120: The Now Habit by Neil Fiore

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1. 00:00:00 I need to stop making life hard on myself, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 -What'd you do this time, Joe Buelegg?
3. 00:00:04 -I don't even know.
4. 00:00:05 We've got some form of weird tech thing going on.
5. 00:00:08 If you are watching this and you see Mike stuttering a bit,
6. 00:00:13 it's because Joe did something and I can't figure out what it is.
7. 00:00:16 Here we are.
8. 00:00:19 Life happens.
9. 00:00:22 That's what I'm going to chalk it up to.
10. 00:00:24 -If you're listening to the artisanal handcrafted
11. 00:00:29 audio version, it should be fine.
12. 00:00:32 -It's true.
13. 00:00:33 -It is true.
14. 00:00:34 Between that and I've also been playing around --
15. 00:00:39 we haven't talked about podcast gear in a while,
16. 00:00:41 but I picked up a Roadcaster Pro this week.
17. 00:00:46 -I saw that.
18. 00:00:47 -I'm running everything through it right now.
19. 00:00:49 I'm still learning a lot about it.
20. 00:00:50 If I screw something up and it sounds bad this time around,
21. 00:00:53 it's Joe's fault, not Mike's.
22. 00:00:54 I'm just going to say that.
23. 00:00:56 I'll give you an out this time, Mike.
24. 00:00:57 -Thank you.
25. 00:00:58 -There's that.
26. 00:00:59 -Thank you.
27. 00:01:00 Well, I tend to dial in my system and then never touch it.
28. 00:01:04 I think I shared a picture with you of my desk setup,
29. 00:01:10 which looks ridiculous, but it is all set up specifically
30. 00:01:14 so that I can come down here and not touch anything
31. 00:01:18 and just start recording.
32. 00:01:19 I have my DSLR, the one I use to not only as a webcam
33. 00:01:25 for the live recording right now,
34. 00:01:27 but when we shoot video for the suite setup,
35. 00:01:29 that's the camera angle,
36. 00:01:31 that's the settings, all of the aperture and the ISO.
37. 00:01:36 It's all dialed in perfectly, so I can come down,
38. 00:01:38 I can hit record and I can record video
39. 00:01:40 knowing that I didn't screw anything up,
40. 00:01:43 and I don't have to redo it again.
41. 00:01:44 -Yes, I hear you.
42. 00:01:47 -I hear you.
43. 00:01:48 -I hate touching anything on this rig.
44. 00:01:50 -I would love to be in that spot,
45. 00:01:55 but part of the reason I made the move is just because
46. 00:01:58 I've struggled to get clean audio off of my other setup.
47. 00:02:03 I'm pretty sure it's the preamp in that little soundboard
48. 00:02:07 that I've got, and although that works,
49. 00:02:10 I'm constantly trying to clean things up.
50. 00:02:13 I'm sure you deal with that too,
51. 00:02:15 off the audio you get off of me,
52. 00:02:17 but I'm regularly trying to get it cleaned up.
53. 00:02:21 So I'm hoping the preamp on this is a little nicer,
54. 00:02:25 and I can get a better output from it,
55. 00:02:28 but I'm also learning that some of the issues I deal with
56. 00:02:32 is the fact that whenever we record,
57. 00:02:33 like I've got my computer sitting here,
58. 00:02:35 and the fans are running at 100% the whole time,
59. 00:02:37 and I can never find a way to make that not happen.
60. 00:02:39 Create problems and then try to work your way around them,
61. 00:02:44 and then it's just impossible.
62. 00:02:46 So until Joe buys a desktop computer
63. 00:02:49 that he can bury somewhere else
64. 00:02:51 to get the fans away from the mic,
65. 00:02:53 this is where we'll be.
66. 00:02:56 You just need an M1.
67. 00:02:57 Get one of those new fancy iMacs.
68. 00:02:59 They look nice.
69. 00:03:01 Do you like them?
70. 00:03:02 I like the style of them.
71. 00:03:03 Well, I have an M1 Mac Mini,
72. 00:03:05 which I actually love,
73. 00:03:07 except that it causes a few weird issues,
74. 00:03:11 which I don't know how to solve.
75. 00:03:13 I'm sure they are solvable.
76. 00:03:16 I don't think it's completely the M1 architecture's fault,
77. 00:03:20 but my way around this is just make sure
78. 00:03:22 I restart my computer before I do anything important.
79. 00:03:25 Yeah, sure.
80. 00:03:26 I have heard from a lot of folks that have the M1s
81. 00:03:30 that are doing AV work that struggle with them.
82. 00:03:33 Okay.
83. 00:03:34 And I can't tell if it's because of
84. 00:03:36 the software not being caught up,
85. 00:03:40 the chat's telling me to get a Mac Pro.
86. 00:03:43 But the thing I don't know is
87. 00:03:46 with all of the Blackmagic software
88. 00:03:48 and stuff that I use for the video switching stuff at church and such,
89. 00:03:52 I don't know how well that stuff's going to play with an M1.
90. 00:03:56 So outside of doing a $1,000 experiment,
91. 00:04:00 I am not ready to go there.
92. 00:04:03 So I need to wait a little bit before we jump in.
93. 00:04:07 Well, for whatever it's worth,
94. 00:04:09 I do have an ATEM Mini sitting right here.
95. 00:04:13 But my cameras aren't good enough to really take advantage of it.
96. 00:04:18 Well, for this sort of thing anyways,
97. 00:04:21 because I wanted to use it for webinar presentation
98. 00:04:24 and then switch between my iPad and iPhone screens
99. 00:04:27 and have those different inputs,
100. 00:04:28 put my video on the corner,
101. 00:04:30 transition between stuff.
102. 00:04:31 Sure.
103. 00:04:31 It's great for that.
104. 00:04:32 But my... I have two cameras.
105. 00:04:35 I have a Canon EOS 70D, which is an older one.
106. 00:04:38 That's the one I'm using as the webcam
107. 00:04:39 and I'm using Cascable for that.
108. 00:04:40 That works perfectly fine.
109. 00:04:42 Except it doesn't have clean HDMI out,
110. 00:04:44 which is the ATEM Mini.
111. 00:04:45 So...
112. 00:04:46 Sure.
113. 00:04:47 It's a weird aspect ratio if I'm going to use that one.
114. 00:04:50 And then the other one I have is the 5D Mark 3.
115. 00:04:55 Okay.
116. 00:04:57 It's an older 5D.
117. 00:04:58 And that one was built in like 2012, 2013.
118. 00:05:05 And they hard-coded an automatic shut-off after 30 minutes
119. 00:05:08 or 29 minutes 59 seconds.
120. 00:05:10 So that it wasn't classified as a camcorder for European taxes.
121. 00:05:14 Yes.
122. 00:05:16 Yes.
123. 00:05:17 Which is completely ridiculous,
124. 00:05:18 but so that one just shuts off after a while.
125. 00:05:20 Well, I use a GoPro.
126. 00:05:23 Which seems to do okay.
127. 00:05:26 But outside of that,
128. 00:05:29 I do a lot more with the audio gear, but I don't know.
129. 00:05:33 Gear.
130. 00:05:34 It's one of those things you can spend
131. 00:05:36 infinite amount of money on and never be happy with it.
132. 00:05:39 That's what I think.
133. 00:05:40 But...
134. 00:05:40 Hey, speaking of audio gear,
135. 00:05:42 I got something new this week which you may appreciate as a church sound guy.
136. 00:05:47 Okay.
137. 00:05:49 Are you familiar with the Line 6 Helix line?
138. 00:05:53 Line 6 Helix line.
139. 00:05:54 No.
140. 00:05:55 Any of the guitar players that your church use that?
141. 00:05:56 Okay.
142. 00:05:56 So Line 6 is a guitar company essentially.
143. 00:06:01 They make effects and amps and stuff.
144. 00:06:02 Yeah.
145. 00:06:03 Long time ago, they made this thing called the pod,
146. 00:06:05 which was that red kidney bean shaped thing.
147. 00:06:07 Yeah.
148. 00:06:08 And then they updated all of their stuff
149. 00:06:10 and they came up with this Line 6 Helix stuff a couple of years ago.
150. 00:06:15 And that's kind of like the super high end,
151. 00:06:17 really nice sounding effects.
152. 00:06:19 And floorboard alone is like 2 grand.
153. 00:06:22 There's a rack mounted unit you can get really, really high end stuff.
154. 00:06:25 Well, they updated the pod line last year.
155. 00:06:29 So they made a Line 6 pod go, it's called.
156. 00:06:31 Okay.
157. 00:06:32 And it takes all of the like the good sounding Helix effects,
158. 00:06:37 but strips out a lot of the fidgety stuff that you don't really need.
159. 00:06:42 Okay.
160. 00:06:43 Sure.
161. 00:06:43 And so like as an example, you know,
162. 00:06:46 the Helix you can have like two separate signal chains in the board.
163. 00:06:49 So you can send like a chorus and tremolo to the right speakers
164. 00:06:53 and an overdrive and a compressor to the left speakers.
165. 00:06:55 Okay.
166. 00:06:56 And I don't need that.
167. 00:06:58 I just need some nice sounding effects.
168. 00:07:01 Because I can't have an amp on stage.
169. 00:07:02 So I got the cheap one.
170. 00:07:05 Nice work.
171. 00:07:06 It sounds really good.
172. 00:07:07 And it's really perfect for what I do.
173. 00:07:10 It's got like a little briefcase carrying case thing that it comes with.
174. 00:07:15 So it's like this padded case that's made just for this thing.
175. 00:07:18 And so it's easy to carry it back and forth from church along with my guitar.
176. 00:07:21 And I love this thing.
177. 00:07:23 And it's got all of the like different amp simulations.
178. 00:07:26 So you can say I want like this type of amp simulation
179. 00:07:29 I want to running through these speakers.
180. 00:07:31 And I want this type of mic and I want it placed three feet away.
181. 00:07:34 Yeah.
182. 00:07:36 And then you put in all your guitar effects
183. 00:07:37 and you can get some pretty crazy sounds out of it.
184. 00:07:40 But some people generally like it because it's one connection,
185. 00:07:43 you know, going straight into the board.
186. 00:07:45 Yes.
187. 00:07:46 That's what I was just thinking.
188. 00:07:47 It's like, you know, as far as how to hook this thing up,
189. 00:07:50 like it sounds like I got just one cable, which my life way easy.
190. 00:07:54 Yeah.
191. 00:07:54 Happy, happy Joe in that scenario.
192. 00:07:59 Yeah.
193. 00:07:59 So take a look at it and try to convince your guitar players to get one.
194. 00:08:02 Sure.
195. 00:08:03 Or sometimes we just buy that stuff and let them use it while they're here.
196. 00:08:06 Like that's kind of what we end up doing in a lot of cases.
197. 00:08:09 Like this will make my life easier.
198. 00:08:11 So I will buy it.
199. 00:08:12 You use it while you're here.
200. 00:08:13 Like sure.
201. 00:08:14 We do that a lot.
202. 00:08:16 So anyway, we didn't join today to talk about audio gear,
203. 00:08:19 but I'm giving people excuses for why audio might not sound good this week.
204. 00:08:23 And the video won't be good this week.
205. 00:08:25 So here we are.
206. 00:08:26 That's the way this stuff goes.
207. 00:08:28 All that to say, let's jump into follow up.
208. 00:08:31 I've got a couple of them here.
209. 00:08:32 And then we also need to talk about an episode we did outside of bookworm.
210. 00:08:37 But the first of these that I want to point out is like this whole upper and
211. 00:08:41 lower bounds of creation.
212. 00:08:43 Like we talked about this where you set the minimum amount of time and
213. 00:08:48 work you're going to spend on a task, but you also set the upper limit.
214. 00:08:52 Like you can't go over a certain amount.
215. 00:08:55 And I did this and had some success with doing some writing and doing some video editing.
216. 00:09:02 One of the results of that is an article I published on
217. 00:09:05 using a stream deck with OmniFocus, which is kind of interesting.
218. 00:09:11 So there's that kind of an interesting article.
219. 00:09:13 I've had a couple of folks already email me saying, what?
220. 00:09:15 I didn't even think about doing this.
221. 00:09:17 Like, yep, pretty much it's kind of been my experience with the stream deck.
222. 00:09:20 It's like, I didn't know you could do most of this stuff, but here we are.
223. 00:09:24 And it's fun.
224. 00:09:25 Yeah, you created more work for yourself because people are asking you questions about
225. 00:09:28 the stuff that you show there, but don't explain.
226. 00:09:31 Yes, yes, but it's been fun at the same time.
227. 00:09:38 So, yes.
228. 00:09:39 So anyway, that's what I've been doing.
229. 00:09:41 I couldn't find.
230. 00:09:42 Did you have any follow up from last time when I was putting the outline together?
231. 00:09:45 It wasn't in the outline from last time around.
232. 00:09:47 I don't think I did.
233. 00:09:49 Maybe I just missed it.
234. 00:09:51 I know I made sure that I wrote down yours when I was editing the episode because
235. 00:09:58 I'd forgotten to save them in the actual file while we were recording.
236. 00:10:03 Yeah, I don't think I did other than the aforementioned special episode where you and
237. 00:10:09 David ganged up on me and made me read a fiction book.
238. 00:10:11 Yes, which was very fun.
239. 00:10:13 So, Mike, you should introduce this.
240. 00:10:20 Sure.
241. 00:10:20 This is your territory.
242. 00:10:22 Well, this is a special episode for the Relay FM, the members there.
243. 00:10:29 So, if you were to listen to Focus, for example, you can support Focus directly,
244. 00:10:33 five bucks a month, just like you do for Bookworm, and then you get access to the
245. 00:10:36 deep focus feed where you get the longer episodes with additional content.
246. 00:10:41 And then you also get access when you join a Relay FM show like that to the,
247. 00:10:45 you get access to the crossover feed, which is where once a year every show publishes a
248. 00:10:49 special episode.
249. 00:10:51 And this is where like Gray and Mike typically have done like those text adventures with Jason
250. 00:10:57 Snell as the Snellatron computer sort of a thing.
251. 00:10:59 And so, David had suggested to me, hey, you should read a fiction book for the Focus special
252. 00:11:09 episode.
253. 00:11:09 And I was immediately like, no, not going to do that.
254. 00:11:12 He actually said that in the episode.
255. 00:11:13 That is 100% true.
256. 00:11:14 My response immediately was like, no, no, that's too much work.
257. 00:11:18 I can't squeeze that in right now.
258. 00:11:19 And then Joshua asked me, my son asked me about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
259. 00:11:26 And he was looking for books to read over the summer.
260. 00:11:29 And I went on Amazon, I bought this series, and he wanted to talk to me about the book
261. 00:11:34 as he was reading it.
262. 00:11:35 So I'm like, okay, fine, I'll read it so we can talk about it.
263. 00:11:38 And then I got back to him and like, okay, fine, I've come around on this fiction book thing.
264. 00:11:41 You want to do this?
265. 00:11:43 And he's like, yeah.
266. 00:11:44 And I'm okay, well, I got to bring Joe in because he's been bugging me about this for years.
267. 00:11:49 Yes.
268. 00:11:49 And if I talked about a fiction book without him, he'd probably kill me.
269. 00:11:52 I would make my way to Wisconsin.
270. 00:11:55 We would have a chat with you pinned to the wall, maybe.
271. 00:12:01 Yeah.
272. 00:12:01 So we recorded, it's about a 40-minute mini bookworm about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
273. 00:12:10 by Douglas Adams, and it turned out about exactly how I was hoping it would.
274. 00:12:16 I went back and listened to it after it published it.
275. 00:12:19 I was really happy with how it turned out.
276. 00:12:20 I will say that I mentioned this in episode two.
277. 00:12:25 I was terrified as I was reading this because I felt the mental tick to go take notes on what
278. 00:12:30 I was reading, but there was nothing to take notes on.
279. 00:12:32 It was just a story.
280. 00:12:34 So I walked into it and I'm like, oh boy, I don't know how this is going to go.
281. 00:12:40 But it went really well.
282. 00:12:42 Yeah.
283. 00:12:44 If you are a really FM member, you should have access to it.
284. 00:12:49 You just got to log into your membership section.
285. 00:12:50 You can get the crossover feed and then it'll show up.
286. 00:12:53 And what's cool about this is that it goes out to all of the members of all of the relay
287. 00:12:57 shows, not just the focused audience.
288. 00:13:00 So hopefully a few people find out about bookworm from it, but I appreciate you taking
289. 00:13:05 the time to go do that. And it was a lot of fun.
290. 00:13:10 Yeah, that was super interesting.
291. 00:13:11 Okay.
292. 00:13:12 Well, I talk about fiction books with my wife and kids and some friends fairly regularly.
293. 00:13:19 And so I was familiar with like, how do people talk about fiction books as compared to nonfiction,
294. 00:13:26 which we'll get into here's, but I know that you don't have that background.
295. 00:13:31 So I wasn't sure how you were going to handle it.
296. 00:13:35 I thought you did well. You did good.
297. 00:13:36 Proud of you, Mike.
298. 00:13:37 Thank you.
299. 00:13:37 I was terrified. It was fun though.
300. 00:13:41 The question that everybody wants to know now though, has your view on fiction changed?
301. 00:13:47 I don't know. I think my view on fiction has changed.
302. 00:13:53 Am I going to read more fiction? Maybe not.
303. 00:13:57 I don't know.
304. 00:13:58 Sure.
305. 00:13:58 I think I will occasionally.
306. 00:13:59 David has already followed through on his threat to send me another fiction book.
307. 00:14:04 Yep.
308. 00:14:05 So I have at least one more to read, but I don't know. I still prefer the nonfiction books,
309. 00:14:13 even the ones that I have to wrestle to get through.
310. 00:14:16 I just see value in those and that excites me more than a good story does.
311. 00:14:23 But sure, that's just how I'm wired, I guess.
312. 00:14:26 I was hoping. Sorry, team. We tried. We tried to get him on board,
313. 00:14:31 but I don't think he's going to be a fiction addict anytime soon.
314. 00:14:34 Maybe next round.
315. 00:14:37 You may see a fiction book pop up in the gap book section here and there.
316. 00:14:41 We'll see. We'll see.
317. 00:14:42 I want to see you actually pull it off first.
318. 00:14:44 When you have a gap book episode that is a fiction book,
319. 00:14:48 I will call it out. But until then, I'm not going to hold my breath, that's for sure.
320. 00:14:52 All right. That's probably a smart idea.
321. 00:14:56 All right. This all said, as Mike decides to procrastinate on the continuation of his fiction
322. 00:15:01 reading habit, let's talk about procrastination in today's book, The Now Habit by Neil Fjor.
323. 00:15:08 And this one, I picked partially because it has the word habit in the title.
324. 00:15:16 And also because so much of what we do and what we talk about has the process of delaying action
325. 00:15:25 or storing things for later. So much of it was like, how do you plan what you're going to do
326. 00:15:30 in a week? How do you know what it is you need to do later in the day?
327. 00:15:33 Those are all things for later. And this is called The Now Habit, which in my head meant
328. 00:15:41 we're going to reel that in and do things right now instead of putting things off and waiting
329. 00:15:47 until later. And now that I've read the book, I'm kind of confused.
330. 00:15:51 So you were expecting kind of GTD Junior or what?
331. 00:15:55 I'm not sure what I expected in my head. This was going to encourage me to find ways to act
332. 00:16:03 on things when they show up, as opposed to storing it to work on it later.
333. 00:16:09 Yeah, it's not what you got. That is not what I got at all.
334. 00:16:17 Either I didn't do enough research on this book before I selected it or this is just marketed very
335. 00:16:23 badly to help people understand what's actually in it. Now that all put out there.
336. 00:16:30 The Now Habit by Neil Fjord, the tagline on it is a strategic program for overcoming procrastination
337. 00:16:37 and enjoying guilt-free play. And I feel like that is probably what I should have focused
338. 00:16:44 more time on as opposed to the actual title. Because I don't feel like the two go together.
339. 00:16:51 Maybe I'm just too dense and can't see it, but that's my perspective on it.
340. 00:16:57 Did you get what you expected out of this? Did you have any expectations? I know when I pick a book
341. 00:17:01 you don't always have expectations of what you're going to get.
342. 00:17:06 I had heard of this book previously, but I had not read it and I was not familiar with the topic.
343. 00:17:15 So I was just going at it from the title just like you were. And I will say that it is not what I
344. 00:17:21 expected. I think it's better than I expected. Not because, oh boy, Joe's picking another goofball
345. 00:17:29 book. But just like looking at the reviews on Amazon, it seemed like there were some people who were
346. 00:17:37 very strong negative reactions to this one. Which you see sometimes in those systems types
347. 00:17:48 type books because people try to apply that specific system and then it doesn't work for them.
348. 00:17:54 I think GTD was kind of the thing that came to mind as the same sort of thing. Like maybe for
349. 00:18:00 the right person, this is really powerful, but also going into it a little bit wary because
350. 00:18:07 obviously it's not working for some people. Do you know when this book was actually published,
351. 00:18:12 the first version? Yes, it was in 1989. Okay, so it's a bit older and I think that shows
352. 00:18:23 through, but it's also written by a doctor. And I think there's a lot of lists and a lot of
353. 00:18:32 these five pieces, these six steps, whatever. I felt like those lists that he explained in here,
354. 00:18:41 those were all a lot more clear and made a lot more sense than I was anticipating.
355. 00:18:47 Sure. You know, the first time you see those bullets or these are the different steps in the
356. 00:18:52 system. My shields go up. But I found myself like going through the first and being like,
357. 00:19:00 "Oh, that wasn't so bad." Actually, there's a lot of good stuff here. I'm kind of wondering
358. 00:19:05 because it was written in 1989. I don't know. I mean, we've read some of the older business,
359. 00:19:11 self-help productivity type books, the seven habits, how to win friends and influence people,
360. 00:19:18 stuff like that. I kind of wonder if this was one of those landmark books about procrastination
361. 00:19:26 back in the day. It kind of feels like it might have been, but it also kind of feels like if I were
362. 00:19:33 to come at this now in 2021 as opposed to 1989. I think you got to kind of recognize that it was,
363. 00:19:43 there's a little bit of history here. Otherwise, if you take it just at face value,
364. 00:19:48 you will miss out on the good stuff, I think. Sure. Yeah. No, that's a valid point because I
365. 00:19:53 think that's spot on. If you try to put this in a context of the time, digital natives didn't exist,
366. 00:20:01 and the online world, I mean, it existed, but was far from where we are today.
367. 00:20:08 It's just a whole different perspective, right? I'm with you. It makes sense what you're saying.
368. 00:20:14 It's a different perspective, and what that means is that if you just take the content of what he's
369. 00:20:21 saying, it's not valid anymore because everything is bigger, stronger, whatever. His advice for
370. 00:20:28 blocking out distractions was when you had a TV that you had six channels on, and you didn't
371. 00:20:35 have the internet in your pocket. But you can take the concepts and you can extrapolate those out,
372. 00:20:40 and that's where I don't necessarily think he's wrong, although there is a scenario where you look
373. 00:20:45 at it and you say he's wrong because of the specifics of what he's telling you.
374. 00:20:50 Correct. Yeah. I think this is one where you kind of have to look at the
375. 00:20:54 intense and the broad picture of what he's saying and not get too hung up on the details,
376. 00:21:00 because if you pay attention to details, you're like, what? And I said, what? A lot in this book.
377. 00:21:07 We'll get into this. Let's start at the beginning. This is not a three-part book. There are no parts
378. 00:21:15 to this. It's just chapters, which is, I guess, a breath of fresh air on that. I don't know why we've
379. 00:21:20 kind of gotten hung up on three-part books, but it seems like they're everywhere, and this is not one.
380. 00:21:25 So there's that. Maybe it was pre-three-part book days. But chapter one here is why we procrastinate.
381. 00:21:35 If you haven't caught onto this at this point, the entire book is about procrastination.
382. 00:21:39 And step one on that is trying to figure out why we procrastinate. And this is where I had my first
383. 00:21:50 but you forgot one points, because he has a number of, and I don't have it in front of me,
384. 00:21:57 like of the specifics for why the different reasons people give for procrastinating, but a lot of it
385. 00:22:05 has to do with anxiety and overwhelm and anxiety in the sense of trying to be perfect and knowing
386. 00:22:15 that you cannot be perfect and the overwhelm of having too many things to do or not knowing
387. 00:22:23 what to do, having a low self-esteem. These are all things that are some of the reasons for why
388. 00:22:31 we procrastinate. And it was curious, Mike, do you feel like he covered all of those,
389. 00:22:37 or did you feel like it was incomplete? It probably is incomplete, although he's got these six
390. 00:22:43 warning signs, which are in my mind node file. So I wrote these down. These are all question-based.
391. 00:22:49 Does life feel like a long series of obligations that cannot be met? Are you unrealistic about time?
392. 00:22:56 Are you vague about your goals and values? Are you unfulfilled, frustrated, and depressed?
393. 00:23:00 Are you indecisive and afraid of being criticized for making a mistake? Are low self-esteem and lack
394. 00:23:05 of assertiveness holding you back from becoming productive? And those questions, they do a very
395. 00:23:11 effective job of painting a picture of, yeah, yeah, that's he's talking about me. Maybe not all of
396. 00:23:20 them, but you can definitely see yourself if you ask yourself those questions.
397. 00:23:24 Yeah, oh sure. And then he talks about the ways that we procrastinate as an indirect way of
398. 00:23:29 resisting pressure from authorities as a way of lessening fear of failure by providing an excuse
399. 00:23:33 for disappointing less than perfect performance and as a defense against fear of success by keeping
400. 00:23:38 us from doing our best. And again, I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's right with that. And then he talks about
401. 00:23:45 the pattern here where you start with the perfectionistic demands that leads to fear of failure,
402. 00:23:51 that leads to procrastination, which leads to a loss of confidence, which leads to greater
403. 00:23:55 fear of failure, which leads to stronger need to procrastinate as a temporary escape. And again,
404. 00:23:59 at this point, I feel like he's reading my mail. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. You win. I'll listen.
405. 00:24:08 Yep. So I feel like this first chapter is very effective in setting the tone that
406. 00:24:11 he listened up. I have something to share with you. Yeah, he's very good at that.
407. 00:24:15 Because I'm with you when I finished this first chapter is like, oh, somebody just put a wire
408. 00:24:22 tap on my brain and figured out all the details I do wrong. And yet, whenever I talked through
409. 00:24:31 some of this stuff with my wife, who is far from a procrastinator, she's very on top of things and
410. 00:24:37 rarely puts things off. She mentioned a couple scenarios where she procrastinates and explain that,
411. 00:24:45 yeah, there is no overwhelm. There's no anxiety. There is no any of that with those. She's like,
412. 00:24:51 I just don't like it. And I occurred to me, he's like, he never talks about that. It was a whole
413. 00:24:57 book. He never talks about just not liking a task. He usually refers to those in the sense of like,
414. 00:25:03 you're overwhelmed that you have to do it. But what if you're not actually overwhelmed? You just
415. 00:25:07 don't like it, right? So I wasn't too sure what to do with that one. I think he kind of indirectly
416. 00:25:14 speaks to that, where you have resentment that you have to do this thing. And he talks about how
417. 00:25:19 you're rebelling. You use procrastination as like your way of getting back at the person who has
418. 00:25:25 asked you to do this sort of thing. And I feel like what you're talking about, where you just
419. 00:25:29 don't want to do something. Sometimes that's somebody asking you to do something. And so,
420. 00:25:33 yeah, you don't want to do it. So you're pushing back against it by procrastinating.
421. 00:25:37 Sometimes it's the person asking you to do it is you. And so that doesn't fit perfectly.
422. 00:25:42 But I think it's the same approach. Past Mike has told current Mike that he needs to do this
423. 00:25:49 thing at this time. And current Mike doesn't want to do it. So what is he going to do? He's
424. 00:25:54 going to stick it to past Mike and future Mike and put it off. Right. Right. So if you think about it
425. 00:26:01 as different personalities that way, which I have have done not because I have a split personality,
426. 00:26:06 but just I've found that a useful exercise before it makes sense in my brain. Sure. Sure.
427. 00:26:13 I suppose I could see that. You could see how you get there. It was just a piece that stood out
428. 00:26:18 to me. And my wife and I, of course, talked about it. I don't know how this fits in. So,
429. 00:26:24 thanks for, thanks for taking me through that. So I'm going to move through this because I feel
430. 00:26:27 like there's quite a few places we could get hung up as we get into this later. So why we
431. 00:26:33 procrastinate? I took my takeaway on that was anxiety and overwhelm. Those are the two big ones
432. 00:26:39 and those show themselves in a lot of different ways. But then the next chapter here is how we
433. 00:26:45 procrastinate. And in this particular piece, it's like, okay, how do we actually go about doing this?
434. 00:26:53 And in most cases, you know, of course, it's just inaction. Well, if I don't get back to my boss,
435. 00:26:59 I don't have to deal with the ramifications of acting on his decision. If I don't respond to that
436. 00:27:07 email, then I don't have to show my work about where I'm at on this progress. And then there's
437. 00:27:14 nothing for people to judge me on, right? So like, how do we actually go about doing those
438. 00:27:20 individual pieces? And again, I feel like as I was going through this, like you're saying,
439. 00:27:24 the wiretap, wiretap on the brain was definitely here. It's like, dang it, how do you know this?
440. 00:27:29 Like, this is exactly me. Stop it. This is weird. So yes, the procrastination and the anxiety working
441. 00:27:37 in five different stages in the second chapter, I thought was pretty interesting. Number one,
442. 00:27:42 you give a task or a goal, the power to determine your worth and happiness. Then you use perfectionism
443. 00:27:47 to raise the task 100 feet above the ground. That was a really powerful picture, I thought,
444. 00:27:53 because he talks about how, okay, now just walking a straight line for 100 feet easy, right? Now,
445. 00:27:58 imagine that that straight line is between two buildings and it's 20 feet off the ground.
446. 00:28:04 Now it's not easy and you're, you're terrified of doing it. So step three, you find yourself
447. 00:28:10 frozen with anxiety, use procrastination to escape your dilemma. And then eventually you use a real
448. 00:28:15 threat, like the building behind you being on fire to release you from your perfectionism.
449. 00:28:21 And at that point, it doesn't matter. You're going to get across the line as however you can.
450. 00:28:25 You have to crawl across it. You're going to do that. And again, you know, that describes me,
451. 00:28:31 perfectionist Mike, where I tend to just put things off and put things off because I want
452. 00:28:35 them to be perfect. And if there's one big takeaway from this whole book for me, it is just to take
453. 00:28:41 the consistent action and not worry about the perfection. Don't get a real clear picture of
454. 00:28:47 what you want this thing to look like. Just show up and start. He talks about that later on,
455. 00:28:52 you know, the power of starting versus focusing on finishing. And in this specific chapter,
456. 00:28:57 he talks about keeping a procrastination log where you're jotting down the times and the places that
457. 00:29:03 you tend to procrastinate. I think that's valuable. I'm in that's one of my actions. I'm going to
458. 00:29:10 start doing that. I'm not going to be real specific about it, but I am going to in my notebook,
459. 00:29:16 just try to jot down like, why am I resisting writing this article, making this video,
460. 00:29:22 whatever? Is it because I have a picture in my mind that I want this thing to be super, super
461. 00:29:27 awesome and cover every single detail? Probably. Do I need to do that? No, you know, going back to
462. 00:29:32 the effort list we talked about last time with the recording the course lecture. I'm guilty of that
463. 00:29:37 in my own circles a lot of times. And the only person that's judging that output is me. So I
464. 00:29:43 got to get over that inner critic and just start taking action. Do you think that the whole procrastination
465. 00:29:50 log piece is potentially difficult to create? This was this was something I spent a decent amount
466. 00:29:58 of time trying to process because the times when I procrastinate, I don't think I even
467. 00:30:07 realize that's what I'm doing. Yeah. It's not something that I think I can be aware of,
468. 00:30:12 especially not in the moment, because if I was aware of it in the moment, I would just not do it.
469. 00:30:17 At least that's whenever I become aware that I'm procrastinating on something in the moment,
470. 00:30:22 I usually course correct. But there are a lot of times that I'm not actively doing it. It's
471. 00:30:29 secondhand, so it's not an immediate issue. So for me to try to keep a procrastination log
472. 00:30:39 minute by minute, it wouldn't be minute by minute, but it would definitely have to be something that
473. 00:30:45 is done upon review of the day. I don't think I could do it as it happens.
474. 00:30:51 Well, I think it works for me because this is my plan for the day. And just as using today as an
475. 00:30:59 example, I've got the zero to obsidian content that I'm working on, a note making article that
476. 00:31:06 I'm working on playing with the slated plug-in in obsidian and recording bookworm. So anything
477. 00:31:11 that's not on that list that I find myself doing is procrastination. And that happens all the time
478. 00:31:18 to be honest. I come down here because I do this the day before, I come down and I'm ready to work,
479. 00:31:25 and I look at this list sometimes and I'm like, I just don't feel like doing that quite yet.
480. 00:31:30 What else could I know? I'll go into notion and see if there's something I can do in there.
481. 00:31:35 And that's procrastination. So I want to recognize those times and jot them down. And I'm not going
482. 00:31:41 to catch everyone, I'm sure of that. But I think even if I catch a handful of them,
483. 00:31:46 then that's going to be valuable for me. And I can look at, okay, so I identified this is the
484. 00:31:51 most important thing for me to do when I come down to work the next day. Why do I feel resistance
485. 00:31:56 or friction to doing that thing? Is it because in my mind, I've already defined this as like a
486. 00:32:02 6000 word article? It doesn't need to be that. And so maybe I need to just reframe these things
487. 00:32:09 a little bit more when I jot them on my list of like, this is kind of the small thing I'm
488. 00:32:14 going to work on. And if I decide to go past that, great. But this is the easy thing for me to do in
489. 00:32:20 the morning when it's time to sit down and go to work.
490. 00:32:22 I think Martin has a solid point here in the chat. Did you catch this? Can't help but think
491. 00:32:27 if you complete a procrastination log, you are a very poor procrastinator. So as I've been sitting
492. 00:32:34 here processing that thought, which I think makes a lot of sense, if I'm able to complete a procrastination
493. 00:32:41 log, it would mean a couple things. One, at least based on the examples he has here in the book,
494. 00:32:49 there aren't that many items on that list in a day. So you're not actually procrastinating very many
495. 00:32:57 things. Whereas there are days I know I've spent the entire day in procrastination mode. So that
496. 00:33:04 list would be like 30 or 40 items long to get it all written down. And it's not because I didn't
497. 00:33:11 get anything productive done. It just was none of the stuff I ended intended to do that day,
498. 00:33:17 because I did a lot like I set up overlays on a different setup for the church or I fixed a
499. 00:33:24 code issue that I decided to go try to find because I wanted to find a code issue. So those
500. 00:33:32 are the types of things that I will do. They end up being productive, but it's on the wrong
501. 00:33:36 thing, which would mean that log would be quite long time it was all done. So the two or three
502. 00:33:43 things, the four or five things like that, I don't think would be sure. That's not what mine would be
503. 00:33:49 many, many days. Well, let me let me push back on that a little bit because I think productive,
504. 00:33:56 the definition of productive is where that establishes the usefulness of this or not.
505. 00:34:04 So what you're saying is there are a bunch of things that I need to do. And if I get some of
506. 00:34:09 them done, then I have been productive. And so even if I say these are the ones that I intend to do
507. 00:34:15 today and I don't do those by do something else instead, then that can still be a productive day.
508. 00:34:19 I would disagree and say that is not a productive day for me just because I didn't follow through on
509. 00:34:24 my intentions. And you can, I mean, that's just my personal preference on that. But I also think
510. 00:34:30 this is one of the sections that doesn't translate well to 2021, because I think the baseline assumption
511. 00:34:37 here is that you are mindful enough to recognize when you are not following through on your intention.
512. 00:34:43 Yes. Yes. That is not the case anymore, because people will just go grab their phone, not even
513. 00:34:49 realize that they're doing it and spend the next hour scrolling through social media and completely
514. 00:34:55 miss the opportunity that he's describing here to recognize that you are procrastinating on
515. 00:35:01 something that you have intended to do previously. So that's the situation I foresee with this.
516. 00:35:07 I don't necessarily think that what he's saying here is is wrong. I just think it's harder to apply
517. 00:35:13 with the vast amount of information and the ease of access that we have to it today.
518. 00:35:18 Sure. Yeah, no, it's valid. I get what you're saying about the productive day versus non-productive day,
519. 00:35:25 like that that makes sense. But at the same time, I should probably just say that it's one of those
520. 00:35:30 where it feels productive. That's the problem, right? Yeah. Because you feel like you're getting a lot
521. 00:35:36 done. And if somebody were to ask you, "Oh, yeah, I got a ton done today." And if you said that,
522. 00:35:40 people assume you did all the right things and you're a really great person and I would love to
523. 00:35:46 be like you. And sure, people might love the stuff that comes out of that, but it wasn't what I intended.
524. 00:35:53 That's an entire day of procrastination, log entries. Yeah, that's the thing. Getting a whole bunch
525. 00:36:01 of things done. And Martin's talking about this in the chat. Anything that isn't taking a task
526. 00:36:06 is done, is tweaking. You could say that, but then if you're checking the boxes, does that mean
527. 00:36:11 that you're being productive? I would argue not necessarily. And people will define that differently,
528. 00:36:19 and that is fine. But I completely am in line with the idea that anything that's not following
529. 00:36:30 through on your intention is not productive. And I don't know how to say this nicely.
530. 00:36:38 Because I really do feel like this is one of those things that you're not going to
531. 00:36:47 get the value of it until you just commit to it and then you go all in with it, like my time
532. 00:36:52 blocked schedule. And I'm not saying that my time blocked schedule specifically is what everybody
533. 00:36:57 needs to do. And I recognize that there are office environments where you don't know what your task
534. 00:37:01 list is going to be until you get into the office and your boss can rewrite it at any given moment.
535. 00:37:06 And I kind of met a loss for like what to do in those scenarios, other than avoid them completely,
536. 00:37:12 which is what I'm going to do with every fiber of my being. Sure, sure. Because this feels really
537. 00:37:18 good. And getting a whole bunch of things checked off in a day, that might actually be very
538. 00:37:23 unproductive because it means that I'm going to be exhausted the next day and the day after that
539. 00:37:29 I'm never going to recover. I kind of had a day like that this week. On Monday, I had my
540. 00:37:35 Monday is usually one of my most productive days anyways, because I know exactly what I want to
541. 00:37:45 be working on at the beginning of the week. We haven't any meetings yet, nothing to distract me.
542. 00:37:49 So I'm cranking through stuff middle of the day, we've got our weekly stand up for
543. 00:37:53 Blunk Media. And then I find out, you know, whatever anybody else might need help with.
544. 00:37:56 And then this particular Monday, I recorded an impromptu Mac voices with Chuck Joyner on Obsidian,
545. 00:38:03 which is published. So I'll put the links to those in the show notes that people want to
546. 00:38:07 see me convince Chuck to try Obsidian. And then I presented for the Silicon Valley Mac user group
547. 00:38:14 at 7pm Pacific time. So 9pm my time. You're crazy. And that was a 14, 15 hour day. And I was like,
548. 00:38:23 oh, it's just one day. You know, I could take a little bit easy the next day, no big deal. No,
549. 00:38:28 it knocked me on my butt. It was really, really hard Tuesday, Wednesday, and even Thursday.
550. 00:38:33 Like I was sleeping nine, 10 hours a night and I'm like, what is wrong with me? The only thing I
551. 00:38:37 can pin it on because I feel fine is that Monday just took so much out of me. So basing it off of
552. 00:38:45 the output is not the right method, I would argue. And you, like I said, you can come back that
553. 00:38:53 and say, well, my situation, yadda, yadda, yadda, I get that ideally, though, you don't want to be
554. 00:38:57 doing that. A better measure is, did I follow through on what I intended to do, regardless of
555. 00:39:04 what category stuff falls into? Yeah, I mean, he's got a whole, that's a good point, because
556. 00:39:10 he does get into like this ABC prioritization thing. And whenever I saw that, I was like,
557. 00:39:17 what, why would anybody like, we know that that doesn't work. And we know that it's
558. 00:39:22 a bad way to do this because that was the friendly, covey, yeah. Correct. That was the time frame.
559. 00:39:29 And that's what everybody did. And it was the thing that everybody wanted you to do. And it makes
560. 00:39:35 sense, given the timeframe, we've just kind of, you know, come beyond that. And, you know, to
561. 00:39:42 transition this here, you know, there are a lot of ways that you can come at this, right?
562. 00:39:48 Should I be keeping logs? How do I even know if I'm procrastinating or not? What is defined
563. 00:39:56 as procrastination? And he has a definition. I don't even remember what it was, because it
564. 00:40:01 didn't really strike a chord with me. Really, it was just you're not doing what you think you should.
565. 00:40:05 Pretty much what it came down to, which is fine. But at the same time, there's,
566. 00:40:12 this next section here is how to talk to yourself, which I thought was needed in this book. But also,
567. 00:40:20 I don't want to say overdone, but because of the number of books that we've read at this point,
568. 00:40:25 this is something that has come up quite a bit self talk and how you refer to yourself within your
569. 00:40:32 own brain. And he points out a lot of potential causes for the way that you think about yourself
570. 00:40:41 and the way you lower your own self worth through what you tell yourself, right? And there are a
571. 00:40:48 lot of things that come out in this, like the should's like, I should be doing X, Y, and Z,
572. 00:40:53 or I have to get that report done today, or this is something they need from me. And every time you
573. 00:41:00 do that, the, the underlying assumption behind it is that there's a negative that's going to happen
574. 00:41:08 to me if I don't do that, that's the problem. So when you're focused on the negative for not
575. 00:41:15 doing something, we tend to resist it, right? Because we're trying to resist that negative,
576. 00:41:20 thus the procrastination process. But a lot of this comes down to how we tell ourselves what,
577. 00:41:25 what we need to do, and why we think we should do it, or in this case, not do it.
578. 00:41:31 Yeah, they talk about the self talk, reinforcing feelings of victimhood, burden, and resistance
579. 00:41:39 to authority. And then it also talks about that have to messaging that you were talking about,
580. 00:41:44 creating a no win situation where you don't want to do something because someone is making you
581. 00:41:49 against your will. And that's the point where I realize that sometimes past you is the one that's
582. 00:41:53 making you do something against your will. They committed to something that you don't want to
583. 00:41:58 follow through on in the moment, but you don't want to go back on your word. So what do you do?
584. 00:42:03 You either do it and have a bad attitude about it, or in the moment, maybe you procrastinate on it
585. 00:42:09 as a form of rebellion. He says that saying no is a sign of self respect. And I think that's,
586. 00:42:17 that's really true. The big takeaway from this particular section for me, though, is to change
587. 00:42:22 that have to into a choice. And this is a fascinating concept for me because I fall into this have to
588. 00:42:31 trap a lot. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself when I commit to something to follow
589. 00:42:41 through, even if the other person that I committed to is like, Oh yeah, you got a lot going on.
590. 00:42:45 Don't worry about it. You know, I'm like, no, I'm not going to go back on this. I said I was
591. 00:42:49 going to do this and I'm going to follow through and do it, dang it. So reframing that, I think is
592. 00:42:57 important. And it's also coupled with that saying no, because you get to the point where you just
593. 00:43:00 have too much to do. But the when you have a lot of things that you have to do and you don't want
594. 00:43:06 to do them and you feel that resentment, it's effective, I think, to change the terminology.
595. 00:43:13 And instead of saying I have to do this, saying I get to do this, or I choose to do this.
596. 00:43:19 Which is really true because all of those things that I have committed to, I have chosen to engage
597. 00:43:25 with. I think work is the one that specifically, if I'm not paying attention and I don't have the
598. 00:43:31 right perspective, I can resent the fact that I have all of these things that I have to do.
599. 00:43:35 But also when I take a step back and think about it, I am pretty darn lucky to have the
600. 00:43:42 type of career that I have and get to do the things that I do. Recording bookworm, recording focused,
601. 00:43:49 making these videos and writing these articles for this sweet setup. This is sort of like my dream
602. 00:43:54 job and I have to check myself every once in a while. Like, you know, this stuff that you
603. 00:44:00 like a few years ago, you were dreaming of the day when maybe you could do this for a living,
604. 00:44:07 like what changed? How did you get to the point now where you resent the fact that you have to
605. 00:44:11 show up and do this stuff? And a lot of times, there's absolutely nothing that has changed other
606. 00:44:17 than my approach to the work. And simply reminding myself of just what a great situation I have,
607. 00:44:25 a lot of times is enough for me to completely change my attitude about engaging with what I
608. 00:44:31 need to do. It amazes me how much the way we approach something with our brains changes the way we act
609. 00:44:37 about it. You ever realize that? Like, whenever we think that something is dangerous, we will
610. 00:44:45 completely alter our lifestyles to avoid it. Even if we learn that it's actually not dangerous
611. 00:44:54 later on, we will still act as if it is. And that happens in so many scenarios. Like, there,
612. 00:45:01 here's an example for you. I grew up in Missouri. Missouri has a fair number of snakes. And the
613. 00:45:09 snakes that I grew up around are water moccasins, copperheads, timber rattlesnakes. Like, these are
614. 00:45:16 all poisonous snakes. And one of those, the water moccasins will actually chase you if you're
615. 00:45:22 around their nests. So I'm not a fan of snakes. That's what I'm saying. And to this day, I live
616. 00:45:30 in Minnesota now, right? The only snakes we really have are garden snakes, black snakes,
617. 00:45:35 and none of them really care about you. They won't, in a lot of cases, even try to bite you if you
618. 00:45:41 pick them up. Like, they're not poisonous. They're nothing. But if I see a snake in my yard,
619. 00:45:46 guess what Joe does? He jumps back and borderline runs away because I thought it was a copperhead.
620. 00:45:54 Becky comes out with the the ho and chops the head off.
621. 00:45:57 I usually end up taking care of it. She's almost worse than I am. But the thing is, like,
622. 00:46:04 my gut reaction is still to this day to run away from it. Because of the thinking that I have,
623. 00:46:10 that this is something that could kill me, even though it won't. So things can change the way
624. 00:46:17 and the places and the things you're around can change. But it's okay. And I think this whole,
625. 00:46:22 how you talk to yourself, section he does have, like what you were saying, the replacing I have to
626. 00:46:28 with I choose to. He has a handful of these phrases through here. Like, you need to replace,
627. 00:46:36 I must finish with when can I start? You can replace. This is a big project and super important
628. 00:46:43 with I can take one small step. What's the other one here? I must be perfect. Replace that with,
629. 00:46:49 I can be perfectly human. I don't have time to play. I must have time to play. I must make time to play.
630. 00:46:55 Like, these are all things that it changes the way you come at it. Now, you might not believe
631. 00:47:02 yourself at first rate. And that's okay. But doing this repeatedly is the point, I think, in this whole
632. 00:47:09 whole section here. Yep, I completely agree that whole concept of play, by the way, that
633. 00:47:15 leads into the next section. That really fascinates me. There are a couple books on the concept of
634. 00:47:24 the play. I'm going to be picking one of these shortly. So I think of preferences about one
635. 00:47:29 bookworm club. Go vote for it now. Yeah, get it on the recommended list. That said,
636. 00:47:35 let's go into the next one here, because the next chapter is guilt free play and quality work.
637. 00:47:40 And this, I don't have a lot to say about this other than his point is to schedule time to play,
638. 00:47:48 schedule that first, and then fill in around it with quality work. That's really what he's
639. 00:47:55 recommending here. And I get what he's saying, it just feels so backwards to me. It just feels weird.
640. 00:48:05 Again, that's fine. But his whole thing is that if you have play, if you schedule your breaks and
641. 00:48:14 schedule your rest and you put in these play times and making sure that you have many much of them
642. 00:48:21 through the week, it frees up your brain and it cuts back on the time you have to get the things
643. 00:48:30 done that you need to do. And it can force you to have the rest and have the mental clarity to go to
644. 00:48:37 work when you have the gaps between the play. I don't know that I'm going to do this, but
645. 00:48:43 it's interesting nonetheless. I was wondering what your reaction to this was going to be because
646. 00:48:49 of the situation, your work situation. And I feel like he's writing this from a certain
647. 00:48:54 perspective that is maybe hard for people to relate to, especially if you've got a nine to five.
648. 00:48:59 On page 41, he kind of plants the seed for this back in chapter two. It says,
649. 00:49:04 don't expect to find eight hours of quality work a day. Much of your legitimate activity in life is
650. 00:49:09 not directly related to productivity. Well, that's fine for you to say that. And I may 100%
651. 00:49:15 believe that. But if my boss doesn't believe that, then how does that help me? Right? Correct.
652. 00:49:21 100%. Yes. If I were to schedule all the play things I want to do ahead of time and then tell
653. 00:49:29 my boss what I was going to do. He's like, what is wrong with you? No, I need you here on
654. 00:49:32 Tuesday morning. Yes. But that doesn't mean that he's wrong. Correct. Yes. So how do you reconcile
655. 00:49:41 this if you're in that situation? And my covert advice, don't share this part with your boss,
656. 00:49:47 would be if you work from home, find ways to do this. And don't tell anybody.
657. 00:49:55 Yes. It doesn't need to take two hours out of your day either. But I think we're kind of in this
658. 00:50:03 unique situation with COVID where everybody is working from home. And it's assumed that you have
659. 00:50:10 other things going on. And we are transitioning back to the way things were and what is normal.
660. 00:50:16 So this is absolutely the time where you should push back a little bit and just say, like, no,
661. 00:50:22 I can't do that. And just see what happens if people are going to ask you, like, well, why?
662. 00:50:27 Like, what do you got going on? Then maybe, you know, you don't have as much wiggle room here as
663. 00:50:32 you thought. But maybe they're just like, oh, okay, well, when can you do it half hour later than that?
664. 00:50:38 Okay, well, now you've just created 30 minutes in the middle of your day where you can go play.
665. 00:50:43 Yep. And it doesn't have to be like, I'm going to go for a 20 mile bike ride. If you can do that,
666. 00:50:50 that's great. You know, I do that not 20 miles, but I build that into my schedule. But it could
667. 00:50:55 just be I'm going to go, we've got a basketball hoop in our backyard. I'm going to go shoot hoops
668. 00:50:59 for 10 minutes, you know, and just finding the little pockets of time that you have to do that
669. 00:51:05 kind of stuff. I feel like there's a lot of value to be gained from that. And ultimately,
670. 00:51:11 if you are being measured by what you create or what your output is, this is arguably to
671. 00:51:21 Dr. Fjord's point, the most productive thing you can do if you're being paid by the hours that
672. 00:51:28 you put in, you know, that's that's one thing. But if the real thing that the company values is what
673. 00:51:34 you are producing, then they're not going to think twice about this. They're not going to ask any
674. 00:51:39 questions. They're just going to see your output go up. And they're going to be like,
675. 00:51:42 whatever Joe's doing, that's cool. I don't know how to do this, to be honest with you. Like this is,
676. 00:51:47 this is one of these that I would love to have this as an action item. I don't know how to do that,
677. 00:51:55 because I'm not working from home. I'm in the office every day, eight to four. I am able to shut
678. 00:52:04 that door. But as you heard, it may or may not actually help. Doesn't necessarily mean anything.
679. 00:52:11 Yeah. Nope. And it's not uncommon. I had it just a minute ago. Thankfully, I was muted,
680. 00:52:17 but somebody opened the door to see if there was anything going on in here. I have no idea why
681. 00:52:21 people do that. So these are things that a big red hue light you can put outside. Right, right.
682. 00:52:28 But these are folks that don't go to our church. And this is the first time they're in their
683. 00:52:33 building in this building. So sure. I don't know how to communicate these things to everybody
684. 00:52:40 without being a complete jerk. Right. So I can only do so much if and when we get a house bought
685. 00:52:47 and I'm able to move my studio back to my home office, I will gladly do so because I can control
686. 00:52:54 it a little bit more. But as it is, trying to schedule playtime would mean leaving the building
687. 00:53:03 regularly. And it would be very obvious what was going on. So there is no hiding that. There's
688. 00:53:10 the option for like normally on Friday afternoons, our building is completely closed up and there's
689. 00:53:16 nobody here. There's a wedding this weekend, which is why this is a bit strange. So normally,
690. 00:53:22 I have the building myself and we can do this all in a controlled environment. But
691. 00:53:27 again, like I have the spots where I know I can do things like this, but it just doesn't allow
692. 00:53:33 it doesn't allow for things like, I'm gonna go for a run at 10 a.m. Like, no, you're not. So
693. 00:53:41 I don't know how to play play that card. I don't know how this is expected to work for someone who's
694. 00:53:48 working in an office every day of the week. I just don't know how to make that work.
695. 00:53:52 I completely agree with you. I sympathize or empathize with your situation. I don't think
696. 00:54:00 it's impossible though. Maybe you can't do it according to the now habit system where it's an hour
697. 00:54:07 every day. Maybe it's an hour once a week. And I also think how you define play, maybe there's
698. 00:54:13 some flexibility there. So like, if I was talking to somebody in your situation,
699. 00:54:19 what I would advise them would be pick a day of the week where maybe you can take an extended
700. 00:54:27 lunchtime. And then what you do with that extended lunchtime is up to you. But if you were to say,
701. 00:54:34 I'm going out to lunch, maybe no one's gonna raise a flag with that. Well, Joe's at lunch.
702. 00:54:41 He already told me that. And at that point, maybe you go for a walk or you walk the dog or you play
703. 00:54:46 disc golf or maybe you just take an extended lunch. Maybe you meet a friend and you have lunch with
704. 00:54:52 somebody that actually has an introvert. That's the hard one for me because he talks about later on
705. 00:54:59 with the unscheduled prioritizing the socialization. And that's just not me. But I know I have to
706. 00:55:08 push myself a little bit to do that because friends are valuable and you don't have friends if you
707. 00:55:16 are not friendly. Yes. But one other thing on this section though, page 80, I think this is the part
708. 00:55:24 that really rings home with me is both Workaholics and Chronic Procrastinators are either working
709. 00:55:29 or feeling guilty about not working. That is true. So that is really what you're fighting back against
710. 00:55:35 when you are trying to prioritize play is what can I do for even a short period of time,
711. 00:55:42 ideally every day that is going to force me to break free from feeling guilty about not working.
712. 00:55:48 Sure. But the I mean, what you're talking about is like one day. Let's let's go on to the next
713. 00:55:53 chapter here. So overcoming blocks to action. There's one piece of this that I want to call out
714. 00:55:59 because there are three different tools that he gives you here. The first of which is the one I
715. 00:56:05 want to talk about, which is three dimensional thinking and the reverse calendar. The second
716. 00:56:11 tool is the work of worrying and the third one is persistent starting. And the first one of those
717. 00:56:17 three 3D thinking and the reverse calendar, the reverse calendar I think is what we're talking
718. 00:56:22 about here when we're talking about scheduling in the play. Right. Yeah, he talks about the
719. 00:56:27 unscheduled later. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's these three chapters kind of all fit together. Like,
720. 00:56:34 it should be a part. If you realize this, there's actually three parts. He just didn't break him off.
721. 00:56:38 Like he talks about procrastination in the first three, then he gets into how it works. And then he
722. 00:56:43 goes into once you're past it. He was ahead of his time. Yeah, there's there's a three part
723. 00:56:49 breakup here. He just didn't do it. And this 3D thinking and the reverse calendar, the reverse
724. 00:56:54 calendar is what we're talking about. Like you schedule in your play and then you have your spots
725. 00:56:59 in between that for your work. Did you understand three dimensional thinking? Did you get your head
726. 00:57:06 around this? Because he he tells a story that somebody is doing two dimensional thinking. And then
727. 00:57:15 I didn't connect all the dots. And then he's talking about how once he started using this three
728. 00:57:21 dimensional thinking mindset, everything was solved. Well, what is it? And I don't think he ever explained
729. 00:57:27 it. Did I just miss this? You know, I thought I understood it. Now I'm looking at my notes and
730. 00:57:33 you're asking the question, I don't have anything for that. Okay. So my interpretation of it, I think,
731. 00:57:41 is with two dimensions, you're not seeing the whole picture. There's a bunch of stuff behind that,
732. 00:57:48 the third dimension that you're not seeing when you have a 2D view. So I think what he's saying
733. 00:57:53 with this is that with your calendar, maybe you're putting all your work stuff on a calendar. That's
734. 00:57:59 a two dimensional view of your life. And your life is more than just your work. So that's how I
735. 00:58:06 interpret this is that the three dimensional thinking that's looking at the the total area of the
736. 00:58:13 entire person. And then the calendar reversing that, you know, prioritizing the personal stuff and
737. 00:58:18 then letting work happen inside of the gaps. I have issues with that specific approach, but that's
738. 00:58:23 what he talks about in the the the unscheduled. So I think that's what he's getting at here. I
739. 00:58:28 actually like the the number two, the work of worrying piece. Yeah, because I tend to worry quite a bit.
740. 00:58:34 And he's basically saying like, well, you could either work on the thing, or you could work by
741. 00:58:43 worrying about the thing and not actually getting anything done. And that that's totally, totally
742. 00:58:48 true. I can spend a whole bunch of mental effort worrying about something, or I could just, you know,
743. 00:58:52 do it myself and get it over with, which is kind of really to do his third point, you know, just
744. 00:58:56 focus on starting. Don't waste your your resources worrying about the stuff. Just start working on it.
745. 00:59:04 Yeah, I'm I feel like I I used to be really bad at the worrying thing, but I've gotten to where now
746. 00:59:11 I think working in IT kind of breaks you of this, because here's an example. I freaked some people
747. 00:59:18 out over this one, and I was fine. We had a Sunday morning where the main computer that runs all
748. 00:59:23 the slides and all the lyrics and everything froze. Five minutes before the service started.
749. 00:59:29 I went in and I was like, oh, and I immediately went up hit restart. And everybody was like,
750. 00:59:36 it doesn't have time to do that. Like we can't we're not going to get it all back up in time.
751. 00:59:41 It's like, it doesn't matter if it's frozen. So it'll be started a little late. I mean,
752. 00:59:46 what are you going to do about it? So that's that's my perspective. But everybody around me,
753. 00:59:51 there was like four or five people that were there. This has been three years ago or so. And
754. 00:59:55 they just freaked. What are we going to do? So like, hey, you know, it's fine. It's totally fine.
755. 01:00:03 Not going to worry about it. Don't freak out. It's okay. That's a great example, because in that
756. 01:00:09 moment, like what what are you going to do? I mean, right, you're not going to solve it without
757. 01:00:13 restarting it. So why not just restart it takes as long as it takes if you don't have slides at
758. 01:00:19 the beginning of service, you don't have slide at the beginning of service, but at least you've
759. 01:00:22 done what you could. Hopefully it comes back. And one other thing I thought was pretty fascinating
760. 01:00:27 in this section, in the work of worrying is basically describing the Tim Ferriss fear setting
761. 01:00:35 exercise. Have you seen that that Ted talk? No, what is that? It's pretty good. Tim Ferriss gave
762. 01:00:42 a Ted talk about fear setting, which is kind of based in stoicism where like things just are,
763. 01:00:47 right? And he's got this whole process with these worksheets where you let your mind go and you
764. 01:00:55 think about the absolute worst case scenario and you paint this picture in very vivid detail.
765. 01:01:01 And then at the end, you're like, okay, so if that happened, what would I do? And then you're
766. 01:01:07 like, well, it's probably not going to be as bad as that. So why worry about it? Because you've
767. 01:01:12 already got a plan in place now if that were to have happened. That's kind of what you were talking
768. 01:01:17 about with the computer freezing right before service. Worst case scenario, the computer freezes
769. 01:01:24 right before service. Well, the computer froze right before service. So what am I going to do at
770. 01:01:28 this point? It is what it is. So I'll just work with what I've got.
771. 01:01:33 There are so many, again, working in tech, I have stuff like this all the time,
772. 01:01:38 where stuff breaks. Like even when this computer just froze, right? I mean, it's really easy for me
773. 01:01:44 to kind of freak like, oh, no, what's going on? And what was my reaction? Like, oh, really? Come on.
774. 01:01:51 Like that's just completely different than what it used to be for me. Because I used to be like
775. 01:01:58 that where I would just completely freak out over little things that happen like that. And I can't
776. 01:02:03 do anything about it. It's like, well, what do you do? You just do what you can move on. Which,
777. 01:02:09 I guess brings us to the unscheduled, which I feel like we've talked about. And it wasn't in,
778. 01:02:16 I mean, it's at this point where he puts all the pieces together, right? So he's talking about
779. 01:02:20 guilt free play. He's talking about how to overcome these blocks to action. And then he gets into
780. 01:02:28 this unscheduled, is trying to find the actual pictures he has here. But basically what it is is,
781. 01:02:32 you schedule in all of your playtime, all your meals, all your sleep, all of these things,
782. 01:02:39 you get all of that scheduled in there. And then you have the blanks between those. And that is
783. 01:02:47 where your work comes in, right? So that is the time when you can, that's the time you can devote
784. 01:02:54 to your work, right? So this is what I think would be really cool to do. But again, I can't figure
785. 01:03:02 out how this applies. If somebody figures this out on how you would apply this to an office IT
786. 01:03:06 worker, I'm all ears. Well, I think the way to do this is to leave those 40 hours on your schedule,
787. 01:03:18 just to real quickly walk through his process, which has actually 11 different steps. And I feel
788. 01:03:23 like a bunch of them are unnecessary. So I'm going to try and condense this. Okay, you schedule
789. 01:03:29 everything but work, like you would normally would. And then all of the blank spaces in your
790. 01:03:35 calendar, that's where you can do work. But you only put work on your calendar when you have
791. 01:03:42 focused on your work without distraction for at least 30 minutes. So if you have 40 hours of
792. 01:03:51 blank space in your calendar during the week, that's your 40 hours that you're putting on your
793. 01:03:58 time sheet. But he would say you're not really doing 40 hours of work anyways. So instead of
794. 01:04:04 putting that on your calendar, what you're doing is you're using those blank spots in your calendar
795. 01:04:09 as the work times. And by not having work on your calendar, but the fun stuff on your calendar,
796. 01:04:14 you're looking forward to the next break that you get to take. And only after you stop working,
797. 01:04:19 do you put those things on your calendar and you get credit for them, if you have followed through
798. 01:04:25 with the intention and focused on the thing that you were going to going to focus on,
799. 01:04:30 which I think is interesting. And it could show you exactly how much quality work you're able to do
800. 01:04:36 in a week. If you were to walk up to your boss and say, Hey, good news, I had 20 hours of quality
801. 01:04:43 work this week. And they're paying you for 40 hours of work. Their reaction is probably like,
802. 01:04:47 uh, well, what were you doing the rest of the time? But that's, that's kind of an organizational.
803. 01:04:53 Yeah. And that's for me, like, that's a sign that I'm not in the right place. Like, I want to be
804. 01:04:59 in an organization that recognizes that I am not going to be going all out for 40 hours a week.
805. 01:05:06 And if I kind of go with the ebbs and flows, and I really like hit it hard when I'm in that
806. 01:05:12 flow state, then you will get more out of me than if I was just punching a clock and putting in
807. 01:05:19 the 40 hours. And ultimately that's a win-win for everybody involved. But I also recognize that
808. 01:05:26 not everybody is in that situation. So what are you going to do with that? I think my approach,
809. 01:05:30 like I said, would just be to leave X number of hours open. But then if you really want to optimize
810. 01:05:36 your own performance, you can take this approach and only give yourself credit for the stuff that
811. 01:05:40 you actually actually do. I don't think this unscheduled thing in this section, though, like I had, I had
812. 01:05:46 issues with this. I think, I think he's, there's some gold in what he's telling us to do.
813. 01:05:53 But these hard and fast rules I don't like talks about don't work more than 20 hours on a project
814. 01:06:00 in a week, don't work more than five hours on a project in a day. You must exercise play or
815. 01:06:04 dance for at least an hour per day. You must take at least one day a week off from work.
816. 01:06:09 And then you're aiming for just those 30 minute blocks. If you go over that because you're in a
817. 01:06:12 flow state, great. I feel like those could be helpful. I also feel like you said that it's not
818. 01:06:21 going to be a accurate representation of the modern knowledge workers world, however.
819. 01:06:28 So I do think that there's value in putting the fun stuff on your calendar. And I would
820. 01:06:35 prioritize that stuff, but maybe not to the level that he's telling you to do it. And then I would
821. 01:06:41 put work on my calendar. I do put work on my time block plan, not just after the fact, so I get
822. 01:06:46 credit for it. But also I recognize I'm dealing with some procrastination stuff. So maybe I should
823. 01:06:51 follow his advice. I don't know. Sure. Yeah, that's, that's the kicker here, right? Like, you can't
824. 01:06:57 really diss on this unless, unless you've tried it. If you're a procrastinator, which
825. 01:07:05 I think in today's world, almost everybody would say they are in some form. The question is, what
826. 01:07:11 do you, what do you do about it? Trying to record when I've worked on things for 30 minutes,
827. 01:07:16 solid. I have no idea how that would work because I have so many things that pop up in the day that
828. 01:07:24 there are many days in a week and across a month where one 30 minute block doesn't exist.
829. 01:07:34 Because if I get 20 minutes to work on something, like here, here's an example. So the article I
830. 01:07:39 released this morning about the stream deck and omni focus and such. And I was talking about how
831. 01:07:43 I use this upper and lower bounds thing to, to do that. I had to have a timer on my phone
832. 01:07:50 that I could start and stop to tell me if I had gotten 30 minutes working on writing each day.
833. 01:07:59 Because I was regularly getting 10 minutes in, somebody would come over, hey, Joe, I've got
834. 01:08:06 sure, great, we go fix that, come back, start in again, 12 minutes later. Hey, Joe, I've got,
835. 01:08:13 so trying to get 30 minutes in one block is difficult. Now, I could go somewhere else and hide.
836. 01:08:20 But then your phone's going off your, I could leave my phone behind, but then you got people
837. 01:08:26 walking around trying to find you because they know you're in the building. Like it's just not,
838. 01:08:30 it's not a thing that works. So I'm better off, have a timer, start and stop it. And that's how I
839. 01:08:37 worked my way towards releasing that article just because you do not know what you're going to run
840. 01:08:45 into each day. So trying to record 30 minute blocks, like I could record maybe five minute blocks,
841. 01:08:50 but that's a bit absurd. So yeah, anyway, my point is, I don't know how, I mean, the type of work
842. 01:08:59 that was being done at the time, I don't think fits into like what you're saying, the modern
843. 01:09:04 knowledge workers scenario. I don't know how to translate it in this particular case. So there's
844. 01:09:11 that. Yeah, even for somebody like me, this is not appealing because I don't want to only take credit
845. 01:09:20 for the time that I spend after the fact, like I get the value in that, but it completely breaks
846. 01:09:29 my time tracking. Yeah, sure. Because if I was doing that, you know, I'm not starting the timer
847. 01:09:34 when I switch the task, which that's the low maintenance version of this for me is like,
848. 01:09:41 okay, I'm going to be working on this thing now. So I'm going to start a timer. The good enough
849. 01:09:45 version of this for me is I look at the hours that are in my my timer report at the end of the week.
850. 01:09:51 And I say really, I wrote for 20 hours doesn't feel like I wrote for 20 hours. Let's see what I
851. 01:09:56 actually published. And then I'm either either feel good about those hours, or I feel like, oh,
852. 01:10:01 I must have not been focused. I better put up some more controls to block out the distractions.
853. 01:10:07 Sure. And I sit down to write or clearly define the things that I'm going to be working on so
854. 01:10:12 that I don't feel that resistance when I sit down at the keyboard in the morning.
855. 01:10:16 That's good enough for me. Maybe you could say that this approach is better. I don't know. Maybe
856. 01:10:23 you could say this approach really only works for executives. Again, I don't know. But I think the
857. 01:10:30 real value to be had here is in figuring out how to apply these principles for yourself. Sure.
858. 01:10:35 Because you're right, the system that he defines here. I don't see this really working for anybody
859. 01:10:41 at this point. Yeah, I don't know who this would apply to. It's a challenge. Well, I shouldn't say
860. 01:10:48 that the people that it could apply to are folks like you. But I'm not sure that that's the right
861. 01:10:54 move either. Now, that said, this next section though, working in the flow state, like that's one that
862. 01:11:02 I think everybody would say is a good thing to do. But this is going to put me right back in the
863. 01:11:08 same solo. When do I do this? Yep. But working in the flow state, of course, he brings up our friend
864. 01:11:14 Mahali. And it occurred to me when he did that, that Mahali's work has been around for a very
865. 01:11:22 long time. Yes, it has. This is not necessarily a new thing. So unless this was added in a later
866. 01:11:29 revision, going back to 1989 with Mahali, Chief Sentmihali's flow work is, I guess, somewhat impressive.
867. 01:11:39 But I was kind of caught off guard as far as where he went with this because he's essentially
868. 01:11:47 talking about how to put yourself into this flow state, right? Yeah, yeah. And what I got was a
869. 01:11:56 plea to start meditating. Which can you say that that is wrong? I don't think I can say it's
870. 01:12:04 wrong is exactly off of what I was expecting. Exactly. That is this book in a nutshell.
871. 01:12:09 He was like, not what I was expecting. But I don't know how to argue with this. Let's go here. Oh,
872. 01:12:15 and I'm going to take you. Yeah, so this chapter starts with him explaining the flow state and how
873. 01:12:21 you got to turn off that critical, logical part of your brain. And then he takes you through a
874. 01:12:26 two minute mindfulness meditation exercise. Yeah. Now that I understand for people who don't
875. 01:12:33 meditate, and I include myself in that camp, by the way, that you feel like, well, I don't need to
876. 01:12:41 follow that. I can get into a flow state without mindfulness meditation. And you're probably right.
877. 01:12:49 But I also have read or listened to Chris Bailey has an audible original called How to Train Your
878. 01:12:56 Brain. It's a fascinating short audible book on the productivity benefits of mindfulness meditation.
879. 01:13:04 And that specific perspective with that book, I say book, it's an audio program that I think is
880. 01:13:13 very appealing to people. And when it was number two on audible for a very long time behind like
881. 01:13:18 Obama's book and the Matthew McConaughey one green lights or something like that for a very long
882. 01:13:24 time. Sure. Having gone through that book, Chris did a bunch of research because he's Chris.
883. 01:13:29 And he found a statistic that said something like for every minute of mindfulness meditation,
884. 01:13:37 you practice in a day, you gain back something like seven minutes of productive work up until
885. 01:13:44 about 15 minutes per day, at that at which point you still are gaining benefit from it. But there's
886. 01:13:50 diminishing returns. Sure. I can't argue with that. I think that's kind of what he's talking about
887. 01:13:57 right here in this chapter. Yeah. Just Chris Bailey did it a lot, a lot better. This is actually
888. 01:14:02 one of my action items because I've gone through that audible original. And David talks about this
889. 01:14:09 all the time on the Focus podcast and I talked to Chris about it periodically. I have so many
890. 01:14:16 people in my life who are extolling the virtues of mindfulness meditation. Every single time I hear
891. 01:14:23 him talk about him, like, yeah, you're probably right. I need to give this an honest shot. It's not
892. 01:14:27 that I haven't given it an honest shot, but reading this, I'm going to give it a shot again.
893. 01:14:33 Yeah. Hopefully it sticks this time. I'm paying for 10% happier. I just need to follow through and
894. 01:14:40 do it. Yeah. You're on 10% now? I thought you were still in what headspace? When did you switch?
895. 01:14:47 I think I was working with 10% happier because I liked the widget a little bit better. Oh, that's
896. 01:14:52 great. Headspace one, headspace one just shows you or it adapts dynamically. So it's given me
897. 01:14:57 like a sleep story at the end of the day if I haven't meditated. That's not what I want. You
898. 01:15:02 know, I want today's meditation. And I'm not going to promise to stick with this again. I'm just
899. 01:15:07 going to try it one more time. Maybe this one more time. Well, see, that's the thing with all
900. 01:15:14 these books that we read, Mortimer Adler writes in topical reading, they all come together and
901. 01:15:20 I'm believing at some point this is going to click for me. And maybe this is the point where I realize
902. 01:15:25 that this mindfulness meditation, this is actually related to quieting my logical brain so I can
903. 01:15:32 focus on just starting the creative process. Maybe this is the thing. If I do this right before I
904. 01:15:39 start work, that makes it easier for me to enter into that flow state and crank out the words in
905. 01:15:44 the morning. If I did that, I would get a lot of value out of this. So maybe, you know, maybe
906. 01:15:49 that's what makes it stick this time. I'm not sure. I'm going to try it though. Two minutes. It's
907. 01:15:53 all you're allowed. We'll see. Two minutes, mindfulness meditation, pay attention to why
908. 01:15:59 you're procrastinating in those two minutes and it will magically put you in a flow state 100% of
909. 01:16:04 the time. I don't think it's going to work that way. I do think one of the reasons that Chris did
910. 01:16:10 the audible version of the book and not actually wrote the book was there are pieces of it where
911. 01:16:16 he takes you through a guided mindfulness meditation, it's just a couple minutes. So I feel like the
912. 01:16:21 ones that he takes you through as he's explaining the process is very similar to what Dr. Fiori is
913. 01:16:27 talking about in this book. So I don't think he's wrong in this process. I totally get your
914. 01:16:34 snarky response to this. Like, all you need to do is this two minute thing though, because it does
915. 01:16:39 feel very prescriptive. Like, just do this and the heavens will open and everything becomes easy.
916. 01:16:46 But again, I'm not sure that that's wrong. I don't think it's as easy as he paints it to be like,
917. 01:16:54 just do this. Like the actual focusing on your breath is what makes meditation so hard. Your
918. 01:17:00 brain is so hyperactive. You got to train it to slow down and focus on something. But I do think
919. 01:17:06 that if you're able to do that, there probably is quite a bit of benefit to be gleaned there.
920. 01:17:11 Yeah, I mean, there could be. I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad thing and I'm not saying,
921. 01:17:16 but I'm also not going to tell you that this two minute meditation thing is going to be a
922. 01:17:19 magic bullet to put you in flow state. Yes, no matter what I do. That I agree with. That I agree
923. 01:17:24 with that transition from doing the mindfulness piece to doing the work. Like, I'm 80D right?
924. 01:17:31 Transitions are my nemesis and trying to move from one over to the other is always going to be
925. 01:17:38 an entertaining process. So I'm very skeptical. Yeah, and just to clarify, I'm not saying that
926. 01:17:46 if I do this, it is going to produce the magical effect that he promises, but I do think maybe it
927. 01:17:52 will make it easier. Sure. So on a scale of zero to kneel, it's somewhere in the middle.
928. 01:17:57 Yes, I'm with you. I'm not going to say it doesn't. I would have to set up everything I'm
929. 01:18:03 going to work on after I'm done with that. Sit in my, I'd have to stay here at my desk
930. 01:18:08 and do it right here so that whenever I come out of that, I could go straight into it.
931. 01:18:14 Maybe that would help, but if I were to go somewhere else where I could sit in peace and do this and
932. 01:18:21 then come over here, the process from over there to here, I'll get lost every time.
933. 01:18:26 Sure. Every time.
934. 01:18:29 Anyway, we don't need to keep going on that fine tuning your progress is the next piece here.
935. 01:18:34 And the only real thing that I got out of this was pay attention to your desires to
936. 01:18:41 procrastinate and continue to change your systems. I hated this chapter.
937. 01:18:46 Week and iterate. I was like, okay, this is all it is, pay attention, change it, fix it, if it
938. 01:18:53 doesn't work. Yeah. That's what this is. This is the cop-out caveat disclaimer chapter saying,
939. 01:18:58 hey, if it doesn't work, change it. That's what this is.
940. 01:19:00 Yeah. He talks about setting effective goals in this chapter.
941. 01:19:03 You know how I feel about goals. Oh, I knew you were going to bring this up. This is why I
942. 01:19:07 didn't even mention it. I knew you would bring it up. And the other thing that he talks about
943. 01:19:11 is resilience and the planned setbacks. I feel like this is kind of an interesting idea where
944. 01:19:17 you plan these setbacks ahead of time so that you can learn from them and figure out where you
945. 01:19:24 tend to freak out about things so you can create new systems where you don't freak out about things.
946. 01:19:28 I don't know anybody who is going to take this approach. Why things are hard enough.
947. 01:19:34 Why would you plan these setbacks just to observe yourself like a lab rat? That makes no sense.
948. 01:19:41 And the resilience thing, absolutely resilience, that makes a ton of sense.
949. 01:19:47 But you're not going to get anything out of what he tells you about resilience in this particular
950. 01:19:51 chapter. You need to go read Grit by Angela Duckworth instead.
951. 01:19:54 Sure. Yeah.
952. 01:19:56 So he talks very high level about a couple different things in this chapter, which I feel
953. 01:20:01 don't give you any real tangible, like, this is what you can do with this. He talks about the
954. 01:20:07 five types of distractions. And I guess he gives you a few pointers and setting effective goals.
955. 01:20:13 But of all the chapters and the way that they're written, I feel like this one is the one that
956. 01:20:19 has the least in terms of now I can apply this in some way, shape, or form.
957. 01:20:26 Yeah. There's not really anything in this that you're going to come away from and say,
958. 01:20:29 "That is my action item." This is just a fluffy motivational talk, I guess, is what this is.
959. 01:20:38 So this is to fill out the non-existent third section.
960. 01:20:41 Possibly. Yeah. So fine tuning your progress. And then he wraps up the book with the procrastinator
961. 01:20:48 in your life. Basically, what do you do if you have someone in your life who is a procrastinator?
962. 01:20:54 In which case, he kind of reiterates some of the self-talk pieces, but it's not self-talk,
963. 01:21:01 of course, it's talking to that person. Focus on the positive. What's the little amount you can give
964. 01:21:07 me here instead of saying, "You have to do this. Could you choose to XYZ?" These are the things that
965. 01:21:15 he's recommending there. Basically, all you're doing is taking the same tactics and just
966. 01:21:20 turning it towards somebody else instead of yourself. I like this chapter. I think this is a
967. 01:21:25 great way to end it because, number one, he's basically summarizing a lot of what he's told you
968. 01:21:29 in the book, but he does add a couple really specific things that I think are really helpful.
969. 01:21:33 Like, one of the ways that he phrases it, and maybe I just missed this in the first part, but I feel
970. 01:21:38 like when you're talking about working with somebody else, this makes it more clear, don't demand
971. 01:21:45 compliance, but invite commitment and function as a consultant, not a director. Can you apply that
972. 01:21:52 personally? Yeah, but if I am a manager working with somebody else and I'm trying to get the best
973. 01:21:59 work out of them, and I want to do this in a fair and not manipulative way, this is absolutely
974. 01:22:06 great advice. Then there's a whole bunch of specific things, kind of like a list of things to keep
975. 01:22:12 in mind when you're working with somebody. Then he ends it with a story about a husband and wife,
976. 01:22:17 which is the scenario in the back of my mind is I'm going through this, it's like, "Well,
977. 01:22:21 that's great. If I'm a manager and I'm a boss over somebody and I can tell them what to do,
978. 01:22:26 but what if I don't always get my way? How do I use this then?" He sort of addresses that with
979. 01:22:33 that story. There isn't really a specific point by point, this is what you do, which is good because
980. 01:22:38 I wouldn't have liked it if he had done that. Essentially, what you have to do is you have to
981. 01:22:42 compromise. You have to be okay with not getting your way all the time, and you're going to apply
982. 01:22:49 these things, and you're going to invite the person to make these discoveries and figure things out
983. 01:22:53 on their own, which is what you have to do. You can't just say, "My way or the highway," you're not
984. 01:22:58 going to have a relationship for very long if you do it that way. So true. Absolutely right.
985. 01:23:05 I mean, it's relationship building is what that is. I think the part about that that really stood
986. 01:23:13 out to me is that the type of conversation that you're talking about is very, very similar to the
987. 01:23:19 one that I've had with my wife that's been ongoing about ADD. These are very similar
988. 01:23:24 conversations. Here's what I'm struggling with. I didn't intend to insult you. I didn't intend
989. 01:23:31 to leave you hanging. I just completely didn't realize what was going on. I just completely spaced.
990. 01:23:37 That type of conversation is what he's encouraging here, or that needs to come out of having read this.
991. 01:23:46 Yes. Relationship building. Be honest. Be open. Talk about things.
992. 01:23:51 That's how he ends the book. It's just over. There is no conclusion wrapping it all up with a
993. 01:23:56 nice little bow, which I actually appreciated. Chapter nine functions that way already.
994. 01:24:02 It didn't need to be any longer than it was. I am thankful that he chose to end it there.
995. 01:24:09 All right. Any action items, sir? I've got a couple.
996. 01:24:15 I mentioned the procrastination log. I'm not going to do this the way that he describes it,
997. 01:24:23 but I am going to commit to if I recognize myself procrastinating, jotting it down in my boudgeau.
998. 01:24:29 I don't know how you're going to hold me accountable to this because I don't want
999. 01:24:33 to go for a target number of log entries, and I don't care what they look like. I just want to
1000. 01:24:41 notice them. I don't know what the next step is going to be once I notice them,
1001. 01:24:47 but I know that they're there. I'm going to try the act of writing them down. I'm going to see
1002. 01:24:52 what that triggers, basically, if that makes any sense. Then I am going to commit to playing
1003. 01:25:01 every day. I feel like I'm doing this already. He in the book talked about an hour of exercise,
1004. 01:25:09 play, or dance every day. I'm not dancing. Sorry. Nobody wants to see me dance for an hour. I do.
1005. 01:25:17 I want to see that live stream that. I'll watch it. I bet I could get a lot of people to watch
1006. 01:25:24 that one. I'm doing this already. It's a cheating action item with the exercise, but
1007. 01:25:33 basically with this action, I want to just be a little bit more intentional about making sure
1008. 01:25:37 that stuff gets on the calendar first. Then the other one that I've got is to try meditating again.
1009. 01:25:43 Again, I have no idea if this is actually going to stick this time. I've done this enough times
1010. 01:25:49 that at this point I'm going into it skeptical. We'll see. I think positioning it at the beginning
1011. 01:25:56 of my day as a primer for work maybe is the thing that will make it stick for me. We'll see.
1012. 01:26:05 For action items, I have two, one of which is a distortion of what's recommended in the book.
1013. 01:26:12 I'm going to call it a procrastination review. This is kind of morphing a lot of things
1014. 01:26:22 that's recommended here. A lot of what he talks about is paying attention to when you procrastinate
1015. 01:26:27 and why, asking yourself questions about why it happened, keeping the log, all of these things,
1016. 01:26:35 the unscheduled and such. If I take all of those because I don't think I'm going to be able to be
1017. 01:26:40 a smart enough person to log things when they happen, I don't think I'm going to be able to do that.
1018. 01:26:45 But I would be able to see it at the end of the day. What I want to do is I want to take the next
1019. 01:26:52 two weeks and do a procrastination review at the end of every day. I think that'll be real
1020. 01:26:59 simple for me to do because I'm already doing things like logging things in my bullet journal,
1021. 01:27:05 which is a real one, not a fake one like yours. I want to do that procrastination review on a
1022. 01:27:11 daily basis just to help me see when those things happen because I think that would help me then
1023. 01:27:17 see when it's happening in the moment because I don't think I'm going to see it unless I do that.
1024. 01:27:21 I want to try, you mentioned the play every day thing, I want to take that on, but I think mine's
1025. 01:27:32 going to be a little bit different in that it's probably got to be off of the eight to four
1026. 01:27:36 timeframe or it's got to be like you were saying earlier, maybe a somewhat extended lunch.
1027. 01:27:42 So maybe if I shorten my overall workday and do a longer lunch, you know, sometimes I can do,
1028. 01:27:48 well, a lot of times I could do extended lunches here without deviating from day to day stuff. I
1029. 01:27:55 would just keep my plate with me so people think and see that I'm still at lunch. There you go.
1030. 01:28:01 But I would like to try. Work the system. That's what you got to do.
1031. 01:28:03 Right. I got to figure something out here. This is a great time for me to be doing so because
1032. 01:28:10 we're now living in an apartment. So I don't have a lot of like house commitment type stuff that
1033. 01:28:15 keeps me busy when I'm off of work. So doing things after hours is actually quite simple as well.
1034. 01:28:19 And I could easily incorporate my kids into it too. So I want to try to figure that out. This is a
1035. 01:28:26 good time to do that. So no idea what the results of that will be, but it'll be an experiment in
1036. 01:28:31 the less. So that's what I'd like to do there. All right. Great fun.
1037. 01:28:35 Style and rating. I suppose this is my book. So as far as style goes, we've talked about this on
1038. 01:28:43 and off through this in that it's a little disjointed to follow things. You really have to look at the
1039. 01:28:52 high level of what he's saying. You can't nitpick him. Like you can't follow the word for word because
1040. 01:28:57 that doesn't matter in this one. You cannot follow the details here because you'll get lost. Like I
1041. 01:29:04 did in a number of cases where it's like you didn't define three dimensional thinking. I thought you
1042. 01:29:11 would like I was trying to find it and reread a couple sections because like did I miss this?
1043. 01:29:16 I appreciate you explaining because I got a better view of it now than what I did reading the book.
1044. 01:29:20 So that's a thing. So my point is this book doesn't seem to have, I don't feel has the flow of a lot
1045. 01:29:29 of other books. I feel like it's written quite quickly. Maybe it didn't have the editing pass on
1046. 01:29:35 it that it should have from an overarching level. Maybe that's why it's not a three part book. I don't
1047. 01:29:41 know. But these are things that I it made it kind of difficult for me to read. I don't know if you had
1048. 01:29:47 the same. Hopefully you'll tell me. But this didn't this wasn't one that I could just sit down and go.
1049. 01:29:52 I had to kind of work at reading this one. It wasn't something I could just sit and you know go into a
1050. 01:29:59 flow state and read it. Maybe it's because I didn't meditate before I read it. So that is something
1051. 01:30:04 that I struggled with. As far as how to rate it, there's a lot of stuff here that I just don't see
1052. 01:30:10 how it fits. And some of that of course is a factor of when it was written. The age of the book is
1053. 01:30:17 showing through on this one. So maybe this book has a lifespan. You know some books are like that
1054. 01:30:23 where they're written for a time period. And once you've moved on beyond that time period,
1055. 01:30:27 they'll just fall off. And they're not a thing you should read anymore because they just don't apply.
1056. 01:30:32 Maybe this is one of those and we're reaching the end of its life span. Don't know. It's very
1057. 01:30:39 possible. But I think I'm going to put this at a 3.30. I am because there's so much of this that I
1058. 01:30:47 struggled with. There's so much of it that I cannot apply. Again, he's reading our mail at the beginning.
1059. 01:30:53 And then after like chapter two or three, it's like, okay, you lost me. Like this is just I don't
1060. 01:31:00 know how to do anything with anything you're saying. And yet I have a couple action items. So
1061. 01:31:04 maybe I'll change my mind. And this will be one that I'll re-rate at a five later on. But right now,
1062. 01:31:10 it's kind of a pain to me. So I'm going to put it at 3.0.
1063. 01:31:14 All right. So let me ask you a question. So with getting things done, for example,
1064. 01:31:21 David Allen updated it because the original version was talking about different apps and things that
1065. 01:31:29 were not relevant anymore. How would you feel about this book being updated? Would you want to read
1066. 01:31:41 one that is updated and expanded for the information age or not? I think I would. I would love to see
1067. 01:31:51 how it translates from someone who wrote this and is into this system. I would love to know how he
1068. 01:31:58 would translate it into today's modern workforce. Sure. I agree that that translation needs to be
1069. 01:32:04 done. I would rather do it myself than have him do it for me. Sure. Yeah. So I, it is older.
1070. 01:32:14 It's almost as old as I am. And as I read that, you know, when in 1989, when it was written,
1071. 01:32:23 you know, I was seven years old. And I'd try to picture back when I was seven, the world that I
1072. 01:32:32 lived in and my parents worked in, how would they have interpreted this book at that point?
1073. 01:32:39 And I feel like it's probably pretty good. The unscheduled specifically, like we talked to
1074. 01:32:46 a lot of specific things in there that I didn't necessarily agree with. I wouldn't do it that way.
1075. 01:32:52 But I feel like the general idea of the unscheduled is really good. We have trouble translating the
1076. 01:33:00 specifics of it now. But I think the core concept is good. And I don't know how I would have reacted
1077. 01:33:08 to that idea in 1989. Also, I feel like that putting the play stuff in first and then letting
1078. 01:33:18 work happen around it. You know, it's another way of saying that the big rocks by Stephen Covey,
1079. 01:33:23 time blocking, hyper scheduling, however you want to define it. You know, these are all
1080. 01:33:30 iterations of this idea. Would we be talking about time blocking if Dr. Fior had not talked
1081. 01:33:38 about the unscheduled in 1989? I don't know. I feel like these things build on each other.
1082. 01:33:44 So I'm trying to view this as like its historical role in relation to all the other books that we
1083. 01:33:51 had have read. As I mentioned at the beginning, it's not what I expected. I'm actually thankful
1084. 01:33:56 for that. It's a book about procrastination. And there wasn't a single mention of the Pomodoro method.
1085. 01:34:02 So if you're coming at it from a recent historian's perspective of the productivity space,
1086. 01:34:12 I mean, that really tells you all you need to know about this because immediately we associate
1087. 01:34:16 procrastination with Pomodoro method. It's not that at all. You do have to kind of translate it
1088. 01:34:23 for someone who has a history reading the types of books that we read. I feel like there is some
1089. 01:34:28 good stuff in here as evidenced by the action items that we have. I did not expect to read a
1090. 01:34:37 30 plus year old productivity book and walk away with the action items that I did. So I feel like
1091. 01:34:45 that is evidence of a pretty solid message. In terms of this style, I didn't really care for the
1092. 01:34:51 style. It tells a lot of stories about people that he's worked with. For the right person,
1093. 01:34:57 those stories are very effective. I wanted to skip most of them to be honest though.
1094. 01:35:01 Yes. So I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting a little bit more cynical about stories when I
1095. 01:35:10 read them in books, period. I think that that is a possibility because I understand the role
1096. 01:35:17 immediately when I start one of those stories, unless it's framed like Adam Grant did and think
1097. 01:35:22 again. Or Ryan Holiday is another person who I like their stories. But the stereotypical,
1098. 01:35:29 I'm going to tell you a story now in the middle of a productivity book. I know exactly what's
1099. 01:35:34 coming and I feel like I can skip that and not miss anything for the most part.
1100. 01:35:38 I am struggling a little bit with where to rate this. I think it's a little bit better than
1101. 01:35:46 the 3.0 that you picked. I'm trying to decide if it's a 4.0 or not.
1102. 01:35:55 I don't know. I guess there isn't a whole lot new here for me based on the stuff that we've already
1103. 01:36:01 read. And it's not the type of book that I would recommend on a top 5, top 10 list. It is dated.
1104. 01:36:09 You do have to translate stuff. So there's a lot going against it. I did enjoy it. I'm going to
1105. 01:36:16 rate it, I think, at 3.5 and David Sparks is going to yell at me because he hates those 0.5 ratings,
1106. 01:36:21 which to defend that for a second. To defend that for a second, these 5 star ratings,
1107. 01:36:29 this is totally based off of the star ratings on Amazon. So you look at a book on Amazon and you
1108. 01:36:36 have like 4.5 stars. Just the little icons, not like the numbers, but you look at it and you're like,
1109. 01:36:43 oh, that's not quite 4, not a little bit more than 3. That's the whole purpose.
1110. 01:36:48 I understand why people maybe don't like those, but I'm going to say 3.5.
1111. 01:36:52 They want you to do 3.175. Not going to happen. Nope, 3.5.
1112. 01:36:56 All right. Well, we can put this one on the shelf. What's next, Mike?
1113. 01:37:02 Next is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. This is one of those books that I have referenced
1114. 01:37:09 over the years because I have listened to the audible version before I realized that I should
1115. 01:37:15 be reading physical books all the time. So this will be the first time that I have actually read
1116. 01:37:20 read this book, but the second time that I have gone through it, and it really impacted me when I
1117. 01:37:26 listened to it the first time. So I think there's a lot to talk about in this one. Hopefully it's
1118. 01:37:34 as good as I remember. I'm going to have to buy it again. I found out because I have this book
1119. 01:37:41 somewhere, but we moved and it's in a box somewhere. I have no clue where it's at.
1120. 01:37:49 I went digging through book boxes in our storage unit. It's like, I've got no clue. No clue.
1121. 01:37:54 So I'm going to buy it again. So anyway, I'll buy Leaders Eat Last again, but then after that,
1122. 01:38:01 we're going to go through digital body language. This is by Erica Dewan. This was written and just
1123. 01:38:06 released here about a week and a half ago. The tagline on it is how to build trust and connection
1124. 01:38:12 no matter the distance. And given how much we've had to do with remote relationships over the last
1125. 01:38:19 year, year and a half, I feel like this could be good for us to talk about. It was like, how do you
1126. 01:38:23 manage relationships from a distance? I feel like that could be a good conversation.
1127. 01:38:29 Absolutely.
1128. 01:38:30 So there you go. Digital body language. We'll see what comes of that. I don't have an additional
1129. 01:38:38 gap book this time around. I have not picked up the second book of Hitchhikers this time around,
1130. 01:38:44 but do you have a gap book, Mike?
1131. 01:38:46 I do and it's not a fiction book, sorry. But I have to read what we've been starting to do
1132. 01:38:54 some strategy stuff for Blanca Media. We've got a team retreat coming up. And so a while back,
1133. 01:39:01 we all attended a workshop by Donald Miller. And he has a book that goes along with that,
1134. 01:39:07 which we are going to be talking about when I have to go to Kansas City, not too far in the future.
1135. 01:39:11 So I'm going to be going through business made simple by Donald Miller.
1136. 01:39:18 And I've gone through some of Donald Miller's other stuff and it's good. I think I've shared
1137. 01:39:25 on this podcast about how I saw him actually at entry leadership a while back.
1138. 01:39:29 And he's sharing the stage with Seth Godin and Alan Mulally and Dan Kathy.
1139. 01:39:37 And he's definitely, the Sesame Street thing, one of these things is not like the other.
1140. 01:39:43 Yep. He's definitely a different style than a lot of those people.
1141. 01:39:50 But I do think his message is actually pretty good. Storybrand was really good, I thought.
1142. 01:39:55 So we'll see if this one is good. Sure. It sounds interesting. Well, I hope that's a good one for you.
1143. 01:40:02 That all said, thanks to everybody who's stuck with us through our fun tech adventure today.
1144. 01:40:09 I am going to be doing some work next week on this because this has to be better.
1145. 01:40:15 I'm not going to deal with what we've got here today. So thanks to you who have joined us live
1146. 01:40:20 today on the YouTube channel. Super grateful to have folks. We don't always get a chance to
1147. 01:40:25 respond to everybody there, but we do keep up with what's going on in the chat and reference
1148. 01:40:29 occasionally. But thank you to you who have joined us. Also, if you haven't already, check us out
1149. 01:40:37 on our Bookworm Club. If you want to check that out, go to bookworm.fm/membership.
1150. 01:40:43 And it's a simple $5 a month. And for that, you get access to a private area in the forums at
1151. 01:40:49 club.bookworm.fm. You get some special wallpaper, some old gat book episodes, all of Mike's mine
1152. 01:40:56 node files. There's a lot going on in that whole system. So check that out if you haven't already.
1153. 01:41:03 We're super appreciative to those of you who do that because you do help us keep the lights on.
1154. 01:41:06 So huge thanks to those of you who are Bookworm Club members.
1155. 01:41:11 All right. So if you're reading along with us, which you should be, pick up LeaderZ Last by Simon
1156. 01:41:17 Sinek. And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.