27: Out of Our Minds by Ken Robinson

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1. 00:00:00 Have you seen Star Wars yet?
2. 00:00:02 I have not seen Star Wars yet.
3. 00:00:04 I wish I do have any times I've been asked that question.
4. 00:00:08 You're going to have to just bite the bullet and get this over with.
5. 00:00:12 I know. It's the whole time thing and little kids don't make it easy.
6. 00:00:16 True. What's new in Mike's world?
7. 00:00:20 Oh man. I don't know. I just watched Ted Talk
8. 00:00:24 by Sir Ken Robinson.
9. 00:00:28 That was very interesting. I wish I would have watched that before we read the book
10. 00:00:32 because he's a lot funnier than real life.
11. 00:00:36 Yes. It puts the whole thing in perspective, doesn't it?
12. 00:00:40 Yep, it totally does. I think it's fun to be able to read a book in
13. 00:00:44 the authors true accent and voice.
14. 00:00:48 If you've seen them and know how they speak,
15. 00:00:52 I think that helps when you read it.
16. 00:00:54 True. Yeah. But I didn't.
17. 00:00:56 I didn't know though.
18. 00:01:00 So now you can do it retroactively.
19. 00:01:04 I tried. It didn't really work.
20. 00:01:08 We're the shot.
21. 00:01:12 I have strong feelings and opinions about this book.
22. 00:01:16 How do you two? This will be an interesting episode because
23. 00:01:20 I both loved it and hated it.
24. 00:01:24 Yeah. We'll get there.
25. 00:01:28 Yeah. Want to go through some follow-up? Yeah.
26. 00:01:32 So I completely forgot when we did this sleep revolution
27. 00:01:36 to mention that one of the resources that she recommends, obviously at the back of the book,
28. 00:01:40 is Good Matrices and she recommends The Casper Matress, which if you listen to podcasts
29. 00:01:44 you've probably heard thousands of ads for Casper Matress.
30. 00:01:48 That would have been the perfect episode to have Casper as a sponsor.
31. 00:01:52 Well, anyways, we have a Casper Matress.
32. 00:01:56 We've had it since roughly December.
33. 00:02:00 This may sound really lame, but it was a Christmas gift for my wife
34. 00:02:04 and she absolutely loved it. So say what you will
35. 00:02:08 about gift giving, but it worked. And it really is a
36. 00:02:12 great mattress. I tend to like the
37. 00:02:16 firmer mattresses. My wife likes it a little bit softer, but this one
38. 00:02:20 we both just absolutely love it. We sleep great. Interesting.
39. 00:02:24 One of the things that I really like about the Casper is that it has this
40. 00:02:28 technology built into it. I don't know how they do it, but essentially it keeps you
41. 00:02:32 cooler at night, which I tend to get pretty warm and I prefer it cooler when I sleep.
42. 00:02:36 If I could have all the windows open in the winter when sleeping, I probably would.
43. 00:02:40 But my wife is the exact opposite of me where she always wants it a lot warmer.
44. 00:02:44 So the Casper is the happy medium. Nice.
45. 00:02:48 And yeah, it's worth every penny. It's a little bit cheaper than
46. 00:02:52 some of the mattresses that you would just go buy at the store.
47. 00:02:56 It comes in this impossibly small box.
48. 00:03:00 It's true. They deliver this thing. And it's probably
49. 00:03:04 about the size of one of those microfridges that you might bring to college.
50. 00:03:08 I'm sticking a dorm room. And then you open it up and you cut the plastic off and then
51. 00:03:12 it just goes, and it fills up the room. And you have
52. 00:03:16 a queen size mattress in this box that's delivered to your front door.
53. 00:03:20 It's crazy. And they also have, I think it's like a 100 night
54. 00:03:24 guarantee. And this is the coolest thing in my opinion because they're so confident in their product
55. 00:03:28 that they will say that they say that they're going to come pick up your mattress for you if you don't like it.
56. 00:03:32 No questions asked. So that got me thinking, like what if you live in this
57. 00:03:36 apartment and you're going up five flights of stairs? Everybody
58. 00:03:40 pictures that friends episode where Ross has got the cow cheese
59. 00:03:44 yelling pivot. So I'm thinking about that. What if you got a
60. 00:03:48 Casper? You got it up to this impossible place. And then
61. 00:03:52 Casper's got to figure out how to get it down. But they don't care. They say that they will come
62. 00:03:56 get it. I bet you they have some big bag that they put it in
63. 00:04:00 and they suck it back down. Maybe. Again, that's magic to me.
64. 00:04:04 I don't know how that works. But that's just where my brain goes. It's like,
65. 00:04:08 well, what if you got like a king size mattress in this tiny apartment on the fifth floor
66. 00:04:12 and there's no elevator. Casper's problem, I guess. But
67. 00:04:16 apparently not very many people take them up on that up. We didn't.
68. 00:04:20 It was definitely a good investment for us. You say it keeps you cool at night.
69. 00:04:24 That's intriguing to me because ours, we have a four inch
70. 00:04:28 memory phone topper on ours. So the actual
71. 00:04:32 box springs and the mattress itself are fairly cheap because we just
72. 00:04:36 needed something to hold the topper. But we love our bed. So
73. 00:04:40 I love having that four inch topper on there because it's just really nice.
74. 00:04:44 The problem I have with it is it holds heat like crazy.
75. 00:04:48 And I'm a hot box at night. So I end up
76. 00:04:52 I don't get overheated but during the summer it's a challenge to stay cool.
77. 00:04:56 So this is the other thing. I absolutely hate
78. 00:05:00 memory phone. And Casper is essentially some
79. 00:05:04 sort of memory phone. They talk about the different layers and again, I don't know exactly how that works.
80. 00:05:08 But I was very apprehensive about this memory foam
81. 00:05:12 composite that they use for the mattress.
82. 00:05:16 But even I like it. Like I said, I typically like it a bit
83. 00:05:20 firmer and I tend to move around a lot at night. But that and so
84. 00:05:24 if you have a memory foam mattress, that's just a recipe for disaster.
85. 00:05:28 Especially coupled with the fact that I don't like being warm.
86. 00:05:32 Yeah. But yeah, the Casper is great and
87. 00:05:36 I wish we would have done it a long time ago. Yeah, I'm looking it up because I'm curious.
88. 00:05:40 Because we the fight in our house, I shouldn't say fight.
89. 00:05:44 That's a strong word. The debate that we have quite frequently is
90. 00:05:48 when do we upgrade to a king size bed?
91. 00:05:52 That's what we go through a lot. So I'm always
92. 00:05:56 looking for ways to get myself into a king size sooner.
93. 00:06:00 So I'm wondering if this would be because our bed has been
94. 00:06:04 eight years old at this point.
95. 00:06:08 There you go. See, you could buy a Casper and you could put it
96. 00:06:12 in the bedroom and you could promise yourself that you're not going to open it until you finish the
97. 00:06:16 bedroom. And then that could be your incentive to finish your project.
98. 00:06:20 Gotcha. What is the difference between
99. 00:06:24 all there's no price difference between a king and a California king?
100. 00:06:28 Yeah, a California king definitely would not fit in our house.
101. 00:06:32 Even a king would be a stretch and we've got a platform for it already and everything.
102. 00:06:36 Yeah, we just want the queen. It's fine. I don't think a California king would fit in our
103. 00:06:40 room either. That doesn't mean I won't try.
104. 00:06:44 Well, there you go. Mattress is good
105. 00:06:48 call on bringing that up. I wish we'd thought about that last time. But that's what we need.
106. 00:06:52 Yeah, again, I can't believe that I forgot to bring that up. Yeah, we've had it for a couple months.
107. 00:06:56 I think the period, the return period probably just passed not
108. 00:07:00 too long ago. But like I said, we're happy with it. We're not taking it back.
109. 00:07:04 The other thing I wanted to follow up on is I was listening
110. 00:07:08 to episode 25, which you published since we recorded the last one.
111. 00:07:12 Yeah. And there was a mention on there about the digital versus the analog tools which I thought was
112. 00:07:16 pretty interesting. I've been thinking a lot about this.
113. 00:07:20 Especially with episode 26 where we are
114. 00:07:24 I went on my rant about task managers.
115. 00:07:28 It made for interesting show notes. I'll say that.
116. 00:07:32 I was like, "Okay, now I've got to drop that one." Oh, there's another one.
117. 00:07:36 I was looking at my file for all the markers because I tried to drop markers when there's something
118. 00:07:40 I need to put in the show notes. That way I can make sure I grab them.
119. 00:07:44 And there was a section where it was like six markers in a 30
120. 00:07:48 second period. Sorry about that.
121. 00:07:52 Okay. But the digital versus analog tools thing
122. 00:07:56 was interesting to me as I was reading this book. Because I was reading this book
123. 00:08:00 around the same time I was listening to that episode. And I think that there's a lot to be
124. 00:08:04 said about analog tools fostering creativity. I know that
125. 00:08:08 one change that I made probably about two years ago
126. 00:08:12 is that instead of taking notes
127. 00:08:16 like word for word on my computer because I am a very digital person
128. 00:08:20 I switched to taking handwritten notes
129. 00:08:24 and I also, after a little while, switched to taking sketch notes
130. 00:08:28 which I'm not, I don't consider myself an artist. And in fact if you were to look at some of my first
131. 00:08:32 sketch notes it's mainly words and a couple stick figures.
132. 00:08:36 But I've gotten decent at it. I'm still nowhere near the ones that you
133. 00:08:40 see online when people post like they go to a talk and they take
134. 00:08:44 sketch notes like, "Hey, a sketch note to the talk." Those are always way, way better than mine are.
135. 00:08:48 But I've gotten a lot better and it was interesting to me
136. 00:08:52 that whole process because I just stuck with it. You know when I first started doing it
137. 00:08:56 people were making fun of me because my drawings were legitimately terrible.
138. 00:09:00 Now to the point where people see me and they're like, "Wow, that is so cool.
139. 00:09:04 How do you do that?" I don't know, I just do it. And then for a while
140. 00:09:08 I even had my original notebook so I'd flip back to the beginning and be like, "I wasn't always good
141. 00:09:12 at this. I mean here's my first one." And then they laugh.
142. 00:09:16 But I think that the tools that you use can also help
143. 00:09:20 foster creativity. And sometimes it's even just a conscious choice
144. 00:09:24 that we have to make to use something that maybe is a little bit more
145. 00:09:28 inconvenient but recognizing that the process is more important than the end result.
146. 00:09:32 You know, we don't want necessarily, I'm at church, I'm taking notes on the pastor's sermon.
147. 00:09:36 I'm not necessarily trying to catch every single word. I'm trying to crystallize the
148. 00:09:40 core ideas from the message that I want to apply to my life. Same thing when you read these books.
149. 00:09:44 And sketch noting in particular but using analog tools
150. 00:09:48 definitely helps with that. And I forgot to grab this link.
151. 00:09:52 I should've done it when I put this in the show notes. I will try to find this. Joe, remind me.
152. 00:09:56 But there is an article that was written that shows that people who take hand-written notes
153. 00:10:02 retain more than people who take digital notes.
154. 00:10:06 I think I picked that up from Mike Roady's
155. 00:10:10 sketch note workbook as well.
156. 00:10:14 He mentions that statistic. But that just got me thinking,
157. 00:10:18 like I've got all of these files, places
158. 00:10:22 all over the place that have all of these notes which are maybe word for word
159. 00:10:26 with the professor or the pastor or the priest or whatever, like what they said.
160. 00:10:30 And I never go back and look at them because there's just too much information to go back
161. 00:10:34 and reread all of that stuff. So I'm thinking about my process and I'm like
162. 00:10:38 wouldn't it be better if I just retained a lot of this stuff more naturally
163. 00:10:42 and the analog tools I believe do that. And the article shows that
164. 00:10:46 research behind that is back set up. Where people who use
165. 00:10:50 the digital tools tend to, they tend to write down
166. 00:10:54 word for word what's being said. And they don't even stop to think about what's being said.
167. 00:10:58 They just write it down. But if you take notes with a digital
168. 00:11:02 tool, what you have to do is you have to think through what's being
169. 00:11:06 said in your head. You have to process it essentially before you write it down because you can't
170. 00:11:10 keep up. You physically cannot keep up. And that
171. 00:11:14 effect is to the next degree when you
172. 00:11:18 do something like sketch notes because you're not just thinking what am I going to
173. 00:11:22 write down but how am I going to draw this, visualize this.
174. 00:11:26 And I think that that could foster a lot of creativity as we get into
175. 00:11:30 the book for today. Right. I did a lot of research on this at one point because
176. 00:11:34 I started handwriting my own
177. 00:11:38 blog articles. And whenever I started doing that,
178. 00:11:42 I figured out that one, I
179. 00:11:46 would write differently for some reason whenever I was
180. 00:11:50 doing it by hand versus typing it. And then I started to realize that I would
181. 00:11:54 retain and think about it more. So I did a lot of research on it and
182. 00:11:58 there are a lot of studies on this. Like where students who
183. 00:12:02 take notes in class by hand, they
184. 00:12:06 do retain it significantly better if they do it by hand. And essentially
185. 00:12:10 what's going on in your brain is that when you use your
186. 00:12:14 hand and you're using the motor
187. 00:12:18 skills as well as your mind instead of
188. 00:12:22 a keyboard. Because what's happening is the keyboard becomes
189. 00:12:26 basically part of your hand. So does the pin.
190. 00:12:30 Whenever you do that, the physical process of writing on paper
191. 00:12:34 engages more areas of your brain than using a keyboard.
192. 00:12:38 And if you can engage more parts of your brain, you tend to
193. 00:12:42 remember it better and you have more connections to other
194. 00:12:46 areas and other memories that you have in your mind. So
195. 00:12:50 from a scientific standpoint, it's very interesting to see the differences between the two. But yeah
196. 00:12:54 you're right. Analog tools do a lot for you from a creativity standpoint
197. 00:12:58 I think. And they do a lot for you as far as memory goes
198. 00:13:02 as well. Yeah but they don't click.
199. 00:13:06 Clicky clicky.
200. 00:13:10 Oh it's fine.
201. 00:13:14 Which actually a clicky keyboard. That, I mean that's an interesting
202. 00:13:18 thought experiment too. Like I've noticed that
203. 00:13:22 I am, it's easier for me to sit down and write when I
204. 00:13:26 am sitting at my big clicky keyboard than it is typing stuff
205. 00:13:30 out on the glass on my iPad Pro. In fact I have a Bluetooth keyboard
206. 00:13:34 case for my iPad Pro which I use when I write on it because I just
207. 00:13:38 can't get over that medium. So that's kind of like a
208. 00:13:42 blend between the digital and the analog in my opinion where if you have the physical keys
209. 00:13:46 especially the big clicky keys like the sound that they make
210. 00:13:50 that actually in my experience anyways. You know it seems to, I don't have
211. 00:13:54 any anecdotal evidence to support this but it seems to foster the creative process
212. 00:13:58 when I sit down to write an article. It should because it should
213. 00:14:02 be a trigger. Yep. There's so much of this stuff that becomes out.
214. 00:14:06 It's so big that it's triggers. Yeah. So if you're hearing the clicking and you're feeling the clicky because
215. 00:14:10 mechanical keyboards have a different feel to them. If you've never typed on
216. 00:14:14 them you're missing out. I want one. I should get one.
217. 00:14:18 Oh I don't know I have one. I don't know. But I know that
218. 00:14:22 whenever you use them it's a longer travel for your fingers
219. 00:14:26 but it engages more of the motor skills piece versus just tapping on glass.
220. 00:14:30 So it's a very different feel and
221. 00:14:34 I'm sure there's something with that that's triggering the creative side of your mind.
222. 00:14:38 Well Joe if you want one I've got a DOS keyboard. I think it's
223. 00:14:42 the professional. It's all black and it's got the blank keycaps
224. 00:14:46 so it'd be perfect for your crazy Devorac layout. But see I want the letters on it.
225. 00:14:52 I can't help you. No I want the letters on it because I do look at my hands
226. 00:14:58 on occasion but that's because I write a lot of code
227. 00:15:02 and there are a lot of weird instances where
228. 00:15:06 you it seems like whenever I type in a typing words
229. 00:15:10 you just kind of know what letter comes next but when you're trying to pick one out
230. 00:15:14 in random it's very different. I don't know why that is but
231. 00:15:18 something in my brain makes that very different.
232. 00:15:22 So I never look at my keyboard when I'm typing
233. 00:15:26 sentences or writing emails I never look at it
234. 00:15:30 even if I'm just navigating my Mac I never look down at my hands but when I'm writing
235. 00:15:34 code I glance at it quite frequently. I don't know why
236. 00:15:38 but that's my thought. Odd? Yeah but okay.
237. 00:15:42 Strange. I have a couple action items here to follow up on.
238. 00:15:46 One is go to bed the other is naps. So did you go to bed?
239. 00:15:50 I did my best.
240. 00:15:54 Eventually I went to bed just not always when I thought
241. 00:15:58 I should. And I'm learning that and some of this
242. 00:16:02 is I don't want to blame my wife but my wife
243. 00:16:06 takes longer to get ready for bed than I do by a long shot.
244. 00:16:10 I can from the time I go upstairs to the time I can be
245. 00:16:14 in bed it's maybe five minutes maybe.
246. 00:16:18 And I told my wife I think there's some nights when it's between two and five
247. 00:16:22 minutes that I fall asleep and she said that was a conservative estimate wasn't it?
248. 00:16:26 It's more like one to two. Okay well whatever
249. 00:16:30 but she can take around 20 to 30 minutes to get ready for bed
250. 00:16:34 and if we go upstairs at the same time it doesn't work out real well and
251. 00:16:38 essentially what I'm learning is I need to
252. 00:16:42 initiate that process earlier. She doesn't always want to
253. 00:16:46 so my thought is that I either need to be okay with us going to bed at different times
254. 00:16:50 or potentially just get up a little later. I'm wondering
255. 00:16:54 I don't know I don't have an answer to it. I know that I have been
256. 00:16:58 doing naps not every day but
257. 00:17:02 fairly regularly more often than not and that helps me a lot.
258. 00:17:06 So I think I'm getting there.
259. 00:17:10 I'm on the right path I'll say that.
260. 00:17:14 Nice. So there's a couple here for me
261. 00:17:18 the first one here making bedtime positive for my kids.
262. 00:17:22 I still haven't cracked this nut. As you can say how did you do that one?
263. 00:17:26 Don't know trying to be more involved with the story time make it regular
264. 00:17:30 and consistent but really the three year old
265. 00:17:34 is the barometer for this and still
266. 00:17:38 does not like going to bed. So that
267. 00:17:42 mission is still in progress. No eating after 7 p.m. I've done a
268. 00:17:46 pretty good job with this. The one thing with this
269. 00:17:50 is that it does kind of conflict with my other
270. 00:17:54 goal which is don't eat out because there's some days where
271. 00:17:58 I just am running from place to place and especially on like Wednesday nights
272. 00:18:02 as we're recording this like we've got church tonight and I got to be there early for a worship team.
273. 00:18:06 So I don't really have time to go home and eat
274. 00:18:10 before I have to be at church. So the
275. 00:18:14 default has been eat after church which
276. 00:18:18 if I wait till I get home means that I'm not eating till about 9 p.m.
277. 00:18:22 So yeah what I've what I've done is
278. 00:18:26 I have prioritized the no eating after 7 p.m. and so on days
279. 00:18:30 like today I'll bring a lunch from home but I
280. 00:18:34 probably will stop somewhere and grab dinner before I head over to church.
281. 00:18:38 Got it. And I just have to be okay with
282. 00:18:42 spending money. Well it makes sense
283. 00:18:46 because I've noticed because I occasionally want to grab a snack
284. 00:18:50 before bed. That's a mistake. I've learned the nights that I do that
285. 00:18:54 I don't sleep as well. Yeah definitely.
286. 00:18:58 The other one is get back on the sleep tracking bandwagon
287. 00:19:02 and I have done this and what I've discovered from
288. 00:19:06 doing this using the sleep cycle app is that I'm not good at sleeping.
289. 00:19:10 [laughter]
290. 00:19:14 It gives you your sleep quality and looking at these
291. 00:19:18 you know it's usually like 70, 80 percent. Some nights
292. 00:19:22 it'll get like 88 percent. A lot of them are like
293. 00:19:26 77 percent. Occasionally I'll sleep really well and I'll get like a 90 percent
294. 00:19:30 and I'm like oh good job. Yeah.
295. 00:19:34 But yeah apparently I am a rule breaker when it comes to sleep and I just don't do it right.
296. 00:19:40 But another thing that's interesting about this app is it also
297. 00:19:44 they updated it and so now it tracks how long you snore as well.
298. 00:19:48 And so if you ever have questions about like do I snore do I not?
299. 00:19:52 Because a lot of people are like hey you were snoring last night like no I don't snore.
300. 00:19:54 Well the app will tell you if you've been snoring.
301. 00:19:58 This is a snore by me. This is a verification.
302. 00:20:02 Yeah and there's actually there's a button that pops up
303. 00:20:06 when it does record you snoring and it says listen so you can tap on that
304. 00:20:10 and you can listen to yourself snoring. There is audible proof
305. 00:20:14 that you are a snorer. But yeah so
306. 00:20:18 this is proven to me though that I do not snore because I've gotten consistently zeros.
307. 00:20:24 Yeah and then there's an online backup thing which I have not used
308. 00:20:28 but I do like getting the graphs and I have been tracking it
309. 00:20:32 every once in a while though I get really discouraged because like I'll have trouble
310. 00:20:36 falling asleep or something and you'll see like a huge spike at the
311. 00:20:40 beginning and I'm just like man what's my problem? I suck at sleep.
312. 00:20:44 How much is this app? This thing is making me curious
313. 00:20:48 because it just sits on your nightstand right? Yep.
314. 00:20:52 You plug it in you turn it over so it's face down and then
315. 00:20:56 you put it like on your nightstand yeah and
316. 00:21:00 I don't know but that's what they say.
317. 00:21:04 I don't know how much it is. I think actually that it is free now
318. 00:21:08 because they have a premium version.
319. 00:21:12 It gets you some additional features except for
320. 00:21:16 the online backup and in fact I did buy it when it was
321. 00:21:20 a paid app so as I'm looking at the settings right now I click on premium or tap on premium
322. 00:21:24 it says since you've already paid for sleep cycle we've given you lifetime
323. 00:21:28 access to all the premium features. Oh nice. If you want to keep your data safe please subscribe to online backup
324. 00:21:32 yada yada yada. Got it. So I don't know what the non
325. 00:21:36 premium features are since I've had this app for a while but
326. 00:21:40 oh I do it up. So it is a free app
327. 00:21:44 and the premium gets you the online backup the long-term trends
328. 00:21:48 sleep aid whatever that is helps you fall asleep faster
329. 00:21:52 sleep notes, wake up mood,
330. 00:21:56 to track your morning moods I guess weather, see how weather affects your sleep quality
331. 00:22:00 heart rate monitor and Philips Hue light bulb support
332. 00:22:04 and more whatever and more means. I didn't look at the Philips Hue light
333. 00:22:08 support I should take a look at that because we have hulets. I say it says simulate a natural sunrise to give you an even softer
334. 00:22:14 wake up. That's pretty sweet. I'm gonna have to take a look at how to
335. 00:22:19 get that. You have something you didn't know about. Yeah yeah I do that a lot you know I get an app and I'll play around with it and then
336. 00:22:27 especially on iOS the apps tend to really evolve at a pretty breakneck pace
337. 00:22:32 right like I use this thing a couple months ago and stuff like that wasn't in there you know maybe that specific future was but I'm just using this as an example where I'll use an app to its full capacity spend like a week
338. 00:22:42 just maxing it out seeing what it can do and then be like ah yeah whatever that's cool and then delete it from my phone and not even realize that they added a whole bunch of stuff.
339. 00:22:50 Right yeah I don't
340. 00:22:54 I don't really download something again I don't know why I probably should because I know things develop quickly. I'm a developer I should know this but I
341. 00:23:04 quite frequently find that I don't
342. 00:23:07 I don't download it again if I have a bad experience with it there's something around that that I don't do. Don't know why.
343. 00:23:15 Fool me once shame on yeah I was
344. 00:23:19 make set up. Fool me once shame on me Fool me once shame on you. Something like that. Okay.
345. 00:23:27 You wanna jump into our book for the day? Yeah let's do it. So this is your pick. I'll let you explain it. Yeah so this is my pick so out of our minds
346. 00:23:36 This is by Sir Ken Robinson and the book is about creativity
347. 00:23:42 and he has a very strong passion for the education system
348. 00:23:48 so he has quite an explanation of how creativity is being taken out of our schools and how it's not used
349. 00:23:58 but how it's not helping our children continue to be creative and teaching them how to be creative.
350. 00:24:06 So the whole premise of the book here is learning to be creative and since Mike and I work in the creativity space somewhat with how we come up with things then I thought it would be kind of helpful.
351. 00:24:19 And since we both have kids and we are very passionate about how we teach them I figured it would play in pretty well. So here we are.
352. 00:24:29 Yeah so I'm just gonna out of the gate ask you about this thing because you're like you explained the premise of the book really well where he's basically saying that the education system is not really helping out our kids and the TED Talk really articulates that even further.
353. 00:24:44 In the TED Talk he said something really pointed and I didn't write it down exactly but he's telling the story of this girl who went on to become like a master cellist and opened up a studio and now has made millions of dollars in a very creative field.
354. 00:25:02 But he explains where she started off and the quote unquote problems that she had and it sounded a lot like ADD or ADHD and he says in there that essentially he concludes his point about how successful she is like that if she was in a different situation she would have been quote given a prescription and told to settle down on quote.
355. 00:25:24 So I know you've mentioned even on this podcast you've described it as your race car brain or ADHD tendencies.
356. 00:25:32 Like how did what did you think when you did you watch the TED Talk first of all I guess and then when you got to that section you hear him phrase it that way like what's your initial reaction.
357. 00:25:43 Yeah so he's got a couple TED Talks maybe three I don't remember but I've watched them all and I also just finished reading the book The End of Absence and in the end of absence he talks about how reading books used to be our filler for time instead of picking up our phone.
358. 00:26:05 And that process forced us to learn how to focus. And the more time I spend on this topic and trying to understand ADHD not from a scientific standpoint but from a personal standpoint.
359. 00:26:22 The more time I spend with that the more I realize that I think attention and focus as pertains to brain capacity is learned not genetic.
360. 00:26:35 Which contradicts I'm sure there's some psychologists and psychiatrists out here that are not saying you're wrong like that's fine you can criticize me if you want but I am becoming convinced that this is something that is taught not nurtured.
361. 00:26:51 No it's nurtured not nature if that makes sense.
362. 00:26:54 The way I said that but reading through Ken Robinson's book here on creativity.
363. 00:27:01 Yeah this solidifies for me that I think and even if I look at my own kids and how our oldest specifically she has the same tendencies that I do.
364. 00:27:12 And she can very easily I could see her being diagnosed with ADHD very early just because of her tendencies but I know those are not it's not her not paying attention.
365. 00:27:28 It's just her directing her attention in a lot of different ways and if I can help her see how to use that I think she's better off in the long run.
366. 00:27:38 But I totally agree with you here that this is something that one I'm passionate about and two I can see developing very early and I think this creativity piece plays into the ADHD thing very closely.
367. 00:27:53 So I don't want to train that out of my kids especially my oldest who I know has a very strong tendency towards this and her tendencies are one that I know the school system would direct towards the sciences and math.
368. 00:28:07 And for sure I know she can catch that very quickly.
369. 00:28:11 The kids for and she's borderline times tables right now.
370. 00:28:16 She's just picking things up very quickly and I love that about her but I also know that there's a very creative side to that that I'm afraid would be trained out of her if I let her go down the typical education path.
371. 00:28:31 There's my rant.
372. 00:28:33 So I want to unpack this whole ADD ADHD thing and like you said definitely not a doctor a psychologist so I fully understand that there are people out there that do have legitimate issues with this and so I'm not trying to diminish people's struggles with this.
373. 00:28:55 But I've also seen a lot of people in my own life who have been labeled ADD ADHD and go on medication and from even a very young age like some of my friends I was just like well why like there's nothing wrong with them.
374. 00:29:13 And after reading this book really what was crystallized for me was that the education system at least in America the one that I am familiar with is designed and he says it in the book too so I believe that you can at least apply this to I think he's from England originally.
375. 00:29:33 Where it's designed it's designed to meet the needs of the system and the society I mean he even says in there at one point that the education system tends to tends to encourage disciplines that the society needs.
376. 00:29:50 And it's really based on like the needs of the system instead of the needs of the individual and if you were to think of it that way yeah makes total sense you've got one teacher in a class of 35 year olds and they're all naturally going to be crazy anyway so the ones that are a little bit more crazy.
377. 00:30:10 Like you're going to want to get them to simmer down a little bit right I totally understand that but I think that it is a tragedy to apply a label to a kid who has a little bit of trouble focusing or they have all of this pent up energy which I think really Ken Robinson would say that this is a creative energy in a sense this is a gift.
378. 00:30:33 You just have to channel it the right way and so I think I think about a lot of the people online a lot of the people in the productivity space who have confessed that they've struggled with this sort of thing.
379. 00:30:47 Even myself like I have not been labeled 80 ADHD I don't know if I would have been if I had been in a traditional school system for for any length of time.
380. 00:30:58 But I do know that one of the things that I do all the time in order to focus when I'm in meetings or whatever is a fidget I'll click my pen I'll tap my foot whatever it drives my parents crazy.
381. 00:31:11 Whenever they see me doing it they're like will you just knock that off so I totally understand how like an educational setting you have a bunch of kids like that you have one adult who's trying to maintain order amidst chaos.
382. 00:31:24 They're going to have the same reaction that will you just knock that off will you just conform right but.
383. 00:31:30 And in the in the short term that is going to be more beneficial but as a parent like looking at this from another angle I don't want a short term solution for my kid.
384. 00:31:41 I don't want to fix you know the fact that I'm a little bit annoyed with the fact that they're hyperactive and it's harder to get them to focus on any one thing for any length of time so maybe it takes a little longer to get through an activity.
385. 00:31:54 What I want to do is I want to channel that that energy into the appropriate appropriate place so that they can be successful and that kind of gets into the topic here of the revolution that he talks about because he's talking about how in the future.
386. 00:32:10 There's going to be a lot of technological innovation and there's going to be a lot of population growth.
387. 00:32:14 And so what we need to do is we need to modify our education system so that our kids can be successful in that new society and in fact at the end of the TED Talk and I just watched the one which was like number I did a Google search for Ken Robinson TED Talks and I found a page that has like the top 20 in terms of views TED Talks of all time and his was number one so I watched the popular one I guess.
388. 00:32:39 But he says in there at the very end we won't see this future but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.
389. 00:32:45 I think it can be very dangerous but very easy to just say well let's make things work right now without taking into account the big picture and what the future is going to look like.
390. 00:32:59 Yeah I talked to a lot of small business owners and even big business owners who struggle to find employees that fit their criteria.
391. 00:33:10 And he talks about this in the book quite a bit of education for the sake of economics and how do we train kids to be better at fulfilling jobs I guess.
392. 00:33:23 And a lot of these business owners they're looking at the education system and they a lot of times are concerned about it because they're not kicking out good employees and a lot of times it's weird because I see a lot of people who are they're desperately trying to find people to come work for them.
393. 00:33:43 And yet I see this vast number of people that say that there are no jobs and you can't find a good job and all this stuff.
394. 00:33:49 This doesn't add up because I see a lot of really great jobs for people but no one's taking them or they can't find people to fit them.
395. 00:33:58 And it's just this weird disconnect and when you talk to these owners or the HR departments.
396. 00:34:06 A lot of times they want people with tech savvy who are also good at thinking outside the box or being creative and being imaginative with how they come out come at things and trying to get a system that encourages that is really difficult and rare in our society today.
397. 00:34:29 And I think that's it's kind of sad to see that but at the same time if you notice the people who are creative and yet scientific those two are not independent of each other.
398. 00:34:42 They can be right on top of each other. I mean it's very evident in our world today.
399. 00:34:46 But the people who are figure that out and know how to channel both of those are typically the ones who are highly successful.
400. 00:34:52 I mean that's Steve Jobs to a tee you know Bill Gates was that way. I mean that's just how you manage to have these awesome and very successful people coming out whenever they can combine those two.
401. 00:35:06 Yeah and actually there's more than two I would argue.
402. 00:35:10 There was a section in here where he does talk about like the different domains of intelligence.
403. 00:35:16 He actually mentions emotional intelligence and I've done some research on this and there are you.
404. 00:35:24 Well consider my upbringing like this has been drilled in me for a long time.
405. 00:35:28 We talked about soft skills last time like that falls in here as well.
406. 00:35:32 But essentially traditionally there are seven different types or domains of intelligence that are taught.
407. 00:35:39 And I saw a lot of those referenced as he's going through here. So the first is linguistic language.
408. 00:35:45 So if you're good with words you're good at speaking that's one type of intelligence and there's logical or mathematical.
409. 00:35:50 And then there's spatial which is the ability to move things around in your head and see them in new positions.
410. 00:35:56 So I always say that my wife has this because I'll come home and she's completely rearranged the furniture.
411. 00:36:01 She sees quote-unquote a better way to do it. Whereas I'm just fine with the way things are.
412. 00:36:07 Then there's musical.
413. 00:36:09 Is it a little alone please.
414. 00:36:11 Yeah.
415. 00:36:12 Then there's musical intelligence.
416. 00:36:14 So if you were to sit down at the piano and you pick it up quote-unquote pretty naturally then you have musical intelligence.
417. 00:36:23 Then there's bodily kinesthetic intelligence which is kind of like natural hand-eye coordination.
418. 00:36:28 A lot of athletes are going to have bodily or kinesthetic intelligence.
419. 00:36:33 And then there's intrapersonal which is communication within yourself and interpersonal which is communication with others.
420. 00:36:39 And those last two combined typically make up what is referred to as emotional intelligence.
421. 00:36:45 And that is kind of specifically I think what you're hitting on when you're talking about like the ability to think creatively about difficult problems and find new and better solutions.
422. 00:36:54 Like yes it is important especially in the arenas that we're familiar with that you have some technical skills.
423. 00:37:00 But you're right that a lot of employers are not necessarily placing a premium on all those technical skills anymore.
424. 00:37:07 What they're placing the premium on is the soft skills because the soft skills and the emotional intelligence skills account for I think we mentioned the last episode up to 85% of your personal and your professional success.
425. 00:37:19 So when you think about the education system like Sir Ken Robinson is talking about in this book that's typically not taught.
426. 00:37:27 They will teach the reading, the writing and the arithmetic.
427. 00:37:30 They will teach the hard skills, the technical skills.
428. 00:37:34 But all of the emotional intelligence skills all of the soft skills even if you look at things like the musical intelligence bodily kinesthetic intelligence.
429. 00:37:45 Those are typically things like physical education and music which yeah maybe they're taught in school but like he's outlined in the book.
430. 00:37:53 They're way down on the totem pole.
431. 00:37:55 They're not emphasized.
432. 00:37:57 What's emphasized is the mathematics and the languages and the sciences.
433. 00:38:03 But that's again coming from a good place I would argue that the people who are choosing the curriculum here they're saying that if well if you have these skills chances are you're going to get a better job.
434. 00:38:13 It's going to pay more etc.
435. 00:38:15 But I can tell you from my own experience that you can't just follow the script that other people lay out for you.
436. 00:38:22 In fact on page 9 he had a quote that I really liked he said "Life is not linear.
437. 00:38:27 When you follow your own true north you create new opportunities, meet different people, have different experiences and create a different life."
438. 00:38:34 And I think that going through that process is not something that you can simulate and it's not something that you can formulate meaning that it is not a pattern that every single kid is going to follow which kind of jumping all over the place.
439. 00:38:49 But that's why we homeschool because every single one of our kids is different.
440. 00:38:53 They're not going to fit into a box.
441. 00:38:56 We're going to have to figure out what is the best thing for Toby.
442. 00:38:59 What is the best thing for Joshua?
443. 00:39:01 What is the best thing for Jonathan and those are going to look different and there's going to be some trial and error.
444. 00:39:06 But we're at least going to course correct as we encounter things that don't work.
445. 00:39:10 Not try to get them to fit into this system or this mold that everybody else does.
446. 00:39:16 And a lot of that is just the format.
447. 00:39:18 Like I said from the very beginning you got one teacher you got 30 kids.
448. 00:39:21 That is a recipe for disaster especially if those kids are hyperactive stereotypical little boys like Binaar.
449. 00:39:28 They're not going to sit there and listen to you talk about addition, subtraction, whatever for any length of time unless you really connect it to some things that are interested in.
450. 00:39:39 I don't think that's the kid's fault.
451. 00:39:41 I think that's just the fact that they are kids.
452. 00:39:43 They are creative from the very beginning and we need to foster that and develop that instead of suppress it.
453. 00:39:50 And I don't want people to think that we're just bashing the school system because these are some very broad generalizations because I know there are some excellent teachers out there.
454. 00:40:01 I know some who try to break this mold and encourage this creativity in kids.
455. 00:40:06 But that's not the norm.
456. 00:40:09 Like just my experience that's not.
457. 00:40:11 And I think Ken Robinson would agree and maybe when was this written.
458. 00:40:16 I know it's been quite a movement that he has been encouraging and fostering.
459. 00:40:22 This was in 2011 when he updated it.
460. 00:40:25 Originally written in 2001.
461. 00:40:27 So it's got a little bit of age on it.
462. 00:40:31 And I'm sure things have progressed a little bit because I know even in HR departments there is a little bit of ease with the creativity side.
463. 00:40:41 It's a little bit easier for them to find it than what it used to be.
464. 00:40:44 But it's still a big challenge.
465. 00:40:47 So I just want to throw that caveat out there that we're not just bashing.
466. 00:40:50 You need homeschool your kids.
467. 00:40:52 It's the only way.
468. 00:40:53 Now that's another topic.
469. 00:40:55 And we're going to homeschool as well.
470. 00:40:57 But there are a lot of reasons for that.
471. 00:40:59 Not just something like this and we're not bashing because of that.
472. 00:41:03 Correct.
473. 00:41:04 Correct.
474. 00:41:05 It is kind of set.
475. 00:41:07 The system is set up.
476. 00:41:09 I don't want to say for failure, but it's set up to make things more difficult.
477. 00:41:14 And that's just by the pure volume.
478. 00:41:16 How do you tailor an education plan which is specifically designed to meet the needs of this kid when you have to do that with so many kids every single day, every single week, every single year.
479. 00:41:29 It's not feasible in my opinion.
480. 00:41:37 And it's not fair for me to expect that the level of attention and tailoring of the curriculum and things like that that we do for our kids, that the teacher is going to have the time to do that for all the kids that they work with.
481. 00:41:51 And this is getting into maybe a little bit of a political thing, but in the US I know that teachers typically are not one of the higher paid professions, but in other countries they are, where the education is really emphasized.
482. 00:42:08 And if you were to take a look at the system that we have developed, it is producing the results that we are getting.
483. 00:42:16 And as a parent, I guess I'm just looking at the system in general.
484. 00:42:21 Like you said, not trying to make a judgment call on any school, any specific teacher, just the system in general to me is not good enough.
485. 00:42:31 And there are alternatives.
486. 00:42:34 Home schooling is an alternative.
487. 00:42:36 In fact, there's a link to another TED Talk which I will give you right now so I don't forget.
488. 00:42:43 On a hack schooling, this is Logan the point.
489. 00:42:46 Oh, I saw this.
490. 00:42:47 Did you?
491. 00:42:48 Did it?
492. 00:42:49 Yeah, this kid is 13 years old, I believe, in this video and he's running his own company.
493. 00:42:55 Like, that's the kind of thing I want to make sure that my kids get, not the ability to memorize facts for a short period of time and be good at taking tests, which I was that kid.
494. 00:43:06 Okay, so I was one of the people who was very easy for me to memorize things I always did very well in school, but I'm looking back at that now and I'm thinking like, what sort of value does that skill really have?
495. 00:43:21 I think that teaching my kids, for example, they're really into, we've got this bits box stuff that we do where they get new coding activities every month.
496. 00:43:30 They love doing that stuff and the things that they're learning just through the process of trial and error of creating things using that code, that is going to provide more long term benefit than all of the years that I was in school and I got really good at memorizing things.
497. 00:43:43 Because in real life, you know, where I am now, I don't need to have all of these things memorized.
498. 00:43:50 I can go back and I can reference things, but what is important is the ability to think creatively.
499. 00:43:55 The ability to come up with killer content, whether it be a podcast episode or a blog post or a video that I'm creating.
500. 00:44:02 And that is something that looking back at my education growing up that, yeah, I did get some of that stuff, but a lot of it was the stuff that I did get was typically was not a result of the education plan.
501. 00:44:16 It was stuff that I did on the side and that's the stuff that now is really valuable to me as I find my own true north.
502. 00:44:23 I did a lot of work on our farm growing up and I remember thinking and talking through this with my dad at one point, but we got to talk about how the school system tries to put us all through the same process and we're all extremely different.
503. 00:44:41 Whereas, like, take the prime example that I always use with this is that the kids that I was going to school with, they would be playing with, say, Tonka trucks and I would go home and drive a semi.
504. 00:44:55 So I was like, okay, you're going to play with the toy.
505. 00:44:58 I'm going to go to home and drive the real thing.
506. 00:45:00 That was the level at which I was operating on.
507. 00:45:03 And it felt like to me that school was trying to put us all through the same process, even though I felt like I thought a lot differently than the way everyone else did.
508. 00:45:13 Like, we would go through when we were doing times tables at one point and I remember we got our assignment and I, one thing for sure, I know later on in school, I had problems with taking homework whenever I actually had homework that went home because I'd never done that.
509. 00:45:32 Every time I'd gotten worksheets and stuff, I'd have it done in school.
510. 00:45:36 But a lot of students would go home and do that.
511. 00:45:39 So whenever I had to go home and do it, I don't know what to do with this.
512. 00:45:43 I don't have time for this.
513. 00:45:44 I'm not going to do my homework because I'm not going to do it at home.
514. 00:45:47 It's for school.
515. 00:45:49 It just didn't register with me.
516. 00:45:51 And I know a lot of other students did take it home and work on it, but that was just me.
517. 00:45:56 I was really good at picking up a lot of what they wanted and I knew how to get the answers that they needed.
518. 00:46:01 And I could do that very quickly, but it wasn't difficult for me.
519. 00:46:05 There wasn't really much critical thinking to it, so it didn't take a lot of work to get it done.
520. 00:46:10 So that's not what I want my kids to do because I always wondered what would happen if I had a couple teachers that challenged me more than just the normal worksheets.
521. 00:46:20 And that's what I want my kids to pick up, is I want them to think through things, not just go through this whole templated school system and go through a templated cookie cutter way.
522. 00:46:30 I would like to tailor it to them so that they're better equipped for what they're going to get hit with in the future.
523. 00:46:39 And I don't think I can do that if I can't teach any of my kids in the same way.
524. 00:46:45 I don't think that's possible.
525. 00:46:47 I think I have to keep an eye on what is their personality, what are they interested in, and how do I help them learn how to go down that process and go down that road.
526. 00:46:55 And I don't think it's going to be identical for any of them.
527. 00:46:59 So how would I expect the school system to do it with 30 kids in a room?
528. 00:47:04 Maybe not that many, but you get the idea.
529. 00:47:07 If there's a whole room full of kids, you can't tailor it to every single one of them.
530. 00:47:13 Exactly.
531. 00:47:14 True story.
532. 00:47:15 When I was in kindergarten, the first day the teachers show in the room and show us all the cool stuff that we could do.
533. 00:47:22 I raise my hand and I say, "Mrs. Crumb, we might have time to do some of this stuff if you would stop talking."
534. 00:47:28 And then later on, like a week into school, she's going through the alphabet and I get frustrated with how slow things are going.
535. 00:47:37 And I just read the rest of the directions to her in the middle of class.
536. 00:47:42 And she was like dumbfounded.
537. 00:47:45 I was apparently a little bit of a problem child in that setting anyways because I was frustrated with how slow things were going.
538. 00:47:56 And also that translated into some behavior issues where I was getting into a lot of fights and stuff when I was in kindergarten or first grade as well.
539. 00:48:02 Which you meet me now and you're like, "What? You? No way."
540. 00:48:06 I was sitting here thinking, "Oh, that's interesting."
541. 00:48:09 I think doing some psychoanalysis on my past self, I think a lot of that was that frustration.
542. 00:48:17 And a lot of times in the education system, you have to deal with those behavioral issues obviously, but where are they rooted from?
543. 00:48:24 For me, it was literally what you were saying.
544. 00:48:27 It's just impossible for my teacher to deliver me a curriculum that is going to challenge me and still teach all of the other kids where they were at.
545. 00:48:37 And I'm sure that there were areas where I was not as advanced, but I had always really liked reading.
546. 00:48:43 And so I went in being able to read.
547. 00:48:46 And I know that was a little bit odd.
548. 00:48:48 A lot of my peers were not.
549. 00:48:50 But for the first week of school, my teacher had no idea that I could read.
550. 00:48:54 That's not necessarily her fault.
551. 00:48:56 She doesn't know me and she's got a whole bunch of kids' needs that she's trying to balance.
552. 00:49:00 But just speaking from my own experience, I understand even now I can remember how frustrating that I was.
553. 00:49:06 And kind of bringing this back to the book.
554. 00:49:09 That's because I'm page 57.
555. 00:49:11 He says, "Education is like an assembly line," which again, it has to be because of the pure volume of students that you are moving through this.
556. 00:49:20 But the three roles of education are the number one individual.
557. 00:49:26 So you have to develop the individual talents and sensibilities.
558. 00:49:28 And I would argue that that is the most important one.
559. 00:49:30 And if you're only going to pick one, that's the one that I would focus on.
560. 00:49:33 That's probably the one that Sir Ken Robinson would focus on also.
561. 00:49:36 But then in the education system is also two more.
562. 00:49:39 There's cultural.
563. 00:49:40 You need to deepen the understanding of the world.
564. 00:49:41 And also economic.
565. 00:49:42 You need to provide the skills required to earn a living and be economically productive.
566. 00:49:46 That's what gets measured.
567. 00:49:48 Do our kids graduate?
568. 00:49:51 Do they get jobs?
569. 00:49:52 I mean, especially working with the family business where we sold software into special education.
570. 00:49:57 That was the metric.
571. 00:49:59 How many of these kids are we actually going to get to graduate?
572. 00:50:03 And then it's not necessarily how does this individual get prepared for their individual life once they leave school.
573. 00:50:11 But they're one of many.
574. 00:50:13 They need to increase their graduation rates.
575. 00:50:15 So what are they going to do?
576. 00:50:16 They're going to try to get Johnny to graduate.
577. 00:50:18 And I know like this is again projecting and it's not fair.
578. 00:50:21 I know that there are teachers who really do care about the, and I'd say the majority of teachers really do care about this.
579. 00:50:27 But the system is designed to work against you where this is what you get measured on.
580. 00:50:32 And so you just physically can't keep up with all these individual kids and keep tabs on them after they leave school and be like,
581. 00:50:38 "Hey, can I help you out with this specific thing?"
582. 00:50:40 Because you're just so focused on get them these hard skills which are emphasized so that we can move on to the next kit because they've gotten to the level of proficiency that we consider adequate.
583. 00:50:56 And what homeschooling allows us to do is to solely focus on the first role of education.
584. 00:51:02 And that is the individual to develop their individual talents and sensibilities.
585. 00:51:06 I personally believe that if you develop your own individual talents and sensibilities, if you discover what you were created to do,
586. 00:51:14 then you don't have to worry about finding the right job.
587. 00:51:17 If I think back on how I ended up at Asian efficiency, it's not something that I would have selected in a career exploration community.
588. 00:51:25 It's not something that I would have even sought out on my own.
589. 00:51:30 In fact, I didn't.
590. 00:51:32 But it's the place for me.
591. 00:51:35 It's my true north.
592. 00:51:36 It's the place where I can thrive because I'm tapping into the things that I have the ability and the skill to do.
593. 00:51:43 And it's the things that I'm passionate about.
594. 00:51:45 Not necessarily the things that I like doing all the time, but the things that are really important to me.
595. 00:51:49 And I think that that is way, way more important than being able to pass a test.
596. 00:51:56 And that gets neglected a lot, or at least suppressed a little bit because the emphasis is on passing that next test,
597. 00:52:04 whether it is passing a grade or graduating high school or getting a certain score on the ACT or the SAT so that you can get into a good college
598. 00:52:13 and get a degree so that you can get a job.
599. 00:52:16 All of those things aren't necessarily bad.
600. 00:52:19 And I would argue that they are actually good, but they are not the greatest good from an individual perspective,
601. 00:52:24 especially given the new economy and the new society that we're going to be living in.
602. 00:52:30 I had a conversation about standardized testing with our babysitter.
603. 00:52:34 She's a sophomore in high school now.
604. 00:52:36 So 10th grade.
605. 00:52:38 And she's quite frustrated with it because she's said that she spends more time testing or preparing for tests
606. 00:52:47 than she does learning the content that's going to be on the test.
607. 00:52:51 Okay, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
608. 00:52:55 But she had a good point.
609. 00:52:56 She mentioned that they have to do the standardized testing for the federal side.
610. 00:53:02 They have to do the state testing.
611. 00:53:04 There's also the regional and county testing as well because each of those have to report up to the higher level,
612. 00:53:11 but they also need to have their own level up or in.
613. 00:53:14 So by the time they get through these, I think it's four or five different level of tests.
614. 00:53:19 They're taking a test or preparing for a test about every other week through the school year.
615. 00:53:26 Like, okay, something's broken here.
616. 00:53:29 So we need to spend less time testing and more time teaching, just my thought.
617. 00:53:33 Yeah, and again, this is something that is inherent in the system and it's not necessarily something that I think
618. 00:53:41 that you can fix quote unquote.
619. 00:53:45 Right.
620. 00:53:46 But my own experience with standardized testing, I took the ACT in high school and I did really well on it.
621. 00:53:53 I think I got a 30 and in science I got a 32, which if you're looking at the scores, you're like,
622. 00:54:00 wow, you're a genius in science. Not true.
623. 00:54:03 In fact, I went to college as a biology major and almost failed out of my freshman year classes
624. 00:54:10 because I was not actually good at science.
625. 00:54:14 I remember one Thanksgiving break.
626. 00:54:17 I stayed on campus and I stayed in the lab and I studied the entire weekend.
627. 00:54:23 I even slept in the lab, but I couldn't remember any of the information because it just wasn't...
628. 00:54:29 It wasn't the thing for me when it came time for the test.
629. 00:54:32 And my professor felt so bad for me because he was there over the weekend too and he'd come in, you know,
630. 00:54:36 big smile on his face. He's like, "I'm really proud of you."
631. 00:54:38 You know, you're putting in the effort. You're going to do awesome.
632. 00:54:40 And then I didn't.
633. 00:54:42 And he's like, "Well, maybe we should find something else."
634. 00:54:46 And he was right.
635. 00:54:47 You know, it's taken a lot of trial and error.
636. 00:54:49 But that was... I made that decision based on my standardized test scores.
637. 00:54:54 You know, I was looking in my options in high school and I'm like,
638. 00:54:58 "Oh, I want to be a chiropractor." That sounds like pretty fun.
639. 00:55:00 I want to help people.
640. 00:55:01 That seems like a cool way to do it.
641. 00:55:03 And yeah, I went to school and it just was completely not the right thing for me.
642. 00:55:08 But the standardized test score, the system indicated that, "Yes, this was."
643. 00:55:12 And really well that showed me was I am actually a very good test taker,
644. 00:55:16 especially when it comes to the multiple choice type tests where you feel on the right circles.
645. 00:55:20 I'm pretty good at eliminating my options and picking the one that sounds the best.
646. 00:55:24 That doesn't translate into actual skill, though.
647. 00:55:27 You're just good at taking the test.
648. 00:55:30 Exactly.
649. 00:55:31 Yeah, I like taking tests too because I'm good at them.
650. 00:55:35 I'm kind of like that where I can...
651. 00:55:37 My intuition and my deduction process will get me to the correct answer,
652. 00:55:42 even if I didn't know it beforehand.
653. 00:55:44 So I've looked at some students' tests before
654. 00:55:49 or like their quizzes and worksheets and just realized that, you know,
655. 00:55:54 I really don't need to sit through the lectures or read any of the material
656. 00:55:58 to figure out what the right answers are.
657. 00:56:00 Sometimes the quizzes even have the answer kind of embedded in the question
658. 00:56:07 if you read it the right way, which is kind of sad.
659. 00:56:10 Like, why are we not teaching our kids to do the whole critical thinking thing?
660. 00:56:14 And again, I'm generalizing here, but I know that they do learn that to a point.
661. 00:56:19 But it just seems like the ones I've run across don't.
662. 00:56:22 Well, if there had been a critical thinking, soft skills assessment,
663. 00:56:25 I would have aced that one and that would have been a flag for me like,
664. 00:56:29 "Oh, maybe those science results on the ACT really weren't legit."
665. 00:56:33 Right.
666. 00:56:34 But it wasn't.
667. 00:56:35 So again, just my experience.
668. 00:56:38 But the reason that we've spent a ton of time complaining about education
669. 00:56:43 and talking about homeschooling, I think, is because of this new society
670. 00:56:48 that we're moving into, and this is the first talking point on the outline
671. 00:56:53 although we've covered several of these other ones already.
672. 00:56:55 We're finally going to start the outline.
673. 00:56:57 Yeah.
674. 00:56:58 So I know I mentioned at the beginning this revolution idea
675. 00:57:00 where there's technological innovation and population growth.
676. 00:57:03 He spends a good chunk of the book outlining, in my opinion, pretty grim future.
677. 00:57:10 In fact, when I read this section, the note I wrote down was reminds me of the shallows,
678. 00:57:16 which is a good way, where it was quite a few pages of talking about how all
679. 00:57:24 of these negative trends are happening and he's selectively using quotes and
680. 00:57:29 events to piece together his arguments.
681. 00:57:32 And I'm sure that if you were to take into context all of the things that he's saying,
682. 00:57:36 it's probably true, but just the way it reads read very similar to the shallows
683. 00:57:41 where it felt very cherry-picked.
684. 00:57:43 He's using it to build this argument, which is a good argument,
685. 00:57:47 but I don't agree with the ultimate end of his argument.
686. 00:57:51 In page 32, I think there's a quote that kind of encapsulates this,
687. 00:57:55 where he says, "computers will become so powerful that they will be capable of learning.
688. 00:58:00 They will rewrite their own operating systems based on their experiences."
689. 00:58:04 So this is getting into the whole idea of artificial intelligence,
690. 00:58:08 and there's a whole genre of entertainment based off of this idea of once technology
691. 00:58:14 gets to this point, they're going to enslave humanity and stuff like that.
692. 00:58:18 Personally, I don't know what to think about that.
693. 00:58:21 I kind of think that that is not going to happen,
694. 00:58:25 but I don't really have a good reason why it couldn't happen.
695. 00:58:29 But I just, when I read that, I kind of felt that this whole thing was kind of sensational,
696. 00:58:34 as I thought of the Hollywood movie setting when he was talking about this.
697. 00:58:39 In the midst of all of these books I've been reading about technology
698. 00:58:43 and how it affects our brain, it depends on who wrote the book,
699. 00:58:48 but they take one or two stances.
700. 00:58:51 One is we're extremely close to artificial intelligence,
701. 00:58:54 and as soon as it can start to rewrite its own operating system, we'll be there.
702. 00:58:59 Well, the problem with that is that you have to teach it how to teach itself,
703. 00:59:06 and we don't necessarily understand our own brains well enough to know how that works.
704. 00:59:12 And until we understand ourselves, I'm not sure how we can teach software how to teach itself
705. 00:59:19 in a brain-growing way.
706. 00:59:23 So you have to take one or two stances.
707. 00:59:26 If you can teach or come up with the technology that allows it to rewrite its own software,
708. 00:59:32 you also have to come up with the ones and zeros on how to tell it to do that in the right way
709. 00:59:41 so that it doesn't self-destruct instead of self-grow.
710. 00:59:46 You have to teach it both. You can't do one and not the other.
711. 00:59:49 And if you get it to the point where it can rewrite its own operating system,
712. 00:59:53 which from a technical standpoint really isn't as difficult as you would think,
713. 00:59:58 but teaching it how to do it in the right way is a challenge.
714. 01:00:02 And that's where if you can get that figured out, one, you're in a lot of money,
715. 01:00:08 and two, you've got software that can become self-aware.
716. 01:00:12 So the people who write these books and talk about this stuff a lot,
717. 01:00:17 the two camps are that one, we're really close to that because the technology is moving so fast
718. 01:00:22 and there's so many people working on it. It's a very competitive space.
719. 01:00:25 So we're going to be there very soon.
720. 01:00:27 And I've even seen estimates that we're going to have fully coherent and self-aware software
721. 01:00:34 and hardware by 2020.
722. 01:00:36 I've also seen the opposite stance where we're never going to get this
723. 01:00:42 because there's so much intricate detail to our own brains
724. 01:00:47 that we're not going to be able to replicate it ever.
725. 01:00:50 You hear that side of it as well.
726. 01:00:52 I personally tend to fall on the camp that it's possible,
727. 01:00:56 but I think we're a very long ways away from that because the software that
728. 01:01:01 theoretically is artificial intelligence is extremely crude in what they're calling AI.
729. 01:01:11 I just don't see it being nearly as dire as, say, like, what Ken Robinson has here.
730. 01:01:19 I think we're a long ways away from that.
731. 01:01:21 Yeah, and that's why I say that I wish I would have watched the TED Talk before reading the book
732. 01:01:27 because you read that section in the book without knowing who he is necessarily
733. 01:01:32 and his personality, at least in the TED Talk, like I said, he's cracking jokes all the time.
734. 01:01:37 He's a very funny guy, actually.
735. 01:01:39 But you read this section and he's just painting this picture of this dystopian future, you know,
736. 01:01:44 fallout where, like, the future is grim.
737. 01:01:48 At least that's the way that I read it.
738. 01:01:50 And I don't necessarily think that that's the case.
739. 01:01:53 I think what is undisputed is that technology is going to be a very important part of the future.
740. 01:02:01 In page 76, he talks about how teenagers and young children speak digital as their native language,
741. 01:02:06 most adults speak it as a second language.
742. 01:02:09 Those are really cool way to articulate that.
743. 01:02:12 And I've noticed this with my own kids, where there's some things that they're just confused by.
744. 01:02:19 Television would be one example where my nine-year-old now, I think, understands that there are things on TV
745. 01:02:26 at certain times.
746. 01:02:27 So we've been watching, like, the basketball playoffs, for example.
747. 01:02:30 But the younger ones, like, they go on Netflix, they find their show, they play it when they want it.
748. 01:02:36 You know, it's on demand.
749. 01:02:38 They have no concept of this, like, scheduled -- the entertainment schedule, the delivery schedule for this media.
750. 01:02:46 That's just completely foreign to them.
751. 01:02:48 And there are some things that really click and some things that, you know, don't make sense to the younger generation,
752. 01:02:54 which is digital native.
753. 01:02:56 The Amazon Echo, I think, articulates this perfectly for me because, for me, the Amazon Echo is kind of cool.
754. 01:03:03 There's a lot of things you can do with it with the integrations.
755. 01:03:06 But I just can't train my brain to think in a way that, you know, I'm wondering what the weather's like outside.
756. 01:03:13 I don't ask the Echo.
757. 01:03:14 I pull out my phone and I check dark sky or something like that.
758. 01:03:18 But my kids totally get it.
759. 01:03:21 My nine-year-old wakes up, and the first thing he does is he asks the Amazon Echo what was the score of the game last night
760. 01:03:28 because he usually, you know, is going to bed before the game is over.
761. 01:03:32 And so, like, they completely get it.
762. 01:03:35 And I've noticed this in my kids where they just fully embrace this thing.
763. 01:03:38 And for me, it's a little bit hard to get in the groove of this.
764. 01:03:42 And so when he's saying this, like, speaking it as a second language, that's what it feels like talking to an Amazon Echo,
765. 01:03:47 trying to avoid saying the name, actually feels like speaking a second language.
766. 01:03:53 Hey, Dangus.
767. 01:03:55 Yeah.
768. 01:03:56 The classic example that I have, so our four-year-old, my wife was out of town for the weekend,
769. 01:04:04 and we were, like, watching a movie, and it was on Netflix, and it just stopped mid-movie.
770. 01:04:12 And I did some digging.
771. 01:04:15 I found out that our Internet provider had had a glitch, so we just had a little blip in it.
772. 01:04:21 But it took, I don't know, probably 20 minutes or something for it to come back.
773. 01:04:25 And I was trying to explain the concept of an Internet service provider, and how these things rely on a connection.
774. 01:04:35 And I could not get through to her that our Internet and the things that these devices do are reliant on a wireless or a wired connection to the network.
775. 01:04:49 Like, I just could not get her to catch that.
776. 01:04:52 And when we just get a new one, like, can we go get a new one at the store?
777. 01:04:55 Like, can we restart it?
778. 01:04:57 Like, it was...
779. 01:04:59 Surely there's something that I can do to get this to come back.
780. 01:05:02 I was like, "Well, no, we're reliant on this other company to do their bit, and I couldn't get through to her."
781. 01:05:10 Like, I still, to this day, have not been able to explain to her that it's reliant on something else.
782. 01:05:15 Right.
783. 01:05:16 Yeah, that's a great example.
784. 01:05:18 But there's just some things like that that right or wrong, they just have these expectations that this is just the way things are.
785. 01:05:27 And it's interesting to see which things they latch on to, like the Amazon Echo or the fact that everything in your house is connected to the Internet, and it just works.
786. 01:05:37 You know, growing up, we had the dial-up modems, and you weren't online very long.
787. 01:05:42 In fact, if you were online and somebody picked up the phone, they kicked you off.
788. 01:05:45 Yeah.
789. 01:05:46 You know, so this is a totally different frame of reference for myself and for you than our kids have.
790. 01:05:52 And it's kind of interesting to see the angle that they approach these things.
791. 01:06:00 But I think how they approach them is also going to be very important.
792. 01:06:03 We talked previous episodes about teaching.
793. 01:06:06 One of the things I want to do is teach my kids to be producers and not consumers.
794. 01:06:10 So not relying on the fact that we can use all of this stuff to get things, but how do we use this technology to actually create things?
795. 01:06:17 The whole purpose of this book is emphasizing the creativity.
796. 01:06:20 So these are great tools, but let's not just focus on what they can do for us.
797. 01:06:24 Let's figure out how we can use these things to actually better the people around us.
798. 01:06:29 And that gets into the whole idea of imagination and creativity, which is the central part of this book, which I liked a lot.
799. 01:06:37 In fact, the whole section on imagination, I really liked on page 140, he talks about this and he identifies three different types of imagination, essentially.
800. 01:06:46 He's got the first one, "Imaginal," which are mental images, which are drawn from real experiences.
801. 01:06:51 Number two is "Imaginative," which are possibilities composed in the mind.
802. 01:06:56 And then the third is "Imaginary," which is "Mestaking imaginative experiences for real ones."
803. 01:07:01 And this is interesting. If you watch kids who have a very active "imagination," they will get to the third part of this real easy.
804. 01:07:11 Now that has never been me, but when I read this, what I realized was that that doesn't mean that I'm "not imaginative."
805. 01:07:21 I'm just a little bit imaginative in a different way.
806. 01:07:24 And I think this is one of those things where you can very easily suppress this, like, "Oh, well, it's just not me."
807. 01:07:29 If you don't understand that this has got layers or there's different levels to this.
808. 01:07:34 So the fact that you are in level one, "Imaginal," where you have the mental images, which are drawn from real experiences, that is still using your imagination.
809. 01:07:43 So if you want to emphasize creativity and emphasize imagination, then just do that more.
810. 01:07:49 And then eventually that's going to make it easier to get to the second level, which is the imaginative, where you have these possibilities which are composed in the mind.
811. 01:07:56 And in the sense of creativity, I think that's the one where there's a lot of benefit.
812. 01:08:00 Because you start to connect these different dots and you make these different connections that you typically would not see.
813. 01:08:07 In fact, his definition of creativity is putting your imagination to work. It's applied imagination.
814. 01:08:13 And I think we've talked to a length in this podcast, but it's totally applicable here.
815. 01:08:19 I've mentioned before, I'm pretty sure, the books "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Klyon. Have you read that book?
816. 01:08:25 Oh, yeah. I haven't read it, but you've mentioned it before.
817. 01:08:28 Awesome book. And it was really pivotal for me because it gave me permission, essentially, to "be creative" in the way that I am creative, which is connecting these things that I am experiencing
818. 01:08:42 and that I am reading and that I am seeing in new ways.
819. 01:08:45 Most people, I think, at least me prior to reading that book, viewed creativity as all of a sudden you have this epiphany and you see this thing that has never been created before.
820. 01:08:57 And here it is, world. Enjoy it.
821. 01:09:00 But that's typically not the process.
822. 01:09:03 And the book "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Klyon talks about how really when you create something new, all you are doing is connecting dots in ways that haven't been connected before.
823. 01:09:12 So when he was talking about making connections in this book, that's totally what I thought of and it totally made sense to me, where you've got all of these different experiences, all these different inputs, and essentially that's what bookworm is for me, reading these books.
824. 01:09:25 That's what it does for me. It gives me more dots to connect. I'm not necessarily worried about retaining x amount of the information in my life.
825. 01:09:32 I just want to have a bigger palette to paint with, a bigger toolbox, so to speak.
826. 01:09:37 But if you can increase the size of your toolbox you've got more dots to work with, then you don't have to worry about once you create this thing, like for me it was writing music.
827. 01:09:46 I would write a song and I'd realize that, "Oh, I totally ripped off that melody line or the chord progression from this other song."
828. 01:09:52 And if you do that in the musical arena, I mean, there really is nothing new in terms of chord progressions.
829. 01:09:58 But when you combine all these different elements from all these different inputs that you have, you do end up with something that is new and unique, and that is still being creative, that is still being imaginative.
830. 01:10:09 And I think that skill is very, very important.
831. 01:10:13 I've done a lot of studying, maybe just interest reading about creativity in general, and how do we come up with new ideas?
832. 01:10:25 Because I've learned that I'm very good at coming up with new ideas and I wanted to know why.
833. 01:10:30 I think, "Okay, somebody explained my brain. I don't get it. How do I work?"
834. 01:10:35 Because I feel like with my racecar brain, I come up with things all the time, and that seems to be something unique that not everyone has, but I think it's something that's easily developed in people.
835. 01:10:46 That if you don't feel that you are creative, it is very possible for you to develop that.
836. 01:10:52 And I think that's what Ken Robinson would agree with, is that our education has likely trained that out of us, and that if someone is creative after school, it's usually in spite of, not because of.
837. 01:11:07 And that's usually the people who manage to do that are few and far between, it seems like.
838. 01:11:14 And if you fall into that camp, it is possible to develop that creativity. I know for me, I didn't realize that I'm highly creative until after I got out of school.
839. 01:11:24 And after I got out of school, that's when I started to figure out how to take advantage of that.
840. 01:11:30 I also know that when I was in school, I would quite frequently do creative stuff outside of school.
841. 01:11:38 I learned how to weld on the farm, so I would grab things and create these little metal sculptures just because I wanted to weld more.
842. 01:11:46 So I would do these really weird things like that. But that was never a part of school. It was always outside of school whenever I would do those things.
843. 01:11:54 But knowing how I come up with those ideas and how to develop them, which is, for me, it's a simple process of coming up with new inputs for my brain.
844. 01:12:04 So in this, you know, take bookworm, for example, reading books continually gives me new ideas because I'm always putting new information into my brain.
845. 01:12:12 And whenever I'm doing that, it gives me what I would call more dots to connect.
846. 01:12:17 So the more points that I know or more information that I have at my disposable disposal, disposal, disposal, the more information I have at my disposal, the more points of reference I can pull together.
847. 01:12:32 And that's where a lot of my ideas and creativity comes from. So that's what I do.
848. 01:12:37 And I feel like that's very teachable. And I want to, one, instill that in my kids.
849. 01:12:41 And two, I've done a few things to try to help other people do that as well, which I don't know if I've ever done that successfully, but it's something that I find interesting.
850. 01:12:51 Yeah. And you mentioned that you were creative outside of school.
851. 01:12:55 So not to rehash that entire rant, but I don't think this is necessarily a problem with the school system, but it is an illustration of what he calls on page 62, septic focus, which is solving one issue, but causing another.
852. 01:13:09 And it's really just the priorities that you place on these things.
853. 01:13:13 So Sir Ken Robinson is arguing in this book that the creative process, the music, the arts, those are the things that are actually more important than the math, the science, the languages, the hard skills, the things that are actually more important than the math, the science, the languages, the hard skills, the things that are
854. 01:13:24 traditionally taught. And I would tend to agree personally.
855. 01:13:29 But what I, when I was thinking about this, what my theory anyways is that arts, music, drama, the things that you would quote unquote create.
856. 01:13:39 These tend to be not quantitative, but qualitative, whereas when you're doing math, there is generally one right answer.
857. 01:13:49 So if you're thinking about again, the system and the grades that you're going to assign these things, it is much easier to grade something where there is a right or a wrong scenario, then there is something like you're going to write your own song.
858. 01:14:06 How do you grade this song?
859. 01:14:08 Well, the fact that you created this thing is really great to begin with.
860. 01:14:13 Like it almost doesn't even matter what the end result is because if you connect to the thing, you're true north, connect to the thing that you're really passionate about, the thing that you really just need to do, then the fact that you maybe are terrible at it at the beginning, that's not important at all.
861. 01:14:29 Because the next time that you do it, you're going to get better.
862. 01:14:31 The next time you do it, you're going to get better.
863. 01:14:33 The next time you do it, you're going to get better.
864. 01:14:34 And this is really something that we talked about at length in episode 25 when we did grit.
865. 01:14:40 But these soft skills, these creative skills, all of those different domains of intelligence that are typically not emphasized, I would argue that this is probably why because they are very hard to measure, especially in the area of being creative.
866. 01:14:57 Your kid paints you a picture, and they're two or three years old, you don't say, "Well, your color choice was terrible," or you didn't stay inside the lines.
867. 01:15:07 No, you hang it on the fridge and you say, "Good job, Johnny."
868. 01:15:10 Look at those scribbles.
869. 01:15:12 Yeah, exactly.
870. 01:15:13 And that's really what he's talking about is like every single kid has that in them.
871. 01:15:18 They grow up, if it's not painting pictures, if it's not coloring, it's playing with Legos, it's something.
872. 01:15:24 They are all creative in some way.
873. 01:15:27 And we lose that as we get older.
874. 01:15:29 And why do we do that?
875. 01:15:31 And like you were saying, I've had to kind of rekindle that myself and rediscover that myself.
876. 01:15:37 And I'm glad that I did.
877. 01:15:39 I'm glad that I found my true north.
878. 01:15:41 But I want to put my kids in a position where they don't have to fight that battle again.
879. 01:15:46 Like even from a very young age, we're doing the things that we're emphasizing the creative process more than the technical skills, the hard work.
880. 01:15:53 And the technical skills, the hard skills, because that's the stuff that's going to change.
881. 01:15:57 You're a coder, you're a developer, you learn a language, and then tomorrow there's a new language.
882. 01:16:02 And you've got to learn that one.
883. 01:16:04 Like that stuff is always going to change.
884. 01:16:06 But the soft skills, the creative skills, the creative process, if you can learn to master that, that's going to provide a benefit for years to come.
885. 01:16:14 We did something with our girls.
886. 01:16:16 Maybe I talked about this already, but we took a lot of toys away from them.
887. 01:16:19 Well, I shouldn't say we took a lot of toys away.
888. 01:16:21 We put all of their toys away.
889. 01:16:24 And you would think that's very detrimental to our kids.
890. 01:16:28 But what we did instead was we pulled out art supplies and craft stuff and let them at whatever they want, whenever they want.
891. 01:16:37 And it's done a number of things and it's very interesting to me because it gets to, I'm trying to think about the, I'll have to ask my wife, there's a blog article that she read about it that referred to toys as either open, or open, or open.
892. 01:16:50 In other words, if it's a closed toy, it's one where there's a set way to do it.
893. 01:16:58 Like you have all these blocks and you have to put them through the hole that matches the shape of the block and you're done.
894. 01:17:03 Like that's a closed toy.
895. 01:17:04 There's one thing that you can do with it.
896. 01:17:06 At least that's the intent.
897. 01:17:08 Or there are open toys, a pile of blocks that you can do all kinds of stuff with.
898. 01:17:14 There's not a set way to play with it.
899. 01:17:17 And what we've tried to do is move our kids away from all these closed toys and closed thinking patterns into these open patterns.
900. 01:17:26 And that has led to some very interesting things.
901. 01:17:30 Like our kids are starting to just be very imaginative.
902. 01:17:34 They had a blanket on the floor the other day and it was their pool.
903. 01:17:37 So they laid a pillow down on the, the pillow was the diving board.
904. 01:17:40 So they were diving into the pool.
905. 01:17:42 They've never done that before.
906. 01:17:44 Whenever we've had all their toys out.
907. 01:17:46 Whenever we put them all away, that's when they started to do these things.
908. 01:17:49 And I've just found that it's very fascinating to me to see how changing what our kids have access to can bring some of this imagination and this creativity out of them.
909. 01:18:01 And I love seeing that in them.
910. 01:18:03 Yeah.
911. 01:18:04 And it's not just for the kids.
912. 01:18:06 I mean, you can, you can notice the stuff in your kids as a parent.
913. 01:18:09 That's probably the letter to you.
914. 01:18:10 Yeah.
915. 01:18:11 That's, that's definitely a benefit.
916. 01:18:13 Let's be serious here.
917. 01:18:15 I think though that, like when you're a parent, you see all this stuff playing out and you can recognize the patterns easier and other people.
918. 01:18:23 But if you understand the patterns, you can definitely apply this to yourself as well.
919. 01:18:26 Even if you are an adult and you're recognizing that, yeah, I need to rekindle that creative process.
920. 01:18:32 I really like what you're talking about though with open versus closed toys.
921. 01:18:35 And I think that you could apply this to any sort of play, which we've talked before.
922. 01:18:40 Like that's one of the areas of emphasis for me because I tend to just focus on the tasks that I need.
923. 01:18:44 I need to get done very linear, check off the things in OmniFocus.
924. 01:18:49 But there's a lot of benefit to the open ended things.
925. 01:18:52 There is a movie which we bought via Apple TV.
926. 01:18:57 I'll share the link here.
927. 01:18:58 This is the Amazon one.
928. 01:19:02 But it is the Lego brickumentary.
929. 01:19:05 And it's essentially a documentary on the history of Lego.
930. 01:19:08 And it's very, very interesting because they talk a lot about that open ended process and the benefits of that.
931. 01:19:15 And they share a lot of stories and a lot of different people who have developed creative careers
932. 01:19:20 because they got their first Lego set when they were a kid and they love the fact that you combine these things
933. 01:19:24 in all these different ways.
934. 01:19:26 And I think that for some people in particular that really clicks with them, but for everybody,
935. 01:19:31 there is benefit in forcing yourself to think that way.
936. 01:19:35 I know a lot of startups, for example, they'll have an area in the middle of their space usually
937. 01:19:40 where they've got Legos on a table where people can just kind of mess with them and fidget with them essentially.
938. 01:19:46 And that helps them think more clearly.
939. 01:19:48 It helps them identify new and creative ideas.
940. 01:19:52 One of the things that I did actually on that front is I purchased several fidget cubes via Kickstarter
941. 01:20:03 because I thought these looked really cool and I think they would make great gifts for some people that I know.
942. 01:20:09 But have you seen these?
943. 01:20:11 Yes, I have and I want one. I'm just not picked one up.
944. 01:20:16 They are really cool. And I know that there's a bunch of knockoffs and fidget spinners.
945. 01:20:20 I think they're called now that you can find seeing those in stores recently.
946. 01:20:25 The idea here is that there's a whole bunch of different switches and just like there's a roller ball,
947. 01:20:31 different buttons that you can press and they have different tactile feedback.
948. 01:20:35 And really what it does is it gives you something that you can fidget with which is kind of discreet.
949. 01:20:40 And you can do the things that like I would do in clicking your pen.
950. 01:20:45 But you can do it discreetly so that it doesn't bother other people but it still helps facilitate that creative thinking process in your own head.
951. 01:20:53 And I think that that is something that is typically neglected especially in a society where we are quote unquote so busy
952. 01:21:00 and we've got a runner from one thing to the next thing to the next thing that we don't take that time
953. 01:21:05 to just fidget and play with with these open ended things.
954. 01:21:09 And so this is something that like my kids absolutely love Lego and this is obviously as a parent like one of the things that I want to encourage in them.
955. 01:21:18 But looking at my own life like I need to make sure that I build in time for me to do this type of stuff as well.
956. 01:21:25 And when I've noticed that when I do take the time to do these sorts of things,
957. 01:21:29 when I am not just focused on okay I've got to meet this specific goal, I've got to develop this slide deck or write this article.
958. 01:21:38 When I can just think open-endedly about things that the end result does tend to be a lot better.
959. 01:21:46 And I think that there's a lot of pockets in your day, a lot of different places that you could apply this type of thing strategically to facilitate and help that creative process.
960. 01:22:00 But you have to identify it first, you have to recognize it and then you can use things like Lego or fidget cubes or whatever to kind of make that a little bit easier.
961. 01:22:09 We've been going at this for a while, you want to step into action items?
962. 01:22:13 Yeah, let me just double check, I think there was maybe one other, oh yeah, I didn't write this down so, but I didn't want to touch on the idea of plussing.
963. 01:22:24 Going off script, we got folks.
964. 01:22:26 We've been off script, I think the entire time.
965. 01:22:29 So the idea of plussing I think is really, really cool, this is from page 235.
966. 01:22:35 And the idea here is that when someone presents an idea, you don't just shoot it down, you don't negate other people's contributions, but you build on them.
967. 01:22:44 And I guess this is kind of an action item, but again, this is not something that is quantitative, it's not something I can measure like, yes, I was good at plussing this week.
968. 01:22:54 But I think this is a really cool idea that I want to try and incorporate in all of my collaborative projects, all the different team members that I work with and all the different organizations that I'm involved in is this idea of someone presents an idea, not just saying like, well, we shouldn't do that because XYZ, which is naturally the way my brain works.
969. 01:23:13 It's very logical, I guess, analytical, where things are black and white. But really what Sir Ken Robinson is talking about in this book, and I think there's a lot of value in this, is fostering this creative process and the other people that you work with by not shooting down their ideas, but taking them and kind of pivoting them, I guess, contributing to them like you would a group Lego project.
970. 01:23:42 You know, everybody's contributing one brick at a time as opposed to, you know, it gets to me and I just knock it down and be like, no, this is the way to do it.
971. 01:23:49 You know, follow the instructions. I don't want to be Lord business. I want to pluss.
972. 01:23:53 Nice. I feel like I do this with my kids a lot because I'm trying to develop grit in them, and I want them to be able to stick things out.
973. 01:24:04 So a lot of times, hey, look what I did. That is awesome. Can you try XYZ, but at the same time, not crushing their spirit?
974. 01:24:12 So I think there's a very delicate line there where I want to contribute to this. I want to help these things be better, even if it's in a business stance.
975. 01:24:20 But I also don't want them to feel like I'm just crushing their idea. So I think there's a balance there, and I think that's not easy.
976. 01:24:29 Yep. No, it's definitely not easy.
977. 01:24:34 Last last big takeaway here is this radical idea. He poses at the end of the book of letting kids work when and how they want based on how they're wired, how they are naturally creative.
978. 01:24:50 And as I was thinking about that, well, yeah, that's obviously what we want to do with homeschooling our kids, but I was thinking about it too.
979. 01:25:01 And I'm like, this is what I do every single day. I work on a remote team, and they don't care when or how I work.
980. 01:25:11 They give me the freedom to do the work. I just have to produce the results.
981. 01:25:15 That is the thing in the new economy. I think that people really have to learn.
982. 01:25:20 And it's interesting to me, whenever I meet people who are like, "Oh, you work from home. I could never do that. So many distractions at home."
983. 01:25:26 Well, yeah, there are a lot of distractions at home. And there are things that I've done to provide an environment where I can work outside those distractions, to overcome those obstacles.
984. 01:25:36 I'm recording this podcast right now in my offsite office because I could not do this at home. It would be physically too loud.
985. 01:25:43 But you just figure that stuff out. And I think the sooner that I can teach my kids to figure that stuff out, the better prepared they're going to be for this new knowledge economy where a lot of the traditional jobs, you know, getting into like the deep work versus shallow work type stuff,
986. 01:26:00 as these computers get better and better, then there's a lot of jobs that are going to disappear without saying, "I ought to make a value judgment on it being positive or negative.
987. 01:26:10 That's just the way things are going to be." And so the knowledge economy, the knowledge worker is going to be, those types of skills are going to become very important.
988. 01:26:20 And regardless of what that creative process looks like, you have to create the space in your day to actually do it.
989. 01:26:27 You have to facilitate an environment where you can actually do the work. And I think that that is something that isn't really emphasized even in this book.
990. 01:26:36 But I would say that this is probably the most important thing.
991. 01:26:40 That's quite the claim.
992. 01:26:42 Yeah, again, I don't really just claim by Mike based on my own personal experience. So feel free to pick it to shreds if you want.
993. 01:26:50 That was the hardest thing which joining the Asian efficiency team was figuring out what that looked like.
994. 01:26:57 I needed to create the space to do that. And all of a sudden, I'm going from working in an office to essentially working wherever I want.
995. 01:27:07 And it was hard. Even for me who was so focused on, "Well, I got to get these tasks done."
996. 01:27:13 It's very, very easy to succumb to your environment if you don't put those walls up.
997. 01:27:18 And you have to learn to look at your environment and the things that you do differently.
998. 01:27:21 You have to learn to create the space to be creative and to do that knowledge work.
999. 01:27:25 It's not something that you can just flip a switch and be like, "Okay, yeah, now I can work from home."
1000. 01:27:29 Because that's the other response I get. People find out, "I work remotely, I work from home."
1001. 01:27:33 "Oh, that's so awesome. I want to do that." And I'm like, "I don't think you could do that."
1002. 01:27:38 It's not as simple as it sounds. I tell people I work home and they have that.
1003. 01:27:44 A lot of people have that reaction. And I quite frequently say, "Yeah, it's a lot harder than you think."
1004. 01:27:50 You've got to think about, you've got kids at home, you have meals and you've got nap times
1005. 01:27:56 and you've got all this stuff. And it's too easy to just go up and grab a snack and take a 30-minute break.
1006. 01:28:02 You've got the TV in your office. There's so many ways you can get derailed.
1007. 01:28:08 If you're easily distracted, not smart.
1008. 01:28:11 Yeah, and I mean not to turn this book into a deep work by Kil Newport,
1009. 01:28:17 but I see a lot of parallels here, where Kil Newport talks about deep work being the skill
1010. 01:28:21 that's going to help you become successful in the new economy.
1011. 01:28:24 Deep work is essentially being creative. And it's not something that you can just flip the switch.
1012. 01:28:30 You have to develop that focus muscle. I was going through, I think it was a "Remete Safety" article
1013. 01:28:35 the other day where he was talking about how people have trouble focusing.
1014. 01:28:40 And there were literally hundreds of comments from people saying, "Yeah, totally. I have so much trouble focusing."
1015. 01:28:46 And some of the people even were saying things like, "When I was in college, I had no trouble reading
1016. 01:28:50 for three or four hours a day. I could study for x number of hours straight. I had no problem focusing.
1017. 01:28:56 Now, I can't even make it five minutes because it's not something that you intentionally practice.
1018. 01:29:03 So that's something that obviously I want instill in my kids, but it's something I've had to develop myself.
1019. 01:29:08 And it's something that every single person who is listening to this podcast,
1020. 01:29:12 it's something that you have to develop in the future at some level.
1021. 01:29:17 Even if your job doesn't necessarily facilitate deep work, it's going to become more and more important.
1022. 01:29:24 Yes. And I talk quite frequently about my ADHD, theoretically, and how reading books has helped me overcome that.
1023. 01:29:35 That's the way I pose it to people is if you have issues with attention and focus,
1024. 01:29:42 pick up something that forces you to focus for an extended amount of time.
1025. 01:29:47 And it will be painful at first. You may not be able to do it for five minutes, but do it every single day
1026. 01:29:53 until you can do it for hours. And it helps. It's made a huge impact on me.
1027. 01:29:58 So I highly recommend it. It's what I tell people to do.
1028. 01:30:01 So action items, I have one on my list because my wife and I are planning to homeschool.
1029. 01:30:08 That's our goal. Now, none of our kids are old enough to actually formally start that process,
1030. 01:30:13 but I want to start a conversation with my wife because I want to be very actively involved in that.
1031. 01:30:20 So I want to be their teacher in a formal sense, not just on their dad. I'm teaching them all the time.
1032. 01:30:26 Great. That's awesome. But there's also this formal school side of it.
1033. 01:30:30 And I want to be involved with that. But I don't know what that means
1034. 01:30:34 considering I'm the breadwinner or the family at the same time. So that's a bit tricky.
1035. 01:30:38 So I'm not sure how that's going to pan out. So my action item is to start a conversation with my wife about it.
1036. 01:30:44 Yeah. And actually, as you're reading that action item, I think that there's a very, very important thing
1037. 01:30:50 that we should add to our education rant. And that is, again, the system being designed to work against the teachers.
1038. 01:30:57 Ideally, every kid that is in that classroom is going to have a set of dedicated parents who are involved in the educational process of their kid as well,
1039. 01:31:11 who have the focus, like you just said, of being the kid's teacher even when they're not at school.
1040. 01:31:16 And that is seldom the case in my experience. And that is completely unfair to teachers. But it is what it is.
1041. 01:31:24 So a little bit of redemption for the education system.
1042. 01:31:29 My action item here is to be okay with being wrong. This is, again, something that we kind of glossed over because there's so much in this book.
1043. 01:31:37 But I wrote down several things around page 151 through 157 where it talks about some of the creative process.
1044. 01:31:48 On page 153, it talks about if you're not prepared to be wrong, it's unlikely you'll ever come up with anything original.
1045. 01:31:55 On page 155, he says, "You need to understand that creativity moves in different phases, and you have to have some sense of where you are in the process."
1046. 01:32:04 And most situations trying to produce a finished version of one move is impossible. And not understanding this can make people think that they are not creative at all.
1047. 01:32:12 And I have fallen into that trap. And so my takeaway here is to be okay with being wrong.
1048. 01:32:20 Be okay with just throwing something out there and having people pick it to shreds, having people tell me that you're off your rocker.
1049. 01:32:25 Because then you can at least iterate and produce something even better.
1050. 01:32:31 But whenever you create something, you are going to have this focal awareness he calls it where, like, if you're hitting a nail with a hammer,
1051. 01:32:41 you're focusing on the head of the nail. You're not focusing on how you're swinging the hammer. He calls that subsidiary awareness.
1052. 01:32:49 So if your focal awareness is off, then whatever you're trying to do is not going to be successful.
1053. 01:32:55 If you're trying to hammer a nail and you're focusing on the hammer and the arc that you're using to swing the hammer, you're not going to hit the head of the nail.
1054. 01:33:02 And in the creative process, you will be wrong simply because your focal awareness is off. And sometimes the solution is simply like you're not changing anything that you're doing.
1055. 01:33:12 You're just changing your focal awareness because your perception of the past and the stuff that you create is partial and selective.
1056. 01:33:18 And so until you get it out there, until you publish something, until you ship something, you will never know what some of the potential problems are going to be.
1057. 01:33:28 And so that's a very long-winded way of summarizing my action item of being okay with being wrong.
1058. 01:33:33 [laughs]
1059. 01:33:34 It's a meandering process to get there. Okay.
1060. 01:33:37 Sorry about that.
1061. 01:33:38 We'll see if I can figure out how to hold you accountable to that one.
1062. 01:33:41 Yeah, I don't think you're going to be able to. It seems like a lot of my action items are things that you cannot actually hold me accountable to.
1063. 01:33:47 I will try to--
1064. 01:33:49 This is a strategy of yours, isn't it?
1065. 01:33:51 No, I'll try to do better with that in the future. To be honest, when I was reading this book, I was worried that I was not going to have a problem.
1066. 01:33:57 I was not going to have a single action item.
1067. 01:34:00 I debated the same thing.
1068. 01:34:02 Because it is very-- and this is kind of, I guess, getting into author style, but it is very matter of fact.
1069. 01:34:07 This is the way things are. This is the problem with the current system, and he kind of proposes some different solutions, but it's very hard to apply this personally, especially if you're not somebody who's interested in homeschooling your kids.
1070. 01:34:24 The whole book is about essentially the education system.
1071. 01:34:27 It would be very easy to read this and be like, "Oh, that was interesting on the education system. I have no idea how to apply this to myself."
1072. 01:34:33 It tells me that what I did was wrong, but how do I actually fix it?
1073. 01:34:38 There wasn't a whole lot of that.
1074. 01:34:41 I mentioned it to my wife this morning because she's interested in it as well.
1075. 01:34:47 I told her that I struggled with this book because I felt like I was taken on a journey without a destination.
1076. 01:34:55 Exactly.
1077. 01:34:57 That's what it felt like.
1078. 01:34:59 I quite often think back to-- I was listening to a Dave Ramsey show at one point, and I remember him saying that inspiration without direction is useless.
1079. 01:35:13 Although that breaks down in some places, I understand his point in that if you're going to motivate someone and you're going to give that inspiration,
1080. 01:35:24 it's not much good unless you help people see what to do with it, unless you point them in a specific direction.
1081. 01:35:32 I felt like this was very informative and very motivating to do-- I don't know what.
1082. 01:35:40 I don't know what to do with this now.
1083. 01:35:43 This is interesting.
1084. 01:35:44 I think I'm with you.
1085. 01:35:46 I agree on so many of these points, but I don't know what to do with it.
1086. 01:35:50 That's why I say I simply want to have a conversation about how to be active in my kid's education, but I was already planning to--
1087. 01:36:01 We've already been talking about doing homeschooling, and I knew I was probably going to be a part of it,
1088. 01:36:07 but I think I just want to be a bigger part of it than what I originally thought, which is really a non-action item per this book.
1089. 01:36:14 It was just kind of a, "Oh, that's interesting.
1090. 01:36:16 Just made me think about it a little differently."
1091. 01:36:18 But I'm with you that although his style is easy to read, I felt.
1092. 01:36:24 I had a hard time sticking with it just because I wasn't sure what he was getting at.
1093. 01:36:29 These are all interesting stories.
1094. 01:36:31 They're all interesting facts.
1095. 01:36:33 I'd rather enthralling idea, I guess, but I didn't know where we were going.
1096. 01:36:42 And time it was done, I realized there really wasn't a destination.
1097. 01:36:46 Maybe you've got some movement that I could participate in that helps try to reform this, but he doesn't call that out in any way.
1098. 01:36:53 There's not anything to engage with.
1099. 01:36:56 It calls out his TED Talk.
1100. 01:36:58 Well, that's true, but that, again, doesn't give you any actions.
1101. 01:37:05 So I felt like although it was great and it was interesting that it was also kind of worthless.
1102. 01:37:10 I'm glad to hear you say that because that justifies a little bit my rating of this book, which I'm going to put at two and a half stars,
1103. 01:37:20 because the information, like you said, is good.
1104. 01:37:23 But the lens that I am viewing this through is my own personal experiences.
1105. 01:37:28 And one of the things that we really drill at Asian efficiency, everything that we try to deliver has to fulfill our brand promise, we call it.
1106. 01:37:38 And our brand promise is actionable content that produces faster results.
1107. 01:37:42 So everything that we create, we have to, before we publish it, ask ourselves, like, what is this providing in terms of things that the reader or the listener can ask?
1108. 01:37:52 And the listener can actually do to create positive change in their life.
1109. 01:37:56 And like you said, get to the end of this book and I'm like, now what?
1110. 01:38:01 Which is great information, but I don't know, just definitely not my thing.
1111. 01:38:07 Two and a half stars for the lack of actionable content.
1112. 01:38:11 Yeah, I am going to join you at this two and a half mark because I had some pretty high expectations on this one because I loved his TED Talk.
1113. 01:38:21 And I knew that we wanted to homeschool, so I was hoping for, I guess, some guidance on that and interested to see what he felt like a good education system should look like.
1114. 01:38:34 And I didn't get it at all. It wasn't even close to that.
1115. 01:38:38 So this is probably our lowest ever combined rating for a book.
1116. 01:38:46 Yeah, this actually, this book reminded me a lot of the stereotypical like grandpa character in TV shows.
1117. 01:38:54 Like when I was your age, we had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways to school.
1118. 01:38:58 Like just talking about how, like complaining about the state of things essentially and not providing any positive way to fix the situation.
1119. 01:39:11 Yep. Yep. So your choice is up next. What are we reading next, Mike?
1120. 01:39:19 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
1121. 01:39:23 And this is one of those classic productivity books, which I think I know all of the habits as identified in this book, just from all of the other stuff that I've read and listened to.
1122. 01:39:34 But I've never actually- See, you know the content of this book. No, that's what I'm saying. I think I'm going into this.
1123. 01:39:40 Like the tendency would be to be like, "Oh yeah, I know that book. I don't have to read it."
1124. 01:39:44 But I want to read it because I'm sure that there's a lot of stuff in there that I'm going to glean in addition to the big bullet points of these are the seven habits.
1125. 01:39:52 Like habit number two, I know off the top might have begin with the end in mind. You know, sharpen the saw, that sort of thing.
1126. 01:39:57 Like these are things that you hear about all the time in the productivity space. But in the Princess Bride, there's a scene where Vasini is always saying inconceivable.
1127. 01:40:08 And then one of the other characters is like, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
1128. 01:40:12 Well, I kind of think that this book, maybe I've got a little bit of an idea. Like it doesn't really mean what I think it means.
1129. 01:40:18 And I want to be set straight by actually reading it. So I can make educated interpretations of it.
1130. 01:40:24 You know, whenever I quote it, I'll know what I'm talking about.
1131. 01:40:27 There you go.
1132. 01:40:30 So after that one is "My Choice of the Go-Getter" by Peter Kine. And this is, I believe, one of, if not the last off of that Dave Ramsey list, I believe.
1133. 01:40:43 It's been one that's been recommended to me from a handful of people as well. So we'll get to that one after yours.
1134. 01:40:50 We got forget books.
1135. 01:40:52 Yeah, you just threw this in here. So I have to put it on the outline. Sorry.
1136. 01:40:57 Well, I thought about it. And I do actually have a book that I'm reading right now, but I cannot find the author of it.
1137. 01:41:02 It is simply called "Hustle." I know one of the authors is Neil Patel. I forget who the other, there's three authors.
1138. 01:41:09 I forget who the other two guys are. It's a yellow book and it's got big black letters and it's his hustle.
1139. 01:41:14 And essentially, what it's talking about is if you are intentional, you can create the future that you want.
1140. 01:41:21 And so "Hustle" obviously is like the title of my book is "Thou Shout, Hustle."
1141. 01:41:25 But the topic of hustle has gotten a negative connotation in the productivity space. And I would argue it's because people are doing it wrong.
1142. 01:41:32 And I want to read this book to see what these guys are saying about it. And I've read it a little bit.
1143. 01:41:39 And so far, I really, really like it. There's one statistic in here which totally applies, or one quote in here that totally applies to the book that we read today.
1144. 01:41:49 They quote David Graver. He says, "If there's a way of society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with like $50,000 a debt so they have to be slaves?"
1145. 01:42:01 So that gives you a little bit of an idea of the tone of the book.
1146. 01:42:05 There you go.
1147. 01:42:06 And so far, it's really good.
1148. 01:42:07 Thanks.
1149. 01:42:08 My gap book this week is "The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis.
1150. 01:42:13 I mean, kind of on a C.S. Lewis kick lately.
1151. 01:42:17 I don't know. It's interesting to see what is his perspective on how God lets pain happen to his people.
1152. 01:42:27 I'm interested. I'm not going to go into it much more than that.
1153. 01:42:31 There you go.
1154. 01:42:32 That could be a very lengthy tangent.
1155. 01:42:34 So we'll just leave that one right here.
1156. 01:42:36 That's why I'm just going to drop it there.
1157. 01:42:38 All right.
1158. 01:42:40 So if you want to recommend a book, you can do that by going to bookworm.fm/list.
1159. 01:42:48 And you will see not only a list of the books that we've covered, a list of the books that are planned and also some other listener recommended books like "Paid to Think" by David Goldsmith, "168 Hours" by Laura Vanerkamp.
1160. 01:43:03 I've actually read that one. That one is really good.
1161. 01:43:06 The power of habit, the mindful geek, the smart but scattered guide to success.
1162. 01:43:11 And actually the seven habits, how effective people, which we're reading next, came from that recommended list.
1163. 01:43:16 So there's a button on the right-hand side of that bookworm.fm/list page where you can recommend a book.
1164. 01:43:22 And if you want us to cover a particular book, please go to the website and recommend it.
1165. 01:43:29 And if you wouldn't mind, sneak over to iTunes. There's a link in the show notes because we're trying to dislodge this radio station from being the first listing whenever you search for bookworm on the iTunes store.
1166. 01:43:41 So help us out there. If you could just go over and leave a review. We're trying to, we're going to win. We're going to get there, Mike.
1167. 01:43:47 So we'll keep working with that.
1168. 01:43:50 Also, if you have comments or you want to share, you know, what are your thoughts on the education system and are we way off on all this stuff?
1169. 01:43:58 Go to productivityguild.com and you'll find a topic for this particular episode. And you can share your thoughts there.
1170. 01:44:06 At KCRW, you are going down. Thanks everybody for listening and we will talk to you next time.