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80: Principles by Ray Dalio
00:00:00
Okay, Joe, you did something last episode that made me very nervous.
00:00:03
We got to find out what is the book that you are going to be picking next.
00:00:07
See, you got kind of nervous about this and got kind of worried and I sensed that, but
00:00:15
I felt like it would be just fine.
00:00:17
But we did have a winner and they picked a really good one too, Mike.
00:00:22
So the problem with this going so well is it makes me want to do it again.
00:00:27
Oh boy.
00:00:28
So I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I feel like this should become a game in
00:00:33
some form.
00:00:34
I need to figure that out.
00:00:35
But for those who didn't attend the live recording, here's how this went.
00:00:40
Joe sprung it on me live and I basically was like, absolutely not.
00:00:43
I hold veto power.
00:00:45
Yadda yadda yadda.
00:00:46
And then I edited it all down.
00:00:48
And if you listened to the downloaded version, none of that was in there.
00:00:51
So basically you were left with the impression that whatever was going to be picked was going
00:00:56
to be the book that we were going to be covering, or you were going to be picking next.
00:01:00
Yeah.
00:01:01
And that's kind of the way I wanted to leave it as an experiment.
00:01:04
And this one was successful.
00:01:06
So I guess that maybe proves your point that it kind of works, but also I was kind of,
00:01:15
I guess, in the back of my mind, hoping that this would be a disaster and we wouldn't
00:01:18
have to do it.
00:01:19
Just being honest.
00:01:20
That's a fair assessment, but this one went really well.
00:01:25
We do have a winner.
00:01:26
It was awful.
00:01:27
Otter chose the infinite game by Simon Sennick.
00:01:31
Now that means, so today we have our book and then my next choice I'll talk about later,
00:01:38
but it will be the one following that on my end.
00:01:41
So today my next choice, Mike's choice, and then the infinite game will come at that point.
00:01:48
So that would be episode.
00:01:49
What is it?
00:01:50
81, 82, it'd be episode 83.
00:01:54
This is what that'll be.
00:01:55
The infinite game by Simon Sennick.
00:01:57
So well done, awful Otter.
00:01:59
Congratulations.
00:02:00
Well done, I guess.
00:02:02
Thanks for reinforcing Joe's habit of springing stuff on me as we record live.
00:02:07
I like springing things on Mike and I don't know why.
00:02:10
I'm sorry, sir.
00:02:12
You like to see me freak out probably.
00:02:14
I feel like I get better genuine reactions out of you if I spring it to you live while
00:02:19
we're recording.
00:02:21
That is probably true.
00:02:22
So we are going to be doing the infinite game, which is cool because I saw that Simon Sennick
00:02:28
had a new book out and I was kind of the back of my mind hoping that that one would come
00:02:32
across the club and people would vote for it, which is how I typically pick the books that
00:02:38
we're going to be covering.
00:02:40
So this one I'm excited to read.
00:02:43
I'm a big fan of Simon Sennick's.
00:02:45
We've covered start with why before, but I've read leaders last two and I was a big fan
00:02:49
of that book.
00:02:50
It makes us to dive into this one.
00:02:52
I own the book leaders eat last and I ran across it at a thrift store.
00:02:58
I don't know why I love hunting books at thrift stores.
00:03:01
It's like a thing I do and I was rummaging through them and I ran across leaders eat
00:03:07
last and it occurred to me.
00:03:09
This is kind of in a weird spot and I look up and I'm in like the cookbooks area.
00:03:14
It's like someone had stuck leaders eat last in the cooking section.
00:03:20
So fun times, but I have done, I sent out, we've talked about my email newsletter a few
00:03:26
times here on the show, but I sent one out here a couple days ago about a new project
00:03:32
that I have undertaken and that a few people are pretty excited about.
00:03:36
It's going to actually come out very quickly.
00:03:39
I think it'll be out.
00:03:40
Let's see.
00:03:41
When does this release?
00:03:42
It'll be on Friday.
00:03:43
It'll be about five days or so after this episode releases.
00:03:49
This will be live, but I'm revamping and redoing working with OmniFocus.
00:03:55
This is my third time revamping this.
00:03:57
So it works out well.
00:03:58
It's like working with OmniFocus 3 and we're on OmniFocus 3.
00:04:03
This works great.
00:04:05
So I'm in the middle of all of my outlining and planning and scriptwriting and such for
00:04:11
all of that and have been doing a little bit of recording.
00:04:15
I know my speed with that sort of thing.
00:04:18
So I know I should be in pretty good shape to get that done and released.
00:04:23
I think it's November 20th is the release date for that.
00:04:27
So I'm pretty excited about this one, Mike.
00:04:30
It's been a while since I've gotten into the whole screencasting thing and released something
00:04:35
in that space.
00:04:36
So I'm excited to get back into it.
00:04:37
It has been a while and I'm curious once you start doing it again, if you have a big
00:04:42
learning curve or if it's riding a bike and you just pick up where you left off.
00:04:46
I'm really hoping for the latter of those.
00:04:49
Well, screen flow is basically the same.
00:04:52
Yeah, and I'm still on the old version of it.
00:04:55
Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen a Joe Buellig screencast.
00:04:59
I can't say I'm at screencast online quality, but one of the things I wanted to put out
00:05:05
about that is I have been like, I'm not a huge mind mapper, but I have been for this
00:05:10
particular course, I've been doing a lot of mind mapping and mind node.
00:05:15
Just because I know you use it all the time and of course the members of the show get
00:05:21
access to your mind node files and I was building out my outline for this.
00:05:27
When you texted me, your fun news with my node, which I did not know was possible.
00:05:34
How did you do this?
00:05:35
Yeah, so I texted Joe and I, well, actually I didn't let you know as it was happening,
00:05:43
but I sent the final version and then I put in the details, I let you know that I thought
00:05:48
I broke my node, which is true.
00:05:51
I thought I did because one of these nights this week as I was finishing today's book,
00:05:56
which is 540 something pages, I went to open my mind node application on my iPhone where
00:06:05
I always take notes when I'm reading books and when I opened it, I usually leave the mind
00:06:12
node file that I'm working on as the open document.
00:06:15
When it went to the mind node application, I got a pop up message that said that the
00:06:21
file was corrupted, the only thing I could do is tap OK and then the file was immediately
00:06:26
deleted from iCloud.
00:06:29
So I couldn't find it on any of my devices and I was a page like 480 something at the
00:06:35
time and I was like, you got to be kidding me, I just lost the entire mind node file for
00:06:40
principles because my approach to this, well, I've shared before that typically when I read
00:06:46
a book, I'm just jotting down the things that stand out to me.
00:06:49
This book is a little bit different.
00:06:50
This is a summary of like everything Ray Dalio has ever learned and he's got a handy reference
00:06:56
in the middle of the physical book that I wanted to kind of recreate as a digital version
00:07:01
that I could search because I think that this is something I'm going to want to go back
00:07:04
and reference down the road.
00:07:07
And so I said about to do that and this file, the mind node file, which includes mainly
00:07:15
text a few images as there's different diagrams and things and I would snap a photo on my
00:07:20
phone and embed it in the mind node file.
00:07:23
But this mind node file alone is 168 megabytes.
00:07:29
So I thought to myself, well, this thing just got so big that mind node can't handle it
00:07:34
and it just freaked out when it's open the file.
00:07:37
What actually happened, I think, is that iCloud was being iCloud and there are issues with
00:07:43
iCloud.
00:07:45
People share stories all the time about, oh, my shortcuts disappeared or whatever.
00:07:49
Like, there's weird stuff that's going on with iCloud right now and I think that iCloud
00:07:54
did something while it was syncing with that package file that it just didn't, it was an
00:08:00
Apple thing.
00:08:01
It was not a mind node thing.
00:08:02
I was able to go into iCloud.com on my computer and go restore the file and then once I opened
00:08:09
it again, I've had no issues since then.
00:08:12
But it's gotten me a little bit nervous about things.
00:08:17
At least I know now that I can go back and find them because when I opened it up, I'd
00:08:23
drill down into the settings in my iOS devices.
00:08:26
You can't find it that way.
00:08:27
The only way I could find a file was going into iCloud.com and then you can see a list
00:08:31
of the files that you've recently deleted and you can download one to your computer.
00:08:36
That's what I did.
00:08:37
Then I moved it back into iCloud and it seems to be working.
00:08:40
For a moment there, it was a little bit scary and I legitimately thought that I had hit
00:08:44
the limit for what my node can handle in terms of size.
00:08:49
If you see this thing, you'll understand why I thought that.
00:08:52
Yeah.
00:08:53
I would say we were talking about this a little bit before we jumped on and I pulled
00:08:58
up Mike's file for this particular book.
00:09:02
It's intense.
00:09:06
There is a ton of information about this book in that my node file.
00:09:12
I might have to spend some time with this mic and I read the book.
00:09:15
This is nuts.
00:09:16
Well done.
00:09:17
Well, like I said, this is not my standard approach.
00:09:21
I'm not trying to recreate the book.
00:09:23
99.9% of the time when I read it.
00:09:26
What I saw when I looked at the physical copy of the book, that there's a special section
00:09:31
in the middle that's easy to find and then it's got two different bookmarks for the different
00:09:35
sections which we'll get into in a minute here.
00:09:38
I just thought to myself that, oh, this is intended to be a reference book.
00:09:42
I make a digital version of this.
00:09:45
Can I do that with my node?
00:09:46
It might be a lot of work.
00:09:47
Nah, it won't be that bad.
00:09:48
It was that bad.
00:09:49
It wasn't a ton of work.
00:09:52
But I'm glad I got it done now and it's searchable.
00:09:55
So that's cool.
00:09:56
Hey, there's that.
00:09:57
I just took pictures of the references in the middle.
00:10:01
I could have done that probably.
00:10:03
But take pictures, OCR it and call it good.
00:10:06
I'm a nerd.
00:10:08
Like you mentioned, I upload my My Map files to the club.
00:10:14
If you are a premium member and you're giving us a couple bucks a month, first of all, thank
00:10:19
you so much for your support.
00:10:21
Also, go check out the book notes section because that's where all of these things live.
00:10:25
There's a lot in there.
00:10:26
There is.
00:10:27
I try to upload them all for every book that we read.
00:10:29
I include my gap books when I do them.
00:10:31
My nodes for them also.
00:10:34
They're all PDF files so you can download those and they're not super huge.
00:10:38
The PDF for this one I think is like five megabytes.
00:10:40
All right.
00:10:41
So should we talk about today's book?
00:10:43
Yes.
00:10:44
This will be fun one.
00:10:45
This is a big one.
00:10:46
It should be a ton of fun.
00:10:48
This is Principles by Ray Dalio.
00:10:50
I know you had picked this as a gap book and you had had it as a gap book for a couple
00:10:54
different episodes.
00:10:55
At the time, I just thought honestly you were being slow in reading it.
00:10:59
Now that I have it, I understand it's 540 something pages.
00:11:04
So it is a very large book.
00:11:07
It is a good book and it's an interesting read because a lot of the books that are in
00:11:14
the personal development of the business type space, the productivity type books, they
00:11:18
tend to be, here's a system, follow this, you'll get awesome results.
00:11:23
This is kind of the opposite where it's like, here's my story, everything that I've learned,
00:11:27
try to apply the stuff that makes sense.
00:11:31
And it really inspired me like seeing this and reading this book, I was thinking to myself,
00:11:38
man, it would be kind of cool to create something like this as a legacy to leave, not just my
00:11:44
kids, but anybody who would be interested in that sort of thing.
00:11:48
Now, Ray Dalio has been fairly successful.
00:11:50
So people want to know what he did.
00:11:53
- Fairly.
00:11:54
- I don't think this is something that you could justify just anybody doing, but also
00:11:59
like, that's where my brain went is, that would be kind of cool.
00:12:02
If everybody at the end of their life had to think through, not that Ray's at the end
00:12:06
of his life, but they think through all of the things that they've learned and they actually
00:12:10
write them down, they document them.
00:12:12
That's kind of cool.
00:12:14
And I got thinking to myself, you know, if there was a thing like this that existed for
00:12:20
all of the things that I value and all the principles that govern my life, that would
00:12:24
be awesome.
00:12:25
We've got our Schmidt's Family Core values, which is kind of like a step in this direction,
00:12:29
but this is obviously a lot deeper than that, given how long it is.
00:12:33
- Yeah, this is one that, like, it's in three parts.
00:12:38
And it's borderline three books in one.
00:12:41
Like, it's darn close because it's so long.
00:12:44
It's, you know, and just to kind of summarize, like, what those parts are, the first one
00:12:50
is essentially an autobiography of Bridgewater by Ray Dalio, Bridgewater being the investment
00:12:58
firm that he founded and runs.
00:13:01
So that's part one.
00:13:03
Part two is life principles, the principles that he developed as part of building Bridgewater,
00:13:09
just to live a genuine life.
00:13:13
And then he goes into part three, which is the work principles.
00:13:16
So he's been taking that same concept and applying it to business and such.
00:13:22
So it's a fascinating read, but at the same time, there is a ton here.
00:13:29
I have a single action item off of this book, which we'll get to later, that is actually
00:13:34
like a massive project.
00:13:38
So you can't really, I mean, and you have some here too.
00:13:42
You can get individual action items out of this particular book, but it's more, it's
00:13:51
more like an inspirational motivational type book, I think.
00:13:54
Yes, you can act on it and you can build out your own set of principles.
00:13:59
But to me, the core helpfulness from this particular one is pure motivation and like,
00:14:07
be true to yourself and get stuff done.
00:14:10
Like that's the sort of read that I feel that this is.
00:14:13
So I really enjoyed it.
00:14:14
Ray does a great job writing it, which is kind of unique given.
00:14:19
I don't think he's done any writing prior to this.
00:14:21
Yeah, I'm not sure.
00:14:22
From what I can tell.
00:14:23
I mean, he does a lot of writing, of course, internally for his business, but I don't think
00:14:28
he's done any public writing previous to this.
00:14:32
But no, it's a great read.
00:14:34
I'm glad you picked it.
00:14:35
It's a fun one.
00:14:36
And it's especially interesting to go through a second time.
00:14:37
Yeah, what was the main difference for you going through it a second time as opposed to
00:14:43
the first time?
00:14:44
Just from a high level, your thoughts and feelings on the book in general, did they
00:14:48
change at all?
00:14:49
I can't say that they did, to be completely honest and upfront.
00:14:55
It was kind of hard to reread part one.
00:14:59
Sure.
00:15:00
Like that particular one.
00:15:01
I mean, yes, it's super engaging in it because it's all story.
00:15:05
But when you know the story and you know the outcomes and you know the punch lines, it's
00:15:11
not as interesting the second time around.
00:15:15
So I'll be honest, I kind of skimmed over some of those pieces in the first one.
00:15:20
I'm not going to discount the book as a result of that just because I know my impressions
00:15:26
from it on the first time I went through it.
00:15:29
So I'm going to be gauging it based on that.
00:15:31
Part two and three, like getting into the principles themselves.
00:15:36
To me, it was very refreshing because I know what's coming and I know the rationale behind
00:15:42
each point.
00:15:44
And yet there's it's just so dense with material on those two parts that it's hard to come
00:15:52
away from it feeling like you just reread a book.
00:15:55
It feels very much a new read, even though I've been through it before.
00:15:59
So I can't say that there was anything different just that it's it rekindles what I originally
00:16:06
went through because there's so much there.
00:16:09
So sure, it's it's one that I feel like if you have read this, it's worth reading it
00:16:14
again.
00:16:15
If I were to come back and try to do this a third time, I might skip part one the third
00:16:20
time around and just go to part two and part three because I feel like that's where the
00:16:24
true reference material level hits.
00:16:26
Okay.
00:16:27
So that's the part I find is super valuable for the long term.
00:16:30
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:16:31
And the reason that I ask is that the book is laid out in a very strategic order.
00:16:38
So if you know what's coming, I'm sure that changes how you are reading the different
00:16:44
sections.
00:16:45
Right.
00:16:46
So it starts with part one is called where I'm coming from.
00:16:50
And this is kind of his story.
00:16:52
That's where we'll start.
00:16:53
We'll impact that in a minute, but just real briefly, the kind of the outline of the entire
00:16:56
book, part two is the life principles.
00:17:00
And then part three, which is the bulk of the book is the work principles.
00:17:05
And those are the principles that they use at at Bridgewater.
00:17:09
So part one, his story, I like this part because he's sharing not just the things that he did
00:17:17
well to bring credibility, but he's also sharing all the stupid mistakes and how arrogant he
00:17:23
was.
00:17:24
Yes.
00:17:25
Yes.
00:17:26
So this is how he's a he was an economist, maybe is the right term where he was trying
00:17:33
to predict things and he was right at the beginning.
00:17:38
And he thought that, okay, I understand this stuff and I'm an expert.
00:17:41
And so the next time he saw something and he thought that it was going to play out a
00:17:46
certain way he went on national TV and he's like, yeah, this is the way it's going to
00:17:50
go.
00:17:51
And it didn't go that way.
00:17:52
And then he realized that everything that he had worked for, he kind of checked out the
00:17:58
window because he had picked that hill to die on and it didn't pan out the way that
00:18:02
he thought it was going to pan out and then he starts doing some soul searching.
00:18:06
Like, well, why did it?
00:18:07
Why did it go that way?
00:18:08
Why was I wrong?
00:18:09
And that kind of sparks this thing in him where he has this new perspective, he says in
00:18:14
chapter three where he just wants to be right.
00:18:16
And he doesn't care if the right answer comes from him.
00:18:19
And that is a theme that pops up through the rest of the book in both life principles
00:18:24
and the work principles, which is an interesting perspective.
00:18:28
I think you can identify for yourself whether you work in an organization which has a leader
00:18:36
or maybe above you or you have worked in an organization where they've either exhibited
00:18:41
those skills or not exhibited those skills or that perspective.
00:18:45
And I found through going through this that it actually caused me to get a little bit
00:18:51
emotional, both grateful for some of these things that I've kind of understood prior
00:18:57
to him defining them here.
00:18:59
But he's saying like, this is how I've done this and been successful in this particular
00:19:03
area, whether it's life or work and the principles that are driving it.
00:19:09
And I saw a lot of overlap with some things that personally I believe but haven't been
00:19:14
able to articulate exactly why.
00:19:17
I know this is right but I can't explain it.
00:19:20
I know I like this and I don't like that but I can't tell you exactly why.
00:19:25
And as I was going through this, I realized that my intuition in some areas has been correct
00:19:29
and then he kind of painted a picture of why it is that way.
00:19:33
And it made me both kind of frustrated for some things that I probably stuck with maybe
00:19:39
a little bit too long in the past.
00:19:40
And I was like, man, that was difficult, it didn't really need to be that way and now
00:19:44
I can see all the underlying causes which caused it to be difficult.
00:19:47
And I just don't want to be associated with that anymore.
00:19:50
But then also it caused some gratitude for current situation and the qualities that I
00:19:56
see and some of the people that are above me right now.
00:19:59
And just thankful for the situation that I have.
00:20:03
I'm curious if you had a similar sort of reaction, either the first or second time that you went
00:20:08
through this or if it's just me being weird that it hit me so hard with his personal
00:20:12
story.
00:20:13
Yeah, I mean, the thing that so the first time I came through it, I have a handful of
00:20:17
notes from the first time I went through this in a notebook and I pulled all those out and
00:20:23
some of it struck me the same in that like I know that I have a tendency to trust my intuition
00:20:32
on a lot of things.
00:20:34
I just do to a fault in a number of areas when it comes to certain business decisions or
00:20:41
if it comes to like, should I write this article or that article, I have a tendency to just
00:20:47
trust my gut.
00:20:49
And a lot of times it means that I'm spending too much time on things I shouldn't be.
00:20:55
And it's because I don't have a good sense of what happens when like when I do X, does
00:21:03
it lead to Y and Z?
00:21:05
My assumption is it leads to F or G. And I'm completely wrong on things quite a bit.
00:21:13
So going through it the second time, I realized that at a deeper level than I did the first
00:21:19
time I believe.
00:21:21
And I'm not real sure the details on how that will play out over time, but I do know
00:21:28
that it makes me want more gut checks in place.
00:21:33
It wants me to have more systems in place that I can rely on that keep me from trusting
00:21:40
my intuition when a lot of cases, I probably shouldn't be doing that.
00:21:45
It can cause some problems.
00:21:46
Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of his whole ethos here, right, with principles is that
00:21:53
you have to understand the truth and then you have to have the principles that are going
00:21:58
to govern your decisions.
00:22:01
And those will apply to both your life and your work.
00:22:06
But you really need to articulate them because they are going to be the driver for everything
00:22:11
positive or negative that happens to you.
00:22:13
Right, right.
00:22:14
And it takes some time to figure that stuff out.
00:22:16
I mean, if you look at the mind map for this, this was not written in a couple of months.
00:22:24
This is a mammoth tome.
00:22:29
And to be honest, it could have been a lot longer because he goes through basically everything
00:22:35
that he considers to be true and provides very short descriptions of why he thinks it's
00:22:41
so.
00:22:42
It's very quick hitting and it's lots of these little digestible chunks.
00:22:46
But there's some principles that he talks about that we've read a whole books on.
00:22:52
And he just keeps it real short and like, no, these are the things that apply to me.
00:22:58
And I think that that does a couple of things.
00:23:00
One, it gives some credibility to the principle because he's Ray Dalio and he's successful.
00:23:07
But also it kind of keeps the door open to define them for yourself, which is kind of
00:23:14
interesting.
00:23:15
It's almost the opposite effect where it's like, well, this is true for me.
00:23:17
It may not be true for you.
00:23:19
And there were some things as I went through here where I was like, I don't know if I'm
00:23:23
going to apply that one.
00:23:26
But I guess we're kind of wandering a little bit here.
00:23:29
Coming back to part one where I'm coming from, I'll just try to summarize this real quickly
00:23:32
because part two and part three, that's really where the meat is here anyways.
00:23:35
As I shared, he talks about the things that he was successful in and also the things that
00:23:40
he messed up in.
00:23:41
He talks about the three different stages of life.
00:23:44
I really like this where the first one is we're dependent on others and we learn.
00:23:47
The second one is that others depend on us and we work.
00:23:50
And the third one is when others are no longer depend on us and we no longer have to work,
00:23:55
we're free to save our life.
00:23:58
And I think this is probably where he is, but also how you save your life is open to
00:24:06
interpretation.
00:24:08
Everybody's got their own version of that.
00:24:11
And just the fact that he put this together, this is a lot of work.
00:24:17
And I feel like the fact that he's sharing all of this, everything that he's learned
00:24:24
essentially, he has a little bit of a perspective of I want to help others get to the level
00:24:31
where I've been.
00:24:32
I don't want them to continue to banging their head against the wall and to make things
00:24:37
harder than they have to be.
00:24:38
If you can learn from my mistakes, go ahead and do it sort of a thing.
00:24:42
Otherwise, there's no reason to share all the mistakes that he made, which he shares
00:24:49
a ton.
00:24:50
Most of the time when he talks about the good stuff that happens, by the way, when he gets
00:24:55
into the work principles, it's these people did this and it was the right thing to do.
00:25:03
But then all the negative stuff, it's like I needed to realize that I wasn't good at
00:25:07
this, that and the other thing, which is a very effective perspective.
00:25:12
But this whole part one, this is really the foundation which makes him believable in the
00:25:17
second and third parts.
00:25:18
I don't think just picking up in reading part two or part three, I would have been as interested
00:25:23
in what he had to say had I not read this first section.
00:25:26
Right.
00:25:27
Right.
00:25:28
Yeah, absolutely.
00:25:29
I will say that second time through part two and part three had a larger impact because
00:25:39
once you go through part one and you understand who Ray Dalio is and I've kept up with some
00:25:44
of the investment world over time.
00:25:47
So I knew who Ray was before I picked this up the first time, but I didn't understand
00:25:53
Bridgewater near as well as I did when I finished reading it the first time and especially the
00:25:58
second time, but the gap between those two, I've noticed and paid attention to Bridgewater
00:26:04
more because I'm aware of them even more now.
00:26:08
And I'm fascinated by the way that they work in today's world.
00:26:13
So part two and part three have, to your point, they have a bigger impact once you understand
00:26:19
the company Ray and where they've been.
00:26:22
Exactly.
00:26:23
So let's jump into part two here, life principles and there are, let me explain how this is kind
00:26:29
of put together.
00:26:30
So there's each of these different sections and then there are chapters inside of these
00:26:36
sections, although in part one, for example, there are eight different chapters.
00:26:43
And then when you get to life principles, he's really just numbering the principles.
00:26:47
So it starts over at one and there are five here in the life principle section.
00:26:51
We're not going to go through all of these.
00:26:53
There's no way we could do that and make this episode interesting for people.
00:26:59
So we're going to pick and choose the ones that really kind of jump out to us, but I'll
00:27:03
real quickly just cover the five that are in here.
00:27:06
Number one is embrace reality and deal with it.
00:27:08
Number two is use the five step process to get what you want out of life.
00:27:13
Number three is be radically open minded.
00:27:17
Number four is understand that people are wired very differently and number five, learn how
00:27:21
to make decisions effectively.
00:27:25
So the things that I really liked here, not necessarily the five step process that felt
00:27:31
like a system, I 100% believe that, you know, he through trial and error landed on this and
00:27:37
this absolutely works for him.
00:27:39
Reading through that does feel a little bit weird in terms of, okay, I'm going to try to
00:27:44
apply this myself.
00:27:46
Do you agree with that?
00:27:47
Yeah, I think there's, I mean, the five step process is interesting.
00:27:53
It's not one that I think I'm, I mean, basically set goals and go after them if you want that.
00:28:01
Yeah, so I guess real quickly, you know, first is have clear goals.
00:28:05
Second is identify and don't tolerate problems.
00:28:08
Third is diagnose problems to get to their root causes.
00:28:10
Four is design a plan.
00:28:11
Five pushed through to completion.
00:28:13
And there's this little graphic goals, problems, diagnosis, design, doing, and it's like this
00:28:18
little loop, loop sort of a thing.
00:28:21
I think the visual is communicating is that you're going to set goals.
00:28:25
You're going to encounter obstacles.
00:28:27
You're going to have to figure out a way around them.
00:28:28
And then eventually if you take that approach, you're going to keep moving upward.
00:28:32
Is that fair?
00:28:33
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:34
I mean, when you're building out or living life, like you always have downturns to some
00:28:40
degree and generally speaking, he's talking about set goals, go for them.
00:28:45
You're inevitably going to have something that goes wrong or something that has a downturn,
00:28:50
evaluate it, figure out how to get past it and push through that way you can keep moving
00:28:54
forward.
00:28:55
Like that concept is it's very systematic, but that's Ray Dalio.
00:29:03
Like that is the way that he does life and he does everything in this book that way.
00:29:08
It's all, the whole point behind the principles is to give him guidance in making decisions
00:29:15
every day.
00:29:17
Yep.
00:29:18
So with all of the five steps or each individual piece being open-minded, radical transparency
00:29:25
and radical truth, these are things that he's all for because he wants to get the raw facts,
00:29:32
make decisions based on those raw facts that are consistent and repeatable.
00:29:38
So that he can alleviate the pressure on his own mind and his own intuition to enjoy
00:29:43
life.
00:29:44
Like that's really what he's going for, his success through systematized, repeatable decision
00:29:52
making.
00:29:53
And that's not a simple process to come to.
00:29:56
I mean, when you look through each of these principles and what he has written here, yes,
00:30:02
they're amazing principles.
00:30:03
Most of them.
00:30:04
Like almost all of them I agree with, but if you think about the mass number of guiding
00:30:12
steps here, it's kind of hard to get your head around how you could use all of this
00:30:18
to make decisions each day.
00:30:22
I mean, it's incredibly valuable, but there's well over, I think there's probably about
00:30:27
a thousand or maybe more principles at a small scale in this book.
00:30:32
Probably have a counter to mall.
00:30:34
Yeah.
00:30:35
And if you think about trying to just be aware of that many guiding principles in making
00:30:41
decisions, like that's borderline impossible.
00:30:45
So like the practicality of using this as a system, I feel is very difficult.
00:30:51
But having gone through the process to write and expand on these principles, I feel like
00:30:58
would cement them in your brain and in your organization quite a bit more than just taking
00:31:03
what he has and trying to implement it.
00:31:06
So I think it's incredibly valuable.
00:31:08
I just think it's kind of hard to get your head around, which is why you kind of have
00:31:13
to go through the process of doing this on your own.
00:31:15
Yeah, it is hard to wrap your head around.
00:31:18
The five step process makes it seem just like every other system that we've talked about
00:31:25
on bookworm, but it's really kind of vague in general because the specifics of your situation
00:31:31
are going to be different and you have to figure out for yourself in those different
00:31:35
areas really what's true.
00:31:38
If I were to summarize this section, I think there's a couple key things.
00:31:43
First, he mentions the very first principle he talks about is be a hyper realist.
00:31:47
He even mentions that people who create great things aren't ideal dreamers.
00:31:50
They're totally grounded in reality.
00:31:52
So you have to know what is true in order to connect the things around you in the ideal
00:32:01
way.
00:32:02
And he really believes in this idea of evolution, not like a large macro as a species topic,
00:32:11
but just personal evolution where you encounter something, you're able to learn from it.
00:32:16
You're able to get better, get stronger, become a better version of yourself.
00:32:22
And you just keep doing that over and over and over again throughout your entire life.
00:32:28
And I think that that is a very important perspective to have.
00:32:33
I think that's a mindset shift that nearly anybody could benefit from going back to the
00:32:39
book on mindset that we covered by Carol Dweck.
00:32:41
I mean, it's really the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset.
00:32:45
This is just growth mindset to the nth degree, in my opinion.
00:32:51
For sure.
00:32:52
Yeah.
00:32:53
First, how am I going to learn from whatever happens to me, but I want to realize as much
00:33:00
as I can, the ultimate truth of the situation around me.
00:33:04
And then once I am enlightened to the degree where I understand what's true, then I kind
00:33:10
of will know what to do.
00:33:13
I'm not sure if that is simpler or more complicated than the five step process.
00:33:18
It feels a little bit more simple to me.
00:33:19
I think there's just a couple pieces there.
00:33:20
And it's not these things that you follow in order.
00:33:24
They're more, again, principles.
00:33:25
They're kind of like the foundational guardrails behind your approach to everything.
00:33:31
It doesn't really matter.
00:33:32
You're not going to find yourself at stage four in the five step process.
00:33:36
You're going to just continue to approach things with an open mind, which is something
00:33:40
that we'll talk about here in a little bit.
00:33:42
And then you're going to constantly be asking, how can I do better next time?
00:33:46
Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:47
You got three specific pieces here you want to go through.
00:33:50
You want to start with the first one?
00:33:52
Sure.
00:33:53
So there's a section here where he talks about disagreements, which I thought was interesting
00:33:58
because most people view disagreements as people are fighting about something and someone
00:34:05
has to win, someone has to lose.
00:34:08
And the usual perspective when you have a disagreement, I think, is I want to prove
00:34:15
that I know better than you do, but he kind of talks about disagreements in a different
00:34:20
light.
00:34:21
He mentions that disagreements aren't threats as much as they are opportunities for learning.
00:34:26
So don't be afraid to disagree because the fact that you are disagreeing may show you
00:34:32
that somebody else has another aspect of truth that you haven't realized yet.
00:34:40
And I think back to most of the disagreements that I've had, and I know it's a general
00:34:48
statement, but I think it's totally fair to say that.
00:34:53
And it's hard in the moment to have that correct perspective.
00:34:59
So this isn't necessarily an action item for me, but I want to recognize that the fact
00:35:06
that I am in a disagreement is actually an opportunity to learn.
00:35:09
It's not something that is hindering me from making progress.
00:35:13
And the fact that we're here isn't necessarily a bad thing.
00:35:16
Just shut up and figure out what you can learn from it so that you can get better instead
00:35:20
of trying to impose your will and dominate the other party, whether that's my wife, a
00:35:24
co-worker, my boss, you know, anybody, because I think this applies both up and down the
00:35:30
chain of command to borrow the term from extreme ownership.
00:35:33
Like, people who are above you, people are below you.
00:35:35
So I might get in a disagreement with my dad.
00:35:38
I might get into disagreement with my kids.
00:35:41
Okay, same principle applies here.
00:35:43
Don't try to justify myself.
00:35:45
Try to understand things from their perspective, right?
00:35:47
Right.
00:35:48
And then figure out where I might be wrong.
00:35:49
Yeah, absolutely, because I know that whenever we get into disagreements, it's easy to get
00:35:55
into defensive mode and start explaining your own side of the story right away.
00:36:02
When in most cases, I mean, you're just flipping the coin to your own side, as opposed to
00:36:08
trying to understand the other side.
00:36:10
So I can't say that I'm good at this, but this is a piece that stood out to me the first
00:36:17
time I went through it because I've tried to learn since then how to ask questions when
00:36:24
I'm in the middle of a disagreement, because essentially what that does is it takes the
00:36:30
burden of explaining a point of view off of me and puts it on the other person.
00:36:37
And burdens may be the wrong word there because I don't want it to be a bad thing.
00:36:42
It's just that asking that other person what they think about their point of view or how
00:36:48
they came to that or tell me more about this specific piece.
00:36:53
All of those questions can eventually lead to a deeper conversation.
00:37:00
And I think that in the midst of that deeper conversation, that's when you can start to
00:37:06
understand why you're disagreeing and why there's a difference between the two of you,
00:37:11
because you may get to a point where you understand that the foundation of how that other person
00:37:16
came to believe what they think is drastically different than the foundation that you stand
00:37:22
on.
00:37:24
So yes, there's a disagreement there, but asking the questions as opposed to defending
00:37:29
your own.
00:37:31
At least in my opinion, can drive a better, I don't want to say argument, but a debate,
00:37:38
maybe a more productive argument, maybe.
00:37:40
Yeah, or maybe productive discourse.
00:37:42
It changes from, you know, I don't want to say hate filled, but a heated conversation
00:37:51
to genuine back and forth about a given topic.
00:37:56
That's kind of where I come from on that.
00:38:00
But that originally, like I hadn't really come to that conclusion until I read this the
00:38:04
first time through.
00:38:05
So it's interesting to me that you pulled this out, stuck it in the outline because this
00:38:08
is a piece that truly struck me heavily the first time I went through this and reading
00:38:14
it again the second time, I was like, yep, absolutely.
00:38:17
I still stink at that, but I will continue to agree that yes, that is a thing I should
00:38:24
be doing.
00:38:25
Sure.
00:38:26
And the thing that's tied to this, I think, is the whole section.
00:38:31
Principle number three, be radically open-minded.
00:38:33
I think if you are open-minded, that's the key to whether you can embrace a disagreement
00:38:42
through the right lens and turn it into a positive instead of it being a negative.
00:38:47
He talks through the different characteristics of being closed-minded versus open-minded.
00:38:53
And this, again, sounds a lot like fixed mindset versus growth mindset, but closed-minded,
00:38:57
you don't want your ideas challenged, you're more likely to make statements and ask questions,
00:39:02
focus more on being understood than on understanding others.
00:39:04
I mean, all of this is stuff we've heard before, right?
00:39:07
So Stephen Covey is the one who said, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
00:39:11
Right?
00:39:12
Right.
00:39:13
Right.
00:39:14
We talked about mindset by Carol Dweck.
00:39:15
Say things like, "I could be wrong, but here's my opinion."
00:39:17
You know, closed-minded people block others from speaking.
00:39:20
They had trouble holding two thoughts simultaneously in their minds.
00:39:24
They lack a deep sense of humility.
00:39:26
When you compare that to somebody who's open-minded, they're more curious about why there's a
00:39:29
disagreement.
00:39:30
They genuinely believe they could be wrong.
00:39:31
The questions that they ask are genuine.
00:39:33
They always feel compelled to see things through other people's eyes.
00:39:36
They know when to make statements and when to ask questions.
00:39:38
They're more interested in listening than speaking.
00:39:41
They can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind.
00:39:43
They go back and forth between them to assess the relative merits.
00:39:46
They're able to compare things.
00:39:47
They're not just so fixated on.
00:39:49
This is the thing that I believe before we started talking.
00:39:51
This has to be true and I'm going to yell louder.
00:39:54
They approach everything with the deep-seated fear that they could be wrong.
00:39:57
I don't think fear maybe is the right word there.
00:40:00
Curiosity maybe is a better one where you want to discover the things that are true.
00:40:06
That's something that I try to embody in my own life, but I know that I could be better
00:40:10
at.
00:40:11
I want to become better at being open-minded.
00:40:16
I think that the place that that plays out most often and most practically in my day-to-day
00:40:22
life is in the disagreements that pop up.
00:40:26
That's the acid test for me.
00:40:29
Next time I'm in a disagreement, how do I find myself responding?
00:40:34
How do I find myself responding?
00:40:35
If I'm going to take my emotional temperature in the moment, am I cool, calm, and collected
00:40:42
and trying to figure out where I missed it or am I frustrated and angry and feel my
00:40:47
blood boiling because the other person just doesn't get it.
00:40:51
I'm ashamed to admit that that one happens a little more often than I'd like.
00:40:58
Sure.
00:40:59
I specifically noticed this one in my marriage.
00:41:03
My wife and I can't say we have a lot of fights.
00:41:09
We have some heated debates, probably regularly, but I can't say it's a full-blown fight most
00:41:15
of the time.
00:41:17
Most cases I find that those heated conversations and the fights come from me not being willing
00:41:28
to see her side of the story.
00:41:31
And essentially not being open-minded to her side of the conversation.
00:41:37
It's not a good place to be in 99.9% of cases.
00:41:42
I can say that in recent months over the last year, I've specifically been targeting that
00:41:49
thought process because I know it's not helpful.
00:41:54
And going through the process of trying to understand what raise take is on being open-minded
00:41:59
and such, just kind of rekindled that, Mike.
00:42:04
It's been one that I've had conversations with my wife about it in that I'm trying to
00:42:09
just be willing to admit that I'm wrong.
00:42:12
I have to be okay with that.
00:42:16
And there's a lot of cases where she'd say the same thing, but it's a back-and-forth,
00:42:21
obviously, in a marriage trying to understand each other.
00:42:23
But you always have to be open-minded to the other person's point of view.
00:42:27
And if you're not, you're going to have disagreements that you don't resolve or that you don't
00:42:32
come to an agreement to disagree on.
00:42:35
So I appreciated this.
00:42:39
And I can't say that it's one that's super groundbreaking right now, but it's one that
00:42:44
was at least encouragement.
00:42:45
This is why I say it's a motivational type book occasionally.
00:42:50
That was another motivator and another kickstart in the right direction, for sure.
00:42:55
Yeah.
00:42:56
And the question then, if you decide that you want to be open-minded is how do you become
00:43:04
open-minded?
00:43:05
And he has a section on that.
00:43:07
A lot of this stuff is just general, recognize what's going on here, stuff like use pain
00:43:12
as your guide towards quality reflection and make being open-minded a habit, get to know
00:43:16
your blind spots.
00:43:17
If there's a number of believable people who say you're doing something wrong, you're
00:43:20
the only one who doesn't see it that way, assume you're probably biased.
00:43:24
But the one that was interesting to me, and this is one of my action items, is to meditate.
00:43:31
And good job, Mike.
00:43:33
All right.
00:43:34
Yeah.
00:43:35
So I've mentioned this a couple of different times, I think now that I've been working
00:43:38
on this article for the sweet setup by the time that this goes live, that article will
00:43:43
be published on the Best Mindfulness Meditation app.
00:43:46
So this has kind of been culminating in coming to ahead, but the reminder that they gave
00:43:51
me here in principles, this is the thing that I think finally has cemented this and is
00:43:56
going to make this a habit.
00:43:57
I've been doing headspace now, my current streak is 12 days in a row.
00:44:02
And it seems to be working.
00:44:05
The thing that has kind of flipped the trigger for this, in my opinion, is, and this is a
00:44:11
little bit of a tangent, but I feel like this might help people who maybe struggle with
00:44:15
this like me, where I've always thought, you know, my situation isn't that bad compared
00:44:22
to other people.
00:44:23
I don't have, I'm not in a office environment and people are barging in all the time and
00:44:27
giving me a bunch of things to do.
00:44:28
So meditation is probably great for those types of people who just can't handle the
00:44:34
situation they find themselves in, but I shouldn't need that.
00:44:38
I think ultimately that's kind of my hesitancy to the idea of mindfulness meditation, because
00:44:46
I understand the science behind it.
00:44:49
I also a long time ago got over the whole woo woo spiritual aspect of it.
00:44:55
There are different meditation styles and practices that get into that stuff and those
00:44:59
I'm not interested in at all, but mindfulness meditation, I definitely am.
00:45:05
I want to train my brain to focus and to regulate my emotions and things like all the physiological
00:45:10
benefits that come from it.
00:45:12
There's nothing spiritual about that.
00:45:14
You can apply it spiritually, you know, we talk about our faith on this podcast.
00:45:18
Some people say too much, but that's a big part of who I am.
00:45:22
So I can apply these principles and think about the people I'm praying for or the verses
00:45:28
that I'm reading.
00:45:30
But that's not something that even if you are completely turned off by everything spiritual,
00:45:37
there's nothing in just mindfulness meditation that will cause you to do that.
00:45:44
It's simply just training your brain on whatever you want to focus it on and then recognizing
00:45:48
when it wanders and bringing it back.
00:45:51
The fact that you keep bringing it back, keep bringing it back, keep bringing it back, that's
00:45:54
the thing that helps it to stay on track more.
00:45:57
And I've recognized I think that this isn't something that I necessarily need to do, but
00:46:03
it is something that will be helpful and that has turned it into something that I want to
00:46:07
do.
00:46:09
And especially as he frames it here in principles as being a thing that can help you be open-minded
00:46:14
and recognizing that, hmm, sometimes you're not so hot at being open-minded.
00:46:19
That kind of highlights the point that, you know, you really could use this.
00:46:25
So that's one of my action items.
00:46:27
Well done.
00:46:28
I'm proud of you.
00:46:29
And I'm sad that 10% happier didn't make it.
00:46:32
It's a solid app.
00:46:33
You have to read the review.
00:46:35
Okay.
00:46:36
But it's expensive.
00:46:37
I get it.
00:46:38
It is.
00:46:39
I'm with you on the meditation thing.
00:46:42
Obviously I've kind of switched sides.
00:46:44
I struggled with it for a very long time, but I've been noticing a lot more of the benefits.
00:46:52
It's kind of this weird chicken and egg thing because it's like you need, it's almost like
00:46:56
you have to be into meditation to understand the benefits of meditation.
00:47:03
And when you're not or you're just trying it out, but being skeptical, like you haven't
00:47:07
bought into it.
00:47:08
So then you're not aware of it.
00:47:10
It's so weird.
00:47:11
Like it's kind of back and forth.
00:47:13
I find.
00:47:14
But the more I have dedicated to the practice and making sure that I do that on a daily basis,
00:47:20
I've noticed I'm a lot more of a calm person than I used to be.
00:47:25
I let things go quicker than I used to.
00:47:28
And I don't get as fired up as quickly as I used to.
00:47:32
So at this point, I'm pretty much sold.
00:47:36
Yeah.
00:47:37
And that's the goal.
00:47:39
I think for me is when I am in a disagreement and I feel myself getting frustrated, the fight
00:47:45
versus flight is kicking in.
00:47:46
And it just shows that I haven't yet developed that to the point where I can catch it early
00:47:51
enough to control it.
00:47:53
And obviously each situation is a little bit different, but that's what I want to get
00:47:57
to you is exactly what you just described where no matter what happens to land in my
00:48:02
lap or whatever happens around me, I can respond appropriately and I can see it the right way.
00:48:09
And I feel like meditation is something that mindfulness meditation specifically is something
00:48:14
that can help me get there.
00:48:16
Sure.
00:48:17
What else we got on life principles?
00:48:19
I got lost in the outline.
00:48:21
Yeah, I kind of jumped over all over the place.
00:48:24
But the last thing I wanted to talk about here comes from section five.
00:48:28
He talks about synthesizing as the collecting and interpreting of dots.
00:48:34
And this was interesting to me because I've shared on this podcast before one of the things
00:48:39
that allowed me to be creative and consider myself a writer, podcaster, creator, whatever,
00:48:46
was reading Austin Cleon's book, "Steal Like An Artist."
00:48:49
And he talks about how when you create something, you're literally just connecting dots in a
00:48:53
way that they haven't been connected before, but the dots themselves are not completely
00:48:56
original.
00:48:58
So when you're talking about synthesizing in this book, that's a term I thought of obviously
00:49:04
he's using this in terms of doing this for making right decisions.
00:49:10
But I also thought back to that book by Austin Cleon and how synthesizing can also be used
00:49:15
in the creative process.
00:49:17
And I thought this was kind of cool.
00:49:19
Not just as a validation for something that I've talked about before, but really just highlighting
00:49:26
this as a life principle and how this can keep you on the right path.
00:49:35
I think the way he presented it in this book made it seem a little bit more approachable
00:49:40
for just about everybody.
00:49:41
Because with Austin Cleon's book, "Steal Like An Artist," people have a lot of questions
00:49:45
of trouble identifying themselves as a creative person or as an artist.
00:49:49
And I talked about that my Max Talk presentation that really everybody is creative.
00:49:56
When you give a kid a box of crayons, they don't sit there and say, "Well, where are
00:50:00
the instructions?
00:50:01
What am I supposed to do?"
00:50:02
They just start drawing unless they've had some prior coaching one way or the other.
00:50:09
But by default, we're naturally kind of curious and we want to experiment with things.
00:50:17
So synthesizing the situation at hand, synthesizing the situation through time, these are all
00:50:24
different things that he talks about in terms of making good decisions.
00:50:30
And I think that when you view collecting these dots and interpreting these dots and
00:50:37
trying out all these different things, it's kind of a license to be more creative.
00:50:44
And creative is probably not the right term.
00:50:46
Maybe it's more adventurous, I don't know.
00:50:49
But the takeaway for me as I read this was don't put yourself in this box because of
00:50:55
the things that you have traditionally done.
00:50:58
Or maybe you tried something a long time ago and it didn't go exactly the way you wanted
00:51:02
it to.
00:51:03
So you're afraid to even try it again.
00:51:05
This is part of making good decisions, is trying things and failing at them.
00:51:11
The key though is to recognize the truth, right?
00:51:15
To see why things failed or why you didn't get a good outcome.
00:51:20
And you might just surprise yourself at what you're able to find when you view this synthesizing
00:51:25
as just collecting as many dots as you can and then figuring out what they actually mean.
00:51:29
We're just letting the connection happen naturally.
00:51:32
I mean, we do this all the time with Bookworm in that we read a ton of books.
00:51:38
Sometimes they overlap, a lot of times their system books and Mike loves them to death.
00:51:43
And sometimes we find things that are just completely contradictory to what we believe.
00:51:49
I'm sure Mike's looking at Amanda Palmer right now.
00:51:53
So these things happen and you collect a lot of information about a lot of different areas.
00:51:59
And over time, you start to put those dots together in ways that are new to you and might
00:52:07
be new to the world.
00:52:09
And I think a lot of the art side can come out in that, but you have to be willing to
00:52:15
make that commitment to connecting or at least collecting those dots.
00:52:21
Whether it's reading a bunch of articles online or experimenting with a guitar or playing
00:52:26
around with screencasts and such, no matter what it is, playing around with it and learning
00:52:33
about it is to your point something we're naturally inclined to.
00:52:38
But it can lead to a lot of really cool things.
00:52:41
So yeah, I love Bookworm because it gives me a schedule for collecting dots.
00:52:47
And it's an easy avenue.
00:52:51
Books are to gathering a lot of information very quickly.
00:52:56
So I'm of course a big fan of the dots being originated in books.
00:53:02
Obviously I'd also like to play around with things as well, both of which do a great job
00:53:08
at collecting dots.
00:53:09
So thanks Ray for encouraging my habits.
00:53:14
Yep.
00:53:15
The last thing that I wanted to call out in this section is something that's pretty short
00:53:20
near the end.
00:53:21
As you mentioned in order to have the best possible life, you need to one, know what
00:53:26
the best decisions are and two, have the courage to make them.
00:53:29
And I feel like this is kind of related to collecting dots because you can't know what
00:53:34
the best decisions are unless you've collected enough dots to weigh them against each other
00:53:39
and then having the courage to make them, that's obviously its own thing.
00:53:45
But it's not just stepping up blindly and hoping for the best.
00:53:51
It's trying a bunch of things, doing a bunch of tests basically and then determining the
00:53:56
best course of action.
00:53:58
Once you see what the best course of action is, even if it's going to be hard or it's
00:54:02
going to be scary, having the ability to overcome the fear and do what you know you need to
00:54:11
do, that's the thing that's going to get you ultimately to a fulfilling life.
00:54:16
Ready for work principles?
00:54:18
Yeah.
00:54:19
Let's talk about work principles.
00:54:20
Let's talk about action in this one.
00:54:22
Yep.
00:54:23
Now there is a ton here.
00:54:25
Number one, trust in radical truth and radical transparency.
00:54:28
Number two, cultivate meaningful work and meaningful relationships.
00:54:33
Number three, create a culture in which it's okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not
00:54:36
to learn from them.
00:54:38
Number four, get and stay in sync.
00:54:41
Number five, believability, weight your decision making.
00:54:44
Number six, recognize how to get beyond disagreements.
00:54:47
Number seven, remember that the who is more important than the what?
00:54:50
Number eight, higher right because the penalties for hiring wrong are huge.
00:54:54
Number nine, constantly trained, test evaluate and sort people.
00:54:58
Let's see.
00:54:59
Number 10, manage as someone operating a machine to achieve a goal.
00:55:03
Number 11, perceive and don't tolerate problems.
00:55:05
Number 12, diagnose problems to get to their root causes.
00:55:08
Number 13, design improvements to your machine to get around your problems.
00:55:12
Number 14, do what you set out to do.
00:55:13
Number five, use tools and protocols to shape how work is done.
00:55:16
Number 16, for heaven's sake, don't overlook governance.
00:55:19
I share all of those just to illustrate to the point that there is a lot in here that
00:55:25
we are not going to talk about.
00:55:27
So don't base a judgment on this section based on what you hear in here us talk about.
00:55:33
Right, because this section, so this is part three, part three by itself is 259 pages.
00:55:40
That's a book by itself.
00:55:42
Yeah, and the thing that is, the thing that is really interesting to it in this, there's
00:55:50
a couple of big themes.
00:55:51
That's kind of what I tried to pick out here.
00:55:53
Number one, he talks about this concept of an idea meritocracy.
00:55:58
This I think is the crux of all of the principles in this section.
00:56:03
I really like his definition of an idea meritocracy, which is radical truth plus radical transparency
00:56:09
plus believability weighted decision making.
00:56:12
I didn't really like the whole believability weighted decision making when it came to the
00:56:16
life principles because there are some things that I haven't understood that I've done anyways
00:56:21
and they've ended up being the right thing to do.
00:56:24
But I think it makes sense in a business perspective in a lot of different organizations.
00:56:28
Now there are obviously going to be situations where you are going to, you're going to overrule
00:56:35
those, I think.
00:56:37
I don't think you can get away from that completely.
00:56:41
But I do think if the goal is to make yourself replaceable as you create this organization
00:56:48
or this business or this thing, you have to have this embedded in the fabric of the organization.
00:56:56
So I understand the value of it.
00:56:58
But the two things that really stand out to me from this are radical truth and radical
00:57:03
transparency.
00:57:04
Well, here real quick, before you get into that, let's define what the idea meritocracy
00:57:09
is.
00:57:10
Because I know when I went through this the first time, that's a really cool term.
00:57:15
What on earth is that?
00:57:17
That's kind of a hard one to get your head around.
00:57:19
And I think in his case, essentially what they're after is a way to collect ideas from
00:57:27
anyone and everyone and weigh them all equally.
00:57:31
Yes.
00:57:32
And so I shared the formula that he shares at the first section of this where it's about
00:57:36
how he thinks about organizations.
00:57:39
So there's the three different components, radical truth, radical transparency, believability,
00:57:43
weighted decision making.
00:57:44
What does that look like?
00:57:45
I think that's kind of what you're getting at.
00:57:47
Radical truth doesn't matter what your title is.
00:57:51
If you are wrong, you are wrong.
00:57:53
And anybody can be right.
00:57:55
Number two, radical transparency.
00:57:58
Everybody can see everything.
00:57:59
And then number three, the things that govern how decisions are made, they're based on logic,
00:58:07
basically.
00:58:08
The believability weighted decision making, this makes the most sense.
00:58:12
So this is the thing that we're going to do.
00:58:14
Data driven decisions might be another way to define that.
00:58:18
And so I can't think of any organization that I've worked with that is this based on the
00:58:25
definition that he outlines here.
00:58:27
And I don't think that they necessarily should be either.
00:58:30
But I do think that these three ideas that combine the idea of meritocracy, this, I can
00:58:39
I can definitely see value in this.
00:58:41
I would like to build elements of this into the organizations that I am involved with.
00:58:49
The challenge is, how do you do that if you're not the person who is the CEO calling the shots?
00:58:55
But I do think that radical truth and radical transparency specifically, like always seeking
00:58:59
the truth and always sharing it, those are things that anybody can apply.
00:59:06
But this is, it requires the people involved to be trustworthy.
00:59:12
Yes.
00:59:13
And full of integrity.
00:59:15
And I say that because I've been burnt by this one, because I, the first time I went
00:59:21
through this, I embraced this one wholeheartedly and went down the path of radical truth, radical
00:59:27
transparency within the business that I was in the middle of at the time.
00:59:33
And it bit me hard.
00:59:36
So yeah, you cannot just join an organization and say, I am going to embrace radical truth
00:59:41
and radical transparency.
00:59:42
Right.
00:59:43
Because that will have negative ramifications if the people above you do not embrace the
00:59:47
same ideals or below you in this case.
00:59:50
So I'm not going to go into any details other than that, but it is very easy for people
00:59:56
to take advantage of an organization if you embrace this.
01:00:02
So the people who are in the organization have to be bought in 100%.
01:00:07
If there's any question about their loyalty or their integrity, like you have a different
01:00:17
issue, which I think is why like he's got part three broken down into three subsections.
01:00:23
Like the first one is getting the culture right, which is where this radical truth and
01:00:28
radical transparency piece comes from.
01:00:30
And he quickly follows that up with getting the people right.
01:00:33
Right.
01:00:34
And I think that's why, because if you get the culture right, it has to have the right
01:00:37
people in it.
01:00:39
And I have screwed that up in the past.
01:00:43
Culture is people.
01:00:45
See, there's that too.
01:00:46
He makes them separate though.
01:00:47
Yep.
01:00:48
And I understand it.
01:00:49
You know, he's talking about from his perspective as a CEO and growing and scaling this company,
01:00:56
right?
01:00:57
So he is driving the ship when they're small.
01:01:01
And then as they grow, he's having to delegate to other people.
01:01:05
And by creating the culture first, he has a better chance of everybody being on board
01:01:10
with the vision that he's casting at the very beginning.
01:01:13
You cannot just collect a bunch of people and assume that they will create the right
01:01:18
culture.
01:01:19
You do have to have the direction dictated by the culture.
01:01:22
First I think, but the way that it plays out is in the people who are a part of the organization.
01:01:29
I mean, there are a lot of organizations that have mission statements that sound great,
01:01:35
and then they don't live out any of them.
01:01:38
So they might have the right corporate culture on paper, but everybody in the organization
01:01:45
knows that's not how they actually do things.
01:01:48
And so that's why I say that culture is people because they're the ones that have to live
01:01:54
it out.
01:01:55
Yeah, sure.
01:01:56
For sure.
01:01:57
All right.
01:01:58
Another thing that talking about culture that stood out to me in this section is I put
01:02:04
disagree, but commit, he has a little bit different way of saying that number six recognize
01:02:14
how to get beyond disagreements.
01:02:16
He mentions 6.4.
01:02:18
So that's basically how he writes this is he's got the principles and then a whole bunch
01:02:23
of point principles and then a whole bunch of sub principles below those or sub sub principles,
01:02:29
I guess is how he defines those.
01:02:31
But 6.4, once a decision is made, everyone should get behind it, even though individuals
01:02:36
may still disagree.
01:02:39
This one jumped out to me because I've sort of studied this already, but I think this
01:02:47
is the thing that kind of makes this all work.
01:02:52
Like if you embrace all of the principles up until this point, and then you've got a
01:02:57
disagreement and you can't get past it and people stay offended about something that
01:03:01
goes away that's different than they think it should, then ultimately it's going to break.
01:03:07
So this is kind of the bottleneck or the choke point I realized is that once you have a decision
01:03:13
that's made by the team and you're using the idea of the idea of meritocracy, these believability
01:03:19
weighted decisions that you're making, you have to be able to disconnect your personal
01:03:24
feelings or what side you were on before the decision was made from the actual decision
01:03:31
and then work to see the end goal that the organization has come about.
01:03:38
You got to be able to see things from a higher level.
01:03:43
The disagree but commit, this is the way that I heard it defined and I think it was Jeff
01:03:47
Bezos who originally I saw talk about this.
01:03:53
But I think this is something that is simple maybe to understand a lot harder to practice.
01:03:59
Oh yeah, definitely.
01:04:00
But something that I think is really, really valuable.
01:04:06
So, and this is something that you could apply as if you're at the head of an organization
01:04:12
and you say, I want my people to understand that there's going to be disagreements.
01:04:16
So this is a principle we're all going to share in like disagree but commit.
01:04:20
But I think the more valuable application of it is if you're not at the top of the food
01:04:24
chain recognizing that you're not always going to get your way, if you can start practicing
01:04:29
this, it's going to severely impact the quality of your life.
01:04:34
You're not going to get so upset about stuff.
01:04:37
Because this can apply at home.
01:04:41
I don't always get what I want.
01:04:42
I've got a wife of five kids who also have things that they want to do in places they
01:04:48
have to be and so I may want to stay home on a Saturday.
01:04:52
I'm going to go to soccer practice anyways.
01:04:57
It could happen in a church organization or where I've got people above me who are going
01:05:04
to ask me maybe to do things that I don't really want to do or I don't think I've got
01:05:11
a whole lot of extra time and yeah, I'd love to do that sort of thing but I just got to
01:05:15
step in and feel a need.
01:05:17
And obviously there's a work context here too but I think even though this is talking about
01:05:23
work principles, the interesting thing to me about this is how this can be played out
01:05:28
in all of these other arenas.
01:05:29
For sure.
01:05:30
Yeah, I can think of all kinds of scenarios where I don't agree with what's being done
01:05:35
but the decision is made, the decision is outside of me.
01:05:38
So guess what?
01:05:40
We get to commit to following through on it the way it was decided because it's outside
01:05:44
of me at this point.
01:05:45
So this happened at our local church.
01:05:50
We had a building project here a few years ago and there were quite a few folks against
01:05:55
it, a number of folks for it.
01:05:56
It essentially went through, was passed and has since been built and paid for and everything.
01:06:03
But the group that was against it bought in and was all on board as soon as that decision
01:06:10
was made and we didn't have any issues past that point.
01:06:13
So kudos to that particular team for following through on it but that is not simple.
01:06:20
Like that is a hard thing to come to grips with and to follow through on.
01:06:26
So a very, very important principle here in even if you have a disagreement, follow through
01:06:34
on the decision once it's made.
01:06:37
I don't know what else to say about it other than that but it's a hard thing to actually
01:06:40
do in real life for sure.
01:06:42
It's a hard thing to do but what's crazy about it is let's just say that you're not the one
01:06:48
driving the change, making the decision from the top of the food chain.
01:06:54
How quickly you can disagree but commit and get over your own preferences has a direct
01:07:01
correlation to how happy you're going to be.
01:07:05
And not only on a personal level but if you have people who can't get over that then
01:07:12
it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
01:07:14
They will sabotage the situation like the building project for example.
01:07:18
There are enough people in that group who didn't want to go through with it and they
01:07:22
fought tooth and nail after the decision that's going to end in failure.
01:07:28
And then you can look back and you can say, oh well I guess I was right but what does
01:07:32
that gain anybody at that point?
01:07:34
Congratulations you were right and you killed the organization because of it.
01:07:38
The organization, the mission is greater than the individual and it's kind of interesting
01:07:45
to me that if you can get your eyes off of your own individual stuff that oftentimes
01:07:53
that ends up better for you as the individual.
01:07:57
It's kind of contrary to how we're wired to think about others first but when we do we
01:08:05
end up better because of it.
01:08:08
It's kind of a paradox I guess but it's tied to what we talked about in the life principle
01:08:15
section where you have to be open-minded and embrace the idea that you could be wrong.
01:08:23
And when you are okay with the fact that you might be wrong it's a lot simpler to just,
01:08:28
oh well okay didn't go my way, let's do it anyways and get on board with where everybody
01:08:33
is going.
01:08:34
For sure.
01:08:35
But you should also keep asking why am I?
01:08:38
Yeah again there's so much in here I try to just pick out a couple things but near the
01:08:43
back of the book he has an exercise in principle 12 I think it was, diagnose problems to get
01:08:51
to their root causes where you use a drill down technique to gain what he defines as
01:08:58
an 80/20 understanding of the department or a sub-department that's having problems but
01:09:03
you can apply this in any area of life I think.
01:09:07
And where you list the problems you identify the root causes you create a plan you execute
01:09:11
the plan but when you keep asking why you eventually get to the root causes that's really
01:09:19
the step two the identify the root causes.
01:09:22
And he has a visual in the book an example I don't have it in front of me where they
01:09:27
keep asking why.
01:09:28
It reminded me of the five wise exercise that I've heard about before and it's something
01:09:34
that I don't do enough of.
01:09:37
I want to and I don't have an action I'm associated with this but to keep drilling down until
01:09:45
you get to the truth and it was a good reminder for me and kind of shocking to me honestly
01:09:51
how much I get to maybe level one level two and then I see a justification something that
01:10:01
masquerades is a root cause and I guess that kind of makes sense and then I just leave
01:10:05
it.
01:10:06
I don't want to do that.
01:10:07
I want to spend enough time with the things to really figure out what's going on.
01:10:11
Sure.
01:10:12
Yeah I don't do this in business stuff enough.
01:10:16
I really should be asking why things happen.
01:10:20
If you work in the world of an online business which I of course have a full time job at
01:10:24
the church but I still do my side business stuff online and with that I have a tendency
01:10:32
to like the first inkling at an understanding of why something happened like oh interesting
01:10:38
okay I'm going to run with it that way then even even without second guessing it when I
01:10:45
should probably you know drill deeper and deeper and deeper to figure out what the actual root
01:10:50
cause is because most likely I'm just looking at a symptom of the root cause and saying that
01:10:55
that's the real deal so yes.
01:11:00
Keep asking why does he even I don't remember does he give a number of times to ask.
01:11:05
I don't think he does but that's why I wanted to call it out here because I think as a general
01:11:09
rule you could just say five wise and eventually by the fifth why you're going to get there.
01:11:15
And that's probably not 100% true in all situations but I think it's a good place to
01:11:20
start and then again there's a ton of places where this can play out if your kids are acting
01:11:27
out.
01:11:29
Keep asking why eventually you'll figure it out or even if you're in a work situation
01:11:35
like I'm kind of doing this right now we're trying to figure out what our scoreboard looks
01:11:39
like and what are the things that really drive the business forward.
01:11:44
Well keep asking why and eventually you'll land at those don't just stop at the first
01:11:49
thing that sounds good and make okay let's track this.
01:11:52
Sure.
01:11:53
Because you could track it for a month and then realize that oh that was a waste of a month
01:11:57
right.
01:11:58
Right.
01:11:59
Right.
01:12:00
Driving things forward for the business.
01:12:01
So the question why it forces you to think the right way.
01:12:07
A lot of finding the right solutions is simply asking the right questions and you really
01:12:13
can't go wrong when you keep asking why.
01:12:17
I'm really inspired by his approach of I want to know what's true.
01:12:23
I want to be humble enough for anybody to tell me and show me where I'm wrong.
01:12:28
He's got some examples in this work section of letters that his subordinates sent him
01:12:33
and like hey you really did a poor job in this meeting because you did this that and
01:12:37
the other thing.
01:12:38
You didn't let me talk and you tried to be the expert and you don't know what you're
01:12:41
talking about.
01:12:42
It's like wow that's radical candor.
01:12:45
No, can't.
01:12:48
But I try to do that myself.
01:12:50
I want to know the truth.
01:12:53
But sometimes the truth is going to hurt.
01:12:58
Sometimes if you're not it's hard to hear how you're messing things up or how you're
01:13:03
not doing things right.
01:13:05
But I want to know that stuff so I can get it fixed and as I'm reading through this section
01:13:12
that's one of the approaches I want to take.
01:13:15
Sure.
01:13:16
Well just keep asking why and whenever I see a result ask myself why.
01:13:20
What's the system that produced this and what needs to maybe change in that system.
01:13:25
Right.
01:13:26
Right.
01:13:27
You ready for action items?
01:13:29
Did we really get through the book?
01:13:30
Well we did.
01:13:31
I mean there's tons more in this work section but we got through the peaks of the mountains.
01:13:41
None of the valleys.
01:13:43
Yeah actually let me there is one other thing here putting it all together the very last
01:13:48
section in part three I believe.
01:13:52
He mentions that we work with others to get three things and I found myself getting emotional
01:13:57
when I read this.
01:13:59
Number one leverage to accomplish our chosen missions in bigger and better ways than we
01:14:03
could alone.
01:14:05
Number two quality relationships that together make a great community.
01:14:08
Number three money that allows us to buy what we need and want for ourselves and others.
01:14:14
And I was getting emotional because I literally before I read this section like the day before
01:14:19
was talking to somebody at my co-working space about we walked over and got coffee and
01:14:26
he was asking me how's work going and I explained my situation and what I was doing now and
01:14:32
he was like that sounds pretty awesome.
01:14:35
He's working as a systems analyst for this company remotely and he's talking about all
01:14:41
the junk he's got to put up with on a daily basis and he makes good money but he's frustrated
01:14:47
with what he's doing and he gets to work as early as he can so he can get off as early
01:14:54
as he can and the whole time that he's there he's just agitated and angry and I recognize
01:15:02
that where I am right now that maybe I don't have all three of these things figured out
01:15:08
but I got the important ones.
01:15:10
I feel like what I'm doing now I'm able to fulfill my chosen missions in bigger and better
01:15:15
ways than I could alone.
01:15:19
And number two quality relationships I feel like bookworm, blank media, focused everything
01:15:26
that I'm involved with I'm blown away with the quality of the people that I get to do
01:15:31
stuff with.
01:15:32
I could not pick a better group of folks to call my friends and the money that's going
01:15:41
to come.
01:15:42
In the past I have tried to cram as many things in as I could have been guilty of that and
01:15:49
I've recognized over the years that people are the reason for productivity going back
01:15:54
to Chris Bailey and I just feel like where I'm at right now I'm kind of in alignment to
01:16:01
maximize both of those first two areas.
01:16:04
And I know we've talked about your situation too I don't want to get into all the details
01:16:07
if you don't want to share them but you're kind of thinking this way too probably so
01:16:11
I'm curious what kind of reaction you had to this section.
01:16:14
Yeah, no it's a good one because I know that I've had a lot of rough things come my way
01:16:20
in the last year or so a couple of year and a half or so and some of those I could control
01:16:26
some of those I could not some of them have put me in a very difficult financial situation.
01:16:33
Some other people have put me in some difficult financial situations so it becomes a process
01:16:40
of you know if the people are part of the problem in that case yeah I need to get those
01:16:44
people out of my life like they are not helpful you know they're causing me to think down
01:16:50
and I can't do that.
01:16:52
So I guess from a higher level stance like one thing that we you and I do a lot Mike is
01:16:58
productivity tools systems services you know etc etc we love this stuff but something I've
01:17:06
become more and more aware of and Ray is a good timing with this book because Ray is
01:17:12
a guy who thinks very very big and his systems the way that he does things are on a whole
01:17:20
nother level if not multiple levels above what you and I do on a regular basis like
01:17:25
people talk about how big success requires big systems and big thinking it's very easy
01:17:31
to focus on yeah I'm going to put together this omni focus course and kick it out and
01:17:37
it'll be great it'll be a good time I'll love that process you know it's always fun but
01:17:43
Ray would probably never even consider doing something like that because it's not anywhere
01:17:48
near big enough for what he's thinking about now the bigger you think the more finances
01:17:54
typically come with it as well but you have to be willing to alter your systems to a higher
01:18:00
level in order to hit those higher levels of success as well to me this particular piece
01:18:06
that you're talking about is a motivator to do that you know yes I have been through
01:18:12
a lot in the last year and a half in the last probably week I've been week and a half two
01:18:18
weeks I've learned of some more difficulties with that with like a mold infection and such
01:18:23
so like I'm trying to work through a lot of that but at the same time I also know I have
01:18:29
been sick for so long that I'm now sick of being sick and I was talking to my specialist
01:18:36
about it and you know what I've been fighting illness for so long that I just kind of expect
01:18:42
to feel bad when I get up in the morning and that doesn't help me heal like that doesn't
01:18:48
help me in the process of getting past that sure so what I've been coming to lately is
01:18:53
you know what I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna be healthy today like as weird as that sounds
01:18:58
is just make that decision like that's kind of where I'm at like yes I know that I have
01:19:04
some health concerns I'm not shirking that but I'm also not going to assume that I'm
01:19:12
gonna have a bad day because of it so I'm gonna be super better exactly and you know
01:19:17
some of this comes from that some of it comes from principles you know it comes from a lot
01:19:22
of different things growth mindset grit like it comes from a lot of these things these
01:19:26
books that we've gone through of like you know what it I'm just done I'm done and in
01:19:33
some cases you know what as I reevaluate some of this right now and go through like I'm in
01:19:38
a really good place now I'm in the process of rebuilding some of what was in some cases
01:19:45
taken from me and some things that I did incorrectly like I'm rebuilding some of that
01:19:50
now and trying to do it in a better way and some of that is primarily debt because of principles
01:19:59
and radolio it's the one action item I have yet from this book is it as I'm working through
01:20:05
all of this stuff I know that one of the things I've not done well is systematizing some of
01:20:11
my decisions in the business that I run so I've been shifting it I've kind of got two
01:20:17
businesses of sorts that I'm working through right now and I want to systemize some of
01:20:21
those decisions that I make for those from a numbers stance I've never really done that
01:20:26
you know people talk about like sales funnels and such and like I've never been into that
01:20:32
and I think that's a detriment like my systematic thinking in all of this is too low of a level
01:20:40
to say that it's been truly successful so I'm trying to raise that bar and take it to
01:20:45
that next level of some degree so this is a long winded way of saying I like this book
01:20:51
yeah it's it's a it's a good book we'll get into style and rating here in a second you
01:20:58
already shared your action item so I'll share a couple of mine I mentioned already that I
01:21:03
want to create the mindfulness meditation habit using headspace been doing that hopefully
01:21:08
I can continue to do that I also mentioned I want to embrace radical truth and radical
01:21:13
transparency however and wherever I can that one is kind of generic I know the other one
01:21:20
that is interesting to me because he talks a lot about the different personality type
01:21:25
assessments he mentions the Myers Briggs he didn't mention the Colby it would be cool
01:21:30
to hear because I really enjoy that one I think there's a lot of insight to begin from
01:21:34
that one strengths finder you know that type of stuff but I've gone through a bunch of
01:21:39
those things and my wife has gone through several of them as well I know that there
01:21:45
are kids versions of those types of things but even if they don't go through those formal
01:21:51
assessments I do think that there is some value in the idea that he mentions of creating
01:21:57
baseball cards he talks about it in the organizational perspective is what people are good at and
01:22:03
they have these things publicly listed so when you need someone who does something you
01:22:07
look at their baseball card and you can see that they have the skills to do this thing
01:22:11
you shouldn't try to do it yourself I want to create baseball cards for my family and
01:22:17
I don't think I'll have this done by the next episode I think this is going to take some
01:22:20
time but I also think that this could provide some identity in some direction for my kids
01:22:27
to understand their own unique talents and abilities not that they're set in stone you
01:22:32
know growth mindset we do hard things but I do think this would be kind of cool and give
01:22:37
them some confidence so I want to want to do this for my family
01:22:40
I think that'll be a cool one I don't think I'm gonna do it but I think it'd be really
01:22:44
cool for you alright style and rating sure we got I really enjoyed this book it took me
01:22:51
forever to get through it because I created the largest mind map that anyone has ever
01:22:57
created probably maybe that's not true but it was something that I really think is valuable
01:23:06
and something that I would like to do at some point in my life I would love to have a Mike
01:23:12
Schmitt's principles like this I think that this is one of the most valuable books anybody
01:23:21
can read again it's his principles so you have to recognize that but it is the sum total
01:23:27
of his life experience written in a way that he can transfer as much of it as possible
01:23:32
to you in as little even though it's 500 something pages as little time as possible I
01:23:39
think if you have the right perspective as you're going through this book there is so
01:23:42
much that you could glean from this and you don't have to try to get it all so you does
01:23:48
take the right perspective going through this book if you if if you're the type of person
01:23:52
who when you read through a book you want to keep all of it front of mind that's not
01:23:58
going to happen that's kind of why I created this ridiculous digital reference but you
01:24:03
don't have to do that either he even gives you a little cheat sheet section in the middle
01:24:06
the pages I think are tipped in red so you can find it real simply and he's got a index
01:24:11
basically of all the different life and business principles that he outlines in this book
01:24:18
there were a couple things that I heard him talk about some of the principles and I was
01:24:23
like I don't think I would I would do that one that particular way but that's all just
01:24:30
based on values differences and it really wasn't something that I got hung up on I struggle
01:24:36
with what to rate this because a lot of the 5.0 books that we read they're kind of life
01:24:46
changing they give you something that allows you to see things in a totally different way
01:24:53
and this book didn't do that for me but it did give me a lot more concrete ways to think
01:25:02
about things that I kind of understood already so I feel like this kind of cemented some
01:25:06
things for me that he explained it in a way I didn't understand it before this felt like
01:25:12
getting coffee with somebody who was really super successful and he's just sharing everything
01:25:18
that he learned and if that idea appeals to you then this is easily a 5 star book if
01:25:27
that sounds boring to you you're not going to get anything out of this that's totally
01:25:31
right up my alley though so I'm going to rate this 5 stars nice well I I can tell you that
01:25:41
having gone through this the second time like I have referenced this book more than I have
01:25:46
any other and like I I have a tendency to keep all my books easily available because I underline
01:25:53
and I have my index in the back of them which is why I don't really have a good way of sharing
01:25:57
it with people so I know that sometimes I'll have something come to mind and I go grab a
01:26:05
book from the shelf because I know it came from mindset but I don't remember what the
01:26:10
exact was and I just want to refer to it so I go flip through the index and I look up the
01:26:15
reference of what I was going for and I find what I'm after I pick up principles more than
01:26:21
just about every other book I'm pretty sure so this is one that I know will come back over
01:26:28
and over and over again and I already know there's some sections I want to go reference
01:26:32
in the midst of doing my action item over the next week or two like I know that I'm going
01:26:37
to be pulling it back out quite a bit to me this is an easy five oh like this this is a
01:26:43
an awesomely written book rate as a great job of writing it and is giving you tons of information
01:26:52
to share I've got a handful of potential business ideas as a result of reading this all of which
01:26:59
I should probably say no to so like it's one that can spark a lot and one that I think
01:27:07
anyone could clean at least something from so I do highly recommend this one but you've
01:27:13
got to be I think you have to be a dedicated reader to do this because it is long yeah
01:27:18
like this is a big book you're not going to sit down and read this on an evening that
01:27:22
will not happen Michael make fun of you if you read it for two four weeks at a time that's
01:27:27
okay but it is one it's worth going through and one that I do really enjoy so thanks for
01:27:35
making me go through it again Mike yeah for sure thanks to the club for recommending it
01:27:40
I do want to call it real quickly here again you have to have the right perspective don't
01:27:44
just go by the fact that Joe and I both rated this as 5.0 that this is the right book for
01:27:49
you if you are just trying to get the gist of a book which I know is what a lot of people
01:27:55
do when they listen to bookworm then you're not going to like this this is not something
01:27:59
that you can get the blinkest version of and there are some books that blinkest would
01:28:06
have been great for that we've covered right because it's a simple thing that should have
01:28:11
been a blog post and they stretched out to 200 pages yeah like bring this is 540 pages
01:28:15
that easily could have been a thousand plus if the idea of sitting down with somebody like
01:28:21
Ray Dalio and getting coffee and trying to learn from him is appealing to you then 540
01:28:27
pages will fly by and you're going to wish this was longer but if you want just like
01:28:32
the too long didn't read version whatever time you're going to invest in this you're
01:28:37
going to feel like is a waste so make sure that you have the right perspective before
01:28:42
you decide to pick this one up and go through it for yourself otherwise it will be kind of
01:28:46
a waste of time sure absolutely well throw not that disclaimer there yeah it's probably
01:28:52
a good good one to throw out there but let's let's put this one on the shelf next time
01:28:57
we are going to go through you are awesome by Neil Pessrisha again these were advanced
01:29:04
copies that were sent to us and Mike yours is on the way but it should be a good read it's
01:29:09
obviously very new so it'll be it'll be a good one to go through I was not familiar with Neil
01:29:15
and I went through and kind of looked at all of his back catalog and kind of the stuff that he's
01:29:22
written he's a speaker I think this is going to be fun yeah it should be a good one to this one too
01:29:27
what you got next all right I'm looking through the the club right now and one that jumps out to me
01:29:33
is highly voted for margin by Richard Swenson this is something that I've wanted to talk to you
01:29:38
about for a long time so awesome I'm going to pick that one and then gapbooks I know you don't have
01:29:44
one at least on the outline here I don't life has been busy yeah I've got the I'm going to pick the
01:29:50
same one I had last time because I really do want to dig into stillness is the key by Ryan Holliday
01:29:56
if I still can't get to it during this one maybe I'll pick that for the bookworm too
01:30:01
here you go I know that this book is going to be going to be awesome and I've heard lots of
01:30:06
great things about it from all the other people who have been raving about it online so that's my
01:30:12
gapbook that's the plan anyways all right so thanks everybody for listening and thank you
01:30:18
specifically to our premium club members as I mentioned I've got a ridiculous mind map which
01:30:24
is available to club members if you want to join the club it's five bucks a month you can also pay
01:30:29
an alumpseum for a yearly plan that helps Joe and I keep doing this and it gives you access to some
01:30:38
extra stuff including all of the mind maps for all of the books that we we cover here so if you
01:30:43
want to download all that stuff you can join the club by going to club.bookworm.fm/membership
01:30:49
or if you're listening in overcast just tap on the little icon on the the bottom of the player
01:30:55
which will take you right to that page awesome well look forward to seeing you guys in the club
01:31:01
and if you are reading along with us pick up you are awesome by Neil Pissricha and we will go
01:31:06
through it next time.