211: Anti-Time Management by Richie Norton

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1. 00:00:00 Welcome back. We've got a whole bunch of follow up items. I'm
2. 00:00:05 just going to lump mine together and say that I have not done
3. 00:00:11 these yet. I'm making progress on them. I'm moving in the right
4. 00:00:15 direction. I feel like actually this book that we're reading for
5. 00:00:18 today is another nudge to to do a lot of this stuff for reasons
6. 00:00:23 which we'll get into in a little bit. But if you did not listen
7. 00:00:26 to the last episode, we covered free time by Jenny Blake. And
8. 00:00:29 I walked away with I think 12 different action items for
9. 00:00:32 business type stuff I wanted to implement. And we're making
10. 00:00:36 progress. But it's it's slow going. I've had a couple other
11. 00:00:39 big projects that have taken priority. But I have started
12. 00:00:43 moving in this direction. And I can tell you it is exciting. But
13. 00:00:48 in terms of was I successful with my follow up big red X for all
14. 00:00:52 these big red X. So you and I are kindred spirits this week
15. 00:00:57 because big red X for both of mine. I only had two, but it was
16. 00:01:01 big red X for both of mine, primarily because it's the week
17. 00:01:06 and a half week before holiday break. And for faculty members
18. 00:01:10 and students, that is a crazy time of chaos. So therefore, I
19. 00:01:16 didn't even think about these didn't even remember that I was
20. 00:01:19 supposed to think about these until we got back on right now. So
21. 00:01:23 that's how far off my radar, they fell. Yeah, that's that's
22. 00:01:28 fair. I think mine are going to make a comeback as we get into
23. 00:01:33 today's book, however. So I guess we can we can start with the
24. 00:01:38 book unless you have anything else you want to mention during
25. 00:01:40 follow up here. No, I don't do you want to do you want to tell
26. 00:01:42 them what I what I texted you at one point this week? Yes, this
27. 00:01:47 book, I officially picked this, but we sort of did a unofficial
28. 00:01:54 swap, because I really wanted to read free time I suggested it
29. 00:01:57 to you, you ended up picking it, which was was cool, because I
30. 00:02:02 was really looking forward to going through it. But then I
31. 00:02:05 picked anti time management because it looked vaguely
32. 00:02:07 interesting. And then you were all excited about it. However, I
33. 00:02:12 got this text message yesterday at 1125 AM. This book the book
34. 00:02:20 this time has broke my brain. I'm struggling with what to do
35. 00:02:24 and how I feel about it. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. So this this should
36. 00:02:30 be a fun conversation.
37. 00:02:34 Yeah, I told I told my wife to say I was like, Katie, like I'm
38. 00:02:37 reading this book right now. And like, I don't know what to do.
39. 00:02:40 I was like, like, there's so much stuff in this book that it's
40. 00:02:44 like, I don't know what to do right now. Like, I kind of feel
41. 00:02:46 like I wanted an extra week with this book. You know, I was never
42. 00:02:49 gonna ask for that. But I want an extra week with this book, just
43. 00:02:52 to process on it and just to still on it. And like, I don't
44. 00:02:55 want the next book to come yet because I want to take more
45. 00:02:57 time to revisit sections and look at the charts and pictures
46. 00:03:01 and figures again.
47. 00:03:03 Yeah, we'll get to the charts and the figures specifically. So
48. 00:03:07 the book we're talking about is anti time management by Richie
49. 00:03:10 Norton. The there's two different like subtitles. There's one
50. 00:03:14 above it and one below it. Once above it, it says stop
51. 00:03:17 managing time, start prioritizing attention. And then
52. 00:03:20 below it, it says reclaim your time and revolutionize your
53. 00:03:22 results with the power of time tipping. And I guess, you know,
54. 00:03:27 I'm kind of curious before we get into the book itself, what
55. 00:03:30 about this has broken your brain?
56. 00:03:35 Okay, so everything up until now in my life, you know, whenever
57. 00:03:39 I started caring about it, whatever, whatever age was like
58. 00:03:42 all time management. Oh, like, how do you get more out of your
59. 00:03:45 time? How do you organize? How do you create systems? How do
60. 00:03:48 you? How do you? How do you? How do you? How do you? To get
61. 00:03:50 more done in less time to get more done in less time, you
62. 00:03:53 know, like, that was this old productivity. The engineer in
63. 00:03:56 me says efficiency says metrics, all of that stuff. And he
64. 00:04:01 takes that whole principle when he just like kind of like flips
65. 00:04:03 it on its head. And he's just like, well, what if you think
66. 00:04:06 about it completely different? And I like so from the from the
67. 00:04:10 very beginning of the preface, I was like, Oh, shoot, like what
68. 00:04:14 what just happened? And then he just unpacks it, you know,
69. 00:04:16 throughout the whole book. So I don't know if I answered your
70. 00:04:19 question, but like that was kind of that was the initial
71. 00:04:22 brain break of like stop thinking about this from a time
72. 00:04:25 management perspective and think about it from a not or an
73. 00:04:29 anti time manager perspective, sorry to use the title of the
74. 00:04:32 book. So it's sort of like a productivity identity crisis.
75. 00:04:39 Yeah, yeah, I would say I would say in not even just
76. 00:04:42 productivity, like work identity crisis, productivity
77. 00:04:45 identity crisis, structure of the day identity crisis, right?
78. 00:04:49 Like, you know, all of that was like, wait, what just
79. 00:04:53 happened? What am I supposed to do with all of this? So
80. 00:04:58 all right, well, that with that as a as a backdrop, maybe we can
81. 00:05:03 help you find yourself again.
82. 00:05:05 Maybe like that's not the nature of the show. That's not the
83. 00:05:09 intention of this episode. Really, we're gonna talk about the
84. 00:05:11 book. But I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say it, it
85. 00:05:15 kind of broke my brain.
86. 00:05:17 All right, well, yeah, let's let's let's get into this then. So
87. 00:05:21 the structure of the book, there's a preface time equals today is
88. 00:05:26 my everything. Then there is an introduction, which is titled
89. 00:05:31 why anti time management. And then there are four different
90. 00:05:36 parts and 10 different chapters. So I think we'll probably go
91. 00:05:39 chapter by chapter, because there's not so many chapters that
92. 00:05:42 we can't get through them all. That's fine. Part one is
93. 00:05:44 purposes. And then from there, chapter one, make final cause
94. 00:05:48 your first cause chapter two work for flexibility, not for
95. 00:05:50 balance chapter three, build the castle than the moat. Then you
96. 00:05:54 get into part two, which is practices and you've got chapter
97. 00:05:57 four, stack your projects, chapter five, sync your work,
98. 00:06:00 chapter six, outsourced to experts. Part three is payments.
99. 00:06:05 And here we've got chapter seven, choose how your paid change
100. 00:06:08 your life. Chapter eight value your time don't time your
101. 00:06:11 values. And then part four is prolific. And chapter nine is
102. 00:06:16 create Prismic productivity. And chapter 10, ask better
103. 00:06:19 questions, get better answers. Then there's an epilogue at the
104. 00:06:22 end. So that's how we're going to go through this. Now let's
105. 00:06:27 start with the the preface here, which is time today is my
106. 00:06:33 everything. What do you think about that? Little acrostic? I
107. 00:06:38 think he's trying to be cute with this. How did this land for
108. 00:06:43 you? Okay, so let me let me caveat. I think he's trying to be
109. 00:06:47 cute with a lot of stuff throughout this book, right? That
110. 00:06:50 we're going to see this in styling rating, but I'm going to
111. 00:06:52 tell you it right now. It's actually one of my negatives of
112. 00:06:55 this book is I think there's like a lot of like, cuteness is the
113. 00:06:59 best word I can describe for it. Mike, is there a better word
114. 00:07:01 for like what he's trying to do? He's got a lot of like one
115. 00:07:04 liners, a lot of quips, a lot of like, different things. I'm
116. 00:07:08 reading the digital version of the book. So I don't know how
117. 00:07:10 things were laid out in the physical paper version of the
118. 00:07:12 book. But it seems like he like just throws like random chunked
119. 00:07:16 comments out there that might be part of the paragraph and might
120. 00:07:19 have just been a thing that he was thinking at the time. So he
121. 00:07:22 threw it, he threw it into like the section. That actually was a
122. 00:07:27 distraction to me or a detractor, I think from it. I don't know
123. 00:07:30 what you thought about that.
124. 00:07:32 Yeah, I think used tactically, these things are helpful, like
125. 00:07:40 recall mechanisms. But when you've got so many of them stacked on
126. 00:07:45 top of one another, it gets a little bit confusing. So time is
127. 00:07:50 really that the point of this one at the very beginning is really
128. 00:07:54 focus on today. And the theme you'll you'll get as you go
129. 00:07:58 throughout the book is don't live for some ideal future that's
130. 00:08:03 way out there someday, you know, when I do this, I'll be able to
131. 00:08:06 live this way, figure out how you're going to start living that
132. 00:08:09 way right now. And then the anti time management is kind of a
133. 00:08:12 framework to help you do that sort of thing. I think that
134. 00:08:15 perspective is valuable. I say it this way in the life theme
135. 00:08:19 cohort, you want to dream big and then act small. So start with
136. 00:08:26 that picture of what a day in the life of future you looks like,
137. 00:08:28 but then how can you live out elements of that right now?
138. 00:08:31 And when you start to think about how this is actually possible,
139. 00:08:34 you find that it's actually a lot more feasible than maybe you
140. 00:08:38 thought it was going to be. In terms of the preface, there's a
141. 00:08:43 couple of other things which we should probably touch on here.
142. 00:08:46 Hold on one second. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Can I talk about
143. 00:08:48 okay. So now to get to your your specific thing, today's my
144. 00:08:50 everything. This did not resonate with me. This did not hit with
145. 00:08:54 me like when you described it as the what can I do doing now? You
146. 00:08:59 know what I mean? Like think about the now like that makes that
147. 00:09:01 resonates with me 100 times more than today's my everything
148. 00:09:04 resonates with me. I think today is my everything actually
149. 00:09:07 kind of bothered me. But the the saving grace is you don't
150. 00:09:11 really deal with it ever again until the epilogue maybe you're
151. 00:09:16 like, yeah, way, way, way late in the book. So it like it
152. 00:09:18 didn't it didn't hurt anything for me. But now like I I don't
153. 00:09:22 believe that today is my everything. I get what he's trying
154. 00:09:26 to drive at because he unpacks it pretty well later. But I that
155. 00:09:30 did not resonate with me that well. Now feel free to go on to
156. 00:09:34 other points. Yeah, I felt it was a little bit clunky as a way to
157. 00:09:41 to start the book. But I think some of the things that he lays
158. 00:09:44 out in the preface are actually important. So he's got this
159. 00:09:47 work life flexibility, which is comprised of three things
160. 00:09:50 availability, ability and autonomy. I think like that's an
161. 00:09:53 effective Venn diagram that he he shares and that's a visual.
162. 00:09:57 There's lots of visuals in here. I've got a bunch of them in my
163. 00:09:59 notes. But after a while, I stopped taking taking photos of
164. 00:10:04 every single visual that he shared at the end of every
165. 00:10:06 chapter because he keeps adding additional layers onto this
166. 00:10:09 framework, which again, you know, didn't really click for me.
167. 00:10:11 But that doesn't mean that the stuff that's in here is is not
168. 00:10:14 valuable. A couple of things that you'll see pop up over and
169. 00:10:17 over again, he talks about a time tipper being a person who
170. 00:10:21 consciously implements projects that create more time in the
171. 00:10:23 long term, then they take in the short term. I like this. I'm
172. 00:10:28 not sure I agree 100% with that definition. I also says time
173. 00:10:33 tipping helps you organize your life around your dream, not
174. 00:10:35 endlessly work toward it. That part I agree with. But the time
175. 00:10:39 tipping, I feel like there is a project that you could engage
176. 00:10:43 with that will create more time in the long term. But it will
177. 00:10:46 take more time in the short term. And it's still worth doing.
178. 00:10:51 So this is kind of the the classic argument for delegation.
179. 00:10:54 And he talks about it a little bit differently. So he
180. 00:10:58 mentions that typically later on he talks about how typically
181. 00:11:00 with delegation, you pick somebody who's not very good at
182. 00:11:03 something and then you spend an insane amount of time trying to
183. 00:11:05 teach them how to do it when you really should just hire an
184. 00:11:07 expert who already knows how to do it. You don't have to worry
185. 00:11:09 about how it gets done. I think there's truth in that. But I
186. 00:11:12 also feel a little bit uncomfortable just making this
187. 00:11:14 blanket statement about really just pick the things that are
188. 00:11:18 gonna take less time and they're gonna create more time sounds
189. 00:11:22 a little bit fantastic. And maybe like, I don't even know what
190. 00:11:25 that looks like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you know, my first thing,
191. 00:11:31 I told you this book broke my brain. That doesn't mean there
192. 00:11:34 weren't things that it like bothered me or like rubbed me
193. 00:11:36 the wrong way about it. The idea like the time tipping and the
194. 00:11:39 time tipper and like the use of this phrase for some reason
195. 00:11:43 graded on me. Like every time he brought out the idea of time
196. 00:11:46 tipper time tipping, like I just had this negative like guttural
197. 00:11:50 reaction. And I don't know why it just really bothered me. I get
198. 00:11:55 what he's saying is like, okay, what are we trying to do? We're
199. 00:11:57 trying to tip time to where essentially, we've done things
200. 00:12:01 in a way that once they're up and running, they give us more
201. 00:12:06 time on the on the back end, right? Like, so we get this
202. 00:12:09 system where we're instead of putting in all these time, all
203. 00:12:12 this, all these hours during the week, we've done things on the
204. 00:12:15 front end that give us all this free time during the week that
205. 00:12:17 we can, you know, tip the scale, if you will, like that's, that's
206. 00:12:21 where I'm at. So I like that idea. I think that concept is
207. 00:12:26 really valuable. That's the part of the concept that broke my
208. 00:12:28 brain is like, what are the things I could be doing that would
209. 00:12:31 not require me to be physically present for x number of hours
210. 00:12:37 per week? And like, what could I develop that gives me the
211. 00:12:41 ability to like, still add value to people's lives, but not
212. 00:12:47 require me, right? And that was like a huge, like huge idea, a
213. 00:12:50 huge concept. One of the things I'll call out in the
214. 00:12:52 preface here is organizing life around your priorities versus
215. 00:12:55 organizing life around whatever job comes up are two very
216. 00:13:00 different styles of living. I completely agree with that, right?
217. 00:13:03 Like, and my modus operandi, like for all it's like, Oh, well,
218. 00:13:10 what is the job that I have right now? Oh, my job right now is
219. 00:13:13 to go to school. So I'm going to go to school. And that's how
220. 00:13:15 I'm going to organize my life around school. Oh, what's my
221. 00:13:17 job right now? My job is to go work. Oh, well, that I'm going
222. 00:13:19 to organize my life around work. My job is, you know, it's
223. 00:13:22 like, that's the way I've operated. It's not been around,
224. 00:13:25 like, these are my priorities. And then everything else fits
225. 00:13:27 into my priorities. And that and that's one of the brain
226. 00:13:30 break processes like, Oh, what would it actually look like to
227. 00:13:34 organize my life around my priorities? And that's so foreign
228. 00:13:37 to me. That it like, wow, like, oh my gosh, you know,
229. 00:13:41 yeah, well, I like that idea. I like that approach. I also don't
230. 00:13:45 really like the term time tipping or time tipper doesn't really
231. 00:13:52 work for me either. But I understand what he's he's after I
232. 00:13:55 think it's a powerful idea. So let's go to the next section,
233. 00:14:01 which is in the introduction, why time management. So here he
234. 00:14:06 lays out the case for why we need to be caring about this stuff.
235. 00:14:11 And he talks about management being control. So the inherent
236. 00:14:17 message, the implicit message is being sent when you're talking
237. 00:14:21 about time management, is it means that you don't have control
238. 00:14:24 of your time. And that, I think is accurate and maybe a little
239. 00:14:28 bit uncomfortable for people to wrestle with. Yep. Yep. Yep.
240. 00:14:33 He also mentions the paradox of getting things done, which is
241. 00:14:35 at the more that you get done, the more is given to you to get
242. 00:14:38 done. I have definitely seen this. I've heard Michael Hyatt talk
243. 00:14:42 about this before, and get this visual of like the hamster
244. 00:14:47 wheel. So your reward for more efficiency is more work until
245. 00:14:50 spinning so fast that you can't keep up and you fall on your
246. 00:14:53 face. Can I give you an example of this? I had a student come
247. 00:14:56 back from an internship. And they were like, Dr. Hixen, the
248. 00:15:00 weirdest thing happened to me. My manager came to me and said,
249. 00:15:04 hey, you need to slow down. Like you're working too fast. And
250. 00:15:09 he said, I looked at my manager and I said, what are you
251. 00:15:11 talking about? You're giving me work to do. I'm getting the
252. 00:15:14 work done. And then, and he's like, the guy came back and he
253. 00:15:18 goes, yeah, I don't have more work for you to do. He's like, I
254. 00:15:21 expected that to take you three weeks. You got it done in a
255. 00:15:24 week and a half. And like, I just don't have anything for you to
256. 00:15:27 do. He's like, so you got to slow down on what you're doing. And
257. 00:15:30 like, I can't help but think about that in this situation is
258. 00:15:33 like, in most systems, if you're super efficient and you're
259. 00:15:37 super effective, the answer isn't, well, you've earned your
260. 00:15:43 your freedom for however long or you've earned the ability to
261. 00:15:46 work on creative projects or whatever it might be, like, it's
262. 00:15:49 more a matter of what we got to find something for you to do.
263. 00:15:51 We've got to find something more for you to do. And it's like,
264. 00:15:53 what a backwards way of thinking. But that's how most
265. 00:15:56 systems are set up.
266. 00:15:57 Yeah. And actually, I think it's it's even worse than that
267. 00:16:01 because I think a lot of organizations, there's no shortage
268. 00:16:05 of the work to be done. So what happens when you get it done
269. 00:16:09 is not that there's no work for you to do. But people just give
270. 00:16:12 you additional things to do, you establish this reputation as
271. 00:16:16 the easy button. So that just increases the amount of things
272. 00:16:20 that are just dumped on you. And if you have people pleasing
273. 00:16:24 tendencies, you just say yes to everything. And then you get
274. 00:16:28 overwhelmed. I forget who it was. It said that work tends to
275. 00:16:32 flow to the competent man until he submerges.
276. 00:16:37 Oh, wow. Yeah. It's one of those like classic time
277. 00:16:40 management guys might be Peter Drucker. I don't remember where
278. 00:16:43 I officially heard that. But that visual is really powerful to
279. 00:16:47 me. It's like you're trying to keep your head above water. The
280. 00:16:49 way you do that is like you're trying to bail things and then
281. 00:16:53 people just keep dumping it in and eventually you're you're
282. 00:16:55 going to get overwhelmed. So you got to figure out how to start
283. 00:16:58 saying no. I think so I all that to say I think that he's spot
284. 00:17:04 on with this paradox. He also shares a couple of questions
285. 00:17:09 here. What controls your or how you sorry, not questions, but
286. 00:17:13 a couple of statements are questions basically at the end
287. 00:17:15 of every section, which he shares to like get you thinking
288. 00:17:18 certain ways. So what controls your time more than any one
289. 00:17:21 person or system are the choices that you make? And then how you
290. 00:17:24 spend your time is more important than how much you have. I
291. 00:17:27 think that's a this is a really great way to lead into the book.
292. 00:17:31 I kind of wish the preface wasn't there and this was just the
293. 00:17:35 first thing that you you came across. Understood. Understood
294. 00:17:39 completely. I want to ask this here. I don't know if it was in
295. 00:17:42 the introduction or not, but like you get a very fast or at
296. 00:17:47 least I got a very quick vibe that the bias that we're making
297. 00:17:52 here is the best work life is being a creator and working from
298. 00:17:59 home. Did you get that or like sorry, not working from home, but
299. 00:18:03 not working in an office. Did you get that same that same vibe?
300. 00:18:07 I think so. I mean, later on in the book, he shares the story
301. 00:18:11 of the two people who traveled with them because one of them
302. 00:18:14 wanted to quit his job. The other one wanted to work remotely.
303. 00:18:18 And I do think that that is a very general statement, but it is
304. 00:18:24 probably true for the vast majority of people.
305. 00:18:29 Well, because because like if you're the kind of person who
306. 00:18:31 is like, Nope, I like to go into the office every day. Like I
307. 00:18:35 think that's great. I think he misses that audience in this
308. 00:18:39 book like because you can still apply a lot of these principles
309. 00:18:42 to that, you know, the purpose and all of those type of things
310. 00:18:45 and driving based on purpose. But like he really drives home
311. 00:18:48 this idea of like flexibility, freedom, travel, you know, all
312. 00:18:53 this stuff. And if you're like the kind of like, nah, I kind of
313. 00:18:56 want to wake up and go to the office at nine and come home at
314. 00:19:00 four and like, that's my ideal day. Like, this is not the book
315. 00:19:03 for you. Like, this is just not, you know, he's he's not
316. 00:19:06 speaking contextually to your audience. Yeah, it's it's less
317. 00:19:12 explicit than a lot of other people who will talk about this.
318. 00:19:16 But the, the vibe is kind of the tropical NBA, you know, you
319. 00:19:21 can run your business from the beach sort of thing. He doesn't
320. 00:19:25 get very specific about what that looks like, which I actually
321. 00:19:28 appreciate it. So I think this is a lot more approachable and some
322. 00:19:32 of the other entrepreneurial type stuff. But I agree, like I've
323. 00:19:36 had that reaction to you hear about these people who have
324. 00:19:38 small kids and they're traveling the world. And they just want
325. 00:19:42 to expose them to all these different cultures have all these
326. 00:19:44 different experiences and like, what's cool for you, I want to
327. 00:19:46 put down roots, I want to be part of a community somewhere.
328. 00:19:49 Like, that's so at that point, I have to decide, is this for me
329. 00:19:52 or is this not kind of sounds like it's not because I have no
330. 00:19:55 desire to do what you're doing.
331. 00:19:57 Well, and that was the little, like the little nayser on my
332. 00:19:59 shoulder going like, okay, this all sounds good. But like, in
333. 00:20:03 particular, like, I would probably Galvant and travel around
334. 00:20:07 the world more. But it's like, my wife, no way, like my wife
335. 00:20:10 does not want to travel like she's not she's like, no, I do not
336. 00:20:13 want to be like in a different country every month or a
337. 00:20:15 different, you know, whatever it is, that's just not her cup of
338. 00:20:18 tea, like she likes having permanence and being in a place
339. 00:20:21 and knowing groups of people and seeing them routinely. So I
340. 00:20:26 felt a little bit of like, I may not be the target audience
341. 00:20:29 for or like my family situation and I may not be the target
342. 00:20:33 audience for this, this book. So I thought that was, that was
343. 00:20:37 fun.
344. 00:20:38 All right, that's actually a great spot to go into the first
345. 00:20:42 chapter, which is make final cause your first cause. This is
346. 00:20:46 the first chapter in the first part, which is purposes. Now,
347. 00:20:53 final cause, what the heck is that? He talks about Aristotle's
348. 00:20:59 four causes, there's a material cause, a formal cause, an
349. 00:21:02 agent or efficient cause and the final cause. The final cause
350. 00:21:05 is basically the thing at the end. So he's trying to get us to
351. 00:21:09 think with the end in mind is kind of how I would get would
352. 00:21:14 define this. There's a key phrase in here where he says act from
353. 00:21:18 your future, not toward it. I think that encapsulates it pretty
354. 00:21:22 well. He talks about how your reaction or your energy is
355. 00:21:26 within your control. And I really like that. So it's up to us
356. 00:21:30 and the choices that we make, how to change your enhance the
357. 00:21:33 direction of your life, decide who decide who you want to be
358. 00:21:36 and then act from that identity immediately. I think that's
359. 00:21:38 actually phrased really well. There are a couple of questions
360. 00:21:42 that he gives you to help you identify the final cause. What
361. 00:21:45 are important things to you that you want to do now that keep
362. 00:21:48 coming back to your mind? What are important things that you've
363. 00:21:52 been putting off until later that you want to do? Apparently,
364. 00:21:56 I was dictating this and it got all mangled. What are the
365. 00:22:00 important things that you've been putting off until later, that
366. 00:22:03 you want to want to do to feel like you can live a life without
367. 00:22:09 regret? Yeah, I don't think you I don't think you dictated that
368. 00:22:12 wrong at all. I think it's just really weird. It's really
369. 00:22:14 strangely worded sentence. Sorry. Yeah, when I was reading that
370. 00:22:16 live, it's like that doesn't make any sense. And then the
371. 00:22:20 third one, what kind of character traits do you want to
372. 00:22:22 embrace to become the person you want to be over the next two
373. 00:22:25 or three years to feel productive with your growth? And I
374. 00:22:30 don't know, I guess these are effective. This is sort of the
375. 00:22:34 approach that we do with the life theme cohort. But I've
376. 00:22:38 obviously got my own approach to this. And this didn't really
377. 00:22:43 click with me. I get what he's after. But I'm kind of curious
378. 00:22:45 what you thought of these final cause questions. So I said
379. 00:22:49 earlier that it would be fun to take a week and like actually
380. 00:22:52 dig through the things in this book and dig through these
381. 00:22:56 questions and kind of process through all of that. Part of the
382. 00:22:59 reason why I say it would be interesting to do is not
383. 00:23:01 because I think all of them are going to hit and all of them
384. 00:23:04 are going to resonate. I actually had a disconnect between
385. 00:23:08 like some of the questions and then the core principles that
386. 00:23:10 he was, he was teaching. So for instance, like I resonate
387. 00:23:14 really well with, you know, Aristotle caused the called the
388. 00:23:18 final cause, the sake of which a thing is done, the sake of
389. 00:23:22 which a thing is done. Okay, cool. That idea makes sense to
390. 00:23:25 me motivation, intention, you know, like, like all of those
391. 00:23:29 things come into my brain when I say like, why am I doing this
392. 00:23:31 thing? Oh, well, like there's an essence to it that's making me
393. 00:23:34 do that. I like the principle of decide what you want to be in
394. 00:23:38 an act, act immediately from that identity. I think that's a
395. 00:23:41 really good idea is like, Oh, you know, I'll go back to your
396. 00:23:44 example of running, right? Like, Oh, I want to be able to run a
397. 00:23:48 marathon. No, it's like, I am a runner. What do runners do
398. 00:23:51 runners run? Like, okay, so cool. Like, there's a lot of
399. 00:23:54 value in that that whole situation. When we get to those
400. 00:23:57 questions, I'm just like, yeah, I don't know, like, they just
401. 00:24:00 don't like, yeah, they're like, those are fine that they just
402. 00:24:03 don't really do it for me. One of the other ones that I liked
403. 00:24:07 out of this was the four P's. I don't know if those cover
404. 00:24:10 everything. And like, again, he's like kind of playing this
405. 00:24:13 cutesy thing. What's like, okay, I gotta identify four P's. So
406. 00:24:16 you got personal professional people in play. Like, what is
407. 00:24:19 the final cause within each of those areas? What I like about
408. 00:24:24 that is not that the four I think the four P's are ideal and
409. 00:24:27 they're the right ones. It's this idea of like, you can have a
410. 00:24:30 final cause in different areas. So it's like, I can have a
411. 00:24:34 personal final cause, a professional final cause.
412. 00:24:37 Well, actually, I interpreted this a little bit different. I
413. 00:24:40 have to go back and look at my visual here in the book. But I
414. 00:24:44 believe the final cause because he keeps building this
415. 00:24:47 diagram, and he adds to it at every chapter. And at the
416. 00:24:52 beginning, pretty sure he introduces these concentric circles.
417. 00:24:57 And the final cause is kind of like the overlap between them.
418. 00:25:03 Oh, of the four P's? Yeah. So I remember that now. I think
419. 00:25:06 you're right. I remember that now. Yeah, he's got a whole bunch
420. 00:25:09 of worksheets and things on how to do this. It's not real
421. 00:25:13 clear, but there's like four different slices of the wedge on
422. 00:25:17 page 57. That's at the end of the this section. And he's got
423. 00:25:20 those personal professional play people and then final cause in
424. 00:25:24 the middle with the arrows that go around. So basically saying
425. 00:25:27 that these are all connected. They're they're independent, but
426. 00:25:31 they're interdependent, which I actually agree with that
427. 00:25:33 concept. I'm not sure I like when he's saying basically focus on
428. 00:25:40 the thing in the middle, part of me is like, yeah, that makes
429. 00:25:43 sense. But it also feels a little bit weird the way that he
430. 00:25:47 defines it. I don't know. Yeah. Yep. I can understand that.
431. 00:25:53 All right. So let's go to the next chapter, which is chapter
432. 00:25:57 two, work for flexibility, not for balance. And he doesn't get
433. 00:26:05 explicit about about it this way. But really what he's talking
434. 00:26:08 about here is the fact that like work life balance is is a
435. 00:26:12 myth, which I 100% agree with. Yes, most effective framing of
436. 00:26:17 that I've heard is the concept of intentional imbalance, where
437. 00:26:19 you got to pick the parts that you're focused on. I think it
438. 00:26:23 was in the one thing by Jay Popisan and Gary Keller, that they
439. 00:26:29 talk about you're juggling all these different balls. And the
440. 00:26:33 work one is the one that's made of rubber. So that's the one you
441. 00:26:36 should feel free to check. And I think that Richie Norton would
442. 00:26:40 probably agree with that. Yeah, yeah. And I think that this is an
443. 00:26:45 important concept in order to start moving towards the things
444. 00:26:50 that he's talking about in the rest of the book. So he talks
445. 00:26:54 about here, practical duality, the choice between two good
446. 00:26:58 options. He talks about unbalancing your life to get the
447. 00:27:03 ball rolling in the direction that you want it to go. And I feel
448. 00:27:06 like just that alone is enough to probably completely change
449. 00:27:11 somebody's future. Because if you just feel like all this stuff
450. 00:27:14 keeps happening to me and there's nothing I can do about it,
451. 00:27:16 essentially what he's doing right here is he is giving you
452. 00:27:19 permission to take control of your life and exert a little bit
453. 00:27:24 of influence, put your finger on the scale, essentially. And I
454. 00:27:27 think that's a really powerful idea. He also mentions that you
455. 00:27:30 don't need to do it all, you just need to set it in motion. And
456. 00:27:32 this was helpful for me because I tend to think, well, this big
457. 00:27:36 thing needs to happen. How am I going to get this big thing
458. 00:27:38 done? Really, he's saying you don't need to worry about all of
459. 00:27:40 it, you just need to worry about what you're going to do next. And
460. 00:27:44 there is a quote here that I really liked from Benjamin
461. 00:27:48 Hardy, "Success is achieved by being true to your future self."
462. 00:27:52 I think if you just encapsulate those concepts into this
463. 00:27:55 chapter, I really, really like it. There are a couple other
464. 00:27:59 things that he talks about here, he says, "No one is more
465. 00:28:01 productive than a procrastinator with an impending deadline."
466. 00:28:04 So basically, he's going to encourage us to apply a little bit
467. 00:28:09 more urgency to things. I'm not sure how I feel about that. But
468. 00:28:12 he does say dreams don't get done until they're due. And I can
469. 00:28:16 totally see the truth in that statement.
470. 00:28:19 All right. So how did you feel about the following? The
471. 00:28:22 paradox of time management is that absurd personal discovery
472. 00:28:26 when the more you manage your time, the less time you have for
473. 00:28:29 your most important things. And the less you manage your time,
474. 00:28:33 the more you get done.
475. 00:28:36 I don't know if I agree with that. Like I'm trying to process
476. 00:28:41 that and it's like, the more you manage your time, the less
477. 00:28:46 time you have for the most important things. I'm okay with
478. 00:28:48 that section. Like that actually seems like, you know, face
479. 00:28:52 value on board. And the less you manage your time, the more
480. 00:28:55 you get done.
481. 00:28:58 Yeah, I think I understand where he's coming from, but he's
482. 00:29:02 making some assumptions with that statement. So I have
483. 00:29:07 created courses on time blocking and time tracking. The
484. 00:29:12 reason that you time block is because you want to be
485. 00:29:16 intentional with how you are spending your time. And that is
486. 00:29:19 something that you would do if you don't have a lot of
487. 00:29:23 control over your time. You find yourself getting pulled in
488. 00:29:27 different directions distracted by things that aren't really
489. 00:29:29 important. So it's a way of prioritizing. This is the big
490. 00:29:32 project I want to actually get traction on. So you you put
491. 00:29:35 the big rocks in the jar first time tracking is the one that
492. 00:29:40 people always have trouble with. I don't really want to know
493. 00:29:42 how I spent my time. But I think that's important so that you
494. 00:29:45 can figure out where you made mistakes, what changes you can
495. 00:29:48 make to the system. Underlying all of this, though, is a
496. 00:29:52 belief that the system is working against you. And I think
497. 00:29:56 what he is advocating here is a future system that pulls you
498. 00:30:03 in the direction that you want to go, instead of pushing
499. 00:30:07 against the things that are really important to you. Okay,
500. 00:30:11 okay. So I think it's possible to design a company to design,
501. 00:30:16 even if you work for somebody else, a work culture, where the
502. 00:30:21 environment naturally kind of funnels you down the intended
503. 00:30:25 path. And I have trouble picturing a scenario where that
504. 00:30:30 works for me personally. Okay, but if I were there in that
505. 00:30:35 situation, I feel, yeah, I probably wouldn't need to manage
506. 00:30:39 my time or track it as much at that point, because I'm doing
507. 00:30:43 the important stuff. It's getting done. I'm not feeling
508. 00:30:46 stressed about it. So, you know, everything should be made as
509. 00:30:50 simple as possible, but no simpler.
510. 00:30:53 Yeah, okay. All right, I'm still working through that. I don't
511. 00:30:55 know. I don't know how I feel about that one, but I'm still
512. 00:30:58 working through that one. So thank you for your perspective on
513. 00:31:00 it though. All right, ready to go to the next one? Yeah, chapter
514. 00:31:04 three. Okay, so chapter three, build the castle, then the
515. 00:31:09 moat. I love this title. I feel like I have been guilty of
516. 00:31:14 building moats prior to building the castle. So a couple
517. 00:31:19 important things from here. If you know what you want, then the
518. 00:31:22 first step is to do the thing that you think is the last step.
519. 00:31:27 Choose your ideal lifestyle first. And then, you know, once you
520. 00:31:31 have that, then you put these different things around it that
521. 00:31:33 are going to protect it. He talks about different kinds of
522. 00:31:36 moats. At the beginning, you've got the final cause, that's what
523. 00:31:39 matters most. And then what works, that's your strategic
524. 00:31:42 moat, what pays, that's the economic moat. I like those two
525. 00:31:46 terms, the strategic moat and the economic moat. The economic
526. 00:31:50 one really kind of challenges me, he gets into that, he's got a
527. 00:31:53 whole section about payments and things like that. That's where
528. 00:31:56 my one action item comes from actually. So we'll put a pin in
529. 00:31:59 that for now. But I think this is a cool framing. What I don't
530. 00:32:04 like about these moats is that after this where he defines the
531. 00:32:09 circles where the final cause in the middle, he just keeps
532. 00:32:12 adding things outside of this visual, every single chapter. And
533. 00:32:18 I feel like after a little while, so I still feel like these
534. 00:32:21 things are being tacked on here, but they don't really click into
535. 00:32:24 place as firmly as they need to if you're going to make it this
536. 00:32:28 this complex. So I don't know the ways that he introduces EDO
537. 00:32:34 here, where you eliminate delegate and outsource. This is
538. 00:32:37 something that I'm trying to do. Yep. So when I read about this
539. 00:32:42 section, it really was a firm push to, Hey, you said you're
540. 00:32:46 going to do this stuff, you need to follow through and actually
541. 00:32:49 do it.
542. 00:32:51 Yeah, I really liked the EDO part of this section. Like, and I
543. 00:32:54 think there is a really strong activity about, alright, what do
544. 00:32:58 I do all the time? You know, I have that written down. And then
545. 00:33:01 what do I, what can I eliminate? What can I delegate? What can I
546. 00:33:03 outsource to somebody else? And I think that alone is a very
547. 00:33:08 valuable activity for people to do, because I think people just
548. 00:33:11 get in the habit of like, Huh, this is what I do. This is what I
549. 00:33:14 do. Right? Oh, what's my job? This is what I do. Do you need to
550. 00:33:18 like, do you really need to or could it just be could it just go
551. 00:33:21 away? Could you delegate it? Somebody else could you outsource
552. 00:33:24 it? So I really like that one. The other one that that's going to
553. 00:33:27 be not surprising to anybody who knows engineering, this idea
554. 00:33:32 of forcing functions. So time tippers leverage forcing
555. 00:33:35 functions or behavior shaping constraints to make purpose
556. 00:33:39 aligned decisions now to expand options for a brighter future
557. 00:33:43 right? So you consider that building the castle and create
558. 00:33:46 barriers to prevent misaligned decisions. So it's like, what am I
559. 00:33:49 going to do now that's going to force me later to make other
560. 00:33:53 decisions? And like, I relate this to like the people who would
561. 00:34:00 develop like habits or goals, you know, kind of thinking to
562. 00:34:04 where it's like, Oh, well, I have this goal. Like, what is the,
563. 00:34:08 what is the thing that's going to like trigger me to not behave
564. 00:34:11 in a certain way? Like, what's the other thing is going to force
565. 00:34:13 and you probably know the right words to say this. I know I'm
566. 00:34:16 failing on like the way people have actually talked about it
567. 00:34:19 help me with with what the right words are. I'm not, I'm not
568. 00:34:24 sure. So a forcing function for a personal goal. So okay, so
569. 00:34:32 somebody's talked about it and I can't for the life of me
570. 00:34:34 remember who it is. Like, Oh, I want to I want to memorize
571. 00:34:39 something. So what do I do? I attach it to brushing my teeth. So
572. 00:34:42 like brushing the habit, brushing it. Got it. There you go. Yeah.
573. 00:34:46 Okay, I knew I knew you'd know the term for it. But it's like,
574. 00:34:48 okay, so like every time I brush my teeth, I memorize I practice
575. 00:34:51 memorizing that thing. Well, the brushing the teeth then becomes
576. 00:34:54 the forcing function, right? It's like, Oh, well, now I don't
577. 00:34:57 even think about memorizing anymore. I just think about
578. 00:34:59 brushing my teeth. And when I brush my teeth, Oh, by the way,
579. 00:35:01 I'm memorizing at the same time.
580. 00:35:03 Yeah, the thing that was showing me off was the the the word goal
581. 00:35:07 because goals and like projects that are actually done in habits
582. 00:35:11 are kind of like just something that you do till the end of
583. 00:35:13 time. Yep. Yeah, yep. So so that I my point being like, I like
584. 00:35:19 this section in terms of those those aspects, the forcing
585. 00:35:23 functions and then the EDO, I really got a lot out of those.
586. 00:35:27 Cool. That leads us into part two practices. You ready to go
587. 00:35:33 there? Mm hmm. All right. So the first chapter in part two is
588. 00:35:39 chapter four, where he tells us to stack our projects. And this
589. 00:35:46 one, I'm not sure what to do with this. I have lots to say
590. 00:35:50 here. Okay, so he's got a visual for project stacking where when
591. 00:35:55 you manage things, specifically these four boxes, and then when
592. 00:35:58 time is tipped, they kind of all overlap. I think that what he's
593. 00:36:03 really saying here is you can pick projects that check more
594. 00:36:08 than one box. Yes, he's got the priority project stacking. So
595. 00:36:13 you got personal projects, people projects, play projects,
596. 00:36:15 professional projects, and kind of going back to the whole idea
597. 00:36:18 of final cause, you know, the middle of that, the overlap is
598. 00:36:23 really where you want to focus your time and attention your your
599. 00:36:27 energy. And I think that is a cool idea. I don't know how practical
600. 00:36:36 that is for anyone who is not a business owner. Like, how do
601. 00:36:40 you actually do this? And I don't think it, it has like the
602. 00:36:48 visual that he shares here basically makes it seem like,
603. 00:36:52 well, you could do these four projects in the time that it
604. 00:36:55 took you to do a little more than the time that took you to do
605. 00:36:58 one, and then look at all this extra time that you have. I
606. 00:37:01 don't think the return on investment is going to be that
607. 00:37:03 great at the beginning for most people. I can see where if you
608. 00:37:07 start practicing this and you build some momentum, eventually
609. 00:37:10 you get to that point. But I don't know, this feels a little
610. 00:37:15 bit too far out there for me. There is a quote that I really
611. 00:37:21 like from this. Well, actually a question, first of all, how
612. 00:37:23 can I make money and meaning without waiting years to do so?
613. 00:37:26 That, that's a cool question. And I feel like that can kind of
614. 00:37:29 force you down certain paths. And I think that's a powerful
615. 00:37:31 question if you spend some thinking time on that. The quote
616. 00:37:36 is from Jim Collins, which is don't make 100 decisions when
617. 00:37:39 one will do. So this is where I think there's a practical take
618. 00:37:44 away from me, not an action item per se. But instead of having
619. 00:37:48 to have it all figured out, figure out what the next step is.
620. 00:37:51 And then when you've got different next steps for different
621. 00:37:55 possibilities, where's the one that checks the most boxes? That
622. 00:38:00 that makes sense to me. Again, I'm a little bit skeptical that
623. 00:38:04 it's going to all of a sudden, free up 75% of my time. Yeah. But
624. 00:38:09 I get what I'm saying, I think.
625. 00:38:11 Okay, so let me let me give you a non business example of
626. 00:38:13 project stacking. When we were in grad school, we and when I
627. 00:38:20 advise students, even to this day, okay, you're going to have a
628. 00:38:24 class and the there's going to be a final project for the
629. 00:38:27 class. We're going to set out the details of the final project.
630. 00:38:31 And most of the time, those final projects, there, we want
631. 00:38:34 everybody to do a very, very similar thing for the sake of
632. 00:38:37 like convenience. Oh, it's easier to grade. It's easier to
633. 00:38:41 make sure everybody hits the standards, you know, for the
634. 00:38:43 class and the project ties into the standards. But when you're
635. 00:38:46 in grad school, like that all kind of breaks, like so between
636. 00:38:48 undergrad and like grad school. So we would always be told where
637. 00:38:53 we were told early, and we would always essentially try to talk
638. 00:38:57 to the faculty member and say, Hey, this final project for your
639. 00:38:59 class, if I wrote it for a conference, or if I wrote it for
640. 00:39:06 this publication, or if I did this thing or if I did this other
641. 00:39:08 thing, would that still satisfy your class goals and the class
642. 00:39:13 outcomes? Because then I can count it for both the class, and I
643. 00:39:17 can check the boxes for the class, and I get a publication out
644. 00:39:19 of it, which looks really, really good on my CVMR resume. So
645. 00:39:22 we got super good at this, like we would not essentially we
646. 00:39:26 would not do a class project that didn't double or triple count,
647. 00:39:30 like we just would try not to do it. And like, sometimes you
648. 00:39:33 got, you know, you were in a class that was just so weird that
649. 00:39:36 you couldn't in the faculty member be like, Nah, there's no
650. 00:39:38 way I can we can figure that out. But most of the time, if you
651. 00:39:42 went and you had like a strong argument, the faculty member
652. 00:39:44 would be like, Oh, yeah, that that makes total sense. Yeah,
653. 00:39:46 sure, like go collect that data that data can be used as this
654. 00:39:50 analysis, but then you can easily turn that into this paper or
655. 00:39:52 this publication or whatever it would be. Like, that's a very,
656. 00:39:55 very real world example of like project stacking, because not
657. 00:39:59 only did it hit my past the class purpose, but it also hit my
658. 00:40:04 like, I need to boost my my CV that way I'm marketable when I
659. 00:40:07 when I come out of when I come out of grad school. So I really
660. 00:40:09 like that he gives the example of Musk in the three companies,
661. 00:40:12 and how Tesla SpaceX and Solar City are all distinct entities,
662. 00:40:18 but they're all like kind of stacked together or brought
663. 00:40:22 together with like this one purpose behind them. And I was
664. 00:40:27 like, Oh, yeah, I could see that now that's a very, very extreme
665. 00:40:30 scale, because that's yeah, you know, a billionaire having the
666. 00:40:33 ability to, you know, eliminate delegate and outsourced in a way
667. 00:40:37 that like align aligns that. But that is project stacking. I
668. 00:40:41 mean, I completely agree with the the project stacking side of
669. 00:40:44 that. So I got a good bit out of this thinking about it now from
670. 00:40:50 the professional standpoint of like, okay, what would I do? But I
671. 00:40:54 do think to your point, this resonates a lot more with I'm
672. 00:40:58 like small business owner. And now how do I project stack in a
673. 00:41:02 way that like this one activity will provide me value, I won't
674. 00:41:07 say money, but it'll provide me value in like three different
675. 00:41:09 areas. I actually think you do this more than you think you do
676. 00:41:13 Mike, right? Like a little bit. So I think what you're talking
677. 00:41:17 about there, the the creator application of that feels like
678. 00:41:21 is you create content once and then you figure out how to
679. 00:41:24 repurpose it. That's not the same picture I had in terms of
680. 00:41:29 the project stacking. I don't know why. I guess just because my
681. 00:41:35 experience with that is when you create that content and you
682. 00:41:41 publish it multiple places, it you repurpose it. So you've got
683. 00:41:45 video you know that you make vertical for YouTube short or
684. 00:41:48 whatever. You kind of don't get the return on that right away.
685. 00:41:56 And it also is completely dependent on the size of your
686. 00:41:59 audience at that place. So you got to kind of balance like the
687. 00:42:01 short game and the long game. I don't know. I think that's
688. 00:42:05 probably in line as I'm talking about this with like what
689. 00:42:08 he's actually saying in this this book, but there is an
690. 00:42:12 emphasis on the do this right now. And I feel like as a
691. 00:42:16 creator, it's really easy to get sucked into those types of
692. 00:42:20 things, which really aren't the ones that are the overlap of
693. 00:42:24 all the different circles. So I feel like there's a scenario
694. 00:42:28 where that could actually be a distraction as opposed to a
695. 00:42:30 stacked project.
696. 00:42:31 Yeah, I think that's a hole. I think that's a hole in this book
697. 00:42:35 is when you compare that to the four P's before there's a
698. 00:42:39 nuance there that you have to be really good at or else it
699. 00:42:42 becomes a problem. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. All right,
700. 00:42:45 I'm ready to go to five. All right. So chapter five is sync
701. 00:42:51 your work. And this one, the thing that stands out to me about
702. 00:42:57 this is the whole idea of ghost steps. I guess actually just to
703. 00:43:02 define sync your work. This is best used with an example. Do
704. 00:43:07 you know who John Lee Dumas is, the guy that he mentioned in
705. 00:43:09 this chapter?
706. 00:43:11 The only reason I do is because when we read Jenny Blake's book
707. 00:43:14 for the episode before this, I looked up John Lee Dumas. I had
708. 00:43:19 no idea who that was before.
709. 00:43:21 So I used to listen to his podcast, which is an entrepreneur
710. 00:43:25 on fire. And it was, it was interesting. I think he's got
711. 00:43:29 like thousands of episodes now. It's a daily podcast where he
712. 00:43:31 would introduce an entrepreneur and basically ask them the same
713. 00:43:36 five questions every single time. But because the emphasis is
714. 00:43:41 on the guest, it feels like a totally different episode every
715. 00:43:44 time. And he's not interjecting a whole lot of supporting, you
716. 00:43:48 know, it's not really much of a conversation. It's really you
717. 00:43:50 just get to hear from all these different entrepreneurs. It was
718. 00:43:54 big back in the day. It was like number one and iTunes when it
719. 00:43:57 when it came out and stuff like that. But anyways, John Lee
720. 00:44:01 Dumas records 15 episodes per day for two days. Then he has 28
721. 00:44:09 days where he doesn't do anything with the podcast. I'm sure he
722. 00:44:13 has a whole post production workflow where he never touches
723. 00:44:17 those episodes again. That is kind of an interesting idea. I
724. 00:44:21 definitely understand the value of batching work like that. But
725. 00:44:27 also, this is a very extreme example that I think most people
726. 00:44:31 are not going to be able to implement to that extreme level.
727. 00:44:35 I mean, he has been doing this podcast for 10 years at this
728. 00:44:40 point. And he had a whole bunch of success at the beginning, which
729. 00:44:45 is kind of what allowed him to get to the point where he can
730. 00:44:48 record 15 episodes per day. I remember hearing him mentioned
731. 00:44:51 several years ago, John Lee Dumas, about how he spent one day a
732. 00:44:56 week recording. So basically, he's cut that in half. So it makes
733. 00:45:00 a more sensational, more sizzle in that story when Richie Norton
734. 00:45:04 tells it tells it here. But I think you have to get to to that
735. 00:45:08 point. However, we do have to wrestle with this idea of horror
736. 00:45:14 vacuai, which you know, this definitely is something that I
737. 00:45:18 deal with a fear or dislike of leaving empty space. Now he's
738. 00:45:22 talking about this kind of specifically in the in terms of
739. 00:45:25 like painters on a canvas. But this totally applies to my
740. 00:45:29 schedule. If I'm not doing something, I feel like I'm not
741. 00:45:33 being productive and I should be doing something. Okay, so
742. 00:45:36 there's the quote, the Industrial Revolution and its
743. 00:45:38 aftershocks, even the way we are educated and measured today are
744. 00:45:41 intentionally designed to keep us working and to feel anxious
745. 00:45:44 about our time. If we aren't, I could not feel this more, Mike. I
746. 00:45:49 could not feel this more.
747. 00:45:51 Yeah, and so the thing that he's trying to challenge us with is
748. 00:45:55 the idea of ghost steps here, which is taking unnecessary steps
749. 00:45:58 that we should have never taken. And then there's this idea of
750. 00:46:01 phantom pains that are associated with getting stuck and
751. 00:46:04 living a phantom life as a result. In other words, you have a
752. 00:46:08 whole bunch of busy work that you're doing that's really not
753. 00:46:10 moving the needle. It's not making that that big of an impact in
754. 00:46:14 the things that are really important to you. So there are
755. 00:46:18 questions that he gives us to help identify ghost stepping. And
756. 00:46:21 I think these are really powerful. It's basically forcing
757. 00:46:25 you to think about the things that you're doing. But how would
758. 00:46:27 you get it done in a smaller timeline? So what would I do if
759. 00:46:31 I had only an hour to get this done? What would I do if I could
760. 00:46:33 work only an hour a day? And what would I do if I worked only an
761. 00:46:37 hour a week? Some of those are obviously parks streamed in
762. 00:46:39 others. The one hour a week feels like so impossible. Why
763. 00:46:44 even consider it to me at this point? But I think I did
764. 00:46:48 actually embrace a version of this when I was working on these
765. 00:46:52 these last two courses. So I mentioned I'm working on a
766. 00:46:56 creativity flywheel course, and then also like a practical
767. 00:46:59 PKM course Lucy based on the the cohorts that I do kind of
768. 00:47:01 like a self paced thing for people who want to go through it
769. 00:47:03 on their own. I started recording these videos at the end of
770. 00:47:10 October, I think it was like October 28, I flew to Boise, and
771. 00:47:13 I had some scripts written, but I didn't have all of them
772. 00:47:17 written. So I was actually like writing the scripts on the
773. 00:47:20 plane while I was flying to Boise, Boise was my forcing
774. 00:47:24 function. And then when I got to those kids studios, I recorded
775. 00:47:27 those those videos, and I recorded a whole bunch on that
776. 00:47:32 Tuesday, I think it was. And then the next week, I went back
777. 00:47:36 again for a single day and recorded a whole bunch of
778. 00:47:39 videos on the creativity flywheel. All together, I think I
779. 00:47:43 recorded 38 videos, and I just finished editing everything.
780. 00:47:49 As we record record this today, I'd like this morning, I edited
781. 00:47:53 the last PKM, practical PKM video. I'm really happy with how
782. 00:47:58 those came out. But those are two major courses. So these are
783. 00:48:02 not, you know, the I'm going to throw together seven or eight
784. 00:48:05 videos on some workflow that I do and make that a course like
785. 00:48:09 I've done that before. These are substantial. And there's I had
786. 00:48:14 the idea for these. I said, well, I had the the vague notion
787. 00:48:19 that I wanted to create these when I launched life HQ. But when
788. 00:48:23 I really started thinking about like, when am I going to do
789. 00:48:25 these? It was mid October at the earliest. And then it's like,
790. 00:48:31 when am I going to get these done? These are the normally
791. 00:48:33 multi month projects for me. Yeah. Right. But then I was like,
792. 00:48:38 I'm just going to book time in the studio. I'm going to book the
793. 00:48:41 flights. And there's no backing out. I just got to make it
794. 00:48:44 happen. Yeah, for sure. That's exactly what happened. And then
795. 00:48:46 there's another forcing function as we record this, it's the week
796. 00:48:48 before Thanksgiving. So I've already sent out an email to my
797. 00:48:53 newsletter list that my Black Friday offer, which is just
798. 00:48:56 going to be for the newsletter, is going to be that creativity
799. 00:49:00 flywheel course at a discount. And it's going to be available on
800. 00:49:04 Black Friday till Cyber Monday. Like I laid it all out there. If
801. 00:49:07 I would have just picked away at it a little bit here a little
802. 00:49:10 bit there, it's probably June by the time these things are
803. 00:49:14 being honest. You know, but I was able to crank them out in a
804. 00:49:17 couple of weeks, as opposed to several months, because I think
805. 00:49:21 I kind of took a little bit of the approach that he's talking
806. 00:49:23 about here. All right. So let's let's stay with you if you're
807. 00:49:27 okay with it. Sure. You would check on me. Well, just
808. 00:49:30 because it's a really good context, right? It's a really
809. 00:49:33 tangible and really good context. All right, you edited all
810. 00:49:36 those videos. Yep. I don't know how many hours it took you to
811. 00:49:39 edit those videos. But like, okay, so what I believe to be true
812. 00:49:43 and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is it probably took you
813. 00:49:46 more hours to edit the videos than it did to make the videos? Is
814. 00:49:48 that correct? Probably. So here's the thing. There are a
815. 00:49:55 combination of talking head videos, like just speaking to the
816. 00:49:59 camera off of a script. And then a whole bunch of visuals that I
817. 00:50:04 had created for different presentations already. Okay, so
818. 00:50:09 I had to make some of that stuff and sprinkle it in. It
819. 00:50:13 probably ended up being about the same though. However, in my
820. 00:50:17 head, the story that I was telling myself and the reason I
821. 00:50:20 needed the forcing function of this is going to be available by
822. 00:50:22 Black Friday was all the editing is going to take forever.
823. 00:50:27 Okay. So Mike, why didn't you outsource or delegate the
824. 00:50:32 editing? I'm not and I don't say that in a way of like, you're a
825. 00:50:35 bad editor. I say that like, I see your job as creating
826. 00:50:38 content. You are the content creator, you write the scripts,
827. 00:50:41 you record the stuff. Why don't you why don't you farm out
828. 00:50:45 outsourced, whatever you want to call it, that editing process?
829. 00:50:48 Oh, I'm going to. Okay. This morning, I was looking at video
830. 00:50:51 editing services. I have used design pickle in the past to do
831. 00:50:56 some of the visuals for like the Practical PKM cohorts. I have a
832. 00:51:01 whole bunch of custom icons made and then I would use those on
833. 00:51:04 the slides. So the reason I didn't use it with these videos is
834. 00:51:07 because I kind of knew already because I had all I presented
835. 00:51:12 this material before. Okay. Okay. I knew how I wanted this to
836. 00:51:16 come together for someone who is going to be going through
837. 00:51:19 this. However, once these are done, if I'm going to make
838. 00:51:22 something brand new, absolutely, I'm going to give this to somebody
839. 00:51:26 and say, what's the best visual is it like the best way to
840. 00:51:29 visualize what I'm talking about here and see what sort of
841. 00:51:32 motion graphic they can come up with because I can't do that.
842. 00:51:36 There are a handful of animations in this video course, which are
843. 00:51:39 basically just magic move transitions and keynote, which
844. 00:51:42 is a bit of a hack, but like really powerful. If you have not
845. 00:51:46 used keynote, it's like Apple's Apple's best best app in my
846. 00:51:49 opinion. It's really, really powerful. But yeah, I'm already
847. 00:51:53 looking at services and honestly, I would I would have signed up
848. 00:51:57 for one already, except that I want to see how this sale
849. 00:52:01 actually goes like life HQ. I've mentioned a couple times the
850. 00:52:03 launch went great. Really happy with how that went. It's not a
851. 00:52:06 life changing amount of money though. So I still have real
852. 00:52:10 financial, financial restrictions that I'm dealing with.
853. 00:52:16 And you could absolutely make the case that, well, 1700 bucks a
854. 00:52:19 month for the design pickle stuff where you can edit the
855. 00:52:22 video, get the motion graphics stuff like that, you absolutely
856. 00:52:26 will be able to earn that back. I will, but I don't know how long
857. 00:52:30 it's going to take me to do that. And I don't want to dig a
858. 00:52:32 whole that I can never get out of it. Well, it could be because
859. 00:52:36 Norton Norton would say based on this book is you should have
860. 00:52:40 never done that work. Like that is work that you should have
861. 00:52:43 outsourced right now without a doubt. And this is where and
862. 00:52:47 we're going to get to it later in the book. So, you know, we'll
863. 00:52:51 talk about one packet more and more there. There's like that
864. 00:52:53 denial first step, right? And it's like, I feel that really
865. 00:52:58 strong, that denial first step, right? Like I come through this
866. 00:53:00 and I go, Oh, yeah, I get what you're saying. But, and like, I
867. 00:53:05 immediately like deny the reality of what he is. And like,
868. 00:53:09 what I start to think is like, okay, this guy wouldn't have
869. 00:53:12 written this book if there wasn't some level of success in
870. 00:53:14 this. If you look at his website, he's worked with Volvo,
871. 00:53:18 Red Bull, North faith, like he's worked with big companies, like
872. 00:53:22 so there is some level of like what he's telling is legit, and
873. 00:53:26 it works. And it or else there's no way you'd have been able to
874. 00:53:29 partner with all these organizations. Why does my gut
875. 00:53:33 reaction say, Oh, no, no, no, I can't, I can't do that. Like,
876. 00:53:37 I got to, you know what I mean? Like, that's that's my gut
877. 00:53:39 reaction. So I asked you because it was a good context, but it's
878. 00:53:43 like, I'm feeling that really, really hard. Again, broke my
879. 00:53:46 brain. What are the areas where I should be not doing this
880. 00:53:49 myself? Because I'm my purpose is to do a different thing. And I'm
881. 00:53:55 struggling with that. Well, let's, let's continue this
882. 00:53:59 conversation in chapter six. Yeah, because it's chapter six is
883. 00:54:03 outsourced to experts. So the place where I find myself right
884. 00:54:09 now, and reading this book, my perspective is you are right.
885. 00:54:16 I'm going to do that. I don't know if this is the right time
886. 00:54:20 for that. Okay. So it's, it's literally just a matter of
887. 00:54:25 timing for me. There's not a question of is that the right
888. 00:54:30 approach? And that's not just from what he's talked about in
889. 00:54:35 this book. It's really just a bunch of conversations and a
890. 00:54:38 bunch of other things that I've read a bunch of other creators
891. 00:54:42 that I know, like, I can see once they get to a certain point
892. 00:54:45 how this does have such a positive impact on things. The
893. 00:54:49 thing that I feel you really have to answer, and this book
894. 00:54:53 doesn't speak to this, and nothing I have found speaks to
895. 00:54:55 this, is how do you know when you're really ready? Yeah, yeah.
896. 00:55:00 So I guess to be determined on that, however, once you are
897. 00:55:06 ready, that's where chapter six outsourced to experts really
898. 00:55:09 comes, it comes into play. So he's talking about expert
899. 00:55:13 sourcing, which is gathering experts to consult with or to
900. 00:55:16 execute various elements of a project, remove friction
901. 00:55:18 and accelerate results. And this is different than the
902. 00:55:21 traditional form of delegation, where you find somebody who
903. 00:55:25 maybe has the potential to do a thing and let's train them up
904. 00:55:28 and see if we can make this work and I'll pay them significantly
905. 00:55:33 less, because that's all that I can afford. But it ends up
906. 00:55:36 taking 10 times as long. So you would have been better off
907. 00:55:38 paying twice as much for the person who actually knew what
908. 00:55:40 they were doing. So this is very relevant to me right now with
909. 00:55:46 the video editing stuff. So I am not an expert video editor. I
910. 00:55:50 am a decent video editor. And my videos are a little bit
911. 00:55:54 different than most videos, because there's an element of
912. 00:55:57 the screencasting. I actually think I'm a very good
913. 00:55:59 screencaster. Okay. So if I'm going to delegate a video to
914. 00:56:03 somebody, I'm a little bit worried, confused, like, how do I
915. 00:56:09 communicate effectively? This is what you do with the
916. 00:56:11 screencast that I would provide you. But I have no doubt that
917. 00:56:15 like, if I were to just hand over to design picklers or anybody
918. 00:56:18 else, this is, you know, my rough cut of my YouTube video, add
919. 00:56:23 the color correction, do the editing, apply the visuals, that
920. 00:56:26 they would do a better job of that than I would. Like, I've
921. 00:56:29 kind of forced myself to learn how to do that with YouTube. But
922. 00:56:34 I'm not great at it. Even like the thumbnails, like, I know a
923. 00:56:39 few things, nor to make a decent one. But there are people who do
924. 00:56:43 this way better. And so I need to just let go of the control of
925. 00:56:47 this stuff. And trust that somebody who knows what they're
926. 00:56:51 doing will actually be able to do a better job, even though it's
927. 00:56:53 my baby.
928. 00:56:54 Well, and I would say even even lower the bar than doing a
929. 00:56:56 better job than you, they would do a job to where you wouldn't
930. 00:57:00 even think about it. You would just be like, Yeah, I'm glad
931. 00:57:02 it's done, right? Like, don't write like, not even comparing
932. 00:57:05 it to yourself. It's like, I'm glad that's done. So my, my
933. 00:57:08 version of this is, you know, talking to the internet, you
934. 00:57:11 know, you were, you were on it, right? It went well, where that
935. 00:57:14 fell down, a big part of where that fell down was scheduling
936. 00:57:18 people to come on. And then editing the podcast. It wasn't
937. 00:57:22 that I wasn't okay at editing the podcast. Like, I'm sure they're
938. 00:57:26 I mean, they're way better editors than me. I could do that.
939. 00:57:28 That was fine. I needed to outsource that. I should have
940. 00:57:32 outsourced that I should have just given that to somebody and
941. 00:57:34 let them do it. Because then I could have been, I would have
942. 00:57:38 been more excited to keep actually talking to people, which
943. 00:57:40 is what I actually wanted to do. I wanted to talk to people. I
944. 00:57:44 didn't want to edit a podcast. But I didn't do that. And I
945. 00:57:47 didn't do that quick enough. And the steam, like it fizzled. And
946. 00:57:50 you know what I mean? So I see this so strong. Like, he makes a
947. 00:57:55 couple different statements in this here. Don't give up half
948. 00:57:58 your life by giving time to things you don't need to do. It's
949. 00:58:00 like, Oh my gosh, like, yes, like, what am I doing? You know,
950. 00:58:03 like, there are times when I go, what am I doing? A sure sign
951. 00:58:06 of lack of self respect is to keep doing one thing when another
952. 00:58:10 would be better worth your time. And it's like, Oh my gosh,
953. 00:58:13 like, this is, I told you broke my brain. This is one of the
954. 00:58:17 chapters where it's like, okay, but Mike, I still come back to
955. 00:58:19 what you're saying. When do I do it? Yeah, when can I afford to
956. 00:58:23 do it? Am I willing to take that risk? And that's a really hard
957. 00:58:28 one for me to wrap my head around. Yeah, so talking through
958. 00:58:31 this, I feel like I just got to do it. But yeah, like the thing
959. 00:58:35 that you're talking about where you're spending all this time
960. 00:58:38 doing things that you don't really need to be doing. The
961. 00:58:40 thought I have because I know YouTube is the biggest driver
962. 00:58:45 of email signups. My email list is the biggest driver of
963. 00:58:49 revenue from my business. These are people who actually want to
964. 00:58:52 hear what I have to say. And they're my fans. So they're going
965. 00:58:55 to buy the stuff that I make. Most of the life HQ sales, like a
966. 00:58:59 vast majority of them came from the email list. I know that for
967. 00:59:02 fact. So how much quicker could I build the business if I was
968. 00:59:09 able to crank out more YouTube videos? And it's not a matter of
969. 00:59:12 me not having the ideas. It's a matter of I've got too many
970. 00:59:16 irons in the fire. At this point, my last YouTube video was
971. 00:59:19 almost two months ago, it was my most successful one. It went
972. 00:59:21 bonkers. It was the one about the my task management dashboard
973. 00:59:25 inside of obsidian. But I need to make another YouTube video.
974. 00:59:29 Why haven't I made another YouTube video? Because I don't
975. 00:59:31 have the time to edit it. I'm doing a whole bunch of other
976. 00:59:34 things. I'm running these cohorts. So I should just hire the
977. 00:59:39 editor so I can show up talking to the camera, give it to
978. 00:59:41 somebody else and be like, Okay, you take it from there. I can
979. 00:59:44 watch it at the end. I can approve it. I can say, you know,
980. 00:59:47 I didn't like this thing, change that. But then just get it
981. 00:59:51 out there. And if I do that now, you know, six months from now,
982. 00:59:54 what is the impact on my business versus if I wait until I
983. 00:59:58 have enough margin to really be thinking about this, and I do
984. 01:00:03 it, you know, six months from now, what is my my email list at
985. 01:00:08 what it where is my business at? I know this is the right thing
986. 01:00:11 to do for the long term health of the business, but it's still
987. 01:00:13 scary to commit to 1700 bucks a month. Yeah, well, and I would
988. 01:00:18 say that the that that's a former project stacking, right? Like
989. 01:00:21 so maybe I'm getting too too loose and too liberal with this
990. 01:00:24 but it's like you making that video that project, right? Like
991. 01:00:27 you doing more videos, not only increases YouTube, it drives
992. 01:00:32 newsletter, which that then drives purchasing of it. It's
993. 01:00:36 like, that is a project stacking thing right there. Like that
994. 01:00:38 one thing hits multiple of those buckets. So I would say like,
995. 01:00:43 yes, like, I'm not going to tell you that you need to go hire
996. 01:00:46 somebody because I don't know the finances of your business. But
997. 01:00:48 what I'm going to tell you is from what you just described to
998. 01:00:50 me, you need to make more YouTube videos. Like, yeah, what
999. 01:00:53 come on, Mike, like, what are you doing? You need to make more
1000. 01:00:55 YouTube videos. And I need to be more active on social media. Why
1001. 01:00:58 am I not active on social media? Because I'm doing all of the
1002. 01:01:02 other stuff in the business. Yep. Which sometimes you got to do
1003. 01:01:06 it, but you shouldn't be doing it doing it forever. So yeah, I'm
1004. 01:01:10 wrestling with this one. But I like this, this whole idea of
1005. 01:01:13 outsourcing to experts. And I keep talking about design pickle
1006. 01:01:16 design pickle is not, you know, the be all end all when it comes
1007. 01:01:18 to this. What I know about design pickles, I've actually used
1008. 01:01:21 it and I have used their process. I know, like, I'm going to get
1009. 01:01:26 good quality stuff. So that's kind of like the known thing. But
1010. 01:01:31 there are a whole bunch of services out there. You could go
1011. 01:01:33 find an independent video editor and hire them after you see
1012. 01:01:37 examples of their work. I get requests from people all the
1013. 01:01:41 time, because they come across my YouTube channel and be like,
1014. 01:01:43 Hey, you could really up your your thumbnail game. I want to
1015. 01:01:47 hire me as a thumbnail designer. It's like, I don't even have time
1016. 01:01:50 to think about this. But I should be, you know, I should be
1017. 01:01:54 thinking about what's the what's the best version of this
1018. 01:01:56 stuff? So yeah, it's getting to the point where I really do
1019. 01:01:59 need to do something about that. All right, let's talk about
1020. 01:02:03 getting money payments. Do we have to? I know. I know. So part
1021. 01:02:10 three is payments. And the first chapter in part three is
1022. 01:02:13 chapter seven, choose how you're paid, change your life. This
1023. 01:02:19 makes me uncomfortable, because I know I need to do a better
1024. 01:02:24 job with this. I will say that one of the the big things that
1025. 01:02:34 stands out to me from this is a simple math equation he shares.
1026. 01:02:38 But he says a million dollars is just 1000 people paying 1000
1027. 01:02:42 dollars. Okay, again, boom, like broke my brain. I was like, Oh,
1028. 01:02:47 my gosh, that is like, not bad. I mean, it's really not bad.
1029. 01:02:54 It's not. It's not. He kind of extrapolates on the idea of I
1030. 01:02:58 think it was Kevin Kelly, 1000 true fans, you know, just get
1031. 01:03:01 people pay you five bucks a month, then you can make it. The
1032. 01:03:05 emphasis here is kind of on the big ticket stuff, which I guess
1033. 01:03:11 I'll talk about that when we get to chapter eight. But this is
1034. 01:03:14 the beginning of talking about building your economic moat. So
1035. 01:03:18 a couple questions he shares here, you know, will I be paid on
1036. 01:03:20 results and not how much time it takes to do it? Will the work
1037. 01:03:22 be valued at a monetary amount that is worth my time and
1038. 01:03:25 energy? Will I be able to provide the result from anywhere I
1039. 01:03:27 choose not a specific physical location? So again, they're like
1040. 01:03:30 the tropical NBA type of thing. But the other two questions I
1041. 01:03:33 think are really valuable. And this is something that I
1042. 01:03:36 understand conceptually, but I still struggle with. And I
1043. 01:03:41 think it's because when you make something as a creator, you
1044. 01:03:47 want people to buy it because it's kind of like validation that
1045. 01:03:49 they like you. The minute that you ratchet up your prices, there
1046. 01:03:54 are going to be people who don't like you. Yes. And really what
1047. 01:03:59 Richie Norton would say is you shouldn't be worried about what
1048. 01:04:03 those people think anyways. Yep. Yep. Here's the problem. Some
1049. 01:04:08 of those people have been following me for a very long time.
1050. 01:04:12 Some of those people are in my community. I like some of those
1051. 01:04:16 people. But if I cater to those people who have been my lifelong
1052. 01:04:22 fans, I will be stuck in the place where I am forever. I'm not
1053. 01:04:29 quite sure what to do with this, to be honest, because I think
1054. 01:04:33 there are different ways to package things. And there's, you
1055. 01:04:38 know, the PKM stack, the creativity flywheel is two courses
1056. 01:04:41 I was working on that mentioned. There's cohorts for those. A
1057. 01:04:45 lot of cohorts are multiple thousands of dollars, because
1058. 01:04:48 you can work one on one with somebody and they can help you
1059. 01:04:51 implement the stuff. So I'm probably undervaluing a lot of
1060. 01:04:55 the live stuff. I'm probably still undervaluing, honestly, some
1061. 01:04:59 of the course stuff, because I've seen what other people charge
1062. 01:05:02 for for courses. And I need to figure out how I can do the
1063. 01:05:09 thing that is going to provide the most value to the people who
1064. 01:05:14 actually want to need the help. And if I can figure out how to
1065. 01:05:18 do that, I feel like you kind of take the the lid off. But it's
1066. 01:05:23 not easy to get there. And if I'm honest with myself, there's a
1067. 01:05:28 quote here by W Edward Deming, Deming. Yep. Every system is
1068. 01:05:34 perfectly designed to get the results that it gets. So my
1069. 01:05:40 creator business at the moment is perfectly designed to get the
1070. 01:05:46 annual revenue that it gets, which is not where I want or need it
1071. 01:05:51 to be. So when pain is sufficient, change will come. Well,
1072. 01:05:55 change has to come. And I got to figure out how to do this
1073. 01:05:59 intentionally, strategically. So this book is honestly like the
1074. 01:06:03 right thing at the right time for me. I mean, I mean, I mean, and
1075. 01:06:07 thinking through those four P's, right? Like, I mean, or
1076. 01:06:12 whatever, whatever that is, I can think it through, where does
1077. 01:06:14 that hit for your final cause? And how does that impact the
1078. 01:06:18 change that you need to make? Like, I, I, I told you this, this
1079. 01:06:22 book broke my brain in terms of like how it comes together. And
1080. 01:06:26 especially for you, I mean, I'm working a normal, a normal job,
1081. 01:06:30 you're doing the independent solo printer thing. Like, I was
1082. 01:06:34 just like, Oh my gosh, this is a really interesting way to think
1083. 01:06:37 about this. A really interesting way to think about this. Okay,
1084. 01:06:40 so we have to call out here, though, that chapter seven is
1085. 01:06:43 where we get the denial, survival, revival, arrival loop.
1086. 01:06:47 Yeah, so all the all's denial, first stage, survival, second
1087. 01:06:52 stage, revival, third stage, arrival loop. It sounds to me,
1088. 01:06:57 like you're in the survival section of this, totally. And
1089. 01:07:01 you're thinking about how do I move to revival? Yep. Do you
1090. 01:07:05 know what I mean? Like, like, that's, that's where it sounds to
1091. 01:07:06 me like you are in the situation. I'm more in the denial part of
1092. 01:07:10 this. Oh, like, no, no, no, like, I, and I'm not by no means am I
1093. 01:07:15 saying like, I want to like, I want to leave or anything like
1094. 01:07:17 that. Like, I'm saying like, I couldn't create anything that
1095. 01:07:21 would produce more freedom in my life and like long lasting,
1096. 01:07:25 you know, whatever it might be, I work a normal job. I could do
1097. 01:07:29 that kind of a thing, you know, like, like, that's where I'm at
1098. 01:07:31 in the stage, which you were there, what, two years ago, two
1099. 01:07:34 and a half years ago, three years ago, whatever that whatever
1100. 01:07:36 that looks like, you're more in that survival, like, how am I
1101. 01:07:39 going to survive? How am I going to make that transition? And
1102. 01:07:43 what decisions do I need to make to make that transition? And I, I
1103. 01:07:46 just, I mean, I think for as much as I don't like the little
1104. 01:07:50 like quips and all the little things that he kind of like
1105. 01:07:52 throws into the book and the like, wow, like, that's powerful.
1106. 01:07:56 It's strong. Like, it's a really strong idea. Yeah. So another
1107. 01:08:00 thing he says in this chapter is live from the dream, not live
1108. 01:08:03 for the dream. The dream is I can show up, record a video, send it
1109. 01:08:08 to somebody, they finish it all, and it publishes to YouTube. That
1110. 01:08:13 is the dream. Do it. Just do it, Mike, right? Like, so live
1111. 01:08:17 from the dream. Do that. Yeah. Yeah. Man. All right. Well, and
1112. 01:08:23 then, and then, okay, so let's say I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn a
1113. 01:08:26 you on you, right? I did not expect to do what's the worst that
1114. 01:08:30 happens? The worst that happens is we get more credit card debt.
1115. 01:08:35 Yeah, like the worst that happens is money, right? Like, so, so
1116. 01:08:38 it's a finite, it's a financial risk. And then you have to weigh
1117. 01:08:41 that out with where you are. And only you can make that decision.
1118. 01:08:44 But like, there really isn't that bad of a thing that's going
1119. 01:08:47 to happen from that because you're not going to pick like some
1120. 01:08:49 random editor who's going to like make a terrible video. And
1121. 01:08:53 then even if they do, you're not going to publish that video. So
1122. 01:08:56 like, really, the worst that the worst that happens is you come
1123. 01:08:58 out of it. And it's like, tag on it, I wasted my money. And that's
1124. 01:09:02 a bummer. Yeah, just a lot of money to waste. I know, I know
1125. 01:09:05 there's a lot of money. It won't be a waste. That's the thing.
1126. 01:09:08 Like, I know it'll work. I think I think in this situation,
1127. 01:09:13 you're the probability of it working is much higher than the
1128. 01:09:16 probability of it not working. Yeah. So I have that going for
1129. 01:09:19 you. But but again, it's not my money. Like it's you, you're
1130. 01:09:21 thinking about it. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's let's go to
1131. 01:09:25 the the next chapter. Chapter eight value your time don't time
1132. 01:09:29 your your values. This one is very much tied to what we were
1133. 01:09:34 just talking about. He talks about bottlenecks here, how they
1134. 01:09:39 can be made by design default or demand. He talks about the
1135. 01:09:43 difference between pride and humility, which I liked. Pride
1136. 01:09:46 is continuing down a wrong path that you've already discovered.
1137. 01:09:48 It's negative ways humility is doing what's right when it's
1138. 01:09:51 hard and turning around when it's wrong, being willing to say
1139. 01:09:53 you were you messed up basically. Yep. The way to become who you
1140. 01:09:57 want to be in the future is to become it in the present. Very
1141. 01:10:01 cool question that he asked here. How can I do X without Y
1142. 01:10:05 happening by Z time? Yep. You know, there's a couple additional
1143. 01:10:08 details there which force you to think about things a little
1144. 01:10:11 bit differently. Yeah, and how time management. Yeah, so go
1145. 01:10:16 ahead. So let me give me one before you go into your high
1146. 01:10:18 ticket offer because I want to hear your high ticket offer
1147. 01:10:19 thing. You alluded to this before. So the Covey, you know, he
1148. 01:10:23 said, Stephen Covey taught me once taught me 20 years of
1149. 01:10:27 experience when really they have one experience over 20 years
1150. 01:10:29 versus actually getting 20 years of experience in one year
1151. 01:10:33 because you're doing the right things. And I was like, man, what
1152. 01:10:36 a cool idea like what an interesting idea because what am I
1153. 01:10:40 doing right now? Yeah, I'm getting 20 years of experience by
1154. 01:10:44 essentially running the same plan. And yeah, like I tweak a
1155. 01:10:48 little bit of things here and I maybe gain a percent or two a
1156. 01:10:51 year, right? Like, I mean, it's by no means am I gaining large
1157. 01:10:55 experience points, the year on year. Like, what an interesting
1158. 01:10:59 thing. But I want to hear your high ticket offer thing. Well, I
1159. 01:11:02 don't know what it is, to be honest, I just know that I need
1160. 01:11:05 to build a high ticket offer. The most expensive thing I sell
1161. 01:11:08 right now. Well, I guess I did mention the cohort and so the
1162. 01:11:13 library is the biggest thing that's 500 bucks a year. But even
1163. 01:11:16 that essentially, that's $500 for four cohorts plus monthly
1164. 01:11:20 workshops sessions. Yeah, that's insane. Like, that's, that's
1165. 01:11:24 either got to go away or it's got to go way up. I'm thinking
1166. 01:11:28 what I'm going to do with that is I'm not going to sell the
1167. 01:11:31 library itself as a community. I'm just going to sell the
1168. 01:11:33 cohorts, you know, I tried to join the community get access to
1169. 01:11:36 all the cohorts feels like it's simpler. I don't think it is
1170. 01:11:38 actually simpler for people. I think what's simpler is the
1171. 01:11:42 practical PKM cohort is happening right now. If you
1172. 01:11:45 struggle making sense of things with your PKM system, I'll
1173. 01:11:48 introduce you to the PKM stack framework will help you
1174. 01:11:51 implement it all. And it's going to be $1000. And you get
1175. 01:11:55 access to these things. And then maybe, you know, the the
1176. 01:11:58 community access is like a discounted thing every year,
1177. 01:12:01 kind of like what Marie Poolin does with notion mastery. It's
1178. 01:12:05 like 1000 bucks to join it. But then you get access to the
1179. 01:12:07 community. And I think it's like 100 bucks a quarter after
1180. 01:12:10 that, something like that. But basically, once you make the
1181. 01:12:12 initial investment, you're kind of paying just to continue to
1182. 01:12:15 have access to it and be a part of the community and see what
1183. 01:12:18 what new comes from it. The high ticket offer, though, like,
1184. 01:12:22 what kind of what I was thinking is like, what could I offer
1185. 01:12:25 that's $1000? That's $2000? That's $5,000 that people would
1186. 01:12:31 actually want to be a part of. I think one option is kind of
1187. 01:12:36 like, it is coaching. I'm hesitant to charge a whole bunch
1188. 01:12:41 of money for like the individual coaching, I've done that sort
1189. 01:12:44 of thing in the past. Unless you really are leading into it,
1190. 01:12:47 though, it's hard to get people to really commit to it. Most
1191. 01:12:51 people who have reached out to me for coaching is like, Hey,
1192. 01:12:53 do you do this? I'm interested. And then you find out they want
1193. 01:12:55 to pay like 100 bucks an hour. Like, that's not worth it with
1194. 01:12:59 all the prep and everything that goes with it. I seeing some
1195. 01:13:04 people doing interesting things around group coaching. So
1196. 01:13:07 that's what I think my high ticket offer is going to be. So
1197. 01:13:11 kind of like the library right now is the community and you do
1198. 01:13:14 get direct access to me. I do the monthly workshops, but the
1199. 01:13:19 cohorts are in there. I guess, you know, if you're interested
1200. 01:13:21 in joining that before I revamp everything, that was a great
1201. 01:13:24 time to do it. But I was thinking through like, what does a
1202. 01:13:29 group coaching look like for the library? Because what I'm
1203. 01:13:33 thinking for that is like, what if there was an exclusive
1204. 01:13:35 group that's 10 spots, I charge a bunch of money for it. But we
1205. 01:13:39 hop on like a group coaching calls like a mastermind sort of a
1206. 01:13:43 thing specifically for, you know, this type of person is trying
1207. 01:13:47 to do this type of thing. And we have a live call every single
1208. 01:13:50 week. You know, what would that look like? What's the version
1209. 01:13:53 of that that I feel like I can deliver the most value? And
1210. 01:13:55 then what would the pricing be for that? I have absolutely no
1211. 01:13:58 idea. I'm hesitant to you. I wasn't even really going to talk
1212. 01:14:02 about it. I was just going to mention it as an action. I made
1213. 01:14:04 you I'm going to figure out a high ticket offer and then you're
1214. 01:14:06 like, Oh, Mike, you've got a high ticket offer. Let's talk about
1215. 01:14:08 it. I made you I forced you into that. Yeah, so we'll put a
1216. 01:14:12 pin in that and we'll move on for the sake of the the sake of
1217. 01:14:15 the book. Like, I think one of the other things that I get major
1218. 01:14:19 things I got out of this one is if you see something like the
1219. 01:14:22 change don't attach a motion to it, ask yourself how you could
1220. 01:14:26 create change while fulfilling your current responsibilities. It's
1221. 01:14:28 like, so, okay, there's that thing I need to change, like, stop
1222. 01:14:31 being so precious about it and just be like, it needs to change.
1223. 01:14:35 There's a part of my brain that says this is wrong, fix it, just
1224. 01:14:38 fix it. And like, I'm so black and white, but for some reason, in
1225. 01:14:42 this realm of my world, I don't like I attach like, oh, I can't do
1226. 01:14:46 that. I can't make that change. So, okay, prolific I'm ready to go
1227. 01:14:52 there. All right, so part four is prolific and then the first
1228. 01:14:59 chapter here is chapter nine, create prismic productivity. And I
1229. 01:15:07 don't like this word prismic productivity. This is kind of
1230. 01:15:10 where the dark side of the moon cover comes. Prismic productivity
1231. 01:15:15 is sharing your results with others and helping them to do
1232. 01:15:18 the same. So essentially, it's creating value in the lives of
1233. 01:15:23 others by helping them achieve an outcome that you've achieved
1234. 01:15:26 yourself seems like basic business to me.
1235. 01:15:30 Okay, so where the prismic word comes from is exactly what
1236. 01:15:33 you're thinking about the dark side of the moon cover, you know,
1237. 01:15:36 it's small inputs creating large outputs. So the prism like the
1238. 01:15:39 light comes in, it's small, and then it prism the prism expands
1239. 01:15:42 it. I understand what he's doing. I agree with you. I don't
1240. 01:15:45 like it at all.
1241. 01:15:48 Yeah, so I don't know, like, it's kind of a weird way to to
1242. 01:15:54 wrap up this this book here. But I think what he's really leaning
1243. 01:16:00 into here is like an exponential increase in the amount of
1244. 01:16:05 impact that you're able to make in the world, he kind of talks
1245. 01:16:07 about the three aspects of world class high achievers, they
1246. 01:16:10 begin mentally from where they want to be, they create an
1247. 01:16:13 atmosphere where they can practice living that way, they
1248. 01:16:15 create a way to get paid based on their their values and the
1249. 01:16:18 value they create to grow this way of life as it expands. I
1250. 01:16:22 mean, there's definitely a nudge here in this chapter for me to
1251. 01:16:26 continue this train of thought that we've kind of been talking
1252. 01:16:28 about throughout the throughout the conversation here. And he
1253. 01:16:33 talks about the productivity paradox here where small inputs
1254. 01:16:38 can create large outputs. And that really is just high leverage
1255. 01:16:43 activities. Yeah, I've heard this said a bunch of different
1256. 01:16:46 ways by a bunch of different people and a bunch of different
1257. 01:16:48 books. But this is something that I need to really consider
1258. 01:16:52 again is just, you know, what is the thing that I do that makes
1259. 01:16:55 the biggest impact? And how do I do more of that? And I again, I
1260. 01:16:59 know what it is. I just need to do it. One other thing I liked
1261. 01:17:03 about this though, is the compasses that we use are only as
1262. 01:17:05 good as the maps we're trying to follow. Yeah, you're you're a
1263. 01:17:08 maps guy. I am a maps guy. Yeah, one of the videos in in the
1264. 01:17:12 creativity flywheel courses, the map is not the territory. Yep.
1265. 01:17:17 And yeah, so I think it's important to consider what is the
1266. 01:17:24 map that I am trying to follow. Now that doesn't mean that
1267. 01:17:26 anti time management by Richie Norton is the perfect map. And
1268. 01:17:30 I would argue that you have to, with any book, it's not the
1269. 01:17:33 perfect map. It's, you're there's gonna be stuff in here, you
1270. 01:17:36 got to, you got to pick out and chew on for yourself and then
1271. 01:17:39 discard the things that don't really, don't really hit the
1272. 01:17:42 mark for you. But yeah, so the couple, couple things here, the
1273. 01:17:47 map, first of all, you have to decide what's the right map to
1274. 01:17:49 follow. It's probably one that you make, you have to decide
1275. 01:17:51 what's going to be on it, get into the whole role of the
1276. 01:17:53 cartographer thing. I'm not going to go too hard on the map
1277. 01:17:56 is not the territory thing right now. But the other thing,
1278. 01:17:58 the compass, and again, I've been teaching this recently to you
1279. 01:18:03 don't need to have it all figured out what's implied with the
1280. 01:18:05 compass is you need to know the direction you need to know the
1281. 01:18:08 next thing to do, which is very much in line with the message
1282. 01:18:11 that he's been sharing throughout this book. And something that I
1283. 01:18:14 need to hear is like, you don't need to know how it all
1284. 01:18:16 connects, you don't need to know where it all ends up. You need
1285. 01:18:19 to take action on the thing. Yep. That you know, you need to do
1286. 01:18:22 right now that you're about the rest. Hit your purpose. Yep. I
1287. 01:18:26 agree. I don't have a lot on on chapter nine. I don't know
1288. 01:18:29 whether I got tired or whether it just didn't wow me that much,
1289. 01:18:32 but I don't have much on chapter nine. So I can I can move on
1290. 01:18:35 to the questions in chapter 10. All right. Yeah, let's do that.
1291. 01:18:38 So the the last chapter, well, last official chapter, I guess in
1292. 01:18:42 the book is chapter 10 asked better questions get better
1293. 01:18:46 answers. Now, what do you think of when you hear that phrase?
1294. 01:18:52 The ask better questions get better answers. Yes. It's my fault.
1295. 01:18:57 Right. Like I am I am the thing. I am the bottleneck here is
1296. 01:19:01 like, Oh, if you're not where you want to be, it's because you're
1297. 01:19:03 not asking the right questions. And it's essentially you that
1298. 01:19:08 needs to fix this. Hmm. Okay. So this is very much anchored for
1299. 01:19:13 me in another book that I have read, which I really, really
1300. 01:19:18 enjoyed called personal Socrates. Have you read this one?
1301. 01:19:22 I've not read it, but I've heard a lot of people tell say it's
1302. 01:19:25 good. Okay, so it's by Mark Champagne. It's published by
1303. 01:19:29 Baron Figge, which is actually kind of cool. And so there's a
1304. 01:19:32 whole bunch of design touches in the book, which are really,
1305. 01:19:34 really nice. But then essentially, it's a whole bunch of
1306. 01:19:37 character sketches from people that Mark has talked to and then
1307. 01:19:40 also just like famous people that he's examined their life and
1308. 01:19:42 drunk conclusions from it. But with each chapter, he gives a
1309. 01:19:45 specific question. And it kind of interested he he begins the
1310. 01:19:50 book by sharing his story and how he completely changed his
1311. 01:19:52 life by asking a question. So I really, you know, believe in
1312. 01:19:55 the power of asking better questions. And then the book is
1313. 01:19:59 really a resource for giving you a whole bunch of questions that
1314. 01:20:01 you could ask about your current situation, different lenses that
1315. 01:20:03 you could look at at things through. All that to say, ask
1316. 01:20:08 better questions, get better answers. I've heard that phrase
1317. 01:20:10 before. I like that a lot. I agree with some of the things that
1318. 01:20:14 he talks about here about learning to ask the right questions,
1319. 01:20:16 let's you jump learning curves, he talks about how ladder
1320. 01:20:18 climbers typically don't ask questions. And you need to keep
1321. 01:20:21 your eyes and ears open for opportunities to serve the
1322. 01:20:24 community. So that's all stuff that I need to I need to do.
1323. 01:20:28 I'm asking better questions, make, create an intentionally
1324. 01:20:31 uncomfortable gap between what you want and how you'll get
1325. 01:20:33 there, he mentions. But then he gives the seven time tipping
1326. 01:20:35 questions. And this is where, you know, I'm not sure that these
1327. 01:20:38 are the exact questions that I want to use. Okay. I'm trying to
1328. 01:20:43 decide if we should even go through these these seven time
1329. 01:20:46 tipping questions. I would basically just summarizes the
1330. 01:20:48 book, right? Like, I mean, yeah, it does. The one sentence
1331. 01:20:52 question that summarizes the book. Yeah, the one thing that
1332. 01:20:56 I'll I'll share at the end of this chapter that really hit me
1333. 01:21:00 was, why are you asking $1 questions when with the same
1334. 01:21:05 breath, you could be asking $1 million questions. I'm totally
1335. 01:21:09 guilty of that. So definitely a nudge to think bigger.
1336. 01:21:16 Yeah, I had a couple couple takeaways out of this one. The
1337. 01:21:19 jobs quote, if you live each day where he he had read a quote
1338. 01:21:23 that said something like if you live each day as if it was your
1339. 01:21:25 last, someday you'll most certainly be right. And it's like,
1340. 01:21:28 okay, that's the momentum more idea. Like, at some point, you
1341. 01:21:31 know, it's gonna happen. What am I doing to live to live like
1342. 01:21:36 that? Another one is, you know, if I look in the mirror and I
1343. 01:21:40 say today was my last last day of my life, what would I what I
1344. 01:21:43 want to do what I'm about to do today? And it's like, oh, man,
1345. 01:21:47 like, like that's a heavy that's a heavy, heavy question. It's
1346. 01:21:50 like, okay, if today was my last day, would I actually do the
1347. 01:21:52 things that I'm planning in my calendar today? And it's like,
1348. 01:21:55 Oh, man, good. So it's like this last chapter, maybe the last
1349. 01:22:01 two chapters, right? Like, it gets like real heavy philosophical
1350. 01:22:08 theoretical, like, think bigger ideas, think bigger thoughts,
1351. 01:22:13 whereas before we were actually like more kind of on the ground
1352. 01:22:16 strategy tactics kind of thing, this one gets a little bit
1353. 01:22:19 bigger in terms of like, I'm really trying to push you and
1354. 01:22:21 motivates you to actually make a change, you know, like,
1355. 01:22:24 Norton's really trying to push us in to actually do something
1356. 01:22:27 which I thought was a good, a good way to round out the book,
1357. 01:22:31 even though it felt kind of abrupt, like the transition
1358. 01:22:34 between eight and nine felt kind of abrupt.
1359. 01:22:37 Yeah, you mean nine and 10?
1360. 01:22:41 Yeah, I actually mean the difference between like, so part
1361. 01:22:44 three to part four. Oh, okay, I felt I felt pretty abrupt
1362. 01:22:47 there. I see. Yep. Yeah, again, like that, that kind of gets
1363. 01:22:50 into the style and reading stuff with the frameworks. And I
1364. 01:22:52 think he tried to do a little bit too much with those. But I think
1365. 01:22:57 the section on the the prolific's the nine and 10, this is one
1366. 01:23:00 that kind of smacked me in the face. Yeah. And it's a great way
1367. 01:23:04 to end the book. It's not actually the ending. There is one
1368. 01:23:07 additional section chapter here called the epilogue. And he
1369. 01:23:13 shares a story about someone that he knew as a kid who had
1370. 01:23:17 died when they were eight years old and they're giving them a
1371. 01:23:20 Hawaiian burial sounds like. And the whole point from there is
1372. 01:23:27 that life's unfair. And he's a pretty good storyteller. He
1373. 01:23:30 shares a lot of lot of stories, some very emotional stories,
1374. 01:23:33 even at the beginning. For the most part, I can read those
1375. 01:23:36 stories. And like, I can feel the emotion from them. But I can
1376. 01:23:43 also quickly move on to the next thing that he's going to talk
1377. 01:23:47 about. Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know if that makes me a
1378. 01:23:49 cold, you know, unemotional person or what. But this one at
1379. 01:23:54 the end hit me. Okay, okay. I I don't really know why. I think
1380. 01:24:03 the takeaway, as I'm trying to process it live here, is that
1381. 01:24:09 you're not guaranteed tomorrow, all idea of mental
1382. 01:24:12 worrying, all that kind of stuff, your limited time. And it's
1383. 01:24:17 kind of like every day that you aren't doing what really matters
1384. 01:24:22 is sort of a wasted day. Now, with the whole concept of that
1385. 01:24:26 story and life being unfair, it's kind of like this could happen
1386. 01:24:31 to you at any moment. So maybe you should stop planning for six
1387. 01:24:37 months from now and just do the thing. I don't know if that's
1388. 01:24:40 the same takeaway that everybody would have from reading this.
1389. 01:24:45 But that's what kind of triggered in me. And then the last kind of
1390. 01:24:48 question he asks here is who are you becoming? And yeah, I sort of
1391. 01:24:56 have an answer, but not a real clear answer. And like, as I'm
1392. 01:24:59 putting down the book, I'm realizing, I've got a lot more
1393. 01:25:03 work to do.
1394. 01:25:03 Yeah, for sure. I thought I mean, I told you before, like I
1395. 01:25:07 thought the same thing, it's like, this was a mind bending book in
1396. 01:25:11 terms of I need to think harder about this stuff. I need to
1397. 01:25:16 consider this stuff. And I need to not just go through the
1398. 01:25:19 motions and I need to not just turn the crank. I'm really good
1399. 01:25:22 at turning the crank and being comfortable with turning the
1400. 01:25:24 crank, even if I'm like a little bit annoyed, you know, like
1401. 01:25:27 even if it's like, well, today's not perfect, but you know,
1402. 01:25:29 whatever, like, that's just what we do. And that's the way life
1403. 01:25:31 is and blah, blah, blah. And like, he is kind of like planted that
1404. 01:25:36 seed in the brain of like, that's not the way it has to be. Yeah,
1405. 01:25:40 and there's another one. And it but like, not in like this super
1406. 01:25:44 hippie dippy, like, Oh, we'll just sell everything and go live
1407. 01:25:48 like in the middle of the woods. And you know, like forge for
1408. 01:25:51 berries. No, it's very much like a still do valuable and
1409. 01:25:55 productive things. Like don't don't give up on that. But you
1410. 01:25:58 don't have to do it the way you've always thought you had to do
1411. 01:26:00 it. And I'm showing you a method, a method that could actually
1412. 01:26:05 work in a in a process that could actually work. And it's like,
1413. 01:26:08 man, like, there's just so much to still think about I want
1414. 01:26:11 another week. I know one another two weeks I want another month
1415. 01:26:14 to like really work through some of these ideas. Yeah. So that
1416. 01:26:18 we both got work to do it's probably the perfect place to
1417. 01:26:21 talk about action items. You ready? Yep. You want me to go
1418. 01:26:23 first, do you want to go first? I can go first. I really just
1419. 01:26:27 have the one action item that I mentioned earlier, which is to
1420. 01:26:31 build a high ticket offer. However, there are lots of things
1421. 01:26:36 that I need to continue to kind of chew on. And talking
1422. 01:26:42 through them live on a podcast has been very helpful. So I guess
1423. 01:26:47 you could add another one here, which is hire a video editor,
1424. 01:26:52 since I've already committed to it on there. Yeah, I'll put that
1425. 01:26:57 on the on the list. But those are those are the the two. And I
1426. 01:27:01 don't think those are it's kind of weird. Those are very
1427. 01:27:05 specific. And not really at all anchored to the big things
1428. 01:27:11 that he's talking about building a high ticket offer kind of is.
1429. 01:27:14 But he talked very conceptually about things, which have the
1430. 01:27:18 part of change of life when you personalize them. And kudos to
1431. 01:27:22 him, I guess, for doing it in a way where I was able to put
1432. 01:27:27 myself in that situation and see what I need to do and figure
1433. 01:27:31 out how to take action on it. I don't know, I guess that's
1434. 01:27:34 getting a little bit into style and rating. But it was a little
1435. 01:27:37 bit surprising to me actually that I had any action items from
1436. 01:27:40 this one. I knew he was going to talk about kind of big picture
1437. 01:27:44 business entrepreneur type stuff. But figured it was just
1438. 01:27:48 going to be like some data points that I would slowly
1439. 01:27:51 implement without any tangible, you know, this is exactly what
1440. 01:27:54 I'm going to do in my business as a as a result. How about you?
1441. 01:28:00 Okay, so I think my biggest one that I'll that'll provide the
1442. 01:28:04 most value is I basically want to go back through this book. And
1443. 01:28:08 through my notes, like I don't want to reread it, like I'm not
1444. 01:28:11 saying that I want to reread it, but I definitely want to go back
1445. 01:28:14 through my notes. And then I want to go back and I want to pull
1446. 01:28:16 out the visuals. So I intentionally didn't pull out the
1447. 01:28:18 visuals in this round. And I want to like the visuals and the
1448. 01:28:23 questions at the end. And I kind of want to organize all this
1449. 01:28:26 and I kind of want to put together like a, what would that
1450. 01:28:28 look like? Now, the answer to this might be just go
1451. 01:28:31 download his stuff, right? Give him my email address, get on the
1452. 01:28:34 listserv and like download the stuff that he provides. And if
1453. 01:28:37 like I do that, and that provides a good enough, you know,
1454. 01:28:40 like recap summary type thing, and then I can compare that with
1455. 01:28:43 my notes. I think that would be that would be okay. But it's
1456. 01:28:46 like, the other way to do it would be to go through my notes
1457. 01:28:48 and go through the book. Because I just want to basically, I
1458. 01:28:51 mean, we we've read it. Now we've processed it live. Right, you
1459. 01:28:56 and I, I want to process it again. Like I really like there
1460. 01:29:00 aren't many books that I read that I'm like, I want to do that
1461. 01:29:03 one a third time. Like I want to think through that one again.
1462. 01:29:06 This is one that makes me go like, man, I just want to do on
1463. 01:29:10 that stuff at least one more time. So that's mine. That's the
1464. 01:29:14 only one I'm picking for this.
1465. 01:29:16 All right.
1466. 01:29:17 Style and rating. I have dreaded this point in the podcast, to
1467. 01:29:23 be honest. I am a little bit conflicted with this. Having
1468. 01:29:31 gone through it, having talked through it. And I sort of had
1469. 01:29:35 an inkling that this was going to happen when we had the
1470. 01:29:37 conversation. I felt like this really does have the potential
1471. 01:29:42 to be a life changing book for me. There are also plenty of
1472. 01:29:46 things in here I didn't really like. We mentioned the visuals.
1473. 01:29:51 This is the place where I really got to just mention. He tries to
1474. 01:29:55 build a whole bunch of frameworks. He uses a whole bunch of
1475. 01:29:58 alliteration. And he kind of stacks it all on top of each
1476. 01:30:02 other into this crazy visual at the end, which I don't think
1477. 01:30:06 works. And if there's like one negative thing I have with this
1478. 01:30:11 book, it's that towards the end, I found myself kind of being a
1479. 01:30:16 little bit like, Oh, every time I got to the end of a chapter,
1480. 01:30:19 and he's going through the, how do you actually apply this?
1481. 01:30:22 Because those things he's tacking on to the work that you
1482. 01:30:27 supposedly already done. So I didn't view this book is like a
1483. 01:30:30 workbook sort of a thing, but it's sort of written like that. And
1484. 01:30:33 there is the toolkit that you alluded to where you can download
1485. 01:30:36 the resources and go through the things. I think if you are
1486. 01:30:40 really just 100% on board with his model, that's probably a good
1487. 01:30:44 good exercise. Even if you just wanted to see what it's like
1488. 01:30:48 compared to all the other things that you've done, which is
1489. 01:30:50 probably more of the appropriate path for me, it probably is
1490. 01:30:55 going to give you a couple interesting things to to noodle
1491. 01:30:59 on. But I don't want to do that at all. I think that there's
1492. 01:31:03 really powerful ideas in this book for me. And those are
1493. 01:31:08 probably going to change forever, the way that I do business
1494. 01:31:12 online as an independent creator. I don't think that I can
1495. 01:31:17 expect that that happens with anybody else who just randomly
1496. 01:31:25 picks up this book and reads it though, even if you're listening
1497. 01:31:28 to our conversation. And you like what we had to say about the
1498. 01:31:31 book and those are topics of interest to you, I still don't
1499. 01:31:36 feel comfortable saying, yeah, 100%, you got to read this one,
1500. 01:31:40 because it's going to change your perspective on things. There's
1501. 01:31:43 a lot of little things in here. He mentions a lot of different
1502. 01:31:46 concepts that we've read about in other places and other books.
1503. 01:31:49 And honestly, I feel like they're described better a lot of
1504. 01:31:52 those different places. He kind of connects everything together
1505. 01:31:55 in a unique way. I feel like the anti time management title is a
1506. 01:32:00 little bit clickbaity. I think it's more just long term vision.
1507. 01:32:09 I don't know, essentially, it's a purpose book. You know, find
1508. 01:32:13 your purpose and live it out every day of your life wrapped in
1509. 01:32:18 the in entrepreneurial, you know, how to be insanely productive
1510. 01:32:22 by not being productive. Yeah, it's it's weird, you know, it's
1511. 01:32:28 weird. I have trouble putting my finger on. What did I just
1512. 01:32:33 read? And who is this for? Yes. I think there's probably a good
1513. 01:32:37 chance that if you're listening to bookworm, you would at least
1514. 01:32:41 like reading the book. He's a good enough writer, a good enough
1515. 01:32:44 storyteller that even if you decide this is all a bunch of
1516. 01:32:46 Huey and I have this is not for me. It was probably still time
1517. 01:32:50 well wasted if you want to think of it that way. Yep, yep, but
1518. 01:32:55 yeah, like it's weird. I still am not 100% sure what this book
1519. 01:32:59 has done to me, but it's done something. I feel good and glad
1520. 01:33:04 that I have read it. I have no idea who to say, you know, you
1521. 01:33:09 need to read this one is this is four. So I think I'm
1522. 01:33:13 iterated at a four. I think an argument could be made, you
1523. 01:33:19 know, six months a year from now that this book was more
1524. 01:33:21 impactful and I should have rated it a five. I'm going to
1525. 01:33:24 take that chance, I guess. Before feels like the right spot
1526. 01:33:28 right now, definitely some impactful stuff in here, not
1527. 01:33:31 the the cleanest packaging. I feel like the frameworks are
1528. 01:33:35 overdone. If you would have just picked like a simple framework
1529. 01:33:39 and talked about this little piece of this instead of like
1530. 01:33:41 trying to cram a whole bunch of detail into it, the more
1531. 01:33:44 detail that you add to those frameworks, the more complicated
1532. 01:33:46 they become the less effective they are, in my opinion. I'm
1533. 01:33:50 not an expert in frameworks, that's just my opinion. But
1534. 01:33:53 that's kind of my my take on all of the different different
1535. 01:33:57 things he tried to roll up into one coherent image feel like
1536. 01:34:01 that. That didn't really work.
1537. 01:34:03 Yeah. Okay, so I'll I'll put the the end first. My rating was
1538. 01:34:08 also for my ratings of four for the following reasons. I
1539. 01:34:14 think there are many, many, many pieces of this book that I
1540. 01:34:19 will think about for a very long time. I don't think the
1541. 01:34:26 front to end package was as clean as it could have been. I
1542. 01:34:31 don't think the front to end package was I think there are
1543. 01:34:36 significant improvements that could have been made to that
1544. 01:34:39 that front to end package. I very much see this as a project
1545. 01:34:43 stack type of a thing from his perspective. Like, what am I
1546. 01:34:47 trying to do? Well, first thing is, I have all these thoughts
1547. 01:34:50 in my head, and I'm going to try to codify these thoughts into
1548. 01:34:53 some sort of a framework. And if I'm going to do that, I'm
1549. 01:34:56 going to write a book about it, because if I'm going to write
1550. 01:34:58 a book about it, then that'll drive people to my website. And
1551. 01:35:01 if I'm going to drive people to my website, then I'm going to do
1552. 01:35:03 more of the stuff that I'm supposed to be doing or that I
1553. 01:35:05 value doing personally, professionally, yada, yada, right?
1554. 01:35:08 Like, I see this very much as like, the product as part of one
1555. 01:35:12 of the the project stacks that he has. Very, very cleanly. I
1556. 01:35:16 think it's a great example of that. I don't fault him for that on
1557. 01:35:19 any level. I think because of that, it's a less effective
1558. 01:35:25 pure book. It's less effective as a pure book. It relies on you
1559. 01:35:30 going to his website, downloading the thing, working through
1560. 01:35:34 that stuff. It might possibly even rely on you setting up a
1561. 01:35:39 coaching call with him or going to one of his seminars or
1562. 01:35:41 workshops. Like, and again, I don't fault him for any of that.
1563. 01:35:44 Like, that's, that's not thing. But I think from it, when it
1564. 01:35:46 comes to the rating of the book, it lowers the rating of the
1565. 01:35:49 book for me. I agree, I agree with your statement on there are
1566. 01:35:54 aspects of the framework, there are aspects of the pieces of
1567. 01:35:57 you, as you've heard us talk about for what an hour and however
1568. 01:36:00 long now, right, that I think are super valuable. I'm going to
1569. 01:36:03 think about this for a really, really long time. I do not think
1570. 01:36:05 I will think about the overall framework. Like, yeah, I just
1571. 01:36:09 don't see myself ever like taking that picture and putting it
1572. 01:36:12 as a desktop background or saving that into my like
1573. 01:36:15 infographics frameworks, like folder. I just don't see that
1574. 01:36:19 that happening. So I'm okay with that. I also just was kind of
1575. 01:36:24 annoyed at certain times, but this is me being very critical. I'm
1576. 01:36:27 going to admit that I'm being very, very critical. Some of the
1577. 01:36:30 quips, some of the things, some of the ways like we repeated
1578. 01:36:33 things like throughout the chapters, I just didn't like it.
1579. 01:36:35 Like I just was like, okay, we could have done without that. We
1580. 01:36:37 could have done without that like an editor would have, would
1581. 01:36:39 have chopped that out of there kind of a thing. So because of
1582. 01:36:42 that, I think it's a four. You asked about who who we'd
1583. 01:36:46 recommend it to. I think pretty much everybody in the bookworm
1584. 01:36:49 audience is going to get value out of this book. I do not think
1585. 01:36:52 they would read this like you said and go like, Oh man, that
1586. 01:36:55 was a complete waste of my time. I don't think that's true at
1587. 01:36:57 all. Right. I would recommend it to the person who you're talking
1588. 01:37:02 to and they're like, man, I'm just struggling with work. I'm
1589. 01:37:06 just struggling with like going in and punching the clock
1590. 01:37:08 every day. I'm just struggling with the idea. I feel like I'm
1591. 01:37:11 just not I don't have any purpose and it's monotony. And I
1592. 01:37:14 just keep working harder and harder and getting less and less
1593. 01:37:16 done. Like that's the person I recommend this book to because
1594. 01:37:19 I think this book for that individual helps them think
1595. 01:37:24 differently. It may not make them leave their job. It may not
1596. 01:37:28 make them start a side business. It may not do any of that
1597. 01:37:30 stuff because I don't think that's the purpose of this book. I
1598. 01:37:32 think it'll help them think differently about waking up and
1599. 01:37:36 doing their day to day activities. And I think that's the
1600. 01:37:39 value of this book. Now, one of the big flaws I have, and I'm
1601. 01:37:44 being super critical, it's called anti time management. The
1602. 01:37:49 first two things you see is a hyphenated thing that says
1603. 01:37:52 anti time. And the first thing he introduces and the way he
1604. 01:37:55 closes out his book is time. Today is my everything. So anti
1605. 01:37:59 time. And I'm like, I'm like, Oh man, I'm like, I know you
1606. 01:38:02 didn't really you probably didn't even think about it. But
1607. 01:38:04 like, I could not think about it. It was like, today's my
1608. 01:38:07 everything anti today's my everything. I dug on it, right?
1609. 01:38:10 Like, if we could have just if we could have just put a you
1610. 01:38:12 know, some sort of parentheses or something around that time
1611. 01:38:14 management. So but again, that's me being insanely insanely
1612. 01:38:18 critical. I think it's four stars. I enjoy the book. You're
1613. 01:38:21 right. I don't think that time acronym really needed to be
1614. 01:38:24 there. That's weird. Yeah. All right. Let's put anti time
1615. 01:38:30 management on the shelf. What's next Corey? All right. So the
1616. 01:38:33 next book we have is never play it safe by Chase Jarvis. So
1617. 01:38:40 this book, you know, is basically, you know, conversations
1618. 01:38:45 with the world's top artists, athletes, performers, I'm reading
1619. 01:38:49 the description right now says like, what is playing it safe?
1620. 01:38:51 How do we do that real world stories? I think it's gonna be a
1621. 01:38:54 good how am I gonna wear this? I mean, it's gonna be a good
1622. 01:38:57 stories book, right? We're gonna get some good like fodder for
1623. 01:39:00 thinking about different things. And I'm excited for this one.
1624. 01:39:03 This is a mic recommendation that when I read through it, I was
1625. 01:39:06 like, yeah, I'm in like, this is a this would be a great a great
1626. 01:39:10 book for the bookworm audience and for us to do next. So never
1627. 01:39:13 play it safe by Chase Jarvis.
1628. 01:39:16 Cool. Yeah, this is this is the one that I'm really looking
1629. 01:39:18 forward to. After that, we are going to do a book that makes me
1630. 01:39:24 very nervous. We are going to cover meditations by Marcus
1631. 01:39:31 Aurelius. Why does this make me nervous? Well, I have actually
1632. 01:39:37 multiple copies of this book. I have never read it. Something
1633. 01:39:41 about stoicism just has always, I like certain aspects of it. But
1634. 01:39:45 it kind of rubs me a little bit the wrong way. A lot of the
1635. 01:39:49 authors that we read tend to reference stoicism. And this
1636. 01:39:54 book in particular as the ultimate ultimate guide to
1637. 01:39:59 stoicism, essentially. And I feel like it's very relevant for
1638. 01:40:05 the bookworm audience. I am looking forward to the
1639. 01:40:09 conversation that we'll have from it. I have no idea how we're
1640. 01:40:12 actually going to rate this thousands of years old book.
1641. 01:40:17 This this may undermine all of the authors that you respect and
1642. 01:40:21 love their opinion on stoicism. You might might guys are
1643. 01:40:25 crazy. Yep. Yep. So we're going to be reading the Gregory
1644. 01:40:30 Hayes translation. That's the updated one. That's a little bit
1645. 01:40:34 a little bit more readable. I have no idea how we're going to
1646. 01:40:37 format the outline. I have no idea. We'll figure it out. Let's
1647. 01:40:41 go figure it out. We will figure it out. Yeah, I'm kind of
1648. 01:40:46 nervous that we're both going to end up just hating this this
1649. 01:40:49 book that is like the foundational pillar of most of the
1650. 01:40:52 productivity stuff we talk about. We know we've had a good
1651. 01:40:55 run, right? We've been writing books pretty high, you know, so
1652. 01:40:58 I mean, maybe we need one that brings things back. Yeah. All
1653. 01:41:02 right. So that's the next official book. You any gap books?
1654. 01:41:06 Okay, so I'm putting the gap book that I mentioned last
1655. 01:41:09 episode on this one, because I got distracted by a different
1656. 01:41:12 gap book between last episode and this one. So this one's going
1657. 01:41:17 to go back to deep discipleship by JT English. It's something
1658. 01:41:19 we're thinking through at church and Katie and I are thinking
1659. 01:41:22 through with kind of how we want to support and serve within
1660. 01:41:26 the church. So deep discipleship by JT English would be my
1661. 01:41:28 gap book. How about you?
1662. 01:41:31 All right. Yeah, Seth Godin has a new book out blanking on the
1663. 01:41:37 name. I think it's this is strategy. And it's kind of a
1664. 01:41:41 follow up to one that you mentioned, this is marketing. I'm
1665. 01:41:44 going to bring this with me to Door County when we go up
1666. 01:41:49 there for Thanksgiving. I have no idea if I'm actually going to
1667. 01:41:52 get this done mentioned, I've kind of bitten off more than I
1668. 01:41:55 could chew recently with a couple new courses I got to get
1669. 01:41:58 out the door. But we do have a bit of a gap before we
1670. 01:42:01 recording in. So this is the one that's at the top of the
1671. 01:42:05 the list for for me.
1672. 01:42:06 And that's in your right. It is this is strategy. That's the
1673. 01:42:09 that's the newest one he does. So cool. All right. Well, thanks
1674. 01:42:14 for listening, everybody. If you want to support the show
1675. 01:42:17 directly, you can do that by going to patreon.com/bookworm
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1680. 01:42:35 removed, today we talked about some of our favorite holiday
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1685. 01:42:53 If you're reading along with us, let's pick up Never Play It
1686. 01:42:56 Safe by Chase Jarvis. And we'll talk to you all next time.