124: Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray

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1. 00:00:00 There's this really cool new app that came out on the App Store this week, Mike.
2. 00:00:03 Oh, yeah, what's that?
3. 00:00:05 It's Obsidian for mobile.
4. 00:00:06 I need to get my bell out now so we can start hitting the bell for Obsidian every single
5. 00:00:12 time it comes out.
6. 00:00:13 Blake's got the emoji in the chat for you.
7. 00:00:16 There you go.
8. 00:00:17 Nailed it, Blake.
9. 00:00:18 So you've been on the Insider build for quite a while, right?
10. 00:00:20 So you've been using Obsidian on mobile for a while, right?
11. 00:00:25 Is that true?
12. 00:00:26 I have, yep.
13. 00:00:27 Okay.
14. 00:00:28 What are your thoughts on it?
15. 00:00:29 It's solid.
16. 00:00:30 It's kind of amazing that they took essentially all of Obsidian and smashed it into an iOS app.
17. 00:00:36 Sure.
18. 00:00:38 It's not exactly the same, obviously, but one of the genius things I thought they did
19. 00:00:43 was on an iPhone, you can swipe down from anywhere but the top of the screen, which
20. 00:00:48 triggers either control center or your notifications.
21. 00:00:51 And that triggers the command palette, which is the exact same gesture that opens up spotlight
22. 00:00:56 inside of or in iOS on your home screen, which in a video for the upcoming course that I'm
23. 00:01:03 working on at the sweet setup, I actually described the command palette as sort of
24. 00:01:10 spotlight for Obsidian.
25. 00:01:12 So that just instantly fit.
26. 00:01:14 It's got the little mobile toolbar above the keyboard for like quick actions and things.
27. 00:01:20 It really does a pretty good job of taking advantage of some of the interface differences
28. 00:01:25 and using them in a positive way, but it still gives you access to the core and community
29. 00:01:30 plugins, all the sync, all the stuff that's there on the desktop is there on mobile.
30. 00:01:37 It's a pretty impressive launch.
31. 00:01:39 I know like Federico Vitticci is using Obsidian primarily on an iOS device.
32. 00:01:44 And I think at this point, I would recommend even mirror mortals like you and me that is
33. 00:01:50 totally doable with this application.
34. 00:01:52 Hmm.
35. 00:01:53 Okay.
36. 00:01:54 So let me just say that the sync on my side was painful to get set up.
37. 00:02:03 So the way to set up sync with the iOS version is to open up the iOS app, create an Obsidian
38. 00:02:12 vault stored in iCloud, which will then create an Obsidian folder in your iCloud drive.
39. 00:02:19 Okay. And then a separate subfolder for the vault that you just set up.
40. 00:02:25 So if you name your vault notes, it's going to be iCloud drive slash obsidian slash notes.
41. 00:02:30 Then what you do is you take all of your stuff, if you're going to migrate it from the Mac,
42. 00:02:35 you're going to dump it all in that iCloud drive folder and then you let iCloud drive
43. 00:02:39 be the sync.
44. 00:02:40 You don't actually use the obsidian sync service.
45. 00:02:43 I agree.
46. 00:02:44 I got some wonkiness when I was beaming stuff up and beaming stuff down.
47. 00:02:47 There are advantages to doing it that way.
48. 00:02:50 You get a year of revision history and it's all end to end encrypted.
49. 00:02:54 So there's people who that's the right solution for, but everybody else, save yourself the
50. 00:03:00 four slash eight bucks a month and just put it in an iCloud drive folder.
51. 00:03:05 And if you put it in a get repository, this is going to be completely painful for you.
52. 00:03:09 Just going to say that because it forces you into that.
53. 00:03:13 So you end up with a scenario where, like for example, I had my notes in an iCloud folder,
54. 00:03:24 but that doesn't work.
55. 00:03:26 Like I couldn't just reuse that and open it in obsidian because it has to be in its little
56. 00:03:31 sandboxed area in the obsidian folder.
57. 00:03:35 Yep.
58. 00:03:36 Correct.
59. 00:03:37 So you have to move it there if you want to use that.
60. 00:03:39 You can create a local.
61. 00:03:42 Not sure why you would do that when everybody wants sync and such.
62. 00:03:47 So I had to do like moving my Git repo on my Mac and then yes, basically reconfigure
63. 00:03:55 almost all of it to get it to continue working, which I wasn't expecting.
64. 00:04:00 In my head, I was like, oh, well, let me just open a vault.
65. 00:04:02 I've already got the notes and working copy.
66. 00:04:04 Let's see if it will actually let me use the file system on the phone and the answer
67. 00:04:09 was no.
68. 00:04:10 You couldn't do that.
69. 00:04:11 I'll just put it over.
70. 00:04:12 So just be aware that if you're going to use it, that's a thing outside of that.
71. 00:04:16 I haven't used it a ton, but I have used it a little bit and I can't really say what I
72. 00:04:25 would use it for outside of a potential inbox.
73. 00:04:29 In-sought like on my phone, but drafts serves that purpose.
74. 00:04:32 So I haven't really figured out why I'm using it on my phone yet.
75. 00:04:35 So I'm glad I didn't pay the extra just to be on the insider to get it ahead of time
76. 00:04:41 because I'm not sure I'm going to use it.
77. 00:04:44 It's there.
78. 00:04:46 It's kind of cool.
79. 00:04:47 I'm glad that they were able to get it out because I know that it has because of it being
80. 00:04:52 an electron app, there's a ton that it is able to do from day one and they don't really
81. 00:04:57 have to rewrite much at all to make it work.
82. 00:05:01 So there's that.
83. 00:05:02 Yeah, and also if you use the iCloud Drive Sync over the Obsidian Sync service and you
84. 00:05:09 keep it in that iCloud Drive folder, it opens itself up to a lot of shortcut automation
85. 00:05:15 through the Files app.
86. 00:05:17 I actually use drafts to capture things.
87. 00:05:20 And so if you're just going to use Obsidian to capture stuff, there are better options.
88. 00:05:24 But if you want a note-taking app kind of with the intended purpose of using it for
89. 00:05:30 creation, I think it's the best option out there at the moment.
90. 00:05:34 Yeah, it's fair.
91. 00:05:35 I mean, I'm doing a lot of my stuff through drafts and such into working copy, which then
92. 00:05:42 syncs via Git.
93. 00:05:44 And then it shows up that way with the automatic stuff.
94. 00:05:47 So I do a lot of that, which is fine.
95. 00:05:50 But it's just an edge case and an edge scenario that's not typical for people.
96. 00:05:56 So just be aware that if you're one of these weird nut jobs like me, that's a thing.
97. 00:06:00 You've got to be aware of.
98. 00:06:02 Fun times.
99. 00:06:03 All right.
100. 00:06:04 So should we do some follow-up?
101. 00:06:06 Let's do it.
102. 00:06:07 You want me to go first?
103. 00:06:09 Sure, why not?
104. 00:06:10 All right.
105. 00:06:11 I didn't do these.
106. 00:06:14 I kind of did them.
107. 00:06:15 The PopTeg and OmniFocus I did not do, but I don't think I looked at OmniFocus this
108. 00:06:20 week.
109. 00:06:21 So fail.
110. 00:06:24 Identify tasks to delegate.
111. 00:06:26 I don't have a big list of these.
112. 00:06:27 But I have delegated tasks.
113. 00:06:29 So this is kind of win.
114. 00:06:32 I have an assistant now, which is great.
115. 00:06:36 And one of the things that I am terrible at doing is remembering to go post on my own
116. 00:06:44 personal site about the podcast that I published.
117. 00:06:49 I have no problem publishing book or amount time.
118. 00:06:52 I have no problem publishing intentional family on time.
119. 00:06:54 I have no problem publishing focus.
120. 00:06:56 But all of those live on different servers.
121. 00:06:59 There's different processes associated with all of those.
122. 00:07:02 And then I never go back to my own site and write a summary post and be like, hey, you
123. 00:07:06 know, in this episode, Joe and I covered this book.
124. 00:07:09 And so I now have delegated the process for all three of those podcasts to an assistant
125. 00:07:15 who is doing a great job preparing the posts.
126. 00:07:18 And then I just go in and publish them within 24 hours after she creates them.
127. 00:07:25 And I've been doing that just so I can make sure that she doesn't have any questions.
128. 00:07:28 And she understands the process, but she's doing an awesome job.
129. 00:07:31 So I'm ready now to just let her hit publish on her own, which sounds like a stupid little
130. 00:07:37 thing.
131. 00:07:38 But what I've realized with this, because these at least post literally take like five, maybe
132. 00:07:41 10 minutes at the atops to create on my site, but it's the kind of thing where it's like,
133. 00:07:46 Oh, I know I should do that at some point.
134. 00:07:49 And then I don't do it because I'm doing something else, but it's in the back of my
135. 00:07:53 mind and it causes me to always go back and think about that.
136. 00:07:56 And so I can't the thing that I'm doing takes longer.
137. 00:07:59 So the actual cost for me not doing these is probably many, many hours.
138. 00:08:04 If you add it all up and I've delegated now, don't think about it.
139. 00:08:09 So that's pretty cool.
140. 00:08:10 I've also delegated some podcast editing.
141. 00:08:14 Intentional family is now being edited by my son who did a phenomenal job.
142. 00:08:18 I showed him kind of my approach to editing.
143. 00:08:21 He's using Fairwright on the iPad and then I'm like, okay, now you try this one, you
144. 00:08:25 know, and he's editing it on a Saturday and I'm there with him so I can answer any questions
145. 00:08:30 that he has.
146. 00:08:31 How did you handle this one?
147. 00:08:32 You know, I showed him like first five minutes.
148. 00:08:33 He did the rest of the episode and then he gave it to me to spot check.
149. 00:08:37 I made three additional edits.
150. 00:08:40 He got on so quick.
151. 00:08:43 He's probably better at it than I am.
152. 00:08:49 So yeah, I don't have to edit intentional family anymore, which is pretty cool.
153. 00:08:55 And then the last one, identifying tests to batch this I did not do.
154. 00:08:59 I probably should still do this.
155. 00:09:02 Just figure out like what are all my admin tasks, kind of like a shutdown routine sort
156. 00:09:06 of a thing, which I think that's what this is going to morph into.
157. 00:09:10 For me, I've been thinking about that is redefining my morning and evening routines.
158. 00:09:16 And I think a shutdown routine would be a logical addition to that.
159. 00:09:21 But just identifying a bunch of things that I can batch do whenever I have time doesn't
160. 00:09:25 make a whole lot of sense to me.
161. 00:09:27 Good work.
162. 00:09:28 I have to admit that the pop tag and OmniFocus sounded like a hokey thing to me from the beginning.
163. 00:09:35 I've seen folks that do like the procrastinate tag in OmniFocus.
164. 00:09:40 I don't think I've ever done that, but it, I don't know.
165. 00:09:45 I've never seen anybody pull it off successfully.
166. 00:09:47 It's a fun concept, but I don't know that I've ever seen it.
167. 00:09:51 So here's, here's what I'm really after and the pop tag really isn't probably the way
168. 00:09:55 to do this, but like I want something to show up in a certain perspective.
169. 00:10:00 It's like, Hey, you chose not to do this before.
170. 00:10:06 And that's tally number one.
171. 00:10:08 And now you're choosing not to do it again.
172. 00:10:11 That's tally number two.
173. 00:10:13 And by the time you choose not to do it a third time, it should just automatically be deleted.
174. 00:10:17 Like if I was creating my own application, that's what would happen here.
175. 00:10:21 Sure.
176. 00:10:22 Because like stuff keeps popping up, not even in a review context, because I know review
177. 00:10:26 is like a really killer feature for OmniFocus.
178. 00:10:29 And that's not really what I'm talking about because you could review a project every week
179. 00:10:34 and you're going to review it a bunch of different times.
180. 00:10:36 But I want this like exploding thing, which is going to keep track of you keep putting
181. 00:10:42 this off.
182. 00:10:44 Now you have to stop doing it because you're never going to do it.
183. 00:10:47 Let's be real here.
184. 00:10:48 Sounds like you need a set of scripts for it.
185. 00:10:51 Potentially, I'm a little bit nervous automating that, but that's kind of the thought process.
186. 00:10:58 And so with the original pop tag, it was going to be, okay, you're looking at this once pop,
187. 00:11:02 you know, sub tag one.
188. 00:11:04 And then next time you just change the sub tag pop two by the time you get to pop three.
189. 00:11:08 Now you have everything pop three, you can go look at those and be like, okay, these
190. 00:11:11 are the ones that you need to just batch delete because you're never going to do them.
191. 00:11:16 Or it auto deletes.
192. 00:11:17 It could, but that's a part that's scary to me.
193. 00:11:21 Until I do it manually first, I don't want to automate it.
194. 00:11:24 Oh, if you automated it, puts a little fire under it.
195. 00:11:28 That is also true.
196. 00:11:30 Anyway, that said, I had one task from last episode, which was to create some templates
197. 00:11:38 for video projects, which I did do.
198. 00:11:41 And that has proved extremely helpful and have used those a few times already.
199. 00:11:46 So kudos to templates.
200. 00:11:48 I feel like one of the interesting things with that is that it seems like that makes it easier
201. 00:11:54 to start a video if that's a thing.
202. 00:11:57 Like because the template is there, it feels like there's less time involved to do that.
203. 00:12:03 Thus it's easier to do.
204. 00:12:05 So that would be an encouragement to anybody who has projects like that.
205. 00:12:11 Build a template.
206. 00:12:12 It helps.
207. 00:12:13 Yeah, templates are the unsung hero of automation, in my opinion.
208. 00:12:20 Yes.
209. 00:12:21 Because they're the kind of thing that anybody can use, even if you don't think you are an
210. 00:12:28 automation person.
211. 00:12:30 Most people think of automation.
212. 00:12:32 They think of writing those custom scripts that you were just talking about for OmniFocus.
213. 00:12:37 And that's, I don't even know how to do that stuff.
214. 00:12:42 So that can be intimidating when you think about automation.
215. 00:12:45 Like, well, I guess automation is just not for me.
216. 00:12:49 But then you get into stuff like basic shortcuts.
217. 00:12:54 And that still feels like, well, there's really some advanced stuff you can do with this.
218. 00:12:58 Maybe this isn't for me.
219. 00:12:59 And then you get even lower level templates and it's like, yes, these I totally can wrap
220. 00:13:05 my brain around and I can leverage these right now.
221. 00:13:08 Yes, yes, yes.
222. 00:13:09 All right, let's step into today's book because I feel like there's a lot of things we could
223. 00:13:13 talk about.
224. 00:13:14 This is probably going to go along.
225. 00:13:15 My apologies.
226. 00:13:16 We'll get there.
227. 00:13:17 But this is one that I have had recommended at least by two different people in multiple
228. 00:13:23 cases and I'm kind of glad it's been recommended because this is going to be a fun conversation
229. 00:13:31 here.
230. 00:13:32 But this is "Leminal Thinking" by Dave Gray.
231. 00:13:36 And I think every person that has seen this sitting on my desk or seen me carrying it somewhere,
232. 00:13:44 which that generally happens in some form, like, wait, what?
233. 00:13:47 What is "Leminal Thinking"?
234. 00:13:49 Okay.
235. 00:13:50 That's one response.
236. 00:13:51 Oh, you have to let me know what you think of it.
237. 00:13:54 That's the other response.
238. 00:13:55 It's kind of one of those two is where people tend to land.
239. 00:14:03 The subtitle on this is "Create the Change You Want" by changing the way you think.
240. 00:14:09 I think that's an apt subtitle for this.
241. 00:14:14 I'm kind of excited about this one.
242. 00:14:16 I think this is along the lines of the Sheen Parish book that we read.
243. 00:14:20 Yes.
244. 00:14:21 I've drawn a blank on the title.
245. 00:14:22 What?
246. 00:14:23 "The Great Mental Models."
247. 00:14:24 There you go.
248. 00:14:25 I had the same thought.
249. 00:14:26 Yep.
250. 00:14:27 I don't normally remember the author's name and not the title.
251. 00:14:30 I usually remember it the other way around.
252. 00:14:32 But yeah, great mental models.
253. 00:14:34 It kind of hits that same nerve with me.
254. 00:14:39 And I don't know that it has the same--it doesn't have the same layout per se, but it
255. 00:14:47 does have that feel at least.
256. 00:14:50 What were your gut reactions on it, Mike?
257. 00:14:52 Yeah.
258. 00:14:53 So "The Great Mental Models" talks about this is a lattice work of frameworks that you can
259. 00:14:58 use.
260. 00:15:00 And this has a lot of the same sort of ideas except it's packaged more so in a system.
261. 00:15:09 And I have thoughts on that.
262. 00:15:11 But maybe let's get into the content first.
263. 00:15:16 I'm still undecided if this way is better or worse.
264. 00:15:22 I think I know which one I prefer.
265. 00:15:26 But I also want to talk through this because more than once you've been able to change my
266. 00:15:32 mind about things.
267. 00:15:35 So is that a belief you're holding onto at the moment?
268. 00:15:38 Yes.
269. 00:15:39 So the ideas in here I really like.
270. 00:15:43 The system I'm a little bit skeptical about.
271. 00:15:46 I will tell you that.
272. 00:15:47 So there's two parts here.
273. 00:15:48 Part one, how belief shape everything where there's principles and then part two, what
274. 00:15:52 do you do about it, where there are practices?
275. 00:15:54 I'm not quite sure how to implement those practices consistently.
276. 00:16:00 I know he's got like a whole big process and there's action items at the end of every
277. 00:16:05 single one of these chapters.
278. 00:16:07 And I did not go through and finish every one of those action items.
279. 00:16:10 There's a couple that I jotted down is like, these are cool.
280. 00:16:13 I'm going to do these.
281. 00:16:15 But I don't really want to just follow the system that he kind of is outlining here.
282. 00:16:22 And to be fair, he's not saying this is a system.
283. 00:16:25 You got to do it this way.
284. 00:16:26 But he is trying to lead you down a path and it feels very linear.
285. 00:16:31 Whereas the great mental models does not.
286. 00:16:34 Here's all of these ideas and you can combine them any way you want.
287. 00:16:37 Yeah.
288. 00:16:38 I think that's fair.
289. 00:16:39 Let's start with, so in the introduction, he starts with what is liminal thinking, which
290. 00:16:44 is the question I got a lot.
291. 00:16:47 Because if you were to just sit and have someone define the term liminal thinking, most people
292. 00:16:55 aren't going to have an answer.
293. 00:16:56 I don't think at least the folks that I ran into didn't have any clue.
294. 00:17:01 So liminal thinking, the word liminal comes from the Latin root.
295. 00:17:06 I think it's lemon.
296. 00:17:07 I assume it's lemon.
297. 00:17:09 Limon.
298. 00:17:10 Anyway, it means threshold.
299. 00:17:12 So it's the point where you're crossing over from one thing into the other.
300. 00:17:16 It's like that boundary between things.
301. 00:17:18 So if you start to combine that, it's the boundary between thinking of one thing into
302. 00:17:23 thinking another thing.
303. 00:17:24 So it's the boundary between those two thoughts.
304. 00:17:28 And on the surface, that seems like a very minor thing.
305. 00:17:33 Okay.
306. 00:17:34 Cool.
307. 00:17:35 Fun thought.
308. 00:17:36 You can have a thought that's between two thoughts, and it's called a liminal thought,
309. 00:17:41 or liminal thinking in that time, or in that space.
310. 00:17:45 But he takes it one step further, in that to use his argument here, change happens at
311. 00:17:54 the boundaries of things, which makes sense when you start processing that.
312. 00:17:58 So if liminal thinking is the boundary between two thoughts and change happens within boundaries,
313. 00:18:07 change is able to happen with liminal thinking.
314. 00:18:10 You with me?
315. 00:18:11 Yep.
316. 00:18:12 And that is the area that we're going to process and that he discusses in this book.
317. 00:18:19 And it's really an interesting way to term it, I think.
318. 00:18:24 I can't say that I have any argument against this concept of change happening within the
319. 00:18:29 boundaries, because whenever I think about all of the change that's happened in society
320. 00:18:33 over the years, almost every time, well, actually, I've never been able to find a thing where
321. 00:18:39 change happened without a boundary of some kind, whether it's intellectual or physical,
322. 00:18:44 I haven't been able to nail down what that would be.
323. 00:18:46 But I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about that particular thought.
324. 00:18:50 Anyway, change happens in the boundaries.
325. 00:18:53 Yeah.
326. 00:18:54 I don't have a whole lot to say about this introductory part.
327. 00:18:59 I remember the threshold definition and then basically forgot about it until the end of
328. 00:19:07 the book, you brought it back.
329. 00:19:09 I'm not quite sure how it fits to the visual that he's building throughout the first section
330. 00:19:17 here necessarily.
331. 00:19:19 He basically is talking about how we define reality and what are you going to do with
332. 00:19:26 that threshold definition when you look at that pyramid type diagram, for example.
333. 00:19:32 Like it's cool.
334. 00:19:35 You can jot it down, but so what?
335. 00:19:39 It is a cool diagram.
336. 00:19:40 I think we'll get to that.
337. 00:19:42 Does he start that in the next?
338. 00:19:44 In the first part?
339. 00:19:45 I don't remember.
340. 00:19:46 It might be part or principle number two.
341. 00:19:49 Sure.
342. 00:19:50 Okay.
343. 00:19:51 Yeah.
344. 00:19:52 We got 15 different chapters to get through.
345. 00:19:53 Yeah.
346. 00:19:54 Yeah.
347. 00:19:55 So let's start with part one.
348. 00:19:56 How beliefs shape everything?
349. 00:19:59 And he's going to, within the very beginning of this part, he kind of lays out that beliefs
350. 00:20:08 are the foundation that things stand on, and that is the foundation that so many things
351. 00:20:17 that we think are founded on.
352. 00:20:20 And he has this diagram that we'll try to explain here in a little bit, but he's trying
353. 00:20:25 to dismantle that, if you will, and just show us that our beliefs are a very small construct
354. 00:20:33 within the broader scheme of reality, if you will.
355. 00:20:37 Now, that might sound kind of philosophical, but I think it makes sense as we go through
356. 00:20:41 this.
357. 00:20:42 And principle one, where he's starting to lay this foundation, is that beliefs are models.
358. 00:20:50 And it, I'll just say this, at the beginning of each chapter, he has like this little sentence
359. 00:20:55 that kind of summarizes the whole chapter, which is helpful, because you can kind of get
360. 00:21:00 an idea of what you're about to go through.
361. 00:21:04 Is it the beginning or is it the end?
362. 00:21:05 I just realized it's at the end.
363. 00:21:07 Never mind.
364. 00:21:08 He summarizes it at the end.
365. 00:21:09 Never mind.
366. 00:21:10 I was reading it backwards.
367. 00:21:11 But on principle one, he has this statement at the end, beliefs seem like perfect representations
368. 00:21:15 of the world, but in fact, they are imperfect models for navigating a complex, multi-dimensional,
369. 00:21:22 unknowable reality, which, unknowable reality is like, wait, what?
370. 00:21:29 So anyway, beliefs are models.
371. 00:21:32 He starts with the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant.
372. 00:21:36 They've all gotten individual part, and that's the reality that they know.
373. 00:21:39 So when they describe an elephant, one of them is describing an ear, one of them is describing
374. 00:21:43 the tail, one of them is describing the trunk.
375. 00:21:45 And that is their reality.
376. 00:21:47 And he says, we can grasp individual fragments, but we'll never be able to grasp the entire
377. 00:21:52 thing.
378. 00:21:53 He also says on page six that a belief is something you hold in your mind, a kind of
379. 00:21:57 map or model of that external reality sounds a whole lot like the map is not the territory.
380. 00:22:05 Exactly, Blake.
381. 00:22:08 The difference here is that he adds one additional detail that you mentioned, Joe, that you're
382. 00:22:13 never going to be able to fully understand the territory.
383. 00:22:17 So yes, the map is the territory, but even the map maker, making their opinionated interpretation
384. 00:22:25 of what is important is not able to know the entirety of the territory that they are trying
385. 00:22:31 to summarize, which is a minor detail, but I think it's important.
386. 00:22:36 The map is not the territory.
387. 00:22:38 It's a quote by Alfred Korszibsky because that's on the page right at the end of this.
388. 00:22:46 So that is right in the midst of all this because that is the transition from principle
389. 00:22:51 one to two because principle two is beliefs are created.
390. 00:22:55 This is where we get the pyramid that he uses.
391. 00:23:00 It's not through the rest of the book, but he uses it sporadically through the whole
392. 00:23:04 thing and beliefs are created.
393. 00:23:07 And here's essentially what he's getting to.
394. 00:23:10 I'm going to do my best to explain this pyramid through explaining this principle.
395. 00:23:17 I think that's how it's going to work.
396. 00:23:20 Basically your foundation that everything is built on is reality, quote unquote, which
397. 00:23:26 he has in parentheses, the unknowable.
398. 00:23:29 And on top of that is your experience, which is a big long block that things are built
399. 00:23:35 on.
400. 00:23:36 But the problem is that you have your attention focused on some small subset of your life
401. 00:23:45 experience, which means you can imagine that as kind of a pole that sticks up one really
402. 00:23:50 small stick that sticks up from that experience.
403. 00:23:55 It's like a needle on a record player.
404. 00:23:57 Exactly, exactly super tiny.
405. 00:24:00 On top of that needle, somehow balanced up there are your theories.
406. 00:24:06 And on top of that are your judgments.
407. 00:24:09 And then on top of that are your beliefs.
408. 00:24:12 So if you start to process all of this, you have the reality, which is the unknowable,
409. 00:24:18 your experience, which you have your attention focus on one small piece of that to create
410. 00:24:22 the stick on which your theories, your judgments, and thus your beliefs are all teeter tottering
411. 00:24:29 up there.
412. 00:24:30 And then above that, the beliefs on which you stand is what you think of as the obvious.
413. 00:24:37 You and the other people in your bubble of belief.
414. 00:24:40 Correct.
415. 00:24:41 Yes.
416. 00:24:42 And when you start to just think through all of these little tiny details with this, I
417. 00:24:50 really, really like this diagram.
418. 00:24:52 Yes.
419. 00:24:53 Because it just clicks, at least for me, because there's so much that we have considered our
420. 00:25:01 foundation, our core, how could anyone not believe this.
421. 00:25:07 And yet, if you follow this model, all of that is founded on judgments, which are founded
422. 00:25:12 on theories, which are focused on this stick of attention, which could easily be tipped
423. 00:25:17 over if you don't try to prop it up with all of your ignoring other facts and such.
424. 00:25:26 So there's a lot, a lot, a lot, I think in this particular diagram.
425. 00:25:30 I'm a fan.
426. 00:25:32 On the topic of that record needle attention, by the way, he shows some stats that our capacity
427. 00:25:37 for perceiving information is about 11 million bits per second.
428. 00:25:43 But your conscious attention, your focus is limited to 40 bits per second.
429. 00:25:49 So already you're limited in your capacity for receiving the information, but the stuff
430. 00:25:54 that you are really understanding is severely limited.
431. 00:25:58 Yes.
432. 00:25:59 So that's a very effective model for the point that he's making that you can't know everything,
433. 00:26:06 because you are limited by the amount of information that you can take in.
434. 00:26:11 I want to point out here, Josh mentions that this book was published before the Great
435. 00:26:15 Mental Models.
436. 00:26:17 And I think it's interesting, this chapter really spoke to me because I understood the
437. 00:26:27 map is not the territory from the Great Mental Models.
438. 00:26:29 And I was thinking about this.
439. 00:26:31 The way he describes the map as not the territory is not very good, in my opinion.
440. 00:26:39 If I would have just read that first chapter before getting to this chapter two, without
441. 00:26:43 the context of reading the Great Mental Models, I feel like this would have been received
442. 00:26:50 very differently by me.
443. 00:26:53 So I don't really know what to do with that other than to call it out.
444. 00:26:58 Like the Great Mental Models does a really great job of explaining the role of the cartographer
445. 00:27:04 and selecting the things that are important.
446. 00:27:09 But he's got a different kind of spin on it, and I think it's less effective, which is
447. 00:27:12 just that, "Yeah, you're never going to know everything."
448. 00:27:17 Which I don't really understand given the definition of liminal, because that threshold definition,
449. 00:27:24 really what's the point of that except to understand where your limits are and then choose to step
450. 00:27:31 beyond those?
451. 00:27:33 I think that's what he's trying to teach us to do through all the action items that are
452. 00:27:37 associated with this particular book.
453. 00:27:40 But I feel like had I not read the Great Mental Models before this one, I would be much less
454. 00:27:45 motivated to do so.
455. 00:27:47 It would be very much more like pie in the sky.
456. 00:27:50 Let's just think about this instead of let's actually do this.
457. 00:27:53 Sure.
458. 00:27:54 What do you think?
459. 00:27:55 Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense because the fact that both of us had independent
460. 00:28:01 connections to the Great Mental Models coming into this one, it's an indicator I think
461. 00:28:07 that it's one of those, as Mortimer Adler would say, is interconnected or there's a
462. 00:28:14 term.
463. 00:28:15 I'm drawing a blank on it.
464. 00:28:16 There's a term he used for it where you're starting to put the book in perspective amongst
465. 00:28:20 all the other books.
466. 00:28:21 I think it's in topical reading, but I don't know the exact term for the connectedness
467. 00:28:25 you're talking about.
468. 00:28:27 Yeah, so because they're within the same topic, you can't help but put one within the view
469. 00:28:34 with the lens of the other as a result.
470. 00:28:37 So in this case, I don't think that's a bad thing.
471. 00:28:42 It's just a thing to be aware of.
472. 00:28:43 We have that bias because we have read the Great Mental Models coming into this one.
473. 00:28:48 But in this particular principle, I think the point that he's trying to make here is
474. 00:28:53 that the beliefs that we hold, that we stand on are created based on where we focus our
475. 00:28:59 attention, which is kind of alarming when you stop and wonder about it for more than
476. 00:29:06 10 seconds.
477. 00:29:09 If that's all it takes to completely change somebody's beliefs, it's at least something
478. 00:29:14 that you should keep in mind, I would say.
479. 00:29:16 Which I think would bring us to Principle 3.
480. 00:29:19 I know I'm kind of moving quickly through this and we're probably going to continue
481. 00:29:23 doing that just because there's a lot to cover.
482. 00:29:25 There's a lot here, yeah.
483. 00:29:26 There is a lot.
484. 00:29:27 I thought about trying to figure out how to cut some of this out, but I just don't think
485. 00:29:30 it makes sense unless you touch on each one, at least briefly.
486. 00:29:34 So anyway, Principle 3, beliefs create a shared world.
487. 00:29:41 This particular one is, think about, okay, you have this belief that you have created
488. 00:29:48 because of where you've chosen to focus your attention, but whenever you create those beliefs,
489. 00:29:57 you're going to have the tendency to want to find other people who have that same belief.
490. 00:30:02 And you're creating a world based on those underlying beliefs that you can share with
491. 00:30:08 other people who also have that belief.
492. 00:30:11 If that makes sense, it may be kind of a roundabout way to say that.
493. 00:30:14 But basically, you're finding people who are like you and you're building your personal
494. 00:30:21 world based on those belief systems.
495. 00:30:23 Yes, although he really gets into that, in my opinion, in Principle 5 with the bubble
496. 00:30:30 of belief.
497. 00:30:32 There is an aspect of this, though, too, because it's in the title, beliefs create a
498. 00:30:36 shared world.
499. 00:30:38 He talks about the learning loop here, and that is that your needs influence your beliefs,
500. 00:30:43 influence your actions, influence your results, and then that provides feedback.
501. 00:30:47 And then that can either be positive or negative.
502. 00:30:51 He defines them as a doom loop or a delight loop.
503. 00:30:53 And he tells the story about the rescue dog that they had who bit one of their kids, and
504. 00:30:59 then they had an option to respond and trigger a doom loop, or they brought in the dog whisper
505. 00:31:06 and changed it into a delight loop.
506. 00:31:08 I think that story is cool.
507. 00:31:11 When I read that, I was like, if my dog bit somebody, I'm not hiring the dog whisper
508. 00:31:19 to try to rehab the dog.
509. 00:31:21 Reheav the dog, I love that.
510. 00:31:25 Although, my emotional response is maybe a little bit raw.
511. 00:31:28 I actually got bit by a dog a couple of weeks ago.
512. 00:31:32 I was biking on a trail.
513. 00:31:36 But someone had their dogs off of the leash on the right side of the trail.
514. 00:31:41 I saw the one dog, and I have a bell on my bike, so I ding the bell.
515. 00:31:46 Let them know, coming through on the left, go way over to the left side.
516. 00:31:49 So there's plenty of space between me and the owner.
517. 00:31:53 And I see the one dog off of the leash.
518. 00:31:58 Here's me ding the bell and kind of cowers over by the owner.
519. 00:32:01 And then so I'm going around him.
520. 00:32:02 And then on the right side of this trail is a bunch of brush and all of a sudden, like
521. 00:32:06 a bad out of hell comes this other dog.
522. 00:32:09 Just booking it right towards me.
523. 00:32:10 I go down into this little culvert ravine sort of a thing.
524. 00:32:14 And I'm just thinking, there's no way this dog is going to get me.
525. 00:32:18 It's got to be like, move to intercept a free safety in football.
526. 00:32:22 And it's got to be perfect because I am booking it on my bike.
527. 00:32:25 But he totally nailed me.
528. 00:32:26 He bit me in the ankle.
529. 00:32:28 So I'm bleeding.
530. 00:32:30 I stop, I look at it and the guy's like, sorry about that.
531. 00:32:33 And he takes off.
532. 00:32:35 Good job.
533. 00:32:37 Way to be a responsible dog owner.
534. 00:32:39 Yeah.
535. 00:32:39 Yeah.
536. 00:32:40 So I don't know.
537. 00:32:42 Maybe that is influencing my perspective when I read this is like, OK, good job for you.
538. 00:32:47 That's not how I would have reacted at all.
539. 00:32:50 That dog is out of here.
540. 00:32:52 Yeah, I've been around a lot of--
541. 00:32:56 my wife and I used to volunteer at a dog shelter where the dogs that people didn't want or
542. 00:33:02 who had bitten someone, that's where they went.
543. 00:33:04 And we got to be the ones who fed them and took them out for walks and all the things.
544. 00:33:10 And all sorts of rough animals who have been through a lot.
545. 00:33:15 And it's amazing how if you have the right demeanor, you can work with these dogs and
546. 00:33:22 do a good job.
547. 00:33:23 But some of them take a lot of very detailed care to be able to work with.
548. 00:33:31 So dogs that just randomly run up and bite people and then run off just seems strange to me.
549. 00:33:40 It wasn't a very deep bite.
550. 00:33:43 I still do have a little bit of a scar on my ankle.
551. 00:33:47 It happened two weeks ago.
552. 00:33:48 But it wasn't deep enough where I felt like I needed to go in.
553. 00:33:54 The guy took off so I couldn't make sure that it was registered, had it shots, whatever.
554. 00:34:00 I mean, it looked like it had one of those harnesses on.
555. 00:34:03 The guy just had unhooked it.
556. 00:34:05 So I don't know.
557. 00:34:06 OK.
558. 00:34:07 Whatever.
559. 00:34:08 But the big thing is if I, for me, it's a dog.
560. 00:34:15 And I'm not going-- if my kids are doing something, which is triggering something in
561. 00:34:21 the dog and causing the dog to react, like I'm going to tell my kids not to do that.
562. 00:34:24 But also I'm going to get the dog out of that situation because I cannot control my kids
563. 00:34:28 100%.
564. 00:34:29 They're not going to be perfect little angels all the time.
565. 00:34:31 And my kids are not going to get bit by a dog.
566. 00:34:34 Like, I'm not going to allow that in my house.
567. 00:34:38 So he's talking like his kid got bit by a dog.
568. 00:34:41 I'm just like, what is wrong with you?
569. 00:34:46 Get rid of that dog.
570. 00:34:47 Your kid is more important.
571. 00:34:48 But that's just my perspective.
572. 00:34:49 I understand.
573. 00:34:50 Sure.
574. 00:34:51 Sure.
575. 00:34:52 Different people.
576. 00:34:53 But I had trouble relating to him at that point.
577. 00:34:54 At this point in the book, he could not have chosen a worse example to keep me engaged.
578. 00:35:00 Well, just to-- OK.
579. 00:35:03 This will be a good example because this is what he's talking about, how your beliefs
580. 00:35:08 inform how you perceive something.
581. 00:35:11 I know, but he's also trying to inspire me to change, right?
582. 00:35:13 And at that point--
583. 00:35:14 I know.
584. 00:35:15 But let me tell you how it came across to me because mine is very different than what
585. 00:35:19 you took it as because whenever he says that he had the dog whisperer come in, you took
586. 00:35:26 it as he's immediately trying to figure out how to train the dog not to do that again.
587. 00:35:30 Right?
588. 00:35:31 Is that fair to say?
589. 00:35:32 Like, you're thinking he's assuming he's going to keep the dog and try to rehab the
590. 00:35:37 dog.
591. 00:35:38 And I took it as he brought this guy in to find out if it's something he should have-- like,
592. 00:35:44 it should the dog be put down.
593. 00:35:46 Like I took it as he wasn't sure he was able to make the right call on that.
594. 00:35:50 So he brought in somebody who could.
595. 00:35:52 And they're telling him, no, actually, you can work with this dog very easily to help
596. 00:35:57 him.
597. 00:35:58 And that's how I took it.
598. 00:35:59 Like, he was just seeking a second opinion there.
599. 00:36:03 But I don't think he actually calls out which way he was intending it because he doesn't
600. 00:36:06 say that part.
601. 00:36:07 Yeah, he does say that he had that thought like, oh, we got to put the dog down.
602. 00:36:11 And I'm not saying you have to put the dog down, but the dog at least cannot live in
603. 00:36:14 my house anymore.
604. 00:36:16 And Josh brings up, depends on the kid, instigated it.
605. 00:36:18 I disagree with that.
606. 00:36:20 I mean, I have a three-year-old.
607. 00:36:21 She's going to instigate a lot of stuff with our golden doodle.
608. 00:36:25 But the very first thing that we did when we got it is I started messing with this thing.
609. 00:36:29 Whenever it eats, I'm poking it in the mouth.
610. 00:36:31 I'm pulling on its tail.
611. 00:36:32 I'm going in between its paws.
612. 00:36:34 I'm doing everything I can to annoy this dog.
613. 00:36:37 And then when it responds even a little bit aggressively, I'm like, no, you don't let
614. 00:36:41 it do that.
615. 00:36:42 And it's learned over a couple of months.
616. 00:36:44 It wasn't even that long.
617. 00:36:46 And now my kids are so rough with this dog and it does not even care.
618. 00:36:50 Like you can totally train this into a dog and if you are going to bring a dog into your
619. 00:36:54 home and you have a family, I feel like this is your responsibility.
620. 00:36:57 Like, yes, you do have to make sure the dog is not going to react and bite a kid.
621. 00:37:05 But at the same time, you don't know where the dog is coming from when you get a rescue
622. 00:37:09 dog.
623. 00:37:10 So these two things, my personal opinion, don't mesh very well.
624. 00:37:14 It's not something I would be willing to do.
625. 00:37:17 But different strokes, different folks.
626. 00:37:21 Dogs, kids, shared worlds.
627. 00:37:24 Great fun.
628. 00:37:25 Right?
629. 00:37:26 So, all right, let's keep going because the next one's kind of fun to principal for beliefs,
630. 00:37:32 create blind spots.
631. 00:37:33 I like this one.
632. 00:37:35 This one's very interesting because what generally happens is if you hold a belief, it's very
633. 00:37:42 difficult, if not impossible, to see outside of it.
634. 00:37:47 And there are a few, I have all sorts of things where this comes up.
635. 00:37:51 But one of the stories he tells is that he had a friend tell him that he was unable to
636. 00:37:56 get a job as a, was an associate professor at a college because he didn't have a master's
637. 00:38:03 degree.
638. 00:38:04 And he figured he could either go through the work, get a master's degree so that he could
639. 00:38:13 apply to the job or it could just apply to the job and find out if he actually needed
640. 00:38:18 a master's degree.
641. 00:38:20 So he opted to apply for the job without the master's degree and got the job without
642. 00:38:24 the master's degree.
643. 00:38:27 Because this other person, and I've heard this many times, you can't get certain jobs
644. 00:38:32 because you don't have X, Y, and Z credentials.
645. 00:38:35 And people say that fairly regularly, but it's odd the number of times those exceptions
646. 00:38:40 are made.
647. 00:38:42 One that I know, that I had to work through just here recently was whenever I was in the
648. 00:38:48 process of trying to buy our new house, new old house, definitely not new.
649. 00:38:55 New to you, right?
650. 00:38:57 It's over 100 years old.
651. 00:38:58 So it's definitely not new.
652. 00:39:00 The thing is that they were telling us, at least the mortgage company was telling us,
653. 00:39:05 we couldn't close on the house within a certain amount of time because it needed a new septic
654. 00:39:10 and they weren't going to allow us to close on it until the septic was put in.
655. 00:39:14 Okay.
656. 00:39:16 So I don't know any different.
657. 00:39:18 So I just kind of follow that.
658. 00:39:19 I relay that to my agent who immediately says, "Oh no, they can close without the septic
659. 00:39:25 being done.
660. 00:39:26 We'll just do X, Y, and Z and then it'll be fine."
661. 00:39:28 And I'm sitting here like, "Wait.
662. 00:39:30 What?"
663. 00:39:31 But the guys who give us the money to be able to write the check, to be able to close on
664. 00:39:35 the house said no, and you're telling me yes.
665. 00:39:37 Okay.
666. 00:39:38 Now what?
667. 00:39:39 So what do we do?
668. 00:39:41 Long story short, we closed in 28 days.
669. 00:39:43 So septic still isn't installed, but it's being installed very shortly because they allowed
670. 00:39:49 us to close without the septic being installed because of some quirks and how all the rules
671. 00:39:55 work.
672. 00:39:56 And it worked out better for everybody involved and it made it a better deal for everybody
673. 00:40:02 involved.
674. 00:40:03 But that was a blind spot, at least to me.
675. 00:40:06 I had no idea that was even an option, but in front of the right person, it's like, "Oh
676. 00:40:12 no, you can get an exception on that.
677. 00:40:14 That's fine."
678. 00:40:15 What?
679. 00:40:16 Anyway, that's an example of a blind spot.
680. 00:40:19 That's what he's talking about here.
681. 00:40:20 Yeah, and the name of the term that he uses for this is limiting belief, a belief that
682. 00:40:27 narrows the range of possibilities.
683. 00:40:30 And he mentions that even your closest friends may share limiting beliefs that close off
684. 00:40:35 opportunities for you, even though they have the best of intentions.
685. 00:40:40 So your mortgage company is just trying to make it simple for you to understand what
686. 00:40:47 the steps are and outline everything.
687. 00:40:50 So you can move forward as quickly as possible.
688. 00:40:53 And then your agent is like, "Actually, you can do these other things and show you some
689. 00:40:57 different opportunities, a different path, a different way of doing things."
690. 00:41:04 And that's cool that you had somebody who was thinking that way, who was able to do
691. 00:41:08 that for you.
692. 00:41:09 I think it's a little bit more difficult when you don't have someone who's telling you,
693. 00:41:12 "Hey, try these other things."
694. 00:41:16 Like the situation of the person who has just gotten the advice that, "Yeah, you need
695. 00:41:20 a master's degree before you can apply for this position."
696. 00:41:23 If there's no one else telling you otherwise, it's hard to put yourself in the position
697. 00:41:26 where, "Well, I'm just going to see what happens."
698. 00:41:29 But I love that idea of like everything that people tell you, questioning whether that
699. 00:41:35 is actually true and seeing which you can get away with basically.
700. 00:41:39 Yes.
701. 00:41:40 Yeah.
702. 00:41:41 I have to say like that whole concept of like what we went through with getting the
703. 00:41:47 house closed and the time frame that we did.
704. 00:41:49 There were at least five different entities involved that all had to align with exceptions
705. 00:41:56 in order to make that happen.
706. 00:41:59 Every single one of them, I was the one that had to make those calls and get those exceptions,
707. 00:42:04 which is strange that I even was able to do that because that is not me at all.
708. 00:42:12 Going through that process, just in talking to these folks, almost everybody was in the
709. 00:42:17 mindset that, "Oh, you need that.
710. 00:42:20 Oh, okay.
711. 00:42:21 I mean, we don't normally do that, but I suppose that's okay.
712. 00:42:25 Let me, well, yeah, okay.
713. 00:42:26 I'll send that letter over."
714. 00:42:28 Almost all of them were that way.
715. 00:42:30 It made me like, "Huh, maybe I should just ask for random things and just see what people
716. 00:42:37 give.
717. 00:42:38 I don't know.
718. 00:42:39 Maybe that's taking advantage.
719. 00:42:40 I don't know, but like, okay, sure.
720. 00:42:43 Why not?"
721. 00:42:44 So the one thing I hear from people all the time whenever I talk about email and like
722. 00:42:48 disconnecting from your email, like, "Oh, that's great for you.
723. 00:42:50 I could never do that."
724. 00:42:52 How do you know?
725. 00:42:53 Have you ever tried to apply this principle to breaking free from your email?
726. 00:42:58 I bet it would work.
727. 00:42:59 Yep.
728. 00:43:00 I hear you.
729. 00:43:01 I hear you.
730. 00:43:02 Anyway, it's about as cool as getting a job that requires a master's without the master's.
731. 00:43:08 Great.
732. 00:43:09 That's the place to start for this kind of stuff, I think, is like question all of the
733. 00:43:14 guiding principles that govern the way that you operate and try to move the needle in
734. 00:43:22 the direction that you want it to go.
735. 00:43:24 Yes.
736. 00:43:25 Yep.
737. 00:43:26 There's all sorts of things to, like, since going through that process, and we're doing
738. 00:43:32 a massive remodel on the house right now, so I've got a lot of stuff torn apart.
739. 00:43:36 But when I've had inspectors or engineers in and out, like, generally a lot of people
740. 00:43:41 are like, "Oh, no, you can't do this because of X, Y, and Z."
741. 00:43:45 I've learned at this point to just ask, like, "Well, what would make it possible?"
742. 00:43:49 Sure.
743. 00:43:50 Like, I'm not asking for an exception.
744. 00:43:52 I'm not asking you to do anything.
745. 00:43:55 I just want to know what would it take to make it possible.
746. 00:43:58 Yes, I cannot take X, Y, and Z.
747. 00:44:00 I can't take that wall out of the house.
748. 00:44:02 Sure.
749. 00:44:03 It would make it possible for me to take that wall out of the house.
750. 00:44:06 What has to happen for that to be able to be done?
751. 00:44:10 And in every case so far, I'm like, "Oh, well, you have to put this concrete thing in
752. 00:44:16 the basement, and then you could put that beam in."
753. 00:44:19 It's like, "Oh, so whenever I do this, I can take that wall out if I add a pad in the basement."
754. 00:44:26 Yeah.
755. 00:44:27 So it's not impossible.
756. 00:44:29 So you get what I'm saying?
757. 00:44:31 Yep.
758. 00:44:32 And then the question is, it's strangely satisfying, honestly.
759. 00:44:35 But even if they believe it's impossible, there are places where you can push and bend
760. 00:44:40 the rules.
761. 00:44:41 He tells a story later on about the guy who works at the place where you have to wear
762. 00:44:46 a certain uniform.
763. 00:44:47 I think it was a white shirt and blue slacks.
764. 00:44:51 And he just wore whatever he wanted, and he just kept doing it.
765. 00:44:56 And everybody saw it, and they're like, "This guy keeps breaking the rules."
766. 00:44:59 But no one did anything about it, and over time he kept doing this, and then he also
767. 00:45:04 brought in a whiteboard and drew something different on it every day.
768. 00:45:09 And the fact that he was breaking the rule branded him as the creative guy.
769. 00:45:14 It actually created more value in the eyes of everybody else in the company who was just
770. 00:45:19 abiding by the rule.
771. 00:45:21 So if they would have went and asked somebody, is this possible, they would have said, "No,
772. 00:45:25 it's impossible."
773. 00:45:26 But he just did it anyways, not only got away with it, but essentially got promoted in everybody's
774. 00:45:31 eyes because of it.
775. 00:45:34 This is where it's just fascinating to me.
776. 00:45:36 Like, okay, well people have these limiting beliefs.
777. 00:45:40 They may not even realize they have them.
778. 00:45:42 If you even hint at a question towards them, they can sometimes crumble very quickly, which
779. 00:45:50 leads us into the next one.
780. 00:45:52 Level five, beliefs defend themselves.
781. 00:45:56 Basically there's this concept of self-ceiling logic where this is exactly what you would
782. 00:46:01 think it is.
783. 00:46:02 We have our beliefs and we will try to find information that confirms those beliefs because
784. 00:46:07 it's comfortable.
785. 00:46:09 And if something challenges those beliefs, it's uncomfortable and we'll tend to avoid
786. 00:46:14 it.
787. 00:46:15 And if we're presented with something that is, in fact, very contradictory to what we
788. 00:46:22 already believe, we'll somehow spin it with some crazy, ridiculous logic, even if it contradicts
789. 00:46:29 some other part of our beliefs so that our entire structure doesn't have to fall down.
790. 00:46:36 So don't do that.
791. 00:46:39 Challenge your beliefs.
792. 00:46:40 Yeah, a bubble of belief reinforces and protects existing beliefs by denying the possibility
793. 00:46:48 of other beliefs.
794. 00:46:49 And he gave a couple of examples of this, which again, said topical reading for the
795. 00:46:53 win, talked about Nokia and Apple's iPhone, Blackberry also, I think fits this description.
796. 00:47:02 That's what I thought of.
797. 00:47:03 I thought of the innovators dilemma by Martin Christensen and then the Detroit automakers
798. 00:47:09 versus Toyota.
799. 00:47:12 And without that context, his brief description of these two things, I don't think hits home,
800. 00:47:18 but because we had gone through the innovators dilemma, I was like, oh, I totally get this.
801. 00:47:25 And that's the thing.
802. 00:47:26 I don't know how to disconnect from where I am right now as I read this book, but I do
803. 00:47:31 kind of question if this is like one of the first books that you pick up, is it as effective
804. 00:47:37 as it was when you and I read it, because it's not a very long book.
805. 00:47:41 And there are a lot of visuals here.
806. 00:47:43 And there's a lot of blanks that we have already filled in because we have read some
807. 00:47:48 other books prior to this.
808. 00:47:50 I think it is very possible that you go through this and you have very surface level understanding
809. 00:47:55 of some of these things if you understand them at all and you walk out of this book,
810. 00:47:59 maybe with more questions than when you went into it.
811. 00:48:02 Yeah, that was something I was trying to pay attention to this time because we've
812. 00:48:07 mentioned that it occurred to me that we have mentioned that on the last few books where
813. 00:48:13 we don't know if a certain part is actually that great because we have enough of this
814. 00:48:19 syntopical background that informs us whenever we get to that.
815. 00:48:24 So I was trying my best to pay attention to this as I went through this one.
816. 00:48:30 And I have to say that whenever I was on a walk through the woods and stuff last night,
817. 00:48:36 just to try to process some of this.
818. 00:48:37 And one of the things I came to was like, I think this is actually a very good foundational
819. 00:48:43 piece to start with.
820. 00:48:45 I don't think there is the need for some other book, even the books that we didn't care for.
821. 00:48:52 How many times have we now mentioned how to read a book, which we didn't write well,
822. 00:48:56 and innovators below, which we did not like.
823. 00:48:59 And yet they continue to inform the books that we read after them.
824. 00:49:04 So I think that this is one that likely fits that bill of could be a good starter book
825. 00:49:11 with this type of thing.
826. 00:49:13 And you can pick the parts that are of interest to you or that are pain points for you and
827. 00:49:18 then find the outcropping from that.
828. 00:49:21 Sure.
829. 00:49:22 The easy way to do that is to easily just go back through the bookworm log and listen
830. 00:49:26 to all of them.
831. 00:49:28 And then you'll be able to pick out which books you should read to fill in those gaps.
832. 00:49:31 That's the best way that you could possibly do this.
833. 00:49:34 I'm just going to say that.
834. 00:49:35 All right.
835. 00:49:36 So principle five, beliefs defend themselves.
836. 00:49:39 One other thing on this, he mentions that there's two ways that people make sense of
837. 00:49:43 new ideas.
838. 00:49:44 They ask, is it internally coherent?
839. 00:49:46 So basically does it line up with the other things that you think you know?
840. 00:49:49 And then is it externally valid?
841. 00:49:51 And I thought it was interesting that he said people rarely test ideas for external validity
842. 00:49:56 when they don't have internal coherence.
843. 00:49:58 So that means that there is a very strong possibility that something is externally valid, but you
844. 00:50:06 never even test it because it is not internally coherent.
845. 00:50:11 Yes.
846. 00:50:12 So that point I think is kind of getting back to some of the stuff he was talking about
847. 00:50:17 at the very beginning about you don't know what you think you know, but this is the point
848. 00:50:23 where that really clicked for me.
849. 00:50:25 Solid.
850. 00:50:26 So principle six, beliefs are tied to identity.
851. 00:50:30 I would say that's exactly what it sounds like.
852. 00:50:33 You know, if you want to, what's the quote they have here at the beginning?
853. 00:50:37 It's from Tom Robbins, if you want to change the world, change yourself.
854. 00:50:40 So whenever you have beliefs, it's very easy for us to put ourselves in a spot where our
855. 00:50:47 entire identity is tied to those.
856. 00:50:51 And it's because like, if you have all of these judgments and theories and your attention
857. 00:50:56 is focused on a certain part of your experience using that pyramid once more, right?
858. 00:51:00 If you're doing all of that, you tend to put yourself at the top.
859. 00:51:03 And what you're standing on is what you see as who you are.
860. 00:51:08 Think about that whenever you talk to somebody, how many times do they refer to like if you
861. 00:51:12 ask them, ask somebody who they are, they always talk about the things that they believe
862. 00:51:16 in.
863. 00:51:17 Yeah.
864. 00:51:18 You ever notice that?
865. 00:51:19 It's true.
866. 00:51:20 Who you are, those are the things that you being who you are, think, but that doesn't necessarily
867. 00:51:28 translate completely.
868. 00:51:30 Yeah.
869. 00:51:31 Those are the governing beliefs, which are tied to your identity and your feelings of
870. 00:51:36 self-worth.
871. 00:51:37 And he has a visual in this section of like the, the inverse tree roots, you know, so you
872. 00:51:42 have your beliefs up at the top and then they all come back into like the few ideas at the
873. 00:51:46 bottom.
874. 00:51:47 And when you're governing beliefs, the ones that really define who you are.
875. 00:51:52 And when you're governing beliefs get attacked, he says that that's like you are being attacked.
876. 00:51:59 I also found this part interesting where he talks about the conspiracy theories.
877. 00:52:06 Because you're governing beliefs being tied to your identity.
878. 00:52:11 What do you do if you don't have control over your life?
879. 00:52:18 If you feel that you are a victim and there are other people who are determining how happy,
880. 00:52:29 successful, satisfied you are, then that's kind of the ideal environment for these conspiracy
881. 00:52:39 theories to take off.
882. 00:52:40 He says that these thrive in groups specifically.
883. 00:52:43 So not just individuals, but groups because that bubble belief, they reinforce it, right?
884. 00:52:47 I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
885. 00:52:48 Everybody thinks this way, right?
886. 00:52:50 But the, those conspiracy theories originate and they thrive in these cultures where people
887. 00:52:58 don't feel like they have control of their lives.
888. 00:53:00 And I use culture there because I was a biology major for a little while in college.
889. 00:53:07 And I remember doing like the bacteria on the slides and stuff and they called that a
890. 00:53:11 culture, right?
891. 00:53:12 So it's like the environment where the bacteria can grow.
892. 00:53:14 That's kind of how I view these conspiracy theories is like these bacteria that these
893. 00:53:19 aren't good things, but they are thriving in these gross environments.
894. 00:53:22 The Petri dish is thriving.
895. 00:53:25 Exactly.
896. 00:53:26 And the gross environment just happens to be the people that we've surrounded ourselves
897. 00:53:29 with who are just reinforcing these negative, unhealthy beliefs, which cause us to be bitter
898. 00:53:39 and resentful and bring our focus solely on ourselves and all of the things that are
899. 00:53:44 going wrong in our own life.
900. 00:53:46 And why doesn't anybody see this?
901. 00:53:47 Doesn't anybody care?
902. 00:53:48 Isn't anybody going to fix this?
903. 00:53:50 That's a very helpless place to be.
904. 00:53:52 It is that it is.
905. 00:53:55 It's kind of sad.
906. 00:53:56 I'm sitting here like processing some of what you're saying.
907. 00:53:58 It's like it's just it's sad to watch whenever people are in that spot.
908. 00:54:02 But yep, this is where we get to part two.
909. 00:54:06 What do you do about it?
910. 00:54:07 Well, this is going back just real quickly.
911. 00:54:09 One of my action items in this section is to make a list of my own governing beliefs
912. 00:54:12 because I think you can just let these things go and then you can find yourself in that
913. 00:54:17 situation where you are identifying with the conspiracy theories.
914. 00:54:21 And this is not like left or right.
915. 00:54:24 He shares a lot of different examples of how it doesn't matter, Republican Democrat, whatever
916. 00:54:28 side of the political spectrum you find yourself on, you're going to find the people on your
917. 00:54:33 side who are going to say it's the other side's fault.
918. 00:54:36 I again, like leaders eat last and all of that coming into play in this section for me.
919. 00:54:41 But it would be better for you just to attack your own governing beliefs than to have them
920. 00:54:46 attacked for you by somebody else eventually.
921. 00:54:50 That day when other people step in and take that role.
922. 00:54:55 So again, part two, what do you do about it?
923. 00:54:58 There's nine practices that he recommends here.
924. 00:55:04 Earlier on, you mentioned this is a system.
925. 00:55:06 I didn't interpret this as a system.
926. 00:55:09 Maybe that's just my viewpoint on it, but that might be because of the term.
927. 00:55:13 Did you look at the action items at the end of the chapters?
928. 00:55:17 It did.
929. 00:55:18 Do you think that they were intended to be completed in a specific order?
930. 00:55:22 No.
931. 00:55:23 Okay.
932. 00:55:24 That's the only thing I thought they did, and that's why I called it a system.
933. 00:55:27 I think he tries to make them build on each other, but there's a lot of very separate
934. 00:55:34 concepts here and I don't think you necessarily need to.
935. 00:55:37 Yeah, I didn't do any of those exercises because they were going to take quite some
936. 00:55:41 time to work through.
937. 00:55:44 I just didn't want to commit to that at this point, which means I'll never do anything
938. 00:55:49 with them.
939. 00:55:51 But there's a lot that you could do there.
940. 00:55:55 But again, because of what he titles these, these are practices.
941. 00:56:01 And generally when I think of A practice, it doesn't necessarily require other practices
942. 00:56:08 before it.
943. 00:56:09 I mean, sometimes it does.
944. 00:56:10 It's not universal.
945. 00:56:11 But there's so many of these that I just didn't place it as needing to be done in a certain
946. 00:56:16 order.
947. 00:56:17 I don't know what that is.
948. 00:56:18 Sure.
949. 00:56:19 Maybe I kind of felt as I read through this that he's trying to get these, specifically
950. 00:56:25 the principles to be built one on top of another.
951. 00:56:30 He's layering these in specific ways.
952. 00:56:33 So you can't really talk about beliefs creating a shared world until you talk about beliefs
953. 00:56:38 being created.
954. 00:56:39 Sure.
955. 00:56:40 But you have to understand that pyramid before you can overlay the learning loop on top of
956. 00:56:45 it.
957. 00:56:47 And the practices are a little bit more disconnected than that.
958. 00:56:51 But by the time I'm getting through part one, I'm feeling like I have to do these things
959. 00:56:55 in a specific order.
960. 00:56:56 So he doesn't tell me, okay, this part's different.
961. 00:56:59 So I just kind of project that on part two as well.
962. 00:57:01 Sure.
963. 00:57:02 Yeah, I think at least my take on it, the principles are all standalone, the practices
964. 00:57:07 are all standalone, but he was just a good writer and put him in a good order to where
965. 00:57:11 it made sense.
966. 00:57:12 Sure.
967. 00:57:13 That's the way I took it.
968. 00:57:15 But anyway, practice one.
969. 00:57:18 Assume you are not objective.
970. 00:57:19 So question for you.
971. 00:57:21 How do you pronounce this two by two grid that he has in the section?
972. 00:57:26 Do you remember?
973. 00:57:28 I got to get there.
974. 00:57:29 I got to get there was a word.
975. 00:57:31 It's spelled J-O-H-A-R-I.
976. 00:57:33 Oh, Johari.
977. 00:57:36 It is actually Johari.
978. 00:57:37 Is it?
979. 00:57:38 I don't know why.
980. 00:57:39 Well, I know why because the two names that are tied to it, but I pronounced it to Johari
981. 00:57:43 and her and her and invented it.
982. 00:57:45 Yeah.
983. 00:57:46 The guys who invented this matrix, their names were Joe and Harry.
984. 00:57:49 Okay.
985. 00:57:50 So Joe, J-O-E, Harry, H-A-R-R-Y as you would expect.
986. 00:57:54 But they call it the Joe Harry window, but they spelled it J-O-H-A-R-I in the book.
987. 00:58:01 So that's for her.
988. 00:58:04 Yes.
989. 00:58:05 But I thought in my head, it was Johari.
990. 00:58:09 Yeah, he explicitly calls that out.
991. 00:58:12 And when he did, I was like, "Oh my gosh."
992. 00:58:16 That can't be why they named it that.
993. 00:58:19 And I feel like calling it out in this chapter kind of discredits it a little bit.
994. 00:58:24 Hey, let's make a two by two bookworm grid and call it the Jameik breed grid.
995. 00:58:32 Yup.
996. 00:58:33 Yup.
997. 00:58:34 And then, I think it's a little bit different.
998. 00:58:37 I think it's a little bit different.
999. 00:58:39 I think it's a little bit different.
1000. 00:58:41 I think it's a little bit different.
1001. 00:58:43 I think it's a little bit different.
1002. 00:58:44 I think it's a little bit different.
1003. 00:58:45 I think it's a little bit different.
1004. 00:58:46 I think it's a little bit different.
1005. 00:58:47 I think it's a little bit different.
1006. 00:58:48 I think it's a little bit different.
1007. 00:58:49 I think it's a little bit different.
1008. 00:58:50 I think it's a little bit different.
1009. 00:58:51 I think it's a little bit different.
1010. 00:58:52 I think it's a little bit different.
1011. 00:58:53 I think it's a little bit different.
1012. 00:58:54 I think it's a little bit different.
1013. 00:58:55 I think it's a little bit different.
1014. 00:58:56 I think it's a little bit different.
1015. 00:58:57 I think it's a little bit different.
1016. 00:58:58 I wanted it as a footnote.
1017. 00:59:05 Anyway, assume you're not objective.
1018. 00:59:08 At the very beginning, I'll talk about this a little bit later, but there's these summaries
1019. 00:59:14 of each chapter.
1020. 00:59:16 The summarization for this particular one is, if you're part of the system you want to
1021. 00:59:21 change, you're part of the problem.
1022. 00:59:24 I like that because a lot of times I work at a church, right?
1023. 00:59:30 A lot of times people come up to me and say, "Hey, the drums were too loud."
1024. 00:59:36 A better example is somebody came up to me.
1025. 00:59:40 This has probably been a month ago and said, "A certain singer sounded very tinny."
1026. 00:59:47 Now, coming from the sound world, I know that if you use the word muddy or tinny or
1027. 00:59:52 boomy or if you use some of those terms, generally it means you have some form of an
1028. 00:59:57 audio background because those are specific terms that we use when we're talking about
1029. 01:00:02 an EQ on a system.
1030. 01:00:04 They're speaking your language.
1031. 01:00:05 It's like, "Okay, so I just clicked with you."
1032. 01:00:07 It's like, "Okay, I didn't hear that.
1033. 01:00:09 Here's the system.
1034. 01:00:10 You're welcome to change it."
1035. 01:00:11 I got silence.
1036. 01:00:12 It's in a blank look because that's typically what happens is a lot of people want to complain
1037. 01:00:18 and they want to complain about the system or whatever it is that they're seeing going
1038. 01:00:21 wrong, but the moment you flip it and have them become part of the solution to that problem,
1039. 01:00:27 they back out and don't want to be involved.
1040. 01:00:31 If you're going to take on solving a problem or pointing out a problem, at least be somewhat
1041. 01:00:38 open to at least consulting on how to solve it.
1042. 01:00:43 Anyway, side note, be objective.
1043. 01:00:46 This window that we mentioned at the beginning breaks it into four different grids.
1044. 01:00:51 There's things that are known to others, things that are unknown to others.
1045. 01:00:55 That's on the Y access.
1046. 01:00:56 None of the X access.
1047. 01:00:58 There's things known by you and things that are unknown by you.
1048. 01:01:01 The blind spots are the things that are known to others and unknown by you.
1049. 01:01:06 Basically, that's the place to focus.
1050. 01:01:10 Your biggest blind spot is yourself, he says.
1051. 01:01:14 Back it's into what you were saying if there's a problem, assume that you are the problem.
1052. 01:01:19 Yes.
1053. 01:01:20 Especially if you're part of that system.
1054. 01:01:22 Yep.
1055. 01:01:23 Try to figure out what you are doing wrong and what you need to fix.
1056. 01:01:25 Yep.
1057. 01:01:26 Because you're not going to change anybody else anyways.
1058. 01:01:28 Yeah.
1059. 01:01:30 To do that, and this is where I think we're talking about things sometimes build here,
1060. 01:01:34 but practice too is empty your cup, which he talks about how it's difficult to learn
1061. 01:01:40 new things or be open to new things until you let go of your old things or be willing
1062. 01:01:46 to let go of the old things that you have learned.
1063. 01:01:50 I see this a lot with folks that I do IT support for whenever they come to me and like,
1064. 01:01:57 "Okay, I've got this presentation I need to make.
1065. 01:02:00 I can't get this web link to load inside PowerPoint."
1066. 01:02:06 Generally whenever I get something like that, it's like my first question is, "Why are you
1067. 01:02:09 loading a web page in a PowerPoint?"
1068. 01:02:12 That seems odd to me, but they have this old way that they're used to thinking about things,
1069. 01:02:17 and I'm pitching something completely different.
1070. 01:02:19 But in order for them to be receptive to that, they have to let go of that old thinking before
1071. 01:02:24 they can accept that new, thus empty your cup.
1072. 01:02:27 Yeah.
1073. 01:02:28 I like the description here of the beginner's mind.
1074. 01:02:31 I've heard this phrased differently before.
1075. 01:02:35 I think it was Sean McCabe who talked about the curse of knowledge.
1076. 01:02:40 You forget what it was like when you were at the beginning of your journey.
1077. 01:02:45 You have all this knowledge that you've accumulated over time and you forget what it was like
1078. 01:02:49 at the beginning.
1079. 01:02:50 In order to learn something new, you have to go back to the beginning.
1080. 01:02:57 Good leaders, he mentions in here, "Supplement information with sense-making and walking
1081. 01:03:01 around," they're constantly emptying their cup and assuming that they know nothing about
1082. 01:03:07 a particular situation.
1083. 01:03:09 I think this is a place where he shared the story about the people who turn around the
1084. 01:03:14 companies.
1085. 01:03:15 They show up and they start talking to the employees and the employees share what's going
1086. 01:03:19 wrong.
1087. 01:03:21 When I read that, I was like, "Well, don't the managers, don't the people who are running
1088. 01:03:25 the show, don't they ever talk to the employees?"
1089. 01:03:30 Some cases they don't, but I think in other cases maybe they do, but they don't hear it
1090. 01:03:35 because they have this whole however many years they've been doing things a certain way.
1091. 01:03:42 One person or even a group of people saying, "We see this other thing that doesn't register
1092. 01:03:48 to them because in their mind they have built up this picture over all these years of, "This
1093. 01:03:54 is the way that things are done."
1094. 01:03:57 It's a good challenge to make this a practice and again, the way my brain works, assume that
1095. 01:04:08 you are not objective, assume that your biggest blind spot is yourself, that's a prerequisite
1096. 01:04:14 to emptying your cup.
1097. 01:04:15 If you don't assume that your biggest blind spot is yourself, you're going to go in there
1098. 01:04:22 thinking, "Well, I have all of this valid information and I have already collected,"
1099. 01:04:26 and essentially what he is saying and this is like, "No, you got to dump it out and you
1100. 01:04:29 got to collect new information."
1101. 01:04:31 Then you can take it back to the lab and you can see how it jives with everything else,
1102. 01:04:35 but everything's going to be weighted the same.
1103. 01:04:37 I don't know, talking through this again, I do feel this is in a specific order, but
1104. 01:04:46 also practice.
1105. 01:04:47 This is something that you do consistently.
1106. 01:04:51 I don't know.
1107. 01:04:53 These exercises, this is not something you're building into your weekly routine.
1108. 01:04:57 Your weekly review is not going through all nine of these practices.
1109. 01:05:03 I also had a little bit of trouble like the term practice.
1110. 01:05:06 This feels to me like, "Okay, do this once and maybe that's the first time you've done
1111. 01:05:10 it," but ultimately after that, these are kind of like my generic action items that
1112. 01:05:15 maybe I'll do and maybe I won't have any way to document them.
1113. 01:05:19 They just sort of happen in the background, maybe kind of sort.
1114. 01:05:22 Okay.
1115. 01:05:23 I want to go into the next one because it ties into this perfectly, I think.
1116. 01:05:26 Yeah, I agree.
1117. 01:05:27 Maybe this is why I say it builds.
1118. 01:05:29 Empty your cup.
1119. 01:05:30 Go with the things you've learned before to be open to the new things.
1120. 01:05:35 However, you cannot do that unless you have practice number three, which is create a safe
1121. 01:05:41 space because in the case of the company you're referring to, I don't think he gave
1122. 01:05:48 us the name of the company, but they did one of two things.
1123. 01:05:51 If they were brought in, they either guided your company through bankruptcy or they buy
1124. 01:05:58 it from them, they bought it out.
1125. 01:05:59 They chatted around, but they owned it.
1126. 01:06:01 Yep.
1127. 01:06:02 They came in at the point where it was already too far gone for you to maintain control and
1128. 01:06:07 to save it.
1129. 01:06:08 They would pay off your debts in exchange for the company.
1130. 01:06:13 By doing that, they would then kick you out as the management team and they would start
1131. 01:06:21 the process of listening to all of the people.
1132. 01:06:25 But in order to do that, they had to make a safe space for people to feel comfortable
1133. 01:06:31 to share their inner beliefs about how the company could be made better.
1134. 01:06:37 Thus practice three, create a safe space.
1135. 01:06:40 This is one that I think is absolutely vital and it's part of oddly enough, even though
1136. 01:06:45 I'm talking about how these are building on each other, this is one that I feel like
1137. 01:06:47 stands alone because this is one that I think a lot of the others are dependent on, even
1138. 01:06:54 the ones before it.
1139. 01:06:56 The ones before it are dependent on this, including the ones after that.
1140. 01:07:00 This one, although it's still three in the list out of nine, I feel like it could have
1141. 01:07:04 been much up in the top one or two probably.
1142. 01:07:09 Just because it is the other two are dependent on that, I would say.
1143. 01:07:14 This one is interesting because he mentions the scarf model for caring for emotional needs.
1144. 01:07:19 At this point-
1145. 01:07:20 Which, by the way, I love the acronym, scarf.
1146. 01:07:25 At this point, whose emotional needs are you caring for?
1147. 01:07:28 Not your own.
1148. 01:07:30 It stands for status.
1149. 01:07:31 Does this person feel important, recognized, or needed by others?
1150. 01:07:34 Certainty, do they feel confident they know what's ahead?
1151. 01:07:36 Autonomy?
1152. 01:07:37 Do they feel like they have control?
1153. 01:07:38 Their life work and destiny?
1154. 01:07:40 Relatedness?
1155. 01:07:41 Do they feel like they belong?
1156. 01:07:42 Fairness?
1157. 01:07:43 Do they feel like they're being treated fairly?
1158. 01:07:45 He's making a switch here, which, again, I think is very much in line with a linear progression
1159. 01:07:51 because you can't start by looking at other people first.
1160. 01:07:56 You have to make sure your ducks are in a row.
1161. 01:08:00 Assuming you're not objective, empty your cup.
1162. 01:08:02 I feel like those are prerequisites before you would try to apply this scarf model.
1163. 01:08:07 Interestingly, the examples he uses in this chapter are really negative examples of places
1164. 01:08:13 that have neglected the scarf model, which have gotten those companies to the point where
1165. 01:08:18 his friend shows up and takes them over.
1166. 01:08:22 It's almost like you're either doing this or you are not surviving as a business, and
1167. 01:08:28 that, I think, is true.
1168. 01:08:31 But the larger point, I think, in this section, the part that stood out to me anyways is that
1169. 01:08:38 it is impossible to leave your feelings at the door.
1170. 01:08:41 When you empty your cup, you're emptying it of everything except your feelings because
1171. 01:08:45 those are going to stay.
1172. 01:08:47 On page 77, he says something which I think is pretty profound as it pertains to personal
1173. 01:08:53 productivity.
1174. 01:08:54 We achieve results in life not because we're objective but because we care.
1175. 01:08:58 It does not matter what sort of system you apply to your life, the perfect system is
1176. 01:09:05 going to do nothing for you unless you are emotionally invested in working that particular
1177. 01:09:12 system.
1178. 01:09:14 And then he crosses the bridge into not just you but other people.
1179. 01:09:18 He says reasons don't get people to act.
1180. 01:09:20 Emotions do.
1181. 01:09:22 And when I read this, I am applying it to myself.
1182. 01:09:26 I'm asking myself, how can I apply emotional motivation basically to the things that I
1183. 01:09:34 want to do?
1184. 01:09:36 I do see how people could take this approach and try to apply it in an organization, but
1185. 01:09:43 I think it's summarized as don't be a jerk and build trust over time.
1186. 01:09:48 Yep, I didn't do it too.
1187. 01:09:55 Yeah they tell the story of the guy who had the tea in this section.
1188. 01:09:59 We got to keep moving.
1189. 01:10:00 But he had an area in his little office cubicle where he could make tea.
1190. 01:10:06 And whenever people would come to him who were upset or wanted to file a complaint with
1191. 01:10:10 him, he was like, well, let's talk about it over tea.
1192. 01:10:13 Well, think about the tea making process.
1193. 01:10:15 You have to heat up the water, you have to let it steep and then you can begin the process
1194. 01:10:20 of drinking it.
1195. 01:10:21 And they make the side note that it's rare that people can be upset and angry while they're
1196. 01:10:27 drinking a cup of tea.
1197. 01:10:29 So there's that going for tea.
1198. 01:10:31 Is that worth the coffee too?
1199. 01:10:33 No it doesn't.
1200. 01:10:34 Guaranteed.
1201. 01:10:35 I've been in coffee dates where the other person is very angry with me.
1202. 01:10:41 Did you make it by hand prior to that though?
1203. 01:10:43 Kind of what I was thinking is like this is a perfect excuse for you to buy that little
1204. 01:10:47 contraption.
1205. 01:10:48 Yeah.
1206. 01:10:49 Yeah.
1207. 01:10:50 You should post a link to this ridiculous coffee maker that I found and I told Mike he
1208. 01:10:56 needed to buy it.
1209. 01:10:57 It's the Belgium Luxury Royal Family Balance siphon coffee maker in gold.
1210. 01:11:05 And it's not nearly as expensive as I thought it was with the US.
1211. 01:11:09 It's a link to me.
1212. 01:11:11 This probably doesn't take that long to be honest.
1213. 01:11:13 I've seen siphon coffee before.
1214. 01:11:14 This is probably, you know, if you're making tea from scratching, you had to let it steep.
1215. 01:11:18 This is probably something similar.
1216. 01:11:20 Which is what got me thinking like maybe this serves the same sort of purpose and you
1217. 01:11:24 should get this for your office.
1218. 01:11:25 So you have tough conversations.
1219. 01:11:28 I did find this on Amazon so I will post this in the chat.
1220. 01:11:34 Too funny.
1221. 01:11:35 Anyway, making tea makes a safe space and then people are able to talk about difficult
1222. 01:11:41 things which brings us to practice for triangulate and validate.
1223. 01:11:47 And this is if I were to summarize this, look at a situation from as many viewpoints
1224. 01:11:54 as you can and try to validate all of the steps in the process to figure out which of
1225. 01:12:00 those is most true, I guess would be the way to say that.
1226. 01:12:05 But if something doesn't make sense in the midst of trying to validate that thing, you're
1227. 01:12:10 likely missing something.
1228. 01:12:12 And sure.
1229. 01:12:14 As many examples as I've tried to come up with the easiest one in my mind right now is
1230. 01:12:18 COVID and vaccines.
1231. 01:12:21 And it doesn't matter where you land on this.
1232. 01:12:23 If you're an anti-vaxxer or you're a hardcore vaxxer, where do you want to land in this?
1233. 01:12:28 Trying to see that viewpoint from as many different angles as you can and try to figure
1234. 01:12:33 out the facts around it.
1235. 01:12:35 No matter which side you're on is actually quite difficult, I find, to get something
1236. 01:12:41 very solid no matter which side you're trying to come at it from.
1237. 01:12:44 And I think it's because we've got so many of these, what was the term earlier, the self-confirming
1238. 01:12:53 biases and stuff that we tend to sit on.
1239. 01:12:56 Bubble of belief, there you go.
1240. 01:12:58 Because of that, it's very hard to get yourself to break outside of that and see things from
1241. 01:13:02 a different viewpoint.
1242. 01:13:04 Politics is a prime example of that.
1243. 01:13:06 People don't want to look beyond their party lines at all to consider something.
1244. 01:13:11 So anyway, try to see something from a bunch of different angles.
1245. 01:13:16 If something doesn't make sense in the process of trying to understand that viewpoint, you're
1246. 01:13:21 probably missing something.
1247. 01:13:22 That's the point.
1248. 01:13:23 The best line in the whole book is in this chapter.
1249. 01:13:27 Okay.
1250. 01:13:28 He says, "The internet is like a grocery store of facts."
1251. 01:13:33 I saw this, I loved that.
1252. 01:13:36 It's a great quote.
1253. 01:13:37 Yeah.
1254. 01:13:38 And the point there is that you're not going to buy everything in the grocery store, you're
1255. 01:13:42 going to pick and choose a few specific things that you want.
1256. 01:13:47 And when it comes to facts, you can find a few specific things that support your bubble
1257. 01:13:52 of belief if you want to do that.
1258. 01:13:55 So triangulation is trying to look at things from other perspectives to escape that.
1259. 01:14:02 And this kind of ties back to the idea of falsifiability, which again is from the great
1260. 01:14:09 mental models.
1261. 01:14:10 The test of a good theory is not whether it can be proven that it's true, but whether
1262. 01:14:15 it can be disproven.
1263. 01:14:17 That should be our goal when we're trying to examine a theory and asking ourselves,
1264. 01:14:22 "Is this correct?"
1265. 01:14:24 Just because you can predict someone's behavior, it says, "Doesn't mean that you validated
1266. 01:14:28 it."
1267. 01:14:29 That applies it specifically to individuals in the way that they act.
1268. 01:14:34 And I think that's an interesting application.
1269. 01:14:36 There's a lot of value just in that.
1270. 01:14:38 We judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.
1271. 01:14:43 Just because you can predict someone's going to respond this way, you don't really know
1272. 01:14:47 why they're responding that way.
1273. 01:14:49 So it's a good reminder to try to understand people's core motivations.
1274. 01:14:53 Put yourself in their shoes and try to look at it from their perspective.
1275. 01:14:57 But it's also a lot broader than that.
1276. 01:14:59 We should be doing that with every belief that we come in contact with.
1277. 01:15:04 And the big challenge for me, I think, as I read this is just collect other viewpoints,
1278. 01:15:09 which I know are contrary to the ones that are convenient and comfortable for me.
1279. 01:15:14 Go read the news sources from the places that I know are going to disagree with my
1280. 01:15:19 worldview.
1281. 01:15:20 Just because my worldview is not going to be complete reality, that's back to part one.
1282. 01:15:26 I have my one perspective on this.
1283. 01:15:30 I know this is kind of best case scenario, right?
1284. 01:15:32 But let's assume that the way I'm approaching something is correct.
1285. 01:15:37 It still doesn't mean that there's not other correct interpretations of the same reality,
1286. 01:15:46 just because I have one piece of the elephant and someone else is a different piece of the
1287. 01:15:49 elephant doesn't mean that I can call their definition of the elephant incorrect, but
1288. 01:15:54 that's wrong.
1289. 01:15:55 I think that's the big takeaway from this is give other people a break.
1290. 01:15:59 Assume that there's some truth in everything and challenge everything that you think you
1291. 01:16:02 know.
1292. 01:16:03 Yeah.
1293. 01:16:04 Yep.
1294. 01:16:05 Which, that's a good lead in to practice five, actually.
1295. 01:16:09 Ask questions, make connections.
1296. 01:16:11 There's a story here, I don't know the guy's name, but he was a change agent, I guess,
1297. 01:16:17 would be the term for him.
1298. 01:16:19 He was tasked with going into an area and trying to help figure out how to fix some
1299. 01:16:26 societal issues.
1300. 01:16:29 And what he decided to do, what he normally does is just start walking the streets and
1301. 01:16:33 just talking to people and just asking them, "How's life?
1302. 01:16:37 What would make it better?
1303. 01:16:38 Do you like the government?
1304. 01:16:39 Do you, you know, how do things go for you?"
1305. 01:16:43 And he ran across some fishermen who were telling the story of how, you know, fishing's
1306. 01:16:50 great, we're always able to catch more than we need and we can easily get them to the
1307. 01:16:53 market.
1308. 01:16:54 The problem is, you know, they start to spoil as the day goes on and we can't sell anything
1309. 01:16:59 at our higher prices early in the morning because no one comes and buys them until later
1310. 01:17:03 when we have to drop the prices whenever they've been sitting out in the sun all day long.
1311. 01:17:07 So we can't get good prices on our fish because they've been sitting out in the sun all day
1312. 01:17:10 long.
1313. 01:17:11 Okay, all right, well, I hope you get that figured out.
1314. 01:17:15 And then he goes on down the road and I forget what it was he bought us, a drink of some
1315. 01:17:20 sort that was cold.
1316. 01:17:22 Yeah.
1317. 01:17:23 And it was in the same market area as these guys selling the fish and it's like, "How did
1318. 01:17:28 you get this cold?"
1319. 01:17:30 Like, "Oh, with the ice that I have here, how did you get the ice?
1320. 01:17:33 There's no electricity in this marketplace."
1321. 01:17:34 Like, "How did you get the ice?"
1322. 01:17:36 "Oh, well, there's this guy.
1323. 01:17:38 He makes these massive blocks of ice."
1324. 01:17:41 So he goes and finds the guy that's making the ice blocks and talks to him and it turns
1325. 01:17:46 out he's got like a generator and a whole process that he can go through to make ice
1326. 01:17:50 and he sells it to a few of these folks.
1327. 01:17:52 He's like, "Well, how would you like to massively increase your business?
1328. 01:17:56 What if you could sell a lot more ice?
1329. 01:17:58 Could you handle that?"
1330. 01:17:59 And he figures it out and he's like, "Okay."
1331. 01:18:01 So then he connects the fishermen to the ice maker and guess what?
1332. 01:18:04 They're able to keep their high prices all day long and it starts to fix some of the
1333. 01:18:08 poverty issues with the fishermen, thus starting to create the societal change that he was
1334. 01:18:15 tasked with solving.
1335. 01:18:17 The point of this is asking questions just to figure out how things work and how people
1336. 01:18:22 think what makes them excited, what makes them upset, and then start to connect the
1337. 01:18:26 dots between what their problems are and what other people could potentially solve for them
1338. 01:18:31 or yourself.
1339. 01:18:32 Like, this is just a marketing thing in that sense.
1340. 01:18:35 But this is a very interesting thing because you can start to connect the dots between
1341. 01:18:38 your beliefs and somebody else's beliefs, help some folks out in the process.
1342. 01:18:43 So I love that story of recognizing that, "Hey, ice could be used over here, too."
1343. 01:18:50 I want to divert a little bit from the point that he's making here, though, because that
1344. 01:18:56 story perfectly illustrates the approach that I take with my notes inside of obsidian.
1345. 01:19:03 So instead of asking yourself, "How do other people think?"
1346. 01:19:06 How are you making that jump, dude?
1347. 01:19:07 Listen, listen.
1348. 01:19:09 So you said this just now.
1349. 01:19:11 You said some form of asking the question, "How do other people think?"
1350. 01:19:18 That's what I do inside of my notes app is, "How do I think?"
1351. 01:19:22 Look at these connections.
1352. 01:19:23 I'm like, "Where can I use these things in other places and how do these things connect
1353. 01:19:28 that I am not seeing?"
1354. 01:19:31 So that's the personal application of this for me.
1355. 01:19:35 But I do love the fact that he's calling this out and asking these questions.
1356. 01:19:39 And I think in this section is the story where they, I can't remember the exact chapter,
1357. 01:19:45 but in this section he talks about the UNICEF and how they were going to give the laptops
1358. 01:19:50 to people and they were going to write their stories.
1359. 01:19:53 And they didn't really understand that no one really wanted to figure out how to use
1360. 01:19:56 these laptops and tell their stories.
1361. 01:19:59 So they were asking questions before they delivered all these laptops that were based
1362. 01:20:06 on their perspective and where they were coming from.
1363. 01:20:10 So he mentions that when you ask these questions, you have to ask them without any of your
1364. 01:20:17 bias attached to them.
1365. 01:20:19 You can't go into it thinking a certain way because what you'll do is you will ask the
1366. 01:20:24 questions in a way that will confirm the bias that you have.
1367. 01:20:29 So go in and ask questions about things that seem obvious to other people.
1368. 01:20:34 Yeah, dig to the bottom of things and keep asking why, but also just do it in a way where
1369. 01:20:41 you're going to get a broad range of answers.
1370. 01:20:45 I think this is one of those aha moments for me where I don't have anything specific with
1371. 01:20:50 this.
1372. 01:20:51 But I do want to whenever I ask a question, ask it in a way where I am getting a true,
1373. 01:20:58 honest, open answer and I can totally see looking back on how I've been guilty of asking
1374. 01:21:02 things in a specific way in order to kind of collect the data points that I want.
1375. 01:21:09 And it's not insidious.
1376. 01:21:10 It's not something that you're trying to formulate a specific story.
1377. 01:21:15 It just kind of happens.
1378. 01:21:17 As an example, with the product development process, you send out these surveys, right?
1379. 01:21:22 You want to identify people's biggest problems with obsidian or whatever before crafting solutions
1380. 01:21:28 for them.
1381. 01:21:29 Like we've done that with the sweet setup, but I can even see places where we're coming
1382. 01:21:33 into this with a certain perspective of this is the problem people are having.
1383. 01:21:38 And maybe it's our fish are rotting too fast and they don't see the fact that, oh yeah,
1384. 01:21:42 there is ice on the other side of the market.
1385. 01:21:44 We could totally use it over here.
1386. 01:21:47 I don't know how to break down those walls other than to just try to make those as many
1387. 01:21:55 weird connections as you can.
1388. 01:21:57 And some of them are going to provide those inspirations and stick.
1389. 01:22:01 Yes.
1390. 01:22:02 100%.
1391. 01:22:03 Let's go on to practice six disrupt routines.
1392. 01:22:09 This is another way that you can start to challenge your own beliefs or challenge how
1393. 01:22:14 things can be done.
1394. 01:22:16 But essentially, it's just what it sounds like.
1395. 01:22:19 Many beliefs are like cemented into our day to day routines or even our week to week routines.
1396. 01:22:27 And they just become on autopilot to use the term that he uses in the summary here.
1397. 01:22:33 But if a routine is a problem, disrupt the routine to create new possibilities.
1398. 01:22:37 That's from him.
1399. 01:22:38 One of the stories in here was that there was a, I think it was a mom and she had a son,
1400. 01:22:44 teenage son that was playing games too late at night and she could never get him to put
1401. 01:22:48 the games away and go to bed.
1402. 01:22:51 And she would normally go in, get upset, tell them shut the game off and go to bed.
1403. 01:22:57 And that was the normal routine and it sometimes didn't work always but created this kind of
1404. 01:23:02 negative culture.
1405. 01:23:03 So one night she decided to, instead of going in and throwing her hissy fit, she went downstairs
1406. 01:23:11 and turned off the wireless router instead of doing her normal.
1407. 01:23:18 And he of course was like, wait, what's going on?
1408. 01:23:21 There's no Wi-Fi.
1409. 01:23:22 What does everybody do when there's no Wi-Fi?
1410. 01:23:23 You go to the router and you reset it, right?
1411. 01:23:25 This is what everybody does.
1412. 01:23:27 Everybody knows you go unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in, or the impatient ones
1413. 01:23:31 of us unplug it, count to three and plug it back in.
1414. 01:23:33 And this is what he went down to do and found his mom standing there with the cord to the
1415. 01:23:40 router in her hand.
1416. 01:23:41 I was like, oh, okay, I'll go to bed now.
1417. 01:23:45 And then he goes to bed.
1418. 01:23:46 I have no idea how that story turns out long term but that's the concept, right?
1419. 01:23:51 Disrupt the routines, change the way you're coming at things, to change up the potential
1420. 01:23:58 behind how you believe things or what you believe, I guess.
1421. 01:24:02 That was actually the author's wife, by the way.
1422. 01:24:04 Oh, it was.
1423. 01:24:05 I missed that.
1424. 01:24:06 Or at least I didn't remember that.
1425. 01:24:07 He shared this manuscript before I published and she started thinking this way and then
1426. 01:24:13 that was her solution to that problem.
1427. 01:24:15 That's what it was.
1428. 01:24:16 Which got me thinking, you know, there are certain things that are, shall we say, a
1429. 01:24:21 little bit more difficult than they should be, like getting people to bed on time.
1430. 01:24:27 So I want to take this approach of figuring out, you know, what are the routines and what
1431. 01:24:33 are the ways that we can disrupt them.
1432. 01:24:35 I don't think this is as simple as I'm plugging a Wi-Fi router.
1433. 01:24:40 No, not generally.
1434. 01:24:43 That's a pretty genius application of that, by the way, though, because it's kind of happening
1435. 01:24:49 until they intervene and then the way they intervene wasn't producing the result that
1436. 01:24:54 they wanted to.
1437. 01:24:55 There's something like bedtime, I don't think it's as simple because it's not a process
1438. 01:24:58 that happens without any involvement.
1439. 01:25:01 We're an active part of that.
1440. 01:25:02 So maybe we can change, you know, some of the ways that we do it.
1441. 01:25:05 But I think the real place to apply this is those kind of automatic cycles that you're
1442. 01:25:10 not driving anyways and then figuring out what you can do to step in at a specific point
1443. 01:25:18 and change the trajectory.
1444. 01:25:21 I don't have any other specific examples of that.
1445. 01:25:24 But I loved that story and I think if I spend some time thinking about it, there's probably
1446. 01:25:28 a bunch of places that I could apply that my own life.
1447. 01:25:32 So practice seven is act as if in the here and now, as if in the here and now.
1448. 01:25:39 This is basically like if you have a belief that you're not 100% sold on and you don't
1449. 01:25:45 know if it's one of these governing beliefs for you, you could change it or act as if
1450. 01:25:53 it's true right now to find out and see how things turn out.
1451. 01:25:58 An example from college for me is our, oh, she owes his name.
1452. 01:26:04 I can't think of his name.
1453. 01:26:05 Anyway, his job was to help students pick majors essentially.
1454. 01:26:09 That was his consultant type position with students.
1455. 01:26:13 And anytime he had a student come in and say, I don't know if I want to be an engineer.
1456. 01:26:18 I've been considering nursing or being a teacher or going into farming or I was like, I don't
1457. 01:26:25 know if that's what I want to do.
1458. 01:26:27 He would have him change their major immediately.
1459. 01:26:30 Like right then, like you think you want to do that?
1460. 01:26:32 Great.
1461. 01:26:33 Let's change your major right now.
1462. 01:26:35 Like what?
1463. 01:26:36 So they would change his major and then go through the process of re determining all
1464. 01:26:40 the classes that would be necessary to make that happen.
1465. 01:26:45 Now they are of course in the middle of classes right then.
1466. 01:26:48 So they have to finish out that semester and then they would figure out how to make it
1467. 01:26:51 work for the remainder, however many semesters they had left.
1468. 01:26:56 But that's what he did.
1469. 01:26:57 Every time if someone was questioning their major, he would have him change it immediately.
1470. 01:27:01 Interesting.
1471. 01:27:02 And I know a lot of people who were very grateful for that because what it did was it forced
1472. 01:27:09 people to then start thinking like they are on a different trajectory overnight and they
1473. 01:27:16 have the path to get there already laid out for them.
1474. 01:27:20 So then they're essentially acting as if they are that major because they are technically
1475. 01:27:26 and then they can figure out if that's the right path or not.
1476. 01:27:29 And if they realize, nope, I was on the right path to begin with, well guess what?
1477. 01:27:32 You already had that path laid out.
1478. 01:27:34 Let's just revert back and go back to that one.
1479. 01:27:37 But it generally only took about a week for the people to figure out if the major actually
1480. 01:27:42 needed to change or not.
1481. 01:27:44 So that's all it took.
1482. 01:27:45 I always thought that was genius.
1483. 01:27:47 That's an interesting example of this principle.
1484. 01:27:53 He goes back to the learning loop here.
1485. 01:27:55 He's got a double loop learning, which I'll just quickly go through the steps here.
1486. 01:27:59 But I think this totally applies to what you just shared where number one, you recognize
1487. 01:28:03 you're operating from a bubble of belief, which is a reality distortion field.
1488. 01:28:07 Number two, you don't just observe behavior.
1489. 01:28:09 You try to figure out the underlying needs and beliefs that are operating.
1490. 01:28:12 Number three, if you're seeing the results that you want, great.
1491. 01:28:16 But number four, if not, explore and examine as many alternate beliefs as you can with
1492. 01:28:20 that guidance counselor type person.
1493. 01:28:23 Yeah.
1494. 01:28:24 What I was doing was forcing people to actually think through the rest of the process and
1495. 01:28:32 explore those alternate beliefs and then go ahead and try it.
1496. 01:28:36 See what happens.
1497. 01:28:37 Did it improve the situation?
1498. 01:28:39 If so, great.
1499. 01:28:40 If not, you can always go back to the old way or Dave Gray would say, repeat as necessary,
1500. 01:28:46 try something else.
1501. 01:28:48 That's where like, I think there's a limit maybe on the number of majors you want to
1502. 01:28:51 try so the analogy falls down.
1503. 01:28:54 But there are these worlds of possibility that are around us.
1504. 01:28:59 And we do have to kind of engage with some of the things that we didn't really think
1505. 01:29:03 were possible, which is interesting because he also says in this chapter that you don't
1506. 01:29:08 have to believe a hypothesis in order to test it.
1507. 01:29:12 So you don't have to assume that this is true or even feasible.
1508. 01:29:15 You could just see, yeah, let's just see if this works.
1509. 01:29:18 And maybe it does.
1510. 01:29:20 Maybe you end up becoming a productivity writer, podcaster, whatever, when you spent your entire
1511. 01:29:28 life working for the family business, you know, just see what happens.
1512. 01:29:31 Give it a shot.
1513. 01:29:33 Who knows?
1514. 01:29:34 Who knows?
1515. 01:29:35 All right, that brings us to practice eight, which is make sense with stories.
1516. 01:29:40 This one I feel like is super simple.
1517. 01:29:42 Like if you're trying to relay a belief to someone else, guess what?
1518. 01:29:46 The best way to do that is to tell a story.
1519. 01:29:49 This is why, and he even calls us out every single principle, every single practice that
1520. 01:29:55 he brings up every chapter begins with a story.
1521. 01:29:59 This is also why, Mike and I do this a lot, where when these chapters come up, there's
1522. 01:30:05 a point that comes up, what happens?
1523. 01:30:06 We tell a story about it because then it allows me to relay that concept, that belief
1524. 01:30:13 to use this terminology within the existing beliefs that I have so that the point gets
1525. 01:30:19 across the way I want it to get across.
1526. 01:30:21 So telling stories is the way to do that, which again, I think this is something we know
1527. 01:30:27 is fairly straightforward.
1528. 01:30:28 Yeah, though the reason why I think is kind of interesting.
1529. 01:30:31 And we've heard this other places.
1530. 01:30:33 I don't remember specifically, but the whole idea of the neural coupling, where when someone
1531. 01:30:38 is telling you a story that your brains connect and you tend to mirror each other, he gets
1532. 01:30:43 a little bit more specific and he talks about how when you're going through the conflict,
1533. 01:30:50 your brain's producing one chemical, and then when there's a resolution, there's another
1534. 01:30:53 chemical, I don't know that understanding all that process really changes anything for
1535. 01:31:01 me, but it was interesting.
1536. 01:31:04 Yeah, I hear you.
1537. 01:31:06 All right, the last practice here is practice nine, evolve yourself and the whole book in
1538. 01:31:13 a nutshell.
1539. 01:31:14 Yeah, I'm going to say this is just be willing to change your beliefs.
1540. 01:31:19 That's pretty much what it says.
1541. 01:31:22 Yeah.
1542. 01:31:23 Let's summarize the whole book up with be willing to change, which is what he's been
1543. 01:31:28 trying to convince us of this entire time.
1544. 01:31:31 There is one thing in this section, which I think I've been guilty of overlooking this
1545. 01:31:36 is that risks come in all shapes and sizes.
1546. 01:31:38 He does reiterate that you won't change the world without changing yourself.
1547. 01:31:41 So that's a place to start focusing on yourself.
1548. 01:31:43 He already said that, but he also says that risk is always there whether you realize it
1549. 01:31:48 or not.
1550. 01:31:49 So when you think about that, that kind of changes your approach to maybe some life-changing
1551. 01:31:57 decisions because you can kind of find yourself in a position where, well, I've got these responsibilities.
1552. 01:32:06 I'm married, I have kids, whatever, and I've always wanted to go out and do my own thing,
1553. 01:32:11 but I have this comfortable job and it's providing for us.
1554. 01:32:15 And so there's more risk in stepping out there and doing my own thing.
1555. 01:32:22 But that's the natural part of the thought process.
1556. 01:32:25 And we never counterbalance that by realizing that there is actually risk with just leaving
1557. 01:32:31 things the way that they are.
1558. 01:32:34 And in that particular example, I don't think my blanket advice would be like, well, there's
1559. 01:32:37 risk no matter what you do.
1560. 01:32:39 So I'll just step out there and see if you can make it happen.
1561. 01:32:42 But I use that as an example because you and I think have both been in that position and
1562. 01:32:45 probably a lot of the people who are listening to this.
1563. 01:32:48 And we can apply that a lot of other places where just because we've done something one
1564. 01:32:54 way before doesn't automatically mean that that's the safe alternative.
1565. 01:32:58 There's risk no matter what we do.
1566. 01:33:00 So number one, we don't really have to be afraid of it.
1567. 01:33:03 And number two, if we do fail, it's not going to be as catastrophic probably as we make
1568. 01:33:11 it out to be in our own heads.
1569. 01:33:13 We tend to be very apprehensive of change and uncertainty.
1570. 01:33:20 But I think he's trying to encourage us at this point in the book that everything's uncertain.
1571. 01:33:27 Everything you thought you knew is wrong anyways.
1572. 01:33:29 So just challenge some things.
1573. 01:33:31 Maybe you'll get that position that requires a master's without the master's.
1574. 01:33:34 All right.
1575. 01:33:35 Great for action items.
1576. 01:33:36 You got more you want to say?
1577. 01:33:37 That's it.
1578. 01:33:38 Let's do it.
1579. 01:33:39 All right.
1580. 01:33:40 I have one action item, which is a little odd in this scenario because this is one of
1581. 01:33:43 those books where it's like you need to think this way.
1582. 01:33:47 Like it's I feel like it's difficult to get a physical action out of this like a tactical,
1583. 01:33:54 practical thing to do from a book that's designed to help you think about your beliefs
1584. 01:33:59 differently.
1585. 01:34:01 And as I was pondering that, walking to trails that are new property last night and just
1586. 01:34:07 kind of wondering my way around this book and the topics around it, it occurred to me
1587. 01:34:13 is like, actually, the thing I need to do with this particular book is take, he has this
1588. 01:34:18 at the beginning.
1589. 01:34:19 I'll talk about this here in a second with style and rating, but he has this executive
1590. 01:34:23 summary up at the very front of this, which I love because it's made it very easy for
1591. 01:34:28 me to reference different things throughout this book.
1592. 01:34:32 And I want to take that and print it up on a eight and a half by 11, laminate it, stick
1593. 01:34:39 it to the wall in front of my computer.
1594. 01:34:41 And it's primarily because there's a lot of this that's hard to keep in your head.
1595. 01:34:46 Like it's hard to keep that in mind.
1596. 01:34:49 So I just want to have something around that I'm probably not going to look at it every
1597. 01:34:54 day.
1598. 01:34:55 I'm probably not going to like after a couple of weeks, it'll probably be something I don't
1599. 01:34:57 reference very often, but having it there to bring it up in mind occasionally, I think
1600. 01:35:04 would be super helpful.
1601. 01:35:05 So that's the one thing I want to do with this one.
1602. 01:35:08 Cool.
1603. 01:35:09 I may look into that too.
1604. 01:35:10 I'm sure there's like a larger poster style version of this.
1605. 01:35:14 Oh sure.
1606. 01:35:15 Yeah.
1607. 01:35:16 And thought that way.
1608. 01:35:17 Yeah.
1609. 01:35:18 That's a good idea too.
1610. 01:35:19 I've got two both from part one, which is identify my limiting beliefs that I have unwillingly
1611. 01:35:26 just taken on from other people in my life and then make a list of my governing beliefs
1612. 01:35:32 so I can challenge them.
1613. 01:35:36 It's interesting that you said that, and I agree with you that there isn't any real
1614. 01:35:42 direct sort of action items with this because he tries to give you one every single chapter.
1615. 01:35:48 Yeah.
1616. 01:35:50 But I again, that part didn't really stick with me.
1617. 01:35:56 So I guess that's getting into style and rating, but okay.
1618. 01:35:59 All right.
1619. 01:36:00 Let's step into that then.
1620. 01:36:01 I suppose I have to go first.
1621. 01:36:03 So the style on this, I think he nailed it.
1622. 01:36:07 It's a two part book.
1623. 01:36:08 We didn't even notice.
1624. 01:36:09 Like we didn't mention that.
1625. 01:36:10 It's not a three parter.
1626. 01:36:11 We got an introduction in two parts.
1627. 01:36:13 So there's that.
1628. 01:36:15 I think he set that up really well.
1629. 01:36:17 I guess far as like laying out the principles and then laying out the practices about what
1630. 01:36:21 to do about it, like it's the, it's the classic.
1631. 01:36:25 Here is the problem or the inspiration, if you will.
1632. 01:36:30 And then here's what you do with it.
1633. 01:36:31 Now I say that knowing that I just said this isn't a book that has explicit action items
1634. 01:36:37 with it, even though he has exercises here, but I just didn't take any of those to heart.
1635. 01:36:42 But in this particular case, like I think he does do this really well.
1636. 01:36:48 He does not belabor any topic.
1637. 01:36:50 It's 144 pages long.
1638. 01:36:53 Lots of diagrams.
1639. 01:36:54 The first page of each chapter I noticed has a little bit larger font than the rest
1640. 01:36:59 of them within the chapter.
1641. 01:37:01 There's like a summary page that's mostly white and there's a lot of blank space in
1642. 01:37:07 this.
1643. 01:37:08 I'm just saying that.
1644. 01:37:09 And yet it feels very dense.
1645. 01:37:11 I feel like we covered a ton.
1646. 01:37:12 Like this is a long episode for a short book, if you get what I'm saying.
1647. 01:37:18 So it's very dense.
1648. 01:37:19 It's very compact.
1649. 01:37:22 And as a result, like I feel like I learned a ton going through this and it made me wish
1650. 01:37:28 a lot of people had read this, especially given how hot topic things are today and how
1651. 01:37:35 firmly people latch on to beliefs that are unfounded in many cases.
1652. 01:37:41 And that's something that I wish more people were willing to challenge myself included.
1653. 01:37:47 Like I have beliefs that I just said foundational things that people don't get.
1654. 01:37:51 Like, well, maybe I'm the one that's the problem there.
1655. 01:37:53 So these are things that I think would be extremely helpful.
1656. 01:37:58 He does have this at the very beginning.
1657. 01:38:02 There's the outline.
1658. 01:38:04 Where is that?
1659. 01:38:05 I just lost it.
1660. 01:38:06 But he has a contents and executive summary.
1661. 01:38:09 We don't normally see this in a book.
1662. 01:38:11 I can only think of one other book where we've had this and that was how to read a book.
1663. 01:38:16 But apparently, knowing having gone through how to read a book, this used to be the norm
1664. 01:38:20 where people would have chapter titles and then an explanation of what was going on in
1665. 01:38:25 that chapter before you read the book.
1666. 01:38:28 And people would read the table of contents to decide if they wanted to read the book
1667. 01:38:31 or not.
1668. 01:38:32 This is like an homage back to that time because this is how it's set up.
1669. 01:38:37 He has the two parts.
1670. 01:38:39 He has like a one or two sentence explanation of what's going on in each chapter.
1671. 01:38:43 That's the stuff that I wanted to take and put on the card or find a poster of in some
1672. 01:38:46 form.
1673. 01:38:47 I really, really like this.
1674. 01:38:49 I wish more people did this.
1675. 01:38:51 Not just because it makes it easy to do bookworm, but just because it makes it very easy
1676. 01:38:56 to reference what's in the book ahead of time.
1677. 01:39:01 Some people probably read that and shortcut it and don't actually read the whole book,
1678. 01:39:04 but at least they got something out of it that way.
1679. 01:39:07 But I really, really like that.
1680. 01:39:09 As far as how to read it, I don't know that I have anything I don't like about it.
1681. 01:39:12 I mean, it's something that I wish a lot of people would read.
1682. 01:39:16 I think there's a ton of very valuable information and insight here.
1683. 01:39:22 Again, I mentioned earlier that I was trying to read this from the lens of could you read
1684. 01:39:26 this without having read a bunch of others?
1685. 01:39:27 I think you totally can.
1686. 01:39:29 I don't think you have to have some of these background books that we have to get a lot
1687. 01:39:35 of value out of this.
1688. 01:39:37 I'm very grateful for having read this one.
1689. 01:39:40 I am going to put this at a 5.0.
1690. 01:39:42 I am just because I think this is one that I'm going to reference for quite some time.
1691. 01:39:47 I can already tell that just because it's starting to like this conforms with a lot of
1692. 01:39:52 how I'm starting to like think about things.
1693. 01:39:55 Maybe that's why I like it.
1694. 01:39:56 I do really appreciate his willingness to even challenge himself as he goes through it.
1695. 01:40:02 So yeah, I'm going to put it at 5.
1696. 01:40:04 I think it's way up there.
1697. 01:40:05 I think people should read this definitely.
1698. 01:40:08 Cool.
1699. 01:40:09 Well, I agree.
1700. 01:40:10 This is a great book.
1701. 01:40:11 It is a very easy read to be honest.
1702. 01:40:13 I mean, you could take a lot of time and really think through the concepts that he is
1703. 01:40:20 telling you.
1704. 01:40:21 I just it as you go, I think maybe it takes you quite a while to get through those 144
1705. 01:40:27 pages.
1706. 01:40:28 But it's a very engaging read and nothing feels like a mental burden.
1707. 01:40:32 Like you have to just pause and unravel stuff in order to figure it out.
1708. 01:40:36 I had that sort of thought when I read C.S. Lewis in college.
1709. 01:40:41 I had a class actually that part of the required reading was the problem of pain.
1710. 01:40:46 And C.S.
1711. 01:40:47 Lewis was that way where you could read a single page and then you had to stop for a couple
1712. 01:40:50 of hours and think about what he just said in that one single page because there was
1713. 01:40:56 so much there.
1714. 01:40:57 So this is like some really heady topics that you could take that approach with.
1715. 01:41:02 But he doesn't write it in a way where it feels like you have to do that.
1716. 01:41:05 It's also very visual.
1717. 01:41:08 And I feel like the visuals that he shares are very, very good.
1718. 01:41:11 I've got some snapshots of some of the diagrams and things inside of the mind node file that
1719. 01:41:16 I took for this one.
1720. 01:41:19 I would recommend this for just about anybody.
1721. 01:41:22 I don't think it's quite as good as the great mental models.
1722. 01:41:26 I still am a little bit confused by these action items at the end of every chapter.
1723. 01:41:31 I don't think they were necessary.
1724. 01:41:33 And I feel that every single time I got to one and I had to make the choice, no I'm
1725. 01:41:37 not going to do that right now.
1726. 01:41:39 I felt a little bit guilty like I wasn't doing what he had asked me to do.
1727. 01:41:42 And so am I really getting the results from this book that he expects me to get?
1728. 01:41:47 Maybe I didn't.
1729. 01:41:48 I think that's a definite possibility that this book just didn't knock my socks off because
1730. 01:41:55 I didn't follow through and do every little thing that he did or that he recommends that
1731. 01:41:59 you do.
1732. 01:42:00 But I also think a lot of the concepts and things that he mentions in here, again, very
1733. 01:42:05 effective writing style, but having read some other books like the great mental models,
1734. 01:42:10 I now know there are people who explain them better.
1735. 01:42:14 The map is not the territory just as one example.
1736. 01:42:17 Maybe that's the only example.
1737. 01:42:19 I don't know.
1738. 01:42:20 But it's a really good book and I would definitely recommend people read it.
1739. 01:42:25 If I could recommend a set of books, I think I probably would.
1740. 01:42:29 I would include this one and the great mental models.
1741. 01:42:32 I feel like if you read both of those, you've got a better understanding of some of the things
1742. 01:42:37 that he's talking about in this one.
1743. 01:42:40 But I also having to talk through this with you, I do think this stands alone on its own.
1744. 01:42:45 Maybe it doesn't have quite the impact that it had for me.
1745. 01:42:51 So great book, not quite as good as some of the other ones I would define as in this genre.
1746. 01:42:57 What is this genre?
1747. 01:42:58 I don't even know.
1748. 01:42:59 I don't know.
1749. 01:43:00 It's not critical thinking.
1750. 01:43:02 It is sort of like the mental models is the best term that I can think of for this.
1751. 01:43:06 He gives you some different ways to think about things, but then kind of leaves it up
1752. 01:43:12 to you in order to apply these in your own life, which I like that is very much my I that's
1753. 01:43:21 my wheelhouse.
1754. 01:43:22 That's my jam.
1755. 01:43:23 I love that kind of stuff.
1756. 01:43:24 So anytime you want to pick a book that fits into that category, I will probably rate
1757. 01:43:28 it very highly.
1758. 01:43:30 But I am going to hold it up against the great mental models as the gold standard of the
1759. 01:43:34 5.0.
1760. 01:43:35 So for that reason alone, I think it's 4.5.
1761. 01:43:37 Sure, sure.
1762. 01:43:39 I don't know if that's fair to the book, but yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
1763. 01:43:47 It's a great primer for these sorts of things.
1764. 01:43:49 However, if you want to really dive deep on this sort of stuff, I would recommend that
1765. 01:43:54 you at least pick up the great mental models, Volume 1 also.
1766. 01:43:58 Yeah, I tend to call these like mental constructs books.
1767. 01:44:02 Like how do you think type of thing?
1768. 01:44:05 Anyway, we can put it on the shelf.
1769. 01:44:06 What's next, Mike?
1770. 01:44:07 Next is willpower doesn't work by Benjamin Hardy because it doesn't.
1771. 01:44:15 No, lots of stuff, lots of stuff kind of contributing to this.
1772. 01:44:21 I came across something that I shared with you about procrastination and ADHD and like,
1773. 01:44:26 is this true?
1774. 01:44:27 And you're like, absolutely.
1775. 01:44:28 And then we've also read procrastinate on purpose.
1776. 01:44:31 We've read way back in the day, the willpower instinct and kind of a lot of things coming
1777. 01:44:36 together in my world right now, which are challenging this whole belief of willpower
1778. 01:44:42 as a way to get things done.
1779. 01:44:46 And this book by its title is attacking that very belief.
1780. 01:44:51 And I'm curious.
1781. 01:44:53 I want to see what they're going to propose here.
1782. 01:44:58 It's kind of interesting coming off the heels of this book because for a long time that
1783. 01:45:02 was like the bubble of belief is like, oh, you just got to protect your mental resources,
1784. 01:45:06 protect your willpower.
1785. 01:45:07 And so now I'm kind of applying this, right?
1786. 01:45:10 I'm challenging that and like, well, what's the what's the alternative here?
1787. 01:45:13 Fun.
1788. 01:45:14 I'm looking forward to this one.
1789. 01:45:16 This will be good.
1790. 01:45:17 Following that, we're going to go through the mountain is you by Brianna.
1791. 01:45:23 We asked W.E.A.
1792. 01:45:25 W.I.
1793. 01:45:26 E.S.T.
1794. 01:45:27 West.
1795. 01:45:28 We asked, I have to figure out how to say that.
1796. 01:45:30 I say that.
1797. 01:45:31 And then I probably won't.
1798. 01:45:32 The subtitle on this is transforming self sabotage into self mastery.
1799. 01:45:38 So if you sabotage yourself so that you fail, that's what we're going to talk about.
1800. 01:45:45 All right.
1801. 01:45:46 I do this.
1802. 01:45:47 Do you do this?
1803. 01:45:48 I do this.
1804. 01:45:49 I think everybody does this.
1805. 01:45:50 I think we all do.
1806. 01:45:51 So anyway, if you're a self-sabotager, we're going to talk about it.
1807. 01:45:56 But that's in four weeks, not two.
1808. 01:45:58 All right.
1809. 01:45:59 Anyway, there you go.
1810. 01:46:00 Got any a gap books, Mike?
1811. 01:46:01 I do not.
1812. 01:46:02 How about you?
1813. 01:46:03 Not even close.
1814. 01:46:04 Remodeling a house.
1815. 01:46:05 There's no time.
1816. 01:46:06 Barely got through this one and it was short.
1817. 01:46:08 So here we go.
1818. 01:46:09 Right.
1819. 01:46:10 Great fun.
1820. 01:46:11 Huge thank you to those of you who have tuned in today to watch us live.
1821. 01:46:16 Hi.
1822. 01:46:17 And who are now listening in your car and such.
1823. 01:46:20 Thank you for joining us as we go through this.
1824. 01:46:23 If you haven't already, go to our Bookworm Club, club.bookworm.fm and go ahead and sign
1825. 01:46:29 up there.
1826. 01:46:30 So once you get access to a premium area inside the club there, but you get access to Mike's
1827. 01:46:36 mind node files that he puts together for the show, you get to be an awesome person because
1828. 01:46:41 you help the show stay on.
1829. 01:46:43 And we just love you.
1830. 01:46:44 So thank you for those of you who have joined the Bookworm Club membership.
1831. 01:46:49 And if you haven't, you need to do that.
1832. 01:46:51 Bookworm.fm/membership.
1833. 01:46:52 All right.
1834. 01:46:53 If you are reading along, pick up willpower doesn't work by Benjamin Hardy.
1835. 01:46:58 and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.