190: Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley & Olav Schewe

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1. 00:00:00 Hey Mike, how's it going?
2. 00:00:01 Pretty good.
3. 00:00:02 Are you Corey?
4. 00:00:03 I'm doing well.
5. 00:00:04 I'm doing well.
6. 00:00:04 This is my first time in the seat as the official co-host.
7. 00:00:08 I was declared last episode, and now I'm official.
8. 00:00:12 So it feels good.
9. 00:00:12 Feels good.
10. 00:00:13 Feels like I'm--
11. 00:00:14 chairs more comfy today.
12. 00:00:16 The microphone feels better in front of my mouth.
13. 00:00:20 Yeah, well, I'll share with you before we hit record.
14. 00:00:22 But I've gotten some great feedback from people
15. 00:00:25 who said that you're doing a good job.
16. 00:00:26 So it's not just me saying nice things
17. 00:00:28 because I want someone to talk to books about.
18. 00:00:30 Well, thank you for those of you who said nice things.
19. 00:00:32 I appreciate that.
20. 00:00:33 That's very good because you throw these things out there
21. 00:00:36 sometimes, and you hope somebody's getting value out of them.
22. 00:00:38 So I appreciate that.
23. 00:00:41 I got one for you.
24. 00:00:42 I didn't do the Mind Map today because I wasn't--
25. 00:00:48 I got down.
26. 00:00:48 I got my notes, and I said, OK, I'm going to organize these,
27. 00:00:50 and I'm going to get ready to think about how I want to talk
28. 00:00:52 about the book.
29. 00:00:53 And the Mind Map just didn't feel right.
30. 00:00:55 And I don't know why.
31. 00:00:55 It just didn't feel like the mechanism I wanted to go for.
32. 00:00:58 So I went with Notion, and I went through,
33. 00:01:03 and I put those in there and organized them.
34. 00:01:05 And then I went back through again and highlighted them.
35. 00:01:08 And I don't want to go into the details of whether I think
36. 00:01:10 it worked well or not right now.
37. 00:01:12 We could do that later, maybe.
38. 00:01:13 That'd be fun to do later.
39. 00:01:15 But what I'll tell you is I think
40. 00:01:18 it's going to be as productive or hopefully more productive
41. 00:01:22 than the Mind Map.
42. 00:01:24 So I might not be a Mind Map convert
43. 00:01:27 like I thought I was going to be a Mind Map convert.
44. 00:01:30 I'm a little sad, but understandable.
45. 00:01:34 This isn't a great book for a Mind Map anyways.
46. 00:01:38 I mean, I did it anyways.
47. 00:01:39 And we're chatting before, and I mentioned
48. 00:01:43 that I'm going to start actually creating these landing pages.
49. 00:01:47 I've done a few of them for people
50. 00:01:49 so if you do want the notes from my notes from this book,
51. 00:01:53 I'll have a link in the show notes where you can download it.
52. 00:01:56 And I do share these in my newsletter now.
53. 00:01:59 So this has kind of become a thing.
54. 00:02:00 But yeah, this one in particular just didn't really
55. 00:02:07 jive with the Mind Map format as easily
56. 00:02:09 as some of the other books that we've read, which
57. 00:02:12 it's a book about learning.
58. 00:02:13 So I was kind of surprised by that.
59. 00:02:15 Yeah.
60. 00:02:16 We're jumping the gun here, but this book
61. 00:02:18 kind of surprised me on a couple of different levels.
62. 00:02:19 So I'm excited to talk to you about it.
63. 00:02:22 I'm excited to hear your opinion on it.
64. 00:02:23 So first thing we have to do is we
65. 00:02:27 have to follow up on action items.
66. 00:02:29 So Mike, are you willing to take us through your action items?
67. 00:02:33 Your first one was check out it design your life workshop.
68. 00:02:38 You did that kind of, right?
69. 00:02:40 So what's your status on that?
70. 00:02:41 Any update?
71. 00:02:42 I've checked it out enough to know that I'm not interested.
72. 00:02:45 OK, good.
73. 00:02:46 I've also checked it out enough to know
74. 00:02:48 that I should be doing stuff like this.
75. 00:02:51 Yes.
76. 00:02:52 Yes, I think you could very much do that.
77. 00:02:54 Like I told you before, I do a mini version of that.
78. 00:02:57 It's really, as I went through the book,
79. 00:02:59 it's very different than what they do there.
80. 00:03:02 But I do it for academics.
81. 00:03:04 So for faculty members who want to figure out
82. 00:03:06 how to combine research, teaching, and service.
83. 00:03:08 So yes, I would agree having done it
84. 00:03:10 and then seeing how they do it, you would your fair game.
85. 00:03:14 And it's right there teed up for you.
86. 00:03:16 You just need to knock it out of the park.
87. 00:03:18 Yeah, so that kind of relates to something--
88. 00:03:23 I think this is later on in my follow-up items.
89. 00:03:28 Maybe it wasn't an official one.
90. 00:03:29 But we talked last time about my brainstorming
91. 00:03:32 with the community.
92. 00:03:33 Oh, yeah, that is one on here.
93. 00:03:34 Start planning my community.
94. 00:03:36 And you pressured me to have a landing page link ready
95. 00:03:38 by the time this one goes out.
96. 00:03:39 So that's still a work in progress, the landing page link.
97. 00:03:42 But I have been thinking a lot about the community.
98. 00:03:44 And these workshops, that's actually
99. 00:03:46 going to be a part of it.
100. 00:03:48 So I'll do them one off.
101. 00:03:52 You can sign up for them like a paid webinar sort of a thing.
102. 00:03:55 But I do plan to have a version of the community
103. 00:03:58 where you get access to all that kind of stuff built in.
104. 00:04:02 That's awesome.
105. 00:04:02 So I'm going to start doing these more regularly.
106. 00:04:06 I'm still trying to nail down the cadence.
107. 00:04:08 But I'm thinking one a quarter.
108. 00:04:10 And I've got a couple of topics I've been thinking about.
109. 00:04:14 I think the place to start, obviously, is like,
110. 00:04:16 how do I take book notes?
111. 00:04:18 I've even done that presentation for other people
112. 00:04:21 as a paid workshop.
113. 00:04:22 Why would I not do it for myself?
114. 00:04:25 Especially since it's kind of evolved a little bit.
115. 00:04:27 I mean, it's largely the same.
116. 00:04:28 I still do the mind map and I have my own system.
117. 00:04:30 But every book we read kind of changes the--
118. 00:04:35 or solidifies are causing me to change some minor things.
119. 00:04:38 So I guess I'll have the link to the community signup.
120. 00:04:44 I'll share that page in the show notes here.
121. 00:04:48 But I'll share the one to the workshop as soon as it's--
122. 00:04:51 That's your second accountability mechanism, right?
123. 00:04:53 The first one was you had to talk about it today.
124. 00:04:55 The next one is you have to have it in the show notes
125. 00:04:56 for the time the show goes out.
126. 00:04:58 Yeah, exactly.
127. 00:04:59 So I got about a week to pull it all together.
128. 00:05:02 In the middle of finishing up my practical PKM cohort,
129. 00:05:05 I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
130. 00:05:07 What could possibly go wrong?
131. 00:05:09 OK, so the next one you had was create engagement, energy,
132. 00:05:12 and flow mind maps.
133. 00:05:13 Were you able to do that?
134. 00:05:14 Yeah, although I didn't actually do it as individual mind maps.
135. 00:05:17 I did it as part of the same mind map.
136. 00:05:19 I just had three different branches.
137. 00:05:22 The last book-- it was a little bit weird the way
138. 00:05:23 that they described mind mapping.
139. 00:05:26 And that actually was another topic
140. 00:05:28 that I was thinking about for a workshop.
141. 00:05:30 It's like mind mapping in general.
142. 00:05:31 I've made courses on that before.
143. 00:05:33 I use it all the time.
144. 00:05:34 I've got thousands of mind maps in mind
145. 00:05:37 note, not just the book notes.
146. 00:05:40 But yeah, I have the different sections for engagement, energy,
147. 00:05:43 and flow.
148. 00:05:44 And it wasn't as insightful as I thought it was going to be.
149. 00:05:51 The big takeaways here were I tend
150. 00:05:54 to get into flow when I'm doing stuff solo.
151. 00:05:57 So writing or reading or even building business systems,
152. 00:06:01 which is maybe kind of weird to some people.
153. 00:06:03 But that was my previous job, was like business systems,
154. 00:06:07 director of operations, essentially integrator.
155. 00:06:09 And so systems are kind of my thing.
156. 00:06:11 I love tweaking those.
157. 00:06:14 The energy and engagement ones, though, were largely the same.
158. 00:06:18 The things that I get really engaged with
159. 00:06:21 and the things that give me a lot of energy
160. 00:06:23 are basically when I can do live stuff with other people.
161. 00:06:28 So recording a podcast is that to a certain degree.
162. 00:06:32 But I think more so even than that,
163. 00:06:35 it's like the coaching type stuff.
164. 00:06:38 So it would be the workshops that we were talking about
165. 00:06:40 or the cohort that I'm going through right now.
166. 00:06:44 I built out in the last session that I did,
167. 00:06:47 I walked through the task dashboard
168. 00:06:49 and all the different ways that you can do
169. 00:06:51 task management in Obsidian and how I manage and track
170. 00:06:54 my habits and all this kind of stuff.
171. 00:06:56 And I created 130 little screencast clips
172. 00:07:01 that I put into my keynote.
173. 00:07:03 And every time I do one of these cohorts,
174. 00:07:05 I'm like, well, I did one previously.
175. 00:07:06 This is the third one.
176. 00:07:07 I'll just use what I had last time.
177. 00:07:09 I literally redid every single screencast.
178. 00:07:14 And then at the end, I'm like, okay, so that was a lot.
179. 00:07:17 I was really excited and I really liked showing it to everybody
180. 00:07:20 and everyone at the end was like, that was amazing,
181. 00:07:23 but it was a lot.
182. 00:07:24 (laughs)
183. 00:07:26 - Well, and if you're like me, you'll do that,
184. 00:07:30 I don't know if you'll do that every time,
185. 00:07:32 but you'll do that the first three, four, five times.
186. 00:07:34 And then you'll get to the grid and you'll be like,
187. 00:07:35 okay, these are good enough.
188. 00:07:36 I need to focus my time in other places.
189. 00:07:38 So yeah, I will get there, I'm sure.
190. 00:07:40 But the thing that really was eye-opening to me is like,
191. 00:07:44 not the presentation of the technical stuff.
192. 00:07:47 Like that's kind of cool.
193. 00:07:47 And I like showing those videos and seeing people on Zoom,
194. 00:07:52 like their eyes get real big, like,
195. 00:07:53 I didn't know you could do that.
196. 00:07:55 But what really lights me up is at the end
197. 00:07:57 when people ask the questions.
198. 00:07:59 And I feel like I'd know enough
199. 00:08:01 to help point them in the right direction.
200. 00:08:03 It's like, I have no idea what to do in this situation.
201. 00:08:08 What do you have for me?
202. 00:08:10 And then I go into my thing and then at the end,
203. 00:08:13 like, so does that make sense?
204. 00:08:14 Like, oh yeah, that was great.
205. 00:08:16 You know, that's exactly what I needed.
206. 00:08:17 That is the thing that I absolutely love.
207. 00:08:20 So.
208. 00:08:21 - Let me ask you a question on this one.
209. 00:08:23 You get energy from those live events.
210. 00:08:26 Do you find yourself, 'cause you've admitted
211. 00:08:28 you're an introvert, do you find yourself on the tail end
212. 00:08:31 of that, like a half hour later, an hour later,
213. 00:08:33 you're just drained?
214. 00:08:35 Or does it have a long tail?
215. 00:08:37 Like, do you stay energized longer than that?
216. 00:08:39 - No, I definitely crash,
217. 00:08:41 although I'm getting better at managing it.
218. 00:08:42 I feel like I don't get quite as high or quite as low.
219. 00:08:44 But there was a point where like my wife and I
220. 00:08:46 have our date night on Tuesday.
221. 00:08:48 And we would always record focus on Tuesdays.
222. 00:08:51 And the days that I would record focus, like afterwards,
223. 00:08:55 I would just be a puddle of mush.
224. 00:08:58 Like, I couldn't do anything.
225. 00:09:00 And she's like, what the heck is wrong with you?
226. 00:09:01 And I'm like, I recorded a podcast?
227. 00:09:04 (laughing)
228. 00:09:06 No, I'm the same way that like, I love teaching.
229. 00:09:09 Teaching gives me energy.
230. 00:09:10 Interacting with students, it's so much fun.
231. 00:09:12 And then I get to like 5.30, six o'clock in the evening.
232. 00:09:15 And I'm like, oh, I'm just drained.
233. 00:09:17 Like, I'm just absolutely spent because it was so much fun.
234. 00:09:19 And it was so high that like the low drops low.
235. 00:09:22 So.
236. 00:09:23 All right, good.
237. 00:09:23 Let's move to the next one you had.
238. 00:09:24 You had make a list of your mentors.
239. 00:09:26 Were you able to do that?
240. 00:09:27 - Kinda, this needs more work.
241. 00:09:30 I have a general list of some of my mentors,
242. 00:09:32 but I didn't get as much time to build this out
243. 00:09:35 as I had hoped.
244. 00:09:36 So again, didn't really get the insight
245. 00:09:39 that I wanted from this specific one.
246. 00:09:41 I would kind of mark this as a failure on my end.
247. 00:09:45 The other ones were pretty much,
248. 00:09:47 I was pretty much able to follow through with all those,
249. 00:09:49 including the exam in my morning routine.
250. 00:09:51 I mean, I talked about habits this week in the cohort.
251. 00:09:54 So I had to do that.
252. 00:09:55 (laughing)
253. 00:09:56 Had to update the slides.
254. 00:09:58 What I discovered from my morning routine
255. 00:10:01 is that over time,
256. 00:10:04 I have been creeping towards,
257. 00:10:06 okay, I'm awake, time to get to work.
258. 00:10:08 (laughing)
259. 00:10:09 - Ah, yeah, yeah.
260. 00:10:10 - So it forced me to kind of reset
261. 00:10:13 and realize that that first hour of my day,
262. 00:10:16 like that is sacred time.
263. 00:10:18 And I really need to protect that for the routine
264. 00:10:21 and nothing else.
265. 00:10:23 I need to shut down the part of my brain
266. 00:10:24 that is telling me that because I am upright,
267. 00:10:27 I need to be working.
268. 00:10:28 - Yes, no, I couldn't agree with you more
269. 00:10:31 that I found myself in that routine.
270. 00:10:33 It's been over the last week or two
271. 00:10:36 that I've really took a step back and said,
272. 00:10:38 no, no, take the time this morning
273. 00:10:41 to do what makes sense to do first, right?
274. 00:10:43 And for me, that's prayer, meditation, reading the Bible,
275. 00:10:48 so take the time to do those things first
276. 00:10:50 because if you don't do that,
277. 00:10:51 you're probably gonna not do it today.
278. 00:10:53 Like you're probably gonna figure out a way
279. 00:10:54 to push it away.
280. 00:10:56 And I've found that over the last two weeks,
281. 00:10:58 that's been huge for me.
282. 00:10:58 So that's cool, that's cool that you've realized that.
283. 00:11:01 - How about you?
284. 00:11:02 You had a couple of them.
285. 00:11:03 - Yeah, so mine were identified gravity
286. 00:11:06 and anchor problems in my life.
287. 00:11:07 And what I've tried to do as I've identified problems
288. 00:11:11 is I've tried to separate those two.
289. 00:11:12 And what I've realized is that things that,
290. 00:11:17 sorry, I guess what I've realized is it's harder to tell
291. 00:11:19 between an anchor problem and a gravity problem
292. 00:11:20 than I thought it would be.
293. 00:11:22 That there's actually a little bit of overlap
294. 00:11:24 between those two and something that I clearly came out
295. 00:11:27 and said, "No, this is definitely a gravity problem."
296. 00:11:30 It's really just like a deep-seated anchor problem.
297. 00:11:32 Like that anchor is really, really stuck into the ground.
298. 00:11:36 But there are definitely ways around it
299. 00:11:37 that I'm not thinking about or ways around it
300. 00:11:39 that we as an institution aren't thinking about.
301. 00:11:41 So it's much more of like a really intense anchor problem
302. 00:11:45 and not truly a gravity problem.
303. 00:11:48 So my big learning from that is don't overthink,
304. 00:11:53 or don't over prioritize gravity
305. 00:11:55 because gravity is the easy way out.
306. 00:11:57 Oh, that's hard.
307. 00:11:58 Boom, I'm just not gonna worry about it,
308. 00:12:00 'cause I have to design around it.
309. 00:12:02 No, no, maybe it's just a really hard anchor problem
310. 00:12:04 and you have to work through that.
311. 00:12:05 My second one was reframe,
312. 00:12:08 do the failure reframe exercise.
313. 00:12:10 So reframe my failures for the last three failures.
314. 00:12:12 I did not do that for the last three.
315. 00:12:15 I did it for a couple of them that I've had lately.
316. 00:12:18 And I'll tell you what, this is a valuable exercise.
317. 00:12:21 It's really one that changes the way you think about it
318. 00:12:24 and takes it from something that potentially impacts you
319. 00:12:28 negatively, mentally, and you're like,
320. 00:12:29 oh man, that's a really kind of a low point in the week
321. 00:12:33 to go, oh yeah, that wasn't awesome.
322. 00:12:36 But look at how much better I can become out of that
323. 00:12:39 or look at what I can learn through that process.
324. 00:12:41 So that's been good for me to do the failure reframe exercise.
325. 00:12:45 That's one that I will definitely keep doing
326. 00:12:49 as more failures pop up because I have this philosophy
327. 00:12:53 that if I'm not failing seven out of 10 times,
328. 00:12:56 I'm not trying, I'm not really pushing the boundary.
329. 00:12:58 If I'm hitting that goal or hitting that achievement
330. 00:13:03 too many times, am I really trying to push to do the fun,
331. 00:13:05 the hard, the things that stretch me?
332. 00:13:08 And a lot of people look at me and they're like,
333. 00:13:09 wait, you wanna fail more than you succeed?
334. 00:13:12 And I'm like, appropriately, yes,
335. 00:13:14 but I'll get some side-eyed looks for that one.
336. 00:13:17 So, (laughs)
337. 00:13:19 - Nice. - All righty.
338. 00:13:20 So those are our action items.
339. 00:13:24 Are you ready to move into the book?
340. 00:13:26 - Let's do it.
341. 00:13:27 - All right, so this week, we're gonna talk about
342. 00:13:30 Learn Like a Pro by Barbara Oakley and Olav Schwe,
343. 00:13:35 which I think is how you pronounce his last name.
344. 00:13:38 The full title of the book is Learn Like a Pro
345. 00:13:39 Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything.
346. 00:13:44 The book is divided up into 11 sections,
347. 00:13:48 a tiny little introduction, which is basically like,
348. 00:13:51 hey readers, this is what you should think about.
349. 00:13:53 And then a checklist at the end,
350. 00:13:55 which is a really interesting kind of summary
351. 00:13:57 of the whole thing.
352. 00:13:58 And we'll just move, if you're good with it,
353. 00:14:01 we'll move right into the intro in chapter one.
354. 00:14:03 So, just real briefly on the book, it's pretty short.
355. 00:14:08 It's shorter than I thought it was gonna be.
356. 00:14:11 I think it's only like 117 pages.
357. 00:14:14 And there are quite a few visuals that go along with it.
358. 00:14:19 I thought it was kind of weird that there were no
359. 00:14:25 parts to this book because there's definitely
360. 00:14:28 some significant themes that they talk about,
361. 00:14:31 which I guess like that's one of the general things
362. 00:14:34 about this is I feel like this is really written for students.
363. 00:14:38 There are definitely sections of it
364. 00:14:40 where it's very generalizable and just about anybody
365. 00:14:43 can benefit from the stuff.
366. 00:14:44 But there is definitely a part of it
367. 00:14:47 where it's like this is how you study for tests
368. 00:14:49 and stuff like that.
369. 00:14:50 So, I felt it very easily could have been broken up
370. 00:14:54 into a couple of different sections
371. 00:14:55 and that maybe would have helped the flow a little bit.
372. 00:14:58 - I would agree with that.
373. 00:14:59 I would agree that it's written to students
374. 00:15:00 because I think, if I had to guess, right,
375. 00:15:03 you always try to back up and say,
376. 00:15:04 well, how did this book generate?
377. 00:15:06 This book generated because Barbara Oakley
378. 00:15:09 went back to school to do engineering
379. 00:15:12 and there were some things she had to learn
380. 00:15:14 through that process and she was like,
381. 00:15:16 well, if I needed to learn this stuff,
382. 00:15:18 somebody else might need to learn this stuff
383. 00:15:20 and then she did the research
384. 00:15:21 and kind of rolled it from there.
385. 00:15:22 So, I would agree with you.
386. 00:15:24 - That's the best kind of books.
387. 00:15:25 - Yeah, exactly.
388. 00:15:26 I would agree with you.
389. 00:15:27 So, from the intro or from the sections
390. 00:15:29 actually titled "Two Hour Readers,"
391. 00:15:31 they call out the fact that people would say,
392. 00:15:34 like, I'm terrible at or I can't learn
393. 00:15:36 or I can't do the thing.
394. 00:15:38 And what they wanted you to do is change your focus
395. 00:15:41 or what they suggested,
396. 00:15:41 just change your focus on maybe you're just not doing it right.
397. 00:15:45 Like, maybe you're just approaching it
398. 00:15:46 from a perspective that doesn't make sense
399. 00:15:48 and it's not that you can't learn that language
400. 00:15:50 or you can't learn the program
401. 00:15:51 or you can't learn these other things.
402. 00:15:52 It's just the way you're trying to do it
403. 00:15:54 isn't the most effective, the most effective way.
404. 00:15:57 Now, the second one was basically they say,
405. 00:16:00 this little book, so they acknowledge
406. 00:16:02 and one of the things you called it out
407. 00:16:04 that I had in the back of my head,
408. 00:16:06 the notes section of this book is like gigantic.
409. 00:16:09 I mean, it feels huge.
410. 00:16:11 There's notes for each chapter
411. 00:16:13 and I was trying to figure out,
412. 00:16:16 and I didn't take enough time to actually do this,
413. 00:16:17 how the notes section differed from the bibliography section,
414. 00:16:21 but I just didn't really dig into that.
415. 00:16:24 But basically, they call out that it's a short concise book,
416. 00:16:28 it's meant to be a short concise book,
417. 00:16:29 which would point me to as well that it's meant for students,
418. 00:16:31 it's meant for younger folks to get a quicker path through it.
419. 00:16:35 But then they say the very best
420. 00:16:37 of practical learning tools and insights.
421. 00:16:40 And you don't have to tell me right now,
422. 00:16:42 but Mike, before we end this conversation,
423. 00:16:43 I would like to know if you think
424. 00:16:45 this is the very best of practical tools and insights.
425. 00:16:49 Anything else on the internet before we move to one?
426. 00:16:52 - No, but I'm having a hard time
427. 00:16:54 resisting answering that question right now.
428. 00:16:56 - Just do it then, just do it, go ahead.
429. 00:16:58 - Okay, well, it's not, I'll say that
430. 00:17:01 because they talk about some productivity principles,
431. 00:17:04 which are good, I feel like the stuff
432. 00:17:06 that they share is actually good.
433. 00:17:08 And there was some insightful stuff here
434. 00:17:10 that helps solidify some things for me.
435. 00:17:13 However, I think that there's a whole big section
436. 00:17:18 that's missing, and maybe I just glanced over it,
437. 00:17:25 but we were talking about mind maps before.
438. 00:17:28 I feel like that is a topic where they didn't really
439. 00:17:32 even address it, and if they did,
440. 00:17:36 they certainly didn't go into any sort of depth
441. 00:17:39 about how it could be helpful.
442. 00:17:41 - They mentioned concept maps.
443. 00:17:43 - Yeah, they'd mention concept maps,
444. 00:17:45 but there's a whole lot more there,
445. 00:17:48 and it feels like a lot of the stuff
446. 00:17:49 that they're sharing is list-based, outline-based,
447. 00:17:53 and I'd forget the official terms,
448. 00:17:55 but there's different types of different ways
449. 00:17:58 that people think, and the outline view
450. 00:18:00 clicks with one type of people,
451. 00:18:02 the visual mapping kind of clicks with another type of person.
452. 00:18:05 However, even if you consider yourself an outline person,
453. 00:18:08 you can gain additional insights by having the mind map
454. 00:18:12 or the concept mapping piece to it.
455. 00:18:14 So I think this is in terms of really learning something.
456. 00:18:19 You need to have kind of these two balanced approaches,
457. 00:18:22 which is honestly why I like mind nodes so much,
458. 00:18:24 because it gives you the mind map
459. 00:18:25 and the outline for free side by side.
460. 00:18:28 And when you look at both of those,
461. 00:18:30 every single time I do that,
462. 00:18:32 I feel like I get additional insights.
463. 00:18:34 Why, when I bring my notes over to Obsidian,
464. 00:18:37 I've got the mind map, but then I export it as a markdown,
465. 00:18:39 and I have all that markdown in there as the outline too,
466. 00:18:42 and then I can break it apart
467. 00:18:43 and link atomic notes together and things like that.
468. 00:18:47 But I felt like this was kind of heavy on the outline approach,
469. 00:18:52 and it's based off of somebody's experience,
470. 00:18:55 so you can't really fault them for that.
471. 00:18:58 But the whole idea of concept mapping,
472. 00:19:00 like they kind of did it lip service,
473. 00:19:04 but they didn't really talk about it at all,
474. 00:19:06 and it's gonna be very much a missing piece to a,
475. 00:19:11 I'm not really sure how they're framing this.
476. 00:19:14 I forget the science-based tools to become better at anything
477. 00:19:18 for certain types of people in certain types of situations.
478. 00:19:21 It really is what it is.
479. 00:19:23 - I agree, and one of the things that I think
480. 00:19:25 is interesting about that too is the how to.
481. 00:19:28 So every, the title of every chapter starts with how to,
482. 00:19:31 et cetera, how to et cetera, how to et cetera.
483. 00:19:33 So I think it's as much as a mini tutorial,
484. 00:19:38 like you said, for certain types of people
485. 00:19:39 in certain situations, and I think if you're coming to this
486. 00:19:42 from zero, from absolutely nowhere, good,
487. 00:19:46 it's a good place to start.
488. 00:19:47 We're hitting some of those high level things,
489. 00:19:49 but it's almost like a launch point to then figure out
490. 00:19:52 what works with you and then go figure out more
491. 00:19:55 later on down the road, and again, that would tie me back to,
492. 00:19:58 if it has a student focus to it,
493. 00:19:59 that actually makes a ton of sense
494. 00:20:01 because that's where students are.
495. 00:20:03 Like students aren't at the level necessarily
496. 00:20:05 where they're gonna go crazy into this.
497. 00:20:07 They really just wanna know like,
498. 00:20:07 how do I get better at X?
499. 00:20:09 Okay, here's a how to guide for that.
500. 00:20:11 All right, so let's move into chapter one.
501. 00:20:13 So chapter one is how to focus intently
502. 00:20:16 and beat procrastination, and this will be,
503. 00:20:20 I, there were a couple of different times in this book
504. 00:20:22 where I went, huh, Mike, huh, Mike, right?
505. 00:20:25 Like, and I just, I'm intrigued to hear you talk about it.
506. 00:20:27 So we started off with the Palmodoro technique, right?
507. 00:20:30 My question for you, Mike, is how many times
508. 00:20:33 in the 190 episodes that you've done here
509. 00:20:36 has the Palmodoro technique come up in one of these books?
510. 00:20:39 Well, I had the same thought, I'm like, oh, Palmodoro,
511. 00:20:42 like everybody knows about Palmodoro.
512. 00:20:44 And then I started thinking about it,
513. 00:20:45 I'm like, actually, maybe not everybody does know
514. 00:20:47 about the Palmodoro because I feel like maybe
515. 00:20:49 in the circles that I've ran in
516. 00:20:51 and the places that I've worked,
517. 00:20:53 I hear about it a lot more than the average person.
518. 00:20:56 So the Palmodoro technique is definitely the place to start
519. 00:21:01 and they do a pretty good job of describing it
520. 00:21:05 because a lot of times when people talk
521. 00:21:08 about the Palmodoro technique,
522. 00:21:09 they just focus on the timer aspect.
523. 00:21:13 You set the 25 minute timer, you do the thing
524. 00:21:15 and then you take a five minute break,
525. 00:21:16 but they added a couple steps, which I think were good,
526. 00:21:19 in that before you sit down and do the 25 minutes of work,
527. 00:21:22 you have to eliminate as many distractions as you can.
528. 00:21:25 And then once you set the timer,
529. 00:21:26 you have to focus intently on your work.
530. 00:21:28 Those two additional steps, while they may seem obvious,
531. 00:21:31 I feel are very important when you are just trying
532. 00:21:36 to learn the Palmodoro technique maybe for the first time.
533. 00:21:39 I think it could save you a lot of trial and error maybe.
534. 00:21:43 And then they get into some of the brain science
535. 00:21:45 behind what happens when you are doing the Palmodoro technique.
536. 00:21:50 Like things you don't wanna do,
537. 00:21:52 they activate this insular cortex,
538. 00:21:54 which is the pain in the brain, I like that description,
539. 00:21:57 but it usually disappears after about 20 minutes.
540. 00:22:00 And that's kind of the thing is like,
541. 00:22:01 that's why the 25 minute timer is set
542. 00:22:03 because you get to the end of it and then you realize,
543. 00:22:05 oh, that thing that I was dreading,
544. 00:22:07 I don't dread it anymore.
545. 00:22:08 And then it's kind of a jolt to your system,
546. 00:22:11 like, well, why were you dragging your feet on the thing?
547. 00:22:13 And then you're like, oh, yeah, I guess maybe next time
548. 00:22:15 I'll just do the thing.
549. 00:22:17 - Yeah, yeah, exactly.
550. 00:22:19 The big piece that you summarize it,
551. 00:22:21 well, the big piece that comes out to me here
552. 00:22:23 is about what to do during the break.
553. 00:22:25 And they call out the fact it's like,
554. 00:22:27 put your phone away, don't really be distracted
555. 00:22:30 by these other things because that doesn't help you process,
556. 00:22:35 that doesn't help you recall,
557. 00:22:37 that doesn't help you work through things.
558. 00:22:38 And I can't remember if they mentioned it or not,
559. 00:22:40 but like one of the biggest things I think you can do
560. 00:22:42 is get up, move, and then for me, it would be like,
561. 00:22:45 get outside, right?
562. 00:22:46 So get sunshine, get some vitamin D,
563. 00:22:49 do something like that if you can't get outside,
564. 00:22:51 'cause it's too cold or it's too icy or whatever,
565. 00:22:53 at least walk around the hallways and do something.
566. 00:22:55 The trick to that though is what I've found
567. 00:22:57 is if you're in a social environment,
568. 00:22:59 sometimes you get pulled into that
569. 00:23:01 and your five minute break turns into a 20 minute break
570. 00:23:03 and now your whole system gets messed up.
571. 00:23:06 But I really like what they call out here
572. 00:23:08 is the fact that there are distinct times
573. 00:23:11 for distinct things and I think that's a really valuable
574. 00:23:14 thing for the Paul Maduro technique,
575. 00:23:15 at least it's been for me when I've tried to use it.
576. 00:23:18 Do you use it much?
577. 00:23:20 - I don't, I have, around my office somewhere,
578. 00:23:24 I have, there was a Kickstarter for this Essington Glass
579. 00:23:28 with the little like nanospheres that I'm gonna,
580. 00:23:31 so it's like a really fancy,
581. 00:23:32 oh there it is on my bookshelf back there,
582. 00:23:36 a really fancy Palmodoro timer.
583. 00:23:38 And I did use that at first because when you flip it over,
584. 00:23:41 it creates that sound and that's kinda,
585. 00:23:43 that becomes an auditory cue of it's time to get to work.
586. 00:23:46 However, I probably haven't run the Palmodoro technique
587. 00:23:51 in like four or five years.
588. 00:23:54 - Yeah.
589. 00:23:55 - And that is largely in part because I've developed
590. 00:23:59 my own system for like planning my day and things like that.
591. 00:24:02 And one of the things that I really believe and hammer on
592. 00:24:06 in like the cohorts and stuff is just because
593. 00:24:08 some things on your task list doesn't mean
594. 00:24:10 that you should necessarily do it.
595. 00:24:13 You gotta be thinking about, is this actually important
596. 00:24:16 to me, especially if you get out of the academic world
597. 00:24:19 where the things that you have to do are the assignments
598. 00:24:21 that are required for the class.
599. 00:24:23 And you get into a workplace setting
600. 00:24:25 and now you've got work email and people can just
601. 00:24:27 dump their trash on your lawn and walk away,
602. 00:24:29 you have to establish some barriers.
603. 00:24:32 So I think at that point, you know, it's not,
604. 00:24:34 how can I squeeze out as much as humanly possible
605. 00:24:38 with the energy that I have available?
606. 00:24:40 Like who carries a few of energy?
607. 00:24:41 You're getting paid to work, you're gonna show up and work.
608. 00:24:44 - Yeah, exactly.
609. 00:24:45 - Exactly, exactly.
610. 00:24:46 - It's really like a filtering that is gonna produce
611. 00:24:48 the value for the organization of selecting
612. 00:24:52 the right activities, not, well, I have to do this thing.
613. 00:24:55 So how do I make myself do it?
614. 00:24:57 - Yeah, I think for me, I don't use it anymore either.
615. 00:25:00 In a large part of it's because, and I don't know,
616. 00:25:02 if you've said this somewhere, if I've read this
617. 00:25:04 in a book somewhere, but it's like, focus is a muscle.
618. 00:25:06 Right, and the more you train the focus muscle,
619. 00:25:08 the more you can focus and the longer you can focus.
620. 00:25:11 And I started out having to do Pomodoro
621. 00:25:14 and it worked really, really well.
622. 00:25:16 Now I typically did a 55 or a 50/10,
623. 00:25:20 but it was because I was reading long form articles
624. 00:25:22 and I was writing bigger things.
625. 00:25:25 But now it's to the point where if I throw the music on,
626. 00:25:28 I actually, they're gonna talk about it later,
627. 00:25:30 these binaural beats, if I throw music like that on,
628. 00:25:34 I mean, I can just drop into focus mode
629. 00:25:36 and I don't need a timer anymore.
630. 00:25:38 Actually, I run the other side of the risk
631. 00:25:40 where it's like, I get so into it that I lose track
632. 00:25:43 and I'm so focused in that time.
633. 00:25:47 Okay, so the next thing they hit here
634. 00:25:48 is be wary of multitasking.
635. 00:25:50 They call out a bunch of different things
636. 00:25:52 that you have attention residue,
637. 00:25:53 so things are left over in your attention
638. 00:25:55 that you're not thinking about.
639. 00:25:56 This actually ties into something they talk about later,
640. 00:25:58 which is this diffuse learning
641. 00:26:00 or this diffuse way of thinking.
642. 00:26:03 They say frequently switching, frequently task switching
643. 00:26:05 increases susceptibility to distraction.
644. 00:26:07 More errors, slow work makes writing worse
645. 00:26:11 and diminishes learning.
646. 00:26:11 They have a bunch of those things.
647. 00:26:13 We can reduce our fixation on the task
648. 00:26:18 or our focus on the task.
649. 00:26:19 So they call out multitasking as a bad thing,
650. 00:26:23 which we've all heard that many, many times before.
651. 00:26:26 I like the fact that they go into ear muffs
652. 00:26:28 and they actually give you a brand of ear muffs,
653. 00:26:30 which I think is pretty hilarious here
654. 00:26:32 and they do that throughout the book
655. 00:26:33 where they'll actually give you specific apps
656. 00:26:36 or brands of things to try out,
657. 00:26:40 which I think is really good for a how-to book,
658. 00:26:42 but at the same time, it makes the,
659. 00:26:44 and tell me if I'm using this term right,
660. 00:26:46 it loses the evergreen nature of the content
661. 00:26:49 because I might go look up some of these things
662. 00:26:51 and they don't exist anymore.
663. 00:26:52 And what do I do?
664. 00:26:53 Like, how do I, you know what I do when that?
665. 00:26:56 So we then get to distraction-free environment,
666. 00:27:00 take frequent breaks, music and binaural beats,
667. 00:27:04 and then meditation and yoga.
668. 00:27:05 And the one I wanna call out here is,
669. 00:27:07 I know you've gone into the meditation realm a little bit.
670. 00:27:11 You've started to think about mindful meditation
671. 00:27:13 and things like that, but they actually say,
672. 00:27:16 "Oh, we can't really draw confirmed conclusions."
673. 00:27:17 And they kinda just, you know, boom,
674. 00:27:18 and it's real short and they call it out there.
675. 00:27:21 So that summarizes our chapter one.
676. 00:27:24 Any thoughts on that?
677. 00:27:25 - Just that the point about not using your phone
678. 00:27:29 during a break, I think is really good.
679. 00:27:31 And the attention residue is a real thing,
680. 00:27:35 but again, that was not new to me.
681. 00:27:40 That was one of the, well, that and the Pomodoro,
682. 00:27:44 essentially were like the first things I learned
683. 00:27:46 when I started studying productivity like 10 years ago.
684. 00:27:50 So again, you know, maybe this is geared towards
685. 00:27:53 your in introductory into these types of concepts,
686. 00:27:58 which makes sense that then that it's in chapter one,
687. 00:28:01 but nothing really profound here in my opinion.
688. 00:28:05 - Okay, good. So let's move to chapter two.
689. 00:28:06 Chapter two is the how to overcome being stuck.
690. 00:28:10 So how to overcome being stuck.
691. 00:28:13 The key, one of the key points they make in this section is,
692. 00:28:16 as long as you're focusing on a particular topic,
693. 00:28:19 you're blocking the activities of your diffuse mode
694. 00:28:23 on that topic.
695. 00:28:23 So they call out this distinction between focused mode
696. 00:28:27 and diffuse mode.
697. 00:28:28 And focused mode is like, okay, I'm editing a paper.
698. 00:28:31 So I'm looking at the actual small level sentence structure.
699. 00:28:35 And am I using the right words in the right places
700. 00:28:37 and overall, the diffuse mode would be
701. 00:28:39 I'm thinking about the ideas of what to write.
702. 00:28:42 And I would have never, this was an interesting finding for me
703. 00:28:45 'cause I wouldn't have thought to call it
704. 00:28:48 focused mode and diffuse mode, but I do this.
705. 00:28:51 So this is the shower thoughts, right?
706. 00:28:53 Like I start thinking about a thing,
707. 00:28:55 but then it just kind of stews in the back of my brain
708. 00:28:58 and all of a sudden this idea pops up
709. 00:29:00 or this new creative thing pops up
710. 00:29:01 or walking to work or driving the car
711. 00:29:06 or doing something like that.
712. 00:29:08 And what I think one of the things that came out for me
713. 00:29:11 on this is, is me constantly having a podcast in my ear
714. 00:29:15 or an audio book in my ear, is it messing with my diffuse mode?
715. 00:29:19 And I think it is and I don't like that,
716. 00:29:23 but at the same time I like listening to things.
717. 00:29:25 I like having people speak into me.
718. 00:29:27 So I thought that was a really interesting point
719. 00:29:29 at a chapter two.
720. 00:29:30 - Well, I'm not sure that it's messing with your diffuse mode.
721. 00:29:36 I mean, I guess potentially,
722. 00:29:39 I don't really like the distinction here
723. 00:29:42 of the focus mode and the diffuse mode, by the way,
724. 00:29:44 because I feel like I've got a better model
725. 00:29:47 from when I read Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey.
726. 00:29:51 And full disclosure, I guess Chris Bailey
727. 00:29:54 is a friend of mine at this point,
728. 00:29:56 but his book, Hyper Focus, talks about how
729. 00:30:00 there's the hyper focus side where we're so zeroed in
730. 00:30:03 on this is what we're doing.
731. 00:30:05 And then there's the scatter focus side
732. 00:30:08 is how he describes it.
733. 00:30:10 And I feel like that scatter focus
734. 00:30:12 is a much better definition than the diffuse mode.
735. 00:30:16 Like that makes more sense to me.
736. 00:30:18 Like, oh, I'm not focusing on one thing.
737. 00:30:21 So my focus is scattered.
738. 00:30:23 Yeah, that clicks whereas like diffuse is like,
739. 00:30:25 well, what the heck does that mean?
740. 00:30:27 Are we talking about camera gear?
741. 00:30:29 What sort of lens are you using there, bro?
742. 00:30:33 - Yeah, exactly.
743. 00:30:34 That makes sense.
744. 00:30:35 So scatter mine.
745. 00:30:36 - Yeah, so and Chris talks about how you have to kind of
746. 00:30:39 intentionally go back and forth
747. 00:30:41 between these different modes.
748. 00:30:43 And Chris is a really smart dude.
749. 00:30:46 He gave a TED talk at one point.
750. 00:30:48 And the description I remember from the TED talk
751. 00:30:52 is like Chris Bailey, the most productive man
752. 00:30:53 you'd ever hope to meet.
753. 00:30:55 And he kind of like, he's a really humble dude.
754. 00:30:57 So every time I seem like, oh, hey,
755. 00:30:59 there's the most productive man you'd ever hope to meet.
756. 00:31:01 And he's like, ah, knock it off.
757. 00:31:02 (laughs)
758. 00:31:03 - Yeah, that's funny.
759. 00:31:04 But I do think that like, he knows his stuff.
760. 00:31:08 And so he talks about how with hyper focus,
761. 00:31:10 you can't do that for extremely long.
762. 00:31:12 I mean, some of the same concepts
763. 00:31:13 that they're talking about in this book,
764. 00:31:15 but if you're gonna like,
765. 00:31:17 if you wanna go deeper on this topic, go read hyper focus.
766. 00:31:19 It's a really good book.
767. 00:31:21 And it describes, I think, more practically
768. 00:31:23 how you can do this sort of thing.
769. 00:31:25 So like one of the things that Chris talks about
770. 00:31:28 in that book is he's got a whole chapter on collecting dots
771. 00:31:32 and how there are certain dots that are really useful,
772. 00:31:34 but they're not that entertaining.
773. 00:31:36 And there's like this spectrum, you know,
774. 00:31:38 if there's useful, there's balance, there's entertaining,
775. 00:31:40 and then there's like the trashy stuff,
776. 00:31:41 it's like that's never gonna be useful.
777. 00:31:43 I feel like with podcasts, maybe that's higher entertainment,
778. 00:31:47 not quite as useful, you could get really useful stuff
779. 00:31:50 from a podcast too, I guess it kind of depends
780. 00:31:52 which ones you listen to and how you're gonna be listening
781. 00:31:54 to them, but just the fact that it's going on
782. 00:31:56 in the background, I don't think that's necessarily
783. 00:31:58 working against the scatter focus or diffuse mode.
784. 00:32:02 You just gotta recognize that when you're doing that,
785. 00:32:04 you're not ringing out every drop of value you can
786. 00:32:09 from the words that are being spoken,
787. 00:32:10 but as long as you're okay with that, like who cares?
788. 00:32:13 - Yeah, and maybe that's a good distinction
789. 00:32:15 that I hadn't until right now is there are certain podcasts
790. 00:32:18 where I should be doing them in more of the hyper focus mode
791. 00:32:22 and I should be taking notes while I'm listening to that.
792. 00:32:24 And then there are other ones that are much more background
793. 00:32:27 scatter focused mode and that's okay.
794. 00:32:31 Like I'm driving to work and I don't really need
795. 00:32:33 to take notes on this, I really just care about,
796. 00:32:35 you know, the new thing that came out
797. 00:32:36 or what's happening in this world.
798. 00:32:38 And that's all right.
799. 00:32:39 - So I gotta jump in right here and ask you,
800. 00:32:42 like where does Bookworm land on that then?
801. 00:32:44 Is that one of those ones that you should be taking notes on?
802. 00:32:46 - So the way I used to listen to it is it depended
803. 00:32:50 on the book.
804. 00:32:51 - Okay. - There were certain
805. 00:32:52 books you all would cover where I really wanted
806. 00:32:54 to get something out of that book, you know,
807. 00:32:56 and I was like, okay, let's see what these guys
808. 00:32:57 have to say about this.
809. 00:32:58 And then there were other ones where just like,
810. 00:32:59 yeah, you know, I'm driving to work, I don't really care.
811. 00:33:01 Like let's just, let's just throw Bookworm on.
812. 00:33:04 So it all just depended on the episode,
813. 00:33:06 like which is not normal for me with all my podcasts.
814. 00:33:11 Like there are very few.
815. 00:33:12 So another one would be Andrew Hubermann's podcast.
816. 00:33:15 - Yeah. - So he runs one where
817. 00:33:16 it's about like health and wellness and fitness
818. 00:33:18 and things like that.
819. 00:33:19 And there are certain ones that I just don't listen to
820. 00:33:21 because I'm just like, yeah, I don't care about that one.
821. 00:33:23 Or there are other ones where I'm like,
822. 00:33:24 I'm gonna listen to this, I'm gonna take notes
823. 00:33:26 because it's so intriguing and it's so,
824. 00:33:28 so interesting to me.
825. 00:33:30 So that's interesting.
826. 00:33:31 - I would like to think that we have very high quality
827. 00:33:34 conversations, but I would still say that people don't take
828. 00:33:39 notes listening to Bookworm because that kind of taps
829. 00:33:42 into the thing with like audio books is like,
830. 00:33:45 oh, well, I know that because I listened to it.
831. 00:33:47 No, you don't. - No.
832. 00:33:49 - No, you don't. - You didn't engage
833. 00:33:51 with the material in a meaningful way to really solidify
834. 00:33:55 this stuff.
835. 00:33:56 And so at first, you know, when Joe and I started
836. 00:33:59 this podcast, we thought people would be reading along
837. 00:34:01 with us and it turned out that a lot of people were listening
838. 00:34:04 to the podcast as kind of like a filter as to whether
839. 00:34:08 they were gonna read the book.
840. 00:34:09 And over time, I feel like that is the ideal way to do this.
841. 00:34:13 Grab something that's entertaining, that you can listen
842. 00:34:15 to on your commutes or when you're at the gym
843. 00:34:17 or when you're doing chores around the house,
844. 00:34:20 but you're not gonna stop on your writing lawnmower
845. 00:34:23 because I say something profound and jot down a note.
846. 00:34:26 Just recognize that that may trigger something,
847. 00:34:29 open up a loop in your brain like,
848. 00:34:30 oh, that book, those ideas that they were discussing,
849. 00:34:33 that sounds interesting.
850. 00:34:35 I'm gonna go study that further and then go pick up the book.
851. 00:34:39 And if you wanna use the affiliate links that are
852. 00:34:40 in the show, no, it's cool.
853. 00:34:42 (laughs)
854. 00:34:43 But then you have to do the additional work to really
855. 00:34:46 like make it your own.
856. 00:34:48 And I feel like we're in this place right now as a society
857. 00:34:52 where we hear things or we watch a video on social media
858. 00:34:57 and I now know this thing.
859. 00:35:00 It's the, I call it the internet philosophers.
860. 00:35:04 (laughs)
861. 00:35:05 - Yeah, exactly.
862. 00:35:06 - And I feel like that's dangerous
863. 00:35:08 and we should all be rebelling against that
864. 00:35:09 as hard as we can whenever we can.
865. 00:35:12 - Well, and I don't know about your philosophy
866. 00:35:13 so I'd be interested to hear this.
867. 00:35:15 When I listen to an audiobook, if it's a nonfiction audio book
868. 00:35:18 that I'm listening to, usually it's because I'm running
869. 00:35:21 but I want a way to distract myself from the running
870. 00:35:24 and all I'm trying to get is like one or two key ideas
871. 00:35:27 out of that book.
872. 00:35:28 Right, like so I'll listen to a five hour audiobook
873. 00:35:31 because I'm like, okay, is there one or two things?
874. 00:35:33 Like, or are there one or two things I can grab
875. 00:35:35 from that book and like that is worth it to me.
876. 00:35:38 Like that is a value to me.
877. 00:35:39 It entertained me while I ran and it gave me one or two things.
878. 00:35:42 If I'm listening to a fiction book, I don't even care.
879. 00:35:44 Right, it's just like, okay, it's in the background.
880. 00:35:46 It's whatever is happening.
881. 00:35:47 So here's my question for you.
882. 00:35:49 Are there any podcasts that you actually listen to
883. 00:35:52 and take notes while you listen to them?
884. 00:35:54 Never.
885. 00:35:55 I will occasionally, like if I'm out for a run
886. 00:35:58 and someone mentions something and I'm like,
887. 00:36:01 that sounds cool, I need to check that out.
888. 00:36:03 Then I'll capture a note inside of drafts
889. 00:36:06 in about once a week, I'll process my drafts inbox
890. 00:36:09 and if I still wanna go check out that thing,
891. 00:36:11 I'll go check out the thing.
892. 00:36:12 There've only been two for me.
893. 00:36:15 So there's one that's happening right now
894. 00:36:17 and it's because I'm using it to prepare for another thing.
895. 00:36:20 But the only reason I do it is because I need that information
896. 00:36:23 to be successful in the other thing that I'm doing.
897. 00:36:26 The other one was the exact same situation
898. 00:36:29 but it was on a one time deal.
899. 00:36:30 It's like they did an episode that was so valuable
900. 00:36:32 that I listened to it a second time and took notes on it
901. 00:36:36 the second time.
902. 00:36:37 So that's interesting.
903. 00:36:38 Wow, okay, I didn't expect this to go down
904. 00:36:40 the podcast rabbit hole.
905. 00:36:42 It can be valuable, that's the thing
906. 00:36:44 but the things that you pick up, I guess,
907. 00:36:48 when I'm listening to a podcast or an audiobook,
908. 00:36:51 I'll listen to audiobooks a lot of times
909. 00:36:52 when I wanna just read something again
910. 00:36:55 or I've read the actual book
911. 00:36:57 and I just wanna review some of the material
912. 00:36:59 so I'll just play that instead of a podcast
913. 00:37:01 when I go for a run or whatever.
914. 00:37:03 But the fact that you're collecting this information,
915. 00:37:06 these are dots that are going into your brain,
916. 00:37:09 that does have an effect whether or not you can recall it.
917. 00:37:12 So from the perspective of today's book,
918. 00:37:15 did you actually learn it?
919. 00:37:16 No, but that doesn't mean that it didn't have an impact.
920. 00:37:19 You can't regurgitate it on a test
921. 00:37:22 but those are still dots that you've collected
922. 00:37:25 and at some point you will connect them
923. 00:37:28 in the right conditions when the time is right
924. 00:37:31 and they will produce something useful.
925. 00:37:34 So I try to curate the stuff that I listened to,
926. 00:37:37 I want it to be potentially useful
927. 00:37:39 but I'm not trying to ring every ounce of value
928. 00:37:43 that I can out of it.
929. 00:37:45 It's just something that is on in the background
930. 00:37:48 and that stuff is maybe not getting as far down
931. 00:37:52 as if I were actually forcing myself to take notes
932. 00:37:55 on it right there but that's okay
933. 00:37:57 because I have limited time attention
934. 00:37:59 and energy available to me so I'll select my own spots
935. 00:38:03 when I'm gonna dive deep on that stuff
936. 00:38:05 and decide what I really think about things.
937. 00:38:08 Yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
938. 00:38:10 All right, so they call diffuse mode the strategic weapon
939. 00:38:13 or what did Bailey call it, scatter mode?
940. 00:38:15 Scatter focus, yep.
941. 00:38:16 Scatter focus, right?
942. 00:38:17 So they call that the strategic weapon
943. 00:38:19 and then they go into a series in chapter two
944. 00:38:21 of giving you techniques and methods, right?
945. 00:38:23 So they call it one, they call the hard start technique.
946. 00:38:25 You scan over a test or I said a homework problems
947. 00:38:27 or something difficult, you mark the ones that are difficult,
948. 00:38:30 you work on them for a few minutes
949. 00:38:31 and then you intentionally step away
950. 00:38:33 to let this diffuse mode or the scatter focus
951. 00:38:36 work in the background.
952. 00:38:38 Now I advise this for my students on tests as well
953. 00:38:40 but mine is purely based on timing.
954. 00:38:42 It has nothing to do with focus mode and diffuse mode.
955. 00:38:46 It's more a matter of students will burn 45 minutes
956. 00:38:49 on one problem and there's a 10 problem test
957. 00:38:51 and I'm like you can't do that,
958. 00:38:52 like you're missing all these other points
959. 00:38:54 'cause you didn't get a chance to try.
960. 00:38:55 But then they also talk about diffuse mode
961. 00:38:57 in writing first drafts, they talk about using coffee shop
962. 00:39:00 or background noise or different places
963. 00:39:02 that'll help pull you out of focus mode
964. 00:39:05 and into diffuse mode.
965. 00:39:06 The one that I like and that I'm ready to go on,
966. 00:39:08 the one that I like is the writer dye app
967. 00:39:11 that they recommend.
968. 00:39:12 I've actually used apps like this before
969. 00:39:15 where you set a timer or you set a word limit
970. 00:39:17 in an amount of time and if you don't hit that number of words
971. 00:39:20 it erases all of your writing.
972. 00:39:22 Now this works for me on a bunch of different levels
973. 00:39:26 'cause one it's motivating, it's like
974. 00:39:27 I don't wanna lose all that work that I did
975. 00:39:28 but two it was taught to me a long, long time ago
976. 00:39:31 that writing is thinking.
977. 00:39:33 So the reason why I like things like that
978. 00:39:34 is because it forces me to think about a thing
979. 00:39:37 and it forces me to think about it more than just
980. 00:39:39 like in the background of my brain
981. 00:39:40 but I'm actually trying to type it as well
982. 00:39:42 and I think about it more deeply.
983. 00:39:43 And then even if I do get to the situation
984. 00:39:44 where it wipes everything away,
985. 00:39:46 I've thought about it once really, really hard.
986. 00:39:48 So I like that they call it out that app,
987. 00:39:50 I like that they threw that app out there.
988. 00:39:52 Use it with caution because if you're one of those people
989. 00:39:55 that like will get really devastated
990. 00:39:56 when it wipes away all your writing,
991. 00:39:59 it might happen and then it's technology.
992. 00:40:02 So sometimes it glitches and it like
993. 00:40:04 it doesn't work the way it's supposed to
994. 00:40:05 and it cuts earlier or whatever.
995. 00:40:07 So that wraps up two for me.
996. 00:40:10 What else do you have anything else to add for two?
997. 00:40:12 - No but this writer die app terrifies me.
998. 00:40:15 I don't think I would touch this with a 10 foot pole.
999. 00:40:17 - It's really, really great.
1000. 00:40:19 If you use it appropriately and your brain can handle
1001. 00:40:23 that kind of a thing.
1002. 00:40:24 And when you get to that point where you're like,
1003. 00:40:26 I just have writer's block, I can't write anything.
1004. 00:40:28 It's a way to move yourself through.
1005. 00:40:31 All right, let's go to chapter three.
1006. 00:40:33 How to learn anything deeply.
1007. 00:40:35 Now I think this is a very, very aggressive title.
1008. 00:40:40 Aggressive is probably not the right word.
1009. 00:40:43 What word am I looking for, Mike?
1010. 00:40:44 Like it's a-- - Clickbaitie.
1011. 00:40:45 - I don't know.
1012. 00:40:46 - Yeah, it's Clickbaitie.
1013. 00:40:47 It's like-- - This is an SEO title for sure.
1014. 00:40:49 (laughs)
1015. 00:40:50 - Anything, okay.
1016. 00:40:52 So what they're taking us through here
1017. 00:40:53 is they're taking us through a little bit more
1018. 00:40:55 of the neuroscience, how axons and other neurons
1019. 00:41:01 and stuff fire and how they connect together.
1020. 00:41:03 My takeaway from this was basically,
1021. 00:41:07 okay, we've got these different parts of our brain.
1022. 00:41:08 We're gonna do different things with different parts
1023. 00:41:11 of our brain.
1024. 00:41:12 Retrieval practice comes into here.
1025. 00:41:14 Mark, Mike, do we get into working memory
1026. 00:41:18 and long-term memory in this section?
1027. 00:41:19 Or is it in a different section?
1028. 00:41:21 - I don't think it's in this one,
1029. 00:41:24 at least not in my notes.
1030. 00:41:25 - No, it's in four, okay.
1031. 00:41:27 So we're leading up to working memory and long-term memory.
1032. 00:41:29 So we're trying to make these links,
1033. 00:41:32 we're trying to do different things.
1034. 00:41:35 Retrieval practice is what stood out for me
1035. 00:41:37 in this chapter.
1036. 00:41:38 So retrieval practice, in other words,
1037. 00:41:39 you wanna see if you can pull information from your memory
1038. 00:41:42 or work with it in your own mind
1039. 00:41:45 rather than simply looking at it, working through this.
1040. 00:41:48 And I think this is where I really connected with Oakley,
1041. 00:41:52 the author, because as an engineering student,
1042. 00:41:55 I would look at all these problems being done,
1043. 00:41:57 these example problems being done.
1044. 00:41:58 And I would think, okay, that's easy, right?
1045. 00:42:01 Piece of cake.
1046. 00:42:02 And then I'd get the problem and I'd be like, oh my,
1047. 00:42:05 I have no idea what to do.
1048. 00:42:07 Like I've, no, I don't even know how to start it.
1049. 00:42:09 I don't know what assumptions to make.
1050. 00:42:10 I don't know anything about this problem.
1051. 00:42:12 And this is where that retrieval practice comes in
1052. 00:42:13 where you kind of make it your own
1053. 00:42:16 and you say, okay, why did they do that in the problem?
1054. 00:42:20 Why did they do that in the problem?
1055. 00:42:21 Why did they do that in the problem?
1056. 00:42:22 And you're really connecting the dots here
1057. 00:42:24 and you're retrieving other things
1058. 00:42:26 from other parts of your brain,
1059. 00:42:27 which then makes those links stronger
1060. 00:42:30 and makes those connections stronger.
1061. 00:42:31 And honestly, if you want to learn anything, right?
1062. 00:42:36 This is where I like don't think the title
1063. 00:42:38 is completely clickbaity.
1064. 00:42:40 If you run this process, it really significantly helps you
1065. 00:42:44 learn in any context, like in almost any context,
1066. 00:42:48 is this retrieval practice?
1067. 00:42:49 And that's where I think they move out of the clickbaity title.
1068. 00:42:52 - Yeah, the thing that I got out of this chapter
1069. 00:42:55 that I really enjoyed was the description
1070. 00:42:58 of how the chain links get forged together.
1071. 00:43:02 And this is where they've got some visuals
1072. 00:43:04 to illustrate this, but this really doesn't have to do
1073. 00:43:08 with the how to part, but I really enjoyed
1074. 00:43:11 the actual scientific description of what actually happens
1075. 00:43:15 where you've got these 86 million different neurons
1076. 00:43:18 in your brain and understanding how they actually get
1077. 00:43:21 wired together was kind of cool.
1078. 00:43:24 And they kind of build on that as they go too,
1079. 00:43:26 but some of the big takeaways to me were that
1080. 00:43:29 when you learn new things, you're building on things
1081. 00:43:32 that you already know.
1082. 00:43:34 And when you're creating these links,
1083. 00:43:36 the more that you retrieve these sets of links,
1084. 00:43:39 the stronger that you make them, which makes a lot of sense.
1085. 00:43:42 Like you just every time you review that material,
1086. 00:43:46 essentially you're reinforcing that set of links there.
1087. 00:43:49 But the thing that really I have the most notes on
1088. 00:43:53 probably is like right at the end, they talk about,
1089. 00:43:55 well, the real place where the learning is solidified
1090. 00:43:58 is in your sleep.
1091. 00:43:59 There's nothing you can do about that
1092. 00:44:00 other than try to get more sleep.
1093. 00:44:02 And here's some tactics for doing that.
1094. 00:44:05 I have to say that they're how to fall asleep more easily.
1095. 00:44:09 They talk about clearing your mind,
1096. 00:44:11 I'm making a list for tomorrow,
1097. 00:44:12 avoid blue light from your phones and screens,
1098. 00:44:14 make it dark, use a way to blink it,
1099. 00:44:15 put your mobile phone in another room.
1100. 00:44:18 Those are all great suggestions.
1101. 00:44:20 I've actually pieced together my own sleep routine
1102. 00:44:23 and that's largely it.
1103. 00:44:24 So I think I agree with that.
1104. 00:44:27 But then the relaxation technique to fall asleep,
1105. 00:44:29 like I tried this, it doesn't work for me.
1106. 00:44:33 And this isn't the only version of this I've found.
1107. 00:44:35 Any of those like articles,
1108. 00:44:37 how to fall asleep in two minutes,
1109. 00:44:38 that's essentially what they're talking about here.
1110. 00:44:41 These have never worked for me.
1111. 00:44:43 And just a little bit of a background on the sleep thing,
1112. 00:44:45 like I was diagnosed with epilepsy
1113. 00:44:47 when I was 18 years old.
1114. 00:44:48 So sleep is really important for me.
1115. 00:44:49 I tracked my sleep using three different apps
1116. 00:44:52 every single night.
1117. 00:44:54 Okay, now I'm not constantly going back
1118. 00:44:56 and looking at that data or saying,
1119. 00:44:58 oh, I only got 57% last night.
1120. 00:45:00 I better just batten down the hatches
1121. 00:45:02 and stay in bed all day because who knows what's gonna happen?
1122. 00:45:05 But the truth is that, you know,
1123. 00:45:08 seizure can be triggered by a lack of sleep.
1124. 00:45:11 Now I haven't had issues in over 20 years.
1125. 00:45:13 So like it's under control,
1126. 00:45:15 but largely because I'm doing everything that I can
1127. 00:45:17 optimize the quality and the quantity of the sleep
1128. 00:45:20 that I get.
1129. 00:45:21 However, I feel like this relaxation technique
1130. 00:45:24 to fall asleep, maybe this works if you are a student
1131. 00:45:27 and you are getting up early because you have to,
1132. 00:45:31 but then staying up late because you want to.
1133. 00:45:34 (laughs)
1134. 00:45:35 That's immediately what I thought of when I read this.
1135. 00:45:38 It's like, well, this would work for someone who's just
1136. 00:45:40 like constantly wired from the stimulus
1137. 00:45:43 of like being in a college setting.
1138. 00:45:46 But when you get into the real world,
1139. 00:45:49 don't get frustrated when that doesn't work
1140. 00:45:51 'cause it's probably not gonna work.
1141. 00:45:53 - Do you have trouble sleeping?
1142. 00:45:54 Like, do you have trouble getting to sleep at night?
1143. 00:45:57 - I mean, I have never been able to get one of these hacks
1144. 00:46:02 to work for me, but I don't think I have trouble sleeping.
1145. 00:46:05 I'm not the type of person where I'm out the minute
1146. 00:46:08 that my head hits the pillow.
1147. 00:46:09 In fact, I get frustrated sometimes because like
1148. 00:46:13 my wife and I will be talking and then all of a sudden
1149. 00:46:15 she's out.
1150. 00:46:16 (laughs)
1151. 00:46:17 And I'm like, where'd you go?
1152. 00:46:18 - Yeah.
1153. 00:46:19 - So I am that person, right?
1154. 00:46:20 So you would get frustrated with me because, I mean,
1155. 00:46:23 I can think about going to bed and then in five minutes
1156. 00:46:25 I'm asleep.
1157. 00:46:26 It is very, very rare for me not to be able to.
1158. 00:46:28 I can drink a couple of coffee and then 10 minutes later
1159. 00:46:31 go to sleep.
1160. 00:46:32 Like it's not, you know, that might just tell you
1161. 00:46:34 about my coffee consumption, but like it is not a challenge
1162. 00:46:38 for me.
1163. 00:46:39 So this section really, I got it and I understand that.
1164. 00:46:42 What I think was interesting about this is I thought about
1165. 00:46:44 through the lens of like Red Bull, Monster,
1166. 00:46:48 all of these energy drinks and the fact that like,
1167. 00:46:50 at least I know for the guys, a lot of the guys I work with,
1168. 00:46:54 you know, they'll do what you say.
1169. 00:46:55 Like they have to be up for eight AM class or nine AM class
1170. 00:46:57 or whatever it is and then they're playing video games
1171. 00:46:59 until two in the morning.
1172. 00:47:00 - Yep.
1173. 00:47:00 - And usually they're not living the healthiest life
1174. 00:47:03 while they play the video game.
1175. 00:47:04 So they're eating food that doesn't make sense.
1176. 00:47:05 And they're in and it's like, okay, I could maybe see
1177. 00:47:07 this kind of working through that.
1178. 00:47:10 What I thought was weird about this chapter too though is
1179. 00:47:12 we talk about some heavier, they're not heavy,
1180. 00:47:15 but heavier concepts.
1181. 00:47:16 So you've got recall practice or retrieval practice.
1182. 00:47:20 You've got inner weaving, which is basically mixing concepts.
1183. 00:47:23 Don't stay focused on the same concept,
1184. 00:47:25 mixed concepts together.
1185. 00:47:26 Talk about the axons and stuff.
1186. 00:47:27 But then we get into these other things,
1187. 00:47:29 procrastination, exercise, nutrition, sleep.
1188. 00:47:31 And it just felt like it came out of nowhere to me
1189. 00:47:33 that it's like these two chapters kind of muddied,
1190. 00:47:36 or sorry, this chapter kind of muddied into two topics
1191. 00:47:38 that I don't know if it should have been two chapters or not,
1192. 00:47:40 but it felt kind of strange to me.
1193. 00:47:43 - Yeah, it is a little bit weird.
1194. 00:47:45 - I like their one connection to some more current things
1195. 00:47:51 was the ideal spacing intervals.
1196. 00:47:53 And that is, so spaced repetition.
1197. 00:47:57 So you'll see programs like RemNote comes around
1198. 00:48:00 and RemNote's purpose is to try to help you
1199. 00:48:01 with spaced repetition, which I think that was pretty cool.
1200. 00:48:04 So that was a good tie in.
1201. 00:48:06 - Yeah, there's, I mean, I know you use Obsidian either too.
1202. 00:48:10 There's different plugins and things that you can do
1203. 00:48:12 that sort of thing with those apps.
1204. 00:48:14 And that's the value of something like read wise,
1205. 00:48:17 in my opinion, I don't use read wise for book notes,
1206. 00:48:19 but they do have like the spaced repetition stuff.
1207. 00:48:21 So there is something to be said for that.
1208. 00:48:24 I think if you're really trying to like ingrain this stuff,
1209. 00:48:27 though, one of the big things that they touched on,
1210. 00:48:29 but really didn't hit hard is you got to exercise.
1211. 00:48:34 You got to be active every single day.
1212. 00:48:36 They talk about how exercise is critical for learning
1213. 00:48:38 because it produces that brain derived new,
1214. 00:48:41 neutrophic factor.
1215. 00:48:42 Is that what the name is, the BDNF?
1216. 00:48:44 Where is it?
1217. 00:48:46 - Yes, brain derived, neutropic factor.
1218. 00:48:48 - Yeah.
1219. 00:48:49 And then what that does is that actually promotes
1220. 00:48:53 the dendrite spine production.
1221. 00:48:55 So we kind of glanced over this,
1222. 00:48:57 but like the way that the neurons wire together
1223. 00:48:59 is they have these spines at the end
1224. 00:49:02 of the little octopus arms.
1225. 00:49:05 And when you exercise those spines, the prickly parts,
1226. 00:49:09 that allow the things to latch together
1227. 00:49:11 and create the links, like there's more that,
1228. 00:49:15 there's more of those spines that get produced.
1229. 00:49:18 They're more effective.
1230. 00:49:20 So if you have more of those spines in there,
1231. 00:49:22 they're stickier, essentially.
1232. 00:49:24 The links get forged a little bit less actively.
1233. 00:49:29 Like you don't have to work as hard
1234. 00:49:31 in order for those things to click.
1235. 00:49:35 - All right, ready, move to four?
1236. 00:49:36 - Let's do it.
1237. 00:49:37 - So how to maximize working memory and take better notes.
1238. 00:49:41 Now, this is another one of those sections
1239. 00:49:43 where I thought Mike is gonna have lots of opinions on this
1240. 00:49:46 because it said take better notes.
1241. 00:49:49 I was like, I wonder what he's gonna say here.
1242. 00:49:51 So let me give you the overview on it
1243. 00:49:53 and then we can dive in.
1244. 00:49:55 So one of the key points here is that
1245. 00:49:57 the brain has two separate types of memory.
1246. 00:49:59 So you have got working memory.
1247. 00:50:00 And for those of you who like computer analogies
1248. 00:50:03 or metaphors,
1249. 00:50:04 'cause that's another part of this book they talk about,
1250. 00:50:06 this is the RAM, this is the memory that's quick access.
1251. 00:50:09 And it's happening all the time.
1252. 00:50:11 And then you have your long-term memory
1253. 00:50:13 and your long-term memory is your hard drive.
1254. 00:50:14 And that's where you store things permanently
1255. 00:50:17 to keep them around a longer term.
1256. 00:50:20 So they say true learning only takes place
1257. 00:50:23 when things are moved from working memory
1258. 00:50:25 to your actual long-term memory.
1259. 00:50:27 So we're gonna move from working memory to long-term memory.
1260. 00:50:31 So then they start talking about the attentional octopus.
1261. 00:50:34 So you brought the octopus in.
1262. 00:50:35 And I thought this was actually pretty clever.
1263. 00:50:37 In turn, the attentional octopus.
1264. 00:50:39 And they say that it's got slippery arms.
1265. 00:50:40 When our working memory situation,
1266. 00:50:42 the octopus is holding things in its thing,
1267. 00:50:44 but things are slipping around
1268. 00:50:45 and they're moving all around
1269. 00:50:46 and it might get stored, it might not get stored.
1270. 00:50:48 And then at some point, that's gonna shift over.
1271. 00:50:51 And we're actually gonna move that into a place
1272. 00:50:53 where it's not into that slippery phase.
1273. 00:50:55 And I may have messed up the backend of that analogy.
1274. 00:50:59 But then they give ideas to basically
1275. 00:51:02 help make the best use of working memory.
1276. 00:51:04 And they've given a couple of different ideas there.
1277. 00:51:06 And then they give ways to actually work
1278. 00:51:09 into long-term memory as well.
1279. 00:51:11 So some of those are simplify the material down,
1280. 00:51:13 break it into chunks, focus on the fundamentals,
1281. 00:51:16 translate into more understandable terms,
1282. 00:51:18 make task lists, put something on paper.
1283. 00:51:20 And then they transition into the taking notes,
1284. 00:51:22 taking into a section.
1285. 00:51:23 So you're seeing a little bit of a theme here
1286. 00:51:26 in terms of the way the chapters are laid out
1287. 00:51:28 to where they'll talk about these sciencey concepts.
1288. 00:51:31 And then they roll it into a how-to
1289. 00:51:33 and a more practical guide.
1290. 00:51:34 And sometimes I think it works better than others.
1291. 00:51:37 Their key here is that notes are a big part
1292. 00:51:40 of helping you move it into long-term memory.
1293. 00:51:42 Which for the most part, I agree with Rick.
1294. 00:51:44 When I go from just thinking about it to writing it down,
1295. 00:51:47 the writing it down and whether I ever go back to that again
1296. 00:51:49 is less relevant than the fact that it makes it more permanent
1297. 00:51:53 in my brain.
1298. 00:51:55 - Yeah, so what constitutes knowing something
1299. 00:51:59 is the follow-up question I've got here.
1300. 00:52:00 Because again, these are academics
1301. 00:52:03 and we're trying to recall information
1302. 00:52:05 to spit it back on a test.
1303. 00:52:08 Which is a valid form of doing something
1304. 00:52:13 with the information.
1305. 00:52:14 But I feel like once you get out of the academic setting
1306. 00:52:17 that has limited value, I was a really good test taker.
1307. 00:52:22 A lot of the stuff that they were talking about,
1308. 00:52:24 like the tactics and like breaking down
1309. 00:52:25 the different questions and things,
1310. 00:52:27 I naturally did that, but I didn't ever have
1311. 00:52:30 like a formal training or like the process,
1312. 00:52:33 this is how you do it.
1313. 00:52:34 It's just like, well, that's how you take a test.
1314. 00:52:36 That makes sense.
1315. 00:52:37 In fact, I was so good at taking tests
1316. 00:52:41 that on the ACT, I think I ended up getting like a 30
1317. 00:52:45 and I got like a 32 in the science section.
1318. 00:52:47 Had nothing to do with my ability to learn science.
1319. 00:52:52 It was my ability to take a test.
1320. 00:52:54 So I'm like, oh, I'm really good at science.
1321. 00:52:56 Well, I've kind of always wanted to be a chiropractor.
1322. 00:52:57 I'll go into, I'll go to college for biology.
1323. 00:53:01 And I just absolutely like, I worked my butt off.
1324. 00:53:05 There was one test specifically,
1325. 00:53:07 like I spent the entire Thanksgiving break in the lab,
1326. 00:53:09 like fell asleep during the study,
1327. 00:53:11 like in the lab on like the Friday or Saturday.
1328. 00:53:13 Now my professor comes in, he's like,
1329. 00:53:15 "Oh, I'm so proud of you.
1330. 00:53:15 You're gonna do awesome in this test."
1331. 00:53:17 I failed the test.
1332. 00:53:18 Like I just could not do, could not hack it
1333. 00:53:21 when it came to biology.
1334. 00:53:23 And that was kind of like a false indicator of like,
1335. 00:53:24 okay, you might be really good at this thing
1336. 00:53:26 because I could figure out naturally how to take the test.
1337. 00:53:30 So fast forward, you know, a lot of the stuff that I do now
1338. 00:53:34 in terms of being a creator,
1339. 00:53:35 that's a totally different application of information.
1340. 00:53:39 You can read all the books, you can have all the information,
1341. 00:53:42 you could spit back that, well, this is how you implement GTD.
1342. 00:53:46 That means absolutely nothing in the world
1343. 00:53:48 that I'm in right now because it's, well,
1344. 00:53:51 how do you actually apply that to make something new?
1345. 00:53:55 And not just like make something like,
1346. 00:53:56 "Well, here's my book notes from whatever."
1347. 00:53:59 And this is what David Allen has said,
1348. 00:54:00 but like putting your own spin on these concepts,
1349. 00:54:04 that's a totally different skill.
1350. 00:54:07 And so I feel like the taking better notes,
1351. 00:54:11 like, yeah, it's an important piece,
1352. 00:54:13 but the type of notes that you're taking
1353. 00:54:15 and then really what you're doing with those is important.
1354. 00:54:19 And you have to think through,
1355. 00:54:21 how am I going to use this stuff again in the future?
1356. 00:54:25 Because the default way, and I say default just because,
1357. 00:54:29 like, the perspective that they're sharing in the book
1358. 00:54:32 does not align with my goals and objectives
1359. 00:54:35 for taking notes at all, (laughs)
1360. 00:54:38 which means that my approach is very different,
1361. 00:54:41 which is why it's understandable that, you know,
1362. 00:54:44 creating concept maps is one bullet point
1363. 00:54:47 at the bottom of this one chapter in this very short book,
1364. 00:54:51 when really like, that's so important
1365. 00:54:53 to all of my productivity and creativity workflows.
1366. 00:54:56 - Well, and that would make sense to me,
1367. 00:54:59 to think about yours versus what they're doing,
1368. 00:55:01 you're trying to make connections between things
1369. 00:55:03 and then take those connections and make new content
1370. 00:55:05 out of that, right?
1371. 00:55:06 And that's interesting and relevant
1372. 00:55:08 and advances our way of thinking about it.
1373. 00:55:11 For their situation as academics,
1374. 00:55:13 and we roll into like test taking,
1375. 00:55:15 it's largely about recall and being able to apply that
1376. 00:55:18 in a confined set of problems or a confined context
1377. 00:55:22 that's related to a class or whatever that would be.
1378. 00:55:24 - Exactly.
1379. 00:55:25 - Which they're very, very different.
1380. 00:55:26 Like they are very, very different environments.
1381. 00:55:29 I teach my students all the time, you know,
1382. 00:55:31 one of the things I don't teach
1383. 00:55:32 is I don't teach specific software platforms,
1384. 00:55:34 I teach them how to learn software,
1385. 00:55:36 because I have no idea what they're gonna go do,
1386. 00:55:38 I have no idea what application they're gonna get into,
1387. 00:55:41 and it takes them a little while to wrap their head around
1388. 00:55:43 that that's like, oh, it doesn't matter
1389. 00:55:45 if we're modeling in Fusion 360
1390. 00:55:47 or if we're modeling in Tinkercad
1391. 00:55:48 or if we're modeling something else,
1392. 00:55:50 I need to understand what a revolution is
1393. 00:55:51 because revolutions happen in all those modeling platforms
1394. 00:55:53 and I'm gonna need to figure out how to do it
1395. 00:55:55 in all those platforms.
1396. 00:55:55 - You're right, but that's the thing is that application
1397. 00:56:00 with the digital economy that we're all going to work in
1398. 00:56:06 once we get out of school, that's less and less important.
1399. 00:56:11 Who cares what the information is
1400. 00:56:13 because when you're on the job,
1401. 00:56:14 you're gonna need to be able to write a good chat GPT query
1402. 00:56:18 or a good Google search in order to surface it quickly.
1403. 00:56:22 The thing that you're not gonna be able to reproduce easily
1404. 00:56:25 and the thing that's gonna add value, I think,
1405. 00:56:29 is well, what do you think about this?
1406. 00:56:31 Or how do you actually use that?
1407. 00:56:33 It's not just the recall,
1408. 00:56:36 in the cohort I'm going through,
1409. 00:56:37 I talk about three different levels of information
1410. 00:56:41 and there's the one level which is just the information
1411. 00:56:44 where I've got it in the archive and I can go find it.
1412. 00:56:47 That's the bare minimum and we've got technological tools
1413. 00:56:50 that can help us with that.
1414. 00:56:52 And then the next one is kind of revelation
1415. 00:56:54 where I don't even need to go look for it anymore
1416. 00:56:57 because I've internalized it and that's kind of
1417. 00:56:58 what they're talking about here.
1418. 00:57:00 But the top level I call applications,
1419. 00:57:03 what are you doing with it?
1420. 00:57:06 And so we are doing people into service
1421. 00:57:08 if we don't kind of push them in that direction.
1422. 00:57:10 That's what I'm trying to do with the cohort is like,
1423. 00:57:12 you gotta make something out of this.
1424. 00:57:14 I don't care if you don't think you're creative
1425. 00:57:16 and I don't care if you don't have a blog or a podcast
1426. 00:57:19 or a YouTube channel, you've gotta decide,
1427. 00:57:22 what does this mean to me and how am I gonna use it?
1428. 00:57:25 And if you're not gonna use it,
1429. 00:57:26 then it's not useful.
1430. 00:57:28 Chuck it and find some information that is.
1431. 00:57:30 - Yep, I agree, I agree completely.
1432. 00:57:32 All right, let's talk about memorizing.
1433. 00:57:34 So the next chapter is how to memorize.
1434. 00:57:36 And their key point out of this one is memorizing
1435. 00:57:39 key pieces of information releases mental power
1436. 00:57:42 so we can understand more complex concepts
1437. 00:57:44 and solve more advanced problems.
1438. 00:57:45 So they tie memorizing into almost establishing a foundation
1439. 00:57:50 that lets us do some of these more advanced things
1440. 00:57:53 that we've been talking about.
1441. 00:57:55 In general, I understand this,
1442. 00:57:58 even though I loathe memorization with a passion.
1443. 00:58:03 Like the idea of memorizing something
1444. 00:58:07 for the sake of memorizing it actually stirs up
1445. 00:58:10 some like frustration and maybe anger in me.
1446. 00:58:14 Now, what I think is very, very valuable
1447. 00:58:17 is if I work in a field and in the field,
1448. 00:58:20 there's a base level of knowledge I need to know
1449. 00:58:22 and I need to understand, but I don't call that memorization.
1450. 00:58:25 I call that learning the base level of knowledge
1451. 00:58:27 in the field, which I know that's a nuanced discrepancy there,
1452. 00:58:31 but it's like I'm not memorizing it just to memorize facts
1453. 00:58:33 so I can regurgitate it back to you.
1454. 00:58:35 I'm learning it because I'm going to apply it
1455. 00:58:38 so readily and so directly
1456. 00:58:40 that it just helps me apply it way faster.
1457. 00:58:42 And that's what I think really gets at the crux of it.
1458. 00:58:46 And I see students all the time
1459. 00:58:48 right having direct experience with this.
1460. 00:58:50 I see students all the time, what are they trying to do?
1461. 00:58:52 They're trying to memorize,
1462. 00:58:53 they're trying to pass the test and then dump
1463. 00:58:54 and they will 100% dump all of that information.
1464. 00:58:58 They could care less about ever keeping it in their brain.
1465. 00:59:01 Really, they just want to pass the test.
1466. 00:59:03 And this happens, I think more and more,
1467. 00:59:04 this is why I actually got out of biology and healthcare
1468. 00:59:08 and all any of those fields is because so much of that was
1469. 00:59:12 why does need to know everybody part in the human body?
1470. 00:59:15 No, like why?
1471. 00:59:17 Like what help does that give me at all?
1472. 00:59:20 But I see the balance in this, right?
1473. 00:59:21 Like actually learning and knowing things
1474. 00:59:24 and having a base level of knowledge,
1475. 00:59:25 they would call it memorizing in the book,
1476. 00:59:27 but actually having that base level of knowledge
1477. 00:59:29 does help you do things better.
1478. 00:59:31 So it's like if I can have an understanding of for me,
1479. 00:59:34 right, if I can have an understanding of material properties,
1480. 00:59:37 it helps me manufacture better.
1481. 00:59:39 I need to essentially memorize those material properties
1482. 00:59:41 because it helps me manufacture better,
1483. 00:59:43 it helps me design better.
1484. 00:59:44 So yes, I get that, but I kind of have a fundamental issue
1485. 00:59:49 with the way they position memorization as,
1486. 00:59:54 I guess the way they prioritize it,
1487. 00:59:56 the way they put it, they put it on a pedestal.
1488. 00:59:58 They run us through a bunch of different memorization
1489. 00:59:59 techniques, which I'm sure we'll get to here in a little bit.
1490. 01:00:03 But the first thing I want to do, Mike,
1491. 01:00:04 is I want to know what your thoughts are on memorization.
1492. 01:00:08 - Well, I don't do a ton of memorization,
1493. 01:00:10 but I do think that there's value in it.
1494. 01:00:13 However, I think there's like different levels
1495. 01:00:16 of memorization here also kind of going back
1496. 01:00:19 to like the three levels of information that I mentioned.
1497. 01:00:23 Like number one, let's just talk about like memorizing
1498. 01:00:27 scripture, I feel like that's valuable
1499. 01:00:29 because then I'm more likely to recall it.
1500. 01:00:31 Yeah, I can go search for it,
1501. 01:00:33 but sometimes it's more valuable to have it,
1502. 01:00:37 like tip of the tongue because I can use that
1503. 01:00:41 to make better decisions.
1504. 01:00:44 But there's another level here with memorization,
1505. 01:00:47 another example that comes to mind with like musical scales
1506. 01:00:51 because I've played guitar on the worship team
1507. 01:00:53 for a long time currently in playing bass.
1508. 01:00:55 And one of the things that really helped me
1509. 01:00:57 with bass in particular was understanding the scales.
1510. 01:01:02 Now, there was a point where I was taking lessons
1511. 01:01:06 and my teacher could say, okay, it's time to play
1512. 01:01:10 the B major scale and I could sit and I could think about it
1513. 01:01:14 and I could do it.
1514. 01:01:14 Like if he's walking through it
1515. 01:01:16 and I'm playing along with him,
1516. 01:01:17 then I could do it at the same speed that he did it.
1517. 01:01:20 But that doesn't mean that I have actually memorized it
1518. 01:01:22 to the point where I can use this in a live setting
1519. 01:01:25 because when we're playing at church, okay,
1520. 01:01:28 now we're going off the page and oh,
1521. 01:01:31 we just changed keys from B to E.
1522. 01:01:34 Well, let's think through what's the E scale.
1523. 01:01:36 I can't in the middle of the song play through the E scale.
1524. 01:01:40 At that point, I just got to know this is E,
1525. 01:01:42 this is the third, this is the fifth.
1526. 01:01:44 These are my options.
1527. 01:01:46 And I've gotten to the point now where I can do that live
1528. 01:01:52 and it unlocks the instrument.
1529. 01:01:54 It is way more interesting even for people
1530. 01:01:58 who are listening, like this is the difference
1531. 01:02:00 between somebody who is really good at an instrument
1532. 01:02:02 and someone who is okay.
1533. 01:02:03 And I can play the guitar in my dorm room
1534. 01:02:06 and people think it sounds cool, right?
1535. 01:02:09 There's a whole another professional level to be achieved
1536. 01:02:13 when you have really internalized these concepts.
1537. 01:02:16 But again, it's not just can you spit it back
1538. 01:02:19 when someone asks you or when it appears on a test.
1539. 01:02:23 So I think there's value in memorization.
1540. 01:02:26 I like the way they talk about how memorizing helps you
1541. 01:02:28 understand more complex topics better
1542. 01:02:30 and solve more advanced problems.
1543. 01:02:31 I mean, that is a hundred percent true.
1544. 01:02:33 When I understand one scale, it helps with the next scale.
1545. 01:02:36 And then the next scale gets easier,
1546. 01:02:37 but you still got to put in the work
1547. 01:02:39 in order to really internalize all those things.
1548. 01:02:41 And I don't think the verbal memory tricks
1549. 01:02:44 and the mnemonics are really the thing
1550. 01:02:46 that's gonna get you there.
1551. 01:02:48 You got to put in a bunch of effort.
1552. 01:02:51 But then also they talked about how,
1553. 01:02:53 I think it was this chapter that,
1554. 01:02:56 or maybe it was the chapter before, I can't remember,
1555. 01:02:58 but like, oh, no, it's in this chapter.
1556. 01:03:00 Half of your brain is involved in visual processing,
1557. 01:03:02 but only 10% is auditory.
1558. 01:03:04 Okay, so why are we focused on the verbal memory tricks?
1559. 01:03:09 And they do share some visual memory tricks here
1560. 01:03:12 to like, the images and memory palaces, things like that.
1561. 01:03:14 You know what else is visual and really great?
1562. 01:03:17 Mind maps.
1563. 01:03:18 (laughs)
1564. 01:03:20 Like, what do that?
1565. 01:03:21 Well, I'm not saying like,
1566. 01:03:22 oh, they definitely should have talked about it here,
1567. 01:03:24 but it just illustrates the point
1568. 01:03:26 that they're approaching this from a single perspective.
1569. 01:03:29 So you got to kind of weigh the stuff
1570. 01:03:31 that they're saying here,
1571. 01:03:32 and there's some really good stuff that they're saying here,
1572. 01:03:34 but then you got to figure out
1573. 01:03:35 how do I actually apply this for myself?
1574. 01:03:38 And the list of things that they're giving you
1575. 01:03:39 in this 117 page book is not comprehensive.
1576. 01:03:42 So take the concepts, figure out how to own it.
1577. 01:03:46 Yeah, so let's get into those verbal and visual
1578. 01:03:49 just a little bit more.
1579. 01:03:50 They say acronyms for verbal sentences for verbal.
1580. 01:03:53 So acronym would be like Rice Rest Ice
1581. 01:03:56 compression elevation when you twist your ankle.
1582. 01:03:59 Sentences are, which I had not heard this version of this,
1583. 01:04:01 but it works.
1584. 01:04:02 My very elderly mother just served us noodles.
1585. 01:04:05 Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
1586. 01:04:06 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
1587. 01:04:08 (laughs)
1588. 01:04:09 The one that they completely missed
1589. 01:04:14 in the verbal section for me,
1590. 01:04:15 and the reason I say like, it's a complete miss
1591. 01:04:18 is because I use it with the boys all the time,
1592. 01:04:20 and it is crazy effective.
1593. 01:04:22 It's actually effective for me,
1594. 01:04:23 but songs.
1595. 01:04:24 Like we completely missed taking an idea
1596. 01:04:26 or taking a concept and turning it into a song.
1597. 01:04:29 I can't tell you the number of things
1598. 01:04:30 we've memorized in our house
1599. 01:04:32 based on putting some sort of musical melody behind it,
1600. 01:04:35 and then like, you know, just repeating it
1601. 01:04:38 and just singing it and it sticks in your brain.
1602. 01:04:40 And then next thing you know, you're singing it.
1603. 01:04:42 So I think that was a huge miss in this section.
1604. 01:04:45 Then the visual memory tricks, they say vivid images,
1605. 01:04:48 basically the more crazy, the more fun,
1606. 01:04:49 the more wild your image is,
1607. 01:04:51 the more likely you are to remember it.
1608. 01:04:53 And then I have never, I've tried this one,
1609. 01:04:55 I've never been able to get it work,
1610. 01:04:57 but the memory palace thing where you're like,
1611. 01:04:59 oh, I'm gonna walk through the door and on the wall,
1612. 01:05:01 there's the picture of this and on the thing.
1613. 01:05:03 And I think about like, nope, that's just not me.
1614. 01:05:06 Like I am not gonna memorize anything.
1615. 01:05:08 I'm not able to memorize anything
1616. 01:05:10 through a memory palace or a memory map
1617. 01:05:13 or whatever it might be.
1618. 01:05:14 So those are some of the things they threw out for us.
1619. 01:05:17 Oh, metaphor.
1620. 01:05:18 And then metaphor was the last one,
1621. 01:05:19 which I use metaphors all the time.
1622. 01:05:20 So that was a natural for me.
1623. 01:05:22 I do remember when I was in Toastmasters,
1624. 01:05:25 one of the, like they have different levels
1625. 01:05:27 and the top level is like the distinguished Toastmaster
1626. 01:05:30 and the DTM.
1627. 01:05:31 So one of the DTM's in my club had given me advice one time
1628. 01:05:35 of doing that sort of thing.
1629. 01:05:37 When you are trying to memorize a speech
1630. 01:05:40 where you are essentially walking through
1631. 01:05:42 a familiar place.
1632. 01:05:43 So I don't know if this is exactly the memory palace,
1633. 01:05:46 it sounded like it.
1634. 01:05:48 It's one of the things I jotted down though,
1635. 01:05:50 was like you're going through and,
1636. 01:05:51 okay, so this part of my speech is representative
1637. 01:05:54 of this part of my house.
1638. 01:05:55 And as I'm walking through the front door,
1639. 01:05:56 then I go to the next piece.
1640. 01:05:58 I did find that helpful,
1641. 01:06:00 but also that's my traditional approach to this was,
1642. 01:06:03 I'm gonna write out the speech word for word.
1643. 01:06:05 I'm gonna memorize the whole thing.
1644. 01:06:07 And that's why when I got into the competition,
1645. 01:06:09 I got up on the stage and I blanked out and I'm like,
1646. 01:06:11 oh man, this is really hard.
1647. 01:06:13 I gotta prove to myself that I can do this.
1648. 01:06:15 So entered the next contest that I could
1649. 01:06:17 and that was the humorous speech contest.
1650. 01:06:19 I think I told the story before.
1651. 01:06:21 So I did it mission accomplished,
1652. 01:06:23 but I kept advancing until the finals,
1653. 01:06:28 which was the whole state of Wisconsin
1654. 01:06:29 and then upper Michigan,
1655. 01:06:31 where I lost to a professional comedian.
1656. 01:06:33 So I didn't feel too bad about that.
1657. 01:06:36 But that was a helpful tool that I used
1658. 01:06:39 when I was going through all those different performances.
1659. 01:06:42 So I think maybe if the stakes are higher, it can be helpful.
1660. 01:06:44 - Yeah, when it comes to those type of things,
1661. 01:06:46 I'm much more improv than I am, than I am memory palace.
1662. 01:06:49 - Yeah, you're one of the tabletop X guys.
1663. 01:06:52 - Let's just improv our way through this.
1664. 01:06:54 Okay, so let's move to six.
1665. 01:06:56 We're gonna gain intuition and think fast.
1666. 01:06:58 So how to gain intuition and think fast.
1667. 01:07:00 In this section, they call out declarative learning
1668. 01:07:04 and procedural learning.
1669. 01:07:05 So declarative learning would be tied to working memory.
1670. 01:07:10 And it's basically those situations where
1671. 01:07:13 you're really just trying to learn like a,
1672. 01:07:15 the way I saw it is a specific thing.
1673. 01:07:17 You're not really trying to learn the connections, right?
1674. 01:07:19 So I'm declaring that I want to learn this topic
1675. 01:07:22 or this concept and you're trying to get that piece
1676. 01:07:25 of information.
1677. 01:07:26 When you get the procedural, now you're thinking about
1678. 01:07:28 like the links and trying to connect that
1679. 01:07:30 the long-term memory and how does that tie
1680. 01:07:32 into these other things.
1681. 01:07:34 So I guess maybe, and Mike, you can tell me
1682. 01:07:36 if you think this is the wrong analogy.
1683. 01:07:38 My declarative would be making my atomic note.
1684. 01:07:40 And my procedural would be connecting those atomic notes
1685. 01:07:45 to write a blog post or write an article
1686. 01:07:48 or whatever that might be.
1687. 01:07:50 Like that might be a way that I could think about
1688. 01:07:52 declarative learning and procedural learning.
1689. 01:07:54 Would you agree with that?
1690. 01:07:56 - Maybe.
1691. 01:07:58 I think you're probably right,
1692. 01:08:00 but I think that's not the best example
1693. 01:08:02 of the procedural learning.
1694. 01:08:03 - Okay.
1695. 01:08:04 - Because they talked about,
1696. 01:08:06 and I used to play Tennyson in college.
1697. 01:08:08 So they talked about learning to serve.
1698. 01:08:10 And the serve, if you really like break it down
1699. 01:08:13 into the component parts,
1700. 01:08:15 it's a very complicated motion.
1701. 01:08:19 And almost everyone that I've tried,
1702. 01:08:22 'cause I did Tennyson instruction
1703. 01:08:25 and coaching for a while too.
1704. 01:08:27 Everyone I've tried to like teach to learn to serve,
1705. 01:08:31 you have to like break down the individual pieces
1706. 01:08:33 and walk them through it once
1707. 01:08:34 and then basically say, okay, now just do it.
1708. 01:08:37 Like forget everything I just told you and do it.
1709. 01:08:40 And what they're talking about
1710. 01:08:41 with the procedural learning systems
1711. 01:08:43 is that's where you learn by doing.
1712. 01:08:47 And you do it enough,
1713. 01:08:48 and then it just kind of gets ingrained
1714. 01:08:50 and you don't have to think about it anymore.
1715. 01:08:54 So I think with like the notes and the creating the links,
1716. 01:08:57 you never really are gonna get to that level
1717. 01:09:00 of procedural learning where it just becomes something
1718. 01:09:03 that you do.
1719. 01:09:04 And then also I think related to this,
1720. 01:09:06 but not discussed in this book,
1721. 01:09:08 is the whole idea of like the visual rehearsal.
1722. 01:09:12 That we talked about a little bit in feel good productivity.
1723. 01:09:16 The mental modeling.
1724. 01:09:18 There's an aspect of like the procedural learning system
1725. 01:09:22 where you could just watch video
1726. 01:09:25 of the right way to do things
1727. 01:09:27 without actually having to practice it yourself.
1728. 01:09:30 And that gets translated, that gets applied.
1729. 01:09:34 And then you've watched it enough that you can do it,
1730. 01:09:38 you can do it without all the step by step,
1731. 01:09:40 this is how you do these sorts of things.
1732. 01:09:42 In fact, some people learn better that way.
1733. 01:09:45 My brother was kind of this way.
1734. 01:09:47 He would, I was the oldest in a family of three boys.
1735. 01:09:51 My younger brother was four years younger than me,
1736. 01:09:53 and then my youngest was four years younger than him.
1737. 01:09:55 So my youngest brother was watching us play sports
1738. 01:10:00 since he was really little.
1739. 01:10:01 And by the time he actually got to play,
1740. 01:10:03 he just knew how to do it.
1741. 01:10:04 And he was the best soccer player out of anybody,
1742. 01:10:07 because it just, it seems so natural to him.
1743. 01:10:10 And it wasn't that he was this phenomenal athlete,
1744. 01:10:13 it was just that he had practiced this over and over and over again.
1745. 01:10:16 He ended up working with a coach
1746. 01:10:18 who really leaned on this, this concept too,
1747. 01:10:20 of like watching the right video.
1748. 01:10:22 You know, you videotape yourself doing something the right way,
1749. 01:10:25 and you're trying to like change a stroke or something,
1750. 01:10:27 and then you watch that video over and over and over
1751. 01:10:28 and over and over and over again.
1752. 01:10:30 And then the next time that you go to play,
1753. 01:10:32 it's automatic, like what happened there?
1754. 01:10:34 I don't know, my brain just created this image
1755. 01:10:36 of this is the way that we do the thing.
1756. 01:10:38 And then it did the thing without me having to think about it.
1757. 01:10:41 - And I like the way they tie into that too,
1758. 01:10:43 'cause you said it without saying the word they use,
1759. 01:10:45 they use the black box metaphor, which yes,
1760. 01:10:49 I mean it actually, it very much is that
1761. 01:10:51 I had never thought about it from a kids learning things
1762. 01:10:55 from other kids standpoint,
1763. 01:10:56 but that makes a ton of sense to me too,
1764. 01:10:58 where procedural learning is like,
1765. 01:11:00 oh, I watched somebody do it so much
1766. 01:11:02 that I just kind of know how to do it,
1767. 01:11:03 because I learned through their experience,
1768. 01:11:05 and I learned through what worked and what didn't.
1769. 01:11:08 The thing it, this tied to me with the,
1770. 01:11:10 they talk about using both systems later on in the chapter,
1771. 01:11:15 and that the step-by-step is the declarative,
1772. 01:11:17 and then the procedural is the more intuitive
1773. 01:11:21 picking out patterns.
1774. 01:11:22 And what I got to thinking about was like,
1775. 01:11:24 the cliche 10,000 hours gets you to mastery.
1776. 01:11:27 What are you doing there?
1777. 01:11:29 Like you knew the process way, way earlier.
1778. 01:11:31 You knew the procedure way, way earlier,
1779. 01:11:33 but then you just had to do, and you had to figure it out,
1780. 01:11:36 and you had to intuit your way through,
1781. 01:11:38 and if you do that enough, and you do that enough,
1782. 01:11:40 you get to mastery, and that's that 10,000 hours,
1783. 01:11:42 so that you're building that procedural system.
1784. 01:11:44 So I actually liked this chapter,
1785. 01:11:46 I thought this chapter clarified these two points pretty well,
1786. 01:11:49 and brought in something new
1787. 01:11:51 that I hadn't thought about before,
1788. 01:11:52 so I'm a fan of this chapter.
1789. 01:11:55 - Me too.
1790. 01:11:55 - All right, so let's go to seven.
1791. 01:11:57 So seven is how to exert self-discipline,
1792. 01:11:59 even when you don't have any.
1793. 01:12:01 So self-discipline, they call it out.
1794. 01:12:04 One of the things I liked is they called it out
1795. 01:12:05 as a limited resource.
1796. 01:12:07 You know, that it's something you can run out of, if you will.
1797. 01:12:11 They say the best first strategy
1798. 01:12:14 is basically just try to limit the amount that you need it.
1799. 01:12:17 Right, so it's like, don't try to have more,
1800. 01:12:20 don't try to get more, just try to limit the amount
1801. 01:12:22 that you draw on that self-discipline,
1802. 01:12:25 and I don't remember the definition
1803. 01:12:26 or the distinction between the two,
1804. 01:12:28 so Mike, if you could help us out on that,
1805. 01:12:29 like I'm thinking here willpower will be the same way, right?
1806. 01:12:32 Like, okay, my willpower is limited
1807. 01:12:35 in terms of the gas tank, right?
1808. 01:12:38 There's only so much in there.
1809. 01:12:39 So therefore, if I can just get into situations
1810. 01:12:41 where I don't need the willpower,
1811. 01:12:43 don't buy the chips, don't buy the ice cream,
1812. 01:12:45 whatever it might be, that's a much easier way
1813. 01:12:47 than trying to say like, no, I'm going to resist that
1814. 01:12:50 every time I walk past it, you know, going through the kitchen.
1815. 01:12:53 Then they tie into something that we've tied into before
1816. 01:12:56 on Bookworm and my short time being a co-host on here
1817. 01:12:59 is Goldwitzer's research, where Goldwitzer says,
1818. 01:13:03 hey, you're much more likely to do something
1819. 01:13:04 if you have a plan, you decide when, where,
1820. 01:13:08 and how you're going to do these things.
1821. 01:13:10 I thought this was a good section.
1822. 01:13:13 I thought it was a little more concise section
1823. 01:13:15 in terms of they hit the point well,
1824. 01:13:18 and then they were able to get out.
1825. 01:13:20 So I was overall, I was pretty pleased with this chapter.
1826. 01:13:23 - Yeah, this may be my favorite chapter
1827. 01:13:26 in the whole book, to be honest.
1828. 01:13:28 Partially because of the statistic
1829. 01:13:30 that they shared about Theodore Roosevelt.
1830. 01:13:32 Do you remember how many books he wrote?
1831. 01:13:34 I don't remember the, 150,000 for some reason
1832. 01:13:37 it's coming into my brain, but I don't know if I'm right.
1833. 01:13:38 - Well, I don't know the total number,
1834. 01:13:40 but I do remember the cadence,
1835. 01:13:42 where even when he was president,
1836. 01:13:43 he was reading a book a day.
1837. 01:13:45 - That's crazy.
1838. 01:13:47 - That's awesome.
1839. 01:13:49 Something to aspire to, I guess.
1840. 01:13:51 - When they're tying at the very end,
1841. 01:13:53 which is like, why did he do it?
1842. 01:13:55 He loved to read, right?
1843. 01:13:56 Like, yeah, there's really, you know,
1844. 01:13:58 he just loved to do it, so.
1845. 01:14:00 - Yeah, well, so that is kind of,
1846. 01:14:02 the reason they used Theodore Roosevelt in the first place
1847. 01:14:04 was he's kind of the poster child for self-discipline
1848. 01:14:09 and they tell a little bit of his story
1849. 01:14:11 how he was the sickly little kid
1850. 01:14:13 and he just disciplined himself to the point
1851. 01:14:15 where he was able to overcome a bunch of that
1852. 01:14:18 and basically anytime that he was told he couldn't do something,
1853. 01:14:22 he's like, I'm gonna figure out a way to do it.
1854. 01:14:24 So there's something to be said about that,
1855. 01:14:27 but the larger point that they're making in this chapter
1856. 01:14:29 and you kind of alluded to it was the best way
1857. 01:14:32 to practice self-discipline or to act in a disciplined way
1858. 01:14:35 is not to have to use it
1859. 01:14:37 and design your environment essentially.
1860. 01:14:40 They didn't say it that way,
1861. 01:14:41 but design your environment in a way
1862. 01:14:43 that you don't have to exercise that discipline
1863. 01:14:46 or activate the willpower all the time.
1864. 01:14:50 And that's a really a powerful concept.
1865. 01:14:53 I don't think they did it justice here.
1866. 01:14:55 And now I've read like entire books on this.
1867. 01:14:58 There's a whole big section in the extended mind
1868. 01:15:00 by Annie Murphy Paul, which is really, really good on this.
1869. 01:15:04 And I think that that is,
1870. 01:15:05 if you're gonna try to practice one thing from this,
1871. 01:15:07 that's the takeaway is consider your environment,
1872. 01:15:11 consider the choices that it is kind of encouraging you
1873. 01:15:15 to make and then figure out how you can tweak your environment
1874. 01:15:18 such you make the types of decisions
1875. 01:15:20 that you want to follow through on.
1876. 01:15:22 And they also talk about habits in here
1877. 01:15:26 and how habits are kind of mental autopilot,
1878. 01:15:28 but the applying the habits idea
1879. 01:15:32 to the environmental design,
1880. 01:15:35 there's another great book that we've covered
1881. 01:15:37 for a bookworm called Tiny Habits,
1882. 01:15:38 which speaks directly to that.
1883. 01:15:40 So everyone's kind of read atomic habits.
1884. 01:15:42 That's the big popular one
1885. 01:15:43 that's been on the New York Times bestseller list forever.
1886. 01:15:47 But the basis of James Clears book
1887. 01:15:51 is the research done by a guy named BJ Fogg,
1888. 01:15:54 who is the person who wrote tiny habits.
1889. 01:15:56 And so there's lots of visuals in there,
1890. 01:15:58 which are great.
1891. 01:15:59 They show like, if you have a lot of ability to do something,
1892. 01:16:03 it's easy to do, your motivation is high,
1893. 01:16:05 then the prompt is gonna succeed at this point in the curve.
1894. 01:16:08 And so you can kind of apply the environmental design idea
1895. 01:16:13 to create the situation where you either follow through
1896. 01:16:18 on the habits that you want to do,
1897. 01:16:21 or you can kind of reverse engineer this.
1898. 01:16:23 So if you want to break a bad habit,
1899. 01:16:25 you can make it harder to do.
1900. 01:16:26 You can not buy the cookies and keep them in the pantry
1901. 01:16:29 because you can go reach for them.
1902. 01:16:32 And there's some really extreme examples
1903. 01:16:35 of that type of stuff.
1904. 01:16:36 Like I remember hearing a story one time
1905. 01:16:37 about a guy who wanted to not watch TV as much.
1906. 01:16:41 So what he did is he removed the batteries
1907. 01:16:46 from the TV remote.
1908. 01:16:48 So TV remote is still on the coffee table
1909. 01:16:50 that every time he sits down and turn it on,
1910. 01:16:52 "I gotta go get batteries from the kitchen
1911. 01:16:54 "if I really want to watch TV."
1912. 01:16:55 And that was enough friction that he didn't do it.
1913. 01:16:58 He read the book instead or whatever he wanted to do.
1914. 01:17:01 So lots of really good stuff in here.
1915. 01:17:03 But again, if you're gonna get any sort of value from it,
1916. 01:17:06 you gotta dig deeper.
1917. 01:17:08 - Yeah, and it's funny 'cause I didn't even take any notes
1918. 01:17:11 on the habits section because I've read atomic habits,
1919. 01:17:14 I've read tiny habits, and those were just so much more
1920. 01:17:18 rich and valuable for me that I didn't even capture
1921. 01:17:22 anything there on habits.
1922. 01:17:25 - Yeah.
1923. 01:17:26 - All right, moving on to eight.
1924. 01:17:27 So let's talk about motivating ourselves.
1925. 01:17:29 So this one's how to motivate yourself.
1926. 01:17:31 What I like here is they call out the fact that
1927. 01:17:34 motivating yourself isn't just about
1928. 01:17:38 how much you want something.
1929. 01:17:40 It's about how much effort you're willing to put in
1930. 01:17:42 to actually get the thing.
1931. 01:17:44 And I don't know if I've never heard that before
1932. 01:17:46 or I've never heard it presented in that way.
1933. 01:17:48 But man, that I think that was a really powerful statement.
1934. 01:17:51 It's like, oh, okay.
1935. 01:17:52 And the way I've thought about it before is like
1936. 01:17:54 action versus intention where motivation is this action
1937. 01:17:59 or sorry, this intention side.
1938. 01:18:01 And then I have to actually move it over to action
1939. 01:18:03 in order to make something out of it.
1940. 01:18:04 Well, they kind of smush those two together here.
1941. 01:18:06 And when they say, how much effort are you willing
1942. 01:18:07 to put out there, then they give advice
1943. 01:18:10 on how to build and maintain your motivation,
1944. 01:18:12 find value in your studies.
1945. 01:18:13 And again, they link it back to school.
1946. 01:18:16 So find value in your studies, work to experience mastery,
1947. 01:18:19 set goals, and then work with others.
1948. 01:18:22 They reframe here, so they talk about a section
1949. 01:18:24 where they reframe the task to identify all the benefits.
1950. 01:18:28 So let's take this task and let's get some benefits
1951. 01:18:30 out of there, reward yourself, which we've heard,
1952. 01:18:33 for most of heard many, many times, it's like,
1953. 01:18:35 oh, if I do the following things,
1954. 01:18:37 I get this reward when I'm done.
1955. 01:18:40 I like to the mastery connection here,
1956. 01:18:42 where I agree with them that like,
1957. 01:18:44 if you can demonstrate to yourself that you're growing
1958. 01:18:47 and you're learning and you're developing mastery,
1959. 01:18:50 you are able to kind of see yourself moving forward
1960. 01:18:54 and then that motivation will encourage.
1961. 01:18:56 And it's kind of like that snowball rolling down the hill.
1962. 01:19:00 Consider setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow.
1963. 01:19:02 We saw that, like that was one of my actionatives
1964. 01:19:04 from last time is reframe those setbacks
1965. 01:19:06 or those failures into what they mean
1966. 01:19:09 or what they might mean in terms of opportunities to grow.
1967. 01:19:11 Goals, they broke them down into long-term milestone
1968. 01:19:14 and process goals, and then they hit smart and night,
1969. 01:19:18 they hit smart, which I immediately went to,
1970. 01:19:21 Ali Abdahl's nice goals, which I like a lot better
1971. 01:19:24 than smart goals and called those two things out there.
1972. 01:19:27 So that's the high level of the chapter overall.
1973. 01:19:30 I thought it was pretty good.
1974. 01:19:32 Probably the weakest section for me was the way they discussed
1975. 01:19:37 the goals, long-term milestone in progress,
1976. 01:19:40 not that it was bad, but it was just a matter of,
1977. 01:19:42 I thought it was a very simple and high level
1978. 01:19:46 way to talk about goals.
1979. 01:19:48 And again, for this context, it's probably good,
1980. 01:19:50 but for folks who have thought about it more,
1981. 01:19:53 I just didn't think it was deep enough.
1982. 01:19:55 - I agree, although, but the goal stuff specifically,
1983. 01:20:00 again, I don't think that that's really
1984. 01:20:04 where they should be concentrating the effort anyways.
1985. 01:20:08 I do like the emphasis on motivation.
1986. 01:20:11 A while back, I had this inkling that motivation
1987. 01:20:16 is more important than willpower,
1988. 01:20:18 because you hear the stories of these tiny little moms,
1989. 01:20:22 their kid gets caught under the car
1990. 01:20:24 and they're able to lift the car off the kid.
1991. 01:20:26 How does that happen?
1992. 01:20:27 It's not willpower.
1993. 01:20:29 At that point, you are motivated to do the thing,
1994. 01:20:34 so you do the thing.
1995. 01:20:35 And it may have actually been impossible
1996. 01:20:38 if you had sat and thought about it,
1997. 01:20:39 but the motivation was high enough.
1998. 01:20:40 So obviously, you don't wanna be in that constant
1999. 01:20:43 state of fight versus flight, but if we could really
2000. 01:20:46 figure out how to manage our motivation,
2001. 01:20:49 like we could probably do a lot more.
2002. 01:20:51 Going all the way back to procrastination stuff
2003. 01:20:52 at the very beginning.
2004. 01:20:54 So I put out a call to the bookworm audience
2005. 01:20:56 and I asked for book suggestions on the topic of motivation.
2006. 01:21:01 And there was one that was really good
2007. 01:21:02 called Master Your Motivation by Susan Fowler.
2008. 01:21:05 So again, there's a whole book that goes a lot deeper
2009. 01:21:08 into these concepts that they're just touching on here.
2010. 01:21:11 But just an example of how this kind of maps
2011. 01:21:13 in Master Your Motivation, they talk about
2012. 01:21:15 how there are three things that we need to thrive.
2013. 01:21:17 Choice, connection, and competence.
2014. 01:21:19 And so one of the things that jotted down here,
2015. 01:21:21 the way they said it is a feeling of mastery
2016. 01:21:23 is a powerful motivator.
2017. 01:21:24 Well, yeah, that's the competence piece.
2018. 01:21:27 But the choice and the connection
2019. 01:21:28 are also important aspects here.
2020. 01:21:30 So they didn't really get into that.
2021. 01:21:33 They did talk about how it's motivated by dopamine.
2022. 01:21:35 Maybe a little bit?
2023. 01:21:37 I don't think it's entirely.
2024. 01:21:39 So I don't know, I guess this is the danger
2025. 01:21:42 of when you write a book based on your experience.
2026. 01:21:45 Like you really need to, if you wanna present
2027. 01:21:47 a full picture of some of the stuff,
2028. 01:21:49 you gotta do a ton more research.
2029. 01:21:52 And maybe they did the research
2030. 01:21:53 and they just cut out a bunch of the stuff
2031. 01:21:54 'cause they wanted to keep it real short and practical,
2032. 01:21:56 which that's fine.
2033. 01:21:58 That's a valid approach, but it's not the one I like, I guess.
2034. 01:22:02 - Yep.
2035. 01:22:05 Okay, so now Mike, this is where the book,
2036. 01:22:08 I don't wanna say like is done for me,
2037. 01:22:10 but I did not get a ton out of nine, 10 and 11.
2038. 01:22:15 So I thought nine, 10 and 11 were light,
2039. 01:22:17 how to read effectively, how to win big on tests,
2040. 01:22:20 and then how to be a pro learner.
2041. 01:22:22 So I'm okay with kind of lumping these three together.
2042. 01:22:25 If you're okay with lumping these three together,
2043. 01:22:27 it all just depends on how you want to,
2044. 01:22:31 how you wanna approach this.
2045. 01:22:32 And it wasn't that they were bad.
2046. 01:22:35 It was just a matter of like, I thought we got
2047. 01:22:38 even lighter in these sections for me.
2048. 01:22:41 - Sure.
2049. 01:22:42 Well, I think chapter nine, how to read effectively,
2050. 01:22:45 obviously in a podcast called Bookworm,
2051. 01:22:46 this could be its own section,
2052. 01:22:48 but they don't do a great job of explaining this, I think.
2053. 01:22:53 One of the things that set out to me here
2054. 01:22:56 is that when you're finished right at three cents summary,
2055. 01:22:57 that's actually something that I've added to my book notes,
2056. 01:23:01 when I bring them over into Obsidian,
2057. 01:23:03 I force myself to write a three cents summary.
2058. 01:23:05 So I think that is a valuable tip there.
2059. 01:23:08 But then they talk about how annotating
2060. 01:23:10 is a great strategy for active reading,
2061. 01:23:12 but the way that they described annotating,
2062. 01:23:13 I don't think I'm gonna use.
2063. 01:23:15 But essentially, this is what I do with the mind maps
2064. 01:23:18 that I create, I have the emoji system.
2065. 01:23:19 So they advocate for important ideas,
2066. 01:23:21 relationships between concepts,
2067. 01:23:23 your own examples of references,
2068. 01:23:24 information you don't understand or need clarified,
2069. 01:23:27 summaries that keep paragraphs, potential test questions.
2070. 01:23:30 Again, my categories are gonna be a little bit different,
2071. 01:23:32 but essentially I like that idea
2072. 01:23:33 of figuring out what's actually useful
2073. 01:23:35 from this information that you just consumed.
2074. 01:23:40 - All right, can I stop you?
2075. 01:23:42 - Yeah.
2076. 01:23:43 - So this is where one of my action items comes from this book.
2077. 01:23:45 And it may be the only action item from this book.
2078. 01:23:47 And I'll elaborate more when we start talking about
2079. 01:23:50 the next book and where we're gonna go.
2080. 01:23:52 How should I annotate?
2081. 01:23:54 So I'm gonna read this next book
2082. 01:23:56 and I'm going to intentionally not highlight,
2083. 01:23:58 typically I'm a highlighter,
2084. 01:23:59 which they told me in this chapter,
2085. 01:24:01 I'm passive and essentially doing a terrible job.
2086. 01:24:04 So I'm going to annotate this next book.
2087. 01:24:06 So give me the mic Schmitz,
2088. 01:24:08 here are the key steps to annotating
2089. 01:24:11 while you read or annotating
2090. 01:24:13 to get something out of this book.
2091. 01:24:14 - That's hard to answer.
2092. 01:24:18 So for me, it's gonna be based on figuring out
2093. 01:24:22 your own system for like the how to read a book concept.
2094. 01:24:26 So that's essentially figure out
2095. 01:24:28 what are the arguments the author's making
2096. 01:24:30 and then you're trying to decide what of this actually matters.
2097. 01:24:33 But I do agree that just highlighting things
2098. 01:24:36 regardless of how much progressive summarization you do,
2099. 01:24:39 sorry, Tiago, is a passive exercise.
2100. 01:24:43 So really what I try to do when I do my mind map notes
2101. 01:24:47 is instead of just jotting down,
2102. 01:24:49 these are the key ideas so I can spit them back
2103. 01:24:51 when we have a conversation on bookworm,
2104. 01:24:53 I'm forcing myself to kind of think through like,
2105. 01:24:56 do I agree with that?
2106. 01:24:57 What do I like about this?
2107. 01:24:59 What do I not like about that?
2108. 01:25:00 And I try to incorporate more opinions as I go.
2109. 01:25:03 So I think the very basic level,
2110. 01:25:05 if you're doing this with just the physical book
2111. 01:25:07 and a pen would be as you see something, underline it.
2112. 01:25:12 Okay, but then on the margin,
2113. 01:25:14 like putting a little opinion note as to why you underlined it.
2114. 01:25:19 I do this with the stuff that we go through
2115. 01:25:21 for our men's group.
2116. 01:25:24 I've got a discipleship group that we go through,
2117. 01:25:26 the Ed Cole material.
2118. 01:25:27 And so I've gone through these books,
2119. 01:25:28 maybe 10, 11, 12 times.
2120. 01:25:30 There's like 12 books all together
2121. 01:25:31 and we just keep going through them over and over again.
2122. 01:25:33 But every time I go through them,
2123. 01:25:34 I get something new.
2124. 01:25:35 Every time I go through them, I buy a new book.
2125. 01:25:38 We read a chapter for the week, I underline things.
2126. 01:25:41 And then because I'm leading the group,
2127. 01:25:43 I often will put like questions in the margins
2128. 01:25:46 that I wanna ask my guys.
2129. 01:25:48 And it's kind of a thing now where people,
2130. 01:25:50 I'll ask a random deep question and they're like,
2131. 01:25:54 yeah, I knew you were gonna ask that one when I read that.
2132. 01:25:57 (laughs)
2133. 01:25:58 So predictable, you're so predictable.
2134. 01:26:01 Okay, so I'll try that.
2135. 01:26:03 One of my action items for this week is to,
2136. 01:26:07 when I read this next book,
2137. 01:26:08 I'm gonna annotate it and ask interesting questions
2138. 01:26:12 and I'm gonna try to make my own opinions
2139. 01:26:14 out of what the author is saying.
2140. 01:26:16 - Now chapter 10, how to win big on tests.
2141. 01:26:21 This one I don't really have anything for.
2142. 01:26:24 I don't think this really applies to me.
2143. 01:26:27 But maybe just briefly we could say that they advise
2144. 01:26:30 to practice with old tests whenever you can.
2145. 01:26:33 And that's probably a good idea.
2146. 01:26:35 I'm kind of curious if you make your old tests
2147. 01:26:37 available to your students, you give them that as a resource
2148. 01:26:40 or if you would recommend the strategy for people?
2149. 01:26:43 - I do not.
2150. 01:26:44 So I recommend the strategy, right?
2151. 01:26:45 If you can, but that has really less to do with learning
2152. 01:26:49 and it has more to do with just understanding
2153. 01:26:52 the style of your professor.
2154. 01:26:54 - Yeah. - And they call that out here.
2155. 01:26:55 Like they don't, like tests.
2156. 01:26:58 So here's my problem with chapter 10.
2157. 01:27:00 I hate tests.
2158. 01:27:01 I think tests are bogus in terms of what do they actually
2159. 01:27:06 demonstrate to me in terms of your learning.
2160. 01:27:08 So this is the educator side of me.
2161. 01:27:09 I'll stop here in two seconds.
2162. 01:27:11 I'll be on a set box for two, for two seconds.
2163. 01:27:13 But it's like, I think they have value in terms of
2164. 01:27:15 rote knowledge and we can do that.
2165. 01:27:17 But I don't think they do a lot in terms of telling me
2166. 01:27:19 what you're actually capable of doing or unpacking
2167. 01:27:22 really what you're capable of thinking
2168. 01:27:23 because there's so many limitations on it.
2169. 01:27:25 I have this amount of time.
2170. 01:27:26 I can only ask this many questions.
2171. 01:27:27 I can, you know, and like, I can only set them up
2172. 01:27:29 in certain ways.
2173. 01:27:31 So therefore this whole chapter rubbed me the wrong way
2174. 01:27:33 from the very, very beginning because the goal was to do
2175. 01:27:36 well on tests, the goal wasn't to learn.
2176. 01:27:38 And I think that undermines of what we're doing.
2177. 01:27:41 So that's the short answer to your question.
2178. 01:27:44 (laughing)
2179. 01:27:45 - Cool.
2180. 01:27:45 - I think one of the things I liked out of this chapter though,
2181. 01:27:48 was they say focus on the process rather than on the end goal.
2182. 01:27:51 And I really like that idea.
2183. 01:27:52 It's like focus on, I'm gonna study for three hours.
2184. 01:27:55 Don't focus on, I'm gonna get an A on the test.
2185. 01:27:57 But that has much less to do with tests
2186. 01:27:59 and it has more to do with goal setting, right?
2187. 01:28:00 Like set the habit, don't set the goal
2188. 01:28:04 because you can't really control
2189. 01:28:06 whether you're gonna get an A on a test.
2190. 01:28:07 You can control whether you study for three hours
2191. 01:28:09 but you can't really control whether you get an A on the test.
2192. 01:28:10 So that ties us back into smart and nice
2193. 01:28:13 and all those other things.
2194. 01:28:16 So now 11 was how to be a pro learner.
2195. 01:28:18 And really the piece I took away from this,
2196. 01:28:23 I think their main piece out of here
2197. 01:28:24 was metacognitive thinking or metacognition
2198. 01:28:27 and then self-regulated learning.
2199. 01:28:28 And the four steps they call out are understand the task,
2200. 01:28:32 set goals and plan, learn and then monitor and adjust
2201. 01:28:36 which makes sense, right?
2202. 01:28:37 Like that's what we're gonna do.
2203. 01:28:38 We're gonna figure out what we're doing.
2204. 01:28:40 We're gonna plan for it.
2205. 01:28:41 We're gonna learn from it
2206. 01:28:42 and then we're gonna adjust that process.
2207. 01:28:45 - Yeah, so the whole idea of metacognition
2208. 01:28:47 is interesting and topic to me
2209. 01:28:51 but again, they don't really get into it.
2210. 01:28:52 I will call out they did define it,
2211. 01:28:54 well, they didn't actually define it this way.
2212. 01:28:56 They described it this way.
2213. 01:28:58 But what I jotted down was metacognition
2214. 01:29:00 is an extra brain outside your main one
2215. 01:29:02 that thinks about thinking.
2216. 01:29:03 So obviously that has links to like
2217. 01:29:05 second building a second brain,
2218. 01:29:07 Tiago Forte.
2219. 01:29:08 I think that's not really what metacognition is.
2220. 01:29:14 Like it can be helpful.
2221. 01:29:17 And I like the idea of a second brain.
2222. 01:29:19 I don't really believe in the promise
2223. 01:29:22 of just build this system
2224. 01:29:25 and then you'll get all the insights.
2225. 01:29:29 But that's one of the reasons I like connected notes apps
2226. 01:29:31 like Obsidian is that you can kind of visualize
2227. 01:29:33 how these things can connect together outside of your brain
2228. 01:29:36 but I've seen that same process actually work
2229. 01:29:39 before I had those apps
2230. 01:29:41 just by collecting better dots in the first place.
2231. 01:29:43 So there's definitely something there
2232. 01:29:46 but they do give you a piece of advice here
2233. 01:29:49 which I think is very helpful
2234. 01:29:50 to become more metacognitive
2235. 01:29:52 start asking higher level questions.
2236. 01:29:55 I believe if you ask the right questions
2237. 01:29:57 the answers usually become clear
2238. 01:29:58 and we don't spend enough time asking questions.
2239. 01:30:01 We need to spend more time thinking about
2240. 01:30:04 just open ended about things.
2241. 01:30:05 It's why I do the personal retreat stuff
2242. 01:30:07 every couple of months
2243. 01:30:08 and that's been really, really valuable.
2244. 01:30:10 So I think that's a key takeaway
2245. 01:30:13 and it fits very well with the theme of chapter 11.
2246. 01:30:16 You wanna be a pro learner?
2247. 01:30:18 Ask better questions.
2248. 01:30:19 And always be asking questions.
2249. 01:30:22 You've gotta be curious.
2250. 01:30:23 If you're not curious,
2251. 01:30:24 if you're just trying to collect the informations
2252. 01:30:26 that you get the A on the test
2253. 01:30:28 you're doing yourself a disservice.
2254. 01:30:30 Any time that you come across something
2255. 01:30:32 that you don't really understand
2256. 01:30:33 that's an opportunity to learn something
2257. 01:30:35 that should be exciting to you.
2258. 01:30:36 You should be curious about those things
2259. 01:30:39 and those opportunities are everywhere for us
2260. 01:30:41 but if you take the approach
2261. 01:30:42 kind of like fixed mindset approach of
2262. 01:30:44 I have to learn all the things
2263. 01:30:47 because I need to know all the things.
2264. 01:30:49 If I don't know all the things
2265. 01:30:50 I might be in trouble, I might fail.
2266. 01:30:52 That's dangerous.
2267. 01:30:54 So there is like a switch that needs to be flipped there
2268. 01:30:57 but that's a great admonition to end the book.
2269. 01:31:01 - Well and I think you talked about it
2270. 01:31:04 in terms of, how do I say this?
2271. 01:31:07 You talked about it the way I understand medical cognition.
2272. 01:31:09 So I had a really good friend who did a bunch of research
2273. 01:31:11 in medical cognition for my grad program.
2274. 01:31:14 And you talked about it that way.
2275. 01:31:16 It's much less in my mind that second brain thing.
2276. 01:31:19 That's a system for organizing information
2277. 01:31:22 and implementing thing.
2278. 01:31:23 It's much more about the okay, I'm going into this class
2279. 01:31:26 and what am I trying to get out of this class?
2280. 01:31:28 Because what I'm trying to get out of this class
2281. 01:31:29 will determine the way I think about this class.
2282. 01:31:31 And when you got to the end there
2283. 01:31:32 and you're like, if I'm trying to learn everything
2284. 01:31:34 that's ever possible to ever know about the human body,
2285. 01:31:38 okay, is that the right thing I should do?
2286. 01:31:39 Or should I learn the core connections?
2287. 01:31:42 Oh, this system interacts with this system in this way
2288. 01:31:45 and this and this and this way.
2289. 01:31:46 And it just depends on what you go into.
2290. 01:31:49 But most people don't go to that level.
2291. 01:31:51 They go to the level of, you tell me what I need to know.
2292. 01:31:54 I'm gonna then do those things.
2293. 01:31:56 Why am I gonna do those things?
2294. 01:31:57 Because you told me I needed to do those things, right?
2295. 01:31:59 And then they don't go any medical cognitive level higher
2296. 01:32:02 than that about how am I gonna use this?
2297. 01:32:04 How might I apply this?
2298. 01:32:05 What do I get out of this?
2299. 01:32:06 So yes, I think your thinking on medical cognition
2300. 01:32:10 is absolutely right.
2301. 01:32:11 And it's definitely not the second brain philosophy.
2302. 01:32:14 It's much more of the, just take a level up
2303. 01:32:18 and think those hard questions
2304. 01:32:19 and think about those things.
2305. 01:32:20 So yeah, cool.
2306. 01:32:21 All right, so the last section that they have here,
2307. 01:32:24 it's not actually numbered as a chapter,
2308. 01:32:26 but it's a checklist.
2309. 01:32:28 And the way I interpreted this is basically
2310. 01:32:31 it's a summary of the key points.
2311. 01:32:33 Exactly.
2312. 01:32:34 Of all that chapters, right?
2313. 01:32:36 So basically they told us what they were gonna tell us
2314. 01:32:39 in 11 chapters and then they summarized it all
2315. 01:32:42 and they plopped it at the end and they said,
2316. 01:32:44 and here you go.
2317. 01:32:46 Here's our last little summary.
2318. 01:32:47 So effective, good, not a problem with it,
2319. 01:32:50 but it's really just a summary to walk away with.
2320. 01:32:55 Yep, 100%.
2321. 01:32:57 All right, good.
2322. 01:32:57 So we made it through.
2323. 01:32:59 At this point, we need to talk about action items.
2324. 01:33:02 So would you like me to go first, Mike,
2325. 01:33:04 since it's my book?
2326. 01:33:06 Go for it.
2327. 01:33:07 All right, so I may only have one action item
2328. 01:33:09 to this book and it is what you and I talked about,
2329. 01:33:14 which I'm honestly blanking on right now, annotating.
2330. 01:33:16 Okay, whew, okay guy, I got that.
2331. 01:33:18 So it's annotating and here's why it comes out.
2332. 01:33:21 I am going to read the next book
2333. 01:33:24 that we're going to read for Bookworm
2334. 01:33:26 as a physical paper book.
2335. 01:33:29 I don't ever do this, right?
2336. 01:33:32 I also intentionally did not buy this book.
2337. 01:33:35 I got this book from the library,
2338. 01:33:38 which would prevent me from highlighting it.
2339. 01:33:40 So I'm not allowed to highlight this book.
2340. 01:33:42 And I did this on purpose because it's like,
2341. 01:33:44 okay, I need to set up these things,
2342. 01:33:46 so therefore I don't default to my old style.
2343. 01:33:50 Because what I typically do is I typically highlight too much,
2344. 01:33:53 then I summarize and I summarize and I summarize, right?
2345. 01:33:55 And try to get down to the key points.
2346. 01:33:57 Well, now I can't do that.
2347. 01:33:59 So if I'm going to take notes on this book,
2348. 01:34:00 I have to use an external mechanism to take notes on this book.
2349. 01:34:03 So I'm going to read in one section
2350. 01:34:05 and then I have to either use a mind map
2351. 01:34:08 or a separate notebook or a note sheet in obsidian,
2352. 01:34:12 something to take notes on this.
2353. 01:34:14 So that is my action item for this book
2354. 01:34:17 is I'm going to read a physical book
2355. 01:34:19 and I'm going to annotate that book
2356. 01:34:20 and see if I think it's a better system
2357. 01:34:22 than my current system for Bookworm.
2358. 01:34:24 (laughs)
2359. 01:34:26 - All right.
2360. 01:34:27 Well, I would encourage you to annotate,
2361. 01:34:30 but get a book that you own.
2362. 01:34:33 So maybe do it this way for the next one,
2363. 01:34:35 but don't write it off if it doesn't work.
2364. 01:34:37 Like there's different methods.
2365. 01:34:39 One of the more popular ones that I think is pretty brilliant
2366. 01:34:42 for this type of thing is creating
2367. 01:34:44 like your own personal index in the back
2368. 01:34:46 where you basically just jot down
2369. 01:34:47 like the pages with the big ideas.
2370. 01:34:49 So then you can go look at, oh, when I read this,
2371. 01:34:51 here's 12 things that really stood out to me.
2372. 01:34:54 I don't do that because I do the mind map stuff, but.
2373. 01:34:57 - Maybe I can do that with an index card, right?
2374. 01:34:58 I'll throw an index card in the back.
2375. 01:35:00 I can do that with an index card, okay.
2376. 01:35:02 - Yeah.
2377. 01:35:03 - Another helpful thing with context for that, by the way.
2378. 01:35:05 Sean Blong told me one time
2379. 01:35:06 whenever someone would recommend a book to him,
2380. 01:35:08 he would, he does the index in the back,
2381. 01:35:10 but he would also get an index card
2382. 01:35:13 with the person who recommended the book to him
2383. 01:35:15 and put that in the thing.
2384. 01:35:17 'Cause that's additional context.
2385. 01:35:18 Like, well, why do I even have this book?
2386. 01:35:20 Oh, well, Mike recommended it.
2387. 01:35:22 I really appreciate Mike's recommendations.
2388. 01:35:24 So that adds more credence to the ideas, you know?
2389. 01:35:26 So anyways, my action item comes from chapter four
2390. 01:35:32 on taking better notes. (laughs)
2391. 01:35:35 They didn't, I mean, there wasn't a whole lot
2392. 01:35:37 in that chapter that I really liked,
2393. 01:35:39 but they did mention split notes.
2394. 01:35:42 So you've got the notes,
2395. 01:35:43 and then you've got kind of your annotations about
2396. 01:35:46 what you took notes on, on the side.
2397. 01:35:49 And the version of that that I immediately thought of
2398. 01:35:52 was this like Cornell notes style,
2399. 01:35:56 where you've got the notes and then kind of the annotations.
2400. 01:35:58 Like the footnotes essentially on the side
2401. 01:36:00 instead of at the bottom of the document.
2402. 01:36:02 I also purchased the Cornell notes plugin
2403. 01:36:06 for Obsidian from TFT Hacker.
2404. 01:36:09 So I've got that already.
2405. 01:36:11 I may as well give this a shot. (laughs)
2406. 01:36:13 I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do with this.
2407. 01:36:16 I don't even know what scenarios I'm really gonna try
2408. 01:36:18 to work on this with.
2409. 01:36:20 I guess I could start if I'm gonna be writing things
2410. 01:36:23 by putting in footnotes and then just have those appear
2411. 01:36:25 on the side.
2412. 01:36:25 Maybe if I do that once or twice,
2413. 01:36:27 it will spark some insight
2414. 01:36:29 and this will gain some traction,
2415. 01:36:30 but I'm really not expecting a lot from this one.
2416. 01:36:33 I just, well, I have that.
2417. 01:36:34 I may as well give it a shot.
2418. 01:36:36 - Have you done Cornell notes ever in your life?
2419. 01:36:39 - I have not.
2420. 01:36:40 - Okay, so my suggestion to you is go look up,
2421. 01:36:43 something quick, something easy, a five minute video
2422. 01:36:45 or some little tutorial on it.
2423. 01:36:48 It's a procedure for some people,
2424. 01:36:50 it works really, really well.
2425. 01:36:52 So like some of my students in class
2426. 01:36:54 will use Cornell notes or a Cornell notes system
2427. 01:36:57 and it's very, very valuable to them
2428. 01:36:58 'cause it gives them a way to organize information.
2429. 01:37:01 And then what you find is that some,
2430. 01:37:03 or a lot of people will lose track of the things
2431. 01:37:05 they wanted to ask or the things they got confused on
2432. 01:37:08 and there's a whole section there of like,
2433. 01:37:09 oh, these are the things I need to ask next class.
2434. 01:37:12 So for a class situation, it makes a lot of sense.
2435. 01:37:14 I'm not sure how it's gonna work for a book.
2436. 01:37:15 So I'm actually trying to,
2437. 01:37:16 or I'm actually intrigued to hear
2438. 01:37:18 how that goes for a book.
2439. 01:37:20 - Well, I don't think it's gonna work for a book at all
2440. 01:37:22 to be honest, but as I was thinking about
2441. 01:37:24 the writing process and I've got a plugin already
2442. 01:37:28 for like footnotes, I could see that being helpful
2443. 01:37:31 to have those instead of at the bottom of the document
2444. 01:37:34 on the side.
2445. 01:37:36 So I guess I'm kind of banking on as soon as I try that
2446. 01:37:39 and I see it on the side,
2447. 01:37:40 that that's gonna trigger something in me
2448. 01:37:42 to want to create more of those,
2449. 01:37:44 but I'm not optimistic.
2450. 01:37:46 - Okay. (laughs)
2451. 01:37:47 - Understood, understood.
2452. 01:37:48 All right, so now we move on to style and rating.
2453. 01:37:53 It's my book, so I will go first.
2454. 01:37:55 Overall, the style, we've talked about this
2455. 01:37:58 a couple of different times.
2456. 01:37:59 It was set at a level, I think, for folks
2457. 01:38:02 who really haven't thought about this very much
2458. 01:38:05 and they're really just getting into learning
2459. 01:38:08 and approaches towards learning
2460. 01:38:10 and some of these high level concepts.
2461. 01:38:12 I agree with Mike, although I don't think
2462. 01:38:13 I was set it this way coming into it.
2463. 01:38:16 Very student focused book, right?
2464. 01:38:18 Very, very driven on the student.
2465. 01:38:20 For those reasons, it drops down on my rating scale.
2466. 01:38:25 I liked that they were clear.
2467. 01:38:29 Like, there wasn't anything that was difficult to understand.
2468. 01:38:31 I thought their examples were pretty good
2469. 01:38:33 in terms of their examples.
2470. 01:38:34 I thought they did a good job coming in
2471. 01:38:35 and summarizing at the end,
2472. 01:38:36 so you could kind of just see it one more time
2473. 01:38:39 as you were going.
2474. 01:38:40 But overall, I'm probably gonna give this book a three.
2475. 01:38:45 Because I think the material was good
2476. 01:38:50 and it was not inappropriate material, right?
2477. 01:38:54 So to move down to a two for me,
2478. 01:38:55 I think we have to, inappropriate's probably the wrong word,
2479. 01:38:58 but we have to actually be,
2480. 01:39:00 I'm not good with the content.
2481. 01:39:01 I was good with the content in this book.
2482. 01:39:03 I just wasn't good at the level that it was written
2483. 01:39:06 or at the amount of depth that they went into certain things
2484. 01:39:09 because I wanted more.
2485. 01:39:11 So I'll give it a three.
2486. 01:39:13 - All right, well, I think that I have two separate ratings
2487. 01:39:18 for this book.
2488. 01:39:19 If you are a student,
2489. 01:39:23 I think it is probably a four star book.
2490. 01:39:25 - Okay.
2491. 01:39:26 - And I think that in the,
2492. 01:39:30 you would probably know better than I would,
2493. 01:39:32 but I think a lot of students,
2494. 01:39:36 they're not productivity nerds.
2495. 01:39:38 Like that's something you learn once you get out
2496. 01:39:40 into the real world because it's a survival mechanism.
2497. 01:39:44 - Yes, absolutely.
2498. 01:39:46 - So there's a lot of stuff in here that if I'm a 20 year old,
2499. 01:39:50 this is brand new first time I've heard about the Pomodoro
2500. 01:39:53 technique and a lot of the concepts in this book,
2501. 01:39:56 then this could be revolutionary in my,
2502. 01:40:01 in the world that I know exists.
2503. 01:40:04 For myself, for probably a lot of people in the bookworm
2504. 01:40:10 audience who are not students,
2505. 01:40:13 I think you nailed it, that it is a three star book.
2506. 01:40:18 It's all right.
2507. 01:40:20 There's some interesting stuff in here.
2508. 01:40:24 It's not all, well, I knew that already.
2509. 01:40:28 I really like the visuals with the octopus arms
2510. 01:40:31 and the forming the links and the chains.
2511. 01:40:34 That's gonna stick with me and I feel like that's valuable.
2512. 01:40:38 Is it gonna change anything that I'm doing?
2513. 01:40:40 No, but had I read it four or five years ago, maybe.
2514. 01:40:44 So I don't know, like I don't think it really
2515. 01:40:48 left a dent for me, but I think for the right person,
2516. 01:40:53 this could be a great primer to the productivity world.
2517. 01:40:59 Like as a first entry into this type of material,
2518. 01:41:05 this could be valuable.
2519. 01:41:07 It's still probably not the first thing that I would recommend.
2520. 01:41:10 I'm having trouble thinking of, you know,
2521. 01:41:12 if someone were just getting into productivity,
2522. 01:41:15 what would I recommend?
2523. 01:41:17 It's definitely not gonna be getting things done by David Allen,
2524. 01:41:20 although that's probably most people's entry
2525. 01:41:22 into this sort of stuff.
2526. 01:41:24 And again, like that's perfectly fine
2527. 01:41:26 for the right type of person.
2528. 01:41:27 That could be revolutionary.
2529. 01:41:29 I'm having trouble filling in that blank.
2530. 01:41:32 I feel like there is need for that sort of thing,
2531. 01:41:37 but this isn't, it could have been, it would be nice.
2532. 01:41:41 You know, if I could, oh, this is, you know,
2533. 01:41:43 you're just getting into productivity,
2534. 01:41:45 you gotta pick up this one.
2535. 01:41:47 The science-based tools to become better at anything,
2536. 01:41:49 like that subtitle applied to a different book,
2537. 01:41:52 I feel like is able to deliver on that promise,
2538. 01:41:56 but this book didn't quite do it.
2539. 01:41:58 It's not to say that it's bad, but...
2540. 01:42:01 - I'm sorry, I really liked the way you called out
2541. 01:42:03 the fact that it was a primer.
2542. 01:42:06 I would have never gotten to that word,
2543. 01:42:07 but man, that actually makes a lot of sense.
2544. 01:42:09 Like this is a primer on this stuff.
2545. 01:42:11 - Yeah. - That's a great word.
2546. 01:42:12 - Yeah. - But it's not even the best primer,
2547. 01:42:16 I think, or at least it's not the ideal version
2548. 01:42:18 of the primer.
2549. 01:42:20 There's a different version of this book
2550. 01:42:24 that is better for that specific use case.
2551. 01:42:29 I don't know exactly what it looks like.
2552. 01:42:32 I don't know who wrote it, but it's gotta be out there.
2553. 01:42:35 - It's gotta be out there, right?
2554. 01:42:37 - Yeah.
2555. 01:42:38 - All righty, so now we are at the stage
2556. 01:42:41 where we think about upcoming books.
2557. 01:42:43 So Mike, what are we working on for the next episode?
2558. 01:42:47 - Well, I had originally said "Influence"
2559. 01:42:52 by Robert Childini because I do wanna read that.
2560. 01:42:57 However, I'm going on vacation shortly,
2561. 01:43:00 so we've got a short turnaround for this next book,
2562. 01:43:02 and I am not reading 570 pages in the next week
2563. 01:43:06 when I'm trying to wrap up a cohort and everything else.
2564. 01:43:08 - So Mike suggests that book, right?
2565. 01:43:10 And we start looking at it and I go,
2566. 01:43:12 "Mike, do you know this book's like 600 pages?"
2567. 01:43:14 And I was like, "I don't think I can pull that off
2568. 01:43:17 "in that amount of time."
2569. 01:43:17 He goes, "No, the last one wasn't that long.
2570. 01:43:20 "Why is this one that long?"
2571. 01:43:22 So they did a major revamp on this book
2572. 01:43:25 between the edition you read and now.
2573. 01:43:27 - Yeah, and it went from basically 300 pages to 600 pages.
2574. 01:43:32 So it doubled in length, and I did not realize that.
2575. 01:43:35 And I said, "Oh yeah, we'll just do the updated one
2576. 01:43:37 "because you always do the updated one."
2577. 01:43:38 - Yep, yep.
2578. 01:43:40 So we're gonna put that one on the back burner for now.
2579. 01:43:43 I am going to pick a book that I've been wanting
2580. 01:43:46 to read for a long time though,
2581. 01:43:47 and that is "Six Thinking Hats" by Edward De Bono.
2582. 01:43:51 The international bestseller that has changed
2583. 01:43:53 the way the world's most successful business leaders think.
2584. 01:43:56 And I think that this kind of breaks down
2585. 01:43:59 each one of the hats is like a different perspective
2586. 01:44:01 in terms of thinking about your business.
2587. 01:44:04 And so that naturally is kind of an interesting topic to me,
2588. 01:44:08 but I feel like the six different perspectives
2589. 01:44:12 could lead to a very cool conversation.
2590. 01:44:15 So it's a pretty short book.
2591. 01:44:18 Well, there's a bunch of chapters,
2592. 01:44:20 but it's like 160 pages, not 560 pages.
2593. 01:44:24 So I'll be able to finish this one before next week
2594. 01:44:27 when we have to record again.
2595. 01:44:29 - Perfect.
2596. 01:44:30 Perfect, that worked for me too.
2597. 01:44:31 And when we switched to this one, I was like,
2598. 01:44:33 "Okay, this is much more in the style
2599. 01:44:35 "for the short turnaround."
2600. 01:44:37 So that was really good.
2601. 01:44:40 - What are you picking after that?
2602. 01:44:41 Do you have one?
2603. 01:44:42 - So I meant to talk to you about this before,
2604. 01:44:46 and I totally blanked on talking to you about this before.
2605. 01:44:49 So we're gonna go ahead and do this live,
2606. 01:44:50 and we're gonna see what you think.
2607. 01:44:51 You kind of soft approved it before.
2608. 01:44:54 So let's see if you're still on board with this one.
2609. 01:44:56 - Or if I was just being nice,
2610. 01:44:59 trying to get you to come talk to you about this.
2611. 01:45:00 - Which if you were, that's fine and I'll go find another one.
2612. 01:45:03 But I think it would be fun to read "The Inevitable"
2613. 01:45:06 by Kevin Kelly, right?
2614. 01:45:07 And that was the understanding the 12 technology forces
2615. 01:45:10 that will shape our future.
2616. 01:45:11 What do you think?
2617. 01:45:12 - Let's do it.
2618. 01:45:13 - Are you interested in that one still?
2619. 01:45:15 - Yeah, I read a different Kevin Kelly book.
2620. 01:45:17 I can't remember if it was for Bookworm
2621. 01:45:19 or if it was just a gap book, but I really enjoyed it.
2622. 01:45:21 And "The Inevitable" is kind of the one
2623. 01:45:23 that was referenced as like,
2624. 01:45:24 this is the definitive work by this guy.
2625. 01:45:26 So I think this makes a lot of sense.
2626. 01:45:29 And I think it's probably a version of this topic
2627. 01:45:34 that I know you really wanna talk about
2628. 01:45:36 that will still be interesting to the audience.
2629. 01:45:38 - Yes.
2630. 01:45:39 So just so you know, in the background, right?
2631. 01:45:42 I'm new, right?
2632. 01:45:43 I'm coming into this and I start throwing books at Mike.
2633. 01:45:47 And he knows the audience way better than I did the audience.
2634. 01:45:49 So I'm learning and everything going.
2635. 01:45:51 And I think this is a good version for you all.
2636. 01:45:54 So hopefully that's true.
2637. 01:45:56 And if it's not, feel free to give feedback.
2638. 01:45:58 And I will learn as much as I can from that feedback.
2639. 01:46:02 So that's "The Inevitable" by Kevin Kelly.
2640. 01:46:06 Mike, do you have any gap books that you're reading right now?
2641. 01:46:10 - Not before the next episode.
2642. 01:46:12 However, I'm gonna probably read a whole bunch of gap books.
2643. 01:46:14 Well, I'm on vacation.
2644. 01:46:15 So maybe I will have some to report back.
2645. 01:46:19 - Okay.
2646. 01:46:20 And then mine is going to be the exact same gap book
2647. 01:46:22 I was working on before.
2648. 01:46:23 It's called "Triumph of the Lamb."
2649. 01:46:25 And it's because I did not make as much progress
2650. 01:46:29 in that as I needed to.
2651. 01:46:30 And I wanna keep reading that.
2652. 01:46:31 So is there a specific definition of a gap book?
2653. 01:46:34 Like, is there like a hardcore definition
2654. 01:46:36 like of a gap book?
2655. 01:46:38 Like do I have to finish it in the gap?
2656. 01:46:40 - No, you don't.
2657. 01:46:42 And you don't even have to finish it.
2658. 01:46:44 There's no rules with these gap books.
2659. 01:46:45 - Okay, I just, I went.
2660. 01:46:46 - In fact, that's a general rule that is worth calling out.
2661. 01:46:50 Life's too short to read bad books.
2662. 01:46:52 So there's plenty of them out there.
2663. 01:46:54 If you're trying to read one and it's just not clicking,
2664. 01:46:57 feel free to put it down, come back to it later,
2665. 01:47:00 or don't, completely up to you, pick up something else.
2666. 01:47:02 (laughs)
2667. 01:47:03 - Yeah.
2668. 01:47:04 - Just find things that are gonna,
2669. 01:47:06 gonna tickle your curiosity as we talked about
2670. 01:47:08 in this episode.
2671. 01:47:09 That's the important thing if you really wanna learn.
2672. 01:47:11 - Well, and I can tell you that the one that's next
2673. 01:47:13 on the list, but I won't call it a gap book yet.
2674. 01:47:15 At some point I will, but it's called "Every Good Endeavor"
2675. 01:47:17 by Timothy Keller.
2676. 01:47:19 That's the one I need to read that one for an actual project.
2677. 01:47:22 So it's gotta be a gap book here.
2678. 01:47:23 I'm gonna pretty soon.
2679. 01:47:25 (laughs)
2680. 01:47:25 - All right, cool.
2681. 01:47:27 Well, thanks everyone for listening.
2682. 01:47:29 And if you are reading along with us,
2683. 01:47:32 pick up "Six Thinking Hats" by Edward Dabano.
2684. 01:47:35 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.