52: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

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1. 00:00:00 I'm still tired, Mike.
2. 00:00:03 Yeah.
3. 00:00:04 Coming from Max-Tock?
4. 00:00:05 I am in a pretty severe way, too.
5. 00:00:08 Well, you had quite a drive.
6. 00:00:11 Yeah.
7. 00:00:12 Well, all right.
8. 00:00:13 So buddy of mine, Justin, drove down.
9. 00:00:16 It was three hours for him to drive down.
10. 00:00:19 He stayed at my place Thursday night and had a great time.
11. 00:00:23 We got a chance to spend a little bit of time just the two of us just talking through.
12. 00:00:27 He does some work for me.
13. 00:00:28 So it's kind of a fun deal there.
14. 00:00:30 But then we drove to pick up Josh, another friend, which is an hour 15-minute drive.
15. 00:00:37 And then from his place to Max-Tock, I want to say it was six hours, six and a half hours
16. 00:00:43 somewhere in there.
17. 00:00:44 Then we had Max-Tock, of course.
18. 00:00:45 But then you flip and repeat it coming back.
19. 00:00:48 And as of this morning, I am finally recovered from this past weekend.
20. 00:00:53 And it's been quite the deal.
21. 00:00:56 Partially because my schedule was so thrown off, I got a migraine yesterday and fought
22. 00:01:01 it all day.
23. 00:01:02 So the joys of doing fun events.
24. 00:01:05 And I knew I was going to have to pay for things a little bit.
25. 00:01:08 Anytime I go out of my normal routines, I always have to deal with something.
26. 00:01:12 But I would gladly do it again.
27. 00:01:14 It was well worth the trip.
28. 00:01:16 I think anyone should go.
29. 00:01:17 So next year, 2019, I got the dates.
30. 00:01:20 I got them out of mic.
31. 00:01:22 Did he announce those dates at the end of?
32. 00:01:23 Because I didn't get to stay till the whole thing.
33. 00:01:25 I'll tell you the truth.
34. 00:01:26 I'm not sure.
35. 00:01:27 I spent most of Sunday afternoon chatting with people.
36. 00:01:32 And then I took off before the love notes to Newton.
37. 00:01:35 We were hanging out with JF and we went to Woodstock, just walked around and then got
38. 00:01:40 dinner with Don McAllister, David Sparks, Kelly Gamont, Gene McDonald, and a few other
39. 00:01:47 folks before we headed back Sunday night.
40. 00:01:50 But we had about a three hour drive.
41. 00:01:52 So a lot shorter than yours, but I was still spent by the end.
42. 00:01:56 I've noticed that the further I can spread out those long drives, the better, which is
43. 00:02:01 part of the reason that my wife and I go down there early.
44. 00:02:05 Although we think we're going to flip that next year.
45. 00:02:07 We're going to just stay later.
46. 00:02:09 Because if I'm, well, I mean, this year I was presenting and I did a pretty good job
47. 00:02:14 of compartmentalizing that and getting all my stuff done before we got down there.
48. 00:02:18 But still you're thinking about, well, I have to present twice on Saturday.
49. 00:02:22 So you can't really relax.
50. 00:02:24 By the time it was over, then I finally feel like I can relax.
51. 00:02:27 Plus you're taking in so much information.
52. 00:02:29 You learn from all these really smart people.
53. 00:02:32 And it's a lot just to process it all.
54. 00:02:35 And by the time the event's over, which it's only two days, you feel like you've been drinking
55. 00:02:39 from the fire hose and it's a little overwhelming.
56. 00:02:43 But it's a ton of fun.
57. 00:02:44 It was great to see you again.
58. 00:02:46 It was fun to meet a friend of the podcast, Justin and friend of the podcast, Josh.
59. 00:02:52 And a whole bunch of other people.
60. 00:02:53 So it was really cool.
61. 00:02:55 Yeah, for sure.
62. 00:02:56 No, I gladly do it again.
63. 00:02:58 And I just looked it up.
64. 00:03:00 So dates for 2019.
65. 00:03:01 All right.
66. 00:03:02 So if you're listening to this, you need to go, you know, put this on your calendar
67. 00:03:05 because you should come see us next year.
68. 00:03:07 July 27 and 28 is when they have it in 2019.
69. 00:03:13 And I should put a disclaimer out here.
70. 00:03:15 Like this is why I was interested in getting this because next year, July 18 is my wife
71. 00:03:21 and I is anniversary.
72. 00:03:23 Becky and I next year will be our 10 year anniversary.
73. 00:03:26 So we're planning like this one week, get away from the kids and go up in the mountains
74. 00:03:31 and go hiking and stuff.
75. 00:03:33 So we've been trying to figure out when to do that, but Mac stock is always like right
76. 00:03:39 on the line of where our anniversary lands.
77. 00:03:41 So I'm always on this delicate balance of can I go or not depending on if it hits our
78. 00:03:47 anniversary.
79. 00:03:48 So that's why I was trying to figure out.
80. 00:03:50 Okay, well, when is this and then we'll plan our week depending on when Mac stock is.
81. 00:03:55 So my anniversary trip for our 10 year is being moved dependent on Mac stock for next
82. 00:04:01 year.
83. 00:04:02 Nice.
84. 00:04:03 You should get Becky to come with.
85. 00:04:04 There's no mountains to hike down in Woodstock, Illinois.
86. 00:04:06 True.
87. 00:04:07 Rachel comes and she has a blast.
88. 00:04:08 She's definitely not an Uber Mac nerd.
89. 00:04:10 I know.
90. 00:04:11 I know.
91. 00:04:12 I told her she should come and then, you know, her and Rachel can hang out though.
92. 00:04:15 I'm not sure how I feel about that.
93. 00:04:16 I don't know if that's a good thing to encourage or not.
94. 00:04:20 Actually, if Josh is involved.
95. 00:04:21 That's true.
96. 00:04:22 Fun time.
97. 00:04:23 So yes, join us for Mac stock next year.
98. 00:04:27 Definitely.
99. 00:04:28 Another point of follow up here.
100. 00:04:30 We had bookworm shirts that have gone to print as this is published.
101. 00:04:35 We've still got about 24 hours left as we're recording this, but they've gone really well.
102. 00:04:40 We've sold 37 so far.
103. 00:04:43 I'm hoping to get to 50, but that's already better than Austin Clian, which I said last
104. 00:04:48 episode.
105. 00:04:49 That's the one I wanted to beat.
106. 00:04:50 Sorry, Austin.
107. 00:04:51 Well, he's sold more lifetime than we had.
108. 00:04:56 No, don't bring this up.
109. 00:04:57 Uh-uh.
110. 00:04:58 No, we beat him.
111. 00:04:59 Okay, fine.
112. 00:05:00 We beat him.
113. 00:05:01 No hard feelings.
114. 00:05:02 But yeah, these are sweet.
115. 00:05:04 There's T-shirts and sweatshirts.
116. 00:05:06 So thank you to everybody who supported the podcast and bought a shirt.
117. 00:05:11 You're going to get bookmarks and stickers too.
118. 00:05:14 But this was a fun thing to do and I can't wait to get my swag.
119. 00:05:19 Yes, yes, yes.
120. 00:05:21 And I have a whole bunch of bookmarks and stickers here thanks to you.
121. 00:05:24 Todd, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
122. 00:05:27 I meant to give you a whole other thing of bookmarks before you left, but I forgot.
123. 00:05:32 See?
124. 00:05:33 I got lucky.
125. 00:05:34 I kid you not.
126. 00:05:36 I came home with those and my wife was like, "Well, I guess you could put some in all the
127. 00:05:41 kids' books and stuff where we have."
128. 00:05:42 Because I'm reading the Chronicles in Narnia grouping of books for my girls, but we just
129. 00:05:48 had like a note card or something in there.
130. 00:05:51 So I pulled the note card out and put a bookworm bookmark in there.
131. 00:05:55 And then I realized, "Oh, wait.
132. 00:05:56 I usually have two different places in my Bible that I'm maintaining at one place, but
133. 00:06:00 I only have one of the ribbon bookmarks in my Bible."
134. 00:06:03 I was like, "Well, perfect.
135. 00:06:04 I'll put one of these bookworm bookmarks in that as well."
136. 00:06:08 And then my wife was like, "Well, you guys will swap it out in the book that I'm reading."
137. 00:06:13 So I swapped hers out at the same time.
138. 00:06:15 And then they're also reading a book for our oldest for her school.
139. 00:06:20 They read a long form book as well.
140. 00:06:22 So I went and swapped that bookmark out too.
141. 00:06:23 So bookworm bookmarks all over the Beelock household right now.
142. 00:06:28 And now I'm still looking for people to give them to.
143. 00:06:30 So if you need one and you're in my area, come see me.
144. 00:06:34 Mike has loaded me up.
145. 00:06:36 Yes.
146. 00:06:37 We have many, many bookmarks.
147. 00:06:38 Well, when you run out, let me know.
148. 00:06:39 I've got more.
149. 00:06:41 All right, should we get to action items from the last episode?
150. 00:06:45 Yes.
151. 00:06:46 All right.
152. 00:06:47 So I've got three of them.
153. 00:06:49 And I think we can go through these fairly quickly.
154. 00:06:51 My first one is consider how I can redesign my work.
155. 00:06:57 And that's kind of general and vague.
156. 00:06:58 But the basic idea from the previous book we did, "Great at Work" by Morton Hanson,
157. 00:07:03 was to figure out the things that you can do that really hit the mark.
158. 00:07:10 That's my synopsis of it anyways.
159. 00:07:12 And so when I was thinking about how can I redesign my work that kind of ties into the
160. 00:07:16 next action item here, which is to make a list of things I shouldn't be doing, there's
161. 00:07:20 a lot of stuff that I do pertaining to the work that I do.
162. 00:07:25 And I recognize that the things that I'm really good at, the things that are kind of in line
163. 00:07:30 with my unique ability are the content creation things.
164. 00:07:33 And so a lot of the admin type stuff, that's things that I really shouldn't be doing.
165. 00:07:38 And I've got a running list of things I shouldn't be doing.
166. 00:07:41 I keep adding to it.
167. 00:07:43 It's actually kind of fun.
168. 00:07:45 And then the challenge there is, okay, so if I shouldn't be doing this thing, it still
169. 00:07:49 needs to get done.
170. 00:07:50 How can I figure out a way that this can get done?
171. 00:07:52 Do I delegate it to somebody else?
172. 00:07:54 If I'm going to do that, I have to create a whole process for it to make sure that they
173. 00:07:59 can do it successfully.
174. 00:08:00 Yadda yadda yadda.
175. 00:08:02 But this has been a really cool action item.
176. 00:08:05 I don't seem myself stopping doing this anytime soon.
177. 00:08:08 This is kind of in line, by the way, with the questions I mentioned regarding the personal
178. 00:08:14 retreat, the thinking day.
179. 00:08:17 What should I start doing?
180. 00:08:18 What should I stop doing?
181. 00:08:19 What should I keep doing?
182. 00:08:20 This is what should I stop doing, in my opinion?
183. 00:08:22 And this is also part of the thing that my wife and I do whenever we have our family
184. 00:08:25 meetings every week, we ask those same questions.
185. 00:08:28 And so it's kind of always at the front of my mind is like, what should I not be doing?
186. 00:08:32 And then taking action and stopping doing those things, that's actually really fun
187. 00:08:37 and exciting.
188. 00:08:38 Interesting.
189. 00:08:39 As you're talking, I was creating a new list in OmniFocus called Stop Doing.
190. 00:08:45 I'm going to try this.
191. 00:08:46 There you go.
192. 00:08:47 That's right.
193. 00:08:48 You're back on OmniFocus.
194. 00:08:49 You enjoying your OmniFocus mug that I brought you?
195. 00:08:52 I am.
196. 00:08:53 So Mike bought me an OmniFocus coffee mug and I used it yesterday morning and my wife
197. 00:08:59 goes, what is that?
198. 00:09:01 It's like it's my OmniFocus mug that Mike got me.
199. 00:09:03 She's like, of course you have an OmniFocus mug now.
200. 00:09:07 Absolutely.
201. 00:09:08 Yep.
202. 00:09:10 Very much appreciated.
203. 00:09:11 Love that mug.
204. 00:09:12 It's one of my favorites now.
205. 00:09:13 Nice.
206. 00:09:14 I'm not sure if this is like an open ended thing.
207. 00:09:15 I found that on societysix.com, they've got a couple things that they are doing.
208. 00:09:21 Like the Omni Group themselves has a campaign that does it.
209. 00:09:24 And society six is kind of like Cotton Bureau, except it's always open and you can do different
210. 00:09:30 artsy things.
211. 00:09:31 Like some stickers or templates, just things like that as well.
212. 00:09:34 But I saw the mug and I was like, oh, this is perfect.
213. 00:09:35 I got to get this for Joe.
214. 00:09:38 I appreciate it.
215. 00:09:40 I have one as well.
216. 00:09:41 Hey, I figured you did.
217. 00:09:43 My last action item here is to ask open ended questions.
218. 00:09:47 And this is something that I have done.
219. 00:09:49 And it's something that I will continue to try to do.
220. 00:09:54 But I've noticed this myself just in like the meetings that I've been involved in since
221. 00:09:58 we read that book, asking these and just waiting for people to come up with an answer.
222. 00:10:04 And at first, there's always some awkward silence because people don't like being put
223. 00:10:08 on the spot, especially like some of the team meetings that I've been involved in.
224. 00:10:13 They tend to be led/dominated by a couple of personalities a lot of times.
225. 00:10:20 And it's really easy for people to show up, like not even say hi because that's just
226. 00:10:26 not the way that they do it, even though it's a Skype call, like that's kind of standard
227. 00:10:28 protocol.
228. 00:10:29 Everybody says hi at the beginning.
229. 00:10:31 But there are literally people in some of these meetings that will show up and not say
230. 00:10:35 a single word and then sign off at the end.
231. 00:10:39 And so I've been trying to flip the tables a little bit and ask these questions and even
232. 00:10:44 call out people who I know haven't contributed in a while and be like, hey, so Brian, what
233. 00:10:49 do you think about this?
234. 00:10:50 What's your opinion?
235. 00:10:51 What should we do to solve this problem?
236. 00:10:54 And I just think that that's providing value on so many levels.
237. 00:10:58 And that kind of ties into one of the gap books that I had read recently, which is No
238. 00:11:02 Film Meetings, I think, by Michael Hyatt.
239. 00:11:04 Short little book, but it talked to this as well.
240. 00:11:08 So these open-ended questions, that's one place that I've been asking them.
241. 00:11:11 And then also I'm asking them to know myself when I do like the personal retreat, thinking
242. 00:11:14 day, asking those questions, what should I start doing, stop doing, keep doing.
243. 00:11:19 Those are kind of open-ended questions.
244. 00:11:21 I mean, they're very specific.
245. 00:11:23 It's not the same type of question necessarily that you get in those meetings.
246. 00:11:28 But I'm just looking for as many opportunities as I can to do this sort of thing.
247. 00:11:32 And just in my mind, when I say open-ended questions, there is no right or wrong answer.
248. 00:11:39 It's not a simple process.
249. 00:11:40 It's just like, throw this out there.
250. 00:11:42 And then whatever comes back is acceptable responses sort of a thing.
251. 00:11:46 Yeah, I like this.
252. 00:11:47 I read the book, maybe we should do this for the show at some point, Mike.
253. 00:11:51 I read the book Quiet by Susan Kane, which is all about introverts.
254. 00:11:56 And one of the aspects of that was with meetings asking questions and then requiring everyone
255. 00:12:02 to answer them, which some introverts, I'm sure, whenever I said that just kind of cringe,
256. 00:12:07 like, no, don't do that.
257. 00:12:10 That might be your reaction.
258. 00:12:11 But honestly, that's probably one of the best things you can do is pinpoint people and
259. 00:12:15 say, hey, what do you think about this?
260. 00:12:16 Because most of the time, you know, someone has an opinion.
261. 00:12:20 They're just a little nervous about saying it.
262. 00:12:22 Yep, totally.
263. 00:12:23 All right.
264. 00:12:24 So you got some action items?
265. 00:12:26 I do.
266. 00:12:27 And I've actually gotten worse on the first one.
267. 00:12:30 That's not good.
268. 00:12:32 Go figure.
269. 00:12:33 The first one here is never be the bottleneck.
270. 00:12:36 And the intent here is that I'm not the one holding up the work being done in my business
271. 00:12:41 since I have other people who are doing things for me.
272. 00:12:44 And thanks to Max Doc, though, I love it.
273. 00:12:47 I am now quite behind.
274. 00:12:50 And now quite the bottleneck.
275. 00:12:52 So I'm trying to catch up with them and trying to get back on top of things there.
276. 00:12:58 And it's not actually going to get better for a little while because I'm leaving tomorrow
277. 00:13:01 on a camping trip and won't be back until Monday.
278. 00:13:04 So it's way ghosts.
279. 00:13:09 So I think, you know, if anything, this has been a good time for me to do this because
280. 00:13:13 I think it's taught me a lot about, you know, I really do need to figure this out.
281. 00:13:19 Like I need to get my act together on this, if you will, just because I know that I shouldn't
282. 00:13:25 be the one that's holding things up.
283. 00:13:26 And yet it seems like I always am.
284. 00:13:28 So I'm still working on it.
285. 00:13:31 You got this, Joe.
286. 00:13:32 You got this.
287. 00:13:33 Thanks.
288. 00:13:34 Thanks for the thanks to the rally cry there.
289. 00:13:37 Number two, measure project time start to finish.
290. 00:13:40 I built the systems for this to help track it.
291. 00:13:44 I don't have anything to report on it at the moment other than the logging systems are
292. 00:13:50 now completely automatic such that I know when things start, I know when they finish
293. 00:13:55 and then it creates reports automatically to tell me how did it work out.
294. 00:14:00 But I've only had like three projects finish up in that amount of time.
295. 00:14:03 So I don't really know, like is, you know, it's not enough to tell me, are we in a good
296. 00:14:09 place or are we in a bad place?
297. 00:14:11 Is it getting shorter?
298. 00:14:12 Is it getting longer?
299. 00:14:13 Like I don't know any of that.
300. 00:14:14 I just know raw data at this moment.
301. 00:14:16 So it's in place.
302. 00:14:18 So I'm measuring it.
303. 00:14:19 So I'm going to say that's quote unquote done, but the analysis of it needs to be done
304. 00:14:23 yet.
305. 00:14:24 Yeah, I was going to say, what's the goal here just to evaluate whether this project was
306. 00:14:29 successful unsuccessful?
307. 00:14:30 Well, the intent was because the thing that I know is with my business, the key is starting
308. 00:14:37 projects and finishing them.
309. 00:14:39 And it's pretty easy for me to get projects started.
310. 00:14:43 But once they're started, it's always this dance of trying to get information and trying
311. 00:14:48 to get, you know, all the code written and getting deployments done and making sure all
312. 00:14:52 the little tiny details are completed.
313. 00:14:54 Like that gets to be and can be like months long.
314. 00:14:59 And the hope is to get this down to where it's like three to four weeks start to finish
315. 00:15:03 on most projects.
316. 00:15:04 Like that's the goal.
317. 00:15:06 But I don't really know what my baseline is right now.
318. 00:15:08 Are we talking about we're taking three months down to three weeks?
319. 00:15:11 Like that seems ridiculous to try to do that.
320. 00:15:14 But you know, that's that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
321. 00:15:18 Gotcha.
322. 00:15:19 So that's number two.
323. 00:15:21 And then the last one here is build better segmentation in my day.
324. 00:15:24 And the intent here is to it's kind of like the batching thing where I'm batching the
325. 00:15:31 types of work and the areas that I'm working on.
326. 00:15:34 So I'll have things that I'm doing for say the productivity guild or I'm working on things
327. 00:15:38 for whims at work or bookworm like the podcasts or I'm doing stuff for pro course my business.
328. 00:15:44 Like I've got these different areas, but I have a tendency to like sprinkle the work
329. 00:15:48 around on each of those and, you know, work on the podcast and then shift over to pro
330. 00:15:54 course and then come back to the guild for a little while.
331. 00:15:56 Like I have a tendency to jump back and forth.
332. 00:15:59 So I've been trying to like block the whole time blocking thing on when am I going to
333. 00:16:04 work on different pieces.
334. 00:16:07 It's been going okay.
335. 00:16:08 Like it's it's getting there.
336. 00:16:10 I think my habits are in a bad place.
337. 00:16:13 There's there's your segue for today's book nicely done.
338. 00:16:16 I feel like my routines I was even trying.
339. 00:16:19 I was just kind of happened.
340. 00:16:20 Whoops.
341. 00:16:21 You know, I feel like I've got these, you know, routines that put me in a bad place without
342. 00:16:27 even realizing it, which is partly why I chose today's book.
343. 00:16:33 So, you know, I'll just I'll just take the segue.
344. 00:16:34 I'll just take it.
345. 00:16:35 You know, it's it's sitting right there.
346. 00:16:37 Do it.
347. 00:16:38 Today's book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig.
348. 00:16:43 This is one that's been on my list, Mike, for probably about two years now, I think.
349. 00:16:48 I don't even know when it came out.
350. 00:16:50 I'm 14.
351. 00:16:51 Yeah.
352. 00:16:52 Yeah, three years old.
353. 00:16:54 So it's been out for a little while, but not super long, but I know it's been one that
354. 00:16:59 I've been wanting to go through for a long time because I refer to my habits a lot.
355. 00:17:02 And I know that so much of what I do is habit driven that I just wanted to understand it
356. 00:17:08 more.
357. 00:17:09 People talk about this book.
358. 00:17:10 It's a New York Times bestseller.
359. 00:17:12 People rave about it.
360. 00:17:13 I can see why.
361. 00:17:17 But it's one that I really enjoyed.
362. 00:17:19 I'm glad we read it and I have a lot of habits.
363. 00:17:21 I feel like I want to tweak now.
364. 00:17:22 All right, me too.
365. 00:17:23 So let's let's jump in here.
366. 00:17:25 All right.
367. 00:17:26 Part the book is broken down into three different parts, which I'm sure we'll we'll talk about
368. 00:17:32 these.
369. 00:17:33 Part one is the habits of individuals.
370. 00:17:35 Part two is the habits of successful organizations.
371. 00:17:37 And part three is the habits of society.
372. 00:17:40 There's a couple chapters in each one of these sections.
373. 00:17:44 The part that you were talking about, which was my initial draw to the book as well in
374. 00:17:49 terms of like, okay, so this is going to tell me how habits work.
375. 00:17:52 It's going to tell me how I can implement habits in my own life to be more successful,
376. 00:17:56 achieve my goals, whatever, fill in the blank.
377. 00:17:58 Okay, cool.
378. 00:17:59 Yes.
379. 00:18:00 You know, you read section or part one and you're like, yeah, this is this is speaking
380. 00:18:03 right to me.
381. 00:18:04 And then they kind of lost me in part two and part three.
382. 00:18:06 Now I also want to say that it's hard.
383. 00:18:09 It was really hard for me to follow this book because Charles Duhigg is obviously a very
384. 00:18:15 smart guy, but there are so many stories in here and they are all interwoven and he's
385. 00:18:21 jumping back and forth between the different ones.
386. 00:18:24 And I found myself like getting them mixed up and getting lost in them.
387. 00:18:28 So each one of these chapters, for example, chapter one, he's got these Roman numerals,
388. 00:18:32 which will show like the different sections within that chapter.
389. 00:18:36 And sometimes he'll have a sentence which transitions from one story to the next.
390. 00:18:40 Other times he'll just jump from them and then he tries to like bring them all together
391. 00:18:44 to a crescendo and makes like one encompassing statement at the end.
392. 00:18:48 Sometimes that worked in my brain.
393. 00:18:49 Sometimes it didn't.
394. 00:18:50 Did you have the same response?
395. 00:18:51 Yeah, I was going through the stories and I love the stories.
396. 00:18:55 Like the stories themselves were kind of cool.
397. 00:18:57 Yeah.
398. 00:18:58 Save target.
399. 00:18:59 We'll get there later.
400. 00:19:01 Target is creepy.
401. 00:19:03 Oh, but don't at me.
402. 00:19:05 But the stories were helpful in understanding, I think, each of those concepts, but trying
403. 00:19:12 to get a grasp on what the concept was, each time kind of got messy for me.
404. 00:19:18 Yeah.
405. 00:19:19 And I also felt like there were some cases like I remember one, the story took I think
406. 00:19:24 eight pages to get through the single story to illustrate a point that he didn't summarize.
407. 00:19:32 And I should, I don't know where it was now, that would be helpful to know, Mike, but I
408. 00:19:36 can't place it.
409. 00:19:39 But it was a long story even for a longer book's stance.
410. 00:19:44 But I'm with you.
411. 00:19:46 It was tough to follow sometimes.
412. 00:19:49 I think part one, I believe I finished part one in about one evening just because I was
413. 00:19:57 so fascinated by it.
414. 00:20:00 But I'm with you when part two and part three came around, okay.
415. 00:20:04 Can you go back to me individually now?
416. 00:20:08 And I'm sure part of that is our perspective as quote unquote, independent knowledge workers.
417. 00:20:15 We're not part of a huge organization and there's a bunch of people above us on the
418. 00:20:20 food chain and we're trying to figure out how to affect the change we want in the organization
419. 00:20:24 by manipulating the habits of the people above us.
420. 00:20:28 So I can see how that might be useful information.
421. 00:20:32 But yeah, I had the same reaction.
422. 00:20:33 So there's in chapter one, he explains the habit loop, which is the cue, the routine
423. 00:20:39 and the reward.
424. 00:20:40 And I'm not sure.
425. 00:20:41 Do you want to dive into that right now?
426. 00:20:43 Sure.
427. 00:20:44 I mean, the concept here is there's three aspects to a habit that Mike just explained.
428. 00:20:49 So the cue, what triggers the habit, the routine, the habit itself and the reward, the positive
429. 00:20:56 feeling or thing that you receive as a result of having done the habit.
430. 00:21:02 Now I'm trying to think of a good example.
431. 00:21:04 Let's call it breakfast.
432. 00:21:06 So for me, you know, here's here's my habit.
433. 00:21:09 I come downstairs in the morning after having taken a shower and gotten dressed for the
434. 00:21:13 day.
435. 00:21:14 I come down the stairs and my instant cue is I'm now downstairs in the kitchen.
436. 00:21:19 So my cue tells me that, okay, well, now I need to start the tea kettle for the water
437. 00:21:25 for my coffee.
438. 00:21:26 And then I start my egg pan.
439. 00:21:28 And then once I've done that, I have this whole series of things that I do to make sure
440. 00:21:33 I made coffee and I've made my eggs for the morning.
441. 00:21:35 And then I get to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee with my eggs.
442. 00:21:38 That's the reward piece.
443. 00:21:39 So the cue there is me coming down the stairs into the kitchen, the routine being making
444. 00:21:45 my breakfast and coffee and then the reward being able to enjoy that meal.
445. 00:21:49 So you kind of get that now.
446. 00:21:50 That's a very dumb down version, I think.
447. 00:21:52 Like that's a very simple.
448. 00:21:54 I mean, they can get pretty intense and very subtle with what the reward itself is.
449. 00:22:01 Even with some detrimental things, I'm probably not a good one to talk about some of the addictive
450. 00:22:07 behaviors that have quote unquote positive feelings, those rewards, things like smoking
451. 00:22:14 cigarettes and doing drugs and stuff.
452. 00:22:15 Like those do have positive feelings to them.
453. 00:22:18 And that's why people continue down those addictive habit trails.
454. 00:22:23 But that's the process, is that cue routine and reward process.
455. 00:22:26 Yeah.
456. 00:22:27 And the interesting part that he lays out at the beginning of this book and really carries
457. 00:22:31 it through to the end is that without these habit loops, your brain would essentially
458. 00:22:36 shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of your day to day life.
459. 00:22:40 In fact, in a Duke university study, he mentions at the very beginning 40% of our actions
460. 00:22:44 aren't actual decisions as we go about our day, but they're habits that we've created.
461. 00:22:49 And so by understanding this habit loop and learning to observe the cues and the rewards,
462. 00:22:58 we can change and manipulate the routine so that they're positive instead of negative.
463. 00:23:02 And so like you had mentioned, smoking and drinking, like this is what Alcoholics Anonymous
464. 00:23:06 is built off of is this cue routine reward.
465. 00:23:11 And he gets into this in chapter three.
466. 00:23:14 But all they're doing is they are substituting the routine of going to the bar and having
467. 00:23:18 a drink and still maintaining the same cue and the reward.
468. 00:23:22 And so he's got this little graphic of the habit loop that he introduces in chapter one.
469. 00:23:26 He uses different versions of this to explain the different stories that he shares over
470. 00:23:29 and over and over again.
471. 00:23:31 But if you understand this simple mental model, like you can kind of plug this in and apply
472. 00:23:36 it to a lot of different situations like you said in your life.
473. 00:23:40 What's interesting about this is, and he starts the book off really strongly by telling the
474. 00:23:44 story of Eugene who had major brain damage and his memory was completely gone based on
475. 00:23:51 the part of the brain that he had lost.
476. 00:23:54 But he could still perform his daily habits and even establish new habits like going for
477. 00:23:59 a walk, which was crazy because according to the physiology, you know, he shouldn't be
478. 00:24:03 able to do any of this stuff.
479. 00:24:05 But he's he's managing to do it anyways, like he's cooking himself breakfast.
480. 00:24:09 He's going for a walk.
481. 00:24:11 He's got like his whole day to day routine and basically the doctors are like, how in
482. 00:24:16 the world is he doing this?
483. 00:24:17 Like the part of the brain that he would use to do these sorts of things isn't there.
484. 00:24:21 And really what they identified was that it's the power of these habits that have been
485. 00:24:27 ingrained.
486. 00:24:28 And also in this section, he talks a little bit about chunking, which we learned about
487. 00:24:33 in in peak.
488. 00:24:34 This is an interesting idea because chunking is the process in which the brain converts
489. 00:24:38 a sequence of actions into an automatic routine.
490. 00:24:41 So even though his I forget what part of the brain it was that he had removed, but like
491. 00:24:47 even though he didn't have that part of his brain anymore, his brain was still able to
492. 00:24:51 apply this idea of chunking to create these new habits.
493. 00:24:56 And this is applicable to everybody because these habits are what allow our brain the
494. 00:25:02 basically your brain is always looking for ways to save energy.
495. 00:25:06 And so it's going to flip into these habit loops whenever it can.
496. 00:25:10 And he's got examples of like the rats in the maze who are trying to get the chocolate
497. 00:25:14 and the monkeys who are trying to get the grape juice and they're measuring their mental
498. 00:25:18 activity.
499. 00:25:19 And what they're recognizing is that it spikes when they are anticipating the reward, but
500. 00:25:26 the routine itself, that doesn't consume a whole lot of mental energy.
501. 00:25:30 And so if you're going to get like one thing out of this book, it's that and then you can
502. 00:25:35 figure out how to apply that to your your own life.
503. 00:25:37 You don't need to read part two or part three.
504. 00:25:39 I thought Eugene's story was interesting because they would ask him like, can you tell me where
505. 00:25:46 the kitchen is?
506. 00:25:47 I was like, well, they had moved to a different house.
507. 00:25:49 He was like, no, I don't, I don't know where the kitchen is.
508. 00:25:52 And just a couple minutes later, they would ask him, are you hungry?
509. 00:25:55 Like, why don't you go get a snack?
510. 00:25:57 And he would walk straight to the kitchen, open the cupboard and grab a can of nuts for
511. 00:26:02 a snack.
512. 00:26:03 It's like, well, he didn't even know where the kitchen was, let alone snacks in the kitchen.
513. 00:26:08 Like, he didn't even, yeah, it was so interesting to see like, okay, well, he knows these habits.
514. 00:26:13 Like, he knows his way there, but he can't tell you his way there.
515. 00:26:17 Yep.
516. 00:26:18 But they had a bunch of tests like that where they would ask him, do you know how you're
517. 00:26:21 doing this?
518. 00:26:22 No, it's weird.
519. 00:26:23 I'm just guessing and it's coming out right all the time.
520. 00:26:27 Well, you know this by building habits.
521. 00:26:30 Like, it's just happened over and over and over again.
522. 00:26:33 Yeah.
523. 00:26:34 And so you don't have to be Eugene trying to survive.
524. 00:26:36 You can be Joe or Mike or anybody else just trying to figure out how to manipulate your
525. 00:26:42 systems of your life so that it's a little bit easier, a little bit more efficient.
526. 00:26:46 You don't have to do the things that you don't want to do.
527. 00:26:48 You know, you're, you have more in the tank for the things that you do want to do.
528. 00:26:52 And that's kind of where chapter two comes in, the craving brain, because habits are formed
529. 00:26:57 when your brain anticipates the reward.
530. 00:27:00 So with Eugene's example, what's triggering that, maybe it's the doctor or whoever's saying,
531. 00:27:06 are you hungry, but I could just be an ad that he sees on TV or the fact that the radio's
532. 00:27:12 pulling in the background.
533. 00:27:13 Like these, these things could all be cues.
534. 00:27:16 And then your brain is anticipating that reward.
535. 00:27:19 That creates the craving, which is what drives the habits.
536. 00:27:22 And so if you want to quote, unquote, hack your habits, what you need to do is figure
537. 00:27:25 out how to spark those cravings, which makes creating the habits even easier.
538. 00:27:30 And you can do this personally, but there are people and companies that do this on a
539. 00:27:35 large scale too.
540. 00:27:37 In this chapter two, he shares a couple different stories of Pepsadint and Febreze.
541. 00:27:43 So Pepsadint was the toothpaste.
542. 00:27:46 And really what they, what they did is they created this toothpaste, but it, it, the thing
543. 00:27:53 that made it stick, the thing that caused homes with toothpaste to rise from 7% to 65%
544. 00:27:58 with Pepsadint was this trigger by a cue.
545. 00:28:02 So what they did is they put like, I'm not sure what exactly it was, but it, it, it,
546. 00:28:08 it caused your, the toothpaste to like tingle on your teeth.
547. 00:28:11 It's a little bit of a reaction that your teeth have and has nothing to do with the
548. 00:28:15 toothpaste ability to actually clean the teeth.
549. 00:28:18 But that feeling is the thing that people anticipated and they, that's what they wanted, was that,
550. 00:28:25 that was their reward.
551. 00:28:26 The feeling that their teeth were clean, even whether they were clean or not.
552. 00:28:29 And then that's the thing that got it to stick.
553. 00:28:31 And made it feel clean.
554. 00:28:33 Febreze too.
555. 00:28:34 I mean, they, they had this awesome product, which they tested with this person and they're
556. 00:28:39 like, oh my gosh, this changed my life because she was like a ranger and she was working
557. 00:28:44 outside with animals and skunks and stuff.
558. 00:28:47 And she was like, I just want to have a normal life.
559. 00:28:49 I want to date somebody.
560. 00:28:51 But they, they come back to my place.
561. 00:28:52 They can smell the skunks and they, they bail.
562. 00:28:54 So she's like in tears saying like this, the spray that they made to eliminate odors.
563. 00:29:00 This is going to change my entire life, but they couldn't get other people to adopt it.
564. 00:29:04 And really what they had to do was change the way that it was perceived.
565. 00:29:09 So yeah, it got rid of the, the stink in a room, but really what they, what they did
566. 00:29:12 is they showed people spraying it after they had cleaned their room.
567. 00:29:16 So it wasn't the fact that the, the room stunk and they needed the spray.
568. 00:29:20 They just used it as a reward for, okay, now my room is clean and people felt good about
569. 00:29:24 that.
570. 00:29:25 And that's what caused it to, to catch on.
571. 00:29:26 It's, it's kind of crazy when you think about it because it has nothing to do with the quote
572. 00:29:31 unquote value proposition of the product itself.
573. 00:29:33 They had to position it a totally different way, kind of like a frivolous thing in order
574. 00:29:37 to get people to buy it.
575. 00:29:39 Yeah.
576. 00:29:40 And this, this plays in a little bit to like how to change a habit.
577. 00:29:45 Which I think is interesting.
578. 00:29:46 You know, if, if you're doing something and you want to, you want to break a habit or
579. 00:29:51 you want to change it, what they tell you is to take the cue, you know, the thing that
580. 00:29:57 triggers that routine, leave the cue the same, change the routine and try to maintain your
581. 00:30:05 reward.
582. 00:30:06 So the only thing that changes is that middle piece.
583. 00:30:10 And when you're talking about this in your personal life, like that makes a lot of sense
584. 00:30:15 and it can be fairly easy.
585. 00:30:16 Like if I want to change it, my morning routine, like I could change it to where when I come
586. 00:30:19 downstairs into the kitchen, I go for a run and then I come back and enjoy the feeling
587. 00:30:25 of having gone for a run.
588. 00:30:26 Like I could say that that would be the change there as opposed to doing breakfast.
589. 00:30:31 That sounds like a horrible idea to me.
590. 00:30:33 But, you know, that's, that's something that you could do.
591. 00:30:36 But with these companies, what they were doing, and we'll probably talk about this a little
592. 00:30:40 bit later because companies do it on a larger scale, but what they're doing is trying to
593. 00:30:46 play into an existing habit or create an exist, a new habit that revolves around a reward
594. 00:30:53 that's very strongly desired and trying to capitalize on it.
595. 00:30:58 We'll talk about targets.
596. 00:30:59 We're going to, I think we're going to keep alluding to target because target is creepy.
597. 00:31:06 We have justification for that statement, but if any, I've actually, anybody who reads
598. 00:31:12 this is going to say, come to the same conclusion that, oh, that's kind of creepy based on some
599. 00:31:17 mistakes that they made.
600. 00:31:19 But in reality, just about every online retailer is doing the same thing now.
601. 00:31:24 Yeah.
602. 00:31:25 We're getting back to exactly what you were just describing about the morning routines
603. 00:31:30 and kind of hacking these things.
604. 00:31:31 After three, there's a couple concepts which kind of tie into one of my action items here.
605. 00:31:37 And that is awareness training.
606. 00:31:39 So this is something that AA does with the people who, who come to them because they want
607. 00:31:46 them to be able to recognize when that Q is happening so that they can substitute the
608. 00:31:52 routine and it doesn't, they don't just go to the bar automatically.
609. 00:31:56 But awareness training is basically asking the patient to describe what triggers their
610. 00:32:01 habitual behavior.
611. 00:32:02 And so a lot of this stuff is so automatic that you never really think about it.
612. 00:32:06 I want to think about my habits and I guess, you know, apply awareness training to myself.
613. 00:32:13 And then apply habit reversal therapy, which he talks about in this chapter, which is
614. 00:32:17 recreating habits based off of those cues and rewards and putting in what he defines
615. 00:32:22 as a competing response, a different routine to focus on when you feel that impulse or
616. 00:32:27 craving.
617. 00:32:28 There's a couple examples they used in this chapter of like the person who was biting
618. 00:32:31 their nails to show that you really can do this.
619. 00:32:35 But you have to identify these pieces if you want to kind of swap them in and out plug
620. 00:32:38 and play sort of sort of thing.
621. 00:32:40 So that's something that I want to do.
622. 00:32:42 I want to evaluate and it may take a while, you know, all of the different routines and
623. 00:32:46 habits that maybe I'm not even aware of.
624. 00:32:48 Obviously, I've got my morning routine, like that's something that we've talked about previously
625. 00:32:52 in action items.
626. 00:32:53 I've got my set things that I do every morning, but really 40% of my day, that's a good chunk
627. 00:33:00 of my day that I'm defaulting to these habits.
628. 00:33:02 So I want to recognize what's really going on.
629. 00:33:04 Do you have any specific habits that you feel like you already know about that you want
630. 00:33:09 to change?
631. 00:33:11 Hmm.
632. 00:33:12 Well, putting me on the spot, I think that I win.
633. 00:33:18 Yes.
634. 00:33:19 I think that I have a little bit of trouble disconnecting at the end of my day.
635. 00:33:25 I know we've talked about like a shutdown routine or something like that.
636. 00:33:27 I don't think I have one of those.
637. 00:33:29 So my brain just kind of stays in work mode if I don't do that.
638. 00:33:33 That's probably one example of a negative routine.
639. 00:33:37 And again, I'm going to have to do some some thought about, you know, what are the cues
640. 00:33:41 and the rewards with that.
641. 00:33:44 I also think that at the end of the day, my bedtime routine specifically, there's room
642. 00:33:54 for improvement there because the cue obviously is, I'm tired.
643. 00:33:57 The kids are finally in bed.
644. 00:34:00 So what am I going to do?
645. 00:34:02 And lately, it's been sit down and watch a baseball game or an old movie.
646. 00:34:08 Like my wife is really into me too.
647. 00:34:10 You know, the Thin Man series of like 1920s, black and white murder mysteries.
648. 00:34:14 All right.
649. 00:34:16 So that's not a real productive use of the last hour or two of my day.
650. 00:34:22 Although there's a lot of good things too, like the I get a notification at 945 that
651. 00:34:28 it's time to journal and you know, and I launched my reflection routine.
652. 00:34:32 So I don't know.
653. 00:34:34 Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
654. 00:34:36 So if I'm aware of how I'm spending my time during my work day, there's probably a lot
655. 00:34:40 of other stuff that I could improve.
656. 00:34:42 Fair point.
657. 00:34:43 I only ask is this is one.
658. 00:34:45 This is an action item I have as well.
659. 00:34:47 I saw that you wrote it down here and it's kind of what I had on my own list, but you
660. 00:34:52 wrote it better of identifying the current routines and habits.
661. 00:34:56 And I know that like whenever it comes to that shutdown ritual that with that, like I
662. 00:35:04 have one, but I don't always stick to it.
663. 00:35:08 And that's a problem.
664. 00:35:09 And it's partly because I am just not ready to be done doing the thing I'm doing at the
665. 00:35:14 time when I need to stop.
666. 00:35:16 And I feel like I can just work on this a little bit longer instead of doing this routine.
667. 00:35:21 And I shouldn't do that.
668. 00:35:24 So I need to, I need to think through that habit or the lack thereof and figure out how
669. 00:35:31 to cement that.
670. 00:35:33 That's one in particular.
671. 00:35:35 That's just one example there.
672. 00:35:36 But I feel like there are a lot of these that I'm not even aware of yet to your point.
673. 00:35:41 So that's what I want to look for.
674. 00:35:43 Because I know there are some like the evening thing like for me, that one's already locked
675. 00:35:48 in like I know exactly.
676. 00:35:50 You tell me it's bedtime and I have this whole series of maybe 50 things that happen
677. 00:35:54 that I don't even realize what I'm doing.
678. 00:35:56 It just is automatic.
679. 00:35:58 So there is a lot of that that I already do.
680. 00:36:00 The morning is the same way but midday I feel like is kind of just fluid.
681. 00:36:06 Yeah.
682. 00:36:07 Another one for me kind of related though is they talk about how fast food is engineered
683. 00:36:14 that makes it sound really gross.
684. 00:36:17 And I'm sure it is.
685. 00:36:19 But fast foods engineered to trigger the habit loop.
686. 00:36:21 And this is something that I struggle with specifically on days when I'm super busy.
687. 00:36:26 Like Thursdays for example, I've got a discipleship group of guys at my church.
688. 00:36:31 And we meet every Thursday at like 5.30.
689. 00:36:33 And then after that at 7 we've got worship team practice.
690. 00:36:37 So I don't get home till late on Thursday.
691. 00:36:40 And there are other times too where it's like I'm going when it would be a convenient
692. 00:36:46 meal time.
693. 00:36:48 And I maybe stayed up to late the night before.
694. 00:36:52 So I'm not prepared the night before.
695. 00:36:55 And it's like lunchtime and I don't have a lunch ready.
696. 00:37:00 And so it's like I'm going to go get some food.
697. 00:37:02 And my weakness is Culver's.
698. 00:37:04 Do they have Culver's in Minneapolis?
699. 00:37:06 I'm pretty sure they do.
700. 00:37:07 It's like a Midwestern thing, right?
701. 00:37:08 I have one less than a mile from my house.
702. 00:37:11 Yeah, as Butterburgers and cheese curds.
703. 00:37:14 So good.
704. 00:37:17 But I eat them too often.
705. 00:37:19 So definitely a habit I need to break.
706. 00:37:23 I am not a fan of fast food.
707. 00:37:25 I am convinced that part of my difficulty with transitioning back from having gone to
708. 00:37:34 max stock was partly because of diet and such.
709. 00:37:38 So yeah, I get it.
710. 00:37:41 I do.
711. 00:37:42 I need to not do.
712. 00:37:45 My wife is very particular about what we eat.
713. 00:37:49 And as a result, anytime I deviate from that diet heavily, I'm going to pay for it.
714. 00:37:55 And I just know it.
715. 00:37:56 So I'm not real good about sticking with it when I'm not with her.
716. 00:38:00 [laughs]
717. 00:38:01 All it is, that sounds.
718. 00:38:04 So yes, I need to improve that as well.
719. 00:38:05 But I don't really have a thing for fast food.
720. 00:38:08 Like that particular is not something that has appealed to me for quite some time.
721. 00:38:13 So I can't say that that's the thing I struggle with.
722. 00:38:15 Sorry.
723. 00:38:16 Well Culver's is kind of borderline fast food.
724. 00:38:18 I think it's still classified as fast food, but it's not like been sitting under a heat
725. 00:38:22 lamp forever.
726. 00:38:23 It's part of the reason why I justify it.
727. 00:38:25 It tastes so good and it's healthier than McDonald's or whatever.
728. 00:38:29 Okay.
729. 00:38:30 No, whatever you need to tell yourself, Mike.
730. 00:38:32 No, I'm saying I got to break that.
731. 00:38:34 I got to plan ahead and I got to eat good food.
732. 00:38:37 Okay.
733. 00:38:38 Go for it.
734. 00:38:39 Where are we at on this outline?
735. 00:38:41 Part two.
736. 00:38:42 Part two.
737. 00:38:43 Okay.
738. 00:38:44 The habits of successful organizations.
739. 00:38:45 In chapter four, this part really doesn't have to do anything with successful organizations.
740. 00:38:49 This is kind of, it could be classified in the previous section in my opinion.
741. 00:38:53 This is the whole idea of Keystone habits.
742. 00:38:55 I get why they classify it here.
743. 00:38:56 They tell the story of Paul O'Neill, who completely turned around a company by focusing
744. 00:39:02 on a Keystone habit, which in his case was safety.
745. 00:39:06 And in fact, when he took over, people thought it was kind of crazy for emphasizing this when
746. 00:39:11 the company was going under, but you know, he was successful.
747. 00:39:16 The story I really liked in this section though was the Michael Phelps story.
748. 00:39:22 And I've heard different versions of this, which actually that's another point I should
749. 00:39:26 classify or point out about this book is that a lot of these stories I have heard before
750. 00:39:30 in different contexts.
751. 00:39:32 And so when he told these stories, he has a really good way of telling just the pieces
752. 00:39:38 he wants to tell to support his point, which I get.
753. 00:39:43 But also when I, when you tell like part of a story that you already know, you're kind
754. 00:39:49 of left with this impression that, well, that was kind of spun, you know, like it's not
755. 00:39:54 the whole truth.
756. 00:39:55 That's kind of how I felt about this Michael Phelps story, but this is such a cool story.
757. 00:40:01 So are you familiar with this?
758. 00:40:03 I've heard this.
759. 00:40:04 I don't know how many times.
760. 00:40:05 So yes, I'm very familiar with it.
761. 00:40:07 Well, I'll just recap it really, really briefly then for the three listeners that haven't
762. 00:40:12 heard this.
763. 00:40:14 But Michael Phelps has a Keystone habit.
764. 00:40:16 And again, these Keystone habits, these are the ones that kind of kick off the whole process.
765. 00:40:20 So some habits matter more than others.
766. 00:40:22 That's really the idea here.
767. 00:40:23 And you can apply this to an organization, but you can also apply this to an individual
768. 00:40:27 level, which is what Michael Phelps is doing.
769. 00:40:30 So Michael Phelps is the most successful swimmer in the history of the world, but he's, he
770. 00:40:36 wasn't always and he dealt with some stuff that his coach kind of had to get him into
771. 00:40:41 these Keystone habits of visualization and relaxation.
772. 00:40:46 And the really cool story that they tell in the book that's kind of the manifestation
773. 00:40:50 of this is in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics season, I think it's a hundred meter butterfly
774. 00:40:55 finals and his goggles break.
775. 00:40:58 So he can't see at the end of the race.
776. 00:41:03 And at the end of the race, he's stretching out.
777. 00:41:04 He wins by like a hundredth of a second, you know, because he didn't take another another
778. 00:41:08 stroke and the guy next to him did.
779. 00:41:11 Now that can go back though to this Keystone habit that he and his coach have created
780. 00:41:17 of visualizing himself swimming this race over and over and over again.
781. 00:41:21 In fact, when Michael Phelps jumps up on the platform, his coach has the trigger phrase
782. 00:41:26 that the cue, you know, put in the videotape.
783. 00:41:28 And that's Michael Phelps's cue to play through the entire race.
784. 00:41:31 So he stays calm.
785. 00:41:33 He wins the gold medal anyway with a world record time and they're interviewing him after
786. 00:41:37 the race and like, what was it like to swim blind?
787. 00:41:40 Because people can't wrap their head around like, how is he able to stay calm during this?
788. 00:41:43 And he says, it felt like I imagined it would.
789. 00:41:46 He had swam that race so many times in his head that the physical manifestation of that
790. 00:41:51 was just like, oh, no big deal.
791. 00:41:53 And I think that's a really powerful concept.
792. 00:41:55 It's just another day in the pool.
793. 00:41:57 Yep, exactly.
794. 00:41:59 Just the way it goes.
795. 00:42:00 I think it's really interesting how that played such a big part in just how he swims or
796. 00:42:07 swam, I guess he doesn't compete anymore, does he?
797. 00:42:09 I think he's done.
798. 00:42:11 I think so, but I don't know that for sure.
799. 00:42:14 I mean, he doesn't need to.
800. 00:42:16 That's for sure.
801. 00:42:17 I think he had like 22 gold medals in the guy and second place had nine or something
802. 00:42:20 like that.
803. 00:42:21 Right.
804. 00:42:22 So he's proven himself.
805. 00:42:23 He doesn't doesn't need to compete anymore.
806. 00:42:25 Yep, he can win.
807. 00:42:26 It's okay.
808. 00:42:27 Good luck trying to beat him.
809. 00:42:28 No, I like that this is a keystone habit here.
810. 00:42:32 And he goes through a number of what these habits are in the book.
811. 00:42:37 He does talk about these in the individual life as well, one of which was if I can recall
812. 00:42:42 was exercise, I think.
813. 00:42:44 Yep.
814. 00:42:45 Like if you built the habit of exercise, other areas of your life tended to come into order
815. 00:42:51 as well.
816. 00:42:52 And it became like a crux that everything folded around.
817. 00:42:57 So I think that's an interesting point and it's one that I know like I've talked about
818. 00:43:05 my morning routine before, but this particular section struck me with, you know, I have had
819. 00:43:12 a few bad habits in the morning of things like, and I've mentioned this on the show before,
820. 00:43:18 like checking my email right away to make sure nothing fell apart overnight.
821. 00:43:21 Like that sort of thing has been something I've struggled with for a long time.
822. 00:43:24 Well, not long ago, I put myself in a position where I was putting my phone downstairs.
823. 00:43:30 It was in my office, my home office whenever I'd go to bed, which means it's not even in
824. 00:43:35 the bedroom.
825. 00:43:37 And although that is terrifying for some people and, you know, something that kind of
826. 00:43:44 makes me nervous once in a while, so what if somebody, you know, what if there's an
827. 00:43:48 emergency and I need to, you know, act on it, like, well, I suppose maybe there's an
828. 00:43:54 I don't know, but the chances that are being an emergency in the night that I need to act
829. 00:43:59 on that can't wait for four hours, like that seems pretty rare to me.
830. 00:44:05 I feel like it would be okay, you know, but, you know, that that's that side of things
831. 00:44:11 us, you know, out the window here, like I keep my phone downstairs.
832. 00:44:14 That's the important part here.
833. 00:44:16 Part of the reason for that is because I don't want to start my day with that bad jump like
834. 00:44:24 that kickstart to the day.
835. 00:44:26 So having it downstairs means it's not even an option.
836. 00:44:29 Like I go through my morning routine without it entirely because it's not even an option
837. 00:44:34 for me to pick up because it's in my office.
838. 00:44:36 So I guess I could go get it, but it seems silly to me to go out of my way to go get
839. 00:44:41 a distracting device.
840. 00:44:43 Like that seems silly and I can't bring myself to actually follow through on that.
841. 00:44:48 So it works out pretty good in that sense.
842. 00:44:50 But what I have found in the week or so that I've been doing this week and a half or so
843. 00:44:56 is that that actually has a lot of impacts around device usage that I wasn't aware of.
844. 00:45:02 I think this might be a Keystone habit that I'm not I'm not I'm not sure on this mic.
845. 00:45:08 So I think what has been going on because I found myself leaving my phone places more
846. 00:45:14 and more often.
847. 00:45:15 I don't know if that's good or bad.
848. 00:45:18 Hopefully I don't leave it behind somewhere.
849. 00:45:21 But I have found that I I I have zero problems just leaving it across the room and it's not
850. 00:45:27 even like it's not within arms reach like right now I don't even or it's at it's somewhere
851. 00:45:31 over on that.
852. 00:45:34 I don't know.
853. 00:45:35 It's somewhere behind me at the moment.
854. 00:45:37 But it's not on my desk.
855. 00:45:39 It's not within arms reach right now.
856. 00:45:41 And that sort of thing is interesting because I've found that over the last week and a half
857. 00:45:47 I've gotten to where my tendencies to want to go pick it up and do those just checks
858. 00:45:51 those quick just tell me what's going on in the world.
859. 00:45:55 What would that be like a FOMO?
860. 00:45:56 Yep.
861. 00:45:57 Piece like fear of missing out relief of sorts.
862. 00:46:01 I don't really do that right now.
863. 00:46:03 Like I still feel that urge but it's not one that strikes me near as much as it used to.
864. 00:46:11 And I think that's derived from you know this the shift in how I've been hailing my
865. 00:46:18 phone at night.
866. 00:46:19 So I don't know.
867. 00:46:20 I think I would recommend it.
868. 00:46:22 I don't know if I would recommend it for everyone.
869. 00:46:24 But it's at least something that's been interesting to me.
870. 00:46:28 Yeah.
871. 00:46:29 So that's what's analyzed Joe Buellig for a moment here.
872. 00:46:31 Okay.
873. 00:46:32 So cycle analysis begin.
874. 00:46:34 Your cue is the FOMO.
875. 00:46:37 The feeling that I need to see what's going on.
876. 00:46:42 And then the reward that you're looking for is ultimately peace of mind.
877. 00:46:48 Okay.
878. 00:46:49 So the routine, you substituted pulling out your phone, checking your email for leaving
879. 00:46:54 it downstairs.
880. 00:46:57 And I would argue that the real reward that you're after that peace of mind like you
881. 00:47:00 get that with this new routine.
882. 00:47:04 Is that fair?
883. 00:47:05 I think that's fair.
884. 00:47:06 Yeah.
885. 00:47:07 I think that's a really cool example of how you can look at the cues and say okay this
886. 00:47:11 is the thing that my monkey brain wants to respond to automatically.
887. 00:47:16 What can I do which is going to steer it in the direction that I want it to go and in
888. 00:47:21 your case and a lot of people's case physically removing the temptation is the way to go.
889. 00:47:26 I think that's a great idea.
890. 00:47:27 And I would argue that it is something everybody should at least think about.
891. 00:47:31 I use my phone because I use sleep cycle.
892. 00:47:34 It's right next to my bed and it's tracking my sleep patterns for the microphone.
893. 00:47:39 But that's a trade off I'm willing to make.
894. 00:47:42 I totally get the rationale behind what you do and I think it's a great example.
895. 00:47:47 So yeah, I would say that that is a keystone habit because whether you reach for your phone
896. 00:47:52 or not, that's going to trigger a whole bunch of other things.
897. 00:47:55 So maybe it's just email.
898. 00:47:57 Maybe it's email and social media.
899. 00:47:59 Maybe there's a huge list of things that you go check every time you pull your phone
900. 00:48:03 out of your pocket.
901. 00:48:05 So that's the keystone habit that you want to change.
902. 00:48:08 Yes, to all the things.
903. 00:48:11 That was a good psychoanalysis.
904. 00:48:13 Well done, Mike.
905. 00:48:14 Just call me Dr. Mike.
906. 00:48:16 Alright, Doc.
907. 00:48:17 Alright, so let's go to the next section here which is chapter five, Starbucks and the
908. 00:48:23 habit of success.
909. 00:48:24 So this chapter I have a little bit of an issue with, not rant worthy, I don't think,
910. 00:48:29 but maybe we'll see.
911. 00:48:31 Okay.
912. 00:48:32 Alright, so he talks a lot in this particular chapter about the idea of willpower, which
913. 00:48:38 peak, you know, kind of spoke to willpower not being as important as motivation.
914. 00:48:43 I think I kind of am in that camp.
915. 00:48:48 But the thing that really bugged me about this is he uses the example of Starbucks,
916. 00:48:52 which completely changes the one guy's life.
917. 00:48:57 And they say in page 131 that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for
918. 00:49:00 individual success.
919. 00:49:02 Share some stats.
920. 00:49:03 I think these stats are deceiving though, because I have seen lots of stats like this
921. 00:49:09 that point to soft skills or emotional intelligence.
922. 00:49:13 And that's really what Starbucks is teaching.
923. 00:49:15 It is not just willpower.
924. 00:49:18 So this kind of backs up my thought that he tells these stories, but he tells part of
925. 00:49:23 the story.
926. 00:49:25 And I didn't really like that in this particular part because yeah, willpower is maybe a soft
927. 00:49:31 skill, but there's a huge list of other things that contribute to an individual's success
928. 00:49:35 as well.
929. 00:49:36 And really like there's the encompassing term for all of these soft skills is emotional
930. 00:49:40 intelligence.
931. 00:49:42 So it's not just your academic intelligence, your hard skills, the ability to do the math
932. 00:49:46 and things like that, but the examples they share like, what do you do when you have an
933. 00:49:51 upset customer and then they role play like, why might this customer be upset?
934. 00:49:54 How can you show empathy to this person?
935. 00:49:56 Like in the examples, they show so many different soft skills at work, but they kind of lump
936. 00:50:02 it all in this book and in this story under willpower.
937. 00:50:05 And I didn't, I don't really like that.
938. 00:50:07 Do you think so willpower being a soft skill?
939. 00:50:10 Do you think in order to work on willpower itself, you have to also work on other soft
940. 00:50:15 skills in order to get there?
941. 00:50:17 Or do you feel like it's a single thing that you can work on on your own?
942. 00:50:20 Like just individually.
943. 00:50:22 I think you could work on willpower alone.
944. 00:50:25 Willpower they talk about in this chapter that it's like a muscle more than a skill.
945. 00:50:29 Like it's tired, like the cookie radish experiment, you know, the cookie eaters gave up after
946. 00:50:33 19 minutes radish eaters after eight minutes because their willpower was depleted.
947. 00:50:38 So I do think that there's, there's something to that, but I also think that there's a whole
948. 00:50:43 bunch of self regulatory skills that they call, they call them in here.
949. 00:50:48 It's really like self determination, academic and academic career personal success.
950. 00:50:55 Like it's all encompassed in the ability to set and achieve a goal.
951. 00:50:59 And then if you have the emotional intelligence skills that can help you get there.
952. 00:51:03 So some of that is communication.
953. 00:51:04 I mean, you're not going to be working in a vacuum, no matter where you work, you're
954. 00:51:09 going to have to get along with other people.
955. 00:51:11 You're going to have to get along with your customers.
956. 00:51:14 And so those communication skills, like they're talking about that in this section too, but
957. 00:51:18 they lump it under this willpower and they think that, you know, or the way he described
958. 00:51:22 it and I forget the guy's name, I should have wrote it down that the story that they tell,
959. 00:51:25 I think maybe it's Anthony.
960. 00:51:26 I'll just use Anthony as an example.
961. 00:51:29 They think that like what made Anthony successful, even though he had all this stuff going on,
962. 00:51:34 you know, his mom and dad are dying from drug overdose, but he's able to turn his life
963. 00:51:37 around because of willpower.
964. 00:51:39 Kind of, but willpower is just the tip of the iceberg in my opinion.
965. 00:51:42 There's a whole bunch of other stuff that you can develop.
966. 00:51:45 You can work these things.
967. 00:51:47 You can increase your capacity.
968. 00:51:50 So if you wanted to view it like a muscle, you could.
969. 00:51:53 But I also think that, I mean, I used to work for a family business and we had assessments
970. 00:51:59 and skill building systems which identified where you were with these emotional intelligence
971. 00:52:05 skills or these soft skills and then a whole research based skill development process to
972. 00:52:10 develop these skills.
973. 00:52:12 And some of the research behind like where you were before to where you are after you
974. 00:52:16 do this, like it's astounding how much you can change, both personally and professionally,
975. 00:52:21 how much you can impact your success when you focus on these soft skills.
976. 00:52:25 So again, like Starbucks and the habit of success, I agree with this, you know, Starbucks
977. 00:52:30 is teaching soft skills and that is translating into success, but he kind of spins it in this
978. 00:52:34 chapter and he's like, no, it's willpower.
979. 00:52:36 Just willpower.
980. 00:52:37 Don't worry about any other stuff.
981. 00:52:38 Just get willpower.
982. 00:52:39 Like, nah, not so much.
983. 00:52:40 I looked it up.
984. 00:52:41 His name was Travis.
985. 00:52:42 Wasn't Andy Travis.
986. 00:52:43 Okay.
987. 00:52:44 Thank you.
988. 00:52:45 Travis Leach to be more specific.
989. 00:52:48 I could tell you that this chapter, something was off on it and I couldn't tell you like
990. 00:52:54 when I read it, I was like, okay, this sounds great.
991. 00:52:59 Something's not right here.
992. 00:53:00 Like I had that feeling.
993. 00:53:02 So thank you for calling this out because I think that's maybe what I was concerned
994. 00:53:06 with is that with them focusing on saying this is all about, you know, focusing just
995. 00:53:15 on willpower, like, yeah, I think, and you know, they're teaching a lot of other things
996. 00:53:18 there too.
997. 00:53:19 I'm sure willpower is there, but they're also teaching like conflict resolution.
998. 00:53:25 Like they're all, they're teaching a whole bunch of things, not just.
999. 00:53:29 Exactly.
1000. 00:53:30 So maybe, maybe you could argue willpower is the crux of each of those other soft skills
1001. 00:53:37 that they're teaching maybe, but I feel like there are, you know, probably another 15 or
1002. 00:53:44 20 other skills are teaching at the same time, but they're, they're basically building
1003. 00:53:49 a course for their employees on how to deal with people.
1004. 00:53:53 So, you know, that's, that's essentially what they're doing, which makes a lot of sense.
1005. 00:53:58 You know, how do you, how do you win friends and influence people?
1006. 00:54:01 Welcome to Starbucks.
1007. 00:54:03 Yeah, exactly.
1008. 00:54:05 But it's not just willpower.
1009. 00:54:06 Willpower is a part of it.
1010. 00:54:07 You know, and I get it, you know, willpower is the probably the key ingredient when you're
1011. 00:54:10 talking about establishing new habits.
1012. 00:54:14 Like that's going to be the thing that's going to help you to stick with the new routine
1013. 00:54:18 that you're creating here.
1014. 00:54:19 Right.
1015. 00:54:20 But then maybe pick some different stories.
1016. 00:54:23 I mean, the Roy Baumas do research, I like that.
1017. 00:54:26 I've heard that a bunch of times with the, the cookie eaters and the radish eaters.
1018. 00:54:32 But I kind of feel like there's some stories that were shoehorned in here in this particular
1019. 00:54:38 chapter.
1020. 00:54:39 And even one of the quotes by one of the researchers, Mark Meeravent says, if you want to do something
1021. 00:54:43 that requires willpower, like going for a run after work, you have to conserve your willpower
1022. 00:54:47 muscle during the day.
1023. 00:54:48 And I put in my, my comments or eat your frog, you know, you could do it at the beginning.
1024. 00:54:53 And so that's an example of like you can use willpower as a leg measure and say, well,
1025. 00:54:58 I didn't get to go, I didn't go from my run this afternoon.
1026. 00:55:01 I guess I didn't have enough willpower.
1027. 00:55:03 But how does that actually help you in the moment?
1028. 00:55:06 Yeah.
1029. 00:55:07 You know, I think being able to manufacture the motivation to do the things is, is more
1030. 00:55:12 important.
1031. 00:55:13 And you could, you could view habit creation that way too, I think.
1032. 00:55:17 I think I'm with you.
1033. 00:55:18 I see this is another reason I like bookworm because although I knew something was
1034. 00:55:23 off with this chapter, I couldn't tell you exactly what it was.
1035. 00:55:27 And then we sit here and talk about it.
1036. 00:55:28 And then Mike tells me what it was.
1037. 00:55:29 It was bugging me about it.
1038. 00:55:31 So that's, this is another reason I like bookworm Mike.
1039. 00:55:33 You can, you tell me what I'm missing on things.
1040. 00:55:36 Awesome.
1041. 00:55:37 Should we move on to chapter six?
1042. 00:55:40 Sure.
1043. 00:55:41 All right.
1044. 00:55:42 The one we've been waiting for.
1045. 00:55:43 No, not the one we've been waiting for.
1046. 00:55:44 That's the next one.
1047. 00:55:45 I really like chapter six though.
1048. 00:55:47 Chapter six is the power of a crisis.
1049. 00:55:58 And then the Rhode Island Hospital where the nurses basically were not empowered to act.
1050. 00:56:05 So they would call out things.
1051. 00:56:07 And I guess maybe because I, I thought of the Atul Gawande book, the checklist manifesto
1052. 00:56:12 and how that process was implemented specifically to solve situations like this, like one of
1053. 00:56:17 the stories they tell, they operated on the wrong side of the guy's head.
1054. 00:56:21 Right.
1055. 00:56:22 And he died.
1056. 00:56:23 Now quick, quick side note.
1057. 00:56:24 Can I interject here?
1058. 00:56:25 Yeah.
1059. 00:56:26 So because of Atul Gawande's because, you know, checklist manifesto is a book that, you
1060. 00:56:30 know, has meant a lot to me.
1061. 00:56:32 Thanks, you know, goes into the draft episode.
1062. 00:56:36 Whenever, and I'm not going to go into this here, but we were in the hospital.
1063. 00:56:40 My wife had to have a surgery and it was unexpected.
1064. 00:56:44 And I was like quizzing people.
1065. 00:56:46 It's like, okay, do you guys have a checklist for these things?
1066. 00:56:48 Have you run through all of this?
1067. 00:56:50 Like here I am.
1068. 00:56:51 Like I'm asking these questions because I know the importance of this.
1069. 00:56:54 Yeah.
1070. 00:56:55 And there were a couple of times where like, well, we have one.
1071. 00:56:57 We just, we don't usually run it.
1072. 00:56:58 Like, would you just do me a favor and run it?
1073. 00:57:00 Please.
1074. 00:57:01 Just, just for my sake.
1075. 00:57:02 And they did.
1076. 00:57:03 So it made me, made me happy that they did that.
1077. 00:57:06 So thanks to all for making me aware of this.
1078. 00:57:08 Yeah.
1079. 00:57:09 So this particular book, you know, talking about the Rhode Island Hospital, he tells
1080. 00:57:13 one example where a nurse actually called out the correct protocol and the doctor basically
1081. 00:57:18 belittled her in the, in the, or the surgeon in the, in the operation room.
1082. 00:57:25 He's like, oh, well, you can eff and do the surgery then.
1083. 00:57:29 And I was like, man, that this guy died because you're a jerk.
1084. 00:57:33 Right.
1085. 00:57:34 And, but what's really more important even than the fact that that happened is like,
1086. 00:57:39 how they, how they fixed it.
1087. 00:57:41 And so it would both like the London underground where there was wooden escalators, which I
1088. 00:57:46 thought was kind of weird, but it seems odd to me that they would allow that.
1089. 00:57:49 Yeah.
1090. 00:57:50 So there were wooden escalators underground and there was a fire and because of all the
1091. 00:57:55 different, the different, I don't know, the divisions basically and everybody being like,
1092. 00:58:01 well, it's not my job.
1093. 00:58:02 I'll get in trouble if I do something about that.
1094. 00:58:05 It was this big fire and 30 some people died, which is, is horrible.
1095. 00:58:10 But then like the things that happened after that, like they, in the hospital example, they
1096. 00:58:15 completely turned the hospital around.
1097. 00:58:17 Now it's getting all sorts of awards.
1098. 00:58:20 And really the point that stood out to me and the challenge to me is that great leaders
1099. 00:58:25 don't let crisis like that go to waste because when you're in an organization or a business
1100. 00:58:32 or a firm, you're guided by these long held organizational habits and routines and habits
1101. 00:58:39 allow truces to be made.
1102. 00:58:41 He called it like a constant civil war.
1103. 00:58:44 So there's all these truces that are happening all the time between these potentially warring
1104. 00:58:48 groups or individuals within an organization in order to get anything done.
1105. 00:58:52 And so the prime time to capitalize on, on not shifting those, those habits or those routines
1106. 00:59:00 happens when there is a crisis and everybody's like, oh my gosh, this is unacceptable.
1107. 00:59:04 We have to change this.
1108. 00:59:06 And so I guess, you know, next time that there is a quote unquote crisis in a team or an organization
1109. 00:59:12 that I'm involved with, don't freak out and be like, oh, I can't believe this is happening,
1110. 00:59:17 but rise to the occasion and figure out, okay, how can we affect positive change through
1111. 00:59:22 this thing that's happened?
1112. 00:59:23 I think that crisis is interesting because it comes up a lot with, I don't, how do I
1113. 00:59:33 term it, maybe religious organizations.
1114. 00:59:37 In Christian circles, it seems to come up a lot because the crisis moments are when people
1115. 00:59:41 change, like big things change in those moments.
1116. 00:59:46 And any sort of a religious organization tends to see those as opportunities to speak into
1117. 00:59:52 somebody's life in some way.
1118. 00:59:54 And I would say the same thing, you know, whenever I left my last job and went out on
1119. 00:59:58 my own, like that was a borderline crisis situation for me.
1120. 01:00:02 It was a major change.
1121. 01:00:04 And as a result of that, a lot of my habits changed some for the better, some not so much.
1122. 01:00:11 But anytime there's a major shift like that, it can lend itself to some pretty major, it's
1123. 01:00:19 a great motivator.
1124. 01:00:21 One of the things I do as the IT director at our church is I run sound.
1125. 01:00:27 And as someone who runs sound, you end up doing things like funerals and weddings and
1126. 01:00:32 and such.
1127. 01:00:34 And I don't do a lot of weddings, but I do a lot of funerals.
1128. 01:00:38 And it's uncanny the things that people will talk to you about in those moments.
1129. 01:00:44 And it's it's not a fun conversation usually, but in those times people are willing to make
1130. 01:00:52 some pretty major changes.
1131. 01:00:53 They have a lot of questions that they want to ask or get answers to.
1132. 01:00:59 But it's just fascinating to me how something relatively small in terms of what happened
1133. 01:01:08 can be something extremely major because of what that thing is.
1134. 01:01:12 You know, if someone's dying, like it's it's technically it's just another event in life.
1135. 01:01:17 Just the last stage here, depending on how you look at that.
1136. 01:01:21 But it can have a major view into how you think as well.
1137. 01:01:27 So I don't really know where I'm going at it from there, but it has a pretty big impact.
1138. 01:01:32 Well, I could take it from there because that's actually a perfect segue into the next chapter
1139. 01:01:36 because part of the and this is where we say the target is creepy because target because
1140. 01:01:42 they hear it out.
1141. 01:01:43 And actually Andrew Poll is the guy in the book.
1142. 01:01:46 So not all of target, but Andrew Poll is creepy.
1143. 01:01:50 So he identified that customers going through major life events like you mentioned a funeral,
1144. 01:01:57 but also in the specific example, having a baby.
1145. 01:02:01 They don't notice or care that their buying patterns have changed.
1146. 01:02:04 Okay, and I put in parentheses, but retailers like target do because major life changes
1147. 01:02:10 make people more vulnerable to intervention from individuals like in your instance, you
1148. 01:02:17 know, somebody sitting down with you as you're you're leaving, leaving your one job and
1149. 01:02:22 you're going on your on your own.
1150. 01:02:23 That's a positive intervention, but marketers can use that for shall we say less than noble
1151. 01:02:29 gains.
1152. 01:02:32 So you're also vulnerable to intervention from marketers and they talk about how the North
1153. 01:02:37 American new baby market is worth $36.3 billion per year.
1154. 01:02:41 It's basically the holy grail of marketing these new parents.
1155. 01:02:44 And so people came to Andrew Poll and they said, can you help us figure out when people
1156. 01:02:50 are pregnant?
1157. 01:02:52 And he did.
1158. 01:02:53 He cracked the formula.
1159. 01:02:54 He identified 25 different products that when analyzed together could tell him what
1160. 01:02:58 trimester woman was in and guesstimate her due date.
1161. 01:03:02 And there was one story in there where they sent and this is where like they made some
1162. 01:03:07 mistakes and they they'd held it back.
1163. 01:03:08 But everybody's doing this at some at some level now.
1164. 01:03:11 They had sent something to this guy's teenage daughter about like a flyer for diapers or
1165. 01:03:18 something and the guy came in and he's all furious and he's like, are you trying to get
1166. 01:03:22 my daughter pregnant?
1167. 01:03:23 And then like a week later, they call him and they apologize and he's like, actually,
1168. 01:03:28 I owe you an apology.
1169. 01:03:29 It turns out she is pregnant.
1170. 01:03:32 She was pregnant.
1171. 01:03:33 Yeah.
1172. 01:03:34 Yeah.
1173. 01:03:35 So like all they did was identify the cues based off of her other buying habits and they
1174. 01:03:38 were right.
1175. 01:03:39 You know, and he had no idea even though she's living in living in his house, you know,
1176. 01:03:43 not making a moral judgment on that.
1177. 01:03:44 But like it's kind of creepy to think that from a from a few purchases, they can they
1178. 01:03:50 can tease out that that sort of thing.
1179. 01:03:52 So the challenge for retailers is how do you take advantage of people's buying habits
1180. 01:03:55 because you want to make more money without being creepy like that?
1181. 01:03:59 And I don't know that there's a I'm not sure that we've as a society found a middle ground
1182. 01:04:04 for this yet.
1183. 01:04:05 I think the debate's still raging.
1184. 01:04:07 Well I know that within like so I used to be a data analyst and the types of things
1185. 01:04:13 that Andrew Poll was and maybe is still doing for Target.
1186. 01:04:19 Like it wasn't to that level, but I did a lot of data analysis for ag companies.
1187. 01:04:25 It wasn't over customers, it was over product data, just how do you make the products better.
1188. 01:04:31 So I kind I understand what he's doing.
1189. 01:04:35 The technicalities in his case are a little bit beyond me, but I do see a lot of what
1190. 01:04:43 he's doing as normal, but I know that one of the things that some of the data circles
1191. 01:04:48 that I run in tend to talk about with this marketing side of it is that they're trying
1192. 01:04:53 to keep things that seem random and yet are targeted.
1193. 01:04:59 And I think this is where like they ended up with it saying, you know, we still push
1194. 01:05:02 a bunch of ads for expecting moms within like a month of them becoming pregnant and they
1195. 01:05:12 will still push those ads, but they will mix them in randomly with other ads for things
1196. 01:05:16 they have zero interest in.
1197. 01:05:18 Exactly.
1198. 01:05:19 Every ad that ends up in your mailbox is specifically targeted to you and your neighbors
1199. 01:05:23 got something very different.
1200. 01:05:26 And that is what they do.
1201. 01:05:27 They are good at it.
1202. 01:05:28 And I think that's becoming the norm is make it feel random, but have it be targeted.
1203. 01:05:34 And that's kind of weird to me, like the thought of these things coming in and they're specifically
1204. 01:05:38 geared towards my purchasing habits.
1205. 01:05:41 Although I kind of like that, I'm kind of freaked out by it too.
1206. 01:05:46 So target.
1207. 01:05:48 Now I will say this is a story I've heard multiple times.
1208. 01:05:51 Like this is not a new thing to me.
1209. 01:05:52 Had you heard this target story before?
1210. 01:05:54 No, I had not.
1211. 01:05:55 Okay.
1212. 01:05:56 This was I it it's been around.
1213. 01:05:59 Maybe it's because I run in these data circles a little bit, but it's in the marketing and
1214. 01:06:03 data world, like that is a story that's been told multiple times.
1215. 01:06:07 And it's when I've heard a lot of times and I will tell you that he specifically picked
1216. 01:06:10 out the pieces on this one as well.
1217. 01:06:12 I figured.
1218. 01:06:13 Yeah.
1219. 01:06:14 There's a lot more to it.
1220. 01:06:15 Yeah, again, like that's one of the issues I have with this this book.
1221. 01:06:20 But is that a bad thing?
1222. 01:06:22 Not necessarily unless you don't don't like the conclusion that he's drawing from the
1223. 01:06:28 story, I guess.
1224. 01:06:29 Because he's trying to make a point.
1225. 01:06:31 Yeah.
1226. 01:06:32 And for the most part, I agree with with his points like the supporting story that he tells
1227. 01:06:37 in this chapter is about they've got this song that they're sure is going to be a hit.
1228. 01:06:41 Yeah, I think it was Haya by El Cast.
1229. 01:06:44 And they start playing it, nobody likes it.
1230. 01:06:46 They're always changing the station.
1231. 01:06:48 They're like, what the heck?
1232. 01:06:49 We know this is going to be a popular song, but it's not.
1233. 01:06:51 So how do we salvage this?
1234. 01:06:53 And basically what they figured out was that people don't change the radio because they
1235. 01:06:55 dislike a song, they change it because it's unfamiliar.
1236. 01:06:57 So they sandwich it in between two favorites.
1237. 01:07:00 And that's the same approach that works for Target when they're targeting or marketing
1238. 01:07:04 to new moms.
1239. 01:07:05 So they're going to give you the diaper ads, but they're going to put it in between some
1240. 01:07:09 other things which are not going to blatantly say, hey, we looked at our data and we know
1241. 01:07:12 you're having a baby.
1242. 01:07:15 But I do think there's one statement in here which I actually put in the notes.
1243. 01:07:19 This is creepy.
1244. 01:07:20 You know, soon he says, soon it will be possible for marketers to know our tastes and predict
1245. 01:07:25 our habits better than we do ourselves, which man, the, the, what's it called?
1246. 01:07:32 Retargeting ads where like you go look at something on Amazon and then all of a sudden
1247. 01:07:36 everywhere you go, you see ads for that thing.
1248. 01:07:38 Like that's kind of what this is all about.
1249. 01:07:42 I guess for me when I, my reaction when I see that stuff is, well, first of all, it's always
1250. 01:07:47 like audio gear.
1251. 01:07:48 So it's microphones and things.
1252. 01:07:51 But also it kind of shows me that like, I think about this a lot.
1253. 01:07:56 Maybe it's not as big a deal as I'm making it out to be.
1254. 01:08:00 Maybe I should shift my focus a little bit.
1255. 01:08:03 But also like I get, you know, that every time they bring that front of you, you know,
1256. 01:08:06 you're, you're more likely to follow through and, and buy that thing.
1257. 01:08:10 So I don't know.
1258. 01:08:12 I don't like the fact that this could be taken to a whole nother level and people know me
1259. 01:08:18 better than I know myself.
1260. 01:08:20 Like that's just kind of a, a creepy thought just based off of data, but it's, it, I can
1261. 01:08:25 totally see how that plays out.
1262. 01:08:26 Even though I'm not a data analyst, I've never heard this story before.
1263. 01:08:29 I don't work in this world.
1264. 01:08:31 I mean, there's a reason that Google gives so much stuff away for free just for some personal
1265. 01:08:40 information.
1266. 01:08:41 And I mean, depending on your position, maybe you're okay with that trade off.
1267. 01:08:45 Maybe you're not.
1268. 01:08:46 I mean, there's definitely two camps on that.
1269. 01:08:47 And some people just choose to use different services.
1270. 01:08:50 That's, that's fine.
1271. 01:08:51 Apple takes a very different approach and we don't even have access to your data.
1272. 01:08:54 We can't get it.
1273. 01:08:55 If the FBI tells us we need to, San Bernardino shooter case, you know, I guess like my personal
1274. 01:09:05 reaction to this is I don't like this and I want to do everything I can to limit that.
1275. 01:09:11 I wish you all the best.
1276. 01:09:12 Yeah, it's not going to happen.
1277. 01:09:13 I know.
1278. 01:09:14 As somebody who builds websites and knows the data side of it, good luck.
1279. 01:09:18 Yeah.
1280. 01:09:19 Like I know how some of that stuff is built.
1281. 01:09:22 It's tough to keep it clean even with things like ad blockers and stuff.
1282. 01:09:27 Yeah, it gets tough.
1283. 01:09:30 Basically the only way to do it is stay off the internet entirely.
1284. 01:09:33 Yep.
1285. 01:09:34 And even then.
1286. 01:09:35 Yeah, I know.
1287. 01:09:36 Good luck.
1288. 01:09:37 You still have a physical address.
1289. 01:09:40 You still use a card.
1290. 01:09:41 Yeah.
1291. 01:09:42 It's one of those things that there probably isn't any recourse for individuals who really
1292. 01:09:47 want to keep their data private.
1293. 01:09:49 Other than to just use cash for everything.
1294. 01:09:52 Yeah.
1295. 01:09:53 I never sign up for anything like I said, never use the internet.
1296. 01:09:56 But I don't know, still like subconsciously it's it leaves a bad taste in my mouth even
1297. 01:10:02 though I know this stuff is happening and I kind of go along with it anyways.
1298. 01:10:07 Like I don't like it.
1299. 01:10:08 I feel dirty sometimes.
1300. 01:10:09 Yeah.
1301. 01:10:10 You know, when I see those retargeting ads and like, I have turned down a couple projects
1302. 01:10:15 that are specifically geared for this sort of thing.
1303. 01:10:18 That might make you feel a little bit better.
1304. 01:10:20 There are people fighting back on the development side of things.
1305. 01:10:24 But there are a lot of developers out there.
1306. 01:10:26 So I'm sure they've got it built anyway.
1307. 01:10:28 But I've had two different clients that wanted me to build some tools that were designed
1308. 01:10:33 to track information that people haven't provided to them.
1309. 01:10:39 And I told them no on that.
1310. 01:10:42 So you know, that's something that's it's tough.
1311. 01:10:45 You know, those were good projects from a business stance.
1312. 01:10:48 You know, it hurts a little bit to pass those up once in a while.
1313. 01:10:50 But yeah, I can't bring myself to do it.
1314. 01:10:53 I don't like that stuff.
1315. 01:10:54 All right.
1316. 01:10:55 Should we go to the part three?
1317. 01:10:57 Yeah, let's stop talking about.
1318. 01:10:59 All right.
1319. 01:11:00 So part three is the habits of societies.
1320. 01:11:03 And there's a couple chapters here.
1321. 01:11:05 Chapter eight is called Saddleback Church and the Montgomery bus boycott.
1322. 01:11:10 Really weird to see these two tied together.
1323. 01:11:13 Yeah.
1324. 01:11:14 I get the points that he's making again, like the Rosa Parks story.
1325. 01:11:19 I'm familiar with this story.
1326. 01:11:21 I've given a Toastmasters speech on this topic and feel like he got part of the story.
1327. 01:11:29 He filled in some blanks actually too with some other details, which was kind of cool.
1328. 01:11:34 But also, I don't know, just feel manipulated every time I read this story after the emotional
1329. 01:11:41 intelligence thing.
1330. 01:11:43 But to summarize this, he says that there's three different pieces in the DNA of a movement.
1331. 01:11:49 So number one, it starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between
1332. 01:11:53 close acquaintances.
1333. 01:11:55 Number two, it grows because of the habits of a community and the weak ties that hold
1334. 01:11:58 neighborhoods and clans together.
1335. 01:12:00 Let's come back to weak ties in a second.
1336. 01:12:02 And then number three, they endure because the movement's leaders give participants new
1337. 01:12:05 habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership.
1338. 01:12:09 All right.
1339. 01:12:10 Weak ties are friends of a friend, people that you don't really know, but they're really
1340. 01:12:16 the key piece to keeping a movement going.
1341. 01:12:20 And so in the example of the Montgomery bus boycott, the thing happened to Rosa Parks
1342. 01:12:27 and he kind of tells how like Martin Luther King Jr. was reluctantly dragged into this
1343. 01:12:33 thing.
1344. 01:12:34 And then he became the spokesperson and then it just kind of swept through the community
1345. 01:12:37 because it was kind of like, well, I don't know anybody who's going to do this, but everybody's
1346. 01:12:41 doing it.
1347. 01:12:42 And so everybody boycotted the bus system in Montgomery in the African American community.
1348. 01:12:49 And that's kind of what led to the, in his opinion, the paraphrasing the whole chapter,
1349. 01:12:55 but that kind of was the first domino in a lot of civil rights stuff.
1350. 01:12:58 Yeah, I got lost on some of this.
1351. 01:13:01 I'm not going to lie.
1352. 01:13:03 I get a lot of what he's trying to say, but I struggled with connecting all of his dots.
1353. 01:13:12 I think this has kind of been your point over and over again.
1354. 01:13:15 Yep.
1355. 01:13:16 You know, that's probably the one tricky part here with this book.
1356. 01:13:23 I think it's the story of hearing how things went down in Montgomery.
1357. 01:13:30 I think it's interesting and there's a lot of historical background there.
1358. 01:13:35 I have a thing for history as well.
1359. 01:13:36 So like that side of me is like, yeah, this is really cool.
1360. 01:13:40 Let's check this out.
1361. 01:13:40 But the other side of it's like, well, okay, I feel like you're trying to force your way
1362. 01:13:46 into saying these are habits.
1363. 01:13:50 Basically what you're telling me is this whole movement started because of peer pressure.
1364. 01:13:53 Yeah, exactly.
1365. 01:13:56 That was my take on it.
1366. 01:13:57 Well, as peer pressure habit, I don't really feel like it is.
1367. 01:14:03 Yeah, yeah.
1368. 01:14:04 So unless I'm wrong in that sense, you use the wrong story here.
1369. 01:14:11 I don't know.
1370. 01:14:12 Right.
1371. 01:14:13 Well, that's kind of where the Saddleback piece comes in because Saddleback is.
1372. 01:14:19 I think now like the biggest church in the United States, but it started by this guy who
1373. 01:14:25 was pouring over research trying to find the place in the country that had the most unchurched
1374. 01:14:31 people or something like that.
1375. 01:14:33 And then the way that he has Rick Warren, the way that he's grown Saddleback according
1376. 01:14:38 to this book is that he's created the whole concept of or really leveraged the whole concept
1377. 01:14:44 of these small groups.
1378. 01:14:46 And the small groups were really designed to encourage people to build their own habits.
1379. 01:14:52 Everybody signs a maturity covenant card.
1380. 01:14:54 Which is a social promise, which triggers that peer pressure that you were talking about.
1381. 01:14:58 And then from there, like their self, self feeders, in fact, even says page 235, if you
1382. 01:15:05 try to scare people into following Christ example, it's not going to work for too long.
1383. 01:15:08 The only way you get people to take responsibility for their spiritual maturity is to teach them
1384. 01:15:11 habits of faith.
1385. 01:15:12 Once that happens, it becomes self feeders.
1386. 01:15:14 People follow Christ not because you led them there, but because it's who they are.
1387. 01:15:18 And so I get that in that specific example, had trouble applying it to the Montgomery
1388. 01:15:25 bus boycott, like you said.
1389. 01:15:27 But I do think that there's some cool things that are happening there.
1390. 01:15:31 So number one, like you're encouraging people to develop these positive habits.
1391. 01:15:36 And then number two, like that maturity covenant card, I really like that idea where everybody
1392. 01:15:40 who is involved in this thing, like knows what they've signed up for.
1393. 01:15:44 And so there's social expectations that they're going to follow through and do those things.
1394. 01:15:48 And a small level, I think that's kind of what we've done with Bookworm, not that we're
1395. 01:15:53 a movement, although maybe we've read this.
1396. 01:15:55 You need to study the habits of our listeners.
1397. 01:15:57 And surely we can change the routine.
1398. 01:15:59 Especially we become a movement.
1399. 01:16:01 Is Andrew Polville?
1400. 01:16:02 Well, you tell me what to analyze and I'll analyze it.
1401. 01:16:05 How about that?
1402. 01:16:07 No, but we've kind of like, this is off the cuff.
1403. 01:16:13 So I may say something really stupid here.
1404. 01:16:15 But we've kind of made a social contract that every two weeks we're going to read this
1405. 01:16:20 book and we're going to show up and we're going to talk about it.
1406. 01:16:23 We're going to have these action items.
1407. 01:16:24 We're going to hold each other accountable to doing what we said we're going to do.
1408. 01:16:27 And I know that there are some people who listen to this that have done the same sort
1409. 01:16:30 of thing.
1410. 01:16:31 They have their own action items.
1411. 01:16:33 So they've kind of like bought into the social contract, even though there wasn't a formal
1412. 01:16:38 process for them to do that.
1413. 01:16:40 And there's like the Bookworm Club that people can join to do that too.
1414. 01:16:45 The T-Shirt example, like that's another example I think of like a community led initiative.
1415. 01:16:53 What's interesting comparing these two is like they're so, well I shouldn't say they're
1416. 01:16:59 so different because in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, what Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching
1417. 01:17:06 was to combat hate with love.
1418. 01:17:11 And so that's interesting to me given our current social situation in the United States
1419. 01:17:18 where you have police officers who are documented like there was one even in Milwaukee not too
1420. 01:17:26 long ago where they tased a Milwaukee Bucks player because he was in a Walgreens parking
1421. 01:17:33 lot.
1422. 01:17:34 Sometimes something like that happens, my heart breaks because I find myself kind of caught
1423. 01:17:39 in the middle where I don't believe that every police officer is bad and we shouldn't trust
1424. 01:17:45 the police.
1425. 01:17:46 But on the other hand, I'm not an African American male who is put in that situation.
1426. 01:17:51 I can't tell everybody, hey, you know, it's going to be okay.
1427. 01:17:55 This is the right response in this situation, which is what Martin Luther King Jr. did.
1428. 01:18:00 He was the example, people were throwing stuff through his windows, blew up his porch.
1429. 01:18:05 You know, they said in this book, if his family had been in the front room, they would have
1430. 01:18:08 died.
1431. 01:18:09 But he even told everybody the whole mob that formed, like we're going to get those guys
1432. 01:18:14 back.
1433. 01:18:15 Like he said, no, you can't do it that way.
1434. 01:18:18 And when I read this, like I found myself saying we really need a Martin Luther King
1435. 01:18:24 Jr. type character to lead real social change now, we need somebody who can channel the
1436. 01:18:30 same strength that he did and create a movement that achieves real results, but without warfare,
1437. 01:18:41 you know.
1438. 01:18:42 And again, like I really can't directly impact that because I'm not the one right in the
1439. 01:18:49 middle of the conflict, but it makes me realize, I guess, hearing the story that they told
1440. 01:18:58 and obviously the changes that came about because of that and then looking at our current
1441. 01:19:02 situation, it stands up to me like that's the missing piece.
1442. 01:19:05 Does that make sense?
1443. 01:19:06 Yeah.
1444. 01:19:07 I think just one of the things he talks about earlier on, what chapter was that three, when
1445. 01:19:14 it was changing, like how to change a habit?
1446. 01:19:18 Essentially what's happening is in a movement, you're trying to change a single habit, but
1447. 01:19:21 he also mentions that you can only really, you should only focus on one at a time.
1448. 01:19:27 Yep.
1449. 01:19:28 Because if you try to do too many at one time, it's overwhelming.
1450. 01:19:32 It's too much going on.
1451. 01:19:34 And one of the things that Martin Luther did with Martin Luther King Jr, they had a single
1452. 01:19:42 target that they were after to fight against and everyone united around that one person
1453. 01:19:50 leading that movement towards that one goal.
1454. 01:19:53 True.
1455. 01:19:54 I think part of the problem that we see in a lot of our society today is there's a whole
1456. 01:19:57 bunch of different targets that people are trying to hit and there's not a single leader
1457. 01:20:01 on them and essentially it's too much at one time.
1458. 01:20:06 So it means everybody's frustrated in some way.
1459. 01:20:08 A whole bunch of people are angry because they feel like everyone should come together
1460. 01:20:13 and unify over this thing.
1461. 01:20:15 But the thing that everybody wants is different.
1462. 01:20:18 There's a whole bunch of these different targets that people are after, but it can't
1463. 01:20:24 be unified because the targets are so different that it can't become one movement.
1464. 01:20:29 So you essentially have multiple of them running all at once and then it just doesn't work
1465. 01:20:33 because you're trying to change too many things at one time.
1466. 01:20:36 Because the civil rights movement, it was so much targeted towards directly one thing
1467. 01:20:43 and absolutely everyone got on board with that one target.
1468. 01:20:46 So that I think is the thing that's missing in our society today.
1469. 01:20:50 I think if they could change that, which I'm not really sure how they would do, I have
1470. 01:20:55 no civil rights movement creator here, but to me that's the fundamental flaw in what's
1471. 01:21:02 going on today.
1472. 01:21:03 Yeah.
1473. 01:21:04 Well, there's a couple different things there.
1474. 01:21:06 So there's obviously the approach that I shared where Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man,
1475. 01:21:13 great example of how you can affect positive change and created a movement.
1476. 01:21:17 But also at the very beginning of this book, there's a totally different solution to violence,
1477. 01:21:23 which is interesting.
1478. 01:21:24 I forget the country that this happened in, but basically there were these two sides
1479. 01:21:27 and they would meet every evening in this square in Kigali, K-I-G-A-L-I.
1480. 01:21:35 And they would fight.
1481. 01:21:38 And every night, there's police there and they're trying to keep the peace and they
1482. 01:21:43 can't.
1483. 01:21:44 There's always violence, like every single night.
1484. 01:21:47 And some guy shows up and he's like, "Oh, I know how to make it stop.
1485. 01:21:50 Just remove all of the kebab vendors from the square."
1486. 01:21:53 Sure enough.
1487. 01:21:54 Like you remove the food and then people just leave because they're hungry and there's
1488. 01:21:58 no more violence.
1489. 01:22:01 So in essence, they controlled crowds with their habits.
1490. 01:22:05 And I'm not saying that this, the Montgomery bus boycott, social situation in the United
1491. 01:22:12 States can be solved the same way.
1492. 01:22:14 But there are multiple triggers here.
1493. 01:22:19 And it's interesting to think that you can affect pretty significant change simply by
1494. 01:22:24 changing a simple habit.
1495. 01:22:26 Well, we got one more chapter.
1496. 01:22:29 One more, chapter nine, the neurology of free will.
1497. 01:22:33 In this chapter, I don't know, it talks about all of the different things that are created
1498. 01:22:38 by habits that maybe people think of negatively.
1499. 01:22:43 So it tells a story about a lady who's addicted to gambling, tells another story about a guy
1500. 01:22:49 who murders his wife while sleepwalking.
1501. 01:22:52 And so there's all these different examples of these habits.
1502. 01:22:55 And he also shares there's different cases that have been brought against these people.
1503. 01:23:01 So in the case of the guy who ended up murdering his wife while he was sleepwalking, he had
1504. 01:23:06 no idea that he did it.
1505. 01:23:07 He was declared innocent.
1506. 01:23:08 But the lady who still has this habit that she "can't control" and she gambled away
1507. 01:23:14 all this money and she owes the casino tens of thousands of dollars.
1508. 01:23:19 Like she's guilty.
1509. 01:23:20 And so the question that he phrases here is, is it fair since habits are so automatic and
1510. 01:23:27 they're all kind of constructed the same?
1511. 01:23:29 Is it fair to say that the guy who murdered his wife is innocent while this lady who owes
1512. 01:23:33 the casino $30,000 or whatever, she's guilty?
1513. 01:23:38 I don't really know the easy or correct answer to that.
1514. 01:23:44 It does kind of tick me off, I guess, to know that gambling, like the people who deal with
1515. 01:23:49 this, they're going and they do go to the casino.
1516. 01:23:54 And that is an example of a cue and a routine that they could potentially change.
1517. 01:23:59 But it kind of ticks me off that once they get there, everything in there is designed
1518. 01:24:04 to manipulate these habits to get them to the point this lady was in where their life
1519. 01:24:07 is completely destroyed.
1520. 01:24:10 But the big takeaway for me in this section is that your habits are not your destiny.
1521. 01:24:17 He kind of ends it on a positive.
1522. 01:24:19 You can change your habits if you know how, but you've got to decide to change it and
1523. 01:24:22 it's going to take some hard work.
1524. 01:24:24 I don't know how I feel about this chapter.
1525. 01:24:27 I tend to be one who thinks you should own up to your actions, like own it up to what
1526. 01:24:35 you do.
1527. 01:24:37 It's the classic, if you're a recovering alcoholic, don't go to a bar.
1528. 01:24:42 Yep, exactly.
1529. 01:24:43 You're the one that's in control of that.
1530. 01:24:45 So saying that she's not responsible for the money that she gambled away, I don't have
1531. 01:24:53 a problem with casinos building themselves such that they are designed to help you give
1532. 01:25:00 your money away to them.
1533. 01:25:02 I don't mind them doing that because you're the one that went in there.
1534. 01:25:05 That is their business.
1535. 01:25:06 You're the one that walked in.
1536. 01:25:07 If that's your problem, don't go in.
1537. 01:25:12 What about this lady where she was trying to get clean and they're calling her house
1538. 01:25:17 and they're showing up and they're like, "Hey, come on over and we'll pay for everything."
1539. 01:25:22 I think there's got to be a line there somewhere.
1540. 01:25:23 Where do you think that line is?
1541. 01:25:25 I guess my question is why, maybe not why, but how do they know how to get a hold of
1542. 01:25:33 her?
1543. 01:25:34 She's obviously given her information to them at some point.
1544. 01:25:38 That's the response I had to.
1545. 01:25:42 It seems like if you don't want that invitation, I don't know very many instances where someone
1546. 01:25:52 has the ability to communicate with you that you can't stop it.
1547. 01:25:58 I'm sitting here trying to run through my head.
1548. 01:26:00 There's people who ignore the do not call list and they will call you even when they're
1549. 01:26:04 not supposed to.
1550. 01:26:07 People will mail you when you don't want it.
1551. 01:26:11 These are things that are easy to just ignore or delete or throw away.
1552. 01:26:16 I can't help but think she invited this.
1553. 01:26:19 Maybe that's just me being hard.
1554. 01:26:22 No, I think you're probably right because again, you've only got part of the story.
1555. 01:26:27 But it does kind of tick me off that there are these rules and guidelines in place.
1556. 01:26:31 Like you said, there are going to be people who are going to ignore the do not call list.
1557. 01:26:35 There are going to be people who are going to send you spam.
1558. 01:26:37 There are going to be people who are going to mail you stuff.
1559. 01:26:39 Then after you tell them, don't send me anything ever again.
1560. 01:26:44 That just seems wrong.
1561. 01:26:46 Given what we know about these habits and the fact that they're praying on these people
1562. 01:26:49 illegally, "How can they get away with that?"
1563. 01:26:56 Not everyone's clean, Mike.
1564. 01:26:58 I know.
1565. 01:27:00 I wish I had a clean answer but I don't.
1566. 01:27:04 Like I said, this chapter is kind of depressing because they share all these stories of people
1567. 01:27:09 who have kind of lost everything because of their habits.
1568. 01:27:13 It does end positively.
1569. 01:27:15 Like I said, because you can change your habits if you want to.
1570. 01:27:20 One important point I think they made in this last chapter is that if you believe you can
1571. 01:27:22 change, the change can become real if you make it a habit.
1572. 01:27:28 It's kind of like things are created twice, first in your mind, then in reality.
1573. 01:27:32 If you want to create it in reality, the way to do that is through establishing the habit
1574. 01:27:36 that's going to produce the right reward to get you where you want to go.
1575. 01:27:39 I like that.
1576. 01:27:40 I feel like that's a good place to stop.
1577. 01:27:42 All right.
1578. 01:27:43 Cool.
1579. 01:27:44 But you've got another miscellaneous here.
1580. 01:27:46 Yeah.
1581. 01:27:47 This actually didn't fit in with anything that he said in this particular book.
1582. 01:27:50 But my gap book for this time was Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey, which is not out yet.
1583. 01:27:55 It's a good read.
1584. 01:27:57 It's a good read.
1585. 01:27:59 He talks in there about the different ways that you can focus.
1586. 01:28:04 You can focus.
1587. 01:28:05 He has this powerful visual of your attentional space.
1588. 01:28:08 It's like this circle and then you can fill it different ways.
1589. 01:28:11 If you really want to get major progress done on a particular task or project, then you
1590. 01:28:17 just focus on that one thing.
1591. 01:28:19 He shares all these different scenarios.
1592. 01:28:21 One of the things that stood out to me was the fact that you can work on a task intently
1593. 01:28:27 and make progress on it while activating an automatic habit in the background.
1594. 01:28:33 We've talked about this roughly on other podcast episodes where you listen to a podcast while
1595. 01:28:43 you're mowing a lawn or whatever.
1596. 01:28:45 That is an example, I think, of how you can effectively, quote-unquote, multitask, but
1597. 01:28:53 the only way to do it is through establishing these habits.
1598. 01:28:57 I'm not sure I explained that real well.
1599. 01:28:59 But an important point, we tend to think, I think, anyways, in the productivity space
1600. 01:29:07 where there's so much emphasis on deep work and focus and all that stuff, that you have
1601. 01:29:11 to be laser focused on one thing at a time.
1602. 01:29:14 Really what Chris Bailey is saying is that now if you create these habits, you can actually
1603. 01:29:19 do those alongside one task that you are focusing on.
1604. 01:29:24 The challenge to me as I'm reading that other book, Hyper Focus, is what are the things
1605. 01:29:30 that I can do that will produce the results I want?
1606. 01:29:34 How can I make them habits?
1607. 01:29:36 We talked about some of them in this episode, the morning routine, the journaling reflection
1608. 01:29:42 at the end of the day.
1609. 01:29:44 What I'm thinking is that there's ways to automate some of that stuff.
1610. 01:29:50 I want to figure out how to do that using the Qroutine reward that we learned about in
1611. 01:29:55 this book.
1612. 01:29:56 Let's see if I understand what you're saying here.
1613. 01:29:59 I'm going to do this via an example of something I do.
1614. 01:30:06 This might explain what you're talking about.
1615. 01:30:09 Sometimes when I'm doing development, when I'm building writing code for a website, I'll
1616. 01:30:15 sometimes work on two different websites at the same time, which sounds like chaos.
1617. 01:30:22 What happens is I'm working on one.
1618. 01:30:25 A part of that process is at some points I need to stop the local website that I'm running
1619. 01:30:35 and clear the cache or the database and then restart it.
1620. 01:30:41 Simple process there.
1621. 01:30:42 That research process can sometimes take 30 seconds to 45 seconds depending on the size
1622. 01:30:48 of the website.
1623. 01:30:50 You're just waiting.
1624. 01:30:51 You're just waiting for that to happen.
1625. 01:30:54 It's all muscle memory.
1626. 01:30:55 I don't even know what the commands are to do all that.
1627. 01:30:57 It just happens.
1628. 01:31:00 I will run those commands to stop the server and run it again.
1629. 01:31:05 As soon as I tell it to run again, I'll switch over and work on the second website while
1630. 01:31:08 I'm waiting for that spin up.
1631. 01:31:12 I'll do the same thing.
1632. 01:31:13 I'll make a couple small tweaks.
1633. 01:31:15 I have a pretty good feel for when that other server should be up and running.
1634. 01:31:18 Once I feel like it's up and running, I'll quit the second website and go back to the
1635. 01:31:22 first one and continue my testing and debugging and stuff from there.
1636. 01:31:27 I'm multitasking because I'm working on two things at once, but it's because I have that
1637. 01:31:30 delay that I'm waiting on something.
1638. 01:31:33 Is that what you're talking about?
1639. 01:31:35 I think so.
1640. 01:31:36 I think that's a good example.
1641. 01:31:37 He talks about three combinations that work with the attentional space that you have available.
1642. 01:31:43 First, you can do a few small habitual tasks.
1643. 01:31:46 Second, you can do a task that requires most of your focus plus a habitual task.
1644. 01:31:50 I believe what you just described falls into that category.
1645. 01:31:53 Or you could just do one complex task.
1646. 01:31:57 The challenge for me, because we just read the power of habit, he's talking about how
1647. 01:32:01 you can create habitual tasks, what are the things that I can create into habitual tasks
1648. 01:32:07 that are things that I want to do?
1649. 01:32:10 I guess, are there things that I do currently that I view as a complex task that I have to
1650. 01:32:16 laser focus on this thing?
1651. 01:32:18 Or can I shift those things so that they become habits and institute cues, routines,
1652. 01:32:24 and rewards to accomplish the results that that task would give me, but also reduce the
1653. 01:32:30 cognitive load to actually do it?
1654. 01:32:32 Does that make sense?
1655. 01:32:33 It does.
1656. 01:32:34 It does.
1657. 01:32:35 I think I get what you're saying, I think.
1658. 01:32:37 In your example, booting up the other server or whatever, that not complex task that you've
1659. 01:32:43 got, you know exactly how to do it and you can do it almost automatically and you can
1660. 01:32:47 do something else while that's happening at the same time.
1661. 01:32:50 That's an example of a task that probably was a complex task for you at one point, but
1662. 01:32:54 you've made it a habitual task.
1663. 01:32:56 You can do that while doing something else.
1664. 01:32:57 I want to look for those things in the way I work.
1665. 01:33:02 That's probably a good example because I went and while you were talking, I pulled up my
1666. 01:33:09 command line history for one of those websites where I was doing that and realized it's four
1667. 01:33:16 different commands that I'm running, which if you've never done that before, it would
1668. 01:33:22 probably take you a little bit to know what order to do that in and when to do that.
1669. 01:33:27 But I don't even think about it.
1670. 01:33:29 I couldn't really tell you when to do that just because it's second nature at this point.
1671. 01:33:35 Yeah, exactly.
1672. 01:33:37 Interesting.
1673. 01:33:38 I've never thought about that as multitasking, but it is something that I do.
1674. 01:33:42 Fun times.
1675. 01:33:43 Anything else on the book, Mike?
1676. 01:33:44 No, other than I think we're probably agreed, but I'll ask you anyways because you have
1677. 01:33:48 one of these questions down.
1678. 01:33:50 What did you think was the most impactful part of the book?
1679. 01:33:52 For me, it was definitely the first part of this.
1680. 01:33:56 By the time we got to the second part, especially once we got to the Starbucks teaching willpower
1681. 01:34:00 and that's why everybody was successful, I was kind of tuning out.
1682. 01:34:03 Yeah, well, it makes a lot of sense.
1683. 01:34:05 I would say what I think is the most impactful point of this book is probably chapter three.
1684. 01:34:13 I think understanding how habits work, like the Q-retune reward, that piece is helpful.
1685. 01:34:19 But to me, understanding how do you change an existing habit or develop one, just knowing
1686. 01:34:26 that process, I feel like could have the biggest payoff.
1687. 01:34:30 A close second to that would be Keystone Habits.
1688. 01:34:34 I think those two pieces were the ones that really jumped out to me and that I felt like
1689. 01:34:38 I read those chapters and kind of wanted them to keep going.
1690. 01:34:43 But they were done too quick.
1691. 01:34:44 I think that's true.
1692. 01:34:45 I would add to that the power of Christ is chapter six and then chapter one, the habit
1693. 01:34:50 loop.
1694. 01:34:51 This is a really powerful idea.
1695. 01:34:52 One thing I forgot to mention, he kind of really briefly talked about how researchers
1696. 01:35:00 had come up with this habit loop, but the way he positions it, the rest of the book feels
1697. 01:35:05 kind of like he's ripping off their idea and he doesn't give them full credit for it.
1698. 01:35:10 Again, this is an example of me knowing the full story as opposed to just the part that
1699. 01:35:13 he tells.
1700. 01:35:15 Basically, I think it was Massachusetts Institute of Technology and there were a couple researchers
1701. 01:35:19 that came up with this key routine reward.
1702. 01:35:21 He just briefly mentions like, "Yeah, researchers have identified this and then he kind of runs
1703. 01:35:26 with it."
1704. 01:35:27 The only visuals in this book are where he plugs in the different pieces for this to
1705. 01:35:33 go along with the story that he's telling.
1706. 01:35:38 By the end of the book, it's easy to forget that Charles Duhigg isn't the one who came
1707. 01:35:42 up with this.
1708. 01:35:43 But it's important to clarify that, I think.
1709. 01:35:50 Yeah.
1710. 01:35:52 What pieces of this book could have been pulled out?
1711. 01:35:55 Which ones do you think he should have skipped?
1712. 01:35:57 Because it's a pretty long book, page count wise.
1713. 01:36:00 What is it, like 270 something?
1714. 01:36:01 Yeah.
1715. 01:36:02 I just threw stuff all over my desk.
1716. 01:36:05 I feel like most books should be around 200.
1717. 01:36:09 It's kind of been my working theory lately, which would tell me there's about 75 pages
1718. 01:36:16 here that could probably have been pulled out.
1719. 01:36:18 Yeah.
1720. 01:36:20 So I think all of part one was good.
1721. 01:36:25 From part two, chapter four and chapter six, you could probably cut chapter five, chapter
1722. 01:36:31 seven, and then part three, I think was definitely the weakest part.
1723. 01:36:35 Because again, the question that I had was how do we implement this?
1724. 01:36:40 It's great to know based on some historical examples why he thinks Saddleback Church was
1725. 01:36:46 successful or the Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful.
1726. 01:36:50 But how does that help now?
1727. 01:36:53 And I, for a thought experiment, applied it to a current situation and there is no easy
1728. 01:36:59 answer.
1729. 01:37:00 It's not as simple as just, oh, pick a new routine.
1730. 01:37:03 Yeah.
1731. 01:37:04 You can't communicate that to millions or billions of people at once and get everybody
1732. 01:37:08 to buy into it right away.
1733. 01:37:09 So I think from a practical applying what you're reading perspective, that part really
1734. 01:37:18 doesn't add a whole lot.
1735. 01:37:20 Fair point.
1736. 01:37:21 I feel like you could just drop part three.
1737. 01:37:23 Like I would be happy with that because if you drop part three, it's at two 12.
1738. 01:37:26 Like, okay, just do that.
1739. 01:37:28 You know, drop those last two chapters and call it good.
1740. 01:37:31 I'd be good with that.
1741. 01:37:33 Interestingly, what do you think the impact would be?
1742. 01:37:37 You know, this is a New York Times bestselling book.
1743. 01:37:39 So we're telling a New York Times bestselling author how they should do it differently.
1744. 01:37:45 Because we have the authority to do that, right?
1745. 01:37:48 Yeah, yeah.
1746. 01:37:49 But what do you think would be the impact if this book was just the two sections?
1747. 01:37:55 I mean, I see this a lot in the books that we read that there's like three different
1748. 01:38:00 sections.
1749. 01:38:01 One more important Hanson book, I think, too, was three different sections.
1750. 01:38:05 And I'm sure that there's some, you know, marketing based habit manipulation going on
1751. 01:38:12 there where it's like, oh, there's three sections.
1752. 01:38:13 They must have really thought this through.
1753. 01:38:16 Right.
1754. 01:38:17 I also wonder because there's also like there's usually a multiple of three in number of
1755. 01:38:26 chapters.
1756. 01:38:27 Yep.
1757. 01:38:28 This one was 12, right?
1758. 01:38:30 And I always think that that's nine.
1759. 01:38:32 No, that player knows.
1760. 01:38:33 Not in the first part, four in the second, two in the last one.
1761. 01:38:36 Right.
1762. 01:38:37 And I would imagine they struggled to put four in the second and tried to move one to three.
1763. 01:38:44 I would imagine they had a fight over that.
1764. 01:38:46 But they, I think you're right.
1765. 01:38:49 I think there's something to that.
1766. 01:38:51 Most books have three parts.
1767. 01:38:52 Like there's, there's something in our mind that, you know, that is the normal way that
1768. 01:38:57 people form books.
1769. 01:39:00 And I, my sense is that most authors probably don't structure it that way.
1770. 01:39:06 They just have, you know, here's my book.
1771. 01:39:09 And then publishers want to sell it.
1772. 01:39:11 So then they throw a marketing spin on it and then we get three parts.
1773. 01:39:17 And if there's not three parts worth in the original, they add one and it's usually that
1774. 01:39:21 last one.
1775. 01:39:22 And it's the last one that we always feel like we should cut.
1776. 01:39:26 So I'm with you.
1777. 01:39:29 Yeah.
1778. 01:39:30 Well, it's, I think I have a partial answer to this from the Chris Bailey book, which,
1779. 01:39:35 you know, I'm not going to quote him exactly because books not out yet and maybe it'll
1780. 01:39:41 even change.
1781. 01:39:42 But he does talk about how this whole idea of a tensional space, like it's essentially
1782. 01:39:48 the ram in your computer's brain and it can only handle so much, which is why chunking
1783. 01:39:54 works and stuff like that.
1784. 01:39:57 But I think that there's probably patterns and habits that people have established that
1785. 01:40:03 like, yeah, readers can wrap their head around the overall message of this book better when
1786. 01:40:07 it's broken up into these three different sections.
1787. 01:40:09 But I do think it's interesting that a lot of the books that we read, we read the whole
1788. 01:40:14 thing and then we're like, yeah, this part really shouldn't even be here.
1789. 01:40:19 So I mean, I know they've got reasons for doing it, but I just think it's interesting
1790. 01:40:24 how often we have that reaction.
1791. 01:40:27 So that said, what else we have here?
1792. 01:40:30 Action items?
1793. 01:40:31 Yep.
1794. 01:40:32 We've talked about them for the most part.
1795. 01:40:35 Just want to summarize yours quick.
1796. 01:40:36 I'll summarize mine.
1797. 01:40:37 Sure.
1798. 01:40:38 So the habit loop, the cure routine reward, that's something that I want to apply to all
1799. 01:40:43 of my current routines and habits.
1800. 01:40:45 I want to identify what they are and then figure out what changes I want to make, change them
1801. 01:40:50 one at a time, not a whole bunch of things at once.
1802. 01:40:53 And then I want things specifically which we mentioned, the fast food.
1803. 01:40:57 I don't want to say like completely cut it out because I don't think that's the right
1804. 01:41:03 approach.
1805. 01:41:04 The right approach is not just saying, okay, no more fast food.
1806. 01:41:06 The right approach is figuring out the cure routine and the reward and figuring out what
1807. 01:41:11 I can do to circumvent that when it happens.
1808. 01:41:14 But the net result I'm going for is no more fast food.
1809. 01:41:17 It's a good one.
1810. 01:41:18 I like that one.
1811. 01:41:20 Specifically no more culvers.
1812. 01:41:21 Little butter burger, cheese curds.
1813. 01:41:23 Sorry, culvers.
1814. 01:41:25 Sorry, Mike.
1815. 01:41:26 That's going to be a tough one.
1816. 01:41:28 I'll definitely make sure that's on the list for next time.
1817. 01:41:31 And maybe the following and the following and the following.
1818. 01:41:36 No, I want to follow you on the identifying what my current routines and habits are.
1819. 01:41:41 I think that there's something valuable in that.
1820. 01:41:44 And I think that might be a it'll be an ongoing thing.
1821. 01:41:49 I think you're always going to be finding more and more of them.
1822. 01:41:52 So that was number one too.
1823. 01:41:54 I've done this somewhat with moving my phone down to my office and changing it my morning
1824. 01:41:58 routine a little bit because of that and getting away from some of those bad habits
1825. 01:42:01 as a result.
1826. 01:42:03 That was too.
1827. 01:42:04 And third one here, I don't think I talked about this earlier, but there are certain points
1828. 01:42:08 in my day and I know when they happen they usually involve me finishing up a round of
1829. 01:42:12 email.
1830. 01:42:14 But those points in the day are a little more stressful than normal.
1831. 01:42:18 And because of that stress, I have a tendency to kind of be chaotic with the tasks that I'm
1832. 01:42:24 doing and it's hard for me to focus on one and I bounce all over the place.
1833. 01:42:28 So because of that, I know that something that calms me down is just take 15 minutes
1834. 01:42:33 and read.
1835. 01:42:35 So I'm wanting to build in this habit of after finishing up email, like my rounds of email,
1836. 01:42:43 taking 15 minutes to read from whatever book I'm reading at the time.
1837. 01:42:47 So that's a habit I want to build in.
1838. 01:42:49 I like that one.
1839. 01:42:50 That should be a good one.
1840. 01:42:51 I'm excited about that one.
1841. 01:42:52 We'll see how well it actually holds true though.
1842. 01:42:55 But that said, author's style and rating.
1843. 01:43:00 So on this one, like I'll go first year since it was my choice, but we've talked a lot
1844. 01:43:06 about how he wrote this book, I think, probably more so than we normally do.
1845. 01:43:10 I think the technicals on him as a writer.
1846. 01:43:13 He's a great writer, I think.
1847. 01:43:14 I just think his choice of structure is a little bit difficult to stick with.
1848. 01:43:21 And I feel like there are some points where that structure inhibits his ways of conveying
1849. 01:43:28 the ideas and it makes it a little bit hard to follow once in a while.
1850. 01:43:32 So although I love the concept of building habits and how do you change them and such,
1851. 01:43:39 I think I resonated a lot more with the individualization side of it more so than the organizational
1852. 01:43:44 and societal sides.
1853. 01:43:46 So I don't really know where I would want to put it.
1854. 01:43:50 So it seems like my de facto, I don't know, rating is four.
1855. 01:43:54 So I'm going to put it at 4.0 just because it's definitely not a five.
1856. 01:43:58 I feel like three and a half is kind of lame because I feel like it has more of an impact
1857. 01:44:02 on me than that.
1858. 01:44:03 And four and a half seems too high for that.
1859. 01:44:05 So I'm going to land it on four.
1860. 01:44:06 All right.
1861. 01:44:07 Interesting.
1862. 01:44:08 I am going to go 3.5 even though it's lame.
1863. 01:44:11 Okay.
1864. 01:44:12 Fair enough.
1865. 01:44:13 Part of the reason for that is like I said, I was familiar with a lot of these stories
1866. 01:44:18 and a lot of these ideas.
1867. 01:44:19 I mean, to be fair, the key routine reward, he does a great job of presenting it in this
1868. 01:44:24 book.
1869. 01:44:25 And if this is the first time you have encountered that idea, it's really powerful.
1870. 01:44:28 But I work for a company in Asian deficiency that teaches a rituals course on this stuff.
1871. 01:44:33 So I kind of get it and I've been implementing it for a while before we read this.
1872. 01:44:39 So take that into consideration.
1873. 01:44:42 Also take into consideration my strong reaction to his lack of giving emotional intelligence
1874. 01:44:47 credit for Starbucks success.
1875. 01:44:50 But I really think that there wasn't that much in this book that really significantly
1876. 01:44:57 impacted me.
1877. 01:44:58 There's some really cool mental models.
1878. 01:45:01 And it's definitely something that I'm going to apply.
1879. 01:45:04 But that habit loop idea, which again, wasn't even his original idea.
1880. 01:45:10 Like, that's the big takeaway for me.
1881. 01:45:13 It's not the societal stuff.
1882. 01:45:15 It's not even the organizational stuff.
1883. 01:45:17 There is some cool stuff in there, but the book could have been half as long in, in my
1884. 01:45:23 opinion.
1885. 01:45:24 So I do think it's a good book.
1886. 01:45:26 I do think I would recommend it to people.
1887. 01:45:28 But in terms of the impact that it had on me and how much I enjoyed it compared to all
1888. 01:45:33 of the other books that we've read, I think 3.5 is very fair.
1889. 01:45:39 That's fair.
1890. 01:45:41 That is fair.
1891. 01:45:43 All right.
1892. 01:45:44 So what's up next, Mike?
1893. 01:45:48 The next book is a listener recommendation, not just my wife, but though she did vote for
1894. 01:45:53 it.
1895. 01:45:54 And that is Boundaries by Henry Cloud.
1896. 01:45:57 This is one that, before we recorded this, you mentioned that you really enjoyed this
1897. 01:46:02 the first time that you read it.
1898. 01:46:03 So it'll be interesting to hear how that maybe has changed for you.
1899. 01:46:06 And I'm excited to dive into it.
1900. 01:46:09 I've heard lots of great things about this book.
1901. 01:46:11 Yeah.
1902. 01:46:12 I'm excited to go through this one.
1903. 01:46:13 And this was, this is a, I think this will be a rare case that I'm going to have a bunch
1904. 01:46:17 of stories on this one.
1905. 01:46:20 Just because I read it nine years ago, and I still recommend it to people.
1906. 01:46:26 So yes, I have lots to say about this book.
1907. 01:46:31 I'm excited that you picked it.
1908. 01:46:32 Interesting.
1909. 01:46:33 So it'll be a good one.
1910. 01:46:35 Following Boundaries, we'll jump into Work Clean by Dan Charness.
1911. 01:46:41 This is also a listener recommendation.
1912. 01:46:43 It wasn't the next top voted one, but it was, it was up there.
1913. 01:46:48 So I'm not really sure why I was drawn to it, but it's one that I've seen around here
1914. 01:46:52 and there.
1915. 01:46:53 It's the, yeah, I'm not going to explain it more than that.
1916. 01:46:56 But Work Clean by Dan Charness.
1917. 01:46:59 That's after Boundaries.
1918. 01:47:01 Nice.
1919. 01:47:02 I have, I have never heard of this book.
1920. 01:47:04 See, I don't know if that's good or bad.
1921. 01:47:07 Right.
1922. 01:47:09 For gap books, I've got on my desk right here, Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield.
1923. 01:47:17 Tap your inner power and create your life's work, which was definitely a big fan of the
1924. 01:47:22 War of Art.
1925. 01:47:24 This looks like it's written in the same style.
1926. 01:47:26 So fairly short, easy read.
1927. 01:47:29 Nice.
1928. 01:47:30 I don't have a gap book this time.
1929. 01:47:32 Kind of lame, I know.
1930. 01:47:33 But things have been crazy.
1931. 01:47:35 You know, I've had some time off, taking some more time off, which you would think would
1932. 01:47:40 lead me to reading more.
1933. 01:47:42 But in the first case, like being gone at Max Talk, I'd read almost none.
1934. 01:47:48 Max Talk is busy for me.
1935. 01:47:52 This upcoming, I think I will, I'll end up having extra books that I will have read.
1936. 01:47:57 So I might have multiple gap books next time.
1937. 01:48:00 We'll see.
1938. 01:48:01 All right.
1939. 01:48:02 So if you want to recommend a book, you can do that at the Bookworm Club, which is club.bookworm.fm.
1940. 01:48:10 It's a awesome form created by our own Discourse Expert, Joe Buele.
1941. 01:48:15 So go join the club.
1942. 01:48:17 You can also see a list of all of the books that are upcoming at Bookworm.fm/list.
1943. 01:48:25 You also see a list of books that we have covered, as well as some links to Amazon affiliate
1944. 01:48:31 links.
1945. 01:48:32 So if you want to go back and buy a book and you want to support the show, that gives
1946. 01:48:35 us a little bit of a kickback so we can pay Joe to host the files and edit them and everything.
1947. 01:48:46 So everybody go go pay Joe and buy some books via Amazon.
1948. 01:48:50 Awesome.
1949. 01:48:51 Thanks, Mike.
1950. 01:48:53 Yes, join the club club.bookworm.fm.
1951. 01:48:56 That's where we hang out and talk about some of these books.
1952. 01:48:59 I wrote this down a little bit earlier about the club.
1953. 01:49:02 I don't know if this is a good idea or not.
1954. 01:49:04 You mentioned that some people have their own action items from these books.
1955. 01:49:07 I would love to hear those.
1956. 01:49:09 Maybe that's weird, but I think that would be cool.
1957. 01:49:12 So if you have action items from this book, The Power of Habit, go share them on the episode
1958. 01:49:18 link.
1959. 01:49:19 I'll make sure that's in the show notes for this episode.
1960. 01:49:23 Just click the discuss on the club and then share your action items there.
1961. 01:49:27 We can help with the accountability thing, I think.
1962. 01:49:30 We'll try it.
1963. 01:49:31 See how it goes.
1964. 01:49:32 I think that would be kind of cool.
1965. 01:49:33 Don't you, Mike?
1966. 01:49:34 I think that would be fun.
1967. 01:49:35 Yeah, for sure.
1968. 01:49:36 So anyway, do that.
1969. 01:49:38 Another way you can support the show is on iTunes.
1970. 01:49:41 What is, you put something in the show notes here about this?
1971. 01:49:45 I did.
1972. 01:49:46 This is a review that P Stanash has left us, which says that this podcast has completely
1973. 01:49:54 changed the way that I take notes when I read books with ideas I'm trying to master.
1974. 01:49:58 I also try to come up with at least three action items from each book.
1975. 01:50:02 So P Stanash, you should definitely go share those action items with us.
1976. 01:50:05 I've added numerous books to my to read list after listening to this podcast and I've gone
1977. 01:50:10 back to read some books over and over again with a new perspective.
1978. 01:50:12 If you enjoy reading books on productivity and personal development, strongly recommend
1979. 01:50:16 this podcast.
1980. 01:50:17 So thank you, P Stanash, for the review and everybody else.
1981. 01:50:22 That's a way that you can support the show.
1982. 01:50:24 Yes.
1983. 01:50:25 So leave us an iTunes review.
1984. 01:50:26 Link in the show notes.
1985. 01:50:28 That'll make it easy.
1986. 01:50:29 All right.
1987. 01:50:30 So thanks everybody for joining us.
1988. 01:50:32 Next book up is Boundaries by Henry Cloud and we will talk to you next time.