Bookworm Transcripts

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All right, since we didn't have any action items from the last book that we read, I thought

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maybe we could check in with how the bullet journal stuff is going.

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Oh, fine.

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I like bullet journal stuff.

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I have mine right here.

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All right, so you're still doing the same method.

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Nothing really has changed or evolved.

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You made it through the first migration and you're pretty much sticking to the system,

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right?

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I am, I actually am approaching quickly onto the second migration.

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What is it today?

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Today is the 25th as we record this.

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And that means that in six days, I'll be doing a second migration.

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So by the time this episode releases, I'll be in the middle of my second one.

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So yeah, no, I think it's going well.

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Cool.

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Stick to it for now.

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Well, I will also stick to it, but not the bullet journal method.

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I'm afraid.

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I do officially saying you're done with quote unquote bullet journaling and just doing something

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on your own.

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What are you doing?

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I don't know.

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I guess I'm hacking my own bullet journal, which is not a bullet journal, but I've still

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got my fancy notebook that I am writing in every single day and time blocking and planning

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the night before and using as my daily log.

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And I've kind of gone through some testing.

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What am I going to do with all these things that I capture in here?

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And I actually made this great big diagram, which I can actually show you this.

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I sat down and I like tried to figure out where all the pieces fit in my work within

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the disk setup.

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Well, so this is kind of messy at the moment.

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It's gotten simpler since then, but basically thinking through like, okay, so I've always

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got the bullet journal with me.

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Where is that going to go?

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What types of things am I going to put in here?

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Yadda yadda yadda.

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And I think I've landed on the bullet journal is going to be the thing that I'm going to

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use to plan my day doing the time blocking, pick a couple of tasks and then log everything.

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But then once it gets logged there, it's going to go somewhere else.

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And for me, it's not going to be the moving them to the different monthly logs or to the

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different collections.

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The more I play with room research, that's going to end up being my collections because

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stuff just connects.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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Now for inside baseball, Mike and I are doing our first ever recording of this with video

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on.

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And Mike just showed me a picture of this.

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So can you drop a picture of that into the show notes?

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Yes, I will drop a picture in the show notes.

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I'll try to do over recording here.

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But yeah, it's basically just thinking through like the GTD style decision trees, kind of

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how it started.

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And then I realized as I started drawing this, I've got a bunch of different things, a bunch

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of different places.

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And it was more complicated than I needed it to be.

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I've been kind of neglecting my task manager anyways.

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And then I started digging into some of the cool stuff that people are using Rome for.

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I remember talking about scrum and wishing we could do something like that inside of

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OmniFocus.

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Right.

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And you hacked together some way to do it.

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Well, put like scripts together to force it into place.

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Yeah.

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So basically with Rome research, you can do like markdown style Kanban boards in the middle

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of it.

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And then the things that you put on the Kanban board are linked to pages, which could be

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your project pages.

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And it just, I think this is probably the thing that will work for me in terms of like

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the creative stuff, which is primarily what I do.

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It's definitely not something if you were trying to work with clients and manage like

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the emails that they send you and stuff.

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You're not sending those into Rome.

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But in terms of connecting ideas and creating stuff, it's pretty cool tool.

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I shared a video with you and I also tweeted it, but I can include it in the show notes

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also about how I take the, I'm just playing with it still, but basically what I wanted

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to build was like a cross reference library of all of the sermon notes that I've taken.

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So I took the sketch note that I export as a PDF, put it inside of Rome because it can

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handle attachments.

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And then I've got this nomenclature that I use, these boxes around the scriptures that

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are used.

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I create a list of all of those, link those to a specific block, which has that particular

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verse on it so that when I look at a page for my sermon notes, hopefully you follow along

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here, you click on the verse, it takes you to the verse page and it also shows you because

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of the way Rome is built, all of the other pages that have a link to that, or mention

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that verse.

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So it's basically my own cross reference library as I build this thing out over time.

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And I think there's a lot of cool ways to do that, not just with the sermon notes, but

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just like the ideas that we read about in these books.

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I know we've like one instance that comes to mind is the story of the Polger sisters,

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the chess champions.

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We've heard that multiple places, right?

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So I could just have that in the quick bullet list of the, the mind note file that I upload

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to Rome.

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So I still have my mind note file.

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That's where I'm taking everything.

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I've taken all my notes and that ends up being in the club as well.

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But then just real quick distilling that when I'm done with a book, five, ten minutes transfer

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the important bullets into Rome.

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And then I have those pages created where I can see all of the different books that we've

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read that have referenced that particular story.

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And seeing those connections kind of opens up some interesting doors sometimes.

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And I think the more that I build into this, the more valuable those cross connections

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are going to become, but still early days.

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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Wait, I still have yet to, can you just go sign up for an account with Rome or do you

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have to be approved?

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Well, or you get into it.

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Thomas Frank created a video on it and it blew up.

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He's got a couple million YouTube subscribers.

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Sure.

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So after that, they shut it down.

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But I believe they just led in a bunch of new people.

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You have to request access at the moment.

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And I'm sure they're going to start charging pretty soon.

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It's a pretty solid app.

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I mean, it's obviously still in beta and there's some rough edges.

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But it's pretty incredible once you get some stuff into it.

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And really it's garbage in garbage out though, which is why I think it took me a while to

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get on board the Rome train.

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As I was just toying with it, you really can't do that with Rome.

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You really have to have like a specific use case you're going to solve, which for me was

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like the cross reference library, the sermon notes, or be all in with it.

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And I kind of like dipped my toes in it for a while and wasn't getting a lot of the benefit.

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But I think I see it now.

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And the more I think about like the bullet journal, I definitely want to keep this piece.

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I know by the way, it's interesting.

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Some people have said they've like abandoned their bullet journal in favor of Rome.

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And I can see how that can happen.

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But I still am 100% behind the analog download of the bullet journal.

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So I think that's- We got you hooked.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So that piece isn't going anywhere.

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It's just where do things go from there?

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And instead of sending it to multiple places, it makes sense to send it to Rome.

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Because I don't have 100 different tasks that I have to do this week.

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And I don't have to make sure all those things get done.

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I've got a couple projects I've got to finish.

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So all those notes can just be with that project.

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And Rome makes it very easy then to connect that and manage the progress of that project

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via the Kanban board and stuff like that.

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It's pretty cool.

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Yeah, I was asking about getting into Rome just because I've debated just looking at

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it and exploring it.

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But at the same time, it's like, okay, the holes that it would fill are very, very small.

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Sure.

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This is not a thing that I'm looking for something huge to take over and replace.

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Because I have a lot of already well-developed note-taking systems that link to other notes

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the way I want already.

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So I know this is like your mission, Mike, to get me to try it.

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But I have a long ways to go at the moment between bullet journaling and I'm an Envy

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Ultra slash Envy Alt user.

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So that means I end up not understanding a lot of the detail that goes into Rome, like

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why people are super excited about it.

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But I could probably rant on that for a while.

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But won't.

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We will not do that.

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I can tell you, I mean, if you're just looking for an Evernote type thing, then don't even

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waste your time.

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Right.

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You are interested in trying out a Zetal cast and I think this is the right tool for the

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job.

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In fact, I think my gap book this time is going to be to go back and read how to take smart

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notes again.

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What?

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Now that there is a tool that I believe can actually accomplish this.

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Sure.

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Because I remember being skeptical the first time that we read through it like, well,

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this sounds too simple.

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Right, I'm scanning my bookshelf, which is right above my desk.

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And the way that I'm scanning for this is for the inverted spine.

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Yep.

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Because I remember wrong.

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Yep.

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Right.

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It's like, I located it and it's backwards.

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Yep.

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Okay.

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I can't tell if I'm excited for you or worried going through that one.

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Give me a couple of months and then you'll either be on board or send help.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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So bullet journaling, still a thing I'm doing.

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You're exploring Rome.

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We've talked about that the last couple times, but you've got something new that released

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here last Thursday, right?

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Yes.

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So we are talking about habits today.

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And one of the reasons that I picked this book as a gap book a long time ago was that

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we have been working on a course for habits for the sweet setup.

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So there is now a course called Simple Habits, which is six different videos on the concept

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of habits and how to track them, analog and the importance of all that, like the building

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blocks of habits, basically.

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And then there's a whole bunch of bonus stuff, which is interviews.

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Like I've got one in there, Sean's got one in there, Sean McCabe has one in there.

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I forget some of their people that haven't been there, but those are actually the cool

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part in my opinion is seeing like the ways that other people have hacked their habits

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and so there's some step-by-step videos, me talking in front of the camera, kind of walking

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through the building blocks.

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And then it's like, okay, so now you know what the components are.

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You can kind of use these to build your own habits.

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And then you get a whole bunch of examples of some really smart folks that are doing that.

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So it is at thesweetsetup.com/habits.

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And it is a $39 course.

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The videos themselves to go through it is probably only a couple of hours tops.

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So it's not something that you need to worry about investing a ton of time into.

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Sure.

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Which is probably good because the people who need to build good habits likely don't have

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them.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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Exactly.

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It's like, okay.

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Yeah.

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But like I said, it's not just the information that I think is cool about this.

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I think it's the examples of like the ways that people are doing this.

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It's like one quick example from the course, which I thought was brilliant and really

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got me thinking is this whole idea of habit stacking, right?

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We've talked about habit stacking before.

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We'll probably talk about it again today.

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But Sean's got an example of habit stacking in that course where he takes like every morning

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he gets up and he's written about this for the sweet setup, how he writes for an hour

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on his iPad before everybody else gets up.

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And he turns on the coffee, everything is set out, it's ready to go.

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And then he starts writing and he wanted to start taking vitamins.

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So he put the vitamins on top of the coffee.

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So that he physically has to touch the vitamins to open up the coffee to, you know, and just

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that little thing has caused him to take vitamins consistently, which is the exact type of thing

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that I've struggled with in the past where it's like, well, I know I should do that, but

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ah, it's too much work.

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I forget it.

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Right.

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And so it's those little things that I think that are valuable where you see like, oh,

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I could totally see how I could apply this thing that this person did in a different way.

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So yeah, that's the, that's the course.

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And I am pretty proud of how it turned out.

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Weirdly excited about this one, an email are kind of the things that I get excited

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because I just want most people are like, oh, no.

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Yeah, I feel like we have a thing for habits when I was scanning my shelves for how to take

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smart notes.

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I was looking at like all the behavior modification type books that we've done for bookworms.

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Like how many habits books have we covered like point blank habits or disciplines or

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yes, there might be another one.

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Yep.

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So here's another one today.

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Ready set go.

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All right.

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So yeah, today's book is Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

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And this was something that I saw in the airport actually when I went to visit you, which seems

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like any eternity ago.

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It does feel like it was a long time ago.

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It wasn't that long though.

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It wasn't.

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It really wasn't.

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No, but yeah.

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So I saw it in the airport and my God, it looks like an interesting cover.

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And then I dug into it a little bit, realized that BJ Fogg is the person who James Clear credits

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with a lot of the research behind atomic habits and is basically the guy behind all of the

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habits.

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It sounds like he's been doing this for a really long time and he's done behavioral design

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with clients for a long time.

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But he was kind of pushed to write this book a couple of years ago.

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Right.

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And he's got some stories beginning in the end that kind of talk about that.

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But the interesting part of this book, in my opinion, is not those stories.

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It is the actual content, which gets into the mechanics of habits in maybe the best way

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that I have ever seen.

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What was your initial impression?

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This versus power of habit and atomic habits.

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How would you rate those three in Europe?

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I'm not guessing for like the star ratings, whatever, but like if you were to recommend

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one book on habits, is it this one?

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Is it James Clear?

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Is it power of habit?

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Oh, that's a tough one.

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Because atomic habits clicked with the way my brain operates.

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That's a so that the person you're talking to confesses that they're really excited about

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habits and they really want to start building new habits.

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And you've got these three books in your hands.

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Which one are you handing them?

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Personally, I'm probably going to throw them atomic habits.

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Really?

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Okay.

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I think if you want to understand the technical details of it, I think this is the one, tiny

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habits is the one to go to.

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Sure.

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But the general person, I feel like, would get a better overview with atomic habits.

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That might be my bent and bias towards James Clear coming out.

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Because I followed him for a long time.

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Yep.

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And I feel like I have a tendency to recommend him and his stuff a lot.

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So that might be part of that.

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So I purely logical rationale.

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This one's probably the one I should share.

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But I think my tendency would be towards atomic habits.

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But again, even atomic habits, tiny changes, remarkable results.

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Like he's even got the homage paid to tiny habits in his subtitle.

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So if you follow that, that would mean you probably should look at tiny habits first.

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Just my thought.

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Yeah.

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So what brought that on is I was talking to my dad.

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And he saw that I was reading this book and he thought it was interesting.

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And he made the comment that atomic habits was too militaristic.

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And he said he defined it as the atomic habits assumes that you have the willpower and the

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self control to follow through and do the habits.

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And I thought that was an interesting point.

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So this one kind of talks about all of the factors that are played that produce the behaviors.

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And the way that he describes them shows that it's kind of like an equation or a formula

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that you can modify.

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It's not just a did it work or did it not work and try something else, which is kind

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of where I thought atomic habits landed.

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For me, the progression is the power of habit looking at that Q routine reward and being

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like, that's not right.

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There's something else missing there.

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James Clear interjecting the fourth step where he calls it the craving, I believe, after

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the queue.

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So you have the desire to do something and being like, okay, that makes more sense.

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And then he gets into like the habit stacking and things like that.

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And at that point of that book, I have to admit that I was like, okay, this is getting

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a little too complicated.

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And then this book, I start reading this and he's got the fog behavior model.

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Maybe this is the place to jump into this first chapter here on the elements of behavior.

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This fog behavior model where B equals MAP and he's got this graph of motivation and

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ability and then this action line.

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So behavior basically equals motivation times ability times prompt.

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So the prompt is the queue and this was the thing I had against the Charles Duhig version

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is the queue doesn't automatically, that prompt doesn't automatically mean that this

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routine is going to happen.

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And then you've got the motivation and the ability, these are two factors and then the

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prompt basically being the thing that, depending on where that is, that can trigger the whole

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thing.

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And this model, this harkens back to my college economics class in some ways.

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And that's why I thought, you know, when I saw this, it's like, oh, I get it now.

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But I do confess that when I got done reading this first chapter, I was like, why didn't

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anybody ever tell me this before?

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Like I feel like I've read all the stuff on this and this feels new.

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Yes, yes.

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Yeah, I was kind of flipping through, I grabbed the other two books, the Power of Habit and

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Atomic Habits and was just kind of flipping through them.

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You know, all of these habit books, they want to build these charts with the loop

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syndrome and they want to show how like the queue routine reward piece from the Power

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of Habit and, you know, James throws in a fourth element to that.

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But I guess if you start looking at those using this B equals map formula from BJ Fogg,

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like, yes, he has another formula and it does have a cycle to it when he gets later on.

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He explains that.

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But I think this is probably easier to understand as I'm thinking through those three setups.

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This one's probably easiest to understand as far as the different elements that go into

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a habit as opposed to the habit itself.

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Sure.

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You get the difference there.

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So, as opposed to like queue routine reward, that's what makes up a habit.

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This is more about how to get yourself to do those behaviors which then can become habits.

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Exactly.

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And that's the thing that was always missing, I think, with the Charles Duhigg thing, which

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is why that particular habit loop never felt right to me.

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It's like, okay, that habit loop, once you start it, will keep going, but you got to

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start it somewhere in the place to obviously start it is the queue.

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So your brain naturally, maybe this is just the way I think and it's the fault is mine,

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not Charles Duhigg's, but it's like, okay, if you can control the queue, then you're

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good.

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Or if you can change that one under my thumb, I'll be happy.

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Yeah, or you already have the queue or something you can do about it.

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So all you gotta do is change the routine.

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And then I don't know, just didn't seem that simple.

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So when this, when he explained it in this book, I felt like this gave you, this gave

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me anyways, when I read it, a lot more hope and a lot, like a greater sense of control

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over the process, because there's more factors at play here.

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And you can actually tackle any one of these, like this behavior, equaling, motivation,

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ability prompt.

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Like, if you were to take this graph, and he has a bunch of different examples of this

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in the book itself, there's a lot of these visuals, which are really cool.

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But if you are having trouble following through and doing an activity that you want to create

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or stopping an activity that you want to eliminate, for example, you can locate where

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that would be on this two dimensional graph.

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And then if the thing is not happening, you realize very quickly, well, you can either

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increase your ability to do this thing, or you can increase your motivation to do this

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thing to get that onto the right side of that action line.

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And there's no one specific thing that is going to make the difference in every single

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case, which I think is actually very freeing.

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And it could seem like that's more complicated, like that's a bunch more stuff to figure out.

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But this whole book is basically about dissecting your current habits and recognizing what's

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going on there.

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And he's got a bunch of different exercises, the swarm of behaviors, all that type of stuff

00:22:00

that helps you identify, like the things that are creating the result that you're getting

00:22:06

and then I think time will tell, I guess.

00:22:09

But based on the stories that he shares, I feel like those types of things that he outlines

00:22:14

in this book are much more useful than the straight up formulas that you get in the others.

00:22:21

I can't help but think like the his particular behavior model is B equals MAP.

00:22:28

So behavior equals motivation, ability and prompt.

00:22:32

And in my head, I feel like this one's going like this particular formula is likely to

00:22:37

stick longer only because I'm used to looking at bit map images and I can't help but see

00:22:43

B map.

00:22:44

I see bit map in my head every time I see B equals map.

00:22:47

So just that, I don't think that's intentional at all.

00:22:51

But I might actually remember this one better this way.

00:22:54

Yep, yeah, and the way that these work, I mean, it's not rocket science.

00:23:02

This book is probably longer than it would have needed to be.

00:23:07

But I don't think it's too long to be honest.

00:23:09

Like he's attacking the same concepts from different angles.

00:23:13

But it does feel like the different chapters that we're going to cover here, they are appropriate.

00:23:18

But even in this first section, he's talking about the troubleshooting of behavior and how

00:23:23

you shouldn't start with the motivation.

00:23:25

You should check and see if there's a prompt first of all.

00:23:28

And then you should see if you have the ability to do the thing.

00:23:30

And then if those things are present, then you see if the motivation is there.

00:23:36

And that can be troubleshooting a behavior that you want to do that you're not doing,

00:23:40

like starting a journaling habit or whatever, or it could be reverse engineered if it's

00:23:44

a negative habit that you want to break, which he has issues with that word break,

00:23:48

which we'll get into here.

00:23:50

This would be a good spot to actually go into that second chapter on motivation.

00:23:55

And the subtitle here is focus on matching.

00:23:58

You have anything else you want to say about the first chapter?

00:24:00

No, I don't think so.

00:24:01

I keep thinking through things to talk about that revolve going into the next three chapters.

00:24:06

So I'm good with that.

00:24:08

Okay.

00:24:09

So this next chapter then is talking about the motivation part of the, what's the term

00:24:15

for this graph?

00:24:16

I mean, I know it's the behavior model, but there's got to be a better way to describe

00:24:20

it.

00:24:21

I'll just use that for now for the fog behavior model.

00:24:22

So when I'm saying the fog behavior model, I'm talking about motivation, ability, and

00:24:26

then the action line.

00:24:28

And then he's got a million different versions of this to illustrate examples that he's talking

00:24:32

about.

00:24:33

But in this particular one, I thought it was cool where he shows that there are conflicting

00:24:38

motivations.

00:24:39

And later on in the book, he talks about some of these being like hope versus fear.

00:24:45

And recognizing this, I think, is really important.

00:24:47

So in this particular graph, the motivation is on the Y axis.

00:24:52

So the motivation arrows are pushing up from the bottom and down from the top.

00:24:57

And he's got a smiley face.

00:24:59

Well, actually, it's just a face.

00:25:00

He's not smiling and locating that particular point on the graph.

00:25:06

And then it's, it's location as based in relation to the action line determines whether

00:25:11

it's, it's happening.

00:25:12

So obviously the takeaway here is that the motivation can be the trigger between you

00:25:21

following through with the activity or not following through with the activity.

00:25:24

But he also talks about how it's unreliable in this particular section.

00:25:30

I thought it was interesting how he talks about the difference between aspirations, outcomes,

00:25:34

and desires.

00:25:36

I thought this was the best description for why I don't like goals that I've found so

00:25:43

far.

00:25:44

Yes.

00:25:45

He describes.

00:25:46

100%.

00:25:47

He describes goals as aspirations and outcomes, which outcomes are measurable achievements,

00:25:52

aspirations are abstract desires.

00:25:54

But really what matters according to this fog behavior, behavioral model is the behaviors,

00:26:00

which is something that you can do right now or at another point in time.

00:26:05

I feel like understanding that is a key piece going forward.

00:26:08

Yeah.

00:26:09

I was looking at some of my notes for this particular book, which are in my bullet journal.

00:26:16

Happy to say it's page 12, if you want to know.

00:26:21

And I have a note here to start using the term aspirations instead of goals.

00:26:27

So if I have an action item from this particular book at the beginning, because I actually didn't

00:26:32

write any action items down on this, and this is the perfect book for action items, I should

00:26:38

say that.

00:26:40

It's explaining how to do the right action and behavior.

00:26:44

It's just detailing it.

00:26:46

The whole book is about that, and yet I didn't put anything down.

00:26:49

So yes, the term aspirations instead of goals, that just made a lot more sense to me because

00:26:54

I hate the term goals anymore.

00:26:55

So having something that would just be, this is something I want to get to, that made so

00:27:01

much more sense to me.

00:27:02

I like it.

00:27:03

Sure.

00:27:04

Well, regarding action items, I don't have anything specific either, but I will say that

00:27:08

as I was thinking about this yesterday, putting together this outline, I realized that my

00:27:12

action item is simply going to be rethinking my morning and evening routines, which sounds

00:27:19

like a total cop out action item because I've done it before.

00:27:22

But I feel like I am better armed with the information now to really make this stuff stick.

00:27:27

I've got the analog tracking of my habits in the back of my bullet journal, and I'm recognizing

00:27:34

that there are some that I am having some trouble with and things that I want to implement

00:27:39

on a regular basis.

00:27:40

So I'm going to take this approach and he's got the seven steps in the behavior design.

00:27:45

I'm going to basically kind of go through this with my different habits.

00:27:50

And I don't think that next time we'll be able to say, yes, these have been successful.

00:27:54

Maybe I'll be blown away by how easy they are.

00:27:56

Now that I understand the different components and I analyze this stuff under a microscope,

00:28:01

but I don't expect that.

00:28:03

What I do expect is that thinking about these things and just identifying what are the little

00:28:09

behaviors I can do to make these easier to follow through with, that's going to have

00:28:13

a positive effect.

00:28:14

Is there a specific piece of those routines that you've been struggling with you'd be

00:28:18

willing to talk about?

00:28:19

Well, there's a couple things that are just rock solid.

00:28:22

And that is the Bible reading in the morning, the prayer every day, stretching and the ones

00:28:32

that are a little bit more difficult for me are journaling at the end of the day using

00:28:38

the daily reflection template inside a day one.

00:28:39

I've been pretty good with that one, but it's not 100% and I just want to figure out why

00:28:46

that is difficult for me to do.

00:28:48

Like I get the notification from day one.

00:28:50

It's time to journal nine o'clock.

00:28:51

I tap it, goes to the reflection template, but for whatever reason, when I get that notification,

00:28:56

I find myself resisting it and I want to think about why because I confess this is an important

00:29:02

thing for me.

00:29:03

So I have to have to figure that part out.

00:29:05

The other thing I really want to think through, I have an inversion table in my bedroom for

00:29:11

crying out loud, but I can't follow through and use it for a couple of minutes every day.

00:29:17

I do my stretches, no problem, which happened three feet from the inversion table.

00:29:23

But for whatever reason, it's like, okay, I got to start my day and I just completely

00:29:27

skip the stretching with the inversion table, which I know impacts me.

00:29:32

If I skip it a couple days in a row, then I do start to have some neck and some back

00:29:36

pain.

00:29:37

It's not major.

00:29:38

The stretching deals with a lot of the sciatica stuff that I was experiencing every once in

00:29:43

a while, so it just doesn't hurt enough, I guess, for it to stick.

00:29:48

And I want to figure out how I can make that a part of the morning routine.

00:29:53

This is not related to this particular thing, really, but I recently, it was my wife's birthday

00:30:00

this past Friday.

00:30:01

It's partially why we didn't record on Friday.

00:30:05

The main present I gave her was a weighted blanket.

00:30:08

Yes.

00:30:09

She's been using that the last few nights and it's just kind of tentatively seeing what

00:30:14

the results are going to be from that.

00:30:16

It's been kind of an interesting thing for her.

00:30:18

Again, I have no idea how that's related, just a thing I needed to get off my chest.

00:30:21

#ADD.

00:30:23

We also have a weighted blanket on our bed and we absolutely love it.

00:30:29

I think, as we're looking at where am I at on this process?

00:30:35

Again, as I'm looking at this particular aspect, one of the things he talks about in this

00:30:43

section is the motivation monkey and how this monkey has a tendency to convince you that

00:30:53

you can do all the hard things at the beginning, which is true.

00:30:59

Again, #ADD.

00:31:01

I can start new things every day of the week and be just fine.

00:31:04

It does not bother me.

00:31:05

That stresses some people out.

00:31:06

I was like, "Oh, it's just another day for me."

00:31:11

It's very common if you've worked with or around me, you know that that has a tendency

00:31:16

to wane after a short period and then I move on to something else.

00:31:21

One of the things that Joe has to figure out is how to get things to last longer as opposed

00:31:26

to allowing this monkey brain to just jump from thing to thing, which was when I got to

00:31:31

this particular section.

00:31:33

This was one of the pieces that I was fairly excited about reading through, was just giving

00:31:38

terminology for that.

00:31:41

I say that because I haven't always had a good way to say, "I jump from new thing to

00:31:47

new thing, but why?

00:31:50

Why don't I stick to something for a long period?"

00:31:56

If I have any major takeaway here, it would be to try to figure out why I or how I could

00:32:03

eliminate some of that.

00:32:05

I think there's a lot of potential with it, but I also don't know all the answers there.

00:32:10

But I do think this was an interesting piece to work through because I haven't really thought

00:32:16

about it.

00:32:17

The whole peaks and valleys of motivation and should you do something about that?

00:32:24

Should you take advantage of it?

00:32:25

Is it a bad thing?

00:32:26

He actually says it's a good thing in a lot of ways.

00:32:29

It's very good to have that big spike of motivation at the very beginning when you first buy a

00:32:35

house.

00:32:36

That was one of the examples he gave in that case.

00:32:39

But you have to be aware that it is going to trail off and you have to know what to do

00:32:44

about it.

00:32:45

You absolutely need to know what to do about it.

00:32:47

This is, I think, one of the things that was an aha moment for me in this chapter and one

00:32:53

of the things that gives you a little bit of more understanding and therefore a little

00:32:57

bit more hope is this motivation wave that's tied with the motivation monkey that you were

00:33:02

talking about.

00:33:04

Combined with the common trap being that we overestimate our future motivation.

00:33:08

So the motivation wave comes and basically you can convince yourself to do something

00:33:12

once.

00:33:13

And then you wonder why it doesn't stick.

00:33:15

And that's because you had this high point in your motivation.

00:33:18

And then after that it died off and of course if you look at it scientifically according

00:33:23

to this model you aren't able to sustain it.

00:33:26

But you just beat yourself up because like what's wrong with me?

00:33:29

I don't have any self control or willpower.

00:33:34

So the steps in this behavior design process by the way, he only talks about a couple of

00:33:38

them in this particular chapter.

00:33:40

He builds up the rest throughout the book but I jotted down all seven of these.

00:33:44

This is a key part to the book.

00:33:46

Step one is to clarify the aspirations.

00:33:48

Step two is to explore the behavior options.

00:33:50

Step three is to match with specific behaviors.

00:33:53

Step four is to start tiny.

00:33:55

Step five is to find a good prompt.

00:33:56

Step six is to celebrate success.

00:33:58

Step seven is to troubleshoot, iterate and expand.

00:34:01

So I know that's a lot there and probably doesn't even make sense the first time that

00:34:05

you hear this which is why he reveals it piece by piece over the rest of the book.

00:34:10

That part by the way was a little bit annoying because I jotted down these three pieces and

00:34:13

then like a couple of every chapter later and like, "Oh, I got to go back and add one

00:34:16

more there because I want these together."

00:34:19

He's just taking his...

00:34:20

This is why you use paper and you just make a separate list for them and you don't have

00:34:25

to worry about that much.

00:34:26

Well, it's no big deal.

00:34:27

They are in a list but it was annoying to me because he just takes his visual and he

00:34:32

adds another step as he goes.

00:34:35

But having to go back to things over and over again was an interesting mechanic I guess

00:34:40

is the best way to describe it.

00:34:42

We don't typically see when reading these books.

00:34:45

Usually people will say, "Well, here's the whole seven step process or we're going to

00:34:48

talk about all these."

00:34:49

But he just gave you three and just like all the other pictures and models, they look

00:34:54

complete at that point in the book.

00:34:56

So you jot those down and like, "Okay, moving on to the next thing."

00:34:59

He just comes back and he keeps adding to that which I think is actually a pretty effective

00:35:02

way of doing it.

00:35:05

He also has a built-in review because when you add step four, you're also seeing step

00:35:09

one, step two, step three and et cetera as you progress through the book.

00:35:13

So by the end of this, you feel like you've seen this a bunch of times already.

00:35:18

Which is helpful.

00:35:19

The one piece of that whole process that really annoyed me and it was purely in my brain.

00:35:23

It was not his fault at all.

00:35:26

But I couldn't help but seeing one of those PowerPoint presentations where the thing slides

00:35:30

in from the left and then the next one slides in from the left and they read it to you and

00:35:34

then it slides in and they read it to you.

00:35:36

That's what I had going through my head whenever I'd see those.

00:35:38

Which is not what he, it doesn't actually look like that somehow I just connected that.

00:35:43

It drove me nuts.

00:35:44

This is not BJ's fault.

00:35:46

This is totally my fault.

00:35:49

Right.

00:35:50

I couldn't help but see that I kept wanting, I really wanted him to show all of those and

00:35:56

then just highlight the one he's talking about so you can see the whole thing.

00:36:00

Sure.

00:36:01

Like towards the beginning because once I realized he was just adding to it after about the third

00:36:05

one then I just wanted to know what the rest of them were and I did something I haven't

00:36:10

done in a long time.

00:36:11

Mike skipped ahead until I found the last one.

00:36:14

I did the same thing and I read all of the things and then I went back and finished reading

00:36:19

through it.

00:36:20

I'm not somebody who does this but it frustrated me enough that that's what I did in this case.

00:36:25

Yeah after step five I did the same thing.

00:36:27

Step four is like I got to go back to find that spot and then step five is like oh you

00:36:30

got to be good.

00:36:31

Let's get this over with.

00:36:32

I'm just a bit.

00:36:33

Thanks for that.

00:36:34

Thanks for making me feel better.

00:36:36

Yep.

00:36:37

Alright so the next chapter is on ability and this is really where he's talking about the

00:36:43

power of the tiny habits, the small wins and he's got this concept in this ability chapter

00:36:50

of the ability chain which I thought was interesting.

00:36:55

It's basically a diagram of five interlinking chain links and the five factors here are

00:37:02

do you have enough time to do the behavior, do you have enough money to do the behavior,

00:37:05

are you physically capable of doing the behavior, does the behavior require a lot of

00:37:09

creative or mental energy and does the behavior fit into your current routine or does it require

00:37:13

you to make adjustments.

00:37:15

I never thought about this as a chain.

00:37:17

I probably even with those descriptions would not have landed on the analogy of the chain

00:37:24

but I think this is effective because basically if any one of these is broken then the strength

00:37:29

of the chain is gone and the habit fails.

00:37:33

Yeah I like this whole visual of the links because then it makes it, I mean it makes

00:37:38

perfect sense.

00:37:39

If you break any one of those pieces the whole thing falls apart and the behavior doesn't

00:37:45

happen.

00:37:46

Yep.

00:37:47

So you can read that in a couple different ways.

00:37:49

You can take all of these aspects of the ability chain and make sure that you do have

00:37:55

them to make sure that you have the ability to do something or you can take advantage

00:38:00

of this and if you have a bad habit that you're trying to break you can disable one of those.

00:38:06

Yep.

00:38:07

Create a problem in the chain and then in theory you don't do it anymore.

00:38:12

Exactly.

00:38:13

You do do it even though you tried to break it that means you didn't actually break it.

00:38:16

Right which again we'll talk about the concept of breaking a little bit later because he

00:38:20

specifically calls that out in a later chapter.

00:38:24

Yep.

00:38:25

I do like, yeah a lot of this stuff you can tell he really knows this stuff and he talks

00:38:31

about it very intelligently and addresses a lot of common issues, I shouldn't say common,

00:38:39

issues, unresolved issues in my head that I didn't know I had towards the topic of habits

00:38:45

if that makes any sense.

00:38:46

He answered all the questions that I didn't know I had.

00:38:50

Yep.

00:38:51

Yep.

00:38:52

He did a good job of that too.

00:38:54

I think I didn't have anything major with this whole chapter of ability that I feel was

00:39:01

groundbreaking other than just being aware that the option or the talents or the skills

00:39:13

or the opportunity to do a behavior is an important aspect in the process.

00:39:20

Yep.

00:39:21

He does spell out early on in the book that there are no behaviors that fall outside this

00:39:29

formula.

00:39:30

Right.

00:39:31

Just none.

00:39:33

When you start evaluating each and every behavior that you do throughout a day if you

00:39:37

do that, I didn't because it started to scare me after a little while.

00:39:41

But whenever you do that you realize, yeah there are a lot of times when the ability to

00:39:47

do something doesn't exist or it does exist and you didn't realize it and all it takes

00:39:53

is a little, all it takes is a little tiny cue to set that whole behavior off.

00:40:01

Yeah.

00:40:02

The two big things I think for takeaways from this chapter are the two questions that he

00:40:07

poses as the discover question and the breakthrough question.

00:40:11

The discover question is what is making this behavior hard to do and then armed with the

00:40:16

ability chain that he identified, you can go through those different steps and figure

00:40:21

out what is the thing that's making it hard and vice versa.

00:40:24

The breakthrough question is how can I make this behavior easier to do?

00:40:29

This is the type of thing that I want to apply to my morning and evening routines.

00:40:33

I feel like going through this process is going to give me some aha moments but I haven't

00:40:37

done it yet.

00:40:38

Yeah.

00:40:39

I can't say that I've got a lot of behaviors that I'm trying to change right now mostly

00:40:45

because so much of my life is dictated for me that I don't have a lot of the options

00:40:52

to change things.

00:40:54

Thanks coronavirus.

00:40:58

There are some things that I want to do but it's just not, I don't have the ability.

00:41:04

If we use this terminology, the time for it doesn't exist.

00:41:09

I have been able to reserve time for things like bookworm, like what we're doing now and

00:41:16

a couple other small things like running sound for a band and live streams for them.

00:41:20

I've been able to do some nights things but the stuff in the morning that I feel like

00:41:26

I want to do more of just nope.

00:41:30

I have to get two setups for the rest of my day and now that in the state of Minnesota

00:41:38

things are starting to open up so that actually gets worse for me now because all the stuff

00:41:44

I'm doing for live streaming still needs to happen and we're going to bring people to

00:41:50

the building now.

00:41:56

That's the best term I have for that.

00:42:00

That's what's about to happen this week.

00:42:01

So thankfully today is Memorial Day and I don't have to do it today.

00:42:05

We'll start tomorrow.

00:42:07

Alright.

00:42:08

The other thing I'll call out from this section before we move on to the next one is that

00:42:14

if a behavior frustrates you, he says it will not become a habit.

00:42:18

There are behaviors that frustrate me and my lack of consistency when it comes to certain

00:42:26

habits is frustrating to me.

00:42:29

So that's kind of what I'm looking for when I apply this stuff is to how do I kind of reverse

00:42:34

engineer that stuff and hack that stuff because at the beginning he talks about how the behaviors

00:42:40

that you have, that's not really your fault.

00:42:44

You are not your behavior.

00:42:46

You're not a bad person because you have trouble meditating or you have trouble writing a new

00:42:51

journal at the end of the day.

00:42:55

The results that you're getting are because of the systems that are at place in your life

00:42:58

and it's not all tied to the motivation.

00:43:00

He also mentions that at the beginning that most people assume they just don't have the

00:43:03

motivation to do what needs to be done.

00:43:05

And he kind of explains that it's a bigger, bigger issue there, which is why he's talking

00:43:10

about his individual pieces.

00:43:11

But yeah, I would say, yeah, just to piggyback off of that, that's a thing that I think is

00:43:18

important here because it's very easy to shame yourself with all of this.

00:43:24

This is something I do all the time, you know, with my inattention on things.

00:43:29

I forget things all the time and I am behind on things pretty much constantly.

00:43:35

So that means it's common for me to be frustrated with myself because I didn't do something.

00:43:41

That's a normal daily experience in a lot of cases.

00:43:45

So it's okay to miss.

00:43:50

That's important, I think, is you can't continue to beat yourself up if you have missed things.

00:43:57

It's okay, just reevaluate and try again the next time.

00:44:01

Like to me, that's the important part here.

00:44:03

Yeah, and that actually leads perfectly into the next chapter, which chapter four is on

00:44:07

prompts, the power of after.

00:44:10

And he mentions in this chapter that no behavior happens without a prompt.

00:44:15

And if you were to dissect a lot of the things that you would typically get upset at yourself

00:44:22

for failing to do, a lot of it has to do with maybe choosing the wrong type of prompt,

00:44:27

an unreliable prompt, let's say.

00:44:30

He mentions that there's three types of prompts here, person prompts, which are in those are

00:44:35

the ones that are unreliable.

00:44:37

That's seeing a person.

00:44:39

Then there's context prompts, which are anything in your environment that cues you to take action,

00:44:43

like a phone notification.

00:44:45

And then there's action prompts, which is a behavior that you already do that can remind

00:44:49

you about a new habit.

00:44:51

And this is where like the coffee vitamins thing, I think is really powerful.

00:44:55

I think this is the one that has the most potential for me.

00:45:01

I don't do all that great with the context prompts as mentioned by my getting the day

00:45:08

one notification and just dismissing it a lot of times.

00:45:12

Good job, Mike.

00:45:13

Yeah.

00:45:14

So I want to reconsider how I can build in these action prompts, the things that I'm

00:45:20

going to be doing anyways and kind of side tangent here.

00:45:24

This is the thing that concerns me the most about the bullet journal system is, yeah,

00:45:31

you've got a great way to log everything and put it in the right place.

00:45:34

And you look at your, you do all your migrations and your monthly logs get transferred over

00:45:39

to your daily logs, but it just feels like because that relies on me, it's going to fail

00:45:45

at some point.

00:45:47

Like I need some sort of computer in the background telling me the important stuff that I'm forgetting,

00:45:53

but also the notifications don't work.

00:45:56

So what does that, that look like?

00:45:58

Rome has this concept of like these daily pages where you can actually do test management

00:46:02

inside of Rome.

00:46:03

I'm not convinced that that's going to be 100% what I'm going to be doing, but.

00:46:08

Not exactly a brilliant idea.

00:46:09

In terms of the project pages and stuff like that, I think it makes a lot of sense.

00:46:14

But I don't want to, you know, when I opened it up at the beginning of my work day, see

00:46:19

the recurring tasks to take the garbage out at the end of the day.

00:46:23

You know, that's the piece that doesn't really fit right for me.

00:46:27

But I do think that Rome specific that I know we talked about at the beginning, but kind

00:46:31

of the reason I think this might work for me is because of this concept of the action

00:46:35

prompts.

00:46:36

I am always working on my computer.

00:46:39

And so if Rome is open when I am on my computer, why not have everything that I need for the

00:46:44

day right there in front of me, have all the things interconnected.

00:46:47

I can find what I need.

00:46:48

I can get the new ideas when I need them.

00:46:50

You know, that is appealing to me, but it's based on this shift from the context prompts

00:46:58

to the action prompts.

00:47:00

And I don't know 100% know what this looks like in my life right now.

00:47:03

I need to spend some time thinking about this and identifying what are the action prompts

00:47:06

that are already there and then leveraging those to build the new habits and the things

00:47:10

that I want to do.

00:47:12

But that's kind of where the action item comes in.

00:47:15

Sure.

00:47:16

This is interesting to me because as I was going through like people context action prompts,

00:47:23

far and away the most successful prompts I have are context prompts.

00:47:28

Okay.

00:47:29

100%.

00:47:30

Like that's where I land.

00:47:32

And it's I think it's because if it shows up on my phone, like an alert of some kind,

00:47:40

I am much more inclined to either ignore it or just clear it to get it to go away, even

00:47:48

though I didn't actually read it in a lot of cases.

00:47:52

Like I have a tendency to do that, which is bad because it means I miss text messages.

00:47:56

I miss who calls I miss a lot of stuff.

00:47:59

But I will rarely miss making bread when we need it because as soon as we get low on

00:48:10

bread, I take my sourdough starter and set it on the kitchen island the night before

00:48:15

because the first thing I'll see when I go to the kitchen in the morning is that sourdough

00:48:19

starter sitting on the kitchen island, which then like, Oh, I need to do that.

00:48:23

And immediately I'll make, you know, start the process.

00:48:27

But I always leave the thing of bread wherever I need it so that I remember whenever I get

00:48:33

to those spots, I take care of it.

00:48:35

I do that a lot, even with reading my book, you know, in this case reading tiny, tiny

00:48:41

habits, I'll set it on the couch in our living room the night before.

00:48:47

So that way, whenever I come downstairs in the morning, it's the first place I go because

00:48:50

it's where the dog sleeps and I want to go pet the dog in the morning.

00:48:52

So my book is sitting there.

00:48:53

It's like, Oh yeah, I should read this morning.

00:48:56

Wait, how many years have we been reading books?

00:48:58

And I still have to have this silly prompt in the morning to help me make sure that I

00:49:04

follow through on that.

00:49:06

So these, these context prompts are huge for me.

00:49:09

So it's interesting to me that they don't work for you.

00:49:11

It feels to me like that would be the brilliant thing to do.

00:49:13

But well, they do work, but not all context prompts are created equal.

00:49:18

And that's the interesting thing to me.

00:49:20

He's got a tiny habits recipe.

00:49:22

He calls it in this chapter where you've got an anchor moment and that anchor moment,

00:49:28

I think is triggered by one of these prompts, but you have to figure out what are the prompts

00:49:32

that are going to work for you in that specific context or that context refers to a type of

00:49:39

prompt.

00:49:40

So maybe that's a bad word choice there, but given your environment, you have to have the

00:49:44

right prompt to trigger the thing.

00:49:46

And then after the anchor moment, you've got the tiny behavior.

00:49:48

And then after that, you've got a celebration.

00:49:52

So this, another, another concept in this chapter is this behavior sequencing where you're deciding

00:49:57

what action should come after the current one.

00:49:59

And he says that reliable habits are simply coding things in the correct order.

00:50:05

So the visual prompt, visual context prompt of the book, that's going to work in one,

00:50:14

one scenario, but just seeing something and having it be, oh yeah, I've got to do this

00:50:20

and then you follow through and take action on that in a different scenario is probably

00:50:24

not going to work.

00:50:26

So I think this is a little bit more complicated, but this is where I want to spend some time

00:50:31

and identify this stuff.

00:50:32

Apparently my mind is a complex forest that must be what navigated through.

00:50:38

I don't know.

00:50:40

That doesn't happen.

00:50:41

I mean, the more I got into this book, the more I was able to see some of the things that

00:50:48

didn't work that I was relying on.

00:50:51

And that was kind of cool to see because, again, it kind of gave me some hope where like somebody

00:50:57

told me this one time, it sounded really good.

00:51:00

I thought it made sense.

00:51:01

So I tried it.

00:51:02

It doesn't work for me.

00:51:03

What's wrong with me?

00:51:04

You know, and this is kind of like, well, no, it's not that there's anything wrong with

00:51:07

you.

00:51:08

It's just that you tried this particular context prompt.

00:51:11

Maybe you need to try a different action prompt to trigger this behavior or whatever.

00:51:16

And so I want to go through the exercises.

00:51:18

Every single one of these chapters has different exercises at the end of it.

00:51:23

And I want to go through those and rethink all through all the different pieces.

00:51:28

Basically what I did when I and I shared this in the chat for the people who are listening

00:51:33

live, the diagram of like all the different pieces of the productivity system, which again,

00:51:38

like that's an older one.

00:51:39

It's going to be a little bit simpler than that.

00:51:41

But just doing that exercise brought a lot of clarity to me on like how the piece

00:51:46

is connect.

00:51:47

And I feel like I can do the same sort of thing with my habits, but I have to really

00:51:52

dive in there and see what's really there before I can fix it.

00:51:55

Yeah, it makes sense.

00:51:56

I feel like there's a lot of different ways you can take this and a lot of different things

00:52:01

that you can set up.

00:52:04

One of the things I was debating in this process is just, you know, he has a system of sorts

00:52:13

to identify what the behaviors should be given an aspiration that you want to achieve.

00:52:23

You have an aspiration of I want to lose 20 pounds, or in my case, it's probably more

00:52:28

like gain 15 pounds.

00:52:30

But if you have that aspiration, that's not a thing you can just go work towards.

00:52:37

Like one of the examples he gives earlier on is around a, I forget the name of the company,

00:52:44

there was a company that had an initiative to help people save $500.

00:52:49

And they thought that was the action.

00:52:51

Like it was the thing that people needed to do was save $500.

00:52:54

And he made a point and said, okay, all of you right now at this moment in this room,

00:52:59

save $500.

00:53:00

Yeah.

00:53:01

And then they laughed and then they're like, oh, I can't do that right now.

00:53:04

Yeah.

00:53:05

Yeah, exactly.

00:53:06

And it just stopped and saved $500.

00:53:09

So what are the behaviors that you need to do in order to achieve that aspiration since

00:53:14

that's not an actual behavior?

00:53:16

I think when you evaluate things in that way and start determining what the behaviors

00:53:21

are that you need to be performing in order to achieve that aspiration, it becomes more

00:53:29

and more apparent what the current MAP, the motivation, ability and prompt system is that

00:53:37

you need to have in place to actually achieve that.

00:53:41

That whole system of taking the time to evaluate each individual behavior is something I've

00:53:47

never considered.

00:53:48

I don't think I've ever sat down and said, hey, I need to rethink how I'm doing my journaling

00:53:55

process at night or I want to start doing yoga in the morning.

00:53:58

What is going to be my motivator for that?

00:54:01

What is how am I going to make sure I have the ability to do that in the morning and

00:54:04

what am I going to prompt myself to do it in at that time?

00:54:08

All of those things are pieces I just have never really considered.

00:54:12

So going through these three different pieces, I guess I'm kind of summarizing the first four

00:54:16

chapters here, but going through that particular process and just understanding each individual

00:54:21

component of this behavior equals motivation, ability and prompt setup and just going through

00:54:27

that I think was helpful.

00:54:30

I didn't really expect it to be that helpful, but it made a lot of sense.

00:54:34

Yeah, you feel like you should have a handle on this habit stuff because we've read all

00:54:39

the books on it already, right?

00:54:41

Yes.

00:54:42

How many books have we read about stuff like this?

00:54:44

Make time had it in there, Induspectable has it in there.

00:54:47

The three habit books now, there's tons of these that have habit forming stuff in it.

00:54:57

And we still read a book on habits and find it interesting.

00:55:00

Yep, and learn a bunch of stuff from it.

00:55:02

Yes.

00:55:03

Exactly.

00:55:04

Now, the next chapter, number five, emotions create habits.

00:55:09

This kind of breaks away from the fog behavior model in the B equals MAP.

00:55:16

This talks about the emotions behind the habits, which are kind of linked to your motivation

00:55:21

probably.

00:55:23

But this is where it gets into the spectrum of automaticity.

00:55:28

Is that how you say that?

00:55:30

Not quite sure.

00:55:31

Automacity.

00:55:32

Yeah.

00:55:33

Yeah.

00:55:34

Basically.

00:55:35

Automativeness.

00:55:36

How automatic habit becomes.

00:55:38

And the better you feel about it, the more automatic it's going to become.

00:55:43

So this was kind of an aha moment for me here.

00:55:45

And this particular chapter, he talks about by feeling good at the right moment, you can

00:55:49

cause your brain to recognize and encode the sequence of behaviors that you just performed.

00:55:55

Now this doesn't really seem that revolutionary.

00:55:59

If you really think about what is going on when you're trying to build habits, but he

00:56:04

also says in this chapter that habits can form quickly in as little as a couple of days,

00:56:12

which sounds blasphemous when you read the other stuff because we were told long time

00:56:19

ago, habits take, takes 21 days to build a habit.

00:56:24

And then you were told, actually, no, it's probably more like 66.

00:56:26

It actually knows a lot going on here.

00:56:28

It could be as much as 200.

00:56:30

And I think all of that is true.

00:56:33

But I've never heard it the other way where you can basically accelerate the creation of

00:56:38

the habit.

00:56:39

If you have a strong emotion attached to it, although I 100% believe that that has after

00:56:46

he explains it, that does make a lot of sense.

00:56:48

I think it's probably dangerous to assume that you will be able to create a habit in

00:56:53

only a couple of days.

00:56:55

But I think the takeaway here is figure out how you can attach a strong positive emotion

00:57:01

to a habit.

00:57:02

And that will decrease the amount of time it takes in order to make it automatic and

00:57:07

reduce the level of motivation and ability that's required in order to get it to happen.

00:57:15

When you think through habits and what has you operating under those habits, maybe that's

00:57:23

the way to say that.

00:57:25

For example, the morning routine and such that I go through, which is fairly basic at

00:57:30

this point, I'll spend a little bit of time reading in whatever book we're reading for

00:57:34

bookworms since it's the only time I have for reading books, the only books that I have

00:57:39

time for reading.

00:57:41

And following that, I go through my morning bullet journal process and then I'm off to

00:57:48

making breakfast with the girls and breakfast with them.

00:57:51

And that's the sum total of it.

00:57:53

But when you look at those, I feel better about my day if I've had the time to read.

00:58:01

And I feel better about my day if I have it prepared from a task stance via bullet journaling.

00:58:08

So the emotion from that is one more around security and borderline motivation to go do

00:58:16

things for the day.

00:58:19

And again, whenever you start evaluating all of the behaviors that you do, what is the

00:58:25

emotion that drives that?

00:58:27

Usually there's some form of a feeling, a good feeling, maybe a fear of not getting it done.

00:58:34

There's always something that "promps you" to actually follow through on that.

00:58:42

So yes, I feel like emotions are important, but at the same time, I understand that these

00:58:52

are things that come as a result of having done it.

00:58:55

It doesn't really work the other way I don't think.

00:58:59

You're hoping that an emotion comes through, but having an emotion doesn't necessarily,

00:59:04

well, maybe it does.

00:59:05

Maybe I'm going backwards on myself.

00:59:07

Now that I say that, emotions come first or last.

00:59:11

Yes.

00:59:12

So he's...

00:59:13

He talks about the three moments for celebration and they are when you remember to do your new

00:59:17

habit while you're doing it and immediately after doing your new habit.

00:59:22

And I didn't find this entirely helpful because I couldn't think of an example of how I would

00:59:28

want to apply that personally, but I understand those three moments and where you could interject

00:59:38

small celebrations at those different places if you really were having trouble getting a

00:59:43

habit to say, which again, maybe I need to do that.

00:59:46

So I mentioned at the beginning, this is my action item to reconsider my habits and take

00:59:50

a look at the ones I want to create and figure out what I need to do in order to do that.

00:59:53

So maybe this is a piece of that, I don't know, but at the moment that's not something

00:59:56

that I do.

00:59:57

One thing I do a pretty decent job of is celebrate accomplishments, which this isn't exactly habit

01:00:04

related, but he does say at the beginning of this chapter, and I think this is a really

01:00:08

important point, that adults usually have many ways of saying I did a bad job and a few

01:00:12

ways of saying I did a good job.

01:00:15

Now I shared before we hit record, I got a fancy new pen as a celebration for a project

01:00:22

that I completed.

01:00:24

And this is more and more I realize becoming an important part of my creative workflow.

01:00:34

Yes, my fancy fountain pen collection is growing, but it's growing by me buying a pen

01:00:41

to celebrate something that I did.

01:00:43

And every time I pick up that pen to use it, I'm reminded of, oh yeah, I've, I shipped

01:00:47

that thing.

01:00:48

I finished that thing.

01:00:49

And these, again, this doesn't pertain to habits necessarily because these are bigger

01:00:53

things that take a month, three months, six months, sometimes even longer than that to

01:00:59

get, get done.

01:01:00

I'm not buying a fountain pen every time I remember to go for a run.

01:01:05

You have a fountain pens, Mike.

01:01:06

Yeah.

01:01:07

And that's really what he's talking about in this chapter is those little things where

01:01:11

like you smile in the mirror, you know, as an example, or you say a specific word or

01:01:16

phrase out loud, but I do think you could take that concept applied on a larger scale.

01:01:21

And that's something that I'm already doing and I'm seeing the effects of that.

01:01:25

So this is something that I realized that I do tend to be my own worst enemy, my biggest

01:01:30

critic and beat myself up with all the things that I did poorly.

01:01:34

So I recognize that I do fall into this category that he outlines at the beginning of this

01:01:38

chapter.

01:01:39

And I know that I do probably need to figure out additional little ways of telling myself

01:01:46

that I am doing a good job.

01:01:48

Because if I'm not careful, then I can find myself putting my mental state into that category

01:01:55

of like, oh, you, you worthless piece of scum.

01:01:57

You can't do anything right.

01:01:59

You know, I think that building these things into your habit routines could be a very effective

01:02:05

guard against that and maintaining a positive mental state, which has benefits, not just

01:02:11

your productivity, but it seems easy to say, well, this is, this is important.

01:02:18

It's going to have an emotional benefit.

01:02:19

But I think especially where we find ourselves now, like everybody's in the middle of a pretty

01:02:24

big emotional turmoil going through all of this COVID-19 stuff.

01:02:30

I mean, even people who haven't really been affected, like I didn't lose my job.

01:02:36

On the surface, you could say, well, you've got it pretty good.

01:02:39

You don't really have any reason to be upset by any of this stuff.

01:02:42

But things are different and just recognizing that things are different.

01:02:44

There's a bunch of things that are at play there.

01:02:46

You know, I relish the additional time that we've had with our family, but it can also

01:02:51

be stressful too.

01:02:52

My wife and I were talking about that.

01:02:53

We go to bed exhausted every single night because there is no break.

01:02:59

I can't get in the car and listen to a podcast while I'm driving to the coworking space

01:03:03

before I start working.

01:03:04

You know, as soon as I open that door, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

01:03:09

Which again, it's not something I'm complaining about, but recognizing that that does drain

01:03:14

you.

01:03:15

Yeah.

01:03:16

Maybe we were used to.

01:03:17

So recognizing that this is a tank that gets depleted a little bit more quickly than it

01:03:22

did a couple of months ago, that is step one.

01:03:26

Step two is recognizing what are the things that you can do to help refill that tank.

01:03:30

And I 100% agree that the miniature celebrations will do that.

01:03:35

In the members chat tied up mentioned having to remove the pinatic podcast.

01:03:43

Listening to them causes the purchase of too many pins, Mike.

01:03:48

Yes.

01:03:49

Which I think is actually how you got into this.

01:03:51

You started listening to the binatic podcast and...

01:03:54

It did.

01:03:55

Whoops.

01:03:56

Okay.

01:03:57

So box moment here for a second.

01:04:01

Whoops.

01:04:02

Sorry, folks.

01:04:04

We mentioned somebody had asked for clarification on how they could join the membership community

01:04:11

for Bookworm.

01:04:12

We mentioned this at the beginning and the end of the podcast a lot of times.

01:04:15

But there is the podcast you can download listen to for free.

01:04:20

There's the Bookworm Club that Joe created where you can go discuss the books that we're

01:04:23

reading.

01:04:24

There is also a paid membership, which is five bucks a month, for people who just want

01:04:28

to wait to support the show.

01:04:30

And there's a couple of bonuses that come with that.

01:04:32

There's the live chat that we've mentioned here.

01:04:34

The Mind Node files that I create, I upload those to the members area so you can download

01:04:39

those for yourself for all of the books that we cover, wallpaper, stuff like that.

01:04:46

But I would guess that the majority of people who join that don't do it because of what

01:04:52

they get.

01:04:53

They do it because they want to support the show and support the people who make it.

01:04:57

Which I think right now is really important.

01:05:00

And I am officially a paying member of the pan addict.

01:05:06

I don't even know what the membership is.

01:05:08

But the five bucks a month.

01:05:10

It doesn't matter.

01:05:11

You're paying.

01:05:12

I get the newsletter just because I want to support Brad and Mike and the whole, like

01:05:16

Brad's got a whole bunch of people that contribute to the pan addict site.

01:05:20

And including Jeff Abbott who does some stuff for the sweet setup too.

01:05:22

So yeah, I'll just throw that out there that now is as good a time as any to support the

01:05:28

creators that you like.

01:05:29

Kind of coming back to the book, I am curious about your thoughts on the Maui habit.

01:05:36

It's one of the things, so the Maui habit, what he talks about is that when you first

01:05:42

get up in the morning, you look in the mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say today is

01:05:48

going to be a great day.

01:05:50

Okay.

01:05:51

Take that concept.

01:05:54

In light of a book, we just did a couple rounds ago.

01:05:58

Maybe it wasn't that many rounds ago.

01:06:00

The antidote and how positive thinking is not the way.

01:06:07

It's like, okay.

01:06:10

So in light of that, one of the things I debated was translating that to, this could be my

01:06:18

last day.

01:06:20

That way you still have like the driver towards a productive day and a successful day.

01:06:27

But at the same time, you're not falling down that trap of positive thinking per se.

01:06:33

But I was curious about your thoughts on this.

01:06:35

That was going through my head and I haven't fully figured out all of my thoughts around

01:06:39

that yet.

01:06:40

But I'm curious what you think.

01:06:41

I think that if you're going to pick one side to air on the side of positive, but that's

01:06:50

me personally because I have no trouble flipping over to the negative.

01:06:56

That's my default a lot of times.

01:06:58

That's fair.

01:06:59

So I could see a scenario where those are flip flopped, but it also makes no sense to me

01:07:05

why you would choose to dwell on the negative stuff.

01:07:10

I think that the antidote, the way that book was written, we kind of talked about this

01:07:17

in that particular episode where it was kind of like a mention of a specific topic like

01:07:22

stoicism and then a story to support their view, but it felt like not a complete picture

01:07:30

and not a fair discussion about some of those topics.

01:07:35

And I still feel that way.

01:07:37

I feel like if you're in a pick one approach as scientifically correct, you have to side

01:07:44

with the PhD behavioral designer.

01:07:49

This just makes so much more sense from an analytical logical point of view, which is

01:07:55

the way that my brain is wired.

01:07:57

Now like I said, I can totally see why that wouldn't work for some people, but I have

01:08:00

no problem embracing the Maui habit and the positive approach to building habits over

01:08:07

the antidote.

01:08:09

I don't usually pass a mirror in the morning.

01:08:13

I don't have the opportunity.

01:08:15

So the ability is not there, Mike.

01:08:17

I will say that the Maui habit specifically, I don't think I even wrote that down in my

01:08:22

outline because it's not something that I have any interest in doing specifically.

01:08:28

We do have a mirror, but when I heard about that, I was kind of like, yeah, no, I'm not

01:08:32

going to do that.

01:08:36

But like I said, I do think that if you're going to pick one of those, then in terms of

01:08:41

habits specifically, I think you have to focus on the positive if you believe in this fog

01:08:49

behavioral model because the motivation that could also be, you could also, I think, reframe

01:08:56

that as a positivity meter, if you will.

01:09:01

I think it does have examples of negative peer pressure, how that can create motivation

01:09:06

and kind of be fear driven, but I don't think that's sustainable.

01:09:10

I think the only sustainable way for this healthy, sustainable way for this to really

01:09:15

work is to figure out how to apply a positive mindset and emotionally charge these habits

01:09:22

so that you want to do them.

01:09:24

He talks about that later on.

01:09:26

I think I mentioned that earlier, you know, if a behavior frustrates you, it's not going

01:09:29

to become a habit.

01:09:30

Well, if it's fear driven, it's going to frustrate you.

01:09:32

At least it would frustrate me.

01:09:33

Yeah.

01:09:34

I wonder how many of my habits are fear driven sometimes.

01:09:37

Like, I have a lot of cases where I don't want to let someone down.

01:09:45

Maybe that's a disappointment driver as opposed to fear driver, but I have quite a few things

01:09:51

I do that float that line, which isn't good, I don't think, but it also helps me get things

01:10:00

done.

01:10:01

So I'm not sure how I feel about that.

01:10:03

Well, that's the perfect spot to go into the next chapter, which is number six, growing

01:10:07

your habits from tiny to transformative because this is where he talks about the hope versus

01:10:12

fear being the two vectors that push against each other and the sum being motivation.

01:10:20

Now he does also mention in this section the examples of like being called out on a dance

01:10:28

floor and you don't want to disappoint people.

01:10:30

You follow through and you do it, but that's really like fear driven and even though pushes

01:10:36

you past the action line, you're feeling anxious and stressful, which I think is kind of what

01:10:40

you're talking about with maybe some of your habits.

01:10:44

And I have no doubt that I have habits that are the fall into that category too.

01:10:49

But like I said, I view that as something that I want to change and make positive.

01:10:55

And I think he would explain it in this book.

01:10:58

I don't have a specific instance here, but I think he would basically say like, yeah,

01:11:01

you have to rewire those and apply some positivity to it in order for it to really become something

01:11:07

that is sustainable.

01:11:09

I think I agree with that.

01:11:11

And I don't know.

01:11:14

I can't.

01:11:16

That just sounds like not a very fun way to live.

01:11:19

So why do that if you don't have to?

01:11:22

Right.

01:11:23

Right.

01:11:24

I get you.

01:11:25

I think I feel like I've wanted or specifically designed.

01:11:30

I just think it's kind of where I've landed.

01:11:32

I don't know if that's I haven't tried to look back in time to see if that's a thing

01:11:37

that I have done for a long period or if it's something that's more recent.

01:11:43

Not sure what that is, but it is a thing that currently exists and haven't figured out

01:11:49

what to do about that yet.

01:11:51

I feel like it might help if I did my own celebrations, like taking advantage of the

01:11:58

small rewards thing, but I hesitate going down the positivity route because that has

01:12:04

bit me in the past because it's given me a bit of a false sense of security in some things.

01:12:11

So I hesitate to go down that road, but I know that it works for some folks.

01:12:17

Obviously it works for you.

01:12:19

So it's not a thing I think I'm going to downplay by any means and say, Hey, you should never

01:12:25

do this, but it is certainly a thing that I personally hesitate with.

01:12:32

Now maybe that's because I have bad motivators in a lot of cases and that would be the solution.

01:12:41

Not discounting that, but it is a thing that makes me wonder.

01:12:45

And I, again, I haven't figured out what the solution there is, but it was something that

01:12:49

BJ Fogg was successful in bringing to light.

01:12:53

So there's that, at least a kudos to Mr. Fogg in that sense.

01:12:58

Yeah, I think what you're describing can be summed up in the Bible verse that says,

01:13:03

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

01:13:05

And I think maybe that is what you're describing where you focus on the positive and you get

01:13:11

disappointed because you don't achieve the positive result that you thought you were

01:13:14

going to get.

01:13:15

And I think that's where goals are dangerous, but habits maybe are better.

01:13:21

And then the whole idea of the tiny habits here being to break it down really, really

01:13:24

small.

01:13:25

So success is not, did you achieve an outcome or did you receive a result that you were

01:13:31

aiming to, but did you do the tiny little activity and then did you celebrate immediately afterwards?

01:13:39

And I think if you define positivity, positivity is probably not even a word.

01:13:43

I keep saying it.

01:13:44

You know what I'm talking about?

01:13:46

That positive mindset, if you apply it in that sense, I think that that is absolutely

01:13:52

a positive thing.

01:13:54

I don't know.

01:13:55

I think the real trick of this is, and this is not simple, but control what you can control

01:14:01

and then let the rest of it go.

01:14:05

And I know that sounds way, way, way, way, way, way too simple.

01:14:08

I get that.

01:14:09

I also think that in terms of getting back control over different parts of your life,

01:14:16

that tiny habits offer some hope where maybe there wasn't some before.

01:14:22

Some of the stories that he shared in this are pretty crazy.

01:14:25

One story in particular I'm thinking about, there was a lady who was in not a great relationship,

01:14:31

but she also wasn't making a lot of money and wasn't in a position to like leave the

01:14:36

relationship, so she started employing tiny habits and celebrating her successes as she

01:14:43

built up her own emergency funds so she could leave this toxic relationship.

01:14:50

And I think that was an interesting example.

01:14:53

I had issues with that specific example because after she left, it turns out that they were

01:14:59

able to work through their differences and now their friends and she's like, "I can't

01:15:02

believe it."

01:15:03

And I'm like, "Well, of course I can believe it because you were so focused on leaving the

01:15:05

relationship that you didn't spend any time working on it.

01:15:08

If you would have worked on building the relationship instead of leaving it, maybe you

01:15:12

could have saved it."

01:15:13

You had the wrong aspiration here.

01:15:16

But I digress.

01:15:18

Yes.

01:15:20

So, there are a couple different skills of change which I wanted to run through real

01:15:25

quickly here.

01:15:27

Number one is behavior crafting, which is selecting and adjusting the habits that you

01:15:30

want in your life.

01:15:31

And this right here I think gets back to the whole positive versus negative thing.

01:15:35

If you are ascribing to the tiny habits model, you basically can't be negative I think because

01:15:41

you are designing things that you want.

01:15:43

So you have to have some bent towards the positive in order to identify those things

01:15:48

in the first place.

01:15:50

Otherwise, you're reacting to things.

01:15:52

Maybe that is that, you tell me, is that unfair?

01:15:54

No, I think that's perfectly fair.

01:15:57

Okay.

01:15:58

And then you've got self-insight which is knowing which new habits will have meaning to you.

01:16:03

And again, if you are focused on the negative side, you're thinking like, "Well, self-preservation,

01:16:10

I just got to endure all of the attacks are going to come against me."

01:16:15

Whereas positive, you're thinking, "Well, these are the things that are going to be

01:16:20

a part of the life that I want to live."

01:16:22

Step number three is the process.

01:16:24

And that is knowing when to push yourself beyond tiny and to ramp up the difficulty of

01:16:28

the habit.

01:16:29

You can scale these things or you can multiply these things you talked about.

01:16:32

Maybe that was the previous chapter.

01:16:35

Number four is the context which is redesigning your environment to make your habits easier

01:16:38

to do.

01:16:39

And then number five is the mindset where you're embracing a new identity.

01:16:42

I think if you're going to embrace a new identity, why not make it a positive identity?

01:16:47

Maybe there's a way to embrace a negative identity with this, but I don't understand.

01:16:52

Yes.

01:16:54

There's a lot here.

01:16:57

With this particular piece, to me it made a lot of sense that this is where atomic habits

01:17:01

jumped off.

01:17:04

As you go through a lot of these, he's explaining how to develop a specific behavior.

01:17:13

And he doesn't really spend a ton of time explaining how to make it repetitive because

01:17:22

the assumption is that once you figure out how to get those three components, motivation,

01:17:26

ability, and prompt, if you get those three in place and it's successful, it just makes

01:17:31

it becomes a habit.

01:17:33

It doesn't have to be a one-time thing.

01:17:34

He does make the point that you can use this to tackle one-time behaviors.

01:17:39

But this sixth section here, growing those habits, to me that makes perfect sense that

01:17:45

that's where atomic habits jumps off because it's a lot more about how do you develop a

01:17:50

routine?

01:17:51

How do you set yourself up to do these small things every single day?

01:17:55

Whereas he doesn't really embrace the routine piece with this entire book.

01:17:59

Yes, he does mention it, but it's not a core component like it is with atomic habits or

01:18:06

the power of habit.

01:18:07

It's not as vital in those specific cases.

01:18:14

It is interesting that he does spell out these specific skills.

01:18:18

It is interesting to go through those, but it's also interesting I think that when you

01:18:22

start comparing and putting these other books and layering them on top of each other, it's

01:18:27

like, yes, you could use this as your starting point.

01:18:29

See, you're convincing me that this is the one I should recommend out of the three.

01:18:34

Good job, Mike.

01:18:35

If you use this as your jumping off point and then come back over to atomic habits once

01:18:41

you get through this, put the broader picture of the routine-based pieces in place, I could

01:18:49

see a pretty powerful setup there.

01:18:52

Interesting thing is how the power of habit doesn't really fit into that.

01:18:55

Yep, agreed.

01:18:57

Although I would say that really the benefit of reading all of these books is that they

01:19:01

all tie together and they fill in the holes.

01:19:04

You were mentioning the recurrence of these things, and he doesn't talk about that specifically,

01:19:12

but there was a story in this section which I thought really exemplified a way that this

01:19:19

could work as a routine, and that is the whole idea of the super fridge.

01:19:23

Do you remember this?

01:19:24

No, I don't know why.

01:19:26

So this is in the context, but there's a bigger aspect of this than just the context.

01:19:31

So they wanted to eat healthier.

01:19:34

So what they did is they relabeled their fridge, super fridge, and once a week they spend time

01:19:41

prepping and organizing it so that when they want to grab a snack, everything is in the

01:19:46

little containers and they just grab it from the fridge.

01:19:48

So basically the food that is stocked there is ready to go, it's convenient because that

01:19:52

was one of the things that caused them to eat unhealthy was the fact that nothing was ready.

01:19:58

So they designed a way to show a bunch of healthy eating options whenever they opened

01:20:03

the fridge.

01:20:04

And this I think exemplifies one of the strengths of this book is that he's got all these little

01:20:07

labels for things, and I feel like they're really effective in some of the stories are

01:20:13

really powerful.

01:20:14

But if you were to break this down, basically what they are doing is they are reverse engineering

01:20:20

their, if you were to go back to that cycle from the James Clear, you know, the queue being

01:20:26

that they're hungry and then the routine.

01:20:28

So they are, they are using that model.

01:20:31

Now he uses this story specifically in skill set number four context, but I immediately

01:20:36

thought of the James Clear model when they were telling this story.

01:20:40

And basically once you do that, now you have a reliable system in place where you constantly

01:20:47

have healthy food that that you can eat.

01:20:50

So I do think they compliment each other.

01:20:52

Sure.

01:20:53

No, I think they do.

01:20:54

You know, and James Clear's book might be the bridge between them, like between the

01:21:00

power of habit and tiny habits since he's pulling off of Charles Duhigg's pieces in

01:21:07

order to get to his system.

01:21:11

But you know, if BJ Fogg's research was a heavily used portion of writing atomic habits, I would

01:21:18

make a lot of sense.

01:21:19

It would.

01:21:20

Yep.

01:21:21

All the habits.

01:21:22

All right.

01:21:23

Let's go to the next chapter here.

01:21:24

Number seven untangling bad habits.

01:21:27

And this is where they have, or he breaks down the issue with breaking a bad habit where

01:21:35

the term breaking a bad habit, he says, that's the wrong expectation.

01:21:39

And he uses this analogy, which I thought this was brilliant.

01:21:43

And if this was the only aha moment you got from this book, it was probably still worth

01:21:48

the time to read it, where your bad habits are essentially a huge tangled knot.

01:21:57

And what you have to do is you have to pick that all apart, little bit by little bit.

01:22:03

It's not something that you just cut out immediately, which I think is what a lot of

01:22:10

people, myself included tend to fall into that mindset when you want to eliminate a behavior

01:22:17

that you tend to do, whether that be eating junk food or binging Netflix at night, whatever

01:22:25

it is, everybody's got something that they gravitate towards that they would confess that

01:22:30

they don't want to do.

01:22:32

And I feel like this is a helpful analogy in identifying the root causes that are there,

01:22:36

because it's probably not just one thing.

01:22:38

Do you have a bad habit you're trying to break?

01:22:40

Good question.

01:22:42

Nothing came to mind as I was reading this.

01:22:44

But like I said, I want to put myself under the microscope for next time.

01:22:49

So there might be something here.

01:22:53

I can't think of it at the moment though.

01:22:56

I have a tendency to use like my breaks.

01:22:59

I make sure I take breaks throughout morning and afternoon work sessions.

01:23:05

I haven't gone full-blown Pomodoro, but I'm like on the edge of saying that's a thing

01:23:10

I should be doing.

01:23:12

But I have a tendency to take those breaks and just watch a couple YouTube videos when

01:23:17

I could definitely use that time to read a book or write my thoughts on something out

01:23:22

or research something that might be helpful later.

01:23:26

Watching YouTube really doesn't solve that, at least not in the way that I'm doing it.

01:23:31

It's possible to use YouTube to learn new skills.

01:23:34

The way I am using it does not.

01:23:36

Fair enough.

01:23:40

So yes, that's a thing I feel like I want to break because I understand exactly what

01:23:44

the prompt is with that and the motivation is quite high to do that.

01:23:51

So there are things I need to do in order to break it.

01:23:54

But I haven't.

01:23:56

I haven't even tried yet, Mike, because frankly I don't want to.

01:24:02

But I should.

01:24:03

I know I should.

01:24:04

Well, that is a larger issue there because just the phrase I should, like why should you?

01:24:13

If you enjoy YouTube, you don't necessarily, it's not necessarily a matter of you.

01:24:20

You should stop doing that.

01:24:21

Maybe you are spending five hours a day watching cat videos on YouTube, in which case.

01:24:26

Well, it's not cat videos.

01:24:27

Tech interviews.

01:24:28

I don't know.

01:24:31

I'm taking my car obsession.

01:24:35

My thinking of that, I'm thinking back to Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey.

01:24:42

And he's got the one graph where it's like useful versus entertaining.

01:24:52

And maybe the way out of that, if it's really something that you want to change, is not

01:24:59

to stop it completely, but to replace some of those videos with educational YouTube videos.

01:25:06

So they're like on the verge of things that you're interested in.

01:25:09

Like I've got a Thomas Frank Rome research video I could send you.

01:25:14

Thanks for that.

01:25:15

I appreciate that.

01:25:16

Sounds up.

01:25:17

You're helping a lot.

01:25:18

Yeah.

01:25:19

Or a TED talk or something like that.

01:25:20

I know you mentioned that you used to.

01:25:22

It used to anyways, watch a bunch of TED talks because every time we would cover a book by

01:25:25

somebody, hey, did you see the TED talk?

01:25:27

Nope.

01:25:28

Yep.

01:25:29

I used to do a thing where I watched a TED talk every morning.

01:25:32

Wow.

01:25:33

So yeah.

01:25:34

That was a thing for a while.

01:25:35

And that's the kind of thing that I would envision if you were to take BJ Fogg's approach.

01:25:41

That would be one of the substitutions that would probably happen there.

01:25:47

He doesn't really talk about it in this particular section, I don't think.

01:25:53

But there are these, he does kind of talk about how if you want to change from a negative

01:26:02

to a positive, then there are different things that you can do to apply that.

01:26:10

In this particular section, he's really talking about just redesigning things and eliminating

01:26:16

them.

01:26:17

So you redesign your ability to stop doing a habit where you make it harder to do or you

01:26:20

reduce the motivation to stop a habit.

01:26:23

But I think there is a substitution option that probably would make sense here too.

01:26:30

And again, it really depends.

01:26:31

And this is the cool thing about this whole concept to me.

01:26:34

This is why I find habits so fascinating is that there is no single right answer to any

01:26:42

of these specific problems.

01:26:44

If you get joy out of watching the car videos, absolutely go ahead and watch the car videos,

01:26:50

which is why I continue to listen to the pen addict.

01:26:54

I continue to do a bunch of other things just because they're fun.

01:26:59

And I don't think, I think this is something that I'm not trying to counsel you at this

01:27:03

moment.

01:27:04

I'm trying to just explain, I guess, to the listeners who have been it.

01:27:08

There is nothing wrong with that.

01:27:10

If you decide that this is important to me, you don't have to justify it to anybody.

01:27:16

Now you can, if you want to, you can say, well, I should be doing something.

01:27:22

And that word should, I think, is dangerous.

01:27:25

But if you want to replace a behavior with a different behavior, there are ways to do

01:27:32

that.

01:27:33

But don't feel like you necessarily have to.

01:27:35

Don't let anybody, productivity, shame you into letting go of the things that you simply

01:27:41

find enjoyable that you don't necessarily get a specific or explicit benefit from those

01:27:48

things.

01:27:49

Yeah, I think the easy answer here is to replace the motor driven exploration of cars with

01:28:00

learning skills.

01:28:02

Like for example, I've been doing tons and tons of live streaming, which has me on the

01:28:05

edge of wanting to become a streamer right now and have played around with that concept.

01:28:11

If you think I should do that, maybe you should let me know.

01:28:14

Because I'm not a gamer, so it would not be gaming.

01:28:17

It was just partly why I was asking about how easy it is to get into room research because

01:28:20

I was debating doing a live stream, just exploring it, trying to figure out if I should use it

01:28:25

or not.

01:28:26

I don't know if that's of any interest to anybody, but that's a concept I've played

01:28:30

with.

01:28:31

It would be very easy for me to replace this bad habit.

01:28:33

I'm going to call it a bad habit with that learning habit, which would be better off in

01:28:38

the long run.

01:28:39

There are tons and tons of videos to go through to learn things around streaming.

01:28:44

I know the encoding part and I know how to push a stream out, but creating the engaging

01:28:50

portion of it is a different game.

01:28:53

So I've done a lot of video work just not in that way.

01:28:56

That's the piece that I would be looking at.

01:28:58

But all of that could come from breaking the bad habit, replacing it with a better one,

01:29:04

which I think in the long run would be better off.

01:29:06

But still like cars might.

01:29:09

Which is fine.

01:29:10

That kind of gets into the skillset number five, the mindset.

01:29:13

I'm the kind of person who fill the blank, knows a lot about cars or learns skills.

01:29:19

I mean, you got to get more specific than that.

01:29:23

What are you really trying to get from this, I think, in order for that to work?

01:29:27

If it doesn't work, I would say don't be upset that it's not.

01:29:31

Yeah.

01:29:32

All right.

01:29:33

Let's talk about the last chapter here, which I don't have a lot.

01:29:36

A lot to say about number eight though, is how we change together.

01:29:39

And this is really talking about applying the seven steps that he mentions back in chapters

01:29:46

two through infinity in a group context.

01:29:50

I did appreciate in this section each of these steps he talks about this from two perspectives

01:29:57

as the ringleader.

01:30:00

So this is the person who is in charge of a group.

01:30:02

And you can set the tone and you can, if you own a business, say this is how we are going

01:30:08

to do things.

01:30:09

And this is always one of the things that people push back against the most, I think,

01:30:13

when it comes to this type of stuff is that a lot of books presume that you have this

01:30:19

sort of control over the groups that you are involved in.

01:30:24

And he basically says that if you're not a ringleader, then you are a ninja and you need

01:30:29

to sneak in behavior change wherever you can stealthily.

01:30:34

I thought this was genius.

01:30:36

And then he goes through each of the seven steps and talks about it from a ringleader

01:30:40

perspective and from a ninja perspective.

01:30:43

Yeah.

01:30:44

I think this is interesting because there are times when I'm definitely the ringleader

01:30:48

and there are definitely times when I'm the ninja.

01:30:50

But I feel like there's also times when I struggle to figure out where the difference

01:30:55

is.

01:30:57

And I say that because at the church, for example, I'm definitely the ringleader when

01:31:03

it comes to producing our Sunday services right now from a technical stance.

01:31:09

But from an overall event stance, I am not.

01:31:16

I'm a big part of it, but I'm not the overarching.

01:31:19

So even in one role, I feel like you can flip back and forth between those because there

01:31:26

are definitely some cases where I have without having been through this, have been building

01:31:33

in habits amongst my tech team to do our Sunday services.

01:31:38

But in the overarching, you know, having this terminology, I need to be more of a ninja to

01:31:45

pull that off.

01:31:46

So I haven't been doing that near as much, even though I've had the opportunity to do

01:31:52

it a lot.

01:31:53

Yeah, I think you're right.

01:31:56

There are going to be a lot of places where you're going back and forth between these

01:31:59

two and it can be difficult to find the balance there.

01:32:04

But this is where the maxims that he shared earlier in the book, but he restates them

01:32:09

here are very helpful, I think.

01:32:11

These apply no matter whether you are a ringleader or a ninja.

01:32:15

And that is number one, to help people do what they already want to do and to number

01:32:18

two, help people feel successful, not be successful, feel successful.

01:32:24

And I think that's a really important difference there, but also running, going back to like

01:32:31

the positive versus negative aspect, why like negative doesn't work with this model,

01:32:37

you can't help people feel successful if they've simply avoided a negative scenario.

01:32:44

You need to help them think that they have won, even if there is a larger victory to

01:32:50

be gained, helping them recognize that they have at least won this specific contest, this

01:32:57

specific thing that's right in front of them, they were able to do this successfully and

01:33:01

build some momentum.

01:33:03

That is going to be important.

01:33:05

I think I'm out of thoughts and I'm through all my notes that I have in bullet journal.

01:33:10

What else we say about this one?

01:33:12

I think it's time for action items then, which...

01:33:15

We didn't write any down, Mike.

01:33:17

True.

01:33:18

I did mention that I want to reconsider my evening and morning routines specifically.

01:33:24

And I mentioned a couple of habits as we recorded this that I want to apply some of

01:33:30

this stuff to and see if I can't get them to be a little bit more successful.

01:33:36

So I'll make that an action item, although I won't bore you next time with a rundown

01:33:41

of my complete morning and evening routines.

01:33:47

But I think that's really the only action item from this book that you could do is apply

01:33:54

these principles and these exercises in some way, shape, or form.

01:34:00

You could pick something specific, I guess.

01:34:01

I'm reconsidering all of my morning and evening habits, which is only six of them.

01:34:10

But I want to make sure that the foundation is solid for anything that I would want to

01:34:15

add in the future.

01:34:17

There are a couple things that I've kind of toyed with on and off and haven't really

01:34:21

invested a lot of time into making those things be a part of the routine.

01:34:27

And I also think that during a global pandemic, maybe not the time to try to establish a bunch

01:34:32

of new habits.

01:34:34

Interestingly, I do think that it is important to take a look at what is already there.

01:34:39

And if you don't have solid habits, start building some positive ones because this has

01:34:44

kind of been a giant reset period for everybody.

01:34:48

And so being intentional about the habits that are producing the outcomes that you're

01:34:53

getting, this is probably a great time to consider that stuff.

01:34:58

Just based on the title of the book, the way to implement those changes is not to do a

01:35:02

bunch of big things.

01:35:04

It is to identify some small things.

01:35:06

Yeah, I think as far as action items, I mostly just want to be aware.

01:35:11

This isn't a, this isn't one where I feel like I have specifics.

01:35:16

This is a, it's good to understand this process.

01:35:20

And I am likely to use it more for bad habits at the start, but I'm not sure what all that

01:35:28

would be.

01:35:29

Save the one we've talked about.

01:35:31

It is interesting that this made me aware of potentially negative motivators behind a

01:35:38

lot of behaviors that I have.

01:35:40

So that particular piece is one that's enlightening and interesting to explore.

01:35:46

So maybe there's an action around that, but that's more of a, I'm going to ruminate on

01:35:51

this over time scenario.

01:35:53

This isn't a, I'm going to sit down and actively work through that.

01:35:57

So I can't say that that's a thing I'm going to do.

01:35:59

So I'm going to leave it at that.

01:36:01

I'm going to just ruminate.

01:36:03

All right.

01:36:04

Can I, can I do that?

01:36:05

Is that allowed?

01:36:06

You can ruminate.

01:36:07

I'll allow it.

01:36:08

All right.

01:36:09

Style and rating.

01:36:10

Uh, I go first, correct?

01:36:12

Yep.

01:36:13

Your book.

01:36:14

You go first.

01:36:15

Okay.

01:36:16

This is a little bit different than what I expected.

01:36:20

I did not think it was going to be this entertaining to read.

01:36:25

I did not expect the stories to be interesting, to be honest.

01:36:32

And the way that he describes some of these things and the labels, even that he applies

01:36:37

to some of the stuff is kind of quirky and, and fun in a way that you maybe wouldn't expect

01:36:45

from a behavioral designer, you know, on the, right on the cover, BJ Fogg, PhD.

01:36:52

And I found it pretty refreshing actually in order to read it.

01:36:56

I already mentioned there's a lot of aha moments in here for me right in the first chapter

01:37:00

that fog behavior model that was kind of interesting and unlocked a lot of things was

01:37:06

like, oh, so that's why I never really thought that this was greater.

01:37:11

Uh huh.

01:37:12

That's why that really clicks, you know, and, and cements this for me.

01:37:16

I, I really enjoyed this book.

01:37:18

I think there's a ton visually in here, which makes it easy to read.

01:37:22

It's, uh, it's not dry at all.

01:37:26

Even though there is kind of a, the deepest dive into habits that we've probably seen

01:37:31

yet.

01:37:32

I feel like this is one of the easiest books to get through too.

01:37:35

Uh, comparing this to atomic habits is interesting because I feel like towards the end of atomic

01:37:41

habits, it feels like it feels pretty weighty.

01:37:46

Like there's a lot of information that you've gone through and you can kind of lose sight

01:37:49

of how it all ties together.

01:37:51

Even though he's really just basically attacking all the different angles on like the four

01:37:55

different points and the four different laws and in that particular book.

01:37:59

I think that this is an easy five star book.

01:38:04

I don't think that means that it's better or worse than atomic habits or any of the other

01:38:09

five star books that we've, we've read.

01:38:12

But I do think for the right person, which I think is probably the majority of people

01:38:18

who are interested in building solid habits.

01:38:22

This is the, the go to book.

01:38:24

I'm thinking of one person in particular who texted me while I was reading this and they

01:38:29

mentioned that they're not a runner.

01:38:32

They want to run a 10 K and so they bought a whole bunch of gear and their plan was just

01:38:35

to run until they couldn't every day for a period of time.

01:38:39

And as I was hearing them talk about that, I'm reading through this and I'm like, nope,

01:38:44

you're doing this, this and that wrong.

01:38:47

Here's the visual models.

01:38:50

Yeah, exactly.

01:38:51

But also it was interesting because I'm not in a position, I don't have the platform basically

01:38:55

to say like, well, that's not the way that you should, you should do this.

01:38:58

But I found myself in the middle of reading this wanting to give it away to somebody.

01:39:03

Because I know that the way BGA fog describes it and the visuals that he applies in this

01:39:07

book, like they will totally get it.

01:39:09

So I think this is a great book.

01:39:13

I really don't think, I can't, I have in trouble thinking of somebody who would not get a lot

01:39:20

out of this book or who would not enjoy it.

01:39:24

I guess if you fall into that camp where like the antidote Oliver Berkman, where you're

01:39:29

just annoyed by the positive stuff, there is a lot of positive stuff in here.

01:39:33

So maybe if you are like anti that, you know, stay away, but otherwise I think this is a

01:39:39

great book.

01:39:40

Sure.

01:39:41

I will join you at five stars.

01:39:43

I think it definitely falls into that category.

01:39:45

But I also think every time we have a habit book, we rate it at five stars.

01:39:48

So there is that.

01:39:50

So if we find another habit book, we should probably just rate it at five stars before

01:39:54

we pick it up to read it.

01:39:55

So in this case, I think he's, you know, from a style stance, he's an awesome writer, very

01:40:01

easy to read the way the book is laid out in a formatted, super simple to follow the

01:40:06

charts and stuff he uses and reuses with tweaks in order to make it a point spot on.

01:40:13

I was annoyed by the PowerPoint slide thing I mentioned earlier that was purely in my

01:40:18

head, not his thing at all did not actually exist in the book.

01:40:21

Just a thing that my brain would not let go of that is not his fault.

01:40:27

So don't don't get upset over that.

01:40:29

But the book is laid out really well.

01:40:31

I liked it and I'm likely to review this one from time to time just because seeing the

01:40:39

motivation, ability and prompt format and in that formula, it's super helpful.

01:40:45

So that's one that I think I'm going to continue to fall back to.

01:40:49

So I am excited that I have had a chance to go through this.

01:40:53

I'm likely to recommend it in quite a few avenues.

01:40:57

So thanks for picking it, Mike.

01:40:59

Good job, sir.

01:41:00

Absolutely.

01:41:01

All right.

01:41:02

So upcoming books, what is next?

01:41:04

All right.

01:41:05

So upcoming book is Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday, which is interesting that

01:41:10

I had picked this ahead of time because given the conversation we just had about how my

01:41:15

tendency to focus on fear and disappointment stuff as motivators, I have a feeling this

01:41:20

is going to cover some of that.

01:41:24

You've read this, right?

01:41:25

I have.

01:41:26

Yep.

01:41:27

This is a good book.

01:41:28

So I'm excited to talk about this one.

01:41:29

Yeah.

01:41:30

I'll leave it there.

01:41:31

Stillness is the key by Ryan Holiday.

01:41:34

I'm excited about going through this one, Mike.

01:41:36

All right.

01:41:37

And the one after that, I am going to pick because I just can't get enough about habits,

01:41:42

triggers by Marshall Goldsmith.

01:41:44

All right.

01:41:46

So is it a five star?

01:41:47

Do we need to rate it now?

01:41:49

I don't think so, but I haven't read it yet.

01:41:52

I have heard Mike Hurley and CGP Grey talk about it on Cortex because they did it for the

01:41:59

Cortex book club.

01:42:00

Oh, interesting.

01:42:01

I know that.

01:42:02

That's right.

01:42:03

They do a book club.

01:42:04

Sometimes I forget that.

01:42:05

They do.

01:42:06

Yeah.

01:42:07

This is one that I've had for a while.

01:42:08

And this is, I'm assuming, just looking at the triggers slash prompts part of the habits

01:42:14

and routines, but also think that there's a lot of changes that could be made there in

01:42:21

my specific scenario.

01:42:23

So I was going back and forth between that one and the power of positive thinking, which

01:42:28

I think we do need to cover at some point because we keep talking about the antidote

01:42:31

and the benefit of the negative side.

01:42:34

I want to just adjust the positive side from somebody who really understands it, but at

01:42:39

some point.

01:42:40

Yeah.

01:42:41

Yeah, for sure.

01:42:42

Any gap books this time?

01:42:43

Life's been hard.

01:42:44

It's true.

01:42:45

I do have some gap books.

01:42:48

So the number, the first one I want to get through is I want to reread how to take smart

01:42:51

notes now that I think Rome might be a digital zettel cast and that would actually work

01:42:57

for me.

01:42:58

But the other one, which is not very long, and I actually have right here is Charles

01:43:06

E. Hummel's freedom from the tyranny of the urgent.

01:43:11

This is a short book, which I am hoping to get to if I get done with how to take smart

01:43:18

notes.

01:43:19

But I'm going to at least read that one because stillness is the key I know is going

01:43:25

to be a quick read for me.

01:43:26

I've read it already and I really enjoyed it when I read it the first time.

01:43:30

I know that rereading it is going to be quick.

01:43:33

Yeah.

01:43:34

I do not have a gap book.

01:43:35

Life is nuts.

01:43:36

I'm still not there.

01:43:39

Yes.

01:43:40

How to stay alive.

01:43:41

Yeah.

01:43:42

Joby looking.

01:43:43

Exactly.

01:43:44

Yep.

01:43:45

And yet I still explore new ideas mentally, constantly.

01:43:47

So whoops.

01:43:48

Here we go.

01:43:50

All right.

01:43:51

I mentioned it already, but just real quickly, you can support the show by coming, be becoming

01:43:58

a member of the premium membership, which you can do at club.bookworm.fm/membership, I

01:44:06

believe.

01:44:07

And five bucks a month, we'll get you access to the live recordings, the MyNote files for

01:44:12

the books that we read.

01:44:14

Some fancy wallpapers are on dying gratitude and is a great way to support the show.

01:44:22

So thank you to everybody who is willing to throw some money at allowing Joe and I to

01:44:27

continue to do this.

01:44:29

You also get a little bit of inside baseball before and after the actual podcast recording.

01:44:34

That's true.

01:44:35

Yep.

01:44:36

So we have a tendency to talk for a little bit before and after.

01:44:38

So if you're on the live, you definitely get some of that as well.

01:44:43

So thank you to everyone who is currently listening to us live and who joins us in the

01:44:50

future.

01:44:51

I need to make that easier to find.

01:44:52

But yes, bookworm.fm/membership.

01:44:55

And if you are reading along with us and you are joining or picking up the books so that

01:45:00

you can read with us and actually have the full background as we go through them, the

01:45:05

next book up is Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday.

01:45:10

And we will go through that one next time.