188: Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal

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4. 00:00:13 Welcome back to Bookworm Corey Hickson.
5. 00:00:15 Thanks for having me back.
6. 00:00:16 It's good to be a recurring guest now.
7. 00:00:19 I guess it was what you could call me.
8. 00:00:22 The most frequent Bookworm guest.
9. 00:00:24 Actually, I think you're tied with Sean Bonke.
10. 00:00:26 He was on twice before.
11. 00:00:27 Only one more.
12. 00:00:28 That's true.
13. 00:00:30 Well, I enjoyed the last conversation we had about difficult conversations.
14. 00:00:38 You were gracious enough to come back and talk to me about today's book, which is Feel Good
15. 00:00:42 Productivity.
16. 00:00:43 But before we get there, we've got a format for this show.
17. 00:00:48 We normally go back and we check in on our action items.
18. 00:00:53 I'm curious, Corey, were you able to, I suppose you're still off from the day job.
19. 00:01:00 You probably haven't had to revisit this before your next scheduled difficult conversations.
20. 00:01:05 Have you had a difficult conversation in the last two weeks?
21. 00:01:08 I have not had a difficult conversation in the nature of this book.
22. 00:01:12 From a parenting standpoint, I've had a bunch of difficult conversations.
23. 00:01:16 From the nature of this book, I haven't had one that would directly apply.
24. 00:01:21 There will probably be one or two coming up here in the near future.
25. 00:01:26 I haven't followed up on this quite yet, but I can see it coming very quickly based on
26. 00:01:33 some things that are happening.
27. 00:01:35 When that happens, I will do my best to follow up in a way that doesn't reveal too many
28. 00:01:41 details of the difficult conversation.
29. 00:01:44 Fair enough.
30. 00:01:45 My mind was to share how I was feeling without judgment.
31. 00:01:51 I feel like I have done this, but there's probably more opportunities where I could have done
32. 00:01:55 this and I didn't do it.
33. 00:01:56 I do think, though, that the mindset shift has clicked for me, where whenever I'm feeling
34. 00:02:02 frustrated and I'm trying to communicate that to somebody else, I'm trying to share.
35. 00:02:07 I'm feeling this way because this thing happened and not saying, "Because you did this."
36. 00:02:13 Yeah.
37. 00:02:14 I think if that was the only thing that I got out of that last book that we read, it probably
38. 00:02:19 would have been a worthwhile read.
39. 00:02:22 Thanks for recommending that one, Corey.
40. 00:02:24 Of course.
41. 00:02:25 I have a question for you about that.
42. 00:02:27 When you think back now and you have your whole process, you have your mind-map process,
43. 00:02:31 then you sink that down into obsidian.
44. 00:02:34 When you think back on that book, if I quizzed you, and not in terms of asking questions,
45. 00:02:40 but I said, "Could you write a one page or how confident would you be on a one page
46. 00:02:46 that actually fairly decently captures that book?
47. 00:02:49 How confident would you be?"
48. 00:02:51 I would not be confident at all, but that's also part of my personality, I think.
49. 00:02:59 I tend to over-prepare for things.
50. 00:03:04 One of the lessons that I've had to learn, especially when I occasionally get asked to
51. 00:03:07 preach at my church, is not to prepare too much because I get so locked into the format.
52. 00:03:17 I'm sure there's a little bit of residual knowledge there where I know the things, but
53. 00:03:22 I have trouble recalling them in the moment.
54. 00:03:26 If you're going to put me on the spot right now, my heart rate is already picking up a
55. 00:03:30 little bit.
56. 00:03:31 If I were to sit down and have some time and actually work through it, I'm sure that
57. 00:03:35 stuff would bubble up.
58. 00:03:37 I buy the nature of the way that I take the notes on the book.
59. 00:03:40 That's why I do the crazy mind maps and all that kind of stuff.
60. 00:03:44 I know that that's craziness for a lot of people.
61. 00:03:47 It's definitely a bridge too far for most normal folks, but I believe it.
62. 00:03:52 It helps me in the moment piece together the things.
63. 00:03:57 That's the thing about this.
64. 00:04:02 There's different versions of knowledge.
65. 00:04:04 There's the knowledge that we can dig up from an archive somewhere when we need to find
66. 00:04:08 it, like a receipt or an account number or something like that.
67. 00:04:12 Then there's knowledge that we know, and then there's knowledge that gets applied.
68. 00:04:15 I feel like this is where in between levels two and three, if you just focus on the knowledge
69. 00:04:21 that you know that you can spit back in the facts, none of it really gets translated,
70. 00:04:26 which is why we did the action items for Bookworm way back in the days.
71. 00:04:29 We read all these books and these dots are connecting whether we realize it or not, whether
72. 00:04:33 we have the actual artifact in front of us of this connects to this connects to this.
73. 00:04:38 Your brain is naturally kind of doing that stuff.
74. 00:04:42 You maybe don't even realize how much of it is actually stuck until you try to put it
75. 00:04:46 into practice.
76. 00:04:48 Why I do the sketch noting for the sermon notes as well.
77. 00:04:51 If you were to ask me what were the exact scriptures that my pastor preached about last
78. 00:04:56 week, I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you the main theme and what stood out to me
79. 00:04:59 and what I applied from that because I took the time to synthesize the information into
80. 00:05:04 these pictures.
81. 00:05:07 The reason I asked the question is because I think about my action item.
82. 00:05:11 I'm going to have to go back and very much revisit my notes.
83. 00:05:15 Right now if you ask me to recap the key five points of difficult conversations, I might
84. 00:05:21 be able to get three of them, but it felt so jumbled.
85. 00:05:25 What I did to the listeners, and I told you this a little bit ago, I actually did the
86. 00:05:31 Mike Schmitt's mind mapping method for this book because I wanted to see if I thought
87. 00:05:37 there was a tangible output difference in the tangible output for it.
88. 00:05:40 Let me tell you, dear listener, it's an event.
89. 00:05:45 It's a thing.
90. 00:05:46 It's not this all like, "Oh, I'm going to create a mind map and everything's going to
91. 00:05:49 be super easy."
92. 00:05:51 My mind map, if I zoom out to where I can see the entire mind map, I can read nothing.
93. 00:05:56 I can barely even tell there's text there.
94. 00:05:59 But what I will say is I think that it helps me with what you're saying, that knowledge
95. 00:06:06 to application step, it helps me with that knowledge step a lot, that step to a lot.
96. 00:06:11 Hopefully that pans out to be true.
97. 00:06:14 Will I take the time every week?
98. 00:06:16 I don't know.
99. 00:06:19 It's going to depend, would it be worth me to take the time every week?
100. 00:06:22 Absolutely.
101. 00:06:23 Yes, it would absolutely be worth it for me to do that.
102. 00:06:26 That's why I asked the question.
103. 00:06:27 Thanks.
104. 00:06:28 Nice.
105. 00:06:29 I'd love to see your mind map if you were willing to share that at some point.
106. 00:06:31 Gladly.
107. 00:06:32 One other thing I'll share with us is the temptation can be when you start taking notes from books
108. 00:06:36 to capture too much or too little.
109. 00:06:40 If you are just adding down a few things that really stand out to you, you're not diving
110. 00:06:46 in and applying the Mortimer Adler how to read a book method where you're really, in my
111. 00:06:49 opinion, trying to grok the arguments that the author is making.
112. 00:06:53 So I feel like you got to do a little bit more, got to put a little bit more weight on the
113. 00:06:56 bar for that.
114. 00:06:58 But then also, once you start doing something like mind maps, specifically the temptation
115. 00:07:02 can be, "Well, I'm just going to recreate the structure of the book."
116. 00:07:05 Don't do that either.
117. 00:07:06 Yeah.
118. 00:07:08 Like, when I dumped all of my notes, so I use because the people who listen will probably
119. 00:07:15 be interested in this, I use a plugin to obsidian to where I highlight in a digital book and
120. 00:07:20 then it automatically draws all my highlights into obsidian directly into the file.
121. 00:07:25 And then I use that file to make the mind map.
122. 00:07:29 My, I have in the file that it downloaded was 10,737 words.
123. 00:07:36 That includes the location, location, location, location, but still that can't be that many
124. 00:07:39 words.
125. 00:07:40 That can't be that many words.
126. 00:07:42 But I thought that was a lot.
127. 00:07:44 I highlighted a lot more than I thought I was going to.
128. 00:07:46 So, all right.
129. 00:07:47 Well, the world needs more mind maps.
130. 00:07:49 So yeah, sorry, not sorry.
131. 00:07:53 All right.
132. 00:07:55 One other thing I'll mention here before we get into today's book, because this episode
133. 00:08:00 will be published very shortly, just a couple of days before the next obsidian university
134. 00:08:06 cohort kicks off.
135. 00:08:07 So I mentioned that last time, but this will be the third cohort.
136. 00:08:11 I'm actually thinking I'm going to rebrand this cohort specifically as practical PKM
137. 00:08:16 because I feel like there's a promise with PKM where you can just dump all those notes
138. 00:08:22 into obsidian.
139. 00:08:23 You have the 10,000 lines that that Corey was talking about.
140. 00:08:26 And then I'll just use the app or I'll use chat GPT and I will discover all these connections
141. 00:08:34 and it will create all these insights.
142. 00:08:36 And that's not actually true.
143. 00:08:38 I actually lean more in the line of not having like right information, but but doing the
144. 00:08:44 right things.
145. 00:08:45 So I really, really like the Cal Newport podcast.
146. 00:08:47 He's been talking about this deep life stack lately.
147. 00:08:50 And that really resonates with me.
148. 00:08:51 So I've got my own version of that.
149. 00:08:52 I called the PKM stack.
150. 00:08:54 I talked a little bit about that last time.
151. 00:08:55 You got information and then you've got the ideas.
152. 00:08:59 Those are things that you're going to do something with creatively.
153. 00:09:01 And then you've got the actions, which are the routines projects.
154. 00:09:03 And that's all directed by the philosophy.
155. 00:09:06 And then a reflection process helps you make sure that you don't go off the tracks.
156. 00:09:10 So it's going to be based on how to actually do that.
157. 00:09:13 And you don't necessarily have to even use obsidian in order to get something out of it
158. 00:09:16 I would argue because the first sessions on Mondays are going to be the conceptual PKM
159. 00:09:20 stuff.
160. 00:09:21 And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll see, you know, a lot of there's kind of been
161. 00:09:25 a sneak preview with some of the topics in there.
162. 00:09:28 So you can definitely apply the principles other apps.
163. 00:09:30 But then Wednesdays are going to be like the obsidian workflow days.
164. 00:09:33 And this is where it's going to be different from the last time around.
165. 00:09:36 I've actually been working on this like starter vault.
166. 00:09:39 I need a better name for this thing.
167. 00:09:41 But anyways, it's this this vault that you download and it's got all of the plug-in setup.
168. 00:09:45 It's got all the call outs.
169. 00:09:46 It's got all the settings dialed in.
170. 00:09:47 And it's even got all of the queries.
171. 00:09:49 So if you're going to start using it for habit tracking or journaling or even tasking
172. 00:09:54 project management, like all the lists in the dashboards are in there already for you.
173. 00:09:58 So you can just start putting in your your tasks and tracking your habits and doing the
174. 00:10:02 journaling.
175. 00:10:04 So it's easier to hit the ground running with this.
176. 00:10:07 And more information can be found at obsidianuniversity.com/cojordkicksoffJanuary22nd.
177. 00:10:14 And would love to have you join us.
178. 00:10:16 All right, let's talk about today's book.
179. 00:10:20 And today's book I picked because it was one that I knew was going to be popular in my
180. 00:10:27 circles because it's written by the what does it say on the cover?
181. 00:10:35 The world's most followed productivity expert, YouTuber Ali Abdahl.
182. 00:10:42 And I don't care for that that title there, but I do like Ali's material.
183. 00:10:51 I've been following his story for a long time and he was a doctor.
184. 00:10:56 He tells a lot of that story actually in the book, but started YouTube on the side and
185. 00:11:00 then that eventually became the the main thing.
186. 00:11:04 And he's put together the part time YouTuber Academy that I went through.
187. 00:11:09 And that's a really great was a cohort when I did it.
188. 00:11:12 I think it's now a course, but got a lot out of it.
189. 00:11:18 That's actually the reason that my YouTube channel is actually getting some traction is
190. 00:11:21 because I'm just applying all the things that Ali talked about there.
191. 00:11:24 So I like his style.
192. 00:11:26 I like his material.
193. 00:11:28 I've benefited from a lot of the stuff that he's done.
194. 00:11:31 So this book is called feel good productivity, how to do more of what matters to you.
195. 00:11:36 And I have to say that the title feel good productivity.
196. 00:11:40 I don't really like because it kind of frames it as well, just do what you want to do.
197. 00:11:48 It kind of reminds me of Cal Newport rails against the passion mindset.
198. 00:11:53 That's kind of what it triggers in me is like feel good productivity is the passion mindset,
199. 00:11:57 but I don't think that's necessarily a fair characterization.
200. 00:11:59 So we'll get into the specifics here.
201. 00:12:02 It's broken into three main parts with an introduction and then a last word.
202. 00:12:06 So introduction and then part one is energize.
203. 00:12:10 Part two is on block and part three is sustain.
204. 00:12:15 And then the last section, the last word, think like a productivity scientist.
205. 00:12:19 You kind of like the framing of that and I think it's a good way to include the book.
206. 00:12:23 Curious your first thoughts on feel good productivity, Corey, what did you think when you picked
207. 00:12:27 it up?
208. 00:12:29 So I didn't really have, I mean, I knew Ali Abdul.
209. 00:12:34 So I didn't really have like an opinion necessarily on what the book might be like.
210. 00:12:39 I agree with you.
211. 00:12:40 The title is I could give or take the title.
212. 00:12:51 But I can see the argument he's making and I understand where it came from.
213. 00:12:57 I know the work that he does on YouTube and then I knew of his transition from being a
214. 00:13:02 doctor to being a YouTuber and a content creator.
215. 00:13:06 I don't think I realized that there's a lot of other things.
216. 00:13:10 I had no idea that this book he says in the book that it was 10 years in the making.
217. 00:13:16 So could not be when I looked at the table of contents, it could not be more different
218. 00:13:20 than the last book we read, the difficult conversations book because it's three sections.
219. 00:13:25 Every section has three chapters.
220. 00:13:27 In every chapter, there are these, you know, few, these six things that we work on, right?
221. 00:13:31 And it's very much the like super clean, this is the formula and I'm going to plug into
222. 00:13:37 the formula.
223. 00:13:39 We'll talk later about how I think that might have been caused certain things to happen
224. 00:13:43 in the creation of the book.
225. 00:13:46 Did every, you know, did every section need six experiments?
226. 00:13:48 I don't know if they did, but that was my general first take on the book.
227. 00:13:53 Yeah, I think that's my general.
228. 00:13:57 Cool.
229. 00:13:58 Well, I'm not sure about the 10 years in the making.
230. 00:14:01 I get why he frames it that way.
231. 00:14:06 But I also know that the book project, at least, you know, from being a subscriber to Ollie's
232. 00:14:14 newsletter and watching some of his videos, I profess I don't watch all of his videos.
233. 00:14:21 I'm a weird YouTuber because I like make more YouTube videos than I actually watch.
234. 00:14:28 I'm telling myself that that's a good thing because then I'm less influenced by other people
235. 00:14:33 and I am less likely to fall into the comparison trap.
236. 00:14:36 If I see somebody else doing something really good, I tend to be like, "Oh, I can't do that."
237. 00:14:40 I walk away from it.
238. 00:14:42 So ignorance is bliss a little bit, I think, there for me.
239. 00:14:45 Well, and one of your mantras is consumed don't create, right?
240. 00:14:49 So that actually, or sorry, create don't consume.
241. 00:14:52 I mixed it up.
242. 00:14:53 Sorry.
243. 00:14:54 One of your mantras is create don't consume.
244. 00:14:55 I thought you were trolling me there for a second.
245. 00:14:56 No, I was not.
246. 00:14:57 I just mixed it up.
247. 00:14:58 My fault.
248. 00:14:59 Yeah, create not consume.
249. 00:15:01 But everything that you create is also downstream from what you consume, I believe.
250. 00:15:05 So I don't know.
251. 00:15:06 It's not that you don't consume, but you're curating what you consume.
252. 00:15:09 You're strategic about it.
253. 00:15:11 But all that to say, like, I feel, and maybe I'm misremembering the story, but it seems
254. 00:15:16 like Ali was approached about the book deal and then was like, "Hey, that sounds interesting.
255. 00:15:23 I'll do that."
256. 00:15:24 And that story that I recall, whether it's true or not, I don't think that happened 10
257. 00:15:28 years ago.
258. 00:15:29 But I also understand that the stuff that he has been learning and the things that have
259. 00:15:34 allowed him to do what he does first as a doctor and then now as a YouTuber.
260. 00:15:39 And it's even beyond a YouTuber.
261. 00:15:41 So when I say Ali Abdals a YouTuber, he's also like, he organizes and runs a small team.
262. 00:15:46 So I know how hard that is.
263. 00:15:48 YouTuber doesn't do it justice.
264. 00:15:50 There's a lot more opportunity to apply productivity principles than just sitting down
265. 00:15:56 and making stuff.
266. 00:15:58 So I feel like he's speaking from a place that he's had experience and he's had to
267. 00:16:03 learn and grow and understand the stuff by doing it.
268. 00:16:07 So those are typically the best kind of books in my opinion.
269. 00:16:11 And my take on the 10 years was it started when he started studying these things.
270. 00:16:16 I think he said he was a psychology minor or he got into psychology and learning about
271. 00:16:22 psychology.
272. 00:16:23 So that was my thing of when it started.
273. 00:16:25 And if you look at the numerous references he gives, I mean, there's just psychology
274. 00:16:32 researchers all the way through it.
275. 00:16:33 So it's behavioral psychologists and those type of things all the way through it.
276. 00:16:36 So that's very easy to see how he said it was 10 years ago and then the book project came.
277. 00:16:42 Yep.
278. 00:16:43 Cool.
279. 00:16:44 So let's jump in and talk through the introduction first.
280. 00:16:49 This is a fairly short section.
281. 00:16:50 It starts off by talking about this really stressful point in his doctor's career.
282. 00:16:57 And I think that's like very attention grabbing, very engaging.
283. 00:17:02 So that's a great way to start it.
284. 00:17:04 And I also really like in this section he frames the candle problem, which was something that
285. 00:17:08 was developed by Carl Dunker if I grab the notes correctly.
286. 00:17:13 And the problem goes like this.
287. 00:17:15 You have three objects, a candle, a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.
288. 00:17:19 How do you stick the candle to the corkboard on the wall so that when it's lit, the candle
289. 00:17:22 wax won't drip onto the table below.
290. 00:17:26 And all these points was that most people ignore the solution, which is that the thumbtack
291. 00:17:31 box itself is a candle holder.
292. 00:17:35 And I think that is a cool visual because I agree with him that when it comes to productivity,
293. 00:17:42 a lot of people try to solve the problem the wrong way.
294. 00:17:46 I think primarily they try to do it by getting more efficient and they try to just like cram
295. 00:17:51 more work in, which I don't know, maybe that's just part of everybody's productivity journey.
296. 00:17:56 I mean, that's how I kind of came into learning about productivity myself.
297. 00:18:01 I was working at the family business and I was trying to get a little bit more efficient
298. 00:18:04 so I could get out of there a little bit earlier.
299. 00:18:06 So I picked up getting things done by David Allen started my lists and the tickler file
300. 00:18:12 and all that kind of stuff and it provides some immediate relief.
301. 00:18:16 So I think that there's a lot of good that comes from that.
302. 00:18:19 But then that's not enough because what the next step is, is that you have more margin.
303. 00:18:23 Now you have more space that gets filled by something.
304. 00:18:26 So at some point you got to figure out what is important to you.
305. 00:18:30 It's why I like Kelney Porte's Deep Life Stack so much.
306. 00:18:34 Ali Abdahl is framing it here as feel good productivity and this is all based off of
307. 00:18:39 the research behind positive emotions and how those affect our cognitive processes.
308. 00:18:44 So if you really want to be productive, Ali's arguing, then you should figure out a way
309. 00:18:48 to do what you like.
310. 00:18:51 That's not exactly the right framing here.
311. 00:18:53 But the reason that feel good productivity works is that it boosts our energy, it reduces
312. 00:18:58 our stress and it also enriches our life.
313. 00:19:01 And he also says that success doesn't lead to feeling good, feeling good leads to success,
314. 00:19:05 which I think that I agree with.
315. 00:19:07 Can we talk about that more?
316. 00:19:08 Yes.
317. 00:19:09 Like the that quote because I wanted to talk about that quote.
318. 00:19:12 So success doesn't lead to feeling good, feeling good leads to success.
319. 00:19:16 And I don't like that statement.
320. 00:19:21 I think there's like way more nuance there.
321. 00:19:22 And I don't remember like how much he breaks it down in the introduction.
322. 00:19:25 But I agree that feeling good can lead to success, but I don't think that feeling good.
323. 00:19:34 Like, okay, so I wake up in the morning and I'm feeling great and everything's good.
324. 00:19:38 But at the same time, I'm completely shirking every responsibility that I have.
325. 00:19:43 And I'm okay with that.
326. 00:19:44 Like I kind of had a little bit of a joke back on that one.
327. 00:19:50 I get what he's going for in terms of the overarching nature of the book, right?
328. 00:19:53 Like, okay, if you're just going at this from a completely disciplined use time as effectively
329. 00:19:58 as we possibly can strategy, you're missing something.
330. 00:20:01 You're missing this big piece, right?
331. 00:20:02 There's this other piece of your wellbeing, your motivation, your things that he would
332. 00:20:06 call the feel good side of it.
333. 00:20:09 But at the same time, I don't think we can just say that, you know, that just because
334. 00:20:14 I feel good about about doing something that it's going to lead me to success, I may be
335. 00:20:18 feeling good about doing a bunch of activities that have nothing to do with something else
336. 00:20:22 in my world that I would say I want to be successful at.
337. 00:20:25 So if I want to be an author, right, like talking about books does not help me get to
338. 00:20:31 actually being an author of a book, even though I feel really good about talking about books.
339. 00:20:35 I just don't ever write words.
340. 00:20:37 And that's where I kind of had to have a rub with that statement.
341. 00:20:42 Yeah, I can understand that, but I, and I think I probably had the same initial reaction,
342. 00:20:50 but the more that I brewed on that, I think that he is right from a certain perspective.
343. 00:20:59 Because I think if you're going to try to do creative work specifically, which is what
344. 00:21:04 he does, you can't consistently do that if you've got nothing in the tank.
345. 00:21:09 Like you have to make sure that you are refilling.
346. 00:21:14 And so I don't think he's saying it in the sense of, well, you just wait until you feel
347. 00:21:22 good and then the success is automatically going to come or because they think about
348. 00:21:27 it like his whole prior to being a YouTuber, he was a doctor and he went through medical
349. 00:21:33 school and that's not an easy thing to do.
350. 00:21:36 And even the stories that he shares, those are some high pressure situations.
351. 00:21:42 So he's kind of done it the other way too.
352. 00:21:44 He's kind of brute forced it before.
353. 00:21:47 And he's basically saying, I recognize now that that's not the best approach.
354. 00:21:52 And I think typically when you have an experience like that and you realize that was the wrong
355. 00:21:56 approach, the pendulum tends to swing more the other way.
356. 00:22:02 I've seen that in my life too.
357. 00:22:04 I tend to do that.
358. 00:22:06 And I think if we get to the later chapters where talking about the alignment and making
359. 00:22:15 sure that you're working in the right areas and for the right things, this all becomes
360. 00:22:20 a lot more, it makes a lot more sense because if I'm aligned, I'm more likely to feel good.
361. 00:22:27 If I'm aligned with what I'm doing and I'm feeling good, then I'm more motivated to do
362. 00:22:31 those things.
363. 00:22:32 So it could have been that just the fact that this statement coming at the very, very front
364. 00:22:36 end of the book, if this would have come at the end of the book, I may not have felt
365. 00:22:40 as strongly as I felt about it.
366. 00:22:42 Sure.
367. 00:22:43 That's a good point.
368. 00:22:44 I get why he would put it at the beginning of the book though.
369. 00:22:47 I mean, that's right on the cover, feel good productivity and also I don't know Ali personally,
370. 00:22:51 but he seems to me like the kind of guy who's just like, yeah, I'm just going to say this.
371. 00:22:56 Yeah.
372. 00:22:57 Yeah, I agree.
373. 00:22:58 So.
374. 00:22:59 All right, we'll go into section one here and there's three chapters in each of these sections.
375. 00:23:05 I think we'll try to go through all of the chapters, but really we're going to frame
376. 00:23:10 the discussion through the different parts.
377. 00:23:12 So part one is energized and then the three chapters here play power and people.
378. 00:23:18 Let's start with play.
379. 00:23:21 So the main point here is that if you really want to do something with excellence, you
380. 00:23:30 kind of can't put all this pressure on it to be something.
381. 00:23:35 You have to kind of hold it lightly and you have to kind of be curious.
382. 00:23:40 And the point that he's making at the beginning, the instruction, I guess, is that life is
383. 00:23:46 stressful so we should embrace play because it's going to make it more fun.
384. 00:23:51 And he has a bunch of different ways to do that, which are all of these experiments.
385. 00:23:56 I'm not really sure I like the framing of the experiments, but essentially each of these
386. 00:24:01 experiments is like a principle.
387. 00:24:04 And I get why he did it as an experiment.
388. 00:24:05 I mean, he's a doctor and he's leaned into the whole scientific aspect of this.
389. 00:24:12 So an experiment just kind of makes sense.
390. 00:24:14 But the first experiment he talks about choosing your character.
391. 00:24:18 So he's saying, and I just picked this one because he has eight different play personalities
392. 00:24:23 here.
393. 00:24:24 And there's the collector, the competitor, the explorer, the creator, the storyteller,
394. 00:24:29 the joker, the director, or the kinesthet.
395. 00:24:32 And I'm curious, Corey, is there one of those?
396. 00:24:34 Has he read this that you identified with?
397. 00:24:37 I was going to ask you the exact same question.
398. 00:24:40 You beat me to it.
399. 00:24:42 I would say no, there's not one of them.
400. 00:24:46 But I think there's two of them that if you smush them together, that's where I sit.
401. 00:24:52 So I think I sit more on the director and the kinesthet side of it.
402. 00:24:57 So I just like figuring out how to lead things well and kind of making the ships run.
403. 00:25:05 And then the industrial systems engineer in me says, okay, now, how do we make it run
404. 00:25:10 better?
405. 00:25:11 Right?
406. 00:25:12 There's this thing or we're wasting this much time here.
407. 00:25:14 We could be doing this in this different way.
408. 00:25:16 And then when I sit down and think about, like, okay, I've got a pocket of an hour or
409. 00:25:21 two hours or honestly, like one of the, one of the things I prioritize highly in my weekly
410. 00:25:28 scheduling is, all right, where am I going to get out and actually get some exercise
411. 00:25:31 in or be outside in nature or move because I feel significantly better in the day if
412. 00:25:38 I've done something physical, like moved my body in any way.
413. 00:25:42 So I think those are the two, the two areas where I resonate.
414. 00:25:45 What about you?
415. 00:25:46 Gotcha.
416. 00:25:47 Well, you're maybe making me change my mind because I am the same way where I need to
417. 00:25:52 get outside specifically.
418. 00:25:54 That was a big takeaway for me during the COVID lockdowns.
419. 00:25:57 I ran our bike every day from like March to October, which was not a small feat in Wisconsin.
420. 00:26:04 But definitely it helped my emotional state for sure.
421. 00:26:09 I think the two that kind of stand out to me are the creator and the director.
422. 00:26:14 The creator more so for me, but I do like to plan and organize things as well.
423. 00:26:19 So it's definitely the director piece.
424. 00:26:21 If you wouldn't have said creator, I would have been very surprised, right?
425. 00:26:24 Like, if I was looking down through these and I was like, I think Mike's going to say
426. 00:26:28 creator, you know, I'd be surprised if he didn't.
427. 00:26:30 Well, what's interesting about that though is like there was a period and I've talked
428. 00:26:33 about this before, so I won't tell the whole story.
429. 00:26:35 But I did say, you know, I guess I'm just not creative.
430. 00:26:39 Like I struggled with that piece for a long time.
431. 00:26:42 So I don't know.
432. 00:26:44 I mean, out of those eight different personalities is basically taking the approach of like your
433. 00:26:48 life as an RPG, which is kind of a cool framing, but I'm not sure it's quite that clean.
434. 00:26:52 Like I personally believe that everyone is creative.
435. 00:26:55 You just have to find the right way to express it.
436. 00:26:59 But yeah, out of the options that he gave us.
437. 00:27:02 Those are the ones that that stood out to me.
438. 00:27:04 The other thing I liked from this section is the idea of side quests.
439. 00:27:10 So I'm not sure, Corey, are you a gamer at all?
440. 00:27:13 So I am not a gamer at all.
441. 00:27:14 I've tried.
442. 00:27:15 I want to be like, I think it would be a ton of fun to get immersed in these certain video
443. 00:27:21 games where like, you know, like Zelda, right?
444. 00:27:24 Like I hear about people playing Zelda and I think, man, that would be awesome.
445. 00:27:27 And I get bored in like 15 minutes.
446. 00:27:29 I'm like, yeah, this is fine, but I could be doing much other different things with my
447. 00:27:34 life, such as like reading a book, right?
448. 00:27:36 Like that's, you know, that's where my nature goes.
449. 00:27:39 I do a bunch of side quests, but I'm not a gamer.
450. 00:27:41 So go ahead.
451. 00:27:42 Gotcha.
452. 00:27:43 Well, Zelda is the one that came to mind for me because that is, I think the perfect application
453. 00:27:50 of this principle, I would say I'm a casual gamer.
454. 00:27:55 I have kids who are into gaming.
455. 00:27:57 They are much more serious about it than I am, but I've, well, you've got to switch and
456. 00:28:02 I've played through both Breath of the Wild and the New One, which is Tears of the Kingdom,
457. 00:28:07 I believe.
458. 00:28:09 And those games are crazy.
459. 00:28:11 It's like a big open world and like, if you're really going to do everything in it, you could
460. 00:28:15 spend hundreds of hours.
461. 00:28:17 And that's kind of the beauty of it is, I mean, on one level, I'll think about that
462. 00:28:22 in like 100 hours playing a video game, what a waste of time.
463. 00:28:25 But also I understand the appeal of when you're in there, like the actual storyline, you could
464. 00:28:31 crank through it pretty quickly.
465. 00:28:33 I don't know what the, maybe it's 15 hours or something like that.
466. 00:28:38 But then there's always all of these additional side quests that you can do.
467. 00:28:43 And I see my kids doing this and I recognize I do the same thing when I play, like I'll
468. 00:28:47 go into a new town or whatever.
469. 00:28:48 And the first thing I do is I just go talk to everybody, I find out what all the shops
470. 00:28:52 are.
471. 00:28:53 And I figure out what are the side quests that are available here.
472. 00:28:58 And then with the second one specifically, like I put a bunch of time into it, but I'm
473. 00:29:04 nowhere close to actually beating the game because the side quests are so fascinating
474. 00:29:09 to me.
475. 00:29:10 I'm going to collect all of the memories and then I'm going to visit all the Sky Islands,
476. 00:29:13 you know, all that kind of stuff.
477. 00:29:16 That's fun for me.
478. 00:29:17 So I like this idea side quests.
479. 00:29:20 I don't know that I have a specific way of how I'm going to apply this to my life, but
480. 00:29:26 I did jot this down as an action item to start thinking about side quests for my date.
481. 00:29:30 So the way I'm envisioning this, I've got my three to five tasks on my note card and
482. 00:29:35 I'm working through, but if there's something that piques my interest throughout the day,
483. 00:29:39 maybe I come across an article on a cool new obsidian plugin and I want to explore that
484. 00:29:44 I will, as long as I'm able to continue to make progress on the things that are important,
485. 00:29:50 I'll use some of that margin that's built into my time block plan to go explore the
486. 00:29:55 side quests and I won't feel bad about it.
487. 00:29:58 Yeah.
488. 00:29:59 And I do this with like apps.
489. 00:30:02 So I love finding apps and trying to do things in different ways through like iPhone apps
490. 00:30:08 or Mac apps.
491. 00:30:10 The other one would be teaching, right?
492. 00:30:12 Like, oh, okay.
493. 00:30:13 I've got this concept.
494. 00:30:14 I've taught it this way for the last four times.
495. 00:30:16 What if I taught it this way and we kind of do like a little mini side quest on, you know,
496. 00:30:20 that's how I keep that process fun, at least for me.
497. 00:30:23 I can't tell you that the students think it's fun, but that's how I at least keep it fun
498. 00:30:27 for me is trying to do these little, what if we did it this way or what if we pushed
499. 00:30:30 in in this button?
500. 00:30:31 So yeah, I really like the side quest part of this because I think it's a good way to
501. 00:30:37 keep things more creative and more fun through some work that you may not think is that fun.
502. 00:30:45 Right.
503. 00:30:46 Right.
504. 00:30:47 All right.
505. 00:30:48 Let's talk about chapter two power because there's one other thing I for sure want to
506. 00:30:50 discuss in here and that is this idea of vicarious mastery.
507. 00:31:00 So when he talks about power, I don't think he's talking about Robert Greene's 48 laws
508. 00:31:05 of power.
509. 00:31:06 He finds power as personal empowerment.
510. 00:31:09 So I guess another term for that would be like self efficacy, maybe self determination,
511. 00:31:16 which those are those are topics that I really like.
512. 00:31:20 But he talked about the experiment number two, the social model method.
513. 00:31:25 And he talked about vicarious mastery, which was coined by Albert Bandura and even talked
514. 00:31:31 about Albert Bandura in the book.
515. 00:31:35 However, I am not sure that the research here, I don't know, I've seen that exact research
516. 00:31:47 used other places more effectively.
517. 00:31:50 And so I've experienced with the family business, which is computer software primarily for special
518. 00:31:57 education.
519. 00:31:58 So like we have this whole line of software for video modeling for real low functioning
520. 00:32:03 individuals, where they see somebody practicing a social skill, for example, and because they're
521. 00:32:10 watching it, they can then generalize that and they can recreate it.
522. 00:32:14 It's like the most effective way to teach these skills to individuals.
523. 00:32:20 And that's all based on the research behind video modeling, which is where Albert Bandura
524. 00:32:26 comes in, you know, where like if you see somebody do something, then you can, you can
525. 00:32:30 do it.
526. 00:32:31 And Ali's kind of talking about this from a different angle, I feel, but not really talking
527. 00:32:37 about the video modeling piece.
528. 00:32:39 And I feel like that's the thing that maybe could have gone a little bit deeper there.
529. 00:32:44 Like he's not wrong in his framing of this, but it's also not the most powerful example
530. 00:32:49 of it.
531. 00:32:50 And that's just because of the experience that I have.
532. 00:32:53 But let me just share like one specific study that stands out to me, which I think actually
533. 00:32:58 fits better than the Albert Bandura research.
534. 00:33:02 And that's this University of Chicago study where they had the basketball players.
535. 00:33:07 Maybe you've heard this one before, where the one group practiced free throws for an
536. 00:33:11 hour a day for 30 days and next group practiced or they didn't actually practice, but they
537. 00:33:16 visualized.
538. 00:33:17 So this, this concept here that there's picturing themselves, making the free throws and the
539. 00:33:22 third group did nothing.
540. 00:33:23 And then after 30 days, the group that did nothing, obviously they didn't improve the
541. 00:33:27 group that shot the free throws, they improved a lot.
542. 00:33:30 But the group that didn't actually touch a basketball, but visualize themselves making
543. 00:33:34 the free throws, they improved by almost as much.
544. 00:33:36 Yeah.
545. 00:33:37 Right.
546. 00:33:38 I don't have the study in front of me.
547. 00:33:39 I don't have the exact numbers, but I've seen that, you know, hundreds, if not thousands
548. 00:33:43 of times.
549. 00:33:44 And that I feel is like more powerful for the argument that he's making here, which is,
550. 00:33:50 you know, if you really want to be able to do something, then you can learn to do it other
551. 00:33:54 ways, you could watch other people do something and then you can successfully recreate that
552. 00:34:01 if you do it the right way.
553. 00:34:03 Yeah.
554. 00:34:04 So one, a couple, a couple of things.
555. 00:34:07 I think Ali does a good job here at hitting the 30,000 foot view of psychology literature
556. 00:34:15 around productivity, motivation, you know, those type of things in terms of the names
557. 00:34:21 he's researched and the people and the studies, they're all what I would consider credible,
558. 00:34:27 right?
559. 00:34:28 Like when I was in my grad program, I mean, we read about a lot of the stuff we read.
560. 00:34:31 I read a lot of these folks work for different reasons, educational, but for different reasons.
561. 00:34:37 So there, you know, if there was a validity there, you know, from, okay, like I can trust
562. 00:34:42 what he's telling me here.
563. 00:34:44 I think where you're saying about the, is this the best example or, you know, I actually
564. 00:34:49 kind of didn't, you know, resonate with that example as much.
565. 00:34:52 I think this got lost between the experiments and then the justification for the experiment,
566. 00:34:57 right?
567. 00:34:58 Like I think more of the emphasis of this book was getting these six experiments done for
568. 00:35:03 every chapter and I'm going to tie into what I, what I can tie into.
569. 00:35:08 And I think that's just a natural byproduct of the way he, the way he structured the book.
570. 00:35:12 I don't think it's bad.
571. 00:35:13 I just think it's there, there are better examples.
572. 00:35:17 And I think your, your example that you gave of the basketball study is a, is a more, it's
573. 00:35:22 a more tangible or in a more higher takeaway, if you will.
574. 00:35:26 I get where he's coming from though, because he's basically touching on a lot of different
575. 00:35:31 principles and he really can't go super deep in any one of these if he's going to do six
576. 00:35:35 experiments, a chapter across nine different chapters.
577. 00:35:39 Yeah.
578. 00:35:40 Yeah.
579. 00:35:41 So, but there's some really good stuff in here.
580. 00:35:42 I mean, he talks about the Shoshone approach, which is beginner's mind.
581. 00:35:47 The protege effect where when you teach something to someone else, you learn it better yourself.
582. 00:35:52 And then there's even something a little bit later here, which I thought was really profound.
583. 00:35:57 When we can't take ownership of the situation, you can still take ownership of the process.
584. 00:36:01 Like, yes, 100%.
585. 00:36:03 We could have an hour long conversation on that specifically because that is the thing
586. 00:36:08 that I feel a lot of people get stuck with.
587. 00:36:11 And maybe it's a bit of a leap for people to get to that point from the introduction.
588. 00:36:17 But I think that this is exactly what someone who picks up feel good productivity needs
589. 00:36:22 is to recognize that the situation isn't necessarily just going to work itself out, but that's
590. 00:36:28 okay.
591. 00:36:29 You can take ownership of your situation and you can steer your own ship without somebody
592. 00:36:35 giving you permission to do that.
593. 00:36:37 It's not that explicit in this book, but the threat is there and I really like it.
594. 00:36:41 Are you interested in talking about chapter three?
595. 00:36:44 Because if not, I have a real quick hit on chapter three.
596. 00:36:47 Yeah, let's talk real briefly chapter three.
597. 00:36:51 So the thing that I just wanted to call out from this is...
598. 00:36:56 So chapter three is called People.
599. 00:36:58 And he talks about energy vampires at the beginning, people who suck the energy from
600. 00:37:02 you.
601. 00:37:03 I've heard this frame differently by Michael Hyatt and I think it might have actually
602. 00:37:05 came from Dan Sullivan originally.
603. 00:37:07 I'll see if I can dig up this blog post.
604. 00:37:09 It's quite old now, but I remember reading a Michael Hyatt blog post about only higher
605. 00:37:15 people that have the batteries included.
606. 00:37:17 It was basically talking about people who have their own energy source and people who
607. 00:37:20 just suck the life out of everybody in the room.
608. 00:37:23 So that is getting into emotional intelligence, which I think is fascinating.
609. 00:37:28 But the one thing I really wanted to call off...
610. 00:37:31 Well, actually I'm wrong, two things.
611. 00:37:33 One, I want to give a plug for in the faith-based productivity community and in the City University
612. 00:37:38 community actually.
613. 00:37:39 I've been doing these live co-working sessions, which are exactly like the writers' hours
614. 00:37:44 that he's talking about.
615. 00:37:45 And these work.
616. 00:37:46 These are cool.
617. 00:37:48 We show up, we turn our cameras on, we share our intentions and we work in silence for
618. 00:37:51 an hour.
619. 00:37:52 And then at the end, we share what we got done, which that's pretty cool.
620. 00:37:55 And then the Benjamin Franklin thing, I wanted to talk about that too.
621. 00:37:58 I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at.
622. 00:38:01 Well, so let me hit on the one, the comrade idea.
623. 00:38:06 This comrade mindset is one of them.
624. 00:38:09 When I was in grad school, a lot of us successfully wrote our dissertations through this model.
625. 00:38:16 We basically said, we looked every semester and said, "Where is the hole in your schedule
626. 00:38:20 to where you can come in and we're just going to sit in a room together?"
627. 00:38:23 And the first five minutes is chatting and like, "Hey, how are you doing?"
628. 00:38:27 Whatever, you're getting your other stuff out and making all your kind of noise.
629. 00:38:29 And then for the next two hours, three hours, whatever it ended up being, we're not going
630. 00:38:34 to talk unless somebody has a very specific question that they need help with.
631. 00:38:39 And we're just going to work and we're all going to do this together.
632. 00:38:41 And there were probably six of us and man, is it effective?
633. 00:38:45 So exactly what you're describing, it is a, that you do through the faith-based work
634. 00:38:49 to the community.
635. 00:38:51 It is super effective in terms of that.
636. 00:38:53 So that was really the one I wanted to hit out of people.
637. 00:38:55 I wanted to make sure we didn't move past it before I could talk about it.
638. 00:38:59 Nice.
639. 00:39:00 Yeah.
640. 00:39:01 So that Comrade versus competitor mindset, I've heard it framed differently of like abundance
641. 00:39:07 versus scarcity.
642. 00:39:08 I think that's kind of tied to this too because if you have a scarcity mindset, then everything
643. 00:39:13 is a threat.
644. 00:39:15 Everyone is a competitor.
645. 00:39:17 And if I win, you lose vice versa.
646. 00:39:20 So I like the Comrade mindset.
647. 00:39:23 But again, like there's a whole bunch more that goes into that abundance mindset that
648. 00:39:28 doesn't have room to talk about here.
649. 00:39:30 I do like this story about Benjamin Franklin though.
650. 00:39:34 I liked it too.
651. 00:39:35 So Benjamin Franklin in 1737, he's running for reelection in the Pennsylvania Assembly.
652. 00:39:41 He's got a rival whose propaganda is the word that Ali used, but he was threatening Franklin's
653. 00:39:46 reelection campaign.
654. 00:39:47 So this was before he did all the stuff that he's known for.
655. 00:39:51 He's worried that he's going to lose.
656. 00:39:52 And there's this guy who just basically relentlessly criticizes everything that he does.
657. 00:39:59 They have complete different perspectives and opinions on everything.
658. 00:40:04 So Benjamin Franklin hears that this guy has a rare book.
659. 00:40:08 And so he asks to borrow it.
660. 00:40:12 And the guy gives it to him.
661. 00:40:14 So then when he returns it, he puts a kind note in the book and basically like they never
662. 00:40:18 talk about it again after that.
663. 00:40:19 But after that, they became good friends despite their opposing views.
664. 00:40:24 And this is the Benjamin Franklin effect.
665. 00:40:26 He calls it, "When someone asks us for help, we think better of them.
666. 00:40:29 I think this is kind of cool."
667. 00:40:31 This ties into me to make somebody the expert.
668. 00:40:36 So okay, you're in this situation and there's maybe this hostile relationship or just not
669. 00:40:42 a wonderful one.
670. 00:40:43 If I walk in and I ask them, I'm like, "Can you help me with this?
671. 00:40:47 You are clearly expert in this thing.
672. 00:40:49 Can you help me fix this thing?
673. 00:40:51 Or can you help me think through this problem?"
674. 00:40:54 And you just see everything kind of melt away.
675. 00:40:57 And they're like, "Oh, okay."
676. 00:41:00 And it's got to tie into value.
677. 00:41:02 It's got to tie into identity.
678. 00:41:03 It's got to tie into a bunch of these other core fundamental concepts.
679. 00:41:08 But I like this example a lot.
680. 00:41:10 And I think Ali does this a good amount where he'll like, how do you say it?
681. 00:41:16 So the Ben Franklin effect.
682. 00:41:18 Trying to think of another one.
683. 00:41:19 Well, there's the write-off effect, but I have thoughts about that when we get there.
684. 00:41:23 Yes.
685. 00:41:24 But he's got a ton of these effects and these little like quippy things in order to remember
686. 00:41:30 the concepts and the principles of the book, which I appreciate.
687. 00:41:33 I actually like that a lot.
688. 00:41:35 Yeah.
689. 00:41:36 Yeah.
690. 00:41:37 Actually, it's a write-off principle.
691. 00:41:38 But again, put a pin in that for now.
692. 00:41:40 Okay.
693. 00:41:41 If you're ready to move on, chapter four is in the next section.
694. 00:41:44 So section two, unblock, chapter four is seek clarity.
695. 00:41:50 And I don't know, I didn't really like this chapter.
696. 00:41:56 I like the message.
697. 00:41:58 I like the what he's trying to drive home here.
698. 00:42:00 But again, like the format, he's not diving super deep into any one of these things.
699. 00:42:04 And these are all the things that I'm probably the most interested in.
700. 00:42:08 So like the whole idea of seeking clarity, that's why I do the personal retreats.
701. 00:42:14 And it kind of bugs me sometimes when I, I don't know, maybe it shouldn't.
702. 00:42:19 But like just the other day, someone was talking about the 12 week year and like, hey, it is,
703. 00:42:24 what do people think about this book?
704. 00:42:27 And I see the comments, people are leaving behind it.
705. 00:42:31 And it's always like, oh, this book is amazing.
706. 00:42:33 It's going to change your life or, you know, not it's just a bunch of snake oil.
707. 00:42:38 And it's not like it works, but the clarity is the most important thing.
708. 00:42:45 Yeah.
709. 00:42:46 Yeah.
710. 00:42:47 So I'm going to get the clarity doing tactical experiments.
711. 00:42:52 Like this is something that's like, you really got to sink your teeth into this before you
712. 00:42:56 really get it, I think.
713. 00:42:57 But what did you think of the nice?
714. 00:43:00 So the nice goals as opposed to smart goals, right?
715. 00:43:02 Smart goals has been around for a million years.
716. 00:43:04 Yeah.
717. 00:43:05 What do you think of the nice goals and the framing of the nice goals?
718. 00:43:07 Well, I like it better than smart goals.
719. 00:43:09 I'll tell you that.
720. 00:43:10 Okay.
721. 00:43:11 So nice is near term, input based, controllable and energizing.
722. 00:43:16 Yep.
723. 00:43:17 And I think those are better.
724. 00:43:18 Like if you're going to pick a framework to set goals, use these.
725. 00:43:24 However, I still don't think that goals themselves are the answer.
726. 00:43:32 I'm trying to be nicer to goals for, for Bodie Quirk's sake.
727. 00:43:36 He's always texting me.
728. 00:43:38 He's like, hey, when are you going to be nice to goals again?
729. 00:43:41 And the reason I don't like them is because I feel maybe it's just my personality.
730. 00:43:45 I get so attached to the outcome.
731. 00:43:48 When this is done, this thing is what is produced.
732. 00:43:51 There's this result.
733. 00:43:53 And that's dangerous for me because I will kill myself to achieve that goal.
734. 00:44:00 But then the minute that you achieve that goal, the goal posts now move and you have
735. 00:44:04 to set another one.
736. 00:44:06 And very briefly, the genesis of this for me was training for and running my first half
737. 00:44:12 marathon.
738. 00:44:13 I trained, hurt my knee, crossed the finish line.
739. 00:44:17 And then it's like, now what?
740. 00:44:18 Like I remember crossing the finish line.
741. 00:44:20 Yeah, I did it.
742. 00:44:21 Oh, this sucks.
743. 00:44:23 Yeah.
744. 00:44:24 Yep.
745. 00:44:25 So mine, I have a running or a fitness example as well.
746. 00:44:29 So I set this goal when I turned 39 that by the time I was 40, I was going to XYZ, right?
747. 00:44:35 And I called it 4, 4, 4, 4, right?
748. 00:44:37 So 4,000 total miles, 400 of those have to be running by the time I'm 40.
749. 00:44:43 And then I have to work on four things, right?
750. 00:44:45 So they're either a vice or something that, you know, whatever it is.
751. 00:44:49 So I have to work on these four things.
752. 00:44:50 Well, I got to thinking about it and I'm doing this and I'm logging miles and everything's
753. 00:44:55 okay.
754. 00:44:56 The running was actually way easier than the total miles.
755. 00:44:58 The total miles equated out to be like 12 miles a day, which is actually way harder to
756. 00:45:04 do than I thought it was going to be.
757. 00:45:06 And I didn't care how I got the miles walking around my actual runs, double counted if I
758. 00:45:10 was riding the bike.
759. 00:45:12 And then I got to the point and this gets back to Ali's main or his first point in this
760. 00:45:16 is the why, the commander's intent.
761. 00:45:18 Like what are you doing?
762. 00:45:19 What's your purpose and why are you doing this thing?
763. 00:45:21 And I got back to thinking of it and I was like, wait a minute, these 4,000 miles aren't
764. 00:45:26 trying to achieve the goal or achieve the thing that I really want to do achieve.
765. 00:45:30 Yeah, they're going to be fine and they're a good thing to do.
766. 00:45:35 They're not a negative impact on me necessarily as long as I'm not hurting myself, but they're
767. 00:45:39 not actually getting to, he says, ask yourself, what is the purpose behind this?
768. 00:45:44 And then build your list from there or build your goals from there.
769. 00:45:47 And I thought, no, the 4,000 is bad.
770. 00:45:49 That's not actually part of what I want to do.
771. 00:45:52 So I dropped that and I'm like, okay, I'm not going to do the 4,000 miles.
772. 00:45:55 In a former life, I'd have been like, I'm a failure.
773. 00:45:58 Like, oh man, I set this thing out and I didn't do it.
774. 00:46:00 And then look at me, blah, blah, blah.
775. 00:46:02 But because I made an active decision, I said, oh no, this goes against what I'm actually
776. 00:46:08 trying to do.
777. 00:46:09 It gave me the freedom to be like, okay, you can drop that first four and there's nothing
778. 00:46:14 wrong with you.
779. 00:46:16 Everything's okay.
780. 00:46:17 You're still a good, you know what I mean?
781. 00:46:19 You didn't fail miserably.
782. 00:46:21 You made an active decision to do something different.
783. 00:46:24 But I'm rounding this all out.
784. 00:46:27 I like the nearer term way better goals as well as long as they're tied to your why.
785. 00:46:34 And as long as those goals are tied to that why that you set out originally.
786. 00:46:39 Yeah.
787. 00:46:40 I mean, the best version in my opinion is who cares, how many miles you get in, but you
788. 00:46:51 have embraced the identity of a runner.
789. 00:46:53 And so you run regularly and you enjoy it, which that I think connects better to the
790. 00:46:58 whole concept of feel good productivity than setting goals.
791. 00:47:02 So I know Ali has read Tom McCabet's.
792. 00:47:04 He mentions it in this book.
793. 00:47:06 He's got a great book club video on it.
794. 00:47:10 That whole identity based habits, like that was the thing that really clicked for me.
795. 00:47:15 And when I had to do physical therapy and I had to reset my counters, essentially, it's
796. 00:47:20 like, okay, well now had to learn to re-learn to run again, basically.
797. 00:47:25 And I had to learn to love the process.
798. 00:47:28 And that's the thing that that's the reason that I still do it is because I got to that
799. 00:47:33 point.
800. 00:47:34 So the routines and the things that are attached to your identity, I feel like are more important
801. 00:47:39 than than goals, but nice is better than smart.
802. 00:47:44 I liked out of this section as well out of chapter four.
803. 00:47:46 I liked Goldwitzer's effects then why that trigger thing that leads to, you know, and
804. 00:47:53 this is in, you know, he referenced other books.
805. 00:47:55 I can't remember which habits book it was in.
806. 00:47:57 Like there's the one where as I'm brushing my teeth, I do this other thing.
807. 00:48:00 Yeah.
808. 00:48:01 And like you, you, you attach those two together.
809. 00:48:03 I like that as well.
810. 00:48:04 Yeah.
811. 00:48:05 And he talks about time blocking, which I'm a big fan of.
812. 00:48:07 I think you are.
813. 00:48:09 But I don't know that I really like the way that he framed it here.
814. 00:48:14 Again, you know, it's probably, his way is probably better for most people who maybe
815. 00:48:20 this is the first productivity book that they, they read.
816. 00:48:24 I agree, he talks a level one time block the task that you've been avoiding.
817. 00:48:27 And then he says time block most of your day and then time block your ideal week.
818. 00:48:31 I think if I were to take a crack at this, I would, yeah, select a time for the test that
819. 00:48:36 you've been avoiding.
820. 00:48:37 That part's the same.
821. 00:48:38 The reason you're procrastinating on it is because you haven't picked that, that spot,
822. 00:48:41 but the minute that you carve out the time to do it, now you force to put your butt in
823. 00:48:46 the seat and do the thing.
824. 00:48:47 So you're more likely to follow through with it.
825. 00:48:49 But I do think the next piece of it would be the time block your entire day.
826. 00:48:52 I don't think time blocking most of your day works.
827. 00:48:56 At least long term.
828. 00:48:57 I think you need the consistency of giving every hour a job.
829. 00:49:00 That's the whole point like that.
830. 00:49:02 That's the budgeting principle.
831. 00:49:03 If you really want time blocking to work for more than just the activation energy to do
832. 00:49:07 this one thing, if you really want to be productive on a larger scale, then time blocking is the
833. 00:49:13 way to do it because you provide the implementation intentions for all of the hours.
834. 00:49:17 I do like the ideal week too.
835. 00:49:19 I like that as the last piece.
836. 00:49:20 But I think you got to be time blocking your whole day before you get there.
837. 00:49:24 I think this ties into the idea he brings up in chapter, chapter seven, where he's talking
838. 00:49:33 about breaks and scheduling breaks.
839. 00:49:35 I think if you smush these two things together, where you're time blocking your entire day,
840. 00:49:39 but you're intentionally time blocking fun, joy breaks into that day, now this comes together
841. 00:49:46 as a lot cleaner of a picture in my mind.
842. 00:49:50 As I'm time blocking in a way that leads to feel good productivity, if that all ties together.
843. 00:49:57 Yep, I agree.
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875. 00:51:46 All right, chapter five is Find Courage and the message of this one is basically like
876. 00:51:53 it says on the tin.
877. 00:51:55 So I really like this chapter.
878. 00:51:59 I really like the exhortation, I guess, to do the thing.
879. 00:52:04 He talks about how fear can cause us to or can keep us from being productive.
880. 00:52:10 Everything to know our fears is the first step in overcoming them.
881. 00:52:14 He's again got the different experiments.
882. 00:52:17 But the one that I thought was most helpful from my experience, I don't think he addressed
883. 00:52:24 directly here and that is the Tim Ferriss fear setting.
884. 00:52:28 Are you familiar with this exercise?
885. 00:52:30 Only because I've heard you talk about it.
886. 00:52:32 Yeah.
887. 00:52:33 So essentially with fear setting, you let your mind.
888. 00:52:40 Your mind is scared of the unknown, essentially.
889. 00:52:42 So if you're trying to figure out, do I quit my job and go do this thing or make some other
890. 00:52:48 decision, but it seems like a big leap to get there.
891. 00:52:52 Well, okay, so let's think worst case scenario, what might happen if I made this decision.
892. 00:53:00 And you can paint in all the details of like, this is the worst case scenario.
893. 00:53:04 When you get done, you're kind of like, oh, is that it?
894. 00:53:08 Because then once you can see it, you can start to realize that there are ways that
895. 00:53:12 we can mitigate against this and ways that we can avoid certain pieces of this from happening.
896. 00:53:19 And the minute that you start to like, codify it, it doesn't seem so scary anymore once
897. 00:53:24 you understand what the dragons are.
898. 00:53:27 So I feel like that was the most effective thing for me here out of this, this chapter,
899. 00:53:33 but he didn't really talk about it.
900. 00:53:35 He does share some other great strategies though.
901. 00:53:37 So the emotion label, the affective emotion, putting your feelings into words, the identity
902. 00:53:43 label, the 10, 10, 10 rule, which is basically, will this matter in 10 minutes, 10 weeks
903. 00:53:48 or 10 years?
904. 00:53:50 I like the talk or the mentioning of spotlighting.
905. 00:53:54 I totally do this where you assume that everyone is paying attention to you.
906. 00:53:59 But the one that is most interesting to me out of the ones that he covered here is the
907. 00:54:04 Batman effect, which is basically adopting an alter ego.
908. 00:54:09 I have heard some of these stories before about like Beyonce and Sasha Fierce and stuff
909. 00:54:14 like that, but it never really clicked to me that like I could create an alter ego.
910. 00:54:21 This does not resonate with me.
911. 00:54:22 Like the idea of me like putting on my alter ego, like he talked about putting on his glasses
912. 00:54:27 and when he puts on his glasses, even though he doesn't need him anymore because he had
913. 00:54:30 a lysic that like he now is like he thinks about himself differently.
914. 00:54:36 And the closest I can get to this is I dress up in a certain way and that changes like if
915. 00:54:42 I'm wearing sweatpants, I'm much more like, you know, low key, relaxed, whatever.
916. 00:54:46 If I could if I put on nicer clothes, then I'm more in a professional mindset.
917. 00:54:52 But this didn't really resonate with me at all.
918. 00:54:55 So it's funny to say it's funny to hear you say that like this one, this one connected
919. 00:54:59 with you.
920. 00:55:00 You're alter ego B like I want to know who is your person.
921. 00:55:04 That's the thing.
922. 00:55:05 I don't know that I like the full on alter ego, but you brought up the glasses thing and
923. 00:55:10 that I think that there's something there.
924. 00:55:12 I don't think those are the same thing by the way.
925. 00:55:15 Okay.
926. 00:55:16 But they are in the context of the of the book.
927. 00:55:19 I feel like you can do things that is almost it's not environmental, but kind of.
928. 00:55:27 Whereas an alter ego is something totally different.
929. 00:55:30 I don't know.
930. 00:55:31 Like I get it.
931. 00:55:32 I wear glasses too and I feel different.
932. 00:55:34 I'm in a different mode when I put my glasses on than what I'm not wearing them.
933. 00:55:37 I came from basketball practice this morning.
934. 00:55:39 I'm not wearing my glasses at basketball practice.
935. 00:55:41 The minute that I put them on, it's like, okay, now it's time to get to work.
936. 00:55:45 Intellectual mic is here.
937. 00:55:46 I don't know, but it's hard to hard to describe, but I can sort of relate to that.
938. 00:55:51 Or there's a certain sweatshirt that you put on.
939. 00:55:58 With my YouTube videos, for example, I'm conscious of what my environment looks like.
940. 00:56:03 And so I've got a couple specific T-shirts that I think look good on my background.
941. 00:56:08 I got limited options in my basement office with no windows.
942. 00:56:12 So I kind of built up a wardrobe with those.
943. 00:56:15 And when I put one on at the beginning of the day, it's like, okay, it's video day.
944. 00:56:19 It's video day.
945. 00:56:20 It's a different energy to it.
946. 00:56:23 So I think that that is powerful, but also I'm not ready to just name an alter ego and
947. 00:56:30 embrace a new identity when it's time to do something either.
948. 00:56:35 I think, you know, to move us back to one that you talked about before, the 10-10-10
949. 00:56:40 role is what resonated with me out of this chapter.
950. 00:56:43 Will it matter in 10 minutes?
951. 00:56:44 Will it matter in 10 weeks?
952. 00:56:45 Will it matter in 10 years?
953. 00:56:47 And the reason why this one resonates with me is because I find more often than not,
954. 00:56:53 like the 10 years one, you know, a lot of the stuff just won't matter in 10 years.
955. 00:57:00 And we get so, so it's like, I smoosh this together with like spotlighting.
956. 00:57:04 Like a lot of the stuff that I do isn't going to matter in 10 years, and that's okay.
957. 00:57:08 Like that's completely fine.
958. 00:57:10 It's not meant to matter in 10 years.
959. 00:57:11 But in my brain, I want to do the kind of stuff that like 10, 50, 100 years from now,
960. 00:57:17 people are like, yeah, do you remember when Corey did whatever it was?
961. 00:57:20 And then I think back and I go, well, do I really want to do that stuff?
962. 00:57:24 Like, I mean, because sometimes that's good.
963. 00:57:26 And then sometimes that's bad.
964. 00:57:27 And you know, you don't necessarily know how that's going to work.
965. 00:57:31 But that was the one that said out to me is, if I had an action item, you know, out of
966. 00:57:35 this book, I think that's going to be the one, like the top one, the key action item
967. 00:57:40 is, all right, think about those things.
968. 00:57:42 Will it matter in 10, will it matter in 10 weeks, will it matter in 10 years?
969. 00:57:47 And how do you feel about that?
970. 00:57:48 It isn't yes or no.
971. 00:57:50 Like I don't think yes or no is the appropriate answer to that.
972. 00:57:52 It's more a matter of how do you feel about that?
973. 00:57:54 Like, are you okay with that?
974. 00:57:55 Or is that not a good use of your time because it doesn't meet the priorities you want to?
975. 00:58:00 But this ties back into your clarity thing.
976. 00:58:02 If I don't have clarity about the things I want to matter in 10 minutes, 10 weeks or
977. 00:58:07 10 years, that that exercise becomes a little bit more difficult or less, less interesting
978. 00:58:13 or less relevant.
979. 00:58:14 Yep, totally.
980. 00:58:15 All right.
981. 00:58:16 So chapter six is get started.
982. 00:58:21 And again, the premise of this chapter is to, as it says on the tin, start doing the
983. 00:58:29 thing.
984. 00:58:30 Newton's first law applies to productivity as well as physics, takes more energy to get
985. 00:58:34 started than to keep going.
986. 00:58:36 I totally agree with all of this.
987. 00:58:38 I remember one of the things that first clicked with me in terms of beating procrastination
988. 00:58:44 was this concept called the five minute rule, which was I will just do this thing for five
989. 00:58:49 minutes.
990. 00:58:50 And then once you show up and you start doing the thing for five minutes, chances are that
991. 00:58:54 you will follow through and finish it.
992. 00:58:56 But you give yourself permission to disconnect and stop the thing if you really want to after
993. 00:59:02 the five minutes.
994. 00:59:04 So I don't have a whole lot of notes about this section, actually, because this has been
995. 00:59:14 the thing maybe that I've grown the most in since I first started my productivity journey.
996. 00:59:20 Like now if something needs to get done, I am going to find a way to get it done.
997. 00:59:26 I'll use the tools that Ali's talking about here, you know, reduce the environmental friction.
998. 00:59:31 I mean, we could spend hours talking just about how your environment affects your productivity.
999. 00:59:35 But that's really something that people should be thinking about is why are you having this
1000. 00:59:41 feeling of procrastination?
1001. 00:59:42 Why are you resisting this thing every time you sit down to actually do it?
1002. 00:59:46 Maybe you can find a way to make it easier.
1003. 00:59:48 Maybe you can break it down and define the next step.
1004. 00:59:51 Maybe you can track your progress.
1005. 00:59:52 Maybe you can find an accountability buddy like he talks about.
1006. 00:59:57 But I do feel that this is a good way to end this section where really the only way to
1007. 01:00:03 get unblocked is to actually do the thing.
1008. 01:00:07 And whatever you got to do to figure out how to do that, like do it.
1009. 01:00:11 And I think this is a the law of inertia really resonated in terms of, oh yeah, I think it
1010. 01:00:18 resonated from a standpoint of, hey, this is a thing.
1011. 01:00:21 It's not just me, right?
1012. 01:00:22 Like there are more people than just me that say, like, I want to do this thing.
1013. 01:00:26 And then two weeks go by and three weeks go by and four weeks go by.
1014. 01:00:29 And I like what you're saying in terms of, okay, if you want to do a thing and then two,
1015. 01:00:34 three, four weeks go by and you're still not doing it, why?
1016. 01:00:36 Like let's analyze why that is the case.
1017. 01:00:39 That was the main takeaway from chapter six for me.
1018. 01:00:42 The experiment that resonated the most with me was probably either tracking your progress
1019. 01:00:49 or finding an accountability partner.
1020. 01:00:52 Accountability partners have been huge in my life in terms of I want to do a thing.
1021. 01:00:55 I know this is going to be challenging.
1022. 01:00:57 Is there is there a person who can come alongside and do this with?
1023. 01:01:01 I disagree with him on some level because he says a stranger with a similar goal.
1024. 01:01:07 I've never tried to do this with a stranger, but I've always done it with somebody who's
1025. 01:01:12 like in my, not necessarily the immediate circle, but at least like one circle out.
1026. 01:01:18 That way it doesn't feel so, you know, difficult to do the things he says where it's agree
1027. 01:01:24 on the culture, discuss the process in more detail.
1028. 01:01:26 So I think the accountability piece is fantastic.
1029. 01:01:30 And like I think that's a core piece to overcoming the inertia of falling back into your old
1030. 01:01:35 routines or just not doing it.
1031. 01:01:37 I'm just not as sold on like, well, finding a stranger, like finding some like random stranger
1032. 01:01:41 with the similar goal is like, well, how do I, how do I do the other things?
1033. 01:01:44 So yeah, I mean, I, I thought, I thought chapter six, I agree with you.
1034. 01:01:48 It was a good way to wrap up the, the, the section.
1035. 01:01:51 There is something about that though.
1036. 01:01:54 I don't know exactly how to define it, but if you have a stranger with a similar goal
1037. 01:02:01 and you get together and we're going to do this thing and I tell you that I'm going
1038. 01:02:05 to do this thing, like the connection that we have is around doing the thing.
1039. 01:02:12 I will feel like I have to do that thing because I don't want to let you down, even
1040. 01:02:18 though you're a complete stranger.
1041. 01:02:20 Whereas if you have somebody as close to you, you could be like, yeah, I'm going to do this
1042. 01:02:24 thing.
1043. 01:02:25 I think it's easier to just be like, oh yeah, well, it didn't happen.
1044. 01:02:28 And well, they understand they know everything else I got going on.
1045. 01:02:31 I don't know.
1046. 01:02:32 Like there's, there's a, it's almost like they'll forgive me, but the stranger might
1047. 01:02:37 not.
1048. 01:02:38 Yeah.
1049. 01:02:39 Yeah.
1050. 01:02:40 I wonder if there's a service where it's like an accountability buddy service where you
1051. 01:02:45 go on there and you put in, I'm looking for an accountability buddy in X and then like
1052. 01:02:49 somebody else comes in and they're like, I'm looking for that too.
1053. 01:02:52 And then you connect.
1054. 01:02:53 It's like a matchmaking accountability buddy service.
1055. 01:02:56 I'm sure there's something like that.
1056. 01:02:59 I'm listening to a focus mate, but that's more, that's not specifically in a shared,
1057. 01:03:07 shared area or anything.
1058. 01:03:08 It's just you are working with a stranger, but it's like the live co-working sessions
1059. 01:03:12 that I was describing before where you can just schedule those, those calls.
1060. 01:03:15 I think the best version of the positive peer pressure is probably a mastermind group where
1061. 01:03:20 it's very clear that we're here because we want to do this thing, but everybody is very
1062. 01:03:23 much invested in the outcomes.
1063. 01:03:27 So that investment means that you're not going to tolerate it when somebody's like,
1064. 01:03:32 yeah, sorry, I didn't do it.
1065. 01:03:33 Yeah.
1066. 01:03:34 Are you still part of one?
1067. 01:03:35 I couldn't.
1068. 01:03:36 Yeah.
1069. 01:03:37 You were at one point.
1070. 01:03:38 I remember you mentioned it.
1071. 01:03:39 Yeah.
1072. 01:03:40 And I don't know.
1073. 01:03:42 You got to find the right mix of people.
1074. 01:03:46 And you also need to make sure that, like I said, that there's that investment piece.
1075. 01:03:52 So I've been thinking through like, how could I maybe facilitate these in a better, more
1076. 01:03:58 meaningful fashion?
1077. 01:03:59 Did it a long time ago for the Focus Podcast, just connected people who had time blocks
1078. 01:04:04 available.
1079. 01:04:05 But I think most of those didn't really work out because the investment piece wasn't there.
1080. 01:04:09 People were just kicking the tires.
1081. 01:04:11 Well, maybe I'll be interested in this thing.
1082. 01:04:12 Now, you really got to commit to it because you got to develop those relationships to the
1083. 01:04:16 point where you feel like you can't let those other people down.
1084. 01:04:19 Yeah.
1085. 01:04:20 All right.
1086. 01:04:21 What do you think?
1087. 01:04:22 Moving to part three.
1088. 01:04:23 Yeah, let's do it.
1089. 01:04:24 All right.
1090. 01:04:25 So part three is labeled sustain and chapter seven is where we will start.
1091. 01:04:34 And this is conserve.
1092. 01:04:37 The big thing I wanted to chat about from here is burnout.
1093. 01:04:44 Probably because I'm closer to it than I care to admit.
1094. 01:04:49 But I also think he talks about different types of burnout.
1095. 01:04:51 There's overexertion burnout, there's depletion burnout, there's misalignment burnout.
1096. 01:04:57 And burnout, the actual definition that Ali shares is an occupational phenomenon characterized
1097. 01:05:02 by feelings of energy, to energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from
1098. 01:05:09 one's job or feelings of negatism or cynicism related to one's job and reduced professional
1099. 01:05:15 efficacy.
1100. 01:05:17 That's what.
1101. 01:05:18 Yeah.
1102. 01:05:19 I also liked the breakdown of burnout.
1103. 01:05:23 So I've heard of burnout and burnout, I feel like has talked a decent amount about.
1104. 01:05:27 But the three ways he broke it down, overexertion, depletion and misalignment, I thought were
1105. 01:05:34 really good at like thinking about, okay, it's not just that I'm burnout.
1106. 01:05:38 Like, is it, am I burnout for a reason?
1107. 01:05:39 Am I burnout?
1108. 01:05:40 Because there's too much work to do.
1109. 01:05:41 Okay.
1110. 01:05:42 Am I burnout?
1111. 01:05:43 That's overexertion.
1112. 01:05:44 Am I burnout because it's, I'm not resting correctly or I'm not resting well.
1113. 01:05:49 I think he had some interesting pieces here about how we don't rest well.
1114. 01:05:53 And we are inclined more and more to not rest well.
1115. 01:05:58 That's depletion burnout.
1116. 01:05:59 And then there's misalignment burnout and that's doing the wrong thing.
1117. 01:06:02 Like, do I not have the right clarity?
1118. 01:06:04 Do I not have the right way to think about the work that I do in terms of I'm doing a
1119. 01:06:09 lot of things.
1120. 01:06:10 It's just not things that I care about or not things that, as I think Ali would say,
1121. 01:06:14 not things that bring this feel good, this joy to, to my world.
1122. 01:06:19 And I, and I really liked that piece of, of chapter seven.
1123. 01:06:25 Yeah, let's double click on that for a second.
1124. 01:06:28 Cause you kind of framed it as bringing joy through the things that you're doing.
1125. 01:06:32 But I think that, that is the message on the tin.
1126. 01:06:37 But also I feel like this is something that is kind of within your control.
1127. 01:06:41 Like your perspective on your work can be the thing that changes.
1128. 01:06:43 The work doesn't have to, to change for your work to feel very different.
1129. 01:06:47 And it's not just work, but that's the, the easy one.
1130. 01:06:51 So when it comes to this whole conservation idea, I mean, the, the experiments that are
1131. 01:06:57 in here are all around kind of protecting margin and conserving maybe energy.
1132. 01:07:04 So maybe burnout doesn't even really belong in this section, at least how I think of burnout.
1133. 01:07:09 Maybe that really is more tied to the idea of recharging.
1134. 01:07:14 I don't know.
1135. 01:07:15 I mean, I, a case could be made for it here too.
1136. 01:07:16 If you don't have the resources you're going to feel burnt out.
1137. 01:07:21 But I think the thing that's going to determine over a length of time, whether you are going
1138. 01:07:25 to get to that point is going to be your ability to recharge.
1139. 01:07:30 So all of the experiments in here I like, you know, where you're scheduling your breaks,
1140. 01:07:36 you're adding friction to things that are distractions, you're learning to say no to
1141. 01:07:41 things.
1142. 01:07:42 I mean, these are not simple things, but they are very important.
1143. 01:07:45 One thing that did jump out to me though, was that breaks aren't a special treat.
1144. 01:07:48 They're an absolute necessity.
1145. 01:07:49 And you shared the story about he's in the, the ER and things are going sideways and he's
1146. 01:07:57 working really hard and his supervisor comes up and he's like, spend five hours.
1147. 01:08:01 You need to take a break.
1148. 01:08:02 And he's like, what?
1149. 01:08:03 No, this person needs this.
1150. 01:08:04 You know, he's like, no, Ali, no one's going to die if you go have lunch.
1151. 01:08:08 It's like, if you don't take a break, you'll make a mistake.
1152. 01:08:11 And then that's when we've got a problem.
1153. 01:08:14 So I've been thinking about that a lot.
1154. 01:08:16 This isn't necessarily an action item associated with this book, but I am committed to building
1155. 01:08:22 in the sabbaticals to my regular routine this year.
1156. 01:08:27 What do you think about building in sabbaticals in your day?
1157. 01:08:30 Like do you do this?
1158. 01:08:31 Do you have natural sections of break in your day or like when you do your time blocking?
1159. 01:08:38 So you, you know, you time block out every day.
1160. 01:08:40 Do you build in break there?
1161. 01:08:43 Um, not usually.
1162. 01:08:46 So the way that I time block, I use the biggest possible blocks that I can.
1163. 01:08:53 And then by doing that, I build in margin so I can either, if I'm like really being productive
1164. 01:09:02 at the beginning of the day, I'll make a bunch of progress.
1165. 01:09:04 And then at the end in the afternoon, you know, if I'm feeling down, then I'll just,
1166. 01:09:08 I'll take a break then go do something else.
1167. 01:09:11 So sometimes that happens, but otherwise it's just, I've got, you know, two hours to do
1168. 01:09:18 this thing.
1169. 01:09:19 It took me an hour and a half.
1170. 01:09:20 So instead of just immediately starting on the next thing, I'm going to just goof around
1171. 01:09:27 on my side quests for those other, other 30 minutes, because those are fun.
1172. 01:09:31 And those are actually ways that you can, you can recharge.
1173. 01:09:35 So I'm kind of getting into the next chapter.
1174. 01:09:37 Yeah, I think mine, mine with this is I value the front end of the day and the back end
1175. 01:09:44 of the day so strongly that like I want to, I want to try to figure out how to do that
1176. 01:09:51 middle chunk of the day where essentially I'm out of the house, right?
1177. 01:09:53 I'm at the university.
1178. 01:09:54 I'm doing that kind of work.
1179. 01:09:56 I want to make that as efficient as possible that way I can go home and see the boys and
1180. 01:10:01 spend time with the boys before they go to bed.
1181. 01:10:03 And then if I need to do more work, okay, I can re-engage in that either super early
1182. 01:10:07 in the morning or I can re-engage in that later at night.
1183. 01:10:12 So I don't schedule breaks into my typical working hours during the day either, just
1184. 01:10:18 because I'm trying to emphasize that first part of the day and the later part of the
1185. 01:10:22 day for the family.
1186. 01:10:24 Yeah, yeah, makes sense.
1187. 01:10:27 Let's go to the next chapter because I want to continue that topic.
1188. 01:10:30 So one of the ways that I take a break is I simply just switch up the context with this
1189. 01:10:38 whole idea of recharging.
1190. 01:10:41 So there's a couple of things in here about bringing in nature, taking a walk.
1191. 01:10:45 For me, this is going for a run, getting outside.
1192. 01:10:49 So that's not a break.
1193. 01:10:51 That's physically difficult.
1194. 01:10:54 But I can tell you every time I go for a run in the middle of the work day, I come
1195. 01:11:00 back.
1196. 01:11:01 I'm more energized to engage with the creative work that I have to do.
1197. 01:11:06 The co-working space that I have, I picked that one because the, well, couple reasons.
1198. 01:11:14 First of all, I have this little cubicle which you saw when we recorded last time.
1199. 01:11:19 It's like a little glass cube.
1200. 01:11:23 It's like eight by 10 with a 12 foot ceiling and impossible to get all of the echoes out
1201. 01:11:28 of there.
1202. 01:11:29 But I only go there when I have to do a live session or something.
1203. 01:11:32 Most of the time I grab my computer and I go sit in the actual co-working space which
1204. 01:11:36 has these big, beautiful, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the river.
1205. 01:11:42 And the sun will rise and set and it'll come in through those windows and it's amazing.
1206. 01:11:48 It definitely helps my energy levels when I am over there working.
1207. 01:11:55 But the other reason is that there is a bathroom with a shower.
1208. 01:11:58 So I have my running stuff in my office and I'll hit a wall and be like, "Man, I just
1209. 01:12:04 don't feel like doing anything.
1210. 01:12:05 Let's go for a run."
1211. 01:12:07 And then come back, take a shower and every single time, it's like, "Okay, now I'm re-energized."
1212. 01:12:12 That's not the only thing you can do.
1213. 01:12:13 He talked about like, he's got his guitar.
1214. 01:12:17 Actually, it wasn't with this section but he put his guitar in the middle of the room
1215. 01:12:21 so that it was easier to pick up and just play every once in a while.
1216. 01:12:23 I've got a guitar hanging on the wall back here.
1217. 01:12:26 I've done that before where it's just like, "Okay, I just need a context switch.
1218. 01:12:29 I'm going to pick up an instrument and strum around on it a little bit."
1219. 01:12:33 And 10-15 minutes later, my energy levels are much higher.
1220. 01:12:37 See, and this is the point I wish you would have gone to here is if I'm working a physically
1221. 01:12:44 taxing job, where I'm building something, construction, whatever it is, my break can
1222. 01:12:50 very much look like reading a book, where I'm not actually taking a break to your point.
1223. 01:12:55 Like, you're going for a run.
1224. 01:12:56 That's not actually taking a break.
1225. 01:12:58 That's planned into your schedule.
1226. 01:13:00 But it's taking that cognitive break.
1227. 01:13:03 It's switching that context in a way that our brains think we are taking a break, or our
1228. 01:13:08 bodies feel like we are taking a break or we actually are in that context.
1229. 01:13:12 So I really like this conversation because it's like, "Yes, break doesn't mean what
1230. 01:13:18 he gets into later where I sit down and just aimlessly look at the ceiling for 40 minutes."
1231. 01:13:26 It might be that.
1232. 01:13:27 That'd be great.
1233. 01:13:28 I recently got into a non-sleep deep rest.
1234. 01:13:33 Have you ever heard of this?
1235. 01:13:35 No.
1236. 01:13:36 Okay, so non-sleep deep rest is you hit that lull at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon,
1237. 01:13:42 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
1238. 01:13:43 Well, you're not going to take a nap.
1239. 01:13:45 Most people are.
1240. 01:13:46 They're not going to take a nap.
1241. 01:13:48 But you can put on these playlists or there are apps for it where it almost walks you
1242. 01:13:53 through a guided meditation that puts you right on the border of taking a nap.
1243. 01:13:58 You're super-duper close if you do it well.
1244. 01:14:01 And man, you feel a ton better when you're done.
1245. 01:14:04 And some days you need that.
1246. 01:14:05 Some days I need that.
1247. 01:14:07 Other days I need to walk.
1248. 01:14:08 I just need to go out in nature.
1249. 01:14:10 I can't remember if it's in this section or not.
1250. 01:14:11 I think it was in this section where they talked about the fact that they showed the
1251. 01:14:17 pictures to people and the pictures impacted their level of productivity or their ability
1252. 01:14:23 to do a task and the green one or the pretty one versus the gray one.
1253. 01:14:27 And I got to thinking about that in terms of how much is the artificial ability to bring
1254. 01:14:32 nature in even if we can't get a window, we can put pictures of pretty things, pretty
1255. 01:14:37 natural things around us.
1256. 01:14:38 Man, what an impact that potentially has on our psychology and our ability to rest and
1257. 01:14:44 recharge.
1258. 01:14:45 I thought that was a really interesting takeaway.
1259. 01:14:47 Yeah, that's crazy to think about.
1260. 01:14:50 The other thing we should talk about in this section is the write-off principle because
1261. 01:14:54 that's where this is.
1262. 01:14:57 So do you remember the write-off principle?
1263. 01:14:59 Yeah, so the write-off principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission
1264. 01:15:04 to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.
1265. 01:15:08 So you sound like you're very passionate about this or at least you've wanted to talk about
1266. 01:15:12 this.
1267. 01:15:13 I'll tell you my take on it before you dive in.
1268. 01:15:16 I think this is valuable for me.
1269. 01:15:18 So not, I don't like it on the passive nature.
1270. 01:15:23 If I'm going into something and I'm planning to get something done that day and I don't
1271. 01:15:29 do that, that doesn't resonate as well with me or that doesn't feel as good to me.
1272. 01:15:35 If I plan in a day, like no, like I'm writing off this day, almost like taking a vacation
1273. 01:15:39 day, I like this principle a lot.
1274. 01:15:42 I can tell you, you know, from an education standpoint, the holiday break, that's a very
1275. 01:15:48 valuable write-off period of time where there has to be built into there some days where
1276. 01:15:53 I intentionally am not doing anything.
1277. 01:15:55 Like I'm not doing any admin work.
1278. 01:15:57 I'm not doing any kind of stuff to get ready for the next semester because if not, I'm
1279. 01:16:01 just completely wiped, right?
1280. 01:16:02 Like to the point of this chapter being recharge, I won't be able to recharge if I don't do
1281. 01:16:07 that.
1282. 01:16:08 So from that standpoint, I like it, but from a passive standpoint, I really get frustrated
1283. 01:16:13 with those days where it's like, oh, nothing's going my way.
1284. 01:16:16 I'm just writing it off.
1285. 01:16:17 I don't care.
1286. 01:16:18 I'm done with this day.
1287. 01:16:19 I don't like it from that perspective.
1288. 01:16:20 There you go.
1289. 01:16:21 Now what's your take?
1290. 01:16:22 Well, I like the principle itself.
1291. 01:16:25 My issue is with the spelling of this.
1292. 01:16:28 Ah, really it's a spelling issue.
1293. 01:16:32 Well so it's spelled R-E-I-T-O-F-F.
1294. 01:16:37 Why?
1295. 01:16:38 Do you know why?
1296. 01:16:41 I don't remember gathering that there was any reason why he wrote it that way.
1297. 01:16:46 He didn't actually say in the book, but where do you think that came from?
1298. 01:16:53 Oh my gosh.
1299. 01:16:54 Is that like some German philosopher who did one of these studies like all these other
1300. 01:17:00 ones that we've read about?
1301. 01:17:02 I have no idea.
1302. 01:17:03 I feel like I should know something that I don't know right now.
1303. 01:17:06 No, no.
1304. 01:17:07 If you had to guess, what would you think?
1305. 01:17:09 Where did that term write off come from?
1306. 01:17:12 I have no idea.
1307. 01:17:13 I mean, based on what you said, maybe a person who's studied this?
1308. 01:17:17 Yeah, that's the thing.
1309. 01:17:18 It's not.
1310. 01:17:20 It's literally just a different spelling of the word write off.
1311. 01:17:23 Okay.
1312. 01:17:24 All right.
1313. 01:17:25 And that bugged you.
1314. 01:17:27 It does bug me.
1315. 01:17:29 And this is completely unfair, I realize.
1316. 01:17:33 But I listened to Nick Milo's podcast where he interviewed Ollie.
1317. 01:17:40 And Ollie literally said like, yeah, I just wanted something that looked different.
1318. 01:17:45 So I changed it and then people were kind of running with it like, oh, is this some guys
1319. 01:17:49 German last name and he didn't feel the need to correct them, which I get, but also
1320. 01:17:57 like why?
1321. 01:17:58 Yeah, I had no idea.
1322. 01:17:59 I feel it's a little bit deceptive based on everything else and all the other research
1323. 01:18:04 that is in this book.
1324. 01:18:05 You see a name spelled like that and you're thinking, this is named after somebody, right?
1325. 01:18:11 But in the section, there's no description of the person because it's literally just
1326. 01:18:15 the story that he had with his flatmate where she's like, why don't you just write off the
1327. 01:18:19 whole day?
1328. 01:18:20 That's where the whole principle came from.
1329. 01:18:22 And so this, I feel like was a poor choice.
1330. 01:18:26 I can easily see that it's, he probably thinks of it as an Easter egg, right?
1331. 01:18:32 Yeah.
1332. 01:18:33 Yeah.
1333. 01:18:34 Which, you know, from one perspective, maybe an argument could be made.
1334. 01:18:36 I think at best it's not that it's not that funny.
1335. 01:18:43 It's not.
1336. 01:18:44 Yeah.
1337. 01:18:45 It's not that clever.
1338. 01:18:47 At worst, I feel like you're opening up yourself to people questioning the validity of a lot
1339. 01:18:54 of other stuff that you've just said.
1340. 01:18:56 So the interesting thing about this is I don't know what about this or about my way of thinking
1341. 01:19:00 or my personality is I saw it, I read it and I was like, I wonder why he spelled it that
1342. 01:19:04 way?
1343. 01:19:05 Yeah, whatever.
1344. 01:19:06 And I just kind of moved on.
1345. 01:19:07 Like I didn't really like sit on it.
1346. 01:19:09 I didn't think he didn't connect it to anybody like you're saying because I was like, was
1347. 01:19:12 I supposed to pick up on the fact that this is like ties to some researcher?
1348. 01:19:15 I did not pick that up if I was supposed to pick that up.
1349. 01:19:19 So okay, I can see where you're coming from.
1350. 01:19:22 Which again is not really that big a deal because most people will just take that approach.
1351. 01:19:28 Most people who read a lot are going to take that approach because if you're not going
1352. 01:19:33 to tell me like I don't have time to go dig through all of the things that you're citing
1353. 01:19:38 in the back of your book and figure this stuff out for myself.
1354. 01:19:41 So me personally I feel like as an author you have a responsibility to communicate things
1355. 01:19:48 as clearly and effectively as you can to your readers.
1356. 01:19:51 And I just don't think the weird spelling of write off is an alignment with that.
1357. 01:19:58 So, but I mean that has literally nothing to do with the content of the book itself.
1358. 01:20:03 I thought you had something fundamentally wrong and I was like, I want to hear this.
1359. 01:20:07 I'm excited to hear this.
1360. 01:20:08 No, okay.
1361. 01:20:09 Sorry, that's it.
1362. 01:20:10 All right, go to the last chapter.
1363. 01:20:13 Yes, sir.
1364. 01:20:14 All right, last chapter, chapter nine is a line and I like this one a lot.
1365. 01:20:22 I've got a couple different action items from this chapter specifically.
1366. 01:20:27 So the big idea here that I liked was the spectrum of the extrinsic versus intrinsic
1367. 01:20:34 motivation and how not all extrinsic motivation is bad.
1368. 01:20:39 If you go on one end you got extrinsic then you've got interjected and then identified
1369. 01:20:43 and then intrinsic.
1370. 01:20:44 The most effective one is actually that identified motivation.
1371. 01:20:47 It's almost intrinsic motivation.
1372. 01:20:49 You're basically taking external events and external circumstances and using them to create
1373. 01:20:54 the intrinsic motivation is kind of how I think about that.
1374. 01:20:58 And I think that's really powerful.
1375. 01:21:00 Alignment is the most powerful thing you can do if you really want to be more productive
1376. 01:21:04 going back to what you're talking about with like the personal retreat stuff.
1377. 01:21:07 That's the other thing that that gives you is it gives you alignment.
1378. 01:21:10 One of the things I do is I take my life theme.
1379. 01:21:13 I take my core values.
1380. 01:21:14 I look at those and I ask myself do these still resonate and then if they do then I'm
1381. 01:21:19 going to be using that as the baseline for everything else that happened throughout the
1382. 01:21:23 last 90 days was I living in alignment with these things.
1383. 01:21:27 And if not, you know, I've already decided the core values and the life theme aren't
1384. 01:21:31 changing.
1385. 01:21:32 So what I'm doing needs to change because if you're not in alignment it is going to
1386. 01:21:36 create friction it is going to feel like you're not not in the right place.
1387. 01:21:43 So there's lots of different things that you can use to kind of push things in the right
1388. 01:21:49 direction.
1389. 01:21:50 One that he talks about was the eulogy method where you write your eulogy.
1390. 01:21:53 I think I actually did this at one point as an action item in bookworm, but I actually
1391. 01:21:58 want to go back and I want to review it and update it.
1392. 01:22:02 So if I'm misremembering that and I haven't done it yet, I'm going to actually do it.
1393. 01:22:07 But otherwise I'm just going to touch it up and probably make a few edits to that.
1394. 01:22:14 There's also the Wheel of Life that's experiment number three.
1395. 01:22:18 And I like the categories that he had for his Wheel of Life.
1396. 01:22:22 He had nine different categories.
1397. 01:22:23 I've typically done eight, but they basically align with, well, I've got to look it up with
1398. 01:22:31 the specific areas, but there's there are groups of three.
1399. 01:22:34 So there's like three groups of three and each one of the areas are basically touching
1400. 01:22:38 on different aspects of who he is as a person.
1401. 01:22:42 So I want to actually take those categories.
1402. 01:22:44 I might matter if I'm a little bit, but I want to use those for my Wheel of Life that
1403. 01:22:49 I do in my next personal retreat.
1404. 01:22:52 And then there was this book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett that he talked about.
1405. 01:22:56 Bill Burnett is the guy who designed the Apple Mouse.
1406. 01:23:00 I thought this sounded fascinating.
1407. 01:23:02 So I've already ordered this book and want to go through it.
1408. 01:23:06 I liked a lot about this section in terms of it became more actionable, right?
1409. 01:23:13 You're seeing a common theme with me from the last book and from this book.
1410. 01:23:16 I liked the actionable sections in the last book.
1411. 01:23:18 I liked the actionable sections in this one.
1412. 01:23:20 I resonated the most with Wheel of Life.
1413. 01:23:24 That's like the one when we got out of this, I was like, I want to do that one.
1414. 01:23:27 I have never done that before and I want to do that one.
1415. 01:23:30 I've done Odyssey Plans.
1416. 01:23:31 I actually teach Odyssey Plans with my students and they work through Odyssey Plans at the
1417. 01:23:36 very beginning of their career in school and then at the very end of their career.
1418. 01:23:41 So those are very, very effective.
1419. 01:23:45 But as he puts that in the long term horizon section and I completely agree with him.
1420. 01:23:51 Those are long term planning things.
1421. 01:23:53 Those do not help you with the day to day activities and they don't even help you really
1422. 01:23:57 that much with the medium term horizon.
1423. 01:24:01 So when you're doing an Odyssey Plan, you really got to think about like, what's my long term
1424. 01:24:04 trajectory here and how do I plan on my long term trajectory?
1425. 01:24:10 I thought the short term section was lacking.
1426. 01:24:13 I wanted more from the short term section of, okay, how do we take these things that
1427. 01:24:20 we're trying to do long term and medium term and then turn them into daily actions?
1428. 01:24:24 It's not that the ones he provided to the two he provided are the three alignment quest
1429. 01:24:28 each morning choose three actions for the day to get you a step closer to where you
1430. 01:24:31 want to be.
1431. 01:24:32 And then the second one was alignment experiments, which is identify what you're feeling, come
1432. 01:24:36 up with a hypothesis and then execute and try to make change.
1433. 01:24:39 I just felt like that that section was lacking and I was left wanting more in that section
1434. 01:24:43 in terms of how do I tangible make that on the day to day.
1435. 01:24:48 Because the way I think about kind of this whole book and the way he frames this whole
1436. 01:24:53 book is where we're going to get to next is this productivity scientist, right?
1437. 01:24:56 Think like this productivity scientist.
1438. 01:24:58 And I went into the book and I kind of still go into the book thinking of it more not productivity
1439. 01:25:05 and the day to day operations of my life, but productivity more in the like, there's
1440. 01:25:10 this thing I want to achieve or there's this thing I want to do better at, I guess for lack
1441. 01:25:15 of a better way to say it, but it's a bigger issue.
1442. 01:25:19 And how do I take steps now to approach that forward?
1443. 01:25:23 And that's really kind of where I wanted this alignment thing to come out in that short term
1444. 01:25:28 section.
1445. 01:25:29 Gotcha.
1446. 01:25:30 Yeah, I like the alignment section and obviously you could go deeper with this.
1447. 01:25:36 We may have to, may have to dig deeper into the Odyssey plans now that I know that you
1448. 01:25:42 actually do these.
1449. 01:25:45 Yeah, maybe you can walk me through an Odyssey plan.
1450. 01:25:48 I don't know.
1451. 01:25:49 I'd be happy to.
1452. 01:25:52 So in my mind, kind of what I'm struggling with here is this alignment section feels
1453. 01:25:58 like the most important piece to me, but it's also at the end of the book.
1454. 01:26:02 On the one hand, I'm like, this should have came first because this is so fundamental
1455. 01:26:07 to everything else and kind of changes everything else.
1456. 01:26:10 But also I think that for most people who are coming to the topic of feel good productivity,
1457. 01:26:19 this is the right place for this at the end.
1458. 01:26:22 I really think the format that he's got here, where we went through, energize on block and
1459. 01:26:30 then once you can kind of like get a little bit of breathing room, that's the time when
1460. 01:26:36 you can figure out the long term stuff with with sustain.
1461. 01:26:40 So I think this is a really, really powerful way to end the book.
1462. 01:26:44 Well, it's not actually the end because there's still the last word, but basically the end.
1463. 01:26:49 Anything else you want to mention here before we go to the last word?
1464. 01:26:53 Not in the section we can go.
1465. 01:26:55 Okay.
1466. 01:26:56 So then the last word is literally just the section where he's encouraging us to think
1467. 01:27:02 like a productivity scientist.
1468. 01:27:04 Talks about how productivity isn't about discipline, it's about doing what makes you feel happier,
1469. 01:27:09 less stress and more organized.
1470. 01:27:11 And I think on the surface, people are going to either put too much stock in that or they're
1471. 01:27:17 going to write that off, right off because it's not that simple, but I think he's right.
1472. 01:27:26 When it comes to long term productivity, it's not about how much you can force yourself
1473. 01:27:34 to do things that you hate.
1474. 01:27:36 It's about the love of the things that you are doing, whether it's natural and it's just
1475. 01:27:41 something that's really fun or it's something that you've created enough meaning for the
1476. 01:27:47 thing that you just want to do it so badly.
1477. 01:27:51 And I also think that he talks about here how some experiments are going to work for
1478. 01:27:55 you.
1479. 01:27:56 Others won't.
1480. 01:27:57 The book is a toolkit, so figure out what works and discard everything else.
1481. 01:28:01 That is the perfect way to end this.
1482. 01:28:04 Now there are lots of these experiments, six per chapter, nine different chapters.
1483. 01:28:08 So you can't go into it thinking all of those experiments are going to be exactly what I
1484. 01:28:14 need and I'm just going to apply everything that he tells me to do and that's going to
1485. 01:28:18 fix whatever situation I find myself in.
1486. 01:28:22 This is a recipe book maybe.
1487. 01:28:30 So you have to kind of pick the things out of here and then the last thing he encourages
1488. 01:28:35 us to do is enjoy the process.
1489. 01:28:37 And I think that is really good advice and a great way to tie this one together.
1490. 01:28:42 Yeah, I like the fact that he's consistent in his theme through it, that he has experiments,
1491. 01:28:52 and then he says think like a scientist and keep doing these things until you figure it
1492. 01:28:57 out.
1493. 01:28:58 I like that he's consistent in that theme.
1494. 01:29:01 I think that comes from kind of the way he did it and the way he started thinking about
1495. 01:29:05 productivity and then the way he got better at thinking about productivity and then the
1496. 01:29:08 way he formed a business out of thinking about productivity.
1497. 01:29:10 Like I like the way he buttons everything up from this.
1498. 01:29:16 I have a couple of questions about the whole book in general for you if you're okay with
1499. 01:29:20 taking those at this time.
1500. 01:29:22 Sure.
1501. 01:29:23 Okay.
1502. 01:29:24 So this book feels to me like a series of YouTube videos or a series of podcast episodes
1503. 01:29:34 that was smushed into a book format.
1504. 01:29:38 And I don't mean that in any kind of negative way.
1505. 01:29:40 But like I almost think about the structure of this as hey, you could easily do an episode
1506. 01:29:46 for every one of these experiments.
1507. 01:29:49 You could do an episode for the different subheadings he has within the chapters.
1508. 01:29:53 You could do an episode for the actual chapter itself and then you could do an episode for
1509. 01:29:56 the part like there is a whole series of content here.
1510. 01:30:00 I went and tried to do research.
1511. 01:30:01 So correct me if you did this and I'm wrong.
1512. 01:30:04 I don't think there's a course built out of this.
1513. 01:30:07 No.
1514. 01:30:08 But like I could very easily see a course coming out of this that is the hey, do you
1515. 01:30:14 like this or do you want to focus on this one aspect of this experiment come come do
1516. 01:30:18 this course, which is a very business like creator mindset to I'm going to take this
1517. 01:30:23 one thing and I'm going to turn it into 15 things and all of these are going to be revenue
1518. 01:30:27 drivers for me.
1519. 01:30:28 And I mean none of that in the negative sense.
1520. 01:30:30 I mean, that's what the book felt like to me as I got to the end.
1521. 01:30:35 Yeah, you know, I said there wasn't a course, but I'm thinking there may be now because
1522. 01:30:41 I think Ollie had a skill share course at one point.
1523. 01:30:48 I'm trying to look that up quick and see that follows this this format.
1524. 01:30:55 Can't tell just from the the webpage.
1525. 01:30:59 But you're right that there's definitely opportunity to go deeper on a lot of the stuff
1526. 01:31:05 that he he talks about here, which I don't think necessarily is a bad thing for the book,
1527. 01:31:11 but we should actually talk about action items before we get to style and writing.
1528. 01:31:15 Any other questions you had before we get there?
1529. 01:31:17 No, I think I might have had another one, but I forgot it too.
1530. 01:31:20 Okay.
1531. 01:31:21 Well, action items.
1532. 01:31:24 I have a couple.
1533. 01:31:26 So one thing I want to do is add the side quest to my day.
1534. 01:31:30 I don't know that I have a formal way to do this yet.
1535. 01:31:33 So I will try and I think I'm already realizing some of the benefit of this, but I'm going
1536. 01:31:39 to try to figure out is there a formal way that I want to to log these and maybe there
1537. 01:31:44 won't be.
1538. 01:31:45 I also want to write and review my or review my eulogy and then update my Wheel of Life
1539. 01:31:51 with the new categories, which are listed on page 247.
1540. 01:31:57 But the categories really are not the important thing.
1541. 01:32:00 It's really just picking the areas that resonate with you.
1542. 01:32:04 So I want to use those as inspiration, but then revisit my personal retreat template.
1543. 01:32:09 How about you?
1544. 01:32:10 You got any action items?
1545. 01:32:11 Yeah.
1546. 01:32:12 So as I mentioned before, the 10, 10, 10, I want to start putting that into practice,
1547. 01:32:18 but I want to start filtering the, not necessarily the activities I do day to day, but the bigger
1548. 01:32:24 projects I take on and even some of the side quests I take on and run those through the
1549. 01:32:30 well, it matter in 10 minutes.
1550. 01:32:31 Well, the matter in 10 weeks will matter in 10 years.
1551. 01:32:32 I really want to start running some of those, those things through that filter.
1552. 01:32:36 The second thing I want to do is I want to, it happened in the last section, the align
1553. 01:32:39 section, the 12-month celebration.
1554. 01:32:43 So it's this idea that you're going to, you're going to have a celebration with a friend 12
1555. 01:32:49 months from now.
1556. 01:32:50 And what do you want to be celebrating at that time?
1557. 01:32:53 And I want to, I want to develop what I think I would want to be celebrating and then what
1558. 01:32:58 is the first action step that gets me there.
1559. 01:33:01 And that's kind of his, you know, his experiment there.
1560. 01:33:04 So I think those two are good tangible ones for me to take away.
1561. 01:33:09 Cool.
1562. 01:33:09 All right.
1563. 01:33:10 Style and rating.
1564. 01:33:14 I have been dreading this section because honestly I don't know what to rate it.
1565. 01:33:21 I have made a resolution that I'm only going to use whole point ratings based on feedback
1566. 01:33:30 from David Sparks.
1567. 01:33:33 And this one is kind of like firmly between four and five stars for me.
1568. 01:33:38 What is the, I haven't heard this, his, his need, his desire to push you to whole numbers.
1569. 01:33:43 Why?
1570. 01:33:44 Why can't you have a middle number?
1571. 01:33:45 Well, I think there's, there's something to be said about the simpler ratings.
1572. 01:33:50 I'm thinking of like Cisco and Ebert where it literally just thumbs up or thumbs down.
1573. 01:33:54 So I think the point fives, it just makes the scale longer.
1574. 01:34:00 So I'm trying to, trying to condense that it also fits better with my, my notes and my
1575. 01:34:05 metadata and obsidian.
1576. 01:34:09 But there's a lot to, to like about this book.
1577. 01:34:13 And I think if I'm coming to productivity, this would be, to learn more, this would be
1578. 01:34:20 one of the first ones that I would probably pick up.
1579. 01:34:22 All right.
1580. 01:34:23 That, that's the question I was going to ask you.
1581. 01:34:25 I'm so glad you said that because I thought this seemed like a very good first book to
1582. 01:34:30 recommend to somebody thinking about productivity.
1583. 01:34:32 And you just said, so you just confirmed that.
1584. 01:34:34 Okay.
1585. 01:34:35 Uh, I think that Ali hits on a lot of the important ideas.
1586. 01:34:42 And he does so in a way that is more cohesive than just here's some tactics.
1587. 01:34:49 That's the problem with a lot of productivity advice is people are like, Oh, the Pomodoro
1588. 01:34:53 method, that's amazing.
1589. 01:34:55 It's one tactic that you can use with success in certain situations, but it's not going to
1590. 01:35:00 work all the time.
1591. 01:35:02 And every time you come across one of those tactics, you're like, Oh, this is the one.
1592. 01:35:05 You know, and then you're just kind of setting yourself up for failure.
1593. 01:35:08 So I think that he does a great job of laying this out.
1594. 01:35:13 I like the structure of the three parts, the energized unblock and then sustain because
1595. 01:35:21 you have to first get going.
1596. 01:35:23 That's the energized piece.
1597. 01:35:25 And then when things get hard, how do you make them flow again?
1598. 01:35:28 That's on block and then long term.
1599. 01:35:30 How do we make sure that we can continue to do this?
1600. 01:35:33 That's where sustain comes in.
1601. 01:35:34 I think he's, he's spot on with how he approaches this.
1602. 01:35:38 The stories that he shares are great.
1603. 01:35:40 He's a, he's a better storyteller than I, I expected to be honest.
1604. 01:35:46 So he's got his own personal stories, which those are honestly the ones that I like the
1605. 01:35:49 most, but he also adds some additional historical stories like the, the Benjamin Franklin story.
1606. 01:35:57 I'd never heard that before.
1607. 01:35:59 And that was a really cool story.
1608. 01:36:01 I like that one a lot.
1609. 01:36:03 I have some nitpicks with specific sections of the book, the write off principle, you know,
1610. 01:36:09 the weird naming.
1611. 01:36:10 I don't really like the experiments, but also as I was thinking through like, how else would
1612. 01:36:17 you frame those?
1613. 01:36:18 I think actually for what he's trying to do here, that's pretty effective, especially
1614. 01:36:22 when you take into consideration at the end, he's saying like, this is a toolkit.
1615. 01:36:26 You're going to run these experiments.
1616. 01:36:28 Some are going to work.
1617. 01:36:29 Some aren't, you know, that's, that's really effective.
1618. 01:36:33 So I don't know.
1619. 01:36:36 I think there's some really good stuff in here and obviously having read a bunch of other
1620. 01:36:39 books at this point could easily go deeper on a lot of this, this stuff.
1621. 01:36:46 But I think he did a, he did a pretty good job with this one.
1622. 01:36:51 I'm going to give it five stars.
1623. 01:36:53 I think for me where I am right now, it probably is a four star book, but I've read hundreds
1624. 01:37:01 of productivity books.
1625. 01:37:03 So if you are a bookworm listener who is interested in this topic and you have not read all of
1626. 01:37:11 those books, this would be the place to start.
1627. 01:37:15 Like I mentioned, now I guess the caveat here is that if you've been in the productivity
1628. 01:37:21 space for a while and a lot of the things that we talked about today, you recognize like
1629. 01:37:27 you've read books where we're talking about where those things come from, maybe there
1630. 01:37:31 isn't a whole lot that's new here for you.
1631. 01:37:35 However, I think just the way that he describes things and the stories that he tells and the
1632. 01:37:40 different perspectives that he shares, this is not regurgitated productivity advice.
1633. 01:37:46 It's a entertaining, engaging read.
1634. 01:37:50 So I would recommend that that people read this one.
1635. 01:37:53 Yeah.
1636. 01:37:54 So I'm in a similar boat.
1637. 01:37:57 I'll give you the rating first.
1638. 01:37:58 If I could give it four and a half, but if we're not going to do four.
1639. 01:38:02 I mean, you can if you want.
1640. 01:38:05 I lean much more towards five than I lean towards four on this.
1641. 01:38:11 I think the decision to make it as this productivity scientist idea, when that hit the experiments
1642. 01:38:17 were a natural byproduct of that.
1643. 01:38:20 So would I have captured the experiments that way?
1644. 01:38:24 Probably not, but had I made the decision to do it a productivity science book, yes,
1645. 01:38:28 I would have probably done it in a similar way.
1646. 01:38:31 What I like is it it points people using that phrase experiment, right?
1647. 01:38:35 It points people to try, like just give it a shot.
1648. 01:38:38 See what happens.
1649. 01:38:39 And this is where, you know, I came in with the question about, would this be a first?
1650. 01:38:43 Do you think this would be a good first productivity book for people?
1651. 01:38:46 Because that was my gut, my gut takeaway from this.
1652. 01:38:48 I've not read nearly as many productivity books as you have, but I've been in the space,
1653. 01:38:54 you know, like reading and researching and listening to people talk about this kind of
1654. 01:38:57 stuff.
1655. 01:38:58 So I wouldn't consider myself an absolute newbie to it, but I also wouldn't consider myself
1656. 01:39:02 as advanced as as you are having read as many books as you've read on productivity.
1657. 01:39:07 But my gut reaction was, man, this would be a really good book for somebody who's first
1658. 01:39:11 interested in, I want to improve.
1659. 01:39:14 I want to get better.
1660. 01:39:15 I want to be more productive.
1661. 01:39:17 I want to say what's an approach or what's something, some resource that's going to give
1662. 01:39:21 me a lot of different things to try, right?
1663. 01:39:23 And I can try this one.
1664. 01:39:24 I can try this one.
1665. 01:39:25 And it's a fairly small buy-in to try it.
1666. 01:39:28 Like you don't even have to read the whole book.
1667. 01:39:30 Just go to that experiment section and try, you know, try that experiment.
1668. 01:39:34 So I agree.
1669. 01:39:35 I think this is a five.
1670. 01:39:37 I think it was very accessible to read.
1671. 01:39:41 I think it was very well organized in terms of its structure and overall the qualms I
1672. 01:39:48 had with it were very, very small in terms of the importance and the nature of the style
1673. 01:39:54 of the book.
1674. 01:39:55 So yeah, I'd definitely give it a five.
1675. 01:39:57 Awesome.
1676. 01:39:58 So we got a golden book here from Ali Abdahl.
1677. 01:40:00 Yeah, thanks for recommended this one because it was, I didn't have an expectation going
1678. 01:40:06 in, but when I got done with it, I was like, oh, that was a great read.
1679. 01:40:09 Yeah.
1680. 01:40:10 I enjoyed this one a lot.
1681. 01:40:12 And it inspired me to pick up designing your life by Bill Burnett.
1682. 01:40:16 And I think I want to go through that one next time.
1683. 01:40:20 So you want to come back and walk me through an Odyssey plan?
1684. 01:40:23 Wait, I'm going to be the most recurring guest ever as of next episode?
1685. 01:40:30 Yes.
1686. 01:40:31 No, absolutely.
1687. 01:40:32 This is a ton of fun.
1688. 01:40:33 I'm learning a lot and I'm really enjoying the conversation.
1689. 01:40:36 So yeah, absolutely.
1690. 01:40:37 Awesome.
1691. 01:40:38 Cool.
1692. 01:40:39 Thanks everyone for listening.
1693. 01:40:41 If you are reading along with us, pick up Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett.
1694. 01:40:46 And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.