50: 2018 Bookworm Draft

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1. 00:00:00 Got a big episode today, Joe. Big episode. Super big. Super big. We're going to talk about all the great books.
2. 00:00:07 At least to us. The best of this club that you've been dubbing the best.
3. 00:00:13 The best, the biggest. The Internet's largest book club.
4. 00:00:17 Largest with an asterisk.
5. 00:00:19 Since I require it.
6. 00:00:22 You want to start with some follow up? We got a lot here.
7. 00:00:25 I do. Before we get into the actual follow up items.
8. 00:00:30 I want to follow up with something that we teased last episode.
9. 00:00:33 When we were talking about the bookworm bookmarks.
10. 00:00:37 So I'm going to have these with me at Macstock.
11. 00:00:43 And you'll be down there too, I believe.
12. 00:00:45 Yes.
13. 00:00:46 I'll give you a bunch.
14. 00:00:47 And I've also got some bookworm stickers.
15. 00:00:49 So hopefully if you listen to bookworm and you come to Macstock, you can.
16. 00:00:54 Bump into Joe and I and you can get some some cool stuff.
17. 00:00:57 You can also get bookmarks and stickers as part of the cotton bureau.
18. 00:01:05 Campaign that we're going to be doing as well.
19. 00:01:07 So by the time this episode airs, it'll be up for a couple of weeks.
20. 00:01:11 And we're going to have a couple of different shirts that you can choose from.
21. 00:01:16 But I sent you the screenshot of the listing and I think they look really cool.
22. 00:01:22 So if you want to support the Internet's largest book club asterisk and be the coolest
23. 00:01:27 cat at your library, then you can you can do that.
24. 00:01:30 The URL be in the show notes, but you can buy a shirt and you can support the show.
25. 00:01:35 And I talked to the folks at Cotton Bureau.
26. 00:01:37 I'm going to send them a bunch of bookmarks and a bunch of stickers.
27. 00:01:40 So if you get a t-shirt, you'll also get a couple of bonuses for free.
28. 00:01:43 I'm super excited about this.
29. 00:01:45 Like I love the idea of being able to do t-shirts and stuff so much so that I'm
30. 00:01:50 going to slip a redirect on.
31. 00:01:52 Our bookworm FM site, so it makes it even easier so you can get to the Cotton
32. 00:01:58 Bureau page by going to bookworm.fm/shirt.
33. 00:02:02 And that'll get you where you need to go.
34. 00:02:04 So that should be a little bit easier to remember.
35. 00:02:06 But yes, t-shirts, stickers, bookmarks go.
36. 00:02:10 Not not just t-shirts, by the way, I I'm a big fan of the zip up hoodies.
37. 00:02:16 So we'll have a bookworm hoodie available as well.
38. 00:02:19 So you can get a you can get a t-shirt or you can get a hoodie and both of them
39. 00:02:23 will come with the bookmarks and stickers that you cannot get anywhere else.
40. 00:02:28 Huh.
41. 00:02:28 I did not know you were doing that.
42. 00:02:30 Now I have to have two.
43. 00:02:32 I know, right.
44. 00:02:33 Awesome.
45. 00:02:36 Well, we'll mention this again at the end, but yes, bookworm.fm/shirt.
46. 00:02:40 Make sure you get one.
47. 00:02:41 And if nothing else, you're really helping us out and supporting the show.
48. 00:02:45 So show your love for bookworm, buy a shirt, get some cool stuff.
49. 00:02:48 Join us at Mac stock.
50. 00:02:50 That's coming up soon too.
51. 00:02:51 So, you know, those are a couple ways to connect with us by a shirt and support the show.
52. 00:02:56 The URL for Mac stock, we'll put in the show notes, but it's Mac stock conference in Expo.
53. 00:03:00 And by the time this series, you'll still have a couple of weeks if you wanted to go.
54. 00:03:03 It's in Woodstock, Illinois.
55. 00:03:04 It's a couple of days.
56. 00:03:05 It's a lot of fun.
57. 00:03:05 And I've actually got a coupon code.
58. 00:03:08 So people can save 70 bucks, I believe, on the weekend pass if they use the coupon code
59. 00:03:13 productivity show, which is put together by Mike Potter.
60. 00:03:16 He just assigned these codes to everybody who's going to be speaking and I'm going to be speaking.
61. 00:03:19 So that and the theme this year is productivity.
62. 00:03:22 So if you're listening to this, it's probably right up your alley, especially if you are any sort
63. 00:03:27 of Apple technology user.
64. 00:03:28 And yeah, the normal weekend pass, I think, is like 250 bucks.
65. 00:03:32 So $70 is actually a pretty big chunk of that.
66. 00:03:36 Other than that, Mike, we have other follow up to hit.
67. 00:03:39 My question for you, Mike, have you learned how to type faster?
68. 00:03:42 I think so.
69. 00:03:44 Okay.
70. 00:03:44 So here's the deal.
71. 00:03:45 I got a coupon code from some developer saying, hey, you should check out this app.
72. 00:03:50 And I get these occasionally.
73. 00:03:51 Most of them I don't really look at.
74. 00:03:55 This one looked pretty good, though, and it was a coupon code for KeyKey, which is a app in the Mac App Store
75. 00:04:01 that teaches you how to type.
76. 00:04:02 But there's lessons that you go through where it strings the letters.
77. 00:04:06 And at first it's just doing certain letters.
78. 00:04:08 And in the next round, it adds a couple more letters.
79. 00:04:10 And so you build up dexterity with your hands as you're going.
80. 00:04:15 But the way that it counts your characters per minute is kind of weird.
81. 00:04:19 So when I started, you know, I was flying through everything and I wasn't very accurate.
82. 00:04:23 And basically it yelled at me and it's like, hey, accuracy is more important than
83. 00:04:26 than speed at the beginning.
84. 00:04:28 So I've actually decreased my typing speed.
85. 00:04:31 Oh, good.
86. 00:04:32 But I've increased the accuracy considerably.
87. 00:04:36 So I don't know what that translates into in terms of the number of words per minute that I can type.
88. 00:04:42 But I do think that this is going to have some long-term benefits.
89. 00:04:46 It's just a small sample size.
90. 00:04:48 And at the moment, you know, I've got to kind of retrain myself because I had some
91. 00:04:51 some bad habits, like using my index finger on my left hand to hit the C key.
92. 00:04:55 And so I have to kind of retrain the muscle memory.
93. 00:04:58 But absolutely, this is this is going to pay off.
94. 00:05:01 I just don't have any stats to verify right now.
95. 00:05:03 Index finger to hit the C key.
96. 00:05:06 I'm trying to get the cover off my.
97. 00:05:08 Oh, OK, I'm with you.
98. 00:05:10 That's right. You're you're one of those Devorak weirdos.
99. 00:05:12 So yeah, I was like, wait, you don't.
100. 00:05:14 That's not right.
101. 00:05:15 You shouldn't wait.
102. 00:05:16 Never mind.
103. 00:05:17 That's a different.
104. 00:05:18 It took me a minute.
105. 00:05:19 Yeah, it should be it should be my middle finger.
106. 00:05:21 But my my index finger is the one that I always use for that I've discovered.
107. 00:05:25 So I need to need to change that.
108. 00:05:27 Huh. OK.
109. 00:05:28 Couple of little weird things like that.
110. 00:05:30 But it's giving me more confidence when I'm when I'm typing.
111. 00:05:33 So I do think that this is a win.
112. 00:05:35 All right.
113. 00:05:36 Well, I'll still hold out for Devorak.
114. 00:05:38 But yes.
115. 00:05:40 All right.
116. 00:05:41 Well, good to know that you're slowing down your typing speed.
117. 00:05:43 Good deal.
118. 00:05:45 Two.
119. 00:05:45 Che.
120. 00:05:46 All right.
121. 00:05:46 So the next one, actually, the next two, these are the ones I said,
122. 00:05:50 there's no way you're going to be able to hold me accountable for.
123. 00:05:52 I don't know why I didn't take these out.
124. 00:05:54 But just to recap, I guess, teach my kids to look for why not how and instill my
125. 00:05:58 kids are self-fueling, self-motivating, drive for tremendous work,
126. 00:06:01 standard of excellence.
127. 00:06:02 These are more just mindset things that I want to be reminded of every once in a
128. 00:06:05 while, and I want to make sure that I'm applying these in some way, shape,
129. 00:06:09 performance, not going to shape how I live my life day to day.
130. 00:06:12 So I think we can probably skip over those.
131. 00:06:15 The real important one and the one we got feedback on Twitter from,
132. 00:06:18 unfortunately, by the time we got it, we had already landed on this app.
133. 00:06:21 Right.
134. 00:06:21 I think it was, name is John, had recommended.
135. 00:06:23 I love the recommendation.
136. 00:06:25 If it had come a week earlier, it would have saved me hours.
137. 00:06:28 Because we tried like 10 different apps for our, our chess battles.
138. 00:06:33 We were texting like all day doing this.
139. 00:06:36 Yeah.
140. 00:06:36 So there are really only two good options, in my opinion.
141. 00:06:40 There is the one that we're currently using, which is leeches, L-I-C-H-E-S-S,
142. 00:06:45 which is actually a website, but the iOS app is pretty good as well.
143. 00:06:50 And the other one that I kind of liked was a messages app called Checkmate.
144. 00:06:55 The thing you didn't like about that app, I think, was that every time you got a
145. 00:06:59 chess movie, thought it was a text message and maybe thought it was more important.
146. 00:07:02 Right.
147. 00:07:03 I was putting too much weight on it.
148. 00:07:05 It wasn't, it was just me making my move in a game.
149. 00:07:07 Right.
150. 00:07:07 So I respect that.
151. 00:07:10 But that app, I like the design of that one.
152. 00:07:13 And I get it, you know, you probably don't want messages going off all the time, whenever
153. 00:07:17 whenever somebody makes makes a move, it's hard to differentiate between an actual text
154. 00:07:21 message, which you need to look at and a game that you can, you know, check whenever.
155. 00:07:25 So leeches, L-I-Ches, whatever, that's the one that we're using.
156. 00:07:29 And I think it's pretty good.
157. 00:07:31 I really liked Checkmate, the iMessage app.
158. 00:07:35 Like that, that seemed to be pretty smooth.
159. 00:07:37 I just wish it was a standalone and then let me do badges with it without the actual
160. 00:07:42 notifications.
161. 00:07:43 Like that was what I was after for that piece because to your point, I would get the,
162. 00:07:48 the notification saying, you've got a new text and I'd go over and say, Oh, Mike moved.
163. 00:07:53 Like, okay.
164. 00:07:54 Like not, not that I'm not excited to play chess with Mike, but
165. 00:07:58 not worth stopping your work for.
166. 00:07:59 That's for sure.
167. 00:08:00 Right.
168. 00:08:01 Right.
169. 00:08:02 So talk about interrupting, you know, the work that you're doing because of a game.
170. 00:08:09 All right.
171. 00:08:09 Well, I don't know that that's the right decision here.
172. 00:08:13 So thanks for bearing with me.
173. 00:08:15 Yeah, I agree.
174. 00:08:16 I have one here outside of chess with you.
175. 00:08:20 And that is deliberate practice in the midst of client management.
176. 00:08:25 And primarily this is turned into client communications.
177. 00:08:30 And the, this might be one that I need to bring back.
178. 00:08:33 Uh, maybe not next time, but in a few episodes, if we can remember or set it up, right?
179. 00:08:39 Partly because I've been focusing on the communication side of it right now
180. 00:08:43 and trying to find ways to fine tune and perfect my methods of the communication I
181. 00:08:50 have with my clients.
182. 00:08:50 I'm not always the best at that.
183. 00:08:52 I've learned.
184. 00:08:53 I thought I was decent at it, but I have figured out I'm actually quite bad at it, I think,
185. 00:08:57 which is not good.
186. 00:08:59 Considering how much I do with clients, but, uh, and that also just could be my
187. 00:09:04 perspective on it.
188. 00:09:05 I think there's a lot of folks in my industry that are much worse at that than I am,
189. 00:09:10 but I'm going to continue working on it.
190. 00:09:13 But it is progressing.
191. 00:09:14 I have processes in place for pre calls, post calls, those types of things.
192. 00:09:20 So it's getting better.
193. 00:09:22 I'll keep checking in on it here and there, but I've been happy with what the way it's
194. 00:09:26 going so far.
195. 00:09:27 I feel like half of my life has been discovering that I suck at something.
196. 00:09:30 I thought I was pretty good at it.
197. 00:09:31 Yep.
198. 00:09:31 Pretty much like, Oh, this one, I'm not so good at that time to continue working on that one.
199. 00:09:37 That's the beauty of it though.
200. 00:09:38 I mean, like you can think you're, you've got it all together and you really don't,
201. 00:09:42 regardless of how great you think you are, but the real benefit in seeing things the
202. 00:09:46 right way is that now you know where the baseline is and you can accurately see the
203. 00:09:50 things that you need to improve.
204. 00:09:52 And if you make the small adjustments and make the improvements to those things,
205. 00:09:56 they translate into some pretty big results.
206. 00:09:58 Like even your deliberate practice and your client management stuff, if you were to
207. 00:10:02 develop those skills and get to the level where you really want to be awesome at it.
208. 00:10:06 And again, maybe you don't want to be awesome at it going back to our last discussion on
209. 00:10:09 peak.
210. 00:10:09 Maybe you're, this is, this is good enough, you know, but identifying the things that
211. 00:10:13 you really want to be good at when you become excellent in those things, they translate
212. 00:10:17 into the other areas of your life.
213. 00:10:18 At least that's what I've found.
214. 00:10:19 Yeah.
215. 00:10:20 I could go along with all that.
216. 00:10:22 I mean, there's, there's a lot to be said for just noticing weaknesses or noticing
217. 00:10:27 places that I need to improve.
218. 00:10:29 And honestly, that's probably the story of Bookworm over the last couple of years is,
219. 00:10:33 you know, we read a book.
220. 00:10:35 It shows us an area that we need to improve on.
221. 00:10:38 And we publicly say what we're going to do to try to improve on it and hopefully follow
222. 00:10:43 through.
223. 00:10:43 Like, that's the idea there.
224. 00:10:44 Uh, so it's, it's kind of a bookworms become kind of a way for us to do that in public,
225. 00:10:50 which is kind of odd for some people, I think, but highly encouraged by, I think both Mike
226. 00:10:55 and I, it is, especially for a couple of introverts.
227. 00:10:57 I mean, I don't think I should say, I don't know that you're here as introverted as I am,
228. 00:11:01 but this is when we started this, this is really weird for me.
229. 00:11:04 Yep.
230. 00:11:04 With you.
231. 00:11:05 But I've definitely grown a lot.
232. 00:11:07 And I think like if you were to sum up everything, the Bookworm is it, it's exactly
233. 00:11:11 that.
234. 00:11:11 It's a growth mindset.
235. 00:11:12 It's identifying the, the things that you want to improve in figuring out how you can
236. 00:11:16 improve in them.
237. 00:11:17 And then the accountability piece just helps it stick.
238. 00:11:19 So that's a good point there to get into what we're going to do today.
239. 00:11:23 And I have to admit that Mike and I spent what maybe two weeks texting back and forth and
240. 00:11:30 having conversations about what are we going to do for episode 50?
241. 00:11:33 Uh, cause it's, it's not like we wanted to put together like, here's a list of the 20,
242. 00:11:38 uh, books that you should read based on our last 50, like that, you know, we talked about
243. 00:11:44 doing that, but that just seemed kind of cheesy.
244. 00:11:46 Uh, then we went through a bunch of different iterations on picking a special book for that
245. 00:11:51 time and landed on none of them.
246. 00:11:53 And then Mike had our idea for today.
247. 00:11:56 So I'll let you introduce this, Mike.
248. 00:11:57 But I think it's kind of a cool idea.
249. 00:11:58 The inspiration for this idea really came when I started thinking about why do people
250. 00:12:04 tune in to Bookworm?
251. 00:12:05 When we started it, we mentioned like we wanted to read these books.
252. 00:12:09 We wanted to grow from them.
253. 00:12:10 We wanted to hold each other accountable.
254. 00:12:11 It almost didn't even matter if anybody else listened at that point.
255. 00:12:14 Cause we just wanted to help each other follow through with something that we knew we were
256. 00:12:18 supposed to do for a long time.
257. 00:12:19 Uh, what we found based on listener feedback is that.
258. 00:12:23 Are going through the books inspires other people to go through the books and we go
259. 00:12:27 through books a little bit faster, maybe than the normal person would.
260. 00:12:30 And that's okay.
261. 00:12:32 Because what that means is that then you've got myself and, and you Joe acting is kind
262. 00:12:37 of like a curation source for the books that people want to go through.
263. 00:12:42 So some of the books we really like, some of them we don't, like I'll throw out the
264. 00:12:47 art of asking by Amanda Palmer.
265. 00:12:49 That was your favorite, right?
266. 00:12:50 Yeah.
267. 00:12:50 Yeah, that was awesome.
268. 00:12:51 So when we think about like, okay, so this is why people listen to Bookworm, then I got
269. 00:12:57 the idea for like the best books that we've ever read.
270. 00:13:01 So the best books of all time, but this is not going to be just rehashing and picking
271. 00:13:06 our favorites from the books that we have already done.
272. 00:13:08 In fact, in prepping for this episode, I went and made a list.
273. 00:13:11 Most of the books on my list here are not books that we have covered by Bookworm.
274. 00:13:16 I'm not sure what your list looks like, but we're going to do a draft of the best
275. 00:13:22 books that we've read.
276. 00:13:24 And we're going to each take turns selecting our favorite books and explaining why we chose it.
277. 00:13:29 We're not going to be allowed to repeat.
278. 00:13:30 So Joe's going to have some picks.
279. 00:13:32 I'm going to have some picks, but if Joe picks deep work by KELNU port, I cannot pick
280. 00:13:36 deep work by KELNU port.
281. 00:13:38 So we have to alternate and we have to pick books that no one else has picked yet.
282. 00:13:43 And we've got five official rounds here, but we'll see how these go.
283. 00:13:47 And then I've got a bunch on my list.
284. 00:13:48 So we'll probably have quite a few honorable mentions.
285. 00:13:51 These are going to be like, if you like our perspective on books, then this is going to give you
286. 00:13:56 a lot of fodder for your reading list.
287. 00:13:58 I put together a list of 10 books since we're doing five rounds to come at our 10 books for the, what did you call this?
288. 00:14:07 The Bookworm Literary Draft, I think is what I'm seeing here.
289. 00:14:10 And so this claver here, Mike and I do not know what each other has selected at this point in time.
290. 00:14:16 So we have our outline here, but it's blank.
291. 00:14:19 Like it's just round one round to Joe Mike and then that's it.
292. 00:14:22 We don't know what the books are.
293. 00:14:23 So this will be fun.
294. 00:14:24 And I have, I'm with you.
295. 00:14:26 I have a handful here that are not Bookworm books.
296. 00:14:30 I don't know how many I have, like four out of my 10 or not Bookworm books.
297. 00:14:34 And these are from, since the time we started Bookworm, so about two years time that I've picked these out of.
298. 00:14:42 I don't know what timeframe did you pick out of, Mike?
299. 00:14:44 Was it the last two years?
300. 00:14:45 No, I think I went further back than that.
301. 00:14:48 I kind of thought about the most influential books that I have ever read.
302. 00:14:52 So some of these I know I read at least five years ago, but I still have quite an affinity for sure.
303. 00:14:58 And so yeah, there's, there's a bunch, a bunch on here.
304. 00:15:01 But basically, if you're new to Bookworm, then this episode is going to be great.
305. 00:15:04 And even if you've been listening from the very beginning, there's going to be a bunch of new stuff in here that will probably peak your interest.
306. 00:15:09 Right.
307. 00:15:10 Hopefully by the end of this, we've got at least 10 plus awesome books that you should consider reading the inspiration for like the draft format.
308. 00:15:18 I totally ripped off of like upgrade where they do like the keynote drafts.
309. 00:15:21 And I know that they've got like the scorecards and I was thinking about, is there a way that we could determine a winner of this draft?
310. 00:15:29 And I don't think there is objectively for either you or I, but I think it might be kind of cool if we created a space on the Bookworm Club, where people could vote like whose list they like better.
311. 00:15:41 And maybe next episode, we can, we can declare a quote unquote winner of the Bookworm literary draft because this is something that is totally new.
312. 00:15:50 And I was sharing the idea with you.
313. 00:15:53 I wanted to let you go first.
314. 00:15:57 So you, so I don't like snipe your first pick right away.
315. 00:16:01 OK, so we'll go officially in alphabetical order.
316. 00:16:04 OK, that's that's that's how you're going to get around that one.
317. 00:16:07 OK, sure.
318. 00:16:08 All right.
319. 00:16:08 So round one, which means I get to go first here and the number one pick I'm going to grab here is grit by Angela Duckworth.
320. 00:16:17 Was this on your list at all?
321. 00:16:18 Did I snipe it from you?
322. 00:16:19 No, this actually did not even make my.
323. 00:16:22 Good.
324. 00:16:23 So I like the book.
325. 00:16:24 That's a good one.
326. 00:16:25 And I think this was one that it really struck me because it's one that I don't think pre reading this one like before that time.
327. 00:16:36 I don't think I had really considered the difficulty and the process of developing perseverance.
328. 00:16:43 I know that's a thing that I've always struggled with of because I can start things day in and day out.
329. 00:16:50 Like I can, you know, new and shiny is like my my middle name.
330. 00:16:54 I love jumping to the new project, but this book really gave me some tools and the mindsets I needed to think through how to get through and finish something.
331. 00:17:06 Because I know this is something you've talked about as a strong suit for you.
332. 00:17:09 Mike is finishing up projects well.
333. 00:17:12 And that is not necessarily my strong suit at all, definitely an area where I need to continue to develop.
334. 00:17:20 And this particular book was very influential in helping me to do that.
335. 00:17:24 And I consider that one of my major flaws in the way that I do things.
336. 00:17:28 So having a book that that plays direct into that flaw and helps me to develop the processes I need to get past that.
337. 00:17:39 That's huge.
338. 00:17:40 It really is.
339. 00:17:41 And I can't say that I've because this is a book from I forget what episode it was back in the teens, I think.
340. 00:17:48 So it's been a while ago that we read it, but it's one that I have continued to reference since then.
341. 00:17:56 There's probably not a two or three week period that I haven't pulled this book out and referenced some piece of it since then.
342. 00:18:03 So it's it was a pretty easy pick for me to just say this is the the number one pick I would have of.
343. 00:18:11 I think I counted there was 78 books that I've read in the last two years.
344. 00:18:14 So I'm putting this one at the top of that list.
345. 00:18:17 So definitely one I highly recommend I've given a few of them away.
346. 00:18:21 So I love this book.
347. 00:18:24 It's one of my favorites.
348. 00:18:25 Nice.
349. 00:18:25 I want to clarify that I forget exactly how you phrased it just now.
350. 00:18:30 OK, but you mentioned that this was a strength of mine.
351. 00:18:33 I want to clarify that it actually can be a weakness because basically what happens is once I commit to do something,
352. 00:18:40 I'm going to follow through and do it even if it kills me.
353. 00:18:42 So that can be good on one on one instance, because, you know, I was like,
354. 00:18:47 if I were that I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it.
355. 00:18:50 But then on the other hand, you can over commit and when you feel like you can't drop things,
356. 00:18:58 like that can be dangerous, dangerous to like I'm about to leave as a recording this tomorrow,
357. 00:19:03 I'm going up to Door County for my personal retreat, my one day, you know,
358. 00:19:07 thinking day that I do once a quarter.
359. 00:19:09 And I'm going to ask those questions, which I start doing, which I stop doing, which I keep doing.
360. 00:19:13 I have a real hard time answering the question, what should I stop doing?
361. 00:19:16 Because once I get my word that I'm going to do something, I tend to just do it forever.
362. 00:19:19 And so you need to be able to disconnect from those things and ask yourself,
363. 00:19:24 honestly, you know, if I were not already committed to this thing,
364. 00:19:27 would it be worth committing to right now?
365. 00:19:29 So I want to just call that out.
366. 00:19:31 I know that's kind of contrary to the whole point of grit by Angela Duckworth,
367. 00:19:35 because really that's focusing on the ability to follow through and complete the things
368. 00:19:39 and the agreements that you've made specifically with yourself.
369. 00:19:42 But I think it's an important point that's worth calling out.
370. 00:19:44 Very fair. All right.
371. 00:19:46 What's your first round pick?
372. 00:19:47 My first pick is not a book that we have done for Bookworm.
373. 00:19:50 It is the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Popison.
374. 00:19:54 Have you read this book?
375. 00:19:55 I have not.
376. 00:19:56 It's I don't even own it right now.
377. 00:19:58 Like it's it's on my list to purchase, but I don't own it.
378. 00:20:00 OK, we we probably will do this one at some point.
379. 00:20:05 I mean, it's it's my favorite book ever.
380. 00:20:06 And that's it's my favorite for for two reasons.
381. 00:20:10 One, there is a phrase in there which sticks with me and I bring up
382. 00:20:15 more often than I care to admit.
383. 00:20:17 And that's this idea of when trying to figure out
384. 00:20:21 like, what is the one thing that you should be doing at any given moment?
385. 00:20:23 Because this is something that probably everybody who's listening to this can relate to.
386. 00:20:27 You've got too much to do, not enough time to do it in.
387. 00:20:30 How do you pick the one thing that you should be doing right now?
388. 00:20:32 It's the best use of your time.
389. 00:20:34 Your energy, your attention, your focus.
390. 00:20:35 Well, they have a framework in here, which it's just one question.
391. 00:20:39 Again, asking the right question can make the answer clear.
392. 00:20:41 The question is, what can you do right now that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
393. 00:20:46 And I can't tell you how many times I've asked that question.
394. 00:20:49 And then I'm like, oh, yeah, that's it's obvious.
395. 00:20:51 I should be doing this thing.
396. 00:20:52 And then other thing I was thinking about doing really doesn't matter.
397. 00:20:54 Yeah.
398. 00:20:56 So that's one really powerful idea that I got from the book.
399. 00:20:58 And if that's all I got from the book, that more than would have paid for it.
400. 00:21:02 But there's another analogy that they use at the beginning, which is really, really powerful.
401. 00:21:08 And they illustrate it with the fact that one of those two inch normal size dominoes
402. 00:21:13 can actually knock over another domino up to 50% larger.
403. 00:21:17 And if you continue that pattern, so you just knock over that first domino
404. 00:21:23 and then you can knock over a bigger one and a bigger one and a bigger one.
405. 00:21:25 If you continue that chain, by the time you knock over the 18th domino,
406. 00:21:29 it's over the height of the tower of Pisa, so over 183 feet tall.
407. 00:21:33 Twenty third dominoes as tall as the Eiffel Tower, one thousand sixty three feet tall.
408. 00:21:37 The 31st is going to rival Mount Everest, 29,028 feet above sea level.
409. 00:21:42 The 57th dominoes going to go from the earth to the moon, 238,855 miles.
410. 00:21:47 The point is really you don't start by saying, I'm going to go to the moon.
411. 00:21:51 You start by saying, I'm going to knock over that one two inch domino.
412. 00:21:55 And then you just the power of consistency as you focus on those little things, those
413. 00:22:00 one things, you know, that one thing that you can do right now that makes
414. 00:22:03 everything else easier or unnecessary.
415. 00:22:05 And before long, that compound effect kicks in and you've achieved the results
416. 00:22:09 that you couldn't even dream of previously.
417. 00:22:11 Sounds like an interesting book.
418. 00:22:12 And this might be why it's on my list.
419. 00:22:14 I I'm with you.
420. 00:22:15 If you choose, put it on the bookworm deal, I'm with you.
421. 00:22:19 Well, we get so many good recommendations now.
422. 00:22:21 In fact, I picked one, which was a recommendation for next time.
423. 00:22:24 So it's been one of those ones is that like had waiting in the hopper for
424. 00:22:28 like whenever we don't know what to cover, we'll do this one.
425. 00:22:31 Right.
426. 00:22:31 We just always have something else.
427. 00:22:33 It seems like the way it goes.
428. 00:22:36 All right.
429. 00:22:36 We'll do we'll do that one at some point.
430. 00:22:38 You're ready for round two.
431. 00:22:39 Let's do it.
432. 00:22:39 All right.
433. 00:22:40 So round two, my choice here is mindset by Carol Dweck.
434. 00:22:45 And you did snipe one of mine.
435. 00:22:48 That was my goal is a snipe, just one book of Mike.
436. 00:22:51 So I win tagline here, the new psychology of success, how we can learn to fulfill our
437. 00:22:56 potential.
438. 00:22:56 I really loved reading through the differences in the fixed mindset and the growth
439. 00:23:02 mindset and simply understanding the differences between those two, one of which
440. 00:23:09 being, you know, the former of those two, the fixed mindset, meaning you feel like
441. 00:23:14 you have a certain amount of talent or skill that you're born with and you can't
442. 00:23:18 grow outside of that.
443. 00:23:20 And of course, the alternative to that is the growth mindset, which means that you
444. 00:23:24 can always improve, which I think we saw quite a bit in our last book in the normal
445. 00:23:29 round of things of peak.
446. 00:23:30 Like we definitely saw how that process could happen in that book, but this is one
447. 00:23:36 that just having the terminology between those two mindsets and understanding how
448. 00:23:43 they operate, it's, it's fascinating to me because you can notice when people refer
449. 00:23:49 to one of these or admit to one of these mindsets, just by the way they talk about
450. 00:23:54 what's going on, like, well, you just need to accept me because that's the way I am.
451. 00:23:57 Like, well, you could approve, like you could change.
452. 00:24:01 Like those things come up more often than you realize.
453. 00:24:05 And I don't think I would have fully understood it without this.
454. 00:24:09 And I found this particular book to be quite empowering in that way.
455. 00:24:14 It kind of goes along with grit in that it shows me a path of improvement.
456. 00:24:20 Maybe that's the theme that's going to run through these books.
457. 00:24:23 I'm looking through my, because I pulled all these books out.
458. 00:24:25 I have them all sitting here.
459. 00:24:26 I don't know if that's a theme yet or not.
460. 00:24:27 We'll, we'll see.
461. 00:24:29 It definitely is a theme.
462. 00:24:31 I mean, the whole idea behind Bookworm, this is going to be appealing to people who
463. 00:24:35 play in the same productivity space that you and I both tend to work in or at least
464. 00:24:40 exist in, you know, online.
465. 00:24:41 Right.
466. 00:24:41 And it's interesting because I went and I did a Google search before we recorded
467. 00:24:45 this, like best productivity books.
468. 00:24:47 There are tons of blog posts out there.
469. 00:24:50 There is no shortage of lists of best productivity books, but all of the lists
470. 00:24:55 that I looked at were also very lame.
471. 00:24:56 Like just looking at them, there's no, there was no incentive as I read it for
472. 00:25:01 why I should read that book.
473. 00:25:03 It was either, oh, yeah, I like that book.
474. 00:25:04 I'm glad that they included it in their list or all I've never heard of that.
475. 00:25:07 I'm not really interested based on the little blurb that they had.
476. 00:25:10 Right.
477. 00:25:10 So I'm hoping that this episode gives a little bit more context and is a lot more
478. 00:25:14 useful, but still scratches that same itch where people want to know, like, what are
479. 00:25:17 the books that I should read?
480. 00:25:18 Like if you were to condense everything down and not want to listen through all 50
481. 00:25:22 episodes, this would be a great resource.
482. 00:25:24 So yes, mindset, Carol Dweck, have a growth mindset.
483. 00:25:28 That was definitely a very influential book for me too.
484. 00:25:30 I probably would have picked it here if you hadn't picked it.
485. 00:25:32 So now I got to pick something else and I'm going to pick so good.
486. 00:25:36 They can't ignore you by Cal Newport.
487. 00:25:38 So this is the other book that Cal Newport has read.
488. 00:25:41 We covered deep work for Bookworm, which was really good, but so good they can
489. 00:25:46 ignore you was really inspiring to me because it's all about developing your
490. 00:25:51 skills.
491. 00:25:52 And as you develop your skills, like the marketplace rewards you for that.
492. 00:25:56 Jim Rohn once said, work hard around yourself and you do on your job.
493. 00:25:59 That's really the idea behind this particular book.
494. 00:26:02 And as really encouraging as I read it at the beginning of my online productivity
495. 00:26:07 journey, I guess, like I was working with Asian efficiency at the time, but I was
496. 00:26:10 pretty new to the online space and I still to this day suffer from imposter
497. 00:26:15 syndrome, but back then it was really bad.
498. 00:26:17 And this just gave me the hope that I could become good enough and excellent
499. 00:26:23 enough that people would want to listen to anything that I had to say.
500. 00:26:26 And it wouldn't be a complete waste of their time.
501. 00:26:28 You know, I don't want to waste people's time whenever they listen to a podcast or
502. 00:26:32 read a blog post that I wrote, anything like that.
503. 00:26:34 And I was really intimidated, like, how am I ever going to get to the level of the
504. 00:26:38 Joe Bulegs and the Mike Vardes and people like that?
505. 00:26:41 Like, why should people listen to me?
506. 00:26:42 What did I do?
507. 00:26:43 You know, and this gave me the confidence to just develop your skills, just keep
508. 00:26:46 doing it, be consistent.
509. 00:26:48 And the results will kind of take care of themselves.
510. 00:26:50 In particular, there's a story in this book that's really powerful.
511. 00:26:54 It really hit me.
512. 00:26:55 And it talks about Steve Martin, who when he was on an episode of the Charlie Rose
513. 00:27:01 Show, Steve Martin said that nobody ever takes note of my advice because it's not
514. 00:27:06 what they want to hear.
515. 00:27:07 What they want to hear is here's how you get an agent.
516. 00:27:09 Here's how you write a script.
517. 00:27:10 But I always say, be so good.
518. 00:27:12 They can't ignore you.
519. 00:27:13 Somebody's thinking, how can I be really good?
520. 00:27:15 People are going to come to you.
521. 00:27:16 I've kind of embraced that mindset and try to use that to motivate everything
522. 00:27:21 that I do.
523. 00:27:22 And, you know, at least so far it seems to be working.
524. 00:27:25 Yeah.
525. 00:27:25 I can't say I've read this one, but kind of going along with that
526. 00:27:30 same thinking is that I saw a phrase by, I think it was Michael Hyatt, who was
527. 00:27:35 actually one of the, the folks who inspired me to start my blog initially, which
528. 00:27:40 I have not updated and way too long.
529. 00:27:42 But whenever I first started that, the, the thought that I continued to remember
530. 00:27:48 was that I didn't have to be the best in the space.
531. 00:27:51 I simply had to be ahead of somebody.
532. 00:27:53 Yeah.
533. 00:27:53 I had to be one step ahead of someone.
534. 00:27:57 And I had to keep that someone in mind when I was writing, because that meant
535. 00:28:02 that I was writing for them.
536. 00:28:03 So I was writing for the people that I was one step ahead of and just continue to do
537. 00:28:08 that.
538. 00:28:08 And then as you get better, the number of people that you're one step ahead of
539. 00:28:11 will continue to grow.
540. 00:28:13 Like that's the idea there.
541. 00:28:14 That sounds very similar to what this book is about.
542. 00:28:17 Now, again, I have not read it.
543. 00:28:18 I'm just kind of projecting there, but I don't know.
544. 00:28:21 Is that a fair correlation there?
545. 00:28:23 Kind of, I think the main idea behind it is the same, like the root motivation, but
546. 00:28:29 it you described it a little bit different.
547. 00:28:31 Whereas like Cal Newport and so good, they can't ignore you.
548. 00:28:35 Really, he's talking about control, which you can control, which is really whether
549. 00:28:39 you're going to have a growth mindset and develop your skills.
550. 00:28:41 Whereas if you're focusing on who can I teach, it's kind of like externally
551. 00:28:46 focused instead of internally focused, if that makes sense, where you're looking
552. 00:28:50 around you for people who you can, you can teach what you do know.
553. 00:28:55 Whereas so good, they can't ignore you.
554. 00:28:57 The difference here is just you're not even worried about what anybody else is
555. 00:29:00 doing because all you're doing is developing yourself to the highest level that you
556. 00:29:04 can.
557. 00:29:04 I'm going to have to add.
558. 00:29:05 See, this is the problem.
559. 00:29:07 This, this, this episode is going to cost me some money.
560. 00:29:09 I knew it.
561. 00:29:10 All right.
562. 00:29:12 Round three.
563. 00:29:13 This one, I think people probably could have seen was coming kind of going off the
564. 00:29:18 Cal Newport train here.
565. 00:29:19 So this one's deep work by Cal Newport.
566. 00:29:21 And I would say like, there are some things after having read this and then
567. 00:29:29 reading a bunch of other books that then referenced this one.
568. 00:29:32 You can tell that this is a very influential book for a lot of people.
569. 00:29:36 And I know that with a lot of the work that I do, finding time to focus and spend
570. 00:29:45 a decent amount of time working on some important project, that's tough to come by.
571. 00:29:51 But having read this, it, it finally helped me understand that that is super
572. 00:29:56 important and shows me some of the paths that I need to take to develop habits and
573. 00:30:03 routines around doing that focused work in the middle of a distracted world.
574. 00:30:10 And I think possibly the world that I work in is one of the most distracting
575. 00:30:14 because, you know, when we're doing high speed development, people want immediate
576. 00:30:19 feedback.
577. 00:30:20 I was running through Slack stuff this morning and realized that I'm a part of
578. 00:30:24 38 different Slack teams right now.
579. 00:30:26 Whoa.
580. 00:30:27 So like it can get to be nuts and very fast paced.
581. 00:30:31 You throw on top of that probably an average of 15 to 18 different discourse
582. 00:30:37 forums that I'm actively participating in at any given time.
583. 00:30:40 Like we're talking high volume.
584. 00:30:43 Throw email on top of there.
585. 00:30:44 I get over 100 a day.
586. 00:30:45 So like it can get fast and I could just sit and respond to messages all day long
587. 00:30:50 and not be caught up.
588. 00:30:52 So this book was one that really helped me realize that that could be a problem
589. 00:30:58 and try to develop ways to get past that.
590. 00:31:02 And I know that there's a lot of people who work in distracted work environments
591. 00:31:07 or struggle to do meaningful work that's not just responding to messages.
592. 00:31:14 Like that's a difficult thing to get past.
593. 00:31:16 For those who are in that world, I highly recommend this one.
594. 00:31:19 This was a good step towards trying to figure out the ways to get past that.
595. 00:31:24 Nice.
596. 00:31:25 Yeah.
597. 00:31:25 I definitely agree.
598. 00:31:27 Deep work should be on this list.
599. 00:31:28 I'm kind of surprised to see two Cal Newport books in the top three rounds.
600. 00:31:32 Right.
601. 00:31:32 But it's not crazy to expect that either.
602. 00:31:35 I think deep work is probably the more popular book of the two major book cities.
603. 00:31:39 He's written a couple other ones.
604. 00:31:41 But yeah, I had a hard time deciding between this one and so good they can't ignore you.
605. 00:31:46 And I'm kind of glad that you picked this one because it definitely deserves to be out here.
606. 00:31:49 And I probably wasn't going to pick another Cal Newport book.
607. 00:31:52 You can't pick two from the same author.
608. 00:31:53 You just can't do that.
609. 00:31:54 Yeah, exactly.
610. 00:31:55 All right.
611. 00:31:56 So my pick for round three, this is interesting because we covered this one back in episode five.
612. 00:32:02 It's essentialism by Greg McKian.
613. 00:32:05 Now, when we covered this one in episode five, I gave it a 4.5.
614. 00:32:09 You gave it a five, but I'm picking it at round three as one of the best books that I've ever read.
615. 00:32:15 Yep.
616. 00:32:15 And this just illustrates to me what's interesting about this, like we can read a book in the moment
617. 00:32:20 and we can have our initial reaction to it.
618. 00:32:23 We can give it an arbitrary rating.
619. 00:32:25 Yes, our ratings are arbitrary.
620. 00:32:26 No, they're not.
621. 00:32:28 It's very calculated.
622. 00:32:29 But then you don't really realize how big an impact a book has on you until you've achieved some time in some distance.
623. 00:32:38 And this is another one of those ones that I keep finding myself coming back to.
624. 00:32:42 I've read it a couple different times now.
625. 00:32:44 And every time I read it, I it's like I'm reading it for the first time.
626. 00:32:48 There's just so much insight that I get from it.
627. 00:32:51 So much clarity.
628. 00:32:51 And this one in particular, the thing that really stands out to me are these images that they've got.
629. 00:32:56 So this is the one where he's got like the squiggly line that goes all over the place on the cover.
630. 00:33:00 OK, so the idea here is that when you are trying to concentrate on all these different things and you're trying to balance all these different things,
631. 00:33:08 you've got a bunch of these squiggly lines that are going all over the place.
632. 00:33:11 But when you embrace the idea of essentialism and you focus on just the things that are essential, you cut out everything else.
633. 00:33:18 And really, this kind of is in line with the one thing.
634. 00:33:21 You know, what you're able to do then is instead of having all these different arrows that are going all over the place,
635. 00:33:25 you're able to focus on the one arrow, you're able to make significant progress in one direction because you're not trying to balance a whole bunch of different things at once.
636. 00:33:32 And I just think that this is a really powerful book.
637. 00:33:35 And Greg McKeown is a great author.
638. 00:33:38 Like it's very approachable.
639. 00:33:39 And I think that anybody who would read this is instantly going to get a lot out of it.
640. 00:33:44 And I continue to years after, you know, I read it for the first time.
641. 00:33:48 Yeah, this was this is one that I did have on my list.
642. 00:33:50 So you did snipe this one from me.
643. 00:33:52 But I'm with you with, you know, with so much of the stuff that you and I do online, it's easy to just say, yes, yes, yes, yes.
644. 00:34:01 And the next thing you know, you've got 14 super important projects that you got to spend your time on.
645. 00:34:06 And Greg did a really good job of showing, you know, what are the processes you should go through in order to decide the concept that you have to decide that you even need to do that.
646. 00:34:19 Like that's that's important.
647. 00:34:21 And I think we forget that in a lot of our society today.
648. 00:34:24 So definitely a good book.
649. 00:34:25 I'm with you.
650. 00:34:26 That was one that really needed to be on this list.
651. 00:34:28 Yeah, another interesting thing about this book, by the way, is I remember I haven't looked in the last year or so, but I remember when I read it again the last time thinking to myself, I love Greg's writing and I want to figure out what other books he's he's written.
652. 00:34:43 He really hasn't written anything else.
653. 00:34:45 Like a lot of the authors that we read, they've written several different books.
654. 00:34:50 And a lot of people, they're just like writing machines where they write a book, they publish it, they promote it.
655. 00:34:56 It does really well.
656. 00:34:57 And then they're just like, okay, that one's done time to write a new best-selling book.
657. 00:35:01 Yeah, let's go do it again.
658. 00:35:02 What I really like about this one is that you can tell that this is really his thing.
659. 00:35:07 Like this is his his theme is this whole idea of essentialism.
660. 00:35:11 And I follow him on on Twitter and he's not super active, but he's still like to this day, like he'll just be tweeting about the theme of essentialism.
661. 00:35:19 And it's not self-promotion.
662. 00:35:21 It's not links to the buy my book, whatever.
663. 00:35:23 It's just something that he really you can tell.
664. 00:35:25 He lives it out, which I think is kind of unique.
665. 00:35:28 There is one other book that he co-authored, by the way, which is on my bookshelf.
666. 00:35:32 Not going to make it on the list, but it is really good.
667. 00:35:34 It's called multipliers of the best leaders make everyone smarter.
668. 00:35:38 And I think that a lot of the themes from essentialism can translate into how you lead people.
669. 00:35:45 And like if you're focusing on the things that are essential with the team that you happen to lead, you can make them better.
670. 00:35:51 And that's the mark of a good leader.
671. 00:35:53 So a little little side note.
672. 00:35:55 Sure.
673. 00:35:55 All right.
674. 00:35:57 So round four, and this is going to be the first book I have here that's not a bookworm book.
675. 00:36:02 I know you've got a few that aren't, but this one is the end of absence by Michael Harris, tagline, reclaiming what we've lost in a world of constant connection.
676. 00:36:13 And I have referenced this book a handful of times.
677. 00:36:17 I know on some bookworm episodes, not recently, but not long after I read it, I did bring it up a few times.
678. 00:36:23 I try not to reference the same books over and over and over again, but the end of absence.
679. 00:36:29 And a lot of what this is about is how we don't take time to just have blank space.
680. 00:36:37 We were doing the three questions for a frantic family.
681. 00:36:40 And one of the themes that my family is working through right now is that we thrive on white space and the outdoors.
682. 00:36:46 Well, the white space piece of that is partially instigated because of this book.
683. 00:36:51 And that buffer of making sure, you know, finding space where I have free time before I start my work day or after my work day is over when I don't have anything scheduled.
684. 00:37:03 Like I try to build those times in because of this book.
685. 00:37:07 Or even simple things like when I'm driving to go do errands, not turning on a podcast or music or anything and just sitting in the silence of a vehicle, assuming the kids aren't with me except bookworm of course.
686. 00:37:18 So when when I have the ability to find, you know, that buffer zone, like that's super important, but Michael Harris goes through in this book, the process of how we've lost that and how that used to be most of what we did.
687. 00:37:37 And today's world, we don't really have white space.
688. 00:37:41 We try to fill every last minute because we want to be the most effective and the most efficient.
689. 00:37:46 So we have to have something that we're doing at all times in every moment.
690. 00:37:50 False.
691. 00:37:51 You don't.
692. 00:37:53 You know, I read this one and I think a day and a half because he has a really cool writing style.
693. 00:37:58 But this is definitely one I recommend, especially if you feel like you're just running ragged.
694. 00:38:06 And needs some blank space.
695. 00:38:08 I want to know why because he explains a lot of the rationale behind why that absence is so important.
696. 00:38:14 So yes, the end of absence, Michael Harris.
697. 00:38:17 Nice.
698. 00:38:17 Yeah.
699. 00:38:18 I know you've talked about it, but I haven't really looked at this one again, just because there's so many, so many books on my list currently.
700. 00:38:25 So many books, but this is very much in theme with a lot of the stuff we've got on here so far.
701. 00:38:31 A lot of the books that we've read actually, and honestly, a lot of the books in the productivity space, the self-development.
702. 00:38:36 Space, they're about cutting out all the noise and being able to focus on the thing that's important.
703. 00:38:42 And I think that that's just going to become more and more of an important skill as the culture that we live in.
704. 00:38:49 Just there's more and more information, more and more noise.
705. 00:38:52 So it's kind of an interesting observation looking at our list so far.
706. 00:38:55 Yeah.
707. 00:38:56 Don't fill all the space.
708. 00:38:58 All right.
709. 00:38:59 My number four is the book that started me on my productivity journey.
710. 00:39:06 And I heard about this initially from Asian efficiency that is eat that frog by Brian Tracy.
711. 00:39:13 And a reason that I picked this is that the whole idea of eating that frog still affects my day to day work, even to this day.
712. 00:39:22 It is the single strategy that is responsible for me getting up early, writing my book, getting it self-published in eight months and getting connected with Asian efficiency and Joe Buellig and Bookworm and all the other things that I'm doing right now.
713. 00:39:38 Like this is the one thing that if I were to pick like only one that contributed to my current situation, it is this whole idea of eating your frog.
714. 00:39:47 Now the background of that phrase eat that frog because if you're not familiar with this, you're probably like, what the heck?
715. 00:39:53 What does that even mean?
716. 00:39:54 I'm not eating a frog.
717. 00:39:56 Right.
718. 00:39:57 There's a Mark Twain quote that goes something like, if you eat a live frog first thing every day, nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
719. 00:40:05 And the productivity perspective on that is that we tend to procrastinate on the things that are big, they're ugly, they're distasteful.
720. 00:40:15 And so if you can apply the very best of your mental resources, your willpower, your attention, your focus, you know, at the beginning of your day before you do anything else, if you prioritize those things, then that does a couple of things for you.
721. 00:40:29 Number one, you can consistently take action on your important projects, whether they are work related or whether it's your side project or side hustle like me, you know, trying to write my book.
722. 00:40:39 But then secondly, what it does, even if it's a work frog and you do it once you get to the office, what that allows you to do is handle the big stuff at the beginning of the day.
723. 00:40:50 And then in the afternoon when your day goes, Hey, why are because sometimes it will, you're not going to feel so bad about it.
724. 00:40:57 You're not going to be as stressed out because you'll have the confidence knowing that you at least got this important thing done.
725. 00:41:04 And that mindset, that's the really important thing for me. And that made all the difference honestly.
726. 00:41:10 When I when I was trying to write my book and having to go to the office and working with a development team all over the world and being stressed out, having too much to do, not enough time to do it in like all that stuff I've been there.
727. 00:41:22 But at least when I started eating my frog and doing my writing, you know, I felt good that I was consistently taking action on this thing that internally to me was super important.
728. 00:41:34 And so when something went wrong during the day and I had to slow down and deal with a quote unquote emergency, I didn't feel so bad about it.
729. 00:41:42 Like it's kind of weird. It's kind of hard to explain. But like in the back of your mind, it's almost like, Oh, this, this isn't really that big a deal.
730. 00:41:49 And it's just a little bit of a perspective change that comes from doing those important things first.
731. 00:41:53 Yeah, I've not read this book. I know I probably should.
732. 00:41:57 Whoops.
733. 00:42:00 I guess, you know, this is one of those that people in the productivity space talk
734. 00:42:04 about quite a bit. I have to say that this is one that I just kind of embraced the concept of do the most difficult thing first.
735. 00:42:13 And I haven't really gone beyond that. So whoops.
736. 00:42:17 On that I should probably read it at some point.
737. 00:42:20 The book itself is interesting because it's called eat that frog.
738. 00:42:23 But really the whole book is 21 short strategies for overcoming procrastination.
739. 00:42:27 OK. And they eat that frog strategy.
740. 00:42:30 Like that's number one.
741. 00:42:31 And a lot of the other ones, you know, maybe he'll reference it, but they're kind of separate chapters.
742. 00:42:36 So if you're like just getting started in the productivity space, this book is great because it gives you a whole bunch of strategies and you can pick the ones that you think are really going to work.
743. 00:42:45 But eat that frog that like that seems to be applicable to anybody in any situation.
744. 00:42:51 And you can just pick that up once you get the gist of it.
745. 00:42:53 But there's a lot of great stuff in here.
746. 00:42:55 And also Brian Tracy is a very good writer.
747. 00:42:57 I really like his style. He's very easy to read.
748. 00:42:59 So yes, I should read this one. Round five.
749. 00:43:02 Yep. This book.
750. 00:43:04 This is my last one.
751. 00:43:05 I have to make this is a good one, right?
752. 00:43:07 I think we'll have several honorable mentions, but this is the last official pick.
753. 00:43:10 OK. All right.
754. 00:43:11 That makes me feel better.
755. 00:43:12 This one is the checklist manifesto, a tool go one day.
756. 00:43:15 And I think there are a lot of people in my life that wish I had not read this.
757. 00:43:19 So whoops. Sorry about that.
758. 00:43:23 What I have learned is that checklists are something that I'm drawn to.
759. 00:43:28 And not necessarily from the stance of trying to just check things off as much as using
760. 00:43:35 checklists as a communication tool.
761. 00:43:37 And I'm thinking specifically of a couple scenarios where I'm the leader of teams
762. 00:43:44 and those teams need to perform tasks and they all need to do them in the same way.
763. 00:43:50 And this book really gave me the motivation and the terminology and the philosophy
764. 00:43:56 behind why we should be using checklists to do that.
765. 00:43:59 And what they have become with the communications side of that is they've really
766. 00:44:04 developed a way for us to say, here's how this process needs to happen.
767. 00:44:09 OK, great.
768. 00:44:10 But what happens if we add an aspect to that, which we've done?
769. 00:44:13 Well, instead of having to do a whole, let's get a meeting together and let's get
770. 00:44:17 everybody on the same page and explain it and blah, blah, blah.
771. 00:44:21 We could just add one or two items to that checklist and put links to them.
772. 00:44:26 Say, here, this is what, you know, this is the description of what this is.
773. 00:44:30 And done.
774. 00:44:31 That's it.
775. 00:44:33 People can can do that as they go through them.
776. 00:44:36 It's not like it's a big to do to make those changes, but at the same time, it also
777. 00:44:41 prevents people from making mistakes or close to.
778. 00:44:45 So I really was drawn to, or I guess maybe drank the Kool-Aid over this whole book,
779. 00:44:52 just because I'm very much one who is a perfectionist and wants to get things right.
780. 00:44:59 And having a simple list, gosh, it's just a checklist, but it really does solve a
781. 00:45:07 lot of problems.
782. 00:45:07 It really does.
783. 00:45:08 So this one had a pretty big impact on me just because it basically allowed me to say
784. 00:45:13 checklists are okay, instead of resisting them and feeling like it was petty or
785. 00:45:19 something that wasn't worth my time or I shouldn't need this, but a simple checklist
786. 00:45:25 goes a long ways.
787. 00:45:26 So I'm grateful for GoWanda putting this together and saying it's okay to like checklists.
788. 00:45:35 It's all right.
789. 00:45:36 So thank you, Atul.
790. 00:45:37 Dr. GoWanda.
791. 00:45:39 GoWanda.
792. 00:45:41 I was wondering if you were going to pick this one, because I remember when we did
793. 00:45:43 it, you were pretty excited about it.
794. 00:45:46 I was all over it.
795. 00:45:47 So, yep.
796. 00:45:47 All right, man, this is really hard picking just one more.
797. 00:45:52 Maybe we should extend this.
798. 00:45:55 But if I have to pick just one more, I have to pick man search for meaning by Victor
799. 00:46:01 Frankel.
800. 00:46:02 As I mentioned when we did that episode, like that book really, really impacted me.
801. 00:46:08 And I think that it's a very good read and everybody should read that at some point,
802. 00:46:15 because it gives you a good perspective on your own situation.
803. 00:46:18 You can get caught up in the moment and think that all these things are going
804. 00:46:22 wrong.
805. 00:46:23 And then you read that and you're like, yeah, I don't have it so bad.
806. 00:46:26 And he's a great example of the power of a positive attitude.
807. 00:46:32 I mean, the thing that got him through basically was his his attitude.
808. 00:46:37 And it's really interesting to hear some of the stories that he shares and how,
809. 00:46:41 like when people change their attitude or they lost that positive attitude,
810. 00:46:44 like they didn't last very long in the concentration camps.
811. 00:46:47 I also was really impacted even at the very beginning of the book in the
812. 00:46:51 introduction where he had, he was granted the visa to go to the United States
813. 00:46:55 and escape it.
814. 00:46:56 But he knew everybody from his family who was still in this hometown was, was
815. 00:47:01 they were going to be putting the concentration camps by the Nazi soldiers.
816. 00:47:05 And he chose to stay.
817. 00:47:07 And even at that point, I was just like, wow, like that takes a lot of guts,
818. 00:47:12 a lot of a lot of character.
819. 00:47:13 And I think a lot of empathy.
820. 00:47:15 And when you think about like, I want to become a better leader, it's one of the,
821. 00:47:21 the things that I get out of bookworm is all of the different areas that I can
822. 00:47:26 grow in so that I can lead myself better, lead my family better, lead any team
823. 00:47:30 that I'm a part of better.
824. 00:47:32 Like a lot of it comes down to serving the people around you.
825. 00:47:36 And you can't serve the people around you that when you're, when you're being selfish.
826. 00:47:40 And this is just the best example I have ever found of being a selfless servant.
827. 00:47:46 And, you know, his, when he wrote the book, he mentions in the introduction that he
828. 00:47:52 didn't even want the credit for it.
829. 00:47:54 Like he didn't even want his name to be associated with it.
830. 00:47:57 Yeah.
831. 00:47:58 But, you know, it's one of those things that he's, I believe he's passed away now,
832. 00:48:03 but like years after it's still like, I forget, I've heard many millions of copies.
833. 00:48:07 It's, it's, it's sold.
834. 00:48:09 Like that's, that's the acid test for whether you are a good leader, in my opinion,
835. 00:48:14 is whether the stuff that you do, the stuff that you say, whether it has any
836. 00:48:18 lasting impact, you know, he left a legacy with, with his experience and his
837. 00:48:23 documentation of it and just his attitude towards the whole situation.
838. 00:48:26 And not saying that I want to have the same legacy because I'm not in the same
839. 00:48:30 situation as him, all I can really do is apply the principles to my own path.
840. 00:48:34 But I'm inspired by how the average person, you know, when they, when they are
841. 00:48:41 faced with the opportunity to do something extraordinary, they can rise to the
842. 00:48:45 occasion.
843. 00:48:46 That's what I got out of reading.
844. 00:48:47 This is like, you have this, you have this inside of you and you don't really
845. 00:48:50 even realize it until the stuff hits the fan and then you have to reach down deep
846. 00:48:54 and you can do these things.
847. 00:48:55 Like that's what I want to be able to do.
848. 00:48:58 And everything that I'm doing now is kind of pedaling before the hill.
849. 00:49:02 So when that moment comes, whatever it looks like, you know, maybe it's not
850. 00:49:06 me being thrown into a concentration camp, but when there's an opportunity
851. 00:49:10 that I can rise to the occasion and be excellent.
852. 00:49:13 I really thought this was going to be your first round pick.
853. 00:49:15 I did.
854. 00:49:17 I figured you might.
855. 00:49:18 No, you, this one hit you pretty hard.
856. 00:49:22 I knew that so much so that you wrote a whole thing about it.
857. 00:49:25 So I really expected this to come out earlier in the rounds.
858. 00:49:29 And when we, since we started round five, I was like, oh, wait, is he not going to
859. 00:49:33 pick that really?
860. 00:49:34 Like, that's what I was feeling, but I'm glad that you did choose it.
861. 00:49:37 So this, that was an important book.
862. 00:49:39 I know for, for both of us in one way or another, but yeah, that one, I've actually
863. 00:49:44 used that one as part of church staff meetings.
864. 00:49:49 We do a devotional before our meetings start and we rotate who's in charge of that.
865. 00:49:54 And whenever I had my turn, the last round, there was a section of this that I used
866. 00:50:00 for that particular devotional.
867. 00:50:02 So yeah, it was, it was an impactful book.
868. 00:50:05 So yes, definitely one that needs to be here on the list.
869. 00:50:09 I'm just surprised it took this long to come out, Mike.
870. 00:50:12 Yeah.
871. 00:50:13 Well, if you look at what else is on my list, there's probably a few other things
872. 00:50:16 that you're like, I can't believe it's not on there.
873. 00:50:18 Right.
874. 00:50:18 Like the five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick once again, one of my favorite
875. 00:50:22 books, and I really think it illustrates why that whole artificial harmony is so
876. 00:50:27 dangerous just because, you know, no one's saying anything doesn't mean that stuff
877. 00:50:32 isn't there and it's much better to just deal with it, get it out into the open,
878. 00:50:35 create that culture where you have the trust in your teammates, where you can be
879. 00:50:38 honest and open.
880. 00:50:39 Like that's, that's pretty rare, but it's super, super important.
881. 00:50:43 And I've given away tons of copies of that book in particular, but when you
882. 00:50:47 compare it against the other ones that I have picked here, it just didn't quite
883. 00:50:52 make the cut.
884. 00:50:52 Yeah.
885. 00:50:53 I have four honorable mentions.
886. 00:50:58 Do you want to just hit these rapid fire?
887. 00:51:01 Or do you want to actually talk about each one of them?
888. 00:51:02 Let's go back and forth.
889. 00:51:04 So I listed five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lunschieri.
890. 00:51:07 So you do another one and then we'll just keep going.
891. 00:51:09 All right.
892. 00:51:09 So these aren't rounds, but one that I've got here is the inevitable.
893. 00:51:16 This is not a bookworm book.
894. 00:51:19 This is by Kevin Kelly.
895. 00:51:21 Tagline is understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our
896. 00:51:25 future.
897. 00:51:25 And this is one that he goes through different types of technology.
898. 00:51:34 I don't even know how to explain it, but things that technology is doing, like
899. 00:51:40 technology is always becoming something.
900. 00:51:42 It's always flowing from one thing to another.
901. 00:51:45 It's always accessing something.
902. 00:51:46 Like those are different aspects and forces of technology they continue to, to
903. 00:51:52 occur.
904. 00:51:52 And I, I definitely could see being someone who works deep in technology,
905. 00:51:59 especially from a software stance.
906. 00:52:01 Like this really shows a lot of the behind the scenes, what's going on in the
907. 00:52:07 tech space from a philosophical stance and helps you understand how it's moving
908. 00:52:13 and where it's progressing to.
909. 00:52:15 So it was definitely one that I was struck by.
910. 00:52:19 And I think if you're trying to understand the tech space in any way, this would be a
911. 00:52:23 must read.
912. 00:52:24 Like if you want to understand how things are moving in the tech space, you need to
913. 00:52:29 go pick this one up.
914. 00:52:30 It was very interesting to me.
915. 00:52:32 Nice.
916. 00:52:33 Yeah, that does sound, that's, I'm pretty interesting.
917. 00:52:35 Next one that I've got for an honorable mention.
918. 00:52:39 And this again, you could make the argument that this should be on my actual list.
919. 00:52:44 And that's the 12 week year by Brian Moran, just because it's been so
920. 00:52:48 influential in how I get things done.
921. 00:52:52 I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I'm going up to Door County for
922. 00:52:57 my personal treat, my thinking date, where I'm literally going to spend an
923. 00:52:59 entire day thinking about what are my personal and professional goals that I
924. 00:53:04 want to accomplish during the next 12 weeks.
925. 00:53:06 I've devoted an entire day to this because it is so important.
926. 00:53:10 So this is definitely something that's translated into my day to day life.
927. 00:53:15 But again, compared to a lot of other stuff on the list, I just couldn't
928. 00:53:20 justify it picking it in the first five rounds.
929. 00:53:22 But this is a really, really good, good book.
930. 00:53:26 I know you've implemented 12 week year two.
931. 00:53:28 The things that I really like about this are number one, that by setting 12
932. 00:53:34 week goals instead of yearly goals, you can achieve more than you thought possible.
933. 00:53:39 The point that they make in the book is that people tend to set annual goals and
934. 00:53:43 they wait 11 months to start working on them.
935. 00:53:44 And I totally agree with that.
936. 00:53:47 So if you set a 12 week goal, you can achieve a lot of times, a year's worth of
937. 00:53:51 work in only 90 days.
938. 00:53:52 But also if you miss, you have four chances throughout the year to hit the reset
939. 00:53:58 button and start over.
940. 00:53:59 And there have been 12 week periods where I have just not done anything that I
941. 00:54:03 wanted to get done.
942. 00:54:04 And it's really comforting to know that, you know, next week is a new 12 week year
943. 00:54:08 and I can start over.
944. 00:54:09 It's kind of like having four chances for your new year's resolutions.
945. 00:54:11 And the end result, in my opinion, is that you gain a lot more traction on the
946. 00:54:16 goals that are actually important to you.
947. 00:54:17 Yeah, I was big into this for a while.
948. 00:54:20 I actually have dropped doing this entirely.
949. 00:54:23 I've kind of gotten to doing some themes over certain periods.
950. 00:54:28 Sometimes it's like one month themes.
951. 00:54:30 Sometimes it's two month themes.
952. 00:54:31 So I'm kind of back and forth right now.
953. 00:54:34 I will say that the 12 week year was one that helped me to get to that point
954. 00:54:39 and helped me to break my, my work schedule down into smaller chunks versus this
955. 00:54:45 year, I'm going to do XYZ.
956. 00:54:47 So definitely one that I can get on board with saying is a good honorable mention,
957. 00:54:54 though it wasn't on my list.
958. 00:54:55 So take that for what it's worth.
959. 00:54:57 The next one I've got here is DARREN GRATELY by Brené Brown, how the courage to be
960. 00:55:01 vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead.
961. 00:55:04 And there was one major takeaway I had from this one.
962. 00:55:09 And that was take chances and it, okay, well, I am someone who likes to know what's
963. 00:55:18 going to happen before it happens.
964. 00:55:19 I haven't been a real big risk taker at all and don't really like putting myself
965. 00:55:26 out there unless I have to.
966. 00:55:28 This book was one big piece in telling me to get over it, Joe.
967. 00:55:35 Put yourself out there, take a chance.
968. 00:55:38 You know, otherwise you're not going to be anything super important.
969. 00:55:42 Like that's just not, you're like, you're not going to be a big mover in any space
970. 00:55:47 or a big help to someone.
971. 00:55:48 So get out there, put yourself out there.
972. 00:55:51 It'll be okay.
973. 00:55:51 Like this book was a big push and a motivator in that way.
974. 00:55:55 So grateful for this one.
975. 00:55:58 I was a little bit surprised when you initially said this one, but I guess
976. 00:56:01 thinking back, it makes sense because I believe that reading this one is the thing
977. 00:56:08 that led you to picking my.
978. 00:56:10 Unfavorite book of all time.
979. 00:56:11 Yep.
980. 00:56:12 The Amanda Palmer one.
981. 00:56:13 Yep.
982. 00:56:14 Cause I know Amanda Palmer is heavily influenced by, by, uh, Renee Brown.
983. 00:56:19 Right.
984. 00:56:19 So, uh, I, I will say Amanda Palmer's book was not on this list and not anywhere
985. 00:56:25 close.
986. 00:56:26 Just I thought about it.
987. 00:56:27 Easy.
988. 00:56:28 Picking that as my number one, just as a joke.
989. 00:56:29 All right.
990. 00:56:31 Another one on my honorable mention list is, and again, I have trouble picking
991. 00:56:35 between two of them, but they're both by the same author.
992. 00:56:38 So I'll give you both of them.
993. 00:56:39 Although the one that I'm officially going to pick is Love is the Killer
994. 00:56:41 App by Tim Sanders, although today we are rich is also very good.
995. 00:56:44 Love is the Killer App.
996. 00:56:46 I'm picking though officially because it's a little bit shorter and also it
997. 00:56:50 really just hammers home.
998. 00:56:52 The idea of the abundance mindset, it's all about like, if you really want to
999. 00:56:56 succeed at business, the way to do that is to, and his words love other people,
1000. 00:57:00 like serve other people, put other people first.
1001. 00:57:02 Don't even worry about other people's success.
1002. 00:57:05 Just think, how can I help that person?
1003. 00:57:07 And I think that this is, uh, it's really something that has translated into my own
1004. 00:57:14 life is that, you know, abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset.
1005. 00:57:17 Cause the other way that you could view success is to say that, well, if I put
1006. 00:57:21 that person down, then I can be lifted up.
1007. 00:57:24 Uh, but that whole idea of there's only so much success to go around.
1008. 00:57:28 I think that that's pretty prevalent and I also think it's pretty dangerous.
1009. 00:57:31 It's also completely unnecessary.
1010. 00:57:33 I believe that there's no shortage of success out there.
1011. 00:57:37 Like you can have as much success as you want and that doesn't diminish what
1012. 00:57:40 I'm able to do.
1013. 00:57:41 And actually, you know, if I'm looking at how can I help other people, what I've
1014. 00:57:48 found is that a lot of times people are more willing to help you and a lot of
1015. 00:57:50 the things that I'm doing right now.
1016. 00:57:52 Uh, I am the benefactor of something that I did not earn.
1017. 00:57:56 And, uh, I am very thankful for that.
1018. 00:58:00 And I want to, I guess the term would be kind of like, pay it forward.
1019. 00:58:02 How can I help other people, pull other people up, get to the same level of
1020. 00:58:07 success or even beyond like what I've been able to achieve.
1021. 00:58:10 And Tim Sanders is a really good, uh, it's a really easy read.
1022. 00:58:14 He's a really good author.
1023. 00:58:15 Um, I've actually met him.
1024. 00:58:17 So he's a, he's a really cool guy.
1025. 00:58:19 And the, the, what he says in the book totally comes across when you meet him
1026. 00:58:22 in person.
1027. 00:58:22 He's very authentic.
1028. 00:58:24 Cool.
1029. 00:58:24 Yeah.
1030. 00:58:25 I own this book.
1031. 00:58:26 Just haven't read it.
1032. 00:58:26 Maybe it'll be a gap book at some point.
1033. 00:58:28 Another honorable mention here.
1034. 00:58:30 I've got two more.
1035. 00:58:31 I don't know how many you have.
1036. 00:58:32 Uh, but the next one I'm going to pick here is perennial seller by Ryan holiday.
1037. 00:58:36 He is the one who, this is, of course, not a bookworm book, but he wrote the book.
1038. 00:58:42 Uh, the obstacle is the way, which is one of, what was it?
1039. 00:58:45 Episode three, I think.
1040. 00:58:47 Uh, through four, something like that that we did.
1041. 00:58:49 Uh, but this one is about the process that you go through to create a thing, a book,
1042. 00:58:59 uh, you know, something online, you name it.
1043. 00:59:03 Uh, you go through the process of building that and how do you do it such that it's
1044. 00:59:10 not necessarily a big time best seller list hitting item as much as it is one that
1045. 00:59:16 builds slowly and continually starts to, uh, to build into a, uh, what am I trying
1046. 00:59:23 to say?
1047. 00:59:24 It's something that lasts a long time and sells for hundreds of years.
1048. 00:59:27 Like it's a perennial seller, just that.
1049. 00:59:30 And he has a lot of examples, uh, in the book, but the tagline that he has here is
1050. 00:59:35 the art of making and marketing work that lasts.
1051. 00:59:38 So it was very influential to me in helping me understand how to go about
1052. 00:59:43 building some of my online stuff.
1053. 00:59:46 And what are the things that I should be doing or shouldn't be doing with my
1054. 00:59:50 business online?
1055. 00:59:51 And although I will say I haven't been very successful in implementing hardly any
1056. 00:59:56 of those, it has continued to form my thoughts around it.
1057. 01:00:01 So it's one that I continue to reference very regularly.
1058. 01:00:05 Yeah, this is a, this is a good one.
1059. 01:00:08 Uh, I was, I really liked the, the one that we covered for bookworm, the
1060. 01:00:12 obstacles, the way I think is that one we covered.
1061. 01:00:15 He goes, the enemy is another one that he's got.
1062. 01:00:16 Um, they were everything that Ryan Holiday writes.
1063. 01:00:20 I'm, I'm a fan of, I'll just pick one more official one and then I'll give a
1064. 01:00:24 couple, couple rapid fire at the end, maybe I have to get Simon Sinek on this
1065. 01:00:29 list and we covered start with why, but the book that I really liked by him is
1066. 01:00:37 leaders eat last.
1067. 01:00:38 It's really, really good.
1068. 01:00:40 Obviously the focus is on, on leadership, the story that he tells at the very
1069. 01:00:44 beginning, he talks about in the Marines, uh, the, the leaders will come into the
1070. 01:00:49 child line and they'll make sure that everybody else underneath them eats first.
1071. 01:00:53 And I think that's a really powerful idea, but he also has a lot of really cool
1072. 01:00:57 stories on how this plays out.
1073. 01:00:59 There's one story in particular at the end of this book, which I have referenced
1074. 01:01:05 many, many, many times because he kind of deconstructs the situations that exist
1075. 01:01:12 currently and how we got into these situations and how it was really like a
1076. 01:01:15 lack of leadership.
1077. 01:01:16 So one thing from this book that I will always remember is he talks about, and
1078. 01:01:21 I'm going to probably mess up a few of the specifics, but you'll get the idea
1079. 01:01:24 how we got into our current political climate where you've got the Democrats
1080. 01:01:29 versus the Republicans and they are just so militantly against each other.
1081. 01:01:33 Cause he's like, it wasn't always that way.
1082. 01:01:36 And he points back to a specific moment when Newt Gingrich, at the speaker of the,
1083. 01:01:41 as the speaker of the house passed some policy change where they didn't have to
1084. 01:01:47 be in Washington, D.C. as often as they, they normally were.
1085. 01:01:51 So up until that point, Democrats, Republicans, whatever, they lived in Washington,
1086. 01:01:56 D.C.
1087. 01:01:56 Their kids went to the same schools.
1088. 01:01:57 They went to the same church as they saw each other outside of the house or the
1089. 01:02:01 Senate floor and it humanized the other side and they were able to work together
1090. 01:02:06 a lot better because of that.
1091. 01:02:07 But after this policy changed, they didn't stay in Washington, D.C.
1092. 01:02:10 They flew into Washington, D.C.
1093. 01:02:11 Whenever they had to vote and then they would go home and they'd raise funds.
1094. 01:02:15 And you can totally see what effect that is having now where just like, you see the
1095. 01:02:20 video of the debates and things like that.
1096. 01:02:23 And it's just like, how did we get here?
1097. 01:02:25 Well, that's how we got here is you have a bunch of people who have embraced
1098. 01:02:30 an us versus them mentality because you don't have to compromise.
1099. 01:02:34 You don't have to get along, you know, as soon as you walk out that door.
1100. 01:02:37 And I think like the whole idea of leadership that he promotes in this book,
1101. 01:02:43 like this is really the solution to a lot of the problems that we face as a society.
1102. 01:02:47 But also it's nothing I can do to fix that situation, at least not immediately.
1103. 01:02:53 So it's kind of like you see how it impacts things on like a large scale, but also it
1104. 01:03:00 inspires you to like control what you can control.
1105. 01:03:02 Sounds like an interesting book.
1106. 01:03:04 I've not read this one either.
1107. 01:03:06 But definitely when I want to pick up the last one I'm going to put on my honorable
1108. 01:03:09 mention list is one I just finished up because I can't help myself.
1109. 01:03:14 It's called the Revenge of Analog by David Sacks.
1110. 01:03:18 And Tagline is real things and why they matter.
1111. 01:03:22 And David goes through the comeback of vinyl records, the comeback of paper
1112. 01:03:28 notebooks, the comeback of film board games.
1113. 01:03:32 Like he goes through each of those and explains the cultural desires and different
1114. 01:03:40 aspects of the mental philosophies that people have and why?
1115. 01:03:45 Why did vinyl records come back?
1116. 01:03:47 You know, why is that?
1117. 01:03:49 Well, you buy a vinyl record and you like you have something physical in your hand
1118. 01:03:53 that you own that is music.
1119. 01:03:54 Like there's that, you know, sound quality aside because there's some arguments, one
1120. 01:04:00 way or the other depending on what you prefer, of which one's better.
1121. 01:04:03 But, you know, being able to own a physical thing can can have a big impact.
1122. 01:04:09 So that book is really interesting.
1123. 01:04:11 David is someone who writes online quite a bit and writes for some magazines and journals
1124. 01:04:17 and such.
1125. 01:04:18 So he knows how to write in an entertaining way.
1126. 01:04:21 So this is a very easy read and very intriguing and interesting historical read as well.
1127. 01:04:28 Because he does give you the history of each of those industries and why they ended up
1128. 01:04:32 where they were and why the analog version of something came back.
1129. 01:04:37 Like everybody thought that film photography was gone and yet it's coming back.
1130. 01:04:44 Hmm, interesting.
1131. 01:04:45 OK, so that was one that I it is one that I would highly recommend just because it's an
1132. 01:04:52 interesting read and it does play out some interesting aspects of our culture and society.
1133. 01:04:58 You don't really think about so definitely a good one.
1134. 01:05:01 I figured you were going to pick that one.
1135. 01:05:03 Yeah.
1136. 01:05:03 Also, when you were talking about the reason behind vinyl records coming back, I was
1137. 01:05:07 thinking myself two words, Casey list.
1138. 01:05:09 There you go.
1139. 01:05:12 All right.
1140. 01:05:13 So a couple of rapid fire ones for me and you can interject any that you might might think of.
1141. 01:05:18 But I really liked to rework by Jason Fried, which I read several years ago now.
1142. 01:05:24 I remember one chapter specifically in there about how meetings are toxic, which really impacted me.
1143. 01:05:29 But that's a very entertaining read.
1144. 01:05:31 A lot of the chapters are only a couple of pages.
1145. 01:05:33 It really gave me a whole new paradigm for how you can actually get work done.
1146. 01:05:37 Another book I really liked, which I definitely recommend people check out.
1147. 01:05:42 He is 30 Lessons for Living by Carl Pillimer.
1148. 01:05:45 Hard to pick it against all the other ones that I have on my list, even honorable mention ones.
1149. 01:05:50 But this is again one of those books that I would recommend everybody read.
1150. 01:05:54 Because it gives you a different perspective.
1151. 01:05:56 I mentioned this is one of my gap books, but the basic idea behind this is that there was this guy.
1152. 01:06:01 I think he's a doctor, Carl Pillimer, who interviewed a bunch of people in nursing homes who had gone through some things.
1153. 01:06:08 It was the golden generation, the last people who really had to sacrifice something, at least in the US anyways, you know, who had to that they went to their.
1154. 01:06:16 They served in the war and you know, they came back.
1155. 01:06:18 They had to sacrifice things like that.
1156. 01:06:20 They've got a different perspective on life than a lot of us do.
1157. 01:06:24 And they shared their lessons that they learned throughout their life, which had allowed them to be successful.
1158. 01:06:30 Very, very entertaining, very enlightening read.
1159. 01:06:34 Another one I've got to throw out there because I talked about it a lot is this whole idea of unique ability.
1160. 01:06:40 So unique ability 2.0 by Katherine Nemura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller.
1161. 01:06:45 This is put out by the strategic coach company, the Dan Sullivan company.
1162. 01:06:49 And really just it's a workbook and a book which kind of walks you through identifying your unique ability, what you're really good at, the thing that brings you life.
1163. 01:06:57 I sent you some emails as part of that.
1164. 01:06:59 You know, it was a very enlightening, helped me kind of land on what my life theme was.
1165. 01:07:04 As part of that, they mentioned the Colby assessment.
1166. 01:07:07 So another book that I've kind of talked about on the podcast is The Conative Connection by Kathy Colby.
1167. 01:07:14 And this is really like next level understanding how you work, in my opinion.
1168. 01:07:19 So there's a couple different things that go into like how you're wired, what your abilities are.
1169. 01:07:24 So you've got like your academic abilities, you've got your emotional intelligence abilities or soft skills, if you want to call them that.
1170. 01:07:32 And then you've got your your conative abilities.
1171. 01:07:35 And this is kind of like I mentioned probably on this podcast before I tend to be a high fact finder.
1172. 01:07:40 So it's my natural mode of work.
1173. 01:07:42 I tend to learn all the facts and then make a decision.
1174. 01:07:44 Well, not everybody's a high fact finder.
1175. 01:07:47 My wife is a high quick start.
1176. 01:07:48 So understanding that she's naturally just going to try something and that's going to drive me crazy.
1177. 01:07:53 Actually has a lot of value because then we can figure out how we work together better.
1178. 01:07:57 And it doesn't just have to be a marriage context.
1179. 01:07:59 Obviously that could be with with any sort of team that you find yourself in.
1180. 01:08:03 Last one I got throughout there is the War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
1181. 01:08:09 I think that for anybody in a creative field, understanding the idea behind the resistance
1182. 01:08:15 and how powerful it can be in keeping you from doing your creative work.
1183. 01:08:19 That's something that you need to have an awareness of.
1184. 01:08:22 And actually one more all throughout there, still like an artist by Austin Cleon because I mentioned that one a bunch of times.
1185. 01:08:27 That's the one that gave me the clarity that, you know, I actually am creative just because I'm not creating something completely new all the time.
1186. 01:08:33 Doesn't mean that I'm not creative.
1187. 01:08:35 I'm connecting the dots in a way that's never been done before.
1188. 01:08:37 So that is by definition creating.
1189. 01:08:40 You notice what's not on any of these lists?
1190. 01:08:42 What's that?
1191. 01:08:43 Getting things done.
1192. 01:08:44 Yes, yes, I did notice that.
1193. 01:08:47 I was just, I pulled up Bookworm FM, Bookworm.fm
1194. 01:08:53 and was just flipping through the list of books that we've covered and looking at the books that you would think would be on this list.
1195. 01:09:05 But aren't.
1196. 01:09:07 This is a great example. I'm glad that you called this out because this is an example of how
1197. 01:09:11 things stick with you or don't stick with you over time.
1198. 01:09:14 And you know, this one did not stick with me, did not age well, especially when we read the
1199. 01:09:18 the updated version.
1200. 01:09:19 And even now, well, especially now I would say, I think that a lot of the concepts that apply to the getting things done framework that he outlined there.
1201. 01:09:28 Yeah, you can still apply that and get get some clarity maybe.
1202. 01:09:31 But I think that it is not aging very well.
1203. 01:09:35 The whole idea of tags instead of context is way more powerful in my opinion.
1204. 01:09:39 And I just, I don't know, I know that OmniFocus was built on this for a long time.
1205. 01:09:45 And I think it's very telling that they've kind of broken away from that with OmniFocus 3.
1206. 01:09:49 I hate tags, just going to say.
1207. 01:09:51 Well, that's fine.
1208. 01:09:51 But I mean, it's an example of how the system that it was using didn't,
1209. 01:09:58 didn't adapt with the way people work.
1210. 01:10:01 And I kind of got that even when we read this.
1211. 01:10:03 When was this published?
1212. 01:10:04 This was July 7th, 2016, so two years ago.
1213. 01:10:07 You know, at the time we were like, I wish he would have spoken more to the technology and how that's actually changed.
1214. 01:10:14 You know, we heard like, this is the new version.
1215. 01:10:17 It's updated.
1216. 01:10:18 And all he did was strip out every technological reference.
1217. 01:10:20 True.
1218. 01:10:22 I don't know.
1219. 01:10:22 I think that shying away from that and attempt to be evergreen really that's that's not helped it.
1220. 01:10:27 And who knows, you know, maybe he'll come out with a new version and it's it's going to be updated for the way that that people work in it.
1221. 01:10:33 It better balances the the exponentially increased amount of information that people have in their inboxes.
1222. 01:10:39 But even with a simple framework, like this, a simple workflow where you just put things into the right place,
1223. 01:10:45 kind of feel like you've got to have a more efficient triage system for a lot of people anyways.
1224. 01:10:50 One that I was really expecting you to pick, but you didn't, was the seven habits of highly effective people.
1225. 01:10:59 I figured that. Yeah. I like, I really expected that and you never, you didn't even bring it up in your rapid fire stuff.
1226. 01:11:06 Yeah, that's true.
1227. 01:11:08 I don't know. I guess there is some stuff from there that I reference all the time.
1228. 01:11:13 I think even in the last episode, I mentioned the emotional bank account.
1229. 01:11:17 So stuff like that really sticks with me, but I also think that like the whole idea of the big rocks and sharpening the saw stuff like that.
1230. 01:11:26 Maybe it's just because I've been familiar with those concepts for a long time.
1231. 01:11:30 And when we read them in the context of the book and you've got all of those things packaged together,
1232. 01:11:35 you know, again, you kind of view it as in isolation.
1233. 01:11:39 And then as I achieve more distance from it, you know, how often do I go back to those things?
1234. 01:11:44 Not that often. I definitely, the case could be made that that should be on at least the honorable mentions list.
1235. 01:11:51 But you know, I've got way more honorable mentions than you do. So I had to draw a line somewhere.
1236. 01:11:56 The other one I'm going to call out just because I think this is interesting because this was a book that was
1237. 01:12:02 everybody talked about it. It was making a ton of circles.
1238. 01:12:06 Everybody was saying, you got to pick this up and you got to read it.
1239. 01:12:09 So we read it for bookworm and we'd really, it didn't rate very well for us.
1240. 01:12:15 You gave it a three. I gave it a four, but that was, you know, if I recall correctly,
1241. 01:12:20 I was being very generous with a four, but that was the 40 X. So the four disciplines of execution,
1242. 01:12:26 like that was a big book for a lot of people and a lot of folks recommended it, but we didn't really
1243. 01:12:32 care for it. So obviously it's not going to make this list in that case, but I just think that's
1244. 01:12:36 interesting. Yeah, again, there's some great ideas in there, but in the totality of the book itself,
1245. 01:12:43 if you were to just rip off like the first 50 pages and package that in a book under a different title,
1246. 01:12:48 I'd recommend that one for sure. Fair enough. But I definitely can't recommend that people
1247. 01:12:52 read that whole thing. All right. Well, there you go. There's the 28 team bookworm literary draft.
1248. 01:12:59 There's our list. So that means next time we're getting into episode 51, so we go back into the
1249. 01:13:04 regular swing of things, which means what, Mike, what do you have picked for us? Because yours is up
1250. 01:13:08 next. I've got a listener recommendation. This is actually the most recommended book on the bookworm
1251. 01:13:15 club. I checked it before we recorded. And that is great at work by Morton Hanson. I almost bought
1252. 01:13:20 this book a couple of weeks ago and just read it as a gap book because I was so intrigued by the
1253. 01:13:26 title and the description. And so when we picked something else for episode 50, I had to hold myself
1254. 01:13:34 back. And when you said, we're going to pick it up again in 51, Mike's going to have a book
1255. 01:13:40 picked out and I didn't have one last time. This is immediately the first thing that I thought of.
1256. 01:13:44 I'm excited to dig into this one. Now there you go. So there's the recommendations system at work
1257. 01:13:50 right there. So 51 will be great at work, Mike's picked. The one following that is mine at
1258. 01:13:56 the power of habit by Charles Duhigg. Duhigg, duhigg, duhigg. I don't know how you say it. Honestly,
1259. 01:14:03 the reason I've picked this, and it's been on the list for a little while, I've been working through
1260. 01:14:09 a lot of issues in my business operations that revolve around the need to build in habits on a
1261. 01:14:16 weekly basis and have been kind of unsuccessful in doing that. So I'm picking this one very
1262. 01:14:23 selfishly, trying to find ways to resolve that. And I thought it would be fun to drag you through
1263. 01:14:29 the mud with me, Mike. So the power of habit by Charles Duhigg. I hope it's better than smarter,
1264. 01:14:35 faster, better, which is his newer book. Was not a big fan of that one. Interesting.
1265. 01:14:40 That's not starting off real well.
1266. 01:14:42 Gap books. I've got a small book that I ordered recently from Michael Hyatt called No Fail Meetings.
1267. 01:14:52 It's very, very short. It's one of those like Derek Sivers, anything you want,
1268. 01:14:58 size books where it looks like it's about 60 pages and they're small. It's a smaller,
1269. 01:15:03 smaller book, perfect size for the Bookworm Bookmarks, by the way. There's enough
1270. 01:15:08 organizations and teams that I work with that the meetings are not efficient that I'm hoping
1271. 01:15:14 that there's going to be some real practical information here that I can apply, even if I'm
1272. 01:15:18 not leading the meeting to result in better meetings, better outcomes.
1273. 01:15:22 There you go. Yeah. My gap book is what you just mentioned, anything you want by Derek Sivers.
1274. 01:15:28 You told me to read this one. I picked it up and I needed a gap book and I needed to start reading
1275. 01:15:36 one today. That's it. It was sitting on my shelf. That one's pretty short. I think I read this in
1276. 01:15:42 like an hour and a half, but it's really engaging. He's the guy who created and sold CD Baby back in
1277. 01:15:49 the day. I think you'll probably get a lot of them. I'm interested to hear maybe for follow-up
1278. 01:15:53 next time what you thought of it. Cool. Like you said, the Bookworm literary draft of 2018,
1279. 01:16:00 the 10 best books of all time, according to Mike and Joe, curators of the Internet's largest
1280. 01:16:04 book club, asterisk. If you want to support the Internet's largest book club, asterisk,
1281. 01:16:09 then you can buy a t-shirt, link in the show notes, or you said bookworm.fm/shirt.
1282. 01:16:17 Buy a shirt, support the podcast, show everybody that you are the coolest cat in your local library,
1283. 01:16:24 and come see us at Macstock and we'll get you bookworm bookmarks and stickers.
1284. 01:16:29 Another way you can support the show, there's a few ways actually. One, because this was all about
1285. 01:16:35 just a massive book list, there's going to be tons of links to all of these things in the show notes.
1286. 01:16:41 Each one of those is an affiliate link through Amazon, so click on any one of those and we can
1287. 01:16:47 get a little bit of a kickback on that. It just helps with hosting and such to help pay for that.
1288. 01:16:51 So that's one way you can help us out. Another is by leaving us an iTunes review.
1289. 01:16:56 That's actually really good for helping other people find the show as well.
1290. 01:17:00 Weird ways algorithms work. And anyway, link in the show notes there as well that you can go to
1291. 01:17:08 iTunes and leave us a review. And then finally, join the club club.bookworm.fm.
1292. 01:17:13 And from there, you can drop in a recommendation, big button at the top makes that easy. But once
1293. 01:17:19 you've done that, make sure you vote. You can vote for books, which is exactly what Mike was
1294. 01:17:23 referring to with the top most recommended book that he chose. That's how that happened.
1295. 01:17:28 People were voting for other books on the club. So if you have one that you want to be a part of
1296. 01:17:33 the show, that's how you do it. Go submit it, hit the vote button, you'll be set.
1297. 01:17:39 Awesome. And thank you to everybody who listens to bookworm for 50 great episodes. I know I mentioned
1298. 01:17:45 at the beginning, we started this without any expectations of anybody listening. But it is
1299. 01:17:50 way more fun to have everybody along for the journey. So thank you so much for joining us.
1300. 01:17:54 The show is on Twitter as @bookworm.fm. I'm on Twitter as @bobbleheadjo. Jo is on Twitter as @jobuleg.
1301. 01:18:03 Let us know what you got out of bookworm. Those comments really do help a lot. They inspire us
1302. 01:18:10 to keep going. But thanks everybody for listening. If you're following along, the next book we're
1303. 01:18:15 going to be covering episode 51 is going to be Great at Work by Morton Hanson. And we will talk to