122: Digital Body Language by Erica Dhawan

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1. 00:00:00 I love that as soon as we hit record, people start talking in the background.
2. 00:00:03 It's true.
3. 00:00:05 So for those who are listening, welcome to Bookworm, and Joe had VBS at church this week.
4. 00:00:11 And since I record at church now, there's potentially background noise.
5. 00:00:14 My apologies if Mike isn't able to get it out of editing, but there's that.
6. 00:00:21 Life goes on.
7. 00:00:22 Sometimes you have to deal with things, right?
8. 00:00:24 So my apologies.
9. 00:00:25 I'll work my magic.
10. 00:00:27 Anyway, this has nothing to do with Bookworm.
11. 00:00:29 We have a few things to follow up on here, one of which I didn't put in the outline and
12. 00:00:33 I did not warn you about.
13. 00:00:35 So my apologies on this, but I was looking through some of what the sweet setup has been
14. 00:00:40 up to lately, and been trying to keep up with some of the obsidian course stuff.
15. 00:00:46 Is it a course?
16. 00:00:47 I didn't look into it too close.
17. 00:00:48 What is it, Mike?
18. 00:00:49 It's a course.
19. 00:00:50 Okay.
20. 00:00:51 But the thing that you're probably referring to at the moment is the workshop.
21. 00:00:55 Okay.
22. 00:00:56 All right.
23. 00:00:57 So the two obsidian is the workshop that I did, which breaking news here for Bookworm listeners,
24. 00:01:03 we're going to be doing it again because I shared, I think, last time how it was very
25. 00:01:07 successful, a lot of positive feedback on it.
26. 00:01:10 So we're going to run it back.
27. 00:01:12 Nice.
28. 00:01:13 Nice.
29. 00:01:14 Well, I saw that and I know about course stuff and I was hoping because I'm trying to process
30. 00:01:21 this stuff.
31. 00:01:22 How does this compare to what Nick is doing over it linking your thinking?
32. 00:01:26 What's the difference between the two?
33. 00:01:28 Why would I pick one over the other?
34. 00:01:29 Just out of, for my own curiosity.
35. 00:01:31 Well, the correct answer is see all of the above.
36. 00:01:35 Fair enough.
37. 00:01:36 Fair enough.
38. 00:01:38 So I learned a lot from Nick's linking your thinking course and I 100% recommend that
39. 00:01:45 that works.
40. 00:01:46 It's a cohort based class.
41. 00:01:48 So it's like six weeks of live sessions and then some self-paced stuff and you have to
42. 00:01:53 like do the work along with everybody else.
43. 00:01:57 It's a different approach.
44. 00:01:59 That's kind of like you can use whatever tool you want.
45. 00:02:02 And here's the key concepts for like working with your ideas.
46. 00:02:08 He talks about the idea emergent stuff, like how to set it up so you can find your things
47. 00:02:12 from top to bottom or bottom to top or even like side to side.
48. 00:02:16 And he talks a lot about PKM in general, like the different aspects of it.
49. 00:02:24 Basically if you follow his YouTube channel at all, it's like that, but better.
50. 00:02:30 And the obsidian course that we're working on is going to cover some basic elements of
51. 00:02:36 PKM, but it's not going to be like here's everything you need to know.
52. 00:02:41 Now piece it together yourself like Nick does.
53. 00:02:44 Sure.
54. 00:02:45 Put in the work if you're going to get the most value out of Nick's course.
55. 00:02:48 That's just the way that it's designed.
56. 00:02:50 It's higher level.
57. 00:02:51 Whereas like the zero tube city and workshop, the whole goal there was like people are,
58. 00:02:56 they've heard of PKM, but primarily they're just apple nerds, you know, and they like
59. 00:02:59 playing with the shiny new apps.
60. 00:03:01 So how do I get started with PKM in two hours?
61. 00:03:06 And so like we're going to walk you through the very basic elements of it, help you identify
62. 00:03:11 like one problem you're going to solve, build a solution to that, and then you can use that
63. 00:03:14 going forward and you can bolt things onto that as you see fit.
64. 00:03:17 A lot of like specific stuff on here's how you do this kind of thing in obsidian.
65. 00:03:24 There'll be videos in there like how I do my book notes.
66. 00:03:27 Rose is making one I think on like how you would run a Dungeons and Dragons game.
67. 00:03:30 Oh sure.
68. 00:03:31 Sure.
69. 00:03:32 Using like one of the dice roller plugins and things like that.
70. 00:03:35 So lots of different like workflow examples for if you want to do this sort of thing, here's
71. 00:03:39 how you do it.
72. 00:03:40 But linking your thinking, the cool thing about that is everybody walks out of that with like
73. 00:03:45 their own version of their system and it's always very different.
74. 00:03:50 You showcase your capstone project, they call it as you go.
75. 00:03:53 And so you get ideas from how other people are doing things and you kind of cobble together
76. 00:03:57 something that's uniquely your own.
77. 00:04:00 Whereas people who come to the suite set up typically are like, I want to know how to
78. 00:04:03 do this thing.
79. 00:04:04 Yeah.
80. 00:04:05 You know, how can you help me take action as quickly as possible.
81. 00:04:09 So different approach really.
82. 00:04:11 Okay.
83. 00:04:12 That helps.
84. 00:04:13 Thanks for that.
85. 00:04:14 Other follow up, I have one that I had on my list for from last time.
86. 00:04:21 That was very simply lead my people.
87. 00:04:26 And that has actually gone pretty well.
88. 00:04:28 And I think some of what we're going to talk about today is going to play into that very
89. 00:04:31 heavily.
90. 00:04:32 But the process that I've been going through is just making sure that whenever I am talking
91. 00:04:37 to people and I'm working with the folks who do a lot of stuff with me and for me, I'm
92. 00:04:43 making sure that that process is when it's very easy for them and that I'm involved in
93. 00:04:49 their day today because of my role and such and just making sure that I'm not making things
94. 00:04:55 difficult for them.
95. 00:04:57 And so far that seems to be going well.
96. 00:04:59 I've had a couple of folks thank me already for being willing to step in and do some stuff
97. 00:05:04 with them.
98. 00:05:05 I don't know, seems like it's going well, but it's forever a task to be done, not one that's
99. 00:05:09 going to be done in two weeks.
100. 00:05:11 If it were, everybody would be a leader, I'm sure.
101. 00:05:15 But alas, here we are.
102. 00:05:18 That's what I got.
103. 00:05:19 What do you have, Mike?
104. 00:05:20 I've got two.
105. 00:05:22 One that I did complete is think bigger.
106. 00:05:26 And as I am sitting here recording this to you, I just got back from the Blanc Media
107. 00:05:31 team retreat, which is why I ended up flying this week for the first time in about 18
108. 00:05:36 months, which was an experience.
109. 00:05:39 Join the live if you want to hear all the details.
110. 00:05:43 But that was all about like where do we want to be in 10 years, three years, big picture,
111. 00:05:53 vision type stuff.
112. 00:05:54 So there was lots of thinking bigger on this retreat.
113. 00:06:00 So that one I will consider complete.
114. 00:06:03 The Gear Procrastination Log, nope, didn't do it.
115. 00:06:06 But that will be remedied with our next book hopefully.
116. 00:06:11 Okay.
117. 00:06:12 Fair enough.
118. 00:06:13 Fair enough.
119. 00:06:14 I knew when I was putting the show notes together, I knew that this was something that
120. 00:06:19 you had said you'd procrastinated on.
121. 00:06:22 It's like, okay, so I guess it has to go back on there so now I need to go again.
122. 00:06:27 So what you're telling me?
123. 00:06:28 Yes.
124. 00:06:29 The next book is my pick and it's going to be procrastinated on purpose by Rory Vadon.
125. 00:06:36 And I don't know a lot about this, but procrastinate.
126. 00:06:40 So it kind of is built into the system that he is going to be trying to convince us to
127. 00:06:45 use.
128. 00:06:47 And I've been thinking about that.
129. 00:06:49 And I'm assuming a lot of this is like, I just don't want to do this right now.
130. 00:06:53 So I'm going to kick it out till a future point and that's probably going to require
131. 00:06:56 some sort of do slash defer date.
132. 00:07:00 We recently interviewed Ken Case for the Focus podcast.
133. 00:07:04 And so I am playing around with OmniFocus again.
134. 00:07:08 Mike.
135. 00:07:09 Well, there's reasons for this.
136. 00:07:11 Okay.
137. 00:07:12 You talked to Ken, that's why.
138. 00:07:15 Well, first of all, if you sign up for Deep Focus, we talked about Ken's custom perspectives.
139. 00:07:21 And it was really interesting because I always felt bad about how uncomplicated my OmniFocus
140. 00:07:27 setup was.
141. 00:07:28 And he basically validated me because his isn't very complicated either.
142. 00:07:32 He does some cool things with it, but basically it doesn't need to be super complex.
143. 00:07:39 So go listen to that episode.
144. 00:07:40 If you want more details about how Ken uses it and how he runs the Omni Group and transfers
145. 00:07:44 things from OmniFocus to their OmniBugs zapper program.
146. 00:07:48 But then also shortcuts is on the Mac.
147. 00:07:52 And I have seen the shortcuts people have for like creating OmniFocus projects and things
148. 00:07:56 and always thought to myself, well, that looks cool, but it's only on my iPhone or my iPad.
149. 00:08:01 And that's not where I want to manage my tasks.
150. 00:08:03 However, that coming to the Mac, I definitely need to play with this.
151. 00:08:08 Yes.
152. 00:08:09 So yeah, I'm on the beta for version four.
153. 00:08:14 And I am going to be giving this another go.
154. 00:08:18 Nice.
155. 00:08:19 Yeah, I saw some of the stuff around beta four.
156. 00:08:22 I feel like I should get involved with that.
157. 00:08:24 But when all you do is like templated projects, pretty much all systems will let you do that
158. 00:08:31 to some degree.
159. 00:08:33 And this is going to sound like I'm jumping on a bandwagon.
160. 00:08:37 But the last couple of them that I've run, I just dumped them into obsidian and just tick
161. 00:08:40 the boxes off and put it alongside the notes I have for the stream or the webinar or whatever
162. 00:08:46 it is I'm doing.
163. 00:08:47 It's just easy.
164. 00:08:48 I know.
165. 00:08:50 So yes, running all the dates and stuff in OmniFocus is great, but I wasn't using any
166. 00:08:57 of it.
167. 00:08:58 Yeah, it's sure that's great.
168. 00:08:59 But I'm still like floating that line between the two of them.
169. 00:09:03 So I haven't really decided what I'm landing on with that.
170. 00:09:06 But if I had a full-blown digital task management system, I could totally see going all in on
171. 00:09:13 it.
172. 00:09:14 But as we sit here, this trusty notebook has served me way better than any digital task
173. 00:09:21 management system I have tried for many, many, many, many years now.
174. 00:09:25 So I just am going to have a hard time letting that one go at this point.
175. 00:09:29 So that's what I land.
176. 00:09:30 Yeah.
177. 00:09:31 Well, as you know, my fancy notebook is not a true bullet journal.
178. 00:09:34 So I need someplace for these things.
179. 00:09:36 No, it's a fake.
180. 00:09:37 It's a total fake.
181. 00:09:39 And Obsidian probably could handle it, but that just isn't quite clicking for me.
182. 00:09:45 There's lots of things you can do with queries.
183. 00:09:48 And I've played around with some of the tasks plugins.
184. 00:09:51 You can do like repeating tasks with them and you can even add start dates with some
185. 00:09:55 of them.
186. 00:09:56 It's pretty crazy.
187. 00:09:57 And I'm sure, you know, as new plugins come out that eventually someone will have like
188. 00:10:03 the exact one that I'm looking for and I'll be able to combine it with my Kanban and it
189. 00:10:07 it'll be great.
190. 00:10:08 But at the moment, it's just not quite there.
191. 00:10:11 Right.
192. 00:10:12 And so OmniFocus is great.
193. 00:10:15 I'm not going to get, you know, $200 a year of value out of wrangling those tasks, but as
194. 00:10:22 a basic reminders, sort of a thing which I already have access to because I've already
195. 00:10:27 paid, you know, to support it.
196. 00:10:29 I don't know.
197. 00:10:31 I'm going to give it another shot.
198. 00:10:34 Most of the stuff that I need reminders for, I just put it in do the do.
199. 00:10:38 See, I've been doing that too, but I've done that for a couple of years now too.
200. 00:10:42 So yeah.
201. 00:10:43 So I've got things in do and I've got things in Obsidian and I've already, I'm already
202. 00:10:48 using two different systems at that point and I could just continue to use the nagging
203. 00:10:52 reminders and do or I could just, is that those nagging reminders?
204. 00:10:58 They're good in theory.
205. 00:11:00 In reality, they just annoy me.
206. 00:11:03 Sure.
207. 00:11:04 Which is kind of the point, but usually what ends up happening is like, I get one like
208. 00:11:09 yesterday, you know, 5 p.m.
209. 00:11:11 Hey, it's time to time block your day.
210. 00:11:13 Well, I'm not in a place to do that.
211. 00:11:15 So just go away, you know, and I snooze it and then it pops up again.
212. 00:11:19 Oh, well, now I'm in the car with my wife who picked me up from the airport.
213. 00:11:23 I'm not going to do this right now.
214. 00:11:24 So I snooze it again.
215. 00:11:25 And at that point, like I keep getting these alerts, these notifications.
216. 00:11:31 I'm like, this is pointless.
217. 00:11:33 I don't want to think about this right now.
218. 00:11:35 And I just keep kicking the can on the road and it keeps annoying me.
219. 00:11:38 So yep.
220. 00:11:39 Yeah.
221. 00:11:40 Yeah.
222. 00:11:41 I hear you.
223. 00:11:42 I think I use it for things that are different than you.
224. 00:11:44 I don't use it for things like time block your day.
225. 00:11:47 I use it for make bread or take your Adderall.
226. 00:11:52 So that's what I do with it.
227. 00:11:53 So for me, I have one that goes off every morning at 7 AM.
228. 00:11:57 It just says take Adderall has a really cute pill emoji next to it because it makes me
229. 00:12:01 feel better.
230. 00:12:03 And I have that go off every morning.
231. 00:12:05 Well, that one's kind of important.
232. 00:12:06 Like it needs to nag me until it's done.
233. 00:12:08 Otherwise if I wait till 8.39 o'clock and I take it then, Joe's not going to sleep well
234. 00:12:13 that night.
235. 00:12:14 So we got to get it done.
236. 00:12:16 So I use it for those reminders where this is actually time bound.
237. 00:12:21 It's not a nice to have.
238. 00:12:23 It's not a self-inflicted deadline.
239. 00:12:26 It's a this has to happen at this point.
240. 00:12:29 That's all I use it for.
241. 00:12:31 And anything that's a nice to have would like to do it today.
242. 00:12:35 That's in the bullet journal.
243. 00:12:36 I feel like that is 99% of my tasks.
244. 00:12:39 It's like the nice to have sure.
245. 00:12:42 Yeah.
246. 00:12:43 If I don't get to something, I'm realizing that the world does not end the type of stuff
247. 00:12:50 that I would keep in my task manager.
248. 00:12:52 Sure.
249. 00:12:53 So I don't know.
250. 00:12:56 I have no idea how this is going to look like again.
251. 00:12:59 I reinvented everything last spring and it worked for a while.
252. 00:13:05 And I feel like now that things are kind of getting back to a little bit more normal,
253. 00:13:10 it's just not quite working for me.
254. 00:13:12 I need stuff that's going to notify me when it's the right place to do it.
255. 00:13:16 Like a lot of the stuff that I do with church kind of getting into today's book, I need
256. 00:13:20 to follow up with people and get answers to things.
257. 00:13:24 And I don't want to think about it when I am laying in bed at night.
258. 00:13:28 Oh, I forgot to ask.
259. 00:13:31 I need to do it when I'm there.
260. 00:13:33 Yes.
261. 00:13:34 So using something like a context-based reminder is perfect.
262. 00:13:37 You know, do's not going to give me that.
263. 00:13:39 I feel like it would.
264. 00:13:40 But that's because I've learned that for me, contexts are more time sensitive than they
265. 00:13:46 are location sensitive, even with so much of the stuff that I do being in a building
266. 00:13:52 and being requiring me to be in a physical place.
267. 00:13:55 Well, if I have similar schedules, I know the time that things need to happen and I
268. 00:14:01 generally know when I'm going to meet with people.
269. 00:14:03 So sure.
270. 00:14:05 That's how it works for me.
271. 00:14:07 But I feel like I'm an oddball in that.
272. 00:14:09 And maybe I'm just too simplistic.
273. 00:14:11 The whole context-based thing, I tried it for years, tried all sorts of different things
274. 00:14:14 with it.
275. 00:14:15 And it just never stuck.
276. 00:14:17 I always found myself trying to find, like, if I could get my context right, for whatever
277. 00:14:22 reason, that would mean that my tasks would get themselves done and I wouldn't have to
278. 00:14:26 work too hard at it.
279. 00:14:27 That's also why I found myself switching task management tools.
280. 00:14:30 It's like, okay, well, if I go to text files, I'll get stuff done.
281. 00:14:35 The tasks will get done because I wasn't getting them done in OmniFocus.
282. 00:14:38 Well, okay, it wasn't getting done in either of those.
283. 00:14:41 Let's try bullet journaling.
284. 00:14:42 Well, guess what?
285. 00:14:43 Sometimes they still don't get done.
286. 00:14:44 And I've just finally learned it's not the tool.
287. 00:14:46 It's this dumb monkey brain can't get it done and won't sit down to start things.
288. 00:14:51 Like, that's the actual problem, not the tool.
289. 00:14:54 So I need to stop trying to make context your tools do the work.
290. 00:14:57 Like, well, it's not going to work that way unless I go to work.
291. 00:15:00 So here we are.
292. 00:15:02 We've diagnosed the problem and it's somewhere between the chair and the computer.
293. 00:15:06 Yeah, but between these two sets, like this headphone and this headphone is where like
294. 00:15:10 somewhere between those two is the problem.
295. 00:15:12 So.
296. 00:15:13 Yes, yes, yes.
297. 00:15:17 Well, that all said, let's jump into today's book because I feel like there are a lot of
298. 00:15:20 places we could go with this.
299. 00:15:21 We've kind of alluded to it a couple of times unknowingly here as well.
300. 00:15:24 But if we jump into today's, this is digital body language by Erica Dolan, I think is how
301. 00:15:30 you say it.
302. 00:15:31 And I'm pretty stoked about this.
303. 00:15:35 This is really, I think, outside what we would normally do, but yet fits, I think, a lot of
304. 00:15:40 what bookworm, like what we talk about here, primarily because this is about communication.
305. 00:15:48 And we've talked about communication a number of times.
306. 00:15:51 Have we done a book on communication before?
307. 00:15:53 I was trying to place this.
308. 00:15:54 I didn't look at the book list.
309. 00:15:55 I probably should have.
310. 00:15:56 Yes.
311. 00:15:57 But I don't.
312. 00:15:58 Yes.
313. 00:15:59 With an asterisk.
314. 00:16:00 We did the Patrick King book.
315. 00:16:01 That's true.
316. 00:16:02 That's true.
317. 00:16:03 We did do that.
318. 00:16:04 without having it. I had a lot of fun in the process as well. So my apologies, but this isn't
319. 00:16:12 on the right. -Sorry, not sorry, that's what I'm hearing.
320. 00:16:13 -He's totally sorry not sorry. It's like, I'm sorry because it wasn't fun for you, but it was very fun
321. 00:16:18 for me so I'm not actually sorry.
322. 00:16:20 -I know someone who would never-- someone would complain about something like that instead of saying
323. 00:16:25 they were sorry they'd be like, "Aww, that's unfortunate."
324. 00:16:28 -I should do that. That would be really frustrating for people. This is one that I
325. 00:16:34 feel like is very applicable given the last year, year and a half of what has been inflicted on,
326. 00:16:40 not inflicted on, but what the international world has gone through with COVID and everybody being
327. 00:16:46 stuck at home and being forced to communicate digitally solely as a result of that. I feel like
328. 00:16:54 being able to communicate well in a digital context is a skill that not many people have even
329. 00:17:03 considered, let alone the detail with which you should consider it as proposed by Erica here in
330. 00:17:10 digital body language. And having gone through this, I really appreciated her being willing to tackle
331. 00:17:17 this topic. That was my original interest in this is I just don't think I've seen anyone try to
332. 00:17:24 tackle this topic of how do you text someone, when do you text someone versus an email, when should
333. 00:17:30 you call, how do you write the subject line on an email such that it's not going to scare your
334. 00:17:36 employees to death into thinking that they're going to get fired unknowingly? Those are the
335. 00:17:43 things that just, I feel like I haven't seen anything about that. Maybe you have. I just don't think
336. 00:17:48 I've seen a book or a course or anybody really talk about this, at least not at this level, if that
337. 00:17:55 makes sense. So, I don't know what your initial thoughts might. Had this been out in March of 2020,
338. 00:18:02 it should have been required reading for every sea level employee in the world. Absolutely. 100%.
339. 00:18:08 Yes. I remember talking to some people who are part of the stuff that we were doing with the focus
340. 00:18:17 course. And they were really frustrated because they were having to do everything virtually,
341. 00:18:23 primarily via Zoom. And they were saying like their managers all want to have these meetings all the
342. 00:18:30 time. And what ends up happening is they're spending eight hours a day in meetings and the
343. 00:18:34 managers feel like, great, this totally allows us to get all of our work done. Only problem is for
344. 00:18:40 the employees, they didn't have any time to get their actual work done. And they were still expected
345. 00:18:45 to do the same amount of work. So, they were at home trying to balance school and everything else
346. 00:18:50 with all their families, everybody's working from the same place trying to figure out
347. 00:18:53 internet situations and what devices are people going to use. And they're in meetings all day and
348. 00:19:00 no time to do the actual work. So, I feel like there's a lot of lessons that we've learned the
349. 00:19:08 hard way in the last 18 months ish. And there's a lot of great tips in, I don't want to say tips
350. 00:19:18 and tricks necessarily because really this is just like best practices for communicating digitally.
351. 00:19:23 And it's not just Zoom calls, it's text messages, it's Slack, email, a lot of different things in
352. 00:19:31 here that just about any organization could benefit from understanding some of this stuff a little
353. 00:19:36 bit better. Yeah, that's a really good way to put this because like you're saying, it's not necessarily
354. 00:19:42 just how to do a video call. It's like, well, when should you do a video call? And what is the
355. 00:19:48 difference between choosing to do a video call and sending an email? And you know what, that's not as
356. 00:19:54 simple as like, these are the parameters around that either because she gets around, she gets that in
357. 00:19:59 part three, like generational differences and cultural differences. And you really got to be
358. 00:20:04 able to read the room and know who you're dealing with before you can select the proper medium.
359. 00:20:09 Yes, yeah, which is fascinating too. So part three is one that's very interesting, there's three
360. 00:20:16 different areas like differences in body language across these three different areas, which we'll get
361. 00:20:21 to. But before we do that, I want to start with chapter one, which is in part one, which is digital
362. 00:20:27 elements of style. And there's one chapter here that is what is digital body language. And I don't
363. 00:20:35 know that there's a specific point at which I want to read anything from this that dictates
364. 00:20:41 like what she means by digital body language. But there are some different examples of what
365. 00:20:49 traditional body language would involve as compared to digital body language. Let me just read one of
366. 00:20:57 these just so that you can kind of see what the difference is between these two. So in traditional
367. 00:21:04 body language, let's let's take the example of smiling. Okay, so traditional body language
368. 00:21:09 is kind of like smiling. It's contagious. As she says, our smile lights up the areas of the brain
369. 00:21:14 linked to happiness, which is why people, why the people we smile at tend to smile back and
370. 00:21:21 or feel a stronger sense of connection with us. Okay, now translate that to digital body language
371. 00:21:27 because yes, I can smile at Mike right now, but it's not the same as if we were in the same
372. 00:21:34 room together. And there's always going to be a really small amount of lag between the time that
373. 00:21:39 he sees me smile the time he can respond to that. But if we translate this to digital body language,
374. 00:21:45 as she says, this involves using exclamation points and emojis. Well, within reason, as she says,
375. 00:21:52 adding a simple have a great weekend to the end of an email laughing during a video meeting. These
376. 00:21:58 are the translations of smiling, but how many times do you actually think that through and act on it?
377. 00:22:04 Like whenever you're trying to convey something or convey acknowledgement of something that someone
378. 00:22:11 else is doing, we don't really think about how to convey that in a digital communication system.
379. 00:22:19 We tend to just like, oh, okay, got it. Thanks. But we don't actually write that in an email back.
380. 00:22:25 It's just, okay, I got the information, create archive, move on, don't reply, no need for it.
381. 00:22:31 But the other person's like, did you ever get that? I have no idea that you got it in and even
382. 00:22:36 acknowledge that it existed. So a lot of those implicit feelings that we have have to become
383. 00:22:43 explicit. What she says here is what is implicit in body language now has to be explicit in
384. 00:22:49 our digital body language, which is what I'm just saying. You have to get it out of yourself in some
385. 00:22:54 form. Yeah, well, it's interesting. She compares the regular body language versus the digital body
386. 00:23:01 language. And you kind of made the point that they are not the same. And I have experienced that
387. 00:23:11 over the last however many months. I mentioned, I just went and traveled for the first time since
388. 00:23:18 everything got locked down. So I was in Kansas City for the Blonde Media Team Retreat. And
389. 00:23:23 they all work together in Kansas City. I flew in and I have been basically working virtually
390. 00:23:32 for the last however many months. And I always thought, it's fine. And I realized once I got there,
391. 00:23:42 you 100% cannot replace face to face. There's so much more that happens when you're in the same place.
392. 00:23:50 So essentially what we're trying to do with the digital body language is make the best of a
393. 00:23:58 less than ideal situation, in my opinion. And I do like how she gives some examples here in this
394. 00:24:05 first section. So there's a list that I jotted down, examples of digital body language, liking a
395. 00:24:11 text, making detailed comments, using exclamation points and emoji like you had talked about responding
396. 00:24:16 promptly. And then she kind of introduces the four laws which we're going to get into in the next
397. 00:24:22 section. But really this first chapter does a lot of like articulating why this is important and
398. 00:24:28 highlighting how much time we spend communicating digitally. She said about 70% of team communication
399. 00:24:35 is virtual. And I don't know if that stat came from the beginning of the book, which was before
400. 00:24:39 COVID or the end of the book, which is after, because she mentioned she finished writing it
401. 00:24:44 while everything was shut down. She mentions that there are 306 billion emails sent every day.
402. 00:24:50 That kind of blew my mind when I saw that number. Jeez, that's a lot. Like I think I get a lot of
403. 00:24:56 email, but yeah. And then get this the average person sends 30 and receives 96. So that's a lot.
404. 00:25:03 And she said 50% of the time our tone is misinterpreted. So we send a ton of email and we're really bad
405. 00:25:13 at it. This doesn't sound like a great start to effective work, effective collaboration.
406. 00:25:23 No, there's a lot you could go into here. You know, I've got a few points here for this first
407. 00:25:32 part for us to cover and and we can jump around here too. But one of them I wanted to point out
408. 00:25:37 is that she does mention emoji, which I know you and I whenever we text tend to use them fairly
409. 00:25:45 liberally. And I found that I tend to do that with a lot of people. When I read this, I realized why
410. 00:25:52 it's because it just conveys so much more than what I can actually type out. Now, if I were to just
411. 00:25:59 send some emoji and not actually have any text with it, I don't think it would get my point across.
412. 00:26:05 But it's very easy for me to write something back. It's like sure, sounds great. And then just
413. 00:26:10 have no punctuation with it. Well, then that's going to get misinterpreted like every single time,
414. 00:26:15 just because I'm not telling you, am I excited about it? Or am I just like sure, sounds great.
415. 00:26:21 Like you can misinterpret that tone so many ways. But if I were to throw some of those on there,
416. 00:26:28 you can see like, am I frustrated with you? Am I actually excited? Am I just neutral? Like you can
417. 00:26:35 start to, I guess, tweak your words a little bit to where it's a little easier to get the full meaning
418. 00:26:40 across. Yeah. So Blake says that's a lot of people who need to read a world without email 100%
419. 00:26:45 agree. Yes. And then Carol mentions, and Carol mentions that shows you is a period in her digital
420. 00:26:53 communications that she never thought she was conveying anything more than a complete sentence.
421. 00:26:58 Erica talks about that in the back of this book, two and part three, how the generational differences
422. 00:27:04 between texts, how a lot of people will, older people specifically will think they're communicating
423. 00:27:10 in incomplete sentences. And a lot of younger people will think, Oh, they're really mad at me.
424. 00:27:14 That really caught me off guard because I write in full sentences. I think I'm probably somewhere
425. 00:27:20 in the middle. Sure. When I go read my tweets, go to Twitter and read through all of my tweets.
426. 00:27:28 Generally speaking, I write them in full complete grammatically correct sentences. I don't like
427. 00:27:34 to shorten things. I've tried there are a few recently that I've been trying to break this habit
428. 00:27:39 because like, okay, I don't do this. Like this is me writing technically. And in my mind, like,
429. 00:27:48 I am conveying that I like to write in a way that is very accurate, not open for interpretation.
430. 00:27:56 And I'm realizing that that may be conveying something that I'm not intending to convey.
431. 00:28:03 So I think I'm with Carol. This doesn't necessarily have to be generational. I don't think so.
432. 00:28:07 It can be cultural too, talking about needing to learn how to use emojis.
433. 00:28:12 They, Erica talks in this section about some of the ways that emojis are interpreted differently.
434. 00:28:21 For example, the thumbs up emoji in the US means got it or you like something,
435. 00:28:28 but thumbs up in some Middle Eastern cultures basically means, in her words,
436. 00:28:34 sit on it and is very offensive. Sure. So really, what this book highlighted for me is that I have
437. 00:28:42 my own norms that I have established over my experience of communicating both in person and
438. 00:28:50 digitally. And I tend to project those onto the people that I am communicating with.
439. 00:28:56 But I can't do that. I need to understand how to speak somebody else's language if I'm going to
440. 00:29:01 communicate effectively and ultimately getting back to the last book, leaders eat last, if I'm
441. 00:29:05 going to be a good leader. And so this book has a lot of like tips and tricks. Again, I hate that
442. 00:29:11 term, but a lot of like tactics, little things that you can do that will help with this sort of thing.
443. 00:29:18 But the realization I got is whether you are communicating with somebody who's older or
444. 00:29:23 younger than you or communicating with somebody in a different part of the world than you
445. 00:29:26 or just communicating with somebody who uses a different style than you, you need to learn how
446. 00:29:34 to speak their language. And that's not easy. It's almost like learning a foreign language.
447. 00:29:42 But it's worthwhile, especially when everything is happening, quote unquote, virtually. The other
448. 00:29:50 thing with this is that she mentions in the first chapter that technology helps people create masks.
449. 00:29:56 And I can totally see this how people will create this persona and they'll say things a certain way
450. 00:30:03 that they wouldn't in real life, not just the people who are going to say really offensive
451. 00:30:10 things because they can hide behind their screen. But just you can pretend to be somebody that
452. 00:30:16 you're not a lot easier online than you can in real life. And so I think all of this stuff that
453. 00:30:24 she shares in this book helps you communicate effectively so you can get past the mask and
454. 00:30:30 understand who you're really communicating with. And also dismantle some of your own masks maybe.
455. 00:30:38 But you have to get past those masks if you are going to communicate effectively.
456. 00:30:45 There's something that happened in the chat that I don't think was intentional or always
457. 00:30:49 partially intentional that just exemplifies what we're talking about. So this is from Blake.
458. 00:30:56 It is funny how a period has become an indication of anger and he ends that in a period. Follow
459. 00:31:01 that with Carol's comment, true Blake with a period. I now intentionally go back and delete them
460. 00:31:07 with no period there. So it's like, okay, I see this. I could see Carol what you mean,
461. 00:31:14 but not having the period there does make it look quite a bit different. And I could see how
462. 00:31:20 having the period there maybe I don't think I would jump to anger. But again, this is me coming
463. 00:31:25 from the that's grammatically correct stance. So I don't know. Maybe that's a thing. Maybe I
464. 00:31:34 should get rid of the period button on my keyboard. And to make this more complicated in chapter
465. 00:31:40 two, it talks about the trust and power matrix where you have the four quadrants as you do with
466. 00:31:47 productivity graphs. They always do. And on the Y access, you have the amount of power. So higher
467. 00:31:55 up you go the more power you have. And then the bottom two that you have low, you have less power
468. 00:32:00 than the person you are communicating to. And then how much you trust each other, whether you're
469. 00:32:05 far apart or whether you're pretty close. And that even indicates how you would communicate
470. 00:32:12 to someone. This is really tricky. You know, if you if I'm working with Joe, as one of the people
471. 00:32:19 who's underneath you on your tech team, I have to communicate with you differently when we are
472. 00:32:26 at work than I do in this podcast. One more friends. Yes. So it's not as simple as like apply this
473. 00:32:34 style to Joe. Yeah, it's very different. And I I've seen this a couple times with folks that
474. 00:32:41 work under me at church that I go help with things like moving from house to house.
475. 00:32:48 Because what happens is when they're here, they tend to morph into my communication
476. 00:32:56 needs. But whenever I'm helping them, it's backwards. I have to change and communicate with them in
477. 00:33:03 their method. And it's like this whole weird like, okay, everything has to be different.
478. 00:33:09 Just because it went from you listening to me and now me listening to you, the person in power
479. 00:33:17 alters. So the whole communication method in style just completely flips. And that is weird.
480. 00:33:23 Yeah. In a in a recent episode of focused, which has yet to be released as we record this one,
481. 00:33:31 David and I talked about communication. And I asked him, do you think that podcasting kind of
482. 00:33:39 trains you to communicate less effectively? Because a lot of communication is simply
483. 00:33:47 you waiting to respond to something someone said instead of actually listening.
484. 00:33:52 When you are actually listening, you're not formulating what you're going to say while the
485. 00:34:01 other person is talking. You know, there's a those are essentially wait to talkers, not actually
486. 00:34:08 listeners. What do you think? Do you think that this kind of nudges us in the wrong direction?
487. 00:34:15 That's that's very possible. Because what happens is, okay, okay, stop and think about the medium of
488. 00:34:23 podcasting. And I for those of you listening to this, I want you to think about the amount of time
489. 00:34:30 that you will tolerate between the moment that one person stops speaking and the moment when the
490. 00:34:37 next person starts speaking. And just as an example, if you pay attention to when Mike and I are back
491. 00:34:43 and forth, there's very little time between the moment when Mike stops and I start or vice versa.
492. 00:34:49 But if I were to pause, yeah, that's true. So he's going to cut it down even more later. But if I
493. 00:34:55 were to stop and let that hang, that was only two seconds, right? Maybe not even an overcast is
494. 00:35:02 going to automatically remove that for you. It will. But that feels awkward whenever you're
495. 00:35:08 listening to a podcast. So what happens is, podcasters who get good at this, we we generally,
496. 00:35:15 I'm thinking about what I need to say the moment that Mike stops speaking, like instantly,
497. 00:35:22 because I don't want there to be that dead space. And I know you're the same way, Mike. And whenever
498. 00:35:27 you listen to podcasters, especially if you were to catch Mike and I say at max stock,
499. 00:35:33 and you were to see us talk, if you ever notice this, we do this whenever we're in person too.
500. 00:35:37 We tend to just talk that way. And it's just because this is the way that we generally speak
501. 00:35:44 with each other, even if we're on the phone, it's just the way we work. It probably makes us
502. 00:35:47 bad listeners. I'm sure it does, just because we're always trying to figure out what comes next.
503. 00:35:52 I've noticed myself doing this with people that we're not on a podcast. I'm just in
504. 00:35:57 conversation with them. So I have noticed myself doing that now. I don't know if that's my
505. 00:36:01 introverted, I don't like dead space thing coming in, or if that's just the podcasting thing. I'm
506. 00:36:08 sure there's a lot going on there. But I'm with you. That's a long pre and post-amble to what you're
507. 00:36:15 saying. But yes, I agree. I think part of it is it's a reinforcement of a negative tendency,
508. 00:36:22 but that doesn't mean that it has to impact your communication. And I even think, depending on the
509. 00:36:29 podcast, you will get different versions of this. I think a lot of interview podcasts, the
510. 00:36:38 interviewer will walk into the interview having done all of the research and having all of their
511. 00:36:44 questions prepped ahead of time. And they won't even listen to what the other person is saying.
512. 00:36:49 They'll just ask their questions and collect the answers. One of the best pieces of advice that I
513. 00:36:54 got on that, by the way, was to ask two questions and then make a summary statement of what you
514. 00:37:03 have heard adding your own slant to it because you're reinforcing then that you are listening
515. 00:37:09 to the responses and you are contributing to the conversation. But as the interviewer, it's not
516. 00:37:15 really about you. It's about the other person. If I'm interviewing James Clear, no one wants to
517. 00:37:19 hear what I have to say. No, not at all. They're not there for you. So I'm guiding the conversation
518. 00:37:26 via the questions that I'm asking. And I tend to not be the type of person who walks in with a
519. 00:37:31 bunch of canned questions. I will have a couple usually because I want to be able to start
520. 00:37:39 somewhere. But then I like to go off the script and sometimes that makes the people I'm interviewing
521. 00:37:44 a little bit nervous. I always try to give them an out, couch it is like, so this maybe is a little
522. 00:37:52 outside your comfort zone or maybe this is not, you're not comfortable answering this, but then I'll
523. 00:37:57 ask the question, giving them an opportunity to take it in a different direction if they want to.
524. 00:38:02 But I also think that if you were to listen to a lot of news podcasts specifically where you're
525. 00:38:10 just rambling in response to current events, there's a lot more tendency to do this sort of thing.
526. 00:38:16 I'm remembering something I saw. I think it was an Instagram video of like three minutes,
527. 00:38:23 the whole clip was three minutes worth of video of this person just using like standard podcaster
528. 00:38:30 space filler phrases. And not actually saying anything.
529. 00:38:35 Sure, sure. I feel like we don't do that a whole lot. And every once in a while, I'll hear it in
530. 00:38:41 the edit and I'll try to tighten it up a little bit. But for the most part, we have a specific
531. 00:38:46 direction that we're going with the conversation because we have these books as the guide posts.
532. 00:38:50 Yeah, I mean, we can normally, when we've got our outline, we know what we know what comes next,
533. 00:38:58 which at the moment is timing for your response because we need to keep going. But I don't know
534. 00:39:04 how emoji got on us on all of that. But this is one that is really important and
535. 00:39:10 this may come up a little bit later. But I'm very curious about your thoughts on this mic because
536. 00:39:17 I know that you're not an email person. And she talks about timing when you should send responses
537. 00:39:25 to things here. And although she does give us some outs later on as far as like just making
538. 00:39:32 other people aware of what to expect as far as a response from you. And knowing that that's
539. 00:39:38 something that you can couch ahead of time can be super helpful. But one of the things that she
540. 00:39:43 mentions in this section around timing is that it's generally considered acceptable etiquette
541. 00:39:49 to wait up to 24 hours before responding to an email. Meaning you've got one day to get a response
542. 00:39:56 back before people start to wonder, did they get it? Are they going to respond? Are they upset with me
543. 00:40:02 that I say that wrong? Maybe I put that in a wrong, put it in a wrong way and they don't really
544. 00:40:08 understand what's going on. So maybe I should follow up with them. But that seems like I'd be
545. 00:40:12 doing it too soon. Like they're just completely thrown off. You get that point. What was your
546. 00:40:17 response to this? Because I know that you don't normally respond within 24 hours on an email. It's
547. 00:40:23 normally what? Once a week? Is that your time frame somewhere there? I don't email you. I text
548. 00:40:28 you because email is not a thing I want to give you. So this is where the syntopical reading of all
549. 00:40:36 of the books comes in because I read that and I immediately thought this is making assumptions
550. 00:40:45 about the rules of engagement around email that Cal Newport has encouraged us to rebel against.
551. 00:40:52 And I'm going to side with Cal on this one. Sure. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I do think that if you
552. 00:40:58 are in an organization where that is the norm, you maybe need to have a conversation before you
553. 00:41:04 would just stop responding to emails. But I don't have that. I guess I'm fortunate in that regard.
554. 00:41:14 So everybody who assumes those rules apply, that doesn't mean I have to play by those rules. And I
555. 00:41:21 won't just look at all of the requests that we get via email to review fiction books for bookworm.
556. 00:41:29 I don't reply to any of those. I don't feel like I owe any of those people a reply.
557. 00:41:34 I don't deserve it. And I'm sorry if you're one of those people who listens to the podcast,
558. 00:41:39 but my job is to make stuff, not reply to requests. And so I will go in there whenever
559. 00:41:51 I feel like I have some bandwidth to deal with that stuff. And usually I'm apologetic. If there
560. 00:41:57 is something important in there, be like, Hey, sorry, you know, I'm just now getting around to this.
561. 00:42:02 And pick it up from from there. So it bugs me when I get those requests like,
562. 00:42:09 will you review my book? It's like, did you even read the description of what bookworm is?
563. 00:42:14 Like it just points out in the description. You can't take five minutes to figure out
564. 00:42:20 what we are. And you're asking me to invest 10 hours or more. No, that's not a fair trade.
565. 00:42:28 It's not going to happen. No, you can fire off that email in less than 30 seconds. Have you ever
566. 00:42:33 noticed that some of them get caught? You probably don't see this, but on the admin side, there are
567. 00:42:37 some of them that get caught because it triggers that they set up a new account. They immediately
568. 00:42:45 sent a private message to us and they typed the message way too fast to be able to actually type
569. 00:42:51 it, which means that they paste it in. So it's a form letter type thing. So they just found places
570. 00:42:57 that they could potentially get the book in front of and just said, here you go. Will you do this?
571. 00:43:01 Will you take all this time and make my life easy? Like, no, because you didn't. So anyway,
572. 00:43:08 that's us getting on our high horse. And that is the problem with email is these addresses are
573. 00:43:17 available. You can find them fairly easily and you don't have any sort of trust established
574. 00:43:24 with this person. And then you've opened up a door to a bunch of requests, which if all you did was
575. 00:43:31 make every single person requested something of you via email happy, you would do nothing else the
576. 00:43:36 rest of your life. So kind of going back to that trust power matrix, I'm assuming that if you're
577. 00:43:42 reaching out to me via email, we don't have any sort of trust in our relationship. If we do,
578. 00:43:48 you're going to ascend the ladder. It's probably going to be Twitter first. And then because I'm
579. 00:43:57 going to have to follow you in order for you to DM me. And then from their text messages. And
580. 00:44:03 those I will get back to. But email not so much. Yeah, I leave my DMS open, which is
581. 00:44:09 good or bad. I don't know. I get some responses from folks. Let's talk about your digital persona.
582. 00:44:17 And then we'll go on to part two. Do we have to? We do because this is important because I
583. 00:44:22 search for people all the time. And I feel like this is important. And do you do this? Do you search
584. 00:44:27 for people online? Just do a quick search for somebody's name. So do you ever do this?
585. 00:44:32 No, but I know that I have a problem with this. So I am Mike Schmitz. Mike Schmitz is always
586. 00:44:39 taken. So my digital persona is Bobblehead Joe. Yep, which makes no sense. It was an inside
587. 00:44:47 joke from the office that I signed up for a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago.
588. 00:44:51 And I can not get any sort of version of Mike Schmitz that I would be happy to embrace.
589. 00:44:58 To replace it. I checked yesterday to see if there was anything else available. There is not.
590. 00:45:04 So that is problem number one. Mike Schmitz is always taken. Problem number two, there is a
591. 00:45:10 younger Catholic priest who is very involved on YouTube. Father Mike Schmitz, not me.
592. 00:45:16 I get repeatable saying all the time, Hey, are you father Mike Schmitz? No, no, I am not.
593. 00:45:22 I'm a dear Mike Schmitz who happens to have a Bible college degree who is not a father
594. 00:45:29 that's hard to explain. So I know I have tons of area to improve.
595. 00:45:36 You have some baggage on your digital persona. Okay. Well, the four aspects that go into a
596. 00:45:42 digital persona, and she recommends that you keep these top notch, your name, your email address,
597. 00:45:48 your avatar or profile picture, and then pay attention to what shows up on your search results,
598. 00:45:53 namely what shows up on your LinkedIn profile, etc, etc. And I am one of these people, unlike Mike,
599. 00:46:01 who can pretty much get my name whenever and wherever I want. So if you want to know,
600. 00:46:06 if you want to find my account on pretty much any major social media network,
601. 00:46:12 Joe Buellig will get you directly to me. So it's pretty straightforward. At the same time,
602. 00:46:21 I don't spend much time trying to figure out what search results show for my name,
603. 00:46:27 but I search other people's names constantly. And I don't know if that's just because we have a
604. 00:46:32 lot of people that come into the church that were just a little bit like, what is going on with you?
605. 00:46:37 Who are you? Should I trust you in the kids department? Probably not until we can figure out what
606. 00:46:43 your past is. So we end up searching for a lot of folks just trying to figure out, are they trustworthy
607. 00:46:50 or not? Who are they? Where are they from? Do they have kids? And you can learn an awful lot
608. 00:46:55 about people just from from that. So keep this up to date, pay attention to it, I guess is what
609. 00:47:03 I'm saying. But I brought it up because I knew, Mike, that you have this bobblehead Joe thing going on.
610. 00:47:08 I have no idea what you could do about it. Give me a better option. I will change it on air.
611. 00:47:15 Oh, you would. I know you would. But I don't know what to tell you. I really don't. I know that
612. 00:47:21 people figure this out. There are folks that have run-offs on their name. They use acronyms
613. 00:47:27 instead of their name. And it works well. Like, Mark has Brownlee, the MKBHD acronym seems to work
614. 00:47:34 well for him. So stuff like that, I could see. But I tried FVP, Mike, faith-based productivity.
615. 00:47:41 Not available. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you. I'll put it out to the chat. You got
616. 00:47:48 something. Let me know. Okay. This is the call for all bookworm listeners. Mike needs a new
617. 00:47:55 online handle. Yes. We'll start with Twitter. What is it? Bobblehead, Mike,
618. 00:48:00 is a recommendation here. Yeah, no, I'm not going to happen. Because I think the issue is
619. 00:48:05 actually the bobblehead part of this. Oh, wait. Okay. We'll leave that for the bookworm listeners.
620. 00:48:09 They're going to solve your problem for you. How do we do this? Tweet at bookworm. Send us a tweet
621. 00:48:15 at bookworm FM or to Mike who is currently bobblehead Joe on Twitter.
622. 00:48:20 Until I get a good suggestion. User name should be. I'm totally on board with this
623. 00:48:26 project. I like this. We need to follow up with this one next time. Okay. Part two,
624. 00:48:31 the four laws of digital body language. Although these are probably the meets of the book, I feel
625. 00:48:36 like they're fairly straightforward. I don't know how much time we'll spend on this. The first one of
626. 00:48:40 these four laws is to value visibly. Process that for a second. Value visibly. Think about what I
627. 00:48:49 was talking about earlier whenever you smile. You can't convey a smile over a text message easily.
628. 00:48:55 You have to actually be explicit with what you're trying to get across. This is something I know
629. 00:49:03 a lot of digital only companies get very into is whenever they want to praise someone or say
630. 00:49:10 something positive to someone, they do it publicly. You've heard this before. Praise in public.
631. 00:49:16 This is similar to that. Value visibly. Show someone the value to them in some form of a written
632. 00:49:23 method or a video or an audio file or something. Make it very well known to them
633. 00:49:31 that you're valuing the work that they're doing. Otherwise, if you appreciate the work they're
634. 00:49:35 doing, but you never put it into documentation of any kind and there is no face to face happening,
635. 00:49:42 guess what? They have no idea if they did a good job or bad and likely will interpret it as they
636. 00:49:48 did a bad job simply because they got no feedback on it. I did this all the time in corporate. I
637. 00:49:54 assumed everything I did was complete trash because no one ever said anything good or bad about it.
638. 00:49:59 I found out much later that they really appreciated it. It got promoted for
639. 00:50:03 stuff that I thought was trash and didn't really know what to do with it. There's that.
640. 00:50:07 Tell people that they're doing a good job if you think they're doing a good job. Make it very visible.
641. 00:50:12 Yes, agreed. One of the things that we do with the
642. 00:50:17 Blanc Media Team, which is pretty cool. It's a built-in system for this kind of thing.
643. 00:50:25 Ideally, you're giving positive feedback and you're saying good job every time someone
644. 00:50:29 is presenting their work project. If that doesn't happen, an easy way to implement something like this
645. 00:50:35 is expressing gratitude at the end. We express gratitude to a single person for something that
646. 00:50:42 they did that really we wanted to call out and say, "Thank you for." I do the same thing with my
647. 00:50:47 discipleship group at church. There's something about expressing gratitude that makes the rest of
648. 00:50:55 your communication with that individual better. Not just the work aspect of they feel good
649. 00:51:01 because they did the right thing and you're giving them live feedback on what they're doing.
650. 00:51:06 But a lot of the work that we have to do, we have to do together, which even for people like us
651. 00:51:15 who do a lot of our creating individually, we have to remember that. The average person,
652. 00:51:23 I think they said, has to work with 10 people or more daily, which is a large number. Now,
653. 00:51:31 just imagine that those relationships are not good and every time you need something from someone,
654. 00:51:38 their initial reaction is to draw back because they don't like you.
655. 00:51:42 Well, that makes everything really, really hard, doesn't it? It's worthwhile investing in
656. 00:51:48 the people before you try to do the work. Yeah, it was trying to count when you said the 10.
657. 00:51:53 It's like, how many people do I work with on a daily basis? I think it's somewhere between
658. 00:51:58 8 and 11, 8 and 12, somewhere in there. So it's probably close to 10. I didn't realize that.
659. 00:52:03 Is yours close to 10? No, I mean, there's the people who are full-time with
660. 00:52:09 block media and then there's a bunch of the contributors that we work with with the suite setup.
661. 00:52:13 So if I counted all of those people, then yeah, probably. But not really working directly with
662. 00:52:20 everyone every single day. Sure, sure. However, I do need to do a better job of
663. 00:52:26 not just going into monk mode and making my stuff and showing up at the end.
664. 00:52:30 Why is that, Mike? I don't want to talk to anybody until this is all done and ready to
665. 00:52:37 be released. And then you can tell me that it's really good, right? But don't give me feedback
666. 00:52:40 before then. Yeah, well, it's not even feedback. Feedback assumes that the goal of the interaction is
667. 00:52:49 to collaborate on the work itself. For me, I need to do a better job of prioritizing
668. 00:52:58 the people before the work. Going back to Chris Bailey and the productivity project,
669. 00:53:02 you know, people are the reason for productivity. Working with people, maintaining relationships,
670. 00:53:07 not efficient, but one of the most important things that you can do with your life.
671. 00:53:13 Very true. Very true. I'm with you on that. So value visibly is the first of these four laws of
672. 00:53:22 digital body language. The second is communicate carefully. I feel like this is one of those places
673. 00:53:30 where most people fall down. Like value visibly. Yes, I get that. People could learn from that. It
674. 00:53:38 could be super helpful. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. To communicate carefully, this is where the
675. 00:53:45 period thing really comes in, right? And should you use emoji? When do you choose what method
676. 00:53:51 to use? And there is a checklist here. And she calls this the think before you type checklist.
677. 00:54:02 And I really appreciated that she did this. There's another thing she did that I'll get to at the
678. 00:54:05 very end here that I thought was super helpful. But this checklist goes like this. Who needs to
679. 00:54:11 be included on the message? What do I want the receiver to do after they read this message?
680. 00:54:17 What context or information do they need? What is the appropriate tone, which I think would be
681. 00:54:23 helpful, right? Should I be super serious and formal? Should I be very informal? That would be
682. 00:54:28 helpful. When is the best time to send this message? I worked for, you know, I directly reported to a
683. 00:54:36 CEO at a previous job. And she was excellent at timing the messages that she sent to be going to
684. 00:54:45 the person at the best time for the other person to receive them. Always thought that was genius.
685. 00:54:50 What is the best channel to convey this message? So is it text, slack, email, phone call,
686. 00:54:57 hop on a plane and go say hi. What is that? And then how comfortable would I be if this message is
687. 00:55:03 screen-shotted, forwarded, or otherwise shared? What can I do to change it? Or should I save this
688. 00:55:09 for a phone call or face-to-face meeting? That one probably gets overlooked by most people,
689. 00:55:15 including myself. Like that one just doesn't really cross my mind in my head. If I send it to
690. 00:55:20 my superiors, it's not going to be in front of anyone other than my superiors. So who cares how
691. 00:55:26 intentional I am with my wording? And when I thought about that one and just considered some
692. 00:55:31 of the emails I've sent thought, I will take a little more time with some of my emails moving
693. 00:55:37 forward because that was not always appropriate. So I learned a lot from that one. Anyway,
694. 00:55:44 appreciate the checklist. Yeah, she's got a lot of those checklists. And I tried to capture most of
695. 00:55:50 them in my my node file. So if you want those checklists club.bookworm.fm/membership,
696. 00:55:59 five bucks a month. There you go. The communicate clearly section here. She mentions three factors
697. 00:56:08 for choosing the right channel, which I think are important to the length, the complexity,
698. 00:56:13 and the familiarity. And these are kind of guidelines, just like everything else in here.
699. 00:56:18 We mentioned at the beginning, you can't just make blanket rules with this stuff.
700. 00:56:21 But the longer the message, then you're going to want to choose something like email as opposed
701. 00:56:30 to text complexity. You know, if it's highly complex, recommends articles, blogs, or video calls.
702. 00:56:37 If it's got medium complexity and email, phone call, or conference call and low complexity,
703. 00:56:41 text, instant message, or a group chat. And I have been on the receiving end of these,
704. 00:56:47 which are very complex and arrive via text. And then I'm like, okay, so is this what you want?
705. 00:56:52 So very frustrating. But also that's part of the value of this book. She mentions at the beginning,
706. 00:57:03 this will help you whether you are the leader of the organization or the team, and you need to
707. 00:57:09 communicate effectively to everybody underneath you, or you happen to be the recipient of a lot of
708. 00:57:14 this stuff in the person above you, you think isn't quite doing it right. You know, you can
709. 00:57:19 mode shift, you can context shift, you can take a complex text message, for example, and reply
710. 00:57:27 via email and choose a different, more appropriate channel. And I think that is a very important
711. 00:57:33 takeaway from this book is that you don't have to be at the top in order to benefit from the
712. 00:57:40 knowledge that you would find here. You might have that assumption going into it. You may feel like
713. 00:57:48 you're in this situation and something you can do because your boss just keeps doing this stuff
714. 00:57:51 that's really annoying and really inefficient. But I would challenge everyone who's going to pick
715. 00:57:56 up this book to ask themselves, you know, I may not be the root cause of this, but I'm going to
716. 00:58:02 take responsibility for fixing it. And what can I do to move things in a positive direction? And
717. 00:58:07 you will find something always. Yeah. This is this is so important, I think, you know, if you're
718. 00:58:14 going to become somebody who's known as communicating really well, if you find someone who or you want
719. 00:58:24 to be someone who's able to make sure that what you're wanting to get across actually gets across
720. 00:58:31 as opposed to, hey, can we meet in 10 minutes? Like even even if I had this just yesterday,
721. 00:58:39 my boss in passing said, Hey, what are you doing this afternoon? Like, I'm around if you need to,
722. 00:58:45 if we need to do something, it's like, when you get a moment, stop by my office for 10 minutes.
723. 00:58:50 Okay, so like, but go grab lunch first. Okay, like this is face to face in person. And all sorts
724. 00:58:59 of things went through my head. Like, did I forget to do something like he doesn't normally do this?
725. 00:59:05 Like, did I get all the computer stuff set up for our new pastor? Did I get like, I had so many
726. 00:59:11 things go through my head, like, what did I mess up with? And then so I'm kind of fretting over
727. 00:59:19 lunch. And then I go sit down and have a chat with him and his office like, do I need to shut
728. 00:59:24 the door for the door for the say, Oh, no, it's fine. Like, okay, he's like, okay, so the rundown
729. 00:59:28 for this Sunday, like, this has nothing to do with anything I've done in the past. It has nothing
730. 00:59:36 to do with anything I messed up. He just wants to make sure that what I have for this Sunday,
731. 00:59:40 because it's a little bit of a different Sunday, you want us to make sure that we've got all the
732. 00:59:44 pieces and all the elements of the service ready to go, because it's a fairly tech heavy service
733. 00:59:48 that's a little different than normal. That was it. And I was kind of freaking out of it. Now,
734. 00:59:54 if he had sent me that in a text, it had been way worse. Like, I would have been
735. 01:00:01 what just happened. I especially if you put a period on it, right, Blake? So like, that would
736. 01:00:07 have made it terrible. Communicate clearly. And I told him, I thought you were going to get
737. 01:00:13 upset with me. I was like, Oh, no, I should have told you it was a good thing. So it's like,
738. 01:00:17 I'll do that next time. So I was at least able to have that conversation with him. But
739. 01:00:21 all that to say, communicating clearly is something that we could all learn a few more tips on. So
740. 01:00:29 I appreciate a lot of what she spells out here. Anything else you want to say on that before I
741. 01:00:34 move on? No, I think the other thing with this, if I were to pick one more thing would be when you
742. 01:00:42 assign tasks via email, use the three W's, who, what, and when just trying to communicate clearly about
743. 01:00:48 what is going to be done from the information that you share email specifically is is tricky.
744. 01:00:57 Because some culture she talks about, they will say yes to a task, which means that they understand
745. 01:01:03 it, not that they are going to actually do it. So I thought that checklist was was helpful.
746. 01:01:10 Lots of that type of stuff in here. Lots of lists. Yeah, lots of like colored call out boxes,
747. 01:01:17 especially in these couple of sections, but nothing we really need to unpack in detail,
748. 01:01:22 I think from here. All right. So third law here then, versus value visibly, communicate carefully,
749. 01:01:29 and then collaborate confidently. And this one, the three of them really have to all work together.
750. 01:01:36 These first three all have to work together, kind of in a circle as she has a diagram later on,
751. 01:01:42 but collaborate confidently is just that if you're going to work with someone else,
752. 01:01:47 be confident in your ability to communicate with them digitally, and also be confident in your
753. 01:01:53 ability to do the task. Yep. And if you can do those two things, you're going to be much better off
754. 01:01:58 the two of you working together. But if you're kind of like, eh, I don't know, what do you think?
755. 01:02:06 Like if you're doing that sort of thing back and forth, it's just going to be rough. It just is.
756. 01:02:12 So be very confident in what you're saying and what you're doing. Yeah, this one I liked a lot,
757. 01:02:18 because she talks about how when you are collaborating confidently, you are stating your needs clearly,
758. 01:02:24 including when and why you need something, the big takeaway from me from this, leave no room for
759. 01:02:30 misinterpretation, fear or anxiety. I like that. Use jargon free language. It's easily translated
760. 01:02:37 between different departments. And then she has a couple of things that you can do to build confidence
761. 01:02:42 through consistency. And I don't think I'm real great at these, but I think it's easy to project
762. 01:02:53 while there's somebody else above me who is worse at this. And I don't want to do that kind of my
763. 01:02:59 takeaway from this is like, just check these boxes as often as I can. So fight thoughtless
764. 01:03:06 deadlines. That's the first one. I got to be really careful when I ask someone for something
765. 01:03:12 to try and give them as much time as possible to get the thing done and be clear about when
766. 01:03:16 exactly I need it. Not just say, Hey, it'd be great if you could get it done by end of day today.
767. 01:03:23 Eliminate chronic cancellations. This one I am pretty good at. If I say I'm going to be somewhere,
768. 01:03:29 I'm going to be somewhere. Nothing is going to change that. In fact, today, I was kind of freaking
769. 01:03:35 out earlier because I had scheduled a lunch with a friend in town because we haven't connected in a
770. 01:03:43 while before I left for my trip and I came back and I'm like, Oh man, I really just don't have time
771. 01:03:48 to go do this. But I said I was going to be there. So I'm going to be there. And then he texted and
772. 01:03:54 canceled because his dad came into town. He's like, I'm really sorry about this. And I was like,
773. 01:03:58 actually, that helps a lot. So thank you.
774. 01:04:01 You would not have liked my afternoon then because we had some VBS wrapped up today, right?
775. 01:04:09 The final program, which I ran sound for ended at 1215. Okay, I had to set up some stuff on the
776. 01:04:16 computer in there because we've got again, this big tech heavy thing going on this afternoon.
777. 01:04:21 Or this, this Sunday, which is us doing worship in the park. So I've got a full sound gear system. I
778. 01:04:29 got to have in a new location this Sunday, which means I got to get the key to the band shell so
779. 01:04:34 that I can get in on Sunday. So at one o'clock, I needed to leave to go get that key. But I forgot
780. 01:04:44 when we scheduled bookworm that I had a hair appointment at 130. And I was like, well,
781. 01:04:51 how am I going to do this? Thankfully, she's usually pretty quick. And it's only a few minutes
782. 01:04:55 from the church. It's like, fine. So before one o'clock, I set up all the gear here and left it
783. 01:05:01 running. And then I went to get the key. And then I showed up about 10 minutes earlier to my
784. 01:05:06 hair appointment. And she said, Oh, I'm so glad you're here because I accidentally scheduled somebody
785. 01:05:11 at 145. I was like, that's good. Because I got to think at two o'clock and I kind of got to go.
786. 01:05:14 She seems like perfect. So she kind of did fairly quick. So that's my hair was cut right before we
787. 01:05:21 hopped on here. And so she finished up at 20 till two. I drove back here and had 15 minutes or so
788. 01:05:29 before we started. But I totally messed up all the schedules. It worked. But I was kind of freaking
789. 01:05:36 out before we started. So anyway, you would not appreciate it. All it's to say, collaborate
790. 01:05:42 confidently whenever you're working together, make things very clear. And then if you can do
791. 01:05:47 the value visibly communicate carefully and collaborate confidently on page 157, she has this
792. 01:05:54 diagram of those three in a circle. And then in the center of that circle is trust totally. And
793. 01:06:01 my takeaway from that particular, this particular law here, this chapter, is that whenever you're
794. 01:06:08 able to do those other three, when you value visibly communicate carefully and collaborate
795. 01:06:13 confidently, it means that when other people communicate to you from within that culture,
796. 01:06:19 you tend to just trust that they're looking out for you. And they're not trying to manipulate or
797. 01:06:25 be cryptic in their messages and what they're saying and such like you can trust that they
798. 01:06:30 have your best interest in mind as well. So you don't have to constantly be watching your back
799. 01:06:35 in that particular culture. And I think that's a very valuable culture to be in. And I don't
800. 01:06:42 think very many people probably fit inside of that and it doesn't exist in as many places as it should.
801. 01:06:48 But the thing I know is that there are more and more companies trying to incorporate things that
802. 01:06:53 would allow this. The more times I've seen companies that are implementing new schedules and rules
803. 01:07:01 and cultures that enable this seems to be growing, which is a positive thing. So anyway, trust totally.
804. 01:07:08 Yeah, she mentions that trust totally happens when the other three pillars are functioning. So kind
805. 01:07:14 of you have the picture of a stool being supported by collaborating confidently, communicating carefully
806. 01:07:22 and valuing visibly. There's not a whole lot in this specifically because it's really the
807. 01:07:30 manifestation of the other three when they are happening. But one thing she does say in this
808. 01:07:37 section, which I liked is that details develop trust, especially with me. But that also ties
809. 01:07:47 back to something from Collaborate confidently, which I think is worth calling out here that less
810. 01:07:52 haste equals more speed. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. If you
811. 01:08:02 want to go far together, you need to communicate effectively. If you're going to communicate
812. 01:08:07 effectively, you need to slow things down and make sure that you are articulating your message
813. 01:08:12 in the correct way on the correct channel. I think this is the one that just drives me nuts
814. 01:08:20 more than anything else is people who are thinking that they're going to delegate something quickly,
815. 01:08:27 and they just shoot off a quick text without any details. And they essentially just dump it on
816. 01:08:32 people's laps to figure it out and get it done. I'm happy to help you do this, but I need more
817. 01:08:39 information. And I'm probably guilty of this myself. So I am reading all of this stuff and
818. 01:08:49 creating my own action items based off of the things that I see here, which are all specific to me.
819. 01:08:55 You know, I can help move the needle in that specific area by responding, not immediately,
820. 01:09:02 which enforces this back and forth, but carefully considering how I want to respond and how I'm going
821. 01:09:09 to ask the questions in order to get the response that I need, which kind of ties back to our initial
822. 01:09:15 conversation about the context based reminders. If I know that I need to respond to this thing,
823. 01:09:22 I can put it in the right context, I can then think about how I am going to do that, because
824. 01:09:25 that's what I'm going to do anyways. My brain is going to just be thinking about this over and
825. 01:09:30 over and over again. And then when I am in the right place to communicate face to face instead
826. 01:09:36 of via text message, then I can ask the question and I can get the answer that I need, because
827. 01:09:42 replying via text is just not going to work. Maybe, it depends on who we're talking about, right?
828. 01:09:47 Well, for me, I know there is enough of a track record here where I will text back and I won't
829. 01:09:54 get a response for several hours. And then I'll get that response and I'll have an additional
830. 01:10:00 question. So I'll reply and I will be sitting there waiting for a response for another several
831. 01:10:05 hours or several days sometimes. So this is, now I can get upset about that and be like, well,
832. 01:10:10 they're the ones who need this thing done. They should tell me what I need to know.
833. 01:10:15 That doesn't help me. So I'm going to just do what I can to move this in the right direction.
834. 01:10:25 And I am going to take ownership of it in context switch when it's appropriate and face to face,
835. 01:10:31 essentially corner the person and say, okay, so this is what I need to know.
836. 01:10:36 Yes. And get my answer that way. And should I have to do that? Maybe not, but it's not worth
837. 01:10:44 getting upset about it's just the way it is. And it's really not that big a deal.
838. 01:10:48 I can create a system on my own end that will help me just disconnect from this thing in the
839. 01:10:56 moment until it's appropriate to re-engage with it and get the information that I need so that we
840. 01:11:00 can ultimately work together. Because that is the truth. We're on the same team here. This is not
841. 01:11:06 my enemy trying to harm me. They want to help me. I just need to take ownership of it and be like,
842. 01:11:12 okay, so I'm going to ask you in a way where I'm going to get the answers that I need so that we
843. 01:11:16 can move forward together. This is a good jumping off point. So part three digital body language
844. 01:11:21 across difference. And what you're saying is exactly that, right? So my whole house buying
845. 01:11:29 process. This is a very good example of this because my real estate agent is one who morphs
846. 01:11:36 to his client's communication methods. He has people who we want who want to call him every single
847. 01:11:41 time. He has people who are perfectly fine texting all the things, which is me. So he texts me
848. 01:11:48 constantly with whatever it is he needs or things that are coming up. But I know that he will call
849. 01:11:53 people with the exact same information because that's their preference in communication methods.
850. 01:11:59 And when we get into these differences, that one is a generational difference, I think. So we'll
851. 01:12:06 let me pin that one for a second. The first difference though that she talks about is masculine
852. 01:12:11 versus feminine digital body language. And she has these two lists here that I think
853. 01:12:19 explain this much better than anyway I could. So what do you use her words instead of mine that
854. 01:12:24 way I don't come across as a man's planer here. So which she does talk about here, I don't think
855. 01:12:29 we're going to talk about it, but it does exist in this book. So from a masculine digital body
856. 01:12:35 language stance, here's some I guess they would be stereotypes would be the way to put this. This
857. 01:12:40 is just kind of these are what are typical, right? People don't like the word stereotype,
858. 01:12:44 but they exist for a reason, I suppose. But there's that so masculine, confidently transfers
859. 01:12:51 conversate conversations between mediums. I totally do this. I'll be texting with somebody and then
860. 01:12:56 I'll see them in person like, Hey, when we were talking about, I do this all the time,
861. 01:13:00 refrains from using emojis or excessive punctuation. Yes, to the latter, not the former ensures
862. 01:13:07 messaging is short, well organized into the points uses bullet points and clear subject lines and
863. 01:13:13 emails, often CC's superiors on emails, even when unnecessary with the goal of receiving praise,
864. 01:13:19 definitely seen that one, uses boosters to make their messages more assertive and definite,
865. 01:13:24 things like always definitely obviously those words and has quick response times. Okay,
866. 01:13:31 that is the masculine digital body language. Again, this is generalized. The feminine digital
867. 01:13:37 body language, okay, prefers face to face meetings over digital mediums, uses niceties and politeness
868. 01:13:44 as tools along with hedging language examples would be perhaps might, I think maybe those types of
869. 01:13:51 things uses intensive adverbs, non standard spelling and punctuation to reveal emotion.
870. 01:13:59 So some examples would be so with three O's question mark exclamation point back and forth
871. 01:14:06 ridiculously no way with way too many O's and A's. They always proofread messages, which is kind
872. 01:14:13 of odd to me that those two don't line up to me and it has slower response times. So you start to
873. 01:14:20 compare those, it's like, okay, how on earth do we ever get together and get married at all?
874. 01:14:26 What does this happen? Because these are so drastically different. But that's what she's
875. 01:14:32 talking about. There are very big differences in a lot of these cases and you just have to be aware
876. 01:14:37 of that whenever you're communicating to someone of the opposite gender.
877. 01:14:39 Yeah, so this whole section, it kind of builds up to the digital man's explaining that you were
878. 01:14:48 talking about and she defines it, which is the patronizing way men try to explain things to
879. 01:14:55 women who actually may know more. And the reason that that happens is that many women are conditioned
880. 01:15:03 to build a consensus and many men are not. And I think I probably have fallen into this,
881. 01:15:11 which is really why one of the things I talked about at the very beginning, my big takeaway is
882. 01:15:17 from this book is that you may have your own natural digital body language. That's fine.
883. 01:15:25 But that's not good enough for communicating effectively in the age that we live. I need to do
884. 01:15:34 a better job of understanding who I am communicating with. And gender is just one piece of that
885. 01:15:42 generation, generationally, culturally, even just individually, there are, if you pay attention,
886. 01:15:51 you can understand people's preferences. And I could just default to, well, this is how I
887. 01:15:57 communicate and stick with my preferences, which is a very selfish way to communicate.
888. 01:16:01 Or the selfless way would be the if you're going to be an effective leader, I would argue you have
889. 01:16:07 to do it this way. You have to understand who you are trying to communicate to, and then adapt to
890. 01:16:14 speak their language. Put the message, if it's important, into a format that they are able to
891. 01:16:21 understand, which requires you to be able to mode shift and do things a little bit differently,
892. 01:16:29 end your sentences with periods occasionally, and use emojis at other times.
893. 01:16:34 Or forget the period occasionally, in some cases.
894. 01:16:38 Or add a bunch of exclamation points or question marks, which she has a couple of
895. 01:16:42 graphics in the previous section about what the number of those actually means, which is so
896. 01:16:48 fascinating to me. Kind of hilarious and very, very educational for me.
897. 01:16:53 How many exclamation points do I have to put on to indicate anger instead of excitement? That's
898. 01:16:57 pretty much what it comes across as. We've talked about this one multiple times, but the next
899. 01:17:05 chapter here is generational differences. And she has a section about embracing the emoji.
900. 01:17:12 Which I had to put an emoji in the show notes, not that you can see that, but I just had to.
901. 01:17:15 It's like, I can't put embrace the emoji there without putting an emoji.
902. 01:17:19 But when you have generational differences, you have to be willing to change your medium and
903. 01:17:24 your methods in the way that you type things. And, you know, again, with the house buying thing,
904. 01:17:30 obviously, I've got the things with the agent, but I've also had, we have to have a septic put in
905. 01:17:35 in the place. The installer, the designer, second installer, who is actually our neighbor,
906. 01:17:41 soon to be neighbor, they all have different methods that they use to communicate. One of them
907. 01:17:49 is a texture. One of them is an email person. And one of them says that all of the digital
908. 01:17:54 communication is done by his wife. So phone call is the only way to get ahold of him.
909. 01:17:59 And I have all three of those. Well, me going through this book and having learned all this,
910. 01:18:06 like I'd morph to whatever it is that they need. But I also become aware of other people who know
911. 01:18:12 this and they morph to me at the same time. So when I notice that someone is morphing to me,
912. 01:18:19 I generally would just say, if you would rather call call me, like I'm fine with that,
913. 01:18:23 instead of texting me, because sometimes it's quicker. And they will, in a lot of cases, like,
914. 01:18:29 I don't want to text you, but you're a texture. So I'll text you. And I'm like, that's fine. If
915. 01:18:33 you want to call me, call me. It's fine. If you have my number, you have the right to call me.
916. 01:18:37 If I don't want you calling me, you probably won't get my number in any way. Or you'll get a Google
917. 01:18:42 voice number and I can block you very easy. So there is that. So it's just a good thing to know.
918. 01:18:49 Everybody's generation has all these different generations. We have our tendencies. We have the
919. 01:18:53 ones that we grew up with that we're familiar with and comfortable with. I know that my kids
920. 01:18:58 are probably not going to be comfortable making phone calls because they just don't need to.
921. 01:19:03 I'm not even super comfortable making phone calls, but I know that my parents and grandparents'
922. 01:19:09 phone calls were what they did. So my grandmother would spend hours on the phone calling relatives
923. 01:19:15 on Sunday afternoons. It's just what she did every week. That just, I have no interest in that at all.
924. 01:19:21 But that's what she did. Anyway, generational differences.
925. 01:19:24 So you are a digital native. I suppose, I think as the term has been going around,
926. 01:19:29 I'm pretty sure I'm a geriatric millennial is the term that I've heard and used. So I think
927. 01:19:34 that's where I fit in on things, but having grown up in the Midwest, it throws this weird flavor and
928. 01:19:40 I'm just strange. That's what I am. Yeah, it's true. Well, in this chapter, she talks about
929. 01:19:47 digital natives versus digital adapters and gives several characteristics of each. And I think
930. 01:19:53 I'm probably somewhere in the middle, but the big difference is that digital natives don't like the
931. 01:19:59 the real time face to face of a phone call. They would prefer to text and they even say,
932. 01:20:06 "You are probably a digital native if you text first to ask if you can call, whereas a digital
933. 01:20:12 adapter is just going to default to the call." I do that. Hey, do you want to call? Do you have
934. 01:20:19 time for a call? I'll text and ask that question. I do that sometimes. And when I read that, I was
935. 01:20:25 like, "I'm just going to start calling." Yeah, most of the time it's fine. Yeah. I should probably
936. 01:20:33 do that. There are times whenever I call people, I think of it as a cold call when I haven't set
937. 01:20:39 it up ahead of time. I know that a cold call is like, "We've never met. This is the first time
938. 01:20:44 we've ever communicated. That's a cold call." But in my head, a cold call is when we didn't plan it.
939. 01:20:50 Sure. Even if it's you calling you without me telling you, I'm going to call you feels like a
940. 01:20:57 cold call. And I wouldn't really do this. Like, "Hey, do you have time for a call? I will always text
941. 01:21:01 you first. It's kind of how I work." The last difference here that she mentions in this part
942. 01:21:08 is cultural differences. I wish I had read this when I was running my primarily web development
943. 01:21:19 business because I worked with so many different cultures. And there were a lot of times I would
944. 01:21:24 email my point of contact at the company and just never hear back from them. And I never knew
945. 01:21:30 that I see something wrong, that I type it wrong, and I could follow up with them and never hear
946. 01:21:35 from them. And having read this, there are probably some things I did or said in the process that
947. 01:21:42 possibly either offended them or they realized like, "Oh, he doesn't actually know what he's talking
948. 01:21:47 about." Like, even though I do... Was it a high-context culture? I think so. In most of those cases,
949. 01:21:53 I think it was. Yeah. So that is one that I'm aware of now and wish I had known at the time,
950. 01:22:00 but alas, here we are. But yes, cultural differences play a big part in choosing, again, the medium
951. 01:22:07 and the way that you communicate. Yep. The big differentiation here is high-context cultures,
952. 01:22:14 which prefer face-to-face communications and low-context cultures like the US that prefer
953. 01:22:18 email and text. So I think you're right. There is an opportunity there for Septuavimius
954. 01:22:25 misinterpreted because you default to, "Well, I'm in the US." It was the way we communicate. So
955. 01:22:30 as of what I'm going to do, whereas with email, you could make a request to somebody in a high-context
956. 01:22:35 culture, for example. And she uses, I think, India as the example where someone had made a request of
957. 01:22:42 somebody via email on their boss got really, really upset because in their culture, it was normal that
958. 01:22:48 you talk to their superior first before you make any sort of request. And they basically viewed it
959. 01:22:54 as stealing their employees' time. So many things to consider here that I think if you don't,
960. 01:23:03 there's a very good chance you're going to step on somebody's toes. The big takeaway from this,
961. 01:23:09 for me, is that when you make a mistake, make sure that you apologize. Yes. Because she basically
962. 01:23:15 talks about how you're going to make these mistakes. There's no way you can know all of the different
963. 01:23:20 nuances with all of the different cultures. But you should definitely do a little bit of preliminary
964. 01:23:26 research and see if there's anything that emoji, for example, make sure you don't send a thumbs up
965. 01:23:33 emoji to somebody in those cultures where it's completely offensive. And then err on the side of
966. 01:23:40 formality. So with the email, for example, even if you have a relationship with a person, you can
967. 01:23:47 still cover a lot of that stuff if you are extremely formal in your interaction,
968. 01:23:54 as opposed to more informal, which I think I tend to do this a lot, like a lot of
969. 01:24:02 formal emails will start with "hi" or "hello" and kind of the informal millennial version of that is "hey,
970. 01:24:09 almost every single email I write is like, 'hey, so and so, so I need to be careful when I'm
971. 01:24:14 communicating to somebody different culture, you know, I'm gonna make sure that I'm writing complete
972. 01:24:18 sentences, I'm using "hi" or "hello", I'm signing off appropriately, I'm using bulleted lists to
973. 01:24:24 summarize what I'm asking for, all that kind of stuff. Yes, please do. There's a lot, I think,
974. 01:24:32 in this particular piece. So as we step into the last piece of this whole book, which is the
975. 01:24:37 conclusion, which is basically a couple pages of wrap-up is really all she's doing. But this is
976. 01:24:44 probably the first time I caught myself scanning and spending time with the appendix.
977. 01:24:51 Did you do this? I did not. Usually when I have an appendix in a book, I'll glance at them to see
978. 01:24:58 what they are, just so I have a reference in my brain for the future if I ever wanted to go back
979. 01:25:03 to it. This one kind of caught me because this is an actual guide book that she puts in the appendix,
980. 01:25:11 which I think is really interesting. It's, if you were to boil down the rest of the book
981. 01:25:18 to the point where you could get a, like you were saying earlier, the tips and tricks, the whole
982. 01:25:24 book has tons of stories in it. But this has an actual step-by-step for a lot of things to help
983. 01:25:31 you choose what it is that you're going to do. Like if you're going to text, what's a good way to
984. 01:25:37 do it in what situation? What's the audience? How fast did you respond? Like she has some answers
985. 01:25:42 for those questions. So it really is kind of like a handbook that you could hold on to and like,
986. 01:25:47 okay, someone just texted me, they're higher up than me. And how do I, like what is the time
987. 01:25:54 frame? How do I respond? What's a good way to respond? And then you could go to this and it could
988. 01:25:58 help you figure that out. I kind of appreciate that. That's super helpful. But again, this is the
989. 01:26:04 first time I found myself like spending decent amount of time with the appendix of a book.
990. 01:26:08 So kudos to Erica on, on that one, because I can't say I've done that before.
991. 01:26:14 Yeah, I think this is a valuable summary of the things that she talks about in the book. And I
992. 01:26:18 could see using it as a reference, but I did not spend a whole lot of time with it prior to
993. 01:26:25 recording. I could be wrong, but that's, that was my interpretation of it as looking at it.
994. 01:26:31 Is it looked like a collection of all of those call out boxes with all of the
995. 01:26:37 tactics from the book itself? So you could reference them easily broken down by different
996. 01:26:42 sections and things. Yeah. I think that if you're going to include a whole bunch of stuff like
997. 01:26:47 she does in this in this book, this is a very valuable addition. For sure. Yeah. All right, so
998. 01:26:56 action items. I suppose I get to go first on this one, Tony. I have two. We didn't talk about these,
999. 01:27:02 but the two that I have, one that's easier than the other, is to pick up the phone more.
1000. 01:27:09 Have this thing in my pocket all the time. Why do I not just tap somebody's name in the phone app
1001. 01:27:17 instead of the messages app? And if I were to do that with at least certain people more often,
1002. 01:27:25 I feel like the relationships that I have with them would be quite a bit better. So that is
1003. 01:27:30 something that I want to attempt to get better at. And I know a couple of folks that I'm planning
1004. 01:27:35 to call over the weekend just because not any particular reason. Just I want to try that just
1005. 01:27:41 to see how that changes some things. The other one that I have is complement in public. This goes
1006. 01:27:46 all the way back to the first chapter in part two, value visibly. I don't, and this kind of plays
1007. 01:27:53 into that whole lead my team thing from last episode. Leaders eat last. It kind of plays into
1008. 01:28:00 that, but trying to make sure that whenever I see my team members doing something that I really
1009. 01:28:05 like, I want to make sure that they know it and that the people around them see that I like it.
1010. 01:28:10 So making sure that it's very visible, that I'm seeing the value that they're bringing to the table.
1011. 01:28:16 So that is what I want to do. Those two things. That's what I'm going to work on this next two
1012. 01:28:21 weeks. All right. You. I got a bunch of little ones here. The first one is to eliminate. I know
1013. 01:28:28 you're really busy. Yeah. Which is my default intro line whenever I am following up with something
1014. 01:28:36 to someone who said they were going to get something to me and they haven't by the time frame that I
1015. 01:28:41 expect it back. I never really realized that that could be offensive, but I get why it might be.
1016. 01:28:50 So I'm just going to try to be a little bit more direct and try to
1017. 01:28:54 temper the message a little bit in different ways. I also want to figure out the norms for
1018. 01:29:01 communication with all of the different teams and organizations that I'm involved with. And I want
1019. 01:29:08 to codify these probably in obsidian. I want to have a reference of these and I'm not sure I'll be
1020. 01:29:14 able to 100% figure these out for all of the different areas, but that's the goal. I also want
1021. 01:29:22 to ban the mute button in all of my video stuff. I like that. That was from somewhere in the first
1022. 01:29:30 section. I think it was under value visibly where when you have a mute button and you turn it on,
1023. 01:29:39 you kind of know that like something's happening around the person. You just can't hear it. So
1024. 01:29:44 you just move forward with the conversation, but you kind of assume that they're not really
1025. 01:29:50 paying attention. And so that's kind of a way to show not intentionally, but I don't really value
1026. 01:29:59 the conversation that's happening. So I want to institute that rule wherever I can. There's a quiz
1027. 01:30:07 that goes along with this. At the end of each of the four sections, there's a lot of like
1028. 01:30:13 fill in the blanks where you think your organization is, but there's an online quiz at I think it's
1029. 01:30:20 Erica de one.com slash digital body language that I want to take. I don't know if I am in a position
1030. 01:30:27 where like it would be applicable to me. Maybe it's like for your entire organization. I'm not
1031. 01:30:34 the person who would take that, but I want to I want to check it out. And then the last one is I
1032. 01:30:40 want to be mindful of whose voices I amplify. And this kind of comes back to the whole third part
1033. 01:30:47 about body language across differences. I think in the text space specifically, there's a lot of
1034. 01:30:54 historically white dudes, which is not great if you want to get a diversity of opinions. And then
1035. 01:31:03 you combine that with the fact that like the masculine versus feminine digital body language.
1036. 01:31:10 And we're kind of wired just to communicate a certain way, get our stuff out there, take center
1037. 01:31:17 stage. And I recognize that that is a stereotype first of all, but also probably I default that
1038. 01:31:25 way. And so I don't want to just continue to amplify voices that are exactly like mine. I want to
1039. 01:31:33 when I retweet someone, not just retweet the people who look and sound exactly like me. And I
1040. 01:31:43 don't know exactly what that's going to look like. I don't have any sort of criteria for this,
1041. 01:31:48 but I know there's lots of interesting people doing lots of interesting things online. And that's a
1042. 01:31:53 very small thing I can do to help make the internet a little bit more pleasant and a little bit more
1043. 01:31:59 diverse. So you're saying the internet is unpleasant? Can be. I don't see the vitriol that a lot of
1044. 01:32:05 other people see, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So I'm not trying to downplay that Twitter
1045. 01:32:12 is primarily positive for me, probably because of all of the filters that I've set up. Yeah,
1046. 01:32:17 that's that's definitely what it is on my side. I mute so many things that
1047. 01:32:22 it's really kind of a nice place to be for the most part, because all the bad stuff doesn't exist.
1048. 01:32:29 Yeah. Fun times. So I suppose that brings us to style and rating, unless you have more action
1049. 01:32:35 items. You want to pile on? That's it. I'm good. All right. So style and rating. Let's let's just
1050. 01:32:41 say that Erica is good at storytelling. And sometimes I wonder if we say that on every single book,
1051. 01:32:48 I wonder if people have just gotten a lot better at storytelling, or we're just picking books that
1052. 01:32:53 have good storytellers in them. I don't know what that is, but it seems like we've picked a lot of
1053. 01:32:58 books with good storytellers. Erica is no exception to that. And she does a good job of keeping me in
1054. 01:33:06 a spot where I really want to see what's going to happen next. And again, this is a topic that was
1055. 01:33:12 very interesting to me. So I had a very hard time putting this one down. Again, I don't know if that's
1056. 01:33:17 so much her writing style as much as my extreme interest in her topic, but combined it all. And
1057. 01:33:25 this was a book I really, really enjoyed going through. I don't think there's any,
1058. 01:33:31 I don't think as we've gone through this, I don't think there've been any points where I felt like
1059. 01:33:35 we were arguing with her saying she was absolutely wrong or that there are things that she needs to
1060. 01:33:44 expand on or shrink, like we really didn't find any of that here. The only real exception might be
1061. 01:33:53 the point at which she was saying the one day turnaround on emails. But even that, she tells
1062. 01:33:59 a story later on of a cult, I think it was in the culture. No, it wasn't cultures. There's a
1063. 01:34:04 section later on where there's a CEO or somebody that only responds and sends emails on the weekends.
1064. 01:34:11 And his team knew that. So they wouldn't worry about emails that he would send and they would
1065. 01:34:18 only reply to him on Mondays and that was expected and completely normal. And that was made known
1066. 01:34:24 by him. So that sort of thing can be done and she does give us that out from that. But anyway,
1067. 01:34:31 what I'm getting at is I don't really think there was much to argue with her on this one.
1068. 01:34:35 There's a lot of this that I totally agree with. I wish I had read this sooner. As far as like how
1069. 01:34:42 to rate it though, I don't think this is a five just because I don't think it fits the territory
1070. 01:34:49 of what we normally see in a five. Just, I don't know if that's maybe topic or the way it comes
1071. 01:34:56 across. I don't know that even if you just absolutely nailed this, I don't know that we would put it
1072. 01:35:01 at a five just because the subject material that we're talking about doesn't really put it in that
1073. 01:35:05 territory, I don't think. But as far as like how she got the how she conveyed the message of
1074. 01:35:13 let's learn how our body language is translated into a digital communication
1075. 01:35:17 method and how do you choose that and how do you become better at that. I feel like she did a
1076. 01:35:24 really good job and I'm very grateful for her putting this book together and having a chance
1077. 01:35:28 to read it. So that all said, I'll put it at 4.5. Again, I don't think it goes all the way to the
1078. 01:35:34 five but I really, really like this and I know I've got a number of folks that I'm going to
1079. 01:35:38 recommend this to. I've already had a couple of our youth leaders ask me about it because they saw
1080. 01:35:44 a couple of the pictures I posted about it and they're like, please tell me if that's worth reading
1081. 01:35:49 because I can never communicate with the kids in my group correctly and now I know it's probably
1082. 01:35:55 because they're using periods. So it could be. All right, that's why I land 4.5.
1083. 01:36:03 All right, I'm going to join you at 4.5. I think it's really good. I think there's lots of
1084. 01:36:07 practical stuff in here. I think she speaks to this topic better than anybody else I have ever heard.
1085. 01:36:13 I don't think it's a completely life changing book.
1086. 01:36:18 I know communication is a big deal. I know a lot of it happens digitally. I just prefer to do it
1087. 01:36:28 in person whenever possible. So that's like the only thing I can say against this.
1088. 01:36:33 Is like you can apply everything in this book and there is a possibility that you think there I
1089. 01:36:40 have mastered communication, but really you are avoiding the way that it should happen
1090. 01:36:45 in certain situations. And she has, I'm sure other books that speak directly to that.
1091. 01:36:53 This book could not be written at a better time. I guess, you know, it could have been released
1092. 01:36:59 right when everything was shutting down, but it is very applicable for the world that we find
1093. 01:37:06 ourselves in. A lot of companies are doing this hybrid thing. Some people are coming back to the
1094. 01:37:10 office. Some people continuing to work remotely or they're working remotely a bunch of the time
1095. 01:37:15 and they come to the office for a day or two a week. So I think a lot of businesses would benefit
1096. 01:37:22 by making this mandatory reading for all of their executives and all of their employees.
1097. 01:37:28 It's really, really good. I got a lot out of it. Even though if you would ask me before we started,
1098. 01:37:35 do I think that I have a better understanding of effective digital communication than a lot of
1099. 01:37:44 other people that I associate with, I would have said yes. And then I read this and I'm like,
1100. 01:37:51 actually, there's a lot here that I'm doing wrong. Not in a condemning way, like I'm the problem for
1101. 01:37:57 all this stuff, although that's the approach I choose to take because I don't want to just
1102. 01:38:02 play the victim and assume that everyone else is going to have to figure this out before
1103. 01:38:06 my life gets better. I want to do what I can. And that's the cool thing about this is like,
1104. 01:38:10 unlike a lot of the other books that we read, which they, a lot, I feel like a lot of our authors
1105. 01:38:16 try to couch it as, well, this book is for everybody and you can apply this from the bottom up. You
1106. 01:38:22 really can't. This one, I think there's a clear path to doing that, even if it's just in like one
1107. 01:38:27 specific relationship that you have in your life, there are things that you can do to make that
1108. 01:38:32 interaction a little bit more positive. So I would recommend this to absolutely everybody.
1109. 01:38:37 Like I said, if you would ask me before this, do I need to read this? I would have probably told
1110. 01:38:42 you no, but I'm really glad that I did and I did learn a lot. So I think there's a lot of people
1111. 01:38:47 like me who can understand some things a little bit better, even just understanding that there
1112. 01:38:53 are differences between the different cultures, the different genders, the different generations,
1113. 01:38:58 without her explicitly calling out every single little thing would still be helpful. But she does
1114. 01:39:03 call out all those little things. And as she's going through those, I could totally picture people
1115. 01:39:09 in my life who like, ah, yeah, they're older than me. And that's why they respond very directly
1116. 01:39:14 with a period. And it seems like they're mad. They're not as just they're older. That's the way
1117. 01:39:20 they have learned to communicate. So taking that into consideration, you know, I'm not going to
1118. 01:39:24 freak out when I get those text messages anymore. I think there's a ton of value to be had from this.
1119. 01:39:29 When you were talking about this, it just occurred to me is like, whenever I'm around my father-in-law,
1120. 01:39:34 he's a texture now because he knows that other people text, but he doesn't like texting,
1121. 01:39:43 so he does it with voice. And if you've ever received a voice generated text from somebody,
1122. 01:39:50 you know, like there is no punctuation unless they call it out. And it's usually a handful of
1123. 01:39:55 run-on sentences. Nothing is capitalized. Like that's just how it kicks out, right? That's how these
1124. 01:39:59 voice to text systems work right now. I mean, they're getting better. But that's how they come
1125. 01:40:06 across. Well, if you get one of those texts, it just seems weird. Like, is he mad with me?
1126. 01:40:13 Is he? Yeah. I don't even know what he like, what does he want? Like, that's just kind of how
1127. 01:40:17 it comes across. And I've told him this, like, it's just, it's kind of strange. So it works for him.
1128. 01:40:23 It's the way it goes. Anyway, we can be done, done with this. Mike, what is next? Next book is yours.
1129. 01:40:29 What did you pick? Procrastinate on purpose by Rory Vaden. We're going to procrastinate, baby.
1130. 01:40:34 Are you still going to put off your procrastination, long? If I'm going to do that action item,
1131. 01:40:39 this is when it's going to happen. So all right. Fair enough. Fair enough. The book I'm choosing for
1132. 01:40:47 after that is "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. The tagline on this one is "Create the change you
1133. 01:40:54 want by changing the way you think." And I've had this one recommended to me a couple times,
1134. 01:40:59 one from a friend just this morning. So I feel like this one's popped up on my radar a handful of
1135. 01:41:06 times recently. So while it's on my mind, I would like to cover it with you because I think this would
1136. 01:41:12 be a good one for us. All right. That's what I'm thinking. So anyway, "Leminal Thinking." That's
1137. 01:41:18 what we'll do after procrastinate on purpose. I'm in the middle of buying a house, Mike. So
1138. 01:41:24 time to read continues to evade me. I almost didn't get this one done, our actual bookworm book.
1139. 01:41:30 So there is no way there's a gap book happening this time or next time. So do you have one? Can you
1140. 01:41:37 redeem bookworm and say you're going to have a gap book this time around? I can say I'll have a
1141. 01:41:43 gap book. I can't say what it's going to be. I will be on sabbatical next week as we record this.
1142. 01:41:49 So I will be reading something, but I don't know what it is yet. That's fair. That's fair. All right.
1143. 01:41:56 Well, big thanks to everybody who has been able to join us live. I know there have been a number of
1144. 01:42:00 folks in and out with the chat and such. I know we don't always respond to the chat while we're
1145. 01:42:04 recording, but it's still cool to see some of the conversations that happen there. And it does
1146. 01:42:08 influence some of what we say. So thank you to those of you who join us live and also a huge thank
1147. 01:42:15 you to those of you who are on our bookworm club membership program as well. So thank you
1148. 01:42:21 to you guys that if you haven't joined that and you want to go to bookworm.fm/membership
1149. 01:42:29 and that will get you to the pages and all the things that you need in order to
1150. 01:42:33 to join that. And that's where you can get like Mike was saying earlier, the my node files that
1151. 01:42:38 he puts together for this as well as a few other things on the site as well. So we'd love to have
1152. 01:42:43 you on board helps us buy our books and keep the sites and the podcasts and stuff all up and running.
1153. 01:42:48 So thank you for that. All right. So if you're reading along with us, which you totally should,
1154. 01:42:53 then buy procrastinate on purpose by Rory Vaden or get it from your local library.
1155. 01:42:59 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.