123: Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden

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1. 00:00:00 So I know you used to play basketball.
2. 00:00:01 Are you a fan of space jam, Joe B. Legg?
3. 00:00:04 Ooh, now we're going back in time.
4. 00:00:07 Um, kind of sort of maybe yes.
5. 00:00:10 OK, do you remember the movie?
6. 00:00:12 Yes.
7. 00:00:13 Very well.
8. 00:00:14 OK, Michael Jordan, all the all the animated characters.
9. 00:00:17 Very fun.
10. 00:00:18 Yes.
11. 00:00:19 Do you remember the little mouse that goes in for approximately 13 seconds
12. 00:00:24 in the film before getting squished by a basketball?
13. 00:00:27 No, I don't remember this at all.
14. 00:00:29 OK, well, the guy who plays Newman on Seinfeld is on the bench and he wants to get
15. 00:00:33 in the game, right?
16. 00:00:34 And they're trying to find a sub because the monster's are destroying everybody.
17. 00:00:39 OK, and they pick this tiny little mouse character whose name is sniffles.
18. 00:00:43 OK, and he's like, really the mouse and the mouse goes in and a very high pitched
19. 00:00:49 voice just starts talking to one of the monster's and won't shut up and then
20. 00:00:54 gets squished by the basketball when the monster has had enough.
21. 00:00:58 That mouse, like I said, is named sniffles.
22. 00:01:01 OK, and was played by the person that we interviewed for focused yesterday.
23. 00:01:06 What?
24. 00:01:07 Yes, her name is Colleen Wainwright.
25. 00:01:10 OK, she's done a lot of cool stuff.
26. 00:01:11 And I just I showed that clip after I got done recording because I was doing my
27. 00:01:17 prep prior to and I started looking at all our projects and found it's the same
28. 00:01:22 person and then found out for a record.
29. 00:01:23 Yeah, she was sniffles in space jam.
30. 00:01:28 So I showed that clip to my kids who all love that movie.
31. 00:01:30 Yep.
32. 00:01:31 And then I'm like, I just interviewed that person and they're like, what?
33. 00:01:35 Mind blown.
34. 00:01:40 That's what that is.
35. 00:01:41 They thought that was the coolest thing ever.
36. 00:01:44 That is pretty cool.
37. 00:01:45 It is pretty solid.
38. 00:01:47 That's that's super fun.
39. 00:01:49 Yeah.
40. 00:01:50 All right.
41. 00:01:51 So enough procrastinating.
42. 00:01:53 I'm procrastinating.
43. 00:01:53 Let's jump in here.
44. 00:01:55 We got lots of follow up items from last time.
45. 00:02:00 It's true.
46. 00:02:01 And most of mine again are not really ones that are going to be completely
47. 00:02:09 actionable.
48. 00:02:09 I'll start with the actionable ones.
49. 00:02:11 First of all, I were the ones that I could actually complete.
50. 00:02:15 But that was basically taking the quiz from Digital Body Language by Erica
51. 00:02:20 Duan.
52. 00:02:21 I did, well, I attempted to do this until I saw what the quiz actually was.
53. 00:02:26 Did you look at this at all?
54. 00:02:28 I didn't even look at it because I knew myself.
55. 00:02:31 I was like, you know, it's a fun thing to aspire to, but I'm not taking this.
56. 00:02:34 This is not a quiz.
57. 00:02:36 This is it takes you to her website where you fill out the form and then you're
58. 00:02:44 supposed to get emailed the link, but you don't.
59. 00:02:47 You get emailed an old link.
60. 00:02:49 So it's like the website was updated, but the rest of the email auto responder was
61. 00:02:56 not.
62. 00:02:56 So it delivers the wrong thing.
63. 00:02:58 I was able to finally figure it out though.
64. 00:03:01 And it's not an interactive quiz at all.
65. 00:03:03 It's literally just a PDF with those little boxes that we saw at the end of the
66. 00:03:07 chapters that you can print off and actually write in.
67. 00:03:09 Sure.
68. 00:03:10 Yeah.
69. 00:03:11 So there was absolutely nothing new with the actual quiz and was pretty
70. 00:03:17 disappointed by that because I enjoyed the book quite a bit, but the quiz was
71. 00:03:22 pretty terrible.
72. 00:03:23 So I printed it off, got access to it, did not actually bother to tabulate any sort
73. 00:03:29 of results because there was nothing to tabulate.
74. 00:03:31 It was just a PDF.
75. 00:03:32 That makes sense.
76. 00:03:33 I suppose if it's the same thing, it's in the book.
77. 00:03:35 Why would I go through the process of doing it again?
78. 00:03:38 I suppose you could do it in the book.
79. 00:03:40 This would at least let you write on it without writing in the book itself.
80. 00:03:43 True.
81. 00:03:43 I suppose that would be the benefit there.
82. 00:03:45 I guess.
83. 00:03:46 Yeah.
84. 00:03:47 I don't know.
85. 00:03:48 Felt a little bit duped.
86. 00:03:49 Oh, well, the other one that really has a.
87. 00:03:53 A, a finish to it is figuring out the norms for communication.
88. 00:03:58 I sort of did this with the one that I had in mind when I listed this action item.
89. 00:04:04 I did think through and kind of codify what are the norms for communicating with
90. 00:04:13 this particular person.
91. 00:04:15 And that was helpful because I basically identified that there are specific days
92. 00:04:21 that I should attempt to communicate something to this person.
93. 00:04:24 And there are specific times of day that I should do that based on the other
94. 00:04:29 responsibilities that they have.
95. 00:04:31 Like I have to get it in front of them at the right time.
96. 00:04:34 That's, you know, it'd be nice if I didn't have to do that, but that's not a huge deal.
97. 00:04:40 And just recognizing where my windows are has made it much easier.
98. 00:04:45 Yeah.
99. 00:04:46 Yeah, I could see that already paying dividends for me.
100. 00:04:49 I just had to do this with, we just had a guy in this morning.
101. 00:04:53 It was helping a spec of potential sound system.
102. 00:04:56 That's an outdoor deal.
103. 00:04:57 And I, I text with them all the time.
104. 00:05:01 We know each other as friends outside of this work relationship.
105. 00:05:04 So it's like, I could text him at just about any time, but this was a work
106. 00:05:09 related thing that I needed to text him about to schedule this.
107. 00:05:12 And it's like, I wrote the text was about ready to hit send and realized it's 730
108. 00:05:17 at night on a Monday night.
109. 00:05:18 I'm like, not going to send this work related thing.
110. 00:05:21 I'll wait till nine o'clock tomorrow morning because I know he starts at about
111. 00:05:24 nine.
112. 00:05:25 So I sent it at like nine 15 the next morning and he got back to me right away.
113. 00:05:28 But I know if I had texted him Monday night, he'd been like, Joe, what are you doing?
114. 00:05:33 Like what?
115. 00:05:33 What?
116. 00:05:34 It's just weird whenever you kind of muddy those lines like that.
117. 00:05:38 So yeah, I appreciate you taking that initiative.
118. 00:05:42 Yeah, timing is everything I'm recognizing and it's really not.
119. 00:05:47 My preferences don't matter.
120. 00:05:50 That's not a like I'm resigned to this, but really the more that I study leadership,
121. 00:05:57 the more I realized that leadership isn't just like some lofty title and you get
122. 00:06:00 all these extra benefits.
123. 00:06:02 It's actually, if you want to become a better leader, you got to be more and more
124. 00:06:06 selfless and it's less and less about you.
125. 00:06:08 Correct.
126. 00:06:10 Yeah.
127. 00:06:10 So I'm okay with that.
128. 00:06:12 The other ones I've got on here before we get to the big one,
129. 00:06:17 eliminate.
130. 00:06:18 I know you're really busy.
131. 00:06:19 I guess you could say I've done that because I haven't used it, but I really
132. 00:06:22 haven't had the opportunity to pull that out of the bag either yet.
133. 00:06:25 So I don't know if this is gone from my vocabulary.
134. 00:06:28 I want it to be.
135. 00:06:29 I want to ban the mute button and I haven't had an opportunity to do this either.
136. 00:06:35 Just the meetings that I've been in.
137. 00:06:37 Nobody's using the mute button.
138. 00:06:40 There's one team in particular that I know this will come up and I am
139. 00:06:45 hesitantly looking forward to that confrontation because you know me.
140. 00:06:50 I love me some confrontation.
141. 00:06:52 Yep.
142. 00:06:52 But I will, when that happens, ask everyone to unmute.
143. 00:06:57 I did the other day ask everyone to put their computers away when we were in a
144. 00:07:02 meeting.
145. 00:07:03 Well done.
146. 00:07:04 Yep.
147. 00:07:05 Be mindful of whose voices I amplify.
148. 00:07:09 I don't think I've amplified anybody's voice.
149. 00:07:11 The last one.
150. 00:07:12 But I've been thinking about that item specifically.
151. 00:07:17 OK, so I don't, again, I don't really know who specifically I'm going to amplify.
152. 00:07:23 But like I said in the last one, I do want to recognize that I don't want to
153. 00:07:27 just like keep echoing the people just like me who say the same things as me,
154. 00:07:32 which is kind of what happens in the tech community specifically is like somebody
155. 00:07:37 has an article about something, whether it's Mac stories or Jason Snell or whoever.
156. 00:07:43 And then everyone in the circle like writes a blog post and points to it or
157. 00:07:49 retweets it and whatever.
158. 00:07:50 So there's enough other people doing that.
159. 00:07:54 And then the one that everyone came here to find out about, did I keep a procrastination
160. 00:07:59 log?
161. 00:07:59 I did not.
162. 00:08:01 Oh, I've been on sabbatical.
163. 00:08:05 Like Mike until this week.
164. 00:08:07 And then this week I did not keep a procrastination log.
165. 00:08:10 I still think there is some merit to this.
166. 00:08:14 I think it's going to look very different than I had envisioned before we picked
167. 00:08:20 today's book.
168. 00:08:21 But I don't think procrastination is the four letter word that we always thought it
169. 00:08:27 was.
170. 00:08:27 OK, we'll get into that in a minute.
171. 00:08:30 I think it depends on what we're procrastinating on, but exactly, exactly.
172. 00:08:34 All right.
173. 00:08:35 So those are my action items.
174. 00:08:37 You've got to.
175. 00:08:39 Yes.
176. 00:08:39 How'd you do?
177. 00:08:40 The first of those is to compliment in public.
178. 00:08:43 Basically, the gist behind this is that I lead teams of people for running the video
179. 00:08:51 production, sound production, live stream stuff for Sunday morning.
180. 00:08:55 So I've got, I forget what the number is, around 18 different people that work
181. 00:09:01 underneath of me and various things at the church.
182. 00:09:03 And as a result of that, it's very easy for me to kind of just set everything on
183. 00:09:09 autopilot and then just kind of sit back and show up whenever things go bad.
184. 00:09:14 And I don't want to be just the guy that shows up when things are bad.
185. 00:09:18 So I've been trying to make sure I know, right?
186. 00:09:22 If Joe shows up, somebody screwed up.
187. 00:09:23 Like that's generally the way it's perceived currently.
188. 00:09:28 So what I've been doing the last couple of weeks is just whenever events are
189. 00:09:33 when things are happening, if I see something that happened that went really
190. 00:09:37 well, I make sure I go over and find that person and make sure that I'm
191. 00:09:42 thanking them and pointing out and showing what I saw, despite whoever's around.
192. 00:09:48 Like if everybody's around, that's great.
193. 00:09:50 But I want to make sure that it's possible for everybody to see what's happening
194. 00:09:55 there. There have been a couple cases.
195. 00:09:57 Now, the trick with this is this is coming from digital body language, right?
196. 00:10:00 So the idea was this is in the world of email and texts and such.
197. 00:10:06 And one thing that we started to do as a result of this is we're playing around
198. 00:10:15 with the idea and working towards some form of like a review of how did the
199. 00:10:19 week go that goes out Monday morning.
200. 00:10:22 It's like, here are all the good things that happened.
201. 00:10:25 We could make that.
202. 00:10:27 I mean, it's very easy for people to take that and say, Hey, and also here
203. 00:10:30 all the things that went wrong, right?
204. 00:10:31 It's very easy to just kind of throw that underneath.
205. 00:10:34 But I don't want it to be that because if I'm pointing out all the positives,
206. 00:10:39 that gives everyone else something to aspire to as well, who's a part of the team.
207. 00:10:45 So that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
208. 00:10:48 Like, okay, Steve did a really good job at setting up that camera shot.
209. 00:10:53 And I noticed it.
210. 00:10:54 So let's talk about it, talk about why it worked.
211. 00:10:56 And hopefully that will happen more often in the future.
212. 00:11:00 So anyway, been doing that.
213. 00:11:01 Um, I've already received a handful of folks thanking me for doing that who have
214. 00:11:07 noticed it.
215. 00:11:08 So I think it's going to have quite a few positive results from that, but it's also
216. 00:11:14 a chance for me to just notice the good things and not just the bad too.
217. 00:11:17 So it's good on, good on both fronts.
218. 00:11:20 Same thing with kids, right?
219. 00:11:21 If I'm catching when they're doing good things, not necessarily when they're
220. 00:11:24 doing bad things all the time.
221. 00:11:26 So same thing.
222. 00:11:27 Uh, that was the first one.
223. 00:11:28 The second one was to pick up the phone more, which you gave me a chance to do
224. 00:11:31 yesterday and I didn't take it.
225. 00:11:32 And I, I've been good about it outside of Mike calling me.
226. 00:11:38 Yeah, I called Joe yesterday and left a voicemail for the only reason that I
227. 00:11:47 wanted to give him an opportunity to fulfill his action item.
228. 00:11:50 Yeah.
229. 00:11:50 If you did it outside of me, then that's fine.
230. 00:11:52 Yeah.
231. 00:11:53 I did do it a lot outside of you.
232. 00:11:55 There are a handful of places where like we were in the middle of scheduling, uh,
233. 00:12:00 who's going to take care of what Sundays for the next three months.
234. 00:12:03 And normally I would just send out an email, a few text messages and stuff, but
235. 00:12:07 I've been making phone calls all the way around because then it gives me a
236. 00:12:09 chance to figure out like, how can I help you do your job better?
237. 00:12:12 There's some legwork I can do to make it easier for you and trying to ask those
238. 00:12:18 questions at the same time.
239. 00:12:19 I normally wouldn't do that over email or text.
240. 00:12:22 It's just weird to do that, but I'll do it over with phone call.
241. 00:12:25 And, uh, again, I mean, it's, it's had a much bigger impact than I expected.
242. 00:12:30 People are like, Oh, well, yeah, I'm super awkward on the phone, but yeah, this
243. 00:12:34 works.
244. 00:12:34 So there is that side.
245. 00:12:36 Um, but yeah, yesterday was crazy.
246. 00:12:40 Ended up with a migraine and stuff.
247. 00:12:41 So that's why I ended up not catching you.
248. 00:12:44 But yes, I've been picking up the phone more.
249. 00:12:46 Just not when Mike calls, apparently.
250. 00:12:48 That's all right.
251. 00:12:50 Cause as I said in the voicemail, that was literally the only reason that I
252. 00:12:53 called.
253. 00:12:53 So in fact, you texted me right after that and said you were in a meeting.
254. 00:12:57 Can you call me back in about a half an hour?
255. 00:12:59 And I said, you really don't need to just listen to the voicemail.
256. 00:13:02 Sure.
257. 00:13:03 And I never called, never responded, just disappeared.
258. 00:13:06 Yeah.
259. 00:13:08 Cool, cool.
260. 00:13:09 Well, I think it is time to stop procrastinating, even if it is on purpose.
261. 00:13:16 And talk about procrastinating on purpose by Rory Vaden.
262. 00:13:24 Uh, this is a book that has been on my radar for a very long time.
263. 00:13:29 Right after I joined the Asian efficiency team back in the day, Zach
264. 00:13:36 interviewed Rory Vaden for the podcast.
265. 00:13:38 And I think that was around the time that he published this book.
266. 00:13:43 This is his second book.
267. 00:13:45 The first one is take the stairs and there's some competing ideas.
268. 00:13:49 It seems like competing ideas anyways between those two books.
269. 00:13:52 I've read both of them.
270. 00:13:53 They're actually pretty complimentary, but he kind of positions them
271. 00:13:57 against each other just so there's a discussion, I think.
272. 00:14:00 Uh, what did you think about this book?
273. 00:14:03 Did it live up to your maybe negative expectations or were you
274. 00:14:10 pleasantly surprised?
275. 00:14:12 Uh, was it just another systems book?
276. 00:14:15 Like what were you thinking when you picked up this one and started to read it?
277. 00:14:19 When I started to read it, uh, when I started to read it, I felt like I was
278. 00:14:25 going down the, this could be good.
279. 00:14:27 Like I, I think he's going to prove me wrong.
280. 00:14:30 And then as I started going through it, it was like, no, he's going to give me
281. 00:14:34 a system to follow and he's going to tell me to put things off until they
282. 00:14:38 need to be done, which is exactly what I thought he was going to tell me to do.
283. 00:14:41 And like, okay, well, I got what I thought I was going to get for the most part.
284. 00:14:48 Um, I mean, there's some tidbits in here and I'm, I'm kind of itching to go
285. 00:14:53 through these because I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of good points
286. 00:14:56 here and procrastination is one of those points.
287. 00:15:02 But depending on how you want to define this, I'm not certain that the title of
288. 00:15:11 this book fits what is in it.
289. 00:15:13 So that's fair.
290. 00:15:16 I, I feel like the title of the book was designed to get us to buy the book.
291. 00:15:21 That's, I feel like it's one of these clickbaity type titles.
292. 00:15:25 And what's inside of it is good stuff, but it's not what I expected.
293. 00:15:31 Sure.
294. 00:15:32 I think that's completely fair.
295. 00:15:35 At least I should say it's not what I expected.
296. 00:15:37 If I go off the title, it is kind of what I expect.
297. 00:15:41 You get what I'm saying, like it is kind of what I expected.
298. 00:15:44 If you follow Mortimer Adler's approach to reading a book, then you have a different
299. 00:15:49 idea than if you've just read the title.
300. 00:15:52 Yes.
301. 00:15:53 Yes.
302. 00:15:53 Very much.
303. 00:15:54 So it's in line with that approach, but not just from reading the title.
304. 00:15:59 Right.
305. 00:16:00 Right.
306. 00:16:00 I think the title is kind of positioned in a way that I mean, procrastinate is one
307. 00:16:07 of those words that people are always like, Oh, yeah, that's a problem.
308. 00:16:11 I, I struggle with that.
309. 00:16:13 And so it's when I first heard the title, my initial response was he's
310. 00:16:18 basically trying to tell you that you're okay.
311. 00:16:23 You know, you're not, which I kind of appreciate, to be honest.
312. 00:16:28 I think there's a lot of books in the productivity space that are just like
313. 00:16:34 full jocko, you know, lazy you.
314. 00:16:38 You need to just completely change your life by getting up at 4.30 in the morning
315. 00:16:42 every day, you know, yeah.
316. 00:16:45 And Rory, like the title of this book kind of implicit implicitly says, well,
317. 00:16:50 you're not going to eliminate procrastination.
318. 00:16:53 Everybody deals with this.
319. 00:16:54 You're just going to kind of shift it a little bit so it's more positive.
320. 00:16:57 Not exactly what, what, uh, what it's going to do.
321. 00:17:03 But let's jump in here.
322. 00:17:04 There's, there's three sections, obviously.
323. 00:17:07 Surprise, surprise.
324. 00:17:09 It doesn't need to be three sections.
325. 00:17:10 There only needs to be two sections, but maybe one depending on how you can get it.
326. 00:17:15 So the first one is part one, the truth about time.
327. 00:17:19 There are three chapters there.
328. 00:17:21 Then there is part two, the five permissions.
329. 00:17:24 That's where we get into the five steps of his system.
330. 00:17:27 And then part three is literally just one chapter.
331. 00:17:31 And that is part three is the next step.
332. 00:17:34 Chapter nine is the last one that is multiplying your time.
333. 00:17:38 And it's basically just a summary of the stuff in the book.
334. 00:17:44 So let's start with the first section here, though, on the truth about time.
335. 00:17:49 I thought there was actually some pretty cool stuff in here.
336. 00:17:53 The first chapter, what you thought you knew talks about priority dilution,
337. 00:18:00 Parkinson's law, intentional imbalance, a whole bunch of stuff that we've covered before.
338. 00:18:05 The one that I think is most interesting is priority dilution, which is delaying
339. 00:18:10 the day's most important activities by allowing attention to shift to less important
340. 00:18:14 tasks.
341. 00:18:15 And I think every single person on the planet has fallen into this trap where you've got
342. 00:18:22 some things that are important that you're looking to get done.
343. 00:18:24 And then you just go and you check your email and you get sucked into whatever
344. 00:18:28 form of busyness, you know, that procrasto working feels kind of like work can technically
345. 00:18:34 be classified as work, but is really just you trying to avoid the thing that you don't
346. 00:18:40 really want to do.
347. 00:18:41 Right.
348. 00:18:41 You know, so that priority dilution, I like that term.
349. 00:18:45 What did you think about that?
350. 00:18:46 I like it.
351. 00:18:47 It sounds like it came from the other book.
352. 00:18:50 I did not read what's the other one, Take the Stairs.
353. 00:18:53 Um, I should know that because he brought it up.
354. 00:18:55 Yep.
355. 00:18:55 Every other page throughout the whole book, it was one like, why are we
356. 00:18:58 keep talking about this?
357. 00:18:59 Um, it sounds like this is definitely one that you should probably read,
358. 00:19:03 take the stairs first.
359. 00:19:05 Is that fair?
360. 00:19:06 That was better anyways.
361. 00:19:07 Is it?
362. 00:19:08 Okay.
363. 00:19:08 Yeah.
364. 00:19:09 Um, but priority dilution.
365. 00:19:12 I think I like that term a lot because it, it's a good indicator to me that, okay,
366. 00:19:18 these are all the things I forget what the book is, but at one point we talked about how you can't have priorities.
367. 00:19:23 Yep.
368. 00:19:25 Cause it's only the top, like it has to be singular priority.
369. 00:19:29 I think it was essentialism, but he also makes the point here.
370. 00:19:32 I think it's later on that there is only one priority.
371. 00:19:35 Correct.
372. 00:19:35 Yep.
373. 00:19:36 And so anyway, priority dilution, basically you've got too many things and it's easy to lose track of what that priority is.
374. 00:19:46 And I think that's absolutely true.
375. 00:19:50 When you have so many things happening, you have so many potential.
376. 00:19:56 Items that could make it to priority status that it gets difficult to nail down which one it actually is.
377. 00:20:04 And something like priority dilution is a term.
378. 00:20:07 I feel like fits that really well.
379. 00:20:09 So yeah, I like it.
380. 00:20:09 Yeah, I like it too.
381. 00:20:11 I think he nails the pain point here exactly when he says that when suffering from priority dilution, it feels like you fall further behind the harder that you work.
382. 00:20:18 And then also kind of coupled with this is Parkinson's law.
383. 00:20:22 This isn't new, but we've heard this before.
384. 00:20:24 The amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of time that we allow to be available.
385. 00:20:30 He also says on page eight and this kind of sets the stage.
386. 00:20:34 So you're either going to resonate with this and be like, yeah, I want to read the rest or you're instantly going to disengage.
387. 00:20:40 He says, once you own your own problem, you empower yourself to create your own solution.
388. 00:20:46 Now I know you, I know me.
389. 00:20:49 And we probably were like, yeah, go Rory at that point.
390. 00:20:52 But there's a few other people that's going to rub the wrong way.
391. 00:20:56 Yep.
392. 00:20:56 So I like that though, right at the beginning of the book, like drawing the line in the sand.
393. 00:21:02 You're either with me or you again, me.
394. 00:21:03 Yep.
395. 00:21:04 And it's not too far after that.
396. 00:21:05 He makes the point that like there's always more to do than you can do.
397. 00:21:09 Yep.
398. 00:21:09 And like take your pick.
399. 00:21:12 You will always have more options than what you can actually do.
400. 00:21:16 Yep.
401. 00:21:17 And it's like rock on.
402. 00:21:18 You got me.
403. 00:21:19 This is where like part one, like I'm all in.
404. 00:21:21 Like this is not what I thought I was going to get, especially at the beginning.
405. 00:21:24 Like you got me.
406. 00:21:25 Let's go.
407. 00:21:26 Like I'm on board.
408. 00:21:27 Yeah, he does a great job kind of unraveling the problems here with traditional time
409. 00:21:32 management.
410. 00:21:33 And I think he does a great job.
411. 00:21:35 One thing I think it wasn't super effective.
412. 00:21:39 Ha ha, effective is his description of efficiency versus effectiveness.
413. 00:21:44 He adds a tries to add a third dimension, which is efficacy.
414. 00:21:49 And then he tries to take that two by two grid and make it into a cube, which I
415. 00:21:52 think visually just didn't really work for me.
416. 00:21:55 But basically what he's saying is it's not just efficiency or effectiveness.
417. 00:22:00 He defines these terms.
418. 00:22:01 Efficiency is performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least
419. 00:22:05 waste and effort.
420. 00:22:06 Effectiveness is being competent and able to perform well, having a proven capacity,
421. 00:22:11 adequate to accomplish a purpose, productive or capable of producing a result.
422. 00:22:14 Okay.
423. 00:22:16 So those two are great.
424. 00:22:17 But then efficacy, he says, is the quality of being successful in producing that
425. 00:22:21 desired result.
426. 00:22:22 So effectiveness is you're able to produce it.
427. 00:22:25 Effectus efficacy is, did you actually produce it?
428. 00:22:28 I think that's how he would put it.
429. 00:22:30 And then in chapter two, he takes that big rocks analogy that we've heard a thousand
430. 00:22:36 times from Stephen Covey, where you put the rocks in and then you put the gravel
431. 00:22:40 in and then you put the sand in, then you put the water in.
432. 00:22:43 And kind of the point is like, if you don't put the big rocks in first, it's not
433. 00:22:47 going to fit.
434. 00:22:47 And so people take them like, a, I just need to organize all my things better.
435. 00:22:51 But he points out and I kind of have implicitly felt this with that analogy,
436. 00:22:58 especially when I hear other people explain it is like, well, what if you've got
437. 00:23:02 too many rocks?
438. 00:23:03 What if you charge is only so big?
439. 00:23:06 Yeah.
440. 00:23:07 What do you do then?
441. 00:23:08 You know, and he, he says eventually the water is going to overflow.
442. 00:23:13 So time management is trying to fit everything inside of that jar.
443. 00:23:18 And really the self management is deciding what things should go into that jar.
444. 00:23:22 I like that.
445. 00:23:23 Uh, page 25, he says, there is no such thing as time management.
446. 00:23:26 There is only self management.
447. 00:23:28 That's uncomfortable.
448. 00:23:29 Again, going back to his previous quote about how you are the problem and you are
449. 00:23:33 the solution, but I don't think he's wrong here.
450. 00:23:36 I think that's very accurate.
451. 00:23:37 Yeah.
452. 00:23:38 This is, this is one of the pieces that like I'm, I'm very on board with you.
453. 00:23:43 Here, I've never, I feel like I've never been good at time management to use that term.
454. 00:23:51 Uh, just ask my wife.
455. 00:23:52 She thinks I'm horrible at it and I am.
456. 00:23:54 And this is kind of a slap in the face in that like, sure, time management.
457. 00:24:02 Great.
458. 00:24:02 But it's actually, you're not good at managing yourself.
459. 00:24:05 So if you're bad at time management, it's just you're making bad choices.
460. 00:24:10 That's what he's getting at.
461. 00:24:12 And like that, okay, I put the book down at that point to be completely up front with you.
462. 00:24:19 Like, all right.
463. 00:24:20 I, how do I?
464. 00:24:23 Mm.
465. 00:24:24 Hmm.
466. 00:24:25 I don't like you right now, but we're not friends anymore.
467. 00:24:28 We are not friends, but you're right.
468. 00:24:31 And I am going to continue reading this because now I need to know, like you've
469. 00:24:34 set the problem up very well.
470. 00:24:36 You have identified the problem that I deal with extremely, painfully, clearly.
471. 00:24:42 And now I need it solved.
472. 00:24:44 So please tell me what comes next.
473. 00:24:45 And that's, I mean, he set that up really well, but yes, he, he spoke to my heart at that point, which ultimately, I mean, on that topic real quickly, that's really what you want, even though it's uncomfortable.
474. 00:24:59 You want someone who will show you your blind spots.
475. 00:25:04 That's why people hire coaches.
476. 00:25:05 You know, it's not just that they can tell them, Hey, you're doing a great job and be a cheerleader all the time.
477. 00:25:11 They want to know what they're doing wrong so they can fix it.
478. 00:25:15 Right.
479. 00:25:15 So that is what a true friend does is they, they maybe say it nicely, but they, they'll knock it off.
480. 00:25:21 I noticed you're doing this thing and it's going to hurt you.
481. 00:25:24 Yes.
482. 00:25:25 Yes.
483. 00:25:26 At least you hope they would point it out.
484. 00:25:27 That's for sure.
485. 00:25:28 Yeah.
486. 00:25:28 Uh, then the last chapter in this section is called multiplying your time.
487. 00:25:33 This sets up the model for this system because he's basically saying like there are really successful people who function.
488. 00:25:41 Differently.
489. 00:25:42 And what they have done is they have learned to multiply their time.
490. 00:25:46 Uh, just as time management has limitations, so does prioritizing.
491. 00:25:51 You can only put things in the proper order so much.
492. 00:25:54 Eventually you got to do the things and you got to cut out the ones that really don't matter.
493. 00:25:59 So you go back to that.
494. 00:26:00 Covey quadrant, you know, what is important?
495. 00:26:03 What is urgent?
496. 00:26:04 And urgency, he defines as how soon does this matter?
497. 00:26:09 Important, he defines as how much does this matter?
498. 00:26:12 And then he tries to add a third one, significance, which is how long is this going to matter?
499. 00:26:17 That was interesting.
500. 00:26:19 I never thought of it that way.
501. 00:26:21 I guess I kind of bundled that into the important.
502. 00:26:24 Uh, column whenever I would try to rank these things, I'm not sure how helpful that would be to break out a separate, a separate access, you know, and decide as I'm doing things.
503. 00:26:37 Is this something that's going to matter five years from now?
504. 00:26:41 Or is it not only going to matter for the next, you know, five minutes?
505. 00:26:44 I could see that being valuable, being weighed into the equation.
506. 00:26:48 I'm not really sure that this works for me, though, the three dimensional grid.
507. 00:26:53 I feel like the third dimension, it makes it, it makes it harder to nail down what to do because it, it by adding the third dimension, it automatically.
508. 00:27:08 Is it doubling or is it tripling the number of options in that whole quadrant?
509. 00:27:13 Because it's no longer a quadrant, right?
510. 00:27:15 Yeah, I don't know.
511. 00:27:17 It's significantly more though.
512. 00:27:18 That's for sure.
513. 00:27:19 Yeah, it's possible combinations you're talking about, right?
514. 00:27:22 Yeah, I think it doubles it.
515. 00:27:23 I think those are the way that works.
516. 00:27:24 So it goes from four to eight.
517. 00:27:26 And when you do that, it's now outside the realm of you being able to process that mentally.
518. 00:27:35 For most people, I mean, generally speaking, trying to sort through eight categories in your mind.
519. 00:27:41 To figure out where something fits in the month's eight categories.
520. 00:27:45 I feel like four is already like towards the limit.
521. 00:27:48 Three is kind of where you need to be.
522. 00:27:50 But that said, having the third dimension and processing, like, okay, how urgent is this, how important is it?
523. 00:27:59 And then also, how significant is this? If I'm looking at, say, 30 years out from right now,
524. 00:28:05 is this worth?
525. 00:28:07 And there's some numbers and stuff we can talk about later about how to calculate some of that.
526. 00:28:11 But 30 years from now, how significant will this be to me?
527. 00:28:17 And using that as a gauge to decide what you should be doing.
528. 00:28:22 It's a really cool idea.
529. 00:28:26 I just don't know. I feel like it's kind of shoehorned into this whole matrix quadrant setup.
530. 00:28:34 And I'm like, well, okay, sure.
531. 00:28:36 That part, I'm probably not going to use the whole three-dimensional cube bit.
532. 00:28:41 But the concept of significance on top of urgent and important that I resonate with,
533. 00:28:46 that part I would probably use.
534. 00:28:48 Yeah, because he mentions that the significance that helps work against priority
535. 00:28:54 dilution. And I 100% agree with that.
536. 00:28:57 He also, the main point that he's making in this chapter is that multipliers make decisions based
537. 00:29:06 on the future.
538. 00:29:08 So if you've got all of these things that you have to do, and you don't take into consideration
539. 00:29:13 the significance, and it does this really matter going forward, it's easy to just feel
540. 00:29:21 overwhelmed by all of the things that you have to do.
541. 00:29:24 But then he says here that choosing how to spend your time is emotional, not just logical.
542. 00:29:31 Okay, I agree with that too.
543. 00:29:34 I'm already, I can see how my emotions are already influencing how I am ignoring certain things.
544. 00:29:43 So basically what he's telling me to do is to harness that emotional decision making
545. 00:29:50 and have a bias towards things that matter going forward, not things that matter right now.
546. 00:29:56 Play the long game essentially.
547. 00:29:58 Sure.
548. 00:29:58 And he says that multipliers give themselves emotional permissions that others don't.
549. 00:30:02 I think this is a really cool idea.
550. 00:30:06 If this is the first time that you've stumbled upon that idea, that alone could make this a
551. 00:30:10 five-star book for you.
552. 00:30:12 I also think there's a lot of resistance to this because we've got a course on email,
553. 00:30:17 and I've talked to people and I'm like, you know, you don't have to respond to every single email
554. 00:30:21 that comes in like, yes I do.
555. 00:30:22 Don't you know my boss?
556. 00:30:25 Don't you know my coworkers?
557. 00:30:25 And interestingly, we talked to, I mentioned Colleen Wainwright at the beginning.
558. 00:30:33 She's the lady who did Sniffles for Space Jam, and she manages a team and does it all out of
559. 00:30:37 email, but she's got all these filters set up, which basically bring the things that she needs
560. 00:30:42 to see to the front and everything else is automatically filters out.
561. 00:30:45 And she is, I mean, if there was one person on this planet who can legitimately say,
562. 00:30:50 I work in email all day and I need to see things right away, it's her.
563. 00:30:54 But even she has these systems set up where she's filtering this stuff,
564. 00:30:58 so she doesn't have to do all of that mental load of deciding all these things.
565. 00:31:02 And that's kind of where we talked about that later too.
566. 00:31:05 So sometimes, you know, I start arguing with these people who just are fighting for wasting time
567. 00:31:11 in email, and I'm just like, you know, I'm not going to win this one.
568. 00:31:14 You've already decided like, there is no changing your mind, so I'm just not going to try anymore.
569. 00:31:20 And I do think there's a potential of you getting to that point with this book as well.
570. 00:31:25 So that's fair.
571. 00:31:26 I don't live in my email.
572. 00:31:27 Even people that I work with know you should text Joe, you don't email Joe.
573. 00:31:31 All right, anything else from the first part for we get into the second one here?
574. 00:31:36 I don't think so, because I think the second part is where we're going to spend most of our time.
575. 00:31:39 All right, as we get to go through the five pieces.
576. 00:31:41 Yes, part two is the five permissions, which sounds really nice.
577. 00:31:47 And then there's this graphic.
578. 00:31:49 The five steps here, let's just walk through these.
579. 00:31:52 Eliminate, automate, delegate, procrastinate, and concentrate.
580. 00:31:59 And there is a visual here.
581. 00:32:02 The process is you start with all, you get rid of everything that you
582. 00:32:06 want to, that you shouldn't be doing, eliminate, then you automate all the stuff that you can,
583. 00:32:10 you delegate all the stuff that you can, and then what you end up with is just stuff that
584. 00:32:14 only you can do.
585. 00:32:15 And then you're going to either concentrate on those and you're going to do those now focus,
586. 00:32:19 you know, or you're going to procrastinate on those things and do them later, in which case
587. 00:32:23 you're going to dump them back up into the top of the funnel.
588. 00:32:27 All right, so with that as the backdrop, let's tackle these one at a time starting with
589. 00:32:35 the first one, which is eliminate.
590. 00:32:37 And these are called the five permissions.
591. 00:32:39 This is labeled eliminate, but eliminate is the permission to ignore.
592. 00:32:45 And this is the one that I think if you got nothing else out of the book other than Rory's
593. 00:32:51 saying, hey, you can ignore some stuff.
594. 00:32:54 It's probably got tremendous value for some people.
595. 00:32:57 It's so true.
596. 00:33:00 So true.
597. 00:33:01 He gives a whole bunch of examples of things that we shouldn't be doing,
598. 00:33:05 re-deciding was one that stood out to me.
599. 00:33:07 And if you make a decision, jot down the result of that decision,
600. 00:33:10 take action on it right away.
601. 00:33:11 Don't just say, oh, yeah, I'll do that later.
602. 00:33:13 And then you have to make the decision again later.
603. 00:33:15 That is just a complete waste of time.
604. 00:33:18 And that really just drives me nuts.
605. 00:33:20 He also lists watching TV, mentions the average American, I think,
606. 00:33:23 I think he said American, watches 35 hours of TV a week, something like that.
607. 00:33:28 It's ridiculous.
608. 00:33:33 Eliminate unnecessary meetings, long emails, unnecessary change.
609. 00:33:34 Whole bunch of things here.
610. 00:33:36 And the big revolutionary idea here is say no, either by saying it to somebody who is asking
611. 00:33:46 for your time and attention or just ignoring it.
612. 00:33:51 You know, that's the thing that I got out of reading this, this particular section,
613. 00:33:56 is I don't owe people an explanation when I say no.
614. 00:34:00 Sometimes I do.
615. 00:34:01 If someone is going to ask me to do something face to face, I'm going to say,
616. 00:34:05 no, I'm not going to do that.
617. 00:34:06 I'm not going to hedge and commit.
618. 00:34:09 It was interesting reading digital body language because
619. 00:34:13 talked about how when you ask somebody to do something in certain cultures,
620. 00:34:16 and they say, yes, really what they're saying is I've received your request.
621. 00:34:19 Not yes, I'm going to follow through and actually do it.
622. 00:34:23 So I'm thinking about that when he's talking about how an uncommitted yes is actually a maybe,
623. 00:34:28 how you're always saying no to something.
624. 00:34:30 These are things that we have understood for a while.
625. 00:34:34 But just because you get a request via email doesn't mean that you have to reply to the person,
626. 00:34:41 even if they read your article and they think that you now owe them tech support for life.
627. 00:34:45 Don't ask for tech support.
628. 00:34:49 Just going to say that.
629. 00:34:51 Does happen.
630. 00:34:51 I have to say that.
631. 00:34:52 Does happen.
632. 00:34:53 Just have to say that.
633. 00:34:54 Yes, eliminate say no.
634. 00:34:57 That's the groundbreaking all-encompassing solution here.
635. 00:35:02 I have to just keep in mind, it was written in 2015.
636. 00:35:09 I've been trying to keep my head in this, this was six years ago when it was written, state,
637. 00:35:16 and trying to put the backdrop of what books had been written by that period.
638. 00:35:21 Because a lot of the books that we've covered on Bookworm are actually beyond that.
639. 00:35:26 They're newer than that.
640. 00:35:27 Or significantly older.
641. 00:35:30 Yeah, or way older, yes.
642. 00:35:32 And the concept of saying no to things wasn't even brought up because people didn't take on too much
643. 00:35:38 stuff at the time.
644. 00:35:39 It was kind of a culture beforehand of you only did certain things and you don't say yes to
645. 00:35:45 absolutely everything.
646. 00:35:46 We're too nice now and we don't want to say no.
647. 00:35:49 We're uncomfortable saying no when we used to be a lot more comfortable with it.
648. 00:35:52 And this, I wonder if this is one of,
649. 00:35:56 like I was trying to place the time period when we have had books tell us you need to say no to
650. 00:36:03 things and which of them are some of the early ones in that period.
651. 00:36:07 I don't know if this fits in with the beginning time period.
652. 00:36:10 Like 2015, if that's roughly that time period when those books were starting to say that.
653. 00:36:16 So I don't know if at the time it was a good thing to say reading it today.
654. 00:36:21 Big deal.
655. 00:36:23 We know this.
656. 00:36:25 Tell people no.
657. 00:36:26 We hear people tell it to us all the time.
658. 00:36:30 But do we listen to it?
659. 00:36:31 Sometimes you're probably better at it than me.
660. 00:36:36 To some degree, I can't say no on some things when it's work related.
661. 00:36:41 Hey, guess what?
662. 00:36:42 My computer doesn't print.
663. 00:36:43 Well, I can't say let me put you on the schedule for next week.
664. 00:36:46 No, I'm not allowed to do that.
665. 00:36:50 So it's pretty much drop things and go do it now.
666. 00:36:53 That's the way that my job works and is expected to work.
667. 00:36:57 That's why they pay me.
668. 00:36:59 So there are periods when saying no are good.
669. 00:37:04 There are some things that are nose absolutely every time.
670. 00:37:07 Something I've, I don't think I've mentioned this on Bookworm, but
671. 00:37:12 whenever I started working at the church as a full-time employee with a title of Director of IT,
672. 00:37:18 very shortly after I started getting people calling in to the church saying,
673. 00:37:23 hey, we have a full-time tech person now.
674. 00:37:25 Do you think they could come to my house and help me fix my Wi-Fi network?
675. 00:37:28 I can't seem to get my computer connected to it.
676. 00:37:30 My domain is like the building walls.
677. 00:37:35 It doesn't go outside of that unless the church takes something outside of it intentionally.
678. 00:37:40 Like me going to your house to fix your printer, like how is, no.
679. 00:37:44 So those are things I say no to all the time.
680. 00:37:48 I still get those occasionally.
681. 00:37:51 Anyway, all this to say eliminate, say no to things.
682. 00:37:56 We know this, but sometimes we need the reminder, I suppose.
683. 00:38:01 Yeah.
684. 00:38:01 Now, see, you brought up something, which I want to unpack a little bit because
685. 00:38:06 inherent with the job are these requests which create problems using Roy Vadon's terminology
686. 00:38:15 for you, right?
687. 00:38:16 Yes.
688. 00:38:17 Someone says, I need this fixed right away and you are getting paid to fix that thing,
689. 00:38:23 so you have to fix that thing.
690. 00:38:25 You don't like the fact that they can completely derail your day,
691. 00:38:29 but that comes with the territory, right?
692. 00:38:31 But go back to the beginning of this book where he says that once you own your own problem,
693. 00:38:37 you empower yourself to create your own solution.
694. 00:38:39 So I think Roy's approach to this would be you are volunteering to work at your current position.
695. 00:38:48 So by saying yes to the job, you're saying yes to these other things.
696. 00:38:55 So it's not really a restriction of your ability to say no, just that no is not just a no to that
697. 00:39:03 individual task.
698. 00:39:04 It's probably no to your future employment at your current position, which some people are going to
699. 00:39:12 be so terrified by that, that they're going to field trap like they don't have an option.
700. 00:39:16 But what Rory is trying to do, I think, is help you see that you do have other options.
701. 00:39:23 You can get another job.
702. 00:39:25 You maybe don't want to go through the whole process, right?
703. 00:39:28 And that's completely fine.
704. 00:39:29 I wouldn't want to do that either if I was in that situation.
705. 00:39:32 But that is technically an option that most people are not going to consider.
706. 00:39:38 Correct. One thing to point out here is that whenever you own your problem,
707. 00:39:44 they have a problem.
708. 00:39:46 They bring it to me.
709. 00:39:47 It becomes my problem, right?
710. 00:39:50 And in that particular scenario, take the whole, hey, I can't print scenario, right?
711. 00:39:57 I can own that problem in that that is now a fact finding mission to me.
712. 00:40:04 Because why is it not working?
713. 00:40:07 Is it potentially going to be an issue for someone else?
714. 00:40:10 Is that a bit of information I can use to fix an infrastructure problem so that that
715. 00:40:15 problem doesn't come up again?
716. 00:40:17 Like those are all things that I'm generally processing whenever I'm going to fix those things.
717. 00:40:23 But I think that only happens because I'm in control of and make decisions for how the building
718. 00:40:29 operates from a technology stance.
719. 00:40:31 And I've been empowered to make changes at an infrastructure level
720. 00:40:36 if it will make things better for the overall staff.
721. 00:40:39 So yes, they are coming to me.
722. 00:40:40 It's going to derail whatever it is I'm working on at that time.
723. 00:40:46 But I also know that I've been building, we've talked about some of these other,
724. 00:40:50 how do I set aside time, deep focus, all these deep work, all that stuff.
725. 00:40:55 How do you set aside time to actually do your work?
726. 00:40:59 I've learned that I can set some time aside and shut the door here to this room.
727. 00:41:04 And people will respect that.
728. 00:41:06 So I know that for about an hour a day, I can probably shut that door without
729. 00:41:12 anything major going on.
730. 00:41:13 I have to pick when that hour is going to happen though.
731. 00:41:16 Because if I do that at the same, say I am going to do it from 8.30am to 9.30am.
732. 00:41:23 Okay.
733. 00:41:23 But I know that at nine o'clock there are three groups coming in.
734. 00:41:28 They're going to do different things in different places in the building.
735. 00:41:31 That's not a good idea to do it at that time frame.
736. 00:41:34 Wait until they're about 30 minutes past done.
737. 00:41:38 Because if you do it anywhere and they're like, hey, my computer's not working.
738. 00:41:42 Hey, let us get our tech guy.
739. 00:41:43 He'll come help you.
740. 00:41:44 Well, I'm in the middle of, well, they will open the door at that point.
741. 00:41:48 So anyway, I'll let us say, I can say no to some things, but generally if it's an immediate,
742. 00:41:56 this is broken right now and there's something getting ready to happen, I'll go fix it right now.
743. 00:42:01 But there are cases where someone brings me a computer.
744. 00:42:04 It's got an issue.
745. 00:42:05 Do you need this right now?
746. 00:42:07 And if the answer is no, then generally I'll schedule it for some other time to go fix it.
747. 00:42:14 Yeah.
748. 00:42:14 I think the big takeaway is to control what you can control, say no where you can say no,
749. 00:42:19 but recognize that if you're going to own your situation, really, you have the ability to say no
750. 00:42:25 to the other things.
751. 00:42:26 It's just maybe too uncomfortable for you.
752. 00:42:29 Right.
753. 00:42:30 Right.
754. 00:42:30 And that's the thing that's causing you to stick there.
755. 00:42:34 Next chapter is automate and automate is the permission to invest.
756. 00:42:40 This is where he talks about multipliers math and that is calculating the hidden costs that come
757. 00:42:48 with our decisions.
758. 00:42:49 He says that anything that wastes your time is also a waste of money, which makes me uncomfortable
759. 00:42:57 because I have prescribed to this for a very long time.
760. 00:43:03 And I have recognized that I cannot project that belief to other people that I work with.
761. 00:43:11 And it leads to me being frustrated.
762. 00:43:14 So I need to figure out when and where I can apply that.
763. 00:43:20 But the big principle here in this chapter is really good.
764. 00:43:25 He talks about the rule of 72, which is actually a financial thing.
765. 00:43:30 And for people who aren't familiar with this, basically you divide the interest rate that
766. 00:43:34 you're getting by 72 and you get the number of years that it's going to be required for you to
767. 00:43:38 double your investment.
768. 00:43:39 And when it comes to finances, that's compound interest.
769. 00:43:43 So this is at the heart of like, well, if you just saved $10,000 by the time of your 18,
770. 00:43:48 when you retire, you'll be a millionaire.
771. 00:43:49 You don't have to invest anything else the rest of your life.
772. 00:43:52 That's the power of compound interest as it pertains to financing.
773. 00:43:56 But I think this is a really interesting idea as it pertains to your time.
774. 00:44:01 So investing is multiplying your money and building your army, spending your losing money,
775. 00:44:06 and you're depleting your army when you're borrowing.
776. 00:44:09 You are using your money to build someone else's army.
777. 00:44:12 So basically, how do we apply that to the realm of our time?
778. 00:44:21 And again, he gives a whole bunch of examples of things that you could automate.
779. 00:44:25 This kind of leads into the next chapter delegate, but I don't want to go there quite yet.
780. 00:44:33 So with automating, I think we're really just talking about systems, machines, computers,
781. 00:44:41 things like that.
782. 00:44:42 In fact, he says that a company can never outgrow the strength of its systems in this chapter.
783. 00:44:47 So that's kind of the backdrop for this.
784. 00:44:50 Anything you create a process for today can save you time tomorrow.
785. 00:44:54 He and Sam Carpenter would probably be pretty good friends.
786. 00:44:57 Just to let me read off some of the examples that he has here.
787. 00:45:03 Just so you can get an idea of where he's taking it.
788. 00:45:06 I feel like you and I, when I see the term automate, my brain immediately goes to things like
789. 00:45:12 Siri shortcuts and writing scripts and plugins.
790. 00:45:16 That's where my brain goes to.
791. 00:45:18 Yeah, tech expanders, Zapier, Alfred, you name it.
792. 00:45:21 These are all the tools, keyboard, maestro.
793. 00:45:23 These are where my brain goes, but this is what he's talking about.
794. 00:45:27 FAQs.
795. 00:45:28 So if you're a company writing FAQs can help save you time later, I use these things all the time.
796. 00:45:34 So when companies have an FAQ, it's one of the first places I go just to figure out
797. 00:45:39 more information about the site.
798. 00:45:40 So anyway, FAQs, disorganized recreation and basically it's recreating things that already exist
799. 00:45:50 because there's no way to know if it already exists or not.
800. 00:45:53 So making things clear.
801. 00:45:54 So standard operating procedures.
802. 00:45:56 Yes, SOPs.
803. 00:45:57 Online bill pay, so it's easier to pay things.
804. 00:46:00 Data backup sync, neat receipts, it's a specific thing.
805. 00:46:05 But anyway, social media management, past client, follow up, online learning, talk tracks.
806. 00:46:12 It's kind of like FAQs, but internal.
807. 00:46:16 You got to understand where he's coming from with this because he is one of the people behind
808. 00:46:22 Southwestern consulting, I believe.
809. 00:46:24 He talks about how when he was starting off, and there's a bunch of really big names that have
810. 00:46:30 come from this consulting firm, but they basically sell things.
811. 00:46:34 And if you hustle as a salesperson, you will sell a lot of product and you'll get paid a lot
812. 00:46:41 because it's all commission based.
813. 00:46:42 And if you do nothing, you won't get paid anything because it's all commission based.
814. 00:46:46 So talk tracks for salespeople help you learn the ropes and can help train you to deliver a pitch
815. 00:46:57 well.
816. 00:46:58 When I say this and the customer responds with that, then I know that I should take the conversation
817. 00:47:03 in this direction.
818. 00:47:04 Yep.
819. 00:47:05 So talk tracks and then drop shipping is the last one he has here.
820. 00:47:08 But he does give some other examples where you can zoom out and such and see things at a higher
821. 00:47:15 level.
822. 00:47:15 But again, I don't think that the scripting and automation zapier world of tools is out of line.
823. 00:47:24 That's just not where he's going with it because that's not his background.
824. 00:47:28 Sure, yep.
825. 00:47:29 That and again, 2015, I'm not sure how much of that stuff would have been so prevalent as it is now.
826. 00:47:35 Now, I'm speaking about it.
827. 00:47:36 Well, he definitely used his infusion soft.
828. 00:47:39 Yes.
829. 00:47:40 Yeah, I'm saying that.
830. 00:47:41 But again, it's six years ago, but I also know that like the whole world of automation has just
831. 00:47:46 exploded in recent years.
832. 00:47:47 So there's that.
833. 00:47:49 Yeah.
834. 00:47:49 He mentions in this chapter that the goal is to eliminate think time.
835. 00:47:54 And that, I think you can apply a lot of different ways.
836. 00:47:59 And I think that's a good definition where nerds like us are going to naturally take it to
837. 00:48:05 like computer based automation because if I'm going to type the same thing over and over again,
838. 00:48:11 I can spend mental resources thinking about the words, making sure I don't miss spell anything,
839. 00:48:17 checking all the links, or I can create a text expander snippet so that I never have to use that
840. 00:48:21 think time whenever I have to use send that email or whatever, you know.
841. 00:48:26 So it's very much in line though, like I see the same thing popping up over and over and over again.
842. 00:48:32 What can I do to make this easier so I don't have to think about it?
843. 00:48:36 Whether that be setting up my clothes the night before, creating a talk track for my sales team,
844. 00:48:41 so I have to answer a whole bunch of questions, whatever.
845. 00:48:44 Yes.
846. 00:48:44 Automate.
847. 00:48:46 Very fun.
848. 00:48:47 So fun.
849. 00:48:48 There's a whole podcast on it.
850. 00:48:49 It's true.
851. 00:48:51 It's good podcast.
852. 00:48:52 Rosemary Orchards and David Sparks.
853. 00:48:55 There's a lot from that podcast.
854. 00:48:57 Next one is delegate, which is very related, I think.
855. 00:49:01 In fact, when I first started reading this, I forgot at that point where the things were in
856. 00:49:07 the funnel.
857. 00:49:08 I started to think about automating as working with an assistant and offloading specific tasks,
858. 00:49:16 which I am doing now.
859. 00:49:17 But that is actually something different.
860. 00:49:19 That is delegation.
861. 00:49:20 Delegate is the permission to be imperfect.
862. 00:49:24 And I get why this is its own separate thing, because this is exactly what I struggle with.
863. 00:49:28 No one can do it as well as I can do it.
864. 00:49:30 No one's going to be as careful as I am going to be, which is not necessarily a problem.
865. 00:49:37 Rory is saying, and I think he's right.
866. 00:49:40 Well, I know he's right.
867. 00:49:42 I'm inspired after reading this book to delegate more things with the understanding that it is
868. 00:49:50 not going to be perfect and that is going to be okay.
869. 00:49:53 It's not going to be exactly the way that I would have done it, but that doesn't mean
870. 00:49:57 that it's a task that I should own.
871. 00:50:00 Doesn't mean that it requires my unique skill set.
872. 00:50:04 Two reasons we don't delegate money and perfection.
873. 00:50:08 And perfection, I think, is the big one for me.
874. 00:50:13 He talks about all the different roles in the business of you, which I thought was interesting,
875. 00:50:18 because I think you can go through this and kind of think,
876. 00:50:21 like, oh, well, that's great for Rory.
877. 00:50:23 Obviously, he's got a company, a whole bunch of people.
878. 00:50:25 He's got assistance that he can delegate stuff to, but it's just me.
879. 00:50:28 And he says, even if it's just you, that you are a business, you are the CEO of your life,
880. 00:50:35 and you operate as office assistant business coach, accountant, bookkeeper, financial planner,
881. 00:50:39 lawyer, whatever.
882. 00:50:40 And recognizing those roles and recognizing which ones you don't really need to be involved with
883. 00:50:47 is important.
884. 00:50:48 And then if you're going to delegate that stuff, then it's worthwhile spending additional time
885. 00:50:54 to get someone else trained up to do it.
886. 00:50:57 This is where the 30x rule comes in.
887. 00:50:59 He says, it's a worthwhile investment as long as you can delegate the task for up to 30 times
888. 00:51:04 the amount of time it would take you to do the task yourself.
889. 00:51:07 It's probably even higher for stuff that happens all the time.
890. 00:51:10 But that's always been the big thing that's held me up is like, well, I know that it's
891. 00:51:16 going to buy back more time, but it feels like even if it takes twice as long, it's like,
892. 00:51:21 I'll just do it myself.
893. 00:51:22 And I got to push back against that and recognize it.
894. 00:51:25 No, no, no, you got to play the long game if you're going to multiply your time and delegate
895. 00:51:29 stuff effectively.
896. 00:51:30 I do this one a lot.
897. 00:51:31 So I have an assistant that works under me at the church.
898. 00:51:37 And whenever I've got like a routine task that happens every single week, which drives me up a
899. 00:51:43 wall, I don't like repetitive things that are the same thing over and over and over again,
900. 00:51:48 where you take this file and you move it over there, you clip the beginning and end and kick it out.
901. 00:51:52 Like that sort of thing, there's no creative thing to that.
902. 00:51:57 It's just a mechanical take this, cut it, move it on.
903. 00:52:00 That stuff drives me up a wall.
904. 00:52:02 So he's really good at that.
905. 00:52:05 He likes doing some of that stuff.
906. 00:52:07 So it's like, perfect.
907. 00:52:08 So here's where the steps and what I have found is in the span of a few months since he's been,
908. 00:52:16 I suppose it's been about six months now, since he's been working here, I've moved a lot over to him.
909. 00:52:23 And it's freed me up to do a lot of these longer term projects, the ones I like doing.
910. 00:52:29 And the amount of time I've gotten back versus the amount of time I've put into it is not 30.
911. 00:52:37 Like I haven't put 30 times into it.
912. 00:52:38 I've maybe put four, five into it.
913. 00:52:41 Like it's not done as well, takes him a lot longer, but who cares?
914. 00:52:45 It's off my plate.
915. 00:52:46 Like he can take longer.
916. 00:52:47 It's fine.
917. 00:52:48 It doesn't matter.
918. 00:52:49 And I can still check up on it every other week or so to make sure it's happening correctly.
919. 00:52:54 And it takes me 30 seconds to check it when it would have taken me four hours to do all of that stuff.
920. 00:52:59 So that was well worth it to me, but that's still a way better return than 30 times.
921. 00:53:08 So it tells me having read this, like, okay, if 30 times, if it's a five minute task,
922. 00:53:14 and I can spend 150 minutes training someone to do that five minute task,
923. 00:53:19 it saves me.
924. 00:53:20 What was the number?
925. 00:53:21 1100 minutes in a year is what that stands.
926. 00:53:25 Whatever the example was.
927. 00:53:27 That makes a lot of sense.
928. 00:53:30 I should probably do that.
929. 00:53:33 It makes me like wonder what are the other small things or even bigger things that I could easily put
930. 00:53:40 30 times the amount of energy into
931. 00:53:44 training someone to do a task instead of me doing it.
932. 00:53:50 Like that, there's a lot of stuff I could put on that list for sure.
933. 00:53:53 And probably should.
934. 00:53:55 Yeah, me too, which is where one of my action items comes in is two.
935. 00:54:03 Figure out what I'm going to delegate to my assistant.
936. 00:54:07 Yeah.
937. 00:54:08 And then bite the bullet and spend the time, create the processes, even though it's going to take me a lot longer.
938. 00:54:16 Set it up so I don't have to do it over and over and over again.
939. 00:54:20 This particular chapter probably inspired me the most out of everything in this book.
940. 00:54:27 But that's again just because the timing is kind of perfect for me getting my
941. 00:54:31 feet wet with the virtual assistant.
942. 00:54:34 So cool.
943. 00:54:35 All right.
944. 00:54:36 Next one, chapter seven.
945. 00:54:37 We are now out of the funnel.
946. 00:54:40 This is where we procrastinate.
947. 00:54:43 And procrastination is the permission to be incomplete.
948. 00:54:49 And this one is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul.
949. 00:54:55 I want things to be complete.
950. 00:54:59 I want things to be done.
951. 00:55:01 I want all the boxes checked.
952. 00:55:02 But yeah, I understand where he's coming from here.
953. 00:55:08 The key question for fishermen, he says, because fishing is about timing.
954. 00:55:18 It's not about doing the right thing and doing it a certain quantity.
955. 00:55:26 You could have perfect casting form and be out on the lake eight hours a day casting perfectly.
956. 00:55:33 If you're not in the right spot at the right time, you're not going to catch any fish,
957. 00:55:38 which I'm not really an outdoorsy type of guy.
958. 00:55:44 I don't really enjoy fishing, but that particular metaphor, I guess, really kind of spoke to me.
959. 00:55:54 Maybe because I've been out on the boat board before.
960. 00:55:58 Sure.
961. 00:55:59 I was like, I don't really want to be here.
962. 00:56:00 What if this could be easy?
963. 00:56:01 Why am I here?
964. 00:56:05 There are no fish.
965. 00:56:07 Why am I throwing this in the water and pulling it back in?
966. 00:56:09 I don't understand.
967. 00:56:10 Exactly.
968. 00:56:11 It's the most useless thing I could be doing.
969. 00:56:15 I get it.
970. 00:56:17 That's not why people do it, but yeah, just not my thing.
971. 00:56:22 So timing matters and a multiplier knows that it's not about what or how, but about when.
972. 00:56:28 If you go into your task list thinking about is now the right time to be doing these things,
973. 00:56:34 I totally get where he's coming from when the way he's defining procrastination.
974. 00:56:40 The typical way of people define procrastination, where you just are unconsciously putting something
975. 00:56:46 off.
976. 00:56:46 You're unconsciously delaying something because you're not looking forward to it.
977. 00:56:50 But related to that is patience, which is intentionally delaying something because we
978. 00:56:55 determine that the timing is wrong.
979. 00:56:57 And then it goes into these gun slingers versus worry warts, which hit way too close to home.
980. 00:57:05 I have a picture of this in the Mind Node file, but the worry warts, they risk acting too soon,
981. 00:57:18 and there's unexpected change costs.
982. 00:57:20 I had this happen with me when I was doing screencast for screencast online because
983. 00:57:25 you're supposed to deliver a screencast during this particular week.
984. 00:57:27 They have a new one from the team every single week.
985. 00:57:31 This is the one that I'm going to be doing.
986. 00:57:33 And I tried to get a jump on it one time, and I did one for Spark, the email client for MacOS.
987. 00:57:39 And then I recorded it ahead of time.
988. 00:57:40 I had it all edited.
989. 00:57:41 It was completely done.
990. 00:57:42 And then they completely changed the interface like a week before my due date.
991. 00:57:47 And at that point, I've got to redo the whole thing.
992. 00:57:49 So that was acting too soon.
993. 00:57:51 On the other side, you can wait too long.
994. 00:57:54 And then there's all of the after last minute costs, which I thought was interesting because
995. 00:57:59 last minute is actually the ideal time to do something.
996. 00:58:05 The problem is we view last minute as like the second before the thing goes public,
997. 00:58:10 as opposed to the second before this thing could be put into the system.
998. 00:58:15 And it could be published without any additional stress or anxiety coming from a creator's perspective.
999. 00:58:21 So that was interesting to me.
1000. 00:58:23 Like last minute really doesn't mean what I think of as last minute.
1001. 00:58:28 There's a last minute prior to what I would consider to be the last minute.
1002. 00:58:32 And that is the ideal moment that I should be doing things.
1003. 00:58:36 I shouldn't really be trying to get stuff done way ahead of time.
1004. 00:58:39 Unless I'm like going on vacation or something and I've got to get stuff done ahead of time.
1005. 00:58:43 But just having like a backlog of stuff, just sitting there getting old isn't necessarily a
1006. 00:58:47 great solution.
1007. 00:58:48 There's one question I have about the section.
1008. 00:58:52 Maybe he mentioned it and I missed it and you can correct me here, Mike.
1009. 00:58:56 But the question is what happens if there is a deadline and that deadline is self-imposed
1010. 00:59:07 and can move if you choose to let it move.
1011. 00:59:11 And there's really no ramifications of going late.
1012. 00:59:15 Like that's the problem with something like this.
1013. 00:59:20 And it's something like I would deal with that.
1014. 00:59:22 Yep.
1015. 00:59:22 Because it's very easy for me to move it.
1016. 00:59:24 And the last minute could easily become a different time frame.
1017. 00:59:29 Very easily could become a different time frame.
1018. 00:59:34 I think he would say that's okay.
1019. 00:59:36 He does say in the section that there is no finish line but there also is no deadline.
1020. 00:59:41 So he's not thinking of deadlines like you and I are probably thinking of like content production
1021. 00:59:50 deadlines.
1022. 00:59:51 We have to publish the episode on Friday at 6am.
1023. 00:59:57 He would probably say, well you technically don't have to do that.
1024. 01:00:00 You've chosen to do that.
1025. 01:00:02 I've chosen to do that.
1026. 01:00:03 Yeah.
1027. 01:00:04 I remember that was that's one of the things that I was really pushing for.
1028. 01:00:07 I was like we got to be consistent with the publishing.
1029. 01:00:11 And so I think that is a self-imposed deadline that he would say if you really want to move it,
1030. 01:00:20 go ahead and move it.
1031. 01:00:22 But if you're assuming that it's not going to be moved, then figure out how to work backwards
1032. 01:00:27 from that publishing deadline, which we have essentially.
1033. 01:00:32 We record on the Friday before.
1034. 01:00:35 And that gives me enough time to do all of the editing and create the WordPress post,
1035. 01:00:40 put in all the links, stuff like that.
1036. 01:00:42 So last minute, it depends on what part of this process you're talking about.
1037. 01:00:48 Let's just say finishing the book because we have to show up and talk about it.
1038. 01:00:52 Last minute would be Friday at 1.55pm.
1039. 01:00:56 Right?
1040. 01:00:57 Yep.
1041. 01:00:57 Yep.
1042. 01:00:58 I have had Friday over lunch as the time frame when I'm finishing a book.
1043. 01:01:03 That has happened more than a couple of times.
1044. 01:01:06 Yep.
1045. 01:01:06 And I think you could even go back even further from that because why do we read the books?
1046. 01:01:13 We want to formulate our own opinions on them.
1047. 01:01:15 We want to talk about what stands out to us, what we want to apply from them.
1048. 01:01:20 So in order to do that effectively, maybe last minute is the night before.
1049. 01:01:24 So you can sleep on it and formulate your own thoughts.
1050. 01:01:27 So in that essence, you get where I'm going.
1051. 01:01:31 Like you keep working backwards and you define your own last minute.
1052. 01:01:34 And if you decide that you're going to change the delivery date for the podcast,
1053. 01:01:38 then it affects all of those things.
1054. 01:01:39 That's completely fine.
1055. 01:01:40 You kind of have to re-identify all that stuff for you.
1056. 01:01:45 But the big thing for me is just identifying, like, not trying to get stuff done too early.
1057. 01:01:55 Because that's where I tend to err on the side of it.
1058. 01:01:58 And I think you could err on the other side of like, well, you've cut it a little bit too close.
1059. 01:02:02 And now you didn't get the book done and you show up and you got to record.
1060. 01:02:06 And it's not as good of a product as it can be.
1061. 01:02:09 Figuring out where that balance is for you is kind of what he's trying to help you to do in this section.
1062. 01:02:14 Yeah.
1063. 01:02:16 I mean, you get what my question is here though too, right?
1064. 01:02:19 In that if I have a project that I want to do is a nice to have, but is not actually necessary.
1065. 01:02:28 Yep.
1066. 01:02:29 Yep.
1067. 01:02:30 And I have it give myself a deadline for it.
1068. 01:02:32 When is last minute?
1069. 01:02:33 Like, I could put it off six months and it's not a big deal.
1070. 01:02:37 There are so many different ways I could easily say that's an unnecessary thing.
1071. 01:02:44 I can put it off.
1072. 01:02:45 And that, you know, and this is part of what the book is trying to get you to, right?
1073. 01:02:52 That is your multiplier.
1074. 01:02:55 Like, yes, if that's a thing that's important, that's going to help you have a significant impact.
1075. 01:03:00 Then that is the thing you need to be spending time on.
1076. 01:03:03 But procrastinating on it because there is no deadline, that's where there's like this loop
1077. 01:03:09 in this system that I'm like, how do you rectify that?
1078. 01:03:14 Yeah.
1079. 01:03:14 So when he's talking about procrastinating, a lot of the, he's talking a lot about the little things
1080. 01:03:20 and he talks about batching as a potential solution to that.
1081. 01:03:23 But also he talks about how time allows ideas to incubate.
1082. 01:03:27 And I think that that is really more in line with some of the stuff that you're talking about.
1083. 01:03:31 Because I've done that before.
1084. 01:03:32 It's like, well, I'm going to get this thing done by this specific time.
1085. 01:03:34 And then I start working on it and like, oh, this really doesn't feel like the right thing.
1086. 01:03:37 I just push it back, right?
1087. 01:03:38 Yep.
1088. 01:03:39 So at that point, looking at that funnel, you are procrastinating on that thing and you're dumping it
1089. 01:03:44 back in, right?
1090. 01:03:46 And you're going to review it again at some point in the future.
1091. 01:03:50 So the batching stuff, I don't know.
1092. 01:03:53 I mean, I kind of already do that too.
1093. 01:03:54 He talks about like email, meeting talk topics, like an office hours type thing,
1094. 01:03:59 you know, come with your questions, then you hammer through stuff.
1095. 01:04:01 I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on those.
1096. 01:04:03 But the other one is interesting to me.
1097. 01:04:05 And one of my action items from this is, I mentioned I'm starting to play around with OmniFocus again.
1098. 01:04:13 I'm not 100% sure it's going to stick, but that's the system I use them for now.
1099. 01:04:17 And I want to mess around with creating a pop tag.
1100. 01:04:21 And I'm not sure how I could do this, but basically I want it to like every time
1101. 01:04:26 that I look at something and I decide, no, I'm not going to do this right now.
1102. 01:04:31 It like adds another number to the pop tag.
1103. 01:04:34 I know I can create sub tags.
1104. 01:04:35 It's probably what I'll end up doing.
1105. 01:04:36 I'd like it to be more of a manual or an automatic process.
1106. 01:04:39 But you get where I'm going with this is like, okay, so this is the third time I've looked at
1107. 01:04:44 this popped project at this point, you know, whatever that number is.
1108. 01:04:48 And I think I'm going to settle on like three.
1109. 01:04:51 At that point, I have to decide like, this is just not something I should be looking at.
1110. 01:04:55 You know, I'm going to just delete this project now because it's obviously not important.
1111. 01:04:59 Or make it back as like a single point on a someday, maybe list.
1112. 01:05:03 You know, I don't really know exactly how I want to implement this.
1113. 01:05:08 But I do get where you're coming from.
1114. 01:05:11 And I think it's, I think it's fine.
1115. 01:05:12 You know, it's my big takeaway.
1116. 01:05:14 I think he would say, if you don't feel like doing it right now,
1117. 01:05:17 then just don't do it right now.
1118. 01:05:18 At that point, it's going to procrastinate, go back into the funnel.
1119. 01:05:21 And the missing piece here from his system, I think, is how many times do you revisit that
1120. 01:05:26 over and over and over again?
1121. 01:05:28 Because that is getting at some of the wasted,
1122. 01:05:31 re-decision stuff that he's talking about.
1123. 01:05:33 At some point, you got to put a number on that and then say, okay,
1124. 01:05:36 we're really going to do this or we're not.
1125. 01:05:37 Yes, but we're dealing with an ADD person.
1126. 01:05:40 So it's like, sure, I can put that off.
1127. 01:05:43 I can put that off for years and think I'm still going to do it.
1128. 01:05:47 [laughs]
1129. 01:05:48 So sure.
1130. 01:05:49 There's that side of things too.
1131. 01:05:51 And if you think I'm making that up, talk to my wife.
1132. 01:05:54 There have been projects that have been put off for at least three years.
1133. 01:05:57 So yes, at some point, there's a motivation aspect that's never talked about in this process.
1134. 01:06:06 That's true.
1135. 01:06:08 And maybe that's in this next section here.
1136. 01:06:12 But there's a component here where there's an assumption that,
1137. 01:06:19 yes, you can procrastinate, yes, you can put it back in the top of the funnel
1138. 01:06:23 and then choose to eliminate, automate, delegate, or concentrate, which we'll get to.
1139. 01:06:28 But you have this option to put it back in the top.
1140. 01:06:32 But at some point, you either have to decide to not put it back in the top
1141. 01:06:37 or to actually work on it.
1142. 01:06:40 At some point, you have to make that particular decision.
1143. 01:06:44 And that decision isn't as simple as, sure, I'll do it now.
1144. 01:06:49 For some people, they can't just do that.
1145. 01:06:53 I would say I'm one of those people.
1146. 01:06:56 So it's very easy for me to just keep throwing it on the top.
1147. 01:06:58 And I will do that repetitively just so that I don't have to make that decision.
1148. 01:07:03 Or because I think I'll get to it.
1149. 01:07:06 And then whenever I get to the time period where I've actually got time set aside to work on it,
1150. 01:07:11 it's like, "Eh, YouTube's more fun. We'll do that."
1151. 01:07:14 That's the problem with some of this, I think.
1152. 01:07:18 And that's part of what I was struggling with.
1153. 01:07:20 Okay, there's a component here that I feel is very important.
1154. 01:07:24 It's very small, but it's not talked about.
1155. 01:07:26 It's like, how do I get myself out of that loop?
1156. 01:07:29 And it's never talked about through this.
1157. 01:07:31 Maybe I missed it.
1158. 01:07:32 I think maybe he feels that he dealt with it already because in chapter three,
1159. 01:07:37 he talks about discipline.
1160. 01:07:38 He says that disciplined people don't actually like discipline.
1161. 01:07:44 Sorry, Jaco.
1162. 01:07:44 Yes.
1163. 01:07:45 They just think about it differently because they have that multiplayer's mindset and they see
1164. 01:07:52 long-term what the discipline is going to lead to.
1165. 01:07:56 So I can see an argument, and I'm putting words in Rory Vaden's mouth right now,
1166. 01:08:02 but based on what he has said in chapter three,
1167. 01:08:06 I would think he would say, "Well, you have to have the discipline to do the thing that needs to be done."
1168. 01:08:11 So the whole purpose of the funnel is to get you to identify this is the thing that needs to be done
1169. 01:08:18 right now.
1170. 01:08:18 And at that point, there's no question about whether you're going to do this or not.
1171. 01:08:22 You're just going to do it because you've developed that multiplier's mindset.
1172. 01:08:26 And you know that when you get it done, it's going to feel really good,
1173. 01:08:29 and it's going to provide X, Y, and Z and all this other stuff.
1174. 01:08:32 I don't know what he would say to ADHD.
1175. 01:08:37 It's like, yeah, that's all fun roses, but...
1176. 01:08:40 I do think that's the danger of this system is that you do just keep procrastinating on things.
1177. 01:08:48 You're constantly shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
1178. 01:08:52 Yes.
1179. 01:08:55 And I don't know. Maybe that's an inherent major problem with the book and the system.
1180. 01:09:05 I guess it would be interesting if we had read this at the very beginning of Bookworm,
1181. 01:09:12 because I think there's two different time periods, like BC and AD, for me with Bookworm.
1182. 01:09:20 There's the books that I read before I read, how to read a book and the books that I read after.
1183. 01:09:24 Sure, sure.
1184. 01:09:27 And the books that I read before how to read a book, I would have taken an isolation and I would
1185. 01:09:32 have been like, yes, Rory, teach me your ways and I'm going to apply everything that you are going
1186. 01:09:37 to tell me. And afterwards, I'm just kind of like, hmm, that's interesting. I don't agree with you.
1187. 01:09:42 But this part I like, you know, and so I'm recognizing now as we're talking through this,
1188. 01:09:50 one of the benefits for me of Bookworm is that I have not completely bought into this system.
1189. 01:09:56 And I've cherry picked the pieces of this that appealed to me and kind of just like written off
1190. 01:10:02 everything else. I really considered it. So yeah, I definitely see the problem with that.
1191. 01:10:07 But let's talk about this last chapter concentrate. Maybe this will kind of continue the conversation
1192. 01:10:12 and we'll we'll end on something here. But at the bottom of this funnel, you know,
1193. 01:10:16 you've identified now the things that only you can do. You're procrastinating on the things that
1194. 01:10:20 you don't want to complete right now. And then concentrating is the permission to protect.
1195. 01:10:29 That is where you are going to focus on and do the things that really matters. This is where
1196. 01:10:36 he talks about priority being singular, talks about the Pareto principle, things we've heard a
1197. 01:10:41 million times, you know, 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. He does define concentrate,
1198. 01:10:48 which I thought was kind of cool as a verb. It's to bring all efforts, faculties, activities,
1199. 01:10:52 et cetera, to bear on one thing or activity. And then as a noun, it means an intense form of
1200. 01:10:59 something. So what he's saying with this part of the system is that when you are concentrating on
1201. 01:11:04 something, you are focused only on that thing. There is only one priority. That is the thing
1202. 01:11:10 that you are doing. It has all of your attention. You're not thinking about the thing that comes
1203. 01:11:16 next. And I think that's the goal of any good task management system is it's going to show you
1204. 01:11:24 the thing that you should be thinking about right now. And it's going to just hide everything else
1205. 01:11:29 if your system does give you like a whole bunch of options and you have to pick one,
1206. 01:11:34 then it's really not working the way that it should, in my opinion.
1207. 01:11:39 But you still have to choose to do it. You do still have to choose to do it.
1208. 01:11:43 It's like you can have the best system that brings you all the way to the point where it
1209. 01:11:48 gives you only one thing and it tells you what that priority is. But you still have to do it.
1210. 01:11:55 And this is something that I've seen a lot of folks like this is partly why I think people switch
1211. 01:12:00 task management systems. Like for whatever reason, they've built their system in OmniFocus.
1212. 01:12:07 And at the end of the day, they find that they're not checking things off and they're not accomplishing
1213. 01:12:13 what they want to accomplish. So obviously, the answer is the task management tool isn't doing
1214. 01:12:20 its job because I'm not getting my work done. So obviously, I need to go try to do it or Trello
1215. 01:12:28 or text files or drop it in obsidian or I need to find some other tool so that I can get this
1216. 01:12:36 stuff done so I can keep track of it so I can get this stuff done. And then they go to the other
1217. 01:12:39 tool, they get all the migration stuff done, they build it all out. It's super fancy, super nice.
1218. 01:12:44 And for some reason, I'm not getting all the things done that I put in that system. So obviously,
1219. 01:12:49 I need a different tool. Do you get what I'm saying? Obviously. Yeah. It's not the tool in most of
1220. 01:12:55 these cases. So trying to, and this is like the part that I'm trying to break. And I know that for
1221. 01:13:03 me, trying to stick with a single tool, which in my case is the bullet journal, and Nikki kind of
1222. 01:13:10 messed with me yesterday on a session for analog Joe. It's like, so anyway, has to do with daily
1223. 01:13:17 logs and writing it on in a notebook and on note cards and anyway, messy stuff. Not messy,
1224. 01:13:23 just different. Anyway, I trying to find some tool that helps you keep track of what it is you're
1225. 01:13:29 supposed to do is only one small piece of that broader conversation. Like what Rory's saying,
1226. 01:13:37 discipline is a big part of this. Motivation is a part of this. It's not talked about here. And
1227. 01:13:43 at the same time, I'm not sure that's what he needs to do here. But I know, especially today,
1228. 01:13:52 given how tired everybody is of pandemic stuff, like motivation is kind of hard to come by for a
1229. 01:13:59 lot of folks. And yeah, this system, if you follow the funnel, throwing tasks in the top,
1230. 01:14:06 eliminate a bunch of things, automate a bunch of things, delegate a bunch of things, procrastinate
1231. 01:14:11 what you don't have to do right now, and then concentrate on the ones that you're supposed to
1232. 01:14:15 be doing right now. When you get to that point, you have to be able to act. And if you have no
1233. 01:14:23 motivation, acting is not that simple. And there's now either games you have to play with yourself
1234. 01:14:30 to convince yourself to do them, which is a lot of what I do. And bring yourself to a point where
1235. 01:14:38 you can see the big picture and see that doing that thing will help you out later on. And apply
1236. 01:14:45 that to the concentration piece. You have to put all that stuff together in order to
1237. 01:14:52 start working on it. And for some people, that's super easy. You put my wife on this and
1238. 01:14:58 she's like, okay, done. She's on it. It doesn't even phase her. She'll just be right on it.
1239. 01:15:04 Me, on the other hand, like, no, it doesn't work that way at all. So it's a very different
1240. 01:15:10 conversation if you put this with her versus me. So anyway, I'm probably repeating myself
1241. 01:15:18 at this point, but you get my point. Like this is potentially a problem for some people.
1242. 01:15:23 It would be interesting to hear your perspective on take the stairs.
1243. 01:15:27 Okay. I haven't read that one in quite a while, but I imagine that that would address a lot of
1244. 01:15:36 your concerns. And like I said, he kind of talks about that book a lot in this one.
1245. 01:15:40 Doesn't do a real great job, I think, of bringing over the concepts from there. And again, it's
1246. 01:15:45 been a long time since I read that one. But one of the things that stands out specifically to me
1247. 01:15:50 from that is a story he told about Buffalo. So there's a difference between Buffalo and Cows.
1248. 01:15:56 Cows, if they see a storm coming, they will try to run away from the storm, which obviously is
1249. 01:16:01 not going to work. Works real well. But he says in take the stairs that Buffalo will actually run
1250. 01:16:10 at the storm and get through it as quickly as they can. And so I see that mindset being applied
1251. 01:16:20 here when he talks about how until you accomplish the next most significant priority,
1252. 01:16:25 everything else is a distraction. So you're right, that's missing from this book. Maybe he's
1253. 01:16:31 assuming that I already talked about that. So go read the other book. And that's not really
1254. 01:16:35 trying to address here. But I do think that if you're just reading this one in isolation, that is
1255. 01:16:42 a missing component. I do wish he would have talked a little bit more about that. Because you're
1256. 01:16:48 right, there isn't a whole lot here on the motivation to sit down and do the thing that you know you
1257. 01:16:52 need to do. Really, this whole system is designed to help you identify the thing that you really need
1258. 01:16:57 to do. But like you said, you're 100% correct, that that does not mean that you are actually going
1259. 01:17:04 to have the motivation and the energy to actually do it. Yeah, yeah, because I just think about,
1260. 01:17:10 okay, so I'm at work till four o'clockish most days. And I go home lately, it's go to the new house,
1261. 01:17:19 work on the house, do dinner and go home, put the kids down. And then I'll work on some of my
1262. 01:17:24 personal side projects after the kids go down. By that point, I've spent eight hours at my day job
1263. 01:17:32 fighting fires and doing long term projects. I've spent at least a couple hours at the house
1264. 01:17:38 doing projects. I've now hustled the kids to bed. And somehow I'm supposed to keep working on some
1265. 01:17:46 things after that point, which I do slowly, but not well. So some of that is I've got too much going
1266. 01:17:55 on right now. There's obviously the eliminate piece there. But at some point, there's a breakdown.
1267. 01:18:01 Somewhere in that process. And this might be what you're saying might be exactly what he's
1268. 01:18:08 expecting and that you've read his other book, because he brings it up constantly. He does.
1269. 01:18:14 In this book. So I felt like I was like a fly on the wall seeing what like what he's telling his
1270. 01:18:23 long term followers and other readers whenever I was reading this. So maybe at this point, what I
1271. 01:18:29 need to do is go back and read the other one. And maybe that would answer a bunch of the questions
1272. 01:18:33 I have because like right now, I'm like, sure, this is a cool concept, but it's for very specific
1273. 01:18:39 people and I'm not one of them. That's kind of what I'm seeing. You know, it's interesting,
1274. 01:18:44 because when I read this book, I had read Take the Stairs prior. Yeah, I didn't feel when I read it,
1275. 01:18:51 like there were missing components to this particular book. He referenced it a lot. He did
1276. 01:18:58 it did not seem to me like it was just blanket promotion for go by my other thing.
1277. 01:19:05 And I'm kind of thinking now, maybe he should have. Maybe he should have said more explicitly,
1278. 01:19:14 you know, I unpack all of this and the four points, whatever, you know, in my other book,
1279. 01:19:20 I'm not going to talk about him here. So if you want to understand that fully, go by the other
1280. 01:19:24 thing. I didn't even realize till we're talking about this now that like my mind just kind of
1281. 01:19:30 filled in those blanks. Sure. But you're right, they do exist in this particular book.
1282. 01:19:36 And as much as much as he talks about his new book, it didn't really seem like when you're
1283. 01:19:43 reading it, like there was stuff missing, but obviously there is.
1284. 01:19:47 And it makes sense what you're saying. Sometimes when you read the follow-ups like this,
1285. 01:19:54 they will oftentimes have either in the intro or somewhere in chapter one, where they explain,
1286. 01:20:01 here's the foundation that I'm going to work from. And it starts in this other book.
1287. 01:20:07 If you've read that, this is kind of the base that we're going to build on. And then they move
1288. 01:20:12 forward from there and they really don't talk about the other book much at all. They just assume
1289. 01:20:16 that you've either read it or chosen to not read it, but they've laid out the groundwork at that
1290. 01:20:22 point to get them there. This one, he just kind of mentions it about every chapter and mentions
1291. 01:20:28 like, yeah, in my other book, I mentioned this. And then he goes on about it. But I don't like
1292. 01:20:33 having read this one, I still don't really know what Take the Stairs is about. Even though he
1293. 01:20:39 mentions it repeatedly, I'm not real sure what it is. So there's that piece as well, where it's
1294. 01:20:45 just not explained here. Yeah, I feel like the, he did the, there were three options and he chose
1295. 01:20:51 the wrong one, which is referred to the old thing over and over and over again. Without
1296. 01:20:57 both of these would have been better. Explicitly stating, if you want to understand a key piece
1297. 01:21:04 to this, go read the other book or explaining more in depth in this book, the concepts from the
1298. 01:21:10 other books, so we didn't have to go read it. But let us know what is missing here.
1299. 01:21:15 Yep.
1300. 01:21:16 And because he didn't do that and he just keeps pointing at the other book, he's kind of doing
1301. 01:21:21 the reader a disservice without telling them the clear path forward. You know, we can kind of,
1302. 01:21:28 a lot of times we see those, those things like, oh, go buy my other thing and that,
1303. 01:21:35 that can rub us the wrong way. But even that is better than leaving somebody hanging.
1304. 01:21:42 Yep. Yep. For sure. So anyway, all it's to say, I feel like there's a gap in this whole thing,
1305. 01:21:49 but it sounds like it might be filled in with the other book, in which case, that's probably valid.
1306. 01:21:53 Sure.
1307. 01:21:54 To have that gap here.
1308. 01:21:55 Yeah.
1309. 01:21:56 All right. Let's talk about the last part here real quickly. Part three, the next step,
1310. 01:22:02 which is really just one chapter, multiplying your results. I don't have a whole lot to say
1311. 01:22:07 about this. He says that procrastination like employee turnover in a business is an invisible
1312. 01:22:13 cost and I agree with that. I think that's an important point to recognize. And then he talks
1313. 01:22:20 about farmers later on, previously in the five permission section and how they work,
1314. 01:22:26 double time, part time for a full time freedom later on or something like that.
1315. 01:22:32 Yeah.
1316. 01:22:32 And so he makes the point here that what you want to be doing is you want to be planting seeds
1317. 01:22:38 instead of fighting fires. So I think that is a great way to summarize this book. It doesn't
1318. 01:22:46 give you anything specific. You got to decide that for yourself, what sort of the seeds you're
1319. 01:22:50 going to be planting. But then he ends it with a Bible story. It doesn't explicitly say it's a
1320. 01:22:56 Bible story, but it's the parable of the talents at the very end, which I, of course, liked because
1321. 01:23:01 my whole book is based off of the parable of the talents.
1322. 01:23:05 Sure. So that was interesting to me just because I recognized where he was getting that story from,
1323. 01:23:10 he doesn't explicitly say like I'm pulling this from the Bible or anything like that. But
1324. 01:23:14 I guess recognize that's where he's coming from. That's his mindset and probably why you and I
1325. 01:23:21 would enjoy hanging out with him. But if you don't like us, I don't know why I was singing this podcast,
1326. 01:23:25 but if I wasn't hanging out with Rory there because he's going to talk about his faith.
1327. 01:23:28 It's true. That is true. I don't really have anything to add to this one. It's just a wrap up
1328. 01:23:34 chapter, basically. It's like, here, do this. Now that I've told you this big cycle, do it.
1329. 01:23:40 Exactly. All right. So do you have any action items from this book?
1330. 01:23:48 I have one. And I feel like had I read the other book and filled in this gap that I've
1331. 01:23:59 been talking about. I would probably have a lot more. But because I feel like there's a lot of flaw
1332. 01:24:05 in the whole cycle to me that meant that I didn't really want to commit to much off of this because
1333. 01:24:13 I feel like I'm going to be setting myself up for a rough failure to try to do that. So I have one.
1334. 01:24:18 And that's in the automation territory. I have a bank of video projects that I do on a regular
1335. 01:24:27 basis that I could build templates for that I haven't done. And it would help me create things much
1336. 01:24:35 faster. And that I could see as a pretty big multiplier in this process of like, okay,
1337. 01:24:41 if I have a template where I can record a video, edit it down and drop it into this particular bank
1338. 01:24:47 that has all the background music, has all the intro, outro, base graphics already built,
1339. 01:24:55 I will make a lot more of these. And this is both for work stuff and my personal stuff. So
1340. 01:25:02 that's what I want to work on. It's going to take me a little bit to build those, of course,
1341. 01:25:06 but I think it will have pretty big payoff in the long run. So that's the one action item I have
1342. 01:25:11 from this one. Cool. Yeah, templates are a great, you know, we didn't even talk about that in the
1343. 01:25:16 automation section, but that is a great way to go. It goes a long ways. It really does. Yeah.
1344. 01:25:22 I've got a couple. So the big one I mentioned is I want to create that pop tag in OmniFocus and
1345. 01:25:30 figure out a system for how many times I review those things and forcing myself to just say,
1346. 01:25:39 admit I'm not going to be doing this thing at any point in the near future. If I see it a certain
1347. 01:25:43 number of times, which I think is going to be three. So I want to build that by next time. I also
1348. 01:25:50 want to identify the tasks that I can batch. I sort of have done this already with like email,
1349. 01:25:57 but there are other things I think that I could, I could batch and then work those into my time
1350. 01:26:02 block plan and then identify the tasks that I can delegate and create the processes in order to do
1351. 01:26:09 those. That's the big one for me. I'm inspired from this. I don't have any like specific ones that
1352. 01:26:16 come to mind as I'm doing this, but I think this is the one where I will see the most
1353. 01:26:22 benefit from. That's the one I have the most excitement behind at the moment. Cool. So those
1354. 01:26:29 are mine. Nice choice. I wish you all the best with them. Hey, thanks. All right. Style and
1355. 01:26:36 rating, my book, I got to go first. I will start with the style part first because I really like
1356. 01:26:44 Rorivain style. If it was style only and not content, this would be different.
1357. 01:26:53 Yes. I really do think he's a really good writer, really good communicator. He mentions in this book
1358. 01:27:00 how he wanted to get better at communication. So he joined Toastmasters and he ended up taking
1359. 01:27:05 second in the world championship of public speaking, understanding his journey into Toastmasters and
1360. 01:27:11 hearing him on podcasts and reading, take the stairs. That was one of the things that got me
1361. 01:27:16 interested in pursuing Toastmasters myself. So I think he's seeing the way he communicates
1362. 01:27:25 and that was just really, that's my jam. I want to be like Rorivain.
1363. 01:27:31 But the content from this book, I think there's a couple cool insights you can get from it.
1364. 01:27:39 I don't think the system is particularly good. I don't know how you would actually just like
1365. 01:27:46 assuming you were going into this. Okay, I am 100% in you've convinced me, let me use your system.
1366. 01:27:51 I don't know exactly how you would implement this. I mean, there is no like, here's how you
1367. 01:27:57 make this work inside of a task manager. One of my action items is like, how do I apply one small
1368. 01:28:07 piece of this that really resonated with me? And even that, I'm not quite sure what it's going to
1369. 01:28:12 look like. So I think there's a very good chance that you get into this and it makes sense to you
1370. 01:28:17 and you walk away from it and you're like, I don't know what to do now. I do think the first
1371. 01:28:23 section is probably the strongest section where he's talking about the problems with the way people
1372. 01:28:28 view time management. That's the one that I liked the most. But that's not really the main thrust of
1373. 01:28:36 the book. That's just the problem. And then he's trying to present a solution and I feel like
1374. 01:28:40 could have done a better, better job with that particular piece. I will cut him some slack and
1375. 01:28:48 recognize that this book, I think is kind of intended to be a bookend to take the stairs.
1376. 01:28:56 I don't think it was just accidental that he wrote this one after and then he keeps referring to
1377. 01:29:01 take the stairs. It kind of felt to me like he knew going in before he wrote anything that these
1378. 01:29:08 were two very different topics and he was going to try to address them separately and bring them
1379. 01:29:13 together. I just am not convinced that it happened very well. I do think I would recommend this to
1380. 01:29:22 people. I think it'll challenge a lot of people, especially in the bookworm audience who maybe have
1381. 01:29:28 a preconception of what procrastination is and how it's evil and ruining their lives.
1382. 01:29:34 And so the clickbaity title, I don't actually mind because he's going to challenge a lot of
1383. 01:29:42 those traditional beliefs around time management. He takes a couple of familiar concepts,
1384. 01:29:46 tries to flip them on their head and forces you to kind of make your own decisions about
1385. 01:29:51 what he's saying is a better alternative. I think I'm going to put this at 4.0. I'm trying to decide
1386. 01:30:00 3.5 or 4.0. Like I said, give him the benefit of the doubt and say a lot of the shortcomings,
1387. 01:30:06 like the gaps not being filled in. Maybe he could do a better job pointing people towards some of
1388. 01:30:11 the key concepts and take the stairs. But I also don't think he's trying to be an author. I mean,
1389. 01:30:20 I think he's written these two books. I don't know what else he's written. I don't see him making
1390. 01:30:26 the circuit. I think he's primarily working with southwestern consulting. So I don't know. I think
1391. 01:30:34 maybe this was never really intended to be his main thing. It was just a message that he had to
1392. 01:30:40 had to share, in which case kudos to you. I mean, that's the situation I found myself when I decided
1393. 01:30:47 to write my book. And I'm sure lots of people could point out a lot of mistakes that I made in mind.
1394. 01:30:50 I like that though. I like the fact that this isn't your purebred
1395. 01:30:56 New York Times best-selling author, even though he was on the New York Times best-selling list,
1396. 01:31:01 I believe. This is somebody who you wouldn't necessarily consider
1397. 01:31:07 an author. And he's just like, I'm going to go for it. And did he do it perfect? No. But he did a
1398. 01:31:14 pretty decent job, especially when you compare them to a lot of the other books that we've read.
1399. 01:31:19 Yeah, there's some stuff that he missed and could have been tighter. But overall, I think this is
1400. 01:31:24 pretty cool. And it kind of inspires me. I want to redo my book because I see all the
1401. 01:31:29 stuff that I've more complete thoughts and better mental models and things like that. So,
1402. 01:31:35 I think there's a lot of other people like me in the bookworm audience who just need
1403. 01:31:40 little inspiration permission to go for something like this. Furry can do it. If Mike can do it,
1404. 01:31:46 you can do it. So, I think there's value in that. So, I'm going to rate it 4.0.
1405. 01:31:50 OK. Well, I think we've talked about the gap and stuff that I've seen in here. The
1406. 01:31:58 style of this, he's very good at bringing stories in that make a lot of sense.
1407. 01:32:05 You mentioned the farmer story. He's talking about how much time do farmers spend working
1408. 01:32:12 during harvest? And he calls out 18 hours. Something. Yep, that's about right. Having been
1409. 01:32:19 there and done that one, yes, absolutely 100%. It's 11 o'clock if not midnight before your home.
1410. 01:32:25 It's 4 or 5 in the morning when you're back out in the field. Yep, it's about right. And
1411. 01:32:31 that concept of putting in the time now, because again, farmers during harvest,
1412. 01:32:38 that's when they're reaping all the rewards from the entire year of work,
1413. 01:32:42 they're not going to put in that amount of time mid-summer. I mean, they don't have to.
1414. 01:32:47 And don't mid-winter. There's really nothing to do other than a few hours of maintenance here
1415. 01:32:52 and there every day. So, there's a, like, you make it back at other periods in the year.
1416. 01:32:58 And that is, I think, the concept of multiplying that he's really getting to here. And he does a
1417. 01:33:04 good job of bringing that out with some of these stories. Some of the things that I'm noticing,
1418. 01:33:11 like, as we're talking about this and, you know, this being his second book and it's maybe not
1419. 01:33:15 his thing to be an author. And, like, the bottom of this says, "New York Times best-selling author
1420. 01:33:22 of Take the Stairs." But this is not a best-selling book. Right? So, at least I don't think it is.
1421. 01:33:29 It's not. At least this copy doesn't say it. He's got Seth Godin as a recommendation on the front.
1422. 01:33:36 Johnny Cuff is on the back. The back calls out that he's a self-discipline strategist
1423. 01:33:42 and he's the co-founder of Southwestern consulting. But something that I've noticed in the past
1424. 01:33:51 is whenever we're reading the second book from an author and the first one was a hit,
1425. 01:33:56 they'll put New York Times best-selling author of whatever that book was on the front. But if
1426. 01:34:02 this one's not a bestseller, it usually means this was a cash grab in a lot of cases.
1427. 01:34:08 They did the follow-up book because the first one did so well. People are like, "Give me more,
1428. 01:34:14 give me more, and I'll buy it." And then all the people who bought the first one bought the second
1429. 01:34:18 one. And then it's a money grab for them because they can make a ton off of that when it happens.
1430. 01:34:25 And then the content of this really doesn't matter a whole lot to the publisher because they've got
1431. 01:34:34 a best-selling author on their hands. They can sell that all day long. So, I'm not saying that this
1432. 01:34:40 is a cash grab. I'm just saying that is a very common thing that happens. And we've seen that
1433. 01:34:46 as someone who hasn't read the first one, this feels like that to me anyway because like you're
1434. 01:34:54 saying, there's the five-step process. But how do you apply that? Like you're saying, like,
1435. 01:34:59 what do I do with that? I mean, it's a cool concept. But how do you work through this? Like,
1436. 01:35:03 what is the flow? When do I do this? And do I have to do this with every single task that comes
1437. 01:35:08 in my plate? What? Like, there is no real... It's a great idea, but I'm not sure what to do with it.
1438. 01:35:17 Like, that's kind of how I feel with it. So, I feel like I want to read the other one,
1439. 01:35:23 even though I feel like this one has a lot of gaps and such. But it's because he has such a great
1440. 01:35:27 way of putting things together and helping you understand the concept he's talking about.
1441. 01:35:32 I just don't think the high level is all there. And I don't think the broad topic was put together
1442. 01:35:39 as well as it could have been. But again, that might be because the other one has that in it.
1443. 01:35:44 And that's actually required reading for this one. So, if that's the case, this could be a really,
1444. 01:35:51 really high-ranking book for me. But as it stands, like, I feel like I need to put it at a 3.0
1445. 01:35:58 because I'm just a bit baffled by some parts of it. Like, okay, I'm not sure what to do with this.
1446. 01:36:06 And I feel like that's on the author to bring that out. Again, what he presented was really good.
1447. 01:36:12 But I feel like he didn't choose to present the things that I could use. And it was just a,
1448. 01:36:17 here's some fun ideas sort of thing. So, I'm not going to rank it very high. So, I'm going to put
1449. 01:36:23 it at 3.0. Probably not going to recommend this to a bunch of folks. And that's primarily because
1450. 01:36:29 I think I'm going to read the other one first before I decide on if someone should read this one.
1451. 01:36:35 And if I do that, it would be a recommendation in pair. Like, you got to read both of these
1452. 01:36:41 together. They're in conjunction to each other. So, you got to have that.
1453. 01:36:46 Yeah, I think that's fair. I'll quit talking about it now. But those are my thoughts about it.
1454. 01:36:50 I thought he had a great style. Put it at 3.0. I'm ready to put it on the shelf.
1455. 01:36:54 All right. Well, let's put it on the shelf. And what are we reading next?
1456. 01:36:59 Yeah, the next one is "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. I've kind of seen this one around
1457. 01:37:05 for a while. I've had it recommended to me a few times from some friends. And I feel like it would
1458. 01:37:10 be a good fit for Bookworm. How do we think? We've kind of been on that train a little bit lately.
1459. 01:37:16 So, let's continue that. It's been kind of fun. All right. And then, what are you picking? I don't
1460. 01:37:21 even know. I'm blind on this one. What are we doing next? Yeah. Well, you inspired me after reading
1461. 01:37:26 this book and raising all the questions about motivation and actually following through
1462. 01:37:32 and doing the work. Sure. So, we are going to read after that, "Will Power Doesn't Work" by Benjamin
1463. 01:37:40 Hardy. Okay. And I feel like this will be interesting because we've read "The Will Power
1464. 01:37:46 Instinct." And I feel like a lot of the books that we've read have talked about. Willpower,
1465. 01:37:52 don't deplete it. Yadda yadda yadda. The topic I just think is something that we're...
1466. 01:38:00 It's the right thing at the right time for us currently. So, let's get to the bottom of this
1467. 01:38:04 and figure out how to get our work done, Joe. I'm going to focus on my bullet journal.
1468. 01:38:10 Just won't do the work for me. As much as I try, they won't do it. It's true. Oh, fun times.
1469. 01:38:17 Yet again, Joe has no gap books. Do you have one? I do. I finished one. I finished "Creativity" by
1470. 01:38:25 John Kleece, which is just a short little book. That was pretty fascinating, actually. And I have
1471. 01:38:31 another one that I am starting called the 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma, which I don't know a lot
1472. 01:38:39 about Robin Sharma. I looked at some of the reviews and it looks like this is a very polarizing author.
1473. 01:38:44 I'm not really sure what to expect going into this. But I also think it's more of a narrative
1474. 01:38:52 than it is like a system sort of a thing. So, kind of along lines like Patrick
1475. 01:38:57 Glencioni. That's my impression of having just cracked it open. Sure. So. Yeah. I've debated that
1476. 01:39:03 one for bookworm a couple times, but it doesn't seem like it would fit real well. But
1477. 01:39:08 anyway, it's crossed my mind a couple times. Well, if I read it and I'm like, we're going to have
1478. 01:39:14 a cool conversation about this, then I'll pick it for bookworm. Okay. All right. Sounds good.
1479. 01:39:19 All right. So thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you to all the people who joined us live.
1480. 01:39:25 You can do that too. If you go to bookworm.fm, you'll see all the links to all the different things.
1481. 01:39:32 Joe always tweets out the schedule ahead of time. So that's always fun. Also, thank you,
1482. 01:39:39 especially to the Bookworm Club premium members who are willing to support the show financially.
1483. 01:39:44 Five bucks a month, you can do that too. If you go to bookworm.fm/membership, you get access to
1484. 01:39:50 a couple of goodies, wallpaper that I created, a couple of gap episodes that Joe recorded back in
1485. 01:39:57 the day. And then the MindNote files that I create whenever I take notes on these books,
1486. 01:40:03 I upload those and those are available to members, both the PDF versions, if you just want, you know,
1487. 01:40:07 something to throw into your obsidian or whatever. And also the MindNote files. I know some people
1488. 01:40:11 like to use those as a base when they're reading their own books, and then they kind of edit it
1489. 01:40:14 as they go. So all that stuff is up there. Bookworm.fm/membership. Yes, yes, yes. All the things,
1490. 01:40:22 yeah, if you follow us on Twitter, Bookworm.fm, I usually tweet out when we're going to be live,
1491. 01:40:27 at least day of, sometimes it's day before, and it'll give you a link that you can set a reminder on.
1492. 01:40:32 So anyway, there's that. If you ever want to join us live and actually see us as we record,
1493. 01:40:37 you're welcome to do that. But if you're someone who's following along with us,
1494. 01:40:40 you can pick up "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray. We'll go through that one in a couple weeks.