198: Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike.
2. 00:00:00 So we didn't have any follow-up items from last week.
3. 00:00:05 - It's true.
4. 00:00:05 Like you put the, like, I don't know what,
5. 00:00:08 I don't know the names of emoji,
6. 00:00:09 but you put that face in there on the last one.
7. 00:00:11 It was like, "What, we had no follow-up."
8. 00:00:13 And I remember thinking back going,
9. 00:00:14 "Yeah, we didn't have any follow-up."
10. 00:00:16 But you have something in the show notes
11. 00:00:18 that I think will be a fun pseudo follow-up
12. 00:00:20 or replacement for follow-up.
13. 00:00:22 So tell us what you're doing.
14. 00:00:24 - Yeah.
15. 00:00:25 Well, first of all, I think that's the screaming face emoji.
16. 00:00:28 And the only reason I know that
17. 00:00:29 is 'cause I use an app called Rocket,
18. 00:00:31 which allows you to put like Slack-style emoji anywhere.
19. 00:00:34 So I have this trigger of like the double colon,
20. 00:00:36 and then you can use the picker
21. 00:00:38 and you can just kind of like type what you want
22. 00:00:41 and it'll show you the emoji.
23. 00:00:44 So highly recommend Rocket, but yeah.
24. 00:00:48 The thing that is actually in the notes is Mac stock.
25. 00:00:52 And Mac stock, actually, I'll quiz you.
26. 00:00:55 Have you ever heard of Mac stock before?
27. 00:00:57 - The only way reason I know of Mac stock
28. 00:00:59 is because of you and your wife.
29. 00:01:02 That's the only reason I know of Mac stock.
30. 00:01:03 Otherwise, no.
31. 00:01:05 What's the other one that everybody used to go to
32. 00:01:08 whose own relay?
33. 00:01:09 They don't do it anymore,
34. 00:01:10 but there was another one that everybody used to go to.
35. 00:01:12 - Yeah, there was...
36. 00:01:14 - I was in Ireland.
37. 00:01:17 - Oh, the one in Ireland, I don't know what that is.
38. 00:01:19 Yeah, there was one in Ireland that Jason Snell,
39. 00:01:22 I think, went to and a couple other people,
40. 00:01:23 but it wasn't everybody on relay sort of thing.
41. 00:01:28 I think probably everybody but me on relay goes to WWDC
42. 00:01:32 in some way, shape or form, but I've never been.
43. 00:01:36 Actually, I was going to go to Mac world,
44. 00:01:39 the year that it got canceled.
45. 00:01:41 I had finally convinced somebody to go with me.
46. 00:01:44 And out of that being canceled came Mac stock.
47. 00:01:48 There were a couple of guys who missed Mac world
48. 00:01:51 and they wanted to do something local
49. 00:01:52 so they could hang out with their fellow Apple nerds.
50. 00:01:55 And one of them lives in a town called Woodstock, Illinois,
51. 00:01:59 which is where they shot the movie Groundhog Day.
52. 00:02:01 So it's kind of this cool historic little town
53. 00:02:05 that's got this square in the middle
54. 00:02:07 with an awesome bookstore, by the way,
55. 00:02:09 called Re Between the Lines.
56. 00:02:11 I'll put a link in the show notes.
57. 00:02:13 And I heard about it and I saw that it was
58. 00:02:19 like three hours from my house.
59. 00:02:20 So I just drove down one year and sat next to
60. 00:02:24 Don McAllister screencast online,
61. 00:02:27 watched the first Mac stock and met a bunch of people
62. 00:02:30 at lunch who, you know, I'm an introvert,
63. 00:02:32 but I went down there, didn't know anybody.
64. 00:02:36 And then I just like sat down with a bunch of people.
65. 00:02:38 I didn't know at lunchtime and started talking
66. 00:02:39 about Apple stuff.
67. 00:02:40 Like it was pretty cool.
68. 00:02:42 So the next year I weaseled my way into speaking
69. 00:02:46 and I've been speaking there actually ever since.
70. 00:02:50 It's a smaller Apple conference, essentially.
71. 00:02:54 And the URL for the website is max.conference.xpo.
72. 00:02:58 And that will be in the show notes.
73. 00:03:00 There's a handful of speakers that present these sessions
74. 00:03:05 on Saturday and Sunday.
75. 00:03:07 I think the dates are like July 11th and 12th,
76. 00:03:10 something like that.
77. 00:03:11 It's that second Saturday and Sunday in July.
78. 00:03:14 And there's always like great sessions
79. 00:03:17 on how to do different things by different people.
80. 00:03:19 Allison Sheridan, Brittany Schuenner,
81. 00:03:23 Chuck, or sorry, Brittany Smith, Chuck Joiner.
82. 00:03:27 I'm mixing up names here.
83. 00:03:29 But a lot of like,
84. 00:03:31 Mac nerds basically presenting on,
85. 00:03:33 this is how you do certain stuff.
86. 00:03:35 So if you're interested in that sort of thing at all,
87. 00:03:37 it's definitely a good time.
88. 00:03:38 And what I like about the conference
89. 00:03:40 is that it's pretty small.
90. 00:03:41 Even in its heyday when David Sparks
91. 00:03:44 and Stephen Hackett were there recording
92. 00:03:45 Mac Power users episode 500 live,
93. 00:03:48 it was only a couple hundred people.
94. 00:03:50 So you're there in this smaller town
95. 00:03:53 and everyone just kind of hangs out together.
96. 00:03:55 It's very easy to meet new friends at Mac stock.
97. 00:04:00 And the organizer, Mike Potter,
98. 00:04:03 has kind of been planting this bug in my ear
99. 00:04:06 for the last couple of years about,
100. 00:04:07 "Hey Mike, you'd be great to do these workshops.
101. 00:04:09 I wanna add these workshops at some point."
102. 00:04:12 So we had some conversation this year
103. 00:04:14 and it turns out with the venue that they've got
104. 00:04:17 that they can get an extra day.
105. 00:04:19 And now we've got workshops that are happening at Mac stock.
106. 00:04:23 So these are gonna be like longer sessions
107. 00:04:25 that are more hands-on
108. 00:04:26 and they'll be for these sessions
109. 00:04:27 that'll happen on the Friday
110. 00:04:29 before Mac stock officially starts.
111. 00:04:32 So there's two options.
112. 00:04:33 You can sign up for like the weekend pass,
113. 00:04:35 which is the Saturday, Sunday
114. 00:04:36 and the normal Mac stock sessions.
115. 00:04:39 That I think is $299.
116. 00:04:41 And then the, to add on the day of workshops
117. 00:04:44 is an extra $100.
118. 00:04:46 So $399.
119. 00:04:48 I do have a coupon code for this.
120. 00:04:50 So if you want to save $30,
121. 00:04:52 you can use the coupon code, Mike Schmitz.
122. 00:04:54 But if it's something that you can swing,
123. 00:04:57 I can't recommend this conference enough.
124. 00:05:01 I really, really enjoy it.
125. 00:05:02 I'm there every single year.
126. 00:05:04 If you are a bookworm listener,
127. 00:05:06 please come say hi.
128. 00:05:07 I like meeting people who listen to the show.
129. 00:05:10 And yeah, it's gonna be a good time.
130. 00:05:14 So definitely check it out,
131. 00:05:17 max.conferenceanxpo.com.
132. 00:05:20 - How long have you been doing it?
133. 00:05:23 So you said you started when?
134. 00:05:24 Roughly like five, 10 years, what's the point?
135. 00:05:27 - I don't know what number they're on.
136. 00:05:30 And I don't know if they continued the official numbering,
137. 00:05:32 like when they had to go virtual over COVID
138. 00:05:34 and stuff like that.
139. 00:05:35 But it's been almost 10 years, if not 10 years.
140. 00:05:39 And the first official year, I guess,
141. 00:05:43 was the year that I talked, Mike into letting me speak.
142. 00:05:46 I had just started working with the Asian efficiency team
143. 00:05:50 and shared some of the OmniFocus videos
144. 00:05:54 that I had been working on.
145. 00:05:55 He's like, yeah, let's give this a shot.
146. 00:05:57 And I have been there every year since.
147. 00:06:00 - Yeah, that's awesome.
148. 00:06:01 That's awesome.
149. 00:06:01 That size of the conference sounds perfect
150. 00:06:04 because I used to go every year
151. 00:06:09 to a couple of different conferences.
152. 00:06:11 One was huge, like 5,000, 7,000 people.
153. 00:06:15 And it just felt so unreal.
154. 00:06:19 Like in terms of like,
155. 00:06:20 there's just so many people floating around
156. 00:06:22 and you know your little groups and stuff.
157. 00:06:23 But then there's another one I used to go to every year.
158. 00:06:26 And it's about 500.
159. 00:06:27 You know, it ranged between 400 and 500 people.
160. 00:06:30 And it felt like the perfect kind of sweet spot.
161. 00:06:33 So that size of a conference makes a lot of sense.
162. 00:06:36 You can really actually get to know people there
163. 00:06:37 and then form good friendships
164. 00:06:40 where a lot of other ones you can't.
165. 00:06:42 They're just too big and everything feels too passerby.
166. 00:06:45 If you will.
167. 00:06:48 So that's awesome.
168. 00:06:49 MaxDock, July.
169. 00:06:51 All right, are you ready to get into today's book?
170. 00:06:55 - Let's do it.
171. 00:06:56 - All right, so today's book was called Scarcity Brain
172. 00:06:59 or is called Scarcity Brain.
173. 00:07:01 It's by an author named Michael Easter.
174. 00:07:04 He's written some books before the comfort crisis.
175. 00:07:07 And that's how I got introduced to Michael Easter
176. 00:07:11 is through the comfort crisis.
177. 00:07:13 And I wanted to read this one.
178. 00:07:16 This is his new one out.
179. 00:07:17 And it was different than I thought it was gonna be.
180. 00:07:19 So I'm excited to talk about it.
181. 00:07:21 But I'll give you a little intro on the different sections.
182. 00:07:26 So we've got an intro and then we have 11 chapters
183. 00:07:30 and an epilogue.
184. 00:07:31 So he breaks it down.
185. 00:07:34 Unlike some other books,
186. 00:07:35 I can't remember if Mike and I talked about this on the show
187. 00:07:37 or if we just talked about it outside.
188. 00:07:40 This book actually takes the full page count.
189. 00:07:43 He does not have 30 or 40 pages at the end of the book
190. 00:07:47 where there's appendices and charts and figures
191. 00:07:50 and notes and chapter notes and all that stuff.
192. 00:07:52 So when you're looking at reading this one,
193. 00:07:54 go into it knowing that that's the full page count.
194. 00:07:57 He starts off with this concept of the scarcity loop,
195. 00:08:01 which we're gonna talk about in the first few chapters.
196. 00:08:04 Then he gets into basically the scarcity loop
197. 00:08:07 or the scarcity loop model applied to different things.
198. 00:08:10 So the first four chapters are basically all about
199. 00:08:14 the scarcity loop and then craving
200. 00:08:16 and why we want more of these things.
201. 00:08:19 And then five, six, seven, eight, nine,
202. 00:08:22 I guess five through 11,
203. 00:08:23 you have escape certainty, influence, food, stuff,
204. 00:08:26 information, happiness, and then you have epilogue
205. 00:08:29 is the last one.
206. 00:08:30 So that's a general overview of it.
207. 00:08:34 Mike and I didn't really talk about this prior
208. 00:08:35 coming into it, but I think we'll hit all of these.
209. 00:08:39 We'll just do them kind of fairly quickly
210. 00:08:42 'cause there's really no good way to,
211. 00:08:45 basically the way I just broke them up
212. 00:08:46 is probably the best way you can break them up
213. 00:08:47 and I don't think it makes sense to talk about them like that.
214. 00:08:49 So we'll hit them, it's just some of them,
215. 00:08:51 I think will be a little shorter based
216. 00:08:53 on how we wanna cover them.
217. 00:08:55 So I'll start off by saying, Mike,
218. 00:08:57 what did you think about this concept of the scarcity loop?
219. 00:09:03 I think the concept is interesting
220. 00:09:06 and the first part of the book kind of played out
221. 00:09:09 the way that I thought it would,
222. 00:09:12 but the rest of it kind of did not.
223. 00:09:17 I feel like the scarcity loop that he's talking about
224. 00:09:21 is a really solid, probably science backed idea,
225. 00:09:26 but he doesn't have, you mentioned
226. 00:09:30 like there's no visuals at the end and the appendices,
227. 00:09:32 there's no visuals, period for this.
228. 00:09:34 Yeah.
229. 00:09:35 It's not a single diagram.
230. 00:09:37 The little slot machine,
231. 00:09:38 but there's the little slot machine
232. 00:09:40 that's a little break up chapter.
233. 00:09:42 That's true, but I was waiting for a visual
234. 00:09:46 of this scarcity loop.
235. 00:09:48 This feels very much like the habit loop
236. 00:09:53 from the power of habit
237. 00:09:54 and then you can build the rest of the book on this thing,
238. 00:09:56 which he kind of built the book off of this thing.
239. 00:09:59 But though I think towards the end,
240. 00:10:00 it kind of just goes in some weird directions,
241. 00:10:03 not weird as in like why the heck is this in here,
242. 00:10:06 but interesting, not where I thought it was gonna go.
243. 00:10:09 (laughs)
244. 00:10:09 Yeah, I didn't expect to say this upfront
245. 00:10:13 or this fast upfront,
246. 00:10:15 but I think Michael Easter may just want to travel
247. 00:10:19 and like do things.
248. 00:10:21 So we figure out like,
249. 00:10:22 how do I take these experiences
250. 00:10:25 and then turn them into a book
251. 00:10:26 and justify it as like this cool expense?
252. 00:10:28 And I'm not knocking that on any level.
253. 00:10:31 I'm just saying, I really think that's why.
254. 00:10:33 And as we talk about these chapters,
255. 00:10:35 you'll understand more if you haven't read the book with us.
256. 00:10:38 So, okay, so let's get into what the actual,
257. 00:10:42 this idea of scarcity.
258. 00:10:43 So we're in the introduction right now.
259. 00:10:44 He talks about that we often talk about developing
260. 00:10:47 good habits, but we don't talk about getting rid of bad ones.
261. 00:10:50 That moderation is key.
262. 00:10:52 We have these ideas of the scarcity queue.
263. 00:10:55 See, even right there, he uses the word queue.
264. 00:10:58 Like lean into this loop.
265. 00:10:59 Come on, it's right there.
266. 00:11:01 Yeah, it is.
267. 00:11:02 It is.
268. 00:11:03 So we got the scarcity queue, right?
269. 00:11:04 Where we think we don't have enough of something,
270. 00:11:06 then the scarcity mindset,
271. 00:11:08 which he breaks down as queue fixation behavior
272. 00:11:10 and then the death of moderation.
273. 00:11:11 So he then contrasts that with this idea
274. 00:11:16 of this abundance loop,
275. 00:11:17 which would be this permanent change
276. 00:11:19 that helps us overcome this whole idea of the scarcity loop.
277. 00:11:22 So I'm trying not to give away
278. 00:11:25 the actual scarcity loop yet,
279. 00:11:28 but more talk about this idea of scarcity and moderation.
280. 00:11:32 And that's essentially what he hits on
281. 00:11:34 in this first introduction.
282. 00:11:37 Yeah, the introduction is fine.
283. 00:11:40 I think I mentioned when we recorded the last episode,
284. 00:11:43 I had just started this book.
285. 00:11:44 I think I had read through the introduction.
286. 00:11:47 And you kind of alluded to the fact
287. 00:11:49 that he wants to travel these different places.
288. 00:11:51 It's a very like intense story.
289. 00:11:54 He's in this place where it sounds pretty dangerous.
290. 00:11:59 It's kind of like, what in the world am I doing here?
291. 00:12:02 And then it's like,
292. 00:12:03 oh, I'm talking to these people about this scarcity loop.
293. 00:12:07 It's very much a movie trailer style introduction.
294. 00:12:12 Yes.
295. 00:12:15 Which I think he does,
296. 00:12:17 I actually think he's a pretty good storyteller.
297. 00:12:21 Yes.
298. 00:12:21 He's kind of immersed in the,
299. 00:12:25 when he's telling me these stories,
300. 00:12:26 I thought they were actually like really good stories.
301. 00:12:29 Now, how well did they relate to the point
302. 00:12:31 or the takeaway of the book?
303. 00:12:33 That's a whole other conversation.
304. 00:12:35 But like, I was really like kind of taken in
305. 00:12:40 by the stories he tells.
306. 00:12:41 He comes from a journalist background.
307. 00:12:43 So maybe that's where some of that comes from.
308. 00:12:45 Is he's good at this,
309. 00:12:46 how do we hook him?
310. 00:12:47 How do we get him to read through the entire article?
311. 00:12:49 And he's then taken that and molded it down into the book,
312. 00:12:52 the longer format for the book.
313. 00:12:55 All right, so we've got this set up with the introduction.
314. 00:12:58 Now we actually get into the scarcity loop.
315. 00:13:00 And he makes a switch here in his stories
316. 00:13:03 and he goes into slot machines.
317. 00:13:06 So he starts to talk about slot machines
318. 00:13:08 and how slot machines are designed and engineered.
319. 00:13:10 We've gone from wire.
320. 00:13:11 From Baghdad to Las Vegas.
321. 00:13:14 Yes.
322. 00:13:14 And it's like, boom, so it's fairly quick.
323. 00:13:18 And we're talking about how they're meant to kind of hook us
324. 00:13:23 and keep us going.
325. 00:13:24 And he'll finally,
326. 00:13:25 and this is where Alex will introduce it.
327. 00:13:26 So he finally gets into the three steps of the scarcity loop.
328. 00:13:28 And the three steps are,
329. 00:13:30 you have the opportunity to get something valuable.
330. 00:13:31 You have an unpredictable reward.
331. 00:13:33 So that's really, you don't know at any given time
332. 00:13:36 whether you're gonna get that thing of value or not.
333. 00:13:38 And then you can do this in a quickly repeatable fashion.
334. 00:13:41 So if you think about a slot machine,
335. 00:13:42 this actually makes complete sense.
336. 00:13:44 I have the opportunity to win.
337. 00:13:46 So there's step one, right?
338. 00:13:48 I have the unpredictable reward.
339. 00:13:49 Well, every time I pull the lever,
340. 00:13:50 I might win or I might not, right?
341. 00:13:52 And then can I do it fast?
342. 00:13:54 And yes, I can pull that lever as many times
343. 00:13:56 as my hand will pull that lever
344. 00:13:57 or as many times as I keep feeding money
345. 00:13:59 and pulling that lever.
346. 00:14:00 So that's essentially the nutshell of chapter one,
347. 00:14:04 which chapter one is called the scarcity loop.
348. 00:14:07 So I thought this was a good,
349. 00:14:10 I mean, I hadn't really thought about, you know,
350. 00:14:12 scarcity, moderation, these ideas of bad habits
351. 00:14:16 and how they might or might not run this loop.
352. 00:14:19 It seemed and it still seems, right?
353. 00:14:21 Like it's a good way to explain this idea
354. 00:14:25 of me feeling like I have scarcity.
355. 00:14:27 So therefore I overdo it in certain areas.
356. 00:14:31 - Yeah, this chapter kind of set up
357. 00:14:35 a direction for the book that I don't think he stuck with,
358. 00:14:42 which I think ultimately is okay
359. 00:14:45 because this kind of felt very much like,
360. 00:14:49 maybe it was the discussion of the slot machines,
361. 00:14:51 but it was sort of like your attention is being taken
362. 00:14:56 by these engineers and it's almost like all the research
363. 00:15:01 that goes into holding your attention
364. 00:15:04 with the gamification of these slot machines
365. 00:15:07 and how they went from these things
366. 00:15:08 that people spent a couple minutes at
367. 00:15:10 to things that you'd spend all day doing
368. 00:15:13 just because they're fun, whether or not you win
369. 00:15:16 and the close wins and all that kind of stuff.
370. 00:15:19 It felt like it was setting it up
371. 00:15:21 for a very negative portrayal.
372. 00:15:24 Like I guess the direction I was sort of anticipating
373. 00:15:27 this was going was sort of like the social dilemma
374. 00:15:30 that Netflix documentary where you have these people
375. 00:15:34 who are talking about these things
376. 00:15:35 and then it just continues to go deeper and deeper and deeper
377. 00:15:38 and like the whole time you're going down that path,
378. 00:15:41 you feel more and more uncomfortable.
379. 00:15:44 But at some point in a few chapters,
380. 00:15:46 he just kind of switches to telling stories.
381. 00:15:48 (laughs)
382. 00:15:50 - And there isn't a clean break.
383. 00:15:52 I mean, at least I didn't identify a clean break
384. 00:15:54 where I was like, oh, we're switching now.
385. 00:15:56 It was more just like, wait,
386. 00:15:58 this was not the way the book started.
387. 00:15:59 Like this was very much not the way the book started.
388. 00:16:01 - Yeah, this part was kind of what I thought the book
389. 00:16:04 was gonna be about when I looked at the cover
390. 00:16:08 and I read the description.
391. 00:16:10 I kind of felt like what I was gonna get
392. 00:16:13 was a scientific approach to maintaining my,
393. 00:16:18 I'll say attention, but it's really broader than that.
394. 00:16:22 I mean, the whole idea of scarcity is we never have enough.
395. 00:16:26 So I figured there would be a little bit of eye-opening
396. 00:16:30 enlightenment in terms of like you have enough.
397. 00:16:33 So just be content and kind of recognize
398. 00:16:37 that all these systems are engineered to get you
399. 00:16:41 to consume and want and have more.
400. 00:16:45 And there is a little bit of that,
401. 00:16:47 but this chapter by far is like the strongest version
402. 00:16:51 of that and then it kind of goes somewhere else.
403. 00:16:55 - Well, and I heard him talk about this book somewhere
404. 00:16:58 prior to reading it.
405. 00:16:59 Like I had heard him be interviewed by somebody
406. 00:17:02 and this is what hooked me to the book.
407. 00:17:04 It was like this idea of, I thought about it from a,
408. 00:17:09 are there things that I wanna stop doing?
409. 00:17:12 Okay, they're not necessarily bad.
410. 00:17:14 It's just a matter of I do them too much
411. 00:17:16 and I wanna stop that.
412. 00:17:17 And I'd heard him talk about this opportunity
413. 00:17:20 on particular reward, quick repeatability thing.
414. 00:17:21 And I was like, oh man, that seems like a really interesting
415. 00:17:23 way to analyze different things.
416. 00:17:27 They're in different scenarios.
417. 00:17:28 And if there's an action item I have from this book,
418. 00:17:31 it's definitely that.
419. 00:17:32 We're not there yet, but that's probably
420. 00:17:34 the key action item I have is can I look at,
421. 00:17:38 particularly those things that I'm not excited about
422. 00:17:41 continuing or continuing to the level that I do them?
423. 00:17:45 And is there a way for me to break one of those three?
424. 00:17:48 So one of the things he says in this first chapter
425. 00:17:50 is how to get out of the scarcity loop.
426. 00:17:52 Well, take the opportunity away,
427. 00:17:55 stop getting the rewards or slow the repetition down.
428. 00:17:59 And if you can do one of those three things,
429. 00:18:01 you can basically break the scarcity loop cycle.
430. 00:18:05 So I thought that was a good way.
431. 00:18:08 And I wanna think about that more,
432. 00:18:09 but I'm putting the cart before the horse as we go.
433. 00:18:12 What else do you have on chapter one?
434. 00:18:16 Well, there's some interesting stuff in here
435. 00:18:17 about casinos and how they work.
436. 00:18:20 One of the things I jotted down was that casino games
437. 00:18:24 return 87 to 98% of every dollar wager,
438. 00:18:28 which kind of goes back to the idea of like the close wins,
439. 00:18:32 which are you can kind of see,
440. 00:18:35 let's say you gotta get five cherries in a row.
441. 00:18:37 So you see him spin and you see the three,
442. 00:18:39 first three lock in right away, cherry, cherry, cherry.
443. 00:18:42 And then it like creates this expectation
444. 00:18:45 that maybe I'm gonna win this time.
445. 00:18:47 So then the next one that leads you along
446. 00:18:51 and it's another cherry.
447. 00:18:52 And then the next one takes even longer, finally stops.
448. 00:18:55 And oh, you just missed it.
449. 00:18:57 Well, that was close, but you lost.
450. 00:18:59 And a lot of times what will happen is you won't lose,
451. 00:19:02 let's say you bet a dollar, you won't lose the whole dollar,
452. 00:19:04 you'll win back 75 cents.
453. 00:19:07 And your brain views that as a win as opposed to a loss.
454. 00:19:11 The lab that the guy talked about in this section
455. 00:19:13 was kind of fascinating and it kind of opened my eyes
456. 00:19:16 to all of the, you kind of know this is going on
457. 00:19:20 from a distance, but when you get into the specifics,
458. 00:19:23 it really is kind of scary.
459. 00:19:27 How much they've done in terms of trying to keep you glued
460. 00:19:31 to the machine.
461. 00:19:33 Everything that's, everything about those games
462. 00:19:36 from the lights to the sounds is engineered to hook you.
463. 00:19:41 And I see that stuff, 'cause I remember going
464. 00:19:43 through the Las Vegas airport last summer,
465. 00:19:45 maybe it was on the way to crafting commerce
466. 00:19:48 or something, I don't know.
467. 00:19:49 And they had all those in the airport
468. 00:19:52 and people were lined up at them.
469. 00:19:54 And I was like, get me away from these
470. 00:19:56 'cause they're so loud, the airport itself
471. 00:19:59 is so dark and dreary, but then you have these bright,
472. 00:20:02 blaring slot machines everywhere you go.
473. 00:20:06 But there's definitely people who are attracted to that.
474. 00:20:09 And I think probably once you do it a little bit,
475. 00:20:12 you get hooked, I've just never done it.
476. 00:20:15 So it's not appealing to me in the least.
477. 00:20:17 - So the only time I've ever been in a casino
478. 00:20:21 was we were in New Orleans
479. 00:20:23 and to get to the restaurant we were gonna eat at,
480. 00:20:25 there was a casino between our hotel and the restaurant.
481. 00:20:28 And I said to my wife, I was like,
482. 00:20:29 "Hey, let's just walk through the casino."
483. 00:20:30 Like, I don't have any desire to do anything.
484. 00:20:32 Let's just walk through the casino.
485. 00:20:34 We went in, I was 50 feet inside.
486. 00:20:37 I immediately got this crazy headache
487. 00:20:39 from all the lights and music and all the stuff.
488. 00:20:42 And I was like, yeah, we should probably get out of here.
489. 00:20:45 But I had a formative experience when I was,
490. 00:20:47 I don't know, 12, 10, something like that.
491. 00:20:49 I was at a fundraiser for a church actually.
492. 00:20:54 And it was like a, play these games fundraiser.
493. 00:20:59 Well, the game was Kino.
494. 00:21:02 - Okay.
495. 00:21:02 - I mean, I had no idea what,
496. 00:21:03 like I still don't even know what Kino is.
497. 00:21:05 I don't remember what the game is at all.
498. 00:21:07 But all I remember is like,
499. 00:21:08 the money that I had to spend that night was gone so fast.
500. 00:21:12 And I thought to myself, I'm never gambling again.
501. 00:21:15 I'm never doing this again.
502. 00:21:16 Like this is a terrible thing.
503. 00:21:18 Your money just goes away really fast.
504. 00:21:19 And thankfully that's never triggered me
505. 00:21:21 to want to gamble again ever really.
506. 00:21:24 - I remember, I grew up in Wisconsin
507. 00:21:26 and there aren't many casinos in Wisconsin.
508. 00:21:29 There are a few, but I remember my grandma,
509. 00:21:33 she lived in Minnesota,
510. 00:21:35 my mom's family is from Minnesota.
511. 00:21:37 And they grew up in a small town Welch, Minnesota,
512. 00:21:40 which is like 60 people.
513. 00:21:42 And the thing of note in Welch is the big ski hill.
514. 00:21:46 But there's a small town like next to that
515. 00:21:49 called Red Wing, which is where everybody goes
516. 00:21:51 and does everything.
517. 00:21:52 That's the big city and it's maybe like 20,000 people.
518. 00:21:55 I don't know.
519. 00:21:56 But I remember going to visit my grandma all the time
520. 00:21:58 and she would always joke with my parents,
521. 00:22:02 like I'm gonna take your kids to the casino
522. 00:22:03 'cause she liked to go and play cards.
523. 00:22:05 She would always have cards at her house
524. 00:22:08 that had the corners clipped off.
525. 00:22:09 Like basically when they're done using the cards
526. 00:22:11 for a card game, they cut the sides off
527. 00:22:15 so they know that that one is done.
528. 00:22:17 And then they like give those away or sell them.
529. 00:22:19 I don't know, my grandma always had all of these decks
530. 00:22:22 of cards from the casino with the corners cut off.
531. 00:22:24 So she was always joking about how she's gonna take us
532. 00:22:26 to the casino and my parents were always,
533. 00:22:28 you better not.
534. 00:22:29 (laughs)
535. 00:22:31 That's awesome.
536. 00:22:31 All right, so we'll move on to chapter two.
537. 00:22:34 Chapter two, now we get into some more of the science
538. 00:22:38 behind the scarcity loop and how the scarcity loop hooks us.
539. 00:22:44 So this is where, and I still don't know how to work through
540. 00:22:49 this in my processing of this book,
541. 00:22:53 he mixes like evolution and nature and biology
542. 00:22:58 and then gambling and Baghdad and, right,
543. 00:23:02 like all of these other things in such a weird way
544. 00:23:06 that like I got used to it.
545. 00:23:07 You know, I mean, it's 11 chapters long
546. 00:23:09 so I got used to it by the end.
547. 00:23:11 But while I'm reading it like this first time
548. 00:23:13 'cause he talks about this optimal foraging theory
549. 00:23:16 that animals will do everything they can to get
550. 00:23:18 the most food for the least amount of work.
551. 00:23:20 Okay, that seems to make sense.
552. 00:23:22 Then that scarcity loop is an evolutionary trade
553. 00:23:24 and then we get into ding, ding, ding, dopamine,
554. 00:23:27 here we go, right?
555. 00:23:29 And we get into all these things.
556. 00:23:31 And I was just like, man, what a strange mix of like
557. 00:23:35 evolution later on religion, like in all of this,
558. 00:23:39 but let me get back to the summary of the chapter.
559. 00:23:42 So he does talk about this optimal foraging theory.
560. 00:23:45 He talks about the fact that the value or reward
561. 00:23:48 of a behavior depends on part,
562. 00:23:50 how often you'll think you'll get it.
563. 00:23:52 He says boring jobs, why some jobs are boring is
564. 00:23:56 'cause there's little unpredictability,
565. 00:23:57 so we might get a ton of value out of it,
566. 00:24:00 but we're gonna get value in a paycheck every Friday.
567. 00:24:02 And because there's a lot of predictability,
568. 00:24:06 little unpredictability, we go, okay, you know, whatever.
569. 00:24:09 And what I liked about this is,
570. 00:24:11 so I studied entrepreneurship a lot in my past life.
571. 00:24:14 And it says, this is why serial entrepreneurs exist,
572. 00:24:16 is because serial entrepreneurs,
573. 00:24:18 once the company becomes a stable company,
574. 00:24:22 and it's basically just churning and doing a good job
575. 00:24:25 and adding value and, you know,
576. 00:24:26 it's kind of a repeatable thing,
577. 00:24:28 they lose interest because they want
578. 00:24:30 that unpredictable reward.
579. 00:24:32 So what do they do?
580. 00:24:33 They leave the company and they spin off
581. 00:24:34 and they go and start another company.
582. 00:24:37 So I thought that was really interesting.
583. 00:24:39 He throws out, lastly, I'll stay here,
584. 00:24:42 is he throws out one,
585. 00:24:42 the basic learning and behavior formula.
586. 00:24:44 We do a thing, we're not sure when we'll get the reward
587. 00:24:48 or how rewarding it'll be.
588. 00:24:49 It increases the dopamine and the desire for the reward,
589. 00:24:52 so then we keep trying and trying
590. 00:24:53 and trying for the rewarding thing,
591. 00:24:55 and we do this over and over and over and over again.
592. 00:24:57 So, but this whole chapter to summarize,
593. 00:25:00 it was a little bit more of the science
594. 00:25:01 behind why we crave and have scarcity loops.
595. 00:25:05 - A little bit of the science.
596. 00:25:08 Not a ton, I would argue.
597. 00:25:11 I do appreciate the fact in this section,
598. 00:25:14 they talk about dopamine and how that's released
599. 00:25:19 and we're pursuing and anticipating
600. 00:25:20 receiving the pleasurable thing,
601. 00:25:22 but not when we actually receive it.
602. 00:25:25 But they do kind of, I think it's in this chapter,
603. 00:25:27 they talk about how dopamine isn't the huge driver
604. 00:25:32 that we think it is.
605. 00:25:35 Like it's not automatic just because
606. 00:25:37 dopamine's been released that we're gonna follow through.
607. 00:25:40 And the thing, it's a part of the equation,
608. 00:25:42 but there's still some agency that we have with this.
609. 00:25:47 I don't actually have a whole lot of notes on this section,
610. 00:25:51 I don't have a whole lot of notes
611. 00:25:51 on the first part of this book, to be honest.
612. 00:25:54 This is the part where it's very systematic
613. 00:25:56 and it feels like if you're gonna condense
614. 00:25:59 the promise of the book from the introduction
615. 00:26:03 through chapter four,
616. 00:26:06 that is essentially the scarcity loop in a nutshell
617. 00:26:11 without all the applications in the various areas.
618. 00:26:14 That's probably a couple thousand word blog post.
619. 00:26:17 - I would agree with that.
620. 00:26:20 - And you could extend that out into the length of a book,
621. 00:26:24 but he didn't, he just kind of left that with those sections
622. 00:26:27 and then kind of took it in a different direction.
623. 00:26:30 Sort of wonder why there wasn't a part one and a part two.
624. 00:26:33 It's like, okay, we're gonna close the
625. 00:26:36 chapter on this approach and we're gonna go
626. 00:26:40 in a different direction here.
627. 00:26:42 - All right, so can we go book nerdery for a second here?
628. 00:26:46 - Sure.
629. 00:26:46 - Is that the author's responsibility?
630. 00:26:48 Is that the editor's responsibility
631. 00:26:50 or is that both of their responsibilities?
632. 00:26:52 Like I kind of think it's both,
633. 00:26:55 but I think a good editor should pick up on that
634. 00:26:57 and be like, hey, Michael,
635. 00:26:59 we really need to like make a cut here at chapter four
636. 00:27:02 and tell the reader we're doing something
637. 00:27:04 completely different for the next,
638. 00:27:06 we're not completely, but like something that's different
639. 00:27:08 enough that they should think about it that way.
640. 00:27:11 - Yeah, I think it could be both.
641. 00:27:13 I think, yeah, I'm not sure which one probably shoulders
642. 00:27:18 the majority of that.
643. 00:27:20 I think probably if you're an author
644. 00:27:23 and you get a book deal from a publisher
645. 00:27:27 and they assign you an editor that you're going
646. 00:27:29 to be working with, it's ultimately the editor
647. 00:27:33 who is signing off on things with the publisher.
648. 00:27:38 So probably that's where the responsibility lies,
649. 00:27:43 but I don't know.
650. 00:27:45 I will say though that with this section,
651. 00:27:49 it's a fairly simple idea at this point.
652. 00:27:51 There's this scarcity loop that we can easily fall into.
653. 00:27:55 Dopa means a piece of it.
654. 00:27:57 And if we don't get the consistent reward
655. 00:28:00 that you were talking about,
656. 00:28:02 then we feel like we need to keep going.
657. 00:28:04 And there's all sorts of examples here
658. 00:28:08 with the birds and the rats and all the different studies
659. 00:28:11 that they did that show like if you press it,
660. 00:28:14 if you press the bar every time and you get the reward,
661. 00:28:18 you don't press it all that much,
662. 00:28:19 but when it's a variable reward,
663. 00:28:21 you're pressing it all the time.
664. 00:28:23 I mean, this is kind of stuff that we've heard
665. 00:28:25 different versions of or were aware of
666. 00:28:27 in different arenas before,
667. 00:28:31 but he does a good job in this chapter of condensing it
668. 00:28:34 and making a strong case for,
669. 00:28:36 hey, this really is a thing that you gotta be aware of,
670. 00:28:39 but it's still definitely at this point,
671. 00:28:43 anchored in the scarcity loop and watch out for this thing.
672. 00:28:46 So it kind of has this negative tone to it still.
673. 00:28:50 - Yep, I agree.
674. 00:28:52 All right, so chapter three,
675. 00:28:54 chapter three is the chapter I have the least notes on.
676. 00:28:57 And it was basically because like,
677. 00:29:00 hey, where's the scarcity loop everywhere?
678. 00:29:04 I mean, the examples that he gives social media, email,
679. 00:29:07 shopping, personal finance, mobile gambling,
680. 00:29:09 television, health, dating, video games,
681. 00:29:11 gig work, news, right?
682. 00:29:13 My biggest takeaway out of this,
683. 00:29:15 I do not have a lot to say about this chapter,
684. 00:29:17 but my biggest takeaway out of this was
685. 00:29:19 the hook then charge model.
686. 00:29:20 I had not heard of the hook then charge model,
687. 00:29:24 although it makes complete sense
688. 00:29:25 and you see it all over the place,
689. 00:29:27 but the game candy crush would be an example
690. 00:29:30 of the hook then charge model,
691. 00:29:31 where you get to play for free,
692. 00:29:32 you get to play for free, and then they're like,
693. 00:29:35 well, if you don't wanna wait for the next round,
694. 00:29:40 just pay us a little bit of money, right?
695. 00:29:41 Or if you don't wanna see this ad pop up every,
696. 00:29:45 30 spins, pay us this amount of money,
697. 00:29:47 so they've hooked you to the game
698. 00:29:48 by giving you enough of the free nature of it
699. 00:29:51 that then you're willing to let go
700. 00:29:53 of some of your resources to play that.
701. 00:29:56 And I remember, like, I can't remember where it was,
702. 00:29:58 but I remember Jason Stell talking about the donut game,
703. 00:30:02 or no, it might've been somebody else talking
704. 00:30:05 about the Simpsons donut game,
705. 00:30:07 and where basically they were like,
706. 00:30:08 I had no intention of paying anything for it.
707. 00:30:11 And then randomly, here I am spending, you know,
708. 00:30:13 like a couple hundred dollars on donuts,
709. 00:30:15 and it's like, oh my gosh, so.
710. 00:30:17 - Yeah, I mean, there's a,
711. 00:30:20 I just shot it down the different areas
712. 00:30:22 where the scarcity loop lives,
713. 00:30:24 but I didn't jot down anything about them
714. 00:30:26 because I think they're fairly obvious.
715. 00:30:29 The one that stood out to me the most was news,
716. 00:30:33 because you maybe don't think of news by default that way,
717. 00:30:38 but news really isn't news,
718. 00:30:42 like people from the 50s think of news
719. 00:30:46 and being informed, it's programming.
720. 00:30:49 And it's programming that's designed to keep you engaged.
721. 00:30:53 The longer they keep you engaged,
722. 00:30:55 the more ads they sell, the more money they make.
723. 00:30:58 And so there's certain types of things
724. 00:31:00 that they'll show you and most of it's negative,
725. 00:31:03 and that's just part of the deal.
726. 00:31:05 Has nothing to do with keeping you informed,
727. 00:31:06 has nothing to do with you being in a positive mental state
728. 00:31:11 when you're done, you're just a cog in the machine.
729. 00:31:15 But the mobile gaming one also, I think,
730. 00:31:19 is very, shall we say, charged in how people think of it?
731. 00:31:24 And maybe it's just me because I hear people like John Gruber
732. 00:31:28 talk about casino games for children on the App Store,
733. 00:31:33 and that's totally what they are.
734. 00:31:35 - Yes.
735. 00:31:35 - And if you were to describe it like that to Apple,
736. 00:31:39 obviously they would refuse to acknowledge
737. 00:31:43 that they'd frame it differently,
738. 00:31:46 but it's the same mechanism that's in the slot machines
739. 00:31:51 that he's talking about in chapter one.
740. 00:31:53 I almost wanna give whoever's in charge of the App Store
741. 00:31:57 a copy of this book and be like, here,
742. 00:31:59 now maybe make some policy changes,
743. 00:32:02 but they won't because that's how they make their money
744. 00:32:05 and that's part of the deal.
745. 00:32:06 I mean, other people do the same thing now at this point.
746. 00:32:09 - There's a whole layer of this book
747. 00:32:10 that is an ethics conversation.
748. 00:32:12 - Exactly.
749. 00:32:13 - Like I don't know if I would read the whole book
750. 00:32:15 just to have the ethics conversation, but it's there, right?
751. 00:32:18 Like there's a whole level of this book that it's like,
752. 00:32:20 "Wait, what's the ethical stance on that?"
753. 00:32:23 You know, gambling, the casino games, the shopping
754. 00:32:27 and how Amazon plays tricks with you as you, you know,
755. 00:32:31 I don't know if you know this, but I assume you do.
756. 00:32:34 You can look at a price of something on Monday morning
757. 00:32:37 and look at it, you know, Monday afternoon,
758. 00:32:39 it's a completely different price.
759. 00:32:41 You're like, their prices vary.
760. 00:32:42 You can log in on one browser and then log in
761. 00:32:44 on a different browser and based on your location,
762. 00:32:46 they'll throw a different price at you.
763. 00:32:48 Like it's a completely like algorithmic model
764. 00:32:51 for what they're doing to get, you know,
765. 00:32:54 an extra 25 cents or an extra dollar or whatever it is,
766. 00:32:56 depending on how much the price is.
767. 00:32:58 - Yeah, I was a business major econ minor in college,
768. 00:33:02 so the price discrimination is what you're describing there.
769. 00:33:06 - Various levels of legality.
770. 00:33:09 (laughs)
771. 00:33:10 - Legality, yeah, exactly.
772. 00:33:12 - All right, so let's get into chapter four
773. 00:33:14 if you're good with it.
774. 00:33:16 - All right, let's do it.
775. 00:33:17 - All right, so chapter four is, again,
776. 00:33:19 we're wrapping up this whole intro.
777. 00:33:21 We're basically laying the foundation on this model
778. 00:33:24 and craving and moderation.
779. 00:33:26 So it's called Why We Crave More
780. 00:33:28 and he gets into a couple different ideas here.
781. 00:33:31 The one is a study by Klutz
782. 00:33:34 where basically people would solve problems,
783. 00:33:37 but they would solve problems by adding
784. 00:33:39 as opposed to removing possible or features, I guess,
785. 00:33:43 if you will.
786. 00:33:44 I see this all the time teaching my engineering students.
787. 00:33:46 Engineering students want to add more features
788. 00:33:49 to solve problems instead of,
789. 00:33:51 why don't we reduce the amount of things
790. 00:33:53 that this device will do because then it'll solve
791. 00:33:57 that one problem we want it to solve much better
792. 00:33:59 than it would, you know, it's the Leatherman idea, right?
793. 00:34:02 Like the Leatherman is the wrong tool for every job, right?
794. 00:34:06 It's not a very good screwdriver, it's not a very good knife,
795. 00:34:08 it's not a very good set of pliers,
796. 00:34:10 like, but at the same time it can do all those things,
797. 00:34:12 it's just not a very good,
798. 00:34:14 so it's that whole ad to solve problems.
799. 00:34:16 So that was one.
800. 00:34:17 Then he gets into a researcher,
801. 00:34:19 and I can't remember if he did this before,
802. 00:34:21 but this is the first place I took a note on it,
803. 00:34:22 it's Zental's research, who researched pigeons,
804. 00:34:26 and basically said, we get bored too easy,
805. 00:34:29 or sorry, we get bored because it's too easy
806. 00:34:31 for us to find resources,
807. 00:34:33 so basically we look for a way to fill the gap in stimulation,
808. 00:34:36 and that kind of came out of his pigeon research,
809. 00:34:40 which then he refers to Zental off and on
810. 00:34:43 throughout the rest of the book.
811. 00:34:44 So there are a couple different kind of core theories
812. 00:34:48 about why we crave more, so.
813. 00:34:51 Mike, I don't know if you have anything you wanna add here.
814. 00:34:55 - I think the big takeaway from me from this section
815. 00:34:58 was the thing that you mentioned at the beginning
816. 00:35:01 where in the human brain less equals bad,
817. 00:35:05 so we tend to try to solve problems by adding things.
818. 00:35:07 And I feel like this chapter right here
819. 00:35:12 has a very clear message associated with it,
820. 00:35:14 and this is sort of where I thought we were gonna get to
821. 00:35:17 by the end of the book when I first dove into it.
822. 00:35:19 (laughs)
823. 00:35:20 - Okay.
824. 00:35:21 - So it's kind of weird that we're encountering this
825. 00:35:25 in chapter four, but I do think that it's an important message,
826. 00:35:29 and I don't have an action on what's associated
827. 00:35:31 with this necessarily, but I do want to start thinking
828. 00:35:36 about how do I remove things as opposed to how do I add things
829. 00:35:41 in terms of finding the sweet spot.
830. 00:35:45 Sometimes removing things is the right solution,
831. 00:35:48 and I've already got the mechanism in the personal retreat
832. 00:35:51 to do it where I ask the questions,
833. 00:35:52 what should I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing?
834. 00:35:55 So just leaning into the stop doing
835. 00:35:57 and not trying to always add things.
836. 00:36:02 But yeah, I mean, at this point,
837. 00:36:06 I feel like the big message of the book
838. 00:36:10 has already been delivered,
839. 00:36:13 and it's delivered in a way where it's a little bit weird
840. 00:36:15 because he's not necessarily calling you to action
841. 00:36:18 at this point.
842. 00:36:19 This is kind of where he transitions into all
843. 00:36:21 of the different stories, which we can talk through
844. 00:36:24 and then decide if that's an effective tack to take.
845. 00:36:27 (laughs)
846. 00:36:28 - All right, so let's do that.
847. 00:36:29 So as we said, this is the end of chapter four,
848. 00:36:31 we're gonna go into five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11,
849. 00:36:34 and basically it's the same idea
850. 00:36:38 through the rest of the chapters,
851. 00:36:39 where there's an idea, so for instance, chapter five
852. 00:36:42 is escape.
853. 00:36:44 He'll have a story that allows him to talk about
854. 00:36:47 the idea of escape and how the scarcity loop ties into it.
855. 00:36:51 Now, one of the things that I thought was interesting
856. 00:36:53 was there's reference and mention to the scarcity loop,
857. 00:36:58 but he doesn't hit it really hard.
858. 00:37:01 It's more about telling the story
859. 00:37:04 and making some points through telling the story
860. 00:37:06 than it is about tying it to that scarcity loop,
861. 00:37:08 which I thought was, I was kind of surprised by that.
862. 00:37:10 I expected him to tie it to the scarcity loop more
863. 00:37:13 as he was doing the things.
864. 00:37:14 But basically in chapter five, escape is the title.
865. 00:37:19 He's talking about his trip over to Iraq
866. 00:37:22 and meeting with all these people,
867. 00:37:24 and it's thinking about this drug
868. 00:37:26 and the influence of this drug called Captagon
869. 00:37:29 while he's there, and he's trying to meet
870. 00:37:31 with all these officials, and a big part of this was
871. 00:37:33 him having this experience of he had a fixer,
872. 00:37:36 which is supposed to, a person who's supposed to set up
873. 00:37:38 all the meetings and the rides and all that stuff.
874. 00:37:40 And he basically said his fixer was not an honest
875. 00:37:44 and/or trustworthy person, and he kind of said
876. 00:37:47 he would do a lot of things that he didn't really do,
877. 00:37:49 though, so it's like, there's a whole part about that.
878. 00:37:52 But then he gets into this whole,
879. 00:37:53 like I have this whole arm on the mind map,
880. 00:37:55 like this gigantic arm on the mind map about addiction.
881. 00:37:58 And it was almost like, I want to write a chapter
882. 00:38:01 about addiction.
883. 00:38:02 And I need to find a good story.
884. 00:38:04 And there's no judgment here.
885. 00:38:06 I'm saying, I'm not even saying it doesn't tie
886. 00:38:08 to the scarcity loop, but that's what this felt like to me.
887. 00:38:10 This felt like I want to write a chapter about addiction,
888. 00:38:13 and he writes this chapter about addiction,
889. 00:38:14 and he has Captagon and the Iraq trip
890. 00:38:18 as the foundation of that chapter.
891. 00:38:20 And then he says it kind of at the end of the chapter,
892. 00:38:23 and oh, by the way, it doesn't just apply to drugs,
893. 00:38:27 it applies to technology, food, extreme sports,
894. 00:38:29 social situations, more and more and more.
895. 00:38:31 But it was kind of like a thrown in thing,
896. 00:38:34 like the whole thing we're talking about as drugs.
897. 00:38:35 And I mean, that's okay, it's a fine way to do the chapter,
898. 00:38:38 but that's what the chapter felt like to me.
899. 00:38:41 - Yeah, it's kind of weird.
900. 00:38:43 So we mentioned in the introduction,
901. 00:38:46 he starts with elements of the story of being in Iraq,
902. 00:38:51 and he's trying to get into this police station
903. 00:38:55 to meet with the chief.
904. 00:38:56 He wants to ride along in one of the real dangerous areas,
905. 00:38:59 essentially so that he can see what's going on
906. 00:39:03 with this Captagon at the source.
907. 00:39:08 And this whole idea of the Captagon, by the way,
908. 00:39:13 isn't necessarily brand new in the Middle East.
909. 00:39:16 He does mention in this chapter
910. 00:39:18 about how lots of World War II soldiers took amphetamines,
911. 00:39:21 which is really what Captagon is,
912. 00:39:23 as a way to increase courage and boost morale,
913. 00:39:26 but the Captagon specifically, he mentions
914. 00:39:28 that this is the pill that ISIS fighters would take
915. 00:39:31 to kill fear before they would embark on suicide missions.
916. 00:39:34 So this is a very powerful mind-altering,
917. 00:39:39 life-altering substance,
918. 00:39:44 and kind of digging into why do people take this?
919. 00:39:48 And as he's telling the stories about where he is,
920. 00:39:52 he doesn't actually get the ride along,
921. 00:39:54 but he does kind of unpack some of the things
922. 00:39:58 that he experiences while he's over there.
923. 00:40:00 And essentially, there's a lot of bitterness
924. 00:40:04 about how things unfolded over the last 20 years.
925. 00:40:09 I think they tie it back to the Gulf War and Saddam Hussein.
926. 00:40:16 But essentially, like a lot of the country
927. 00:40:22 is looking for a way to escape reality.
928. 00:40:25 And this is a cheap, easy way to do it,
929. 00:40:27 because they get it from Syria,
930. 00:40:29 which one of the things I jotted down,
931. 00:40:31 Syria's Captagon export was 45 times
932. 00:40:34 that of the entire legal export industry.
933. 00:40:37 Did you catch that stat?
934. 00:40:39 - I did, yeah.
935. 00:40:39 - That's crazy.
936. 00:40:40 So he's telling these stories,
937. 00:40:43 and he's cherry-picking these data points
938. 00:40:45 to kind of show how powerful this stuff can be.
939. 00:40:48 And then the chapter of the title, "Escape,"
940. 00:40:51 essentially the message he's trying to say here
941. 00:40:53 is that scarcity loop can come into play
942. 00:40:56 in terms of the drugs that people will take
943. 00:41:01 and alcohol to any sort of substance abuse
944. 00:41:04 is possible because of the scarcity loop.
945. 00:41:09 But one of the things that I thought was kind of interesting
946. 00:41:12 from this section is that the term addiction
947. 00:41:15 doesn't appear in the DSM-5,
948. 00:41:17 which is the psychology Bible.
949. 00:41:19 Like they don't actually define this
950. 00:41:20 as what addiction is,
951. 00:41:22 because essentially, my takeaway from reading the chapter
952. 00:41:25 was there's all these different shades of gray.
953. 00:41:27 It manifests a lot of different ways.
954. 00:41:28 So you can't say this one thing is what addiction is,
955. 00:41:32 but one of the other things that I jotted down here
956. 00:41:35 is that kind of one of the triggers of addiction, I guess,
957. 00:41:38 can be one of the top reasons for alcoholics to relapse
958. 00:41:43 is believing that addiction is a disease.
959. 00:41:45 So it's something that they don't really have power over.
960. 00:41:48 They don't have a choice in.
961. 00:41:50 And that's kind of the message he's trying to get across
962. 00:41:53 in this chapter, I feel, is that you do actually have a choice.
963. 00:41:57 You maybe have more choice than you realize.
964. 00:42:01 And I think there's not a real clean,
965. 00:42:06 this is what you do about it,
966. 00:42:08 which is gonna be a recurring theme
967. 00:42:10 in a lot of these chapters.
968. 00:42:12 It's kind of like I was interested in this topic,
969. 00:42:15 so I went to this place, I met this strange person,
970. 00:42:18 this is what I learned,
971. 00:42:20 and then kind of summarize it all at the end
972. 00:42:22 and onto the next chapter.
973. 00:42:24 - Yeah, I mean, I would think that putting the layer
974. 00:42:29 on top of this, it would be, okay,
975. 00:42:31 addiction's gonna hit the value,
976. 00:42:35 the opportunity for value,
977. 00:42:37 and then it's gonna hit the unpredictability too,
978. 00:42:42 really well.
979. 00:42:43 And he mentions that, he says some things around that,
980. 00:42:46 especially, I'm remembering,
981. 00:42:47 I didn't write it down on my notes,
982. 00:42:48 but I'm remembering him talking about
983. 00:42:50 the unpredictability of, will I find it,
984. 00:42:53 how potent will it be,
985. 00:42:57 those type of things when he's talking about
986. 00:42:59 the drug side of it.
987. 00:43:01 So what I didn't remember him doing though,
988. 00:43:04 is saying, okay, if we talked about moderation
989. 00:43:07 in the introduction, and that's what we're trying to get to,
990. 00:43:10 this would be a way that you would address this.
991. 00:43:13 If you're in this situation,
992. 00:43:14 and maybe he didn't want it to be
993. 00:43:16 a self-help book like that,
994. 00:43:18 but that seems what's missing to me,
995. 00:43:20 it would be really easy to just be like,
996. 00:43:22 well, let's address the unpredictable repeatability,
997. 00:43:27 or unpredictable nature of it,
998. 00:43:29 and let's say, okay, how do we make this more predictable,
999. 00:43:31 or how do we, whatever it might be?
1000. 00:43:34 I think that would have helped me
1001. 00:43:37 get more out of the book, I think.
1002. 00:43:40 - Agreed.
1003. 00:43:41 I should say that there is one thing he mentions
1004. 00:43:44 in this, towards the end,
1005. 00:43:47 that one of the best ways to break the scarcity loop,
1006. 00:43:50 as it pertains to this area of escape,
1007. 00:43:53 is to make a big change.
1008. 00:43:55 Not that you necessarily want to create
1009. 00:44:00 big moments of change frequently in your life, I would argue,
1010. 00:44:06 but my takeaway from this was to leverage the ones
1011. 00:44:09 that are already there.
1012. 00:44:11 So, something like a milestone birth thing,
1013. 00:44:17 birthday or anniversary,
1014. 00:44:19 like using those as triggers to rethink certain things.
1015. 00:44:24 Not that you're constantly going back to drawing board,
1016. 00:44:26 and is this really what I want to do with my life,
1017. 00:44:29 but there's elements of that
1018. 00:44:30 kind of built into the personal industry process as well.
1019. 00:44:32 The dates are kind of arbitrary,
1020. 00:44:34 but look for the opportunities to reflect
1021. 00:44:38 and make those big changes,
1022. 00:44:41 and it doesn't always have to be something like,
1023. 00:44:45 "I'm quitting my job and doing something completely different."
1024. 00:44:49 But I think thinking about those things
1025. 00:44:54 can either spur that change,
1026. 00:44:57 or I think the other effect is just as powerful.
1027. 00:45:00 You reconcile your situation and you feel okay with it,
1028. 00:45:04 and so you have more motivation and clarity
1029. 00:45:07 to show up and do the thing that you were already doing,
1030. 00:45:11 you just kind of recommitted to why you're doing it.
1031. 00:45:14 Okay, good. Are you ready to move to six?
1032. 00:45:16 - Let's do it.
1033. 00:45:17 - Okay, we made it halfway.
1034. 00:45:18 So we're over halfway.
1035. 00:45:20 The next chapter is certainty.
1036. 00:45:23 So, this chapter is around him having a conversation
1037. 00:45:28 with a guy at a coffee shop, basically.
1038. 00:45:32 Or it's like a bakery/coffee shop,
1039. 00:45:33 and that was the nature of the story.
1040. 00:45:37 The last one was at Iraq.
1041. 00:45:38 This one is him having this conversation.
1042. 00:45:42 Nguyen is the guy's name,
1043. 00:45:44 and he talks about gamification a lot.
1044. 00:45:49 The fact that we gamify everything now,
1045. 00:45:50 which this one hit home pretty hard,
1046. 00:45:53 because I was like, "Yeah, we do gamify everything."
1047. 00:45:56 As he's doing all these examples, I'm thinking,
1048. 00:45:58 "Yeah, we gamify that.
1049. 00:46:00 "Yep, we gamify that."
1050. 00:46:01 And he talks about basically the problem with that,
1051. 00:46:06 or one of the problems with that is it changes the goals
1052. 00:46:10 from what we were doing to then trying to play
1053. 00:46:12 the game, right?
1054. 00:46:13 Instead of trying to, let's say it's social media,
1055. 00:46:17 that's the easiest one to pick on, right?
1056. 00:46:18 Well, what am I trying to do
1057. 00:46:19 with having a good presence on social media?
1058. 00:46:23 Well, maybe I'm trying to provide value
1059. 00:46:25 around a topic area that people don't know about.
1060. 00:46:28 Well, when I turn it into just getting followers,
1061. 00:46:30 I stop, I lose the goal of actually trying to provide value
1062. 00:46:33 and content that will edify people,
1063. 00:46:35 and I'm really just trying to find,
1064. 00:46:37 trying to do things that'll get clicks,
1065. 00:46:39 and it'll get likes, and it'll get follows,
1066. 00:46:40 and it'll do those things, so it changes the goal.
1067. 00:46:43 And then he says that we typically gamify things
1068. 00:46:46 as an escape, but we can't escape everyday life.
1069. 00:46:49 So when we start gamifying everyday life,
1070. 00:46:51 we can't escape that, and that's a problem.
1071. 00:46:54 The biggest thing I think I got out of this chapter
1072. 00:46:56 was this, when we put an overly simplified scoring system
1073. 00:47:02 on something, how it changes that goal.
1074. 00:47:05 Okay, so the one that I'll give you a sleep score,
1075. 00:47:09 you and I have talked about this in the past.
1076. 00:47:12 So if I have an app that tells me a sleep score
1077. 00:47:14 and I'm trying to get the sleep score,
1078. 00:47:16 I'm trying to get the sleep score,
1079. 00:47:16 I'm trying to get the sleep score.
1080. 00:47:18 Well, there might be a bunch of other things
1081. 00:47:20 that I'm negatively impacting
1082. 00:47:23 to try to get that good sleep score,
1083. 00:47:27 and I have to think about that,
1084. 00:47:29 that overall simplified or overly simplified one metric
1085. 00:47:33 that may be absolute garbage,
1086. 00:47:35 I'm adjusting all of these other things
1087. 00:47:37 in a negative way to get that one thing better.
1088. 00:47:40 And I think that was my biggest take away
1089. 00:47:42 from this whole section.
1090. 00:47:44 - My big takeaways from this were twofold.
1091. 00:47:48 One, they talk a lot in this section about games,
1092. 00:47:52 which I like a lot.
1093. 00:47:53 I'm not sure if I've mentioned this to you,
1094. 00:47:58 but we actually have a board game table
1095. 00:48:01 in our kitchen/living room,
1096. 00:48:04 and we probably have close to 200 board games at home now.
1097. 00:48:09 The number keeps growing.
1098. 00:48:13 We play lots of games,
1099. 00:48:15 and I do think that there's a lot of value
1100. 00:48:17 that comes from playing games.
1101. 00:48:19 One of the things, and I don't remember where I heard this,
1102. 00:48:20 but I have seen this play out.
1103. 00:48:24 When you play games with kids,
1104. 00:48:26 it helps them get adjusted to losing
1105. 00:48:29 'cause they're not gonna win every time,
1106. 00:48:32 which is really good,
1107. 00:48:34 but also I feel like there's just a lot of conversations
1108. 00:48:37 that happen at the table when you are playing games,
1109. 00:48:42 and it just feels like a quality way
1110. 00:48:44 to spend time together, so that's what we do.
1111. 00:48:48 But he mentions on page 102,
1112. 00:48:51 and I'm not gonna even try to pronounce the person's name,
1113. 00:48:54 but the games are a balm for the confusion
1114. 00:48:56 and anxiety of real life.
1115. 00:48:59 I can see this.
1116. 00:49:00 One of the points that they make
1117. 00:49:01 is that you can control certain things in games,
1118. 00:49:03 which I think is why I really like games like Civilization VI.
1119. 00:49:08 That's available on the iPad,
1120. 00:49:11 which is the one game that I'll still get sucked into
1121. 00:49:14 and play for hours on end.
1122. 00:49:16 My iPad at this point is a Civilization machine
1123. 00:49:20 and a good notes machine.
1124. 00:49:21 But with that, you have all of the different aspects.
1125. 00:49:27 You're controlling an entire civilization
1126. 00:49:30 and you're controlling what gets built at different cities
1127. 00:49:33 and it affects the economy,
1128. 00:49:34 it affects your science and research,
1129. 00:49:37 you're building the military, all that kind of stuff.
1130. 00:49:40 And I really like those kind of games,
1131. 00:49:42 and I think it's because I like to micromanage.
1132. 00:49:45 And I like to control every aspect of things,
1133. 00:49:50 which Toby's a lot like I am,
1134. 00:49:54 and probably explains a little bit
1135. 00:49:57 why he gets really into these really complicated board games.
1136. 00:50:01 Like he'll play these games that take eight to 10 hours to play
1137. 00:50:04 and I just don't have the time
1138. 00:50:06 or the attention span for that kind of stuff,
1139. 00:50:08 but he's got a group of guys that he'll play those with.
1140. 00:50:12 And I think that's kind of interesting.
1141. 00:50:14 The other one I wanted to double click on
1142. 00:50:16 was the social media, which you kind of hit on already,
1143. 00:50:19 but it should be used towards a goal, not just likes.
1144. 00:50:22 And we kind of talked a little bit about this
1145. 00:50:23 in the Pro Show with the description of what's the abyss,
1146. 00:50:26 because my abyss is related sort of to social media.
1147. 00:50:29 And specifically email,
1148. 00:50:30 I'm trying to get to 10,000 email subscribers
1149. 00:50:32 for my independent creator business.
1150. 00:50:35 Just from what I've heard from different coaches
1151. 00:50:38 that I've worked with,
1152. 00:50:39 like that's the point where now you're cooking with gas,
1153. 00:50:43 essentially, in terms of you've got people who are interested
1154. 00:50:47 and what you have to say and what you're making,
1155. 00:50:50 and you can probably earn a living at this point.
1156. 00:50:53 So we're not there yet.
1157. 00:50:56 Scarcity Loop is definitely real for me there.
1158. 00:50:59 Well, but I would say, like your goal,
1159. 00:51:01 your goal is good there, right?
1160. 00:51:03 Yeah. Yeah.
1161. 00:51:03 You're not trying to get subscribers just for the sake
1162. 00:51:06 of getting subscribers to like pad your stats.
1163. 00:51:08 You're trying to do it because you want to add value
1164. 00:51:11 and you're making living, right?
1165. 00:51:12 Exactly.
1166. 00:51:13 So this is the thing that I've learned, though,
1167. 00:51:15 because I'm using YouTube specifically in a way
1168. 00:51:18 which is driving growth to the email list.
1169. 00:51:21 Basically, I started publishing consistently to YouTube
1170. 00:51:24 around September and I was just publishing stuff around Obsidian
1171. 00:51:29 because I realized that the Obsidian stuff that I was publishing
1172. 00:51:32 was getting like 10 times the engagement, the views,
1173. 00:51:39 the comments, the likes, whatever is anything else.
1174. 00:51:41 So, okay, lots of people want to see from me,
1175. 00:51:45 so I'll make more of that.
1176. 00:51:47 But after a little while, the switch gets flipped
1177. 00:51:53 and it's not how can I make stuff that's going to get
1178. 00:51:57 the most attention?
1179. 00:51:59 Like I'm finishing up a video right now and I know that there
1180. 00:52:02 because I've made enough of them at this point,
1181. 00:52:04 there's certain things that I want to add to the video
1182. 00:52:07 that are going to take it to another level,
1183. 00:52:10 to just have an extra level of polish.
1184. 00:52:13 And at this point, it's like, well, this is the better video.
1185. 00:52:16 I know that the numbers will be connected to that,
1186. 00:52:21 but the numbers aren't the reason for it if that makes sense.
1187. 00:52:25 Whereas if you don't have that goal,
1188. 00:52:27 what ends up happening is I want to post something.
1189. 00:52:31 What can I post that's going to get a bunch of likes
1190. 00:52:34 or get a bunch of engagement?
1191. 00:52:35 And it's because it's so short-sighted, short-term,
1192. 00:52:40 that I feel like kind of tends to sharing certain types
1193. 00:52:44 of information, but kind of the opposite is happening
1194. 00:52:48 with me with these videos now, where I want to make
1195. 00:52:51 this killer video because I want people to like it, yes.
1196. 00:52:56 But ultimately, I know that when I publish it,
1197. 00:52:59 maybe there'll be a spike, people will like it.
1198. 00:53:01 But this is going to continue, if I make a good video,
1199. 00:53:05 it's going to continue to be a benefit
1200. 00:53:09 to achieving my goal for months down the road.
1201. 00:53:13 That kind of what I'm realizing at this point
1202. 00:53:15 is the videos that I made in September and October,
1203. 00:53:17 the good videos.
1204. 00:53:19 When I release a new video now,
1205. 00:53:21 I'll get a whole bunch of views on the new video,
1206. 00:53:23 and then people will start clicking
1207. 00:53:24 and watching all of the other videos that I've made.
1208. 00:53:28 Because I made something that they actually want to see,
1209. 00:53:31 that's actually helpful.
1210. 00:53:32 That's why I like YouTube, honestly,
1211. 00:53:33 is I feel like the algorithm is designed,
1212. 00:53:37 it's incentivized to get your videos
1213. 00:53:41 in front of people who actually want to see them,
1214. 00:53:44 and that can be used for good or bad.
1215. 00:53:46 I'm trying to use it for good.
1216. 00:53:48 People want to learn how to use Obsidian.
1217. 00:53:50 So I'm not just going to do something quick,
1218. 00:53:53 something easy, something stupid.
1219. 00:53:54 I want to show people how to actually use it
1220. 00:53:57 in terms of living out their vision and their values,
1221. 00:54:00 the whole life theme idea, the PKM stack.
1222. 00:54:03 But it was interesting that he's saying,
1223. 00:54:07 but there's actually a good way to use social media,
1224. 00:54:09 and it's this way.
1225. 00:54:10 But it does feel very different.
1226. 00:54:14 When you're creating things for social media that way,
1227. 00:54:17 and I say social media because I think this can apply
1228. 00:54:19 like LinkedIn and Twitter/X, whatever, threads.
1229. 00:54:23 There are tools, and this is kind of the next step
1230. 00:54:26 for me in terms of my business systems.
1231. 00:54:27 I want to take the content that I use in the videos
1232. 00:54:30 and the stuff that I write about in the newsletter,
1233. 00:54:33 and like break it apart and share those as valuable threads
1234. 00:54:37 and posts on social media through a tool like Typefully,
1235. 00:54:41 where you can actually post that stuff
1236. 00:54:44 and not have to just scroll through all the things.
1237. 00:54:47 That's what you want to avoid in my opinion,
1238. 00:54:50 and that's kind of what he's advocating for.
1239. 00:54:52 - All right, good, let's move to Influence,
1240. 00:54:55 which is chapter seven.
1241. 00:54:57 So Influence, there were a couple of things out of here,
1242. 00:55:03 so I'm gonna try to say it.
1243. 00:55:05 Schismogenesis, right?
1244. 00:55:07 I had never heard of that word before,
1245. 00:55:09 and then when I read it and he defined it,
1246. 00:55:11 I was like, "Oh man, that's a really good word,"
1247. 00:55:14 but it's our entire sense of self and cultural identity
1248. 00:55:17 is effectively a reaction to others,
1249. 00:55:19 and I was like, "Oh man," right?
1250. 00:55:21 Like, how true is that in so many different places
1251. 00:55:25 where it's like, "I say a thing,"
1252. 00:55:26 and then I see how somebody responds,
1253. 00:55:28 and I'm like, "Okay, was that a good thing?
1254. 00:55:32 "Did I do a good job there, or did I not do a good job there?"
1255. 00:55:34 And it's like, and really, it's less about what I said,
1256. 00:55:37 and it's more about how the person reacted to what I said.
1257. 00:55:40 So I thought that was a, that was a really good one.
1258. 00:55:43 He talks about humans desiring a high status,
1259. 00:55:46 that we wanna have an influence over other people,
1260. 00:55:48 we want to kind of be able to impact others
1261. 00:55:53 with our behaviors and our actions
1262. 00:55:56 and the things we say and the things we do.
1263. 00:55:59 Then he gets into kind of some of the negatives of this,
1264. 00:56:02 or some of the things you need to be careful of,
1265. 00:56:03 so pride, he said, "There's good pride,
1266. 00:56:06 "there's authentic pride, then there's heuristic pride,
1267. 00:56:09 "that basically we can have the overblown implications effect
1268. 00:56:11 "when we think one silly mistake will ruin our image,
1269. 00:56:14 "spotlight effect where we overestimate what people think,
1270. 00:56:17 "fundamental attribution error,"
1271. 00:56:20 and then he says this thing,
1272. 00:56:22 "Do you wanna be right or happy?"
1273. 00:56:24 Which I think is a really, really clever way to do this,
1274. 00:56:27 but I thought the point of this was really, really good,
1275. 00:56:32 and then where I wanted more was I wanted it tied again
1276. 00:56:35 to the scarcity loop.
1277. 00:56:36 I wanted it tied better to the scarcity loop.
1278. 00:56:38 So I think about this and is there an opportunity,
1279. 00:56:42 is there a value in influence?
1280. 00:56:43 Yes, there is.
1281. 00:56:45 Is it unpredictable?
1282. 00:56:46 Yes, it is, because I have no idea how you're gonna react
1283. 00:56:49 to what I say or things like that,
1284. 00:56:51 and then is it predictable?
1285. 00:56:52 And this is where it kind of fell down for me
1286. 00:56:54 from an influence standpoint is like,
1287. 00:56:56 "I have no idea how you're gonna react."
1288. 00:56:58 Now maybe with enough data,
1289. 00:57:00 or with a consistent enough demographic,
1290. 00:57:04 I guess that's the way I'll say that,
1291. 00:57:06 I could get pretty predictable results.
1292. 00:57:07 So maybe I could manipulate this to fit
1293. 00:57:11 into the scarcity loop.
1294. 00:57:12 But this one didn't fit as much with me.
1295. 00:57:16 Is it a thing that we go after?
1296. 00:57:17 Is it a thing that we strive after?
1297. 00:57:18 Yes, without a doubt, 100% influence
1298. 00:57:21 is something we wanna do.
1299. 00:57:23 I don't even remember.
1300. 00:57:24 Did he have a story around this one?
1301. 00:57:26 Can you remember the story around this one?
1302. 00:57:27 'Cause I don't have this one jotted down.
1303. 00:57:29 I actually did not write down any of the stories
1304. 00:57:32 that he tells.
1305. 00:57:33 Okay, okay.
1306. 00:57:34 Specifically because they're all,
1307. 00:57:37 like interesting situations that he finds himself in,
1308. 00:57:40 but the people other than this is someone
1309. 00:57:45 who is doing this thing that I'm interested in,
1310. 00:57:48 the names really aren't that important.
1311. 00:57:51 He's not interviewing the world's leading experts
1312. 00:57:56 in any of these areas.
1313. 00:57:59 He's just, "Ah, this might be a cool experience.
1314. 00:58:01 "I'll see if I can get in there."
1315. 00:58:03 You know, and then he finds someone who allows him to do so,
1316. 00:58:06 and then he tells cool stories about it.
1317. 00:58:07 But I don't think that that is really gonna be
1318. 00:58:12 something that sticks with me months or years later
1319. 00:58:15 from these books.
1320. 00:58:16 But I do have a couple things jotted down
1321. 00:58:18 from this section on "Uninfluence."
1322. 00:58:21 And I do think, well, so one of my action items was
1323. 00:58:24 that phrase, "Do you wanna be right,
1324. 00:58:25 "or do you wanna be happy?"
1325. 00:58:26 I wanna start asking myself that.
1326. 00:58:28 'Cause my default is to want to be right,
1327. 00:58:31 and I feel that that is,
1328. 00:58:34 that could maybe be tempered,
1329. 00:58:35 not just in my relationship with my wife,
1330. 00:58:38 but with, I think there's a lot of opportunities
1331. 00:58:42 to exercise this.
1332. 00:58:43 Then just be a little bit more picky
1333. 00:58:46 about where you're gonna draw the lines.
1334. 00:58:50 But also the thing that kinda stands out to me
1335. 00:58:55 with the pride, 'cause you mentioned the authentic pride,
1336. 00:58:58 the type of pride that you get when you feel good
1337. 00:59:00 for achieving something great.
1338. 00:59:01 And then heuristic pride, which is undeserved pride
1339. 00:59:03 that creates a drive for getting other people
1340. 00:59:06 to appreciate us.
1341. 00:59:07 I feel like that is the one that's sorta naturally
1342. 00:59:11 aligns with social media use.
1343. 00:59:15 It's like a fake pride.
1344. 00:59:18 And I, as I read this section on "Influence,"
1345. 00:59:23 and I'm thinking about the different types of pride,
1346. 00:59:26 the thing that kinda stands out to me is that authentic pride,
1347. 00:59:30 I've seen that connected for me
1348. 00:59:33 to the act of creating things of quality.
1349. 00:59:37 And you could argue how much quality,
1350. 00:59:40 especially if you listened to some of the earlier podcast
1351. 00:59:43 episodes that I did, some of those,
1352. 00:59:47 I still can't go back and listen to it, it's too painful.
1353. 00:59:52 - You're too hard on yourself.
1354. 00:59:54 - Yeah, but the point I'm trying to make is
1355. 00:59:57 whenever I make something,
1356. 00:59:59 it's the very best that I can do right now.
1357. 01:00:01 I'm not mailing it in, I'm not just checking a box there,
1358. 01:00:05 I publish something to the internet.
1359. 01:00:07 I'm doing my best, I'm putting something out there,
1360. 01:00:10 and then that creates the feedback loop
1361. 01:00:13 so that I can learn from it and get better next time.
1362. 01:00:17 And I have this system that I follow
1363. 01:00:21 for doing this sorta stuff, which I've taught
1364. 01:00:24 called the creativity flywheel.
1365. 01:00:27 And that came from me trying to figure out
1366. 01:00:30 how do I do this consistently,
1367. 01:00:33 and how do I seem to do it with some degree of success
1368. 01:00:37 where people actually want to listen or want to watch
1369. 01:00:41 or want to read the things that I make?
1370. 01:00:45 And I feel the authentic pride comes whenever you put forth
1371. 01:00:50 your best effort and you share something out into the world.
1372. 01:00:56 And I think that the more that I understand
1373. 01:01:01 about how creativity works,
1374. 01:01:06 the more I feel everyone is creative
1375. 01:01:08 and everyone should be looking for their creative outlet,
1376. 01:01:12 I really feel that there isn't anybody
1377. 01:01:15 who's just not creative.
1378. 01:01:17 And I was the guy who said that at one point,
1379. 01:01:20 but that's kinda what triggered to me
1380. 01:01:21 is I was thinking about this authentic pride
1381. 01:01:23 and you were kinda talking about finding your tribe,
1382. 01:01:25 changing your words a little bit,
1383. 01:01:27 but getting around the right types of people,
1384. 01:01:29 I feel like when you lean into the thing
1385. 01:01:33 that you really wanna make, you do it the best you can,
1386. 01:01:37 and then you continually just keep publishing,
1387. 01:01:40 keep making, and it keeps getting better,
1388. 01:01:44 you'll sort of find the people that align
1389. 01:01:48 with the things that you're making.
1390. 01:01:49 Case and point, the max stock conference
1391. 01:01:52 that we mentioned at the very beginning.
1392. 01:01:55 You know, I was a poser when I first started going there,
1393. 01:01:59 and at this point now, I feel like I can actually do it.
1394. 01:02:02 (laughs)
1395. 01:02:03 - Yeah, that's awesome.
1396. 01:02:04 All right, let's move to food.
1397. 01:02:07 So chapter eight is food.
1398. 01:02:09 We go back into the story,
1399. 01:02:12 the strong storytelling here, so the chamani.
1400. 01:02:14 He talks about going to visit them.
1401. 01:02:18 I can't remember where, what country?
1402. 01:02:21 Do you remember Mike?
1403. 01:02:23 - I don't know.
1404. 01:02:24 - And I also, as I got into this chapter,
1405. 01:02:26 I was kind of like, why?
1406. 01:02:28 (laughs)
1407. 01:02:29 - Yeah, so basically, I think he might have a vendetta
1408. 01:02:34 against the American diet, and that's partially,
1409. 01:02:39 the reason I say this, partially from the comfort crisis,
1410. 01:02:41 if you link those two things together,
1411. 01:02:43 you can kind of see that,
1412. 01:02:45 'cause he talks a lot about going and hunting caribou,
1413. 01:02:48 and then like how good it is for you,
1414. 01:02:50 and like all that stuff.
1415. 01:02:51 So there's a whole section of it there too,
1416. 01:02:53 on the comfort crisis as well.
1417. 01:02:54 But, so basically it gets into food,
1418. 01:02:56 and how food ties into the scarcity loop model.
1419. 01:03:00 The fact that, this one actually I thought was the,
1420. 01:03:03 probably the cleanest connection,
1421. 01:03:05 I mean maybe the cleanest connection that we had here
1422. 01:03:08 is because back in the day, right,
1423. 01:03:11 you needed food to stay alive.
1424. 01:03:13 You were hunted together, so you either found it,
1425. 01:03:16 or you hunted it, so it was very unpredictable
1426. 01:03:18 whether you'd get food,
1427. 01:03:20 and then you could repeat that.
1428. 01:03:22 You had to do that every day, right, so okay,
1429. 01:03:23 there's the scarcity loop model there.
1430. 01:03:25 Like that one, very clear,
1431. 01:03:27 like very, very clean connection here.
1432. 01:03:30 The rest of it is basically,
1433. 01:03:32 I'm telling a story about me going down
1434. 01:03:34 and eating roots, and plants, and rice,
1435. 01:03:37 and fish that was just caught out of the river.
1436. 01:03:41 And basically the, like my key takeaway is,
1437. 01:03:45 eat chamomile food, and don't snack, right?
1438. 01:03:48 That was kind of my biggest takeaway from this chapter.
1439. 01:03:52 I don't really know what else to do with it.
1440. 01:03:57 I mean the one other comment that I have here
1441. 01:03:58 that maybe you can add more,
1442. 01:04:00 but negative information triggers our brain
1443. 01:04:02 to unconsciously assume that the bad thing is going to happen.
1444. 01:04:07 So when we get negative information,
1445. 01:04:09 we're like, "Oh, the bad thing's gonna happen,"
1446. 01:04:11 which really that might not have anything
1447. 01:04:12 to do with the bad thing, it's just, it does that,
1448. 01:04:14 and this is related to food, right?
1449. 01:04:16 Like so, "Oh, I can't find berries today.
1450. 01:04:21 "I'm going to die of starvation."
1451. 01:04:22 And it's like, "Maybe not,
1452. 01:04:24 "maybe you just couldn't find berries today,
1453. 01:04:25 "and you gotta look somewhere else tomorrow."
1454. 01:04:28 But really my big takeaway from this was,
1455. 01:04:31 eat chamomile food, like whole fruits and vegetables,
1456. 01:04:35 and don't snack.
1457. 01:04:37 That was kind of what I got.
1458. 01:04:38 - Yeah, the specific diet that he talks about,
1459. 01:04:41 the chamomile diet, or meals,
1460. 01:04:45 composed of 25% lean protein,
1461. 01:04:48 chicken fish, couple of eggs, or red meat,
1462. 01:04:51 25% vegetables, like cabbage,
1463. 01:04:53 and the 50% unprocessed staple crops,
1464. 01:04:55 potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice,
1465. 01:04:56 kimwa, squash, corn, plantains, et cetera.
1466. 01:05:00 So you could take that and be like,
1467. 01:05:02 "Okay, yeah, I'll eat that
1468. 01:05:03 "because that is a healthy diet."
1469. 01:05:06 But yeah, it's attached to this story of him
1470. 01:05:09 going into the jungle, and it's kind of like why.
1471. 01:05:13 The things that I jotted down from this chapter,
1472. 01:05:16 and I had not heard of the comfort crisis,
1473. 01:05:20 and to be honest, I've had no interest
1474. 01:05:22 in picking up any sort of diet or food book,
1475. 01:05:27 because I feel like a lot of them,
1476. 01:05:31 I've had a lot of them shared with me.
1477. 01:05:32 I've had a lot of them given to me by people close to me.
1478. 01:05:36 Like my parents specifically are, what's the word?
1479. 01:05:40 - They gluten-free.
1480. 01:05:44 - Okay. - So like they don't eat bread.
1481. 01:05:46 I love bread. - Are they celiac
1482. 01:05:48 or are they gluten-free?
1483. 01:05:49 - I think celiac, but I know my dad,
1484. 01:05:55 'cause he had all the tests done at one point.
1485. 01:05:59 My mom, I think, eats gluten-free primarily.
1486. 01:06:03 I don't think she had it as bad as he did,
1487. 01:06:04 so maybe she's in the middle.
1488. 01:06:06 And I remember they had me get tested at one point
1489. 01:06:12 as I was finishing high school,
1490. 01:06:14 or maybe I was even in college
1491. 01:06:16 because they had gotten this revelation,
1492. 01:06:19 and my dad stopped eating bread,
1493. 01:06:20 and he started feeling a lot better.
1494. 01:06:22 Cool, more power to you,
1495. 01:06:24 but then they had me test
1496. 01:06:25 the frolleys different foods,
1497. 01:06:26 and I remember there were some that I was fairly allergic to,
1498. 01:06:30 and then there was the bread one,
1499. 01:06:32 and it wasn't even close to being like the biggest one,
1500. 01:06:35 but there was a little bit of a reaction there,
1501. 01:06:37 like, "See, see, you should cut out bread, too."
1502. 01:06:39 And I'm like, "No."
1503. 01:06:41 To this day, I love my bread.
1504. 01:06:42 So as a guy who is exactly like you mentally,
1505. 01:06:46 I love bread, carbs, pasta, all that stuff, pizza.
1506. 01:06:51 I get, that's my go-to food,
1507. 01:06:54 and I can't eat any of it,
1508. 01:06:56 like I can't eat any of it.
1509. 01:06:58 So I'm not celiac,
1510. 01:06:59 where like celiac, I mean, you'll potentially die, right?
1511. 01:07:02 'Cause you actually have a physical reaction to it.
1512. 01:07:05 I just like, it's terrible.
1513. 01:07:07 It's terrible, right?
1514. 01:07:08 So like my dad'll start coughing,
1515. 01:07:10 and he doesn't feel well when he has,
1516. 01:07:14 not just bread, but anything that's like coming in contact.
1517. 01:07:18 Yeah.
1518. 01:07:20 I have learned my limits,
1519. 01:07:22 and it has nothing to do with bread,
1520. 01:07:24 but there are certain things that I gotta be careful
1521. 01:07:28 not to eat too much.
1522. 01:07:30 And yeah, so I've kind of figured that out for myself,
1523. 01:07:34 and I don't drink soda.
1524. 01:07:37 Like there are a lot of things that we do,
1525. 01:07:39 I feel like I eat fairly healthy already.
1526. 01:07:42 I do think I could probably eat a little bit more balance.
1527. 01:07:46 So this idea of the 25% lean protein,
1528. 01:07:49 25% vegetables, 50% on processed staple crops,
1529. 01:07:53 that's kind of interesting to me.
1530. 01:07:54 Maybe I can start to move a little bit in that direction,
1531. 01:07:57 but I don't feel like I need to turn my world upside down
1532. 01:08:00 in order to try to eat this way.
1533. 01:08:02 Like he's doing, you know,
1534. 01:08:04 he mentions he's going to Costco,
1535. 01:08:06 and his wife's making fun of him.
1536. 01:08:07 And instead of the fresh, fresh-caught fish,
1537. 01:08:10 he's getting like fish burgers
1538. 01:08:11 from the frozen food section.
1539. 01:08:14 (laughs)
1540. 01:08:14 Which if you wanna do that, fine,
1541. 01:08:16 but it kind of sounds like,
1542. 01:08:19 I don't know, there's a tinge in the story.
1543. 01:08:25 I mean, he's choosing to do this,
1544. 01:08:27 and he's talking about how he's lost weight,
1545. 01:08:29 and he's feeling better.
1546. 01:08:31 You know, I've experienced that too,
1547. 01:08:32 and I've made some dietary changes,
1548. 01:08:34 but it wasn't just like, I'm gonna completely cut off
1549. 01:08:37 this stuff.
1550. 01:08:38 I don't know, like, probably as I get older,
1551. 01:08:43 I will be a little bit more strict
1552. 01:08:45 about some of these things,
1553. 01:08:47 but I'm kind of already moving in that direction.
1554. 01:08:49 I mean, I used to really enjoy,
1555. 01:08:52 not that I was ever drinking a lot of soda,
1556. 01:08:55 but I would always, we got to eat it, always get a soda.
1557. 01:08:59 I don't do that anymore,
1558. 01:09:00 and it's been years since I've done it,
1559. 01:09:02 and now it's just the thought of a super sweet soda
1560. 01:09:05 is completely appalling to me.
1561. 01:09:08 I have no desire for it whatsoever.
1562. 01:09:10 And I don't think you're gonna convince somebody
1563. 01:09:13 information-wise, especially when the source
1564. 01:09:16 of the information is, I went to this place
1565. 01:09:18 and did this thing, and I saw these people.
1566. 01:09:21 - I'm gonna disagree with you on this one.
1567. 01:09:25 Not because I personally disagree with you.
1568. 01:09:26 I'm gonna disagree with you because his audience,
1569. 01:09:29 this is the core, the crux of his audience.
1570. 01:09:33 And this, I told you, it comes,
1571. 01:09:34 this chapter reminds me of the most of the comfort crisis
1572. 01:09:36 because it's very much a, like,
1573. 01:09:39 oh, I'm gonna do a thing that's gonna make me uncomfortable,
1574. 01:09:41 and then I'm gonna report back on what it was like
1575. 01:09:43 and what that experience was like.
1576. 01:09:45 So it's like, I think he has a built-in newsletter
1577. 01:09:49 podcast audience here that eats up chapter eight.
1578. 01:09:53 They're like, yeah, and I didn't mean to do that,
1579. 01:09:55 but that's actually- - Yeah, so I think
1580. 01:09:57 you're probably right, and that was kind of the inclination
1581. 01:09:59 I had is like, there's gotta be more to this
1582. 01:10:01 because you don't share some of these statistics
1583. 01:10:05 just by going to visit this people that lives in the jungle.
1584. 01:10:08 Like the US cardiovascular disease
1585. 01:10:10 killing someone every 34 seconds
1586. 01:10:12 and cardiovascular disease killing more people
1587. 01:10:15 than the eight other top causes of death combined.
1588. 01:10:17 This is something obviously we should be paying attention to,
1589. 01:10:21 but I don't think the solution to cardiovascular disease
1590. 01:10:24 is you have to eat this exact diet.
1591. 01:10:28 Like you can convince me that a lot of the ultra processed
1592. 01:10:31 foods that we eat are bad for us and we should avoid them.
1593. 01:10:35 100%, I'm with you there.
1594. 01:10:37 I'm just not gonna follow you down the,
1595. 01:10:39 how do you say it?
1596. 01:10:40 - Chamoni. - Chamoni, yeah.
1597. 01:10:42 - Chamoni meal train.
1598. 01:10:43 - I'm very happy though that his wife made fun of him
1599. 01:10:46 because that's like, that makes me like her more, you know?
1600. 01:10:49 It's like, hey, you should be eating real fish.
1601. 01:10:52 No, fish birds.
1602. 01:10:53 Okay, so let's go to chapter nine.
1603. 01:10:57 Chapter nine, I liked a lot 'cause it talks about stuff
1604. 01:10:59 and right now for some reason I have this problem
1605. 01:11:03 that's haunting me right now where I feel like
1606. 01:11:06 we just have so much stuff in life.
1607. 01:11:08 There's just stuff everywhere and I'd love to get rid of
1608. 01:11:13 most of it, all of it, as much stuff as we could get rid of.
1609. 01:11:16 But the story around this one--
1610. 01:11:19 - You're gonna become a minimalist on me?
1611. 01:11:21 - So yes, but not practically.
1612. 01:11:25 - We can talk about that later.
1613. 01:11:28 So this whole chapter has wrapped around a story
1614. 01:11:32 with a, I can't remember, is there her first name?
1615. 01:11:36 I think zero is her first name, right?
1616. 01:11:37 - Yeah. - Oh man.
1617. 01:11:38 Okay, so the story--
1618. 01:11:40 - The warrior lady who lives in the wild.
1619. 01:11:43 - Yeah, so she, you know, is very much has been this way
1620. 01:11:46 for a long, long time and just really likes to go out
1621. 01:11:50 and I had heard that people do this,
1622. 01:11:53 but I didn't know that we were gonna read a chapter about it,
1623. 01:11:56 but they would go out and they'll animal shed
1624. 01:11:59 or animal skull hunt, right?
1625. 01:12:01 So they'll try to find animals that have died naturally
1626. 01:12:04 or however they've died in the woods
1627. 01:12:05 and then they'll get their antlers
1628. 01:12:07 or they'll get their full skull
1629. 01:12:08 and that she doesn't do it for anything,
1630. 01:12:11 any other reason than just the thrill of doing it,
1631. 01:12:15 but basically that she's learned to live
1632. 01:12:18 essentially out of a backpack, right?
1633. 01:12:20 Now, she does not follow the Chamonni diet, right?
1634. 01:12:23 So immediately we start to contradict ourselves
1635. 01:12:25 because she's eaten a piece of bread
1636. 01:12:26 with a half stick of butter on it,
1637. 01:12:28 which is not the Chamonni diet,
1638. 01:12:30 which that's, you know, that's, there's a dissonance there.
1639. 01:12:34 But basically the point of the chapter is humans
1640. 01:12:37 are defaulted as to collect more stuff
1641. 01:12:38 that we think having stuff or that actually having stuff
1642. 01:12:43 helps us survive, that we think it can bring us status
1643. 01:12:45 and then it can make us feel like we belong with others,
1644. 01:12:49 that we have this, I actually think this is a really
1645. 01:12:52 interesting point of this chapter
1646. 01:12:54 that there's this compulsive buying disorder
1647. 01:12:56 that got worse during the pandemic.
1648. 01:12:58 And I think that's a really interesting argument
1649. 01:13:01 that however it fits into this book
1650. 01:13:03 is a whole another story, but like,
1651. 01:13:05 I think it's a really interesting argument
1652. 01:13:08 that basically he has the 60 second idea
1653. 01:13:11 that if you can make a decision in 60 seconds,
1654. 01:13:13 you should do it.
1655. 01:13:14 If not, that's something.
1656. 01:13:16 That's telling you something.
1657. 01:13:17 You probably shouldn't do that.
1658. 01:13:18 I like that a lot.
1659. 01:13:20 - Yeah, there's a lot more into this.
1660. 01:13:21 So I'm gonna kick it to you in a second,
1661. 01:13:23 but the one other thing I wanted to say
1662. 01:13:24 before we dialogue this chapter is he actually has,
1663. 01:13:28 it's either his whole newsletter or it's a day
1664. 01:13:31 of his newsletter that's called "Gear Not Stuff."
1665. 01:13:35 So he has taken this concept, this gear not stuff concept
1666. 01:13:39 and turned it, like, and had made it part of his normal
1667. 01:13:42 content creation routine, where he's trying to talk about,
1668. 01:13:44 like, I didn't buy this thing just to have more.
1669. 01:13:47 I bought this thing because I consider it gear
1670. 01:13:50 and it's useful and it has an effectiveness in my life
1671. 01:13:53 beyond just getting something.
1672. 01:13:57 So I'll turn it to you now.
1673. 01:13:59 - Well, those are the two things
1674. 01:14:00 that I really wanted to talk about from this chapter two.
1675. 01:14:03 I mean, he also, he makes a very good compelling argument
1676. 01:14:06 for we buy a lot of stuff that we don't need.
1677. 01:14:09 According to Wall Street Journal,
1678. 01:14:10 Americans spent 1.2 trillion annually on things we don't need.
1679. 01:14:15 He shares that the dog clothing industry is projected
1680. 01:14:18 to be worth 16.6 billion in a couple of years.
1681. 01:14:22 - So my brain filtered that out.
1682. 01:14:26 I never made it, like, that's the first time I'm hearing that.
1683. 01:14:29 - Well, that stood out to me because I remember hearing
1684. 01:14:32 several years ago that the productivity market
1685. 01:14:37 was like $9 billion.
1686. 01:14:40 And I thought that was pretty high,
1687. 01:14:42 but if the dog clothing industry almost doubles it,
1688. 01:14:47 maybe it's not that impressive.
1689. 01:14:48 (laughing)
1690. 01:14:51 So the deciding on purchasing decisions within 60 seconds,
1691. 01:14:54 essentially what that's designed to do is
1692. 01:14:56 to avoid finding justification for things.
1693. 01:14:59 I think this is a really cool rule.
1694. 01:15:00 This is one of my action items.
1695. 01:15:03 Not that I'm even doing anything specifically formal with this,
1696. 01:15:06 but when I get tempted to buy something,
1697. 01:15:09 I'm either gonna buy it right away
1698. 01:15:11 because it's really clear.
1699. 01:15:12 This is how this is gonna be useful,
1700. 01:15:15 or I'm just not gonna buy it,
1701. 01:15:16 and I'm not gonna think about it anymore.
1702. 01:15:18 And so related to that is the second thing
1703. 01:15:20 about the collecting gear, not stuff.
1704. 01:15:22 This was another action item that I jotted down
1705. 01:15:24 from the section.
1706. 01:15:25 Gear having a clear purpose in terms of helping us achieve
1707. 01:15:30 a higher purpose.
1708. 01:15:31 I like that definition a lot.
1709. 01:15:33 I have actually sort of inadvertently
1710. 01:15:37 already taken action on this.
1711. 01:15:40 So I'm recording this episode today
1712. 01:15:44 on a new 14-inch M3 Space Black MacBook Pro.
1713. 01:15:50 (laughing)
1714. 01:15:53 - How black is the Space Black?
1715. 01:15:55 - It's pretty black.
1716. 01:15:56 - Nice. - Black enough.
1717. 01:15:58 Now I had a M1 MacBook Pro that had 36 gigs of RAM
1718. 01:16:03 and a terabyte of space.
1719. 01:16:07 This was an open box at Best Buy
1720. 01:16:09 that had a really great deal.
1721. 01:16:11 I think it was like $1,600,
1722. 01:16:15 but it's kind of a base model, 18 gigs, 512,
1723. 01:16:19 18 gigs of RAM, 512 gigabytes of space.
1724. 01:16:21 So I actually had to clear a whole bunch of clutter
1725. 01:16:24 just to get everything onto this device.
1726. 01:16:28 But the thing that spurred this
1727. 01:16:31 is that my kids are done with school for the year,
1728. 01:16:34 and Toby has told me a couple of times
1729. 01:16:36 he wants to help me with the video stuff.
1730. 01:16:39 So it's gonna become kind of a school work machine
1731. 01:16:44 for my older two who share a bedroom in the basement
1732. 01:16:47 next to my office.
1733. 01:16:48 The computer stays in my office.
1734. 01:16:50 They can bring it into the room to use it,
1735. 01:16:51 but it doesn't stay in the room at night.
1736. 01:16:55 And we have that rule with all our phones and stuff.
1737. 01:16:57 Like there's no devices in the bedrooms.
1738. 01:17:00 That's where their desk are,
1739. 01:17:01 that's where they do their school.
1740. 01:17:02 So I don't care if they bring it in there,
1741. 01:17:03 but he needed something that was gonna be able
1742. 01:17:08 to do video editing and Final Cut and ScreenFlow,
1743. 01:17:11 the programs that I use for the YouTube videos.
1744. 01:17:14 So this is a forcing mechanism for me to delegate
1745. 01:17:17 some of my video production to my son.
1746. 01:17:20 I'm at the point now with YouTube
1747. 01:17:23 where I make some money every month from YouTube
1748. 01:17:28 and I can see it going up every time I release a video.
1749. 01:17:34 So the thing that six months from now
1750. 01:17:37 is going to really hold me back from realizing
1751. 01:17:42 the full creative potential of my independent creator business
1752. 01:17:47 is me continuing to try to do everything on my own.
1753. 01:17:51 Yes.
1754. 01:17:52 Which YouTube has been the thing,
1755. 01:17:54 I'm still figuring it out.
1756. 01:17:55 I really care a lot about these videos.
1757. 01:17:57 They gotta be perfect.
1758. 01:17:59 So it's been hard for me to delegate pieces of it.
1759. 01:18:03 And the excuse that I've always had is
1760. 01:18:04 well, you don't have a machine that could actually
1761. 01:18:06 do this sort of stuff.
1762. 01:18:08 So I bought a machine.
1763. 01:18:10 And now he's gonna be able to do some of that stuff.
1764. 01:18:14 So you turned gear into gear for your son.
1765. 01:18:18 Yes.
1766. 01:18:19 And then you turned, you got new gear.
1767. 01:18:21 Yes, okay.
1768. 01:18:22 This started actually with the iPad Pros that came out
1769. 01:18:25 because I use a 2019, I think the current version
1770. 01:18:30 of the iPad mini, I bought that when it came out.
1771. 01:18:32 And as I mentioned before, I do use my iPad
1772. 01:18:36 for Civilization 6, but also for GoodNotes.
1773. 01:18:39 And if you look at my slides from like the reading masterclass
1774. 01:18:43 that I did and all my big presentations now,
1775. 01:18:46 I use the things that I draw in GoodNotes.
1776. 01:18:49 I'll grab those and I'll use those as images in my slides
1777. 01:18:53 alongside a sketch note font.
1778. 01:18:55 So when I'm creating things, I have my iPad open.
1779. 01:18:58 I'm drawing the thing and then I'm copying that,
1780. 01:19:01 pasting it into keynote.
1781. 01:19:03 So it is used for my work.
1782. 01:19:06 And I saw the iPad Pros, I'm like, this could be cool.
1783. 01:19:09 Then I kind of got to the point where I don't need
1784. 01:19:11 a new iPad Pro, especially if you're gonna spend $1500
1785. 01:19:15 when you get the new pencil, the new keyboard.
1786. 01:19:18 But then it was like, you know what I could do
1787. 01:19:19 with that money that would be a better use of that money.
1788. 01:19:23 Get a computer for my son to actually help me
1789. 01:19:26 with some of the video stuff.
1790. 01:19:28 'Cause that's the bottleneck.
1791. 01:19:29 That's the thing that takes all my time.
1792. 01:19:32 So even if I just record the videos
1793. 01:19:34 and then he does like the first pass
1794. 01:19:36 and he can put in some of the B roll,
1795. 01:19:38 that sort of stuff, that would be a huge help.
1796. 01:19:40 And that's the difference between me doing a video
1797. 01:19:43 every two or three weeks, as opposed to doing one every week.
1798. 01:19:46 - Yeah, you turned a temptation
1799. 01:19:48 into a actual productive purchase.
1800. 01:19:52 - Well, we'll see if it's productive, I guess,
1801. 01:19:54 in the like yet to be determined, but that's the belief.
1802. 01:19:58 - Yeah, okay.
1803. 01:19:59 All right.
1804. 01:20:00 All right, let's keep moving.
1805. 01:20:01 We're gonna go to chapter 10 and now this is information.
1806. 01:20:05 And I actually have quite a bit of notes on chapter 10.
1807. 01:20:08 I guess I'm interested in information.
1808. 01:20:12 So the story around this one is the International Space Station.
1809. 01:20:15 He interviews a guy who wanted to talk to him
1810. 01:20:19 because of the comfort crisis.
1811. 01:20:21 So he ends up talking to this guy about information
1812. 01:20:24 and science and doing those things.
1813. 01:20:26 But then this is where he really goes hard
1814. 01:20:28 into the evolution side,
1815. 01:20:30 because he starts talking about this fish
1816. 01:20:32 that had arms like human arms
1817. 01:20:35 that could crawl out of the water.
1818. 01:20:37 And I'm gonna try to not go super heavy on here,
1819. 01:20:41 but like--
1820. 01:20:42 - I forget what that fish was called.
1821. 01:20:44 There was a name for it.
1822. 01:20:45 - Yeah, it's called the Tikalik.
1823. 01:20:48 - Okay.
1824. 01:20:49 - All right, Tiktalik, Tiktalik, there you go.
1825. 01:20:52 Tiktalik, I had to get all the letters in there.
1826. 01:20:55 But basically there's a connection there
1827. 01:20:58 and I'm not gonna,
1828. 01:21:00 I don't wanna get into evolution right now.
1829. 01:21:02 Mike, I don't wanna do that whole thing
1830. 01:21:05 and what our beliefs are on that.
1831. 01:21:06 I think that's a different podcast
1832. 01:21:08 or a pro-show topic for another time.
1833. 01:21:12 But we get into that
1834. 01:21:13 and then we get into basically that the scarcity concept
1835. 01:21:18 is the mother of why we need this information
1836. 01:21:21 and we're driving for that scare,
1837. 01:21:22 get more information, more information.
1838. 01:21:27 What I really liked about this was the word informivores.
1839. 01:21:31 I thought that was awesome, right?
1840. 01:21:33 And basically it's creatures that search for
1841. 01:21:35 and digest information just like carnivores hunt for
1842. 01:21:38 and eat meat and I was like, man,
1843. 01:21:39 that is a great concept, right?
1844. 01:21:41 So when you're finding the diamonds in the rough
1845. 01:21:43 of the book, right?
1846. 01:21:44 That was one of the diamonds walking out for me.
1847. 01:21:47 Talk about information overload.
1848. 01:21:49 I also liked his conversation of knowledge versus understanding.
1849. 01:21:53 I thought that was good where knowledge is just facts.
1850. 01:21:56 Understanding is having facts, seeing how they connect
1851. 01:21:59 and being able to use that knowledge
1852. 01:22:00 to explore, categorize and gain insight.
1853. 01:22:01 And I thought that was a really good kind of overview.
1854. 01:22:05 So those I think were my few takeaways,
1855. 01:22:07 my few big takeaways from this chapter.
1856. 01:22:09 - So I have my own heuristic, whatever,
1857. 01:22:13 for the difference between information, et cetera.
1858. 01:22:18 And the way I describe it is that information
1859. 01:22:23 is the stuff that you collect, you put it in an archive,
1860. 01:22:25 you can look it up.
1861. 01:22:26 So something that you have.
1862. 01:22:30 Revelation is something that you've internalized,
1863. 01:22:34 you can spit back the numbers, you know the stuff.
1864. 01:22:36 So it's something that you know.
1865. 01:22:38 But then there's application, which is the highest level
1866. 01:22:41 where you're taking the information
1867. 01:22:43 and you're doing something with it.
1868. 01:22:45 That's maybe a separate discussion,
1869. 01:22:47 but since you were talking about the information,
1870. 01:22:50 I think that's kind of how I view that.
1871. 01:22:53 And I think it's important because one of the stats
1872. 01:22:55 he shares in this chapter is that by the 2020
1873. 01:22:58 is the average person spent between 11 and 13 hours per day
1874. 01:23:01 consuming information.
1875. 01:23:03 Many of the problems that we encounter,
1876. 01:23:06 we feel like our information or knowledge problems,
1877. 01:23:10 if we just found the right information
1878. 01:23:12 or if we knew the right things,
1879. 01:23:14 we knew what to do that the problem would go away.
1880. 01:23:17 And that's not actually the case.
1881. 01:23:19 Most of the time we know what to do,
1882. 01:23:21 we just fail to do it.
1883. 01:23:22 Because we're so overwhelmed with everything else.
1884. 01:23:26 Mike, in your bookworm and just reading experiences,
1885. 01:23:30 is there anybody that talks about that in detail
1886. 01:23:32 or in depth?
1887. 01:23:33 Nothing comes to mind, but maybe there's a book
1888. 01:23:39 we should read at some point.
1889. 01:23:41 I have it on my bookshelf.
1890. 01:23:43 I think it's called information anxiety,
1891. 01:23:47 something like that.
1892. 01:23:48 And essentially it's that we're trying to collect
1893. 01:23:50 and manage too much information.
1894. 01:23:52 You add to the fact, and I'm part of this problem I guess,
1895. 01:23:57 40% of information is user generated,
1896. 01:23:59 like YouTube, TikTok, podcasts.
1897. 01:24:02 How do you feel about that, Corey?
1898. 01:24:03 We're part of the problem here.
1899. 01:24:05 - We are part of the problem, yes.
1900. 01:24:07 - Well, I don't think we're part of the problem,
1901. 01:24:10 to be honest.
1902. 01:24:11 I think the problem is not how much information is out there.
1903. 01:24:14 That ship has sailed, there is too much information.
1904. 01:24:18 The problem is how people are trying to deal with it.
1905. 01:24:22 You have to flip a switch where instead of trying
1906. 01:24:25 to consume as much information as you can,
1907. 01:24:28 you intentionally neglect certain things,
1908. 01:24:32 and you have to be okay with that.
1909. 01:24:34 You can't keep up with the FOMO.
1910. 01:24:38 And that's kind of the whole message here.
1911. 01:24:39 Information has diminishing returns.
1912. 01:24:41 We crave information, but we prefer it be easy to get,
1913. 01:24:44 which leads us to finding it from low quality sources.
1914. 01:24:48 So essentially be more particular
1915. 01:24:53 about the stuff that you're consuming,
1916. 01:24:55 which I would like to think that Bookworm listeners
1917. 01:24:58 in particular are, you may not agree with everything
1918. 01:25:03 that we say, you may dislike us as people,
1919. 01:25:05 but we are cut from the same cloth.
1920. 01:25:08 (laughs)
1921. 01:25:09 - Yep, I would agree.
1922. 01:25:10 All right, I wanna round this one out.
1923. 01:25:12 If it was there more, did I cut you off?
1924. 01:25:14 I'm sorry.
1925. 01:25:15 - Well, the only other thing I wanna call out from this
1926. 01:25:18 is the internet, how it's altered our brains,
1927. 01:25:21 because it's heard our ability to focus.
1928. 01:25:23 We've offloaded some of our memory to the cloud,
1929. 01:25:25 and it changes our social interactions.
1930. 01:25:28 Those are important things to be aware of,
1931. 01:25:31 but those are not new or original necessarily
1932. 01:25:34 to this particular book.
1933. 01:25:36 I think that there are other books that kind of talk
1934. 01:25:40 about that maybe on a deeper level
1935. 01:25:43 if you wanna get deeper into it,
1936. 01:25:44 but it is relevant for this section.
1937. 01:25:49 Recognize that we're not saying,
1938. 01:25:51 and he's not saying, avoid the internet,
1939. 01:25:54 just go into it with your eyes open.
1940. 01:25:56 Use it for good, discard the stuff that's not useful,
1941. 01:26:01 and move on.
1942. 01:26:02 - All right, so this is the,
1943. 01:26:06 maybe the one time, if not,
1944. 01:26:08 it's the strongest time he points to the abundance loop,
1945. 01:26:12 because he talks about Niantic,
1946. 01:26:15 and the founder of Niantic basically creating this thing
1947. 01:26:20 where you'd kinda walk around and you'd get information
1948. 01:26:23 about local sites and local monuments
1949. 01:26:27 and different things that are cool about where you were,
1950. 01:26:29 then turning that into a game called Ingress,
1951. 01:26:32 and then Ingress being turned into Pokemon Go,
1952. 01:26:36 and basically how the scarcity loop
1953. 01:26:40 was turned into an abundance loop
1954. 01:26:41 and went from a negative thing into a positive thing.
1955. 01:26:45 And I just thought that story was really, really cool.
1956. 01:26:47 I actually knew that Pokemon Go was developed
1957. 01:26:51 from the foundation that is Ingress.
1958. 01:26:54 I had heard that before,
1959. 01:26:56 but it was just really cool to hear the story of how
1960. 01:27:01 they took one thing and then they built on it
1961. 01:27:02 and they built on it and look how successful it's been,
1962. 01:27:05 and the stats that they put out about the number of steps
1963. 01:27:07 that people were taking and the number of miles
1964. 01:27:09 people have traveled and how it's actually improving
1965. 01:27:13 people's social interaction,
1966. 01:27:16 'cause they'll team up to go fight different bosses
1967. 01:27:19 and stuff.
1968. 01:27:20 I'm sure there are negatives to that.
1969. 01:27:21 I know of one because I had a student in my class
1970. 01:27:24 who was basically addicted to Pokemon Go,
1971. 01:27:27 and he came to me and he's like,
1972. 01:27:29 "Dr. Hicks, I need help."
1973. 01:27:30 He's like, "I really do, I need help."
1974. 01:27:32 And I was like, "Okay, let's talk about this."
1975. 01:27:35 But at the same time, it's still doing positive things
1976. 01:27:38 and I thought that was a cool story.
1977. 01:27:40 - That was a cool story.
1978. 01:27:42 Yeah, when you were starting to share with the,
1979. 01:27:45 as evidence for the abundance loop,
1980. 01:27:46 I was thinking to myself,
1981. 01:27:48 "Well, maybe it's not all abundance.
1982. 01:27:50 "Maybe there's a dark side to this too."
1983. 01:27:53 - There's always. - But they're probably,
1984. 01:27:54 they're always is, yeah.
1985. 01:27:56 Everything is not as simple as we would like it to be.
1986. 01:28:00 I think the big takeaway,
1987. 01:28:02 kind of jumping to the end of the book.
1988. 01:28:03 So maybe put a pin in this,
1989. 01:28:06 but recognize that these loops exist
1990. 01:28:09 and figure out for yourself how you want to use them
1991. 01:28:14 to advance your personal agendas,
1992. 01:28:18 which can be positive or negative.
1993. 01:28:21 You could do it in service of other people,
1994. 01:28:24 which I think he would maybe kind of argue
1995. 01:28:28 that if you're talking about your life's purpose,
1996. 01:28:30 that that is an important thing,
1997. 01:28:32 'cause that kind of gets into the next chapter.
1998. 01:28:35 But there's definitely the Robert Green style,
1999. 01:28:39 48 Laws of Power,
2000. 01:28:40 you could use this to manipulate people too, if you want.
2001. 01:28:43 - Yep.
2002. 01:28:44 Yep.
2003. 01:28:45 All right, let's get to the last chapter,
2004. 01:28:50 which is about happiness.
2005. 01:28:51 Now, he takes the last chapter
2006. 01:28:56 and he centers it around Benedictine monks in New Mexico.
2007. 01:29:01 And his visit to this Benedictine monastery,
2008. 01:29:05 this was very reminiscent of another book that I've read
2009. 01:29:09 by, I'm forgetting his name right now,
2010. 01:29:11 but it's called "Live Not By Lies"
2011. 01:29:14 and where he basically looks at the Benedictine monks as well.
2012. 01:29:18 And I think this is just an absolutely fascinating
2013. 01:29:23 group of people to look at.
2014. 01:29:24 And there are parts of their livelihood
2015. 01:29:27 that I am jealous of,
2016. 01:29:29 that I would love to try out for an extended period of time.
2017. 01:29:33 So we were talking about the abyss earlier.
2018. 01:29:35 I gave you one of my abyss things,
2019. 01:29:38 but the second one would be doing this, right?
2020. 01:29:42 Like going to one of these and saying,
2021. 01:29:43 like, I'm just gonna live there for a month
2022. 01:29:44 and I'm gonna see what that's like.
2023. 01:29:46 But the whole point of this is he goes to this monastery
2024. 01:29:50 and he lives with the monks for, I think, a week.
2025. 01:29:53 Is that right, Mike?
2026. 01:29:54 I think he's stay there for a week.
2027. 01:29:56 - I forget the timeframe,
2028. 01:29:59 but I think it sorta doesn't matter.
2029. 01:30:04 The takeaway from the story is that it sounds extreme
2030. 01:30:07 when he gets there and by the end,
2031. 01:30:09 he doesn't really wanna leave.
2032. 01:30:10 - Exactly, exactly.
2033. 01:30:12 So he's learning about this idea of what we think happiness is
2034. 01:30:16 and then where actual happiness comes from.
2035. 01:30:20 He quotes Thomas Aquinas a bunch of times,
2036. 01:30:23 happiness is the goal of all human activity,
2037. 01:30:24 the search for happiness is a common ground
2038. 01:30:26 on which human desires all human ambitions meet.
2039. 01:30:30 There's all these different kind of references here.
2040. 01:30:32 What's interesting about this chapter,
2041. 01:30:34 and I really was not expecting it at all,
2042. 01:30:37 is he goes into this whole section
2043. 01:30:39 about talking about his background
2044. 01:30:42 and a Mormon, a universalist,
2045. 01:30:44 then being a self-proclaimed, like,
2046. 01:30:46 and he says this,
2047. 01:30:47 self-proclaimed, like, ignorant/juvenau atheist,
2048. 01:30:50 and then being a deist, right?
2049. 01:30:52 So it's interesting that he goes into his kind of religious
2050. 01:30:56 journey and it would make sense,
2051. 01:30:57 I mean, he went to a Benedictine monastery,
2052. 01:30:59 so it makes sense that that would come out.
2053. 01:31:02 But he calls out the fact that basically,
2054. 01:31:05 we should challenge ourselves physically,
2055. 01:31:08 intellectually, spiritually,
2056. 01:31:09 because that will make us stronger and happier.
2057. 01:31:12 He calls out deprivation that there are times
2058. 01:31:14 when we should deprive ourselves intentionally
2059. 01:31:16 because that deprivation,
2060. 01:31:18 when we get the thing back,
2061. 01:31:19 will lead to a happier attitude
2062. 01:31:22 and more gratitude toward that thing.
2063. 01:31:25 He calls out the difference between loneliness and solitude,
2064. 01:31:27 which I had never heard anybody break those two down,
2065. 01:31:29 but I really liked it,
2066. 01:31:30 but basically that solitude is intentional,
2067. 01:31:33 and then, you know, he picks a couple of different examples
2068. 01:31:37 of people talking about how solitude led them to,
2069. 01:31:39 you know, their great discoveries
2070. 01:31:41 or their different things.
2071. 01:31:43 So overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting chapter.
2072. 01:31:47 - Yeah, the solitude, he's talking about it longer timeframes,
2073. 01:31:53 but this is kind of the personal retreat stuff for me
2074. 01:31:58 and why I advocate for getting away,
2075. 01:32:01 not just to a different place,
2076. 01:32:03 but some place that you're not really interacting
2077. 01:32:08 with other people.
2078. 01:32:09 I think I've mentioned to you the getaway houses
2079. 01:32:11 that I've been going to lately,
2080. 01:32:13 that's perfect for this sort of stuff.
2081. 01:32:17 And there is something about that solitude,
2082. 01:32:20 not just in terms of thinking more clearly,
2083. 01:32:23 but when you do it,
2084. 01:32:26 especially the first couple times,
2085. 01:32:28 it feels really uncomfortable.
2086. 01:32:30 And then afterwards,
2087. 01:32:32 you feel this calmness,
2088. 01:32:35 like you're glad that you did it.
2089. 01:32:38 And so I think that's an important point
2090. 01:32:42 and you don't need to go visit a monastery for a week
2091. 01:32:47 in order to start implementing elements of it.
2092. 01:32:49 That's kind of the point that I want to make here.
2093. 01:32:51 The other thing from this that really stood out to me,
2094. 01:32:56 so there's this running bit on focus
2095. 01:33:00 where Mike tries mindfulness meditation.
2096. 01:33:04 It doesn't stick.
2097. 01:33:06 David talks about the benefits of it
2098. 01:33:08 and Mike tries it again and it repeats.
2099. 01:33:12 And I've kind of always thought
2100. 01:33:14 that one of the reasons maybe
2101. 01:33:17 that I have trouble getting this to stick
2102. 01:33:20 is that I have a daily prayer habit.
2103. 01:33:23 So I've been trying to build mindfulness meditation
2104. 01:33:26 on top of that.
2105. 01:33:28 And I have never, I don't think explicitly said,
2106. 01:33:32 well, I don't need to do mindfulness meditation
2107. 01:33:34 'cause I'm already getting the benefits
2108. 01:33:36 from the prayer practice.
2109. 01:33:38 But I think Michael Easter just gave me the data
2110. 01:33:41 that allows me to come to grips with this.
2111. 01:33:45 - Yes, that actually makes a lot of sense.
2112. 01:33:47 - Yeah, he mentions that meditation and prayer
2113. 01:33:50 both reduce stress and help us control our emotions.
2114. 01:33:52 And I don't know specifically which study that comes from,
2115. 01:33:57 but it kind of occurs to me, oh yeah, I guess,
2116. 01:33:59 that these are kind of related.
2117. 01:34:01 And David's kind of alluded to this,
2118. 01:34:03 but I feel like I still want to try to build
2119. 01:34:08 a little bit more mindfulness into my day to day,
2120. 01:34:14 but I'm not viewing it anymore as something additional
2121. 01:34:19 that has to be tacked on to the prayer habit.
2122. 01:34:23 Like prayer is already a version of this.
2123. 01:34:26 Like I'm already kind of doing this.
2124. 01:34:28 So made me feel a little bit, a little bit better.
2125. 01:34:32 I didn't see that conversation going that way.
2126. 01:34:34 And I'm really glad 'cause that actually makes a lot of sense
2127. 01:34:37 on why I've heard you try and not do it.
2128. 01:34:41 Try and not do it, try and not do it.
2129. 01:34:44 - Yeah, just when things get busy,
2130. 01:34:46 it just never really seems to stick.
2131. 01:34:48 And that would make sense while like when I do it,
2132. 01:34:50 I don't realize the huge impact
2133. 01:34:54 'cause I've already kind of achieved the payoff.
2134. 01:34:58 So, but I also like the section in here about finding meaning
2135. 01:35:03 in our lives and stuff like that, obviously.
2136. 01:35:05 We're wrapping up the Life theme cohort
2137. 01:35:08 as we record this next week is the one
2138. 01:35:10 where people are gonna share their Life theme,
2139. 01:35:12 which I'm looking forward to.
2140. 01:35:14 But I have one additional action item
2141. 01:35:17 that comes out of this section
2142. 01:35:20 because this is not something new.
2143. 01:35:22 I've heard versions of this before,
2144. 01:35:23 but the scientific source of this
2145. 01:35:27 is the monk that he was talking to.
2146. 01:35:30 About four hours of creative work per day is the limit.
2147. 01:35:34 He makes the point that you can actually do those four hours
2148. 01:35:38 of work every day.
2149. 01:35:40 You don't need to take a day off, seven days in a row,
2150. 01:35:43 which I'm not going to do that.
2151. 01:35:46 But I do think that there are limits to creative work
2152. 01:35:51 that when I get focused on a project,
2153. 01:35:56 I just kind of try to blow through.
2154. 01:35:59 And usually what happens when I do that is the next day,
2155. 01:36:03 I have a terribly unproductive day
2156. 01:36:05 and I don't feel like doing anything.
2157. 01:36:08 So, I don't know exactly how I wanna manage this.
2158. 01:36:10 The action item I'm gonna take away from this is
2159. 01:36:13 I want to revisit my ideal week,
2160. 01:36:16 which I recently created as a table in Obsidian, of course.
2161. 01:36:21 (laughs)
2162. 01:36:22 But I wanna take a look at that and try to block
2163. 01:36:26 four hours every day for the real creative work.
2164. 01:36:31 Kind of the way I see this going is the mornings
2165. 01:36:34 are gonna be the creative time.
2166. 01:36:36 And by the time I disconnect around noon,
2167. 01:36:40 I'd like to start a little bit earlier.
2168. 01:36:41 So I get done maybe 11 a.m.
2169. 01:36:44 And then I can go for a run, work out, whatever,
2170. 01:36:46 and then have lunch.
2171. 01:36:48 But in the afternoon, that would be the admin stuff.
2172. 01:36:52 And maybe just more blocks of thinking time,
2173. 01:36:57 be curious about less structure.
2174. 01:37:00 I am not quite sure where podcasts fit into this.
2175. 01:37:05 I kind of feel that by the time I sit down to talk
2176. 01:37:13 into a microphone, the hard work, hard creative work
2177. 01:37:18 has already been done in preparing the outline.
2178. 01:37:21 This is actually the easy part for me.
2179. 01:37:24 So I may just keep this in the afternoon,
2180. 01:37:28 but I have to think about that.
2181. 01:37:30 - Well, and you'll know if you're toast, right?
2182. 01:37:32 Like if you do this for a week or whatever,
2183. 01:37:34 and you get into those podcasting sessions
2184. 01:37:36 and you're like, nope, it's way more creative
2185. 01:37:39 than I thought it was.
2186. 01:37:40 Like you'll know that pretty quick, I think.
2187. 01:37:43 - Yeah, I think also, I gotta think about this more.
2188. 01:37:47 I think it's not real clean and clear,
2189. 01:37:52 but I will share that I have noticed,
2190. 01:37:56 usually Thursday afternoons, this one got moved
2191. 01:37:59 because scheduling, and we had to do this one
2192. 01:38:03 in the afternoon.
2193. 01:38:04 But a lot of times, what I'll try to do when I have a video,
2194. 01:38:07 I'll record Thursday afternoons
2195. 01:38:10 after we've recorded bookworm.
2196. 01:38:12 And I'll notice after the fact,
2197. 01:38:14 I know everything about presenting and exaggerate
2198. 01:38:18 your facial expressions, be over the top,
2199. 01:38:21 gooberish, smiling all the time,
2200. 01:38:23 but still sometimes I record,
2201. 01:38:25 and then I look at the video later
2202. 01:38:26 and I'm like, why am I so angry?
2203. 01:38:28 (laughs)
2204. 01:38:29 And it's probably just because I'm drained.
2205. 01:38:32 - Why am I so angry?
2206. 01:38:35 (laughs)
2207. 01:38:37 (laughs)
2208. 01:38:38 All right, Mike, we gotta move to that blog.
2209. 01:38:40 Okay, so the epilogue is super short in this book,
2210. 01:38:43 but this is kind of where the abyss idea came from.
2211. 01:38:46 Basically, he kind of puts a bow
2212. 01:38:50 and then recaps everything.
2213. 01:38:51 So you call this the epilogue,
2214. 01:38:53 you call it a summary of the book
2215. 01:38:54 'cause he does summarize everything
2216. 01:38:56 into kind of a tight little package here.
2217. 01:38:59 But basically, one of the main drivers is
2218. 01:39:02 the scarcity loop, we often flip it,
2219. 01:39:05 where we push for the short-term comforts
2220. 01:39:08 kind of at the downfall of the long-term happiness, right?
2221. 01:39:12 That would be a fairly succinct way to say that.
2222. 01:39:16 And that we should find more of these abyss-like opportunities
2223. 01:39:21 that actually help us to live in new ways
2224. 01:39:24 and that help us build endurance
2225. 01:39:25 and help us kind of work through these harder things
2226. 01:39:28 because we'll get the longer-term reward from that.
2227. 01:39:33 Other than that in the summary
2228. 01:39:35 and just kind of revisiting everything again,
2229. 01:39:37 not too much in the epilogue.
2230. 01:39:40 - Yeah, I think the big takeaway
2231. 01:39:41 is that we can shift scarcity loops into abundance loops,
2232. 01:39:45 which would be a much more powerful way to end the book
2233. 01:39:50 if there were some visuals associated with this.
2234. 01:39:53 - I can get a sense for style and rating,
2235. 01:39:57 but we'll hold off on that for a little bit.
2236. 01:39:59 (laughing)
2237. 01:40:00 All right, so Mike, let's move into action items.
2238. 01:40:03 We've kind of touched on these a little bit,
2239. 01:40:05 but let's summarize them as we go.
2240. 01:40:07 My book, I'll start with my action items.
2241. 01:40:10 So one, I have two coming out of this book.
2242. 01:40:14 In areas where I feel like I'm lacking moderation,
2243. 01:40:16 I wanna apply the scarcity loop.
2244. 01:40:18 So I wanna say, okay, I think I'm doing too much
2245. 01:40:22 of whatever it might be.
2246. 01:40:23 How do I address one of those three points to overcome
2247. 01:40:27 or get out of that?
2248. 01:40:28 Or how do I turn it into abundance loop?
2249. 01:40:30 The second one would be to take a month
2250. 01:40:33 and try to get rid of one thing every day.
2251. 01:40:37 So if I take a month,
2252. 01:40:37 I'm gonna get rid of 30 things out of my house
2253. 01:40:39 and just see what that.
2254. 01:40:40 And I've heard of this in other places, right?
2255. 01:40:42 So this is not a new concept,
2256. 01:40:43 but take a month and try to get rid of a thing every day.
2257. 01:40:46 And this would be my idea of getting towards more gear
2258. 01:40:48 and not stuff, 'cause I'd have to look at a thing
2259. 01:40:50 and say, is this gear, is this stuff?
2260. 01:40:52 Is this gear, is this stuff?
2261. 01:40:53 I think those are my two takeaways.
2262. 01:40:55 So Mike, what do you have?
2263. 01:40:57 - I've got four, and I think I mentioned all of these.
2264. 01:41:00 Ask, do I wanna be right or do I wanna be happy?
2265. 01:41:02 And that's not ask like out loud,
2266. 01:41:04 but just consider when I'm about to be actually, you know?
2267. 01:41:08 (laughs)
2268. 01:41:10 I want to decide on purchasing decisions quickly
2269. 01:41:13 within 60 seconds and avoid finding justification
2270. 01:41:16 for stuff that I don't need.
2271. 01:41:18 I wanna collect gear, not stuff,
2272. 01:41:19 things that are actually useful.
2273. 01:41:21 And I want to revisit my ideal week
2274. 01:41:23 and try to do four hours of creative work per day.
2275. 01:41:27 - Wonderful.
2276. 01:41:29 Okay, so style and rating now.
2277. 01:41:31 This was my book.
2278. 01:41:33 So overall, my comments and my rating
2279. 01:41:38 were probably not going to go hand in hand.
2280. 01:41:41 I like the stories.
2281. 01:41:43 Like I thought they were pretty good.
2282. 01:41:45 I was engaged by them.
2283. 01:41:47 I did not think that they always hit the theme
2284. 01:41:51 or the thread of what the book was trying to cover.
2285. 01:41:55 I think that's the biggest downfall I have with this book
2286. 01:41:57 is I like the scarcity loop idea.
2287. 01:42:00 I really like the thread that could have been there
2288. 01:42:03 throughout this entire book.
2289. 01:42:05 I think we could have knocked,
2290. 01:42:07 I mean, you've heard this for me before
2291. 01:42:09 and you're gonna hear this for me again.
2292. 01:42:10 I think we could have knocked 100 pages off this book
2293. 01:42:12 and it gets a lot better.
2294. 01:42:14 Just because I think it would have been a lot tighter,
2295. 01:42:15 it'd have forced you to make it a lot tighter
2296. 01:42:17 and it would have made you stick to that scarcity loop idea.
2297. 01:42:21 And maybe we'd have had one or two less stories
2298. 01:42:24 or one or two less chapters.
2299. 01:42:25 So overall, while I enjoyed the stories,
2300. 01:42:29 I don't have any problem with the way Easter writes.
2301. 01:42:33 I don't have any problem with the way he tells a story.
2302. 01:42:37 I didn't have a problem with the way he connected that through.
2303. 01:42:39 I'm gonna give this book a three
2304. 01:42:43 and it's primarily based on the fact
2305. 01:42:45 that I like the scarcity loop
2306. 01:42:46 and I like the way that that could have
2307. 01:42:48 positive impact in my life.
2308. 01:42:51 It's a mic you're up.
2309. 01:42:53 - Sure.
2310. 01:42:54 I agree with your rating.
2311. 01:42:55 I'm gonna rate it 3.02.
2312. 01:42:57 And I think that there is an alternate scenario
2313. 01:43:00 where this actually is higher
2314. 01:43:02 and that is if you just want to be entertained,
2315. 01:43:07 kind of like an edutainment type of book,
2316. 01:43:11 this would be a good one
2317. 01:43:12 'cause it is a really engaging style
2318. 01:43:17 and the stories that he tells are really good.
2319. 01:43:20 But when we talk about books for bookworm,
2320. 01:43:23 I think the prevailing mindset often is,
2321. 01:43:27 I wanna read this book
2322. 01:43:28 because I believe it's gonna solve a problem that I have
2323. 01:43:31 and the thing that could solve the problem
2324. 01:43:34 that you have would be applying the information
2325. 01:43:38 regarding the scarcity loop and the abundance loop.
2326. 01:43:42 And that is not that heavy.
2327. 01:43:46 It's not that strong.
2328. 01:43:47 Like it's kind of loosely there in the background
2329. 01:43:50 as the foundation for all the cool stories
2330. 01:43:53 that he's gonna tell.
2331. 01:43:55 Not to say that there's not stuff you can't get
2332. 01:43:57 from the stories.
2333. 01:43:58 All of my action items came from
2334. 01:44:01 those types of chapters, I believe.
2335. 01:44:02 I don't think there was a single one from the first five.
2336. 01:44:07 Yeah, there wasn't.
2337. 01:44:08 They were all from the stories that he was telling,
2338. 01:44:10 which are really fun and interesting to read.
2339. 01:44:15 But I feel like the main message of the book
2340. 01:44:17 of the scarcity loop anyways is chapters one through four.
2341. 01:44:21 I don't even know, that's like gotta be less than 100 pages.
2342. 01:44:24 So when you were talking about 100 pages being chopped off,
2343. 01:44:27 I was gonna ask you which 100 pages.
2344. 01:44:30 It would not be that part, that's for sure.
2345. 01:44:32 Yeah, but there is a book that is just fun to read
2346. 01:44:36 that does remove those 100 pages.
2347. 01:44:39 And then it's just about chapter five on, I think.
2348. 01:44:43 But yeah, I don't think that's why you picked the book.
2349. 01:44:45 I don't think that's why a lot of bookworm listeners
2350. 01:44:48 would pick up a book like this
2351. 01:44:51 when he started talking about the scarcity loop.
2352. 01:44:54 I anticipated kind of James Clear,
2353. 01:44:57 atomic habit style approach towards the scarcity loop.
2354. 01:45:02 And that is definitely not what we got.
2355. 01:45:06 So I think it actually leaves you entertained,
2356. 01:45:09 but with maybe a lot more questions than answers by the end.
2357. 01:45:13 And I've mentioned this a couple times,
2358. 01:45:15 but I cannot fathom why there is not a visual
2359. 01:45:18 associated with this.
2360. 01:45:19 I mean, literally just a circle
2361. 01:45:21 with the three different things.
2362. 01:45:22 You could go a lot further with that.
2363. 01:45:24 I mean, you could have them go the other way
2364. 01:45:26 when you're talking about the abundance loop
2365. 01:45:29 and you gotta have this mindset shift
2366. 01:45:31 to go from one direction to the next.
2367. 01:45:32 Not that that is necessary, but what that does,
2368. 01:45:36 I feel like if you are really,
2369. 01:45:38 this is what the idea I want people to walk away
2370. 01:45:40 from this book with, those visuals are a way
2371. 01:45:44 to cement it in people's brains.
2372. 01:45:46 Now we talked through it for over an hour and a half.
2373. 01:45:50 So we're gonna remember the conversation,
2374. 01:45:52 but I think if most people pick up the book
2375. 01:45:54 and they read through it,
2376. 01:45:55 you might forget the scarcity loop specifics
2377. 01:45:58 by the time you get to the end,
2378. 01:46:00 which I think is probably not his intended effect here,
2379. 01:46:03 but he's a great writer.
2380. 01:46:05 So I kind of feel a little bit confused by this book,
2381. 01:46:09 but in terms of like actionable information, 3.0,
2382. 01:46:13 in terms of fun entertaining read
2383. 01:46:17 that you're gonna get something out of,
2384. 01:46:19 if that's what you were going into it for,
2385. 01:46:20 then it's probably a 4.0, honestly,
2386. 01:46:22 'cause his writing's really good.
2387. 01:46:24 There wasn't a point in this book where I was like,
2388. 01:46:26 "Oh, I wish this would be over,"
2389. 01:46:27 even though it's almost 300 pages long.
2390. 01:46:30 All right, so let's put scarcity brain on the shelf.
2391. 01:46:34 Mike, you have the next book.
2392. 01:46:35 So what are we coming up with next?
2393. 01:46:38 Radical Cander by Kim Scott,
2394. 01:46:40 one of the culture books that comes up all the time
2395. 01:46:44 in terms of creating culture and organizations.
2396. 01:46:47 And when I heard that this was a topic
2397. 01:46:48 you were interested in,
2398. 01:46:50 figured this would be a fun conversation.
2399. 01:46:54 Outstanding.
2400. 01:46:55 So I have the next book then,
2401. 01:46:56 and as you're prepping for two episodes from now,
2402. 01:47:00 I stole a book from Mike.
2403. 01:47:03 He, I had thrown a couple ideas by him.
2404. 01:47:05 So I'm still learning kind of the bookworm books
2405. 01:47:08 and what would be best for the show,
2406. 01:47:10 but we're gonna do co-intelligence
2407. 01:47:12 and the subtitles, "Living and Working with AI,"
2408. 01:47:14 and it's by Ethan Mullick.
2409. 01:47:16 So I've wanted to do an AI book.
2410. 01:47:17 So Mike had one on the ready.
2411. 01:47:20 - Yeah, I wish I could remember
2412. 01:47:21 where I heard that recommendation,
2413. 01:47:23 but it was definitely from somebody
2414. 01:47:25 whose recommendations I trust.
2415. 01:47:28 When I trust a recommendation,
2416. 01:47:30 I buy the book right away.
2417. 01:47:31 So this is one that was sitting on my bookshelf.
2418. 01:47:32 I came across it the other day when I was cleaning up
2419. 01:47:35 and I was like, "Kori wanted to read an AI book.
2420. 01:47:36 "I should tell him about this."
2421. 01:47:37 - So thank you, thank you for that.
2422. 01:47:39 Thank you for entertaining my AI desire.
2423. 01:47:42 Mike, do you have any gap books
2424. 01:47:43 for this next period of time?
2425. 01:47:46 - Well, I guess I could try to read the para method.
2426. 01:47:48 It didn't happen last time.
2427. 01:47:50 So I'll list that one again.
2428. 01:47:53 - Okay, so we went to Moab for a little family vacation
2429. 01:47:58 and then between that and graduation
2430. 01:48:00 and I had no time to do anything
2431. 01:48:03 other than the bare minimum of life.
2432. 01:48:06 So I'm still on liminal thinking.
2433. 01:48:08 Liminal thinking, I'm gonna get to it.
2434. 01:48:11 I'm gonna get to it.
2435. 01:48:12 - All right.
2436. 01:48:13 - That's a point.
2437. 01:48:15 (laughs)
2438. 01:48:15 So thank you, everybody.
2439. 01:48:17 This will wrap us up for today.
2440. 01:48:20 If you are interested in becoming a Bookworm Pro subscriber,
2441. 01:48:25 we'd love that.
2442. 01:48:27 It helps kind of support the show
2443. 01:48:29 and just provide for some of the things that we do here.
2444. 01:48:32 The things you get there
2445. 01:48:33 is you get a bootleg feed that's released
2446. 01:48:36 about two weeks early.
2447. 01:48:38 You get the Pro feed, which those are two separate feeds
2448. 01:48:41 and the Pro includes the Pro show.
2449. 01:48:43 Today we talked about abysses
2450. 01:48:45 and what our abysses would be.
2451. 01:48:47 - Abyssai?
2452. 01:48:49 - Abyssai, I don't know what is the plural of abysses.
2453. 01:48:51 (laughs)
2454. 01:48:53 But you also, it's an ad-free show.
2455. 01:48:57 You get early access to it.
2456. 01:48:59 There's a Bookworm wallpaper.
2457. 01:49:01 So if you're interested in that,
2458. 01:49:02 you can head over to patreon.com/bookwormfm
2459. 01:49:06 and we appreciate you listening.
2460. 01:49:09 We appreciate you being members and subscribers
2461. 01:49:11 and we just thank you all for being fans of the show.
2462. 01:49:15 So appreciate it.
2463. 01:49:16 - Awesome.
2464. 01:49:17 And if you're reading along with us,
2465. 01:49:18 Pick Up Radical Candor by Kim Scott,
2466. 01:49:20 and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.