170: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen

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3. 00:00:11 So I did a thing, Mike.
4. 00:00:13 What'd you do?
5. 00:00:14 I collected ideas, and then I thought about them some more,
6. 00:00:19 and then I wrote them down and I sent them to you.
7. 00:00:23 Which is exactly what I think you asked me to do.
8. 00:00:26 But yes, there was a little bit more detail in the homework for the Life Theme cohort.
9. 00:00:32 I think that's what you're talking about.
10. 00:00:34 Yes, I did my thing.
11. 00:00:37 I did my homework.
12. 00:00:38 That's the point that I'm trying to make here.
13. 00:00:39 I did my homework to the Life Theme cohort.
14. 00:00:43 I'm not going to explain all the ideas and stuff because you need to be a part of the
15. 00:00:47 cohort.
16. 00:00:48 But it was an eye-opening experience, and I've not really done that exact process.
17. 00:00:55 So kudos to you for making me think more than I originally wanted to think.
18. 00:01:00 Ooh, now I've got to know what was eye-opening about it.
19. 00:01:06 Mostly I've known a lot of the things that I love to do.
20. 00:01:13 There's some stuff that's no surprise.
21. 00:01:15 I love running sound for different events.
22. 00:01:18 I was not necessarily aware that some of the stuff I love to do is helping people solve
23. 00:01:22 their problems.
24. 00:01:25 Some of the short-term stuff, like, "Why is my goat not taking a bottle?"
25. 00:01:30 Well, I grew up around cattle and pigs and stuff.
26. 00:01:33 I kind of have some pretty good guesses as to what's going on.
27. 00:01:36 So sharing that knowledge with people helps solve their problems.
28. 00:01:40 That's just a very weird example now that I'm saying it out loud.
29. 00:01:45 But something about that, I love doing that.
30. 00:01:47 But I've not really connected the dots with that as a recurring theme until you made me
31. 00:01:51 stop and think about it for a week.
32. 00:01:53 So...
33. 00:01:54 Awesome.
34. 00:01:55 Yeah.
35. 00:01:56 Didn't realize some things about myself until I did this.
36. 00:01:58 So good job.
37. 00:01:59 Cool.
38. 00:02:00 Thanks.
39. 00:02:01 Hopefully, the other four weeks will be just as enlightening.
40. 00:02:04 Since you're talking about it, I'll just mention two things.
41. 00:02:07 One, the life-theme cohort.
42. 00:02:09 I'll put the link to that in the show notes.
43. 00:02:11 If people do want to jump in, I'm leaving it open for now because I have as part of this
44. 00:02:15 first-round lifetime access, I'm not going to do that in future versions of this.
45. 00:02:21 But basically, it's the lowest price it will be.
46. 00:02:23 It's going to go up from here.
47. 00:02:24 Someone asked me what it's going to be.
48. 00:02:25 I don't know what it's going to be.
49. 00:02:26 I just know it's going to go up.
50. 00:02:29 And I'm going to basically do them a couple times a year.
51. 00:02:32 And so if you jump in now, even if you can't go through it now, you get access to the future
52. 00:02:36 cohorts for free.
53. 00:02:38 And then the other thing is that we took...
54. 00:02:41 We edited the audio, but the gist of that first session, which went really, really well,
55. 00:02:47 we released that as this week's intentional family episode.
56. 00:02:52 So people will want a feel for what it's kind of like.
57. 00:02:57 You can listen to that episode.
58. 00:02:58 And I'll put a link to that podcast episode in the show notes as well.
59. 00:03:02 Cool.
60. 00:03:03 But it was a lot of fun.
61. 00:03:06 When I started, I thought there's no way I'm in a fill an hour.
62. 00:03:11 And of course, we went an hour and 20 minutes, and I had to cut something.
63. 00:03:14 So yeah, it was cool, a very interactive group, very international group.
64. 00:03:21 That was kind of cool to see.
65. 00:03:24 And it was a lot of fun.
66. 00:03:25 Everyone was very engaged, and that makes it easy as a presenter.
67. 00:03:31 So glad to hear that you got a lot out of it.
68. 00:03:33 And I hope everybody else did too.
69. 00:03:34 Looking forward to the other sessions.
70. 00:03:37 Just having read some of the feedback that people have put in the circle community for
71. 00:03:44 it, I would say a lot of people got a lot out of it.
72. 00:03:47 But that's me.
73. 00:03:48 I'm not going to put words in their mouth.
74. 00:03:50 Just saying.
75. 00:03:51 Awesome.
76. 00:03:52 It was good.
77. 00:03:53 Thanks for doing that.
78. 00:03:54 Anyway, there you go.
79. 00:03:56 I've now done my follow up right out of the gate because it was a big deal.
80. 00:04:00 How about you?
81. 00:04:01 I know you got three things here.
82. 00:04:03 That's true.
83. 00:04:04 That was your action item was committing to that LifeThem cohort.
84. 00:04:07 And you did deliver it down to the wire, but you did deliver it.
85. 00:04:10 Hey, I got it done.
86. 00:04:12 Nobody said it had to be done super early.
87. 00:04:13 It just had to be done.
88. 00:04:14 Yeah.
89. 00:04:15 I saw the notification come in about 10 minutes before we recorded post from the movie.
90. 00:04:21 It was maybe 20.
91. 00:04:25 So I haven't even had a chance to see what you put there yet.
92. 00:04:27 It's okay.
93. 00:04:28 It's okay.
94. 00:04:29 I just gave away one of them.
95. 00:04:30 Yeah.
96. 00:04:31 We get it.
97. 00:04:32 So I had three action items all kind of related to find my rich life.
98. 00:04:36 What does a miserable life look like?
99. 00:04:37 Who is the person you don't want to be?
100. 00:04:40 I have kind of failed at these, but sort of also took action on them because this was
101. 00:04:47 inspired by the previous episode, The Pathless Path, which has gotten me to think differently
102. 00:04:54 about what I want to be when I grow up.
103. 00:05:00 And I guess at this point, it will be public knowledge, but especially by the time this
104. 00:05:04 publishes that I am leaving the day job and I'm going to be a full time content creator.
105. 00:05:15 So that is inspired by these action items, but I don't have like a list of these are
106. 00:05:18 all the details of what a rich life looks like exactly or what a miserable life looks
107. 00:05:22 like exactly.
108. 00:05:23 But I can tell you that the rich life has 100% less meetings than the miserable life does.
109. 00:05:34 Does this count as a meeting?
110. 00:05:35 Like you and me?
111. 00:05:36 No, okay.
112. 00:05:37 All right.
113. 00:05:38 All right.
114. 00:05:39 I could see.
115. 00:05:40 I'll give it to you, I guess.
116. 00:05:42 Yeah.
117. 00:05:43 I'm still kind of thinking this through.
118. 00:05:44 I've actually been thinking about like, what do I want my ideal week to look like?
119. 00:05:49 Because anytime you go through a major life transition, it's an opportunity to kind of
120. 00:05:56 redefine what normal is going to look like.
121. 00:05:59 And I've got a blank slate.
122. 00:06:01 So I still need to take the time to do that.
123. 00:06:04 I've been a little busy with offboarding at the day job.
124. 00:06:08 I really do want to make sure that everything is taken care of and there's no surprises
125. 00:06:12 after I'm no longer there.
126. 00:06:15 And this is just purely, you know, I feel like this is a move I have to make.
127. 00:06:21 My oldest son is 15 and a half, right?
128. 00:06:24 And he's the one who told me about the pathless path.
129. 00:06:27 And I keep telling him, like you're capable of more, think bigger, you know, take chances,
130. 00:06:33 but on yourself, well, I got to model it for him.
131. 00:06:37 So this is one of those things that I feel if I don't, that the time is right, the circumstances
132. 00:06:44 are right.
133. 00:06:45 Like, I know a ton more about how to do this than I did last time I was in a similar situation.
134. 00:06:53 And yeah, I feel like I'm in a position here to be successful with this and I need to give
135. 00:06:59 it a shot or I will regret it on my deathbed.
136. 00:07:03 But all that to say, still have, you know, the offboarding stuff with the day job, still
137. 00:07:06 have some of the meetings that I'm responsible for their podcasts and other things, wrapping
138. 00:07:13 up the school year.
139. 00:07:14 In fact, I got to go to an end of year presentation for our classical conversations thing right
140. 00:07:19 after this recording.
141. 00:07:20 So I haven't had as much time to think about this as I would have liked when I stated these
142. 00:07:25 action items.
143. 00:07:26 And the reason I say they're unfinished is because I pictured coming back with a very
144. 00:07:30 clear, detailed list of this is what it's going to look like.
145. 00:07:33 And I know exactly when I have that, how exciting and compelling that's going to be.
146. 00:07:38 But it's not there yet.
147. 00:07:40 It probably won't be for another, another couple of weeks, unfortunately.
148. 00:07:45 But I'm moving in this direction and it is kind of exciting to think about this.
149. 00:07:51 Well, as I look at the things that you had set for your follow up, like defining all
150. 00:07:56 these things and answering these questions, like, I don't think I would want to do these
151. 00:08:00 because it'd take a lot of time just to put them down on paper in some form.
152. 00:08:05 So it's a lot of thinking time.
153. 00:08:07 I don't think it's actually all that much work, but I haven't had the time to sit think
154. 00:08:12 about these things a whole lot yet.
155. 00:08:13 Yeah.
156. 00:08:14 And a couple like low hanging fruit, you know, where I know I'm not going to have to do this
157. 00:08:21 in the middle of the day anymore.
158. 00:08:23 So I have more flexibility.
159. 00:08:25 And usually when I try to squeeze in my run on Tuesdays, I have to cut it short because
160. 00:08:30 I got to be back for the leadership meeting and stuff like that.
161. 00:08:34 Like I can, I can establish the boundaries where I want them.
162. 00:08:38 And that's, that's really exciting to me.
163. 00:08:42 But I haven't had the chance to sit through and do that.
164. 00:08:44 One of the things I did think through though, and I'm not going to get there right away,
165. 00:08:50 but this is where I want to end up.
166. 00:08:52 I mentioned, I'm sure I've mentioned on this podcast before, the one on ones that I do
167. 00:08:56 with my kids.
168. 00:08:57 So once a week, bring one of them to a coffee shop and we play games for an hour, right?
169. 00:09:02 And even with my busy schedule, I can squeeze in one of those days a week for that, about
170. 00:09:09 95% of the time.
171. 00:09:12 I was thinking though, like to find my rich life, wouldn't it be awesome if I could do
172. 00:09:17 that every single day, right?
173. 00:09:20 Just different kid every day of the week.
174. 00:09:23 And I just am at that coffee shop every morning.
175. 00:09:26 And then I started thinking through like, well, what would that actually cost?
176. 00:09:29 Because a coffee for me, coffee, hot chocolate, whatever for the other kid, it's like 10 bucks.
177. 00:09:34 Right?
178. 00:09:35 So if I do that 10 bucks a day, that's 50 bucks a week.
179. 00:09:39 If I do four weeks in a month, that's $200.
180. 00:09:44 And then 12 months in a year, $2,400.
181. 00:09:50 And if I did my math right, that sounds like just that single item, you could look at it
182. 00:09:57 and be like, oh, that's kind of a lot of money, but $2,400 to have dedicated one on one time
183. 00:10:01 with each of my kids every single work day.
184. 00:10:04 I'd pay $2,400 bucks for that.
185. 00:10:07 So I know that's one thing I want to move towards.
186. 00:10:10 It's like I said, there's a lot of things that have to fall into place before I can get
187. 00:10:14 to that, but I feel like it's possible.
188. 00:10:17 And yeah, that'll be exciting.
189. 00:10:20 That'll be awesome.
190. 00:10:21 Yeah, I know one of the things I've been trying to do is take one of my kids to work
191. 00:10:25 with me.
192. 00:10:26 I do enough like physical hands on stuff with my day job that it's possible for me to bring
193. 00:10:31 one of them to work with me.
194. 00:10:32 I know like tomorrow my oldest Emma is planning to come with me to work.
195. 00:10:37 So I know she's going to be helping me terminate.
196. 00:10:40 Shielded RJ45 ends on our cat six cables for a new soundboard install.
197. 00:10:45 So she's going to be helping learn how to do that.
198. 00:10:48 And then we're setting up new soundboard stuff.
199. 00:10:50 So like she's going to be taking some of that on, but that's four or five hours I'm
200. 00:10:56 going to have with her doing that.
201. 00:10:58 So it'll be fun.
202. 00:10:59 But yeah, those are like gold times.
203. 00:11:01 Like I love, love, love having that opportunity to spend that much time with them.
204. 00:11:06 When I want to teaching them the things that I do at work.
205. 00:11:09 So and they love it too.
206. 00:11:11 They borderline fight over who gets to go with dad each day that I have to do that.
207. 00:11:16 So gotta be careful not to, you know, make it too much of a thing and too much of a fight,
208. 00:11:22 but at the same time it's kind of fun to make that possible.
209. 00:11:25 So doing it every single day, I don't think I could pull that off.
210. 00:11:28 Not at that scale, but going to have coffee.
211. 00:11:30 I could see that, but my schedule would not allow that one.
212. 00:11:34 Fun idea though.
213. 00:11:37 Yep, exactly.
214. 00:11:38 And that's the whole point is like, let your mind wander and think about, you know, what's
215. 00:11:43 the best thing I can imagine, you know, for for this sort of thing.
216. 00:11:49 And then realizing that actually, you know, what that's a lot more possible than it seemed
217. 00:11:54 at at first.
218. 00:11:56 Well, cool.
219. 00:11:58 Well, on that point, maybe we should step into today's book is this, I feel like, could
220. 00:12:05 either be fairly straightforward and done or we may end up spending a lot of time on
221. 00:12:09 this.
222. 00:12:10 I'm not real sure which way this one's going to go.
223. 00:12:12 But regardless, today's book is the almanac of Nval Ravakant.
224. 00:12:19 And this is by Eric Jorgensen, which is a little bit of an oddity in itself.
225. 00:12:25 Like this is wisdom and knowledge from Nval.
226. 00:12:29 And yet it's put together by Eric.
227. 00:12:33 And that part by itself kind of threw me off a little bit at the beginning.
228. 00:12:36 It's like, wait a second.
229. 00:12:38 Wouldn't this be written by the guy that the wisdom is from?
230. 00:12:41 So it's a little bit odd in that regard at the same time, like this is very highly rated
231. 00:12:46 on the Amazon.
232. 00:12:49 And a lot of people seem to recommend this book.
233. 00:12:52 I can kind of see why having been threw it at this point has a forward by Tim Ferris,
234. 00:13:00 which he broke his own rule in that because he doesn't write forwards.
235. 00:13:06 I could see why this one's not very good.
236. 00:13:09 Yeah.
237. 00:13:10 I kind of thought that too.
238. 00:13:12 It's like, interesting.
239. 00:13:14 It's kind of lame.
240. 00:13:16 I read it.
241. 00:13:17 Like, I really wish wanted this book to exist and here it exists.
242. 00:13:21 And I'm not usually one to do this, but here I am doing it.
243. 00:13:23 So here you go.
244. 00:13:24 Like that was kind of my takeaway from the forward.
245. 00:13:28 Sorry, Tim Ferris, but don't do that again, please.
246. 00:13:33 But yeah, I thought it was interesting that he broke his own rule for writing forwards
247. 00:13:37 for a book.
248. 00:13:38 Really wanted one to be written, really wanted a book by Nval to be written, but then ends
249. 00:13:45 up writing the forward for a book that's not written by Nval, but written by somebody
250. 00:13:48 else about him.
251. 00:13:49 So a little bit weird in that sense, but regardless, it's a fascinating read.
252. 00:13:56 What were your initial thoughts on it, Mike?
253. 00:14:00 It is a fascinating book.
254. 00:14:04 Like you said, it is a little bit weird that it's written by somebody else for somebody
255. 00:14:09 else.
256. 00:14:10 But I think I had never heard of Nval Ravakant before, but after the introduction to him
257. 00:14:17 and looking him up on Twitter and looking at his blog, I understand why.
258. 00:14:23 If I were to summarize it, he's basically like an angel investor at this point for Silicon
259. 00:14:31 Valley companies, but he was originally a developer, I think, or a coder.
260. 00:14:41 And he just kind of climbed the ranks, and now his name is pretty well known in those
261. 00:14:49 circles.
262. 00:14:50 And that type of person probably doesn't care if he ever writes a book.
263. 00:14:55 He's too busy just absolutely crushing it.
264. 00:14:59 So I understand why Eric Jorgensen wrote it.
265. 00:15:02 Jack Butcher illustrated it.
266. 00:15:04 Tim Ferriss wrote the forward because there was no way Nval Ravakant was going to put forth
267. 00:15:08 the effort to actually put this together.
268. 00:15:11 Now that could be good or bad, right?
269. 00:15:12 This guy could be a complete jerk.
270. 00:15:15 And he got lucky a couple times and we don't want that person spewing their philosophies
271. 00:15:23 about life into the universe.
272. 00:15:25 But that's not the case with this one.
273. 00:15:26 I think that's why this one is so highly rated is that he seems like a pretty level-headed
274. 00:15:32 guy.
275. 00:15:34 It's a lot of the straightforward, no-nonsense productivity type stuff, but practical applications
276. 00:15:41 and set in a way that feels more approachable, just like you're having a coffee with a friend
277. 00:15:46 as opposed to reading a formal book that has been edited heavily and has a certain tone
278. 00:15:53 to it.
279. 00:15:54 I don't know.
280. 00:15:55 It feels very approachable, I guess, maybe is the best term.
281. 00:16:01 Like you're not going to get on Nval Ravakant's calendar to go pick his brain to have coffee,
282. 00:16:08 but that's kind of what this feels like.
283. 00:16:10 And to some people, they may think that, "Well, why would you ever do that?
284. 00:16:13 That sounds stupid anyways."
285. 00:16:15 But for me, I think that's awesome.
286. 00:16:17 And I would totally do that if I could.
287. 00:16:18 I remember being at the Sean West Conference when it still existed and Nathan Berry was
288. 00:16:25 presenting.
289. 00:16:26 And he shared when he was starting ConvertKit, he had tried several other businesses previously,
290. 00:16:33 and he was just trying to get around as many successful people as he could to pick their
291. 00:16:37 brains about things.
292. 00:16:38 So he would send messages to people he really wanted to meet.
293. 00:16:42 And he lives in Boise, Idaho, where ConvertKit is, I believe.
294. 00:16:45 And he would send a message to somebody that he really looked up to.
295. 00:16:49 He was like, "Hey, I'm going to be in New York this day, this day, or this day.
296. 00:16:54 When we get together, I'll buy you lunch."
297. 00:16:58 And he sent out a whole bunch of those messages, and then a few people responded, and then
298. 00:17:02 he would book the plane ticket and go there.
299. 00:17:06 He wasn't actually going to be there, but he just wanted an audience with those big thinkers.
300. 00:17:13 And I think that's really smart.
301. 00:17:15 And so this is kind of that in book format.
302. 00:17:18 Yeah, it's so true.
303. 00:17:19 It reminds me a lot of, no, this is longer, of course, but the book I'm working through
304. 00:17:24 Tim Paris, obviously the tribe of mentors, that one's going to be coming up for me probably
305. 00:17:30 quite a bit over the next months, probably, just because of how long that thing is.
306. 00:17:34 But it has that feel where you're getting a peek into somebody's brain and how they
307. 00:17:41 process a specific avenue.
308. 00:17:43 In this particular case, we're given an insight into Nivol's take on wealth and happiness.
309. 00:17:52 And that's exactly where he starts on this is the wealth side of it.
310. 00:17:58 It's just a two-part book.
311. 00:18:00 He's not deviating.
312. 00:18:01 Well, he is deviating from the three-part nonsense, I guess, that continues to plague
313. 00:18:07 all of the books that we see.
314. 00:18:09 That's me being obnoxious.
315. 00:18:11 But he does have the two parts here, so wealth and happiness.
316. 00:18:15 There's a bunch of little subtitles underneath of it, but there's two chapters in the first
317. 00:18:19 part.
318. 00:18:21 And then there's what, three in the second part?
319. 00:18:24 Yeah.
320. 00:18:25 So, first part, wealth starts with the chapter called building wealth.
321. 00:18:30 And there's like a lot of little subtitles here.
322. 00:18:32 I didn't write them all down into our outline for today.
323. 00:18:36 I'll bring up a few of them here and then obviously make villain where you would like.
324. 00:18:40 But there's one specific topic here that he starts us off with at the beginning of this
325. 00:18:46 building wealth section, which is specific knowledge.
326. 00:18:50 And this is essentially talents and skills that you enjoy doing and that you become,
327. 00:18:55 I guess, world-class at is my take on how he's intending that.
328. 00:19:01 It doesn't have to be quite at that scale as he gets to a little bit later.
329. 00:19:05 But the specific knowledge is a thing where it's stuff you love to do, stuff you're really
330. 00:19:11 good at, and that's what creates the leverages he'll get into.
331. 00:19:15 We'll get into here a little bit later to then create value for other people, which then
332. 00:19:20 drives wealth creation.
333. 00:19:24 So this is like the basis of this whole wealth thing where you've got to have a certain amount
334. 00:19:30 of knowledge in an arena before you can start building on these other components.
335. 00:19:36 This struck me as very like become an expert in your field-ish.
336. 00:19:45 More or less, so it's not necessarily that specific.
337. 00:19:48 But at the same time, I was like, this is something I feel like I could do.
338. 00:19:51 I have some of this, but then what do I do with it?
339. 00:19:55 Obviously, he gets into that a little bit later, but I don't know.
340. 00:19:58 What's your take on specific knowledge, Mike?
341. 00:20:00 You picked the one thing in here I didn't really like.
342. 00:20:04 Perfect.
343. 00:20:05 So he mentioned that specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents.
344. 00:20:11 And that's the part that I take issue with.
345. 00:20:14 I mean, you probably do have some innate talents, but it's kind of contrary to the growth mindset
346. 00:20:24 that we talk about all the time.
347. 00:20:28 And I guess just where I'm at with my current situation and what I've learned in the last
348. 00:20:36 year and a half at the day job, it wasn't my innate talents.
349. 00:20:41 It was being forced to develop skills.
350. 00:20:45 So one of the skills I developed was for lack of a better term, financial literacy.
351. 00:20:50 I took classes on like balance sheets and income statements.
352. 00:20:53 I'm not naturally gifted with numbers and finances, but it was a skill that someone at
353. 00:21:00 the company needed to have.
354. 00:21:01 So I developed it.
355. 00:21:03 And now I know how to do it and I feel like I could help other people do that who also
356. 00:21:07 have an aversion to that and don't want anything to do with it.
357. 00:21:10 That's very contrary to what he's talking about with specific knowledge.
358. 00:21:13 So that's anti-specific knowledge that actually I feel going into the next season of my life.
359. 00:21:20 One of the things that I'm kicking around the idea of doing is being like a business
360. 00:21:24 guide for specifically creative entrepreneurs because creative entrepreneurs, somebody who
361. 00:21:30 is making something and it blew up and they can't do it alone so they start hiring team
362. 00:21:34 members, but they don't know anything about scoreboards and getting everyone to pull in
363. 00:21:40 the same direction and running scrum with a team and then ultimately reading income statements,
364. 00:21:46 balance sheets, understanding cash flow, which is different, all that kind of stuff.
365. 00:21:53 I would love to work with people and help them understand that stuff, put systems in
366. 00:21:57 place to help them fill in those knowledge gaps.
367. 00:22:01 But if I was pursuing specific knowledge, I would not be going there.
368. 00:22:05 I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
369. 00:22:08 So I don't know.
370. 00:22:10 I was also thinking about as I read this section, Iki Guy with the overlap of those concentric
371. 00:22:16 circles.
372. 00:22:18 There's something there.
373. 00:22:20 It's not just what you can get paid for, what the market wants, what you enjoy doing.
374. 00:22:26 Those are places to start, but I think really what it is is capitalizing on opportunities,
375. 00:22:32 which is another theme that he talks about a lot in this chapter because there are opportunities
376. 00:22:37 everywhere and he talks about how the most important skill for getting rich is becoming
377. 00:22:42 a perpetual learner.
378. 00:22:45 Productize yourself is linked to that specific knowledge, but that's the thing is I don't
379. 00:22:49 think you have to zero in quite as far on specific knowledge.
380. 00:22:53 So yeah, I have unique experiences with working at a digital marketing company and having
381. 00:22:59 experience with the family business and emotional intelligence assessment and I have been creating
382. 00:23:04 for a long time.
383. 00:23:05 So like, how do all those things overlap?
384. 00:23:07 That's more important to me than what are my innate talents.
385. 00:23:12 I don't know.
386. 00:23:13 Maybe it's different if you're 18 years old and you're trying to figure out what are you
387. 00:23:15 going to do with your career.
388. 00:23:17 Maybe the advice is a little bit different there and if you can figure out what you're
389. 00:23:20 really, really good at then just go ahead and lean into that, but I don't know.
390. 00:23:23 I think it's an unapproach, but I don't necessarily think it's the best or the right one.
391. 00:23:28 Yeah, two things to kind of follow up on that.
392. 00:23:33 The one piece of it that's a little bit strange to me is the concept of innate.
393. 00:23:38 It has like this, I was born with it mentality, which I think we would both agree is sometimes
394. 00:23:46 the case.
395. 00:23:47 That's the exception.
396. 00:23:49 In most cases, it seems like these are skills and expertise.
397. 00:23:54 It's been trained or developed over many years.
398. 00:23:57 Now that may have begun at age three.
399. 00:24:01 And then by the time you're 18, you're extremely skilled at it because you've got 15 years
400. 00:24:06 of experience doing it.
401. 00:24:07 That's very possible, but that's not necessarily the norm.
402. 00:24:13 It seems to be the thing everybody's like trying to do with their children nowadays, but that's
403. 00:24:17 not the common path.
404. 00:24:22 There's a lot of competition in that territory, which is why, what is it, page 44, he has
405. 00:24:28 a quote, "Escape competition through authenticity."
406. 00:24:31 I love that.
407. 00:24:33 That's the thing.
408. 00:24:34 It's not competition if I'm truly me in the process.
409. 00:24:38 That's something he does refer to quite a bit here, it's like be yourself.
410. 00:24:41 Don't be who people tell you you need to be.
411. 00:24:45 I think it's something people get into a lot of trouble with is this should business, the
412. 00:24:50 things I feel like I should do because of what other people tell me I should be doing,
413. 00:24:55 or the expectations that I think I should be living up to.
414. 00:25:00 That just gets in so many.
415. 00:25:03 It just creates a lot of problems.
416. 00:25:04 I really like that quote, "Escape competition through authenticity."
417. 00:25:08 Be authentic, and the competition doesn't matter because you are who you are.
418. 00:25:14 I really liked that.
419. 00:25:16 He does get into this concept of leverage here where he's going to refer to the specific
420. 00:25:25 knowledge or using labor that you have at your disposal, money, or what was the other
421. 00:25:31 one, products that are easy to replicate.
422. 00:25:34 He's specifically referring to books, code and software, that type of thing that's easy
423. 00:25:40 to just replicate.
424. 00:25:42 And courses would fit that category.
425. 00:25:45 Having the expertise to build things that then can give you leverage to then go on to
426. 00:25:51 the next thing, these are all the process of building wealth, is being able to accrue
427. 00:25:56 these skills and these products that then can build on themselves.
428. 00:26:02 That one got me thinking a lot about the video course thing, like the cohort thing.
429. 00:26:07 All these people who write code and then it blows up and becomes a big thing like that.
430. 00:26:12 That is a very big real thing that is possible.
431. 00:26:18 That's the type of thing he's encouraging you to get into.
432. 00:26:21 Yeah, I love the whole topic of leverage.
433. 00:26:23 This was another book, the Pathless Path talked about how that one struck a chord inside of
434. 00:26:31 me.
435. 00:26:32 This one also did, and kind of complimentary.
436. 00:26:36 He kind of talks about how, and this is all building wealth, right?
437. 00:26:40 Do I need to be a billionaire?
438. 00:26:43 I do not.
439. 00:26:44 That is not the thing that is going to make me extremely happy.
440. 00:26:48 I also think though, if you're able to build wealth, you can affect a lot of positive change
441. 00:26:54 in the world.
442. 00:26:55 So I'm not against it either.
443. 00:26:57 And he kind of talks later on about how like, well, if it's not important to you, you're
444. 00:27:00 never going to get it, right?
445. 00:27:01 But at this point, when he's talking about building wealth, he says that if you don't
446. 00:27:07 own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom.
447. 00:27:12 And he didn't say this specifically, but when he said that, kind of what it triggered
448. 00:27:17 in my mind was a montage of all the things that I have done in the last 10 years online.
449. 00:27:26 I'm starting with work with Asian efficiency, and then the sweet setup and Sean Blanc, and
450. 00:27:33 then the digital marketing stuff, and each step along the way, I learned a ton of skills
451. 00:27:38 and I'm grateful for the time there, but I was always building somebody else's thing.
452. 00:27:43 And as I was reflecting on that, I realized that part of the reason I do that is because
453. 00:27:48 it's safer.
454. 00:27:51 I can make things.
455. 00:27:53 And if Sean Blanc's audience likes it, then that's kind of validation like, hey, you're
456. 00:27:58 good at this, right?
457. 00:28:00 But it's scary to say I'm going to do this thing and believe that I can attract an audience
458. 00:28:05 like that.
459. 00:28:07 So this is very enlightening.
460. 00:28:11 I mean, this is not really what he's talking about at all, but what it triggered to me
461. 00:28:13 was like an analysis of myself, probably coupled with this life-themed cohort stuff.
462. 00:28:21 And I was like, I have been playing it safe pretty much my entire life.
463. 00:28:28 And do I believe I have the skill to be successful or not?
464. 00:28:33 I have a lot of people in my life telling me that, yes, I can be successful.
465. 00:28:37 And so I was like, okay, thanks.
466. 00:28:39 I appreciate that, but I don't ever do anything with it.
467. 00:28:43 So by the time I was reading this, I had already put in my notice at the day job.
468. 00:28:48 It did not force that decision.
469. 00:28:51 It didn't reinforce necessarily that decision.
470. 00:28:54 But it crystallized for me what the next steps kind of look like.
471. 00:29:01 I can't go back.
472. 00:29:03 I've got a gap book that I'll mention later, but it's called Burn the Boats.
473. 00:29:10 And essentially, the subtitle is something like, ensure your success by not having a
474. 00:29:15 plan B.
475. 00:29:18 And that's kind of what I feel like I need to do right now.
476. 00:29:24 And that was kind of crystallized because of that one comment from this section.
477. 00:29:29 The other thing with the leverage, he talks about he can have classes of leverage, labor,
478. 00:29:33 money, but then also products with no marginal cost of replication.
479. 00:29:37 Now he's a developer, so he's talking about apps and web apps and things like that.
480. 00:29:42 I don't have that knowledge, but I can make knowledge products.
481. 00:29:47 So when you mentioned that, I started getting a whole bunch of ideas for different types
482. 00:29:54 of products to be building, both for the Faith Facebook activity brand.
483. 00:29:59 And then also, like I mentioned, the business coaching stuff, that's an idea that really
484. 00:30:02 intrigues me.
485. 00:30:03 I'm going to go to Craft and Commerce shortly, the ConvertKit conference.
486. 00:30:06 That's where those people hang out.
487. 00:30:08 So I'll be able to get some live feedback and see if that really is something that people
488. 00:30:11 are interested in.
489. 00:30:14 But the goal, he says, is to be in control of your time.
490. 00:30:17 Again, this is exactly what I needed to hear at the exact time I needed to hear it.
491. 00:30:21 He mentions on page 62 that 40 hour work weeks are a relic of the industrial age.
492. 00:30:25 I feel like we kind of touched on that a little bit with the pathless path last time.
493. 00:30:30 But I really, I understand and feel compelled now more than ever to really sit down and think
494. 00:30:38 about what does the future, my ideal future look like.
495. 00:30:43 We're going to talk about that week three of Life Theme cohort too.
496. 00:30:46 Hopefully, I'll have some details by then.
497. 00:30:48 I've got an old version, but it needs to be revised.
498. 00:30:52 I need to follow my own advice here.
499. 00:30:55 Talk about this on Friday.
500. 00:30:56 Think bigger, right?
501. 00:30:58 What would it look like if I couldn't fail?
502. 00:31:02 What would it look like if fear wasn't holding me back?
503. 00:31:06 What would it look like if I didn't have obligations that kept me from taking chances?
504. 00:31:17 Not that you just chuck it and whatever I'm going to do, do whatever the heck I want.
505. 00:31:22 But I don't know.
506. 00:31:23 I think I've given up too quickly on some of these things previously and I'm excited by
507. 00:31:30 another chance to give it a shot.
508. 00:31:35 Page 84 starts talking about luck and how to make luck like different types of luck anyway.
509. 00:31:46 One of the things he mentions is that luck finds you if you're the best at a thing.
510. 00:31:52 This is interesting.
511. 00:31:54 Getting asked to do, here's an example from My World.
512. 00:31:58 I run sound for very large events at times.
513. 00:32:02 Because I've developed that skill set, whenever there are things that come along inside my
514. 00:32:09 friend group where they need somebody to run sound for, say, paid talent, and then it becomes
515. 00:32:14 a paid gig.
516. 00:32:16 I'm one of the first people they talk to about doing that.
517. 00:32:21 Yet I have a few friends that are trying to break into that world to get paid to do those
518. 00:32:26 gigs and want to make that their thing.
519. 00:32:29 There's like, "Man, you always get asked to run these things."
520. 00:32:32 I run for way bigger things.
521. 00:32:35 Then people see that and then it ends up meeting your skill level is significantly higher
522. 00:32:40 than what they need.
523. 00:32:42 I don't always run those things when I get asked to just because I don't have the time
524. 00:32:48 to just go run for a 40 person event and they're not going to pay what it would require for
525. 00:32:53 me to go do that.
526. 00:32:55 It doesn't make sense.
527. 00:32:56 I'll pass them off to these other friends.
528. 00:32:59 I get the luckiness of being asked to do that because of a skill set that I've built
529. 00:33:05 up.
530. 00:33:06 That's a very small scale compared to what he's referring to in the scheme of things.
531. 00:33:11 It's that concept.
532. 00:33:13 If you get really good at a certain skill set, you can become the person that people go to.
533. 00:33:20 It makes it look like you're super lucky to get those opportunities when really it's
534. 00:33:27 just you've gotten good at something and then people want you to do it more, but for them,
535. 00:33:32 which makes it look like luck.
536. 00:33:34 Yeah.
537. 00:33:35 I like the section on luck.
538. 00:33:39 The first three are basically lower level versions I feel, which is the intention.
539. 00:33:47 Hope luck finds you.
540. 00:33:48 Hustle to you.
541. 00:33:49 Stumble.
542. 00:33:50 Prepare the mind and be sensitive.
543. 00:33:51 It changes other than others miss.
544. 00:33:52 Then the last one is the one that we should be striving for.
545. 00:33:54 We come the best at what you do, which again, I would argue doesn't necessarily have to
546. 00:33:58 do with your innate talent, but whatever.
547. 00:34:02 The other things I liked from this chapter were the three big decisions early in life
548. 00:34:06 where you live, who you're with and what you do.
549. 00:34:08 I feel like that is important, but over indexes, I think on where you live.
550. 00:34:14 Part of that is based on my experience as a now full-time content creator living in Wisconsin.
551. 00:34:21 There's not a bunch of people hanging out here.
552. 00:34:23 If I was going to hang out with these people, I would probably move to Austin, Texas.
553. 00:34:27 That's where it seems like that kind of crowd hangs out.
554. 00:34:29 There's probably other places too, but the bottom line is that you don't have to be there.
555. 00:34:35 There are digital places like that where you can live quote unquote.
556. 00:34:42 There are advantages to not living in those places.
557. 00:34:45 I became aware of that.
558. 00:34:46 I was at the retreat with the mastermind guys because my cost of living is way, way less
559. 00:34:54 than someone who lives in some of those other places.
560. 00:34:58 That means that I can reach the same audiences online.
561. 00:35:02 The internet doesn't care where people live.
562. 00:35:04 My run rate, basically, is a lot lower than it would be if I lived somewhere differently.
563. 00:35:11 There are advantages to being around those people.
564. 00:35:14 He's thinking of Silicon Valley.
565. 00:35:16 Absolutely, those people all being in the same place.
566. 00:35:18 That definitely was a catalyst to that whole thing being what it was.
567. 00:35:24 The last thing he mentioned in this chapter, last thing I jotted down, I really love the
568. 00:35:28 closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be.
569. 00:35:32 I think I'm going to implement some sort of filter like that.
570. 00:35:37 Nothing official, but I feel like when I meet somebody new, it can go a couple of different
571. 00:35:45 ways.
572. 00:35:47 If I feel like they're trying to figure out what I want to hear and appeal to me, basically,
573. 00:35:59 that's a big red flag.
574. 00:36:00 I don't have a better way to describe that, but do you understand what I'm saying?
575. 00:36:04 It's almost like they're a chameleon and they're trying to fit the scenario and use
576. 00:36:08 the right words.
577. 00:36:09 I don't know.
578. 00:36:11 You can see right through that.
579. 00:36:13 Be who you are.
580. 00:36:15 Then we'll see if we're a match and we'll hang out some more.
581. 00:36:21 Those people who just try to fake it, the lack of authenticity just absolutely drives
582. 00:36:26 me nuts.
583. 00:36:28 I think a version of this.
584. 00:36:30 One should implement, but it's going to become part of the Mike Schmitt's test for sure.
585. 00:36:35 I think that actually goes back to that quote I mentioned earlier, the escape competition
586. 00:36:40 through authenticity.
587. 00:36:42 It's seen as a competition in social situations, which is what I've noticed.
588. 00:36:48 Getting into certain circles where people want to be a part of a conversation, so then
589. 00:36:54 they start trying to inject a story that is kind of related, but not really.
590. 00:37:01 If you know your stuff, then you're very aware that that story has nothing to do with what
591. 00:37:06 you're talking about, but they really want to be a part of it.
592. 00:37:10 It just feels very, very fake, but it's because they're trying to compete and trying to do
593. 00:37:14 the whole social status thing.
594. 00:37:17 I can't stand it, but I get why people do it too.
595. 00:37:22 This episode of Bookworm is brought to you by Headspace, Mindfulness Meditation Made Simple.
596. 00:37:28 Last few years have taught us just how important our mental health is to our overall state
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599. 00:37:39 bit more seriously.
600. 00:37:41 Now I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with mindfulness meditation in the past, it's
601. 00:37:45 never really stuck, but I decided it was time to get serious, so I went back to Headspace.
602. 00:37:51 What I love about Headspace is how approachable they make everything.
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605. 00:38:03 that you can do on the go when you're pressed for time.
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607. 00:38:11 of my day helped me focus before I sat down on my computer and went to work.
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620. 00:39:13 Let's go to the next chapter here.
621. 00:39:16 Underneath of this Building Wealth Part 1, the second chapter in this part is Building
622. 00:39:22 Judgment.
623. 00:39:23 The first one was Building Wealth and then Building Judgment.
624. 00:39:25 It's interesting to me that that's captured underneath of the wealth half of this, that
625. 00:39:31 judgment is such a big deal when it comes to wealth building because you're making some
626. 00:39:37 high-level decisions.
627. 00:39:39 There's a quote here towards the beginning of this chapter.
628. 00:39:44 Just trying to understand what is he referring to when he's talking about judgment.
629. 00:39:50 He does define it in his terms, at least Eric's defining it on behalf of Navell, I think,
630. 00:39:58 using some of Navell's words.
631. 00:40:02 That part's still a little weird to me.
632. 00:40:05 Anyway, this is page 94.
633. 00:40:08 Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.
634. 00:40:13 Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment.
635. 00:40:19 Building the wisdom of being able to understand what are the consequences of something, specifically
636. 00:40:26 your actions, what are the long-term consequences of the actions that you are taking, and then
637. 00:40:33 applying that knowledge of those external consequences, those long-term consequences,
638. 00:40:39 and applying that to problems, that's judgment.
639. 00:40:43 The more I've thought about that, I really like some of that definition there.
640. 00:40:50 Having the wisdom and having the ability to make good judgments is critical to building
641. 00:40:57 wealth.
642. 00:40:58 That's the clean way of saying why that is in this particular section.
643. 00:41:04 But shortly after that, this will take us all the way back to what you're talking about
644. 00:41:09 and follow-up, Mike.
645. 00:41:11 He refers to having time to think for yourself, because many people who have high values and
646. 00:41:17 build high amounts of wealth, large amounts of wealth, think for themselves even when
647. 00:41:24 they have experts tell them what to do or what the answer should be, they will still
648. 00:41:29 want to process everything themselves.
649. 00:41:32 They want to understand it in details.
650. 00:41:35 That I can appreciate, because there are many times when someone will tell me, "This
651. 00:41:40 is the best way to do this."
652. 00:41:42 I regularly want to say why, and it drives people crazy.
653. 00:41:49 Part of this is me adopting my wife's habits, because Becky does this to me constantly.
654. 00:41:53 Why would you do that?
655. 00:41:54 It's like, "The wood needs stacked.
656. 00:41:57 Who cares how I stack it?
657. 00:41:59 You don't need to ask me why.
658. 00:42:00 Just I got to stack wood.
659. 00:42:03 It doesn't matter."
660. 00:42:07 I get that, asking why and trying to quiz and work through even what the experts tell
661. 00:42:12 you can sometimes be frustrating for the other person.
662. 00:42:16 If you're trying to build wisdom and develop good judgment, it's a critical step.
663. 00:42:21 That's an important part of the process.
664. 00:42:23 Yeah.
665. 00:42:24 I didn't jot down nearly as much in this section as I did the previous one, but there were
666. 00:42:32 some related concepts that I really liked.
667. 00:42:36 You talked about how smart thinkers are clear thinkers.
668. 00:42:40 That one is challenging because the more you study some of these concepts that we read
669. 00:42:49 about in these books, the more it becomes clear as mud.
670. 00:42:57 That's the natural first step, additional information, and how does this connect.
671. 00:43:01 You lose the clarity, and then you've got to put in the effort and figure out where
672. 00:43:05 all the pieces fit.
673. 00:43:07 That part is even subjective because you define it for yourself.
674. 00:43:13 That really is the thing that makes people smart.
675. 00:43:17 I like that.
676. 00:43:19 He also talks about how the more desire that we have for something to work out a certain
677. 00:43:23 way, the less likely we are to see the truth.
678. 00:43:27 There was a lot in here about this whole idea of judgment is like right versus wrong.
679. 00:43:31 That's the picture I get in my head, especially with some of the application that you were
680. 00:43:38 talking about there.
681. 00:43:39 But ultimately, the thing that stood out to me from this section was that you just have
682. 00:43:45 to let it go.
683. 00:43:48 The more you're just okay with the way things are, the less stressed out about things you
684. 00:43:53 are.
685. 00:43:54 That kind of gets into the next section on happiness too, but you can see the seeds
686. 00:43:58 of it starting here.
687. 00:44:01 I remember hanging out with the guys at the retreat, and one of them had mentioned they
688. 00:44:07 were listening to somebody, and I'm blanking on the name.
689. 00:44:12 That's a big name guru guy.
690. 00:44:15 People are just not...
691. 00:44:18 You can tell they want the answer to life, and he's sharing stuff, and it's not really
692. 00:44:22 landing.
693. 00:44:23 In the middle of the thing, he's like, "You want to know the real secret?"
694. 00:44:26 Everybody's like, "Yeah, yeah, what's the real secret?"
695. 00:44:28 He's like, "I don't mind what happens."
696. 00:44:32 That's what I think the message for me from this chapter is because he mentions tension
697. 00:44:38 is who you think you should be.
698. 00:44:39 Relaxation is who you are.
699. 00:44:41 It doesn't mean you just accept who you are, and you don't try to get better.
700. 00:44:46 But I think in the past, I've been guilty of anchoring too much on this is who I should
701. 00:44:50 be.
702. 00:44:51 There's those "shoulds" again, and he does talk about how you need to get rid of those.
703. 00:44:56 There's some other things that I liked from this section, but that was the big one, is
704. 00:45:01 like, "Dude, just chill out a bit."
705. 00:45:03 Yeah.
706. 00:45:04 There's a couple more here.
707. 00:45:08 Like how to build good judgment.
708. 00:45:12 One was to collect mental models, which we have a thing around mental models.
709. 00:45:18 The other one, page 113, read a lot.
710. 00:45:22 Can get on board with that.
711. 00:45:24 That's very quickly followed up with a statement and a quote that I wrote down.
712. 00:45:29 If they wrote it to make money, don't read it.
713. 00:45:33 How many times have we picked up a book and we're like, "This feels like a sales pitch
714. 00:45:36 for X, Y, and Z."
715. 00:45:39 Like that right there summarizes why I feel like we get frustrated with those books.
716. 00:45:44 It's just not to share information and knowledge, which is the way that this one's written.
717. 00:45:50 This almanac of Nival Ravakant was written in a way to share knowledge.
718. 00:45:53 It's not a pitch for any sales thing whatsoever.
719. 00:45:58 I think you'd actually have to do some digging to find some way to actually give money to
720. 00:46:01 either one of these guys.
721. 00:46:04 But that might explain why we don't necessarily care for those books.
722. 00:46:08 So, I now have a reasonable justification because Nival said I shouldn't read it because they're
723. 00:46:13 trying to make money off of it.
724. 00:46:16 Yeah.
725. 00:46:17 Well, I mean, it's not necessarily bad to make money off of the ideas, but I totally
726. 00:46:24 understand what he's getting at here.
727. 00:46:28 I think one of the things that comes to mind from this, you mentioned we read books like
728. 00:46:36 this.
729. 00:46:37 So, let's just call a few of them out here, shall we?
730. 00:46:40 Sure, why not?
731. 00:46:42 The one that stands out to me the most is the 12-week year, which I actually really like
732. 00:46:49 that idea, but it doesn't need to be the length of the book that it is.
733. 00:46:56 And it's not just that book.
734. 00:46:58 Now they've got the 12-week year for writers, which I bought because you keep thinking there's
735. 00:47:03 going to be some additional context here.
736. 00:47:06 And really, they're just looking for additional ways to make revenue from that single idea.
737. 00:47:12 And the people who have the really great ideas, they aren't necessarily the best sales people.
738. 00:47:21 If you get a good idea and you are a great salesperson, you will spin off 12 different
739. 00:47:27 versions of this sort of thing.
740. 00:47:30 Biggest example I can find of this, by the way.
741. 00:47:34 Do you know who Dan Kennedy is?
742. 00:47:35 No, I don't know that name.
743. 00:47:38 Dan Kennedy is kind of like a digital marketing guy from back in the day, is my understanding.
744. 00:47:45 And he's got a book that I bought.
745. 00:47:47 I haven't started it yet called The Ultimate Sales Letter.
746. 00:47:51 But then there's like 20-something different versions of that for individual niches.
747. 00:47:59 And if you search for Dan Kennedy on Amazon, you'll see a whole bunch of these that are
748. 00:48:03 just applied to different markets.
749. 00:48:07 And on one level, that's smart because if you're speaking directly to somebody in a specific
750. 00:48:12 situation, then maybe you have the credibility that you can actually solve their problem.
751. 00:48:18 I don't know.
752. 00:48:19 But when you do a Google search or an Amazon search and you see all of these different
753. 00:48:24 flavors of the same idea, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
754. 00:48:28 Now contrast that with, like I said, I have never heard of Naval Ravakamp before.
755. 00:48:34 But this guy just seems wicked smart.
756. 00:48:38 And some of the stuff that he says in here, it's almost like passing comments.
757. 00:48:42 And it's like, if you really knew how profound that was, you would expound on it for another
758. 00:48:47 150 pages because some people do that.
759. 00:48:49 He's just like, "Eh, whatever.
760. 00:48:52 On the next thing."
761. 00:48:54 That's the way I want to be, is like, "This was a good idea.
762. 00:48:57 Cool.
763. 00:48:58 I can write about it a bunch.
764. 00:48:59 I can help people out with it, but I'm not going to anchor on that.
765. 00:49:02 On to the next thing.
766. 00:49:03 There's always going to be a next thing."
767. 00:49:06 Now he does talk about the way he reads books, which I think I have a little bit of an issue
768. 00:49:11 with.
769. 00:49:12 I didn't even write it down.
770. 00:49:15 I don't even know what I probably should have, but I didn't write it down.
771. 00:49:18 I remember the section you're talking about, but I can't place any of it in my brain right
772. 00:49:21 now.
773. 00:49:22 Well, he basically skims a lot.
774. 00:49:24 He could learn something from Mortimer Adler and how to read a book.
775. 00:49:27 So in the end of all, if you're listening, I recommend you go skim that book and then
776. 00:49:33 come back and reassess your approach to reading here.
777. 00:49:40 I agree with some of his ideas.
778. 00:49:43 Basically that there's too many books out there.
779. 00:49:45 So if you're reading a book and it's a slog and you don't think you're going to get anything
780. 00:49:49 from it, feel free to put it down.
781. 00:49:52 I mean, the only reason we follow through is because we have to talk about them on a
782. 00:49:55 podcast.
783. 00:49:56 Some of them.
784. 00:49:57 That's true.
785. 00:49:58 Some of them, I'm sure, you absolutely love them.
786. 00:50:01 Oh, I'm so glad Joe picked this book, but truth be told, there are some where I'm like,
787. 00:50:04 "Joe, why did you pick this one and now I got to finish it?"
788. 00:50:09 That does go both ways, by the way.
789. 00:50:12 Yeah, I know it does.
790. 00:50:15 But in general, if you don't have a podcast, you do every two weeks to talk about books.
791. 00:50:19 You can put it down and move on to the next one.
792. 00:50:21 There's plenty of other books out there.
793. 00:50:22 Now one tip I will give people.
794. 00:50:24 I think I might have mentioned this recently, but this, I think this is brilliant life advice.
795. 00:50:32 And I've told this to a couple other people in real life.
796. 00:50:34 And some of them are like, "Oh, that's so great.
797. 00:50:36 I'm going to do this."
798. 00:50:37 As you can just tell, it goes right over their head.
799. 00:50:40 When you are around somebody who is smart, but you look up to and they recommend a book,
800. 00:50:47 buy it instantly, take out your phone, go to Amazon, place the order.
801. 00:50:54 Because what will happen is you will collect a bunch of these books that are in your environment,
802. 00:51:00 in your home.
803. 00:51:01 And when you're looking for the next thing to read after you develop this reading habit,
804. 00:51:06 you will have a bunch of great material available to you.
805. 00:51:10 So you've already done the filtering out of the junk.
806. 00:51:15 And there's just always going to be something there.
807. 00:51:18 Now if you start something and doesn't really do it for you, like the vol is saying, "Feel
808. 00:51:22 free to move on to the next one."
809. 00:51:25 But that, I feel like that's the big question a lot of people have is like, "Well, what
810. 00:51:30 should I read?"
811. 00:51:31 And a lot of people will go search the internet for the top 10 lists.
812. 00:51:35 I mean, I've got that on my website, try to help people out as a starting place.
813. 00:51:39 But really, the people who you look up to, they have certain knowledge, they've gotten
814. 00:51:44 it certain places.
815. 00:51:45 And they're basically revealing to you where they got it when they recommend these books.
816. 00:51:48 So buy them.
817. 00:51:50 And don't trust that you're going to go to the library and get them later.
818. 00:51:52 You won't.
819. 00:51:53 You'll forget, right, which is why you need to place the order and have it show up at
820. 00:51:56 your house.
821. 00:51:57 And yes, it's 15 bucks a book, 20 bucks a book.
822. 00:52:00 Even if you buy three or four of these books a month, that's not that big of an investment.
823. 00:52:06 And it's an investment in your future.
824. 00:52:07 These ideas are going to compound and they're going to create a better life for you.
825. 00:52:13 You got me going on this reading stuff, but there are a couple of other things I wanted
826. 00:52:16 to mention here.
827. 00:52:18 He says...
828. 00:52:19 I wasn't trying to.
829. 00:52:20 Yeah.
830. 00:52:21 For the record.
831. 00:52:22 Yeah, that's okay.
832. 00:52:23 Praise specifically, but criticize generally.
833. 00:52:26 This is brilliant advice that, again, there could be like whole books written on this and
834. 00:52:32 why this is the right approach.
835. 00:52:35 But this is one of those things that can quickly just kind of fly under the radar and I wanted
836. 00:52:39 to call out.
837. 00:52:40 So basically, if somebody does something well, you say, "Good job, Joe."
838. 00:52:46 Right?
839. 00:52:47 But if someone makes a mistake, you say, "You know what, Bookworm team, we need to do better."
840. 00:52:54 And I literally had an opportunity to practice this because the intentional family episode
841. 00:53:01 that I mentioned earlier with the audio from the Life Theme Call, that was not the audio
842. 00:53:07 we had intended to release this week.
843. 00:53:10 That's all I will say.
844. 00:53:13 All right.
845. 00:53:15 But I was reading this and I kind of understood this previously, but this was good reinforcement.
846. 00:53:22 Had to address a couple of things, right?
847. 00:53:24 So I tried to do it in a way where it's like, "You know what, guys?"
848. 00:53:28 Because Rachel had created the content Toby had done the editing.
849. 00:53:32 Then result was this audio that I was supposed to publish, right?
850. 00:53:35 And I decided to, guys, listen to this.
851. 00:53:38 Would you want to come back for another episode after listening to this one?
852. 00:53:44 Tell me honestly.
853. 00:53:45 And if you think it's top quality, then it's the best we could do.
854. 00:53:49 We'll go ahead and we'll release it.
855. 00:53:51 But personally, I think we can do it a little bit better.
856. 00:53:55 So we had to scramble and figure something out, but it was a cool learning opportunity.
857. 00:54:01 And I feel like everyone kind of got it.
858. 00:54:03 It's like, "Oh, yeah.
859. 00:54:04 We have an obligation to listen there to deliver something of value."
860. 00:54:08 It's not a light thing that people are giving us their time to listen to this.
861. 00:54:13 There's so much information out there.
862. 00:54:14 There's so many other podcasts out there.
863. 00:54:16 So many other things that you could be doing, some of the other things that you could be
864. 00:54:20 listening to, we want to make sure that we're delivering the goods.
865. 00:54:26 And yeah, it was cool because I wasn't criticizing a specific person.
866. 00:54:30 You should have done it this way and you should have done it that way.
867. 00:54:33 It's like, "Team, this just isn't good enough."
868. 00:54:37 Right.
869. 00:54:38 Yes.
870. 00:54:39 I get it.
871. 00:54:40 That's really good advice.
872. 00:54:41 The whole praise specifically criticized generally.
873. 00:54:45 It does go a very long way.
874. 00:54:48 I don't think I could have explained it in those terms as Navall has in version.
875. 00:54:55 Side note, he was an early investor in Twitter and he loves Twitter.
876. 00:54:59 He has a whole section in the back of Twitter, "People to follow," and how he likes the platform
877. 00:55:06 because you have to think a lot harder about how to say something in such a short space.
878. 00:55:13 So he really likes it in that sense.
879. 00:55:15 Anyway, back to the criticism thing.
880. 00:55:17 I don't think I could have explained it in that way, but I know that it's generally
881. 00:55:21 been a practice of mine whenever we have a video crew or a slide crew.
882. 00:55:26 It's like, "Okay, how'd this morning go?"
883. 00:55:29 And I'm like, "Well, I didn't do this or didn't do that."
884. 00:55:31 It's like, "Well, if you know specifics, you can go after that, but just know I feel
885. 00:55:36 like it could have been improved overall."
886. 00:55:41 And I feel like you know what you need to do in order to do a good job for the next time.
887. 00:55:48 By the way, you did an amazing job hitting those slides and the timing and stuff whenever
888. 00:55:54 Dave was doing his announcement speech because that's not always easy to do with Dave.
889. 00:55:59 So good job on that.
890. 00:56:01 That concept, that construct of what I just gave you is just a general criticism of this
891. 00:56:07 was not great down to you nailed this specific thing.
892. 00:56:12 I don't remember where I learned that.
893. 00:56:14 I've had a manager or some point explain that construct to me and I've just kind of adopted
894. 00:56:20 it for a long time now.
895. 00:56:23 But Navell says it significantly better than I probably could have ever summarized it in
896. 00:56:31 that very short phrase.
897. 00:56:32 So kudos to him on that.
898. 00:56:34 But he's also a big fan of Farnham Street and this is where my single action item comes
899. 00:56:40 from.
900. 00:56:42 I put join Farnham Street membership question mark, but I have already joined it.
901. 00:56:50 Already done.
902. 00:56:52 Good job.
903. 00:56:53 All right, let's improve our happiness and go on to part two here, which is happiness,
904. 00:57:02 which starts with a chapter that I didn't write down the title of learning happiness.
905. 00:57:07 There we go.
906. 00:57:11 It starts with an interesting statement that has kind of given me pause and then I processed
907. 00:57:19 and I kind of want your thoughts on this, Mike, but he states that happiness is learned
908. 00:57:26 and that happiness is a default state when nothing is missing or wanted.
909. 00:57:32 That's my summarization, not his exact words.
910. 00:57:35 So happiness is learned and it is a default state when nothing is missing or wanted.
911. 00:57:44 And to clarify that last little bit, like if there's nothing missing, like, for example,
912. 00:57:49 if someone passes away, you are now missing that person.
913. 00:57:52 So if nothing is missing, but you're also not envious of a thing, like you're content
914. 00:57:57 with where you are, that's the default state of happiness.
915. 00:58:01 I think that's ultimately what he's referring to.
916. 00:58:03 That actually has given me great pause and just kind of realizing that in that short
917. 00:58:10 raising there that if I'm unhappy, it's generally because of some mindset that I have latched
918. 00:58:21 onto, not the external circumstances.
919. 00:58:24 So the external is not at fault.
920. 00:58:28 Getting a nicer car, getting a more property around our house, like those things do not
921. 00:58:34 matter.
922. 00:58:35 That is not applicable to happiness.
923. 00:58:37 It's purely my perception on the situation.
924. 00:58:40 What's your take on this, Mike?
925. 00:58:42 Do you think he's off his rocker or is he onto something here?
926. 00:58:46 I think he's onto something.
927. 00:58:48 I wrote it a little bit differently.
928. 00:58:49 Said happiness is a choice.
929. 00:58:51 Yeah.
930. 00:58:52 He mentions that a lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the
931. 00:58:56 present.
932. 00:58:59 And the fundamental delusion is that there's something out there that will make me happy
933. 00:59:03 and fulfilled forever.
934. 00:59:06 So I do think that a lot of this is mindset and it doesn't matter if you are in our situation
935. 00:59:18 or further along or not as far along in terms of he's quite a bit further along in the pursuit
936. 00:59:26 of wealth, but that doesn't translate necessarily to achieving happiness.
937. 00:59:32 The more that you have potentially, the more that you want.
938. 00:59:35 So really what he's saying is you got to learn to let that desire go in order to really be
939. 00:59:42 happy.
940. 00:59:43 And I think that I don't know exactly what I think.
941. 00:59:48 I have to think about this more, but I think this really challenged me.
942. 00:59:52 You mentioned that desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you
943. 00:59:55 get the thing that you want.
944. 00:59:58 And I can totally see how I've done that in the past.
945. 01:00:02 I also think that that's kind of just the way that society and culture forces us down
946. 01:00:09 by default.
947. 01:00:10 So I really liked what he said on page 141 about how the real winners are the ones who
948. 01:00:15 step out of the game entirely.
949. 01:00:16 I don't know exactly how to do that.
950. 01:00:19 I've probably kind of made the first step, I suppose, by not having a normal job, right?
951. 01:00:26 Realtime content creator and figuring out even with that, there's certain things that
952. 01:00:32 if you just look at the way other people are doing things, you could be like, "Oh, well,
953. 01:00:36 I'll do that the same way."
954. 01:00:38 But I feel like I could do that, but then I'll desire the greater results, things like
955. 01:00:46 that.
956. 01:00:47 I have to decide for myself what is the real right way to do this.
957. 01:00:52 And once I figure that out, then the real challenge is just staying in the moment.
958. 01:00:56 Yeah, I want to work hard and build things that I'm proud of, but happiness not being
959. 01:01:03 tied to an outcome I think is really important.
960. 01:01:07 And I need to figure out exactly what that looks like for me, but challenge to do that
961. 01:01:12 based on this section of the book.
962. 01:01:15 Yeah, he's got a success.
963. 01:01:18 Does not earn happiness.
964. 01:01:20 It is a choice.
965. 01:01:22 I also wrote down like, "Envy is the enemy" when it comes to happiness.
966. 01:01:28 And also, one that I think you'll resonate with, happiness is built by habits.
967. 01:01:35 Go habits.
968. 01:01:37 And then, you know, it's interesting, like that can come from a lot of things, from building
969. 01:01:41 the habit of like mindfulness, which I think we'll get into a lot more in the book I've
970. 01:01:46 picked for two books from now.
971. 01:01:50 And trying to just realize that again, the way that I think about a situation, the way
972. 01:01:57 I perceive it, the way I choose to view the situation is more often the determiner when
973. 01:02:05 it comes to my own personal happiness.
974. 01:02:08 So if I'm willing to think about a situation as a way to learn as opposed to how terrible
975. 01:02:15 I did and how I failed at something, like those are two different games.
976. 01:02:19 Like those two different ways of considering something.
977. 01:02:23 Like if I failed to mix something correctly on a soundboard, that's not me completely
978. 01:02:29 failing at running sound for that whole event.
979. 01:02:33 That's me finding something I need to improve on and that I can grow in later.
980. 01:02:38 That's all in perception.
981. 01:02:40 It's all in your brain.
982. 01:02:42 The exact same scenario to do completely different outcomes.
983. 01:02:46 So being willing to admit that happiness is my own responsibility and not an external
984. 01:02:55 circumstance, it's kind of tough to come to grips with that.
985. 01:03:00 At least I find that it means that if I'm not happy, it's my own fault.
986. 01:03:05 I don't want to take credit for that.
987. 01:03:07 I don't want to blame somebody else.
988. 01:03:08 It's way more fun if I can blame somebody else.
989. 01:03:11 If it's my own fault, well, I'm the only one that can be responsible for changing it then,
990. 01:03:17 which is both encouraging and slightly disheartening at the same time.
991. 01:03:23 Yeah, I mean that's a strong word there.
992. 01:03:26 That's the next chapter.
993. 01:03:28 Actually take responsibility for fixing yourself.
994. 01:03:30 Yep.
995. 01:03:31 Yeah, the enemy of peace of mind, he says, "Our expectations drilled into you by society
996. 01:03:36 and other people."
997. 01:03:37 So you got to figure out what it is that winning looks like for you because life is a single
998. 01:03:42 player game.
999. 01:03:44 That kind of is building on an idea from earlier.
1000. 01:03:47 I think it was maybe the first chapter about how wealth is not a zero sum game.
1001. 01:03:53 Status is, there can only be one person who's at the top of the mountain, but when it comes
1002. 01:03:58 to wealth, just because somebody else is successful doesn't mean that you can't be.
1003. 01:04:05 So you can't look at what other people are doing when determining what winning looks
1004. 01:04:11 like for you personally.
1005. 01:04:15 He also talks in this section about how you're a combination of your habits and the people
1006. 01:04:18 you spend the most time with.
1007. 01:04:20 That's an interesting way to phrase it, but also learning happiness and not having that
1008. 01:04:27 associated with an outcome necessarily kind of sounds like he doesn't believe in goals
1009. 01:04:32 either.
1010. 01:04:35 And then there's this thing he calls the trifecta.
1011. 01:04:37 I've seen this illustrated previously, but this is pretty great.
1012. 01:04:42 When you are young, he says that you have time and you have health, but you have no money.
1013. 01:04:47 When you are middle-aged, you have health and money, but you have no time.
1014. 01:04:50 And when you are old, you have money and time, but you have no health.
1015. 01:04:53 And really, the goal is to have all three of those at the same time.
1016. 01:05:00 So it's really just describing the default way that people's existence is.
1017. 01:05:07 And you should be challenging that and thinking about how you can tweak it.
1018. 01:05:11 But when it comes to the way that things are and the habits that you have, you've got three
1019. 01:05:15 options.
1020. 01:05:16 You can change it, you can accept it, or you can just leave it.
1021. 01:05:20 This isn't something that's worthy of my attention, and I'm not going to stress out
1022. 01:05:24 about this.
1023. 01:05:25 I'm just going to let it go and go do something else.
1024. 01:05:29 Yeah, we're kind of jumping into the second chapter.
1025. 01:05:32 I'm going to just introduce it quick since we're like halfway through it at this point.
1026. 01:05:35 But saving yourself is the second of the three chapters in this happiness section, which
1027. 01:05:41 is what we've kind of talked about, taking responsibility for yourself.
1028. 01:05:44 He does talk about diet, exercise, and meditation here and covers a handful of different types
1029. 01:05:52 of meditation.
1030. 01:05:53 That part, I specifically called that one out because, and I didn't call out all of them
1031. 01:05:59 in my notes, but the quintessential, here's what you think of whenever you think of meditation.
1032. 01:06:06 Like somebody cross-legged sitting on the floor, focusing on their breath.
1033. 01:06:11 Like that concept of meditation was just one of a bank of types of meditation that he called
1034. 01:06:16 out from walking meditations to accidental meditations because you're in the shower.
1035. 01:06:23 Those also count.
1036. 01:06:26 It made me wonder if this is why I've struggled with meditation in the past.
1037. 01:06:30 Maybe this is in your camp as well, Mike, because we've got enough other things where
1038. 01:06:34 these different types of meditation maybe play into our daily routines, that it's possible
1039. 01:06:40 that that's actually happening just in a different way.
1040. 01:06:46 So that I thought was interesting.
1041. 01:06:48 Then he has the Scott Adams quote in here, "Set up systems, not goals."
1042. 01:06:54 Yeah.
1043. 01:06:55 Again, love that.
1044. 01:06:57 We talk about that one quite a bit.
1045. 01:07:00 This is a thing that I'd love to do.
1046. 01:07:02 Let me build systems.
1047. 01:07:05 I may not be the greatest at using the system once I have it built, but I really like to
1048. 01:07:08 build it, which is a weird problematic situation for me personally, but it's way it goes.
1049. 01:07:17 So yeah, save yourself.
1050. 01:07:19 Yeah.
1051. 01:07:21 He talks about several different types of meditation and basically confesses that none
1052. 01:07:25 of them really have clicked for him.
1053. 01:07:28 But I do think that the way he describes the mind being a muscle, being able to observe
1054. 01:07:35 your mental state, he is more of a meditator than he gives himself credit for.
1055. 01:07:44 He talks about how that mindfulness aspect can manifest different ways.
1056. 01:07:49 That was interesting.
1057. 01:07:50 I've always thought that for myself, it's probably why mindfulness meditation is not
1058. 01:07:55 ever completely stuck for me because it's so focused on your breathing or the guided
1059. 01:08:03 meditations and the version of that that works for me is my prayer habit.
1060. 01:08:07 I pray every single day that is a form of meditation he talks about.
1061. 01:08:13 And that was kind of cool to get the validation of that from him.
1062. 01:08:17 He talks about how meditation is kind of like intermittent fasting for the mind.
1063. 01:08:20 I think that's a cool idea.
1064. 01:08:22 And so it's something that you maybe don't need to do all the time.
1065. 01:08:25 I'm sure there are other people who would argue with that.
1066. 01:08:29 He kind of talks about maybe this is just a result of the culture that he's a part of
1067. 01:08:33 in Silicon Valley, but that he doesn't know anybody who is really consistent with it.
1068. 01:08:37 I think I do know some people who are really consistent with it.
1069. 01:08:42 But yeah, I think the big takeaway from this is to continue to try to train my mind.
1070. 01:08:48 And there are other things that can go along with that.
1071. 01:08:51 You know, journaling is another thing, things like that.
1072. 01:08:55 But the other thing that I like from here is that most of our suffering he talks about
1073. 01:09:04 comes from avoidance.
1074. 01:09:06 And I think that when we try so hard to not do something, and this is really coming from
1075. 01:09:21 anchoring on like, this outcome is good and this outcome is bad.
1076. 01:09:25 When you do that and you try to avoid the bad outcome all the time, you're not going
1077. 01:09:30 to be able to at least 100% of the time.
1078. 01:09:34 And so the fact that you can't avoid it, that causes suffering and is the way that he would
1079. 01:09:40 describe it.
1080. 01:09:41 And I think I'm guilty of this, even a lot of the stuff that isn't realized tend to be
1081. 01:09:49 a worst case scenario thinker.
1082. 01:09:53 I hesitate to label myself pessimistic versus optimistic.
1083. 01:09:57 There was actually an interesting John Maxwell podcast on this recently where optimism is
1084. 01:10:03 like a learned trait.
1085. 01:10:06 You can kind of naturally think about the negative things, but you don't have to let
1086. 01:10:10 your mind stay there.
1087. 01:10:11 You're constantly trying to direct it towards something that's healthier.
1088. 01:10:16 And that's something that I definitely need to do.
1089. 01:10:20 Because just letting my mind run on its own, it's going to create this sensationalized
1090. 01:10:28 picture of how the world is falling apart.
1091. 01:10:31 And there are certain people in my life that I recognize are not helping with that.
1092. 01:10:35 So be careful who you surround yourself with, to his earlier point, who are you allowing
1093. 01:10:40 to speak into your life.
1094. 01:10:43 But the big takeaway from this section for me is to just keep trying, right?
1095. 01:10:49 It's never going to be perfect.
1096. 01:10:51 Progress not perfection.
1097. 01:10:52 And really the wind comes from not giving up.
1098. 01:10:56 Let's jump into the last one here because then we can tie things off in a nice little
1099. 01:11:01 pretty bow.
1100. 01:11:02 But it's philosophy is the last chapter of this happiness section.
1101. 01:11:08 And he gets into like meetings of life, which I didn't really follow his very well.
1102. 01:11:18 This is a, I think you missed the mark here scenario.
1103. 01:11:22 He did have a section shortly after that about living by values.
1104. 01:11:25 That I can definitely get behind.
1105. 01:11:27 Like having these statements or these constructs that he's not going to deviate from.
1106. 01:11:34 This is maybe similar to what you were talking about earlier with, you know, if you don't
1107. 01:11:38 have a certain level of a standard or values, like you're not going to get too close to
1108. 01:11:43 me, like that idea, right?
1109. 01:11:45 It kind of fits into that territory where if something isn't following by one of your
1110. 01:11:51 values, it's an instant no situation.
1111. 01:11:55 You know, that's, that's very interesting to me.
1112. 01:12:02 And I'll save this last bit for the end of this, but that particular piece to live by
1113. 01:12:05 values is one that.
1114. 01:12:09 And I know we've had like principles or by Ray Dalio.
1115. 01:12:11 This kind of has some of that feel, uh, uh, navel's style of sorts here.
1116. 01:12:18 Not specifically, but generally speaking.
1117. 01:12:21 Um, but that, that is very appealing to me.
1118. 01:12:24 I'm not real sure what to do with that one as far as like an action item goes, but it
1119. 01:12:27 is an interesting idea to just have these statements like, I'm not going to do this if
1120. 01:12:34 this and this, I'm not going to do that.
1121. 01:12:36 Like those are the, the ideas there.
1122. 01:12:39 Anyway, I really like that concept.
1123. 01:12:42 Yeah, I agree.
1124. 01:12:43 I didn't really care for the meaning of life part here.
1125. 01:12:46 He talks about those four options, but I didn't think even we're very good.
1126. 01:12:50 So I write them down.
1127. 01:12:52 I didn't either.
1128. 01:12:53 Yeah.
1129. 01:12:54 The, the big takeaways for me from this section are to live by your values and that all benefits
1130. 01:13:00 in life come from compound interest.
1131. 01:13:02 That's an idea he kind of talked about in the previous part, uh, wealth, I think, and
1132. 01:13:08 he's talking about judgment, maybe in relationships, how you, if you wouldn't work with someone
1133. 01:13:16 for forever, then you shouldn't work with them for a day.
1134. 01:13:21 Uh, basically like you want to find people who align with your values and then you just
1135. 01:13:26 want to do life with them.
1136. 01:13:28 And by maintaining those relationships with the right people that will compound to have
1137. 01:13:34 a benefit for you throughout the rest of rest of your life, essentially.
1138. 01:13:38 So I think that's a really cool idea, really good advice.
1139. 01:13:45 Just be careful who you're surrounding yourself with.
1140. 01:13:49 And then related to that, he talks about anger being a hot cold that you hold in your
1141. 01:13:52 hand before you throw it at somebody.
1142. 01:13:54 That was a, uh, a powerful, uh, image.
1143. 01:13:59 And uh, I don't know that I get angry all that often, but I do get frustrated quite a
1144. 01:14:04 bit.
1145. 01:14:05 So part of that is probably me being around wrong people.
1146. 01:14:10 Uh, part of that is I'm letting things bother me that shouldn't be bothering me.
1147. 01:14:16 So uh, I can feel that like starting to, to rise in me certain times and it never manifests
1148. 01:14:22 as, as anger and I lash out at people.
1149. 01:14:24 Um, but I, I do want to just notice that and then chill, right?
1150. 01:14:29 Because don't mind what happens.
1151. 01:14:31 Don't let anything steal your, your happiness.
1152. 01:14:34 Um, the takeaways from here mentions kind of closing that the present is all we have,
1153. 01:14:41 right?
1154. 01:14:42 So don't live for tomorrow or for someday.
1155. 01:14:45 But then the other thing is inspiration is perishable.
1156. 01:14:47 So act immediately.
1157. 01:14:50 This kind of gets into the whole idea of motivation.
1158. 01:14:53 But um, I really like this.
1159. 01:14:57 Uh, essentially another way to say this would be like, don't put off till tomorrow, which
1160. 01:15:02 you can do today, but you're not always going to feel like it.
1161. 01:15:07 So what do you do in those situations?
1162. 01:15:10 Do you just force yourself to muscle through anyways?
1163. 01:15:12 There's got to be a better way to do that.
1164. 01:15:15 And so I think if you follow a lot of the advice that he's talking about here, you're
1165. 01:15:19 going to create this environment where you're motivated to do the things that his words
1166. 01:15:24 are your specific knowledge, your innate talents, right?
1167. 01:15:27 But it doesn't have to be that necessarily.
1168. 01:15:29 But over time, I, I do get this picture of you can create this environment where you
1169. 01:15:35 are doing things that are of high value.
1170. 01:15:37 There are things that you really want to do because of the impact that you're able to
1171. 01:15:40 make in the world and you're able to do them with people that you enjoy working with.
1172. 01:15:45 And you can do that over and over and over again.
1173. 01:15:46 There's momentum that gets built there.
1174. 01:15:49 And if you can figure out what the things are that you can do now that are going to
1175. 01:15:53 move you in that direction.
1176. 01:15:54 Those are the things that as soon as you get inspired and you see how that connects, do
1177. 01:15:57 that right away.
1178. 01:15:59 You don't have to do it all.
1179. 01:16:00 But what's one thing that you can do right now, it's going to move you towards that,
1180. 01:16:05 that picture, that future that, that you, you want to have.
1181. 01:16:11 That was the last note that I had written down.
1182. 01:16:13 The inspiration is a perishable act on it immediately.
1183. 01:16:17 And I just took that as, here's your book.
1184. 01:16:20 There's all of the inspiration you should need to get moving.
1185. 01:16:25 Act on it right now because that inspiration will slowly dissipate.
1186. 01:16:29 Or in some cases, it will quickly dissipate.
1187. 01:16:32 So get to moving, which is maybe a good place for us to move on to action items unless there's
1188. 01:16:37 something else you would like to bring up here.
1189. 01:16:42 I have one, and I know you and I talked about this last week, Off Mike is something that
1190. 01:16:48 I was working on.
1191. 01:16:50 And it was partially because I had started this book, but I'm in the process of starting
1192. 01:16:54 to write some blogs again.
1193. 01:16:58 And I've got a couple of those written.
1194. 01:16:59 I've not released them as of this recording, but by the time this episode goes live, those
1195. 01:17:04 will start to hit the, hit the website.
1196. 01:17:07 So JoeBilig.com, where else would I put it, right?
1197. 01:17:12 So Joe's going to start blogging again.
1198. 01:17:15 And a little bit different flavor, first one or two is going to be kind of in my old mentality,
1199. 01:17:21 but I'm kind of transitioning some of what I'm writing about.
1200. 01:17:24 So we'll see how that goes.
1201. 01:17:26 But yeah, this is partially the inspiration from Novell here is like, okay, you know,
1202. 01:17:31 there's a lot that I could share.
1203. 01:17:32 I have a lot of things that I want to write about from my voice.
1204. 01:17:36 And that could potentially lead into some other things.
1205. 01:17:38 So that's the easiest starting point that I can provide for myself.
1206. 01:17:43 So I'm going to head down that path.
1207. 01:17:45 Cool.
1208. 01:17:46 Super fun.
1209. 01:17:47 Awesome.
1210. 01:17:48 What about you?
1211. 01:17:49 I just have the one which I mentioned already when I read it was to consider joining the
1212. 01:17:53 Farnham Street membership, which is not cheap.
1213. 01:17:55 I think it's 150 bucks a year.
1214. 01:17:57 However, I have since joined.
1215. 01:18:03 The reason is that the Farnham Street, I just really like the stuff that they put out.
1216. 01:18:13 We've covered the great mental models, volume one and two previously.
1217. 01:18:19 But there are it's also a blog that I enjoy and I find myself going back to over and over
1218. 01:18:26 again.
1219. 01:18:27 So there's obviously additional content there.
1220. 01:18:29 There's also a couple courses that they offer like the art of reading, which I want to see,
1221. 01:18:34 obviously what they have to say about that.
1222. 01:18:37 And really just the quality of the ideas I feel in this book was very high.
1223. 01:18:45 There was a lot of signal, not much noise.
1224. 01:18:49 So I kind of went left with the impression that Naval Ravakan is a really great thinker.
1225. 01:18:55 And he thinks that these people are really great thinkers.
1226. 01:18:57 So I'm going to surround myself with other people who are good thinkers in the attempt
1227. 01:19:05 to become a better thinker myself.
1228. 01:19:09 So it's also interesting timing for me.
1229. 01:19:12 I mentioned with leaving the day job.
1230. 01:19:16 I know that when it comes to creating garbage in, garbage out, right?
1231. 01:19:22 So at the very least, higher quality ideas are going to spur more interesting things
1232. 01:19:29 that I make.
1233. 01:19:30 So it's an investment in the types of things that not just the podcast episodes like this,
1234. 01:19:37 but other things that I'll be creating.
1235. 01:19:42 Yeah, I think this is an investment in the future.
1236. 01:19:47 Cool stuff.
1237. 01:19:48 Well, let's jump into style and reading.
1238. 01:19:52 And I have to say the style of this is a little bit strange from a holistic stance.
1239. 01:20:00 From a down in the technicals of the writing, this is really well written.
1240. 01:20:06 It's a little strange in that this is not written by Naval despite the fact that we're
1241. 01:20:10 talking about Naval the whole time.
1242. 01:20:13 This is written by Eric Jorgensen, who has mostly compiled, but also put his own words
1243. 01:20:20 into this.
1244. 01:20:22 So it's a little bit strange in that sense.
1245. 01:20:24 I must say that Eric has done a good job of putting this together in this way because,
1246. 01:20:29 like, I had a really hard time knowing, like, what did he write versus what did Naval say
1247. 01:20:34 and what did Naval write?
1248. 01:20:37 There's lots of citations there, so he's telling you exactly where he got all of this
1249. 01:20:42 information.
1250. 01:20:44 So it's strange in the sense that I'm not used to reading a book.
1251. 01:20:48 So point blank by someone, but yet has a different author.
1252. 01:20:55 It just has a weird flavor to it from that stance.
1253. 01:20:59 So I found it very easy to lose track of, wait, is this Eric or is this Naval?
1254. 01:21:05 It got to be pretty easy to lose track of that.
1255. 01:21:07 That particular point aside, I really, really liked the book.
1256. 01:21:12 I really liked the way it was put together.
1257. 01:21:15 Naval has tons of tweets that are embedded in here and they have their own formatting,
1258. 01:21:20 which makes it easy to figure out when it is a tweet by Naval.
1259. 01:21:24 So you know those words are from him.
1260. 01:21:26 So I really enjoyed that process and the fact that that was very easy to tell.
1261. 01:21:32 Naval has a lot of great wisdom to share here and does a good job putting it together.
1262. 01:21:37 There's just some strange, like, what's with the meanings of life thing?
1263. 01:21:42 Like, it just seems very odd.
1264. 01:21:46 Like, your actual content there is just, like, your viewpoint there seems way off to
1265. 01:21:51 me, like, I didn't even really grasp what his, like, he has one of the points there that
1266. 01:21:58 is, like, his way of saying that someone has meaning in life and it had to do with some
1267. 01:22:05 scientific evolution thing that I didn't follow.
1268. 01:22:09 So anyway, that aside, there's a lot you can get from this.
1269. 01:22:14 Absolutely, this is something I feel like people should pick up.
1270. 01:22:16 Obviously keep on a little bit of a discerning filter here with some of this stuff if you're
1271. 01:22:21 coming from a faith background because he has a strong belief on the evolution train.
1272. 01:22:29 So that all said, as far as a rating goes, like, absolutely loved it.
1273. 01:22:33 There's just a few qualms I have with it.
1274. 01:22:35 So I'm going to put it at 4.5.
1275. 01:22:36 I mean, it's a pretty solid book.
1276. 01:22:38 Really, really happy I picked this one up.
1277. 01:22:40 So I was glad I got to drag you along on this one.
1278. 01:22:43 But the real question is, what do you think of it, Mike?
1279. 01:22:47 I enjoyed it a lot.
1280. 01:22:49 There were some things that, yeah, you got to pick out what you're going to keep.
1281. 01:22:54 And I think if you were to talk to Naval Ravakant himself, he would say the same thing.
1282. 01:22:59 Like, don't just blindly accept everything that I'm going to say.
1283. 01:23:01 This is all just based off of my experience.
1284. 01:23:03 But here's everything that I know.
1285. 01:23:06 There's no fluff in this book.
1286. 01:23:08 It's great.
1287. 01:23:09 I like the formatting of the embedding the Twitter stuff.
1288. 01:23:13 So there's things that they use for specific tweets.
1289. 01:23:16 But then also, he has these tweet storms or threads, essentially.
1290. 01:23:20 And even those are formatted in a way that you know exactly where they're coming from.
1291. 01:23:24 And it's really well done.
1292. 01:23:25 I really like the visuals.
1293. 01:23:27 There's not as many as I thought there might be.
1294. 01:23:30 But I like Jack Butcher's style.
1295. 01:23:34 I will join you at the 4.5.
1296. 01:23:37 I don't think it's one of those books that's completely life changing.
1297. 01:23:42 I'm definitely going to be different from this moment forward.
1298. 01:23:44 But there's definitely the possibility of that, some of these ideas.
1299. 01:23:47 It's kind of weirdly formatted.
1300. 01:23:49 And there's certain things that he's obviously more skilled speaking to than others.
1301. 01:23:56 But I don't fault them for including anything that they've included in here.
1302. 01:23:59 It's 200-some pages.
1303. 01:24:02 And it feels like if you were to address all these things, it could have been a lot longer.
1304. 01:24:06 There are a couple bonus sections in my book of, you mentioned like the Twitter people
1305. 01:24:11 to follow and the books that you recommend you read.
1306. 01:24:14 I don't necessarily recommend the same books, but whatever.
1307. 01:24:20 Yeah, I think anyone in the bookworm audience, if you've listened to more than a handful
1308. 01:24:24 of episodes, you're going to enjoy reading this one.
1309. 01:24:28 It's going to move pretty quickly.
1310. 01:24:30 And it's not going to be a huge time investment.
1311. 01:24:33 But yeah, it's a very, very good book that I had never heard of before.
1312. 01:24:40 And I am very glad that you picked it.
1313. 01:24:42 Cool, cool.
1314. 01:24:43 Alright, let's shelf it.
1315. 01:24:44 What's next, Mike?
1316. 01:24:46 Next is The Gap vs. The Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.
1317. 01:24:52 This is a recommendation from Carol last time when I had no idea what I was going to pick.
1318. 01:24:57 So thank you for the suggestion, Carol.
1319. 01:25:00 And this is an idea that I've talked about a bunch of times.
1320. 01:25:04 And I'm really looking forward to having an in-depth conversation about it with you.
1321. 01:25:11 Yeah, it would be good.
1322. 01:25:13 I just started this one this morning, so I'm looking forward to this conversation.
1323. 01:25:16 It would be a good one.
1324. 01:25:17 Awesome.
1325. 01:25:18 For sure.
1326. 01:25:19 Following that, this particular book has a fairly decent section on like mindfulness
1327. 01:25:25 and meditation in it.
1328. 01:25:27 I wasn't wanting to go down the let's pick up a book on meditation route.
1329. 01:25:31 But I found one that has been hitting my radar for close to a year now, even though Mike
1330. 01:25:36 has never heard of this one either, it sounds like.
1331. 01:25:38 The things you can only see when you slow down is by Haman Sunum.
1332. 01:25:43 And I have to say this one has shown up quite a bit.
1333. 01:25:47 It's rated roughly the same as the one we just covered, the almanac of Nival Ravakot.
1334. 01:25:52 So it's in that same territory rating-wise.
1335. 01:25:55 At least from what I'm seeing.
1336. 01:25:58 So I feel like it should be a good one to cover, but I also feel like in my life, things continue
1337. 01:26:04 to ratchet up speed-wise and I keep wanting to slow down.
1338. 01:26:08 So this is maybe a bit of a selfish.
1339. 01:26:10 I feel like I need this right now and I want some accountability and support around it
1340. 01:26:15 from all of you amazing bookworm people.
1341. 01:26:19 So please help me slow down a little bit.
1342. 01:26:23 That's my hope.
1343. 01:26:25 That's fair.
1344. 01:26:26 How about gap books, Mike?
1345. 01:26:27 Well, I did have a gap book.
1346. 01:26:28 I'm not done with this one yet, but I mentioned it earlier.
1347. 01:26:33 This- I'm not sure where this came on my radar, but it was one of the recent books that we
1348. 01:26:38 read and I trusted the source.
1349. 01:26:43 And that is Burn the Boats by Matt Higgins.
1350. 01:26:46 Toss Plan B overboard and only sure full potential.
1351. 01:26:49 A little bit of a sensational title there.
1352. 01:26:52 And I had some people flipping through it and they made the comment, "Mm, this guy seems
1353. 01:26:56 like he's kind of full of himself."
1354. 01:26:59 So it's so far it's pretty good.
1355. 01:27:02 The thing that got me on this was that one of the blurbs at the front is by Adam Grant,
1356. 01:27:08 which I really enjoyed the Adam Grant book that we read.
1357. 01:27:11 So I'm trusting that it's going to pick up a little steam here as we go.
1358. 01:27:17 But yeah, just seems like a theme for me right now and the season of Reinvention.
1359. 01:27:27 What am I going to be when I grow up?
1360. 01:27:29 Hopefully this will help me figure it out.
1361. 01:27:32 What about you?
1362. 01:27:33 I don't really have a gap book this time around.
1363. 01:27:36 I kind of jumped straight from the almanac into the gap versus the gain.
1364. 01:27:41 So not really any of them this time at all mentioned, but I will mention that I love
1365. 01:27:46 our Bookworm Pro members because they are freaking awesome.
1366. 01:27:51 And I'm always very grateful that people are willing to support us financially to help
1367. 01:27:56 keep the lights on here at Bookworm.
1368. 01:27:59 So we've been at it for just shy of seven years at this point, which is kind of hard
1369. 01:28:05 to get my head around at this point.
1370. 01:28:07 Episode 170.
1371. 01:28:08 Wow.
1372. 01:28:09 That's a lot of books and a lot of time.
1373. 01:28:13 So thank you to those of you who have continually supported us and helped us to keep the lights
1374. 01:28:17 on here.
1375. 01:28:18 We absolutely could not do it with all of you.
1376. 01:28:20 Amazing listeners.
1377. 01:28:21 So thank you for that.
1378. 01:28:23 If you haven't already, head over to club.bookworm.fm and join the club there.
1379. 01:28:27 It's completely free to join that.
1380. 01:28:29 If you want to get access to the Mind Node files that Mike has put together and some
1381. 01:28:34 extra perks like the bootleg episode or the ad-free version and such.
1382. 01:28:41 If you're interested in any of that, you can join the pro membership, which will get you
1383. 01:28:45 access to all of those special things.
1384. 01:28:47 So again, thank you to all of you who listen, and especially to those of you who are Bookworm
1385. 01:28:51 Pro members.
1386. 01:28:53 Awesome.
1387. 01:28:54 If you are reading along with us, pick up the gap versus the gain, and we will talk to
1388. 01:29:00 you in a couple of weeks.