125: Willpower Doesn’t Work by Benjamin Hardy

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1. 00:00:00 All right, so I have a little bit of self promotion.
2. 00:00:03 If you don't mind real quick here, Joe Bielig.
3. 00:00:05 - Okay, ready to set go.
4. 00:00:06 - As we record this, it is the eve of the launch
5. 00:00:11 of the video course, which has been my obsession
6. 00:00:13 for low these many months, and that is too obsidian
7. 00:00:16 and beyond over at the sweet setup.
8. 00:00:19 I absolutely love this app.
9. 00:00:22 Sharing with you some cool stuff I figured out even today
10. 00:00:25 before we hit record.
11. 00:00:27 And there's always a launch week discount
12. 00:00:30 as with all sweet setup courses.
13. 00:00:32 So we talk about it a lot on this show.
14. 00:00:34 Wanted to make sure people knew about it.
15. 00:00:36 Sweetsetup.com/obsidian.
16. 00:00:38 If you are interested in it, it includes
17. 00:00:40 the Zero Tube City and Workshop replay
18. 00:00:42 that I did previously, plus I think there's like
19. 00:00:45 46 different videos, and I keep finding new stuff
20. 00:00:48 and I keep adding things to it.
21. 00:00:49 So this is definitely not one of those ones
22. 00:00:51 where you just throw it out there
23. 00:00:52 and then you never think about it again.
24. 00:00:54 This is gonna grow over time because I just can't help
25. 00:00:57 myself.
26. 00:00:58 - Sure, sure.
27. 00:00:59 I get a kick out of this so much because you were
28. 00:01:02 on such the roam train.
29. 00:01:03 - I was.
30. 00:01:04 - Here for quite, like you were hardcore.
31. 00:01:07 It's like, I gotta get you off a roam.
32. 00:01:09 Like we gotta get you onto obsidian
33. 00:01:11 and now you're like hardcore obsidian.
34. 00:01:13 - I love this.
35. 00:01:14 - So it's kind of your fault, I guess.
36. 00:01:16 - I don't know about it.
37. 00:01:18 It's not 100% my fault.
38. 00:01:20 I know that one for sure.
39. 00:01:22 - It's partially your fault, partially Nick Milo.
40. 00:01:24 I'm doing a lighthouse session with him
41. 00:01:27 as we record this, it's tomorrow.
42. 00:01:30 So by the time that episode goes out,
43. 00:01:32 it will have happened already, but I'm a little,
44. 00:01:35 shared with you, I'm a little bit terrified
45. 00:01:36 to be doing that one because I still think
46. 00:01:39 I'm kind of an obsidian poser and I'm not that confident
47. 00:01:42 in my abilities with the app.
48. 00:01:44 Like I kind of feel the stuff that I do is cool for me
49. 00:01:47 but like no one else really cares.
50. 00:01:48 (laughs)
51. 00:01:50 But it's cool, Nick is a very thoughtful guy
52. 00:01:52 and I am excited to be in those sessions.
53. 00:01:55 He's had Eleanor, I forget her last name,
54. 00:01:57 but she's the one who does obsidian roundup on there.
55. 00:02:00 David Sparks is gonna be on there,
56. 00:02:01 a couple other people.
57. 00:02:02 David's doing a lot of cool stuff with obsidian too.
58. 00:02:05 But yeah, I'm just trying to share what I learned.
59. 00:02:08 It's fascinating like how you can build this
60. 00:02:11 into whatever you want it to do.
61. 00:02:13 I mean, just before we hop down, I was screen sharing.
62. 00:02:16 I added something to my personal retreat stuff
63. 00:02:18 which I think is gonna come up in the course of the episode
64. 00:02:21 'cause we can talk about environment disconnections,
65. 00:02:23 stuff like that.
66. 00:02:24 But anyways, there's the self-promotion segment
67. 00:02:28 of a bookworm so thanks for giving me a moment to do that.
68. 00:02:31 - Good work, you did well.
69. 00:02:33 - Thank you.
70. 00:02:34 Let's jump into follow up here.
71. 00:02:37 Did you print your summary and put it
72. 00:02:39 in front of your computer?
73. 00:02:40 - Not 100% and this is because, well,
74. 00:02:43 I guess technically so I did print it twice.
75. 00:02:49 But I haven't been happy with what I've got in the layout.
76. 00:02:52 So if you go to, oh shoot, what is the link?
77. 00:02:56 Let me get you the link here.
78. 00:02:58 If you go to liminalthinking.com,
79. 00:03:00 so this is based on "Lemonal Thinking" by Dave Gray.
80. 00:03:03 In the top, he's got a menu bar that has principles
81. 00:03:05 and practices and he has these listed there,
82. 00:03:08 which makes it very easy to copy paste
83. 00:03:09 and get it into a document and then you can do
84. 00:03:12 all the formatting and such that you want.
85. 00:03:14 But I really want this to be on one page
86. 00:03:17 but it's a lot of text and makes it hard to read.
87. 00:03:20 So I either need to make it on a really big piece of paper
88. 00:03:24 or figure out how to format this differently.
89. 00:03:27 So I've tried a couple iterations
90. 00:03:28 and don't like either one.
91. 00:03:30 So technically I have printed a summary
92. 00:03:32 and I have put it in front of my computer
93. 00:03:33 but I still don't like it.
94. 00:03:35 So I'm trying a third round,
95. 00:03:38 I don't know what it's gonna become.
96. 00:03:40 So I'm still working on it technically.
97. 00:03:42 So it depends on how far down the technicalities
98. 00:03:44 you wanna go here.
99. 00:03:46 So do you consider it done or not?
100. 00:03:48 I guess is.
101. 00:03:48 (laughs)
102. 00:03:50 My technical criteria here.
103. 00:03:52 We didn't really, so many of these are like,
104. 00:03:55 okay, we haven't officially decided what done is on these
105. 00:03:59 and in my head it was just,
106. 00:04:00 oh yeah, print it and stick it up on the wall.
107. 00:04:02 Like, well, no, it's turned into way more
108. 00:04:04 than just print it and stick it on a wall.
109. 00:04:05 So it doesn't work that well.
110. 00:04:08 When we didn't decide should I be done
111. 00:04:10 trying to get it formatted correctly
112. 00:04:11 or should I have at least started it?
113. 00:04:13 I think in this case it should probably be done
114. 00:04:16 in which case it's not done.
115. 00:04:18 If that made sense.
116. 00:04:20 - Sure, so if you're not willing to check the box
117. 00:04:24 then I'm good with that.
118. 00:04:25 I'll join you in not checking boxes.
119. 00:04:29 (laughs)
120. 00:04:30 'Cause I had two year of identifying limiting beliefs
121. 00:04:33 from others and making a list of my governing beliefs.
122. 00:04:37 I have been cranking on this obsidian course
123. 00:04:41 and I still intend to make both of these lists
124. 00:04:45 inside of obsidian but it hasn't happened yet.
125. 00:04:49 If I can get through tomorrow
126. 00:04:51 then I will be able to think again.
127. 00:04:56 And yeah, so I guess maybe we can keep those on
128. 00:04:59 for next time.
129. 00:05:00 I do think there's a lot of value in those.
130. 00:05:02 I've been talking about these limiting beliefs
131. 00:05:04 and these governing beliefs and I have an idea
132. 00:05:05 of some of these.
133. 00:05:07 I just don't have them in a list form
134. 00:05:08 like I was intending to make inside of obsidian
135. 00:05:11 so not done.
136. 00:05:13 - All right, so you got some work to do.
137. 00:05:16 I got some work to do.
138. 00:05:17 - Yeah.
139. 00:05:18 - At least we know how our action items
140. 00:05:19 for next time are gonna start.
141. 00:05:21 - I might have some more work to do after this book.
142. 00:05:24 So.
143. 00:05:25 - Yeah, there's that.
144. 00:05:27 So let's jump in here.
145. 00:05:29 Today's book is Will Power Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy.
146. 00:05:32 And this I picked kind of because of the clickbaity title.
147. 00:05:39 It's obviously taking a stance against Will Power
148. 00:05:41 which has been kind of a trendy productivity topic
149. 00:05:44 for the last several years.
150. 00:05:46 A lot of research about how you need to conserve
151. 00:05:49 your willpower, lots of stories about like Steve Jobs
152. 00:05:51 and Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah and all those really,
153. 00:05:54 really successful people,
154. 00:05:55 how they wear the same thing every day
155. 00:05:57 so they can serve their mental resources
156. 00:05:59 and they have the willpower for the things that really matter.
157. 00:06:02 And this book is basically just saying like,
158. 00:06:04 all that is a bunch of baloney.
159. 00:06:05 (laughs)
160. 00:06:07 It's all about the environment.
161. 00:06:09 So I didn't really know what to expect going into this.
162. 00:06:12 I kind of expected he would take a strong stance
163. 00:06:14 and then not back it up very well with arguments.
164. 00:06:17 I think he did a pretty decent job.
165. 00:06:19 We'll get into the specifics here
166. 00:06:21 but it is your standard three part productivity book.
167. 00:06:25 Although the flow of these parts was a little bit different.
168. 00:06:29 Did you catch that or is that just something
169. 00:06:34 that I felt was a little bit different?
170. 00:06:37 I can't say I noticed that there was a different flow in it
171. 00:06:40 because there was the parts and then chapters
172. 00:06:42 within those parts.
173. 00:06:43 I mean, there's a summary at the end of the chapters.
174. 00:06:46 - Sure.
175. 00:06:47 - So chapters or parts?
176. 00:06:48 I forget what--
177. 00:06:49 - Summary at the end of the chapters, yep.
178. 00:06:50 - So I can't say that I noticed
179. 00:06:52 there was a difference in flow.
180. 00:06:55 - Okay, well, maybe I just missed it.
181. 00:06:56 - Well, most of the three part books specifically
182. 00:07:00 is like part one is the biggest one.
183. 00:07:03 That's like half of the book.
184. 00:07:04 And this is everything you need to know about the topic.
185. 00:07:08 And then part two is like, here's how it applies to you.
186. 00:07:12 And then part three is usually like,
187. 00:07:14 here's how it applies to the future
188. 00:07:15 if I'm gonna make a template
189. 00:07:18 for how to write a productivity book.
190. 00:07:20 That would be it.
191. 00:07:21 (laughing)
192. 00:07:23 And part three is--
193. 00:07:23 - Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes.
194. 00:07:25 - Yeah, and part three is always the smallest section.
195. 00:07:29 It's kinda just like the last thing he wants to say
196. 00:07:32 so it sticks in your brain as you close it
197. 00:07:35 and you move on to the next thing.
198. 00:07:37 And this one, I felt was a little bit different.
199. 00:07:39 Part one is your environment shapes you.
200. 00:07:42 Part two, how to make willpower irrelevant
201. 00:07:44 and then part three, outsource high performance
202. 00:07:46 and success to your environment.
203. 00:07:48 But what's different about this, in my opinion,
204. 00:07:51 is that part three is the biggest one
205. 00:07:55 and that's where a lot of the gold nuggets are.
206. 00:07:58 That's where the stuff that really matters is.
207. 00:08:02 I feel like that's a little bit different
208. 00:08:03 than at least several of the last books
209. 00:08:07 that we've read that have been kind of broken up
210. 00:08:08 into these three different parts.
211. 00:08:11 And I felt like that was a little bit refreshing.
212. 00:08:14 I was kinda surprised when I was going into part three
213. 00:08:17 'cause it felt like it was coming pretty early in the book.
214. 00:08:21 And I kinda had a thought when I got there,
215. 00:08:23 I hope this doesn't just become monotonous and repetitive
216. 00:08:27 and by the end, I just wish it was a lot shorter
217. 00:08:30 and I can't say I ever got to that point.
218. 00:08:32 So I feel like he took a chance with the format of this book
219. 00:08:36 but it paid off because the whole part three,
220. 00:08:39 he was able to hold my attention
221. 00:08:41 and I felt like the chapters kind of tied together well.
222. 00:08:45 - It's interesting to me that you think
223. 00:08:47 that part three is where all the nuggets were
224. 00:08:49 'cause I thought that was part two.
225. 00:08:52 - Sure.
226. 00:08:53 - This is total and this is gonna play right
227. 00:08:56 into the topic of the books.
228. 00:08:57 I feel like my background has set me up
229. 00:09:00 such that part two is probably where I feel like
230. 00:09:02 a lot of the gold is on this.
231. 00:09:05 There's a lot of gold in three
232. 00:09:06 but I felt like I got the most out of part two versus three.
233. 00:09:09 - Sure.
234. 00:09:10 - And yet you feel like part three is where most of it is
235. 00:09:14 unless I'm putting words in your mouth
236. 00:09:15 but that's what it sounds like.
237. 00:09:16 - I feel like part three is where most people
238. 00:09:19 who are going to read this are going
239. 00:09:21 to find the most value.
240. 00:09:23 I think the way part two is written,
241. 00:09:26 that's the one that appeals to me the most
242. 00:09:29 and I'm not surprised that it appealed to you the most either.
243. 00:09:32 - Sure, sure.
244. 00:09:33 - But we just came off of liminal thinking
245. 00:09:35 where basically it's like go find the other things.
246. 00:09:40 How to make willpower relevant,
247. 00:09:42 this is kind of high level stuff still
248. 00:09:45 and you can find individual things in here.
249. 00:09:48 I do have an action item or two from this section as well
250. 00:09:50 but I do think that part three is where you would,
251. 00:09:56 for lack of a better term, find the tactics,
252. 00:09:58 the more actionable stuff where you read
253. 00:10:00 through one of these chapters and you're like,
254. 00:10:02 oh, that's the one that I've been missing
255. 00:10:04 because a lot of this is talking about your environment
256. 00:10:09 and things that you can do to make an environment
257. 00:10:12 where you can be more productive and achieve your goals faster.
258. 00:10:16 I mean, it sounds kind of sleazy when you say it that way
259. 00:10:20 but he does a better job of saying it than that.
260. 00:10:24 It doesn't feel like snake oil salesman.
261. 00:10:28 That's one of the common complaints I hear
262. 00:10:32 about productivity books is like,
263. 00:10:34 oh, these are all just snake oil salesman
264. 00:10:36 and I understand why people feel that way.
265. 00:10:38 I didn't feel that way about this guy
266. 00:10:41 but everything leading into it,
267. 00:10:43 that's kind of what I was expecting.
268. 00:10:45 - Sure, sure.
269. 00:10:47 I really thought I was gonna get a book
270. 00:10:49 where it was gonna like sidestep the conversation
271. 00:10:52 around what is willpower and how does it work
272. 00:10:56 and here's why it doesn't work.
273. 00:10:59 I thought it was gonna be one of these
274. 00:11:01 total click bait titles scenarios
275. 00:11:03 and I don't feel like I got that.
276. 00:11:06 I don't feel like this was a bait and switch scenario.
277. 00:11:11 I feel like he lived up to the title of the book in this case.
278. 00:11:15 So it feels solid to me from a gut reaction
279. 00:11:19 at the very beginning of this.
280. 00:11:21 - It does and that's why I think it's important
281. 00:11:23 to have this conversation at the beginning
282. 00:11:25 because if you just look at this book,
283. 00:11:27 you're probably like, "Ah, no."
284. 00:11:32 - Yep, yep.
285. 00:11:34 Even here's a good indicator, all right?
286. 00:11:36 So this book was sitting on one of the in tables
287. 00:11:41 by our sectional in the living room
288. 00:11:44 of the apartment last night
289. 00:11:46 and my mother-in-law had just,
290. 00:11:48 I was gone last week doing a bunch of work on the house
291. 00:11:52 and our girls were down for what we affectionately called
292. 00:11:54 a G camp, grandma and grandpa camp for the week.
293. 00:11:57 Well, grandma brought them home yesterday
294. 00:11:59 and then my mother-in-law spent the night with us
295. 00:12:03 and she left this morning.
296. 00:12:04 Anyway, she saw this book on an in table in the living room.
297. 00:12:07 She's like, "Willpower doesn't work."
298. 00:12:09 Well, that's not true.
299. 00:12:10 Willpower does wonders.
300. 00:12:12 It's like, "Okay, this'll be a fun conversation."
301. 00:12:15 And started like, "Okay, why do you think that?"
302. 00:12:19 And just had a whole,
303. 00:12:21 it was about a 30-minute conversation there
304. 00:12:23 around a lot of her history
305. 00:12:25 in making big decisions, things like stopping, smoking
306. 00:12:30 and how it happened.
307. 00:12:31 She's like, "I totally used Willpower to stop smoking."
308. 00:12:34 It's like, "Okay, well, talk to me about
309. 00:12:36 "how you came to the decision to stop smoking."
310. 00:12:40 Well, she was dating now her husband
311. 00:12:43 and they decided they wanted to stop smoking together
312. 00:12:46 so they made a pact that whoever smoked a cigarette first
313. 00:12:48 had to buy a steak dinner for the other person.
314. 00:12:51 And that was the pact.
315. 00:12:52 I was like, "You totally changed your environment.
316. 00:12:54 "That wasn't Willpower.
317. 00:12:55 "You totally changed the circumstances
318. 00:12:57 "around the situation."
319. 00:12:59 And she just kind of looked at me like,
320. 00:13:00 "I suppose you're right."
321. 00:13:01 It's like any other examples that she gave me two or three more.
322. 00:13:04 It's like same thing every time.
323. 00:13:06 It was environment changing, not Willpower.
324. 00:13:09 And time it was done.
325. 00:13:10 She's like, "Oh, huh.
326. 00:13:12 "Okay, I guess maybe I could get on board with that,
327. 00:13:15 "but that's completely different
328. 00:13:15 "than what I've thought in the past."
329. 00:13:17 So this is a thing.
330. 00:13:19 It totally feels clickbaity,
331. 00:13:22 but whenever you start getting into it,
332. 00:13:23 which we'll do here,
333. 00:13:24 and it seems to stand just from what I can tell.
334. 00:13:28 - Yeah, that's a great place
335. 00:13:29 to jump into this first section, I think.
336. 00:13:32 So I have this broken up in the outline by parts.
337. 00:13:35 There's a lot of different chapters,
338. 00:13:36 but I don't want to go through each chapter individually.
339. 00:13:38 I just want to grab a couple key ideas
340. 00:13:40 from each of these parts.
341. 00:13:42 So part one is your environment shapes you.
342. 00:13:45 And in the first chapter in part one,
343. 00:13:49 talks about there are two different worldviews.
344. 00:13:54 One is extreme individualism,
345. 00:13:56 which is I have free will,
346. 00:13:58 I make my own decisions, Willpower works, et cetera.
347. 00:14:02 And then there is complete determinism
348. 00:14:04 where everything is decided ahead of time,
349. 00:14:06 and I'm just a victim of my environment.
350. 00:14:10 And he basically says the truth is somewhere in the middle.
351. 00:14:14 So Willpower doesn't work
352. 00:14:15 is a little bit of a clickbaity title,
353. 00:14:17 because I don't think he's saying,
354. 00:14:19 it doesn't exist.
355. 00:14:21 But he is saying that it only accounts
356. 00:14:24 for part of the formula,
357. 00:14:25 and you have to recognize that your environment
358. 00:14:27 is going to contribute more to the other part.
359. 00:14:31 This particular point, by the way,
360. 00:14:33 this resonated with me because of my Christian background,
361. 00:14:38 there are two very different theological camps.
362. 00:14:42 One is Calvinism, where everything is decided ahead of time.
363. 00:14:47 And the other one is Armenianism, I believe.
364. 00:14:50 And so right away when he's like two worldviews,
365. 00:14:53 extreme individualism, complete determinism,
366. 00:14:54 like, oh yeah, of course, just like the church.
367. 00:14:57 - Great destination, yes.
368. 00:14:59 - Oh, tulip, got a look.
369. 00:15:03 And that's going deep into church history and theology background.
370. 00:15:10 - That's as far as we're gonna go.
371. 00:15:12 - That's deep.
372. 00:15:13 - Yeah, just saying that I have thought
373. 00:15:16 about this particular topic before,
374. 00:15:18 which I think kind of primed me for his argument
375. 00:15:21 at this point in the book.
376. 00:15:23 - I think it is interesting,
377. 00:15:25 like this whole concept of,
378. 00:15:29 the misnomer here of willpower doesn't even exist.
379. 00:15:33 Well, it does, but he's just not saying it's the end all,
380. 00:15:37 be all that the productivity self-help world says it is.
381. 00:15:40 That's essentially what he's getting at.
382. 00:15:42 At least that was my take on it.
383. 00:15:43 And in this particular, in the beginning,
384. 00:15:47 especially at this first part, individualism and determinism,
385. 00:15:50 which that's not the name of the chapter,
386. 00:15:52 but that's one of the topics within those first couple chapters.
387. 00:15:56 And whenever you start looking at it, like,
388. 00:16:00 oh, okay, well, if I admit that I can change my environment,
389. 00:16:05 if I have this individualism mindset here,
390. 00:16:09 if I recognize that I can change that,
391. 00:16:11 you still have to have some form of a very small piece
392. 00:16:15 of willpower to change that environment.
393. 00:16:18 Like if you're gonna say that your environment is
394. 00:16:21 the key indicator here and not willpower,
395. 00:16:24 then you still have to make the change.
396. 00:16:26 You've gotta have some form of motivation or willpower
397. 00:16:28 to make that change so that the change
398. 00:16:31 you're actually after can happen.
399. 00:16:33 So there has to be something at the beginning.
400. 00:16:35 That's the one piece here that I don't feel like
401. 00:16:36 was talked about a ton.
402. 00:16:38 Maybe I just missed it,
403. 00:16:39 but there does have to be at least a small piece of that
404. 00:16:42 at the beginning of the chain here.
405. 00:16:43 - You're right, he does get a little bit into that
406. 00:16:45 in chapter two.
407. 00:16:46 He talks about when you're in a bad environment,
408. 00:16:48 you only have two choices.
409. 00:16:49 You either conform to the bad environment,
410. 00:16:51 that's the default, or you battle your environment
411. 00:16:53 through willpower, which is not ideal.
412. 00:16:56 So the whole book is trying to enable you
413. 00:16:59 and give you the authority and the power
414. 00:17:01 to change your own environment
415. 00:17:04 instead of just continue to stay somewhere
416. 00:17:06 where it's doing you harm.
417. 00:17:09 At the end of chapter one,
418. 00:17:10 he talks about this coming of age moment,
419. 00:17:13 which I know this is gonna take some people off
420. 00:17:15 when they read this.
421. 00:17:17 He says, the coming of age moment,
422. 00:17:19 so when you become an adult, right,
423. 00:17:22 that is when you take responsibility
424. 00:17:24 for changing your own environment.
425. 00:17:26 So he's not mincing any words here.
426. 00:17:29 He's not beating around the bush.
427. 00:17:30 He's basically saying, look,
428. 00:17:32 if you're not willing to take responsibility
429. 00:17:35 for changing your own environment,
430. 00:17:36 we're basically done here.
431. 00:17:37 - Yes, yeah, which is probably good
432. 00:17:40 because the rest of the book,
433. 00:17:41 you're just gonna be mad at him if you don't.
434. 00:17:44 (laughs)
435. 00:17:45 Hit that piece at the very beginning here.
436. 00:17:47 So yes, take ownership,
437. 00:17:49 but we've talked about this before,
438. 00:17:50 self responsibility.
439. 00:17:51 - Yes.
440. 00:17:52 (laughs)
441. 00:17:53 - Please do this.
442. 00:17:54 Though at this point, I would imagine that
443. 00:17:57 if you haven't or you haven't at least acknowledged
444. 00:18:00 that that's a thing you should do,
445. 00:18:01 you're probably not listening to bookworm anymore
446. 00:18:03 at this point, so.
447. 00:18:04 - That's true.
448. 00:18:05 - There's that. (laughs)
449. 00:18:08 - Yeah, also with taking responsibility
450. 00:18:11 for your environment,
451. 00:18:12 this goes beyond your immediate environment.
452. 00:18:15 The second thing I jotted down for the outline here
453. 00:18:18 is this negative secondary connections.
454. 00:18:21 I found this idea pretty fascinating
455. 00:18:25 where if you have a friend who has a friend,
456. 00:18:30 who is getting into some stuff
457. 00:18:34 that you would consider bad,
458. 00:18:35 then it's going to have a negative impact on you
459. 00:18:38 even though you don't spend any time with that other person.
460. 00:18:40 Does that make sense?
461. 00:18:42 - Mm-hmm.
462. 00:18:43 - Yeah, this is the whole guilty by association concept.
463. 00:18:45 - Yeah, so he even mentions in this book
464. 00:18:47 that belief that I don't know where it originates from,
465. 00:18:50 but you are the average of the five people
466. 00:18:52 you spend the most time with,
467. 00:18:53 but actually you're the average of the people
468. 00:18:57 that the five people you spend the most time with
469. 00:18:59 spend the most time with.
470. 00:19:00 'Cause they're bringing in all of those influences
471. 00:19:02 into your circle of safety
472. 00:19:05 to borrow a Simon Sinek term
473. 00:19:08 and that's having an impact on you
474. 00:19:10 whether you realize it or not.
475. 00:19:12 So if you have a friend of a friend
476. 00:19:15 who is gaining weight,
477. 00:19:17 then you are more likely to gain weight.
478. 00:19:21 And he's got science and research
479. 00:19:24 and numbers to back that up,
480. 00:19:26 which is pretty crazy when you think about it.
481. 00:19:28 I don't want to admit that my well-being
482. 00:19:32 is at the whims of people
483. 00:19:34 who I don't even really see day to day.
484. 00:19:38 But I think it's important to recognize
485. 00:19:40 all of those little factors
486. 00:19:42 that do make an impact in your environment.
487. 00:19:44 - It's so true.
488. 00:19:46 And one of the ways,
489. 00:19:48 and this is something I've been working on a little bit here
490. 00:19:51 recently, the easy one here is fitness.
491. 00:19:53 This is always gonna be the easy example.
492. 00:19:56 It's more universal than many, many others.
493. 00:19:59 But I recently started playing basketball
494. 00:20:02 with a group of guys early on Thursday mornings when I can.
495. 00:20:06 And it's fun,
496. 00:20:09 but the guy who heads the whole thing up
497. 00:20:12 was a bit tentative in asking me
498. 00:20:15 because I'm the tech guy
499. 00:20:16 and he knows I grew up on a farm.
500. 00:20:18 And I don't usually come across
501. 00:20:21 as somebody who's super athletic.
502. 00:20:23 Like that's not something that people assume about me at all.
503. 00:20:27 But I made all star teams in basketball in high school.
504. 00:20:30 Like that was my sport.
505. 00:20:31 And so whenever I talked to,
506. 00:20:35 who was I talking to?
507. 00:20:36 I was talking to my wife
508. 00:20:37 and she was talking to his wife.
509. 00:20:39 And they found out that Joe used to play basketball
510. 00:20:42 in high school anyway, long story short.
511. 00:20:44 He asked because they're super, super competitive.
512. 00:20:47 Like a lot of the guys who play,
513. 00:20:50 you played in college
514. 00:20:51 and they played on the Varsity team in college and such.
515. 00:20:55 So they're good.
516. 00:20:56 And they're a bit younger than me even.
517. 00:20:58 So it's a challenge to keep up with these guys.
518. 00:21:01 And that has pushed me to very different levels
519. 00:21:06 in basketball than what I did even in high school.
520. 00:21:09 So I feel like I've upped that significantly
521. 00:21:12 and then the whole fitness realm
522. 00:21:14 I've now been doing things I haven't done in years.
523. 00:21:17 So that's a very positive thing.
524. 00:21:19 So this is definitely like that whole
525. 00:21:22 who you hang out with thing can change
526. 00:21:25 partially because like in this scenario,
527. 00:21:27 that group of guys, they're all dads.
528. 00:21:29 Everybody's dads.
529. 00:21:30 Everybody's got some form of a white collar job of some kind.
530. 00:21:34 So it's a very interesting group.
531. 00:21:38 But I feel like it's a group that,
532. 00:21:40 we can keep each other accountable
533. 00:21:41 and help each other grow that whole average concept there.
534. 00:21:44 So I don't know.
535. 00:21:45 It's something I've been working on lately.
536. 00:21:47 - Do you feel that they are better than you?
537. 00:21:50 - Yes.
538. 00:21:51 - Okay.
539. 00:21:52 - It's very obvious.
540. 00:21:53 - Okay.
541. 00:21:54 I just ask because that's one of the specific things
542. 00:21:56 he says to look for in part three
543. 00:21:58 is whatever skill you're trying to become better at,
544. 00:22:03 go compete with people who are way better than you are
545. 00:22:06 'cause you'll learn a lot just
546. 00:22:07 from being with them and watching their mannerisms
547. 00:22:10 'cause you don't wanna be embarrassed.
548. 00:22:12 So you'll figure out a way to keep up.
549. 00:22:15 Which I think is a pretty fascinating concept
550. 00:22:17 but I couldn't think of anything personally
551. 00:22:19 where like I would wanna put myself in that environment.
552. 00:22:21 Sounds like you already did that.
553. 00:22:22 That's pretty great.
554. 00:22:23 - Yeah.
555. 00:22:24 I've done it there and then,
556. 00:22:27 the thing that's been on the forefront of my mind
557. 00:22:29 is remodeling a house in the span of three months,
558. 00:22:33 tearing it down to studs and rafters
559. 00:22:34 and bringing it all the way back in three months.
560. 00:22:37 That's what I'm in the middle of right now
561. 00:22:39 which means I've been hanging around a lot of people
562. 00:22:42 who are DIYers and contractors and engineers and inspectors
563. 00:22:47 and permit people and all sorts of folks
564. 00:22:49 which is a very interesting crowd
565. 00:22:52 that I've now found myself neck deep in.
566. 00:22:55 So anyway, a lot has changed in Joe's world
567. 00:22:57 and in my environment.
568. 00:22:58 So this has all been very interesting to me
569. 00:23:02 given the stage that I'm in the middle of right now.
570. 00:23:04 - So if you can't find Joe, go look at a Home Depot.
571. 00:23:07 - That's not far off.
572. 00:23:08 Home Depot, Minards, the local home outlet.
573. 00:23:11 Like these are the places.
574. 00:23:14 This past week when I took the week off
575. 00:23:16 and worked on the house,
576. 00:23:17 I was in Home Depot or Minards at least once
577. 00:23:20 if not twice a day.
578. 00:23:21 So, so here it goes.
579. 00:23:24 - Nice.
580. 00:23:25 I don't have an action I'm associated with this
581. 00:23:27 'cause I think I've kind of already pruned my social circles
582. 00:23:32 as much as I feel comfortable
583. 00:23:33 but that would be a very obvious action item
584. 00:23:36 from reading this would be to take stock
585. 00:23:38 of the people who are speaking into your life
586. 00:23:39 and making sure that you're okay
587. 00:23:41 with the effect that they're having.
588. 00:23:43 If you're not, then figure out what connections you need
589. 00:23:47 to break off and that's never easy.
590. 00:23:49 It's never comfortable but I think he's making
591. 00:23:53 a very strong case here at the beginning
592. 00:23:54 that it is important especially if you want
593. 00:23:58 to change your situation
594. 00:23:59 which he's got a cool personal story of how he did that.
595. 00:24:02 He gets into a lot of the details at the very end
596. 00:24:05 in the conclusion part of the book
597. 00:24:07 but he kind of alludes to it over and over throughout here
598. 00:24:09 but there's been different tipping points in his life
599. 00:24:12 where he's been under a considerable amount
600. 00:24:15 of positive stress he calls it.
601. 00:24:17 He makes a difference between use stress and distress
602. 00:24:20 and using those as a launch pad to go up to a new level
603. 00:24:25 in his life in a specific area
604. 00:24:28 which kind of gets into the last part of this
605. 00:24:31 I wanted to talk about was the environments and stress
606. 00:24:35 'cause he says we need two different types of environments
607. 00:24:37 and I think we know this analytically
608. 00:24:40 because we've read flow by Mihali.
609. 00:24:44 - Yeah.
610. 00:24:45 - 'Cause that's all about being in a stressful environment
611. 00:24:48 but not one that is beyond your capability
612. 00:24:50 and then you're able to get a lot done
613. 00:24:53 and you're in the zone, you're flowing
614. 00:24:54 and then when you're done you step out of the zone
615. 00:24:57 and so there's high stress where you're functioning
616. 00:25:00 at peak capacity but then there is a place
617. 00:25:03 where you completely disconnect and that is high recovery
618. 00:25:06 and the high stress environment
619. 00:25:09 that's where the positive stress or negative stress
620. 00:25:11 comes in the positive stress that use stress
621. 00:25:13 that leads to growth but interestingly he says
622. 00:25:16 it only leads to growth if it's followed by
623. 00:25:18 a period of rest and in order to become a lead at anything
624. 00:25:21 you have to constantly switch between these
625. 00:25:23 highly stressful environments to highly restful environments.
626. 00:25:26 Reminds me a lot of the, "Life is Not a Marathon"
627. 00:25:29 it's a series of sprints.
628. 00:25:31 I don't think there's anything specific.
629. 00:25:33 I take away from this.
630. 00:25:35 I feel like I'm kind of already doing this
631. 00:25:36 with the built-in, you know,
632. 00:25:38 it's the badicals that we have at the Eponch Media
633. 00:25:40 every eighth week we take the week off.
634. 00:25:43 So reading this makes me thankful to have that cadence
635. 00:25:47 and I think maybe if you are typical productivity person
636. 00:25:52 who's reading all these books because you just wanna
637. 00:25:54 maximize your output, there's a good chance
638. 00:25:56 that this is a radical idea and maybe you should take a break
639. 00:26:00 and actually the way to go faster is to slow down.
640. 00:26:03 - This is something that I've been having a conversation
641. 00:26:06 with Becky quite a bit lately in that this whole peak
642. 00:26:11 moments concept, this peak, wasn't peak moments.
643. 00:26:15 - Peak experiences, that's actually in the next section
644. 00:26:18 he gets into those but this is kind of
645. 00:26:20 running the pump for that, yeah.
646. 00:26:22 - It is, it is.
647. 00:26:22 So when you have these big stressful times
648. 00:26:26 and then you need to rest from them,
649. 00:26:27 like I'm in the middle of one of these great
650. 00:26:29 big stressful times right now.
651. 00:26:30 And in the process of trying to maintain a day job
652. 00:26:34 and, you know, maintain some of my online stuff
653. 00:26:37 plus remodeling a house as fast as you possibly can.
654. 00:26:41 And trying to do all that stuff all at one time
655. 00:26:44 means that this is a period where there's a ton of learning
656. 00:26:47 happening in a very short amount of time
657. 00:26:50 and the goal is to make sure our kids are brought along
658. 00:26:54 for the ride which they've been loving it so far
659. 00:26:56 which is a good thing.
660. 00:26:57 So trying to go through all of that and then knowing,
661. 00:27:01 like we've talked about like the culmination of this period
662. 00:27:04 for us is moving into the house.
663. 00:27:07 And I've already said we're taking at least two weeks off
664. 00:27:10 from any work on the house after we move
665. 00:27:14 'cause that needs to be our break before we start doing,
666. 00:27:17 there's like a second wave of remodel we'll do
667. 00:27:19 after we move in.
668. 00:27:20 So we'll start in on that after that two weeks
669. 00:27:23 but that's not of course,
670. 00:27:24 that doesn't have to have the timeframe that this one does.
671. 00:27:27 But we're in the middle of one of those right now
672. 00:27:29 and like, okay, I wanna learn as much from this
673. 00:27:31 as I possibly can.
674. 00:27:33 I've met a ton of people in this process
675. 00:27:35 some of which I hope to become good friends with
676. 00:27:37 because they are way better at things than I am
677. 00:27:40 and I would love to learn from them.
678. 00:27:42 So there's a lot of that going on
679. 00:27:44 but all this to say, environment for Joe
680. 00:27:46 is changing very rapidly.
681. 00:27:48 So there you go.
682. 00:27:49 - Sure.
683. 00:27:50 Well, that's a good place to get into the second part
684. 00:27:53 which is how to make willpower relevant.
685. 00:27:56 And one of the things that I jatted down here,
686. 00:27:57 I wanna talk about was this peak state
687. 00:27:59 and this disconnection
688. 00:28:01 because here he gets into a little bit more specifics
689. 00:28:04 about these peak experiences he calls them
690. 00:28:08 which are rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving,
691. 00:28:11 exhilarating, elevating experiences
692. 00:28:13 that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality
693. 00:28:16 are even mystical and magical
694. 00:28:18 in their effect upon the experimenter.
695. 00:28:21 They are essential to becoming a self-actualized person
696. 00:28:25 and they are most likely to occur
697. 00:28:27 in what he calls an enriched environment,
698. 00:28:32 an enriched environment can be either one
699. 00:28:35 where you are hyper-connected
700. 00:28:37 or one where you are hyper-disconnected.
701. 00:28:40 He uses the story of the person who is doing marketing
702. 00:28:44 and when she's in Denver, she's full go
703. 00:28:48 and then when she's there half of the month
704. 00:28:50 and then the other place I forget
705. 00:28:53 where she originates from maybe Southern California
706. 00:28:55 or something the other half of the month
707. 00:28:57 and that's just kinda like a couple hours a day
708. 00:29:00 and it's pretty chill
709. 00:29:00 and she's having lunch with people and networking
710. 00:29:04 and stuff like that but when she's in Denver
711. 00:29:06 she's focused on the project and doing the work
712. 00:29:10 and that cadence actually sounds pretty cool to me.
713. 00:29:13 I'm not sure I have the ability to do that sort of thing.
714. 00:29:18 I like the fact that they're in different locations,
715. 00:29:20 different spots.
716. 00:29:21 I feel like that's an easy way to do this
717. 00:29:24 to force yourself into a new state and compartmentalize
718. 00:29:28 but for most people that's not an option
719. 00:29:31 especially when things get shut down
720. 00:29:33 and now you have to work from home, school from home,
721. 00:29:37 everything from home, right?
722. 00:29:39 Everything becomes blended and that's not great
723. 00:29:42 but one of the other ways that you can kinda separate
724. 00:29:45 these things is to disconnect completely.
725. 00:29:50 So he says to get into a peak state
726. 00:29:53 you have to be able to disconnect
727. 00:29:55 and I immediately thought of my personal retreat
728. 00:29:58 thing that I do every three months.
729. 00:30:01 It made me thankful for that process
730. 00:30:04 and I've been doing it now for several years
731. 00:30:07 so Rachel's on board and she supports it.
732. 00:30:10 I'm not sure it would have lasted very long
733. 00:30:12 if I didn't have my wife's support for that
734. 00:30:14 and she does the same sort of thing
735. 00:30:17 but I don't know what did you think
736. 00:30:19 when you were reading this section
737. 00:30:21 on like peak state and disconnecting.
738. 00:30:24 What did this mean to you and is there anything
739. 00:30:26 that you're hoping to do about this in the future?
740. 00:30:30 I know things are a little bit crazy right now
741. 00:30:32 in the apartment working on the house,
742. 00:30:34 all that kind of stuff but like, I don't know.
743. 00:30:36 Is there any sort of process for this
744. 00:30:39 you're looking to implement?
745. 00:30:41 - Yeah and it's been very intentional on my part.
746. 00:30:44 So and I started doing this even before
747. 00:30:48 we picked up this book to go through it
748. 00:30:51 but at night and this is on a day to day basis.
749. 00:30:55 This isn't a, it's not like a personal retreat
750. 00:30:58 that's happening on a recurring month to month
751. 00:31:01 or quarterly basis, it's a daily thing
752. 00:31:04 and what I've been doing is at night
753. 00:31:08 when we're done working on the house,
754. 00:31:11 it's a five acre property with about two acres of woods
755. 00:31:13 on the back, it has a bunch of trails cut through it.
756. 00:31:16 The previous owner had a bunch of these trails
757. 00:31:18 and there's a big open prairie that we don't own it
758. 00:31:20 but there's a big prairie on the backside of it
759. 00:31:23 that our property butts up to.
760. 00:31:25 So what I've been doing is when I'm done working
761. 00:31:28 on the house at night, everybody is packed up,
762. 00:31:31 houses locked up, we're ready to leave
763. 00:31:33 and go back to the apartment.
764. 00:31:35 I go for walks out on those trails by myself
765. 00:31:38 and it's usually about a 15, 20 minute walk that I go on
766. 00:31:42 and it gives me a chance to just settle down
767. 00:31:46 from the craziness of trying to hustle all day long.
768. 00:31:50 That's what I've been doing now.
769. 00:31:51 Now of course I'm not there at that time of night
770. 00:31:53 every night of the week but when I am,
771. 00:31:56 that's what I'm doing.
772. 00:31:57 I have to admit, I'm super excited to get moved
773. 00:32:00 into the house because I wanna make that a morning
774. 00:32:02 and evening thing. - Sure.
775. 00:32:04 - Obviously if I live there, it's very easy to walk out
776. 00:32:06 the back door and go walk through the woods
777. 00:32:08 and that's what I would love to do.
778. 00:32:11 The question mark there is what are you doing the winter?
779. 00:32:15 You live up north where we do.
780. 00:32:17 - So when you get a foot of snow,
781. 00:32:21 what's gonna happen out on those trails?
782. 00:32:24 I don't know, maybe I'll buy a set of snow shoes
783. 00:32:25 and keep doing it. - Put on your yak tracks
784. 00:32:27 and you go for a run anyways.
785. 00:32:30 - Exactly, exactly, we'll do something.
786. 00:32:32 So I intend to make that a daily routine.
787. 00:32:36 I'm not able to do that every single day right now,
788. 00:32:40 especially in the mornings 'cause I'm not there.
789. 00:32:42 So whenever we get moved, that's definitely on the goal list
790. 00:32:46 of altering Joe's daily environment and routines for sure.
791. 00:32:51 - Sweet, I like that example.
792. 00:32:54 I think that's great.
793. 00:32:55 I've been thinking through what I could do
794. 00:32:58 on a regular basis to split these up for myself too
795. 00:33:02 and nothing really comes to mind.
796. 00:33:05 Although going for a walk was one of the first things
797. 00:33:07 that I thought of.
798. 00:33:08 I remember reading, I think it was daily rituals.
799. 00:33:13 Though we didn't cover it for a book where I mean,
800. 00:33:15 it was a gap book, a whole bunch of couple page bios
801. 00:33:18 of really famous people and kind of their daily routines.
802. 00:33:21 Surprising number of them spent the morning creating
803. 00:33:24 and then the afternoons walking around their property.
804. 00:33:27 - Yeah, it's so true.
805. 00:33:30 - Also a lot of them had some sort of meditation
806. 00:33:36 prayer journaling habit which in this particular chapter
807. 00:33:39 he talks about all three of those going together.
808. 00:33:41 I thought that was a kind of cool description.
809. 00:33:43 I never really thought about the overlap
810. 00:33:45 of all three of those.
811. 00:33:47 Although as soon as I did, it made perfect sense.
812. 00:33:50 (laughs)
813. 00:33:51 - Yes.
814. 00:33:52 It's like, oh wait, I suppose those would work together.
815. 00:33:55 - Exactly.
816. 00:33:56 The other thing from this chapter though
817. 00:33:58 that I really liked was the weekly planning session.
818. 00:34:02 He's got several questions that I think are just kind of
819. 00:34:06 get you thinking type questions.
820. 00:34:07 I'm not sure they're meant to be replicated.
821. 00:34:10 But they were good, I thought.
822. 00:34:12 How did the previous week go?
823. 00:34:14 What were my wins?
824. 00:34:14 What could have gone better?
825. 00:34:15 Any significant moments?
826. 00:34:17 What are my plans for next week?
827. 00:34:19 How am I gonna take what I've learned into next week?
828. 00:34:22 What are my bigger picture goals?
829. 00:34:23 What are my proximal goals?
830. 00:34:25 What specific to do is do I have to finish this week?
831. 00:34:27 I kind of reworded those into my own language
832. 00:34:30 when I jotted them down into my my node file here.
833. 00:34:33 But that's one of the things I look at
834. 00:34:36 when people give you like a series of questions.
835. 00:34:39 I feel that's a really great place to locate
836. 00:34:42 whether they're a voice worth listening to.
837. 00:34:44 If they give you good questions,
838. 00:34:47 then I feel like they are more thoughtful
839. 00:34:51 and I'm more likely to align with their perspective.
840. 00:34:56 They've got more credibility in my head
841. 00:34:59 if they have gotten me to ask a good question.
842. 00:35:02 However, frequently, most of the questions
843. 00:35:06 I see people pose because I've been around this space
844. 00:35:11 long enough and I've seen enough good questions.
845. 00:35:14 You can kind of tell someone's just making some stuff up
846. 00:35:17 and throwing them on a page.
847. 00:35:19 I can sniff that out from a mile away.
848. 00:35:21 These I thought were good though.
849. 00:35:22 - Yeah, he spent some time with these.
850. 00:35:24 I will say, I do have an action item from this section though.
851. 00:35:27 It's the, he's got the weekly planning sessions.
852. 00:35:30 I don't know that I'm gonna adopt his questions,
853. 00:35:32 but I've been doing journaling at night,
854. 00:35:35 which is if you follow the whole timeframe here,
855. 00:35:38 whenever I do that walk at night through the woods,
856. 00:35:41 when I get back to the apartment,
857. 00:35:43 I am in dire need of a shower.
858. 00:35:45 You don't wanna be anywhere near me
859. 00:35:46 whenever I get to that point.
860. 00:35:48 Usually covered in plaster dust and such,
861. 00:35:50 but whenever I get back, I'll take a shower
862. 00:35:53 and then I do my best to grab the journal
863. 00:35:55 and just write down how I feel the day went.
864. 00:35:58 And that can take a lot of different forms,
865. 00:36:01 but it's been extremely helpful for me
866. 00:36:03 to just process my thoughts as far as what's going on.
867. 00:36:07 But he did talk about journaling in the morning as well,
868. 00:36:11 which is something that I hadn't really processed much.
869. 00:36:15 So that's something that I wanna try to take on
870. 00:36:18 as having like a morning journaling routine,
871. 00:36:21 just kind of reminiscent of morning pages.
872. 00:36:24 But I don't think it's gonna be anywhere near that extensive
873. 00:36:29 'cause that's like a 45 minute to an hour long commitment,
874. 00:36:31 at least for me.
875. 00:36:32 Some people say they can do it in 15 minutes
876. 00:36:34 and I still can't figure out how you do that.
877. 00:36:36 But ain't nobody got time for that?
878. 00:36:37 No, so if I can figure out like a five,
879. 00:36:40 maybe 10 minute morning journaling routine of sorts,
880. 00:36:45 I think that would be helpful.
881. 00:36:46 So that's one of the action items I have from this section.
882. 00:36:49 Well, I have a thing, an action item here
883. 00:36:52 to create a weekly planning template.
884. 00:36:54 I don't know if it's gonna specifically use these questions,
885. 00:36:57 but I do like these questions.
886. 00:36:59 And I think I wanna ask a couple of these
887. 00:37:01 as I'm thinking about the week ahead.
888. 00:37:05 I also think that Obsidian is a great place to do that,
889. 00:37:09 which is why I think it might work for me
890. 00:37:12 because I can just kind of add it on
891. 00:37:14 to my current journaling workflow,
892. 00:37:17 which is basically built around daily questions.
893. 00:37:21 And then I have a separate section on my daily notes
894. 00:37:24 for journal entries.
895. 00:37:25 So when there's a significant event,
896. 00:37:27 I'll jot about it and then I'll hashtag journal slash entries.
897. 00:37:30 So it applies both the journal and the entry tags.
898. 00:37:32 And then there's a gratitude section at the bottom.
899. 00:37:34 I don't fill those two sections out every day.
900. 00:37:36 I do do the daily questions every day.
901. 00:37:38 One of the things that makes me,
902. 00:37:41 or makes this stick for me,
903. 00:37:43 because it's not something that you just do
904. 00:37:45 at the end of the day.
905. 00:37:46 If I just put off the journaling until the end of the day,
906. 00:37:49 I'll forget about the significant event.
907. 00:37:51 So I gotta capture it right after it happens.
908. 00:37:54 So one of the things that I've done is I have installed
909. 00:37:57 the daily notes core plugin,
910. 00:37:59 and then there's an option in there
911. 00:38:00 to open it to today's daily note.
912. 00:38:02 So I have that toggled on.
913. 00:38:04 And those, if you set up your vault in your iCloud folder,
914. 00:38:07 those plugin preferences sync as well.
915. 00:38:10 So now when I open up Obsidian on the Mac,
916. 00:38:13 it takes me to the daily note for open it on the iOS device,
917. 00:38:17 my iPhone, it takes me to that daily note.
918. 00:38:20 And now I can just put in the scores for the daily questions
919. 00:38:23 or jot down on journal entry or gratitude whenever
920. 00:38:26 I'm thinking about it because it's all on that one note.
921. 00:38:31 I'm ashamed to say I just discovered
922. 00:38:33 that workflow, but I think that's going to be very effective
923. 00:38:37 for me.
924. 00:38:38 And I think the weekly planning can fit into there nicely.
925. 00:38:42 Just need to figure out how I'm gonna do that specifically.
926. 00:38:46 So the action item is to create a weekly planning template
927. 00:38:49 and I'd need to figure out what exactly it's gonna do,
928. 00:38:53 but I'm 99% sure it's gonna take place
929. 00:38:56 in Obsidian somewhere.
930. 00:38:57 - Makes sense.
931. 00:38:58 I would expect absolutely nothing less from you, Mike.
932. 00:39:01 - My setup is in the Trustee Bullet Journal, so.
933. 00:39:06 There you go.
934. 00:39:08 (laughs)
935. 00:39:09 - Trustee Bullet Journal.
936. 00:39:12 - Yep, good old pen and paper.
937. 00:39:14 - The next thing I wanna talk about from this section is,
938. 00:39:18 I just jotted it down as Newton's third law,
939. 00:39:21 but this is from chapter six where he talks about
940. 00:39:26 that everything in your life is energy.
941. 00:39:27 And when you make a decision,
942. 00:39:29 it has an equal and opposite reaction.
943. 00:39:31 I think this pertains to even something
944. 00:39:35 like you just mentioned,
945. 00:39:36 the pen and paper bullet journal stuff.
946. 00:39:39 So like you decide, "Hey, I'm gonna do this."
947. 00:39:41 There's a whole bunch of other stuff
948. 00:39:43 that is gonna happen like the fact
949. 00:39:45 that you do a lot of stuff online
950. 00:39:47 and you have to reconcile that, right?
951. 00:39:48 But those are forces that are gonna be competing against
952. 00:39:52 this new behavior that you're trying to create.
953. 00:39:54 You can't just say, "Oh, well, this thing looks fun.
954. 00:39:56 "I'm going to try it."
955. 00:39:58 Because the minute that you decide to try it,
956. 00:40:00 there is going to be something on the other side
957. 00:40:02 that is trying to pull you back to the level you were at
958. 00:40:06 or the way you were doing things.
959. 00:40:09 You're not just going to stumble into a better future.
960. 00:40:14 And I think it's valuable to recognize
961. 00:40:17 that there is, every time we make a decision
962. 00:40:22 for an action item, whether we succeed with it or not,
963. 00:40:25 the moment that we say, "I have this action item,"
964. 00:40:28 there is now a competing force in the universe
965. 00:40:31 that is trying to make us fail at that action item.
966. 00:40:35 So recognizing that there's gonna be some resistance
967. 00:40:37 that you need to overcome, in some cases,
968. 00:40:39 that's all that's required.
969. 00:40:41 In other cases, that's just the first step.
970. 00:40:43 - I did a coaching call with a gentleman here
971. 00:40:48 a few weeks ago and he was attempting to do
972. 00:40:53 a certain workflow, a certain system.
973. 00:40:55 I'm not gonna go into the details of that
974. 00:40:57 'cause we'll be here way too long.
975. 00:40:58 But he was trying to implement a system.
976. 00:41:01 And that system, in his mind, dictated the use
977. 00:41:06 of a certain piece of software.
978. 00:41:09 He had never worked with that piece of software before.
979. 00:41:12 - Oh boy.
980. 00:41:14 - So I told him, "Do not do this."
981. 00:41:16 This is a problem, you are going to fail at this.
982. 00:41:20 I don't wanna sugarcoat this in any way
983. 00:41:23 if you attempt to learn that tool
984. 00:41:24 and you attempt to learn this system at the same time,
985. 00:41:28 almost guaranteed you will fail at this.
986. 00:41:30 And it will take you much, much longer
987. 00:41:32 to achieve what you're trying to achieve.
988. 00:41:36 Instead, what you need to do is whenever you have
989. 00:41:39 something pushing on you, you need to adopt something.
990. 00:41:43 Trying to go a different direction
991. 00:41:45 and take on a different system or a different tool
992. 00:41:48 at the same time is absolutely going to cause you problems.
993. 00:41:51 You're better off going to a known tool
994. 00:41:52 which is why in your case, Obsidian, obviously,
995. 00:41:56 like you should, right?
996. 00:41:57 That is by far the answer you should have to that.
997. 00:42:01 If you're going to adopt a new thing
998. 00:42:04 that can easily be transformed into just raw text,
999. 00:42:07 in your case, it should be an Obsidian.
1000. 00:42:10 In my case, almost every single time
1001. 00:42:12 that's in a pen and paper notebook.
1002. 00:42:14 So of course, it should be there 'cause I know it
1003. 00:42:16 and it's not gonna create problems for me down the road.
1004. 00:42:19 So there you go.
1005. 00:42:21 That's my take on Newtons third law.
1006. 00:42:23 - Cool.
1007. 00:42:25 I do think there's a little bit more complexity
1008. 00:42:30 than we just made it sound like with this.
1009. 00:42:36 - Very much so.
1010. 00:42:37 - And you do have to recognize
1011. 00:42:39 like with the app stuff specifically,
1012. 00:42:41 this stuff kind of grinds my gears
1013. 00:42:43 because people often assume that a different app
1014. 00:42:47 is going to solve their problem.
1015. 00:42:49 I stumbled upon a clip.
1016. 00:42:51 I think Matt Burchler shared it on Twitter
1017. 00:42:54 of a podcast episode with Casey Newton
1018. 00:42:56 describing the task manager that he was gonna use.
1019. 00:43:01 And he's like, I just picked the prettiest one
1020. 00:43:04 because I know next year I'm gonna want to switch
1021. 00:43:06 to something else anyways.
1022. 00:43:07 And they've all got the same features at this point.
1023. 00:43:09 (laughing)
1024. 00:43:12 - That's brilliant.
1025. 00:43:13 - Yeah.
1026. 00:43:14 - It's kind of true though.
1027. 00:43:15 - So I don't know.
1028. 00:43:17 There's an element of truth to that I think
1029. 00:43:19 where part of it is just if you enjoy the tools
1030. 00:43:23 that you're using, then it's easier to do your work.
1031. 00:43:27 But also there's the other side of that
1032. 00:43:29 which is if I have a system already
1033. 00:43:32 that allows me to do the work,
1034. 00:43:34 I should therefore not go see what else is new.
1035. 00:43:39 And I don't know that there's any clean place
1036. 00:43:43 to draw the line there.
1037. 00:43:45 Like especially with something like the bullet journal method
1038. 00:43:48 that you do because you do so much other stuff
1039. 00:43:51 in the tech space.
1040. 00:43:55 I mean, are you just saying like,
1041. 00:43:59 I'm never going back to digital task management.
1042. 00:44:01 I mean, is that a stance you're willing to take right now?
1043. 00:44:04 - It's messy, intentionally.
1044. 00:44:08 - Yeah.
1045. 00:44:09 - And people get really confused
1046. 00:44:12 and all been out of shape over this.
1047. 00:44:14 And I totally get it, I do, but for me,
1048. 00:44:18 what I have found is if I keep track of my day-to-day,
1049. 00:44:23 week-to-week, like ritual-based stuff in the bullet journal
1050. 00:44:28 and keeping track of what is it I need to do today,
1051. 00:44:31 this week, this month, like that sort of thing.
1052. 00:44:34 We're not even this month really today and this week.
1053. 00:44:36 That's really where the bullet journal stops.
1054. 00:44:39 But whenever I have templated projects,
1055. 00:44:42 like this bookworm episode,
1056. 00:44:45 I have a whole series of, I think it's like 160 checkboxes
1057. 00:44:49 that I've got to go through from reading the book
1058. 00:44:52 to publishing the episode, which you do mostly,
1059. 00:44:57 but all the stuff that is on my side
1060. 00:44:59 that makes that happen, right?
1061. 00:45:00 So all of those are in a templated checklist,
1062. 00:45:03 but that's an obsidian.
1063. 00:45:05 And that's because I've been keeping,
1064. 00:45:08 I wrote some of this stuff down
1065. 00:45:10 just because I like having it on paper in front of me,
1066. 00:45:12 but a lot of times I'll capture some notes on paper
1067. 00:45:16 and then I transfer it into obsidian for book notes,
1068. 00:45:19 but a lot of times those book notes are in the text file
1069. 00:45:22 that I created for the bookworm episode,
1070. 00:45:24 which also contains that template.
1071. 00:45:26 So those tasks are kind of scattered
1072. 00:45:29 through some text files now.
1073. 00:45:33 And I was doing that with a mix of omni-focus and obsidian,
1074. 00:45:39 but I've kind of, I shouldn't say kind of,
1075. 00:45:41 I've migrated all that over to obsidian at this point
1076. 00:45:45 because it's easier to keep the tasks
1077. 00:45:47 and the notes in one place,
1078. 00:45:49 which is a bit backwards from what I've done in the past,
1079. 00:45:53 but it seems to work.
1080. 00:45:54 - Yeah.
1081. 00:45:55 - But at the same time, I also know I'm not using obsidian
1082. 00:45:58 anywhere near what you're doing either.
1083. 00:46:00 Like I'm not using it as a thinking tool at all.
1084. 00:46:03 So that's not on my radar to use it in that way,
1085. 00:46:07 but I don't know, seems to work well for me
1086. 00:46:10 to have things kind of broken up that way
1087. 00:46:12 with templated projects in obsidian,
1088. 00:46:14 but all of the other task management type stuff
1089. 00:46:17 goes in the bullet journal.
1090. 00:46:19 But I will say like we use for all the house remodel stuff
1091. 00:46:23 I've been using base camp with my wife.
1092. 00:46:25 So that's where we've been managing
1093. 00:46:27 all of the house project stuff.
1094. 00:46:30 All the stuff that's gotta be done before we move,
1095. 00:46:31 after we move, et cetera, et cetera.
1096. 00:46:34 So that's where that lives.
1097. 00:46:37 - Yeah, I think there's some inertia based off
1098. 00:46:41 of the choices that you have previously made,
1099. 00:46:45 but that doesn't necessarily indicate
1100. 00:46:47 whether a choice is good or bad.
1101. 00:46:49 I think this one's pretty whatever you feel like doing.
1102. 00:46:54 - Yeah.
1103. 00:46:55 - But when you're talking about creating new habits
1104. 00:46:58 or setting some goals for things that you want to achieve,
1105. 00:47:05 I think the completion of the activity,
1106. 00:47:09 if it's a positive habit or a positive goal
1107. 00:47:11 you're trying to achieve,
1108. 00:47:12 that's the good state and the bad state is,
1109. 00:47:14 well, I didn't do it.
1110. 00:47:16 And with those specifically,
1111. 00:47:18 that's where I see a lot of this
1112. 00:47:21 equal and opposite reaction stuff coming in.
1113. 00:47:24 You don't think about it that way.
1114. 00:47:26 When you decide I'm going to create a journaling habit
1115. 00:47:30 or a mindfulness meditation habit
1116. 00:47:32 or a habit of exercising every day,
1117. 00:47:35 that someone on the other end is like,
1118. 00:47:37 oh, really?
1119. 00:47:38 Well, we'll see about that.
1120. 00:47:40 Not if I have anything to say about it,
1121. 00:47:42 but that's really what happens.
1122. 00:47:44 - It's true.
1123. 00:47:46 There's always somebody on the other side trying to stop.
1124. 00:47:48 Like even if you, and this happens,
1125. 00:47:51 if you make a statement that you're going to start a habit
1126. 00:47:56 or you're going to release a product,
1127. 00:48:00 what's one of the first things you hear?
1128. 00:48:03 Oh, that's really hard.
1129. 00:48:05 Oh, that takes a lot of work.
1130. 00:48:06 - Yes, of course.
1131. 00:48:07 - Oh, that's a difficult task to take on.
1132. 00:48:08 Why is, oh, that's a big project.
1133. 00:48:11 These are the comments you'll hear almost immediately,
1134. 00:48:14 which is a hint in the exact opposite direction
1135. 00:48:18 of where you want to go.
1136. 00:48:20 So I've been talking to a bank of these subcontractors,
1137. 00:48:25 and it's interesting how many of them are entrepreneurs.
1138. 00:48:29 Like they started that business, right?
1139. 00:48:31 And as with a lot of entrepreneurs,
1140. 00:48:35 like they always have people telling them what will
1141. 00:48:38 and won't work, or what type of business model to take on.
1142. 00:48:42 And just for fun, I was talking to my drywall guy,
1143. 00:48:47 'cause he's got to come in in like five, six weeks.
1144. 00:48:51 I'm not ready for him now, but he,
1145. 00:48:53 I was talking to him about how he got his business going
1146. 00:48:56 and how he got it up and running and stuff,
1147. 00:48:58 and was talking to him about like how many people
1148. 00:49:02 will tell you stuff doesn't work when you want to make it work.
1149. 00:49:04 And he's like, oh yeah, I just decided early on
1150. 00:49:07 that whenever someone tells me that something won't work
1151. 00:49:09 or it's going to be too hard,
1152. 00:49:10 like I just won't talk to them anymore.
1153. 00:49:12 (laughing)
1154. 00:49:14 Okay, sure, that'll work.
1155. 00:49:17 So yes, it's something that does exist.
1156. 00:49:19 It's something that, you know, I think it can work
1157. 00:49:23 is whenever you have these negative influences,
1158. 00:49:26 like when people are pushing back against you,
1159. 00:49:28 this equal and opposite energy that's happening
1160. 00:49:33 whenever you try to make a decision,
1161. 00:49:36 you need to counteract it or ignore it in this case
1162. 00:49:39 as these guys are doing.
1163. 00:49:40 Yeah, and that kind of leads into the next point
1164. 00:49:43 on the outline, which is what if it's not equal and opposite?
1165. 00:49:48 What do you do if you're in an environment
1166. 00:49:51 where you can't control the forces at play there?
1167. 00:49:56 And immediately I thought of obviously an office environment
1168. 00:49:59 where you've got a boss or a manager
1169. 00:50:02 who is dictating the way that you do things,
1170. 00:50:06 but that's not the only one that comes to mind.
1171. 00:50:11 I think that process is probably the same
1172. 00:50:15 for all of these.
1173. 00:50:18 The advice that he gives in this last chapter, chapter eight,
1174. 00:50:22 I feel is pretty brilliant if you sit and think about it
1175. 00:50:26 for a little while, because the chapter before this
1176. 00:50:30 is talking about changing your default options.
1177. 00:50:34 Okay, so that's great when you have the ability
1178. 00:50:37 to set your own course and make intentional choices
1179. 00:50:40 and change the default options,
1180. 00:50:42 but what if you can't control the options
1181. 00:50:45 that are presented to you?
1182. 00:50:47 In that case, he advises that you create automated responses
1183. 00:50:51 for situations where you know you will be triggered.
1184. 00:50:54 Have any examples of this that you'd be willing to share?
1185. 00:50:57 (laughing)
1186. 00:50:59 Like default answers whenever something could go wrong.
1187. 00:51:02 Like, okay, so here's one.
1188. 00:51:04 Just a situation where you know you're gonna get triggered.
1189. 00:51:08 Sure.
1190. 00:51:09 One thing that really, really, really bugs me
1191. 00:51:12 is whenever I have people point out things
1192. 00:51:14 they don't like about a technical production
1193. 00:51:17 that they aren't willing to help with.
1194. 00:51:22 So I work at a church, we operate off of a volunteer base,
1195. 00:51:26 right, this is fairly standard practice,
1196. 00:51:28 and I regularly need people to volunteer for things
1197. 00:51:33 like on a weekly basis, I need volunteers.
1198. 00:51:36 And I have a pretty good base of folks
1199. 00:51:38 who are willing to help out, but it's the folks
1200. 00:51:41 outside of that team that like to offer suggestions
1201. 00:51:47 unsolicited and it really, really bugs me.
1202. 00:51:52 Like, I don't know why that is, but whenever people
1203. 00:51:55 really, really want to tell me how things
1204. 00:51:58 are not going well, but they don't want any part
1205. 00:52:02 in helping solve the problem.
1206. 00:52:06 That's when I start to have issues.
1207. 00:52:09 So this has been a while back now, I just decided like,
1208. 00:52:13 okay, every time somebody comes up to me
1209. 00:52:15 and they have an issue with a technical production,
1210. 00:52:17 'cause obviously I'm the one in charge
1211. 00:52:19 of how that all goes down, anytime I get those complaints,
1212. 00:52:23 my first response is, I hear you,
1213. 00:52:26 would you be willing to help us solve it?
1214. 00:52:29 And that is my default response.
1215. 00:52:32 And sometimes, as in once, I've had somebody say,
1216. 00:52:35 yeah, I could help.
1217. 00:52:37 And every other time it's been, you know,
1218. 00:52:40 I don't know that I'm gonna be able to help you with that.
1219. 00:52:44 Oh, okay, all right.
1220. 00:52:45 Well, if you change your mind, please let me know
1221. 00:52:47 if you'd be willing to help us make this production better.
1222. 00:52:50 Like, I'm all ears if you're willing to help.
1223. 00:52:52 - I like that.
1224. 00:52:53 - Which I'm not saying it, but what I'm essentially saying is,
1225. 00:52:57 I'm not listening to a word you say
1226. 00:52:58 unless you're willing to help me fix it.
1227. 00:53:00 That's really what I'm saying, but that's,
1228. 00:53:02 that's the hard part about it, right?
1229. 00:53:06 So that's kind of one of my default responses.
1230. 00:53:08 I don't know if that's the right way
1231. 00:53:10 to handle that situation, but for whatever reason,
1232. 00:53:12 that whole scenario is one that really trips my trigger.
1233. 00:53:16 - I like that a lot.
1234. 00:53:17 You know, as you're talking about that,
1235. 00:53:18 I'm trying to think of a way to summarize that stance.
1236. 00:53:22 I don't know if it's correct or not either,
1237. 00:53:24 but I tend to agree with your approach to this,
1238. 00:53:28 which is if you aren't willing to commit,
1239. 00:53:32 then I don't want the feedback.
1240. 00:53:34 - Yes, yes, which again, I don't know
1241. 00:53:36 if that's the right stance to take in that scenario.
1242. 00:53:40 It's just that people really, really, really like to complain.
1243. 00:53:45 - Yeah.
1244. 00:53:46 - And I don't want to just listen to complaints
1245. 00:53:49 unless you're willing to do something about it.
1246. 00:53:52 So again, I don't know if that's the right way to,
1247. 00:53:54 again, it's a church, right?
1248. 00:53:56 So I don't know, that's what I've chosen to do.
1249. 00:53:59 I haven't had anybody really, really get upset with me
1250. 00:54:01 over that.
1251. 00:54:02 - Yep.
1252. 00:54:03 - Yes, yet.
1253. 00:54:04 - Yeah, I don't know.
1254. 00:54:06 I think that feels fair to me.
1255. 00:54:09 I think it's a good filter because I think a lot of people
1256. 00:54:13 and myself included will tend to offer feedback
1257. 00:54:18 when it's not asked for with maybe the intention,
1258. 00:54:26 at least we tell ourselves,
1259. 00:54:27 the intention of helping the person solve the problem
1260. 00:54:31 that we so clearly see.
1261. 00:54:33 But often, even if we do bring attention
1262. 00:54:36 to a legitimate problem, it's really not helping
1263. 00:54:39 unless we are willing to be part of the solution.
1264. 00:54:42 So.
1265. 00:54:43 - Yes.
1266. 00:54:44 - My gut says that's a pretty decent rule of thumb,
1267. 00:54:47 but I don't know, I don't know, for sure.
1268. 00:54:50 - I don't know.
1269. 00:54:51 I know that I've recommended that process
1270. 00:54:53 to a couple other volunteer team leaders.
1271. 00:54:58 And I know a couple other folks have adopted that.
1272. 00:55:00 And actually in their particular case,
1273. 00:55:02 they've gained a lot more volunteers that way.
1274. 00:55:04 So I think it does help to some degree,
1275. 00:55:08 but because the teams that I'm in control of
1276. 00:55:12 are fairly skilled positions,
1277. 00:55:15 I think I don't get as many people willing to actually help.
1278. 00:55:17 - Yeah, I think that's probably true too.
1279. 00:55:20 The example that comes to mind for me
1280. 00:55:23 is in person meetings.
1281. 00:55:28 I can't stand a poorly organized in person meeting.
1282. 00:55:34 And I'm kind of fortunate that for the last year and a half,
1283. 00:55:37 a lot of the local meetings have been via Zoom.
1284. 00:55:42 And we're kind of in this place now
1285. 00:55:46 where people are pushing to meet back in person.
1286. 00:55:50 And the way that I am embracing this,
1287. 00:55:53 what to do in an environment you can't control
1288. 00:55:56 is to drag my feet and basically create
1289. 00:56:02 a scenario where I can still join virtually
1290. 00:56:07 to hide my annoyance with the way things are run.
1291. 00:56:12 - Sure.
1292. 00:56:14 - That sounds terrible.
1293. 00:56:15 I need to not show my displeasure for things,
1294. 00:56:18 but there's some meetings that I'm thinking of specifically
1295. 00:56:22 that they're scheduled for an hour
1296. 00:56:23 and they take two hours every single time.
1297. 00:56:25 And it ends up being a monologue.
1298. 00:56:28 And I'm very, very glad that they're poorly run meetings
1299. 00:56:32 that I can attend virtually with everybody
1300. 00:56:34 has their cameras off.
1301. 00:56:35 'Cause then I just turned my camera off too
1302. 00:56:36 and no one can see me roll in my eyes.
1303. 00:56:39 - Yeah.
1304. 00:56:40 (laughs)
1305. 00:56:40 I remember early on in the pandemic,
1306. 00:56:44 when we were shut down,
1307. 00:56:46 there was none of our staff was at the building,
1308. 00:56:49 but I was in control of the live streams, right?
1309. 00:56:51 So I was here at the building,
1310. 00:56:53 which is where I'm at currently.
1311. 00:56:54 So I was at work, but no one else was.
1312. 00:56:57 So it's kind of weird, but they would want to do
1313. 00:57:00 these Zoom calls.
1314. 00:57:00 Well, you know, the rule of thumb when you're doing a Zoom call
1315. 00:57:03 is like you cut your meeting in half
1316. 00:57:05 of what it would have been in person, if not more.
1317. 00:57:07 Like that's generally what they say,
1318. 00:57:08 'cause it doesn't have all the interactions.
1319. 00:57:12 Over Zoom is what you would have in person.
1320. 00:57:15 But it seems like people who aren't used to that
1321. 00:57:17 make them much longer.
1322. 00:57:19 - Yeah.
1323. 00:57:20 - Just shoot me now.
1324. 00:57:21 I am so grateful for being able to turn things off
1325. 00:57:23 'cause I always throw the AirPods in.
1326. 00:57:25 I'm gonna keep working on my thing.
1327. 00:57:26 I'll stay within about 50 feet of my computer
1328. 00:57:28 and I'll be fine.
1329. 00:57:31 Or I'll join Zoom for my phone and carry it around with me.
1330. 00:57:33 Like that's what I'm gonna do.
1331. 00:57:35 - Yeah.
1332. 00:57:36 - 'Cause I don't want people to see that I'm not paying
1333. 00:57:38 any attention to what they're doing,
1334. 00:57:39 but I still need to be on the call.
1335. 00:57:42 - It's true.
1336. 00:57:43 And in the past, I think I would have
1337. 00:57:47 tried to change the meeting culture.
1338. 00:57:51 And then I still try to push things in the right direction
1339. 00:57:54 when I feel like I have an opportunity to do so.
1340. 00:57:58 But I also know that for the most part,
1341. 00:58:02 my advice is not going to be heard or heated.
1342. 00:58:05 So I'll just play by everybody else's rules
1343. 00:58:10 and see what I can get away with.
1344. 00:58:14 It's not an ideal situation.
1345. 00:58:15 Ideally, we have an effective in-person meeting
1346. 00:58:19 since that's not going to happen.
1347. 00:58:21 How do I make this suck the least?
1348. 00:58:23 It's kind of the approach I'm taking.
1349. 00:58:26 And I think ultimately when you're talking about
1350. 00:58:28 an environment you can't control,
1351. 00:58:29 that's kind of the approach you have to have.
1352. 00:58:33 It's like you think and you plan for the worst case scenario.
1353. 00:58:38 And then when it happens, you're not surprised.
1354. 00:58:41 You don't get bent out of shape.
1355. 00:58:42 You just initiate your pre-planned response immediately,
1356. 00:58:47 even though it's not maybe ideal.
1357. 00:58:51 But yeah, I think that's helpful.
1358. 00:58:53 I think the situations that he describes
1359. 00:58:56 for the majority of the book don't fall into this category.
1360. 00:58:59 But I also, unlike some of the other books that we've read,
1361. 00:59:03 feel like his advice to someone who's not in a situation
1362. 00:59:06 that he's in is still pretty good.
1363. 00:59:09 There are other books that we've read where it's like,
1364. 00:59:11 oh, well, you just apply this this way
1365. 00:59:13 if you're an employee instead of a CEO.
1366. 00:59:15 Maybe not.
1367. 00:59:17 (laughs)
1368. 00:59:19 Thanks for the tip, but no way.
1369. 00:59:21 It's actually going to work.
1370. 00:59:23 Yep.
1371. 00:59:24 I feel like this one, there's at least some clear path forward
1372. 00:59:26 for just about anybody.
1373. 00:59:28 Yeah, that's fair.
1374. 00:59:29 Yeah, 'cause you can at least figure out
1375. 00:59:30 how you're going to respond to things.
1376. 00:59:31 Like it's the classic, I can't change what you can do.
1377. 00:59:35 I can't change what you do, but I can change my response
1378. 00:59:37 to what you do.
1379. 00:59:38 Yep.
1380. 00:59:39 So it's kind of that concept.
1381. 00:59:41 Yeah, exactly.
1382. 00:59:42 All right, and then part three is outsource,
1383. 00:59:45 high performance and success to your environment.
1384. 00:59:48 As I mentioned before, I feel like this is
1385. 00:59:51 the longest part of the book feels.
1386. 00:59:53 Like the longest part of the book.
1387. 00:59:54 There's five chapters, six chapters here, nine through 14.
1388. 01:00:00 And they all tackle a specific aspect of outsourcing
1389. 01:00:06 your performance to your environment.
1390. 01:00:12 I think it's very possible that listeners to bookworm,
1391. 01:00:15 they're not going to be blown away by every single one of these,
1392. 01:00:17 but there's probably something in here for everybody.
1393. 01:00:22 I'll just run through the chapters real quickly.
1394. 01:00:24 Chapter nine is embed forcing functions
1395. 01:00:26 into your environment.
1396. 01:00:27 Chapter 10, more than good intentions.
1397. 01:00:30 Chapter 11, grow into your goals.
1398. 01:00:32 Chapter 12, rotate your environments.
1399. 01:00:34 Chapter 13, find unique collaborations.
1400. 01:00:36 Chapter four, never forget where you came from.
1401. 01:00:38 I just picked, I got a couple of things from these chapters,
1402. 01:00:42 which kind of stood out to me.
1403. 01:00:45 First one being the forcing functions from chapter nine.
1404. 01:00:49 And these are self-imposed situational factors
1405. 01:00:53 that quite literally force you to act and achieve
1406. 01:00:58 what you had intended.
1407. 01:01:02 I immediately thought of some negative versions of these.
1408. 01:01:06 Like, I remember hearing a story about somebody
1409. 01:01:09 who would pre-schedule an embarrassing tweet
1410. 01:01:13 to go out at like six in the morning.
1411. 01:01:14 So it would force him to get up before then
1412. 01:01:17 and turn it off every day.
1413. 01:01:19 And if he didn't, then it was gonna go out
1414. 01:01:21 and it said something like so-and-so is a lazy bum
1415. 01:01:25 who didn't bother to get up and turn off
1416. 01:01:29 this embarrassing tweet, something like that.
1417. 01:01:32 So I had no trouble envisioning negative versions
1418. 01:01:37 of these, but I wasn't real clear on how I might apply these.
1419. 01:01:43 He does talk about the most important forcing functions
1420. 01:01:48 or high investment, there's social pressure,
1421. 01:01:50 there's high consequences for poor performance,
1422. 01:01:53 there's high difficulty,
1423. 01:01:54 and there's novelty associated with these.
1424. 01:01:57 I was curious though, did you have any insight
1425. 01:01:59 into forcing functions?
1426. 01:02:01 Are you planning to do anything with these?
1427. 01:02:03 - I'm in the middle of a very big one
1428. 01:02:05 with a house right now.
1429. 01:02:06 - That's true.
1430. 01:02:06 We did this very intentionally.
1431. 01:02:10 Whenever we set up the lease for our apartment,
1432. 01:02:13 we set up a six month lease.
1433. 01:02:15 And the reason for that was we didn't want to be
1434. 01:02:19 in an apartment for more than six months.
1435. 01:02:21 So the choice we had was to either find a house
1436. 01:02:25 that needed a decent amount of work early on in that lease
1437. 01:02:28 and buy it and work on it until our lease expired,
1438. 01:02:31 or we needed to over time decrease the amount of work
1439. 01:02:36 that a house needed that we were looking for
1440. 01:02:38 so that we could get one bought that needed less work done
1441. 01:02:41 so that we could move into it towards the end of our lease.
1442. 01:02:43 Like that was our forced deadline in the process.
1443. 01:02:47 And we can go month to month after the lease
1444. 01:02:50 but the price goes up and we didn't want to do that.
1445. 01:02:52 So we kind of forced ourselves into this.
1446. 01:02:55 So with that, I've got this deadline in October
1447. 01:02:58 where the house has to be move in a bowl
1448. 01:03:01 and that is forcing me to make a lot of life choices
1449. 01:03:06 to get a house ready to go very quickly.
1450. 01:03:09 So if you don't get the gist, like this house has been
1451. 01:03:13 very much what I've been eat, sleep and breathing
1452. 01:03:17 for the last month now.
1453. 01:03:19 So everything kind of is seen through that lens right now
1454. 01:03:22 but yes, I've kind of set this deadline
1455. 01:03:25 that's forced based on a lease expiring at that point.
1456. 01:03:28 - That's a good example.
1457. 01:03:30 I have trouble, a little bit of trouble
1458. 01:03:33 around wrapping my head around that one though
1459. 01:03:35 because that is an example of like later on
1460. 01:03:38 when he talks about burning the boats
1461. 01:03:40 where you have to have a house to live in.
1462. 01:03:44 I guess technically you don't because you do have
1463. 01:03:46 the apartment and like you said,
1464. 01:03:47 you are going to keep paying rent on it
1465. 01:03:50 if you aren't moving into the new place.
1466. 01:03:55 But I feel like that's less optional
1467. 01:03:57 than some of the other stuff that he has on here.
1468. 01:04:02 Like you're going to move into the house.
1469. 01:04:03 It's a matter of when.
1470. 01:04:06 And I'm trying to figure out from myself
1471. 01:04:09 how and where I might want to apply these.
1472. 01:04:13 Like for example, in this section,
1473. 01:04:16 he talks about the idea of flipping the sunk cost fallacy
1474. 01:04:20 and using it for forcing functions.
1475. 01:04:22 And sunk cost fallacy, I was an economics minor in college.
1476. 01:04:25 So that caught my attention where you made a big investment
1477. 01:04:29 in something and so you just convinced yourself
1478. 01:04:31 that you're just going to keep going with this thing
1479. 01:04:34 because you've already made this big investment in this thing.
1480. 01:04:37 And the economic perspective is,
1481. 01:04:40 well, it doesn't matter how much you have invested
1482. 01:04:42 in something, if it's still the wrong choice,
1483. 01:04:44 then the best thing you can do is to stop investing in that.
1484. 01:04:48 And even if you have to throw away all the money
1485. 01:04:50 that you haven't invested in that thing,
1486. 01:04:52 make the right choice now,
1487. 01:04:53 it's going to be better off in the long term.
1488. 01:04:55 I like the idea of using this in terms of creating
1489. 01:04:59 positive habits and setting positive goals.
1490. 01:05:03 But I can't figure out how I would want to do this.
1491. 01:05:07 I guess, if you've got a streak,
1492. 01:05:12 like I still practice my Spanish every night
1493. 01:05:16 in like 650 days or something in a row.
1494. 01:05:19 So that's kind of a sunk cost fallacy.
1495. 01:05:22 Like, well, I can't throw away that giant streak.
1496. 01:05:24 I'm just going to keep going so I don't break the chain.
1497. 01:05:27 I guess maybe that's a version of it,
1498. 01:05:30 but I'm having trouble thinking of a real practical way
1499. 01:05:34 that generally speaking, anybody could implement
1500. 01:05:37 this sort of thing.
1501. 01:05:38 - Sure.
1502. 01:05:39 Well, if you're following the chat,
1503. 01:05:41 Blake talks about having an appointment with a trainer.
1504. 01:05:45 So you've got the sunk cost of hiring the trainer,
1505. 01:05:50 and you've got the appointment made with them.
1506. 01:05:52 You've kind of got the forcing function
1507. 01:05:54 of the every other week scheduling a bookworm.
1508. 01:05:58 Like you have some of these already.
1509. 01:06:00 You've got the sabbatical weeks that you take off,
1510. 01:06:04 but you generally have launches somewhere in the middle.
1511. 01:06:08 So you've got these deadlines that are forced in there.
1512. 01:06:11 So you kind of have a lot of these.
1513. 01:06:14 - True, yeah, maybe that's why I'm having trouble thinking
1514. 01:06:16 of other places that I might implement this
1515. 01:06:18 'cause I've got all low hanging fruit already, but.
1516. 01:06:22 - Possibly, yeah.
1517. 01:06:23 Which might beg the question, why add another one?
1518. 01:06:26 - Yeah, true.
1519. 01:06:27 I guess one thing to be said about this book
1520. 01:06:30 is that there is an emphasis on achieving a specific goal
1521. 01:06:34 he uses launching a book towards the end
1522. 01:06:38 as a specific example, but obviously there's a bias here
1523. 01:06:43 towards goals and you know how I feel about goals.
1524. 01:06:48 I much prefer habits.
1525. 01:06:50 - I know, you're a big fan.
1526. 01:06:51 - Yeah, so forcing functions, I don't think translate real well
1527. 01:06:55 into habits.
1528. 01:06:56 Changing your environment does and setting things out
1529. 01:07:00 to make it easy to initiate a habit I feel like does,
1530. 01:07:04 but I don't know, maybe the forcing functions
1531. 01:07:06 and the sunk cost that goes into some of these,
1532. 01:07:09 maybe that doesn't really fit with show up every day.
1533. 01:07:13 - I feel like it could.
1534. 01:07:15 It would just depend on what you show up for.
1535. 01:07:17 - Sure, yeah.
1536. 01:07:18 - Like if you were to say you're gonna launch
1537. 01:07:20 a YouTube channel in three weeks,
1538. 01:07:22 that would force you into doing a lot of video editing
1539. 01:07:27 and such and launching a product of sorts.
1540. 01:07:30 - That's tied to a goal though, right?
1541. 01:07:31 Launching the product or launching the YouTube channel?
1542. 01:07:34 - Sure.
1543. 01:07:35 - Yep.
1544. 01:07:36 - So I guess my question is the goal,
1545. 01:07:38 a necessary component to the forcing function?
1546. 01:07:41 - To me, the forcing function is a tool to be used
1547. 01:07:46 if needed, not like it's not a requirement,
1548. 01:07:49 but if you have a goal that you're trying to achieve
1549. 01:07:51 and you're having our time achieving it,
1550. 01:07:53 using a forcing function to help you with that
1551. 01:07:55 would be the answer or one of the answers.
1552. 01:07:59 But it's not, like I feel like it's not a necessary,
1553. 01:08:02 like it's something to be added on if required.
1554. 01:08:05 - Okay, that's fair.
1555. 01:08:07 - That's the way I took it anyway.
1556. 01:08:09 Maybe I misunderstood it.
1557. 01:08:10 - No, I think you're right.
1558. 01:08:12 I do think that fits very well with the idea of goals,
1559. 01:08:16 not so much with habits, but the next point on the list here
1560. 01:08:21 and the next chapter actually,
1561. 01:08:23 which is more than good intentions,
1562. 01:08:24 this talks about learning styles.
1563. 01:08:27 This part I feel aligns better with the concept of habits.
1564. 01:08:30 'Cause it talks about the growth mindset,
1565. 01:08:33 going back to the book by Carol Dweck,
1566. 01:08:35 which is one of the better books we have ever read.
1567. 01:08:40 That one might get more mentions than flow at this point,
1568. 01:08:43 and not sure, probably pretty close.
1569. 01:08:46 But he mentions here that people with a fixed mindset
1570. 01:08:49 have a really hard time learning.
1571. 01:08:52 And that spoke to me because from a point several years ago,
1572. 01:08:57 I have identified as someone who personal growth
1573. 01:09:05 is very important to me.
1574. 01:09:08 So I want to be a lifelong learner,
1575. 01:09:11 and that's one of the things that my wife and I
1576. 01:09:13 have explicitly decided we want to teach our kids
1577. 01:09:17 to be lifelong learners.
1578. 01:09:19 Because that is going to serve them better
1579. 01:09:22 than getting into the right school
1580. 01:09:23 or getting the right degree ever could.
1581. 01:09:26 Unless they're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer
1582. 01:09:28 or something like that, and they need the piece of paper.
1583. 01:09:31 In which case, I'd support them if that's what they really
1584. 01:09:33 want to do, but whatever.
1585. 01:09:36 I want them to be able to learn,
1586. 01:09:37 and not just in a classroom.
1587. 01:09:39 So there's these different learning styles here,
1588. 01:09:41 imagining, reflecting, analyzing, deciding, acting,
1589. 01:09:44 and experiencing, just to name a couple of them.
1590. 01:09:47 And he says that people tend to have a growth mindset
1591. 01:09:49 and learning styles that they're comfortable with,
1592. 01:09:51 but a fixed mindset in those that they are uncomfortable with.
1593. 01:09:55 I think this is an interesting idea,
1594. 01:09:58 and I think it's 100% true.
1595. 01:10:00 I can see how I have fallen into this in the past,
1596. 01:10:05 but also I'm kind of encouraged by this
1597. 01:10:07 because I've sort of embraced the fact
1598. 01:10:11 that I don't have certain skills
1599. 01:10:14 and I don't feel comfortable learning certain ways,
1600. 01:10:17 and I've kind of forced myself
1601. 01:10:18 to try to learn those ways anyways,
1602. 01:10:22 if that makes any sense.
1603. 01:10:23 So I've never really been a big YouTube person,
1604. 01:10:28 but I am starting to get into YouTube
1605. 01:10:31 and primarily finding and watching videos
1606. 01:10:34 from people who are speaking intelligently
1607. 01:10:37 about topics that I'm interested in.
1608. 01:10:41 The whole video format is just not the way
1609. 01:10:43 that I would have traditionally chosen to learn something,
1610. 01:10:47 and it's not like giving a choice
1611. 01:10:49 between reading a book or listening to a book
1612. 01:10:51 or watching a book that they're all equal,
1613. 01:10:54 but there is information that is valuable
1614. 01:10:56 that I wouldn't be able to get any other way
1615. 01:10:58 that I'm going to YouTube for,
1616. 01:11:01 even though it's still kind of low on the totem pole
1617. 01:11:05 of the ranking of sources for me.
1618. 01:11:08 But point being that I'm kind of forcing myself
1619. 01:11:11 to learn in a channel that isn't naturally comfortable for me.
1620. 01:11:16 I think also the whole sketch note,
1621. 01:11:21 my journey with sketch notes is another example of this
1622. 01:11:24 where I never really was a visual learner.
1623. 01:11:27 I would always take notes on a computer
1624. 01:11:30 and then kind of decided one day I read this study
1625. 01:11:33 that if you took notes by hand, you retained more.
1626. 01:11:37 You didn't get as much information,
1627. 01:11:39 you couldn't keep up word for word,
1628. 01:11:42 but that's okay because you have to sort of synthesize
1629. 01:11:45 what's going on and put it into your own words.
1630. 01:11:48 And so you retain more information
1631. 01:11:50 and then I came across sketch noting and like,
1632. 01:11:53 "Oh, I bet it's that concept to the nth degree."
1633. 01:11:57 And so even though my first sketch notes
1634. 01:11:59 were absolutely terrible, stick figuring a bunch of words.
1635. 01:12:02 I forced myself to do it over and over again,
1636. 01:12:06 and I've been able to see the benefit
1637. 01:12:08 of forcing myself to learn that way,
1638. 01:12:10 even though it was super uncomfortable at the beginning.
1639. 01:12:14 So I guess I'm discovering that I can
1640. 01:12:18 and am willing to embrace the discomfort
1641. 01:12:22 when it comes to these different learning styles.
1642. 01:12:25 Is there anything in this section here
1643. 01:12:27 on these learning styles that you see for yourself?
1644. 01:12:31 Like this is the one that I kind of gravitate towards
1645. 01:12:34 or this is one that I've been thinking about
1646. 01:12:38 for a while, but I've been dragging my feet on it.
1647. 01:12:40 Coming out of this, was there any sort of path forward
1648. 01:12:45 for you in terms of continuing to develop a growth mindset?
1649. 01:12:49 - I don't think so.
1650. 01:12:50 I mean, you know, at risk of beating a dead horse,
1651. 01:12:55 like I've been forced into learning a lot of things
1652. 01:12:59 from a house construction stance lately.
1653. 01:13:04 And I think I've always had the mindset
1654. 01:13:07 like, okay, if I don't understand how to do something
1655. 01:13:11 or how something works, I can either figure it out,
1656. 01:13:15 find somebody who can tell me how it works
1657. 01:13:17 or find it online somewhere.
1658. 01:13:19 Like those are generally the ways I've done things.
1659. 01:13:23 Like just to use a different example,
1660. 01:13:25 I've got a running light that's out on our suburban
1661. 01:13:29 that I need to get replaced.
1662. 01:13:30 I found out that GM is a genius
1663. 01:13:32 and it actually requires removing the fender well
1664. 01:13:35 in order to get the running light out
1665. 01:13:37 so you can replace it.
1666. 01:13:38 Like, come on.
1667. 01:13:40 So, like I can learn how these things work
1668. 01:13:44 and how to do them.
1669. 01:13:46 And I feel like, I don't know if it's the growth mindset book,
1670. 01:13:50 but I feel like I've always had this,
1671. 01:13:52 like I can figure out how things work mine,
1672. 01:13:54 you know, this mental model, if you will.
1673. 01:13:58 So I've kind of always had that
1674. 01:14:01 in the back of my head somewhere.
1675. 01:14:03 So I can't say that's anything new,
1676. 01:14:05 but I know that I've got a ton of things right now
1677. 01:14:09 that I've been learning very intricate details on.
1678. 01:14:12 Simple things too.
1679. 01:14:13 Like, how do you lay out recessed lighting in a room?
1680. 01:14:17 Like, I can walk you through the math
1681. 01:14:18 on how to figure out how many lights
1682. 01:14:19 and how to place them right now.
1683. 01:14:21 Like, I can do all of that.
1684. 01:14:23 But these are things that I've had to learn
1685. 01:14:26 in order to put a house together to keep, you know,
1686. 01:14:29 vehicles maintained 'cause I choose to do those things myself
1687. 01:14:32 instead of outsourcing them.
1688. 01:14:33 So I guess if there's something in this
1689. 01:14:37 that I've kind of forced is that
1690. 01:14:39 I've made the decision to do a lot of things myself
1691. 01:14:42 instead of trying to get other people to do them for me.
1692. 01:14:47 And, you know, even the things that
1693. 01:14:49 I'm gonna pay other people to do right now,
1694. 01:14:52 I'm paying other people to do them
1695. 01:14:54 because they will do them better than me
1696. 01:14:55 'cause there's a little bit of an art form to it
1697. 01:14:58 and they can do it quicker than me.
1698. 01:15:00 And I don't have time.
1699. 01:15:01 So I can technically do, like, I can lay carpet,
1700. 01:15:06 I can hang drywall, I can do the mud and stuff.
1701. 01:15:08 Like, I can do all of that,
1702. 01:15:10 but I'm not gonna take the time to do it
1703. 01:15:12 as well as they're gonna be able to do it
1704. 01:15:13 in the quick speed that they're gonna be able
1705. 01:15:16 to do that as well.
1706. 01:15:17 So sometimes I will outsource things
1707. 01:15:19 even though I do have this tendency to say,
1708. 01:15:23 I'm gonna figure out how to do that myself
1709. 01:15:24 and do it myself.
1710. 01:15:26 I don't know if that answers what you're asking.
1711. 01:15:28 - Kind of, I don't think I'm putting it very well.
1712. 01:15:31 I feel like this chapter, he talks about at the very end,
1713. 01:15:35 the primary obstacle is how you feel
1714. 01:15:37 about what you need to do.
1715. 01:15:38 And with these learning styles specifically,
1716. 01:15:42 he talks about a behavioral inhibition system,
1717. 01:15:44 which is when you perceive risks or threats
1718. 01:15:46 that stop you from acting
1719. 01:15:48 and then a behavioral activation system
1720. 01:15:51 where you perceive the rewards that encourage action.
1721. 01:15:54 And it sounds to me like your behavioral activation system
1722. 01:15:58 is very active and you're not thinking
1723. 01:16:00 about how stupid you're gonna look,
1724. 01:16:02 trying to figure out how to hang drywall,
1725. 01:16:05 you're just gonna figure it out 'cause you're curious.
1726. 01:16:07 (laughs)
1727. 01:16:08 - Yes, yeah, absolutely.
1728. 01:16:11 Whenever, here's a good example too.
1729. 01:16:14 Whenever I've gone to Home Depot,
1730. 01:16:16 and here's a silly one, you'll love this one,
1731. 01:16:19 the shut off valves for the washing machine need replaced.
1732. 01:16:24 Okay?
1733. 01:16:25 And I found out when I got to Home Depot
1734. 01:16:28 that there's like 14,000 versions of these things.
1735. 01:16:32 And I did not know that.
1736. 01:16:33 And the nice thing about Home Depot
1737. 01:16:35 is the people who are, at least the local one,
1738. 01:16:37 the people who are working there
1739. 01:16:39 are like previous contractors and such.
1740. 01:16:41 And one of the guys who was in the aisle there
1741. 01:16:43 used to be a plumbing contractor.
1742. 01:16:45 And I just asked him, I have an old house,
1743. 01:16:49 I don't have a clue what I'm getting into here.
1744. 01:16:51 What am I not knowing that I need to pay attention to?
1745. 01:16:55 I don't mind asking that question
1746. 01:16:57 'cause I know I'm probably an idiot when it comes to
1747. 01:17:01 (laughs)
1748. 01:17:02 how this stuff is supposed to be done.
1749. 01:17:04 But if I'm willing to ask the question,
1750. 01:17:07 I've learned that most of these people
1751. 01:17:09 who have expertise in an area,
1752. 01:17:12 they love teaching other people how to do it the right way.
1753. 01:17:16 So I don't usually worry about me looking dumb
1754. 01:17:21 because if I can activate their teacher,
1755. 01:17:25 then I can be a better student.
1756. 01:17:27 I guess that's probably the way to put that.
1757. 01:17:29 - Sure, and that's the thing.
1758. 01:17:31 I think a lot of people, myself included,
1759. 01:17:35 would have trouble doing
1760. 01:17:37 because you don't wanna look like an idiot.
1761. 01:17:40 - Sure, yeah.
1762. 01:17:42 - I mean, I kinda went through that
1763. 01:17:44 when I started taking virtual guitar lessons last fall,
1764. 01:17:49 is I've been playing guitar for a long time.
1765. 01:17:50 I play on the worship team at our church
1766. 01:17:52 every single Sunday.
1767. 01:17:54 And it's a little bit humbling to say,
1768. 01:17:58 I'm not happy with my current ability
1769. 01:18:01 and I wanna submit myself to somebody who is better than me,
1770. 01:18:05 who can help me improve.
1771. 01:18:07 - Sure.
1772. 01:18:08 - And in order to do that, in order to have a coach,
1773. 01:18:11 if you're working with a trainer,
1774. 01:18:14 I think it's probably the same thing.
1775. 01:18:16 Like you have to admit how out of shape you are
1776. 01:18:19 or how bad you are at something before
1777. 01:18:21 somebody can really help you get better.
1778. 01:18:23 - Right.
1779. 01:18:24 - And that's not an easy thing, I think, for most people.
1780. 01:18:28 - Sure.
1781. 01:18:29 Well, here's another example.
1782. 01:18:30 It's not really house related,
1783. 01:18:32 so it's just probably a good thing.
1784. 01:18:33 But for a long time, I've wanted to get into blacksmithing.
1785. 01:18:36 When I was on the farm growing up,
1786. 01:18:38 I used to do welding and such quite a bit.
1787. 01:18:40 So I've done metal work quite a bit in the past,
1788. 01:18:43 but I've never done blacksmithing.
1789. 01:18:45 So I would love to make an axe head
1790. 01:18:48 or I don't even know what, make garden tools and stuff.
1791. 01:18:51 Like I would love to be able to just make stuff
1792. 01:18:54 out of molten metal.
1793. 01:18:56 I have no idea why I want to do that, but I do.
1794. 01:19:00 And I discovered two weeks ago
1795. 01:19:02 that one of the custodians here at our church
1796. 01:19:06 has a blacksmith shop and has been doing this
1797. 01:19:08 for quite some time.
1798. 01:19:09 I was like, dude, when I'm done on this house
1799. 01:19:12 and I get some more time, preferably in the winter,
1800. 01:19:13 'cause I know blacksmithing is hot,
1801. 01:19:15 can I please come out to your place and you teach me?
1802. 01:19:20 Like, yeah, absolutely.
1803. 01:19:21 We'll do like every other week lessons or something.
1804. 01:19:23 Like that'd be amazing.
1805. 01:19:24 I would love that.
1806. 01:19:26 So like, I guess I don't mind looking like a dummy sometimes.
1807. 01:19:31 Maybe that's just me.
1808. 01:19:32 - Well, I think I can get to the point where I'm okay with it,
1809. 01:19:37 but it takes me a little while.
1810. 01:19:39 - Sure, sure.
1811. 01:19:40 - Which is kind of the next point on the outline here.
1812. 01:19:45 It talks about collaboration and also masterminds.
1813. 01:19:49 So I feel like these are kind of related.
1814. 01:19:54 The masterminds thing comes from chapter 11,
1815. 01:19:57 grow into your goals.
1816. 01:19:58 And this is where it talks about competing
1817. 01:20:02 with people who are much better than you.
1818. 01:20:04 Towards the end of this, he talks about joining
1819. 01:20:08 a mastermind group.
1820. 01:20:08 I don't think those two ideas map perfectly,
1821. 01:20:11 although if you can get yourself in a mastermind
1822. 01:20:13 with a bunch of people who are more successful than you,
1823. 01:20:16 then absolutely do it.
1824. 01:20:18 I do think the big value of the mastermind group
1825. 01:20:21 is just getting people who can help you kind of see your,
1826. 01:20:26 your blind spots and help you implement this context-based
1827. 01:20:30 learning that he's talking about here.
1828. 01:20:32 Where you learn something at a surface level,
1829. 01:20:34 you practice it, you get immediate feedback
1830. 01:20:37 so you can smooth out your rough edges,
1831. 01:20:39 you repeat it over and over,
1832. 01:20:40 and then you get more coaching and feedback to assess
1833. 01:20:44 and assess your knowledge and skills over time.
1834. 01:20:46 So you're constantly looking for the next thing
1835. 01:20:48 that you can improve.
1836. 01:20:50 It's been a while since we've talked about masterminds.
1837. 01:20:53 I know we've talked about it before.
1838. 01:20:55 When you brought it up in this chapter,
1839. 01:20:58 did it do anything in you?
1840. 01:21:01 Like, yeah, I want to be a part of a group like that?
1841. 01:21:06 - No.
1842. 01:21:07 - I didn't think it would.
1843. 01:21:08 (laughing)
1844. 01:21:11 - I see a lot of people talk about the benefits of masterminds.
1845. 01:21:15 I know that there are certain personalities
1846. 01:21:20 and people who think that they're the end all be all,
1847. 01:21:24 and they might be for some people.
1848. 01:21:28 I think my issue is that I generally don't enjoy
1849. 01:21:33 the process of hearing other people talk about
1850. 01:21:36 how good things are going in their businesses and such.
1851. 01:21:39 - That is valid, that is valid.
1852. 01:21:41 - And that's what a lot of, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot
1853. 01:21:44 of them tend to be that way, which they're not all
1854. 01:21:48 and they're not all, and that's not necessarily bad.
1855. 01:21:51 I just don't have the patience for that.
1856. 01:21:53 - Sure.
1857. 01:21:54 - And I would rather do like a one-on-one coaching deal
1858. 01:21:59 or having like two people specifically.
1859. 01:22:02 If I were to go to a quote unquote mastermind
1860. 01:22:06 where it's me and maybe two or three other people
1861. 01:22:08 and it's us focusing on one other person's business
1862. 01:22:11 and we're trying to help that one person that whole time,
1863. 01:22:13 then yeah, that's a very different thing.
1864. 01:22:15 If I'm going into a scenario where I've got four or five
1865. 01:22:18 people looking at my business to help me figure out
1866. 01:22:20 how to do it better, that's a different thing.
1867. 01:22:22 I think those are both very valid and good things to do.
1868. 01:22:25 But most masterminds that I've participated in,
1869. 01:22:28 seen and such, it's round robin where you go around
1870. 01:22:31 and you're switching roles midstream, which can work,
1871. 01:22:35 but I feel like everybody gets like 15 minutes or so
1872. 01:22:37 and to me 15 minutes is nowhere near enough
1873. 01:22:39 to get anywhere solid.
1874. 01:22:41 Like you're basically just getting an intro
1875. 01:22:43 when that intro is not what I need.
1876. 01:22:45 - Sure.
1877. 01:22:46 - And I need to go much, much deeper than that,
1878. 01:22:48 which means that to me to have a round robin mastermind
1879. 01:22:52 that has the value that I'm trying to get out of it,
1880. 01:22:54 it needs to be like four to five hours
1881. 01:22:55 and nobody's gonna take the time for that.
1882. 01:22:58 - I would.
1883. 01:22:59 (laughs)
1884. 01:22:59 - I'm sure you would, but that's not something
1885. 01:23:01 I wanna commit to and I don't have that kind of time
1886. 01:23:04 to devote to something like that.
1887. 01:23:05 - Yeah.
1888. 01:23:06 - So if I want that feedback, like he's talking about
1889. 01:23:10 for masterminds, I'm going to seek out a coach
1890. 01:23:13 in some form, which I've done in a few cases,
1891. 01:23:15 but that's probably the route I would take.
1892. 01:23:17 - That's an interesting alternative, I think,
1893. 01:23:20 because you're right, the mastermind group
1894. 01:23:24 that you join is gonna be important
1895. 01:23:28 and kind of everybody's expectations going into it.
1896. 01:23:31 And I also don't think his definition
1897. 01:23:33 of a mastermind group necessarily
1898. 01:23:35 is the default definition for a mastermind group.
1899. 01:23:38 The example that he uses is the genius network
1900. 01:23:42 that Joe Polish does, and he's connected with Dan Sullivan
1901. 01:23:47 and the strategic coach, unique ability stuff.
1902. 01:23:52 I know somebody who was a part of that mastermind group,
1903. 01:23:55 it's $25,000 a year and they do call it a mastermind group.
1904. 01:24:00 They meet four times a year
1905. 01:24:01 and they probably have those hot seat sessions
1906. 01:24:03 that you were describing.
1907. 01:24:05 One additional detail I got out of reading this
1908. 01:24:08 was that if you don't 10x your investment
1909. 01:24:13 in the first year you can't join the next year,
1910. 01:24:16 which I thought was interesting,
1911. 01:24:17 I'm gonna have to go back and ask my friend
1912. 01:24:18 if he's still a member or not.
1913. 01:24:20 - Yep, yep.
1914. 01:24:21 - 'Cause I remember him coming back
1915. 01:24:24 from one of those meetings and talking about
1916. 01:24:27 the connections that he had made,
1917. 01:24:30 and that gets into the collaboration piece of this.
1918. 01:24:34 'Cause he says collaboration is the physical act
1919. 01:24:36 of making new and novel connections.
1920. 01:24:37 And I think this can apply to networking,
1921. 01:24:39 it could also apply to ideas.
1922. 01:24:42 And I think there's some maybe accidental overlap here
1923. 01:24:47 with these terms of mastermind and collaboration.
1924. 01:24:53 I do think the biggest value a mastermind group can have
1925. 01:24:57 is helping you see things the right way,
1926. 01:25:00 pointing out the weak spots.
1927. 01:25:01 If you're in a situation where you're actually getting
1928. 01:25:04 legitimate feedback and you're not just praising
1929. 01:25:07 everybody for the stuff that's going right,
1930. 01:25:09 I don't think that's helpful,
1931. 01:25:11 but I also recognize that that's what a lot
1932. 01:25:15 of people wanna hear, so.
1933. 01:25:16 (laughs)
1934. 01:25:17 Whatever, it's just not for me.
1935. 01:25:20 The collaboration piece though,
1936. 01:25:23 I think there's a lot of value in this too.
1937. 01:25:25 Maybe this is worth maintaining those connections
1938. 01:25:28 even if you thought it was a mastermind
1939. 01:25:30 and you discover it's actually a collaborative group
1940. 01:25:33 because he says one plus one off and equals 10
1941. 01:25:36 when it comes to collaboration,
1942. 01:25:37 especially if you have people from diverse viewpoints,
1943. 01:25:40 different perspectives who can help you see things
1944. 01:25:43 in a different way.
1945. 01:25:45 He talks about the stages of conscious evolution
1946. 01:25:48 where you're socializing, everything is calculated
1947. 01:25:50 to avoid fear and anxiety, second level self-authoring,
1948. 01:25:54 where everything is to further your own agenda.
1949. 01:25:56 And then the last level that almost nobody gets to
1950. 01:25:58 is the transforming self where you both value an agenda
1951. 01:26:03 and are wary of it.
1952. 01:26:04 I feel like that's where the collaboration,
1953. 01:26:05 the different perspectives can come in
1954. 01:26:07 as they can help you see the weak spots
1955. 01:26:09 and not just identify the weak spots
1956. 01:26:12 but can help you build a better solution
1957. 01:26:17 because they are coming at the problem
1958. 01:26:19 from a different perspective.
1959. 01:26:21 I don't think I have a collaborative group
1960. 01:26:25 that I am actively a part of,
1961. 01:26:26 although maybe my mastermind group
1962. 01:26:28 kinda gets into this a little bit.
1963. 01:26:30 I don't know, but I feel like these are two
1964. 01:26:33 very different ideas.
1965. 01:26:34 And if you were able to be a part of two different groups
1966. 01:26:38 with these distinct purposes,
1967. 01:26:39 that would probably be the best implementation of this.
1968. 01:26:42 But I don't know.
1969. 01:26:44 Do you have any interest in collaborating
1970. 01:26:46 given your current work responsibilities?
1971. 01:26:50 Like, does this appeal to you at all?
1972. 01:26:53 - Yes, very much so.
1973. 01:26:55 To me, this is very, very different than a mastermind group.
1974. 01:26:57 Like the whole mastermind group versus a collaborative group.
1975. 01:27:00 But I don't think I took the collaborative group
1976. 01:27:04 as a set group of people that regularly rotates.
1977. 01:27:08 I didn't take it that way at all
1978. 01:27:09 'cause I feel like I kind of do this.
1979. 01:27:12 Like whenever I have people on as a guest for analog J out,
1980. 01:27:16 well, that's a collaborative scenario.
1981. 01:27:18 - That's true.
1982. 01:27:19 - I have a different podcast that I guest on.
1983. 01:27:23 That's a collaborative deal.
1984. 01:27:25 If I, you get what I'm saying,
1985. 01:27:27 like anytime I make a connection,
1986. 01:27:30 whenever I've been on Mac Power users in the past,
1987. 01:27:32 like, well, that's me collaborating with David and Steven.
1988. 01:27:35 Like, that's the way that those work.
1989. 01:27:38 So whenever I do those, like to me,
1990. 01:27:40 that's building a collaboration network.
1991. 01:27:44 Like this is a group of people that I can collaborate with
1992. 01:27:47 on different temporary projects.
1993. 01:27:50 To me, that's what he was getting at.
1994. 01:27:52 But I could see how you take it as a set group
1995. 01:27:56 that rotates and collaborates inside itself.
1996. 01:27:59 I could see that as well.
1997. 01:28:00 - Well, I think these are both process driven solutions
1998. 01:28:04 to the problem of how do I get outside perspectives?
1999. 01:28:09 And I think the guests on analog J that could be
2000. 01:28:12 a collaborative group, although I think there's a danger
2001. 01:28:15 of it not being a collaborative group
2002. 01:28:18 where you do just seek out the people who are just like you
2003. 01:28:22 and saying the same things as you
2004. 01:28:24 and you get on the microphone and talk about
2005. 01:28:28 the benefits of the bullet journal system, right?
2006. 01:28:31 And I just use that just to pick on you,
2007. 01:28:33 but you could do the same thing with me, with Obsidian.
2008. 01:28:36 We've all got these different bubbles of belief
2009. 01:28:38 going back to the Luminal Thinking book.
2010. 01:28:41 And so how do you bust out of that?
2011. 01:28:42 I feel like it takes some very intentional connecting
2012. 01:28:47 with people who wouldn't just naturally be hanging out
2013. 01:28:51 the same places that you would be.
2014. 01:28:54 If I'm a Mac fan and I'm listening to MPU,
2015. 01:28:58 I mean, this is a stupid example,
2016. 01:29:00 but it's probably worthwhile if I wanna be able
2017. 01:29:05 to speak intelligently about the tech space in general
2018. 01:29:08 to go pay attention to what's going on
2019. 01:29:11 in the Windows world and on Android,
2020. 01:29:13 even though I don't wanna be there, right?
2021. 01:29:15 And that's just if I were to decide
2022. 01:29:17 that's the thing I wanna do.
2023. 01:29:18 You have to decide for yourself,
2024. 01:29:19 but going into those other places can be uncomfortable.
2025. 01:29:24 - So you haven't kept up with Windows 11,
2026. 01:29:26 that's what you're doing.
2027. 01:29:27 - That is exactly what I'm telling you,
2028. 01:29:29 and I am okay with that.
2029. 01:29:30 - Wow.
2030. 01:29:31 (laughs)
2031. 01:29:32 Well, if you follow their every other cycle,
2032. 01:29:34 Windows 11 will be a flop, so we'll see.
2033. 01:29:36 (laughs)
2034. 01:29:38 - Yeah, and I just picked that one
2035. 01:29:39 because I feel like there's not a whole lot of risk there.
2036. 01:29:43 I think a lot of the other camps
2037. 01:29:45 that people would self-identify with,
2038. 01:29:47 maybe are a little bit more emotionally charged,
2039. 01:29:49 but that's honestly where there'd be the most value
2040. 01:29:52 in figuring out how to collaborate anyways.
2041. 01:29:55 - Sure, sure.
2042. 01:29:57 - Makes sense.
2043. 01:29:58 - All right, so that's the book.
2044. 01:29:59 Then there's a conclusion where he tells a little bit
2045. 01:30:01 of his story.
2046. 01:30:03 It sounds kind of interesting.
2047. 01:30:04 He grew up and was having trouble dealing
2048. 01:30:07 with a divorce of his parents,
2049. 01:30:10 was playing a bunch of video games,
2050. 01:30:11 eating a lot of pizza,
2051. 01:30:13 and then just decided enough of this,
2052. 01:30:15 I'm gonna change my life,
2053. 01:30:16 changed his environment, move somewhere else,
2054. 01:30:18 came back a couple years later,
2055. 01:30:20 and everybody in his hometown basically tried
2056. 01:30:23 to drag him back to where he was.
2057. 01:30:26 And I think there's a possibility that
2058. 01:30:30 you come back home and people are naturally,
2059. 01:30:35 or people are legitimately excited about the change
2060. 01:30:38 in your life, but I think it's definitely possible
2061. 01:30:41 that you get the reaction that he got,
2062. 01:30:43 which is like, oh, you're always gonna be this way,
2063. 01:30:46 'cause this is the way you were when you left.
2064. 01:30:48 And in that case, you know,
2065. 01:30:49 can't blame him for getting out of there.
2066. 01:30:52 A couple other pivotal points when he decided
2067. 01:30:56 he wanted to write this book.
2068. 01:30:58 They adopted some foster children, I believe,
2069. 01:31:02 which is cool, he talks about how this is really,
2070. 01:31:05 really stressful, and I don't know how this is gonna happen,
2071. 01:31:08 but they figure out a way to make it work.
2072. 01:31:10 And that encourages me just the conclusion here
2073. 01:31:14 about his story, like these different things
2074. 01:31:19 that make you uncomfortable, they're not necessarily bad.
2075. 01:31:23 I have to admit, I was thinking about this
2076. 01:31:26 when I shared with you before we hit record
2077. 01:31:29 that since we recorded last time,
2078. 01:31:32 I have agreed to help coach my son's middle school soccer team.
2079. 01:31:37 I haven't coached in, it's gotta be 15, 20 years.
2080. 01:31:42 And I knew they needed a coach,
2081. 01:31:44 they're, both of them are on the middle school team,
2082. 01:31:46 one is in eighth grade, one's in sixth grade.
2083. 01:31:48 So it's kind of a unique opportunity that I can, you know,
2084. 01:31:52 be with both of them and do something that we all enjoy,
2085. 01:31:56 have a good time together.
2086. 01:31:57 But coaching is a big responsibility,
2087. 01:32:00 and when I heard they were looking for a coach,
2088. 01:32:02 I'm like, nope, nope, nope, way.
2089. 01:32:04 And then Rachel's like, well,
2090. 01:32:05 why don't you just talk to the coach?
2091. 01:32:06 He's a pretty easygoing guy, maybe, you know,
2092. 01:32:09 you can just help out a little bit here and there.
2093. 01:32:12 So I talked to him, and very first thing I said is like,
2094. 01:32:14 okay, so you wanna have practices,
2095. 01:32:15 Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
2096. 01:32:17 Like a new Mondays, Thursdays will never work.
2097. 01:32:20 Fridays will only work about half of the time.
2098. 01:32:22 If you're still interested, let's talk.
2099. 01:32:24 He's like, oh yeah, no problem.
2100. 01:32:26 (laughs)
2101. 01:32:28 So going back to, you know, the limiting beliefs,
2102. 01:32:31 and this is an example of like I said,
2103. 01:32:32 I've identified some of these,
2104. 01:32:34 but I haven't written them all down.
2105. 01:32:35 That was a limiting belief that I had going into this was,
2106. 01:32:38 well, they're gonna want a coach
2107. 01:32:40 who's gonna be there every single time.
2108. 01:32:42 And that's not me, so I just shouldn't even bother.
2109. 01:32:47 But once the conversation was forced upon me
2110. 01:32:50 and I basically laid out, you know,
2111. 01:32:52 what I wanted to have happen and say,
2112. 01:32:55 I completely understand if you want somebody more committed
2113. 01:32:58 and no hard feelings if this just isn't gonna work,
2114. 01:33:01 they're like, no, no, we'd love to have you.
2115. 01:33:03 So it's kind of like the best of both worlds for me.
2116. 01:33:05 I get to be involved on my own terms
2117. 01:33:07 and not completely blow up our lives
2118. 01:33:10 and our schedule and the process.
2119. 01:33:12 - Good job, Mike.
2120. 01:33:13 - Hey, thanks.
2121. 01:33:15 Anything else about this book?
2122. 01:33:16 - No, I think I'm good.
2123. 01:33:18 - All right, well, let's talk about action items.
2124. 01:33:22 I will go first.
2125. 01:33:25 There is chapter 14, "Never Forget Where You Came From,"
2126. 01:33:27 where he talks about the,
2127. 01:33:30 this is kind of where he talks about his story
2128. 01:33:33 and overcoming his environment, switching environments.
2129. 01:33:38 But he talks about the narratives that families tell
2130. 01:33:41 about themselves and he says it's valuable
2131. 01:33:45 to learn your history and your roots,
2132. 01:33:46 just be learning about your history
2133. 01:33:48 doesn't mean you have to repeat it.
2134. 01:33:50 So I actually bought on Prime Day,
2135. 01:33:53 one of those DNA tests that is supposed to give you
2136. 01:33:58 like your health analysis, but also your ancestry.
2137. 01:34:02 And it is sitting in a drawer upstairs.
2138. 01:34:04 So before the next episode,
2139. 01:34:06 I am going to take that DNA test
2140. 01:34:08 and hopefully have the results.
2141. 01:34:11 - Nice, nice.
2142. 01:34:13 - I'm also going, yeah, it should be interesting.
2143. 01:34:16 I also want to, from the Find Unique collaborators,
2144. 01:34:19 I want to make a list of who I am collaborating with.
2145. 01:34:24 And some of this is easy.
2146. 01:34:28 You know, I'm collaborating with Joe when we do bookworm.
2147. 01:34:30 I'm collaborating with David Sparks when we do focused,
2148. 01:34:33 but I want to make a list of the people
2149. 01:34:36 that I am collaborating with or have collaborated with
2150. 01:34:40 in the recent past and the projected takeaway from this
2151. 01:34:44 is I'm going to recognize I have a little bit bigger network
2152. 01:34:48 maybe than I thought I did, which would be good for me
2153. 01:34:52 because I still feel like I don't really have
2154. 01:34:55 a whole lot of name recognition
2155. 01:34:59 and I get nervous about reaching out to somebody.
2156. 01:35:03 He's like, oh, they don't know who I am, you know,
2157. 01:35:05 that sort of thing.
2158. 01:35:06 But when I sit and think about the people that I've worked with
2159. 01:35:09 and the stuff that I've been able to make,
2160. 01:35:12 I'm pretty proud of the results.
2161. 01:35:15 So just having that list, I think, will be good to go back
2162. 01:35:19 and look at periodically.
2163. 01:35:21 - Sure, yeah.
2164. 01:35:22 - And then the last one is I want to create
2165. 01:35:24 a weekly planning template in Obsidian
2166. 01:35:28 as we talked about.
2167. 01:35:29 - I gotta get the bell out.
2168. 01:35:30 - Yeah, you do.
2169. 01:35:31 - I'll get it out here.
2170. 01:35:33 - All right, what about you?
2171. 01:35:36 - I have three of them here
2172. 01:35:38 and I've talked about two of them already.
2173. 01:35:41 So the morning and evening walks piece
2174. 01:35:44 is one that I've brought out
2175. 01:35:47 that I've been kind of working towards.
2176. 01:35:50 The other one was the journaling and the morning piece
2177. 01:35:52 and possibly the weekly, I'm gonna try it this upcoming weekend
2178. 01:35:55 and just see how that goes.
2179. 01:35:57 And if it works out great, I'll probably try to continue it.
2180. 01:36:00 If it doesn't, then I'll abandon it
2181. 01:36:02 but do that particular piece.
2182. 01:36:05 And then one chapter item that we didn't talk about
2183. 01:36:09 that I have an action item from is,
2184. 01:36:11 there's a section in the,
2185. 01:36:13 I think it's the second to last chapter
2186. 01:36:15 where he's talking about the mastermind's collaboration piece
2187. 01:36:18 but he also mentions rotating environments.
2188. 01:36:21 And I know some people do this for work and personal
2189. 01:36:25 or different types of work that they do.
2190. 01:36:27 Like they've got a desk that they go to and they write
2191. 01:36:29 and then they've got another area they go to
2192. 01:36:31 for recording video and they have these different environments
2193. 01:36:34 that make things easier.
2194. 01:36:35 And I'm kind of wanting to work out something
2195. 01:36:39 along those lines where I've got a couple different
2196. 01:36:41 like base workstations.
2197. 01:36:44 Some of that's because I've got this IT assistant
2198. 01:36:47 who works in the same space as my current desk
2199. 01:36:49 and I love him, he does a lot of great work
2200. 01:36:52 but he just needs to ask questions about everything.
2201. 01:36:56 So I love you Joel, but he's,
2202. 01:36:59 sometimes I gotta go work somewhere else
2203. 01:37:01 'cause he'll do fine, doesn't need my input
2204. 01:37:03 but if I'm here he will ask for it consistently.
2205. 01:37:06 So haven't got him to stop that part yet
2206. 01:37:08 and he knows he does it, he just doesn't realize it
2207. 01:37:10 until it's like 30 minutes into it.
2208. 01:37:12 So anyway, I gotta find a different area
2209. 01:37:14 so I can try to do a little bit of a rotating environment setup.
2210. 01:37:19 So yeah, those three, the morning and evening walks,
2211. 01:37:22 the journaling in the morning
2212. 01:37:23 and then the different workstations.
2213. 01:37:25 Nice.
2214. 01:37:26 - That's what I got.
2215. 01:37:27 - That one I liked to the rotating environments,
2216. 01:37:30 I actually kind of had that as an action item
2217. 01:37:34 but have already worked through a schedule
2218. 01:37:36 where I can go to the coworking space
2219. 01:37:38 and just break up the routine.
2220. 01:37:40 - Oh sure, sure, yeah.
2221. 01:37:42 - I do think that's a valuable action item though
2222. 01:37:45 and that chapter is really good, I agree.
2223. 01:37:49 - Yep, it's a good one.
2224. 01:37:50 - All right, so style and rating, my book,
2225. 01:37:53 so I guess I go first.
2226. 01:37:56 We talked at the beginning about how this
2227. 01:37:59 is your standard three part book
2228. 01:38:01 but it's laid out a little bit differently
2229. 01:38:04 than what I was expecting, which is a good thing.
2230. 01:38:08 It also, the headline, the book title is very click baity
2231. 01:38:13 and so I feel like that tempered my expectations going into it.
2232. 01:38:19 I sort of chose it with the,
2233. 01:38:23 I don't wanna say I expected it to be bad
2234. 01:38:25 but there was definitely in my mind the possibility
2235. 01:38:27 that this could go south quickly.
2236. 01:38:30 - Yeah.
2237. 01:38:31 - But that's not what happened.
2238. 01:38:33 I feel like Benjamin Hardy is a very good writer,
2239. 01:38:36 very entertaining, lots of research being done with this,
2240. 01:38:39 quoted a lot of the other books that we've read.
2241. 01:38:42 If I were to nitpick this,
2242. 01:38:44 I think one thing I would say is that he does
2243. 01:38:49 what I would probably do if I were to try to write a book
2244. 01:38:52 which is quote too many people.
2245. 01:38:56 I feel like every single chapter,
2246. 01:38:58 he's quoting another book and another source
2247. 01:39:00 and somebody who said this thing this particular way
2248. 01:39:02 and some of the best advice that I got was,
2249. 01:39:05 you know this stuff, you've been around this stuff long enough,
2250. 01:39:09 you can make these ideas your own.
2251. 01:39:11 It doesn't mean you're taking somebody else's idea
2252. 01:39:13 and you're putting your name on it
2253. 01:39:15 but you are synthesizing the idea
2254. 01:39:17 and you're applying your own spin to it
2255. 01:39:19 and you don't feel like you have to give someone else credit
2256. 01:39:24 for the work that you're doing.
2257. 01:39:27 And that is inherently ingrained in me.
2258. 01:39:30 I think I've shared this story before
2259. 01:39:31 about how when I was a freshman in college,
2260. 01:39:33 I got in trouble because I cited a source wrong
2261. 01:39:36 for a book report of all things.
2262. 01:39:38 It stemmed from a relationship with a professor
2263. 01:39:41 who really wanted to get me
2264. 01:39:43 and I can't say that I blame them.
2265. 01:39:44 I was a little bit of a jerk in that class.
2266. 01:39:47 But anyways, that really stung me.
2267. 01:39:50 They gave me a zero on the paper
2268. 01:39:52 so they're gonna take me to academic court,
2269. 01:39:54 get me thrown out of school, whatever.
2270. 01:39:56 I'm like, you know, I didn't plagiarize that paper.
2271. 01:39:58 It's a book report for crying out loud.
2272. 01:40:00 (laughs)
2273. 01:40:01 But that stuck with me.
2274. 01:40:03 And I feel like he kind of takes the same approach
2275. 01:40:07 in this particular book where, yeah,
2276. 01:40:10 maybe you've heard these things from other places
2277. 01:40:13 but you don't need to just regurgitate
2278. 01:40:17 what Carol Dweck has said
2279. 01:40:19 and what Ari Maisel has said
2280. 01:40:21 and all of these other people have said,
2281. 01:40:24 I wanna know what you have to say.
2282. 01:40:26 I wanna know what you think about this.
2283. 01:40:28 So I feel like it could have been a little bit more direct.
2284. 01:40:33 It could have been a little bit more
2285. 01:40:35 like just owning this idea.
2286. 01:40:37 I can totally empathize with not wanting
2287. 01:40:41 to rip off somebody else's unique idea as your own though.
2288. 01:40:44 I think some of that comes from a little bit
2289. 01:40:47 of a lack of self-confidence though.
2290. 01:40:49 That's the only thing really I can point out
2291. 01:40:51 that I wish would have been different
2292. 01:40:53 about this particular book.
2293. 01:40:54 I love the descriptions of the environment,
2294. 01:40:57 determining your actions.
2295. 01:40:59 I feel like the first section just sets the stage
2296. 01:41:01 really, really well.
2297. 01:41:02 I feel like no matter where you are
2298. 01:41:04 in your productivity journey,
2299. 01:41:05 you're gonna find something out of this.
2300. 01:41:10 The only other thing I can say about it is
2301. 01:41:13 that I don't know that there is anything completely
2302. 01:41:16 life-changing here for us having gone through this.
2303. 01:41:20 I feel like if we would have sat down
2304. 01:41:23 and thought about what does it mean
2305. 01:41:26 if willpower doesn't work?
2306. 01:41:28 Well, it means this is true and that is true.
2307. 01:41:30 We probably could have arrived at a lot of the message
2308. 01:41:33 that he is putting forth in this book.
2309. 01:41:36 Doesn't mean it's necessarily bad,
2310. 01:41:38 but it's not completely radical either.
2311. 01:41:41 Once you wrap your head around the title,
2312. 01:41:44 a lot of this stuff kind of seems a little bit
2313. 01:41:47 of common sense, the forcing functions
2314. 01:41:51 and leveraging the sunk cost fallacy and stuff like that.
2315. 01:41:56 I mean, it's really well done,
2316. 01:41:58 but it's not one of those books that I'm gonna recommend
2317. 01:42:03 to everybody that they read this.
2318. 01:42:06 I'm gonna rate it at 4.0.
2319. 01:42:09 I do think it's valuable.
2320. 01:42:11 I think the biggest value it has is in context
2321. 01:42:15 with other books that we have read,
2322. 01:42:17 like the willpower instinct.
2323. 01:42:20 I'm not quite sure if I just read this in isolation,
2324. 01:42:25 if it's gonna have the same sort of impact.
2325. 01:42:28 And I also, when I got done with this book,
2326. 01:42:33 it wasn't something where it was,
2327. 01:42:36 I don't know, like mindset specifically
2328. 01:42:39 or even something like grit,
2329. 01:42:42 man search for meaning definitely,
2330. 01:42:44 you get done and there's almost like an emotional high
2331. 01:42:47 from reading the book and you're excited about,
2332. 01:42:50 I now see the path forward.
2333. 01:42:52 I don't feel like I got that from this book.
2334. 01:42:55 I feel like I got a lot of information
2335. 01:42:58 about environments and some motivational tactics
2336. 01:43:03 that I could deploy carefully in specific situations,
2337. 01:43:08 but it wasn't the kind of thing that you get done with it
2338. 01:43:14 and you're like, let's go storm the castle sort of a thing.
2339. 01:43:17 Not that every book needs to be that way,
2340. 01:43:19 but just in terms of like the books that we've read
2341. 01:43:22 for Bookworm and the lasting impact that they have,
2342. 01:43:25 I'm not sure this one sticks around for a real long time.
2343. 01:43:30 - Sure, no, that makes sense.
2344. 01:43:32 It does, it does.
2345. 01:43:34 Well, I just wanna say like he started off the book
2346. 01:43:36 by talking about Victor Frankel and I thought, hmm.
2347. 01:43:40 - Yes, he did.
2348. 01:43:40 - That's a pretty solid start to a book.
2349. 01:43:43 And then shortly after he mentions Frankel,
2350. 01:43:45 he gets into Carol Dweck and then Carol Dweck comes up
2351. 01:43:47 multiple times throughout the book.
2352. 01:43:49 But there's also a few points in here.
2353. 01:43:51 You know how sometimes we, you know, down grade a book
2354. 01:43:54 because there's a section that they feel,
2355. 01:43:57 that we feel like they should have expanded on.
2356. 01:44:00 It's like, well, yes, but there's a whole nother book on that.
2357. 01:44:03 So they probably didn't need to, and like we make that comment.
2358. 01:44:07 I feel like fairly often.
2359. 01:44:09 Well, he does have a couple places,
2360. 01:44:12 at least a handful of places in this book where he's like,
2361. 01:44:14 if you wanna read more about this, go check out these.
2362. 01:44:17 And I remember whenever we were reading how to read a book,
2363. 01:44:22 that thing keeps coming up.
2364. 01:44:24 Like I don't know how that book keeps coming up, but it does.
2365. 01:44:28 And it's like whenever you're choosing what book to read next,
2366. 01:44:31 like if you were to make the list of books that were recommended
2367. 01:44:34 or mentioned inside the one you're currently reading
2368. 01:44:36 and then go read those, like you end up with this massive network
2369. 01:44:39 of books to read, it seems like a lot of books
2370. 01:44:42 that I don't do that.
2371. 01:44:44 They do once in a while, they'll mention one or two books,
2372. 01:44:46 but not like 12 or 15 or 20.
2373. 01:44:49 This one, there's a lot of books recommended in it,
2374. 01:44:51 which is kind of a throwback, I feel,
2375. 01:44:54 to kind of the older way of writing
2376. 01:44:56 that just isn't done as much today.
2377. 01:44:59 Now, I think you're absolutely right.
2378. 01:45:01 He doesn't really own this and pose a whole new thing
2379. 01:45:06 that's his own idea.
2380. 01:45:08 He does outsource the credit to a lot of people,
2381. 01:45:13 which is fine, but I feel like he, I think you're right.
2382. 01:45:17 I think he needs to own it to some degree.
2383. 01:45:20 I think he nailed it.
2384. 01:45:21 I think it's a 4.0 book.
2385. 01:45:23 I do, although I feel like this has potential
2386. 01:45:28 to be a how to read a book scenario
2387. 01:45:30 where this could come up more often in the future,
2388. 01:45:34 but it just doesn't feel like it will right now.
2389. 01:45:36 'Cause I feel like this is the type of thing
2390. 01:45:37 that we've kind of been coming to already.
2391. 01:45:39 So it doesn't feel groundbreaking to us,
2392. 01:45:42 but I feel like to somebody who's still trying to figure out
2393. 01:45:45 how to set their mindset and figure out
2394. 01:45:47 how to do the self-help concept,
2395. 01:45:48 this could be a very revolutionary book for them.
2396. 01:45:51 So to us and for Bookworm, I don't think it fits that,
2397. 01:45:55 but I think this could be one that I would recommend
2398. 01:45:57 to people who are fairly new to the space though.
2399. 01:45:59 Like I feel like it could be helpful in that scenario.
2400. 01:46:01 So anyway, I'll agree with you 4.0.
2401. 01:46:04 That's where I'll land on it.
2402. 01:46:05 - All right, so let's put willpower doesn't work
2403. 01:46:10 on the shelf.
2404. 01:46:12 What's coming up next?
2405. 01:46:14 - Yeah, so next book up is "The Mountain is You"
2406. 01:46:18 by Brianna West, I think is how you say it
2407. 01:46:21 from what I looked up.
2408. 01:46:22 And this is about self-sabotage
2409. 01:46:25 and why we resist efforts to change.
2410. 01:46:30 And as I've talked to some folks about
2411. 01:46:33 the concept of self-sabotage,
2412. 01:46:35 I'm learning that pretty much everybody does this.
2413. 01:46:37 So we're gonna talk about sabotaging yourself
2414. 01:46:41 and stopping you from setting up your environment
2415. 01:46:44 to do things the way you think you should do
2416. 01:46:46 or that you want to do.
2417. 01:46:47 So there you go, "The Mountain is You," Brianna West.
2418. 01:46:50 And then what's the one you're gonna pick, Mike?
2419. 01:46:53 - So I have to give you some context
2420. 01:46:55 for the selection of this book.
2421. 01:46:57 I mentioned liminal thinking when we decided
2422. 01:47:02 we were gonna read that one.
2423. 01:47:03 When you just, when you pick that one,
2424. 01:47:05 I told it to my mastermind group
2425. 01:47:07 and there was one person in particular
2426. 01:47:09 who was very, very excited about that book.
2427. 01:47:12 And there are a couple other books
2428. 01:47:14 that he has recommended since then,
2429. 01:47:17 which are kind of all along the same vein.
2430. 01:47:19 This guy reads more books than we do put together.
2431. 01:47:23 So this, I feel like is a creative perspective
2432. 01:47:28 on using liminal thinking.
2433. 01:47:34 I am going to choose another recommendation
2434. 01:47:37 from that person, "The Art of the Idea" by John Hunt
2435. 01:47:40 and how it can change your life.
2436. 01:47:42 It's an illustrated edition, it says.
2437. 01:47:45 It's a hardcover though, it's not really a hardcover.
2438. 01:47:48 It's kind of a funky cardboard cover,
2439. 01:47:52 but it looks like a really neat looking book
2440. 01:47:58 and my hope is that this will build off
2441. 01:48:00 of the liminal thinking foundation
2442. 01:48:03 and kind of put a creative spin on it.
2443. 01:48:07 - Cool, sounds fun.
2444. 01:48:09 - Indeed.
2445. 01:48:10 - Super exciting.
2446. 01:48:11 - All right, gotta get book.
2447. 01:48:13 - I do not.
2448. 01:48:14 And I think already know the answer about you.
2449. 01:48:18 - I barely got through this one.
2450. 01:48:20 I finished it this morning, like this.
2451. 01:48:22 (laughs)
2452. 01:48:24 Talk about forcing functions.
2453. 01:48:26 (laughs)
2454. 01:48:28 That was definitely necessary for sure.
2455. 01:48:31 So thanks for having Bookworm in existence
2456. 01:48:33 that way I can keep reading in crazy times like this.
2457. 01:48:36 - Sure, all right.
2458. 01:48:38 Well, thank you everybody for putting up
2459. 01:48:40 with our technical difficulties today.
2460. 01:48:43 Thank you for supporting the show
2461. 01:48:45 by downloading and listening to it.
2462. 01:48:48 Thank you specifically to our Bookworm Club Premium members
2463. 01:48:52 who have chosen to support the show financially
2464. 01:48:56 and are willing to give us a couple bucks a month.
2465. 01:48:59 Really means a lot to us.
2466. 01:49:01 If you decide to do that,
2467. 01:49:02 you can go to club.bookworm.fm/membership to join.
2468. 01:49:09 And when you do, you get a couple of goodies.
2469. 01:49:11 You get a wallpaper that I designed.
2470. 01:49:14 You get access to the Mind Node files from the books
2471. 01:49:18 that I read.
2472. 01:49:19 There's some gap book episodes
2473. 01:49:20 that Joe had recorded a while back
2474. 01:49:23 and a special section on the club specifically
2475. 01:49:27 for the Premium members.
2476. 01:49:28 So thank you to everybody who has supported the show
2477. 01:49:31 in some way, shape, or form.
2478. 01:49:33 - Absolutely.
2479. 01:49:34 - And if you want to become somebody who is an avid reader,
2480. 01:49:39 the first thing you need to do is change your environment.
2481. 01:49:41 And you need to buy the mountain is you
2482. 01:49:44 and put it on your kitchen table
2483. 01:49:46 and read it over breakfast tomorrow.
2484. 01:49:48 That's your task.
2485. 01:49:49 That's what I'm gonna give it for you.
2486. 01:49:51 And then we'll cover that in a couple of weeks, all right?
2487. 01:49:53 And I expect you to be back here again.
2488. 01:49:56 All right, thanks team.