Bookworm Transcripts

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So Mike, how is the bullet journaling going?

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Well, if you are defining bullet journaling as the method that writer Carol outlined in our last book, then probably not that great.

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Oh, come on.

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But if you are defining bullet journal as an analog system with paper and pen where I jot everything down, then awesome.

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So I am really loving this, but I am definitely not doing it by the book.

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Okay.

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Can I ask what you're doing, then?

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You may.

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So I am doing a single page spread every day for time blocking.

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And I can take a picture of one of my daily pages and put that in the show notes so people can see it.

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But basically time blocking on the left below that.

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I've got a box from my highlight below that.

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I've got the five tasks that I'm going to get done in a day.

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And it limits it to five because of the space on the paper that I have in my notebook,

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which finally came in.

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And that is the Uggmunk heirloom journal.

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It's this leather disc bound journal, which I found out is compatible with the Levenger

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circus system.

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So I actually am going to be experimenting with some other paper types.

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I did not know that you could swap between those two.

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I thought it was one or the other.

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Yeah.

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Well, I emailed in after I had used it for about a week because I wasn't super happy with the

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the paper that's in here.

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It's got a lot of feathering with some of my broader fountain pens.

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So that's no good.

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And they said that it's compatible with this base system.

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So I have a Levenger circa punch coming tomorrow.

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And I've got some Rodea pads here, which I'm a little bit small.

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And I've got some.

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Ah, what is it?

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Clear Fontaine triumph coming from Anderson pens shortly.

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So I'm going to be trying to punch some better paper and use that instead.

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But basically the size of the paper, it's an A5 notebook.

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So it limits the number of things that I can put on that side of the page,

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which is kind of perfect.

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And then on the right side of the page, that's where I take all of my notes.

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It could be meeting notes.

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It could be just things that I'm thinking about that I need to jot down.

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But that's kind of my daily log.

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I have not landed on a symbol system yet.

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I know you were using the dash plus, which I think I like better than the bullet journal one.

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But I have trouble remembering the symbols in like the middle of a meeting and I'm trying

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to jot down things.

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So I've just been jotting down bullets basically.

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Cleaning it all up after the fact.

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Hopefully that'll get a little bit smoother.

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But that's what I've got on the front of my journal.

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I've got a couple of tabs for different collections.

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And I really am not doing a whole lot with these, but I do have one that I'm using to track my habits.

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I always resisted habit tracking paper pencil because I thought I would never do it.

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Turns out I really enjoy it.

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Nice.

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So real simple, just names of the habits on the left, number line from left to right.

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On the top, I'm doing this kind of landscape.

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And then X's for the days that I actually did the things, kind of inspired by the thing that

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you sent minus the fancy graphs for how many hours I slept and all that stuff.

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So yeah, that's what I'm doing.

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And I like it a lot.

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I've been doing it since we recorded last time, so a couple of weeks.

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And I think this is going to stick.

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I still am keeping my tasks in OmniFocus and grabbing them from there at the beginning of my day,

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or when I'm planning my day for the next day so that I can hit the ground running.

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You know, looking on the focus if there's anything urgent in there, basically, then that's going on the list.

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Otherwise, I just sit and think about what do I want to get done tomorrow.

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And then I'll put those things on there.

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Last time we were talking about my fascination with Rome research, I think that has passed.

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I get it.

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I get the hype.

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I see people using it and it is really, really cool.

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The bidirectional linking, I do think, is kind of a game changer.

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But at the same time, you open up Rome research and it takes you to a daily page

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where you're supposed to be capturing everything.

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And I'm not doing it there.

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So I feel like I'm not even giving Rome research a decent shot.

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They're about to come out of beta.

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Who knows how much it's going to cost?

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I've heard $15 a month.

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I've heard $30 a month.

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There's no way I'm getting $30 a month worth of value out of it.

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So you inspired me because I was asking you some questions.

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You said you can basically do this in Envielle with the wiki style links.

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Yeah.

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And you can.

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The problem with that is you put a link in and it's only one way.

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The other note does not link back to the one that you just linked to.

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That's the beauty of Rome, in my opinion.

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But Envielle does have a handy little tab for connected notes.

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And it's not just the ones that have links between them, but suppose I don't know how it all works,

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but Brett Terpstra is a genius.

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So I don't have enough in Envielletra to really gauge whether this is effective,

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but the whole idea of Envielle and Envieltra is you type something in the top and searches for

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something.

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And you can change the way that it searches from just like the keyword to connected notes that

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are similar to the type of note that you have or something like that.

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So I think that can kind of replace some of the bidirectional linking of Rome research for

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me on a I know it's not nearly the same thing.

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It's not going to get me true Zetelkasten, but since I'm using a bullet journal,

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a digital Zetelkasten is probably not going to happen anyways.

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So that's fair.

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All the things are still moving, but that's kind of where I'm at right now.

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I'm pulling up, pulling up mine just to see.

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Well, yeah, because like everything in mine is borderline connected.

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So it shows a ton when I do that.

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It's kind of cool though, because, and I mentioned this to you because anyone who's

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in Envy Alt or Envy Ultra, like the thing about that is that you can just type the bracket bracket

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and then start typing and it does the search.

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You drop it in just like what you would see in Rome, which is why when I first saw Rome

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and was seeing the different things that it was doing, I couldn't help but immediately think of

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Envy Alt slash Envy Ultra and wonder if it was a complete ripoff.

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Like that was my take on it.

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I didn't know if that was legit or not.

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So I am far from even interested in trying Rome because I feel like it's just

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it's normal in Envy Alt.

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So I don't know why it's now becoming a big thing, maybe because people just haven't been able to

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understand it in Envy Alt.

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Maybe it's because of the moat, like because you can get Rome on mobile devices, right?

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Because it's the whole responsive web app concept.

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Kind of, yeah.

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I think that's maybe the thing Envy Alt slash Envy Ultra doesn't really have

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an iOS app per se.

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I mean, you can get a lot of the features through SimpleNote and syncing it that way,

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but that's just not a route I want to go at all.

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Sorry, not going to be trying Rome anytime soon.

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Don't expect working with Rome research from Joe anytime soon, which is fine.

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I get it.

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I see people use it and it is different than Envy Alt or Envy Ultra.

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Thomas Frank, the guy who used to do the College Info Geek and now he's a pretty successful YouTuber,

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did a pretty awesome video of how he uses it and how it ties everything together.

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And it makes his writing and creation process pretty seamless.

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But yeah, I feel like you don't need all of that if you're going to be doing some things

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in the bullet journal, unless you are going to transfer absolutely everything that you ever

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write down.

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And at that point, why not just go digital?

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And I do think that a lot of the fascination with Rome recently is because there are some

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big names like that who have brought attention to it. And that has spurred some stuff.

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I shared a tweet with you of somebody had asked for Wiki-style links inside of drafts.

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And that's the same thing that's in Envy Alt. In fact, your comment to me was, "Looks like Envy

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Alt."

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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And that is because I think people look at the Rome research on the surface and they're like,

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"Oh, there's a link to another note. Well, can I do that?" And something else.

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But that's not really what it is. The bidirectional linking is really the powerful thing there,

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because that creates all of the connections from whatever way you would approach, whatever you

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are trying to find. That's missing in Envy Alt, and it's missing in the stuff from drafts.

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But it's also the thing that's being brought to the surface is like, "Hey, this is what Rome

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does. This is what I'd like to do in something else," which is kind of where I'm landing with

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Envy Altra. I think that's where that's going to fit in my workflow.

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Sure.

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It's going to be Rome, but it's going to be good enough. I'll have my wiki, but it won't be a

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true Zetl Cast, and I'll be fine. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep using my paper pen for

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everything else, because I really, really enjoy that.

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Go for it. No. I think that whenever you sent me the thing of Greg Pierce,

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looking at putting these links, these wiki links into drafts,

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has no interest in that, because nothing stays in drafts. Drafts is a temporary holding place for

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me. I know that people use it as a writing tool.

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See, that's what Envy Alt always was for me on the Mac.

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Sure.

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Just an inbox, and then you send it somewhere else.

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I get that approach, but also I recall when I first started doing things that way, because

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I started off with Envy Alt, it was repository for everything. Then I made that switch, and I'm like,

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huh, you know what? I should really just use this as an inbox and process it all the time.

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And then that's basically how I've been using it for several years now.

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And so I get that approach to drafts, but I also think drafts is very similar to Envy

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Alt, where you could use it as a repository if you wanted to. There's a lot of powerful tools in

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there. I'm not sure if that's how Greg Pierce had imagined it at the beginning or not, but

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sure.

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You could do that. It has the technical capability to be used that way. I don't think one way is

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necessarily right or wrong. But I know when you get sucked into one, you tend to not even think

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like, well, of course, other people can use it this way, because you're like, no, no one

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would ever use it except the way that I'm using it.

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Of course. This is the one and only way to use this.

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This is the logical way.

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I mean, the whole workspaces thing in drafts is kind of cool, but I really only use it as

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ways to segment quotes or micro blogs that I'm going to post a little bit later, but I'm not

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ready to do it. It will hold those, but inevitably, everything always either gets eventually trashed

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because I've actioned it off or just deleted because I just decided I'm not going to use it

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anymore. So that is how I end up using drafts. But in my case, Envy Ultra ends up being my

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note-taking, my digital note-taking system, which I don't use a ton. It's not a thing that comes out

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very often, but it is kind of a writing place of sorts. I do want to come back to,

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because I did do a monthly migration in my bullet journal. I suppose I didn't really follow up with

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that. Yeah, I want to hear how your bullet journal process is going.

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So I had almost an entire month. I had like three weeks of April where I was running a

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bullet journal system, and then I did my monthly migration into May, and I'm still pretty strong

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on, I don't want to say everything to the letter by writer Carol's intent, but I'm not far off.

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I think the only thing I've run into that I might be adding to his system is some form of like a

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weekly log, because I have found that I tend to get tasks or want to explore tasks on a weekly basis

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where I know, like I get it on Monday and I know I need to do it on Wednesday. Well, I'll write it

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down in my rapid log for that day, my daily log, but it's kind of messy getting it into two days

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later. Like if it was just the next day, that's easy. You just migrate it one line down. But when it

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goes to two days out, like that's when I start to get a little odd on things, or if I catch it on

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Tuesday and I know I need it for Friday, that's where things start to get a little bit messy.

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But I'm still working through that, trying to figure out what that process is going to

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to look like. But I can tell you this has been as far as like whenever I adopt new systems,

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it seems like it's easy for me to do it for the first two or three weeks, because at that point,

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it's still new and shiny. And this is actually one where I have been capturing things in notebooks

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for a long time. So the new and shiny period wore off pretty quick. In this case, I knew it was over

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after about a week, maybe a week and a half, that new and shiny in this particular case,

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which meant that I've been working this system after that period longer than I've been in it.

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So that means is I feel like I'm rambling, but that's the way that it's been working. And it's

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been going really well. Like even today, I suppose I could look because you know what, my bullet

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journal has gone everywhere with me anymore. I have 15 things logged for today already, and it is

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130 at this moment. So, you know, I'm doing pretty well with it. I've enjoyed the process of writing

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things by hand into it. And it just seems like I've been a lot more productive with it. Something I

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hadn't planned on, Mike, is that I've been logging my interactions with other people,

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which is kind of interesting. Like, you know, meetings are interesting tidbits about people

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that have happened throughout the day, which is especially helpful right now given the season

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of life that's occurring for the world. And it's been interesting to just keep track of how many

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times I've had fun interactions with other people. But I think the part that's probably more interesting

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right now is like, I've been specifically trying to nail down what my flavor of ADD looks like

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right now, because it's getting worse and quickly. So I've been trying to like log a little bit of,

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hey, I did this and it did not work at all. Like, so I've been doing quite a bit of that as well,

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just trying to keep an eye on what is my ADD doing and do I need to play games with myself in order

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to get things accomplished? Like, I've been trying to track some of that as well in that

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logging mechanism. It's been very interesting. So I can stop talking about it now, because I

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feel like this is the sort of thing I could go on and on and on about. Thus, I'm like working on

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analog membership sites. So here we go. Joe's on to another thing. But I've been really enjoying it.

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I think this is something I'm going to be using for quite some time at this point.

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Cool. I definitely think I'm going to be using mine too. I am a little bit concerned about your

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weekly log, because I think I don't remember exactly, but I did edit the last episode.

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And I think you and I both agreed that the weekly thing seemed like too much. So it seems to me

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like you are inching closer and closer towards doing a weekly review inside of a bullet journal.

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And it's a bunch of additional effort added to writer curl system, which is fine if it clicks

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and it works. But I could see that just becoming untenable in the long run. Once the new and shiny

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wears off, I know you basically said you're past the new and shiny, but yeah, no, and that's very

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fair. And I think the kicker here is like, this is not a weekly review. It's just these are the

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tasks that I need to do later in the week. Like I'm setting those particular days for

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when something needs to happen and just reviewing that each day. So there is no,

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there's not really a weekly migration of any kind, because it's just a reviewing that on a daily

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basis to see is there something that I need to do each day in order to, you know, accomplish the

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things I've set out for myself. So that's that's mostly what I'm after. It's not really a

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here are the things for the entire week that I need to be doing. Like, no, this is setting a

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specific day to do a task because, you know, I may not have all the slides I need for Sundays,

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service until Friday. So it's not even worth trying to do it until Friday. So I'm going to set that

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on Friday. How do I do that? Like that's that particular scenario is the one that I'm trying to

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solve. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Oh, one other thing I should mention with, with my system,

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because I mentioned I've got the disbound journal, which again, blasphemous to true

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boo-jowers, but I like to move my pages around. And I think that this makes it a lot easier for me

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to just flip to the next open page and start doodling something because I can keep it with all the

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other stuff when I want I get that civil goal, the index, but I just want to be able to move

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these things. And I also want to be able to archive them digitally so I can go find stuff

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later when I'm done with them, like my old daily spreads. And I should report back on that because

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in the last episode, I was saying it would be great if I could do all this stuff inside of day one,

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because I've got so much stuff inside of day one already. I've got my journaling template that I

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complete every night. I've got song ideas. I've got jokes. I've got quotes. I've got so much stuff.

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But day one is really terrible at scanning things. You can basically take a picture and attach it to

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a journal entry. And that's it. You can't do anything with that. It's not OCR. You can't search for it

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later. And it's just not an elegant workflow at all. However, good notes is amazing at this.

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With good notes, they I don't know if this is like an iOS, like a system level thing, or if

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they built this themselves. But there's a scanning engine inside of good notes where you don't even

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have to be like directly over the page. I can scan it on an angle, like a 45 degree angle from

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like across the room. And it recognizes that this is the page. It shows the highlight on the camera.

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You hold it still, it scans it, and then it like fattens it all out, makes it a square. You can see

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all the text perfectly and applies OCR pretty much instantly. And you can just throw that in another

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notebook and then you can search your library and you can find that stuff whenever you want it.

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It's pretty amazing how good notes can actually interpret handwritten text and make it findable.

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But as much as I want day one to be the perfect solution for this, it's not. And I've kind of

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landed on being okay with just creating a separate bullet journal archive notebook inside of good

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notes and then just throwing all of my daily stuff in there when I'm when I'm done with the day.

00:19:57

Sure. This is kind of weird to hear you say that day one can't do something.

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I know. I love day one. I love day one and that would be the ideal place for this stuff because

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I have so many other journals in day one, but it just can't do it. And I was trying to shoehorn

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it in. I tried to make a shortcut using what is that toolbox pro where you can OCR an image and

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then put it into day one. It's convoluted shortcut, but even that wasn't working that great. And then

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I'm like, well, maybe I should just try it in good notes. And you know, it's sort of work,

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but not really. And then I went into good notes and it was so simple, so easy. It takes like two

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seconds. So it's much to my chagrin, I guess. I shouldn't say that because I really do like

00:20:44

good notes. I do all my sketch notes and stuff in there. But this is the thing where I really

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wanted this with all the other journal type stuff. And it's just not the right tool for the job at

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the moment. So into good notes, it goes. I'm sorry, Mike, but I'm also happy for you.

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Thank you. Kudos on being willing to set aside the tool you wanted to work. That's not always an

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easy thing to do. It's like, Oh, I could do this in Omni Focus. Okay. Is it difficult? Yeah.

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Am I going to do it anyway? Yep. Like that's. Yeah. I will spend three days writing a script so

00:21:17

that I don't have to use a different tool. Like that's. Right. Yeah. Yep. That's the way things go. So.

00:21:23

Anywho, should we transition into today's book? Because I feel like we could go on this for quite

00:21:32

some time. That was a nice nudge. You just gave me there. I know, right? Let's just, yeah,

00:21:37

just just go for it. So today's book is Nudge by Richard. Taller. Gosh, I didn't look it up, Mike.

00:21:45

Richard Thawler. Taller. One of those in Cass Sunstein. And this is about the concept of

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making small, I don't want to say default answers, but small decisions for people so that they are

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more inclined to make good decisions. Now this could be you for someone else. It could be you

00:22:10

for yourself. This is something I play trick. I talk about playing tricks on myself. This is kind of

00:22:16

a way to do that. It's like this covers a very wide range of territory, but that's probably the

00:22:25

most succinct way I could possibly explain this. How would you explain it, Mike?

00:22:30

A libertarian manifesto?

00:22:35

Not exactly sure. They do make in the beginning of the book, they define what they call libertarian

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paternalism because they recognize at the very beginning that all of these nudges can be used

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for good or evil. And people are going to either wish that people would nudge them towards making

00:22:55

right decisions or completely resist that based on their political affiliations. And the last

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chapter, which I don't think we have a section here to get to this, but the last chapter is

00:23:05

basically a summary of everything that they've done. And then the case for libertarian paternalism,

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they basically say there's this two-party system and they advocate for the third way.

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And I feel like with that last chapter, what you really see is everything in the book leading up

00:23:24

to that. That's probably not entirely fair, but they definitely took advantage of that to get

00:23:30

one last shot in there and be like, "Well, the way you're doing it isn't working." So maybe you

00:23:34

should think about it our way. And they're really smart university professors,

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so it's really hard to argue with them. But I think for most people who would identify as either

00:23:46

a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican, there's going to be lots of stuff in here that's

00:23:50

going to make you feel uncomfortable. That's not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. We should be

00:23:53

able to wrestle, we should want to be able to wrestle through those types of things because it

00:23:58

just helps us land on the right thing. So don't necessarily just resist the things that are different

00:24:06

or challenging, but recognize what you're getting into as you read this book, I guess.

00:24:10

Yeah, so Richard Toller is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics. So you should know

00:24:18

that. And he is also a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago's

00:24:25

Graduate School of Business. Sometimes it bugs me at these titles or so long. And then Cass

00:24:32

Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School. So, you know, not exactly people who don't have

00:24:40

experience in this world, in this realm. So they are very qualified to discuss this. I think I would

00:24:48

join you in saying that there's a lot in here that I struggled with from a political stance

00:24:56

and from a religious stance to some degree. And I wasn't certain how to handle it. Like,

00:25:03

because you can take a lot of what they say to their point, like, you can take this and

00:25:09

spin it for evil, you can take it and spin it for good. But in either case, it's

00:25:16

a challenge to determine where the line is between those two.

00:25:22

Yes, yes it is. And the way that they talk about stuff makes it seem like, oh, well, the answer is

00:25:30

obvious. You just haven't considered it this way. I know we'll get into this in the section on

00:25:35

freedom. But one of the chapters in the freedom section is on the private privatizing marriage.

00:25:40

And they basically make the argument that there's all of this contention around what is marriage,

00:25:49

should same-sex marriages be allowed. And they basically say, well, the only reason this is an

00:25:54

issue is because of the word marriage. So we should let churches use marriage and everybody else use

00:25:58

civil unions in there. Problem solved. And I don't think it's quite that simple, but also,

00:26:03

because they're really smart, it's hard to argue with the arguments that they lay out,

00:26:07

because they lay out their arguments really well. And that's one chapter, one small section.

00:26:10

But there's obviously a whole lot there to unpack. So I found as I was reading through those

00:26:15

different sections, after we get past the humans and econs part one, then they get into different

00:26:21

sections on money and health and freedom. Those, I feel like I got a wrestle with some of that stuff.

00:26:28

Raised a lot of questions. And not having all the answers immediately after you're done with the

00:26:32

book isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that is what you're signing up for when you read this.

00:26:37

So let's just jump in here. There are five parts that we'll go through here. The first of those is

00:26:46

humans and econs. And the best way I could probably explain this is that an econ is a person who

00:27:00

acts and delivers action to themselves and makes decisions based on historical information and

00:27:12

deciding what is the best given all the data for their future. And you're always acting in your

00:27:19

own best interest. I would say that's the easiest way to explain an econ versus a human,

00:27:27

where emotions are involved and dopamine is involved and the want to do fun things,

00:27:34

even in spite of all the bad things that could happen, that is involved. So you don't really get

00:27:44

to choose one or the other. I would say we're all humans in some form. I'm sure there are a few

00:27:49

econs Spock out there who will act in the best interest in every scenario. But I'm far from that.

00:27:59

Like that is not me at all. So this will be an interesting conversation, but that's the way I

00:28:06

think to explain both of those. So the two different systems that he talks about in here,

00:28:14

this kind of is another version of the humans and econs where the automatic system is rapid and

00:28:21

instinctive. It's uncontrolled. It's effortless. It's unconscious. It's associative. It's fast.

00:28:25

And the reflective system is the deliberate one, the self-conscious one controlled,

00:28:29

effortful, deductive and slow. And I feel like a lot of that harkens back to the thinking fast

00:28:39

and slow with Daniel Kahneman that we read. In fact, a lot of this intro section here,

00:28:44

a lot of these stories I had heard before from the other books that we've read.

00:28:48

But I thought that helped me really attach to these terms humans and econs, where humans are the

00:28:57

ones who are going to react instinctively and emotionally and probably make dumb decisions if

00:29:04

we let them. And the econs are the ones who are always going to choose the right path to maximize

00:29:11

the output of happiness or whatever resource they're trying to conserve. And so the whole idea of

00:29:18

nudge is to nudge people away from the instinctive decision, which is not going to be in their best

00:29:26

interest and into the econ mode where they think things through rationally and they pick the right

00:29:32

one. Just describing that you probably see a lot of issues, potential issues anyway, is with that.

00:29:43

Who gets to decide what is best for people? And that comes to the surface right at the beginning

00:29:52

here. And it doesn't really, I don't think, like I said, I got to the end of this. I didn't feel

00:29:59

like I had an answer to that as much as they tried to say like, this is the answer. I don't think

00:30:05

it's quite that simple, but it did really get me thinking about these things. And I think that's

00:30:14

the real value in a book like this is not in the answers that it gives you, but in the questions

00:30:20

that it raises, you know, six months from now, I'll probably still be thinking about some of the

00:30:24

stuff in this book. And it's definitely a challenging book, no matter which side of the alley you

00:30:30

happen to fall on. Right. And just as an example, like one of the first stories that they kick off

00:30:38

the introduction with, I think it was the introduction, is about an individual lady who

00:30:43

sets up school lunch trays. So like the students can go through and they're selecting what they

00:30:50

want for for lunch, pretty straightforward, right? But what they what they do is ask the question,

00:30:58

how should she set that up? Should she, because they know that students tend to choose from certain

00:31:04

areas that are either easily accessible, they're right up front, they're the first thing they see,

00:31:09

like those are the things that people tend to choose, you know, they do the same thing in

00:31:13

in grocery stores, the things that are eye level, like the shelf space that's eye level is the most

00:31:17

expensive for the suppliers to rent. So that's because that's where people tend to have their eyes

00:31:25

go first. And it's much higher selection by choice whenever things are in those areas. Same thing

00:31:32

with school lunches. So the question is, do you put fruits and veggies in the most selected area?

00:31:41

Or do you put pizza and chips there because that's what the students want? Like, do you put what

00:31:48

the students want? Or do you choose what is best for them? And who gets to say what? Like, who gets

00:31:55

to say that one is better than the other? That's that's the dilemma here. And I think that's where

00:32:01

we could get into this conversation of, is that an evil way of using this information? Or is that

00:32:08

the right way of using this information? You know, I of course have my own opinions, but I think

00:32:13

even my own opinions with these things tend to conflict with each other when I'm looking at these

00:32:19

like, well, no, in that case, I want you to do this. And in that scenario, I want you to do that. But

00:32:24

don't cross those lines because and don't make me see them side by side because they're not,

00:32:28

they're not going to be congruent with each other. So yeah, it's tricky. But that's that's the

00:32:35

concept here. He also talks about planners and doers being like two sides of your yourself,

00:32:42

where the planners take steps to control the actions of the doers. And the example that he uses

00:32:48

here is you put the alarm clock on the other side of the room, and then he has this ridiculous

00:32:53

example of an ad that takes us to the next level. This is not ridiculous. I thought this was genius.

00:32:58

Have you ever seen one of these things? No, but I wish I had.

00:33:03

Okay, so they include this ad for it's called clocky, and it's an alarm clock that when it goes off,

00:33:10

it has two wheels on the side. It rolls off of your nightstand and then across the room,

00:33:17

and you have to go find it and dig it out from underneath the dresser or the bed or something

00:33:21

in order to turn it off. So basically the alarm goes off and the alarm clock runs away from you.

00:33:25

As the ultimate example of the planner setting up this system to get the doer out of bed in

00:33:33

the morning, this is hard for me to wrap my head around, but I know that there are other examples

00:33:41

where I am just as susceptible to this kind of thing in my own life. So it seems ridiculous to

00:33:48

me in that specific example, but I also understand the logic behind it and really what they're trying

00:33:55

to hack together with that approach. And I think there is some validity to that for sure.

00:34:00

Yeah, this is so this is kind of getting into one of the chapters within this part resisting

00:34:06

temptations. And I kind of laughed whenever I read about clocky, but at the same time, I was

00:34:12

thinking that is absolutely the sort of thing that I have to have because I get distracted too

00:34:17

easy. And just as an example, with so like you've been to our house, we have a bathroom

00:34:23

upstairs, which is right next to our bedroom, and then there's a bathroom down in what used to be

00:34:29

my office, but I guess that's where I'm sitting right now. There's a bathroom down here as well.

00:34:34

And in the morning when I get up, I always come to the downstairs bathroom to get ready because it

00:34:40

tends to make a lot of noise. I don't want to wake up the kids upstairs. So what I did was in

00:34:47

order to get to the bathroom, there's only one little hallway through our family room to get to it.

00:34:54

And I lay out the yoga mat that I use on that little pathway. It's not an ideal spot for yoga,

00:35:03

but there are definitely better places for me to do that in the morning. But if I set the mat

00:35:09

there, I have to walk over top of that mat in order to go use the bathroom. And then if I want to go

00:35:14

anywhere else in the house, I have to walk over top of it again. And I feel guilty walking over this

00:35:21

mat and not doing my yoga practice in the morning. So I end up doing yoga more often as a result of

00:35:31

having that mat sitting there. I feel like that's the sort of thing that he's talking about here.

00:35:35

But it's something I have to do this all the time. I will forget things or choose not to do

00:35:41

them because I don't want to, or if it's too many steps to do it. This is the whole like

00:35:45

eliminating resistance thing. Like that's similar to what this is. But I find that that's the sort

00:35:51

of thing I have to do. As silly, it's ridiculous that we have to do that sort of thing, but it's

00:35:57

the sort of thing I have to do. I don't know. Is this something you have to do to yourself?

00:36:00

I don't know that this is universal, but some of us are more, you know, our executive functioning

00:36:08

is more advanced than others, I think. Well, it's not something. Well, I should say I've used that

00:36:16

sort of tactic previously, but I have not used it recently. So the exercise thing, I think that's

00:36:26

one of the ones where this would manifest more frequently. And to be honest, my whole exercise

00:36:33

routine has been revamped significantly since the whole COVID-19 thing. Can't go to the gym anymore.

00:36:41

I was going to the gym six days a week. So to help me deal with that, and also to help me just kind

00:36:51

of get a reset every day, I've been getting outside. And the way that I do that is I either go for a run

00:36:57

or I go for a bike ride. And those were things that were part of my normal routine, but I am

00:37:04

basically running or biking every single day now. And I don't have to put my running shoes

00:37:13

in the middle of the bedroom floor so that I see them and I remember to take a run. There

00:37:19

was a point when I would do something like that, but I feel like I've made the adjustments that I've

00:37:25

wanted to make for this period. And now it's just kind of like, well, it is what it is.

00:37:31

If I was going to apply this tactic to anything, it would probably be with the books that we read,

00:37:37

because as I was telling you before we hit record, during this self-isolation thing,

00:37:43

I've been having a real hard time getting through the books that we read for Bookworm.

00:37:50

If it is not, if it would not be for Bookworm, I probably would not be reading right now.

00:37:55

So it's helping that to stick at least a little bit, but I was having a gap book every single week,

00:38:00

and now I haven't had one for four episodes in a row or something. So maybe you could argue

00:38:06

that doing it with a physical book, that would be something that I could do. Just putting it,

00:38:10

I don't know, on my nightstand, so I see it first thing in the morning and I grab it when I grab

00:38:17

my journal and I'm planning out my day and I take it with me everywhere, I tend to leave it in a

00:38:22

part of the house and not think about it until kids have gone to bed and then either I pick it up

00:38:27

and read it like I'm supposed to or I don't feel like it because I'm too tired. Just being real here.

00:38:33

So I haven't been doing much of this lately, I guess, is the short answer, but I see the value

00:38:40

in it and I think it's a great trigger for positive habits that you want to help create

00:38:46

stickiness for. Yeah, one of the other chapters in this section is called Following the Heard

00:38:53

and I merely wanted to just mention that this is a thing that is in the book,

00:38:59

mostly because we know that this happens, we have a tendency to follow everybody else and

00:39:05

we want to be like the people we are around, but it can lead to some pretty detrimental

00:39:16

outcomes if we're not careful and actually thinking through what it is that we're doing and this is

00:39:22

something I find myself doing more often than I want and have been trying to work through ways to

00:39:29

slow down my thinking and be willing to swim upstream as it were to break that habit of sorts.

00:39:42

So it's a thing I think a lot of people struggle with, obviously, otherwise the herd wouldn't exist

00:39:48

in that sense, but I think it is a thing worth calling out. You don't have to follow the herd

00:39:54

in today, one, Mike, it's okay. True, another interesting thing. Well, I feel like I was there

00:40:02

before the herd even got there. I heard you about that. Sure, sure. One thing that really fascinated

00:40:09

me in this whole section of following the herd though is the spotlight effect because this

00:40:15

totally applies to me where you believe that everyone is looking at and watching you and in

00:40:21

reality, people are paying less attention to you than you really think. But I have definitely

00:40:28

struggled with this. It's also kind of interesting that we find ourselves in the situation now

00:40:33

where I haven't really left the house in weeks. Our church does these like drive-in services on

00:40:41

Sunday mornings where everybody goes in their cars and you tune in on the radio. But other than that,

00:40:46

like we just stay home. So I'm not around other people and I'm not been worried about what they

00:40:52

think. But totally when I'm out in public, I'm always like, are they looking at me? Do I have

00:40:57

something in my teeth? Yes, you do 100% every time. That's why podcasting is so great. Nobody can see.

00:41:04

Oh, so that's why you don't like the whole Zoom live video thing.

00:41:08

Another interesting tidbit from here, by the way, that I jotted down in my

00:41:14

mind-notifile is that people tend to eat more when they're in a group. Yeah, these numbers are

00:41:19

crazy. They said that when you're with one other person, you tend to eat 35% more,

00:41:24

75% more if you're in groups of four, and 96% more than you would if you were alone if you're in a

00:41:31

group of seven or more. I think I must be the exception to this rule because I tend to,

00:41:37

if I'm alone, just keep eating. But I don't know. Does this apply to you?

00:41:43

I feel like I'm not because I feel like if there's a lot of people there,

00:41:48

my tendency is to want to make sure that everybody has enough. So I don't tend to eat more. I will

00:41:55

eat more if we're out at a restaurant, but that's because I feel like it's- Yeah, because they give you

00:41:59

huge portions. Yeah, I feel like it's rude with enough. Like if it's just me and my

00:42:03

wife, we have zero issues. Just give me a box. I'll take it home. But for some reason, I don't feel

00:42:09

like I could do that with a whole group of people. Now, if it was our small group who we've been

00:42:15

together with since, you know, how long has it been? Eight years now, I would totally do it with them.

00:42:20

But if it was a group that I was new to, I don't know why that is. I don't feel comfortable doing

00:42:28

that. So I'm very likely to eat more in that scenario. Another thing that I got from the section on

00:42:35

following the herd is that the most powerful nudges happen with unanimous groups. And there's

00:42:45

this concept called collective conservatism, where the tendency of the group is to stick to

00:42:49

establish patterns. I feel like again, I recognize like times when this has been true, but also find

00:42:56

myself maybe not fitting into the mold on this one either. Because I'm the type of person where

00:43:02

if you tell me this is the way that we do things, part of me is like, well, okay, we're going to

00:43:08

follow the rules. But part of me is like, I'm not going to do that. Why? Because you told me to.

00:43:13

I'm not doing it a different way. So do you think that personality plays into this following the

00:43:22

herd mentality? I think it depends on the scenario. Because I feel like there are like,

00:43:28

in the case of you and I, if a whole bunch of creators were using a new app, let's take

00:43:36

room research again, a whole bunch of people are using it. We're not as inclined to just follow

00:43:42

the herd in that case, because we've been around it. We've got a lot of experience with it. So we're

00:43:48

not as inclined to just jump on the bandwagon. But I feel like if we were brand new to the

00:43:56

productivity space and choosing these tools, I feel like if that were the case, we would be

00:44:00

much more likely to just jump on everybody's talking about that. Maybe I should too. I feel

00:44:05

like that's what we would end up doing. So I think it depends. Sure. What about priming? That

00:44:10

was the other thing in this section. I got a lot of notes from this particular section.

00:44:16

But I feel like this was the most interesting to me. It was the most,

00:44:20

the one that had the most potential action items, even though I have none.

00:44:24

But spoiler alert, this is the section that is most consistent with my preconceived notion

00:44:33

of what this book would be, which is kind of like the science and how this stuff plays out

00:44:39

rather than a whole bunch of scenarios on where you can apply nudges to improve outcomes for

00:44:48

people, which is kind of the other sections of the book. But priming is basically a subtle

00:44:56

influence that can increase the ease with which certain information comes to mind. So

00:45:00

an example they gave of this was asking people if they were going to vote the day before of an

00:45:05

election increased the percentage of people who voted by 25%, which is kind of crazy.

00:45:13

I get it though. And again, this is something that doesn't apply to me personally recently,

00:45:20

because we just went through this in Wisconsin. They went ahead with the primary election at the

00:45:25

beginning of April after a bunch of back and forth politically about whether they were going to

00:45:31

push back the election or not. And I remember at the time when everybody was being told to stay

00:45:36

home, they were canceling school, I was like, well, why don't they just announce it right now?

00:45:40

They're going to push this back. But they didn't. And then the governor tried to delay it like

00:45:46

a couple days before. And the Supreme, Wisconsin Supreme Court jumped in and was like, no,

00:45:52

you can't do that. So they forced everybody to go to the polls anyways. And I'm watching all this

00:45:58

play out. Meanwhile, the minute that we heard schools were shut down, we're like, oh, the

00:46:03

election's coming up. We better request our absentee ballots. So we didn't have to deal with any of

00:46:08

this. Because that was a thing that they were arguing about was like, well, there's not enough

00:46:13

time now. People won't be able to get their absentee ballots. It won't be counted. And I was

00:46:17

just like, we took care of this already. So there's no, yeah, I can't say that that's always been the

00:46:26

case. There have been times, it's like, Oh, yeah, I forgot, we got a vote today. But whatever,

00:46:30

like this particular scenario, you know, we avoided that whole, that whole thing.

00:46:35

So that really just fought against a little bit some of this stuff as I was reading it,

00:46:42

because you're hearing the authors talk about how these nudges can get people to do the right,

00:46:50

the right things. And these are kind of necessary because, look, people aren't going to go vote

00:46:54

unless you tell them to go to go vote the tomorrow, you know, but I would, meanwhile,

00:46:59

I'm getting texts all day every day telling me who to vote for. And I'd sent in my ballot already.

00:47:04

So I understand the nudges, but I also think the big takeaway from this is that maybe the nudges

00:47:12

aren't so necessary if you have a little bit of self determination and personal responsibility.

00:47:21

And you have the systems in place to think about these things before it becomes critical, like

00:47:28

maybe that reduces the effectiveness of the nudges a little bit. Maybe it doesn't, you know, I'm not

00:47:34

sure. But I feel like there's some cherry picked examples here of like, this is how people behave.

00:47:39

And then it's just interesting to me because recently I've completely bugged those trends

00:47:43

showing that there is at least the possibility of an alternate approach here.

00:47:49

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I love it when I'm like, okay, this is going to be a big problem.

00:47:54

Oh, yeah, we took care of that like three weeks ago. Not it, not an issue. All right, so the next

00:48:02

part in this book is about money. And I need to get it open because I need to run through

00:48:08

the sections. I don't have them up right in front of me. So there's four different chapters in this

00:48:14

section. Save more tomorrow. Naive investing, credit markets, privatizing social security,

00:48:22

smorgasbord style. And I don't want to say that I have a ton of like financial advice type

00:48:32

background, but I've studied a lot of like markets and investment strategies and, you know,

00:48:40

buying or selling puts and calls on the stock market. Like I've done a lot of research on that,

00:48:45

done a lot of it. And you know, my wife and I do not have credit cards, like, we're kind of on

00:48:51

the fringes with all of this. And I read all of these chapters and found myself like arguing with

00:48:59

them a lot. And like, they're not wrong with these things. Like they're, they're talking about

00:49:08

setting up defaults for savings accounts, 401ks, so that whenever you join, you're set up the best

00:49:16

for the future. I feel like that's probably the best way to do that. They tended to go just a

00:49:23

little too far, I felt in making recommendations on how to do that. And that's where I started to,

00:49:30

oh, you cannot do that. Yeah, you are not financial advisors. Please stop. Don't go there.

00:49:37

That could be said about every section from here on out to be honest.

00:49:41

Exactly. So I, it was interesting to read, I, you're going to start to figure out my feelings on this

00:49:51

book pretty quick now, but I don't think that this section was super helpful other than,

00:49:58

okay, here's how some people make decisions with money. Yep, that ends up badly. Always does.

00:50:06

Here you go. Best of luck. Don't screw it up like that. I wasn't sure what else to do with it.

00:50:11

Yeah. So this particular section is interesting because he's talking about the 401k stuff specifically.

00:50:20

And I had an immediate action item where I logged into my 401k and up my percentage that I was

00:50:29

contributing because I was the person that he described where they took advantage of the company

00:50:37

match, but then didn't even think about it after that. And did some quick math in my head. So

00:50:44

as of what I make, there's how much less it would be. But oh, that's not that much. And in the long

00:50:49

run, whoa, okay, yeah, I'm going to do this. You know, we can survive without that little bit of

00:50:55

extra month, month, or extra money month to month. And it just does a lot in the long term to

00:51:01

move us towards retirement goals. So that was a good nudge just reading that section.

00:51:06

But I agree that there's a lot of advice that they offer here, which is maybe unsolicited.

00:51:13

But it's also they use it as examples of how this stuff gets applied. There's a section in the

00:51:22

or chapter in the previous section, the humans and econ section on choice architecture, which is

00:51:26

probably worth unpacking real briefly here. Because that's what's happening in this money

00:51:33

section is they're taking a look at the systems that are created to guide people into making the

00:51:40

right decisions when it comes to setting up something like a 401k. And so they map out in the money

00:51:47

section, the different approaches that you actually could take with this. So you could

00:51:53

force people into a default being the conservative, the conservative fund, or you could make the

00:52:01

default the aggressive fund, or you could just rely on people to sign up for their 401ks and not

00:52:07

tell them that, Hey, this is available, or you could force people into the 401k, you know, all of

00:52:12

that stuff. And then where's the balance and the right way to do this sort of thing. And it's

00:52:18

interesting because I've been in those meetings and sitting there, hearing the explanations of

00:52:23

the plans and my eyes glazing over because I don't understand a word that they're saying at that

00:52:28

point, just let me out of here, sort of a thing. You know, and I do think that there are people like

00:52:38

past me who, ideally, you should just tell them like, be an adult and figure this stuff out.

00:52:44

But not everybody's going to do that. And there are areas of my life where I still haven't done

00:52:49

that to be fair. So do you just let people do their thing? Or do you create a system that kind

00:53:00

of guides them into the right choices? And then along with that, obviously, is what are the right

00:53:04

choices? What are the incentives here? And they've got four questions that they talk about in choice

00:53:08

architecture. Who who chooses basically who pays for it, who profits from it, you know, and those

00:53:18

are all things that you have to answer in order to understand the choice architecture that has been

00:53:25

employed here, because in the back of your mind, and there's a chapter on this later, but

00:53:30

in kind of a seed as I was going through this book was, well, this is great, assuming that

00:53:37

noble people with pure motives are the ones manipulating this choice architecture. But

00:53:42

what about the bad guys? What about the credit card companies who are trying to get the college

00:53:46

students who have $100,000 in student loans to sign up for a credit card to? You know, there's

00:53:53

people who are have self-serving interests that they're going to be using these nudges as well.

00:53:59

And at this point, they're basically just not even going there. They're trying to say, well,

00:54:05

these are the some examples of both sides of or both extremes, like ways that people have

00:54:10

done this sort of thing. And here's what we propose is the right path forward, but again,

00:54:15

not that simple, not cut and clear for everybody. Yeah, my, my mom works for, I don't know if I've

00:54:24

mentioned this on the show or not before, but my mother works for one of the big credit card

00:54:30

companies in the call center. And sometimes she will tell us stories of how some of her calls go.

00:54:38

And it just amazes me, the financial misunderstanding that people have on a lot of things. The most

00:54:48

basic being, and they have a whole, they have a set of scripts to handle people who call in,

00:54:54

who don't understand why they have a bill to pay. Because credit cards are free money, right?

00:55:02

Like that's the expectations. That's what people think. I don't know where this thought process

00:55:06

came from, but they she regularly has people who call in and they have like a $10,000 limit on a

00:55:14

credit card, which is pretty high. And they have spent all of that. And now they're at the point

00:55:21

where they have to pay that back, but they don't realize that it's credits. They think it was just

00:55:27

free money. Yeah, no, it's it's true. And it's fascinating to me because every once we don't

00:55:33

keep a credit card balance, we hardly ever use the card and it's set to auto pay the whole balance

00:55:38

every single month. But I know that we don't use it a whole lot. And frequently there is no balance

00:55:47

on the card. And every once in a while, I'll get these emails like, good news, we up to your credit

00:55:52

limit. It's now like $30,000 or whatever. Like I never going to spend that much. Yes. But they're

00:55:59

trying to try and entice you obviously to right to spend more with it. I can buy a car with my

00:56:04

credit card. Why would I ever do that? This is a great idea. I'm sure. Yeah, exactly.

00:56:11

The piece about this that I feel is at least helpful is, you know, what they talk about setting up

00:56:19

by default, when you join a new employer's plan that you would just by default be saving the

00:56:30

expected amount, whatever that is, 3%, 5%, depends on the company, but you would be automatically

00:56:36

saving a certain amount. And you would be automatically enrolled in the company match

00:56:41

program unless you decline it. Like that sort of thing I get. And I tend to appreciate because

00:56:48

otherwise, you know, the people who don't realize that credit cards need to be paid off would not

00:56:53

have any savings at all. So I feel like that's at least helpful. But at the same time, I'm a bit

00:57:00

conflicted because I have a tendency to put a lot of value on personal responsibility with this sort

00:57:06

of thing. And you know, this is where I start to get conflicting thoughts in my own head,

00:57:11

and I don't really understand how I can hold conflicting thoughts in my head and the dissonance

00:57:15

sometimes causes problems for my brain. So, you know, in one sense, I like having those defaults

00:57:21

for the people who don't understand it. But at the same time, I don't understand why the people

00:57:24

who don't understand it don't try to understand it. Sure. If you followed my train of thought there

00:57:29

because I kind of messed with you there. But I feel like there is a bit on each individual person.

00:57:36

And this is something I kept thinking about through this whole book is there has to be an

00:57:41

element that you allow a person to make decisions for themselves. You know, but at the same

00:57:49

aspect, and we'll get into this on the next one with health, you have things like obesity rates

00:57:55

that are through the roof. And it's not every scenario, but some of those scenarios are personal

00:58:02

choices that lead to obesity. And why is that? Why do we tend to choose that? Well,

00:58:10

I think that this is kind of getting at something like if we don't have things or people or systems

00:58:17

that nudge us in the right direction, our own inclinations would be to just go down whatever

00:58:26

feels good. And that's not always the best path in the long run. So, right, that's where I get

00:58:32

conflicted on this, Mike. Well, this this section in particular on credit cards, because there's a

00:58:38

whole chapter on this, there's solution to this, the possible nudges that they outline are to

00:58:46

highlight the fees on people's statements and don't make the minimum payments so easy.

00:58:51

And that sounds great. But what if you rack up because you have no self control and you've got

00:59:01

a $10,000 limit, even though you've got $100 in the bank, you rack up the huge credit card bill.

00:59:08

It doesn't matter if the default is to pay off the entire balance at that point. You don't have

00:59:15

the ability to do that. And that is a separate activity from the transaction where you don't

00:59:22

actually give the retailer any money when you buy something. There's a disconnect there where

00:59:28

a simple nudge when it comes to thinking about the numbers, I don't think it fixes it.

00:59:33

And so that's kind of prevalent, I think, in a lot of these examples going forward

00:59:41

in is that the solution is really not as simple as they make it out to be. I feel like there's a

00:59:49

lot more complexity to these things and a big piece of it you're right has to do with your ability to

00:59:56

delay the gratification and say no to some things because you just don't have the ability to do that

01:00:04

when it comes to credit cards in particular. So let's take a look at health here. So this is

01:00:12

the third part of this whole piece and they cover three individual areas, prescription drugs,

01:00:21

organ donations, and environmental saving the planet as they call it.

01:00:26

And I don't get that under health, but okay. Yeah, I think, you know, I might be able to get

01:00:33

that one and that it's only because with my health conditions that I've been fighting,

01:00:38

I have a tendency to see how the environment around me impacts my health significantly. So

01:00:44

maybe I could see how they get there. I feel like they wanted to talk about it and they don't,

01:00:50

like if you look at the parts and the section headings, there's not really a good place for them to put

01:00:54

it. Yeah, every chapter, every section needs to have three chapters. Exactly. So they kind of had

01:00:59

to stick it somewhere, I feel. I can't say that I follow a lot of these particular pieces. Maybe

01:01:09

you had a better grasp of what they were getting at with some of this, Mike, but like they're talking

01:01:14

about prescription drugs and what the best practices are for, you know, the plans by which you would

01:01:21

get them. Obviously in the US of A, we have kind of a runaway train when it comes to health care

01:01:29

prices and such. So this is obviously a big problem that is yet to be solved. I don't think

01:01:35

anybody would argue with that both sides of the aisle tend to agree that it is an issue. So,

01:01:40

you know, there's that piece. I can't really say that I like a lot of what they talked about,

01:01:47

but I also don't know what the answers are. Organ donations, they tend to say that there should be

01:01:54

like a default answer of yes, you will buy defaults, donate all of your organs once you're

01:02:01

passed with the thought process that you no longer have any, you know, will to live at that point.

01:02:08

Obviously you are dead. So you should obviously donate for anyone who could use your organs.

01:02:16

Just making that default that way you could save more people. And then they get into a lot of the

01:02:21

environmental side of things and talking about the EPA and such. Okay, I have a lot of strong

01:02:26

opinions on about this, but I don't know that I'm going to talk about them because, you know,

01:02:31

life. So anyway, thoughts on this, Mike? I think the how to increase organ donations,

01:02:39

chapter 11 is the easiest one to get on board with because they make the point that many people

01:02:46

who are willing to be donors aren't donors simply because of the required explicit consent that we

01:02:50

have in the US. But there is, there are other options available for how that works, where instead

01:02:58

of checking the box to explicitly be an organ donor, you can also make it check the box to not

01:03:06

be an organ donor. So you're kind of presuming consent, or you can force people to pick one,

01:03:12

but provide nudges along the way as to what you want them to do, which is to be an organ donor.

01:03:20

And I thought it was interesting that most states in the US have explicit consent. That's the way

01:03:24

it is here in Wisconsin. What's it like in Minnesota? Do you have to check the box?

01:03:28

You do. Yeah, it's explicit consent. Okay. But in Europe, they have presumed consent. And I get the

01:03:35

complications with that, although I don't think I personally would have any issues with that,

01:03:40

where after I'm dead, my family members are like, no, don't cut him open and take his heart.

01:03:44

I don't really care. I'm an organ donor for whole disclosure. I checked the box.

01:03:49

Great. I did too, which is why I'm like, you know, maybe that's a good thing. Like,

01:03:54

they're going to cremate me anyway. So what's the big deal? So that's, but that's my stance.

01:03:59

Yeah. And I thought this section was interesting just in the fact that you could communicate how

01:04:04

many lives could be, could be saved if you do check the box. And then forcing people to make

01:04:09

a choice that way is probably enough to get people to pick the right thing for them. And if they really

01:04:15

have an objection to it, they have a easy out right there. But otherwise, you don't have to use a

01:04:21

default as like an excuse for, well, I wish we had an organ, but we don't because they didn't check

01:04:26

the box or just default to it. You know, and then you've got a stockpile of organs, but you've

01:04:32

got upset family members. The other ones, I think, are more complicated. The prescription drugs thing.

01:04:41

This, they talked a lot about the part D, the Medicare Part D thing that they

01:04:48

passed in like 2000 or something like that. And the big thing with this being that it was too

01:04:56

complicated for people to choose the tool that was designed to help them the website was

01:05:02

pretty much impossible to use. They had people on their staff who tried to pick the best option

01:05:07

for them given certain criteria and three different people got three different answers. I mean,

01:05:11

that obviously shows that the website was, was poorly designed. And you could argue that there

01:05:19

were too many choices for elderly people to try and figure this out on their own. But I also

01:05:27

kind of think that maybe the emphasis here being on like the website being too hard to use,

01:05:34

this is a circa 2000 website. And I'm not sure that just because it's a newer website, it would be

01:05:42

easier, but also maybe we've learned something in our web design mistakes since then. So how does

01:05:50

this play out? You know, if we were to do it, do it now. And I don't know what the answer is there.

01:05:57

Reading through that description they had of the Medicare Part D, it's easy to see the problems

01:06:05

with it because they had like 47 different choices. But that's kind of retroactively saying,

01:06:11

well, obviously this is, this is what was wrong here. And I think it's easy to do that with something

01:06:16

that happened in the past. I think it's harder to say, well, this is the right way to approach it

01:06:21

going forward. So I don't really want to touch that one. And then the saving the planet thing,

01:06:27

this one kind of irked me because their solution again is go ahead and pollute if you want to just

01:06:33

pay the tax. And I don't know, it's over simplistic, I feel like. I did like the nudge examples from

01:06:45

this section where they had like the redone fuel emissions stickers and the energy star

01:06:51

savings. I think, you know, those are examples that most people are familiar with. So you can see

01:06:56

how that stuff would pan out. But I bristle a little bit at the idea of just because I bought a

01:07:03

cheap water heater because it's the only one I could afford at the time for my house that I'm

01:07:09

going to get taxed because it's using a lot of energy. Yeah, I'd like the, you know, the nudges

01:07:15

within the saving the planet section around how to encourage people to use less energy or

01:07:22

buy a vehicle that's more fuel efficient. I understand those and I think it's helpful.

01:07:29

I will be completely honest and upfront that I have kind of a gearhead background and have a

01:07:38

thing for cars. So whenever I see these fuel economy estimates and these stickers on the cars,

01:07:44

I have a tendency to want vehicles that specifically have a lower number on the fuel economy scale

01:07:51

just because that tells me that it can do things I like doing. Sure, I'll stop there.

01:07:59

So I tend to take advantage of that in the opposite direction. And I know I have a handful

01:08:05

of friends that would do the exact same. At the same time, I've also got a large group of friends

01:08:10

that have talked about how that's helpful and have chosen vehicles that are more fuel efficient

01:08:17

as a result of those. So this, I feel like this does work in a good way overall. But I feel that

01:08:24

people in the car community who like performance vehicles will have a tendency to take advantage

01:08:31

of this negative way. Okay, I'll stop on that. Yeah, I don't think I have anything else to say

01:08:40

about this particular section. I feel that the next one on freedom is a little more of interest.

01:08:48

And there are again three chapters here. And those are improving school choices.

01:08:55

Should patients be forced to buy lottery tickets and privatizing marriage? I can kind of get on

01:09:03

board with the school choices thing where you're helping students make better choices for the

01:09:09

longer because I feel like kids don't always have the best decisions for themselves. I know that

01:09:14

we have a tendency to want kids to be able to make decisions for themselves. But I think Mike,

01:09:20

you would agree with me that that's fine along with strong prodding in the correct direction.

01:09:25

So, yes. Yeah, this one though really isn't about the kids. It's about the parents.

01:09:32

So that's fair. That's fair. Again, like this is difficult. I did think the examples that they

01:09:40

shared where they had one school district in particular and I'm blanking on the name where all

01:09:45

of the schools pretty much in that area were below average. And so they basically went in

01:09:53

there as like, this is the place where people should want to change. And they talked about how

01:09:58

complicated and convoluted the process was and all the way along. Like the parents had to schedule

01:10:04

meeting with the principal, then they had another meeting where they were at the school's information

01:10:08

center and every single step of the way the officials are stressing that transfers aren't

01:10:13

always possible and transportation's not guaranteed. And I totally get where all that stuff happens

01:10:19

before the paperwork even gets filled out. You're probably not going to fill out the paperwork.

01:10:23

No, this is good enough. We'll just make it make it work. So yeah, many parents didn't didn't do it.

01:10:29

But should they do it? I don't know. I think that depends on a lot of different factors.

01:10:36

If the officials who are saying that transportation isn't guaranteed to your new school are correct,

01:10:42

then maybe from an educational standpoint, yeah, Johnny should be going to the other school across

01:10:46

town where he'll get a better education. But if mom and dad both work and they can't get them there,

01:10:50

that doesn't matter. So in that case, the nudge is appropriate. But if they're just trying to keep

01:10:56

people in their school district, so they can check all the boxes, you know, and keep enrollment

01:11:02

up and all that, then that's not an appropriate nudge. There's so much nuance to this type of stuff.

01:11:10

The one thing here that I really wanted to chat with you about was the whole nudging towards

01:11:15

college. They mentioned in San Marcos, they required an application to the local community

01:11:20

college for high school graduation. And I get it on the surface. You know, if you get accepted,

01:11:24

you don't have to go there. It's free to fill it out. Yada yada yada. At least you have the option.

01:11:30

But this is again, presuming that college is the right answer. And I'm not so positive it is.

01:11:39

I probably don't have time to get into a whole bunch of debate here, but sure, I went to a private

01:11:46

liberal arts college that put my wife and I about $100,000 in debt. It took us a really long time to

01:11:53

pay that off. And I use approximately zero of what I learned there. Now, I still learned a lot

01:12:00

during the process. Was it worth the cost? I don't know. I'm not presuming though that telling my

01:12:09

kids that when they graduate from high school, that yeah, the right thing is that you go sign

01:12:14

up for more student debt and learn some skills that are antiquated in today's economy. I mean,

01:12:21

that's kind of the whole idea behind Omar Zenholm. If you know his story, he was a business professor

01:12:25

at a big university and was trying to impose some new curriculum and it had to go through the committee

01:12:33

and he realized that it's going to be three years before this even gets approved. And I'm sick of

01:12:38

teaching people to manage factories when they're going to be working online. So I'm just going to

01:12:43

go create a website, the $100 MBA, call it a day. You know, I think there's some truth to that. We

01:12:51

read the personal MBA and I feel like those types of programs, it's not a one to one with an MBA

01:13:00

program. You have to realize that. But the information that is really going to help you,

01:13:06

the relevant stuff maybe isn't taught in a classroom after it's been reviewed by a university. And

01:13:13

I don't know, I think things change really fast. So just the whole idea of colleges, the automatic

01:13:23

right next step for people for a lot of people. Yeah, but not for everybody. And I think there's a

01:13:28

lot more to consider there before you make that choice. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about the

01:13:35

requirement to fill out an application to graduate high school. I haven't quite figured out my

01:13:41

thoughts on that particular piece, though I have thought about it quite a bit. And that's

01:13:46

primarily because I don't know. I don't know the area and I don't know the type of student that

01:13:52

they're dealing with very well. And I feel like there's potentially a lot of benefit to that.

01:13:59

Maybe it's a great thing. Obviously, I feel that it would increase the number of students going

01:14:06

to college. But to your point, I don't know how much of college I would say is required. I will

01:14:14

say that as far as our kids go, we tend to just talk with them with the assumption that they will

01:14:21

go to college. We have a tendency to say, well, yeah, after high school, when you get to college,

01:14:26

like this is what life could look like. We'll have those conversations as they come up. But

01:14:32

that's just the way that we tend to reference that. It's not a thing that we expect you to go to

01:14:39

college. That's not it at all. We just talk as if the assumption is there. Though, if any of my

01:14:46

girls mention that they don't feel that that's the right move, you better believe I'm going to be

01:14:51

right behind them trying to figure out how I can help them best to set themselves up for

01:14:56

a successful future. But I'm not sold on college either. I think the master's degree has become the

01:15:04

new BA. I feel like that's where we've landed. It frustrates me when pretty much everybody can

01:15:13

get a BA when they go to college. I feel like it's an option. You have to work to get that, not just

01:15:19

pay for it. Rance over. I don't know how I feel about this particular scenario with the application.

01:15:26

Peace. But I know that in our specific case, I find encouraging that to be, at least for now,

01:15:33

the right direction that we're going to head towards. Yeah, you should consider it as an option,

01:15:38

but you should not. I don't think nudge people in that direction, which kind of gets at the

01:15:46

bigger underlying issue with everything in this book, is who gets to decide what the right thing

01:15:54

to do is? It's not the people who wrote this book, I think. If I'm in that situation, by the way,

01:16:05

I'm not necessarily against the filling out of the application. I would probably advise my kids,

01:16:13

"Yeah, go to fill out the application. It takes half an hour, and then you've at least got the

01:16:18

ability to fall back on that if you want." It's more the psychological emphasis on this is what

01:16:24

you should be doing. Maybe that's just the rebel in me, bristling at people saying, "Hey,

01:16:32

you should be doing this." But I don't know. It's not as simple as they make it out to be in the

01:16:41

15 pages that they devote to the topic. Same thing with the next chapter on Should Patients

01:16:46

be Forced to By Lottery Tickets? There's a nudge right in the title of basically,

01:16:52

healthcare is the lottery. Insurance is a lottery. You can guess where they land on that side of

01:16:59

the argument of whether or not you should have insurance, whether or not. Medical insurance is

01:17:05

kind of their emphasis in this particular chapter, but you can apply that to other things. Should

01:17:11

you be required to have car insurance when you're driving on the road? Should you be required to have

01:17:18

homeowners insurance? Should you be required to have life insurance? There's so much more to unpack

01:17:25

here. Let's just take the home insurance thing for an example. You could make the argument that I

01:17:31

have the right to not buy home insurance. I understand the risk that if my house goes up in flames,

01:17:38

that my stuff is gone and I'm okay with that. But what about then the people who respond to the 911

01:17:49

call? Do they ask you when you call? Do you have homeowners insurance? Oh, sorry. We only have so

01:17:55

many firefighters. We're going to try to save the people who have the insurance first because

01:18:01

they're paying for it. That's a ridiculous example. But I don't think it's too far-fetched.

01:18:08

Because of where we find ourselves with the whole coronavirus thing either. Because the whole

01:18:13

argument that people were making at the beginning of this is you got to flatten the curve. Because

01:18:18

otherwise we're going to have more cases of this than we have health care capacity. And at that point,

01:18:23

you've got to decide who you're going to take care of. You're triaging your patients, just like the

01:18:28

Napoleonic war. Who are the ones who are probably going to survive? We'll leave them alone. Who are

01:18:32

the ones that are probably going to die? We'll leave them alone. And who are the ones where we can

01:18:35

really make a difference? Those are the ones who are going to be allowed in the hospitals.

01:18:40

No one likes that scenario. And I think being asked to make those types of decisions,

01:18:49

rightfully so, feels wrong to a lot of people. But the minute that you frame

01:18:58

insurance is a lottery ticket, that's kind of what you're encouraging.

01:19:01

Right. I'm of course extremely biased with the health care system. I have lots and lots of

01:19:09

opinions. My wife and I are technically uninsured in the world of health insurance,

01:19:15

which always freaks people out when I say that. But we're a part of a health care sharing ministry.

01:19:20

So we do have that. I find that it's actually way cheaper and has better coverage. Just going to

01:19:28

say that. I have lots of opinions on that. Of course, I also have lots of opinions about

01:19:35

the privatizing marriage piece that are more religious than they are anything. So I feel it's

01:19:41

probably better for me to just skip that part here. If either of those two is of any strong interest

01:19:48

to you, reach out to me somewhere online, email me, etc. We can have discourse about it as long as

01:19:54

it's cordial. Let me just say one thing about that. I don't have many notes, but I already shared

01:20:01

their solution when I use this chapter as an example early on. But they define this very loosely,

01:20:08

the goal of marriage being to protect people's commitments to each other. And I feel that that

01:20:15

explanation right there kind of invalidates a lot of what they're going to propose after that.

01:20:23

Because that's how you're going to define it. That's fine. But you can't just say this is

01:20:30

the blanket definition for everyone. And you could make that argument about any of the things that

01:20:39

they discuss in parts three, four, two, three or four in this book. So I agree with you. My

01:20:50

solution isn't their solution, but recognize where they're coming from and the formula that

01:20:54

they're following for this book. So my real issue is not that they think they have a solution for

01:21:01

privatizing marriage because they also have one for privatizing social security and lots of other

01:21:06

stuff. But they boil it down into something that is they try to make something really, really complex

01:21:13

and complicated, very, very simple. And I don't think they do it justice.

01:21:18

All right, last part here, extensions and objections. And there is, again, three chapters here,

01:21:27

a dozen nudges, objections, the real third way. And the piece of this, you can cover the other two

01:21:35

if you want to, Mike, but the piece of this that I wanted to just mention briefly is a dozen nudges.

01:21:40

And it's because these are kind of like many smaller nudges as compared to what they've been

01:21:47

talking about throughout the rest of this book. And I can't say that any of them in particular

01:21:53

jumped out at me other than the fact that this concept is what I kind of expected from the entire

01:22:00

book, not just the end. Like, I kind of thought whenever I picked this up, that it was going to be

01:22:06

how to help yourself and others make better choices through some minor pieces like this,

01:22:15

not these massive infrastructure pieces that they're talking about. So that's really the

01:22:21

only piece that I wanted to call out here. I just thought it was an interesting way to do it. And

01:22:25

it was the way that I expected the entire book to go. I agree. The objections section is interesting

01:22:31

to me because they talk about the objections that people are going to have to their libertarian

01:22:37

paternalism being a slippery slope. And they have three questions to the arguments of merit.

01:22:43

Actually, the next ones aren't questions, but they their arguments, they they argue that

01:22:47

with their models, freedom of choice is optimized. And it's naive to think that government won't

01:22:52

nudge people anyways. And then they address the evil nudgers that bad people will manipulate the

01:22:59

nudge and they asked to be worry more about public choice architects and private choice

01:23:02

architects. I feel like that's very fair to ask that. But on page 245, you get the summary

01:23:11

of their arguments here. And I think this is interesting given the current situation we find

01:23:16

ourselves in as we record this. So we they say we think a good society makes trade-offs between

01:23:21

protecting the unfortunate and encouraging initiative and self help. So when I read this,

01:23:27

I immediately thought of all of the arguments on both sides that are happening right now

01:23:36

with the state stay at home orders, because on the one hand, you've got the people saying,

01:23:44

well, if you go outside and you have coronavirus and you're asymptomatic and you don't even know

01:23:49

that you have it, older people are susceptible, they're going to catch it, they're going to die.

01:23:52

So it's not right for you to leave your house. I get that argument. There are also people saying,

01:23:59

well, we can't just stay locked up forever. We're already in the middle of a recession,

01:24:02

which is kind of like the biggest one since the Great Depression. So many millions of people

01:24:07

are filing for unemployment. The economy is not going to bounce back to the middle the next decade.

01:24:11

Yadda yadda yadda. I understand that argument. You see the dilemma here. How do you get people

01:24:19

back to work in a safe way? And I think this argument could be made for either

01:24:29

camp, maybe, that you might find yourself in. As we see this play out in real time, by the way,

01:24:34

it tends to be very politicized. So the Democrats tend to be the ones just at home,

01:24:41

the Republicans are the ones saying the economy is going to tank. We're never going to recover

01:24:45

from this. I think that it's again more complicated than either one of those simple definitions of

01:24:51

this. So I am not proposing a right way to handle this. I'm glad I'm not the one having to make

01:24:59

the decisions here, because this is potentially a lot of people's blood on your hands.

01:25:03

But also, this book was written in 2007, I think. And so when they said this, it probably sounded

01:25:13

really, really good. And when I read this now, I'm like, this is really, really ridiculous.

01:25:18

Because how do you define that? How do you define where to make the trade-offs between

01:25:25

protecting the unfortunate and encouraging initiative and self-help? How do you make the

01:25:30

distinction between the trade-off of protecting people by telling them to stay home and

01:25:38

encouraging their initiative and self-help to provide for themselves and their families?

01:25:44

It's not simple. And so this statement jumped out to me, because this is in the second

01:25:51

to last section of the book, the last chapter here. This is kind of like the bow on all of their

01:25:55

arguments. Like, ah-ha, here we go. This is the solution, people. Let's just be rational.

01:26:00

And we're literally, as I read this in the middle of a situation, we're like, what does this even

01:26:04

mean? Good job, Mike. I think I have reached the end of my thoughts on this book as far as the

01:26:11

content goes. Do you have anything else you want to say about it? No, other than so many questions

01:26:17

that I'm going to have to wrestle with. Again, that's not a bad thing. That's not a judgment on

01:26:22

the book itself. Maybe that's the design of the book itself. Sure. But it's not going to give you

01:26:29

a simple five-step formula for saving an hour a day. Sure. Any action items out of this one?

01:26:36

I have none. Well, I started to write down the action item to adjust my 401k that I just went

01:26:41

and did it. So I guess you can say- So you really down, check it off. I started to write it down.

01:26:47

You know what? This is stupid. I can do this online. Let's just go do it. Sure. Makes sense.

01:26:52

So that technically was an action item at one point, but not anymore. It's already done.

01:26:57

All right. So I have none for action items, which brings us to style and rating. I suppose I get

01:27:05

to go first on this one. I can honestly say I did not expect to be reading a political book.

01:27:11

I did not know that's what we were picking up. I feel a little bit cheated on that because based

01:27:19

on descriptions and things that I was reading, I was expecting something that would,

01:27:24

I guess, help guide some personal decision-making. Not here's the way we should set up

01:27:32

social security. Like that is not what I was expecting at all. So I'm a bit frustrated by that.

01:27:40

I won't argue that their writing style is one that is set up pretty well, I feel. They would

01:27:49

share a lot of issues and struggles and why things don't work in the current scenario. And

01:27:55

then they would make recommendations after they've discussed all those about what nudges they

01:28:01

would recommend in order to prevent that from being a long term or a bigger problem and helping

01:28:06

solve it. So kudos to them on setting it up that way. I feel like that was done pretty well.

01:28:11

I simply disagree with them on so many things that it was difficult for me to be, I guess,

01:28:19

objective in going through the book because I had so many things that I was arguing with them on.

01:28:24

This was a case where I was more frustrated after reading this than I felt I got value from it.

01:28:32

So that made it a challenge. I can't say I'm going to recommend this one.

01:28:40

If you have it and you really want to read it and you want to see what I'm talking about,

01:28:44

sure, go for it. But probably not going to mention this one to very many, if anybody.

01:28:50

So this is something that I would just say just skip it is my opinion. As far as how to rate it,

01:28:58

it's a challenge because I feel like it was well written. I just didn't care for the content of it

01:29:04

overall. Like obviously there's some points in here that I thought were interesting.

01:29:08

The very beginning I felt was helpful, but the back four parts I struggled with with some

01:29:14

exceptions here and there. So how do you rate that when you just flat disagree with the content?

01:29:22

I think I'm going to put it at a three because I'm struggling where else to put it because I

01:29:28

don't feel like it is worth, in my opinion, higher than that. But I don't feel like I can go below

01:29:34

that. So I'm going to stick it in the middle of three somewhere in there. I suppose the middle

01:29:37

would be what? Two and a half? I'll stick it at three. Yeah, I'm done talking about it.

01:29:45

Three point on. There you go. I wish I had that graph. I'm curious how many books you have ever

01:29:53

rated below three. Let me see if I can find. Oh, that's right. Somebody charts this. I need to

01:30:00

pull that up. Here we go. I have below three. I have rated, what am I? I'm red on this chart.

01:30:10

I have rated four books below three. All right. Out of 90. You've done two.

01:30:16

That's true. That's true. Mine now go lower though. That's true. True that.

01:30:23

Yeah. I'm going to get down to the 1.5. What was the 1.5? That might have been Zen.

01:30:28

Oh, that's right. Yeah. So this book is, I don't know how to describe it. On one hand, it is

01:30:37

fascinating to me because like you, I disagree with a lot of stuff that's in here. But also,

01:30:42

I think that it was ambitious to take the approach that they did. I agree with you. It's not what I

01:30:50

expected. And if I were to recommend something to somebody along this topic, it would be thinking

01:30:56

fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman. In fact, the first section of the book, the humans and econs,

01:31:01

it felt a lot like that book. There were a lot of the same stories, a lot of the same principles

01:31:07

that were discussed as thinking fast and slow. So if that's what you're interested in, that book

01:31:13

gets into the mechanics of how these things are done. And I think it was not a terrible idea to

01:31:21

address some of these taboo topics that nobody wants to talk about. It does make you uncomfortable

01:31:28

when you read them because you don't have these discussions about whether you should be advertising

01:31:35

credit cards or how to encourage people to be responsible with saving the planet. And this is

01:31:44

not something that people like to talk about. And I actually enjoyed reading through these

01:31:51

because I liked the arguments that they made, even though I again, like you, I disagree with some of

01:31:58

their outcomes. And I feel like they oversimplified stuff. It was kind of refreshing to have a book

01:32:05

that was willing to tackle that stuff, as opposed to just talking about the mechanics and like,

01:32:10

well, it is playing out real time front of us right now in this scenario. But we're not going to

01:32:15

touch that with a 10 foot pole. Like that's typically what people would do a lot of this stuff. And

01:32:19

they're like, no, we're going to try and explain this the best that we can. Here's the arguments

01:32:23

to our understanding. And here's kind of the middle ground that we think people should do.

01:32:26

And again, I don't agree with a lot of their their solutions, but that's because of my biases. I get

01:32:32

that and everybody's going to have their their biases. So I don't think the the approach is is

01:32:38

necessarily a bad thing, but definitely not what we expected. And not something that I think really

01:32:47

impacts me, at least in my day to day, as I'm finished reading nudge. And I think about,

01:32:56

okay, what did this book do to me? I don't know, I feel kind of numb. Like, there wasn't a whole

01:33:03

lot of impact for me here, which is different than a lot of the other books that we read. Like,

01:33:07

I remember Victor Frankles, Man Search for Meaning, that was that there's no specific action items

01:33:12

from that in terms of like, this is what I'm going to do in my day to day productivity workflow.

01:33:17

You know, but I read that totally changed my perspective on things. This book didn't totally

01:33:21

change my perspective on things. It also didn't give me the little adjustments, which is really

01:33:25

what we look for in terms of of action items. It was simply an entertaining read, in my opinion.

01:33:32

By a couple of really smart professors who at times can sound a little bit like,

01:33:42

it can go the language that they use and the way that they describe things. You know, it can be a

01:33:48

little bit, I don't know, it's not difficult to read, but it's dry, I guess. I mean, this is

01:33:56

an economic book kind of. You mentioned political book, I think, while the libertarian paternalism

01:34:05

that they talk about could be classified as like a political system and the third way, whatever,

01:34:12

I really do think that at the heart of the arguments that they're making, they're trying to

01:34:17

just propose a better way to maximize the economic value for all the people that are involved in

01:34:25

the system. So if economics is your thing, then maybe this is worth a read, but otherwise,

01:34:32

I think I would probably stay away from it. I'm going to rate it at a 3.5, I think, just because

01:34:41

I respect the fact that they try to tackle a bunch of taboo topics, I think they did a pretty good

01:34:47

job of explaining the things. You know, if I were to write this, people would disagree with my

01:34:52

conclusions too, I understand that you're not going to please everybody. But kudos for trying.

01:34:57

It's a decent book, definitely not what we expected when we went into this, probably not the type of

01:35:04

thing that we would had we known exactly what this was. You know, the typical type of book for

01:35:10

Bookworm, but that's okay. I'm glad that I read it. Probably never going to read it again.

01:35:16

Yeah, I'd join you on that one. All right, I'm happy to put this one on the shelf.

01:35:21

What's our next pick, Mike?

01:35:23

The next book is my gap book from yesteryear, Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

01:35:28

This one I bought, I think, after I visited you, I saw it in the airport, but I didn't buy it in

01:35:38

the airport because books are expensive in the airport.

01:35:40

Nice. Yeah, and after Tiny Habits, we're going to do Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday.

01:35:48

Ryan Holiday, we did one of his books way back towards the beginning of Bookworm, but this is one

01:35:57

that came out just this past year. I've been seeing it make the rounds. People have been talking about

01:36:02

it. It's New York Times bestseller, that sort of thing. So I'm excited to go through this one.

01:36:09

I like this one's going to hit me at the right season in life. So yeah, Stillness is the key,

01:36:14

Ryan Holiday. I think we've talked about this already, but gap book, Mike.

01:36:18

Yep. I know I do not. Oh, no, I do not have any gap books. Stillness is the key. Actually,

01:36:23

was a gap book for me though. So I have read this one previously. I'm excited to go through it

01:36:26

again though. I really enjoyed it the first time. Spoiler alert.

01:36:30

Nice. Well, big kudos to all of you members who are listening in live. We really appreciate

01:36:36

you joining us as we do this a week prior to the release. So thanks for joining us on that. If

01:36:42

you're interested in becoming a member want to listen to these live chat with us, why as we

01:36:46

record these episodes, you can do that at bookworm.fm/membership. And it just helps us keep the show running.

01:36:55

And you get access to a few special things. We've talked about this numerous times, but the fun

01:37:00

one lately has been the live recordings and just joining us for those. So yeah, if you're

01:37:04

interested in supporting the show, bookworm.fm/membership. All right. So if you are reading along with us,

01:37:12

pick up Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.