17: QBQ! The Question Behind The Question by John Miller

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1. 00:00:00 I certainly took my time, huh?
2. 00:00:02 - You mean you're two minutes late?
3. 00:00:05 - I am.
4. 00:00:06 - I guess that's out of character for you, so yeah.
5. 00:00:09 (laughs)
6. 00:00:11 That's a good thing.
7. 00:00:12 - It never fails.
8. 00:00:13 I go to pick up a microphone and you know this.
9. 00:00:16 Something always goes wrong.
10. 00:00:18 So I was ready.
11. 00:00:20 Three, well, at this point, it's five, six minutes ago.
12. 00:00:23 And I went to pull up Adobe Audition to do the recording piece.
13. 00:00:29 And it had some weird error and wouldn't open it.
14. 00:00:33 So I had to restart my computer.
15. 00:00:35 And it took three minutes to get that done and then a couple minutes to get everything back up and ready to go.
16. 00:00:40 - Oh, the life of podcasting.
17. 00:00:43 I know, Adobe, right.
18. 00:00:46 But frankly, paying attention to folks who at least post stuff on Twitter,
19. 00:00:50 I have a lot fewer problems with Adobe Audition than other people seem to have with Logic.
20. 00:00:57 - That's just my gut feel though.
21. 00:00:59 I don't have any data on that.
22. 00:01:01 - I'm saying--
23. 00:01:02 - I don't know.
24. 00:01:03 I use Logic and I actually really like it.
25. 00:01:05 - See?
26. 00:01:06 There you go.
27. 00:01:07 You gotta prove me wrong.
28. 00:01:08 (laughs)
29. 00:01:09 - It's just me.
30. 00:01:10 Small sample size.
31. 00:01:11 (laughs)
32. 00:01:13 - Sample of one.
33. 00:01:15 Should we jump into follow up?
34. 00:01:18 - Let's do it.
35. 00:01:20 - So you have an end of day checklist on here.
36. 00:01:23 Tell me about that.
37. 00:01:25 I have a checklist that I go through at the end of my day now.
38. 00:01:30 And the idea here is that I do this during the buffer block and I have to admit that this is still not something that's ingrained in me yet.
39. 00:01:38 So I have not fully implemented this yet, but really the takeaway from last time was that I would actually have this checklist.
40. 00:01:46 So I do have the checklist and I need to just get better at using it now.
41. 00:01:50 So I'll run through five items that are on my end of day checklist.
42. 00:01:54 So when I'm done working, I get to the buffer block.
43. 00:01:56 Basically, I want to ask myself these questions.
44. 00:01:58 Number one are all my emails processed.
45. 00:02:01 Number two are all my inboxes emptied.
46. 00:02:03 So that would include envy, alt, or drafts.
47. 00:02:06 You'll be happy to hear.
48. 00:02:07 - Nice.
49. 00:02:08 - Number three are all my tasks in my task manager, which is OmniFocus.
50. 00:02:13 Number four are all my meetings on my calendar.
51. 00:02:17 And then number five are all my tabs closed.
52. 00:02:21 I'm kind of bad at this where I'll just close my computer and leave.
53. 00:02:27 And then when I open it up again, I have a whole bunch of tabs.
54. 00:02:30 And I know that that's a terrible thing from a productivity perspective to leave those open loops.
55. 00:02:34 So I put that in the checklist as well.
56. 00:02:37 - I started doing that like nine months ago with the tabs thing.
57. 00:02:41 That just blew my mind.
58. 00:02:43 I did not realize I did that until, oh gosh, I'm not going to think of who suggested this.
59. 00:02:49 I saw somebody on Twitter.
60. 00:02:51 I have no clue who.
61. 00:02:53 I would love to give them credit, but I can't give a name.
62. 00:02:56 But they suggested putting a process inbox and then Safari or Chrome.
63. 00:03:02 And I saw that and thought, what does that mean?
64. 00:03:06 How on earth do you have an inbox in a web browser?
65. 00:03:10 And they were simply referring to the tabs and trying to clear them out so that you had
66. 00:03:15 a clear web browser when you came back the next time.
67. 00:03:18 - Makes total sense to me.
68. 00:03:20 - I know, it makes total sense to me too.
69. 00:03:22 I just found myself not doing that.
70. 00:03:24 In fact, I went back and I realized I did a webinar for Asian efficiency a couple of years ago
71. 00:03:30 on some basic productivity techniques.
72. 00:03:32 That was one of the things I recommended.
73. 00:03:34 - Of course. - So I need to take your own advice.
74. 00:03:36 - Nice.
75. 00:03:37 - And the checklist as we learned last time is hopefully the way to do that.
76. 00:03:42 - Cool.
77. 00:03:43 - I do it as part of my daily review, so I have this whole process of doing my inbox clearing
78. 00:03:50 all at once.
79. 00:03:51 I just do a part of that.
80. 00:03:52 That's usually a first thing in the morning thing as opposed to the end of the day.
81. 00:03:55 But it just depends on how you want to come at it, what it is that you want to do.
82. 00:04:00 - Right.
83. 00:04:02 The other follow up item that I had was reading Strengths Finder with Rachel.
84. 00:04:06 And I have to admit that I failed on this one as well.
85. 00:04:09 - I did.
86. 00:04:11 - Yeah, okay.
87. 00:04:12 So not trying to make an excuse here.
88. 00:04:15 I did finally purchase the Strengths Finder, but every time I went to purchase it, they
89. 00:04:20 make it really, really hard.
90. 00:04:22 And that was enough friction for me to just be like, "I'll do this later."
91. 00:04:25 So basically, if you go to the website, you cannot buy just straight out of the box an
92. 00:04:32 access code for the assessment.
93. 00:04:34 You have to buy the book and then you enter the access code and it walks you through creating
94. 00:04:39 the account.
95. 00:04:40 And then what I didn't realize until just recently was that once you have that account and you
96. 00:04:44 log in to view your own results, you can then from that point purchase a separate access
97. 00:04:52 code for somebody else.
98. 00:04:54 - Got it.
99. 00:04:55 - But it's completely unintuitive.
100. 00:04:56 I didn't want to purchase another copy of the book.
101. 00:04:59 In fact, I went and I looked, the Kindle versions are usually cheaper.
102. 00:05:04 - Right.
103. 00:05:05 - So I'm like, "I have the book already.
104. 00:05:06 I don't need another version of this book.
105. 00:05:08 Maybe I can just get the Kindle version.
106. 00:05:10 It'll be included in the Kindle version, but it's a physical thing.
107. 00:05:14 So is it actually in the Kindle version?
108. 00:05:16 So I went and I looked at the Kindle version and the Kindle version is actually $20.
109. 00:05:20 So it's more expensive than the print one.
110. 00:05:23 And I don't know.
111. 00:05:25 It's a stupid little thing, but it was enough for me to just keep kicking the can down the
112. 00:05:29 road.
113. 00:05:30 But I did actually figure it out now, purchased the code for Rachel, have sent it to her and
114. 00:05:36 we have a week off next week over the week after Christmas.
115. 00:05:41 So we're going as a family.
116. 00:05:42 We rented a big house actually through Airbnb, kind of the middle of nowhere.
117. 00:05:47 And then her family is going to come stay there too.
118. 00:05:51 So it'll be fun and we'll be there for a week and we'll have some downtime.
119. 00:05:54 There'll be a couple days where we'll be the only ones there.
120. 00:05:57 So the plan is that she's going to take it then and then we'll talk about those results
121. 00:06:03 in one of our family meetings.
122. 00:06:04 - Fun.
123. 00:06:05 - So it sounds like you need to do some sort of a screencast on how do you get a Strengths
124. 00:06:09 Finder code?
125. 00:06:10 - Yeah, seriously.
126. 00:06:12 It's completely ridiculous.
127. 00:06:13 I don't understand.
128. 00:06:14 In fact, I found the screen where you could buy just the access codes without being logged
129. 00:06:20 in.
130. 00:06:21 And then it tells me, you need to have like an official account before you can purchase
131. 00:06:24 this.
132. 00:06:25 And the way they phrased it made it sound like you had to have a certification from Gallup
133. 00:06:32 in order to buy these.
134. 00:06:35 You had to go through a process and be approved.
135. 00:06:38 But really all you need to do is have an account already.
136. 00:06:40 So I saw that screen and I got freaked out.
137. 00:06:42 I'm like, well, there's no way I'm going to be certified.
138. 00:06:46 So I guess I can't purchase this and I kind of gave up on it for a while.
139. 00:06:49 And then when you put it back on the follow up, I'm like, I really need to figure this
140. 00:06:54 out.
141. 00:06:55 So we got it.
142. 00:06:57 - I'm glad I can prod you a little.
143. 00:07:00 - Bookworm is fulfilling its purpose.
144. 00:07:03 - There you go.
145. 00:07:04 - It's me follow through and stuff.
146. 00:07:05 - Awesome.
147. 00:07:06 So the two that I had, one was this continued process of writing down expectations for my
148. 00:07:13 projects as I take them on and then reevaluating those whenever they close.
149. 00:07:19 Now I did have, I had a couple of projects and I thought I was going to have this for
150. 00:07:23 this episode.
151. 00:07:24 So this will work out well.
152. 00:07:25 I had a couple of those that finally were completed the past week.
153. 00:07:31 And as a result of that, I realized I'm terrible at thinking how a project is going to end at
154. 00:07:39 the very beginning.
155. 00:07:40 And I've never noticed that before because I was reading what I wrote down for a couple
156. 00:07:44 of these projects.
157. 00:07:46 And then I'm looking at how it actually turned out and realizing I got nowhere close in my
158. 00:07:53 expectations.
159. 00:07:54 Huh, interesting.
160. 00:07:57 But if I had, because here's the other thing that I did, I was trying to, because it was
161. 00:08:02 long enough period from the time I started those projects to the time I completed them
162. 00:08:06 that I couldn't remember what I had wrote down for the expectations on it.
163. 00:08:11 So I was able to kind of, I guess guess what I thought I originally thought I could get
164. 00:08:17 done on the project or how it would turn out.
165. 00:08:19 And the comparison of what I thought I expected and what I actually expected was drastically
166. 00:08:26 different, which caught me off guard because it made me think that I had actually accomplished
167. 00:08:33 what I intended to accomplish.
168. 00:08:36 But whenever I reviewed it, I realized that it was, it was just a lot different.
169. 00:08:42 I don't know how else to say it without explaining the whole project and everything, which I
170. 00:08:45 can't do.
171. 00:08:47 But seeing the difference there was something that struck me, which I think is the point
172. 00:08:51 of that whole process is to help you see how we actually view these things.
173. 00:08:57 It was just a lot more alarming than I was expecting.
174. 00:09:01 So I explained that in a very vague, non-descriptive way.
175. 00:09:04 Sorry about that.
176. 00:09:05 But I think I get the gist of it.
177. 00:09:08 Yeah, it's a good process.
178. 00:09:10 I want to continue doing it.
179. 00:09:12 I'm probably going to drop it off of our follow up for the next one, just because it served
180. 00:09:17 its purpose.
181. 00:09:18 I'm going to continue doing it.
182. 00:09:19 And I have been, I've continued to write down what I thought a project would do at the beginning.
183. 00:09:24 So I've still been doing that.
184. 00:09:25 I just only have two of them that have actually been completed.
185. 00:09:29 Anyway, there you go.
186. 00:09:31 The other piece of follow up that I have is avoiding my phone early in the morning.
187. 00:09:36 This is a complete failure for me.
188. 00:09:39 I have this tendency to just want to know if any, for example, I want to know if I did
189. 00:09:45 any of my websites break overnight.
190. 00:09:48 Most of my clients will let me know if something's busted.
191. 00:09:52 Well, I would like to know that because if it's broken, I typically would try to fix it
192. 00:09:57 first thing in the morning when I get up, which is awesome if you're in my world because
193. 00:10:03 that means in most cases I can get it fixed and up and running before my client ever gets
194. 00:10:08 out of bed.
195. 00:10:09 So it's kind of this magical, like, I sent Joe a thing in the night and then it just magically
196. 00:10:13 works in the morning.
197. 00:10:15 I've kind of created this little monster of mine and I think I need to break that cycle
198. 00:10:23 before I'm going to be able to break the phone in the morning thing entirely.
199. 00:10:28 So I'm kind of copying out on that one somewhat.
200. 00:10:31 That is, avoiding your phone in the morning is way harder than it should be.
201. 00:10:37 Even maybe especially from our perspective because we're in the productivity space, like
202. 00:10:44 we understand all the rationale why you want to do that and it's still really, really
203. 00:10:49 hard to fight that urge.
204. 00:10:51 Right.
205. 00:10:52 Right.
206. 00:10:53 And you would think that if, to me, it seems like I should be able to just say, I'm not
207. 00:10:59 going to pick it up because I know that there's a lot of negative stuff that's on there that
208. 00:11:04 I don't want to start my day with.
209. 00:11:06 There's a lot of things that can distract me and get me off my intended path of the
210. 00:11:10 morning which may be developing a new plugin of some sort or writing a website, coding
211. 00:11:14 of some kind of writing articles.
212. 00:11:16 Like it can prevent me from doing a lot of that stuff that's vital to my business or
213. 00:11:20 vital to what I like to do.
214. 00:11:23 And you would think that if I knew that I would be able to just avoid my phone in the
215. 00:11:28 morning.
216. 00:11:30 But it's nowhere close to that.
217. 00:11:32 It doesn't even come in that ballpark.
218. 00:11:35 It's just something that completely messes with me because I keep thinking this should
219. 00:11:39 be simple and should be obvious.
220. 00:11:42 And yet it's one of the hardest things I feel like I've done in a long time.
221. 00:11:46 Right.
222. 00:11:47 Yeah.
223. 00:11:48 Which is why one of my action items was to remove email from my phone.
224. 00:11:54 And right.
225. 00:11:55 I'm finding now that there are times where I feel the urge to go in and check it.
226. 00:11:59 But physically, I'm not being able to do it is great.
227. 00:12:02 Nice.
228. 00:12:03 Well, maybe I should start using a different alarm clock and put my phone downstairs in
229. 00:12:09 the morning.
230. 00:12:10 I don't know.
231. 00:12:11 But it's not working the way I'm doing it.
232. 00:12:14 So I need to try to figure out some other other ways of coming at it or trying to break
233. 00:12:19 some of these current cycles or expectations that I've set.
234. 00:12:25 I probably need to break some of those currently before I'm going to get anywhere without one.
235. 00:12:32 Just the way it goes.
236. 00:12:35 Which may lead me into our book for today simply because it's going to make me ask questions
237. 00:12:40 and why in a lot of cases.
238. 00:12:43 So the book that we have read for our conversation today is QBQ.
239. 00:12:48 The question behind the question, which is by John G. Miller.
240. 00:12:53 And I think I called this out in the last couple of episodes.
241. 00:12:57 But this is a book that's on a list of books put together by Dave Ramsey.
242. 00:13:01 If you're familiar with him.
243. 00:13:03 And this is one of the books that at least he used to require his new hires to read before
244. 00:13:08 they started.
245. 00:13:09 I don't know if he still does that or not.
246. 00:13:10 But it was on a list at one point that he would ask people to read before they started
247. 00:13:15 working for him.
248. 00:13:16 And having read it, I can understand why.
249. 00:13:20 There are a few other books that are on that list that I have planned to make you read
250. 00:13:24 with me, Mike.
251. 00:13:27 And listeners, I'm going to prod us a little bit.
252. 00:13:30 Because I just think it'd be fun to go through all those books that he has recommended for
253. 00:13:35 his employees.
254. 00:13:36 And that is the entirety of why I picked this book, Mike.
255. 00:13:39 No philosophical, no deep underlying need on this one.
256. 00:13:45 There you go.
257. 00:13:47 I'm glad you picked this one.
258. 00:13:48 And I can totally see why Dave Ramsey or really anybody would require their employees
259. 00:13:54 to read this.
260. 00:13:56 There's a lot of workplace examples in here.
261. 00:14:00 He mentions at the very beginning the story about the waiter that basically blew his mind
262. 00:14:05 because he asked for a diet Pepsi, I believe, and they only served Coke.
263. 00:14:11 Or the other way around.
264. 00:14:12 I mix up the brands.
265. 00:14:13 But the waiter then talked to his manager who went to the store around the corner to
266. 00:14:18 get the person what they really wanted.
267. 00:14:20 And the waiter brought it to John Miller, I guess, when he was at the restaurant.
268. 00:14:26 And he just was blown away by that little thing.
269. 00:14:30 And then he kind of deconstructs that about what enabled this waiter to go above and beyond.
270. 00:14:35 It was the fact that the manager gave them the ability to make those types of calls.
271. 00:14:41 And it really comes down to the whole idea behind this book is taking responsibility and
272. 00:14:47 impacting the things that you can impact and not projecting the blame onto other people.
273. 00:14:52 So I really like that whole message.
274. 00:14:56 It's kind of been something that has been indoctrinated to me from a very young age.
275. 00:15:02 So I read the topic resonated with me right away.
276. 00:15:05 But then the way that he explains it, like this book, I really enjoyed it.
277. 00:15:10 This is one that I'm with you in that I think I was just raised in a way that this is almost
278. 00:15:15 second nature, like the concept of personal accountability.
279. 00:15:18 And if something goes wrong, I need to do something to fix it.
280. 00:15:21 Whether it's my fault or not, I can still take responsibility for it.
281. 00:15:25 So that's something that I know me personally, I always jump to.
282. 00:15:30 I always assume like, even if something like, take for example, somebody reruns me while
283. 00:15:34 I'm driving.
284. 00:15:35 Well, it's not necessarily my fault, but I can take responsibility to make sure that
285. 00:15:40 everything is fixed.
286. 00:15:42 I can make sure that my car is taken care of and not rely on the insurance agency or
287. 00:15:47 any of that.
288. 00:15:48 I can be the one that takes care of it.
289. 00:15:50 And it seems like, and this is something I'm hesitant to talk about, but I understand
290. 00:15:56 that it's a big deal right now because this whole personal accountability piece is something
291. 00:16:01 that seems to be disappearing in our culture, which is kind of saddening because so many
292. 00:16:06 times I run into people who it's the end of the world because somebody else did something
293. 00:16:12 to them or the latest political world, the new president doesn't believe what I believe
294. 00:16:20 and is against me.
295. 00:16:21 So everything's going to come crashing down.
296. 00:16:24 Well, that's not true.
297. 00:16:28 It's not necessarily the end of the world because someone else did something to you.
298. 00:16:32 It's more about what am I going to do about it.
299. 00:16:34 And that's what this is a lot about, of let's come up with the question behind the question.
300. 00:16:39 And if I define that because it's a bit nebulous to say it that way, that was one thing I
301. 00:16:45 struggled with here is he would talk about QBQs and it would be kind of difficult for
302. 00:16:51 me at times to just do the translation.
303. 00:16:52 But I think that was just because of my own mentality.
304. 00:16:55 That's not his fault at all.
305. 00:16:57 But the way that he defined a QBQ is a tool that enables individuals to practice personal
306. 00:17:05 accountability by making better choices in the moment.
307. 00:17:09 And the way that he goes about defining what that actually is as far as a question goes
308. 00:17:16 as he puts together a series of three criteria that you essentially ask yourself.
309. 00:17:20 So think of the question behind the question as something that you're going to ask yourself
310. 00:17:25 in a moment so that you can create a better outcome as opposed to falling into this assuming
311. 00:17:31 if somebody else's fault.
312. 00:17:32 You can take that responsibility.
313. 00:17:34 But the three criteria for one of these questions is that it starts with a what or a how.
314. 00:17:40 It contains an I and it focuses on action.
315. 00:17:44 So the classic example here is what can I do?
316. 00:17:48 Something goes wrong.
317. 00:17:49 What can I do about it in order to create a better outcome?
318. 00:17:52 So to me, that's a great way of leading us.
319. 00:17:57 If you look at the cultural thing, if people stopped asking why won't shipping get their
320. 00:18:04 act together?
321. 00:18:06 Well, instead of asking why won't shipping get their act together, what can I do to better
322. 00:18:12 enable shipping to do their job?
323. 00:18:15 A completely different question, but it leads to an action in it, something that you can
324. 00:18:19 physically do.
325. 00:18:20 I'm rambling now, Mike.
326. 00:18:21 You jump in.
327. 00:18:22 No, I completely agree.
328. 00:18:24 And this was something that I kind of learned with working with the Asian efficiency team.
329. 00:18:29 I think I may have mentioned this story before where when we were launching the podcast,
330. 00:18:35 there was something that had gone wrong.
331. 00:18:37 Somebody basically had pushed published too early on a podcast episode and it went out
332. 00:18:41 to the feeds and people were downloading it and the episode wasn't finished.
333. 00:18:47 And so at the time, because I was working on the podcast project, I saw that and immediately
334. 00:18:56 I was like, "Oh, no, I need to fix this."
335. 00:18:58 The way that I had always traditionally done things is figure out what went wrong, but
336. 00:19:05 the way that I was asking the questions was framed as, "Who did this?
337. 00:19:10 What happened?
338. 00:19:11 Who's responsible for this?"
339. 00:19:14 And when that was happening, when I was going through that process, I was trying to figure
340. 00:19:18 that out.
341. 00:19:19 Tan basically just corrected me on the spot.
342. 00:19:21 He's like, "No, it doesn't matter.
343. 00:19:22 It doesn't matter.
344. 00:19:23 Let's just figure out what we need to do to fix this going forward."
345. 00:19:25 And really what he was saying was the application of the question behind the question and implementing
346. 00:19:30 the formula that you just mentioned.
347. 00:19:32 Begin with the what or the how.
348. 00:19:34 It contains the word "I" and the focus on the action.
349. 00:19:36 So it doesn't matter what somebody else did in the past, but what can I do right at this
350. 00:19:42 moment to fix this.
351. 00:19:44 And then obviously from a system standpoint, you want to understand what had happened so
352. 00:19:48 that you can change the system and make sure that there's safeguards in place so that that
353. 00:19:53 doesn't happen again.
354. 00:19:55 But I had always focused on figuring things out from the perspective of assigning accountability
355. 00:20:03 in terms of blame as who is the one who did this thing so that we can hold them accountable
356. 00:20:08 for whether this worked or didn't work.
357. 00:20:10 And that's kind of not the right approach.
358. 00:20:12 And one of the things I really like about the Asian deficiency team is that one of the core
359. 00:20:17 values we have is "we" before me.
360. 00:20:19 So a lot of people will say, "We win or we lose as a team," but at Asian deficiency,
361. 00:20:24 it really is true.
362. 00:20:25 Like if we fail in one particular area, we're not going to isolate the single person and
363. 00:20:31 shame them for making the wrong decision.
364. 00:20:34 We're going to, as a team, figure out how to fix this, how to pull everybody up, how to
365. 00:20:39 make the best of this situation, and how to move forward.
366. 00:20:44 So I guess the short way of saying this would be that in the past, I had been asking what
367. 00:20:49 John Miller would call the "I" cues, the incorrect questions in terms of just projecting
368. 00:20:55 the blame.
369. 00:20:56 But those are incorrect questions because those questions don't produce anything productive
370. 00:21:01 or positive from asking them.
371. 00:21:03 You can try to figure out the same result, but the way that you ask the question can
372. 00:21:09 either be framed as positive or negative, and I realized now that in the past, what I had
373. 00:21:13 done a lot of times when I was asking those questions, is I was asking them in a negative
374. 00:21:19 light.
375. 00:21:20 And so that was a big thing for me, was recognizing that you want to ask these questions, yes,
376. 00:21:26 but you want to do it in a way that moves the team, the organization, yourself forward.
377. 00:21:31 I think we have a tendency to protect ourselves.
378. 00:21:36 We have a desire to make sure that if something bad happens, we know that it wasn't something
379. 00:21:44 that we did.
380. 00:21:46 There's something in us that wants to know it's not my fault.
381. 00:21:50 I did my job.
382. 00:21:51 I did everything correctly.
383. 00:21:53 There's something in us that wants to say that.
384. 00:21:57 It leads us to how do I get to that point, how do I prove that it's not me, that it's
385. 00:22:03 not my fault, which leads us to these incorrect questions, these IQs of why do they continue
386. 00:22:11 to do this?
387. 00:22:12 Why do they always make it harder on us?
388. 00:22:14 Why did they put it around about?
389. 00:22:15 That's a terrible idea in that spot.
390. 00:22:17 They should have been in a stoplight.
391. 00:22:18 There's so many of these things that, why would they inflict this on us and putting us
392. 00:22:24 in a situation where we're, and it looks like you have this on the outline, we're the
393. 00:22:28 victim, we're the one who's had something happen to us, and instead of coming at it
394. 00:22:35 from the standpoint of what do I do about it or how do I solve this right now, instead
395. 00:22:41 of coming at it that way, we try to protect ourselves and we want to make sure that we're
396. 00:22:45 in the right and making sure that we're the ones who are awesome right now, and they're
397. 00:22:52 the ones that screwed everything up.
398. 00:22:54 That's just kind of the mentality we seem to take with a lot of situations, especially
399. 00:22:58 negative ones.
400. 00:22:59 You know, if it's positive, we want to take credit for it, but if it's something negative,
401. 00:23:03 we always want to pass the blame off because we don't want to be the one at fault.
402. 00:23:07 We're always the victim in that situation.
403. 00:23:10 This is why this is kind of, it'll mess with you a little bit because if you're always
404. 00:23:14 coming at it from the standpoint that this is something that happened to me and you reverse
405. 00:23:19 that and start thinking about, well, even if it's something that negative happened to
406. 00:23:23 me, I can still do something about it.
407. 00:23:26 If you change that, that's where so many of these protests and the riots and all these
408. 00:23:32 social justice groups can start to get somewhere.
409. 00:23:36 I just hear a lot of noise with a lot of it, and this is probably highly controversial.
410. 00:23:41 Whoops.
411. 00:23:42 But I hear a lot of noise with it, and my question is always, well, what are you going
412. 00:23:46 to do about it?
413. 00:23:48 Don't, you know, violence is never the answer.
414. 00:23:51 Getting upset and making other people angry, that's never the answer.
415. 00:23:54 So what's the action item here?
416. 00:23:57 You know, go back to GTD.
417. 00:23:58 What's the next action?
418. 00:23:59 What are you going to do about it?
419. 00:24:01 And don't say that you need to do this.
420. 00:24:04 What is it that I can do in this situation?
421. 00:24:06 He told a story about a CEO who went through some of these trainings that they do about
422. 00:24:14 QBQs, and the whole point of it was to help people understand personal accountability.
423. 00:24:20 And one of the comments that the CEO made toward the end of it is, what can you do about
424. 00:24:27 the situation?
425. 00:24:29 And it completely missed the point of the whole conference because you can understand
426. 00:24:33 what he's saying is, you know, you need to take personal responsibility, but the better
427. 00:24:37 example there would have been if the CEO stood up and said, this is what I need to do.
428. 00:24:41 Like, here's what I can do to help whatever situation.
429. 00:24:44 So it's kind of a shift in thinking away from, I'm the one who's just at fault or I'm the
430. 00:24:52 one, not that I'm at fault, but I'm the one that's the victim here and getting away from
431. 00:24:57 that and stepping into, what do I do about it?
432. 00:25:00 Yeah.
433. 00:25:01 And I think that that is a great example because from a CEO perspective, he's looking
434. 00:25:08 at that and saying, I really want to change the culture of this organization, then not
435. 00:25:16 saying this is the correct approach, but I'm projecting now his approach is probably,
436. 00:25:21 I just need to communicate this to everybody in the organization.
437. 00:25:25 So that's why he framed it that way.
438. 00:25:27 Personal responsibility begins with you.
439. 00:25:29 Going back to social justice issues and things like that.
440. 00:25:33 There are a lot of, a lot of times when you can look at it as I'm just one person, what
441. 00:25:38 sort of difference can I make?
442. 00:25:39 And really the point that I got from this book is that you really want to make a big
443. 00:25:45 difference.
444. 00:25:46 That's the best thing you can do is to just model it, to do it yourself.
445. 00:25:52 And you may not think that you have this big platform and it's not going to ripple down
446. 00:25:57 like a CEO would just telling everybody and, you know, assuming that they're going to
447. 00:26:02 apply this immediately and it's going to be this big change in the organization.
448. 00:26:06 But the truth of the matter is that that approach isn't going to work anyways.
449. 00:26:09 Right.
450. 00:26:10 Right.
451. 00:26:11 You're going to get much more traction.
452. 00:26:13 You're going to get much further if you just apply this to yourself.
453. 00:26:17 And so the whole idea of the victim thinking, something that my dad taught me, he said this
454. 00:26:22 over and over and over again, he had this, this graphic made where it was procrastination
455. 00:26:29 and there was an arrow so like procrastination leads to blame, leads to victim thinking.
456. 00:26:37 And the whole idea is that you procrastinate on things that you know you need to do.
457. 00:26:42 And then when push comes to shove and things don't go exactly the way that you want them
458. 00:26:47 to, that's when things go wrong.
459. 00:26:50 And then when people ask you or hold you accountable for the results, then you play the victim
460. 00:26:55 card.
461. 00:26:56 And the example of this, and I think we've mentioned this on this podcast is you go to
462. 00:27:01 your class on the first day of the semester and they give you the syllabus and they say
463. 00:27:05 there's going to be a big project due at the end of the semester.
464. 00:27:08 Here's the due date.
465. 00:27:09 And most people are going to procrastinate on that project.
466. 00:27:12 They're going to wait till the week before and then they're going to pull for all nighters
467. 00:27:17 and they're going to try to cram and get this thing done.
468. 00:27:21 And then the day before it's due, they have some technical issue, their computer malfunctions,
469. 00:27:26 they lose all their work.
470. 00:27:28 And it's not my fault.
471. 00:27:29 Well, it is your fault.
472. 00:27:31 The only reason that you're in that situation is because you put it off so long to begin
473. 00:27:36 with.
474. 00:27:37 It's the classic, "dog ate my homework" sort of a thing.
475. 00:27:40 And we can fill in the blanks with our own situation.
476. 00:27:43 I mean, every single person does this where you project that things are going to go perfectly
477. 00:27:49 and then things don't always go perfectly.
478. 00:27:52 And then because they don't go the way that you had planned them instead of assuming the
479. 00:27:56 responsibility for the way that things have turned out and not starting on this thing
480. 00:28:00 earlier when you had the time and you decided to watch Game of Thrones or whatever the new
481. 00:28:05 TV show is, insert your favorite time waster there.
482. 00:28:09 Then when we actually do have to have the thing done, it's not our fault.
483. 00:28:14 Or even sometimes if we get it done, it's just way harder than it needs to be.
484. 00:28:19 That's the kind of person I am.
485. 00:28:20 I'll get things done, but if I procrastinate on them, I will project the blame onto other
486. 00:28:26 people still when it doesn't go my way and I'll say, "Oh, this is so much harder than
487. 00:28:29 it needed to be."
488. 00:28:30 Well, it's so much harder than it needed to be because I put it off.
489. 00:28:33 If I would have just started right away, if I would have pedaled before I got to the
490. 00:28:37 hill, I would have had some momentum.
491. 00:28:38 This would have been a lot simpler.
492. 00:28:41 So many of our incorrect questions come from that.
493. 00:28:44 Like the process of, "I didn't get this done in time.
494. 00:28:48 I didn't think about it ahead of time."
495. 00:28:50 But now that I missed because I waited, "Well, why would they ever do this to me?
496. 00:28:56 Why can't they get their act together?
497. 00:28:58 Why am I sitting here waiting to get?
498. 00:29:01 Why can't they get their discount card to work?
499. 00:29:04 I need this right now."
500. 00:29:05 Well, you should have been in a week ago.
501. 00:29:09 You could have had it figured out a week ago.
502. 00:29:11 That's...
503. 00:29:12 It happened so much.
504. 00:29:14 And even in situations where you have people who are administrators or secretaries and
505. 00:29:22 such, and I run into this all the time with clients, that I need a certain amount of information
506. 00:29:27 from them so that I can build a website for them.
507. 00:29:30 I give them their deadline because based on the time that they want to launch, here's
508. 00:29:34 the date that I need to have all the information from them, which gives me the time to build
509. 00:29:38 it.
510. 00:29:39 Rarely do they get it to me on time.
511. 00:29:41 Just the way it goes, just the way it happens.
512. 00:29:44 And then my typical MO on that is, "Okay, you were four days late on getting the information.
513. 00:29:51 The very first thing I do is push the launch date back four days.
514. 00:29:56 I just take the amount of time and just tack it onto the end."
515. 00:29:58 And I always, always have to have a conversation on why I did that.
516. 00:30:02 They don't understand, "Well, that's the date you gave me.
517. 00:30:06 That's the date that it should be.
518. 00:30:08 Why can't you do what you told me you were going to do?"
519. 00:30:10 It's like, "Well, because you didn't do what you told me you were going to do."
520. 00:30:14 It's just simple cause and effect here.
521. 00:30:17 But that whole consequence's conversation of taking ownership for the thing that you
522. 00:30:21 did or didn't do, in this case procrastination, leads to a failure of hitting that deadline,
523. 00:30:27 which they're not happy with.
524. 00:30:29 They don't want to take the blame in this case.
525. 00:30:32 They don't want to take credit for screwing up the deadline.
526. 00:30:36 It's not that complicated.
527. 00:30:37 Just think about it ahead of time and I understand we're all busy.
528. 00:30:41 We have a ton of things going on.
529. 00:30:42 But if you're going to commit to something, do it and take ownership of it.
530. 00:30:48 Don't try to blame somebody else, which is what so much of this book is about.
531. 00:30:53 Don't put it on somebody else.
532. 00:30:55 Take it on to yourself.
533. 00:30:57 Just own it.
534. 00:30:59 It sounds simple.
535. 00:31:00 I get that.
536. 00:31:01 I'm making this sound crazy easy, but it's not.
537. 00:31:05 I understand that.
538. 00:31:06 But at the same time, it is that easy.
539. 00:31:09 Just do what you say you're going to do and very few things are problematic because of
540. 00:31:13 that.
541. 00:31:14 Maybe I should raise traditional.
542. 00:31:16 I don't know.
543. 00:31:17 And if you don't do what you say you're going to do and if there is a crisis, then that
544. 00:31:22 kind of leads into the next point on the outline, the brainstorming versus blame storming.
545. 00:31:26 I mean, the meeting that you're describing where they're trying to figure out why you
546. 00:31:30 push the due date back four days is an example of blame storming and they're trying to figure
547. 00:31:38 out, well, why is this this way?
548. 00:31:41 Instead of brainstorming, I view that as figuring out together the best way to solve
549. 00:31:48 this particular problem.
550. 00:31:51 Just the whole model of this is going to be delivered by a certain date is going to create
551. 00:31:58 some of that.
552. 00:32:00 He has a quote in the book where he says questions that begin with when always lead to procrastination.
553. 00:32:07 So when you put it out there that way is like, when are you going to have this done?
554. 00:32:14 And I say I'm going to have it done by a specific date.
555. 00:32:17 Then there's built in motivation, I guess, to procrastinate.
556. 00:32:21 The best way to say that.
557. 00:32:24 And really, when we ask incorrect questions, when we use when when we blame storm, when
558. 00:32:31 we do things like that, what we do is we accept stress.
559. 00:32:35 It's a choice.
560. 00:32:36 He says it's a choice that you make by asking those incorrect questions.
561. 00:32:41 And on page 35, he mentions that the answers are in the questions.
562. 00:32:44 So literally it sounds super simple, but it really is true.
563. 00:32:49 If you want to get better results, all you really have to do is ask some better questions
564. 00:32:55 and not fall into that blame storming cycle because those meetings where you're trying
565. 00:32:59 to figure out, well, whose fault is this really?
566. 00:33:01 You could go back and forth for hours.
567. 00:33:04 Well, I couldn't get it to you until four days later because of this.
568. 00:33:08 And then, you know, there's always going to be a justification.
569. 00:33:12 And that's where the procrastination leads to blame leads to victim thinking cycle comes
570. 00:33:16 in.
571. 00:33:17 And there's always going to be something that you can use as a crutch to say, this is not
572. 00:33:20 my fault.
573. 00:33:22 And that's what we mentioned a lot about society.
574. 00:33:25 And I prefer to just apply this to myself.
575. 00:33:27 But this is prevalent in society today is that we tend to blame other people for the
576. 00:33:33 things that happened to us.
577. 00:33:35 And really, that's not going to change anything.
578. 00:33:38 What we need to do is to not assign the blame.
579. 00:33:42 You know, maybe we did start off disadvantage.
580. 00:33:44 Maybe we are in a tough spot.
581. 00:33:46 But blaming somebody else for being there really doesn't help anything.
582. 00:33:49 It just makes you bitter.
583. 00:33:51 And so what can you do right now to fix that?
584. 00:33:54 You can start asking the right questions following that QB key formula.
585. 00:33:59 What can I do?
586. 00:34:02 I want to go back to this example of, you know, me and this meeting with the client because
587. 00:34:09 something I've been doing for a while that it's mostly me trying to avoid a conflict.
588. 00:34:15 You know, I'm trying to be the good freelancer here and trying to make sure it's a positive
589. 00:34:19 meeting because it typically leads to better things for me in the long run.
590. 00:34:22 Pretty obvious stuff, I think.
591. 00:34:25 Whenever we get into a situation where something negative has happened and they're trying to
592. 00:34:28 do this blame storm process of why did this go bad and why is it this way?
593. 00:34:34 I find myself typically just trying to say, you know what, let's not go there.
594. 00:34:38 You guys can work on that on your end.
595. 00:34:40 At some point, you can figure out where it went wrong on your end unless it's something
596. 00:34:43 I did, in which case I'm usually the one who's going to say, hey, I screwed this up.
597. 00:34:47 Like I try to make sure that I point those things out if I did screw something up and
598. 00:34:51 then I know it.
599. 00:34:52 But if they go through this process of trying to figure out where something went wrong,
600. 00:34:57 my tendency is to say, you know, take your own time and do that right now.
601. 00:35:00 This is what we need to figure out on how to get forward.
602. 00:35:03 And if they still want to hit a certain deadline, even though they were four days late, typically
603. 00:35:07 what I can do is say, here's here are a few areas that I'm going to need responses
604. 00:35:12 from you.
605. 00:35:13 And here is the timeframe that has like I've given you a week to give me those responses.
606. 00:35:21 If you want to gain those four days, you need to beat those deadlines.
607. 00:35:24 Like you can make this back up on your end.
608. 00:35:27 So if you can make up four days in these three check-in periods, then we can make those
609. 00:35:31 four days and still hit your deadline.
610. 00:35:33 Now granted, 99% of the time they still go until the last day or a day after on those
611. 00:35:40 check-in periods and they don't actually make up time, but in their mind, they're still
612. 00:35:44 trying to hit some of those and they'd like, oh yeah, we could do that.
613. 00:35:48 And then they plan on still hitting that deadline, but then they don't actually make
614. 00:35:51 up the time.
615. 00:35:52 And then we have another conversation when we're at the deadline and it's not done.
616. 00:35:56 Like, okay, guys, it's not complicated.
617. 00:35:59 You didn't actually do what you said you were going to do.
618. 00:36:01 So it's interesting to me that whenever those blame storms start to crop up, that if you
619. 00:36:07 can shut them down and let them solve it on their own end, you can at least start to
620. 00:36:12 try to have this conversation of where the ownership lies on moving forward instead of
621. 00:36:17 focusing on the past.
622. 00:36:19 Now I'm not trying to discount that there's no value in doing that because something I
623. 00:36:24 try to do, at least personally, is it, you know, if something goes wrong, I want to get
624. 00:36:27 the path forward figured out and then come back to it afterwards and figure out what
625. 00:36:31 went wrong and why it didn't happen the way I wanted it to.
626. 00:36:35 I'm not always the best at that, but I try to just because I want to know how can I prevent
627. 00:36:40 that from happening again in the future?
628. 00:36:42 I don't want it to continue to be a problem, but it at least forces that conversation.
629. 00:36:47 Is this something you ever do?
630. 00:36:49 Do you ever have to deal with folks that want to push deadlines around and blame in different
631. 00:36:54 areas?
632. 00:36:55 Or is this just something that I'm dealing with?
633. 00:36:57 No, it's definitely something that I think probably everybody deals with because you can't
634. 00:37:01 control what other people are going to do, but you can control whether you fall into
635. 00:37:05 the blame storming cycle or the brainstorming cycle.
636. 00:37:08 And so one of the things he says is like break the circle of blame.
637. 00:37:11 That's really where the focus needs to be.
638. 00:37:13 That was one of my big takeaways from this book.
639. 00:37:17 I mean, really there's a single takeaway for me here, but it's that the only person I can
640. 00:37:22 change is myself.
641. 00:37:24 So I can't try to fix anyone else.
642. 00:37:26 I can go back and I can deconstruct the situation.
643. 00:37:29 I can figure out where things went wrong and I can institute procedural changes, systemic
644. 00:37:34 fixes to these processes that can make better outcomes in the future.
645. 00:37:39 But I can't say, well, client X, you have to do things this way.
646. 00:37:44 I think another area that this really manifests is in the tools that you have.
647. 00:37:51 He talked about that quite a bit and I forgot to put this in the outline here, but he mentioned
648. 00:37:56 that focusing on what we don't have is a waste of our time and energy.
649. 00:38:00 And a lot of times I know I've fallen into this trap.
650. 00:38:03 I think well, soon as I get that new MacBook Pro, which actually I am recording this podcast
651. 00:38:09 on right now.
652. 00:38:10 What?
653. 00:38:11 Yep.
654. 00:38:12 I got a new 15 inch MacBook Pro.
655. 00:38:15 I do a lot of video work and I had a 13 inch with no video card.
656. 00:38:18 So it was time.
657. 00:38:19 Ah, it's so jealous.
658. 00:38:22 It's a pretty great machine, but that aside, I don't doubt that a bit.
659. 00:38:30 That aside, there are definitely cases where I've thought to myself, if I could just get
660. 00:38:35 this particular tool, it would make everything else so much easier.
661. 00:38:39 Now, this is a little bit different because this is a work computer and it's not something
662. 00:38:44 that I personally paid everything for myself, Asian efficiency, helped me out a little bit
663. 00:38:48 because I am doing this to create videos for Asian efficiency.
664. 00:38:52 So a little bit different situation.
665. 00:38:54 It wasn't just me saying, oh man, I want a new computer.
666. 00:38:58 I went from exporting a five minute screen flow and 35 minutes to exporting a 45 minute
667. 00:39:04 screen flow in five minutes.
668. 00:39:05 So it's, it makes total sense for this particular situation.
669. 00:39:10 But I mean, fill in the blanks.
670. 00:39:12 It could be you wanted to, you want to start a podcast and oh, I can't start a podcast because
671. 00:39:17 I don't have my high LPR for you.
672. 00:39:19 I don't have an awesome audio interface.
673. 00:39:21 I don't have Logic Pro that I can edit this stuff on.
674. 00:39:24 Doesn't matter.
675. 00:39:25 Use what you've got or start with some entry level stuff.
676. 00:39:29 I started with a Blue Yeti and Garage Band and that was completely fine for a really long
677. 00:39:33 time.
678. 00:39:34 Once you get into something, then you can upgrade your tools a little bit later.
679. 00:39:38 But we tend to focus on these, on the tools so much and we use that as a, as an enabler
680. 00:39:43 for our procrastination.
681. 00:39:45 There's a quote in there by, I believe it was Deb Weber from State Farm Insurance.
682. 00:39:49 He said, "Every time I do the job with the tools I have, I tend to receive more tools."
683. 00:39:54 And I think that's the perfect way to approach this.
684. 00:39:56 So the podcast example, just start podcasting.
685. 00:39:58 And then once you start getting some momentum, then you can upgrade it.
686. 00:40:02 But don't use the tools as a reason not to get started with something.
687. 00:40:06 In essence, don't blame your tools or lack thereof.
688. 00:40:09 Right.
689. 00:40:10 Right.
690. 00:40:11 Well, you're familiar with the podcast Lore by Aaron Mankey.
691. 00:40:15 He, he put a tweet out two or three days ago as we're recording this.
692. 00:40:20 I'll see if I can find it or not, but he, he posted that he's still using GarageBand
693. 00:40:26 for Lore, which receives millions of downloads.
694. 00:40:30 Like, really?
695. 00:40:32 It hit the top podcast in 2016 for Apple.
696. 00:40:35 Like, right.
697. 00:40:36 And he's still using GarageBand for his editing.
698. 00:40:39 Now it's an older version because I think he wanted some features that they've pulled
699. 00:40:43 since then, but he's still using a free software that came with his Mac.
700. 00:40:48 Like this is, to me, I'm like, see, you don't have to have super sophisticated tools.
701. 00:40:54 Like I'm complaining about Adobe Audition earlier.
702. 00:40:56 Like, this is just something I use.
703. 00:40:58 I like using it, works well.
704. 00:40:59 I know how it works.
705. 00:41:00 I'm going to run with that.
706. 00:41:01 I do all of my recording on a road podcaster.
707. 00:41:04 Like, that seems to work really well for me, but it's a tool that I have.
708. 00:41:08 And you know, I could upgrade.
709. 00:41:09 There are some ways I could make this better.
710. 00:41:12 But for now, you know, it does the job, does a good job, and I'm happy with it.
711. 00:41:17 So, you know, at some point, if I get good at podcasting, I'll probably upgrade.
712. 00:41:21 If it continues to be something that I want to do, I'll get to that point.
713. 00:41:24 But like you said, you know, if I get good and do a good job with the tools I have, more
714. 00:41:28 tools will come.
715. 00:41:29 That's the way it works.
716. 00:41:31 Right.
717. 00:41:32 You just have to take ownership of what you can control, which from a podcast perspective,
718. 00:41:37 since this is a podcast, we're talking about podcasting, would be the creation of the actual
719. 00:41:42 content.
720. 00:41:43 He defines ownership in the book as a commitment of the head, heart, and hands to fix the problems
721. 00:41:49 and never again affix the blame.
722. 00:41:53 And that kind of ties back to the next point on the outline here, the three people that
723. 00:41:57 you have to beat.
724. 00:41:58 I really like this.
725. 00:41:59 I'm into sports.
726. 00:42:01 So this sports analogy that he had was really resonated with me.
727. 00:42:05 If you played sports competitively, like in high school, for example, you can probably
728. 00:42:09 think back to a specific game that was quote unquote, decided by a bad call or decided
729. 00:42:18 by the referee because the referees are human.
730. 00:42:22 They're going to make mistakes.
731. 00:42:24 Maybe it actually is a hometown referee, but that doesn't really matter.
732. 00:42:29 And what John Miller says in the book is that you have to be good enough to beat first yourself,
733. 00:42:36 second your opponent, and third the referee.
734. 00:42:39 And when you think about it that way, it's like, yeah, that makes total sense.
735. 00:42:44 And in the case of professional sports, for example, and you're on the biggest stage,
736. 00:42:50 you're playing for the Super Bowl.
737. 00:42:51 I mean, people work their entire lives to get to that point.
738. 00:42:54 It would really stink to have the referee have a bad call that looks like it determines
739. 00:42:58 the outcome of the game.
740. 00:43:00 But in real life, or for me and for everybody else who is not a professional athlete, you
741. 00:43:05 can definitely apply this to your specific situation.
742. 00:43:08 You can say, yeah, there is going to be things that I can do to overcome any variables that
743. 00:43:15 the referee in my life, whatever that looks like, would throw my way.
744. 00:43:19 So that could be the referee could be a boss that doesn't understand the huge time commitment
745. 00:43:27 that email really is.
746. 00:43:28 You know, we talked about email quite a bit on this podcast.
747. 00:43:31 I worked on a product for Asian efficiency called Escape Your Email.
748. 00:43:34 Some of the research shows that the average US worker spends 6.3 hours per day dealing
749. 00:43:39 with email.
750. 00:43:40 Okay.
751. 00:43:41 Well, if you have a boss who sends you an email and then comes into your office 10 minutes
752. 00:43:44 later to ask you if you receive the email, that's going to waste a lot of time.
753. 00:43:48 But there's still things that you can do to set yourself up for success.
754. 00:43:52 You can overcome the referee in that particular situation.
755. 00:43:56 So recognizing that you are in complete control of the entire outcome.
756. 00:44:02 That is really freeing in my opinion.
757. 00:44:06 It's enabling it.
758. 00:44:07 It gives you permission to be successful in that sense because you can take account, you
759. 00:44:13 can take responsibility for the entire process.
760. 00:44:16 And then you can say, okay, whether I succeed or fail, this is completely on my shoulders,
761. 00:44:20 which really it is because there are things that you can do.
762. 00:44:22 Like I mentioned before, you can pedal before the hill.
763. 00:44:25 You can gain enough momentum where even a bad call isn't going to matter because you've
764. 00:44:29 run up the score.
765. 00:44:32 This is similar to the thing I keep saying.
766. 00:44:34 It's not necessarily my fault, but it can be my responsibility.
767. 00:44:40 I don't have to rely on the referee in this case to be the one that dictates the outcome
768. 00:44:46 for myself.
769. 00:44:47 I can take ownership of that.
770. 00:44:50 It's kind of disheartening to see how many people reject this concept.
771. 00:44:57 And that warrants why this book exists because personal accountability is not something
772. 00:45:02 that is...
773. 00:45:04 I don't want to say that it's not common, but it's not mainstream, I guess is the word
774. 00:45:09 for it because it's not something you just see and absolutely everybody.
775. 00:45:14 And I could pinpoint certain groups, but you're always going to be stereotyping and there's
776. 00:45:18 not always true stereotypes.
777. 00:45:20 So it can fall in a lot of different categories, but ultimately, if I can beat my opponent,
778. 00:45:27 I can beat myself, but when it comes to the other people who are setting the rules and
779. 00:45:33 the who ones are making the calls that dictate the outcome in front of me, it's really up
780. 00:45:38 to me to make sure that I'm good enough to even beat them.
781. 00:45:43 And I think about my high school days and some of the things that I did, especially in
782. 00:45:50 basketball because I was speaking captain of what they called it for our basketball team
783. 00:45:55 my senior year.
784. 00:45:56 And that was something that I learned with the refs there.
785. 00:45:59 Like, okay, there was a bad call made.
786. 00:46:01 My first instinct was to go ask him what happened and what was it that he did.
787. 00:46:08 Just can you explain to me what happened so that we can make sure it doesn't happen
788. 00:46:11 again.
789. 00:46:12 And oddly enough, if I asked that question in like the first quarter of a basketball game,
790. 00:46:16 the refs typically wanted to try to help us get better, which probably swayed them a
791. 00:46:21 little bit in the wrong direction.
792. 00:46:22 I think they were favoring us in some cases and I'm not so sure I was comfortable with
793. 00:46:27 that.
794. 00:46:28 But it happened.
795. 00:46:30 If you're willing to say, you know, where did I go wrong or how do I fix it in the future,
796. 00:46:36 then people are a lot more forgiving and they tend to be the more inclined to try to help
797. 00:46:42 if you're willing to ask for help.
798. 00:46:44 And that's something that I think is very unique in some circles where we tend to have
799. 00:46:52 this victim thinking, we tend to expect or feel entitled to certain things.
800. 00:46:57 And that's not necessarily a good thing in most cases.
801. 00:47:01 You're better off trying to come at it from the standpoint of the main question here.
802. 00:47:06 What can I do?
803. 00:47:07 What can I do about this?
804. 00:47:08 What's the QBQ here?
805. 00:47:10 How do I come at this in a better way?
806. 00:47:13 And you know, one of the quotes I noticed that you wrote down here is the easiest thing
807. 00:47:16 to spot is gaps in integrity and others.
808. 00:47:19 So if I'm looking for something that I can do about it, it's easier for me to step away
809. 00:47:26 from this blaming mentality that's looking for something that they did wrong.
810. 00:47:32 You know, it's taking it on to myself instead of looking for gaps in what they're doing.
811. 00:47:37 Yeah.
812. 00:47:38 And I think I've shared this on the podcast before too.
813. 00:47:41 But one of my favorite quotes is that we tend to judge other people by their actions
814. 00:47:46 and ourselves by our intentions.
815. 00:47:48 True.
816. 00:47:49 So we see what other people do and we assume that they meant to hurt us and we project
817. 00:47:55 that onto them.
818. 00:47:56 And that just leads us down the cycle of playing the victim card.
819. 00:48:03 He talks in the book about how personal accountability changes the world one choice
820. 00:48:07 at a time.
821. 00:48:08 And it's literally every single situation, every single social interaction that you have
822. 00:48:12 assuming that the other person, assuming the best about the other person, I guess, is maybe
823. 00:48:17 the best way to do it.
824. 00:48:20 Because yeah, the easiest thing to spot is those gaps in integrity and other people.
825. 00:48:23 It's easy to spot the mistakes that other people make.
826. 00:48:28 But that really doesn't help fix anything because he mentions on page 68 that change
827. 00:48:35 only comes from the inside as a result of decisions made by the individual.
828. 00:48:39 So if you want to change your situation, you have to start within yourself.
829. 00:48:45 So going back to the personal accountability changes the world one choice at a time.
830. 00:48:49 Personal accountability literally will change your world one choice at a time, assuming that
831. 00:48:54 you implement this.
832. 00:48:55 And this is the thing.
833. 00:48:57 It's so easy to do.
834. 00:48:58 It doesn't require anybody else being on board with this, agreeing with it, doesn't require
835. 00:49:03 buy-in from your spouse, your family.
836. 00:49:07 You can do this right now.
837. 00:49:09 It's just sometimes difficult and we don't want to accept the responsibility.
838. 00:49:14 We don't want to say that, yeah, the buck stops here, that I am in control of my own outcomes
839. 00:49:20 because sometimes we don't like those outcomes.
840. 00:49:24 He's got a section here because he kind of talks about how these QBQs, they're great questions,
841. 00:49:33 but they're intended to be asked of ourselves.
842. 00:49:36 We've talked about this quite a bit at this point.
843. 00:49:38 It's not necessarily.
844. 00:49:40 I can't expect someone else to change things and I don't need to be the victim here.
845. 00:49:44 But it can be a bit tempting to say, here are the questions that I'm asking myself.
846. 00:49:49 You should ask yourself these as well.
847. 00:49:51 It would be very easy to say, here, here's a great way for you to start thinking.
848. 00:49:57 You should start thinking this way.
849. 00:49:59 He points out very clearly, no, that's not the point here.
850. 00:50:03 You should be asking yourself and not other people.
851. 00:50:06 The quote that he's got around this, it's not about asking better questions of our coworkers,
852. 00:50:12 our customers, or family.
853. 00:50:14 It's about asking better questions of ourselves.
854. 00:50:16 Don't try to project these on to other people, which is something I wish I could do.
855. 00:50:22 I would love to do, and I would love to hand this book out to a lot of people, but it's
856. 00:50:27 going to rug people the wrong way and it's going to have an opposite effect.
857. 00:50:32 One of the things that I liked in here is the QBQs serenity prayer.
858. 00:50:37 The serenity prayer is pretty popular and my grandma had this hanging in her house.
859. 00:50:44 I've seen it a lot of different places.
860. 00:50:46 The serenity prayer goes, "God grant me the grace to accept the things I cannot change.
861. 00:50:51 The wisdom of the..."
862. 00:50:53 I forget how it goes.
863. 00:50:56 Basically accept the things you can't change, the courage to change the things that you
864. 00:50:59 can and the wisdom to know the difference.
865. 00:51:03 He kind of reframes this in terms of the message of the book and I thought this was so good.
866. 00:51:07 The peace is God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage
867. 00:51:12 to change the one I can and the wisdom to know it's me.
868. 00:51:18 What was the story?
869. 00:51:19 There was some gal that had someone who worked for her and they eventually parted ways because
870. 00:51:26 they couldn't work together.
871. 00:51:29 It was a couple years later and as things worked out, he ended up working for her again.
872. 00:51:35 The second time around, her comment was that this is awesome.
873. 00:51:39 We're working really well together.
874. 00:51:41 I wonder what all he changed and she realized, "No, he didn't change at all.
875. 00:51:46 He's still the same.
876. 00:51:47 The difference is how I'm treating him and how I see what he's doing."
877. 00:51:52 It was purely a difference in herself and not this person working for her.
878. 00:51:58 I think it's very interesting if you come at it from, "This is all me."
879. 00:52:04 It's all about how I perceive things and what I do about it.
880. 00:52:08 I've got a couple of quilts here.
881. 00:52:10 One refers back to the tools thing we were talking about.
882. 00:52:15 When would we get better tools and better systems?
883. 00:52:19 The quote that he had here was about, or it is, here you go, page 40, "Succeeding within
884. 00:52:24 the box."
885. 00:52:26 This is specifically geared towards creativity.
886. 00:52:30 We do a lot of creative work, Mike, you and I, and so much of that revolves around coming
887. 00:52:35 up with something new or finding a way to portray an idea or display it or choosing the
888. 00:52:41 medium in order to convey a concept.
889. 00:52:45 So many times we want to have a better tool.
890. 00:52:47 I would like a better MacBook.
891. 00:52:49 I'm going to come steal Mike's MacBook.
892. 00:52:51 There's so many of these cases where I wish I had a better tool, but frankly, creativity,
893. 00:52:57 it really thrives when certain constraints are put on it or when there's a certain box
894. 00:53:02 that you're trying to work within.
895. 00:53:04 That's so much of why I love coding and development because there are certain constraints that
896. 00:53:08 you need to work within.
897. 00:53:12 Once you're within that, the sky's the limit on how you actually achieve it in most cases.
898. 00:53:16 There's a problem to be solved and you've got certain ceilings that you need to work
899. 00:53:21 underneath of in order to accomplish something.
900. 00:53:23 I love that concept of succeeding within the box and not always trying to make sure that
901. 00:53:30 you get outside the box or think outside the box, but being willing to work within it.
902. 00:53:34 You get the difference there?
903. 00:53:35 Is that too nebulous?
904. 00:53:37 No, definitely.
905. 00:53:39 I mentioned at the beginning of the new MacBook as an example, that's, again, an example
906. 00:53:45 of evolving the tools that I was using.
907. 00:53:48 I was succeeding within the box.
908. 00:53:50 I was doing video on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with no video card.
909. 00:53:57 I got to the point because I had done that, because I had focused on the tools that I
910. 00:54:01 had and just using them to create the content that I got to the point where I was like,
911. 00:54:06 "Okay, I can justify now upgrading the tools."
912. 00:54:11 The important thing is to start where you are with what you have.
913. 00:54:15 Absolutely, start somewhere and start now with what you currently have.
914. 00:54:22 The other quote that I had mentioned, I had to, page 116, he mentions wisdom is what
915. 00:54:27 we learn after we know it all.
916. 00:54:31 I was reading this in a situation where my mother-in-law was in the living room and my
917. 00:54:36 wife was in the couch.
918. 00:54:37 We were all just doing our own thing, so I of course had a book.
919. 00:54:41 I ran across this and I read it out loud and my wife and my mother-in-law both almost
920. 00:54:46 simultaneously, "Man, that's true."
921. 00:54:50 Yes, once we think we know it all, eventually we learn that, "No, we don't know it all."
922. 00:54:56 The more I learn and the more I feel like I understand, the less I know.
923. 00:55:01 It's just kind of crazy how that happens.
924. 00:55:03 The more I understand, the more I know, the less I know.
925. 00:55:06 It just seems like the more areas and the more knowledge that I gain or the more areas
926. 00:55:11 that I feel like I'm starting to understand, the more I realize there are even more areas
927. 00:55:15 that I don't understand.
928. 00:55:17 I really liked that quote of wisdom what we learn after we know it all.
929. 00:55:22 There was one quote I did not like in this book.
930. 00:55:25 That's good.
931. 00:55:26 We haven't had many of those.
932. 00:55:28 He said that we buy too many books.
933. 00:55:31 Oh yes, I hated that.
934. 00:55:33 I was really hated that.
935. 00:55:35 I disagree.
936. 00:55:36 We buy too many books.
937. 00:55:37 Blasphemy.
938. 00:55:38 I get his point.
939. 00:55:40 His point is that we buy the books and they sit on the shelf and we don't actually read
940. 00:55:44 them and we don't apply anything that we learn in them, which is really the point of
941. 00:55:50 this podcast.
942. 00:55:51 So hopefully we don't fall into that definition.
943. 00:55:55 But yeah, I will definitely continue to buy books.
944. 00:55:58 Yes, I know.
945. 00:56:00 It was a whole chapter that he dedicated to.
946. 00:56:02 We buy too many books.
947. 00:56:03 But in this particular case, his chapters were really short.
948. 00:56:07 So that entire quote unquote chapter was a whopping three paragraphs long.
949. 00:56:12 So I attributed the shortness of that particular chapter within this book to its weight in
950. 00:56:20 value.
951. 00:56:21 Okay, it's really short.
952. 00:56:23 It doesn't have a lot of value, hopefully.
953. 00:56:28 So you want to jump into action items here?
954. 00:56:31 Yeah.
955. 00:56:32 Like I mentioned earlier, I really only have the one action item, which is no trying to
956. 00:56:38 fix anyone else.
957. 00:56:40 Nice.
958. 00:56:41 So don't.
959. 00:56:42 Again, I don't know exactly how you put a.
960. 00:56:47 I don't know how you quantify that, but really the whole message of the book, I don't know
961. 00:56:51 how you quantify any of the stuff that he's talking about necessarily, which is really
962. 00:56:56 why I think he ends the book by saying, great.
963. 00:57:01 So now that you've finished the book, read it again because he really wants to make sure
964. 00:57:05 that you get it and that this permeates down and it actually affects and changes the way
965. 00:57:10 that you go that you live your life.
966. 00:57:13 So you can ask me if I'm doing okay on this, but I don't have like a definition of done
967. 00:57:20 for this particular action item.
968. 00:57:22 We run across those on occasion.
969. 00:57:23 Like I've got a couple here that's like, I don't know how I'll, I don't know how to
970. 00:57:27 measure this.
971. 00:57:28 Sometimes I wish these action items you could measure, but at the same time, there would
972. 00:57:31 be so many things we're measuring we wouldn't get anything done.
973. 00:57:33 So exactly just the way it works.
974. 00:57:35 So I have one that's a little similar to that is noticing my blaming tendencies.
975. 00:57:41 So essentially noticing when I ask these incorrect questions of why can't they get this right?
976. 00:57:47 Instead of asking those and noticing when I'm trying to put it off on someone else and
977. 00:57:50 make myself the victim, instead of that, just pay attention to it and don't allow it to
978. 00:57:55 happen.
979. 00:57:56 And I'm afraid to spend much time with that one because I'm afraid of how often I do it.
980. 00:58:02 So okay.
981. 00:58:04 The other one that I wrote down here is thinking out loud around others that work in my kids.
982. 00:58:11 And I mean that in a very pointed way in what can I do about this right now?
983. 00:58:15 So primarily what I'm trying to do is create a situation where I can help other people
984. 00:58:21 see how I'm thinking about something such that if something goes wrong, what can I do
985. 00:58:27 about this right now?
986. 00:58:28 What's the next step here?
987. 00:58:29 And saying that out loud, obviously talking to myself so I can play off the I'm crazy
988. 00:58:34 card.
989. 00:58:35 But what can I do about this right now?
990. 00:58:37 Primarily in my work situations and around my kids because at work, if I'm saying those
991. 00:58:44 things out loud, it's potentially something that other people can notice.
992. 00:58:47 Okay, it's not important to focus on whose fault this is.
993. 00:58:51 It's not important to find the blame.
994. 00:58:53 But how can I fix this right now?
995. 00:58:55 What is it I can do?
996. 00:58:57 And trying to, I guess, push that a little bit just inadvertently and through osmosis,
997. 00:59:04 do the whole lead by example thing at work.
998. 00:59:06 And that can translate into my kids as well.
999. 00:59:09 I would love for my girls to grow up not saying that it's someone else's fault, even
1000. 00:59:16 if it is someone else's fault, I would like for them to be really good at this and taking,
1001. 00:59:22 you know, being really good at personal accountability and being willing to take responsibility
1002. 00:59:26 for things, even if it's not them that caused it, I would love for them to have that skill
1003. 00:59:31 in that mindset.
1004. 00:59:33 So I want to try to talk about those things out loud at home and at work, just so that
1005. 00:59:38 both situations that people can around me can see that example.
1006. 00:59:42 And hopefully that'll start to permeate throughout circles.
1007. 00:59:46 That's my thought.
1008. 00:59:47 So I'm going to try it.
1009. 00:59:48 See how it goes.
1010. 00:59:50 As for how easy this book was to read, I thought it was crazy easy to read.
1011. 00:59:54 It's very understandable.
1012. 00:59:56 I thought that Mr. Miller was quite the author.
1013. 01:00:00 He could distill things quite easily and seemed to be able to convey a lot of information
1014. 01:00:05 in a very short, short book.
1015. 01:00:08 Well, I guess I wouldn't say it's a super short book, but it's shorter than some that
1016. 01:00:13 we have on the list.
1017. 01:00:15 I enjoyed it.
1018. 01:00:16 I thought it was a good book.
1019. 01:00:17 I would recommend it.
1020. 01:00:19 There are, we're just looking real quickly, there are 39 chapters, but there are 115 pages
1021. 01:00:29 and a lot of the chapters are not even an entire page.
1022. 01:00:34 One chapter, chapter 36 I'm looking at right now is literally two sentences.
1023. 01:00:39 So you could probably read this entire book in less time than you would listen to this
1024. 01:00:44 podcast.
1025. 01:00:47 But it is definitely an easy read and the content in there is really good.
1026. 01:00:51 It's very approachable.
1027. 01:00:52 I really enjoyed this book.
1028. 01:00:54 I do got to knock him for saying we have too many books though.
1029. 01:00:57 So I got to give him 4.5.
1030. 01:01:00 Just because of that.
1031. 01:01:01 That's started.
1032. 01:01:02 Yep.
1033. 01:01:03 Sorry, John.
1034. 01:01:04 Just because he told me to read books.
1035. 01:01:05 But you're not getting my books.
1036. 01:01:08 Sorry.
1037. 01:01:09 Well, he even called out listening to too many podcasts in that chapter too.
1038. 01:01:13 Right.
1039. 01:01:14 So I was like, okay, this is a chapter I'm going to skip.
1040. 01:01:18 So yeah, I would echo the 4.5.
1041. 01:01:22 Just minor details that lead me to that that aren't really worth going into.
1042. 01:01:27 But yeah, I would put it at 4.5.
1043. 01:01:29 It's a really good book.
1044. 01:01:30 There's a lot in here.
1045. 01:01:32 There are a number of groups that I wish would read this.
1046. 01:01:36 But that's just just life.
1047. 01:01:39 Wait goes.
1048. 01:01:40 Don't try to fix them.
1049. 01:01:41 Fix me.
1050. 01:01:42 Right.
1051. 01:01:43 And that's a really stupid, spiteful, maybe, you know, rating.
1052. 01:01:48 I'll expound on that a little bit more, I guess.
1053. 01:01:51 The book is really, really good.
1054. 01:01:52 But I would prefer, I guess, to only give the 5 stars to the books that completely just
1055. 01:01:58 blow me out of the water.
1056. 01:01:59 There've been a couple of books that have done that.
1057. 01:02:02 This book, while it was really, really good, I'm really glad that I read it.
1058. 01:02:05 Didn't have that sort of effect for me.
1059. 01:02:08 And again, maybe it was my upbringing where my dad has kind of preached this stuff to
1060. 01:02:12 me from a very young age.
1061. 01:02:14 So I didn't really feel like there was really anything completely new in here for me.
1062. 01:02:19 But the way that he said it was kind of refreshing.
1063. 01:02:22 It was presenting the information in a different way.
1064. 01:02:25 So there was definitely a lot of takeaways for me.
1065. 01:02:26 But I do want to qualify that statement.
1066. 01:02:29 I'm not just talking it because he said, "Don't buy any more books."
1067. 01:02:32 It's mostly just in jest.
1068. 01:02:34 But yeah, I'm with you because we're making this sound like a 4.5 is a bad thing.
1069. 01:02:38 And it's not.
1070. 01:02:39 It's a 4.5 out of 5.
1071. 01:02:40 Like you're most of the way there.
1072. 01:02:42 So it's not like it's a bad rating.
1073. 01:02:46 It's just that those five star books, we shouldn't have one every single week.
1074. 01:02:52 Those are special books.
1075. 01:02:56 Hopefully.
1076. 01:02:58 So the upcoming books.
1077. 01:02:59 Next one that we're going to be reading is Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath, which is
1078. 01:03:05 one that I picked out.
1079. 01:03:07 And then you picked out one that I honestly have never heard of.
1080. 01:03:10 The Shallow's by Nicholas Carr.
1081. 01:03:12 This is an internet book in that it's about the internet and what it does to our brain.
1082. 01:03:17 So we did some of this with brain chains.
1083. 01:03:20 I think this one is a little easier to read and maybe a little better written.
1084. 01:03:27 And just skimming through it, I think it has a little, I shouldn't say a little.
1085. 01:03:31 It has some more depth to it and a broader range.
1086. 01:03:36 That's probably the better way to say it.
1087. 01:03:38 That's my first impression on a book that I have skimmed over and have read literally
1088. 01:03:43 none other than skimming.
1089. 01:03:45 There you go.
1090. 01:03:47 Nice.
1091. 01:03:48 All right.
1092. 01:03:49 So if you want to follow along, you can go to bookworm.fm/list.
1093. 01:03:56 You can get a list of all the books that we have read as well as the upcoming books.
1094. 01:04:02 And there's also a button on the webpage and on the sidebar to recommend a book.
1095. 01:04:06 So if you wanted to make a recommendation for one, you'd love us to cover here on bookworm.
1096. 01:04:12 We would really appreciate that.
1097. 01:04:13 We've got a handful of recommended books and some of them have been making their way into
1098. 01:04:17 the rotation like the checklist manifesto, which was the last one that we did.
1099. 01:04:22 So absolutely we want to hear from you.
1100. 01:04:24 If you have any recommendations, please submit that via the website.
1101. 01:04:29 And if you listen to one of our podcasts or you've read one of the books and you think
1102. 01:04:33 we completely misrepresented it or you're mad at something we said or you're like, yeah,
1103. 01:04:39 that's exactly what I was thinking.
1104. 01:04:41 If that's you, the best way to let us know about that is on iTunes.
1105. 01:04:45 So you can drop or I'll drop a link to our podcast that's on iTunes in the show notes
1106. 01:04:51 and you can just click on that and go let us know what you think of the show over there.
1107. 01:04:55 That's a great way to help other people find the show as well.
1108. 01:04:59 Usually you're getting a lot out of these episodes and we really appreciate you tuning
1109. 01:05:04 in so we will catch you next time.