Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

All right, let's jump right into follow up this week because I'm anxious to talk to you about this book show.

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Okay, so I'll make mine simple.

00:00:11

I failed miserably at the minesweep in the weekly review,

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although I'm going to do these within the next 24 hours.

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As I shared before we hit record, it's been a little bit of a week for me.

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Fantastico three came out as we're recording this and we had tons of stuff that we were publishing on the suite setup.

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So I was kind of coordinating all of that even if I didn't write every single word felt like I did.

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Because I've been staring at that so much.

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I had four screencasts that got released today as we're recording this.

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So it's been busy. That's my excuse.

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I 100% recognize that that isn't an excuse and I need to do this.

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Although one interesting observation here, you know, we went through getting things done or not getting things done, making it all work last time.

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Might as well have been.

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Yeah, and I kind of mentioned, well, maybe I should give this another shot.

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I should do more GTD.

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The fact that I haven't followed through with this yet kind of shows me that it really didn't have a big impact on me as maybe I thought it did last week.

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You know, nothing really stuck from that.

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But I do fully intend to do these.

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So we can leave these on for next time if you want.

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I am going to do my minesweep and implement my weekly review system.

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But this week was not the week was a terrible fail in terms of productivity organizing.

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Fair enough.

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And I would almost argue that when you get that busy, it's even more important to do a minesweep and weekly review.

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At least.

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I understood.

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That's the David Allen correct answer in the world of getting things done.

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Yes, the problem is that the system doesn't exist yet for me.

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So it's kind of like starting from scratch in a sense.

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It's intentionally creating these new habits.

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And because I've kind of neglected these, there was nothing to fall back on.

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So got busy, stuff hit the fan and Mike did not do his minesweep or his weekly review.

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Fair enough.

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Well, I have three action items from last time.

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One of those is to start capturing high level ideas.

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So resolve relationships or conceptual around what should I be doing in my life and being willing to capture those.

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I have been doing that.

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And it is interesting that the more you capture in that realm, it seems like the more times I'll say no.

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And it almost makes it better in the long run because you end up seeing so many of these big level,

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these big high level things that you could be doing.

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So you're kind of forced to say no more often because there's absolutely no way you'd get anywhere close to accomplishing them.

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So that's been kind of interesting and an unintended side effect of that one.

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But at the same time, it's also been helping me with the other two action items, one of which was to determine my purpose and principles.

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That one's not going to be done for quite some time.

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Probably doesn't make sense to hold me accountable to it, but you're welcome to check in if you want, Mike.

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All right.

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You know, there's that and my vision is I don't want to say it's the same, but it's not far off.

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Like that one I'm probably going to have nailed down in another month, month and a half, at least the way that I'm coming at it.

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Some people could probably just go sit down, do one of like your personal retreats and come up with this.

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I just would rather marinate on it over time in this scenario and would like to take a little bit longer with it.

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So that's kind of what I'm doing.

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So I don't really have anything concrete other than the high level idea capturing here, but it is an interesting process to capture, you know, potentials around those concepts.

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So there you have it.

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All right.

00:03:52

Interesting.

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I like the one about being able to say no to more things that is kind of appealing to me.

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There you go.

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See?

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Although the busyness for this is not based on me not saying no, it was just a season that I knew was coming, but still bit me.

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Fair enough.

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All right.

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Let's jump into a different type of book.

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Today's book is the art of gathering by Prya Parker.

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I think that's right.

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I'm going to mess this name up so many times.

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I apologize.

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But this is basically how to host more effective gatherings.

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And gatherings is broad intentionally because there's stuff in here for hosting the kibbutzes, which I had mentioned as an action item from Indestractable.

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And kind of what inspired this for me, but she does a lot of moderation and planning for a lot bigger events too, like even conferences and things.

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So this is an interesting book that was kind of difficult to have concrete takeaways from because there's a lot of principles in here that you sort of have to digest and unpack to your specific situation.

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But lots of really cool stuff and very much not a systems book, not a productivity type book.

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So therefore not the type of book that we would typically cover, I feel, like for bookworm.

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But I think this will be an interesting conversation.

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Yeah, I feel like this isn't necessarily like to your point, it's not a systems book.

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But this is the second time I've gone through it because I did this as a gap book a while back, oh, three or four months ago, maybe somewhere in there.

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And it kind of gives you ways of thinking about get-togethers and gatherings as she calls them.

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And I have to say, Mike, that over the last handful of months having gone through this, I think this will be a fun conversation.

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Just because like I've been practicing some of these things for at least the last couple months.

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I know that.

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And I have the biggest men's conference or the, I guess I should say the biggest conference we do each year at our church is happening tomorrow as we record this.

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And a lot of the principles that we're going to talk about here have gone into the development of that conference that's happening tomorrow.

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So it's kind of an interesting timing on this as well.

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It's a nice choice. Good job, sir.

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Nice.

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Well, let's start there then because I'm curious, you mentioned you've been practicing elements of this for the last couple months.

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So how do you feel your gatherings have been changed from reading this the first time and then follow up question to that would be what kind of additionally stood out from you high level the second time?

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Or was it just good to review the information?

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I think I would say the second time through it, it's just good to refresh on it because I think the big points here, there are ones that will stick with you.

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At least I have found at least for me, maybe it had a big impact on me.

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The first, you know, I'll dive into the first talking point here.

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Like why are you gathering?

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Like what's the whole point?

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That question in itself can cause you to think through a lot of the other things we talk about and take the men's conference tomorrow.

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Like why are we having that conference?

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Well, in some cases, it's to teach something new, like to help people improve their lives in a new way.

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But in a lot of ways, it's to rally the troops and it's a motivational scenario.

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And the difference in that versus saying, you know, this is just a conference, you know, we're going to pull in this feed and we're going to have all these things available and such.

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Like that's fine.

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But you probably wouldn't do things like making sure you got name tags for everybody or making sure you have certain treats in certain areas or setting up.

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You know, we've set up some areas for men to go have conversations on their own, which we wouldn't really have done some of that.

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If we weren't taking the mindset of this is to connect with you, connect you with some other men and give you the opportunity to become motivated to act on the things we're talking about.

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So it's kind of changed the way we're coming at that conference just by asking that question of why.

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And the more times I feel that we've worked through these, especially at our church in the events we put on, because I tell people that most of my job is putting on events anymore.

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It seems like from a technical stance, like that's a lot of it.

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Because so many times we have these get togethers and, you know, everybody's got a projector. Everybody needs a microphone.

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Like, you know, I'm heavily involved in all the logistics that go into a lot of those things.

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So I don't know. I think it does have a big impact.

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At least what I do on a regular basis. But I think probably the one that's most interesting.

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And you're picking this book to help with your kibbutts, which we should probably explain for those who haven't caught on to what that one is.

00:09:08

But our small group is probably the closest thing to what I think you're referring to in a kibbutts in that we get together, we enjoy a meal, we pray for each other, and then we do some form of a study.

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We recently, within the last month, took some of the principles from this particular book. And, you know, why are we getting together as a small group?

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Well, to do life together, you know, to learn about God's word, to help each other through difficult times.

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Like, those are some of the things we've pulled out as like, why we get together.

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And that's what prompted us to have a very, like, we've put together a very structured way of having that small group.

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But it frees us to have conversations within certain realms when we do that.

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Just as a quick example, what we do is we have our meal, and then we meet at about 6.30, and at 7.30, we sit down and do 30 minutes of prayer time together.

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Everybody shares a prayer request, try to keep it short, sweet, and to the point, go around the circle.

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That way everybody has a chance to talk. And then we, same thing, go around the circle and pray for everyone.

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And then we do an hour of diving into a specific chapter in the Bible and discussing it.

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But again, we have set questions, and we go around the circle and everyone has to answer those.

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That way everybody's involved and you don't end up with one person talking more than everyone else, because, you know, that happens.

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And it has helped us develop even closer yet within the last month that we've been doing that.

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So anyway, I'll stop talking. I like this book a lot as you tell already.

00:10:46

Cool. So to summarize what you just said, basically, it's impacted the way that your small group meets, but also affects things like the conference that you're doing this weekend.

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That's interesting to me, because conferences, I think, specifically maybe can fall into a category very easily.

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Like a men's conference, that is pretty clear. It's a conference for men.

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But you have to dig deeper if you're going to actually put a purpose on that.

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That's kind of the category for it. And I think a lot of people maybe would just stop once they reach that category and start figuring out the details.

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And that was one of the things that really struck me about this book is that you have to figure out that purpose before you can figure out anything else about what you're going to do.

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A good gathering doesn't just happen. You do have to have a purpose for your gathering.

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And that routine is the enemy of meaningful gatherings, as she points out in this first chapter.

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So conferences aren't going to be routine, but a small group definitely could be.

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And I like this idea of figuring out what the purpose is for your gatherings.

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It also occurred to me as I was reading this that in some way, shape, or form, bookworm falls into this category.

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And we have a gathering every two weeks on a Friday. It just happens to be recorded prior to.

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But not for the people who download this and listen to it.

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That's one of the things I love about podcasts is you feel like you're in the room.

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Like you've got a seat at the table and it really is Podcast Book Club.

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So that got me thinking, because in this section she talks about tips for crafting your own purpose,

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zoom out, drill down, figure out what problems your gathering might solve, and then reverse engineer an outcome.

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And I thought it would be worth discussing if you're up for it.

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We'll take that approach to why we gather for bookworm and see how maybe it's changed since we started this however many years ago.

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Sure. Because this is episode 86 of roughly every other week.

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So what is that? Almost three years worth?

00:13:02

Yeah. We're approaching three years. It'll be three years this coming July, I think.

00:13:06

Yeah. And so, okay, so let's just start here with zoom out. Like Joe Mike, Mike Meachow.

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Hey, you want to do a podcast together?

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What, zooming out, the idea that we landed on was kind of, we want to read more books.

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Okay. So we have this shared interest in reading more books because we believe that that's going to expand our horizons and allow us to reach our full potential.

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I'm putting words in your mouth at the moment, but is that fair to say?

00:13:39

Sorry. You're accurate so far.

00:13:41

Okay. Then we drill down and we're like, well, how can we do this? How can we create a system that forces us to read more books?

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I know. Let's start a podcast and commit to reading one every two weeks publicly with the belief that the pressure to show up and talk about it every other week is enough to get us to follow through and read the books.

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Is that accurate?

00:14:04

I think it's accurate. Yeah.

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So, and that part, as I think back on it, maybe wasn't the best approach. Like, I wouldn't say for everything that you want to change about your life, go to all the work of starting a podcast.

00:14:21

Oh, absolutely. This is most certainly what you need to do.

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Guaranteed, you'll follow through.

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You know, as since we've started Bookworm, it occurs to me that I've had other ideas for other podcasts and things that I've wanted to do and I just don't have the time to follow through and do them.

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So, if you take that approach and you apply it to a bunch of things, you're not going to have any time left.

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Turns out that hosting, editing, recording, a podcast is a lot of work, especially when there's a book to be read every two weeks as part of the prep.

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Yeah. Who knew?

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Yeah.

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So, I think we kind of caught lightning in a bottle with that one, but not something that someone who just wishes they would read more and they're super busy, you know, unless you're all in with the idea that that isn't going to work, but it ended up working out for us.

00:15:09

Figuring out what problems your gathering might solve.

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This is the part that's interesting to me because when we started this, we probably, well, not probably, we talked about this.

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We did think that we would get people who would buy the books and read along with us and it would be truly a podcast book club.

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That's not why a lot of people listen.

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Turns out they listen because they want to filter whether a book is worth spending the time to read.

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So, we do the work for them.

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When we talk about it, we say, "Yeah, this is good.

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No, this is junk."

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And then they decide whether they're going to read it or not.

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Right.

00:15:54

So, I feel like we probably skipped this step from the perspective of why would anybody want to listen to this?

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Do you agree?

00:16:03

I think there's, because we read books so quickly, we've talked about this before, the value or maybe not the value, but the cost involved in choosing or selecting a book is quite low.

00:16:17

Yep, true.

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So, whenever I choose a book for the next time, it's okay if I'm not 100% sold on it, something like it being something that I'm excited about.

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It's okay because I know I'm only going to spend maybe a week and a half, two weeks with it, and that's it.

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But if you don't read it--

00:16:37

I know I'm not going to have to read David Allen again for another couple of years.

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Correct, correct.

00:16:42

Like, you know, reading, making it all work, you're going to read it in two weeks and be done.

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And, or you're going to skim it in a week and be done.

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And what happens is if you don't read as much as Mike and myself, then you have a much higher cost to the selection of the next book you're going to read.

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If you read a book every two months or two a year, you're going to be a lot more selective on which book you're going to pick up.

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And I think what we're learning is there are a lot of people who read less than us that are using us as a filter to select which ones they're--

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because they're looking for more information to determine if that's the right one to read or not, because the cost is much higher when you read fewer books.

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I'm not saying that's bad.

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You know, I've stopped doing gap books here and there, so I don't read as many as I was at one point.

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So, you know, sometimes you do have to back off of that.

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So I think there's some of that going on as well as far as why people, you know, join us in gathering for a Bookworm episode.

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It's just a little bit different than what we intended when we first started doing this, for sure.

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And then the last one, reverse engineer and outcome for us, again, it was inward focused and, well, if we can pull this off, we'll be reading at least 24 books a year, which was the statistic that I found.

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I don't even remember where that was, but I shared it with you when we started that said something like the most successful CEOs are the ones who read at least 24 books a year.

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I'm like, hey, if we do this every other week, then we'll be in that club.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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In theory.

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I'm not sure those are perfectly correlated, but, you know, right, right.

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What occurs to me, though, from looking through this is that we kind of did this wrong from the medium of creating a podcast.

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We kind of stumbled onto something, I think, that was valuable for people, but we didn't consider other people when we started this.

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We did this solely for ourselves.

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So that's where the art of gathering kind of illustrates to me that as a host of a gathering, you got to have this perspective.

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It's not really about you.

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You've got to give purpose to the people that are going to be there.

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And didn't do a great job of that, but I like these questions.

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I like being able to craft your purpose for any type of meeting that you're going to be doing.

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Another thing that's fresh on my mind because I had a meeting this morning with my mastermind group was to figure out, you know, zoom out, drill down, figure out what problems you're gathering might solve reverse engineer and outcome for my mastermind group, because we've kind of gone through this thing where we had five people, one of them dropped off.

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And at that point, it's kind of like, okay, so what is this exactly?

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Why are we still doing this?

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Do we do we want to keep doing this? And at that point, basically, everybody else that was left in the group is like, yeah, we want to double down on this.

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And instead of occasionally meeting once a month or whatever, we want to connect every single week and we'll do it via zoom.

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Different person's going to have the 30 minute session and you can ask questions, get feedback, or you can present something that you want.

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But we kind of again, accidentally stumbled on this type of thing where the mastermind group, the value in that is that you've got other people who are going to be there.

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And then the other thing that is that you've got other people, other perspectives who can see your blind spots and they can present things that you don't see.

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They're there, but you're stuck in your tunnel vision and you can't break out of that because you've got this perspective that tends to be your default.

00:20:24

So it was kind of cool to realize that we've kind of gone through this process when we rebooted this.

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And we did that probably six months ago. And how the outcome really that we want is we want those fresh ideas.

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We want those outside perspectives and we want those on a more regular basis.

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So how do we do that? We increase the amount or the how often we meet.

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And if we're going to do that, like, how do we make this valuable for people who are going to show up all the time?

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So we kind of again stumbled onto that and I feel like there's a lot of value if you haven't really thought through this sort of thing to your gatherings to apply this everywhere.

00:21:04

So all that to say, well, I started reading this for the kibbutz.

00:21:09

This first section specifically of decide why you're really gathering.

00:21:13

This has challenged me to think about every regular gathering that I am committed to.

00:21:18

And it's been cool because some of them, you know, we're not going to drastically change things, but I am going to refine the purpose and it's going to change my perspective a little bit on how I show up for the mastermind meeting.

00:21:29

I'm not going to just show up because I said I was going to do this.

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I'm going to show up with the intention because of the purpose that I'm going to help somebody or I'm going to receive help from somebody.

00:21:39

And just changing the expectations kind of changes the outcomes from those gatherings.

00:21:45

Yeah, and it's kind of crazy how because you're absolutely right.

00:21:50

Once you start asking this question, you start applying it to a lot of things you normally wouldn't have like meeting someone for coffee.

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Why are you doing that?

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What's what's your expected outcome from that?

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And the answer to those questions can help you determine like how to set up the flow of it.

00:22:14

And there are things like you and I are getting together here in a few days in person.

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And what does that look like?

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How do we do that in a way that's most effective for each other and in a way that's the most helpful to each other?

00:22:29

Like why are we doing that?

00:22:31

We could get into all of those details, but you see my point.

00:22:35

Like the more often you start noticing, anytime you have a connecting point with one other person or more, you could apply this.

00:22:43

It's kind of uncanny and it'll start to mess like it'll start to infiltrate your mind over time for sure.

00:22:49

At least it has mine.

00:22:51

Yeah, totally.

00:22:53

And actually, let's go into the next point here because one last thing from this chapter, she mentions the gathering well isn't a chill activity.

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It has to be, there has to be intention applied to it.

00:23:07

So the next chapter, chapter two, closed doors, this talks about the who and the where for your gathering.

00:23:17

And this part, I liked a lot because this is about saying no, which I have trouble doing.

00:23:24

What?

00:23:25

But specifically on saying no to people who maybe want to be a part of your gathering, which is even more difficult, I would argue,

00:23:36

than saying no to something personally, just because it's going to be one more thing for you to do.

00:23:41

Saying no to somebody else who actually wants to be involved with your group can definitely be difficult.

00:23:46

And again, there's a mastermind application to this because not too long ago we had somebody who wanted to join the group.

00:23:52

And we ended up saying no because they didn't have the history that we all did when we rebooted this thing.

00:24:03

We kind of went through that thought process, do we need to replace the person who dropped out?

00:24:06

And somebody's like, well, I know someone who wants to be a part of this and we all went and thought about it on our own, came back together,

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and we don't feel good about that.

00:24:15

There's a good mix, there's good energy here right now, you bring somebody new in and they might disrupt that basically.

00:24:21

And you could look at that and be like, well, that's not fair because what about the person who's not involved in the mastermind?

00:24:26

Did they not get a shot then?

00:24:28

But one of the questions that she poses here for excluding well, this kind of crystallized this for me, she said, who is the gathering for first?

00:24:39

I feel like you could apply this to any type of gathering and it instantly brings clarity on who should be invited.

00:24:47

And this actually happened with the kibbutz because I was going through this and before I started my wife and I had our list of people that we thought were going to be a part of this.

00:24:55

And after I read this chapter, I started to feel uneasy and I told my wife after thinking about it for a couple of days, you know, there's one couple that we originally thought was going to be a part of this that I don't think we should add them, at least yet.

00:25:11

And she's been reading this book too so she's like, yeah, I had the same thought.

00:25:14

Well, why didn't you tell me? You could have saved me a lot of stress, you know, thinking about this.

00:25:20

Yeah, how do I frame this so that my wife is okay with this?

00:25:25

She's like, oh, yeah, I have the same thought.

00:25:28

But it's interesting because the other thing that that pertains to is diversity.

00:25:37

You start talking about exclusion, you think, well, we're getting a lot of people who are exactly the same and you're going to have the echo chamber, but she makes the point that that's really not the case, that exclusion is not the case.

00:25:49

Exclusion is not the enemy of diversity.

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It's just intentionally choosing the people who are going to be there.

00:25:57

So they're separate topics.

00:25:58

You can exclude people and still be diverse.

00:26:02

And that's where this Judson Manor thing comes in.

00:26:06

This was in Ohio and I swear, I don't know this for sure because the person that I knew passed away a while ago and I couldn't find it, but I saw it.

00:26:18

But I swear, I know somebody who lived there and we visited them.

00:26:23

But she said in the book that it started in 2010, so I visited them before that.

00:26:28

So it's not a Ben Judson Manor.

00:26:30

I could have sworn it was, but I've seen this in action, basically, where there was this lady who used to work for the family, but she just wanted something to stay busy with, keep her mind sharp, so we would give her stuff and she would proofread it.

00:26:46

And we went to visit her one time and we stayed at her place, which was just like this Judson Manor, like this old hotel that they converted into elderly housing, but then also college students.

00:26:59

In the book she talks about how they added college music students to this facility and then they let them stay there for free in exchange for doing some music concerts.

00:27:10

The mix of those people actually produced, it wasn't because these are two very different groups of people you would think that maybe they wouldn't mix, but that's not really what they found.

00:27:24

And I think this is a really cool idea.

00:27:28

I think that there's a ton of value that comes from this for both the elderly who get to impart wisdom and be around young people, which keeps them young, and also for the young people who tend to, I'm generalizing here, but I'll say this for myself at least.

00:27:50

You tend to think only about what you want, what you like, and yeah, you're being enticed with free housing, but being forced to occasionally at least get your focus off of yourself and put it on the other, especially when the other is so different in a very different stage of life than you are.

00:28:09

There's something really powerful about that.

00:28:11

This is going to sound morbid when I say it, but I really enjoy going to funerals.

00:28:19

As a tech person at our church, I run sound for events like we've talked about.

00:28:25

And one of those events that you cannot plan for is funerals.

00:28:30

So over the last six months, I think I have been a part of what's it been probably 15, 16 funerals somewhere in there.

00:28:40

So it's a lot in that timeframe.

00:28:43

And it's fascinating to me because you see that person's entire life, but people are a lot more willing to talk about sensitive topics at a funeral for whatever reason.

00:28:55

So I'm just the sound guy, like I'm the tech person, but people walk by that booth and just want to start a conversation.

00:29:05

And I don't have any idea why that is, but you better believe I'm going to make sure I got extra time to have those conversations.

00:29:12

Because you learn things in those time periods that you normally wouldn't have a chance to talk about.

00:29:19

The number of men that have come by and explained old war stories they've never told anyone before.

00:29:26

It's just nuts what people will come up and tell you.

00:29:29

So anyway, as weird as that is, funerals are a weird time when I get a chance to connect with what I tend to refer to as the gray hairs.

00:29:40

Getting a chance to talk to them is fascinating to me because I just don't have built in ways to do that outside of those times on a day to day basis.

00:29:52

So I do greatly appreciate that.

00:29:54

So if you're listening to this and you don't do things like go to retirement homes or nursing centers and such, there's a lot of value in that, especially if you have little kids in taking them there and just seeing that perspective at a different.

00:30:09

A different stage of life, take advantage of this book, the Art of Gathering and apply that to that visit.

00:30:15

So I don't know, I'll stop rambling.

00:30:18

But yeah, it's a fascinating conversation if you can put yourself in that situation.

00:30:23

That is really powerful.

00:30:25

That's something that my family has done through our church once a month.

00:30:28

There's a group of people who will go in between services on Sunday to the nursing home, which we go to the one that people in the city kind of.

00:30:38

No, like you don't want to go there.

00:30:40

It's not known for providing the best care.

00:30:43

And a lot of the people that are there, they have family, they never see them.

00:30:48

It's kind of heartbreaking when you go.

00:30:50

But we bring our kids and we are there pretty much every month.

00:30:55

And it's to the point now where my kids really enjoy going.

00:31:00

They really enjoy being able to speak to and minister to the people that are there.

00:31:06

And that's kind of the whole point is you can be in those places occasionally.

00:31:11

You can be at the funerals at your church.

00:31:13

But if you take the factors into consideration that you talk about here, about who and where in terms of closing doors and creating the atmosphere for that vulnerability that exists.

00:31:26

Occasionally you can produce that if you're intentional about designing your gathering.

00:31:32

And that's the part that's exciting to me is not to just recognize those opportunities when they're there and make the most of them, but how do I create more of those?

00:31:41

For sure.

00:31:42

Yeah.

00:31:43

And I do want to say that a lot of times it's easy to have the perspective that you shouldn't exclude.

00:31:51

But like to your point earlier, sometimes it's just as important to consider who should not be there as it is to consider who should be there.

00:32:00

And you can easily apply this to like work meetings.

00:32:04

I think about my days in corporate when everybody was invited to everything it seemed like.

00:32:10

Just stop.

00:32:11

Like that is just not helpful.

00:32:13

Find the decision makers, the people who could actually help in making the decisions or resolving the conflict and invite them.

00:32:23

You don't need to invite all the admins or the data people and such.

00:32:27

Unless they're a key part of that conversation, they don't need to be there.

00:32:31

Just going to say that.

00:32:33

Don't invite everybody.

00:32:34

Yep.

00:32:35

Yep.

00:32:36

And in terms of designing those types of meetings, that kind of leads into the next chapter, which is don't be a chill host because those types of things are not going to just happen.

00:32:47

Even the funerals that you mentioned at your church, there's somebody who is consulting and facilitating those meetings so that they're not going to be there.

00:32:56

And so this idea of being a chill host, I like this because it challenges me.

00:33:02

I think I kind of tend to default into this.

00:33:06

And she says in this chapter that often chill is you caring about you masquerading as you caring about them.

00:33:16

And I was like, "Ouch.

00:33:18

Too true."

00:33:19

Yeah.

00:33:20

This is a really cool thing.

00:33:22

And I was like, "Ouch. Too true."

00:33:25

Yeah.

00:33:26

This is one that I'm guilty of where I like to think that I used to be since reading this the first time.

00:33:33

This is one that really struck me because it showed me that one, I have to decide why people are getting together.

00:33:42

And two, I really need to make sure that I have a plan for how that evening is going to go or how that thing is going to happen.

00:33:49

And maybe a good example of this is tomorrow at the men's conference, one of the things that's happening there is I'm actually speaking at that, which I haven't spoken to a large group in years at this point.

00:34:06

We'll see how this goes.

00:34:07

It's been a while.

00:34:09

You got this.

00:34:10

It's a scenario where I have to make sure I know how that entire class is going to go.

00:34:19

Like, yes, there's a part where it's just me speaking, but there's also a time in that where I have to have a dialogue with the audience.

00:34:28

And it's going to last 15 minutes worth of dialogue the way I have it set up.

00:34:33

Now, if I were to just sit back, ask a question, and let them go, do you think that's going to go well?

00:34:39

No way.

00:34:40

Not likely.

00:34:41

So I have to make sure I know what that whole plan is for how that's going to happen because traditionally I would have just asked questions and see where people go with it.

00:34:54

But for tomorrow, I have a very detailed plan on how that is going to go.

00:35:00

And the questions are designed to have them guide us through that path that I have laid out.

00:35:08

Whether or not we'll actually follow that path, not 100% certain, but that's okay.

00:35:13

Like, I'm usually pretty good on my feet at directing things like that.

00:35:16

So we'll see how it goes.

00:35:18

But the key here is you can't just sit back and hope that it goes.

00:35:24

Okay.

00:35:25

Not long after I first read this, we had a couple friends over for dinner.

00:35:30

It was a difficult situation that had happened at our church and was just kind of an emotional time.

00:35:35

We had them over as a way to, you know, let's, you know, let's continue to be close to each other despite this thing that has happened.

00:35:43

And as part of that, I made sure that I knew what the layout of the evening was going to be.

00:35:51

Like, winter, what time were we planning to do dinner?

00:35:53

You know, are we going to open wine, a wine bottle?

00:35:56

When do we do that?

00:35:58

And what questions do I need to be prepared to ask as part of that because it's kind of a delicate situation.

00:36:04

To some degree.

00:36:06

Oddly enough, we actually wanted to sing songs in this scenario.

00:36:10

Both families are kind of big into music.

00:36:14

So we actually did that, which is really cool, by the way.

00:36:18

So we just had a plan for that evening.

00:36:20

You couldn't just sit back and say, we need to talk about some things sometime tonight.

00:36:26

No, it doesn't really work that way.

00:36:27

We really have to make sure we know what that plan is because if you know that plan, it makes everybody else feel like it.

00:36:33

It makes everybody else feel a lot more comfortable in that process.

00:36:37

Yes, absolutely.

00:36:39

You have to take advantage of the generous authority that she talks about in this chapter.

00:36:46

And I like how she makes a point that this authority is not something that you use at the beginning to kick off the gathering.

00:36:54

And then you can kind of relax and let it coast, but it's an ongoing commitment in that it requires reinforcement.

00:37:03

She mentions that if you don't reinforce things, then other people will step in and enforce their own purposes.

00:37:09

So you have to be careful of that, especially if you have a solid purpose for your gathering, which you don't want to be overridden.

00:37:16

And this is something I feel like I've kind of not been great at in the past.

00:37:21

I also like the three points you mentioned, under generous authority to protect your guests, equalize your guests, and connect your guests.

00:37:29

I find that from those three things specifically, what really excites me is equalizing and connecting people.

00:37:40

I read this and instantly I was thinking about how do I do this?

00:37:47

It kind of inspires me, like, I want to go start my own conference just so I can get people in the room and I can do these things.

00:37:56

But that's not the right way to handle that.

00:38:00

Let me know when the Schmitt's conference is happening.

00:38:04

Bookworm conference.

00:38:05

There you go.

00:38:06

Is it going to be in Wisconsin?

00:38:08

I don't know.

00:38:09

Yeah.

00:38:10

I am interested, though, now that I've read these, I tend to handful of conferences every year.

00:38:16

I'm going to be at Max Talk again.

00:38:18

I'm going to be at Craft & Commerce in Boise.

00:38:21

And I kind of feel like I will probably be watching with a more critical eye how those conferences are run based on how people get protected, equalized, and connected.

00:38:38

I think to a fault, maybe, that's what I try to do when I'm in a place like Max Talk and I happen to be presenting.

00:38:47

It's like someone comes up to you and they've listened to you on a podcast and they kind of don't know what to say, but they want to say hi.

00:38:55

And then you just invite them to sit down and eat lunch with you and they're like, "Whoa, this is awesome."

00:39:00

I love creating those types of moments for people.

00:39:05

And yeah, I want to be able to do that on a larger scale and obviously the larger scale is like, "Well, what can I organize in order to do that?"

00:39:15

And I know that's not the thing right now.

00:39:17

The thing for me right now is how can I do this in the scope of the things that I'm already committed to?

00:39:24

Like, for example, we have a men's ministry at our church that I help run and every month we've got a men's rally, so it's kind of like a mini-conference sort of thing.

00:39:33

We share a meal and then we do worship.

00:39:36

Pastor speaks.

00:39:37

It's a couple hours on a Friday night.

00:39:40

And I'm reading through this and I'm like, "Okay, how can I make that more effective?"

00:39:45

And I don't have any answers yet.

00:39:47

That's the thing.

00:39:48

You read this book and I was expecting when I read this that there was going to be 12 different action items for me.

00:39:53

I'm like, "This is what I'm going to apply to my quibits."

00:39:55

I got none of that.

00:39:56

I got a whole bunch more questions to ponder.

00:39:59

Nice.

00:40:00

But it's good.

00:40:02

I'm grateful for it because I feel like if you ask the right questions, then the answers will become clear.

00:40:08

I just need to spend some more time thinking through these things.

00:40:11

And this idea of generous authority specifically, I need to let this cook some more.

00:40:15

Once you've read this, it's one of these scenarios where you can't unsee it.

00:40:20

Or you hear something and you can't unhear it and you'll never be able to see it the same again.

00:40:25

This is one of those books because I've been to one conference since reading this.

00:40:31

The first time, I keep saying that since my original reading.

00:40:36

And one thing I noticed was that they had a whole bunch of breakout sessions.

00:40:41

So you had the main keynote stage and then they had a bunch of breakouts.

00:40:46

And the main stage, that was handled beautifully.

00:40:50

They were great hosts from that stage.

00:40:53

The breakouts, you would kind of expect someone from the conference itself to do the introductions.

00:41:00

And be the host of that breakout.

00:41:04

But what they did instead was they let each of the presenters and each of those breakouts be the host.

00:41:09

Oh boy.

00:41:10

Do you know how many different styles come with that?

00:41:13

Yeah.

00:41:14

And they weren't given a set way to be the host for those.

00:41:18

So some people introduced themselves, some didn't.

00:41:21

They assumed you knew who they were.

00:41:23

Some people had things that they would offer free to you.

00:41:27

Some didn't and some people just asked a question and then hoped you ran with it.

00:41:32

Some people guided you through the whole process.

00:41:34

It was just so different depending on which one you went to.

00:41:37

And it drove me up a wall.

00:41:39

Yeah.

00:41:40

In another scenario, I probably would have never noticed.

00:41:44

But thanks to Pray a Parker, I can't unsee it.

00:41:48

And it does happen pretty regularly, it seems.

00:41:52

Yeah, that's a great transition point into the next chapter.

00:41:55

Number four is create a temporary alternative world.

00:41:58

And one of the things that you talked about here is the standards of etiquette versus rules-based

00:42:04

gatherings and what you were just describing where there weren't, there wasn't a framework that people were expected to follow in terms of the hosts and the breakouts and they were able to just do whatever they want.

00:42:15

You're leaving then the running of those breakout sessions to what people may or may not be familiar with in terms of etiquette, which she mentions in this video.

00:42:24

She mentions in this chapter, standards of etiquette tend to be fixed, impurious and exclusionary.

00:42:28

So you have somebody who's a little bit outside the group, they have no idea what the etiquette is and they just do whatever they want.

00:42:36

Whereas rules-based gatherings, these are interesting to me because on the surface, you've got these rules you've got to follow, it can feel more restrictive, but actually the constraints, in my opinion, tend to open up additional freedoms because you know exactly what's expected of you.

00:42:53

I like this a lot, by the way.

00:42:55

The whole concept of just having rules of engagement, this is what came out of the book and into our small groups, small group, and it's because we have set times now.

00:43:09

This is the way this is going to work.

00:43:12

And when we get to the time for our Bible study conversations, we've always designated usually one of the men as a leader of the Bible.

00:43:22

And the leader of that conversation, and it's their job to facilitate that conversation.

00:43:27

Generally, that means deciding what questions we're going to answer in the circle and just making sure that everybody gets a chance to talk.

00:43:35

But we've set up those rules of engagement beforehand.

00:43:39

That way, we know how that ritual, I guess, is intended to operate.

00:43:45

And I have to say, when we've done this and gone through it, it's beautiful, it really is.

00:43:50

I don't have another word for it because it just works so well, as opposed to previously when we've set like we need to pray and then we need to go through our Bible study.

00:44:01

Sure, that's great.

00:44:03

But generally, we're getting to the Bible study part around 815 and then, you know, we're kind of talking as part of it.

00:44:11

And, you know, we'd watch a video with it and then it ends up being almost 9 o'clock time, we're ready to discuss it.

00:44:18

And that's the point at which a lot of us have to get back and take babysitters home.

00:44:22

Yeah, they knew that that awkward situation, which he talks about later, like people want to leave, but they can't.

00:44:27

Correct.

00:44:28

And now it gets all weird.

00:44:30

Moving to this new approach where we've kind of created this ritual is a great word for it.

00:44:38

We've created this ritual based around these bumpers that we've put on it.

00:44:43

And it's just so much better.

00:44:45

I feel like I've connected with the people in that group significantly more since setting up those rules, which is kind of backwards.

00:44:52

You know, it seems very backwards from what it should be.

00:44:56

But it works.

00:44:57

So I can't argue with it.

00:44:58

Yeah.

00:44:59

I'm curious because I don't know the people who are in your group, but I'm guessing that you probably have certain things that you're in your group, but I'm guessing that you probably have certain things that you're in your group.

00:45:07

Certain things that are similar, but my experience with church-based gatherings is that you tend to get people who are different.

00:45:15

They just have a shared common belief.

00:45:19

So she mentions in this chapter that etiquette allows people to gather because they are the same rules based gatherings allow people to gather because they are different.

00:45:29

Would you describe your group as mostly the same or mostly different?

00:45:33

In a few scenarios, it's the same.

00:45:36

In a few scenarios, it's different.

00:45:38

So I think overall, that probably makes it different.

00:45:40

Okay.

00:45:41

Yeah.

00:45:42

That's what I would argue too.

00:45:43

And I'm curious just because the way that she described that, that if you are in a group where everybody is the same, maybe you institute these rules and you do get some pushback because why do we need these?

00:45:57

We already know what the rules are because we all are exactly the same and we follow the same etiquette.

00:46:02

I don't know.

00:46:03

But I personally like the idea of the rules.

00:46:06

And I don't know.

00:46:08

I guess I tend to be a little bit weird in the groups that I'm involved in.

00:46:12

I tend to feel like there's nobody who's just like me here, but I'm going to make it work anyways.

00:46:19

So maybe it's my craving of the rules that makes me want to apply the different groups that I'm in.

00:46:25

But I'm wondering how there are scenarios where people would push back on that.

00:46:28

They probably are, but when I read this chapter, I thought this is going to be, this is going to do nothing but help.

00:46:35

Yeah.

00:46:36

I think just to comment on that, I think there are, there probably are scenarios where people will push back in our scenario just because I feel like this is probably a representative scenario.

00:46:47

We had one night where we just said, we feel like we're doing something wrong.

00:46:53

Let's talk about it.

00:46:54

And that's all it started out as.

00:46:57

And there were two or three of us, one of which I had discussed this book with kind of on my own before this.

00:47:04

And we just kind of talked through some of the things that came from this book.

00:47:09

And everybody was fully on board because they understood that it meant that everyone would get a chance to talk and everybody would get a chance to share their thoughts.

00:47:18

And the rest of us could help them through that.

00:47:20

Like once you found that as the core, everybody jumped on board.

00:47:26

So for what it's worth, I don't know if that would work in every scenario, but it seemed like it was pretty universal to me.

00:47:32

Okay, cool.

00:47:33

Another thing that really stands out to me in this section here is this, these I am here days, which was something that they started, it was originally going to be just a couple thing.

00:47:47

And then somebody asked if they could join and they're like, yeah, then they kind of changed the rules and they ended up on this thing that they do now with a group, which I think is pretty cool, where they just wandered around these New York City neighborhoods together because they wanted initially to experience some of the different neighborhoods

00:48:01

and they wanted to experience these different things together.

00:48:04

And one of the rules that they landed on for these I am here days where they'll just wander and they'll do crazy stuff is that they stay together and that there's no technology.

00:48:16

She mentions in this chapter that etiquette is a hopelessly porous shield against the most powerful force of our age, addictive technology.

00:48:23

I was thinking about that as a pertain to the kibbutz and for reasons that we'll talk about probably as we get further on in this book, I feel like this is a big ass to like pass a basket around at the beginning.

00:48:34

Okay, everybody put your phone in here, but I'm wondering, have you implemented any of those types of rules with your gatherings?

00:48:41

Yes, and we debated doing it for the men's conference tomorrow.

00:48:48

We really debated, we're talking about having 200 people there.

00:48:52

We talked about trying to figure out a way to block all signals in the church.

00:48:58

So it means I can't actually run the conference, but we were talking about trying to do that.

00:49:04

We're not, but that was something we talked about.

00:49:07

Interesting. I can say that, you know, the small group, we don't have a problem with people on their phones, like that's not really an issue that we run into.

00:49:16

There are times when I've seen meetings that I've been a part of where it becomes an issue, but I can't say there's been a scenario where, at least recently, where it's a gathering where there is a phone problem or a watch problem and we put a rule in place.

00:49:33

I can't say I've done that. That said, I'm debating still doing it for part of my talk tomorrow.

00:49:41

I still want to.

00:49:43

We'll see. It's kind of, I mean, the whole, the talk is called the Amish smartphone, and it'll be kind of an interesting, it'll be an interesting talk, but, you know, just the title itself will probably guilt people into not being on their phone during the talk.

00:50:00

So we'll see. Sure. Yeah. That's really interesting. I, if you're the recording of your, your talk, I would love to, to listen to it because I think that this is, this is something that I wholeheartedly believe in, but I have difficulty figuring out a way to communicate it nicely to other people.

00:50:24

So in an arena, I guess where I'm not maybe the one, like with the kibbutz, yes, I am, but with a lot of other stuff, it feels like an abuse of power or not my place to say, okay, everybody, give me your phones.

00:50:38

Even though I so want to do that. Sure.

00:50:42

And that kind of leads into the next chapter on never start a funeral with logistics because she makes the point in this chapter about how even before the event starts, it's already begun. You've got a prime your guess for what's going to happen.

00:50:58

In fact, she says 90% of what makes an event successful takes place beforehand.

00:51:03

So for something like the men's conference, I think what you're talking about where you are going to turn off access to devices, no Wi-Fi, whatever, that could totally work.

00:51:13

But you would definitely have to communicate it ahead of time. Right. Right. And I don't know.

00:51:22

I feel like the kibbutz isn't the place to institute that sort of rule, but this whole idea of priming has really got me thinking because she mentions that it doesn't have to be complex. It could just be an email.

00:51:34

And the phrase that really stands out to me from this section is ask your guest to do something instead of bring something.

00:51:41

I don't know exactly what that looks like yet for me, but I'm really intrigued by that idea. And I want to apply that to everything. You know, if I'm going to meet somebody for coffee, it would be.

00:51:56

It's a cool idea to me to kind of put a question out there. You know, think about this and then let's talk about it when we get there sort of a thing.

00:52:05

And that's an example of priming. And the kibbutz I kind of feel like I don't really know what that's going to turn into quite yet, but there's lots of other areas where I recognize I could be doing a much better job of priming people before the meeting.

00:52:23

One in particular that kind of stands out to me is the small group that I lead at our church on Thursdays.

00:52:30

We do have a curriculum that we go through. And it's kind of expected that you're going to read this chapter and then we're going to talk about it.

00:52:36

But I could do a better job of, you know, send out the reminder the day before.

00:52:43

And I kind of set the tone for what's going to be discussed or share something that I want people to think about before we get there.

00:52:51

I tend to just throw stuff at guys when they get there. Okay, so what do you think about this?

00:52:56

And I like that sometimes because you get more honest answers I feel like when you put people in the spot, but I don't know.

00:53:03

I feel like I can do a better job of thinking this through ahead of time for myself and then throwing it out there for other people.

00:53:10

And maybe that has a positive impact on the meetings or the gatherings overall.

00:53:14

So the title of this is Never Start a Funeral with Logistics.

00:53:18

So did you start a funeral with logistics?

00:53:20

No, we don't. None of ours ever do it that way unless we have a guest pastor who botches.

00:53:27

Oh, thank that does happen on occasion.

00:53:31

We always start funerals with a declaration of appreciation for the deceased.

00:53:39

Like that's usually what starts starts that off.

00:53:43

If there are logistics that need shared, they usually do it at the end of the formal pieces of the service before like a last song or something.

00:53:53

That way you've shared the logistics, but it's not really a thing that starts or ends the whole thing.

00:53:59

I think maybe a good translation of this is at least a good example is the talk I'm giving tomorrow.

00:54:06

I really did not want to be the one that introduced myself and mentioned a couple things.

00:54:12

I'm given 45 minutes to talk, but I know I'm going to need about 15 minutes of Q&A on that.

00:54:20

And I have about 20 slides I'm going to work through in 30 minutes.

00:54:25

It's going to be fast and I know that.

00:54:28

And it's going to be a lot of information. It's one of these really dense talks. That's the goal anyway.

00:54:33

So what I'm doing is I'm having someone else introduce me and then call out right notes down.

00:54:39

We're not going to stop. Joe will answer questions at the end.

00:54:42

Like I'm having him do that because I don't want to be the one who steps up and immediately starts talking logistics before we ever get going.

00:54:50

Interesting. That's the goal there because I want to be able to just get up and dive right into the first story.

00:54:56

And I want that to be the kickoff for that talk. That's my goal.

00:55:01

But if I need people to not interrupt in that first 30 minutes, I need them to not.

00:55:09

So what that means is somebody else needs to call that out.

00:55:14

So that's a direct from this. That's the whole point.

00:55:18

That's where I got that concept was from those books. Thank you.

00:55:22

Yeah, Parker. And your situation for speaking at the conference is maybe a little bit different because I'm assuming you're not the first speaker.

00:55:30

The first thing people are going to hear is the logistics. Maybe it is. I don't know.

00:55:35

It can kind of. I mean, it's a live stream. So we will have an introduction at the very beginning of the morning.

00:55:43

And there will be a little bit of logistics there. And then we'll have a live feed coming through.

00:55:50

There's one session there, a little bit of a break. And then that session will still be happening.

00:55:55

And then I'll have the live deal in another room at the same time.

00:56:00

Okay. I'll be the first in-person speaker at the conference.

00:56:05

So I don't know. It kind of depends on how you want to think about it in that sense.

00:56:09

There are a lot of logistics involved with the whole day. And it's scheduled down to the minute.

00:56:14

So don't go over.

00:56:18

All right. Well, one of the things that stands out to me with this, and I guess if I were the one organizing your conference,

00:56:26

then maybe I would do it a little bit differently because the story that really stood out to me was about George Lucas.

00:56:34

She mentions that attention is highest at the outset. And you've got to take advantage of that when you launch your gathering.

00:56:40

And she used George Lucas with the Star Wars movies as an example because at the time, the director's guild, I think it was, required that you had opening credits.

00:56:52

And George Lucas was like, "No, I'm not going to do that." And he was actually fined $250,000 for skipping those opening credits.

00:57:01

But that opening for Star Wars, everybody knows that. That's iconic.

00:57:06

You've got a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And then you've got the scrolling credits where he's setting the scene for jumping into the movie.

00:57:15

He knew how powerful this was going to be if it was done right. He knew that he couldn't do it if he followed the rules.

00:57:20

And so he intentionally decided to break the rules. And I don't know exactly how I want to implement this, but this idea really impacted me.

00:57:31

And I definitely want to give it some thought about how I can start or launch not even the beginning of a conference.

00:57:41

Let's say I get selected to speak at Macstock this year. I don't know that. I've submitted.

00:57:48

But I don't want to just, here's my experiments, walk on stage, typical intro sort of a thing.

00:57:54

I want to really think about something that's new and different. She also uses the example of Saturday Night Live where they open cold.

00:58:03

There's no logistics. There's no, here's the show. They just jump right into a skit. And then at some point in the skit, someone yells out live from New York at Saturday night.

00:58:11

Those are the things that tend to be memorable.

00:58:15

Yeah. And I think in the case of a conference where like what you're talking about with Macstock,

00:58:20

you also have to realize that there's a difference between your hosts gathering and my gathering.

00:58:29

True.

00:58:30

So there is the broad gathering of the overall conference. Yes. So take tomorrow. That's the whole men's conference.

00:58:38

I am not the host for that. I am working with.

00:58:41

Correct. Yeah. That was kind of the question I was asking.

00:58:43

Yeah. So they are the hosts of the overall conference, but I'm the host of my talk.

00:58:50

And you kind of have to work with a gathering within a gathering in that sense.

00:58:56

So what happens is because of that, at least having thought through this a lot, I think what happens is you have the overall conference and yes, the way that that starts early in the morning.

00:59:10

That one's very well scripted at the moment. And I think they have that set off really well, kicking off with a video and such so that it's not logistics right away.

00:59:21

Like it does kick off that way. And then we talk about logistics before moving on into specific talks.

00:59:29

But the overall conference, part of that is going to involve logistics.

00:59:33

But I feel like my, where I transition from them being the host to me being the host is the moment they're done introducing me.

00:59:40

Right. That moment is when my gathering starts. And I do not want to be talking about who am I and where did I come from at that point.

00:59:50

Does that make sense? Like do you see that transition? Yes. No, I definitely see that transition.

00:59:55

I just am challenged to think about this and really do the impactful stuff at the beginning, I guess.

01:00:04

And that kind of leads into the next chapter because you had mentioned that you're going to share some stories, I believe.

01:00:15

The next chapter is keep your best self out of my gathering.

01:00:18

And the big thing that jumps up to me from this chapter is the fact that as the host, you can set the tone and you can show your guess how.

01:00:35

You know, we need to be even more personal than we expect our guest to be is kind of the point she makes here.

01:00:44

So, again, I don't know that much about your talk. I know you've got your presentation part, you've got a Q&A part.

01:00:53

And you mentioned like for your conference, there's going to be things built in where people are going to sit down and share.

01:00:59

So, Priya Parker would say make sure that you share something super personal and don't just share about the things that are going well.

01:01:13

She defines them as dark themes. The good themes, those tend to be very superficial where there's real gold is when people are sharing what hurts and what struggles they're going through those types of things.

01:01:32

I feel like with Bookworm, I've tried to be honest and we've talked about some of that stuff.

01:01:41

But I also think that when it comes to the other gatherings that I help facilitate or I'm a part of, I can take this to another level.

01:01:52

And I kind of don't know where the line is with this because a lot of these are more regular. People don't want to hear about everything that's going wrong in your life all the time either.

01:02:04

I had that kind of thought go through my head as she was talking about this section. But she just shared some powerful stories, especially in this chapter about creating the space for people to really be vulnerable.

01:02:22

And yeah, like I said, I really don't know how to do this per se. I don't know what it looks like. I guess I don't have any action specifically associated with it.

01:02:33

But I really like this idea and I like the analogy of the swimming pool that she mentions where you offer the invitation, you kind of set the tone, but even let your guests decide and choose how deep they want to go.

01:02:44

Yes, I think there's, when you're giving a talk, it's easy to want to present a problem and then share what you did to succeed at it, which means that, you know, whenever we're talking on a podcast or you're writing an article or you name it.

01:03:02

Anytime you're sharing something publicly or with a group, a gathering, anytime you're doing that, there is a tendency to a problem comes up with another person and you want to share how you solve that problem, which by default means you're sharing how good you did at something.

01:03:21

You know, that's kind of what ends up happening because we want to share the solution to the problem.

01:03:28

But the problem with that is that you don't typically tell the story of how you had the problem as well.

01:03:37

And that I feel like is a critical point that can make or break whether or not they see you as just sharing a highlight or sharing the full truth behind it.

01:03:51

And I will tell you, when I first drafted this talk for tomorrow, I did exactly that.

01:03:57

I had it down to where it's like, okay, these are the problems. Here's how I've solved them all. Here's what I'm doing today.

01:04:04

And whenever I step back and looked at it, I just put myself on a pedestal here.

01:04:09

That's what I just did with that.

01:04:11

So I just completely destroyed the whole thing and tell stories about other people and the problem they had, what they did and then how they solved it in some of those.

01:04:23

It's going to kind of work out that way.

01:04:25

You know, a lot of it's just data and facts that are put together in a certain way.

01:04:30

If and when I share a story about my own, I'm making sure I share like, here's what I screwed up.

01:04:37

Here's where I suck at life. And this is what I'm attempting to do to get past that.

01:04:44

I struggle with this the same way everybody else does. Like, that's kind of the way I'm coming at it.

01:04:49

Because you're right, it's easy to want to say, look how great I am. Like, this is what I'm doing. Look at me.

01:04:54

And that's kind of our default answer when it comes to this because we don't like to share what we screwed up with.

01:04:59

We don't really want to do that. But a lot of times that's what prevents you from looking like a snot.

01:05:05

And just trying to make yourself look good all the time.

01:05:09

Yeah, and she would probably argue that as the host, it's your responsibility to not to throw yourself out there.

01:05:16

And it's interesting to me, you're talking about that conference thing specifically.

01:05:21

Now, maybe you're going to know everybody who's going to be there. I don't know.

01:05:25

But most conferences, those types of public speeches like that, you don't.

01:05:31

There's a lot of strangers in the room, or at least strangers on some level.

01:05:35

And that's exactly the type of place where being vulnerable can have the most effect.

01:05:42

But it's also the type of place where we typically do not want to be vulnerable.

01:05:48

I was impacted by the section here where she talks about to facilitate more sharing, invite more strangers.

01:05:54

Because with strangers, there's this temporary rebalancing act.

01:05:58

I think especially in a conference where you're a speaker, you're listed on a page.

01:06:02

As a speaker, people tend to project their best selves.

01:06:06

The people who are attending maybe are familiar with the work that you've done and they view you a certain way.

01:06:14

But they maybe don't know all of the personal struggles.

01:06:18

They don't know, I use myself as an example, that the last year was the hardest year of my life.

01:06:24

I don't really share that enough.

01:06:26

So I'm thinking about the impact that you can have by getting up on a stage,

01:06:32

and there's hundreds, thousands of people there, whatever, and you just open up and bury your soul.

01:06:38

That is really intriguing to me because the other side of that, she mentions here,

01:06:44

that your friends and your family know who you have been.

01:06:47

And they often make it harder to become who you want to be.

01:06:50

Totally true.

01:06:52

I can definitely see that in my own life.

01:06:57

And I feel like if you are able to, whether you raise the stranger quotient like she talks about or not,

01:07:05

if you are able to push yourself to be more vulnerable, that is the place where the growth actually happens.

01:07:14

And again, not an action item per se, but something that I want to keep in mind whenever I have the opportunity to speak.

01:07:21

Whether it's having a couple of people, a couple of other couples over for a meal, like our kibbutts,

01:07:29

or speaking at a conference and everything in between.

01:07:32

I want to use this to kind of think about how can I share not just ideas, but experiences and struggles.

01:07:42

Because it's those stories that share the vulnerabilities that really connect us.

01:07:46

Kind of dovetailing into this, because we are talking about telling stories and such.

01:07:52

The next chapter is cause good controversy.

01:07:56

And I feel like part of that is because if you are talking about something that is a little bit sensitive,

01:08:03

then a lot of times people will be more inclined to share their opinion and you can spark that conversation.

01:08:10

And it's essentially a way of prodding people along in order to encourage the relationships to build.

01:08:19

And I feel like whenever you have, it's tough to do stuff like that whenever you're talking about a scenario

01:08:25

where you're speaking to a group of say 100 people, that's kind of different than if you're sitting down with someone over coffee.

01:08:35

Or you're trying to plan a dinner with another couple or a group.

01:08:41

It's kind of different in those scenarios.

01:08:44

But regardless, a lot of what this comes down to is just ways to continue conversations.

01:08:51

That's really a lot of what she's getting at here.

01:08:55

Yeah, definitely. This section cause good controversy. I love this chapter.

01:09:00

This might have been my favorite chapter cause she talks about unhealthy peace and unhealthy heat.

01:09:06

So most gatherings have one of these two ingredients.

01:09:10

Unhealthy peace she talks about not saying what you really think.

01:09:13

Unhealthy heat being a total free for all.

01:09:17

And I can think of several examples that fall into both of these categories.

01:09:23

And every single time I am in those situations, I am frustrated that we cannot meet in the middle.

01:09:30

I really don't know what the solution is to this.

01:09:33

I think there's some of these gatherings where I just don't have the power or the authority to facilitate it in the right way.

01:09:41

But it does challenge me to every type of gathering where I do have that authority.

01:09:46

How do I get to this point? Because again, good controversy doesn't just happen.

01:09:54

But one of the things that can keep you from getting there is avoiding, you're following the conventional advice to avoid certain topics.

01:10:03

She mentioned sex, religion and politics. And she's saying, no, you should not talk about those.

01:10:09

Absolutely talk about those because those will stir the pot and they'll allow you to have productive conversations.

01:10:15

There's a couple of questions that I think I'll use from this chapter in terms of considering where that line is for my gatherings and how closely I want to tiptoe around that.

01:10:30

Basically, what is the gift?

01:10:33

So what is the good that can come from this controversy?

01:10:36

What is the risk? And this is the one that's difficult to answer sometimes.

01:10:41

I mean, you have to consider this before you just blow up a Thanksgiving dinner with some controversy.

01:10:46

And then the other question is, is it worth it? And that's the one that doesn't have an easy answer, I don't feel.

01:10:52

It looks good on a list like she put in the book.

01:10:55

But how do you determine whether causing that controversy is worth it?

01:11:01

For me, I'm kind of going through some of this stuff right now. I'm thinking through it with some family situations and thinking about how I want to navigate those and what I want to say.

01:11:12

Because I want to be truthful and honest. I don't want to hurt people's feelings. Not that anything I'm going to say is about other people anyways.

01:11:20

It's going to be about my shortcomings and my failures and the things that I feel from the things that I've done wrong, basically.

01:11:28

But I want to do it in a way where we do talk about these things and we don't just let it sit below the surface because everybody feels it every time we see each other.

01:11:40

And we got to figure out a way to get that stuff to the surface and we got to get it resolved.

01:11:46

And we show all the best. That is not fun.

01:11:48

Well, I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.

01:11:52

So you could say it's not fun and it's not easy. I 100% agree with that.

01:11:57

But just considering these things with the hope and the belief that there will be a resolution is positive and exciting to me on some level.

01:12:11

It doesn't make it easier necessarily to sit down and have the conversations.

01:12:16

But it provides the motivation to follow through and actually do it because you know the good is going to come from it. That makes any sense.

01:12:23

Sure. Sure. Yeah, it does.

01:12:25

Cool. So, yeah, every single gathering I'm a part of, I want to steer it more towards this where we're not avoiding wanting to offend people.

01:12:36

We don't want to put up roadblocks to the rich and honest dialogue, which traditionally those things disappear whenever you do that sort of thing.

01:12:47

Alright, let's talk about the last chapter here, which is accept that there is an end.

01:12:54

This seems obvious, but there's tons of good stuff in this chapter.

01:13:00

One of the things that she mentions here, because there's a lot of stuff that like break up with your guests, you know, you want to give them a closing where they look inward and they turn outward.

01:13:12

But there's one thing in particular that I wanted to talk about here, which is this idea of quitting while you're ahead.

01:13:20

I recognize that I sort of have been doing this with my wife because when we get together with other people, this is kind of one of my sayings.

01:13:31

It's like, let's end on a win where we don't want to overstay and then something happens, kids are upset, and then we've ended, you know, on a negative note instead of a positive one.

01:13:45

And I've been saying that for a while and not realizing what I was actually doing, and she's defined it for me in this chapter, but also it helped me to understand that this is an attitude that I could take towards every skill gathering that I'm a part of.

01:14:00

It doesn't just have to be something where the kids are involved.

01:14:04

It really should be something that even if it's just me or it's my wife and I, and we're involved, that we should have this attitude.

01:14:12

I kind of, in the back of my mind, am thinking that if I think this way with all of the different gatherings that I'm a part of, it will probably change how people instinctively react to spending time with me, which again, one of my big words this year is rest in relationships.

01:14:35

So this is something that I kind of have to figure out. I don't want to make people feel like, like this, like they're an obligation.

01:14:43

And I feel like I do tend to default to that where we've got this time set aside and because I don't close the gathering or the meeting well, that I'm the one who's kind of in a hurry to get to the next thing.

01:14:55

I'm looking at my watch and I know subconsciously that that's got a negative message associated to the other person.

01:15:02

I'm basically saying you're not that important to me, but I want to change that.

01:15:07

I want to change the signals that I'm sending, not necessarily the way that I feel about the gatherings with other people.

01:15:14

Yes, to all the things.

01:15:16

I feel like ending things well is difficult.

01:15:20

It seems easy, but me, I have a tendency to get on a train and don't want to get off whenever it seems like a gathering is going well.

01:15:32

But at the same time, you have to close it at some point.

01:15:36

And whenever you are in that situation and you love what's happening, I have found an easy way to quit while you're ahead is to figure out when you're going to do it again.

01:15:53

Yeah.

01:15:54

And like go ahead and put it on the calendar. If it's two months out, it's fine.

01:15:57

Like it gives you two months to plan for it.

01:15:59

If you really enjoy that gathering and you're willing to repeat it, go for it.

01:16:04

You know, with the men's conference, it's a thing we've done every year, we will close it out by saying, "We'll see you next year and here are the dates and this is when it's going to happen."

01:16:14

And if you have recommendations for who you want to speak, let us know.

01:16:18

Like that's kind of how that all ends and then there's a very clean line.

01:16:23

Pray, done, gone.

01:16:25

Like that's, it's very clean in that. I think it's a little messy or whenever you're talking about like getting together for coffee or having a couple over for dinner.

01:16:35

Like that is a little bit different because what is that time?

01:16:39

And something I have done a few times with some success is just communicating when we normally go to bed.

01:16:46

And it's like, okay.

01:16:48

Yeah, I'm usually embedded about nine o'clock.

01:16:50

If I communicate that, the other person knows somewhere around 845 is probably the latest they want to stick around.

01:16:58

They generally know that and will follow suit.

01:17:01

If they don't, they're probably not super attentive.

01:17:06

It's not because I'm making it pretty obvious.

01:17:10

So there are ways to do that.

01:17:13

Similar to what we were talking about when we read "Indistractable" is

01:17:19

whenever you call people out who are on their phones, like, you know, hey, notice you on your phone.

01:17:24

Is everything okay? Like asking that question, it's similar to that.

01:17:28

And like you're just making something known that you're aware of.

01:17:32

This is a thing that we need to determine of when this is going to end and you're communicating that in some way.

01:17:37

I feel like doing that ahead of time does help.

01:17:40

But you know, to your point, like when you're on a high note and you're towards the end of the evening, just make it clear that this is a thing that you're going to be able to do.

01:17:48

That this is an okay time to be done.

01:17:50

Yeah, she mentions that a good host is like a good actor.

01:17:53

Good actors are known not for how they enter the stage but how they exit.

01:17:57

And she says, "Don't simply scuttle off the stage when it's over."

01:18:01

And that's challenging to me.

01:18:04

For some of my gatherings, there is a very, like you mentioned, there's a very specific structure for how they end.

01:18:13

And we follow that procedure based on the time and it actually is a very positive thing.

01:18:20

But there are lots of other things where I think specifically my wife and I haven't talked through prior to being in those situations what the clothes really looks like.

01:18:32

And for me, that causes a lot of stress because my wife tends to be the more spontaneous one.

01:18:39

So I'll ask the questions before we get there, like, okay, so we're going to leave by four, right?

01:18:44

And at four thirty, I'm giving her the look and she's completely enthralled in the conversation that's happening.

01:18:50

And I'm annoyed that I was supposed to be home half an hour ago because I got asked by NZ that I got to do.

01:18:56

Which again, there's multiple things going on here.

01:18:59

Number one, for me, extreme ownership, I've got to learn to roll with things better.

01:19:03

But I also think that if we talk about the closing and what this looks like ahead of time, that probably makes things less stressful for her too.

01:19:11

Because she's just doing what comes naturally.

01:19:14

I'm doing what comes naturally and those tend to be two very different things.

01:19:20

So I really like this book going into action items here.

01:19:26

There's a couple things that stand out to me.

01:19:29

Totally not what I expected, like I said, so I thought that I would have a dozen action items.

01:19:34

I have one that's just general, like apply what I learned here as I process and think about this to my quibbit specifically because that's the next gathering that's going to happen.

01:19:44

Again, I don't know specifically what that's going to look like.

01:19:46

We could follow up on that.

01:19:47

Maybe I'll have a list of things that I implemented from this book, but right now I have no idea.

01:19:53

When does this first quibbit, when does it happen?

01:19:56

It actually happens Sunday.

01:19:58

A couple days from now my wife is out of town at the moment at the youth camp for our church.

01:20:04

So we won't even get a chance to talk about this until Saturday, the day before the quibbits.

01:20:09

The big things I know I want to be intentional about are the opening, the closing and sharing specifically.

01:20:18

I don't know exactly what I'm going to share, but sharing something vulnerable that steers the conversation in a way that the relationships are built intentionally, which is kind of the whole idea behind the quibbits in the first place.

01:20:27

So if I had to identify key ingredients from that that I would implement from this book, those would be it, but I don't know.

01:20:36

We'll see.

01:20:38

The other action item I have here, we did not talk about this in the last chapter, but she mentions this just in passing as an example of something that they do, I think, at home where their kids share their rows in their thorn.

01:20:55

The rows is the best part of the day.

01:20:57

The thorn is the worst part of their day.

01:20:59

I really like that idea.

01:21:01

This is the first time I've heard about this.

01:21:03

This maybe has come up before.

01:21:04

Maybe you've heard of this before, but I feel like dinner time at my house tends to be pretty crazy.

01:21:11

We try to have meaningful conversation at the dinner table.

01:21:15

It doesn't always work because you share, you ask a question, and then the oldest ones are the ones who will jump in and dominate the conversation.

01:21:24

The younger ones are busy picking on their siblings and not eating their food.

01:21:29

But I feel like this gives a structure where you could go around the table very systematically and have everybody share something that is intentional.

01:21:38

So I haven't run this by my wife yet, but I'm going to say publicly here that this is at least something that we are going to try.

01:21:46

I've heard it called high and low.

01:21:48

What was the high point of your day and what was the low point of your day?

01:21:51

Sure.

01:21:52

I've heard that before.

01:21:53

That's probably the closest thing I've heard of prior to that though.

01:21:57

I don't have any action items from this other than just keep on keeping on.

01:22:03

I've been implementing some of this for a while.

01:22:07

I love it.

01:22:08

I really do.

01:22:09

It's super helpful.

01:22:11

Yes, it is one that I originally had a bunch of action items, but I can't say I have anything new from that.

01:22:20

So previously, those would have been applied to our small group and start using this in things that are in our church.

01:22:30

Quick side note, there is a gap book episode on this book already because I had done this one at that time.

01:22:37

So there is, for premium members of the Bookworm Club, there is an extra episode and I talk about some of the action items I had from the time when I read that.

01:22:46

I can't say I followed through on those.

01:22:49

Awesome.

01:22:50

For what it's worth.

01:22:51

Go Joe.

01:22:52

Alright, style and rating.

01:22:53

This is my book, so I guess I go first.

01:22:55

That's correct.

01:22:56

I have said this a couple times, but not what I expected.

01:23:00

In a very, very good way.

01:23:04

Pripy Parker's style is very easy to read.

01:23:08

She is a phenomenal storyteller.

01:23:11

Not just in the way that she tells the stories, but the stories that she tells are very interesting.

01:23:16

I feel like if I were to sit down with her, we probably don't have a whole lot in common, but it almost doesn't matter in the Bookform at any ways.

01:23:24

You still want to hear what she has to say.

01:23:27

The writing style is very approachable.

01:23:30

It's not, I don't know, some of the productivity/business type books that we read, they tend to fall into one or two categories.

01:23:40

You've got something like The Innovators D'Luma by Clayton Christensen, and that is just over your head unless you sit down and deliberately go through it slow and try to digest everything.

01:23:51

Then you've got people who are going to say the same thing over and over and over again at a fourth grade level because they don't want anybody to miss how smart they are.

01:23:59

This book does not fall into either of those categories.

01:24:03

I feel like anybody can sit down and read this, and maybe this is because of the subject matter, and she's applied this to writing her book as well.

01:24:13

Anybody can sit down and read this. Anybody can get a lot out of this.

01:24:17

Anybody, I would say, who just picks us up and starts thumbing through it, is going to get sucked in.

01:24:24

You're going to get engaged with it.

01:24:26

For that reason, I think this is a really great book. Again, very different than the type of stuff that we typically read.

01:24:35

It's very different than what I expected. I expected to have a ton of action items associated with this. I've only got a couple.

01:24:41

But that being said, I also think, in time we'll prove this out, but I feel like this book is going to impact a significant portion of my life.

01:24:51

There's a lot of things where the stuff that she talks about in here is going to change how I approach the gatherings that I am a part of.

01:25:01

For me, this is a five-star book.

01:25:05

It feels kind of weird to say that because it is so different than the type of book that I typically would read.

01:25:13

But maybe it's the right thing at the right time. I don't know.

01:25:16

But I feel like I got a lot out of this. And even though there's not specific, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z.

01:25:21

I feel like my perspective is significantly altered for the better.

01:25:25

You say you only have really one action item, but if you read that, apply what I learned to planning my kibbutts.

01:25:32

You're actually talking about a whole bunch of action items. You just summarized them all.

01:25:36

Yeah, that's true. But there's not enough there for me to say, "Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that."

01:25:42

I really don't know what I'm going to do. I just know that I'm going to figure it out as I go and it's going to be impactful.

01:25:49

Yes.

01:25:50

I will join you at five stars. I feel like this is an easy one to put at five stars.

01:25:56

I can say this just because of history and using what I've learned here at this point, which is kind of an odd scenario to be in for a bookworm.

01:26:04

We don't normally end up with it that way.

01:26:06

But having gone through it twice now, I feel blessed to be able to do that.

01:26:12

It's one that I know I will continue to come back to.

01:26:16

I know I have referenced it a number of times over the last two months or so.

01:26:23

It's one that I have recommended to a number of our leaders in our church that they read it because obviously we do a lot of events.

01:26:31

If we do a ton of gatherings, to me, this is something if you're the leader of an organization, especially of a nonprofit like a church, this is a must, I think.

01:26:41

So definitely going to recommend this one, have numerous times and would recommend anyone who's listening to this to pick it up because most people talk to other people at some point.

01:26:52

So there's that.

01:26:54

Yes, I will join you at five stars, Mike.

01:26:56

All right.

01:26:57

Double five stars.

01:26:58

Nice.

01:26:59

Let's do it.

01:27:00

Okay.

01:27:01

What's coming up next?

01:27:02

Yes.

01:27:03

So next up is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

01:27:08

This is one of those books that I feel like we should have read a while back and haven't.

01:27:14

It's made the rounds.

01:27:16

It's one that people reference in other books that we've read a handful of times, at least, if not numerous times.

01:27:24

So I'm excited to be going through this one.

01:27:26

We'll get to think about thinking.

01:27:28

And after that, we will go back and do the book that was originally picked for this time.

01:27:34

And then I called the Audible.

01:27:36

It doesn't have to be crazy at work by Jason Fried and David DHH.

01:27:42

Let's just say that.

01:27:45

All right.

01:27:46

Sure.

01:27:47

Cheater.

01:27:48

Guilty.

01:27:49

You have any gap books?

01:27:52

I don't.

01:27:53

I did two last time and I don't have any this time.

01:27:55

I've been focusing on making sure this talk is ready to go for tomorrow.

01:28:00

So all my extra creative space has gone there.

01:28:03

All right.

01:28:04

Well, I also do not have a gap book.

01:28:06

I feel like I just need a need a break, especially with traveling next week.

01:28:11

And then also, I think the week after that, I have to look at my calendar.

01:28:15

But I want to make sure that I can give Thinking Fast and Slow the effort that it deserves.

01:28:24

So no gap books from me either.

01:28:26

I want to say thank you to the Premium Club members who are willing to give us a couple

01:28:32

of bucks every month in order to keep this show going.

01:28:34

It really does mean a lot to Joan myself.

01:28:37

There's a link in the show notes.

01:28:39

If you want to become a Premium Club member and support the show, you'll get a couple of

01:28:42

bonuses like the MyNote files from all the books that we read that I upload and the ability

01:28:48

to listen live when we record these.

01:28:52

So thank you to everybody who is a Premium Club member.

01:28:55

Your support means a lot.

01:28:56

And if you want to become a Premium Club member, just tap the link in the show notes.

01:29:00

Or if you're an overcast, the icon at the bottom will take you straight where you need

01:29:04

to go.

01:29:05

Awesome.

01:29:06

Thanks again to our Premium Club members.

01:29:08

And if you are reading along with us or interested in what the next book is going to be, Thinking

01:29:13

Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, we'll go through that one next time.