166: The Future is Analog by David Sax

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4. 00:00:12 So I got a fancy new thing to show you, Mike.
5. 00:00:15 Ooh, let's see.
6. 00:00:17 And it's going to be a little unfortunate for the actual podcast, but I got this really
7. 00:00:22 cool thing that my wife made me, which is a leather cover for my lake term.
8. 00:00:31 And she actually made this, which is quite the thing.
9. 00:00:37 The part that I like about this, I'll probably hear some of that on the thing, is that it's
10. 00:00:42 got like a pin loop underneath of the clasp on the thing.
11. 00:00:47 Very nice.
12. 00:00:49 Very much a fan of this thing because she knows how obsessed I am about this.
13. 00:00:55 And I am attempting to see if I can get her to make some more of them so that she could
14. 00:01:00 sell them.
15. 00:01:01 That's why I'm bringing it up because she wants to know if people are interested in it.
16. 00:01:05 Yeah, Blake mentions like my wife has been posting it on Instagram and she's been working
17. 00:01:09 on it.
18. 00:01:10 So anyway, it's kind of a cool thing, but I'm pretty stoked about it.
19. 00:01:15 She's gotten very good at the leather craft, I will say.
20. 00:01:18 Until very, very excited to see her doing that.
21. 00:01:22 It's kind of fun to watch.
22. 00:01:23 But anyway.
23. 00:01:24 Yeah, I saw a couple of pictures come across too.
24. 00:01:26 This looks great.
25. 00:01:27 Yeah.
26. 00:01:28 I didn't see the finished product previous to the big reveal here, but that looks really
27. 00:01:32 nice.
28. 00:01:33 Yeah, it's fun.
29. 00:01:34 It's kind of cool.
30. 00:01:35 So I'm going to see if I can get her to make another one, put it up for sale.
31. 00:01:41 So what happens?
32. 00:01:42 So I'll let Carol and Blake know first, apparently.
33. 00:01:46 So there you go.
34. 00:01:47 You could do, there's a guy who wrote a book, The Antinet, I think.
35. 00:01:55 It's basically like an analog Zettelcaste book.
36. 00:01:59 And it's like 700 pages or something and you can only buy it directly from the guy who
37. 00:02:03 wrote it.
38. 00:02:04 Okay, yeah.
39. 00:02:06 It was recommended to us by somebody in the club.
40. 00:02:10 Okay.
41. 00:02:11 I bought the book, so I'm on this guy's mailing list now and he had a analog Zettelcaste and
42. 00:02:19 that he was selling to his email list.
43. 00:02:21 And it was the one and only.
44. 00:02:23 Like this is the only one that he was going to make.
45. 00:02:25 And he sold it for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, I forget what it actually went
46. 00:02:29 for because I had absolutely no interest in it.
47. 00:02:33 But it was interesting.
48. 00:02:34 The framing was like, this is the one.
49. 00:02:36 So if you want it, click here to sign up and then I'll let you know when it goes for sale
50. 00:02:40 and you got like an hour to get it, otherwise moving to the next person, you could do the
51. 00:02:43 same thing with this.
52. 00:02:44 I suppose we could.
53. 00:02:47 I know there's going to be like a minimum cost on it just because of like it's real
54. 00:02:52 leather.
55. 00:02:53 So the thing costs quite a bit.
56. 00:02:54 So just a forewarning, but it's pretty cool.
57. 00:02:57 Right.
58. 00:02:58 It's pretty cool.
59. 00:02:59 Let's see, I'm looking at our notes, Mike, and we have a very long list of follow up
60. 00:03:06 action items this time around.
61. 00:03:08 Yeah, I don't see anything on here, but I could have sworn you had one.
62. 00:03:13 So now I'm confused.
63. 00:03:15 Let me go back and, you know, we didn't capture anything last time.
64. 00:03:20 We must have, I remember reviewing that episode and publishing it last week while I was on
65. 00:03:25 vacation, which is part of the reason that I messed up the, the pro feed.
66. 00:03:30 Paul, sorry about that.
67. 00:03:31 Yeah, I remember we talked about how the action was really just rethink your creative process.
68. 00:03:37 But I, in back of my mind, I had this thing that you had one small action item, but no.
69. 00:03:43 Well, that was quick.
70. 00:03:45 It did good.
71. 00:03:46 All right.
72. 00:03:47 Awesome.
73. 00:03:48 Follow up complete check that brings us to today's book.
74. 00:03:55 That's okay.
75. 00:03:56 We're going to, we're going to need the extra time for this one.
76. 00:03:58 Possibly.
77. 00:03:59 Yeah.
78. 00:04:00 So this will be an interesting conversation and probably very animated at times.
79. 00:04:06 The future is analog.
80. 00:04:07 This is by David Sacks.
81. 00:04:09 He is also the author of the revenge of analog, which I read a few years ago.
82. 00:04:14 And this is, you think about it as kind of a, a debrief of the human experience of what
83. 00:04:25 it was like to go through lockdown during the pandemic and why some things worked and
84. 00:04:31 why some things didn't, probably a little more heavily waited on why things didn't
85. 00:04:37 go the way we thought they should.
86. 00:04:40 I found out by reading this that David Sacks is a little more opinionated about things
87. 00:04:46 than I recall from his other book that I've read.
88. 00:04:49 He's written, I think, four now.
89. 00:04:52 And this one definitely struck me as he has lots of opinions.
90. 00:04:57 The other is not so much.
91. 00:04:59 So is what it is.
92. 00:05:01 But what was your initial take on the book, Mike?
93. 00:05:05 Well, I have to say that I was really excited to read this one because the revenge of analog
94. 00:05:11 had been on my radar for a while.
95. 00:05:15 However, this was basically, and I told you so for everything that happened in COVID.
96. 00:05:23 And that was unfortunate.
97. 00:05:27 I kind of wish you would pick the other one.
98. 00:05:30 I will say the other one compared to this one, I really enjoyed the other one in a way that
99. 00:05:38 explained why in certain specific analog areas, why is writing with your hand a very different
100. 00:05:46 experience than writing with a keyboard?
101. 00:05:49 Why is a vinyl record a better sound than listening to a digital streaming service?
102. 00:05:59 And though the quality is technically worse.
103. 00:06:01 Like, why is that?
104. 00:06:03 Why do we want that?
105. 00:06:04 That was the revenge of analog.
106. 00:06:06 This is not that.
107. 00:06:08 If we just jump right into this, like in the introduction, he's basically pitching the beginnings
108. 00:06:15 of the COVID pandemic and how we were sent home.
109. 00:06:22 And then everybody had to quarantine how he went up to, I think it was his mother-in-law's
110. 00:06:29 leg home or his mother's leg home.
111. 00:06:31 I forget which one it was.
112. 00:06:32 They went north to this retreat home of sorts.
113. 00:06:37 And that's where they did their first stint of the pandemic in quarantine.
114. 00:06:44 And then basically what was the experience of going through these different areas?
115. 00:06:50 And he has the book laid out by going through an entire week, which is basically Monday,
116. 00:06:57 Tuesday, Wednesday through Sunday, and picks a different topic to discuss for each of those,
117. 00:07:03 which is kind of somewhat based on what you would typically do on that day of the week.
118. 00:07:08 So it's an interesting endeavor to work through all of this.
119. 00:07:13 One of the things that I wrote down from the introduction is he has some quotes and a little
120. 00:07:20 excerpt from what would be considered, I guess, a long essay called "The Machine Stops" by
121. 00:07:27 E.M. Forster.
122. 00:07:28 Have you read this?
123. 00:07:29 Do you know what this is?
124. 00:07:31 I have not.
125. 00:07:32 So I have this and I read this.
126. 00:07:35 It's probably been at least four years ago now.
127. 00:07:38 And it's a very quick read.
128. 00:07:41 I read it in one sitting.
129. 00:07:43 The premise of that particular essay, I'll call it, is that it is in the future when people
130. 00:07:53 basically create an entire machine that treats the air that they live in, it brings video
131. 00:08:01 feeds to them, it brings their food to them, it washes them, it does everything for them.
132. 00:08:08 And they live underground because the air above ground is unhealthy and everything revolves
133. 00:08:15 around this machine.
134. 00:08:16 The machine even fixes itself.
135. 00:08:17 If it has problems, it has these robots that come through and fix it.
136. 00:08:21 And over time, people are starting to try to escape it.
137. 00:08:27 And there are a few groups of people who are going up for air to try to acclimate their
138. 00:08:32 bodies to the real air so that they're not going to die if they escape to that.
139. 00:08:38 But basically at the end of the essay, the machine breaks down and stops working.
140. 00:08:44 And then the question is what happens?
141. 00:08:46 But he ends that essay with saying the machine has stopped, then what?
142. 00:08:53 And then what isn't explained?
143. 00:08:55 That's the end of the essay.
144. 00:08:58 Is the backdrop of going into this, that's the concept and the forward thinking ideology
145. 00:09:05 that he is pitching or has been pitched to us.
146. 00:09:10 That's the kind of the groundwork that he's laying out in this introduction.
147. 00:09:14 It's like this concept of we're going to build this digital future, this machine, if
148. 00:09:18 you will, that can do everything for us and make everything better.
149. 00:09:24 That utopia, is it something that we should strive for?
150. 00:09:29 Time we're done with this.
151. 00:09:30 We'll have a very clean answer to what his opinion is on that.
152. 00:09:35 Right.
153. 00:09:36 Remind that the description you were just sharing reminded me of Wally.
154. 00:09:44 I don't know if that's exactly what you're going for with that.
155. 00:09:49 But yeah, I think this is a bitter old man yells at cloud sort of situation.
156. 00:09:55 Yes, yes.
157. 00:09:57 So for context, I was excited about this book because I feel like we read The Shallows by
158. 00:10:04 Nicholas Carr and I made the same comment we read through that one that this just sounds
159. 00:10:09 like a lot of complaining.
160. 00:10:10 And yeah, there's problems with this stuff, but I don't think it's, I don't know, it just
161. 00:10:14 feels negative.
162. 00:10:15 Like I don't appreciate that.
163. 00:10:16 So David Sacks, Revenge of Analog, I was really excited about that.
164. 00:10:20 And then yeah, this ends up being like, these are all the problems with COVID.
165. 00:10:24 Like we all went through it.
166. 00:10:25 We understand the problems with COVID.
167. 00:10:27 No one is arguing at this point.
168. 00:10:28 Yeah, let's continue to just do things digitally.
169. 00:10:32 So it's kind of framed as like, I don't know if this is intentional or not, but like, yeah,
170. 00:10:37 I told you so, right?
171. 00:10:38 See how smart.
172. 00:10:40 Yeah.
173. 00:10:42 And it's, I don't know, it's unfortunate.
174. 00:10:44 I like the approach with the different chapters for the different sections.
175. 00:10:49 Not sure it actually works.
176. 00:10:51 Maybe by the end of the conversation, I'll have made a decision before we get into style
177. 00:10:56 and rating because each one of these, it feels like he's grabbing snippets of other
178. 00:11:00 books that we have read, which speak to these things.
179. 00:11:04 Like he talks about Cal Newport, slow productivity and the work one.
180. 00:11:08 He talks about, let's see.
181. 00:11:11 There were a couple other specific ones.
182. 00:11:15 He mentioned Sherry Turkle before, some like reclaiming conversation.
183. 00:11:23 He talked about blanking on the other ones.
184. 00:11:26 They were like three or four different ones.
185. 00:11:28 Basically, every time we went through a chapter, I was like, oh, he's referencing this other
186. 00:11:32 book that we read, which is like a deep dive on this, which is sort of what we just talked
187. 00:11:37 about in, I forget if there's a recent book where like, oh, we didn't really get deep
188. 00:11:41 enough yet.
189. 00:11:42 Slow productivity hasn't been written.
190. 00:11:44 Yeah, I realize that.
191. 00:11:45 But that's like a concept that Cal's been talking about for years with like the deep
192. 00:11:49 work and stuff like that.
193. 00:11:51 So I don't know.
194. 00:11:54 I guess it makes sense to tackle analog in all these different domains.
195. 00:12:00 But yeah, maybe we just jump into these one by one and maybe you can change my mind about
196. 00:12:07 some of this stuff.
197. 00:12:08 Fair enough.
198. 00:12:09 Yeah, so let's jump into the first one.
199. 00:12:12 And I'll do my best to kind of explain some of the background for each of these.
200. 00:12:19 But the first one is Monday.
201. 00:12:21 The thing that people do on Monday is they go back to work for the week, right?
202. 00:12:25 So he talks about work and working from home.
203. 00:12:31 And this I think could be interesting knowing that you work from home.
204. 00:12:36 I certainly do not.
205. 00:12:38 And I have worked from home extensively in the past.
206. 00:12:41 But what he gets at is that whenever people went into lockdown and went home to work,
207. 00:12:49 like people bought the cameras, they bought the microphones, they did all the things.
208. 00:12:53 But sitting on Zoom meetings all day long, technically you got productivity done.
209. 00:13:03 That was with a lot of stats.
210. 00:13:05 If you remember all the news articles, productivity has skyrocketed.
211. 00:13:09 The question mark that he poses is how are you defining that term?
212. 00:13:15 Because there are a lot of places that would say that their productivity has dropped, if
213. 00:13:20 not completely stopped.
214. 00:13:22 And that the technicality of getting things accomplished typically would include responding
215. 00:13:32 to Slack messages, doing email, and sitting on Zoom.
216. 00:13:37 That would qualify as getting work done.
217. 00:13:40 But the creative side of it, which we've talked about a lot lately, is the creative process.
218. 00:13:46 Areas where they had that as a focal point would just completely fail and had all sorts
219. 00:13:52 of issues.
220. 00:13:54 And he talks a little bit about why that is.
221. 00:13:57 But I'm curious what your thoughts are on Mike.
222. 00:13:59 Some of this is a big problem working from home is terrible concept.
223. 00:14:05 Knowing that you work from home, how did you take this, dare I ask?
224. 00:14:11 An introvert working from home.
225. 00:14:14 Let's frame that.
226. 00:14:15 Fair enough.
227. 00:14:17 So I recognize that there are issues with just being remote.
228. 00:14:23 And there are a lot of organizations that they were forced to go home.
229. 00:14:30 They had an office previously and they have to rethink how they do things.
230. 00:14:35 So that's a different conversation than a lot of the work experience that I have had,
231. 00:14:41 which has been primarily remote before the pandemic.
232. 00:14:46 So I appreciate the fact that some people had to just completely figure this out from
233. 00:14:51 scratch.
234. 00:14:53 That is where things went awry, I feel.
235. 00:14:57 I don't think it's necessarily impossible to have a productive remote work experience.
236. 00:15:03 I've been doing that for the last several years.
237. 00:15:07 Even the job I took with the day job now, that is completely remote.
238. 00:15:14 The thing when you're doing remote, though, is that you do still need to have, and I do
239. 00:15:19 emphasize need.
240. 00:15:22 If you are going to really function together as a team, you need human interaction.
241. 00:15:27 And so the way this has worked previously is every couple of months, a recorder with
242. 00:15:34 Asian efficiency, every cycle with Blonk Media, I would fly to the location and we would just
243. 00:15:43 hang out and do our quarterly planning.
244. 00:15:45 Like there's some work stuff that happens there.
245. 00:15:47 But the majority of it is just you build relationships with people and you can't really quantify
246. 00:15:54 how that helps all the other work that you do together.
247. 00:15:58 But it is necessary, I feel.
248. 00:16:01 I don't think you have to do it on a set schedule, but people, they do need that connection.
249. 00:16:10 When you don't have that and then you couple that with people who don't know how to work
250. 00:16:15 remote, you have a terrible situation.
251. 00:16:18 I remember working with Sean and doing a focus course call with some people and they were
252. 00:16:25 complaining about their working remote and their bosses basically, the way that they handled
253. 00:16:33 the situation was everybody worked remote and the C-level executives all had their eight
254. 00:16:39 hours of meetings every day and they required everybody to be there so that they were heard
255. 00:16:44 and then they logged off and they, "Okay, great.
256. 00:16:46 We got a lot done today and everyone else was freaking out because they were also expected
257. 00:16:50 to continue to do all the other, crank all the widgets that were required for their job."
258. 00:16:56 Now they had to learn how to do that off hours.
259. 00:16:59 So definitely like complete lack of empathy there in certain situations and I think the
260. 00:17:06 situation could facilitate that if you're not careful.
261. 00:17:10 That's really a working with jerks problem.
262. 00:17:13 Those were issues that existed before the pandemic and they just were hidden behind some
263. 00:17:20 analog process.
264. 00:17:22 I think anyone who's smart, who cares, is able to overcome those obstacles but that
265. 00:17:29 doesn't mean that that's a lot of people's experience.
266. 00:17:31 You're going to fall into that stuff if people don't care and a lot of people don't care.
267. 00:17:36 Yeah.
268. 00:17:37 I know that when we went into the lockdown period, I was one of those people that didn't
269. 00:17:44 really affect at all because I was at the church trying to build all the equipment and
270. 00:17:49 the gear for the live streaming and stuff which was the lifeblood of the church at the time.
271. 00:17:54 There was one particular day, I remember very vividly because my boss decided we were going
272. 00:18:01 to do our normal staff meeting like we did typically and so we jumped on Zoom and I was
273. 00:18:09 at the building, everybody else was at home.
274. 00:18:11 I still had a lot of stuff I needed to get done so I put in my wireless earbuds and then
275. 00:18:16 was sometimes in front of the camera, sometimes not but I left my mic on because there were
276. 00:18:20 ways I could mute and unmute it while I was moving around so if they asked me a question
277. 00:18:24 I could respond even though they couldn't see me.
278. 00:18:26 Blah, blah, blah.
279. 00:18:27 Everyone lasted like an hour and a half and you're instantly smiling because everybody
280. 00:18:32 knows an hour and a half on Zoom is torture and there were lots of, okay let's go around
281. 00:18:38 the room and like all of the pauses and the waiting and the talking was just, it was hard
282. 00:18:46 and I think everybody felt that and he gets into some of this here in this chapter just
283. 00:18:52 because there's a lot of stuff that happens in between like those Zoom calls like if you
284. 00:18:58 had like one a day it's probably fine.
285. 00:19:00 When it's all day then there's so much that you're not seeing and that you're not experiencing
286. 00:19:07 together.
287. 00:19:08 Like we're doing this recording over Zoom, right?
288. 00:19:10 So like I can see Mike, I can see his head, I can see his headphones, I can see some of
289. 00:19:15 what's behind him in a bookcase but I know what's to his left in that room because I've
290. 00:19:21 been in that room before but it's probably either clean or dirty or things have been
291. 00:19:28 moved around, who knows?
292. 00:19:29 Like things could be different than what I remember them as but he can see it right
293. 00:19:33 now, right?
294. 00:19:34 So like you can see that Mike but I can't see it so you couldn't reference something
295. 00:19:38 on say the table because I can't see it.
296. 00:19:42 It would be a whole process of you getting it to show it to me, right?
297. 00:19:45 So we don't have a truly shared experience because we're not in the same room.
298. 00:19:49 Like you have no idea that I have security cameras sitting on the floor in front of me
299. 00:19:53 but if you were in this room together you would know that instantly.
300. 00:19:56 Like that sort of thing changes the entire environment.
301. 00:20:00 So like yes we're on a video call together but you're only catching a very small subset
302. 00:20:05 of the communication and the experience together.
303. 00:20:11 That's the part that's missing.
304. 00:20:12 Now expand that to if you're in a creative work environment, silly dumb stuff like you're
305. 00:20:19 commute as much as we bemoan those is actually very valuable because you like he calls out
306. 00:20:25 you tend to see a lot of small things and they help inform some maybe decision making
307. 00:20:30 things that you're working through or it gives you an idea for a specific article or an architecture
308. 00:20:36 idea like it gives you a lot of ideas.
309. 00:20:40 So being able to go through some of those seemingly mundane processes that you feel
310. 00:20:46 like are a waste of time actually are helpful.
311. 00:20:49 We just don't necessarily realize that.
312. 00:20:52 To me that was a very important part of this particular chapter that and what was the other
313. 00:20:57 one the craft piece which he had towards the end of this.
314. 00:21:02 He started talking about like craft beer but ultimately like if you give people the concept
315. 00:21:08 was that if you give people the freedom and trust them to do their job help them to hone
316. 00:21:13 their craft they'll do a good job.
317. 00:21:16 But if you're constantly wanting to do check-ins and do meetings and constantly keep an eye
318. 00:21:20 on them and manage them and not give them that freedom then craft tends to fail or fall
319. 00:21:27 apart.
320. 00:21:28 So anyway work from home doesn't always work Mike.
321. 00:21:35 I feel like this one the book that we've covered that speaks to this topic is digital
322. 00:21:41 body language.
323. 00:21:42 Yeah that's true.
324. 00:21:45 Because you're right we don't have the shared context.
325. 00:21:48 I don't think that's completely necessary.
326. 00:21:52 What you really need is alignment on the rules of engagement and that's where like when you're
327. 00:21:57 coming from we used to meet in an office and now we're doing this virtually and what do
328. 00:22:01 we do.
329. 00:22:02 Like that's where you have the big gaps in the zoom call that lasts an hour and a half.
330. 00:22:08 But it doesn't have to last an hour and a half.
331. 00:22:09 I mean we do daily stand-ups with the day job and there is a very specific format that
332. 00:22:14 we follow.
333. 00:22:15 And even though we have 12 team members we're done in 15 minutes where people share this
334. 00:22:20 is what I'm working on.
335. 00:22:22 This is where I'm stuck.
336. 00:22:23 We discuss real briefly how we get that person unstuck.
337. 00:22:27 But everybody kind of knows like if I'm stuck with something that I'm waiting on Joe for
338. 00:22:31 I'm going to bring that up in the huddle and no one else is going to speak at that moment.
339. 00:22:36 Joe is going to respond and he's going to say this is where it's at or I will get to
340. 00:22:40 that right after the call.
341. 00:22:43 By end of day this will be done you know that kind of stuff.
342. 00:22:47 So it's sort of like dancing I guess.
343. 00:22:50 You got a there's give and take there.
344. 00:22:52 You have to recognize when it's your turn to do something and when it's not.
345. 00:23:00 And what he's describing painfully in all of these chapters is the video awkwardness
346. 00:23:06 of all these different situations.
347. 00:23:07 And he's right and a lot of them it's just like you can't do a book club virtually maybe
348. 00:23:14 you can because we do that.
349. 00:23:15 But like the one that he's describing where everybody is close friends and part of it
350. 00:23:22 is that they're enjoying some alcoholic beverages together.
351. 00:23:27 And so like that changes the interactions like of course that's something totally different
352. 00:23:32 than a video we stream on YouTube.
353. 00:23:36 But that's what you're after with that then yeah you have to take some some intention
354. 00:23:42 and consideration and crafting the environment where you want that sort of stuff to happen.
355. 00:23:48 Now that doesn't appeal to me at all to be honest.
356. 00:23:51 So I don't know he's bemoaning the fact that he's lost this kind of stuff.
357. 00:23:57 I'm like yeah it's cool.
358. 00:24:00 That's where I was with the work thing I'm like yeah actually there's a lot of benefits
359. 00:24:03 to working remote and I really enjoy those and I feel like I've been able to navigate
360. 00:24:08 that stuff.
361. 00:24:09 That's part of it is also like this is the new book right?
362. 00:24:12 And at this and this there's a lot of benefit to reading those timely books a lot of times.
363. 00:24:18 However this one just the exact moment that we're in and the process that he went through
364. 00:24:22 to write this and the fact that this is yet another book talking about how COVID ruined
365. 00:24:28 our lives like I'm ready to be done with this.
366. 00:24:30 Yes.
367. 00:24:31 And specifically as it pertains to work like can we just figure this out and move forward
368. 00:24:36 you know but it was what it was.
369. 00:24:40 It is what it is.
370. 00:24:42 Let's just move on please.
371. 00:24:45 And to be fair I didn't realize that was the whole point of this because everything that
372. 00:24:48 I had read or seen about this didn't touch that at all.
373. 00:24:54 So I was like huh we're really going to have an entire book debriefing the pandemic.
374. 00:25:00 I was not ready for that but that's what we got.
375. 00:25:04 Let's go relive that again.
376. 00:25:05 Yeah here we go.
377. 00:25:06 We're going to go back in time and live all the horrible again.
378. 00:25:10 That said let's go to school.
379. 00:25:14 So the next day or chapter it's Tuesday where he talks about school.
380. 00:25:21 And it's I would say pretty similar to the work conversation in that he's showing what
381. 00:25:31 the experience was like for kids.
382. 00:25:34 Because this is an area like in every chapter it's always talking about how there's like
383. 00:25:39 this promise of a digital future that would then be better than where we're at right now.
384. 00:25:44 So like that's always the pitch.
385. 00:25:45 And that's been a big pitch in the world of education for a long time.
386. 00:25:49 Like iPads for every student you know all of this digital you know learning from home
387. 00:25:56 concept is something that's been pushed and advocated for for many years.
388. 00:26:01 And covid kind of forced us to go full steam ahead on that.
389. 00:26:05 Sent everybody home.
390. 00:26:07 Parents had to get involved with their kids education on a daily basis when they were
391. 00:26:13 not necessarily used to doing that.
392. 00:26:17 And it's it's one where he's explaining that kids were then able to do school.
393. 00:26:24 How did he put this kids were able to do school where how and whenever they wanted.
394. 00:26:31 But my question whenever he made that comment was that who's going to teach the kids the
395. 00:26:36 self discipline to do that.
396. 00:26:39 Because you and I as adults struggle with that self discipline when we're working from
397. 00:26:43 home.
398. 00:26:44 He just finished a whole chapter on how that's hard to do.
399. 00:26:49 To do the work from home thing all day every day.
400. 00:26:53 And then he turns around and goes into the like kids can do this.
401. 00:26:58 They don't have the experience or the learning to to know how to manage themselves in a way
402. 00:27:04 to make that work.
403. 00:27:06 So then he tells the fun stories of his son in kindergarten doing zoom for many hours
404. 00:27:11 a day.
405. 00:27:12 But I have no interest in helping a kindergarten or do school online for an entire day let alone
406. 00:27:20 months on end like that just does not.
407. 00:27:22 Yep.
408. 00:27:23 That sounds terrifying to me.
409. 00:27:25 So school at home.
410. 00:27:27 No good.
411. 00:27:29 Unless you homeschool.
412. 00:27:31 It's true.
413. 00:27:32 It's true.
414. 00:27:33 The virtual school I should say maybe I should clarify that.
415. 00:27:37 Yeah.
416. 00:27:38 There you go.
417. 00:27:39 Since we homeschool.
418. 00:27:40 There's a ton to unpack in this tiny little chapter and he's not able to speak to all
419. 00:27:46 of this stuff effectively just in the format that he chose.
420. 00:27:50 So I recognize that.
421. 00:27:51 I don't want to attack a whole bunch of things here.
422. 00:27:55 But this one specifically I feel like I don't know.
423. 00:27:59 I've got a real good picture in my head of what this was actually like.
424. 00:28:03 One of my guys in my discipleship group is a teacher for fifth grade locally and he kind
425. 00:28:13 of switched careers five or six years ago because he believed that he should have been
426. 00:28:17 a teacher.
427. 00:28:18 He's like he was working with the family landscaping business sitting in the school parking lot
428. 00:28:24 because they were snow plowing in the winter watching the teachers go in.
429. 00:28:27 He's like that should be me.
430. 00:28:28 Went back to school.
431. 00:28:29 Got his degree.
432. 00:28:30 He's a teacher now and he's won last couple of years like the teacher of the county award.
433. 00:28:36 He's really really good at it.
434. 00:28:38 So when this happened like he was distraught because the school that he teaches at I mean
435. 00:28:43 you've been in our area we're not like inner city or anything but the school that he teaches
436. 00:28:48 at tends to be the school where there's a lot at risk kids.
437. 00:28:52 So he knows that like these fifth graders that he has they're coming from broken homes.
438. 00:28:56 A lot of them don't have dads at home stuff like that.
439. 00:28:59 He's like that's not a good situation.
440. 00:29:00 They can't be home alone all day every day.
441. 00:29:05 They're not going to do well in that scenario that environment.
442. 00:29:10 So he was doing everything that he could like he would drive to people's homes and talk
443. 00:29:15 to him through the screen door you know as soon as he was able to do that like he was
444. 00:29:20 going above and beyond working 18 hour days just to try to physically wherever and however
445. 00:29:27 he could connect with his kids beyond the screen.
446. 00:29:30 Right because he knew that the screen was not going to not going to translate.
447. 00:29:36 Now that being said there's so I guess I say that to say like there are some problems
448. 00:29:42 that go a lot deeper here than David Sachs talked about.
449. 00:29:47 There are also he kind of touched on this a little bit but kind of glanced over it that
450. 00:29:51 there are a lot of kids who don't have access to technology and they're the in the worst
451. 00:29:57 of the worst environments and those are the ones who suffered the most.
452. 00:30:01 One of the churches that I follow I've not actually been there but there's a church in
453. 00:30:05 California called the Dream Center Matthew Barnett and they created this whole big open
454. 00:30:11 air building during the pandemic and got a whole bunch of technology and so it's got
455. 00:30:20 like one of those coverings so it's in the shade but it's outside so it follows protocols
456. 00:30:25 and stuff and kids can just show up and do their school there right because they don't
457. 00:30:30 have that sort of stuff at home.
458. 00:30:32 I really appreciate people who are able to see the real needs of people like that you
459. 00:30:38 know that the stuff with his with his son like that's funny right but it's really not
460. 00:30:41 that big a deal compared to what other people have went through.
461. 00:30:45 I also have experience with the family business and that's educational software for primarily
462. 00:30:51 special education so he talks in this chapter about how a big part of learning is like this
463. 00:30:57 social emotional learning and that he is 100% right on that.
464. 00:31:03 The social emotional aspect actually is more important than the hard skill stuff that you
465. 00:31:08 will learn in the classroom and that's what it was diluted down to when you all you had
466. 00:31:14 was the virtual stuff.
467. 00:31:16 However, the social emotional learning stuff this has always been an issue for a certain
468. 00:31:22 percent of the population even when they were meeting together in person primarily the populations
469. 00:31:28 that the family business served.
470. 00:31:31 If you've got a lower functioning individual they typically don't have these social emotional
471. 00:31:36 skills but these are the skills that they need to function independently how you're
472. 00:31:40 going to learn those you got to learn those right.
473. 00:31:43 So I mean we've got whole lines of products for the family business that are built on
474. 00:31:48 this concept of video modeling right so there are certain populations that the only way they
475. 00:31:54 learn these skills is through a screen because you can't put them in that situation they'll
476. 00:32:00 freak out right but if you've got a lower functioning individual who is severely autistic
477. 00:32:09 let's say right and they go into a grocery store to do their shopping the amount of noise
478. 00:32:16 and everything that's going on there like that can cause a panic attack but if you can
479. 00:32:21 practice that ahead of time you can go do what you need to do and you can be around
480. 00:32:27 other people and you can interact and you can leave and go back home and that's a win
481. 00:32:33 right so that's like we've got whole products that are kind of built on that model like
482. 00:32:37 you can watch these videos you can understand the proper way to behave in a certain situation
483. 00:32:42 and then when you see it you recognize it and it's generalizable transfers different
484. 00:32:47 domains like that's a really powerful concept so again like there's a whole bunch here
485. 00:32:55 I don't think he really spoke to it effectively the one tidbit I got from this is the thing
486. 00:33:01 about Finland's education system I like this there are a couple this is good couple things
487. 00:33:06 you see called out here but how and why it's always in the top in the world rankings not
488. 00:33:10 maybe the the top but near the top their academic instruction starts later there's almost no
489. 00:33:16 homework there's no standardized testing and teachers have autonomy they have the trust
490. 00:33:21 of the organization that whatever they're going to do is going to be right for the kids
491. 00:33:27 that's awesome I love that kind of stuff and that that's the thing that reminds me a lot
492. 00:33:31 of homeschooling honestly I mean not that you have no process but that's the thing people
493. 00:33:36 are always worried about is like well you're not a certified teacher how you're going to
494. 00:33:40 make sure your kids have all these skills I'm like don't worry about it they're going
495. 00:33:42 to they're going to be better off and that's hard for some people to understand yeah that's
496. 00:33:48 that's tough for people to grasp it was uncanny to me how many people helped their kids with
497. 00:33:54 the virtual school and then the next semester or the next school year started homeschooling
498. 00:34:02 like just just done like if I'm gonna be teaching my kids anyway I might as well do
499. 00:34:06 all of it like that was the mentality so it completely changed things for them I know
500. 00:34:12 one of the quotes that he had in here I think it was his daughter said that the the digital
501. 00:34:17 virtual school is all of the work and none of the fun because they just didn't have the
502. 00:34:22 interactions with their fellow classmates and I know that like for a number of students
503. 00:34:28 that's a good thing like they're in that category where like that was not a pleasant
504. 00:34:34 experience so going home helps so there there are those but broadly speaking it became a
505. 00:34:43 bigger issue which kind of leads us into the next piece here which is one Wednesday
506. 00:34:49 where we talk about commerce this one actually opened my eyes a little bit to some things
507. 00:34:54 that were going on that I don't think I really knew about like I knew some of it but not all
508. 00:35:00 of it the biggest part of that he's talking about here and he kind of talks about this
509. 00:35:05 in the school and you kind of alluded to it as well as like the divides that already existed
510. 00:35:09 got exacerbated like they got even worse so like we were talking about the the divide
511. 00:35:15 between the haves and the have-nots in school got even wider just because if you had good
512. 00:35:22 computers and you had a good internet connection it would be like you could afford those things
513. 00:35:26 well then that meant that you were in better place to do well with school but if you didn't
514. 00:35:30 have the ability to afford that now it's an even bigger problem when you can't even connect
515. 00:35:35 to the teacher at all and a similar thing happened in the world of commerce with small
516. 00:35:40 businesses and big corporations the scale thing meant that Amazon and Walmart did wonderfully
517. 00:35:47 well but your small mom and pop shops closed their doors because they can't make it and
518. 00:35:57 you start to take that to like restaurants who were forced to shut their doors and started
519. 00:36:05 using delivery services that were eventually taking advantage of them and taking all of
520. 00:36:11 the profits and leaving them making food for them for free so all of this gets to be a
521. 00:36:17 bigger and bigger problem on the overall economy just because whenever all of that starts to
522. 00:36:23 go away like when your small mom and pops and your small little coffee shops and stuff
523. 00:36:28 can't make it where do you go when you can meet with people like that like we we've pretty
524. 00:36:33 much belabored this already we're going to continue to labor because it's what the whole
525. 00:36:36 book's about it's like the connection with other people face to face is a big deal and
526. 00:36:42 if you don't have places to do that it gets tough so this world of commerce one of the
527. 00:36:49 notes I wrote down I'd never heard of this book was it bookshop my notes are a little
528. 00:36:54 harder yeah I'd not heard of this I feel like I should have heard of this but it's it's
529. 00:36:59 essentially a group that helps small book distributors book publishers drawn up like
530. 00:37:05 local bookstores basically basically makes it easy for them to sell books online like
531. 00:37:11 think of it that way and I feel like that's something I need to do some looking into it's
532. 00:37:17 like huh why have I not heard of this but it would be a good thing to do anyway there
533. 00:37:22 are all these places that are starting to and have been working towards the process of
534. 00:37:27 helping you to support small businesses in your local community as opposed to supporting
535. 00:37:31 the big mega corporations and it's those little companies those little groups that have a
536. 00:37:39 much how do I say that they have a much better connection to their local community in that
537. 00:37:47 like the example he gave of surfing in Toronto which just kind of messed with my head a little
538. 00:37:52 bit like surfing in Toronto people do how yeah how do you do that he explains that later
539. 00:37:58 on in a different chapter has to do with like high winds on a lake in winter basically
540. 00:38:03 it seems like just did not sound fun at all but whenever he needed to get a wetsuit like
541. 00:38:11 he did all sorts of research online and just could not figure out what it was he needed
542. 00:38:15 to do he finally called a local surf shop which that again blew my mind that there's
543. 00:38:19 a surf shop in Toronto and the guy walked him through like oh well if you're doing this
544. 00:38:25 and this this is what you need this is your build here's what you need and it's like absolutely
545. 00:38:30 I'm buying from you because that expertise piece is missing when you go online and you
546. 00:38:35 don't get to have that personal connection that helps you work through those details
547. 00:38:39 so I get that in some ways it's better to buy from bigger companies like I'm probably
548. 00:38:47 not stopping my use of Amazon anytime soon but I also know that there are a lot of local
549. 00:38:52 places that I frequent that have expertise that I need some help with so trying to support
550. 00:38:59 them instead of the mega corpse can be a positive thing yeah I like the idea of being able to
551. 00:39:05 shop online and support local businesses I've got an action item to check out bookshop
552. 00:39:10 which I've looked at the website and I don't know looks looks interesting as long as the
553. 00:39:16 book isn't twice as expensive right I'm right I'm gonna try to order one of the next ones
554. 00:39:21 from this I looked up my next book on bookshop and it's not available there so that's not
555. 00:39:28 an option but maybe down the road I'll use this site I also like to support local businesses
556. 00:39:35 whenever I can I have never thought to myself well I'm gonna go buy a book at a local bookstore
557. 00:39:41 as opposed to ordering it off of Amazon there are a couple local bookstores near me and if
558. 00:39:47 I am in a place where there is a little bookstore like that that has things that I am interested
559. 00:39:53 in I will tend to buy something there to support it I'm thinking of between the lines right
560. 00:40:00 that's the name of the one in Woodstock that sounds right I think so I'll look it up and
561. 00:40:07 I'll put it in the show notes I like that bookstore I'm the stuff that they have there
562. 00:40:11 I could buy off Amazon but when I'm there I like to support the local bookstore I've
563. 00:40:15 got a little pin on my backpack that says fight evil read books you know I bought that
564. 00:40:20 at that book store but around me they're like I don't even know what they're because
565. 00:40:26 there's there's typically different genres that are represented by these local bookstores
566. 00:40:32 and none of them are really the ones that I'm interested at are near me so I tend not
567. 00:40:37 to to go to those places but I will buy my pens or mandarism pens right you know during
568. 00:40:45 the pandemic there were a couple restaurants that we really like that we tried to get food
569. 00:40:48 from them frequently not because we needed to because we were so busy we had nothing
570. 00:40:54 but time but we wanted to support them because people weren't eating in there anymore whole
571. 00:40:58 big section of this chapter is how bad those third party delivery services were which I
572. 00:41:04 kind of knew but like as a reader of that information what are you going to do with
573. 00:41:09 that like you're going to go talk to your local company be like hey you shouldn't use
574. 00:41:12 this you should use this other company they're well aware believe me yep they know what
575. 00:41:18 the problems are and so I don't know like what's the tactical takeaway from this it's
576. 00:41:26 probably just support your local business is regardless of who they use for their delivery
577. 00:41:31 right yep so I don't know this is one I didn't other than checking a bookshop I'm
578. 00:41:38 not quite sure what to do with this this information this one was one that I I don't
579. 00:41:44 really have takeaways because this is something I've been doing for a long time by takeaways
580. 00:41:49 I mean action items because I know that's like for example I tend to do a decent amount
581. 00:41:56 of my own mechanic work on our vehicles right now I'm in the middle of a check engine light
582. 00:42:01 issue on our truck and I know what the problem is I know what part I need because I was able
583. 00:42:07 to get the code off of it all the things I could order it online and have it at my door
584. 00:42:15 the next day but instead I'm I know that a local shop has the part because I called them
585. 00:42:23 and I'm gonna go pick it up probably tomorrow but I want to do that because I know that the
586. 00:42:29 guy the guys who work there can walk me through the stuff that I need to know and when I'm
587. 00:42:35 doing that particular replacement it's not just a simple unscrew it screw it back in
588. 00:42:41 and you're done it's a whole process I've got to go through to fix this and I'll do that
589. 00:42:46 I just don't want to spend the $700 to have a shop do it when it can cost me 40 bucks
590. 00:42:50 in parts like I just don't want to do it so I know that if I go shop at that place they
591. 00:42:55 can walk me through their expertise becomes what I'm paying for I might pay a few dollars
592. 00:43:01 more there than what I could get it for online it's totally worth it to me and that's just
593. 00:43:07 one instance like I've got a big soundboard project I'm in the middle of I bought it from
594. 00:43:12 our system from a local guy that I've worked with a number of times because he has the
595. 00:43:17 expertise and I could get the same stuff maybe a little bit cheaper if I bought it myself
596. 00:43:22 but again I'm getting his expertise in the process so to me like that's the piece that
597. 00:43:27 sticks out like that that whole somebody who knows what they're doing and being able to
598. 00:43:31 get access to them and their knowledge like that's that's a big deal in some arenas but
599. 00:43:37 if it's something like this very specific book I need to get bought like whether I buy
600. 00:43:44 it at a local place or not it doesn't really matter it's just pure price to me at that
601. 00:43:48 point.
602. 00:43:49 Isn't it obvious though when you want to go to those places and get the feedback because
603. 00:43:54 I mean like the scenario for that for me would be like musical gear.
604. 00:44:01 Oh yeah yeah.
605. 00:44:03 The local place that everybody would go to even though it's not local is like guitar
606. 00:44:07 center I hate going in there I would rather order something online than go to guitar center
607. 00:44:12 but there is a local store that I love because the people there know their stuff and when
608. 00:44:19 I wanted to buy a thin line telecaster because I wanted or no it was a acoustic sonic telecaster
609. 00:44:29 because I wanted the ability to do acoustic and electric the guys there's like you really
610. 00:44:33 don't want that that's not a very good guitar if you want acoustic it in a acoustic if you
611. 00:44:36 want electric in an electric this one's bad at both it's like if you really want the
612. 00:44:40 telly but you want to occasionally play acoustic this is what you do you buy the thin line
613. 00:44:46 telly so you got the acoustic semi-hello body right and then you get a piezo pickup
614. 00:44:52 and you plug it directly into an acoustic off board amp I was like oh that's amazing
615. 00:44:58 that's such a great idea and that's that's what you're talking about but I feel like if
616. 00:45:06 that's what you're after you know that when you see it and you're kind of attracted to
617. 00:45:11 that kind of stuff you don't need a kick in the pants from somebody who wrote a book that
618. 00:45:15 you read like hey you should really start looking for this stuff locally and maybe that's just
619. 00:45:19 our perspective because that's our approach to these these books maybe that's not how most
620. 00:45:23 people would read this book and be looking for that kind of stuff but yeah so that that's
621. 00:45:28 the thing like as I read through this I'm like well I'm not gonna change anything because
622. 00:45:33 I'm already sort of like doing this where it makes sense and yeah online is convenient
623. 00:45:38 yeah a lot of scenarios I'm gonna continue to do that it's it's funny to me that you
624. 00:45:43 bring up guitar center because I have a few musicians that talk about going there and
625. 00:45:47 getting some feedback and picking up gear and stuff and I'm always like most of the time
626. 00:45:53 when I go in there which is almost never anymore they they will tell me something and
627. 00:45:58 it's like like in one particular case I had somebody recommend a specific basically it's
628. 00:46:07 a ground lift box all it does is break ground so you get sometimes you get like buzzes in
629. 00:46:13 the background a lot of times it's a ground loop and this basically breaks that for you
630. 00:46:19 and he was pitching this box to me that would solve that problem it's like okay but it takes
631. 00:46:26 power a ground fall issue doesn't need more power introduced to it it simply needs to
632. 00:46:34 take a line in and a line out and then break one of them like that's all it needs to do
633. 00:46:38 it doesn't have to have power so why would I need one with power and I got to looking
634. 00:46:42 as like that one was more expensive so okay and then like that that just didn't make sense
635. 00:46:49 to me so what I've run across is and I now know that that particular box and I'm not
636. 00:46:52 mentioning what it is because you don't ever need it it it just doesn't work for any scenario
637. 00:47:00 that it could possibly work for like there are many other ways that would do that a lot
638. 00:47:03 better so I basically learned that whenever I go in there a lot of times I know more than
639. 00:47:08 they do which is an unfortunate situation to be in so that's why I go to somebody that
640. 00:47:13 has toured with a list singers and noses stuff very well way beyond anything I can comprehend
641. 00:47:20 so he's the guy that I go to whenever I need some feedback if there's one thing that we've
642. 00:47:26 learned the last couple years it's the importance of mental health and our overall state of well-being
643. 00:47:31 and you don't need to be going through a pandemic in order to feel stress anxiety deal with sleep
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661. 00:49:11 one of the places that I tend to avoid though whenever I'm doing all of this is actually the city
662. 00:49:16 which is where we're going next which is on Thursday is when we go to the city
663. 00:49:22 and I had all sorts of qualms with this particular chapter did not like this one
664. 00:49:29 at all and some of that might be because of the way he started this particular one but he ends up
665. 00:49:35 talking about like smart cities and like this digital promise of everything fully connected
666. 00:49:40 electric cars that are autonomous and stuff and although we think that's a cool thing we've learned
667. 00:49:45 that you know the more that that type of thing happens it doesn't actually decrease
668. 00:49:49 traffic it actually increases traffic just because of you know it makes it easy like take
669. 00:49:57 uber for example like in theory it would mean fewer people have vehicles on the road because
670. 00:50:02 they're leaving their cars at home but what actually happens is the uber drivers are just
671. 00:50:07 they're not going to park somewhere and pay for parking so they just keep driving until somebody
672. 00:50:11 pings them for another ride so there's actually more cars on the road because of that but he starts
673. 00:50:18 this particular chapter and I wrote this quote down because it just it just bugged me and I'll
674. 00:50:25 explain why after I read this but anyway he says that cities at their core are a critical mass of
675. 00:50:32 brain power that naturally generates ideas innovation and energy by sheer physical proximity
676. 00:50:39 and I don't think I would argue with him on that I would simply argue with the quality of all of
677. 00:50:46 those things like what quality of ideas what quality of innovation what quality of energy are
678. 00:50:51 you talking about when you're talking about people to people because yes there is a lot of
679. 00:50:55 physical proximity but I'm saying this as a farm kid who grew up on many thousands of acres at my
680. 00:51:05 disposal and not only seeing one house in like a mile radius like that was it and just having access
681. 00:51:15 to tons and tons of open space where if you went outside you didn't hear an airplane you didn't hear
682. 00:51:21 cars unless there was one that happened to be going by on the highway that was a half a mile away
683. 00:51:27 like you just didn't hear that stuff and then whenever we moved to Minnesota we bought a house
684. 00:51:35 in a little suburb in a little subdivision right like at like you do on a third of an acre and
685. 00:51:43 over the span of like eight years like my stress levels just constantly went up and up and up
686. 00:51:49 and I only know this because we eventually bought five acres and moved away from it and I know that
687. 00:51:54 having moved like there's way more peace in my brain just because I'm not in all of that all the
688. 00:52:01 time and there's not so much stuff in the background constantly now either that's the problem that
689. 00:52:08 cities create or that's a disconnect between cities and Joe's personality like it's it's going to be
690. 00:52:16 one of those two things I like to think it's the former a lot of people would tell me it's the latter
691. 00:52:24 but regardless his whole section is talking about like what cities have to offer and how good that is
692. 00:52:31 and every time he brought that up it just made me cringe is like no that's not good
693. 00:52:36 maybe I'm just being an introvert who knows I don't know I feel like I see both sides of this for a
694. 00:52:47 long time in college specifically I was pretty adamant that I wanted to live in a city
695. 00:52:55 just because there is a different energy there there are different groups of people that assemble
696. 00:53:04 in cities that you won't find other places but there's a lot of benefit from the large open spaces
697. 00:53:15 as well kind of where I live now is neither of those things I've got the the the suburbs with the
698. 00:53:26 people around here who typically don't care about Apple tech or productivity and like think I'm
699. 00:53:32 weird because I make podcasts and when I worked online they didn't think I really had a job you
700. 00:53:40 know so I'm kind of in like the worst sweet spot of those overlapping circles I guess but
701. 00:53:47 I don't know I think you're right that there's a tone that comes across here that cities are great
702. 00:53:54 and they are the genesis of every good thing that has ever happened in human civilization that's
703. 00:54:00 not what he's saying but that's kind of how it comes across in a large part of this chapter is
704. 00:54:03 really talking about urban planning yes which is kind of weird because unless you are in the city
705. 00:54:10 you really don't have a whole lot of context for this now I've been to enough big cities I had to
706. 00:54:17 go to Austin frequently I had to go to Kansas City you're close to Minneapolis like we have
707. 00:54:24 experience right in those environments but I think there's a large large portions of the
708. 00:54:29 population where like they've gone there a couple times and they just have no desire to go back
709. 00:54:32 and I think that's completely fine so I guess if you're gonna if I'm gonna put on the perspective
710. 00:54:38 of the wannabe city dweller from many years ago the urban planning stuff is kind of interesting
711. 00:54:47 but even then like it's not doesn't really do it for me I do think it's it's interesting the whole
712. 00:54:55 concept of the traffic that you were talking about like the Uber drivers like that's not an
713. 00:54:58 issue where I live yeah Uber is around here but I remember several years ago coming back from the
714. 00:55:04 airport and I'll just get an Uber and there's no cars there's service in my area but there are
715. 00:55:09 no cars available it's not something you can rely on and even like Appleton the town that I'm in
716. 00:55:15 it's maybe a hundred thousand people they just got those scooters the bird scooters because the guy
717. 00:55:21 who invented the that company bird he's actually from Apple so okay yeah it's like a pet a pet project
718. 00:55:28 right and I see this like this battle being played out locally because there's a whole bunch of people
719. 00:55:35 who like they don't want to live in the city they drive their cars everywhere like you were
720. 00:55:39 talking about they're like these scooters are in nuisance and they're right people take them
721. 00:55:43 and they just leave them all over the place and people are zipping up and down the sidewalks with
722. 00:55:47 them like I know somebody who got hit by one of those like people are stupid so yeah we don't
723. 00:55:53 want these but then there are like the perspective he's taking with this as well you know these cities
724. 00:55:59 are are built for these these cars but it'd be way better if everybody just lived in this area we
725. 00:56:04 didn't have all the traffic and you could just use the scooters and get around to the different
726. 00:56:07 places and wouldn't that be awesome like yeah I could kind of see that that too but it's not as
727. 00:56:12 as simple I feel like as he makes it out to be in this chapter yep I think there's a lot more to it
728. 00:56:20 I mean I get how people want to have a lot of tech in the cities but
729. 00:56:25 seems like the more that you put into these digital things the more that like the companies
730. 00:56:30 tend to collect on you and then they end up that power ends up somehow making its way back to the
731. 00:56:36 government somehow not super thrilled with that particular component of it but I feel like this
732. 00:56:42 one's just kind of weird like did he did he pick this one because there was another day he needed
733. 00:56:47 to fill like I think it's just important to him sure that that's fair it seems it seems to be a
734. 00:56:53 thing that's a big deal to him because he talks about all the big cities that he has lived in and
735. 00:56:57 around and it's always been an important component to him so I get why he like I get why he chose that
736. 00:57:05 because like that's something that's super important to him and like to me I'm just reading
737. 00:57:10 that like I want nothing to do with this at all like I'm actually opposite I want to avoid this
738. 00:57:17 so I am not the person I think I for that particular chapter I think I tend to skew that way as well yep yep
739. 00:57:25 all right let's let's keep going it's now friday and let's talk about the culture and by culture
740. 00:57:33 basically I think he just means live performances of any kind that's that's kind of the
741. 00:57:40 main talking point through this that's that's fair chapter and maybe I gravitated and summarized
742. 00:57:46 it that way just because like that's an area that I tend to do a lot of work in but he does talk about
743. 00:57:52 how things like comedians or going to a live concert like these things are all very very different
744. 00:57:59 like he uses the example of Hamilton like he got to see Hamilton right before lockdown
745. 00:58:06 and then attempted to watch it on Disney plus have you watched this I watch it on Disney plus
746. 00:58:12 yeah so this this is interesting because I remember Hamilton being all the rage and
747. 00:58:17 it wasn't coming anywhere near me I couldn't take it's it wasn't even an option
748. 00:58:23 you know so when everything got shut down and it went online I'm like oh hey cool we can watch it
749. 00:58:28 yeah yep my my experience was that I had heard about it and that people were absolutely loving it
750. 00:58:35 I looked up because like we're close to the Twin Cities surely it's going to come to Minneapolis
751. 00:58:39 St. Paul somewhere and it uh it was coming but you could it was going to come twice I think whenever
752. 00:58:47 I looked it up and you couldn't get tickets to the first one and the second one was like 18 months
753. 00:58:51 out and they were going to be like close to $100 a ticket I was like that it's not my style like
754. 00:58:56 it's way too steep for me but a free trial on Disney plus I will do for context here he was at
755. 00:59:04 Hamilton yes it was during the intermission when the NBA season got canceled I remember that event
756. 00:59:12 specifically like the teams came out they warmed up and then they just left yep and everyone was
757. 00:59:18 like whoa what the heck is this so he's talking about how they're at this show storing intermission
758. 00:59:25 everybody gets the message that the NBA season has been canceled and now they're going back in
759. 00:59:30 to finish watching the show and that is the entry point into now everything is online correct so
760. 00:59:37 I feel like he feels it more than we correct yeah I I know that you know first off Hamilton's a
761. 00:59:45 great show if you haven't seen it I feel like you should go watch it on Disney plus and uh the
762. 00:59:50 the thing that he gets into is how like these live performances that went online like people
763. 00:59:56 that went to twitch or they went to like live streaming and like all of these things comedians it just
764. 01:00:01 it wasn't the same because like they're performing in front of a camera and like I can tell you all
765. 01:00:09 sorts of things that are wrong like you're in front of the camera you don't have the audience
766. 01:00:12 in front of you you're feeding off of the audience there's also like take the Hamilton
767. 01:00:17 performance like I know that whenever you're in a room like that it feels different not necessarily
768. 01:00:24 because the cameras and the sound system and stuff are different but just literally because
769. 01:00:29 the volume that they're able to crank those speakers is much higher than what you're going to be able
770. 01:00:34 to do at home in 99 percent of cases like most people do not have a sound system that's going to
771. 01:00:40 be able to rival that like we just had a comedy night at our church and watching a comedian live
772. 01:00:48 in the room with him is very different than me watching it on youtube like I could watch the
773. 01:00:54 exact same person I could watch somebody funnier than him and laugh more with him in the room than
774. 01:01:00 I would with somebody else online we had a band that performed beforehand and it was full concert
775. 01:01:06 level which is super fun for me but it's cranked up louder than normal whenever it's cranked up that
776. 01:01:12 loud and he hits the kick drum it actually you like you feel it you don't just hear it you feel it
777. 01:01:18 you don't do that at home like I yep I can crank things up at home but you're not going to generally
778. 01:01:24 do that unless you have a crazy sound system at home I know you people are out there so like
779. 01:01:29 it's just different and you also have like the shared experience if you're at a live concert
780. 01:01:33 people start singing along with the music like you have this huge group of people around you
781. 01:01:39 singing and you tend to join in well you can join in and sing when you're at home but you just hear
782. 01:01:44 your own voice and for some people that's okay for a lot of people they don't like hearing
783. 01:01:49 themselves sing so that's a bad experience so anyway I can go on and on about this one this one
784. 01:01:56 kind of got me triggered a little bit but it's it's one that like yes it's very different live
785. 01:02:01 than watching it online or watching a recording of something so I totally get how this could be a
786. 01:02:10 bad experience trying to watch everything on a screen I understand that part of it and I agree
787. 01:02:15 with it completely I mean I grew up playing violin I've played with different symphonies and
788. 01:02:23 orchestras and there's just something about being in that place together doing the thing that yeah
789. 01:02:29 you get to a whole nother heightened level of experience I agree so I agree with a lot of like
790. 01:02:35 the performance aspects of everything that he's talking about here and how like when you're
791. 01:02:39 watching something online the second you close the screen you're alone I know somebody who is in
792. 01:02:46 the New Orleans area and during the pandemic they started just like doing this on a smaller scale
793. 01:02:53 outside their their house yeah I heard about these things yeah rooftop jazz concerts yep
794. 01:03:00 and he was doing them for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden the cops showed up and he
795. 01:03:06 thought they were gonna get shut down and the cops were like this is really cool so they did it for
796. 01:03:11 like a year and a half so that that's cool like those are the kind of things that that people need
797. 01:03:18 to bring stuff together however that's like one avenue of this and like the fact that these Grammy
798. 01:03:24 winning produce like musicians like it feels different online and it's not the same to them and they
799. 01:03:31 miss the old thing that's not necessarily well I shouldn't say it's all it's not all bad right
800. 01:03:37 the fact that you don't need to have an amazing band and have a contract with a producer in order
801. 01:03:46 to make music and share it online is not a bad thing and like twitch streaming the stuff that
802. 01:03:51 we're doing right now like there are hurdles that if we were doing this the old way and the people
803. 01:03:56 in the big halls and things like that there are like hurdles that will never obstacles will never
804. 01:04:01 be able to overcome in order to perform in those arenas so the fact that we can do it digitally
805. 01:04:06 I think that's awesome and I think it makes it a lot more accessible for a lot of people who
806. 01:04:11 don't have access to the resources that they need don't have the right people to open the
807. 01:04:17 the doors for them in those those other types of scenarios so I don't think this is all bad I
808. 01:04:22 think you got to see both sides of this however yes you should meet in person whenever you can
809. 01:04:26 and one other thing with this which I I was really disappointed because this whole thing about like
810. 01:04:33 it's different when you're there together that applies to church now there's a whole separate
811. 01:04:38 section chapter seven Sunday soul where I thought he was going to talk about this but that's really
812. 01:04:42 just get outside correct yes so there's like a whole chapter that should be written on that
813. 01:04:49 specific piece of it I feel because I mean you work at a church you you ran the live stream
814. 01:04:54 you would probably agree like it's different the religious experience is different when you
815. 01:04:58 meet together as opposed to when you have to tune in because you're not feeling well and you don't
816. 01:05:02 want to yeah bring stuff to the building right but bringing bringing yourself to the building
817. 01:05:07 should be the default whenever possible yeah that's actually why like we I think I've got
818. 01:05:12 everybody on board with us we actually treat our live stream as if it doesn't exist
819. 01:05:17 a lot of churches will acknowledge like and thanks for those of you who are online joining us today
820. 01:05:21 like we don't do that because I don't want you to be a first-class citizen if you're just on the
821. 01:05:26 live stream because that doesn't count so you might be upset with me if you disagree with me on that
822. 01:05:33 but frankly like that's not like you're missing so much of the actual point that I don't even
823. 01:05:41 want to relationship there like it's there yeah exactly still do it every week I have a lot of
824. 01:05:46 people that say that they start coming to the church just because they were able to watch the
825. 01:05:49 live stream it's it's actually an anxiety thing I've found for a lot of people like we have a lot
826. 01:05:55 of people who are brand new to the faith brand new to the church who can quote-unquote try church
827. 01:06:01 if you will to figure out what is that service like and what do people wear because you can see a
828. 01:06:07 few people and what is the pastor going to do when is the service over like how do I know when to do
829. 01:06:14 what and people have a lot of anxiety over that type of thing and being able to watch a service or
830. 01:06:19 to online before you come to the building for the first time seems to help people with that I don't
831. 01:06:23 want to discount that I've got people who are shut into can't get out like I get that but when I
832. 01:06:28 have people that say that well I just I was tired when I got up so I just made some bacon and eggs and
833. 01:06:35 you know turned on the live stream and washed it at home like shame on you like that's
834. 01:06:41 my point anyway I can get heated over that one let's go to Saturday because it's way more from
835. 01:06:46 to talk about well real real quick the one last thing with this because I think this leads into
836. 01:06:51 Saturday but like my my pastors have shared like because our church has had services on the local
837. 01:06:59 television station for like 20 years right so occasionally they'll get people who pass away and
838. 01:07:06 it's like who do you want to facilitate your your service and like oh my pastor is
839. 01:07:10 my pastor is like I have no idea who this person is right it's the most awkward thing it's like
840. 01:07:17 I'm supposed to do a eulogy for somebody that I've never actually met yeah right that relationship
841. 01:07:22 component that is the height of the religious experience it's the community right so and that's
842. 01:07:29 kind of ways talking about chapter five not at all ways talking about chapter seven so now let's
843. 01:07:34 go to chapter six okay chapter six is conversation and he starts us off and there's a little bit
844. 01:07:42 of a section here where it talks about like what is conversation it's a very brief part
845. 01:07:47 but there's three components that he identifies and I've heard this in a bunch of different ways
846. 01:07:52 sometimes it's three pieces sometimes it's five but in this particular case he's referring to
847. 01:07:57 when you're having a conversation there are three components that lead to that conversation
848. 01:08:02 being like three different levels of that one is the language you're using so like right now you
849. 01:08:06 can hear my voice you can catch the tone of my voice that's the second one so you can hear the words
850. 01:08:11 you can hear the tone with which I'm sharing these words but then the third one is body language
851. 01:08:16 now if you are watching the live stream you can see kind of some of my body language as I'm saying
852. 01:08:22 this but you can't see all of it so like I'm chest high on this right so it's a headshot so you're
853. 01:08:28 not gonna see what am I doing with my feet right now you have no idea so you're not getting all
854. 01:08:33 you don't know if Joe's wearing pants you don't know if I have pants on like just I just want to
855. 01:08:39 point that out maybe I don't I came to church in my underwear that's a little weird that changes
856. 01:08:45 the conversation if you're not wearing pants very true it's very true but I am at work and I work
857. 01:08:50 at a church just you draw your own conclusions so body language is a big deal what somebody's wearing
858. 01:08:58 you know how long is somebody's beard are they wearing glasses like these things all inform
859. 01:09:02 our conversation and how we have that conversation with each other and being in the same physical
860. 01:09:09 room in the same space does change things like maybe you both smell something maybe you both
861. 01:09:16 like there's a sound that's in the background you know mics got his fancy microphone so if
862. 01:09:20 something hits the room door he hears it but we don't if that happens here you would hear it
863. 01:09:26 through my mic because this place is noisy so anyway like conversation is difficult to have even in a
864. 01:09:36 video sense so much so that he even points out that he's not sure he would actually call it a
865. 01:09:42 conversation he would just call it communication like you're not actually engaging in developing
866. 01:09:46 empathy and and relationship with each other it's purely sharing of facts back and forth and I don't
867. 01:09:53 know that I would say he's completely wrong I don't think he's necessarily happy about all of this I
868. 01:09:59 think he's just jaded when he's writing this and maybe just taking it a little bit too far but
869. 01:10:04 it's it's interesting to me that whenever you think about conversations and the good conversations
870. 01:10:11 that you've had in the past like it's rare that I talk about like a most meaningful conversation is
871. 01:10:16 one I had on the phone like that that doesn't seem to be the case in most scenarios it's usually a
872. 01:10:22 I had lunch with this person and that was one of the best conversations I've had in my life
873. 01:10:26 like that's typically what you would hear about so he does break it down a little bit in just saying
874. 01:10:32 you know this doesn't necessarily always happen in a productive way when it's through a screen
875. 01:10:37 which is fair I like the distinction I actually think it's pretty brilliant of the
876. 01:10:48 communication virtually as opposed to conversation I think in most most scenarios that is accurate
877. 01:10:58 however it's not again not all bad I remember during the the pandemic when people were really
878. 01:11:08 wanting this this sort of thing we connected with JF and we played virtual yachty JF is nowhere near
879. 01:11:17 me we were never going to do that you know personally but we were both craving it so we made it
880. 01:11:23 made it happen during the pandemic where did FaceTime and opened up the board game table and
881. 01:11:29 okay JF it's your turn I'll roll the dice for you which ones you want to keep you know not the
882. 01:11:34 ideal version of yachty but it's definitely better than not playing yachty together right
883. 01:11:39 so I think it's just finding the right situation technically deploying these these tools
884. 01:11:46 again maybe if you're in a city and you just everyone that you care about is within walking
885. 01:11:51 distance like this is this is the that that is a scenario that you could you could create I don't
886. 01:11:59 know that it's not possible for me my parents are currently in Florida you know we were there
887. 01:12:06 last week visiting them and it was great being able to be together but I'm not going to just like
888. 01:12:10 not talk to them until they're back home right we're going to connect virtually because I care
889. 01:12:15 about them so this this uh chapter is where he brings up the sherry charcoal stuff and that was a
890. 01:12:22 great book I feel like you should go back and listen to that conversation rather than try to like
891. 01:12:26 rehab it here the other thing I I got out of this one got whatever like he talked about the negative
892. 01:12:35 aspects of social media talks about how clicks equal power and um I don't know that's
893. 01:12:45 at this point something we've talked about a lot so it's kind of like well do we really have to
894. 01:12:50 have this conversation again I'm willing to have that conversation again if there's going to be
895. 01:12:54 something new here but there is nothing right here yeah uh maybe at some point we just you know
896. 01:12:59 dissect the social dilemma because I feel like that's the best resource for this this kind of thing
897. 01:13:04 but I don't know I guess that it's valuable to realize that online you hear about people but
898. 01:13:10 rarely from them and you should look to connect with people with different viewpoints but I feel
899. 01:13:15 like we're already like trying to do that that's been one of the takeaways for me from
900. 01:13:19 bookworm honestly is like we read these books and they expose me to different ideas not things that
901. 01:13:23 I would have naturally encountered in my day-to-day life otherwise and I'm like oh you know what I
902. 01:13:28 should really consider that it feels weird it's awkward I don't agree with it I should lean into it
903. 01:13:33 right even though it makes me a little bit uncomfortable and if you do that I feel like your online
904. 01:13:37 experience ends up being a lot better I just want to point out that like the point you made about
905. 01:13:43 you know when family is away because I have family it's a long ways away and phone calls and video
906. 01:13:48 calls like they're great at filling gaps I think but we always know that that's what it's doing it's
907. 01:13:54 filling a gap until we see each other face to face like that's the point good point and that
908. 01:14:00 relationship is much deeper and extensive whenever we do meet in person and it can be extended and
909. 01:14:08 have a little bit of an effect whenever you're doing all the video stuff like again that's definitely
910. 01:14:12 something that can fill that gap but again it's not like if that's all you're given like and you
911. 01:14:20 have none of the actual in-person at all ever like it gets tough so it's it's tough when it's not
912. 01:14:29 just a gap filler it is the the end in itself but that's the the thing is like I don't know that
913. 01:14:37 anybody after the pandemic is going to argue that every interaction should be virtual so this is a
914. 01:14:46 weird time to be making this argument you know it feels like it made a lot more sense coming from
915. 01:14:53 Sherry Turkel when we read reclaiming conversation before all all of this right well let's go to
916. 01:15:01 Sunday where we don't talk about church at least not really he talks about soul and honestly I had
917. 01:15:11 a hard time nailing down what he was getting at here because in my head like this is a layup like
918. 01:15:19 this is an easy one I say that knowing that I'm a church person so it's like okay well this is
919. 01:15:24 an easy thing and then he doesn't go there well he's Jewish so correct yeah so he talks about Sunday
920. 01:15:31 being the day when people you know put on their exercise clothes and do a good workout or go on
921. 01:15:38 hikes get outside this was an area that he seems to have not really struggled with a whole lot because
922. 01:15:43 he did do he would disconnect so again you mentioned he is Jewish and has had this habit of disconnecting
923. 01:15:52 on Sunday for a long time I guess for him it was Shabbat so it would have been Saturday I don't
924. 01:15:58 remember what he said is it Sunday that he does that or is it Saturday good question I caught the
925. 01:16:04 Shabbat but I didn't catch the specifics of when exactly it happened he said something about
926. 01:16:10 making his holla bread on Friday going into Saturday but then he was on Sunday maybe he's
927. 01:16:17 just making a cultural change for us anyway regardless he has a day when he disconnects and he turns
928. 01:16:21 off his phones those computers all the things and they don't do tech and that is something that I know
929. 01:16:28 I've done in the past it's actually kind of tricky for me working at a church because so many people
930. 01:16:34 text or call me on Sunday morning when I'm there at work like doing running sound or something so
931. 01:16:40 like I'm between services and they need to get ahold of me because printers busted so like stuff
932. 01:16:44 like that does happen so I can't really do that on a Sunday morning but I definitely could do that
933. 01:16:49 whenever I get home from church and shut things off and just be done then so like that's something
934. 01:16:54 that I've got as an action item for the book is to do a tech shutdown on Sunday afternoon and
935. 01:17:02 that's that's something that I know a lot of people do and have a lot of success with and it can be
936. 01:17:08 super helpful so just kind of getting that break but again if we come back to the book he does talk
937. 01:17:15 about how like nature being the true healer and going for walks going for hikes getting outside
938. 01:17:22 no matter how cold it is I don't know how much snows in the ground like go outside it's okay
939. 01:17:28 and it can be a bit of a healing process so again not really a religious
940. 01:17:33 chapter like I was expecting yep agreed I agree with all the stuff about getting outside
941. 01:17:41 that was something that I determined to do very early on in 2020 I think it was late March when I
942. 01:17:51 decided I was going to get outside for either a run or a bike ride every single day and I did that
943. 01:17:59 from the end of March until the end of October so rain or shine I either biked my bike route is
944. 01:18:09 eight and a half miles or I went for at least a couple mile run I logged hundreds and hundreds of
945. 01:18:16 miles that year and it did definitely have a big impact on my mental state so I think that
946. 01:18:24 that is definitely a good aim however I don't know yeah not what I was expecting to check
947. 01:18:32 me off yeah I did also have an action item though to unplug on the the Sabbath is how I put it
948. 01:18:39 I don't think I'm gonna just completely turn stuff off we got multiple services
949. 01:18:45 on Sunday that I am therefore in the morning and in the evening so it doesn't work for me to just
950. 01:18:51 turn stuff off after I get home from the morning service because occasionally it's hey I need you
951. 01:18:56 to preach for the evening service or something like that however there are focus modes and so
952. 01:19:01 I am going to set up a Sabbath focus mode and only allow a few things through and I have a
953. 01:19:11 I'm pretty confident that that will that will help a lot I don't get a ton of notifications
954. 01:19:17 already but just whatever I can do to limit the noise here and and just on have that day where
955. 01:19:25 you're just you're not connected to your devices people can get a hold of you if they absolutely
956. 01:19:28 need to but setting up the boundaries there where only certain people can get through I feel like
957. 01:19:36 that's going to be really healthy even if it doesn't result in a huge decrease in the number of
958. 01:19:42 notifications that I'm receiving or anything like that yeah well that brings us to the conclusion
959. 01:19:46 of the book and the the end of this I mean it's just that it's he's re-wrapping up things
960. 01:19:55 and he kind of basically pitches it as we had this digital future that was pitched to us that had
961. 01:20:02 all these answers and it failed us and just because something can be done this is actually a thing
962. 01:20:11 that I've talked about in tech at church quite a bit it's like just because something can be done
963. 01:20:15 doesn't mean it should be done and I regularly get into that conversation of you know can I
964. 01:20:22 you know just because I can turn down the house lights on the congregation on a Sunday morning
965. 01:20:27 I'm not going to because it's not something we should do like that's and I have all sorts of
966. 01:20:32 rationale and reasons for that so we don't do that and just because I can do something doesn't
967. 01:20:39 mean we're going to you know we could run with click tracks I know some churches do that for
968. 01:20:43 their band so that everything can be perfectly in sync we don't and have no interest in that
969. 01:20:48 and there's there's a whole bunch of these things like specifically with church and
970. 01:20:52 production and stuff that I will not do because I think it takes away from the shared experience
971. 01:20:58 on a Sunday morning so anyway that's a whole different thing all together but I did like that
972. 01:21:04 phrase like just because something can be done just because you can put sensors underneath the
973. 01:21:08 sidewalk to see how many people are walking on it doesn't mean it's something you should do
974. 01:21:12 it's kind of weird to do that but people do it so anyway he's just wrapping up basically saying
975. 01:21:18 this digital future that was so great and so grand it's not so great and so grand and because we
976. 01:21:23 tried it out we kicked the tires in the car and took it for a test drive and I don't like it take
977. 01:21:26 it back so that's that's kind of what he's saying yeah to which I would reply you're holding it wrong
978. 01:21:32 uh I think there are ways to implement aspects of the digital future but it all
979. 01:21:42 comes down to intention and it shouldn't be the default I agree with that there's a couple things
980. 01:21:47 he said specifically in this last chapter which I think are good now recognizing what we missed
981. 01:21:51 made us appreciate what we had more agree with that don't accept digital as the default setting
982. 01:21:56 agree with that and the future is analog because we are analog I agree with that we're not going to
983. 01:22:01 ever get rid of that that doesn't mean that there's no good that can come from it either though and
984. 01:22:09 it's all packaged in this remember covid remember covid so you get this immediate visceral reaction
985. 01:22:16 like oh yeah that was awful right we all understand that was awful and that's the
986. 01:22:21 perspective he takes every chapter oh yeah that was awful I don't think it was all awful
987. 01:22:27 I think you got to recognize the context and used sparingly intentionally in some other ways
988. 01:22:36 some other scenarios could be a good thing doesn't mean that we should just automatically do that
989. 01:22:42 though agree with that yep I'm with him all right you ready for action items let's do it I have one
990. 01:22:50 and that is to do this tech shutdown like shutting off things or at least restricting them I guess
991. 01:22:58 I kind of like your idea of setting up like the focus mode things I kind of already have that for
992. 01:23:02 a Sunday morning because I get restriction and I have a bunch of that type of thing for when I'm
993. 01:23:07 off work as well to kind of like so my boss isn't texting me and it's an issue he knows that by the
994. 01:23:13 way I don't just do that blindly but anyway like the concept of shutting down some things but not
995. 01:23:19 other things like we listen to music on Sunday afternoons like well I'm streaming that through
996. 01:23:23 Apple music so I can't completely shut it all down because that's a very fun thing for us as a
997. 01:23:28 family so trying to figure out what that means but I think you get the gist like I don't want to
998. 01:23:33 be sitting there looking at my screen the whole time like that that's the part that I want to eliminate
999. 01:23:38 right how about you yeah I agree with that and that's one of my action items as well as to
1000. 01:23:45 unplug on the the Sabbath as you kind of just talked about I do have that other one though to
1001. 01:23:51 check out bookshop I'm not committing to buying something off of there necessarily but I'm gonna
1002. 01:23:58 take a look at the the site and the service in which bookstores they support you know if I can
1003. 01:24:05 find a local one that I can buy from then that's cool and I think there's there's something we
1004. 01:24:10 said about just buying from a local shop even if it's not the one where you happen to be I know
1005. 01:24:15 Austin Cleon is really involved with is it book people like that's the one sounds right yeah
1006. 01:24:21 I know like when he came out with his latest actually not the latest one anymore I forget which
1007. 01:24:29 one it was but there was a thing that he did like through book people if you bought it through them
1008. 01:24:32 you got an autograph copy as opposed to just buying it off of Amazon is still available via
1009. 01:24:38 Amazon and other places but because he had a relationship with that local bookstore he was
1010. 01:24:42 able to sign a bunch of copies and then say hey you should really buy it from this place like that's
1011. 01:24:46 cool I like that but if it's more of a pain to get the books that I want to read I do that
1012. 01:24:54 frequently enough I'm not going to go out of my way to say that I did this well style and reading
1013. 01:25:02 for style I will say he he has an interesting style actually I think it's changed quite a bit
1014. 01:25:10 since the last book I read by him because I went back and looked at it a little bit just as
1015. 01:25:16 like did he used to do this but he didn't he's changed his style quite a bit but he has a lot of
1016. 01:25:20 scenarios where he's saying that and this was something that went wrong and then he has this
1017. 01:25:25 long list of things that are examples of that and it's not like four or five it's like 15 to 20
1018. 01:25:33 things that he lists and it's like an entire page worth of examples it's not necessarily bad it
1019. 01:25:38 just got to be like this is this is a lot like you're kind of upset right now I kind of wondered
1020. 01:25:44 if he was doing some angry writing when he wrote this because he's definitely like old man complaining
1021. 01:25:50 at times definitely what's going on so it's an interesting style again it's very story based so
1022. 01:25:59 it's I think an easy read as far as like is he all 100 right I think he's just upset that things
1023. 01:26:11 had to be done completely and 100 like working from home and being on zoom all day long yeah
1024. 01:26:18 that's that's terrible but doing a zoom call a day or every other day and then working from home and
1025. 01:26:26 being able to work on your craft that's not necessarily the same like that's not necessarily
1026. 01:26:32 bad but he kind of pitches it like all working from home is bad and then when you get to school like
1027. 01:26:38 all virtual school is bad well that's not necessarily true what if somebody's
1028. 01:26:42 working full-time and they're taking a couple classes at night but it's you know on-demand sort
1029. 01:26:48 of thing so they can do it when they have time like that's a different scenario you know yep
1030. 01:26:53 the commerce piece the culture pieces like conversation all of this stuff like you can do all of these
1031. 01:26:59 things in moderation digitally and it's okay and again it can fill a gap and I think you've brought
1032. 01:27:04 that up on almost every one of these mic and rightly so that there is a place for this
1033. 01:27:10 digitally and when it's taken in totality and it encompasses every component of it that's when it
1034. 01:27:17 gets to be a bit of an issue so I think he's kind of over reached in that just because the timing of
1035. 01:27:23 when this came out was very much pandemic on the heels of so it's not something that he's far removed
1036. 01:27:31 from and was writing in the middle of so I think it's kind of a a reaction book I don't think this
1037. 01:27:36 is going to age well some of these books that we read like these are perennial books they're
1038. 01:27:41 going to last a long time if you're going to read this one you're going to have to do it soon
1039. 01:27:46 so you don't forget some things you know if you wait a couple years it might get to be where it's
1040. 01:27:51 a bit too far removed maybe a couple years is too soon but you get my point as far as how to rate
1041. 01:27:56 this you know there's a lot of stuff in here that's like yeah I could see how I want that to be
1042. 01:28:02 analog and there's a lot of stuffs like I'm not doing that like I'm still gonna buy from Amazon
1043. 01:28:06 like I'm not gonna abandon that so I think at this particular point you're wrong Mike I'm gonna say
1044. 01:28:15 yes Mike's typing what he thinks I'm gonna rate it as in the in the notes I'm gonna put it at 3.5
1045. 01:28:23 you're close he thought I was gonna put it at 3.0 but that's what I had it originally I got
1046. 01:28:28 rid of it at 0.0 as you started to get more negative in your yes review so no I'm gonna put it at 3.5
1047. 01:28:35 I just think that you know it's overreaching in a lot of ways it's an interesting read and again if you
1048. 01:28:42 are into reading debriefs of worldwide pandemics this is a good book to pick up but
1049. 01:28:52 on at the end of the day you probably just need to listen to this episode and not
1050. 01:28:55 worry about the book what are your thoughts well I originally wanted to write it at 3.5 as well
1051. 01:29:04 because even though I have I have disagreements and issues with the perspective taken in a lot
1052. 01:29:11 of the different chapters he is a pretty good writer and it is an entertaining read it's very
1053. 01:29:17 one-sided you know his experience during the pandemic yeah he's talked to a lot of other people and he
1054. 01:29:22 brings in those other anecdotes but it's so story driven from his personal experience you can tell
1055. 01:29:27 that just by like the way that the chapters are set up and things like that that's not necessarily
1056. 01:29:31 a bad thing it's not for me though and as I was reflecting on this like what else would I recommend
1057. 01:29:37 over this bowling alone I feel like that speaks to a lot of these issues a lot better and has a
1058. 01:29:45 lot more research basis behind it and I can't remember exactly what I rated that book I don't
1059. 01:29:53 think I rated it super high but as I was reading this one I was like bowling alone is better
1060. 01:29:57 so I'm gonna rate this 3.0 I don't know it's a fine read I don't think I'm going to recommend
1061. 01:30:06 it necessarily to anybody I wish I had read the Revenge of Analog not just for this episode but
1062. 01:30:14 I wish I had that as context I wish I could line this one up alongside that one but in terms of
1063. 01:30:22 when should you do analog things when should you do digital things Chris Bailey talks about that
1064. 01:30:27 better and how to calm your mind in terms of the sociological what is this doing to us as a society
1065. 01:30:34 again bowling alone is better like I don't know where this one fits it just seems kind of weird
1066. 01:30:40 and I don't appreciate wrapping it all in the covid narrative honestly I mean
1067. 01:30:47 as he's writing it that's fine if I had read this six months ago a year ago does that change
1068. 01:30:56 my I've been asked myself does that change my interaction with this book I don't know that it
1069. 01:31:02 does but maybe so maybe some of this is just timing but yeah it it's okay you ranked bowling
1070. 01:31:12 alone at a 3.5 that's what I thought I rated it so okay and it's long it's not an entertaining
1071. 01:31:22 read but I think we read that one before covid and I feel like at this point probably we go
1072. 01:31:29 back and look at that kind of like how to read a book and we're like man there was a lot of
1073. 01:31:32 profound stuff in here he was right December 2020 okay so it was yeah it was in the middle of
1074. 01:31:39 it all that's right there was like an addendum sort of thing at the end those this is how this
1075. 01:31:43 applies to right to covid but I feel like that type of stuff about this is how it's just changing
1076. 01:31:48 communities that's more that whole perspective is more interesting to me than urban planning
1077. 01:31:57 okay let's put it on the shelf what's next Mike next is Master Your Motivation by
1078. 01:32:04 Susan Fowler recommendation by Martin so hopefully this one is good no I think it I think it will be
1079. 01:32:11 I've gotten a whole bunch of recommendations from people by the way since I've mentioned that I
1080. 01:32:15 wanted to read a book on motivation thank you for those I've bought several books on this topic
1081. 01:32:21 but yeah if you give me a good book recommendation I will buy it all right and then after that
1082. 01:32:27 I've selected the book 12 Rules for Life and Anadote to Chaos this is by Jordan B Peterson
1083. 01:32:35 have you ever heard of this book I have okay this is a lightning rod for controversy it is very
1084. 01:32:43 bookwormish yep yep so this is one that you know Jordan Peterson is one of those people that
1085. 01:32:52 people generally either love or hate very few people tend to be in that middle ground
1086. 01:32:58 and this book's been out for a little while and I think it was what is it 2018 is when it came out
1087. 01:33:05 so anyway I'm kind of curious it's kind of a philosophy take on a handful of things so it
1088. 01:33:12 should be interesting that'll be a fun fun conversation I have been kind of avoiding this one
1089. 01:33:18 intentionally however now that you've picked it I'm excited we're gonna get to talk about it
1090. 01:33:23 I'm not gonna lie this has been on my to read list for a very long time and I've had it show up
1091. 01:33:32 many many many times from recommendations from other people in the last probably four months
1092. 01:33:39 it's like I feel like maybe I should do this one now so some people may hate that we are doing
1093. 01:33:44 this book but I think it'll be an entertaining conversation regardless it's a long one though
1094. 01:33:50 with 400 pages yep so get cracking gap books I read three books last week whoa whoa yeah
1095. 01:34:00 most of them are pretty boring the most interesting one which is still going to be
1096. 01:34:04 pretty boring for a lot of people is this book called top grading by Bradford Smart it's essentially
1097. 01:34:11 a hiring process we just went through the hiring process at the day job so relevant to me but
1098. 01:34:18 I don't know it's it's kind of kind of interesting it's a very different take on the the hiring
1099. 01:34:23 process I'll summarize it for you soon I have to buy the book but in case you do on it buy it
1100. 01:34:28 they'll link a bit in the show notes essentially what you do when you talk to when you interview
1101. 01:34:32 people is you have you open it up with a threat of a reference check by saying it's part of our
1102. 01:34:36 process we require that you set up a conversation with one of your former managers or bosses
1103. 01:34:43 to verify that they will say the same thing about your work as you say whoa you don't actually
1104. 01:34:50 have to talk to them you just have to threaten that and you do it in a way that it's completely
1105. 01:34:55 legal and stuff like that but that immediately eliminates all the people obviously who are lying
1106. 01:34:59 on their resumes that might be just a brilliant thing right there interesting yep yep exactly
1107. 01:35:07 so it's a standard business book it's like 300 some pages and that's really all you need out of it
1108. 01:35:12 interesting cool well I have one gap book I'm in the middle of right now which is the cost of
1109. 01:35:21 discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I'm gonna go into too much detail here but I've got a friend
1110. 01:35:27 of mine that wanted to read it together so kind of have a quasi book club in person sort of thing
1111. 01:35:31 going his initiation not mine so anyway that's kind of what I'm in the middle of right now
1112. 01:35:37 nice all right so that brings us to the end of the show but I have a quick announcement before I get
1113. 01:35:45 too far into this and that's just that because we're in the middle of this migration of the bookworm
1114. 01:35:51 community from well to circle there's gonna be a post on the existing community probably in the
1115. 01:36:00 next couple days explaining the process but basically if you were a subscribing member
1116. 01:36:05 which we're very grateful to you for doing you're gonna get an invite to the new community which will
1117. 01:36:11 have basically a free trial for whatever time frame you have left on your existing subscription
1118. 01:36:18 and you just need to add a payment method to it in order for that membership to continue so you'll
1119. 01:36:24 get an email with all the stuff on that from us and invite with all the details just got to accept
1120. 01:36:30 it and do the stuff it's pretty simple so there'll be a post on the existing community about how
1121. 01:36:34 all that works and one on the new whenever you get there and then we'll do that migration so it
1122. 01:36:40 should be a pretty simple process if you have issues let us know I'm sure you will it'd be great so
1123. 01:36:46 again thanks to all of you who do that and I hope that's a simple process we'll be in a much better
1124. 01:36:50 spot once we get that all moved over so excited to have that underway so again thanks to all of
1125. 01:36:56 you who are paying members that link will stay the same for how to get their bookworm.fm/membership
1126. 01:37:02 I know that that's going to remain the same link so you can continue to go there to become a
1127. 01:37:08 subscriber and get all of Mike's book notes we're migrating all of that stuff over all of it comes
1128. 01:37:12 along for the ride thank you thank you thank you. The ad-free version maybe a bootleg version oh yeah
1129. 01:37:19 the bootleg that'll be entertaining all right so thanks everyone for hanging out today if you're
1130. 01:37:28 reading along with us pick up Master Your Motivation by Susan Fowler and we'll talk to you in a couple of
1131. 01:37:33 weeks.