147: Hero on a Mission by Donald Miller

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1. 00:00:00 What's new and exciting, Joe B. Legg?
2. 00:00:02 What's new and exciting?
3. 00:00:04 Um, I get to livestream from a park this weekend.
4. 00:00:08 That is new and exciting.
5. 00:00:10 Just not on any of my platforms.
6. 00:00:12 It's church thing.
7. 00:00:13 But I've never tried to livestream outside of a dedicated building.
8. 00:00:17 So this will be fun.
9. 00:00:20 Cool.
10. 00:00:22 It means a joke is to get up before I am and go set up tons and tons of tech gear
11. 00:00:26 for four hours straight before we do anything with it.
12. 00:00:29 That's what it means.
13. 00:00:31 Super fun.
14. 00:00:32 So that's what's new in Joe's world.
15. 00:00:34 Nice.
16. 00:00:35 So that was the best question I came up with, by the way, for my follow-up on a different question
17. 00:00:41 instead of how are you?
18. 00:00:43 Nice work.
19. 00:00:44 Nice work.
20. 00:00:45 I would say this one works about 80% of the time.
21. 00:00:49 You get an interesting response, like yours, instead of, "I'm good.
22. 00:00:54 How about you?"
23. 00:00:55 You know which was the whole idea behind the action item in the first place.
24. 00:00:58 Yep.
25. 00:00:59 A couple other ones that I was thinking about, which I don't think worked quite as well,
26. 00:01:03 but can be deployed tactically in certain situations, is everything okay.
27. 00:01:10 I feel that one kind of leads people into a more truthful, honest response, as opposed
28. 00:01:17 to just, "I'm good," because you're sort of implying that maybe there is something that
29. 00:01:21 is not okay by asking it that way.
30. 00:01:25 And those are the two best ones I came up with.
31. 00:01:27 If I tried some other ones, like, "What book have you read lately?"
32. 00:01:30 I mentioned that one on air last time.
33. 00:01:33 Or what project excites you?
34. 00:01:36 What project are you working on currently?
35. 00:01:39 Just picking out a specific thing that someone is excited about, different versions of that
36. 00:01:45 type of question.
37. 00:01:46 But the one I landed on as the clear winner, I think, is what's new and exciting.
38. 00:01:51 You like it?
39. 00:01:53 I like it.
40. 00:01:55 It's probably the better route to go than the route I've been taking with that whole thing,
41. 00:02:00 because I was trying to come up with different answers to the "How are you?" scenario.
42. 00:02:07 Every time I tried to come up with it in the morning, I only did this for about four or
43. 00:02:09 five days, because it was weird.
44. 00:02:13 But you ended up trying to come up with answers that revolved around your energy states without
45. 00:02:19 realizing it.
46. 00:02:20 It's like, "I'm tired.
47. 00:02:21 I'm doing really well.
48. 00:02:22 I'm super excited today."
49. 00:02:24 You have these different energy levels that we talked about.
50. 00:02:28 I feel new today.
51. 00:02:30 You'd come up with answers like that.
52. 00:02:32 They don't really do much other than get people to just look at it a little funny.
53. 00:02:37 Really, why is that?
54. 00:02:39 Then they'd ask a follow-up question.
55. 00:02:40 Sometimes it led into something more than that.
56. 00:02:42 For the most part, it was just a little weird.
57. 00:02:46 I'm probably just doing it wrong.
58. 00:02:49 A few states is not a good response to that question.
59. 00:02:55 Coming up with a different question altogether is probably better.
60. 00:02:58 Cool.
61. 00:03:00 The other item here for follow-up, and by far the coolest one, is this new Bookworm rating
62. 00:03:08 website that Joshua had put together.
63. 00:03:12 Do you have a link that you could drop in the chat?
64. 00:03:16 It keeps blocking my links when I put them in there, so no.
65. 00:03:21 I can grab one quick.
66. 00:03:22 Send it to you.
67. 00:03:23 You can drop it in.
68. 00:03:24 Sure.
69. 00:03:25 This website has got a table of all of the Bookworm episodes.
70. 00:03:33 I knew this was being worked on because Joshua had asked about the last episode where I
71. 00:03:39 had missed the ratings.
72. 00:03:41 They didn't show up in the feed, and then once I got those and put them in, I understood
73. 00:03:48 what he was working on here.
74. 00:03:51 This is basically a list of all of the different episodes.
75. 00:03:55 It's got my rating and your rating, and then it's got the average of the ratings.
76. 00:04:01 Bitter Sweet by Susan Cana, I rated it 3.0, you rated it 4.0, so it's an average there
77. 00:04:04 at 3.5.
78. 00:04:07 At the bottom of this, there is some Bookworm trivia where it shows that, for example, out
79. 00:04:11 of 143 ratings, 18 books have been given a double 5 star.
80. 00:04:16 It's 12% every eighth book on average, which is really cool.
81. 00:04:18 The most recent book to be awarded full stars by both Mike and Joe was 142, yes to life
82. 00:04:24 by Victor Frankl.
83. 00:04:25 Four episodes ago.
84. 00:04:26 Some really cool stuff here.
85. 00:04:27 Joe's average rating, my average rating, you're nicer than I am.
86. 00:04:31 Your average rating is 4.13.
87. 00:04:33 Mine is a 4.1.
88. 00:04:35 Barely.
89. 00:04:36 Barely.
90. 00:04:37 Yep.
91. 00:04:38 And the biggest difference in rating is two stars on Episode 98, the crossovers of Should
92. 00:04:42 Amust.
93. 00:04:43 Were you surprised by that one?
94. 00:04:45 I was.
95. 00:04:46 That one really stood out to me that I knew, if you had asked me what book I had rated
96. 00:04:53 the lowest, I think this is my lowest rated book.
97. 00:04:58 Is this the lowest rating on Bookworm period?
98. 00:05:00 Could be.
99. 00:05:01 Maybe Joshua can add that to the stat to probably tell us the answer to that.
100. 00:05:07 Well, I mean, highest rated book isn't going to do us much good, but lowest rated book,
101. 00:05:15 I would be kind of curious.
102. 00:05:16 Nope, you have a 1.5 for Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.
103. 00:05:21 Ah, yes.
104. 00:05:23 That's right.
105. 00:05:24 Yeah.
106. 00:05:25 And then I've got the two for the crossroads.
107. 00:05:26 But yeah, I didn't realize like the concept of thinking of the spread between your rating
108. 00:05:30 and my rating never crossed my mind as something that would be interesting to see.
109. 00:05:35 Yeah.
110. 00:05:36 It's totally fascinating to me.
111. 00:05:38 Like there's some other stuff too here.
112. 00:05:40 Like I have rated a five books, five stars, 33 times.
113. 00:05:44 You've done it 30 times.
114. 00:05:47 We've given the same rating 57 times.
115. 00:05:50 Like it's kind of interesting how that's.
116. 00:05:53 I don't know stats that I never totally would have expected to come up with.
117. 00:05:57 But I guess this is what happens when you come up with 100 and what is it?
118. 00:06:01 146 data points for somebody to play with.
119. 00:06:04 So there you go.
120. 00:06:06 Yeah, so this website is very cool.
121. 00:06:08 Thank you, Joshua, for putting this together.
122. 00:06:10 I'll have a link in the show notes if you want to check this out.
123. 00:06:15 This is great.
124. 00:06:16 I love the fact that he put this together.
125. 00:06:19 And this is a continuation of a project that had started several years ago by Andrew
126. 00:06:24 Pfeiffer, I believe.
127. 00:06:25 Joshua mentioned in the Bookworm Club that that project had been abandoned.
128. 00:06:30 So he kind of rebooted it with this website.
129. 00:06:32 And this looks great.
130. 00:06:34 I feel like we should put in a redirect for this or something.
131. 00:06:37 Like Bookworm.fm/statts or something that takes you here.
132. 00:06:42 Is that out of line?
133. 00:06:43 I'll let you know.
134. 00:06:44 I don't know if we should do something with it.
135. 00:06:47 Whatever you want to do is cool.
136. 00:06:50 All right, so Bookworm.fm/statts.
137. 00:06:52 That's a URL we can use.
138. 00:06:53 Yep, I'm totally going to do that when we're done here.
139. 00:06:55 All right, you heard it here, folks.
140. 00:06:57 There you go, Joshua.
141. 00:06:59 Thanks for making this.
142. 00:07:01 This thing is sweet.
143. 00:07:02 I absolutely love this.
144. 00:07:03 The data nerd in me is just ecstatic.
145. 00:07:06 So yes.
146. 00:07:07 All right, but I think that is it for follow-up.
147. 00:07:13 So you're ready to talk about today's book?
148. 00:07:16 No, but we should do it anyway.
149. 00:07:19 I'm wondering why you are so hesitant to talk about this one.
150. 00:07:24 This is, I am curious.
151. 00:07:28 I've been hesitating on this book since we got on this call.
152. 00:07:31 Even before we started recording.
153. 00:07:32 So there's that.
154. 00:07:33 This will be fun.
155. 00:07:36 All right, well, today's book is Hero on a Mission by Donald Miller, which maybe that's
156. 00:07:44 the part that is surprising to people because Donald Miller has kind of been all over the
157. 00:07:51 place with his literary journey.
158. 00:07:53 He kind of gets into the reason behind that in this book, which is kind of meta-fascinating
159. 00:07:57 to me.
160. 00:07:59 I first discovered Donald Miller from the book Blue Like Jazz.
161. 00:08:04 I'm guessing the first place you heard of him too.
162. 00:08:08 Yes.
163. 00:08:09 Okay.
164. 00:08:10 Which was a religious book.
165. 00:08:12 And then from there, he pivoted and kind of became the business strategy guy and came
166. 00:08:19 out with Story Brand, which is the big thing, I would argue, that he is known for.
167. 00:08:25 Although he does a lot more with that now with like business made simple and marketing
168. 00:08:31 made simple, all that kind of stuff that is an extension of that Story Brand.
169. 00:08:38 Now I am familiar with business made simple.
170. 00:08:41 I'm also familiar with marketing made simple.
171. 00:08:44 I actually have access to the business made simple course library thing, whatever.
172. 00:08:54 When I was working with the family business, we were doing some Story Brand stuff and we
173. 00:08:58 had signed up for the Story Brand course, the thousands of dollars one got to work with
174. 00:09:04 a Story Brand coach for a little while when we were redoing our website.
175. 00:09:10 And that kind of morphed into the complete catalog of Donald Miller's training.
176. 00:09:17 So I've gone through some of it, but I got to be honest, I'm not a real big fan of that
177. 00:09:24 stuff.
178. 00:09:25 And the reason is I feel like it is overly simplified.
179. 00:09:29 I am probably just again, not the right person for this kind of stuff for someone who is
180. 00:09:35 an entrepreneur and has never really had a grasp of why their business is broken and
181. 00:09:40 it feels like everything is really hard.
182. 00:09:44 There's probably a lot of clarity that can come from some of the simple models that he
183. 00:09:47 uses.
184. 00:09:48 Like your business is an airplane.
185. 00:09:49 These are the engines and this is the wings and stuff like that.
186. 00:09:52 Metaphor though, it was overly simplified in my opinion.
187. 00:09:57 So it never really clicked for me.
188. 00:09:59 And I expected a hero on a mission to be business made simple for your personal life.
189. 00:10:08 Is that kind of what you were anticipating going into this as well?
190. 00:10:12 That's what I was hoping for, yes.
191. 00:10:13 So yes, that was definitely the trajectory I expected to get, yes.
192. 00:10:18 Interesting.
193. 00:10:19 Okay.
194. 00:10:20 So the beginning of this, likes in this mode where he's picking my words apart already.
195. 00:10:24 Yeah, I am.
196. 00:10:26 So the book is broken into I guess three different sections though part three is really just the
197. 00:10:32 templates that he talks about.
198. 00:10:35 So there's an introduction, which is where we'll start.
199. 00:10:39 But before we get there, just how this put together introduction, act one, how to create
200. 00:10:42 a life of meaning, act two, create your life plan and then act three, which is all of the
201. 00:10:48 templates and things.
202. 00:10:50 So let's get into the introduction here.
203. 00:10:55 Now the introduction started off really shaky for me because he shares a lot of his story
204. 00:11:06 at the beginning here.
205. 00:11:08 And a lot of his story is essentially I was a jerk and this is his words, not mine.
206. 00:11:15 And I'm not trying to project anything on Donald Miller at this point.
207. 00:11:19 He is very self-deprecating, especially as he talks about where he was 20 years ago,
208. 00:11:26 living with the guys in the house and then having to have an intervention because he's
209. 00:11:29 projecting blame onto all of them.
210. 00:11:31 And he's like, I was not a good person to live with.
211. 00:11:35 So he starts off by basically saying he's been playing the victim card for a long time
212. 00:11:39 and playing the victim has affected the quality of his life.
213. 00:11:43 However, from there, he starts talking about Victor Frankl and logo therapy.
214. 00:11:52 I was curious, what do you got to this point?
215. 00:11:54 Did you fall off your chair like I did?
216. 00:11:57 I honestly, so this was, I was reading this at 5.45 in the morning.
217. 00:12:02 I woke up early that day to start this book.
218. 00:12:04 I didn't wake up in order to start this book.
219. 00:12:07 I woke up early.
220. 00:12:08 So I started the book.
221. 00:12:09 We'll go to 5.15 blah, blah, blah.
222. 00:12:11 The thing that happened was at 5.45, I was to that part where he got to Victor Frankl.
223. 00:12:19 And I set the book down and I looked out the window.
224. 00:12:21 The sun was rising.
225. 00:12:22 I was like, this is going to be a weird journey.
226. 00:12:25 And I went and made a cup of tea and I went and sat down and then I continued.
227. 00:12:29 So it was enough of a jarring moment that I had to stop what I was doing.
228. 00:12:34 Go grab something to drink and come back.
229. 00:12:37 Yeah.
230. 00:12:38 I haven't had that very many times, reading a book, just say that.
231. 00:12:42 So Victor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning and Yes to Life, which we mentioned
232. 00:12:48 we were looking at those stats.
233. 00:12:51 Probably the only author who we've reviewed multiple times and never given anything less
234. 00:12:57 than five stars would be my guess.
235. 00:13:01 Big fans of Victor Frankl, we've talked about that in those other episodes.
236. 00:13:05 So we won't spend too much time revisiting that.
237. 00:13:11 But Victor Frankl is the one who survived through the Nazi concentration camps and came
238. 00:13:18 out with logo therapy as a way to compensate with what makes sense of what he had just
239. 00:13:27 been through.
240. 00:13:28 And so he was kind of working with people who had been through the same sort of thing
241. 00:13:32 and find meaning in all of the pain and suffering that they had gone through, not look for pain
242. 00:13:39 and suffering in order to bring meaning.
243. 00:13:41 But we had to go through this.
244. 00:13:43 We did.
245. 00:13:44 Now how do we turn it around to use it for good, basically?
246. 00:13:47 So there's an interesting detour right at the beginning.
247. 00:13:52 And I actually have in my mind node file after 10 years made a system slash planner.
248. 00:13:58 And I put in a red flag emoji because I wanted this to be the point where this is where I
249. 00:14:05 started to see things go off the rails.
250. 00:14:10 It's important to know, I guess, before we get into the rest of the book here that there
251. 00:14:14 is a planner that goes with this.
252. 00:14:17 Now in the book, he provides the printouts of the actual planner pages.
253. 00:14:24 There's also QR codes that you can use to, and I think you can access these for free
254. 00:14:28 online and print them out if you want.
255. 00:14:31 But there is also a product associated with it, which he frames as it's a couple bucks
256. 00:14:37 a month in order to cover the hosting costs.
257. 00:14:40 It's $10 a month or $100 a year, so it's far exceeding the hosting costs.
258. 00:14:46 And like I said, I'm familiar with the other business made simple stuff.
259. 00:14:50 I have no interest in this web software at all.
260. 00:14:53 I don't think that's going to detract a whole lot from the conversation that we'll have,
261. 00:14:57 but you do need to recognize at this point in the book that he is selling something.
262. 00:15:02 He's a business guy.
263. 00:15:03 I don't fault him for that, but I kind of expected at this point that everything he's
264. 00:15:07 going to talk about is going to be filtered through, use my system.
265. 00:15:12 It's not exactly what happens here, but the software that he's put together and the
266. 00:15:18 sheet said he has, they're kind of guides that you can use to apply some of the principles
267. 00:15:22 he's going to talk about if you wanted to do it that way, but you can apply it your
268. 00:15:26 own way as well if you want to.
269. 00:15:28 Did you get into the software at all?
270. 00:15:30 Did you buy into this to find out?
271. 00:15:32 I didn't.
272. 00:15:33 I didn't ask.
273. 00:15:34 I went to the website.
274. 00:15:35 I saw the pricing.
275. 00:15:36 I did not sign up for a trial or anything because I'm not interested in it in the least.
276. 00:15:40 Yeah.
277. 00:15:41 I don't think there is a trial, but I think when I got through, so I picked up the book
278. 00:15:46 and was like flipping through it at the very beginning, you know, how to read a book.
279. 00:15:49 You flipped through it.
280. 00:15:50 What the things about before you actually sit down to start reading it.
281. 00:15:53 It's impossible to do that and not catch that there's a QR code at the beginning and at
282. 00:15:58 the back and at five, six, seven places throughout the book as well.
283. 00:16:04 The same QR code is in many places.
284. 00:16:08 If you go to that link, there's a whole bunch of go to the, go download now or whatever it
285. 00:16:15 is, get the online tool, whatever it is.
286. 00:16:16 You go through that.
287. 00:16:17 You go through it many, many, many times and then you finally click on one and it takes
288. 00:16:21 you to the payment page right away.
289. 00:16:23 Whenever I got there, I realized, oh, this is a sales thing.
290. 00:16:28 But I had done that before I had started reading the book, which meant that I knew before I
291. 00:16:33 ever started reading that this book was a sales pitch.
292. 00:16:38 And that framed the rest of the book for me, which was not helpful because then it told
293. 00:16:44 me that I had paid to read a book to sell me something, which never goes over well in
294. 00:16:50 my mind.
295. 00:16:51 It just seems very strange.
296. 00:16:53 So anyway, it rubbed me the wrong way.
297. 00:16:55 I get that you can still get a lot of good out of this.
298. 00:16:59 You don't have to go through his course or whatever it is that you're going through.
299. 00:17:04 You can get it downloaded for free at that URL, but you have to pay attention very specifically
300. 00:17:12 to what you're looking at because it does a little deceptive, so where the free part
301. 00:17:19 is versus the paid.
302. 00:17:21 So it's a little strange.
303. 00:17:23 And yes, you can use the stuff in the back of the book, but it's printed so small that
304. 00:17:26 you actually can't really use it unless you write really small.
305. 00:17:29 So you'd have to copy it and blow it up.
306. 00:17:32 All I have to say, that's a business move for sure to try to sell that.
307. 00:17:38 So I get it, it's just a little frustrating to me.
308. 00:17:42 I'm not surprised by the approach of selling the online software.
309. 00:17:47 What I would have loved to see him sell instead would be like a digital planner that you could
310. 00:17:51 put inside a good notes or something.
311. 00:17:53 I feel like that's the logical in between here without having to have like a physically
312. 00:17:59 like a notebook.
313. 00:18:00 Yeah, that was the other things like a Michael Hyatt approach, full focus plan or sort of
314. 00:18:04 a deal.
315. 00:18:05 I could totally see that.
316. 00:18:06 Yep.
317. 00:18:07 I could see something like that happening.
318. 00:18:09 Well, yeah, so I think there's a, I don't fault him for making the choice to go software
319. 00:18:17 instead because I've seen specifically like goal setting software, life mission software
320. 00:18:25 and having those things be able to tie together, that could be kind of cool.
321. 00:18:29 Is it $10 a month cool?
322. 00:18:30 Not to me, but no.
323. 00:18:34 So I knew this was going to be there.
324. 00:18:36 I didn't scan any of the QR codes until I was done with the book because I wasn't going
325. 00:18:43 to implement anything that he was talking about at the beginning.
326. 00:18:47 And also everything that he outlined here, I actually created a version of this for my
327. 00:18:53 faith, his productivity course.
328. 00:18:55 So I went into it thinking I'm going to just understand the thought process behind what
329. 00:19:01 he has designed to see if I want to make any modifications to what I had created.
330. 00:19:08 Now, I don't really even use that anymore because I use the fancy pens and the blank
331. 00:19:13 page and I do the, create the time.
332. 00:19:17 But as I was thinking through this and thinking about the thing that I had made back in the
333. 00:19:21 day for faith based productivity, makes me kind of want to go back and take a look at
334. 00:19:26 that again.
335. 00:19:27 I still got my remarkable and I think maybe I'll experiment with modifying that template
336. 00:19:34 and putting it inside of there.
337. 00:19:36 I think using a remarkable would be more enjoyable for me than using an iPad for that.
338. 00:19:43 iPad I use for very specific things.
339. 00:19:46 Sketch Notes primarily at this point, which by the way, did you see the sketch note I
340. 00:19:52 made for the next book we're going to cover?
341. 00:19:55 I did.
342. 00:19:56 I didn't even grab the like of it, so I have a download of it to hold on to that.
343. 00:20:01 Hey, thanks.
344. 00:20:02 It's pretty slick.
345. 00:20:03 I have not started our next book, but I have it in hand.
346. 00:20:06 It showed up a day later than it was supposed to, so prime.
347. 00:20:11 But I have it.
348. 00:20:13 Super excited about it.
349. 00:20:14 That'll be fun.
350. 00:20:15 We'll get to that in a bit.
351. 00:20:17 But yeah, so software versus planner, I can see why he took the approach that he did.
352. 00:20:23 I'm not going to sign up to make sure to verify whatever that those things are connected as
353. 00:20:29 powerfully as they can be using online software, but based on the other Donald Miller stuff
354. 00:20:33 that I have access to via online software, I'm guessing that it's not.
355. 00:20:36 Yeah, that's all I'm going to say.
356. 00:20:39 Even if it was, it's not worth 100 bucks a year to me.
357. 00:20:43 I didn't have the visceral negative reaction to that, though, that you did.
358. 00:20:48 I knew that was going to be there.
359. 00:20:49 And like I said, I put the red flag in the ground because I expected that was going to
360. 00:20:53 be the anchoring point for everything he was going to talk about.
361. 00:20:58 But maybe it was just because I had in the back of my mind, well, I've kind of done a
362. 00:21:00 version of this already with faith-based productivity.
363. 00:21:04 But I didn't feel like he was pushing me other than the QR codes at the end.
364. 00:21:11 Obviously those are pointing back to the system that he's made, but I didn't feel like it
365. 00:21:15 was simply a sales pitch for the planner.
366. 00:21:19 And that resulted in me getting a lot more out of the book than I was anticipating at
367. 00:21:25 this point in the introduction.
368. 00:21:26 Yeah, I want to point out one clarification to what you just said.
369. 00:21:31 And that is that having finished the book, I don't feel like the book was a sales pitch
370. 00:21:37 in its entirety.
371. 00:21:38 That was my perception once I figured out that he had this product because I figured
372. 00:21:43 out all the pricing and what the product was before I ever started reading the introduction.
373. 00:21:48 So that was my perception before I got into it.
374. 00:21:52 I just want that to make that clear.
375. 00:21:55 Gotcha.
376. 00:21:56 Yeah, that makes sense.
377. 00:21:57 And I think that is the impression you're going to get at this point in the book.
378. 00:22:01 But let's get into the actual content here.
379. 00:22:05 So the first part, they're not actually called parts in this book.
380. 00:22:12 They're called acts, which is kind of in line with the whole story brand thing, a play,
381. 00:22:19 whatever.
382. 00:22:20 So I actually kind of like that approach.
383. 00:22:24 Act one here is how to create a life of meaning.
384. 00:22:28 And there are six chapters in act one.
385. 00:22:32 I do not have all six of these in the outline.
386. 00:22:36 Maybe we'll get into something for each one of these.
387. 00:22:38 I don't know though.
388. 00:22:39 I kind of just grabbed a couple of bullets on the big themes.
389. 00:22:44 Chapter one is the victim, the villain, the hero and the guide, the four roles that we
390. 00:22:47 play in life.
391. 00:22:48 Chapter two is a hero accepts their own agency.
392. 00:22:51 Chapter three is a hero chooses a life of meaning.
393. 00:22:53 Chapter four, what elements are necessary for a person to transform?
394. 00:22:57 Chapter five, a hero knows what they want.
395. 00:22:59 Chapter six, a morning ritual to guide and direct your story.
396. 00:23:03 So the first chapter, the victim, the villain, the hero and the guide, this is the thing to
397. 00:23:09 understand for the rest of the book to make sense.
398. 00:23:13 It's the basis of the title hero on a mission.
399. 00:23:17 So just real briefly, let's define these four different roles.
400. 00:23:21 The victim is the person who surrenders their life to fate.
401. 00:23:26 The villain is a person who makes others small.
402. 00:23:29 The hero is a person who is willing to face their challenges and transform.
403. 00:23:34 And the guide is the one who helps the hero on their journey.
404. 00:23:37 The guide is the one that I attach to being familiar with the story brand framework because
405. 00:23:44 story brand is all about your business, like who are you trying to help?
406. 00:23:48 That's your customer.
407. 00:23:49 They're the hero and you are the guide.
408. 00:23:52 So when you get into designing your website and your messaging and things like that, you
409. 00:23:57 want to create empathy and you want to exhibit authority, but it can't just be all about you.
410. 00:24:03 It's all about the problem that your customer is facing.
411. 00:24:06 Were you familiar with story brand going into this and did you have the same sort of thought
412. 00:24:11 about this or what were you thinking at this point?
413. 00:24:14 Yeah, so I'm familiar with story brand.
414. 00:24:18 I have a half completed work set for it at the moment that you and I were going to go
415. 00:24:23 through at one point and never happened.
416. 00:24:26 But so I have that that I've worked through completely honest with you.
417. 00:24:31 I've not read the formal set of it, but I've been around it enough.
418. 00:24:35 I feel like to understand it to some degree, this might be a case of like GTD where I read
419. 00:24:40 enough around it that I thought I understood it and then if I went and read it, I wouldn't
420. 00:24:43 actually understand it.
421. 00:24:44 It might actually be the way it is.
422. 00:24:47 But anyway, all that said, I get the concept of building the story, building your brand
423. 00:24:53 around that story.
424. 00:24:54 As far as like these four roles, I think it kind of depends, like me personally, what
425. 00:25:00 I identify as it depends on what arena we're talking about because I know that I float
426. 00:25:05 from thing to thing, which is not abnormal.
427. 00:25:09 But as far as I want specifically that I find myself identifying as all the time, I don't
428. 00:25:15 know that I really have one that I feel like I sit in all the time, regular or most of
429. 00:25:20 the time I should say, but I get the concept at least.
430. 00:25:25 Okay.
431. 00:25:26 So yeah, the story brand framework is actually really well put together, I feel.
432. 00:25:31 And I became aware of this when I was at the Entre Leadership Summit down in San Antonio
433. 00:25:39 and Don Miller presented there.
434. 00:25:40 He had just kind of came out with this.
435. 00:25:42 And I think it's like a seven part framework.
436. 00:25:45 It's really easy to understand which is why it's so effective in terms of helping businesses
437. 00:25:49 create their marketing narrative.
438. 00:25:52 And just real briefly, it starts with character.
439. 00:25:55 It's the customer and identifying what they want.
440. 00:25:58 That character has a problem.
441. 00:25:59 And so you identify external internal philosophical problems they're trying to overcome.
442. 00:26:04 Step three, they meet a guide who understands their fear.
443. 00:26:08 That's where you exercise empathy and authority.
444. 00:26:10 Step four, that guide gives them a plan.
445. 00:26:12 So you summarize whatever plan it is that your product or your service is offering.
446. 00:26:18 Step five, calls them to action.
447. 00:26:21 So the hero has to do something.
448. 00:26:23 He's a director of transitional call to action that results in ultimately success or failure.
449. 00:26:28 Here's what it looks like if you take action and your situation changes.
450. 00:26:31 Here's the tragic results of failure.
451. 00:26:33 If you failed to take action, if you just continue to leave things as they were, for
452. 00:26:38 example, and then use all that to create like an identity transformation for the customer.
453. 00:26:43 From something to something.
454. 00:26:45 I've filled this out dozens of times and every time I do it, it's really, really effective.
455. 00:26:50 It helps you think through things.
456. 00:26:53 It connects very, very easily.
457. 00:26:56 And the net result is you don't give your customer, the person who's landing on your
458. 00:27:01 website experiencing your marketing message, a whole big message that they have to unravel.
459. 00:27:07 Donald Miller uses the analogy of giving customers like 8-pound bowling balls to carry around
460. 00:27:13 with in terms of like a lot of online messaging.
461. 00:27:16 So you want to make it as simple as possible for them to understand and resonate with whatever
462. 00:27:21 you're trying to help them achieve.
463. 00:27:23 And then remembering that you're not the hero in this journey they are.
464. 00:27:27 So now here on a mission, we've got that guy and hero again, but now it's all about you.
465. 00:27:31 And he's applying it personally.
466. 00:27:33 And I did not expect this to transfer well.
467. 00:27:35 So at this point when he's talking about these four different roles and I feel like I understand
468. 00:27:41 what he's going to say already about two of them.
469. 00:27:44 I am very, very skeptical.
470. 00:27:49 However, I do like how he is saying at this point we need to take responsibility for writing
471. 00:27:55 our own story.
472. 00:27:57 We talk a lot about personal responsibility and self-determination on this podcast and
473. 00:28:01 a lot of conversations that we have.
474. 00:28:03 And that's kind of what chapter two is all about is agency, the ability that we have to
475. 00:28:08 make our own choices.
476. 00:28:11 And so I am hopeful that this message that he's going to share here is going to resonate
477. 00:28:18 with me, but recognize I do have this bias of this story brand that I don't think is
478. 00:28:24 going to translate real well to an individual's perspective at this point.
479. 00:28:30 Yeah, this is where him trying to make that transition to do the translation of story
480. 00:28:38 brand to a personal life because I caught that right away when he started to do that
481. 00:28:42 as well.
482. 00:28:43 I was like, okay, this is where he's going with that.
483. 00:28:45 But there are components of it that I feel like it worked well.
484. 00:28:49 There are some spots where I'm kind of what?
485. 00:28:53 Hold on.
486. 00:28:54 So there are some of those, but all of that aside, like you were talking about in chapter
487. 00:28:59 two here where a hero accepts their own agency.
488. 00:29:02 This one really struck me because there's a lot of little one liners in this section
489. 00:29:08 that I found super interesting and super helpful.
490. 00:29:11 One of those comes from page 21, but some people mistakenly believe that because they
491. 00:29:17 cannot control some characteristics of their lives, they cannot control their lives at all.
492. 00:29:23 Okay, that is so true.
493. 00:29:26 If you tend to have one little area that's spiraling out of control, that doesn't mean
494. 00:29:31 you've lost control of absolutely everything.
495. 00:29:35 That just means there's one little thing that's got out of your control.
496. 00:29:39 It's not your entire life is going up in flames.
497. 00:29:42 It's one little small thing that needs corrected.
498. 00:29:46 I think that is something that comes up regularly, but again, he has a lot of these little tidbits
499. 00:29:52 in here.
500. 00:29:54 I don't want to discount.
501. 00:29:55 I know I've kind of been naysaying already on this one, but I do want to point out, there
502. 00:29:59 are some really good points in these sections, this being one of them.
503. 00:30:06 There's a handful of these all.
504. 00:30:07 I'll point out as we go through, but I did appreciate that.
505. 00:30:12 If you come at it from a hero stance, if you use the story concept, if you're going to
506. 00:30:16 be the hero of your story and you're going to take ownership of the actions that you need
507. 00:30:23 to make, you have to keep in mind you are in control of that.
508. 00:30:27 You're the one that decides what you do every day.
509. 00:30:30 You may have other people telling you you need to do certain things, but it's your choice
510. 00:30:33 to actually act on them or not.
511. 00:30:35 The consequences, if not following through on that, might be quite severe, but if you're
512. 00:30:41 okay swallowing those consequences, that's okay.
513. 00:30:44 You're still the one that's making the decision to do what someone else has asked you to do,
514. 00:30:49 or to decide what it is you're going to be doing.
515. 00:30:51 Thus, you're the one that has the control.
516. 00:30:54 In that particular part, I really appreciated him making that point here.
517. 00:30:58 There are a lot of one-liners like the quote you shared from page 21 that I did not expect
518. 00:31:06 to come out of Donald Miller's mouth.
519. 00:31:09 There's a lot of wisdom that he shares in this.
520. 00:31:12 This is the point where he is really leaning into the hero's journey metaphor.
521. 00:31:21 I will say at this point, I'm not positive that that is going to work, but I think the
522. 00:31:28 further that we go in the book, the more I come around to that.
523. 00:31:33 Some important elements of that which he talks about here.
524. 00:31:38 Chapter 2, he introduces the idea of the narrative void, which is the restlessness of sitting
525. 00:31:44 in the theater of your mind waiting for something to happen.
526. 00:31:48 It's kind of how he puts it, when one story ends, another story needs to begin.
527. 00:31:53 And chapter 3 on page 32, he says, "Some of my saddest, most depressing, can't get out
528. 00:31:59 of bed experiences have come in the season following a significant accomplishment."
529. 00:32:03 His significant accomplishment that he's telling at this point in the book is riding his bike
530. 00:32:08 all the way across the United States.
531. 00:32:11 I know exactly what this feels like.
532. 00:32:14 I won't retell the whole story here because I know people are sick of it, but running
533. 00:32:17 my first half marathon, hurt myself, cross the finish line.
534. 00:32:22 What do I do next?
535. 00:32:23 I felt that void.
536. 00:32:24 I know exactly what that feels like.
537. 00:32:26 I was hurt at the time, so I couldn't feel it with something else, at least another running
538. 00:32:31 goal.
539. 00:32:32 So I feel like calling that out and forcing us to deal with that is important.
540. 00:32:40 And also, he's planting the seeds here for the whole idea of goal setting, why it may
541. 00:32:48 or may not be such a great idea.
542. 00:32:50 Put a pin in that one.
543. 00:32:51 We'll get to that later.
544. 00:32:54 But he also talks about Frankl's formula for a life of meaning in this chapter.
545. 00:32:59 And again, he kind of comes back to this all the time.
546. 00:33:01 So take action creating a work or performing a deed, experience something or encounter someone
547. 00:33:07 that you find captivating that pulls you out of yourself, have an optimistic attitude towards
548. 00:33:11 the inevitable challenge and suffering you will experience in life.
549. 00:33:14 And uses that kind of at this point as the foundation for everything else that he's going
550. 00:33:19 to share, which I feel like was a very positive move.
551. 00:33:25 I understand citing Victor Frankl at the beginning.
552. 00:33:31 And at that point, I'm thinking maybe that was a mistake.
553. 00:33:35 Maybe we've read a bunch of Victor Frankl stuff.
554. 00:33:39 I've studied his life outside of those books even because I find him fascinating.
555. 00:33:44 So I was completely expecting him to misinterpret some of the stuff that Victor Frankl had talked
556. 00:33:50 about.
557. 00:33:51 And usually that stuff doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
558. 00:33:54 I can see when someone's trying to just shoehorn something in there because of the name associated
559. 00:34:00 with it.
560. 00:34:01 But I feel like what he did with Victor Frankl's ideas and logo therapy, because he says that
561. 00:34:06 he kind of experiences himself and that's the thing that gave him hope, I feel like that's
562. 00:34:09 authentic.
563. 00:34:10 And I feel like he shares these little tidbits very well.
564. 00:34:14 And so this is kind of borrowed credibility at this point because it's Victor Frankl.
565. 00:34:18 But I feel like Donna Miller does a good job with this.
566. 00:34:21 Yeah, I would agree with that, especially this section here specifically of like when
567. 00:34:26 you've completed a big goal, then what, like what's the next thing?
568. 00:34:32 Like that's almost dangerous territory when you've succeeded at something big.
569. 00:34:38 Like I specifically think about last summer we did our big remodel on the house.
570. 00:34:44 And when we got done with it, we specifically decided we were not going to be doing any
571. 00:34:48 major projects on the house or on the property over the winter just because we knew we needed
572. 00:34:53 a break.
573. 00:34:54 What I was not expecting is this massive void of boredom and exhaustion, overwhelm, all of
574. 00:35:04 that coming on as a wave after completion.
575. 00:35:07 Like we've moved in, everything's good to go.
576. 00:35:10 Like we can kind of just take a step back now.
577. 00:35:13 And that hits hard.
578. 00:35:16 It really can.
579. 00:35:17 And it makes it kind of difficult to like get yourself going again.
580. 00:35:22 Unless you have like, I forget the term you had for it.
581. 00:35:26 There's that what did you call it?
582. 00:35:27 Narrative void.
583. 00:35:28 Yeah.
584. 00:35:29 When you don't have that mission, that story that you're working on.
585. 00:35:34 So you have to come up with the next thing.
586. 00:35:36 But I don't think it has to be in the same arena necessarily.
587. 00:35:42 Like that's where the whole goal setting thing comes in.
588. 00:35:45 That he's going to pitch.
589. 00:35:48 And I'm sure we'll have a fun conversation about.
590. 00:35:50 But he's got the whole like once you've completed one, go on to the next one.
591. 00:35:54 Don't get like, yes, it's good to take a break.
592. 00:35:56 It's good to rest.
593. 00:35:57 It's good to celebrate.
594. 00:35:58 But go on to the next one.
595. 00:36:00 And he, he nails this, I think with some of the backing he provides with man search,
596. 00:36:06 remaining from Victor Frankl in that he is talking about like you have to have that drive,
597. 00:36:11 that meaning, that purpose.
598. 00:36:14 Or there's nothing to live for.
599. 00:36:16 Like that's, that there's no point in continuing, thus the depression that can set in after
600. 00:36:21 success.
601. 00:36:22 So you have to like shift your gaze forward to the next thing.
602. 00:36:27 Or you're in dire straits very quickly.
603. 00:36:29 Yeah.
604. 00:36:30 He says that meaning comes from motion, which I thought was a very profound statement.
605. 00:36:35 Yeah.
606. 00:36:36 And you could just talk about that for another 20 pages, I feel, but he, he didn't.
607. 00:36:41 The idea though is, is really powerful.
608. 00:36:43 And he also shares the idea of the existential vacuum here, which again, he credits Victor
609. 00:36:49 Frankl for this, but this fits perfectly with this narrative void that he was talking about.
610. 00:36:54 Cause the existential vacuum is where we feel like life should be better, more fun, more
611. 00:36:58 rewarding, more fulfilling.
612. 00:36:59 It's that whole idea of the gap where you think you should be at this point and you're
613. 00:37:04 not and you measure the distance that you have to go and you get frustrated because all
614. 00:37:09 you see is how you're falling short.
615. 00:37:12 And the opposite of that would be the gain where you measure where you are versus where
616. 00:37:16 you started and that produces motivation to keep going.
617. 00:37:20 But really it's having that meaning that life mission, life theme is what I call it,
618. 00:37:25 your purpose statement.
619. 00:37:26 Why are you here?
620. 00:37:27 You know, if you have that, you can reverse engineer the projects that you're going to
621. 00:37:31 work on and the daily actions that are going to produce the, the meaning for you.
622. 00:37:36 I have nitpicks maybe with the way that they're framed.
623. 00:37:39 If you're talking about goals, but the idea is, is the same and it's accurate, I would
624. 00:37:45 what argue.
625. 00:37:46 Yeah, for sure.
626. 00:37:47 All right.
627. 00:37:48 So the next idea in here, starting in chapter four, what elements are necessary for a person
628. 00:37:53 to transform?
629. 00:37:54 Now, he's talking about transformation through the whole hero's journey.
630. 00:37:59 You were this wimpy little character who was scared of everything and at the end of it,
631. 00:38:05 or the hero who does the thing and everybody thinks you're awesome.
632. 00:38:11 So that's kind of what he's talking about with this transformation.
633. 00:38:15 That's the seed that's planted here, but I think the more powerful idea behind this.
634. 00:38:19 And I think he kind of starts to speak to this, but that was the idea I had going into
635. 00:38:23 it.
636. 00:38:24 Transformation is not an overnight thing.
637. 00:38:28 You don't just snap your fingers.
638. 00:38:35 There's not a single event that helps you go from zero to a hundred or from victim to
639. 00:38:38 to hero.
640. 00:38:39 The truth is, and this is what he is kind of communicating at this point, is that we are
641. 00:38:45 actually always transforming.
642. 00:38:47 We are always changing.
643. 00:38:49 He even says humans are designed to change when we don't.
644. 00:38:51 It's an indication that something is wrong.
645. 00:38:55 And I love that.
646. 00:38:56 I mean, one of the things I've adopted with the whole faith-based productivity thing is
647. 00:39:00 starting to get into YouTube more.
648. 00:39:01 And I'm trying to end my videos with that.
649. 00:39:03 Keep going and keep growing.
650. 00:39:04 Like I want that to become my tagline.
651. 00:39:07 Essentially don't ever give up and constantly be looking to change.
652. 00:39:11 Figure things out.
653. 00:39:12 Try something new.
654. 00:39:14 You're going to mess up.
655. 00:39:15 You're going to fail.
656. 00:39:16 He kind of talks about that throughout this whole section here is that failure is actually
657. 00:39:22 where you learn.
658. 00:39:24 And failure is an opportunity for education is how he frames it at one point.
659. 00:39:29 And heroes have to engage their challenges.
660. 00:39:31 Very Ryan Holiday-esque.
661. 00:39:33 The obstacle is the way sort of a vibe going on here at this point.
662. 00:39:38 Yeah, this whole transformation idea is you could take this the wrong way.
663. 00:39:45 If you think of some of the hero movies, there's an event that takes them from a nobody to
664. 00:39:51 superhero overnight.
665. 00:39:54 Like what you were saying.
666. 00:39:56 It's the little things that add up.
667. 00:39:59 We've talked about this before.
668. 00:40:00 This is why the habits books always do so well.
669. 00:40:02 And we always get excited when we have conversations about routines and habits, right?
670. 00:40:07 And whenever we look at those little things and the repeated actions over time, it's that
671. 00:40:15 continual progression that leads you to great places.
672. 00:40:20 Whether that quote unquote great place is success as you would see it in the public eye.
673. 00:40:28 Or if that is success in the sense of you made an impact on your kids lives in a positive
674. 00:40:34 way, which is no small feat, I want to point out.
675. 00:40:39 And if you're able to say that you've succeeded in that, then you've done well.
676. 00:40:46 But it's these little transformational habits and these little things that do add up over
677. 00:40:52 time that lead you to that.
678. 00:40:54 I mean, the big things can happen.
679. 00:40:56 Like it can be a big overnight thing.
680. 00:41:00 But that is easily the exception, not the rule.
681. 00:41:04 And I wish it was normal.
682. 00:41:06 And you could just call that into place.
683. 00:41:08 It's like, okay, tomorrow I am sun being distracted at all the little things.
684. 00:41:13 I'll be focused 100% from here on out.
685. 00:41:16 And there's something that would cause that.
686. 00:41:18 I would imagine if I asked for a raise of hands, everybody would raise their hand asking
687. 00:41:23 for that to happen.
688. 00:41:25 But that's not going to happen.
689. 00:41:27 So it is these little things that you have to dedicate yourself to that add up over time.
690. 00:41:33 Is this the part where you're talking about the writers that showed up on a dedicated
691. 00:41:37 writing schedule every day?
692. 00:41:39 I don't remember if this was that part.
693. 00:41:41 I don't think that was at this point.
694. 00:41:43 I think that's probably in Act 2.
695. 00:41:46 Okay.
696. 00:41:47 But I tend to get those things mixed up.
697. 00:41:50 Yeah.
698. 00:41:51 So Act 1 really is kind of big picture stuff.
699. 00:41:57 And then Act 2 is the specifics.
700. 00:42:00 And kind of the last part here in Act 1 is a Morning Ritual, the Guide Director's story.
701. 00:42:05 So it's planting the seeds for the routines.
702. 00:42:07 He shares his Morning Ritual, which includes reading his eulogy, reading his 10 year, five
703. 00:42:12 year and one year visions, reading his goal setting worksheets and filling out his daily
704. 00:42:15 planner page.
705. 00:42:18 So I'm sure we'll get into that.
706. 00:42:20 But before we move on to the next part, I just want to call it a couple of other things
707. 00:42:26 I liked from this that he says in Chapter 6, "A life plan is not about productivity,
708. 00:42:32 but it will make you more productive."
709. 00:42:34 Love that statement.
710. 00:42:35 That is, I agree with that 100%.
711. 00:42:38 He said that better than I could have possibly done, but I've tried to say similar things
712. 00:42:45 regarding the time block plan for the day and the intention that it provides.
713. 00:42:49 We had a follow up item for you, several shows in a row to see if that actually clicked.
714. 00:42:55 What did you think of that quote there?
715. 00:42:59 It's a good one.
716. 00:43:00 Did it resonate with you?
717. 00:43:01 I know that.
718. 00:43:02 Did it make you want to plan your day every day or in some way, shape, or form?
719. 00:43:06 Not time blocking specifically, but…
720. 00:43:08 Yeah, I mean…
721. 00:43:11 So here's…
722. 00:43:12 Okay, let me explain this one.
723. 00:43:14 So I started to figure out why some of the time blocking thing hasn't clicked for me.
724. 00:43:21 It's because I didn't realize this until I read this book and got through the part
725. 00:43:27 you're talking about.
726. 00:43:29 But I kind of do a pseudo plan for the day anyway and have for quite some time.
727. 00:43:37 But I don't think I could have told you that that's what it is.
728. 00:43:41 Sure.
729. 00:43:42 I would have…
730. 00:43:43 Regularly, I would have told you that, yeah, I make a list of things I'm trying to do
731. 00:43:46 today.
732. 00:43:47 It's a checklist of things I'm setting out to accomplish today.
733. 00:43:51 But the part of that that isn't captured anywhere is the own…
734. 00:43:56 My mental plan of when all those things are going to happen.
735. 00:44:00 It's not a plan in the terms of this hour, this is going to happen and this is going
736. 00:44:06 to take 30 minutes and this is going to take two hours.
737. 00:44:09 I don't do that.
738. 00:44:10 But I know that if I'm going to write this particular article, it's going to be done
739. 00:44:14 this morning.
740. 00:44:15 If I'm going to go run these errands, that's going to be right after lunch.
741. 00:44:17 And I know if I'm going to do any form of administrative maintenance tasks, that's
742. 00:44:22 going to be right before I go home.
743. 00:44:25 I have all of that plan in my mind, but it never gets externalized anywhere.
744. 00:44:30 And I think it's because I know that my schedule tends to change so much day to day or like
745. 00:44:34 hour to hour that trying to write it out doesn't seem to make sense.
746. 00:44:39 But I know in my head when those things are best going to work out and then I shoot for
747. 00:44:43 that.
748. 00:44:44 So I think that's what some of my angst with the time blocking is, is like I have kind
749. 00:44:49 of a plan already and have done that for quite some time.
750. 00:44:53 But I don't think I could have told you that I'm doing that.
751. 00:44:55 It wasn't until recently that I was able to connect that that's what I'm doing.
752. 00:45:00 So yet, yes, he does get into like this whole ritual of, you know, make your plan for the
753. 00:45:05 day and stuff like, and I get that.
754. 00:45:06 So I've been like answering these questions of myself in the morning, which is kind of
755. 00:45:10 similar to what he's getting at.
756. 00:45:14 But as far as like the hourly time blocking thing, I don't think I'll actually ever get
757. 00:45:19 to a point where I'm fully like writing that out every single day and thinking that's super
758. 00:45:23 exciting.
759. 00:45:24 I don't think that's going to be me.
760. 00:45:26 Sure.
761. 00:45:27 And I think Donald Miller would say that's okay because he actually says in the daily
762. 00:45:32 planner section in act two, which we'll get to in a minute, that the daily planner page,
763. 00:45:38 you could fill us out every day if you want, or just on days where you need additional
764. 00:45:42 focus, which was surprising to me.
765. 00:45:44 Everybody I know who has professed a system is like, you got to do this every single day.
766. 00:45:50 He's kind of like, I just use it whenever you want.
767. 00:45:53 Right.
768. 00:45:54 I absolutely loved and I'm not used to people saying that, which is why when he said it,
769. 00:45:59 like, well, hold up.
770. 00:46:01 Yep.
771. 00:46:02 What?
772. 00:46:03 You're a guy who has a set of worksheets and a system here and you're telling me to maybe
773. 00:46:08 use it sometimes when it's helpful?
774. 00:46:10 Mm hmm.
775. 00:46:11 Who are you?
776. 00:46:12 You're strange.
777. 00:46:13 Yeah.
778. 00:46:14 So this is like the seeds of these are the principles and take them and apply them how
779. 00:46:19 you want.
780. 00:46:20 If you want more structure in order to help you apply them, I've got this thing that you
781. 00:46:23 can use and I think he's kind of okay if you decide that that's just not for you.
782. 00:46:30 Right.
783. 00:46:31 Right.
784. 00:46:32 It's interesting.
785. 00:46:33 And then the other thing here with the hero knowing what they want, this feels selfish
786. 00:46:38 at first, but he kind of addresses that.
787. 00:46:41 He mentioned that the sweet spot is the things that benefit us and others.
788. 00:46:47 And he does a really good job of defining that, what that looks like.
789. 00:46:50 You can't just be in service of others.
790. 00:46:53 You need to have something that's in it for you.
791. 00:46:55 Otherwise you're going to lose motivation to keep going.
792. 00:47:02 But also he talks about asking the question, what if and I like this question.
793. 00:47:09 I've asked versions of this question in the past, but this is one of my action items.
794. 00:47:13 What if I did the thing?
795. 00:47:16 What if I wrote a New York Times best selling book because that's the thing on the bucket
796. 00:47:22 list for me?
797. 00:47:23 Right.
798. 00:47:25 And I want to start asking this as a filtering question.
799. 00:47:30 That's kind of the idea he talks about here is having a theme.
800. 00:47:33 Life theme is where my mind went.
801. 00:47:35 Every story has a controlling idea or a theme.
802. 00:47:39 And that theme serves as a filter.
803. 00:47:42 So you're not trying to do everything.
804. 00:47:43 You're trying to do the right things.
805. 00:47:45 But kind of encouraging you, you're capable of more than you realize at this point.
806. 00:47:51 You'll never get it if you're trying to live the life and the story of other people or
807. 00:47:58 that they want you to live.
808. 00:47:59 You have to define that for yourself.
809. 00:48:01 But when you focus in on a specific thing because it's really important to you because
810. 00:48:05 it's going to help you and help other people, then that creates motivation to consistently
811. 00:48:09 do it.
812. 00:48:10 And that's really cool and I think very exciting as you go into the next part here in Act 2.
813. 00:48:17 Yeah, I think it's a good segue.
814. 00:48:20 Let's go to the fun part here.
815. 00:48:23 All right.
816. 00:48:24 So Act 2 is Create Your Life Plan.
817. 00:48:28 And right there, it's in the title.
818. 00:48:30 You kind of know what he's expecting us to do with this section of the book.
819. 00:48:35 Chapter 7 is a eulogy allows you to look back on your entire life even before it's over.
820. 00:48:42 We'll come back to that.
821. 00:48:43 I just want to go through the rest of these chapters real quick.
822. 00:48:45 Chapter 8 is a good eulogy talks about who and what the hero loved.
823. 00:48:49 Chapter 9, a good eulogy helps you find narrative traction.
824. 00:48:52 Chapter 10, write your eulogy.
825. 00:48:53 Chapter 11, create your long-term vision and short-term goals.
826. 00:48:56 Chapter 12, a hero gets things done.
827. 00:48:58 Chapter 13, the hero on a mission daily planner.
828. 00:49:00 Chapter 14, the role that matters most.
829. 00:49:03 Chapter 15, the story goes on and on.
830. 00:49:05 So lots of chapters here.
831. 00:49:07 Several of them come before the actual writing of the eulogy, which I loved.
832. 00:49:12 Yeah.
833. 00:49:13 Yeah.
834. 00:49:14 So the term eulogy, you probably, at least I did, instantly thought of Stephen Covey and
835. 00:49:22 the seven habits, right?
836. 00:49:25 It's not what I thought of.
837. 00:49:26 Well, habit number two, begin with the end in mind.
838. 00:49:29 I guess maybe that's just my upbringing with the family business and my dad.
839. 00:49:33 And has a whole self-determination product built off of that principle as a perchains
840. 00:49:38 to goal setting.
841. 00:49:39 I'm wearing a funerals too much.
842. 00:49:41 Fair enough.
843. 00:49:42 I instantly thought of the worksheet we have here that helps you write one.
844. 00:49:47 Oh my gosh.
845. 00:49:48 Sure.
846. 00:49:49 Well, going into it and seeing all these chapters about a eulogy, that's what I anticipated
847. 00:49:54 is, okay, so we're getting into life, purpose, mission, statements, stuff like that.
848. 00:50:00 So probably going to come back to Stephen Covey, seven habits.
849. 00:50:04 I know this already, Donald Miller.
850. 00:50:06 You don't need to talk to me about it for four chapters.
851. 00:50:09 That was me at the beginning of chapter seven.
852. 00:50:12 However, he won me over with this section.
853. 00:50:17 He did a really good job of talking about the eulogy in a new light.
854. 00:50:22 He probably brought up Stephen Covey at one point.
855. 00:50:24 I didn't jot it down in my notes here, but I don't know that he did.
856. 00:50:29 I don't remember.
857. 00:50:30 He did.
858. 00:50:31 There's definitely a lot of new material here on this idea.
859. 00:50:35 So don't write it off even though at the beginning it probably sounds the same as we talk about
860. 00:50:39 it, but essentially eulogy, what legacy are you going to leave?
861. 00:50:45 And he has a couple of exercise questions in each one of these chapters, which is a very
862. 00:50:51 effective way of doing this because he doesn't just give you all the questions at once.
863. 00:50:55 In chapter seven, you have to identify, I will likely pass away when I am about X years old.
864. 00:51:01 And if I die when I am X years old, that means I only have Y years left to live.
865. 00:51:06 This is very weight, but why ask?
866. 00:51:10 Have you ever seen one of those calendars?
867. 00:51:12 Mm-hmm.
868. 00:51:13 Yeah.
869. 00:51:14 Yeah, they're humbling.
870. 00:51:15 I'll say that.
871. 00:51:17 Yeah.
872. 00:51:18 So the calendar I'm talking about basically has the average lifespan and then you color
873. 00:51:22 in the squares from the moment that you're born to the day that you die.
874. 00:51:28 And the whole idea behind it is you see all those boxes that are colored in and you're
875. 00:51:34 like, "Oh my gosh, my life is half over," or whatever.
876. 00:51:38 And it's very sobering when you look at that.
877. 00:51:43 Yes.
878. 00:51:44 However, this feels very stoic, memento-mori sort of a thing.
879. 00:51:50 Remember you're going to die.
880. 00:51:52 What you do with that is the important thing.
881. 00:51:54 And I feel like he does a really good job of saying, "Okay, well, I'm probably going
882. 00:51:58 to live to be about 80.
883. 00:51:59 I'm 40 now, then I better get busy."
884. 00:52:02 And it creates the momentum or the motivation to take action now and start creating the
885. 00:52:08 life that you want to live.
886. 00:52:10 One of the interesting things, because he shares a lot of his own personal story throughout
887. 00:52:13 this, is that he kind of got a late start.
888. 00:52:17 He talks about how he bought this chocolate lab, Lucy, and started traveling around the
889. 00:52:25 country with Lucy.
890. 00:52:27 And he thought at that point, "I'm in my mid-30s, this is the only companionship I'm
891. 00:52:31 ever going to have."
892. 00:52:33 And at the end, he talks about how now he's married, they just have their first kid.
893. 00:52:40 Lucy is going to die soon.
894. 00:52:44 So one story's ending, another story's beginning.
895. 00:52:48 I don't want to jump right to the end, but it's a very effective metaphor.
896. 00:52:54 When I read that last chapter, I mean, I have a dog named Lucy.
897. 00:52:58 Maybe that's part of it.
898. 00:53:00 But I went through this not too long ago with our previous dog, who passed away suddenly,
899. 00:53:09 and then we ended up getting another dog.
900. 00:53:12 And I found myself getting emotional as I was reading that last chapter.
901. 00:53:18 And he does a really good job, I feel, of communicating like, "Well, yeah, you should
902. 00:53:22 be emotional because the story is ending, but don't just stay there."
903. 00:53:25 Like, life keeps going, brings in Victor Frankle again.
904. 00:53:28 Like, this is the perfect mashup of all these different things, all these different ideas
905. 00:53:33 that we've read in my opinion.
906. 00:53:34 And then he tells it through the Donald Miller lens, which is kind of self-deprecating, kind
907. 00:53:40 of humorous sometimes, sometimes trying to be funny, not so funny.
908. 00:53:45 He's got one kid who's a couple of months old, so he's talking about explosions of
909. 00:53:49 love and explosions of poop.
910. 00:53:52 I've been through it with five kids, so that doesn't work for me.
911. 00:53:56 I know you going through it for the first time, exactly how fascinated you are by this.
912. 00:54:02 However, it doesn't translate.
913. 00:54:04 But overall, I feel like all the different dots that he's connecting with this, it's
914. 00:54:10 very, very effective.
915. 00:54:12 And the eulogy is the thing here that I feel this kind of anchors a whole bunch of stuff.
916. 00:54:18 I want to write my own eulogy.
917. 00:54:22 That is an action item that I am going to commit to.
918. 00:54:26 I'm not sure if I'm going to share the whole thing on the air next time, but I'm definitely
919. 00:54:31 going to write it.
920. 00:54:32 I think that's a noble task to take on.
921. 00:54:37 I think a lot of people should do this.
922. 00:54:39 I'm very grateful that he took the three chapters to explain basically what makes a
923. 00:54:45 good eulogy.
924. 00:54:48 Like I mentioned earlier, one of the first things I thought of was the eulogy that I
925. 00:54:51 read whenever we have funerals here at the church.
926. 00:54:57 Some of them are written very well, and some of them are lackluster to be kind.
927. 00:55:05 And there have been, I think, two.
928. 00:55:11 One in particular, I know, stood out to me.
929. 00:55:13 But there have been two that I know I've read that were written by the deceased, one
930. 00:55:20 of which was written as they were on their deathbed with the help of their family, which
931. 00:55:27 I found very emotional and difficult to read.
932. 00:55:32 The other one I'll bring up just because it fits this very well.
933. 00:55:38 The person had the deceased.
934. 00:55:41 They died early.
935. 00:55:42 They were in their late 50s.
936. 00:55:44 They wrote their own eulogy in their early 20s.
937. 00:55:48 And that eulogy was inserted as part of the bulletin, rundown, whatever you want to call
938. 00:55:57 it, the handout that came at the funeral.
939. 00:56:00 That was placed beside the eulogy that was then written by the family.
940. 00:56:06 And to see the two side by side was just mind blowing to me.
941. 00:56:11 How'd they match up?
942. 00:56:13 Very well, actually, it was shocking because what had happened was he had written this
943. 00:56:20 eulogy in his early 20s and then basically did what Donald Miller is talking about here,
944. 00:56:27 where he was trying to live his life towards that end goal.
945. 00:56:35 There weren't any specifics like, "I'm going to have a big business."
946. 00:56:37 You don't like none of that was part of it.
947. 00:56:39 It was all relationships, which is a lot of what he's getting at here.
948. 00:56:43 That's chapter 8, yep.
949. 00:56:45 In what makes a good eulogy.
950. 00:56:47 I have no idea how this person came about the concept to do this, but obviously they
951. 00:56:53 came about it somehow.
952. 00:56:55 And to see the family's response to reading that, because a lot of them didn't even know
953. 00:57:03 that he had written it.
954. 00:57:06 It was just a super fascinating experience to have.
955. 00:57:10 I waited till now to bring this up because this makes perfect sense here.
956. 00:57:13 But absolutely, I'm going to join you in trying to write this because I feel like this is
957. 00:57:19 something that can definitely drive a lot of good in your life as far as a mission goes.
958. 00:57:27 But I also know this is not going to be simple.
959. 00:57:31 You know this, this is not going to be a fun or exciting process by any means.
960. 00:57:38 But I think Donald Miller has set us up well with understanding what makes a good one and
961. 00:57:43 giving you the framework to help you get through this to do it well.
962. 00:57:48 But yes, it's one that I'm definitely going to take on here.
963. 00:57:53 Yeah, he does give a lot of great examples of people who have written their eulogy.
964. 00:57:57 He shares his, I think he shares his wife's like a whole bunch of other people, a couple
965. 00:58:02 paragraphs.
966. 00:58:03 These are the sort of elements that you would include in it.
967. 00:58:05 There's even a whole bunch of questions that he gives you in chapter 10 with writing your
968. 00:58:11 eulogy.
969. 00:58:12 I'm not going to read them all, but they are in the mine node file.
970. 00:58:14 So I guess there's a plug for membership.
971. 00:58:18 You want to get access to that stuff.
972. 00:58:20 There you go.
973. 00:58:21 This section about people and relationships, how they give us meaning, he mentions this
974. 00:58:29 drama triangle in chapter eight, which is interesting because if you just take that
975. 00:58:35 statement at surface value, yeah, your life should be about other people, you could totally
976. 00:58:40 get sucked into this.
977. 00:58:42 And I've seen this manifest, but I didn't really understand how you get there necessarily.
978. 00:58:50 But basically he did a really good job of defining this.
979. 00:58:53 So basically this drama triangle is when we interact with someone who sees themselves
980. 00:58:57 as a victim, the person positions themselves as a victim to attract a rescuer.
981. 00:59:04 And then the rescuer swoops in and makes themselves feel good by helping the victim.
982. 00:59:09 However, the victim has no desire to actually change.
983. 00:59:11 So when the rescuer's patient starts to wear thin, they begin to blame and persecute the
984. 00:59:15 person they were attempting to rescue.
985. 00:59:17 Who then needs a rescuer other than their original rescuer and on and on we go.
986. 00:59:23 Yeah.
987. 00:59:24 So this is kind of like a false hero, I think, at this point.
988. 00:59:27 You could find someone who has a need and who is trying to get attention this way.
989. 00:59:32 But that's not going to provide the meaning.
990. 00:59:35 You're going to fall into this trap.
991. 00:59:36 So he says, "Heroes on a mission attract other heroes on a mission."
992. 00:59:40 Really you got to find other people who are like-minded, not in an echo chamber, but people
993. 00:59:46 who are at least trying to believe they have the agency to change their situation.
994. 00:59:52 If you get around people like that, then that will inspire you to change yourself.
995. 00:59:56 And it's a reinforcing perpetual cycle at that point.
996. 01:00:03 He does also make the point here that when others are involved in our stories, we have
997. 01:00:06 to make compromises.
998. 01:00:07 He talks about how he had to make compromises when he got married.
999. 01:00:10 He had to make compromises again when his daughter was born.
1000. 01:00:13 At that point, I'm like, "Buddy, you have no idea."
1001. 01:00:17 You could just get and start him, my friend.
1002. 01:00:21 Yeah.
1003. 01:00:22 And I don't say that because my family has cramped my style or anything like that just
1004. 01:00:26 with each additional person.
1005. 01:00:28 You've got less and less agency for yourself.
1006. 01:00:33 And you willingly trade that because a story that involves other people is more meaningful.
1007. 01:00:40 But yeah, he's kind of talking about it with his first kid who is a couple of months old
1008. 01:00:47 and framing it as this requires a huge amount of sacrifice.
1009. 01:00:52 And when you have five kids and they are 14 and under, that requires much more sacrifice.
1010. 01:00:58 So I'm very much aware of this problem.
1011. 01:01:00 Donald Miller, I don't need you to explain it to me.
1012. 01:01:04 That's just me.
1013. 01:01:05 Yes.
1014. 01:01:06 At the same time though, there are many people who aren't even to his point.
1015. 01:01:09 Yep.
1016. 01:01:10 It totally makes sense.
1017. 01:01:12 What he's saying isn't wrong for the stage he's in.
1018. 01:01:17 And I think he's got a good viewpoint given his starting point there.
1019. 01:01:24 He's coming at it probably from a better place than what I was at that time in that season.
1020. 01:01:29 So kudos to him on that front.
1021. 01:01:31 But yes, absolutely.
1022. 01:01:33 Yeah.
1023. 01:01:34 Two kids is way more complicated than one, three more.
1024. 01:01:37 So I'm done at three.
1025. 01:01:39 You've got five.
1026. 01:01:40 I don't even want to think about it, Mike.
1027. 01:01:42 Like I'm good at three.
1028. 01:01:44 I'll stay there.
1029. 01:01:45 We see probably four or five years ago, we bought a suburban and we went into the dealership
1030. 01:01:55 and we're talking to the sales guy.
1031. 01:01:59 Actually it was four years ago because Adelaide is four and we had five kids.
1032. 01:02:04 And my wife and I walked in.
1033. 01:02:06 We didn't have the kids with us.
1034. 01:02:08 Well, we need a bigger family vehicle.
1035. 01:02:11 Okay, so how many kids you got?
1036. 01:02:14 And it's like five.
1037. 01:02:18 Five?
1038. 01:02:20 Pardon me for asking this, but are you planning on having any more?
1039. 01:02:26 Just because that determines whether you need the bucket seats or the...
1040. 01:02:29 Right, the vehicles.
1041. 01:02:31 Sure, that's what you're thinking about.
1042. 01:02:34 Yeah.
1043. 01:02:35 But you was wrong with you.
1044. 01:02:36 So his mind was blown at that and then...
1045. 01:02:42 But that's all right.
1046. 01:02:43 There's another thing in chapter nine I wanted to talk about here with creators, not consumers.
1047. 01:02:51 So this is one of the things that we have tried to make a mantra in our family is create
1048. 01:02:58 not consume.
1049. 01:02:59 It's one of the things my wife and I talk about all the time and the intentional family
1050. 01:03:01 podcasts that we do.
1051. 01:03:03 I've even got on my iPhone home screen, the widget smith thing with the text at the bottom
1052. 01:03:08 that says create not consume.
1053. 01:03:10 So whenever I open my iPhone, I see that as a nudge to not just go check Twitter or whatever,
1054. 01:03:19 but do something that I consider to be a positive use of that technology and just intentional
1055. 01:03:26 technology uses what I'm trying to go towards.
1056. 01:03:30 So I love that idea from the perspective of intentional technology use, but I also think
1057. 01:03:38 it fits really well with what he's talking about here in terms of narrative and story.
1058. 01:03:44 Because he says creators make things that didn't exist before and a life plan and a life vision
1059. 01:03:50 and ultimately a life well lived could fit there as well.
1060. 01:03:57 Consumers consume what creators create.
1061. 01:04:00 So somebody says you're going to do this and you end up doing that and then you complain
1062. 01:04:03 because it's not what you wanted to do.
1063. 01:04:07 So creators create consumers consume and then they complain about the things that they've
1064. 01:04:12 consumed because really they should be creating themselves, but they don't do it because I
1065. 01:04:17 don't know.
1066. 01:04:18 There's a lot of different reasons, but I think one of the big ones is that they're
1067. 01:04:21 waiting for somebody to give them permission to do it.
1068. 01:04:24 Consider this your permission, permission granted.
1069. 01:04:27 You can create the life you want.
1070. 01:04:29 You don't wait for somebody else to give you the ability to do that.
1071. 01:04:33 Start where you are with what you have.
1072. 01:04:35 You don't have to change your entire situation overnight, but do something to move in the
1073. 01:04:41 direction that you want to go.
1074. 01:04:43 Whenever you let other people define your world, they're always going to make it too
1075. 01:04:48 small.
1076. 01:04:49 That and if you're waiting, like you go back to act one when we're talking about the heroes
1077. 01:04:55 agency.
1078. 01:04:56 Don't wait for the perfect circumstances either.
1079. 01:05:01 This is something I've been bad about in the past.
1080. 01:05:04 Well, I can't start seeding the grass until it's just right.
1081. 01:05:10 The perfect time to seed grasses in the spring and in the fall.
1082. 01:05:13 Yeah, but I have the time mid-summer.
1083. 01:05:17 It's not perfect.
1084. 01:05:18 It's going to take more water, but I'm not paying for water.
1085. 01:05:21 It's just a well pump.
1086. 01:05:22 I don't pay for the water.
1087. 01:05:24 Water it.
1088. 01:05:25 Who cares?
1089. 01:05:26 That's my view now.
1090. 01:05:27 But previously, I've always waited for those perfect scenarios.
1091. 01:05:32 If you're looking for absolute perfection, you'll never find it, which means you'll never
1092. 01:05:37 act on it, which means you don't get anywhere.
1093. 01:05:39 You'll always be complaining because you didn't act on the thing that you think you should
1094. 01:05:42 have done.
1095. 01:05:43 Now you're sitting in a wallowing pit of nothingness.
1096. 01:05:46 So please stop.
1097. 01:05:47 Get up.
1098. 01:05:48 Do something.
1099. 01:05:49 Here's your permission to get going.
1100. 01:05:51 This is also where helping you to realize that you're running out of time can be used
1101. 01:06:00 for the positive, I'll say.
1102. 01:06:02 No one likes to think about the fact that they don't have a whole lot of time left.
1103. 01:06:09 But when you realize that it does create urgency to start living your life now, and in chapter
1104. 01:06:15 nine, he talks about page 114.
1105. 01:06:17 He says, "Every day we write a page that someone will someday read."
1106. 01:06:21 So kind of to your point, don't wait until circumstances are perfect because they're
1107. 01:06:24 never going to be.
1108. 01:06:26 Start tomorrow and write the page of your life story that is in alignment with the story
1109. 01:06:33 that you want to tell.
1110. 01:06:36 You're picking up, if you're embracing these ideas that he's talking about, every single
1111. 01:06:39 one of us is embracing a story in progress.
1112. 01:06:43 And the tendency could be, "Well, I want to start at the beginning and I want to make
1113. 01:06:45 it perfect, but you can't do that."
1114. 01:06:50 You're jumping in the middle and you've only got so much time left.
1115. 01:06:52 So I feel like that is a very compelling argument for just starting where you are with what
1116. 01:06:57 you have.
1117. 01:06:58 And so this character in our story, maybe he's made a whole bunch of mistakes.
1118. 01:07:02 That's actually a good thing from a storytelling perspective because it's going to make the
1119. 01:07:04 comeback that much sweeter and the triumph that much greater.
1120. 01:07:09 Okay.
1121. 01:07:10 So this character who has made all these mistakes in the past wakes up today and is you and
1122. 01:07:16 what is the thing that they are going to do, the best version of them is going to do today
1123. 01:07:21 to set up this storybook ending.
1124. 01:07:25 I feel like that's a really cool visual exercise.
1125. 01:07:30 And that's kind of what he's talking about in this chapter is developing this vision.
1126. 01:07:34 There's different ways that he talks about this.
1127. 01:07:35 The three characteristics of a good vision, it should probably embarrass you.
1128. 01:07:38 It should probably scare you.
1129. 01:07:40 And then says, "Oh, by the way, it should also be realistic," which that was kind of jarring.
1130. 01:07:45 He embraces that.
1131. 01:07:46 He recognizes that.
1132. 01:07:47 He's like, "Think big, dream big, and then, oh, by the way, now make it realistic."
1133. 01:07:52 I feel like the embarrassing, scaring part, that's kind of just priming the pump.
1134. 01:07:57 But then the realistic is a very effective way for like, "Okay, so what can you do now?"
1135. 01:08:02 Right?
1136. 01:08:03 You don't have to have it all figured out.
1137. 01:08:04 You can't go from zero to 100.
1138. 01:08:06 What can you do right now to start moving in this direction?
1139. 01:08:10 But then the other thing that was really effective for me was he talks about how the choices
1140. 01:08:18 that he and his wife are making and the life that they're creating, that is establishing
1141. 01:08:22 what is normal for their daughter.
1142. 01:08:25 And so one of the visions that they have is this retreat center sort of a thing.
1143. 01:08:30 They call it Goose Hill, where they have people come and he has these bookshelves in their
1144. 01:08:34 carriage house, which he wants to fill with people's life stories, and their hero and
1145. 01:08:40 emission stories.
1146. 01:08:41 He wants to collect all of those in three ring binders and have all of them there on the
1147. 01:08:46 bookshelf.
1148. 01:08:47 So there's a whole bunch of things that they're doing right now that are creating this normal
1149. 01:08:53 world for their kids.
1150. 01:08:56 And that has me thinking, "What elements of my story do I want to make normal for my
1151. 01:08:59 kids?"
1152. 01:09:00 I feel like I've done some of this stuff already because my wife and I have done our family
1153. 01:09:05 core values and things like that.
1154. 01:09:09 We've got a weekly date night and the weekly one-on-ones with my kids and things like that.
1155. 01:09:15 And I know that they appreciate that stuff because they're old enough now that they see
1156. 01:09:23 their friends, they don't do that sort of thing.
1157. 01:09:27 And they still like hanging out with me.
1158. 01:09:29 So I'm going to continue to do it as long as they're willing.
1159. 01:09:32 Yeah, take advantage while you can.
1160. 01:09:34 But at this point, it is normal for us.
1161. 01:09:37 And I think that's awesome because I want them to be able to do the same sort of thing
1162. 01:09:40 with their kids.
1163. 01:09:41 And by making it normal in our house, I feel like that sets them up for success.
1164. 01:09:47 But I definitely want to think about that.
1165. 01:09:48 And are there any other elements of my story that I want to make normal for my kids?
1166. 01:09:52 And maybe they're elements that don't exist yet.
1167. 01:09:54 Maybe they're things that are traditions that are yet to be crafted.
1168. 01:09:59 But I want to spend some thinking time on that.
1169. 01:10:01 Yeah, no, that's good.
1170. 01:10:03 Because I know we have some defaults that we're setting for our kids, like not making progress
1171. 01:10:09 on Sundays, like making sure that we're taking a break, giving yourself the rest, making
1172. 01:10:14 sure sleep is a priority.
1173. 01:10:16 There's some of those things that we're trying to make sure the kids pick up.
1174. 01:10:20 And those go a long ways to the point where my oldest knows, you're not getting a phone
1175. 01:10:27 ever.
1176. 01:10:29 Never.
1177. 01:10:30 And she knows I'm joking, of course.
1178. 01:10:34 But she also knows it's going to be a while before you are allowed to have one of these.
1179. 01:10:39 She's nine.
1180. 01:10:41 And she does have a friend who has one and is starting to become friends with some older
1181. 01:10:46 kids who have phones and stuff.
1182. 01:10:48 So it's interesting to see her, like whenever her friends ask her about it, like, well,
1183. 01:10:54 my dad's a tech guy at church.
1184. 01:10:57 And when she gets that out, they're like, oh, so you probably have like, nope, I mean,
1185. 01:11:00 I have nothing.
1186. 01:11:02 Absolutely nothing.
1187. 01:11:03 Get a light phone.
1188. 01:11:06 Not even that.
1189. 01:11:07 Like, no, nothing.
1190. 01:11:09 That's actually what we did for our 14 year old.
1191. 01:11:12 We got a light phone.
1192. 01:11:13 I wrote it up actually recently for the sweet set up.
1193. 01:11:16 It's a great entryway because there are text messages.
1194. 01:11:20 There's no multimedia messages.
1195. 01:11:21 There's no web browser.
1196. 01:11:23 There's no apps.
1197. 01:11:24 And we've talked to him about it.
1198. 01:11:26 We've watched the social dilemma together.
1199. 01:11:28 Like he gets it.
1200. 01:11:29 He understands why.
1201. 01:11:30 And he also gets annoyed by some of his teenage friends who like will come over and they just
1202. 01:11:33 stare at the phones all the time.
1203. 01:11:35 So I feel like, you know, we've planted the seeds there, but we'll see.
1204. 01:11:40 Yep.
1205. 01:11:41 Anyway, we could spend a whole episode on that one, but yes.
1206. 01:11:44 Yeah.
1207. 01:11:45 Another thing he says here on page 117, there's lots of these little quotes that I just absolutely
1208. 01:11:49 love.
1209. 01:11:50 I know.
1210. 01:11:51 I know.
1211. 01:11:52 It's what I was saying early on.
1212. 01:11:53 Yeah.
1213. 01:11:54 A lot of like one-liner zingers here and there.
1214. 01:11:55 Yep.
1215. 01:11:56 He says, "This is not a book of chance you can recite to force the genie out of the bottle
1216. 01:11:58 and grant you three wishes, although those books seem to sell well."
1217. 01:12:03 That they do.
1218. 01:12:05 Like, yeah.
1219. 01:12:06 Yeah.
1220. 01:12:07 You really just...
1221. 01:12:10 I didn't expect that statement because he is embracing what this book really is, but
1222. 01:12:17 also slamming like every other stereotypical productivity book in this space at the same
1223. 01:12:23 time.
1224. 01:12:24 This is chef's kiss.
1225. 01:12:31 But only because he's dissing on the parts you don't like.
1226. 01:12:34 So Echo Chamber going on right here.
1227. 01:12:37 That's what that is.
1228. 01:12:38 That's true.
1229. 01:12:39 That's true.
1230. 01:12:40 However, I've been thinking a lot about this.
1231. 01:12:43 This probably relates a little bit to Storyrand and just like the stuff that I've been creating
1232. 01:12:46 lately with faith-based productivity, the YouTube channel, stuff like that.
1233. 01:12:51 I have struggled.
1234. 01:12:53 Like, let's just share with the YouTube stuff specifically.
1235. 01:12:57 I've got a whole bunch of these sermon sketch note videos that I've been doing long before
1236. 01:13:01 I ever cared about YouTube.
1237. 01:13:03 And I continue to do those roughly every week and they get a handful of views, probably
1238. 01:13:09 all people at my church.
1239. 01:13:12 And they don't perform well.
1240. 01:13:16 So I've been thinking about as I'm getting into other types of YouTube videos, do I
1241. 01:13:21 want to just delete all those?
1242. 01:13:24 Do I even want to do those anymore?
1243. 01:13:27 Because the other ones that perform well, they reach a broader audience.
1244. 01:13:34 But then I've just gone through ship 30 for 30 and they basically say become as niche
1245. 01:13:38 as you can.
1246. 01:13:40 You want to get to the point where people don't like you because of something that you have
1247. 01:13:46 created.
1248. 01:13:47 And I feel like that's the sermon sketch note stuff for me.
1249. 01:13:50 I'm kind of still wrestling through this, but kind of where my mind is at right now is,
1250. 01:13:54 "No, I'm going to leave them up there because that's who I am."
1251. 01:13:57 And if that takes people off good because those aren't the people who are going to be
1252. 01:13:59 my true fans anyways, and the internet's big enough that I'll find the people who think,
1253. 01:14:04 "Oh, this is great that you do the standard productivity stuff and the sermon sketch notes
1254. 01:14:08 and bookworm and all this other stuff."
1255. 01:14:10 There's an audience there that I can absolutely serve well and that's what I should be trying
1256. 01:14:17 to do, not try to be more palatable to other people or the algorithm.
1257. 01:14:23 So yeah.
1258. 01:14:25 Totally fair.
1259. 01:14:26 The last thing I really want to talk about in this book is this topic of goal setting.
1260. 01:14:35 Now in chapter 12, he says, let me back up, chapter 11, create your long-term vision,
1261. 01:14:41 short-term goals.
1262. 01:14:42 So that's where he starts talking about goal setting.
1263. 01:14:45 However, chapter 12 was where I re-engaged with him because he says, quote, goal setting
1264. 01:14:55 is optional.
1265. 01:14:57 What?
1266. 01:14:58 Did you catch that?
1267. 01:14:59 It's the second paragraph at the very beginning of chapter 12 and marked this in my notes.
1268. 01:15:04 I'll just read it to you.
1269. 01:15:06 The third and optional step in creating your life plan and experiencing a life of meaning
1270. 01:15:11 is to fill out your goal setting worksheets.
1271. 01:15:14 Right.
1272. 01:15:15 It's right at the beginning of the chapter.
1273. 01:15:18 Yeah.
1274. 01:15:19 So this just kind of sealed the deal for me that at this point, I have officially been,
1275. 01:15:28 every objection I've had to Donald Miller has been disarmed.
1276. 01:15:32 I still don't think he's all that funny sometimes, but that's, that's just personal style, whatever.
1277. 01:15:38 I really appreciated this statement and this was kind of the cherry on top in terms of
1278. 01:15:44 I've got all these principles and I'm sharing my story and I feel like there's something
1279. 01:15:48 here that can help you, but you don't have to do it my way.
1280. 01:15:50 I mean, he's got goal setting templates.
1281. 01:15:53 It would be very easy to just lean into that and be like, this is what you got to do.
1282. 01:15:58 Every, I shouldn't say every, I gotta be careful how I phrase this.
1283. 01:16:05 The beginning of my productivity journey and the stuff that I did online, I was very much
1284. 01:16:12 encouraged to embrace this role as the guru and well, I've done this for a period of time.
1285. 01:16:21 So just trust me and do it this way.
1286. 01:16:24 And Donald Miller totally went the opposite direction here.
1287. 01:16:29 And that's not what I expected him to do.
1288. 01:16:33 I mean, at this point in the book, maybe, but at the beginning, you know, I was expecting
1289. 01:16:37 here's the system, follow the system.
1290. 01:16:40 And I found at this point, obviously, because I have my own issues with goals and the vacuum
1291. 01:16:45 that they create as soon as you achieve one and all that kind of stuff.
1292. 01:16:50 By framing it as optional, I'm like, this is my people.
1293. 01:16:56 I am 100% on board with this, this message at this point.
1294. 01:17:02 But just to, you know, tie a bow on this, the point that he's making by saying goal setting
1295. 01:17:07 is optional is that all you really need is motivation and action.
1296. 01:17:14 The way I wrote this down was motivation and action creates traction.
1297. 01:17:19 Those aren't the words that he used.
1298. 01:17:21 He does talk about narrative traction, right?
1299. 01:17:24 But all you really need is something that will create the momentum that you need to show
1300. 01:17:31 up and do what you need to do.
1301. 01:17:34 And then at that point, you can chuck the rest of the system and all of the regular stuff.
1302. 01:17:41 I still believe habits and routines are important, but it talks about the daily planning and
1303. 01:17:46 how like even that is optional.
1304. 01:17:48 You can use it strategically whenever you need a little bit of additional focus.
1305. 01:17:54 And this has got me rethinking a whole bunch of things.
1306. 01:17:59 So here's something that has crossed my mind as I've been kind of reflecting on this book
1307. 01:18:06 prepping for today, Mike.
1308. 01:18:08 And I want your hot take on this, okay?
1309. 01:18:11 Because I did not prep you for this at all.
1310. 01:18:13 But there's a lot of times we talk about goal setting and we've belabored the negatives
1311. 01:18:19 of goal setting or resolutions or the short term things regularly.
1312. 01:18:27 But at the same time, there might be a disconnect here in our own, I guess, negativity towards
1313. 01:18:37 the term goals and setting goals in that I think that we tend to set things called projects.
1314. 01:18:46 And we have these short term projects that we have that we're off to achieve.
1315. 01:18:52 And part of me wonders if we've been in the productivity space enough to think of a goal
1316. 01:18:58 as something else, like the concept of a smart goal.
1317. 01:19:02 Yeah.
1318. 01:19:03 Like, you know what I mean?
1319. 01:19:04 Like the whole measurable realistic time bound, like all of that.
1320. 01:19:08 I think whenever I think of a goal, I think of that.
1321. 01:19:12 But at the same time, I wonder if the broader world doesn't see it that way.
1322. 01:19:17 And they would say that like what we call a project that we're trying to accomplish here
1323. 01:19:21 in the next month or two, like take your YouTube channel, like you're trying to accomplish
1324. 01:19:27 releasing a video and just call it one video, like you've got the next one.
1325. 01:19:31 I wonder if people would call that a goal and you and I would call it a project.
1326. 01:19:37 I wonder if there's just a terminology difference there.
1327. 01:19:40 I think you're right.
1328. 01:19:42 I think most people who'd and when I say most people, not even like bookworm listeners,
1329. 01:19:48 the general public, when you first stumble upon the idea of goal setting, that is the
1330. 01:19:54 very first time you've applied any sort of intentionality to maybe to how you live your
1331. 01:20:01 life and you begin to live with not just for today, but for tomorrow.
1332. 01:20:09 And so it can be very effective when you start to think that way.
1333. 01:20:12 I think the issues I have are very much attached to the smart goals because that is the next
1334. 01:20:18 step, the general public.
1335. 01:20:20 Okay.
1336. 01:20:21 So I'm going to set a goal.
1337. 01:20:22 Now it's got to be smart, right?
1338. 01:20:23 Because that gives you something which is realistic to go after.
1339. 01:20:29 However, I feel the better approach is what the onal miller is talking about here.
1340. 01:20:34 You begin with the end in mind.
1341. 01:20:36 You have the eulogy.
1342. 01:20:38 What do you want your entire story to be about?
1343. 01:20:42 And then from there, you can work backwards.
1344. 01:20:44 I like the idea of the acts like he's talking about.
1345. 01:20:47 And I even like the idea of the chapters.
1346. 01:20:49 You could apply this to this analogy to your life.
1347. 01:20:55 And I would say the projects that you're talking about, maybe those are chapters.
1348. 01:20:58 So maybe this is like the YouTube chapter for Mike, right?
1349. 01:21:02 But I would never by approaching it that way, I would never set smart goals.
1350. 01:21:08 I would never say by this date, this chapter is going to be over.
1351. 01:21:11 I'm going to move on to the next one.
1352. 01:21:12 That's the issue I have with them.
1353. 01:21:15 So it's almost like if you have never set a goal before and you stumbled on the idea
1354. 01:21:20 of goals, fine.
1355. 01:21:22 Okay.
1356. 01:21:23 Use them.
1357. 01:21:24 Great.
1358. 01:21:25 Now you have a little bit of intentionality.
1359. 01:21:26 However, if you stick with it long enough, the better way to do this is to work backwards
1360. 01:21:31 and to forget everything you knew about smart goals.
1361. 01:21:35 So yeah, I think you're right that it's the way that we describe them and the goal.
1362. 01:21:41 The goals themselves maybe aren't necessarily bad.
1363. 01:21:44 They just have to be framed the right way and it's not framed the way that most people
1364. 01:21:47 are going to think about them.
1365. 01:21:49 Yeah.
1366. 01:21:50 I part of me asked that because I was looking at his worksheets for how do you set a goal
1367. 01:21:55 and break it down and all these things when you're going to complete it by and such.
1368. 01:21:59 And like it has that smart goal, askness of it.
1369. 01:22:02 Like just I noticed that it's reeking of that, right?
1370. 01:22:07 But at the same time, I could easily see how taking some of the things that I call projects
1371. 01:22:14 that have due dates on them, you know, early on I mentioned we've got this live stream
1372. 01:22:20 thing I'm doing on Sunday, right?
1373. 01:22:22 Like, well, the due date for that is Sunday.
1374. 01:22:24 Like I cannot, it's impossible for me to put that off outside of canceling part of the
1375. 01:22:29 scope of the project.
1376. 01:22:31 It's not going to, it's not going to move at all.
1377. 01:22:35 So that particular project, I know some people will call it a goal.
1378. 01:22:41 It's our goal to do that service well.
1379. 01:22:45 And I just don't call it that.
1380. 01:22:48 But I could see how taking some of his worksheets and if I applied it to that project, it actually
1381. 01:22:53 would make sense and maybe potentially be helpful.
1382. 01:22:56 I'm not going to do that.
1383. 01:22:57 But that is something that I know could be helpful for some people.
1384. 01:23:01 So anyway, I had that translation happen in my brain at some point when I was walking
1385. 01:23:05 through the woods and it occurred to me that maybe we're a little bit off, you know, coming
1386. 01:23:11 back to the whole mental models concept of questioning your assumptions.
1387. 01:23:16 And I had that, I wonder if we're off base on some of this goal angst.
1388. 01:23:25 So I just wondered if we were off potentially just have a different terminology.
1389. 01:23:29 That's what I was processing.
1390. 01:23:31 I think maybe I need to reframe my angst.
1391. 01:23:35 My angst is not with the whole concept of goals, but smart goals specifically.
1392. 01:23:42 Because one of the things that he says, which I think this has stated really well, the secret
1393. 01:23:47 to success is to one, work on the right things and to do a little every day.
1394. 01:23:53 And that is the essence of my issues with the goals.
1395. 01:23:58 Like, yeah, you can put in all the metadata and break it down into all the individual
1396. 01:24:01 things and have all the due dates.
1397. 01:24:03 You're still not going to do anything about it.
1398. 01:24:06 Because you're not going to be motivated tomorrow and you're going to think, oh, I've got
1399. 01:24:09 three months to do this thing and you're going to put it off until the last possible
1400. 01:24:12 moment and then it's going to suck every second that you're working on it.
1401. 01:24:16 That's what most people do.
1402. 01:24:18 But that's what you just said is an excellent reason to pick this up and go through this
1403. 01:24:26 concept.
1404. 01:24:27 Right?
1405. 01:24:28 Because that issue with putting things off and not feeling like you have to get to it
1406. 01:24:35 and to get it done is primarily because you're not motivated to do it ahead of time, which
1407. 01:24:42 I think is partly why you and I get into the habits world because then it becomes a motivation
1408. 01:24:47 to do those things every single day, which kind of forces you into the forward progress
1409. 01:24:53 like that mode.
1410. 01:24:55 But if you go about doing that blindly without some in-game in mind, it does get to be, I
1411. 01:25:06 guess, hollow, if you will, without that substance behind it.
1412. 01:25:13 So that's where Story Brand comes in.
1413. 01:25:16 It gives you that substance as opposed to just finances for business.
1414. 01:25:21 And that's where some of his Right Your Ulogy, which to me is the big, big, big point in
1415. 01:25:28 this book that stands out and that here's what makes a good one.
1416. 01:25:32 Here's how you do this.
1417. 01:25:34 You should do this.
1418. 01:25:35 The whole 10-year, five-year, one-year vision thing, sure, cool, awesome.
1419. 01:25:40 Probably not going to do that part.
1420. 01:25:41 Yeah, I'm either going to say that.
1421. 01:25:43 Going to skip fast forward plus 30 on that one.
1422. 01:25:48 But I think that that Ulogy piece is the core component here.
1423. 01:25:53 He's doing a lot of setup for it.
1424. 01:25:55 I guess I'm kind of in the middle of wrap-up here.
1425. 01:25:57 I don't intend that.
1426. 01:25:58 But the thing about it is that if you have that mission, if you have that drive, the
1427. 01:26:06 habits, the routines, the day-to-day stuff, I don't want to say it becomes easy, but it's
1428. 01:26:11 easier to get the motivation to start, I guess.
1429. 01:26:14 Oh, for sure.
1430. 01:26:15 Who struggles with that starting point?
1431. 01:26:18 Like getting started is always the trick for me.
1432. 01:26:22 Having that mission is the part that makes that a lot easier.
1433. 01:26:27 Knowing that mine's a bit fuzzy from time to time, especially right now.
1434. 01:26:31 So I'm aware of that.
1435. 01:26:33 Yeah, I agree with that.
1436. 01:26:35 Really what you need is alignment, something that is pulling you towards something that
1437. 01:26:40 is meaningful to you doesn't have to be something that is easy, that kind of gets into the whole
1438. 01:26:46 idea of passion, which he doesn't address this specifically in here, but basically the
1439. 01:26:52 whole Victor Frankl thing, finding meaning in the suffering while passion is suffering.
1440. 01:26:59 The word for passion is petit, which literally means suffering.
1441. 01:27:02 So what are you willing to suffer to see come about?
1442. 01:27:06 And I think that is in a nutshell.
1443. 01:27:10 There's a whole bunch more in this book, to be honest.
1444. 01:27:13 Chapter 14 talks about the role that matters most.
1445. 01:27:15 That's the guide.
1446. 01:27:16 So essentially once you've lived out your here on a mission journey, try to help other people
1447. 01:27:22 do that.
1448. 01:27:23 And then chapter 15 is where he kind of ties it all together.
1449. 01:27:26 Like I said, that's the emotional part where he talks about how Lucy's not going to be
1450. 01:27:30 there much longer, but encourages you to look for opportunities to transform.
1451. 01:27:35 And that's a big takeaway.
1452. 01:27:37 Start where you are with what you have.
1453. 01:27:38 And that's how I would frame it, but keep going, keep growing and embrace those opportunities
1454. 01:27:43 as you see him.
1455. 01:27:44 The last part is part three.
1456. 01:27:48 We don't really need to say a whole lot about this, but this is where all the templates
1457. 01:27:51 are.
1458. 01:27:52 So if you want to see kind of how his system works, this is where you see it all.
1459. 01:27:56 You see the daily planner pages, you see the goal setting worksheets, you see the eulogy
1460. 01:28:00 stuff, everything that you need in paper form.
1461. 01:28:04 That's too small to write on.
1462. 01:28:05 It's true.
1463. 01:28:06 Just going to say that.
1464. 01:28:07 This part was weird to me because normally this is in an appendix.
1465. 01:28:11 This is normally the...
1466. 01:28:12 Yes.
1467. 01:28:13 Go to the appendix and get this.
1468. 01:28:14 And he made it part of the book, like the formal part called it its own act.
1469. 01:28:20 So to me, this is an introduction, a two act book and an appendix, but he termed it different.
1470. 01:28:25 So I don't know, it was weird.
1471. 01:28:27 I think there's some marketing thing going on there, but that's...
1472. 01:28:32 They were like, no, you need three parts.
1473. 01:28:34 And he's like, okay, fine.
1474. 01:28:36 I know, I know, I know.
1475. 01:28:38 But the thing that's weird here is like, okay, so now you come back to the beginning of this.
1476. 01:28:42 This is where I started off on a weird foot because I saw the sales pitchy thing at the
1477. 01:28:46 beginning.
1478. 01:28:47 And then if you follow the trajectory of this episode even, there's a lot of really cool
1479. 01:28:52 things and a lot of things you can learn from what he has here.
1480. 01:28:55 And I like a lot of stuff he has here.
1481. 01:28:57 And then he ends me on the sales pitch thing again.
1482. 01:29:01 He brought me back to that.
1483. 01:29:02 I had kind of forgotten about it at this point.
1484. 01:29:04 Then he brought me back to it.
1485. 01:29:05 I was like, oh, come on.
1486. 01:29:06 So you started me and ended me on this sales thing, which from a business stance, I totally
1487. 01:29:12 get it, but I just was not into that at all.
1488. 01:29:16 So it bugged me.
1489. 01:29:18 It really did.
1490. 01:29:19 Interesting.
1491. 01:29:20 Like, come on.
1492. 01:29:21 I just considered the book over after act two, to be honest.
1493. 01:29:24 I know, I wish I could have, but I couldn't let it go.
1494. 01:29:26 For some reason, it bugged me.
1495. 01:29:28 And I don't fully understand why, but there's something about it I just didn't care for.
1496. 01:29:34 It left a bad taste in my mouth.
1497. 01:29:36 Fair enough.
1498. 01:29:37 Done.
1499. 01:29:38 I'm ready for action items.
1500. 01:29:40 Sure.
1501. 01:29:41 True book.
1502. 01:29:42 You get to go first.
1503. 01:29:44 All right.
1504. 01:29:45 So my action items, I have three of them.
1505. 01:29:51 One I mentioned in part one is to ask, what if and fill in the blank there with something
1506. 01:29:58 that I tend to think is impossible.
1507. 01:30:02 So a dream bigger, essentially.
1508. 01:30:04 The second one is to write my eulogy.
1509. 01:30:09 And the third one, which is somewhat related to that, but I don't think I broke this out
1510. 01:30:14 as a separate action item because I want this to be a separate thing.
1511. 01:30:21 This is connected, but it's not necessarily the same thing.
1512. 01:30:25 And that is the what elements in my story do I want to make normal for my kids?
1513. 01:30:30 So does that make sense?
1514. 01:30:31 I want this to be separate.
1515. 01:30:33 This could manifest in the picture that you were talking about about the people, the person
1516. 01:30:37 who had written their eulogy when they were 20 and then you did the funeral when they
1517. 01:30:40 were 50.
1518. 01:30:41 I would imagine this sort of thing would show or could show up there.
1519. 01:30:46 But I want this to be like a separate list sort of a thing that I can talk to my wife
1520. 01:30:51 about.
1521. 01:30:52 We can get an agreement about this is what we're going to do without telling her, hey,
1522. 01:30:57 let's write our eulogy.
1523. 01:30:58 I'm not sure she would embrace that action item like I would.
1524. 01:31:01 Give you the side eye.
1525. 01:31:03 What are you talking about?
1526. 01:31:05 What did you read now?
1527. 01:31:06 What did Joe talk you into?
1528. 01:31:07 That's sort of the reaction I would anticipate, at least initially until I explained it.
1529. 01:31:15 So what about you?
1530. 01:31:19 I have two, well, I'll call it two and a half because I had the one early on of setting
1531. 01:31:25 up Bookworm.fm/stats because Joshua was amazing.
1532. 01:31:28 I'll call it a half action.
1533. 01:31:31 The two that I wrote down, one is I want to write my eulogy as well.
1534. 01:31:35 I think that's a great thing to take on.
1535. 01:31:40 I want to amend your version of this.
1536. 01:31:42 I want you to write it by hand first before you type it out.
1537. 01:31:46 Okay.
1538. 01:31:47 Because I think it'll be different if you write it by hand as opposed to typing it first.
1539. 01:31:52 Just my opinion.
1540. 01:31:53 I think you should do that.
1541. 01:31:54 That's what I'm going to do.
1542. 01:31:55 All right.
1543. 01:31:56 The other one that I wrote down is to, he has, and I know you've done this with faith-based
1544. 01:32:05 productivity, but I haven't really had any form of a printout that I ever do for myself
1545. 01:32:12 on a daily basis where you have, I talk about these questions that I ask myself in the morning.
1546. 01:32:19 I feel like it would be better off if I wrote them by hand in the morning and then transfer
1547. 01:32:23 them.
1548. 01:32:24 It's a little bit longer.
1549. 01:32:25 There's a couple minutes longer to do that.
1550. 01:32:28 But I think that would be a little more impactful, but would also give me a piece of paper to
1551. 01:32:34 look at for the days, I guess, mission to use that term.
1552. 01:32:41 I need to try to create something along those lines.
1553. 01:32:44 I've got kind of my own branding that I use for things like that, but I've never formally
1554. 01:32:49 made my own printout for something like that.
1555. 01:32:52 I want to start that process.
1556. 01:32:53 I think it's going to take me some iterations to get that right, but I at least want to start
1557. 01:32:56 that journey there.
1558. 01:33:00 That's my goal.
1559. 01:33:01 All right.
1560. 01:33:02 So what I wrote down for your second action item there is to create a daily plan type thing.
1561. 01:33:07 Is that accurate?
1562. 01:33:08 A daily plan type thing.
1563. 01:33:10 Sure.
1564. 01:33:11 We'll call it a daily plan type thing.
1565. 01:33:12 That's going to be the title for a daily plan type thing.
1566. 01:33:15 I'd put that right at the top.
1567. 01:33:16 I'm not quite sure what else I was to say that.
1568. 01:33:18 Yeah.
1569. 01:33:19 I don't know what it would actually be, but something.
1570. 01:33:21 But I'm going to call it the daily plan type thing.
1571. 01:33:25 All right.
1572. 01:33:26 Totally going to put that at the title.
1573. 01:33:28 You know that right.
1574. 01:33:30 That works for me.
1575. 01:33:32 All right.
1576. 01:33:35 So style and rating.
1577. 01:33:39 This is a tough one because of how I approached it at the beginning.
1578. 01:33:47 I totally anticipated that this was going to be story brand for individuals and nothing
1579. 01:33:53 more and I was going to rip this to shreds.
1580. 01:33:57 Yep.
1581. 01:33:58 Donald Miller caught me off guard with the Victor Frankl stuff at the beginning and my
1582. 01:34:05 preconceived notions of this were shattered at every turn I feel.
1583. 01:34:10 I really enjoyed this book.
1584. 01:34:11 I feel like there's a lot of great stuff here.
1585. 01:34:15 I think you and I both will not sign up for the software, but that doesn't detract at
1586. 01:34:23 all from the book itself.
1587. 01:34:26 I guess if you can get past the QR codes and the sheets in Act 3, it doesn't detract
1588. 01:34:32 from the rest of the message itself.
1589. 01:34:34 Yes.
1590. 01:34:35 It is not a sales pitch in a hardcover binding.
1591. 01:34:42 There's a lot of really great stuff here.
1592. 01:34:44 Even things that we have thought about, read about, studied ourselves.
1593. 01:34:50 Like I said, I knew at the very beginning he had a planner that he was going to pitch
1594. 01:34:55 and I was going into it thinking, well, I've already got my planner, so no thank you.
1595. 01:34:59 I've been there, done that.
1596. 01:35:00 I've literally created the same sort of thing that you created here, Donald Miller.
1597. 01:35:06 There was a lot of great stuff in here and I feel like this, dotted a lot of eyes, crossed
1598. 01:35:11 a lot of tees, gave me a lot of unique perspective on a lot of different things that we had talked
1599. 01:35:17 about.
1600. 01:35:21 I don't have a whole lot of negative stuff to say about it other than the style itself.
1601. 01:35:26 Donald Miller is Donald Miller.
1602. 01:35:29 There are occasionally times when his personality just kind of rubs me the wrong way, but that's
1603. 01:35:35 just because of me.
1604. 01:35:40 It's not him, that's me.
1605. 01:35:42 I mentioned the jokes about the kids and the babies and things like that and I've moved
1606. 01:35:46 on past that.
1607. 01:35:48 I 100% believe that if I were to go get coffee with Donald Miller, he would be very different.
1608. 01:35:57 He would be able to read the room and be like, oh, that didn't land.
1609. 01:36:00 He would modify his tone.
1610. 01:36:03 This is a very authentic book, I feel.
1611. 01:36:07 A lot of this is based on his story.
1612. 01:36:10 At the beginning, I thought it was a bit self-deprecating and just based on other stuff that I've seen
1613. 01:36:16 him, a song present.
1614. 01:36:19 I've read a lot of his more recent books.
1615. 01:36:23 I very much anticipated that that was just going to be the style and it was who he was
1616. 01:36:29 but it wasn't really connected to the message that he was going to be communicating.
1617. 01:36:35 That's not the case here.
1618. 01:36:36 I feel like the stories that he shares that actually it's not just a matter of preference
1619. 01:36:41 or personal style.
1620. 01:36:42 They are essential to the whole message of this book.
1621. 01:36:46 It creates the authority for what he is going to be talking about.
1622. 01:36:52 You know how we had talked about with Joshua Becker?
1623. 01:36:56 We read, I forget, the first couple books and then the things that matter was the one
1624. 01:37:04 that was authentically him, the book that he was meant to write.
1625. 01:37:07 I feel kind of weird saying this at this point but I feel like this is the book that Donald
1626. 01:37:11 Miller was meant to write.
1627. 01:37:16 And maybe that's just because I'm more interested in the personal stuff than the business stuff.
1628. 01:37:20 I'm sure he's helped a lot of businesses with Storybrand and business made simple and all
1629. 01:37:24 that kind of stuff.
1630. 01:37:27 But everything that I have read by Donald Miller, this is the one that has felt the most
1631. 01:37:32 authentic.
1632. 01:37:34 I don't know if he's intending to shift his business and hero on a mission software becomes
1633. 01:37:40 the main thing.
1634. 01:37:42 I can't imagine that being the case because personal stuff does not scale like business
1635. 01:37:48 stuff does.
1636. 01:37:49 Everybody that I know who started with personal stuff has tried to get to the point where
1637. 01:37:53 they're working with businesses.
1638. 01:37:55 He's kind of coming at it from the other direction.
1639. 01:37:58 But in terms of the message, I stand by that statement that in terms of just buying a book
1640. 01:38:03 off the shelf that Donald Miller has written, this is the best one that I have read so far.
1641. 01:38:10 I have trouble putting it at a 5.0.
1642. 01:38:15 I'm going to put it at 4.5 just because I feel like it is very good.
1643. 01:38:21 And I feel like just about anybody can get something out of this one.
1644. 01:38:23 I would recommend this to just about anyone.
1645. 01:38:25 I've already recommended it to a bunch of people.
1646. 01:38:28 My mastermind group is going to be writing our eulogy together whenever we get to that
1647. 01:38:34 point because we take turns picking the meetings and this is totally what I'm going to make
1648. 01:38:39 everybody do.
1649. 01:38:41 Nice.
1650. 01:38:43 But yeah, I do think there's a possibility that this could just not be for you.
1651. 01:38:51 That's kind of what I was anticipating going into it was pleasantly surprised, however.
1652. 01:38:55 I feel like this is very much on-brand for the bookroom audience and also for me personally.
1653. 01:39:02 I can nitpick little things about specific statements that he shared here and there.
1654. 01:39:09 But for the most part, those one-liners that he tries to manufacture because he is a good
1655. 01:39:16 writer and understands the writing process, I feel like the majority of them landed for
1656. 01:39:20 me.
1657. 01:39:21 So yeah, 4.5 would recommend this.
1658. 01:39:26 All right.
1659. 01:39:27 Well, I think at the very beginning, so I don't do this very often, but in my notes for this
1660. 01:39:34 book, I sometimes will write a pre-read rating.
1661. 01:39:39 I'll do this once in a while.
1662. 01:39:41 Just like, okay, I flipped through the book, I glanced it over, I read the table of contents,
1663. 01:39:45 I've seen the title, I've read the accolades, I've read the back of the book, I've done
1664. 01:39:50 all those how to read a book things.
1665. 01:39:53 And I'll like, okay, what do I think this is going to come out to?
1666. 01:39:56 And once in a while, whenever I do that, I read the book and it comes out exactly where
1667. 01:40:00 it's at.
1668. 01:40:01 This is a case where this might be the widest spread I've had from what I think it's going
1669. 01:40:07 to be at the very beginning.
1670. 01:40:08 And again, I don't do this all the time, but I did it on this one because I put down,
1671. 01:40:12 this might be a 1.0 book is what I wrote in my notes here.
1672. 01:40:16 I think that's fair at the beginning.
1673. 01:40:18 Yeah, I was like, hmm, this is not going to go well.
1674. 01:40:22 So when I started the book, my assumption was I was going to have a 1.0 book because I assumed
1675. 01:40:29 the entire book was a sales pitch.
1676. 01:40:31 The whole thing was going to be trying to get me to buy something, he was going to give
1677. 01:40:35 me a system I didn't want to do, he was going to ask me to do some stuff I think are hokey.
1678. 01:40:39 These are all the expectations I had coming into this book.
1679. 01:40:43 Now, as he started in the introduction, I pretty much thought that's where I was going to get
1680. 01:40:49 until we got to that point where I had to go grab some tea and he mentioned Victor Frankel.
1681. 01:40:55 And I think at that point, I don't think I had quite the turnaround at that point as
1682. 01:41:01 what you did.
1683. 01:41:02 It just caused me pause because at that particular point, it's like, okay, he's either going to
1684. 01:41:07 make me angry that he used Victor Frankel to try to get me on board or he's going to
1685. 01:41:11 nail this.
1686. 01:41:12 That would be one of those two and I don't think there's much in between.
1687. 01:41:16 And I think he did nail it with his use of Victor Frankel's credibility.
1688. 01:41:21 I think he did really well with that.
1689. 01:41:23 He spent the rest of the next part and a half or so, act and a half or so, kind of redeeming
1690. 01:41:29 himself from my beginning expectations.
1691. 01:41:33 And it came a very long way from that, which you can kind of see.
1692. 01:41:36 Again, you can see the trajectory of this in even the Bookworm episode here.
1693. 01:41:40 I think there's a lot of these one paragraph, one line comments that come out that are like,
1694. 01:41:47 yeah, you absolutely nailed it.
1695. 01:41:48 You made me think about that differently.
1696. 01:41:50 And at this point, when you've read this many self-help business non-fiction books, you get
1697. 01:41:55 one tidbit out of it and it was worth the read.
1698. 01:41:57 So with this one, I think there's more than that.
1699. 01:42:01 There's definitely more than one or two tidbits that you can pull from this.
1700. 01:42:05 Obviously, writing your eulogy, I've seen the benefits of that firsthand.
1701. 01:42:09 And yet, I've not done anything with it and he's prompted me to act on that.
1702. 01:42:13 So it came a very long way.
1703. 01:42:16 I don't think he entered on a very good note with me because he brought me all the way
1704. 01:42:19 back where I started and was like, oh, come on.
1705. 01:42:21 Why did you have to do that?
1706. 01:42:23 Just calling it a appendix.
1707. 01:42:24 Don't do that thing.
1708. 01:42:25 Don't do the business thing.
1709. 01:42:26 I was with you.
1710. 01:42:28 So anyway, I don't know why I've got that beef there.
1711. 01:42:32 So I don't think I'm going to go to the 4.5 with you, but I will go to 4.0 on it.
1712. 01:42:39 I feel like that's a good place for it to land just because I think that there's a ton of
1713. 01:42:43 value in this middle section here.
1714. 01:42:46 Again, I'm not doing this whole 10, 5, 1-year vision thing.
1715. 01:42:50 I've done those sorts of things before and I feel like I spend more time trying to create
1716. 01:42:56 those than I ever spend working towards them.
1717. 01:43:00 So I don't know what that is.
1718. 01:43:02 Maybe that's me, maybe my fault.
1719. 01:43:04 I'm just the wrong person for this.
1720. 01:43:06 Wrong brain.
1721. 01:43:07 Not sure what that is, but I am grateful for having gone through this.
1722. 01:43:11 I don't know if this is the book he was meant to write.
1723. 01:43:14 I don't know if I would go that far with you, but I do think this is one that if you
1724. 01:43:20 haven't put together a mission, you haven't found what that is.
1725. 01:43:24 I feel like this is a really good book to pick up to help you figure that out.
1726. 01:43:28 There's a lot of material and self-help type things out there.
1727. 01:43:33 Mike has some good stuff.
1728. 01:43:34 So there's a lot of this stuff out there, but this is a great place to start for sure,
1729. 01:43:40 I think.
1730. 01:43:41 So definitely going to recommend it to a handful of folks that I know could go through this.
1731. 01:43:46 So yes, ready, eulogy.
1732. 01:43:47 Pick this up, read it, do it.
1733. 01:43:50 All right.
1734. 01:43:51 So let's put here on a mission on the shelf.
1735. 01:43:54 What's next, Joe?
1736. 01:43:56 Going up next is a book that officially released two days ago.
1737. 01:44:01 You can get your hands on it two days ago, I think?
1738. 01:44:02 One day ago, something like that.
1739. 01:44:03 Anyway, you can pre-order it for quite a while.
1740. 01:44:05 Building a second brain by Tiago Forte.
1741. 01:44:08 This thing's been hitting all sorts of charts on the Amazon lists.
1742. 01:44:11 It's been all over the place.
1743. 01:44:13 I know you had a pre-release version of been through it and I've seen your sketch notes
1744. 01:44:18 on it.
1745. 01:44:19 So super excited to go through this.
1746. 01:44:20 I've not had a chance to start it.
1747. 01:44:22 I'm itching to get my hands on it and go through it.
1748. 01:44:25 So very high expectations at this point.
1749. 01:44:30 And I think we know how expectations can frame your view of a book at this point.
1750. 01:44:33 So that's either a good thing or a bad thing.
1751. 01:44:36 We'll see how it lives up.
1752. 01:44:39 All right.
1753. 01:44:40 I have a book after that which you've probably never heard of.
1754. 01:44:48 Oh boy.
1755. 01:44:49 It is called Love and Work by Marcus Buckingham.
1756. 01:44:54 Now context here, I signed up for during COVID, John Maxwell has these Live to Lead conferences
1757. 01:45:04 and they were forced to go virtual.
1758. 01:45:07 And so they sold a virtual pass for like 50 bucks or something one year.
1759. 01:45:11 So I signed up for it and they had basically John Maxwell and a handful of the speakers
1760. 01:45:17 in a room of like 20 people presenting on a stage for the video.
1761. 01:45:21 And I watched the videos from that conference and Marcus Buckingham blew me away.
1762. 01:45:29 Okay.
1763. 01:45:31 And this book came out just a couple of months ago, but the subtitle is How to Find What You
1764. 01:45:35 Love, Love What You Do and Do It for the Rest of Your Life.
1765. 01:45:39 And the very first line in the Amazon description, you long been told to do what you love.
1766. 01:45:43 Sounds simple.
1767. 01:45:44 Right.
1768. 01:45:45 So you can kind of see like he's going to blow up this myth.
1769. 01:45:50 Right.
1770. 01:45:51 And I am, I feel like this is a great follow up to hear on a mission.
1771. 01:45:57 I haven't read it yet.
1772. 01:45:58 So I don't know exactly what to expect here other than I've heard Marcus Buckingham present
1773. 01:46:05 before and he was a very engaging speaker.
1774. 01:46:08 So that's what we're doing next.
1775. 01:46:11 Okay.
1776. 01:46:12 That sounds exciting.
1777. 01:46:13 I think.
1778. 01:46:14 I don't know.
1779. 01:46:15 I feel like the whole do what you love thing has always been kind of hokey, but to find
1780. 01:46:20 a book that's going to take it on, I'm game.
1781. 01:46:24 At least I think that's what's going on.
1782. 01:46:25 I think that's what's going on.
1783. 01:46:27 We'll find out.
1784. 01:46:28 Super fun, super fun.
1785. 01:46:31 I don't have a gap book this time around.
1786. 01:46:33 All right.
1787. 01:46:34 No, I was just about to ask.
1788. 01:46:35 I do not have any gap books.
1789. 01:46:38 I have a whole bunch of books that I keep intending to read as gap books.
1790. 01:46:42 I thought I was going to crank through this Donald Miller one super fast, but he gave
1791. 01:46:46 me a lot to chew on.
1792. 01:46:47 How's it's new?
1793. 01:46:48 I wasn't sure what that was.
1794. 01:46:49 Okay.
1795. 01:46:50 I thank you for saying that because I feel like this was one that I thought I was the
1796. 01:46:54 same way.
1797. 01:46:55 I thought this was like a five day read, four day read or something.
1798. 01:46:58 And then I took the whole two weeks on it.
1799. 01:47:00 I was like, huh.
1800. 01:47:01 Yep.
1801. 01:47:02 Maybe I don't know.
1802. 01:47:03 There's something there.
1803. 01:47:04 It's a good one though.
1804. 01:47:08 I mentioned the, the my node file.
1805. 01:47:10 I'm going to get that posted right after we record here, but that is one of the perks
1806. 01:47:15 of becoming a bookworm club premium member.
1807. 01:47:18 If you go to bookworm.fm/membership, you can sign up five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year.
1808. 01:47:23 You get access to all my mind node files.
1809. 01:47:25 I upload them as PDF files and also actually mind node files as the app that I use to make
1810. 01:47:31 them so you can edit them yourself.
1811. 01:47:33 There's also some gap book episodes that Joe created back in the day.
1812. 01:47:36 There is a bookworm 4K wallpaper that you can download and put on your devices, but that
1813. 01:47:44 is the way to support the show for the people who are willing to do that.
1814. 01:47:48 Give us a couple of bucks a month to help us keep the lights on, buy the books, etc.
1815. 01:47:52 We really appreciate it.
1816. 01:47:54 And we really, really, really appreciate those of you who read along with us.
1817. 01:47:58 So if you are one of those really great people, pick up Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.
1818. 01:48:03 We'll cover that with you in a couple of weeks.