18: Decisive by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

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1. 00:00:00 I am alive and I
2. 00:00:02 Would say I'm doing well, but it's
3. 00:00:05 Okay, so since we talked
4. 00:00:08 What did we talk before we had our third kid? I don't remember Mike too many things have been going on lately. I
5. 00:00:14 Think that
6. 00:00:18 We talked
7. 00:00:21 But it was kind of impassing. I don't think we've recorded
8. 00:00:27 Anything maybe since you had your baby. Did we okay? Well?
9. 00:00:31 All right, so we have our third baby in the house now
10. 00:00:36 third kid little girl hazel hi hazel and
11. 00:00:39 She's been a really good kid so far. She's three weeks old now and
12. 00:00:45 I would say she's sleeping well at night. She gets up a couple times as long as everything at the evening witching hour goes well
13. 00:00:52 but
14. 00:00:54 It's one of those situations where it's actually harder with the other two kids. You know this you have multiple kids
15. 00:01:01 the other two are more difficult than the baby because
16. 00:01:05 they are trying to figure out why mom and dad are so focused on little one and
17. 00:01:12 It means you have to spend a lot more time being very intentional with your other two
18. 00:01:18 Yep, it's a domino effect
19. 00:01:21 Yeah, yeah, and I can't say that I was fully expecting the gravity of
20. 00:01:27 That's like I knew I knew it was gonna be a thing
21. 00:01:31 I you know everybody talks about you're not man-on-man. You're on zone defense now like everybody talks about that
22. 00:01:37 But and knowing that I don't have the full understanding of what that means
23. 00:01:42 I knew that but it's just completely different than anything. I was expecting just wait till your kids figure out that you're playing zone defense
24. 00:01:50 Oh, I'm sure I'm sure then I'm toast. Yep
25. 00:01:54 And they know all I got to do is I got to spread the zone
26. 00:01:58 All right, you go in the kitchen. I'm gonna go in the living room. Good luck mom and dad
27. 00:02:04 Exactly little conspirators. I tell you it's true and
28. 00:02:09 It it becomes a thing now where
29. 00:02:12 Our oldest is very particular about where she does certain things like she's okay hitting her sister
30. 00:02:20 I'm not okay with that obviously but
31. 00:02:23 She doesn't do it when we're anywhere near
32. 00:02:26 She makes sure that they're in a different room and then Rose or a second she'll come out crying of course
33. 00:02:33 It's like okay
34. 00:02:34 What happened and you have to try to coerce it out of them because you didn't actually see anything so you have a hard time
35. 00:02:40 Disciplining them not knowing what actually happened. Oh well the joys of parenting
36. 00:02:46 Exactly see now that you have more kids and there are adults
37. 00:02:50 They'll just wait for the moments where you've got your back turned and then those types of things happen more often
38. 00:02:56 So it's a lot more figuring out what actually happened and yet people think that us humans are naturally good creatures
39. 00:03:04 Right
40. 00:03:06 Why do we have to teach us teach ourselves to be good like okay if if we were naturally good people
41. 00:03:12 Then why are our kids like this?
42. 00:03:15 Okay, actually get into this argument a lot
43. 00:03:19 How's Mike doing? That's Joe. How's Mike?
44. 00:03:22 Doing good. We had a week off at a Airbnb last week. Oh, right?
45. 00:03:30 Well, I guess this will be released quite a bit after we record this but as we're recording this
46. 00:03:34 I took a week off after Christmas and my family and Rachel's whole extended family
47. 00:03:39 So she's got a couple brothers and sisters who have families. We all rented this Airbnb, which sleeps 20 people
48. 00:03:45 pretty comfortably actually really nice place
49. 00:03:49 the kids loved it because the
50. 00:03:52 Cabin in the basement guy had finished off like his man cave and he had a pinball machine and golden tea golf and big buck hunter
51. 00:04:01 Bubble hockey and they were their minds were blown that you could play all these video games without actually putting in any quarters
52. 00:04:09 Nice
53. 00:04:11 So yeah, it sounds like a blast it was uh it's good to get away
54. 00:04:15 And I basically didn't do anything that the whole week
55. 00:04:18 I felt kind of guilty about it when I got back, but I think it was definitely needed
56. 00:04:21 And that whole taking breaks thing
57. 00:04:24 We know it's a good thing, but we hate it. Yep
58. 00:04:28 So unproductive it feels like anyways, it's true true
59. 00:04:35 We're ready to jump in our into uh our follow-up here. Let's do it. All right, um
60. 00:04:40 I'll go first here. I think we've got roughly the same number here, but uh the one thing I had on my list from
61. 00:04:47 Last time is thinking out loud around my kids
62. 00:04:51 And at work about what can I do about this right now?
63. 00:04:55 So this goes back to the personal accountability piece and owning
64. 00:05:00 Owning the the situation it may not be my fault, but I'm gonna own the situation
65. 00:05:05 Uh, and that whole process of just thinking out loud. That's it's an interesting
66. 00:05:10 It's an interesting thing whenever something happens say I'm at the church working on an it thing
67. 00:05:16 Uh, we recently rolled out a new email structure and there's I think I have one decent sized issue other than that
68. 00:05:23 It's all fairly straightforward
69. 00:05:25 But in that particular situation that it looked kind of dire and it was
70. 00:05:29 Looking like it was going to be a nightmare
71. 00:05:32 And I'd simply stopped and asked out loud like okay. Well, this is a big problem
72. 00:05:36 But what can we do about it right now because it looks like it's gonna take a long time to fix it, but right now
73. 00:05:42 What's the solution?
74. 00:05:44 I simply said that out loud
75. 00:05:46 And the the couple folks that were there
76. 00:05:49 Immediately started helping on the brainstorming process on how to create like a workaround
77. 00:05:55 For this situation and it turned out to be a pretty easy thing that ended up being the solution itself
78. 00:06:01 So I was like, oh, that's interesting
79. 00:06:02 So I had a couple of other folks that were asking about it later because it made the rounds
80. 00:06:07 And uh, it actually had a bigger impact than I thought it would
81. 00:06:10 That people have started
82. 00:06:12 Even questioning well, you know, this may be a bad situation, but what is it we can fix right now?
83. 00:06:18 So it's had an interesting
84. 00:06:20 Uh trickle-down effect there. So I think that's something I want to continue to do because it's had a pretty big
85. 00:06:25 pretty big impact
86. 00:06:28 Cool
87. 00:06:28 The second one on this list notice my blaming tendencies. Yeah, this is one. I think I'm gonna have to just continue
88. 00:06:35 Continue following up on I don't know that we'll do it here for a while, but I
89. 00:06:40 I have realized that there are a lot of situations where
90. 00:06:44 Something probably is my fault, but I don't want it to be
91. 00:06:49 So I have a tendency to want to put it off on somebody else that happens way more than I thought it did
92. 00:06:55 and it's kind of humbling whenever you start trying to notice that and
93. 00:07:00 it becomes something that
94. 00:07:03 It forces you to realize how often you don't take responsibility for a situation. So it's
95. 00:07:11 humbling, like I said and something I should probably definitely keep up
96. 00:07:17 Last one on my list of voting my phone in the early morning
97. 00:07:23 Still still terrible at this
98. 00:07:25 Quite quite terrible at this. I think I succeeded one morning
99. 00:07:30 Since we last talked Mike once I have successfully pulled this off
100. 00:07:34 And I was stressed most of the morning. I did not like it
101. 00:07:39 We are
102. 00:07:42 So what what uh specifically
103. 00:07:44 Do you do on your phone in the early morning that you feel like you have to check
104. 00:07:49 certain things is there other
105. 00:07:52 Tools of the ways that maybe you could get that information
106. 00:07:55 Like for example one of the things that I use my phone for is checking the weather
107. 00:08:01 But I could also do that using like the Amazon echo that's in the kitchen
108. 00:08:06 I don't physically have to have my phone with me then and I can still get the information that I need
109. 00:08:10 Yeah, the things that I'm checking and
110. 00:08:14 It's for a little bit different reason than others. There's a couple forums that I check which sounds
111. 00:08:20 Silly to check for saying in the morning, but the reason I'm checking those is I have released some free plugins and a couple
112. 00:08:27 Yeah, it's mostly free code that others are using and I
113. 00:08:31 Want to know if something's wrong with them like that's part of it
114. 00:08:34 So I'm I'm trying to figure out if there's an issue with something I've done. That's the crux of most of my
115. 00:08:40 Issue with the morning because there's a couple email accounts. I'll check
116. 00:08:45 There are the like I said the forums and I check in on github
117. 00:08:50 For the coders and developers out there
118. 00:08:52 To see if there's any issues literal. That's a technical term issues that have come up on that repository that tell me there's something wrong with the code
119. 00:09:00 so it's mostly a
120. 00:09:03 A quick rundown of
121. 00:09:06 Are all the programs and all the scripts and such that I've written is everything still okay? Has anything broken and
122. 00:09:14 I understand there's
123. 00:09:18 Good reason not to check this first thing in the morning like take for example. I've got one for
124. 00:09:22 um
125. 00:09:25 One for omnifocus that updates when your next review is going to be it's a fairly popular one
126. 00:09:30 So it'll update your next review schedule for
127. 00:09:32 Projects in the in omnifocus and there was an issue with it whenever we rolled over to the new new year
128. 00:09:39 And I knew there might be an issue with it, but I ran across it first thing in the morning
129. 00:09:42 Now I still haven't fixed it as we record this but I'm aware of it and I'm still trying to figure out how to
130. 00:09:48 Solve that particular issue now see this is the negative side of it Mike because
131. 00:09:52 I found out about it early morning
132. 00:09:54 Not long after I got up and then the rest of the morning
133. 00:09:57 I was trying to figure out how to solve it even though I didn't have time to solve it
134. 00:10:01 So I completely understand why I should not do this and yet I continue to do it
135. 00:10:07 Uh, I don't I'm not sure what to tell you there. I would probably do the same thing if I was in your shoes
136. 00:10:14 Oh, thanks. That's helpful
137. 00:10:18 Yeah, fortunately
138. 00:10:20 I don't have to go online and check to make sure that the things that I've made haven't broken overnight
139. 00:10:25 But I can definitely see that being a
140. 00:10:27 An open loop that would cause a lot of stress. So I sympathize with you
141. 00:10:32 I think it's something I think there's something deeper that I need to solve here
142. 00:10:36 But I can't tell you what it is
143. 00:10:38 It has I think it has something more to do with trusting what I've done and being okay with some of it being broken
144. 00:10:44 Like I think there's something there, but I haven't figured it out
145. 00:10:47 And this is a long rant on, you know, why I can't stop checking my phone in the morning
146. 00:10:52 but it seems like there's something else involved that
147. 00:10:56 is caused
148. 00:10:58 Around this mindset of not being willing to let go of something I've released
149. 00:11:04 And constantly wanting to fix and adjust
150. 00:11:07 The moment something goes wrong. I think there's something involved there. I just need to let it go and stop
151. 00:11:14 All right, I'm gonna be done with my rant on my phone in the morning. All right, I'm gonna switch over let you go
152. 00:11:17 Yeah, so speaking of fixing things one of my follow-up
153. 00:11:20 I know I saw that
154. 00:11:22 Was no trying to fix anyone else and I feel like I've done a pretty good job with this
155. 00:11:28 I've caught myself a couple times just in my thought process not
156. 00:11:32 Actually gotten to the point where I followed through with action
157. 00:11:36 And blaming people for certain things, but I've caught it internally where
158. 00:11:41 Before I would default to something and say you need to do this
159. 00:11:44 Catching it and applying it to myself first and saying well, what can I do?
160. 00:11:48 You know kind of going back to your first follow-up item. What can I do about this right now?
161. 00:11:53 And there've been a couple things that I've been able to do and
162. 00:11:56 that has
163. 00:11:59 That has made things a lot smoother
164. 00:12:01 One of those things is the next follow-up item the reading the strengths finder with with Rachel
165. 00:12:06 I set her up with the account
166. 00:12:09 Center the login information and
167. 00:12:12 She was going to do it while we were on the family vacation
168. 00:12:16 That didn't actually happen and so when we followed up in the family meeting on sunday night
169. 00:12:23 I was faced with a decision
170. 00:12:26 To either say well, why didn't she do this or hurry up and do it?
171. 00:12:30 But before I even was able to say that
172. 00:12:33 It there was an opportunity that I noticed like what can I do about this right now?
173. 00:12:37 I can create the space for Rachel to take this for the next 30 minutes
174. 00:12:40 I can handle bedtime myself so that when she's done with this and I'm done
175. 00:12:44 With what we need to do getting the kids in bed, then we can talk about the results
176. 00:12:48 That's obviously a much better solution than me saying well, you had one thing you needed to do
177. 00:12:53 so
178. 00:12:56 That was that was really interesting and then also after we we took the actually she took this the strengths finder
179. 00:13:02 we shared the results with each other and
180. 00:13:05 we wrote down five things for each of us
181. 00:13:09 to apply based on the other person's results so the strengths finder the default results give you your top five strengths
182. 00:13:17 And so for example
183. 00:13:20 one of the
184. 00:13:21 Rachel's top strength was empathy and so I wrote down for my action item that based on the description there which is
185. 00:13:28 Surprisingly accurate if you've taken these types of assessments
186. 00:13:31 You read this and you get a really good idea you understand a little bit more about yourself
187. 00:13:36 And when you do it with your significant other you understand a little bit more about them
188. 00:13:39 So we read this description and she's like, yeah, that's that's exactly it
189. 00:13:44 and one of the things that it talked about in there was that
190. 00:13:46 because
191. 00:13:47 Her strength was empathy. She liked to contribute different viewpoints to decision-making processes
192. 00:13:53 But she didn't like to be the one to actually make the decisions
193. 00:13:56 I tend to be very black and white
194. 00:13:59 And if I could manage all of my life inside of omnifocus with every other person that I come in contact with I probably would
195. 00:14:07 But that's not the way that she's wired. So the takeaway there was that I need to lead the decision-making
196. 00:14:14 I can't just delegate stuff to her and be like, okay, you know, you decide on this thing
197. 00:14:17 Okay, I need to lead the decision-making but I also need to ask Rachel what she thinks more often
198. 00:14:23 Not in a frame of mind as like, well, what do you think we should do?
199. 00:14:26 But what do you think about this particular situation or this particular problem?
200. 00:14:30 And so we each have five of those things based off of our strengths and it was a really eye-opening experience to go through up to go through that
201. 00:14:37 Sounds like it's a
202. 00:14:41 very helpful thing to know she likes to contribute to a decision and then you like to make the decision
203. 00:14:46 because
204. 00:14:48 That I feel like just knowing that can make a like that can have a huge impact on a marriage for sure
205. 00:14:55 Yeah, exactly. I mean going back to one of the other books that we talked about on this podcast
206. 00:14:59 The willpower instinct like you every decision you make reduces the amount of willpower that you have available
207. 00:15:04 So I was approaching this as well. I'll handle these decisions you handle those decisions
208. 00:15:08 But that was actually creating more friction and it ended up costing more in terms of the time-attention focus energy that we had
209. 00:15:15 To devote to this whole decision-making process
210. 00:15:18 And so this is one of the adjustments that we've decided to make is yeah
211. 00:15:23 I'll lead the decision-making but I'm not going to do all the heavy lifting myself
212. 00:15:26 I'm going to involve Rachel in the process. She's going to provide input so I don't have to
213. 00:15:30 expend as much myself
214. 00:15:32 It's it's basically a different approach to the same type of problem
215. 00:15:35 The problem is I can't physically handle making all of these decisions myself
216. 00:15:40 We have to work as a team, but how we work as a team is influenced based on our strengths
217. 00:15:45 Nice. Nice. Well, it sounds like this has been a very helpful
218. 00:15:50 Thing if you hadn't put it off for so long, right? I know right?
219. 00:15:53 Should have done this a long time ago. What can I do about this right now?
220. 00:15:58 It's amazing how big that question can be
221. 00:16:00 Um, so last one on this follow-up list is 12 week year updates
222. 00:16:05 Um for me
223. 00:16:08 And the other thing I put this on here is because as we're recording this
224. 00:16:10 It's the first of the year
225. 00:16:12 And I know if I remember correctly mike you were talking about starting yours here at the beginning of the year
226. 00:16:17 And the way my timing worked out it meant that I finished up my first round
227. 00:16:21 A week ago, which means I had my week off last week and then this is the beginning of another 12 week year for me
228. 00:16:28 so
229. 00:16:30 Following up to that there's
230. 00:16:32 Two different sets of this that I'm doing one is for my personal and for my work
231. 00:16:38 Uh, the other is for the church because with the church and my role there
232. 00:16:42 It kind of needs its own
233. 00:16:45 Set up and needs to follow that as well. And since I started there about a month ago
234. 00:16:48 Uh, it works out really well to kind of get my feet wet and then I can kick off a 12 week year there and this kind of run
235. 00:16:54 I'm in parallel
236. 00:16:56 So for me, I've got my personal goal set
237. 00:16:58 kicking those off here soon and then I'm doing the same at the church
238. 00:17:04 But I don't have a whole lot to report on it other than that
239. 00:17:07 Um, well other than I've got a buddy of mine over here in the twin cities area
240. 00:17:12 Josh, I don't know
241. 00:17:14 I need to give him grief. I don't know if he has a website of any kind he should he's needs to change that
242. 00:17:20 Um, but he's uh, he's a good friend of mine
243. 00:17:22 But we're trying to do the whole accountability thing once a week on that which actually like starts this afternoon
244. 00:17:28 So that'll be kind of a fun
245. 00:17:30 Fun add to my 12 week year process
246. 00:17:33 But
247. 00:17:35 Are you am I right in thinking that you were planning to start this or are you going to do that?
248. 00:17:40 Yes, uh, and I
249. 00:17:42 Had intended to it was one of the things that I intended to do over the uh, the week that I was on vacation and
250. 00:17:48 Of course that well didn't it didn't actually happen
251. 00:17:51 Um, I did do it personally. I meant to involve Rachel in the process
252. 00:17:57 So I still need to do that at some point and do one for our family
253. 00:18:00 But I since this is the first time that we've ever done it. I just
254. 00:18:04 Downloaded an excel spreadsheet and
255. 00:18:10 Followed the template and kind of filled it out
256. 00:18:12 Based on my best guesses and now in the next family meeting
257. 00:18:17 My goal is to share that with Rachel and kind of get her feedback and tweak it based off of that
258. 00:18:21 But it's a really interesting process if you've never done it before the first time
259. 00:18:25 I don't know if you experienced this, but it was pretty difficult
260. 00:18:28 Yeah to actually sit down and articulate all that stuff you have
261. 00:18:32 You have these uh, these
262. 00:18:35 Ideas for this big project that you want to do and then uh to actually sit down and figure out the individual milestones that you can track on a weekly basis
263. 00:18:43 Is a lot harder than just saying yeah, I want to do this sometime
264. 00:18:46 I know it when I first put the first one together
265. 00:18:50 when I first put the first one together when I did the initial one I uh
266. 00:18:55 It took me quite a while to figure out what are those goals like?
267. 00:18:59 What are the areas that I want to do these goals for?
268. 00:19:02 And how do I break them out week by week and coming up with the goals is easy
269. 00:19:07 I thought anyway
270. 00:19:10 But whenever it came to okay, here's this week and then here's this week and then here's this week from start to end for each one of those goals
271. 00:19:17 That was not easy
272. 00:19:21 And even you know, I just redid it again
273. 00:19:24 And even the second time like coming up with the goals is fairly easy
274. 00:19:29 I think I came up with what I wanted my goals to be in 10 minutes
275. 00:19:32 And that was simple
276. 00:19:33 But it's taken me a good two or three days of thinking it through to figure out what those milestones need to be
277. 00:19:40 It's not simple. I understand like I haven't gone through it
278. 00:19:45 I know that it's powerful and it can be extremely helpful and I got a lot done the last three months and I had
279. 00:19:49 you know, probably in the last nine
280. 00:19:52 before that but
281. 00:19:55 It just leads you to knowing what's coming up next and that's what I want to pose at the church
282. 00:20:00 I'm kind of curious to see how they're going to react to it. I've got a meeting this afternoon to talk through that
283. 00:20:04 my
284. 00:20:07 the executive pastor that I report to
285. 00:20:09 He's never heard of this at that I'm aware of so I'm planning this will be fun
286. 00:20:15 I'm planning to go into a conversation about 2017 goals
287. 00:20:18 And just talk about them and then turn around and say so my goal is to get all those done in the next 12 weeks
288. 00:20:25 So
289. 00:20:26 I'm kind of curious to see how that pans out, but that should be a fun conversation
290. 00:20:30 Yeah, you have to let us let us know how that goes. I know it'll be inter entertaining. I'm sure
291. 00:20:35 Uh, so I'm going to backtrack a little bit here. So you reading strengths finder and then understanding
292. 00:20:41 Uh yourself and your wife and knowing how the two of you work together to make decisions
293. 00:20:47 I think that's a pretty good lead-in to
294. 00:20:51 Your choice for our book today because I think that
295. 00:20:54 What we're going to talk about the rest of this episode plays into that possibly perfectly
296. 00:21:00 Yeah, this is a an interesting book
297. 00:21:03 It's uh decisive by chip and dan heath and basically the gist of it is that it's a framework for making better decisions
298. 00:21:10 And I really don't have any rationale for picking this one other than I thought it looked really really interesting
299. 00:21:16 Well, I'm really glad you picked it because I really enjoyed this one
300. 00:21:21 Nice
301. 00:21:23 Yeah, it's uh, it's it's different and there's a ton of stories in here
302. 00:21:27 The way that they implemented the stories. I thought was was really great. It wasn't a bunch of random, you know, person's first name like we
303. 00:21:35 Read about the the uh, the powerful engagement
304. 00:21:39 Um, but it's it they were carefully selected stories that illustrated the principles that they were talking about in real life situations
305. 00:21:50 starting on
306. 00:21:51 page six
307. 00:21:53 Yes, and he made the the very simple
308. 00:21:57 demonstration here that if
309. 00:22:00 If you walk into a courtroom say you're on a trial and the prosecutor at the trial
310. 00:22:07 presents powerpoint slides
311. 00:22:10 And using those powerpoint slides he demonstrates why the defendant is guilty
312. 00:22:16 And then they're having to reach a decision based on that and that alone
313. 00:22:20 Like that would just be absurd like that makes zero sense whatsoever
314. 00:22:25 That's not the case at all that you have no pun intended there
315. 00:22:29 Uh, that's not how things work
316. 00:22:31 But the idea is that you have to have all of this information to help make that decision
317. 00:22:35 To draw it out and not be something. It's just here's what I think and then making a decision based on what you think and feel
318. 00:22:42 That is kind of the crux of the book that
319. 00:22:46 There's more to making big decisions and I say big decisions because there's a lot of little decisions
320. 00:22:51 You can kind of just run with it sounds like
321. 00:22:53 Uh, but
322. 00:22:55 If he used the courtroom analogy, there's no way that would ever fly like that would just be a terrible and an absurd
323. 00:23:01 Thing to do
324. 00:23:03 So he takes us through this process of how to make better decisions
325. 00:23:05 Yeah, and it's really interesting how he starts by
326. 00:23:10 Giving an example of a framework that a lot of people use and the story that he uses to illustrate this
327. 00:23:16 Shows that the guy ignored the
328. 00:23:18 Ignored this framework and it actually worked out better for him
329. 00:23:22 So he talks about Benjamin franklin's moral algebra
330. 00:23:25 Which is basically you make your list of pros and cons and then you strike out the equally weighted items until you identify
331. 00:23:31 Whether this decision has more pros or more cons
332. 00:23:34 And Benjamin franklin gave that advice to this guy who was
333. 00:23:38 Trying to decide if he was going to go
334. 00:23:40 Uh, take this position with like an aristocrat and in europe somewhere. I forget the guy's name
335. 00:23:46 I forget the exact situation, but according to the moral algebra this guy should not have taken the
336. 00:23:52 Position he ends up taking the position and it ends up being a great thing for him
337. 00:23:56 But also the way that he did it
338. 00:23:59 Is a little bit different too. Uh, one of the things that they talk a lot in this book about is that
339. 00:24:04 A lot of times we're tempted to think should I do this or should I do that and instead you should ask yourself
340. 00:24:09 Is there a way that I can do this and that and so that's kind of what this guy did is he spun it around a little bit
341. 00:24:14 And he tweaked the terms a little bit and it wasn't so so much a I have to choose this path or that path
342. 00:24:20 Sort of a decision. He was able to accomplish a lot of his goals and it ended up being a great decision for everybody that was involved
343. 00:24:27 And it seemed like in that scenario that
344. 00:24:32 There were there were a lot of really good decisions he could have made. That was the part that struck me about that
345. 00:24:37 There were a lot of
346. 00:24:38 Options that he had
347. 00:24:40 That were all good options and yet he somehow traversed all of this to create this awesome
348. 00:24:45 Path using a bunch of them. So I thought it was interesting and I I'm with you. I can't recall his name
349. 00:24:51 That's probably terrible Mike
350. 00:24:53 It was an interesting story
351. 00:24:56 of how he
352. 00:24:58 Kind of and you don't really think of this as a good thing. He ignored Ben Franklin's advice
353. 00:25:02 Yep, and still came out for the better
354. 00:25:05 To me the idea of ignoring Ben Franklin
355. 00:25:09 Makes zero sense whatsoever, but you know, hey, some people are probably smarter than Ben Franklin and that seems crazy
356. 00:25:18 But it's easily possible
357. 00:25:20 Well, I mean he's definitely a very smart guy
358. 00:25:23 but the the real
359. 00:25:26 Reason I think that it worked is that it
360. 00:25:29 Ben Franklin didn't not have
361. 00:25:32 all of the information to
362. 00:25:35 accurately combat the
363. 00:25:38 Villains of decision-making that he talks about on on page nine
364. 00:25:42 Now you put these in the the show notes
365. 00:25:45 But uh, this is one of the big things for me too is that there's a couple different things that can influence us
366. 00:25:50 When we don't realize it and it can cause us to make poor decisions
367. 00:25:55 So number one we kind of talked about already. That's the narrow framing where you're only looking at these two options
368. 00:26:01 And the solution to that is to widen your options
369. 00:26:06 Uh second one is the confirmation bias
370. 00:26:09 This one I thought was really interesting because I could totally see how this plays out in the business world where you decide that
371. 00:26:16 You're going to do this thing. You're going to take advantage of this opportunity
372. 00:26:20 And then you find all these facts to help support it
373. 00:26:23 I I think this comes up a lot and the part that struck me on this one is he had uh,
374. 00:26:29 He mentioned that confirmation bias researchers
375. 00:26:32 struggled to overcome confirmation bias
376. 00:26:35 Okay, so that means i'm toast because
377. 00:26:39 If the people who study this and know it inside out can't beat it
378. 00:26:43 How on earth am I expected to beat it like this is not going to happen?
379. 00:26:48 Right. Yep
380. 00:26:50 And so the the solution to to that is to reality test your assumptions
381. 00:26:55 Uh, the third villain of decision making is the short-term emotion
382. 00:26:59 And this one again was really interesting because he's not saying in this book that you can't
383. 00:27:04 You have to remove emotion from the equation
384. 00:27:06 He talks a lot in the book about how emotion is actually a very important piece of decision making
385. 00:27:12 But when you're making a decision
386. 00:27:16 Instantly those short-term emotions can influence you to make bad decisions
387. 00:27:20 So the solution to that is to attain the distance before deciding this
388. 00:27:24 While heard the advice sleep on it before you send that email, you know
389. 00:27:29 Uh, and then the the last one is overconfident
390. 00:27:32 So once you've come to your decision, you're so sure if this is the right thing
391. 00:27:36 And then the solution to that is prepared to be wrong and he wraps all of these making better decision
392. 00:27:42 uh criteria
393. 00:27:45 He he has a
394. 00:27:46 What's it called an acronym? I believe for this called rap
395. 00:27:49 So w widen your options r reality test your assumptions a attain distance before deciding for prepare to be wrong
396. 00:27:56 And then uh at the end of the book he even gives some case studies on how you can apply this rap process
397. 00:28:02 After the majority of the book is about the individual steps of the rap process
398. 00:28:06 But at the very end of the book there's even some case studies where you can apply this to particular decisions
399. 00:28:12 And uh, I think this is a really really solid framework
400. 00:28:15 And if that's the only thing that you got out of reading this book it was definitely worth it
401. 00:28:19 This is this is exactly why I told a couple people that I
402. 00:28:23 Was uh having conversations with i've got i bring up books all the time with people anymore
403. 00:28:28 It's probably really frustrating for others, but i'm
404. 00:28:31 Yeah, anyway
405. 00:28:33 I I talked to some folks who they're homeschooling their kids
406. 00:28:38 and
407. 00:28:40 They are trying to figure out how to help their oldest two sons one is a freshman
408. 00:28:46 Uh, so he's a ninth grader and the other one's a an 11th grader and they're starting to have these conversations about you know
409. 00:28:52 What do you want to do?
410. 00:28:54 As a a career you want to go to college like they're trying to have all those conversations
411. 00:28:57 I told them to read this book both of them and their kids
412. 00:29:01 Because to me there's so many scenarios for especially students
413. 00:29:07 I mean think about it you're getting ready to donate essentially four years of your time
414. 00:29:11 If you say you're going to college if you're going to donate four years of your time without an income in most cases
415. 00:29:16 With the assumption that you're going into a career that you are going to excel at
416. 00:29:23 How do you actually know that's the right decision to make wouldn't you be better off taking a month and donating your time to the industry
417. 00:29:31 Before you donate four years like simple things like that come out in this book
418. 00:29:36 And it's one that would I hope would help a lot of students and a lot of parents help kids make those decisions
419. 00:29:43 Yeah, and even if you are confident that you want to go into a particular field
420. 00:29:48 Then typically it's how do I get into the best school and he talks in here about how the us news and world report rankings
421. 00:29:54 That determine the the highest rated schools
422. 00:29:58 They're actually based on things that don't matter things like faculty compensation and the percentage of graduates who actually donate back to the university
423. 00:30:07 They actually did independent research and found that when it comes to income it really doesn't matter what school you go to
424. 00:30:14 So I agree it would be much better to figure out what is that thing?
425. 00:30:18 And maybe you do a small test before you actually dive in and decide that you want to devote
426. 00:30:24 eight years of your life or more to becoming a doctor
427. 00:30:27 Right and this comes from so this is a part of the R in rap
428. 00:30:33 So I suppose rap WRAP. So the reality test your assumptions
429. 00:30:37 That's essentially what i'm talking about there is you know do a test to find out if this is the real thing you want to do
430. 00:30:43 This is so they brought up van hhelen and the M&M's again
431. 00:30:46 Which I thought was kind of fun
432. 00:30:48 But that story seems to come up quite a bit because it seems absurd it seems kind of diva ish
433. 00:30:53 and
434. 00:30:54 Yet it's brilliant and this is one where van hhelen had
435. 00:30:59 He's doing the reality test in that case. He's making sure that everybody who's
436. 00:31:03 Building the structures and taking care of all of his music equipment
437. 00:31:07 That they're actually going to do what he can assume they need to do
438. 00:31:11 So it's a reality test using something as simple as a brown M&M who'd have thought
439. 00:31:16 Yeah, and if you haven't listened, I think it was probably the previous episode we talked about this
440. 00:31:21 I think so. Yeah
441. 00:31:22 But the gist of the story is that
442. 00:31:25 Van hhelen when they would go on tour they would bring I think they said in this book eight semis worth a gear
443. 00:31:31 Yeah, I think that's right
444. 00:31:33 So they were really the first ones to do these really really technical productions when they would give a concert
445. 00:31:39 And they knew that when they showed up to do the show they couldn't
446. 00:31:44 Check everything every time so they used
447. 00:31:48 They used a clause in the contract where it said that there was to be a bowl of M&M's
448. 00:31:55 Backstage in the green room
449. 00:31:57 And the brown M&M's were to be removed and if the if they went back there and they found brown M&M's in the bowl
450. 00:32:02 They actually according to the contract had the right to cancel the show and not refund any of the money
451. 00:32:07 And the reason for this was basically a tripwire
452. 00:32:10 Which is another thing that he talks about in the book later on
453. 00:32:13 Where they knew that if they had overlooked that detail
454. 00:32:18 Then they probably overlooked a lot of other details when it came to setting up the eight semis worth of gear
455. 00:32:24 And that was basically their cue to have to go and check
456. 00:32:27 everything
457. 00:32:29 Because they knew that if they weren't going to pay attention to this one thing
458. 00:32:32 There were some other things that probably slipped through the cleric cracks too and at one point
459. 00:32:36 I believe they found a pretty major
460. 00:32:38 Thing wrong and it actually would have been life-threatening had they actually gone through with the show
461. 00:32:43 It's quite the deal. I mean, it's not I mean it sounds ridiculous, but it's not just M&M's
462. 00:32:50 I know it's more than an M&M
463. 00:32:53 So I'm looking through our outline here, Mike and
464. 00:32:55 I feel like we've kind of given a quick overview of the book
465. 00:32:59 But I'm noticing that the remainder of the items that we have on this list are
466. 00:33:04 A bunch of tactics
467. 00:33:07 So, you know, we talk about rap, why in your options reality test your assumptions attain distance before deciding and prepare to be wrong
468. 00:33:14 The remainder that we're going to talk about here are some of the
469. 00:33:19 tactics and ways to help get the information and to make the decisions
470. 00:33:23 I just want to clarify that because I feel like we've gone through a summary piece
471. 00:33:28 And we may hit some of these rapid fire because there's a bunch here. Yep, and there's a lot of
472. 00:33:34 Really interesting
473. 00:33:37 And yet in some cases very small like just ask a single question and it can really open things up
474. 00:33:41 There's some of these that are very simple some of them are more complicated some of them are expensive
475. 00:33:48 That can help us make better decisions. Do you think it's fair if you're looking at the list that I'm looking at?
476. 00:33:53 I can wish I could share this with the listener
477. 00:33:56 Definitely, I completely agree
478. 00:33:59 For example, the very first thing on here is the vanishing options test
479. 00:34:03 And this applies to the first point of rap, which is widen your options
480. 00:34:08 And this is really really simple
481. 00:34:11 But it's something that a lot of people probably don't do
482. 00:34:14 And I know that I've been guilty of this as well. The vanishing options test is basically if you can't do what you're considering right now
483. 00:34:21 What other options are available to you?
484. 00:34:23 So this is really handy when you're trying to decide
485. 00:34:27 Whether to take another job for example or stay in your current job when you're looking at something like that where there's two options
486. 00:34:34 Should I do this or should I not do this?
487. 00:34:36 If neither of those options are available to you
488. 00:34:39 What other options are out there?
489. 00:34:41 So basically you you eliminate the ones that are available to you and then that helps you see
490. 00:34:45 All the other options that are actually available to you. You just haven't noticed it because you're so focused on
491. 00:34:51 This particular
492. 00:34:54 This particular thing
493. 00:34:55 It makes a lot of sense. I think if you come at it
494. 00:34:57 From the standpoint of here's what I can do right now and what happens if all those go away
495. 00:35:03 And
496. 00:35:05 There are a lot of times I think whenever I look at like my business
497. 00:35:08 And there are some potential business partnerships that can come up some new advent
498. 00:35:13 Adventures, I suppose they could be adventures
499. 00:35:16 business ventures
500. 00:35:18 uh that are
501. 00:35:19 possibilities for me
502. 00:35:21 And
503. 00:35:22 It seems like I'm dealing with those quite a bit and I can't they come up quite a bit sometime
504. 00:35:27 Honestly, a lot of them come from you Mike
505. 00:35:29 but
506. 00:35:30 These things come up and I need to make a decision about them and in a lot of cases I try to make them very quickly
507. 00:35:37 And if I were to in some of these cases just say all right if that's an option
508. 00:35:43 But I need to do something. What would I do if those options weren't there?
509. 00:35:48 I haven't tried this in any scenario. Have you tried this at all?
510. 00:35:52 Uh
511. 00:35:55 Not recently I don't think at least
512. 00:35:58 Explicitly, but I I feel like I've kind of been
513. 00:36:04 asking myself this question for a long time because
514. 00:36:07 That was one of the tipping points when I was writing my book
515. 00:36:11 uh, which is called dauchil hustle kind of gives you an idea of
516. 00:36:15 the whole premise of the of the book
517. 00:36:18 but uh
518. 00:36:20 I basically got to the point where I realized that a lot of times
519. 00:36:24 We were trying to decide between thing a or thing b and
520. 00:36:29 We don't need to make that choice sometimes sometimes you can do both and it's just figuring out how to do it. Sometimes
521. 00:36:35 It's neither
522. 00:36:38 But the the default should not just be well. I have to pick one of these things
523. 00:36:42 So I can look back at a couple different scenarios in my life and I can I can identify different situations where I've kind of applied that
524. 00:36:50 But not the way that they articulated it in this book
525. 00:36:56 So I should point out that this particular process falls under the the widening or options
526. 00:37:01 Part of making better decisions. So there's a few of them here. We'll go through specifically on this
527. 00:37:07 but
528. 00:37:08 Another one of those ways to essentially get different ways, you know, open up the possibilities for a decision
529. 00:37:14 Uh, it was simply asking what about both like in so many cases
530. 00:37:18 We have decisions that come up that are you know, should I do this or not?
531. 00:37:23 Well, sometimes you can ask well, what if you do both or in some cases like, okay, should I buy?
532. 00:37:28 Uh
533. 00:37:30 Well buying something's probably not good because then I'm buying multiple should I buy a macbook or an iPad both?
534. 00:37:35 but
535. 00:37:37 You know sometimes you have decisions that come up and rather than try to decide between them
536. 00:37:42 You should ask the question of can I can I do both of those and?
537. 00:37:47 Does that open up new possibilities for me in the future?
538. 00:37:52 It I can tell you from personal experience that it definitely does when you take this approach if I would have stuck with
539. 00:37:59 Choose this or that I never would have written the book
540. 00:38:02 Which never would have led to the position with Asian efficiency?
541. 00:38:05 Never would have gotten connected with you most likely
542. 00:38:08 Lots of other things that I've been able to do lots of other opportunities that I've had
543. 00:38:12 Don't happen if I have to make the choice between
544. 00:38:15 staying in the family business where I'm making pretty good money and I have security
545. 00:38:21 And deciding that I'm going to just burn that bridge and become a writer because I had never written anything before
546. 00:38:27 So I mean that's that's just a really obvious example of you don't have to choose between one or the other
547. 00:38:34 You can actually do both and I think that a lot of passion projects or side hustles or dreams that people have
548. 00:38:39 They don't take action on them because they're waiting for the moment where it makes sense for them to chase that thing full time
549. 00:38:45 But you you don't have to do that right away
550. 00:38:49 You can just make a little bit of of movement in a particular direction
551. 00:38:53 You can create a little bit of action and then that can actually snowball as long as you're consistent with it
552. 00:38:59 So
553. 00:39:00 What about both? I would argue that everybody should be looking for that option
554. 00:39:04 Not necessarily as the default for every decision that you make if you do that
555. 00:39:09 Obviously you're going to get over committed and you're going to burn out you need to maintain some sort of margin, but
556. 00:39:14 How many of those things are in people's hearts? How many goals?
557. 00:39:19 Do they have how many books, you know that people want to write or
558. 00:39:23 Businesses that they want to start how many of those things don't happen because they're waiting for it to make sense to choose
559. 00:39:30 That option as opposed to the thing that they're right now committed to
560. 00:39:35 and one of the ways to
561. 00:39:38 Think about this and to try to I guess avoid it is he
562. 00:39:42 I keep saying he it's they so sorry guys, but
563. 00:39:48 they talk about the
564. 00:39:50 The alarm that should set off in your mind whenever you hear somebody say should I do this or that?
565. 00:39:55 Or i'm trying to decide whether or not to do something
566. 00:39:58 Uh, the example he brought up was i'm trying to decide whether or not to break up with my boyfriend
567. 00:40:02 They talked about that and you know, they also come at should I buy this company or not?
568. 00:40:08 well
569. 00:40:09 You know that that's not necessarily the right way to come at it because it's limiting you down to essentially one option
570. 00:40:16 You know do this or not like you're making one
571. 00:40:19 Choice in that instead of coming at it and just saying there's this one option here
572. 00:40:23 Try to figure out what the assumption is, you know the assumption is I need to decide between this about this particular scenario
573. 00:40:31 And instead of trying to decide on that one scenario you're better off
574. 00:40:35 Trying to figure out if there's a different way to come at it like the he talked about the example of buying
575. 00:40:40 Was it Quaker was buying snapple?
576. 00:40:44 I think that was the company layout there. Uh, they were simply trying to decide whether or not to buy it
577. 00:40:49 Well, it would have been a better it ended up being a terrible thing
578. 00:40:52 Uh it ended up being a scenario where they probably should have thought about it of is snapple a good choice
579. 00:40:59 Or should we save that money and invest it in research or?
580. 00:41:04 Should we look at buying a couple smaller companies that would potentially lead up to something like snapple?
581. 00:41:10 Like they didn't ask any of those questions. It was simple simply a
582. 00:41:14 Should we buy snapple or not and it stopped there? They didn't try to widen
583. 00:41:18 Their choices they simply stuck to the one and got laser focused on it
584. 00:41:22 Instead of trying to broaden the spotlight on what the options were in front of them
585. 00:41:27 If you can kind of see that correlation there, but that that's what you're trying to do is if you see something that
586. 00:41:33 Uh a question that someone's asking should I do this or not?
587. 00:41:36 Well alarm bells should go off because that means you're thinking at a narrow frame of mind
588. 00:41:42 Which is one of the villains of decision-making?
589. 00:41:45 And it's really interesting
590. 00:41:49 the story about frank and doreen because
591. 00:41:51 being married
592. 00:41:53 That's a your partner can be a very valuable resource when it comes to
593. 00:41:58 widening
594. 00:42:00 Your options and realizing all the options that are available to you basically in this particular story
595. 00:42:05 Doreen was stressed out at work and she just felt like she couldn't handle everything
596. 00:42:10 So she was approaching this problem from a particular mindset
597. 00:42:13 Which is another thing that they bring up the prevention focus versus the promotion focus
598. 00:42:17 So if you have a significant other
599. 00:42:20 There's a very good chance that one of you's prevention focus one of you is promotion focus
600. 00:42:27 Prevention focus basically orients you towards things that are negative you want to avoid negative situations
601. 00:42:33 Promotion focus is oriented towards positive outcomes. Well, what wouldn't it be great if this actually happened?
602. 00:42:39 And so in this particular story
603. 00:42:41 Doreen's all stressed out. She's looking for ways to reduce stress
604. 00:42:46 She's thinking about quitting her job because she just can't handle the stress in that particular environment
605. 00:42:51 Frank is looking at it from the through the lens of how do you increase your happiness? So one of the solutions that
606. 00:42:58 He mentions is maybe you stop and you work out on the way home
607. 00:43:02 and I think a lot of solutions
608. 00:43:05 to
609. 00:43:07 Specific situations like that where you're really stressed out and you're thinking about, you know, I got to get out of out of this job
610. 00:43:14 It's probably not
611. 00:43:16 wise to just
612. 00:43:19 Burn that burn that bridge so to speak or to just walk away from that particular situation
613. 00:43:23 There's probably things that you can do in that particular situation to alleviate some stress in the corporate environment
614. 00:43:29 For example, and there's some other things that you can do to increase your happiness
615. 00:43:33 So in this particular story what I took away was that I might be looking at the solution to this
616. 00:43:38 This is one thing my wife might be looking at at the solution to this is another thing
617. 00:43:42 And really the ideal situation is both, you know, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that
618. 00:43:47 It's not so cut and dry. Just we have to pick one or one of these or the other
619. 00:43:51 I really like the story of frank and doreen. It is very
620. 00:43:56 And this this correlates throughout the rest of the book, Mike
621. 00:44:00 At least I thought you know a lot of these stories
622. 00:44:02 He's got they've got tons of them in this book to explain and illustrate these decisions that are being made
623. 00:44:08 And how they came about doing it
624. 00:44:11 Like these stories are very relatable. They're ones that you can easily grasp and you can easily
625. 00:44:18 Comprehend I guess and it's something that illustrates their point very clearly
626. 00:44:23 This is one of the reasons I had a hard time putting this book down
627. 00:44:26 Because it was very engaging and I kept wanting to know
628. 00:44:29 The stories would last through four pages in some cases and I I would finish reading about the concept
629. 00:44:35 And then I would read because I was curious I would read the first couple sentences of the story that was coming up
630. 00:44:40 And then I was hooked and I was another four pages in before I'd put it down
631. 00:44:43 But then I got curious as to how that led to the next option and how like the next strategy that they were going to talk about
632. 00:44:49 Oh gosh this thing
633. 00:44:52 All right, so here I am reading 3040 in one case 50 pages in a day because
634. 00:44:56 I'm just curious about it
635. 00:44:59 This is kind of led me from one to the next but that has a lot to do with the stories that are in it
636. 00:45:02 And just wanting to know how they apply this specific strategies that they're talking about
637. 00:45:08 Definitely and they do a really good job of making the stories
638. 00:45:12 I think he used the term relatable. That's a really good term like when I read the story about doreen and frank
639. 00:45:18 I was picturing mike and rachael
640. 00:45:20 Like I really picture myself in those characters shoes and a lot of the stories
641. 00:45:25 I like that even if they're about famous people even if you're not making a decision whether to spend two billion dollars to acquire a company
642. 00:45:32 The the thought process that they go through and the way that they describe the characters
643. 00:45:38 Makes them seem very real
644. 00:45:40 And that the processes that they use
645. 00:45:44 You can totally see how you can apply those to your own specific situation
646. 00:45:47 So another couple things under widening your options here are like multi tracking for example
647. 00:45:53 Which is the ability to consider more than one option at once
648. 00:45:57 And then laddering up this one I thought was really interesting. It's looking at other domains for solutions to your problem
649. 00:46:05 So when you are looking at a
650. 00:46:08 So we're trying to figure out a solution to a particular problem first thing you'll probably do is
651. 00:46:13 You'll base it off of your own experience
652. 00:46:15 Have I gone through this type of thing before do I know how to solve this if you don't then you might look at other people who are in that particular
653. 00:46:21 Situation the exact same situation that you are and how they handled it
654. 00:46:25 But laddering up is really even looking outside that into different domains. So
655. 00:46:30 maybe for example
656. 00:46:33 I forget the exact example they used in the in the book, but they were talking about
657. 00:46:38 Walmart and how they handled the the queue lines for the checkouts and how that was
658. 00:46:43 More convenient in it or more efficient and it got people through the lines faster
659. 00:46:47 You can use that same sort of principle in a lot of different domains
660. 00:46:50 You could use it in the theme park when you're designing
661. 00:46:53 the lines for the rides for example and
662. 00:46:56 Just being able to recognize how people are applying these principles in different domains
663. 00:47:01 Can really shut shed some light on some really valuable
664. 00:47:06 Solutions some really valuable options if you if you know where to look
665. 00:47:09 One of the stories that I because with this book and with the stories it
666. 00:47:16 part of the reason it's so engaging is because
667. 00:47:18 You can sometimes learn how to do some things even beyond making decisions even though it's about making decisions being decisive
668. 00:47:25 You can still through these examples
669. 00:47:29 Figure out new ways of doing certain things and the the one I want to call out here is lexicon the company
670. 00:47:36 Who you know, they are genius at the multi tracking thing you're talking about running with multiple scenarios all at one time
671. 00:47:42 in an effort to learn more about the situation and make an even better decision and lexicon
672. 00:47:48 Uh, what the company does is they name products or companies like that's what they do is they name things
673. 00:47:55 You know how hard is to name things like that is not a simple thing to do
674. 00:47:58 And if you work online at all you're naming things like constantly it seems like
675. 00:48:03 You know, you clear down to writing article names like it just yeah, yeah
676. 00:48:07 So I I thought it was interesting that they spell out their process for how they come up with names
677. 00:48:13 Which is multi tracking to a t essentially what they do is they let some of their employees use the product itself
678. 00:48:20 Say they're trying to name. I think the example they gave was naming one of colgate's
679. 00:48:25 Toothbrushes it could be like it was a travel toothbrush
680. 00:48:28 They were trying to get it named so they let some of their employees
681. 00:48:33 use the product
682. 00:48:35 Then a few of them came up with the concepts based on that experience like it's easy. It's
683. 00:48:41 It's freshening. It's lightweight. It's
684. 00:48:44 You know simple to use they would take some of those concepts and then let
685. 00:48:49 A different group of people who had no idea who the company or product was they didn't have any idea what it was
686. 00:48:55 They would take some of those concepts and then just try to come up with words or phrases that correlated with it
687. 00:48:59 And they would do this over a period of time
688. 00:49:03 And using that strategy of running with these multiple scenarios
689. 00:49:06 They would have a group of people who were looking at all of the results that came in and then they would try to draw correlations between them
690. 00:49:12 And sometimes they would go back to a different group and they would run with a different scenario and they would run all these different
691. 00:49:17 Systems all at one time
692. 00:49:20 Until they came up with something very simple and that made perfect sense and that they could all agree on
693. 00:49:25 And and you know use the colgate example. That's how they came up with a name for the colgate wisp
694. 00:49:30 Which I think is a fun name, but anyway, that's the process of lexicon and I bring that up because of two things one
695. 00:49:36 It shows the example of a multi tracking the way to different why a way to widen your options even further
696. 00:49:42 But also that gave me a lot of ideas on how I can name things for myself in the future
697. 00:49:47 Like oh, these are some really good ways to name things
698. 00:49:51 This would be awesome and it won't cost me millions of dollars to hire lexicon to do it
699. 00:49:56 Yeah, they also named I believe the pentium line of processors for intel
700. 00:50:00 Which was another thing where they went outside the domain and I forget exactly where they got that from
701. 00:50:04 But they were looking at computer terms and nothing really fit
702. 00:50:07 And then they ended up selecting pentium and their whole process for selecting these these names
703. 00:50:13 It's pretty amazing because they're so good at it
704. 00:50:17 They're so efficient at it and then the results that they deliver time after time after time
705. 00:50:23 It's it's pretty crazy that you can develop a creative system
706. 00:50:26 Like that that just continually produces those results just by learning a different way to think
707. 00:50:32 I really liked it. It was a fun fun set of examples because he used lexicon quite a bit in that process because it sounded like they were perfect
708. 00:50:41 At coming up with tons and tons of choices for themselves to pick from
709. 00:50:45 So what we've been talking about here is the the first
710. 00:50:49 Part of rap the wideener options. Let's step into the second one there the reality testing
711. 00:50:56 uh, what's the actual their reality tester assumptions and he does this they do this by
712. 00:51:03 You know the first one that we have down here is asking yourself the question
713. 00:51:07 uh a question and say you have
714. 00:51:10 Some different options on the table. You've got the options that you want to pick from
715. 00:51:14 And then the next thing you would have to say is you know, what would have to be true
716. 00:51:20 in order to
717. 00:51:21 Pick between those and the story that they gave with this at least the one that I can recall because they had a few stories to correlate some of these
718. 00:51:28 but
719. 00:51:30 They shared the story about a I believe it was an oil company that had a plant
720. 00:51:35 Mine, I guess in uh, Canada that was potentially going to be shut down because of a lot of different options
721. 00:51:41 And they took the executive team. They took the management team
722. 00:51:45 So the executive team making the big decision and then the management team at the plant
723. 00:51:49 And the two of them tried to figure out do we shut this down or not?
724. 00:51:53 And of course they're going to gridlock the executives want to shut it down
725. 00:51:57 And the managers don't because it employed over a thousand people
726. 00:52:00 So they don't want to shut it down the whole economy in the area would probably fail if it was shut down
727. 00:52:05 And that's a tough decision to make. It's not something you want to just you know, willy nilly say here you go
728. 00:52:12 Well, you don't want to do that
729. 00:52:14 but whenever they ask the question what would have to be true for each one of these scenarios
730. 00:52:20 to be
731. 00:52:22 Like what would have to be true to make each one of those a good decision
732. 00:52:25 And by going through the process of defining
733. 00:52:29 In detail what would have to happen to make each one of those correct and then trying out the process
734. 00:52:35 Of coming up with those particular solutions. They were able to decide. Yeah, this actually is a good decision to shut it down
735. 00:52:42 Even the management team that didn't want to shut it down said yes, we need to shut this down
736. 00:52:46 But they would have never been on board with that if they hadn't gone through the process of reality testing
737. 00:52:52 The the scenarios that they had to pick from
738. 00:52:54 Exactly and also the reason that they're good locked in the first place was that they had different
739. 00:53:01 Points of view and those different points of view aren't
740. 00:53:05 necessarily
741. 00:53:07 Bad there's not there's not always one right one and one wrong one
742. 00:53:11 But they talk in the book about how we get locked into our own
743. 00:53:14 Inside view a lot of times and that's exactly what the managers did they had this inside view. We can't
744. 00:53:20 Can't let these people go
745. 00:53:22 But when they were able to get an outside view when they were able to reality test those assumptions
746. 00:53:28 And they were able to project out well what happens?
747. 00:53:31 You know what what has to be true in order for this to be the right choice
748. 00:53:34 It was pretty obvious when they did that so
749. 00:53:38 When it comes to decisions that we have to make we have to be good at getting an
750. 00:53:42 Outside view and one example they gave of this which I thought was kind of interesting
751. 00:53:47 was Yelp
752. 00:53:49 So you go you're gonna go out to eat you're in a new town. You're gonna look at least if you're like me
753. 00:53:55 High-fak finder on the Colby score
754. 00:53:58 You're gonna you're gonna boot up Yelp and you're gonna see what are the places that have the highest reviews
755. 00:54:04 And then you're gonna you're gonna base your decision on the outside view of the other people who have eaten there and
756. 00:54:10 It's kind of silly when you think about it
757. 00:54:13 Something like that like where you're gonna go eat
758. 00:54:16 That's not really that big a decision
759. 00:54:18 And we make those types of decisions the correct way a lot of times by getting those those outside views
760. 00:54:24 And he even says in there that sometimes there's criteria there that you know
761. 00:54:29 You're gonna override the outside view because you know you want Mexican food and there's
762. 00:54:34 A couple people who didn't like they gave it bad reviews
763. 00:54:37 But it was because it was too expensive and you're flush with cash you're good companies paying for it
764. 00:54:42 You just want good Mexican food in that case you're gonna ignore the outside views
765. 00:54:46 But for the most part we welcome the outside views when it comes to things like spending a couple bucks on a cup of coffee or buying an app on the app store
766. 00:54:54 but when it comes to the really big decisions
767. 00:54:58 We
768. 00:55:00 Don't seek those outside views
769. 00:55:03 And he has a process that he talks about in there where we need to learn to zoom out
770. 00:55:07 To learn from the experience of others and then we need to zoom back in
771. 00:55:11 To our inside view in order to add the color
772. 00:55:14 That's where a lot of the stories come and you can see that that's how they did it in this book
773. 00:55:18 They would zoom out to talk about the whole decision-making framework the rap process
774. 00:55:22 And they zoom in and they'd add all these stories to add color and life to what they were actually
775. 00:55:27 telling you
776. 00:55:30 One of the other ways to do the reality testing piece is what they were
777. 00:55:35 Terming ooching have you heard this term before?
778. 00:55:38 I've not but I love this idea
779. 00:55:41 I do I like it, but I'd never heard of ooching before
780. 00:55:45 I think of myself as having grown up at least near the south and supposedly this is a southern
781. 00:55:50 term of ooching
782. 00:55:53 Essentially, you know, it kind of comes from scooching or you know
783. 00:55:56 Dipping your toe in the water that scenario where you know, you're just going to ease into something a little bit
784. 00:56:01 Now that's that's what he's getting at with
785. 00:56:04 Oooching your way into something
786. 00:56:06 Uh, essentially what it is is trying to find some way
787. 00:56:09 however crude
788. 00:56:12 to just test and see what the waters are like in a specific scenario and
789. 00:56:17 They give a few examples. I can't recall any of them off the top my head at the moment Mike
790. 00:56:22 but
791. 00:56:23 effectively what you're doing is trying to take
792. 00:56:26 Whatever your decision should be you think it might be and then find a way to
793. 00:56:32 Try it out
794. 00:56:35 Without going really big on it. I guess the example that I'm I would go back to is when I was talking about
795. 00:56:40 the the donating of four years of your time to go learn about a specific
796. 00:56:45 uh industry if like while you're in school
797. 00:56:49 As opposed to taking a month to just donate your time to a specific business and learn about it and try it
798. 00:56:55 Like that would be a way of ooching your way into something. Let's go try it for a month
799. 00:56:59 it
800. 00:57:00 It's a free month to the employer where i'm not going to make any money off of it
801. 00:57:05 But it saves yourself for years of expensive school
802. 00:57:10 To go into an industry that you may not be good at or hate
803. 00:57:14 But it's a way to test the waters before you get to it
804. 00:57:18 He also used the example of the hiring process and I believe that
805. 00:57:24 Again, I said he I meant they uh one of them. I think it was that's a problem with co-authored books
806. 00:57:30 Right
807. 00:57:31 But they tell the story. I think it was dan who was involved in this hiring decision and they had this guy who
808. 00:57:38 um was applying for a
809. 00:57:40 a graphic
810. 00:57:42 artist job, I believe
811. 00:57:44 and did the interview and
812. 00:57:46 Just absolutely did not like the guy
813. 00:57:50 Didn't click with them at all and then they had as part of the interview process them submit samples of their work
814. 00:57:56 and uh, they didn't attach the names to the
815. 00:57:59 samples when they reviewed them and this guy
816. 00:58:03 The he was uh the guy that the dan didn't like
817. 00:58:07 Was the guy who performed the best by far everybody agreed that his work was the best
818. 00:58:12 and so
819. 00:58:13 they
820. 00:58:14 Because they had they had had him do that small test
821. 00:58:18 The definition of ooch that they use in the book is to construct small experiments to test one's hypothesis
822. 00:58:23 So by having him do that small test of that sample of work
823. 00:58:27 They decided to hire this guy and then actually after they hired him found out that he's actually a really really nice guy
824. 00:58:33 And all of the reservations that dan had about this guy before they hired him were completely off base
825. 00:58:38 And they basically just talk about how interviews are pointless and little work samples like that are are much better
826. 00:58:46 One of the things that they wrote in there that I completely
827. 00:58:48 Agree with it just completely resonated with me and is something that I need to figure out how to apply this more in my life
828. 00:58:54 But they said why predict something we can test
829. 00:58:57 Yes
830. 00:59:00 Why take the chance that you're going to be completely wrong about something when you can validate it very very simply
831. 00:59:04 Yes, yes. So I go back to uh
832. 00:59:08 Oh, man mind blank uh cortex cgp gray
833. 00:59:13 He was trying to hire someone to help do
834. 00:59:15 the animations for his videos
835. 00:59:17 And part of his process to hire somebody was to have them submit work samples. That was the primary interview
836. 00:59:24 Process was to submit a sample of the work you can do
837. 00:59:28 And stop there and if you're good at the work, why would I worry about some of the other stuff like yeah
838. 00:59:33 He's picky about can you work with me or not?
839. 00:59:35 You can figure some of that out, but the whole process was you know, let's do a preview
840. 00:59:39 Let's do a sample of what this is going to look like and how it's going to work
841. 00:59:42 Like that's awesome and so many times
842. 00:59:44 We run across an interview process that seems to make zero sense whatsoever
843. 00:59:49 And asking questions, you know, this goes back to the beginning
844. 00:59:52 You know, you wouldn't just sit and talk about the work you do
845. 00:59:55 You wouldn't talk about why you think the defendant in a case is guilty. You wouldn't just talk about it
846. 01:00:01 You would show evidence you'd prove it you'd give a preview of all the
847. 01:00:04 Specifics that show that in reality like that's what you want to do
848. 01:00:09 You don't find a way to prove it like like you're saying why why
849. 01:00:12 Just assume something why I think of talk about it when you could prove it
850. 01:00:16 Why why go off of concepts when you can have facts like that makes zero sense whatsoever?
851. 01:00:20 exactly
852. 01:00:24 So the the next step
853. 01:00:26 in rap so widen your options reality test your assumptions and then attain distance before
854. 01:00:33 Deciding so sleep on it, you know, that's that's the real simple version is you know, take a night off
855. 01:00:39 You know get a little bit of distance from it take some time
856. 01:00:42 but one of the strategies that he gives they give
857. 01:00:47 Page 160 if you're in the book is using the 10 10 10 time frames
858. 01:00:53 the framework there and what that stands for is
859. 01:00:56 10 minutes 10 months and 10 years
860. 01:01:00 So a way to get distance on a decision is to ask yourself
861. 01:01:06 How will I feel about this decision in 10 minutes?
862. 01:01:09 Okay 10 minutes after I have decided to ask my boss for a raise
863. 01:01:13 How am I gonna feel about it possibly nervous about how he's gonna do it
864. 01:01:16 Potentially really excited that you finally did that
865. 01:01:20 In 10 months, how are you gonna feel about that?
866. 01:01:23 Well, if it went well, you're gonna be pretty excited about the raise that you got or potentially thinking about asking again
867. 01:01:30 Or you may have turned out to be a very it may have turned out to be a very bad situation
868. 01:01:36 You're not there anymore, but you might be at a better place overall
869. 01:01:38 So there's a potential for quite a life-changing scenario, but in either case you're better off
870. 01:01:44 Or you could look at it in 10 years in which case it's kind of a fun story
871. 01:01:48 It probably was a keystone in your life
872. 01:01:50 But it could still be a big part of that decision in 10 years out
873. 01:01:55 So it's a way to using this 10 10 10 time frames
874. 01:01:59 To just kind of force yourself into getting some distance from a decision and just kind of looking at it
875. 01:02:06 From the futures standpoint. They explain that okay
876. 01:02:09 Yeah, you did a great job
877. 01:02:12 And this this example is really what I think is so brilliant about this book
878. 01:02:17 This is something that everybody knows
879. 01:02:20 We know that we should not make decisions in the heat of the moment
880. 01:02:25 We know that we should sleep on things
881. 01:02:27 We know that we need to attain distance before we make these really important decisions
882. 01:02:31 but we don't do it anyways and
883. 01:02:35 And what the the 10 10 10 rule does is it gives you the support structure
884. 01:02:41 To fall back on
885. 01:02:43 So instead of saying well, I know I need to
886. 01:02:45 Think about this some more that's really vague. So
887. 01:02:49 There is no next step there
888. 01:02:52 When do you define that?
889. 01:02:55 You've thought about this enough in order to make this decision
890. 01:02:58 And this gives you three very simple questions where once you ask these the questions are the answers are very
891. 01:03:05 Evident and then you've got enough of a of a framework there to actually make a pretty good decision
892. 01:03:11 How will you feel about this? Like let's just say you're going to purchase something how you feel about this purchase in 10 minutes?
893. 01:03:16 Okay, if it's an impulse buy you might still feel really good about it in 10 minutes
894. 01:03:20 How will you feel about it in 10 months? You're probably getting sick of the thing in 10 years from now
895. 01:03:25 This is a complete waste of money. This is a really simple decision now that I've answered those three questions
896. 01:03:30 At least if you have the long term in mind, you know, if you're not just so focused on instant gratification
897. 01:03:36 But I think deep down people know that they need to think about the future
898. 01:03:40 They just need a little bit of help they need the training wheels to help keep them on the keep them upright keep them on the right track
899. 01:03:46 And that's what the 10 10 10 rule does
900. 01:03:48 I'm trying to find the
901. 01:03:52 The stats because I wanted to say exactly what they were but I'm failing to find them at the moment
902. 01:03:58 but he gets talking about the familiarity like being familiar with something specific and
903. 01:04:05 It gosh, where is it?
904. 01:04:08 It was interesting to me because
905. 01:04:11 I'm going to get there Mike
906. 01:04:13 what what he talked about in this particular scenario was
907. 01:04:16 media and how they use researchers and how we have a tendency to
908. 01:04:23 Think that we're good at predicting things and think that we're really we end up being over confident
909. 01:04:28 with specific situations and it has a lot to do with just
910. 01:04:34 We trust our own expertise and we think we're really good at predicting things and
911. 01:04:40 They did some tests on experts quote unquote experts
912. 01:04:45 primarily who were in the media and
913. 01:04:48 Think of you know, we just went through the elections here in the us
914. 01:04:53 and
915. 01:04:55 a lot of passion a lot of emotions around that and
916. 01:04:58 There are all kinds of experts that are offering
917. 01:05:00 Advice and expertise on why they think things turned out the way they did
918. 01:05:05 Why did the polls not figure this out and
919. 01:05:09 Essentially what happened was a researcher tested these experts
920. 01:05:15 and simply asked them to make predictions and
921. 01:05:19 I think he collected what was it?
922. 01:05:21 1000 plus no it was 80 some thousand
923. 01:05:25 Predictions and then ran results on them to figure out in two years time where those predictions correct
924. 01:05:31 and of
925. 01:05:34 The experts who were in the media talking about their
926. 01:05:36 Predictions it was like 70 to 80 percent wrong
927. 01:05:41 Of the ones who were in the media they were like 60 percent wrong on average
928. 01:05:45 But if they were in the media in some form it was closer to the 80 percent
929. 01:05:50 which basically means
930. 01:05:52 If you're paying attention to you know, the the news networks or anyone who's reporting any of this if you have an expert that comes on to offer a prediction
931. 01:06:01 You're better off assuming the opposite of whatever it is that they predict
932. 01:06:05 Okay, well, maybe we should get some distance from this
933. 01:06:10 Let's get away from some of these decisions that are being made here and that are being posed on us because there's a good chance that they're wrong
934. 01:06:18 And this is I only bring this up because it to me is something that
935. 01:06:22 I'm pretty good about avoiding the news because I know that most of it is extremely biased and you can't trust most of it
936. 01:06:28 That's my well, maybe that's just my opinion, but I don't care for it
937. 01:06:33 But I try to get myself some distance from that because of two things one. I don't trust it
938. 01:06:38 It's mostly negative so I just don't feel the need to have that
939. 01:06:41 Cluttering my mind and two
940. 01:06:44 If I'm gonna make a decision about what I want to do
941. 01:06:47 For a business or what I'm going to do for my family or something. I don't want some of that
942. 01:06:51 Affecting it some in this case. I'm trying to get some
943. 01:06:54 Some space between me and that particular set of information because to me it's going to affect me negatively
944. 01:07:00 As opposed to positively. Is this making any sense? I'm trying to show the correlation here, but it's
945. 01:07:05 Somewhat vague in my mind even
946. 01:07:08 Yeah, I mean this there was way too much to get everything that they they wrote in this book
947. 01:07:12 but the
948. 01:07:14 to give a little bit more context to the
949. 01:07:16 The statistic that you were trying to find
950. 01:07:18 They mentioned the big takeaway was that like a teenager who doesn't know anything about this particular domain
951. 01:07:26 It has a better chance of being right
952. 01:07:28 Yes
953. 01:07:30 Which is kind of kind of shocking when you think about that
954. 01:07:33 There's another humbling fact
955. 01:07:35 Yeah
956. 01:07:36 another thing that
957. 01:07:38 That influences decisions and another reason why we need to attain distance is that we all have this
958. 01:07:45 loss aversion
959. 01:07:47 where we
960. 01:07:48 View losses as being more painful than gains are pleasant so
961. 01:07:52 we'll tend to
962. 01:07:55 Default to the things that we've always done are the things that we already have
963. 01:08:00 one example was they gave out
964. 01:08:02 Coffee mugs I believe to 50 students who showed up for a lecture one day
965. 01:08:07 And then they asked the the students who got the mugs what they would value them at or what they would sell it at basically
966. 01:08:13 And it was like seven dollars something then they asked the students who didn't get a mug
967. 01:08:16 What would you be willing to pay to get that mug and it was like two dollars
968. 01:08:19 So there's obviously like a big difference there and the
969. 01:08:23 Equation that they share is that loss aversion plus mere exposure the fact that we have this thing already
970. 01:08:29 That combines to equal a status quo bias
971. 01:08:34 Where we'll just keep doing the things that we've always done and not stop to think about whether this really is the right decision and
972. 01:08:41 Attaining the distance
973. 01:08:43 That helps us kind of balance these things a little bit better and overcome that that loss aversion
974. 01:08:48 I think I run into this a lot with websites
975. 01:08:52 Like people don't want to change a website because they're afraid
976. 01:08:57 There's information on the website that they're going to lose and I recently did one for
977. 01:09:02 a client where
978. 01:09:05 They were making some executive decisions to
979. 01:09:08 Cut information off of the existing website as we were rebuilding it
980. 01:09:12 And knowing that there are a handful of people that use that information
981. 01:09:17 but also knowing that
982. 01:09:20 Having it on their clutters it significantly
983. 01:09:22 So that by cutting it we make it cleaner and easier for the broader
984. 01:09:27 User base even though there's going to be a little bit of a loss for a few
985. 01:09:31 And depending on who you talk to that was either a very good thing to do or an absolutely terrible thing to do
986. 01:09:39 And a lot of it came down to we have something in existence
987. 01:09:43 We think it's working out well because we know how to use it and I'm going to lose my familiar
988. 01:09:49 User like I'm going to lose my knowledge of how this works
989. 01:09:54 So I don't want to change it
990. 01:09:56 How many times do we hear people say that they just want to these is one thing to go back the way they've always been
991. 01:10:01 Why why change like don't change it if it ain't broke like we see that a lot
992. 01:10:07 I think this is why we're averse to losing something that we currently have
993. 01:10:11 for the sake of the broader
994. 01:10:14 Goal like instead of going for the bigger thing
995. 01:10:16 We're stuck on this little thing that's going to keep us from getting to that
996. 01:10:20 Yeah, and it kind of leads into the final point
997. 01:10:23 Which is prepared to be wrong because part of overcoming the loss of version is being proactive and choosing which things you're going to intentionally lose
998. 01:10:32 Like one of my takeaways
999. 01:10:34 From this book was to create a stop doing list
1000. 01:10:36 As soon as you create that stop doing list and you take control of the process and you are intentionally letting things go
1001. 01:10:42 you've overcome the loss of version that
1002. 01:10:45 naturally happens
1003. 01:10:48 when
1004. 01:10:49 Somebody asks you hey, can you can you do this particular thing and you're already over committed
1005. 01:10:54 And instead of viewing it as how do I do this?
1006. 01:10:57 How do I squeeze this in? Well, I've got to let some things go
1007. 01:11:00 I don't want to let those things go because I've been doing them unfamiliar with them
1008. 01:11:03 You get into that loss of version mere exposure the status quo bias
1009. 01:11:08 If you intentionally create the margin if you intentionally create that stop doing list then
1010. 01:11:14 you can
1011. 01:11:16 You can acknowledge at the at the beginning of the process that there are some things that maybe I'm doing that are a little bit wrong
1012. 01:11:22 Maybe there are some adjustments that need to be made some tweaks that need to be made to my particular situation my particular
1013. 01:11:29 System and then when you do that it opens up the door to the things that are actually better the bigger opportunities
1014. 01:11:35 and part of the process of
1015. 01:11:39 Just being ready to be wrong is setting what they call trip wires. So when you're making a decision
1016. 01:11:46 Whether it's to do something or to not do something
1017. 01:11:49 You need to put things in place that trip you I use that kind of figuratively
1018. 01:11:57 They are set there to remind you or to indicate that you need to stop
1019. 01:12:01 and reconsider that decision
1020. 01:12:04 And there are a lot of instances where this happens, but in some cases it's like, okay, well, I need a new car
1021. 01:12:09 But now isn't the good time
1022. 01:12:11 But when I have say $6,000 in savings
1023. 01:12:17 That's when I'm going to reevaluate this and that trip is to say at that point my current assumptions and my current decision is no longer valid
1024. 01:12:27 And I need to reevaluate it at that point my current decision is wrong
1025. 01:12:30 And I need to think over it again and setting those trip wires can be
1026. 01:12:35 I guess freeing and
1027. 01:12:38 They can help you to loosen up to make a decision, but it makes a lot easier. I know we've done this in a few cases
1028. 01:12:45 I'm fairly recently none of which I am comfortable talking about here, but they're they're good
1029. 01:12:51 Good indicators to say if I'm going to do this for my business
1030. 01:12:55 That would be great, but after six months if I haven't received this amount of dollars then I'm going to stop doing this
1031. 01:13:03 And setting those trip wires can be
1032. 01:13:06 freeing to let you just run with the decision and know that when you get to a certain point or if something does or doesn't happen
1033. 01:13:12 You need to stop and think it over again
1034. 01:13:15 Yeah, it's it's designed to defeat the let's just see what happens mentality and it
1035. 01:13:22 refocuses you and it snaps you out of the autopilot that we can get stuck in and they have a really great story of a trip wire here with the
1036. 01:13:30 the offer that zappos has for their new recruits. Oh, yeah
1037. 01:13:33 Where basically they they hire people and very first thing they take them through the training process that then the training process they say
1038. 01:13:41 That if at any point you don't want to be here walk up to any manager and say I'd like to take the offer
1039. 01:13:49 And that is zappos will pay you a thousand dollars to leave
1040. 01:13:52 It's kind of bold, isn't it?
1041. 01:13:55 It's really bold, but it makes so much sense from a business perspective because zappos is
1042. 01:14:00 They built a reputation on phenomenal customer service and they told some pretty crazy stories about
1043. 01:14:06 Some of the customer service experiences in the book
1044. 01:14:10 But uh, the real thing here is that those customer service
1045. 01:14:14 Experiences where you blow people's minds
1046. 01:14:18 That doesn't happen if you have people there that don't really want to be there if they're just there to collect the paycheck
1047. 01:14:24 so
1048. 01:14:25 This is genius in my opinion because you're going to naturally weed out all of those people and how much money would those people if they
1049. 01:14:32 stayed on an extra six months an extra six years and didn't perform at the level where they were supposed to be
1050. 01:14:39 A lot of times you don't even notice that as a manager. You can't really track that sort of sort of thing
1051. 01:14:46 Very well, and so
1052. 01:14:48 What is that really costing the organization or the business to have those people there who aren't
1053. 01:14:54 Putting everything into what they're doing
1054. 01:14:57 One way that they talk about these trip wires was book ending
1055. 01:15:02 and
1056. 01:15:04 It's kind of a way of saying there's two trip wires involved with the decision one at the top and one at the bottom
1057. 01:15:10 And the example they give is that with
1058. 01:15:13 an investor and deciding which stocks to invest in and
1059. 01:15:16 He uses a specific example of red box and the parent company that was involved with that
1060. 01:15:22 and how
1061. 01:15:24 They were trying to make the decision as an investment group as to whether or not to put you know in this case millions of dollars into
1062. 01:15:31 the company and
1063. 01:15:34 What they realized was if a lot of very dire situations happened
1064. 01:15:38 The stock price would be about $20 a share
1065. 01:15:43 If absolutely everything worked out for them and you know, they had some home runs
1066. 01:15:47 It would be about $60 a share and mathematically if you get into stocks there are some ways that you can calculate that
1067. 01:15:52 Based on some assumptions
1068. 01:15:55 Knowing that information at the bottom you would have one book end at $20 a share at the other end
1069. 01:16:01 You'd be bookended at $60 a share and the current stock price for them was at 30
1070. 01:16:08 meaning you're at the lower end of that scale and
1071. 01:16:12 You know through watching the company and seeing how they were doing things
1072. 01:16:15 They realized that the company was doing things that the general public was not aware of and that most investors
1073. 01:16:21 were
1074. 01:16:23 Assuming was going to lead to a lot of trouble, which is why the stock seemed pretty low
1075. 01:16:27 and
1076. 01:16:28 They felt like as a group that the company would be able to overcome some of those hurdles
1077. 01:16:34 Knowing that they're at the towards the bottom of that scale of that range from 20 to 60 at the 30
1078. 01:16:41 They decided to watch it for about another month and a half to two months
1079. 01:16:44 Realized that it came down even further and ended up investing in them
1080. 01:16:48 Because they were I think they averaged somewhere around 24 to 25 dollars a share at millions of dollars into it
1081. 01:16:54 So you can imagine how many shares they bought there
1082. 01:16:57 Well, it turned out they were right things turned out for the better the stock started to come back because you know
1083. 01:17:04 They felt like the worst that could happen here as we lose five or six dollars per share
1084. 01:17:09 But they had the option to gain
1085. 01:17:11 You know 35 dollars a share
1086. 01:17:14 Well, it came back to at the end of it
1087. 01:17:17 I think it ended up around 48 is when they were starting to sell quite a bit because it was reaching the top of their scale
1088. 01:17:22 Knowing that we're getting close. There's more to lose here than there is to win
1089. 01:17:26 Okay, let's get out. Well, they got out and how many millions is that equal a lot?
1090. 01:17:31 So it turned out for the better for them, but essentially what that book ending process did for them
1091. 01:17:38 Was set trip wires on the top and bottom
1092. 01:17:40 That allowed them to know when they could potentially be wrong in their decision
1093. 01:17:44 You know when we hit close to one of these two ends, that's when we're going to have issues
1094. 01:17:48 Now like I don't really know how to
1095. 01:17:51 Correlate this to like my life and how to use this
1096. 01:17:55 But I think it's very interesting the the stocks thing because I I don't do single stocks, but it's something that I'm
1097. 01:18:02 I like paying attention to I don't know that I would ever spend the time doing it
1098. 01:18:07 Because there's guys like this who can figure this stuff out and do it way better than I can so I'm always going to lose
1099. 01:18:12 but
1100. 01:18:14 That's something that I'm always enjoying. I've always enjoyed watching it, but I don't know how to correlate it to what I do
1101. 01:18:20 Well, I don't think that the unless you're an investor that the stocks example really hits home
1102. 01:18:26 Unless you dig a little bit deeper and you understand the process that they use because there's two things
1103. 01:18:30 That they use to identify the bookends
1104. 01:18:34 That I think you can apply pretty generally and that's the pre-mortem and the pre-parade
1105. 01:18:39 so
1106. 01:18:40 We're probably all familiar with the post-mortem where
1107. 01:18:43 after
1108. 01:18:44 And it comes from the medical industry where you kind of look back at why this person died
1109. 01:18:49 But you could also apply it to a project what we're wrong with this project
1110. 01:18:52 Um, so that's the post-mortem and that happens
1111. 01:18:55 You know, that's that imagines the future death of a project and it asks what killed it basically
1112. 01:19:00 Pre-parade is similar to a pre-mortem, but it's assuming success instead of failure
1113. 01:19:07 So instead of looking back at the end of the project identifying what went right what went wrong
1114. 01:19:11 Assuming at the very beginning, what's the absolute best case scenario for this thing and what's the absolute worst case scenario?
1115. 01:19:18 For this thing. I think that you could use those to kind of frame the bookends whenever you're trying to
1116. 01:19:25 Make a decision and this again is a great example of how
1117. 01:19:30 In this book they explain things really really
1118. 01:19:33 Uh, I don't know what the term would be it's very easy to apply this type of stuff
1119. 01:19:37 Like i'm not an investor like you're like you were saying
1120. 01:19:39 I don't relate to the stocks example, but I can definitely see instances where I could apply the pre-parade and the pre-mortem
1121. 01:19:46 Into the decisions that i'm making when it comes
1122. 01:19:49 The time to decide whether i'm going to pursue this particular project
1123. 01:19:53 See that makes a lot of sense
1124. 01:19:55 Knowing you know if I pay attention to
1125. 01:19:58 Where the potential downfalls are that that could be a big thing. I get that
1126. 01:20:02 Um
1127. 01:20:04 So we've been at this for a while. I'm looking at
1128. 01:20:06 Action items here. So just to summarize quick
1129. 01:20:09 uh, the four villains
1130. 01:20:12 To decision making the things that trip us up narrow framing only looking at one or two options
1131. 01:20:17 Confirmation bias, you know looking for information that uh confirms what I already want to do
1132. 01:20:24 Short-term emotion trying to make decisions in the moment instead of trying to get some distance from it
1133. 01:20:28 And overconfidence placing too much weight on our own
1134. 01:20:32 mentality in our own facts
1135. 01:20:34 Uh, and the way that you overcome each of those
1136. 01:20:37 Is to one widen your options to reality test your assumptions three attain distance before deciding
1137. 01:20:44 And four prepare to be wrong using the acronym wrap. There you go. So all that said
1138. 01:20:51 Action items. What do you do about it, Mike?
1139. 01:20:55 Well, I
1140. 01:20:56 Let's start with you because you have one here that's just try to find two decisions to apply this to so have you put any thought into this so far
1141. 01:21:02 a little bit. Yeah, and
1142. 01:21:04 I haven't found exactly two that I want to
1143. 01:21:08 I don't know. Maybe there's one, but I have one in particular. So I've talked about discourse before
1144. 01:21:16 Uh, the forum software that I help
1145. 01:21:19 I contribute to as an open source project. I am in the process of potentially building a paid plugin for it
1146. 01:21:26 And I believe there's only one other paid plugin for it and this one would be a
1147. 01:21:33 direct competitor to that
1148. 01:21:36 I have a lot of reasons my own mentality and
1149. 01:21:39 Through confirmation from other people that I feel like this would be a very good decision
1150. 01:21:45 So what I'm currently doing so I guess I'm trying to decide on this that so I might apply this
1151. 01:21:50 Uh, is to ooch my way into it. I'm loving that term
1152. 01:21:54 I've been using it more and more and everybody kind of looks at me funny, but
1153. 01:21:58 I'm trying to figure out how to ooch my way into it and just try to do a like I'm uh,
1154. 01:22:03 What do we call MVP the minim minimally viable product? So do something very basic to get it out there and just try it
1155. 01:22:11 So I'm I'm trying that process with it. So I guess that might be one
1156. 01:22:15 Decision that I'm trying to apply this process to the other one is actually my other action item
1157. 01:22:21 So maybe I've got these two. I'm still trying to play around with some other decisions where this might
1158. 01:22:25 apply more directly, but
1159. 01:22:28 I'm in the process also of deciding whether or not to build a
1160. 01:22:32 What they call a CHMS you familiar with these mic?
1161. 01:22:36 I'm not I was gonna ask you about that. Okay. It's what they call a church management system
1162. 01:22:41 So if you're familiar with a CMS content management system, this is kind of a playoff of that
1163. 01:22:46 effectively what it is
1164. 01:22:49 Is a way to manage all of the members of a congregation
1165. 01:22:52 Keep track of volunteers in a church
1166. 01:22:55 Uh to schedule them and typically they also come with
1167. 01:22:58 A check-in system for like a nursery. So there's a lot of safety and and legal things
1168. 01:23:04 You have to be careful with with something like a nursery or it's similar like a daycare
1169. 01:23:09 I guess it would be similar to that scenario if you're outside the church
1170. 01:23:12 That would be the the correlation that you'd make there
1171. 01:23:14 But what I have found with my with my role as a director of it at our church
1172. 01:23:18 I have learned that the one that we use
1173. 01:23:21 So our church is big enough that it's kind of hard to maintain all the volunteers primarily
1174. 01:23:26 uh, it it's
1175. 01:23:29 It's less than ideal
1176. 01:23:31 That would be what I'd say and
1177. 01:23:33 In
1178. 01:23:34 Something I'm trying to do for them is make a decision on whether or not the one that we currently have is one
1179. 01:23:38 We should stick with or should we go to something different?
1180. 01:23:41 So that's another decision. I'm trying to use some of this framework for
1181. 01:23:45 But in my quick research for it. I have realized that there really aren't any really solid good
1182. 01:23:53 modern choices for this
1183. 01:23:56 So I am considering building one
1184. 01:23:59 Which is no small decision for my company
1185. 01:24:03 and it would require a lot of
1186. 01:24:08 a lot of work and a lot of support and potentially people helping me get it done from a uh,
1187. 01:24:14 management and a
1188. 01:24:16 secretarial standpoint. So that's a pretty big
1189. 01:24:20 Choice that I'm needing to make the problem I have here is
1190. 01:24:24 That particular choice is a whether or not choice. So I need to
1191. 01:24:30 See, I don't know if you caught it until I said that but that's what it is and that's
1192. 01:24:37 I have a lot to work through with some of these things. So
1193. 01:24:39 What I'm planning to do is use this wrap process to help me through a few of these
1194. 01:24:46 I'll figure out a way to put this in for follow-up for the next time around
1195. 01:24:51 because some of this is very quickly moving for me. So
1196. 01:24:55 Some of it I'm trying to put off so I can get some more distance from it
1197. 01:24:59 and some of it I'm still trying to fact-find on it, but
1198. 01:25:04 There you go. So I'm trying to put this into effect immediately and have a bunch of big decisions
1199. 01:25:09 I'm oddly trying to solve right now. Good timing. Nice. My action items are more
1200. 01:25:16 of the small tactical items that they mentioned
1201. 01:25:19 Um, so number one I mentioned already create a stop doing list
1202. 01:25:24 Identify the things
1203. 01:25:27 That I do not want to be doing anymore
1204. 01:25:31 And the things that the season has passed for that particular thing
1205. 01:25:35 And I need to cut it loose so that I can have more margins so that when something else more valuable comes I can say yes to it
1206. 01:25:42 Uh second one is to try out the productive interruptions. So
1207. 01:25:46 The idea here is that you send yourself alerts
1208. 01:25:51 Uh, they recommend it on the hour and basically you just ask yourself
1209. 01:25:56 Whether you are focused on what you should be focusing on right now
1210. 01:26:00 I'd like to think that I would be pretty good with this
1211. 01:26:03 but I want to
1212. 01:26:06 Get some data. I want to test this
1213. 01:26:08 So
1214. 01:26:10 I'm I'm going to I'm going to try this out at least for a small period
1215. 01:26:14 It might drive me crazy after a little while, but I think at the beginning at least it will give me a real clear picture of whether I'm
1216. 01:26:20 Actually investing my time the way I think I'm investing my time just simply answering the question. What are you doing right now?
1217. 01:26:26 When that goes off every hour. I think might be enlightening
1218. 01:26:30 What is uh, also kind of scary. Yeah, what is your what's your tactical?
1219. 01:26:34 Process for that are you and use the app will watch to do this
1220. 01:26:38 We're tech nerds. We have to ask these questions. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure how I want to implement it yet
1221. 01:26:44 That's the the thing I will probably use the do app du e
1222. 01:26:48 and just have it go off every hour between
1223. 01:26:52 Working hours. So maybe eight to five or something like that
1224. 01:26:56 But I haven't really worked through 100% how I want to implement that yet because I don't want it to just be annoying
1225. 01:27:02 24 hours ding every hour go
1226. 01:27:05 Maybe not
1227. 01:27:08 What are you doing it 2 a.m. Sleeping go away
1228. 01:27:11 And then the third one that I've got here is to use the active listening technique
1229. 01:27:18 They talk about this. They don't call it active listening in the book
1230. 01:27:21 but basically restating what others say so that they're confident that you're listening to them
1231. 01:27:26 And the way that they frame this in the book is they talk about procedural justice versus distributive justice
1232. 01:27:33 Procedural justice is where we believe that the procedures that were used to make decisions were just
1233. 01:27:37 Distributive justice is where as whether we think the spoils of a decision were divvied up fairly
1234. 01:27:42 so he used an example they used an example of uh two different cases and one where
1235. 01:27:50 the defendant loses the case but they have confidence that the
1236. 01:27:56 The procedures were fair. They're actually happier with the outcome than the person who won the other case
1237. 01:28:01 But they didn't they're not confident that the procedures were fair
1238. 01:28:04 And so I think that this will just make everything a little bit smoother in interactions with other people
1239. 01:28:12 Especially when it comes to group decision-making if I can show that I am
1240. 01:28:20 actively listening and listen by restating what other people are saying to so that they can be confident
1241. 01:28:25 That I am hearing them correctly. I think regardless of the outcome that has a lot of positive benefits
1242. 01:28:32 So I want to start doing that more
1243. 01:28:34 Would you think of their writing style?
1244. 01:28:37 I really liked it. Uh, they jump around a lot in the chapters
1245. 01:28:43 But it's not as bad as some other books. I've read
1246. 01:28:45 like one that I can think of off the top of my head is the
1247. 01:28:49 The power of habit by Charles de Higg which is a great book
1248. 01:28:52 but
1249. 01:28:53 There's so many open loops throughout the individual chapters. We'll start one story and we'll switch to another story
1250. 01:28:59 He'll switch to another story and then
1251. 01:29:00 By the time he get to point number four, he's back at the original story
1252. 01:29:04 And it's just like from one cutscene to the next
1253. 01:29:06 This one I thought flowed really well. It was really easy to follow the writing style was really good
1254. 01:29:12 like I mentioned at the earlier the
1255. 01:29:15 The the stories and the characters were very relatable
1256. 01:29:18 I saw a lot of different ways to implement what I was what I was
1257. 01:29:23 uh, hearing or reading and so I really liked the author style and jumping into the the rating
1258. 01:29:29 I would give it a five stars
1259. 01:29:32 Nice. So I already mentioned I had a hard time putting this one down
1260. 01:29:36 and from a recommendation standpoint
1261. 01:29:40 I
1262. 01:29:42 Think this should be required reading for high school students. I do
1263. 01:29:45 This is something that would really help them with a lot of very big decisions
1264. 01:29:51 That they're trying to make at that point and put a framework in front of them on how to do that
1265. 01:29:54 And to do it the right way
1266. 01:29:56 It's one that was very easy to jump into and just keep going. So I I loved it
1267. 01:30:01 So I'm going to join you in the five star thing. So we've got a double up five here
1268. 01:30:05 and
1269. 01:30:06 This is one that I think
1270. 01:30:09 I can easily recommend to a very large group of people
1271. 01:30:13 with with zero hesitations. So
1272. 01:30:16 If you're in school in any capacity whether you're making a decision for college or what college you go to
1273. 01:30:22 Any of those scenarios. This is one I think you should read before you make that decision easy
1274. 01:30:28 Definitely
1275. 01:30:30 You tell us about the upcoming books. Yep. So the next one up
1276. 01:30:34 To transition here is uh my choice called the shallows by Nicholas Carr and the subtitle here is what the internet is doing to our brains
1277. 01:30:44 So we read brainchains. This is kind of uh, I'm gonna guess so I haven't read it yet
1278. 01:30:49 I'm gonna guess it's something somewhat similar, but I'm hoping for one that's easier to recommend
1279. 01:30:55 Right. I actually believe that cal Newport references this book in deep work
1280. 01:31:02 Yeah, I need to go figure out where I found this because I
1281. 01:31:06 See if I can find it here because I I think this is one that was recommended in
1282. 01:31:13 Um some other book that we
1283. 01:31:16 I don't I don't know. I gotta go try to find it
1284. 01:31:20 Mentioned and oh the productivity project. That's where we got it. Oh, he was talking about the impact
1285. 01:31:27 Familiar. Yeah, and he's like, okay. This came up somewhere. This was not the one that I just randomly
1286. 01:31:31 Found it was one that I saw recommended elsewhere. So
1287. 01:31:35 Yes, that would mean Chris Bailey as it fall here
1288. 01:31:38 The one after that is my pick and that is who moved my cheese by spencer johnson
1289. 01:31:46 I've heard about this book a lot
1290. 01:31:49 And I went and looked at the amazon reviews for it and they are very polarizing
1291. 01:31:57 Nice there are a lot of people who absolutely love this book and there are a lot of people who say this is absolute trash
1292. 01:32:02 But I can see why managers and CEOs love it. So I want to know what all the fuss is about
1293. 01:32:07 So that so yeah collecting information on things. Yeah, that's fun
1294. 01:32:13 Something is very polarizing. This will be a good good experience
1295. 01:32:18 So if you're listening to this and you have a book that you want to get put into our list
1296. 01:32:25 And you want to recommend it to us so you can do that out on bookworm.fm/recommend
1297. 01:32:29 Also out there you can get the current list of books that we have completed
1298. 01:32:34 Are planning to read or that have been recommended in the past
1299. 01:32:38 Uh at same place bookworm.fm/list
1300. 01:32:42 And if you want to help us get the word out about bookworm and help other people find the show
1301. 01:32:48 If you would take just a moment to go over to iTunes and leave a review that would really help us out
1302. 01:32:53 We read all of those reviews. So any positive or negative feedback
1303. 01:32:56 We would love to hear what you have to think
1304. 01:32:58 And if you're reading along jump into the shallows that's coming up uh right now and
1305. 01:33:04 It'll be an interesting experience. We'll figure out what the internet's doing to our brains and we'll go from there
1306. 01:33:09 But we'll jump into that one and we'll talk to you next time