242: The Overthinker's Guide to Making Decisions by Joseph Nguyen

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike, we're going to talk about a book that we thought about and have thought about and we texted about yesterday because we needed to text about it yesterday.
2. 00:00:10 So hopefully you're ready to talk about this very strange, very interesting book.
3. 00:00:16 But before we do that, we need to do follow up.
4. 00:00:21 I will go first.
5. 00:00:22 My first item on follow up that I'm going to talk about is create a goal inventory.
6. 00:00:27 I've done this. I created a goal inventory.
7. 00:00:31 I do not think that my goal inventory is actually thorough.
8. 00:00:37 I think it's some of the goals that I was working on.
9. 00:00:40 And this was fun to do because while I was doing it, I was like, hold on.
10. 00:00:44 Is this a goal or is this an intention?
11. 00:00:47 And like, what is the difference between these two?
12. 00:00:49 And is this a priority?
13. 00:00:50 And how does all of this stuff kind of smoosh together?
14. 00:00:52 And then I went back to the stack that's a funnel that's not a funnel, but it's a stack.
15. 00:00:57 And I was trying to like think about how all that could tie together.
16. 00:01:00 But the key is I did this from a position of kind of starting nowhere.
17. 00:01:07 So it's like, it really shows me the things that are like first in mind.
18. 00:01:11 And when I did it, I did it in like different areas of my life or different
19. 00:01:15 like roles or responsibilities.
20. 00:01:17 Like, what are the goals in this area?
21. 00:01:18 What are the goals in this area?
22. 00:01:19 And I was kind of surprised at times, which ones popped up first.
23. 00:01:24 So that was a, that was a valuable exercise for me to do, to do in general.
24. 00:01:31 Cause I kind of got that picture of it, but then I'm still a little bit confused
25. 00:01:34 on goals, priorities, intentions, values make sense to me.
26. 00:01:40 But like the goals, priorities, intentions, I'm still a little bit fuzzy on that.
27. 00:01:43 Now you also had a goal inventory there.
28. 00:01:46 Your, your action was to create a goal inventory.
29. 00:01:49 Did you do this and how did it go?
30. 00:01:51 Uh, I didn't do a straight up goal inventory.
31. 00:01:55 I'm created a project inventory, which is related to goals, I guess, inside of, uh, obsidian.
32. 00:02:02 Um, I'm not sure if you've been paying attention to the, the stuff that I've
33. 00:02:06 been sharing in the library, but I, uh, have been experimenting with creating
34. 00:02:11 these different dashboards and using Claude to write the data view JS code.
35. 00:02:17 Cause I don't know data view JS.
36. 00:02:19 I saw, I saw your newsletter that you talked about at one point around this stuff,
37. 00:02:23 but I haven't seen the stuff in the library.
38. 00:02:25 Okay.
39. 00:02:25 So that's actually the video I published yesterday was how I used, uh, Claude to
40. 00:02:29 create the, um, journaling dashboards.
41. 00:02:33 So if you remember, like the daily questions type stuff, I use Claude to create
42. 00:02:37 those, uh, dashboards with a filterable buttons.
43. 00:02:41 So you can select, show me the data from, you know, the last quarter, the last month,
44. 00:02:45 last week, all time, et cetera.
45. 00:02:49 And then it's got a dotted line for the average.
46. 00:02:52 And I even created one where you can click the different, uh, lines you want.
47. 00:02:57 You can have a combined view where they're all different colors.
48. 00:03:01 That is all using Claude back and forth.
49. 00:03:05 And I know nothing about Dave, you JS, but I'm starting to learn it because
50. 00:03:08 Claude does a good job of explaining it as it gives it, gives it back to you.
51. 00:03:13 So I'm doing all that sort of stuff, uh, like a life OS dashboard.
52. 00:03:18 Um, and part of it is, uh, like a projects dashboard.
53. 00:03:22 So I built in like a review feature in obsidian, where you've got a review date
54. 00:03:27 time stamp in, uh, for your project note.
55. 00:03:31 And then there's a meta bind button that you click that and it updates the review
56. 00:03:35 time to, you know, that specific moment that you click the button.
57. 00:03:38 And then in the dashboard, there's all of the things that you haven't reviewed
58. 00:03:42 in the last week that are active, those sorts of things.
59. 00:03:45 So in order to test that sort of stuff, obviously I got to have some data.
60. 00:03:47 So I've been building out some, uh, some projects in my, my backlog.
61. 00:03:52 In, uh, in obsidian and basically they're just active and they count towards
62. 00:03:56 that or they're inactive and they don't.
63. 00:03:58 I got to have a few things in there, but I, I don't, I don't think it's a
64. 00:04:03 comprehensive goal inventory.
65. 00:04:06 And to be honest, I'm completely okay with that.
66. 00:04:09 This is, this is the thing I think we're, uh, I think Chris is the closest to losing
67. 00:04:17 me, like, I really enjoyed intentional.
68. 00:04:20 We both gave it five stars.
69. 00:04:21 Sure.
70. 00:04:21 Yeah.
71. 00:04:22 And it's not just us like it's, it's doing really well.
72. 00:04:25 Chris has been on all the, the big podcasts and talking about the stuff.
73. 00:04:30 And people are really liking this one.
74. 00:04:32 But, uh, yeah, the goal inventory is, uh, you know, how I feel about goals.
75. 00:04:38 And I feel like that needle has moved a little bit, but I'm, I'm still not
76. 00:04:43 convinced that you should be focusing on the goals, especially all of the
77. 00:04:48 someday, maybe goals that are going to sit in this inventory until who knows
78. 00:04:52 when, as we talked about in the pro show 2025 was a bit of a whirlwind for
79. 00:04:56 the Schmidt's family.
80. 00:04:57 So I'll focus on the next 90 days and no further.
81. 00:05:01 Thank you.
82. 00:05:02 There you go.
83. 00:05:02 That's, if that's what you learned, that's, that's a great thing to learn.
84. 00:05:06 I have two more action items.
85. 00:05:07 I had a tri rolling time blocking.
86. 00:05:09 I'm going to get this one out of the way real fast.
87. 00:05:11 I didn't even think about this one.
88. 00:05:13 And the reason I didn't even think about this one is because since the last
89. 00:05:17 time we recorded, I have been running wall to wall with things to do for school,
90. 00:05:25 things to do for bookworm, things to do for family.
91. 00:05:28 Like I am just wall to wall.
92. 00:05:29 So there's been no chance of rolling time blocking.
93. 00:05:33 It's been a hundred percent.
94. 00:05:34 Like what is the next thing on the deadline and how do I get that done
95. 00:05:38 before the deadline?
96. 00:05:39 And then there's a couple of things where it's like, I didn't get that done
97. 00:05:41 before the deadline.
98. 00:05:42 So how do I just get it done as soon as I can?
99. 00:05:44 And we're just going to be okay with the fact that life is not perfect and
100. 00:05:47 you just got to go, go there.
101. 00:05:49 So rolling time blocking is still something I'm interested in doing, but I
102. 00:05:52 haven't, I didn't really get a chance to do that.
103. 00:05:54 All right.
104. 00:05:55 I have one more.
105. 00:05:56 Yes, you do.
106. 00:05:57 Observe what you're doing for a week and connect it to the intention stack.
107. 00:06:01 I'm going to not answer this question.
108. 00:06:04 I have observed what I'm going to do, but I want to get back to the intention stack
109. 00:06:08 because I went back and listened to your focused interview with Chris Bailey.
110. 00:06:13 And in your focused interview with Chris Bailey, he admits it's a stack that
111. 00:06:20 looks a lot like a funnel, but there's still a stack.
112. 00:06:24 And then he kind of just glosses over that and moves on.
113. 00:06:27 So I feel vindicated because I feel vindicated because he admitted that it's
114. 00:06:33 a funnel, that he then forced into a stack and I feel good about that.
115. 00:06:37 So, and that's all I'm going to say about my, my last action.
116. 00:06:41 All right.
117. 00:06:42 That's, that's fair, I guess.
118. 00:06:48 Um, I have one other thing I want to mention, by the way, uh, in this, this,
119. 00:06:54 uh, section before we get into the, the book, um, I created a, uh, a PKM quiz.
120. 00:07:01 So it's at, uh, quiz.proctalpkm.com.
121. 00:07:04 It is actually technically live.
122. 00:07:07 So you can go take it right now.
123. 00:07:10 I built this using score app and I, uh, basically asked 20 questions.
124. 00:07:17 You rate from one to 10, whether you strongly disagree to strongly
125. 00:07:22 agree with the statements, it gives you an overall PKM score.
126. 00:07:26 And then it gives you scores based on the, uh, let's see, the five different
127. 00:07:30 categories, the PKM stack, uh, sections basically.
128. 00:07:33 So information management, idea management, tasks and project management,
129. 00:07:36 vision of values, and then reflection and journaling.
130. 00:07:39 And what I love about this is that it gives you a little graph and it breaks
131. 00:07:42 it all down.
132. 00:07:43 And it gives you dynamic advice based on what range your scores fall into.
133. 00:07:50 It packages it all up, it puts it into a PDF and it emails it to you.
134. 00:07:56 And, uh, it's, it's pretty cool.
135. 00:07:59 I like it.
136. 00:08:00 So I'm going to get that out into the, the world soon.
137. 00:08:04 If you want to test it out for me, quiz that practical PKM.com.
138. 00:08:10 And one other thing I'll mention here.
139. 00:08:13 Is that I am currently working on a, uh, obsidian report card video.
140. 00:08:18 Nice.
141. 00:08:19 So if you want to contribute to the obsidian report card, I'll have a link
142. 00:08:24 to the, uh, the, uh, the form, uh, by the time this goes live, the video will be
143. 00:08:30 going out pretty quick.
144. 00:08:33 So, uh, if you want to contribute, don't wait too long.
145. 00:08:37 And, uh, it's a Jason Snell style, you know, report card.
146. 00:08:40 I did one last year, just me and, uh, I want to incorporate more folks.
147. 00:08:45 So I had a bunch of people in the library do it.
148. 00:08:47 I shared it with my email list.
149. 00:08:49 Now I'm sharing it publicly.
150. 00:08:50 So if you want to want to contribute, uh, link to that will be in the, the
151. 00:08:53 show notes as well.
152. 00:08:55 Nice.
153. 00:08:56 Uh, you just gave me my first action item.
154. 00:08:58 Maybe my only action item from today, but you just gave me my first action.
155. 00:09:02 Item is to take your PKM quiz.
156. 00:09:07 All right.
157. 00:09:07 Well, Mike, we must do it now.
158. 00:09:10 We must move on to the overthinkers guide to making decisions.
159. 00:09:13 Uh, that is our book today.
160. 00:09:15 Uh, I need to tell you where this book came from.
161. 00:09:17 Um, uh, Joseph Nguyen wrote a book called don't believe everything you think.
162. 00:09:24 And this book is extraordinarily highly rated.
163. 00:09:28 Okay, uh, I don't remember exactly when he wrote that one.
164. 00:09:32 I'm trying to find it real quick, 2024.
165. 00:09:36 So you read an updated version that I, I bought along with this one.
166. 00:09:40 Okay.
167. 00:09:40 So that was in 2024.
168. 00:09:42 Was this originally published in 2024?
169. 00:09:44 Yeah, I think it was.
170. 00:09:44 Okay.
171. 00:09:45 Uh, so 2024, well, then this one came out in 25, right?
172. 00:09:49 November 25.
173. 00:09:49 And I was like, okay, cool.
174. 00:09:51 That one's really highly rated.
175. 00:09:51 Let's, let's read his newest one first and let's go from there.
176. 00:09:56 What's weird about this, Mike, is I don't know if you searched on Amazon very much.
177. 00:10:02 The number of like copycat and like mimic versions of this book is unbelievable.
178. 00:10:10 Like it's kind of wild.
179. 00:10:11 Like, I mean, you can do a quick search and the, the front cover looks identical.
180. 00:10:18 It's called the over, the overthinkers guide to, and then they'll change the last
181. 00:10:23 like two words that'll be like making instead of making decisions.
182. 00:10:25 It'll be like decision making or, or something.
183. 00:10:28 And then it's by a different author.
184. 00:10:29 It is wild how copycat or mimicky people are when it comes to this book.
185. 00:10:35 I, I'm kind of shocked by it.
186. 00:10:37 It's the first time I've ever seen it.
187. 00:10:39 Yeah.
188. 00:10:39 I, I've definitely seen this sort of thing before, but I feel like this is prime.
189. 00:10:46 Uh, copycat territory here because it's a pretty short book.
190. 00:10:52 And, uh, if you wanted to copy the format, you don't have to write a whole lot.
191. 00:10:58 You could generate some exercises.
192. 00:11:02 And as long as you're not publishing through, I think it's author's equity is the company
193. 00:11:07 that did this one, which is a nice, nice book.
194. 00:11:09 It's like a sort of cloth cover.
195. 00:11:13 The back is weird.
196. 00:11:14 It's got like the, the pasted like paper thing on the back, which it like is smooth.
197. 00:11:21 I don't like, don't like that, but I could see, uh, lots of Kindle versions of
198. 00:11:26 this, this book being spawned.
199. 00:11:28 Yes.
200. 00:11:28 And there, and there are, there are very many.
201. 00:11:31 So if you, out of our discussion today, decide that you're interested in reading
202. 00:11:34 this book and you want to pick this book up.
203. 00:11:37 You look hard, you know, like vet the site that you're looking at, because if
204. 00:11:42 you're doing the Kindle version, there's a ton of copycats out there.
205. 00:11:45 So that's, that's the first thing.
206. 00:11:46 Um, second thing, uh, this is a book of a series of three, I think.
207. 00:11:51 If I'm, if I'm correct, Mike, did you buy the series or did you buy?
208. 00:11:56 Uh, no, it just might be, I did not buy the series.
209. 00:11:58 I, I just saw that the, what was the other one you mentioned?
210. 00:12:02 Don't believe everything you think I heard that one come up before.
211. 00:12:05 So when I saw it, I bought that one too.
212. 00:12:07 Yeah.
213. 00:12:07 Okay.
214. 00:12:08 So, so that's the bundle.
215. 00:12:09 It's not a bundle of three.
216. 00:12:10 It's a bundle of two, I think is, is what it, what it is.
217. 00:12:12 But the, the tagline to this one or the, the subtitle is how to make decisions
218. 00:12:16 without losing your mind.
219. 00:12:17 So that's kind of the nature of it is overthinking.
220. 00:12:20 And then how do we actually go through a decision making process?
221. 00:12:24 Um, and he has these frameworks that we're going to go through.
222. 00:12:28 Now, we need to talk about the fact that Mike, you said it's a short book.
223. 00:12:33 It's listed on, uh, on Amazon as 192 pages, which is generous.
224. 00:12:39 Like that is a generous 192 pages.
225. 00:12:42 The part one, so that there are four parts to this book.
226. 00:12:45 Part one is 12 chapters that I think is like 50 something pages, maybe 60 at the most.
227. 00:12:54 Okay.
228. 00:12:55 And then part two might described it best yesterday when we were hashing out
229. 00:13:00 how to actually talk about this book is like, it's a workbook.
230. 00:13:04 Like you said it the best, like part two is a workbook.
231. 00:13:06 Like that's all it is.
232. 00:13:07 It's, it's not really any new content at all.
233. 00:13:11 It's a, it's like an assessment question and then fill this out, fill this out,
234. 00:13:15 fill this out, and then you move on to the next chapter.
235. 00:13:17 So I don't remember how many chapters there are in each of those.
236. 00:13:20 There's, there's another, what, 10 chapters, 12 chapters in there.
237. 00:13:25 Let's see.
238. 00:13:25 Yeah.
239. 00:13:25 It looks like 12 chapters, 13 through 24.
240. 00:13:29 They're broken into two sections.
241. 00:13:30 Part one is self discovery.
242. 00:13:32 The last chapter in that section is reflection.
243. 00:13:34 And then the same thing with part two, which is self reinvention.
244. 00:13:37 Last chapter there is reflection.
245. 00:13:39 And just to be fair here, you mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned it this way,
246. 00:13:43 but the words you use were like just a workbook.
247. 00:13:47 And I think there is value in the workbook approach.
248. 00:13:51 If you like the content in the first section.
249. 00:13:55 So forgive me.
250. 00:13:55 I did not mean to be little or demean the just a workbook thing at all.
251. 00:14:00 I wasn't expecting it to be a workbook.
252. 00:14:02 Like I was expecting there to be more content there.
253. 00:14:04 So when I say just a workbook, I wasn't expecting 12 chapters of
254. 00:14:08 essentially the exact same thing, repeated 12 times, only with like a different
255. 00:14:14 context to it or a different new works to it.
256. 00:14:17 It is kind of weird.
257. 00:14:18 I feel like most of the time you see the book and then the workbook is separate,
258. 00:14:21 or you have the action item type stuff built into the chapters themselves.
259. 00:14:26 Yes.
260. 00:14:27 So, uh, you know, we'll get into this in the book, but it's definitely
261. 00:14:32 got a specific angle that it's talking about this stuff from.
262. 00:14:37 And I feel like that maybe influences the, uh, the breaking them apart and
263. 00:14:43 putting them into these, these groups of things, assuming that you're actually
264. 00:14:46 going to sit down and do all this stuff.
265. 00:14:48 I feel like that was the thing that shocked me the most is that's a big ask.
266. 00:14:53 Yeah.
267. 00:14:54 It's, I mean, this is a, this is a commitment book.
268. 00:14:58 Yeah.
269. 00:14:58 Like to do it, but I wasn't ready for that.
270. 00:15:00 And I think that's the first thing I want to say before we even talk about the
271. 00:15:02 book is like, I wasn't ready for a workbook.
272. 00:15:07 I was ready to be taught about overthinking and to be taught about, you know,
273. 00:15:12 kind of some of these things in, I feel as though the marketing on the, of the
274. 00:15:17 book on the front end needs to be refined because I can't imagine that I'm
275. 00:15:23 the only person who was a little bit caught off guard of like, wait a minute,
276. 00:15:26 part two, like really, like this is very feels a little duped.
277. 00:15:31 Oh, I do.
278. 00:15:31 I 100% feel, I feel duped by this book, like 100% feel duped by this book.
279. 00:15:35 And I have no idea if that's, you know, if Joseph did that or if publishers
280. 00:15:40 equity did that or as authors equity did that.
281. 00:15:43 Or if it was just the nature of like, core, you should have known better.
282. 00:15:45 Like, I mean, come on.
283. 00:15:46 What are you doing?
284. 00:15:47 Okay.
285. 00:15:47 Now, so then there's part three, which is practicing trust, which is a framework
286. 00:15:51 that he throws out there.
287. 00:15:52 Then there's part four.
288. 00:15:53 And this is what I was trying to get to as I do the overview of the book.
289. 00:15:57 Part four is thought experiments.
290. 00:16:03 It's like, like many decision making experiments that he that he wants you to
291. 00:16:07 try as you're going through through your life, which again is just kind of weird.
292. 00:16:13 Like the nature of most of this is just kind of strange.
293. 00:16:18 So if you're going to pick up this book and if you're going to read it,
294. 00:16:21 just know that like it is not structured.
295. 00:16:25 I mean, I hate to be like overdramatic.
296. 00:16:27 I don't know if it's structured like any other book I've ever read in my life.
297. 00:16:31 Like, I don't think I've ever read a book that's been structured like this before.
298. 00:16:34 And I'm going to flash forward to style and rating was not a fan.
299. 00:16:39 Like I didn't like the structure of this book.
300. 00:16:43 So that's my, that's my overview.
301. 00:16:45 Mike, I don't know if you want to add anything to my, my overview of today's book.
302. 00:16:49 Um, so it, it's weird that it's packaged as a book.
303. 00:16:54 Um, my thought to this with all of the self guided stuff is the new way to decide
304. 00:17:02 the first 12 chapters, which is really, I think probably what we'll talk about today.
305. 00:17:06 There's some interesting things in there.
306. 00:17:09 There's definitely a Zen Buddhist approach, which I get like, I don't love though.
307. 00:17:18 And, uh, that's coming from somebody whose first product was faith based productivity.
308. 00:17:25 So I get that I've got my own bias towards this.
309. 00:17:29 And I guess, uh, the, the thing is.
310. 00:17:33 If you're going to lean into that, just make it explicit at the beginning.
311. 00:17:38 The trust framework is, is good.
312. 00:17:40 That's, that's his signature framework.
313. 00:17:43 I don't know that I really love it, but I think it's put together well.
314. 00:17:47 And that feels to me like this is a short, maybe video course that you sell for 20
315. 00:17:56 bucks or something.
316. 00:17:57 And then all of the parts, two, three and four, that is a live cohort that you get
317. 00:18:05 people to sign up for if they want to practice it.
318. 00:18:09 It feels weird squishing, squishing it all into this tiny little book, but.
319. 00:18:15 So we've had, you know, we, we, we read published and we read all these other
320. 00:18:19 things and you think about that the ways you can publish different things and the
321. 00:18:22 ways you can build a list serve and all this stuff.
322. 00:18:26 You had said it's like a video course with then an additional course, you know,
323. 00:18:30 behind it.
324. 00:18:30 I could also see this as a series of blog posts that drive traffic and then you
325. 00:18:35 push people to the experiments and you push people to the other things.
326. 00:18:38 Like I think it works better like that too.
327. 00:18:41 That's the thing, like there's good stuff in here and he's got a very clearly
328. 00:18:46 organized the information, but there's not enough in here for it to be a book.
329. 00:18:51 It's like a little leaflet sort of a thing already.
330. 00:18:54 This book is tiny and the first section is really the book part.
331. 00:19:01 The rest of it, you know, not to say that the exercises aren't well designed,
332. 00:19:06 but they do feel a bit repetitive.
333. 00:19:07 You know, we'll say that and I didn't want to do them.
334. 00:19:15 As someone who like built exercises into the personal retreat planner,
335. 00:19:19 I was a little surprised by that.
336. 00:19:20 It's like my hypocrite for not wanting to do this stuff.
337. 00:19:25 There are just different ways to do it.
338. 00:19:27 Martin said, Martin said in the chat, which I really liked.
339. 00:19:29 It's a, it's a blog post cosplaying as a book.
340. 00:19:33 Yeah.
341. 00:19:33 And it's like, that's a really good, it's a really good way to say that.
342. 00:19:37 All right, so let's go ahead and let's go through part one, which I think is
343. 00:19:39 the most interesting part.
344. 00:19:42 So part one is a new way to decide rethinking everything we know about making
345. 00:19:46 decisions.
346. 00:19:47 So a new way to decide rethinking everything we know about making decisions.
347. 00:19:50 Chapter one, it's got 12 chapters in it.
348. 00:19:53 Chapter one is going to be called the silent weight of choice.
349. 00:19:57 And essentially the nature of chapter one is we don't lack options.
350. 00:20:01 We have too many options.
351. 00:20:03 So therefore we overthink decisions and we have trouble figuring out, you know,
352. 00:20:08 our desires and the expectation of others and we try to convince ourselves,
353. 00:20:14 you know, of different things.
354. 00:20:16 Now he gets into one of the things I think is a major, major thread of his
355. 00:20:21 mindset around overthinking and his mindset of decision making.
356. 00:20:26 And that's the idea of fear that like a lot of what drives are overthinking
357. 00:20:31 about things and a lot of what drives our decision making is fear of regret or
358. 00:20:37 fear of, you know, we can't do this thing or fear of, you know, whatever, you
359. 00:20:40 know, we're going to disappoint somebody or whatever that might be.
360. 00:20:43 And Mike, like I can't put my finger on it, but like I have an inherent problem
361. 00:20:47 with that first framing because it's like, I don't think that I overthink
362. 00:20:52 decisions because of fear.
363. 00:20:54 I do think I overthink decisions sometimes because there's too much choice.
364. 00:20:58 And like there's too many options and I don't know how to pick the right option.
365. 00:21:01 So I overthink it, but I really don't know if it comes out of fear for me.
366. 00:21:05 The, the problem I have is I don't know what it comes out of.
367. 00:21:07 It's not fear.
368. 00:21:08 I don't have like a good alternative for him.
369. 00:21:11 But like I really don't, like when I was reflecting on the different things,
370. 00:21:13 it's like, okay, one was a time that I've overthought something.
371. 00:21:16 I don't think it comes out of fear necessarily.
372. 00:21:20 I don't know.
373. 00:21:20 And I struggled with that one.
374. 00:21:21 Um, so, but that's the gist of chapter one.
375. 00:21:24 We're not going to have a lot to like go into and unpack for all these chapters.
376. 00:21:28 Cause I don't know, Mike, like they're what maybe like four or five pages long,
377. 00:21:32 the chapters, like they're not super long.
378. 00:21:35 I do have quite a few notes from this section.
379. 00:21:37 So I think I've got something to say for each of the chapters.
380. 00:21:40 Uh, if we want to break them down individually and I, I do think that fear is,
381. 00:21:46 uh, I'm okay with, with using fear there.
382. 00:21:49 I think that's probably accurate.
383. 00:21:53 So one of the things that he says in this first chapter,
384. 00:21:57 which I think is pretty profound is that most people give advice based
385. 00:22:02 on their fears, regrets, and limitations.
386. 00:22:06 And I can definitely see that being true in my own life and have had that thought.
387. 00:22:13 I don't want to offer advice to my kids that way.
388. 00:22:18 I probably still do sometimes.
389. 00:22:21 And so it's worth being aware of, and that I think is the common theme
390. 00:22:28 throughout this first part of the book anyways, is that there's going to be some
391. 00:22:33 stuff in here that maybe is like light bulb moments.
392. 00:22:36 First time you've heard this sort of thing.
393. 00:22:38 It's a lot of stuff that I have heard before.
394. 00:22:42 The way that he says it, it's part good reminder part.
395. 00:22:48 I didn't quite ever hear it described that way.
396. 00:22:51 So I feel like there's good and new information in this, uh, this first section.
397. 00:22:58 And I think this first chapter does a good job of setting the stage of rethinking.
398. 00:23:05 I guess rethinking.
399. 00:23:06 I don't know.
400. 00:23:07 Like the book is on overthinking and breaking free from that.
401. 00:23:10 So you probably don't want to rethink a whole bunch of things.
402. 00:23:14 But I think, uh, addressing the core intentions at the very beginning is a smart
403. 00:23:19 way, a smart way to do it.
404. 00:23:21 Um, I do think that where he goes from here, maybe colors your perspective a
405. 00:23:27 little bit about why maybe you don't think it's, it's truly fear.
406. 00:23:31 Um, but I think if, if you can disconnect the, what he says in this chapter one
407. 00:23:36 from the rest of the, the stuff that I think it's probably accurate.
408. 00:23:40 Okay.
409. 00:23:41 All right.
410. 00:23:41 So let's go to chapter two, uh, chapter two goes into why do, why do we ever think
411. 00:23:44 here is where he unpacks this idea of fear.
412. 00:23:47 Um, he makes a statement here all over thinking, no matter the, uh, the surface
413. 00:23:50 story can be traced back to fear, fear, failure, fear of regret, fear of disappointing
414. 00:23:54 others, fear of not being who, being who we think we should be.
415. 00:23:57 And, and this is where like I really started to wrestle with this, with this idea.
416. 00:24:01 I like I have, and I don't know how far we want to go down this rabbit hole, but
417. 00:24:05 it's like, I have a thing right now that I am 100% overthinking.
418. 00:24:08 I know I'm overthinking it.
419. 00:24:10 I can guarantee you that Mike that I'm the, if you, if I told you about this
420. 00:24:13 story, you'd be like, core, you're overthinking this.
421. 00:24:16 Like you're making way too big of a deal of this.
422. 00:24:18 And my problem is, as I said before, I don't think all of this stuff drives from
423. 00:24:22 fear.
424. 00:24:24 But then when I think about this, it's like, well, why, why am I overthinking this?
425. 00:24:27 Oh, well, I'm actually, I'm concerned.
426. 00:24:31 Is that fear, right?
427. 00:24:32 Like I'm afraid that I'm going to let the people down.
428. 00:24:35 Like I said, I would do a thing.
429. 00:24:37 And, and if I, if I back out of this thing, I'm afraid I'm going to let these people
430. 00:24:39 down, you just said it, I'm afraid I'm going to let these people down.
431. 00:24:43 Agree.
432. 00:24:43 So this is where like I'm conflicting with myself, because it's like, I don't
433. 00:24:48 think everything drives from fear.
434. 00:24:50 But then like when I look at it, I'm like, does it?
435. 00:24:52 Because like I would have said, maybe it's, I want to control that situation
436. 00:24:56 or I want to control this later on down.
437. 00:24:58 But then does that just arrive from fear?
438. 00:25:00 You know what I mean?
439. 00:25:00 Like, is my, am I fearing the loss of control over, over a situation?
440. 00:25:05 And it's like, I'm, I'm torn.
441. 00:25:08 I think, I think I'm torn.
442. 00:25:09 And this is like one of the big values I got out of this book is there were
443. 00:25:13 things in here, especially in this first part, like you just described that really
444. 00:25:16 made me like wrestle with some ideas and go, huh, is that really the way I think
445. 00:25:20 about that?
446. 00:25:21 So this is one of, this is one of those examples.
447. 00:25:24 Um, and he makes, you know, he makes another comment, like overthinking is just
448. 00:25:27 fear and disguise and that if we can get down to address the root emotion that we
449. 00:25:33 will then overcome this overthinking.
450. 00:25:35 So this idea of overthinking comes from fear and then we need to get down to
451. 00:25:39 the root emotion, overcome that fear.
452. 00:25:42 And then we won't overthink is the gist of chapter two.
453. 00:25:44 That's what I took away from chapter two.
454. 00:25:46 Yeah.
455. 00:25:46 And I think that is grossly oversimplifying it, but the point is valid.
456. 00:25:50 Okay.
457. 00:25:51 Um, I do think that the root of a lot of stuff is fear.
458. 00:25:57 I do think loss of not being able to control a situation is a, a form of fear.
459. 00:26:03 He says that the moment you stop running from fear, it stops running your life
460. 00:26:06 in this chapter.
461. 00:26:07 I think that is an important point.
462. 00:26:09 However, I don't think all the exercises that he shares here is the in this book
463. 00:26:14 is the best way to do that.
464. 00:26:17 Uh, the most effective exercise I've had in dealing with this was Tim Ferriss's
465. 00:26:23 fear setting exercise, but you, you're not in your head.
466. 00:26:26 So you're familiar with that.
467. 00:26:27 I am.
468. 00:26:28 Okay.
469. 00:26:29 So basically what you do is you embrace that worst case scenario that your
470. 00:26:35 brain tends to not want to consider.
471. 00:26:37 And I think that is the core motivation behind overthinking is I want to avoid
472. 00:26:42 that uncomfortable scenario where that really bad thing might happen.
473. 00:26:46 And so with fear setting, you're just basically, okay, let's stare the
474. 00:26:49 dragon in the face.
475. 00:26:50 Let's assume that that actually happens.
476. 00:26:52 What would you do then?
477. 00:26:54 And you realize as you go through the steps in the fear setting exercises, I'll
478. 00:26:58 put a link to the fear setting video that Tim Ferriss did.
479. 00:27:01 He gave a TED talk on it.
480. 00:27:03 And I don't really love Tim Ferriss, just like the whole four hour work week
481. 00:27:07 vibe, but the fear setting thing is really good.
482. 00:27:09 So I do recommend people, uh, watch that, that video, but you, uh, you start to
483. 00:27:15 define it and you realize that even if that worst case scenario, the thing you
484. 00:27:19 absolutely do not want to think about happens, even in that scenario, you have
485. 00:27:24 options.
486. 00:27:25 I went through this when I decided to leave the digital marketing agency.
487. 00:27:29 I've told the story in my newsletter before, but at one point I was talking
488. 00:27:34 to Rachel about it and, uh, I had just come across the concept of, of fear
489. 00:27:40 setting and we were on a date night or something.
490. 00:27:42 And I was like, so if I left this job and went out on my own and it completely
491. 00:27:50 failed, like what's the worst that could happen?
492. 00:27:53 You know, I go get another job and at the time I said it, she was like, encouraging
493. 00:27:58 like, yeah, that's the spirit.
494. 00:27:59 And I'm like, no, really, what would be the worst case scenario?
495. 00:28:03 She's like, Oh, we're doing this now.
496. 00:28:05 Yeah.
497. 00:28:05 No, we figured it out.
498. 00:28:07 And I realized that, uh, I, while I don't want to be a failure, failure isn't
499. 00:28:13 the, the end of the world.
500. 00:28:14 There, there are options.
501. 00:28:16 You can, everything is figure outable.
502. 00:28:20 So.
503. 00:28:21 All right, let's go to chapter three.
504. 00:28:22 So chapter three is your focus determines your decision.
505. 00:28:25 And in this one, he will, he makes the statement that like.
506. 00:28:29 Essentially you think of a fear like fire and the more oxygen we give it, the more
507. 00:28:35 it stokes the fire.
508. 00:28:36 So we need to pull the oxygen out of that.
509. 00:28:38 Well, what is the oxygen that, that, um, drives the fear?
510. 00:28:42 And that's the emotion that we're making that decision from.
511. 00:28:46 So therefore we need to refocus it into a new emotion or a different emotion or
512. 00:28:52 not fear or not the negative emotion.
513. 00:28:54 He makes a statement, uh, in this chapter about make decisions based on how
514. 00:28:57 you want to feel rather than what you're afraid to experience.
515. 00:29:01 And I have a problem with this statement.
516. 00:29:03 I can't make all my decisions based on how I want to feel like I'm a dad, right?
517. 00:29:09 Like, so if I made all of the decisions based on how I want to feel my family
518. 00:29:14 would pay the price, they would 100% pay the price.
519. 00:29:18 And like that is not right.
520. 00:29:20 Now that doesn't come out of fear.
521. 00:29:23 That comes out of a sense of responsibility.
522. 00:29:25 Like I, if I didn't want to take on that responsibility, I should not have had
523. 00:29:30 children.
524. 00:29:31 So this is a very good example.
525. 00:29:32 I didn't know we were going to get to here, right?
526. 00:29:33 This is a very good example.
527. 00:29:34 Like of my, of my mindset here, um, it's 100% not fear.
528. 00:29:37 Like I don't fear that, um, my, me making a decision based on what, how I want to feel.
529. 00:29:47 I have a sense of responsibility.
530. 00:29:48 Like this is something I signed up for.
531. 00:29:51 And if I wasn't willing to take this on, I shouldn't have signed up for that.
532. 00:29:53 Like, so it's much more responsibility than his fear, but shoot holes in that.
533. 00:29:56 Like, am I, am I wrong in the way I'm thinking about that, Mike?
534. 00:30:00 Well, I think from a certain perspective, yeah, you are, because the truth is that
535. 00:30:05 you could, if you really wanted to, you could walk out of your marriage, walk away
536. 00:30:12 from your kids, move to some other country, never see them again.
537. 00:30:17 People do that.
538. 00:30:18 Okay.
539. 00:30:19 You're not going to because you have more character than that.
540. 00:30:22 That's why you say it's out of a, uh, a sense of responsibility.
541. 00:30:26 But I think if, uh, we had a long enough conversation with the, the author here, we
542. 00:30:31 could agree that at some point, you know, you don't want to do that.
543. 00:30:36 You don't want to let your wife down.
544. 00:30:38 You don't want to let your kids down.
545. 00:30:39 Those relationships are important to you.
546. 00:30:41 So they'll probably define that as fear of, you know, you don't want to let
547. 00:30:44 those, those people down when you're trying to decide what it is that you
548. 00:30:47 really want to do.
549. 00:30:48 And this is the issue that I have with this book, I think is it's hard to argue
550. 00:30:53 with that perspective, but also I have no desire to drill down that deep.
551. 00:31:01 I think there are certain decisions that you make in life that are connected
552. 00:31:07 to your vision and your values and those become non-negotiables.
553. 00:31:13 And that doesn't mean that you should never consider them again, but
554. 00:31:17 also you don't need to rethink.
555. 00:31:19 Am I married to the right person as part of your weekly review?
556. 00:31:23 Like that was a decision I made.
557. 00:31:25 I committed to that.
558. 00:31:26 And my life is better if I don't, uh, rethink that all the time.
559. 00:31:32 Doesn't mean you never do.
560. 00:31:33 It doesn't mean there's not a, not ever a reason to get out of an abusive
561. 00:31:36 relationship or anything like that.
562. 00:31:39 So I think there is, I'm going to call it the illusion of like being trapped
563. 00:31:45 by the decisions that previous you has made.
564. 00:31:47 And I think you do have to realize that you do have ability agency.
565. 00:31:52 Um, what's, what's the, the term self advocacy, maybe where you do have the
566. 00:31:59 ability to make the choice that you want to make?
567. 00:32:02 And, uh, it's fine to assume that the right decisions are going to be made by
568. 00:32:08 my code of conduct, my core values, my religious belief system.
569. 00:32:13 Um, and I think that's maybe where my perspective differs from, I'm going to
570. 00:32:19 call it Zen Buddhist.
571. 00:32:20 It's probably not fair to just lump it all together, but I've read several
572. 00:32:24 books by Zen Buddhist, uh, practitioners, monks.
573. 00:32:29 There was one in particular that we had on the focus podcast a while back.
574. 00:32:32 And I can't remember, I can't remember the person's name now, but it just kind
575. 00:32:37 of always drifts back to this.
576. 00:32:39 And sometimes, you know, you, you consider this stuff and it's like, Oh, wow,
577. 00:32:43 I never really thought about it that way before.
578. 00:32:45 That's interesting.
579. 00:32:46 But then like when I read books like this, it keeps bringing me back to that
580. 00:32:50 place since, and, and I feel like, no, I've resolved that in my head.
581. 00:32:53 I don't need to think about that anymore.
582. 00:32:57 So I get that there's value for getting people to consider that from that
583. 00:33:01 perspective, but also I feel like you don't need to do it over and over and over
584. 00:33:05 again, which is kind of the vibe I get from stuff like this.
585. 00:33:10 Are you ready to go to chapter four?
586. 00:33:12 Sure.
587. 00:33:14 Uh, so where our best decisions come from, this is chapter four and the
588. 00:33:19 answer to put it bluntly is intuition.
589. 00:33:22 Uh, your intuition is saying, you know, who you truly are and it sees
590. 00:33:28 beyond the fear and into possibility.
591. 00:33:31 And like I tie this into like thinking fast and slow and I tie this into a bunch
592. 00:33:37 of other thoughts and, and I don't know, I don't know that I agree with this.
593. 00:33:41 Like I don't think my intuition is always the best way that I should act or
594. 00:33:46 the thing that is the most like I think a, there are times when my intuition, right?
595. 00:33:52 It says, this is a bad way to do this.
596. 00:33:54 You should not be doing it this way.
597. 00:33:56 And I need to take a step back and I need to go, no, rationally speaking,
598. 00:34:01 you're not doing this right.
599. 00:34:03 Like you need to, you need to back up from this.
600. 00:34:05 So it's like, I just, I struggle with this.
601. 00:34:08 Like I struggle with the overall concept, the overall like nature of what we're
602. 00:34:13 doing here, Mike, like I'm, I'm really having a hard time.
603. 00:34:17 Okay.
604. 00:34:17 Well, this one, I actually agree with it on the surface.
605. 00:34:20 Okay, so I agree that the best decisions don't come from the mind.
606. 00:34:23 They come from the part of you that feels you should listen to your intuition.
607. 00:34:27 And the best decisions come from trusting yourself.
608. 00:34:30 However, I don't think that you just dig deep enough into your pure essence.
609. 00:34:35 And then that becomes clear.
610. 00:34:37 I think it has to be rooted in the type of person that you want to become your
611. 00:34:43 ideal futures.
612. 00:34:44 Yeah.
613. 00:34:45 Yeah.
614. 00:34:45 Now in the next chapter he talks about life as a compass, we'll, we'll get there.
615. 00:34:50 But I think that compass analogy is really powerful.
616. 00:34:54 And I use that all the time in the life theme stuff is you don't need to have it
617. 00:34:57 all figured out.
618. 00:34:58 You just need to know the next step to take.
619. 00:34:59 You have to put yourself out there and then you realize what are the other
620. 00:35:04 doors that you can walk through in the adjacent possible.
621. 00:35:07 You never can consider those things until you take that, that first step.
622. 00:35:11 But you don't have to have it all figured out.
623. 00:35:12 And as a recovering analytical, logical planner, where I would absolutely overthink
624. 00:35:21 everything, this is actually good advice that I've had to apply myself.
625. 00:35:25 And I've grown, I feel like in this, this area over the last several years.
626. 00:35:31 But I also, like I said, I think it has to be anchored in something.
627. 00:35:35 Where are we going?
628. 00:35:37 What do we want our life to look like?
629. 00:35:41 What's the legacy that we want to leave?
630. 00:35:44 What's the dent we want to leave in the universe?
631. 00:35:47 It's not why I just need to dig deep enough.
632. 00:35:49 And then I get in tune with my true intentions.
633. 00:35:54 I think we are a little bit more malleable than that.
634. 00:35:58 Just like the brain is, has some plasticity built into it and you can
635. 00:36:03 strengthen certain areas of it.
636. 00:36:07 Just like working a muscle, I guess, if you're going to go to the gym.
637. 00:36:10 I feel like you can do that with your identity and your vision and even your
638. 00:36:15 values as well, just because you were born a certain way.
639. 00:36:19 It doesn't mean that you have to stay that way.
640. 00:36:21 One of my core values is permanent beta.
641. 00:36:24 I am a work in progress until they put me in the ground and it will never change.
642. 00:36:30 The product doesn't get shipped until I take my last breath.
643. 00:36:34 And maybe, maybe that's where I'm part of what I'm struggling with is like.
644. 00:36:39 I have core values, I've like, I've done the values activity many, many times.
645. 00:36:43 And like I have these things that are core values and maybe some of the ones
646. 00:36:46 that I thought were core aren't really core.
647. 00:36:50 Like, or that they used to be core and then they've changed over time.
648. 00:36:54 Yeah, that's that happens.
649. 00:36:56 Yeah.
650. 00:36:56 And that's okay.
651. 00:36:57 And I need to like do another, like round of this.
652. 00:37:00 And then like, I'll give a, I'll give the example of this.
653. 00:37:03 There's a thing that like my intuition, I'm going to use the author's words.
654. 00:37:07 My intuition is telling me, shut this down.
655. 00:37:09 Like you need to not be part of this anymore, right?
656. 00:37:12 Like it's okay.
657. 00:37:14 You're going to let people down.
658. 00:37:15 Everything's fine, right?
659. 00:37:16 Like all this stuff you'll, like in three years, you'll look back on this.
660. 00:37:20 And you'll be like, oh, I like, there was no reason not to shut that down.
661. 00:37:23 But I'm overthinking why I don't want to shut this down, why I shouldn't shut this
662. 00:37:27 down, why I should stick, stick it through.
663. 00:37:30 And part of that is because one of those values.
664. 00:37:34 Is one of those values is like, if I say I'm going to do a thing, I should do the thing.
665. 00:37:41 But at the same time, I also have this other idea of like, well, just because I said
666. 00:37:44 I was going to do it, like doesn't mean that the context of when I said I was going
667. 00:37:49 to do it is the same as the context now.
668. 00:37:52 And like I'm struggling with this idea of what, what would we call it, Mike?
669. 00:37:55 Like help me with the word that I'm trying to figure out.
670. 00:37:58 It's like follow through or commitment to the thing or doing what you say you're
671. 00:38:03 going to do, but it's not that I'm just like, willy nilly going, I don't want to do
672. 00:38:07 this anymore.
673. 00:38:07 It's like the nature of the context has changed, which then says, okay,
674. 00:38:13 I need to reassess the situation.
675. 00:38:15 So yeah, I don't know.
676. 00:38:16 So what happens is you go through the identifying your core values.
677. 00:38:24 For me, you know, the life theme process, you've got your personal mission statement.
678. 00:38:29 You have figured out what your life is going to be about.
679. 00:38:32 And you take that and you're like, check that box.
680. 00:38:35 Now let's run with this.
681. 00:38:38 And when you consider it again, and you realize it doesn't really fit anymore,
682. 00:38:46 there's a little bit of, well, has my whole life been a lie then?
683. 00:38:52 And that's not not true.
684. 00:38:53 So like part of this perspective is you can't look back and try to course correct
685. 00:39:00 every decision that you made previously and how you would have done things differently.
686. 00:39:06 That's what he's talking about in this book, I think, with other people
687. 00:39:09 share their advice based on their fears or, you know, the mistakes that that they've made.
688. 00:39:17 I also don't really love the perspective of why wouldn't change anything.
689. 00:39:21 I would do everything exactly the same.
690. 00:39:22 Like, well, you're an idiot.
691. 00:39:23 There are definitely things that I would have done differently.
692. 00:39:26 But I'm not going to second guess every decision that I've made because I put forth
693. 00:39:30 my best effort, I made the best decision I could.
694. 00:39:33 And then you move forward.
695. 00:39:35 So you have to like make a decision and then look ahead.
696. 00:39:39 You can't hold on to that and be like, oh, I got to get some external validation
697. 00:39:44 that that was the right decision.
698. 00:39:46 Example, if I decide, you know, I get an Instagram ad and something looks cool and I'm going to buy it.
699. 00:39:53 Okay, so I buy it.
700. 00:39:54 And then I immediately go start reading reviews of the thing that I bought.
701. 00:40:00 Why am I doing that?
702. 00:40:01 It's because I want to prove to myself that I should have spent money on the thing.
703. 00:40:06 Right.
704. 00:40:06 That's what you want to want to avoid.
705. 00:40:08 So strong convictions lately held, I think, is the key here.
706. 00:40:12 And then recognizing that you're always changing.
707. 00:40:14 So the decisions that passed you made are not the right decisions for current you.
708. 00:40:20 That doesn't mean that you try to go back and erase all those decisions, but reevaluate those
709. 00:40:25 decisions every once in a while and be like, if I were deciding about this commitment
710. 00:40:29 that I've been doing for years, if this was an opportunity that was presented to me today,
711. 00:40:34 would I take it?
712. 00:40:35 Is it in alignment with where I want to go?
713. 00:40:38 And recognizing that no, it's not.
714. 00:40:40 That's that's tough sometimes.
715. 00:40:43 And it requires some difficult conversations with people that, again, you don't want to let down.
716. 00:40:47 So is that anchored in fear?
717. 00:40:49 Yeah, maybe.
718. 00:40:51 Yeah.
719. 00:40:52 Like, OK, all right, let's go to chapter five.
720. 00:40:55 Chapter five is, but what if I make the wrong decision by trusting myself?
721. 00:40:58 So you're, you're seeing the chain through here.
722. 00:41:01 All right, we've got fear that drives to this idea of where our decisions come from and this intuition.
723. 00:41:10 And then we need to reframe that or refocus that.
724. 00:41:12 And then, OK, now I trusted myself.
725. 00:41:14 I made this decision.
726. 00:41:15 But what if it was the wrong decision?
727. 00:41:17 You talked about liking the compass portion of that.
728. 00:41:19 So I'm going to save that for you.
729. 00:41:20 I'm going to let you talk about the compass portion of that.
730. 00:41:22 There's a there's a couple of parts in this chapter that I I also liked in addition to the to the compass portion.
731. 00:41:28 I do think the way we frame
732. 00:41:32 kind of the things that happen or the way we frame a situation have a lot of impact on it.
733. 00:41:37 Like I I don't think that like things are always good or bad.
734. 00:41:42 It's just that we think of them as being good or bad.
735. 00:41:44 Like this is just a thing that happens.
736. 00:41:46 And if and if I'm remembering correctly, it's the story of the the Chinese farmer
737. 00:41:51 whose son breaks his leg and then like, oh, well, that prevented him from going to war and that prevented him from lying in the war.
738. 00:41:57 Too bad and he keeps responding with we'll see.
739. 00:42:00 Yeah. So it's like for some reason that story really hits home with me.
740. 00:42:04 Like that's a that's a really it's like, well, maybe, well, maybe, well, maybe, and it's the way we we think about that.
741. 00:42:11 My thing is like, I don't go as I don't know, like I don't go as far as the author goes on on a lot of this stuff, right?
742. 00:42:21 So I'll give you a case in a case point.
743. 00:42:23 There are no failures, only invitations to grow, no path is wasted.
744. 00:42:28 Well, I don't know if I completely agree with that.
745. 00:42:31 I do very much have a growth mindset from Dweck, you know, this way of thinking that like, oh, okay, so this didn't go the way I thought I was going to.
746. 00:42:39 It's an opportunity for me to grow.
747. 00:42:41 But like there are failures, like there are things that are just objectively, if we look at them, I failed, like I bombed like at that.
748. 00:42:50 I mean, I will tell you like, like I in my grad program failed one time, straight up failed.
749. 00:42:58 Now, was it an opportunity to grow?
750. 00:42:59 It absolutely was, but it was a hundred percent of failure.
751. 00:43:02 And I think what he's trying to get at is he's trying to get at the fact that if we frame that not as a growth mechanism, but we frame that as a failure and we let it like kind of destroy us and ruin us and throw us down the wrong path, that's the negative side of it.
752. 00:43:15 But if we look at is, okay, I didn't do what I wanted to do, I actually, you know, failed in that situation, but I can learn from this and do better next time.
753. 00:43:22 Yeah, I get that.
754. 00:43:24 Like, there was just something about like the nature with the way he talked about some of this stuff that just didn't connect with me and didn't resonate with me.
755. 00:43:31 So I'm going to let you go to compasses because I like the compasses part too.
756. 00:43:34 But well, so I actually want to talk about something else here.
757. 00:43:38 That's, this is where he loses me is I agree, like there's good and there's bad and I have read enough books by Zen Buddhist to know where this argument with the parable of the wise farmer is coming from that there isn't good.
758. 00:43:53 There isn't bad.
759. 00:43:54 There's just what happens and you got to deal with it.
760. 00:43:57 You can use it for good.
761. 00:43:58 You can use it for bad, but we should release the judgment and that's the part where they lose me because I agree.
762. 00:44:05 Like I have a certain belief system which has been crafted by a lot of a lot of years and I'm not willing to throw that away and just say, let's see what happens.
763. 00:44:19 And I don't think if you asked him about it, he would say, well, I'm not asking you to do that.
764. 00:44:23 But that's always been the thing with this is I believe that there are certain things that I can blanket say this is good and there are certain things that I can blanket say this is bad.
765. 00:44:35 And breaking my son breaking his leg is not a good thing whether or not he gets drafted into the army is irrelevant.
766. 00:44:42 I don't want his leg to be broken.
767. 00:44:45 I know you got a trip to the ER later today.
768. 00:44:50 You would prefer not to do that regardless of the outcome.
769. 00:44:54 We don't have to wait and see if that is going to be a good or a bad thing, but we also don't need to work ourselves up about all these bad things are happening to me either.
770. 00:45:05 So I actually have one of those Ryan Holiday coins on my my desk over there, the amor fatigue and basically just love what happens.
771. 00:45:16 OK, so you can't change the thing.
772. 00:45:18 Don't wish that it could be changed.
773. 00:45:20 Don't ruminate on it.
774. 00:45:21 That's the trap I fall into is the rumination and overthinking.
775. 00:45:24 Why did this?
776. 00:45:25 Yeah, yeah, so this happened.
777. 00:45:28 What are we going to do with this?
778. 00:45:30 How are we going to grow from this?
779. 00:45:32 And where do we go from from here?
780. 00:45:35 That's really the only useful approach.
781. 00:45:38 I feel, but yeah, I am not willing to just release the value judgment of the the events either.
782. 00:45:46 Yeah, yeah, comment just came in the in the jet.
783. 00:45:50 Perhaps you are not the ideal reader.
784. 00:45:52 The author had in mind.
785. 00:45:53 Perhaps that is totally fair, perhaps totally fair.
786. 00:45:57 Yes, and I'm trying to to temper this a little bit.
787. 00:46:00 I do think there are some powerful ideas.
788. 00:46:02 And I'm just not going to take them to the same extreme that the author is taking.
789. 00:46:07 And you did mention the life as a compass.
790. 00:46:09 I think this is a great metaphor because one of the things that I teach in the life
791. 00:46:13 theme stuff inside of the library and actually even in the practice of P cam
792. 00:46:17 cohort this week, we talked about the vision of values piece.
793. 00:46:20 And a big part of that is that you need a compass, not a blueprint.
794. 00:46:25 If you've got a blueprint, you've got your goals figured out, and I'm going to do this
795. 00:46:29 by this time and what happens?
796. 00:46:31 It doesn't happen as fast as you thought it would.
797. 00:46:33 You get frustrated and then you feel like you are a failure because you're not as
798. 00:46:38 far as you thought you should be by now.
799. 00:46:40 That's the gap Dan Sullivan talks about that as the as the gap, but you can look
800. 00:46:44 back from where you started and you can see the growth and that's the gain and that
801. 00:46:47 creates the momentum and the motivation to keep going.
802. 00:46:50 And so that's why I say you don't need the goals.
803. 00:46:53 You don't need to say by the time I am 50 years old, I am going to do this, this
804. 00:46:57 and the other thing.
805. 00:46:58 Who knows?
806. 00:47:00 Right.
807. 00:47:00 But I do know that I want to generally go in this direction.
808. 00:47:03 This is what a day in the life of future me looks like and this decision is going
809. 00:47:06 to help me move closer to that ideal future instead of further away from it.
810. 00:47:10 So I'm going to go do that thing and then you go do the thing and then you take a
811. 00:47:14 look around and you figure out what do I do next, but you don't beat yourself up.
812. 00:47:17 Be like, Oh man, I really shouldn't have done that, that thing or made that
813. 00:47:21 decision, you know, 20 years ago, that really, that really messed me up.
814. 00:47:26 You know, I should have done this other thing.
815. 00:47:28 I could have been in this place like that's not fruitful.
816. 00:47:31 Yeah.
817. 00:47:32 At one point, you talked to me about the map at like the top right corner or the
818. 00:47:37 bottom right corner of a video game.
819. 00:47:39 And I can remember the context of when we talked about this or whatever it is, but
820. 00:47:42 it's like, okay, I want to be going in the right direction and then more of the map
821. 00:47:46 will become clear and I want to be going in the right direction and more of the map
822. 00:47:48 will become clear.
823. 00:47:49 And then you think about like, Oh, I just went into this new section of the map and
824. 00:47:53 it's like a pit of burning fiery lava.
825. 00:47:56 And it's like, okay, what do I do?
826. 00:47:58 But like the, that doesn't change the nature of we're still shooting for that,
827. 00:48:03 that one compass direction or we're still shooting for that one direction.
828. 00:48:06 We just might have to figure out a different path, a different path around that.
829. 00:48:09 And it's like, I like that framing of this.
830. 00:48:12 And I like that way of thinking about this better than like, I don't know, like
831. 00:48:17 it's guided by something that's not just my intuition.
832. 00:48:19 It's guided by something that's bigger and better and smarter than me.
833. 00:48:24 I think that's what I'm trying to get to is it's like, it's smarter than I am.
834. 00:48:27 I don't, I don't trust myself to be that smart.
835. 00:48:30 That's fair.
836. 00:48:30 All right, let, let's go to chapter six.
837. 00:48:32 Now, what if my decision upset someone I care about?
838. 00:48:35 I don't like this.
839. 00:48:36 I didn't like this chapter.
840. 00:48:37 Spoiler alert, it will.
841. 00:48:39 Yeah, I didn't like this chapter.
842. 00:48:42 You're always going to upset somebody.
843. 00:48:43 Yes, I know that someone else's comfort should never come at your, at the expense
844. 00:48:48 of your growth, your joy, or your sense of alignment.
845. 00:48:50 I wholeheartedly disagree with that.
846. 00:48:54 Like I just disagree with that statement.
847. 00:48:56 Like I think that is a bad statement to make.
848. 00:48:58 Like, yes, there will be times where my growth, my joy, and my sense of alignment
849. 00:49:06 will not be perfect because I'm focused on someone else's comfort.
850. 00:49:12 In my mind, this gets to the idea of servanthood.
851. 00:49:15 Now, Mike, do you think I'm like, I can see you getting ready to say something.
852. 00:49:18 Do you think I'm taking this wrong?
853. 00:49:19 Like, am I interpreting this?
854. 00:49:21 Okay.
855. 00:49:22 All right.
856. 00:49:22 But I think, well, I think you're interpreting it in a short term through a short term lens, right?
857. 00:49:29 So I'm trying to decide whether I want to go play video games or go pick up my
858. 00:49:35 kids from school and I have to go pick up my kids from school rather than boot up
859. 00:49:40 the switch and play Zelda, right?
860. 00:49:43 But I think the long term view, you, you do have to prioritize yourself over other people.
861. 00:49:53 And I don't know where I've heard this.
862. 00:49:56 It might have been Jim Rohn back in the day where he kind of addressed specifically
863. 00:50:03 this, I take care of you, you'll, you take care of me.
864. 00:50:06 That's not the best approach.
865. 00:50:08 It's more, I'll take care of myself for you.
866. 00:50:11 You take care of yourself for me.
867. 00:50:13 And it comes back to, for me, the analogy of your on a airplane and the oxygen masks
868. 00:50:20 drop from the ceiling, they always tell you, put your own oxygen mask on first.
869. 00:50:25 Because if you have passed out, you are not useful to anybody else.
870. 00:50:31 Okay.
871. 00:50:31 And this is a very oversimplified analogy, but I think that's really at the heart of this
872. 00:50:37 is when you decide that you're going to get married.
873. 00:50:42 Right.
874. 00:50:43 We're in the US.
875. 00:50:44 We don't have arranged marriages where you're just going to commit to this person.
876. 00:50:49 And over the years, you'll learn to love them.
877. 00:50:51 You make the commitment and then I can pretty much guarantee you at some point,
878. 00:50:56 you're going to be like, this isn't the same person that I married because you've
879. 00:50:58 both, you've both grown.
880. 00:51:00 You can, however, grow together.
881. 00:51:02 You can, I was going to use the term prioritize the other person, but really it's
882. 00:51:08 just consider the other person, but in the long term, when you're making that
883. 00:51:12 initial commitment, you have this vision, this future of you both growing old
884. 00:51:18 together, starting the family together.
885. 00:51:20 You know, if you've gone through counseling, they work through all that stuff
886. 00:51:23 to make sure that you're aligned.
887. 00:51:25 And then you get to the, uh, the end of your life.
888. 00:51:29 And hopefully you've, you've, uh, both been walking that path together and, uh,
889. 00:51:35 arrive where you, you want to arrive.
890. 00:51:39 Yeah, like, I don't know, Mike.
891. 00:51:41 I just think this is going to be taken the, the way wrong way.
892. 00:51:45 Like I understand what you told me.
893. 00:51:46 Like, okay, so you said about the oxygen mask thing.
894. 00:51:49 We got a comment in here that it's like, I agree.
895. 00:51:52 I, I get it at face value.
896. 00:51:53 I understand that.
897. 00:51:55 And in my mind, that situation is a little bit different and it's a bad
898. 00:51:59 analogy because if I don't put the oxygen mask on, I'm going to die.
899. 00:52:04 And if I die, I can't help anybody else.
900. 00:52:07 Okay.
901. 00:52:08 In this situation, I don't get the gist that that's what we're talking about here.
902. 00:52:13 Like we're not talking about like a life in that situation.
903. 00:52:15 We're talking about like, um, someone else's comfort should never come at
904. 00:52:19 the expense of your growth.
905. 00:52:22 Okay.
906. 00:52:22 So here's, here's the thing though.
907. 00:52:23 I do think it's life and death.
908. 00:52:25 I think it's life and death by series of a million tiny paper cuts.
909. 00:52:29 I think it's very possible you get to a point.
910. 00:52:32 If you never consider this stuff, this is what a midlife crisis is, is this
911. 00:52:37 isn't what I wanted.
912. 00:52:39 Well, if you're considering what you wanted and you're trying to align that
913. 00:52:43 with where you're going together, then I think this takes care of itself.
914. 00:52:48 But again, it's the longer timeframe that, uh, you have to, uh, you have to
915. 00:52:53 look at this through.
916. 00:52:55 I don't know.
917. 00:52:55 I, I think, I think it, I think it takes it too far.
918. 00:52:57 Uh, so we're, I think we're going to, we're going to disagree on this one.
919. 00:53:00 And I don't know if there's any, there's any saving it.
920. 00:53:03 Well, okay.
921. 00:53:04 I want to say one more thing.
922. 00:53:05 As someone who has dealt with mental health stuff in the not so distant past,
923. 00:53:14 I can tell you that there are certain things that will happen over and over
924. 00:53:19 and over again in your life that don't seem like a big deal, right?
925. 00:53:24 It's not life or death in that moment.
926. 00:53:27 But if you repeat it hundreds or thousands of times, it can lead you to a
927. 00:53:31 place, a very dark place where you're not useful to anybody.
928. 00:53:37 And it's not at that, you know, my wife's not like, well, forget you,
929. 00:53:40 because you're not doing what you said you were going to do.
930. 00:53:44 She was the one who's like, we're going to go to the walk in mental health clinic.
931. 00:53:47 And we're going to, we're going to get you checked out because I'm worried
932. 00:53:51 about you.
933. 00:53:51 Yeah.
934. 00:53:52 Okay.
935. 00:53:53 So I think this, this stuff can be insidious and you don't even realize it
936. 00:53:57 until one morning when you can't even, you're like,
937. 00:54:01 I don't want to get out of bed.
938. 00:54:03 Why did, how did I get here?
939. 00:54:04 Like all of that is irrelevant in that moment, but it wasn't one big catastrophic
940. 00:54:09 event that got you there.
941. 00:54:10 Yeah.
942. 00:54:11 Okay.
943. 00:54:12 Yeah, I don't know.
944. 00:54:14 I like I hear that was a very convincing argument.
945. 00:54:18 There's just something that irks me or something that rubs me wrong about
946. 00:54:22 chapter six.
947. 00:54:23 All right.
948. 00:54:23 Let's go to chapter seven.
949. 00:54:25 So how do we actually make better decisions?
950. 00:54:26 That's the title of chapter seven.
951. 00:54:29 Not surprisingly, like you'll probably if you're followed along, what do we do?
952. 00:54:33 We stopped choosing from fear.
953. 00:54:35 We choose from a different emotion.
954. 00:54:37 We follow a different path.
955. 00:54:38 We, we get into one of the frameworks that is presented in this book and it's
956. 00:54:44 the sage framework.
957. 00:54:46 Okay.
958. 00:54:47 And it's dimensions of actualized decisions.
959. 00:54:50 So this idea that we're going to now actually start to make decisions from, you
960. 00:54:55 know, a different place and sage stands for serenity, which choice will give me
961. 00:54:59 the deepest piece alignment, which choice aligns with who I want to become
962. 00:55:03 growth, which choice expands me the most and then emotion, which choice is
963. 00:55:07 driven by love and abundance rather than fear.
964. 00:55:10 I can't tell you that I think this is all that wrong.
965. 00:55:13 I would have never, ever, ever, ever come up with the, the acronym sage and
966. 00:55:20 or these four dimensions of actualized decision on my own.
967. 00:55:24 But I can't tell you that I think this is bad.
968. 00:55:26 Like if I'm going to make a choice and I'm going to make it from a sense of
969. 00:55:29 peace, great.
970. 00:55:31 If I'm going to make it from a sense of alignment with, I'm going to say with
971. 00:55:33 my values, great, I'm going to make it a decision that aligns with me.
972. 00:55:38 Um, I can't, I do not like the expands me the most, like that is just not the
973. 00:55:44 way I think about anything in life, but like growth, like growth, I get, like
974. 00:55:48 I understand that, but like in a way that makes me grow or challenges me or
975. 00:55:51 makes me better, right?
976. 00:55:52 Okay, cool.
977. 00:55:53 And then one that's driven by the idea of love, right?
978. 00:55:56 Like, okay, I'm in for that.
979. 00:55:57 So I don't have a fundamental issue with, with the sage framework.
980. 00:56:01 It is not going to be one that sticks in my head though.
981. 00:56:03 Like it just isn't, yeah, it doesn't, doesn't click.
982. 00:56:06 I'm not a huge fan of the, uh, the sage framework, but I think that the
983. 00:56:11 advice in this chapter is really good.
984. 00:56:13 So you kind of mentioned the, the stuff already, but our experience of reality
985. 00:56:17 is not something we passively observe.
986. 00:56:18 It's something we actively shape.
987. 00:56:20 And there's a question here where he encourages us to ask, what kind of
988. 00:56:25 life do I want to create with this choice?
989. 00:56:27 That is a hundred percent.
990. 00:56:30 I agree with that.
991. 00:56:31 Like that's this whole book in a nutshell for me is that you have more
992. 00:56:37 power than you realize.
993. 00:56:40 And even if you don't feel like you have options, you have options.
994. 00:56:45 And you have to recognize that those options are there.
995. 00:56:48 You do have the ability to quit your job if you want to.
996. 00:56:53 And then when you realize that you have that freedom, now it completely
997. 00:56:58 changes how you show up for your job, because it's something that you've chosen
998. 00:57:01 to do, if you can align that with your vision and your values, even better.
999. 00:57:04 Now you've got the motivation to show up every day and take consistent action
1000. 00:57:08 on the things that are important and the clarity to cut the things that aren't.
1001. 00:57:11 That's the whole goal of the life theme process that I teach in the library.
1002. 00:57:15 So I think this is really good, but yeah, I don't really care for that sage
1003. 00:57:20 framework. I don't disagree with it.
1004. 00:57:21 I just it's like, yeah, that's that's nice.
1005. 00:57:24 The core one is the trust framework, and that's the next chapter.
1006. 00:57:27 Yeah.
1007. 00:57:27 And what you described there, he's it's his definition of the actualized
1008. 00:57:32 decision, right?
1009. 00:57:33 A choice made not from all the negative stuff, but it's made from the more positive
1010. 00:57:37 stuff. And I think seeing that like you like you just said, seeing that is is the
1011. 00:57:42 key takeaway from that and see this is the thing.
1012. 00:57:45 This is the thing and why I keep fighting you on on this.
1013. 00:57:49 I feel like average after we get to is if you feel like you are stuck,
1014. 00:57:54 you will resent the life that you have at some point.
1015. 00:57:58 There will come a point where you're like, I have to do this thing.
1016. 00:58:01 I don't want to do this thing.
1017. 00:58:02 How in the world did I get here?
1018. 00:58:05 Right.
1019. 00:58:06 And if you recognize that, no, this is a choice that I made and I have
1020. 00:58:12 the power and ability to make a different choice.
1021. 00:58:15 If I want, now it's not so bad.
1022. 00:58:18 In fact, it's not even bad.
1023. 00:58:19 It's it's good because yeah, it's uncomfortable, maybe in the moment,
1024. 00:58:23 just like going to the gym is uncomfortable, but it's in service of
1025. 00:58:27 something that is more important to me.
1026. 00:58:30 This is the root of passion.
1027. 00:58:31 The root of passion is the Latin word petit literally means to suffer.
1028. 00:58:36 So an actualized decision is not the one that feels the best.
1029. 00:58:40 It's the one that is the best based on current information that you
1030. 00:58:45 believe is going to get you closest to where you want to go.
1031. 00:58:50 Ah, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, I mean, I can't lie.
1032. 00:58:56 Like nothing that you're saying isn't correct, like nothing you're saying.
1033. 00:59:01 I don't like, I don't think anything you're saying is incorrect, where it's
1034. 00:59:03 like, I'm going to push back on, that's that's wrong.
1035. 00:59:06 You know, kind of a thing.
1036. 00:59:07 I just, I don't know, there's something something goofy.
1037. 00:59:10 All right, let's go to chapter eight, the trust decision-making framework.
1038. 00:59:13 So he lays out, and I think this is the crux of what he's trying to drive out here.
1039. 00:59:19 Like we're trying to get to the trust decision-making framework, a five step
1040. 00:59:23 practice designed to help you break through overthinking and make actualized
1041. 00:59:26 decisions.
1042. 00:59:28 It's not meant to give you the right answer.
1043. 00:59:30 It's intended to help you remember what you already know.
1044. 00:59:32 And here are the here is the acronym.
1045. 00:59:35 T is take five deep breaths, or reveal the root decision, you uncover the fear
1046. 00:59:42 and the cost of listening to it, S shift from fear to intuition, and then T take
1047. 00:59:48 the smallest possible action.
1048. 00:59:50 And Mike, I'm going to tell you, like, I don't have any problem with the
1049. 00:59:53 trust framework at all.
1050. 00:59:55 Like I like the trust framework.
1051. 00:59:57 I think the trust framework makes sense.
1052. 00:59:59 I think it's good.
1053. 01:00:01 I think the five steps of it make, make total steps.
1054. 01:00:04 Like what do you do?
1055. 01:00:05 You intentionally slow down, right?
1056. 01:00:07 So you take those five breaths and then you try to figure out what's the,
1057. 01:00:12 what's the root cause of everything, which I'm a big fan of root cause analysis.
1058. 01:00:16 Then we say your fear setting activity, right?
1059. 01:00:19 Is the next one, right?
1060. 01:00:20 Then we roll into the shift from fear to intuition.
1061. 01:00:23 It's like, okay, well, let's actually, you know, kind of figure out what the
1062. 01:00:27 intuitive answer to this is if it's not fear.
1063. 01:00:30 And then finally, you know, what's the smallest possible action, which we've
1064. 01:00:33 talked about a bunch of different habits type things of the smallest possible action.
1065. 01:00:36 So I like the, I like the trust framework.
1066. 01:00:38 I think the trust framework is good.
1067. 01:00:40 I don't know if I will ever remember to use it, but I, but I like it.
1068. 01:00:44 Like I don't have a, I don't have an inherent problem with it.
1069. 01:00:46 Yeah.
1070. 01:00:47 And that's the issue I have with it is I feel like it sounds good.
1071. 01:00:51 It looks good.
1072. 01:00:52 It makes sense.
1073. 01:00:53 I don't think it is very applicable unless you walk around with this checklist in
1074. 01:00:58 your wallet and every time that you have to make an important decision.
1075. 01:01:02 You take it out.
1076. 01:01:03 I think it could be simplified.
1077. 01:01:05 I think it is five steps because they had five letters.
1078. 01:01:11 But if I were to condense this down, it's really, okay, let's, let's slow down here and
1079. 01:01:18 figure out what is the actual motivation here.
1080. 01:01:24 And then what is the correct motivation and how do I move in that direction?
1081. 01:01:31 Right. So I think there's really three steps here, maybe, but I don't know.
1082. 01:01:37 Like I really can't fault the author for putting it together this way based on
1083. 01:01:42 everything that they've, they've shared here.
1084. 01:01:44 Maybe for some people it is easier to have five distinct steps like that with tiny
1085. 01:01:51 actions that, that you can take.
1086. 01:01:53 But yeah, I'm not applying this myself.
1087. 01:01:56 I think it's good.
1088. 01:01:57 And I agree with everything in it.
1089. 01:01:59 But I am not going to, I'm not going to use this.
1090. 01:02:04 I am going to use it as a reminder that when I'm making decisions,
1091. 01:02:08 I don't have to have it all figured out.
1092. 01:02:11 And I just need to do something that's going to move me in the right direction.
1093. 01:02:17 So I think that's the brilliance of this, actually, is that last step.
1094. 01:02:20 Is that you don't need to take a big step.
1095. 01:02:23 You need to take a step, a step.
1096. 01:02:26 You cannot steer a parked car.
1097. 01:02:29 And when you are overthinking, that is what you have done.
1098. 01:02:31 You have turned off the ignition.
1099. 01:02:33 You have put it in park.
1100. 01:02:36 So the analogy I like to think about this one is, is you ever ride a jet ski?
1101. 01:02:39 Yeah.
1102. 01:02:40 So like to move a jet ski, to turn a jet ski, you actually have to push the gas.
1103. 01:02:44 Like you actually have to accelerate.
1104. 01:02:46 And if you're not taking some sort of action, you're not moving in the direction that you
1105. 01:02:52 have decided that you should go.
1106. 01:02:54 So it's like, I like that one.
1107. 01:02:56 The funny thing is you made the comment and I forgot to make it when I was introducing trust.
1108. 01:03:00 I also, when I was reading this thought, well, that's convenient that, you know, TRUSD,
1109. 01:03:05 like that's like, that's a convenient thing.
1110. 01:03:07 So it's like, it almost felt like it felt that way inherently.
1111. 01:03:11 And I don't know why it felt that way inherently.
1112. 01:03:13 But it's funny that you made that, that comment too.
1113. 01:03:16 Yeah.
1114. 01:03:17 This is the gist of the book though.
1115. 01:03:20 Like if you're going to take away one thing from this, this is, this is it.
1116. 01:03:23 Yeah.
1117. 01:03:23 All right. So chapter nine, interestingly, chapter nine is called conclusion, a new perspective.
1118. 01:03:30 So now we're getting into this idea of essentially putting it all together.
1119. 01:03:35 And like the, this brave idea or the perspective that you should have is self trust.
1120. 01:03:45 And it ties into the trust framework.
1121. 01:03:47 It ties into, you know, the sage idea and all of these things.
1122. 01:03:52 I don't have a ton from this other than we kind of just wrapped up
1123. 01:03:55 all the things we had said in the last, the last day chapters,
1124. 01:03:58 Mike, I don't know if you have anything else that you want to, want to hit here.
1125. 01:04:04 I guess that I liked the, the encouragement that reality is not fixed.
1126. 01:04:09 It's created.
1127. 01:04:11 It's also worth recognizing that the mind craves certainty and safety.
1128. 01:04:18 Life offers neither guarantee nor control only opportunity.
1129. 01:04:22 This is a very effective conclusion.
1130. 01:04:24 Unfortunately, it's not the conclusion that you heard my, you heard my statement when I said
1131. 01:04:31 chapter nine is interestingly named conclusion, right?
1132. 01:04:34 Like, I agree.
1133. 01:04:35 It's, it's strange.
1134. 01:04:37 Yeah.
1135. 01:04:37 It's a, it's a very good pepperale for going and making positive change in your life.
1136. 01:04:45 But hold on, folks, there's three more chapters in this part, and then there's four more parts.
1137. 01:04:50 Yeah.
1138. 01:04:50 Okay.
1139. 01:04:51 So let's talk about chapter 10, the threshold before you.
1140. 01:04:55 So basically it's, this is chapter is a launch into the rest of the book.
1141. 01:05:00 It's trying to say like, okay, here's what we're going to do.
1142. 01:05:03 We're going to move into a bunch of exercises.
1143. 01:05:06 Take all take this as an opportunity to cross the threshold to become a new person
1144. 01:05:10 to forget about the person that you were and, you know, practice into this new way of thinking
1145. 01:05:17 in this new perspective.
1146. 01:05:18 That's what I got at a chapter 10.
1147. 01:05:21 Yeah, I think that's, that's accurate.
1148. 01:05:24 And I think it's interesting that there's that encouragement on the one hand.
1149. 01:05:29 You know, we just did the conclusion.
1150. 01:05:31 That's the pepperale.
1151. 01:05:32 Why do we need another chapter here?
1152. 01:05:34 But based on the format of the book, I do think it's probably valuable to have a separate
1153. 01:05:39 chapter convincing us to do the exercises if what he has discussed so far is resonating with you.
1154. 01:05:47 And you are the ideal reader.
1155. 01:05:49 I think neither you nor I are the ideal reader.
1156. 01:05:53 So it feels, feels extra.
1157. 01:05:56 Okay.
1158. 01:05:57 The next one is a guide to using this book most effectively.
1159. 01:06:01 And what I don't understand is why this guide isn't at the beginning of the book.
1160. 01:06:09 And like actually walking me through everything from the very, very beginning,
1161. 01:06:13 it feels very strange to me that this guide comes in.
1162. 01:06:17 It chapter 11, you know, in essentially the middle of the book or a third of the way through
1163. 01:06:22 the book, however you want to think about that.
1164. 01:06:25 But it's like, you know, walk through the trust exercise when you're ready to make.
1165. 01:06:30 So he's basically explaining the how to use the rest of the book most effectively.
1166. 01:06:35 When you're ready to understand the patterns, find the choices, go to discovering yourself
1167. 01:06:38 in decision making section, choose a challenge from the tiny acts of self trust kind of a thing.
1168. 01:06:44 Like he's explaining how to use the rest of the book, which just feels really weird at this point.
1169. 01:06:51 But okay, I'm sorry with this.
1170. 01:06:53 I don't understand why we didn't.
1171. 01:06:55 I don't understand why we didn't take chapter 10, 11 and 12 and lump them all into one thing.
1172. 01:06:59 That's what I'm well, maybe just 10 and 11 because 12 is a little bit different too.
1173. 01:07:03 Well, I feel like this one talks about how there's no fixed sequence for the exercises that you can
1174. 01:07:11 pick and choose the things that you want out of there.
1175. 01:07:13 So I feel like it makes sense.
1176. 01:07:15 I get why it's here, I think, because everything that was shared in the first nine chapters is
1177. 01:07:23 sort of foundational knowledge that you need in order to do the rest of the stuff that's in here.
1178. 01:07:29 However, there is a version of this that they could have shared at the beginning saying,
1179. 01:07:34 part one is all the foundational knowledge stuff and then everything that's in this chapter
1180. 01:07:39 for using the rest of the book.
1181. 01:07:42 I think I would have appreciated that.
1182. 01:07:44 But if you're trying to get people to stop overthinking things, maybe it's best to just
1183. 01:07:47 dive right into it.
1184. 01:07:48 I don't know.
1185. 01:07:50 Okay.
1186. 01:07:50 Now chapter 12 is called decision making principles.
1187. 01:07:55 And the decision making principles, I'm trying to capture to remember how many of them total
1188. 01:08:00 there were.
1189. 01:08:00 There were 30.
1190. 01:08:00 I wrote down four.
1191. 01:08:02 One was fear and protection, intuition and inner knowing, growth, alignment and choice,
1192. 01:08:07 and then self-trust and emotional freedom.
1193. 01:08:08 So those are the headers for the 31 actual decision making principles.
1194. 01:08:15 So there's 31 of them that grouped into four headers.
1195. 01:08:18 And the reason why I didn't know 31 off the top of my head is because I didn't write down
1196. 01:08:24 all of them because they weren't always interesting to me as other ones.
1197. 01:08:27 I captured the header and then went to the ones that I thought were interesting.
1198. 01:08:31 So as Mike said, there's the idea of decision making principles, fear and protection.
1199. 01:08:35 An example of this would be fears, not a stop sign.
1200. 01:08:38 It's a compass pointing you into what matters most.
1201. 01:08:40 Like that would be an example of the principle within fear and protection.
1202. 01:08:44 Intuition and inner knowledge.
1203. 01:08:46 No one else has to understand your decision for it to be right for you.
1204. 01:08:49 That's an intuition and inner knowledge type thing.
1205. 01:08:51 Growth, alignment and choice.
1206. 01:08:55 To create the life you love, make decisions based on what you want instead of make
1207. 01:08:58 decision to avoid what you fear.
1208. 01:09:00 And then self-trust and emotional freedom.
1209. 01:09:03 Your focus is a mental magnet.
1210. 01:09:07 What you place your attention on is what you attract more of in your life.
1211. 01:09:10 So it's just these principles and there's no commentary around them.
1212. 01:09:16 Like it's just like the four sections and then there's principles.
1213. 01:09:20 I shouldn't say there's no commentary around them.
1214. 01:09:21 Forgive me.
1215. 01:09:22 There is a very brief commentary at the very beginning that kind of describes like,
1216. 01:09:28 hey, I'm going to give you these principles now.
1217. 01:09:31 And then we move on to the next section.
1218. 01:09:34 Yeah, this is a list of overthinking tweets that we're packaged into a section.
1219. 01:09:39 I mean, it's just honestly, I said at the very beginning,
1220. 01:09:42 like this is one of the strangest books I've ever read.
1221. 01:09:45 And I didn't even know what to do with it at times.
1222. 01:09:49 Okay, so now we get into part two.
1223. 01:09:52 Mike, I assume you're ready to go to part two.
1224. 01:09:54 Yep.
1225. 01:09:54 All right, because the rest of this is in my mind,
1226. 01:09:56 the rest of this discussion is going to go very, very fast.
1227. 01:09:59 And we're going to move on into the after show or the after book matter real quick.
1228. 01:10:03 Chapter two is a bunch of activities that you go through.
1229. 01:10:09 Like so the first is self discovery.
1230. 01:10:10 So there's part two of the book and then part one of part two.
1231. 01:10:14 And there's part two of the book part two of part two.
1232. 01:10:16 So part one is self discovery and part two is self-revention.
1233. 01:10:19 And let me describe, let me try to describe.
1234. 01:10:22 So chapter 13 would be called revealing hidden patterns.
1235. 01:10:24 And it would start off with basically like reflection exercises.
1236. 01:10:29 How would you describe yourself as a decision maker?
1237. 01:10:32 How does decision making typically go for you?
1238. 01:10:34 Then you have a couple of rating questions.
1239. 01:10:36 Then you have some things that you, you know, trigger overthinking.
1240. 01:10:39 Do's and don'ts.
1241. 01:10:40 Why do you think that is?
1242. 01:10:42 What do you overthinking feel like for you?
1243. 01:10:44 And then you go to chapter 14 and 14 would be what emotions feel the most present for
1244. 01:10:49 you when making a difficult decision.
1245. 01:10:51 And then there's some like rating questions.
1246. 01:10:53 So I'm going to rate it based on one to five.
1247. 01:10:56 Then there's mind body.
1248. 01:10:57 And it's a very, very formulaic parts one and part two are very, very formulaic
1249. 01:11:02 around the idea of self discovery and self-reinvention.
1250. 01:11:06 And if, if chapters one through 12 have resonated with you and you're going to do this,
1251. 01:11:11 in my mind, you need to set aside a significant amount of time
1252. 01:11:15 to work through chapters 13 through 24.
1253. 01:11:20 Like, I don't know what you thought.
1254. 01:11:21 I don't know what you want to add to that.
1255. 01:11:22 But like, it's really now like a big, long workbook for me to work through.
1256. 01:11:28 Yep, absolutely.
1257. 01:11:30 I am not a huge fan of any of the exercises.
1258. 01:11:34 I've flipped through them with the intention of picking the ones that really
1259. 01:11:38 seemed interesting to me and nothing grabbed my attention.
1260. 01:11:42 Agreed.
1261. 01:11:43 I left room to do it.
1262. 01:11:44 You know, I finished this book three days ago, I think.
1263. 01:11:48 So I built in the margin and was just like,
1264. 01:11:53 and that's just me, you know, because I gleaned some good stuff out of the first part,
1265. 01:11:58 but you kind of lost me.
1266. 01:12:00 And I feel like if you're going to do these exercises,
1267. 01:12:04 you really got to buy in completely to everything that he's shared up until this point.
1268. 01:12:09 Otherwise, find some different exercises.
1269. 01:12:12 And that's really the thing is like, find the exercises, find the questions that are
1270. 01:12:16 really going to help you refine your decision-making in service of the future that you are creating.
1271. 01:12:25 That's the overall message of this book.
1272. 01:12:27 And these exercises just didn't do it for me.
1273. 01:12:29 But I've also created my own exercises as part of the personal retreat process,
1274. 01:12:33 the life-themed process.
1275. 01:12:35 So I sort of stumbled my way into the version of this that I like.
1276. 01:12:41 And so it's not surprising to me that I looked at these and I was like, nah, this is it for me.
1277. 01:12:46 Overall idea, overall idea, I like though.
1278. 01:12:50 So we'll go to part three.
1279. 01:12:51 And part three is practicing trust a step-by-step exercise for your overthinking decisions,
1280. 01:12:57 for when you're overthinking decisions.
1281. 01:12:58 Now what's interesting about this is in part three, he fully repeats the decision-making
1282. 01:13:06 principles fully.
1283. 01:13:08 He re-hits on the sage framework, he re-hits on the trust framework,
1284. 01:13:13 and then he takes you through another set of like reflection activities and another set of
1285. 01:13:19 kind of exercises.
1286. 01:13:20 And again, it's almost like he only revisits those other things,
1287. 01:13:24 so you don't have to scroll the whole way back up to the top.
1288. 01:13:27 But he does point you to like, you can download these things from my website.
1289. 01:13:31 So like, I really think what he wants you to do is go download them and then have them sitting
1290. 01:13:34 out beside you as you do the exercises.
1291. 01:13:38 Some of the exercises include like, which decision felt the hardest?
1292. 01:13:42 Did you recognize any patterns in your thoughts or fears?
1293. 01:13:45 What insights can you draw?
1294. 01:13:46 He's got some reading questions in there.
1295. 01:13:48 How much was overthinking present in these decisions?
1296. 01:13:51 Like, it's just again, like you said, Mike, I think you said it the best.
1297. 01:13:55 You really have to buy into this stuff to then commit to doing this.
1298. 01:14:00 I, as I read through them, was like, well, I'm just not going to do this.
1299. 01:14:04 Like, I'm not, like, I'm not, I don't think I'm going to get enough value out of this.
1300. 01:14:07 I'm just not going to do this.
1301. 01:14:09 But if you do buy in, I think that these are probably valuable questions.
1302. 01:14:12 Like, I don't think the questions themselves are bad.
1303. 01:14:14 It's just, I could look at them and I've considered enough thinking time questions
1304. 01:14:19 that I was like, this one's not going to do it for me.
1305. 01:14:22 So feel free to discard this part of the book.
1306. 01:14:26 I would say if you're not being pulled along by these questions, don't force it.
1307. 01:14:31 Yeah.
1308. 01:14:31 And then then we go into part four and part four.
1309. 01:14:36 I think I actually am going to like part four better than Mike,
1310. 01:14:39 based on the little bit of talk we've had about this.
1311. 01:14:41 But it's tiny acts of self-trust, many decision-making experiments to help you
1312. 01:14:45 stop overthinking and start trusting yourself again.
1313. 01:14:48 And basically what this is is, hey, try this experiment
1314. 01:14:52 and see how it goes.
1315. 01:14:53 Try this experiment, see how it goes.
1316. 01:14:55 I didn't count the number that they're have, but there's at least 20.
1317. 01:14:58 There's probably 25 or so in here.
1318. 01:15:02 The examples of them are go with your gut on food.
1319. 01:15:06 So instead of over-analyzing or overthinking the menu,
1320. 01:15:09 look at the menu real quick and say like, what am I thinking I'm going to order for this meal?
1321. 01:15:14 Okay, cool.
1322. 01:15:14 That's a good example.
1323. 01:15:16 Right without editing.
1324. 01:15:18 Free right.
1325. 01:15:18 Just right.
1326. 01:15:19 You know, don't try to edit anything.
1327. 01:15:20 Great.
1328. 01:15:21 The courage to say no, say no to something, right?
1329. 01:15:23 Like just, you know, make sure that this week you figure out something to say no.
1330. 01:15:28 Delay a decision on purpose.
1331. 01:15:30 Oh, I want to buy this thing.
1332. 01:15:31 Well, I'm intentionally going to delay for 48 hours.
1333. 01:15:33 These aren't new.
1334. 01:15:35 I've heard these in different places before.
1335. 01:15:38 He's tying them into ways to help you stop overthinking.
1336. 01:15:42 I actually think that there is a there is a world in which I would try some of these.
1337. 01:15:48 But I don't think any of these stood out enough to me
1338. 01:15:52 for me to add them as an action item and say like, I'm definitely going to try this one.
1339. 01:15:58 You know, like it was just I think I have probably tried all of these to be honest.
1340. 01:16:03 This is every piece of productivity advice that you can think of packaged in one section
1341. 01:16:10 and loosely connected to the topic of overthinking decisions.
1342. 01:16:16 Yep, that's a great that's a great summary.
1343. 01:16:18 I don't have anything better to say.
1344. 01:16:20 So Mike, yes, that's it.
1345. 01:16:22 And again, very, very strange.
1346. 01:16:25 The book just ends.
1347. 01:16:29 Like after part four and after you get through that last tiny exercise,
1348. 01:16:34 there might be a note section.
1349. 01:16:35 I don't know, Mike, you could probably remember this better than.
1350. 01:16:38 No, there's a what you should read next.
1351. 01:16:40 And it's literally a QR code to his other books.
1352. 01:16:42 Yeah, like it's it just ends.
1353. 01:16:45 It just flat out ends.
1354. 01:16:46 So again, very, very strange in my mind structure to some some things
1355. 01:16:52 and kind of the overall the way we're doing things.
1356. 01:16:54 So at that point, let's go into action items.
1357. 01:16:58 I will be very quick.
1358. 01:16:59 My action item is to take your PKM quiz.
1359. 01:17:02 I have I have no action items from this book and I'm totally okay with that.
1360. 01:17:07 Yeah, I also don't have any action items.
1361. 01:17:10 I think the one action item that is like right there for everybody is you go through the part
1362. 01:17:18 two exercises, which that's okay.
1363. 01:17:22 So the the perspective like how we read books, why we read books is we go through all this stuff
1364. 01:17:28 and we pick and choose the things that we want.
1365. 01:17:31 And there were things in here that I liked, but because it was an entire comprehensive package,
1366. 01:17:38 I felt like you're asking me to completely buy in right at the beginning.
1367. 01:17:42 And if I've really bought in, then you've got a whole curriculum for me.
1368. 01:17:45 Great.
1369. 01:17:46 If I want that, that's awesome.
1370. 01:17:48 But the flip side of that is if I don't want that, it's hard to tease out individual things
1371. 01:17:53 as action items from this book.
1372. 01:17:55 I agree.
1373. 01:17:56 I agree completely.
1374. 01:17:57 When I think back on the books that we've read, and we're trying to, you know,
1375. 01:18:00 like the tagline of our show, like we're trying to apply these books to our life.
1376. 01:18:03 When I think back about from the books we've read, there are many, many, many other frameworks
1377. 01:18:08 and many, many other activities that were in other books that I want to do before I do
1378. 01:18:13 anything in this book.
1379. 01:18:14 So therefore it just, it's a non-starter for me when it comes to acting on this.
1380. 01:18:20 Let's go to the styling rating.
1381. 01:18:22 My book, my time to go first, which I don't want to go first.
1382. 01:18:27 I'm torn here.
1383. 01:18:30 And where I'm torn here is like, I think there were some interesting things.
1384. 01:18:35 I mean, we've just talked on this book for an hour plus, you know, about like things that
1385. 01:18:40 we've thought about.
1386. 01:18:41 And the crazy thing is like there wasn't a ton of like new and, you know,
1387. 01:18:45 revelatory content in the first 60 pages.
1388. 01:18:49 But at the same time, like some of the stuff was thought-provoking.
1389. 01:18:52 It made me think about things.
1390. 01:18:54 What's interesting about this book is it actually made me more confident in things that I've
1391. 01:19:02 evaluated and established up until now.
1392. 01:19:05 It wasn't like some books that they come out in this like new idea.
1393. 01:19:08 Oh, this new idea, this is a new idea I'm going to apply to my life.
1394. 01:19:10 This is new.
1395. 01:19:11 And this one was more of a, that's an interesting idea.
1396. 01:19:14 But no, like I'm liking the way I approach the situation or I'm liking the way I do this.
1397. 01:19:21 I think the, like you said, like the trust framework is the most valuable thing out of that.
1398. 01:19:27 But I can't tell you that I'm going to actually apply the trust framework in situations where
1399. 01:19:31 I find myself overthinking.
1400. 01:19:33 I think the thing that will stay with me the longest in this book is, okay, am I overthinking
1401. 01:19:41 this out of fear?
1402. 01:19:42 Or am I overthinking this out of something else?
1403. 01:19:45 And I think the main reason why that will be the thing that sticks with me is I'm less
1404. 01:19:48 confident on everything being out of fear or whether or not everything
1405. 01:19:55 is a derivative of some sort of fear.
1406. 01:19:58 And I'm calling it something, you know, like that, that idea is going to stick with me
1407. 01:20:02 only because I don't like it.
1408. 01:20:03 Like I'm not, I haven't wrestled around with it enough.
1409. 01:20:05 And I want to wrestle around with it more.
1410. 01:20:07 And I don't like when ideas aren't solidified in my head.
1411. 01:20:10 So that's going to be from a style standpoint.
1412. 01:20:14 I really wish he would have explained the nature of the book and the style of the book
1413. 01:20:20 from the very beginning.
1414. 01:20:22 Because it just didn't click with me the way he wanted me to work through this.
1415. 01:20:29 And like when I got to part two, I was just like, wait, what?
1416. 01:20:32 Like, we're just going to do this for a long time now.
1417. 01:20:36 Like here we go for 12 chapters.
1418. 01:20:38 And like, and that just didn't resonate with me at all.
1419. 01:20:40 And at no point was I, at no point was I enticed to do his activities.
1420. 01:20:48 Okay.
1421. 01:20:48 So, okay, I'm going to go on.
1422. 01:20:52 Mike, and like, I think there are people out there that this book will really click
1423. 01:20:57 with obviously based on, you know, some ratings on online and things like that.
1424. 01:21:01 There are people that this book will click with.
1425. 01:21:03 I am not one of those people.
1426. 01:21:05 This is a, this is a one star book for me.
1427. 01:21:07 Mike, like I really think this is a one star book for me.
1428. 01:21:11 All right.
1429. 01:21:12 And I'm the one who picked it and I feel terrible about that.
1430. 01:21:16 Yeah, so I think this is very close to being a great book for me.
1431. 01:21:22 But it is not a great book for me.
1432. 01:21:24 And for reasons that we have discussed at length, I feel like the author did just about
1433. 01:21:30 everything they could to push me away in certain ways, certain tiny little, little things.
1434. 01:21:39 And I do think that there are some really powerful ideas in here.
1435. 01:21:44 I like the challenge at the beginning to think about fear being the dominant motivation
1436. 01:21:50 in your life and wrestling with that.
1437. 01:21:51 And what are you going to do about that?
1438. 01:21:53 I think there's some great perspective that is shared in the first part of this book,
1439. 01:22:01 some of the stories and just the way things are described.
1440. 01:22:05 I can instantly see this is coming from a particular perspective that does not resonate with me,
1441. 01:22:10 which means that the whole parts two through four of this book kind of lost me.
1442. 01:22:17 But I do think it's interesting.
1443. 01:22:20 I'm trying to think about if I had come across this book at the beginning of my productivity journey,
1444. 01:22:26 I had not tried almost every single one of these tiny acts of self-trust
1445. 01:22:31 as they were presented as things to do in other productivity or self-help books that I had read.
1446. 01:22:37 I was coming to this fresh, how would this resonate?
1447. 01:22:41 I think there's potential that it's maybe a little bit more useful.
1448. 01:22:45 But also, I don't know that this is one that I would necessarily recommend.
1449. 01:22:51 I think there's about a thousand words of really challenging ideas
1450. 01:22:56 in the first part of this book.
1451. 01:22:59 And you definitely don't need to go through the whole book.
1452. 01:23:01 I think maybe you, if I could create like a cliff notes version of this with the things
1453. 01:23:06 that I thought were important, I'd give that to people and be like, "Okay, read this,
1454. 01:23:09 then come back to me and tell me how you feel about it."
1455. 01:23:12 And if they're like, "Yeah, I totally agree with all this stuff.
1456. 01:23:15 Okay, then go pick up this book and go through the exercises and you'll probably get a lot out of it."
1457. 01:23:20 I'm sort of stuck in between.
1458. 01:23:23 I'm not the person who's just, "Oh, I don't agree with this at all."
1459. 01:23:28 But also, I don't agree with all of this.
1460. 01:23:33 So I'm going to put it at three stars right in the middle.
1461. 01:23:36 I think it is well written.
1462. 01:23:39 And I do think that there's potential for some people to pick up this book,
1463. 01:23:43 go through that first part and be like, "Wow, I never thought about it that way before.
1464. 01:23:47 This changes everything."
1465. 01:23:49 I would caution you not to just myself personally, blindly follow the author down the rest of the
1466. 01:23:56 path here.
1467. 01:23:57 But I think there are some people where these exercises are great.
1468. 01:24:01 And this is the life design handbook for you.
1469. 01:24:04 And it's a five plus star book.
1470. 01:24:07 But that is not me.
1471. 01:24:09 And I don't think it's the average book where I'm listener.
1472. 01:24:12 I do think if you were to pick this one up and read through just the first part,
1473. 01:24:17 it's probably going to challenge you a little bit.
1474. 01:24:20 Maybe see if you can get it from the library or something.
1475. 01:24:22 I would agree.
1476. 01:24:24 I would agree.
1477. 01:24:25 Yeah, I would agree.
1478. 01:24:26 Yeah, so three stars.
1479. 01:24:28 I'm actually surprised that you rated it that high.
1480. 01:24:32 So Mike, let's put the overthinkers guide to making decisions on the shelf.
1481. 01:24:38 What's next?
1482. 01:24:40 Next is the end of Burnout by Jonathan Malcich.
1483. 01:24:45 We talked a little bit about Burnout last time when we went through Intentional.
1484. 01:24:50 And I'm nervous about this book now.
1485. 01:24:55 But Burnout is a thing that I have dealt with.
1486. 01:24:59 And yeah, I'm going to take you down this journey with me.
1487. 01:25:03 If nothing else, we'll get to talk about Burnout, and that'll be fun.
1488. 01:25:07 Yeah, it will.
1489. 01:25:09 After that, we're going to be doing The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stenier.
1490. 01:25:16 And Mike is familiar with this book.
1491. 01:25:18 This book's a little bit older.
1492. 01:25:19 It's from 2016.
1493. 01:25:20 I am not familiar with it.
1494. 01:25:22 But the subline is, say less, ask more and change the way you lead.
1495. 01:25:26 So it's a leadership book around coaching.
1496. 01:25:28 So I'm excited to see how that one impacts me in advising, and working with my kids,
1497. 01:25:34 and doing different things as a leader.
1498. 01:25:36 So that'll be fun.
1499. 01:25:38 Nice.
1500. 01:25:39 Do you have any gap books?
1501. 01:25:41 I do.
1502. 01:25:42 I'm on this fiction kick, thanks to Corey.
1503. 01:25:44 So I have finished up Red Rising by Pierce Brown.
1504. 01:25:48 And I am reading The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald,
1505. 01:25:52 because we're actually going to go see The Great Gatsby as a play in March or April.
1506. 01:25:57 I can't remember, we got tickets.
1507. 01:25:59 So yeah, and then I've got another fiction book lined up after that.
1508. 01:26:03 So it's working, Corey.
1509. 01:26:06 All right, bookworm listeners.
1510. 01:26:07 I'm just going to let you know, we might turn into a fiction podcast as well.
1511. 01:26:12 Not true, not true, not true.
1512. 01:26:15 So my gap book right now is called The Crucified King, and it's by Jeremy Treat.
1513. 01:26:22 And it is what the what the tin says, right?
1514. 01:26:25 So it's a very much a theology and Bible book about Jesus being crucified.
1515. 01:26:31 So there you go.
1516. 01:26:33 We just want to thank the pro listeners on our pro show.
1517. 01:26:38 We talked about our 2025 retrospective and then what we're looking forward to in 2026.
1518. 01:26:44 So if you're interested in listening to that, you can check that out.
1519. 01:26:49 If you're interested in becoming a pro member, it supports the show.
1520. 01:26:52 It helps us kind of with the hosting and with the back end items that we do,
1521. 01:26:58 or that we need to provide for the show.
1522. 01:27:00 But it'll give you a longer ad-free pro show, like I described the retrospective.
1523. 01:27:05 It'll give you a bootleg, which is released pretty much right after the recording.
1524. 01:27:09 So we dump that audio down and we get it turned around really, really fast.
1525. 01:27:12 Usually it's about a week or two early.
1526. 01:27:14 It gives you a bookworm wallpaper, and Mike has generously shared his reading master class
1527. 01:27:21 from Practical PKM.
1528. 01:27:22 So that's Mike, what, three hours, two and a half hours, something like that.
1529. 01:27:26 Yep, two and a half hours of how to reading goodness.
1530. 01:27:30 So that was awesome for him to do that.
1531. 01:27:33 It's seven dollars a month.
1532. 01:27:35 You can sign up on bookworm.fm/pro.
1533. 01:27:39 You can go there to sign up.
1534. 01:27:41 And we thank everybody who is a pro member.
1535. 01:27:43 It really, really does support us and it really, really helps us out.
1536. 01:27:45 So thanks so much.
1537. 01:27:47 Yes, absolutely.
1538. 01:27:48 Thank you.
1539. 01:27:48 And thank you to the people who showed up live.
1540. 01:27:51 We had a bit of a lively chat this time around.
1541. 01:27:55 And that was definitely an ad to recording the show.
1542. 01:28:00 So we do share the links when we go live.
1543. 01:28:05 We record on YouTube.
1544. 01:28:06 So if you want to join us live, please check that out.
1545. 01:28:08 If you're reading along with us, then pick up The End of Burn Up by Jonathan Malcich.
1546. 01:28:12 And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.