13: Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker

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1. 00:00:00 You can blame Joe for being a bad communicator.
2. 00:00:03 No, we just need an SOP, I think.
3. 00:00:05 Why?
4. 00:00:06 I'm just kidding.
5. 00:00:10 We have had for quite a while until we switched and finally got away from Skype, but we haven't,
6. 00:00:18 I don't think we've formally decided that Skype is no longer worth it.
7. 00:00:23 We didn't formally decide that Skype was garbage, but we've known it for a long time.
8. 00:00:29 Skype is one of the most talked about topics, I think, in the podcasting world, just because
9. 00:00:36 everyone uses it and everyone hates it and it's just the way it has to be right now.
10. 00:00:42 It's a necessary evil, just like a yes.
11. 00:00:45 Yes.
12. 00:00:47 Yes.
13. 00:00:49 I just had some conversations about email and it amazes me.
14. 00:00:54 I keep running across clients who they have email tied to their domain, so in my case
15. 00:01:00 it's at jobeelig.com because I own jobeelig.com.
16. 00:01:03 Well, I run across a number of clients who have this question of, "Is my website tied
17. 00:01:09 to my email?"
18. 00:01:11 That comes up way more than I would expect.
19. 00:01:14 It's like, "Well, yes and no.
20. 00:01:19 I'm going to sit here and explain how a DNS and a domain name structure works now, simply
21. 00:01:25 so that you understand how this whole thing works and you don't think I'm going to break
22. 00:01:29 your email whenever I change your website."
23. 00:01:31 It sounds like a fun conversation to have.
24. 00:01:34 Oh, yes.
25. 00:01:35 I have it more often than I care to.
26. 00:01:40 I kind of failed on my follow up this time, Mike.
27. 00:01:44 Uh-oh.
28. 00:01:45 Okay, so one of them, so I have three things that ended up on the list for follow up on
29. 00:01:51 my end.
30. 00:01:52 One is the daily rule of three, so choosing the three major things I want to do in that
31. 00:01:58 day.
32. 00:01:59 That one I'm fine on.
33. 00:02:01 That one I'm good and the only reason I think I'm good on that one is because I was doing
34. 00:02:04 it before I read the productivity project somewhat.
35. 00:02:09 I'd formalized it after reading that but not, ultimately it's one that I kind of had started
36. 00:02:16 beforehand.
37. 00:02:17 It's kind of cheating to say that one.
38. 00:02:20 The other two, one was to take longer lunch breaks and do a daily walk.
39. 00:02:26 I haven't done it once.
40. 00:02:29 I continue to put it on my daily schedule but it continues to not happen.
41. 00:02:34 The only reason I have for that is I feel like I need to get my butt to work and I feel
42. 00:02:39 like I'm slacking and I think that's part of what he was getting at is don't fall into
43. 00:02:44 that.
44. 00:02:45 Right.
45. 00:02:46 But you've succumbed despite your best efforts.
46. 00:02:49 Does that what you're saying?
47. 00:02:51 I continue writing it down at least.
48. 00:02:54 I think so.
49. 00:02:58 So that one has failed.
50. 00:03:00 I've been trying to do the meditation piece again.
51. 00:03:05 I'd say I'm about 25% successful doing that one daily which is the same as saying I stink
52. 00:03:13 at this.
53. 00:03:16 So I'm going to continue working at that one but for the sake of follow up it's not looking
54. 00:03:23 good right now.
55. 00:03:24 I guess you've got some extra credit homework to do this time I guess.
56. 00:03:29 I guess which is probably okay because I think I only have, yeah I've got one action.
57. 00:03:35 I've got an item for them today's book but before we get there how are yours going because
58. 00:03:40 I noticed you have four down here from the last time around.
59. 00:03:44 Right.
60. 00:03:45 Next year before we get to mine I'll cut you a little bit of a break about taking longer
61. 00:03:49 lunch breaks because you did take a pretty long breakfast break with me earlier this
62. 00:03:53 week.
63. 00:03:54 True.
64. 00:03:55 I was in Minnesota.
65. 00:03:56 Does that count?
66. 00:03:57 I think it counts.
67. 00:03:58 I think it counts.
68. 00:03:59 It was an extended break over a meal so I think a case could be made.
69. 00:04:04 So that's a nice thing about us living just one state away.
70. 00:04:10 Mike came and visited the Twin Cities a couple days ago so Mike and I got to sit down and
71. 00:04:15 enjoy coffee and breakfast together.
72. 00:04:18 It was glorious.
73. 00:04:19 Thank you for that.
74. 00:04:20 For sure.
75. 00:04:21 Thanks for picking me up.
76. 00:04:22 All right so my follow up items.
77. 00:04:25 Implementing the rule of three and adding it to my journaling template was the first one.
78. 00:04:28 I did do this and I pasted the link to the journaling action in the show notes.
79. 00:04:35 Maybe it was for the last one so I'm not sure if we posted that yet when this one goes
80. 00:04:41 live but if we haven't we can go ahead and share that.
81. 00:04:43 So in order for this to work though you're going to need to have Launch Center Pro on
82. 00:04:48 your iOS device and you're also going to need to have day one installed because what
83. 00:04:53 it's going to do is it'll ask you a bunch of prompts including what are your top three
84. 00:04:56 accomplishments throughout the day and then it's going to format it all into a markdown
85. 00:05:01 table which day one because it supports markdown will display very prettily.
86. 00:05:09 I don't know.
87. 00:05:10 It looks nice in day one.
88. 00:05:12 It looks pretty.
89. 00:05:13 Right.
90. 00:05:15 So that one is done structuring downtime at weekends.
91. 00:05:18 This is kind of done.
92. 00:05:21 This requires buy-in from the other half of the Schmidt's family management team.
93. 00:05:28 So we're working on this.
94. 00:05:32 We're doing really well structuring our entire weeks and we have a family meeting every Sunday
95. 00:05:36 night and we sit down and compare our calendars throughout the entire week and I have proposed
96. 00:05:42 that we do this for the weekends as well and I think that we have agreement on this that
97. 00:05:49 it would actually be valuable but it's going to take a little bit of time for us to really
98. 00:05:54 just create that momentum and that habit of actually planning out our Saturdays and our
99. 00:05:58 Sundays as well because we have not done that.
100. 00:06:01 I don't think ever.
101. 00:06:02 I think there's this is one of those that on the surface it sounds like a horrific idea.
102. 00:06:10 Okay.
103. 00:06:11 I have free time.
104. 00:06:12 Let me make a plan for how I'm going to spend that time.
105. 00:06:15 That just sounds like the worst thing ever.
106. 00:06:17 It does sound like the worst thing ever but what's even worse is getting to a Saturday
107. 00:06:22 and then everybody is stressed because you haven't taken the time to think things to
108. 00:06:26 and you both have independent expectations of how your family time is supposed to go
109. 00:06:30 and you're at odds with each other because you're both chasing your own vision and you're
110. 00:06:35 pulling in opposite directions.
111. 00:06:36 Yes.
112. 00:06:37 I think that it on the surface it maybe sounds like more effort than it's worth but I believe
113. 00:06:43 wholeheartedly that it is worth the effort to implement this.
114. 00:06:48 I don't think I would argue with that.
115. 00:06:50 I just know that so you and I are very detailed with how are we going to spend our time and
116. 00:06:58 we plan out our whole day.
117. 00:06:59 We do this stuff all the time and the expectation the should behind this to me seems like, oh
118. 00:07:08 well you have the weekend or you have the evenings since you worked on your day so hard.
119. 00:07:14 Don't do that again in the evening.
120. 00:07:16 You need a break from that.
121. 00:07:17 That's at least how I perceive what you should do but like we're saying and like what was
122. 00:07:24 the author Chris Bailey who was writing about this in the productivity project shows that
123. 00:07:30 even though it feels like you should give that time absolutely no intentions so that
124. 00:07:37 you can do whatever.
125. 00:07:39 To me I guess I understand that that's way more stressful of not knowing what's going
126. 00:07:44 to go on whereas if you plan to you know in our case there's lakes everywhere.
127. 00:07:49 Well let's go hang out by the lake and go walk along the beach or just look at all the
128. 00:07:54 you know it's fall so the gorgeous leaves that are across the lake.
129. 00:07:58 If you plan to go do something like that it's a lot more relieving stress relieving than
130. 00:08:03 it is to just leave it wide open and just see what happens.
131. 00:08:07 It doesn't seem to actually relieve stress when you leave it open ended.
132. 00:08:13 I would agree with that completely and I think also kids are the wild card here.
133. 00:08:18 Yes.
134. 00:08:19 If you don't have kids you probably can get away with just going with the flow on a Saturday
135. 00:08:23 but when you do have kids you will quickly find yourself being pulled too many directions
136. 00:08:27 for you to possibly even follow a conscious train of thought so you do have to be intentional
137. 00:08:32 about what you're going to say.
138. 00:08:34 Especially when they start asking you what are we going to do now dad what are we going
139. 00:08:37 to do what are we going to do next what are we going to do after lunch what.
140. 00:08:41 Stop asking me.
141. 00:08:42 Yeah actually I just a couple hours ago met my family at the children's museum in downtown
142. 00:08:47 Appleton and my two year old like daddy day let's go in the fire truck and then like
143. 00:08:51 two minutes later let's go in the water room let's go play in the balls like it just from
144. 00:08:56 one that we went all the way around the entire museum I think in about five to ten minutes
145. 00:09:00 because if you get to one thing and he loved it he was so engaged with it and then just
146. 00:09:05 like snap your fingers all of a sudden his focus is somewhere else so yes but I digress
147. 00:09:10 so that is a structuring down time and weekends is in progress the maintenance day ritual this
148. 00:09:17 is also in progress I have not officially picked a maintenance day yet but I also have
149. 00:09:25 a couple weeks of vacation coming up so I feel like I've been head down so long on the
150. 00:09:30 email product and all the other projects that I've had going that starting Monday I'll be
151. 00:09:36 going to the Sean West conference actually well by the time this airs that'll be that'll
152. 00:09:41 be over but I'm really looking forward to getting down there and meeting some some of
153. 00:09:45 my internet heroes like Sean Blanc I believe is going to be speaking Nathan Barry from ConvertKit
154. 00:09:49 people like that so my wife is going to be with me so I'm going to have a couple weeks
155. 00:09:55 actually where I'm going to be traveling I'll be down in Texas again later for another faith-based
156. 00:10:03 men's conference so during that extended period I am first of all going to just let
157. 00:10:09 my brain have a little bit of space to unwind and then I've got a couple things that I want
158. 00:10:13 to figure out so that is that is one of them to figure out that maintenance day ritual what
159. 00:10:17 day that is actually going to take place on I have been collecting things in my omnifocus
160. 00:10:22 with the maintenance day context so to speak and then the other thing is the limiting the
161. 00:10:28 amount of time that you spend each week in meeting so I also have some initial thoughts
162. 00:10:32 on how I'm going to implement this but I have not taken the time to set up the system for
163. 00:10:36 this so this is another task that is going to be part of a larger life maintenance project
164. 00:10:42 over the next couple weeks where I just take a step back and finally have some time to
165. 00:10:47 think about things and breathe and since it'll be basically just me and my wife for a couple
166. 00:10:53 of those weeks then I can get her perspective as well so those are my follow up items are
167. 00:11:00 you able to control your meetings like for me I work on my own so I can for the large
168. 00:11:07 part of things control exactly what meetings I say yes to and which ones I say no to are
169. 00:11:12 you able to do that with Asian efficiency or do they kind of have a set number of meetings
170. 00:11:17 and you really kind of have to be there well Asian efficiency does have set meetings but
171. 00:11:22 they are also flexible so it's not like hey we are going to have a meeting at this time
172. 00:11:27 and you're expected to be there it's always whenever we're going to institute a new meeting
173. 00:11:31 for example like we have a bi-weekly strategy meeting and before that actually appeared
174. 00:11:36 on the calendar tan would make sure that what time works for everybody so it's very very
175. 00:11:43 accommodating and that's one of the reasons I really enjoy working with Asian efficiency
176. 00:11:49 they are very respectful of my time and now if I could just get everybody else in my life
177. 00:11:55 to operate the same way we'd be in business but a big part of that in all of the other
178. 00:12:01 areas of responsibility that I have is managing expectations I know we've talked about that
179. 00:12:07 a lot throughout this podcast not this specific podcast but bookworm and it's hard a lot of
180. 00:12:14 times initially to say no to things and you can see the disappointment in people's eyes
181. 00:12:18 when they have like trusted you to pick up this ball and run with it even if it's not
182. 00:12:23 your turn to carry it but if you set if you start saying no they will start respecting
183. 00:12:28 you and then you can basically steer the conversation and steer the terms of the terms of engagement
184. 00:12:36 I guess is the best way I can describe it in your favor so just because everybody I don't
185. 00:12:43 know I'll just use my church as an example like there's a bunch of people involved in
186. 00:12:47 a lot of the ministries that I'm in that are of a lot of different work situations and
187. 00:12:54 the difficult job of the ministry coordinator for any of those things is to try and coordinate
188. 00:13:01 this volunteer army I don't envy that position at all okay but I especially in that specific
189. 00:13:08 scenario it can be really easy to just say oh yeah I'll do whatever works for everybody
190. 00:13:12 else I've got a flexible schedule yes and no but what I've learned is that if you are
191. 00:13:19 very forthright not like aggressive but just very transparent you know this is what will
192. 00:13:25 work for me this it would be great if we could work this way you know let me know 24 hours
193. 00:13:31 in advance that sort of thing like if you dictate the terms then most often people will
194. 00:13:36 look at that and be like oh yeah that makes sense I guess we can do it that way so got
195. 00:13:40 it to get to that position though what I've had to do is I've kind of had to toe the line
196. 00:13:45 a couple times and sometimes you know there's things that will come up and I've got something
197. 00:13:49 else planned and I have to say no can't do that because we didn't follow like this format
198. 00:13:55 I've got something else scheduled there and it's not flexible so sorry but I can't I can't
199. 00:14:03 react to the urgency of your particular matter and it may maybe sounds mean when I say it
200. 00:14:08 like that on the podcast here but I have found that when you when you are uncompromising
201. 00:14:15 to a certain degree the the standards that you're going to uphold and how you're going
202. 00:14:19 to live your life how you're going to manage your time then people will respect your convictions
203. 00:14:25 and they will agree to to work your way more often than not at least in my experience and
204. 00:14:31 you can also tell because I've learned this working with a number of clients you can tell
205. 00:14:36 a lot of the details on how people are going to how they're going to interact with you
206. 00:14:41 in the future based on some really small things because for me I know that if I'm trying
207. 00:14:48 to set up a meeting I'm trying to understand you know what kind of website are you after
208. 00:14:51 what kind of consulting are you looking for if I'm trying to get a time figured out with
209. 00:14:57 them and the first time we meet they're like 15 minutes late or they cancel a couple times
210. 00:15:05 and try to reschedule if things like that start to happen early like first meeting level
211. 00:15:13 I usually sometimes like I will typically fire them before they ever become a client
212. 00:15:18 just because I know those are very strong indicators that me trying to get something
213. 00:15:24 from you or get something to you is going to be an extremely painful process right I
214. 00:15:30 just don't want to go through that and even if you don't fire your clients so maybe like
215. 00:15:35 I'm not going to fire the people who I work with at my church I don't have the ability
216. 00:15:38 to do that even if I wanted to but they those warning signs do indicate to me that if this
217. 00:15:44 is going to work this is going to take a little bit of extra effort on your part and
218. 00:15:48 that that's okay like I can do that but I if I know that I had a time I can plan for
219. 00:15:54 that I can the thing that really gets me and throws me for a loop is when something lands
220. 00:16:02 in my lap at the last second and I have to drop whatever I'm doing in order to accommodate
221. 00:16:07 this but most of the stuff that happens in my life in my life anyways seems to be pretty
222. 00:16:12 regular obviously there's still the unexpected emergencies like my two-year-old deciding to
223. 00:16:19 dive down the basement stairs you know take the ER that does actually happen and when
224. 00:16:27 that happens you just got a role with it but there are a lot of things that we just roll
225. 00:16:30 with we don't ever take a step back and think about like well why are we in this situation
226. 00:16:35 and what could we have done to avoid this and if you can develop that mindset you can
227. 00:16:40 put out a lot of those fires before they're even there but this is a lot of talking about
228. 00:16:45 how you manage everybody else that you work with and the topic of this book was managing
229. 00:16:53 oneself so I'll let you introduce Mr. Peter Drucker and why you chose this.
230. 00:17:01 Yeah and I think a lot of what we've been just talking about applies to this specific
231. 00:17:06 book here because so much of the interactions that I know especially with me with clients
232. 00:17:13 and you and how you interact with folks at church and such so much of that is dependent
233. 00:17:18 on how you yourself operate and understanding some of that and that's what Peter Drucker
234. 00:17:26 gets into with this particular book managing oneself and like I mentioned last time this
235. 00:17:32 is a pretty short book I think I calculated it out it comes to from a normal book size
236. 00:17:38 it's about 20 pages even though I think it's 60 in this book but it's small enough that
237. 00:17:44 each page is roughly a third the size of a normal page but I picked this one because
238. 00:17:50 one it's Peter Drucker and Drucker comes up a lot and I'm one that hasn't read anything
239. 00:17:57 by Drucker technically in the past and I've wanted to and this one being short I figured
240. 00:18:04 it was easy to jump in and I also was trying to find something that was easy for folks
241. 00:18:08 who are listeners who haven't had a chance to read along or read ahead of one and so
242. 00:18:14 I wanted an easy one for them to get in so I don't have some deep philosophical reason
243. 00:18:18 on this one Mike there you go hey I think that's a first so what one of the first things
244. 00:18:25 that Drucker gets into in this book is why should you manage yourself and I guess to define
245. 00:18:33 that just going through the whole thing and just seeing what he talks about in the book
246. 00:18:38 I would say that in this case when he says manage yourself it's really just knowing yourself
247. 00:18:43 and then doing something with that is that fair Mike I think that's probably pretty fair
248. 00:18:50 I really like the whole idea of managing yourself and I really like the way that he outlines
249. 00:18:56 it in this book as well but really the argument for managing yourself is that your life is
250. 00:19:02 going to happen you've got a set amount of years and it can either happen by default
251. 00:19:09 or it can happen by determination and you can be intentional about what you're going
252. 00:19:14 to do what you're going to accomplish and the sort of legacy and impact that you're
253. 00:19:18 going to leave and I think if you frame it that way it's a no brainer everybody wants
254. 00:19:24 to make an impact everybody wants their life to mean something and if you don't choose
255. 00:19:31 to manage yourself then essentially like you're just floating and you're not going to be nearly
256. 00:19:37 as effective as if you had been if you'd make in the conscious decision to point your life
257. 00:19:43 in a specific direction I think it's interesting that he makes the correlation in here between
258. 00:19:50 the knowledge worker and the manual labor worker and to me it's always fascinating to
259. 00:19:57 see the correlations that people make and how you come from one to the other coming from
260. 00:20:01 a farm so I've worked with pigs I've worked with cattle I've run tractors I've run plows
261. 00:20:07 like I've done all that and typically when you're in that scenario it's pretty simple
262. 00:20:13 to see here's something that needs done I need to go run I need to tell up the ground
263. 00:20:19 like I need to go do that I need to run the planner like it's easier to go do that and
264. 00:20:22 then it's a manual process whereas so much of what we do is knowledge it's all about
265. 00:20:30 the information and what we know what's the ideas that are in our minds and when we do
266. 00:20:36 work there's not something physical and it's not something that you're most of the time
267. 00:20:41 it's not something that you're coming up with out of your own thought processes it's something
268. 00:20:47 that you see externally that dictates what it is you're going to do so there's no point
269. 00:20:53 in I shouldn't say there's no point most cases it's something outside of you in the manual
270. 00:20:59 labor world it's managing you so I know that the cows need fed okay well I'm gonna feed
271. 00:21:05 the cows like that's the cows managing me it's just the way it works in the knowledge
272. 00:21:10 world I have to decide one what needs done to how it needs to be done and three when
273. 00:21:16 it needs to be done like I have to make all of those decisions and work my way into doing
274. 00:21:22 those so in in our world in our society today when everything is based on ideas and everything's
275. 00:21:27 based on the knowledge and what you know you have to be the one that controls it and it's
276. 00:21:33 getting to where just about everybody is falling into that category which means that everyone
277. 00:21:38 should be reading this and going through it and understanding it yeah definitely it's
278. 00:21:43 not just for knowledge workers and I think even the term knowledge worker like a lot of
279. 00:21:49 the circles that you and I run in that term is understood and a lot of people would fall
280. 00:21:55 into that category maybe that doesn't apply to the average listener though and I think
281. 00:22:02 that it's easy to write that off if you are not a knowledge worker and you are responding
282. 00:22:07 to things that do actually physically need to get done and because because I think I've
283. 00:22:14 been there to a certain degree where it's like oh it'd be great to just sit at a coffee
284. 00:22:19 shop all day and write words for a living oh it sounds real hard you know it actually
285. 00:22:25 is once you sit down and try to do it but compared to some of the physical work like
286. 00:22:29 a coal miner for example just the idea of a job that I would not have wanted to do hearing
287. 00:22:36 stories about people who have done that sort of work in the past and even today it's easy
288. 00:22:40 when you're in that position to kind of look down on the whole idea of knowledge work I
289. 00:22:44 think but the next point I have in here is transitions and one of the things that Peter
290. 00:22:49 Drucker says you need to know how and when to change the work that you do so this ties
291. 00:22:55 in I think really well with what we were talking about in the innovators dilemma it's
292. 00:23:00 like when do you jump ship when do you decide that the new thing is the thing for you and
293. 00:23:07 then how do you do that I think that managing yourself is what will take you from where
294. 00:23:13 you are currently to where you want to be and I'm not saying that everybody wants to
295. 00:23:18 be a knowledge worker but if you are going to make that transition whatever that looks
296. 00:23:23 like you do have to apply these principles and manage yourself well because if you do
297. 00:23:28 not especially when you are when you're in your job is determined by your responding
298. 00:23:33 to physical needs and mental emotional needs you know if you're a nurse for example you're
299. 00:23:41 responding to especially like an emergency room people you're responding to emergencies
300. 00:23:46 all the time you're responding to fires you're living like a firefighter according to David
301. 00:23:50 Allen the author of getting things done how do you get out of that mode and no matter
302. 00:23:57 what industry you happen to be in there are going to be certain things that you can do
303. 00:24:01 to make sure that you don't have to live your life to the to that level where you're constantly
304. 00:24:06 under that stress of not knowing what's coming like like I said some of those jobs that comes
305. 00:24:11 with the job and there are people that have to fill those roles and that's fine but the
306. 00:24:15 rest of the time when you don't have somebody that's bleeding out on the table in front
307. 00:24:18 of you how do you live your life do you live it responding to the next fire do you just
308. 00:24:23 sit there and wait for that next fire do you sit there and wait for that next person with
309. 00:24:27 a healthy emergency to walk through the door so that you can get to work again and the whole
310. 00:24:31 time that you're sitting there like are you stressed and are you on edge because if you
311. 00:24:35 live your life like that all the time you're gonna burn out you're gonna wear out and if
312. 00:24:40 you manage yourself well you can manage it really comes back to you a lot of the things
313. 00:24:44 that we talked about think about the powerful engagement managing your energy managing your
314. 00:24:48 attention managing your focus being able to dial down and then when it's appropriate
315. 00:24:54 become actively engaged again dial back up be intense put out the fire move on to the
316. 00:24:59 next thing but if you don't have the skills to manage yourself then that's never going
317. 00:25:05 to work you're never going to be able to progress you're never going to be able to get from
318. 00:25:09 point A to point B you're going to be stuck going around the mountain you're going to
319. 00:25:13 be stuck chasing your tail if you don't recognize that these principles are in play and I think
320. 00:25:18 that's the first step is just recognizing the sort of things that you need to do and
321. 00:25:22 the steps you need to take in order to manage yourself because if you don't even recognize
322. 00:25:27 it it's really easy just put your head down and go through the grind go day to day you
323. 00:25:32 know I get up early I go to work I come back I'm tired I start I go to sleep I do the same
324. 00:25:36 thing over again the next day like that's how a lot of people live and I think that that's
325. 00:25:41 why this book is so great and I think that probably everybody should read it it's so
326. 00:25:45 short it's so direct it's so actionable I would argue that if you invest probably an
327. 00:25:51 hour you can get through the whole thing and it's I thought I thought it was great I think
328. 00:25:57 that this applies to anybody in any situation who is looking to improve yeah I think there's
329. 00:26:03 a lot of there's a lot of value in it for sure especially for people who make decisions
330. 00:26:09 about the work that they're going to do before they do it so that you have to make the decision
331. 00:26:13 about what task am I going to take on and then I'm going to step into it I think there's
332. 00:26:19 a lot of value in it for them because so much of those decisions like so many of those
333. 00:26:25 decisions I mean look at people who first go to work from home the first time people
334. 00:26:29 go work in a virtual company or something along those lines it's usually culture shock
335. 00:26:35 it's usually a bit of a challenge because you have to start to make decisions about
336. 00:26:41 when you're going to go to work you have to start to make decisions about where you're
337. 00:26:46 going to work and what are your methods of working you have to understand yourself really
338. 00:26:51 well in order to really thrive from a home environment it's not simple I don't know how
339. 00:26:56 many times I run across people and what do you do you know it's always the question
340. 00:27:00 people ask what do you do and whenever you say you know you're working online or I talk
341. 00:27:05 about some of these other ventures that I'm in every one of them is me working from home
342. 00:27:09 like it's just the way that I do things and like nine times out of ten the response oh
343. 00:27:15 that's awesome I'd love to do that well yes I understand what you're saying it's not that
344. 00:27:21 simple like it's not necessarily a dream come true I have a couple friends who did it for
345. 00:27:27 about six months and had to quit and go back to work for somebody or rent an office space
346. 00:27:31 to go work there because working from home simply didn't work they weren't able to control
347. 00:27:36 so many of their impulses and they just weren't getting anything done yeah the process in
348. 00:27:41 my opinion usually looks something like you're in an office environment and you're like
349. 00:27:44 oh man it'd be sweet to work from home and then you start working from home and you say
350. 00:27:49 oh man this is awesome I love that I can work from home and then after a while you're like
351. 00:27:54 oh this is really getting old I wish I had somewhere that I could go and I've caught
352. 00:28:01 myself in the same situation where I'll leave home and I'll go before I had this particular
353. 00:28:08 office where I'm recording right now I would leave home and I would literally hop from
354. 00:28:14 coffee shop to coffee shop and I would find myself like getting on the road on the way
355. 00:28:18 to one and then halfway there being like I don't really want to go there today and change
356. 00:28:23 my mind which is so ridiculous I mean this is hashtag first world problems I completely
357. 00:28:29 understand but you do have to be able to manage that and the grass is always greener on the
358. 00:28:35 other side of the fence oh you're in an office there's a lot of positives about being in
359. 00:28:39 an office environment in fact I joined a co-working space recently that I go to a couple times
360. 00:28:44 a week just because I like the interaction I like the energy that comes from being around
361. 00:28:48 other people like that who are creating and making things but and when you're in the office
362. 00:28:53 environment you're surrounded by people maybe who are already fitting that mold at the time
363. 00:28:57 you're just like oh I want to get away from these people and then once you get away from
364. 00:29:00 them you're like oh actually that wasn't so bad this is a lot of about how gray CGP gray
365. 00:29:08 on cortex a lot of that podcast is understanding yourself like that's so much of what he he's
366. 00:29:15 very good at understanding how he does things and I think there's a lot that people could
367. 00:29:20 learn from him just in because it sounds like he's absolutely crazy sometimes until he starts
368. 00:29:26 to explain the details around why he did something and once you understand why he's done something
369. 00:29:32 then it's like well huh I think I could do that too like that makes perfect sense I want
370. 00:29:37 to try that but you don't have that like it's hard for most people to see at that depth that
371. 00:29:44 he's able to see within himself he's very self-aware and under able to understand how he gets
372. 00:29:50 work done and that's so much of how Peter Drucker comes at this because he has a number
373. 00:29:56 of questions that he poses to prompt you to understand yourself he's prompting you to ask
374. 00:30:03 yourself certain questions and then based on the answers to those this is what that could
375. 00:30:08 mean and the thing that I found interesting is that he doesn't he doesn't dwell on a topic
376. 00:30:15 right because it's so short he poses something he makes the point and then he moves on there
377. 00:30:21 is absolutely you know how many times if I had gotten in the authors for you know say
378. 00:30:26 a topic and then repeat it like six times like I always get on to him for that and this
379. 00:30:31 is not a case of that by any means because Peter goes through topics exactly once and
380. 00:30:36 never brings him up again and it's almost I'm gonna sound ridiculous now it's almost
381. 00:30:44 hard to catch everything because it's never ever repeated in here so now I sound like a
382. 00:30:50 crazy guy no I completely understand what you're saying because there are no like chapter
383. 00:30:55 breaks I don't think not that I can remember anyways where it's a real clear delineation
384. 00:31:00 we're leaving this topic and we're going into another topic yep he's got a list of questions
385. 00:31:05 that you need to ask yourself and he doesn't even have numbers or bullet points for them
386. 00:31:10 they're not bold it's reads like a big long essay and it's very easy to miss first second
387. 00:31:16 third because he jumps between them so quickly yeah I think one of them and one of these questions
388. 00:31:24 that he he asked that I thought was kind of interesting is how do I perform and there
389. 00:31:29 were two two things that came up on that I'm gonna pull it up just so I do this the right
390. 00:31:35 way but he underneath how do I perform he poses the question are you a reader or a listener
391. 00:31:43 and I think what he's ultimately getting at within that section is what's the best way
392. 00:31:47 that you understand the topic that's coming into your mind like what's the best way that
393. 00:31:54 you understand something that's coming to you and some people love to listen to you know
394. 00:32:00 in this case listen to a podcast to understand something some people want to read a book in
395. 00:32:04 order to comprehend something I don't know that I fully understand my own self in this
396. 00:32:10 but I would tend to venture that I'm a reader simply because we read books all the time so
397. 00:32:17 I think that it's probably where I'm gonna land on that but I think understanding that
398. 00:32:22 that's the best way to gather information for yourself can be extremely valuable yeah definitely
399. 00:32:29 there are I think six questions and I wrote them down and answered them because I was curious
400. 00:32:37 how do I actually perform so the first one you hit on is am I a reader or a listener and
401. 00:32:42 I don't have the book in front of me at the moment but I the way that he phrased it because
402. 00:32:47 I thought for sure yeah I'm a reader I read lots of books I have a podcast called book
403. 00:32:50 or like I must be a reader of course but the way that he phrased it wasn't just like what
404. 00:32:56 you did but when presented information how did you synthesize it more more easily I guess
405. 00:33:08 and so even though I read a lot of books I find that if I want to really take something
406. 00:33:12 away from them I have to take notes and so when it comes to absorbing information I
407. 00:33:18 think that I'm actually a listener the next question he asked was how do I learn and he
408. 00:33:25 give a couple different examples and for me I put that I learned by writing which I think
409. 00:33:33 is evidenced by the fact that I can go and I can read a book for this podcast but I will
410. 00:33:37 not take anything away unless I actually take notes and write write things down next question
411. 00:33:44 is do I work well with people or am I a loner and I'd be interested to find out what your
412. 00:33:51 yours is here well let me so the how do I learn piece before I get into that one for
413. 00:33:59 me I've got kind of a hybrid I'm I'm weird on this one and I know this because for me
414. 00:34:05 I learned one of two ways either reading about it or in some cases in our world watching
415. 00:34:11 it in like say on YouTube so consuming it in some form like that or doing it so there's
416. 00:34:18 so many times that I'm trying to figure out how to like take a website for example how
417. 00:34:23 do I actually build this particular piece of a website I just jump in and do it like
418. 00:34:28 I'll figure it out along the way so that's just how I know that I pick things up as far
419. 00:34:33 as working with other people I know that it really depends if it's something where it's
420. 00:34:42 definitely my forte and it's definitely something that I need to do I'm better off just let
421. 00:34:46 me go do it but so much of you know the the client especially the client side of having
422. 00:34:52 that relationship with someone or you know I've played around with some other roles right
423. 00:34:57 now I so much of that is dependent on other people and I do fine with that I'm perfectly
424. 00:35:05 content working with other people on things I think for me it just kind of depends on what
425. 00:35:10 the on what the particular project is is that a cop out maybe I agree though I think that
426. 00:35:18 applies to me as well I definitely enjoy working as part of a team especially with the Asian
427. 00:35:23 efficiency team for example you know I've talked I believe on this podcast for sure on
428. 00:35:29 the productivity show with Zach about how we're kind of polar opposites when it comes
429. 00:35:34 to our personality so it's taken a little bit of time to figure out how to work together
430. 00:35:38 but because we've invested the time to make it work we know how each other are wired we
431. 00:35:43 can work really well together so I see myself being able to function in that arena but I
432. 00:35:48 also think that if I had a choice I would rather just get my work go into monk mode and get
433. 00:35:54 it done so sadly I think I am a loner but that's okay I think I do pretty well with
434. 00:36:03 both of them especially if someone else works the same way I do which is why you and I work
435. 00:36:07 so well together I think so maybe we're social loners maybe that's it that's odd yeah but
436. 00:36:14 one of the other ways that he brought up that I thought was really interesting was some
437. 00:36:17 people learn by hearing themselves talk I thought that was kind of interesting because
438. 00:36:21 I never really thought about that until I'd read this and once I'd read it it made all
439. 00:36:27 kinds of bells and whistles go off my brain because I think I'm like that Mike which is
440. 00:36:32 why I like this show and it's why I drive my wife absolutely crazy sometimes because I
441. 00:36:39 have something I want to talk to you about I don't know what I think about it but by
442. 00:36:43 the time I'm done explaining it I'll know exactly how I feel about it but I won't know
443. 00:36:49 until I explain it to you that makes sense I know people who are like that I don't think
444. 00:36:54 I am personally like that maybe I go ramble on some rants on this podcast as I tend to
445. 00:37:01 think things through while I'm talking but for the most part I think I like to collect
446. 00:37:05 all the facts I'm a high-fak finder on the Colby's Colby score and then then I'll I'll
447. 00:37:12 state my case but next question was do I produce results as a decision maker or an advisor
448. 00:37:20 so I know that I have the ability to produce results as a decision maker I think that's
449. 00:37:26 one of the biggest benefits of reading all of these books in fact I shared with you at
450. 00:37:31 one point a link to an article that showed that like the really successful CEOs they are
451. 00:37:38 the ones who read at least 24 books a year like there's very concrete evidence that that
452. 00:37:46 gives them basically a bigger toolbox to make better informed decisions from so I think
453. 00:37:52 that if you held my feet to the fire and said you have to pick what are you going to do
454. 00:37:56 this or that I could make a pretty good decision most of the time because I do like to to
455. 00:38:02 learn and improve myself and I feel like I've expanded my toolbox quite a bit in the
456. 00:38:06 last several years but given my preference I think I would rather have a meeting and
457. 00:38:14 share the options and talk things through and let somebody else put their neck on the
458. 00:38:18 whole line and actually implement it yeah so I would say that I am an advisor what would
459. 00:38:24 you say you are I am pretty certain I'm a decision maker and the reason I say that is
460. 00:38:30 because I've been in some other companies in the past where I butt heads with people pretty
461. 00:38:36 strongly simply because I have a strong feeling as to the way that things should be done based
462. 00:38:43 on what I know about the market and based on what I know about how things operate in
463. 00:38:47 a certain sector I know how a website works I know how it should be built trying to get
464. 00:38:53 me off of the best way to do it is going to be pretty tough because I know what that
465. 00:38:57 decision needs to be so I honestly like I think this is why I work for myself because
466. 00:39:04 I struggle so much to work with an entire team that's telling me what I need to be doing
467. 00:39:11 or that shuts down something that should be done differently in my opinion you know take
468. 00:39:16 for example like email newsletters I know there are very specific ways that you have
469. 00:39:20 to collect email addresses some of that's legal like some of that is this is a major
470. 00:39:28 fine if you don't do it a certain way and I've had people fight me on that in the past
471. 00:39:33 it's like no this is not right so I have some stuff like that and I if there's a decision
472. 00:39:39 that I feel like should be made a certain way I tend to put my stake in the ground and
473. 00:39:42 that's tough to get me off of it I tend to do that also but usually when there's a team
474. 00:39:49 or a group of people who are making the decision I find myself if I really have the authority
475. 00:39:55 to just say okay we're going to take the entire organization or this entire group in a certain
476. 00:39:59 direction that is somewhat paralyzing to me so that's why I say that my preference is
477. 00:40:04 probably advisor but I get what you're what you're saying as well yeah I think I would
478. 00:40:09 rather be the one at the front I would rather be the one that has a bunch of folks around
479. 00:40:16 me helping pull all the information together and then based on all the information I'll
480. 00:40:21 make the I'll pull the trigger so I that's kind of how I feel that makes sense I have
481. 00:40:27 two more questions second last one says do I perform well under stress or do I need a
482. 00:40:32 structured predictable environment now I work for a time management and productivity
483. 00:40:39 company I have given talks on Omni focus at max.conference I on the surface should totally
484. 00:40:49 be in the structured and predictable environment crowd yep however if I am really honest with
485. 00:40:55 myself and I look at how I actually get work done I have to admit that at least a little
486. 00:41:02 bit I perform well under stress now that doesn't mean I like to manufacture that stress all
487. 00:41:09 the time I would prefer to avoid that if possible but I think I kind of land in the middle here
488. 00:41:15 where I'll get a project and I'll plan it all out but I won't jump in and take action
489. 00:41:20 on it right away I will usually let it sit for a little bit I'm not gonna wait till the
490. 00:41:23 last minute and then scramble to get things done but I'm also generally not super methodical
491. 00:41:32 just do five minutes every day and then you've read your book every two weeks usually I'll
492. 00:41:37 take a couple days off and then think to myself I should probably get started on that book so
493. 00:41:41 I think I have to confess that I perform well under stress what about you?
494. 00:41:50 Well as much as I want to be in the structured category for everything it doesn't work that
495. 00:42:01 way if it's something that I enjoy doing say take reading books for example I can say I'm
496. 00:42:07 a sit down I'm read 25 pages a day I can do that but the reason I do that is because
497. 00:42:11 I know there's a deadline coming and I know that if I wait I will have a hard time catching
498. 00:42:19 up and I'm aware of that so on the surface it looks like I'm operating underneath of
499. 00:42:26 that structure but the only reason I put the structure in place is because of the stress
500. 00:42:30 of the deadline that makes sense so I'm I'm when I know there's a deadline coming and
501. 00:42:38 when I know that there's the stressor of something that needs to be accomplished within a certain
502. 00:42:43 time frame or in a certain way I'll put the structures in place to make it happen in that
503. 00:42:50 within those bounds but if I don't have a bound that I'm I'm tied to so take take working
504. 00:43:00 with Alfred for example so this is the next video course that I'm trying to work on and
505. 00:43:04 I say I'm trying to work on very intentionally because on the surface I've put all the structure
506. 00:43:10 in place to do it but there is no deadline there is no stressor behind it which means
507. 00:43:15 that that particular project is one that if there's going to be something bumped it immediately
508. 00:43:19 gets bumped even though that's a very important project for me in my business I still bump
509. 00:43:24 it yep so there is no there's no stressor to get me to do it so as my friend I'm going
510. 00:43:29 to do it as much as I love the structure and as much as that gives me I guess peace is
511. 00:43:35 weird as that sounds I I have to have something that pushes yep no it totally makes sense
512. 00:43:43 last question I think this one will be pretty easy it says do I work best in a big organization
513. 00:43:48 or a small one I cannot picture how anyone can work better in a big organization but I'm
514. 00:43:56 sure that there are people out there that that is true but that just illustrates to me that
515. 00:44:01 100 percent thousand percent I fall into the work best in a small organization camp I struggled
516. 00:44:11 with this question I did and the reason I say that is because I've worked in a pretty
517. 00:44:18 big corporation I've worked on some pretty big teams and I've worked as I don't even know
518. 00:44:26 what to call it I more like a technology assistant like someone who just does a hodgepodge of
519. 00:44:32 things in order to make stuff that shouldn't happen happen I've done a lot of that and worked
520. 00:44:37 specifically for some higher up executives and seeing them and how they operate I don't
521. 00:44:46 know that they would work well in a smaller organization because they require a pretty
522. 00:44:54 large team underneath of them to make their ideas and their decisions happen and they
523. 00:44:58 know that so I think there are some there are definitely some people who need a larger
524. 00:45:04 team underneath of them in order to accomplish what it is that they're setting out to do
525. 00:45:10 I guess I guess it makes sense I just have such a strong connection to what I want to
526. 00:45:17 be able to see what I do actually produce the results I don't want to see the decisions
527. 00:45:22 that I make trickle down through a hundred different other people who will then produce
528. 00:45:26 the results although maybe that's just because I've never been a particular situation it
529. 00:45:31 could be the the decision maker advisor thing like the the difference between those two
530. 00:45:37 because those people most certainly their decision makers they're not the ones that
531. 00:45:40 are going to go out and actually build a website they're going to make all the decisions around
532. 00:45:44 it that's that's what they'll do they don't actually want to be the ones who write the
533. 00:45:49 code that they don't want anything to do with that they'd rather put a team around it to
534. 00:45:53 make it happen I think that's what Drucker is getting at here maybe I'm wrong but that's
535. 00:45:57 that's kind of how I took it some people need to be able to have a larger group underneath
536. 00:46:02 of them or work with a lot of people to accomplish something and some people really struggle
537. 00:46:08 with that and part of my issue that I run into is I really like to work on larger teams I
538. 00:46:16 think I like to be in those scenarios not necessarily because I want to be part of the
539. 00:46:22 group putting together a big report or something like that but I'd like to be the one that
540. 00:46:26 leads it that's helping pull the whole thing together but honestly a lot of the places
541. 00:46:32 where I feel like I'm better suited I don't have the experience or the age honestly to
542. 00:46:39 do that as much as that sounds horrible this is kind of the way it works out it's just
543. 00:46:43 the way you know a lot of these organizations want to operate they don't want to hire a
544. 00:46:47 young kid in order to come in and you know lead a whole team of 50 people it just doesn't
545. 00:46:51 work that way sure so there's a bit of a disconnects in some cases you can you can get around it
546. 00:46:58 but I think this is a lot of the reason that I work for myself is I'm working to build
547. 00:47:03 up kind of my own business to where I can eventually start to lead a group of people
548. 00:47:07 like that's ultimately what I'm shooting for a longer term is to get to that point so I've
549. 00:47:12 been coming at it from a lot of different angles to get to that level but I digress let's
550. 00:47:17 just kind of how kind of how I see things because I think some people need to have a
551. 00:47:20 team around them in order to accomplish something and it typically and some for some folks
552. 00:47:26 you know take a CEO for example they need a lot of people underneath of them to achieve
553. 00:47:31 what it is that they want to do.
554. 00:47:33 Am I off my rocker on all this?
555. 00:47:34 Nope, makes perfect sense and I think there's a really important thing in detail in what
556. 00:47:40 you just said where you mentioned basically that this is how I see things I think a lot
557. 00:47:45 of people don't ever take the time to figure out exactly what they're seeing and then interpret
558. 00:47:51 what that actually means and that's really at the heart of this whole section and why
559. 00:47:57 I wanted to go through that question by question the big thing that I got out of this is you
560. 00:48:02 need to know your strengths in fact he has a couple quotes which I liked one of them said
561. 00:48:06 most people think they know what they are good at they are usually wrong.
562. 00:48:12 So I as one of my takeaways I put I want to figure out what specifically my strengths
563. 00:48:17 are and every time he presented a list of questions like that I wanted to identify that
564. 00:48:22 and it kind of ties back into the I have this on the outline here the feedback analysis
565. 00:48:27 method where there's three steps to this one is to concentrate on your strengths to work
566. 00:48:34 on improving your strengths and then three discover where your intellectual arrogance
567. 00:48:37 is causing disabling arrogance and overcome it and most people I think well I shouldn't
568. 00:48:44 say most people but I do know that this approach is out there I've seen people who have had
569. 00:48:48 this mindset and it makes total sense to me after reading this book that this is not the
570. 00:48:52 way that you should approach things is I want to I want to become better at the things that
571. 00:48:57 I'm not that good at and Peter Drucker is basically saying that that is a complete waste of time
572. 00:49:02 you should be just don't do it on your strengths.
573. 00:49:05 In fact he says one should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low
574. 00:49:12 competence which makes total sense especially when you read it in the context of this this
575. 00:49:16 book if you really want to leave a dent in the universe as Steve Jobs would say then you
576. 00:49:24 need to do the things that you are best at that is a force multiplier of whatever focus
577. 00:49:30 attention effort that you put forth why would you choose to do something that is going to
578. 00:49:35 diminish the effort that you're that you're putting out there and I think a lot of people
579. 00:49:40 get stuck working in ways where they're not utilizing their strengths and they don't
580. 00:49:47 ever stop to consider whether there actually should be a better way.
581. 00:49:53 One of the other quotes I really liked in this book is too many people work in ways that
582. 00:49:56 are not their ways and that almost guarantees non-performance so that's really what was
583. 00:50:02 at the heart of all of those questions that we just went through is how do you actually
584. 00:50:06 perform if you can figure out how you actually perform then all you have to do is follow
585. 00:50:12 that script and the squirrel take care of itself.
586. 00:50:18 One of the things that he talks about with the feedback analysis because you brought that
587. 00:50:21 up was the process of writing down what you expect out of something so that you can create
588. 00:50:27 that feedback and I thought this was interesting this is the I have one major action item that
589. 00:50:31 I wrote down for this and this is it is that whenever you make a commitment to do something
590. 00:50:37 say a big project you're going to do something big in your life like say you want to lose
591. 00:50:41 weight or some cases you want to gain weight if you're going through that process you need
592. 00:50:46 to write down what you expect is going to happen when it's done and then when it's completed
593. 00:50:52 compare what actually happened to your expectations on it and if you do that that's where you
594. 00:51:00 can generate that analysis of did it like did I accomplish what I thought I would was it
595. 00:51:05 better was it worse do I understand myself well enough to in order to accurately write
596. 00:51:10 down what I expect out of something and that process of understanding the difference between
597. 00:51:15 what you expected and what actually happened can generate that feedback for your for you
598. 00:51:21 to understand yourself and I think that's one thing that I've never even tried I never
599. 00:51:26 even occurred to me that this is something that you could do so I I want to try doing
600. 00:51:31 this I'm going to start writing down whenever I take on a project what do I expect out of
601. 00:51:35 it by the time it's done because I'm curious what the difference is between what actually
602. 00:51:40 comes of it and what I thought was going to come of it at the very beginning so now I've
603. 00:51:44 he's got this curiosity in me growing yeah I read that too and I think that that would
604. 00:51:49 be a little difficult for me to implement because unless I actually created like a reminder
605. 00:51:55 or a task anomaly focus to say go back and look at what you wrote down then I don't think
606. 00:52:03 I would ever just come across that in my everyday work I tend to be really focused on what I'm
607. 00:52:11 doing at the moment I have no problem looking ahead go week or even 12 weeks plug for an
608. 00:52:18 upcoming book but yeah I have I have a little bit of a hard time just naturally looking back
609. 00:52:25 well you want to know here's here's my tactical process for that whenever I create a new project
610. 00:52:31 an Omni focus which hopefully is not super frequent if I'm not saying yes to frequent
611. 00:52:38 whenever I create a new project what I'm trying to do and I started doing it I think yesterday
612. 00:52:44 of whenever I create a new project in the notes field inside Omni focus I'm I leverage those
613. 00:52:51 pretty heavily I will write down what I expect out of that project when it's done
614. 00:52:57 and then before I know I haven't done this yet so this is a theoretical whenever I'm done with
615. 00:53:05 that project before I hit the spacebar to mark the project complete I review what's in those
616. 00:53:10 note field in that note field for that project does that make sense so you have this process you
617. 00:53:16 end up creating a habit around when you enter and create a new project and then you have another
618. 00:53:21 habit that's on the back end of it for whenever it's done and those two take care of it that's
619. 00:53:27 my process anyway my thought it sounds doable but I don't think that I would actually follow
620. 00:53:34 through with it I will probably forget a few times just confess there well I will I will hold
621. 00:53:39 you accountable to that since you said this one of your action items anyways so
622. 00:53:43 do you want to talk a little bit about options
623. 00:53:48 yeah I uh I wrote down a few quotes that uh that Drucker had in here that I thought were
624. 00:54:00 really interesting and one of them that he had towards the back of the book was and this is the
625. 00:54:06 quote in a society in which success has become so terribly important having options will become
626. 00:54:13 increasingly vital and what he's getting at here is the second half of our lives and so many of us
627. 00:54:19 we work on building a career we work at it we get better and better and better at it and then at
628. 00:54:23 some point you know we have this midlife crisis and part of the rationale behind that that he poses
629. 00:54:30 is that when you hit mid 40 roughly in that area you've learned and grown so much in a specific
630. 00:54:39 career that you become bored with it and you go out and try to do something new and that's where a
631. 00:54:47 lot of that comes from that's his that's what he's getting at and he poses that one this is a
632. 00:54:52 very good thing because you can continue to grow yourself and continue to understand yourself in
633. 00:54:56 the future so I think there's a lot of value in and continue to work at things in the second half
634. 00:55:01 of our lives granted you and I both are nowhere near that right now so that's just something that's
635. 00:55:07 up there in the future however he does point out that don't wait until you get there before you
636. 00:55:15 start to do something right you start keeping things open right now and that's what that quotes
637. 00:55:19 about is making sure that you have a lot of things going right now so that in the future if you want
638. 00:55:25 to make a change you can and it's not that difficult this is part of the reason that I seem very
639. 00:55:31 chaotic with the businesses and the processes that I take on because I take on all kinds of weird
640. 00:55:37 diversified methods for businesses seems yeah so I completely agree and I've pretty much gone
641. 00:55:47 through this process recently so this I wrote down the same the same quote and I definitely that that
642. 00:55:56 hit me he talks in the book about those three ways to develop a second career and I'll just go
643. 00:56:04 through these real quickly and then I'll kind of talk briefly about okay how this uh how this played
644. 00:56:09 out in in my own life because I'm sure that there are a lot of people listening to this right now
645. 00:56:13 who are in the situation that I was in so if you are in a job in a career right now and you're
646. 00:56:20 listening to this and you don't want to wait until you're 45 to realize that I need to start
647. 00:56:25 investing in another area because that's going to be more fulfilling which is what Peter Drucker
648. 00:56:30 is arguing here there's three ways to develop that second career he calls it one is to actually
649. 00:56:35 start one so that's where you're just gonna quit what you're doing you're gonna go chase
650. 00:56:41 something else and I think that's what most people think of when they think when they hear that
651. 00:56:46 develop a second career it's all or nothing A or B not both but the second option second way to
652. 00:56:53 develop a second career is to develop a parallel career this is what I would argue I did because
653. 00:57:00 while I was working full-time for the family business I had this idea that I wanted to write
654. 00:57:06 this book and I decided because I'm really really smart that I better learn how to write so I created
655. 00:57:13 the space by getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning I would I would go to a coffee shop and I would
656. 00:57:19 write for an hour before I went into the office that process of getting up and writing just for an
657. 00:57:27 hour every day in six to eight months resulted in my first book and it also resulted in me getting
658. 00:57:35 connected with Asian efficiency and the career that I now have but it didn't it wasn't just like
659. 00:57:42 okay I'm gonna on this date stop working with the family business and I am now going to switch
660. 00:57:49 careers and go work for this other company and in fact if I had taken that approach Asian efficiency
661. 00:57:55 would not have looked at me at all because I would have had nothing to show them in fact when I had
662. 00:58:01 the call with tan when he put out on twitter that they were hiring at the time that I approached
663. 00:58:06 them I wasn't interested in a second in in going full-time with Asian efficiency and I was just
664. 00:58:12 starting to blog every day and said any opportunities for guest posting and he said well it's not
665. 00:58:18 something we typically do but if you have anything send it my way so I just started my blog like I
666. 00:58:23 had done two weeks worth of blog posts that's about it so you were a pro yeah I knew nothing but I
667. 00:58:30 was putting myself out there I was doing this in parallel and I sent send them the link to my
668. 00:58:36 blog and say hey yeah there's a lot of synergy here we can tell a lot of the same mindsets read
669. 00:58:39 a lot of the same books we should give this a shot and one thing has led to another where I am now
670. 00:58:44 full-time with Asian efficiency but if I had never taken this approach of developing that parallel
671. 00:58:48 career there is no way that those dots connect to where I am now in the position that I'm in
672. 00:58:57 and the third way to develop a second career I think this might be you is the social entrepreneur
673. 00:59:03 and that to me kind of means that you've got a lot of different things going on
674. 00:59:09 you're doing this thing then you're doing that thing then you're doing that thing and you can
675. 00:59:12 just make those jumps like you were just talking about seamlessly where when someone on the outside
676. 00:59:19 is looking at it they're like there is no method to this madness so maybe you can
677. 00:59:24 talk a little bit about what it means to be a social entrepreneur I just have ideas and
678. 00:59:30 I can't help myself that's the way I see it is that I tend to see gaps in what is currently
679. 00:59:38 available in I'm just going to use the term marketplace because I don't know what else to call it but
680. 00:59:42 I tend to see gaps and then I pursue them and a lot of times for me it doesn't seem to matter
681. 00:59:51 what sector it's in because I am just fascinated by all a bunch of different areas and just random
682. 00:59:58 technology and that can range from how to railroads work to you know how to SpaceX actually
683. 01:00:06 accomplish its rockets like I go all over the place and I just know that for me I tend to look at
684. 01:00:14 different things that seem interesting and look for opportunities and then I'll go for them like
685. 01:00:21 it's just kind of how I go for it and it doesn't seem to matter like I don't I have a general
686. 01:00:28 purpose like we've talked about vision and mission a lot in the past I understand that but if you
687. 01:00:33 pay attention to what I tend to come up with for visions it's usually very vague and very like I
688. 01:00:41 have a general direction I shoot for but I'm not going to narrow it down like I keep it a pretty
689. 01:00:47 broad pretty broad shot out there and that's why is because I know the general direction but I
690. 01:00:54 don't have a specific sector that I like to focus on yeah and I'd say that I'd argue that that is
691. 01:01:01 completely fine Peter Drucker talks in the book about the mirror test and I think this is the
692. 01:01:07 mirror test is answering the question what kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the
693. 01:01:11 morning and I don't think you need to have a redetail figured out in order to answer that question
694. 01:01:16 you have a general idea of of the why and maybe even have some specifics but you don't need to
695. 01:01:22 have it all figured out in order for yourself to take action I think that's the the key thing there
696. 01:01:29 the other thing is that you want to you want to create things that are that are contributing so
697. 01:01:40 one of the questions that Peter Drucker asks is what should I contribute and there were a couple
698. 01:01:44 questions underneath that number one what does the situation require number two given my strengths
699. 01:01:51 my way of performing how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done and then
700. 01:01:56 number three what results have to be achieved to make a difference and I think as long as you are
701. 01:02:03 producing results you can kind of look at those results and you can using the salary test from
702. 01:02:09 start with why you can have a pretty good idea of yes I am moving in the right direction even if
703. 01:02:15 you don't have all the details filled in yet in fact he talks about results and specifically what
704. 01:02:22 they should look like he says results should be hard to hard to achieve so they should require
705. 01:02:27 some stretching and they should be meaningful so they should make a difference and I think if you
706. 01:02:32 can check those boxes then you're moving in the right direction so much of that has to do with
707. 01:02:39 I think of the boardrooms I've been in and when there's a CEO in the room I think that if you look
708. 01:02:45 at how most chief executives run their businesses and run the companies it has a lot to do with
709. 01:02:53 this whole book because they are very good at noticing who is good at what they're very
710. 01:03:00 in tune with the inner workings of their teams they're very good at understanding what all the
711. 01:03:07 details should or could be and whenever they notice and they pay attention to how the business
712. 01:03:14 operates and they know how to push and pull levers and push the right buttons and maybe not push
713. 01:03:20 the right buttons but they know how to move things around in order to accomplish something
714. 01:03:25 successful and that's what so much of this is about in order to drive success in the long term
715. 01:03:33 you have to understand how all the different pieces work together I think Drucker does an
716. 01:03:39 excellent job of pulling together all these questions in order to drive you to that so that
717. 01:03:44 you can understand you know how does a CEO actually pull all this off and how do I think like him
718. 01:03:48 in order to do and accomplish the bigger projects and the bigger tasks that I want to
719. 01:03:55 accomplish right and thinking like a CEO is if you were to sum up this entire book that's what it is
720. 01:04:03 is he makes the argument that managing one yourself managing oneself demands that each
721. 01:04:08 knowledge worker think and behave like a CEO and it's really like when you think of a CEO
722. 01:04:14 they are directing the ship they are in charge of the organization or the business
723. 01:04:19 and a lot of times we don't even want to take responsibility for ourselves we don't even want
724. 01:04:24 to take responsibility for our own outcomes and that's really what he's saying here is that you
725. 01:04:29 have to take responsibility for your own outcomes you have to steer your ship you can't control
726. 01:04:35 everything else that's going on around you at an organizational level maybe but you can control
727. 01:04:39 yourself and if you can dot your eyes and cross your T's and you put yourself in a much better
728. 01:04:44 chance to be successful is a really great quote that I wrote down at the end this is for a great
729. 01:04:50 many people there is at best an absence of failure wherever there is success there has to be failure
730. 01:04:57 and then it is vitally important for the individual and equally important for the individual's family
731. 01:05:02 to have an area in which he or she can contribute make a difference and be somebody that means
732. 01:05:07 finding a second area whether in a second career a parallel career or a social venture that offers
733. 01:05:12 an opportunity for being a leader for being respected for being a success and the key part
734. 01:05:18 there for me is that you cannot have the success without the failure so many people will go day
735. 01:05:24 to day because they don't want to put themselves out there and have somebody say that podcast that
736. 01:05:30 you just recorded that was garbage or that course that you created Joe that was crap
737. 01:05:34 you know right they see and people see that and they get scared by that they don't want to put
738. 01:05:41 their heart on their line they don't want to wear their heart on their sleeve they don't want to
739. 01:05:44 be criticized and so they don't actually do anything but if you are scared of the failure then you
740. 01:05:49 will never be able to get the success because you can't separate those two you have to be willing to
741. 01:05:55 mess up and you have to be willing to look at it and deconstruct it and say what was wrong with
742. 01:06:00 this where did I miss this make adjustments and then eventually you do the enough iterations of that
743. 01:06:07 and you end up with something great so to recap some of the because we talked about I think we
744. 01:06:13 talked about all of our action items in the midst of this one the one that I have down is to do the
745. 01:06:20 expectations piece so that I can create that feedback analysis with all of my projects so whenever I
746. 01:06:27 put together a in some cases I'm doing this with goals as well so if I write down a goal I write
747. 01:06:32 down a project I'm going to take this on I'm going to make a commitment to doing something
748. 01:06:36 what is it that I expect out of it and whenever I complete that goal or that
749. 01:06:41 project I want to review that and go through it and I talked about how I'm going to do it not
750. 01:06:46 let me focus but that's the one thing that I'm taking away from this there's so many things I
751. 01:06:49 could take away from this a lot of them are just be aware pay attention and notice like there's a
752. 01:06:56 lot of that I don't know how to write that into an action item other than I'm hoping to just start
753. 01:07:01 paying attention more but as far as something physical that you can hold me accountable to I'm
754. 01:07:07 planning to write down expectations on commitments all right sounds good I had two of them one I
755. 01:07:15 talked about and that is know your know your strengths so specifically what I intend to do
756. 01:07:21 is I intend to take the strengths finder assessment whichever Michael Hyatt talk about
757. 01:07:26 and he actually talked about how he takes that or he's taken that with his wife and they've
758. 01:07:32 identified their strengths and that's helped their family dynamic so my wife and I are actually both
759. 01:07:38 going to take the strengths finder assessment the other one that I wrote down and this one I don't
760. 01:07:44 know how you hold me accountable to this but this is something that I recognize in myself he had a
761. 01:07:48 phrase in there that kind of hit me it said take responsibility for relationships it really wasn't
762. 01:07:53 a major point which is why we didn't really unpack it when we're doing the podcast but it hit me because
763. 01:08:01 I tend to try to go through go through my day get my stuff done I mentioned I'm a loner and then
764. 01:08:08 when there's friction with other people I tend to drawback and say well I just can't work with this
765. 01:08:13 person and so what this meant to me is that I have to accept the fact that other people are as much
766. 01:08:20 into much as an individual as I am and I have to take responsibility for successful communication
767. 01:08:28 between us so there are some people that I have regular interaction with where naturally we just
768. 01:08:35 don't work together well and like I mentioned Zach and I in Asian efficiency we were able to
769. 01:08:39 overcome that but in some other areas of my life I have not put forth the effort to make that as
770. 01:08:45 smooth as it could be and I don't know what exactly this outcome looks like and I don't know what
771. 01:08:51 specifically I need to do I think the first step is to recognize and identify those relationships
772. 01:08:57 and then instead of trusting that the other person's gonna change to take the steps to try to
773. 01:09:04 move their direction if that makes sense this has probably been about a year and a half maybe
774. 01:09:11 it's been two years ago I read a book called boundaries and I can't think of the author's name I'll put
775. 01:09:17 it in the show notes but in that book he he made the comment that I can't I can't change what other
776. 01:09:26 people do but I can change how I react to it and that has stuck with me for a long time because so
777. 01:09:33 much if they just wouldn't have done this one thing I'd be okay like I get rather upset sometimes I
778. 01:09:39 can internally over something that someone did and it's not simple to just say okay they did this thing
779. 01:09:48 I can't change that but here's what I'm gonna do in response right but that's I'm terrible at it
780. 01:09:57 but but it's something I try to do fairly regularly and I think that's kind of what you're getting
781. 01:10:02 at is trying to just own your side of that relationship is that fair yeah and ultimately
782. 01:10:08 the relationships where that is the case where there is some of that friction like
783. 01:10:13 success is determined not by whether I do my part but whether the organization or the group
784. 01:10:23 accomplishes the goal so if I'm just gonna sit on the sideline and pout and say well I did my part
785. 01:10:31 they got to do theirs that's not going to help anything I'm going to fail if I take that approach
786. 01:10:36 right so I got to figure out how to make it work and I guess the the real application of this is
787. 01:10:46 just recognizing that the the buck stops with me fair enough I think whenever we sat down
788. 01:10:57 for breakfast on Wednesday I said something about I was gonna read this either that afternoon and
789. 01:11:02 put the notes together for it Wednesday and then I didn't do it until fully this morning the reason
790. 01:11:08 why is because Peter Drucker is such a good writer and it was so easy to read and there was so much
791. 01:11:15 in it that I started reading it on Wednesday but it was so dense and salt like there was
792. 01:11:20 dense is probably the wrong word there was so much information in such a small space
793. 01:11:25 that I had to put it down not because I couldn't keep reading but because I was just trying to
794. 01:11:30 digest it because it was so much here so I put it down Wednesday I picked it up Thursday
795. 01:11:35 finished it I guess that would be yesterday so I finished it yesterday and
796. 01:11:41 I I was gonna put the notes together for it was like man I don't even know
797. 01:11:47 man what do I write down I struggled with it a little bit not because I didn't have anything
798. 01:11:53 to write down but I just needed some time to digest it right and so I for author's style here I wrote
799. 01:11:59 down that this is an easy and quick read but the chances of you being able to sit down and read it
800. 01:12:05 just in one sitting like what I try to do I think you can but I think you'll get more out of it if
801. 01:12:10 you break it up into a few settings at least that was my perspective because it felt like I had so
802. 01:12:14 much coming through my head and I had so many ideas and thoughts about it that I just needed
803. 01:12:18 a break to digest and and can fully understand everything that I was consuming yeah I I can
804. 01:12:27 definitely see you where that that approach would make sense I the way I read books I usually read
805. 01:12:33 it and then I'll take notes in an iOS app which I believe is it's free it's called shelf so maybe
806. 01:12:38 we can put the link to that in the the show notes right but with this book I read it in one sitting
807. 01:12:43 but it was kind of funny because I've got the book in one hand and there were so many things
808. 01:12:47 that I wanted to write down that pretty much every 20 or 30 seconds I was taking a note on my phone
809. 01:12:55 and my wife is sitting on like how she next to me and she see me jump back and forth from the book
810. 01:12:59 to the phone the book to the phone the book to the phone and she's like what are you doing are
811. 01:13:03 you reading the book or not so yeah and that's just my own personal style but yeah I think that if
812. 01:13:12 you're really if you're the kind of person who just needs to think about some of these things and
813. 01:13:15 solidify them in your head then yeah don't try to read it all in one sitting because there is a lot
814. 01:13:18 here but it is very easy to read and it is very short and the information that is in it is really
815. 01:13:24 really good so I guess I can give my my rating for this book I am gonna give it five stars
816. 01:13:33 not because it is one of the best books that I have ever read but I think for the average listener
817. 01:13:41 or the person who is looking to to pick up something to read that they want
818. 01:13:47 quick results they want quick actionable things that they can do this is the perfect book for that
819. 01:13:54 person and even if you are somebody who reads a lot of books even a lot of really long books
820. 01:13:59 even somebody like myself who is immersed in the productivity time management world there is still
821. 01:14:04 a lot in this book that you can take away from it so I think this applies to just about anybody
822. 01:14:11 and it's very easy to read so definitely five stars so my question is can you get away with
823. 01:14:17 giving Peter Drucker something less than five stars probably not because I I had a lot of the same
824. 01:14:24 reactions to this is there's a lot here you can take away a lot from it and there's a lot that
825. 01:14:31 you can learn from it and I honestly I sat down and I was trying to figure out okay what are the
826. 01:14:37 negatives of this book what are the downsides of it and outside of maybe needing to take time to
827. 01:14:45 understand it and fully comprehend it I really had a hard time coming up with anything on it so
828. 01:14:51 I have to follow you here Mike and go with the five so you know this is one of those books that
829. 01:14:56 gets the rare double five star rating from us right and I would say though the one thing I would
830. 01:15:03 say that would make this book maybe even better and I don't think it was really intended to be
831. 01:15:08 a book per se it seems almost like it was an essay that was republished by it was Harvard
832. 01:15:14 business business review that that published this one as well so completely different than the
833. 01:15:19 previous Harvard business book that we were kidding but uh if if you were gonna write a book with
834. 01:15:26 these things it would probably be a good idea to make clear distinctions when you're moving from
835. 01:15:32 one section to another like the main points that you're hitting I think even adding just like some
836. 01:15:37 bold text at the top of some of the pages to indicate that okay we are now talking about this
837. 01:15:41 specific thing would kind of compartmentalize some of the ideas a little bit better so maybe
838. 01:15:46 they're a little bit easier to implement because it's very very concise very dense it's very easy
839. 01:15:51 to move from one thing to the next to not even realize that you've left you know what you were
840. 01:15:55 talking about previously right yeah I found that I was asking myself a new question when I wasn't
841. 01:16:01 sure if I'd answered the one previous so it was it's fast moving for sure
842. 01:16:06 so I'm looking at upcoming books Mike and the next one up is your choice yep the the 12 week year
843. 01:16:18 and I forget who this one is but I don't have it in front of me but uh I found out about this book
844. 01:16:24 through Asian efficiency there's a bunch of people in the dojo who post their 12 week year status
845. 01:16:31 so that people can hold them accountable to their plans for the quarter and I just really like the
846. 01:16:37 idea so I am excited to jump in and figure out exactly how to implement that but this makes total
847. 01:16:43 sense to me that instead of planning for a whole year at a time you you plan 12 weeks at a time
848. 01:16:48 yeah I've struggled with the yearly planning thing in the past I always felt like something's
849. 01:16:53 really wrong with it and I've I've started in on this book and he explains why so I'm excited to
850. 01:17:00 talk about that one that'll be a good one sweet uh following that the one I've picked is one that
851. 01:17:05 we've had recommended a number of times uh brain chains so this one has been on the list for a while
852. 01:17:11 and it's finally coming to the top of that list uh that's a longer one so you may want to if you're
853. 01:17:19 reading along with us you might want to pick that one up sooner that one will take a little while
854. 01:17:24 to get through it might take more in a couple weeks to get through that one nice yeah and if
855. 01:17:29 you wanted to recommend a book uh like I don't know who did uh recommend brain chains but that
856. 01:17:34 was a recommendation that they came in and we've got a couple other ones that are recommended here
857. 01:17:38 uh you can actually go to bookworm.fm and there's a button on the sidebar to recommend a book if
858. 01:17:45 you want to see a list of all the books that we've covered as well as the recommended books and the
859. 01:17:50 upcoming books there's a page for that as well I believe it's bookworm.fm/list and something that
860. 01:17:59 I've noticed and it's kind of strange to me it makes perfect sense but I don't always realize
861. 01:18:05 uh how it happens but every once while I have someone that jumps into one of my other endeavors
862. 01:18:12 that comes from a different so I had uh we had a uh a guy that jumped into the bookworm and he
863. 01:18:19 left us on iTunes review uh Wilson Ng I think is how it's pronounced but Wilson uh comes from a lot
864. 01:18:26 of the omni-focused stuff that I've done in the past or he gets involved with a lot of the omni group
865. 01:18:30 forums and such so I run into him quite a bit and then I saw he left us a review on iTunes which
866. 01:18:36 was awesome thank you Wilson uh but I think it's really interesting how people can cross
867. 01:18:41 some of those different worlds but we don't always find out about it until we see
868. 01:18:45 someone leave a comment on something so if you're like that and you've you've jumped from one of
869. 01:18:49 these other endeavors that Mike and I do and you're on uh and you're now on bookworm I'd love to see
870. 01:18:55 you know where you came from but a great way to do that is to leave us a review so if you get a
871. 01:19:00 chance I'll drop a link to how you can do that in uh in the show notes and you can go over to iTunes
872. 01:19:06 and review us over there excellent well Mr. Bueleg it has been a pleasure and as always thank you
873. 01:19:14 everyone for tuning in and we will catch you next time