253: How to Try Again by Steve Kamb

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1. 00:00:00 So Corey, did you complete your action item,
2. 00:00:04 a 30 minute thought session about how this book,
3. 00:00:07 meaning our previous book,
4. 00:00:08 the book of Elon, applies to your life?
5. 00:00:11 - I did, Mike, I did.
6. 00:00:13 And I'm not gonna tell you anything like monumental
7. 00:00:15 about that book.
8. 00:00:17 Other than like, I think there's some real good nuggets
9. 00:00:20 in there.
10. 00:00:21 Like, I think there are some really good, like,
11. 00:00:23 think about them and how they apply to different projects
12. 00:00:27 or different things that I'm working on nuggets in there.
13. 00:00:30 I'm not gonna wholeheartedly kind of embrace most
14. 00:00:35 any of Musk's like high level philosophies,
15. 00:00:39 but like there are some nuggets in there.
16. 00:00:41 What it really made me think of is kind of
17. 00:00:43 a higher level meta thing about like,
18. 00:00:46 okay, I've got all these book notes now.
19. 00:00:48 And like your world puts them into the mind maps.
20. 00:00:53 And then, you know, like, you're,
21. 00:00:55 are you still doing the summaries in posting those YouTube?
22. 00:01:00 - I'm working on them.
23. 00:01:01 So, yes, I'm a little bit behind for secret reasons,
24. 00:01:08 which will be revealed by the end of the month.
25. 00:01:10 - Okay, cool.
26. 00:01:11 (laughs)
27. 00:01:12 So that was not a T's on purpose.
28. 00:01:14 That was awesome.
29. 00:01:15 But that was not a T's on purpose.
30. 00:01:17 So it got me thinking about, okay,
31. 00:01:20 you and I have done, you know, quite a few books at this point.
32. 00:01:23 70 maybe, you know, we're getting close to 70 books.
33. 00:01:27 You and I, just us, much less the 180 something
34. 00:01:31 that were before I joined the show.
35. 00:01:33 And I'm starting to think about like, okay,
36. 00:01:35 I wanna start making some bigger connections
37. 00:01:39 in all of the stuff that I've said,
38. 00:01:40 I thought was at least somewhat important
39. 00:01:42 coming out of the book.
40. 00:01:44 And I'm trying to think about how do I use AI to do that?
41. 00:01:47 How do I use a tool to help me make those extractions?
42. 00:01:51 Or do I not intentionally?
43. 00:01:53 And is it worth the time to go back in
44. 00:01:55 and try to pull some of those nuggets out of there?
45. 00:01:59 And I don't know the answer to it.
46. 00:02:00 Like I don't know, but that's what came out
47. 00:02:02 of that 30 minute session.
48. 00:02:03 It was like, hold on, there are things inside
49. 00:02:05 of all these notes that you've taken.
50. 00:02:07 And there are things inside of these highlights.
51. 00:02:10 And what I'm also debating there,
52. 00:02:12 and I know I'm kind of talking in circles right now,
53. 00:02:14 but it's like, is that too static?
54. 00:02:18 Like does it need to be more of a dynamic thing?
55. 00:02:21 Whereas like, as my life changes,
56. 00:02:23 I'll get different things out of the insights
57. 00:02:25 that I grabbed out of those books.
58. 00:02:27 And I don't know the answer to that right now,
59. 00:02:28 but it's like, they're almost needs to be,
60. 00:02:30 I need to have like a process, like a review process
61. 00:02:32 for the notes that come out of the book.
62. 00:02:34 You know what I mean?
63. 00:02:35 But it's like, it seems daunting when I think about 70 books.
64. 00:02:38 So I can only imagine it seems daunting
65. 00:02:39 when you think about 250.
66. 00:02:43 So I don't know what that would be.
67. 00:02:44 - Yeah, so on that note, like this is,
68. 00:02:47 I think the argument that best supports my belief
69. 00:02:51 that everybody needs to be creative
70. 00:02:53 and you need to create on a regular schedule.
71. 00:02:56 Because what that does for me is it forces my brain
72. 00:02:59 to do the creative work of connecting those dots.
73. 00:03:04 And it's sort of like going to the gym
74. 00:03:05 the more that you do it, the stronger the muscle gets.
75. 00:03:08 But I don't worry at all about surfacing particular notes
76. 00:03:13 that I have taken from previous books that I have read.
77. 00:03:17 If it surfaces, great, because I understand enough
78. 00:03:19 about the greater process that that's what your brain
79. 00:03:22 is trying to do anyways.
80. 00:03:24 And if there's specific ways that I can leverage
81. 00:03:26 those connections between my notes, I'll make those
82. 00:03:29 so I can do it in the future.
83. 00:03:30 Kind of like the cross-reference library stuff
84. 00:03:32 that I've done with my Bible verses and things
85. 00:03:35 in obsidian.
86. 00:03:36 But to force yourself to go back
87. 00:03:39 and try to wring something out of those notes,
88. 00:03:43 I feel like I have no interest in doing that.
89. 00:03:46 And I feel like it would be a little bit
90. 00:03:48 of a difficult exercise.
91. 00:03:49 You probably could do it.
92. 00:03:50 You probably could get something out of it.
93. 00:03:52 But that juice just isn't worth the squeeze to me.
94. 00:03:55 - Yeah, I think my default would be to throw it to an AI
95. 00:03:58 and see what it'll do for me.
96. 00:04:01 And see what I think about that.
97. 00:04:02 But then I know that as soon as I do that,
98. 00:04:04 there's something that rubs me the wrong way about that.
99. 00:04:07 It's like, ah, but that's not me gaining those insights.
100. 00:04:10 That's me asking it to summarize the things
101. 00:04:13 that I've included in there or something.
102. 00:04:15 And I don't know what to do with that.
103. 00:04:17 - Yeah, don't let it make the connections for you.
104. 00:04:19 And yeah, it could summarize things
105. 00:04:20 if all you want is the summary.
106. 00:04:22 But I feel like that's not really what you're after.
107. 00:04:25 And I would just let that stuff organically bubble up,
108. 00:04:29 give yourself some sort of regular output
109. 00:04:32 for connecting those dots
110. 00:04:34 and then just trust the process.
111. 00:04:36 The output is the output.
112. 00:04:38 You don't have to judge it.
113. 00:04:39 Try to make it better, et cetera.
114. 00:04:41 Just as what it is.
115. 00:04:43 - Yep, but that's the outcome of my follow-up.
116. 00:04:46 So it was good.
117. 00:04:47 But nothing major came out of it.
118. 00:04:50 - All right.
119. 00:04:51 I don't think we have anything else to announce here.
120. 00:04:55 So I guess we talk about today's book then, huh?
121. 00:04:58 - Yeah, let's do it.
122. 00:05:00 - All right.
123. 00:05:01 So today's book is How to Try Again by Steve Cam.
124. 00:05:07 And before I get into how this book got on my radar,
125. 00:05:11 I'll ask, have you ever heard of Steve Cam before?
126. 00:05:15 Or his brand nerd fitness?
127. 00:05:17 - Yeah.
128. 00:05:17 I had, nerd fitness had like popped through at some point
129. 00:05:22 because it was from like the early 2000s, 2010-ish, right?
130. 00:05:26 So it's like somewhere I had seen that,
131. 00:05:28 but it was like a fly-in fly-out thing.
132. 00:05:30 Like I wasn't part of the community.
133. 00:05:32 I never knew anything about it.
134. 00:05:33 I couldn't have told you that Steve Cam
135. 00:05:34 was the guy who created it.
136. 00:05:36 I've just heard the nerd fitness thing before at some point.
137. 00:05:40 - Yeah.
138. 00:05:41 I feel like nerd fitness is probably something
139. 00:05:43 past Corey would have really enjoyed or maybe even now,
140. 00:05:48 I don't know, I'm not into nerd fitness at all,
141. 00:05:51 but just hearing him talk about it,
142. 00:05:53 couldn't help but think that pre,
143. 00:05:57 what do you call it?
144. 00:05:58 The F3 group that you're a part of
145. 00:06:00 and the CrossFit type of stuff, you know,
146. 00:06:02 before that got big, I could totally see you doing something.
147. 00:06:04 - Yeah, I agree, I agree, yeah.
148. 00:06:08 - Okay, so I was familiar with Steve Cam
149. 00:06:10 from Nerd Fitness back when I was working
150. 00:06:13 with Asian efficiency.
151. 00:06:14 His name showed up, he probably was on the productivity show
152. 00:06:18 when I was editing it and Zach was hosting it.
153. 00:06:21 So I knew who he was, I had never talked to him though.
154. 00:06:25 And then I bumped into him outside of Craft & Commerce,
155. 00:06:30 he came to the conference with a t-shirt,
156. 00:06:33 had the cover of the book on it with an arrow,
157. 00:06:36 said I wrote this, was fucking around,
158. 00:06:39 talking to people, the whole, whole conference.
159. 00:06:42 So right away when I saw that, I'm like,
160. 00:06:45 props to you, author guy, promoting your book
161. 00:06:47 in a unique and interesting way.
162. 00:06:50 I recognized the name once I saw it,
163. 00:06:52 I heard other people saying good things about it.
164. 00:06:56 And when I happened to bump into Steve
165. 00:06:58 and we're doing the small talk thing,
166. 00:07:00 mentioned the podcast, we've got a bookworm podcast
167. 00:07:03 where we review books, I would love to take a look at it.
168. 00:07:05 He said, okay, well, I gave Nathan a copy
169. 00:07:07 to give to everybody at the conference,
170. 00:07:09 so it's in your bag.
171. 00:07:11 That's awesome.
172. 00:07:12 Yeah, and then obviously he was there
173. 00:07:14 signing copies and things,
174. 00:07:16 doing the whole promotional tour at this point.
175. 00:07:21 This is an interesting book because I think it was,
176. 00:07:23 he said something like 13 years in the making.
177. 00:07:26 He got a book deal when Nerd Fitness was blowing up,
178. 00:07:29 life, life to him, and then he ended up writing
179. 00:07:33 a very different book, which is the one
180. 00:07:34 that we have here today.
181. 00:07:36 Interesting layout too, there's an introduction,
182. 00:07:39 there's a first chapter, then there are two parts.
183. 00:07:43 Part one is let's make a pack,
184. 00:07:44 there's four parts in that one for each of the letters,
185. 00:07:48 and then part two is how to use packs in our lives.
186. 00:07:51 That is chapters six through 10, yep, there we go.
187. 00:07:55 It's going through my mind map here.
188. 00:07:58 Then there's a conclusion and an epilogue.
189. 00:08:01 So I think we'll do this chapter by chapter,
190. 00:08:03 but it does break down into those separate parts
191. 00:08:06 with that one weird chapter at the beginning
192. 00:08:08 and it doesn't fit inside of anything.
193. 00:08:10 - What's really funny is you think about it
194. 00:08:12 and you get to the end of the book and he talks to you about,
195. 00:08:15 well, I couldn't figure out how to organize the book,
196. 00:08:18 I couldn't figure out how to structure the book,
197. 00:08:19 and it's like, yes, correct, you couldn't figure it out
198. 00:08:23 and there's that one weird chapter at the beginning
199. 00:08:25 and then we go into somewhat of a reasonable organization.
200. 00:08:29 So yeah, he struggled with that.
201. 00:08:30 I mean, that seems to be a problem,
202. 00:08:32 but I think it turned out okay,
203. 00:08:34 I don't think it came across as overly unique,
204. 00:08:38 or different, or weird.
205. 00:08:39 - Yeah, I don't mind it,
206. 00:08:40 other than you're messing up my outline, Steve.
207. 00:08:42 - Uh-huh, uh-huh, come on, Steve.
208. 00:08:44 - Does that manually adjust all of these headers
209. 00:08:47 when I export this to Markdown?
210. 00:08:49 - Yeah.
211. 00:08:52 - The book is basically about the topic of failure
212. 00:08:56 and trying again, hence the name.
213. 00:09:01 Not a typical topic, I would say,
214. 00:09:05 for either productivity or business,
215. 00:09:09 you know, the types of books that we would typically read,
216. 00:09:12 but also very important.
217. 00:09:14 I feel like we've come across anecdotes in other books
218. 00:09:18 about the importance of failure
219. 00:09:19 and learning from your failures.
220. 00:09:21 I mean, even in the last book that we read,
221. 00:09:24 Elon's talking about the failed launches
222. 00:09:26 are all part of the process,
223. 00:09:28 but I think this is the first book I've ever seen
224. 00:09:30 that's really just all about making mistakes.
225. 00:09:34 - Uh-huh, okay, so you're nodding your head,
226. 00:09:36 you haven't seen anything like this before either?
227. 00:09:39 - No, and he owns it too, right?
228. 00:09:41 Like, what's interesting to me about the start of this book
229. 00:09:43 is it's semi-autobiographical,
230. 00:09:47 where he's telling you about like the way all of this came
231. 00:09:50 to be through his experiences,
232. 00:09:52 but then he also has a framework
233. 00:09:53 and he also wants you to think about this framework.
234. 00:09:55 So it was almost, you know, as you're reading it,
235. 00:09:59 and I don't remember if he says it this directly or not,
236. 00:10:01 but it's almost as you're reading it,
237. 00:10:02 he was like, I had to figure out a way to get through this.
238. 00:10:05 This was the, this book is the result
239. 00:10:07 of me figuring out a way to get through this,
240. 00:10:10 but no, I've not seen many other books
241. 00:10:14 combine those two things or talking,
242. 00:10:17 talking about, it's not just failure, right?
243. 00:10:18 'Cause he does talk about failure there,
244. 00:10:20 but it's more a matter of like, don't stop at the failure.
245. 00:10:24 Go, like what do you do after that happens?
246. 00:10:26 When it happens, what do you do?
247. 00:10:27 And I've not seen any other books like that,
248. 00:10:29 or I've not read any other books like that.
249. 00:10:32 All right, well, let's get into it.
250. 00:10:34 The first chapter here is the introduction.
251. 00:10:37 This is actually titled "Starting at the End."
252. 00:10:41 And this is where he tells a little bit of his story
253. 00:10:44 in the context for this book,
254. 00:10:47 mentions that he had a relationship that ended
255. 00:10:50 and a company that fell apart two weeks
256. 00:10:53 after signing the book deal.
257. 00:10:56 And I can't think of worst timing for that.
258. 00:11:00 Definitely you feel for him when he shares that.
259. 00:11:05 But like you said, he owns it.
260. 00:11:07 And the net result of that, I think,
261. 00:11:10 is that it's very encouraging.
262. 00:11:12 It's sort of like if I went through this
263. 00:11:13 and was able to do it, then you can do it too.
264. 00:11:17 He mentions that this book is for people
265. 00:11:19 who don't have it all together.
266. 00:11:20 And there's a quote that I really like
267. 00:11:22 in this introduction, it says,
268. 00:11:23 "Rather than help people succeed with more discipline,
269. 00:11:26 "we need to help them fail with more compassion."
270. 00:11:29 I love that phrase, curious to get your thoughts.
271. 00:11:32 - Yeah, I mean, the nature or the orientation,
272. 00:11:37 that's what I'm gonna say out of the book,
273. 00:11:39 is so different than other books in this area
274. 00:11:42 where you think about like,
275. 00:11:43 "Oh, you just need to be more disciplined.
276. 00:11:45 "You just need to hustle more.
277. 00:11:46 "You need to go do it."
278. 00:11:46 You're like, "You need to have a better plan.
279. 00:11:48 "You need to organize better," whatever it is.
280. 00:11:50 And his whole orientation is,
281. 00:11:52 when you get smacked in the face, right?
282. 00:11:55 How do you pick yourself back up and keep going?
283. 00:11:57 And how are you kind to yourself?
284. 00:12:01 How do you have compassion to yourself?
285. 00:12:03 And like, it's just a very different perspective on it.
286. 00:12:06 Now, I don't love every aspect of that perspective,
287. 00:12:09 but I appreciate the nuanced difference in this book
288. 00:12:14 than in most of the other books that you read in this area.
289. 00:12:18 I'm gonna turn a question back on you.
290. 00:12:21 He says in here, "The book is for the rest of us.
291. 00:12:23 "Burned out humans are a fresh day.
292. 00:12:24 "They can't get it together.
293. 00:12:26 "They think they should exercise more.
294. 00:12:28 "They should eat better.
295. 00:12:29 "They should be more productive."
296. 00:12:31 There were multiple times in this book
297. 00:12:33 where I was like, "Steve, stop shining the spotlight on me.
298. 00:12:37 "What are you doing?"
299. 00:12:40 I mean, I know that's your goal here,
300. 00:12:41 but like, come on, you're just not blind to me
301. 00:12:44 with the spotlight here?
302. 00:12:45 'Cause like, the number of times I've said that,
303. 00:12:47 like, come on, Corey, get it together.
304. 00:12:48 Like, come on, Corey, don't be so lazy.
305. 00:12:51 You should exercise.
306. 00:12:52 You should eat better.
307. 00:12:53 You should breathe more productive.
308. 00:12:54 It's like, gosh, you're hitting all the things
309. 00:12:56 that at times in my life I've called out on my own.
310. 00:13:00 So I think is, if it hasn't found a strong audience,
311. 00:13:06 I could very easily see this book finding a strong audience
312. 00:13:09 in a committed audience that's willing to word of mouth
313. 00:13:12 share this in a bunch of different places.
314. 00:13:14 - All right, so you mentioned you had a question for me
315. 00:13:17 in there, was it basically just, do I ever feel that way?
316. 00:13:19 - Did you feel it's called out?
317. 00:13:20 Like, sorry to get into the question.
318. 00:13:21 Like, did you feel called out
319. 00:13:23 and the times he was putting the spotlight on you as well?
320. 00:13:27 Yes and no, so this is interesting timing for me
321. 00:13:30 reading this because I've been thinking through a lot
322. 00:13:33 of this stuff the last couple of weeks in particular.
323. 00:13:38 I wrote a newsletter actually that I published today
324. 00:13:43 as we record this.
325. 00:13:44 I'll put the link to it in the show notes.
326. 00:13:47 But it was essentially about some coaching
327. 00:13:50 that I had done with Darryl Vesterfeld
328. 00:13:52 after attending Gabby Beckford's session
329. 00:13:55 at Craft and Commerce.
330. 00:13:56 So, Becky, Gabby Beckford.
331. 00:13:59 Why do I have such a hard time with that name?
332. 00:14:01 Give a talk and she talked about this concept
333. 00:14:03 delusional confidence.
334. 00:14:04 She asked this question, like if you could change
335. 00:14:07 the rule book, what would you change?
336. 00:14:10 And it really just got me thinking about
337. 00:14:13 what are the limiting beliefs that I have,
338. 00:14:15 the things that I've just accepted,
339. 00:14:16 this is part of the process.
340. 00:14:17 And one of those I think is what you were just describing.
341. 00:14:20 I am a messed up individual who can't just seem
342. 00:14:24 to get it together and do the stuff that I should do.
343. 00:14:27 And I've been thinking a lot about that
344. 00:14:30 in terms of my creator business
345. 00:14:32 and had some coaching with Darryl
346. 00:14:34 and he was walking me through this exercise.
347. 00:14:37 The details are in this article if you wanna go deeper.
348. 00:14:38 But essentially he did two things.
349. 00:14:40 First he asked, you know, you 15 years ago,
350. 00:14:44 what would they think about your situation right now?
351. 00:14:46 And then go out 15 years into the future.
352. 00:14:48 So, older you, how would they think
353. 00:14:50 about your situation right now?
354. 00:14:51 So, younger you is like, oh, that's awesome.
355. 00:14:54 We get to make YouTube videos for a living.
356. 00:14:56 Sweet, sign me up.
357. 00:14:57 And then the older you is like,
358. 00:14:58 whatever it is you're dealing with right now,
359. 00:15:00 it's going to be okay, it's not that big a deal.
360. 00:15:02 It feels like the world is ending, but it really isn't.
361. 00:15:05 So, I've been struggling with some of that stuff
362. 00:15:07 more recently.
363. 00:15:08 Darryl was talking to me about this launch
364. 00:15:11 that I'm getting ready to do.
365. 00:15:12 I'll share more about that when it's ready.
366. 00:15:15 But the general premise of it is,
367. 00:15:18 I wanna help people use AI
368. 00:15:19 to amplify their human voice and taste.
369. 00:15:22 And I've fascinated by that topic.
370. 00:15:25 I don't think AI is a switch.
371. 00:15:26 A lot of people view it as like push button done,
372. 00:15:29 SEO blog post go.
373. 00:15:30 Don't ever let it think for you.
374. 00:15:31 I'm kind of in the middle.
375. 00:15:33 And I'm fascinated by that whole topic,
376. 00:15:36 but there's a whole lot of imposter syndrome
377. 00:15:38 that I deal with around that.
378. 00:15:40 So, Darryl was kind of helping me unpack that.
379. 00:15:44 And the imposter syndrome is really just a sign
380. 00:15:46 that you have something to share here.
381. 00:15:48 And then he had me think six months into the future,
382. 00:15:52 this launch that you've got
383. 00:15:53 is gonna be the best launch you ever had.
384. 00:15:55 What is true six months from now about this launch?
385. 00:15:58 And as I got into the details of that exercise,
386. 00:16:02 obviously you're getting excited about it.
387. 00:16:04 Oh man, this is gonna be amazing.
388. 00:16:06 He's like, okay, now the place that you're at right now,
389. 00:16:08 that's the place that you have to stay in
390. 00:16:11 as you work towards that launch.
391. 00:16:13 Because if you get in your own head
392. 00:16:14 and you're stuck freaking out about stuff,
393. 00:16:16 you create very differently out of that place of fear
394. 00:16:20 than you do when you are creating
395. 00:16:21 out of a place of abundance.
396. 00:16:23 And I can totally see that.
397. 00:16:24 I can totally see that in myself
398. 00:16:25 where it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
399. 00:16:27 I'm so nervous about things breaking that they break.
400. 00:16:30 Yeah, or they don't go as well as I want them to go.
401. 00:16:34 So I've had that in the back of my mind
402. 00:16:36 as I'm going through all this stuff too.
403. 00:16:38 What that did for me as we're talking
404. 00:16:40 about the whole thing about failure
405. 00:16:44 is I think it helped me realize
406. 00:16:47 that it's really not that big a deal.
407. 00:16:49 And I have permission to just go try things.
408. 00:16:54 Lean into the curiosity.
409. 00:16:55 It's not all gonna work, but it doesn't have to work.
410. 00:16:59 So I was kind of moving this direction anyways, I guess.
411. 00:17:01 It's good.
412. 00:17:02 It's the best way to describe it.
413. 00:17:04 Yeah, good.
414. 00:17:05 Good, I mean, he also gets into,
415. 00:17:08 I don't remember if he actually tells us
416. 00:17:09 what Pac stands for, but he tells us
417. 00:17:11 that he's gonna tell us about a framework here
418. 00:17:14 in this chapter.
419. 00:17:15 And then he's really kind of just setting the stage
420. 00:17:19 of basically stuff's gonna get in the way
421. 00:17:22 and let's talk about how to handle that stuff.
422. 00:17:24 So that's really what I took away
423. 00:17:26 from this introductory chapter of like,
424. 00:17:28 let's look at where we are right now
425. 00:17:32 and you're probably there too.
426. 00:17:34 So I thought it was a good intro.
427. 00:17:37 It's a great intro.
428. 00:17:38 Yeah, I don't think he really got into what Pac is.
429. 00:17:41 Although if you look at the table of contents,
430. 00:17:42 you can totally see it.
431. 00:17:44 So the next chapter though, the first official chapter,
432. 00:17:48 this is the one that stands alone,
433. 00:17:50 it's lonely, it doesn't have a part.
434. 00:17:52 The unexpected benefits of failure.
435. 00:17:54 I get why this one doesn't really fit anywhere else.
436. 00:17:56 And I'm really glad that this chapter is in here.
437. 00:17:58 Me too, me too.
438. 00:18:00 Feel like this is a very important first chapter.
439. 00:18:03 This is the first chapter you have to have,
440. 00:18:04 I feel like in this book.
441. 00:18:05 Yeah, I agree.
442. 00:18:07 I agree, the launch, the quote in here,
443. 00:18:09 the recanting quote about Buddha's brain,
444. 00:18:11 did you highlight that?
445. 00:18:13 I don't remember that, no.
446. 00:18:14 Our brain is like Velcro for negative experiences
447. 00:18:16 but tough on the positive ones.
448. 00:18:18 I was like, oh my goodness.
449. 00:18:20 And this is where I said like, oh my goodness,
450. 00:18:21 it's such a spotlight.
451. 00:18:22 Yeah, like I remember all the negative things
452. 00:18:25 and I just easily let the positive ones
453. 00:18:27 just kind of float away.
454. 00:18:28 And this happens with me, you know, as a teacher,
455. 00:18:32 you get student reviews at the end of the class
456. 00:18:34 and man, oh man, the one negative one,
457. 00:18:37 you wore a funny shirt on the third day of class.
458. 00:18:40 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and like that's the one
459. 00:18:42 that's six in your brain, not like, not the one that's like,
460. 00:18:44 man, you've like, you've impacted my life
461. 00:18:46 and it was such a good class and all that stuff.
462. 00:18:48 Like those just fly out the window.
463. 00:18:50 I did jot that down, I didn't jot down the source of that.
464. 00:18:54 But yeah, brain is like Velcro for negative Teflon
465. 00:18:57 for the positive.
466. 00:18:59 And it is totally true.
467. 00:19:00 I had an experience this week, which again,
468. 00:19:03 I was kind of already thinking about this stuff
469. 00:19:05 in a little bit different light.
470. 00:19:06 I was primed for this book, I guess,
471. 00:19:07 is the best way to put it.
472. 00:19:09 But even last week, I had this situation
473. 00:19:12 where I got this really nasty email
474. 00:19:16 from someone who signed up for my email list.
475. 00:19:19 And it was basically, you're all a bunch of snake oil sales
476. 00:19:24 menu people making money off of this free app obsidian.
477. 00:19:27 And I was like, I don't normally reply.
478. 00:19:30 I replied to this one.
479. 00:19:32 I was like, I agree to disagree.
480. 00:19:34 I'll go ahead and unsubscribe you from my list.
481. 00:19:36 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's tough.
482. 00:19:39 But I noticed though, so I mentioned I don't normally reply.
483. 00:19:45 And I'm actually pretty proud of the reply that I had
484. 00:19:47 because I stood up for myself,
485. 00:19:49 which I felt like in the moment
486. 00:19:51 that was something I needed to do.
487. 00:19:53 Most of the time when I get emails like that,
488. 00:19:55 I ignore them, but this is absolutely true.
489. 00:19:58 By replying and saying, I don't see it that way,
490. 00:20:02 I guess let's just go our separate ways.
491. 00:20:04 I felt like that was me because I wasn't coming at him,
492. 00:20:07 but I was acknowledging like, this is not a match.
493. 00:20:11 And it allowed me, it was interesting
494. 00:20:12 'cause I think it allowed me to sort of turn the page
495. 00:20:15 a little bit and not think about it anymore.
496. 00:20:17 But I have to tell you, Corey,
497. 00:20:19 the people who are like that,
498. 00:20:23 they have something in common
499. 00:20:24 and it makes me uncomfortable.
500. 00:20:27 Most of the people who are like that,
501. 00:20:29 'cause that's not, for some of her that argument,
502. 00:20:33 they are people who have downloaded my Bible resources.
503. 00:20:37 - Oh, really?
504. 00:20:38 - Yep, which is why I talk about my faith often.
505. 00:20:43 I think it's a very important part of who I am
506. 00:20:45 and my approach to productivity.
507. 00:20:47 My values are very, they guide everything that I do,
508. 00:20:52 but I don't wanna make a faith-based anything anymore
509. 00:20:57 because of I've had enough people like that,
510. 00:21:00 where it's just like, you should give this to me for free.
511. 00:21:03 And I'm like, well, I would be broke
512. 00:21:06 and living in a van down by the river like that, so no.
513. 00:21:11 - Yeah, there's a difference between those two things, yes.
514. 00:21:13 - Yeah, and that's not everybody, obviously,
515. 00:21:16 but they definitely have something in common.
516. 00:21:19 - That's a bummer, man.
517. 00:21:20 Like, that's such a bummer and I agree.
518. 00:21:23 Like, those things would bother me, too.
519. 00:21:25 But I see what you're saying in terms of,
520. 00:21:27 it allows you to almost like close out and be like,
521. 00:21:30 okay, I set my piece, I was respectful, I was kind,
522. 00:21:33 but at the same time I set up for myself
523. 00:21:35 and just call it a day and be like,
524. 00:21:37 I can't change you, but at least I gave myself
525. 00:21:40 a fair shot, kind of a thing.
526. 00:21:42 - Yeah, don't waste your time worrying
527. 00:21:44 about what people you're never gonna make happy.
528. 00:21:46 Think about it, go make other people happy.
529. 00:21:50 Provide the transformation that you can
530. 00:21:51 with the people who actually want it.
531. 00:21:53 And I've been able to do that on a higher level
532. 00:21:56 since I started implementing some of the stuff
533. 00:21:58 that I was going through in that growth intensive.
534. 00:22:00 So I feel like that stuff that I've been doing,
535. 00:22:03 man, I can't speak highly enough about this.
536. 00:22:06 I'm gonna put the link to the growth intensive
537. 00:22:08 and the show notes that people are interested in.
538. 00:22:10 That's the two day thing I did
539. 00:22:12 with De'El Vesterfeld and Corey Wilkes.
540. 00:22:14 I joined the program that they have,
541. 00:22:16 but they pitched at the end of that.
542. 00:22:18 And it's been phenomenal, it is not cheap,
543. 00:22:20 but it's not an overstatement to say
544. 00:22:24 that that has been life-changing for me.
545. 00:22:26 - Okay, that's good to know.
546. 00:22:27 - Yeah, that's good to know.
547. 00:22:29 There are a couple of things in this chapter, though,
548. 00:22:31 that I did wanna talk about.
549. 00:22:32 The first is the Museum of Failure.
550. 00:22:33 Have you heard of this before?
551. 00:22:35 - I've not, but it sounds fascinating.
552. 00:22:37 Like it sounds like something
553. 00:22:39 that I would wanna go check out
554. 00:22:40 and see what this is all about.
555. 00:22:43 - Yeah, so my understanding is that this actually moves
556. 00:22:48 to different locations.
557. 00:22:50 - Cool.
558. 00:22:50 - But it's been around for a while
559. 00:22:52 and it has a big collection of things
560. 00:22:54 that were a quote unquote failure.
561. 00:22:58 So you'll see things in there.
562. 00:23:00 Like one of the examples he mentioned was Apple's Pippin,
563. 00:23:03 which is like a video game system
564. 00:23:05 that they made back in the day.
565. 00:23:07 Kodak and the first digital camera,
566. 00:23:09 which they didn't release
567. 00:23:10 'cause they didn't wanna cannibalize their film business.
568. 00:23:15 All sorts of stuff that, like, oh, the virtual boy,
569. 00:23:18 that was one.
570. 00:23:19 I was gonna ask you, if you remember that,
571. 00:23:20 you're of a certain age.
572. 00:23:21 - No, no, I don't remember the virtual boy
573. 00:23:24 at all, no.
574. 00:23:25 - I remember trying this at like a blockbuster video.
575. 00:23:28 It was this--
576. 00:23:29 - I remember that.
577. 00:23:30 - It was like an Apple vision pro thing that you put on,
578. 00:23:32 but imagine like big red and black pixels.
579. 00:23:35 And after two minutes says like a 12 year old or something,
580. 00:23:38 I was like, this is making me sick, I can't stand this.
581. 00:23:41 It was horrible, that's in there.
582. 00:23:44 But the thing that I found the most fascinating
583. 00:23:47 from the Museum of Failure was the wall of failure
584. 00:23:49 at the end with the Post-It notes.
585. 00:23:52 And they had a picture of one in particular.
586. 00:23:55 'Cause they don't have to all be these huge colossal failures.
587. 00:23:58 One was like, I farted in yoga.
588. 00:24:00 - Yeah, exactly, yeah.
589. 00:24:02 The one that I always, I thought about when I was reading that
590. 00:24:04 as like, do you remember green and purple ketchup?
591. 00:24:08 - No, that sounds disgusting.
592. 00:24:09 - Okay, so it was a complete mind bend
593. 00:24:12 'cause it's like, if you're from Pittsburgh,
594. 00:24:14 which, you know, I'm originally from Pittsburgh,
595. 00:24:17 Heinz ketchup is, you know, is everything.
596. 00:24:19 You put it on almost anything, right?
597. 00:24:21 And it's red and it's Heinz ketchup
598. 00:24:22 and it's Heinz 57 and all this stuff.
599. 00:24:24 And then they made purple and green.
600. 00:24:26 And I remember eating a hot dog with green ketchup
601. 00:24:29 on it going, nope, can't do it.
602. 00:24:32 Like it tastes exactly like normal tomato ketchup,
603. 00:24:35 but it was just weird, you just couldn't do it.
604. 00:24:38 It was the strangest thing in complete flop.
605. 00:24:40 Like it absolutely flopped it.
606. 00:24:41 It was gone in months.
607. 00:24:43 I don't know how long it was there,
608. 00:24:44 but it was gone in months.
609. 00:24:45 But that's what like popped into my head
610. 00:24:46 when I thought about failure, Museum of Failure.
611. 00:24:47 - Good, there was a definition of failure in here
612. 00:24:53 which I thought was interesting.
613. 00:24:54 So in 1828, failure was defined as a breaking
614. 00:24:57 or becoming insolvent, a thing that happened.
615. 00:25:00 And that was Noah Webster from Webster's Dictionary.
616. 00:25:03 He died in 1843 and in 1857, there was a revision
617. 00:25:07 where a failure was redefined to include
618. 00:25:09 some weakness in man's character disposition or habit.
619. 00:25:12 And that's when it became a character flaw
620. 00:25:14 in a moral shortcoming.
621. 00:25:15 - I thought that was an interesting observation.
622. 00:25:19 - What do you think, he makes a statement in here,
623. 00:25:22 failure is the most common of all human experiences.
624. 00:25:25 - Do you think that's true?
625. 00:25:27 Like I thought about this and I was like,
626. 00:25:29 I mean, you think about it,
627. 00:25:31 you start doing it as a baby, right?
628. 00:25:33 Like, okay, you're trying to walk.
629. 00:25:35 Hey, what do you do?
630. 00:25:36 You fail, and you fail, and you fail, and you fail,
631. 00:25:37 and you fail, and eventually you learn how to walk, right?
632. 00:25:40 Like you're trying to talk and you fail,
633. 00:25:41 and you fail, and you fail, and you fail.
634. 00:25:42 And I think about like, does that break anywhere?
635. 00:25:45 And I didn't run like the entire life scenario out,
636. 00:25:48 but like grades in school.
637. 00:25:51 - You fail, and you fail, and you fail until you get it right,
638. 00:25:52 right, your job.
639. 00:25:54 You fail until you fail, and you fail until you find it,
640. 00:25:56 or don't, right?
641. 00:25:57 Like, I mean, it's really, like a really accurate statement
642. 00:26:02 that like failure might be one of the most common things
643. 00:26:04 we experience as humans.
644. 00:26:07 And I just think that's a wild thing to think about
645. 00:26:09 as most of life as failure.
646. 00:26:11 - It is a wild thing to think about.
647. 00:26:13 I hadn't really thought about it until you just brought it up.
648. 00:26:17 I think my gut says that that's probably true.
649. 00:26:20 - Yeah.
650. 00:26:22 - I don't have any evidence to the contrary.
651. 00:26:25 You know, there's that meme all he does is win,
652. 00:26:27 but that's not real.
653. 00:26:29 - That's not real, yeah, that's not real.
654. 00:26:33 - All right, I'm ready to go into part one.
655. 00:26:35 - Yep, let's make a pact.
656. 00:26:37 - All right, so part one is let's make a pact,
657. 00:26:40 but I want to break this down chapter by chapter.
658. 00:26:43 So we'll have individual chapters
659. 00:26:46 in the podcast episodes.
660. 00:26:48 You can jump between these.
661. 00:26:49 The first one here, chapter two, is P is for pause.
662. 00:26:55 I do have to call out here at the beginning.
663. 00:26:57 I don't like the word pact here.
664. 00:27:02 I'm gonna see if you can guess why that is.
665. 00:27:06 - Hmm, no, I don't really know.
666. 00:27:09 - I'm not sure why you would have a love book.
667. 00:27:12 - Well, when I hear the word pact,
668. 00:27:14 I instantly think of Tiny Experiments by Ann Lourley-Coomph.
669. 00:27:19 - Okay, okay.
670. 00:27:21 - That book I absolutely loved.
671. 00:27:23 And she has her definition of pact there.
672. 00:27:28 So I had trouble reconciling that in my brain.
673. 00:27:34 Like two different definitions for this same acronym.
674. 00:27:39 It was not working for me.
675. 00:27:40 - Yeah, I got it.
676. 00:27:41 - That did not rub me the same way at all.
677. 00:27:44 So that's interesting.
678. 00:27:46 - All right, so chapter two, P is for pause.
679. 00:27:49 This is really about at the beginning,
680. 00:27:52 just taking a break.
681. 00:27:53 He had a statement in here.
682. 00:27:57 Sometimes the best thing to do
683. 00:27:59 is to not make things worse.
684. 00:28:01 I thought that was pretty brilliant.
685. 00:28:04 The rest of the chapter is kind of along those lines.
686. 00:28:07 One thing I appreciate about these chapters, by the way,
687. 00:28:09 is the key insights at the end.
688. 00:28:11 There's like a couple of bullets
689. 00:28:12 on the last page of the chapter
690. 00:28:14 that kind of summarize everything.
691. 00:28:15 But that's basically what this is about.
692. 00:28:19 So when you feel like something's not working,
693. 00:28:23 don't just push harder,
694. 00:28:25 which I think is maybe the natural tendency for go-getters,
695. 00:28:31 people who are very driven, maybe high achievers.
696. 00:28:37 Like I'm gonna make this work.
697. 00:28:38 Don't do that because you may just end up
698. 00:28:40 going further down the wrong path.
699. 00:28:43 - Yeah, yeah.
700. 00:28:44 I think one of the things that I try to tell my students
701. 00:28:49 all the time when we do design projects and engineering
702. 00:28:51 is, okay, you can create the absolute best design
703. 00:28:55 in the world that doesn't solve the problem
704. 00:28:57 that the customer actually needs.
705. 00:28:59 And he gets into a similar thing here,
706. 00:29:01 is like, you know, don't waste your time
707. 00:29:04 and don't waste your energy on the wrong activity.
708. 00:29:06 And this is why you and I have talked about this at length
709. 00:29:09 and, you know, it's a big part of your life-themed stuff
710. 00:29:12 and all of that.
711. 00:29:14 If we're throwing good energy at the wrong thing,
712. 00:29:18 there's never gonna be what we need out of that.
713. 00:29:22 Like we're never gonna get what we need out of that,
714. 00:29:23 or we're never gonna make the progress
715. 00:29:24 that we wanna see here.
716. 00:29:26 And I just, I love that he brings that back up
717. 00:29:28 that it's basically, if we're going toward the right,
718. 00:29:32 if we're going in the right compass direction,
719. 00:29:34 as you and I will talk about this,
720. 00:29:35 if we're going in the right compass direction
721. 00:29:37 and we try and we fail, we at least moved
722. 00:29:40 in the right direction, even though it didn't go right.
723. 00:29:43 If we're going in the wrong direction,
724. 00:29:46 if we succeed, that's not good.
725. 00:29:48 Like that's a problem.
726. 00:29:49 Like we actually haven't helped ourselves at all
727. 00:29:52 by being successful in the wrong direction.
728. 00:29:54 And I just like that framing of it,
729. 00:29:56 trying harder in the wrong thing is not success.
730. 00:30:00 So really pause, you know, take that stop
731. 00:30:03 and think about, am I even doing the thing
732. 00:30:06 that I should be doing?
733. 00:30:08 The other one that comes out of this
734. 00:30:09 that I thought was really, really good
735. 00:30:11 is he started talking about, he quotes Naseep Taleb
736. 00:30:15 from Anti-fragile.
737. 00:30:17 Chess graham masters usually win by not losing.
738. 00:30:19 People become rich by not going bust.
739. 00:30:21 And if you think about that, there's a lot of truth in,
740. 00:30:25 hey, the best offense is a good defense.
741. 00:30:27 You know, like this has been said a bunch of different ways
742. 00:30:30 a bunch of different times and not getting in our own way
743. 00:30:34 can a lot of times lead us to success.
744. 00:30:37 Investing smart and not trying to get the huge win
745. 00:30:41 can be very successful.
746. 00:30:42 So it's like, I just, I think the fundamental principles
747. 00:30:44 he has here in this first P, this pause second
748. 00:30:47 are really strong.
749. 00:30:49 - Agree, I think the fundamental principles
750. 00:30:52 are actually pretty solid throughout this whole thing.
751. 00:30:57 Anything else before we go to the next one?
752. 00:30:59 - No, let's go.
753. 00:31:00 - Okay, so the next one is chapter three.
754. 00:31:04 A is for accept.
755. 00:31:07 And this is basically encouraging us
756. 00:31:12 to accept the situation.
757. 00:31:15 You know, acceptance is not an admission of failure.
758. 00:31:17 He talks about things will never go back to normal.
759. 00:31:20 There is no normal.
760. 00:31:22 And this really got me thinking about the whole creative
761. 00:31:27 process and my creator business because I was actually,
762. 00:31:31 I don't know where it came from,
763. 00:31:32 but I was wrestling with this question
764. 00:31:36 as I was reading this.
765. 00:31:38 It's like, what if things never actually got smoother?
766. 00:31:43 What if this was just what it is?
767. 00:31:46 Would I still choose to do this?
768. 00:31:48 Because when I was reading this chapter,
769. 00:31:51 I totally could see how the natural tendency,
770. 00:31:55 natural human tendency maybe, is to think,
771. 00:31:58 well, once I do this thing, then it's gonna be easier.
772. 00:32:04 I had one of those moments recently, Corey,
773. 00:32:07 because for a long time, I'm talking to my parents
774. 00:32:09 about what I'm doing with my business
775. 00:32:11 and trying to explain how it all works.
776. 00:32:13 I'm like, well, once I get to 10,000 email subscribers,
777. 00:32:17 like that's one of those milestones.
778. 00:32:18 Things will get so much easier then.
779. 00:32:20 I just went over 10,000 email subscribers,
780. 00:32:23 not too long ago.
781. 00:32:24 Did magic happen?
782. 00:32:26 Did sparks fly?
783. 00:32:27 No, no, no, unicorn showed up
784. 00:32:28 and gave me a great big bag of money,
785. 00:32:30 like I thought was gonna happen.
786. 00:32:32 Dang, got it.
787. 00:32:33 Still struggling.
788. 00:32:34 But at the time when it happened,
789. 00:32:36 I was already wrestling with this
790. 00:32:38 and I wasn't disappointed by it,
791. 00:32:40 like I kind of think I would have been
792. 00:32:42 if it had been a different scenario.
793. 00:32:44 If I had been in a different headspace, I guess.
794. 00:32:47 So I think this is a really powerful idea.
795. 00:32:50 I also don't really love the framing, like AS4X out.
796. 00:32:54 I just have to accept this.
797. 00:32:56 Like that's uncomfortable.
798. 00:32:59 Yeah.
799. 00:33:00 But I can't stand this principle.
800. 00:33:02 That doesn't mean it's not right.
801. 00:33:04 Like I'm not telling you that I think he's wrong.
802. 00:33:06 I hate every second of this
803. 00:33:07 because I think there's a lot of truth to the fact
804. 00:33:09 that at times I don't have to like it
805. 00:33:13 and I can't control it, but that's the way it is.
806. 00:33:17 Like that's just the way it's going to be.
807. 00:33:19 And I push up against that, right?
808. 00:33:21 Like in it's like banging your head off the brick wall.
809. 00:33:25 No matter how hard you hang your head off the brick wall,
810. 00:33:26 it doesn't change the fact that this is real
811. 00:33:28 and doesn't change the fact that this is the way it is.
812. 00:33:31 Now where I struggle with here
813. 00:33:33 and like where I got really kind of in my own head
814. 00:33:36 as I'm reading this is like, okay,
815. 00:33:38 sure acceptance is good,
816. 00:33:40 but like acceptance can also just mean like passivity
817. 00:33:45 where like I'm not going to try anymore.
818. 00:33:48 And I don't think that's what he's saying at all.
819. 00:33:50 No, I think that's a,
820. 00:33:52 we have to be careful we don't slip or you slope that down
821. 00:33:54 to like acceptance means giving up or apathy
822. 00:33:57 or not trying anymore.
823. 00:33:59 And it's basically just allowing ourselves
824. 00:34:02 to acknowledge the reality of the situation
825. 00:34:04 and understand that he talks about predictability
826. 00:34:06 a lot in here.
827. 00:34:07 He calls out a blaze Pascal quote that all of humanity's problems
828. 00:34:11 stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
829. 00:34:15 And it's like, yeah, like we aren't willing to accept
830. 00:34:19 the way reality is and analyze and observe that situation.
831. 00:34:24 We always want to go and go and do
832. 00:34:26 and try to like fix the thing.
833. 00:34:28 Well, maybe we should try to go around the thing.
834. 00:34:31 Maybe we should try to go over the thing,
835. 00:34:33 not try to power away through it.
836. 00:34:35 And it's like this section really messed with my brain
837. 00:34:37 a lot in a good way, like in a positive way.
838. 00:34:41 Cause I kind of didn't like it.
839. 00:34:42 I kind of was uncomfortable with it.
840. 00:34:44 - Well, if you stop here, it definitely is uncomfortable
841. 00:34:48 because you were just saying,
842. 00:34:50 if you just take this in isolation,
843. 00:34:51 just accept it, don't try.
844. 00:34:53 That's not what he's saying.
845. 00:34:54 The last part of pact is to try.
846. 00:34:56 - Exactly, exactly, yes.
847. 00:34:59 - So, but I liked the efficiency trap in here.
848. 00:35:02 This isn't an original idea.
849. 00:35:03 This actually comes from 4,000 weeks by Oliver Berkman.
850. 00:35:06 But this is pretty, pretty great.
851. 00:35:08 The way that this is worded, I think.
852. 00:35:11 The more efficient I become,
853. 00:35:13 the more things end up on my plate
854. 00:35:14 that need to be efficiently dealt with.
855. 00:35:16 So you create this hamster wheel
856. 00:35:19 that just keeps spinning faster,
857. 00:35:21 and you gotta go faster to keep up with it,
858. 00:35:23 otherwise you'll fall on your face.
859. 00:35:25 And I think that is a great description
860. 00:35:27 of what typically happens.
861. 00:35:29 - Absolutely.
862. 00:35:30 - I think it's inevitable.
863. 00:35:31 That's probably one of the reasons that we fail so much
864. 00:35:34 is we bite off more than we can chew.
865. 00:35:37 And then when it all comes crashing down,
866. 00:35:39 I guess the big takeaway is I'm think wrestling through
867. 00:35:42 like, what do I do with this sort of stuff?
868. 00:35:43 Like, oh, well, that was too much.
869. 00:35:45 Let's not do that again.
870. 00:35:46 Instead of like, the world has ended
871. 00:35:49 because I couldn't keep up.
872. 00:35:51 - This is why I think sabbaticals are so valuable, right?
873. 00:35:53 Like, I know sabbaticals give you the time to process.
874. 00:35:55 They also give you a time to stop
875. 00:35:57 and to like, say, okay, I'm done.
876. 00:36:00 Like, I'm not going to do that anymore.
877. 00:36:02 And this is a natural break point.
878. 00:36:04 And I think like, we've run the risk of,
879. 00:36:06 if we don't plan in periods where we can,
880. 00:36:10 I don't wanna say like get an out clause
881. 00:36:11 or have like an out in there,
882. 00:36:13 we potentially get ourselves on that hamster wheel.
883. 00:36:16 And next thing you know,
884. 00:36:17 we don't know how to get off of it.
885. 00:36:18 Or we're stuck on it and we can't get off it.
886. 00:36:21 And I think sabbaticals are really good for that.
887. 00:36:22 There's probably other methods
888. 00:36:24 that are good for that as well.
889. 00:36:26 The thing that I'll call out here,
890. 00:36:29 'cause we're getting into the meat of the book,
891. 00:36:32 Steve, the author is very well read.
892. 00:36:36 He like, who he quotes and how he quotes them
893. 00:36:39 that's both popular in like old school philosophical stuff.
894. 00:36:43 Like there's a good mixture here.
895. 00:36:45 They also don't feel, at least from my perspective,
896. 00:36:48 they didn't feel forced.
897. 00:36:49 It wasn't like, he was just quoting people
898. 00:36:52 just to quote people and just throw random stuff in there.
899. 00:36:55 The jokes, I think he was just trying to figure out
900. 00:36:58 ways to inject jokes into the book.
901. 00:36:59 'Cause I think that's personality.
902. 00:37:01 And the, the shirt you have where it points to I'm the author.
903. 00:37:06 Like, he seems like that's just who he is through and through.
904. 00:37:09 But I didn't feel that way with the quotes.
905. 00:37:11 Like some of the books you read and you're like,
906. 00:37:12 okay, like that quote, like you were just quote farming.
907. 00:37:15 Like you just went out and did a Google search.
908. 00:37:16 Like I need a good quote here.
909. 00:37:17 I thought his quotes were really smooth and really well done
910. 00:37:21 and added value.
911. 00:37:23 - I 100% agree.
912. 00:37:26 Ready to go to the next one?
913. 00:37:28 - Let's change.
914. 00:37:30 - Okay.
915. 00:37:31 C is for change, this is chapter four.
916. 00:37:34 There's some really cool stuff in this chapter.
917. 00:37:36 I love the beginning story about the caterpillar
918. 00:37:41 going into a chrysalis.
919. 00:37:42 I actually use this as an object lesson.
920. 00:37:46 I opened up service at a church last night
921. 00:37:50 and talked about this a little bit.
922. 00:37:52 - Yep, yep.
923. 00:37:53 - The big idea there, the reason that it triggered it for me
924. 00:37:56 was there's this word transformation,
925. 00:37:58 which in the original Greek is metamorpho.
926. 00:38:00 It's really the, the road of metamorphosis.
927. 00:38:03 And so if you're thinking about going through a transformation,
928. 00:38:06 that sounds cool.
929. 00:38:07 Who doesn't wanna become a butterfly when they're a caterpillar?
930. 00:38:10 Well, if you have to release enzymes
931. 00:38:12 that literally eat your body and break it down
932. 00:38:15 and then you have to put it all back together,
933. 00:38:17 that's not as glamorous.
934. 00:38:21 Also, I looked it up because I was curious
935. 00:38:24 how much of a caterpillar's life it spends in that chrysalis.
936. 00:38:29 And depends on the species, obviously,
937. 00:38:30 but it's like 15 to 20% of its entire lifetime
938. 00:38:33 is spent in that, that process.
939. 00:38:36 So we want the change, we want it instantly inside how it works.
940. 00:38:42 - Not how it works at all.
941. 00:38:44 No, I like here 'cause he pulls into my world
942. 00:38:49 of the Toyota production system and the Five Wise.
943. 00:38:53 And I'm like, oh, he's speaking my language, right?
944. 00:38:56 This is what I mean by like, he's pretty well read
945. 00:38:58 in terms of the fact he's talking about popular stuff.
946. 00:39:00 And then he randomly gets into Toyota production Five Wise
947. 00:39:03 and it's like, whoa, where'd you come home with that one?
948. 00:39:06 But like I like this principle where we think about the fact
949. 00:39:14 that like we're under no obligation.
950. 00:39:16 He quotes it, he attributes it to Alan Watts.
951. 00:39:19 We're under no obligation to be the same person
952. 00:39:20 you were five minutes ago.
953. 00:39:22 And while I think you can take that too far
954. 00:39:24 and you can constantly be like changing
955. 00:39:28 and you can constantly be adjusting
956. 00:39:29 and like basically have no anchor and have no mooring.
957. 00:39:33 But I think we tend as humans,
958. 00:39:35 we tend to veer the other way.
959. 00:39:37 Where we say like, oh, once we started this thing,
960. 00:39:39 now I have to finish it and I have to go through
961. 00:39:41 and I have to commit my entire life to it.
962. 00:39:43 I have to, I have to, I have to.
963. 00:39:44 And I think that's part of the way maybe
964. 00:39:46 our generation was brought up.
965. 00:39:48 Whereas like, no, we really don't.
966. 00:39:51 Now we need to have like a decent plan
967. 00:39:53 and we need to like think it through
968. 00:39:54 and not be irrational and just all over the place.
969. 00:39:58 But at the same time, like there's no reason
970. 00:40:01 I can't adjust what I said I was gonna do five years ago
971. 00:40:04 or six months ago if I'm doing it for the right reasons
972. 00:40:08 that are aligned and they're pointing in my compass direction
973. 00:40:11 and they make sense.
974. 00:40:12 So like I really like that principle
975. 00:40:14 because I think it's not the way we think naturally
976. 00:40:17 as humans and I think he's hit the nail on the head
977. 00:40:20 in terms of that.
978. 00:40:22 - Agreed.
979. 00:40:23 I also really like the bad metrics leading to bad outcomes.
980. 00:40:29 - Yep, yep.
981. 00:40:29 I mean, I totally recognize this as a recovering integrator.
982. 00:40:36 You get what you emphasize, like what gets measured,
983. 00:40:42 that's what people will do.
984. 00:40:44 He had some pretty extreme examples and stories
985. 00:40:47 in the book, but I think it's,
986. 00:40:51 so I like those stories on the one hand
987. 00:40:52 they definitely drive home the point that he's making.
988. 00:40:55 But the thing I would add to this I guess is that
989. 00:40:57 it is very easy to pick a metric that you think
990. 00:41:01 is in alignment with the thing that you really want to do
991. 00:41:05 and find out that it is not.
992. 00:41:08 So picking the metrics I feel like
993. 00:41:11 it's one of the most important things you can do
994. 00:41:14 not just at an organizational level
995. 00:41:16 but if you're trying to affect any sort of change,
996. 00:41:19 what do you think a quite a bit about
997. 00:41:22 what are you optimizing for?
998. 00:41:24 - Yeah, and I know this isn't the first time
999. 00:41:26 we've heard about, you mentioned Ann Lourlacoum
1000. 00:41:29 in her Tiny Experiments book,
1001. 00:41:32 but he then talks in here about like actually
1002. 00:41:34 don't pick a goal, conduct an experiment
1003. 00:41:35 and just for the right variables and things.
1004. 00:41:38 And I liked his framing, like I thought he did a good job
1005. 00:41:41 by no means is it the experiments book
1006. 00:41:43 about like how to conduct these experiments,
1007. 00:41:45 but that wasn't what he was trying to get after.
1008. 00:41:47 He was trying to say, hey, before you sell out
1009. 00:41:51 and commit to the wrong thing, let's just test it.
1010. 00:41:54 Like let's see how this goes.
1011. 00:41:55 What do I want to measure?
1012. 00:41:57 What's the experiment that allows me to measure that thing?
1013. 00:42:00 And let's run that.
1014. 00:42:01 And this is where I think if you attach this
1015. 00:42:03 to Tiny Experiments, man, this change section
1016. 00:42:07 gets really, really strong in here.
1017. 00:42:09 - Yeah, that brings up an interesting point
1018. 00:42:12 because I want to write a book.
1019. 00:42:14 And one of the things that I want to do
1020. 00:42:16 when I write a book is I don't want it to have to rely
1021. 00:42:21 on other books.
1022. 00:42:23 I'm not sure how to do that.
1023. 00:42:26 I remember when I was at Crafton Commerce
1024. 00:42:29 and I was in the mastermind with James Clear,
1025. 00:42:31 he talked a little bit about his process
1026. 00:42:33 for writing atomic habits.
1027. 00:42:34 And he at one point had the note cards
1028. 00:42:37 for the individual chapters and he laid them all out
1029. 00:42:40 on the floor in front of him.
1030. 00:42:41 And he went over to the bookshelf
1031. 00:42:43 and he pulled the books off of the bookshelf
1032. 00:42:45 that he wanted to make obsolete by what he wrote
1033. 00:42:48 in those chapters.
1034. 00:42:49 Well, you were just describing.
1035. 00:42:51 That's where my brain went to.
1036. 00:42:53 I don't remember if he calls out Annler's book or not,
1037. 00:42:56 but just the terminology that's being used there,
1038. 00:42:59 it's a direct connection.
1039. 00:43:01 So when I encounter that as a reader,
1040. 00:43:05 I feel like, I don't know how to describe this.
1041. 00:43:09 It's almost like you're giving me homework
1042. 00:43:14 to go read the original source for this
1043. 00:43:17 so I can fully understand this paragraph or page
1044. 00:43:21 or whatever you're trying to explain.
1045. 00:43:23 I have no idea what the remedy is for that,
1046. 00:43:27 but I am determined to figure it out before I write my book.
1047. 00:43:33 'Cause I want whatever someone would pick up and read,
1048. 00:43:35 I want them to feel like, yeah,
1049. 00:43:37 maybe I'm borrowing ideas from other people
1050. 00:43:39 and I'm absolutely gonna cite those sources,
1051. 00:43:42 but I want them to feel like they can rock the entirety
1052. 00:43:46 of the argument that I am making,
1053. 00:43:48 simply from what I am presenting to them
1054. 00:43:51 in that particular chapter.
1055. 00:43:53 - And I think this is where just being cognizant of that
1056. 00:43:58 and trying hard to do that,
1057. 00:44:00 plus telling your reviewers, your early readers,
1058. 00:44:04 this is what I'm trying to do was I successful
1059. 00:44:07 and then letting them feed back into that and say,
1060. 00:44:09 hey, I don't get what you want me to get out of this,
1061. 00:44:12 this section, you need to bolster that,
1062. 00:44:14 you need to make it bigger or make it better or whatever.
1063. 00:44:16 But I think that's where you rely on them a lot too.
1064. 00:44:19 - Yeah, it makes sense.
1065. 00:44:22 All right, the last chapter in the first part here
1066. 00:44:24 is chapter five, T is for try
1067. 00:44:29 and this is where we're gonna try stuff.
1068. 00:44:31 We have to start somewhere,
1069. 00:44:32 the scariest thing is starting with nothing at all.
1070. 00:44:34 I loved the description of the quote here
1071. 00:44:38 about Winston Churchill.
1072. 00:44:40 I don't know, I forget who exactly was saying this
1073. 00:44:44 about Winston Churchill,
1074. 00:44:46 but he was, he wanted to start painting
1075. 00:44:49 and he was having so much trouble getting started
1076. 00:44:51 'cause he didn't want to mess up the canvas
1077. 00:44:53 and then this coach, whatever comes in
1078. 00:44:56 and just starts throwing paint against the canvas,
1079. 00:45:00 describing it's like a violent interaction
1080. 00:45:02 and the canvas is just sitting there taking it, right?
1081. 00:45:05 And it mentions in this particular book,
1082. 00:45:08 the quote is he was so afraid of making a mistake
1083. 00:45:10 that he couldn't get himself to put the paintbrush
1084. 00:45:12 on the canvas and I have been there.
1085. 00:45:16 Not with the canvas, not with paints,
1086. 00:45:18 but yeah, totally concerned about saying the wrong thing
1087. 00:45:22 or I don't know, just whatever I'm making,
1088. 00:45:26 not being very good.
1089. 00:45:28 That was the heart of one of the fears that was unearthed
1090. 00:45:32 for me when I was in the growth intensive,
1091. 00:45:34 that fear of ridicule and it's hard.
1092. 00:45:38 Like I see it, I understand it
1093. 00:45:40 and it still is something that I have to battle
1094. 00:45:43 against every time I try to make something.
1095. 00:45:46 Even a podcast like this where I'm just talking
1096. 00:45:49 to a friend about a book,
1097. 00:45:52 the fact that this is being released to the internet
1098. 00:45:55 on an internal level makes me really nervous.
1099. 00:45:59 I don't know why I've done thousands of podcasts episodes
1100. 00:46:02 at this point.
1101. 00:46:03 - You're exponentially better at this than I am,
1102. 00:46:05 so listen, if anybody's gonna make a fool of themselves,
1103. 00:46:08 it's me, so. (laughs)
1104. 00:46:13 - But yeah, anything worth doing is probably worth
1105. 00:46:14 doing poorly at the start,
1106. 00:46:16 but your perfectionism doesn't want you to start poorly,
1107. 00:46:19 so you don't do anything, I don't know.
1108. 00:46:22 I mean, this is something that is very obvious
1109. 00:46:25 and something like, oh yeah, obviously I need to put
1110. 00:46:28 something out there, but the way that he describes it,
1111. 00:46:31 I feel hits the perfect balance between new perspective
1112. 00:46:36 and also just your buddy Steve is encouraging you
1113. 00:46:39 because hey, I've messed up worse than you have,
1114. 00:46:41 so just go do it, it's gonna be okay.
1115. 00:46:44 - Yeah, the one that stuck with me,
1116. 00:46:46 I'm not a very big video gamer, like I don't mind him,
1117. 00:46:49 I like him, but he talks about playing Dark Souls
1118. 00:46:50 and basically it's not even about the game,
1119. 00:46:53 it's about the process of it.
1120. 00:46:55 I mean, you pick up a video game
1121. 00:46:57 and nobody expects to be great at it
1122. 00:46:58 when you first pick it up.
1123. 00:47:00 Like you pick it up and what do you do?
1124. 00:47:01 You play and then you die or you lose the game
1125. 00:47:04 or whatever it is, and then what do you do?
1126. 00:47:05 You respawn and you restart and you just do that.
1127. 00:47:09 Over and over and over and over again,
1128. 00:47:12 until you get good enough or you learn enough
1129. 00:47:14 of the game mechanics or you do whatever you're gonna do
1130. 00:47:16 until you like make it through
1131. 00:47:18 or you've just committed a bunch of hours to something
1132. 00:47:21 and you've learned a ton of things about the game
1133. 00:47:23 and you've learned a ton of things about playing the game
1134. 00:47:25 and it's like, I just, why can't I do that
1135. 00:47:28 in other aspects of my life?
1136. 00:47:30 It makes so much sense to me when I think about it
1137. 00:47:33 from a video game standpoint, because what's the point
1138. 00:47:36 of the game?
1139. 00:47:37 The point of the game is to play the game.
1140. 00:47:39 It's like, eventually I'm gonna wanna win the game,
1141. 00:47:42 I'm gonna wanna progress and gain all the coins
1142. 00:47:44 or do all the things, right?
1143. 00:47:46 But what's like, I'm here to play the game,
1144. 00:47:47 like that's what I'm here to do,
1145. 00:47:48 but I don't translate that to other aspects of my life.
1146. 00:47:52 Like when I think about like a work project,
1147. 00:47:54 what's the point of it?
1148. 00:47:55 It's not to do the project,
1149. 00:47:56 it's to achieve the goal at the end of the project
1150. 00:47:59 or, and it's like, why don't I allow myself to focus on,
1151. 00:48:03 as cliche as it's gonna sound,
1152. 00:48:05 the journey and not the end, right?
1153. 00:48:07 Like why don't I allow myself to just say,
1154. 00:48:09 hey, this is gonna be fun, we're gonna do a thing
1155. 00:48:11 and like, we're just gonna do it until we get it right
1156. 00:48:13 and we're just gonna do it.
1157. 00:48:15 But I also think that we,
1158. 00:48:16 and I'm gonna get very educational on us,
1159. 00:48:20 and then we beat this out of people in school, right?
1160. 00:48:23 Like we don't tell them like the process is what we're here for.
1161. 00:48:27 We tell them getting the grade is what we're here for.
1162. 00:48:29 Finishing the assignment is what we're here for.
1163. 00:48:31 You're gonna do it, like, and I think we harm ourselves
1164. 00:48:36 from this trying and trying and trying
1165. 00:48:39 because we're so focused on doing it right
1166. 00:48:42 or whatever it might be.
1167. 00:48:43 And like, ah, again, I just, I've said this four times now.
1168. 00:48:47 I'm gonna say it five more times.
1169. 00:48:49 I just think he hits a really good principle here.
1170. 00:48:52 And if he had to go through all the cruddy had to go through,
1171. 00:48:55 like my heart breaks for him 'cause it does not sound
1172. 00:48:58 like he had a very fun experience there
1173. 00:49:00 for multiple years of his life.
1174. 00:49:02 But like, man, he turned, he turned Lemons into Lemonade
1175. 00:49:06 in terms of putting it into this, into this book.
1176. 00:49:09 So I'm a big fan of what he's doing.
1177. 00:49:13 - Me too.
1178. 00:49:14 All right, go to part two.
1179. 00:49:16 - Part two.
1180. 00:49:17 - All right, so part two is how to use packs in our lives.
1181. 00:49:21 And the first chapter here is chapter six.
1182. 00:49:25 How to pick the next thing to try.
1183. 00:49:28 I really like the perspective of this chapter.
1184. 00:49:32 There's no single right way to do things.
1185. 00:49:34 He mentions a couple different examples
1186. 00:49:36 of people in their writing processes.
1187. 00:49:39 I've been thinking a lot about this too
1188. 00:49:40 as it pertains to AI and the writing process,
1189. 00:49:45 the creative process.
1190. 00:49:47 And again, referencing the newsletter
1191. 00:49:51 that I wrote this week,
1192. 00:49:52 there was a quote that I shared
1193. 00:49:53 from the War of Art by Stephen Pressfield,
1194. 00:49:55 'cause that's the thing that comes to mind,
1195. 00:49:56 is the War of Art.
1196. 00:49:59 Writing is hard.
1197. 00:50:00 And the rule that I wanted to change,
1198. 00:50:03 going back to that Gabby Beckford thing was,
1199. 00:50:06 what if the, 'cause she mentioned this phrase,
1200. 00:50:08 the suffering is optional.
1201. 00:50:09 I was like, huh, what if the suffering of writing
1202. 00:50:13 was optional, you know?
1203. 00:50:15 And not that you're gonna completely remove the work
1204. 00:50:18 from the creative process.
1205. 00:50:20 But there are so many people who write so many different ways.
1206. 00:50:24 There's the one guy who goes to his island
1207. 00:50:26 and types on a gold-plated typewriter every day.
1208. 00:50:29 There's the woman, I forget her name,
1209. 00:50:32 where she stole away for five minutes here and there
1210. 00:50:35 and wrote little slips of paper
1211. 00:50:37 and then compiled them together
1212. 00:50:39 into something like 60 books.
1213. 00:50:41 It's different for every single person
1214. 00:50:45 and there's always gonna be resistance in the process.
1215. 00:50:48 And I'm not saying that you need to completely remove
1216. 00:50:50 the resistance in order to create.
1217. 00:50:53 But what if you just had a little bit of help
1218. 00:50:55 every time you sat down to get going?
1219. 00:50:58 And yeah, that's the whole idea behind that cohort
1220. 00:51:03 is like figuring out where to intentionally interject
1221. 00:51:08 AI into the process so you remove friction
1222. 00:51:11 in the right places, but you add it in other places
1223. 00:51:15 so it keeps you on the rails.
1224. 00:51:18 I think that's such a powerful idea.
1225. 00:51:22 So, I mean, really just pick something, try it.
1226. 00:51:26 If it doesn't work out, it's okay.
1227. 00:51:28 If it worked for somebody else
1228. 00:51:30 and it doesn't work out for you, it's still okay.
1229. 00:51:33 He encourages us not to chase a strategy
1230. 00:51:35 that delivers optimal results.
1231. 00:51:36 Pick one you can follow pretty consistently
1232. 00:51:39 most of the time for a long time.
1233. 00:51:41 I think that's maybe the best advice in the entire book.
1234. 00:51:45 Pretty consistent most of the time, long time.
1235. 00:51:47 It was just like, wow, that's a great phrase.
1236. 00:51:50 - Yep. - Yeah, great phrase.
1237. 00:51:52 I mean, one of the things that comes out of here
1238. 00:51:55 is this idea of optimal and everybody's gonna sell you
1239. 00:51:59 this optimal strategy and the way you should do the thing
1240. 00:52:02 and it just might not hit with you.
1241. 00:52:04 Like it really might not hit with you.
1242. 00:52:06 And then he builds that foundation
1243. 00:52:08 through thinking about all of the things you bring
1244. 00:52:12 to the table that are different than that thing
1245. 00:52:15 that somebody else is telling you is the optimal strategy.
1246. 00:52:17 And those things might clash with each other.
1247. 00:52:20 The idea might still be good.
1248. 00:52:22 What they're trying to get across to you might still be good
1249. 00:52:24 but allow yourself to figure out
1250. 00:52:26 that what works for you, like we said,
1251. 00:52:30 what was it most of the time, like long time?
1252. 00:52:33 - Pull it back up.
1253. 00:52:36 - Pick one thing you can follow pretty consistently
1254. 00:52:38 most of the time for a long time.
1255. 00:52:40 - Yeah, which I've never thought of it like that.
1256. 00:52:43 I always thought like, no, we gotta pick the one
1257. 00:52:46 that's gonna save the world and it's gonna change me
1258. 00:52:48 in four days and all this other.
1259. 00:52:50 It's like, nope, nope, just, you know, pretty good.
1260. 00:52:54 I can do it for a long, long time.
1261. 00:52:56 And it's like, what a unique way to think about that.
1262. 00:53:01 - And then again, think about what you're optimizing for
1263. 00:53:04 because he says that there's problems arise
1264. 00:53:07 when we take our life and we compare it to others
1265. 00:53:09 who are playing with a different scorecard.
1266. 00:53:11 I think that's really important.
1267. 00:53:12 - Yeah, I mean, just so good.
1268. 00:53:14 Like, just so much good in here in terms of, you know,
1269. 00:53:19 like how do we figure out what to do next
1270. 00:53:22 with the underlying assumption of do something,
1271. 00:53:24 like do something next, do something next.
1272. 00:53:27 Okay, again, I just think it's well done.
1273. 00:53:30 - All right, the next chapter, chapter seven
1274. 00:53:33 is escape the doom loop.
1275. 00:53:35 Do you know what a doom loop is?
1276. 00:53:37 - I didn't know what it was until he described
1277. 00:53:41 what the doom loop was, but I,
1278. 00:53:44 I liked it.
1279. 00:53:45 - So the doom loop, he describes it here,
1280. 00:53:47 is we feel less than and then we set irrational expectations,
1281. 00:53:51 then we go all in and then we give up when life happens.
1282. 00:53:54 But a doom loop in like a video game is,
1283. 00:53:59 it automatically resets, I guess that's like a hyper loop.
1284. 00:54:03 - Okay.
1285. 00:54:03 - From like science fiction or something.
1286. 00:54:05 You have a set period of time and if you don't figure out
1287. 00:54:08 what to do in that set period of time,
1288. 00:54:09 it just jumps you back to the beginning.
1289. 00:54:11 - No, I had no idea of this.
1290. 00:54:12 - It's stuck in that loop over and over again.
1291. 00:54:17 That's what I thought of when he said the doom loop.
1292. 00:54:20 And then he says to break free with mental escape pods.
1293. 00:54:23 There's five of many describes here.
1294. 00:54:25 Great visual, let our thoughts think themselves,
1295. 00:54:28 forgive ourselves for being human,
1296. 00:54:30 notice and name to regain power,
1297. 00:54:32 understand what scares you and lean in
1298. 00:54:33 and overcome impatience with healthier expectations.
1299. 00:54:37 The one thing that I thought was pretty brilliant
1300. 00:54:40 from this section was the advice to treat yourself
1301. 00:54:43 the way you would treat a friend.
1302. 00:54:46 Because I do talk to myself totally different
1303. 00:54:49 than I would talk to anybody else.
1304. 00:54:52 - Me too.
1305. 00:54:53 - Yeah.
1306. 00:54:55 - Now I'm not as interested in like whether the escape pods,
1307. 00:55:00 I thought were like the most high quality escape pods
1308. 00:55:03 in the world.
1309. 00:55:04 I really, this doom loop thing was a spotlight on me.
1310. 00:55:08 Like, I mean, I do this all the time, right?
1311. 00:55:11 Where, and especially the set of rational expectations
1312. 00:55:15 where it's like, I, you know, will write down in my journal
1313. 00:55:18 like this is the expectation.
1314. 00:55:19 And it's like, Corey, that's dumb.
1315. 00:55:20 Like, what are you, what are you doing?
1316. 00:55:22 It just doesn't even make any sense.
1317. 00:55:24 Even on like your best day,
1318. 00:55:25 you're barely gonna, barely gonna hit that.
1319. 00:55:27 And this is, I asked the question and it's like,
1320. 00:55:30 well, okay, are we setting the bar too low
1321. 00:55:31 or are we just being realistic?
1322. 00:55:34 And I actually think it's much more we're being realistic
1323. 00:55:36 than it is we're setting the bar too low
1324. 00:55:37 because you're still trying to get better.
1325. 00:55:40 Like the goal is still trying to get better.
1326. 00:55:42 By no means are you, are you trying to do nothing
1327. 00:55:45 or trying to do worse.
1328. 00:55:47 There's a principle out here into what scares us
1329. 00:55:50 and what makes us lean in.
1330. 00:55:52 This, what are you scared will happen a month from now?
1331. 00:55:56 And thinking about it negatively,
1332. 00:55:59 I don't do that very often.
1333. 00:56:01 It's like, oh, I'm scared that a month from now,
1334. 00:56:05 I will still not have written any words in my book, right?
1335. 00:56:09 You know what I mean?
1336. 00:56:09 Like whatever it might be.
1337. 00:56:10 And it's like, why?
1338. 00:56:11 Why am I scared about that?
1339. 00:56:12 Okay, now what do I do to overcome that?
1340. 00:56:14 What do I do to not do that?
1341. 00:56:16 And it's just a different framing.
1342. 00:56:17 Like I've never framed anything like that.
1343. 00:56:20 And I think that would be a valuable thing for me to do
1344. 00:56:23 in terms of framing the things I'm scared of
1345. 00:56:26 or the things I don't wanna do or I procrastinate on.
1346. 00:56:30 And how do I turn those around and flip the script on that?
1347. 00:56:32 I think that's a cool way to think about that.
1348. 00:56:35 Is that an action item?
1349. 00:56:36 I can't quite tell.
1350. 00:56:37 Yeah, I don't know.
1351. 00:56:37 I don't know if I wanna commit to it.
1352. 00:56:39 I was like talking about it.
1353. 00:56:40 I was like, I don't think I'm gonna commit to that
1354. 00:56:42 as an action item, but it's a cool one.
1355. 00:56:44 Okay.
1356. 00:56:46 Next chapter, unless you got anything else from that one?
1357. 00:56:48 No, we'll go.
1358. 00:56:49 All right, so chapter eight,
1359. 00:56:52 how to keep doing the thing.
1360. 00:56:55 This has been my goal as an independent creator.
1361. 00:56:59 Keep doing the thing.
1362. 00:57:00 Keep doing the thing, yep.
1363. 00:57:03 Talks in here about four components of self-efficacy.
1364. 00:57:06 There's 10 strategies that he shares here.
1365. 00:57:10 The one thing that I had written down from this chapter
1366. 00:57:14 that I wanted to talk about was his epic quest of awesome.
1367. 00:57:18 When he mentioned that,
1368. 00:57:20 I instantly recalled where I had heard about him previously
1369. 00:57:25 'cause I remember using that term,
1370. 00:57:27 like adopting that term from myself,
1371. 00:57:29 my epic quest of awesome.
1372. 00:57:30 Okay, okay.
1373. 00:57:32 But then he talks about how it kind of failed.
1374. 00:57:33 So that makes me a little uncomfortable.
1375. 00:57:39 But yeah, essentially this is strategies
1376. 00:57:41 to help you to maintain consistency even when life lifes you.
1377. 00:57:49 So he talks about in here that it all counts.
1378. 00:57:52 We kind of have this binary state.
1379. 00:57:54 If I don't go to the gym and complete my full workout
1380. 00:57:58 and PR in different areas, then it's a bad day.
1381. 00:58:01 He's like, no, if you showed up and you did anything,
1382. 00:58:04 take credit for that.
1383. 00:58:07 There's also the idea here of,
1384. 00:58:09 instead of asking, do I have time to do the thing,
1385. 00:58:12 asking how much of the thing do I have time for?
1386. 00:58:15 I think that could be pretty transformational
1387. 00:58:17 for some folks.
1388. 00:58:19 I feel like I've done a pretty good job of just,
1389. 00:58:24 I don't know, I guess it's rolling with the punches.
1390. 00:58:25 That sounds so negative.
1391. 00:58:27 But like, if I don't have time to go for a real long run,
1392. 00:58:31 that's okay, I'll still do a couple of miles.
1393. 00:58:35 I have learned that lesson,
1394. 00:58:37 I guess the hard way over the last couple of years.
1395. 00:58:40 But I can think back to when,
1396. 00:58:43 well, if I can't do all of this thing,
1397. 00:58:45 then I'm just not gonna do it.
1398. 00:58:46 And I feel like this is actually pretty brilliant advice
1399. 00:58:48 for someone in that situation.
1400. 00:58:51 - Yeah, a lot of these strategies resonated with me.
1401. 00:58:53 Like as I was reading through,
1402. 00:58:54 I was like, yeah, that's a good strategy.
1403. 00:58:56 Yeah, that's a good strategy.
1404. 00:58:57 The one that stands out to me the most is the Ulysses Pact.
1405. 00:59:00 Have you heard of this Ulysses Pact before?
1406. 00:59:04 - I've heard the story of Ulysses
1407. 00:59:05 in tying himself to the mast.
1408. 00:59:08 I guess I'd never heard the framing of the pact before though.
1409. 00:59:12 - Yeah, so I think of it like in true fashion,
1410. 00:59:16 like you're learning about me.
1411. 00:59:17 It's much more like what the pact that Dumbledore
1412. 00:59:19 makes with Harry Potter,
1413. 00:59:21 when he's basically like, you have to drink all of the,
1414. 00:59:24 or like you cannot let me not drink all this liquid.
1415. 00:59:26 Once I start drinking this liquid,
1416. 00:59:27 you have to make sure that I drink all this liquid.
1417. 00:59:30 Anyhow, we digress.
1418. 00:59:32 But I like this idea, it's basically like,
1419. 00:59:34 I'm gonna take the possibility of doing the thing
1420. 00:59:38 I don't wanna do off the table.
1421. 00:59:39 So I'm gonna figure out a way that like,
1422. 00:59:42 it just becomes a non-issue, it becomes a non-starter.
1423. 00:59:45 And can I pre-plan that in to like make that
1424. 00:59:50 just not even a remote possibility
1425. 00:59:53 and not even anything that I would consider there?
1426. 00:59:55 And I think that's where my action item
1427. 00:59:58 is coming out of this book.
1428. 00:59:58 It's like, what are the things?
1429. 01:00:01 And it's like, it's gonna be a multi-phaser
1430. 01:00:03 'cause I can't do Ulysses' packs for things
1431. 01:00:05 I don't know that I wanna adjust, right?
1432. 01:00:07 Like I don't wanna change.
1433. 01:00:09 So I gotta think about like, okay, what are the,
1434. 01:00:10 what's the one thing that I wanna try
1435. 01:00:12 to make a Ulysses' pack for?
1436. 01:00:14 And then what's the pack that I wanna make
1437. 01:00:16 and how am I gonna make that pact?
1438. 01:00:18 And I just think it's gonna be hard to figure out
1439. 01:00:21 what it is and then it's gonna be hard to stick to it.
1440. 01:00:24 Like so I have to get like an accountability circle.
1441. 01:00:26 I have to get somebody that's gonna say,
1442. 01:00:28 they'll hold me to that
1443. 01:00:29 or I'm just so staunch about the pact.
1444. 01:00:32 Like that I make it in a way that it's just,
1445. 01:00:33 it's not defeatable, you know?
1446. 01:00:35 It's kind of one of those not defeatable things.
1447. 01:00:37 But my overall takeaway here is,
1448. 01:00:38 I think all of these seven strategies are really, really good
1449. 01:00:40 and can be very effective at different times.
1450. 01:00:44 - Nice, you're gonna have to word that action.
1451. 01:00:46 - I'm going to.
1452. 01:00:46 - I just jotted down Ulysses' pack for you.
1453. 01:00:48 - I'm going to, thank you, thank you.
1454. 01:00:51 - All right, so the next chapter is the one
1455. 01:00:53 where I get my action item from this book.
1456. 01:00:57 Chapter nine, when life kicks your butt,
1457. 01:00:59 here's what to do.
1458. 01:01:02 I'm trying to think of how to consolidate this chapter.
1459. 01:01:05 Well, I guess just to talk to a couple of these points.
1460. 01:01:06 So life is hard, bad things happen to good people.
1461. 01:01:09 There's a lot of crazy stories again in this chapter.
1462. 01:01:11 Is this the one where the guy was gonna go surfing
1463. 01:01:13 on his birthday?
1464. 01:01:14 He got sick, falls off the boat
1465. 01:01:16 and then has to tread water for a long time
1466. 01:01:18 in order to be rescued?
1467. 01:01:20 - I don't remember, I don't remember the story
1468. 01:01:22 where they're at but that sounds right.
1469. 01:01:24 - Okay, he encourages us to give up your anger,
1470. 01:01:31 acceptance is the key to surviving the worst situations.
1471. 01:01:33 Yeah, this is it because I remember he's in the ocean,
1472. 01:01:36 he's treading water and he uses the term,
1473. 01:01:39 'cause he talks about all the things
1474. 01:01:40 that this guy had to endure.
1475. 01:01:42 Curious sharks who are nibbling at his toes,
1476. 01:01:44 stuff like that and then he uses the phrase,
1477. 01:01:47 some jerk birds and that's it like you fill in a blank.
1478. 01:01:53 - Yep, yep, yep, yep.
1479. 01:01:55 - That was funny, but my action item
1480. 01:01:57 is to declare expectation bankruptcy.
1481. 01:02:00 - Okay.
1482. 01:02:04 - As I read that out loud, it's kind of like,
1483. 01:02:07 well, what the heck does that mean?
1484. 01:02:10 To put more context into this, I think
1485. 01:02:13 I have put a lot of pressure on myself
1486. 01:02:17 to do certain things on a regular basis
1487. 01:02:22 and I'm the type of person that once I commit to something,
1488. 01:02:25 I am going to make sure that it gets done.
1489. 01:02:28 - Okay.
1490. 01:02:29 - And I probably end up doing things
1491. 01:02:32 that I should not be doing.
1492. 01:02:36 One thing that I've been thinking about,
1493. 01:02:38 just as an example, this has really nothing
1494. 01:02:40 explicitly to do with the action item,
1495. 01:02:43 but I published my newsletter this morning.
1496. 01:02:46 Every week I published my newsletter,
1497. 01:02:47 I also publish a blog article version of it
1498. 01:02:53 and I record a podcast episode
1499. 01:02:57 and I embed it at the top of the post.
1500. 01:03:00 On the one hand, that podcast episode
1501. 01:03:04 is a way for me to talk through the article
1502. 01:03:06 as a form of proofreading, that's great,
1503. 01:03:08 but also if I don't record that by the morning of,
1504. 01:03:13 it's real hard for me to do that in the morning
1505. 01:03:15 'cause my voice just isn't warmed up yet
1506. 01:03:18 and I end up making a bunch of mistakes
1507. 01:03:21 and it adds hours to the process.
1508. 01:03:24 Why do I continue to publish those podcast episodes?
1509. 01:03:28 Do I really need to do that?
1510. 01:03:30 The real important thing is that I publish the newsletter.
1511. 01:03:34 So I don't know, there are ways around this.
1512. 01:03:37 I could get help.
1513. 01:03:40 I'm actually probably gonna be hiring a VA
1514. 01:03:42 in the near future, I've got a whole bunch of applications
1515. 01:03:45 that I'm going through currently.
1516. 01:03:47 So there are things that I can delegate
1517. 01:03:50 and somebody else can do this,
1518. 01:03:52 certain things that I know I should be doing
1519. 01:03:54 that I just don't have the time to do,
1520. 01:03:57 but there are also things that I've created these expectations
1521. 01:04:00 because I said yes to this thing years ago
1522. 01:04:03 and I just continue to do it because of the momentum
1523. 01:04:05 that's behind that thing.
1524. 01:04:07 And if I were to declare expectation bankruptcy,
1525. 01:04:11 to me that means I wake up,
1526. 01:04:14 I still own my creator business.
1527. 01:04:17 But all of the things that I've told myself,
1528. 01:04:19 you have to publish a YouTube video every week and a half.
1529. 01:04:22 You have to publish a podcast every two weeks.
1530. 01:04:25 You have to publish a newsletter every Monday.
1531. 01:04:28 You have to do all of these different things.
1532. 01:04:29 All that stuff is basically just like dumped out
1533. 01:04:33 and then choose what are the things
1534. 01:04:34 that I actually want to put back into the jar.
1535. 01:04:38 I feel like it's time to do that.
1536. 01:04:40 - You're describing my big takeaway from this chapter
1537. 01:04:43 which is the zero based budgeting, right?
1538. 01:04:44 Where you've budgeted and you're evaluating
1539. 01:04:48 based on last month's budget.
1540. 01:04:49 Where you're saying these are all the things
1541. 01:04:51 I've done last month and I am going to make
1542. 01:04:53 next month's time budget based on that.
1543. 01:04:56 And what you just described there is nope,
1544. 01:04:59 wipe the slate clean, build it from scratch
1545. 01:05:02 and what makes the cut.
1546. 01:05:03 Wipe the slate clean, build it from scratch,
1547. 01:05:04 what makes the cut.
1548. 01:05:05 The other principle that you've described here
1549. 01:05:07 that I think is really, really fun.
1550. 01:05:10 Hey Mike, what's your experiment here?
1551. 01:05:12 Your experiment is don't put the audio in the newsletter
1552. 01:05:16 for like two or three weeks.
1553. 01:05:18 See if anybody says anything, right?
1554. 01:05:20 Like do a bunch of people complain?
1555. 01:05:22 Does anybody even notice?
1556. 01:05:24 Like is, and if you don't get that really strong feedback
1557. 01:05:28 that says, I can't stand this without the audio.
1558. 01:05:32 You must, you must, must,
1559. 01:05:34 dude, let the audio go, right?
1560. 01:05:35 Like it's okay, you know, like obviously,
1561. 01:05:38 maybe you can try it again later,
1562. 01:05:39 but it's not a key feature of that.
1563. 01:05:43 Like, so I think you can apply multiple steps
1564. 01:05:45 of what the author here is talking about
1565. 01:05:49 and apply those right now.
1566. 01:05:50 There, so yeah, and just to like full circle mentioned,
1567. 01:05:55 like we mentioned the AI stuff with the creativity process,
1568. 01:05:59 figuring out what parts are valuable for me as the human
1569. 01:06:04 and what parts are not.
1570. 01:06:06 I know, I've heard people talk about how they use 11 labs
1571. 01:06:11 to, here's the script from my newsletter,
1572. 01:06:14 turn it into a podcast episode.
1573. 01:06:17 I know some people with big audiences who do that.
1574. 01:06:21 And I don't know if it's like public knowledge,
1575. 01:06:24 so I'm not gonna name any names.
1576. 01:06:27 But I feel like the ones that I've heard talk about that
1577. 01:06:30 in the way that seems like maybe it's
1578. 01:06:33 the right middle ground approach is they admit that,
1579. 01:06:36 you know, this is something that exists
1580. 01:06:38 because I'm using this AI tool.
1581. 01:06:40 If I didn't have the AI tool, this would not exist.
1582. 01:06:43 So take it or leave it, this is what it is.
1583. 01:06:46 And people love it, you know?
1584. 01:06:48 So yeah, I feel like all of the rules
1585. 01:06:52 are kind of changing right now in terms of,
1586. 01:06:56 and I gotta figure out where those boundaries are,
1587. 01:06:59 where the lines are.
1588. 01:07:01 I wanna be curious about it though.
1589. 01:07:02 I don't wanna go into it thinking,
1590. 01:07:03 well, obviously, I am the human and I know best.
1591. 01:07:07 And so I should just draw these lines based off
1592. 01:07:09 of my experience and my past suffering,
1593. 01:07:11 which is indicated that this is the thing
1594. 01:07:13 that I put a lot of work into,
1595. 01:07:15 so therefore must be valuable to my audience.
1596. 01:07:17 I feel like you really have no idea.
1597. 01:07:20 So yeah, expectation bankruptcy,
1598. 01:07:23 just put it all under the microscope,
1599. 01:07:25 figure out what is actually valuable,
1600. 01:07:27 what's worth doing, and then where does my time go
1601. 01:07:29 in terms of the things that I contribute the most value to?
1602. 01:07:33 - Yeah, I think that's a smart plan, man.
1603. 01:07:35 I think you need to do it.
1604. 01:07:36 I'm gonna push you to do it. - All right.
1605. 01:07:39 Anything else before we go to chapter 10?
1606. 01:07:41 - No, sir, let's go.
1607. 01:07:42 - Okey-dokey, so chapter 10 is the last official chapter,
1608. 01:07:46 I think, how to navigate life with flexible resilience.
1609. 01:07:51 We make progress by releasing our need for control.
1610. 01:07:55 Man, this is hard, he's right,
1611. 01:07:58 but I struggle with this.
1612. 01:08:00 Talks about flexible resilience,
1613. 01:08:02 which is making unoptimized progress
1614. 01:08:04 in an unpredictable world.
1615. 01:08:06 I like that idea a lot.
1616. 01:08:08 Also talks about the approach of wayfinding.
1617. 01:08:10 Kinda lost me there.
1618. 01:08:13 Like the people who navigate the Polynesian oceans
1619. 01:08:15 in a canoe, just by looking at the stars.
1620. 01:08:19 He does say in this section that
1621. 01:08:22 you don't need to see the whole path only
1622. 01:08:23 what's right in front of you,
1623. 01:08:25 and this is, you mentioned the compass thing earlier,
1624. 01:08:27 this is where I wrote down,
1625. 01:08:28 you need a compass, not a blueprint,
1626. 01:08:30 that's something that I say in the life-themed stuff
1627. 01:08:32 all the time. (laughs)
1628. 01:08:33 You don't need to have it all figured out,
1629. 01:08:35 you just need to know what the next step is.
1630. 01:08:37 He also says though, one of the thing I really liked here
1631. 01:08:39 is that you cannot connect the dots looking forward,
1632. 01:08:42 you only can connect the dots looking backward.
1633. 01:08:44 - I like that a lot.
1634. 01:08:45 - Me too, I feel like that's really profound
1635. 01:08:47 because when you're connecting the dots,
1636. 01:08:49 you're really trying to make sense of the things
1637. 01:08:50 that have happened and you're painting a narrative
1638. 01:08:52 about what's possible based on your experiences.
1639. 01:08:55 I don't wanna do that, but I do it all the time.
1640. 01:08:57 (laughs)
1641. 01:09:00 - Yeah, we've talked about this before
1642. 01:09:03 where you've described it as the video game map
1643. 01:09:06 to where as you move in the direction,
1644. 01:09:08 it reveals a little bit more of the map.
1645. 01:09:09 So most of the map is blacked out and then as you move,
1646. 01:09:13 he describes a quote here writing a novels
1647. 01:09:15 like driving a car at night,
1648. 01:09:16 you don't see your destination
1649. 01:09:18 or everything you pass along the way,
1650. 01:09:19 you just see one or two feet ahead of you.
1651. 01:09:22 And it's like that thinking is again,
1652. 01:09:27 it's just different thinking than I normally do.
1653. 01:09:29 I try to plan out so far
1654. 01:09:31 and then get frustrated when something happens,
1655. 01:09:34 when life life's you
1656. 01:09:35 and when these things constrain what you're able to do
1657. 01:09:39 and then I enter that doom loop of I feel cruddy about it
1658. 01:09:44 so it just makes it worse and it's like no,
1659. 01:09:47 what if you only tried to plan a few a little bit further
1660. 01:09:51 and a little bit further and a little bit further
1661. 01:09:53 and we do this all the time.
1662. 01:09:54 Like I think about it when I think about teaching design
1663. 01:09:56 or doing design projects,
1664. 01:09:58 we call this agile design or like sprints
1665. 01:10:01 where we're doing these small recursive sprints
1666. 01:10:03 where we're not trying to plan out so far.
1667. 01:10:06 And it's like, why don't I do this more?
1668. 01:10:09 Like why does my brain not just naturally default
1669. 01:10:13 to this style of thinking?
1670. 01:10:14 So I don't know,
1671. 01:10:17 I'm not gonna commit to an action item on this one
1672. 01:10:19 but man, I think I'd be better off
1673. 01:10:21 if I did it this way where I only tried to look so far
1674. 01:10:25 and then I reassessed and I reassessed
1675. 01:10:27 and my short-term version is the semester.
1676. 01:10:30 Like what do I wanna get done by the end of the semester
1677. 01:10:32 or what do I think I can accomplish by the end of the semester
1678. 01:10:33 and then reevaluate and then what I think next semester
1679. 01:10:36 and then summer and then semester, semester, summer.
1680. 01:10:38 Like that's just the natural ebb and flow of my life
1681. 01:10:42 so I think that's the natural process for me.
1682. 01:10:44 - And for me it's a personal retreats every quarter
1683. 01:10:48 but yeah, that's the thing is the regular feedback loops
1684. 01:10:51 I feel.
1685. 01:10:52 That's the approach.
1686. 01:10:56 You need to make progress for a little bit, sprint,
1687. 01:10:58 then take a step back, get a different perspective,
1688. 01:11:02 look at what happened and readjust.
1689. 01:11:05 Repair if needed, try again.
1690. 01:11:08 - Yeah, exactly.
1691. 01:11:09 - I guess I didn't realize that the personal retreat stuff
1692. 01:11:12 and a lot of the productivity stuff that I talk about
1693. 01:11:14 how neatly it fits into the topic of this book.
1694. 01:11:18 I feel like looking at it and at the beginning
1695. 01:11:21 it feels like, oh look it, here's somebody
1696. 01:11:25 who has failed a lot, sharing vulnerably
1697. 01:11:28 about their experience to help folks who are ready to give up
1698. 01:11:33 and the more I go through this book,
1699. 01:11:34 the more I feel like he's talking to me.
1700. 01:11:38 - I told you spotlight, right?
1701. 01:11:39 Like did I tell you at the beginning?
1702. 01:11:40 I was like there were so many times in this book
1703. 01:11:42 where it was like spotlight, spotlight, spotlight.
1704. 01:11:44 We would be remiss.
1705. 01:11:46 Like we would be remiss.
1706. 01:11:47 We have to talk about this.
1707. 01:11:49 Throughout the Bob Ross quote,
1708. 01:11:50 "There are no mistakes, only happy accidents."
1709. 01:11:54 And it's like, yes, Bob Ross, you had it,
1710. 01:11:56 you nailed it a long, long time ago.
1711. 01:11:58 Where are the happy accidents in our life
1712. 01:12:00 and how do we respond to those?
1713. 01:12:01 Sorry, happy at the Bob Ross quote.
1714. 01:12:03 - Happy little trees, happy little trees, oh man.
1715. 01:12:08 - All right, so the next chapter is the conclusion.
1716. 01:12:13 This is not the last section of the book.
1717. 01:12:16 (laughing)
1718. 01:12:18 But it is essentially a conclusion to the book.
1719. 01:12:21 It's pretty short, I think that blog is longer,
1720. 01:12:23 which is kind of weird.
1721. 01:12:24 Essentially the conclusion is,
1722. 01:12:26 how can I have a pretty good day today?
1723. 01:12:27 That's the question that we should be asking,
1724. 01:12:30 make a pact and see what happens.
1725. 01:12:32 And then an encouragement that we have all the tools
1726. 01:12:35 and the mindsets that we need in order to try again.
1727. 01:12:39 Anything else you wanna call out from this conclusion?
1728. 01:12:41 - I think he does a good job like hitting the highlights here.
1729. 01:12:44 He's got a section here where he says,
1730. 01:12:45 winner learn, which he's talked about before,
1731. 01:12:47 except the happy accidents, find a way to get good.
1732. 01:12:50 Failures are gonna pile up and we gotta figure out
1733. 01:12:53 how we rebound from that.
1734. 01:12:55 And I think he did a good job telling us
1735. 01:12:58 what he told us earlier and through the rest of the book.
1736. 01:13:01 So, I didn't have any issues with the conclusion at all.
1737. 01:13:05 Thought it was good.
1738. 01:13:06 - It is a good conclusion, but it's not the end.
1739. 01:13:09 So the chapter after that is the epilogue
1740. 01:13:12 and it really is another chapter.
1741. 01:13:14 (laughing)
1742. 01:13:16 - This one caught me in like a weird way.
1743. 01:13:18 Like I, and even the title of it
1744. 01:13:19 with a little help from my friends,
1745. 01:13:20 like I still can't tell you,
1746. 01:13:23 I understand the title of this epilogue.
1747. 01:13:26 - Yeah, well, I think one of the things I jotted down
1748. 01:13:30 at the beginning of this is that most success
1749. 01:13:33 is out of our hands.
1750. 01:13:36 And I don't know how you feel about that.
1751. 01:13:40 I've wrestled with this, but I've actually talked about this
1752. 01:13:44 in quite a few of my mastermind groups
1753. 01:13:47 and even the people who are really, really successful
1754. 01:13:49 would tell you, yeah, I just got lucky.
1755. 01:13:52 I think there is an element of that,
1756. 01:13:54 but also I feel like if you continue to show up,
1757. 01:13:56 you exponentially increase your chances of getting lucky.
1758. 01:14:01 So you do need to be in the right place at the right time,
1759. 01:14:06 but if you go from failure to failure
1760. 01:14:10 with no loss of enthusiasm,
1761. 01:14:13 you feel like it's sort of inevitable
1762. 01:14:14 that you'll get there eventually.
1763. 01:14:16 Maybe that's wrong, I don't know.
1764. 01:14:19 There's the idea of Wabi Sabi here,
1765. 01:14:21 which is the Japanese are like painting the cracks
1766. 01:14:24 and in the China and stuff like that.
1767. 01:14:26 So you embrace the imperfect basically.
1768. 01:14:29 He has a phrase which I really liked.
1769. 01:14:31 It's all for fun and it will all be okay.
1770. 01:14:34 Asking for help is a sign of strength, not a weakness.
1771. 01:14:37 And then the big one, the way he ends the book essentially
1772. 01:14:41 is to deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.
1773. 01:14:43 Great advice and a great way to end the book, I feel.
1774. 01:14:48 - Yeah, I, again, this kind of stands on its own.
1775. 01:14:52 It's kind of this little island,
1776. 01:14:53 like the epilogue is the little island,
1777. 01:14:55 which I guess that's what the point of an epilogue is.
1778. 01:14:58 Like sometimes it connects more than others.
1779. 01:15:00 I didn't think this one connected very much at all.
1780. 01:15:06 And it may be what I'm gonna call
1781. 01:15:09 the weakest section of the book for me.
1782. 01:15:10 Like it just, I get what he's pointing is pointing,
1783. 01:15:13 but it's almost like an afterthought.
1784. 01:15:14 Like that's what he was thinking.
1785. 01:15:15 He was like, "Ah, and oh, by the way,
1786. 01:15:17 "I wanna tell you all this other stuff too."
1787. 01:15:19 And it wasn't a ton of stuff,
1788. 01:15:20 but it's like, here's this other stuff too.
1789. 01:15:22 So my biggest takeaway here,
1790. 01:15:24 like my biggest insight here was the one time one meeting
1791. 01:15:28 that basically be in the moment.
1792. 01:15:30 Like when you're meeting with somebody,
1793. 01:15:33 like slow down, be present, enjoy that,
1794. 01:15:36 because I don't do that.
1795. 01:15:38 Like I don't do that enough in there.
1796. 01:15:39 So that's why it resonated with me more is,
1797. 01:15:41 I'm thinking about what's next and where are we going
1798. 01:15:43 and what's the goal?
1799. 01:15:44 And we've heard other people talk about this,
1800. 01:15:46 we've read other people talk about this
1801. 01:15:47 as like transactional interactions,
1802. 01:15:50 not like meaningful interactions.
1803. 01:15:51 And it's like, just my life would be better.
1804. 01:15:53 And I think my relationships would be better
1805. 01:15:55 if they were more meaningful interactions.
1806. 01:15:57 What are we doing?
1807. 01:15:58 We're just living in the same moment together right now
1808. 01:16:01 and just enjoying it.
1809. 01:16:02 We're not trying to get something out of this.
1810. 01:16:04 So that was my biggest takeaway from the epilogue.
1811. 01:16:07 - Yeah, I get that.
1812. 01:16:08 I actually think the epilogue is a pretty important point
1813. 01:16:12 and it's placed pretty great, I think,
1814. 01:16:15 in terms of the flow of the whole book.
1815. 01:16:17 You don't really wanna talk about others' roles
1816. 01:16:21 in your failure until you get to the point
1817. 01:16:24 where you're willing to own it.
1818. 01:16:26 And I feel like you probably have to work through
1819. 01:16:28 the whole book in order to feel okay with that.
1820. 01:16:32 But then, like this is a whole 'nother book,
1821. 01:16:35 essentially, this topic of the importance
1822. 01:16:37 of relationships and the communities
1823. 01:16:39 that you're a part of and things like that.
1824. 01:16:42 I don't want him to add a whole 'nother part to the book.
1825. 01:16:46 I don't, on the other option I see with this
1826. 01:16:48 is this becomes like part three.
1827. 01:16:50 - Yeah.
1828. 01:16:51 - And I don't think I would have liked that approach either.
1829. 01:16:54 But I do think there's a lot of value in this
1830. 01:16:57 and it does feel a little bit weird
1831. 01:16:59 tacked on to the end, like you said.
1832. 01:17:01 But I also feel like this is a pretty good palette cleanser.
1833. 01:17:05 This is the orange sherbert at the end of the meal.
1834. 01:17:09 But it's good, it's good stuff.
1835. 01:17:11 It's not a throwaway, here's a summary from chapter one,
1836. 01:17:15 chapter two, chapter three, chapter four,
1837. 01:17:17 all in a two page thing.
1838. 01:17:18 And I'm gonna tell you what I already told you
1839. 01:17:20 just to make sure that it sticks.
1840. 01:17:22 Could've gone in a million different directions,
1841. 01:17:24 could've left this out entirely.
1842. 01:17:25 I think it's a better book because it's there.
1843. 01:17:27 - Okay.
1844. 01:17:28 Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you,
1845. 01:17:29 I felt that strongly about it either way.
1846. 01:17:32 But I, if it wouldn't have been there,
1847. 01:17:35 I don't think I'd have noticed.
1848. 01:17:36 I don't think I'd have been like,
1849. 01:17:37 ah, we were just missing that one last little thing.
1850. 01:17:41 That's just, yeah, so cool.
1851. 01:17:42 Good take on. - I can see that.
1852. 01:17:45 Okay, action items.
1853. 01:17:47 I've got one which is,
1854. 01:17:50 let me see how I wrote this down,
1855. 01:17:52 declare expectation bankruptcy.
1856. 01:17:55 Yeah, so I should probably add a little bit more
1857. 01:17:58 to the text for that, but reconsider all the things
1858. 01:18:02 that I am currently committed to
1859. 01:18:05 and whether I am going to continue doing them
1860. 01:18:07 and whether I am the right person to do them.
1861. 01:18:10 I'll workshop that, but you've also got one here.
1862. 01:18:13 What's yours?
1863. 01:18:14 - Yeah, so mine is the, think about the Ulysses Pact
1864. 01:18:17 and it's basically what do I not wanna do
1865. 01:18:20 and how do I set it up so I can't do that thing?
1866. 01:18:23 And I'm just picking one thing.
1867. 01:18:24 I don't wanna go crazy, like just one thing.
1868. 01:18:27 Well, what's the thing I don't wanna do
1869. 01:18:28 and then how do I set it up to not be able to do that?
1870. 01:18:32 All right, okay, style and rating.
1871. 01:18:37 Man, here we go. (chuckling)
1872. 01:18:41 I struggle with what to rate this
1873. 01:18:44 because at the beginning of this,
1874. 01:18:47 I felt like this is an entertaining read
1875. 01:18:51 with some good stuff in it,
1876. 01:18:53 but it's really not for me.
1877. 01:18:56 I went through some of this stuff already.
1878. 01:18:58 I see where he's going with some of this stuff.
1879. 01:19:00 I know the resources that he's pointing to or eluding to
1880. 01:19:04 and I've already got a different understanding
1881. 01:19:07 of some of the stuff that he's talking about.
1882. 01:19:11 So thanks, Steve, I know that already.
1883. 01:19:13 And then when we get into part two,
1884. 01:19:15 it's kinda like more and more.
1885. 01:19:17 Okay, you actually know more about this
1886. 01:19:19 than I thought you did.
1887. 01:19:20 It's kinda like that friend who is real goofy
1888. 01:19:23 and then you find out that they're real smart.
1889. 01:19:25 - Yeah, yeah.
1890. 01:19:26 - And oh, I should have been listening to you all along.
1891. 01:19:29 (laughing)
1892. 01:19:31 I do think that just by the nature of how he writes
1893. 01:19:36 and the jokes that he tells,
1894. 01:19:39 there are people like past Mike, maybe,
1895. 01:19:44 at the beginning of this book,
1896. 01:19:45 who are going to dismiss maybe some of the things
1897. 01:19:49 that he is saying in the book.
1898. 01:19:52 He mentions, just as an example,
1899. 01:19:54 there's a section in there where he's like,
1900. 01:19:56 I would have mentioned a Lord of the Rings example here,
1901. 01:20:00 but my editor told me I've already used them all up.
1902. 01:20:02 And then later on, he uses one.
1903. 01:20:03 He's like, okay, I actually managed to squeeze one more
1904. 01:20:06 out of them or something like that.
1905. 01:20:08 It's, that's the style.
1906. 01:20:10 I mean, you're gonna,
1907. 01:20:11 I think you're either gonna love it
1908. 01:20:13 or you're gonna hate it.
1909. 01:20:15 I think there's probably a good portion
1910. 01:20:17 of the bookworm audience who is just not gonna,
1911. 01:20:20 not gonna connect with this one.
1912. 01:20:21 Doesn't mean that they shouldn't though.
1913. 01:20:23 That's the thing that I'm really struggling
1914. 01:20:26 with this particular book is like,
1915. 01:20:29 do I think this is one of the best books
1916. 01:20:33 that I have ever read?
1917. 01:20:34 I don't, but also it's a very brave way
1918. 01:20:39 to tackle a topic that nobody else talks about.
1919. 01:20:43 The world would be better
1920. 01:20:45 if there were more Steve Cams in it writing books like this.
1921. 01:20:49 - I agree completely.
1922. 01:20:51 So I feel like maybe that's a little bit
1923. 01:20:55 of my hesitation is just, it's so different.
1924. 01:20:59 I don't really have a frame of reference
1925. 01:21:02 for this type of book.
1926. 01:21:05 I don't know what to do with this.
1927. 01:21:06 It doesn't fit neatly into my checklist
1928. 01:21:09 of what is a five star book.
1929. 01:21:11 I mean, there's two parts and an extra chapter
1930. 01:21:14 that doesn't fit.
1931. 01:21:15 I've never seen that.
1932. 01:21:17 There's an epilogue after a conclusion
1933. 01:21:19 that has more than the conclusion.
1934. 01:21:20 I've never seen that,
1935. 01:21:23 but I also think that I really, really enjoyed this one.
1936. 01:21:27 I picked it because I met Steve at Craftin Commerce
1937. 01:21:32 and he seemed like a cool guy.
1938. 01:21:34 I wanted to get some attention on his book
1939. 01:21:37 and I thought it would be good based
1940. 01:21:39 on what I heard other people talking about it,
1941. 01:21:42 but I didn't expect it to be a five star book, honestly.
1942. 01:21:46 I thought it would just be an entertaining read
1943. 01:21:48 because Steve seems like a cool guy.
1944. 01:21:51 So I don't feel, I'll say this explicitly right now,
1945. 01:21:55 I don't feel an expectation because I met Steve
1946. 01:22:00 to give it five stars,
1947. 01:22:02 but I feel like this message is so important
1948. 01:22:07 and he does such a good job communicating it
1949. 01:22:10 in a way that anybody can relate to it, I feel,
1950. 01:22:14 that I have to.
1951. 01:22:16 I think this is a five star book
1952. 01:22:18 and I think everybody should read it, yep.
1953. 01:22:21 - So you hit the nail on the head
1954. 01:22:23 at the very, very end of your review.
1955. 01:22:26 The reason why I think this is a five star book
1956. 01:22:29 is because I would have zero hesitation
1957. 01:22:35 recommending this to anybody who is in that mode
1958. 01:22:38 where they're thinking about a failure,
1959. 01:22:41 they're thinking about picking themselves back up,
1960. 01:22:43 they're thinking about trying again,
1961. 01:22:44 they're thinking about what are strategies
1962. 01:22:46 to keep going in light of difficult times.
1963. 01:22:50 Like when I think about all that stuff,
1964. 01:22:52 it's an accessible book, it's an easy read,
1965. 01:22:55 it's got a lot of like core principles
1966. 01:22:58 that I think are outstanding, the stories aren't bad.
1967. 01:23:02 Like I don't, I mean, I'm not one
1968. 01:23:04 to like overly resonate with stories in any book,
1969. 01:23:08 like you've known that by now.
1970. 01:23:10 So it's like, they're not bad,
1971. 01:23:11 like I think they connect with what we're trying to do
1972. 01:23:15 in communicating the idea.
1973. 01:23:18 I think the extra little key insights
1974. 01:23:20 at the end of the chapters just drive home,
1975. 01:23:23 the efficacy of the book, in terms of that,
1976. 01:23:26 my biggest like struggle with the book is
1977. 01:23:29 the epilogue just kind of feels like it sits
1978. 01:23:31 a little bit over here on an island,
1979. 01:23:32 which is a really, really silly like complaint.
1980. 01:23:36 You know, like it's not even a complaint,
1981. 01:23:38 like complaints too strong a word.
1982. 01:23:39 Like there's no way I'd knock it down just for that.
1983. 01:23:42 Like it just doesn't make any, many sense to do that.
1984. 01:23:46 No, I think he, I think he wrote a great book.
1985. 01:23:48 I think it's a message that whether,
1986. 01:23:52 even if you aren't gonna get a lot of this personally,
1987. 01:23:56 there's somebody in your life that will.
1988. 01:23:58 Like there's somebody that you'd be like,
1989. 01:23:59 oh, so and so if they read this book,
1990. 01:24:02 it would mean a lot to them.
1991. 01:24:03 And it would give them a couple strategies to try.
1992. 01:24:05 You know, like you think about the escape pods,
1993. 01:24:07 you think about the strategies,
1994. 01:24:08 he blends the high level principle
1995. 01:24:11 with like effective strategies really, really well.
1996. 01:24:14 I think in the two parts of the book,
1997. 01:24:16 to where if you wanted to,
1998. 01:24:18 you could just be like, hey, just read chapters two through five.
1999. 01:24:20 And then if you're like, okay, now read chapter six through 10,
2000. 01:24:23 right? Like so I'm at different phases of this.
2001. 01:24:25 I just think it's a, it's a really effective book.
2002. 01:24:28 And I think it's like, it's kind of an easy five star for me.
2003. 01:24:32 Like I didn't come into it with any, not knowing anything.
2004. 01:24:35 This is an easy five star for me.
2005. 01:24:36 And then I think he deserves a five star on this.
2006. 01:24:40 I like what you said at the end there.
2007. 01:24:42 This is a really effective book.
2008. 01:24:45 I feel like he knocked it out of the park
2009. 01:24:48 for what he was trying to do with this one.
2010. 01:24:50 It's definitely better for going through
2011. 01:24:52 the 20 different revisions that it had to go through.
2012. 01:24:55 So if you're listening, great job, Steve.
2013. 01:24:58 - And I think, I think him struggling so much
2014. 01:25:01 to try to figure out the structure of it,
2015. 01:25:03 I think he landed on a good structure.
2016. 01:25:05 Like, is it the best structure?
2017. 01:25:06 I have no idea.
2018. 01:25:07 Like I'd have to think about that a little harder,
2019. 01:25:09 but he landed on a good effective structure.
2020. 01:25:11 So, I'm in.
2021. 01:25:12 - It's quirky, but so is he.
2022. 01:25:17 All right, let's put how to try again on the shelf.
2023. 01:25:19 What's next, Corey?
2024. 01:25:21 - All right, so the next book we have
2025. 01:25:23 is called "Inside the Box" by David Epstein.
2026. 01:25:26 No, we've, I can't remember, Mike.
2027. 01:25:29 Did you all read "Range" before I got here?
2028. 01:25:31 Or have you not?
2029. 01:25:33 - I read "Range".
2030. 01:25:34 I can't remember if it was "Bookworm" or not,
2031. 01:25:35 but it is a phenomenal book.
2032. 01:25:37 - Okay, so in "Cam", actually acknowledges
2033. 01:25:41 and references "Range", David Epstein's book range
2034. 01:25:43 in his book, but basically what we're gonna look at
2035. 01:25:46 is we're gonna look at putting constraints on things
2036. 01:25:49 and narrowing down options.
2037. 01:25:51 And he's gonna tell us some stories
2038. 01:25:53 from different people in different organizations
2039. 01:25:55 that embraced constraints to kind of transform
2040. 01:25:58 the way they did things or transform the world
2041. 01:26:00 or think about things.
2042. 01:26:02 I am a big, big fan of constraints
2043. 01:26:05 in terms of using them appropriately.
2044. 01:26:07 I think we can over-constraint things.
2045. 01:26:08 I think we can under-constraint things.
2046. 01:26:10 I think if we hit constraints well,
2047. 01:26:14 it actually improves our ability to be creative
2048. 01:26:17 and improves our ability to solve problems well,
2049. 01:26:18 it improves our ability to do different things.
2050. 01:26:20 So I'm very intrigued to see what he,
2051. 01:26:22 how he helps us think about this idea
2052. 01:26:25 of setting appropriate constraints
2053. 01:26:26 or appropriate boundaries on a problem space
2054. 01:26:29 or on a design space and where we go from there.
2055. 01:26:32 So I'm excited to read this one.
2056. 01:26:33 So David Epstein, "Inside the Box" is what it's called.
2057. 01:26:37 How about you, Mike, what's after that?
2058. 01:26:38 - I have a slide in my presentation
2059. 01:26:40 for next talk about embracing constraints.
2060. 01:26:42 - Nice.
2061. 01:26:43 - I think I'll like this one.
2062. 01:26:44 - Yeah, it's beautiful.
2063. 01:26:46 - So after that, we've got a way to recommend a book,
2064. 01:26:50 by the way, bookworm.fm/recommend, I believe.
2065. 01:26:53 Link will be in the show notes.
2066. 01:26:55 But we've got quite a few recommendations from folks.
2067. 01:26:58 And so I was going through that list
2068. 01:27:00 and there was a book that I own,
2069. 01:27:05 but I have not read yet.
2070. 01:27:08 And I think it is time.
2071. 01:27:10 The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
2072. 01:27:14 There is a blurb on the front of this book
2073. 01:27:17 from James Clear.
2074. 01:27:18 It says, "Bursting with ideas, everyone should own a copy."
2075. 01:27:22 So I honestly don't know what this book
2076. 01:27:25 is really going to be about.
2077. 01:27:27 It says, "Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness."
2078. 01:27:30 I've read a Morgan Housel book before.
2079. 01:27:32 I think we covered one for bookworm.
2080. 01:27:34 - It was just before I got there.
2081. 01:27:37 So just before I started on the show.
2082. 01:27:39 - I can't even remember the name of that book.
2083. 01:27:42 It was one of the more recent ones.
2084. 01:27:44 He's got another one out more recently
2085. 01:27:47 on the art of spending money,
2086. 01:27:48 which is sort of a second iteration of,
2087. 01:27:52 follow up to the Psychology of Money.
2088. 01:27:54 So I feel like this is the one
2089. 01:27:56 that gets thrown out all the time.
2090. 01:27:57 It's sold like something like 10 million copies.
2091. 01:27:59 So this is the definitive work, if you will.
2092. 01:28:03 We should definitely, I feel like,
2093. 01:28:05 have this one in the catalog.
2094. 01:28:06 So we're going to read this one.
2095. 01:28:08 And thank you to listener Paul for recommending this.
2096. 01:28:12 All right, you got any gap books?
2097. 01:28:14 - No, no, no, no, no, no.
2098. 01:28:17 I'm just reading bookworm books.
2099. 01:28:19 I'm not reading gap books.
2100. 01:28:21 No, not reading.
2101. 01:28:22 - Okay, well I do have one that I'm going to bring
2102. 01:28:25 with me to Macstock as we record this.
2103. 01:28:29 And it is actually inspired by you.
2104. 01:28:33 You told me about Bandersnatch back in the day.
2105. 01:28:36 - I did.
2106. 01:28:37 - Yes, so I have it here on my desk.
2107. 01:28:40 I'm going to bring it with.
2108. 01:28:41 And I'm hopefully going to start reading this
2109. 01:28:43 when I need my introvert breaks at Macstock.
2110. 01:28:47 - And I'm going to ask you about it
2111. 01:28:49 and wonder if it's worth me reading
2112. 01:28:52 and you might save me for reading it.
2113. 01:28:54 So you're paying your attention.
2114. 01:28:56 - The idea behind this one, by the way,
2115. 01:28:57 it's on the creative process of CS Lewis,
2116. 01:29:01 Jerro Tolkien, and The Inklings,
2117. 01:29:03 which was their creative mastermind group
2118. 01:29:06 where they gave each other feedback on their writing
2119. 01:29:08 and stuff like that,
2120. 01:29:09 which I think is a pretty awesome topic.
2121. 01:29:12 So yeah, we're going to give it a shot.
2122. 01:29:15 All right, I guess that does it
2123. 01:29:18 for another episode of bookworm.
2124. 01:29:21 Appreciate everybody listening
2125. 01:29:23 and supporting the show.
2126. 01:29:25 If you want to join the pro show,
2127. 01:29:28 we would love to have you.
2128. 01:29:29 It's seven bucks a month.
2129. 01:29:30 It helps us keep the lights on here at bookworm.
2130. 01:29:34 You get access to a longer ad-free pro show.
2131. 01:29:37 So there's an extra segment there.
2132. 01:29:40 Today we talked about World Cup and Soccer.
2133. 01:29:43 There's a bootleg that gets released
2134. 01:29:44 right after the recording.
2135. 01:29:45 So that gets you access to the episodes.
2136. 01:29:47 Usually one to two weeks early.
2137. 01:29:49 I've got a reading master class that I did.
2138. 01:29:52 It's a two and a half hour workshop
2139. 01:29:54 on how to extract more value from the books that you read.
2140. 01:29:57 That normally sells for $49 on its own.
2141. 01:30:00 So you get access to that as well.
2142. 01:30:01 So like I said, $7 a month.
2143. 01:30:03 And if you want to support us,
2144. 01:30:05 we would love to have you join us bookworm.fm/pro.
2145. 01:30:10 If you're reading along with us,
2146. 01:30:11 pick up Inside the Box by David Epstein.
2147. 01:30:14 And we'll talk to you next time.