20: Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson

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1. 00:00:00 Sorry, I'm a couple minutes late. I just got a call. I'm the community manager for the Appleton co-working space
2. 00:00:05 So I'll set up a tour for tomorrow morning. Nice. Nice
3. 00:00:09 Good for you. I'm not I'm not a co-working space guy
4. 00:00:14 Well, in my experience, there are a couple different types of co-working spaces
5. 00:00:20 There are the kind which are very sterile and don't have very many people in them, which we have one of those as well
6. 00:00:29 Okay, then there is the kind that is kind of focused on the community and that's the Appleton co-working one that I'm involved with
7. 00:00:37 And I really just love community. I love getting
8. 00:00:42 Smart talented people together in the same space and seeing what we can come up with so
9. 00:00:47 I want to help build that in this area. So I am officially now community manager
10. 00:00:54 Like I needed one more thing to do, but right right but it's fun because you're bored and you're looking for things to do all the time
11. 00:01:00 I'm aware of that right
12. 00:01:02 Alright, so I have something that you need to you need to start talking about this
13. 00:01:07 I saw a tweet that you put out and
14. 00:01:10 It involved one of these internet connected light bulbs
15. 00:01:16 Yes
16. 00:01:22 so
17. 00:01:24 One of my follow-up items is a stop-doing list
18. 00:01:28 And I did that and as I was doing that just basically applied that principle to a whole bunch of things and
19. 00:01:37 I guess the term for it might be curating or editing your life and
20. 00:01:42 I was thinking about all the different
21. 00:01:47 Places I have to go to do different things like right now. I'm recording this podcast in my off-site
22. 00:01:53 Office which I pay monthly for and it's great. You know, I have a place where I can just show up my
23. 00:01:59 Setup is ready to go. I don't have to worry about being interrupted
24. 00:02:03 But it has a very real cost in terms of money and time because it's about 10 minutes from my house
25. 00:02:11 And it's kind of the opposite direction from everything else that I might be doing in the day
26. 00:02:15 so
27. 00:02:17 Think that I am going to well, I'm not I think we have started
28. 00:02:21 Finishing off an office in the basement of our house for me. Oh, nice
29. 00:02:26 The thing is that it is in the corner of the basement our house is like a walkout ranch
30. 00:02:31 So mine is in the corner of the basement where there are no windows and
31. 00:02:35 so as we're
32. 00:02:37 Planning out this office
33. 00:02:39 One of the things that I've always wanted was to have these these hulaights because I've seen tans
34. 00:02:44 And I see how they can kind of create like a feel for your room
35. 00:02:48 And I think that's going to be really important especially when I have no sunshine
36. 00:02:53 So the office is in progress, but I bought a
37. 00:02:58 Hugh
38. 00:03:00 starter kit, which is the the bridge and then the three bulbs and
39. 00:03:04 Just put them in other lamps in our house just to play with them in the meantime and they may be permanently in our bedroom
40. 00:03:14 Because Rachel absolutely loves them
41. 00:03:16 Yeah, it's it's pretty cool like I don't know she typically will go to bed before I do and so this way
42. 00:03:24 You know we can just turn on one of those lights really really low
43. 00:03:27 It's almost like a night light and I don't have to stumble over stuff when I come into the bedroom
44. 00:03:32 Yeah, it's it's great and
45. 00:03:34 The different colors like it seems very simple. It seems not that big a deal
46. 00:03:40 Which is why I put it off for a very long time. I'm like well, it looks cool, but really it's not worth it
47. 00:03:46 I mean the bulbs are 50 bucks a piece
48. 00:03:48 Here's the thing though the bulbs themselves they say will last 50,000 hours so
49. 00:03:56 If I'm doing my math correctly, you know roughly 20 hours in a day roughly 300 days in a year, okay?
50. 00:04:02 That means that you could have these
51. 00:04:06 These bulbs on all all the time pretty much for about 20 years and they're not gonna burn out
52. 00:04:13 Which that in of itself
53. 00:04:16 Makes them much more cost effective
54. 00:04:19 But then also the ability to play with the different colors and really just like set the mood for whatever you're doing
55. 00:04:25 Like if I'm reading at night, I don't want blue light which is gonna keep me up
56. 00:04:29 I can make it more orangish
57. 00:04:31 You know some people don't like the the flux app for your for your Mac or the night shift on iOS devices
58. 00:04:37 Let's see. I love that stuff
59. 00:04:39 Yeah
60. 00:04:39 I'm I'm a firm believer in that stuff and I've talked about talked about that on the productivity show where like I
61. 00:04:45 Have been diagnosed with epilepsy so one of the things that can trigger a seizure is not enough sleep
62. 00:04:50 I'm also on medication which makes me more drowsy so sleep is very important to me
63. 00:04:55 I've been using flux for years. I'm all in on this this idea, you know, no blue light at night and
64. 00:05:01 so
65. 00:05:02 Yeah, it's it's it's great. You know, I can have my my side of the the of the bed
66. 00:05:07 You know, I've got my hulaite. It's it's not super bright
67. 00:05:10 It's got this orangish tint and I can read for 20 30 minutes and by that point like I am very tired
68. 00:05:16 I am ready to go to bed
69. 00:05:18 and
70. 00:05:19 Yeah, it's it's an investment in the way I rationalize it
71. 00:05:23 I guess if you want to use that but the way that that I view it is that it's not just an investment in like
72. 00:05:30 Oh, I've got this cool new gadget for my house
73. 00:05:32 but it really does make all my my morning and evening routines more efficient and
74. 00:05:41 Since I've got a lot of things going on and sleeps really important to me like I think it's a it's a worthwhile investment
75. 00:05:48 Just from that standpoint plus it's a lot fun and see and I that point I get the fun part
76. 00:05:54 I totally understand but the whole
77. 00:05:57 instigate like the whole catalyst here was light in the
78. 00:06:01 Office space correct and this is this is in a walkout ranch or in our neck of the woods. It would be a rambler
79. 00:06:08 still get to that term, but
80. 00:06:11 This is where I think you and I would differ a little bit on this because my instinct would have been to put in a window
81. 00:06:17 Instead of buying a light bulb, which is way more expensive, of course, but right well
82. 00:06:24 We looked at that option. Yeah, it was several thousand dollars more expensive
83. 00:06:28 But also we want to make this office like it's kind of a
84. 00:06:34 elongated room and the idea is that like if someone were to buy the house in the future
85. 00:06:40 This is not going to be the person's ideal office
86. 00:06:44 It's my ideal office because it's in the corner away from everything else and it'll be quiet. Yep
87. 00:06:48 But the average person is not going to want to use that room as an office
88. 00:06:53 But it would make an awesome theater room and so if you're gonna do a theater room
89. 00:06:58 you have to block out all the light anyways, and so
90. 00:07:00 We just think that this might be a really cool
91. 00:07:03 Way to implement this stuff which has been on my to try list for a long time
92. 00:07:08 But never could justify it. So this is kind of the thing that pushed me over the edge
93. 00:07:12 See, okay, you may have to work on me on these things because I
94. 00:07:16 I understand what you're saying. I
95. 00:07:21 Get the benefits, but at the same time I'm sitting here thinking
96. 00:07:24 Internet connected the light bulb
97. 00:07:27 Do I really need it to be that complex to turn on a light like that's what that's what I start thinking about
98. 00:07:34 Like I just don't understand I
99. 00:07:37 Guess the the whole rationale behind the details I get the big picture stuff
100. 00:07:43 But to me I'm thinking okay, that means if the internet goes down
101. 00:07:47 I can't do all that stuff and now I'm frustrated because the light bulb can't be tweaked like simple things like that now start to creep in
102. 00:07:55 Yeah, not necessarily
103. 00:07:57 I mean the way that it works is like we've got them in these lamps which are triggered by
104. 00:08:01 You can turn the lamp on and off and when you turn the lamp on and off
105. 00:08:05 What it does is it basically resets what color you headed on and it functions just like a normal light bulb
106. 00:08:10 So if you had these switch operated you could turn them off turn them back on and they're going to look just like
107. 00:08:17 Normal lights so you don't have to worry about them not working in that that sense. Yeah, I get that part
108. 00:08:22 I'm I mean, I'm sure they're fail safe still kind I mean they have to function is regular light bulbs
109. 00:08:27 That's the premise of it, but
110. 00:08:29 it's the concept that if I
111. 00:08:32 get used to
112. 00:08:35 being able to control like the brightness and the coloring of that light bulb and then I
113. 00:08:40 mean internet's not perfect the signals are never going to be a hundred percent and
114. 00:08:46 I have a couple days when I don't have internet, which is actually really rare. I get that
115. 00:08:51 But I could easily see myself getting quite frustrated if it doesn't work the way I'm used to
116. 00:08:58 I'm very much a creature of habit here Mike. So if it doesn't work the way I expect it to I tend to get a little bit
117. 00:09:03 anxious
118. 00:09:04 Well, yeah, I can see that I haven't encountered that yet. Although I haven't had them very long
119. 00:09:09 one of the things that I did
120. 00:09:11 Mmm, I guess last summer was yeah, I think it was prime day. They had a big sale on the euro routers
121. 00:09:17 So I have euros throughout my house and that has been a significant improvement in our Wi-Fi. Yep, so I
122. 00:09:26 Don't know. I mean, I'm not really concerned about the
123. 00:09:28 Losing the connection for the Internet of Things, but I guess you know time will tell yeah
124. 00:09:35 I'm just I haven't bought into the Internet of Things
125. 00:09:39 Concept really at all which is a bit counterintuitive if you look at all this stuff
126. 00:09:44 I do like I'm very heavy on tech, but I've never touched this like I don't have an echo
127. 00:09:49 I don't have any of these internet connected really anything nothing
128. 00:09:55 So I've not bit into that at all. So that might be the bigger piece that you're trying to get me to overcome here
129. 00:10:02 Yeah, I think that is the the bigger piece there and in tan described it as lifestyle productivity
130. 00:10:08 So the echo is kind of the gateway drug to that Asian efficiency actually bought me an echo. So nice
131. 00:10:14 Yeah, it's it's pretty fun and my kids like they they know how to use this thing in fact my nine-year-old
132. 00:10:21 Uses it much more frequently than I do. I don't tend to think that way
133. 00:10:26 Like I'll still go to my phone to find like a sports score or something in the ESPN app
134. 00:10:30 whereas he'll just be like I
135. 00:10:33 Don't want to say the the trigger term, but you know, hey lady in the canister
136. 00:10:37 What was the score of the bucks game last night and it'll it'll tell them so I think that there's
137. 00:10:44 these these devices whether whether you like it or not are changing the way that we live and
138. 00:10:51 The younger generation seems to adapt to them much more quickly
139. 00:10:55 I want to know what all the fuss is about and with the Phillips hulets. I can see some home automation
140. 00:11:02 Benefits to this as well. Although I'm not 100% sure how many use these yet. So these are for example home kit enabled
141. 00:11:08 so theoretically I could from my phone or you know
142. 00:11:14 Hey
143. 00:11:16 Person on the phone, you know, a hoy telephone
144. 00:11:18 Turn on the lights in the office or set the scene for this whatever like you can you can set all of that stuff
145. 00:11:25 And then you can trigger all of that using
146. 00:11:29 Using home automation and I don't think we're really to the point yet where home automation is really clicking
147. 00:11:34 So it's kind of a well well west thing where you've got these things integrating with this and these things integrating with that
148. 00:11:41 And these things not talking to each other
149. 00:11:43 But I think that there is definitely going to be something here in the future in fact
150. 00:11:47 I knew a guy who even just a couple years ago had a a business doing
151. 00:11:53 home automation before
152. 00:11:57 The echo and before Siri and people would pay him tens of thousands of dollars to do this exact same thing
153. 00:12:05 And he'd go needs install like a little network server inside the house that they could control with a remote
154. 00:12:11 you know and
155. 00:12:12 Now for a couple hundred bucks you can get the light bulbs and and your smart device is gonna act as the hub and allow you to control
156. 00:12:19 All that stuff. I think that is
157. 00:12:21 Kind of a game changer, but still needs to kind of play out. I
158. 00:12:26 Think you and I are coming at this very
159. 00:12:28 Opposite into the spectrum so I I do a lot of computer stuff
160. 00:12:32 And we need to get past this and go on to follow up because we're gonna have a long one here
161. 00:12:35 but I
162. 00:12:36 I tend to fall on the side of trying to do more things in the analog sense because we've read a lot about how
163. 00:12:42 Internet in itself can affect us and most of these books that we've read
164. 00:12:49 Indicates negative effects from spending too much time with
165. 00:12:55 connected devices and I tend to
166. 00:12:58 You know from that I tend to want to
167. 00:13:01 Separate a little bit I spend my whole day working on computers. I like to get away from it when I'm done
168. 00:13:07 To me that that it works better for me to just say okay. I'm gonna have my 10 hours of
169. 00:13:14 computer work in a day or sometimes longer than that and
170. 00:13:18 once I'm done with that I
171. 00:13:21 would really rather just go play games with the girls and read a book or
172. 00:13:25 You know do something in the kitchen or do something in the wood shot with saws
173. 00:13:30 You know things that can cut my hand off instead of
174. 00:13:32 Adjust lights like that's
175. 00:13:35 Okay, well, I tend to put my money in time. All right, so let me jump in right here because
176. 00:13:40 The Hue lights also have a disco mode. Oh, of course they do
177. 00:13:45 Of course they do boys love the disco mode all you have to do is like place the music and then the
178. 00:13:51 I think maybe the speaker is actually on your phone
179. 00:13:54 But there's like no latency between your phone and the lights themselves
180. 00:13:59 So the microphone will pick up the beats to the music and it will actually flash the lights accordingly and it's nice
181. 00:14:05 It's pretty awesome
182. 00:14:07 All right, so follow up because I don't know where to go from that
183. 00:14:11 So I've got a bunch here we've got a ton here
184. 00:14:17 We could we could talk about my my follow-up item to disconnect since this okay
185. 00:14:22 It's there you go now that you're connecting your house. How does this work?
186. 00:14:26 Well, let me say like I am
187. 00:14:29 The light bulbs are not going to tell me when an email comes in
188. 00:14:35 Well, that's good. They're not going to tell me when somebody likes to face flash three times
189. 00:14:39 They're they're not going to interrupt what I am doing at any given moment
190. 00:14:44 So I think that's kind of the distinction that I'm making there, but
191. 00:14:48 Yeah, I mean this is from somebody who has completely removed email from from their phone
192. 00:14:54 So I see these as two very different things, but the follow-up item here to disconnect
193. 00:15:01 Have to admit I haven't really done
194. 00:15:04 Great at this I had every intention to do it and then got a little behind on a project and basically had to work through the weekend
195. 00:15:11 So I need to still create the time to do this. I've got the plan to do it. It's just that
196. 00:15:19 Well, I mean with Asian efficiency
197. 00:15:22 We just are in the middle of developing a new product
198. 00:15:25 And so there were some things that just needed to get done
199. 00:15:28 And I had taken a couple days off earlier in the week and we got a little bit behind and it was
200. 00:15:32 You know up to me. I just needed to get get it done. So I I got it done, but
201. 00:15:37 the weekend is really the time when I want to make sure to disconnect and
202. 00:15:41 This kind of runs into evaluate my tools. Do I run them or do they run me because one of the quote-unquote tools?
203. 00:15:48 That I use is tweetbot. So I really like Twitter. I'm not on Facebook
204. 00:15:53 I don't really do a whole lot with social media, but I do like Twitter. I also
205. 00:15:58 Have realized this is my confession that apparently I am a Twitter completionist
206. 00:16:04 I have a hard time not looking at Twitter
207. 00:16:07 But one of the things that I'm holding on Twitter completionist explain that for me
208. 00:16:13 So term I've heard before. Yeah, so if you go into tweetbot specifically
209. 00:16:17 You open up the app and it'll tell you how many unread posts there are and then I think that's an option you can turn on or off
210. 00:16:24 Since you last were in Twitter
211. 00:16:27 So basically it puts a marker at like the last tweet that you read on your timeline
212. 00:16:31 And then it counts them all up ahead like above that
213. 00:16:34 And so if I were to disconnect for a Saturday for example not check Twitter
214. 00:16:39 And then I open it in the evening and I see like 350 messages like that's a little bit
215. 00:16:45 Anxiety producing in me and I'm like why that's that's dumb
216. 00:16:49 So you feel like you have so by the completionist that means you're trying to read every single tweet
217. 00:16:54 Yeah, because yeah because I have curated very
218. 00:16:59 Close or like I've been very
219. 00:17:01 very careful about what I have
220. 00:17:04 What I follow so everybody that I follow is not like they are people that I want to hear what they have to say
221. 00:17:12 I'm not getting ten people saying different versions of the same thing
222. 00:17:16 I'm not getting the people who are being extremely political
223. 00:17:21 Like I use mute filters and I block out all the stuff
224. 00:17:26 I don't want to see which is in my opinion the great thing about Twitter over something like Facebook
225. 00:17:30 As you can really control what you see on your timeline
226. 00:17:33 But as a result like I want to get through all that stuff and so
227. 00:17:36 Yeah, I need to
228. 00:17:40 Again, you know, I failed at this. I need to I need to create that time and my plan is to
229. 00:17:45 Saturdays
230. 00:17:48 Specifically to just completely disconnect so no email no social media
231. 00:17:54 No work and if I'm gonna do something I guess project related. It's gonna be read a book for this podcast
232. 00:18:02 But that's the ideal and I have not gotten there yet
233. 00:18:06 Okay now something I do is I
234. 00:18:09 With the disconnect thing is I throw my phone on a do not disturb every Saturday
235. 00:18:14 Because I work at the church Sunday is a workday for me
236. 00:18:17 So I tend to use my day off as Saturday and I put my phone permanently and do not disturb
237. 00:18:23 Which means for me that indicates that
238. 00:18:25 Nothing will go off on that phone unless it's a phone call from somebody on my VIP list, which is a pretty short list and
239. 00:18:33 That's literally the only thing that that phone gets used for on a Saturday. That's it
240. 00:18:38 Yeah, I think part of the problem here is that Tana and I have gotten into Carcassonne
241. 00:18:44 So we've been playing the iOS version of Carcassonne quite a bit and as soon as I get the notification that it's my turn
242. 00:18:52 That opens the floodgates see this is how out of the loop. I am I've never even heard of this. Oh my gosh
243. 00:18:58 You have to try Carcassonne. No, I don't I don't have to try this board game in the world
244. 00:19:02 Yes, you do Carcassonne is amazing. You don't have to do the iOS version, but you have to play Carcassonne
245. 00:19:07 Next time we get together whether it is at max stock in the summer or find the Minneapolis again
246. 00:19:13 I am bringing Carcassonne. We are playing Carcassonne. All right
247. 00:19:17 Trust me. It's life-changing. Okay
248. 00:19:21 Well, see you got on your list here. I
249. 00:19:23 Mentioned the stop-doing list. So let me just run down the items here that I put on here
250. 00:19:29 I think initially when I said I was gonna create a stop-doing list it was gonna be
251. 00:19:34 Just saying no to a bunch of things just because I thought that well if I say no to things then things will be better
252. 00:19:40 as I evaluate at all things I'm committed to I
253. 00:19:43 Don't feel good about saying no to any of them
254. 00:19:49 so that kind of let me down a bunny trail it's like well, you're not gonna
255. 00:19:53 delete any of your current responsibilities
256. 00:19:57 then how are you going to stop doing the things that you're not supposed to be doing like how are you gonna get more focused on the
257. 00:20:05 things that are really providing a return and
258. 00:20:08 So I identified some things that I do spend a bit of time with and I don't have plans necessarily for
259. 00:20:16 Fixing all of these but I'll just run through them. So number one is email
260. 00:20:20 Even though this isn't a huge problem. I still have to deal with email every single day and
261. 00:20:26 I was thinking, you know, it'd be really great if I just didn't have to check this
262. 00:20:30 So I don't know if that means I need to figure out and document my system and then try the VA thing again
263. 00:20:39 or what but
264. 00:20:42 Yeah, email is definitely a thorn in my side. So is calendar management I
265. 00:20:48 Would it would be great to say you wanted schedule meeting with me then, you know
266. 00:20:53 Talk to my assistant and I know that there are digital services that do this sort of thing
267. 00:20:57 I've got enough different calendars though that those don't work at least not without paying through the nose to
268. 00:21:04 integrate them all together like Calum Lee and doodle have some free services and they're great for scheduling meetings with people but
269. 00:21:11 It would be great to say, you know, you want to schedule coffee with me
270. 00:21:16 You want to have a meeting for something at church or whatever like something that's outside the normal
271. 00:21:21 everyday
272. 00:21:23 routine then
273. 00:21:25 Don't talk to me because I don't have time to look at everything and make sure that
274. 00:21:31 That all the plates that keep spinning
275. 00:21:33 But just talk to talk to this person and they'll get it on there
276. 00:21:37 Then all I've got to do is look at my calendar and show up when I'm supposed to be there
277. 00:21:41 But again, that's gonna take some work
278. 00:21:43 Another thing that I identified as a potential thing to stop doing this kind of hurts me to say this
279. 00:21:50 But I spend quite a bit of time making coffee
280. 00:21:54 What no this doesn't yeah, so I really like coffee I
281. 00:21:59 Think that making coffee at home. There's a lot of benefits to that number one. It's much less expensive
282. 00:22:07 number two
283. 00:22:09 It really like there is something about the process that I really enjoy so I could I'm using that currently in my morning
284. 00:22:17 Ritual as like a reward
285. 00:22:20 So when I get done with these things then I can make myself a cup of coffee
286. 00:22:23 but it takes
287. 00:22:26 15 to 20 minutes to make a fancy cup of coffee and
288. 00:22:28 If I do that
289. 00:22:31 Even once a day that's gonna add up but realistically I'll have a cup in the morning and then maybe a cup in early afternoon
290. 00:22:37 So is there a more efficient way to make coffee that still tastes good?
291. 00:22:41 I'm looking in the French press. No, no no French press
292. 00:22:45 French press is all right. I just do not like the
293. 00:22:49 Silt the the grounds that get in the coffee itself. You're doing it wrong
294. 00:22:55 Well, you'll have to show me how to do it then because every time I've tried to do a French press
295. 00:23:01 There's been some among there always is yeah, there's always a little bit in there
296. 00:23:05 Yeah, and I just for whatever reason can't stand that so it tastes good
297. 00:23:09 But yeah, I know a lot of people swear by the French press
298. 00:23:12 But regardless what I'm thinking is is there a way to automate the whole coffee process?
299. 00:23:17 I know that there are some machines that you can program
300. 00:23:20 I am trying to find an automated pour over machine that can handle the grinding of the beans as well
301. 00:23:27 If I could find that that would be amazing
302. 00:23:30 But even if I have to grind the beans, that's not really that big a deal
303. 00:23:33 So I think an automated coffee maker is probably in my future somewhere
304. 00:23:38 I had a little bit of a freak out in my mind because I thought you were getting ready to say something about a drip machine
305. 00:23:44 I was like oh Mike. Nope. I can't do that. You're on to my press and you're gonna do a drip machine
306. 00:23:49 Nope, that's just what I thought first I know I will know will not do drip. I would probably give up coffee before
307. 00:23:55 Aaron drip and find something else in fact, you know people I talk a lot about coffee and how much I I like it
308. 00:24:03 It's kind of I don't know my vice if you want to put it that way, but every January we do this fast and
309. 00:24:09 for 21 days I
310. 00:24:12 Do no coffee just to kind of show my body that I'm still in charge
311. 00:24:17 So I use that to say I don't believe I'm addicted but
312. 00:24:22 Huh I'm addicted, but I won't fast from it. I know I'm addicted. I'm gonna stick with it. I will continue feeding it
313. 00:24:31 Be the be the monster
314. 00:24:33 The other thing
315. 00:24:35 Two other things I had on this list
316. 00:24:37 meeting prep so there are
317. 00:24:40 Several meetings that I have to do throughout the week and a lot of areas of responsibility that
318. 00:24:48 I
319. 00:24:50 tend to be the person who
320. 00:24:52 Gathers the data so that the meeting is effective and we
321. 00:24:57 arrive at action items that we can do something with at the end
322. 00:25:01 So that means that it falls to me to gather that data and that takes a bit of time and it's not
323. 00:25:10 Really anything all that complicated someone else could definitely do that
324. 00:25:13 So I think as I'm going through this list. I really do need to be a at some point
325. 00:25:17 The other one. I'm not sure how to delegate this one. I know if you're in big city
326. 00:25:21 You can use something like task grab it, but errands and shopping. I
327. 00:25:25 Hate running errands. I hate going shopping
328. 00:25:28 In fact, I just got new glasses because I needed some my old ones were super glue at least a dozen times and my wife told me
329. 00:25:35 I'm not super gluing these anymore. You have to buy new ones
330. 00:25:37 So I did some research. I'm like, how can I buy glasses without leaving the house?
331. 00:25:43 So I got Warby Parker glasses, which was which are awesome and
332. 00:25:48 I went to Costco because that you can get an eye exam
333. 00:25:53 so I got the eye exam for like 30 40 bucks and
334. 00:25:55 Then with the Warby Parker app you take a picture of your prescription
335. 00:26:00 Uploads it and then you pick out the ones that you want to try on they send them to you for free
336. 00:26:04 And then you send them back and you can order whichever ones you want and I bought some new glasses
337. 00:26:09 I think there were 95 dollars, which is like a third of the cost that they would have been if I had gone to a
338. 00:26:14 Vision place nearby and and bought some
339. 00:26:17 so
340. 00:26:20 Yeah, I need to figure out
341. 00:26:22 specifically
342. 00:26:24 How to eliminate all of the errands and shopping that I have to do from my life
343. 00:26:29 like one of the things I have to do occasionally
344. 00:26:30 I guess people who send me checks because they don't like to pay online for whatever reason and
345. 00:26:35 I know you like some banks. You can just take the picture deposit the check. I
346. 00:26:39 Really can't do that. So I have to I have to go deposit them and that drives me crazy too
347. 00:26:46 In fact, I usually like don't deposit them for weeks or sometimes even months at a time and they pile up
348. 00:26:52 Just so I can do them all at one time, but yeah, little things like that where I don't have to physically go somewhere
349. 00:26:57 I want to get rid of as well
350. 00:26:59 Our bank lets us take pictures. I like that
351. 00:27:03 All right, so I'm gonna run through these rapid fire if I can so
352. 00:27:07 The first one on this list is notice my blaming tendencies
353. 00:27:10 I put this back on the list because I'm trying to
354. 00:27:13 Just notice when I try to put things off of myself and onto other people and
355. 00:27:19 Realizing that I do this a lot. So I'm just trying to pay attention to it
356. 00:27:23 You know instances where something comes up and we'll talk about some of this today with our book today
357. 00:27:27 if we ever get there and
358. 00:27:30 Whenever something changes or something comes up
359. 00:27:33 I tend to want to say it's somebody else's fault and not mine and I don't want to do anything about it
360. 00:27:38 So I'm just trying to pay attention to that and just notice how often I do that
361. 00:27:42 I've been trying to make a decision on building a plug-in for discourse
362. 00:27:48 If you follow me at all, you know, I'm a huge fan of discourse and I help open source develop that
363. 00:27:52 It's a forum software anyway
364. 00:27:55 I did make the decision on whether or not to build this plug-in and I am going to move forward with it
365. 00:28:00 And I'm actually quite a ways on it at the moment nice
366. 00:28:02 So it's that should be a good thing if you're familiar with that. It's essentially a paid group access
367. 00:28:07 plug-in so it allows you to
368. 00:28:10 Set up groups in discourse and have people pay you to get access to that group which can then lead to
369. 00:28:18 Paid categories and private areas of a forum. So it's something. It hasn't been done
370. 00:28:22 Well, and I'm gonna step in and do that. So I've got a yes on that one
371. 00:28:26 The second one second decision. I've been trying to make and this is all based off the book decisive
372. 00:28:31 Decision on a CHMS or a church management system at our church
373. 00:28:38 I'm in the middle of that one that one's gonna take me a little while
374. 00:28:41 I've got a couple more months that I've planned out to help me make that decision on whether or not
375. 00:28:46 We should switch the one we're using to something else
376. 00:28:48 So I'll check in with that one in a little and like probably a month out or so just to see how that's going
377. 00:28:55 But I'm still working on that one don't have a decision there, but I'm at least using the process
378. 00:28:59 sweet
379. 00:29:01 the last two I have here I'm gonna consolidate so a commonplace book and
380. 00:29:05 memorization and I've always resisted doing a commonplace book and
381. 00:29:10 There were a lot of reasons for that and I think it was primarily that I didn't fully understand
382. 00:29:16 How a commonplace book was originally designed and what the purpose of it was learning that it involves memorization and
383. 00:29:22 Me understanding through our last book that there's a lot of value in memorizing along with some other stuff
384. 00:29:28 I've decided to step into doing that so I ordered of course a new commonplace book because you can't do this digitally
385. 00:29:36 Of course not
386. 00:29:38 So I ordered a commonplace book that I'm gonna use for it
387. 00:29:41 And I'm in the process of collecting quotes mostly from books and some other things and then I've begun the process of memorizing those so
388. 00:29:47 That's a go. That's a good one. I'm moving forward on that one. I like that one the the quotes specifically
389. 00:29:54 I've been using an app called quote book which I've mentioned on this podcast before but unfortunately it's not being developed anymore and
390. 00:30:01 There really isn't a good alternative for something like that
391. 00:30:05 So I'm still putting things in quote book, but I am counting down the days until it doesn't work anymore
392. 00:30:10 And it makes me very nervous, you know, I really don't think they're ever gonna stop making notebooks, so I
393. 00:30:15 Don't really have to worry about them not developing notebooks anymore true
394. 00:30:20 But I don't want to write all my quotes in an open see that's part of it. That's part of the thing like that's what
395. 00:30:26 Helps you understand it more true true. All right. This is not a little bit. I hear
396. 00:30:34 Okay, let's get past all this what's our book for today?
397. 00:30:37 Book for today is who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson. It is a
398. 00:30:44 very short book
399. 00:30:47 That was kind of intentional because I saw you had the personal MBA coming up. That's a short book
400. 00:30:53 Yeah, it's only like 460 pages no big deal
401. 00:30:56 Although I did find a book longer than that by the way
402. 00:30:59 I recently got tools of Titans the Tim Ferriss book that one is actually over 600 pages
403. 00:31:04 Good night. Yeah, but who moved my cheese is?
404. 00:31:07 94 pages and many of the pages are one line with a big piece of cheese on them. Yep
405. 00:31:15 So you could probably get through this whole book in 45 minutes to an hour. I would say that's I sat down and did it in about
406. 00:31:24 50 minutes. Yeah one setting
407. 00:31:26 Yeah, the the layout of the book is kind of interesting
408. 00:31:31 It's basically broken down into three different parts
409. 00:31:35 so at the
410. 00:31:38 at the beginning it talks about
411. 00:31:40 Kind of what is gonna happen and then there's there's a gathering
412. 00:31:44 There's a story about like a high school reunion or something
413. 00:31:47 And then that leads into somebody in the high school reunion telling this story and then the group has a discussion about it afterwards
414. 00:31:54 Which I don't know. I mean I get why he did that. I wasn't a huge fan of that approach
415. 00:32:01 I thought it was cheesy. Yeah, haha, but I'm sure you'll be here till Thursday. Yep
416. 00:32:06 Yeah, like basically the the effect of that in my opinion is that he is not the one now saying this
417. 00:32:15 It's the character that he created that is saying this which takes a little bit of the edge off of it or at least
418. 00:32:21 That's what I think
419. 00:32:22 The desired effect is because I mentioned
420. 00:32:25 That one of the reasons I picked this is that I've heard a lot of things about it
421. 00:32:29 And I went on the Amazon reviews and they were very polarizing there were a lot of people
422. 00:32:33 Who were like I gave this to my employees it completely changed everything and there were a lot of people who were like
423. 00:32:38 Yeah, I boss gave me this book and it's complete garbage. I can see why CEOs love it though
424. 00:32:41 Uh, and I do get a little bit of that. I get a little bit of both of those as I was reading this
425. 00:32:47 I kind of viewed it through those two different lenses simultaneously
426. 00:32:49 There's a lot of stuff in here
427. 00:32:52 Where it talks about like change is gonna happen. You got a role with it whatever
428. 00:32:56 I kind of think though that there's well at least I can envision scenarios where
429. 00:33:02 CEOs and management will use that as justification to not communicate effectively to the people that they're working with
430. 00:33:09 And like we've talked about before
431. 00:33:13 I really do believe that the responsibility of the vision that you have like if you're
432. 00:33:18 The responsibility for communicating the vision is on the person who has the vision
433. 00:33:22 So you can't just say from a CEO level management level
434. 00:33:26 Well, this is where we're going and you guys got to get on board because you got a role with the changes like that doesn't work
435. 00:33:33 You can try that, but it's not effective
436. 00:33:36 You need to be able to articulate your vision in a way that people understand it
437. 00:33:39 I mean even in a family dynamic my wife and I like we're leaders of our family
438. 00:33:43 We have to communicate the vision for our family in a way that our kids can understand it
439. 00:33:48 We can't say well, I told you that we're going to do these things and it's going to improve this, you know by 30 percent like
440. 00:33:54 My nine-year-old seven-year-old don't care
441. 00:33:56 That doesn't mean anything to them
442. 00:33:59 so
443. 00:34:01 Yeah, I think that it's dangerous to to just give this book to people and say well here
444. 00:34:05 This is the framework for change that will help everything go a lot smoother
445. 00:34:08 So I didn't I didn't really like that approach
446. 00:34:11 I I found that the
447. 00:34:14 whole class reunion piece that the beginning and the end was
448. 00:34:18 I don't know how to say that it was just weird to me
449. 00:34:23 Yeah, that my I've never seen a class reunion that looks anything like that
450. 00:34:27 Right, I'm sitting here thinking about my high school class and trying to imagine this conversation happen as I'm reading it
451. 00:34:33 And thinking I would never say this no way this is there's just no way this is real
452. 00:34:38 It's so fake that it's just hard to
453. 00:34:41 It was almost hard to read in some sense, but I was trying to figure out what his ground work was that he was trying to lay
454. 00:34:45 So I thought that was really odd
455. 00:34:47 That's the part of the book that I was like well, I feel like this could be
456. 00:34:50 This could be removed and it would be fine if you
457. 00:34:54 If you laid it out saying, you know, here's the story and this is what some people think about it and this is
458. 00:35:00 The the groundwork of what and why the story exists which they kind of did in the inner
459. 00:35:06 Introduction
460. 00:35:07 To me, I felt like the introduction would have been fine if you'd skipped the precursor that was developed within this class reunion setting
461. 00:35:14 I I really could have just left that including the discussion afterwards. I mean I I understood what they were trying to get at with it
462. 00:35:22 But it was just weird
463. 00:35:24 Really weird?
464. 00:35:24 weird
465. 00:35:26 yeah, and
466. 00:35:28 By creating that picture of like this is a high school reunion and you haven't seen these people in 20 years and all of a
467. 00:35:33 Sun they're having this deep discussion like that makes it seem not real
468. 00:35:37 Because I know people who I see every single week who there's no way I'm having this conversation
469. 00:35:45 Right, absolutely
470. 00:35:47 Like there's so many walls that need to come down people especially in like that setting like you haven't seen each other for 20 years
471. 00:35:54 You want to put your best foot forward. It's like social media times a thousand where like you want to project the best image of yourself
472. 00:36:01 You want everybody to think that you are super successful. I mean I can I personally probably wouldn't take that approach because I just don't care
473. 00:36:09 But I can totally see that that would be the natural thing to do in that that setting you know you see people they haven't seen oh
474. 00:36:17 How's it going? What are you up to like you want?
475. 00:36:19 You want to make it seem like you did something with your life, right?
476. 00:36:23 And in that situation there's so that people have their guard up like there's no way that you're going to have this honest
477. 00:36:30 conversation about this guy who took over the family business and it's failing like and I would say if you're that person and
478. 00:36:38 These people who you haven't seen in 20 years are giving you counsel
479. 00:36:41 You're an idiot if you listen to them. Yes, because they know nothing about your situation
480. 00:36:46 They know nothing about who you are at that particular moment. I mean
481. 00:36:48 I think back to my own high school experience and I have changed a lot
482. 00:36:54 I am nowhere near the person that I was in high school and I can see
483. 00:36:57 Some of the people that I was really good friends with we've went in total different directions
484. 00:37:02 Not where like I've taken a turn for the better
485. 00:37:05 They've taken a turn for the worst, but just like our lifestyles are completely different
486. 00:37:09 One of my best friends in high school is now a rancher in Colorado
487. 00:37:13 I am not a rancher. I am a techie. I'm a geek and so if we got together over coffee like
488. 00:37:19 I don't know nothing about roping steer like there's not
489. 00:37:21 We're not going to have this deep heartfelt conversation
490. 00:37:25 Which is kind of what he what he painted in this this book and I just yeah totally think it's completely unrealistic
491. 00:37:30 The premise of the story. So what this actual story is that's in the middle. So where the meat of it is the good part
492. 00:37:37 I would say
493. 00:37:39 He's essentially looking at four characters
494. 00:37:42 And this this might ruin the book. I might end up just giving you the whole book here, but I would still recommend reading it
495. 00:37:48 Just preface that so sorry. Maybe this is spoiler alert
496. 00:37:52 But most of our stuff is probably spoilers
497. 00:37:54 You should probably cut out this piece and put it at the very front and say if you just want to know
498. 00:38:00 It's in the book go read it because it's quicker than listening to the podcast
499. 00:38:03 Yeah, that might be true
500. 00:38:05 That there might be some truth to that. So just pause right now go grab the book read it
501. 00:38:09 All right, welcome back. So
502. 00:38:13 with
503. 00:38:14 The four characters are placed inside think of a a mouse maze
504. 00:38:20 So you've created a maze and you put cheese in different areas in the maze and the mice go and find it
505. 00:38:25 The the catch here is that two of these characters are mice and two of them are what he calls little people
506. 00:38:31 Which are the same size as mice, but they're humans
507. 00:38:34 That's a little bit hard to get your head around sometimes, but think of them as little humans little people
508. 00:38:39 The the mice their names sniff and scurry the two little people him and haw
509. 00:38:45 Which I kind of wish to use different names for him and haw
510. 00:38:49 I understand why he did that, but I kept getting them confused
511. 00:38:52 Maybe that's just me, but I kept getting them backwards until about halfway through it
512. 00:38:56 And then we spent enough time with him that I realized that haw was
513. 00:39:00 Not me. That's pretty much what I decided there right at the at the beginning of the book even before
514. 00:39:07 I guess the story
515. 00:39:10 The pre-story story
516. 00:39:12 He has a page at least in my version
517. 00:39:16 Where he's got the four different characters and he talks about the differences
518. 00:39:19 So sniff is one who sniffes out change early scurry is one who scurries into action
519. 00:39:23 Hem is the one who denies and resists change as he fears it will lead to something worse
520. 00:39:27 And haw learns to adapt in time when he sees something can lead to something better
521. 00:39:31 Yeah, and I think that's a good summarization of the four of them
522. 00:39:36 effectively what the story is
523. 00:39:39 They the four of them, you know, sniff and scurry tend to do things together the two mice
524. 00:39:44 The two little people tend to do things together as well
525. 00:39:46 and between the two of them they hunt for cheese in this maze
526. 00:39:51 and him and haw eventually find well the four of them eventually find
527. 00:39:57 uh a large portion of cheese in a specific part of the
528. 00:40:01 maze
529. 00:40:03 And it continues to show up day after day and they become reliant on it
530. 00:40:06 And they get used to it being there and then one day the cheese is gone. It just doesn't come
531. 00:40:13 and
532. 00:40:14 The rest of the book is spent exploring the reactions of these four characters to
533. 00:40:20 This cheese just all of a sudden disappearing
534. 00:40:23 And there's some nuances with it of you probably could have seen this
535. 00:40:27 Change coming if you just paint attention because the amount of cheese given every day was slowly decreasing and the quality was going down
536. 00:40:34 Like there's some of those things that come out in it
537. 00:40:36 But the the general premise there is that that cheese disappeared
538. 00:40:41 sniff and scurry
539. 00:40:43 Immediately jumped into action and snipped out some different scenarios and scurried off to go hunt down some more cheese
540. 00:40:49 And they found a much larger
541. 00:40:52 Bank of cheese than they ever had so they adjusted very quickly
542. 00:40:57 him
543. 00:40:59 Took quite a while he eventually left they him and haw didn't even leave the initial station for many days
544. 00:41:05 Man, it might have been in weeks. I don't remember
545. 00:41:07 But him eventually worked his way out to go look for
546. 00:41:12 Another station of cheese and haw in the story never left he never
547. 00:41:16 I don't at least that's my interpretation. I guess you could interpret it differently
548. 00:41:20 He to me he never left that original station and just continued going back even though there was nothing there
549. 00:41:27 So the the whole story is explaining how different people and different personalities
550. 00:41:34 React whenever something big change some big change happens
551. 00:41:40 And it's all told through this story of amaze with mice and little people
552. 00:41:44 Right, uh, the only thing i'll add there is that hem and haw are actually I think you flip them
553. 00:41:52 So hem is the one that I just yeah hem is the one who just stays there. He's like
554. 00:41:57 Well, it's easy to do
555. 00:41:59 Um and haw is the one who eventually
556. 00:42:01 Bus out on his own now what's interesting about about this
557. 00:42:05 Uh, and this could be just the way that my brain works
558. 00:42:08 So I know this is not the point that he was trying to make in this the story, but as I was reading this
559. 00:42:14 There you mentioned like the mice tend to stay together the little people tend to stay together
560. 00:42:19 And he defines some of the characteristics of the the little people uh, he mentions that they had complex brains
561. 00:42:27 um
562. 00:42:29 And sometimes their brains clouded their judgment
563. 00:42:31 so
564. 00:42:33 Right away what I thought was that the mice are very similar
565. 00:42:38 the little people are very similar
566. 00:42:40 And the way that he framed it in this particular story
567. 00:42:43 The fact that the little people are more complex more sophisticated whatever that actually hurts them
568. 00:42:49 I think in real life. There's probably a balance. There's pros and cons to each of these
569. 00:42:54 and
570. 00:42:56 I was thinking that it would have been a totally different story
571. 00:42:59 Especially in a bigger context of not just finding the next cheese pile
572. 00:43:03 But what if sniff had become friends with him and scurry become friends with ha
573. 00:43:08 You know that the people that you surround yourself with are really important and having different perspectives is really important
574. 00:43:15 My wife and I talked about this last night actually like I mentioned
575. 00:43:18 We've taken the Colby test the strength finders test like every assessment we take we find out we are very very different
576. 00:43:23 And we can either use that
577. 00:43:26 to uh
578. 00:43:27 We can we cannot recognize that and we can just let that create friction because the way that I typically do things
579. 00:43:31 Isn't the way that she would typically do things
580. 00:43:33 Or we can leverage our differences and play off of each other's strengths
581. 00:43:37 And we can move forward together and accomplish a lot more
582. 00:43:40 But the natural tendency
583. 00:43:43 Maybe outside of of marriage or choosing a life partner is to just surround yourself with like-minded people
584. 00:43:49 And there can be some benefit to that
585. 00:43:52 You know, uh, I live in nino, wisconsin and there's not a huge
586. 00:43:59 Tech community here, you know, I mentioned a lot of people think I don't really have a job
587. 00:44:04 Um, you know what?
588. 00:44:07 I have like four jobs
589. 00:44:09 Not really
590. 00:44:11 Um, I I do keep busy
591. 00:44:13 But uh, there's a lot of people that i've connected with online
592. 00:44:17 That are of similar
593. 00:44:20 Mindset
594. 00:44:21 And really I think that there's a lesson to be learned here in
595. 00:44:25 Picking and choosing
596. 00:44:26 The best of what people from different
597. 00:44:29 backgrounds and different perspectives can add to your life
598. 00:44:33 If you just surround yourself with like-minded people, it's easy to fall into
599. 00:44:38 Groupthink I guess maybe is the term where you don't even consider other options
600. 00:44:44 But if you have a healthy balance between all of these things the outcome at least in my experience is always better off
601. 00:44:53 I think there's a lot of value to knowing which of these four characters that you are
602. 00:44:57 And some of the examples that came out I think in the discussion
603. 00:45:02 Part at the end when they come back to the reunion piece
604. 00:45:07 The one part of that that stood out to me that I didn't think was odd or strange
605. 00:45:11 Was when the main I think it was named was michael who was the one that actually told the story
606. 00:45:16 He explained how in their organization they had some big change. I don't remember what it was
607. 00:45:22 But they basically identified
608. 00:45:25 Employees as each individual character. So who are the sniffs who are the scurries who are the hymns who are the haws
609. 00:45:32 and
610. 00:45:34 How do they get each of them to?
611. 00:45:36 Play a part in enacting the change. I thought that was interesting to just
612. 00:45:42 If something big comes up if if a change happens
613. 00:45:45 Understanding who you are and who the people around you are and how they all react to it
614. 00:45:52 There's a lot of value to that because then you can understand who to interact with in a certain way
615. 00:45:57 So I completely agree
616. 00:45:59 But that part did kind of bother me too because it again framed it in the way that like I totally get why the people who didn't like this book on amazon
617. 00:46:07 don't like it because
618. 00:46:09 It's framing it as a way. It's almost like the guy if you remember the story from the question behind the question where
619. 00:46:14 Forget the author, but he was doing the the session with the CEO of the company and the CEO is doing this presentation
620. 00:46:21 He gets up there and he's like personal responsibility begins with you and the author's general right?
621. 00:46:26 Gemma is like well actually no it starts with you
622. 00:46:29 Meaning that the CEO of the company right kind of you this is like well
623. 00:46:33 We're just going to identify you guys and if you're not on board like tough hit the bricks
624. 00:46:38 Yeah, I think I think that that's a wrong approach
625. 00:46:41 And the productivity project by chris bailey talked about how people are the reason for productivity you can
626. 00:46:48 Tweak your organization and you can try to get the right people on the bus and some people you know
627. 00:46:52 They're just not the right people and they shouldn't be in the organization
628. 00:46:55 But I don't think it's fair to just classify people as like well you're a sniff you're a scurry
629. 00:47:00 And sorry there's no room for you here because I think that that is the danger of doing that
630. 00:47:06 I get it, but all that said which character are you Mike?
631. 00:47:15 Well, I definitely
632. 00:47:17 Definitely the description that I used earlier
633. 00:47:21 Try to find it again now
634. 00:47:24 Where the little people
635. 00:47:26 Have complex brains that
636. 00:47:28 Sometimes cloud their judgment that definitely is me. I tend to overthink things
637. 00:47:33 So I think that I am probably a combination of hem and haw
638. 00:47:39 We're initially I am resistant to change
639. 00:47:42 If something happens something changes. I typically don't like it. I like my routine. I like the familiar
640. 00:47:48 but
641. 00:47:49 Once I have time to process it once I have time to get
642. 00:47:53 Some some facts
643. 00:47:55 Which in this case, you know, maybe what would be haw realizing that you know, there's no cheese here
644. 00:48:00 Maybe we should move on like that's I can totally see myself doing that sort of thing
645. 00:48:04 I wouldn't be the one who's just like oh, let's go find something better
646. 00:48:06 but
647. 00:48:09 Yeah, I think that I'm probably a mixture of those too
648. 00:48:11 See I would say that if you feel like you're a mixture of those two
649. 00:48:15 You're probably haw in that he he was kind of stuck in that
650. 00:48:19 At first and it took him a long time and then he eventually did true, but how's the good one?
651. 00:48:24 So I don't want to just say well, I'm the good one
652. 00:48:26 Well, I don't know. I would say sniff and scurry. I don't know. I
653. 00:48:30 That said, I think I'm scurry
654. 00:48:33 I really do
655. 00:48:35 because
656. 00:48:36 If something big happens my gut reaction is
657. 00:48:40 What do I do?
658. 00:48:43 Instead like take for example
659. 00:48:45 Uh me leaving the last company I worked for it was pretty quick. It happens suddenly and whenever I left
660. 00:48:52 I was then left with the question
661. 00:48:55 uh
662. 00:48:56 what happens next
663. 00:48:58 And
664. 00:48:59 I kid you not it was the next day that I started building out my online business and starting to work on that in a
665. 00:49:05 In a heavy way
666. 00:49:06 So it it took like no time at all. I don't think I even lost
667. 00:49:10 I probably lost a couple hours of a workday and that was it
668. 00:49:13 That's how fast I tend to move on things like okay. Well, this job's not going to work
669. 00:49:18 So let's create another one and I will continue doing this until
670. 00:49:22 I fully made up my mind on what the the next path is
671. 00:49:27 And it just because I kept going at it it turned into a full business in and of itself
672. 00:49:33 So I I and if you ask my wife whenever change happens
673. 00:49:38 I'm very quick like I will make a decision on what comes next
674. 00:49:42 Almost instantaneously like I just immediately jump to the next thing
675. 00:49:47 It kind of drives her crazy
676. 00:49:50 New becky is not one that
677. 00:49:54 Just jumps in headfirst for change. It takes her a while
678. 00:49:59 Uh, I don't think she's him by any means, but I would say she's probably a aha. Maybe not as severe
679. 00:50:05 As the character in the book like it doesn't take her that long, but it does take her a while
680. 00:50:10 Uh, which is fine. It just means that the two of us need to learn how to work with each other in our marriage through that
681. 00:50:16 But my wife will tell you if if change happens
682. 00:50:20 I get excited and I start
683. 00:50:22 I get to work right away my problem with it. You've got your running shoes tied around your neck
684. 00:50:27 I don't know that I take them off. So
685. 00:50:29 It it's to the point that if if an idea comes up and I think it's interesting a lot of times
686. 00:50:36 I will just go try it. I'll go try it for a couple weeks and see how I like it before I
687. 00:50:40 Decide yes or no on it. Like that's just how I do things. I I move fast
688. 00:50:45 See, I don't think that there's really anything wrong with that particular approach though in this book
689. 00:50:51 I kind of wish that they focus so much on him and haw after the cheese ran out at a cheese station
690. 00:50:57 See was it? Yeah, I think cheese station see
691. 00:51:00 Um, and uh, you don't really know what happened with sniff and scurry other than at the end when
692. 00:51:08 Haw finally gets there. He realizes that they've been happy and they've been at this new cheese station end for quite a while
693. 00:51:14 Yep
694. 00:51:16 So uh, yeah, I think we're getting kind of an incomplete
695. 00:51:19 View here and I know it's a simple little story
696. 00:51:22 But that was something that I had questions about was like well
697. 00:51:27 Which one do I really want to be like?
698. 00:51:29 Uh, I wish I could understand from another you know another perspective almost like a cutscene if this were a movie
699. 00:51:34 You know seeing what stiff and scurry were doing at the same time that Haw is trying to convince him that this is a bad idea to stay here
700. 00:51:41 Yeah, I I understand that but at the same time, I don't know that
701. 00:51:45 Uh, I don't know that Spencer was trying to lay out who you should be as much as just explaining
702. 00:51:54 Four different personalities whenever change happens now
703. 00:51:57 I I think there is a little bit of a hint of
704. 00:52:00 Don't get stuck and and pay attention
705. 00:52:04 You know saying you've got a quote written down here smell the cheese often to see if it's getting old
706. 00:52:08 I think there's there's some value there because you don't want to
707. 00:52:12 Just have it disappear one day when you could have seen it coming
708. 00:52:16 If you could see something coming, there's no point in ignoring it and just wishing it wasn't the way it is
709. 00:52:24 You can see things coming if you if you pay attention in most cases
710. 00:52:28 I can tell you when a client is likely not going to sign something even though
711. 00:52:33 I'm sitting across the table from them and they're giving me every indication that they are
712. 00:52:40 Excited and they want to move forward on a website right away
713. 00:52:43 But I can usually tell you even though they're telling me that
714. 00:52:46 That I'm probably not going to ever get a signature and they're probably never going to actually move forward with this
715. 00:52:54 Like there's just an inkling that I can get with that
716. 00:52:56 I don't know if that's just the sniff part of this book coming out in me
717. 00:53:02 I don't know what that is, but I think there's a little bit of value and just you know pay attention to your surroundings and see what's going on
718. 00:53:08 because
719. 00:53:09 I don't think any of us want to be him. I don't think any of us want to be the one who's
720. 00:53:13 You know the proverbial stick in the mud
721. 00:53:16 You don't want to be that person who's just dragging things down in some cases
722. 00:53:21 I think and this is probably rare. I think there are some cases where change is a very bad thing
723. 00:53:25 but those scenarios are pretty slim in my opinion
724. 00:53:30 So I think there is some value in understanding how each of these four could play out in your life
725. 00:53:35 But I don't think any one of them is necessarily the best
726. 00:53:38 If that's fair
727. 00:53:41 Yep, yeah, I of course
728. 00:53:42 I agree with that. I mean really what he's doing is he's showing like he said different ways to approach change and really the
729. 00:53:48 The big takeaway that I I got from this book is that
730. 00:53:52 You can view change as either losing something or gaining something and that perspective will either
731. 00:53:58 Inspire you to keep looking for something new something better whether you decide to stay at home base while you do that or not
732. 00:54:05 Or you can just cling to the thing that you used to know and I think that there's probably a lot of people who are wired
733. 00:54:13 that way and
734. 00:54:15 That's the thing I didn't really like about this book was that
735. 00:54:19 It kind of painted those types of people in a negative light
736. 00:54:24 Hem for example gets frustrated. He's yelling that no one warned them
737. 00:54:29 and he's just getting like negative and bitter
738. 00:54:34 and
739. 00:54:36 maybe that's because
740. 00:54:38 In an organizational setting the leader isn't communicating
741. 00:54:42 Well enough where the organization is going. You know, I view this book almost as a justification for actions
742. 00:54:50 in terms of
743. 00:54:53 manipulating and trimming a workforce
744. 00:54:56 then
745. 00:54:58 really
746. 00:54:59 Making positive changes in an individual's life
747. 00:55:02 Although there are definitely a lot of personal takeaways from this
748. 00:55:05 There were enough little things that he put in there
749. 00:55:08 I'm like, you really didn't need to put in that detail, but I see the point you're trying to make there
750. 00:55:13 I see the justification you're trying to add
751. 00:55:16 And that I didn't I didn't really like
752. 00:55:19 I could see how you take this as
753. 00:55:22 justification for doing things to an organization. I feel like if you
754. 00:55:28 If you turn that on its head a little bit and you used these four characters and how they adjust the change
755. 00:55:37 I think if you took that
756. 00:55:39 and applied it to the decision making process on whether or not change should happen
757. 00:55:43 That would be a better way to interpret it instead of using it as an excuse and saying
758. 00:55:49 You know, I need to let everybody go here read this book and you'll understand
759. 00:55:54 You know, this this will make you feel better about me firing you
760. 00:55:58 You know instead of coming at it that way if you were to
761. 00:56:01 Take the different forms of change
762. 00:56:05 different ways of interacting and and reacting to
763. 00:56:08 Change and then use that to say
764. 00:56:12 Should we do this?
765. 00:56:15 Should we explore some other options? Maybe we could do maybe we could add a division
766. 00:56:19 Maybe we cut three and move those to this like you could start to explore some of those options
767. 00:56:24 and then help people see how any of those may be
768. 00:56:28 A good thing and help people to see how some of those are like how you could react to those
769. 00:56:35 I think that could be a much better way of coming at it instead of
770. 00:56:38 Using it as the the top down here now that i've done this to you deal with it
771. 00:56:43 I don't think that's the right way to use it. I think that's
772. 00:56:46 That is possibly a distortion of what
773. 00:56:50 Spencer johnson is trying to get at I think all he's trying to say is people react
774. 00:56:55 differently when things happen to them theoretically quote unquote happen to them
775. 00:57:02 and there are some things that we can do individually to
776. 00:57:06 Not be surprised by it, but to react positively to it
777. 00:57:11 I don't think it'd be a good thing to say
778. 00:57:15 Here's here's something I want to do to you deal with it like that's yeah using this book from that perspective
779. 00:57:20 I think is the wrong view. I think that it gets used that way often though
780. 00:57:25 I mean on the back of my book. Yeah, I don't I don't disagree with that at all number one international bestseller an instant classic
781. 00:57:30 Hailed by people in leading organizations and yeah triple a amway and has your bush apple atut
782. 00:57:35 Bosch and lumb good rich bristle miers blue cross
783. 00:57:38 So you know that that's happening and there's enough stuff in here where it's like, uh, I can see why you're putting that in there
784. 00:57:46 And I know how you're using this and I don't like that
785. 00:57:48 But if this were like like we picked it up and we read it individually for this podcast
786. 00:57:54 I think there's a lot of positive stuff in here
787. 00:57:56 but I think that
788. 00:57:59 The majority of the time that people pick up this book and maybe if you've heard the name who moved my cheese and you
789. 00:58:03 Has has a negative connotation to you. It was probably because this was jammed down your throat by a manager
790. 00:58:09 Yeah, so that was a little bit hard for me to get over. Yeah, I get that. I I think that's the wrong
791. 00:58:16 Purpose. I don't think that's the way it was intended
792. 00:58:18 At least that's me. That's how I took it if if I had been
793. 00:58:23 If I had been given this book by a corporation that I worked for
794. 00:58:28 My gut reaction to that would probably be what are you getting ready to do?
795. 00:58:33 Like what what are you what are you plotting up there in your headquarters?
796. 00:58:38 And it just just seems like
797. 00:58:41 It seems like the easy button as opposed to I don't want to have this difficult conversation
798. 00:58:47 I don't want to be responsible for communicating this vision. So here somebody wrote a really good book. Just read this
799. 00:58:52 Yeah, you know that that doesn't work. Yeah, exactly. It's a perfect term. It's a cop out
800. 00:58:58 Um, because I know
801. 00:59:00 From personal experience there've been people who are like, oh this podcast episode or this book like
802. 00:59:05 If you read this, this will be life-changing, but you can't project
803. 00:59:09 How other people are going to benefit from this type of stuff even though you might see these things
804. 00:59:13 You can't say well here read this and this will fix your problems
805. 00:59:18 Like that's not gonna work. Only thing you can do is fix yourself like we talked about a couple episodes go
806. 00:59:26 I could see because I'm sitting here trying to figure out how what would the right way of
807. 00:59:32 portraying this and in sharing this with
808. 00:59:35 Say i'm the leader of an organization and I I read this
809. 00:59:39 And I get excited about it because it helps me understand when things happen to the organization as a whole
810. 00:59:45 There's not like I need to react positively to that
811. 00:59:48 That's probably how I would take it
812. 00:59:50 If I had read it as an owner of a bigger organization and I would feel that that would be something beneficial to my team
813. 00:59:57 Great. Awesome. But it'd be easy for them to interpret it
814. 01:00:00 As I'm getting ready to do something to them like I could easily see that
815. 01:00:04 So i'm trying to figure out what would the right way of portraying it be and i'm wondering if you know as that leader
816. 01:00:11 I read this and I want my team to read it as well so that they understand
817. 01:00:16 I would want to make sure that I pose it as
818. 01:00:20 sometimes we get hit with this from say a client
819. 01:00:23 And this is a book that I found helpful to me in reacting to that
820. 01:00:29 I mean that that would cheat that would frame it as
821. 01:00:32 The purpose behind why you're asking someone to read it
822. 01:00:35 True
823. 01:00:37 I still wouldn't recommend this book though
824. 01:00:39 I mean the one thing that this book has going for it if you were going to take that approach is that the main story is like 50 pages long
825. 01:00:46 So I mean you could you could theoretically get people who would never normally read a book to read this
826. 01:00:52 Yeah, but if you're going to take that approach, I'd argue something like decisive would be much more effective
827. 01:00:57 Yeah, that that could be that could be if you're trying to make a decision
828. 01:01:01 As opposed to dealing with something they got that you got hit with but there could be a decision too of how do you deal with it?
829. 01:01:07 Yeah, exactly
830. 01:01:08 I mean if you're going to frame it as there's change that's happening and we need to respond appropriately
831. 01:01:13 If you if you get everybody else to understand the decision making framework
832. 01:01:16 Which they talk a lot about indecisive a lot of different examples. We need to change markets, etc
833. 01:01:20 We need to invest in this thing. We don't need to invest in this thing
834. 01:01:23 I think if everybody understood that you'd be a lot better off than if they've read who moved my cheese
835. 01:01:27 But I understand also that that's a much bigger time investment also right I mean that book is quite a bit longer
836. 01:01:33 But I would argue if you were just looking to complete a book and see changes
837. 01:01:38 You would probably get more by saying this book changed me. I like you guys to read it
838. 01:01:42 And then we'll talk about the takeaways as opposed to here. I'm your manager read who moved my cheese
839. 01:01:47 Yeah, because the walls are instantly gonna be up
840. 01:01:50 But anyways, I will get off my soapbox on that now
841. 01:01:53 Well, and maybe before you do that
842. 01:01:56 I mean if you if you're the leader of an organization and you feel like it'd be helpful your group
843. 01:02:00 I'm not I'm not entirely sure. I think you're right. This may not be the right
844. 01:02:04 thing to recommend but
845. 01:02:07 Big butt here if I
846. 01:02:09 Were talking to somebody personally like they're not someone who works for me. I'm not leading them. It's not part of a organization
847. 01:02:16 I would very easily recommend this I think because if it's just me to someone else like take a good friend of mine at church
848. 01:02:23 I know he is going through a bit of a difficult time some things have happened to him. He can't it's out of his control
849. 01:02:29 I could easily see recommending this to him because it would help him understand, you know, something happened
850. 01:02:35 Here are some different ways to react to that change. I could easily see recommending it to him
851. 01:02:39 But I don't I'm not over him in any capacity whatsoever
852. 01:02:42 I that I think there's a big difference between those two scenarios. Yeah, and that it could be you know
853. 01:02:48 I have not been in a position where I've had
854. 01:02:51 100 or a thousand people where I'm like, I want to improve my workforce
855. 01:02:55 I'm gonna have him read this book, but I can totally see it being applied that way now. What would be interesting would be to see
856. 01:03:02 If anybody has taken that approach what the results actually were
857. 01:03:05 I think I have a little bit of an idea looking at the amazon reviews, right?
858. 01:03:09 But they also have a who moved my cheese for kids
859. 01:03:11 So in that context
860. 01:03:14 It might be really beneficial to have my kids read that and see how they respond to it because yeah
861. 01:03:20 I mean they're smart. They're gonna know whether this is something that I'm trying to use to manipulate them or right whether they're actually getting something out of it
862. 01:03:27 My concern is that they would view it as the former, but maybe maybe it's not maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this
863. 01:03:33 I really don't know. I don't have any any hard data to to support this
864. 01:03:38 Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out where you could or couldn't recommend it
865. 01:03:42 But that's it's probably a fluid you probably have to just pay attention to each scenario to make that decision
866. 01:03:48 Yeah, there is some great stuff in here though
867. 01:03:51 I mean, I really like the whole metaphor like cheeses the metaphor for what we want in life
868. 01:03:56 Regardless of what you define that as and the maze is where we spend our time looking for what we think will make us happy
869. 01:04:02 uh, yeah, I think if you were to
870. 01:04:05 Analyze all the decisions that a person makes no matter who that person is every decision they make
871. 01:04:12 It's because ultimately they think that that is going to
872. 01:04:15 make them happier in fact
873. 01:04:19 How did they put that? I think it was erg in terms of like the
874. 01:04:25 The hierarchy of needs where you make decisions first of all based on existence you want to stay alive
875. 01:04:31 And then once you have that stuff taken care of then you go up a level to relationships
876. 01:04:38 Um, so you want to make sure that your relationships are a solid you've got friends
877. 01:04:43 You've got a significant other and then finally the last one is
878. 01:04:46 Growth personal growth really and that's from the next book that we'll get into
879. 01:04:51 uh personal NBA so sorry to
880. 01:04:55 The tease that one, but uh, I think that you could apply happiness to those three different levels like same same metaphor
881. 01:05:01 Like you're chasing that cheese you're chasing the things that are going to help you progress
882. 01:05:05 on that, you know, I guess another way to view it would be like Maslow's hierarchy of needs
883. 01:05:09 but uh
884. 01:05:11 Yeah, there's some definite nuggets in here, which I thought were great
885. 01:05:14 The one thing I wrote down is if we just work harder, we'll find more cheese
886. 01:05:17 That has been me to a tee in the past like well, I just got to figure out a way to make this work
887. 01:05:24 Sometimes it's just not going to work. Sometimes the cheese really has gone and it's time to move on and find something else
888. 01:05:30 Yep
889. 01:05:31 And so uh, yeah, there's a lot of little things like that that really made me think
890. 01:05:35 Um, the other thing they said was they'll never put yesterday's cheese back. It's it's time to find new cheese
891. 01:05:41 Uh
892. 01:05:44 Couple other quotes here. Um, I mean a lot of these like they're just supporting this. There's really only one idea in this book
893. 01:05:51 Right and that and that is that change is inevitable and you have to embrace it
894. 01:05:56 Um, the quicker you let go of old cheese the quicker you're going to find your new cheese
895. 01:06:00 Uh, smelling the cheese often to see if it's getting old. I mean a lot of these things that
896. 01:06:05 We get some of these we talked about already
897. 01:06:08 They all line up and really the idea is don't get comfortable
898. 01:06:11 Don't get fat and sassy where you are
899. 01:06:14 Always be looking for the next thing and I think that I kind of have that approach anyways
900. 01:06:19 but it's a good reminder to constantly be
901. 01:06:21 Content but not satisfied like be okay with where you are right now
902. 01:06:27 But always be looking to improve always be looking for the next big thing
903. 01:06:32 And don't be clinging so hard to the the thing that is familiar that you completely miss those opportunities
904. 01:06:38 There is in the at least the book that I received because I ordered it through amazon
905. 01:06:45 There was a little card that came in it and did you get this? It's kind of like a little bookmark
906. 01:06:51 I did not but I picked up my copy at half price books. Got it. Well, I ordered my new
907. 01:06:56 Um, I'm really sure why I do that. I like making sure they're direct because then I get little stuff like this
908. 01:07:02 uh, anyway, it came with a bookmark and it's
909. 01:07:05 Kind of handy, but it says uh who moved my cheese at the top the handwriting on the wall
910. 01:07:10 Uh because throughout the story
911. 01:07:12 Hall was always writing things on the wall kind of leaving a trail for him in case he decided to come look for new cheese
912. 01:07:17 Uh, but it laid out the seven different
913. 01:07:20 Uh areas that he wrote on the wall throughout the the book
914. 01:07:24 And it's a lot of these quotes that you just ran through
915. 01:07:27 You know, they keep moving the cheese get ready for the cheese to move smell the cheese often like it's got a bunch of these
916. 01:07:31 On here, but it just details out all these little pieces and
917. 01:07:36 The the last one
918. 01:07:39 On this list is be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again and again
919. 01:07:42 They keep moving the cheese
920. 01:07:44 Save for the adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese. Well
921. 01:07:47 I get that and it'd be very easy to read this and by the time you're done
922. 01:07:52 Get the feeling that you're supposed to be super excited
923. 01:07:55 Pay attention to when change is going to come move to it quickly and then just off to the races and be super excited
924. 01:08:01 and
925. 01:08:03 I I think that if you took that
926. 01:08:06 Just carte blanc and just took it the way it is
927. 01:08:08 Then it'd be very easy to think that if you ever stop moving it's a bad thing
928. 01:08:15 I I don't want to go that far. I don't think that's necessarily true. There are a lot of times where I think you're perfectly
929. 01:08:22 Can like you should be perfectly content sitting where you are and that you need to be okay with that
930. 01:08:28 We my wife and I tend to refer to it as sitting in the pain
931. 01:08:31 I may not like where I'm at right now
932. 01:08:33 but I need to sit in it for a while so that I can comprehend it well enough before I move on
933. 01:08:37 And I'll move on at some point, but I need to fully understand where I'm at right now before I can do that
934. 01:08:43 I agree with you at least from a personal perspective because I happen to be a high-fact finder
935. 01:08:49 And I need to know the facts before I'm gonna make a choice about where I'm going next
936. 01:08:53 But I think there is some
937. 01:08:56 Some truth to the fact that you do want to keep moving though
938. 01:09:00 I think it was Winston Churchill who said if you're going through hell keep going like you don't want to set up shop there because
939. 01:09:06 This is the thing that's familiar to you
940. 01:09:09 I mean, I don't know a lot about this subject
941. 01:09:13 So I guess this is kind of dangerous, but from what I do know
942. 01:09:17 Abusive relationships often the person who is being abused I've been told will stay in the relationship because it's familiar
943. 01:09:27 They don't want to venture out and find something new because that's something new could be better
944. 01:09:32 Or it could be worse, but this is what they know right now
945. 01:09:35 And they don't know where they are on that sliding scale of good versus bad
946. 01:09:39 Uh, one of the questions that they asked in this book that really got me thinking was what would you do if you weren't afraid?
947. 01:09:45 And I think that I've kind of overcome that
948. 01:09:49 A couple times in my own life, but it also makes me stop and think are there any things that I have missed
949. 01:09:57 Because I've been afraid to do them and then in the future. Obviously, I don't want to miss those opportunities like one in particular
950. 01:10:03 Uh, I'll just use as an example the the process for writing my book
951. 01:10:08 Uh, I knew nothing about writing
952. 01:10:11 I knew nothing about the process
953. 01:10:14 And if I were to sit and think about like who should actually write a book
954. 01:10:18 I was way down at the bottom of the list. I was completely unqualified
955. 01:10:24 Uh, and uneducated
956. 01:10:25 But that didn't stop me and I think that for a lot of people that would stop them
957. 01:10:30 And again, like I'm not painting this picture or I'm not trying to paint this picture as like I've got this all figured out
958. 01:10:35 I'm sure if someone were to look at my life, they could identify
959. 01:10:38 Times where well, you know, you completely missed this opportunity because you were afraid
960. 01:10:42 But I share that experience because maybe there are people listening to this that that is the thing that is holding you back
961. 01:10:49 Like you have that that dream that vision that you want to write the book
962. 01:10:51 You want to create the the course you want to do that thing, but you don't know how to do it
963. 01:10:55 And this applies to you, you know, what what would you do if you weren't afraid?
964. 01:11:00 I think a lot of people have that answer at the tip of their tongue
965. 01:11:04 They they know it, but they are afraid to embark out and find new cheese
966. 01:11:08 And so for those type of people
967. 01:11:11 This book is great and also for me personally like I said
968. 01:11:14 This is a great reminder because I want to apply that mindset and that framework
969. 01:11:19 To my life not just for a specific decision, but for all of my decisions
970. 01:11:24 I came away from this book with a way to explain
971. 01:11:30 You know, there's a lot of instances here where I have a way to
972. 01:11:34 Just explain how things happen when something changes and just having words for it
973. 01:11:40 I think can be extremely valuable just understanding here is
974. 01:11:45 The process that we all go through when something happens to us and just being able to you know
975. 01:11:51 I've mentioned this book to a couple people now and they're like, oh, yeah, I've read that
976. 01:11:54 So now it's a joke between us like oh, where's your cheese at today?
977. 01:11:58 Like you can you can start to do that. It gives you a way to talk about it
978. 01:12:01 Which is kind of fun and it's it's something that I always find valuable when a book gives me a way to explain something
979. 01:12:07 Which is partly why I like the commonplace and memorization thing gives me a way to memorize things and explain it better anyway diversion
980. 01:12:15 uh one of the quotes you wrote down here feeling entitled will make you sick and
981. 01:12:19 This is something I think I see a lot of and it's just kind of prevalent in our culture if you stop and
982. 01:12:25 Marinate on it a little bit. Uh, so in this process him
983. 01:12:29 He he gets into a rut
984. 01:12:32 continuing to go to the same spot every single day where there is nothing and
985. 01:12:37 He he gets to a point
986. 01:12:41 Well, maybe let me back up whenever they're going and there is cheese there
987. 01:12:44 It slowly becomes a thing and they he explains how they start having people over and they they have these big
988. 01:12:52 Events and they show off their pile of cheese even though they've done nothing to get it. Mm
989. 01:12:58 They feel entitled to it because it's always there and they're just so used to it and they're the only ones that use it and
990. 01:13:05 It's mine like I it's mine. Yeah
991. 01:13:09 And that's where he is like I deserve my cheese like why why haven't you given me my cheese back?
992. 01:13:15 Well, it's not his cheese. It was just in an area that he had access to and that entitlement
993. 01:13:23 In this case, you know following the quote feeling entitled will make you sick if you follow the rest of the book
994. 01:13:29 him is stuck in a rut and
995. 01:13:33 He's angry because they're not giving him what he feels like is his even though it was never his to begin with he was simply a using it
996. 01:13:41 If you look at our culture today, you can see that running rampant
997. 01:13:45 I mean, it's just everywhere where things have been handed out at one point and people then feel like they deserve it
998. 01:13:51 Even though it's not necessarily theirs to begin with it was just extra so I
999. 01:13:57 I'm not going to go too far down that path because it's it's a slippery slope and it breaks
1000. 01:14:03 Down in some areas, but it's something that I feel like
1001. 01:14:07 Can cause a lot of toxic relationships if you let it and it's one that I feel like if you were to read this you could see that
1002. 01:14:15 but it's
1003. 01:14:18 It's toxic
1004. 01:14:20 Yeah, so we I mentioned earlier that the only person that you can change is yourself
1005. 01:14:26 And that is where
1006. 01:14:29 My big issue with how this book would typically be delivered to employees at an organization even if you frame it perfectly
1007. 01:14:37 You are giving it
1008. 01:14:39 At least in my mind from a manager or a boss to the employees
1009. 01:14:43 That sets the scene
1010. 01:14:46 and now it's
1011. 01:14:48 They're trying to change me and you can't do that. So
1012. 01:14:52 Again, I think a lot of where the the entitlement stuff
1013. 01:14:59 The big takeaway from that is that you cannot apply this to anybody else
1014. 01:15:03 You cannot say well, you can't feel entitled you didn't earn that
1015. 01:15:06 All you can say is look at yourself and you can say what did I really do to get this
1016. 01:15:12 And me specifically and I've talked a lot about I have a very particular mindset that I approach everything through
1017. 01:15:19 I'm a christian so not to get all woo-woo
1018. 01:15:21 But my faith is a very important aspect of this and so I personally have the belief that
1019. 01:15:29 Everything that I have I am not an owner of I have been blessed with I am a steward of
1020. 01:15:35 including
1021. 01:15:37 Though including the love of my wife. Okay, so that's that's a big thing
1022. 01:15:40 I think not to go into marriage counseling on this podcast
1023. 01:15:43 But it totally applies to this stewardship versus ownership and feeling entitled model
1024. 01:15:48 Every single time I'll just pick on myself every single time that there is
1025. 01:15:52 A breakdown in communication or there is an issue. We're having a fight
1026. 01:15:57 I can look at myself
1027. 01:15:59 And I can recognize a time
1028. 01:16:01 Where I have felt entitled and expected my wife to do something whether that's
1029. 01:16:07 Make a lunch for me in the next day because I got a really busy day or fill in the blank
1030. 01:16:11 But I mean if you live with a significant other
1031. 01:16:14 You know what your buttons are you know what the topics are that you fight about
1032. 01:16:19 And if you were to deconstruct those if you were to look at the root causes of them
1033. 01:16:24 I would say probably 95 percent of the time it's going to stem from this entitlement mindset
1034. 01:16:30 So feeling entitled will make you sick
1035. 01:16:32 But applying this only through a personal lens
1036. 01:16:35 If you just try to maintain what you have and the cheese really is gone
1037. 01:16:42 It's moved on and
1038. 01:16:44 Maybe that's the job that you're at like the market has dried up
1039. 01:16:47 Maybe you know
1040. 01:16:49 We we did the innovators dilemma and we talked about some of those companies that
1041. 01:16:53 Actually developed the breakthrough new technologies, but didn't embrace them and you know Kodak for a long time
1042. 01:16:58 Didn't do anything with digital and file bankruptcy
1043. 01:17:01 So maybe you're at Kodak and your job's being eliminated like
1044. 01:17:04 Don't cling to the fact that you know all of this stuff about photography
1045. 01:17:09 These old technologies old ways of doing things
1046. 01:17:11 Be willing to learn new things be willing to
1047. 01:17:14 Embrace the the change be willing to change yourself
1048. 01:17:19 One of the things that they said in this book
1049. 01:17:22 Was that what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine on page 63
1050. 01:17:28 A lot of times we cling to those old things because
1051. 01:17:32 We're afraid that we won't be able to do the new thing
1052. 01:17:35 We won't be able to adapt
1053. 01:17:38 And what this book is saying and what I can verify from my own personal experience is that a lot of times you can just figure this stuff out
1054. 01:17:44 Like you may not know exactly how to publish a book
1055. 01:17:47 But if you just get up every day and you start writing you'll figure it out
1056. 01:17:51 And then on page 72 he talks about how nothing gets better until you change again
1057. 01:17:55 This is one of those sayings that
1058. 01:17:57 Reminded me specifically of the john miller story where personal responsibility begins with you over there not me
1059. 01:18:03 Yeah, um, but
1060. 01:18:06 I mean if the shoe fits
1061. 01:18:08 As my tennis coach would say try it on and think about it
1062. 01:18:11 Long long story, but uh
1063. 01:18:15 Yeah, you can only apply this stuff to yourself, but when you do apply it to yourself be honest with yourself and if this stuff is
1064. 01:18:22 If this stuff is uh hitting home with you don't just get upset like hem did and say well
1065. 01:18:29 This isn't the way that things should be
1066. 01:18:30 Maybe you're right. Maybe this isn't the way that things should be but what can you do?
1067. 01:18:35 To create the future that you want
1068. 01:18:37 What can you do in order to get to the next cheese station?
1069. 01:18:41 Maybe you don't know exactly where that next cheese station is
1070. 01:18:45 But I think a lot of times you have an inkling that it's in this particular direction
1071. 01:18:49 And if you're like me anyways, you're just hesitant to make that jump
1072. 01:18:52 Maybe not for a scurry like you, you know, you see the new thing and you're like, oh shiny new object
1073. 01:18:56 Let's go see what that is
1074. 01:18:58 That I don't know, but
1075. 01:19:01 That that's my my thoughts on the feeling entitled will make you sick like don't
1076. 01:19:04 stick where you are just because
1077. 01:19:07 You you feel that your current position is unfair if you're if you feel that your current situation is unfair then do something yourself
1078. 01:19:14 To change it because you have the power to change it
1079. 01:19:17 The main action item I took away from this book is to encourage my wife to read it and
1080. 01:19:24 I say that not I don't mean that in a common-sending way at all
1081. 01:19:29 Because I had this conversation with her and I was explaining
1082. 01:19:32 The the story of being an amaze and how different characters reacted differently whenever cheese was moved
1083. 01:19:39 I was trying to explain that to her
1084. 01:19:41 And she made the comment that she felt like she was potentially the one who never changed
1085. 01:19:47 So she was classifying herself as a hymn
1086. 01:19:50 And you know, we have a new baby in the house
1087. 01:19:53 And that means a lot of things change
1088. 01:19:56 And it's very easy to become resistant to that and be a little bit angry and have some of that entitlement feeling
1089. 01:20:01 In a few odd cases. Yeah, I even fall into that
1090. 01:20:05 And my wife felt like that was something that she wanted to read but wouldn't really
1091. 01:20:11 Commit to it. So
1092. 01:20:13 I am going to see if I can encourage her to go ahead and make that jump and go ahead and read it
1093. 01:20:17 Simply because I know it's something that for her
1094. 01:20:20 It would help a lot. It would help her understand
1095. 01:20:24 The process of whenever change happens that you can't control
1096. 01:20:28 Because I don't want to say that she struggles with that, but I know that she struggles to understand it
1097. 01:20:33 Well enough. So you know being a good husband. I want to help. So I'm a problem solver. I move quick
1098. 01:20:40 So I'm an encourager to read it and hopefully not be overbearing
1099. 01:20:43 That actually leads into the the next thing on here the job of a leader
1100. 01:20:48 Um, because this was just one line in the book
1101. 01:20:51 But I thought this was the most important line in the book
1102. 01:20:54 I've mentioned a lot of different things in here that rubbed me the wrong way because
1103. 01:20:57 It kind of framed it as like the responsibility is on the individual who has to deal with the change
1104. 01:21:03 But he says in the book that the job of a leader is to paint a picture of new cheese
1105. 01:21:10 That's so good. Like as a leader
1106. 01:21:12 You can't just say well, you got to change and trust me that there's new cheese out there somewhere
1107. 01:21:17 The job of the leader is to say
1108. 01:21:20 Follow me. I know where the new cheese is. It's right around the corner
1109. 01:21:25 You know all we have to do is this this and this and we'll be at our new cheese
1110. 01:21:28 and
1111. 01:21:30 I think that that applies to pretty much any team or organization
1112. 01:21:34 in life. So your marriage your job at the church
1113. 01:21:39 uh, any sort of job in the workplace that you might have
1114. 01:21:43 uh, I think that leadership skills are not just for
1115. 01:21:48 certain
1116. 01:21:50 kinds of people they're not for certain positions. They're not for
1117. 01:21:53 management level and CEOs
1118. 01:21:56 They're skills that everybody
1119. 01:21:58 needs
1120. 01:22:00 And if you consider yourself a leader, then you have to be able to do this
1121. 01:22:04 You have to be able to communicate that vision
1122. 01:22:07 It's not like I mentioned earlier. It's not on the people that you're trying to talk to that you're trying to communicate to it's not on them to understand
1123. 01:22:14 Necessarily where the cheese is you have to explain to them in the language that they understand
1124. 01:22:20 Where the new cheese is and only when you do that
1125. 01:22:24 Only then can you move together?
1126. 01:22:27 Cohesively as a unit towards that new goal. Sean uh, shan mckay of shan west
1127. 01:22:33 Mentioned on his podcast. I believe that
1128. 01:22:37 You know you've communicated the vision when you hear other people
1129. 01:22:41 Saying it back to you out of their own mouth
1130. 01:22:44 So they are doing it not because they're just reciting what you've said
1131. 01:22:49 But they've internalized it and they can actually communicate you can say what was the vision again?
1132. 01:22:55 And then they say it and then it's exactly what you have pictured. That is the point
1133. 01:23:00 When you have done your job as a leader
1134. 01:23:03 And I think that a lot of times we stopped short because well, I told you this, you know, no, that's not good enough
1135. 01:23:09 Yeah, you know applying it to myself personally
1136. 01:23:11 Like I can't just say well, I posted this on slack. I sent an email. You know, that's it's in writing
1137. 01:23:17 That's great that it's in writing, but the fact that it's in writing doesn't mean that communication
1138. 01:23:22 Actually took place. Yeah, it's just one half of the
1139. 01:23:25 The equation there and you know if you follow that train of thought if the leader is painting a picture of what the new cheese is and where you're going to go
1140. 01:23:33 It makes it easier for people to get past
1141. 01:23:35 An aversion of losing what they currently have
1142. 01:23:38 So they're used to cheese in a certain spot
1143. 01:23:42 And they are used to a certain flavor and quality of cheese in this area
1144. 01:23:46 but
1145. 01:23:48 Whenever the leader steps in and explains
1146. 01:23:50 In detail what the new cheese is and how to get there and continues to drive that point home
1147. 01:23:57 successfully and
1148. 01:24:00 tactfully
1149. 01:24:01 It's a lot easier for people to make the move and go ahead and make the jump into the new and get away from
1150. 01:24:07 The fear of what they're getting ready to move away from because it's comfortable. We're used to something where we're at now
1151. 01:24:12 It's a lot easier if you if you can see where you're going and know what's coming up now
1152. 01:24:18 If you're like me
1153. 01:24:20 I as long as somebody has some gist of an idea that it might be better
1154. 01:24:23 I can jump in headfirst and take off like that's just all it takes for me
1155. 01:24:30 But if you're if you're like Mike and you need some data on it then the leader has a different
1156. 01:24:35 that they need to
1157. 01:24:38 Work with you in a different way than what they would
1158. 01:24:39 With me if you want to get me on board with something
1159. 01:24:42 You have to paint a picture of a vision that I can relate to and I'm kind of picky on how
1160. 01:24:50 Well, that needs to be conveyed and the tact that needs to be driven with that
1161. 01:24:55 So I'm picky with it and I have a lot of
1162. 01:24:58 Intuitiveness with that, but I would say just what I know about you Mike
1163. 01:25:03 If you're like Mike it would take a lot of data and you would really have to show it
1164. 01:25:08 In detail and here's how it all works. Here's the plan in each step of the way and here's what
1165. 01:25:15 It will look like once we get there
1166. 01:25:18 What I'm getting at is you you have to paint those pictures potentially in different ways depending on who you're talking to
1167. 01:25:25 To help them overcome the movement of where they're currently at to get to the new
1168. 01:25:29 Yeah being a leader is not easy and a lot of people say well
1169. 01:25:34 I want to be a leader, but that means that you have to be able to speak all of these different languages
1170. 01:25:40 Yeah, so that the people that you're leading quote-unquote
1171. 01:25:43 Uh can understand where you're going and I think that being a boss does not necessarily make you a leader
1172. 01:25:50 I think that there are a lot of bosses
1173. 01:25:54 Who will misuse this book?
1174. 01:25:57 Um
1175. 01:25:58 And that's that's my concern, you know
1176. 01:26:01 Why I spent so much time talking about it earlier is I can totally see a situation where
1177. 01:26:06 I'm going to give all my employees this book some of them
1178. 01:26:10 It's going to resonate with and they're going to see some positive change
1179. 01:26:13 Some of them aren't going to get it and I'm going to use that as justification that they're not the right people when really it's just
1180. 01:26:20 I have not communicated I have failed as a leader because I have not communicated
1181. 01:26:25 Where the new cheese is what the change is going to look like how it's going to be better
1182. 01:26:29 In a way that they get it and I don't know where the line is between like I've tried all these different approaches
1183. 01:26:36 I can't spend all day every day trying to get this person on board
1184. 01:26:40 But I also think that just handing somebody a book isn't enough
1185. 01:26:44 Yep, I think that's a cop out. I guess that earlier
1186. 01:26:47 All right action items. Yeah, so I had the one I mentioned it earlier
1187. 01:26:53 Uh encouraging veggie to read this because I think it would help her
1188. 01:26:58 That's really what I got from it because I
1189. 01:27:00 I feel comfortable with how I react to change and I enjoy creating change, which is difficult for others sometimes
1190. 01:27:08 Sorry about that team
1191. 01:27:10 Love you guys
1192. 01:27:12 So I I can move quickly
1193. 01:27:14 Uh, if there's any other thing I would to if I
1194. 01:27:16 If there's any other thing I would take from this it would be
1195. 01:27:20 To sometimes slow down a little bit to help others
1196. 01:27:23 Come along with me. That would be the other thing
1197. 01:27:26 You're a high quick start just like my wife. Yeah, I like to take off and hit the ground running
1198. 01:27:31 uh, so my takeaway is
1199. 01:27:34 Uh, this is a simple little thing, but it really jumped out at me at one point. Hause going through the maze and
1200. 01:27:42 He's decided to make the the decision and leave she's stationed C and search out for new cheese
1201. 01:27:46 And at one point he just stops and laughs at himself
1202. 01:27:49 So my takeaway is we're willing to laugh at yourself and what you're doing wrong
1203. 01:27:53 Because I tend to take myself very seriously when really
1204. 01:27:56 You know, you can you can sensationalize the decisions that you make like this is a life-changing decision
1205. 01:28:02 In reality, it's not any one decision that really impacts you all that much
1206. 01:28:09 I mean there are very important decisions that you have to make like who you decide to marry is a very important decision that will
1207. 01:28:15 impact the rest of your life
1208. 01:28:18 Um, the job that you decide to take, you know, those things are very important, but
1209. 01:28:22 The only wrong decision is to make no decision when the cheese dries up
1210. 01:28:27 so
1211. 01:28:29 Don't be afraid. I guess my takeaway, you know, don't be afraid to try something and if it doesn't work
1212. 01:28:34 You're like, well, that didn't work
1213. 01:28:36 As opposed to no, I gotta figure out a way to make this work because I'm so invested in this
1214. 01:28:40 I have this sunk cost I've invested so much time and effort into this I've got to make this business work
1215. 01:28:44 You know being able to to laugh at yourself. You're like, well, that was a dumb idea
1216. 01:28:49 Why did I ever think that was gonna work?
1217. 01:28:51 As opposed to getting so entrenched into a way of thinking and so attached to an idea
1218. 01:28:56 This book I think was easy to read as long as you're in the middle part of it
1219. 01:29:03 We talked about this earlier the beginning and end I felt like could have been chopped off and it'd been okay
1220. 01:29:08 But at the same time, this is a very quick read
1221. 01:29:11 Because you know, I opened this up before I sat down
1222. 01:29:15 To read it and I was gonna get started on it one night and I realized one the fonts really big
1223. 01:29:20 Two margins are huge top and bottom three
1224. 01:29:24 There are a lot of pages with a picture of a cheese block and one sentence on them
1225. 01:29:28 And it's only 90 some pages long
1226. 01:29:31 Okay, this is gonna be fast
1227. 01:29:33 So I skipped it that night and I picked it up the next morning
1228. 01:29:37 I think it was like 45 50 minutes. I was done with it from start to finish
1229. 01:29:41 So it's quick and I and I like that about it. It's nice to have short books that you can recommend to people
1230. 01:29:46 I simply think like what we've been talking about
1231. 01:29:49 This is one that I will recommend but only in very specific scenarios and likely not in a broad
1232. 01:29:56 group so
1233. 01:29:59 I will recommend this one
1234. 01:30:01 And I will give it a four stars
1235. 01:30:03 But I'm not gonna say, you know, I'm not recommending to all the bookworm listeners to read this because I want you to change
1236. 01:30:12 Right. I'm simply saying that because I feel like it's helpful to anybody in their personal lives in some way
1237. 01:30:19 That's why I would recommend it
1238. 01:30:21 Yeah, I've mentioned kind of throughout the the podcast here that I really did not like the authors
1239. 01:30:30 necessarily I like the idea of the story in the narrative
1240. 01:30:33 but framing it
1241. 01:30:36 in the context of
1242. 01:30:38 A discussion that happened during high school reunion at the office a little ridiculous
1243. 01:30:41 And then there was lots of language in here, which like I said just kind of rubbed me the wrong way
1244. 01:30:48 so
1245. 01:30:51 I don't know. I mean, I definitely think there's some good stuff in here
1246. 01:30:55 But I think that there are much better books for the typical bookworm listener
1247. 01:31:00 That we have already covered
1248. 01:31:03 So I am going to give this three stars
1249. 01:31:07 Which maybe is my lowest rating so far
1250. 01:31:10 Did we give what did we give the innovators dilemma?
1251. 01:31:13 Was that one down in the that was one of our lower ones? I think I think I did three and a half for that one
1252. 01:31:19 There was a lot of good information in that one as well, but this one just
1253. 01:31:24 I don't know. I could see the agenda the entire time that I was reading it and it bothered me. Yeah
1254. 01:31:29 Yeah, yeah innovators dilemma. You gave it a three and a half. I gave it a three oh
1255. 01:31:33 I think that was one of our lower ones anyway. There you go
1256. 01:31:39 Uh coming up next so the next one up is my choice the personal MBA as mike mentioned and that's by josh koffman
1257. 01:31:47 Uh mike mentioned it's a long one
1258. 01:31:50 And i'm sorry for that
1259. 01:31:52 Uh, this is one that I saw
1260. 01:31:54 Uh shawn blanc recommended this at one point and I wrote it down and I really like shawn
1261. 01:32:00 I love his stuff. So I put it on my list and here we are. I'm gonna make you guys read it with me
1262. 01:32:06 Nice
1263. 01:32:08 So speaking of shawn blanc uh the next book that I have coming up is the 10x rule by grant cardone
1264. 01:32:15 Which shawn has mentioned on his blog. He's read and he really got a lot out of it
1265. 01:32:21 And I think it's safe to announce at this point that we are actually going to have shawn on the podcast to talk about the 10x rule
1266. 01:32:28 So we will have a guest for that episode. Yeah, that'll be fun. It's on the calendar at least
1267. 01:32:33 So hopefully that all pans out if it doesn't right
1268. 01:32:36 Whoops, sorry guys. We'll try shawn. It shawn if you're listening to this now you're committed. So yeah
1269. 01:32:41 Uh, I added something to our list of things that we normally go over because I realized mike that you and I tend to read a book in between these books
1270. 01:32:51 Uh, so I called it gap books on our outline get anybody's interested and I know that the personal envious along one
1271. 01:32:56 So I'm sure you've jumped into this one, but I'm in the middle of a book
1272. 01:32:59 That's in between these we have zero intention to talk about this on the podcast
1273. 01:33:03 But I think it's interesting to at least know what we're reading
1274. 01:33:05 Uh, so I'm currently in the middle of reading cooked by michael pollen
1275. 01:33:09 Uh, if you know my personal life at all, I come from a very strong agriculture background
1276. 01:33:14 And I have a thing for understanding the food industry from
1277. 01:33:17 plant and animal to the dinner table
1278. 01:33:21 So this is one where michael pollen talks about the history of our cooking
1279. 01:33:25 Cultural transformation. It's interesting. So if you if you got an open mind with food systems and kitchens
1280. 01:33:32 It's a fun one
1281. 01:33:35 Nice. I guess my gap book would be tools of titans by tim ferris. I mentioned
1282. 01:33:39 I've got that one the other day
1283. 01:33:41 And it's an interesting book in that it's broken down into very short chapters
1284. 01:33:46 Each chapter is just a couple pages long and it's really him distilling all the major takeaways from all the interviews that he's done
1285. 01:33:52 So I both love and hate tim ferris
1286. 01:33:55 he
1287. 01:33:58 Kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but also I think that he talks about a lot of good stuff in terms of
1288. 01:34:05 uh, just productivity and and he's got that attitude where he's constantly looking to improve himself and so
1289. 01:34:10 If you listen to his podcast at all, he has some really really successful smart people on his podcast
1290. 01:34:16 This is basically a couple page summary of each of those major interviews broken down into different categories like
1291. 01:34:22 finance success
1292. 01:34:25 fitness
1293. 01:34:26 and
1294. 01:34:28 Yeah, so I think that it's going to be an easy one to fill in the gap
1295. 01:34:31 But it will probably take me a very long time to get through it. Yeah
1296. 01:34:34 fun
1297. 01:34:35 So
1298. 01:34:36 If you're interested in having us read a specific book because obviously you can tell you know
1299. 01:34:41 We've got two more that we're getting ready to read for bookworm and then we're reading stuff outside of that
1300. 01:34:44 We go through a lot of books, but if you have one that you want to recommend that you want us to go through here on the podcast
1301. 01:34:50 You can do that over on our website. We mention it every time bookworm.fm
1302. 01:34:53 And you can find a button in the sidebar there and just hit recommend and send us what that book is and in the same place
1303. 01:35:00 You can also find a book list bookworm.fm/list if you want to go straight there
1304. 01:35:04 And it will give you a list of all the books that we have
1305. 01:35:07 Finished with the links to those episodes
1306. 01:35:10 Uh, and there's also all the amazon links out there as well
1307. 01:35:13 That's one way that you can support us is click on those links and we'll get a kick back from that
1308. 01:35:17 So if you want to support us, that's a great way to do it
1309. 01:35:19 But you can also see the full list of books there
1310. 01:35:21 Including all the ones that we have planned to to read in the near future and the ones that have been recommended already
1311. 01:35:28 You can also skip your Starbucks and go donate to joe so that he builds us that apple scre-
1312. 01:35:33 Yes, I'll put it in the show notes
1313. 01:35:35 We'd also appreciate it if you have a few minutes to go into itunes and leave a review for the show if you enjoy it
1314. 01:35:43 Even if you don't let us know what we can improve on we want to we want to make the show better
1315. 01:35:48 So let us know what you like what you don't like we take all of that feedback very seriously
1316. 01:35:53 Plus if you leave reviews it helps other people find out about the show
1317. 01:35:56 And coming up next we have the personal MBA as I mentioned so if you're interested in learning about
1318. 01:36:01 Business and getting a masters of business without going to school you can join us next time
1319. 01:36:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]