15: BrainChains by Theo Compernolle

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Zencaster does not like my audio interface.
2. 00:00:05 It always tries to put me on the system setting
3. 00:00:10 or the MacBook one, the built-in.
4. 00:00:16 That might be partly because they recently released,
5. 00:00:21 like they're at a 1.0 now,
6. 00:00:22 so we're not playing with their beta anymore.
7. 00:00:25 'Cause I had to, like, I usually,
8. 00:00:27 it was typically remembering mine at least,
9. 00:00:30 and then whenever I came in today to set this up,
10. 00:00:35 they had announced that, oh, we're open to the public now.
11. 00:00:40 Like, we're available to sign up
12. 00:00:43 and you can actually pay them now.
13. 00:00:44 So it's possible to do that,
14. 00:00:47 but that also means that all of the settings
15. 00:00:49 and such needed to be reset.
16. 00:00:53 'Cause I had some things that,
17. 00:00:56 we're gonna cause a lot of problems if I didn't tweak them.
18. 00:00:58 So thankfully I noticed that, I don't know, an hour or so ago,
19. 00:01:02 so I made those changes then,
20. 00:01:03 so that way we didn't have 30 minutes
21. 00:01:05 of trying to figure out how to make it work.
22. 00:01:08 (laughs)
23. 00:01:09 - Nice, thanks for doing your homework.
24. 00:01:11 - Yes, well, I just got lucky, I think.
25. 00:01:13 That's about all that amounted to.
26. 00:01:15 (laughs)
27. 00:01:16 How's Mike?
28. 00:01:18 - Good, how are you?
29. 00:01:21 - Doing pretty well.
30. 00:01:21 You've been, like, traveling all over the place lately.
31. 00:01:24 - It's true, I was in Austin for the Sean West Conference,
32. 00:01:28 and then two weeks later I went back to Texas
33. 00:01:30 to Dallas for the Christian Men's Network Conference.
34. 00:01:33 So I just got back from that last week.
35. 00:01:36 And that was a lot of fun.
36. 00:01:39 It was very inspirational.
37. 00:01:41 A lot of the people there are literally changing the world.
38. 00:01:45 So you get around those types of people
39. 00:01:47 and it helps you get a bigger perspective
40. 00:01:49 and a bigger vision, so it's always good to go to that.
41. 00:01:54 But now I am back and I am talking to you
42. 00:01:56 and we are gonna talk about the brain.
43. 00:01:59 - Yes, quite extensively it looks like.
44. 00:02:02 I was looking at our notes.
45. 00:02:03 It's like, holy cow, we have a lot on this one.
46. 00:02:06 - Yeah. - Okay.
47. 00:02:08 - Well, it is 512 pages. - It might be a long one, folks.
48. 00:02:11 - Yeah, it's true, it's true.
49. 00:02:13 Before we get there, let's check in on 12-week year stuff.
50. 00:02:18 How's that going for you?
51. 00:02:19 - It's going good, I'm still implementing the pieces of it,
52. 00:02:22 like the buffer blocks and the focus block.
53. 00:02:26 I forget exactly what I called them,
54. 00:02:27 but basically there's like the strategic block
55. 00:02:30 and then there's the relaxation block,
56. 00:02:32 which I'm using just to disconnect.
57. 00:02:36 And the strategic one I'm using to think big picture
58. 00:02:39 about what are the major outcomes
59. 00:02:41 that I wanna achieve across all the different domains
60. 00:02:45 or areas of responsibility.
61. 00:02:46 So I'm making sure that those get on the calendar.
62. 00:02:48 I'm finding that it's hard to find the time
63. 00:02:50 to do those sorts of things.
64. 00:02:52 But when I get them on the calendar,
65. 00:02:54 then they actually happen.
66. 00:02:56 So my implementation of the 12-week year,
67. 00:02:58 well, it's not the complete 12-week year,
68. 00:03:00 I'm gonna start doing that at the beginning of the new year
69. 00:03:02 where I have the quarterly goals, I guess,
70. 00:03:05 and then break that down by weekly objectives.
71. 00:03:08 The blocks have made it onto my calendar consistently.
72. 00:03:11 So how about you? - Nice.
73. 00:03:13 It's going really well.
74. 00:03:15 So I have, as I mentioned last time,
75. 00:03:17 I got started on it a little bit early.
76. 00:03:20 So the nice thing is I've been running with it quite well
77. 00:03:23 and it's surprising how much time I have wasted
78. 00:03:28 in the past, Mike.
79. 00:03:29 It's what I'm learning.
80. 00:03:31 Holy cow, this is kind of awesome,
81. 00:03:35 but bad at the same time in that I'm getting a lot more done
82. 00:03:40 now than I did beforehand,
83. 00:03:43 but that makes me feel pretty guilty about my,
84. 00:03:46 we write about productivity, like this is what we do.
85. 00:03:48 And apparently I was not very productive.
86. 00:03:51 So that's kind of challenging.
87. 00:03:53 The nice thing is that I,
88. 00:03:55 and I've told you about this,
89. 00:03:56 there was enough flex time.
90. 00:03:59 Like I, through that process,
91. 00:04:00 it managed to give me a little bit extra time in my schedule.
92. 00:04:03 Well, that meant that I was able to take a part-time job
93. 00:04:08 with our church here in town.
94. 00:04:09 They've been needing an IT director for quite some time.
95. 00:04:13 We've just never sat down long enough to define
96. 00:04:16 what should that role be?
97. 00:04:17 And can we get somebody in it?
98. 00:04:19 And the more we did that, I was like,
99. 00:04:21 "Oh, I'll take that."
100. 00:04:22 So it's kind of a cool,
101. 00:04:25 cool little transition there for me,
102. 00:04:26 but that's something that affects our scheduling
103. 00:04:31 for when we record and such,
104. 00:04:33 but outside of that,
105. 00:04:34 it's kind of an interesting little side thing
106. 00:04:37 that lets me go work with people day in and day out
107. 00:04:41 instead of just on my own with a computer screen,
108. 00:04:44 which I think we'll talk a lot about here in a little bit.
109. 00:04:47 But the 12-week year has been pretty instrumental
110. 00:04:49 in making that possible.
111. 00:04:50 And the nice thing is that the executive password
112. 00:04:54 or church who I'll be reporting to once I start there,
113. 00:04:59 I've told him about this process for a 12-week year.
114. 00:05:02 I don't think he understood it in near the detail
115. 00:05:06 'cause I didn't take the time to explain a whole lot of it,
116. 00:05:09 but he's gonna let me use that
117. 00:05:11 for a lot of my goal setting come the beginning of the year.
118. 00:05:14 There's some fires that you'd put out between now
119. 00:05:16 and the end of the year,
120. 00:05:17 but come January, I get to start in on the 12-week year
121. 00:05:21 in my part-time job too.
122. 00:05:23 So it'd be kind of fun.
123. 00:05:24 - Sweet.
124. 00:05:25 What about the meditation?
125. 00:05:29 That was the other thing that you had on there.
126. 00:05:31 - Oh, you of course had to see that.
127. 00:05:33 I was honestly thinking,
128. 00:05:34 I don't know if I wanna bring this up.
129. 00:05:35 Okay, well, meditation,
130. 00:05:37 another complete failure for Joe.
131. 00:05:39 I tried it and tried it and tried it.
132. 00:05:46 It just doesn't stick for me.
133. 00:05:49 So what I did was I,
134. 00:05:52 what I learned in this process of reading brain chains,
135. 00:05:56 which we'll get to here shortly
136. 00:05:57 'cause I think we're itching to get into this one,
137. 00:06:00 with the process of reading that,
138. 00:06:03 I think something that came out of that for me
139. 00:06:05 was that the process of reading a book
140. 00:06:08 kind of acts like meditation for me,
141. 00:06:11 in that I have to sit down
142. 00:06:14 and continually bring myself back
143. 00:06:17 to focusing on the book I'm reading.
144. 00:06:19 And I hadn't ever noticed myself do that up until this one.
145. 00:06:24 And I don't know if that's just because the subject of it
146. 00:06:27 or the length of it or what,
147. 00:06:29 I don't know why,
148. 00:06:31 but something about reading a book has that same process
149. 00:06:34 of noticing that I'm straying in my mind
150. 00:06:36 and bringing it back, that constant,
151. 00:06:38 refocusing process, which is the whole point of meditation.
152. 00:06:42 I think, you know, I'm no pro,
153. 00:06:45 but that's my interpretation of it.
154. 00:06:47 So I'm wondering if that reading process is
155. 00:06:50 taking the place of meditation for me
156. 00:06:54 and if that's the case, that might be why
157. 00:06:58 the just sit down and focus and do the meditation
158. 00:07:02 very intentionally, that might be why I have a struggle with this
159. 00:07:06 because I'm doing it a lot already.
160. 00:07:08 I'll give you a half a point for that one.
161. 00:07:11 It might be a cop out, I don't know.
162. 00:07:13 (laughing)
163. 00:07:15 I want it to be something that sticks.
164. 00:07:17 It just doesn't seem to make sense for me
165. 00:07:19 and I can't nail down why.
166. 00:07:21 Sure.
167. 00:07:23 It's like I keep looking for excuses.
168. 00:07:25 Well, I actually got to talk to Chris Bailey recently
169. 00:07:30 who was the author of the last book that we did.
170. 00:07:32 Yep.
171. 00:07:33 And we talked about all those different experiments
172. 00:07:36 that he did and he's obviously a big emphasis on meditation.
173. 00:07:40 That's something that has really stuck for him.
174. 00:07:42 But in the interview that I did with him,
175. 00:07:44 he said that you really have to kind of figure out
176. 00:07:48 what works for you and people approach productivity
177. 00:07:51 a lot of times with preconceived notions
178. 00:07:53 that this is the thing that's going to make
179. 00:07:55 all the difference for me and they try it
180. 00:07:57 and it doesn't really work.
181. 00:07:58 And he was talking about how you need to be willing
182. 00:08:00 to say, okay, this isn't for me and try something else.
183. 00:08:03 Like the thing for him was he had always heard
184. 00:08:05 that the people who get up early are more productive
185. 00:08:08 and actually in this book,
186. 00:08:10 Theo has some research that supports that.
187. 00:08:14 But the conclusion that Chris came to
188. 00:08:16 is that that's not my biological prime time.
189. 00:08:18 I really hate doing this.
190. 00:08:20 It's not working for me and being willing
191. 00:08:22 to just let that one go and find something else
192. 00:08:24 that really produces some results.
193. 00:08:26 Sounds like meditation might be that for you.
194. 00:08:29 I think so.
195. 00:08:31 I need to stop trying right now.
196. 00:08:34 I need to give it a year before I try it again, I think.
197. 00:08:38 It's just one of those things.
198. 00:08:39 Everybody talks about it.
199. 00:08:40 So many people mention it as something that's been
200. 00:08:43 highly helpful and it's changed the way that they come out life.
201. 00:08:46 It doesn't work for me, despite my trying.
202. 00:08:51 Fair enough.
203. 00:08:54 So you want to tell us a little bit about this book
204. 00:08:56 we're going to be talking about today?
205. 00:08:57 Yes.
206. 00:08:58 So Brain Chains by Theo Comprenol.
207. 00:09:00 I think that's how you say it.
208. 00:09:01 This one was heavily recommended by our listeners.
209. 00:09:04 So thank you to those who recommended this.
210. 00:09:07 We had five different people recommend it separately.
211. 00:09:11 I don't think you guys ginged up on us.
212. 00:09:13 But it was recommended.
213. 00:09:15 I have an extreme interest in how our brains work.
214. 00:09:18 So I think there are a few on our list that I'm potentially
215. 00:09:23 going to be selecting in the future that will dive into
216. 00:09:26 neuroscience a little more.
217. 00:09:27 Sorry, I'm like, and sorry listeners.
218. 00:09:29 This is something I'm interested in.
219. 00:09:31 So that's just kind of the way it goes.
220. 00:09:32 I'll get back at you.
221. 00:09:34 Yeah, I saw some things you wrote down.
222. 00:09:37 Between the recommendations and my interest in brains.
223. 00:09:43 And I think this one at one point I heard David Allen mention it
224. 00:09:47 at one point as well.
225. 00:09:49 But I've heard it come up a few different places and connect
226. 00:09:53 all the dots.
227. 00:09:54 Here we are.
228. 00:09:55 Yeah, so thank you to everybody who recommended this one.
229. 00:10:01 And we want more recommendations.
230. 00:10:03 So we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the
231. 00:10:05 episode.
232. 00:10:06 But I really think that's awesome that people are recommending
233. 00:10:08 these books.
234. 00:10:09 I probably would not have read this book had it not been
235. 00:10:11 recommended.
236. 00:10:12 And I have to say right at the beginning, this is probably
237. 00:10:15 the best and the worst book I've ever read.
238. 00:10:17 Yep, exactly.
239. 00:10:20 Yeah.
240. 00:10:21 And he kind of preffices it by he starts out with the challenge
241. 00:10:27 basically or the decision that you have to make on whether you
242. 00:10:30 really want to read this book or not.
243. 00:10:32 And at the time I thought that was kind of used for shock value
244. 00:10:37 maybe, but towards the end of the book I got it.
245. 00:10:40 Yep.
246. 00:10:41 Yep.
247. 00:10:42 I'm glad that I stuck with it.
248. 00:10:44 There's a ton of really valuable insights that you can get out of
249. 00:10:46 it.
250. 00:10:47 But it definitely, 522 pages.
251. 00:10:49 So it was definitely a longer, longer read.
252. 00:10:53 Yeah, this is a, this is a long book.
253. 00:10:56 And this is, this might be why I was talking about the
254. 00:10:59 meditation thing because you really just had to sit down and
255. 00:11:02 focus on it.
256. 00:11:03 So I was reading every day for two weeks on this and it's, I think
257. 00:11:07 the number was 33 pages a day.
258. 00:11:09 So despite it being across two weeks instead of, well, it's about
259. 00:11:13 twice as long as what most books are.
260. 00:11:15 So you end up reading twice as much per day.
261. 00:11:18 Anyway, it's a long read as for sure.
262. 00:11:20 Yeah.
263. 00:11:21 And it's based off of, I think he said in there there are 600
264. 00:11:24 different research studies that he went through.
265. 00:11:27 Yep.
266. 00:11:28 That's crazy.
267. 00:11:30 So it's definitely, I mean, he's a very smart guy and he knows what
268. 00:11:34 he's talking about and everything that he's articulating.
269. 00:11:36 There's science behind it, which is great.
270. 00:11:38 I did notice though that he uses the same statistics over and over
271. 00:11:42 and over again in the different sections of the book that got a
272. 00:11:45 little repetitive.
273. 00:11:46 But yeah, definitely a lot of great information in here kind of
274. 00:11:50 revolving around the idea of ICT.
275. 00:11:53 He uses that acronym a lot, which means information and
276. 00:11:58 communication technology.
277. 00:12:00 So I like that term.
278. 00:12:02 I like that he's not just saying smartphones, tablets, because who
279. 00:12:05 knows what that is going to look like in the future.
280. 00:12:07 But really his whole idea there is that we need to be able to use
281. 00:12:12 this technology in the correct way.
282. 00:12:14 Kind of the distinction that he makes, which is something that I've
283. 00:12:16 been kicking around in my own head for a while, is that there's
284. 00:12:19 a difference between using this to consume things and that's
285. 00:12:22 going to be a difference between using it in a productive way to
286. 00:12:26 actually produce things.
287. 00:12:28 And most people will default to consuming.
288. 00:12:31 They'll watch hours and hours of cat videos on YouTube and they
289. 00:12:36 just get sucked into the hole and they don't think about how they
290. 00:12:40 could actually be leveraging that technology to contribute value
291. 00:12:43 rather than just consume things.
292. 00:12:45 And especially like with the work that I do online and understanding
293. 00:12:50 a little bit about internet marketing, I totally get how
294. 00:12:54 marketers are completely taking advantage of our natural, I don't
295. 00:12:59 want to say desire, but just like we get sucked into this hole
296. 00:13:03 where we're just looking for the next bit of information.
297. 00:13:06 We're scrolling through our social media feeds or we're clicking
298. 00:13:09 on the next video in YouTube and pretty soon hours have gone by.
299. 00:13:14 And really the whole idea with this book, the big takeaway that I
300. 00:13:17 got is that we need to change how we relate to the tech information
301. 00:13:22 and communication technology that is in our lives.
302. 00:13:25 Because it can take over very quickly.
303. 00:13:27 Yes.
304. 00:13:28 The whole premise of the book is how this technology affects our
305. 00:13:34 brains and how we can interact with it, which I didn't realize
306. 00:13:38 that whenever I picked it up to be honest.
307. 00:13:40 I think if I had read the tagline for it, I would have caught
308. 00:13:43 that, but I didn't notice it.
309. 00:13:46 So anyway, the tagline of it, "Discover your brain and unleash
310. 00:13:49 its full potential in a hyper-connected multitasking world."
311. 00:13:52 And I think if I would have read that ahead of time, I would have
312. 00:13:54 realized this is about technology and how we interact with it.
313. 00:13:58 Because I've got another book on our list that will probably hit
314. 00:14:01 this a little more depth from a philosophical standpoint, not
315. 00:14:05 necessarily from a scientific standpoint.
316. 00:14:07 But he goes through so much of what he is labeled as the three
317. 00:14:12 different brains within our brain.
318. 00:14:14 So just to kind of explain those, there's the three.
319. 00:14:17 One is the reflex brain, one is the reflection brain, and one
320. 00:14:20 is the archive brain.
321. 00:14:21 And these are three different functions that our mind has.
322. 00:14:25 And the first of those is the reflex, which is like our
323. 00:14:28 instinctual.
324. 00:14:29 This is just a quick response.
325. 00:14:30 We don't ever have to think about it.
326. 00:14:32 These are just our habits.
327. 00:14:33 This is just something that happens automatically for us.
328. 00:14:36 Then you get into the reflection mind, which is where we have
329. 00:14:41 to sit and focus.
330. 00:14:42 That's where we're dedicating our mental ram towards a specific
331. 00:14:46 task.
332. 00:14:47 And that's where the deep work stuff comes from.
333. 00:14:50 Honestly, that's the major player in this book.
334. 00:14:53 That's where he focuses most of his time, is on that particular
335. 00:14:56 part of our brain.
336. 00:14:57 So it's the part that really drives a lot of value in the
337. 00:15:00 work that we do.
338. 00:15:01 And then the last brain that he's got there is the archive brain,
339. 00:15:04 which is the one that takes all the information that we collected
340. 00:15:07 from our reflex and reflection brain and stores it in long-term
341. 00:15:10 memory or makes the connections in the creativity world.
342. 00:15:14 And while we're sleeping, while we're taking breaks, while we're
343. 00:15:16 taking naps, that's the side of the brain that does all that.
344. 00:15:19 And the whole book talks about the relationship between those three
345. 00:15:23 and how we can take advantage of those relationships to get more
346. 00:15:27 done and increase our intellectual productivity.
347. 00:15:30 He talks about a lot of that difference.
348. 00:15:33 He talks a lot about the differences between the three and
349. 00:15:38 how each one can lead us to doing things that destroy our own
350. 00:15:43 productivity and election.
351. 00:15:45 Does that make sense, Mike?
352. 00:15:46 Yep, absolutely.
353. 00:15:48 And actually, it was really interesting to go through this
354. 00:15:52 book because one of my kids' favorite movies is Inside Out.
355. 00:15:57 And when he was talking about, he had one phrase, "a team of
356. 00:16:02 millions of librarians."
357. 00:16:03 That's exactly the picture that I got.
358. 00:16:06 And I actually am going through an audiobook, Creativity Inc,
359. 00:16:11 which is kind of the story behind Pixar.
360. 00:16:13 Yep.
361. 00:16:14 And I haven't gotten to the part if it's in there about that movie
362. 00:16:17 specifically, but it talks a lot about their process.
363. 00:16:19 They do a ton of research to understand the domains that they're
364. 00:16:23 going to be talking about.
365. 00:16:25 So when they tell a story, it has to be maybe not canonical.
366. 00:16:31 This is the science behind the concepts that we're dealing with,
367. 00:16:34 but it has to make sense.
368. 00:16:36 And I could totally see the effort that they put into that movie
369. 00:16:40 after I read through this book.
370. 00:16:42 And I'm sure they did a lot more than just read this one book.
371. 00:16:45 They probably combed through all those different 600 different
372. 00:16:48 studies that Dr. Theo did.
373. 00:16:51 But it was really interesting.
374. 00:16:53 And for those of you who have seen the movie, all the stuff that
375. 00:16:58 kind of happens automatically, like the behind the scene stuff,
376. 00:17:03 the long-term memory, all the different things that the archiving
377. 00:17:07 brain is going and putting in this proper place when you're not
378. 00:17:11 really thinking about it.
379. 00:17:12 It's kind of astounding to think about that.
380. 00:17:15 And from a visual perspective with Inside Out, kind of the thing
381. 00:17:18 that got me was like, during that story, you know that there are
382. 00:17:22 things happening in the other parts of the brain that are really,
383. 00:17:25 really important, but you're so focused on the main character in
384. 00:17:28 that particular case, it's joy.
385. 00:17:31 And you don't really see all the other things that are happening,
386. 00:17:34 all the other systems that are in place that like that's just what
387. 00:17:36 they do.
388. 00:17:37 And you take them for granted and you never think about them.
389. 00:17:40 And then it's pretty amazing the complexity of all those things
390. 00:17:45 that are happening automatically, even while we're sleeping.
391. 00:17:49 Like that's when the archive brain really kicks in.
392. 00:17:52 And that gets into, you know, he talks later about why sleep is so
393. 00:17:56 important.
394. 00:17:57 But yeah, like even while we're sleeping, when our body shuts down,
395. 00:18:00 we don't even know what's going on.
396. 00:18:02 Like our brain is doing some pretty amazing stuff.
397. 00:18:05 Yeah, I loved that movie because there was so many little things
398. 00:18:09 that just clicked, especially when you read this, like with the
399. 00:18:11 archiving thing, whenever the little girl would close her eyes
400. 00:18:15 and go to sleep at night, the main part of her emotions and such
401. 00:18:20 would stop what they were doing.
402. 00:18:23 And then the whole back end librarian side, just everything was
403. 00:18:26 in overdrive.
404. 00:18:27 Like everything just went to work at that point.
405. 00:18:30 It's not that was so cool.
406. 00:18:32 And whenever you go through this and understand the actual
407. 00:18:35 science of how that all works, like, oh, yeah, they know exactly
408. 00:18:39 what they're talking about in that movie.
409. 00:18:41 I loved it.
410. 00:18:42 I like that movie a lot.
411. 00:18:44 Yeah, it's really interesting.
412. 00:18:46 And when I don't mean to turn this podcast into Inside Out,
413. 00:18:50 I mean, we're focusing on brain chains.
414. 00:18:52 But it was really interesting when my wife and I watched it,
415. 00:18:55 we understood a little bit better, like why our kids did things
416. 00:18:59 that they did.
417. 00:19:00 It's like, oh, that's what they're thinking.
418. 00:19:02 Like that's how their brain is working.
419. 00:19:04 Yeah, it's interesting.
420. 00:19:06 But there's so many different little pieces that Theo goes into
421. 00:19:14 within the book that they, and we have a long list in our
422. 00:19:18 outline here, Mike.
423. 00:19:19 I don't know if we're going to get to all of this, but there's a lot
424. 00:19:22 of little nuggets I think that we pulled out of this, one of
425. 00:19:25 which was multitasking.
426. 00:19:27 I think it's pretty well known at this point that multitasking
427. 00:19:31 is a terrible idea.
428. 00:19:33 And when I went through and read his whole chapter on
429. 00:19:38 multitasking, the first of those, he kind of hit me with this
430. 00:19:45 test that he had spelled out in order to show that multitasking
431. 00:19:48 is a terrible idea because it takes much longer to switch
432. 00:19:51 back and forth because we know at this point you just can't do
433. 00:19:55 two things at one time.
434. 00:19:56 You're not really doing two things at one time because your
435. 00:19:58 brain can't focus on two things at one time.
436. 00:20:01 So you're just constantly switching between them.
437. 00:20:04 And to test this, something he had to do, and I did this because
438. 00:20:09 I was curious, is you set a timer and you have two lines.
439. 00:20:14 On the top line, you write the word multitasking and then
440. 00:20:18 underneath of it, you number each letter.
441. 00:20:21 So one, two, three, four, five, I think it's 12.
442. 00:20:24 So you write multitasking and then underneath of it, write one
443. 00:20:27 through 12 and then you stop the timer.
444. 00:20:29 And whatever that time is, write that down.
445. 00:20:32 You do the same thing, again, on the top line, you're writing
446. 00:20:35 multitasking underneath of it, you're writing one through 12.
447. 00:20:38 But what you're doing is you write the M and then one, U and
448. 00:20:41 then two, L and then three.
449. 00:20:43 And you go all the way down through it and then stop the timer
450. 00:20:47 and then check the difference between the two.
451. 00:20:50 And it amazed me how much longer it takes to do the second
452. 00:20:55 process, the latter of those two.
453. 00:20:57 So what were your times?
454. 00:20:58 Because I did this and I made my wife do it also.
455. 00:21:01 Yeah, so the first one, and I wasn't trying to go crazy fast,
456. 00:21:05 but the first one, let me get my numbers here.
457. 00:21:09 The first one, I think it took me eight seconds.
458. 00:21:14 So it was nine seconds to do the first one.
459. 00:21:17 And then the second one, it took me 17.
460. 00:21:20 Whoa.
461. 00:21:22 That we got a little bit different results, but that was maybe
462. 00:21:28 because I, maybe it was the way I framed it.
463. 00:21:32 Like I kind of probably presented it in a way where it was
464. 00:21:36 transparent as to what specifically the point of the
465. 00:21:40 exercise was.
466. 00:21:41 So I didn't get quite as big a discrepancy.
467. 00:21:44 When I wrote it, it took me 12 seconds to write multitasking.
468. 00:21:47 And that's basically because I was hitting start, writing
469. 00:21:50 multitasking and hitting stop.
470. 00:21:51 So probably a little bit less than that.
471. 00:21:53 And then when I did the letters and numbers jumping back and forth,
472. 00:21:56 it took 16 seconds, so about 33% longer.
473. 00:22:01 And then my wife got the same thing.
474. 00:22:04 It was 15 seconds and then 20 seconds.
475. 00:22:07 But what was astounding to me, especially when watching my
476. 00:22:10 class do it, was how much harder it was to go back and forth.
477. 00:22:14 It wasn't even the time.
478. 00:22:16 It was the fact that this is really hard and all we're doing is
479. 00:22:20 we're writing a word and writing a sequence of numbers.
480. 00:22:23 Like this is very basic stuff.
481. 00:22:25 So if you're going to take this approach when you're dealing with
482. 00:22:28 something really complex, like working on a project that work
483. 00:22:31 and trying to respond to an email at the same time, you're
484. 00:22:34 going to make mistakes.
485. 00:22:36 Oh, yeah.
486. 00:22:37 Those mistakes are going to have negative consequences.
487. 00:22:39 So it really just illustrated to me that this is not something
488. 00:22:44 that you really want to mess with.
489. 00:22:46 Having a visual picture of my wife trying to identify like,
490. 00:22:50 well, what is the next number?
491. 00:22:51 And if you do this exercise, you'll totally get it.
492. 00:22:54 It's way harder than you think it's going to be.
493. 00:22:58 Yeah, exactly.
494. 00:22:59 I had a couple of friends try this just because I was curious
495. 00:23:02 what theirs would be as well.
496. 00:23:04 I don't remember their numbers, but I remember one of them,
497. 00:23:08 the first time through both were fine.
498. 00:23:10 Like it was not a big deal, but the second process where you're
499. 00:23:13 alternating, one of the guys, he misspelled multitasking.
500. 00:23:18 And the other guy, he misnumbered them.
501. 00:23:23 I think he swapped six and seven.
502. 00:23:25 He wrote seven, six.
503. 00:23:27 He's like, now that is interesting that you go through this,
504. 00:23:32 like you know how to write one to 12.
505. 00:23:34 You know how to spell multitasking.
506. 00:23:36 And yet when you try to do them simultaneously,
507. 00:23:39 you screw them up.
508. 00:23:40 And this is very fundamental.
509. 00:23:43 This is not some elaborate project you're working on.
510. 00:23:46 This is just writing a word numbering it.
511. 00:23:48 That's all it is.
512. 00:23:49 And yet there's mistakes in it.
513. 00:23:50 Yep.
514. 00:23:51 That was kind of an alarm for me that even something so small,
515. 00:23:56 so basic can become extremely difficult and cause problems.
516. 00:24:01 It just kind of scared me to think about the number of people
517. 00:24:05 that try to multitask on some major vital projects.
518. 00:24:10 Right.
519. 00:24:11 Like talking on the phone and driving your car at the same time,
520. 00:24:13 which is some nailed that one through your skull in this book.
521. 00:24:17 Yes, yes he did.
522. 00:24:18 He is definitely on the soapbox for that.
523. 00:24:21 He's like encouraging you over and over again to call your
524. 00:24:25 representatives and get them the past laws where you can't use
525. 00:24:29 information communication technology in the car because if
526. 00:24:34 you're on the phone, what was the statistic?
527. 00:24:37 I think it was four times more likely to get in an accident.
528. 00:24:39 And if you're texting, you're 23 times more likely to get in an accident.
529. 00:24:43 But most people think that, "Oh, I'm good enough.
530. 00:24:45 Like I can cover this."
531. 00:24:47 And he shares some of those statistics too where like,
532. 00:24:49 people know like 90% of people say that texting while driving is
533. 00:24:53 extremely dangerous, but 60% of people do it anyways because they
534. 00:24:57 think that they're a good driver.
535. 00:25:00 Right.
536. 00:25:01 And really the reality is we give ourselves more credit than we
537. 00:25:05 deserve.
538. 00:25:06 And we really overestimate our abilities.
539. 00:25:12 And when it comes to operating a vehicle or a piece of heavy
540. 00:25:16 machinery, he talks about that in factories too.
541. 00:25:18 We're like driving forkless and things.
542. 00:25:20 Maybe you're not on the highway and you're not going to take
543. 00:25:23 someone's life necessarily, but you might cause major damage in
544. 00:25:26 the warehouse.
545. 00:25:27 Same concept still applies.
546. 00:25:30 This is a big deal and it's a lot bigger deal than most people
547. 00:25:34 realize.
548. 00:25:35 You kind of have this idea like, "Oh yeah, I know that happens.
549. 00:25:37 I know it's not safe, but it'll never happen to me."
550. 00:25:40 But it does.
551. 00:25:41 And you don't want to get in that situation.
552. 00:25:43 Something I just noticed is neither one of us putting anything
553. 00:25:46 on our outline about driving with a smartphone.
554. 00:25:50 Yeah.
555. 00:25:51 That's because by the end of the book, I was pretty tired of hearing
556. 00:25:55 about it, honestly.
557. 00:25:56 That statistic specifically, like I totally get it.
558. 00:25:59 I understand the importance of it, but I understood the importance
559. 00:26:02 of it by about a page, page 120, I think.
560. 00:26:05 Yep.
561. 00:26:06 And then it got reiterated over and over and over and over again.
562. 00:26:09 Yeah.
563. 00:26:10 I think how did this work?
564. 00:26:12 I...
565. 00:26:13 Because he keeps referencing the chapter on phones and driving
566. 00:26:17 and attention.
567. 00:26:18 Like he references it over and over and over and over again.
568. 00:26:21 And then I finally got to the chapter about it.
569. 00:26:24 And it's like, "Oh, okay.
570. 00:26:27 So now we're going to go through this."
571. 00:26:28 And then I realized I already know all this because he's already
572. 00:26:31 told me everything that he's saying here.
573. 00:26:34 Yeah.
574. 00:26:35 There's a couple different levels of implementation of the brain
575. 00:26:39 gains part of this.
576. 00:26:41 And we'll get to those.
577. 00:26:42 But there's the brain gains at the me level, brain gains at the
578. 00:26:46 we level and brain gains at the they level.
579. 00:26:49 And what I found was he kind of repeated a lot of the same things
580. 00:26:52 over and over and over again.
581. 00:26:54 So at the me level, you personally don't text or call while
582. 00:26:58 you're driving your car.
583. 00:26:59 And then at the we level, tell other people not to text or
584. 00:27:03 drive or text or call when they're driving their car and then at
585. 00:27:06 the they level.
586. 00:27:07 Tell other people, like your sayers, that they need to pass laws
587. 00:27:10 to tell people not to text or drive while the...
588. 00:27:13 Or text or call.
589. 00:27:14 Why can't I say that?
590. 00:27:15 Text or call while they're driving their car.
591. 00:27:18 You know, and it's like, "Okay.
592. 00:27:20 You get it."
593. 00:27:21 Especially after the first time he did a really good job of
594. 00:27:23 articulating all the danger behind it.
595. 00:27:25 He's got a lot of different images and diagrams that show like the
596. 00:27:29 effect where you're not only not seeing things that are actually
597. 00:27:34 there, but also the scope of what you're seeing is diminished.
598. 00:27:37 And so when you combine those together, it makes perfect sense
599. 00:27:39 that yeah, this would compound to four times more accidents while
600. 00:27:43 you're on the phone and 23 times more accidents when you're
601. 00:27:45 texting.
602. 00:27:46 But then hitting it over and over and over again, I don't know,
603. 00:27:51 maybe it's just because I had to get this done by a certain
604. 00:27:53 time.
605. 00:27:54 You know, we're going to get on the mic and we're going to record
606. 00:27:56 this episode.
607. 00:27:57 But I felt like it was really repetitive.
608. 00:28:00 Like, "Okay, I got this already.
609. 00:28:02 We can move on."
610. 00:28:04 Yep.
611. 00:28:05 So.
612. 00:28:06 Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts when we get to the author style
613. 00:28:08 part.
614. 00:28:09 He does talk a little bit about different, how do you say this
615. 00:28:14 by a seas biases?
616. 00:28:15 Yep.
617. 00:28:16 I don't know.
618. 00:28:17 I'm going to go with biases, maybe.
619. 00:28:18 I like that way better.
620. 00:28:20 He talks a lot about, I forget how many there are.
621. 00:28:24 There's like 12 of them that he brings up.
622. 00:28:26 And they're just tendencies.
623. 00:28:28 We're intuition to lean ourselves towards a specific way so that
624. 00:28:31 we can make a decision quicker.
625. 00:28:33 That's where our reflex brain comes in because it allows us to
626. 00:28:36 make decisions very quickly.
627. 00:28:38 And in a lot of cases, that's very good.
628. 00:28:41 In a number of cases, that's very bad.
629. 00:28:44 And the primary one that's typically bad is that your
630. 00:28:48 reflex brain has no real sense of ethics and morality, which
631. 00:28:54 means it's your reflection brain that needs to stop and think
632. 00:28:58 things through in order to make those decisions.
633. 00:29:00 And when we work inside of very fast paced scenarios, we tend to
634. 00:29:07 make decisions through our reflex brain using these biases,
635. 00:29:11 biases.
636. 00:29:12 I'm going to screw it up the whole time, Mike.
637. 00:29:15 Without that reflection brain taking account, taking that into
638. 00:29:19 account, it means that we end up leaning ourselves one way or
639. 00:29:22 the other without ever realizing it.
640. 00:29:24 One of these is the anchoring bias that I noticed wrote down.
641. 00:29:29 Did you have a specific direction you wanted to go with that?
642. 00:29:32 I really just wanted to put that on there to talk about this.
643. 00:29:36 I guess from a marketing perspective, because that's where
644. 00:29:41 I noticed this happening a lot, where you'll have a price.
645. 00:29:46 And usually what the salesperson will do is they will give you
646. 00:29:50 the big price first.
647. 00:29:52 Because that way, you're anchored to that big price.
648. 00:29:55 And even if you're not going to take advantage of that offer, if
649. 00:29:57 they move in the right direction, you will probably agree to a
650. 00:30:00 higher price than you would have paid if you had just started at
651. 00:30:04 zero.
652. 00:30:05 And I thought this was really interesting because your brain
653. 00:30:08 basically what it's doing is it's saying, if they started $1000
654. 00:30:12 and we get them down to $900, we think that we're getting a deal.
655. 00:30:15 We feel good about that.
656. 00:30:17 But if you were to approach it the other way, maybe you start at
657. 00:30:20 $500 and then you're never going to end up at $900.
658. 00:30:23 It depends where you start.
659. 00:30:25 And so I think it's really important.
660. 00:30:27 Another book that I read, which isn't on the list, but it's
661. 00:30:31 called Influence, I believe, by Chialdini.
662. 00:30:36 Forget his first name.
663. 00:30:38 It's kind of considered the marketing Bible.
664. 00:30:40 And it talks about how marketers will leverage these techniques
665. 00:30:44 and then also what you can do to combat them.
666. 00:30:46 And he talks about this as well, where you just need to understand
667. 00:30:51 what is going on.
668. 00:30:52 And so that's why I put it on here because that was one of the
669. 00:30:54 biases that he talked about.
670. 00:30:56 And I think it's a really important one.
671. 00:30:58 You have to understand the process.
672. 00:31:00 And when you understand the process and the game that people
673. 00:31:03 are trying to play, then you can more accurately discern whether
674. 00:31:07 it's worth the value that they're asking you to pay.
675. 00:31:12 And I'm not saying that all marketers are liars.
676. 00:31:15 Seth Goden wrote a book I think by that title.
677. 00:31:18 But you have to understand this is the way that the game is played.
678. 00:31:23 And if you understand the rules of engagement, then you can
679. 00:31:27 decide on your own, not be influenced, but you can decide
680. 00:31:31 for your own that yes, this is a quality product.
681. 00:31:34 And I'm willing to pay this amount of money for it, but don't
682. 00:31:38 just let your brain default to, oh, hey, this is less than where
683. 00:31:41 we started.
684. 00:31:42 So yeah, this is a good deal because your brain is brilliant
685. 00:31:45 as it is.
686. 00:31:46 And as many amazing things as it does, there are some things
687. 00:31:49 that is just like, why?
688. 00:31:51 What are you doing?
689. 00:31:52 Like that makes no sense.
690. 00:31:54 The anchoring bias is one of those things, in my opinion, where
691. 00:31:57 it just didn't really click for me.
692. 00:31:59 But I totally see it.
693. 00:32:00 And I just wanted to bring it up so that other people could
694. 00:32:03 kind of be aware of the process.
695. 00:32:05 I'm not going to lie.
696. 00:32:06 I take advantage of this one.
697. 00:32:07 Yeah.
698. 00:32:08 I mean, it's the way the game is played.
699. 00:32:10 Like this is what you do as a marketer, which is fine.
700. 00:32:13 Like you're trying to communicate the value of what you are
701. 00:32:16 selling.
702. 00:32:17 And this is something that I struggle with honestly, because I
703. 00:32:19 have trouble with self promotion.
704. 00:32:20 I need to be better at anchoring bias in the direction of
705. 00:32:23 my stuff is actually valuable.
706. 00:32:25 But you have to understand, like both sides should just, should
707. 00:32:29 just understand the rules that you're playing by.
708. 00:32:31 And then when you can do that, you can arrive at an agreement
709. 00:32:34 that's mutually beneficial.
710. 00:32:36 Right.
711. 00:32:37 I do this with clients who will ask me, can we do an iOS app
712. 00:32:42 and a website?
713. 00:32:44 And if they ask me for both of those, I always want to talk
714. 00:32:48 about the iOS app first.
715. 00:32:50 Because it's usually more expensive, like drastically more
716. 00:32:54 expensive.
717. 00:32:55 And if that's the case, when we get to the website, because most
718. 00:32:59 of the time, you know, nine times out of ten, well, probably
719. 00:33:02 99 times out of 100, they don't want to do the iOS app, just
720. 00:33:05 because it doesn't actually provide anything that they
721. 00:33:08 need.
722. 00:33:09 And it's way more expensive.
723. 00:33:10 Well, because we've been talking about a way more expensive
724. 00:33:14 scenario, when we get to the website, overall, my rates for
725. 00:33:19 building websites are pretty high.
726. 00:33:21 Like typically they're not super cheap.
727. 00:33:23 Like I know what my time there is worth.
728. 00:33:25 And because those rates are high, and because it's typically
729. 00:33:29 lower than building an iOS app, I usually get the sale on the
730. 00:33:33 website because those numbers feel a lot lower by the time we
731. 00:33:37 get to those conversations.
732. 00:33:38 So it's just in how you play that whole meeting game.
733. 00:33:41 Yeah, but in that particular instance, you're not trying to
734. 00:33:44 suck every dollar out of your client that you can.
735. 00:33:47 No.
736. 00:33:48 Especially with web development, like you don't want to burn those
737. 00:33:51 bridges, you want this to be a win-win.
738. 00:33:53 Yeah.
739. 00:33:54 And so in order to arrive at the win-win, you are implementing the
740. 00:33:57 anchoring bias because you have a better understanding of what the
741. 00:34:01 client actually needs than they do in that particular case.
742. 00:34:05 The alternative to this is that, oh, yeah, I can do this for
743. 00:34:09 X amount of dollars.
744. 00:34:10 Okay, great.
745. 00:34:11 What's going to happen as soon as you start that project?
746. 00:34:13 No matter what you said, yeah, I'll do all of this work that you
747. 00:34:16 want me to do at a price that the customer is willing to pay, you
748. 00:34:19 are going to spend two to three times more effort and you're
749. 00:34:23 going to hate that project by the end and your customer is going
750. 00:34:26 to get upset because it's taking longer than you initially
751. 00:34:29 thought.
752. 00:34:30 Like this is the whole waterfall method to project management
753. 00:34:32 that doesn't work.
754. 00:34:33 So the anchoring bias can be used in a positive sense.
755. 00:34:37 It's not always just get the customer to pay more, but understanding
756. 00:34:42 how it works, I think, is important whether you are the
757. 00:34:45 producer or the consumer, I guess, is the best way to put it
758. 00:34:49 because that's the terminology they use in the book.
759. 00:34:51 But whether you're selling the thing or buying the thing, just
760. 00:34:54 understanding the rules of engagement.
761. 00:34:56 Great.
762. 00:34:57 I have all kinds of thoughts on this, but it's going to send us
763. 00:34:59 down at 30 minute, Bunny Trail.
764. 00:35:01 Well, we better move on then so this doesn't take 12 hours to
765. 00:35:05 go through.
766. 00:35:06 I know.
767. 00:35:07 One of the stories that he tells, because so much of this comes
768. 00:35:10 back to working our reflection brain too much, there's a lot of
769. 00:35:14 that with if I'm trying to focus for multiple hours on end,
770. 00:35:18 there's a good chance I'm going to burn out and not be able to
771. 00:35:20 keep going.
772. 00:35:21 So he's pretty heavy on taking breaks, disconnecting from ICT,
773. 00:35:26 information and communication technology.
774. 00:35:28 So our phones, tablets, computers, he's pretty big on taking
775. 00:35:31 breaks from them and doing the whole disconnection process
776. 00:35:34 because that's what allows our brains to get a break and rebuild
777. 00:35:39 and recharge, reenergize the whole willpower and focus ability.
778. 00:35:47 And one of the stories he tells to emphasize this is about
779. 00:35:50 lumberjacks.
780. 00:35:51 There's two lumberjacks, woodsman, who are trying to cut down a
781. 00:35:55 similarly sized tree, one of which starts in chopping right
782. 00:35:59 away and eventually gets to where he's taking a break.
783. 00:36:04 The other spends time sharpening his axe, cuts, then stops and
784. 00:36:08 sharpens his axe, cuts and does the back on forth.
785. 00:36:11 And when they're done and they both take this break at the same
786. 00:36:13 time, the former who just went in cutting and never stopped
787. 00:36:18 realizes that the other guy is drastically further ahead of
788. 00:36:21 him despite the fact that he hasn't been technically working
789. 00:36:24 as long.
790. 00:36:25 And it's a bit of a paradox in your mind that I didn't work as
791. 00:36:30 long, but I got a lot more done and it's because you were
792. 00:36:33 sharpening your tool in that case.
793. 00:36:35 In our case, it would be giving your brain a break, which means
794. 00:36:39 that you're able to focus and have more deep thinking on a
795. 00:36:45 particular topic or a task.
796. 00:36:47 So I just thought the story was interesting because I like wood
797. 00:36:51 working and I like wood and trees.
798. 00:36:53 I like them.
799. 00:36:54 So that story resonated with me and it's one that really kind of
800. 00:36:58 tripped my trigger on, "Huh, I need to take breaks after I go
801. 00:37:03 through a little batch processing and not work myself to death as
802. 00:37:08 much," which I'm very prone to do, Mike.
803. 00:37:11 Yeah, this is completely counterintuitive for me as well,
804. 00:37:16 where even though I understand the concept and I understand that
805. 00:37:21 you need to put yourself in a position to be more productive
806. 00:37:25 and you can be exponentially more productive if you give yourself
807. 00:37:28 the time in the space to actually recharge.
808. 00:37:30 It's hard for me not to just continue to work, even though I
809. 00:37:35 know in my mind I know, my actions don't bear it out a lot of
810. 00:37:40 times, that taking a break is actually the better thing for me.
811. 00:37:43 Stop this project now, go to bed, get a full night's rest and
812. 00:37:47 pick it up in the morning as opposed to keep cranking on it
813. 00:37:50 because I'm not going to finish it anyway.
814. 00:37:52 But that's a tendency that I have as well.
815. 00:37:59 There's a quote that I heard and I think he put it in the book
816. 00:38:02 also about Abraham Lincoln.
817. 00:38:04 It's not specifically the lumberjack story, but it's attributed
818. 00:38:08 to Abraham Lincoln where he says, "If I had six hours to chop down
819. 00:38:11 a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe."
820. 00:38:15 I don't think that ratio is too far off.
821. 00:38:18 Right.
822. 00:38:19 I'm trying to find it because I know it's in here, but I think
823. 00:38:24 it's in the same place.
824. 00:38:26 Yeah, page 132.
825. 00:38:29 Man, you said it verbatim.
826. 00:38:31 Well done.
827. 00:38:32 Did I?
828. 00:38:33 Nice.
829. 00:38:34 I've heard different versions of it.
830. 00:38:35 Eight hours, six hours sharpening the axe, whatever.
831. 00:38:37 But principle still applies and I think there's a lot to be said
832. 00:38:41 for the amount of time that you spend prepping.
833. 00:38:44 And that's really what he's illustrating with that lumberjack
834. 00:38:46 story is like it's not even close.
835. 00:38:49 It's kind of the, going back to the productivity project book,
836. 00:38:53 the 20 hour work versus the 90 hour work week and how they were
837. 00:38:56 pretty similar.
838. 00:38:57 They actually are pretty similar.
839. 00:38:59 Like even though it doesn't make sense that you're spending less
840. 00:39:02 than one fourth the amount of time doing the actual work because
841. 00:39:05 you are so much better equipped to do the work, especially brain
842. 00:39:09 work or knowledge work, you can be much more effective.
843. 00:39:12 And I've experienced this myself where I need to write an article
844. 00:39:15 and I can spend hours trying to write this article.
845. 00:39:19 And if I'm not in a mental state to do so, I'm going to write
846. 00:39:22 a few more words.
847. 00:39:23 There'll be other times where everything is clicking and I'll
848. 00:39:26 write a thousand words in 30 to 40 minutes.
849. 00:39:29 And it's kind of, it's kind of amazing that the results can be
850. 00:39:35 that dependent on how sharp the axe is.
851. 00:39:38 Which in this case is your brain.
852. 00:39:40 Yes.
853. 00:39:41 And part of the reason that works is whenever you're taking those
854. 00:39:46 breaks, like you take a nap, you go to bed at night, whatever you're
855. 00:39:49 doing for your break or just stepping away from your work and
856. 00:39:53 going for a walk, going to a whiteboard, just drawing pictures,
857. 00:39:56 whatever that is.
858. 00:39:58 Ultimately what you're doing is you're turning off the
859. 00:40:01 reflex and the reflection brain and freeing up your mental ram for
860. 00:40:05 that archive brain.
861. 00:40:07 Which I see, I love this analogy.
862. 00:40:08 I like having the three different brains because it gives me a way
863. 00:40:10 to talk about this.
864. 00:40:12 But the archiving brain is the one that needs to do the
865. 00:40:16 rejuvenation process and free up your working memory so that you
866. 00:40:21 can go back to working again.
867. 00:40:24 So it's interesting to me if you think about it as if I take a
868. 00:40:27 break.
869. 00:40:28 If I separate from the work that I'm doing right now, it frees my
870. 00:40:33 mind up to come back and do it more later instead of still
871. 00:40:38 trying to retain everything I just finished.
872. 00:40:41 So you end up giving yourself the ability to go back to work
873. 00:40:44 because it's your archiving brain taking things out of that,
874. 00:40:47 your mental working ram and putting it into longer term
875. 00:40:52 storage so that you're not eating up the front side of your
876. 00:40:57 memory.
877. 00:40:58 Yeah, absolutely.
878. 00:41:00 I like it.
879. 00:41:02 I like being able to put words to it.
880. 00:41:05 Finally, we know taking breaks is a good thing.
881. 00:41:08 I don't think anybody would argue with this whenever we say,
882. 00:41:11 "You should take breaks.
883. 00:41:12 Let's get more work done."
884. 00:41:13 I don't think anyone would argue with that.
885. 00:41:15 But this at least gives you the rationale and the reasoning
886. 00:41:18 behind it.
887. 00:41:19 Yep, definitely.
888. 00:41:21 So, I mean, if you were to do the Colby test, which I think
889. 00:41:26 we've mentioned before, and it's something that we've done on
890. 00:41:29 the Asian efficiency team, and then also my wife and I have done
891. 00:41:32 it because it basically illustrates the natural tendencies that
892. 00:41:36 you have towards how you work.
893. 00:41:38 So one of the scales there is a high fact, is a fact-finder scale
894. 00:41:42 and I happen to be a high-fact finder, which means I need to
895. 00:41:45 know all the details before I start something.
896. 00:41:49 And that's where this book is really beneficial because he's
897. 00:41:53 gone through 600 different research studies and he's teased
898. 00:41:58 out the main takeaways.
899. 00:42:00 And those are all based off of research.
900. 00:42:02 They are statistically valid.
901. 00:42:04 And those are facts that I can use to support and reinforce
902. 00:42:08 these behaviors like taking breaks like you were just talking
903. 00:42:10 about.
904. 00:42:11 I know that we're supposed to do this, but I don't really know
905. 00:42:13 why, so I'm not going to do it.
906. 00:42:15 Yeah.
907. 00:42:16 Like, that's where I think that this book can really help.
908. 00:42:19 And did you have anything else you want to talk about the
909. 00:42:22 archiving brain, or should we move on to like the five brain
910. 00:42:25 chains?
911. 00:42:26 Yeah, I think we can move on because there's a lot of the
912. 00:42:29 remainder that clarifies the smartphone stuff I want to talk
913. 00:42:32 about.
914. 00:42:33 Okay, cool.
915. 00:42:34 So, there's five brain chains that he talks about in the book,
916. 00:42:37 and then there are four brain gains or ways to beat those
917. 00:42:41 brain chains.
918. 00:42:42 And I think the important thing here is just to recognize
919. 00:42:45 what these are.
920. 00:42:46 I mean, obviously there's a lot of information behind each of
921. 00:42:50 these.
922. 00:42:51 So, if you want to know all about them, read the book.
923. 00:42:54 But brain chain number one is always being connected.
924. 00:42:59 So, the fact that you always have your smartphone right there,
925. 00:43:04 he talks about the phantom vibrations in your pocket,
926. 00:43:08 you know, stuff like that.
927. 00:43:09 That is always being connected.
928. 00:43:11 And I'll just run through these five and then we can come back
929. 00:43:13 and we can kind of unpack whichever ones you want.
930. 00:43:16 Brain chain number two is multitasking and task switching,
931. 00:43:20 which we kind of talked a little bit about already and how that's
932. 00:43:23 ineffective.
933. 00:43:24 Brain chain number three is a continuous low level of stress
934. 00:43:29 ruining the very best of your reflecting brain.
935. 00:43:31 So, really positive versus negative stress, recognizing that stress
936. 00:43:35 actually can get you to follow through and complete things,
937. 00:43:38 but also not having that constant drip where it's just having a
938. 00:43:43 negative effect on everything that you do.
939. 00:43:45 Brain chain number four is a lack of breaks and sleep.
940. 00:43:51 And this is something that everybody kind of knows that,
941. 00:43:54 "Oh, we need to sleep more.
942. 00:43:55 We need to take more breaks like you were just talking about,
943. 00:43:57 but we don't really do it.
944. 00:43:58 So, I'm hoping that this will actually give me the kick in the pants
945. 00:44:01 I need to actually do that."
946. 00:44:03 And then brain chain number five, he says,
947. 00:44:06 "It's outside your control.
948. 00:44:07 It's brain hostile open offices."
949. 00:44:10 This one was really interesting because there's -- he's right.
950. 00:44:15 Sometimes where you work, you don't get to control that.
951. 00:44:18 But also, I've kind of experienced this not through my place -- not
952. 00:44:24 through the place that I work, but because I work remotely,
953. 00:44:27 I've kind of self-inflicted this on myself to a certain degree.
954. 00:44:31 And also, and also figured out ways to remedy it.
955. 00:44:35 In fact, I had an article that I wrote maybe two weeks ago
956. 00:44:39 for Asian efficiency on how to work effectively from cafes and coffee shops.
957. 00:44:45 And some of the tips and tricks that I've picked up, like, for example,
958. 00:44:48 invest in a really good pair of noise-canceling headphones.
959. 00:44:52 Because when I throw on, I've got Bose QC35s, which were very expensive,
960. 00:44:56 but in my opinion, they were worth every penny.
961. 00:44:59 Not only for the noise-canceling, which I know there's better -- in terms of audio quality,
962. 00:45:03 better headphones, and I'm an audio file.
963. 00:45:05 I've tried a lot of them.
964. 00:45:06 But in terms of noise-canceling, Bose is the best that I've experienced
965. 00:45:10 and for the specific type of work and where I work,
966. 00:45:13 that is the most important feature for me.
967. 00:45:16 So having the noise-canceling ability, and then also their Bluetooth.
968. 00:45:19 So that means I don't have to physically plug in to my laptop when I want to work.
969. 00:45:25 And I like being able to get up and move around and not worry about
970. 00:45:30 pulling the headphones off my head because they're still connected to my laptop
971. 00:45:33 or pulling my laptop off the table.
972. 00:45:36 So little things like that, which can help you overcome your environment.
973. 00:45:41 Really the idea here is that don't play the victim card.
974. 00:45:47 Don't just assume that things are the way that they have to be.
975. 00:45:52 So you recognize that these brain chains are in place, so not just to open
976. 00:45:56 office thing, but all these different areas.
977. 00:45:58 And then do what you can to overcome these because if you just go with the flow,
978. 00:46:03 if you just default to the way that things are right now, then you are not going to
979. 00:46:08 reach your potential in terms of the brain work that you are able to do.
980. 00:46:12 But even if you're able to make a little bit of progress in one of these areas,
981. 00:46:16 it's going to be much better.
982. 00:46:17 So maybe you can't do everything that he implements or he talks about here.
983. 00:46:22 Maybe you can't implement every single thing.
984. 00:46:24 Maybe he talks a lot about email.
985. 00:46:26 Maybe you can't get everyone in your corporate organization to escape that
986. 00:46:33 email culture.
987. 00:46:34 But there are still little things that you can do to reduce the amount of
988. 00:46:37 email that you have to deal with.
989. 00:46:38 Even if it's not get to zero internal email, like we basically have an Asian
990. 00:46:44 agency, which is one of the reasons I love working there.
991. 00:46:47 Does that make sense?
992. 00:46:49 I think so.
993. 00:46:50 There are so many of these, because ultimately what these brain chains are is
994. 00:46:54 they're ruining your intellectual productivity.
995. 00:46:56 That's a term that he uses quite heavily in the book is intellectual productivity.
996. 00:47:00 So you're taking advantage of how your mind works so that you can do the
997. 00:47:05 brain work that we're all trying to do.
998. 00:47:08 We're knowledge work as we've referred to quite a bit in the past.
999. 00:47:11 The one that really stands out to me is they always be connected.
1000. 00:47:14 Because the bulk of the book seems to revolve around disconnecting and the
1001. 00:47:18 negative effects of having your phone with you all the time.
1002. 00:47:21 Even having a smartphone sitting on the table or in the room when you're
1003. 00:47:25 having a conversation with someone else can lead to negative consequences.
1004. 00:47:29 It degrades the conversation itself.
1005. 00:47:32 So there's a lot of little pieces that come with the ICT, the technology that we
1006. 00:47:38 have.
1007. 00:47:39 There's a lot of how that impacts us on a very small scale.
1008. 00:47:44 Each interaction, but on a very big scale as a whole.
1009. 00:47:50 If you follow my train of thinking there.
1010. 00:47:53 Ultimately what I'm realizing and I've had conversations with a few people about
1011. 00:47:58 this since starting to read this and going through it about how the ADHD world
1012. 00:48:04 plays into this.
1013. 00:48:05 I'm sure you thought I was going to bring this up right away.
1014. 00:48:07 But it's fascinating to me how many of these explanations that he gives are
1015. 00:48:16 tied to what I now refer to as a race car brain and just being able to bounce
1016. 00:48:22 from thing to thing.
1017. 00:48:23 Because our phones allow us to do that quite heavily.
1018. 00:48:26 And I'm wondering if the constant, you know, the building of that, even when
1019. 00:48:31 kids are really little, if we're letting them play with phones and tablets and
1020. 00:48:36 play the games and such on it.
1021. 00:48:38 I wonder if we're training our kids to be ADD through that.
1022. 00:48:41 I have zero science on this.
1023. 00:48:43 It's purely firsthand experience.
1024. 00:48:45 So I'm sure there are people out there that will catch me on this and say,
1025. 00:48:49 "Oh, but that's okay."
1026. 00:48:51 To me, it just seems like there's so much of the tech that we love playing with it.
1027. 00:48:56 It helps us do an awful lot.
1028. 00:48:59 But are we just consuming things in such a way that it's training our brains to
1029. 00:49:05 work in a way that's counter what we actually want to do from an intellectual
1030. 00:49:10 standpoint?
1031. 00:49:11 Yeah, I completely agree.
1032. 00:49:13 In fact, you have a point on here.
1033. 00:49:15 This is probably where you were going with this.
1034. 00:49:17 The rats, the dopamine, and the ICT.
1035. 00:49:19 Yes.
1036. 00:49:20 Really, what that comes down to is the notifications.
1037. 00:49:22 And this is something that I have preached at Asian efficiency.
1038. 00:49:25 I actually picked it up from Asian efficiency.
1039. 00:49:27 So this is not original.
1040. 00:49:29 But this was something that really hit me is the research that has been done that
1041. 00:49:34 when you get a notification on your computer, like the ding, when an email comes in,
1042. 00:49:41 or the buzz in your pocket when somebody likes your Facebook post, whatever,
1043. 00:49:46 what that does, because it is a variable reward, it creates an addiction because
1044. 00:49:52 what it does, your brain releases dopamine, which is a pleasure chemical.
1045. 00:49:56 And you go and you have to find out what that thing is because you're not sure
1046. 00:50:01 it could be something really great or could not be.
1047. 00:50:04 And the fact that you don't know what it is makes you want to check it.
1048. 00:50:08 And so the notifications, like this is something that this would be a takeaway for
1049. 00:50:14 me had I not already trimmed the heck out of my notifications where I basically don't
1050. 00:50:19 get anything.
1051. 00:50:20 Yeah.
1052. 00:50:21 But that's really, really important because it just reinforces the habit that people
1053. 00:50:26 have of being interrupted, losing their focus from what they were doing.
1054. 00:50:30 And then it takes a long time to get back into the flow and do what you were doing
1055. 00:50:34 in the first place.
1056. 00:50:35 He talks in here, I think he talks about the first part of this where when you
1057. 00:50:39 stop doing something, it takes 15 minutes, I believe, to get back to what you were
1058. 00:50:44 doing.
1059. 00:50:45 And then if you were in the zone, so to speak, if you're in a state of flow, like my
1060. 00:50:49 boy, Mihali, Chik said Mihali would say, then it takes you actually 40 minutes to get
1061. 00:50:55 back into what you were doing.
1062. 00:50:57 So why would you allow your information communication technology, your ICT, to interrupt you with
1063. 00:51:04 this stuff that really isn't contributing any value?
1064. 00:51:08 And then bringing this back to what you were talking about with the smartphones and conversations.
1065. 00:51:12 I think this is another place where it's really important how you set this stuff up and how
1066. 00:51:17 it plays out.
1067. 00:51:18 I really have tried to make a concerted effort that when I am meeting somebody for coffee
1068. 00:51:23 and getting somebody for lunch, that I am not getting notifications.
1069. 00:51:27 They don't know that I'm getting notifications if I am because I don't want them to feel
1070. 00:51:32 like, oh, you should probably check that.
1071. 00:51:34 And so this is where the Apple Watch comes in for me and I really, really like it.
1072. 00:51:39 Now you have to set it up correctly.
1073. 00:51:41 You have to really trim the notifications that you get on the Apple Watch.
1074. 00:51:44 Otherwise you're constantly looking at your wrist.
1075. 00:51:46 It's just as bad as constantly looking at your phone.
1076. 00:51:48 But if you have your notifications set up correctly, what you can do is you can get
1077. 00:51:52 notifications when you need to get them.
1078. 00:51:55 And if I'm meeting with you for breakfast or whatever and I get a notification, I can
1079. 00:51:59 feel it on my wrist, but it doesn't interrupt the flow of the conversation that is happening.
1080. 00:52:04 It's much less rude in my opinion.
1081. 00:52:07 And I really like that.
1082. 00:52:09 I really like the fact that I can still have those things on.
1083. 00:52:12 I can still get notified of the things that are really important to me.
1084. 00:52:15 But if what I'm doing at that particular moment is not as important than it doesn't have to
1085. 00:52:22 be a distraction, it doesn't have to interrupt the flow of that conversation and the personal
1086. 00:52:28 connection that's happening.
1087. 00:52:29 This is why I don't have an Apple Watch.
1088. 00:52:32 Because to me, if it's important enough to get a notification, to disrupt whatever it
1089. 00:52:41 is I'm working on, I don't care if it's a conversation with somebody else.
1090. 00:52:45 Or if I'm writing an article, whatever it is, if it's important enough that I get a notification,
1091. 00:52:51 I need to stop everything right now and go pay attention to it.
1092. 00:52:56 That's how I come at that.
1093. 00:52:58 And if I have something on my wrist that can tap me, even if I'm with someone else, I don't
1094. 00:53:05 get how I should have that tap on the wrist, even if I shouldn't, like, if you follow me
1095. 00:53:13 here, because I shouldn't get a tap on the wrist unless I need to leave right away.
1096. 00:53:19 If I need to get out of there immediately, in which case my phone buzzing or dinging
1097. 00:53:23 is okay.
1098. 00:53:25 So to me, it's a duplicate system.
1099. 00:53:29 It enables potential for more addiction to me.
1100. 00:53:33 It does have potential for more addiction, but this is where I would push back.
1101. 00:53:37 I agree with that.
1102. 00:53:39 If everybody in your life is going to respect whatever boundaries you tell them 100% of
1103. 00:53:45 the time, which in my life is not the case ever.
1104. 00:53:50 So you could say, "Don't call me unless it's super important."
1105. 00:53:53 And then theoretically, when your phone rings, "Oh, this is super important, I have to go."
1106. 00:53:58 And then you find out, "Oh, Johnny Pooped on the living room floor.
1107. 00:54:03 It's really not that big a deal.
1108. 00:54:04 Can't do anything about it right now."
1109. 00:54:07 So what are you going to do at this moment?
1110. 00:54:10 Was that worth interrupting the conversation that was happening at that particular moment?
1111. 00:54:16 When I get a phone call and I have my watch on, my phone isn't ringing.
1112. 00:54:20 You don't know that my phone is ringing.
1113. 00:54:23 And I have the ability then to discreetly ignore that.
1114. 00:54:26 Or if I feel that it really is important, then I can get up and I can deal with that
1115. 00:54:30 thing.
1116. 00:54:31 But in the moment, I can decide that this conversation that is happening right now, this
1117. 00:54:36 is the most important thing.
1118. 00:54:38 And because my phone hasn't made any noise, my watch hasn't made any noise, it's just
1119. 00:54:42 tap me on the wrist to let me know that I'm getting a call, I can in the moment say,
1120. 00:54:47 "This is not as important as what is happening right now."
1121. 00:54:50 See, I make that decision before I ever start.
1122. 00:54:53 To me, there is no phone call that I need right now because the only time that I need
1123. 00:55:00 to be interrupted by a phone call is when I'm allowing myself to be interrupted by a phone
1124. 00:55:05 call.
1125. 00:55:06 So if I'm going to meet you for breakfast, my phone won't ring, period.
1126. 00:55:10 And I won't know if there's a phone call until I'm done.
1127. 00:55:13 That's just how I work.
1128. 00:55:14 I just don't need to know about it until afterwards.
1129. 00:55:19 So I'm not going to make the decision in the conversation.
1130. 00:55:22 I'm going to make the decision on whether or not I call them back later.
1131. 00:55:25 Ideally, I agree with you again, that's what the whole do not disturb thing is for.
1132. 00:55:28 In practice, I don't turn that on.
1133. 00:55:31 See, I do all the time.
1134. 00:55:34 That's one of the things that actually between airplane mode and do not disturb those two
1135. 00:55:37 are on and off on my phone multiple times a day because I just don't.
1136. 00:55:44 Like right now, my phone is on do not disturb.
1137. 00:55:46 Obviously, we're recording.
1138. 00:55:48 It would be on airplane mode if I wasn't sitting here with Alfred remote open using it to bounce
1139. 00:55:53 between applications.
1140. 00:55:54 So that's just how I'm working right now.
1141. 00:55:57 But I don't want it to ever interrupt certain things.
1142. 00:56:03 There are times in the day when I'm allowing myself to have someone give me a ring or to
1143. 00:56:09 text me.
1144. 00:56:10 But for the most part, I dictate when I'm going to respond to those.
1145. 00:56:15 Some people don't like that at first, but after I explain it to them, they're usually
1146. 00:56:18 perfectly fine with it.
1147. 00:56:20 And if they're not perfectly fine with it, they're usually not a client of mine very
1148. 00:56:23 long.
1149. 00:56:24 Yeah, I think that your approach is accomplishing the same thing and probably is the ideal way
1150. 00:56:31 to do it.
1151. 00:56:32 But in practice for me, I forget to turn my phone to do not disturb, put it on airplane
1152. 00:56:36 mode.
1153. 00:56:37 And so I just find that this is a little bit less intrusive.
1154. 00:56:44 And really what it comes down to is I want to put those constraints in place so that
1155. 00:56:48 I can focus on what Dr. Theo calls right tasking.
1156. 00:56:52 Okay, so excuse me while I shift this a little bit.
1157. 00:56:56 But this is really at the heart of what we're talking about.
1158. 00:56:58 We can go on and on and on about notifications.
1159. 00:57:00 Yeah, but ultimately what we're getting at is that you want to be doing the right thing
1160. 00:57:05 at the right moment and notifications are usually somebody else telling you that this
1161. 00:57:11 is what you should be doing at this particular moment.
1162. 00:57:14 And you have to be intentional about deciding that, no, this is the right thing for me at
1163. 00:57:19 this particular moment.
1164. 00:57:21 And then creating the environment, putting out the constraints in place for that work
1165. 00:57:26 to actually happen.
1166. 00:57:28 And I think that was actually one of the brain gains.
1167. 00:57:32 There were four brain gains that he talks about.
1168. 00:57:35 Number one is disconnect.
1169. 00:57:36 So these are just basically how you deal with those brain chains and always being connected.
1170. 00:57:40 Like the way to do that is to disconnect.
1171. 00:57:42 Like you were talking about putting your phone on do not disturb or airplane mode.
1172. 00:57:46 Which was fascinating to me that I've been doing some of this without realizing it.
1173. 00:57:50 Yeah, I know me too.
1174. 00:57:51 I thought that was really interesting that some of this stuff has stuck.
1175. 00:57:54 Some of it has not.
1176. 00:57:56 And why did the stuff that stick?
1177. 00:57:59 Stick?
1178. 00:58:00 Why does the stuff that I've been doing?
1179. 00:58:01 Why did that stick?
1180. 00:58:02 And then the stuff that I haven't been doing?
1181. 00:58:03 What's the deal?
1182. 00:58:04 Like why haven't I been able to make that work?
1183. 00:58:07 And like I said, hopefully the research that he's implemented in here helps some of that
1184. 00:58:12 other stuff stick for me.
1185. 00:58:14 But yeah, brain chain number one, disconnecting.
1186. 00:58:17 You got that one down.
1187. 00:58:18 I'm working on that.
1188. 00:58:19 Brain chain number two, I'm sorry, chain breaker number two.
1189. 00:58:23 Become a right tasker.
1190. 00:58:25 This one actually I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on.
1191. 00:58:28 I have a pretty good idea of this is the thing that I should be doing at any given moment.
1192. 00:58:33 One thing I do need to work on in this particular area is articulating that in a way that doesn't
1193. 00:58:38 come across as mean to the other people in my life.
1194. 00:58:42 Chain breaker number three, letting your brain idle.
1195. 00:58:44 So getting enough sleep and then chain breaker number four is managing your stress well.
1196. 00:58:51 But I think if you were to boil this all down to one specific thing, it could probably
1197. 00:58:56 be defined as right tasking.
1198. 00:58:58 That's interesting.
1199. 00:59:00 I thought you were getting ready to say to disconnect.
1200. 00:59:01 Well, disconnect.
1201. 00:59:03 The way I reconcile this in my brain is that disconnecting is doing the right thing at
1202. 00:59:07 the right time.
1203. 00:59:09 Disconnect is the process that you would use to do the right thing at the right time.
1204. 00:59:12 But ultimately the thing that you are doing, whether it is being distracted because you
1205. 00:59:17 are connected or focusing on the thing that you are doing, that's the lower level right
1206. 00:59:22 tasking I would argue.
1207. 00:59:24 See, that makes sense.
1208. 00:59:26 I can go with that.
1209. 00:59:28 Now, something I'm going to disagree with you on is you said that I'm pretty good at
1210. 00:59:32 disconnecting.
1211. 00:59:33 That's not true.
1212. 00:59:34 I do the quick check thing a lot.
1213. 00:59:38 This is one of the action items I've got a little bit later is knowing what I'm going
1214. 00:59:42 to do before I grab my phone because I had this tendency to do this quick check of email.
1215. 00:59:51 As much as I talk about batching that, I realized when I went through this that a lot
1216. 00:59:55 of times I just glance to make sure I don't have something from a client that's come through.
1217. 01:00:00 I don't want them calling me, but I'll check your email.
1218. 01:00:02 It's just kind of the way it works.
1219. 01:00:06 So I think there's a little bit of a misfire for me and how I have that set up.
1220. 01:00:11 So something I set up to try to help me with this.
1221. 01:00:16 I've got an article I'm in the process of writing which will come out this Friday.
1222. 01:00:20 So it will be out for a little bit before this episode goes live because we're a little
1223. 01:00:24 bit ahead in scheduling.
1224. 01:00:26 But something I set up, Mike, is so I use Gmail for everything I do with email.
1225. 01:00:33 The awesome thing that I like about Google is there's ways to write scripts that run
1226. 01:00:38 the background and you can actually do some automatic stuff on your email with those
1227. 01:00:43 scripts.
1228. 01:00:44 So I wrote one that simply checks my inbox every minute.
1229. 01:00:48 And if it finds an unread or if it finds a read message within my inbox, it will automatically
1230. 01:00:56 archive it.
1231. 01:00:58 And what that effectively does is it means that if I check an email without doing something
1232. 01:01:04 about it, it'll disappear out of my inbox automatically.
1233. 01:01:08 That could be dangerous.
1234. 01:01:10 It's very dangerous.
1235. 01:01:12 And I kid you not.
1236. 01:01:14 The day I put that in place, I spent the better part of an hour on my phone trying to figure
1237. 01:01:19 out how to get around this.
1238. 01:01:21 Like, no, I just needed, like I sat there and I looked at it.
1239. 01:01:26 There was one particular email.
1240. 01:01:27 I just wanted to check.
1241. 01:01:28 I was like, okay, what's this process?
1242. 01:01:30 And like, okay, if I tap that, I have to mark it as unread and then move it back to
1243. 01:01:35 my inbox.
1244. 01:01:36 That's not simple to do.
1245. 01:01:38 So I ended up spending this time trying to, is probably not an hour, but I'm exaggerating
1246. 01:01:42 there.
1247. 01:01:43 But it was a decent amount of time.
1248. 01:01:45 How do I get around this thing I put in place?
1249. 01:01:48 So it's very helpful in forcing me to not use my phone to check email, enforcing me to
1250. 01:01:53 batch it through my computer, which is way more efficient and way better anyway.
1251. 01:01:58 Definitely.
1252. 01:01:59 I inflicted some pain on myself.
1253. 01:02:01 And it's been very helpful to keep me from not checking my phone.
1254. 01:02:04 Yeah, email on the phone is not a great idea.
1255. 01:02:10 I actually just did a, you know, we worked on an email course for Asian efficiency.
1256. 01:02:15 And it's actually called Escape Your Email.
1257. 01:02:17 And there's a whole big section on there on the right way to use email on your phone,
1258. 01:02:20 which is triage because the swipe gestures allow you to real quickly take actions on
1259. 01:02:25 specific emails, put them in your task manager, send it to a reference file, whatever.
1260. 01:02:29 But even that I am leaning towards taking email completely off my phone.
1261. 01:02:38 For sure, it's disappearing from my home screen and I'm burying it in a folder somewhere.
1262. 01:02:43 But I am 95% convinced that removing it from my phone completely would be a good idea for
1263. 01:02:52 me.
1264. 01:02:53 I don't really ever want to reply to emails on my phone.
1265. 01:02:59 And this is what Dr. Theo talks a lot about is you have a small keyboard, a small screen.
1266. 01:03:04 You can't see very much.
1267. 01:03:05 You're going to make typos, etc.
1268. 01:03:08 And that makes a lot of sense.
1269. 01:03:10 But I just think that there would be a lot of benefit from completely eliminating that
1270. 01:03:18 source, that potential source of distraction on my mobile device.
1271. 01:03:23 It would force me to constrain email to the specific times that have set aside for it
1272. 01:03:29 on my calendar going back to the 12 week year with the buffer periods.
1273. 01:03:34 And I'm actually really nervous about this.
1274. 01:03:38 But I'm putting it out there right now.
1275. 01:03:41 I am going to do this.
1276. 01:03:42 So this is something that you can hold me accountable to.
1277. 01:03:45 All right.
1278. 01:03:46 I'll let you know if it has caused a crisis or not, I guess, when we hear you go right
1279. 01:03:51 next.
1280. 01:03:52 All right.
1281. 01:03:53 We'll see how it goes.
1282. 01:03:56 I'm trying to get out of some of my email too.
1283. 01:04:00 Yeah.
1284. 01:04:01 And when you think about the whole idea here between how we use our technology as a consumer
1285. 01:04:06 or a producer, I'm never going to use email on my phone to produce things.
1286. 01:04:14 And I know that you could technically classify some of the emails maybe that you reply to
1287. 01:04:21 as moving projects forward and producing things.
1288. 01:04:24 But the majority of it, if you're honest with yourself and actually, if you're honest with
1289. 01:04:29 yourself, self, I would say all of it really isn't accomplishing that goal.
1290. 01:04:34 So if I'm asking myself, why is this device in my life?
1291. 01:04:38 Is it to be a potential distraction?
1292. 01:04:41 Well, then I should leave email on there.
1293. 01:04:43 But if it's any other reason, what in the world would I leave that there for?
1294. 01:04:49 It's only going to cause problems.
1295. 01:04:52 That's kind of how I'm learning to deal with it.
1296. 01:04:55 Yep.
1297. 01:04:56 Oh, email.
1298. 01:04:57 Can we talk about daylight savings?
1299. 01:04:59 Because we just went through daylight savings and I hate daylight savings.
1300. 01:05:03 Yeah, actually, that was something that I put on the outline.
1301. 01:05:06 The daylight savings is done.
1302. 01:05:08 I hate the savings.
1303. 01:05:09 Yeah.
1304. 01:05:10 He talks about how daylight savings really messes with your internal clock.
1305. 01:05:16 And there's really no good reason for it.
1306. 01:05:20 And I completely agree.
1307. 01:05:21 And yeah, you're right.
1308. 01:05:22 The wound is fresh.
1309. 01:05:23 So I figured I'd throw it on there.
1310. 01:05:26 But really the--
1311. 01:05:27 And we have kids.
1312. 01:05:28 So it continues.
1313. 01:05:29 Like, the scab continues to be pulled off every day with kids.
1314. 01:05:33 Right.
1315. 01:05:34 If you want to know why daylight savings is a dumb idea, like, have kids because they
1316. 01:05:38 don't recognize that it's an hour later.
1317. 01:05:41 You don't get an extra hour of sleep.
1318. 01:05:42 They're up at the same time.
1319. 01:05:44 But really, like, that just illustrates Dr. Theo's point is that this is not something
1320. 01:05:50 that is natural for your body.
1321. 01:05:52 Why are we implementing this man-made construct?
1322. 01:05:55 And I'm sure that somebody out there somewhere is able to articulate actually a decent reason
1323. 01:06:00 for daylight savings.
1324. 01:06:02 But from--
1325. 01:06:03 No, they can't.
1326. 01:06:04 [LAUGHS]
1327. 01:06:05 Well, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
1328. 01:06:07 I'm not.
1329. 01:06:08 But yeah, what I would argue is based off of especially the content of this book, like
1330. 01:06:12 how your brain actually works, why would you do this to yourself?
1331. 01:06:16 Because sleep equals good.
1332. 01:06:17 And if you mess with my sleep, I have a problem.
1333. 01:06:20 Right, right.
1334. 01:06:21 There's another thing I put on there.
1335. 01:06:24 Sleep equals good.
1336. 01:06:25 Well, they're connected because so much of daylight savings, it takes place at 2 AM.
1337. 01:06:33 And that means that it's going to affect the way that you sleep, no matter how you
1338. 01:06:39 come about it.
1339. 01:06:40 If you sleep longer or sleep shorter, it's going to affect it in some way.
1340. 01:06:44 So he talks an awful lot about how we are sleep deprived as a nation, as a world mostly.
1341. 01:06:52 And because we are sleep deprived, there are so many attention dragging--
1342. 01:06:58 what do I want to say-- negative outcomes that derive from a lack of sleep.
1343. 01:07:05 And most people need more sleep than what they're saying.
1344. 01:07:07 And those of us who think that we fall into the category of not needing that much sleep
1345. 01:07:11 because we're OK, the number of us that do that greatly outweighs the number of people
1346. 01:07:16 who actually can live with that little sleep.
1347. 01:07:19 It's a word and not real good shape.
1348. 01:07:23 What I figured out with this mic is that-- and the part that really stood out to me is the
1349. 01:07:27 whole blue screen thing because we know that watching and looking at blue screens before
1350. 01:07:31 bedtime is a terrible idea.
1351. 01:07:32 I never fully understood why until he explained how there are receptors in your eye that correspond
1352. 01:07:40 to the production of melatonin, which is the hormone that helps you fall asleep.
1353. 01:07:46 And the frequencies of blue light going into your eye inhibits that production of melatonin.
1354. 01:07:54 And that particular process is identical to being outside and looking at the sun at noon.
1355. 01:08:01 It's equivalent to that level.
1356. 01:08:03 So it just inhibits that production of melatonin, which means it's harder to fall asleep.
1357. 01:08:08 And it messes with your whole night as well.
1358. 01:08:10 Yeah, there's probably most people who listen to this show are aware of this tool, but I'll
1359. 01:08:16 throw it out there because this really had an impact for me.
1360. 01:08:19 If you have to use your computer specifically past the time when the sun goes down, definitely
1361. 01:08:25 get flux, which I believe the website is justgetflux.com.
1362. 01:08:29 We can put the link in the show notes.
1363. 01:08:30 But what it does is it changes the tint of your screen so it's more orangish.
1364. 01:08:36 And then the later it gets the more orange it becomes because that warmer orange, it
1365. 01:08:41 kind of simulates like a candle light as opposed to a bright blue sunlight.
1366. 01:08:46 Yeah, so it doesn't stop your body from producing the melatonin that will actually help you
1367. 01:08:54 get a good night's sleep, which is what using your devices at night actually does.
1368. 01:08:58 And ideally, obviously you can disconnect completely, but there have been times where
1369. 01:09:02 I've had to work late and that has been a huge lifesaver.
1370. 01:09:05 I could definitely notice a difference once I started using that tool as compared to before
1371. 01:09:12 I started using that tool, the quality of my sleep got a lot better.
1372. 01:09:16 And the thing that I really got out of this sleep section is that sleep allows your archiving
1373. 01:09:21 brain to connect the dots effectively.
1374. 01:09:23 This was really interesting to me because one of the big revelations that I got about
1375. 01:09:27 creativity was from reading a book by Austin Cleon titled, "Steal Like An Artist."
1376. 01:09:33 And in the book, he talks about how when you create something new, all you're doing is
1377. 01:09:38 you're connecting dots in a ways that nobody has before, but ultimately you are reusing
1378. 01:09:43 and repurposing things that already exist, which I struggled with for a long time.
1379. 01:09:49 A lot of this stuff, like I'm a musician, I play guitar and I sing on the worship team
1380. 01:09:52 in our church.
1381. 01:09:53 I'd be writing a song and then I'd be happy with the song and then I would hear this
1382. 01:09:58 chord progression from a different song and I'm like, "Oh, that must be where I got that.
1383. 01:10:02 Darn it, I can't come up with anything new."
1384. 01:10:05 And so reading that book kind of freed me from the stress of thinking that I wasn't able
1385. 01:10:12 to produce anything new because that's just the result of the process.
1386. 01:10:15 What you put in is what comes out.
1387. 01:10:17 It's going to be a little bit different.
1388. 01:10:18 You're going to put your own spin on it.
1389. 01:10:19 That's okay.
1390. 01:10:20 And that really was very freeing.
1391. 01:10:23 But in this particular section as it regards to sleep, getting enough sleep allows your
1392. 01:10:29 brain to connect those dots.
1393. 01:10:31 So if you're not getting enough sleep, you cannot be as creative because your brain doesn't
1394. 01:10:36 have the ability to connect those dots effectively while you're sleeping or even if you just
1395. 01:10:41 look at the quantity of your sleep and take quality out of the equation, which you can't
1396. 01:10:45 do obviously.
1397. 01:10:46 But even if you just limited the amount of time that those dots can be connected, you're
1398. 01:10:50 still handicapping yourself when you don't get enough sleep.
1399. 01:10:55 And for anybody who is creative, they have probably experienced the phenomenon where
1400. 01:11:01 you're thinking about a problem and you're like, "I just forget it.
1401. 01:11:03 I'm going to go to bed."
1402. 01:11:05 And then you wake up and you're like, "Oh, there's the solution.
1403. 01:11:09 This is why.
1404. 01:11:10 This is what's happening while you're asleep."
1405. 01:11:12 So that was really a light bulb moment for me.
1406. 01:11:15 I love how if I'm struggling with how to do something in code and I don't have the solution.
1407. 01:11:23 I don't know how to solve that problem.
1408. 01:11:26 And then I go mow the lawn.
1409. 01:11:29 Usually I come out of mowing the lawn with the answer.
1410. 01:11:32 Just the idea of stepping away from the problem, we talk about this all the time.
1411. 01:11:37 Like, "Well, you can't come up with a solution to it.
1412. 01:11:38 Well, step away.
1413. 01:11:39 Go do something else."
1414. 01:11:40 And you'll figure it out.
1415. 01:11:41 Like, that's so true.
1416. 01:11:43 Absolutely so true.
1417. 01:11:44 And this is where the archiving brain comes in.
1418. 01:11:46 And this is why I love it because now I have words on how to explain it.
1419. 01:11:50 Right.
1420. 01:11:51 Yeah, definitely.
1421. 01:11:54 I think we could probably, for the sake of time, skip the other email related stuff
1422. 01:11:59 because we've talked about that enough.
1423. 01:12:02 But I do want to hit on the thing that you put in here about the Eisenhower matrix.
1424. 01:12:07 Yes.
1425. 01:12:08 So, and this kind of comes back to what you were talking about where you're going to go
1426. 01:12:14 mow the lawn and the solution comes.
1427. 01:12:16 It's because you're allowing your brain to engage and disengage and activate those different
1428. 01:12:21 parts of your brain in an effective way, which you could boil down again to right-tasking.
1429. 01:12:27 Right-tasking is really at the heart of this Eisenhower matrix.
1430. 01:12:32 For people who aren't familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, it basically splits things up into
1431. 01:12:37 four different quadrants.
1432. 01:12:40 There's the things that are important and urgent.
1433. 01:12:42 There's the things you've got to do.
1434. 01:12:44 And then there are things that are important but not urgent.
1435. 01:12:46 These are the things that typically get pushed to the wayside.
1436. 01:12:49 Things like going to the gym or getting up early to write, spending quality time with
1437. 01:12:53 your family, the things that you know you want to do.
1438. 01:12:56 Everybody would say they want to do, but they don't make the time for them.
1439. 01:12:58 And the reason they don't make the time for them is that the third quadrant is things
1440. 01:13:02 that are not important but are urgent.
1441. 01:13:04 This is where email comes in.
1442. 01:13:06 I've heard somebody say that email is a to-do list that other people can write on.
1443. 01:13:10 And if you think about how you reply to email typically, you say yes to stuff.
1444. 01:13:14 You don't even consider whether you should be doing those things, especially if it's
1445. 01:13:18 coming from a co-worker or a boss.
1446. 01:13:20 You just figure out a way to get that thing done, but that means you sacrifice something
1447. 01:13:24 else.
1448. 01:13:25 And then there are the things that are not urgent or not important.
1449. 01:13:28 These are the time wasters.
1450. 01:13:30 And these are the things that we should kind of get rid of.
1451. 01:13:34 What was interesting to me about this particular section was the percentages.
1452. 01:13:39 So he actually assigned percentages to the things that kind of, I think this is the ideal
1453. 01:13:44 way that you would divvy up your tasks where you spend 20% of your time on things that are
1454. 01:13:50 important and urgent, 70% on things that are important but are not urgent, 10% on things
1455. 01:13:56 that are not important but are urgent, and then you eliminate altogether the things that
1456. 01:14:00 are not important and not urgent.
1457. 01:14:01 And the reason I say that's ideal is that I don't think that accurately reflects how
1458. 01:14:05 most people spend their time.
1459. 01:14:07 It's true.
1460. 01:14:08 It's true.
1461. 01:14:09 I only wrote down Eisenhower Matrix because I know you love it.
1462. 01:14:12 It's true.
1463. 01:14:13 I do love it.
1464. 01:14:14 It's been very, I don't want to say inspirational because there has been action associated with
1465. 01:14:20 this, but it really just articulated to me in a way that I completely understood, yeah,
1466. 01:14:25 the things that are important, they're not going to happen unless I make them happen.
1467. 01:14:29 And if I just go through my day because I'm naturally a people pleaser and I'll have
1468. 01:14:34 a tendency to say yes to everything, it's been hard for me to learn the ability to say
1469. 01:14:37 no, that I will get stuck living my life out of the urgent column.
1470. 01:14:43 And that means that you don't have time for the things that are important.
1471. 01:14:47 And one of the things that he said to do, which I thought was really interesting, this
1472. 01:14:51 is an exercise that actually I implemented in the escape your email course as well, but
1473. 01:14:55 he says to score each task on your to-do list, basically put it in one of those quadrants.
1474. 01:15:01 And so the way I did it when the escape your email course is that we had people put the
1475. 01:15:06 emails that they received in those different quadrants just so they could see, is this
1476. 01:15:10 email actually important and urgent or is it urgent, but not important?
1477. 01:15:14 Just so they could see that most of the email that you get actually falls into that quadrant.
1478. 01:15:18 But this is really interesting in that like if you score each of these tasks on your list,
1479. 01:15:22 you can identify, yeah, these are all things I need to do.
1480. 01:15:25 But then if you score them and you know that this task is important and urgent, this task
1481. 01:15:31 is important, but not urgent, then you can use those ratios to build out your to-do list
1482. 01:15:37 for the day.
1483. 01:15:38 I thought that was a really cool approach.
1484. 01:15:39 I think it makes a lot of sense.
1485. 01:15:42 And that's something I'm trying to figure out with this new role I'm taking at our church.
1486. 01:15:46 The primary of that is doing support for the group of people who work on our staff.
1487. 01:15:51 Okay, everything is going to be urgent and important according to them.
1488. 01:15:58 Right.
1489. 01:15:59 I know how this works, but just because someone else thinks that it's highly important that
1490. 01:16:06 it happens right now, and I've had this conversation with a few of the staff members already,
1491. 01:16:11 it's like the chances of something going down and being catastrophic is actually quite slim.
1492. 01:16:20 And in most cases, the issues that we run across really don't need solved right now.
1493. 01:16:27 Like yes, they're urgent, but they're not truly like it's not like someone's going to
1494. 01:16:31 die because the projector doesn't work.
1495. 01:16:33 Like it just doesn't hit that level.
1496. 01:16:35 Like everybody's still going to be living.
1497. 01:16:37 It's okay.
1498. 01:16:38 You may not be able to use your PowerPoint, but that's okay.
1499. 01:16:41 It's not the end of the world.
1500. 01:16:42 You'll be all right.
1501. 01:16:43 So I'm just trying to help people understand that.
1502. 01:16:45 So there's going to be a lot of coaching going on in that, I'm sure.
1503. 01:16:48 Yeah, definitely.
1504. 01:16:50 And I think that's an important point to make is that you're probably in an organization
1505. 01:16:55 or maybe even a job where you can't define your entire day.
1506. 01:17:00 You will have to do some of this where you're responding to things that other people are
1507. 01:17:03 declaring as urgent, but you don't have to sign for the package 100% of the time.
1508. 01:17:09 You can make small steps in the right direction and create the space to take action on the
1509. 01:17:15 things that are really important.
1510. 01:17:16 That's where the last point there that I put, the Pareto squared comes in.
1511. 01:17:20 The Pareto principle is the 80/20 rule.
1512. 01:17:23 So the idea is that 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results.
1513. 01:17:29 So Pareto squared, that's like the 80/20 of the 80/20.
1514. 01:17:32 And he extrapolates this out.
1515. 01:17:34 He has the numbers to support it.
1516. 01:17:36 But if you apply the 80/20 rule to the 80/20 percentage, what that means is that I think
1517. 01:17:42 it's 4% of what you do produces 64% of your results.
1518. 01:17:49 And so really what this articulated to me was really dig down and identify what are the
1519. 01:17:54 things that move the chains, what are the things that really make an impact, what are
1520. 01:17:59 the things that really move you towards your goal?
1521. 01:18:01 Because you can make time for those things.
1522. 01:18:05 4% of your actions, of your tasks, creating 64% of your results.
1523. 01:18:12 And the way that that happens is through the habits or the rituals that you establish.
1524. 01:18:15 Your morning routine, your evening routine.
1525. 01:18:18 For me, it was getting up early.
1526. 01:18:20 We talked about this a couple episodes ago to write.
1527. 01:18:24 And that produced the book, which led to my position with Asian efficiency.
1528. 01:18:29 But it was not a whole lot of time.
1529. 01:18:31 It was an hour a day.
1530. 01:18:33 But just taking small, consistent steps in the right direction, implementing the right
1531. 01:18:38 4% can significantly move the ball.
1532. 01:18:44 Every time I read one of these books, I try to come up with some way to summarize the
1533. 01:18:50 whole of the book.
1534. 01:18:53 And in this particular case, I think there's a quote that comes that he wrote in the book
1535. 01:18:58 that applies quite well.
1536. 01:19:01 And since we're Apple nerds and we're in technology, and this was all about technology,
1537. 01:19:05 I thought that's made a lot of sense.
1538. 01:19:06 So anyway, the quote is, "If Steve Jobs had been glued to his iPhone, he never would have
1539. 01:19:11 invented the iPhone."
1540. 01:19:13 Exactly.
1541. 01:19:14 Okay, that sums up a lot here.
1542. 01:19:18 Because so much of our technology, because we become addicted to it and because we can't
1543. 01:19:23 disconnect from it, it prevents our ability to think clearly and to reflect on a higher
1544. 01:19:29 level and more critical thinking tasks.
1545. 01:19:34 It prevents us from being able to do that.
1546. 01:19:36 Which is very, it's required heavily if you're going to do something like invent an entire
1547. 01:19:43 new world of devices like Steve Jobs did with the iPhone.
1548. 01:19:48 So I think that quote makes an awful lot of sense with how this book is laid out and what
1549. 01:19:54 the intent of the book is.
1550. 01:19:56 Is that fair, Mike?
1551. 01:19:57 Yeah, in fact, I wrote down in my notes the book in a nutshell, "Control your ICT enough
1552. 01:20:03 the other way around."
1553. 01:20:05 Which is really summed up in the quote that you shared about Steve Jobs because if he hadn't
1554. 01:20:09 been able to control his ICT, he would be a consumer and not a producer.
1555. 01:20:15 So action items.
1556. 01:20:16 I talked about one for myself of knowing what I'm going to do with my phone before I pick
1557. 01:20:22 it up.
1558. 01:20:24 So that's a tough habit to break because so many times I think a lot of us just like,
1559. 01:20:29 "Oh, I got a few seconds here.
1560. 01:20:31 Just grab my phone.
1561. 01:20:32 I open it before I even really know what I'm going to do with it."
1562. 01:20:34 So I have that habit.
1563. 01:20:36 So I need to try to break that and just know what I'm going to do with my phone before
1564. 01:20:39 I pick it up.
1565. 01:20:40 I have a habit of checking my phone first thing when I get up in the morning.
1566. 01:20:43 He talks about the negative of this quite a bit.
1567. 01:20:45 I also have the opposite of doing it before bed, which I've actually been able to kick
1568. 01:20:49 since reading this because I realized how bad that was.
1569. 01:20:52 Which honestly I can say helps my sleep.
1570. 01:20:54 I like sleep.
1571. 01:20:55 Sleep equals good.
1572. 01:20:56 So that's a good thing.
1573. 01:20:58 So I'm trying to figure out how to avoid my phone in the early morning because I have
1574. 01:21:01 this tendency to want to know, "Did anything come crashing down last night because I have
1575. 01:21:05 so many websites that I maintain?"
1576. 01:21:08 I just have a tendency to want to keep an eye on things.
1577. 01:21:11 It's not always good.
1578. 01:21:13 Something I picked up and he doesn't really spell this out in the book in much detail,
1579. 01:21:19 but talking to my kids before I pick up a device.
1580. 01:21:24 Part of the reason I wanted to do this, and I was talking to my wife about it because
1581. 01:21:28 so many times we'll grab our phones and we'll check something quick like, "What's the weather?"
1582. 01:21:32 But we just pull it out and check it without ever saying what we're going to do.
1583. 01:21:37 The problem that I have with that is that I think, and this is Joe's summary here, I
1584. 01:21:44 think that might be teaching my kids that those phones and those devices are more important
1585. 01:21:49 than them, which is kind of a scary thought to have.
1586. 01:21:54 I don't want them to think that if I don't like what's going on right now or I can't
1587. 01:21:59 do something like, "This is my pacifier."
1588. 01:22:02 I don't want them to think that.
1589. 01:22:05 Something I started trying to do, and our oldest picked it up pretty quick, is just
1590. 01:22:08 saying, "I need to check the weather for this afternoon on my phone.
1591. 01:22:13 I'm going to do that quick and then I'm going to be done."
1592. 01:22:15 It's funny how they've just did a lot of accountability in that as well because I have
1593. 01:22:18 to, one, know what I'm going to do before I pick it up, and two, stop immediately, otherwise
1594. 01:22:23 I'm a heretic.
1595. 01:22:25 I don't want to be lying to my kids, so it forces my hand in a couple of scenarios.
1596. 01:22:33 What I'm trying to do is talk to my kids about what I'm doing on a device before I pick it
1597. 01:22:37 up.
1598. 01:22:38 Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
1599. 01:22:42 That's scary though.
1600. 01:22:43 It is.
1601. 01:22:44 Because what are you going to say?
1602. 01:22:45 I'm picking up my phone because I am bored and I'm going to waste the next 20 minutes
1603. 01:22:50 on Twitter.
1604. 01:22:51 Yeah, I want to know what's going on in Twitter.
1605. 01:22:53 I want to see more of Marco's dog pictures.
1606. 01:22:57 Like, "No, it's not important."
1607. 01:23:00 Right.
1608. 01:23:02 My action items, along the same lines but not the same implementation, I want to teach
1609. 01:23:10 my kids the right way to use technology.
1610. 01:23:12 That was one of the big takeaways I got, is use technology to be a producer, not a consumer,
1611. 01:23:17 which I feel like I've already taken some significant steps in that direction.
1612. 01:23:21 I do not have a Facebook account, but I almost never check it.
1613. 01:23:27 And it's just kind of interesting to me.
1614. 01:23:30 People will say, "Well, I sent you a message on Facebook and I'm like, 'Up, I don't check
1615. 01:23:33 Facebook and it feels good when I can say that.'"
1616. 01:23:36 Right.
1617. 01:23:37 So, I want to teach my kids the right way to use the technology.
1618. 01:23:40 My wife actually had a little bit of a conversation about this recently where we were talking about
1619. 01:23:45 the negative effects of technology and how addicted people can get.
1620. 01:23:49 She mentioned that, "Well, I don't think they should have a cell phone until whatever.
1621. 01:23:54 I forget what age she said."
1622. 01:23:57 And I push back a little bit initially.
1623. 01:23:58 I'm like, "Well, I don't think that we should necessarily put a rule in where we don't want
1624. 01:24:01 them to have it because if we just take it away completely, all that's going to do is
1625. 01:24:06 increase the desire and the want for it.
1626. 01:24:07 And then once they actually get access to it, once they get their kids phones or their friends'
1627. 01:24:11 phones, for example, they're not going to know how to use it correctly.
1628. 01:24:15 So I want to show them the right way to use it.
1629. 01:24:19 Another action item is to implement the out-of-office replies that he talks about.
1630. 01:24:23 So he mentions in the very long email section about how he uses an out-of-office to curb
1631. 01:24:31 people's expectations.
1632. 01:24:33 And actually, Chris Bailey does the same thing.
1633. 01:24:35 It's awesome.
1634. 01:24:36 He has an auto-responder that gets back and says, "Hey, I only checked my email at 3pm.
1635. 01:24:41 Once a day at 3pm, so if you need an immediate response, I'm sorry, but you're not going
1636. 01:24:45 to get it basically."
1637. 01:24:47 And I don't think I could do this with all my email accounts, but definitely some of
1638. 01:24:51 them, that makes a lot of sense.
1639. 01:24:53 And I think they could go a long way, just in curbing people's expectations as to when
1640. 01:24:58 I actually get back to them via email because ultimately I want to be in control of my
1641. 01:25:02 own email experience.
1642. 01:25:03 I don't want to feel like I'm stuck.
1643. 01:25:05 Another one I talked about was no email on my phone.
1644. 01:25:07 I'm going to do that even though it scares me to death.
1645. 01:25:12 And then the last one, we talked a little bit about sleep, but I have had actually, in my
1646. 01:25:16 possession, the sleep revolution for a long time, but never read it.
1647. 01:25:20 I actually bought it with you when we were at the max.conference at that bookshop.
1648. 01:25:24 Oh, that's right.
1649. 01:25:25 I remember this now.
1650. 01:25:26 I was like, "Why do I know the name of this book?
1651. 01:25:28 Like this sounds familiar, but I remember that now."
1652. 01:25:31 Yeah, because you were with me when I bought it.
1653. 01:25:33 But yeah, I want to go through that one and just understand more concretely everything
1654. 01:25:38 that goes on in terms of sleep.
1655. 01:25:41 And also I think that there is a lot of little things.
1656. 01:25:43 We talked about the blue screen stuff and there's some takeaways here, but my anticipation
1657. 01:25:48 is that with the sleep revolution, there's going to be a lot more practical tips on how
1658. 01:25:51 to get a better night's sleep, which I am excited to dive into.
1659. 01:25:56 And the sleep revolution is a pretty approachable from what I've heard way to do this.
1660. 01:26:02 I actually saw the other day, there is a course on how to sleep better.
1661. 01:26:08 That is $500.
1662. 01:26:11 And I cannot fathom somebody taking an online course on how to sleep better, but they have
1663. 01:26:19 like the price anchoring.
1664. 01:26:21 It's really interesting.
1665. 01:26:22 They have the graphic that says, "You could either spend $5,400 on a graduate level course
1666. 01:26:27 on how to sleep better or buy this course for $500."
1667. 01:26:32 Interesting.
1668. 01:26:33 But anyways, sleep revolution seems like a better option to make.
1669. 01:26:37 Makes sense.
1670. 01:26:38 It's a little cheaper.
1671. 01:26:39 Yeah, definitely.
1672. 01:26:42 So author style, I alluded to this earlier.
1673. 01:26:46 I don't know how many times I should have been keeping track, Mike.
1674. 01:26:51 I don't know how many times I got caught trying to read a sentence and noticing typos,
1675. 01:26:59 sentences that didn't make sense.
1676. 01:27:03 And I'm not a grammar Nazi.
1677. 01:27:04 I'm not one that usually calls this stuff out.
1678. 01:27:08 There were a lot of places where I just had a hard time reading it, not because the content
1679. 01:27:12 was difficult, but simply the writing style.
1680. 01:27:15 And frankly, the lack of editing was quite painful in some places.
1681. 01:27:21 Did you have that experience?
1682. 01:27:23 Yeah.
1683. 01:27:24 I mean, really the version of this book is a Kindle version.
1684. 01:27:29 I believe that the paperback version is a Create Space, which is Amazon's self-publishing
1685. 01:27:34 platform.
1686. 01:27:35 And it was like $30.
1687. 01:27:37 So I went with the Kindle book.
1688. 01:27:39 And in the Kindle book, they have links to things, but almost every time the link was
1689. 01:27:44 highlighting the wrong text.
1690. 01:27:45 Yeah.
1691. 01:27:46 You know, like he's got an email address and it's grabbing the email address, but also
1692. 01:27:50 like the three words before the email address and underlining it all is a link.
1693. 01:27:54 So that was really distracting.
1694. 01:27:55 And there was also some definite grammar issues.
1695. 01:27:59 It just seemed like he didn't work with an editor with the, which if he self published
1696. 01:28:03 it, you know, maybe that's the case.
1697. 01:28:04 And I'm sure if you went through my book, you'd see the same thing because that's a
1698. 01:28:07 process that I took.
1699. 01:28:09 But from a reader's perspective, it definitely was distracting.
1700. 01:28:13 I also mentioned that like he repeated a bunch of statistics a bunch of times.
1701. 01:28:18 This book has a ton of great information.
1702. 01:28:20 He's distilling 600 research papers into this book.
1703. 01:28:24 So I don't want to be too harsh on this, but it definitely could have been a lot shorter.
1704. 01:28:29 Like I mentioned, there's the different levels of the brain gains that he mentions.
1705. 01:28:36 And I felt like a lot of that was just saying the same things.
1706. 01:28:40 Not even different ways a lot of times, but restating the same statistics.
1707. 01:28:45 And it kind of felt to me like maybe he's got a blog where all of this stuff originated.
1708. 01:28:50 And then he combined it all into a book and didn't after he did that read it from beginning
1709. 01:28:56 to end to make sure that it flowed well.
1710. 01:28:58 Again, very minor, like it's not as big a deal as I'm probably making it out to be.
1711. 01:29:03 But that's kind of the approach that I got.
1712. 01:29:04 And then by the end, you know, it's 522 pages long.
1713. 01:29:07 It's a really long book.
1714. 01:29:09 But by the end, it makes you want to just finish the thing as opposed to like that's
1715. 01:29:13 when it should be climaxing.
1716. 01:29:15 That is when like he's good.
1717. 01:29:16 He should be in my opinion as a writer, making his strongest points.
1718. 01:29:19 Like you want to leave that positive note, that positive taste in the reader's mouth.
1719. 01:29:25 That's not what I got.
1720. 01:29:26 I got to the end.
1721. 01:29:27 I got to the page where it says, "You've reached the end.
1722. 01:29:29 You want to write this book."
1723. 01:29:30 And I was like, "Oh, yes."
1724. 01:29:33 So I said at the beginning, "This is the best and the worst book I've ever read."
1725. 01:29:37 That's why.
1726. 01:29:38 Tons of great information, tons of great takeaways.
1727. 01:29:40 But the author's style definitely, I don't know, it kind of graded on me towards...
1728. 01:29:49 Again, I don't want to sound mean.
1729. 01:29:51 I don't want to sound negative.
1730. 01:29:53 But it's a very factual based book.
1731. 01:29:57 So if you're looking for a lot of stylistic writing, that's not really here.
1732. 01:30:01 And then by the end, it's like, "Okay, I've heard this already."
1733. 01:30:05 So...
1734. 01:30:06 Yeah.
1735. 01:30:07 I got curious because I noticed enough just pure spelling mistakes that I was like, "Who
1736. 01:30:12 published this?"
1737. 01:30:14 This should not get through an editor.
1738. 01:30:16 He did have an editor, but it just felt like I was reading a second draft or something
1739. 01:30:20 like that.
1740. 01:30:21 It just didn't have the cleanliness of it.
1741. 01:30:24 But he did self-publish it.
1742. 01:30:25 I looked it up because there's no one claimed it on the external of the book.
1743. 01:30:31 Because I got the print.
1744. 01:30:32 Like I've got the physical book for it because that's how I read things.
1745. 01:30:36 But there was so many cases where, for example, the third section, he's got it all broken out
1746. 01:30:42 into three sections.
1747. 01:30:43 The third section was designed to help you figure out what do you do about all of the
1748. 01:30:49 chains that we put on ourselves and how we interact with all these issues.
1749. 01:30:54 I was super excited to get to that point because that's what we do is what do you do
1750. 01:30:58 with all this stuff?
1751. 01:31:01 I got to that point and then I realized, "Oh, he's just going to reiterate most of what
1752. 01:31:06 he said already and put words to the conclusions that the reader can grab automatically as
1753. 01:31:12 you go through the first part of it."
1754. 01:31:14 I literally think this book could be about a third as long as it really is.
1755. 01:31:19 There's so much of this that's just copy-paste almost and reiterate the same thing and say
1756. 01:31:25 things that don't need to be said.
1757. 01:31:28 There's a lot of it.
1758. 01:31:29 I was rather upset about the way that this was put together.
1759. 01:31:34 I think there's a ton of great information here.
1760. 01:31:36 I think you're right.
1761. 01:31:37 This has got a lot of value.
1762. 01:31:39 I'm glad to have read it.
1763. 01:31:41 The reading process was rather painful though.
1764. 01:31:43 Yeah, don't ever want to read it again.
1765. 01:31:45 Yeah, I don't know either.
1766. 01:31:47 Here to read it?
1767. 01:31:49 Yeah, I struggled with this because like I said, there's a lot of great information
1768. 01:31:52 in here and I got some very actionable takeaways which I think are going to be really good.
1769. 01:32:02 That being said, I invested a lot of time.
1770. 01:32:06 I read 522 pages which is a big ask and I don't know when I got done.
1771. 01:32:13 Like I said, I felt glad to have been done as opposed to glad to have read the book.
1772. 01:32:21 Great.
1773. 01:32:23 I would recommend it to people especially if they are interested in understanding the
1774. 01:32:28 science behind how the brain works.
1775. 01:32:31 But I don't know, I think I'm going to have to write it 3.5 which feels kind of negative
1776. 01:32:36 to me because we read a lot of great books and I usually write things 4 or 5 stars.
1777. 01:32:40 But yeah, it's a good book.
1778. 01:32:44 It's just a little bit hard to read and pretty repetitive.
1779. 01:32:47 So in my opinion, that's worth a 1.5 star docking I guess.
1780. 01:32:54 All right.
1781. 01:32:55 No, I'm going to put it in a 3.
1782. 01:32:58 So I'll make you look a little better.
1783. 01:32:59 How about that?
1784. 01:33:00 Yeah.
1785. 01:33:01 Part of my rationale is again, a lot of great information.
1786. 01:33:04 I think there are better books that could cover a lot of the similar information.
1787. 01:33:09 I think I've got at least one maybe two on our list for the future that might cover some
1788. 01:33:13 of the similar information.
1789. 01:33:16 But I think it might come at it in a better way.
1790. 01:33:18 Just my skimming of one in particular that I already have in my possession.
1791. 01:33:22 So I think there are other books out there that could maybe cover a lot of this just
1792. 01:33:27 in a better way.
1793. 01:33:30 So I don't think this is one I'm going to recommend to most folks.
1794. 01:33:33 I love having read it again.
1795. 01:33:35 I just am not sure that I don't think I could with a good conscience say, "This is a great
1796. 01:33:41 book.
1797. 01:33:42 I think you should pick it up."
1798. 01:33:43 I really don't think I can say that.
1799. 01:33:44 Yeah, I agree.
1800. 01:33:45 If someone comes to me and says, "Hey, you got a book on brain science that can really
1801. 01:33:50 help me understand the reasons why I am or am not productive, I'm probably not reaching
1802. 01:33:58 for this one to give it to them."
1803. 01:34:00 Yeah, I'm sure there are some others and I'm hoping to read them soon.
1804. 01:34:06 So the next book on the list is one that I picked out.
1805. 01:34:09 It is the Checklist Manifesto by a tool Goon Day.
1806. 01:34:14 I'm not sure if that's how you say it.
1807. 01:34:17 But I actually just started this one last night.
1808. 01:34:20 I read the introduction.
1809. 01:34:21 I think this one's going to be really interesting.
1810. 01:34:23 Nice.
1811. 01:34:24 I'm looking forward to this one having taken this part-time job because I'm guessing I'm
1812. 01:34:29 going to put a lot of checklists in place.
1813. 01:34:31 Nice.
1814. 01:34:33 The one after that is, "CUBE Q," the question behind the question.
1815. 01:34:41 There's a series of about four or five books that I'm probably going to sprinkle in here.
1816. 01:34:46 If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey, this is one of the books that he requires his new
1817. 01:34:52 hires to read before they start.
1818. 01:34:54 He has a series of books that he makes new people read before they join the organization.
1819. 01:35:01 This is one of them.
1820. 01:35:02 I've wanted to read those books for quite some time.
1821. 01:35:05 I figured I'd make you read them with me.
1822. 01:35:06 If you're going to make me read the sleep revolution, I'll make you read Dave Ramsey's
1823. 01:35:09 books.
1824. 01:35:10 That's cool.
1825. 01:35:11 That's cool.
1826. 01:35:13 If you have any books that you'd like to make us read, you can recommend them on the
1827. 01:35:17 website.
1828. 01:35:18 Just go to bookworm.fm and there will be a button on the sidebar on the right to recommend
1829. 01:35:23 a book.
1830. 01:35:25 We've got a whole bunch of them that people have recommended and we're starting to get
1831. 01:35:29 to some of them.
1832. 01:35:30 Brainchains, what we did today, was actually a recommendation.
1833. 01:35:33 If you have a book that you think we should read, go there and recommend it for us.
1834. 01:35:38 There's also a list of books that we've read and are upcoming.
1835. 01:35:42 If you go to bookworm.fm/list, you can see all of the books that we've read so far, the
1836. 01:35:47 ones that are planned and then also some of the ones that are recommended by listeners
1837. 01:35:51 just like you.
1838. 01:35:52 Sometimes, I think it's interesting to see what people think about a certain book.
1839. 01:35:59 We don't really have a good self-hosted mechanism for folks to...
1840. 01:36:05 This is what I thought about your episode.
1841. 01:36:07 We don't have a self-hosted place to do that.
1842. 01:36:10 We've been using instead as just the iTunes review process.
1843. 01:36:13 There are a number of folks who have posted out there to let us know what they thought
1844. 01:36:16 of either a specific episode or the podcast itself.
1845. 01:36:20 If you have some feedback on what we've been talking about here, you don't like our recommendations
1846. 01:36:25 or you think we were too harsh on brainchains, go over there and let us know.
1847. 01:36:29 That's a good place to share that information because we do keep up with those reviews on
1848. 01:36:32 iTunes.
1849. 01:36:33 Thanks, everyone, for joining us.
1850. 01:36:36 If you read the book, thanks for joining in our podcast Book Club.
1851. 01:36:40 We'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.
1852. 01:36:42 [BLANK_AUDIO]