197: Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann

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4. 00:00:11 So we only have one follow-up item, but it's a doozy.
5. 00:00:18 So Corey, have you been getting eight hours of sleep?
6. 00:00:21 OK, I have not, but I am closer to that than I was the last time we recorded.
7. 00:00:28 The other thing that's interesting about this is I'm.
8. 00:00:31 It's like, you know, that like idea, the mind virus, right?
9. 00:00:35 It's that mind virus that really is messing with me right now.
10. 00:00:38 So it's like, if I don't get eight hours of sleep, I go, oh, man, like I did it wrong.
11. 00:00:43 Like I didn't, I wasn't able to do it.
12. 00:00:44 The other one is I based on your recommendations and then I've used it in the past,
13. 00:00:50 but I downloaded sleep plus, plus again.
14. 00:00:51 OK. And then I look at that readiness score on there and I get, and if it's not like in the green,
15. 00:00:57 because they give you like codes where it's like green is good, yellow is you're OK,
16. 00:01:01 and then red is bad.
17. 00:01:03 And if I look there and it's not green enough, I feel bad.
18. 00:01:06 And I'm like, oh, man, so I'm working on this.
19. 00:01:09 The biggest challenge I have is I have things built into my schedule that are limiting me.
20. 00:01:17 That's number one thing that's bad.
21. 00:01:19 So it's like it requires me to get up at a certain time.
22. 00:01:22 The other thing is that the abs are playing really, really well right now.
23. 00:01:28 So the Colorado Avalanche are and their games don't start until eight o'clock at night.
24. 00:01:33 So if I ever want to watch any part of an abs game, I mean, I may as well kiss my eight hours of sleep.
25. 00:01:37 Just absolutely goodbye.
26. 00:01:39 So that's where I'm at.
27. 00:01:41 It's what I think is overall, it's it's better.
28. 00:01:45 The thing that I wasn't actually kind of surprised about was when the readiness score shows more green,
29. 00:01:51 I actually feel better in the morning.
30. 00:01:53 So I don't know what that algorithm is doing, but it seems pretty accurate in terms of,
31. 00:01:59 man, if I'm if I'm in the green, I actually wake up and roll out of bed feeling a lot better than if it's,
32. 00:02:04 you know, one of those closer to red colors.
33. 00:02:07 So nice.
34. 00:02:08 So that's been pretty cool.
35. 00:02:10 Yeah, to be honest, I haven't looked at the sleep readiness score in, I guess, not sleep
36. 00:02:17 readiness score, just a readiness score, right in a very long time, because if you get up in the morning,
37. 00:02:23 after a rough night of sleep and it tells you you're not ready for the day, like, what are you going to do with this?
38. 00:02:28 This is not actionable information.
39. 00:02:29 I know.
40. 00:02:31 I'm not going back to bed.
41. 00:02:33 You're absolutely right.
42. 00:02:36 And at the same time, I'm a sucker for somebody's made up algorithm that is supposed to tell me something important.
43. 00:02:42 So yeah.
44. 00:02:44 Well, sleep cycle does that too, but because I use sleep cycle on my watch, it's not quite as visible.
45. 00:02:53 I don't really interact with the sleep cycle app on my phone ever unless I were wanting to go back and look at the charts from how well did I sleep over the last several days.
46. 00:03:06 But for the most part, I'm just setting the alarm.
47. 00:03:07 It's going off in the morning.
48. 00:03:08 It's saying, Hey, congratulations.
49. 00:03:11 You're ready to start the day.
50. 00:03:12 I'm like, OK, thanks, sleep cycle.
51. 00:03:14 I will start the day.
52. 00:03:15 I will start overall, though.
53. 00:03:19 I think it's a good thing for me, right?
54. 00:03:20 I think getting more sleep is better than not getting more.
55. 00:03:24 And I was always one of those people that was like, no, I'm good on five hours.
56. 00:03:27 Like I can, I can power through.
57. 00:03:29 So we're going to continue this trend.
58. 00:03:31 I'm not going to keep it as a follow up item, but we're going to continue this trend of, you know, we're shooting for eight hours every night.
59. 00:03:36 And how do I do that?
60. 00:03:39 Thankfully for me.
61. 00:03:40 So not everybody has the luxury that I have, but the semester is ending.
62. 00:03:43 Like as we speak, so I'm in the very last part of the semester.
63. 00:03:47 So my summer looks very, very different.
64. 00:03:50 And if I'm ever going to get a chance to kick the tires on this thing, it'll be, it'll be over the summer where nobody really makes me be, you know, anywhere unless I want to be.
65. 00:03:58 So that's, that's a good part.
66. 00:04:00 Have you noticed generally overall any difference in like how you feel going into the day?
67. 00:04:07 Now that you're just cognizant of, I'm trying to get eight hours of sleep.
68. 00:04:09 Cause you mentioned that used to be able to, you used to think that you could just muscle through on, on five, for example.
69. 00:04:15 So I think even if you're not getting, you know, a great eight hours of sleep, you're still getting more sleep.
70. 00:04:20 Has that had a positive effect?
71. 00:04:21 Yeah, it actually isn't in the morning.
72. 00:04:23 It's in that dip in the afternoon.
73. 00:04:25 Okay.
74. 00:04:26 Dip doesn't feel as low.
75. 00:04:28 Right.
76. 00:04:28 So there were times there, you know, where, I mean, it was, I don't want to say hard to keep my eyes open.
77. 00:04:34 I feel like that's too dramatic, but it's like you feel just really, really tired.
78. 00:04:38 Um, and this one is like, you still feel tired, but that dip doesn't go nearly as sharp or steep down.
79. 00:04:45 So I like that a lot.
80. 00:04:47 Um, I think the other aspect of it would be that tail end of the night where, you know, like, I don't feel like I'm, I'm hitting a wall as quickly as I would hit a wall, a wall before.
81. 00:05:00 So we're going to, we're going to keep it going and we're going to see how it does.
82. 00:05:03 I mean, I'm more interested in the eight hours of sleep, not from a, do I feel tired standpoint?
83. 00:05:07 Because I just addressed that with coffee, which I understand is a, is a vicious cycle, but I just addressed that with coffee.
84. 00:05:12 Um, but, uh, mine's more for the other health effects that he was talking about, like stress control, blood, blood sugar regulation, like those type of things.
85. 00:05:22 I think if I can even see a marginal improvement, not see it, but like if my body can experience a marginal improvement there.
86. 00:05:29 Okay.
87. 00:05:29 That's, that's a win.
88. 00:05:30 Uh, that's a win for me.
89. 00:05:31 Nice.
90. 00:05:32 And speaking of coffee, we had a very interesting pro show today where we
91. 00:05:37 talked about rose three tours and coffee brewing.
92. 00:05:41 So if that's of interest to you, you, you can support the show and get access to the, the pro feed, which has extended ad free episodes.
93. 00:05:48 So.
94. 00:05:50 All right.
95. 00:05:51 I don't think we have any other follow up items though.
96. 00:05:53 You're ready to jump into today's book.
97. 00:05:54 I am ready to jump into today's book.
98. 00:05:57 All right.
99. 00:05:57 So today's book is super thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann.
100. 00:06:03 And, uh, it's a big book of mental models.
101. 00:06:07 And this came on to my radar.
102. 00:06:09 I shared a little bit last time about how this had been recommended to me previously.
103. 00:06:16 And then when I saw it in my office that I share with a friend of mine at the local
104. 00:06:24 co-working space, he's a designer for duck.
105. 00:06:26 Go start talking to him about it.
106. 00:06:28 He's like, Oh, that's the Gabriel Weinberg.
107. 00:06:30 He's the CEO of duck.
108. 00:06:31 Go.
109. 00:06:31 I'm like, Oh, interesting.
110. 00:06:32 I use duck.
111. 00:06:34 Go on all my devices.
112. 00:06:35 I like the, the company.
113. 00:06:37 I like what they stand for and I really like mental models.
114. 00:06:40 So I decided that we were going to go through this one.
115. 00:06:44 Um, a couple of my favorite books have been books about mental models and, uh,
116. 00:06:50 I'll call out specifically the great mental models, volume one by Shane Parrish.
117. 00:06:57 And ran a bow and that was my introduction to this topic.
118. 00:07:03 And, uh, that one, um, it's interesting because there's nothing original in there,
119. 00:07:10 but it was the first time that I had heard some mental models like the map is not the,
120. 00:07:15 the territory described in, uh, in detail and it really resonated with me.
121. 00:07:21 Um, so that's kind of what I thought I was getting into with this one.
122. 00:07:26 However, I don't think it's fair to compare those two, those two books because
123. 00:07:31 the great mental models you can see on the Amazon listing, it's a big physical,
124. 00:07:35 hardcover book.
125. 00:07:37 Um, that actually is custom printed by automatic, the people behind WordPress.
126. 00:07:43 It's a, it's a very nice cloth bound cover.
127. 00:07:46 It's, it's really, it's a very impressive looking book, but the whole book covers
128. 00:07:50 like seven mental models.
129. 00:07:51 And I don't even know how many mental models are in super thinking.
130. 00:07:56 It's got to be hundreds.
131. 00:07:58 If not thousands.
132. 00:07:59 It's 338.
133. 00:08:01 If the source I read was correct.
134. 00:08:02 Okay.
135. 00:08:03 He says over 300, like they say over 300 in the book.
136. 00:08:06 So I think the source I found was 338.
137. 00:08:08 Yeah.
138. 00:08:09 That's, that's probably true.
139. 00:08:11 Although I think that there are some models that they talk about that they don't, uh,
140. 00:08:16 they don't actually call out as mental models.
141. 00:08:19 So the way the book is written is interesting.
142. 00:08:22 They basically say at the beginning, whenever we talk about a mental model,
143. 00:08:25 we're going to make it bold.
144. 00:08:26 So your antenna are up like, Hey, pay attention.
145. 00:08:29 This is a mental model.
146. 00:08:30 The whole thing is kind of written like as a narrative story, they just flow
147. 00:08:34 from one section to the next and they go from one model to the next.
148. 00:08:38 There's no like clear sections.
149. 00:08:40 We're like, Oh, we're talking about a different model right now, which is why I
150. 00:08:42 say there were some that I saw, like they're using these terms and they're not
151. 00:08:45 bolded and I'm like, Hey, that's a mental model too.
152. 00:08:48 Yep.
153. 00:08:48 Yep.
154. 00:08:49 Yep.
155. 00:08:49 But it is what you have it in front of you, like 350 something pages.
156. 00:08:55 And that's not your standard, like, how do you describe it?
157. 00:08:59 It's not eight and a half by 11, but like that, that proportion size, like
158. 00:09:03 they're big, like squarish pages with pretty small text.
159. 00:09:07 There's lots of visuals in here too, but there's a lot of text.
160. 00:09:10 Yeah.
161. 00:09:11 So, so a couple of things.
162. 00:09:12 I read a physical book this time, everyone.
163. 00:09:14 Good job.
164. 00:09:15 I actually have paper in front of my hands right now.
165. 00:09:18 I read the physical book.
166. 00:09:19 Uh, it's about, I would say 10 by 10, um, in terms of the overall dimensions of
167. 00:09:23 it, but you're absolutely right.
168. 00:09:24 I, I wanted it to go faster than it did, but because there was so much like
169. 00:09:31 surface area and the text was pretty small, like it actually took a pretty
170. 00:09:35 decent amount of time to get through.
171. 00:09:36 One of the things I really got out of it were I thought the images and the
172. 00:09:43 cartoons did a good job just breaking up the model model model model model.
173. 00:09:48 You know, like, you know, like they do, they do a really good job tying it all
174. 00:09:51 together, but the images also like accentuate appropriately, I thought.
175. 00:09:56 Like I didn't think they were, you know, just in there for no reason.
176. 00:09:59 They were, they were good at accentuating where they wanted to.
177. 00:10:02 So, um, but it was, it was a, it was a strange read.
178. 00:10:07 In terms of, am I supposed to like dig deep into all these models or am I
179. 00:10:12 supposed to get the big overarching takeaway from this section and then
180. 00:10:17 where does this section end and where does the next section begin?
181. 00:10:19 And I know they gave, they gave headers, but I don't know.
182. 00:10:21 It just didn't, it didn't summarize that well for me in terms of what I did.
183. 00:10:27 So it took me like a chapter or two to like really get my stride and figure out,
184. 00:10:31 all right, what do I want to get out of this book?
185. 00:10:32 Like, what do I, what's my goal?
186. 00:10:34 Walk it in or walk it away from this book.
187. 00:10:37 That is, uh, aptly described.
188. 00:10:39 What is the goal?
189. 00:10:40 Because I went into this and read the introduction and then we started
190. 00:10:45 getting into the mental models and I started taking notes and I realized
191. 00:10:49 that it would be pretty cool if by the end of this book, I had a reference for
192. 00:10:56 all of these mental models.
193. 00:10:58 I regretted that about halfway through the first chapter.
194. 00:11:02 So, so Mike and I try not to text too much about the books, but like in between
195. 00:11:08 the shows, we like to save it, right?
196. 00:11:09 But like I, I started doing this and then I didn't make it very long.
197. 00:11:15 And I was like, this is exhausting and I can't do this.
198. 00:11:17 I have to just read the book and then highlight some things.
199. 00:11:19 That are important.
200. 00:11:21 Yeah.
201. 00:11:22 That's what I should have done.
202. 00:11:23 That's what a normal person should do.
203. 00:11:25 That's not what I did.
204. 00:11:26 Um, I captured every mental model that was in bold text to my, my node file.
205. 00:11:35 So, um, if people want to download this, I'll put the, the link in the, the show notes.
206. 00:11:42 This was a lot of work and definitely was on the verge of tears multiple times.
207. 00:11:48 If you've ever felt good, you know, like if you ever wanted to pay Mike and feel good about it, just send him some money and just say, send me the, send me the super thinking mind map.
208. 00:11:58 And like everything's great, right?
209. 00:12:00 Because the effort that went into this had to be like monumental.
210. 00:12:05 I mean, I, oh man, I can't believe you did it.
211. 00:12:07 Yeah.
212. 00:12:07 Well, I guess, you know, in the back of my mind, I was also thinking about how I would bring this over to obsidian eventually.
213. 00:12:16 And all of these mental models are basically going to become their own atomic notes.
214. 00:12:21 And I want them to be linked not just to super thinking, but the other books that I've taken notes on.
215. 00:12:27 There's, there's a lot of topics that we've read about in other books.
216. 00:12:30 And so, um, it's kind of like the, the perfect source for that kind of stuff.
217. 00:12:37 And, uh, it's just a lot of work and we're done now.
218. 00:12:41 So it's okay.
219. 00:12:43 So, so if you had to, and you might have said it and I missed it, if you, if you did that, I'm sorry, if you're going to recommend, and maybe you want to save this to the end, right?
220. 00:12:51 If you're going to say like read a book about mental models, would you go the great mental models of volume one or would you go super thinking for the first one?
221. 00:12:59 Somebody's never talked about mental models at all.
222. 00:13:01 That's a great question.
223. 00:13:03 And to be honest, I think I don't have like a standard recommendation.
224. 00:13:08 I would need to talk to somebody and really get a feel for how deep do you want to go on this topic.
225. 00:13:15 So I think that super thinking is a great approach.
226. 00:13:18 If you just want like, give me surface level, all the mental models, it's a really easy read and the visuals make it interesting.
227. 00:13:25 Yeah.
228. 00:13:25 So if you just read it and you're not like taking notes on it, because it's essentially a mental models textbook that's going to sit on your, your shelf and you can go back and you can look for stuff.
229. 00:13:38 Later, as you want to, they even mentioned all the mental models and the index in the back.
230. 00:13:42 Then I think that's probably my recommendation.
231. 00:13:47 But if you are like, I really want to get introduced to like how to actually apply these mental models, the great mental models are probably better because they talk at the beginning about how you need to collect these models.
232. 00:13:59 And then you have to learn how to use them in certain situations.
233. 00:14:02 So the missing piece from super thinking is basically like there's always mental models. There's really like zero description on here's when to use it. Here's when not to use it.
234. 00:14:10 Because if they did that, it'd be a thousand pages, which is why like the great mental models only tackles seven, I think in that first book, because they're really going deep on like here's how this has been used in other places to achieve certain outcomes, whatever.
235. 00:14:27 Like I still remember one of the stories from that book about the guy.
236. 00:14:31 Who was on the Russian submarine nuclear submarine and the US had told during the Cold War that we're going to do this exercise in this area, but that never got down to the people on the submarine.
237. 00:14:47 So all of a sudden they see here all these explosions going off and then they're like, oh, we're under attack launched the nuclear missiles.
238. 00:14:54 And the guy's like, no, no, no, we don't know what's going on. We got to find out what's going on.
239. 00:14:57 And the mental model is basically like never ascribed to Malice, what can be ascribed to stupidity or something like that.
240. 00:15:04 So he's like, no, no, because he was the one who needed to sign off on it. He just refused to sign off on it.
241. 00:15:09 But everybody else is like, we got a fire right now.
242. 00:15:11 You know, he basically prevented World War three because he wanted to find out what was going on before he responded.
243. 00:15:18 You know, so like that kind of stuff, I feel like that's missing in this book, but there's there are lots of good stories and lots of anecdotes about these.
244. 00:15:27 These different mental models, lots of visuals, lots of charts. I mean, it's a lot. We should probably get into the book here.
245. 00:15:38 I want to say one more thing. I like the level that which they write about these mental models.
246. 00:15:45 So one of the things I was surprised by was how many of these have been exposed to at some point in my life.
247. 00:15:52 Right. So there were more of these that have been exposed to by no means am I an expert at them,
248. 00:15:56 but like I had heard them before or we talked about them in a class I took or something like that.
249. 00:16:01 I like it the level that they talk about them. And then I like the fun nature of the images, right?
250. 00:16:09 They weren't trying to be too serious with the images. So I really think that they wrote at a level of normal people,
251. 00:16:17 not too heady, not too like, we want to show how much better we are than you.
252. 00:16:20 It's like, no, we want to expose people to these mental models because we think it's really cool.
253. 00:16:23 I think part of that ties from, and I can't remember if it's both of them or not,
254. 00:16:27 I think it was Gabriel had a medium post where he went through some of this and it was like the precursor to this.
255. 00:16:36 So he listed out a bunch of mental models and talked about those and then it turned into this book
256. 00:16:39 because I found it randomly in like the edit at the top says, since I wrote this post, I published a whole book.
257. 00:16:49 You should go read that. You should go read that whole book. So, all right. Well, I'm ready to go then.
258. 00:16:53 Nice. So the book starts with an introduction, which has a couple of points. It basically kind of sets up the super thinking journey.
259. 00:17:03 So I talk about super models, which are broadly useful mental models and super thinking, which is the ability to think better about the world.
260. 00:17:11 They have this phrase, which I really like that not using mental models for strategic thinking is like using addition when multiplication is available to you.
261. 00:17:21 But the kicker is that you have to learn which models to use when and that only comes through practice.
262. 00:17:27 So just like the great mental models has their own thing at the beginning, which is kind of making the case for why you should even care about these mental models.
263. 00:17:37 Super thinking is doing the same thing here. It feels a little bit less.
264. 00:17:44 Like I remember the first in the great mental models that we're talking about the lattice work that you hang these mental models on.
265. 00:17:51 Like it's very visual, the imagery, and this feels just like a lot more practical.
266. 00:17:56 Like, hey, you got to use this stuff if you want to be effective and you got to learn it.
267. 00:18:00 And now for the next 300 something pages, we're going to teach them all to you.
268. 00:18:05 So good introduction, but not real deep.
269. 00:18:10 I agree. I like that they tie into Charlie Munger quote that he gave it one of his commencement speech or somewhere at the University of Southern California Marshall Business School.
270. 00:18:24 And basically says that you've got to have models in your head.
271. 00:18:28 You've got to have a rave experience both vicarious and direct on this lattice work of models.
272. 00:18:33 So basically he calls out that models, but then later they refer to it as this book is that toolbox.
273. 00:18:40 It systematically lists, classifies, and explains the important mental models across the major disciplines.
274. 00:18:45 And where I really like their toolbox explanation is I can have a toolbox that's filled with 1000 tools that I don't know how to use any of.
275. 00:18:52 They're there, they're beautiful, they're organized, all that stuff is good, but I still have to go to the manual to actually figure out how that tool works.
276. 00:19:01 Or just try and fail as many times as I can. I think the book is the same way.
277. 00:19:05 The book doesn't teach me how to really use any of them. It just kind of exposes me to all of them.
278. 00:19:10 And if you go into it with that mindset, it does a really good job covering the landscape.
279. 00:19:15 If you go into it like wanting to know how to use the models we're going to talk about as we go through the 10 chapters,
280. 00:19:20 yeah, you're going to be disappointed because you're not going to get the instruction manual.
281. 00:19:25 Yeah, that's true. That's a good explanation.
282. 00:19:28 All right, so with that being said, there are nine chapters and then a conclusion.
283. 00:19:34 And the chapters are kind of broken down into different categories.
284. 00:19:40 So what I thought we would do for this episode is we basically go chapter by chapter and we each just pick one mental model that we liked from that chapter and we talk about that mental model.
285. 00:19:53 Sound good? I have those ready.
286. 00:19:56 Yep. All right, cool. So the first chapter is being wrong less.
287. 00:20:02 And I guess if I were to describe these, they're kind of like the elementary mental models.
288. 00:20:10 Like these are the big ones that you should know right from the beginning and starting with inverse thinking,
289. 00:20:19 unforest errors, anti fragile, like these are things that we've heard talked about before, even if we not used those terms before.
290. 00:20:26 Remember, it is written in very much of a narrative style.
291. 00:20:30 So it's not like a section on this mental model, then another section on the next mental model.
292. 00:20:33 They kind of all blend together, which just as an aside, props to them for writing it that way,
293. 00:20:40 that must have taken so much more work when they had their big list of all the models and how are we going to tie all these together?
294. 00:20:47 Like that it's impressive.
295. 00:20:50 I agree.
296. 00:20:51 Yeah, that being said, though, the one that I wanted to call it from this section
297. 00:20:55 is the devil's devil's advocate position, which is taking an opposite side to an argument,
298. 00:21:01 even if you don't agree with it.
299. 00:21:03 The reason I want to call this one out is because I've heard of this one before.
300. 00:21:07 Probably everybody knows what this is, but they shared a little bit of the history behind this.
301. 00:21:14 So essentially, when the Catholic Church was trying to vote on whether someone should become a saint,
302. 00:21:22 they would assign someone on the committee to play the devil's advocate position,
303. 00:21:27 and they were basically arguing for the reasons why the person should not be canonized as a saint.
304. 00:21:34 Which I guess if I would have thought about it, that makes a lot of sense, but when I read it,
305. 00:21:40 I was like, "That's wild."
306. 00:21:42 Yeah.
307. 00:21:43 Yeah.
308. 00:21:44 All right, you're playing the devil today, right?
309. 00:21:46 It's your job to figure out.
310. 00:21:48 It's like cheese.
311. 00:21:50 Which I don't know.
312. 00:21:52 I mean, because I've been familiar with the mental model and I kind of knew what it was,
313. 00:21:56 essentially, when I was at the day job, whenever we were discussing something,
314. 00:22:01 that was kind of the role I naturally took because I want to discuss things from every angle.
315. 00:22:06 And I noticed, depending on the meeting that I was in, if there were people who were just like,
316. 00:22:11 "Well, this seems like the right thing to do. Let's just move forward."
317. 00:22:13 I would always be like, "Well, what about this? What about this? What about this?"
318. 00:22:16 Not that I prefer to do that, but I recognize the value of looking at things from all the different
319. 00:22:22 angles. So I guess if you were to ask anybody else that was in those meetings with me,
320. 00:22:27 they're probably like, "Oh, yeah, Mike likes to do this. It's not that I like to do it. It's just
321. 00:22:31 that somebody needs to do it."
322. 00:22:32 Yeah.
323. 00:22:34 And I think it's a really, really helpful way to bring the other side of the picture in, because
324. 00:22:39 you counteract that group thing, you counteract the fact that the first idea tends to prime people,
325. 00:22:45 and then they think like, "Hold on, let's step back. Let's play the devil's advocate on this,
326. 00:22:49 and let's see how we would knock this down, how we would attack this, how we would go from a
327. 00:22:55 different perspective on this." So this is one I use a lot to, and I particularly find myself
328. 00:23:01 using it if I have to submit a proposal to somebody, or if I'm thinking about why somebody would
329. 00:23:06 tell me no. I want to make a picture or something. Why would they tell me no? Well,
330. 00:23:11 no, you said this, but really it's this. So I like devil's advocate a lot.
331. 00:23:16 Nice. Which one did you pick?
332. 00:23:18 All right. So I picked Hanlon's Razor.
333. 00:23:21 Oh, I think that's the one I was describing earlier.
334. 00:23:23 It's funny that you described it earlier, because that's the one I had picked,
335. 00:23:27 but never attribute to malice what could be incompetence or carelessness. And I find myself
336. 00:23:35 having to remind myself of this all the time, it's like, "Oh, that person didn't cut you off
337. 00:23:39 because they're a terrible person when they're driving your car. They cut you off because
338. 00:23:44 they're careless and they just didn't look well enough, or because they're on their phone, or because
339. 00:23:47 they're busy or distracted or something." I do this with students all the time, right? So it's like,
340. 00:23:54 the student did not do your assignment because they wanted to stick it to you, because I don't
341. 00:24:01 like you, so I'm going to get a bet. It's like, no, they were probably just hanging out with their
342. 00:24:04 friends and they planned their time poorly, or they probably just didn't study hard enough,
343. 00:24:09 so they don't know. But I see my peers see this all the time, and they're like, "How did these
344. 00:24:14 students not do well on this thing?" And it's like, "Hold on. Like, no. Like, don't think that
345. 00:24:20 they actively did that." And then I think about this other one with my kids all the time, right?
346. 00:24:26 Like, no, your brother did not intentionally try to smack you in the head with that thing.
347. 00:24:32 He was just so focused on hitting the ball, and your head was near where he was swinging the bat,
348. 00:24:37 so you got too close. So that's mine for this chapter.
349. 00:24:42 - Yeah, a related idea to that is something that I picked up from the men's ministry curriculum
350. 00:24:48 that we go through at church, where the author Ed Cole said that we judge others by their actions
351. 00:24:55 and ourselves by our intentions. So I think about that often. Like, when I do something,
352. 00:25:01 I basically am like, "Oh, well, they know that I didn't mean to do that." But then,
353. 00:25:07 when you have somebody else, the thought process goes something like, "Well, they know I hate that,
354. 00:25:14 so they obviously did it on purpose." And it just makes you more and more upset.
355. 00:25:20 - Yeah, this is marriage 101 for those of you out there that might be single, or it's like,
356. 00:25:26 "No, Katie did not do this thing intentionally." It's like, you probably had something else in mind
357. 00:25:33 when she was doing it. - Yeah.
358. 00:25:35 - All right, chapter two, you want me to go first on chapter two or do you want to go first?
359. 00:25:38 - Sure, go for it. - Okay. So mine on chapter two is the tyranny of small decisions. So basically,
360. 00:25:45 you do small, seemingly insignificant things over a course of time. And because you've done these
361. 00:25:53 small, seemingly insignificant things, you end up that are negative, essentially, to what your
362. 00:25:59 overall objective is or your overall goal is or where you want to be. They end up hurting you in
363. 00:26:03 the long run or they make a suboptimal ending in the long run. So for instance, the easiest
364. 00:26:08 example for me to give, not that I struggle with this at all, don't-- I mean, no one read into this
365. 00:26:12 at all. If I snack every night, I'm probably not going to be at the healthy weight that I want to be
366. 00:26:19 at moving forward. If I eat ice cream and chocolate for every meal, I'm probably-- like I said,
367. 00:26:24 there's small decisions that you make add up over the long term to potentially overrule or
368. 00:26:31 subvert one of the bigger goals that you have. So I like tyranny of small decisions in this chapter.
369. 00:26:35 - Nice. Yeah, and just for context, this one is called anything that can go wrong,
370. 00:26:41 will. - Oh, yeah, that's a chapter.
371. 00:26:43 - So there's lots of stuff in here about why things happen, like the tragedy of the commons,
372. 00:26:52 which has an interesting story associated with it. Adverse selection, asymmetric information,
373. 00:27:00 all that kind of stuff. But the one that I liked out of this was actually two. And when they introduced
374. 00:27:10 it, it was basically one that they framed it as reversible versus irreversible decisions. But
375. 00:27:15 essentially, there's two concepts there, reversible decisions and irreversible decisions. And I've
376. 00:27:21 been thinking about this because as we record this, we're going through the life-themed cohort
377. 00:27:27 and Rachel and I were literally just kind of talking about this the other day when we're
378. 00:27:32 encouraging people to dream bigger and think about what's possible. But a reversible decision
379. 00:27:39 is essentially something that you can go back on, decisions that can be undone.
380. 00:27:44 Irreversible decisions are like a door that locks behind you. Those are decisions that cannot be
381. 00:27:51 undone. And as I was thinking about this in context of the life theme, I feel like there are a lot
382. 00:27:58 of decisions that we're facing with that we're faced with that we feel are irreversible decisions.
383. 00:28:06 So because we feel like there's no way back from this, we don't really consider them. And it kind
384. 00:28:13 of strikes me like that decision that you make may not be as irreversible as you think it is.
385. 00:28:19 And I don't have a specific example with this, but I feel like the cost of inaction is often
386. 00:28:31 greater than the cost of action. And yeah, maybe there's going to be some things that will happen
387. 00:28:37 and some things are set in motion that you can't go back on. But don't let your brain kind of make
388. 00:28:42 this worst case scenario, paint this vivid picture of how awful things are going to be. And really
389. 00:28:53 just recognizing that there's these two different types of decisions, that may be enough to help
390. 00:28:58 you to realize this thing that I'm trying to decide here, this actually is a reversible decision.
391. 00:29:04 Because if you continue to think through, well, if I were to follow this course of action,
392. 00:29:08 what are the possible outcomes? What's the worst thing that could happen? What's the best thing
393. 00:29:13 that could happen? That's kind of the basis of the whole fear setting thing by Tim Ferriss. Are you
394. 00:29:18 familiar with that? Okay. Which we talked about in the life and cohort, like I went through that
395. 00:29:23 with Rachel when I was thinking about quitting the day job. Except I didn't call it fear setting.
396. 00:29:28 I just was like, you know, what's the worst thing that could happen if I left my job? And
397. 00:29:34 I and she's like, yeah, that's the spirit. And I'm like, no, really, what is the worst thing that
398. 00:29:38 could happen? I'm like, oh, we're doing this now. I didn't actually say let's go through the fear
399. 00:29:44 setting exercise, but made her walk through it with me. We realized basically that like,
400. 00:29:49 I could go get another job. Yeah. My example right now, and it's relevant to the time of the year,
401. 00:29:55 is I get a lot of students that come out and they're like, I have to find the perfect job.
402. 00:29:59 And if I don't find the perfect job, and it's like, no, no, like find a job. And then if you
403. 00:30:04 don't like the job, like that's reversible, right? Like, what do you do? You just stop working,
404. 00:30:08 or you find another job, right? Like you, you can do that. My dad told me once, he's like, well,
405. 00:30:13 I was thinking about changing majors in college, right? And he goes, he's a core,
406. 00:30:18 and nobody puts you in jail. He's like, the only thing you can't really get out of is when you,
407. 00:30:22 when you get put in jail, because you don't control any of that aspect. He's like, so you're on jail,
408. 00:30:26 like, you're okay. And I was like, dad, that's a wisdom right there. Like, that's, that's huge
409. 00:30:30 wisdom right there. So yeah, it is. That was good. Cool. Anything else from chapter two?
410. 00:30:37 Nope. Then the next chapter, chapter three,
411. 00:30:44 this one is all about spending your time wisely. And the model that I wanted to call out here
412. 00:30:56 is the top idea in your mind, which is basically when you concentrate intently on one problem or
413. 00:31:05 question. So I like this idea. I'm going to actually take a little bit different approach on this
414. 00:31:13 particular model, because I have some different experience with this. But I do think that in general,
415. 00:31:19 this is a great idea. Like, if you are trying to figure something out, you don't just need to find
416. 00:31:28 an answer. You need to just noodle on the problem for a while, and then your brain kind of unpacks
417. 00:31:35 this. I talk about this in the personal retreat stuff, where I ask a couple of questions as part
418. 00:31:42 of my personal retreat. I've got a video on the whole process, which I'll put a link in the,
419. 00:31:47 the notes that people want to want to know more about it. But I ask myself these three questions,
420. 00:31:51 which I start doing, which I stop doing, which I keep doing. And those are purposely vague.
421. 00:31:57 And every time I spend at least two hours thinking about those. And every time I get a bunch of
422. 00:32:05 things after like 20 minutes, and my brain is like, okay, there we check the box. Now let's move on
423. 00:32:11 to the next thing. But when you have no other agenda, you can just continue to focus on that.
424. 00:32:18 So that's what I do. And then I realize about an hour and a half in, like, there's a breakthrough
425. 00:32:23 and I get to a whole nother level. And then that stuff is the really, really good stuff.
426. 00:32:28 Because that's kind of like when your brain is considering all of the possibilities. And a lot
427. 00:32:33 of that stuff is just like, out of nowhere, this is, this is never going to be something that I would
428. 00:32:39 actually do. But the fact that I wrote it down, it feels like I have more agency and I have more
429. 00:32:43 choice. And it's almost like when I go back, I've recommitted to the things that I really want to do.
430. 00:32:49 And I have more motivation and clarity to, to do them. And then I always force myself to pick at
431. 00:32:53 least one thing that I'm, I'm not doing. Okay, so the top idea in your mind, where you concentrate
432. 00:32:58 telling on one problem or question, I'm actually going to pivot this to Richard Feynman had a thing
433. 00:33:05 his 12 favorite problems. So you familiar with this concept? I am. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I actually
434. 00:33:11 have a note in obsidian of my 12 favorite problems. Nice. Nice. So these are not problems that you
435. 00:33:18 need to be fixed quickly. They're not easy. But they're things that I glance at every once in a
436. 00:33:24 while. It's like, Oh, yeah, I'm still kind of curious about how that's going to turn out. I don't
437. 00:33:29 put any pressure on myself to like fix this now. And by doing so, I find that I'll be somewhere
438. 00:33:36 doing something completely different. And then it's like, Oh, now I get it. You know, and then I'll,
439. 00:33:42 okay. So now I can check that that box, but it's weeks, months, maybe even years down the road.
440. 00:33:49 And it's almost just like you've primed the pump. So you've moved stuff into like your random access
441. 00:33:55 memory. And then your brain continues to work on it in the background. And then all of a sudden,
442. 00:33:59 it gets the breakthrough. So I think this is a cool idea where you have that stuff kind of like
443. 00:34:05 loaded up in your your mental psyche. Just don't put the pressure on yourself to like, okay,
444. 00:34:11 this is a task to be completed. Mike, I can't remember what book it was, but it was once
445. 00:34:16 since I've started the show that talked about diffuse thinking, right? Like there's the,
446. 00:34:21 there's the proactive thinking and then the diffuse thinking. And I think it was learned like a pro,
447. 00:34:26 wasn't it? Probably, but, but like, that's what it makes me think of is like that top of mind thing,
448. 00:34:31 you're putting it in the top of mind, there's a focus period on top of mind, but then being
449. 00:34:35 willing to let it enter that diffuse mode, and then maybe you bring it back up top of mind,
450. 00:34:40 or you just stay in top of mind long enough to where a couple cycles of that happens diffuse,
451. 00:34:45 you know, active diffuse active. Okay, cool. So mine on this one, and I cheated,
452. 00:34:52 fully that I cheated on this. So folks, you got to understand like there are a ton of mental
453. 00:34:59 models in every one of these chapters, and you're reading them in a narrative fashion.
454. 00:35:02 So my cheating on this was all of the focus models. So that would mean there's a focus on the
455. 00:35:10 vital few activities top of mind, I would say is a focus, is a focus mental model. Book time on
456. 00:35:17 the calendar, right, for deep work, that's a focus one. Decide ahead of time what quality level is
457. 00:35:24 acceptable, that's a focus one, right? Because that ties into into my focus. So it's like, I might be,
458. 00:35:28 I might be faking this a little bit, but the idea, you know, the chapters titled spend your time
459. 00:35:33 wisely, and this is, I think, a theme as well in my, in my life right now is like, sometimes I feel
460. 00:35:38 like I'm not focused enough. Like I'm not like, I'm too many places, I'm a little too scattered.
461. 00:35:43 So focus is an area where, you know, if I had an action item, you know, foreshadowing to, to what,
462. 00:35:49 where we're going, you know, it's probably going to be that it's like, how do I focus more? How can I
463. 00:35:53 utilize some of these mental models to obtain better focus in life and keep things moving?
464. 00:36:00 I mean, you make a show. I was gonna say I got a podcast for you.
465. 00:36:04 So you have a whole podcast, you know, that works on focus. So, but that's, that's my,
466. 00:36:10 that's my cop out for this chapter is like, there were too many good ones around this topic that's
467. 00:36:14 really relevant in my life right now, in terms of, you know, trying to get more focused and trying
468. 00:36:21 to stay more focused. I think that's the big thing too, is trying to stay more focused.
469. 00:36:25 So that was my, my big one, or my big takeaway from this chapter.
470. 00:36:29 Nice. All right. So chapter four.
471. 00:36:33 Now we're becoming one with nature. So in chapter four, we're going to get into things like natural
472. 00:36:39 selection. And we're going to get into kind of, you know, inertia and physical and entropy and a
473. 00:36:48 bunch of different things, critical mass. So it takes this turn, right, somewhat biological,
474. 00:36:54 somewhat physics, kind of a, kind of a thing. So mine and this one is the forcing function,
475. 00:37:00 right? And basically the forcing function is that like thing that makes me do work towards the thing
476. 00:37:07 I want to go. So shockingly, like it's, it's like helps me focus. Right? So it's that thing that
477. 00:37:12 helps me. So the example they given in the book would be like a standing meeting. Well, we have a
478. 00:37:17 standing meeting every Monday at noon to talk about this one thing. And that is the forcing
479. 00:37:23 function that helps me make progress on that project, because I know I'm going to have that
480. 00:37:27 meeting and I know that, you know, Mike's going to want me to talk about that meeting. So this
481. 00:37:31 podcast is an example of a forcing function where it's like, what forces me or what encourages me to
482. 00:37:36 read the books? Well, I know I'm going to talk to Mike about it. And I want to be able to talk
483. 00:37:40 well with Mike and I want to make, be able to make good content and produce a good show. So therefore,
484. 00:37:44 I'm more motivated or I'm, you know, not for like forced, but you know what I mean, like I'm more
485. 00:37:48 forced to make commitment on that or make progress on that commitment. So forcing function was mine,
486. 00:37:54 was mine here. I love the idea of the forcing function. I might have picked that one myself if
487. 00:38:03 you hadn't picked it. But this is the only way that I can be productive to be honest,
488. 00:38:10 is forcing functions. And they can take different formats. So like sometimes it's an article that's
489. 00:38:18 due by a certain day and got to write it. The podcast example was a great one. You know,
490. 00:38:24 you have to finish the book before you show up and talk about it. Well, you should finish the book
491. 00:38:28 for you show up and talk about it. I guess. So there's lots of different ways to apply that.
492. 00:38:35 And I think this is something that people should be thinking about. It doesn't have to be as hard
493. 00:38:42 as a deadline though. It could just be like sometimes when I know that I need to write something the
494. 00:38:50 next day, I'll instead of sitting down and thinking like, okay, what am I going to pick for the
495. 00:38:55 newsletter this week? I'll decide ahead of time. So I have the prompts ready to go. That's actually
496. 00:39:00 what I did not too long ago. I made a big like notion database of all the newsletters I want to
497. 00:39:05 send throughout the rest of the year. They may shift here and there, you know, I had some delete
498. 00:39:09 some whatever, but I always know like when it's time to sit down and write like, there's the topic.
499. 00:39:15 And then that's what allows me to sit down and do it. It's not necessarily forced as in like how
500. 00:39:21 they're defining the forcing function where it's like, someone is making you do it. But I don't know,
501. 00:39:28 like the newsletter's got to go out. I've got to decide on the topic at a time. So if I think about
502. 00:39:32 that ahead of time, that can enable me to actually sit down and do the work, which I think is
503. 00:39:36 is kind of cool. The one that I want to talk about is one I had not heard about before,
504. 00:39:41 and that is Metcalf's Law. Now this is from the becoming one with nature section,
505. 00:39:47 and I'm going to take this in a totally different direction probably.
506. 00:39:50 But Metcalf's Law, it describes the nonlinear growth and network value when nodes are connected
507. 00:39:58 to one another. So the example they give from the book, they even have a visual of this. When you
508. 00:40:03 have two people, there's like one connection between them. And when you have three people,
509. 00:40:08 I forget what the number was, but there's a whole bunch of different possible connections.
510. 00:40:12 And as you add numbers of people, the number of possible connections between all the people in
511. 00:40:18 the network exponentially grows. Okay, now see if you can predict where I'm going to go with this.
512. 00:40:25 I think... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, obsidian? Yes.
513. 00:40:33 But the thing is with obsidian, and this is the thing that I think a lot of people don't get about
514. 00:40:39 these connected notes apps, is it's not just as simple as like, find all the instances of this term,
515. 00:40:45 connect all, and now I've got all those connections just in case that I need them.
516. 00:40:50 The way that these things really have value for me is when I forged the intentional connections.
517. 00:40:58 So there's a multiple... There's an exponential value that's added based on when the number of
518. 00:41:04 connections grows, as long as everything that's part of that little local network is relevant,
519. 00:41:12 I would argue. So if you've got... I don't know, let's just use the example in the book. You've got
520. 00:41:18 people, you're building this network of people who read a lot of books. Okay, so you have four
521. 00:41:23 people sitting down at dinner and they're talking about the best books that they ever read. You add
522. 00:41:27 a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth person to that discussion who they don't read. They're not adding
523. 00:41:32 any value. So those connections are worthless. And when you just add the find all search connections,
524. 00:41:40 that's what you're adding, in my opinion, to these connected notes. So I think I've seen this
525. 00:41:49 play out in how I've kind of developed my own obsidian vault, like the cross-reference library
526. 00:41:53 stuff for all my sermon notes and things like that. And the takeaway here, I think, is not,
527. 00:42:01 oh, I should be developing my network of people or developing my network of connected notes,
528. 00:42:06 but I think you should be looking for ways that you could build all of the networks that are in
529. 00:42:12 your life. So that could be connected notes. It could be people... I don't know, there's probably
530. 00:42:19 a hundred other variations of this that could present themselves. But I think that the takeaway,
531. 00:42:26 the thing that I'm noodling on and thing I want people to think about is the power of these networks
532. 00:42:31 when they're built intentionally and then go about trying to intentionally build those networks.
533. 00:42:38 Yeah, I mean, I think about this one from a... What are my long-term goals?
534. 00:42:45 And then I think about... I know you don't like goals, right? But at the same time, we all have
535. 00:42:49 some. Is it true? Or is it fair to say you don't like goals? I feel like you've said that in the past.
536. 00:42:54 Yes. I think goals are okay, but most people's approach to them is flawed, let's say.
537. 00:43:04 All right, so I think long-term goals. I just wanted to give you a chance to defend yourself
538. 00:43:09 if I spoke too aggressively there. But I think about this long-term goal when I think about
539. 00:43:14 like, okay, well, there is a network of resources or people that will help me achieve that goal.
540. 00:43:20 So the more... And I love what you said in terms of it has to be relevant resources or
541. 00:43:27 relevant people. Because I can just bring in random resources that doesn't help me achieve the goal
542. 00:43:31 at all. But if it's relevant and I can keep... And I have more of those, there's a much higher
543. 00:43:37 chance that I'm able to achieve that goal. So it's like, I like my cast law, even though it was
544. 00:43:42 kind of created very specifically around networking and like, ethernet communications.
545. 00:43:47 I like how it applies in a bunch of other places. And that's probably why it has staying power,
546. 00:43:51 right? Because it's one of those mental models that yes, it was made for a specific thing, but it has
547. 00:43:56 application in a bunch of other different areas. Yep.
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572. 00:46:10 Okay, so number five lies, darn lies, and statistics.
573. 00:46:17 This is basically math-related models, I would say, and the one that stood out to me
574. 00:46:28 from this is actually the topic of some other books that I've seen, and I've seen this come up
575. 00:46:37 in the library, my community. There's a Bookworm listener there who kind of talks a lot about
576. 00:46:45 these calls them neuromiths. Shout out to Mark where people just buy into this idea that they
577. 00:46:55 heard about in a book, but Mark has a very analytical approach to a lot of this stuff,
578. 00:47:00 and his argument is always like, "Well, that doesn't replicate." So the mental model that I picked
579. 00:47:06 from this one is the replication crisis. This is really the fact that less than 50% of positive
580. 00:47:14 results can actually be replicated in psychology. On the one hand, that feels a little bit depressing
581. 00:47:24 because you read these books about these different topics and you're like, "That sounds good. I want
582. 00:47:31 to believe that." That seems like it could be helpful and useful, and then someone comes in and
583. 00:47:37 says like, "No, that's Huey," and you're just like, "Oh, well, now what do I do?" But I think that
584. 00:47:43 there's a balance to be achieved here. So from a scientific or a mathematical perspective, you should
585. 00:47:50 be a little bit wary, I think, of how people are doing these studies, especially people who are
586. 00:47:59 writing books and they're trying to project it as like, "This has a research basis." You got to know
587. 00:48:05 how the research is being done. A slight variation of this, I used to, and I still do work a little
588. 00:48:11 bit with family business, and my dad has a master's in assessment and psychology. So he developed these
589. 00:48:20 research-based assessment skill building tools and there's so much research that's gone into these
590. 00:48:24 like hundreds of doctoral level papers and books that have been written on the effectiveness of some
591. 00:48:32 of these assessments. So when I come across someone who has written a book and they have an accompanying
592. 00:48:40 assessment, my initial reaction is always, "That's not an assessment. That's a quiz."
593. 00:48:48 Because I know how much work goes into those true assessments. Having an academic background,
594. 00:48:54 you probably know a little bit about that too. So I get this, but then also I think that if you're
595. 00:49:02 constantly looking to disprove these things, then you maybe are throwing the baby out with the
596. 00:49:08 bathwater sometimes too. So I feel like on some level, if it's not completely replicatable,
597. 00:49:18 but it's still helpful, go ahead and use it. Just recognize that it's not the bulletproof thing
598. 00:49:27 that the author maybe is saying it is. But I think it's something that you should definitely be
599. 00:49:35 a cognizant of, that whenever you come across a study that says this was the results,
600. 00:49:40 you can't just accept that as like gospel truth. You got to figure out a little bit more about how
601. 00:49:47 the study was done in order to really put some wood behind the arrow in terms of the conclusions
602. 00:49:55 that they're drawing from the results that they're sharing.
603. 00:49:59 Yes, I mean going through the PhD process, you run into a lot of these things
604. 00:50:06 quite a bit. I'm more of a qualitative researcher, so this whole statistics section,
605. 00:50:11 I know of it, but by no means an expert in these things. But I liked replication crisis a lot.
606. 00:50:19 I've seen it in a situation where you overgeneralize or you try to make more out of it than it really
607. 00:50:28 really is and it ties quickly into incentives. What are the incentives to get the publication
608. 00:50:34 out there and to get the study out there? There's a whole, we're going to tie into one later,
609. 00:50:38 but a whole system that is associated with that. So I'm glad you picked that one. Mine's related
610. 00:50:46 to this. Mine is publication bias and I want to throw an honorable mention out to systematic
611. 00:50:51 reviews and meta-analysis. I'm cheating all over the place, Mike. I know we said one,
612. 00:50:55 but I'm cheating all over the place. That's right. Publication bias, right? So when the
613. 00:50:59 publication status depends on the statistical significance of the study. And the big thing I want
614. 00:51:05 to throw out here is like, okay, whether or not this thing gets published depends on the results of
615. 00:51:11 the study. We could publish based on the research question and based on the potential value of it,
616. 00:51:21 and then we publish whatever the study finds. So if the study didn't find anything,
617. 00:51:24 we should still publish that because there's a reason it didn't find anything. If we did the
618. 00:51:28 study right, we asked good questions, our methods were good. We analyzed the results correctly.
619. 00:51:32 There's a reason why we didn't find anything. We need to know that. The field needs to know that.
620. 00:51:37 What I'll tell you is those studies are insanely hard to get published. They are insanely hard
621. 00:51:42 to get published. If you don't come out with a clear result, a lot of editors and associate editors
622. 00:51:50 and review committees, they kind of throw up, they're like, okay, in a best case scenario,
623. 00:51:57 and it depends on the field. So for those of you who don't do academic research, there are certain
624. 00:52:03 fields where conference publications are more important than journal publications. And then
625. 00:52:08 there are certain fields where journal publications are more important than conference publications.
626. 00:52:11 And you have to know what your field is. So like my field engineering education,
627. 00:52:15 your journal publications were top and then your conference publications came in under that. So
628. 00:52:21 it's like, I would submit a study like that, let's say to one of the top tier journals in the field.
629. 00:52:26 And it's probably not going to get published because there wasn't a significant finding there.
630. 00:52:30 So I could publish it then in the conference, but when you publish it in the conference,
631. 00:52:35 it's typically not seen by as many people because it wasn't published in the journal.
632. 00:52:38 And this is where the bias comes in. The bias comes in the fact that there's this cycle that
633. 00:52:42 happens. So I won't say like people are intentionally doing this to like,
634. 00:52:49 to direct the conversation. But I also won't say that people aren't doing this
635. 00:52:57 direct a conversation. This can be used against, it can be used for against an agenda that somebody
636. 00:53:05 has or that a field has that they want to get a certain message out of there. So you got to be
637. 00:53:08 really careful with this one. The reason why Honorable mentioned systematic reviews and meta-analysis
638. 00:53:12 studies is these are incredibly valuable. If they're done well, so systematic review is basically
639. 00:53:19 where we do like a very, very thorough look at the field and what's been studied and how it's
640. 00:53:26 been studied and why it's been studied that way to get a bigger picture. You essentially have to
641. 00:53:31 do this if you get a PhD, right? Like when you're doing a PhD, you're doing a systematic review,
642. 00:53:34 the field you're just not going to publish it as a systematic review. But that's like your
643. 00:53:37 literature review. And it justifies that there's a hole there that you need to fill. The meta-analysis
644. 00:53:42 studies are essentially when we take a bunch of secondary data sources from a lot of other places
645. 00:53:48 and then we try to run new analysis on that. And we run an analysis on top of the existing
646. 00:53:54 analyses to do it to do a different study. And those can be really, really valuable as well because
647. 00:53:58 the researchers designed the study in a certain way. They collected data in a certain way. And then
648. 00:54:02 you're coming in and if you're doing it correctly, you're coming in and doing it in a legitimately
649. 00:54:08 valid study on secondary data, if you will, on data that might tell a story and might not.
650. 00:54:15 And I think those are really valuable too. So this was a fun section for me to think about and
651. 00:54:20 think back to my days of old in the research world. Yeah. I want to go back to the publication
652. 00:54:27 bias that you mentioned because I feel like the larger point with that is to recognize that
653. 00:54:35 everybody's being incentivized by something and just asking what are the incentives for this
654. 00:54:42 particular person. Now with the publication bias specifically in terms of the publications,
655. 00:54:47 there was a really funny comic that they attached to this. I forget the specifics.
656. 00:54:55 It was something like green jelly beans caused cancer. That was what they were trying to prove.
657. 00:55:01 And then they kept asking the scientists and he's like, there's no correlation between
658. 00:55:04 green jelly beans and cancer. There's no correlation. There's like 20 frames of that.
659. 00:55:08 And then at the very end, they have the newspapers like green jelly beans caused cancer.
660. 00:55:13 Yeah. That was a good one. I like that one too. I like that they gave it a whole page too.
661. 00:55:19 Right. Like that whole comic just gets its own page. It was worth it enough in the author's mind.
662. 00:55:24 All right. So the next chapter is decisions, decisions. And it's basically a set of mental
663. 00:55:32 models to think about how we make decisions and how we can make them better. I'm a big fan of this
664. 00:55:37 this chapter as well. I thought there were a lot of good interesting decision making models here.
665. 00:55:44 The one I'm going to call out today is systems thinking. So I am a faculty member.
666. 00:55:50 I have a master's in industrial and systems engineering. We study systems thinking
667. 00:55:54 publication bias, everybody. Yeah. Well, it's just a matter of like this hits
668. 00:56:01 so close to home. I love this model. And I think if people thought in systems more,
669. 00:56:06 it would change the way they think. Right. So if you would actually come in,
670. 00:56:09 I won't go as far as to recommend the causal loop diagram, stocks and flows. I took a class on
671. 00:56:15 that, a grad level class on that. Man, it is a whole another way of thinking about the world.
672. 00:56:19 Right. Like it is really, really out there. But Donella Melos, sorry, Donella, Donella Meadows.
673. 00:56:26 That's her name. She has a book on systems thinking and it's a really, really good.
674. 00:56:32 Yeah. I think we covered that one at one point before you join the show.
675. 00:56:35 Okay. Yeah. And it's a really, really good primer on systems thinking. So if you want to
676. 00:56:40 go and do that. But basically like, hey, we need to think more broadly about the connections and
677. 00:56:46 about all the players in this. And I don't even know how to summarize systems thinking because
678. 00:56:51 it's this whole like concept or this way of kind of viewing and approaching the world.
679. 00:56:57 But like one of the ways I do it, I guess this is the best way I can give you an example.
680. 00:57:01 So I can basically take any system and I can think about it as inputs, value added processes
681. 00:57:06 and outputs. Yeah. And I can, I can do it with any system. So it's like, okay, there are going to
682. 00:57:10 be inputs in the system. We're going to do value added processes to this. And then outputs will
683. 00:57:14 come out. And what we want is we want the outputs to be better than the inputs, or we want the
684. 00:57:17 outputs to add value in some way. And that is systems thinking. Right. So now I start to analyze
685. 00:57:21 it. I say, what are all my inputs? What are all my value added processes? Can I make those better?
686. 00:57:25 Can I make my inputs better? Right. Can I get my outputs out in a different way,
687. 00:57:29 channels, marketing and all that stuff? Right. So if like Mike thinks about mikechmitz.com or
688. 00:57:33 sitting university or any of that stuff, I mean, I could we could think about it as a system and
689. 00:57:37 what what other system does it interact with? And how does it interact with those other systems?
690. 00:57:41 And so I'll stop now because I could I could nerd out about this for a long time.
691. 00:57:46 So could I, in fact, during life in court, we just shared our document that Rachel and I made
692. 00:57:55 with family core values and stuff like that. And I shared that when we sat down to do it
693. 00:58:00 back in 2017, I wanted to call it Schmidt's family standard operating procedures. Nice.
694. 00:58:05 And she said no. So I think we landed on like guiding operating principles or something like that.
695. 00:58:10 Is this kind of like a vision document? Like what what's the relationship that we want to have with
696. 00:58:15 our kids stuff like that? But to your point about everything being a system, like that was my
697. 00:58:19 approach to that is like, if we want to have this output when our kids are older, there's
698. 00:58:24 inputs and processes that have to be optimized for that. It's not going to happen by default.
699. 00:58:30 You have to be intentional. Hence the intentional family, you know. So yeah, I love that. We're
700. 00:58:37 going to have to pick another systems book at some point because I would love to nerd out about
701. 00:58:41 that again. Maybe we'll maybe we'll do my the one I did in grad school and what you'll learn
702. 00:58:46 about stocks and flows and how to model stocks and flows and simulate those.
703. 00:58:49 I remember stocks and flows from thinking in systems. I was like, this is the one part of
704. 00:58:53 this book I don't like. That might have been the hardest grad class I've ever taken because
705. 00:58:59 it was just so foreign to like, oh my gosh. And then when you added delays into there and we were
706. 00:59:03 trying to like model the housing market as well. Sorry. All right. So my model here and there's
707. 00:59:12 lots of them I could have picked from this one. This was actually the one I had the most trouble
708. 00:59:17 picking one specific model from, but I didn't cheat on like somebody else on this school
709. 00:59:22 call, which already made me. I picked unknown unknowns, which is what you don't know what
710. 00:59:29 you are, what you don't know about what you don't know. Let me say it that way.
711. 00:59:34 And I picked this because this has been my independent creator journey in a nutshell.
712. 00:59:43 Okay. It's like, well, okay, so I got to do this. And then I do that and it's like,
713. 00:59:50 this isn't working. Why isn't that working? Oh, there's another thing I didn't know was a thing.
714. 00:59:55 And now I got to figure that out. Okay, well, we figured that out, but it's still not working.
715. 01:00:00 Oh, there's another thing that I didn't know was a thing. I mean, before we even recorded for
716. 01:00:07 the pro show, so we have a separate version of this that is we called the bootleg. It's the entire
717. 01:00:13 call from the moment that we connect. And I walked you through this thing called a deadline funnel
718. 01:00:18 for new people who sign up for the Obsidian University starter vault. Like I just built that
719. 01:00:23 today because I didn't realize that was a thing until I talked to somebody a few weeks ago,
720. 01:00:27 and they're like, Oh, yeah, you should totally do this. It's like, Oh, actually that makes a lot of
721. 01:00:31 sense. So how do you apply this? I think it's always asking what is it that I'm not seeing right now?
722. 01:00:41 Because it can get it can be easy to focus on, well, this is the problem that needs to be solved.
723. 01:00:48 That is a problem, maybe that needs to be solved. But there are lots of other things,
724. 01:00:53 kind of couples with systems, thinking, you know, there are lots of other pieces of this system
725. 01:00:59 that aren't very obvious when you're so focused on one piece of the machine. So I guess this is like
726. 01:01:06 a reminder for me to be taking a step back into looking to look at things a little bit more
727. 01:01:12 holistically and kind of always asking myself, where are my blind spots? What am I not seeing
728. 01:01:19 in whatever the system happens to be? So it doesn't have to be the business. I mean,
729. 01:01:24 this is the whole idea behind the discipleship model at our church too, is like, you don't recognize
730. 01:01:30 your blind spots, but other people can see them real easily. So when everyone comes together with
731. 01:01:36 the intention of we're going to call this stuff out and we're going to challenge each other to be
732. 01:01:41 better, that produces fruit in everybody's life, as long as everyone's there for the same purpose.
733. 01:01:48 They bought into the process, the reason for the system. So you can apply systems just
734. 01:01:55 but anywhere, just be careful of what you don't know about those systems.
735. 01:01:59 All right, ready to move on to the next one? I am. Okay, so the next one is chapter seven,
736. 01:02:09 dealing with conflict. All right, and since I was just talking about the other one,
737. 01:02:15 I have to find which one I picked for this. Okay, generals always fight the last war.
738. 01:02:19 This was a pretty simple model, actually, but I think it will potentially be very useful for me.
739. 01:02:30 It's kind of all contained in that description, actually. So the thing that generals always
740. 01:02:37 fight the last war, it's kind of got a military application, but armies by default, they say in
741. 01:02:44 the book, use strategies, tactics, and technology that worked for them in the past. And so when you
742. 01:02:51 think about generals specifically, are people who have been promoted and they've advanced because of
743. 01:02:58 the outcomes that they've been able to achieve, that's good. But I think the larger thing, take away
744. 01:03:06 from this for me, is to ask, is this the same type of battle that we're fighting? Or is it different?
745. 01:03:14 Can we use the same tactics? Can we use the same strategies? Or should we be looking for
746. 01:03:20 something else because this is comparing apples and oranges? I think I generally tend to fall into,
747. 01:03:28 well, this is the way it worked last time. So let's do the same thing again, this time, and let's not
748. 01:03:34 fix it unless it's broken. But being aware of this mental model, I think maybe could save me some
749. 01:03:41 some trial and error time falling into that. Yeah, I like this one a lot. I mean, in terms of
750. 01:03:49 it's so easy to rely on what worked before, right? And you see this in sports teams,
751. 01:03:54 you see this in business and in culture and even in family, right? It's like, oh, this worked before.
752. 01:04:00 What I did with the last kid worked, maybe it'll work with this kid. Oh, that's a great example.
753. 01:04:05 Yeah, because every single kid is so incredibly different. Yeah. So I really, I really like that
754. 01:04:10 one too. I picked Burn the Boats. So they call it Burn the Boats. I've heard it as Burn the Ships.
755. 01:04:15 Yeah. The story behind this one, I loved which is Cortez coming in and basically there's,
756. 01:04:21 who was he fighting Mike? The Aztecs, I think. Aztecs, okay. Yeah. So he's fighting the Aztecs
757. 01:04:30 and they've got significantly more troops. He's got this measly force of 600 and he's basically,
758. 01:04:36 and they call out the fact that he didn't really burn the boats. He just like sunk them and made
759. 01:04:41 it to where, hey, there's no getting out of here. So we're not retreating. You're either going to
760. 01:04:45 fight or die basically. You know, is the... I feel you're not an option. Yeah. Yes.
761. 01:04:51 And how it incentivizes. And I think about this and what are the ways where I could apply this more
762. 01:04:56 to, you know, what are ways that I could burn the boat, not in such a dramatic way, but,
763. 01:05:01 you know, we got a major decision. We've got a major thing that we're thinking about.
764. 01:05:05 How do I set it to where there's no turning back? How do I set the circumstances or create a boundary
765. 01:05:12 that says, no, we're going to push forward no matter what and that's what we need to do.
766. 01:05:16 So I like to burn the boats out of this chapter. I actually, when I was thinking about leaving
767. 01:05:21 the day job, there was a book that I read called Burn the Boats. I forget who it was by, but essentially
768. 01:05:28 it was a whole book devoted to that concept. If you're going to go out on your own in terms of
769. 01:05:36 business, you have to make sure that you don't leave yourself a path back that retreat is not an
770. 01:05:44 option. And I think that this is one of those mental models and one of those stories that
771. 01:05:50 people maybe could take issue with some of the specifics. I mean, there's lots of different
772. 01:05:56 versions of that story and maybe some of the specifics could be debated, which it kind of
773. 01:06:02 doesn't matter, you know, which is why I like the fact that it's in this book because they don't
774. 01:06:07 have the time to get so deep into it. You can't really argue with the specifics of it. The mental
775. 01:06:13 model, I think, is very powerful though. I think you should also, though, be wary of applying this
776. 01:06:21 one. It's very effective in specific situations. And then maybe don't use it the rest of the time.
777. 01:06:27 Yes, you sparingly, right? Like, yes, you, yeah. For sure.
778. 01:06:31 Okay, you ready to go chapter nine? Let's do it. No, chapter eight. So unlocking people's potential.
779. 01:06:39 I'm cheating again, Mike. Listen, I'm sorry. I did my best. If you wanted me to pick one,
780. 01:06:45 I'll pick it. Here it is. It's the basically there are three types of people, commandos,
781. 01:06:49 infantry and police. Now I'm not going to talk about that one anymore. I like that one. That's the one
782. 01:06:53 I like commandos, infantry and police. But the one what I like about this chapter is basically,
783. 01:06:58 it stresses the importance of culture. And I'm learning more and more in life that like
784. 01:07:03 culture is so important that, you know, they have a model here and the one I'll actually pick is
785. 01:07:10 what is it? It's something along the lines of like culture, culture out does strategy, right?
786. 01:07:18 Or strategies defeated by culture, right? So we have the best strategy in the world. But if we
787. 01:07:21 have a terrible culture within the within the organization, the company, the team, the project,
788. 01:07:25 whatever it is, you know, we're we're hurting. And and I don't remember if it was in this book
789. 01:07:33 or where it was, it had to have been in this book, but I don't remember if it was for this example
790. 01:07:37 or not. But they talk about the dream team and the dream team coming together and like
791. 01:07:42 how they had a bunch of individual players. And while they might have had a great strategy and a
792. 01:07:47 great team to like win the Olympics with that dream team, the culture was a bunch of individual
793. 01:07:52 players who knew how to play as basically the all star on their team. But they didn't know how
794. 01:07:57 to necessarily play as a supporting player, how to play this certain position or how to
795. 01:08:00 contribute to the whole team. And this has been so, I don't know, just so real in my life where
796. 01:08:07 it's like you see culture and you're like, man, that is a good culture. I'm seeing that culture
797. 01:08:11 over there thrive. Like that is amazing. And you're like, Oh, and I'm seeing that one
798. 01:08:15 where they technically should win everything. Like they should be the best at everything. And
799. 01:08:20 they're just not. Like they're just they're, you know, they're kind of chasing their own tail because
800. 01:08:24 of the way their culture set up. So that was what came out of chapter eight for me.
801. 01:08:28 All right. Well, since you're interested in culture, I'm going to do you a favor with the
802. 01:08:33 next book that I'm going to pick. Put a pin in that though. The one that I want to talk about from
803. 01:08:40 here is the Dunning Krueger effect, which is this model describing the confidence people
804. 01:08:47 experience over time as they move from being a novice to an expert. So there's a visual for this,
805. 01:08:52 which I'm going to describe on the Y axis, you have confidence. So as you go up, you get more
806. 01:08:58 confident. And then on the X axis, you have experience. So as you go to the right, you become
807. 01:09:05 more of an expert. Now the graph goes from I have no experience and I have zero confidence.
808. 01:09:12 As soon as I get a little bit of experience, it spikes way up. And it's like, I am confident.
809. 01:09:18 I have totally comprehended this topic. And then right after that, it dips way down. And then it
810. 01:09:25 just kind of curves and it slowly comes back up as you become more of an expert. This, I feel like,
811. 01:09:32 is my productivity journey in a nutshell. Yep. As soon as I start writing stuff for the internet,
812. 01:09:40 I feel like, Oh yeah, I got this. And then all of a sudden it's like, you don't know anything.
813. 01:09:44 And slowly I'm developing a little bit more confidence like, Hey, maybe I do actually have
814. 01:09:49 something to add to the world. It is also every graduate students experience ever,
815. 01:09:57 especially if you're in a doctoral program. And like, you see this when you go and you're like,
816. 01:10:02 Oh, that person's a first year grad student. And you're like, Oh, that person's a second year.
817. 01:10:06 But tied to this, and the model that they talked about right before this, so maybe I am cheating a
818. 01:10:11 little bit here is imposter syndrome, which is where someone's plagued by feeling that they're an
819. 01:10:15 imposter and they're scared of being exposed as a fraud. And I feel like this graph shows why
820. 01:10:22 imposter syndrome is a thing. Yeah. And I feel like imposter syndrome kicks in when you actually have
821. 01:10:30 experience. So this is actually encouraging to me. And everyone else, hopefully that is dealing
822. 01:10:36 with imposter syndrome. I hope it's encouraging to them too. It's almost like the fact that you are
823. 01:10:41 experiencing imposter syndrome actually means that you don't have to worry about it.
824. 01:10:47 If you weren't experiencing imposter syndrome, then maybe you weren't very far on this journey. And
825. 01:10:54 then you should be questioning whether you actually know what you know. But if you are,
826. 01:11:00 I think it's likely if you are experiencing this imposter syndrome, it's because you've gone up
827. 01:11:07 that spike, you've come back down and now you're working your way back, which is actually the
828. 01:11:11 thing that gives you the credentials to talk about the thing that you're talking about. And
829. 01:11:16 whenever you're talking about something in terms of imposter syndrome, this is kind of the way that
830. 01:11:19 I kind of overcome it is I don't try to profess to be the world's leading expert and whatever.
831. 01:11:26 It's just this is what I've learned. This is what works for me. And you create and you talk about
832. 01:11:31 things that would help you from two years ago. You know, Mike, two years ago, would have loved
833. 01:11:38 this piece of advice. And it's not prescriptive as like, you should do this. It's really just,
834. 01:11:45 this is what worked for me. And maybe you want to try to do this too. That's cool.
835. 01:11:49 Yeah. And that was a great example of how the narrative nature of this book, like I wouldn't
836. 01:11:54 have been able to call that out. But the fact that you called out the tie between imposter
837. 01:11:57 syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger effect, like that was really, really, man, that might be the best
838. 01:12:04 example of how they tie together that I can remember in the book. Like, yeah, it was really good.
839. 01:12:11 Agreed. All right. So the last official chapter, chapter nine, is on flexing your market power.
840. 01:12:20 And this is kind of getting into economics and markets and things like that.
841. 01:12:25 Now, there's some really cool models in here, but the one that I wanted to call out is the jobs to be
842. 01:12:32 done. And this is actually the title of a book that I have on my shelf. So again, just
843. 01:12:40 evidence of the fact that there's a whole lot more depth you can go into with these.
844. 01:12:44 Are you familiar with the concept of jobs to be done, Corey? No. Okay. So I'm going to give a
845. 01:12:52 brief, hopefully brief description here. It's a model that was introduced by Clayton Christensen.
846. 01:13:00 And we read a book a long time ago of his called The Innovators Dilemma, which when we read it,
847. 01:13:07 I was like, this is a boring book, even for a business major like me. Like, this was not very good.
848. 01:13:14 I don't ever want to touch this again. And since then, I realized how great that book was.
849. 01:13:20 And the Innovators Dilemma is kind of talking about how it companies,
850. 01:13:25 a Kodak who invented the first digital camera, they're so attached to the thing that's making
851. 01:13:29 the money that they can't embrace the new technology. So that's who Clayton Christensen is.
852. 01:13:34 Now, this job should be done model. I've actually heard this from a YouTube video. I'll try to find
853. 01:13:41 this and put it in the show notes. But there was a Clayton Christensen was like a business professor
854. 01:13:50 at Harvard or something really, really smart business guy. And he was sharing about this project
855. 01:13:56 that they were doing with, I think it was McDonald's and they were trying to sell more milkshakes.
856. 01:14:02 And he was, so his firm is working with McDonald's and they're considering all the options. Do we
857. 01:14:11 put more sugar in it, more chocolate flavor, whatever? And Clayton Christensen is like,
858. 01:14:15 that's the wrong question to be asking. Let's interview some of these people who are buying
859. 01:14:18 these milkshakes. So I start talking to the people and they find out the people who are buying these
860. 01:14:21 milkshakes. Most of them are bought early in the morning. Most of them are bought by people who
861. 01:14:26 are on their way to work. Most of them are bought by people who are alone in their vehicle.
862. 01:14:32 Okay, so the last time you didn't buy a milkshake, what did you do instead? And that was,
863. 01:14:38 I had a donut, I had fruit. And essentially what they realized is that people were buying these
864. 01:14:44 milkshakes because they had a long commute to the office and they wanted something that was going
865. 01:14:50 to pass the time and traffic and they weren't wasn't going to leave them feeling hungry when
866. 01:14:55 they got to work. Okay, well, at this point, now we can change the design of the straw
867. 01:15:01 and sell more milkshakes because it's more effective for the job. The question that they're asking was
868. 01:15:05 what job did you hire that milkshake to do? I've actually kind of ripped that off and I talk
869. 01:15:11 about that story in my practical PKM cohort. When I asked people as you're building out your PKM
870. 01:15:16 stack and all the different apps that you're using for whatever purposes, what job did you
871. 01:15:20 hire that app to do? Okay, because you hear about, oh, this app has these new features. And it's like,
872. 01:15:26 oh, well, I should totally do that. But you don't want to just add things. You don't want to just
873. 01:15:31 chase these shiny new features. If it's not solving a problem, if it doesn't fit into your systems,
874. 01:15:36 like it's not actually beneficial to you. So this whole job's to be done. I mean, this is
875. 01:15:43 asked you to figure out what the real job that your product does. He's talking about it from a
876. 01:15:46 marketing perspective, but I feel like this is a mental model that I really like and can be applied
877. 01:15:51 a lot of different different ways. So why are you doing the thing that you are doing is really the
878. 01:15:58 big takeaway here? I like that one too. All right, so mine is going to be only the paranoid survive
879. 01:16:04 because I think this overcomes that kind of lax, the physical nature that you get when you've
880. 01:16:13 been successful or when things are kind of comfortable and you have to remember like,
881. 01:16:18 I don't like the word paranoid. I actually like that part of it gets me. But like this idea,
882. 01:16:23 I like the idea that it brings up is like, okay, I should be thinking about what's next. I should
883. 01:16:27 be thinking about what's next. I should be thinking about what's next or I should be thinking about
884. 01:16:30 like, if I'm running a business, who's coming up against me? Like who's coming up against me? And
885. 01:16:35 I need to be able to counteract that or I need to be proactive about that. And I think this
886. 01:16:40 gets us out of that malaise that can happen when we're doing well in the engines running and
887. 01:16:46 everything's going really well. But we stop innovating. We stop doing that thing that's going to get us
888. 01:16:53 to the next level. And in the example that he gives, it's Kodak and how Kodak basically owned
889. 01:16:59 the photography market. And then as digital cameras came on and as phones became,
890. 01:17:05 their cameras got better in phones, they basically just stopped paying attention to what was happening
891. 01:17:13 behind them or around them. And next to, you know, they're kind of out of it, like they're out of
892. 01:17:19 the camera market. So I thought this one was good. And it makes me think about like, what are the
893. 01:17:23 areas where I need to think about like, okay, paranoid, like, where should I be paranoid? And like,
894. 01:17:28 to go back to parenting, something's vying for my children's attention. Right. And I need to be
895. 01:17:34 paranoid about that. And I need to be paranoid about the fact that like, they're going to give
896. 01:17:38 their attention to something. Am I helping them give it? Am I encouraging them to give it to good
897. 01:17:43 things? Or am I encouraging them to give it to bad things? Or am I neglecting that? And like,
898. 01:17:47 that's, that's really where this one triggered for me is like, I need to be paranoid about where my
899. 01:17:50 kids attention is going. And how do I help them put that in the right places?
900. 01:17:54 Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the heart of the approach we've taken with the devices. We've got
901. 01:18:01 this mantra create not consume. We don't mind if our kids use devices, but we don't want them to just
902. 01:18:09 mindlessly consume things from the endless feeds. So if you're gonna, if you want more time for good
903. 01:18:16 notes, that's fine. If you want to use it to like a pay-to-be to edit the podcast, like, that's cool.
904. 01:18:24 Computers are really powerful tools, but let's use them with the intention of making something. It
905. 01:18:30 kind of changes the the interaction with the technology. And hopefully, I guess, jury is still out,
906. 01:18:37 hopefully by doing that, we've helped crease them into like positive uses of the technology.
907. 01:18:43 That's really what we're after. And we want to model that ourselves too. Like, we don't want to
908. 01:18:48 let the machines steal from us, but we also don't want to just completely avoid the machines because
909. 01:18:54 you can do all this bad stuff on it. That's not effective either. Anyways, this isn't the parent
910. 01:19:00 team podcast. Sorry, I didn't mean to take us down that route, but that was my example.
911. 01:19:05 Maybe we should have you and Katie come on the Intentional Family sometime. That'd be cool.
912. 01:19:09 I'm fine, right? I'll be there. You're gonna have to convince her.
913. 01:19:12 All right. The last chapter, not really a chapter, but section of the book is the conclusion. It's
914. 01:19:20 very short couple pages. Two things I jotted down from this. One is the cargo cult, which is where
915. 01:19:26 people think that imitating what they see from technologically advanced people will bring them
916. 01:19:31 wealth. And then the circle of competence. This is really the one that I think is worth
917. 01:19:35 maybe discussing a little bit where you have knowledge or experience and are competent to think
918. 01:19:41 effectively about something. And this is not something that I have an action item associated
919. 01:19:47 with or anything like that. But it's something that I'm always kind of asking myself. The circle
920. 01:19:51 of competence, if I get real specific with a topic, for example, that I want to make a YouTube video
921. 01:19:57 on, I feel like then I feel I can add value to the world. But if you just think about big picture
922. 01:20:05 stuff, like let's just talk about productivity, for example, who do you think of when you think of
923. 01:20:10 the productivity guy? Maybe it's David Allen or maybe right now it's Ali Abdahl. And if you if
924. 01:20:17 you try to compare yourself to somebody like that, you know, I'm just not going to do anything.
925. 01:20:21 They know way more about this than I do. Who am I to speak to this? But if I can drill down
926. 01:20:26 specifically into something like the PKM stack and helping people apply values based principles
927. 01:20:31 to their personal knowledge management workflows, they can be more productive and creative is like,
928. 01:20:35 Oh, okay. Now I have some competence in this area, because this is what I've been doing. And
929. 01:20:40 this is how I've been able to do it. So I think recognizing that circle of competence, that's
930. 01:20:47 that's important. But also I don't think it's is it's cut and dried or as obvious as maybe it seems.
931. 01:20:53 Anything else you want to talk about from the conclusion?
932. 01:20:56 No, you you pegged mine too, right? So circle of competence was and it was more of a check for me
933. 01:21:02 to say, Hey, are you operating slightly outside that circle of competence in the area where they
934. 01:21:09 call they say is bad, it's the bad zone where you think you're competent, but you're really not.
935. 01:21:13 And I would like, I want to think about that. And it's like, where am I trying to do that? But
936. 01:21:19 I'm actually not competent in there, then gain those skills if I if I want them.
937. 01:21:23 Yeah, basically stay in your lane. Yeah, exactly. Stay in your lane.
938. 01:21:27 All right. Well, we made it. Good job. We did. We did.
939. 01:21:34 That was hard. That was hard because there were so many models and I like mental models. I learned
940. 01:21:39 from this book that I really like mental models. Yep, me too. All right. So do you have any action
941. 01:21:46 items from this book? I don't think I do. I'm not nothing clearly stands out, you know, as something
942. 01:21:54 that I should do an action item on or, you know, continue ideas that come from this book. And I
943. 01:22:00 have things that I want to learn more about, but nothing that I would solidify into an action item
944. 01:22:06 from this book. Overall, I just enjoyed, you know, reading it and either reviewing or learning the
945. 01:22:13 new the new models. Yep. I agree. I don't think there's anything specific from this. I think if
946. 01:22:20 you were to go through like the great mental models, you could possibly have an action item.
947. 01:22:24 It was like, these are seven models, figure out ways to use these. There's too many to do that
948. 01:22:29 here. So really, the takeaway is if any one of these resonated, then you should be thinking about how
949. 01:22:38 might I apply that? And maybe through some of the stories, it would have sparked something tangential.
950. 01:22:43 But that wasn't the case for me with one exception. I already kind of mentioned it.
951. 01:22:48 My upcoming book was mentioned in this, in this, this one. So I'll get to that in a minute here.
952. 01:22:57 But before we do that, we need to talk about style and rating. So this was my book. I will go first.
953. 01:23:04 I really like the style. It is very different than what I expected. And just because I came into this
954. 01:23:14 basing my experience with mental models on the great mental models, there's three soon to be a
955. 01:23:22 fourth book in that series. And we've covered two of them for Bookworm. And I think I read the third
956. 01:23:27 one. I can't remember if I'm talking to my head. They're sitting on the shelf right over there.
957. 01:23:32 Great books. But those are kind of like the reference books. And that was kind of what I thought of.
958. 01:23:38 When you're thinking about mental models, it's going to be these things where we're going to dig
959. 01:23:42 deep on these specific things. And that's not what this book is at all. This is kind of like a
960. 01:23:48 cursory glance of all these different mental models. It's different. That's not necessarily
961. 01:23:54 better or worse. It just is. And I think back to the question that you asked at the very beginning,
962. 01:24:02 you know, you're going to recommend a book on mental models. So somebody, which one do you recommend?
963. 01:24:07 I really don't know. I will recommend you don't read this one and try to write down every mental
964. 01:24:14 model that they mentioned from personal experience. That's not a good approach. I think this one has
965. 01:24:22 a little bit more laid back casual style as supported by the visuals. I think this one maybe
966. 01:24:32 is more fun to read than the other books on mental models. But I also think there's a possibility
967. 01:24:40 that if you're really into the topic, you'll start reading about a mental model. It'll be the first
968. 01:24:45 time you've come across that you'd be like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. And then before you
969. 01:24:50 really know what's happened, they've moved on to something else. When that happens, it's a little
970. 01:24:55 bit jarring. So I don't know. It feels weird to go into this like super thinking the big book of
971. 01:25:04 mental models. Read it for funsies. Like, but that's kind of what you have to do. I think it's a
972. 01:25:14 really great book though. And I think I don't know how much I will go back to it. I'm not sure how
973. 01:25:20 much I'm going to recommend it. I will say just by having it out and reading it the last couple
974. 01:25:26 weeks, people who have been in my house, people who live here and also people who just come over
975. 01:25:31 like, Oh, that looks really interesting. And they pick it up and they thumb through it. And I don't
976. 01:25:36 know. So for people who are not even they don't even know that they're interested in the topic of
977. 01:25:41 mental models, this is probably more approachable. So I think depending depending on where you are
978. 01:25:47 in your your journey, that might change which one I would recommend. But I am very glad that I read
979. 01:25:52 this one specifically. I think for me, I wish I would have read this three years ago, before I
980. 01:26:02 really got into the topic. Once I got into the topic and I realized it's really big into mental
981. 01:26:08 models, I feel like I was kind of already past who this book was really for. I'm still glad that
982. 01:26:15 we read it. And I thought this was a really cool conversation. But if you're just trying to
983. 01:26:23 add more mental models to your toolkit, I'm not sure this is the best way to do it. I don't know,
984. 01:26:32 like, I'm kind of dancing around and adding a whole bunch of caveats. It's like, who this is,
985. 01:26:37 this is for, but I am going to rate it for stars. And I would recommend like, if you're interested
986. 01:26:41 in this topic at all, it's at least worth picking up and putting on your bookshelf. So not your
987. 01:26:46 digital bookshelf, your physical bookshelf, I think it's got value there where you take it out
988. 01:26:50 and you look at something because you, and you know, I had a book on this. I wonder if I can find it.
989. 01:26:55 You know, this is the book that you go to, you look up the mental model in the back, and then
990. 01:27:00 chances are there's an interesting visual or a funny picture that goes with it that kind of
991. 01:27:06 triggers something as a reference work. But I think if you're just looking for something to read,
992. 01:27:12 I find it hard to picture someone just picking this up and just thumbing through it. You know,
993. 01:27:17 it's on their nightstand. Okay, I'm done with this one in the put away. I guess it's not really a
994. 01:27:22 great bookworm book is what I'm after. But it's because it's not a deep dive on a specific topic.
995. 01:27:30 So I don't know. But that being said, I do think it's a, it's a good book, and I do recommend it
996. 01:27:36 and I'm going to rate it four stars. Alrighty, so I mean, I grew with a lot of what Mike said.
997. 01:27:42 I know that's a very blanket way to start this. I'm very glad that I read this book.
998. 01:27:49 I do not think this is a book that I will read again. If I would read it again, it would be
999. 01:27:55 chapter by chapter spaced out, right? So it's like, oh, I would go in and I would just read chapter one
1000. 01:28:01 again. And I would read it strategically the second time. So the second time I would read it to look
1001. 01:28:08 for models that I'm less familiar with and then go and look up those models, right? So I would have
1002. 01:28:13 a, I would have a very big drive or motive, motivation for doing it, reading it to cover to cover again.
1003. 01:28:21 I don't think at this stage for Mike and I who have thought about mental models, you know, a decent
1004. 01:28:28 amount. I don't think it's, I don't think it'll be worth it. Even to the point where I was reading it
1005. 01:28:32 and I was thinking, okay, I get where this book is going. I understand what we're doing here in
1006. 01:28:38 terms of bookworm, but like this, this book isn't, I wouldn't read this book in this way, right?
1007. 01:28:45 Like I wouldn't read it just straight through to, to capture all the mental models because
1008. 01:28:49 partially my brain doesn't work that way. Like I read this and get overwhelmed because there's
1009. 01:28:53 300 plus models and I think I want to learn more about some of these models, but I need to finish
1010. 01:28:57 the book, but I want to learn more about these models and I go into this cycle. So that, but that's
1011. 01:29:01 a personal thing. I think for someone who is interested in thinking, interested in mental models,
1012. 01:29:08 interested in making decisions and or just being an overall more intelligent human,
1013. 01:29:14 I think, I mean, you hand them this book right away, right? Like you just give them this book and say,
1014. 01:29:19 go read this, get an overview of the way people think and the way people make decisions and the
1015. 01:29:23 way people use statistics and those things and you'll be way better off for it. I also think it's
1016. 01:29:29 really, really good for people who want to figure out things they want to dive deeper into from a
1017. 01:29:35 thinking perspective or from a decision-making perspective. So I think those two uses are really
1018. 01:29:39 good. I agree with Mike that I don't think it's a very good bookworm book, but I actually liked the
1019. 01:29:44 way we did the episode, right? Like by constraining us to pick one, even though I cheated, right?
1020. 01:29:50 Like constraining us to pick one, it made it for a fun episode because we actually had to
1021. 01:29:53 think about which one we wanted to talk about on the show. So this, I don't know if this will make
1022. 01:30:00 sense once I give my rating or not. I think this is a five-star book, right? Like I really liked
1023. 01:30:05 this book. I really liked the way it was laid out. I really liked the narrative style, but I also
1024. 01:30:10 wouldn't read it again. Like I wouldn't read it cover to cover again, which is weird to me. Like
1025. 01:30:15 it's weird to me to rate a five-star book but say like I'm probably never going to read this again,
1026. 01:30:18 cover to cover. I agree with Mike that having the physical copy that you have on a shelf somewhere
1027. 01:30:25 that you can then open up and go to explore a little bit more, I think that is a much more
1028. 01:30:33 valuable version of this book than the digital copy without a doubt. All right, let's put super
1029. 01:30:40 thinking on the shelf. What's next, Corey? So next, we are going to talk about our upcoming books,
1030. 01:30:47 which is my book, and this is "Scarcity Brain" by Michael Easter. So I'm excited to look into some
1031. 01:30:54 brain science a little bit more, dig into that a little bit deeper and figure out how we're
1032. 01:30:59 triggered and how we're thought kind of manipulated, if you will, to come back and think about some
1033. 01:31:06 certain things. So as I said last time, Michael Easter is a journalist, but he's written a couple
1034. 01:31:12 different things, a comfort crisis, and I think this is going to be a good book for us
1035. 01:31:16 for next time. I started this one today at lunch, and it starts off pretty intense. I'm looking
1036. 01:31:24 forward to this. Okay, good, good, good. How about you, Mike? What's yours? Yeah, the book after this
1037. 01:31:31 was mentioned in super thinking, and it was presented as a mental model, and that is radical
1038. 01:31:40 candor. It says one of those two by two grids. This was one of the core values for the day job,
1039. 01:31:50 and it was one of the things realized that people didn't really understand what it meant.
1040. 01:31:55 There's a whole book about radical candor by the person who came up with this model, who is Kim Scott,
1041. 01:32:03 and it came up again when I think I told you a while back I interviewed for a director of
1042. 01:32:10 operations role with David Pirell, the writing guy with write a passage, and in the job description,
1043. 01:32:16 they talked about radical candor versus ruinous empathy, all that kind of stuff.
1044. 01:32:22 I resonated with me when I saw it in the job description, but then I realized that I've never
1045. 01:32:29 actually read this book. I feel like I understand the model because I've gone through materials and
1046. 01:32:35 like the abbreviated cliff notes version of it, but this might be a cool bookworm book,
1047. 01:32:42 and I was thinking back to the difficult conversations book that you had picked
1048. 01:32:45 before I knew that you were fascinated by like the company culture stuff. And I was like,
1049. 01:32:51 oh man, this is perfect. I'm really glad you picked this book. I might be more excited about
1050. 01:32:57 your next book than my next book, but at the same time it's going to be good. I've wanted to read
1051. 01:33:01 this for a while. I saw this pop up whenever and I wanted to read this for a while, so I'm really
1052. 01:33:06 glad you picked it. Awesome. Yeah, so we'll do that after "Scarcity Brain." You got any gap books?
1053. 01:33:13 So I'm still working on liminal thinking. I really want to do little thinking, but man,
1054. 01:33:18 the last couple of weeks have just been a been a burser. So liminal thinking still. How about you?
1055. 01:33:26 All right. Well, having started "Scarcity Brain," I feel like I will have time for a gap book this
1056. 01:33:33 time. So I have one that is a little bit shorter that I bought a while back. I've read "Building a
1057. 01:33:41 Second Brain" by Tiago Forte. As part of that, he has this para method, and he actually has a book
1058. 01:33:48 called "The Para Method," which is a bit shorter. And I really enjoyed building a second brain. So
1059. 01:33:56 I know this is one aspect of that model, but I am looking forward to going through this
1060. 01:34:02 book. I really don't know what to expect. Part of me is thinking, why does it have to be a whole book
1061. 01:34:10 about this? So I'll report back, I guess. So I've read about the para method, but not in book format,
1062. 01:34:19 in blog post format. So I'm intrigued to see what you say about the book version of it,
1063. 01:34:23 whether it gets too long-winded. Yep. So we will see. All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening.
1064. 01:34:32 If you want to support the show, you can do that and get extended ad-free episodes. And also,
1065. 01:34:40 bootleg episodes, which are completely unedited and have the entire call from
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1071. 01:35:22 uploaded as soon as we get done. So those actually come out a couple weeks ahead of time. So if you
1072. 01:35:28 want early access to Bookworm, then that is the way to do that. And there'll be a link in the show
1073. 01:35:33 notes that you can use to go sign up. Thank you so much to everyone who is a Bookworm Pro
1074. 01:35:41 supporter and is willing to throw some money at this to help us keep the show going. Really appreciate
1075. 01:35:47 it. If you are reading along with us, pick up Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter. And we will talk to you
1076. 01:35:53 in a couple of weeks.