181: On Quality by Robert Pirsig

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1. 00:00:00 Welcome back to Bookworm.
2. 00:00:01 Joe is still trying to figure things out.
3. 00:00:04 So I've got another guest here today.
4. 00:00:06 Welcome to the podcast or David Sparks.
5. 00:00:09 Hey, Mike.
6. 00:00:10 Nice talking to you on a podcast.
7. 00:00:13 Yeah.
8. 00:00:14 It seems like it doesn't happen every day, but every couple of weeks or so.
9. 00:00:18 Yeah.
10. 00:00:18 Yeah.
11. 00:00:19 Thanks for having me.
12. 00:00:19 I'm a big fan of the show.
13. 00:00:21 I love what you guys have been doing over the years and I'm pleased to be part
14. 00:00:27 of it for one week.
15. 00:00:29 Awesome.
16. 00:00:30 Well, you've had a bigger influence on Bookworm than you realize, I think, because
17. 00:00:34 I shared last episode when Vardy was on a personal story of encouragement I
18. 00:00:40 received from him, which meant a lot.
19. 00:00:42 And I remember getting emails from you when I had no prior interactions with you.
20. 00:00:49 And you were basically listening to Bookworm and I was sharing the things that I
21. 00:00:55 was frustrated with and the struggles I was going through.
22. 00:00:57 And every once in a while, I'd get an encouraging note saying, Hey, buddy, you
23. 00:01:01 got this.
24. 00:01:01 And I really appreciated that.
25. 00:01:04 So that was the support, honestly, that I needed when I had a lot of other things
26. 00:01:10 going on and Bookworm was this side project that, who knows if it's ever
27. 00:01:13 going to gain any traction, you know, I appreciate the kind words and the support
28. 00:01:19 over the years.
29. 00:01:19 So it seemed only natural to have you on at some point when we needed to start
30. 00:01:24 having rotating guests.
31. 00:01:25 Can I just tell the folks listening that if you ever got to know Mike Schmitz
32. 00:01:29 personally, this guy just like drips in competence.
33. 00:01:33 It just like drips off of him.
34. 00:01:35 If you ever get to meet him, he's exactly what he sounds like on the show.
35. 00:01:38 I just want to give a little behind the scenes.
36. 00:01:40 Yeah, I think I think that was that faith was well placed here.
37. 00:01:45 You do got this, Mike.
38. 00:01:46 Well, thank you.
39. 00:01:48 So yeah, the other thing that made you a logical person for this episode, I think,
40. 00:01:55 is that we have a mutual friend and Mike actually brought up this book to us
41. 00:01:59 individually, but then also on the last episode, I was kind of ranting about how
42. 00:02:04 I really did not like Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.
43. 00:02:08 And he said, Oh, well, you got to read this other book that that Robert
44. 00:02:11 Pusey wrote, wrote on quality.
45. 00:02:13 And we were talking offline and you mentioned that you were not a huge fan
46. 00:02:17 of Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance either.
47. 00:02:20 But we figured we would give this one a shot.
48. 00:02:24 And yeah, it's kind of an interesting, interesting book.
49. 00:02:30 It's a compilation of different writings that Robert Pusey has had over the years,
50. 00:02:37 but it's really not a book as you would think of a book being put together.
51. 00:02:42 It's basically something that was assembled by his wife after he passed away
52. 00:02:47 from different letters and lectures and things that he has written.
53. 00:02:52 And it's broken into a couple of different parts here, which are going to hit on
54. 00:02:56 some themes that I know you and I have talked quite a bit about on the focus podcast.
55. 00:03:00 So I'm excited to talk about him again here in context to this book that we both read.
56. 00:03:05 Before we get into it too far, I guess, you know, what, what did you think of on
57. 00:03:10 quality when you when you first picked it up?
58. 00:03:12 I was confused, honestly, because it's a difficult book to absorb.
59. 00:03:17 This is not your typical habits for highly effective people kind of book.
60. 00:03:23 Pusey is an interesting guy.
61. 00:03:27 I actually went and did more research as I was reading the book to try and make more sense of it.
62. 00:03:31 He wrote another book after Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance in 1991 called Lila.
63. 00:03:38 And that book is almost necessary to read this book.
64. 00:03:42 So I went and I haven't read the entire thing, but I've gone through big portions of it because
65. 00:03:47 he's making an argument here for a thing that he has dubbed the metaphysics of quality.
66. 00:03:53 And it's very philosophical.
67. 00:03:57 You know, it's a it's a way to perceive reality.
68. 00:03:59 And he's like combining all sorts of things like clearly he has some Eastern philosophy under his belt, but he also, you know, grew up in America.
69. 00:04:10 And he spent time in India and he spent time with Native Americans.
70. 00:04:13 And so he's got a very interesting take on how to perceive the world.
71. 00:04:18 And that's what he's arguing for throughout this series of interviews.
72. 00:04:21 But, you know, it's a book that's put together after he passed away.
73. 00:04:24 He never he never really put it together into an argument.
74. 00:04:28 It's more of like when you read it, you've got to piece it together yourself, which can be fun, right?
75. 00:04:34 But for heavy duty metaphysics where, you know, we're talking about a difference between duality and
76. 00:04:43 what he's talking about, where you perceive where the there's no difference between perception and reality.
77. 00:04:48 It's man, this one was it was rough to be honest with you.
78. 00:04:52 I guess that's a long way to put this.
79. 00:04:54 This was a rough read.
80. 00:04:55 I'm trying to get out of it.
81. 00:04:57 I don't want to do the book in justice because I think if you're interested in those questions, I think he definitely has an interesting take on it.
82. 00:05:04 But I also want to be clear.
83. 00:05:06 This is not a book you read if you want to get better at answering email.
84. 00:05:10 I mean, it's something much different than that.
85. 00:05:13 Yeah, it's interesting because Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, I did not like that book.
86. 00:05:20 I think it was the lowest rating I've ever given a book or book, to be honest.
87. 00:05:24 But this one I enjoyed quite a bit more.
88. 00:05:27 Now, I did not actually go back and read Lila, which was the the other one that he wrote after Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance that you referenced earlier.
89. 00:05:35 But I did get a few more puzzle pieces, I feel, on reading this one.
90. 00:05:42 So some of his background and his story comes through in this one in a way.
91. 00:05:47 Maybe it was there was then in the art of motorcycle maintenance and I just kind of missed it.
92. 00:05:51 But I do remember when we read that one finding out about his child, Chris, who got murdered.
93. 00:05:58 I mean, that's such a terrible, terrible event.
94. 00:06:02 I mean, how do you how you deal with something like that?
95. 00:06:05 But then also I learned in this book that he actually had at some point spent some time in a mental hospital.
96. 00:06:12 I mean, this was a complex guy with some some complex things that he was was struggling with.
97. 00:06:18 And I feel like having that that broader picture of who he was, that helped me not dislike Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance quite as much.
98. 00:06:29 Yeah, no, I agree.
99. 00:06:33 And like for me, I read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance young, but I was kind of on a journey interested in Buddhism at the time.
100. 00:06:41 And I wanted some answers.
101. 00:06:43 But if you actually look into Buddhism, there's very few answers in books.
102. 00:06:47 The idea is actually that you find the answers on the cushion, not in a book.
103. 00:06:51 And but this book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance had very little to do with Zen, in my opinion.
104. 00:06:57 In fact, maybe it was the very first book to use in commercially because that is a thing now, right?
105. 00:07:04 You know, it's like you go and you can buy Zen candles and Zen socks and Zen, whatever.
106. 00:07:10 But the but I felt like the book, the title didn't jive with me with the content, but now understanding what he was aiming for with this whole thing on quality.
107. 00:07:21 That was a thing for him even back then.
108. 00:07:23 It does make more sense now, right?
109. 00:07:26 I think Lila was even more explicit, but, you know, he's looking for a different metaphysics here.
110. 00:07:32 He's not writing about Zen or really motorcycle maintenance.
111. 00:07:36 Yeah, exactly.
112. 00:07:38 And you knew that reading just that first book, but I don't know.
113. 00:07:43 It never really clicked for me.
114. 00:07:47 And I feel like if I had a different, I had read this, this first or had some additional perspective prior to reading that one, maybe it would have landed a little bit different.
115. 00:07:55 Although I still am not a huge fan of just the style and the approach because it doesn't really fit the format of the books that we cover for bookworm.
116. 00:08:05 And honestly, those are the books that I prefer to read.
117. 00:08:06 I know you're always trying to get me to read fiction.
118. 00:08:09 Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance kind of read like a fiction story at times.
119. 00:08:13 No, that's not the kind of fiction I want you to read, but yeah, OK.
120. 00:08:17 I mean, don't judge fiction on that book, but the, yeah, you know, the, I think there's really, as I, because I read the book,
121. 00:08:25 I look twice and I also read Lila or most of it.
122. 00:08:27 And, and I really am concerned appearing on this show and not doing this book justice because the guy is trying to do something.
123. 00:08:36 And, you know, he's gone and he can't defend himself and they're just collecting his writings and putting it out.
124. 00:08:42 So, so there is merit to it on two levels.
125. 00:08:45 I think the first merit is his whole idea of metaphysics of quality.
126. 00:08:50 If you want to be a philosopher and go down that rabbit hole.
127. 00:08:54 It's looks like it's highly Indian influence because he spent time there.
128. 00:08:59 But the idea of, you know, subjective and objective being combined into one perception that you don't control as kind of the way I might take away from it.
129. 00:09:10 And he did the research on it.
130. 00:09:12 He did.
131. 00:09:12 He also has some science background and like at one point he makes up.
132. 00:09:17 He makes an argument in the book about, you know, how we measure things.
133. 00:09:24 And I thought it was really a good one because in the modern day, like with all of, I mean, this is written well before the Internet blew up.
134. 00:09:33 But, you know, we do have a lot of people that are arguing about things that should be not argued about, you know, that look like truths.
135. 00:09:40 And, and maybe our metaphysics isn't good enough now for us to objectively look at the world as it moves so quickly.
136. 00:09:49 But I just, I just felt like I could barely grab onto the tiger's tail of this big argument.
137. 00:09:56 But then interspersed throughout the book are little thoughts and observations that I think work no matter whether you buy into his metaphysics of quality or not.
138. 00:10:08 I feel like there's a lot of good wisdom in the book.
139. 00:10:13 Yeah, you can tell that what he is struggling with and really it's not him because this is just pieces of things that he has written.
140. 00:10:21 But he, you can tell is a deep brother.
141. 00:10:27 Yeah.
142. 00:10:28 He, he has read a lot.
143. 00:10:31 He has learned a lot and I kind of empathize.
144. 00:10:35 I don't want to put myself at the same intellectual level as, as he is.
145. 00:10:40 I'm definitely not there.
146. 00:10:42 But I feel like what I see in some of the writings that he has is he is trying to figure this stuff out for himself and in doing so he ends up going so deep that the casual reader who picks this up has trouble staying with him because he's just at a whole different place, a whole
147. 00:11:00 other plane and I feel like he would be a really interesting person to sit down and actually talk to about this.
148. 00:11:07 So he was a professor and one of the things that kind of struck me, let's get into the first part of this book actually the preface.
149. 00:11:14 It's called Bob's Quest because this is where he talks about static quality versus dynamic quality.
150. 00:11:19 But the pivotal event here that got him thinking about this he shares was when he had a colleague at Montana State College who just made a passing comment while she was watering the
151. 00:11:30 plants in between one of his lecture sessions saying, "I hope that you are teaching quality to your students."
152. 00:11:36 And then that obviously set all of this in motion.
153. 00:11:41 And I think that's actually a really cool story because I've experienced that before.
154. 00:11:46 Someone says something casually and it just really resonates and impacts you and it sends you down a rabbit trail and you're just like, "I have to find out the truth about this thing."
155. 00:11:55 Yeah, I mean, and what is the definition of the word quality is something I think he struggles with the rest of his life.
156. 00:12:05 At the very end of Lila there's a great quote where he talks about good is a noun.
157. 00:12:13 Because good is not usually a noun.
158. 00:12:17 But there is the good. We talk about the good. Are you serving the good?
159. 00:12:26 And so he states explicitly, this is the closest I found to him explaining his theory of metaphysics of quality in terms that makes sense to humans.
160. 00:12:37 Good is a noun rather than as an adjective. It's all the metaphysics of quality is about, of course the ultimate quality isn't a noun or an adjective or anything else definable.
161. 00:12:49 But if you had to reduce the whole metaphysics of quality to a single sentence, that would be it. Good is a noun.
162. 00:12:56 So it's just interesting. And then the other thing that's weird is they've got pictures of tools spread out throughout the whole book.
163. 00:13:04 Which couldn't help but think of you when I saw those because it looked like there were obviously some sockets and wrenches and things for working on motorcycles.
164. 00:13:12 But it looked like there was some woodworking stuff in there.
165. 00:13:14 There was definitely some woodworking tools in there. But it is something that I thought about as I read the book because there is a certain, I use the term craftsmanship that I think you can bring to what you do.
166. 00:13:28 I learned it from my dad who was an avid woodworker and I grew up kind of at his knee and I do it still and I really consider craftsmanship and everything that I make.
167. 00:13:39 I'm not, you know, my currency is craftsmanship. It's not speed or money or whatever. It's really craftsmanship.
168. 00:13:48 But I carried that into my law practice and my Max Barkey work. In fact, I wrote on the 20th anniversary of my dad's death, which was like, I don't know, 10 years ago now.
169. 00:13:59 I wrote a blog post about craftsmanship and how I had learned it from him. And that to me is a philosophical underpinning of my life in terms of how I view the world, you know, in terms, I don't look at people.
170. 00:14:14 I don't care what kind of car you drive, but do you work with craftsmanship with the things you make that to me is the judge of people and myself.
171. 00:14:22 So you would think that this would resonate with me, but it didn't quite. I think he's going a little bit further down the rabbit hole than I am. But yeah, there is a relation there.
172. 00:14:32 Yeah, and that topic, so the craftsmanship that you're talking about, I kind of put in words in his mouth, but that's kind of what he's going for, I feel like, with quality, because he's talking about static quality versus dynamic quality and how static quality is like a pattern of one-sided fixed values, but dynamic quality is the source of all things.
173. 00:14:53 It's much harder to define, and I feel like, "You can correct me if I'm wrong here, but with craftsmanship, it's kind of this innate feeling like, "Oh, well, this is well made."
174. 00:15:03 That's kind of what he would say. You just know. And that's what he says to you. Quality should know you don't have to think about it.
175. 00:15:10 Yeah, but what's interesting is that in this book on quality, the underpinnings of this, the beginning of the whole metaphysics of quality that he's talking about here, I think it's fair to say that that was Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.
176. 00:15:28 But they share in the preface here that that book, which is kind of interesting, he's obsessed with this concept of quality, and he's writing this book, which is in a lot of ways tied to these thoughts on quality, but it got rejected 121 times.
177. 00:15:50 That was one of my favorite parts. In terms of just kind of takeaways from the book, the guy got rejected over 100 times, and you know what? He didn't quit.
178. 00:16:00 Exactly. So those are 121 times where he's getting external validation, essentially saying like all these thoughts that you have on this topic of quality. We don't think they're any good, but obviously he stuck with it and he got that book out.
179. 00:16:15 Now that wasn't the case with what he calls the first book. So let's go into the introduction the right way, because this was also interesting to me.
180. 00:16:24 He talks about how there was the first book and the second book. And when he's talking about the second book, he's talking about Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.
181. 00:16:33 But the first book was one that never got written, and he tells the story of how he and his wife saved up enough money and they traveled to Mexico and they had the perfect setup for him to sit down and write, but he gave into a lot of the distractions and the procrastination that we all succumb to at different points.
182. 00:16:53 And he even says when it was hard, he found something else to distract him. One of the things he found to distract him was building a boat. I'm kind of curious if you've ever had the inclination to build a boat out of your shop when you're procrastinating on a project.
183. 00:17:09 Sometimes when I think, "Well, I can't really finish this project. Maybe I should just build a submarine." There you go. Yeah, that was fun. But yeah, I agree.
184. 00:17:20 It also kind of goes to the struggle we all have, doesn't it?
185. 00:17:24 Yes. In fact, there's a phrase that he uses, which I think this was brilliant. He says that he's reflecting on this decision to build this boat.
186. 00:17:33 And he says, "It seemed like a brilliant idea because it got him out of writing." I mean, that's brutally honest there.
187. 00:17:40 Yeah. Yeah. That was great. And then the second book is the one that actually did get written. And so he's kind of comparing the one that he didn't write versus the one that he did write.
188. 00:17:51 And some of the things that he was told when he was writing the second one is write about what you know. And the idea came out of what he was currently doing.
189. 00:18:01 I think there's some good advice there. He says on page 11, "I'm sure that in any creative project you can't perceive what the end is going to be unless it is a very small thing you are doing."
190. 00:18:12 Which again, I feel like is pretty brilliant because anytime I sit down to do a creative project, if I try to figure it all out, I've realized at this point that that's a fruitless exercise because it's going to change and it's going to evolve throughout the course of the project.
191. 00:18:28 So trying to figure out what it's supposed to be at the end is almost pointless at the beginning. The real value comes in just starting.
192. 00:18:35 It's almost like child rearing, right? Like you don't know what they're going to grow up to be. You just try and take care of them when they're little and then they take on the life of their own.
193. 00:18:44 Yeah, exactly. I talk about the creativity flywheel in my Obsidian cohort and really it's this idea development process because that's how I view ideas. You have no idea what they are going to be when you actually have them.
194. 00:19:01 You want to talk about you have to have the right environment. You have to just provide the right nutrients, the time, the space to grow.
195. 00:19:12 Some people maybe who are master gardeners can put a seed in the ground and they know exactly what they're going to get. I would have no idea.
196. 00:19:18 I would have to just show up and water it every day and when something poked through the soil, which there's a lot of consistency that has to happen before you get to that point.
197. 00:19:27 That's when you start to figure out what you've really got to work with. I feel like creative ideas are like that too. I feel like this kind of that one sentence, that's not the whole point of the book there, but just recognizing at this point the struggle that he went through in order to actually write the book.
198. 00:19:42 That statement just rings to me of the creative act by Rick Rubin. That's a great book and the Laws of Creativity by Joey Kefone. You and I actually talk to him for the Focus podcast.
199. 00:19:54 I feel like if you really want to go deeper on that topic, there's some great resources there. It's a very valid point that he's making in a very astute observation.
200. 00:20:04 In the Rick Rubin concept that we, as humans, were just creative by nature, just like trees make fruit, humans make things. I love that whole concept of it.
201. 00:20:17 That introductory section of this about Bob's Quest, there's a lot of takeaways in there that are probably worth the cost of the book just to reinforce ideas and see a fellow traveler.
202. 00:20:31 How often is it that people think that in order to write the great novel or to do the big thing, they have to take a step like move to Mexico?
203. 00:20:42 You have to turn your world upside down so you can make this thing as part of the art process. I just don't buy that.
204. 00:20:50 I feel like every time I see a story about somebody who tries that, it inevitably doesn't work.
205. 00:20:58 If you can't create where you are, you're not going to be able to create in Mexico. You've got to figure the process out.
206. 00:21:05 Changing your location, you're just going to bring the same baggage with you.
207. 00:21:10 Yeah, I agree with that. There are occasional stories of people who got away to do a thing.
208. 00:21:20 I actually just listened to a Cal Newport podcast the other day where he was talking to somebody who moved to France because they were going to write a book.
209. 00:21:29 They actually failed at it, but that seems to be the prevailing advice.
210. 00:21:35 If you have the means, essentially, just completely change your location, go someplace foreign, and you'll have nothing to do but sit down and write the thing.
211. 00:21:44 A lot of times you do just end up bringing all your distractions and bringing all your problems with you.
212. 00:21:50 But you do need to think about your environment. There's some nuance there.
213. 00:21:56 Yeah, I agree. The extended mind, when we talked to Annie Murphy-Paul, she talked a lot about the environment and how that can support the right and deeper levels of thinking.
214. 00:22:09 I agree with that too. I'm a little contrary there.
215. 00:22:14 But I also think that this idea of moving somewhere else, when you've got the big project moving to France, moving to Mexico, I just don't generally buy it.
216. 00:22:27 I think more often than not, that is going to be a bigger distraction than if you just figured out your space.
217. 00:22:35 Can we go into the quality discussion? That's the root of the book where he tries to define quality.
218. 00:22:43 He tries to define quality, but keeps saying how it can't be defined.
219. 00:22:47 This is where you know he's been around Zen monks because that's exactly what they do.
220. 00:22:52 The idea of finding what they call Nirvana in the moment.
221. 00:22:58 You can't read it in a book, so they want to bang you over the head until it pops in.
222. 00:23:03 I feel like he's using techniques like that. I don't know if that's intentional.
223. 00:23:08 This part to me was a little hard, but then he got into an extended discussion of RTA, which is my quality word.
224. 00:23:17 That's a word I think I've been carrying around for 40 years.
225. 00:23:22 It was fun to see all the research and everything they pulled together on the history of the word.
226. 00:23:29 That part he talks about, Phaedrus, which I think is the character from Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
227. 00:23:35 Honestly, that's where he kind of started to lose me, but that RTA term obviously popped off the page to me
228. 00:23:41 because I've heard you talk about this a lot. How would you define RTA?
229. 00:23:46 I would say I define RTA as virtue in the Aristotelian sense of the word.
230. 00:23:53 I think virtue, in fact they make the point in this book that the original interpretation of RTA was a Victorian version of virtue,
231. 00:24:04 which it's about virginity.
232. 00:24:09 It's not really virtue in the sense that the bigger sense of the word, Aristotle thought of virtue in the sense of a man of virtue
233. 00:24:18 or a woman of virtue, a person who lives their life to their potential to do greater good.
234. 00:24:26 It's a fuzzy term, but the interesting thing for me is I've realized one of the insights I got from this book is
235. 00:24:34 because he goes into the root of RTA and he goes back into even ancient languages where the RT symbol,
236. 00:24:42 which is the basis of RTA, is also a root for words like art and arithmetic, in other words.
237. 00:24:51 I don't really care that much.
238. 00:24:55 To me, RTA took on a term for me in college when I first discovered it, of the Aristotelian virtue.
239. 00:25:04 It's just a hook I'm using to hang things on when I judge myself.
240. 00:25:09 It's like, am I doing my best to become the best version of myself in these various things I do?
241. 00:25:15 RTA is a fun, ancient way to connect it to thousands of year old people that ask themselves the same questions.
242. 00:25:23 That led me to the idea of, well, maybe that's what Persic is doing with quality.
243. 00:25:29 Just like I am abusing the word RTA for my uses, maybe he's doing that with quality, I'm not sure.
244. 00:25:36 But that was a question that came to me in this section of the book.
245. 00:25:40 That's interesting because I think I actually kind of like that approach where let's make this mean what is useful to me.
246. 00:25:53 Now, obviously, you can't just make up your own definitions for things.
247. 00:25:58 But also, seeing his approach and knowing a little bit about his story, I kind of feel like when it comes to some of this stuff,
248. 00:26:10 figure out at what point it's useful, and then maybe it's all right not knowing everything about something.
249. 00:26:19 The surface level revelation of RTA, if that's enough to help me to live a better life, which is really what he's after,
250. 00:26:29 with the metaphysics of quality.
251. 00:26:33 I believe that more and more as we get into the later parts.
252. 00:26:37 But I like the way you define it and set it up as virtue.
253. 00:26:43 And essentially, I feel like if we're going to try to live out RTA or at this point in part one,
254. 00:26:50 we're going to live a quality life. Essentially, what we are trying to do is do the best we can with what we've got to work with.
255. 00:26:58 Is that fair?
256. 00:26:59 Yeah.
257. 00:27:00 Yeah, exactly.
258. 00:27:02 Which, going back to the previous section with the creative stuff, I feel like this is actually a fairly good transition from that
259. 00:27:09 because he talks about how quality can't be originally defined. Everyone knows what it is.
260. 00:27:14 But then on page 30, he talks about how normally one's ability to see what is good marches ahead of one's ability to produce it.
261. 00:27:20 So tying that back to the creative stuff, I feel like this is where imposter syndrome kicks in.
262. 00:27:27 Because you are watching these things and listening to these things and reading these things that other people have made.
263. 00:27:34 And you can appreciate the quality that is in those things, but you haven't yet developed the ability to do that yourself.
264. 00:27:42 You have the potential to do it, but without the practice, obviously you're not going to be able to.
265. 00:27:46 So the first time that you sit down and try to make something and then you compare it to the people who you look up to and you're like,
266. 00:27:53 "Well, this is garbage compared to what they make. That can cause you to stop creating."
267. 00:27:59 And that's the thing, we got to be careful of. Quality, I feel, and this goes broader than just the creative stuff,
268. 00:28:07 but this is very personal. Really living a quality life and even making quality art is not in comparison to the other things that other people have made,
269. 00:28:17 but is this the very best that I can do? And it's not as long as you just view it as a one-time event.
270. 00:28:23 It's got to be a practice. And the more repetitions you get, the more feedback loops, the better the art becomes, the higher the quality.
271. 00:28:30 There's a Latin term, "materium zapura bat opus," which means roughly the quality was better than the material,
272. 00:28:39 where the sum was better than the parts. And I've always told my kids, "That's what I want on my gravestone,"
273. 00:28:45 because I feel like that's the goal, right? We get these raw materials of life as we start,
274. 00:28:51 and it's up to us to make the most we can out of them. And that's what you want at the end, is that the sum was greater than the parts,
275. 00:28:58 the quality was better than the material. And I feel like that's what he's aiming for here. He never really says that.
276. 00:29:06 And even kind of looking into his head a bit, that boat he built, he named RIT. He named the boat RIT.
277. 00:29:14 And is quality for him a modern substitute for the word "arratea," or why would he spend so much time on it?
278. 00:29:24 I'm trying to like, I feel like this whole book is a puzzle, and I'm trying to unlock it.
279. 00:29:30 But there's a bit of that to him. To that extent, I relate to him. I think RITa is an excellent standard to live to.
280. 00:29:37 I think we do need, in modern times, something to judge ourselves by. And I do think that, to get philosophical for a minute,
281. 00:29:46 I think relativism is not good enough. Relativism is the idea that nothing can really judge anything
282. 00:29:55 because everything is subject to relative constraints or whatever. No, I think in the world there are things that are good and bad,
283. 00:30:03 and sometimes you need to take a stand. And I don't think we have enough of that now.
284. 00:30:10 So maybe I'm closer to this guy than I think I am, but this book is dense man, this stuff.
285. 00:30:16 It is dense. Let's go into the next part, which is part two, and this is on values.
286. 00:30:24 And I have to say that this part left me sorely disappointed. I love the term values. In fact, in Master of Change by Brad Stolberg,
287. 00:30:36 there's a section in there where he talks about personal core values, and that got me real excited because this is important to me.
288. 00:30:44 I feel like the concept of values fits perfectly with everything that he's talking about here with the metaphysics of quality and trying to live a quality life.
289. 00:30:53 But sadly, I don't think he really gets into values a whole lot here unless there's a connection that I'm just not making here.
290. 00:31:03 What did you think about this part? And can you maybe shine some light on how this connects for me?
291. 00:31:10 It's very difficult, I think. There's a quote in this section.
292. 00:31:16 "The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands and then work outward from there."
293. 00:31:23 And I think that's what he's aiming for in this section, but it's very obtuse.
294. 00:31:30 Yeah. One of the quotes I wrote down here, this is kind of more to do with quality than it does with values,
295. 00:31:37 but quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking process
296. 00:31:42 because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.
297. 00:31:47 I feel like that kind of sets the stage for what I believe around values and vision and using that as the framework or the foundation for making the decisions that will ultimately lead you to live a quality, meaningful life.
298. 00:32:06 But he doesn't really get to that point. This is really where he just repeats that no one understands what quality is, it can't be defined, but everyone knows it when they see it.
299. 00:32:16 Yeah, it's tough. There's a quote from an interview in this section he did in the Washington Post, and he says,
300. 00:32:23 "I'm trying to make the classic concepts more relevant today, helping people lead more imaginative, productive lives.
301. 00:32:29 The problem today is one has to succeed in some terrible chain of values."
302. 00:32:34 And I guess almost this section feels like he's identifying a problem more than giving you a solution, but again, I'm on board with some of this.
303. 00:32:43 I do read the classics. I mean, by classics, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, these old folk.
304. 00:32:53 I think there's a lot of wisdom in the stuff they wrote, and I love the idea of timeless problems.
305. 00:33:00 I mean, just like you're struggling to figure out how to have the best relationship with your kid, Aristotle probably did the same thing.
306. 00:33:08 And so all of us, there are these things we face as humans that continue through the ages.
307. 00:33:15 And I feel like he's making some call to that with this. So again, this book triggers some thoughts in myself, but doesn't really give me a lot of answers.
308. 00:33:25 And I guess maybe that was part of his shtick.
309. 00:33:29 Yeah, so if you're taking this book as kind of priming the pump and you're going to go a lot deeper on whatever kind of resonates from what you read here,
310. 00:33:39 I think it actually could be a pretty valuable tool. But in terms of how we typically approach books for bookworm, which is an author or a guru is waxing or pontificating about everything that they know on a topic.
311. 00:33:54 Like, that's not here in this value section, but I do think that this is a pretty cool springboard for thinking about this further for yourself and to the point that you were just making.
312. 00:34:06 I never really made the connection about how my approach to having a better relationship with my kids or with my wife, that's a different version of the same type of problem that Aristotle was trying to solve.
313. 00:34:21 But I think there's some truth to that. And the approach really is you try to be intentional. You try to be focused on the things that are going to move the needle for you.
314. 00:34:33 And what I like about the concept of values is that you get to pick these. You get to decide what's really important for you.
315. 00:34:41 And if you do that, then you have at least things that will point you towards things that are quality. You maybe can't measure yet the quality of something based on these values.
316. 00:34:53 But I feel like if the goal is to get to the end of our life and say that, yes, I had a quality life, that values are a very important piece of that.
317. 00:35:04 And obviously, I've got my life theme cohort, which is like a personal mission statement. We've got family core values that my wife and I worked out and printed and they're hanging on our living room wall.
318. 00:35:17 And you don't have to maybe go that far. But I think this is a piece that it's easy to gloss over when you're constantly just jumping from one thing to the next.
319. 00:35:30 The busyness that we find ourselves in kind of unintentioned, I don't know, it sort of diminishes the value in the moment of stopping everything and figuring this stuff out.
320. 00:35:41 But once you actually have this, I feel like this is the way that you focus on the things that are quality.
321. 00:35:47 And it's a constant struggle, obviously, to maintain that focus. That's why we do the Focus Podcast.
322. 00:35:53 But if you're thinking about it, you have a much greater chance of being able to follow through on those intentions. And that's really what we're trying to do here.
323. 00:36:03 And this book is just so hippy-dippy that it's very easy for us to tumble ourselves into a focused episode in the middle of the world.
324. 00:36:10 So we're doing our best not to gang.
325. 00:36:13 It's true, but also I feel like given the framework of this book, I think we try to talk about these things in a way that's approachable to everyone on the Focus Podcast.
326. 00:36:27 But if there was ever a time and a place to really go into hippy mode, that's probably today for this recording.
327. 00:36:36 There's another in the next section called the Metaphysics of Quality. There's a line in that that really resonated with me.
328. 00:36:45 He talks about in a letter to somebody. He says, "A major problem of the century is that there's been no intellectual basis for making moral judgments, a lot of timidity and a lot of foolishness about making them as a risen.
329. 00:36:58 That's left society open to the moral erosion that is distressing people everywhere these days."
330. 00:37:04 And I know those are a bunch of trigger words for a lot of people in the audience, so I don't want to do that.
331. 00:37:11 But I do think we all need to be willing to stand up for right and wrong.
332. 00:37:17 I just had this conversation with my kids recently about this whole idea of irony.
333. 00:37:23 That's like a thing now. Everybody's ironic about everything.
334. 00:37:28 And I said, "I think that's kind of cowardish. Don't be ironic about something. If you don't like it, say it.
335. 00:37:37 The irony doesn't get us anywhere. It's not funny. It's not solving a problem. There's a problem. Solve the problem. Don't be ironic."
336. 00:37:46 Anyway, I guess I'm going down. See, I'm going down the Focus Dravital again.
337. 00:37:51 That's okay, though.
338. 00:37:52 But I like that quote. It worked with me. And I think that's something to think about.
339. 00:37:57 Yeah, so one of the things that kind of ties to that, that I jotted down from this Part 3 on the Metaphysics of Quality,
340. 00:38:04 is that everything is an ethical activity. And I've kind of believed that for a long time,
341. 00:38:11 but maybe that's at the root of the thing you were talking about with the whole concept of irony.
342. 00:38:18 When you're just responding to something in isolation, it's easy to just flippantly say or do something.
343. 00:38:29 But when you view every moment that you have, going back to the concept of Memento Mori, I think,
344. 00:38:36 and really just I'm going to make the very best of every single moment that I have on this Earth.
345. 00:38:41 You really don't have time to waste. And you can define for yourself, I guess, what you consider to be right or wrong
346. 00:38:49 in terms of ethical activity. But the world would be a much better place if everybody had that lens that they were looking through.
347. 00:38:59 I feel like a lot of the times we just switch into default mode and we just react instead of responding to things.
348. 00:39:08 And I was challenged when I read that because I know that I've fallen into this trap myself.
349. 00:39:15 It doesn't mean going back to the whole concept of productivity.
350. 00:39:21 It doesn't mean that you have to be "productive" and making something or doing something every moment of every day.
351. 00:39:29 But realizing that every moment that we have is a component of this larger thing, which is our life.
352. 00:39:38 And that is the thing that we're trying to maximize as much value as we can from that to live something that is quality and meaningful.
353. 00:39:46 In fact, that's one of the things he talks about also in this chapter is that meaning is a synonym for quality.
354. 00:39:52 And obviously that kind of stuck with me because that's the whole purpose behind the life theme and the core values is to live a life of meaning and intention.
355. 00:40:02 That's what everybody is trying to do, whether they realize it or not.
356. 00:40:07 And obviously different people are going to say it in different ways.
357. 00:40:10 There's lots of different flavors of this stuff.
358. 00:40:13 And Robert Pierce-Siggs generally doesn't jive with me, but there are a couple things in here that I thought were helpful and help kind of fill in some additional details to make it more difficult.
359. 00:40:21 And that's one of the things that I've learned over the years with Bookworm is I'll have my thinking about something and I'll read a book and it's not at all on the topic, but it's going to help add a couple more details.
360. 00:40:40 I think the last one that I did that I kind of had the same sort of feeling like this is useful for me in terms of my own personal philosophy, vision and value, stuff like that.
361. 00:40:50 I was here on a mission by Donald Miller. Now I don't really like Donald Miller's approach, but that book asks some of the same questions that I like to think about my favorite questions if you want to phrase it that way, that I'm constantly kind of turning over in my head.
362. 00:41:05 It gave me some new angles to think about some of that stuff.
363. 00:41:09 And I feel like that's what this chapter did for me as well.
364. 00:41:12 Yeah, and I think he's pushing a lot of those same buttons with his writings and thoughts, although it never really coalesces together.
365. 00:41:22 And the word quality a lot of times throughout the book, I never was able to nail it down because even the quote I did from Lila earlier, that's one way he defines it, but then it does seem to move around a bit throughout his writings.
366. 00:41:38 And then fairness, these are writings throughout his life. You'll see a letter he wrote in 1970 something and then a lecture he gave in 2004.
367. 00:41:48 So it's not really fair to judge the guy, but he does kind of move around a bit with his thoughts on the stuff over the course of his life.
368. 00:41:57 Yeah, it almost reads like a journal. Once I had that perspective, then I was able to let go some of the blatant contradictions here, because he like five or six different times says quality is, and then uses a completely different analogy or completely different definition.
369. 00:42:20 But when I viewed it, kind of like you said, these are all individual writings. And so what we're kind of seeing here is a snapshot of his thinking on this, I feel like evolving over time.
370. 00:42:30 And ultimately, that's what I would like to think, if someone were to do the same thing and look at all my journal entries, they would have the same sort of thought is like, well, none of this connects because it's not supposed to be read in one sitting as a, this is everything that I ever thought about this.
371. 00:42:47 But when you take a step back and you can kind of see the growth and the how things mature and how thoughts mature and change over time, it kind of tells a different story.
372. 00:43:01 And it definitely evolves. I mean, when you got decades between topics or discussions of the same topic, it evolves.
373. 00:43:10 Yeah. And one of the things that I feel like kind of compliments that idea that he talks about in this section is the dynamic quality is a stream of quality events that go on forever.
374. 00:43:23 So quality really is an event. It's not a thing. And without that dynamic quality, without those string of quality events, nothing is actually going to grow or evolve.
375. 00:43:35 And I think it's easy to, I've been there where like, oh, I wrote this thing and I professed, you know, this is the way that this stuff ties together.
376. 00:43:45 But that kept me from publishing things for a very long time because I didn't want to be wrong. I didn't want to have something on the internet that somebody could point back to at some point and say, well, you said this, you know, and kind of what I realized was that whenever I actually do write a blog post or publish a podcast episode.
377. 00:44:04 That's a snapshot in time. That is what I think about this thing right now. But I give myself permission to change my mind.
378. 00:44:12 And I feel like that's something if I had known Robert Pierce, like you would be able to see throughout his life is that he was willing to change his mind about things.
379. 00:44:21 But I don't know, maybe I'll just read a little too much into it.
380. 00:44:24 No, I agree. And obviously that's a sign of someone who is intellectually awake, right? If you stick to the same ideas your whole life, you're not growing.
381. 00:44:33 Yep. All right. Let's talk briefly about this next part because I know you're not a big fan of part for Dharma.
382. 00:44:43 But I do think that there's a couple things in here which we don't have to talk about Dharma specifically, but just some ideas here.
383. 00:44:51 It talks about how quality and spirituality are synonymous. And I don't want to make this necessarily religious.
384. 00:45:00 But I do think that this kind of ties back to the whole idea of living a quality life.
385. 00:45:06 Really what that means is that our life is more than just the bag of bones that you see day to day.
386. 00:45:15 And I don't know if that resonates with people or not. Obviously it kind of resonates with me and it makes me kind of attached to his ideas about quality a little bit more and meaning.
387. 00:45:26 I mean, obviously for me, there is a spiritual aspect to that. But I don't think you necessarily have to have that.
388. 00:45:32 You can have your own vision and your values. And then that should be influencing everything else that you do.
389. 00:45:41 And ultimately you have to figure out what is right for you. There's a quote in this section that I really liked.
390. 00:45:49 A page 101, he says, "Everyone has a personal Dharma which could be defined as duty to quality." I think that's true.
391. 00:45:54 We've got a duty to live a quality life, a meaningful life. That doesn't mean that the specifics of that quality life anybody else can necessarily say, "This is right or this is wrong."
392. 00:46:05 You have to find that for yourself. But in fact there's a quote from Shunriyu Suzuki.
393. 00:46:12 This is when I'm all done with this lecture, you should forget every word that I've said. I feel like that's the mindset. That's the approach you've got to have when you read books.
394. 00:46:20 Not just books like this, but books in general. This is somebody who professes to have all these answers. If you're reading a productivity book anyways, that's what it seems like.
395. 00:46:29 This is a guru who's been up the mountain and they've got the three secrets to help you save an hour a day every day for the rest of your life.
396. 00:46:36 All you've got to do is follow their system. No, you should go into it, challenging all of the arguments that they're going to make.
397. 00:46:44 Then whatever resonates, that's what you keep. But there should be no pressure, no obligation to retain necessarily anything that they are going to save.
398. 00:46:55 The obligation is on them to convince you that something here is going to be useful. When you feel like you have the permission and the freedom to pick a little piece here and a little piece there and fit it into your own personal philosophy, that's really where you get the benefits.
399. 00:47:13 It's not okay, so I'm going to apply this entire system. I feel like this is where this is a little bit of a rabbit trail maybe, but this is the approach that a lot of people take with GTD.
400. 00:47:25 I don't think GTD is necessarily bad, but people try to follow that diagram that David Allen made 20, 30 years ago at this point to the T.
401. 00:47:36 Then when it doesn't work for them, I've been there where it's like, "Oh, something's wrong with me because obviously David Allen has this figured out." No, the approach is wrong. You're not supposed to just take that whole thing.
402. 00:47:46 It's just to figure out what works and spit out the sticks.
403. 00:47:49 This quote from Suzuki is a very common quote in Buddhism because the idea of Buddhism really is about letting go of attachments. Buddha himself taught that the last attachment you need to let go of is Buddha.
404. 00:48:04 Buddhism, in a lot of ways, is not a religion. It's more of a way of thinking. The idea is you've got to let go of that too.
405. 00:48:18 This is very common. The reason I was a little wound up about this chapter is just his use of the term Dharma. I have my own definitions of that that I think are a little more conventional.
406. 00:48:34 The constant use of mixing it with quality really kept throwing me in a tailspin. It was hard to keep up with it because it's redefining a word that is very much defined in my head is hard.
407. 00:48:51 That is fair. I can totally see that.
408. 00:48:54 If I just suddenly told you, any time I say green, you should think about the color red. It's a little hard.
409. 00:49:00 I can definitely see that. I actually like the approach because I don't have the anchoring on that term. I disregarded the title and then just picked out a few of the things that I thought were useful.
410. 00:49:15 I do think that there is some decent ideas here that you've got to figure out how to apply them, obviously, but I think there's some valuable stuff.
411. 00:49:24 One of the things he mentioned, and he didn't make this connection, but I did quality can't be apprehended by the rational mind.
412. 00:49:32 People who listen to the bookworm know my Christian faith guides a lot of the stuff that I do, but that's the picture I got of that is the definition of faith.
413. 00:49:44 The belief that what you cannot see will come to pass.
414. 00:49:50 Without faith, what is it?
415. 00:49:52 Exactly. Even if you aren't religious, that idea of faith, that can have a secular application too.
416. 00:50:00 It does definitely tie to the whole concept of quality.
417. 00:50:04 The things that you are doing in the pursuit of quality are not going to be the things that are going to trigger the dopamine hits in the short term.
418. 00:50:14 It's going to be a more long-term thing.
419. 00:50:17 Quality is apprehended in ways that can't be described.
420. 00:50:21 It's believing that what you're doing is going to compound and it's going to pay off in the end.
421. 00:50:28 That definition of faith that I showed, the belief that what you cannot see is going to come to pass, that's actually the same definition of fear.
422. 00:50:36 Fear, the belief that what you cannot see will come to pass.
423. 00:50:40 You can have that as, "Well, if I keep doing these things, I'll create the positive outcome that I want."
424. 00:50:46 These bad things are going to happen, and so that's going to cause me to not take a step, not do something.
425. 00:50:54 I don't know. I think that there's a valuable application of this, but just about anybody realizing that quality goes beyond the surface level.
426. 00:51:06 Yes, you can't define it like he's talking about, but that's because it's more than just what you see, feel, hear, taste, touch.
427. 00:51:14 It goes beyond the physical senses that I definitely agree with.
428. 00:51:20 Another common Buddhist parable is the moon, trying to teach somebody something, and I think they had asked the Buddha about it.
429. 00:51:29 He's like, "If I point at the moon, he asked me at the moon and I point at the moon, you're going to look at my finger and think that you know about the moon."
430. 00:51:38 That's the problem with this stuff. I feel like he's bringing that same level of scrutiny to his discussion of quality, which makes it so hard to wrap your hand around it.
431. 00:51:48 There's definitely a lot of questions that are opened in this book and not a whole lot of answers, which I'm okay with.
432. 00:51:58 I probably would have been really frustrated with that at the beginning of the bookworm journey, but I've learned the value of asking questions.
433. 00:52:08 I kind of like getting to the end of a book and feeling like I've got a lot more wrestling with the ideas in it to do.
434. 00:52:19 What do you think about Section 5 on attitude?
435. 00:52:24 Not a fan of this one. In fact, this is the one that I jotted down the least from my notes.
436. 00:52:33 I've only got a couple of things, but I feel like in terms of the outline of the book, this was the one I was the most excited to read.
437. 00:52:45 I feel like the story he tells at the very beginning of this chapter, and I think the thing I didn't like about this chapter is that he reuses a bunch of the stuff from Zen and the Artimor cycle maintenance in this section.
438. 00:52:56 A lot of the other parts.
439. 00:52:58 To be clear, he's not using it. Somebody else's.
440. 00:53:02 The rest of the book felt new to me. This one felt like I had read this before.
441. 00:53:06 Obviously, there's different context. There's a story at the beginning where he's on the trip, the motorcycle trip with his son.
442. 00:53:14 At one point, his son asks him if he'll be able to own a motorcycle when he gets older.
443. 00:53:21 He's like, "Well, it's a lot of work. You're going to have to learn all these things."
444. 00:53:24 He's like, "Well, I'll be able to do that." Yeah, as long as you have the right attitudes.
445. 00:53:29 He's like, "Am I going to have the right attitudes?" He's like, "I believe that you will."
446. 00:53:33 I thought about that story a lot just because I have kids myself, so I could kind of relate to that.
447. 00:53:42 You don't really know that your kids are going to be able to thrive when they leave the house,
448. 00:53:52 but you do everything that you can to put them in a position to be able to do that.
449. 00:53:56 When he said that, it made me think about that with each of my kids.
450. 00:54:01 Do I believe that they're going to be successful?
451. 00:54:05 The thing that's going to enable them, I believe, to be successful is the right attitude.
452. 00:54:09 Not in terms of learning the skills to wrench on a motorcycle,
453. 00:54:13 but Rachel and I have thought about this for a long time.
454. 00:54:16 We want to help our kids develop a lifelong love of learning because if they can learn to love learning,
455. 00:54:25 then whatever we are not able to teach them that they need to know,
456. 00:54:29 they are going to be able to learn that themselves.
457. 00:54:33 That's been our approach, and I feel like we're still approaching the ultimate test.
458. 00:54:39 All of our kids are still at home, but I like this idea.
459. 00:54:43 I don't really like the supporting points selected for this chapter.
460. 00:54:49 It's interesting because the points selected primarily focus on love and quality
461. 00:54:55 and the differences between them.
462. 00:54:58 I thought it's almost improperly named, except for that nice little quote from the book at the beginning.
463. 00:55:08 I almost feel like this section is about love and quality, but either way,
464. 00:55:14 it is an interesting collection of thoughts.
465. 00:55:17 It definitely gives you more insight behind Robert Persink.
466. 00:55:22 Yeah, you're right about the idea of love and quality.
467. 00:55:26 I also think that's a powerful idea that didn't get a whole lot into,
468. 00:55:33 but again, is maybe framed differently here.
469. 00:55:37 I would love to unpack that a little bit further,
470. 00:55:40 because you mentioned at the beginning something else that you had read,
471. 00:55:44 where he talked about quality being good.
472. 00:55:47 I feel like there's overlap here with quality and love being interchangeable.
473. 00:55:55 He talks about this, maybe it's in this section, maybe it's sprinkled throughout,
474. 00:56:01 but when an object has quality, when it is good, then it changes how we feel about it,
475. 00:56:08 and that's where we love it.
476. 00:56:10 In other words, we love things because they have quality,
477. 00:56:14 and I feel like quality is a little bit subjective,
478. 00:56:19 where you define what's quality for yourself,
479. 00:56:23 but I do think that there is a connection there between the things that we love
480. 00:56:28 and the things that we consider to have quality.
481. 00:56:31 My brain, as I was thinking about this,
482. 00:56:35 goes back to some marriage advice I got at a conference a long time ago
483. 00:56:40 that if you love your wife, she appreciates in your mind,
484. 00:56:47 same with your kids or any relationship really,
485. 00:56:50 but we tend to nitpick and find the flaws.
486. 00:56:54 When we do that, we're essentially depreciating our significant other, our spouse,
487. 00:57:00 and when we can learn to appreciate instead,
488. 00:57:03 then that increases the value of the person that's in the relationship that we have.
489. 00:57:08 I thought that was an interesting parallel to this whole discussion of love and quality.
490. 00:57:14 It's interesting to know that this is something that really developed in the '90s,
491. 00:57:19 like most of the writings he has that makes these comparisons are later,
492. 00:57:24 much later after the book, after Zinn and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
493. 00:57:28 and even Lila is published.
494. 00:57:30 Maybe there was a third book there.
495. 00:57:33 Maybe that's what all this stuff adds up to,
496. 00:57:36 where he tries to synthesize it a bit more,
497. 00:57:39 but he never got a chance to do that, so his wife did her best to put it out there,
498. 00:57:45 and I'm glad she did.
499. 00:57:47 Yeah, me too.
500. 00:57:49 What are your general thoughts on this book as a whole?
501. 00:57:55 I never got there with metaphysics of quality, and I really tried.
502. 00:57:59 I really tried to completely...
503. 00:58:01 I don't feel like I ever completely understood it,
504. 00:58:05 and because it changed so much over time,
505. 00:58:07 and he really never did synthesize it because he didn't write this book,
506. 00:58:12 but it did give me lots of good, interesting food for thought.
507. 00:58:16 It made me think about my relationship with RTA and craftsmanship.
508. 00:58:21 The tools in the book, the picture of the tools,
509. 00:58:24 never made sense to me, except for the fact that he wrote another book about motorcycle maintenance.
510. 00:58:28 It never really made sense to me, but I enjoyed seeing them.
511. 00:58:32 Tools make me comfortable and happy.
512. 00:58:35 But overall, I'm glad I read it, but it is not an easy read.
513. 00:58:42 Yeah, I agree.
514. 00:58:44 I kind of get this picture of a book like this called "On Craftsmanship",
515. 00:58:52 which I enjoy reading much more and has pictures of woodworking tools written by David Sparks.
516. 00:59:00 Maybe I'll have to do that someday.
517. 00:59:02 I have thoughts, that's for sure, but it is a...
518. 00:59:07 But this wasn't by Robert Percy, and I think that was...
519. 00:59:12 That made it tough.
520. 00:59:14 Yeah, that's a good point.
521. 00:59:17 This is a selection of things that somebody else determined were important to him on this topic
522. 00:59:25 based off of little snippets of things that he had written,
523. 00:59:29 but I'm sure it would have been very different than an actual conversation with Robert Percy on this particular topic.
524. 00:59:36 I do wish he would have written this book.
525. 00:59:41 Zen in the Art of motorcycle maintenance, not a fan.
526. 00:59:44 From what I can tell about Lila, I don't think that's really the book for me either,
527. 00:59:50 but an actual discussion about these topics.
528. 00:59:56 I'm all in on that.
529. 00:59:58 And it would have been interesting, even if we would have had very different conclusions about things
530. 01:00:03 to just get straight from his mouth, a packaged presentation on his actual thoughts on this topic.
531. 01:00:16 I love the action item part of this podcast.
532. 01:00:19 Mike, what are your action items on this book?
533. 01:00:23 I have none.
534. 01:00:26 So I don't think that means that no action will be taken from this book, however.
535. 01:00:31 There's some things that I've been noodling on since I read this.
536. 01:00:38 And I don't have anything specific yet, and I feel like it's still just kind of brewing in the background.
537. 01:00:46 It's not even like, "Well, I have to unpack this further."
538. 01:00:51 But there's some things in here that kind of spoke to me.
539. 01:00:54 We talked about the simple story that he shared from Zen in the Art of motorcycle maintenance
540. 01:00:59 and how that got me to reconsider my relationship with my kids.
541. 01:01:03 I feel like there's some different quotes that as we were going through it even today
542. 01:01:07 and having a conversation about it, hit a little bit deeper now that we had some dialogue.
543. 01:01:14 I think this is probably going to be fairly impactful over the long term,
544. 01:01:19 but there is absolutely nothing in here that's like, "Oh, that was a great idea.
545. 01:01:22 I'm definitely going to apply this."
546. 01:01:25 I'm assuming you didn't have anything like that either.
547. 01:01:28 I mean, this isn't that kind of book, but I will say that the extended discussion of RTA
548. 01:01:34 got me digging in.
549. 01:01:36 I have my document where I define RTA and what it means to me,
550. 01:01:41 and I'm annotating that based on some of the things I learned here.
551. 01:01:45 It is interesting to get a little bit more of the definition of the history of the word.
552. 01:01:50 And the show today got me thinking more about craftsmanship.
553. 01:01:53 I think I may try and document that a bit more in my written system,
554. 01:01:57 in my Obsidian database as well.
555. 01:01:59 There are some follow-up items I want to do, but lots of food for thought here.
556. 01:02:06 Like I said, this is not as a listener of your show.
557. 01:02:10 This is an unusual one.
558. 01:02:12 It is a little bit unusual.
559. 01:02:15 I am glad that we read it though, and really appreciated the chance
560. 01:02:22 to talk through it with you.
561. 01:02:25 I was picturing if this one had been recommended in another way at a different time.
562. 01:02:32 Joe was on the show, and I went through this with him.
563. 01:02:35 It would have been a very different conversation, and I probably would have,
564. 01:02:40 if I had read this six months ago, a year ago, I probably would have still had the bad taste
565. 01:02:48 of Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance in my mouth.
566. 01:02:51 And I would have just written this one off.
567. 01:02:54 I feel like this one was actually valuable and helpful to me at this point,
568. 01:03:00 even though it's not one of my favorite books.
569. 01:03:03 I guess we're getting into styling and rating at this point.
570. 01:03:07 But it's a short book.
571. 01:03:10 It's an easy read in terms of getting through it.
572. 01:03:14 I mean, if you're going to wrestle with some of these ideas,
573. 01:03:16 it's definitely not easy if you're going to figure out what you actually think
574. 01:03:20 about some of this stuff.
575. 01:03:21 This may be one of the more difficult books that you would sit down and read.
576. 01:03:26 But I like the table of contents a lot.
577. 01:03:31 I like the order and the progression of some of these ideas.
578. 01:03:37 If you're looking for answers to some of these topics, quality, values,
579. 01:03:43 attitude, I don't think you're going to find it.
580. 01:03:47 But I think it is useful in terms of sparking some additional questions
581. 01:03:52 and getting you to think through things.
582. 01:03:55 I'm going to rate this three stars, although I would probably skew a little bit higher than that.
583. 01:04:02 I have trouble putting it at four stars, just in the most recent one that comes to mind
584. 01:04:08 as a master of change by Brad Stalberg.
585. 01:04:11 I rated that at four stars.
586. 01:04:13 I feel like I got a lot more out of that book in particular.
587. 01:04:16 But I am taking your advice, David.
588. 01:04:18 Joe is not on board yet, but I'm not doing the half stars anymore.
589. 01:04:22 I'm not a fan, honestly.
590. 01:04:25 Come on.
591. 01:04:26 One to five is good enough, right?
592. 01:04:30 But I'm with you.
593. 01:04:32 I'm giving it a three.
594. 01:04:34 The problem is there are some people listening for whom this book will be a five.
595. 01:04:40 There's a bunch of people who are listening for whom this book will be a one or two.
596. 01:04:45 You can't really grade it that way.
597. 01:04:50 If you've got to this point in the podcast, you've got a pretty good idea if you might
598. 01:04:55 connect with this or not.
599. 01:04:56 The other thing I would recommend is read it twice.
600. 01:04:59 It's a hundred pages.
601. 01:05:00 I read it first and just kind of tried to not judge it and just read it.
602. 01:05:06 I said, "You know what?
603. 01:05:07 I need to read it again."
604. 01:05:08 I went back and read it a second time.
605. 01:05:10 It landed better the second time because I had a better idea of where he was going.
606. 01:05:14 This is a book you may want to just read twice.
607. 01:05:18 Sure.
608. 01:05:19 That's fair.
609. 01:05:20 Another thing I think about this book is that if you're trying to select individual books
610. 01:05:27 that are going to speak to a specific problem that you are facing, this is not a good book
611. 01:05:33 to pick up.
612. 01:05:34 But if you're taking a long-term view of I want to become a learned reader, this is a
613. 01:05:43 valuable dot to add to your collection.
614. 01:05:48 I feel like this has long-term value that you won't realize for a while until you get
615. 01:05:56 some other dots to connect it to.
616. 01:05:59 It kind of feels to me like how to read a book in that sense, although that one I feel
617. 01:06:04 is a lot more practical.
618. 01:06:06 So it's not fair to compare this one to that either.
619. 01:06:09 But I just have this sense from reading this one that even though I can't really figure
620. 01:06:15 out how these mental lego bricks that I've collected from reading this are going to be
621. 01:06:21 used in putting together something that they will be useful nonetheless down the road.
622. 01:06:27 Yeah.
623. 01:06:28 And also if you just want to ask yourself some Aristotle-level questions, this is a good
624. 01:06:32 book.
625. 01:06:33 You'll read some stuff and he doesn't answer them for you, but he gives you the question.
626. 01:06:38 And just like other books that ask big questions and don't give you answers, I think you can
627. 01:06:45 learn a lot from those as well.
628. 01:06:48 I mean, just like personal Socrates, I mean, this book is a source of questions.
629. 01:06:54 Yeah, absolutely.
630. 01:06:56 That was one of my favorites.
631. 01:06:58 Again, that one is a bit more practical, but this one, because it actually gives you
632. 01:07:02 the questions to ask.
633. 01:07:04 This one, you got to dig a little bit, but I think if you put in the effort, then this
634. 01:07:10 is a valuable read.
635. 01:07:12 Again, though you're right, it's not going to be for everybody.
636. 01:07:17 So recognize if you're picking this one up, you got to be interested in the topic of quality.
637. 01:07:23 You got to be willing to dive a little bit deeper and you got to be willing to do some
638. 01:07:27 additional work here, because he is not going to give you the answers himself.
639. 01:07:36 But overall, I'm glad that I read this.
640. 01:07:39 I kind of came full circle with this.
641. 01:07:40 I had the same reaction that you did at the beginning.
642. 01:07:44 I was kind of asking like, why did Mike Vardy speak so highly about this book?
643. 01:07:51 But having talked through it, I feel like I've got a different, a little bit of a different
644. 01:07:59 perspective on it now.
645. 01:08:00 I mean, I kind of was moving this way already as I was reading it and found myself as the
646. 01:08:03 recording got closer, looking forward to talking to you about it.
647. 01:08:07 That's one of the indicators of a decent book in my opinion.
648. 01:08:12 If I read it, I feel like, okay, that's it.
649. 01:08:13 I've gotten everything that I need out of this.
650. 01:08:17 It's very surface level value, but a lot of the real good stuff comes from the conversations
651. 01:08:22 around this.
652. 01:08:24 If you've got other people who are interested in this sort of topic, this would be a great
653. 01:08:27 one if you like to use as a jumping off point, kind of like we did today.
654. 01:08:31 This is what Robert Pierce says.
655. 01:08:33 What do you think about that might lead to some interesting conversations and follow up?
656. 01:08:38 Yeah, I would agree with you on it.
657. 01:08:40 I feel like this conversation to me has been just as enjoyable as reading the book, like
658. 01:08:46 getting, talking to a good friend about these types of questions.
659. 01:08:52 Good stuff.
660. 01:08:53 Yeah.
661. 01:08:54 So we'll wrap up there.
662. 01:08:56 Probably most people who listen to bookworm are aware of where to find you other places,
663. 01:09:00 but just in case.
664. 01:09:02 People want to find more Max Sparky.
665. 01:09:03 Where do they go?
666. 01:09:04 Max Sparky.
667. 01:09:05 Go to maxbarky.com.
668. 01:09:06 It's all there.
669. 01:09:07 And if you want to hear another podcast, I make it called the Focus Podcast, which I
670. 01:09:11 do with a very smart young man named Michael Schmitz.
671. 01:09:16 Yeah, that's a fun one.
672. 01:09:19 It's a productivity podcast, but more than just cranking widgets where we talk about
673. 01:09:23 intentionality and focus.
674. 01:09:25 Not quite as a hippie level as we got to today.
675. 01:09:29 Yeah, kind of fun though, right?
676. 01:09:32 Yep, definitely.
677. 01:09:33 Well, thank you for being on the show, David.
678. 01:09:36 Really appreciate you coming on for people who are listening.
679. 01:09:39 We will be back in a couple of weeks book and guest yet to be determined, but we will
680. 01:09:45 talk to you in a couple of weeks.