229: From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks

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1. 00:00:00 So we have no follow up for this one, zero action items from AI snake oil, that's appropriate.
2. 00:00:11 Yeah, I feel like we should put something in this beginning section before we just jump into
3. 00:00:16 the book, but I don't know what it is. I don't know if I do either. So let me ask you this question.
4. 00:00:24 Are there, ah, we'll revisit this, Mike. Have you been enticed by any fiction books lately?
5. 00:00:32 Oh, come on. Or we get bored. The other one we get the other one I could ask is, how is your
6. 00:00:39 Nintendo switch playing going? That's not great either. Okay. That's okay. I'm failing all over the
7. 00:00:45 place. So no, no, that's okay. We are recording this one in person. So right behind you, Corey,
8. 00:00:50 is the case for my OLED Steam Deck. But the Steam Deck is not in there. Joshua has confiscated it.
9. 00:00:57 Ah, I see. I've been getting into, I think it's the Guardians of the Galaxy game.
10. 00:01:02 Steam had some big summer sale and I bought a bought a couple games. And yeah, I haven't
11. 00:01:07 been able to play that one much. But I did get into another video game though. Okay. It's on the
12. 00:01:11 Xbox. So there's a game pass and they just added a whole bunch of games to Game Pass.
13. 00:01:17 One of them is the New Indiana Jones, what is it called? Indiana Jones in the great circle,
14. 00:01:24 I think it's like an adventure style game, but you're Indiana Jones. And it's made by a company
15. 00:01:31 called Bethesda, which is the company that did like the Elder Scrolls, like Skyrim, basically.
16. 00:01:37 That's the game I really got into. So imagine like an Indiana Jones themed Skyrim. Yeah.
17. 00:01:43 It's basically what this is. They've got, I think it sounds like Harrison Ford doing all the voice
18. 00:01:48 acting for the main character and stuff. It's pretty cool. I could get into that one. I could
19. 00:01:53 burn some hours. Yeah. That one sounds fun. Yeah. Especially if it's like adventures,
20. 00:01:57 like are you doing challenges or is it open world? Like what are you? Well, it's an adventure game.
21. 00:02:02 So there's a story. The beginning of it is kind of cool because it's a flashback to
22. 00:02:06 Raiders of the Lost Ark. So it's teaching you the controls as you're going into the temple to
23. 00:02:11 grab the statue. Very cool. And then you wake up and you're in the college, you know, and you're
24. 00:02:17 talking to one of your colleagues. And then after that, that's when the real exciting stuff happens.
25. 00:02:22 Somebody breaks in and steals a statue. You got to fly to the, I don't want to give any spoilers.
26. 00:02:27 You fly to the Vatican and the whole premise of the game is like the Pope is dying, Mussolini,
27. 00:02:33 and the fascists are coming in and taking over. Very Indiana Jones. Yes. Very Indiana Jones. I
28. 00:02:39 would get into that game. And what platforms are for? So it's on Game Pass. I know they have it
29. 00:02:44 on Steam. I'm not sure what all platforms it's available for, but I've been playing it on the
30. 00:02:48 Xbox upstairs a little bit. But yeah, I haven't had a whole lot of time for that. I've been trying
31. 00:02:54 to crank out more YouTube videos. I don't know if you, I don't think I talked to you about this.
32. 00:02:58 I have started publishing a YouTube short a day. Oh, no, you have not talked to me about this at
33. 00:03:05 all. So if I had had more time to plan this episode, that's probably what I would have led with. But
34. 00:03:09 yeah, I was on a call, like a live call for Ecan with Doc Rock. And he made a comment about
35. 00:03:21 trying to, trying to stick with with shorts. He's like, Mike Schmitz is here. He's got to do
36. 00:03:26 this too. And I'm like, okay, Doc, fine. I'll do it. And then, yeah, I've been doing it every day.
37. 00:03:32 And it seems like it's working pretty well. My views obviously are way up, not the watch time
38. 00:03:38 because they're, they're shorts. But what I love about the shorts is that I can take
39. 00:03:43 clips from my actual videos, and I can point them to the longer videos. So then it's just
40. 00:03:49 actually formatting those in a way that they're interesting for people with shorts. I'm not sure
41. 00:03:54 if you know anything about about shorts, but like standard, like good metrics are like 70%
42. 00:04:00 engagement. So 70% of the people who come across it will actually watch it. Okay.
43. 00:04:03 And I started off at like 30, 40% than it was 50 and 60. I had one that hit 70 not too long ago.
44. 00:04:10 So I'm starting to get it. Help me understand how long is a short on YouTube. Like it's less
45. 00:04:16 than three minutes. Just less than three minutes. That's what I think the ideal length is probably
46. 00:04:20 around 30 seconds. Okay. Yeah. So I'm experimenting with a whole bunch of stuff. But yeah, it's cool.
47. 00:04:25 I'm using Opus Pro to get like the beginning part. What I love about Opus, I'll actually do a
48. 00:04:31 live stream about this at some point is you can take what they give you because it's like an AI
49. 00:04:35 thing. Here's the viral part of your video. You know, you can add as a short and it's never very
50. 00:04:40 good, but it's a starting point. And then you can change the formatting and add little, you know,
51. 00:04:45 I want this sentence to be inserted here just just in the transcript, you can highlight a
52. 00:04:48 sentence and be like, I want that part of the big video at this point in the clip. So you can make
53. 00:04:54 something that is pretty decent, pretty quick. And that's through Opus Pro. Take that big video
54. 00:05:00 and it'll suggest what the short should be. Yeah. Oh man, that's cool. Yeah. But then what they
55. 00:05:05 give you is never what you should actually post in my opinion, at least not with my educational
56. 00:05:09 type videos. But it's a starting point. You know, if I were to just start with the video and be like,
57. 00:05:13 oh, I got to find a spot for making a clip, I would I would never do it. But when it gives me
58. 00:05:19 10 options, you know, now it, you know, I cranked out 30 shorts last Saturday and like four to five
59. 00:05:25 hours. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's great. I just listened to another couple podcasters and
60. 00:05:30 they also they also make YouTube videos. But did you ever hear of no dumb questions or? I've heard
61. 00:05:35 of that. Yeah, Bible hour. So Dustin Salem and Matt Whitman, they were talking on no dumb questions
62. 00:05:43 about the, how do I say this, the growing up of YouTube and how like how it started and then the
63. 00:05:52 next couple phase and the next phase and it's funny because they actually talked about a Mr.
64. 00:05:56 Beast phase. Like there was the Mr. Beast phase where it was basically gamifying everything,
65. 00:06:00 right? You're trying to gamify everything about the algorithm. And it really turned me off to
66. 00:06:05 YouTube. I was like, Oh, I just feel so gross. Like everything about it feels so gross. But then I
67. 00:06:10 still, I don't say that in terms of I don't still go there to find good content. I just think about
68. 00:06:17 like making videos and like trying to play that game and like how much of a barrier there is
69. 00:06:22 between what I want to produce for people and what we are them actually watching it or it going
70. 00:06:29 viral or whatever. And I'm just like, Oh, I don't want to play that game at all. Like that sounds so
71. 00:06:33 terrible. That's fair. I mean, you don't have to play it the way that Mr. Beast plays it. Yeah. But
72. 00:06:39 yeah, you got to find the the balance there. The TLDR I think is if you make good stuff,
73. 00:06:47 YouTube is incentivized to help your content get in front of the people who actually want to see
74. 00:06:51 it, which I think is pretty cool. But it is algorithmic. So you got to figure out what do they want to
75. 00:06:58 see what they were talking about like a b testing thumbnails and like doing that before they posted
76. 00:07:03 the video. And I was like, I don't even know how that like, how would you even do that? Like,
77. 00:07:07 how would you even test your thumbnail for engagement prior to posting the video? But maybe I just
78. 00:07:13 heard it wrong. Like there's a really good chance I heard them wrong and I wasn't understanding. Well,
79. 00:07:16 I think you probably could do that. You could do like an unlisted video. So you could like send
80. 00:07:21 your email list to it or something and maybe test it that way and make it public to everybody once
81. 00:07:25 you get some data. But yeah, I'm not doing that. I they do make it easy to upload multiple thumbnails.
82. 00:07:32 So I'll typically do that and let the
83. 00:07:34 point and then just run them for a week, run them, run each one for a week. Is that how you would do
84. 00:07:37 it? No, it will actually A B test them for you. Will it really pick the one that performs the best?
85. 00:07:42 Yeah, you can perform you can put up to three three thumbnails. So
86. 00:07:48 Yeah, wow, I didn't realize that that system was that I mean advanced, if you will, that it'll
87. 00:07:53 run those tests for you. That's pretty, pretty interesting. Yeah, YouTube is a is the thing.
88. 00:07:59 It's a thing. It's a thing. Well, keep making good content, man. Keep making good content.
89. 00:08:03 I will try. All right, let's talk about today's book, which is from strength to strength by Arthur
90. 00:08:10 Brooks. And I have to call out because you showed it to me that you read this one as a physical book.
91. 00:08:18 So how was it? I did read this as a physical book. And Mike, here's what I'm going to tell you.
92. 00:08:22 I liked the reading experience so much better as a physical book. I really did. I like the
93. 00:08:27 reading experience as a physical book. The problem I have is now I have this stack of notes because
94. 00:08:32 the way I take notes, I can't get out a digital device while I'm reading the physical book. It
95. 00:08:39 just feels so wrong. And I don't like it. I get that. I don't like anything about it. And then
96. 00:08:43 this morning I was going through and thinking about like, okay, I need to compress these down
97. 00:08:48 and make my like show notes that way I can talk about this elegantly. And I got so tired of it.
98. 00:08:52 I was I'm just taking pictures of them. So in my in my note app, I have pictures of my of my notes.
99. 00:08:58 At some point here, you and I are going to talk about my new scheme that I found that works for
100. 00:09:06 my note-taking. Okay. And I've told you this before, it uses liquid text. And we're going to talk
101. 00:09:12 about my note-taking scheme because that's hands down without it out the best. Throw a PDF into
102. 00:09:17 liquid text. I do my highlights. I do my notes. When we're doing the show, I can scroll right
103. 00:09:21 through that. The thing I haven't figured out about that is the archiving. But what I will tell you
104. 00:09:26 is I will tell you that the physical paper book was much more pleasant to read. I enjoyed it much
105. 00:09:32 better than I did reading it on a digital platform. Nice. Have you ever tried doing like the personal
106. 00:09:38 index in a physical book? I haven't. No. So that's kind of where you jot down things in the margins
107. 00:09:44 and then you in the back, you put page number, whatever, just like a word or two about what you
108. 00:09:50 captured in the actual page itself. No, I've never I've never tried to do that. So I don't know how
109. 00:09:56 that feels wrong to me. I can tell you right now, like I'm thinking about it and it just feels
110. 00:10:01 it feels weird to write in a physical book. I think it's fine, you know, conceptually, but I
111. 00:10:05 can't I can't do it. Yeah. You're you're mind-mapped through and through. Right. Yeah. Mind-mapped through
112. 00:10:11 and through. Exactly. All right. So from strength to strength by Arthur Brooks is really about
113. 00:10:16 navigating a midlife crisis. Is that fair summary? I'm actually glad foreshadowing he gets to the
114. 00:10:22 word the phrase midlife crisis towards the end of the book towards the latter part of the book.
115. 00:10:27 Yeah. I'm really glad he did because I was like, man, why are you not talking about the word
116. 00:10:30 midlife crisis? Like, what took you so long to get to midlife crisis? Yeah, but it's kind of like
117. 00:10:35 that. I think it's a little more nuanced, which we'll get into, but it's kind of like that. Yeah,
118. 00:10:39 the subtitle is finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life.
119. 00:10:44 So I think it midlife transitions anyway. This is the right right summary. There are nine different
120. 00:10:52 chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. The chapters do not break apart into any sort of
121. 00:10:59 sections. So I think we'll tackle these one by one. Good. And not all chapters are formatted the
122. 00:11:06 same. Some are significantly longer than others. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Which is a little
123. 00:11:10 bit strange, to be honest, but yeah, 220 pages. So not crazy long. And some really impressive
124. 00:11:21 blurbs on the the back of this one. Not sure if you saw those, but we've got Simon Sinek,
125. 00:11:26 we've got Daniel Pink, Dan Harris, Angela Duckworth, Eric Schmidt from from Google,
126. 00:11:34 and Bishop Robert Bering, founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, who at one point sent me a
127. 00:11:42 Word on Fire Bible for free. I think they thought I was the Father Mike Schmitz.
128. 00:11:50 I have found Father Mike Schmitz a long, long time ago when I looked up Mike Schmitz and I was
129. 00:11:54 like, that is not the Mike Schmitz. Yeah, I know. That's how I explain people who are like,
130. 00:11:59 oh, you have a YouTube channel. Yeah, Mike Schmitz, not the buff Catholic priest. It's a great way.
131. 00:12:05 One of the things if you're picking this book up to read it, the intro and the conclusion are
132. 00:12:09 very, very short. I mean, they're two or three pages. I don't know exactly, but they're very,
133. 00:12:14 very short. So the bulk of the meat is in chapters one through one through nine.
134. 00:12:18 Yep. So let's start with that introduction. The introduction is really a story about
135. 00:12:27 at one point he was on a plane. I don't remember where he was going, but he overheard someone in
136. 00:12:32 the row behind him. It was a man who was sounding very despondent and like, my life isn't worth
137. 00:12:39 living anymore. And a woman who he presumed to be the man's wife trying to encourage him.
138. 00:12:45 And then as he got off the plane, he looked back and he saw that it was somebody super famous that
139. 00:12:52 he knew. And famous enough to the point where when they got to the front, the pilots were wanting
140. 00:12:59 to shake his hand and tell him what an impact he had on their life. And it kind of juxtaposed this.
141. 00:13:06 You know, he was very depressed and despondent just minutes ago in his seat now because he'd
142. 00:13:11 being recognized for something that he had done earlier in his life. He seems much happier.
143. 00:13:19 So this guy on the plane, he literally told his wife that he thought he would be better off dead.
144. 00:13:26 And that's sort of the premise for the book is why do these strivers, he calls them,
145. 00:13:33 suffer so much when they can't continue to do the thing that they did that made them famous and
146. 00:13:39 helped them accumulate all this stuff. And he talks about the strivers curse, which is people
147. 00:13:44 who strive to be excellent at what they do finding their inevitable decline terrifying.
148. 00:13:50 I don't think I've had enough success to be absolutely terrified by this. However,
149. 00:13:55 reading this introduction, it did get me thinking about it a little bit. And I'm like, man,
150. 00:13:59 I am actually much closer to that point than I feel comfortable with. So it definitely is a
151. 00:14:05 little bit unsettling. And then he uses that as kind of like a jumping off point, but it doesn't
152. 00:14:12 have to be that way. You can make the inevitable change a source of strength. And that's kind of
153. 00:14:16 where the actual title comes from. Yeah, I have a question for you first before we get too deep
154. 00:14:22 into it. Who do you think the person was? I have no idea. What do you think their context was? Like
155. 00:14:28 do you think they had a certain profession? I do. I have an idea of if I had to guess, but what do you
156. 00:14:33 I have no idea? I was trying to think about that. And yeah, I don't, I don't even know where to
157. 00:14:38 sink. I have to think it was somebody either in the military or in politics. Like I really think
158. 00:14:44 it was like, because the pilots, like they would have had to known this figure, right? And pilots,
159. 00:14:50 I mean, they're going to know people probably in the military. Like that's my, you know, my,
160. 00:14:53 my thought. And then kind of everybody knows people in politics. So it's like, but it's like,
161. 00:14:58 if it was like some obscure like CEO of something, but maybe not, I mean, you know, I don't know,
162. 00:15:03 but I have to think that's what it is. And that's what it's in my head. But he says at the end of
163. 00:15:06 the book that he's not going to tell. Like he's never going to tell you the person go to the grave,
164. 00:15:10 not not revealing this person's name. The other thing that I think is important as you get started
165. 00:15:15 with the book is I don't want to say the book is autobiographical, but he is part of this story
166. 00:15:21 a lot. Like you, as he unpacks different ideas and thoughts, he's very much going to refer to
167. 00:15:29 his self and his experience in this. And I liked that about the book. Like I thought it was a good
168. 00:15:34 addition to the book. Like sometimes you do that and it feels, it feels strange. It's like, oh,
169. 00:15:39 you're like, your story doesn't really add in here. You feel, I feel like you're forcing your story
170. 00:15:43 into here. That is very different here. It was like, you're very clear where he's writing this
171. 00:15:49 book from is I was on this plane. This thing happened. It had a dramatic impact on my life.
172. 00:15:54 And it got me researching. And that research turned into this book, essentially, is what it is.
173. 00:16:00 So I think it's a really interesting way, just real quick for folks who may not know who Arthur
174. 00:16:05 Brooks is. I didn't know much about him before he started. But he basically ran a policy think
175. 00:16:10 tank in DC was super successful and then went back to school, got his doctorate and became a
176. 00:16:16 social science researcher. And now he writes books, he writes kind of like, public facing research
177. 00:16:23 books. But he also does academic work as well. So he's got a really kind of interesting career
178. 00:16:29 as a social science researcher and as a former big wig in Washington DC.
179. 00:16:35 Yeah, I had not been familiar with Arthur Brooks previously. I actually was confusing him initially
180. 00:16:42 with David Brooks. Who wrote the excellent, the second mountain, it's on the bookshelf back there.
181. 00:16:48 One of my favorite books. And he actually mentions David Brooks at one point in the book and calls
182. 00:16:54 out that they are friends, but not related. I like that too. All right. I don't really have much
183. 00:17:02 else from the introduction. I mean, it was a good story. It set the stage well, but that's really
184. 00:17:07 all I have for that. All right. Well, let's go into the first chapter then, which is your professional
185. 00:17:12 decline is coming much sooner than you think. And this is where he starts to share some of the
186. 00:17:19 research around high skill professions. And the general summary is that decline sets in sometime
187. 00:17:29 between late 30s and early 50s. And then he kind of breaks down different professions,
188. 00:17:36 like professional athletes, that one's kind of obvious. And that one is a little bit earlier.
189. 00:17:41 The one that I jotted down for the mind map is that for writers, the average decline is from 40
190. 00:17:46 to 55. So a little bit later, but still kind of earlier than I anticipated for people who write
191. 00:17:52 for a living, he would say the same thing about science, that people who do like scientific
192. 00:17:57 research or make scientific advancements, it's later as well. Yeah, that still feels generally
193. 00:18:03 kind of early, though, I guess is my big takeaway. And it kind of makes sense when he explains it.
194. 00:18:09 He does talk about how the prefrontal cortex degrades in middle age. And I love that neuroscience
195. 00:18:19 stuff. So I jotted down a couple of things from that research, which are interesting to me,
196. 00:18:26 the rapid analysis and the creative innovation, those suffer some specific once easy tasks become
197. 00:18:33 hard. I have to admit that when I read that one, I started replaying the last several weeks
198. 00:18:38 amongst my head is like, oh boy, which one of these things would I have just crushed it several
199. 00:18:45 years ago? But now it's hard for me. You're more easily distracted and your recall of names and
200. 00:18:50 facts can suffer. So this is coming basically. And we're kind of genetically wired to deny the
201. 00:19:02 fact that it's going to happen. I remember reading a book a long, long time ago, I forget the name
202. 00:19:07 of the book, but it talked about the statistics behind like texting and driving and how people
203. 00:19:15 think that it's, if you were to ask them in general texting and driving, oh yeah, it's super
204. 00:19:19 dangerous. But then when they think when they do it, it's not as dangerous. And it's something like
205. 00:19:24 90%. It's like, oh yeah, it's dangerous. And then when I do it, it's like 50%. It's like
206. 00:19:28 significant difference. And that's kind of what this reminded me of is, you know, we think we're
207. 00:19:34 we're able to out maneuver this stuff and we're we're really not.
208. 00:19:39 He brings up a couple of different points here in terms of success. And you see where he's going
209. 00:19:45 with this in later chapters, but he talks about how the bigger accomplishments you have, often the
210. 00:19:50 bigger the letdowns you have that if you chase power and achievement, then you tend to be
211. 00:19:56 unhappier in retirement. I really think this is an interesting idea. And I think part of it, the
212. 00:20:03 reason why I think it's such an interesting idea is because you can see this in so many people.
213. 00:20:07 Like they're there. They've been successful in whatever. I don't really think it matters what
214. 00:20:12 you gauge success as. I mean, like, whether it's successful as a, I don't know how to explain
215. 00:20:18 like a normal person, or whether it's successful as like a celebrity, or whether it's successful
216. 00:20:22 as like a big CEO or whatever it is, you see this curve, right, where you see they were really
217. 00:20:27 successful. And then all of a sudden, like there's just the slope down of be it energy, be it productivity,
218. 00:20:32 be it achievement. And he, he ends the chapter by saying you have three doors to walk through.
219. 00:20:38 And I love the way he describes them. He says you can deny and rage, right? Like, so your frustration
220. 00:20:43 and disappointment just overtake you and you can deny and rage, you can shrug and give in and just
221. 00:20:47 be like, okay, I'm just going to accept it and go get over it. Or what he's going to pitch in this
222. 00:20:53 book is the third, the third route, you can build new skills and strengths. And you can overcome the
223. 00:20:57 fact that you're going to have that inevitable decline. So I just really like the way the way he
224. 00:21:02 presents this. I mean, I feel this too. You talked about, you know, are you feeling it or in different
225. 00:21:07 areas or whatever, like without a doubt, like I feel this in terms of, if I think about writing
226. 00:21:14 research grants when I was 27, you know, in my grad school days and doing that kind of thing,
227. 00:21:21 I just have way less interest now. I had way more interest then to like, go get that grant and go
228. 00:21:27 do that thing and whatever it is. And it's like, no, I still want to do good work. But like, I'm not
229. 00:21:31 trying to compete with everybody out there because I need to put that check in the in the list of
230. 00:21:37 like, I got that thing. I got I really got that. It's just I just don't feel it anymore. I don't
231. 00:21:42 know why. But I don't like it's just kind of naturally gone gone away. So interesting. I never
232. 00:21:48 really thought about it from the perspective of not interested in that anymore. But I guess that
233. 00:21:54 makes sense. It's like, why am I not interested in it? Maybe just because it's not worth the
234. 00:22:00 the hassle. The juice is no longer worth the squeeze. Yep. That and and I think that there's a there's
235. 00:22:06 a little bit of like, I see the way the game is played. I am just not willing to play that game
236. 00:22:12 anymore. Like I don't want to play. I don't even want to get into the into the sandbox and play
237. 00:22:16 around anymore. I'm kind of done with it. All right. Well, the ready going on the next chapter. I am.
238. 00:22:22 So the the second chapter here is the second curve. And this is really, you know, how do you
239. 00:22:27 how you respond to that? You mentioned the different doors that you can walk through.
240. 00:22:31 But the interesting thing to me about this is that that inevitable decline is not all negative.
241. 00:22:38 The first thing I jotted down here was that as people get older, they almost never become
242. 00:22:43 less articulate. So you may not be as quick as you once were. Your critical thinking ability
243. 00:22:50 may not you may not have the same mental horsepower as you once did. However, that doesn't mean that
244. 00:22:56 what you do has to decrease in quality necessarily. And so this is where like I'm getting personal
245. 00:23:03 thinking about what this looks like for me. I don't have the the energy maybe to crank out all the
246. 00:23:10 videos as fast as I I once did. However, I do have the ability to communicate more effectively,
247. 00:23:18 at least potentially, just because I'm not as quick on my feet as I used to be doesn't mean that
248. 00:23:26 what I make has to be bad or even, you know, of lesser quality. So with age, there are some
249. 00:23:33 benefits people usually get better at combining and utilizing complex ideas. That kind of gets
250. 00:23:38 into like the whole personal knowledge management thing for me. So I guess, you know, I'm gonna stay
251. 00:23:41 there for a while. Since that's how I I was gonna say beat this thing, but it's not really beat
252. 00:23:47 it. Like you can't really beat it, but you know, sets you up for success, I think.
253. 00:23:52 Let me let me add a thing there. He actually says in here, don't try to bend the curve. Yeah,
254. 00:23:56 move to the other curve. Right. So when you say about like beating it, he's basically, I mean,
255. 00:24:01 he is sold out and committed on the fact that that first curve that we started we talked about in
256. 00:24:06 chapter one, it's going to happen. You're not going to beat it, you're not going to defeat it,
257. 00:24:11 you're not going to bend it. Like there are exceptions to the rule, but he said, most people
258. 00:24:16 are going to go through that. Don't try to don't try to fight it. There's a better way is essentially
259. 00:24:22 what he's what he's going after. Yeah. And at the heart of that really is these two different kinds
260. 00:24:27 of intelligence. So fluid intelligence is the ability to reason, think flexibly and solve novel
261. 00:24:32 problems. That's the one that degrades with age. But then there's crystallized intelligence,
262. 00:24:36 the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. So one of my
263. 00:24:42 mantras, I guess, keep going, keep growing. If I literally keep doing that, I'm creating more
264. 00:24:49 crystallized intelligence that I can use, beneficially, in what I, and what I do, and it will theoretically
265. 00:24:59 allow me to do what I do longer and at a higher level. So yeah, this, this is, you know, the first
266. 00:25:07 chapter punches you in the gut. The second one is like, okay, so here's it's not all bad news. Yeah.
267. 00:25:13 Talks about Cicero's beliefs about older age, about how old age should be dedicated to service,
268. 00:25:19 not goofing off, that our greatest gift later in life is wisdom and our natural, natural ability
269. 00:25:25 at this point is to counsel so advising and, and teaching others. I really like that. You know,
270. 00:25:31 that's actually exciting to me. I would love to do more coaching and stuff like that.
271. 00:25:37 And yeah, so it's really not, I have to stop doing what I'm doing, but what I'm doing maybe has to
272. 00:25:44 change and how I express it. Yeah, if that makes sense. Yeah, that would make sense. One of the
273. 00:25:48 things I like about the fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence is the kind of the
274. 00:25:52 sub descriptor he gives for them, fluid intelligence being raw smarts, and then crystallized intelligence
275. 00:25:58 being wisdom. And I just really like that, that breakdown of those two, because it, it seems so
276. 00:26:03 reasonable in life that, you know, you're, you're an entrepreneur, and there's the raw smart side.
277. 00:26:10 And then there's the making wise decisions as a business leader side. And from all of the
278. 00:26:14 entrepreneurship training that I've done and, or helping people think about entrepreneurship,
279. 00:26:20 helping engineers think about entrepreneurship, there's a big difference between the, the young
280. 00:26:24 and hungry, and then the seasoned veteran. And like, that's why companies will, they'll have
281. 00:26:30 the young and hungry until the technology gets developed. And then they go, okay, the board's
282. 00:26:34 like, okay, we need to bring in somebody to actually run the company now, because hey, young and
283. 00:26:38 hungry, you're like, you just don't have the why, the wisdom to run this well. And so it like,
284. 00:26:43 it checks out what he's saying here checks out in quite a few different ways. The, I like his story
285. 00:26:49 of Bach, where Bach was the innovator, the, the new composer, he was, he was doing, you know, his
286. 00:26:57 style. And then all of a sudden it changed. And I'm sure it wasn't all of a sudden, but over the
287. 00:27:01 course of a couple of years it changed. And then his son, which I had no idea, his son came up,
288. 00:27:06 and his son kind of took over and like was overtook his dad and was kind of like more popular
289. 00:27:12 than his dad in at the time, which then he says, Bach made that transition to counselor, mentor,
290. 00:27:18 advisor, teacher, still teaching his own style. So he didn't abandon what he was good at.
291. 00:27:25 He just kind of said, like, okay, I have a new role. My new role was to teach people the style that
292. 00:27:29 I'm that I'm really good at. And then now we look back in Bach is huge. And I had never heard of
293. 00:27:36 the other individual, which I don't even remember what his name was, but a CPE was the abbreviation.
294. 00:27:39 I don't remember what his full name was. But I just think that's that's really
295. 00:27:44 like a really good example of how someone did this well, or how it appeared that someone did
296. 00:27:50 this well. I like that he pitches hard or he says, hard, get ready to jump. You're going to need to
297. 00:27:57 jump from this fluid IQ into this crystallized IQ and get ready for it. It's coming get ready for
298. 00:28:03 it. So overall, I'm, you know, we're two chapters in and I'm I'm jiving with with what he's talking
299. 00:28:09 about for sure. Nice. So the third chapter is kick your success addiction. And this talks about
300. 00:28:20 objectification and workaholism. So objectification is reducing someone to one or two
301. 00:28:25 enviable characteristics. And he makes the point, which I thought was really good,
302. 00:28:30 that we understand how this is bad when applied to other people. But we do it to ourselves all the
303. 00:28:38 time. And I definitely definitely guilty of that. Also tells the story of the lady who was really
304. 00:28:50 struggling with this stuff. And she actually told him maybe I would prefer to be special,
305. 00:28:56 more than I would prefer to be happy. So he equates that to like the drug and the substance abuse
306. 00:29:06 addict, which then leads into the whole idea of workaholism. Now workaholism, he defines as the
307. 00:29:13 compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly. And I have to admit, when I read
308. 00:29:18 that, I was like, I'm not workaholic. Like, yeah, I, I'm thinking about work a lot. And I
309. 00:29:23 am having to put in more time than I normally would just because I'm trying to get my business
310. 00:29:26 off the ground. I'm totally not workaholic. And then he gives you three questions that
311. 00:29:30 therapists generally use to diagnose workaholism. Do you usually spend your discretionary time and
312. 00:29:37 work activities? And maybe we just answer these on the fly. It sounds like maybe this hit you too.
313. 00:29:44 Not currently, but this was me in college. Hands down 100%. I was like, yep, this is me.
314. 00:29:50 Well, it's definitely me. Do you usually think about work when not working?
315. 00:29:54 I still do that. Yeah, absolutely. I think actually this one is less of a yes than the previous one
316. 00:30:01 for me because I guess I just I'm doing enough other things. Like, I'm not thinking about work
317. 00:30:06 when I'm coaching soccer. I'm able to be in the moment when I'm doing that sort of stuff.
318. 00:30:11 But if there's space, yeah, I'm thinking about work. And then do you work well beyond what is
319. 00:30:16 required of you? That's hard for me to answer because I feel like I haven't cracked the not yet.
320. 00:30:22 So you could argue that I haven't been putting in enough effort, but you could also follow me
321. 00:30:29 around for the week and be like, dude, you are putting in too much work. I work most Saturdays,
322. 00:30:35 you know, and I never used to never used to do that. So yeah, this one for me is much more of a
323. 00:30:40 no only because I've had to put really tight boundaries on this. Sure. Like, would I do this?
324. 00:30:45 Absolutely. Like there is there's a really good feeling that I have like waking up at
325. 00:30:51 six in the morning or whatever, working by seven and just powering through until, you know, nine
326. 00:30:57 o'clock and you know, you take a couple breaks here and there, but there's a good feeling about
327. 00:31:02 that day to me, except for the fact that I've ignored everyone else in my life and I've probably
328. 00:31:09 not eaten well and I've probably forgotten the drink water and I sat all day. So it's like,
329. 00:31:14 there's all these other areas where I've just completely tanked, you know, the rest of my life.
330. 00:31:19 But there is something about about me that that I would want to do that. So I have to be really
331. 00:31:23 careful of this and my wife would agree because she at one point in college was like, hey, listen,
332. 00:31:30 this isn't going to work unless you like actually give some more time into this and stop worrying
333. 00:31:35 about all these other things. I was like, okay, noted like, wow, so I've actually had to work hard
334. 00:31:41 on this over the years. So you're recovering workaholic? I would say yes. And I just like to do fun
335. 00:31:50 stuff and like, produce things. So yeah, it just it's just really fun. I think that's really fun.
336. 00:31:57 But I also understand where there is a negative driver of that. Yeah. So this is one of the things
337. 00:32:04 we've talked about, you know, at different times. I think one of the reasons why I don't like social
338. 00:32:08 media is because of how quickly I get sucked into how many people like it, how many people clicked
339. 00:32:13 it, how many people watch it. Like, why am I not getting the response that I want and, you know,
340. 00:32:19 heaven forbid dare I say deserve for like this cool thing that I made. And it's like, hold on,
341. 00:32:23 buddy, like you don't deserve anything, right? Like, you know, yeah, okay, might have been a
342. 00:32:27 fine idea, but you know, you don't need, you know, and then I run into the problem of I watch other
343. 00:32:34 people doing it and I'm like, well, my stuff was better than that. And they're getting 10,000 clicks.
344. 00:32:38 And, you know, so I have to be really, really careful of that. And that's why I'll
345. 00:32:43 sometimes keep an intentional arms, arms like the way from social media. Because if not,
346. 00:32:48 I get sucked into that really, really hard. Yeah, I can see that. For the most part, I do a
347. 00:32:53 decent job resisting that. But there are times like, even today I published a YouTube video a
348. 00:33:00 little bit before you came. So I'm checking to see, is it popping off? Or is this another one of
349. 00:33:05 those 10 out of 10 videos? Yeah, those ones hurt. Yeah. What did you think of the objectification
350. 00:33:15 talk, right? Where he's basically saying pride and fear drive that. And then we make ourselves our
351. 00:33:22 work, our looks, our success, our products, our awards, whatever it might be that you resonate
352. 00:33:30 with that at all. Well, yes and no. So we're going to get real for a minute. I've been struggling with
353. 00:33:39 this because the business still isn't to the point where I want it to be. And Rachel's picked up some
354. 00:33:48 part-time stuff because she came as a photographer. And not being the sole breadwinner for my family
355. 00:33:56 is really hard. And it's kind of like is not connected to how much effort I put into it. There's not a
356. 00:34:03 direct connection between the hours that I work and the money that we make. So the solution is not
357. 00:34:09 to just work harder. And I feel like I've kind of done everything that I can do. And it's still not
358. 00:34:16 where I want it to be. So that's real hard. And I go through periods where it's hard to get
359. 00:34:23 out of bed in the morning. It's like, here we go again. Another day in paradise. To the point
360. 00:34:30 where I've been thinking about going and seeing a counselor, therapist, just to help me through
361. 00:34:37 this sort of stuff. Because I know this isn't unique to me that a lot of people who are in my
362. 00:34:44 position say struggle with this stuff. And I've talked to a few people recently who have actually
363. 00:34:49 been really helpful with that. So my objectification really is, I guess, I got to come to grips with
364. 00:34:56 the fact that I view myself as the breadwinner. And if I don't have that, what am I? I get that.
365. 00:35:04 And Rachel's great. And she reminds me of all of the good things I do. But in the moment I feel
366. 00:35:12 like a total schmuck. And I forget about the fact that I do the one-on-ones with my kids and I'm
367. 00:35:18 involved with the soccer practice and doing all these other things. It's just like, dude, you're
368. 00:35:22 a loser. You can't even provide for your family. Oh man, I'm sorry. That's tough. Thank you for
369. 00:35:28 sharing. That's awesome that you're willing to share that openly. I can tell you that that is
370. 00:35:33 not true. That is 100% what he's talking about is you're objectifying. You're doing the self
371. 00:35:39 objectification thing. Exactly. So that's why I share it, by the way, because it's hard for
372. 00:35:43 you to talk about that stuff. And I kind of don't want to talk about it a lot. But I have
373. 00:35:49 experience where I've shared this with certain people and they're like, thank you for sharing
374. 00:35:54 that. I was feeling the same thing. But they would never go first and say, so hopefully that helps
375. 00:35:59 some people. Yeah. And I think that is feelings like that. I think they're common if you care.
376. 00:36:06 If you care about the work that you do and you want to do good work, they're more common than they
377. 00:36:11 are not. I have a hard time finding people who are good at what they do and are walking. I just
378. 00:36:20 don't care. I just walk in. It's like, no, I care a lot about what I do. So that's awesome.
379. 00:36:27 So thanks for sharing that. He talks about using humility to lighten the load, essentially
380. 00:36:33 taking the spotlight off of ourselves and understanding that it's not all about us or about
381. 00:36:41 our accomplishments and our achievements. And boy, oh boy, do I have to remember that.
382. 00:36:47 The world is bigger than me. And unfortunately, or fortunately, or have you want to think about it?
383. 00:36:53 If I would die tomorrow, the world will keep going. Everybody will do OK. And I know that's
384. 00:36:59 a really dramatic example of the world keep going. But it's the truth. So having that humility,
385. 00:37:05 having that there's something bigger and it's something bigger than me, which for those of you
386. 00:37:10 who are thinking about reading this book, we're going to get to it at the very end. But he is very,
387. 00:37:15 very clearly, there's something bigger in the world than Arthur Brooks. He is very, very clearly.
388. 00:37:22 And you read it throughout his writing and he talks around it. Sometimes he talks directly
389. 00:37:27 towards it. But there is definitely higher power that's associated with. He calls it the divine
390. 00:37:34 later. But there's definitely that higher power. He describes himself as Roman Catholic, I think.
391. 00:37:40 Right. So he describes himself as Roman Catholic. So just keep that in mind if you're reading this
392. 00:37:46 book, he definitely comes from that worldview. And that's in, I think, humility is tied to that.
393. 00:37:51 Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of Roman Catholic, can we talk about Thomas Aquinas?
394. 00:37:56 He references Thomas Aquinas a lot.
395. 00:37:59 Yes, that's in the next chapter, chapter four, start chipping away. So the title of this chapter
396. 00:38:05 really is in reference to the way that Eastern culture versus Western culture views art
397. 00:38:12 and the East art is already there waiting to be released versus in the West, it's a blank canvas
398. 00:38:16 that needs something to be added to it. And I get this conceptually, but I admit that I tend to
399. 00:38:26 think of the blank canvas more than the carving that needs to be released inside of the piece of
400. 00:38:32 marble or whatever. But this is where he talks about Thomas Aquinas, who came from a wealthy noble
401. 00:38:38 family. He was supposed to enter the church, but he wanted to join the Dominican order,
402. 00:38:43 which I don't know a lot about the Dominican order, but it sounds like that was an order
403. 00:38:48 who they took a note of poverty or something, and they were pretty poor. So his family was
404. 00:38:54 not a fan of that. In fact, his family, they disagreed so much that they kidnapped him from
405. 00:39:00 the Dominicans at one point. I thought that was wild for like a year, right? Yes, a long time.
406. 00:39:06 Yes, they held him hostage for over a year. And when they realized that they couldn't break his
407. 00:39:12 resolve, they tried to break his faith. And at one point said that his brothers tried to seduce him
408. 00:39:17 with a prostitute, and he chased her away with a fireplace poker. It's a wild story.
409. 00:39:25 It is absolutely wild story. And I've heard a lot about Thomas Aquinas, and I've heard a lot of
410. 00:39:30 people talk about how good his writings are and that you've got to read Thomas Aquinas. You've got
411. 00:39:35 to read Thomas Aquinas. And I don't think I've ever been as sold as this description right here.
412. 00:39:39 Yeah, I know. Where he's like, listen, we're going to get rid of all idolatry. And when I say all
413. 00:39:43 idolatry, I mean all idolatry. And it's like, it makes me want to read some of his works more than
414. 00:39:49 anybody ever suggesting them to me. Yeah, and he has his list of substitutes that people have
415. 00:39:54 forgotten. And this is kind of the point that Arthur Brooks makes is that these don't necessarily
416. 00:40:00 need to be substitutes for God. These could be idols just in context of what he's talking about
417. 00:40:07 with life transitions and going under the second curve. Money, power, pleasure, and honor. And
418. 00:40:16 he has this game that he talked about he played called What's My Idol. Do you remember that?
419. 00:40:22 Mm hmm. I do. Yeah.
420. 00:40:23 Which essentially is just putting these in order of which one is the most important to you. I'm
421. 00:40:31 curious, did you perchance do that? I didn't do it fully, but I thought about it. And I was like,
422. 00:40:36 man, that would be a valuable thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't have an action I'm associated
423. 00:40:43 with that. But I think if I were to do it live, my top one would probably be honor. And these are,
424. 00:40:52 you know, not necessarily bad things. Honor of the things that are on this list feels like
425. 00:41:00 the one tied to helping other people and the whole idea behind the life theme for me. Well, if you
426. 00:41:06 remember that he said that when Aquinas is talking about honor, he's actually talking about fame.
427. 00:41:10 Sure. So that's the way he's using the word honor in this situation.
428. 00:41:14 But I feel like that's the thing that would allow me to impact more people. Yeah.
429. 00:41:18 So if I'm going to, you know, really address it as he's laying them out here,
430. 00:41:24 then I guess that would be my, my big one. But yeah, I think so what were they, they were money,
431. 00:41:32 money, power, pleasure and honor, money, power, pleasure and honor. I would say,
432. 00:41:38 I would say right now mine, mine's probably power, right? Not in like a, I want to
433. 00:41:44 rule over other people, but it's like, I want to do more leadership. Like I want to be in
434. 00:41:49 more of a position of power to make decisions and to affect change. You want to be the guy.
435. 00:41:54 Well, but, but in, I actually think it's, it's leaning in more of like a negative way.
436. 00:41:59 Like it's actually messing with my brain and I'm not as effective as I should be on the day to day
437. 00:42:05 because I want, I think that I need to be in this powerful position in order to do that. So I think
438. 00:42:11 that's a, that's a problem with my thinking right now that I need to, I need to adjust.
439. 00:42:14 Interesting. Well, I don't think it's necessarily a problem. That's the thing.
440. 00:42:17 These idols, I look at this list and I feel like these are maybe not pleasure. I guess you could
441. 00:42:25 kind of deconstruct that one a little bit, but they feel like you could use these for good or
442. 00:42:31 evil. Kind of like a tool that doesn't have any moral value. It's really, how are you trying to,
443. 00:42:37 to use it? So it's a little bit weird to be like, yeah, this is my idol because it feels like a
444. 00:42:41 negative thing. Yeah. But I think that's the whole point of the exercise is to identify the thing
445. 00:42:46 that could be used in a negative way in your life. So I also like the way that he redefines
446. 00:42:56 satisfaction at the end of this. So he's got a couple different formulas. Satisfaction,
447. 00:42:59 the first version continually getting what you want. Success is continually having more than others
448. 00:43:05 and failing is having less. So then at the end, he talks about the new definition of satisfaction
449. 00:43:12 is what you have divided by what you want. That makes a lot of sense. It does. It really does. I
450. 00:43:18 like the concept that he brings in for getting what we want in this hedonic treadmill, where we're
451. 00:43:24 constantly on this treadmill for pleasure or for the things that that we want to satisfy
452. 00:43:30 to satisfy our desires, if you will. I like the prospect theory. If you remember him talking
453. 00:43:37 about prospect theory, the we're more emotionally affected by loss than by gain. So if you give me
454. 00:43:44 $50, I don't get as happy as when somebody steals $50 out of my wallet. I'm much more upset about
455. 00:43:51 that. And I was like, wow, that's actually a really, really true statement in my life is me not getting
456. 00:43:59 that role is way more impactful than me getting the role or getting a similar role or whatever it
457. 00:44:05 might be. But I like this new math too, what I have divided by what I want. And then he has a
458. 00:44:12 good quote in here by Jose Maria Escriva. It's he who has most needs least, which I thought was a
459. 00:44:21 really good one. Yeah, that is really good. So this whole chapter, if I'm going to try to summarize
460. 00:44:32 this, it is recognizing that the going back to the art thing, you know, the canvas, the blank canvas,
461. 00:44:41 we have to make something new out of that. Really, it's trying to be content with what we've already
462. 00:44:49 got. And the thing that you were talking about where our resistance to less is even more powerful
463. 00:44:56 than our desire for for more that can actually be traced back to what was it thinking fast and
464. 00:45:02 slow. Is that what you talked about? It was, I think it was quantum and one of quantum and
465. 00:45:06 studies your books. Yeah. Okay. All right, you ready to go chapter five? Yeah, it's death time.
466. 00:45:14 It's true. So chapter five is ponder your death. And do you talk about mental worry in this
467. 00:45:21 section? I don't think you use the phrase momentum worry, but I wrote it down. Yeah, I know, I was
468. 00:45:25 totally thinking about that. But he didn't, he didn't write it in his book. Yeah. So this is a very
469. 00:45:33 I didn't jot down a whole bunch of stuff. Didn't jot down much from this chapter. There were a
470. 00:45:38 couple of things. Ponder your death is an interesting idea, though, and it's tied to that idea of
471. 00:45:42 a mental worry. I guess if you wanted to really dive deep into this concept, this is 4000 weeks
472. 00:45:48 from Oliver Berkman. And the key idea there is the cosmic insignificance theory. Yeah. And that's sort
473. 00:45:57 of tied to the thing you were talking about from the last chapter. So the thing to remember here is
474. 00:46:04 that regardless of how great a life you live, regardless of how big an impact you make, people
475. 00:46:09 will forget you, because people will just move on. And what do you do with that?
476. 00:46:18 I'm intrigued to see to know what you thought about the Disney films being all about death.
477. 00:46:23 And I, and I had never really thought about them that way before. And then I was like,
478. 00:46:28 oh, they, they actually are like most, most Disney films either there's death in the beginning that
479. 00:46:34 dramatically changes the character arc of our, of our, you know, hero or heroine. Right. And then
480. 00:46:40 there's like, or there's some like, I'm going to face death. If this thing doesn't happen, or,
481. 00:46:44 you know, you get something is, you know, straight up a snow white, where they think she's dead, you
482. 00:46:49 know, like it's just, it's just why I was like, I never thought about that. And then he ties that
483. 00:46:54 back into Walt Disney and about how Walt Disney had this crazy fear, fear of death, right? Like,
484. 00:47:00 he had had this experience and he had this crazy fear of death. Yeah. I mean, I guess that makes
485. 00:47:05 sense. I've heard different stories about Walt Disney. And I think that what you see
486. 00:47:15 in the stuff that was made is a reflection of the, the character, uh, or the, the visionary,
487. 00:47:22 if you will. And I think it's kind of impossible and maybe not even a good thing to try and hide
488. 00:47:30 those flaws. But it's also easy to look back, connect the dots and be like, man, what was this
489. 00:47:35 guy's problem? So I'm a little bit reluctant to do that. But I, I do see the, the theme. I'm not sure
490. 00:47:44 that I would say it still permeates the entire company. I would agree. The way that that's framed
491. 00:47:52 was a little bit weird to me because Walt Disney, I don't remember when he died, but it was a long
492. 00:47:56 time ago. It was, it was, it was, I mean, decades ago. And I'm sure there's no SOP somewhere that's
493. 00:48:02 like, this is how you make a Disney film. Talk about that. Talk about death. Yeah. Or incorporate
494. 00:48:05 death hard. So, so part of that to me is maybe, you know, a little bit of it is Walt Disney's
495. 00:48:11 personal inner struggle. But maybe part of it is just the human condition. And that's what makes a
496. 00:48:16 good story. So I don't know. I, I generally, the thing that is interesting as you kind of unpack
497. 00:48:24 that is, well, why do we even feel the need to talk about the fact that he was obsessed with this
498. 00:48:30 because it's a dark slash quote unquote negative thing that we generally want to avoid? I, I don't
499. 00:48:38 know. Maybe we should talk about it more. Maybe he was right. I don't know. So this is where I get
500. 00:48:43 into the memento mori. He, what's interesting to me about this book is how much he ties into
501. 00:48:50 like Eastern religion, Eastern mysticism, those type of things through, through Asian culture and
502. 00:48:58 through Indian culture. And I think it's really interesting. So he describes this, the meditation
503. 00:49:02 called the marinassati. Oh, yeah. The marinassati, the mindfulness in death. And that's immediately
504. 00:49:08 where I went, Oh, we meant to more like it's this mindfulness thinking about death. Now, one of the
505. 00:49:13 things that we haven't talked about it up until now is he mainly his point in talking about death
506. 00:49:19 here is he's talking about a professional death. Yeah. So he gets into the idea of like, we're all
507. 00:49:24 going to die a professional death. That like, we are going to have to make a decision. We're
508. 00:49:28 going to have to make a change. We're not going to be good at the thing we were good at before. And
509. 00:49:33 are we good at overcoming this? Or can we figure out a way to overcome this? So he says he practices
510. 00:49:37 a version of this marin, marinassati, in which I mindfully envision each of the following states.
511. 00:49:43 Now he gives nine states. I'm not going to read it. But like, I was like, that's a really
512. 00:49:48 interesting practice, if you will. I think it's a little overkill for me personally. But I think
513. 00:49:55 it's really interesting to think about that and think about a professional death. So I think about
514. 00:50:00 it for me. Okay. If this next year, you know, my time as a faculty member dies, right? I lose
515. 00:50:09 the ability to teach. I'm not effective. I'm not able to interact with students. Well, whatever it
516. 00:50:14 might be, how would I do? Like, what would I do? Would I be okay? Would I make it mentally out of that
517. 00:50:20 situation? And I won't answer it right now. But it's like, I want to think through that. I think
518. 00:50:25 that's an interesting thing to think through. I get my first action item here, Mike. Would you
519. 00:50:29 like my first action item at a chapter? We're in chapter five. Yeah. If I had one year left in
520. 00:50:35 my career and life, how would I structure this month? He talks about the he had a friend that
521. 00:50:43 got cancer and thought and he was given a very short time to live. So he then started living
522. 00:50:49 like he would like he wanted the like he wanted to live knowing that. And then thankfully, I mean,
523. 00:50:53 the individual lasted a couple more decades right before he ended up passing away. And he said that
524. 00:50:59 was a turning point, a positive turning point in the person's life. I think that's a really valuable
525. 00:51:06 live in the present type of a question. Yeah. But it's very actionable. It's like,
526. 00:51:10 if I only had one year left as a faculty member at CCU, if I only had one year left with my family,
527. 00:51:15 if I only had one when you're left with whatever, what would I do this month? And I think the month
528. 00:51:20 is cool. Like you could do week as well. But I think the month is cool because it's like,
529. 00:51:24 it's a long enough time to actually plan things. And then it's also a short enough time to like,
530. 00:51:29 hey, do it. Like it's that poker, it's the poker that's hitting you in the side going,
531. 00:51:33 you need to really do this kind of stuff. Yeah, the cancer diagnosis, I actually have a
532. 00:51:39 note about that that I want to discuss, but not until you get to chapter eight.
533. 00:51:43 So you're ready to go to the next one? Yes. All right. So chapter six is cultivate your
534. 00:51:51 Aspen Grove. So he was talking about trees that grow and grows. And he mentioned specifically
535. 00:51:57 Aspens and Redwoods. And I had heard this about Redwoods, but I had not heard this about Aspens,
536. 00:52:02 that they have these intertwined root systems that give them strength. And really, it's just
537. 00:52:07 tying everybody together. I should say the beautiful segue into this from chapter five,
538. 00:52:15 you don't have to face decline alone. That's what I jotted down as one of the things there.
539. 00:52:20 And so that leads perfectly into this really about who are you going to connect with humans
540. 00:52:28 are naturally interconnected biologically, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually,
541. 00:52:32 and spiritual isolation is unnatural. And it's the lonely people who feel like they are the only
542. 00:52:41 ones who feel lonely. Basically, it's not what you're you're not supposed to exist that way.
543. 00:52:46 You need other people more than you realize, maybe that you need other people.
544. 00:52:50 Can I add as something I like that Arthur Brooks does in his writing? So he says, yeah,
545. 00:52:54 the lonely people are the ones that feel that way. And then he ties it back into what he's written
546. 00:52:58 about before that workaholics and leaders are often the lonely people in the organization.
547. 00:53:03 So therefore, they're going to feel this way. But I think that's a demonstration of how
548. 00:53:08 how consistent his writing is or how good he is at saying, like, I didn't just write this chapter
549. 00:53:13 before, just as a throwaway chapter, like it ties in. I'm developing a story. I'm developing a
550. 00:53:19 narrative as we go through here. So he ties stuff together so well throughout this entire book.
551. 00:53:26 This is one of the more masterfully written books in terms of opening up all these different loops
552. 00:53:31 and tying all these threads together to tell a cohesive story. I want to write a book like this.
553. 00:53:37 This is pretty inspiring to me. One thing that I really liked about this section,
554. 00:53:41 obviously the emphasis is on building relationships. He talks about the seven big
555. 00:53:44 predictors of being happy, one of them being stable long-term relationships.
556. 00:53:49 There's a lot of interesting things I jotted down about marriage and happiness is not
557. 00:53:57 related to falling in love, but staying in love. But the thing that really impacts me out of this
558. 00:54:02 is the difference between the real friends and the deal friends.
559. 00:54:06 I thought that was great. I've actually already told people about that.
560. 00:54:09 Have you? I've used that in conversations with, I was like, this concept, this guy's writing
561. 00:54:13 about this concept of real friends and deal friends. And there's so many people that your
562. 00:54:18 deal friends and that's okay. I'm totally cool with it. We're deal friends and I'm totally good
563. 00:54:23 with that. And then there's the people that are like, no, you're my real friend. If I need you
564. 00:54:27 at 2.30 in the morning, I call you and you might not be happy, but you'll be there. You'll be there
565. 00:54:32 for me. Yeah, so let's just define those real quick. The real friends are the friends where
566. 00:54:38 it doesn't really matter what you actually get from this. You just want to be there for the other
567. 00:54:42 person. Deal friends is something that his son mentioned when he had to take a call
568. 00:54:48 during one of their weekends when they were going to go fly fishing or something. He's like,
569. 00:54:52 dad, was that a real friend or was that a deal friend? And a deal friend is someone where
570. 00:54:56 you have this like mutually beneficial relationship. You both get something out of it. But it is,
571. 00:55:03 I don't know, it sounds a little bit negative or superficial, but I like what you said about how
572. 00:55:09 it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's okay to have these deal friends, but it's also important
573. 00:55:14 to recognize who are your real friends. Those are the ones that really provide the strength that
574. 00:55:20 he's talking about in this chapter on the Aspen Grove. He mentions the book, How Will You Measure
575. 00:55:24 Your Life by Clayton Christensen? Have you read that book? I have not. Okay. We should maybe pick
576. 00:55:30 that one for a bookworm at some point because I have mentioned it, I think, several times I read
577. 00:55:36 it as a gap book a long time ago. And I think you would probably dig it. Number one, just because
578. 00:55:44 of the topic. Number two, Clayton Christensen, you know who he is? I do.
579. 00:55:49 Yeah. He's a Harvard or was a Harvard business professor. So it's kind of interesting that he
580. 00:55:57 wrote that book. It's kind of my world's colliding there. Yeah, for sure. But that's a really good
581. 00:56:06 book in it. It was written towards the end of his life and really just thinking about, you know,
582. 00:56:11 again, in the title, how are you going to measure your life? What does the legacy really that you
583. 00:56:16 you want to leave? And the action item that I have from this book actually comes from this chapter
584. 00:56:22 where he's talking about these different friendships because I feel like that's tied to the legacy
585. 00:56:27 that I want to leave. Nope. I did a live stream yesterday as we record this. I'll put a link to
586. 00:56:33 it in the show notes about the personal retreat stuff. And I also teased the physical personal
587. 00:56:39 retreat planner that you were leafing through. So remind me to put those links in the show notes
588. 00:56:44 for people. But in the live stream, I actually walked through part of my personal retreat is I
589. 00:56:50 look at my ideal future and then also my eulogy. And I read my eulogy online. Like the one that I
590. 00:56:56 want people to say about me when I'm gone. That's awesome. And every time I do it, I'm like,
591. 00:57:01 this feels really weird, but it's really powerful. And it's all about the impact that I want to make
592. 00:57:06 in the lives of other people. I'm not saying that to be noble or anything. I just feel like
593. 00:57:11 that's the more powerful why if you can connect that to the second mountain, David Brooks and
594. 00:57:15 other people, it's more powerful. So I got to recognize, you know, if I want to have that impact,
595. 00:57:22 if that's the legacy I want to leave, I got to make sure that I am taking consistent action
596. 00:57:27 towards that. And I can get like with my family, I know what's important, like the the one on ones,
597. 00:57:34 the the man's school stuff, the weekly date nights, and there'll be periods where that stuff is
598. 00:57:40 harder than it is most of the time. But for the most part, it's very consistent because I recognize
599. 00:57:45 that's really important. The one thing I don't do a great job of though is building relationships,
600. 00:57:50 building friendships. So that's my action. I do something to build a friendship. Fantastic.
601. 00:57:55 So you and I are kindred spirits in this situation. Mine isn't necessarily to do something like
602. 00:58:00 yours is good. Do something to build a friendship. Mine was research men's networks for friendship.
603. 00:58:04 I just want to know what all is out there. I come at this from somebody who is actively
604. 00:58:09 engaged in one. So I think I've told you about this. I don't know if I have or not, but there's a
605. 00:58:14 group called F3. It's fitness fellowship and faith. And F3, it's disguised as a men's workout,
606. 00:58:20 but really it's a men's friendship group. Like now they'll say it's a men's group to develop,
607. 00:58:26 you know, male leaders, male community leaders, but really it's a men's friendship group. Like
608. 00:58:29 that's really what it is is it gets guys out and it gets them hanging out with each other. And
609. 00:58:34 when they don't have that other thing. And I had never realized before, a lot of the guys in the
610. 00:58:40 group are 50 and above. And it's like, are they directly addressing this need? He also describes
611. 00:58:48 men's sheds, which I had never heard about. Yeah, those are wild. Right? Like, and it's basically
612. 00:58:52 like a co-working space for men to woodwork and to metalwork and to forge and to just get in there
613. 00:58:59 and make things with their hands. And I kept thinking to myself, there's got to be more of these
614. 00:59:03 things. Or if there aren't more of these things, why aren't there more of these things? Because
615. 00:59:07 this is really, I think, an area of need among men and especially middle-aged men. You know,
616. 00:59:15 it's like you just, for whatever reason, your kids, your wife, and your job. And if you don't
617. 00:59:23 have one of those, it's not like you fill it in with something else. Like maybe a hobby. So it's
618. 00:59:27 like, I think about some of the other guys I know. And it's like, okay, they've got their,
619. 00:59:31 they've got no kids, but they got their wife's their job, and then they hunt. And they, they hunt
620. 00:59:35 all the time. Right? Like, that's, that's the thing they love to do or fish or golf or whatever it
621. 00:59:39 might be. And so I think we as men are just really bad at this. We're really, really bad at this. So
622. 00:59:44 I like your, I'm encouraging you. I really like your do something to build a real friend, right?
623. 00:59:51 Not a real friend. Yep. Anything else from that chapter? Before we moved out.
624. 00:59:56 The last piece I would have out of this chapter would be the avoiding snares. I thought this was
625. 01:00:00 interesting enough to write down that you've got marginal thinking. Right. So and plan, plan the
626. 01:00:06 month for what matters most, which we talk about all the time. There's the who needs my time and
627. 01:00:10 attention. So again, that's a planning thing. And then how do the people I love me or what are the
628. 01:00:16 people I love need? And just these ideas of like, he's directly calling out the things that you're
629. 01:00:23 probably going to struggle with and be proactive and think about those. So I just like the proactive
630. 01:00:28 nature of thinking about those early. But that was the last thing I have for this chapter. Cool.
631. 01:00:34 All right. Well, let's move to the the next one then, which is the one that I can't pronounce.
632. 01:00:41 Start your Vana Prastha. Nice. Did I do it? You did a great job. I don't know if you did it right,
633. 01:00:48 but you did a great job. I feel very, I feel very good. So this is the stage of life where we pull
634. 01:00:55 back from our professional duties. And this is where you hear the stories about him going to
635. 01:01:02 India and meeting with the the gurus. And they have the different terms for the different parts
636. 01:01:09 of that, the failure to move on from the previous stage, the greeahastha, often is because of love
637. 01:01:15 for the things of the world. And he talks about the general interest in religion and faith as we age.
638. 01:01:22 The interesting thing that I jotted down from this chapter, though, was the idea of the pilgrimages.
639. 01:01:29 And he mentions specifically the Camino de Santiago, the way of St. James. I know somebody who did
640. 01:01:36 that. I actually do too. A guy this summer did it. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a guy that I met
641. 01:01:43 through my community. His name is Hugo. And he has done this now a couple of times. Now,
642. 01:01:50 remember, I actually had to meet him last year when he came to Macstock. And he was telling me
643. 01:01:54 about it. And it was kind of interesting because I've heard Hugo's perspective on this and how it
644. 01:02:01 was such a powerful religious experience for for him. And then hearing Arthur Brooks talk about it.
645. 01:02:07 On the one hand, it's like, Oh, I kind of know what that is already, but it also felt like I was
646. 01:02:11 hearing a totally different account, like it was a totally different description. So it was it was
647. 01:02:17 interesting. There wasn't as much overlap in those two descriptions as I thought there would be.
648. 01:02:22 And that end result is like, I totally want to do something like this. What I thought was funny
649. 01:02:27 about the way Arthur Brooks described it, because I've heard other people talk about doing it before.
650. 01:02:31 And then have you ever watched the movie, The Way? So The Way is a movie about walking,
651. 01:02:36 walking that pilgrimage. Okay. Oh, he does mention that in the book. Yeah. And I had watched that
652. 01:02:42 before, but then one of my colleagues actually did a portion of it or he did all of it. I can't
653. 01:02:46 remember how much he did. But he describes it when Arthur Brooks describes it, he's like,
654. 01:02:51 it is just so amazingly boring. He's like, you get out there and you are just so bored that the only
655. 01:02:56 thing you can do is think about meaningful and deep things. And like, I just thought it was so
656. 01:03:02 funny the way you described it, because it wasn't like this amazing, beautiful experience from the
657. 01:03:07 get-go. It was like, well, you get out there and you start walking. And there's really nothing around.
658. 01:03:11 There's just fields and Roman road, and you just walk. It's really boring. And I was like, wow,
659. 01:03:20 you're really selling this guy. But then he gets to the end where it actually matters. And he's like,
660. 01:03:26 and then you get into this spiritual, your head is clear, you're thinking, well, you're thinking
661. 01:03:32 about deep thoughts. And I thought that's cool. Like, I really like that. I wouldn't want to do
662. 01:03:38 the Community Day Santiago though. But I want to, before I tell you mine, I want to know,
663. 01:03:43 which one would you do? Like, what would you do if you're going to do an experience like this?
664. 01:03:46 Oh, I don't know which one. And the Community Santiago, I mean, I'm not Catholic, so it probably
665. 01:03:51 doesn't hit the same way for me. But I just like the idea of something like that. I have no idea
666. 01:03:58 where to even start. I can tell you mine right now. It would be the John Muir Trail,
667. 01:04:02 and it would be a significant portion of it. I don't think I need to go the whole way from
668. 01:04:07 Mexico to Oregon. So the John Muir, if you don't know where it goes, it basically starts in
669. 01:04:16 Southern California, like the Canadian, sorry, the Mexican border. And then I think it might go
670. 01:04:21 the whole way to the Canadian border, but I don't exactly remember. But it'll hike through
671. 01:04:27 like the national parks in California. And it's akin to the Appalachian Trail
672. 01:04:34 through Appalachia and a little bit of the Southeast, but it's just the West Coast version of it. So
673. 01:04:39 I think that would be the one that I'd be like, yes, like, that's my enlightened getaway. I'm not
674. 01:04:46 going to try to say, gree, Greasta experience, right? Like, that's, that's where, or the, sorry,
675. 01:04:52 I guess the Vanna Prosthe experience. Yep. All right. So the next chapter, chapter eight,
676. 01:05:00 is make your weakness your strength. And I like this one a lot. I think this is a really powerful
677. 01:05:12 idea and something that I want to lean into, but I wish more people would. Okay. So the idea here
678. 01:05:20 is that your weakness, which is your loss or your decline, can actually be a gift to others,
679. 01:05:26 which is what I sort of clumsily was trying to explain when I was sharing the, the mental stuff
680. 01:05:33 that I was dealing with later. Like I've come to the point, even before I read this book, but
681. 01:05:38 especially after I read this book in this particular chapter, where if me talking about this stuff
682. 01:05:43 can help somebody else, it's totally worth it. Yes. So I think there's a lot of people out there
683. 01:05:49 who want to be the gurus and they want to have all the answers. I like having answers for people
684. 01:05:55 when they have questions. I like saving them time so they have to make the same mistakes,
685. 01:05:59 but also I think one of the more valuable things that you can do is talk about the places where
686. 01:06:03 you've messed up and the mistakes that you've made. And I try to do that. So there were a couple
687. 01:06:12 things specifically from this chapter I wanted to talk about in one that really hit me was the
688. 01:06:16 Stephen Colbert interview with, I forget who interviewed him, was it? I can't remember Conan. I
689. 01:06:25 don't remember who it was. No, I think it was someone from CNN maybe. Oh, Anderson Cooper. Anderson
690. 01:06:30 Cooper. That's right. Yeah. So and Anderson Cooper, it kind of sounds like he started this interview
691. 01:06:36 by asking him about this plane accident where Stephen Colbert had lost a couple of family members
692. 01:06:42 when he was his brother and his dad. Yeah, when he was young. And like, that's a pretty heavy way
693. 01:06:49 to start an interview. But Stephen Colbert talks about specifically being grateful for the incident,
694. 01:06:57 which sounds weird, right? So let me kind of explain that. You don't want to be grateful that
695. 01:07:02 you know, my brother and my dad died, you know, good. Like that's not what he's saying at all.
696. 01:07:08 It's kind of, it's kind of tied to this thing about a more fatigue. I've actually got the
697. 01:07:14 Ryan Holliday challenge coin sitting over there on my desk. Love the thing. So the, the idea that
698. 01:07:20 Stephen Colbert talks about is love the thing you most wish had not happened. And really what
699. 01:07:24 it is is kind of like in my, in my opinion, sort of redeeming that experience, redeeming that time.
700. 01:07:29 And the thing that really crystallizes this for me is Rachel talking about her experience
701. 01:07:37 forming her life theme, because she explains it really well in the videos in the, the community.
702. 01:07:45 I'm gonna probably butcher it, but basically her dad died in a car accident when she was young. I
703. 01:07:50 think it was, she was six. And she recognizes that that was a very impactful moment. It wasn't
704. 01:07:58 obviously a good moment, a happy moment. She lost her dad. She would prefer that her dad not have
705. 01:08:02 died in the car accident, but there's no denying the impact that that had on her. And then she's
706. 01:08:08 kind of lead into the last several years of owning that experience and talking about it freely so
707. 01:08:13 that it can help other people who are dealing with that sort of grief. And so she's tied that
708. 01:08:19 her life theme and made it her mission to basically like help people in that, that situation.
709. 01:08:24 So that's kind of what that looks like. And I think that's, that's really cool. It's really
710. 01:08:29 noble. And then the other piece of this is that cancer diagnosis. This is where that,
711. 01:08:35 that came in for me because my dad was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago. He's doing pretty
712. 01:08:42 good, but he would be the first one to tell you that he's told me this to in different,
713. 01:08:48 in different ways. I don't, I don't want to put words in his mouth because I'm going to mess it up,
714. 01:08:52 but basically he would say that the perspective change anyways that has come from dealing with
715. 01:08:59 this has been a gift, not the cancer itself. You know, obviously you don't want to have cancer,
716. 01:09:03 but he's a very different person now. And his perspective has completely changed based
717. 01:09:09 because of that, that event that triggered that. And so I guess, you know, the best version is to
718. 01:09:15 get that perspective change without having to go through that thing. But maybe that's not even
719. 01:09:18 possible. Maybe you do have to go through that stuff in order to get to the other side.
720. 01:09:21 So I don't know, this chapter, I feel like is probably the most important one to me. Like,
721. 01:09:27 it's the hardest one. But then also, I think it has the potential to make the greatest impact.
722. 01:09:34 See, and he, and he uses the example of Paul in the Bible to do this. And he refers to Paul,
723. 01:09:39 like, I love, I loved every second of the way he refers to Paul is the anti-stoic.
724. 01:09:44 I, I don't like stoicism. I don't like it. It's always rubbed me the wrong way. Like,
725. 01:09:50 I don't like it. I don't like it. When I read about it, when they, when people talk about it,
726. 01:09:53 I just don't like it. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't like the philosophy. And he calls me
727. 01:09:56 an anti-stoic. So like, he had me there. But then when he describes talking about your weaknesses
728. 01:10:02 as a way to reach out to other people, just like you described, as a way to support other
729. 01:10:06 people, as a way to help other people, there's a big difference between talking about him in a
730. 01:10:09 complaining fashion or in a whining fashion. And that's not the example that he gives here.
731. 01:10:15 He gives the example of like, I'm talking about these to hopefully lift you up to bring
732. 01:10:20 something valuable to you. And then he ends it out with honesty and humility bring relaxation.
733. 01:10:27 So again, we talked about before about how he ties everything together so well. If you're this
734. 01:10:31 success addict, if you're this person who is declining and you're freaking out and you're not,
735. 01:10:38 you're not peaceful, you're not relaxed about where you are in life because of the curves and
736. 01:10:43 where you are and you're trying to live on this first curve and you're not willing to move over,
737. 01:10:46 having honesty and humility about your weaknesses, sharing that in relationship with other people,
738. 01:10:53 it makes sense. And it seems reasonable that you would get relaxation and some peace out of that.
739. 01:10:59 Like, I just love the way he ties stuff together. So I thought chapter eight was great. I actually
740. 01:11:06 don't have as many notes in chapter eight, probably because I was so into the chapter.
741. 01:11:12 I like when I'm into the chapter, I kind of just read and then I go, oh man, what just happened?
742. 01:11:16 Like, I didn't write anything down about this chapter. Yeah, that does happen. I don't have a ton
743. 01:11:22 here, but I had two of those little talking head emojis. So yeah. All right, ready to move on to
744. 01:11:29 the last official chapter. That's the official chapter. All right. So the last official chapter
745. 01:11:35 is chapter nine, which is cast into the falling tide. Now I am not a fisherman either. So this
746. 01:11:41 metaphor does nothing for me. But he does talk about a couple different things here,
747. 01:11:49 which I think are kind of cool. So, liminality is the time between, he defines as the time between
748. 01:11:54 work roles, organizations, career paths, and relationship stages. And this is interesting to me,
749. 01:12:02 because I, with, you know, just the place where stuff is with the business, I have been doing my
750. 01:12:12 due diligence and like brushing up the resume and making some, sending out some job applications.
751. 01:12:18 And it's quickly become evident to me that like, if you have any sort of gaps, like that's a huge
752. 01:12:24 red flag for people. So I got, I'm figuring out, you know, how do I actually, how do I actually do
753. 01:12:29 that? So he's basically saying that doesn't have to necessarily be a bad thing. And I think that's
754. 01:12:35 actually pretty cool. He talks about a book by Bruce Filer. Life is in the transitions. I totally
755. 01:12:41 want to take a look at this. I have a different Bruce Filer book on my bookshelf. I think it's
756. 01:12:49 by the same guy, the secrets of happy families. He was basically talking about sprint planning for
757. 01:12:54 families. Interesting. Yeah. He originally gave a TED talk on it, which is how it came on on my radar.
758. 01:13:01 But the idea behind casting in the falling tide anyways is, he was talking about the story when
759. 01:13:08 he's fishing on the ocean, he's casting and somebody's watching him and telling him, you know, you don't
760. 01:13:13 want to fish right now because there's not going to be any fish there. As the tide is coming in,
761. 01:13:18 that's when you think the fish would be there, but really you have to cast when the tide is going
762. 01:13:22 out and when the window is closing, basically that's when you actually catch the fish. So
763. 01:13:29 it's an effective way to end the message of the book. He talks about transitions being inevitable,
764. 01:13:38 but crisis does not have to be inevitable. Suffering during transitions isn't always bad. It can
765. 01:13:44 create meaning in life that imposes a sense of stability in future transitions. So maybe, you know,
766. 01:13:49 a more fatigue, going back to the Ryan Holiday thing, it literally means like to love whatever
767. 01:13:56 happens. And again, you know, I struggle with that a little bit because I don't want to, you know,
768. 01:14:00 love all the bad things that happen, but I get the idea is like, this is just part of the process.
769. 01:14:04 So let's glean what we can out of it. And the goal, he says, is seeking a life that is a balance
770. 01:14:09 of enjoyable and meaningful. He talks about Hidonia, which is feeling good and Udomonia,
771. 01:14:13 which is living a purpose-filled life. So I like how he frames this about the balance there.
772. 01:14:19 Being an interesting life. So yeah, that's that's a new goal for me.
773. 01:14:23 They live an interesting life. No action item associated with that, because you'd have to follow
774. 01:14:29 me around for the next 40 years before you could mark that one off. But we keep making stuff
775. 01:14:34 in the internet. We're following you. I think what we talk about that midlife crisis, I said,
776. 01:14:40 we'd get to it later in the book. He talks about it here directly. And he basically says,
777. 01:14:45 it's not really a midlife crisis. It doesn't have to be anyhow. It doesn't have to be a midlife
778. 01:14:48 crisis. It's a career reset. So I think if I have any rub with this book, it's how much it's
779. 01:14:56 focused on career. I understand why he does it, but it's like, it's a career reset. And I think
780. 01:15:01 this would have been more meaningful if it would have been a life reset or like a it's a different
781. 01:15:06 phase of life. It's a instead of just career. But that's a very minor, minor hit for me. But I like
782. 01:15:14 that he, he uses starts to use the language of reset and not crisis. Because I think it changes
783. 01:15:20 the way you think about it is it's not the end of the world, that you know, the sky is not falling.
784. 01:15:25 Hey, let's figure out what the next step is. And then this idea of liminality, it's like,
785. 01:15:30 embrace this transition process and reset and figure out what you're going to go with.
786. 01:15:35 I mean, I hope that like people and myself don't ever have to go through this. Like I would love
787. 01:15:40 to just be like, Oh, smooth sailing, everything, everything's fine. Or it's, it's more natural.
788. 01:15:45 You hear about people that, that kind of go through this and it was like, well, this next
789. 01:15:49 opportunity arose. So I just went and seized that opportunity. And it's like, well, good for you.
790. 01:15:55 Like, I'm so glad that next opportunity just like rose up out of the ground and, and, you know,
791. 01:16:00 found found you. But then he starts, he talks about this, um, modern elder academy. And I thought
792. 01:16:06 this was just an interesting concept. I don't know if I loved every aspect of the modern elder
793. 01:16:10 academy, particularly the four, um, the four steps in the, in the academy. But I really like the four
794. 01:16:16 questions. What activities will you keep? And this is very personal retreat. Like that's the way I
795. 01:16:21 thought of it. What activities will you keep? What activities will you evolve to do differently?
796. 01:16:25 What activities will you let go of? And what new activities will you learn? Right? So again,
797. 01:16:29 it's very, very personal retreat. Like I've heard you talk about this before.
798. 01:16:32 I start doing, stop doing, keep doing. Exactly. I heard you talk about this in many different ways
799. 01:16:37 before. And I, I like that, that way of thinking. And it's because it normalizes change, which I
800. 01:16:46 think is a really hard thing for people to wrestle with. Yep. There's this liminal period. We're in
801. 01:16:50 the middle of it. We don't know what the future is going to look like. That's okay. Normalize the
802. 01:16:56 change process and, and be okay with that. I just, I really thought that was a, a good,
803. 01:17:03 you know, way to, to package the end of his, of his argument and the end of the thesis he was
804. 01:17:08 trying to make. What did you think about the, uh, he mentions that one of the biggest mistakes
805. 01:17:14 people make in their careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end. I feel like that's
806. 01:17:18 kind of the road of the slight, maybe a little bit of criticism that you mentioned there about the
807. 01:17:24 focus on the, the, the career. I think he's, what he's trying to say with that statement is really
808. 01:17:30 work should not be, you know, I want to do all these things and achieve all these things, but
809. 01:17:36 I am trying to live out my purpose in a professional way, right? Yeah. I, I, it's that whole lived
810. 01:17:44 to work, work to live kind of thing. Like that's the, the short way of describing kind of what he
811. 01:17:48 unpacks in, in more detail. I mean, I, I think, I don't remember how he said it. So, so tell me,
812. 01:17:54 how, tell me how he said it again is he, he says, one of the biggest mistakes people make in their
813. 01:18:00 careers is to treat work primarily as a means to an end. Yeah. See, and, and I can't even say that
814. 01:18:04 if you treat work like a means to an end, that's a bad thing. Like if you're okay with that and you
815. 01:18:09 know you're doing that and it's like, nope, my purpose is not in my career. And this is where I,
816. 01:18:15 like, like, so you, you described it really well. I don't think I'd have put this together on my own.
817. 01:18:18 You described it really well. I think I disagree with him here. I think if you replaced work or
818. 01:18:24 career with that thing you think is most important, it might be your work in your career. And for
819. 01:18:30 most people, I think it is work and career, especially men, right? It's your work in your career. But
820. 01:18:34 like, let's say it's something else. Um, you know, I mean, I don't even know what to say. Like, I'm,
821. 01:18:40 I'm the best club softball player in my town, right? And like, and that's what I like, I mean,
822. 01:18:46 that's bread and butter. Like, so do I work all day just to go play softball at night? Absolutely,
823. 01:18:50 right? And that's totally fine. Like go work all day to play softball at night and to buy new bats
824. 01:18:54 and equipment and gear. But when you stop being able to play softball well, acknowledge that that's
825. 01:19:01 a natural part of life. Yeah. And transition to the, do the older person league or transition to
826. 01:19:07 pickleball or, you know, like, like make that transition. And I think, so I think what he's describing
827. 01:19:11 here can be applied in a lot more context than he does. Again, I don't think it's a big knock on
828. 01:19:18 the book, but I think I do think it's one of the things that I, I think could be broadened out as
829. 01:19:23 he writes. Sure. Yeah, it makes sense. All right. Conclusion. This one is pretty short. It's called
830. 01:19:30 seven words to remember. I'm going to cut you off. Had you heard the seven words prior to reading
831. 01:19:36 this book? Because you've said this to me. I know you've said this to me. I'm almost positive you have.
832. 01:19:42 I don't want to give away the seven words until you're ready. So the first four, yes, I feel like
833. 01:19:47 I've heard those somewhere else, but not all seven. Okay. So the seven words are use things,
834. 01:19:53 love people, worship the divine. Yeah. I swear you've said this to me before.
835. 01:19:58 Like I said, the first part of this, I feel like I've heard somewhere before. And I can't place
836. 01:20:03 where I've initially heard that maybe we read it somewhere else in a different book or something.
837. 01:20:07 Yeah, but it kind of gets back to the whole definition of productivity or productivity is not
838. 01:20:14 cranking widgets. And so Chris Bailey in the productivity project, I mentioned that people
839. 01:20:19 are the reason for productivity. It's kind of a different, different approach there. So yeah,
840. 01:20:26 I don't know. I can't, I can't trace this specific phrase, but I've heard it before and it definitely
841. 01:20:31 has resonated with me before. So very effective way to wrap up the book.
842. 01:20:36 I agree completely. I think it, I think it's incredibly, and he directly addresses the other
843. 01:20:40 thing he directly addresses is self worship. And I don't mean it in like this overly dramatic way,
844. 01:20:45 but it's this, this worshiping money, power, idols, whatever it might be as a way to satisfy
845. 01:20:52 ourselves. And we need to really push that away, which I, I just really thought he ended it well.
846. 01:20:58 I thought the book wrapped up well. Agreed. All right. So action items. I just have one.
847. 01:21:05 My one action item here is to do something to build a friendship. I have a feeling that this
848. 01:21:13 will turn into some sort of system. In fact, I was talking to Jesse J Anderson at Craft and Commerce.
849. 01:21:25 Do you know who Jesse J Anderson is? You've described Jesse. He is the person behind extra focus.
850. 01:21:33 So the ADHD guy, basically, there's lots of people out there who make really great content for
851. 01:21:40 neurodivergent folks. But that one is pretty good, in my opinion. And he was showing me,
852. 01:21:47 he's shared publicly on social media this idea. So I'm not letting the cow out of the bag. But he
853. 01:21:53 was showing me a beta version of this app that he was developing because in his words, I'm a really
854. 01:22:00 terrible friend. He's like, I forget to follow up with people and check in with people. So it's
855. 01:22:06 basically like a contact style app where it pulls in different notes from things that you have it
856. 01:22:11 all in one place, but then also you can set these different reminders associated with the person's
857. 01:22:18 account to follow up and connect with them at different periods, which I think is a really cool
858. 01:22:24 idea and exactly what I need. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so I don't know, if he ever comes out with
859. 01:22:30 that, that app in the near future, I'll probably pick that up right about it, whatever. But even
860. 01:22:36 if he doesn't, you know, I need to first of all do something and then figure out how to do it,
861. 01:22:40 do it consistently, just because that's what I do. I make systems out of things.
862. 01:22:44 All right, so I had two. The first one I had was if I had one year left in my career and life,
863. 01:22:50 how would I structure this month? I think it'd be really interesting to think about that,
864. 01:22:54 especially as we go into the new semester because, you know, Mike, you've done this with me a couple
865. 01:22:59 different times now. My life is going to get absolutely insane here in about a week and it's
866. 01:23:04 going to be insane for like, it's going to be like really insane for about a month. And then
867. 01:23:07 it'll level off again. And then towards the end of the semester, it's going to get insane again.
868. 01:23:10 So I want to think about like in this insane period, I don't want to lose focus on what I should
869. 01:23:18 be focused on. So I think this would be a good one for me to do right now. The second one was
870. 01:23:22 just research. What are all the men's friendship groups that exist? I mean, there's got to be a
871. 01:23:28 ton of them. And let's go look at what they are and figure out, are they working? Aren't they working?
872. 01:23:33 Do I resonate with what they're in? I'm not necessarily looking to join anything. I just want to know
873. 01:23:37 what's out there and what exists. Sure. All right, style and rating. So I guess a little bit of a
874. 01:23:49 backstory here. Maybe I should have shared it at the beginning. I was given this book for Christmas
875. 01:23:54 by my brother, maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago. Well, Christmas, yeah, I guess to be
876. 01:24:00 a year and a half ago. And I could tell when he gave it to me, he was a little bit nervous to do
877. 01:24:06 it. Like he thought that I would really enjoy the book, but it's really a book about how like,
878. 01:24:10 hey, you're getting older. Yeah. Are you going to deal with it? And I, like I said, I had two
879. 01:24:17 copies of this. I had bought it previously because it just showed up on the list for me and things
880. 01:24:21 like that. But I think honestly, because of the subject matter, maybe I just was like, I don't,
881. 01:24:28 I don't want to read about that right now. Okay. So I think I have been subconsciously resisting
882. 01:24:33 this book for a while. And I think that's probably pretty natural. If you feel like you probably
883. 01:24:42 should read this, but don't want to, you totally should definitely read it. Yeah, I don't think it's,
884. 01:24:47 you know, we've, you were talking a little bit about the, the men's stuff and things like that.
885. 01:24:51 I don't think it's, you know, just applicable to, to guys. This is for anybody who is going to,
886. 01:25:01 going to or has or is about to transition from one stage of life to the next, like,
887. 01:25:08 I think this is a book that everybody should read. Maybe when you read it is important, you know,
888. 01:25:14 if you're just getting out of college, you probably don't want to, you probably don't need to worry
889. 01:25:17 about this one for a little bit. But I think this is a really important book. I think it's really,
890. 01:25:23 really good. I think Arthur Brooks is an incredible writer. We talked a little bit about all the open
891. 01:25:27 loops and all the threads that he weaves together in the narrative towards the end. The conclusion,
892. 01:25:32 seven words to remember, brilliant, great way to just put the exclamation point on this,
893. 01:25:38 this whole idea. There's so many things in here where he added additional context for me,
894. 01:25:45 two ideas that I had heard somewhere else. But every time he described something,
895. 01:25:51 I didn't a single time feel like, well, I've heard this before. It always felt fresh. It
896. 01:25:56 always felt new. And every single word that he used felt purposeful. His writing style is very
897. 01:26:04 entertaining, a little bit self-deprecating. And the other thing that's really interesting to me
898. 01:26:09 about this, because a lot of non-fiction books that we read tend to kind of fall into a rhythm.
899. 01:26:17 You know, his writing style is extremely varied. A lot of longer sentences than a lot of shorter
900. 01:26:23 sentences. Like he's got a very good cadence to how he writes. And yeah, this is really good.
901. 01:26:30 I'm going to give this five stars. I think this one belongs on everybody's bookshelf.
902. 01:26:34 Yeah, this is easily a five star book. I would agree completely with you, Mike. Everything from
903. 01:26:39 the writing style to the stories that were relevant to the way he threaded things together. I thought
904. 01:26:47 he brought up. It was like a well researched book, not an overly researched book, though, which is
905. 01:26:53 fun. It's a fun needle to thread because some of those ones, you just get so bombarded by all
906. 01:26:58 the research, all the research, all the research. But this one was like, okay, I've done my homework,
907. 01:27:02 and I'm going to tell you the story. But I'm not going to like pummel you over the head with too
908. 01:27:07 much of the background or the too much of the research. I think like you said, if you're in high
909. 01:27:14 school or just coming to college, yeah, like get it, put it on the shelf and come back to it in 10
910. 01:27:19 years. Like you don't really need it right now necessarily. But even even there, he talks about
911. 01:27:24 his story with playing the violin and how no matter how much he practiced, no matter what he did,
912. 01:27:29 what tutors he worked with, no matter what he did, he was just getting worse. And there was no way
913. 01:27:34 for him to get better. And he was only like 20, like in his mid 20s or something like that. So,
914. 01:27:39 again, there's exceptions to everything. But it's like, I think for most people picking this up in
915. 01:27:43 the mid 30s, I think would be a really, really healthy way to do it. I also think that if you're
916. 01:27:49 on the older side of life, right, you know, the more seasoned experience out of life,
917. 01:27:54 picking this up to help people that you might mentor who are going through
918. 01:27:59 their late 30s, early 40s, 50s, I think it would be a huge help for you to think through some of
919. 01:28:05 these ideas as you as you help other people. So I could not recommend this book more. I think this
920. 01:28:10 is one that people will benefit from reading. And I also think it's an enjoyable read. I don't
921. 01:28:16 think it's one of those ones that's slogged to get through. So without a doubt, it's a five-star book
922. 01:28:20 for me. Awesome. So we've got a golden book. Yep. All right. Well, let's put from strength to
923. 01:28:28 strength on the shelf. What's next, Corey? So the next book we're going to talk about is called
924. 01:28:33 The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And this book is brand new. It just came out July 29th,
925. 01:28:42 2025. So it's exciting to get to look at another one of Benjamin Hardy's books. He has a co-author
926. 01:28:50 on this one, Blake Erickson. I don't know a lot about Blake Erickson, but we'll find out more.
927. 01:28:55 Oh, he is the co-founder of scaling.com. Oh, okay. Makes sense. So they're into this. Mike,
928. 01:29:04 I think you mentioned last episode when I offered this book that it seems like Benjamin Hardy's
929. 01:29:10 making a pivot or making a little bit of a change in what he's doing. So it's going to be
930. 01:29:16 interesting to see what this book's all about. And basically, this is about growing a business
931. 01:29:23 bigger and faster than you think you can. And I think it'll just be an interesting book to read
932. 01:29:27 as Mike thinks about his creator business, as I think about the stuff I'm doing.
933. 01:29:32 There's just dabbling around on the side. But I'm also thinking about scaling the engineering
934. 01:29:37 program with CCU. So it's like, I think it's going to be a very relevant book, although it's
935. 01:29:41 going to be specific to scaling a business or scaling an entity. So that's our next one.
936. 01:29:48 After that, Mike, what do you have? Yeah, so back in the day, I read a book that
937. 01:29:55 pretty much changed my life. And that was Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. I have talked about it
938. 01:30:01 several times on the Bookworm podcast. We've never read it because it's an older book.
939. 01:30:07 However, the fourth edition was just released. So I feel like we have to cover this one.
940. 01:30:15 Eat That Frog when I read it was like 21 productivity tips. This one says it's got 25%
941. 01:30:21 new material. So I don't know if that means the tips changed or if it's still says 21.
942. 01:30:25 Okay. So I don't think they've added more, but it's got 25% new material.
943. 01:30:30 Yeah. So this one will be interesting because my thoughts and my perspective, I guess,
944. 01:30:36 on productivity has changed quite a bit in the last several years. So I'm kind of curious to
945. 01:30:40 see if I still think that this one is as great as it is in my head. But it should be a pretty,
946. 01:30:46 pretty easy read. And this is the first time I've read it. So it'll be fun for you as an experienced
947. 01:30:52 reader of this one to talk to me about somebody who's reading it for the first time. All right.
948. 01:30:56 Got any gap books, Corey? You know, I don't have gap books. And part of that is because
949. 01:31:00 we are starting a new semester in a week or two. And I'm intentionally not taking on a gap book
950. 01:31:07 right now. So no, no, the answer is no gap books. Mike, what about you?
951. 01:31:12 I have one I'm going to try to read through, but I don't know that I'll get through it.
952. 01:31:17 And that is right useful books by Rob Fitzpatrick. I mentioned that reading this by Arthur Brooks
953. 01:31:22 makes me inspired to write a book of my own. That's kind of one of those projects that
954. 01:31:29 bubbles up to the surface every once in a while. And I have this book, I've never made it all
955. 01:31:34 the way through it. So yeah, I'm going to try to try to crank through that one. Wonderful. If you
956. 01:31:42 all are interested in hearing me talk about my experiences in Wisconsin, which I'm there right
957. 01:31:48 now, I'm actually sitting two, two feet away from Mike, you can listen to the pro show. The pro show
958. 01:31:54 is a longer ad free show. You get the bootleg to release to write. After we record, it's typically
959. 01:32:00 about a week or two early. The there's usually a live stream. We didn't do the live stream today
960. 01:32:05 just because of the being in person and trying to figure out the logistics of filming video and
961. 01:32:11 live streaming that. So if you're a pro show member, sorry, we'll get back to the live stream
962. 01:32:18 here on the on the next recording, but you also get a wallpaper. It's $7 a month. It's at patreon.com/bookwarmfm.
963. 01:32:24 And we really appreciate those who subscribe and we really appreciate anybody else who's willing
964. 01:32:29 to join and support the show. Absolutely. And if you want to recommend a book for us three,
965. 01:32:35 you can do so. There'll be a link in the the show notes where you can do that. Otherwise,
966. 01:32:41 pick up the science of scaling. And we will talk to you all in a couple of weeks.