112: The Organised Writer by Antony Johnston

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1. 00:00:00 I'm nervous about today's book, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 -Mm. How so?
3. 00:00:04 -Because there's a comment made at the very beginning of the book
4. 00:00:08 that I think could potentially nullify the entire book.
5. 00:00:11 There's a teaser, but we can't go there yet.
6. 00:00:14 -Nope. We got to talk about workout stuff.
7. 00:00:17 -That we do.
8. 00:00:19 So, I guess the big question is, did you work out?
9. 00:00:23 -Yes, yes I did.
10. 00:00:25 You want me to go through mine first?
11. 00:00:27 -I'll go first here. So, I did do workouts, I think, ten times
12. 00:00:33 since we had our last episode, which is saying something for me.
13. 00:00:38 I'm normally not that on top of it, but I did, every weekday,
14. 00:00:44 I've done a workout, and I did one of the bodyweight workouts
15. 00:00:49 from Nerd Fitness, and I've done that every morning.
16. 00:00:53 It's been super helpful. I'm a fan of that one. It's been good.
17. 00:00:56 -Cool, cool. -So, yes, I've been doing it.
18. 00:00:59 Been doing the thing.
19. 00:01:00 -All right. Well, while you were going Nerd Fitness,
20. 00:01:03 I was going full Jaco.
21. 00:01:05 -[laughs]
22. 00:01:06 -Jiu Jitsu?
23. 00:01:08 -No, not Jiu Jitsu, but I had a couple different action items
24. 00:01:13 from the previous episode, and they were all around
25. 00:01:17 reconfiguring my workout routine at home.
26. 00:01:20 -Okay.
27. 00:01:22 -First one was to start working out in the morning
28. 00:01:25 as part of my morning routine to do a little bit of a workout,
29. 00:01:31 quick little things that I could do, and he had a bunch of examples
30. 00:01:36 and also a bunch of recommended gear.
31. 00:01:38 So, part of that also was getting up earlier.
32. 00:01:40 I am trending in the right direction here, still not where I want to be,
33. 00:01:44 but I think my target wake-up time is going to be 6 a.m.
34. 00:01:49 I've adjusted my bedtime earlier so that that's definitely feasible.
35. 00:01:53 The last one was to consider my home gym purchases,
36. 00:01:56 and this is why I say I went full Jaco.
37. 00:01:58 This is completely awful otter's fault.
38. 00:02:03 [laughs]
39. 00:02:06 -All right.
40. 00:02:07 -But I have a concept to model D rowing machine in my bedroom now.
41. 00:02:11 -Nice.
42. 00:02:12 -Nice work.
43. 00:02:14 -I started looking at rowing machines, and they are...
44. 00:02:21 They vary quite a bit in price.
45. 00:02:24 The cheap ones are a couple hundred bucks,
46. 00:02:27 and there's lots of those on Amazon, and they've got like three and a half
47. 00:02:31 star reviews, four star reviews, which tells me they're probably good enough,
48. 00:02:37 but there's going to be something about them that just isn't what you want.
49. 00:02:42 -Right.
50. 00:02:43 -Then the step up from that is the concept to model D,
51. 00:02:46 which is about 900 bucks, and you actually cannot buy it right now.
52. 00:02:50 -Oh, interesting.
53. 00:02:52 Why is that?
54. 00:02:53 I suppose a lot of people buy in this sort of thing.
55. 00:02:55 -Yeah, everybody's buying home workout gear, so if you go to the website
56. 00:02:58 and try to buy it directly, they say join the waiting list,
57. 00:03:03 and every week they send you an update on your spot in the queue,
58. 00:03:06 and so I did that when I finally came to grips with the fact that I was going to want to get a decent one
59. 00:03:11 if this is going to be something I was going to do for a while.
60. 00:03:13 -Sure.
61. 00:03:14 -My wife was really excited about it too.
62. 00:03:15 She had used the rowing machine at the gym, and this is actually the one that they had there,
63. 00:03:19 so she was looking for something that would help her establish a good workout routine at home too,
64. 00:03:25 so it's a worthwhile investment since we're both going to be using it consistently.
65. 00:03:31 Then the list that once I signed up on it, they sent me the update.
66. 00:03:35 "Okay, your spot in the queue is going to be available to purchase on March 4th."
67. 00:03:41 -Nice.
68. 00:03:42 -It's like eight weeks out.
69. 00:03:43 -Nice.
70. 00:03:44 -In the meantime, I was looking around on the old website,
71. 00:03:46 and I could find it somewhere.
72. 00:03:49 Rogue fitness sells it, but it's always out of stock.
73. 00:03:51 All the places that would normally have it, you can't get it off of Amazon.
74. 00:03:54 The listing is there, but you can't get it off of Amazon.
75. 00:03:56 You go on eBay and they're selling for twice as much as they do retail just because you can't get them anywhere.
76. 00:04:03 -Sure.
77. 00:04:04 -You can even buy, people are on that waiting list.
78. 00:04:06 You can buy the link in order to buy the machine off of eBay for like 40 bucks.
79. 00:04:11 -But then randomly I checked Rogue fitness and they must have just gotten a big shipment of them in.
80. 00:04:19 I'm like, "Hey, weird, this is available now."
81. 00:04:22 I bought one, it came.
82. 00:04:24 I figured it was going to be one of those things like,
83. 00:04:27 "When it comes in and when it's available, then we'll ship it to you."
84. 00:04:31 But it shipped the same day and it came two days later.
85. 00:04:34 -I don't think I would complain.
86. 00:04:36 -No, not at all.
87. 00:04:37 -Thro party celebrate.
88. 00:04:39 -Well, I really should have dragged my feet a little bit more because a really incredible Bookworm listener offered to give me a rowing machine after I had already received the concept to, which I was blown away by.
89. 00:04:54 I don't think it would have worked out anyways because I think they thought I was closer to you than I am.
90. 00:04:59 They offered to deliver it themselves.
91. 00:05:01 I don't think they realized how far out of a drive that would be, but a phenomenal offer.
92. 00:05:08 I did not expect anything like that.
93. 00:05:10 It's blown away by it.
94. 00:05:12 I do have a rowing machine now and I've been using it a couple times a day.
95. 00:05:17 Our buddy Josh has one too.
96. 00:05:19 He texted me.
97. 00:05:20 I was listening to Bookworm.
98. 00:05:21 You need to get this one.
99. 00:05:23 Just don't even look at anything else.
100. 00:05:25 I'm like, "Well, that's good because it's coming tomorrow."
101. 00:05:28 -I'm glad you've not changed your mind and said, "Don't ever buy this one."
102. 00:05:33 He told me, "Don't go hard at the beginning because you're not used to the workouts.
103. 00:05:39 You will be in really sorry shape the next day if you do it.
104. 00:05:42 Just stick to five minutes at a time."
105. 00:05:44 -Sure.
106. 00:05:45 -That's what I've been doing.
107. 00:05:46 Five minutes in the morning, part of a morning workout, five minutes in the evening usually.
108. 00:05:51 It's awesome.
109. 00:05:53 I love it.
110. 00:05:54 Never thought I would be a rowing guy, but here I am.
111. 00:05:57 -I know I've talked to a handful of folks since that episode about rowing.
112. 00:06:04 People seem to love this thing.
113. 00:06:07 This thing called rowing.
114. 00:06:09 I don't understand it, of course.
115. 00:06:11 You have jumped in head first now.
116. 00:06:14 I don't get it, but people who are really into it, it seems.
117. 00:06:20 -It's a pretty phenomenal workout.
118. 00:06:22 It works a bunch of different muscle groups.
119. 00:06:24 It burns a ton of calories, and you can put your phone above the little computer sort of
120. 00:06:31 a thing and watch YouTube videos while you do it.
121. 00:06:37 Once you build up some endurance anyways, you can get lost in it and it's a really good
122. 00:06:41 workout in a short amount of time.
123. 00:06:44 It's also low impact, so it's the opposite of running for me, which is probably a good
124. 00:06:51 thing.
125. 00:06:52 Yesterday, I went for a run, and then I came back and I used the rowing machine that just
126. 00:06:56 about knocked me out for the rest of the day.
127. 00:07:00 -Nice.
128. 00:07:01 Do two different types of workouts in the same day, back to back, and pay for it later.
129. 00:07:09 -Also, while talking to Josh, he convinced me that I should get a kettlebell.
130. 00:07:14 I have ordered a kettlebell.
131. 00:07:15 It has not arrived yet, but I know that Jaco is a big fan of the kettlebells.
132. 00:07:20 In the book, I wasn't sold on it talking to Josh.
133. 00:07:22 I am.
134. 00:07:23 There's a 35-pound kettlebell on its way to me.
135. 00:07:26 I just bought the cheap Amazon Basics one because I'm not sure if I got the right size.
136. 00:07:30 I'm not sure if I want to get multiples.
137. 00:07:32 There's some adjustable ones.
138. 00:07:35 There's lots of different options.
139. 00:07:36 I was blown away at all the different options that are for kettlebells.
140. 00:07:40 -There's a ton.
141. 00:07:41 -It's just a piece of metal with a handle.
142. 00:07:45 But no, you can get rubberized.
143. 00:07:46 You can get different coatings.
144. 00:07:48 Like anything in the fitness world, there have got to be 1200 different versions of every
145. 00:07:54 hunk of metal that you're going to pick up and throw around.
146. 00:07:57 -Yep.
147. 00:07:58 I bought the cheapest one.
148. 00:08:01 I also bought a pull-up bar.
149. 00:08:05 So I have this pull-up bar.
150. 00:08:07 I can put a link to the exact one in the show notes for people who are interested in it.
151. 00:08:11 It's an iron-age pull-up bar.
152. 00:08:13 It clips onto the top of a doorframe and then it goes underneath.
153. 00:08:17 And then there are pads that push into the door at a 90-degree angle.
154. 00:08:22 So it's not like you're hanging on the top of the doorframe.
155. 00:08:25 The way that it distributes the force, it's actually pushing against the doorframe itself
156. 00:08:32 instead of downward you're pushing out if that makes any sense.
157. 00:08:36 -Sure.
158. 00:08:37 -So it's kind of crazy.
159. 00:08:38 It's got a padded bar.
160. 00:08:39 It's got wide grips.
161. 00:08:40 You can do a couple different types of pull-ups.
162. 00:08:42 I have it.
163. 00:08:44 My office door is closed at the moment because we're recording, but most of the time during
164. 00:08:48 the day I have that open and I have that bar just hanging there.
165. 00:08:52 -Sure.
166. 00:08:53 -It's high enough.
167. 00:08:54 I'm not going to hit my head on it or anything.
168. 00:08:55 I'm pretty short.
169. 00:08:56 But every time I go in and out of my office I do a couple of pull-ups.
170. 00:08:59 So I don't know what that adds up to.
171. 00:09:01 10, 20 pull-ups a day.
172. 00:09:03 -It doesn't matter.
173. 00:09:04 That's kind of the...
174. 00:09:05 What is it?
175. 00:09:06 Bruce Lee used to do that all the time.
176. 00:09:07 He was always moving, always doing some form of resistance workout almost all day.
177. 00:09:12 He always had some form of movement that he was doing.
178. 00:09:16 Obviously did well for him.
179. 00:09:18 -Yep.
180. 00:09:19 -I don't think I could argue with that.
181. 00:09:22 -I'm not Bruce Lee yet anyways.
182. 00:09:25 -No offense.
183. 00:09:28 You got some work to do, Mike.
184. 00:09:30 -It's true.
185. 00:09:31 -That one will take a while.
186. 00:09:33 -I'm not sure I ever really aspire to get there.
187. 00:09:36 -Sure.
188. 00:09:37 -But I like the adjustments that I've made.
189. 00:09:40 I feel like this stuff is really going to stick.
190. 00:09:42 -Sure.
191. 00:09:43 -Well, let's jump into today's book because I feel like there's a lot of things we could
192. 00:09:49 say about this.
193. 00:09:50 So I feel like this is one of those that's going to be at risk of being long.
194. 00:09:53 So let's dive in.
195. 00:09:54 So today's book is the organized writer, how to stay on top of all your projects and never
196. 00:10:00 miss a deadline, Anthony Johnston.
197. 00:10:04 And the very first thing I have to say about this is he spelled organized wrong.
198. 00:10:08 -He's British.
199. 00:10:09 -He's spelled it wrong.
200. 00:10:10 -He's still spelled it wrong.
201. 00:10:11 Totally spelled it wrong.
202. 00:10:12 And then I type it into something.
203. 00:10:13 It tries to correct it.
204. 00:10:15 I'm like, "He spelled it wrong."
205. 00:10:18 Anyway, I digress.
206. 00:10:20 So yes, this book is one that--
207. 00:10:22 -I think we need Rosemary Orchard to weigh in on this.
208. 00:10:26 -For sure.
209. 00:10:29 I have to say this is not what I expected.
210. 00:10:33 This is not the book I expected to be reading.
211. 00:10:38 And I am very conflicted with it at the moment.
212. 00:10:42 -Really?
213. 00:10:43 -Yes, I am.
214. 00:10:45 It's not-- I'll say that so my expectation-- and we'll see how this holds up as we go through
215. 00:10:52 the recording today-- my expectation that this was going to spend the majority of its
216. 00:10:59 time talking about how to manage ideas and the documents around writing.
217. 00:11:08 -So, I mean, this isn't exactly it, but you were thinking more PKM, Zettl Casten, idea
218. 00:11:14 management as opposed to practical task and calendar stuff.
219. 00:11:18 -Maybe the thing that I was hoping to get from it is direction on-- if I've got 17 different
220. 00:11:26 types of written content that I'm working on, what's a good way to keep all of that
221. 00:11:32 straight?
222. 00:11:33 And you can extrapolate this into that.
223. 00:11:36 But it's not point-blank, and I thought it was going to be very point-blank.
224. 00:11:40 And the whole purpose of the book, it is not.
225. 00:11:44 I don't think.
226. 00:11:46 So it is not what I expected.
227. 00:11:48 I'm curious.
228. 00:11:49 Did it turn out to be what you expected?
229. 00:11:51 -Interesting.
230. 00:11:52 Yeah, it was pretty much exactly what I expected.
231. 00:11:54 -Okay.
232. 00:11:55 Interesting.
233. 00:11:56 -That being said, I disagree with some of the stuff in here.
234. 00:12:00 -Oh, sure.
235. 00:12:01 Absolutely.
236. 00:12:02 Given our background in knowing what's in this book.
237. 00:12:04 -Yep.
238. 00:12:05 -Exactly.
239. 00:12:06 -Absolutely, we're going to disagree.
240. 00:12:07 -That's kind of thinking.
241. 00:12:08 He's obviously writing this to a very specific audience.
242. 00:12:12 Most of the writers I know, I know them because I got connected to them in the productivity
243. 00:12:19 space.
244. 00:12:20 So they have the same sort of frame of reference that I do.
245. 00:12:22 That's kind of how you and I got connected.
246. 00:12:24 -Yep.
247. 00:12:25 -But I wonder if the majority of writers, the people that he wrote this for, this is like
248. 00:12:33 light bulb revelation to them because I found myself, especially in the last part of the
249. 00:12:41 book when he's talking about the ins and outs of the systems and the different recommendations
250. 00:12:45 for hardware and software, I'm like, "That is not the best way to do that."
251. 00:12:50 -Yeah.
252. 00:12:51 There was a point.
253. 00:12:52 I was flipping through this book and doing kind of my pre-read process.
254. 00:12:59 One of the things, I didn't intend to do this.
255. 00:13:02 I don't normally read this before I read a book, but there's a spot in the back for
256. 00:13:08 acknowledgments.
257. 00:13:09 And just by happenstance, my fingers landed on that.
258. 00:13:14 And the very first full paragraph starts with Merlin Mann and David Allen pave the way
259. 00:13:22 for, and it doesn't even matter what comes after that.
260. 00:13:27 I read that and I thought, "Oh no, he's going to do that, isn't he?
261. 00:13:34 He's going to do that thing where you repeat what other people have said."
262. 00:13:38 And the fact that he starts with that in his acknowledgments kind of worried me a little
263. 00:13:43 bit.
264. 00:13:44 So I came into the book with that concern from the get-go because I had accidentally read
265. 00:13:51 that at the end.
266. 00:13:52 It's one of those things I always don't want to do is read the end before you read the
267. 00:13:56 beginning and I accidentally did it.
268. 00:13:58 Well, that'll teach you.
269. 00:13:59 I know.
270. 00:14:00 I'm avoiding the back of the book from here on out.
271. 00:14:02 I definitely am.
272. 00:14:06 So yes, I was a little concerned.
273. 00:14:08 We'll go through this and I think some of what I'm concerned about will come out.
274. 00:14:13 But I mentioned as kind of a teaser at the very beginning that there was a comment that
275. 00:14:19 I think potentially nullifies a lot of things in this book and the comment is on page 5.
276. 00:14:29 This is in the introduction under a piece for assumptions.
277. 00:14:35 And one of the assumptions that he makes of the reader of this book is that the reader
278. 00:14:41 is neurotypical.
279. 00:14:43 I'm not used to seeing people specifically call that out.
280. 00:14:48 But I don't think it's a surprise.
281. 00:14:49 I am not neurotypical.
282. 00:14:51 What does that even mean?
283. 00:14:52 It means you're not ADD basically.
284. 00:14:56 That is a term like I've seen that term all over the place in the world of ADD and it's
285. 00:15:01 referred to as neurotypicals.
286. 00:15:04 I think that would be you versus neurodivergence like myself who are now medicated because
287. 00:15:12 of this.
288. 00:15:14 But where's the line on the spectrum for neurotypical versus neurodivergent?
289. 00:15:19 Where's the line?
290. 00:15:20 Yeah, is it 51% neurodivergent?
291. 00:15:22 Now you're this?
292. 00:15:25 I have trouble with that classification.
293. 00:15:27 I get it.
294. 00:15:28 Neurotypical basically means like you're the normal person.
295. 00:15:32 What is normal?
296. 00:15:33 Correct.
297. 00:15:34 Not me.
298. 00:15:35 And it's not really defined anywhere by anybody.
299. 00:15:39 But I do know if you're really far on one side versus the other, it gets easy if you're
300. 00:15:46 on one of the ends.
301. 00:15:47 If you're somewhere close to the middle, I think it can get a little messy.
302. 00:15:51 But my follow up comment that I wrote in my notebook after that part was, "Well, this
303. 00:15:55 is off to a good start."
304. 00:15:58 So I was, "Take what I've just explained."
305. 00:16:02 I saw the Merlin man David Allen thing at the end, which I love both of them.
306. 00:16:08 And then I have this neurotypical comment at the very beginning of the book.
307. 00:16:12 And there are some spots, and I'll probably bring this up as we go through it.
308. 00:16:16 There's some spots in here where he references how to do certain things from a philosophical
309. 00:16:21 stance that just would never work for me and for a lot of people, I know.
310. 00:16:27 So it kind of concerned me in that.
311. 00:16:28 It's like, okay, yeah, if you can, like if focus and motivation are not an issue for
312. 00:16:34 you at all, what he's saying is spot on.
313. 00:16:37 But if those are issues, you need external helps to do the things that he is talking about.
314. 00:16:44 But they are issues for just about everybody that I know.
315. 00:16:48 Yeah, it's all, again, it's a spectrum, right?
316. 00:16:51 So yeah, does that mean that most people that I know are not who he wrote this for?
317. 00:16:59 Could be.
318. 00:17:01 I don't know.
319. 00:17:04 I don't either.
320. 00:17:05 Yes, I guess I went right over that because it seemed like a ridiculous statement to me
321. 00:17:11 at the time.
322. 00:17:12 I'm like, well, let's just see what he has to say.
323. 00:17:14 Then we'll figure it out.
324. 00:17:15 Yeah, right.
325. 00:17:16 And that's the way this stuff works too, right?
326. 00:17:17 Like there are a number of times like you've had things that stand out.
327. 00:17:20 It's like, you can't say that.
328. 00:17:21 And I was like, I don't even remember that in there.
329. 00:17:23 Is that in there?
330. 00:17:25 Is that in there?
331. 00:17:26 So yeah, this is where like the whole book thing strikes people very differently, depending
332. 00:17:30 on where they're at and what's going on.
333. 00:17:32 Sure.
334. 00:17:33 Anyway, that one stood out to me.
335. 00:17:36 It was the only assumption and the only thing in the introduction that I can recall at this
336. 00:17:39 point just because it was such a big thing to me.
337. 00:17:43 So yes, the one thing I want to point out here before we jump into the three parts of
338. 00:17:50 a book because him being a writer, of course, he needs to have a three part book because
339. 00:17:54 that's what all editors want.
340. 00:17:55 Apparently he does call out in the introduction that he used everything in this book to write
341. 00:18:01 this book.
342. 00:18:03 And I tend to appreciate whenever authors will say that because then it's not like, here's
343. 00:18:08 the thing you should do, but I didn't do it.
344. 00:18:12 So it is encouraging that he did follow through on that.
345. 00:18:17 Do as I say, not as I do.
346. 00:18:18 Right.
347. 00:18:19 Right.
348. 00:18:20 So as not a fan of that.
349. 00:18:21 Totally.
350. 00:18:22 You are being disingenuous.
351. 00:18:25 Yep.
352. 00:18:26 All right.
353. 00:18:27 So the three parts, part one is get organized.
354. 00:18:30 It's kind of talking about the concepts, I guess.
355. 00:18:34 Well, a little bit more than concepts of what the process of getting organized is.
356. 00:18:39 Part two is write, which I don't have a whole lot for us on the outline from that one because
357. 00:18:44 it seems fairly straightforward.
358. 00:18:48 Part three, non-writing stuff.
359. 00:18:50 This is where things will be interesting.
360. 00:18:53 Yes.
361. 00:18:54 The part that I'm not so sure should even be in the book, I think is where we'll end
362. 00:18:58 up spending a decent amount of time.
363. 00:19:00 Well, yeah.
364. 00:19:04 So the get organized part, that's kind of where he's talking about the foundations of
365. 00:19:12 the system.
366. 00:19:14 Then part two, right, that's really where there's not a whole lot to be said, other
367. 00:19:19 than to share the steps that he goes through when he's writing.
368. 00:19:23 And then part three, and he mentions this in part three that this could be grouped with
369. 00:19:30 the first part, but you need to understand the why before you dive into the house.
370. 00:19:36 So I think that makes a lot of sense, honestly.
371. 00:19:41 Yeah.
372. 00:19:42 He also recommends that once you get through reading it, you immediately go back and read
373. 00:19:46 it again, which I did not do.
374. 00:19:51 No, I did not either.
375. 00:19:53 I do think because of the way it's laid out that that's not necessarily terrible advice,
376. 00:20:00 because those two parts, part one and part three could be grouped together.
377. 00:20:05 I get why he split him apart, but if you were to follow his advice and go back and reread
378. 00:20:09 it again, you would probably get more strong connections between those parts and why he's
379. 00:20:15 recommending certain tools and setting things up a certain way when it's right next to part
380. 00:20:22 one, if that makes sense.
381. 00:20:24 Yep.
382. 00:20:25 And it would make sense too, because you can kind of go through the why and the concepts
383. 00:20:29 here in part one, you get to the end where you're implementing this process and system,
384. 00:20:37 and then you can go back and it'll make more sense once you have things in place.
385. 00:20:42 That's a very GTD thing.
386. 00:20:44 David Allen says that all the time.
387. 00:20:46 Yeah.
388. 00:20:47 It's like, read the book, put the system in place, and then read the book again.
389. 00:20:50 Yep.
390. 00:20:51 Be able to pick out all the stuff that you didn't understand in the process of building
391. 00:20:56 your system.
392. 00:20:57 And this is very David Allen-esque in the approach of constructing the system, because
393. 00:21:02 he has very specific things and very specific ways for you to do things.
394. 00:21:07 He's got a two day process in part three, where you empty out everything from your office
395. 00:21:15 and you put things back in a specific order to build this system.
396. 00:21:20 That's totally what I picture David Allen's coaching looking like.
397. 00:21:25 He's just got this checklist in his head and he's done it so many times that he shows up
398. 00:21:29 in somebody's office and he's like, "All right, take everything off.
399. 00:21:32 Okay.
400. 00:21:33 Now put this back and then put this back and then put this back."
401. 00:21:35 And he's walking people through these simple decisions that he's done millions of times
402. 00:21:40 and the fact that he's helping people, holding their hand as they go through it for the first
403. 00:21:44 time, they're just like, "This is amazing."
404. 00:21:47 Yep.
405. 00:21:48 Yep.
406. 00:21:49 So let's jump into part one here, get organized.
407. 00:21:54 And there are, I don't think I have all of them.
408. 00:21:57 Maybe I do have all of them.
409. 00:21:58 I don't have chapter one here.
410. 00:21:59 It's just fasten your seatbelts.
411. 00:22:01 He's just prepping you for what's coming in.
412. 00:22:04 I want to jump in here, Mike, and chapter two.
413. 00:22:06 Real quick though with that fasten your seatbelt, because fasten, that is his system in the
414. 00:22:11 nutshell.
415. 00:22:12 Sure.
416. 00:22:13 So fasten stands for filing, assistance, say no, time, equipment, and notes.
417. 00:22:20 And why he has that at the beginning?
418. 00:22:23 Having read the rest of the book, I'm not really sure.
419. 00:22:25 It makes an appearance back at the end.
420. 00:22:28 But I quickly forgot that that was in there until I went back and looked at my mind node
421. 00:22:33 file.
422. 00:22:34 I even forgot about it until just this moment.
423. 00:22:36 So I was like, "I don't really want to..."
424. 00:22:39 It's just, it's all prep work.
425. 00:22:40 There's nothing really there worth talking about.
426. 00:22:42 Now that you stopped me and explained, "Oh yeah, that is his foundation."
427. 00:22:46 That's his thing.
428. 00:22:48 Like that's his own personal stamp on this stuff.
429. 00:22:51 Otherwise a lot of this is just advice that you've heard before if you are coming from
430. 00:22:56 it through the productivity lens that we are.
431. 00:22:59 And you pick up a couple of specific workflow types of tweaks that you could do based on
432. 00:23:06 his writing experience.
433. 00:23:08 Right.
434. 00:23:09 Right.
435. 00:23:10 Okay, so where I was trying to go, chapter two, clocking in and out, this is kind of
436. 00:23:16 a section where he has some principles on how to operate in a number of areas.
437. 00:23:26 He covers them fairly quickly, which I think is good.
438. 00:23:31 But from a fairly high level, and yet there's some practical stuff in here.
439. 00:23:37 And let me just read some of the sub-headers here, and it'll give you an idea of what
440. 00:23:42 we're talking about.
441. 00:23:43 So a day in the life, use your calendar, multiple projects in one day, get smart with
442. 00:23:50 email, use a task manager, learn to say no, work to a quantity, not time, productive procrastination,
443. 00:23:59 invest the time to set up your system, organize your personal life.
444. 00:24:03 Again, organize a spell wrong.
445. 00:24:05 And in the midst of this, I wrote down a few of these that I want to walk through, but
446. 00:24:12 there's a lot in this little chapter.
447. 00:24:15 I shouldn't say a little chapter.
448. 00:24:16 It's 58 pages in this one chapter.
449. 00:24:19 That's another thing that kind of bugged me about this book is the chapters are crazy
450. 00:24:23 different in terms of length.
451. 00:24:25 They are all over.
452. 00:24:27 What was the chapter one is eight pages.
453. 00:24:33 Chapter two is 58 pages.
454. 00:24:36 So it's all over the place.
455. 00:24:38 Chapter five is 14.
456. 00:24:40 It's just all over.
457. 00:24:42 So there is no real consistency in that.
458. 00:24:44 But I don't know.
459. 00:24:45 That doesn't really bother me a whole lot.
460. 00:24:47 Some people, I'm sure it bugs.
461. 00:24:48 It doesn't really bother me in terms of reading it, but it feels a little bit disjointed.
462. 00:24:54 It's not like I guess when I read, I get into a bit of a rhythm or cadence based on what
463. 00:25:04 the author is doing at the beginning of the book.
464. 00:25:07 And it was impossible for me to land in that.
465. 00:25:11 You know where I don't have, I'm going to read X number of pages today.
466. 00:25:17 I just sit down and read at the end of the day.
467. 00:25:20 And if I'm really digging it, I'll keep reading.
468. 00:25:25 Usually one of the points where I make that decision about whether I'm going to keep reading
469. 00:25:29 is at the end of a chapter.
470. 00:25:31 And so with this one, I'm like, I'm done with the chapter.
471. 00:25:34 Should I keep going?
472. 00:25:35 Well, I better flip ahead because the next chapter might be five pages or it might be
473. 00:25:40 55 pages.
474. 00:25:42 And I don't really like leaving off in the middle of a thought.
475. 00:25:46 I like, and there are different sections in this chapter.
476. 00:25:51 Like you mentioned, task management, calendar management, all that kind of stuff.
477. 00:25:54 So you could cut it off at that point and not lose something when you come back to it the
478. 00:25:59 next day.
479. 00:26:01 But it feels weird doing that when you don't know exactly what is going to be coming.
480. 00:26:06 And I feel like it was impossible to predict with this book.
481. 00:26:10 Yeah, I do that too.
482. 00:26:12 I wait until I get to the end of a section before all, quit reading, and it bugs me if
483. 00:26:16 I have to stop.
484. 00:26:17 And there's a middle of a page or something.
485. 00:26:20 Yeah.
486. 00:26:21 Wait, but that means I'm going to have to reread the last three paragraphs when I come
487. 00:26:24 back to it.
488. 00:26:25 Yeah.
489. 00:26:26 Totally like that.
490. 00:26:27 And if I get interrupted during the day, kids need something.
491. 00:26:31 I'll put my bookmark in the book and I'll close it.
492. 00:26:34 I don't really care.
493. 00:26:35 But when I'm going to go to bed at night, when I'm going from one day to the next, I
494. 00:26:40 want to have a solid endpoint there where I can clearly pick it up and start something
495. 00:26:47 new without having to go back and read those paragraphs because what I'm about to read
496. 00:26:52 is dependent on what they just said.
497. 00:26:54 Right.
498. 00:26:55 The first of these sections that I want to cover is calendaring.
499. 00:26:58 I think that's one of the tenants of his system here.
500. 00:27:03 And this particular little subsection is 15 pages, which is longer than some of his
501. 00:27:10 papers.
502. 00:27:11 And the premise of what he's getting at here is putting it onto your calendar, what writing
503. 00:27:17 project you're working on right now.
504. 00:27:19 And I want to point out getting to this particular point, this book is more geared for long form
505. 00:27:26 writing, like book level writing.
506. 00:27:31 And my sense is the type of writing that you and I do, you can translate what he's talking
507. 00:27:36 about here.
508. 00:27:39 But like in my case, if I'm writing an article, generally it's one day, like I'm going to
509. 00:27:43 outline it that morning, I'm going to write the rough draft sometime in the day and I'm
510. 00:27:47 going to publish it that afternoon.
511. 00:27:49 Like that is my writing process, which does not fit what he's doing here because he has
512. 00:27:56 multiple weeks that he'll block off on his calendar for a given project, which is fine.
513. 00:28:03 If you're writing a long project like he's doing, and my question to you is, are you able
514. 00:28:11 to calendar writing projects like this?
515. 00:28:15 Or do you have to do something much different?
516. 00:28:17 Because I have to do something very different.
517. 00:28:19 I can't do what he's doing.
518. 00:28:21 I'm probably in between you two, to be honest, because the things that I am writing, I do
519. 00:28:28 know weeks ahead of time, this is what I'm going to be writing.
520. 00:28:32 And I will work on it for an extended period of time.
521. 00:28:34 The difference is that that isn't the only thing that I am going to be working on.
522. 00:28:39 In the past week and a half, I worked on and published an update to the best habit tracking
523. 00:28:45 app pick for the suite setup, post on the Streak 6.1 update, which has some really cool
524. 00:28:53 stats widgets and was prepping for and presented a habits webinar.
525. 00:28:57 So I prefer when all of those things are related because I can do research and it can translate
526. 00:29:02 to different places.
527. 00:29:03 But they are not always related to the same topic.
528. 00:29:05 And so I do have to slot these things in in order to make sure that the content schedule
529. 00:29:12 continues to move forward.
530. 00:29:15 But I do think that there is a lot of value in his approach.
531. 00:29:20 Essentially what he's talking about with this is time blocking.
532. 00:29:24 It's just he's blocking off time for one project per day.
533. 00:29:28 And I'm doing it for probably two or three projects per day.
534. 00:29:31 Sure.
535. 00:29:32 Yeah, because he does have the section here, multiple projects in one day.
536. 00:29:36 Yep.
537. 00:29:37 And talks about how that's not a normal thing if you want to be successful and that you
538. 00:29:42 should really be doing just one.
539. 00:29:43 Well, I guess I'm not a successful writer then.
540. 00:29:46 At least not at his scale, no, but I don't see that as something I'm going to pursue just
541. 00:29:55 because the size of projects that we're talking about, both you and I are much, much smaller
542. 00:30:00 than what he's referencing.
543. 00:30:02 Yeah, there is a lot of stuff in this chapter though where he is spot on with how I write.
544. 00:30:10 One of the things you mentioned on page 25 is just because we're not typing doesn't
545. 00:30:14 mean we're not working.
546. 00:30:16 That totally applies to me.
547. 00:30:18 A lot of the stuff that I write, it's not here's a technical breakdown of all of the features
548. 00:30:24 in a specific application.
549. 00:30:27 I prefer to figure out what is the best way to use it and then teach people the workflow
550. 00:30:34 for how to implement that thing or why you should use this specific app because it's
551. 00:30:38 going to create a positive outcome in your life based on what you define as a positive
552. 00:30:43 interaction with your technology, not just default to consuming, but using it for creating
553. 00:30:49 is one random example.
554. 00:30:51 Sure.
555. 00:30:52 And he also says that contextual lists don't always make sense for writers because you
556. 00:30:56 always have your tools with you at your desk.
557. 00:30:58 And I feel like this is kind of hitting on one of my problems with GTD and typical task
558. 00:31:05 management is that the context are kind of worthless.
559. 00:31:11 I think it would make sense if you were working in an office and you were trying to do something
560. 00:31:17 on the side, then maybe you've got like work, studio, home, whatever, like those different
561. 00:31:24 contexts, but the contexts are really for me dependent on my energy levels and really
562. 00:31:34 just what I'm inspired by at the moment, which even sounds really terrible when I describe
563. 00:31:41 it because if you were to wait till you feel inspired to write like you're never going to
564. 00:31:45 write, but basically what I'm excited about, that's the thing that I should be writing
565. 00:31:50 about.
566. 00:31:51 I'm going to pick my projects so they are in line with the thing that I'm excited about
567. 00:31:55 at the moment because that's the easiest way for me to constantly be thinking about these
568. 00:31:59 things when I'm not writing and I'm making these connections and figuring out, well,
569. 00:32:03 what if I did this, trying that stuff out and then sharing what I've learned through
570. 00:32:09 the writing process.
571. 00:32:11 But I don't think he provided a very clear explanation of what I should be doing instead.
572. 00:32:18 Yeah.
573. 00:32:19 So, I guess I'm going to continue to write by deadlines, which is kind of what he mentions
574. 00:32:24 the most writers do, just stay ahead of your deadlines, which is why he's recommending
575. 00:32:28 putting them on your calendar.
576. 00:32:32 But I don't think I'm going to take his approach of time blocking on the calendar for this
577. 00:32:38 is my project that I'm going to be working on this week because I'm not going to devote
578. 00:32:42 an entire week to one specific project.
579. 00:32:45 I can't do that and I'm much better off day to day time blocking my day and saying, "I'm
580. 00:32:50 going to work on the webinar for two hours here tomorrow because I know typically in
581. 00:32:55 the morning that that's when I'm most excited to be doing this stuff.
582. 00:32:59 And so if I can kind of align my motivation and my energy with the test that I've got,
583. 00:33:03 save the admin stuff for the afternoon, that kind of thing, then I'm going to get a lot
584. 00:33:07 further.
585. 00:33:08 It is impossible for me to really do any form of time blocking or calendering of projects
586. 00:33:15 like he's referring to.
587. 00:33:18 This morning is a good example.
588. 00:33:20 Like, one of the concepts we'll talk about in the next part when we get theirs writing
589. 00:33:25 immediately in the morning.
590. 00:33:27 And I had intentions of doing some of that this morning and ended up needing to help
591. 00:33:34 install a TV in a classroom.
592. 00:33:38 And that is not what I expected to be doing.
593. 00:33:40 I came back from that to resume my intention and had to go help someone else with an email
594. 00:33:46 problem.
595. 00:33:47 Then I had a network problem and then the writing never happened.
596. 00:33:52 And that is a fairly common experience for me.
597. 00:33:57 So some of what is predicated with this book is you have full control over your schedule
598. 00:34:08 for the most part.
599. 00:34:09 Even people who have full control over the schedule have meetings with superiors and
600. 00:34:14 such that come up that they can't control.
601. 00:34:17 So that stuff does happen.
602. 00:34:19 Mine is simply significantly higher than what his is.
603. 00:34:25 So that foundation is so different that it's impossible for me to do that sort of thing.
604. 00:34:33 I can do a lot of calendering when it comes to meetings and events.
605. 00:34:37 That one I can do.
606. 00:34:40 But when it comes to blocking time for me to do things, it doesn't really work.
607. 00:34:46 Unless I have somebody else involved with the work that I'm doing, it has the opportunity
608. 00:34:51 of being interrupted by someone else just by the nature of the job that I do.
609. 00:34:57 So saying that, I think if I was in his shoes, if I had a bunch, I shouldn't say a bunch.
610. 00:35:05 If I have one to two, maybe three big projects, writing projects that I was working on, and
611. 00:35:10 that is where my income was derived, this system would probably work really well.
612. 00:35:16 I don't think I would argue with that as far as this calendering piece goes.
613. 00:35:21 But I can't do it.
614. 00:35:23 That's all I'm saying.
615. 00:35:24 I don't know anyone who could, to be honest.
616. 00:35:29 Not the people in the circles that we run in anyways.
617. 00:35:32 There are probably people who can, and maybe he means to write this for that very specific
618. 00:35:40 audience.
619. 00:35:42 But that's not exactly what I anticipated when I saw this book making the rounds and
620. 00:35:47 people talking about it on social media and stuff like that.
621. 00:35:50 The people who were raving about it were in that other category where, kind of like you,
622. 00:35:56 they don't have complete control over their entire day and they're not working on one
623. 00:35:59 thing at a time.
624. 00:36:01 So there is a little bit of a mismatch there, I feel like going into it in terms of the
625. 00:36:05 expectations.
626. 00:36:06 I don't think it's irreconcilable.
627. 00:36:08 I think you can take pieces of it, but you're right that you can't probably just follow
628. 00:36:13 it to the letter like he's telling you to, but it's written like you're supposed to follow
629. 00:36:18 it to the letter like he's telling you to.
630. 00:36:21 I want to read, I want to move on to email, but I want to read the beginning of this section
631. 00:36:28 on email because I'm about to trigger Mike.
632. 00:36:33 All right, here you go.
633. 00:36:35 You ready for this?
634. 00:36:36 An email arrives.
635. 00:36:38 You read it and realize it contains some form of request or instruction that means you
636. 00:36:43 now have one or more new tasks to carry out.
637. 00:36:47 What do you do?
638. 00:36:48 If you're an organized writer, you mark it unread and move on to the next email.
639. 00:36:56 This is how the section on email begins.
640. 00:37:00 And then he then proceeds to explain how you set aside time to deal with these unread
641. 00:37:07 emails and complete these actions and to use your inbox explicitly explains how to use
642. 00:37:14 your inbox as a task list.
643. 00:37:18 Yeah, I remember that part.
644. 00:37:21 I read this and I thought, huh, I bet Mike is going to adopt this 100%.
645. 00:37:27 I am sure he will.
646. 00:37:30 When it comes to being organized, he is terribly disorganized regarding email.
647. 00:37:36 He has three broad categories of email, but there are four things that you can.
648. 00:37:44 Do with it.
649. 00:37:45 You can read an archive.
650. 00:37:47 You can deal with it now.
651. 00:37:48 You can deal with it later or you can ignore and delete.
652. 00:37:51 Also skip ahead to the back of the book and look at his recommended email software applications.
653. 00:37:58 There is one Gmail on the web.
654. 00:38:01 Okay, so.
655. 00:38:02 Isn't the appendix is this?
656. 00:38:03 No, this is chapter.
657. 00:38:05 Oh, that's what you're talking about.
658. 00:38:07 Yeah, I'm with you.
659. 00:38:08 He goes through all the different types of categories.
660. 00:38:11 I wrote down all of the apps that he recommends.
661. 00:38:15 Note takers, he talks about notes, one note, simple note, Google keep, calendar, calendar,
662. 00:38:20 fantastic.
663. 00:38:21 Cal, which he spells wrong.
664. 00:38:22 Busy Cal.
665. 00:38:23 What?
666. 00:38:24 Yeah, he spells it with a capital C. Fantastic.
667. 00:38:28 Cal.
668. 00:38:29 Oh, he totally did.
669. 00:38:32 Yeah.
670. 00:38:33 And then he gets into spreadsheets, local and cloud, backup and archiving.
671. 00:38:39 And most of these recommendations, I can tell there's some that he has used and he's putting
672. 00:38:46 them in here.
673. 00:38:47 And then he's just trying to cover all of his bases.
674. 00:38:49 He grabs a couple windows recommendations from a Google search and throws them on the
675. 00:38:53 list.
676. 00:38:54 I hate these types of lists.
677. 00:38:57 They are worthless.
678. 00:39:00 But look at the email app section.
679. 00:39:03 He's like, there's lots of email apps out there.
680. 00:39:05 I just use Gmail on the web.
681. 00:39:07 Okay.
682. 00:39:08 This is not the person to be listening to when it comes to how to handle an abundance of
683. 00:39:14 email.
684. 00:39:15 I got a kick out of it.
685. 00:39:18 This section on email though, like I am not, I am not good about maintaining in box zero.
686. 00:39:27 The way it's been interpreted.
687. 00:39:28 It's not the way you see it out there.
688. 00:39:31 Even the way he explains it here is not the way Merlin man intended it.
689. 00:39:35 That's a story for another day.
690. 00:39:37 But I don't follow the processing of getting inbox zero.
691. 00:39:43 I tend to leave things there from time to time.
692. 00:39:48 But that's partially because I don't need the email now.
693. 00:39:51 I don't need to act on it right now.
694. 00:39:53 But I will in four days.
695. 00:39:55 And the easiest thing for me to do is just leave it in the inbox and then four days later
696. 00:39:59 when I'm done with it, then I deal with it.
697. 00:40:01 That's, that's what I do.
698. 00:40:02 So I regularly have 30, 40 emails sitting in that inbox.
699. 00:40:06 It's completely fine.
700. 00:40:08 But very rarely are they unread.
701. 00:40:10 Well, that isn't completely fine.
702. 00:40:12 They're not unread.
703. 00:40:14 I don't mark them unread and move on.
704. 00:40:16 I just know that they're there and I go back to them when I need them.
705. 00:40:20 Yeah.
706. 00:40:21 So you're, you're an organized writer then.
707. 00:40:23 Totally.
708. 00:40:24 I'm good at this.
709. 00:40:26 Uh, yeah, I, I think when it comes to inbox zero, there's a lot of misconceptions about
710. 00:40:33 it and if I were to give people one piece of advice when it comes to email, it is do
711. 00:40:38 email on your own terms.
712. 00:40:40 So you don't have to get to zero messages every day.
713. 00:40:45 Uh, and in fact, that is not what I do.
714. 00:40:48 But once a week, I clear everything out and that's going to tick some people off.
715. 00:40:55 I have a request in my email.
716. 00:40:58 Currently, it's not staying in my email.
717. 00:41:02 It's a task inside of Rome at the moment, but there it is.
718. 00:41:07 To present that at a Mac user group.
719. 00:41:11 Okay.
720. 00:41:12 Well, I didn't see that email for a week because it's not coming from a sender that
721. 00:41:15 I had interacted with before.
722. 00:41:17 And I'm sorry, but if you want an instant response to an email like that, then I'm not
723. 00:41:24 sure guy and be okay with that.
724. 00:41:26 You know, that's something I do want to do.
725. 00:41:28 I would love to present to that group.
726. 00:41:32 And I love contributing to the Apple community.
727. 00:41:35 It's been a really cool place for me.
728. 00:41:37 It's given me a lot.
729. 00:41:39 So I feel like I want to give back and I feel like I could do a good job and I could help
730. 00:41:45 out the folks that are a part of that group and whatever topics, you know, they, they
731. 00:41:48 had presented.
732. 00:41:50 But if you're trying to nail it down and get some details from me right away, then I've
733. 00:41:55 got other things that are more important.
734. 00:41:57 And that's one of the things you mentioned here is that you don't owe strangers a reply.
735. 00:42:03 You may want to reply to everybody like that, but ultimately they are still a stranger at
736. 00:42:09 this point, you know, or at least they're not a prioritized individual.
737. 00:42:16 David Sparks and I talked about this on focus not too long ago about the input workflows
738. 00:42:21 and where do all the inputs come from an email is a big one.
739. 00:42:24 And we actually walked through like how we deal with the inputs and all these different
740. 00:42:27 areas.
741. 00:42:28 And there was a common theme when it came to me is like, well, I'm going to be annoying
742. 00:42:32 to people who aren't part of my circle, but I'm going to check it on my terms and I'll
743. 00:42:36 get back to you when I feel like.
744. 00:42:40 And I feel that comes across even in a podcast like this as a little bit people maybe are
745. 00:42:46 offended that, well, Mike can get away with that, but I can't.
746. 00:42:51 But I think everybody can move a little bit more in that direction.
747. 00:42:55 We have this picture in our heads a lot of times of like, I don't want to let anybody
748. 00:42:59 down and I want to be looking for those new opportunities all the time.
749. 00:43:05 And I don't want to miss something.
750. 00:43:09 And so you compulsively go check to see if there is something new there, but there is
751. 00:43:15 a lot of value in just saying no to the things that you don't know are there and focusing
752. 00:43:19 on the thing that you do know you need to do, which is kind of part of his fastened system,
753. 00:43:25 but he doesn't talk a whole lot about that.
754. 00:43:26 Say no part.
755. 00:43:27 You'll probably be upset with me for this, but I do tend to leave my email open all day
756. 00:43:32 anymore.
757. 00:43:34 Some accounts and not others.
758. 00:43:37 So there are probably three different levels of accounts for me.
759. 00:43:41 Some that I check only once a week.
760. 00:43:43 I don't leave those open all day every day.
761. 00:43:45 I have some of my like online based emails that I'll run through maybe once or twice
762. 00:43:51 a day, but my day job work I have open all day.
763. 00:43:57 Now I say that and yet the way that I use my computer, I usually can't see it and I
764. 00:44:02 don't have alerts on.
765. 00:44:04 So if I'm working on something, I have no idea if an email came in.
766. 00:44:08 It's not like I've got it over on the corner of a monitor and can see it at all times.
767. 00:44:12 I even have I've been playing around, I've got a stream deck that I've been using from
768. 00:44:16 Elgato and I have a button on there that I put on that's hide others.
769. 00:44:20 If you're familiar with this, if you go like on a Mac, if you go up and hit whatever the
770. 00:44:24 program is and go down, you can hide others like everything but that program.
771. 00:44:29 I love to do that, especially if I'm writing on something or working on a presentation or
772. 00:44:33 something.
773. 00:44:34 The stuff is still open.
774. 00:44:35 I just can't find it like it's not visible to me.
775. 00:44:38 So I do tend to have it open but it's usually not right in front of me.
776. 00:44:43 But I would easily say I check it 10, 12 times a day.
777. 00:44:47 But that's partially because then I would argue that the hide all isn't working.
778. 00:44:53 Sure, sure.
779. 00:44:54 But keep in mind like I'm moving around so much.
780. 00:44:59 For example this morning, I probably checked it seven or eight times.
781. 00:45:02 But that was because I had a lot of things that were in between.
782. 00:45:05 I'm waiting on some information to be able to finish some stuff I've got to have done
783. 00:45:09 for two days from now.
784. 00:45:10 So I was like, is it here yet?
785. 00:45:13 Can I go do that task yet?
786. 00:45:14 Nope, it's not.
787. 00:45:15 Okay, I'll go on to the next thing.
788. 00:45:17 So like that's a lot of what I have going on if I've got a funeral tomorrow that I'm
789. 00:45:22 running tech for.
790. 00:45:24 Generally I'm waiting on a bank of pictures, lyrics, all sorts of stuff.
791. 00:45:29 I'm waiting for stuff and that all comes in via email from people I don't know.
792. 00:45:33 So that's a lot of why.
793. 00:45:35 But if, for example, if I'm doing editing on a video project, it's not uncommon for me
794. 00:45:42 to be there two and a half, three hours on that and never have anything else open.
795. 00:45:47 Those days I'd probably check it maybe twice.
796. 00:45:50 So it changes.
797. 00:45:52 It depends on the day.
798. 00:45:53 Which is really the problem because the days that are nuts are the days when you're
799. 00:45:59 not finding the time to sit down and write because your brain is already constantly
800. 00:46:05 used to jumping from one emergency to the next.
801. 00:46:10 And as soon as you get done with one, you're like, well, I better go check my email and
802. 00:46:13 see if there's something else.
803. 00:46:14 And at that point it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
804. 00:46:17 Well, what do you know?
805. 00:46:18 There's something else that I should be dealing with right now.
806. 00:46:20 That's the difference.
807. 00:46:21 It's not like I'm not checking it to see if there's something else.
808. 00:46:24 It's if I've got the thing I need to do a different task because I regularly will find
809. 00:46:29 new emails in there that I just don't even bother opening whenever I do that.
810. 00:46:32 So if new emails come, I usually don't pay any attention to them until I need them or
811. 00:46:39 I have time later on.
812. 00:46:40 It's only when I'm waiting on things, but that happens a lot.
813. 00:46:43 But also keep in mind, yes, I'm jumping from fire to fire, but that's my job.
814. 00:46:48 Yep, no, I get that.
815. 00:46:50 And I'm not trying to paint this as like Joe's fault, but this is the human's, the general
816. 00:46:55 humans problem.
817. 00:46:57 Yep.
818. 00:46:58 Is that the crazier things get, the more you are in reactive fight versus flight mode.
819. 00:47:07 So the thing that leads to that is also the thing that you gravitate towards when things
820. 00:47:13 get a little bit nuts.
821. 00:47:15 If you were able to disconnect from your email on those days that you've gone from one emergency
822. 00:47:24 that you got to fix, the next emergency that you got to fix, eventually those emergencies
823. 00:47:28 that you got to fix are going to be done.
824. 00:47:31 And at that point, you might have the time for your writing, but the average person at
825. 00:47:36 that point is like, well, I better go check my email.
826. 00:47:39 And at that point, you see a whole bunch of things that are urgent to other people.
827. 00:47:43 And it's very easy to say, well, I don't want to be the guy that no one can rely on.
828. 00:47:47 So I'll just do this right now.
829. 00:47:50 And then you do that again, and you do it again, and you do it again.
830. 00:47:52 Pretty soon, the entire day is gone.
831. 00:47:54 And you didn't get to your writing.
832. 00:47:56 But here's the other key to, and I'll point this out, because I've done this sort of thing
833. 00:48:00 long enough to know how to handle email, in my opinion, appropriately for me, in that
834. 00:48:08 if it's an emergency, they're not sending me an email.
835. 00:48:13 I've done this long enough that if it's a true emergency, they're not emailing me.
836. 00:48:17 They've called me.
837. 00:48:18 They've come found me.
838. 00:48:19 They have done something because if they email me about an emergency, they know they can't
839. 00:48:25 rely on a quick response for that, because there are days when I get focused on working
840. 00:48:32 on a couple of things.
841. 00:48:34 Maybe I'm doing some writing.
842. 00:48:35 Maybe I'm doing some video work.
843. 00:48:37 Maybe I'm recording with somebody.
844. 00:48:39 And it's going to be the next day before you get a response from me.
845. 00:48:44 So I've told people over and over again, if you need a quick thing from me, call me,
846. 00:48:49 come find me.
847. 00:48:50 Do not email me.
848. 00:48:51 So they know that.
849. 00:48:52 So I know that I don't generally have fires that need to put out in my email.
850. 00:48:57 So I'm never going to be the one who's solving a problem when someone else could, if it's
851. 00:49:01 an email.
852. 00:49:03 But that's not necessarily something that everyone listening to this is going to be
853. 00:49:07 able to have.
854. 00:49:09 Like that's all whole mindset and culture that I've kind of built around how do you
855. 00:49:13 work with Joe and have been working on that for years.
856. 00:49:17 So it's not something that I could just say, you can just do this too.
857. 00:49:20 It takes time to kind of build that up around all the people who work with you.
858. 00:49:26 So it's making sense.
859. 00:49:27 Yep.
860. 00:49:28 And that's a worthwhile discussion if it needs to be had.
861. 00:49:35 Have that talk about this is how you work with me.
862. 00:49:39 But I would argue everyone should think about how they can move that needle in the direction
863. 00:49:45 that they want it to go.
864. 00:49:48 Because it's easy to just default to whatever anybody else is doing.
865. 00:49:55 If you have to go back and forth with somebody about a file that they're sharing with you
866. 00:49:59 for a funeral tomorrow, you can say, because there's going to be some back and forth on
867. 00:50:06 this and you're going to want some immediate feedback, here's my cell number, text me.
868. 00:50:13 That's exactly right.
869. 00:50:14 Yeah.
870. 00:50:15 That's exactly what I do.
871. 00:50:16 Constantly check the email.
872. 00:50:17 I wonder if they send it yet.
873. 00:50:18 I wonder if they send it yet.
874. 00:50:19 I wonder if they send it yet.
875. 00:50:20 And I know that you do that kind of stuff, but most people don't.
876. 00:50:26 Yeah.
877. 00:50:27 Yeah.
878. 00:50:28 If it's multiple days out or like if it's on a deadline, for example, take the funeral
879. 00:50:33 example, which this is kind of morbid to be talking about a funeral.
880. 00:50:37 I probably shouldn't have said it that way.
881. 00:50:39 But it's very common for me to three or four days prior to that moment.
882. 00:50:46 I've gotten an email from the family.
883. 00:50:49 I know what their expectation is of the end result, but they have a lot of questions around
884. 00:50:57 what file formats, what method do I get it to you?
885. 00:51:01 Do I need to drop off a thumb drive?
886. 00:51:02 Can I send you a link?
887. 00:51:03 They have all kinds of questions.
888. 00:51:04 And rightly so.
889. 00:51:05 They've never worked with me in that sense.
890. 00:51:07 So they don't know what to do.
891. 00:51:09 I always just, here's my phone number.
892. 00:51:11 Call me.
893. 00:51:12 We can talk through this whenever it's convenient for you.
894. 00:51:14 Call me whenever it's convenient for you.
895. 00:51:16 And I will do what I can to help you as best I can.
896. 00:51:19 I generally get a phone call within 20 minutes.
897. 00:51:22 And we talk it through.
898. 00:51:24 I tell them, I got to have it sometime morning of or the day before preferably so I can set
899. 00:51:30 it up before the event.
900. 00:51:33 And it's that day or the day before that I'm like, I've checked in with them.
901. 00:51:40 They know they're sending it to me, but I don't have it yet.
902. 00:51:42 And I'm going to be leaving in two hours.
903. 00:51:45 And I need this file so I can go work on it now or I'm going to have to come in early
904. 00:51:48 the next day to do it.
905. 00:51:50 That's the moment that I'm generally checking more often than not.
906. 00:51:55 Sure.
907. 00:51:56 Yeah, that makes sense.
908. 00:51:58 Anyway, email.
909. 00:51:59 Don't trust this guy's email methods.
910. 00:52:03 I don't agree with it.
911. 00:52:04 I mean, there's a lot of things that I do that are what he's talking about that are
912. 00:52:10 bad.
913. 00:52:11 I'm not arguing with that.
914. 00:52:14 But I generally have a lot of background to where mine's a little different than normal,
915. 00:52:22 even different than what he's explaining.
916. 00:52:24 Anyway, anything else you want to say about email?
917. 00:52:26 I'm like, no, let's go on to the next topic, which is maybe just as bad.
918. 00:52:30 That's bad.
919. 00:52:31 That's just bad.
920. 00:52:32 Yes, task management.
921. 00:52:34 And his favorite task manager is things.
922. 00:52:38 He's a things fan.
923. 00:52:40 And it made me hurt a little bit when he said that Omni focus was too much for him.
924. 00:52:45 It is.
925. 00:52:46 It is.
926. 00:52:47 I totally get where he's coming from.
927. 00:52:50 He's absolutely right in the appeal of something like things.
928. 00:52:54 That being said, things is not the task manager that I would just blanket recommend for every
929. 00:52:59 single writer.
930. 00:53:01 That the reasons that he likes it are absolutely spot on and they've done a phenomenal job
931. 00:53:05 of making a beautiful application that doesn't feel complicated with Omni focus, even though
932. 00:53:14 it doesn't have to be complicated, it still feels complicated a lot of times because you
933. 00:53:19 got to understand some of the killer features that it has, like the review thing.
934. 00:53:24 There is no review in things.
935. 00:53:28 Every somebody like Anthony Johnson, that's completely fine.
936. 00:53:32 GTD, Beerus are going to bock at that, but is what it is.
937. 00:53:38 I like his differentiation here between the task manager and the to do list though.
938. 00:53:44 The Sean Blanc described this in all the things course as the brain versus the list.
939. 00:53:49 And I thought this was absolutely genius.
940. 00:53:50 And this is kind of what I've done with keeping everything inside a room and then writing
941. 00:53:54 it out on my notebook every single day when I plan my day the night before is the task
942. 00:54:02 manager.
943. 00:54:03 Basically, that's the piece that's using all the fancy stuff to help you identify.
944. 00:54:10 These are the things that you should be thinking about for tomorrow.
945. 00:54:16 And I would recommend that you do this the night before, not the day of.
946. 00:54:19 I don't think he made that distinction, but that's a really important point.
947. 00:54:22 And then you jot everything down into a list.
948. 00:54:25 And that's basically a short temporary checklist of things that you're going to be doing.
949. 00:54:31 This has been really great for me.
950. 00:54:33 And I know that there are ways to do this inside of a task manager, but separating those
951. 00:54:37 two has kind of been transformational for me in the way that I get stuff done.
952. 00:54:43 Feels a lot better to work this way, in my opinion.
953. 00:54:47 So I think this approach makes a lot of sense and people should think about this.
954. 00:54:51 Yeah, this kind of for a lot of people, this is interpreted into a hybrid system.
955. 00:54:57 I think yours is the same where your to-do list is on paper and the task manager handles
956. 00:55:04 kind of the cold storage of, if you will, of projects.
957. 00:55:08 He does point out that a paper-based system like this is not worth your time because you
958. 00:55:12 have to carry a notebook with you everywhere.
959. 00:55:14 And then he talks about later about how he carries a notebook with him everywhere.
960. 00:55:17 I'm like, what gives?
961. 00:55:18 He specifically calls out bullet journals like don't do that.
962. 00:55:22 He does.
963. 00:55:23 Yeah, I was like, buzz off.
964. 00:55:26 But anyway, so I of course took exception with that.
965. 00:55:31 But I get his point.
966. 00:55:32 I get what he's saying.
967. 00:55:34 It sinks in the cloud.
968. 00:55:35 It always backs up.
969. 00:55:36 It's like all these things.
970. 00:55:38 But I don't have to charge my bullet journal.
971. 00:55:39 I will say.
972. 00:55:40 Anyway, he does talk quite a bit about task management.
973. 00:55:45 I don't know what else to say about it other than he just encourages you to keep track
974. 00:55:50 of things in some form.
975. 00:55:53 Like that's ultimately what he's getting at here, which I think all of us would agree
976. 00:55:58 with, given knowledge-based work in any form.
977. 00:56:02 The work isn't visible in front of you, so trying to keep track of it becomes necessary.
978. 00:56:08 Yeah, I agree.
979. 00:56:10 I do think that this task manager versus to-do list or the brain versus the list, that becomes
980. 00:56:16 even more important when you add additional projects and you're not able to just pick
981. 00:56:20 one thing to work on every day like he recommends.
982. 00:56:24 So I think he doesn't get into a lot of details here because his needs are pretty basic.
983. 00:56:29 But the format that he's talking about here, I think is important as you scale the number
984. 00:56:35 of things that you're trying to get done.
985. 00:56:36 The next section here is work to a quantity, not time.
986. 00:56:42 And this one's very straightforward as far as what he needs.
987. 00:56:45 He's talking about set an amount of writing that you're going to do.
988. 00:56:50 Don't set the amount of time you're going to work on something.
989. 00:56:53 So instead of saying, "I'm going to spend two hours working on this project," say, "I'm
990. 00:56:58 going to write 1500 words on this project."
991. 00:57:01 And I get that.
992. 00:57:03 I do, too much of my time is time-based, of course.
993. 00:57:08 So I don't know how I would do that because it's very different.
994. 00:57:14 Sometimes it's scripting, sometimes it's outline, sometimes it is an article.
995. 00:57:18 And they're very different in the amount of time that it takes to complete the entirety
996. 00:57:22 of the project.
997. 00:57:24 And I know roughly how long that will take me to do.
998. 00:57:29 I don't disagree with him.
999. 00:57:30 If I was writing a novel, I would absolutely do this.
1000. 00:57:34 I'm going to put 1500 words on the document every day until it's done.
1001. 00:57:41 I would totally do that.
1002. 00:57:43 If I had the ability to set my schedule and dictate it like that, I would totally do
1003. 00:57:48 it.
1004. 00:57:49 But again, in my personal life, I don't think that's going to fit real well.
1005. 00:57:54 Well, you may not disagree with him, but I will.
1006. 00:57:58 All right, fair enough.
1007. 00:58:00 So I agree that this is a good approach.
1008. 00:58:03 If you are a professional writer who can charge large sums for your writing, you are
1009. 00:58:09 not worried about finances and you are not worried about how long something takes.
1010. 00:58:16 Basically, if you have unlimited resources, this is a great approach.
1011. 00:58:21 Most people do not have unlimited resources.
1012. 00:58:24 And so I think this is dangerous.
1013. 00:58:28 My own personal experience, the thing that got me into what I'm doing today, was establishing
1014. 00:58:36 a writing habit.
1015. 00:58:37 I literally just did a webinar yesterday as we recorded this on habits.
1016. 00:58:41 One of the things that I told people when it comes to developing habits and writing may
1017. 00:58:46 very well be a habit for somebody who works a nine to five, but they want to write something
1018. 00:58:51 on the side, that's a great way to do it.
1019. 00:58:54 You establish a writing habit.
1020. 00:58:55 The number one tip I would give that person, don't pay attention to how many words you're
1021. 00:59:00 writing show up every day.
1022. 00:59:03 That's the only thing that matters.
1023. 00:59:04 Did you write at all?
1024. 00:59:06 That's what matters.
1025. 00:59:08 When I was writing my book, I got up early and spent an hour a day before I went into
1026. 00:59:15 the office writing and I was not worried about word counts.
1027. 00:59:20 Had I been worried about word counts?
1028. 00:59:22 Now all of a sudden, each one of those writing sessions, I have either succeeded or I have
1029. 00:59:27 failed because I have to stop at a specific time.
1030. 00:59:32 I'm agreeing with you that when you have to work within a specific timeframe, this doesn't
1031. 00:59:39 work, but I also think that for the majority of people, that's going to be the way to do
1032. 00:59:45 it anyways.
1033. 00:59:46 Just did you check the box on making an effort to do the thing, not keeping track of your
1034. 00:59:52 prolific output?
1035. 00:59:54 There is a switch that gets flipped there when this is the sole thing that you do for
1036. 01:00:00 a living.
1037. 01:00:01 If you're trying to work on one specific project, like a novel and you have all day, every day
1038. 01:00:07 to do this, then yeah, I probably would take the approach that he takes.
1039. 01:00:13 But even if that was my only job and everything else about my life is the same where I've
1040. 01:00:18 got five kids and a wife at home who are here with me, I'm still not going to take this approach.
1041. 01:00:23 I'm still going to time block stuff and I'm going to put parameters around how I'm investing
1042. 01:00:27 my time because my time is my most valuable resource and I don't want to spend it all
1043. 01:00:33 working.
1044. 01:00:34 Yeah.
1045. 01:00:35 I think it's valid.
1046. 01:00:36 I do.
1047. 01:00:37 But again, like you and I are in a situation where we have so much time that we can put
1048. 01:00:42 towards it.
1049. 01:00:43 Like I have a tendency to write over lunch breaks and stuff.
1050. 01:00:46 Well, that's a limited time frame.
1051. 01:00:48 I've got 30 minutes.
1052. 01:00:50 And if I want to kick out a 500 word article, guess what?
1053. 01:00:55 The keys continue to press the entire time.
1054. 01:00:59 Yeah.
1055. 01:01:00 So it's not going to allow me to change the amount of time that I'm using to put those
1056. 01:01:07 500 words down.
1057. 01:01:09 I am going to get them out is that's really all it is.
1058. 01:01:13 So anyway, I think again, I think it's different depending on where you're at in the situation,
1059. 01:01:18 for sure.
1060. 01:01:19 Yeah.
1061. 01:01:20 The next section here, I feel like I understand and yet I don't understand and I do what he
1062. 01:01:29 talks about very differently.
1063. 01:01:30 But chapter three is taking notes and making lists.
1064. 01:01:35 The first piece of this that's of interest to me is the note taking an ideas section.
1065. 01:01:40 This is where this whole dare I say nonsense of Zettelkasten and linking of notes and ideas
1066. 01:01:49 comes in.
1067. 01:01:50 How dare you.
1068. 01:01:53 He doesn't call it that.
1069. 01:01:55 He doesn't refer to a Zettelkasten.
1070. 01:01:57 He does not refer to trying to tie notes together.
1071. 01:02:02 He does refer to though is the idea of having some form of ubiquitous capture to use the
1072. 01:02:11 term and having it with you at all times and transferring those into some form of a digital
1073. 01:02:20 note taker and then spending time developing those ideas when you're doing that transferring.
1074. 01:02:26 And that piece, I think I need you to correct me if I'm wrong here, but that piece of spending
1075. 01:02:34 time developing notes and ideas in a dedicated note taking system is exactly what I would
1076. 01:02:42 expect a writer to tell me.
1077. 01:02:45 Is that fair?
1078. 01:02:46 A creator, but yeah.
1079. 01:02:47 Sure.
1080. 01:02:48 Yeah, absolutely.
1081. 01:02:49 And I think that's why the Zettelkasten stuff and the PKM stuff is taking off right
1082. 01:02:55 now is there is an emphasis on creating one of the people that I follow online because
1083. 01:03:03 I like what they are producing around this topic at the moment is Nest Labs.
1084. 01:03:11 And she's actually got a course called collector to creator.
1085. 01:03:16 And I feel like all of the Zettelkasten type stuff, the PKM type stuff is right now the
1086. 01:03:23 all of the backlink type stuff that's coming to craft and notion and every other app that
1087. 01:03:28 you can think of, it's designed to get you from just collecting the information, storing
1088. 01:03:35 it in a folder somewhere, being able to go back and find it later if you can recall it
1089. 01:03:40 to connecting it in a way that is more organic.
1090. 01:03:44 You can see things jump between things more easily.
1091. 01:03:48 And as a result, that makes a creative process easier.
1092. 01:03:52 And I think there's absolutely value to that.
1093. 01:03:56 The way that it gets expressed is different.
1094. 01:03:59 You know, I have a confession to make.
1095. 01:04:00 I am actually playing with Obsidian at the moment.
1096. 01:04:03 I like the local storage of things.
1097. 01:04:08 I'm also playing around with the hook app.
1098. 01:04:11 That's kind of the thing that got me.
1099. 01:04:13 That one's cool.
1100. 01:04:14 Yeah.
1101. 01:04:15 So I have this keyboard maestro macro, which pulls the subject line and the message ID
1102. 01:04:22 from Mailmate and puts it into a markdown link that I could use inside a room.
1103. 01:04:25 But it's a pain in the butt to build that yourself.
1104. 01:04:30 And I'm seeing other places, local apps that I want to have those sorts of connections.
1105. 01:04:35 I'm putting it inside a room and I'm clicking on those links and it always opens up a blank
1106. 01:04:39 tab before opening the application.
1107. 01:04:42 It drives me absolutely insane.
1108. 01:04:45 This is a URL to a local thing you should not be opening up a separate Chrome tab just to
1109. 01:04:52 open up the mail message.
1110. 01:04:55 You know, do that enough and it's just, it's driving me nuts.
1111. 01:04:58 So yeah, I think Obsidian is ultimately where I'll be ending up.
1112. 01:05:03 I'm also going through a course linking your thinking and their recommended app is Obsidian.
1113. 01:05:07 So as I learn more about it, I'm sure my opinion of it is going to change.
1114. 01:05:11 I also have mentioned this from the very beginning.
1115. 01:05:14 I really don't like the people who make room.
1116. 01:05:17 Yeah.
1117. 01:05:19 One of the things I stumbled across is that this video, I think it's part of the linking
1118. 01:05:25 your thinking guy, that the apps that you use, you don't just influence those apps, those
1119. 01:05:31 apps also influence you.
1120. 01:05:33 And I think that's absolutely true.
1121. 01:05:35 I'm not sure I want Connor in the gang influencing me.
1122. 01:05:39 So I've paid for it.
1123. 01:05:41 You know, I've got five years, but I am looking for the moment when Obsidian can do all the
1124. 01:05:50 things that I need it to do and it makes it easy for me to move away from Rome.
1125. 01:05:55 I don't know when or if that day will come, but I'm playing around with it.
1126. 01:06:02 So all that to say, you know, Obsidian has a way of doing this.
1127. 01:06:05 Rome has a way of doing this.
1128. 01:06:06 Hook has a way of doing this.
1129. 01:06:08 You don't even have to use those other applications.
1130. 01:06:10 Hook has a way of doing this.
1131. 01:06:12 The hook is interesting because you can literally just grab a link to anything from anything
1132. 01:06:15 and paste it inside of anything.
1133. 01:06:17 Yes.
1134. 01:06:18 So now all of these applications, which normally would have been siloed, are no longer in a
1135. 01:06:27 silo.
1136. 01:06:28 And you don't have to rely on OmniFocus being the ones to develop the direct integration
1137. 01:06:35 with the email app that you're using because you can just use Hook, grab the link to the
1138. 01:06:39 message and drop it inside of your task manager.
1139. 01:06:43 And I don't know a whole lot about Hook.
1140. 01:06:45 I'm kind of playing around with this too.
1141. 01:06:47 But there's all this to say, there are tons of options for this sort of thing.
1142. 01:06:51 And this is absolutely valuable.
1143. 01:06:53 This is where the productivity space is going.
1144. 01:06:56 I'm going to call it right now.
1145. 01:06:58 And you can call it a Zetlcast and you don't have to call it a Zetlcast and though I think
1146. 01:07:02 there's a lot of stuff that right now people would define is like, Oh, well, that's a Zetlcast
1147. 01:07:07 and but it's just going to become ubiquitous with no, that's a productivity app because
1148. 01:07:12 it ties with other things and you can use it in different ways.
1149. 01:07:15 And it's all around this idea of idea management and not just collecting these dots, but how
1150. 01:07:20 do you express them?
1151. 01:07:22 I'm not using one of these things.
1152. 01:07:25 Because here's the thing.
1153. 01:07:27 My view on what becomes content and what are the things that I release has been changing
1154. 01:07:35 somewhat?
1155. 01:07:36 And if you pay attention to what I've been doing over the last probably six to nine
1156. 01:07:41 months, it's become more and more of a here's something that's on my mind.
1157. 01:07:48 Let me tell you about it.
1158. 01:07:50 Here is something I'm learning how to do right now.
1159. 01:07:53 Let me tell you about it.
1160. 01:07:55 That's a lot of what I've moved to, which means the concept of trying to gather an idea
1161. 01:08:02 and further it to a point to where I'm comfortable sharing it.
1162. 01:08:07 I don't do that.
1163. 01:08:09 It's pretty much all hot takes.
1164. 01:08:11 And to me, there's a lot less stress involved with that.
1165. 01:08:16 If I have an idea for something, it gets like a new line item in my bullet journal for when
1166. 01:08:26 it could become something, but I don't develop it.
1167. 01:08:29 I just think about things.
1168. 01:08:33 If it's something that I feel like I've thought about long enough that I'm willing to put together
1169. 01:08:36 formal thoughts on, then I sit down and I put it together and release it all in one
1170. 01:08:42 day.
1171. 01:08:44 That's what I do.
1172. 01:08:45 I don't do a lot of this, build it over time and then release it, which is partly why I
1173. 01:08:52 have a hard time grasping what people do with Rome and obsidian and gang.
1174. 01:09:01 It doesn't resonate with me.
1175. 01:09:02 I get how it does.
1176. 01:09:04 I'm not telling other people not to do that.
1177. 01:09:07 In most cases, there are cases where I tell people don't do that.
1178. 01:09:10 But overall, I don't see it as something I'm giving like a blanket statement.
1179. 01:09:16 Don't ever do this because I get where there are some.
1180. 01:09:19 I just think that the group of people who are doing it is much larger than the group
1181. 01:09:24 of people who should be doing it.
1182. 01:09:27 That's my opinion.
1183. 01:09:28 Take it or leave it.
1184. 01:09:30 I'm not sure I have time to take that.
1185. 01:09:33 Okay.
1186. 01:09:34 Job sheets.
1187. 01:09:35 Let's talk about job sheets.
1188. 01:09:36 So the next part of this is this thing called a job sheet.
1189. 01:09:44 Again, he's a writer.
1190. 01:09:45 So he has things like contracts and he has invoices and he's got all sorts of stuff per
1191. 01:09:49 writing project.
1192. 01:09:51 He regularly has a manila envelope for that project and he has this job sheet of sorts
1193. 01:09:59 that he tapes to the front and it has like the title of the thing, who the publisher is,
1194. 01:10:04 who's the agent, what is the fee for it?
1195. 01:10:06 Is there a contract?
1196. 01:10:08 What else is on here?
1197. 01:10:09 It has like checks for what part of the process is he in currently and it's like, do I have
1198. 01:10:18 the research done?
1199. 01:10:19 Do I have my notes taken?
1200. 01:10:20 Do I have the plot figured out?
1201. 01:10:21 Do I have the breakdown done?
1202. 01:10:22 Where am I at in the draft process?
1203. 01:10:24 Has it been published?
1204. 01:10:25 Has it archived?
1205. 01:10:26 Has it been paid?
1206. 01:10:27 All these things, all these check boxes.
1207. 01:10:28 It's a physical piece of paper.
1208. 01:10:29 He prints and puts on this manila envelope and I'm looking at this thinking, hey, that's
1209. 01:10:34 really cool.
1210. 01:10:35 I'm probably never going to use this.
1211. 01:10:37 Are you going to use this?
1212. 01:10:39 I don't think I have anything that this would apply to because my projects are also
1213. 01:10:42 different.
1214. 01:10:43 Yeah.
1215. 01:10:44 I'm not a big fan of these job sheets.
1216. 01:10:46 I'm a fan of them conceptually.
1217. 01:10:48 I'm not a fan of them being printed out and taped onto the file folders.
1218. 01:10:55 I do think there's value in having a checklist of things that you go through for a specific
1219. 01:10:59 project.
1220. 01:11:00 I mean, I have that already, but also I don't have it formally inside of any of my own personal
1221. 01:11:08 task stuff.
1222. 01:11:09 A lot of the places that that exists is for writing for this suite setup.
1223. 01:11:13 We've got a couple of different tools that we use for SEO research.
1224. 01:11:18 It's not sleazy.
1225. 01:11:20 I'm going to hack the algorithm.
1226. 01:11:21 It's just the best habit tracker app, for example.
1227. 01:11:24 When I updated that one, I plugged it into this application called usetopic.usetopic.com.
1228. 01:11:31 It gives you a rank based on the keywords that are already there.
1229. 01:11:36 Then you can look at the other high ranking articles and the keywords that they're using
1230. 01:11:41 and it makes recommendations like, "Oh, you should say things this way."
1231. 01:11:45 It's stuff that I'm already saying, but it helps me say it a little bit more clearly,
1232. 01:11:48 so you're answering the questions that people have when they type in the search box, what
1233. 01:11:52 is the best iOS habit tracker.
1234. 01:11:57 That's something that's new to my writing process.
1235. 01:12:01 Having that in a checklist is helpful.
1236. 01:12:03 Do SEO research.
1237. 01:12:05 A lot of the other stuff, I just flow from one state to the next.
1238. 01:12:11 I'm going to write the text.
1239. 01:12:12 I'm going to finish the first draft.
1240. 01:12:13 I'm going to edit the first draft.
1241. 01:12:15 I'm going to grab the screenshots.
1242. 01:12:17 I'm going to make any videos that are needed.
1243. 01:12:19 I'm going to upload all this stuff to WordPress and then I'm going to assign it to somebody
1244. 01:12:22 else to review it before it goes out.
1245. 01:12:28 I don't know.
1246. 01:12:29 I'm not going to do this for my personal stuff.
1247. 01:12:31 I can see the value of this when you're working with other people because at any point
1248. 01:12:35 in the process, you can assign it to somebody else and they can jump in and help you out
1249. 01:12:39 with something.
1250. 01:12:40 That's really where I feel the value of this is.
1251. 01:12:43 I'm not telling people you shouldn't have this kind of checklist inside of things around
1252. 01:12:46 your focus or whatever your task manager is, but I also don't necessarily think you need
1253. 01:12:51 it either.
1254. 01:12:53 It's just a checklist.
1255. 01:12:55 Exactly.
1256. 01:12:56 It's just a different form of it.
1257. 01:12:57 I use a lot of these as well.
1258. 01:12:59 I don't want to belabor that.
1259. 01:13:00 I just thought it was a cool concept for sure.
1260. 01:13:04 Part two, this one we're going to go through fairly quick, I think, is write.
1261. 01:13:10 Exclamation point.
1262. 01:13:11 It's two chapters in here.
1263. 01:13:13 Chapter four is five pages after breakfast.
1264. 01:13:17 He goes through this whole thing about a clean mind.
1265. 01:13:20 You haven't had a chance to fill it with messy stuff from social media and relationships
1266. 01:13:26 and communications throughout the day.
1267. 01:13:28 You have a clean mind at that point in the day.
1268. 01:13:31 Do your writing right after breakfast.
1269. 01:13:33 Five pages is his quantity, not his time.
1270. 01:13:36 He goes as far, takes as long as he needs to do a minimum of those five pages after breakfast.
1271. 01:13:45 That's pretty much what I got out of that chapter.
1272. 01:13:49 My one action item comes from this chapter.
1273. 01:13:52 It's not the five pages.
1274. 01:13:53 It's not a specific amount of words, but I do want to make sure that my morning time
1275. 01:14:00 is my writing time.
1276. 01:14:01 I've talked about this sort of thing in the past and probably had an action item sort
1277. 01:14:06 of like this in the past, but where I'm at right now, I do notice that I can default
1278. 01:14:15 to some of the admin type stuff and I want to kind of protect those early morning hours
1279. 01:14:21 specifically for writing.
1280. 01:14:24 Even if I don't have a specific article that I am working on with a publication date, I
1281. 01:14:30 want to spend a couple of hours just writing every single morning.
1282. 01:14:38 My mornings, the schedules are kind of hit or miss based on meetings and things.
1283. 01:14:45 I can't do this every single day, but I think most days I probably could, especially as
1284. 01:14:51 I'm starting to get up a little bit earlier.
1285. 01:14:54 Maybe I can't spend four hours writing every morning, but I can spend at least an hour
1286. 01:15:00 writing every morning before I have to jump in and help out with something else that the
1287. 01:15:04 team has going on.
1288. 01:15:06 I think if I could create that habit, it would alleviate a lot of the stress of writing to
1289. 01:15:12 the deadline that he was talking about in the first section.
1290. 01:15:16 Fair enough.
1291. 01:15:18 Chapter five is from scribbles to script.
1292. 01:15:22 I just have one question for you here, Mike.
1293. 01:15:25 Did anything in this chapter get you to a point where you thought this would be helpful?
1294. 01:15:31 I'll explain what it is here in a second.
1295. 01:15:33 No, I literally just jotted down the seven step-study outlines, but I'm not writing scripts.
1296. 01:15:41 Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me.
1297. 01:15:45 I think if I was writing scripts for a TV show and such, which he does, this would make
1298. 01:15:52 a lot more sense to me, but I was reading through this.
1299. 01:15:55 I don't even understand what some of this is or why you would do it, but I guess there's
1300. 01:15:59 a reason, but it's initial notes, initial plot, bullet point outline, treatment and pitch,
1301. 01:16:07 breakdown, manuscript, rewriting.
1302. 01:16:11 A lot of it felt like just expanding on the previous step to me.
1303. 01:16:16 It's just seven steps of tweaking your draft and expanding it.
1304. 01:16:21 That's what I saw.
1305. 01:16:22 I'm sure it's different than that, but it just felt a lot of the same stuff.
1306. 01:16:28 Yeah, so my process here is a little bit different, and this is where the PKM, Zettlecast and
1307. 01:16:34 Type stuff add some value.
1308. 01:16:36 I think I get an idea for something and I will capture it.
1309. 01:16:40 That's the initial notes.
1310. 01:16:42 I will then add it to Notion.
1311. 01:16:45 If it's going to be a TSS article, for example, we'll put it down the publication calendar.
1312. 01:16:52 Before I do any sort of writing, I'm going to go through a couple additional steps.
1313. 01:16:57 The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a mind map of the topic and I'm
1314. 01:17:02 going to just dump everything that I can think of relating to that particular topic
1315. 01:17:07 or idea.
1316. 01:17:08 That's where all the back linking stuff really can add some value because, again, it's not
1317. 01:17:13 just the technical features and things.
1318. 01:17:15 It's like writing habits, journaling, stuff like that, where I want to be able to go back
1319. 01:17:20 and look at the quotes that I've collected and the other insights that I've gotten from
1320. 01:17:24 the books that we've read on those particular topics and drop those in.
1321. 01:17:29 That I think adds a lot of value to the stuff that I write.
1322. 01:17:32 Once I have created the mind map, then I might do some SEO research and then I will actually
1323. 01:17:39 write the article.
1324. 01:17:42 My points from Scribble to Script are looking very different than his.
1325. 01:17:47 I follow this process, basically, when I write things.
1326. 01:17:52 I think if you haven't ever had a process for your writing, this is a good place to start.
1327. 01:17:59 However, you're probably going to change some of the specifics.
1328. 01:18:02 Or a lot of it, yeah.
1329. 01:18:04 For sure.
1330. 01:18:05 Okay, part three, non-writing stuff, the first of the two main chapters in here are money
1331. 01:18:15 matters, or it is money matters.
1332. 01:18:18 Hire an accountant, how I learn to stop worrying and love the spreadsheet, invoicing, find your
1333. 01:18:22 price and stick to it.
1334. 01:18:25 The only one I really want to cover here is, like, I get it.
1335. 01:18:28 Like if you have the money, hire an accountant.
1336. 01:18:29 I don't think anybody would argue with you on that.
1337. 01:18:32 Invoicing.
1338. 01:18:33 That's a good process.
1339. 01:18:34 You got to do it, do it immediately.
1340. 01:18:37 Raise your price, stick to it, don't back off of it.
1341. 01:18:39 I mean, those are all fairly straightforward things.
1342. 01:18:42 You would say to anybody who runs a business of sorts, the spreadsheet one is the one I
1343. 01:18:46 just was curious about.
1344. 01:18:48 Because I do, like, coming from a data background, like, spreadsheets, I can look at them and
1345. 01:18:54 run with them all day long.
1346. 01:18:57 And it's not an issue for me to use those.
1347. 01:19:00 I actually just shared one on Twitter who was at Matt Cassinelli was asking for a shareable
1348. 01:19:07 spreadsheet.
1349. 01:19:08 So I dumbed down my business budget spreadsheet and shared it with him.
1350. 01:19:13 And it seemed like it was what he was after.
1351. 01:19:15 But anyway, I tend to run a fair number of spreadsheets for accounting and finances
1352. 01:19:20 and stuff with my business.
1353. 01:19:22 It doesn't mean that it runs well, but it at least means I know what's going on.
1354. 01:19:27 Do you do anything like this?
1355. 01:19:28 Like, my wife and I have a personal budget that we, well, theoretically have up to date.
1356. 01:19:34 We're not now.
1357. 01:19:35 But we have a spreadsheet that we use for this because I can never find apps that do
1358. 01:19:39 the sort of thing that I feel like basic budgeting should do.
1359. 01:19:43 But I'm curious, do you do anything with spreadsheets, Mike?
1360. 01:19:45 I feel like what you do probably doesn't require that much.
1361. 01:19:49 No, any talks about the different categories for the spreadsheets?
1362. 01:19:53 I do keep track of my expenses.
1363. 01:19:56 I usually just print off the receipt as a PDF, save it to my desktop with EX for expense,
1364. 01:20:06 space, the date, and then the company that the receipt is from.
1365. 01:20:13 Save it as a PDF, got a Hazel rule then, which takes that and automatically files it in a
1366. 01:20:17 Dropbox folder for the year under tax info.
1367. 01:20:21 So when we do give everything to the accountant at the end of the year, it's really easy to
1368. 01:20:25 just add all that stuff up.
1369. 01:20:27 Sure.
1370. 01:20:28 I also use FreshBooks.
1371. 01:20:31 I've been using it for years for like the one-off stuff that I do.
1372. 01:20:35 There's not a whole lot of that anymore, but I do still contribute to the Screencast Online
1373. 01:20:39 Monthly Magazine.
1374. 01:20:40 So it's just easy to, whenever I need to send somebody an invoice for something that I
1375. 01:20:45 did, use FreshBooks.
1376. 01:20:47 And then when you get a payment, your market is paid, export their reports at the end of
1377. 01:20:51 the year, stuff like that.
1378. 01:20:53 Sure.
1379. 01:20:54 But that's it, because the rest of the stuff that I get paid for doesn't require me to
1380. 01:20:58 send an invoice for it.
1381. 01:21:01 Sure.
1382. 01:21:02 Like the relay stuff are focused and the ads, I just get payments in PayPal whenever the
1383. 01:21:10 companies who took out the ads pay their invoices.
1384. 01:21:12 So they handle that stuff and then they send it to me.
1385. 01:21:15 And I don't have to worry about managing that.
1386. 01:21:19 Yeah.
1387. 01:21:20 I don't know what else to say about it, spreadsheets.
1388. 01:21:22 I mean, if you want to keep track of things, it's a good way to do it.
1389. 01:21:26 The spreadsheet I use for my business lets me just copy paste all of the transactions
1390. 01:21:31 from the last month and I can just paste it in and it auto-populates based on a whole
1391. 01:21:36 bunch of stuff, because spreadsheet formula, nerdery going on.
1392. 01:21:41 So I do a lot of that, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, so I automate an
1393. 01:21:46 awful lot of it.
1394. 01:21:47 So anyway, spreadsheets.
1395. 01:21:49 After seven, it's a setup.
1396. 01:21:55 Man, is it a setup?
1397. 01:21:57 Yeah, it is.
1398. 01:21:58 There's six sections in here.
1399. 01:21:59 Take a weekend.
1400. 01:22:00 He's talking about taking a weekend to set up your system and relax is the next section.
1401. 01:22:05 Take a break afterwards.
1402. 01:22:08 Hardware, software, taxonomy and gadgets.
1403. 01:22:12 The three that I think we would be interested in covering is hardware, software and gadgets.
1404. 01:22:18 And I know that we've talked about some of this already.
1405. 01:22:21 So I don't want to go too deep in the specifics of what he's recommending.
1406. 01:22:25 I'm more curious about what he's doing here, because with hardware, you're talking about
1407. 01:22:32 you need a backup drive.
1408. 01:22:33 Guess what?
1409. 01:22:34 You need a computer.
1410. 01:22:35 Guess what?
1411. 01:22:36 You need a notebook.
1412. 01:22:37 I really didn't understand why it needed to be.
1413. 01:22:41 Because you don't have to tell writers they need a computer.
1414. 01:22:44 Okay.
1415. 01:22:45 I get that.
1416. 01:22:46 The software piece I kind of understand, but the hardware one, I just did not.
1417. 01:22:50 Why is this even here?
1418. 01:22:52 Did I miss something in this?
1419. 01:22:53 Well, with the hardware, I don't think the focus is on the computer.
1420. 01:22:58 A couple of things he talks about.
1421. 01:23:00 Get a good desk and get a good chair.
1422. 01:23:02 I think that's pretty great advice.
1423. 01:23:05 I finally bought a decent desk chair this year, because I was dealing with a lot of
1424. 01:23:11 severe bad things.
1425. 01:23:12 Time time.
1426. 01:23:13 Yep, exactly.
1427. 01:23:15 The chair that I got is this crazy looking chair, kind of built for standing desk.
1428. 01:23:21 I actually got it from Foley, the company that makes the, the used to be Jarvis, by Ergo
1429. 01:23:27 Depot, I guess is the company that used to be.
1430. 01:23:29 Jarvis is still the standing desk.
1431. 01:23:30 That's the one that I use.
1432. 01:23:32 But they sell these crazy chairs that you can sit in a bunch of different ways that are
1433. 01:23:36 kind of made for these desks too.
1434. 01:23:37 It does look like a thumb thumb from spy kids.
1435. 01:23:43 But I kind of wish that I had followed that advice before this year.
1436. 01:23:50 I've heard it before, but I don't think I took it very seriously.
1437. 01:23:55 So I don't mind him saying at the very beginning, "Hey, trust me.
1438. 01:23:59 You really want a really good chair."
1439. 01:24:02 Yeah, the computer advice isn't, isn't that great.
1440. 01:24:05 He talks about buying a dozen pens.
1441. 01:24:06 Well, check.
1442. 01:24:07 Did that.
1443. 01:24:08 Although he says, "Get the same ballpoint pen," which I disagree with.
1444. 01:24:11 He even calls out those fancy fountain pens that you've had for years and you're never
1445. 01:24:16 going to use.
1446. 01:24:17 I'm like, "Balledard Ash and Poppycock."
1447. 01:24:19 I use them every day.
1448. 01:24:21 But they're all in use.
1449. 01:24:22 Yep.
1450. 01:24:23 Side note, I've got my oldest started on her fountain pen collection.
1451. 01:24:26 I saw that.
1452. 01:24:27 That's awesome.
1453. 01:24:28 And a bullet journal.
1454. 01:24:30 Yep.
1455. 01:24:31 So she has a Lamy Safari now.
1456. 01:24:33 So yeah, pretty fun.
1457. 01:24:34 So that's the hardware side.
1458. 01:24:36 I do think there's one other thing in this section though before we get to the software
1459. 01:24:41 because he talks about the process day one, day two, and very specifically is exactly
1460. 01:24:46 what you do over the weekend as you get your system set up.
1461. 01:24:48 And then Monday, you just work the system and you feel a lot better because you don't
1462. 01:24:53 have all this stress because you have this awesome system.
1463. 01:24:55 But at one of those call out boxes that he has throughout the book, there's one on calling
1464. 01:25:01 digital notes.
1465. 01:25:04 What do you think about this?
1466. 01:25:06 It's a pretty common thing for people to collect a whole bunch of stuff that's unnecessary.
1467. 01:25:11 As far as like, I would recommend calling files on a regular basis.
1468. 01:25:17 I do that like files that are from things that have been uploaded that if I ever need,
1469. 01:25:22 I can go download again.
1470. 01:25:23 Like that sort of thing I'll get rid of on a regular basis.
1471. 01:25:28 But calling notes seems odd to me.
1472. 01:25:32 Like if I'm calling notes, I'm calling a potential article that I'm half written, that
1473. 01:25:40 I have half written, like that's what I would be calling or deleting a outline for an upcoming
1474. 01:25:45 webinar.
1475. 01:25:46 That's what I would end up deleting if I was, I wouldn't be upcoming, but it would be from
1476. 01:25:50 a webinar that was done six months ago.
1477. 01:25:54 But I'm not going to get rid of that because I sometimes reference those for upcoming things.
1478. 01:26:00 I don't know.
1479. 01:26:01 I feel like that's a bad idea to get rid of those.
1480. 01:26:04 All right.
1481. 01:26:05 That's the response I thought you were going to have.
1482. 01:26:09 Funky Mosquito is talking about Tiago Forte's PARO system.
1483. 01:26:13 That's instantly what I thought of when I read this too.
1484. 01:26:15 Not PARO specifically, but he talks about different levels of personal knowledge management.
1485. 01:26:21 And I don't personally do it Tiago Forte's way, but I think this makes a lot of sense.
1486. 01:26:26 You capture text that you want to recall, and then you bold certain things so that they
1487. 01:26:30 jump off.
1488. 01:26:31 And then as you go through and you review those things, then you highlight them and you
1489. 01:26:35 have these different levels of culling that information down to a couple of essential
1490. 01:26:40 pieces.
1491. 01:26:41 And I think that's very valuable.
1492. 01:26:43 I think that's what makes a Zetalcaste and our personal knowledge management system work.
1493. 01:26:47 And I feel like just dumping everything in it is a quick way to make it not work.
1494. 01:26:53 Yeah.
1495. 01:26:55 So I do think that it's a good idea to call your digital notes.
1496. 01:27:00 I don't know if I would call them delete certain things, but you do want to distill things
1497. 01:27:06 down into the core essence.
1498. 01:27:08 And those are the things that you want to link together.
1499. 01:27:11 So I just thought it was interesting that he pointed this out because I'm sure that he's
1500. 01:27:14 not doing this at all.
1501. 01:27:17 Like I interpreted calling your digital notes.
1502. 01:27:21 But I also think that he's kind of onto something here, even if it is accidentally.
1503. 01:27:25 Yeah, that's fair.
1504. 01:27:27 I kind of wondered if the notes he's taking are things like call Susan on Wednesday.
1505. 01:27:33 Yeah, could be.
1506. 01:27:34 Well, yeah, you would delete that.
1507. 01:27:36 I kind of wondered about some things like that, but I don't know.
1508. 01:27:39 It just seemed really odd.
1509. 01:27:41 The things that are in my notes bank are I would have problems if I deleted any of them.
1510. 01:27:47 Sure.
1511. 01:27:48 So I don't foresee that.
1512. 01:27:49 Yeah.
1513. 01:27:50 And I guess the thing that I'm talking about with culling is not deleting them.
1514. 01:27:54 But over time, those notes that are in your notes bank, some of them are worthwhile having
1515. 01:28:01 at your fingertips to recall.
1516. 01:28:03 Some of them are destined for the archive box that he's talking about.
1517. 01:28:07 And so what is the system that you have?
1518. 01:28:11 Speaking generally here, dear listener, the system that you have, what sort of system
1519. 01:28:17 do you have where you can kind of discard the stuff that isn't worth keeping right there
1520. 01:28:22 and still being able to reference those things that are relevant at any given point.
1521. 01:28:28 I think there's ways that you can do that.
1522. 01:28:29 I don't think it happens by default though.
1523. 01:28:31 Yeah.
1524. 01:28:32 No matter which app or system you use.
1525. 01:28:34 Well, I don't know.
1526. 01:28:36 Mine kind of happens by default because I don't ever move things out of that folder.
1527. 01:28:42 But my tools that I use on top of that notes folder sort by last opened at the top.
1528. 01:28:51 Sure.
1529. 01:28:52 The ones that I haven't opened in years are at the bottom of that list and I never see
1530. 01:28:56 them.
1531. 01:28:57 Yep.
1532. 01:28:58 If I don't need them, I can search for them.
1533. 01:29:00 Exactly.
1534. 01:29:01 But they're not going to surface.
1535. 01:29:03 Next time you write an article about bullet journal, you're not going to see, oh, I wrote
1536. 01:29:08 this thing two years ago that's still relevant and I should link to this from the article
1537. 01:29:11 that I am writing now, necessarily.
1538. 01:29:14 But I would.
1539. 01:29:15 How would you guarantee that that happens?
1540. 01:29:18 Because whenever I'm pulling up the article to work on, I search for bullet journal and
1541. 01:29:24 it pulls up everything I've ever written that contains the words bullet journal in it.
1542. 01:29:28 Sure.
1543. 01:29:29 Okay.
1544. 01:29:30 So you're doing it manually.
1545. 01:29:32 I guess kind of, but that's, I've always operated based on search and I've gotten to
1546. 01:29:38 the point where if I'm going to try to find, or if I'm pulling up something to work on
1547. 01:29:45 it, I generally pull it up by keyword, which by default shows me all the stuff that is
1548. 01:29:52 connected to it just based on that keyword.
1549. 01:29:55 So that previous article that you wrote then, how do you know what's the relevant piece from
1550. 01:29:59 that, the big takeaway?
1551. 01:30:01 I guess that's kind of what I'm viewing as culling is like if you had a way, maybe you
1552. 01:30:05 organize your articles with a hierarchy and you've got different level headers for the
1553. 01:30:09 different sections that you can quickly glance at.
1554. 01:30:12 But you don't want to have to go reread a 2000 word article every time it shows up
1555. 01:30:16 in your search results in order to locate the core idea there.
1556. 01:30:19 I don't know.
1557. 01:30:20 It just kind of works.
1558. 01:30:21 That's kind of what I think he's, that's kind of what I think he's getting at with this
1559. 01:30:23 whole idea of like culling your digital notes.
1560. 01:30:25 Sure.
1561. 01:30:26 Is it's making sure that the relevant stuff pops up when you need it, which you can absolutely
1562. 01:30:31 do the way that you're doing it.
1563. 01:30:33 You know, I'm, I don't think that there's any one right way to collect and manage these
1564. 01:30:39 ideas other than to pay attention to how you're doing it.
1565. 01:30:43 Yeah.
1566. 01:30:44 Because my, my tendency is like whenever I see the titles of these notes, my brain triggers
1567. 01:30:50 on what they are.
1568. 01:30:53 And I generally know which ones I want if I'm going to reference them elsewhere.
1569. 01:30:58 And that is really all I ever need.
1570. 01:31:02 Like if it, if it, if it was going to take a lot longer to create or to find it's not
1571. 01:31:10 worth linking in that case.
1572. 01:31:12 But if I have to create links to things in any form, when I'm making it, I just won't.
1573. 01:31:20 It takes too long.
1574. 01:31:22 I agree with you.
1575. 01:31:23 I move too fast for that.
1576. 01:31:24 Yeah.
1577. 01:31:25 That's why wiki style linking is never going to work for me.
1578. 01:31:27 Yeah.
1579. 01:31:28 But back links will.
1580. 01:31:29 Yeah.
1581. 01:31:30 Sure.
1582. 01:31:31 All right.
1583. 01:31:32 All right.
1584. 01:31:33 We need to talk about software.
1585. 01:31:35 We can maybe skip gadgets because he's just telling you to get an external battery.
1586. 01:31:40 That was a pretty awful section.
1587. 01:31:41 It was pretty awful.
1588. 01:31:42 Oh my God.
1589. 01:31:43 Just skip this.
1590. 01:31:45 But he walks through what his recommended apps are.
1591. 01:31:50 And it's pretty straightforward.
1592. 01:31:53 He uses calendar on his Mac and iPhone.
1593. 01:31:56 He uses things which we've talked about.
1594. 01:31:58 Yep.
1595. 01:31:59 He uses timers and then he uses time machine.
1596. 01:32:03 Does he use a cloud based?
1597. 01:32:07 I think he uses backblaze and also he mentions crash plan.
1598. 01:32:12 Does he mention backblaze?
1599. 01:32:13 I don't see it here.
1600. 01:32:15 I thought it was in here.
1601. 01:32:17 Carbon copy cloner.
1602. 01:32:18 Yep.
1603. 01:32:19 And super duper.
1604. 01:32:20 He mentions those.
1605. 01:32:21 Super duper.
1606. 01:32:22 And on the next page.
1607. 01:32:23 Oh, Bob, got it.
1608. 01:32:24 Got it.
1609. 01:32:25 Got it.
1610. 01:32:26 Got it.
1611. 01:32:27 Yeah.
1612. 01:32:28 And drive stuff.
1613. 01:32:30 But yeah, he does go into backblaze and crash plan and stuff.
1614. 01:32:34 What else has he got in here?
1615. 01:32:35 Archiving.
1616. 01:32:36 He's a big Scrivener fan for the actual writing.
1617. 01:32:40 But then he gets into like what does he use for voice chat?
1618. 01:32:43 What does he use for my character finders and tech snippets and stuff?
1619. 01:32:48 It's like, OK, great.
1620. 01:32:50 These are cool things.
1621. 01:32:51 Launchers.
1622. 01:32:52 He talks about how he's a quick silver fan.
1623. 01:32:54 And I'm like, what?
1624. 01:32:55 That is still around.
1625. 01:32:56 It is still around.
1626. 01:32:58 That's not the one you want to admit that you use.
1627. 01:33:00 No.
1628. 01:33:01 One password.
1629. 01:33:02 What is his PDF thing?
1630. 01:33:03 Actually, Otter, he does not listen to MPU.
1631. 01:33:07 He makes a bunch of garbage recommendations.
1632. 01:33:10 Can I just real quickly point out all the places he's wrong with these?
1633. 01:33:13 Sure.
1634. 01:33:14 Just real quick.
1635. 01:33:15 So he's using, for PDFs, he uses PDF pin.
1636. 01:33:17 Which is fine.
1637. 01:33:18 Yeah.
1638. 01:33:19 He uses view scan for a scanner driver.
1639. 01:33:23 No.
1640. 01:33:24 He uses PCalc.
1641. 01:33:25 He uses the web version of Gmail.
1642. 01:33:30 He uses TripIt for traveling.
1643. 01:33:32 Yep.
1644. 01:33:33 TripIt's a good app.
1645. 01:33:34 That's his bank of stuff.
1646. 01:33:35 Flight tracker is what he uses for flights and stuff.
1647. 01:33:39 My point here is that-- and then I'll let you tell us where he's wrong.
1648. 01:33:42 But this is all pretty basic.
1649. 01:33:47 And it's going to be outdated very quickly.
1650. 01:33:49 Especially the way that he wrote it.
1651. 01:33:51 Yeah.
1652. 01:33:52 He's concerned to me that this is not designed to be valid in five years.
1653. 01:33:57 This is good for maybe a year, maybe two.
1654. 01:34:01 But I would even argue, and you're probably about to explain it to us, that a lot of the
1655. 01:34:06 software he's talking about here, which is valid for 2020.
1656. 01:34:09 He wrote this in 2020.
1657. 01:34:12 I think is out of date even for now.
1658. 01:34:14 Exactly.
1659. 01:34:15 Anytime you make app recommendation, by the time you hit publish, it's out of date.
1660. 01:34:20 Yeah.
1661. 01:34:21 I know.
1662. 01:34:22 This is what I do for a living.
1663. 01:34:25 So the one piece of advice that's worth following here is under writing software because he is
1664. 01:34:29 a writer and he says, "Don't use word."
1665. 01:34:31 I 100% agree with that.
1666. 01:34:35 He uses Scrivener.
1667. 01:34:37 That's not the one I would recommend people use.
1668. 01:34:38 There's lots of good minimal writing apps which don't have all the bells and whistles
1669. 01:34:44 so you can focus on the words, which is really what people should be doing.
1670. 01:34:47 I think when they are looking for writing software.
1671. 01:34:50 I've used Ulysses forever.
1672. 01:34:53 Lately, I've been using BBEdit because I like having the text files.
1673. 01:34:57 I finally got annoyed with the way Ulysses handles Markdown and with the images specifically,
1674. 01:35:04 it's just annoying because I'm updating app picks that are already on the website.
1675. 01:35:08 So I'm taking that pure Markdown and I'm pasting it into Ulysses and then I got to clean it
1676. 01:35:13 all up because Ulysses doesn't even know what to do with the standard Markdown that I pasted
1677. 01:35:17 in there.
1678. 01:35:18 It was a pain in the butt.
1679. 01:35:20 BBEdit, are you opening up individual files?
1680. 01:35:22 Yep.
1681. 01:35:23 You need to look at multi-markdown composer.
1682. 01:35:26 Possibly.
1683. 01:35:27 Because it's what I use for it but it is brilliant with Markdown because it's built for Markdown.
1684. 01:35:37 Yep.
1685. 01:35:38 Yep.
1686. 01:35:39 I'll take a look at that but I'm really happy with BBEdit.
1687. 01:35:43 I would...
1688. 01:35:44 I just want to mess with your systems.
1689. 01:35:46 Yeah, if you need individual files, BBEdit or I-A-writer is a great option for just standard Markdown.
1690. 01:35:55 Ulysses is also a very good editor but recognize that it's going to be cloud-based and you're
1691. 01:35:59 going to have these sheets and it's not going to be an individual file and you're going
1692. 01:36:02 to run into copy paste issues with standard Markdown like I am.
1693. 01:36:06 When it comes to note-taking, these recommendations again are old and garbage.
1694. 01:36:13 The notes app is okay but it's like number 10 on my list.
1695. 01:36:19 I'd recommend.
1696. 01:36:21 You also list one note, simple note of Google Keep.
1697. 01:36:23 The only thing decent in that list is simple note but even that.
1698. 01:36:27 Use EnvyAlt and VUltra or drafts or even something like Bear is honestly better.
1699. 01:36:35 The notes app, I don't know.
1700. 01:36:38 I guess I'm so used to doing everything Markdown wise but I just feel the notes app is...
1701. 01:36:43 pretty limited and I know a lot of people swear by it and it sinks between all your
1702. 01:36:49 devices but when it comes to writing really what you want is plain text.
1703. 01:36:52 You don't want rich text, PDFs, all that kind of stuff.
1704. 01:36:57 Google Keep, you know what?
1705. 01:36:58 I'm not that familiar with Google Keep so I can't say anything bad about Google Keep.
1706. 01:37:03 Other than my default is not to use Google Apps because I don't want them looking at
1707. 01:37:07 everything that I write.
1708. 01:37:09 They don't read anything.
1709. 01:37:12 That's the only thing I'll say about that.
1710. 01:37:16 Calendar, he does list the right calendar apps here in my opinion but he spells Fantastic
1711. 01:37:20 Cal wrong.
1712. 01:37:22 Out of these that are listed, I use busy Cal and I do that because it's not a $40 per year
1713. 01:37:30 subscription and I don't need a bunch of calendar stuff on my iOS device.
1714. 01:37:35 Task managers, he mentions things.
1715. 01:37:36 He doesn't mention OmniFocus in this section which he should have because that's the other
1716. 01:37:40 one for Mac users specifically that I would recommend you look at.
1717. 01:37:44 Trello's decent wonder list.
1718. 01:37:46 I don't even think that's a thing anymore.
1719. 01:37:47 I know it was bought by Microsoft.
1720. 01:37:50 I think it would kill it.
1721. 01:37:52 To do list is decent.
1722. 01:37:53 There's lots of other task managers though that are relevant.
1723. 01:37:58 Tick tick is another one that I would probably recommend people look at.
1724. 01:38:03 But this is the problem, right?
1725. 01:38:04 Yeah.
1726. 01:38:05 Exactly.
1727. 01:38:06 You shouldn't be putting this in a printed book.
1728. 01:38:07 This is a blog post that you reference and then you keep up to date.
1729. 01:38:11 That's the problem with this because again, there's so much software he's talking about
1730. 01:38:14 here and we can go on all day for all the things he's doing wrong with it.
1731. 01:38:19 One other thing that he is absolutely doing wrong though is he's listing typeinator above
1732. 01:38:23 text expander.
1733. 01:38:24 Absolutely not.
1734. 01:38:26 Just use text expander.
1735. 01:38:27 If you don't want to pay for something, then use text expansion inside of something like
1736. 01:38:31 Alfred.
1737. 01:38:32 But no way.
1738. 01:38:33 I went down this exact same product path.
1739. 01:38:36 I had typeinator first.
1740. 01:38:38 Text expander is way better though.
1741. 01:38:40 Yeah.
1742. 01:38:42 People complain about text expander with its subscription and stuff, but it's a no brainer
1743. 01:38:47 to me.
1744. 01:38:48 The things I do with text expander just it amazes me what I can pull off with it.
1745. 01:38:53 Anyway, hardware, software, the gadgets, I wish he hadn't put this in there.
1746. 01:39:03 You know, like they're saying like Mosquito sing in the chat, like it kind of feels like
1747. 01:39:06 padding.
1748. 01:39:07 I kind of feel like this is one of those situations where he loves this stuff and just
1749. 01:39:12 wants to talk about it.
1750. 01:39:13 So he decided to write a chapter about it and I wish he hadn't.
1751. 01:39:17 Like that's my concern with it.
1752. 01:39:20 I actually think I have not talked to Anthony Johnston.
1753. 01:39:26 So I don't know if this is true or not, but I think he probably does not want to talk
1754. 01:39:33 about this stuff, but he knows that people are going to ask him.
1755. 01:39:39 So he wrote it down so he has a place to point people would be my guess.
1756. 01:39:45 And he puts it in his book that way.
1757. 01:39:46 You have to buy the book to get it.
1758. 01:39:48 Yeah.
1759. 01:39:49 Anyway, conclusion here at the end of it is like a two pager because he had to do it
1760. 01:39:56 and wrap up the book and summarize.
1761. 01:39:57 This is the only other place the fasten system comes back.
1762. 01:40:00 Yes, yes.
1763. 01:40:02 And I totally forgot about it again until now, but yeah, he does go all the way back
1764. 01:40:07 to the beginning and mention fastened very, very briefly.
1765. 01:40:11 But then he concludes the book.
1766. 01:40:13 Anything else you want to say about it?
1767. 01:40:15 Then a says go read it again.
1768. 01:40:17 Yes.
1769. 01:40:18 Yes.
1770. 01:40:19 All right.
1771. 01:40:20 So action items here, Mike.
1772. 01:40:23 I have one.
1773. 01:40:24 I have one.
1774. 01:40:25 I, and I'm done with it already, actually.
1775. 01:40:30 When we were talking about, he was walking through like all the calendaring pieces and
1776. 01:40:36 I was looking at that, was looking at the job sheets, was looking at all of the stuff,
1777. 01:40:42 like how he manages the checklist and stuff for where a project is in the process.
1778. 01:40:48 And it occurred to me is like, yes, but the one thing I really want, he actually never
1779. 01:40:52 mentions this in the book, but I really wanted some form of a can van for the product, like
1780. 01:40:59 the content projects I have going on, which I keep an omnifocus.
1781. 01:41:03 Like, yes, I'm everything in my bullet journal, but like the checklists of what it takes to
1782. 01:41:10 write an article and all the places I got to post it and all of the communications that
1783. 01:41:13 go out around it, I lose track of all that stuff.
1784. 01:41:16 So it's just templated checklist and omnifocus and I use that as kind of a content calendar.
1785. 01:41:21 But I put together a system based on some of omnigroup's can ban thing on their omniautimation
1786. 01:41:29 site and I tweaked it to run on projects instead of tasks.
1787. 01:41:32 Nice.
1788. 01:41:33 That's what I do.
1789. 01:41:35 So I'm in the process of trying to figure out how to release that, but I've built a can
1790. 01:41:40 ban system for managing those projects in omnifocus.
1791. 01:41:45 So I'm already done with it.
1792. 01:41:47 So I have an action item and I'm done.
1793. 01:41:48 So next time.
1794. 01:41:49 The only follow up I may have is just here's where you can go get it.
1795. 01:41:54 Exactly.
1796. 01:41:55 That is your action item for next time.
1797. 01:41:56 Make it public.
1798. 01:41:57 That's fair.
1799. 01:41:58 All right.
1800. 01:41:59 What's yours?
1801. 01:42:00 All right.
1802. 01:42:01 So my action item is to make morning time my writing time.
1803. 01:42:05 All right.
1804. 01:42:06 I talked about this not time specific or not time specific per day.
1805. 01:42:12 Like every single day I'm going to write for two hours before I do anything else.
1806. 01:42:16 And also it's going to vary from day to day and also I'm not going to have a specific
1807. 01:42:20 writing goal of X number of words like he's talking about.
1808. 01:42:23 But the basic principle of writing first thing that's going to be what I'm going to
1809. 01:42:28 try to do.
1810. 01:42:29 Good luck with that.
1811. 01:42:30 I hope it goes well.
1812. 01:42:31 Hey, thanks.
1813. 01:42:32 All right.
1814. 01:42:33 As for style and writing style and writing style and rating.
1815. 01:42:36 I have to say like he's a good writer.
1816. 01:42:38 Obviously.
1817. 01:42:39 Would you say he's an organized writer?
1818. 01:42:42 It sounds like he's at least attempted to put systems together.
1819. 01:42:45 So in that sense, yes.
1820. 01:42:48 I think he is organized for him.
1821. 01:42:51 And this is this is an exposition on his system, which I don't argue with.
1822. 01:42:59 And this is some of what I do.
1823. 01:43:00 Like whenever I share things, I always say this is what I have found that works for me.
1824. 01:43:04 In my experience.
1825. 01:43:05 Yep.
1826. 01:43:06 This is what I have found that works.
1827. 01:43:09 And I'm sharing it with you with the caveat that this is my system so that maybe some
1828. 01:43:15 of this could be used for your system, knowing that yours likely needs to be very different
1829. 01:43:22 than what I have.
1830. 01:43:23 But I'm hoping that one or two things and what I'm doing could be helpful to you and
1831. 01:43:27 help you to build your system better.
1832. 01:43:30 But some assembly required doesn't sell books, Joe.
1833. 01:43:33 It doesn't.
1834. 01:43:35 And I kind of got the impression from this one that he was trying to come up with a new
1835. 01:43:39 GTD of sorts.
1836. 01:43:41 And but he never called it that.
1837. 01:43:43 But the format and the layout of what he's doing here is very similar to getting things
1838. 01:43:48 done.
1839. 01:43:49 It does have that feel.
1840. 01:43:52 Obviously some form of an homage to David Allen and Merlin Man of sorts.
1841. 01:43:56 But I think I struggled with this one a lot.
1842. 01:44:00 Probably more than I should have.
1843. 01:44:01 I think if you are a long form writer and you are all over the place and you struggle
1844. 01:44:08 to keep track of things, this is up your alley.
1845. 01:44:10 You want this, I think, because this could be a really good intro to all the things that
1846. 01:44:16 you and I live and breathe every day, considering how much is in it.
1847. 01:44:21 And if you think about the number of people who are not even aware that they can use something
1848. 01:44:27 other than outlook for email.
1849. 01:44:30 Like I work with those people.
1850. 01:44:31 Like they see my email system.
1851. 01:44:33 I use mail mate and like, wait, what is that?
1852. 01:44:36 It's like it's mail mate.
1853. 01:44:37 It's what I use for my email.
1854. 01:44:38 You can use something other than outlook.
1855. 01:44:40 Like I get my outlook mail all the time.
1856. 01:44:44 There's outlook mail doesn't exist.
1857. 01:44:47 Never mind.
1858. 01:44:49 So yes, working with folks who come from that side of things, I get why he's making
1859. 01:44:55 recommendations like that.
1860. 01:44:56 If you have that background, this makes sense.
1861. 01:44:59 I think if you have read any and all of the types of books that we read and you are familiar
1862. 01:45:05 with the productivity space, I think this is potentially a, I don't want to say harmful,
1863. 01:45:10 but it's not worth your time.
1864. 01:45:12 I don't, I don't think.
1865. 01:45:13 I think it's interesting to have some of the motivation that comes with it.
1866. 01:45:16 I mean, anytime you read something like this, it always motivates you to do some new things.
1867. 01:45:20 So for that, I'm grateful.
1868. 01:45:23 But the one action I had was like from a conglomeration of places from his book.
1869. 01:45:29 It wasn't a specific point where I said, yes, that is a thing I want to do.
1870. 01:45:33 I didn't have any of those.
1871. 01:45:35 So in that sense, I don't know what to do with it.
1872. 01:45:41 But again, the style of it, super easy to read.
1873. 01:45:44 I think they laid it out fairly well.
1874. 01:45:46 The changing size of chapters like we talked about as a little odd.
1875. 01:45:50 The call out boxes are kind of helpful.
1876. 01:45:52 History calls out a specific point or explains a specific term, gives us the background of
1877. 01:45:57 where something came from.
1878. 01:45:59 Those are kind of interesting.
1879. 01:46:01 As far as how to rate it, knowing that this is trying to fit itself into a productivity
1880. 01:46:08 book of sorts and knowing kind of how he intends this to come across, I kind of just disagree
1881. 01:46:18 with it from his intentions somewhat.
1882. 01:46:23 I get why people love it.
1883. 01:46:25 I'm going to put this at a 3.0 because I feel like it needs to be somewhere in the middle
1884. 01:46:28 of the road because there are some people this could be good for.
1885. 01:46:31 But there are a lot of people I think this could be not helpful to.
1886. 01:46:34 I would probably recommend a few other books before I got to this one.
1887. 01:46:40 Unless you are specifically either a full-time writer or very close to.
1888. 01:46:47 So all of that said, I'm going to go with the three.
1889. 01:46:51 All right.
1890. 01:46:52 I'm going to join you at 3.0.
1891. 01:46:55 I think there's a couple of interesting tidbits in here that I teased out.
1892. 01:47:04 But the majority of it is a weak system wrapped in a well-written explanation.
1893. 01:47:14 I think GTD for writers is spot on in terms of what he's trying to do here.
1894. 01:47:19 I think that you could, if you are a full-time writer, follow this step by step and do pretty
1895. 01:47:25 well with it.
1896. 01:47:27 But that being said, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think I know anybody who this is tailor-made
1897. 01:47:34 for.
1898. 01:47:35 I know a lot of people who would consider themselves writers.
1899. 01:47:41 The fact that you have to make it your own significantly increases the cognitive effort
1900. 01:47:49 you've got to put forth in order to really get something from this.
1901. 01:47:52 And I agree with you that all of the individual pieces of this that you would apply, there
1902. 01:47:57 are other places to look for the majority of it that will explain it better and make
1903. 01:48:04 it easier to implement for people like us.
1904. 01:48:07 Sure.
1905. 01:48:08 I don't think it's a bad book.
1906. 01:48:10 I'm glad that we read it.
1907. 01:48:13 But I also disagree with a lot of the recommendations, which makes me not trust all the other stuff
1908. 01:48:19 that maybe I would normally agree with.
1909. 01:48:23 But because he's saying, "Keep your task in your email application."
1910. 01:48:27 And oh, by the way, don't use an email application.
1911. 01:48:29 I use Gmail on the web.
1912. 01:48:31 Like you're losing credibility right there with me.
1913. 01:48:35 So I don't know.
1914. 01:48:38 I don't know enough to say, "Don't trust this, but I don't trust this."
1915. 01:48:46 That's kind of what it comes down to.
1916. 01:48:48 I do think there's a couple of key takeaways from this that are good reminders for me.
1917. 01:48:53 Like the morning writing time, for example.
1918. 01:48:55 Again, not the first place that I've heard that sort of thing.
1919. 01:48:58 If it was the first time that you heard that or get a decent desk chair, stuff like that,
1920. 01:49:05 it could be those sorts of things I feel do have the potential to be very influential
1921. 01:49:10 in terms of how you get your work done, especially for a knowledge worker.
1922. 01:49:15 You don't have to be a writer to benefit from some of that stuff.
1923. 01:49:19 And that's where I kind of wish he would have made it a little bit more generic spoken
1924. 01:49:22 to a wider audience.
1925. 01:49:23 I get that it's called the organized writer.
1926. 01:49:26 That's not what he was going for.
1927. 01:49:29 But I feel like for the bookworm audience, that sort of approach would have been more
1928. 01:49:32 valuable.
1929. 01:49:33 Very valid.
1930. 01:49:35 All right.
1931. 01:49:36 I'll be happy to put this one on the shelf.
1932. 01:49:37 What's next time, Mike?
1933. 01:49:39 Next time is the great mental models, Volume 1 by Riannon Baoben.
1934. 01:49:45 I don't know how to say that name.
1935. 01:49:47 In Shane Parrish.
1936. 01:49:50 This is a very beautiful book with a kind of like cloth hard cover that it looks really
1937. 01:50:00 intriguing and it talks about a lot of concepts that we have come across before.
1938. 01:50:05 But I think this will be a fun discussion type book.
1939. 01:50:09 The book itself, by the way, Josh showed me his.
1940. 01:50:13 It came.
1941. 01:50:14 I saw the pages were printed upside down.
1942. 01:50:16 I was like, what in the world?
1943. 01:50:18 I saw them.
1944. 01:50:19 So if you are going to order it off of Amazon, make sure you check your page printing, I
1945. 01:50:24 guess.
1946. 01:50:25 But this one has been recommended for a while.
1947. 01:50:27 And I've wanted to read this for a long time, but I also want the physical books.
1948. 01:50:31 And for a long time, you could not buy the physical book for this.
1949. 01:50:34 They must have just printed a bunch of new ones and some of them, they printed upside
1950. 01:50:38 down.
1951. 01:50:39 Mine is not upside down, thankfully.
1952. 01:50:40 Mine's not either.
1953. 01:50:41 Yeah.
1954. 01:50:42 Okay.
1955. 01:50:43 Cool.
1956. 01:50:44 So yeah, I'm excited to go through this one.
1957. 01:50:46 Yeah, I think that'll be a fun one.
1958. 01:50:48 Following that is Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.
1959. 01:50:53 This is a book that came up on one of my live streams here recently.
1960. 01:51:00 And it was about, it was with Josh as well, about thinking about in percentages of sorts.
1961. 01:51:07 Is this 70% that it's true?
1962. 01:51:10 Or is it 40% that it's true?
1963. 01:51:12 And if it's 40% versus 70%, how do you act on that?
1964. 01:51:15 So anyway, I think it'll be kind of an interesting one to go through.
1965. 01:51:18 I do not have any gap books, do you?
1966. 01:51:21 I don't.
1967. 01:51:22 I keep thinking I will, but let's be honest.
1968. 01:51:26 So I do not.
1969. 01:51:27 Let's be honest.
1970. 01:51:28 That said, thank you to everybody who has tuned in to the live stream, joined us in
1971. 01:51:35 the chat.
1972. 01:51:37 Obviously if you are listening to this, you can kind of see how it impacts what we're
1973. 01:51:41 talking about.
1974. 01:51:42 But we're also extremely grateful to those of you who are a part of our memberships at
1975. 01:51:48 Bookworm.fm/membership and given us five bucks a month to help keep the show on the air
1976. 01:51:54 and helping to pay some of those hosting fees and such, pick up our books for us here
1977. 01:52:00 and there.
1978. 01:52:01 So we are grateful for that.
1979. 01:52:04 And when I say that, I should also point out that if you do join that membership program
1980. 01:52:09 that it's not just that stuff that you're paying for.
1981. 01:52:13 You also get some extras, like some really cool wallpaper that Mike put together.
1982. 01:52:20 It's super high res for the Bookworm logo and such.
1983. 01:52:24 So there's that.
1984. 01:52:25 There's some old gap book episodes that I've recorded.
1985. 01:52:28 Mike's mine node files have gone up there.
1986. 01:52:31 If that is all of interest to you, again, Bookworm.fm/membership.
1987. 01:52:37 And we're super grateful to those of you who do that.
1988. 01:52:41 Alright, so thanks everybody for hanging out with us.
1989. 01:52:44 If you are reading along, pick up the great mental models, Volume 1.
1990. 01:52:50 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.