Bookworm Transcripts

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So we should probably jump right into follow up wait.

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There is no follow up.

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Good job.

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We're done.

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That's the follow up ever.

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Why is that again?

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I do have some long range follow up because last time we recorded, I had not

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hosted my kibbutts yet, which I think I'm saying that right now.

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Yeah.

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Thanks to the episode that's went live today as we're recording it.

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Yes.

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So that was kind of fortuitous for me because my kibbutts got pushed back a

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couple of weeks and then we got to record the author's corner episode that

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dropped today as we record this with near aisle.

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And there's a big section in there where I asked him about tips for the kibbutts.

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And he shared a whole bunch of really cool stuff.

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The interview turned out great.

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It probably was not what you had in mind when you put together authors

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corner.

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No, no, no, no, no, no.

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This is very, very different than what I intended.

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So I hope you're okay with that, but I thought it was a great conversation.

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Yeah.

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There's a great guy.

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Yeah, sure.

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And it was a lot of fun.

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So go check that out.

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It's a bonus episode and it's available in your podcast feed right now, even as we

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record this, but I did want to follow up with the actual kibbutts because that

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was a big action item for me following the actually might have been the first

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indestractable and then we read the art of gathering because I wanted to do this.

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And then it got pushed back.

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So we haven't been able to really talk about that yet.

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And like I said, we, we hosted it regardless of the circumstances.

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We made it work, which again, circumstances kind of worked against us for this.

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There are two other couples from our church that we invited over in between

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services on Sunday because we are there in the morning.

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We were also there in the evening.

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So the afternoons, we have a few hours at home, not a ton of time.

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And it's just a personal decision that we've made that this is what we're going to

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do with our Sundays.

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We're going to take our rest a different day.

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And so that's our approach.

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And we got this little window in the middle where like, how can we make the most of

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this because you're not going to just go like by the time you would go chill out

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and unwind, you're getting ready to go back back to church.

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So we identified that couple hour block is like a great.

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A great spot for especially specifically other families who are kind of in the

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same situation as we are.

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So both of these other couples that we invited to our cubots, they, they're kind

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in that spot too.

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Like, well, what do we do during the afternoon?

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So we're like, come on our house.

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We'll get some food and we'll just hang out.

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And that's kind of all the framing I did for it.

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I did share a little bit about how like we want to make this a regular thing

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prior to having them over because we want to build these relationships.

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Basically, we care about you guys and we want to, we want to build this

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intentionally over time.

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We know that this is not just going to be a happy accident sort of a thing.

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So you guys down to give this a shot and they said, yeah.

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So they came over and that Sunday that they came over turned out that our

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pastor asked all three of us.

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So myself and then the two other males from the couples, they also,

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typically will speak different parts of the services, but we didn't have

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anything on the agenda at the time.

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And then after the AM service got all three of us got a message from our

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pastor saying, Hey, can you guys preach tonight each take a turn?

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We're like, Oh, okay.

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Cause you can't really, you can't really say no to that.

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At the same time, we're like, could you pick a different Sunday?

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Right.

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Please move this.

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We've been trying to do this for like a month and we, we really just were

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committed to making it work.

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So we're like, well, we've all got a prep now, but let's just, let's just do it

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anyways.

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And, uh, you know, if we got a bounce early, no hard feelings, whatever.

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So had people over had the meal, there were at our house, I think 11 kids

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between the three families.

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And we told them all go in the basement and don't come up unless you're bleeding.

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Per near suggestion, which kind of worked kind of didn't.

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Uh, I think that'll take some more coaching, but that's okay.

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We kind of knew that.

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Sure.

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Uh, also the older kids kind of wanted to linger upstairs.

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Like they, they kind of sensed that we were going to do something and they

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wanted to see what it was.

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And we're just like, no, go away.

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And, uh, so eventually, you know, they went downstairs and we had about an hour,

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maybe an hour and a half of just like intentional conversation, which my wife

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and I kind of kicked off and, uh, this was the part I was super nervous about.

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Because I wanted to kind of set the tone for this sort of thing based on what we

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had learned through the art of gathering and share like, uh, an implementation

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intention is, is near had put, put it in that interview, but also didn't want to

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just like scare everybody away.

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So we kind of shared like this is kind of what we've been thinking through lately.

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And this is what we've been struggling with.

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And this is kind of what we've learned.

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And we really want to set this course for our family, for our relationships.

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Like we see you guys being integral part of our future.

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We love you guys.

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We want to make sure that our relationship is not just one where we show up at

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church together and we, we serve or we work together, but we value you guys.

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And, uh, we want to do this on a regular basis to build those, those relationships.

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And everybody was much more into it than I kind of anticipated that they would be.

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It was received really, really well, basically.

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I was a little concerned going into it that it would kind of drift off into just

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like small talk after we shared our piece.

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And then we kind of asked, uh, specific questions to kind of draw from other

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people, like what they thought of different situations that we knew they were kind

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of in the same situation as we were.

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So I was kind of shocked, honestly, about how quickly we were able to get past

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the superficial stuff and enter into like the, the deep, meaningful conversations.

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Near your shared in that interview, how there was one point where they were

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talking with this guy and they were just getting to that point when the kids

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came up and they ruined it.

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You know, so I kind of thought based off of that brief description that this is

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going to be the kind of thing that you've really got to dig and you've really

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got to, you really got to set the atmosphere for this and maybe it'll take

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like a half an hour, an hour to even get there.

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But I maybe it's just the limited expectations that I had for this first one.

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I was really impressed and happy with where we were able to get to in just

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an hour, hour and a half.

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And then, you know, we, we had to leave.

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We had to go, go prep for, for service, which was, was fine.

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But the, it went really well is the, the too long didn't read version here.

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And we intend to keep doing this once a month.

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So I view this as a huge success.

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Good work, sir.

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It sounds like it was at least, you know, a good beginnings to something

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that's more long term.

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Is that fair?

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Yes.

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Uh, I think that it is even taking out the, the, the framing of, you know,

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this is the beginning of a long term thing.

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If this was just a single event, I think it was successful.

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Sure.

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And not just because I tend to think worst case scenario and oh my gosh,

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this is going to be a disaster and it wasn't a disaster.

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Like this is kind of, I kind of had a picture in my head of where I wanted

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it to get to eventually.

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And I feel like we got there even in the first one.

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Nice.

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So there's probably a lot more room for growth with this.

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There's probably many, many more levels to get to that I don't really see yet.

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But even with the progress that we've made so far, I think that this is, this is

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awesome.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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Now, what is it that you, you know, you've been through this once?

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What is, what is the thing or things that you feel you need to change for the

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next round?

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If that's something you can share.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think the biggest thing that we need to, uh, we need to change

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is we need to set the parameters and have people respect them a little bit more

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strongly regarding the kids do their thing.

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We do our thing, which I think is maybe a little bit easier now because we were

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able to share based on how we directed the thing.

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We didn't want to force it and be like, okay, now everybody do this.

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Sure.

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You know, it's more like we had to invite people to go in a certain way and then

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see how they responded.

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I felt really, uh, maybe stressful is the right word for me because I'm like, I

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know where I want this to go, but I don't know anybody else wants to go there with

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me.

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Sure.

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So let's, let's see, you know, but now we've kind of established that this,

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everybody likes and this is kind of the, the mission for these things going forward.

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Everybody says they're on board with it.

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So now that the expectations are kind of set, I think we can move through the

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beginning phases of this, maybe a little bit more more quickly.

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We may still have to figure out something to keep kids entertained, organized

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activities.

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I don't know.

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But, um, the way our house is set up, we've got a big open basement, which is the

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size of our, the whole upstairs of our house.

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It's the way we bought this house, basically, because that was all open and we were

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going to be able to finish that off.

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However, we wanted to, right, my voice have a bedroom down there.

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My office is down there, but otherwise it's all, it's all open.

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We got a ping pong table down there.

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And it's basically doubles the square footage of our house.

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So it's not like we're shoving them all in a tiny room and be like, here, be quiet.

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Yeah.

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They got plenty of room to go do stuff.

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I think when it gets nicer outside, they'll be able to go outside and do stuff.

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I'm really not too worried about that, but that's probably the area where there's

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room for improvement.

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So it's with the kids, like the potential for distraction through kids.

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Have you ever thought about?

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Maybe this is a bad idea about hiring a babysitter of sorts just to be with them

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and take care of the bloody noses and such.

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Okay.

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Cause I've seen that happen before, where you hire one or two teenagers to watch the

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kids while two or three couples are upstairs doing their thing.

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Yeah.

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Well, shortly there will be three teenagers in this group.

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Oh, sure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So they're all, they're all younger.

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So to be honest, though, that was not an idea that it entered my, my head.

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And I think that that makes sense.

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Rachel's done that before when she's needed to focus on something at work or at

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home for a work project and I'm out of town or whatever.

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She'll hire somebody to come watch the kids while she's at home.

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She just retreats to my office focuses on what she needs to do.

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So that's not a, that's not a bad idea, but also I think this is kind of just a

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season that we're into.

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Like I'm really not worried about this, this long term.

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It's going to be, it's going to be.

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Fine, but yeah.

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Well, cool.

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I'm glad it went well.

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I hope it continues.

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Thank you.

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Me too.

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All right.

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That's all we got for follow up.

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So let's talk about today's book.

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Today's book is it doesn't have to be crazy at work by Jason

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Freed and David Hanamayar Hanson, which I will hereby to refer to as the base camp.

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Guys, it's really a book about how they do things.

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At base camp and it's written like a lot of the other books that they've written,

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like rework and remote kind of as a series of blog posts.

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I don't follow the 37 signals blog, to be honest.

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So I can't tell you which of these were published as blog posts and which ones

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were just collected into the book itself, but it does feel like a collection of

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blog posts that are sorted into seven different sections.

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First, curb your attention.

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Defend your time, feed your culture, dissect your process, mind your business,

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and then last.

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So I'm thinking for today, we can kind of break this down piece by piece.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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And just to point that out, first is the first section and last is the last

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section.

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Like it sounds a little funny when you say it first, curb your attention.

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No, first is the first curb your attention to the second.

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Yeah.

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Sure.

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But I should also say that, like, I think you have a special vested interest in this

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because I know like your work cycles follow a lot of the mentality that comes

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from the base camp team.

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Mine is slowly morphing its way into that.

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I've been slowly putting together some form of like a six or seven week cycle

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with my work at the church as well.

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So like this is something that I'm seeing like you and I have a vested interest

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in this, but it's also something that a lot of people in the tech industry have

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followed the base camp company and how they do things.

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And I think that's because like there's such a small team with regards to the

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size of audience that they serve, like the size of the customer base that they

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serve.

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So it's, it's kind of an anomaly, the base camp company.

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And I think that's really cool.

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So it's kind of neat to see how they've, how they are working and how they put

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together, you know, their working patterns.

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And I don't, I'm with you.

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I don't know how much of this is blog posts versus originals.

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Uh, I do follow the 37 signals blog, but I can't say that this is one that I,

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as I was reading these, like, yes, that one was a blog post.

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I remember reading, I didn't have any of that.

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And I've, this is the second time I've gone through this book.

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So I can't say that these are all blog posts, but it's, it's definitely that

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style, like it's a, it feels like a bunch of posts put together, which I'm

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not saying it's bad.

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It is an interesting book.

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It's a very quick read.

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I found because of that.

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So interesting.

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I did not know that this was your second time through the book.

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It's my second time.

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Also, I covered it previously as a gap book, but yep.

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I did the same.

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Awesome.

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Um, what, what was your general, general impression reading through it the second

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time compared to the first time that I don't do things well.

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I have a lot of room for improvement.

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That's, that's a lot of it.

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Uh, there, there are a lot of correlations with what I do now that would lend itself

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to adopting a lot of what they do in the IT world, where it's difficult for me to

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translate it this time.

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Because when I read it the first time, I was, you know, neck deep in running a web

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development company and working with clients and had a lot of the same, you

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know, processes that I needed to work through that the base camp team does.

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Right now I don't as much.

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I'm a one man band when it comes to technology and my team at the church.

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Now granted I'm working with a lot of other people, you know, to put on events

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and make sure equipment is up and down.

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Like I have to work with them, but that's on a day to day basis.

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There are no real big long term, six week long projects.

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Most of my projects are one to two weeks.

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If that sometimes they're just, this is a one day project and it's done.

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I have a lot of those.

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So I'm not real sure how a lot of this translates to that.

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That's the part that I'm working through.

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And that was the part that struck me this time around.

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I didn't know this was your second time going through it.

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Yes.

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Uh, the first time that I read this, I was still at A.E.

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And the second time, obviously my work situation is a little bit different now.

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And like you mentioned, a lot of the Blanc media stuff is based off of kind of a

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mashup of what Sean got when he was at the base camp workshop at their office in Chicago,

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where they kind of talked about how they work.

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And also I know a big influence with the way that we do the work cycles also was Sean

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McCabe with the, um, he does the seventh week sabbaticals.

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And actually as we record this, he's in the seventh year since he started that process.

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So he has taken the entire year off and he's kind of chronicling his journeys.

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He's going around the country meeting people, hosting meetups.

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And it's, uh, it's interesting.

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David and I interviewed him a while back on the focus podcast about this,

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cause he was kind of still apprehensive about the idea of taking the entire year off,

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but he's doing it to his credit.

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And, uh, I've been following his Instagram stories and it's kind of cool.

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He and Lacey, his wife, they, uh, they sold their house and they're traveling.

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And, uh, I can't wait to see when he's done with this, kind of what the, the

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benefit has been from that.

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But on a smaller scale, I've seen a lot of benefit myself from every eighth week,

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the, uh, the Blanc Media team taking the entire week off, kind of a forced vacation,

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if you will, the first time I did it, it felt really weird.

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It felt like I don't want to take a break.

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I've got this project that I'm working on.

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I want to keep going.

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Uh, now it's to the point where it really, like I had something that I look forward to.

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And, uh, we talked about scrum and the whole idea behind scrum and sprints being

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that like you sprint for a short period of time and then you can take a step back

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and reevaluate.

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Well, I feel like the sabbaticals really create the space for you to take that

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step back and really evaluate if you just implement scrum to the letter, you never

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create that space to really think objectively about what actually happened.

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Then it's limited and its effectiveness in, in my opinion.

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So the first time that I read this, there were things in here that I read.

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And I was like, well, that sounds kind of cool, but that'll never happen.

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And since I read it the first time, some of those things have happened.

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So it's a little bit different, uh, different for me going through it the

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second time, there were still a couple of things in here where I was like, Oh,

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we should maybe change the way that we do this and incorporate an aspect of that.

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But it wasn't, uh, it wasn't the same as when I went through it the first time is

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like it kind of felt like a very foreign, different culture, different idea.

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Kind of, you know, you hear people talk about something and you can't wrap your

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head around it and it almost seems like too good to be true sort of a deal.

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It felt a lot more attainable, a lot more real when I went through it the

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second time.

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Obviously they still little things room for improvement, stuff like that.

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Um, and I'm not trying to paint a picture of like, work was awful at a either,

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but, uh, it's just a totally different system from like scrum and story points

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and tracking everything to, it doesn't have to be crazy at work.

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Just kind of like, we trust you, go do good work.

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Show us what you did.

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Right.

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That's very oversimplified, but that's kind of the idea.

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Yeah.

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And it's, it's one that I think a lot of people can resonate with because we are

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like the traditional worker is, I don't want to say micromanaged,

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but every little detail is watched, at least whenever I was in corporate and even

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whenever I was working for clients, like they wanted to know where every 30

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minute block went or sometimes every 15 minute block, they wanted to know all

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of that and wanted to know how productive you were with that time, which

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just kind of drives you up a wall over time and it feeds this whole monster of

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email and chat systems and such like it just, it feeds all of that.

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The Slack systems, it just, it's too much.

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And I think going through this a couple times, I'll say this, this is one of the

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few books that I find myself wanting to go back to and reread occasionally.

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Going through this a second time, it reiterated that for me that I really

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should like read this every six months or something just to, you know, refocus

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my brain on things.

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So it is a spoiler alert.

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I'll recommend this one.

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All right.

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Let's, let's jump in here with the first section, literally first and just real

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briefly, the basic idea here at the very beginning that I want to call out is

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that your company is a product and Jason and, and David say that it should be your

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best product.

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And the goal is to create a calm company.

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It's basically a rallying cry.

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They say, yes, it's possible and it kind of sets up the rest of the, the book where

00:21:22

they're going to detail their, their process.

00:21:24

But I also think it's worth explaining here because I would argue, even if you

00:21:30

don't run a company, there's still a lot you can get out of this book.

00:21:34

And you may find yourself in a position where there's not a whole lot you can do

00:21:38

to implement some of the stuff that you, you, you learn in here, but there will be

00:21:42

little things that you can do here and there.

00:21:44

And that's the value in a lot of this stuff.

00:21:47

There's a lot of like little nuggets as you go through this book.

00:21:50

It's not a system.

00:21:52

It's not, you know, a five point, whatever plan to create a calm company.

00:22:00

It's just all of the little things that they do in brief descriptions of why.

00:22:04

And you could probably dive in real deep into some of this stuff.

00:22:07

I'm sure there, there are books written about individual things that they spend

00:22:12

like two paragraphs talking about.

00:22:14

But that makes it a lot more approachable for the average person to you.

00:22:19

Don't need to be a CEO and you don't need to have an MBA in order to get

00:22:23

something from, from this book.

00:22:24

For sure.

00:22:25

Yeah.

00:22:26

I think there's a lot of, at least in this very beginning part, it's, it's

00:22:31

helpful because they give you the background of base camp and where they've

00:22:34

come from, what it is they, they do.

00:22:37

So it's important, I think, to have that before you go through the rest of this,

00:22:42

because it does set up the context for what we're talking about.

00:22:45

I don't know that at this point, there's many people who don't know about base camp

00:22:52

or have heard the name of the product that they, of the product and company.

00:22:58

Like people know base camp at this point.

00:23:00

So if you don't, if you don't know them, go to basecamp.com.

00:23:06

You'll, you'll figure it out real quick.

00:23:07

Yep.

00:23:09

And base camp as a product is interesting.

00:23:12

They share a couple of things specifically towards the later chapters that are

00:23:18

probably worth unpacking, but there's seven different sections in here.

00:23:23

So I don't think I have anything else to say about this first section.

00:23:26

Maybe we should move on to the second one.

00:23:27

Okay.

00:23:28

So the second section is curb your ambition.

00:23:31

And there's one thing specifically I wanted to talk about from this section,

00:23:37

not just because it validates kind of a belief that I've, I've established even

00:23:43

more strongly the last couple of books that we've went through, but it also kind

00:23:47

of refreshed in my mind that maybe this is the first place I kind of heard this,

00:23:51

but they have this thing, they call it an anti-goal mindset where they are against

00:23:57

goals, the anti-goal mindset they talk about, it's disingenuous to pretend that

00:24:02

you care about a number that you just made up and they aren't willing to make the

00:24:05

cultural compromises that it takes to achieve those goals a lot of times.

00:24:10

We talk about how chasing goals often causes people to compromise their morals

00:24:15

in order to get there.

00:24:15

I found that myself, I mean, not even encouraged by the company culture,

00:24:21

just intrinsic pressure on myself to make sure that whatever we're going to be

00:24:27

doing is awesome.

00:24:27

I tend to want to keep working past 5 p.m.

00:24:32

I'm thinking about it on the weekends and I got to force myself to disconnect on

00:24:36

a Saturday and like, no, you're not going to work on those videos for the product.

00:24:41

That's going to be launched in a couple of weeks.

00:24:43

Like it'll be fine.

00:24:44

Just chill, dude.

00:24:45

And I think that the setting goals, especially in a work context definitely

00:24:53

does kind of implicitly encourage people to cut those corners and do what they

00:25:00

can to make sure that the end product is awesome and that the company is

00:25:05

successful.

00:25:05

So the easy, humane way to deal with that from a management perspective is just

00:25:11

to get rid of the goals in the first place.

00:25:14

Yeah, I've done a lot of different goal setting exercises in the past and

00:25:20

whenever I've gone through the last two times, I've gone through this one now,

00:25:25

these two times I've gone through this.

00:25:28

I find myself like, no, I don't want to do goals.

00:25:31

Like we've done 12 week year, we've done how many different things have we done

00:25:36

where like set your goals and they'll achieve themselves, basically.

00:25:41

Like that seems to be the sentiment, which is so far from the truth.

00:25:45

I find that for me, I just don't want to do it.

00:25:50

Like I'm only recently starting to put together like what a long-term vision

00:25:55

would look like and like where I want things to go.

00:25:59

But at the same time, like any time I've tried to break that down to like three

00:26:04

month periods or even like the whole 12 week period, it just doesn't work out.

00:26:10

Like I end up changing them frequently about every month to six weeks.

00:26:17

Funny that that timeframe adds up, but it's just something I find doesn't work.

00:26:24

How many people talk about goal setting and how important that is?

00:26:27

You know, we're not far off of the new year right now.

00:26:30

And I'm sure there are a lot of goals that people set at January one and

00:26:34

they've not touched them or they've changed them six times already.

00:26:38

Like it's, I feel like it's more headache than it's worth.

00:26:41

Yeah, I am a little bit conflicted by this because I think that goal setting

00:26:49

does have some value in giving you a direction to go.

00:26:56

But once you set the goal in the 12 week year, specifically, I like that framework.

00:27:02

My personal retreat course is built off of that framework.

00:27:04

And I do think that it works, but not if you focus on the goal.

00:27:10

You have to follow the other pieces of it and break it down into the habits

00:27:15

that you're going to do consistently.

00:27:16

And then you just got to focus on the habits, let the score take care of itself.

00:27:20

It's hard to disconnect though from that end result.

00:27:24

My tendency is to focus on the end result and to continually pick at it and

00:27:30

try to move the needle as it pertains to the accomplishment of that goal.

00:27:35

And I have to fight against that in myself.

00:27:37

But I also think that one of the things I've learned from the 12 week year format

00:27:43

specifically is that I don't like incorporating work stuff into my 12 week

00:27:50

year planning anymore.

00:27:51

Sure.

00:27:52

I keep it separate and I keep actually everything at work separate.

00:27:57

And I think a big part of that is because we use Basecamp.

00:28:00

Basecamp is not one of those products that has like a bunch of incredible

00:28:06

technical features.

00:28:08

There's nothing in there I think that is revolutionary from a technical perspective.

00:28:13

It's just built on this ethos that you shouldn't be able to be interrupted

00:28:17

when you're doing what you should be doing.

00:28:19

And we'll talk about like work chat and stuff like that as we go through this,

00:28:23

this, this book, but it gives you kind of like enough to direct your work and then

00:28:29

nothing else.

00:28:30

And the first thing that people say when they look at Basecamp, I think is like,

00:28:34

well, it's not going to do X for me.

00:28:37

And like, yeah, that's the point.

00:28:38

The intentional constraints.

00:28:39

Yeah, you're right.

00:28:42

It's not going to do that.

00:28:42

Woo.

00:28:43

Yeah.

00:28:44

That's a good thing.

00:28:45

But that's that's scary for some people who have worked a certain way around the idea

00:28:50

of goals.

00:28:51

Like if you're coming from scrum and you look at Basecamp, you're like, there's

00:28:54

no way we can use that.

00:28:55

But as we talked about, there's a whole other way of working, which is not based

00:29:01

off of story points and backlog grooming.

00:29:04

It's just this is the thing we want to build.

00:29:06

And now let's show up and do an honest day's work every day, but

00:29:10

can find it to human timeframes where it's sustainable.

00:29:15

You know, they, they have on the cover, all of the things with a big red X on them,

00:29:19

like 80 hour weeks, packed schedules, super busy endless meetings, overflowing

00:29:24

inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep Sunday afternoon emails, no time to

00:29:27

think stuck at the office all night or is chats blowing up.

00:29:30

I mean, we've probably all been subject to those things in some way,

00:29:36

shape or form previously.

00:29:38

And I can think of specific examples for just about all of them.

00:29:41

Not that I want to really even talk about those things here, but it's, when

00:29:49

you buy into the philosophy, then you can say, okay, I'll try to make this work.

00:29:55

But when you just look at the product, it's easy to say, no, that won't do it for me.

00:30:01

I want to point out one thing, because there, there's a perceived disconnect here

00:30:08

with goal setting and, you know, a lot of people talk about the six week cycles

00:30:13

that base camp works on, because it can seem like they're working off of goals

00:30:18

whenever you're doing that.

00:30:20

But I, it's important to know that whenever base camp sets up their intention

00:30:25

for those six week periods, they don't have like set like numbers that they're

00:30:33

trying to hit.

00:30:34

Like they have guide posts that they set up, but they're trying to stay within as

00:30:39

far as achieving the work that they're setting out to achieve.

00:30:43

It's not necessarily a marker in the sand that they're trying to cross by a

00:30:49

certain date.

00:30:50

It's a very different setup.

00:30:52

So they have those guide posts and they're given the creative liberty to work

00:30:56

their way towards something at the other end that keep, but they're staying

00:31:01

within those guide posts as they go.

00:31:03

Yes.

00:31:03

So they don't call those goals.

00:31:05

And I don't think I would call them goals because it's not really the line in the

00:31:08

sand.

00:31:09

It's, it's not something you're trying to achieve per se, but it's a task to

00:31:15

accomplish.

00:31:15

If you can catch the subtle difference there.

00:31:18

Yeah, because their goal is not to change the world, it's to do good work.

00:31:24

They even say that exact phrase in this section.

00:31:27

Right.

00:31:27

And they say that one of the things that I highlighted in my, my node file, the,

00:31:33

the mind map for this book is that you can dare to be completely ordinary every

00:31:37

now and then.

00:31:37

And that's the thing with goals, I think, is everybody wants to achieve

00:31:41

something extraordinary.

00:31:43

And the fact of just putting in an ordinary effort.

00:31:48

That's, that's like a mark of shame.

00:31:52

Almost.

00:31:53

It's like, well, what do you mean?

00:31:54

Don't you want to be excellent?

00:31:55

Well, yeah, I want to be excellent, but I also want to operate within these

00:32:00

boundaries and base camp is able to say these boundaries exist.

00:32:03

So we're not going to move these as opposed to most company cultures.

00:32:07

When you have a stated goal, the, the implicit pressure, even if it's not

00:32:12

explicitly stated is you really should be thinking about this goal.

00:32:17

And moving towards this goal with every waking moment.

00:32:22

It does.

00:32:23

They would even say put in your 40 hours and go home, but they want you

00:32:28

so bought into the vision for the goal that it's impossible.

00:32:32

If you were to do it the way they want you to, that it's impossible to

00:32:35

disconnect from it when you do leave the office and for knowledge workers who

00:32:40

work remotely, like I do, my office is my home.

00:32:44

So I have to work even harder at this.

00:32:47

And I think without a company telling you that they don't want you doing it

00:32:53

that way, that you will probably find yourself falling into that for sure.

00:32:59

Yeah, I just don't do goals.

00:33:03

At least company goals.

00:33:07

But that also kind of gets into the basis for their whole company.

00:33:12

You know, they talk later on about how they don't want to be.

00:33:17

The product for the fortune 500, they want to be the product for the

00:33:21

fortune five million.

00:33:22

They want to be something that anybody can use, which that is a little bit

00:33:27

different than most people's approach to business too.

00:33:30

But right.

00:33:31

Let's get into the next section here.

00:33:33

Number three is defend your time.

00:33:36

Couple of things I wanted to talk about here.

00:33:39

First one is something that I actually disagree with in this book and not really

00:33:45

if you dig into it deeper, but the way it's phrased, I do.

00:33:48

They make a statement that productivity is for machines, not for people.

00:33:54

And they use the terminology that effectiveness and productivity are kind

00:34:03

of opposites.

00:34:03

And I get where they're coming from.

00:34:05

And if I had Jason Freed's experience, I maybe would describe it the same way,

00:34:10

but I don't and I don't view productivity as simply the number of

00:34:15

widgets that get cranked out in a set period of time.

00:34:18

If that is how you define productivity, then yes, productivity and

00:34:22

effectiveness are opposites.

00:34:25

But I think productivity is more about intentionality and doing what you said

00:34:30

you were going to do, not focusing on the outcome or the goal as, as, whether

00:34:35

you achieved it or not, but did you do what you set out to do?

00:34:39

And from that perspective, productivity and effectiveness are very much the,

00:34:44

the same thing.

00:34:45

Now they do say that people tend to fill every moment and I, I get that.

00:34:52

That's kind of the, that's kind of what I was saying earlier.

00:34:55

When you have a goal, you try to use every spare moment towards the

00:34:59

achievement of that goal.

00:35:02

And that isn't actually what you should be doing.

00:35:05

Sometimes having nothing to do is actually extremely productive.

00:35:08

And people tend to fill every moment, but that doesn't mean that you have to.

00:35:13

And so I would say that product, I would fight back a little bit against the idea

00:35:18

of productivity simply as what percent progress did you make towards a goal and

00:35:24

really kind of redefine it as you've got this intention and did you follow through with it?

00:35:28

I am slowly not carrying what words we use.

00:35:32

Any more.

00:35:33

I find, you know, I totally get your point, Mike.

00:35:37

And I get a lot of the productivity world and community wants to redefine

00:35:43

productivity to include effectiveness and intentionality.

00:35:46

I get that.

00:35:48

I, I just don't care anymore.

00:35:52

I think like sure.

00:35:54

My goal is to be, you know, goals.

00:35:57

My goal is to be intentional and effective.

00:35:59

And if we want to define productivity as those, I think that's fine.

00:36:04

I think if you have a big company, corporate background and that's all you know,

00:36:11

and you just know big business, you're going to define productivity as the output

00:36:15

versus the input, like that's just the way that you're going to view it.

00:36:20

So yeah, the general population is going to view it the way that Jason

00:36:26

Freed spelled it out here.

00:36:27

So I'm not going to fault him for saying it that way.

00:36:32

I can't say that I would reword it any difference because I think you have to

00:36:37

use the normal everyday definitions of these words whenever you're putting

00:36:43

them into print like this.

00:36:44

Otherwise it's just, you know, someone's reading it and they're going to have one

00:36:48

view, but that's not what you intended and then they're going to take it wrong.

00:36:51

And then it's going to have the wrong impact.

00:36:53

So I have a tendency to like, sure, I get, I think I get your point, but I

00:36:59

think I would disagree with you in that I don't think I would have said it

00:37:03

differently, but I think it's we're splitting hairs when we start getting

00:37:07

upset about what words are being used in different arenas.

00:37:12

So at least whenever we're trying to define like, am I being effective?

00:37:17

Like what should I be in these scenarios?

00:37:20

I think when we're coming down to that point, it's just a matter of spelling out

00:37:24

clearly what your intention is not trying to say, I'm into productivity.

00:37:28

And here's what I mean by that.

00:37:29

That I feel like that's sometimes misleading in trying to take a term and

00:37:36

then redefine it to be what you want it to be.

00:37:38

Is that fair?

00:37:39

Yeah.

00:37:40

It is.

00:37:41

It just makes me sad because we're not going to have any words left pretty soon.

00:37:45

I mean, this is the same, same thing as we're recording this.

00:37:49

Um, Eric Fisher beyond the to do list has re-edited and republished a

00:37:55

couple of interviews that he did with Merlin man back in the day.

00:37:58

Merlin is the guy who invented inbox zero and then got so upset at the

00:38:03

productivity world redefining it from what he meant for it that he just kind

00:38:09

of completely left and does stuff that's kind of completely unrelated at this

00:38:14

point.

00:38:14

Maybe that's unfair.

00:38:15

I, I haven't attended any workshops.

00:38:17

Merlin has done recently, but the stuff that you see him doing is like the

00:38:22

rhetoric on the line and do by Friday and stuff like that where it kind of feels

00:38:28

like he's pushed back on that a lot with good reason, I think.

00:38:32

And I feel like that's kind of the options that you're left with when you

00:38:37

let people redefine the words and not even redefine the words, but I would say

00:38:43

you have to say something if you want, uh, if you want to be able to accurately

00:38:48

define the words, like I, another word that a lot of people

00:38:52

have a very negative reaction to rightfully so is the word hustle because

00:38:57

they think of Gary V and work in sleeping three hours a night because you're

00:39:01

so consumed with the work that you're doing.

00:39:03

I wrote a whole book on how I actually think that that's crazy and attempt to

00:39:10

redefine it a different way, but I'm not going to win that battle.

00:39:13

I know that.

00:39:14

Sure.

00:39:15

But I still think it's worth calling out that like, Hey, maybe, you know, like, uh,

00:39:19

the princess bride, this thing, he's like, you keep using that word.

00:39:22

I do not think it means what you think it means.

00:39:23

So I don't know the right, right, uh, path forward for, uh, as an educated

00:39:35

dialogue about this type of stuff, but I do think personally that it is worth

00:39:41

fighting for the term productivity and not defining it as simply corporate

00:39:45

efficiency, which you're totally right.

00:39:47

I don't have a corporate background that has been made abundantly clear to me.

00:39:50

I'm not trying to.

00:39:53

I'm not trying to.

00:39:55

I know, I know, not just you, but, uh, I understand that my perspective on this

00:40:00

is going to be different than a lot of other people, but in my opinion, this is

00:40:04

what it should mean.

00:40:05

And it, and it doesn't for a lot of people.

00:40:07

That's, that's okay.

00:40:09

But, um, this right here specifically, I, I think that he's right.

00:40:15

You know, you don't want to just focus on efficiency and crank out widgets.

00:40:19

Cause that is for machines, but I think that productivity is a positive thing.

00:40:25

It's, it being effective at what you set out to do.

00:40:30

And sometimes that is measured in the form of, of output, but you almost don't

00:40:35

have to be worried about that so much.

00:40:37

You're, that's not how you measure the, the effectiveness, you know, it kind of,

00:40:41

I don't know, I'm thinking of like the four disciplines of execution and like

00:40:46

the wildly important goals.

00:40:48

I have a negative, uh, response to that idea as well.

00:40:54

But productivity still, when I think of that word, like it's, it's exciting to me.

00:41:01

It's, uh, it's motivating because it means that I have the ability to produce

00:41:07

something that is worthwhile.

00:41:08

And the key to doing that is in the intentional approach to what I'm going to

00:41:13

be doing.

00:41:14

And I feel like that should be exciting for anybody, uh, with a growth mindset,

00:41:22

you know, to go back to Carol Dweck's book, because it means that your

00:41:25

future isn't set in stone.

00:41:26

You're not going to be cranking widgets for the rest of your life.

00:41:29

You have the ability to set your course and, uh, your future is not created yet.

00:41:35

And you have the ability to produce it, but don't do it by working 80 hours a

00:41:42

week.

00:41:44

Sure.

00:41:44

We're setting a giant goal.

00:41:46

And I want to be clear that I'm not, I'm not saying you shouldn't argue for a

00:41:52

better definition of a word.

00:41:54

I think that's, there is a lot of validity in that.

00:41:57

I think there's a difference in that versus choosing what's words you're using

00:42:02

when you're writing a book like this.

00:42:04

Yeah.

00:42:05

Because I feel like you have to use the commonly accepted definitions in

00:42:09

order to convey your idea, otherwise you're kind of splitting hairs.

00:42:15

But the difference there is there are times when you read books and then they

00:42:18

define a word a certain way and then use that word in that way throughout the book.

00:42:23

I think that's fine too.

00:42:23

He didn't define productivity in this sense, which means you have to assume he's

00:42:27

using just the generally accepted version of that.

00:42:30

Yeah.

00:42:31

True.

00:42:31

Fell point.

00:42:33

Uh, the next thing that we should talk about here is the presence prison because

00:42:38

this is another idea that's fascinating to me.

00:42:40

This might take a while to talk about this.

00:42:42

All right.

00:42:44

So the presence prison refers to kind of the group chats, the status bubbles.

00:42:50

And I have totally fallen into this myself where you've got the green being

00:42:57

that you're available yellow.

00:42:59

I think typically is like you're away.

00:43:01

Red is do not disturb or you're not online and you find yourself looking at

00:43:07

those status bubbles to see who you can ask when you have a question or a problem.

00:43:13

And base camp deliberately does not have status indicators for the people who

00:43:21

are a part of your team inside of base camp.

00:43:24

And this again, if you're used to working remotely, you might think like,

00:43:28

well, that's a deal breaker.

00:43:30

I can't work that way, but it requires a totally different approach, something

00:43:36

that they intentionally have built into their culture of this eventual response.

00:43:41

So you ask your question and someone else can deal with it when they have time,

00:43:46

not as soon as they see it and you use the presence indicators as an indication

00:43:52

of who you can bother.

00:43:54

You know, I don't know if you've seen that before where you have the people in

00:43:58

your organization or on your team and you just kind of go down the list and you

00:44:01

look for the first green dot and then you're like, Oh, there's somebody

00:44:04

I can ask this question to.

00:44:05

Right.

00:44:05

Because I need this answer right away.

00:44:07

Well, base camp would say, no, you don't need that answer right away.

00:44:10

Right.

00:44:11

And I think this is maybe for some people, a very radical idea, but having worked

00:44:17

this way now for almost the last year, this is, this is better.

00:44:22

Let me tell you.

00:44:24

I know that whenever I was doing freelance client work, I got to the point

00:44:30

where I was on tons of Slack teams, not channels, teams.

00:44:36

And it was a thing where some of those clients would ask me,

00:44:43

what time zone are you in that like they would ask me where I'm located.

00:44:48

And what they were intending by that was, when will you be on Slack?

00:44:53

When can I bother you on Slack was basically the question being asked.

00:44:57

And at first I was response, it didn't even occur to me what they were

00:45:02

trying to get it.

00:45:03

I would tell them and then I wouldn't necessarily be on Slack, but then I would

00:45:08

get the email saying, Hey, I thought you were going to be on Slack.

00:45:11

Well, I suppose so I'd hop on and then they'd ask their questions and such.

00:45:17

And I want to bother you.

00:45:18

Yeah.

00:45:18

I mean, it was, you know, a thing that happened, but I, I then realized that

00:45:25

they would take advantage of that and use it to get like free consultation

00:45:29

for products and I was not willing to give that out.

00:45:35

So I got to the point, not long before I quit doing that, I got to the point.

00:45:40

It's like, you know, I have a Slack account.

00:45:43

You're welcome to add me.

00:45:44

If you would like me to be available, that's fine.

00:45:48

I simply add it to the billable hours.

00:45:50

There we go.

00:45:50

And you know, they're not, they're not terribly interested in asking you tons

00:45:54

of questions on Slack and making sure you're there when they're paying for you

00:45:57

to be on it.

00:45:58

Like it's very, very different whenever they do that.

00:46:01

And I say that.

00:46:02

And yet I had one client that was willing to pay me to be on Slack for three hours

00:46:06

a day for, I think two weeks, I think is what it worked out to.

00:46:09

So I ended up getting paid to just have Slack open for them for three hours a day

00:46:16

for two weeks.

00:46:17

Like, that's just what they wanted.

00:46:18

Like, okay, like that's fine by me.

00:46:21

Like, as long as I can have the clock running, I'm fine.

00:46:24

And that's exactly what I did.

00:46:26

But I was able to double bill some of those hours because they didn't use it.

00:46:30

And I was working on somebody else's project at that time.

00:46:33

So I, I, I understand the whole green dot obsession because a lot of people want

00:46:41

the want to be available, but you can't get anything done.

00:46:46

Like you just can't.

00:46:47

Especially in that type of role whenever I was doing that, it was very easy for me

00:46:53

to find like if I'm on that many teams and say I had 15 or 16 clients that were

00:46:59

active at one time, which was not uncommon, I could spend the entire day

00:47:03

just answering Slack messages.

00:47:05

My entire day could do that and not get anything else done.

00:47:09

And that is not not what I needed to be doing.

00:47:13

Now, if I was able to bill all of those at the same time, that would have been great.

00:47:16

But that's not the way it works.

00:47:19

So I don't, I don't like this whole chat culture that we've built.

00:47:26

I feel like people, if they would realize that Slack themselves, the Slack company

00:47:31

tells their employees to turn it off whenever they go home.

00:47:33

Yeah.

00:47:33

Like people realize that I don't think they would have the expectations of their

00:47:38

employees like they do all that to say, don't you slack.

00:47:42

It's human nature.

00:47:44

It's kind of the redefining of the inbox zero to it's a battle that you're going

00:47:48

to lose no matter how hard you're going to fight for it because people going to

00:47:54

people and the lizard brain is going to take over.

00:48:00

I do think that it's a little bit different, not in a freelance perspective,

00:48:06

but as a employer employee perspective, the employee, maybe you have expectations

00:48:13

in your workplace that you are supposed to be on line, especially if you work

00:48:17

remote, I get it where people want to know that you're at your computer and that

00:48:23

you are doing work while you are working from home.

00:48:26

But the base camp guys would say that you don't need that.

00:48:32

In fact, on page 65, they say, how do you know if someone is working if you can't

00:48:36

see them?

00:48:36

Same answer as this question.

00:48:38

How do you know if someone is working?

00:48:39

If you, if you can't see them, you don't.

00:48:42

The only way to know work is getting done is by looking at the actual work.

00:48:45

That's the boss's job.

00:48:46

If they can't do that job, they should find another one.

00:48:48

So, and maybe this, you know, it's worth calling out here that this doesn't mean

00:48:54

that you need to set the goals and measure the outcomes.

00:48:58

But on the one hand, what you, the better way to work is to leave people

00:49:04

alone so that they do the work and then you can see the work that they are able

00:49:08

to produce as evidence that they are doing what they should be doing, trusting

00:49:13

that everybody is grown up enough to manage themselves.

00:49:17

And maybe there's a lot of workplaces where that's not true assumption that

00:49:25

not everybody could manage themselves.

00:49:28

And so they do need to have people who are looking over their shoulder all the

00:49:32

time.

00:49:32

Again, I am thankful for my corporate ignorance in this regard.

00:49:38

But I also think another piece that there's some truth here where a lot of

00:49:43

management thinks that they need to be able to see certain things.

00:49:49

And maybe those certain things are not the things that we should be paying

00:49:51

attention to.

00:49:52

Another thing I'm thinking of would be like video in like remote meetings.

00:50:00

And if I can see your eyeballs, I know that you're engaged.

00:50:05

Well, not really.

00:50:07

You don't know that.

00:50:08

In fact, most people who are in the meeting are probably checking their

00:50:11

email or do another work, even if their webcam is on.

00:50:14

Right.

00:50:14

And the better approach would be let them do the work that they need to do

00:50:19

that they're trying to do in the middle of the meeting anyways and just let them

00:50:22

miss the meeting, which they talk about in this section too, the joy of missing

00:50:27

out.

00:50:27

Joe Mo, they say on page 70 that most people should miss out on most things

00:50:30

most of the time.

00:50:31

I think that's a great general rule.

00:50:34

What's the there's a product that lets you turn on your webcam and it's on all day

00:50:40

long.

00:50:41

It's for remote teams and then they can see who's at their desk or not.

00:50:45

You know what I'm talking about?

00:50:46

I'm trying to remember, is it buffer that uses this or used to?

00:50:50

I remember seeing this at one point and the intent behind it was that companies

00:50:56

could use this and it created this wall of webcams for either your team or the

00:51:02

entire company and you could see who was working and who wasn't.

00:51:05

You weren't talking to each other.

00:51:07

It was just video only.

00:51:08

And it was just a thing that you could see if someone was at their desk or not.

00:51:13

And my thought was when I saw it is, uh, oh my gosh, I had not heard of that

00:51:20

but it makes my skin crawl.

00:51:22

I know it's like the green dots on steroids.

00:51:24

Totally.

00:51:25

It's totally butts in the seats.

00:51:26

It's exactly what it is.

00:51:29

We could get into a whole discussion here about the traditional school system

00:51:33

and why we homeschool what we want.

00:51:35

Yeah, we're on that train too.

00:51:38

Yeah.

00:51:38

All right.

00:51:42

Anything else on this section?

00:51:43

No, I'm ready to talk about family.

00:51:46

All right.

00:51:47

So let's go on to number four or part number four is feed your culture.

00:51:53

And the very first section in this, this part of the book is titled, we're not family,

00:52:01

which I absolutely love this.

00:52:04

Yeah.

00:52:05

The whole idea that they present in the section of the book is that companies will

00:52:12

use this phrase to manipulate the employees.

00:52:16

This is a one sided relationship from the perspective of we are family.

00:52:22

And they define it as we are people who work together to make a product that we are

00:52:25

proud of, we are not family.

00:52:26

They say companies will use this to get loyalty even if they don't intend to pay it

00:52:32

back.

00:52:33

The best companies aren't families, but they are supporters of families like base

00:52:37

campus.

00:52:38

Yeah.

00:52:39

I think of it as like you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family.

00:52:42

Well, if you choose the company, like again, you can't choose your family.

00:52:47

So how does that work?

00:52:49

Like how do you know it doesn't?

00:52:52

Add up.

00:52:53

I think it is important too to think it can go the other way as well.

00:52:58

I don't think it's as common, but a lot of times it's the employer telling the

00:53:04

employees, we're all family.

00:53:06

But and talking about how we're going to work on this together and trying to, you

00:53:13

know, help each other, it can happen where the employer has a good view of that.

00:53:21

But the employee expects it to operate as a family and then expects you to

00:53:27

understand whenever they make a choice of the company.

00:53:30

Wouldn't like that does happen.

00:53:33

And I only say that because I had to deal with it personally in the company that I

00:53:39

was running.

00:53:39

So I just wanted to point that out.

00:53:42

There are cases where that that coin can get flipped.

00:53:45

Yeah.

00:53:45

And I think whenever you define it as family, there's going to be an unbalanced

00:53:51

relationship here one way or the other.

00:53:54

Either the employee is going to be taking advantage of the company, which I

00:54:01

understand how that can happen to working in a family business where there is a

00:54:07

family dynamic and you can't fire people.

00:54:09

And I understand how certain certain companies may feel that way this person

00:54:14

has been here forever.

00:54:16

And they put in an honest day's work.

00:54:19

We can't, can't let them go.

00:54:20

Well, if you have been preaching the mantra that we're family, then you're right.

00:54:26

You can't let them go.

00:54:27

But the much more healthy approach is to say, even if you do work with family,

00:54:35

you know, the family stuff is for family, the work stuff is at work.

00:54:39

And you have to be able to disconnect those two and say, while we are at

00:54:44

work, we are not family, but we are people who are working together to create

00:54:51

something, to produce something.

00:54:53

And hopefully, you know, we're proud of the thing that we're making.

00:54:58

I think, you know, the more experience that I get working in different situations,

00:55:05

the more thankful I am when you enter into a situation or an agreement.

00:55:13

And it's just, okay, we're going to base this on the quality of the work.

00:55:15

It's almost like a breath of fresh air to me now.

00:55:18

It's like, oh, yes, as long as I'm doing good work and I'm adding value to the company,

00:55:22

I know that we're good.

00:55:24

And usually I can tell if what I'm doing isn't in alignment anymore or, you know,

00:55:32

we're starting to butt heads, we see things a little bit differently.

00:55:35

They've got different, different goals going back to, to that word.

00:55:41

But it doesn't have to get to that point where feelings are hurt, but you,

00:55:46

you basically guarantee it will as soon as you use this, this phrase that we're

00:55:50

family.

00:55:50

Right.

00:55:51

Something I've learned in a number, working with a number of companies and in a

00:55:57

handful of nonprofit and business ownership situations is that if you can find

00:56:02

the right people who are good at what they do and willing to learn to do a good

00:56:08

job, generally speaking, you can give them a task and not worry about it.

00:56:13

This kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier on about, you

00:56:17

know, trying to micromanage and track everything.

00:56:20

That's unnecessary if you have good people in place.

00:56:24

I have a couple of volunteer teams that I oversee at the church and over time,

00:56:31

we've built into a handful of people on each of those teams and they're

00:56:37

phenomenal.

00:56:37

They do great work.

00:56:38

I have no problem stepping away on a Sunday morning and letting them just run

00:56:44

the Sunday without my help at all.

00:56:47

And they do a great job with it.

00:56:48

They don't need me there all the time.

00:56:52

And that's something that I think a lot of companies could benefit from is just

00:56:58

getting out of their way, like letting your workers do their thing.

00:57:02

And I think that's a lot of what they're getting at here in this section,

00:57:05

feed your culture in that there are a lot of things that they do, like

00:57:09

benefits wise and such, their expectations of time off and things.

00:57:14

Like those pieces are ones that they put in place to enable their people to live

00:57:21

extremely healthy and balanced, maybe not balances kind of a bad term for that,

00:57:27

but a well built lifestyle that allows the company to continue growing and

00:57:34

building on what they want to do without draining the people who are doing the work.

00:57:41

But again, a lot of that comes back to being willing to trust them and getting

00:57:48

out of their way, enabling them and let them go.

00:57:51

That's, that's the moral of the story here.

00:57:52

Yeah.

00:57:53

You know, I, you mentioned the, the benefits and the things that they have.

00:58:00

It occurs to me that the we're all family, that might be something that someone

00:58:08

could say, and they could be sincere when they say it, and they mean it as a,

00:58:14

a compliment, as a positive thing.

00:58:17

But the response from every employee should be, show me the money.

00:58:26

Give me the benefits instead.

00:58:29

Sure.

00:58:30

Yeah.

00:58:30

Well, let me take a vacation and just disconnect.

00:58:35

Um, I really like how they don't negotiate the salaries at base camp, how they just

00:58:40

pay the top 10% in whatever role based on San Francisco rates.

00:58:45

Uh, they mentioned that they don't give bonuses because people tended to view the

00:58:51

bonuses as part of the salary anyways.

00:58:54

So they base those off of the standard salary and bonus totals in the top 10% in

00:58:58

San Francisco, which is really, really cool.

00:59:00

And they just say, you know, this is what we're going to pay you.

00:59:03

And maybe it costs the company a little bit more, but it breeds loyalty in the,

00:59:10

the employees, I would argue.

00:59:12

And they didn't really get into statistics behind like who comes and leaves.

00:59:18

They did mention that there are a couple of people who moved on to, to other

00:59:22

things after they've been at base camp, but they did mention that most people tend

00:59:25

to, to stay for a while.

00:59:27

And I think that this is a big reason for that.

00:59:30

Like maybe if they did the negotiations, they would be able to pay less,

00:59:33

especially being in the Midwest for people in specific roles, but they're just like,

00:59:38

no, we're not going to say we're family.

00:59:41

We're just going to show people that we care about them by paying them top dollar.

00:59:44

I think that's, that's pretty legit.

00:59:46

Yeah.

00:59:47

For sure.

00:59:48

Yeah.

00:59:49

I think it's, it's a bold move to.

00:59:51

Yep. Yeah.

00:59:52

But it ultimately is a not negatively impacting the business that they want to

00:59:59

build.

00:59:59

Is it maybe negatively impacting the maximum on a profit that they could make?

01:00:04

Yeah.

01:00:04

But that's not their, their goal either, which we'll get to maybe towards the end of

01:00:11

this book.

01:00:12

Uh, let's jump into the next section here.

01:00:14

Number five is dissect your process.

01:00:17

And the big thing I wanted to talk about here is the idea of work chat,

01:00:23

which is somewhat related to the presence prison, but I think there's a lot of

01:00:31

value for a lot of different ways that people could work, not just at work,

01:00:35

but in organizations, even families where you can't always have instant feedback,

01:00:45

instant communication, and the kind of ground rule they lay out here is real time,

01:00:52

sometimes asynchronous, most of the time.

01:00:55

I think that's a great ground rule.

01:00:58

Uh, they mentioned on page 133 that chat puts conversations on conveyor belts

01:01:04

that are perpetually moving away from you.

01:01:06

And if you're not at your station, when the conversation rolls by, you'll never get

01:01:08

a chance to put in your two cents.

01:01:10

I've experienced this, uh, and I even had a conversation with, uh, the family

01:01:16

business.

01:01:17

They were trying to make sure that they were all working on them the same page

01:01:23

at one point.

01:01:23

And you know, and they, well, one of the ways that we think we can, we can do that

01:01:26

is if we have these, these daily meetings, do you want to be a part of them?

01:01:30

I'm like, absolutely not.

01:01:31

Oh, come on.

01:01:34

Why not?

01:01:34

Would you want it?

01:01:35

Uh, over the time that I have worked with the, the family business,

01:01:40

that's been something that I've had to push back on and, and try to, I try gently, uh,

01:01:46

ever so carefully to kind of move people towards this asynchronous communication.

01:01:54

But I've seen the struggle that some people have with this, where they are just so

01:02:00

used to working a certain way.

01:02:01

And when they have an idea, it's kind of good dealt with right now.

01:02:04

And that's what chat allows remote workers to do.

01:02:09

So for me, when I was taking a step back from the family business, uh, it was kind

01:02:16

of in response to this type of thing happening in the office all the time.

01:02:22

And it just drove me nuts.

01:02:23

It's like someone will walk in and be like, okay, we need to talk about this right now.

01:02:26

Like, no, but I'm, I'm doing this thing right now.

01:02:29

No, no, we got it.

01:02:30

Forget what you're doing.

01:02:32

Let's sit down and have an hour and a half long meeting, which was framed as just a few minutes.

01:02:38

You know, and chat allows that to happen anywhere, anytime.

01:02:43

And I have felt that pressure where it's like, well, we talked about it in the chat.

01:02:47

Didn't you see it?

01:02:48

And that kind of goes back to the presence prison.

01:02:49

This is what feeds the presence prison.

01:02:51

In, in my opinion, is this fact that these things, yes, you can view them whenever you want,

01:02:56

but you are expected to view them.

01:02:58

And if you let them go for a long time and they start to pile up and you have all these

01:03:02

messages that you comb through, that feels like a lot.

01:03:04

So the natural reaction, just like with emails to check it all the time.

01:03:08

And to see what's new and to respond immediately so you don't forget about it and doesn't come

01:03:13

back to bite you later when you give some feedback and they say, oh, well, it's too late

01:03:16

because we've already done this other thing.

01:03:18

And we talked about it.

01:03:18

Didn't you see that?

01:03:19

So I, I'm very much in favor of the way that chat happens in base camp where you think

01:03:29

things through and then you share the message and then people can respond whenever, but it's

01:03:34

not something that you hammer out over work chat.

01:03:37

If you really need to work through something, get a few people together on the, on a phone

01:03:42

call and talk it through.

01:03:43

I can tell you have a lot of opinions on communication.

01:03:46

Like of the sub points from these sections you've selected there, like half of them

01:03:53

involve communication in some form.

01:03:54

Is this a topic for you?

01:03:57

I actually, I wouldn't say it's a bitter topic.

01:04:01

It's a very important topic.

01:04:03

The men's curriculum that we go through at church, the guy who wrote it, Ed Cole has a

01:04:08

saying says communication is the basis of life.

01:04:10

And I think that this is true for ministries.

01:04:15

I think this is true for families.

01:04:16

I think this is true for organizations.

01:04:18

And if you never take the time to set the parameters for the communication, then you end

01:04:26

up creating a big stress ball that people are forced to carry around all the time.

01:04:33

It's like a, you're carrying around these, these in story brand to talk about, don't

01:04:38

give your, your potential customers too many eight pound bowling balls to carry.

01:04:42

That's kind of what it feels like when you don't explicitly say, you know, you don't

01:04:46

have to chime in via via work chat.

01:04:49

And I totally see the where that evolves to if it's not checked.

01:04:54

Like you basically have to check it at some point and most people will not ever stop to

01:04:59

think about checking it.

01:05:00

They're just going to continue with the, the process.

01:05:03

We'll just go with the flow.

01:05:04

And then you end up in this situation where you feel always connected and you just feel

01:05:10

drained.

01:05:11

So I think this is the thing that resonates with me for sure.

01:05:15

I think there's a lot of expectation that comes from doing things immediately.

01:05:24

You hear the stories of startups and these tech companies that they started in a garage and

01:05:32

they, you know, work together all in the same room and they just pounded things out and they, they got it done.

01:05:38

You have to know like they had tons of distractions.

01:05:42

They just put in so much time working on it that they overcame that.

01:05:48

And that kind of leads us to the point where we assume, like, if I

01:05:53

need an answer right now, the best thing for me to do is to go find the person and get the answer

01:05:57

and then I can keep working on things.

01:05:59

Not even considering what that does for the other person.

01:06:03

I feel that some of this comes from so much of our culture right now is built around, like looking out for number one.

01:06:10

And this definitely is that to the max where I'm working on a project.

01:06:17

So obviously you need to stop working on your videos to tell me the answer that I need.

01:06:22

Yeah.

01:06:23

Obviously, because what I'm doing is so important.

01:06:26

Even if it's, you know, something mundane, like trying to put in the right number in an email, it's not that big a deal, but we assume and think it is.

01:06:34

But because of that culture, it feeds this whole instant response.

01:06:39

So many, you know, we can do a quick duck duck go search because I don't want to say the other way.

01:06:44

You can do these searches and get exactly what you want whenever you want.

01:06:48

Well, that, you know, we should be able to get what we want when we want it whenever we want it.

01:06:52

Like that's our expectation.

01:06:54

But how many times have we read books and studied this stuff, Mike, where our gut reaction isn't always or our instant answer isn't always the right solution because we didn't take the time to think through all the potentials.

01:07:08

If we take the time to marinate on things, process it and then kick out our response, we're going to have a better response in the long run.

01:07:21

And I think that's what the whole culture behind base camp is dependent on.

01:07:27

It's geared towards preventing those gut reactions, those instant responses and enabling the slower thought out process.

01:07:39

Like that's what it's enabling and it's not like it allows you to come up with better answers in the long run.

01:07:46

I feel like so much of this comes back to that.

01:07:50

But I think the work chat thing that you're talking about, like that's instant feed me response to the max.

01:07:58

Yes, I think it was David Sparks who told me at one point that what meditation does for him is it creates space between the impulse and the response.

01:08:11

And that's where the value lies.

01:08:13

And I think that totally applies to a work situation too, especially when you are focused on the good of the product that you're going to make.

01:08:23

You almost don't want the instant response.

01:08:26

This is something that I've been talking through recently with different meetings and things at church and stuff that I'm trying to to communicate effectively.

01:08:40

Like I want to have the space to respond appropriately after I look at the thing.

01:08:46

And I don't want to just like show up and be surprised and to be fair, like everybody's totally on board with this once I explain it.

01:08:53

But I don't want to just show up and then have something presented to me and then be asked to respond in the moment because I know and it's kind of.

01:09:04

It's kind of galvanized after reading this book that my response is probably not going to be the right one or at least not 100% correct.

01:09:16

And the real valuable thing that's going to allow us to move forward is if I create that space and I look at this thing through the right lens.

01:09:26

And it's kind of shocking to me how rare that is in a lot of work situations specifically because.

01:09:35

I see the value in taking your time and doing doing the thing the right way.

01:09:44

And I think most people that you would ask that question, like given the option, do you want to just do it haphazardly right away or do you want to slow down?

01:09:56

And get it right? Almost everybody would say, let's slow down and get it right.

01:10:01

Now there's balance there.

01:10:03

I mean, you do have to ship the thing eventually.

01:10:05

So I'll mention that, but I think that most people think they would prefer to do it that way.

01:10:11

But then when they get in the moment, it's like they completely forget about that.

01:10:18

They're a completely different person.

01:10:19

Right.

01:10:21

It's like the lizard brain takes over and it's like, no, forget that.

01:10:24

I just want instant feedback.

01:10:25

Just give me the answer.

01:10:26

And it's just, yeah, yeah.

01:10:28

And I don't, I don't understand it.

01:10:31

Not sure people could point to stuff that I do to that where I fall into that.

01:10:35

But I see it and I'm like, what is wrong with you people?

01:10:39

Don't you know, I feel like I'm taking crazy bills.

01:10:41

But yeah, I had this conversation with my wife.

01:10:47

It was the last night, two nights ago that, you know, we know, I know to take, for example, I noticed things.

01:10:55

On Sunday morning that are technical anomalies or difficulties that are wrong.

01:11:01

Like I just, I noticed when things are wrong, I know when the slide is a half second, too slow coming on the screen.

01:11:07

I know when there's a slight buzz in a line and they got the pad on it instead of setting the game correctly.

01:11:12

I noticed when the compressor is set wrong.

01:11:14

I noticed when the cabling is not right on this on stage, like, I notice all these things.

01:11:19

And it doesn't matter if it's the church that I work at or if it's someplace I'm visiting an event center.

01:11:27

It doesn't matter.

01:11:28

I've been to big conferences and just noticed all the things wrong with the sound system.

01:11:32

Like I noticed these things.

01:11:34

You noticed them at my church and we put you to work fixing this.

01:11:36

It's true.

01:11:37

It's true.

01:11:37

It went to Mike's church is like, I ended up in the booth all night and I loved it.

01:11:41

It was great.

01:11:42

And like I noticed these things.

01:11:45

And when you become aware of them, you notice how frequent they happen.

01:11:53

It's the same concept behind like if you buy a white Toyota Prius, you start to notice white Prius is everywhere.

01:12:00

It's that concept.

01:12:02

Once you become aware of one, you start to notice it in a lot of different areas.

01:12:08

I think this is the same thing, Mike, in that you have a tendency to notice when like you become aware of the

01:12:15

scenario when communication systems aren't working well, I feel like you notice those.

01:12:22

So then you see all the ways that they operate wrong, but not everyone has that awareness.

01:12:28

So they don't even understand that that is something to be changed.

01:12:33

And my point to that my wife and I were working through was that when you have that awareness, you also develop the

01:12:39

responsibility to either act on it or help the people who aren't aware of it.

01:12:43

Sure.

01:12:44

So in my case, like, yes, I notice all the technical things that go wrong.

01:12:48

Well, that's an opportunity for me to talk to the people who are running it and say, Hey, did you notice X, Y and Z?

01:12:56

Most of the time the answer is no, I didn't even know that was a thing.

01:13:00

And then the next time they notice it and now they are infected and cannot stop the mental difficulties with

01:13:08

noticing these things as well, because they become aware of it.

01:13:11

So then, you know, overall, people are able to grow and get better in the long run.

01:13:14

But I think what you're talking about is you're just aware of it and you can't.

01:13:19

I don't want to say you can't see it, but you're not.

01:13:22

You're not in a position always to be able to convey like how it should be changed.

01:13:30

Like that's not a position that you fill in a lot of these scenarios.

01:13:33

I think I'm kind of making an assumption there.

01:13:36

No, I think you're, I think you're right.

01:13:38

You know, sometimes the, well, another aspect of this, by the way, is that Chris Bailey, I think, was the one who originally said that people are more important than productivity.

01:13:50

So, and there again is maybe an improper use of the word productivity if I want to define it the way I define it.

01:13:58

But really people are the principal thing.

01:14:01

So the relationship maybe is worth more than the effective communication.

01:14:09

Maybe if it's going to damage the relationship, you should just shut up and let it be.

01:14:14

That's what I have to wrestle again.

01:14:17

Sure.

01:14:18

So sometimes it's just framing it the right way.

01:14:23

Sometimes it is communicating it effectively myself.

01:14:28

Sometimes it is knowing that this battle just isn't worth fighting.

01:14:33

And I think that's probably true for a lot of people, no matter what position you find yourself in, you could, you could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

01:14:42

And that doesn't mean that you can always get your way in terms of setting the, the, the rules of engagement when it comes to communication.

01:14:50

So I think it's very fluid.

01:14:53

And it's something that you have to figure out, not just for yourself, but for every aspect of your life.

01:14:58

Fair, but not equal sort of a thing.

01:15:00

Yeah, absolutely.

01:15:02

All right.

01:15:02

Part six is mind your business and lots of cool stuff in here.

01:15:09

I'm trying to keep it short because we're running long.

01:15:12

So the thing maybe worth talking about is they don't worry about copycats.

01:15:21

And I picked this just because this resonates with me.

01:15:26

My dad started the family business before I was even born and was running it out of his house for a while, and then eventually grew it to the point where he had an office.

01:15:41

But I remember at one point that I think I was maybe in high school when this happened.

01:15:48

There was a big name counselor in, I probably shouldn't even say the field, but if I mentioned the name, you would probably recognize it.

01:16:00

That was taking an assessment that my dad had developed.

01:16:07

And at that point, it was software.

01:16:10

And also there was a PDF version, like a print manual that would go with it.

01:16:14

This was back in the days of CDs.

01:16:18

So they bought one CD and a PDF manual.

01:16:22

And then basically took the assessment from the software, which license, obviously, is like, you can use this on your one computer with a few people.

01:16:31

And they took it and they used it with lots and lots and lots and lots of people.

01:16:37

In fact, they had a whole system where they had service providers who had to get certified by them.

01:16:46

And they were using this tool that my dad had created.

01:16:50

So total copyright infringement.

01:16:54

And at that point, as a small software company, my dad basically felt like, well, I've got to sue this guy.

01:17:01

And I remember this lawsuit dragging out for years.

01:17:05

And in the end, even though my dad had all of the rights and had everything, had all of the power.

01:17:16

In the situation, eventually, you know, the guy who was copywriting, he grew old and just kind of left the business.

01:17:26

And the last thing I remember was that we were going to win the lawsuit, but he was declaring bankruptcy.

01:17:32

Big national name.

01:17:34

And I remember thinking at that point, like, this wasn't worth it because I saw how much it ate.

01:17:45

My dad.

01:17:46

And that's instantly what came to mind when I read this section in this book, because they basically say, people copy our stuff all the time.

01:17:57

Sometimes they just rip stuff off and they put it into a lousy product.

01:18:01

And at that point, you're really angry because not only did they copy your thing, but they did it bad.

01:18:07

Right.

01:18:08

Did it poorly.

01:18:09

And he's just like, doesn't matter.

01:18:12

It's not worth it.

01:18:13

It's not worth investing the emotional energy into fighting for this thing.

01:18:19

And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

01:18:21

Again, seeing what, how much it impacted my dad and how angry he would get whenever he would just think about this.

01:18:29

There's nothing he can do.

01:18:30

Can't get the guy in the phone to talk about it rationally or anything.

01:18:33

He's just, it's affecting everything that he's trying to do as he's at the same time, trying to maintain a normal day to day existence and grow his his company.

01:18:43

While fighting this guy who has a bunch more people and a bunch more money to throw at defending this thing.

01:18:48

And it's kind of like a losing battle.

01:18:51

Even if you win the lawsuit, you're not going to get anything from it.

01:18:56

All you're going to do is you're going to invest a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of emotional energy into this thing.

01:19:03

And kind of there's no good that's going to come from this.

01:19:08

So I kind of resolved after I saw that.

01:19:13

And then again, when I read this, like, don't worry about that stuff because it's always going to be there.

01:19:21

There's always going to be somebody who's trying to copy you if you do anything worthwhile.

01:19:25

And maybe this is naive of me to say, but kind of my approach ever since then, not that I've been in that same situation has been like, go ahead and let them try to keep up.

01:19:37

If they copy something, that's fine because we'll be on to the next thing.

01:19:41

I think that's a much healthier approach to this.

01:19:44

But it's a very hard one to adopt.

01:19:47

Totally.

01:19:48

By a long shot.

01:19:50

I can't say that I've had anyone rip off like what I've done online.

01:19:57

I have had people take my ideas and then not give me credit for them.

01:20:01

That really bothers me.

01:20:05

And it drives me nuts and I've had it happen way more than I care to admit.

01:20:08

But what do you do about it?

01:20:11

You know, it's not worth exactly throwing a fit.

01:20:14

You know, in most cases, what happens is, yes, they've ripped off the idea, but they don't understand it well enough to execute it right.

01:20:24

So it ends up falling apart anyway.

01:20:28

Yeah.

01:20:29

Whereas if I were to take that same idea and do it myself, it would have a much better chance of success than if they had done it or when they did it just because I have the full experience and knowledge behind where it came from.

01:20:44

So yes, just ignore the copycats.

01:20:48

They're just, it's not worth it.

01:20:49

It's so hard to do.

01:20:51

You know, I get it, but the whole, the whole game around.

01:20:58

I made this thing.

01:20:59

Now it's copyright it.

01:21:00

So what?

01:21:01

So you can defend your copyright?

01:21:03

Not just doesn't seem worth it.

01:21:06

Right.

01:21:06

Right.

01:21:07

And again, I know that there's probably people somewhere where they have a very legitimate reason to do that sort of thing and they would argue very validly against my naive statement of this this problem.

01:21:21

I get that, you know, it's not going to apply to everybody everywhere.

01:21:25

But I think in my situation, generally speaking, just water under the bridge, just let it go.

01:21:34

Hanging onto it is not going to have any, any sort of long term positive effect.

01:21:39

Right.

01:21:40

What's last, Mike?

01:21:42

Last is last.

01:21:43

Yes.

01:21:44

I got it right.

01:21:46

The, the main idea with this last section is basically a call to consider everything that you've read up into this point.

01:21:56

They say here that a business is a collection of choices.

01:22:02

And I think what that does is it makes you think about all of the individual chapters, which again, you know, maybe there were individual blog posts at one point.

01:22:14

As each, each one of those as a choice that you could make in terms of setting the direction for your company.

01:22:21

But also if you can't change your company, which they call out here at the end and why I wanted to mention it at the very beginning, you always have the ability to change yourself.

01:22:29

So don't get frustrated that your sphere of influence isn't as big as you want it to be.

01:22:34

Just recognize what you can control and do the best with what you've got.

01:22:38

Yeah.

01:22:39

They have a phrase at the end of this, you know, choose a calm company, like choose to be calm instead of reacting and moving quickly and needing answers.

01:22:50

Now slow down, make deliberate decisions and act on them.

01:22:55

Like that's, that's the sum total of the way base camp works.

01:22:58

And I would say that's the overarching premise of the book is just, you know, choose to be calm.

01:23:03

That's, that's the resounding statement here.

01:23:05

Yep.

01:23:06

Don't be creepy.

01:23:09

Don't be crazy.

01:23:09

Don't be a jerk.

01:23:11

Now here's, here's the hard question, Mike.

01:23:15

Are you ready?

01:23:16

Yep.

01:23:17

What action items do you have from this?

01:23:19

Cause there could be a ton here.

01:23:21

I know in the outline, we have nothing at the moment, but there could be so many here.

01:23:27

Yeah.

01:23:28

I thought about that as I was reading this and with each chapter that went by, I'm like, I don't have an action item yet.

01:23:35

Got a little bit more nervous.

01:23:37

Yeah.

01:23:37

Yeah.

01:23:39

I don't know that I have, I don't know that I have any action items.

01:23:45

Oh, you can't do that, Mike.

01:23:46

But well, okay, then I will say this one, cause this is the one that really, that really kind of got me thinking, like, how do I apply this?

01:23:55

But it's not something that we can mark off as complete.

01:23:59

Not that that's ever stopped me before.

01:24:00

And says what we do all the time.

01:24:01

Yeah.

01:24:02

They talk about the two different tokens in the mind, your business section and they say there is a no big deal token and there is a the end of the world token.

01:24:13

And when it comes to support for your customers, whichever one you pick, the customer will choose the opposite.

01:24:20

So the question is, which one are you leaving for your customer?

01:24:25

Now, I don't do a whole lot of support.

01:24:29

I do here and there.

01:24:31

I don't necessarily think that this is going to be applied for me in a support scenario, although that's what they're talking about.

01:24:41

And it definitely could be.

01:24:42

But I also think that maybe there's value in taking this approach with your family or your kids, where if your kids come up and they're there, something's a really big deal to to them.

01:25:00

You can adjust their perspective, but it's not going to be as simple as like, oh, knock it off.

01:25:04

It's not that big a deal.

01:25:05

That doesn't work.

01:25:06

Trust me, I try.

01:25:08

So when they come to you with a problem, could this approach work in that scenario?

01:25:16

I think probably there's nuance and sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.

01:25:19

But it's got me thinking about how I respond to things.

01:25:23

Again, I have no idea what sort of fruit is going to come from considering the

01:25:30

this is an action item, but if you're going to make me pick one, that would be.

01:25:34

Consider which token I'm picking and which one I'm leaving for other people.

01:25:38

Sure.

01:25:39

I think I've got maybe two action items here.

01:25:42

One is I'm reading.

01:25:44

They have an online book called Shape Up, which is like the technicals of how the company operates, not just the high level philosophical side like this.

01:25:53

I want to finish reading that because I started reading it about the time I finished this one.

01:25:59

So it's not really a book.

01:26:01

It's all web pages.

01:26:02

But so I want to finish going through that as part one and part two, I think I want to formally put together six week cycles with what I'm doing at the church.

01:26:15

I think I'm going to have a conversation with my boss either Sunday or Monday morning and see if I can get that in motion.

01:26:23

So I want to try it.

01:26:23

I just want to see how that would work out.

01:26:26

Nice.

01:26:27

That's what I got.

01:26:29

We will definitely have to follow up on that one.

01:26:30

We'll see.

01:26:32

We'll see.

01:26:32

All right.

01:26:33

So style and rating.

01:26:36

I like this book a lot.

01:26:40

I think that there's something here for everybody.

01:26:44

I don't necessarily like some of the language.

01:26:49

I was going to ask.

01:26:50

Yeah.

01:26:50

Cause there's a decent amount of language in this.

01:26:52

Yeah.

01:26:53

They totally use it for a shock value at specific points, but you're talking about work guys, just chill out.

01:27:03

But if you follow them online, that's just who they are.

01:27:08

Like that's the way that they write.

01:27:09

Exactly.

01:27:10

So it's not manufactured.

01:27:13

I'm sure it is authentic, but also as I was reading it, I'm like, dude, just held out.

01:27:21

I also think it's very possible, like me this time, when you go through it and there's not necessarily any action items from this, a lot of stuff that maybe is inspiring.

01:27:31

You're like, Oh, I wish that I could apply that.

01:27:33

And maybe there's limited, limited things, limited influence that you have in terms of implementing this stuff.

01:27:38

But I do think that it's a very worthwhile book.

01:27:42

I'm very glad that it exists.

01:27:44

If for no other reason to push back against the typical corporate culture, because base camp has had enough success to get attention.

01:27:54

And by taking a strong stance and saying, you don't have to do this, that and the other thing, it has more credibility than when I say it.

01:28:02

I think that their company is fascinating.

01:28:08

We didn't even get into the section about your big customers and how the worst customer is the one that you can't afford to lose and why they charge every single company that uses base camp the same amount of money.

01:28:25

It's totally against everything that people would advise you if you were trying to maximize your revenue.

01:28:33

And they're just kind of like, Oh, we don't care.

01:28:34

We just want to make a cool company and a cool product.

01:28:37

Which maybe is easier if you're partnering with the guy who invented Ruby.

01:28:42

I don't know.

01:28:43

Maybe that's not right.

01:28:45

Maybe maybe he's not the inventor, but I know he's like he's big in the Ruby space.

01:28:48

That's how I first became, came aware of it.

01:28:50

So yeah, he's the David Heinemayer.

01:28:54

Hanson is the developer behind Ruby on Rails.

01:28:57

So I don't think he's the developer Ruby.

01:29:00

It's the rails side of it.

01:29:02

Gotcha.

01:29:03

OK, thank you for clarifying.

01:29:05

But yeah, I mean, when you have somebody like that who's building your product,

01:29:08

that is probably an advantage.

01:29:11

Yes, only slightly, you know, you know, slight.

01:29:13

So ever since I've been aware of base camp, that's kind of been in the back of my mind.

01:29:19

It's like, well, he's not there.

01:29:20

How successful is this thing really?

01:29:22

Which maybe is completely unfair.

01:29:25

I don't know.

01:29:27

I'm kind of talking around this, this topic of base camp in general,

01:29:34

not just the book specifically.

01:29:36

But I think that that influences my perspective as I read this book too.

01:29:41

And so it's hard for me to, and maybe I shouldn't, you know, try to disconnect those two.

01:29:46

I think base camp is a great product.

01:29:48

I'm really happy with using it with blank media.

01:29:52

It's very different than a lot of the other stuff that I've used.

01:29:55

It's definitely not going to be for everybody.

01:29:57

You have to have the right perspective in order to use it, which from that,

01:30:02

when you recognize that, you kind of totally understand why this book exists,

01:30:05

because it is a sales pitch for base camp pretty much.

01:30:09

All that being said, I still think there's a lot of valuable stuff in here.

01:30:14

It's definitely an easy read.

01:30:17

It's not something that I would consider super meaty.

01:30:20

It's not going to, I think anyways, change your, your world.

01:30:26

But there's a lot of great stuff in here.

01:30:29

I'm going to rate it at 4.0.

01:30:31

Nice.

01:30:32

So I think I'm going to join you at 4.0.

01:30:36

And I say that because you're absolutely correct.

01:30:39

It's an easy book to read.

01:30:40

It's one I would recommend.

01:30:42

And it's one that I obviously have read it again and plan to read it again,

01:30:47

which is a little bit weird because it's in like a lot of times people say,

01:30:51

well, why don't you reread your 5.0s?

01:30:52

Like that would make perfect sense.

01:30:54

It doesn't always like choosing a book to reread doesn't necessarily

01:30:59

revolve around the rating on it because I feel like the long-term impact

01:31:04

is sometimes different because those ratings are like gut, like immediately

01:31:08

when they happen, maybe that's an argument to not do that.

01:31:11

We need to go back and re-rate everything, Mike.

01:31:13

We have like an immediate rating and a long-term rating.

01:31:16

It's a doppler.

01:31:17

We will do that for episode 100.

01:31:19

There you go.

01:31:19

We're going to re-rate every book we've gone through.

01:31:22

That'll be like a three hour episode.

01:31:24

So the thing that I find is that, yes, this is an excellent book to go through.

01:31:30

I got a lot out of it and we'll probably do so again in the future.

01:31:36

But I can't say it's like groundbreaking and there's, you know,

01:31:42

pictures on every other page with it.

01:31:45

It seems like and a lot of blank spaces.

01:31:48

So yes, it's, you know, a decent sized book.

01:31:54

The mine, I should say this, mine is flawed because I have pages that are duplicated.

01:32:02

There's like a whole bank of 40 pages.

01:32:04

It's in my book twice.

01:32:05

It's really weird in the printing on it.

01:32:08

So I probably shouldn't rate it super high because the printing on it was wrong.

01:32:11

I don't know how that happened.

01:32:13

But I do have a 40 page bank in my book that's repeated.

01:32:17

It's weird.

01:32:18

Huh. Yeah, strange.

01:32:21

I haven't run into that ever before.

01:32:23

I've run into situations where like the words are slightly out of alignment

01:32:27

because the line didn't get printed, printed evenly.

01:32:30

So words are broken up a little bit.

01:32:32

I have run into that before, but that's the first time I've ever had like the,

01:32:36

like entire pages duplicated in there.

01:32:40

It's strange.

01:32:41

I'll show it to you sometime, but I'm going to join you at the 4.0.

01:32:45

I think that's a good place to put this.

01:32:47

But again, I enjoy the book and love the company base camp.

01:32:52

I feel like I'm trying to learn from them all the time.

01:32:54

Nice.

01:32:55

All right.

01:32:56

So what's next?

01:32:57

So the next one up is

01:33:01

Zinn and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

01:33:05

I know you're really excited about this, Mike.

01:33:08

This is this is definitely one I know you're going to absolutely love.

01:33:12

All right.

01:33:15

Why do you do this to me, Joe?

01:33:17

I don't know.

01:33:17

It's fun.

01:33:18

I enjoy this.

01:33:19

You know, it's not a man to pop.

01:33:21

A little too much, I think.

01:33:22

You can't be too upset.

01:33:23

Yeah.

01:33:26

Last episode, we talked a little bit about an idea, which I know appears in good to

01:33:32

great by Jim Collins.

01:33:33

And I feel like this is something we need in the bookworm library.

01:33:39

Sure.

01:33:40

So I'm going to make you read it with me.

01:33:43

OK, I have two of these.

01:33:46

We were talking about this before we started recording.

01:33:48

I have two books, two of these books.

01:33:49

I paid $1 for the one and the other one was given to me.

01:33:52

So if you want one, but I think you already have it.

01:33:56

I think I also have two copies, actually.

01:33:58

So hopefully we really like it and I can give them to somebody.

01:34:03

Do you have any gap books?

01:34:06

I do.

01:34:07

And this one was actually recommended recently.

01:34:10

So if this ends up being a great book, we may turn this into an actual episode,

01:34:15

but I have the book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg,

01:34:18

which I saw in the airport not too long ago, but BJ Fogg, the name sound

01:34:25

vaguely familiar.

01:34:26

And I recognized after I looked into it that actually BJ Fogg is credited

01:34:32

with a bunch of stuff from atomic habits.

01:34:33

Oh, sure.

01:34:34

So I'm interested to dig into this one fascinated by the topic of habits.

01:34:40

Atomic habits is currently my clear recommendation for people whenever they

01:34:46

have a question about habits, but I've heard a lot of great things about this

01:34:50

book as well.

01:34:52

Sure.

01:34:52

I don't have a gap book this time, but that's kind of the norm lately.

01:34:56

Apologies.

01:34:57

I'll get there soon.

01:34:58

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

01:35:00

We're coming.

01:35:01

I hope it's not a train.

01:35:03

That just occurred to me.

01:35:04

Help is not a train.

01:35:05

All right.

01:35:07

Well, if you want to support the show, you can become a Bookworm Club premium

01:35:14

member, you can go to bookworm.fm/membership.

01:35:18

And for $5 a month or I think $50 a year, haven't checked that recently, but

01:35:23

yes, there is a yearly option thanks to Joe's technical wizardry.

01:35:27

You can support the show and you can get access to a bunch of bonus stuff, like

01:35:30

the mind maps that I create as I take notes on all of these books.

01:35:35

A lot of my gap books are up there as well.

01:35:38

So those are all in the premium area of the club.

01:35:43

And there's a Bookworm wallpaper that you can download and put on your

01:35:48

computer that Joe's got some gap book episodes that he's created.

01:35:52

So a bunch of additional bonuses, but ultimately, oh, and you can listen to the

01:35:58

recordings live.

01:35:59

So, but for everybody who is currently a paying member, we really appreciate your

01:36:04

support.

01:36:05

And if you want to support the show, you can check that out at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:36:10

Awesome.

01:36:11

Well, if you're interested in how much Mike dislikes story based books, you should

01:36:17

check in on our next episode, Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

01:36:21

And we'll check in on that one next time.