248: How to Live a Meaningful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

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1. 00:00:00 OK, Mike, welcome back.
2. 00:00:01 We are going to talk about meaning and purpose and coherency.
3. 00:00:07 But before we do that, we should talk about our action items.
4. 00:00:11 And one of the action items related directly to our book
5. 00:00:13 that we're going to talk about today-- and that
6. 00:00:15 was for me to listen to the Nathan Berry episode of--
7. 00:00:20 that had Bill Burnett and Dave Evans on it.
8. 00:00:22 And I did listen to that.
9. 00:00:23 And I've never felt more proud to have a green checkmark
10. 00:00:27 by one of my action items.
11. 00:00:28 And I mean, in all seriousness, I've
12. 00:00:30 been following Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, who
13. 00:00:34 are the authors of this book today,
14. 00:00:35 for a very, very, very long time, very long time.
15. 00:00:39 So it was cool to hear them not in a book.
16. 00:00:43 And it was cool to get to--
17. 00:00:46 I mean, by no means meet, but get to hear somebody
18. 00:00:50 that you've talked highly about, Nathan Berry.
19. 00:00:52 You've spoken highly about him through the Crafty Commerce
20. 00:00:56 and through Kit and through these other things
21. 00:00:58 a couple of different times.
22. 00:00:59 So it was fun to hear that dialogue
23. 00:01:01 and then kind of see what they think
24. 00:01:03 are like the highlights of this book.
25. 00:01:05 And it's like, if I have a very limited amount of time
26. 00:01:07 to talk about it, here's what I want to talk about.
27. 00:01:09 So that was a really good, really good episode.
28. 00:01:12 So that was actually number one for me.
29. 00:01:14 I have my second one.
30. 00:01:15 Before we move on from that one, though, one thing
31. 00:01:18 that stood out to me from that episode
32. 00:01:21 was how effortlessly those two went back and forth.
33. 00:01:26 They're basically one person, two bodies.
34. 00:01:29 Yeah.
35. 00:01:30 Which I mean, they've done it for like 20 years or 30 years
36. 00:01:33 or whatever at the D School.
37. 00:01:35 I mean, they are the guys who founded the D School
38. 00:01:38 and were the core faculty in the D School.
39. 00:01:42 So sorry if you don't know what I'm talking about.
40. 00:01:44 That's Stanford's design school.
41. 00:01:45 They call it the D School, which is world-renowned
42. 00:01:48 at this point for what it does, helping people
43. 00:01:51 to think like designers and human-centered design
44. 00:01:53 and things like that.
45. 00:01:54 So it's really cool.
46. 00:01:55 It's really cool to hear.
47. 00:01:57 All right, so my next one was, what are free throws
48. 00:02:00 or layups for gumption or keeping things moving?
49. 00:02:02 And how do I plan these into my routine?
50. 00:02:04 I think the biggest thing I came out of this one
51. 00:02:06 with as I reflected on it was, sit down and start.
52. 00:02:11 So the thing I need to start doing
53. 00:02:13 is I need to start putting into my calendar
54. 00:02:16 not an hour of do this task, but a 15 minute sit down
55. 00:02:23 and start this task because what I have found
56. 00:02:26 and I knew this and I've always known this,
57. 00:02:28 if I sit down and start, I usually will get into the groove
58. 00:02:32 and I'll usually work on it for a half hour
59. 00:02:35 or an hour or an hour and a half or two hours
60. 00:02:36 or whatever it is.
61. 00:02:38 So it's like, I don't think the ability to focus is the issue.
62. 00:02:41 I think the ability to get started is the issue.
63. 00:02:44 So that is my free throw.
64. 00:02:46 Sit your butt down and start the thing.
65. 00:02:49 Don't try to complete the thing.
66. 00:02:51 Don't try to make any major goals.
67. 00:02:52 And I think about this.
68. 00:02:53 Do you remember a couple of months ago
69. 00:02:55 the writing challenge you and I kind of took on so many words
70. 00:02:59 per day?
71. 00:03:00 I do.
72. 00:03:02 It wasn't the actual writing of it.
73. 00:03:03 I actually like that part.
74. 00:03:04 Like when you get into it and you're like,
75. 00:03:06 I mean, you're just putting words on pages
76. 00:03:07 and it's like, are they good?
77. 00:03:08 Who cares?
78. 00:03:09 Right, there's words on pages.
79. 00:03:10 Like this is great.
80. 00:03:12 It's the, I should probably put some words on pages today.
81. 00:03:17 I'll do it later.
82. 00:03:19 I should probably, yeah, but I have to actually go get
83. 00:03:21 my computer, you know, so that's my thing for that one.
84. 00:03:25 So there you go.
85. 00:03:26 That's what I'm going to try to do.
86. 00:03:27 I'm going to try to, in my calendar, actually schedule
87. 00:03:29 those 15, 10 or 15 minute blocks of getting started.
88. 00:03:33 And I'm even going to call them, like getting started
89. 00:03:34 or I'm going to code it GS, you know, like get started, boom,
90. 00:03:38 with whatever, whatever the thing is.
91. 00:03:41 I like it.
92. 00:03:42 Okay.
93. 00:03:43 Third one is what's at least one intentional milestone
94. 00:03:45 between now and the end of 2026.
95. 00:03:48 Nope.
96. 00:03:49 I, I thought for like five or 10 minutes on that one.
97. 00:03:54 And I said, I'm too overwhelmed right now.
98. 00:03:58 It's the end of the semester.
99. 00:04:00 And I still have to finish up the seminary stuff that I'm working on.
100. 00:04:03 And no, I'm not going to do that.
101. 00:04:06 And like I could have coped out and said, oh, just finished
102. 00:04:07 the seminary, like this little seminary thing that I'm doing.
103. 00:04:10 But that's not, I don't want that to be it.
104. 00:04:11 I want it to be like a fun thing that I, you know, didn't sign up for a class for.
105. 00:04:17 It's like, I'm going to do this intentionally.
106. 00:04:19 So I'm intentionally, sorry to use that word too many times, but I'm like, I'm on purpose
107. 00:04:24 not going to pick this right now, but I'm going to think about it as soon as the semester's
108. 00:04:27 over and I have a little more time.
109. 00:04:30 You sir also had three action items.
110. 00:04:33 And what were they?
111. 00:04:35 Let's go in order of how poorly I did it.
112. 00:04:40 So the first one, how can I add milestones to my life?
113. 00:04:44 Nope.
114. 00:04:45 Let me even consider that one, even though I am in the middle of that because my oldest
115. 00:04:51 is graduating from high school in like three weeks.
116. 00:04:55 So that is definitely a milestone in my life, but we're a little bit in survival mode with
117. 00:05:01 that one.
118. 00:05:02 That makes it sound worse than it really is, but it's been a busy season.
119. 00:05:06 And yeah, lots of people, lots of different places every single night of the week with
120. 00:05:12 the musical and the end of the year choir concerts and the graduation stuff.
121. 00:05:19 It's been crazy.
122. 00:05:20 Did soccer star yet?
123. 00:05:22 No, but have I told you that I'm the high school coach this year?
124. 00:05:27 You did tell me that.
125. 00:05:28 That's why I asked.
126. 00:05:29 Is it fall?
127. 00:05:30 Is soccer in the fall?
128. 00:05:31 It's officially fall.
129. 00:05:32 Yeah.
130. 00:05:33 But there have been things that I have been broke into already.
131. 00:05:37 Yes.
132. 00:05:38 Yeah.
133. 00:05:39 I'm excited about that also terrified by it.
134. 00:05:45 Transitional routines.
135. 00:05:46 I thought a little bit about this, but it didn't stay around the transitional routines.
136. 00:05:54 It really was like, what kind of work do I want to do at different points?
137. 00:05:58 So I noticed that a lot of my best creative writing happens at the first part of the day.
138. 00:06:05 So if I can protect everything up until like 11 a.m. for writing, that would be ideal.
139. 00:06:10 The problem is I can't do that every single day.
140. 00:06:14 Like today I had three meetings back to back to back.
141. 00:06:17 And so first break I got was like 10 30.
142. 00:06:21 So is what it is.
143. 00:06:23 I can't control it all, but I think that's kind of the direction I want to go.
144. 00:06:27 And then with that, I think the transitional routines kind of come along for the ride.
145. 00:06:32 Like if I am doing the heavy lifting, creative work at the beginning of the day, then after
146. 00:06:38 lunch, early afternoon, I'm thinking that's when I should be doing, first of all, the admin
147. 00:06:43 type stuff.
148. 00:06:44 When I say admin type stuff, that to me is like checking in with the community.
149. 00:06:48 That's using my crazy news feed app, or I can like read stuff and send it over to Instapapers.
150. 00:06:56 So I can look at it when I'm in my comfy chair in my living room at the end of the day.
151. 00:07:03 That sort of stuff.
152. 00:07:04 So I think that there's a little bit of overlap there, but in terms of just knocking out the
153. 00:07:09 transitional routines, I wasn't able to make a progress on that.
154. 00:07:13 I did, however, make some progress on the other one.
155. 00:07:16 Yes, you did.
156. 00:07:20 So the other one here, it's funny because as we record this, I just reviewed the previous
157. 00:07:26 episode.
158. 00:07:27 It's going to get published shortly.
159. 00:07:30 And I brought up, you know, I think maybe I should try mindfulness meditation one more
160. 00:07:34 time.
161. 00:07:35 And you were even like, "Should you though, do you really want to do this to yourself yet
162. 00:07:41 again?"
163. 00:07:42 And then when you said that, something clicked for me, it's like, "Yeah, like I keep trying
164. 00:07:48 it.
165. 00:07:49 Why do I keep feeling at it?"
166. 00:07:50 And as I was reviewing the episode, I was talking about this app that I actually really
167. 00:07:54 liked.
168. 00:07:55 By the time I actually started using it, it had already been abandoned.
169. 00:07:58 And it was called Do Nothing.
170. 00:08:00 So I was like, "This app is not that complicated.
171. 00:08:06 Maybe I can make a better version of this."
172. 00:08:09 So my action item was to not just try mindfulness meditation again.
173. 00:08:14 It was to vibe code a mindfulness meditation app.
174. 00:08:18 That is what I did and it looks great, right?
175. 00:08:22 It looks very clean.
176. 00:08:23 It's got your practical BKM stylings.
177. 00:08:26 Yep.
178. 00:08:27 So that's great.
179. 00:08:29 I wonder if I can share screen and maybe even show you what this looks like because that
180. 00:08:34 would be kind of cool for the video folks.
181. 00:08:38 By the way, we record these episodes live on YouTube.
182. 00:08:42 So you should come hang out with us sometimes.
183. 00:08:44 There's two people.
184. 00:08:45 Let me see if I can share just the bezel app, which is what I can use to send stuff to my
185. 00:08:56 computer for my phone.
186. 00:08:57 Okay.
187. 00:08:58 So, yeah.
188. 00:08:59 I think I can.
189. 00:09:00 There we go.
190. 00:09:01 Share.
191. 00:09:02 There it is.
192. 00:09:03 Look at that.
193. 00:09:04 It even helped me with the icon, which is in the lower right corner of the dock there.
194. 00:09:10 I am calling this app because I'm terrible at naming things.
195. 00:09:13 So with some assistance from Claude, I'm calling it halo.
196. 00:09:18 I'll show you why here in a second.
197. 00:09:21 There is literally two screens to this entire app.
198. 00:09:24 The one that it opens to is this meditate screen where there is a timer, a slider, and
199. 00:09:29 then a start button.
200. 00:09:30 So you can adjust the timer at defaults.
201. 00:09:34 Maybe this is just what I did last time was five minutes.
202. 00:09:38 So when you tap start, it has this animation.
203. 00:09:41 So this purple bar, purple circles going around, and there's a countdown timer in the middle,
204. 00:09:46 there are two very subtle rings outside of that, though, that breathe in and out with
205. 00:09:52 the expanding and contracting circle.
206. 00:09:55 Maybe not.
207. 00:09:56 I can't see that real well in the screen share, but this actually I'm pretty proud of because
208. 00:10:01 I got this, I set the timing of this to five seconds where it goes out, five seconds where
209. 00:10:07 it comes in, because that's what felt right for me in terms of deep breath and deep breath
210. 00:10:12 out.
211. 00:10:13 So a little bit of a visual reinforcement of what's actually supposed to be happening
212. 00:10:17 here while you're staring at your screen, just looking at this timer.
213. 00:10:24 My goodness.
214. 00:10:25 That's really cool.
215. 00:10:26 Yeah, I thought that was neat.
216. 00:10:28 So when it gets done, it logs it, I'll just reset it for now.
217. 00:10:32 But the stats here, though, this is cool.
218. 00:10:35 So the stats, and this is even updated since the screenshot that I sent you.
219. 00:10:40 There's a heat map, which is based off of completely arbitrary numbers that I made up
220. 00:10:44 because I made this app for me.
221. 00:10:48 And I thought, you know, I want this heat map to go from, I didn't do it at all to,
222. 00:10:52 I actually did a lot today.
223. 00:10:55 What is a lot?
224. 00:10:56 For me, it's over 15 minutes.
225. 00:10:58 So there are different shades of that purple based off of the total amount of time that
226. 00:11:04 you spent or that you logged, mindfully meditating with this app.
227. 00:11:09 Then there's the four different boxes there with your current streak, the longest streak,
228. 00:11:12 the total sessions and the total minutes, okay.
229. 00:11:15 And then at the top is the beloved chilometer.
230. 00:11:18 Now I don't remember, I don't remember ever finding out exactly how this worked.
231. 00:11:24 But I remembered something like this from the do nothing out.
232. 00:11:27 In fact, it was 10 o'clock at night.
233. 00:11:29 This wasn't there.
234. 00:11:30 I was showing this to Toby and he's like, dude, you got to bring in the chilometer.
235. 00:11:33 I was like, oh, yeah, the chilometer, I wonder if I could build that logically.
236. 00:11:39 So what this does, there's actually a name for this.
237. 00:11:42 I forget what it is, but it's like a step scale sort of a thing.
238. 00:11:47 So it gives you the percentage.
239. 00:11:49 So this is the test version of this for me, which I've had on my phone for two days.
240. 00:11:53 So the way this works is it starts at zero.
241. 00:11:56 And then when you complete the streak for that day, it will add.
242. 00:12:03 Add your current streak to the total.
243. 00:12:06 So on the first day, it goes from 0% to 1% when you actually complete a session.
244. 00:12:12 But then the second day, your streak is now at two.
245. 00:12:16 So it adds two, which is why it's at three.
246. 00:12:18 If I complete it tomorrow, it will be at six.
247. 00:12:20 So you build on the momentum that you get from building the streak.
248. 00:12:25 Does that make sense?
249. 00:12:26 Nice.
250. 00:12:27 Yeah.
251. 00:12:28 Yeah.
252. 00:12:29 So you miss a day, your streak is over, but your chilimeter doesn't go all the way down
253. 00:12:34 to zero.
254. 00:12:35 Okay.
255. 00:12:36 Yeah.
256. 00:12:37 Yeah.
257. 00:12:38 It actually just decreases by one.
258. 00:12:39 Okay.
259. 00:12:40 So this is actually the same logic that I saw in Jesse J. Anderson helped build an app called
260. 00:12:46 Polar Habits, which was sort of like a different way of thinking about those streaks to combat
261. 00:12:52 that same issue.
262. 00:12:53 It's like, well, I broke my streak.
263. 00:12:54 Now, all my motivation is gone because I got to start all over.
264. 00:12:57 It's like, no, you don't actually.
265. 00:12:59 There's still a lot of good that's happened so far by building that streak.
266. 00:13:04 And the fact that you missed one day doesn't mean that the whole thing gets blown up.
267. 00:13:07 So that's what the chilimeter is designed to do.
268. 00:13:09 Nice.
269. 00:13:10 I love it.
270. 00:13:11 Yeah, I love it.
271. 00:13:12 But yeah, that's the whole app.
272. 00:13:15 And honestly, I feel like I could probably release this right now.
273. 00:13:20 I was wondering, I was like, are you going to release it?
274. 00:13:22 Because even though the details of that section are specific to you, I mean, it looks
275. 00:13:27 clean enough that you could easily release that.
276. 00:13:30 Well, that's the thing is like, I have tried so many different versions of this type of
277. 00:13:37 thing in the past.
278. 00:13:39 And I would find one and it would work for a little while and then it would get abandoned.
279. 00:13:43 And then I would find one and it would work for a while and it would get abandoned.
280. 00:13:46 This one's not going to get abandoned because it's easy for me to maintain this.
281. 00:13:51 And it's a tool I want to exist for myself.
282. 00:13:53 It is working for getting me to practice mindfulness meditation every day.
283. 00:13:59 Because this is one of those data points that we talked a little bit about in the ProShow,
284. 00:14:04 where this is a data point which in the past maybe wasn't important to me, but it is important
285. 00:14:11 to me.
286. 00:14:12 So I'm going to build a system to get the data that I want to reinforce the positive behavior
287. 00:14:15 change I want to make.
288. 00:14:17 And I vibe-coded the thing in probably a couple of hours and I like it better than just about
289. 00:14:25 any other version of a simple mindfulness meditation app that I've tried.
290. 00:14:31 And all of the ones I've tried them all, tried Headspace, I've tried Calm, I've tried all
291. 00:14:36 of them.
292. 00:14:38 I wrote several articles for the sweet setup back in the day on the best mindfulness meditation
293. 00:14:42 app.
294. 00:14:43 And that was the one that I would have to update all the time because it's like, oh, that one's
295. 00:14:46 no longer around, oh, that one's no longer around, the big players that are like 80 bucks
296. 00:14:50 a year, insanely expensive.
297. 00:14:53 And then there's the really cheap ones where a couple bucks and they just don't get supported.
298. 00:15:01 If I were trying to make money off of this, I would probably abandon it as well.
299. 00:15:05 There's so much competition in that space, however, I just want this tool to exist.
300. 00:15:10 So why not release it, charge 99 cents for it, right?
301. 00:15:14 A one-time cost, I'm not asking for a subscription, I'm not promising the moon.
302. 00:15:18 Anything.
303. 00:15:19 Yeah.
304. 00:15:20 Exactly.
305. 00:15:21 The timer will work and it'll track some things.
306. 00:15:24 The timer will work.
307. 00:15:25 Exactly.
308. 00:15:26 Exactly.
309. 00:15:27 So, yeah, I like it a lot.
310. 00:15:30 And I think it might actually stick this time.
311. 00:15:32 I guess, you know, famous last words, we'll see.
312. 00:15:35 Okay.
313. 00:15:36 Without going too far without a rabbit hole, because we do need to talk about a book.
314. 00:15:40 Like when is the Mike Schmitt's app design studio?
315. 00:15:45 Like when is it launching?
316. 00:15:47 When is the website going to go live?
317. 00:15:48 Like when is all that?
318. 00:15:49 Like the practical PKM, you know, we design apps.
319. 00:15:54 We vibe code apps that are very specific, but very good.
320. 00:15:59 I don't know.
321. 00:16:00 I thought about that.
322. 00:16:01 Like should I have an app section on my website?
323. 00:16:04 Because there are now a couple different tools that, well, this is the third one.
324. 00:16:09 The second one is that news feed app, which I started building that.
325. 00:16:16 And I was like, no one's going to care about this, but me.
326. 00:16:18 I just want to wait to send stuff to Instapaper so I can read it off my super note nomad.
327. 00:16:22 And that people are like, actually, this is really cool.
328. 00:16:24 I want to use this.
329. 00:16:25 By the way, added a whole bunch of stuff to that.
330. 00:16:29 I came across an app called Current, which is really all about the Oliver Berkman RSS stuff
331. 00:16:35 just floats by you.
332. 00:16:37 Okay.
333. 00:16:38 And they have, their feed is called the River.
334. 00:16:40 The app is called Current, Current Reader, C-U-R-R-E-N-T.
335. 00:16:45 And it's a good app.
336. 00:16:46 But I had some back and forth with the developer who I'd actually met there in Wisconsin.
337. 00:16:51 And so I didn't realize that when I covered that app for the screencast online module
338. 00:16:55 that I did on it, had some back and forth.
339. 00:16:58 And I was like, well, you know, I'd really love the ability to send this to Instapaper
340. 00:17:00 with a keyword hockey.
341. 00:17:01 And he's like, I will accommodate your ridiculous Instapaper request.
342. 00:17:06 And I was like, oh, okay.
343. 00:17:08 Well, his point, and it's kind of fair, is like, who uses Instapaper in 2026?
344. 00:17:12 Exactly.
345. 00:17:13 I do.
346. 00:17:14 So Bethan actually happened the way I wanted it to.
347. 00:17:20 He's like, I'll just use a share sheet.
348. 00:17:21 And I was like, eh, not exactly what I'm going for.
349. 00:17:25 So I was like, maybe I can implement a version of that.
350. 00:17:28 So what I did is I built in this whole idea of freshness to the things in the feed.
351. 00:17:32 And there is a line where it says you're up to date, and everything below that is just
352. 00:17:36 a little bit grayed out.
353. 00:17:38 So you can still read it very easily.
354. 00:17:39 But the stuff above that, the titles are white as opposed to gray, so they pop a little
355. 00:17:44 bit more.
356. 00:17:45 And the idea is that you go down there and you mark things as red as you go.
357. 00:17:49 And then if you refresh all those things that you've currently read, they go below the visual
358. 00:17:52 indicator as like you've caught up.
359. 00:17:54 And there's a separate one which is called fresh and it just shows the things that are
360. 00:17:59 that meet that freshness threshold.
361. 00:18:00 So the threshold is different based on the platform.
362. 00:18:03 Massed on blue sky.
363. 00:18:04 It's a couple of hours.
364. 00:18:05 Blog post I think is like a day, YouTube is a couple of days, and you can figure, you
365. 00:18:09 know, what's fresh in the settings for the different platforms.
366. 00:18:12 But yeah, I'm really happy with where that one is at too.
367. 00:18:15 So you may have noticed a bunch of new test flight builds for that one or the last couple
368. 00:18:21 of days as well.
369. 00:18:23 Mike's just over here.
370. 00:18:24 He's just over here grinded on his on his vibe coating.
371. 00:18:27 But they're all things that I want to exist.
372. 00:18:29 So to answer your question, like when is the stuff become, you know, the studios get open.
373. 00:18:36 I don't really know.
374. 00:18:37 But I've been thinking about that because it all fits with the whole practicum ethos.
375. 00:18:42 Even the creator bot stuff, which is right now just for like the VIP members of the library.
376. 00:18:48 But I made a whole bunch of changes to that Corey.
377. 00:18:51 I actually put that behind a so it is an email account associated with it, but you don't
378. 00:18:56 need a password.
379. 00:18:57 Because like no credentials, it just, I put your email in the database.
380. 00:19:00 And then if it recognizes the emails in the database, when you try to log in, it'll ask
381. 00:19:04 you for the magic link and then it'll save your, your login info.
382. 00:19:07 The reason for that is because everything that it does now helps you build out the context
383. 00:19:13 that you use when you are working with the AI.
384. 00:19:16 So it'll help walk you through the frameworks of like identifying your ideal customer profile.
385. 00:19:21 And then at the end of that, it'll say, okay, so if I were to summarize this, this is what
386. 00:19:25 you've told me, want me to write that to your profile.
387. 00:19:28 And then it uses that in the profile every time that you get feedback on a piece of content.
388. 00:19:31 I think it's amazing.
389. 00:19:32 Yeah.
390. 00:19:33 Yeah.
391. 00:19:34 Yeah.
392. 00:19:35 No, I mean, you're developing really cool stuff, like this is, this is an area of your creator
393. 00:19:39 life that I was not anticipating, but it's really cool to watch happen to me either.
394. 00:19:43 And I have no idea what to do with it.
395. 00:19:45 That's great.
396. 00:19:46 Right.
397. 00:19:47 Now just like all library members, I guess you guys can try this stuff out.
398. 00:19:51 Like I have to figure out a way to, if someone just wants access to that, like, how do they
399. 00:19:56 do it?
400. 00:19:57 And I have no idea currently, but that is kind of the direction I've been thinking about
401. 00:20:00 going is like practical Pcams are I talk about this stuff.
402. 00:20:03 I've got the resources like Life HQ and the library and things like that already.
403. 00:20:07 It would make sense that I've got some other apps and tools that would help you implement
404. 00:20:11 the things.
405. 00:20:12 And yeah, I got to do some deep thinking about how all that ties together.
406. 00:20:16 Yeah, that's fun though.
407. 00:20:17 That's fun.
408. 00:20:18 Okay.
409. 00:20:19 You move on though, at this point, let's talk about today's book.
410. 00:20:22 If you're ready, are you ready Mike?
411. 00:20:24 Sorry.
412. 00:20:25 No, it's great.
413. 00:20:26 This is great.
414. 00:20:27 This is great.
415. 00:20:28 Okay.
416. 00:20:29 So we are reading today how to live a meaningful life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
417. 00:20:34 Bill Burnett and Dave Evans became, it's probably wrong to say they became popular because they
418. 00:20:41 were always like well known in the educational design community because they ran the Stanford
419. 00:20:46 design school or D school, but they became I would say more popular through their original
420. 00:20:52 book Design Your Life.
421. 00:20:54 So it was a thing that they had done where they run students through a design process
422. 00:20:57 thinking about their life.
423. 00:20:59 And they turned that into a book and a workbook and those kinds of things and that's where
424. 00:21:03 I first learned about kind of designing and applying design not to physical products or
425. 00:21:09 software products, but designing it to humans and thinking about human psychology and how
426. 00:21:14 it impacts that.
427. 00:21:15 The full title of this book, how to live a meaningful life using design thinking to
428. 00:21:19 unlock purpose, joy and flow every day.
429. 00:21:23 This book has an introduction.
430. 00:21:25 It's gotten eight chapters and it's got a conclusion.
431. 00:21:28 It is written in a very, at least from my perspective, it's a very like storytelling kind
432. 00:21:34 of way.
433. 00:21:35 And oh, by the way, we're going to give you some design tips, some design tricks and
434. 00:21:39 design tools, every chapter at the end has very much an active apply step to it and they
435. 00:21:46 have a try stuff section to it.
436. 00:21:48 So when you get to the end of the chapter, they're going to say try stuff and then they're
437. 00:21:51 going to give you a list of things to try and they're going to kind of detail those
438. 00:21:53 out.
439. 00:21:54 And I think they're going to detail them out pretty thoroughly to where it, for me, it
440. 00:21:58 was really easy to go like, Oh, I actually know what they want me to try.
441. 00:22:01 Like I could go out and do that right now.
442. 00:22:03 Like the steps are, are clear and the steps are there.
443. 00:22:05 So that's my high level of the book, Mike, what do you have to add for the high level
444. 00:22:09 before we get into the introduction?
445. 00:22:11 I think that's probably pretty good.
446. 00:22:16 I'll just mention that the stuff at the end of the chapters, I'm curious how you felt
447. 00:22:25 about those exercises if you if you tried any of them.
448. 00:22:28 Maybe you haven't yet.
449. 00:22:29 Maybe you've got some as action items, I don't know, but just my perspective on those when
450. 00:22:34 I got to the end was I immediately wanted to skip them, not because the activities were
451. 00:22:39 bad, but I think a lot of that stuff, I've got my own version of getting to the essence
452. 00:22:46 of it, which is really what they're trying to do there.
453. 00:22:51 And so I have no doubt that those exercises come from like the classes that they teach
454. 00:22:55 at Stanford and are actually very useful, but I don't think there was a single one that
455. 00:23:03 really jumped out to me is like, oh, yeah, I'm going to totally do that.
456. 00:23:06 It's like, I've done a version of that before.
457. 00:23:08 Yeah, I'm going to let the chapter by chapter tell you if any of them like jumped out to
458. 00:23:12 me because I don't remember right now, like there's there's not one, there's maybe one,
459. 00:23:16 but like nothing jumps out to me.
460. 00:23:18 But I can remember thinking as I read those, I can see the value in this and not interested.
461. 00:23:24 I can see the value in this like, okay, this one, this one hits more than the other ones,
462. 00:23:29 but you're, I think you're absolutely spot on between the Nathan Berry interview and then
463. 00:23:32 just what I know about the D school, all of these activities they do with everybody who
464. 00:23:37 runs through their programs in school, like they do them all.
465. 00:23:40 And we've, we've incorporated some of them.
466. 00:23:42 I've mentioned before about the workshop that I ran that like kind of incorporated some
467. 00:23:47 design your life elements into it for academics, for, for university faculty.
468. 00:23:52 And man, some of these, some of these activities are very, they're very meaningful to people
469. 00:23:58 when, when they run through them.
470. 00:23:59 We have one of the, I can't, I don't know if she's certified or not because, because Bill
471. 00:24:03 and Dave will do a certification process for academics to run through their design your
472. 00:24:08 life stuff.
473. 00:24:09 And I can't remember if my colleague was certified or not, but she would go out to Stanford every,
474. 00:24:13 every year or twice a year or whatever and go through D school stuff and then bring it
475. 00:24:17 back and we could use that stuff in our, in our workshop.
476. 00:24:19 So it's a really cool thing and they're really open, like they just want people to use this
477. 00:24:25 stuff, they just want people to be more in, in this specific book, they want them to think
478. 00:24:31 about meaning and purpose and flow and, and those kinds of things.
479. 00:24:35 And like, honestly, like, yes, it's about a book and they want to write a book that becomes
480. 00:24:40 popular and sell the book and all that stuff, but it's really like you just get the vibe
481. 00:24:43 of like, we just want people to be better.
482. 00:24:45 And if, and if them interacting with the stuff we're thinking about is better, it makes them
483. 00:24:49 better.
484. 00:24:50 Fantastic.
485. 00:24:51 We've, you know, we've hit a, hit a home run.
486. 00:24:52 So it's just, it's just really kind of cool.
487. 00:24:53 Okay.
488. 00:24:54 Are you ready to move into the introduction?
489. 00:24:55 Yep.
490. 00:24:56 Let's do it.
491. 00:24:57 Okay.
492. 00:24:58 So the intro, the greatest design problem of all, what I love here is they summarize, they,
493. 00:25:02 they make a statement in here about like the best summaries are like 10 words or less.
494. 00:25:06 So like they say like, we're going to summarize design your life because this is how we got
495. 00:25:09 well known.
496. 00:25:11 Get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story and I was like, well, okay, there
497. 00:25:16 we go.
498. 00:25:17 I'm pretty sure, Mike, didn't we redesign your life or did we redesign your work life?
499. 00:25:21 I can't remember for the life of me.
500. 00:25:24 Oh, good question.
501. 00:25:25 I can't remember.
502. 00:25:26 But when they, when they had those words in that simple phrase, I remembered that from
503. 00:25:30 the Nathan Berry episode.
504. 00:25:31 Okay.
505. 00:25:32 Yeah.
506. 00:25:33 We discussed that in there.
507. 00:25:34 We read, I think it was design your life.
508. 00:25:36 Um, I'm pretty sure that, that's what we read.
509. 00:25:41 Okay.
510. 00:25:42 So anyhow, so let's move, let's move forward through here.
511. 00:25:43 They, they talk about a concept called, uh, Veltschmer, which is a world pain or world
512. 00:25:50 sorrow, the dissatisfaction, this satisfaction between worlds and the world is it, or the
513. 00:25:54 world as we know it in the world, as we should be, um, they talk about wicked problems, which
514. 00:25:59 they are very big on wicked problems.
515. 00:26:01 This is a thing that I learned about in graduate school.
516. 00:26:04 They talk about reframing, they, they then basically go into this idea that this book
517. 00:26:08 is in two sections.
518. 00:26:09 Uh, we're going to have the big ideas in the mindset section and then we're going to have
519. 00:26:12 the tools and the practices, um, and they're going to work us through, um, all of those
520. 00:26:17 things.
521. 00:26:18 And they, the last thing I want to say, they stress in this introduction is basically they
522. 00:26:21 own it.
523. 00:26:22 They're like, we are designers.
524. 00:26:24 This is a design book.
525. 00:26:26 It's going to help you make meaning.
526. 00:26:28 If you use the tools, if you try the principles, if you do the things that we ask you to do,
527. 00:26:32 our nature is not to just give you a book for head knowledge.
528. 00:26:35 Our nature is to give you a book to actually try and apply and go do the things, right?
529. 00:26:39 And that's a nutshell of what their, what their introduction hits.
530. 00:26:43 Yeah.
531. 00:26:44 I think that's a great intro.
532. 00:26:47 I like that term.
533. 00:26:48 The welchmerts.
534. 00:26:49 I don't know why that stood out.
535. 00:26:52 I thought maybe I'd heard that before, but also like I can't place where I heard that
536. 00:26:56 before.
537. 00:26:57 So maybe they talked about it in a different book, but, um, the two sections of the book
538. 00:27:03 is kind of interesting to me because it set up perfectly for two different parts.
539. 00:27:08 And I had to go check after that reading that part in the introduction is like, how did
540. 00:27:11 they set up the table of contents?
541. 00:27:13 It's totally not two different parts.
542. 00:27:15 Well, it's chapter by chapter and all the chapters are formatted the same way where they've
543. 00:27:21 got the information and then the exercises at the end.
544. 00:27:25 Yep.
545. 00:27:26 Yeah.
546. 00:27:27 So they, they don't separate it there.
547. 00:27:28 And I actually double took when I, when I said it.
548. 00:27:29 So I don't know if you heard me when I was doing the introduction part.
549. 00:27:32 I was like, did they break it into two?
550. 00:27:34 No, they didn't.
551. 00:27:35 They just listed eight chapters.
552. 00:27:36 So, uh, but it's definitely in two.
553. 00:27:38 So let's, let's, are you ready for that a little bit?
554. 00:27:39 Do you think it would have helped if they had broken it down into two parts?
555. 00:27:44 Not for me.
556. 00:27:45 I, I didn't have any problems with honestly, I didn't remember that they separated into
557. 00:27:50 the two sections.
558. 00:27:51 I just thought idea, idea, idea, tools, tools, tools, tools, tools.
559. 00:27:54 Sure.
560. 00:27:55 Didn't, didn't impact me at all.
561. 00:27:56 Yeah.
562. 00:27:57 I feel like it was a, I feel like if they did like break it into two parts, it would have
563. 00:28:01 helped a little bit more in terms of the organization of the ideas.
564. 00:28:06 Um, and maybe it's just coming off of the heels of the, the way of excellence, where
565. 00:28:11 it was very distinctly two different parts.
566. 00:28:13 I really didn't care for the first part and absolutely love the second part.
567. 00:28:17 So that one, they explicitly said, feel free to skip the first part.
568. 00:28:21 And they didn't say that with this book, but I feel like maybe there's a scenario where
569. 00:28:25 that would be good advice is like, I just get into the, the tools, the, the five different
570. 00:28:31 things in the, the last part of the book.
571. 00:28:33 But I don't know.
572. 00:28:34 I just felt like if they're, if you're going to describe about how the book is broken into
573. 00:28:38 two parts, make it easy for people and just explicitly call it the parts.
574. 00:28:42 Yeah.
575. 00:28:43 That makes sense.
576. 00:28:44 Yeah.
577. 00:28:45 That makes sense.
578. 00:28:46 Okay.
579. 00:28:47 Ready to go.
580. 00:28:48 Chapter one.
581. 00:28:49 Yep.
582. 00:28:50 All right.
583. 00:28:51 So chapter one is meaning and purpose reframed.
584. 00:28:52 And we need to start with the key word of this chapter.
585. 00:28:53 And that is the word reframe because essentially that's, that's what they're trying to get us
586. 00:28:58 around this idea or this mindset of reframing things.
587. 00:29:02 So they'll tell you that reframing is a designer's power, a power tool that when you reframe,
588. 00:29:08 you are like changing your perspective on something or you're, you're trying to figure
589. 00:29:14 out like a different way to look at something.
590. 00:29:17 And they are doing that with, or they, they give a big story in this about how like, they
591. 00:29:22 went through this whole process of what the design, your life and everybody came in and
592. 00:29:25 then people would come back and they'd say, yeah, but I'm just not, or there's something
593. 00:29:29 missing or there's this thing and they, they had to reframe and they had to think about,
594. 00:29:35 like, is there another way to look at people's lives?
595. 00:29:38 Is there another way to look at psychology?
596. 00:29:39 Is there another way to look at these things?
597. 00:29:41 Now, they hit the word passion.
598. 00:29:43 So Mike, I'm going to hold off.
599. 00:29:44 I'm going to see if you want to talk about the word passion.
600. 00:29:46 Mike loves the word passion if you don't know that, but he, they also will talk about
601. 00:29:50 the three frames of dysfunctional belief, okay, and those frames are impact, fulfillment
602. 00:29:57 and particularity.
603. 00:29:58 Okay.
604. 00:29:59 So they're going to, they're going to hit those three reef, sorry, I say frames.
605. 00:30:01 I meant reframes.
606. 00:30:02 So the three reframes of dysfunctional belief.
607. 00:30:05 So impact, fulfillment, in particularity, which we can unpack those if you want to.
608. 00:30:10 And then in their try stuff section, they're going to talk about an impact assessment,
609. 00:30:14 a fulfillment assessment and a particularity assessment.
610. 00:30:16 So they're going to be cohesive there when it comes to, comes to those things.
611. 00:30:21 I think the thing that stood out the most to me out of this chapter was the, uh, particularity
612. 00:30:28 reframe is thinking about it, like embracing the here and now, not thinking about more
613. 00:30:35 and future and different and the other thing, but like really saying like embrace the particularity
614. 00:30:41 in this moment.
615. 00:30:43 This is where we find meaning and purpose get the most out of this particular moment.
616. 00:30:47 And I think that was, uh, kind of my biggest takeaway out of, uh, out of this chapter.
617. 00:30:52 Yeah, they do a pretty good job of describing that, uh, the, the moments are the, the things
618. 00:31:01 that really matter.
619. 00:31:02 Um, I guess my big takeaways from this, this chapter are to get more out of life.
620. 00:31:10 You can't cram more into it.
621. 00:31:12 You know, a, a more is not a path to a meaningful life.
622. 00:31:15 Uh, they did talk a little bit about passion, but said that it's not about finding my passion.
623. 00:31:20 It's about finding out how to live passionately.
624. 00:31:24 So you're right.
625. 00:31:25 I do, I think take issue with the word passion that they, uh, they use here, but also because
626. 00:31:34 of the reframe, I'm willing to let that one go.
627. 00:31:37 Yeah.
628. 00:31:38 Yeah.
629. 00:31:39 Um, I think the, the main idea here of this book is not trying to help you find the meaning
630. 00:31:45 of life, but find meaning in life is a very powerful lens to, to think about the, the
631. 00:31:52 world through.
632. 00:31:55 And um, yeah, I, I don't know, I feel like, uh, this first chapter kind of does the, the
633. 00:32:01 job, uh, it gives you enough of, uh, don't think this way, think this other way to kind
634. 00:32:10 of get you moving in that direction, but also it does not feel very, uh, prescriptive, which
635. 00:32:15 I think is key when you're tackling a topic like, uh, like this.
636. 00:32:20 Yeah.
637. 00:32:21 Uh, if we, if we jump into these, uh, try stuff points a little bit more.
638. 00:32:25 So basically what they want you to do is like essentially a point of view assessment and
639. 00:32:29 they're, they break that into the three things impact, put your roles in order of importance.
640. 00:32:33 How does the impact make me feel, uh, does the impact seem to make me a better person?
641. 00:32:38 And they say fulfillment assessment, would you rather be fulfilled or fully alive?
642. 00:32:42 How does self transcendence, which self transcendence, what they're going to say is Maslow's
643. 00:32:46 hierarchy of needs ends it self actualization.
644. 00:32:50 And they say actually there's a step above that and that's self transcendence, um, which
645. 00:32:54 I don't want to unpack that right now.
646. 00:32:55 If you want to, like I'm happy to, but so they say, um, how does self transcendence resonate?
647. 00:33:01 And then they say particularity, how often do you feel like something's missing?
648. 00:33:04 How often do you embrace the moments in your life?
649. 00:33:08 Um, what would it mean if ultimate is unrealistic and everything as really a series of moments?
650. 00:33:12 So like these things, I think are good assessments, but to your point earlier, Mike, I don't feel
651. 00:33:18 compelled to do these, like there, there's nothing in these assessments here impact fulfillment
652. 00:33:23 or particularity that I'm like, Oh, I have to do this tomorrow.
653. 00:33:26 Like if I don't do this tomorrow, I'm missing out.
654. 00:33:28 Um, and I don't know if that's a, that's a good thing or a bad thing.
655. 00:33:30 It's just they didn't really hit super hard with me, hit up with me.
656. 00:33:35 Well, I think it's, it's neither a good nor a bad thing.
657. 00:33:39 Uh, it is evidence of them being academics and not marketers.
658. 00:33:43 Okay.
659. 00:33:44 Okay.
660. 00:33:45 Um, I still think that the tools and the quote, unquote assessments, like I can nitpick some
661. 00:33:56 of that stuff.
662. 00:33:57 I, I would question whether that's the most effective version of the tool to accomplish
663. 00:34:02 the thing that they're intending for it that.
664. 00:34:06 So on one hand, part of me is like, well, that's not the way I would do it.
665. 00:34:11 But also a part of me is like, it doesn't really matter.
666. 00:34:14 Yeah.
667. 00:34:15 So the, the overall thing bouncing around in my brain is I'm going through this and I'm
668. 00:34:19 going, I'm feeling the temptation to skip all of the, you know, try stuff sections is
669. 00:34:26 that, uh, just getting people to think about living a meaningful life like this is really
670. 00:34:33 the win here.
671. 00:34:34 Yeah.
672. 00:34:35 The specifics of the exercises that they get people to go through or the specific questions
673. 00:34:40 that they have people ask kind of doesn't matter.
674. 00:34:43 You can take different paths I feel and still end up at the same destination.
675. 00:34:49 Yeah.
676. 00:34:50 So I don't know.
677. 00:34:51 It's interesting.
678. 00:34:52 It's different than just about every other book that we've read that way.
679. 00:34:56 I think where most books, they're going to walk you through these series of steps and
680. 00:35:02 they're all going to build on one another and they're going to, uh, end up at this destination
681. 00:35:07 where you pull all this stuff together.
682. 00:35:09 They don't have like a, okay, fill in this for section A, fill in this for section B.
683. 00:35:14 Maybe in the class, they would actually have something like that, a tool.
684. 00:35:18 Yeah.
685. 00:35:19 But I don't know.
686. 00:35:20 I'm a little bit surprised by that.
687. 00:35:22 The other thing, this is not exactly, um, I don't think this is from the first section
688. 00:35:29 here.
689. 00:35:30 Maybe it was the introduction, but kind of like the whole tipping point where someone
690. 00:35:35 comes back from, you know, implementing what they did and they're having this crisis and
691. 00:35:39 like, this isn't what I thought it was going to be.
692. 00:35:42 I did all the things that you said I should do and I'm still really depressed and frustrated.
693. 00:35:48 And like, what do I do with this?
694. 00:35:51 I feel like the way that they told that story is really effective because it's a little
695. 00:35:57 bit self-deprecating where it's like, oh, we obviously don't have all these answers
696. 00:36:01 figured out.
697. 00:36:02 They respond in a very curious way though.
698. 00:36:05 And then I feel like the path that they chart forward from there is really interesting in
699. 00:36:09 terms of giving people enough to help them sort through this on their own because really
700. 00:36:14 it is a personal journey, you can't do this sort of stuff for people.
701. 00:36:19 They have to put in the work.
702. 00:36:22 Yes, sir.
703. 00:36:23 Uh, now if you told me, hey, I'd really like to do these try stuff things with you, Corey.
704. 00:36:30 I'd probably be like, okay, Mike, I'll do them with you.
705. 00:36:32 Right?
706. 00:36:33 Like they, they, they're, they're interesting enough that I would do them with you.
707. 00:36:35 But like, like I said, they're not as interesting that I would just go out and do all of them
708. 00:36:39 on my own, uh, as of right now.
709. 00:36:40 So hopefully I didn't come across too far as like I was thinking they were bad.
710. 00:36:45 It's just a matter of certain ones resonated and other ones didn't.
711. 00:36:48 All right.
712. 00:36:49 You ready to move to chapter two?
713. 00:36:50 Yep.
714. 00:36:51 Let's do it.
715. 00:36:52 So chapter two is think like a designer.
716. 00:36:53 You have to know as you're thinking through this book, these guys are designers through
717. 00:36:58 and through.
718. 00:37:00 They work at the design school.
719. 00:37:01 They think about designing like the fact that they didn't name this book with the first
720. 00:37:06 word design is shocking to me.
721. 00:37:09 Although they did incorporate design thinking into the sub, the subtitle as quickly as they
722. 00:37:14 could.
723. 00:37:15 So one of the guys, is it Bill Burnett, like designed the first mouse for the Apple Mac?
724. 00:37:21 I could.
725. 00:37:22 I can't remember which one it was, um, but one of them, yes, was the first, was the first
726. 00:37:26 mouse he worked on, like the Lisa computer system and designed the first mouse.
727. 00:37:29 Yeah.
728. 00:37:30 So, so their designers through and through, I mean, without a doubt, anyhow, uh, so they
729. 00:37:34 say prototype iteration is the secret sauce, um, they would say that you're going to think
730. 00:37:39 about, um, meaning is designing moments.
731. 00:37:44 Like that's a kind of a way you'll think about that.
732. 00:37:47 Uh, you then want to get into this designer's mindset and the, and their designer's mindset
733. 00:37:52 for meaning making and they're, they're very specific.
734. 00:37:54 It's the designer's mindset for meaning making, wonder and mystery, availability, radical
735. 00:37:58 acceptance, fully engaged, but calmly detached, create your world.
736. 00:38:04 Those are like the five components that they would have.
737. 00:38:06 And then they combine those later on in the chapter and they say, if you combine radical
738. 00:38:11 acceptance and availability, it's like icing on the cake, like bonus points.
739. 00:38:15 If you combine availability and wonder, um, it's icing on the cake and it's bonus points.
740. 00:38:21 So Mike, I'm going to turn this to you first and I'm going to say, did any of the five
741. 00:38:26 designer mindsets stand out to you more than others and which ones if they did?
742. 00:38:31 I liked the fully engaged and calmly detached.
743. 00:38:34 Okay.
744. 00:38:35 Um, that's the one that, that I wrote down actively participating, but realizing you can't control
745. 00:38:39 the outcome.
746. 00:38:40 And I guess the reason that that one resonates with me is that I understand that intellectually,
747. 00:38:44 but, uh, I have trouble practicing it.
748. 00:38:49 I have trouble detaching from the, the outcome because the, the thing here is that, uh, you
749. 00:38:57 can make the right choice and still not get the, the right outcome.
750. 00:39:01 So you can't judge whether you made the right choice based on the result of, of the choice
751. 00:39:08 that, that you made, uh, I also like the statement that you can't solve a problem.
752. 00:39:16 You're unwilling to accept.
753. 00:39:18 So that's where the fully engaged part comes in.
754. 00:39:21 And it actually the perspective that I got from this is a little bit along the lines of
755. 00:39:26 extreme ownership, everything is your responsibility.
756. 00:39:31 And, uh, I don't know, like there's, there's definitely a, a truth to that.
757. 00:39:36 I guess the term for that, that I think most accurately describes it is self-determination,
758. 00:39:42 but that's not as sexy.
759. 00:39:45 Yeah, for sure.
760. 00:39:46 Um, that's really, I think what they're after here though, is getting people to take ownership
761. 00:39:51 of the ability to chart their course and design their, their life.
762. 00:39:57 And so this, this chapter, I think like a designer, I really like, uh, the whole idea
763. 00:40:02 of the lifestyle design and the way that they describe it, I feel like is very effective
764. 00:40:06 and very approachable for people who maybe are coming into this from a, I don't know,
765. 00:40:17 like in the productivity world that I've been in for a very long time, it feels like, uh,
766. 00:40:25 you use different buzzwords to describe things.
767. 00:40:29 And there are certain ways of describing the sort of stuff that people tend to gravitate
768. 00:40:36 towards lifestyle design, I feel like is not one of those words.
769. 00:40:40 And that's a good thing for the majority of the general public that may pick up this
770. 00:40:45 book.
771. 00:40:46 Yeah.
772. 00:40:47 I agree with that completely.
773. 00:40:48 Uh, one of the things I think is interesting is how consistent they are.
774. 00:40:51 So in the introduction, they describe, design your life in those four, those four things.
775. 00:40:57 I don't remember exactly how they did it, but it's curiosity.
776. 00:41:00 It's something else.
777. 00:41:01 I don't remember what the second one was that it's try stuff and tell your story.
778. 00:41:04 So I forget what the, what the second one is.
779. 00:41:06 And if you look over these five design mindsets, wonder and mystery, curiosity, right?
780. 00:41:11 Um, availability is partially curiosity, right?
781. 00:41:14 It's like I'm available to be curious, I'm open to that.
782. 00:41:17 When you get into the fully engaged, calmly detached, okay, right now they're thinking
783. 00:41:21 try stuff like engage, participate, like get out there and do it.
784. 00:41:25 And don't worry about the, the result, let, let the result go.
785. 00:41:29 And then you get to the create your world, uh, number five, and it's tell your story.
786. 00:41:32 Like, uh, know your personal story, design your personal story, essentially look for
787. 00:41:35 patterns and tell, and tell your story.
788. 00:41:37 They're incredibly consistent here.
789. 00:41:39 They've just taken those things and gone, Hey, how do we adjust this to meaning?
790. 00:41:43 And like, what does this look like, uh, when it's adjusted to meaning?
791. 00:41:47 So I think that's, that's interesting and I, and I like that they're, that they're consistent.
792. 00:41:52 If you go to the try stuff section, okay, this one, they're going to say, day start statements.
793. 00:41:57 What are mantras to start your day or what are things that'll get, it'll start your day?
794. 00:42:01 And for some reason, I don't know if they say this or not, or if I got this from another
795. 00:42:04 book, maybe like a David Goggins book or something like that, I always think it about, I always
796. 00:42:09 think about putting the sticky note on the mirror.
797. 00:42:11 So every time I think about the mantra, it's like, what's the sticky note on the mirror?
798. 00:42:14 Or what's the thing that's like on my, uh, car where the speedometer is that you're going
799. 00:42:19 to see it every day when you drive that.
800. 00:42:20 And I think about those mantras, I love, love, love, love, the got to get to reversal, absolutely
801. 00:42:27 love the got to get to reversal because I often will think in my mind, ah, I've got to go
802. 00:42:32 do this thing.
803. 00:42:33 Ah, you know, I got to go do this thing framing that as a, I get to go do this thing.
804. 00:42:40 It's my privilege to go get to go do this thing.
805. 00:42:43 Even when I'm not, it can't hurt, like it's got to, it's got to help me.
806. 00:42:47 As much as I say that I like that one, the reframe ladder was too much for me.
807. 00:42:52 Like, like, I don't know if you remember the reframe ladder, but no, I, I wrote down zero
808. 00:42:57 of these, like try stuff things in my notes.
809. 00:43:00 Okay.
810. 00:43:01 All right.
811. 00:43:02 So, so you put stuff on the bottom rung, you transfer it up.
812. 00:43:04 What would I get if I would ever, and you do this whole like rung thing and you're trying
813. 00:43:07 to move these to go through ladder, and I was just like, nah, like not, not for me.
814. 00:43:11 Like, as much as the got, got to get to reversal works, this one doesn't work for me.
815. 00:43:15 Yeah.
816. 00:43:16 None of them.
817. 00:43:17 So for me.
818. 00:43:18 Okay.
819. 00:43:19 Anything else on chapter two?
820. 00:43:20 Nope.
821. 00:43:21 All right.
822. 00:43:22 Let's go to chapter three.
823. 00:43:23 A tale of two worlds.
824. 00:43:24 So in this one, you're going to have the transactional world and the flow world.
825. 00:43:28 I have never heard anybody describe this as the transactional world.
826. 00:43:32 Have you?
827. 00:43:33 No.
828. 00:43:34 I like that term a lot though.
829. 00:43:35 Yeah.
830. 00:43:36 Like, I thought this was really, really good flow.
831. 00:43:39 You and I have talked about there have been a bunch of people talk about flow in different
832. 00:43:43 ways and getting into that flow state and all that.
833. 00:43:46 But I had never heard anybody talk about the transactional world and how most of us live
834. 00:43:49 in this transactional world, where it's the day to day, get stuff done world.
835. 00:43:54 It tied into something we've read in previous books, which I think you've brought up and
836. 00:43:58 discussed is the finite and infinite games, whereas transactional world, you're playing
837. 00:44:03 a finite game.
838. 00:44:04 It's a game with an ending that we're trying to get to a result.
839. 00:44:07 The flow world is total immersion, complete focus, time stand still, you know, it is this
840. 00:44:13 infinite game.
841. 00:44:14 We're not worried about the individual transaction thing, but we want to go into this other state,
842. 00:44:20 if you will, throughout the whole, I'll call it out here.
843. 00:44:23 I don't remember the details of the story.
844. 00:44:25 I think this might have been where was Fritz the guy who was going into work to give the
845. 00:44:30 presentation.
846. 00:44:31 Am I, am I remember that right?
847. 00:44:32 I can't remember.
848. 00:44:33 Yes.
849. 00:44:34 Okay.
850. 00:44:35 So, but they, they'll tell stories throughout this, throughout this book or they'll tell
851. 00:44:38 stories throughout this book.
852. 00:44:39 And I think most of these stories are people in their actual classroom or that they've
853. 00:44:45 interacted with through, through the D school.
854. 00:44:47 And it basically tells them about how this, you can live a life transactionally or you
855. 00:44:52 can live a life where you're noticing the things around you and you're alive and you
856. 00:44:57 understand the meaning of what's going on around you, even to the point where they present
857. 00:45:01 a table, whereas the difference between transactional focus, task, action, orientation and role,
858. 00:45:07 and then flow focus, flow task, flow action, flow orientation, flow role, I'll stop there
859. 00:45:12 for a second.
860. 00:45:14 But I think this is an interesting perspective.
861. 00:45:16 If nothing else, the transactional world perspective, I think is really interesting.
862. 00:45:19 The thing I liked about the transactional world and the flow world, the thing that kind of
863. 00:45:24 solidified it for me was the, the topic of the finite games and the infinite games.
864. 00:45:29 Which we've read some book around that topic, but there's this OG book that every time people
865. 00:45:38 talk about it, they reference, we should probably cover that one at some point.
866. 00:45:42 I know you like that topic too.
867. 00:45:45 The whole idea of flow, I like a lot.
868. 00:45:49 I have to say, I don't think I really love their reframing of Michali's diagram around
869. 00:45:58 flow.
870. 00:45:59 I'm not sure I completely agree with, with the direction that they took that.
871. 00:46:03 Also, my local library had a book sale the other day.
872. 00:46:08 So I went in and I picked up like 10 books for eight bucks or something like that, okay,
873. 00:46:15 including an original hardcover version of flow, which I have not seen anywhere.
874. 00:46:21 Like you can't really get them on Amazon that it's, I don't know when the book was originally
875. 00:46:28 published.
876. 00:46:29 It was like 1980 something, '90 to '90.
877. 00:46:31 Yeah.
878. 00:46:32 So that was, I was pretty excited to find that.
879. 00:46:36 But I do think that the flow of state coming from the flow world is, is an important topic
880. 00:46:41 and an important understanding to have.
881. 00:46:43 Yeah.
882. 00:46:44 So Mike, here's, here's a question for you.
883. 00:46:46 I think there's a version of Bookworm and, or a series in Bookworm, if we would choose
884. 00:46:52 to do this, where we like go back and we look at the classics.
885. 00:46:57 And some of them you've already done, so therefore the, those ones we can already check that box.
886. 00:47:02 But like, if we have a book that's been referenced so many times and all the other books that
887. 00:47:06 we haven't read or talked about yet, we should probably do that, right?
888. 00:47:09 Because we try to run this balance of those really seminal important books and then the
889. 00:47:13 new ones, like the, the new books that come out and we try to, we try to do that balance.
890. 00:47:17 And then every once in a while, you and I will throw a wild card in there, which is probably
891. 00:47:19 going to be my next book, but like, but, but like, I think there is a, there's a series
892. 00:47:25 of our, of our thing where we look at infinite, finite, infinite games or we look at flow
893. 00:47:29 or whatever it is.
894. 00:47:30 I'm game.
895. 00:47:31 Oh, you're game?
896. 00:47:32 Okay.
897. 00:47:33 Awesome.
898. 00:47:34 Fantastic.
899. 00:47:35 Okay.
900. 00:47:36 So I don't really have much else that's coming out of this one.
901. 00:47:37 They talked a little bit about like achieving brain and awakening brain and like the fact
902. 00:47:41 that they want to get to more of this awakening brain.
903. 00:47:44 So they're really, honestly, like if I'm, if I'm kind of looking at it clearly, they're
904. 00:47:49 really coming down hard on the transactional world, even though they say you have to do
905. 00:47:55 it, you're never going to get away from the transactional world outcomes and doing these
906. 00:47:59 things are necessities, but really what you want to get to, if you want to find meaning
907. 00:48:03 and purpose and joy, is this awakened world in this, in this new world.
908. 00:48:07 The only try stuff they offer here is they call it the flip the, flip the world switch.
909. 00:48:12 So you like act like you're flipping a switch and you change from the awaken or from the,
910. 00:48:17 what is it, achieving world to the awakening world or the transactional world to the flow
911. 00:48:21 state.
912. 00:48:23 That's really the only try stuff they have.
913. 00:48:24 And again, this one didn't hit that, that hard for me.
914. 00:48:26 I didn't, the idea flow mic doesn't really do it for me.
915. 00:48:32 Like I get it.
916. 00:48:33 I understand it.
917. 00:48:34 I'm just, I don't know.
918. 00:48:35 I'm not a flow kind of guy.
919. 00:48:37 Like it's just doesn't do it for me.
920. 00:48:39 Well, I feel like if you're optimizing for flow, you're going to be disappointed.
921. 00:48:44 It's one of those things that you kind of just have to celebrate it when it shows up.
922. 00:48:49 Yeah.
923. 00:48:50 I'd be like, Oh, that was cool.
924. 00:48:51 They would try to say, maybe, you know, tap into that a little bit more frequently.
925. 00:48:56 But if you're, you know, checking a box, did I experience flow today or do I experience
926. 00:49:00 enough flow today, that's never going to, going to produce any sort of happiness.
927. 00:49:06 And these authors would say our goal is to help you figure out a way to find yourself
928. 00:49:11 in that flow state more often.
929. 00:49:13 Yeah.
930. 00:49:14 I think that's what, that's what they would try to drive them.
931. 00:49:15 Yeah.
932. 00:49:16 All right.
933. 00:49:17 I'm ready for chapter four.
934. 00:49:18 All right.
935. 00:49:19 Let's do it.
936. 00:49:20 Okay.
937. 00:49:21 So the wonder formula.
938. 00:49:22 So to not hide the wonder formula, let's go straight to it.
939. 00:49:25 Curiosity plus mystery equals wonder.
940. 00:49:28 So curiosity plus mystery equals wonder.
941. 00:49:30 That is the wonder formula that basically the designer sees things step deeper than
942. 00:49:37 most people see it.
943. 00:49:39 And they say like, oh, well, that's a flower, but what really is a flower?
944. 00:49:43 And they look at that extra step deeper and they try to figure that out.
945. 00:49:47 I don't really have a lot here other than like, try to find wonder moments or try to
946. 00:49:53 be more curious.
947. 00:49:54 I mean, like this one didn't, like, I mean, it was fine.
948. 00:49:58 I don't remember thinking this is a terrible chapter, but I just don't have a lot here,
949. 00:50:02 Mike.
950. 00:50:03 Yep.
951. 00:50:04 Me either.
952. 00:50:05 My outline and this may be the reason they decided not to do the sections because I feel
953. 00:50:12 like there is roughly a loose order to these things.
954. 00:50:16 And this is the first one in the second section.
955. 00:50:19 And it's what do you do with this?
956. 00:50:21 I think if I were to summarize this whole chapter, it's be aware of those moments of
957. 00:50:29 wonder, like have your eyes open for them because they are everywhere.
958. 00:50:34 If you know what to look for, but yeah, just stay curious, I guess.
959. 00:50:39 Yep.
960. 00:50:40 Stay curious.
961. 00:50:41 My friend, right?
962. 00:50:42 Like that's, that's, that's really the gist of it.
963. 00:50:44 Because I want to be consistent about the way we're doing the chapters, the try stuff,
964. 00:50:48 you put on your wonder glasses and you try to view things through an awakening perspective.
965. 00:50:52 Mike, I'm not going to say, okay, good.
966. 00:50:55 You shook your head too.
967. 00:50:56 I, I kind of cringe every time we talk about the wonder, like every time they talked about
968. 00:51:01 the wonder glasses, I was just like, I just don't, I just don't see it.
969. 00:51:04 Man, like, I, no, like the wonder glasses just don't do it for me.
970. 00:51:08 No, I get to be curious.
971. 00:51:10 I get the mystery, wonder glasses don't do it.
972. 00:51:14 Me either.
973. 00:51:15 Uh, and then the next one is museum magic.
974. 00:51:17 And my, my statement in my notes is here, here says, not interested in this at all.
975. 00:51:23 Like that was, that was my statement here.
976. 00:51:25 I've actually done a museum magic, um, event where you went in with, um, little prompting
977. 00:51:31 and or no prompting, and you just tried to think about like the open ended nature and
978. 00:51:37 be curious about what the, the museum was showing, um, I've, I've done an activity like
979. 00:51:41 this and it was, it was fine, but I can't tell you I got, you know, a ton of stuff out
980. 00:51:45 of it.
981. 00:51:46 Wasn't super, super impactful.
982. 00:51:47 Yeah.
983. 00:51:48 All right.
984. 00:51:49 Chapter five.
985. 00:51:50 Let's do it.
986. 00:51:51 Living a coherent life.
987. 00:51:52 So, um, now coherent, they call it one that truly aligns with your values.
988. 00:52:00 And then they bring a topic in, Mike, that is near and dear to your heart, right?
989. 00:52:05 Because they start talking about the three compass items that should be, uh, around for
990. 00:52:12 you to get coherency.
991. 00:52:14 These compass items are who are you?
992. 00:52:17 What do you do and what you believe?
993. 00:52:18 So who are you, what you do and what you believe?
994. 00:52:21 What do you think about this, Mike, as the compass man?
995. 00:52:24 Oh man.
996. 00:52:25 I don't know, like, I like the idea of the compass, obviously I even have a saying in
997. 00:52:32 the, uh, the life theme cohort where you need a compass, not a blueprint.
998. 00:52:36 You need a direction, not a plan.
999. 00:52:39 So I feel like if we were to sit down and just have a chat about the, the topics, I would
1000. 00:52:45 love talking to these guys, these three things though, I don't really care for these.
1001. 00:52:51 I think they, they were trying to get you to, um, like create these documents for these
1002. 00:52:56 different things.
1003. 00:52:57 Right?
1004. 00:52:58 Yeah.
1005. 00:52:59 Yeah.
1006. 00:53:00 Which when I heard about that, I was like, no, I don't think so.
1007. 00:53:01 But then also like I have my own version of that.
1008. 00:53:03 I have my life theme.
1009. 00:53:04 I have my personal core values.
1010. 00:53:05 I have my eulogy.
1011. 00:53:06 I have my ideal future.
1012. 00:53:08 So I'm not against the creating the documents.
1013. 00:53:11 These three just in particular didn't really resonate with me.
1014. 00:53:14 I think maybe for someone who is going through this as a college class, this is probably
1015. 00:53:21 a better framing than the stuff that, that I do.
1016. 00:53:24 You kind of have to be in the right mindset in order to ask the questions that I would
1017. 00:53:29 ask if you're getting somebody who has just taken this class because it sounded interesting
1018. 00:53:34 and they're going to fit it in with their other class, other classes.
1019. 00:53:38 This is probably the, the direction to take.
1020. 00:53:40 So I don't know.
1021. 00:53:41 I don't really fault them for it, but also it's not, not charging my batteries.
1022. 00:53:44 Yeah.
1023. 00:53:45 Yeah.
1024. 00:53:46 So you said about the, they want you to write the things.
1025. 00:53:48 They give you four steps to gain coherency and basically it's, you're going to build
1026. 00:53:52 your compass and calibrate it.
1027. 00:53:53 You're going to take compass readings.
1028. 00:53:54 You're going to reflect on those readings and then you're going to recalibrate your compass.
1029. 00:53:57 And in order to build your compass and calibrate it, you write a story about who you are.
1030. 00:54:04 You write your work view and you write your life view, which this is very common to them
1031. 00:54:08 and it ties back into that design, your life stuff, where you do these different odyssey
1032. 00:54:12 views of if everything is normal, here's what life looks like.
1033. 00:54:15 If everything is, goes crazy.
1034. 00:54:17 Here's what life looks like.
1035. 00:54:18 And then if the world's my oyster, here's what life looks like.
1036. 00:54:20 So they're, they're very consistent in, in terms of these things.
1037. 00:54:23 Yeah.
1038. 00:54:24 And see, that's, that's the stuff I don't really care for, like the whole distinction
1039. 00:54:27 of the work view and then the life view, I don't really like the idea of the work life
1040. 00:54:32 balance.
1041. 00:54:33 It's really just your life.
1042. 00:54:34 And you got to figure out how it all ties together by separating those.
1043. 00:54:38 You kind of are implying that, well, you're not just what you do.
1044. 00:54:42 So the life view should be more important than the work view.
1045. 00:54:45 But then they also say that the number one place where people report that they experience
1046. 00:54:49 meaning in their lives is at work.
1047. 00:54:52 So how are you going to reconcile these, these sorts of things?
1048. 00:54:56 I kind of feel like it's a little bit of an arbitrary distinction, which maybe gets in
1049. 00:55:00 the way.
1050. 00:55:01 Got it.
1051. 00:55:02 Got it.
1052. 00:55:03 All right.
1053. 00:55:04 So, let's go to the try stuff section of this.
1054. 00:55:07 Well, the first thing they want you to do is they want you to build that compass, you
1055. 00:55:10 know, so, so they want you to do those four steps to build your compass and refine it.
1056. 00:55:15 And then they have this thing called a coherency sightings log.
1057. 00:55:19 Well, before they've defined coherency sightings is basically you want to, how do I say this?
1058. 00:55:27 You want to like write down instances in your life where what you do, who you are and what
1059. 00:55:36 you believe kind of all come together and converge on this, the same activity or moment
1060. 00:55:43 they would say if we're going to stay with their thing and then just keep a log of those.
1061. 00:55:47 So that's, that's the two tasks.
1062. 00:55:49 I don't want to keep that log.
1063. 00:55:51 I think it is a kind of cool idea, but also maybe it's something that you just need a
1064. 00:55:56 little bit of a feel for.
1065. 00:55:57 You don't need a formal process for documenting coherency or maybe that's just me because
1066. 00:56:01 I'm fascinated by this stuff.
1067. 00:56:03 I don't know.
1068. 00:56:04 I will say one thing they mentioned in here, which is not in the try stuff section, but
1069. 00:56:08 before that they mentioned that anytime you are changing your situation or going through
1070. 00:56:13 a transition, that is a great opportunity to stop and recalibrate your compass.
1071. 00:56:18 I think that is very good advice.
1072. 00:56:20 Yeah.
1073. 00:56:21 Did, do you think you do the coherency sightings with your gratitude?
1074. 00:56:27 Hmm, I guess that is a way of thinking about it, but I don't know, I didn't really think
1075. 00:56:34 of it that way.
1076. 00:56:36 I think a different version of that is just my whole personal retreat process where I'm
1077. 00:56:42 thinking about, I have those different parts of the retrospective.
1078. 00:56:45 So the first part is what did I accomplish, celebrate your wins, what went well, what
1079. 00:56:52 could have gone better.
1080. 00:56:55 And I'm just jotting down everything that comes to mind there.
1081. 00:56:57 I'm not taking action on these things.
1082. 00:56:58 It's just a brain dump at that point.
1083. 00:57:00 And then what should I start doing, stop doing, keep doing.
1084. 00:57:03 And you combine that with the fact that I do it every three months, I feel like that gives
1085. 00:57:10 me the same sort of benefit with the coherency sightings because I'm trying a bunch of stuff
1086. 00:57:18 and I'm getting evidence for what actually works.
1087. 00:57:21 And the cadence there I think is the important thing where you shift out of actually just
1088. 00:57:28 doing the things to thinking about the way that you're doing the things and what you're
1089. 00:57:32 engaging with and maybe I should change things up.
1090. 00:57:36 All right.
1091. 00:57:37 If you're ready, I'm ready.
1092. 00:57:39 Chapter six.
1093. 00:57:40 Let's do it.
1094. 00:57:41 All right.
1095. 00:57:42 So in chapter six, we are looking at finding flow.
1096. 00:57:46 Flow is state of peak performance and aliveness.
1097. 00:57:49 And they would say that that aliveness directly correlates to meaning or purpose.
1098. 00:57:54 They would tie back into what they've talked about before in the mindset section and say
1099. 00:57:58 it's where self-actualization meets this particularity and this moment-driven nature of things.
1100. 00:58:05 Or it's where a particular skill is being used in an effective way.
1101. 00:58:12 They say to get more peak flow opportunities, we need to leverage radical acceptance and
1102. 00:58:16 availability, which again ties back into the mindset that they've talked about before.
1103. 00:58:19 So we need to accept the challenge and retain our full attention.
1104. 00:58:22 We need to boost the deployment of our attention whenever with being more available to it.
1105. 00:58:30 And they say this is a peak flow state.
1106. 00:58:33 Now they make a big distinction here between peak flow, which is what we often think about
1107. 00:58:39 when we talk about flow.
1108. 00:58:40 Hold on.
1109. 00:58:41 I know you're like shaking his head if you're not watching the video, but like they talk
1110. 00:58:44 about peak flow, which is basically this I got lost in the activity completely like kind
1111. 00:58:50 of consumed with what I was doing.
1112. 00:58:53 And then they say simple flow is more common, right?
1113. 00:58:56 And simple flow is like I don't even know if I can like describe what simple flow is.
1114. 00:59:03 What's simple flow?
1115. 00:59:04 Just like I lost 15 minutes to like the Excel spreadsheet I was working on?
1116. 00:59:08 Or how would you describe that one?
1117. 00:59:09 I don't think this is a thing.
1118. 00:59:12 But I guess based on the diagram that they have in the book, it's the thing where your
1119. 00:59:18 skill exceeds the challenge.
1120. 00:59:21 So it's pretty easy for you to do those things.
1121. 00:59:25 But basically there's a range there, which they are calling simple flow.
1122. 00:59:32 And I get what they're saying with this, but I feel like this diagram is not one that
1123. 00:59:37 I agree with.
1124. 00:59:38 Yeah.
1125. 00:59:39 I actually kind of forgot about the diagram until you just brought that back up because
1126. 00:59:44 I was like, I didn't remember there was a diagram.
1127. 00:59:46 So there is a very interesting diagram, if you read this, that shows you a flow channel.
1128. 00:59:52 And then it shows you a peak flow area, a simple flow area, bored and anxious and challenge
1129. 00:59:56 and skill.
1130. 00:59:57 And they, I forgot they related it to challenge and skill.
1131. 00:59:59 So I'm actually glad you, glad you reminded me of that.
1132. 01:00:03 And this is a revision of a diagram from Mihaly's research, but it wasn't the flow book necessarily.
1133. 01:00:12 It was like a follow up work to that where he had these different quadrants for this graph
1134. 01:00:18 where the Y axis is the challenge and the X axis is the skill.
1135. 01:00:23 I feel like this is a misinterpretation though of what that follow up visual to the original
1136. 01:00:30 research on flow was really getting it.
1137. 01:00:34 Yeah.
1138. 01:00:35 And here's where I maybe disconnect a little bit with the writing style of the authors.
1139. 01:00:39 So we can talk about this in style of rating a little bit more, but I'll mention it here.
1140. 01:00:43 He talks about extending extended flow and having these periods where like you're so,
1141. 01:00:47 you know, you're encouraging yourself, you're more available to be in this flow state.
1142. 01:00:53 And he talked about chopping onions and like how you can like be in flow while you're chopping
1143. 01:00:58 onions and you're listening to the knife go through the onions and you're feeling the
1144. 01:01:02 onion and I'm thinking to myself, I'm never going to do this.
1145. 01:01:04 Like I'm just going to chop the onions and I'm going to put the onions in the thing.
1146. 01:01:08 And like, I start to go, is that a problem?
1147. 01:01:11 Like, is it like, I think it's okay that I just want to chop the onions and get the
1148. 01:01:14 onions chopped because I want to put flow into other things.
1149. 01:01:18 So I don't know.
1150. 01:01:19 So this, this kind of gets at kind of my, my big barrier, I think with most of the mindfulness
1151. 01:01:25 meditation stuff that I have ever tried before is there's this, and they even mentioned this,
1152. 01:01:32 um, I don't know if there's this thing from Buddhism, I think where it's like before enlightenment,
1153. 01:01:39 enlightenment, chop wood, carry water after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
1154. 01:01:43 And the point is focus on the task at hand.
1155. 01:01:47 But then I agree, the description of all the joy that he is getting from being in the flow,
1156. 01:01:51 chopping these onions.
1157. 01:01:52 I'm like, we are not cut from the same cloth.
1158. 01:01:57 I kind of agree.
1159. 01:01:59 Like I kind of agree.
1160. 01:02:00 Like these, these just don't resonate with me.
1161. 01:02:02 We get to the try stuff section and I'm even more in like that idea of like, I just don't
1162. 01:02:07 think these activities resonate with me.
1163. 01:02:09 So yeah, magic trees.
1164. 01:02:10 Do you remember the magic trees when Mike, uh, did you even remember, I do remember coming
1165. 01:02:17 across that section and immediately thinking of Bob Ross and the happy little trees.
1166. 01:02:20 Okay.
1167. 01:02:21 So not windy day.
1168. 01:02:23 You pay attention to the trees so much to where you can see the like leaves shake a tiny
1169. 01:02:28 little bit.
1170. 01:02:29 And it's impossible to not look at the tree and see the leaves shake a tiny little bit.
1171. 01:02:32 And I'm just like, Oh, I don't know.
1172. 01:02:34 Like we've, we've gone a little too far here.
1173. 01:02:36 Then there's the walking flow meditation, the take a sniffari, the peak flow.
1174. 01:02:43 So just so you know, if you didn't read the book yet, a sniffari is when you go around
1175. 01:02:46 and instead of using your eyes, which we are visually people sensitive, we were using
1176. 01:02:50 like, um, smell and we're trying to smell everything in our, in our environment.
1177. 01:02:55 Sound touch would be the exact same thing.
1178. 01:02:58 The foot, the foot, the world switch as he talked about in chapter three, I think this
1179. 01:03:04 was the hardest most or sorry, least connected section of the book for me.
1180. 01:03:11 Chapter six was the least connected section of the book for me.
1181. 01:03:14 Um, and I struggled with it the most, I think, agreed because, uh, the top, the topic of
1182. 01:03:19 flow is not an easy one to understand to begin with.
1183. 01:03:22 And then they, they took me, Holly's research in a little bit of a different direction.
1184. 01:03:28 And maybe some of the stuff that they're talking about here, this works for some people, but
1185. 01:03:32 it does not work for me.
1186. 01:03:33 Uh, I will admit that.
1187. 01:03:35 And you know, the whole idea of like the getting the joy out of cutting the onions, part of
1188. 01:03:39 me, when I read that section, I hear him describing it.
1189. 01:03:42 I feel a little bit bad, like maybe there's something wrong with me that I'm not able
1190. 01:03:46 to do that.
1191. 01:03:47 Me too.
1192. 01:03:48 Me too.
1193. 01:03:49 Yes.
1194. 01:03:50 Okay.
1195. 01:03:51 We were kindred spirits here, but I also think having, you know, processed it that for me
1196. 01:03:54 at least the value comes from, as we talked about in the first section with the whole idea
1197. 01:03:59 of the mindfulness meditation app, for me, the goal there is not to completely lose
1198. 01:04:04 track of time and, uh, master, you know, mindfulness.
1199. 01:04:10 It's to train my brain.
1200. 01:04:12 It's used to jumping all over the place.
1201. 01:04:13 So focus on the task at hand.
1202. 01:04:16 Would it be better for me to just focus on the task at hand while chopping the onions?
1203. 01:04:19 Yes.
1204. 01:04:20 Would I like to be in the spot where those little things I can get so wrapped up in them
1205. 01:04:26 that I'm just completely engulfed in the moment?
1206. 01:04:29 I think actually if I'm honest, I would say yes, I would like to be able to do some of
1207. 01:04:33 that stuff.
1208. 01:04:34 But also I don't think that there is anything wrong with me because I'm not like that when
1209. 01:04:39 I'm chopping the onions.
1210. 01:04:41 And a lot of the stuff that I read about this by describing it that way, it makes it feel
1211. 01:04:48 a little bit unattainable.
1212. 01:04:52 And I don't know, I don't know, like the more I think about this, the more I think maybe
1213. 01:05:02 maybe there's not something wrong with me.
1214. 01:05:06 Maybe maybe there is just a version of this that clicks for me and that's, that's okay.
1215. 01:05:14 And I don't know, like the way that they couple these things together in this chapter makes
1216. 01:05:21 flow feel like something that is so far out there and woo woo and spiritual that you got
1217. 01:05:30 to click into a different plane in order to get to it.
1218. 01:05:33 And that's not completely fair because that's not exactly what they're saying.
1219. 01:05:36 But it's the argument that my brain makes by the way that they connected these dots.
1220. 01:05:43 So I kind of wish they hadn't done that.
1221. 01:05:45 Yeah, like I can't agree with you more.
1222. 01:05:47 Like there's a disconnection here for sure and it's, I can't say that they're wrong,
1223. 01:05:52 but I also can't say that you and I are wrong or that I'm wrong.
1224. 01:05:55 The one thing that I think about as I think through chapter six, I think this book or
1225. 01:06:01 this chapter changes if I think about it as gratitude instead of flow.
1226. 01:06:07 And I think that it resonates a little bit more with me for always trying to find gratitude.
1227. 01:06:13 Like, okay, I'm walking in from my truck and I notice like, man, I'm just so thankful
1228. 01:06:17 that I live in Colorado and it's sunshiney here all the time.
1229. 01:06:21 Like that's not necessarily, I'm not looking for the flow state there, but I'm looking
1230. 01:06:24 to acknowledge that that is like, I'm very grateful for that, for that thing.
1231. 01:06:29 Now, I'm sure there's a, there's a problem with the way I'm thinking about it because
1232. 01:06:31 I haven't thought about it all that hard, but that's just kind of the way, that's kind
1233. 01:06:34 of where my brain goes is gratitude seems to fit better with me than flow does in the
1234. 01:06:40 argument.
1235. 01:06:41 But there's another, there's another dimension to this, which I'm realizing as you're talking
1236. 01:06:46 about the gratitude piece, I'm actually working on a newsletter right now.
1237. 01:06:52 The working title is the amateur advantage.
1238. 01:06:55 And it was inspired by a Rick Rubin quote that I came across while listening to a podcast
1239. 01:07:00 recently about playing to win versus playing to play and immediately tied back to like
1240. 01:07:06 the finite versus infinite games that they were talking about in this book while I was
1241. 01:07:09 reading it and the word amateur comes from another word which basically means love.
1242. 01:07:19 So we've kind of given amateur a different definition as like not professional or not
1243. 01:07:26 of high quality when really amateur means you do the thing because you love the thing
1244. 01:07:31 not because you're not getting paid for it.
1245. 01:07:32 You're not getting paid for it.
1246. 01:07:33 It has nothing to do with the outcome.
1247. 01:07:35 So I think that is very much in alignment with what he's describing with the chopping
1248. 01:07:39 the onions, you know, where whatever I'm doing, can I be so invested in it and find joy in
1249. 01:07:45 the moment.
1250. 01:07:46 That is a different way of thinking about this that actually does resonate with me.
1251. 01:07:51 But also like, how do you work in then that idea of amateur with the skill and the challenge?
1252. 01:07:58 Like, I don't really know.
1253. 01:08:00 I don't really know.
1254. 01:08:01 I think this is not a 2D graph, this is probably a cube.
1255. 01:08:05 Yeah, that makes sense.
1256. 01:08:06 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1257. 01:08:08 Makes a lot of sense.
1258. 01:08:09 All right, let's move on.
1259. 01:08:10 We're around in the corner here.
1260. 01:08:11 We're at a chapter seven out of eight.
1261. 01:08:13 So chapter seven is designing formative communities.
1262. 01:08:16 So Mike, for as much as we kind of like talked about that one and not, it wasn't negative,
1263. 01:08:22 but it was more of like a didn't really resonate with us one.
1264. 01:08:25 Oh my goodness, did this one resonate with me?
1265. 01:08:28 Like this was the chapter of the book for me.
1266. 01:08:30 I was like, yes, I love everything you're doing here.
1267. 01:08:34 Like keep doing this.
1268. 01:08:35 I even texted Mike at one point and I was like, man, this formative groups, like communities
1269. 01:08:40 thing, I'm in, like I'm 100% in on this.
1270. 01:08:42 So formative communities are places where everyone is genuinely interested in seeing
1271. 01:08:45 you and sharing life together.
1272. 01:08:49 They typically are formed for three reasons, social or fun, collaborative, which is to get
1273. 01:08:54 something done, and then formation is to get better at something.
1274. 01:08:58 And they give a framework for starting these, engage, reflect and story tell.
1275. 01:09:03 So real quick, I have to just point this out, those three different groups that you talked
1276. 01:09:08 about, those are the primary reasons that people form groups.
1277. 01:09:12 So there is a social community.
1278. 01:09:14 That's the first one.
1279. 01:09:15 Have a good time.
1280. 01:09:16 There is a collaborative community where you're trying to get something done.
1281. 01:09:17 The formative community is actually the third one where you become better together.
1282. 01:09:22 Yeah.
1283. 01:09:23 So the formative community is not, you know, one of those three things.
1284. 01:09:26 It is kind of like the third thing.
1285. 01:09:27 So if you were to view this, I think probably like a hierarchical thing, the formative one
1286. 01:09:32 is the, you know, the top, the transcendental level, whatever.
1287. 01:09:35 Okay.
1288. 01:09:36 Yeah.
1289. 01:09:37 I didn't think about it like that.
1290. 01:09:38 I just thought of it as the three different reasons people typically get into groups and
1291. 01:09:42 the formative was one of those three, but I could see where you go with that.
1292. 01:09:47 Okay.
1293. 01:09:48 So then he plays out this idea of this focus question, who am I becoming in this season
1294. 01:09:53 of my life and that kind of drives a lot of the action or the lot of the discussion in
1295. 01:09:58 the group and basically all I can tell you is, I mean, if you don't read any other chapter
1296. 01:10:06 of the book, make sure you read chapter seven, it just, it seems great.
1297. 01:10:09 Like I, I was fired up.
1298. 01:10:10 I wanted to leave this chapter and go form some group for everybody getting better and,
1299. 01:10:17 you know, community building of each other.
1300. 01:10:20 And I thought, I immediately thought of the, the library.
1301. 01:10:24 I immediately thought of the mastermind groups you talk about, Mike.
1302. 01:10:26 I immediately thought of like the, the community groups that I'm involved in.
1303. 01:10:30 And I was like, this is why they're so sticky.
1304. 01:10:32 This is why I like them so much is because they have so much value.
1305. 01:10:37 And it's where you share.
1306. 01:10:38 It's where you tell.
1307. 01:10:39 It's just where you grow together.
1308. 01:10:40 And I think that's such a cool, great thing, like just cool and great.
1309. 01:10:44 Yeah.
1310. 01:10:45 This is a, a really strong chapter.
1311. 01:10:47 The whole idea of the formative communities is, is really good.
1312. 01:10:50 And I had the same thought when I was reading this is, how do I make the library more like
1313. 01:10:54 this?
1314. 01:10:55 I think I'm one, one level it kind of is already, which is kind of cool.
1315. 01:10:59 But then also there, I, this is where my one action item comes from.
1316. 01:11:03 I want to consider how do I make the library even more into a, to a formative community.
1317. 01:11:11 They've got some critical elements of formative communities that I jotted down.
1318. 01:11:15 So one, everyone has made a commitment to growing their way forward to come more coherently
1319. 01:11:19 and authentically human and help others do the same.
1320. 01:11:22 Second one, there are regular and consistent interactions.
1321. 01:11:24 The group spends time together communicating and sharing experiences.
1322. 01:11:28 There is a shared constructor methodology that guides the process the community uses
1323. 01:11:32 to sustain itself.
1324. 01:11:34 And the fourth one, the group process for, the group process for a sufficient period.
1325. 01:11:40 I think I wrote this one down wrong, the group process for a sufficient period of time to
1326. 01:11:43 form trusted relationships, basically, like you have to show up long enough in order for
1327. 01:11:48 the relationships to develop.
1328. 01:11:50 I must have dictated that one and it misheard me.
1329. 01:11:54 But the, the chief goal of a formative community, I love this.
1330. 01:11:58 He says it's to get more out of life without having to cram more into it.
1331. 01:12:01 And that's the point where I was starting to think about, oh yeah, this is totally the
1332. 01:12:04 people in, in the library.
1333. 01:12:07 And then the other thing that really hits me with this is that a formative community
1334. 01:12:11 meeting is like a potluck.
1335. 01:12:12 Everyone needs to bring a dish so that everyone gets fed.
1336. 01:12:16 This changes everything when it comes to building an online community for me, because
1337. 01:12:22 I have historically created these courses and thrown, you know, the practice of PKM
1338. 01:12:28 hybrid cohort, the life-themed cohort, you get access to all this stuff.
1339. 01:12:32 Nobody goes through the courses.
1340. 01:12:34 What people want when they join a community like this is they want transformation.
1341. 01:12:37 But even that, I don't want it to be transactional.
1342. 01:12:40 A community doesn't work when something is transactional.
1343. 01:12:42 Once you get the result, you're done, you leave, which honestly, if I'm done providing
1344. 01:12:47 value to you at that point, that's the way it should be, but that's not the way I want
1345. 01:12:51 it to be.
1346. 01:12:53 And I don't really care, you know, I care that I make enough money to support my family,
1347. 01:12:58 but I don't really care how much I charge for facilitating this nice place on the internet
1348. 01:13:03 where people can come and get this sort of stuff.
1349. 01:13:05 And I recognize that I can't deliver what people really need all by myself.
1350. 01:13:09 I need to have a whole bunch of people who are going to buy into this as well.
1351. 01:13:13 And I notice this whenever we do like the Ask Library, anything calls or any of the sessions
1352. 01:13:19 where we're just talking and sharing as opposed to me teaching something.
1353. 01:13:24 It's like, those are the ones that I really enjoy.
1354. 01:13:28 And I hope that other people feel the same way.
1355. 01:13:30 But that's kind of the thing I'm thinking about is like, how do I facilitate more moments
1356. 01:13:34 like that?
1357. 01:13:35 Where it's just like, we're going to talk about this topic and I'm not going to come tell you,
1358. 01:13:39 this is the way, but we're going to just have a discussion about it and people are going
1359. 01:13:43 to figure out how to apply this stuff for themselves.
1360. 01:13:45 That's really exciting to me if I can see that.
1361. 01:13:48 So they list some try stuff here at the end of this one as well.
1362. 01:13:52 Mike, if you didn't write down the designing a formative community, try stuff details.
1363. 01:13:57 You're wrong and you should have and shame on you because that was the best try stuff
1364. 01:14:03 in the whole book, in my opinion.
1365. 01:14:05 And basically, they walk you through like, hey, here's how you do it.
1366. 01:14:08 Here's the homework for the first meeting.
1367. 01:14:10 Here's the second meeting.
1368. 01:14:11 Here's the third meeting.
1369. 01:14:12 Here's an example of agenda.
1370. 01:14:14 I just think they do a really good job walking you through getting started on a formative
1371. 01:14:19 community.
1372. 01:14:20 I agree that those are good ways to get started with a formative community.
1373. 01:14:23 However, I did look at those and I was like, I'm not doing these.
1374. 01:14:27 Okay.
1375. 01:14:28 Okay.
1376. 01:14:29 And I think part of it is that I'm like halfway there.
1377. 01:14:32 I have in some ways a formative community that I want to make more formative.
1378. 01:14:37 And I agree with the steps that they outlined, if you were starting from scratch and you
1379. 01:14:41 were just trying to attract your tribe and you're going to create a formative community,
1380. 01:14:46 but the library already has a charter.
1381. 01:14:48 It already has a membership guide.
1382. 01:14:51 Like the bones are there already.
1383. 01:14:53 So I'm not going to blow that all up and be like, okay, let's just start from scratch.
1384. 01:14:57 Yeah.
1385. 01:14:58 I completely agree that you're, you're in a different place having started or having
1386. 01:15:01 already developed a community.
1387. 01:15:03 Yeah.
1388. 01:15:04 All right.
1389. 01:15:05 So chapter eight, it's our last full chapter, ages and stages.
1390. 01:15:09 So basically this whole thing, and I honestly think this chapter demonstrates a big driver
1391. 01:15:16 in the book is these guys are moving to a different stage in their life.
1392. 01:15:22 And as they move into this different stage of their life, they're thinking about design
1393. 01:15:27 differently and they're thinking about humanity differently and they're thinking about their
1394. 01:15:30 own personal lives differently.
1395. 01:15:32 And yes, the students, the 20 something year olds or the 30 something year olds, but like
1396. 01:15:36 Bill said he works actually not with the 20 year olds anymore.
1397. 01:15:41 He works with people that are in their 60s and 70s, I think 80s that are, that are willing
1398. 01:15:46 to come back for a year to Stanford and do like a design sabbatical, essentially, around
1399. 01:15:53 their life.
1400. 01:15:54 So, and I forget what the name of the, the organization is Mike.
1401. 01:15:56 I don't know if you have it written down or not, but yeah.
1402. 01:15:59 So, but he works with older folks and he sees this all the time.
1403. 01:16:02 So it like it can, it can gills everything fits together and everything works well together.
1404. 01:16:07 But basically, I think this was a big driver of why they wrote this book is, is they're
1405. 01:16:10 experiencing this shift right now.
1406. 01:16:12 But basically they're saying in the first half of life, we build ourselves in the second
1407. 01:16:17 half of life, we try to give that away.
1408. 01:16:19 And what we want to think about is like, okay, transactional to focus world.
1409. 01:16:25 In the first half of our life, it's a largely transactional, but can we make that more focus?
1410. 01:16:31 In the second half, how do we even then double triple quadruple down on that focus and really
1411. 01:16:36 shirk a lot more of that transactional, a lot more of that transactional.
1412. 01:16:41 So they, they talk one, the one phrase that came out of here that I thought was really,
1413. 01:16:45 really cool, embrace elderhood.
1414. 01:16:48 This idea like, okay, if you become the elder in the group, instead of pushing back and,
1415. 01:16:53 and saying, oh my gosh, I'm the old, oh, the old man, I'm the elder in the group, embrace
1416. 01:16:58 that process and say like, hey, listen, these folks are going to look up to me because,
1417. 01:17:03 you know, I'm the elder in the group and I have a different perspective of that because
1418. 01:17:07 of my faith background and what elder means in our church setting and those kind of things.
1419. 01:17:11 So it's more of a respected idea and a respected position.
1420. 01:17:15 But like, I think we think about it as tribes or whatever it is, like, there's the elder
1421. 01:17:19 in the tribe and where do you go for advice and wisdom and stuff?
1422. 01:17:21 You go to the elder.
1423. 01:17:23 So it's like, I think it's a cool, it's a cool way to think about that transition through
1424. 01:17:28 the different ages of your life or through the different stages of your life.
1425. 01:17:32 This is a weird last official chapter of the book because they are basically restating
1426. 01:17:42 an idea shared by others previously, but they sort of split the credit for the idea
1427. 01:17:48 into two different places.
1428. 01:17:52 One is the second mountain by David Brooks, which I love that book.
1429. 01:17:56 The other one is I think maybe even the inspiration for that one, and that is a book by Richard
1430. 01:18:01 Rohr and the whole thing just gets a little bit muddy.
1431. 01:18:08 I forget what that book is, but I actually have that book on my bookshelf as well.
1432. 01:18:13 So if I were to have rewritten this chapter, I think I would just focus on the David Brooks
1433. 01:18:21 second mountain piece because that's the one that's more popular.
1434. 01:18:25 And yeah, they are basically saying the same thing, but they're kind of jumping all over
1435. 01:18:29 the place here and then sort of kind of layering in some original stuff on top of it like the
1436. 01:18:34 embrace elderhood, but it's not enough original stuff here to justify a chapter because there's
1437. 01:18:43 not that many chapters in this book.
1438. 01:18:46 And it feels weird that this is the one that they end on to me.
1439. 01:18:50 I agree.
1440. 01:18:51 It's a powerful idea.
1441. 01:18:52 I don't know how you could possibly have worked this in alongside the other stuff, but
1442. 01:19:00 I feel like I really would have tried to because there's all a lot of stuff here where it's
1443. 01:19:07 like I sort of heard this before, you're really not going into it deep enough to really talk
1444. 01:19:14 about it effectively.
1445. 01:19:16 There's another book that we've actually read, which I think speaks to this too a little
1446. 01:19:20 bit and that's right here from strength to strength by Arthur Brooks, not David Brooks,
1447. 01:19:27 not related.
1448. 01:19:28 See, and that was the one I got to mix up with.
1449. 01:19:30 When you said the second mountain by David Brooks, I was like, Oh yeah, that's the one
1450. 01:19:34 we read.
1451. 01:19:35 But we read Arthur Brooks's from strength to strength.
1452. 01:19:38 Yeah.
1453. 01:19:39 And they're both great books, but the point being, I guess that like you could grab these
1454. 01:19:44 main ideas from a million different places.
1455. 01:19:46 And I remember being at a max stock, actually the first time I met David Sparks, I think,
1456. 01:19:53 in real life.
1457. 01:19:54 He was at the conference.
1458. 01:19:56 So we went to a coffee shop, it was David, me, JF, a couple other people from the conference,
1459. 01:20:03 and we were talking about something that I had made, and I was like, well, David, do
1460. 01:20:09 you have any feedback for me?
1461. 01:20:11 Probably a bookworm episode, to be honest.
1462. 01:20:13 And I remember him telling it, like being a little bit hesitant to share it, and he's
1463. 01:20:16 like, no, no, I want to know.
1464. 01:20:17 How could it get better?
1465. 01:20:18 And he's like, well, you don't need to give everybody else credit for every idea you ever
1466. 01:20:23 have.
1467. 01:20:25 You can just own some of this stuff.
1468. 01:20:27 You always take it in a little bit different direction, and you apply your own flavor to
1469. 01:20:32 it anyways.
1470. 01:20:34 It's got the Mike Schmitt's fingerprint on it.
1471. 01:20:37 So you don't need to just cite all these different places that you get all these different
1472. 01:20:41 things from.
1473. 01:20:42 Yeah, maybe they inspired it, but you're synthesizing it and you're making it your own.
1474. 01:20:46 That's what was going through my head when I was reading this chapter.
1475. 01:20:49 Okay.
1476. 01:20:50 Okay.
1477. 01:20:51 So like, okay, we're trying to give credit to everybody who ever talked about this topic
1478. 01:20:53 before.
1479. 01:20:56 And it's just kind of like, well, where did this come from, you know?
1480. 01:21:01 It gets a little bit too muddy, a little bit too complicated.
1481. 01:21:04 Like, you're right.
1482. 01:21:06 There's the two halves of life.
1483. 01:21:08 And no one would have, I don't know, I guess I shouldn't say that, but what I was going
1484. 01:21:13 to say is if they would have just been like, this is how you should think about your life.
1485. 01:21:18 The first half of the second half, first half, you're building something second half, you're
1486. 01:21:21 giving it away.
1487. 01:21:22 I feel like that would have been a much stronger close as opposed to, well, David Brooks talks
1488. 01:21:26 about this and Richard Roar talks about this and embrace elderhood and from 18 to 28, those
1489. 01:21:32 are your odyssey years.
1490. 01:21:33 Like there's too much going on here and it's not, not coherent enough.
1491. 01:21:37 It's like, this is really what you do with this in terms of the ages and stages.
1492. 01:21:41 If you are here, think about this, if you're here, think about that.
1493. 01:21:43 That's really what, what this should have, should have been.
1494. 01:21:46 How do I, I am, you know, fill in the blank.
1495. 01:21:49 I am so many years old based off of everything that you've read here, do this next, do that
1496. 01:21:55 next.
1497. 01:21:56 Maybe this is the part where it should be prescriptive is like, now you understand all
1498. 01:22:00 this stuff, start working through this, building your own compass and for your specific situation,
1499. 01:22:06 this is the way you got to think about it.
1500. 01:22:08 Yeah, that's an, that's an interesting perspective.
1501. 01:22:11 I hadn't, hadn't gotten there.
1502. 01:22:13 So I like that.
1503. 01:22:14 I like hearing that.
1504. 01:22:15 I did like the fact that they, they talked about parents, right?
1505. 01:22:18 And the, they acknowledged us, so thank you for acknowledging us.
1506. 01:22:24 But then the tri stuff, right, just to, to wrap that up, basically the tri stuff is, hey,
1507. 01:22:29 we said a bunch of other stuff that you should try.
1508. 01:22:31 And this stuff applies in the ages and stages as well.
1509. 01:22:34 And they didn't really hit anything new here.
1510. 01:22:36 All right.
1511. 01:22:37 So let's move to the conclusion, living a meaningful life.
1512. 01:22:40 Part of what they do is they, they wrap everything up by revisiting certain topics.
1513. 01:22:45 You don't need to wait.
1514. 01:22:47 There is no finish line.
1515. 01:22:48 Life is a particularity.
1516. 01:22:51 Use radical acceptance.
1517. 01:22:53 And they get into, they really hit hard on design, right?
1518. 01:22:57 Like design your way.
1519. 01:23:00 There is no way design your way.
1520. 01:23:02 You need to be proactive in this.
1521. 01:23:04 Use a formative community.
1522. 01:23:06 The raw, use the raw materials you have, accept what you have, radical acceptance kind of
1523. 01:23:10 a thing.
1524. 01:23:11 So honestly, like the, for me, the, the conclusion section, I, I read it and was just like, okay,
1525. 01:23:19 like good, like done, I did not get anything, I guess, new or exciting out of the, out of
1526. 01:23:26 the conclusion section.
1527. 01:23:29 I don't think there's anything new in here, but yeah, meaning isn't something you find.
1528. 01:23:34 It's something you design.
1529. 01:23:35 We can all of the meaningful life right here right now.
1530. 01:23:39 There is no finish line.
1531. 01:23:41 Well one thing actually that did stand out to me was that you're not late.
1532. 01:23:45 There is no late in the flow world.
1533. 01:23:48 But it resonates to me with me because recently I've had a couple conversations with people
1534. 01:23:53 where a borderline shared like a kind of sort of semi have a regret that I didn't try to
1535. 01:24:00 go out on my own right out of college because I had a feeling that blogging was going to
1536. 01:24:04 be big and I just didn't really do anything with it.
1537. 01:24:07 I could have been a content creator a long time ago.
1538. 01:24:10 And I feel like if I had done that, I would have been able to build a, a business that
1539. 01:24:14 was more mature and more sustainable than, you know, where I'm at right now.
1540. 01:24:20 Present me would have loved for past meet to have taken that approach and not just taken
1541. 01:24:24 the safe path.
1542. 01:24:26 But so yeah, I think that's an important point and there's probably an encouragement to some
1543. 01:24:31 folks out there and then just to keep designing.
1544. 01:24:33 So I think it's a fairly effective conclusion.
1545. 01:24:37 Pretty short.
1546. 01:24:38 The whole book is pretty short.
1547. 01:24:40 I mean, it's 208 pages and probably 50 of it is the try stuff.
1548. 01:24:47 So yeah, I feel like if they're trying to give us a sink summary of finding them, creating
1549. 01:24:54 a meaningful life, they, they did that well.
1550. 01:24:56 But also I'm not sure that that was the right approach.
1551. 01:24:59 I don't know.
1552. 01:25:00 I guess we'll get to that in style and rating and style and rating.
1553. 01:25:03 All right.
1554. 01:25:04 So let's move on to action items.
1555. 01:25:06 I have two action items here.
1556. 01:25:08 One is I want to revisit the focus question.
1557. 01:25:11 So they describe this in the same chapter as the formation, the community formation.
1558. 01:25:18 And basically it's like, who am I becoming in this season of life?
1559. 01:25:22 What is the presenting problem or what is sorry?
1560. 01:25:25 What is the focus question?
1561. 01:25:26 Not the presenting problem.
1562. 01:25:28 So a focus question is about who I'm becoming.
1563. 01:25:30 It's about formation.
1564. 01:25:31 And I just want to revisit that.
1565. 01:25:32 I haven't done that.
1566. 01:25:33 I haven't made that thought in quite a while.
1567. 01:25:35 So I want to think about that.
1568. 01:25:37 And then the second one is, is there a formative community that needs to be developed?
1569. 01:25:41 Do I need to be the starter of a formative community?
1570. 01:25:45 And I guess aside to that one that I'm probably not going to write down, but is, or is there
1571. 01:25:49 one that I need to join?
1572. 01:25:51 Because that might be the healthier approach for me right now at the season in my life,
1573. 01:25:54 is not to start my own, but to join one that already exists.
1574. 01:25:57 So Mike, how about you?
1575. 01:25:58 That would be the healthier option.
1576. 01:26:00 Yes, it would be the healthier option.
1577. 01:26:02 So Mike, what about you?
1578. 01:26:04 Well I just have the one.
1579. 01:26:05 And actually I had none for a long time.
1580. 01:26:07 I added this one as we were talking through the chapter seven, but I want to consider
1581. 01:26:12 how to make the library a more formative community.
1582. 01:26:15 There's lots of potential action items in every single chapter.
1583. 01:26:19 It's kind of weird to me that every time I encounter stuff like that, I'm like, nope,
1584. 01:26:22 nope, nope, nope, no action items for me.
1585. 01:26:25 Yup, yup, yup, yup.
1586. 01:26:26 That is interesting.
1587. 01:26:27 All right, let's go to style and rating it is my book.
1588. 01:26:30 So I will start overall, Mike.
1589. 01:26:33 I like this book.
1590. 01:26:34 Like I thought it was pretty good.
1591. 01:26:36 The tri stuff area didn't resonate quite as much with me, but there were a couple home
1592. 01:26:43 runs that came out of this chapter, like chapter seven was a home run for me.
1593. 01:26:48 Thinking about just some of the mindset and kind of concept things, the tracks transactional
1594. 01:26:58 versus flow world, right?
1595. 01:26:59 Like while I'm not a huge fan of flow, I like the idea that we think too much in the
1596. 01:27:04 transactional world and I like that that piece came out.
1597. 01:27:07 I thought they told good stories.
1598. 01:27:08 I thought it was an interesting like read that was credible because of all their background,
1599. 01:27:14 because of working with all of these individuals from such a wide range of it.
1600. 01:27:19 They had credibility for me from design your life and I've used it and it's been effective.
1601. 01:27:23 So they were already starting above the normal author to me, right?
1602. 01:27:28 Because they had a they had built some clout with me in that.
1603. 01:27:33 So I mean, overall, do I think this is the best book I've ever read?
1604. 01:27:36 No.
1605. 01:27:37 Do I think that I will share this book as widely as possible or more widely than I've ever
1606. 01:27:42 shared it with anybody else?
1607. 01:27:44 No.
1608. 01:27:45 Do I think that if people come to me and they ask me ever a book on like meaning and purpose
1609. 01:27:50 and joy, will I think of this book first?
1610. 01:27:53 No, I don't think I will.
1611. 01:27:55 Do I know the book I'll think of first?
1612. 01:27:56 Not right now, but like do I think it'll be this one?
1613. 01:27:59 I don't think it will be.
1614. 01:28:00 Do I think there are a couple pieces of this book that I'm going to pull out and I'm going
1615. 01:28:03 to use in my teaching, I'm going to use in my mentoring, I'm going to use in my advising
1616. 01:28:07 other people?
1617. 01:28:08 I do.
1618. 01:28:09 I think there are these few two, three, four, five core concepts that will stick with me
1619. 01:28:15 and they'll resonate with me.
1620. 01:28:17 I don't see this as a book that it's like five years from now.
1621. 01:28:20 I'm going to go, man, I should read that how to live a meaningful life book again.
1622. 01:28:24 Like I think it's going to do it.
1623. 01:28:26 I think I'll go look at my notes and go, oh yeah, I remember the gist of that book.
1624. 01:28:30 So what does that mean for my rating?
1625. 01:28:32 For my rating, I think that sits this book at a three.
1626. 01:28:37 I think it wasn't bad.
1627. 01:28:39 It wasn't great.
1628. 01:28:40 It's kind of right down the middle for me and I feel pretty good about that.
1629. 01:28:45 So I'm going to rate this book a three and I'm very intrigued to see what you rate this
1630. 01:28:50 book.
1631. 01:28:51 Oh man, what do I rate this book?
1632. 01:28:55 Well first of all, let me say you're like, do I know which book I would recommend to someone
1633. 01:28:59 who's interested in this topic?
1634. 01:29:01 No.
1635. 01:29:02 I don't know either, but I think I may have just purchased the one that ends up being
1636. 01:29:07 that.
1637. 01:29:08 We talked about the Arthur Brooks from strength to strength.
1638. 01:29:11 He has a new book called the meaning of your life and I feel like it's probably very similar
1639. 01:29:17 in terms of the topic for this one, but also I heard him talk about this.
1640. 01:29:21 I think on the Kale Newport podcast and some of the stuff that he was sharing, I was like,
1641. 01:29:25 that's the way to think about this.
1642. 01:29:26 I was getting real excited listening to that.
1643. 01:29:28 I almost picked this as my next book, but I was like, you can't do two meaning books
1644. 01:29:33 back to back.
1645. 01:29:34 You're going to be that guy.
1646. 01:29:35 So I intentionally didn't do that, but we should put that on the short list for the coming
1647. 01:29:39 week.
1648. 01:29:42 Sure.
1649. 01:29:43 Okay.
1650. 01:29:44 So, Stalin rating the style of this book I think is pretty phenomenal.
1651. 01:29:52 It's co-written by two people who feel like they're one person, one voice.
1652. 01:29:58 And that's kind of rare.
1653. 01:30:01 Most of the time you have a book like this and it's so and so wrote this section and
1654. 01:30:06 you can tell the other person wrote this section.
1655. 01:30:08 You can tell they definitely jive together.
1656. 01:30:12 They was one line in particular where they were talking about like they both have their
1657. 01:30:19 experiences and how it gets expressed is very different, but the principles are the same
1658. 01:30:25 in the, like the, just the whole style, I wish I had written it down, but it was, I forget
1659. 01:30:30 which one is which now, but so and so is an atheist and so, and the other one is a Christian
1660. 01:30:38 and is like Dave, Dave is a Christian, Bill is an atheist.
1661. 01:30:42 Yeah, but the way that they described it was like a so and so is a big fan of Jesus, but
1662. 01:30:50 like is in the third thing in a list and it was it was kind of just like a throwaway comment
1663. 01:30:57 where it was like, I don't know, it was the way that it's written, they were juxtaposing
1664. 01:31:02 these two things.
1665. 01:31:03 I should have written this down.
1666. 01:31:05 And it does a very effective job in two sentences of framing very important things about these
1667. 01:31:12 two vastly different worldviews, but also combining them in a way where it's like, you
1668. 01:31:18 can see how they found the middle ground, okay.
1669. 01:31:21 That example is like those, that two line example from this book is basically the book
1670. 01:31:31 in a nutshell.
1671. 01:31:34 There are not any wasted words and it is a very concise discussion of these topics written
1672. 01:31:41 in a very playful whimsical way where they are self deprecating a lot of times talking
1673. 01:31:47 about their struggles and their stories and the fact that they're tearing up when they're
1674. 01:31:51 cutting the onions, you know, even though that doesn't really do it for me, that type
1675. 01:31:56 of thing makes us a very interesting entertaining read.
1676. 01:32:01 If you've listened to that Nathan Barry episode that we've talked about the last couple of
1677. 01:32:05 episodes, that gives you a perfect representation, I think, hearing them talk on that show and
1678. 01:32:11 the way that they work back and forth off of each other, you can just tell these are
1679. 01:32:16 best friends that just enjoy doing life together and they've made this thing together and even
1680. 01:32:21 though they have completely different backgrounds and ways that they think about the big questions,
1681. 01:32:27 they're thinking about the same big questions and it's making it, you know, it's really
1682. 01:32:32 entertaining to watch, it's really entertaining to read.
1683. 01:32:35 So if you are even remotely interested in the topic, I think this is probably worth
1684. 01:32:39 a read.
1685. 01:32:40 Is it the best book on the topic?
1686. 01:32:42 I think that's an interesting question when I heard you say I was like, oh yeah, definitely
1687. 01:32:46 not the one that I would probably recommend people pick up if this is really a topic
1688. 01:32:50 that they're interested in.
1689. 01:32:51 But again, I don't really know what that is yet either.
1690. 01:32:53 Maybe it is that Arthur Brooks book.
1691. 01:32:56 But I think at the very least, this is a very succinct book.
1692. 01:33:01 You can skip the whole do stuff section, try stuff sections if it's not working for you
1693. 01:33:08 and you can crank through this one in a couple of hours.
1694. 01:33:10 Oh yeah, absolutely.
1695. 01:33:11 And if nothing else, it will at least be fun.
1696. 01:33:14 Yes, I don't think that there's anything in here that was completely transformational
1697. 01:33:21 for me.
1698. 01:33:22 I appreciate the fact that they are leading a discussion about these very important topics.
1699. 01:33:26 I mentioned that the exercises and things that they have people go through are not the
1700. 01:33:31 ones that I would go through.
1701. 01:33:32 I think that's completely okay.
1702. 01:33:34 I think that's actually ultimately a good thing.
1703. 01:33:36 I think different strokes for different folks and they've done this with a lot more people
1704. 01:33:40 than I've done my life theme stuff with.
1705. 01:33:42 So more power to you, it is working.
1706. 01:33:45 I'm going to give it four stars for all of those reasons.
1707. 01:33:50 But yeah, not my favorite book, not even my favorite Bill Burnett and Dave Evans book,
1708. 01:33:53 which I kind of thought it would be based off of the title.
1709. 01:33:58 But it is kind of what I thought it was going to be and that is a fun read about a very
1710. 01:34:04 important topic, which I think will get you to ask some important questions.
1711. 01:34:07 I want to just make sure for the record if Bill and Dave ever listened to this episode.
1712. 01:34:15 I would love to study under you and I would love to learn about design and I would love
1713. 01:34:19 to apply design in the Christian education space.
1714. 01:34:22 By no means am I saying that.
1715. 01:34:25 I'm debating right now, Mike, has anybody ever changed because I'm like, is it a four?
1716. 01:34:30 It's probably more like a four.
1717. 01:34:32 I don't know.
1718. 01:34:33 I kind of feel like a three, but I'm going wishy-washy.
1719. 01:34:35 Should I call it a four?
1720. 01:34:36 I kind of think I should call it a four.
1721. 01:34:38 All right.
1722. 01:34:39 Go for it.
1723. 01:34:40 I think it's a four.
1724. 01:34:41 Because when I think about it being eternalized on the internet, I'd rather it be eternalized
1725. 01:34:44 as a four than a three because I really do think it's more of a four than a three.
1726. 01:34:49 Okay.
1727. 01:34:50 So there you go.
1728. 01:34:51 Wishy-washy.
1729. 01:34:52 All right.
1730. 01:34:53 Mike, let's put how to live a meaningful life on the shelf.
1731. 01:34:55 What is next?
1732. 01:34:57 Next is what you're made for, powerful life lessons from my career in sports by George
1733. 01:35:02 Raveling, this is a guy who was a coach, I know nothing more about his experience.
1734. 01:35:09 But the forward, I think, are the blurb on the front, at least is by Michael Jordan.
1735. 01:35:14 So pretty influential in the sports world.
1736. 01:35:16 He came in my radar because I follow Ryan Holiday on social media.
1737. 01:35:20 And he basically helped get this book published because he met this guy at some function and
1738. 01:35:27 is like, holy cow, this guy has a lot of wisdom and I want to write this down so that
1739. 01:35:31 other people can benefit from it.
1740. 01:35:33 So I think it'll probably be a fun book to talk about with some interesting stories,
1741. 01:35:39 at least that's the hope, but I've not cracked this one open yet.
1742. 01:35:43 Wonderful.
1743. 01:35:45 My book is after that.
1744. 01:35:46 It's going to be Design Love In by Marcus Buckingham and it's basically about how do
1745. 01:35:52 you put love into business making and into your business experience.
1746. 01:35:59 So that's as much as I'm going to give you right now.
1747. 01:36:02 So how about gap books, Mike?
1748. 01:36:04 Do you have any gap books?
1749. 01:36:06 I do not have any official gap books, no, hoping that I can get one in, but I don't
1750. 01:36:11 have anything currently.
1751. 01:36:13 I don't hope I'm going to get one in, I'm not going to get one in, there is no chance
1752. 01:36:17 of a gap book between this and our next recording.
1753. 01:36:21 Well we just want to say thank you all to the Pro Show members.
1754. 01:36:26 So if you're a Pro Show member today, we talked about, sorry, if you're not a Pro Show member,
1755. 01:36:32 today we talked about me doing Whole30 and then we got into like tracking things and like
1756. 01:36:37 how we track different things.
1757. 01:36:39 So if you're interested in listening to that become a Pro Member and you can hear that
1758. 01:36:43 part of the show.
1759. 01:36:44 We also release a bootleg right after the recording.
1760. 01:36:47 So it's usually one or two weeks early.
1761. 01:36:48 It's whenever I can get that turned around and it's usually the day after, if not the
1762. 01:36:52 day of, we have a wallpaper, a bookworm wallpaper, Mike has generously shared his reading master
1763. 01:36:57 class for the, for the members, for the Pro Show members and then it's $7 a month.
1764. 01:37:04 You can go to bookworm.fm/pro and it'll take you to the Patreon page and you can sign up
1765. 01:37:09 there.
1766. 01:37:10 And thanks again for all the, all the Pro Show members.
1767. 01:37:13 Absolutely.
1768. 01:37:14 One other benefit of the Pro Show, you get the edited episodes, usually a little bit
1769. 01:37:19 earlier or two because I hit publish on the Pro Show after I'm finished reviewing it,
1770. 01:37:23 whereas we schedule the regular episodes to go out on Friday morning.
1771. 01:37:27 So Pro Show listeners, last time got it a couple days early.
1772. 01:37:34 And then if I can make one more request, Mike doesn't know what I'm going to do, but if
1773. 01:37:36 I can make one more request for folks, if you're enjoying bookworm, share it.
1774. 01:37:40 I mean, it helps out.
1775. 01:37:42 We would love for more people to know about bookworm and to hopefully get some value out
1776. 01:37:45 of our discussions for this.
1777. 01:37:47 So if you're willing to share it on social media and or just, you know, tell other people
1778. 01:37:51 about it, we'd greatly appreciate that too as well.
1779. 01:37:54 We would.
1780. 01:37:55 All right.
1781. 01:37:56 If you're reading along with us, pick up what you're made for by George Raveling and we'll
1782. 01:37:59 talk to you in a couple of weeks.