110: Lead Yourself First by Raymond Kethledge & Michael Erwin

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1. 00:00:00 You like my new glasses, Mike?
2. 00:00:01 They look great.
3. 00:00:02 You have completed the nerd look now.
4. 00:00:04 It's totally true.
5. 00:00:06 It's totally true.
6. 00:00:07 For those who can't see me at the moment, go check my Instagram.
7. 00:00:10 There's a picture of me with them on.
8. 00:00:11 My wife picked these up for me for Christmas.
9. 00:00:15 So I have now jumped into the world of computer glasses
10. 00:00:18 and have a set of Felix Grace.
11. 00:00:20 So no more blue light in the ice.
12. 00:00:22 That's the theory, right?
13. 00:00:24 That's how this works.
14. 00:00:25 Nice.
15. 00:00:26 I've never heard of that company before.
16. 00:00:28 So they are specifically blue light glasses.
17. 00:00:30 All right.
18. 00:00:31 Our friend of the show, Josh,
19. 00:00:33 I have seen his and I'm a fan.
20. 00:00:37 You know, I've worn him for a few days now.
21. 00:00:39 And I can't say I've had any like groundbreaking changes
22. 00:00:44 as a result of wearing them,
23. 00:00:45 but I know that my eyes don't seem to be straining as much,
24. 00:00:48 which makes me wonder if that was part of some of my headache,
25. 00:00:53 migraine issues that I've had in the past.
26. 00:00:55 Just curious.
27. 00:00:56 Yeah, could be.
28. 00:00:57 But yours are blue light, right?
29. 00:00:59 I don't believe so.
30. 00:01:00 These are Warby Parkers.
31. 00:01:03 And I paid for the reflective coatings,
32. 00:01:06 but I did not pay for the blue light filtering.
33. 00:01:10 I do not think.
34. 00:01:11 That's right.
35. 00:01:12 I was thinking you did something with that,
36. 00:01:14 but maybe do you use like the, was it flux
37. 00:01:17 or something along those lines?
38. 00:01:18 Oh, yeah.
39. 00:01:19 Love flux.
40. 00:01:19 Yep.
41. 00:01:20 Although I've been doing a pretty good job of
42. 00:01:24 not using my computer at night.
43. 00:01:26 So I don't see it active all that often.
44. 00:01:29 I don't.
45. 00:01:30 I regularly use my computer before the girls go to bed.
46. 00:01:34 Thus the glasses.
47. 00:01:37 Gotta love it.
48. 00:01:41 Follow up.
49. 00:01:42 I don't have any to report on,
50. 00:01:45 which means it's up to you, sir.
51. 00:01:47 We got.
52. 00:01:49 I didn't take a stand for anything.
53. 00:01:51 Happy New Year.
54. 00:01:54 That's not saying a stand.
55. 00:01:56 Not entirely true, probably.
56. 00:01:58 But I have basically been off the grid
57. 00:02:00 since publishing the last episode.
58. 00:02:03 I scrambled to get that one out the door
59. 00:02:06 on Christmas Day,
60. 00:02:07 and then basically didn't do anything
61. 00:02:11 until we record this on New Year's Day.
62. 00:02:14 So I haven't had a ton of opportunity
63. 00:02:18 to do that sort of thing.
64. 00:02:19 I've been thinking about this.
65. 00:02:20 And I, this isn't exactly the spirit of the action item,
66. 00:02:24 but one of the things I've been thinking about
67. 00:02:26 is this whole concept of hustle.
68. 00:02:28 Because there's a lot of anti-hustle messages
69. 00:02:32 in the productivity space right now,
70. 00:02:34 which I agree with the spirit of those.
71. 00:02:38 I know that the term hustle is typically associated
72. 00:02:43 with somebody like Gary Vee.
73. 00:02:45 And that's not what I aspire to be.
74. 00:02:49 But also I wrote a book called Thou shalt hustle.
75. 00:02:53 Sure. I'm in the process of updating that to a 2.0,
76. 00:02:57 and not just a 2.0, it's going to be significantly expanded.
77. 00:03:01 I basically developed a whole bunch of mental models
78. 00:03:05 and things like that since I put that out.
79. 00:03:07 I want to make it something I'm proud of.
80. 00:03:09 And I am working on that,
81. 00:03:12 and I've been thinking about do I just give up on that title,
82. 00:03:16 or do I double down on it?
83. 00:03:17 Sure.
84. 00:03:18 And I feel like if I were to give up on it,
85. 00:03:20 that would be in some way kind of the taking a stand against something,
86. 00:03:27 saying I don't want to be associated with hustle anymore,
87. 00:03:30 but that's not how I define hustle anyways.
88. 00:03:31 So I could lose a bunch of people who see the word hustle in the title
89. 00:03:37 and say, well, that's not really appealing to me.
90. 00:03:41 But I think I've kind of made my piece with
91. 00:03:44 I'm just going to own this term and stand for what I think it really means.
92. 00:03:48 Not getting up at 5am, staying up till 2am hustle then.
93. 00:03:53 Yep.
94. 00:03:54 People associate with some people on the internet.
95. 00:03:57 And I know I'm never going to win the overall war for redefining that term,
96. 00:04:03 but I think it's okay.
97. 00:04:06 And so this action item, even though it was not at all what I was talking about,
98. 00:04:10 that's kind of the outcome from it.
99. 00:04:11 Sure.
100. 00:04:12 Yeah.
101. 00:04:13 If that makes any sense whatsoever, but my brain works in mysterious ways.
102. 00:04:19 Well, I know that like there's been a lot of folks talking about hustle online lately.
103. 00:04:23 I don't know why that is.
104. 00:04:24 I don't know what has caused that.
105. 00:04:27 But the thing that I've noticed is the people who are bemoaning hustle and saying,
106. 00:04:31 you shouldn't do it or the ones who went through it and have come out
107. 00:04:34 successful on the other side.
108. 00:04:35 That's true.
109. 00:04:37 Yeah.
110. 00:04:38 So it's interesting to me that they'll tell you, this is not the way to do it.
111. 00:04:42 But they can only say that because they did it and had success as a result of it.
112. 00:04:48 So I struggle with that particular piece.
113. 00:04:51 I think I would agree that you don't want to be up till 2 a.m.
114. 00:04:55 working on something up at 5 a.m. to start working on it again.
115. 00:04:59 Like that I wouldn't agree with, but I do hustle a lot.
116. 00:05:04 When we were talking before we hit record, like I'm or maybe it was after I've been up,
117. 00:05:11 you know, working on a computer till nine o'clock and then going to bed at 9.15, 9.20.
118. 00:05:15 So like that messes with you a little bit when you're on a computer doing work at that time.
119. 00:05:21 So I'm aware of that.
120. 00:05:22 It's just a sacrifice I'm willing to make right now.
121. 00:05:25 So I don't know.
122. 00:05:27 Yeah.
123. 00:05:28 I think the thing is that like if you listen to Gary V, the predominant message that he's
124. 00:05:37 saying, and I think Jaco kind of ventures into this territory too, is like, just shut up and do the work.
125. 00:05:45 And the problem with that is that if all you do is work, you can bring yourself out and there's
126. 00:05:50 no guarantee that just doing the work will get you where you want to go anyways.
127. 00:05:54 It's more important to be effective than it is to be efficient.
128. 00:05:57 And the number of widgets cranked does not have a direct correlation to the quality of life improved.
129. 00:06:04 Yeah.
130. 00:06:06 So I get, you know, people's resistance to it and I don't think you have to
131. 00:06:10 sell your soul in order to get any sort of level of comfort in designing a life that you want to live.
132. 00:06:16 But yeah, I don't know.
133. 00:06:19 Maybe when I update that book, we'll cover it up a book where we can unpack my how I define it and stuff like that.
134. 00:06:24 Sure.
135. 00:06:25 I don't know. I follow Gary V on a number of platforms and
136. 00:06:28 I hesitate to tell people to follow him because he is so far over the top.
137. 00:06:36 But I've noticed that if you follow him and listen to what he says for an extended amount of time,
138. 00:06:42 you'll pick up a little little subtleties from him.
139. 00:06:45 There's nuance there. Yep.
140. 00:06:46 Yeah.
141. 00:06:47 And it seems pretty common that people will say like, well, how do I, how do I get started and all this stuff?
142. 00:06:54 He's like, just do the work, like show up, do your thing.
143. 00:06:57 Yeah.
144. 00:06:57 And the more like one of the subtleties is you could burn the candle on both ends.
145. 00:07:03 He does in so many ways.
146. 00:07:06 And yet he will like the subtle pieces that you'll get out what you put in
147. 00:07:13 is the concept there.
148. 00:07:15 So if you want to get things up and running quickly, yeah, go for it.
149. 00:07:20 If you're willing to, you know, maybe build a more sustainable lifestyle that's going to take a
150. 00:07:28 little bit longer to get things up and going just because you're not pushing, pushing, pushing,
151. 00:07:33 like what Gary V does. So I don't know.
152. 00:07:35 I think if you were to sit down and talk to Gary V, he would say the stuff that people think about,
153. 00:07:42 the casual observers opinion of Gary V, he would say, no, that's not right.
154. 00:07:46 That's not really what I mean.
155. 00:07:47 Right.
156. 00:07:48 But also, I mean, he's kind of wired that way.
157. 00:07:52 Yes.
158. 00:07:53 You should go listen to the 10% happier podcast episode that he's on.
159. 00:07:58 It did.
160. 00:07:58 Yep.
161. 00:07:59 That is hilarious.
162. 00:08:01 It's basically them trying to, it's Dan and a meditation expert trying to get him to shut
163. 00:08:08 up long enough to lead him in like a three minute meditation.
164. 00:08:11 Right.
165. 00:08:11 And he just won't go along with it.
166. 00:08:13 Not like he says he's going to, but he's just 100 miles an hour.
167. 00:08:17 And at the end, he's like, yeah, that was powerful.
168. 00:08:20 It didn't do anything for me, but I can see how this could be.
169. 00:08:23 It's so true.
170. 00:08:26 Because they take, if you listen to it, there's like 12, 15 minutes of them trying to start
171. 00:08:32 the meditation.
172. 00:08:33 Yep.
173. 00:08:33 Yep.
174. 00:08:34 And he's just like trying to, like, so what do I, you know, and how do I, and whenever that's,
175. 00:08:38 and then, you know, oh, yeah.
176. 00:08:40 And this reminds me of this and he's just nonstop.
177. 00:08:44 Oh, Gary V.
178. 00:08:45 Yeah.
179. 00:08:46 How do we get on this?
180. 00:08:46 My action item.
181. 00:08:48 Oh, yeah.
182. 00:08:49 Hustle.
183. 00:08:50 Yeah.
184. 00:08:52 I've also one other thought related to this.
185. 00:08:55 I've been thinking about the whole faith-based productivity thing.
186. 00:08:58 And I've got some stuff percolating that I want to start publishing shortly on, like,
187. 00:09:06 the whole idea of faith and kind of the contrasting idea of fear.
188. 00:09:11 And so faith-based productivity, anybody who follows me knows who I am and what I stand for,
189. 00:09:20 and how my Christian faith is a big part of who I am and what I do.
190. 00:09:24 But as I am thinking about these two terms, I actually heard them defined by somebody,
191. 00:09:29 and it's the same definition.
192. 00:09:31 They defined fear as the belief that what you can't see is going to come to pass and faith as the
193. 00:09:36 believing what you can't see is going to come to pass, whereas faith is a positive and fear is a
194. 00:09:43 negative.
195. 00:09:44 And I like that a lot.
196. 00:09:46 And so I just been thinking about that and like, what does that practically look like?
197. 00:09:50 How does that influence your day to day if you are acting in faith or acting in fear?
198. 00:09:56 And the real takeaway from this, I think, again, more to come in the blog posts and the newsletters.
199. 00:10:04 But if you are being limited by fear, you're not actually that far off.
200. 00:10:09 You just have to have a little bit of a perspective change.
201. 00:10:11 And the thing that was negatively motivating you to do nothing can positively motivate you
202. 00:10:18 to do something that you are passionate about, that you care about going back to like Seth
203. 00:10:24 Godin in the practice and all that stuff.
204. 00:10:26 So stay tuned.
205. 00:10:28 We'll do.
206. 00:10:28 I think I'm on that newsletter already.
207. 00:10:31 Yeah, I haven't sent anything yet.
208. 00:10:32 I've got to finish this newsletter ninja book, but I've gotten some pretty decent ideas about this.
209. 00:10:37 Sure.
210. 00:10:38 And I want to make sure that the newsletter itself is entertaining and adding value and not just
211. 00:10:45 something like a lot of people view a newsletter as like a button that you pushed when you launch
212. 00:10:49 something to get money.
213. 00:10:51 Right.
214. 00:10:51 I don't want it to be that.
215. 00:10:52 It's so true.
216. 00:10:54 I want it to be something, you know, I mentioned, I think last episode, one of my words for 2021
217. 00:11:01 is community.
218. 00:11:02 I view this as like a big piece of the community building that I want to be doing.
219. 00:11:07 And I just want to make sure that I wrap my head around it.
220. 00:11:10 And I'm doing it the right way.
221. 00:11:12 And I'm doing it in a way that like I'm committed to and is sustainable kind of like what I've
222. 00:11:15 done with the sermon sketch notes.
223. 00:11:17 I don't want it to be something that like I try and then I can't quite figure it out.
224. 00:11:21 So I gave up on it.
225. 00:11:22 I did that last time.
226. 00:11:23 Sure.
227. 00:11:25 Yeah.
228. 00:11:26 No, it makes sense.
229. 00:11:27 It does.
230. 00:11:28 It does.
231. 00:11:28 Well, shall we, shall we jump in here today?
232. 00:11:32 Let's do it.
233. 00:11:33 So today's book is lead yourself first.
234. 00:11:37 Inspiring leadership through solitude by Raymond Kethledge.
235. 00:11:42 Also, Michael Erwin is on this as well.
236. 00:11:44 And I will say this was, I think exactly what I thought I was getting into.
237. 00:11:51 In that I fully expected a handful of stories and an explanation of how solitude can help
238. 00:12:01 you understand how to be a good leader.
239. 00:12:04 And that is exactly what I got.
240. 00:12:07 Plus a little bonus at the end, which I'm very grateful for.
241. 00:12:11 And we will talk about a little bit when we get there.
242. 00:12:15 Yeah.
243. 00:12:17 What were your first impressions on this, Mike?
244. 00:12:18 This is not exactly what I had anticipated, but I didn't pick the book either.
245. 00:12:26 The first experience with this was when I opened the Amazon package and held it in my hands.
246. 00:12:31 I like the approach.
247. 00:12:33 There's some really great stories in here.
248. 00:12:36 There is not much I thought on the idea of practicing solitude until the very end.
249. 00:12:46 He's got some practical stuff, but I don't know.
250. 00:12:49 I feel like along the way there was opportunity to interspers some of that.
251. 00:12:54 But overall, it's a really cool book.
252. 00:12:58 And some of these stories I had heard versions of these before, but never
253. 00:13:04 anything close to the level of detail that they gave for some of these famous people.
254. 00:13:10 And so that made this really, really entertaining and really fun to read.
255. 00:13:15 It inspires me that when I write a book, I want to include a bunch of really cool stories like this.
256. 00:13:24 I know that that's going to take a ton of research in order to
257. 00:13:28 deliver anything close to the quality of what they did in this book.
258. 00:13:32 But then again, this is the very best that I can recall storytelling that I have ever seen.
259. 00:13:40 And there's a lot of it.
260. 00:13:41 Yep.
261. 00:13:43 Because there's...
262. 00:13:43 Well, I think I would say this entire book is just stories.
263. 00:13:50 Pretty much.
264. 00:13:51 Yeah.
265. 00:13:51 There's not much between it.
266. 00:13:54 So it's broken up into four parts.
267. 00:13:57 We don't have a three part book this time, Mike.
268. 00:14:00 We do not.
269. 00:14:01 So it's a four-parter.
270. 00:14:02 Plus a fifth.
271. 00:14:04 Plus a fifth, like an ending of sorts.
272. 00:14:07 And I really appreciated that ending solo chapter.
273. 00:14:13 It's only eight pages.
274. 00:14:14 But I remember, I listened to an interview at one point by Johnny Cuff.
275. 00:14:19 He was talking about some of the direction that Dave Ramsey gave him when he was writing his first
276. 00:14:26 book.
277. 00:14:27 I don't even remember what the first book was.
278. 00:14:30 Start, maybe?
279. 00:14:31 And Dave Ramsey told him that if you're going to write a motivational book, make sure you have
280. 00:14:40 practical how-to's that come with it.
281. 00:14:45 That way people can take that motivation and actually do something.
282. 00:14:48 And I'm trying to remember what the phrase was.
283. 00:14:51 It was motivation without application is useless.
284. 00:14:54 It was something like that.
285. 00:14:56 A phrase that's similar to that.
286. 00:14:57 But it was encouraging Johnny Cuff to put an application aspect to his book at the end of the
287. 00:15:03 book after he had motivated people to do something.
288. 00:15:07 And that way they're not just left out trying to figure out what to do.
289. 00:15:10 That's exactly what he does here, where there's a massive amount of motivation to it.
290. 00:15:15 But then there's eight pages at the end where there's some form of application.
291. 00:15:21 I wouldn't say it's very practical, but it's like a philosophical, here's the concepts that you need
292. 00:15:26 to try to put in place.
293. 00:15:28 And we'll get to that and what those actually are when we get towards the end of this.
294. 00:15:33 But the four parts are clarity, creativity, emotional balance, and moral courage.
295. 00:15:39 It doesn't actually name the parts.
296. 00:15:41 This is the name of the first chapter within those parts.
297. 00:15:44 That was weird, I thought.
298. 00:15:46 Yeah, it was a little bit strange.
299. 00:15:48 It made sense, I think, once you got into it, because what was it?
300. 00:15:52 Two between two and three chapters behind each of those, explaining various aspects or specific
301. 00:16:01 stories about that specific concept.
302. 00:16:04 So I think structure-wise it made sense, but it was weird to not name the parts.
303. 00:16:09 It's just part one, two, three, four.
304. 00:16:11 Yes.
305. 00:16:12 And I don't know why they did that.
306. 00:16:16 I mean, there's these four different parts which they could have combined into some sort of formula,
307. 00:16:25 but they didn't.
308. 00:16:26 And because they didn't, it's kind of weird that part one, for example, which is titled
309. 00:16:34 clarity, goes into the chapter one on clarity.
310. 00:16:38 Oh, by the way, I did actually find in the first introduction part, he mentions these four different
311. 00:16:45 pieces and how those were going to be essentially the names of the four parts.
312. 00:16:50 So my mind-note file actually says like part one clarity, chapter one clarity,
313. 00:16:54 which is kind of goofy.
314. 00:16:55 The table of contents you're correct does not actually list those things.
315. 00:16:59 But essentially that's what he's doing is he's breaking these down into the individual
316. 00:17:04 components.
317. 00:17:05 But if you skip the introduction, you wouldn't even know that's the approach they're taking,
318. 00:17:09 which is kind of puzzling. Why would you not, I don't know, that seems very counter to a lot of
319. 00:17:18 the productivity type books that we read.
320. 00:17:22 I think me specifically, I like to think in terms of systems, but I think a lot of productivity
321. 00:17:30 authors, that's what they sell is these dots that we've heard about before packaged into a
322. 00:17:36 little bit different way of thinking about them that they brand as their own system.
323. 00:17:41 It feels like just from a marketing perspective, there's an opportunity that was missed here.
324. 00:17:48 But I really don't understand it from a reader's perspective either because if you skip the
325. 00:17:53 introduction, this is just kind of confusing at the beginning.
326. 00:17:56 Yeah, I could see that. And I will say like as I was going through this, one of the things that
327. 00:18:00 I struggled with was connecting things. I kept forgetting that the core was about solitude.
328. 00:18:09 And some of that's because he's so good at telling stories.
329. 00:18:12 Like, okay, let's hear about Dwight Eisenhower.
330. 00:18:16 Awesome. Oh, right. Why are we going down this path again?
331. 00:18:22 I struggled with that somewhat. He always ties it together at the end, but it's hard to see
332. 00:18:27 because some of the stories are so elaborate and so long that you sometimes disconnect what
333. 00:18:32 what the purpose of it was. So if I've got a critique on that particular format, that would be it.
334. 00:18:38 But on that note, I mean, as I was taking notes here, I found myself looking for that
335. 00:18:46 common thread throughout because it's my node file. And this is the part on clarity. So
336. 00:18:54 what does this section in chapter three on the stillness of intuition have to do with clarity?
337. 00:19:01 And he's such a good storyteller. It feels a lot of times like he loses the plot, you know,
338. 00:19:07 because he's so enamored with some of the details that he's sharing. Sure. And some of the times I'm
339. 00:19:13 going through this story and I'm like, well, that's cool detail, but I don't want to write that down.
340. 00:19:16 That's cool detail. I don't want to write that down. And then I'm like, okay, so how long has it been
341. 00:19:19 since I wrote something down? Like, where are we? I need a map. Yes. Yes. And I feel like, again,
342. 00:19:27 that's easily provided if we have that system at the beginning. I hate the word system to being
343. 00:19:34 used here because I don't think it really is a system, but really just bringing us back, re-centering
344. 00:19:40 us on this is the core message. Like that part is suspiciously absent. And I feel like the book
345. 00:19:48 suffers a little bit because of that. Yeah, I think that's fair. That is fair.
346. 00:19:53 Let's dive into these points. But before we can do that, I feel like we have to talk about
347. 00:19:56 solitude itself, which he doesn't do. Exactly. Which I thought was interesting.
348. 00:20:04 Because the first four parts here are talking about the results of solitude. Now, granted,
349. 00:20:13 as he tells the stories, there are various types of solitude that are discussed. And
350. 00:20:21 then you get to see the results of that solitude. So you kind of pick up what solitude is as you go
351. 00:20:27 through it. But I feel like for the sake of this conversation, it's not going to make sense
352. 00:20:32 unless we talk about it point blank, which I didn't put in the outline. And I realize that only just
353. 00:20:36 now because Joe ADD. Well, I would say you won't pick it up as you go because I didn't realize
354. 00:20:43 until chapter 10 when he's talking about Doug Kona, the former CEO of Campbell Soups,
355. 00:20:49 how he would reflect every morning and he had those different areas. Sounds a lot like the wheel
356. 00:20:55 of life. And then they mentioned every couple of months he does a deeper dive and I'm like,
357. 00:20:59 oh, that's a personal retreat. Doug, solitude, personal retreat. And then at that point,
358. 00:21:06 I'm like, oh, I should go back to the beginning and reread this.
359. 00:21:09 Sure. So chapter 10 is when I made that connection. And I like to think that I'm
360. 00:21:15 a little bit smarter than the average bear. Like, I feel there didn't need to be that long before
361. 00:21:23 that light bulb went on in my head, but they just didn't really make it clear at the beginning what
362. 00:21:30 they were going to be doing, you know, basic marketing. They tell you, say what you're going to tell
363. 00:21:35 them, tell them, then tell them what you told them sort of a thing. Yep. There's absolutely none of
364. 00:21:41 that in here. Right. Right. Which at the same time, I have to say that I appreciate to a degree.
365. 00:21:48 I don't know. I haven't really decided quite yet how this fits into the spectrum because
366. 00:21:54 I also appreciate books that assume a base knowledge because they don't spell everything out for me
367. 00:22:02 because sometimes that tell me what you're going to tell me, tell me and then tell me what you told
368. 00:22:06 me that whole concept that drives me up a wall sometimes. I'm not a third grader. I know they
369. 00:22:13 tell you to write at a third grade level or a second grade level, but I hate it. I hate reading
370. 00:22:18 it whenever they do that. Like, make me feel like I'm an intelligent person. You don't have to speak
371. 00:22:25 to me like I'm a child. But do tell us why you're telling us. Correct. You're telling us. Like,
372. 00:22:30 what's the point of these stories other than they're fun to listen to? Yep. So there's there
373. 00:22:35 needs to be a more legitimate chapter zero here, I think, because like, and tell me what your
374. 00:22:44 perception of solitude was. So this is so for me, what I picked up going through this is there's a
375. 00:22:49 whole variety of versions of this. Some of those can be going for walks on your own,
376. 00:22:55 going on something like a personal retreat, which would be multiple days.
377. 00:22:59 Meditation is brought up, you know, a simple 10, 15 minutes journaling. Yep. Journaling is in
378. 00:23:06 there. Like there's there's a bunch of these. You're taking time by yourself in silence. That
379. 00:23:12 seems to be the overarching concept here is time by yourself in silence. And that time frame can
380. 00:23:19 vary from five minutes to months. So it really depends on the level of clarity and the level of
381. 00:23:29 well, I'm jumping into part one there, but it depends on the level of difficulty that you're trying
382. 00:23:35 to overcome will dictate the type of solitude and the length of solitude that you've got to have.
383. 00:23:42 I feel like most of the stories that he shares, especially in the initial chapters in the
384. 00:23:51 sections, where he's not highlighting a historical figure per se. Those are basically telling what
385. 00:24:00 other people do in order to practice this undefined solitude. So they're different
386. 00:24:08 applications of the concept of solitude. But again, like we don't have an anchor of this is what you
387. 00:24:14 are going for. It's basically just, yeah, I was going through a rough patch and this is the thing
388. 00:24:20 that kept me sane. And they tell a whole bunch of different ways of doing that transcendental
389. 00:24:24 meditation, running marathons, yada, yada, everything that you have ever heard of. You'll hear somebody
390. 00:24:30 who has done that successfully. But the problem with that approach is that unless you've
391. 00:24:35 tinkered with this and experimented on yourself, you don't know which one of those could be the
392. 00:24:41 thing that will work for you. And there's no real step by step on how to apply any of them.
393. 00:24:49 Which is fine. I mean, that's probably not what they were going for. But I could see if you are
394. 00:24:56 coming to this book, not having read the 109 that we have before this, you're like, oh, that's an
395. 00:25:03 interesting concept. I never heard of that before. But I still don't know what I can do right now
396. 00:25:08 in order to move me in that direction. I just know what this other person did. And again, like
397. 00:25:19 maybe it's just a stylistic preference. I don't really like that though. I felt like I was kind
398. 00:25:27 of left hanging on some of this stuff. And so I think for a newbie coming to this, you're definitely
399. 00:25:32 going to feel left hanging. And I feel like that's a little bit of a it's the author's responsibility
400. 00:25:39 to answer the questions that will arise from the reader as they engage with their material.
401. 00:25:45 I feel like this is kind of like having a conversation and not caring what the other
402. 00:25:51 person is going to say, just moving on with what you want to say.
403. 00:25:54 There's one point I want to contradict you with or argue with you on in that what we're talking
404. 00:26:03 about here is he's not giving us the foundation of what is solitude, right? Like you have anchored us.
405. 00:26:11 But if you think about the stories and what the results of solitude are, part of me wonders if
406. 00:26:21 the intention here is that you are inspired enough to try solitude as you're reading this
407. 00:26:27 in order to understand it more. Because this first step, this first part on clarity, there's a lot
408. 00:26:36 of stories in there where people took time to themselves in order to understand a situation more.
409. 00:26:41 Like that's a lot of what that part is about is how do I get clarity on what's going on,
410. 00:26:47 whether it's an analytical decision or I don't even know. So business decision, like there's so
411. 00:26:52 many things trying to make a decision. Like there's a lot of clear thinking and such that
412. 00:26:59 you're trying to find by getting away and being on your own. If you apply that to the book itself,
413. 00:27:06 I wonder if because I didn't. So I can't tell you the results of that. But if we had, I wonder what
414. 00:27:12 what the outcome of that would have been would we have had that same feeling? Or would it
415. 00:27:20 be putting the book into practice as you read the book? I don't know. Just an interesting concept
416. 00:27:26 I've been mulling over. My question for you is what is this book about?
417. 00:27:34 It's fair. It's a fair question. Because I would argue that this book is actually about leadership.
418. 00:27:41 It is not about solitude. It is about leadership. Solitude is the vehicle that gets you to the
419. 00:27:49 leadership, the effective leadership that you, what's the first word? Lead yourself first.
420. 00:27:55 So if that is the case, they should explain to us what we're shooting for with this solitude.
421. 00:28:04 Yeah, that's fair. But again, you have a good point. It's more about leadership, which is valid.
422. 00:28:10 I think maybe that's a misfire, maybe on my part, of focusing on the solitude side of it.
423. 00:28:19 When the bulk of the book is about leadership, and it is the first word in the title,
424. 00:28:24 and it's inspiring leadership through solitude. So leadership is the forefront. I guess if you
425. 00:28:29 follow those two, but solitude is the method. So I focus on the method.
426. 00:28:34 Exactly. So it's an interesting point.
427. 00:28:37 Yeah. I mean, the four components here, this is really, we've got clarity, we've got creativity,
428. 00:28:47 we've got emotional balance, and we've got moral courage. Really, those are defining what effective
429. 00:28:54 leadership looks like. Those aren't components of solitude. But solitude is directly tied to the
430. 00:29:02 quality of those four different characteristics. So that's the part where I think we need a little
431. 00:29:10 bit more to go off of. Sure. But I don't know, maybe we should just get into the different sections
432. 00:29:17 here and maybe we'll, maybe my concerns about the lack of defining solitude will be alleviated
433. 00:29:23 as we talk through this. Sure. Yeah. Well, the first part is about clarity.
434. 00:29:27 I kind of alluded to that already. And I would say, this is of the four parts, I feel like this is
435. 00:29:37 exactly the right one to start with. Primarily because whenever people think about going off on
436. 00:29:43 their own, it's to clear their head. Like that's probably the number one reason people would do
437. 00:29:49 that. Myself included, like I use my commute to and from my day job in silence to just
438. 00:29:58 create a clean transition between the different modes of action that I'm engaging in. And
439. 00:30:06 it becomes a very clean way for me to, again, shift my mindset from one set to the other. But
440. 00:30:15 I don't do that very well if I've got a podcast playing in the car or music or I don't do well
441. 00:30:22 when I have that I've been in tune with that enough to know that if I sit in silence
442. 00:30:28 for that 10 minutes, it makes a huge difference on both sides morning and evening. So
443. 00:30:36 having that time to clear your head, taking that space, you know, in my case, that would be 10
444. 00:30:41 minutes a couple times a day that I know I can count on. But I know that there are other benefits
445. 00:30:47 that would come from doing the same at other intervals, like a whole day or a weekend, like
446. 00:30:54 your personal retreat thing. So having more time would in retrospect give you more clarity for
447. 00:31:02 bigger things as well. Yep, absolutely. And what's interesting about this section is that
448. 00:31:11 there is a couple different spotlights for lack of a better term. One on chapter two
449. 00:31:17 on analytical clarity, where they talk about Dwight Eisenhower. And then chapter three,
450. 00:31:23 they talk about Jane Goodall and that talks more about intuition. Backing up a little bit,
451. 00:31:27 chapter one is titled clarity. And they use a phrase here. They say leadership is not letting
452. 00:31:36 the immediate take precedence over the important. That sounds a lot like important versus urgent.
453. 00:31:43 That's what I thought too. Yield Eisenhower matrix. So very appropriate, I think, going into
454. 00:31:50 chapter two, talking about Dwight Eisenhower, although they never actually talk about that matrix
455. 00:31:55 specifically. They do talk in that section about how Dwight Eisenhower had to make some
456. 00:32:01 really tough decisions. And in order to make them effectively, he would basically
457. 00:32:07 embrace solitude as much as he could. They use a lot of really cool personal examples,
458. 00:32:14 letters that he was writing to his wife, where he says, even when I think I have a couple of hours
459. 00:32:19 to myself, something always happens to upset my plans. Yeah, stuff like that. But the thing I
460. 00:32:26 found interesting about Dwight Eisenhower specifically, because this is analytical clarity, which they
461. 00:32:30 make the point that this is the hardest kind to get. He had a habit of thinking by writing.
462. 00:32:36 Does that remind you of anything? The artist way. Yeah, that was the first one that came to mind.
463. 00:32:41 Morning pages, exactly. Now, I think I have given up entirely on the practice of morning pages.
464. 00:32:49 Oh, I gave up on that one a long time ago. I do not have the time for that. Yeah,
465. 00:32:54 especially anymore when I've been focusing more on sleeping, save last night. But, you know,
466. 00:33:00 focusing more on sleep, by getting up in the morning, trying to do my Bible reading, trying to,
467. 00:33:05 you know, do a morning kickoff on my bullet journal, getting breakfast for the kids, all the things.
468. 00:33:09 I don't have time. I don't like it takes 30 minutes or more sometimes to do that. It's like,
469. 00:33:15 I it's just not that important. Yeah, but I think there is a connection to be made there.
470. 00:33:21 And essentially, that's what Dwight Eisenhower is doing. Although he's not doing it maybe in the
471. 00:33:26 morning. He's doing it whenever he can find some some time. And so there is, I think,
472. 00:33:32 a little bit of an incentive there for me to start trying to think through things by writing.
473. 00:33:38 I don't know exactly what that's going to look like for me yet. I don't have an action item
474. 00:33:44 associated with that specifically. But that's an example of the kind of thing we were just
475. 00:33:48 talking about where it's like, okay, there's a real connection here between him writing to
476. 00:33:52 untangle his thoughts. Julia Cameron is the artist way, which I'm sure they're familiar with. And
477. 00:33:57 they just kind of leave us hanging of like, this is what Dwight Eisenhower did. He wrote all these
478. 00:34:00 letters. Yeah. I don't want to write letters. So how do I apply this? If I hadn't read the artist
479. 00:34:06 way, I have no idea what morning pages are. Like, where do I even begin with this? Right,
480. 00:34:10 right. You know, and it'd be really easy to say, Oh, in the artist way, Julia Cameron says,
481. 00:34:14 just stream of conscious writing. So you sit down and you write whatever comes to your mind,
482. 00:34:18 and that's a wave on tangling things. Boom, done. You know, a sentence or two. And now we've got
483. 00:34:22 something solid that we can build off of. But yeah, there were there were a couple things
484. 00:34:28 that I noticed that we're overarching across the book. Number one, they have a fascination with
485. 00:34:33 the Civil War. Yes, they do. I'm okay with that. I'm fine with that. But they just,
486. 00:34:40 there's an inordinate amount of stories from that period. The second is that a lot of people from
487. 00:34:48 that time period processed and thought on paper, which we don't do. We do it sometimes we do it
488. 00:34:55 through keyboards, but we don't do that on paper very often. Yep. This is where I, of course,
489. 00:35:01 gravitate towards that as somebody who runs a membership site called analog Joe. So,
490. 00:35:08 and that's part of what we're going to we're getting ready to talk about. Let's see, as this
491. 00:35:11 releases, it's in another this next Wednesday as this releases. We're going to be talking about
492. 00:35:17 like new year stuff and processing your thoughts and reflecting on paper. Like that's what we're
493. 00:35:22 going to talk about exactly. And this was like fueled with the fire for that, because so many
494. 00:35:27 people in here process like you're saying on paper and wrote things out. And that's how they got
495. 00:35:31 their thoughts together. And what how's the phrase go thoughts disentangle themselves over
496. 00:35:36 lips and pencil tips? Like that's there's something to that for sure. This is partly why we have
497. 00:35:42 bookworm. We can process it out loud. So yes, there's a lot of writing. It's like, I don't do that.
498. 00:35:49 I don't. Maybe I should. I don't know. It's it's inspiring to at least maybe try it.
499. 00:35:55 But you know, going back to our point of, you know, what are you supposed to get from these
500. 00:36:00 stories? Some of me wonders if they don't want to set you up for that so that you can gravitate
501. 00:36:06 towards the ones that fit you. Maybe. Sure. I would love for them to just say that it would take
502. 00:36:13 three sentences and you'd be done. But it is it is interesting. So yeah, that's one of them that
503. 00:36:19 stuck out to me and like, okay, should I be doing this? I'm probably not going to take the time for
504. 00:36:23 it, but probably should. Well, the other interesting thing about this, I think, is you write a lot of
505. 00:36:28 people that they focused on obviously did this paper pen. But 2020 was the the year of the Zettel
506. 00:36:37 Caston. Yeah. And it's an understatement. Whether you are a room research fan, there it is.
507. 00:36:46 I knew it was coming. Yeah, I was trying to figure out a way to walk around that one, but I couldn't.
508. 00:36:51 So now we've talked about it. I think this is part of the value of applications like
509. 00:36:57 Roman obsidian. And I think we're going to see this more and more in other note taking apps is the
510. 00:37:03 ability to go back and resurface in the appropriate context, things that you had written previously.
511. 00:37:11 Because I think there is value in the stream of conscious writing, getting it out of your head
512. 00:37:18 onto the paper. But also once you've gotten it onto the paper, in this case, digital paper,
513. 00:37:23 being able to see that again and see those things pop up over and over again. I think there is
514. 00:37:28 insight to be had from that too. So like just getting it down is sort of level one. And then
515. 00:37:34 being able to see all of your thoughts on this thing at a time and look at all those dots and
516. 00:37:40 how they connect, that's kind of level two. And that has a lot of benefit to not just this first
517. 00:37:49 section clarity, but also the next one, which we're going to talk about creativity. Before we get
518. 00:37:53 there though, just real briefly, chapter three, I talk about intuition. I think it's worth calling
519. 00:37:58 out here how intuition and analytical clarity are kind of like two different sides of the coin.
520. 00:38:03 And how analytical clarity, this is the one where you get away and you think about things and you
521. 00:38:09 get really focused on the problem you're trying to solve. But intuition actually kind of works
522. 00:38:14 the opposite way. You still need the solitude, you still need to get alone. But instead of having a
523. 00:38:19 focused approach, it's more like the panoramic view. And you see, but sometimes without even
524. 00:38:25 being able to clarify what you're seeing the big picture. And then you're like, yeah, I just
525. 00:38:30 don't feel like this is the right decision to make it. So you do something else instead.
526. 00:38:33 Right. Right. Yes. So let's let's go ahead and step into the creativity side of it. I feel like
527. 00:38:39 this is maybe one that we've heard a lot of in the past. If you can't come up with a solution to
528. 00:38:47 something, go off on your own and it'll come like that. I just summarized three chapters. But the
529. 00:38:53 well, two chapters. Oh, that's right. This one's too. Yeah.
530. 00:38:56 I will say this is one that I use a lot in a very, very small way. But it's very common for me to be
531. 00:39:06 stuck on say a code project. I don't know what the answer is to how to solve that.
532. 00:39:12 But I step away from whatever it is I'm doing, go for a walk, do something else that involves
533. 00:39:18 working with my hands, always by myself. And I come back to it and I almost always have an answer
534. 00:39:24 and can solve whatever it was I was stuck on. That's exactly what we're talking about here.
535. 00:39:30 In that if you are trying to come up with a solution to something that you don't currently
536. 00:39:34 have that solution, implementing some solitude will not always, but in most cases, at least get
537. 00:39:42 you on the path towards a solution. Yeah. Absolutely. And they make the point in chapter four here
538. 00:39:50 that solitude is where we find revelation. That's kind of what you were just talking about.
539. 00:39:53 One other thing from chapter four specifically that I thought was interesting is they talk about
540. 00:40:02 that people try hard to copy what other people do because there is so much information available
541. 00:40:07 to us. I never really thought of this this way. We have mentioned many, many, many times,
542. 00:40:13 steal like an artist by Austin Cleon. You have. I've never read this. So we're going to have to
543. 00:40:19 read it. You should pick that book. But the basic idea there is you don't have to be worried about
544. 00:40:26 ripping somebody off because all those dots you collect, they're going to be synthesized in your
545. 00:40:31 head and they're going to come out as something original anyways. But this kind of completes the
546. 00:40:37 picture for me because it's basically saying that in order for that to happen, you do have to have
547. 00:40:42 the solitude. You will end up just mimicking somebody else if all you're doing is consuming
548. 00:40:50 information. You can get the information and you can spit it back out, but in order for it to
549. 00:40:58 really become something that is authentically you, there needs to be this solitude piece
550. 00:41:05 for the creative process to work. It's not even something like do X, then Y, and you'll get Z.
551. 00:41:14 It's really just get solitude and then your brain will take care of the rest,
552. 00:41:18 which I think is kind of cool. Yeah, it really is. It's absolutely right. How many times have you
553. 00:41:26 heard the stories of people who failed or rejected hundreds or thousands of times before they had a
554. 00:41:32 success? You hear those stories? How many times do we hear that story in the books that we read?
555. 00:41:38 So it's very common. You hear it a lot. I think that plays into this. If I'm consuming RSS feeds
556. 00:41:47 and just scrolling Twitter and scrolling Facebook and all the things, like you're consuming all this,
557. 00:41:51 yes, you have a lot of ideas. You can research things to the nth degree and collect the dots,
558. 00:41:56 that you can then connect later. But you're not going to create an original dot,
559. 00:42:02 per se, unless you're regularly creating and it's when you create the original dot that things
560. 00:42:09 really blow up. Yeah, and you won't even really have the ideas, I would argue, until you have some
561. 00:42:15 built-in solitude. So this is something I've been thinking about because I've been thinking about
562. 00:42:20 like time tracking and the work that I do at the sweet setup. And that time where I'm just
563. 00:42:28 letting my brain connect things, how do I track that time? Is it like research time? I'm not really
564. 00:42:37 researching. And if you have to think of the work that you do through the lens of defining to somebody
565. 00:42:45 what you are working on, how do you say this solitude piece where I was spending four hours
566. 00:42:52 just thinking that's actually part of the process? They're like, well, I don't want to pay you for
567. 00:42:57 that. Yes. Yeah. I struggled with that when I was doing contracting all the time. I figure out
568. 00:43:04 how to solve your problems while I'm mowing the lawn, but you for sure will not be paying me to
569. 00:43:09 mow my lawn. Yeah. I can't bill that time, but that's where I solve your problem. So how do I
570. 00:43:16 incorporate that? Usually it's by upcharging 25%. So like you do something like that to make up for
571. 00:43:24 when you're actually working off hours. So it's messy. It really is. And how do you do that on a
572. 00:43:30 regular basis? You can't go mow your lawn every single day. No, no. But if that's the solitude,
573. 00:43:38 that if that's the place where things click, you should be looking to do that, I would argue
574. 00:43:45 more than once a week. Right. So I've been thinking about that and I don't have any specific answers
575. 00:43:52 yet. But I empathize for people who are in a situation where you're being measured by what you
576. 00:44:02 are able to produce because there's a tendency to be like, Oh, well, you wrote that article. Well,
577. 00:44:07 that took five hours to write that article. But you didn't see the 25 hours of noodling that
578. 00:44:13 needed to happen before the five hour article got written. Right. And I guess as I'm reading this,
579. 00:44:20 I feel less bad about that being my process because it, I'm not weird.
580. 00:44:25 There are more like me. Yeah. But I still don't have anything solid. I'm like, well,
581. 00:44:32 what do I call that time? And how do I incorporate that into my regular time blocking? I'm not quite
582. 00:44:38 sure what to do with that yet. But I recognize that it's an important piece of my creative process
583. 00:44:44 going forward. Yeah. This is actually a big reason I've stepped away from a lot of contracting and
584. 00:44:51 commission work because trying to bill it is such a mess. I get that it can be lucrative. You can
585. 00:44:58 make good money at it. But because I was somewhat forced out of it and now have been trying to
586. 00:45:04 rebuild some things outside of that concept, it's significantly freeing to be able to work on
587. 00:45:14 content. But then it doesn't matter how like, if you can do the recurring passive thing,
588. 00:45:18 because then that doesn't matter. You know, yes, you get paid whenever you kick out content and
589. 00:45:24 such. But you have the freedom to step away, do some solitude, mow the lawn, blow snow. Like,
590. 00:45:34 one of the things that they've tried to get me to offload to somebody else at my day job is my
591. 00:45:41 weekly process of tearing down the stage and rebuilding it for the next week from a sound system
592. 00:45:48 stance. Yeah. And because they don't like paying me to do that because, you know,
593. 00:45:53 any, you know, a high school student could do that. You are absolutely correct. But I want that task.
594. 00:46:00 Because it takes about an hour and a half, maybe a little bit more. It takes a little bit of time
595. 00:46:07 to do that. And as a result of that, I get a lot of clarity on the projects I'm working on because
596. 00:46:14 of it. So yep, I want that time. Don't take it from you. And that hour and a half, I mean,
597. 00:46:23 you have some other stuff that you're maybe getting clarity on too at the same time. So maybe
598. 00:46:27 that's where it gets a little bit sticky. But from a boss's perspective, they're probably thinking,
599. 00:46:32 oh, well, we can get back an hour and a half of Joe's time by removing this task. No, you
600. 00:46:38 probably just stole three hours from Joe because you're not letting him think through the work that
601. 00:46:43 he's doing. Yes. Yeah. You're going to take that task from me and to replace it, I'm going to walk
602. 00:46:50 the building for an hour and a half. Or you're just going to sit down and try to do what you
603. 00:46:55 need to do and you're going to be stuck. Correct. And I'll be stuck for five hours.
604. 00:46:59 I mean, it's a delicate dance, isn't it? I mean, it really is. It is. And I think everybody is
605. 00:47:06 unique in what you need to do and how much time you need to make things click. But I wish there was
606. 00:47:16 a way to just make it simple. Right. Right. This is time spent in this category. And this is how
607. 00:47:25 much benefit I got from it. It's not easy to say, well, this random idea I had that I haven't tested
608. 00:47:31 or done anything with yet. I have no idea how valuable that thing is. So I can't say this is
609. 00:47:37 what you're getting in return for the hours that I spend doing this. Right. Right. So we've got the
610. 00:47:44 two points here, clarity, and then creativity. The third one is emotional balance. And
611. 00:47:50 this one and the next one are a little bit harder to, I guess, quantify the first two are pretty
612. 00:47:58 straightforward. I'm going to go off of my own, get clarity on the specific situations so I can
613. 00:48:02 make a better decision. I can't solve my problem. I'm going to go off and spend some time by myself.
614. 00:48:07 We're doing something else that way I can get some, some better potential solutions for that.
615. 00:48:14 Emotional balance is a little harder to, I guess, quantify in this case because it's, if you have
616. 00:48:23 an extreme emotion, fear is probably a big one or angst or anxiousness. Like those are worries.
617. 00:48:30 Like those are big issues that could be overwhelming. But they're making the argument through these
618. 00:48:38 stories, I would say, that again, being willing to separate from the situation, I think about some
619. 00:48:44 of the worst scenarios where it's very dire, the situation that they're looking at, the general
620. 00:48:52 steps away from it and can, you know, let all the emotion subside and then step back into the
621. 00:49:00 situation with a clear head. That's a lot of what they're talking about here. At least that's
622. 00:49:04 the way I understood it. So again, emotional balance, whenever you've got the overwhelming
623. 00:49:10 emotions, giving yourself time for that solitude can give you a better, you know, it's kind of a
624. 00:49:16 messy line there too between clarity too. Like it can help you get some clear thinking on what's
625. 00:49:21 going on, but they're calling it emotional balance because of the situation that you're
626. 00:49:24 trying to get clear thinking on, it can go either way. Yeah, this one is complicated. They
627. 00:49:31 mentioned in the chapter on emotional balance specifically that the fact that your emotions get
628. 00:49:41 out of whack is not necessarily a bad thing. They mentioned that every leader has their emotional
629. 00:49:46 limits, there's no shame in exceeding them. What distinguishes effective leaders from ineffective
630. 00:49:50 ones is their ability to restore their emotional balance. And that helps them make appropriate
631. 00:49:55 decisions. One of the chapters I talk about here, Abraham Lincoln, General Mead, he's got General
632. 00:50:02 Lee cornered, the Potomac River is flooding, so they can't cross it. The bridge has been blown up.
633. 00:50:10 He's basically a sitting duck if they capture him, the war is over, but they had just fought the
634. 00:50:14 battle of Gettysburg and all his men were burned out. And he was burned out and he's listening,
635. 00:50:21 me inserting details here. He's probably listening to his men being upset about the guys that they
636. 00:50:26 lost. And even though they outnumber at least troops and they can end this thing right now,
637. 00:50:31 they don't recognize the opportunity as before them. Lincoln's like, "Hey, get your butt over there
638. 00:50:36 and finish this." And they wait and they wait and they wait and then they decide to go finally
639. 00:50:42 and they had crossed the river like three hours before. And they lost their chance. They had escaped
640. 00:50:47 to Virginia. And there's a bunch of lessons to be learned from that specifically. The thing there,
641. 00:50:55 I think that they don't really address is that General Mead had he been a more emotionally balanced
642. 00:51:01 leader. Maybe he recognizes the fact that they lost a bunch of men in the battle of Gettysburg,
643. 00:51:07 but quickly is able to write that and say, "I know this is terrible, but we have an opportunity
644. 00:51:13 here, guys. Let's just get this over with." That didn't happen. And then Abraham Lincoln, that's
645. 00:51:19 the one that they focus on. He's really, really upset that this didn't end. And instead of
646. 00:51:26 berating this guy, he writes a letter, puts it in an envelope and says, "Not signed, not sent."
647. 00:51:31 Which that's pretty brilliant, I think. And again, is one of those things where like,
648. 00:51:38 that's a tactic that you could use, but they don't really describe how this might look in modern
649. 00:51:44 day. They're just focused on telling Abraham Lincoln's cool story. But I think this is something
650. 00:51:50 that I used to beat myself up about is the fact that I would get upset about things. And he's
651. 00:51:57 basically saying like, "Well, that's normal. It's just how quickly you bounce back." And I'm thinking
652. 00:52:03 back specifically to a couple of years ago when I found myself getting let go and not knowing what's
653. 00:52:11 going to happen and being pretty upset about the whole situation. Being able to navigate
654. 00:52:20 through that and come out kind of like a better person, that is actually a huge win.
655. 00:52:29 There's a topic in this section called post-traumatic growth, which I had never heard before,
656. 00:52:36 heard of PTSD. And that's obviously the negative application of this trauma. And I'm not negating
657. 00:52:45 that that's a very real thing. But I feel like there's a valuable perspective shift that can happen
658. 00:52:52 here when you recognize that I'm in this trauma. I don't want to be here, but there's an opportunity
659. 00:52:58 to grow because of this. And I can say that I guess because I went through that and it was a pretty
660. 00:53:05 tough financial time for my wife and I. I got pretty depressed about it, to be honest. I don't
661. 00:53:14 really talk about the details of that with really anybody. But I look back at it now and I can realize
662. 00:53:21 that I was not in a great place. But stuff happened and I made it through and like with the whole
663. 00:53:29 COVID-19 thing and the economy. And I don't want to be little the things that have happened. But
664. 00:53:36 the stuff with the economy specifically, I know a lot of people lost their jobs. And I was thinking
665. 00:53:44 about that myself when it all happened is like, well, what's the worst thing that can happen
666. 00:53:50 here from an economic perspective? Specifically, it's like, well, you can lose your job. I'm like,
667. 00:53:54 oh, Ben, they're done that. Is that the worst?
668. 00:53:56 Right. Sounds bad.
669. 00:53:58 Yeah. I got that. Like, what else?
670. 00:54:02 And so that was kind of a point where I recognized that I kind of went through this post-traumatic
671. 00:54:10 growth. And their definition of this post-traumatic growth is when you come out of the experience of
672. 00:54:15 more plastic, gentle, positive person. And I think that in a small way, that has happened to me
673. 00:54:24 because of that specific scenario. And so I think this is a very real thing that I didn't have a
674. 00:54:31 term for before reading this. And I like that section. They also say running is cheaper than
675. 00:54:36 therapy. And I can 100% agree with that.
676. 00:54:39 That is a very valid point. It's way easier to go outside, go for a walk, run through the woods,
677. 00:54:47 hiking, all those things. It's way, way, way, way cheaper than talking to a psychologist.
678. 00:54:52 Just saying. One visit will pay for your shoes. The last part here, because I want to spend a
679. 00:55:00 little bit of time on the little practical piece, but the last part is moral courage.
680. 00:55:07 And this is where there's conversations around Martin Luther King.
681. 00:55:10 That concept where you're trying to make decisions or trying to get your head around
682. 00:55:15 a decision or an action that needs to be taken, that is very likely to have a lot of pushback,
683. 00:55:23 will have a lot of people upset because you made that decision or taken that action.
684. 00:55:27 So you're gathering the courage through your solitude and trying to get, again, clarity on
685. 00:55:35 what that decision or action should be. But you're ultimately trying to build up the courage to
686. 00:55:41 act on your morals in that case. You have a better way to explain that. This is another one of those
687. 00:55:47 that's a little bit messy to get your head around. I don't really have a better definition,
688. 00:55:53 but I'll try off the cuff here. They mentioned that some decisions bring consequences that are
689. 00:56:00 more than professional. So essentially, moral courage is taking a stand for something and knowing
690. 00:56:09 that you are probably going to get a more than reciprocal negative response for doing so.
691. 00:56:18 So you mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. That's one of the chapters in here.
692. 00:56:24 I really liked the chapter in this section on Winston Churchill. The TLDR here is that Neville
693. 00:56:32 Chamberlain went to Munich to try to prevent Hitler from declaring another World War.
694. 00:56:41 And basically just bent over backwards and gave him everything that he wanted regarding Czechoslovakia
695. 00:56:49 and then came back and everybody hailed him as a hero saying, "Hey, you did it." Even though all
696. 00:56:56 he did was say, "Yes, sir." Everything Hitler wanted. You avoided the war. And a couple days later,
697. 00:57:03 Winston Churchill gets up in the meeting and he says, "This is a very bad thing. We're going to
698. 00:57:10 pay for this down the road." And everybody's like, "How could you say that?" And obviously,
699. 00:57:15 he was right. Because Hitler changed the terms again and again and again. And then,
700. 00:57:21 "Yeah, he's Hitler. He's a crazy guy. You're never going to appease him. We do not negotiate
701. 00:57:28 with terrorists." Churchill was very good at figuring out what people's motives were. We knew that.
702. 00:57:34 And that's the definition of that term we talked about in, "What was that book?"
703. 00:57:42 The Chris Vos book. You do actually negotiate with terrorists. But basically, this guy was so
704. 00:57:49 irrational that you couldn't come to an agreement and be like, "There, now those parameters are set."
705. 00:57:54 Like, he was always going to change the rules to try to get more. And no one recognized that
706. 00:58:02 except for Churchill and when he pointed it out, he was not popular, shall we say.
707. 00:58:09 Right. At least at first, never split the difference. Never split the difference. That's it.
708. 00:58:13 Yeah. He was not super popular at first. People don't realize that. I think, "Oh, Churchill,
709. 00:58:17 not well loved from the get-go." But again, Churchill had a lot of practices
710. 00:58:23 that helped him get some courage to stand up and to intuit what's going on. I guess that's a
711. 00:58:32 term we haven't talked about much, but they do reference intuition quite a bit through these
712. 00:58:37 parts that whenever you can step away a lot of times, you may not be able to articulate what
713. 00:58:45 you think. Moral courage maybe has more of this than some of the others. So you may not be able to
714. 00:58:52 verbalize your action rationale, I guess, would be the term for it.
715. 00:58:57 Sure.
716. 00:58:58 But you have that intuition to where you know. Like, you know that this is the right move.
717. 00:59:04 You just can't tell anybody why, which is sometimes hard. No, you just have to listen to me.
718. 00:59:09 Or maybe not even be able to tell people why, but not being able to assign proper values to the
719. 00:59:21 reasons behind it. No one can really understand why this thing is so important to you.
720. 00:59:26 That's the gist of the story on Martin Luther King Jr. They basically get to the point in
721. 00:59:33 that story where he's kind of a reluctant participant in all of this stuff.
722. 00:59:41 And in the back of his mind, he's like, my wife and my daughter are going to suffer
723. 00:59:47 because of my involvement in this. And then he's getting death threats. These people say,
724. 00:59:54 we're going to blow up your house in a couple of days if you don't knock this off.
725. 00:59:57 And that night, like he's up all night praying. And when he the next morning, basically,
726. 01:00:04 he's got he's got it resolved in his heart. He's like, okay, I'm going all in with this.
727. 01:00:11 And from that moment forward, he's kind of like, I don't really care what the costs are.
728. 01:00:15 That from this point forward, I am 100% involved with the cause. And that's really the
729. 01:00:22 the thing that people remember when they think of Martin Luther King Jr.
730. 01:00:27 Is that post all night prayer session when he resolved like, this is what I need to do.
731. 01:00:36 The story that they tell up until that point, he's kind of like, well, I don't know. I mean, I guess,
732. 01:00:41 isn't there someone else? And my, how history could have been very different if he would have just
733. 01:00:50 gotten to the point where he was like, this is enough. I don't need to do this anymore. Let
734. 01:00:55 somebody else without a wife and a kid at home, let them make that sacrifice because I don't really
735. 01:01:02 want to do that. Yes. All right. So these are the four parts, clarity, creativity, emotional balance,
736. 01:01:08 moral courage. Like we've talked about, these are all stories with very little connecting and
737. 01:01:15 very little explanation in them and around them. But there is this last eight page section,
738. 01:01:23 embracing solitude where there's like a practical, here's what you should do.
739. 01:01:30 Kind of I preface that because it's not cut and dry, I would say, as far as like, what you should do.
740. 01:01:37 One, in the beginning part of this, and I pulled it up here so I could see it, but
741. 01:01:44 I haven't seen this, but people often refer to the information age. Yeah. And he used another term
742. 01:01:50 for it, the input age. Yeah, true. Which I hadn't heard that term before. And it made a whole lot
743. 01:01:58 of sense to me. Like I prefer that over the information age, just because there's so much
744. 01:02:03 stuff that you see and read that really isn't information. Like it's just junk.
745. 01:02:08 So there's things just trying to grab your attention and it's an input, but it's not necessarily
746. 01:02:13 information. So yeah, I do like that, that different terminology for it. So I'm probably going to stick
747. 01:02:18 with that one. But he does have a solid point there just in that very brief section that because
748. 01:02:25 of that constant input, the constant flood, we don't do the solitude practice. As much as we
749. 01:02:33 used to, like we were talking earlier, people used to process on paper, we just don't do that
750. 01:02:37 anymore. You know, even if it's over a keyboard, it doesn't matter. Like we just don't do that.
751. 01:02:43 Maybe the zettel cast and thing will take over, but I don't expect it to be so widespread that
752. 01:02:48 it will change the culture as a result of a zettel cast. But this section starts off with
753. 01:02:55 a conversation about creating solitude at work. And in my head, all I saw was deep work,
754. 01:03:04 deep work, deep work, deep work. That's what I saw. Yeah. As he was explaining all this, you know,
755. 01:03:11 setting expectations so that other people know what you're doing, finding space for it. Like,
756. 01:03:16 this is, it's Cal Newport through and through. That's, that's what I saw there.
757. 01:03:20 It is Cal Newport through and through. It's not just deep work, though. I think there's a time
758. 01:03:25 blocking piece to this. Oh, sure. Page 182, he says, scheduling a leader's time is a zero-sum
759. 01:03:30 game. But again, no mention of time blocking. Correct. Yes. Cal Newport's latest book is the
760. 01:03:38 Time Block Planner, which is actually pretty cool. I have one. I am not going to use it because I
761. 01:03:45 still time block my day old school in my fancy notebook. Sure. But that's the big idea here
762. 01:03:51 from creating solitude at work is finding space for the solitude by scheduling it during your day.
763. 01:03:56 And I don't like the definition of this as creating solitude at work. This is just creating
764. 01:04:01 solitude. Yeah, it really is. The work piece, I get that if you're in an office environment,
765. 01:04:07 maybe this is a little bit harder to do. But maybe it's even more important. I don't know.
766. 01:04:12 Maybe it's even more valuable to give people some step-by-step on how to do this, which is
767. 01:04:18 noticeably absent here. But I don't know, that distinction, I feel like is artificial.
768. 01:04:26 So the other thing I want to mention here regarding the Zettelcaste and the input age,
769. 01:04:32 you mentioned a little bit ago, I feel like the Zettelcaste in popularity is directly tied
770. 01:04:41 to the information overload that people are experiencing. And they define in this book,
771. 01:04:47 people are looking for more meaning between all of the inputs in their lives. I am putting my flag
772. 01:04:54 in the ground right now though, that a year, two years, five years from now, there will be
773. 01:05:01 so many people who say, "Yeah, the Zettelcaste and stuff just doesn't work." And the reason it's
774. 01:05:07 not going to work is because no one has turned off the firehose of useless information. There are
775. 01:05:14 going to be tons of people who try programs like Rome and Obsidian and all the other backlinking
776. 01:05:21 stuff. And they're going to say, "There, I got backlinks. I got a Zettelcaste." No, no, what you have
777. 01:05:26 is a bunch of linked garbage. You have to have the right things go in and you need solitude in order
778. 01:05:33 to identify what those important things are, which is why I really like my hybrid system where the
779. 01:05:39 paper stuff forces me to slow down and the stuff I capture there, not all of it gets actually into
780. 01:05:46 my Rome database. And that's a good thing because it means the stuff that's in there is more
781. 01:05:50 valuable. And so I think there's going to be a huge flood of people who are right now
782. 01:05:54 because every application out there is adding these sorts of features to connect things.
783. 01:05:59 They're going to connect all these things and they're going to say, "There, I connected things,
784. 01:06:02 but I still don't have any more ideas or any better ideas." Well, I guess this thing just doesn't
785. 01:06:09 work. And they're never going to realize that really they are the problem. It is user error.
786. 01:06:16 Well, I've already been going down this road. You've known me in this area. I've been telling
787. 01:06:24 people for a little while now that you don't need a Zettelcaste. I mean, people sing its praises,
788. 01:06:29 but I've been saying, "You don't need this." What I've been offering and what we've talked about,
789. 01:06:35 it's kind of an undertone in some of the, I don't mean to keep bringing up analog Joe,
790. 01:06:39 but some of the webinars we've done for analog.com. We've had this weave through. It's like,
791. 01:06:45 "Okay, having a Zettelcaste isn't necessarily the right answer. It has more to do with turning off
792. 01:06:51 Twitter, turning off the news feeds and creating things." That's what it comes down to. Now,
793. 01:07:02 creating is a very, very loose term whenever we talk about it. It has more to do with just
794. 01:07:08 being willing to make either things in physical realms. You're doing woodworking or you're
795. 01:07:16 re-plumbing a house. I don't know what it is. Something along those lines. You could be making
796. 01:07:22 content online. It's easy for content creators in general have full control over their schedule
797. 01:07:29 generally. They're going to talk about things like Zettelcaste and the tools that they use,
798. 01:07:34 because they have full control over it. I don't. My schedule and who has access to me and what
799. 01:07:41 tools I use, I don't control 100%. I am forced to use things like Microsoft Teams.
800. 01:07:47 I still think it's garbage, but I still use it. Which is fine. This is kind of a discussion
801. 01:07:55 then about the tools. I do think the Zettelcaste is an effective tool. It is an effective tool for
802. 01:08:00 thinking and connecting thoughts. However, just because you have a tool doesn't mean that you know
803. 01:08:07 how to use it. That's the thing. Funky mosquito mentions in the chat that people follow trends,
804. 01:08:13 and that is what is happening here. But I guess what I'm saying is that embracing the tool
805. 01:08:20 without the perspective renders the tool useless. People are going to write off this tool as useless
806. 01:08:31 and they're going to have no idea what they actually had in their hands.
807. 01:08:35 And you don't need the Zettelcaste in to your point in order to be creative. You can use other
808. 01:08:42 tools. You can use other things to capture notes and develop them. There are other things that you
809. 01:08:47 can use to develop ideas. My maps are a great thing for that. I've kind of cobbled together
810. 01:08:54 my own system with all the different pieces. Ultimately, that's what you got to figure out how to do.
811. 01:08:59 But it just kind of makes me, on one hand, it makes me sad. On one hand, I kind of laugh.
812. 01:09:05 We're like, I see all these people who are trying all these backlinks and they're like,
813. 01:09:10 "There, I got my Zettelcaste." I'm like, "No, no, you really don't. You have backlinks,
814. 01:09:14 drafts that you have to manually connect. That's not the same thing." And then even if they do
815. 01:09:19 add the automatic backlinking, then like, "There, I got my Zettelcaste." I'm like,
816. 01:09:24 "Well, what is all in your database?" And I see all these grocery lists and things. And I'm like,
817. 01:09:29 "No, no, that's not it either." The quality of the ideas is really what we're after here.
818. 01:09:38 And I think that that is relevant to this whole discussion of leadership and solitude too.
819. 01:09:44 Some of these stories, which we didn't really talk about, like Lawrence of Arabia back in chapter
820. 01:09:50 five, he came down with a sickness and had to sit in his tent for 10 days. And then he had this
821. 01:09:58 crazy idea which ended up winning the war for them. And it was sort of the same thing with
822. 01:10:05 Ulysses S. Grant, how he's sitting in his room at the Magnolia for days. And then he comes out with
823. 01:10:12 this crazy plan and everybody's like, "I don't think this is going to work." And then it ends up
824. 01:10:17 working and turning the tide of the war. I mean, you can have those ideas and without the solitude
825. 01:10:26 piece, you don't even recognize what you have. The solitude, in my opinion, what it does is it
826. 01:10:35 helps you to see things for what they really are. And I kind of hesitate to even think about
827. 01:10:44 all the ideas that I've had that I never really gave much thought to and just quickly dismissed
828. 01:10:50 and forgot about them and they're gone forever now. Like, what all did I get rid of?
829. 01:10:56 In my haste, you know, in my hesitance to embrace solitude and margin, I think, is relevant to
830. 01:11:05 this discussion too. That's another form of this, I feel. So this is definitely something that I am
831. 01:11:14 a champion for the cause at this point. When it comes to embracing solitude after reading this book,
832. 01:11:21 however, going back to this last section, what are they even telling me to do here?
833. 01:11:26 Think about things, identify my first principles, find a higher purpose. I don't know. Does this
834. 01:11:37 strike you as odd that this is like a bullet list at the end? Now I should, I guess,
835. 01:11:43 preface this by saying I actually have a course for faith-based productivity, which is 20-something
836. 01:11:50 videos on this specific topic. So I feel a little bit slighted that they're trying to just cram
837. 01:11:55 this in at the end at the beginning probably. Well, having, you know, having gone through that,
838. 01:12:03 it's weird that they bullet pointed at the way they did at the end. I would agree with you,
839. 01:12:07 that was kind of strange. But you know me, I tend to generalize things. And with this sort of book,
840. 01:12:15 I feel like it does very well. Like the way my brain operates connects with this, I think
841. 01:12:20 significantly better than what yours does. Just from listening to you, I'm making that
842. 01:12:25 assumption and putting words in your mouth. But to me, like, I'm seeing all these potential benefits
843. 01:12:32 from solitude. Solitude might mean something like a personal retreat. It could mean the 10
844. 01:12:38 minutes I've got on my drive. It could mean once in a while, whenever I can't think clearly,
845. 01:12:43 going for a walk in the woods, like it could mean a lot of different things. To me, I felt like I
846. 01:12:47 came out of this with, I don't have an action plan. I have no action items for this. But I expect
847. 01:12:54 that having gone through this, I'm probably going to be implementing solitude more often without
848. 01:12:59 realizing that this book is the result of that. Sure. So I feel like there's a bit of a,
849. 01:13:06 this is one of those that yes, there's a lot of motivation here. There's very little application
850. 01:13:11 at the end that's kind of hard to get your head around. If you want a practical, tactical
851. 01:13:17 step and system, I don't know that they need a system for it. But that's why I feel like it's
852. 01:13:24 kind of hard to grasp what's going on. Sure. They don't really want to give you a system.
853. 01:13:29 I'm kind of getting into style and rating here. So they're not wanting to go into that. At least
854. 01:13:37 I didn't feel like they wanted to give you that. They want it more open-ended so that you can
855. 01:13:43 make decisions about what's important to you. And in my case, I think that that's a good thing
856. 01:13:50 that they did that because I have mentally, I've extrapolated it out into a lot of different
857. 01:13:57 minor scenarios. Even some that they don't talk about at all, like minute systems, like
858. 01:14:04 whenever I'm trying to write something or I'm trying to code something and such, I generally
859. 01:14:10 want to do that at a standing desk scenario. The reason being it's common for me to write a
860. 01:14:14 sentence and a half, not have the right word, and then I step away from my computer and take a
861. 01:14:19 couple steps back and forth and then I step back to it and then I keep going.
862. 01:14:23 And it's that 15 seconds there, which I would call solitude in a way, but they don't really talk
863. 01:14:31 about that type of thing at all. That's not discussed. So there's another way that that can be
864. 01:14:37 brought into this. So anyway, I think I have expanded it a little bit from what they intended
865. 01:14:45 because they didn't give me the specifics there. So I don't know. I would say that's a positive
866. 01:14:50 thing. But again, for the average person, the average Joe, I don't know how that would pan out.
867. 01:14:57 I can't speak to that one. The fact that you have no action items from this book
868. 01:15:03 proves its failure as a book, in my opinion. Sure. Not saying that, Joe, you really need some
869. 01:15:13 solitude. But I feel like the message here is so important and it's so critical. And the whole
870. 01:15:23 idea of leadership, even if it's just a small team or even if it's just your family or even if
871. 01:15:28 it's just yourself, this is like, we are who they are trying to speak to. And the fact that they
872. 01:15:38 spoke to you, they made their arguments. You're not quite sure what to do. And so you do nothing
873. 01:15:44 at them. I'm not faulting you. I totally understand how people can have that approach after reading
874. 01:15:51 this book. But that just makes me sad because there is, I feel like a bunch of gold in here.
875. 01:15:57 There's a bunch of stuff that we didn't even talk about regarding leadership that I think is
876. 01:16:03 is really, really good. Like they talk about leadership as consensual interdependence. You
877. 01:16:07 can't just command people. Leaders choose to depend on their followers and their followers choose
878. 01:16:12 to depend on their leaders. Like there's so much stuff like that that's just so good in here.
879. 01:16:18 And I agree with you that because there's no, well, this is how you do this sort of thing.
880. 01:16:24 The easy thing at the end is just to be like, well, let's put that one on the shelf and move on.
881. 01:16:30 I'll figure this out on my own later. But we both know that like, that's not going to happen later.
882. 01:16:36 Maybe it'll have like you were the standing desk example. That's a really good one. So I'm
883. 01:16:40 glad that you at least have like thought through that sort of thing. But I really like what I'm
884. 01:16:45 sad about as I'm talking through this is like missed opportunity here for championing the cause
885. 01:16:50 of of solitude. It's almost like you attend a conference and you see somebody who's presenting a
886. 01:16:56 talk that you've done a bunch of research for, but they've got a really big audience and a really
887. 01:17:02 big following. And so you're really excited that they're talking about this thing. And you go
888. 01:17:07 attend the talk and they just kind of like tip toe around the real issues and
889. 01:17:11 just kind of lands with a thud. And you're just like, I could have done a better job.
890. 01:17:16 Not saying that I would have done a better job, but at least like there's that thing inside of
891. 01:17:23 me that's like, let me try. Yeah. Let me see if I can write something about Sal didn't give Joe an
892. 01:17:29 action item. Yeah. Now I will say, since we're talking about action items, I don't have
893. 01:17:37 anything that I wrote down. But I think some of that is because I haven't practiced the thing that
894. 01:17:43 they're promoting in solitude. Because my sense is like it's it's a chicken and egg scenario for me
895. 01:17:50 right now in that I feel like I need to do some form of an extended solitude period so that I could
896. 01:17:57 get my head around what to do with solitude. Like that's kind of how I feel right now. Sure.
897. 01:18:03 Thus no action items because I haven't had the time to process what those should be. So I don't.
898. 01:18:10 And the problem there is when is that gonna happen, right? I mean, as the person who wrote
899. 01:18:15 the personal retreat handbook, it's easy for me to say, we'll just get away for a day, do a
900. 01:18:19 personal retreat and you'll figure it out. In the busyness of the day to day, I understand why
901. 01:18:25 that's not feasible for a lot of people. My day job won't let me do that. Exactly. So what does
902. 01:18:30 somebody like Joe do right now? What's one thing they can do from this book to start regaining solitude?
903. 01:18:36 Well, you know, if I want to be, you know, devil's advocate on myself here, the thing that you that
904. 01:18:43 I could do, I'm probably not going to choose to do this right now. But I could give up some of the
905. 01:18:50 work I do at night after the girls go to bed and just spend that hour, hour and a half on my own.
906. 01:18:56 I could easily do that. I could go for a walk that time at night. It would be cold, probably good for
907. 01:19:00 me, but I could do that, but I don't. And I don't plan to start running with me. I'm not running
908. 01:19:05 to Meno to Wisconsin just to go running with you. That'd be a long run. You're running me,
909. 01:19:10 I'll run to you, I'll meet in the middle. I went running in the snow the other day. This is
910. 01:19:14 totally a side tangent, but I got these called the act tracks. They have little metal springs
911. 01:19:19 and metal spikes on them so you don't kill yourself when running on the ice. And they work really,
912. 01:19:24 really well. Nice. I feel like I would somehow sit on the side of my shoe and it would,
913. 01:19:31 I would just beef it. Oh, we should do style and rating. Hold on, I got a couple action items here.
914. 01:19:40 You do? There's nothing in the outline. Sorry, I forgot to update the outline. I've been
915. 01:19:44 unsybatical before this. That's my experience. Got it. Got it. Okay. They're not major. I do have
916. 01:19:50 a couple. In chapter one, they shared an example of somebody who was color-coding their journal entries
917. 01:19:58 based on their emotional response. Do you remember that story? It was like, if I feel good about
918. 01:20:05 this thing, I'm going to color code it green. If I feel bad about this when it happens, it's right.
919. 01:20:08 If I'm not sure I'm going to make it purple. Yep. I don't know exactly how to do this inside
920. 01:20:14 of Rome research, but Rome is what I'm using now for all of my journaling stuff. Why would you put
921. 01:20:19 it in Rome? I have a whole article for you. Yes, I do. I actually just published this.
922. 01:20:25 The link there that talks about the ways that I'm using Rome research and I started using it
923. 01:20:32 with the daily questions because I had a specific pain point I was trying to solve.
924. 01:20:37 And that was I had all these things regarding the prompts inside of day one, but I have to go to
925. 01:20:44 the journal, tap on an entry. It's in a markdown table. So I tap another button in order to render
926. 01:20:48 the code. And now I can see the table with my responses. And if I was going to review those,
927. 01:20:54 which I want to do as part of the personal retreat, I have to open up every single one,
928. 01:20:58 go back, open the next one, go back, open the next one. I can't see them in line.
929. 01:21:01 So what Rome does is it allows me to use metadata and just get all of these things linked on like
930. 01:21:07 the daily questions page. I open them all up and you can kind of see that in the link that I shared.
931. 01:21:13 But I also watched Drew's video on using Rome for journaling and he inspired me to do a couple
932. 01:21:20 other things. So I've started using it for daily gratitude and then also journal entries,
933. 01:21:25 which I'll do typically when I finish something that I feel is kind of substantial. So like when
934. 01:21:31 we finish recording this episode, I will make a journal entry just one or two sentences about how
935. 01:21:36 it went, how I'm feeling, whatever. And then I'll put all of that stuff on the daily notes page,
936. 01:21:42 the daily notes page is kind of the anchor. And what I love about Rome is that I can see all
937. 01:21:46 that stuff in line without having to worry about where I'm sticking it. I don't have to say this
938. 01:21:50 goes in this journal, this goes in that journal. It's just this metadata, click the link, boom,
939. 01:21:54 there's everything. So that's why I'm doing it in Rome. Although I would argue that Rome is not
940. 01:22:02 the right place for probably 90% of people who are looking for a journaling solution.
941. 01:22:10 Regarding journaling, though, the thing I'm trying to figure out is this color coding.
942. 01:22:14 I know you can do like highlights. I'm not sure I want to do highlights inside a room. I could do
943. 01:22:19 tags. I really don't know if this is something that will stick for me, but I do kind of want to
944. 01:22:26 try this out and see if there's a way for me to implement this, which is kind of timely for me
945. 01:22:32 anyways, because New Year and I've been spending a lot of time, I wrote that article thinking about
946. 01:22:38 the ways that I want to journal more regularly in 2021. I've got another one which is related
947. 01:22:46 and that is get more regular about journaling. Actually, that's kind of happened already,
948. 01:22:51 but I want to continue the motivation that I have with this consistent journaling.
949. 01:22:58 Again, in that article, I make the case that I feel I just couldn't do it with the
950. 01:23:03 tool I was using and Rome kind of removes that friction for me, but we'll see. Maybe I'll hit
951. 01:23:08 another snag. Those are my two action items and they're very minor. Neither of them are really
952. 01:23:15 related to solitude, which is why I said what I said at the beginning about like there's tons
953. 01:23:22 of action items to be had here. Just you need some more context in order to apply anything from
954. 01:23:29 this book. One thing I have a complaint about with you trying to put things in Rome,
955. 01:23:35 I'm convinced people are using Rome with the whole collector's fallacy. They're just dumping
956. 01:23:41 tons of stuff in it and there's not really anything they get out of it. I've been asking a lot of
957. 01:23:46 folks that tell me they're big into Rome. I'm like, "Okay, you're putting all that into Rome.
958. 01:23:50 What are you getting out of it? When do you go through that? What is your schedule for getting
959. 01:23:54 value out of that stuff you're dumping into it?" I would challenge you to do the same thing.
960. 01:23:58 It's part of my personal retreat. It already is. If you're going to dump all your emotional
961. 01:24:03 tracking stuff in there, I hope you have a process for pulling it back out. I would also
962. 01:24:09 argue something like that is very data heavy and putting it into a writing tool is a terrible idea.
963. 01:24:16 There's the thing. Rome is not a writing tool. I've tried to use it for writing. It is not a good
964. 01:24:21 writing tool. You know what I mean? No type. I don't mean long form writing. I mean,
965. 01:24:28 I get what you're saying. I agree that that's totally where this falls down for
966. 01:24:32 99.99% of people. I am the personal retreat guy. That's my anchor. That's why I started
967. 01:24:40 putting stuff in there in the first place. I wanted the ability to go in there for the last three
968. 01:24:44 months and see my journal entries in line as part of my personal retreat, which I just went through
969. 01:24:51 that process. I know it works for me. That's another thing where they mention it for that one guy,
970. 01:25:00 the Campbell soup's guy, the whole idea of the personal retreat. I was upset when I read that.
971. 01:25:07 I was like, "Oh, personal retreat. That should have been prevalent throughout the whole thing,
972. 01:25:14 in my opinion. You want to be an effective leader. You got to have a system like a personal retreat
973. 01:25:20 for getting away every couple of months and just re-centering. You don't have to follow my format
974. 01:25:25 for it, but you do need solitude." That was my big takeaway from this entire book was the value
975. 01:25:31 of solitude and crystallizing for me why the personal retreat worked so well. Before I reading
976. 01:25:38 this, I was like, "Well, I know it works. I think I know why, but I really can't explain it."
977. 01:25:43 After reading this, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, solitude." Sure. Makes sense. All right,
978. 01:25:49 I look forward to you reporting back on how your Rome experiment goes. All right, we'll do your
979. 01:25:54 journaling stuff. Stiling, right? We've talked about the style stuff quite a bit here, and I don't
980. 01:26:00 want to reiterate things. Quick summary, he's a good writer. They are good writers. Stories are
981. 01:26:10 amazing. They are very well written. I feel that this is a collection of stories around a topic.
982. 01:26:19 And it's hard to, like we've been talking about, it's hard to gather like, "Okay, what's the
983. 01:26:23 purpose and what do I do with it?" It's motivation without application to use those terms again.
984. 01:26:29 Yes. So all of that said, it could be better, I think. It is fairly short for a book like this.
985. 01:26:37 They have room for it. They could have put in chapter zero. They could have put in a part five,
986. 01:26:43 probably, and spelled it out. They could have, but chose not to, or ran out of time, one of the two.
987. 01:26:50 And it could have been there. So from a rating, I'll put it at 3.5. There's some good stuff in here.
988. 01:26:57 I mean, it's really good, but it could be a lot better, I think. So 3.5.
989. 01:27:04 It's an incredibly powerful message, mistold through excellent storytelling.
990. 01:27:12 That's how I feel about this. Now, from a bookworm perspective, maybe that doesn't matter so much.
991. 01:27:18 Maybe you're sick of hearing us talk ad nauseam about all of these different morning pages,
992. 01:27:25 journaling, and meditation, and all the stuff that's in here. So from a bookworm perspective,
993. 01:27:31 if you have any sort of experience in the rest of the productivity genre, and you have
994. 01:27:36 outside reference from, if you were to read this and you have those other books to draw on,
995. 01:27:42 going all the way back to how to read a book by Mortimer Adler, you're able to
996. 01:27:47 read this through the lens of I've read these other books on these topics, and I can kind of
997. 01:27:52 fill in the holes that way. This is a great book. I am really glad that we read this. All my criticisms
998. 01:28:00 from this are in isolation to this book specifically. But in terms of, do I recommend you read it,
999. 01:28:07 I think absolutely. If nothing else, you will hear some really cool stories.
1000. 01:28:11 You'll be motivated to figure out, maybe you won't spend a whole lot of time doing it.
1001. 01:28:18 You'll be motivated by the idea. You'll at least have the thought, you know, I really should try
1002. 01:28:22 to figure out if I can get some solitude in my daily routine. I'm going to rate this at 4.0
1003. 01:28:29 because as much as I railed on the lack of action items in the book, again, I'm viewing this as
1004. 01:28:38 like a valuable addition to my collection. If you read any other books, which our bookworm
1005. 01:28:45 audience probably does, then I think there's more value to be had here than if you read this book
1006. 01:28:50 and just read this book. Also, I feel that these are the best stories I have ever read in any of
1007. 01:28:58 the books that we have covered for bookworm. Excellent, excellent storytelling. And the more
1008. 01:29:06 that I read books, the more I realize the value of stories, and I feel like the stories and the
1009. 01:29:16 details that they give me in this book, these will come back to me. I just don't know how yet,
1010. 01:29:23 and it's going to be valuable. Being able to recall Abraham Lincoln's emotional tirade in his room
1011. 01:29:32 before writing that letter and never sending it adds more detail to the next time I hear a story
1012. 01:29:38 about Abraham Lincoln and the next book that we read or whatever. And I don't know, again,
1013. 01:29:44 I don't know how you put a value on those sorts of things. So I'm just going to say, since I don't
1014. 01:29:50 know what to assign to that, I'm going to just assume that that's good and round up.
1015. 01:29:55 Sure, no, it makes sense. Would you say the stories here are better or
1016. 01:30:00 better written than Ryan Holidays in Stillness is the key? Because we said the same thing
1017. 01:30:07 about that one. We just loved his stories because he was bringing out things we'd never seen or
1018. 01:30:12 heard before. How does this compare? Hmm, that is a good question. I would have to look at
1019. 01:30:20 Ryan Holidays books to respond appropriately. But my recollection is that he told great stories,
1020. 01:30:28 but he focused on just the pieces that supported the argument that he was making. So
1021. 01:30:35 that's great for trying to persuade somebody to your point of view. That's not really the
1022. 01:30:44 approach they took in this book. In this book, it was just here's kind of the struggle that
1023. 01:30:49 they're going through and some really cool details that kind of give you an inside look into like
1024. 01:30:54 their character and what's going on in their life. And then you're left to make your own judgment
1025. 01:30:59 from those those stories. And I don't think one is better than the other. If I had to pick one that
1026. 01:31:07 I personally liked better, I think maybe I liked this approach and lead yourself first better.
1027. 01:31:16 Simply because I've got a large enough collection of dots to fall back on in making my own judgments.
1028. 01:31:21 But if you want somebody to like tell you what the big takeaway is, you're going to be disappointed
1029. 01:31:27 with these stories. You'll like Ryan Holidays better. Sure. Yeah, I think I would prefer Holidays.
1030. 01:31:32 That's just me though. All right, I'm good with putting this one on the shelf. So we got a 3.5
1031. 01:31:38 and a 4.0 shelf it. What's next, Mike? Next is discipline equals freedom by
1032. 01:31:45 Jackal Willink who is going to convince us to get up at 4.30 AM and work out every day.
1033. 01:31:50 False, false, false, false. Good luck on that one.
1034. 01:31:55 It would be hilarious if he can encourage us to make an adjustment in one of those areas.
1035. 01:32:05 I would say it's a success on his part if he can do anything along those lines.
1036. 01:32:12 Let's see if Jackal can get Joe to have an action item. Yeah, let's see. We'll see.
1037. 01:32:17 Following that, we discussed this before we jumped on to record the organized writer by Anthony
1038. 01:32:27 Johnston. Mike and I have both been diving more into the writing space. So we'll see. See how it
1039. 01:32:35 pans out. I've seen this one make the rounds for a while now. Multiple years, it's been out for a
1040. 01:32:42 while, right? So yeah, looking forward to that one. It should be good.
1041. 01:32:46 I'm actually, I think this has not been out for a while. I pre-ordered this book.
1042. 01:32:52 How long has it been out? Maybe there was a version of this that was released a while back,
1043. 01:32:56 but this was a pre-ordered book that I got maybe six weeks ago, eight weeks ago.
1044. 01:33:02 Maybe I'm thinking of something else. So it's fairly new. But Anthony Johnston has been
1045. 01:33:07 around for a while as a writer for sure. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of.
1046. 01:33:11 Could be. This one should be fun though. I've started this one. I think that there may be
1047. 01:33:20 some lively discussions from this. Chat tells us that at 4.30 a.m. there's a lot of solitude.
1048. 01:33:26 True story. There you go. You got any gap books, Mike? You've had some time off? It's the holiday
1049. 01:33:35 realm. I have. I don't know how to pronounce the author, but I am finishing up newsletter ninja
1050. 01:33:41 and mentioned at the beginning, I am verbally committing to doing a regular newsletter.
1051. 01:33:50 But I want to do it in a way where I know that I can stick with it and that I'm not doing it just
1052. 01:33:56 to sell stuff. I want to figure out basically what are the things that people want to hear
1053. 01:34:04 from me. So if you have any ideas or anything you'd like to share, you can @bobbleheadjo on Twitter.
1054. 01:34:10 I would love to hear that sort of stuff. But I'm thinking through that stuff now. This is a
1055. 01:34:14 great book though in terms of talking through the logistics and what you should do and the best
1056. 01:34:21 practices for creating that community based newsletter, not the sales based newsletters.
1057. 01:34:29 I don't have a better term for that. Sure. Makes sense.
1058. 01:34:32 Well, I'm not doing a technical gap book, but I am leaning pretty heavy into Charles Dickens
1059. 01:34:38 tale of two cities lately. So all right. Still a good one. I know it's fiction.
1060. 01:34:44 Since you like stories, Mike, I do. I like real stories.
1061. 01:34:48 Real stories. All right. Great fun. Great fun. All right. Well, thanks to all of you who have been
1062. 01:34:55 in the chat. I know we don't always interact with those in the chat because we're actually
1063. 01:35:01 recording at the time, but it is kind of cool to see some of the comments and sometimes we do bring
1064. 01:35:06 them up. But we're also extremely grateful to those of you who have been bookworm members,
1065. 01:35:11 bookworm.fm/membership. And it definitely helps. Helps keep the lights on, helps us get the hosting
1066. 01:35:18 fees and stuff, buys a coffee and a book for us once in a while. So huge thanks to anyone who is
1067. 01:35:25 a part of that club. And when you join though, like you do get some perks. It's not just paying
1068. 01:35:32 for hosting and stuff. Like there are all of Mike's mind node files. He's got his new Rome
1069. 01:35:37 thing. What is this thing? It's a link that apparently I can access without an account.
1070. 01:35:42 It's a public graph and basically migrating all of my book notes over from my personal
1071. 01:35:48 database into the bookworm one. So what you get are pages for all the bookworm episodes
1072. 01:35:55 and then pages for all of the individual books. Not everything's in there. I was working on it
1073. 01:36:00 actually before we hit record here today. I think it's through like episodes 83 through 109 are there
1074. 01:36:07 right now. But I also am entertaining the idea of giving edit access to this
1075. 01:36:16 for bookworm club members. If that's something people are interested in, and that would allow us
1076. 01:36:23 to build off of the notes that I take. That's what a lot of people do with the mind node files.
1077. 01:36:29 I've discovered is they download them and they use them as a starting point when they read the
1078. 01:36:33 books. And I think that's pretty cool. And so what this allows us to do is build a big bookworm
1079. 01:36:39 wiki of all of the books that we've covered for bookworm. Sure. If you were ever to export
1080. 01:36:45 that out, could you do anything with it? Yeah, I exported it out of my database and imported it
1081. 01:36:50 into that one. It's all markdown based, but outside of Rome, I would think so. I mean,
1082. 01:36:56 haven't tried it. I know that those are PDF files that are embedded in there. Sure. And the rest of
1083. 01:37:01 it is just a markdown, markdown formatted bullets. So interesting. Yeah, and just curious and being
1084. 01:37:08 a snot. That's all. So anyway, for members, they're a handful of perks. And you can get into the
1085. 01:37:17 bank of perks, bookworm.fm/membership. That'll take you over to club.bookworm.fm.
1086. 01:37:23 And where you can sign up for that membership and get access to those things. So thank you to all
1087. 01:37:28 of you who already do that. All right. So thanks, everyone, for following along. If you are reading
1088. 01:37:35 along, pick up Discipline Equals Freedom by Jack O'Willink. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.