60: The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

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1. 00:00:00 and bought another keyboard, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 - You did?
3. 00:00:03 - I did.
4. 00:00:04 - The DOS keyboard wasn't cutting it for you anymore,
5. 00:00:06 or what's the deal here?
6. 00:00:08 - I bought another one.
7. 00:00:10 (laughs)
8. 00:00:11 - Of course, 'cause you always need more keyboards.
9. 00:00:13 - Hey, you can never have too many keyboards.
10. 00:00:15 (laughs)
11. 00:00:16 - All right, so what'd you get?
12. 00:00:17 - I bought another DOS.
13. 00:00:20 It's the Professional, the S series.
14. 00:00:23 - Okay.
15. 00:00:24 - So it's got the little hub on the side of it.
16. 00:00:25 It doesn't have the little dial in the top, right?
17. 00:00:28 To me, that seems a bit excessive for what I'm doing,
18. 00:00:30 but I needed a mechanical for the job I took.
19. 00:00:35 So yes, I was not about to work
20. 00:00:38 on those old membrane keyboards.
21. 00:00:40 (laughs)
22. 00:00:40 I forget this.
23. 00:00:42 Totally buying a computer or a keyboard,
24. 00:00:46 even though they should probably buy it,
25. 00:00:48 but they wouldn't buy that sort of thing.
26. 00:00:49 So I bought it, bought some new keycaps coming for it
27. 00:00:54 since I'm Devorac all the way.
28. 00:00:56 (laughs)
29. 00:00:57 - That's right.
30. 00:00:58 Oh man, so this is quite an investment
31. 00:01:00 for a mechanical keyboard for what kind of computer
32. 00:01:03 are you hooking this up to?
33. 00:01:05 (laughs)
34. 00:01:07 - I don't even know what it is.
35. 00:01:08 It's an HP something.
36. 00:01:10 I know that it's slow.
37. 00:01:12 Welcome back to the PC world, Joe.
38. 00:01:17 That's kind of how this goes.
39. 00:01:18 (laughs)
40. 00:01:19 That's the big downside of the whole thing.
41. 00:01:20 So yes, I am working in the PC world.
42. 00:01:23 I will say Microsoft has made some pretty good changes
43. 00:01:26 from the last nine to 12 months, I would say.
44. 00:01:28 - Yeah.
45. 00:01:29 - They're starting to come around,
46. 00:01:31 so I've been pretty happy with what I'm seeing out of them,
47. 00:01:34 but it's still a PC.
48. 00:01:37 It's still Windows.
49. 00:01:38 (laughs)
50. 00:01:40 - Does it have all the extra stuff on it
51. 00:01:42 that makes it run half as fast?
52. 00:01:44 - Totally, totally.
53. 00:01:45 I even had a thumb drive
54. 00:01:50 that I was gonna boot a Linux system off of,
55. 00:01:54 and I plugged it into it and booted it off of that thumb drive,
56. 00:01:57 and it freaked out.
57. 00:01:59 It was not happy, and it reported me to IT for doing it.
58. 00:02:02 So, yes, I got in trouble for that one, but you know.
59. 00:02:07 - Yeah, I think if you could clean that sort of stuff
60. 00:02:10 off of the majority of PCs, they would be
61. 00:02:14 pretty decent computers, but they come with all
62. 00:02:17 of that factory junk, and most people just never bothered
63. 00:02:20 to clean it out, and so you end up with a severely
64. 00:02:24 governed/crippled machine, in my opinion.
65. 00:02:29 - Yeah, I know when I've built PCs for the church,
66. 00:02:34 one of the first things I do with a brand new computer
67. 00:02:36 right out of the box is go in and do a factory restore on it,
68. 00:02:40 and it strips a lot of the extra stuff off of it.
69. 00:02:44 It doesn't, depending on where you got it,
70. 00:02:46 it doesn't always get all of it,
71. 00:02:47 but people always look at me funny,
72. 00:02:50 and it's like, you just turned it on,
73. 00:02:52 why are you destroying it?
74. 00:02:54 It's like, I'm starting over to get rid of all the cruft,
75. 00:02:57 and like one scenario, and then I'll stop talking about this,
76. 00:03:01 but in one scenario I did that,
77. 00:03:03 and I was checking the hard drive space
78. 00:03:05 to see how much space I gain from doing that,
79. 00:03:09 and it had, I think it was a 512 SSD,
80. 00:03:13 and it had almost 60 gigs taken up,
81. 00:03:18 straight from the factory.
82. 00:03:19 I did the factory reset, and it was at 20,
83. 00:03:22 so it had 40 gigs worth of bloatware on this thing.
84. 00:03:26 - Jeez.
85. 00:03:27 - Ugh, I don't understand that, but they do it,
86. 00:03:32 and it's all in the name of making it faster.
87. 00:03:35 (laughing)
88. 00:03:36 - Well, real briefly, since we're talking tech stuff,
89. 00:03:39 I also got some new gear,
90. 00:03:40 which I shared the picture with you
91. 00:03:42 before we hit the big red button,
92. 00:03:44 but I am recording this from a Mac Mini.
93. 00:03:46 I got sick of my microphone disconnecting
94. 00:03:48 from my Thunderbolt 3 dock
95. 00:03:50 that my MacBook was plugged into
96. 00:03:51 when I was recording podcasts.
97. 00:03:54 So this is a pretty awesome machine.
98. 00:03:57 I like it way better than I thought I would.
99. 00:03:58 I kind of viewed it as something that would get me by
100. 00:04:02 when I'm recording at my house,
101. 00:04:03 and I wouldn't have to ever touch it,
102. 00:04:04 wouldn't have to ever change anything.
103. 00:04:06 It would just kind of sit here,
104. 00:04:07 and I would use it when I needed to record something,
105. 00:04:10 but otherwise I would be running off my MacBook,
106. 00:04:13 which I still have in my iPad, but I love this thing.
107. 00:04:16 It's awesome,
108. 00:04:18 and it's really fast.
109. 00:04:19 I also got a Synology because I've been needing
110. 00:04:21 some cold storage for a long time,
111. 00:04:24 and this seemed like the right time to get it.
112. 00:04:28 So this is a really expensive justification
113. 00:04:31 for not fixing my Thunderbolt 3 dock.
114. 00:04:33 (laughing)
115. 00:04:35 But that was kind of the option I had was like,
116. 00:04:38 I could spend 300 or 400 bucks on a new Thunderbolt 3 dock,
117. 00:04:41 or I could get this Mac Mini,
118. 00:04:43 which they just revamped them.
119. 00:04:45 Who knows if they'll ever update them ever again?
120. 00:04:48 Plus it looks so cool.
121. 00:04:49 (laughing)
122. 00:04:51 Not, so yeah, I really like it though.
123. 00:04:54 I find it, it's weird, like it's the same operating system.
124. 00:04:57 It's, a lot of it is the same setup,
125. 00:04:59 it's the same keyboard, same mouse that I had been using,
126. 00:05:02 but it just feels so much snappier,
127. 00:05:04 and I find myself wanting to go down to my desk to work more.
128. 00:05:07 Maybe that's just 'cause it's shiny and new.
129. 00:05:09 - It's new, yeah.
130. 00:05:11 But you did the ram upgrade on it though, right?
131. 00:05:14 And that what you told me?
132. 00:05:15 - I did, yep.
133. 00:05:16 So I got the nicer stock option.
134. 00:05:19 I didn't custom order anything
135. 00:05:20 because I needed something like tomorrow
136. 00:05:23 when I went to the store to look at them.
137. 00:05:25 And they had in the store the Core 4
138. 00:05:29 and the 4 Core and the 6 Core.
139. 00:05:32 So I just bought the 6 Core, it's the i5,
140. 00:05:34 I kinda wish it was the i7,
141. 00:05:36 but like I said, I couldn't wait for a custom order.
142. 00:05:38 And then I ordered the 32 gigabyte OWC ram upgrade,
143. 00:05:43 which was I think 300 bucks roughly instead of 600,
144. 00:05:46 which it would have been from Apple.
145. 00:05:48 I went on the internet, saw that it's user upgradable,
146. 00:05:50 and I used to build systems for a living.
147. 00:05:52 This is not average user upgradable for sure.
148. 00:05:55 It took me about an hour and I didn't have any issues,
149. 00:05:58 but there's so much stuff that's crammed inside
150. 00:06:01 that little box and it's really crazy.
151. 00:06:05 All the different special tools you need and everything.
152. 00:06:07 I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a lot of people,
153. 00:06:09 but it is possible.
154. 00:06:10 And so yeah, I've got it with a more ram than double the ram
155. 00:06:14 actually that my Macbook had.
156. 00:06:16 And this is a pretty screaming little machine
157. 00:06:18 for what I use it for.
158. 00:06:19 - Nice, nice.
159. 00:06:20 But you saved 300 bucks, got the same results,
160. 00:06:25 sounds like.
161. 00:06:25 - Yep, yep.
162. 00:06:26 Didn't have any issues once I turned it on.
163. 00:06:29 That's always the moment where I hold my breath.
164. 00:06:31 But yeah, it's working great.
165. 00:06:34 - Hit the power button and hold your fingers crossed.
166. 00:06:36 (laughs)
167. 00:06:37 I hope it boots.
168. 00:06:38 - Yeah, but 2018 Mac Mini, two thumbs up from Mike Schmitt's.
169. 00:06:43 - Awesome, I'm jealous, I want one of these.
170. 00:06:45 But alas, I have a two year old PC.
171. 00:06:50 - Woo hoo.
172. 00:06:51 - Well, teach each their own.
173. 00:06:53 (laughs)
174. 00:06:55 - So we got some follow up items here.
175. 00:06:59 - Yeah.
176. 00:07:00 - And really the only action item to follow up on is,
177. 00:07:03 did you have the talk?
178. 00:07:05 - Well, depending on the type of talk we're talking about,
179. 00:07:09 the talk, no, we did not have the talk.
180. 00:07:13 Kids are a little too small for that.
181. 00:07:15 But I did start the conversations with my parents
182. 00:07:20 and my in-laws and this, okay.
183. 00:07:23 So this goes back to last book of being mortal,
184. 00:07:25 starting the conversation about what happens
185. 00:07:28 when we get to end of life scenarios.
186. 00:07:30 And of course, as you would expect, Mike,
187. 00:07:33 that's not necessarily a fun conversation
188. 00:07:35 to open up right away.
189. 00:07:37 And I wouldn't say that we had the formal conversation
190. 00:07:41 around it, but we at least talked around it
191. 00:07:45 so that people would start thinking about it.
192. 00:07:49 And I think that's the first step here.
193. 00:07:52 So we'll see my folks over the next few months again.
194. 00:07:57 And then we'll see my in-laws,
195. 00:07:59 I think towards the end of this month.
196. 00:08:00 So we're recording this New Year's Day.
197. 00:08:02 So Happy New Year's.
198. 00:08:03 So we'll see my in-laws here later in the month.
199. 00:08:06 And goal is to talk through it more formally with them
200. 00:08:09 at that point from both sides.
201. 00:08:11 We're both aware of that.
202. 00:08:12 So it has begun.
203. 00:08:15 I don't have any answers on how it went.
204. 00:08:17 I'm not even sure I should share answers on how it goes,
205. 00:08:20 but it's at least in progress.
206. 00:08:23 Yeah, that'd be kind of weird, wouldn't it?
207. 00:08:25 Yeah.
208. 00:08:27 Well, kudos to you for even attempting this
209. 00:08:29 because I am not going to for quite a while.
210. 00:08:32 (laughs)
211. 00:08:34 We did get some cool feedback though on that episode
212. 00:08:38 from a couple of people.
213. 00:08:40 One person said, "I appreciate you covering this book
214. 00:08:43 "that was outside your comfort zone.
215. 00:08:45 "Your uncomfortableness was evident,
216. 00:08:47 "but you both covered the book well as always."
217. 00:08:49 So appreciate that.
218. 00:08:50 P.F. Robbins, Stephen Lowry also had some nice comments
219. 00:08:55 about it.
220. 00:08:56 And it sounds like this book kind of spoke to Stephen,
221. 00:09:01 but yeah, I was really nervous when we recorded it.
222. 00:09:05 I was really nervous when I hit the publish button.
223. 00:09:07 And it seems like it's being fairly well received.
224. 00:09:11 So that's a little bit of a sigh of relief from me
225. 00:09:14 because it's something that,
226. 00:09:16 when we covered this in when we recorded the episode,
227. 00:09:18 that we don't really feel like we're qualified
228. 00:09:20 to give advice on this particular topic
229. 00:09:22 or don't have enough experience to really even speak to it.
230. 00:09:25 Right.
231. 00:09:26 But so far so good.
232. 00:09:28 And I do think that there's a lot of value
233. 00:09:31 in having the conversation.
234. 00:09:33 And not just the conversation with your elderly parents,
235. 00:09:36 like what does the end of life scenario look like
236. 00:09:38 if you do find yourself in that situation,
237. 00:09:40 but really just conversation amongst the community.
238. 00:09:44 So selfless plug here for the Bookworm Club.
239. 00:09:47 I mean, if you wanna get around other people
240. 00:09:50 who are going through the same sort of things.
241. 00:09:52 And that was really the surprising thing for me
242. 00:09:54 when I guess when we published this episode
243. 00:09:57 is like you had a really strong reaction to the book.
244. 00:10:00 And for you, you said it was kind of the right thing
245. 00:10:02 at the right time.
246. 00:10:04 Me, not so much, but there are obviously people
247. 00:10:07 like the people who have posted in the Bookworm Club here
248. 00:10:10 who are in the same shoes as you were Joe.
249. 00:10:13 And I think it's really interesting,
250. 00:10:16 maybe interesting about the right word,
251. 00:10:18 but it's cool to see how people in those similar situations
252. 00:10:23 like you get around other people
253. 00:10:24 who are going through the same thing.
254. 00:10:25 And it's not just like the echo chamber type thing,
255. 00:10:27 but there's without even explicitly offering encouragement
256. 00:10:32 to other people who are going through that thing,
257. 00:10:34 the fact that there's a group of people
258. 00:10:36 who are going through this tough thing together,
259. 00:10:38 that's encouraging to somebody who is in that situation.
260. 00:10:42 It makes you feel less alone,
261. 00:10:44 or it makes you feel that there is hope
262. 00:10:47 because other people are going through this,
263. 00:10:48 other people have gone through it
264. 00:10:49 and they've come out okay on the other side.
265. 00:10:51 Like it gives you hope that you will get through
266. 00:10:53 it and you'll be able to navigate it successfully
267. 00:10:56 or probably do a terrible job of explaining this analogy.
268. 00:10:59 But you get the drift, I hope,
269. 00:11:01 that like there are other people out there
270. 00:11:03 and just by sharing something,
271. 00:11:04 you don't know who that's going to impact.
272. 00:11:07 - I remember when we,
273. 00:11:08 before we really even got through like some of the small talk
274. 00:11:13 that we tend to do before we start recording,
275. 00:11:15 I remember you telling me
276. 00:11:16 that you were not looking forward to recording today,
277. 00:11:18 like that.
278. 00:11:19 (laughing)
279. 00:11:20 - Nope, I was not.
280. 00:11:22 And we both knew it was going to be kind of a hard episode
281. 00:11:23 to record.
282. 00:11:25 I am happy with the way it turned out.
283. 00:11:27 I'm glad it kind of comes across as,
284. 00:11:28 you know, we're kind of nervous about how this was going to go.
285. 00:11:33 So I'm kind of glad it came across that way.
286. 00:11:36 Hopefully people don't get too offense-offended by it,
287. 00:11:41 but you know, it's a tough topic.
288. 00:11:43 It's not talked about enough, I don't think so.
289. 00:11:46 - Yep.
290. 00:11:47 - Glad to contribute in some small way.
291. 00:11:49 That actually leads to a somewhat related point
292. 00:11:53 that has really kind of been driven home for me recently
293. 00:11:56 because David Sparks and I recently rebranded
294. 00:11:59 Free Agents 2, so now it's called Focused
295. 00:12:01 and it's more of a productivity podcast.
296. 00:12:04 And this short story behind that is that
297. 00:12:06 we were talking a lot about productivity stuff
298. 00:12:09 'cause that's who I am.
299. 00:12:11 That's what comes out much to the chagrin
300. 00:12:13 of some of the listeners of Bookworm
301. 00:12:14 who wish we would cover more diverse books.
302. 00:12:16 (laughing)
303. 00:12:18 - Whoops.
304. 00:12:18 - Yeah, and we're going through the forums for Free Agents
305. 00:12:22 and there's a ton of people in there who are like,
306. 00:12:24 hey, great episode, really like your approach to this topic.
307. 00:12:27 And then they would always end it with something like,
308. 00:12:29 I'm not a free agent or I have no desire to be a free agent,
309. 00:12:32 happy working for the man, whatever.
310. 00:12:33 Like they would phrase it however they want
311. 00:12:35 in their own words, but basically they felt kind of bad.
312. 00:12:38 Like they were apologizing for listening
313. 00:12:40 and getting something out of the episode
314. 00:12:41 even though they weren't a quote unquote free agent.
315. 00:12:44 And we were like, whoa, this is like half of our audience
316. 00:12:47 who is not a free agent.
317. 00:12:48 And then also there were a bunch of people
318. 00:12:50 who like I talked to you about the show.
319. 00:12:52 I'm like, oh, I'm not an independent worker.
320. 00:12:54 So I guess that show's not for me.
321. 00:12:56 And I'm like, well, yeah, yeah, it is.
322. 00:12:57 The stuff that we talk about, you can totally apply
323. 00:12:59 to just about any situation.
324. 00:13:01 So we want to make it a little bit more general.
325. 00:13:05 But anyways, David and I in our last episode
326. 00:13:07 talked about some of the struggles
327. 00:13:09 that we've gone through in our own free agent journeys
328. 00:13:12 and there was somebody who had commented in the forum
329. 00:13:15 about depression related to free agency.
330. 00:13:18 And so we kind of tackled that as a topic.
331. 00:13:20 And again, same thing, like we're apologizing left and right,
332. 00:13:23 but we're not the ones who should be offering
333. 00:13:25 this sort of advice on this sort of thing.
334. 00:13:26 We haven't gone through it to the degree that other people have.
335. 00:13:29 And there was some really positive response to that too.
336. 00:13:32 Something somebody said in that forum though really hit me
337. 00:13:34 was the fact that like you don't have to be an expert
338. 00:13:37 in this stuff in order to talk about it.
339. 00:13:41 You just need to share your experience
340. 00:13:43 and that makes you qualified.
341. 00:13:45 And I'm doing a terrible job again, paraphrasing
342. 00:13:47 what they said, but it was encouraging because it's like,
343. 00:13:49 well, just because you haven't gone through this
344. 00:13:51 to the degree somebody else does,
345. 00:13:53 the fact that you're talking about it is a positive thing.
346. 00:13:55 And there's a lot of people who will benefit from this.
347. 00:13:57 And more people need to be talking
348. 00:13:58 about these difficult things.
349. 00:14:00 And so that's kind of the goal with the new show.
350. 00:14:03 As it pertains to this conversation though,
351. 00:14:06 it's like talking about the failures,
352. 00:14:08 talking about the fact that you don't have it all figured out
353. 00:14:10 and sharing from your mistakes.
354. 00:14:12 I really want to just encourage everybody
355. 00:14:14 who happens to be listening to this,
356. 00:14:16 who feels in that position,
357. 00:14:17 'cause I've been there and it can be difficult to,
358. 00:14:20 fortunately we've got, this is episode 60,
359. 00:14:23 so a bunch of episodes under our belt.
360. 00:14:25 And there was no doubt that eventually
361. 00:14:27 we were going to hop on the mic and talk about it.
362. 00:14:30 But I think for a lot of people,
363. 00:14:31 maybe they find that they're in that spot
364. 00:14:33 and they're not sure whether to hit publish
365. 00:14:36 on the blog post that they wrote or not.
366. 00:14:39 Share your thing, share your experience
367. 00:14:40 because you don't know who's out there
368. 00:14:42 who can benefit from it.
369. 00:14:43 And for somebody who finds that
370. 00:14:45 and reads that or listens to that or watches that,
371. 00:14:48 it's gonna be the right thing at the right time
372. 00:14:50 and you don't know who you're gonna be able to help.
373. 00:14:52 - Exactly.
374. 00:14:53 There's still, like there are other podcasts out there
375. 00:14:56 of people who read books.
376. 00:14:58 - Yep.
377. 00:14:59 - And this, so this is not a unique concept.
378. 00:15:04 We're possibly unique in the way that we go about it,
379. 00:15:07 but the concept of, like the idea itself is not new.
380. 00:15:10 - Right.
381. 00:15:11 - Obviously that has not stopped us.
382. 00:15:13 (laughs)
383. 00:15:14 We don't think about it that way.
384. 00:15:16 It's all about making sure that,
385. 00:15:18 if you have something that you wanna say,
386. 00:15:20 your voice is going to be different
387. 00:15:22 than a lot of people who are out there currently.
388. 00:15:24 - Yep.
389. 00:15:25 - Most likely.
390. 00:15:26 So everyone will resonate with a different personality
391. 00:15:30 in some varying degree.
392. 00:15:32 So you're better off publishing it,
393. 00:15:35 even just as an experiment to see what happens.
394. 00:15:38 - Right.
395. 00:15:39 - And see what comes of it.
396. 00:15:41 That's what I tell people is just,
397. 00:15:43 if you don't know if you should do it or not,
398. 00:15:45 try it and find out.
399. 00:15:46 (laughs)
400. 00:15:47 That's the easy way to try it on.
401. 00:15:48 - Go make your thing.
402. 00:15:50 And to be honest, if I would have had a picture
403. 00:15:53 of what Bookworm would become now,
404. 00:15:56 and the approach that I take to reading books now,
405. 00:15:59 I probably wouldn't have published the first one.
406. 00:16:01 (laughs)
407. 00:16:02 If I were to go back and look at my approach to that book
408. 00:16:05 and the way that we covered it,
409. 00:16:07 and just like how we put together the outlines
410. 00:16:09 and all that stuff, it's like, ugh, you need it.
411. 00:16:13 - Yeah.
412. 00:16:14 But you learn, and it's still out there.
413. 00:16:17 I don't care, people can go back and hear me rail
414. 00:16:18 against getting things done,
415. 00:16:20 but like the value is in the journey
416. 00:16:22 as you figure these things out.
417. 00:16:24 And I think as you progress on your own journey,
418. 00:16:27 that tendency can be to look back at all the mistakes
419. 00:16:29 that you made, and my initial reaction
420. 00:16:32 because I'm a bit of a perfectionist is,
421. 00:16:33 oh, I wish I could go back and erase that,
422. 00:16:36 or change that or fix that, whatever.
423. 00:16:38 But I don't know, I mean, there's a lot of value
424. 00:16:41 in recognizing this is where I was,
425. 00:16:43 and this is where I am now.
426. 00:16:44 So that whole idea of like the gap versus the gain,
427. 00:16:46 you can see the growth when you compare
428. 00:16:48 where you were to where you are now,
429. 00:16:49 and that can be encouraging as opposed to just saying,
430. 00:16:51 oh, I wish I was there.
431. 00:16:53 I wish I had a podcast with as many downloads
432. 00:16:56 as Mac power users or whatever.
433. 00:16:58 You know, so success is kind of relative, I guess.
434. 00:17:03 You can't judge your success by what somebody else has done.
435. 00:17:06 But also like the real definition of success,
436. 00:17:11 I think is the fact that you're embarking
437. 00:17:12 on the journey and you're doing it consistently,
438. 00:17:14 and you've applied the growth mindset,
439. 00:17:16 and you continue to get 1% better every time that you do it.
440. 00:17:20 - You can't change the past,
441. 00:17:21 and you can't get to Mac power users level unless you've done it
442. 00:17:24 for nine and a half years.
443. 00:17:26 (laughs)
444. 00:17:27 - What are they, 464 episodes now or something?
445. 00:17:30 And as we're recording this,
446. 00:17:31 Katie Floyd just recorded her last episode,
447. 00:17:34 which is kind of sad.
448. 00:17:35 - Yep, sad day.
449. 00:17:38 But Stephen's stepping in.
450. 00:17:40 - Yep, if there is one person who was qualified
451. 00:17:43 to speak to all of Apple history past and present,
452. 00:17:48 it's Stephen Hackett.
453. 00:17:49 - No kidding.
454. 00:17:51 - So I'm looking forward to what they come up with.
455. 00:17:53 All right, should we talk about today's book?
456. 00:17:56 - Yep, I'm expecting a lot of good things out of you today.
457. 00:17:59 - Hopefully I can deliver.
458. 00:18:00 (laughs)
459. 00:18:01 A little bit under the weather,
460. 00:18:03 you can probably hear it in my voice,
461. 00:18:05 but we'll bring it.
462. 00:18:07 - All right.
463. 00:18:07 Today's book is The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Popisan,
464. 00:18:12 which side note here,
465. 00:18:13 this is another one of those books with two authors,
466. 00:18:16 but when you're reading this, he's saying,
467. 00:18:18 "I, me," like it's very singular in the way that it's written,
468. 00:18:23 so I found that a little bit confusing
469. 00:18:25 when I read it this time.
470. 00:18:26 But whatever.
471. 00:18:27 - And even Gary signed it at the very end,
472. 00:18:29 and Jay did not.
473. 00:18:31 - So let's assume that this is Gary Keller
474. 00:18:33 because I tend to refer to the author as a single person
475. 00:18:37 in the episode Anyways,
476. 00:18:38 but it really fits with this book
477. 00:18:40 because it seems like Anyways, Gary talking.
478. 00:18:44 - Yes.
479. 00:18:44 - So, but this was the book that I picked,
480. 00:18:48 I believe number one, when we did our draft,
481. 00:18:52 the 2018 Bookworm Draft for episode 50,
482. 00:18:56 as my favorite book of all time.
483. 00:18:58 It was also one that my wife read recently,
484. 00:19:02 and she recommended that I go through again
485. 00:19:04 based on the current season of my life,
486. 00:19:05 which not to get into all the details again,
487. 00:19:09 but I'm no longer working with Asian deficiency.
488. 00:19:11 I find myself as a free agent for reals,
489. 00:19:13 and this is kind of uncharted waters for me,
490. 00:19:17 and it's led to, like we talked about last episode,
491. 00:19:20 my omni-focus getting out of hand,
492. 00:19:22 my email getting out of hand,
493. 00:19:23 like everything that I've known seems to be wrong.
494. 00:19:26 (laughing)
495. 00:19:27 She just, she said, you really need to go back
496. 00:19:30 and revisit this whole idea of the focusing question
497. 00:19:33 and the one thing, yeah, you're probably right.
498. 00:19:35 (laughing)
499. 00:19:37 So, that's why I picked it for this episode,
500. 00:19:42 and you, I'm gonna get this out of the way
501. 00:19:45 because no one else is gonna see this hopefully,
502. 00:19:47 but you actually have in the outline that we have here,
503. 00:19:50 a rating of .5, and I asked you before we started recording
504. 00:19:53 if you were trolling me,
505. 00:19:54 or if you really thought it was that bad.
506. 00:19:56 You assured me that you were trolling me,
507. 00:19:58 so hopefully we'll have some good conversation
508. 00:20:00 about this book.
509. 00:20:01 - Yes.
510. 00:20:02 And just to clarify, it was your number one pick
511. 00:20:05 on the draft, I did just double check that,
512. 00:20:08 and yes, I knew that this was gonna be a book
513. 00:20:13 that Mike really would enjoy,
514. 00:20:15 especially if he has it as his number one,
515. 00:20:17 so I knew and know that you have a lot of good things
516. 00:20:20 to say about this book.
517. 00:20:21 So, knowing that, it was the perfect time for me
518. 00:20:24 to just drop, 'cause we never put our ratings in
519. 00:20:26 until we get to the end of it.
520. 00:20:28 - Yep.
521. 00:20:29 - So we don't know what each other has rated it
522. 00:20:31 until we're done and we're at that point,
523. 00:20:35 and it's only then that we'll do that actual reveal,
524. 00:20:37 even to each other.
525. 00:20:39 So, yes, I put in a .5 in the outline, so yes,
526. 00:20:44 I'm just trolling you, Mike.
527. 00:20:46 You're okay.
528. 00:20:47 - So the book itself, I wanna preface this
529. 00:20:51 with the subtitle here, because I think this sets the tone
530. 00:20:56 for the whole book, so the title is the one thing,
531. 00:20:58 the subtitle is the surprisingly simple truth
532. 00:21:01 behind extraordinary results.
533. 00:21:04 And I think that is important because this is a book
534. 00:21:08 that technically has three parts,
535. 00:21:11 although I would say the most important takeaway
536. 00:21:14 from the book happens before the first part
537. 00:21:16 in the introduction.
538. 00:21:18 - Yeah.
539. 00:21:18 - And this is really the thing that I remembered
540. 00:21:21 when I did the draft episode was the profound impact
541. 00:21:26 that this single idea had in my life,
542. 00:21:30 and that is the domino effect.
543. 00:21:33 And this is not something that is originated
544. 00:21:36 from Gary Keller, by the way,
545. 00:21:38 he gives credit where credit is due,
546. 00:21:39 so more credit than Charles Dewitt gave the MIT professors
547. 00:21:44 who came up with the Qroutine reward thing.
548. 00:21:46 (laughing)
549. 00:21:47 He says, "In 1983, Lauren Whitehead wrote
550. 00:21:50 in the American Journal of Physics
551. 00:21:51 that a single domino can topple another domino
552. 00:21:54 up to 50% larger."
553. 00:21:57 And this is a really powerful idea
554. 00:21:59 because, and he extrapolates on this,
555. 00:22:01 he gives very real examples.
556. 00:22:04 So if you start with a normal two-inch domino,
557. 00:22:07 the tenth domino you would knock over
558. 00:22:08 if you assumed that progression through each domino.
559. 00:22:11 And there's actually a YouTube video that I saw at one point,
560. 00:22:14 I couldn't find it again when I was prepping for this,
561. 00:22:17 but someone did this with like big wooden blocks.
562. 00:22:20 And they only did like the first several,
563. 00:22:22 but you can kind of see the effect that it has.
564. 00:22:25 So if you started with one domino,
565. 00:22:27 and the next one was 50% bigger,
566. 00:22:28 and the next one was 50% bigger,
567. 00:22:30 and you continued that chain.
568. 00:22:32 You start with a two-inch domino,
569. 00:22:33 the tenth domino, he says is gonna be almost as tall
570. 00:22:35 as Peyton Manning.
571. 00:22:37 The 18th is gonna rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
572. 00:22:39 the 23rd domino is gonna be taller than the Eiffel Tower,
573. 00:22:42 the 31st domino is gonna be 3000 feet taller than Mount Everest,
574. 00:22:46 and the 57th domino would almost go
575. 00:22:48 from the earth to the moon.
576. 00:22:50 So that is, that's a really, to me anyways,
577. 00:22:54 a very powerful picture because you can think about
578. 00:22:58 the big results that you wanna achieve.
579. 00:23:00 And it's really interesting, I think,
580. 00:23:01 that we're covering this book and we're recording this
581. 00:23:03 on January 1st.
582. 00:23:05 So this is the time of the year when people are gonna
583. 00:23:08 set their goals and they're gonna have their new year's
584. 00:23:10 resolutions and I'm gonna lose 30 pounds this year, whatever.
585. 00:23:14 Well, the way to do that is not to focus on the big goal
586. 00:23:19 that you want to achieve,
587. 00:23:20 but what is that one thing, that first domino
588. 00:23:23 that you can knock down?
589. 00:23:25 And that's the idea that he comes back to
590. 00:23:27 throughout the rest of the book.
591. 00:23:29 I think it's interesting you picked this book
592. 00:23:30 at this time of the year.
593. 00:23:31 I don't think you intended that.
594. 00:23:33 I didn't. (laughs)
595. 00:23:34 But it's oddly a good one.
596. 00:23:37 Yep. So, yeah.
597. 00:23:39 So what was your impression of this domino idea?
598. 00:23:43 Did you have the same, like, oh my gosh,
599. 00:23:45 that's amazing reaction that I had when I first read it?
600. 00:23:48 Or were you kinda like, yeah, I understand that already
601. 00:23:51 'cause we've read enough of these books now?
602. 00:23:54 I got you nervous with that .5 rating, didn't I?
603. 00:23:56 Like, you're itching. (laughs)
604. 00:23:58 Well, no, I just wanna, I'm not even necessarily looking
605. 00:24:01 for like validation or anything, but I do,
606. 00:24:05 I'm kinda curious, like, what sort of reaction
607. 00:24:08 did you have to this?
608. 00:24:09 Because I had a very strong positive reaction
609. 00:24:12 when I read it the first time.
610. 00:24:14 We talk about this all the time.
611. 00:24:15 These productivity books tend to be longer than they could be.
612. 00:24:17 This one, I think, we'll get into this in the other parts.
613. 00:24:21 Like, there's a lot in here.
614. 00:24:22 But if you were just gonna take away this one thing,
615. 00:24:24 like, you get the main idea from the one thing
616. 00:24:26 in the first 20 pages, so.
617. 00:24:28 - Right. - Is it like, okay,
618. 00:24:29 we've heard this over and over again?
619. 00:24:30 Are you like, yeah, that's a really powerful idea.
620. 00:24:33 - Yeah, I would say he does a very good job
621. 00:24:35 of explaining the concept in the very beginning.
622. 00:24:38 And then post beginning, like post the intro,
623. 00:24:42 he kinda, he goes through things that would derail you
624. 00:24:47 from it and then ways to set yourself up for success
625. 00:24:51 with that question of what is the one thing.
626. 00:24:55 And I don't think it's too long.
627. 00:24:58 Like, and I don't think it's too short either.
628. 00:25:01 I feel like he did a pretty good job
629. 00:25:02 of setting the density on the book.
630. 00:25:05 So that's a piece that I was very appreciative of.
631. 00:25:08 The intro, with the domino effect,
632. 00:25:10 I can't say that I had a guttural reaction like that, Mike.
633. 00:25:14 But I, it was one of those that, okay,
634. 00:25:16 this is an interesting concept.
635. 00:25:17 I understand it.
636. 00:25:19 It's one that helps me understand
637. 00:25:21 the consequential process of if I knock down one task,
638. 00:25:26 no matter how small, as long as it's pointed
639. 00:25:32 in the direction that I need to go,
640. 00:25:35 it can set me up to knock down a domino
641. 00:25:37 that's bigger than the one I originally knocked down.
642. 00:25:39 Like that, that I understand,
643. 00:25:41 but I can't say that it was profound to me.
644. 00:25:45 - Okay.
645. 00:25:46 Yeah, and that's fair.
646. 00:25:48 Really the thing to get from this first section,
647. 00:25:52 which completely rocked my world the first time I read it,
648. 00:25:56 was that on page 10, he says,
649. 00:25:58 "You need to be doing fewer things for more effect
650. 00:26:00 "instead of doing more things with side effects."
651. 00:26:03 So you can apply that to your own situation
652. 00:26:07 when I read that, it was like,
653. 00:26:09 "Oh my gosh, I'm doing all of these different things
654. 00:26:12 "and I don't have time for this thing
655. 00:26:14 "which I know is most important."
656. 00:26:17 And I need to cut out all this other stuff that I'm doing,
657. 00:26:22 which if you listen to any sort of productivity podcast,
658. 00:26:26 like you'll hear that sort of advice over and over again,
659. 00:26:31 but it really is that important.
660. 00:26:35 Like everything that you do during your day,
661. 00:26:39 why are you doing it?
662. 00:26:41 What is it accomplishing?
663. 00:26:43 What is the end result of that chain of dominoes
664. 00:26:47 from you knocking that thing over?
665. 00:26:49 And a lot of people, and this is where I was
666. 00:26:51 when I read this the first time,
667. 00:26:53 it's like, "Well, I have to do this thing
668. 00:26:54 "and I have to do that thing and I have to do that thing."
669. 00:26:56 And then maybe by the end of the day,
670. 00:26:58 when I've got a little bit left over,
671. 00:27:00 I'll figure out what's my one thing left?
672. 00:27:04 Like what's the one thing with the resources
673. 00:27:05 that I have left available to me?
674. 00:27:07 The problem with that approach though,
675. 00:27:08 is that like you get to the end of the day
676. 00:27:10 and you're exhausted and you don't do the thing
677. 00:27:12 that you say is most important,
678. 00:27:14 whether you're trying to start a side business
679. 00:27:17 or write a book or whatever your New Year's resolution
680. 00:27:20 happens to be this year.
681. 00:27:22 Like that's why they fail is you've got all the things
682. 00:27:26 that you have to do and then you try to add this one thing
683. 00:27:28 on top of it, I'll just talk about New Year's resolutions
684. 00:27:30 for a minute because a lot of them are like,
685. 00:27:32 I'm gonna eat healthier, I'm gonna save more money,
686. 00:27:34 I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna exercise more.
687. 00:27:37 All of those things are probably the most important thing
688. 00:27:42 that you could be doing.
689. 00:27:43 Like if you don't protect the golden goose,
690. 00:27:45 if you don't take care of your health,
691. 00:27:47 it doesn't really matter how much work you're able to get done,
692. 00:27:50 it's not gonna be sustainable and you're gonna burn out
693. 00:27:53 and it's gonna have probably long-term effects on your health.
694. 00:27:56 Ultimately you're going to live a shorter life
695. 00:28:00 and that's just the natural progression of that thought process
696. 00:28:03 but people don't typically go there.
697. 00:28:04 So let's assume that we aren't living a healthy lifestyle.
698. 00:28:08 So the number one thing we can do is figure out
699. 00:28:11 how to make a healthy lifestyle
700. 00:28:13 but most people won't take exercise
701. 00:28:16 or getting to the gym as the single most important thing
702. 00:28:19 in their day.
703. 00:28:20 I'm not arguing that everybody should
704. 00:28:22 but seeing it from that perspective
705. 00:28:25 is kind of a game changer because then instead of trying
706. 00:28:28 to fit one more thing into your jar,
707. 00:28:30 you're kind of dumping out your entire jar
708. 00:28:33 and you're putting that thing in first
709. 00:28:34 and then everything else can kind of fit in around it.
710. 00:28:37 The first thing's first analogy from Stephen Covey
711. 00:28:41 but when you do it that way,
712. 00:28:44 surprisingly it works.
713. 00:28:46 Like the things that you quote-unquote had to do,
714. 00:28:48 you still figure out a way to get those things done
715. 00:28:51 but when you put the things that are important
716. 00:28:53 but not urgent, scrambling all of the productivity metaphors
717. 00:28:56 in this one story.
718. 00:28:58 - Good job.
719. 00:28:58 - Hopefully you're getting the point that I'm making here
720. 00:29:01 is like you can't just say I'm gonna do this one additional thing.
721. 00:29:04 You have to rethink how you've constructed your life currently
722. 00:29:09 if you want to make this thing the most important thing
723. 00:29:12 and that's the message that I think the one thing
724. 00:29:15 does a really good job with.
725. 00:29:17 - I will say this is good timing for me right now.
726. 00:29:22 I mentioned like the PC and going to work for a company.
727. 00:29:26 I have started going back to, I'm now a corporate monkey.
728. 00:29:31 Whoo, but in that process of joining a company,
729. 00:29:36 I have to cut back on all the little things
730. 00:29:40 that I've had going on.
731. 00:29:42 Bookworm's not going anywhere, just gonna say that.
732. 00:29:46 So no worries there.
733. 00:29:48 So I have had to be particular with what is it
734. 00:29:53 that drives me to my mission?
735. 00:29:55 And this book is, it's perfect timing for me
736. 00:29:58 because it forces me to work through
737. 00:30:01 all those pieces of what is the most important thing
738. 00:30:03 I should be working towards.
739. 00:30:04 Is it the corporate job?
740. 00:30:06 Is it the side gig?
741. 00:30:07 Do those work together towards one mission?
742. 00:30:10 Like those are the questions I need to answer.
743. 00:30:12 And this book I feel like is perfectly suited for that.
744. 00:30:16 It does work through that.
745. 00:30:17 So it's, again, it's hitting me at exactly the right moment.
746. 00:30:22 - Nice.
747. 00:30:23 Last thing I'll say about the introduction here
748. 00:30:25 before we get into the three different parts.
749. 00:30:28 There's a ton of chapters in here.
750. 00:30:29 I think there's like 18 different chapters.
751. 00:30:32 Let's see.
752. 00:30:33 - Yes, 18.
753. 00:30:35 - So we're not gonna cover all of the chapters in depth.
754. 00:30:38 I kind of picked out a couple key ideas from each section
755. 00:30:41 except where there were lists,
756. 00:30:42 which we can go through kind of quickly.
757. 00:30:44 But in chapter three, which is still part of the intro,
758. 00:30:47 it's called Success Leaves Clues.
759. 00:30:49 And so this whole idea here is that there are other people
760. 00:30:52 who have succeeded and if you do what they did,
761. 00:30:54 you can get the results that they got.
762. 00:30:57 Obviously every situation's gonna be a little bit different.
763. 00:31:00 But he talks about the most successful companies
764. 00:31:03 are known for one thing.
765. 00:31:05 He talks about how on page 24,
766. 00:31:07 the unintended consequence of abundance
767. 00:31:08 is that we are bombarded with more information
768. 00:31:10 and choices in a day than our ancestors received in a lifetime.
769. 00:31:13 I really do think like that's a contributing factor.
770. 00:31:15 If we can just cut out all the noise
771. 00:31:17 and figure out what is the one thing,
772. 00:31:18 regardless of how big it is
773. 00:31:20 and how much effort it takes to knock down that first domino,
774. 00:31:23 like it doesn't have to be a lot.
775. 00:31:24 But if we can select the right things and work on them,
776. 00:31:27 then once you start going down that path,
777. 00:31:30 the results will come maybe quicker than you realized.
778. 00:31:33 But there's a key idea here which really impacted me.
779. 00:31:36 No one succeeds alone.
780. 00:31:37 On page 20, he says, "Everyone has one person
781. 00:31:40 "who either means the most to them
782. 00:31:41 "or was the first to influence, train, or manage them."
783. 00:31:45 And when I read that, I wrote down one of my action items
784. 00:31:49 is who can you be that one person for?
785. 00:31:52 And it's kind of an interesting situation
786. 00:31:56 because I never really considered bookworm,
787. 00:32:00 like a big podcast.
788. 00:32:02 I really haven't considered anything that I've done
789. 00:32:04 to be like really out there
790. 00:32:08 in terms of like, this thing is really impressive.
791. 00:32:10 But I've had people approach me
792. 00:32:13 and say that about different things that I've done.
793. 00:32:17 And obviously when that happens, it feels good personally
794. 00:32:21 because it's kind of like validation
795. 00:32:23 that this thing that I created is actually,
796. 00:32:26 it does actually have some value,
797. 00:32:27 other people see value in it.
798. 00:32:29 But when I see those situations now,
799. 00:32:33 after reading this section in the book,
800. 00:32:35 I want to apply a little bit more intentionality
801. 00:32:40 in my response to those, if that makes sense.
802. 00:32:44 So when someone reaches out and says,
803. 00:32:47 "Hey, I loved that last episode of bookworm
804. 00:32:49 "that you recorded on this particular topic."
805. 00:32:52 Instead of just saying,
806. 00:32:53 "Hey, thanks, appreciate the kind of words."
807. 00:32:57 Dig a little bit deeper,
808. 00:32:58 find out what that person is wanting to do.
809. 00:33:03 Maybe they haven't a goal to start a podcast or something.
810. 00:33:07 Well, I know how to start a podcast.
811. 00:33:09 I know the process there.
812. 00:33:11 So maybe I can be that person
813. 00:33:15 who is the first to influence train or manage them
814. 00:33:18 and get them going down the path of success.
815. 00:33:21 Like they start their podcast
816. 00:33:23 and it turns into something big.
817. 00:33:25 And they can look back and be like,
818. 00:33:26 "Yeah, really the tipping point for me was
819. 00:33:29 "when Mike helped me do X.
820. 00:33:32 "Like I want to look for those opportunities."
821. 00:33:35 And this is a classic bike action item
822. 00:33:37 and that I have no idea how you're going to be able
823. 00:33:39 to hold me accountable to this.
824. 00:33:41 But the real acid test, I think,
825. 00:33:44 of this action item is like the,
826. 00:33:46 what is that?
827. 00:33:47 Stephen Covey's second habit, I think,
828. 00:33:50 begin with the end in mind.
829. 00:33:51 One of the exercises in there
830. 00:33:52 is like to think about your own funeral
831. 00:33:55 and who's going to show up and speak
832. 00:33:57 at your eulogy sort of thing.
833. 00:33:58 Like I want a huge line of people saying,
834. 00:34:00 "Yeah, Mike helped me do this."
835. 00:34:03 Not so that I can pat myself on the back or anything,
836. 00:34:06 but I think there's a lot of people
837. 00:34:08 who are kind of on the fence.
838. 00:34:09 They're right at that tipping point
839. 00:34:11 between this thing getting wings and flying
840. 00:34:14 or them just giving up on it.
841. 00:34:16 And I want to be the type of person
842. 00:34:18 who can help push them over the edge
843. 00:34:20 and get that thing airborne.
844. 00:34:22 Which is a very noble thing to do.
845. 00:34:24 Like that's a thing that I feel like I...
846. 00:34:27 There are a lot of people that like to do that.
847. 00:34:30 I don't think there are a ton of people
848. 00:34:32 that are good at it.
849. 00:34:34 I feel like you would be good at it, Mike.
850. 00:34:35 - Hopefully.
851. 00:34:36 I mean, that's the goal behind the workshop
852. 00:34:40 I'm doing this Saturday.
853. 00:34:42 - Oh, Mike.
854. 00:34:43 - But yeah, so I guess after that,
855. 00:34:45 we'll have a little bit more,
856. 00:34:47 larger sample size people can just say,
857. 00:34:49 "Yep, you're good at this," or, "Nope."
858. 00:34:51 No, you're not.
859. 00:34:52 Find something else.
860. 00:34:53 - You're gonna share the results?
861. 00:34:55 - Lots of things.
862. 00:34:56 That's kind of what I was talking about
863. 00:34:57 with the action item, like,
864. 00:34:58 "I don't think this is something
865. 00:34:59 that you can hold me accountable to
866. 00:35:00 because you don't really know what impact this has
867. 00:35:03 until the end."
868. 00:35:04 And then you can see everything.
869. 00:35:06 And somebody shows up at your funeral and says,
870. 00:35:08 "Hey, that point when Mike helped me launch my podcast
871. 00:35:11 or encouraged me this way,
872. 00:35:13 like, and that was the thing I needed
873. 00:35:14 to actually do my thing, get my book, publish, whatever."
874. 00:35:17 Like, you don't really know what impact that stuff has
875. 00:35:20 until it's all said and done.
876. 00:35:21 But I don't wanna wait till it's all said and done
877. 00:35:23 to look back and be like, "Oh man, I should've."
878. 00:35:25 Not been such a selfish jerk.
879. 00:35:27 - Yep, yep.
880. 00:35:29 I feel like, I'm just trying to figure out
881. 00:35:33 if we should talk through the question itself
882. 00:35:37 before we get into the lies,
883. 00:35:40 or if you wanna go through the lies first.
884. 00:35:42 - Well, the question itself is actually
885. 00:35:46 the focusing question in part two.
886. 00:35:48 So maybe we'll just leave that for now
887. 00:35:51 and just kinda understand that the idea here
888. 00:35:54 is that you don't need to be doing a ton,
889. 00:35:58 you just need to be doing the right things,
890. 00:36:00 you can start small, that first two inch domino,
891. 00:36:03 and that's gonna create the momentum that you need
892. 00:36:05 to produce the big results.
893. 00:36:07 And then part one gets into the six different lies
894. 00:36:11 that they're called.
895. 00:36:13 And these are different things that we've kinda talked
896. 00:36:16 about and around on Bookworm,
897. 00:36:20 but we can just kinda run through these maybe real quickly.
898. 00:36:24 So the first lie is that everything matters equally.
899. 00:36:29 The second one is multitasking,
900. 00:36:33 and that's just the name of the chapter,
901. 00:36:34 but he basically says, "You can't multitask."
902. 00:36:37 And we've talked about that,
903. 00:36:39 we've talked about Chris Bailey's approach to it.
904. 00:36:41 After reading this section,
905. 00:36:42 I do kinda find myself going back to,
906. 00:36:44 "Yeah, you should probably just stay away
907. 00:36:45 from multitasking."
908. 00:36:46 The third one is a disciplined life.
909. 00:36:52 The fourth one is willpower is always on a will call.
910. 00:36:56 The fifth one is a balanced life,
911. 00:36:58 and then the last one is that big is bad.
912. 00:37:01 So maybe let's start here with everything mattering equally.
913. 00:37:06 I think the key takeaway from this,
914. 00:37:09 if you were to condense everything in this chapter,
915. 00:37:13 would be a concept called Pareto's Principle, the 80/20 rule.
916. 00:37:18 And he kinda shares the story behind this,
917. 00:37:20 which was kinda cool.
918. 00:37:22 I mean, you've probably heard this other places,
919. 00:37:25 but one of the things he does a good job of, in my opinion,
920. 00:37:29 is giving credit where credit is due,
921. 00:37:30 and condensing the stories down
922. 00:37:32 while still making sure that you understand
923. 00:37:34 where they came from.
924. 00:37:36 So this one originated from an Italian economist,
925. 00:37:38 I believe it's Vilfredo Pareto.
926. 00:37:41 In the 19th century, he stated that 80% of the land
927. 00:37:44 was owned by 20% of the people.
928. 00:37:46 And this is a concept that people have applied
929. 00:37:49 to productivity, the basic idea being that 80%
930. 00:37:53 of the results are gonna come from 20% of the effort.
931. 00:37:57 So what you need to do is figure out
932. 00:38:00 what are the things that are gonna produce
933. 00:38:02 the 80% of the results from the 20% of the effort.
934. 00:38:06 Something that's really powerful in this section though,
935. 00:38:09 is what he calls extreme Pareto,
936. 00:38:11 where if you apply that principle to itself,
937. 00:38:15 you can really figure out what is the single thing,
938. 00:38:19 not the 20%, but what is the single thing you can do
939. 00:38:22 that's gonna have the most impact.
940. 00:38:24 So if you take the 20% of the 20% of the 20%,
941. 00:38:29 I figured, I did the math on this,
942. 00:38:30 the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20 is 51.2%
943. 00:38:35 of the value from 0.8% of the effort.
944. 00:38:38 So you get the principle here,
945. 00:38:40 like you can keep following this, he's saying,
946. 00:38:44 and I don't know that this is completely true,
947. 00:38:45 but I kind of feel like it is.
948. 00:38:48 It feels like there is truth to this,
949. 00:38:50 where if you just do the one thing
950. 00:38:52 that is the most important,
951. 00:38:54 kind of the rest is gonna work out.
952. 00:38:57 And that's kind of been my own experience,
953. 00:38:58 but it's kind of hard to quantify that too.
954. 00:39:00 It's kind of hard to say,
955. 00:39:01 this is the one thing looking back
956. 00:39:03 that produced 51.2% of the value.
957. 00:39:08 Right, but I think the principle definitely applies.
958. 00:39:11 Like there's one thing that you can do
959. 00:39:13 at any given moment that is the most important.
960. 00:39:16 And if you can figure out what that is,
961. 00:39:18 you're in real good shape.
962. 00:39:19 I think that concept of doing the 80/20 of the 80/20
963. 00:39:23 of the 80/20, I feel like I've heard someone say that before,
964. 00:39:28 but it didn't trigger with me like it did this time.
965. 00:39:32 And whenever I was reading through it
966. 00:39:36 and thinking about like my task lists
967. 00:39:38 and what I have on my docket,
968. 00:39:41 it struck me that this is really something
969. 00:39:45 that could have a lot of strength behind it.
970. 00:39:48 Like if I work through and get down
971. 00:39:50 to the single most important tasks,
972. 00:39:52 like people talk about your three MITs in a day,
973. 00:39:55 your most important tasks in a day.
974. 00:39:56 Like that's a pretty common thing that you'll see
975. 00:39:58 in the productivity space.
976. 00:39:59 Put together your list of MITs.
977. 00:40:01 Great, but really you're after the one.
978. 00:40:05 Yeah.
979. 00:40:06 And I think if you were able to drive it down that far,
980. 00:40:11 like all of the prioritization
981. 00:40:13 and the decision making process of which one should I do next?
982. 00:40:17 And what should my contexts be?
983. 00:40:19 Well, all of that disappears whenever you're down
984. 00:40:22 on the single task because it's not a matter
985. 00:40:24 of doing the task when you're in a context.
986. 00:40:27 It's the matter of putting yourself in a context
987. 00:40:29 to do the task and doing it the other way around.
988. 00:40:32 Like that, all of that hit me.
989. 00:40:35 Just by working through this 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20.
990. 00:40:38 So I really like that part.
991. 00:40:40 Yeah, I think, I don't know this for sure,
992. 00:40:44 but trying to think back to previous me,
993. 00:40:49 I think maybe the impact that this book had on me
994. 00:40:53 had to do with this concept of you don't need to worry
995. 00:40:57 about the three MITs or the five MITs
996. 00:41:00 or whatever productivity system you happen to use.
997. 00:41:03 They kind of are all built that same way
998. 00:41:06 where it's like, these are gonna make sure,
999. 00:41:08 these are gonna put you in the best possible position
1000. 00:41:10 to win your day, okay?
1001. 00:41:12 But the one thing is kind of like,
1002. 00:41:14 you don't have to worry about the whole day.
1003. 00:41:16 All you've got to worry about is what do you do next?
1004. 00:41:19 And that feels a lot more approachable, I think.
1005. 00:41:23 Right.
1006. 00:41:24 Where you don't have to have the whole thing figured out,
1007. 00:41:27 you just need to figure out what's the two inch domino
1008. 00:41:30 I need to knock over right now.
1009. 00:41:32 And then once you start doing the one thing
1010. 00:41:36 and you knock over a couple of dominoes
1011. 00:41:38 and you get some momentum,
1012. 00:41:40 I kind of think that at that point,
1013. 00:41:42 you've got a little bit more clarity
1014. 00:41:44 on the direction that you're heading.
1015. 00:41:46 And that's what creates the momentum
1016. 00:41:48 to knock over the bigger dominoes.
1017. 00:41:51 But for somebody who's just completely overwhelmed
1018. 00:41:53 and stressed out and they're trying to figure out
1019. 00:41:56 what's best next, like this is the approach
1020. 00:41:59 that you should take.
1021. 00:42:00 Yeah, 'cause the main point of this chapter,
1022. 00:42:03 chapter four, everything matters equally
1023. 00:42:06 is that they don't, you know, that is the lie.
1024. 00:42:09 And if the one most important thing drives,
1025. 00:42:13 would you say 53 point something something percent?
1026. 00:42:16 51.2, yeah.
1027. 00:42:18 Yeah.
1028. 00:42:18 So if it drives that amount of the value,
1029. 00:42:20 then it's pretty obvious it's not all the same.
1030. 00:42:24 Like me helping a coworker with
1031. 00:42:28 how to sort an Excel file versus driving together
1032. 00:42:33 the real time live database reporting.
1033. 00:42:35 (laughing)
1034. 00:42:37 Completely made up examples there.
1035. 00:42:38 But that's the concept.
1036. 00:42:41 Those two things are not the same.
1037. 00:42:43 And I think everybody knows that intuitively.
1038. 00:42:46 Yep.
1039. 00:42:47 But not everyone's willing to say it out loud.
1040. 00:42:49 Right.
1041. 00:42:50 You also can't do those two things at the same time.
1042. 00:42:53 Oh, nice segue into multitasking.
1043. 00:42:55 (laughing)
1044. 00:42:56 So we've talked a lot about multitasking on this podcast
1045. 00:43:01 because it comes up in a lot of the books that we've read.
1046. 00:43:05 The most recent revelation, I guess, I've gotten on this
1047. 00:43:08 was when we did Hyper Focus, or no, yeah,
1048. 00:43:12 Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey.
1049. 00:43:14 And he kind of explained it in a way
1050. 00:43:17 that at the time seemed really profound to me.
1051. 00:43:20 And I think going back and rereading the one thing
1052. 00:43:23 that Gary Keller kind of says it in the same way,
1053. 00:43:26 I think that Chris Bailey has a better visual
1054. 00:43:28 to help you understand this.
1055. 00:43:30 But he basically says in the one thing,
1056. 00:43:33 since that's the book we're covering today,
1057. 00:43:35 that you can do two things at once,
1058. 00:43:37 but you can't focus on two things at once.
1059. 00:43:39 Which sounds super simple and obvious.
1060. 00:43:41 But we're stupid and we try to do a bunch of stuff
1061. 00:43:44 at the same time anyways.
1062. 00:43:46 When we multitask and we're trying to focus on two things
1063. 00:43:50 at the same time, we end up going back and forth really fast.
1064. 00:43:53 We contact Switch and what's interesting in this book
1065. 00:43:57 is how multitasking even came about.
1066. 00:44:00 He tells the story that it came from the 1960s
1067. 00:44:04 and it was used to describe
1068. 00:44:06 alternately sharing a resource, like a CPU in a computer.
1069. 00:44:10 And in time, it's come to mean multiple tasks being done
1070. 00:44:14 simultaneously by one resource for a person.
1071. 00:44:19 And when you think about it that way,
1072. 00:44:21 especially in the 1960s where computers
1073. 00:44:23 were not the 2018 Mac mini that I've got running on my desktop here right now,
1074. 00:44:29 with the six cores all firing at the same time,
1075. 00:44:31 like you've got, I don't know, 10 megahertz or whatever,
1076. 00:44:35 megahertz is probably too much for back then.
1077. 00:44:38 But like even in that time,
1078. 00:44:41 like you have all of this computing power,
1079. 00:44:44 this is an insanely powerful machine,
1080. 00:44:47 but it can only do one thing at a time.
1081. 00:44:49 And so the fact that it's switching back and forth so fast,
1082. 00:44:53 it seems like things are being done at the same time.
1083. 00:44:55 That's where multitasking comes from.
1084. 00:44:59 And there's just a whole bunch of stuff he shares in here,
1085. 00:45:02 a whole bunch of research.
1086. 00:45:03 The one that really I liked was a 2009 study by Richard Nasse
1087. 00:45:08 with 262 people and the big takeaway was that,
1088. 00:45:11 quote, "Multitaskers were just lousy at everything," unquote.
1089. 00:45:16 I love that.
1090. 00:45:18 Yeah, another one was multitaskers experience more,
1091. 00:45:22 his words, "Life reducing happiness squelching stress."
1092. 00:45:26 So those two statements in particular really just articulate
1093. 00:45:31 to me the profound negative impact
1094. 00:45:34 that multitasking can have.
1095. 00:45:36 And when you read Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey,
1096. 00:45:39 you're like, "Oh, I think that there's a way around this.
1097. 00:45:41 "I could make this work."
1098. 00:45:42 But when I went back and I read the one thing,
1099. 00:45:44 it's like, "I'm not even gonna try it.
1100. 00:45:46 "I don't wanna take a chance
1101. 00:45:47 "and sign up for life-reducing happiness
1102. 00:45:49 "squelching stress."
1103. 00:45:51 You know, it's like, "Take me away from this stuff."
1104. 00:45:53 I don't remember what bucket was now,
1105. 00:45:56 but there's the example of you write the numbers,
1106. 00:46:01 I think it's one through 10.
1107. 00:46:03 Yeah, I remember we did that exercise.
1108. 00:46:05 I forget what episode that was.
1109. 00:46:07 Yeah, you write the numbers one through 10
1110. 00:46:09 and then you write multitask.
1111. 00:46:11 Is it multitask or multitasking?
1112. 00:46:13 Maybe it's 12 and you do multitasking.
1113. 00:46:16 However many letters are multitasking,
1114. 00:46:18 I'm not gonna count them right now.
1115. 00:46:19 So the idea is that you write the M and then one,
1116. 00:46:24 the U and then two, L and then three,
1117. 00:46:26 and you go back and forth and you time yourself
1118. 00:46:28 when you do this until you're done.
1119. 00:46:30 And then you turn around and you do it again,
1120. 00:46:33 you time yourself and you write the word multitasking
1121. 00:46:36 and then you write the numbers one through 12,
1122. 00:46:40 I think it's 12, and then you check your time
1123. 00:46:42 and see what the difference is between there.
1124. 00:46:44 That's the difference that multitasking causes
1125. 00:46:48 in just from a sure time stance
1126. 00:46:52 and even in a task that small,
1127. 00:46:54 it's quite a bit different.
1128. 00:46:56 So if you want an example, go do that.
1129. 00:46:58 Anyway, I have people do that on occasion.
1130. 00:47:01 I've yet to bring this up in the office I'm in now.
1131. 00:47:03 I don't know that I will for a while.
1132. 00:47:06 It sounds like a conversation that may be less fun
1133. 00:47:08 than the one that you're having with your in-laws.
1134. 00:47:11 Yeah, I'll talk to my in-laws about end of life care
1135. 00:47:15 before I'll talk about multitasking in the office.
1136. 00:47:19 (laughs)
1137. 00:47:20 Yeah.
1138. 00:47:21 Yes.
1139. 00:47:22 People get it.
1140. 00:47:24 You can't do two things at once.
1141. 00:47:25 You can't focus on two things at once.
1142. 00:47:27 Yes, you can accomplish chewing gum
1143. 00:47:28 and listening to a podcast at the same time,
1144. 00:47:31 but that's not a multi-focusing scenario.
1145. 00:47:33 It's just habits taking over.
1146. 00:47:35 So I think people get it.
1147. 00:47:38 Right, another thing that stood out to me
1148. 00:47:40 in this section specifically because we just got done
1149. 00:47:43 reading "Being Mortal" by Tool Gawande
1150. 00:47:46 is he says, I forget what page it was,
1151. 00:47:49 but he says we expect pilots and surgeons not to multitask,
1152. 00:47:53 which Tool Gawande is a surgeon
1153. 00:47:54 in the checklist manifesto.
1154. 00:47:56 He specifically spoke to pilots and checklists
1155. 00:47:58 and things like that too.
1156. 00:47:59 Right.
1157. 00:48:00 Those two specific people groups,
1158. 00:48:04 we expect them not to multitask.
1159. 00:48:06 So why is it okay if we do it?
1160. 00:48:08 Why should we ever tolerate multitasking
1161. 00:48:10 when doing our own most important work?
1162. 00:48:14 So maybe somebody's life isn't held in the balance
1163. 00:48:18 whether you try to do two things at once
1164. 00:48:20 during your work day, okay?
1165. 00:48:23 But the point he's making is that it's still not okay.
1166. 00:48:28 Just because no one's gonna die
1167. 00:48:30 doesn't mean that you should be doing it this way.
1168. 00:48:34 And it kind of makes it seem more,
1169. 00:48:37 I don't wanna say more serious
1170. 00:48:38 because it really, in my opinion, it is a serious thing.
1171. 00:48:41 One of the things that got me going down
1172. 00:48:43 is this faith-based productivity thing
1173. 00:48:44 is this whole idea of stewardship.
1174. 00:48:46 And I believe that we are gonna be held responsible
1175. 00:48:51 for what we do or don't do in this life.
1176. 00:48:54 It's not just you're gonna feel more fulfilled
1177. 00:48:57 if you're quote-unquote more productive.
1178. 00:49:00 Dang it, I said quote-unquote.
1179. 00:49:01 Did you do it on purpose?
1180. 00:49:02 I do it on purpose.
1181. 00:49:03 I didn't, I didn't.
1182. 00:49:04 But the fact of the matter is like regardless
1183. 00:49:10 of your religious belief system,
1184. 00:49:12 you have so much time on this earth.
1185. 00:49:15 And Gary Keller is basically saying
1186. 00:49:17 that it is a crime to limit your effectiveness
1187. 00:49:22 and to make things take longer, take more effort,
1188. 00:49:26 like waste is a crime basically.
1189. 00:49:28 And the way to eliminate that is simple.
1190. 00:49:33 Just don't try to do two things at the same time.
1191. 00:49:36 - Right.
1192. 00:49:37 - I think like when you explain it this way
1193. 00:49:40 of like pilots and surgeons,
1194. 00:49:41 yeah, they shouldn't be able to multitask.
1195. 00:49:42 But then it's also like, well, they're more high functioning.
1196. 00:49:45 Why should you feel that way?
1197. 00:49:46 Like why should they be held to a higher standard
1198. 00:49:50 than you would hold yourself?
1199. 00:49:52 I really believe like a lot of productivity
1200. 00:49:54 and a lot of being effective, a lot of goal accomplishment
1201. 00:49:59 is just simply holding yourself accountable
1202. 00:50:02 to what you say you're going to do.
1203. 00:50:03 Personal responsibility if you wanna call it that.
1204. 00:50:06 Where if you make a promise to yourself
1205. 00:50:08 that you're gonna do this thing,
1206. 00:50:09 regardless of somebody's holding your feet to the fire or not,
1207. 00:50:12 sometimes that's helpful.
1208. 00:50:13 You know, we'll talk about that in a little bit I believe.
1209. 00:50:15 But that's not always necessary
1210. 00:50:19 if you can just simply make a promise to yourself
1211. 00:50:23 and then fulfill it like you can do a lot.
1212. 00:50:27 And it's kind of limit, it's a limiting belief I think
1213. 00:50:31 to say, well, oh yeah, well, pilots and surgeons,
1214. 00:50:33 obviously like they shouldn't do this.
1215. 00:50:36 But willingly accepting that standard for yourself
1216. 00:50:40 is how you get to that level.
1217. 00:50:41 Yeah, I don't really understand why,
1218. 00:50:44 especially like I think about people in meetings.
1219. 00:50:47 They're definitely distracted.
1220. 00:50:49 And there's a lot of meetings where very big decisions
1221. 00:50:51 are being made that impact entire industries
1222. 00:50:54 or entire countries or the entire world.
1223. 00:50:58 And they're on their phone while they're listening
1224. 00:51:00 to the presentation that they're gonna use
1225. 00:51:02 to make those decisions.
1226. 00:51:03 How is that different?
1227. 00:51:05 Like that's--
1228. 00:51:06 Yeah.
1229. 00:51:07 It's the same.
1230. 00:51:08 Like you have a lot of people's lives at stake
1231. 00:51:11 in a lot of cases.
1232. 00:51:12 No, that's an extreme scenario.
1233. 00:51:14 Maybe those meetings don't happen as often as I'm suggesting.
1234. 00:51:18 But I would say that they happen more often
1235. 00:51:20 than we would like to give credit.
1236. 00:51:22 So yes, just don't.
1237. 00:51:26 Yeah.
1238. 00:51:27 Just don't.
1239. 00:51:28 Well, let's make it personal.
1240. 00:51:30 Okay.
1241. 00:51:31 So maybe you're not having a meeting
1242. 00:51:34 and you're making these really important decisions
1243. 00:51:37 that are gonna affect the entire company, whatever.
1244. 00:51:41 But maybe it's your son or your daughter
1245. 00:51:44 who's going through something at school.
1246. 00:51:47 And they're trying to talk to you about what's going on,
1247. 00:51:51 but you've got your face in your phone
1248. 00:51:53 and you're looking at Twitter
1249. 00:51:54 and you don't even recognize the moment, okay?
1250. 00:51:57 That could kill that relationship.
1251. 00:52:00 That one instance could be the tipping point for them
1252. 00:52:04 or they just, oh, mom or dad just doesn't really listen.
1253. 00:52:06 They don't listen.
1254. 00:52:08 You don't know when the defining moment is going to happen.
1255. 00:52:12 So pay attention for those things
1256. 00:52:15 and don't try to do more than one thing at once
1257. 00:52:18 because in that particular moment,
1258. 00:52:21 if you can recognize that this is critically important
1259. 00:52:25 and I need to give my full attention to this thing,
1260. 00:52:28 you have a much better chance of navigating that successfully.
1261. 00:52:33 And I firmly believe with parenting specifically,
1262. 00:52:37 it's a series of moments like that
1263. 00:52:40 that either build or erode the relationship
1264. 00:52:44 that you have with your kids.
1265. 00:52:45 Again, I'm probably not the person who's qualified
1266. 00:52:48 to speak to this because my oldest is 11 years old.
1267. 00:52:51 He's not a teenager yet, okay?
1268. 00:52:54 But I do know that we've implemented some things
1269. 00:52:57 that have allowed us to foster the relationship
1270. 00:53:02 that we have with our kids to the point
1271. 00:53:05 where I am happy with where we're at
1272. 00:53:08 because I've always wanted to have
1273. 00:53:11 that sort of relationship with my kids
1274. 00:53:13 when they got to be teenagers
1275. 00:53:14 where they felt they could be comfortable talking to me
1276. 00:53:16 about anything.
1277. 00:53:17 You can't wait till they're teenagers and then say,
1278. 00:53:19 son, daughter, you can talk to me about anything.
1279. 00:53:22 You have to prove it along the way.
1280. 00:53:23 So I mean, I've talked about this before
1281. 00:53:26 but one of the things we do is we have like the weekly thing
1282. 00:53:30 where I'll go do something with one of my kids.
1283. 00:53:32 So not doing a one-on-one with each of them every week
1284. 00:53:36 but a different one every week.
1285. 00:53:38 So it ends up being more like once a month
1286. 00:53:40 but you do that consistently enough
1287. 00:53:44 and maybe the first couple times
1288. 00:53:45 that you do something like that, it's awkward.
1289. 00:53:47 I've got a couple of kids who are a little bit shy
1290. 00:53:50 and the first time we did it,
1291. 00:53:53 it was a little bit awkward
1292. 00:53:55 but it's to the point now where they look forward to it
1293. 00:53:58 and it creates the intentionality in the space
1294. 00:54:02 for the relationship to grow
1295. 00:54:04 and a lot of positive stuff has come out of that
1296. 00:54:07 but it's been the consistency in doing it
1297. 00:54:10 over and over and over again
1298. 00:54:10 that has gotten it to the point where it is today.
1299. 00:54:13 I wanna keep that going because I want,
1300. 00:54:15 by the time they're 18 to say,
1301. 00:54:17 yes, we've successfully navigated this season of our life
1302. 00:54:22 and I can't say that I've successfully done that yet
1303. 00:54:24 but you can do the one thing,
1304. 00:54:27 going back to the main idea of this book,
1305. 00:54:30 you can do this one thing on Friday morning,
1306. 00:54:32 like this is the most important thing
1307. 00:54:34 and everything else is gonna go around this
1308. 00:54:36 and that can lead you to the results that you're looking for
1309. 00:54:40 and I think like those moments happen more often
1310. 00:54:43 than we realize.
1311. 00:54:44 So for multitasking, we're not even gonna see 'em
1312. 00:54:47 the majority of the time.
1313. 00:54:48 - Yeah, I think phones get in the way with a lot of this.
1314. 00:54:51 When you start thinking about kids,
1315. 00:54:54 so anyway, I can belabor that
1316. 00:54:56 but I don't think we,
1317. 00:54:58 I think you've covered it well, Mike, so good job.
1318. 00:55:00 - We've talked about that before.
1319. 00:55:02 (laughs)
1320. 00:55:03 - Yes.
1321. 00:55:03 - Another thing we've talked about,
1322. 00:55:04 oh wait, no, that's number seven is willpower
1323. 00:55:07 but number six is a discipline life or chapter six.
1324. 00:55:11 - Yeah.
1325. 00:55:12 - Key idea here that I wanted to talk about
1326. 00:55:14 was that life isn't a marathon, it's a series of sprints
1327. 00:55:19 and he says on page 55 that success is actually a short race,
1328. 00:55:23 it's a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough
1329. 00:55:25 for habit to kick in and take over.
1330. 00:55:28 So the goal of discipline he says is to build these habits
1331. 00:55:31 and he even says that no one is disciplined,
1332. 00:55:33 people just train successful habits into their lives
1333. 00:55:36 to make them look that way.
1334. 00:55:37 This is kind of radical, I think,
1335. 00:55:42 based on a lot of the books that we've read
1336. 00:55:45 which would talk about how you can build willpower
1337. 00:55:47 like a muscle and you're gonna use that
1338. 00:55:49 to live a discipline life,
1339. 00:55:51 willpower is the next chapter.
1340. 00:55:52 So we'll get into that in a little bit here.
1341. 00:55:55 But I do think that the main idea here
1342. 00:55:57 of creating positive habits is a very powerful one.
1343. 00:56:02 I know you've sent me a message about atomic habits
1344. 00:56:07 and we're gonna have to cover that one at some point here.
1345. 00:56:10 I love that book, I gifted actually,
1346. 00:56:11 I think four copies of that for Christmas to people.
1347. 00:56:14 - Nice, nice, I have it.
1348. 00:56:16 - Yeah, it's so good but the main idea there again
1349. 00:56:21 is like the way to implement these big changes
1350. 00:56:24 is not to try to accomplish something big
1351. 00:56:28 but to create the habits that are gonna take you there.
1352. 00:56:31 And I think that for the right person at the right time
1353. 00:56:35 this whole idea of I may not be disciplined
1354. 00:56:38 and that's okay, it can be really powerful
1355. 00:56:40 because then it kind of gives you freedom to,
1356. 00:56:45 maybe freedom is not the right word.
1357. 00:56:48 It feels, I don't wanna say more approachable again
1358. 00:56:50 but it's kind of like you can look at this and say,
1359. 00:56:53 well I haven't shown much discipline up until this point
1360. 00:56:56 so I guess I'm disqualified.
1361. 00:56:58 And he's saying no, you're not disqualified.
1362. 00:57:00 In fact, if you look deeper, all of this successful heroes
1363. 00:57:03 that you have suck at this too.
1364. 00:57:06 But they've just created these habits
1365. 00:57:08 and you can do the same thing.
1366. 00:57:09 - Yeah, I tell people I suck at discipline
1367. 00:57:12 and following through on commitments I make to myself.
1368. 00:57:15 Yeah, I'm terrible at it.
1369. 00:57:17 So I'm not one that can speak to what a discipline life
1370. 00:57:21 really looks like.
1371. 00:57:22 I feel like I'm breaking my own rules all the time
1372. 00:57:25 but there's back on page 55
1373. 00:57:29 which I have a side note here.
1374. 00:57:30 He does underline, like the book itself
1375. 00:57:32 has underlining printed into it.
1376. 00:57:35 - Yeah, that's weird.
1377. 00:57:36 - I didn't like that.
1378. 00:57:38 - The first time I ran across like, wait,
1379. 00:57:39 I wanted to underline that.
1380. 00:57:41 You can't underline that for me.
1381. 00:57:42 And then my underlining are lost to some degree
1382. 00:57:46 in the midst of his.
1383. 00:57:48 I didn't like that.
1384. 00:57:49 - Well, I think the intended effect was
1385. 00:57:51 that people are gonna pick up this book
1386. 00:57:54 and they're gonna skim through it
1387. 00:57:55 and they're not gonna listen to what I'm gonna say.
1388. 00:57:57 So I'm gonna underline stuff so it jumps off the page
1389. 00:57:59 and really make that stand out.
1390. 00:58:01 So I think it does do that well.
1391. 00:58:04 But yeah, for people like us who want to go in
1392. 00:58:07 and mark them up ourselves,
1393. 00:58:08 it was a little bit annoying
1394. 00:58:10 because I didn't wanna underline on that section.
1395. 00:58:12 I wanted it on the section that came right after that.
1396. 00:58:14 And now it looks like they're both underline.
1397. 00:58:16 - Right.
1398. 00:58:17 It kind of, it bothered me so much.
1399. 00:58:19 I was paying attention to the underlining itself
1400. 00:58:21 'cause they even make it look like it's a pen
1401. 00:58:23 or a pencil or something that's doing the underlining.
1402. 00:58:26 And it's the same image that they put on it.
1403. 00:58:28 They have the same like, it starts up
1404. 00:58:30 and it has a slight hill and then it has a slight dip.
1405. 00:58:33 The first time the underline starts it always has that.
1406. 00:58:35 It's just longer or shorter.
1407. 00:58:37 Like I even noticed it to that degree.
1408. 00:58:39 I was so focused on what they underlined
1409. 00:58:41 instead of the words that they're underlining.
1410. 00:58:43 Like, don't do this.
1411. 00:58:46 - No, I'm not gonna do that.
1412. 00:58:47 - If you're writing, don't do this.
1413. 00:58:49 Please.
1414. 00:58:50 So anyway, page 55, what I was getting at,
1415. 00:58:54 you don't need to be a disciplined person to be successful.
1416. 00:58:56 In fact, you can become successful with less discipline
1417. 00:58:59 than you think.
1418. 00:59:00 For one simple reason, success is about doing the right thing,
1419. 00:59:04 not about doing everything right.
1420. 00:59:07 And that is something that I definitely appreciated him saying
1421. 00:59:13 because there's so many times you see folks who talk about,
1422. 00:59:17 you need to work 70, 80 hours a week
1423. 00:59:19 in order to be successful.
1424. 00:59:21 We'll leave that one unnamed.
1425. 00:59:23 But there's people that talk about things like that.
1426. 00:59:25 And then you have to do this 80 hours worth of work
1427. 00:59:28 and you have to do it all extremely well
1428. 00:59:29 in order to be successful.
1429. 00:59:30 That's not actually true.
1430. 00:59:32 - It's garbage.
1431. 00:59:33 - It's, you know, success is about doing things small.
1432. 00:59:37 You know, and I think he says that a few times in here
1433. 00:59:39 is like, huge success comes from being tiny.
1434. 00:59:41 - Yeah.
1435. 00:59:42 - That's essentially what you're after.
1436. 00:59:45 And seeing that he had a discipline life
1437. 00:59:48 under the lies section kind of made me feel better
1438. 00:59:52 about myself.
1439. 00:59:53 (laughing)
1440. 00:59:54 So thanks for that, Gary.
1441. 00:59:56 - Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that.
1442. 00:59:59 I do think there is some truth to leading a discipline life.
1443. 01:00:03 - Yes.
1444. 01:00:04 - But I understand it's his point.
1445. 01:00:05 So I'm willing to leave it for now.
1446. 01:00:08 - Yeah.
1447. 01:00:09 And no matter how you come at this,
1448. 01:00:11 the focusing question that he'll like how you decide
1449. 01:00:15 the one thing, he even has a whole routine and stuff
1450. 01:00:18 that he'll give us and we'll talk through it later.
1451. 01:00:20 But that all requires a fair amount of discipline in itself.
1452. 01:00:24 - Yeah, exactly.
1453. 01:00:26 - He's, he himself is not saying that you can be
1454. 01:00:28 completely undisciplined and still be highly successful.
1455. 01:00:32 He's not even saying that.
1456. 01:00:33 So it can come across that way with what we just said,
1457. 01:00:36 but it's not actually true.
1458. 01:00:38 - Printed clickbait.
1459. 01:00:40 Also in this, in this chapter,
1460. 01:00:42 he mentions a 2009 University College of London study
1461. 01:00:45 regarding the habits.
1462. 01:00:47 And this is a powerful idea, I think,
1463. 01:00:48 because there's a belief that it takes 21 days
1464. 01:00:52 to make a habit.
1465. 01:00:53 That's not true.
1466. 01:00:54 This study found that the average is 66 days,
1467. 01:00:57 but the full range was anywhere from 18 to 254 days.
1468. 01:01:02 So the key thing here for me is the 254
1469. 01:01:05 because when you start to create a habit,
1470. 01:01:08 if it takes longer than you think it's going to take,
1471. 01:01:11 you start to think like,
1472. 01:01:12 well, maybe this just isn't going to work for me.
1473. 01:01:14 And really in this section, he's saying that,
1474. 01:01:16 no, it is going to work.
1475. 01:01:18 It just maybe is going to take a little bit longer
1476. 01:01:20 to build that habit than you think.
1477. 01:01:22 - I don't know how long it is for me.
1478. 01:01:23 I think it depends on what I'm doing.
1479. 01:01:25 - Yeah, it depends on the habit.
1480. 01:01:26 And whether there's one there,
1481. 01:01:27 that's how firmly it's ingrained,
1482. 01:01:29 what you're trying to replace.
1483. 01:01:30 Like there's a lot of variables there.
1484. 01:01:32 But the key thing that I want to point out
1485. 01:01:35 is that if you struggle with something,
1486. 01:01:37 it doesn't mean you're a failure.
1487. 01:01:39 Keep going because once you do get to the point
1488. 01:01:41 where this is a habit,
1489. 01:01:42 then it is going to be not an autopilot, not automatic,
1490. 01:01:47 but it is going to be significantly easier.
1491. 01:01:49 All right, the next one, willpower?
1492. 01:01:51 - Yeah, we've talked about this one quite a bit.
1493. 01:01:53 We even did a whole book on willpower way back
1494. 01:01:56 to the beginning of bookworm.
1495. 01:01:58 I don't think I want to listen to that one.
1496. 01:02:00 (laughs)
1497. 01:02:02 That's far back.
1498. 01:02:03 I'm not sure how well we did with this.
1499. 01:02:04 (laughs)
1500. 01:02:08 - The lie here is that willpower is always on will call.
1501. 01:02:09 There's a lot of folks who tend to say,
1502. 01:02:12 I can will myself to do something.
1503. 01:02:14 It's like, that's great,
1504. 01:02:15 but when are you doing that?
1505. 01:02:17 First thing in the morning, nine o'clock at night,
1506. 01:02:20 that chocolate cake looks a lot better at nine o'clock
1507. 01:02:23 at night than it does at eight a.m.
1508. 01:02:24 So that is not true.
1509. 01:02:29 It definitely ebbs and flows, comes and goes
1510. 01:02:32 throughout the day.
1511. 01:02:33 And I think everybody would agree that morning,
1512. 01:02:37 when you first started your day,
1513. 01:02:38 is always going to be the time
1514. 01:02:39 when you've got the most willpower.
1515. 01:02:41 And he definitely calls that out
1516. 01:02:42 and then takes advantage of that later on
1517. 01:02:44 when he's putting together how you should go
1518. 01:02:46 about structuring some of this.
1519. 01:02:48 But that is a piece that I think is important.
1520. 01:02:51 I think I've operated that way for a long time, Mike.
1521. 01:02:53 Like I've always kind of used my mornings
1522. 01:02:55 as a special time to try to get my stuff done.
1523. 01:02:59 'Cause I know that's when I'm gonna be able
1524. 01:03:00 to focus on it more.
1525. 01:03:01 And I let people put meetings and stuff on the calendar
1526. 01:03:03 in the afternoon.
1527. 01:03:04 (laughs)
1528. 01:03:05 I'll come talk to you about all this important stuff
1529. 01:03:08 when I'm tired.
1530. 01:03:09 (laughs)
1531. 01:03:10 - Right.
1532. 01:03:11 So, yes.
1533. 01:03:12 - There's a whole bunch of productivity takeaways
1534. 01:03:15 from this chapter, specifically the one story
1535. 01:03:18 he shares on the Stanford School of Business Study.
1536. 01:03:22 And I'm gonna try and condense this down
1537. 01:03:24 and really just make the main points
1538. 01:03:26 that he's making here, but there's a ton in here.
1539. 01:03:29 So the study, they analyzed a little more than 1100
1540. 01:03:33 parole board hearings and they found that the judges
1541. 01:03:36 heard the arguments and then they had six minutes
1542. 01:03:38 to render a decision.
1543. 01:03:40 They only had two breaks during the day,
1544. 01:03:42 a morning snack and then a later lunch.
1545. 01:03:44 And what they found is that the parolees chances
1546. 01:03:46 of being released peaked at about 65% right after the breaks
1547. 01:03:50 and then dropped to almost 0% later in the day.
1548. 01:03:54 What that shows is that their willpower got depleted.
1549. 01:03:59 And one of the points he makes here is that willpower
1550. 01:04:02 is limited, but it is a renewable resource.
1551. 01:04:04 It can be replenished with downtime.
1552. 01:04:08 But also it shows that their default answer
1553. 01:04:10 because they're talking about whether to release
1554. 01:04:12 this person back into society was no.
1555. 01:04:16 Now, this prompted a question for me as I read this
1556. 01:04:21 just the way my brain works of what are your default answers?
1557. 01:04:28 And I think you could apply this to a lot of different scenarios.
1558. 01:04:32 It's going to be different for everybody,
1559. 01:04:35 but there's two kinds of willpower he talks about in here.
1560. 01:04:38 We covered this in the book, The Willpower Instinct,
1561. 01:04:40 but there's willpower, so I want to do something
1562. 01:04:42 and it won't power, I want to not do something.
1563. 01:04:45 And I think specifically when it comes to these default answers,
1564. 01:04:50 it maybe is a worthwhile exercise to figure out
1565. 01:04:54 what are the things that you have trouble applying
1566. 01:04:56 and it won't power to like Netflix
1567. 01:05:00 or eating unhealthy snacks, like a bag of chips
1568. 01:05:04 that happens to be in your pantry or whatever.
1569. 01:05:07 I didn't actually make a big list to share
1570. 01:05:11 on the episode here, but it did get me thinking,
1571. 01:05:15 like what are the things that I tend to default to
1572. 01:05:19 and then what are the habits that I want to create
1573. 01:05:23 to change those default answers?
1574. 01:05:27 He says on page 69 that we lose our willpower,
1575. 01:05:30 not because we think about it, but because we don't.
1576. 01:05:33 So the process for me, at least the way I see it in my head
1577. 01:05:38 is to think through these things
1578. 01:05:40 that are triggering my default answers
1579. 01:05:43 and then create systems or habits around those
1580. 01:05:46 to eliminate the negative behaviors
1581. 01:05:48 or create the positive behaviors that I want to create
1582. 01:05:51 so that I don't have to invest my willpower
1583. 01:05:56 in order to do the thing that I want to do.
1584. 01:05:58 Does that make sense?
1585. 01:06:00 - Yes.
1586. 01:06:01 - Okay. - At least to me.
1587. 01:06:02 - So I guess maybe this is an action item.
1588. 01:06:05 I didn't write it down as an action item per se,
1589. 01:06:10 probably because I'm in the middle of revamping
1590. 01:06:14 my morning evening routines
1591. 01:06:16 and what's my work day gonna look like anyways.
1592. 01:06:20 I guess maybe I just didn't think I needed
1593. 01:06:21 to be held accountable in this.
1594. 01:06:23 - Is that your New Year's resolution?
1595. 01:06:24 - It could be, I guess.
1596. 01:06:26 We can follow up on this if you want,
1597. 01:06:28 but I do want to just throw it out there
1598. 01:06:31 to other people too to think about this in their own lives
1599. 01:06:34 because I think that identifying these things
1600. 01:06:38 is gonna be important.
1601. 01:06:40 A lot of times it's simply just recognizing
1602. 01:06:44 what is really happening that allows you
1603. 01:06:46 to make the change that you want to make.
1604. 01:06:48 So if you identify that you get home at the end of the day,
1605. 01:06:52 you're really tired and Netflix is so accessible
1606. 01:06:56 but you know that you lose three hours every night
1607. 01:06:58 because you've been watching whatever,
1608. 01:07:00 then maybe like Danariah, you need to take the batteries
1609. 01:07:02 out of your remote and just introduce
1610. 01:07:04 a little bit of friction there,
1611. 01:07:05 which is gonna win you back three hours a day.
1612. 01:07:08 Like that's kind of a ridiculous example,
1613. 01:07:11 but that's the kind of impact I think
1614. 01:07:14 that the thinking about your willpower can have.
1615. 01:07:17 And again, we're still just in the lies section here.
1616. 01:07:21 We're gonna get into the truth, focusing question,
1617. 01:07:26 but really these are the things in this section
1618. 01:07:29 if I were to paraphrase this,
1619. 01:07:30 these are the things that will contribute to you
1620. 01:07:34 not being able to do the one thing.
1621. 01:07:37 So with willpower specifically, maybe the belief is,
1622. 01:07:40 I'm gonna do my one thing when I get home from work
1623. 01:07:43 and then you get home from work
1624. 01:07:44 and you find yourself in a situation
1625. 01:07:47 that you're not physically equipped to deal with
1626. 01:07:51 because your willpower has been depleted
1627. 01:07:53 and you're sabotaging yourself
1628. 01:07:55 just because of the way that you've structured
1629. 01:07:56 your day sort of thing.
1630. 01:07:57 - Yeah, I think a good example of this is diet.
1631. 01:08:01 And I can speak to this personally now.
1632. 01:08:05 Due to health stuff, I'm working through
1633. 01:08:09 my first ever Joe's gonna go on a diet sort of thing
1634. 01:08:12 and not to lose weight by any means.
1635. 01:08:14 If you've met me in person, you know I'm thin as a rail.
1636. 01:08:17 The last thing I need to do is lose 20 pounds.
1637. 01:08:19 I don't know that I would be around much longer
1638. 01:08:21 if I did that, but that's just the way I am.
1639. 01:08:24 So because of health, I'm working on implementing a diet
1640. 01:08:29 that does some things like cutting out sugar and such.
1641. 01:08:32 My default has always been,
1642. 01:08:35 I can eat pretty much whatever I want and I'm fine.
1643. 01:08:38 But that's not the case anymore,
1644. 01:08:41 which means that my best case scenario is to set myself up
1645. 01:08:46 such that the environment around me
1646. 01:08:48 makes it very easy to stick to that diet.
1647. 01:08:51 So I can't just rely on the willpower side of things
1648. 01:08:54 because we've read enough about this.
1649. 01:08:56 We've studied it enough to know
1650. 01:08:58 that I will fail given the opportunity.
1651. 01:09:01 It will not go well if I allow myself
1652. 01:09:05 to just trust my instincts.
1653. 01:09:07 I will instantly fall in that process.
1654. 01:09:10 So I have been working through new defaults
1655. 01:09:15 on what do I grab for snacks when I'm done at work?
1656. 01:09:18 What do I grab for a mid-morning 11 Zs?
1657. 01:09:23 What do I use for second breakfast?
1658. 01:09:24 These are very important questions
1659. 01:09:26 that all hobbits need to answer.
1660. 01:09:28 So I need to recreate what my default answers are
1661. 01:09:33 for those in order to prevent myself from relying
1662. 01:09:37 on willpower later on.
1663. 01:09:39 Because as the lie says,
1664. 01:09:41 willpower is always on will call, that's not true.
1665. 01:09:44 And I know better.
1666. 01:09:45 So I'm not gonna rely on it.
1667. 01:09:47 - Right.
1668. 01:09:47 All right, so next one, a balanced life.
1669. 01:09:51 - Doesn't exist.
1670. 01:09:52 - Exactly.
1671. 01:09:54 So this, I was really excited when I saw the title for this
1672. 01:09:59 because I think it was a 12 week year
1673. 01:10:01 we were first introduced to the concept
1674. 01:10:04 of intentional imbalance.
1675. 01:10:06 That's kind of what he's advocating for here also.
1676. 01:10:10 Although the visuals that he has in this section
1677. 01:10:13 do kind of show work on one side and life on the other.
1678. 01:10:17 And personally, I don't think it's that simple.
1679. 01:10:19 I don't think those are the only two distinctions.
1680. 01:10:21 - No.
1681. 01:10:22 - And in fact, later on in the book he talks about
1682. 01:10:24 some different areas that you wanna apply the one thing to.
1683. 01:10:27 So I would argue that there is just life
1684. 01:10:29 and your work is a part of that,
1685. 01:10:31 but it's up to you to balance this whole thing.
1686. 01:10:34 But the visuals indicate like there's work
1687. 01:10:38 and then there's life.
1688. 01:10:39 And he's basically saying that when you're doing one,
1689. 01:10:42 you're not doing the other.
1690. 01:10:44 And so it's kind of this balancing act
1691. 01:10:47 or counter balancing act where you're not just trying
1692. 01:10:50 to do both of these at the same time.
1693. 01:10:52 Sometimes you are gonna be working
1694. 01:10:54 and life is gonna suffer a little bit,
1695. 01:10:55 but then you have to reciprocate by focusing on life
1696. 01:11:00 and being okay with work suffering a little bit.
1697. 01:11:03 Again, like I don't agree with just those two distinctions,
1698. 01:11:07 but I do think that the section,
1699. 01:11:10 there's some interesting takeaways.
1700. 01:11:11 So number one, he talks about the term work life balance,
1701. 01:11:15 not being coined until the 80s,
1702. 01:11:18 when more than half of all married women
1703. 01:11:21 joined the workforce.
1704. 01:11:23 And Ralph E. Gomoroy, I believe is the author,
1705. 01:11:26 he credits this to, says,
1706. 01:11:28 "We went from a family unit with one breadwinner
1707. 01:11:30 and one homemaker to one with two breadwinners
1708. 01:11:34 and no homemaker."
1709. 01:11:35 So women specifically under this model
1710. 01:11:38 are feeling the pressure of going into the workforce
1711. 01:11:41 but still being expected unfairly,
1712. 01:11:43 I would argue by society and their husbands
1713. 01:11:46 to manage all of the life stuff at home too.
1714. 01:11:49 So if that sounds like an impossible situation,
1715. 01:11:52 I would argue that it is, but also that's the one
1716. 01:11:54 we willingly embrace whenever we talk
1717. 01:11:56 about work life balance.
1718. 01:11:57 It's just not set up for success.
1719. 01:12:00 - I thought it was interesting,
1720. 01:12:01 'cause he did a count of the number of times
1721. 01:12:05 the phrase work life balance was mentioned
1722. 01:12:07 in newspapers and magazine articles.
1723. 01:12:09 - Yeah. - And in the decade from 1986 to 1996,
1724. 01:12:14 so in 10 years, that phrase was used 32 times
1725. 01:12:19 in newspapers and magazine articles.
1726. 01:12:22 And in the year 1997 alone, it was 34 times.
1727. 01:12:26 Now, fast forward to 2011,
1728. 01:12:31 'cause he doesn't have any data in here beyond that,
1729. 01:12:33 but in 2011, in that one year,
1730. 01:12:36 it was 1,452 times.
1731. 01:12:38 - Yeah, ridiculous. - It had a peak in 2007,
1732. 01:12:41 it's 1,674.
1733. 01:12:43 So it's kind of nuts.
1734. 01:12:45 This is, I think of it as a term,
1735. 01:12:47 it's been around for a long time,
1736. 01:12:48 but in regards to history, it's very new.
1737. 01:12:51 - Yep, yep, definitely.
1738. 01:12:53 The other thing worth calling out here, in my opinion,
1739. 01:12:57 is this analogy he shared of juggling balls,
1740. 01:13:00 which even here, he's kind of destroying his own visuals
1741. 01:13:04 of work versus life because there's more than these two balls.
1742. 01:13:08 But he says that you have all these balls
1743. 01:13:10 that you're juggling, family, integrity, whatever.
1744. 01:13:14 And I didn't really write down the specific areas
1745. 01:13:17 because, again, I think like these areas,
1746. 01:13:19 you define these for yourself.
1747. 01:13:20 He talks about these a little bit later too.
1748. 01:13:22 But really just the analogy here is that you've got
1749. 01:13:24 all these balls that you're juggling,
1750. 01:13:25 work is the one that is rubber and will bounce back.
1751. 01:13:28 The rest of them are made of glass.
1752. 01:13:30 So those are the ones you have to be careful with.
1753. 01:13:32 You can't excuse all the other stuff
1754. 01:13:34 just because work is saying to do this,
1755. 01:13:37 which is easier to do when you are the one calling the shots
1756. 01:13:42 about how you work.
1757. 01:13:44 I was kind of interested to get your response to this
1758. 01:13:48 given the fact that you mentioned
1759. 01:13:50 at the beginning of this episode,
1760. 01:13:51 you work for a company now and we recorded this on New Year's Day
1761. 01:13:55 because this is the day you have off.
1762. 01:13:57 - Yes.
1763. 01:13:58 - So what was your response to that analogy?
1764. 01:14:03 Did you, again, I read it and I'm like,
1765. 01:14:06 yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1766. 01:14:07 I'm gonna make sure that I chuck the work ball
1767. 01:14:11 if I'm gonna let something go.
1768. 01:14:13 But I don't know, did you have a different reaction
1769. 01:14:15 because of your situation and maybe you don't have
1770. 01:14:18 as much flexibility with that particular wall?
1771. 01:14:21 - I think it's, I'm in a weird position with this.
1772. 01:14:25 So I used to work corporate, then I worked
1773. 01:14:28 for a virtual company, then I worked for myself
1774. 01:14:30 for three years and now I'm back in corporate.
1775. 01:14:33 And so I've been in all of those scenarios
1776. 01:14:35 and I worked for a small company
1777. 01:14:37 before I worked corporate originally.
1778. 01:14:39 So I've been in all of those different scenarios
1779. 01:14:41 and I think right now I'm in a weird spot
1780. 01:14:44 where I understand, like, I'll put it this way,
1781. 01:14:48 corporate is a much slower pace than what I'm used to pulling.
1782. 01:14:53 So for me, it's pretty easy for me to say,
1783. 01:14:57 yeah, work can bounce back, but frankly,
1784. 01:15:01 it's not too hard to keep that ball in the air at all.
1785. 01:15:04 Like, especially considering what I've just come from.
1786. 01:15:07 So I get his analogy.
1787. 01:15:10 I think it's a little weird to think of it that way.
1788. 01:15:13 But to me, I see it as if I keep the work plate spinning
1789. 01:15:18 all the others I can focus on a little more.
1790. 01:15:22 'Cause to me, the work when I can almost,
1791. 01:15:25 like I can almost put it on autopilot in a lot of ways,
1792. 01:15:28 I'm pretty good at segmenting my focus
1793. 01:15:30 when I'm back and forth.
1794. 01:15:31 So I just, to me, the hard part is making sure
1795. 01:15:34 I've got the time part nailed down.
1796. 01:15:37 For me, the focus piece I'm pretty good about.
1797. 01:15:39 I'm gonna go work on my work stuff here.
1798. 01:15:41 I'm gonna be 100% engaged in that.
1799. 01:15:44 Okay, work is done, get home,
1800. 01:15:46 and now I'm gonna be 100% at home.
1801. 01:15:47 Like, I'm usually pretty good at that, especially right now.
1802. 01:15:50 So working corporate actually makes that easier
1803. 01:15:53 than working for myself.
1804. 01:15:55 So I don't know, I didn't really find anything with this
1805. 01:15:58 that struck me as, you know, yeah, that's completely dead on.
1806. 01:16:03 Or no, that's absolutely wrong.
1807. 01:16:04 I was like, well, there's a lot of areas.
1808. 01:16:06 It's not just work in life.
1809. 01:16:08 Like I have friendships, I have my faith,
1810. 01:16:12 I have, you know, I still have a side gig.
1811. 01:16:14 I've got all these different things.
1812. 01:16:16 Like it's a matter of keeping them all in check.
1813. 01:16:19 Sometimes one has to be more in focus than the others.
1814. 01:16:23 And they need to give and take,
1815. 01:16:26 but I tend to have my family as the core
1816. 01:16:30 and the others work around that
1817. 01:16:32 as opposed to work being the center of that
1818. 01:16:35 and everything works around it.
1819. 01:16:37 Okay.
1820. 01:16:38 I think of it very differently because of it.
1821. 01:16:40 So I don't know, I'm an oddball, I'm aware of that.
1822. 01:16:43 All right, we all.
1823. 01:16:45 (laughs)
1824. 01:16:47 Everybody's special in their own way.
1825. 01:16:49 All right.
1826. 01:16:51 Big is bad, man.
1827. 01:16:51 Yeah, big is bad.
1828. 01:16:52 This is the last one in the live section.
1829. 01:16:56 This was an interesting one for me,
1830. 01:16:58 again, because of my situation.
1831. 01:17:02 So I didn't, he's got lots of cool visuals
1832. 01:17:05 throughout this entire book.
1833. 01:17:06 And I wrote, I took a picture of the one for this section
1834. 01:17:10 and put it in the mind node file.
1835. 01:17:12 But this one really wasn't that powerful, the visual,
1836. 01:17:15 but the idea behind it basically is that
1837. 01:17:20 when you connect big with bad,
1838. 01:17:22 it triggers what he calls shrinking thinking.
1839. 01:17:25 And so we kind of lower our trajectory
1840. 01:17:27 to what we consider to be safe.
1841. 01:17:30 But the truth is that no one knows their ultimate ceiling.
1842. 01:17:32 So worrying about what your ceiling is
1843. 01:17:37 is kind of a waste of time.
1844. 01:17:39 And as it pertains to my situation,
1845. 01:17:42 I'm getting ready to officially launch
1846. 01:17:46 faith-based productivity.
1847. 01:17:47 I struggle with thinking big about that.
1848. 01:17:50 So that's one of my action items,
1849. 01:17:51 is to think big about faith-based productivity.
1850. 01:17:54 On page 92, he says that to live great,
1851. 01:17:57 you have to think big.
1852. 01:17:58 You must be open to the possibility that your life
1853. 01:18:00 and what you accomplish can become great.
1854. 01:18:03 Achievement and abundance show up
1855. 01:18:05 because they're the natural outcome
1856. 01:18:07 of doing the right things with no limits attached.
1857. 01:18:09 That's kind of getting back to the one thing
1858. 01:18:11 that the knocking down the right dominoes.
1859. 01:18:13 He's basically saying in this section
1860. 01:18:16 that if you just knock down the right dominoes,
1861. 01:18:19 you will end up doing something great.
1862. 01:18:22 There will be achievement and abundance
1863. 01:18:24 simply by doing the right thing over and over and over again.
1864. 01:18:28 And the thing that I'm asking myself,
1865. 01:18:31 and I don't know all the answers yet here,
1866. 01:18:33 but like I said, I do have trouble thinking big
1867. 01:18:36 about some of the stuff that I do.
1868. 01:18:39 I wanna think to myself and identify
1869. 01:18:42 all the places where I have been
1870. 01:18:45 subject to this shrinking thinking
1871. 01:18:46 and kind of figure out for myself,
1872. 01:18:49 how have I limited myself simply by the approach
1873. 01:18:53 that I've taken?
1874. 01:18:55 I've noticed even when I started doing
1875. 01:18:58 the faith-based productivity,
1876. 01:18:59 talking to different people,
1877. 01:19:00 I would hear things come out of my mouth
1878. 01:19:03 like, well, this is the thing I wanna do,
1879. 01:19:05 but I don't know how big this can be.
1880. 01:19:06 And I've had people cut me off and they're like,
1881. 01:19:08 no, no, you don't even understand.
1882. 01:19:10 Like this could be big.
1883. 01:19:13 And for whatever reason,
1884. 01:19:14 I have trouble accepting that.
1885. 01:19:16 So I wanna fix that,
1886. 01:19:18 and I wanna start thinking bigger.
1887. 01:19:19 And I kind of believe that if you can train yourself
1888. 01:19:23 to think big about the things that you do,
1889. 01:19:27 obviously you can't just throw out a big dream.
1890. 01:19:30 And if you're not gonna do anything
1891. 01:19:32 that's gonna lead you to that point,
1892. 01:19:34 then you aren't gonna get those results.
1893. 01:19:36 But I kind of think what Gary Keller is telling us
1894. 01:19:40 and the thing that is appropriate for me right now
1895. 01:19:44 is to focus on the little things that you know to do
1896. 01:19:48 and then do those consistently all the while thinking big,
1897. 01:19:51 because that's gonna provide the motivation
1898. 01:19:53 to keep going.
1899. 01:19:54 And before long, you're knocking down some big dominoes
1900. 01:19:56 that you didn't think you would ever be able to knock down.
1901. 01:19:59 That's exciting and terrifying.
1902. 01:20:01 And on the surface, you might say like,
1903. 01:20:05 well, why is that terrifying?
1904. 01:20:06 Because the fact that you're doing it,
1905. 01:20:09 when you put forth the effort,
1906. 01:20:14 there's only two possible outcomes.
1907. 01:20:16 You either succeed or you fail.
1908. 01:20:18 As long as you don't try to knock down the dominoes,
1909. 01:20:21 you've always got that third option of,
1910. 01:20:22 well, someday I might be able to get serious about this
1911. 01:20:25 and start knocking down the dominoes.
1912. 01:20:27 And then, my life is gonna be different.
1913. 01:20:30 But it's scary when you do start knocking down those dominoes
1914. 01:20:32 and you don't know what the outcome's gonna be
1915. 01:20:35 because the voice in my head is saying,
1916. 01:20:39 this isn't gonna work.
1917. 01:20:40 And I recognize after reading this particular section
1918. 01:20:44 that I gotta stop that.
1919. 01:20:46 I have to start thinking positive
1920. 01:20:48 and I have to start seeing big picture.
1921. 01:20:50 Like maybe I do get connected with the right people
1922. 01:20:53 and this thing blows up and XYZ and the other thing.
1923. 01:20:57 That's gonna provide a lot more benefit
1924. 01:21:00 than capping myself and hedging my bets.
1925. 01:21:03 I think that's the justification
1926. 01:21:05 that a lot of people myself included will use.
1927. 01:21:07 It's like, well, if I don't think big,
1928. 01:21:11 then I won't be disappointed if it doesn't happen.
1929. 01:21:13 (laughs)
1930. 01:21:15 But that's, I don't know,
1931. 01:21:17 the fact that it's not even an option is more disappointing.
1932. 01:21:20 That's lame.
1933. 01:21:21 Don't do that.
1934. 01:21:23 - Right, right.
1935. 01:21:24 That's what I'm saying.
1936. 01:21:25 I'm recognizing that's not the right way to do this.
1937. 01:21:28 I need to let myself think big.
1938. 01:21:30 And just by doing that, the dominoes,
1939. 01:21:32 I believe it'll bring clarity to the right dominoes
1940. 01:21:35 that need to be knocked over.
1941. 01:21:36 And in the end, it is going to have
1942. 01:21:38 a significant positive impact.
1943. 01:21:40 And I'm gonna get a lot further than I would have
1944. 01:21:42 if I would have subscribed to the lower trajectory,
1945. 01:21:45 the shrinking thinking, whatever, just go for it.
1946. 01:21:48 And when you hit your ceiling, that's fine.
1947. 01:21:50 But once you get to that point,
1948. 01:21:52 you can say, okay, there's my ceiling.
1949. 01:21:54 But I think the sad thing is like,
1950. 01:21:55 if you don't wanna hit the ceiling,
1951. 01:21:57 then you're just never gonna get there.
1952. 01:21:58 You don't know how high it is.
1953. 01:22:00 - I think too many people suffer from fear of disappointment.
1954. 01:22:04 Like, don't be afraid of it.
1955. 01:22:06 Like, you're going to be disappointed by things
1956. 01:22:08 at some point.
1957. 01:22:09 Like, you can definitely set yourself up for failure.
1958. 01:22:12 But I don't think you should worry about,
1959. 01:22:17 if you want, you know, take faith-based productivity
1960. 01:22:20 as an example.
1961. 01:22:21 Let's say you launch it and 10,000 people sign up for it.
1962. 01:22:24 And you probably smirked whenever I said that, Mike.
1963. 01:22:28 (laughs)
1964. 01:22:29 - Yep.
1965. 01:22:30 - That isn't unreasonable in my mind.
1966. 01:22:34 But if you expect it, that's different than
1967. 01:22:39 thinking that you could have something big.
1968. 01:22:42 If you're expecting a big number, to me,
1969. 01:22:44 that's different than expecting it to be big
1970. 01:22:48 or acting as if it's a big thing.
1971. 01:22:51 So I don't think you should be scared of that
1972. 01:22:55 or afraid of it as much as embrace it.
1973. 01:22:58 Even, like, he even goes into Carol Dweck's
1974. 01:23:01 mindset book here.
1975. 01:23:02 - Yep.
1976. 01:23:03 - And the whole growth mindset versus the...
1977. 01:23:07 - Fixed mindset.
1978. 01:23:10 - Fixed, there you go.
1979. 01:23:10 I was drawing a blank on it.
1980. 01:23:12 So do you have a ceiling or can you grow past that?
1981. 01:23:15 You can grow past it.
1982. 01:23:17 - Right.
1983. 01:23:17 - I don't think we would argue with that.
1984. 01:23:20 So don't be afraid of growing to the point
1985. 01:23:24 where you do have something big.
1986. 01:23:26 Don't be afraid of that.
1987. 01:23:27 Even Bookworm has been growing quite a bit lately.
1988. 01:23:30 So thank you listeners.
1989. 01:23:31 But it's been fun to watch it continually grow.
1990. 01:23:35 I don't know if that's because we changed our mindset on it
1991. 01:23:37 or if it's just been around long enough.
1992. 01:23:39 - Yes.
1993. 01:23:40 - Yeah.
1994. 01:23:41 It's not a thing.
1995. 01:23:42 I think we're afraid of it going big.
1996. 01:23:45 I think we definitely expect it to get big.
1997. 01:23:48 So yes, there you go.
1998. 01:23:50 - And that actually leads in perfectly to the next section.
1999. 01:23:53 So part two is the truth.
2000. 01:23:54 And this is where we get into chapter 10,
2001. 01:23:56 the focusing question.
2002. 01:23:58 This is the single takeaway from the entire book.
2003. 01:24:02 Asking this question.
2004. 01:24:03 - Yep.
2005. 01:24:04 - What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it,
2006. 01:24:07 everything else will be easier or unnecessary.
2007. 01:24:11 And if you're not careful,
2008. 01:24:15 I think you can miss the impact that this question has,
2009. 01:24:19 which is why, I mean, he mentions it at the beginning
2010. 01:24:22 and you were asking, should we share it now
2011. 01:24:24 or should we do it later on?
2012. 01:24:26 But really chapter 10 is where he's really hitting this
2013. 01:24:29 for the first time in my opinion really strongly.
2014. 01:24:32 Because I think you have to understand the value
2015. 01:24:36 that comes from asking the right questions.
2016. 01:24:40 Otherwise, this simple little question is like,
2017. 01:24:43 well, there's nothing profound about that.
2018. 01:24:45 Well, maybe you're right.
2019. 01:24:47 Maybe it isn't that profound.
2020. 01:24:49 But there is a lot of powerful from asking the right questions.
2021. 01:24:52 In fact, he says that the quality of any answer
2022. 01:24:54 is directly determined by the quality of the question.
2023. 01:24:57 This is what my whole personal retreat,
2024. 01:24:59 handbook course is built off of,
2025. 01:25:01 asking the right questions
2026. 01:25:02 and giving your brain enough time to unravel them.
2027. 01:25:05 And everybody that I know that has done,
2028. 01:25:08 not just the process that I share,
2029. 01:25:10 but like this whole idea of thinking time,
2030. 01:25:13 they're blown away at the results that they get
2031. 01:25:17 simply by asking the right questions.
2032. 01:25:19 He says to get better answers,
2033. 01:25:20 you have to ask better questions.
2034. 01:25:21 He shares a quote by Voltaire,
2035. 01:25:23 judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
2036. 01:25:26 And so this focusing question,
2037. 01:25:28 this is the thing that will lead you to your first domino,
2038. 01:25:33 but you can apply this, you know,
2039. 01:25:35 the 80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20.
2040. 01:25:37 So you could say out of all the projects
2041. 01:25:38 that I can be working on,
2042. 01:25:39 what's the one project I can do that by doing it,
2043. 01:25:41 everything else is gonna be easier unnecessary.
2044. 01:25:43 Okay, you identify your project,
2045. 01:25:45 then you can ask this about your project.
2046. 01:25:46 What's the one thing I can do right now
2047. 01:25:48 that by doing it, this project,
2048. 01:25:50 and everything else is gonna be easier or unnecessary?
2049. 01:25:52 This single question,
2050. 01:25:53 if you just keep applying this over and over and over again,
2051. 01:25:56 I really do believe that this helps you
2052. 01:25:58 knock down the right dominoes.
2053. 01:25:59 This produces the results that he was talking about
2054. 01:26:02 in the first section that the lies
2055. 01:26:04 will try to keep you from getting.
2056. 01:26:06 So I do really like the structure of the book
2057. 01:26:09 and the fact that he's getting to this question
2058. 01:26:11 at this point, but this is,
2059. 01:26:15 we're like what an hour and a half into this episode,
2060. 01:26:19 and we're finally getting to this.
2061. 01:26:21 There's a reason that this is delayed,
2062. 01:26:24 and that is to maximize the impact that it has,
2063. 01:26:27 in my opinion.
2064. 01:26:28 So I want to just really drive home strongly right now,
2065. 01:26:30 if you're still listening to this episode,
2066. 01:26:32 like this is the thing.
2067. 01:26:34 Make sure that you understand this
2068. 01:26:37 and simply apply this question.
2069. 01:26:40 And apply it, maybe test it out,
2070. 01:26:43 different areas of your life.
2071. 01:26:44 Maybe you're not gonna go
2072. 01:26:45 do your whole productivity system
2073. 01:26:47 based off of this one question.
2074. 01:26:49 Maybe test it first.
2075. 01:26:50 But everybody that I know that has done that
2076. 01:26:52 has been blown away by the clarity
2077. 01:26:54 that they get from doing this.
2078. 01:26:55 Now I know you, first time you've read this book,
2079. 01:26:57 so I read it before,
2080. 01:26:59 and this was the thing that really impacted me.
2081. 01:27:02 So what was your response to this focusing question?
2082. 01:27:06 Were you like, is this too simple or?
2083. 01:27:08 - No, I don't think it is,
2084. 01:27:11 with great questions come great answers.
2085. 01:27:13 So there's that whole side of things.
2086. 01:27:16 But I want to couple this with the next chapter.
2087. 01:27:20 One, to help speed us up.
2088. 01:27:22 Two, that it made more sense to me with the next one.
2089. 01:27:26 So the next chapter is the success habit.
2090. 01:27:29 And in that he talks about the importance
2091. 01:27:31 of asking this question on a repeated basis.
2092. 01:27:34 - Right.
2093. 01:27:35 - That's the sum total of what he's getting at.
2094. 01:27:37 So ask it on a daily basis, on a weekly basis,
2095. 01:27:40 a monthly basis, a yearly basis.
2096. 01:27:42 Any time you need to make a big decision
2097. 01:27:43 or something is going on that you don't like
2098. 01:27:46 or something's not going on that you do want to happen,
2099. 01:27:48 like this is the question you need to ask.
2100. 01:27:51 And part of me really wishes this question
2101. 01:27:53 was a part of getting things done.
2102. 01:27:55 But David Allen had put it into that system
2103. 01:27:58 because it would solve a lot of the issues
2104. 01:28:00 that people have with that structure.
2105. 01:28:03 But to me, I know, like I have points in my morning
2106. 01:28:07 and at the end of my day where,
2107. 01:28:11 I'm not necessarily asking questions,
2108. 01:28:13 but there are things that I do
2109. 01:28:15 that require me to ask myself questions.
2110. 01:28:17 Like what is my plan for the week ahead?
2111. 01:28:20 I write it on the list as weekly plan,
2112. 01:28:23 but I know that I'm asking myself of,
2113. 01:28:26 well, what is it I need to accomplish this week?
2114. 01:28:29 Well, I don't really think of it as,
2115. 01:28:31 what's the one thing I could be doing
2116. 01:28:35 that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
2117. 01:28:38 Like I don't ask myself that question,
2118. 01:28:41 but I have been doing that in the last, I don't know,
2119. 01:28:44 it's probably not been a week with holidays and such,
2120. 01:28:47 but last three or four days I've been asking this question
2121. 01:28:49 on a daily basis.
2122. 01:28:51 It does have some pretty interesting effects.
2123. 01:28:54 Nothing like groundbreaking currently,
2124. 01:28:57 but it's a very fascinating way of coming at things.
2125. 01:29:01 So to me, I simply implemented it as part of my regular routines,
2126. 01:29:04 which is why I love having those checklists
2127. 01:29:06 that I work off of during those times,
2128. 01:29:08 because it's very easy for me to alter those habits
2129. 01:29:11 just by adding something to that list or removing it,
2130. 01:29:14 so or tweaking what it says.
2131. 01:29:16 Like that's the part that's important.
2132. 01:29:18 So to me, the success habit here is asking this
2133. 01:29:20 on a repeated basis, but the answers that I get
2134. 01:29:24 whenever I ask this question sometimes surprise me
2135. 01:29:28 and it's not always intuitive on what I should be doing
2136. 01:29:33 to drive me at the broader mission.
2137. 01:29:36 So I love the question.
2138. 01:29:38 I wish I had been asking myself this earlier.
2139. 01:29:41 - Right, and he breaks down, I forget if it's in chapter 11,
2140. 01:29:46 maybe chapter 10, like the three different parts
2141. 01:29:48 of the question, I don't think it,
2142. 01:29:51 that part I didn't really think was all that strong,
2143. 01:29:54 but the way he phrased this question is very specific.
2144. 01:29:58 Like it accomplishes a specific outcome
2145. 01:30:01 that he engineered it to do.
2146. 01:30:04 So you've got like the one thing,
2147. 01:30:06 that's the two inch domino, that's the approachable piece.
2148. 01:30:09 I can do that, such by doing it,
2149. 01:30:11 everything else is gonna be easier on necessarily.
2150. 01:30:13 The main idea there is that there's a system
2151. 01:30:15 which is going to be affected by this single action.
2152. 01:30:19 And I think that you can, it's different than asking
2153. 01:30:22 what's the most important thing that I can do.
2154. 01:30:25 So in terms of systems, the one thing that you can do,
2155. 01:30:28 which is gonna make everything else easier or unnecessary,
2156. 01:30:31 if you focus on the last part of that,
2157. 01:30:33 what's gonna make everything else that I do easier
2158. 01:30:36 or unnecessary, that brings a lot more clarity
2159. 01:30:38 than just saying like, well, what's the one thing
2160. 01:30:39 I should be doing?
2161. 01:30:41 And that's the thing I wanna call out here
2162. 01:30:43 because I think the first time I read this,
2163. 01:30:46 after a while, I kind of regressed to abbreviating
2164. 01:30:50 this question to what's the one thing I should be doing?
2165. 01:30:52 And I think the systems aspect of this is very important.
2166. 01:30:57 He also talks about in chapter 11 here,
2167. 01:30:59 specifically applying the focusing question
2168. 01:31:01 to all different areas of your life.
2169. 01:31:03 He's got what looks kind of like a wheel of life
2170. 01:31:05 sort of a thing.
2171. 01:31:06 That's what reminded me of anyways,
2172. 01:31:08 where you've got your finances, your spiritual life,
2173. 01:31:10 your physical health, your personal life,
2174. 01:31:11 your key relationships, your job or your business.
2175. 01:31:14 And he's got arrows pointing to all these different
2176. 01:31:16 circles and what's the one thing I can do
2177. 01:31:18 for all these different areas?
2178. 01:31:20 I agree with that in principle.
2179. 01:31:23 I do think there's a danger though,
2180. 01:31:27 in trying to do all of these one things at the same time.
2181. 01:31:31 Maybe if you break it down small enough
2182. 01:31:35 and you create these as habits,
2183. 01:31:38 you can touch on all of these,
2184. 01:31:40 but the 12 week year is basically built on the principle
2185. 01:31:44 that you can't tackle everything at once.
2186. 01:31:47 So in my opinion, this is the point of the book
2187. 01:31:51 where I would throw out a caution.
2188. 01:31:55 If you're getting excited about the idea of the one thing
2189. 01:31:58 and you see this picture and you see,
2190. 01:31:59 yeah, like those are the different areas of my life
2191. 01:32:01 that I want to address.
2192. 01:32:03 And you start asking yourself this question pretty soon.
2193. 01:32:06 You've got goals that you're trying to accomplish
2194. 01:32:09 in all these different areas.
2195. 01:32:10 You will probably get overwhelmed and frustrated.
2196. 01:32:14 - I disagree, but.
2197. 01:32:15 - Yeah. - We're good at that.
2198. 01:32:17 I saw this wheel and thought
2199. 01:32:20 that's a great way to come at this
2200. 01:32:22 because if you stop and think about it,
2201. 01:32:25 yes, you could do one thing in all these areas
2202. 01:32:27 and be overwhelmed, but the trick is
2203. 01:32:28 you're only doing one thing.
2204. 01:32:30 You're not focused on all the extra chaos
2205. 01:32:32 that comes with it.
2206. 01:32:34 That's part of the point that he's got here.
2207. 01:32:36 So you're limiting it.
2208. 01:32:38 If you take this in its totality
2209. 01:32:41 of the way he intends it,
2210. 01:32:43 you're actually doing less by doing this.
2211. 01:32:47 So it's easier to do the most important thing
2212. 01:32:50 that makes everything else easier or unnecessary
2213. 01:32:53 if you do that in every area.
2214. 01:32:56 So to me, it's easier to do it in all of these
2215. 01:32:59 than it is to try to do it in one and not the others.
2216. 01:33:02 - Sure.
2217. 01:33:03 - Does that make sense?
2218. 01:33:04 - It does. - That might be crazy.
2219. 01:33:06 This might be a case of Joe gone nuts, but.
2220. 01:33:08 - I feel like it's kind of counter to his argument
2221. 01:33:12 for a balanced life where you are picking
2222. 01:33:15 either work or life to work on.
2223. 01:33:17 And if I'm looking at, when I look at this circle,
2224. 01:33:20 I see business and job as work
2225. 01:33:22 and all of these other things as life.
2226. 01:33:24 And since he said earlier,
2227. 01:33:26 you're gonna be focusing on work or life
2228. 01:33:29 and neglecting the other one occasionally
2229. 01:33:31 to try to do all seven days at the same time
2230. 01:33:34 seems overwhelming to me.
2231. 01:33:37 But I think I understand what you're saying.
2232. 01:33:40 And I do think once you get a system in place,
2233. 01:33:44 there is a lot of value in figuring out
2234. 01:33:48 what's the one simple thing I can do for all of these areas
2235. 01:33:53 that I'm absolutely just not gonna neglect.
2236. 01:33:55 'Cause I think practically that's how it pans out for me.
2237. 01:34:00 I go to the gym every day.
2238. 01:34:01 I read my Bible in Prairie every day.
2239. 01:34:03 So I'm checking a lot of these boxes that he has here.
2240. 01:34:07 But in terms of goal setting and big outcomes,
2241. 01:34:12 that's where I think applying this question
2242. 01:34:16 gets a little bit, needs a disclaimer, I guess.
2243. 01:34:20 But if you're looking at it as just,
2244. 01:34:22 I wanna set up a simple habit every single day.
2245. 01:34:25 I don't even wanna think about it.
2246. 01:34:26 It's gonna become automatic at some point.
2247. 01:34:28 Maybe it's gonna be 18 days.
2248. 01:34:29 Maybe it's gonna be 254 days.
2249. 01:34:30 Who cares?
2250. 01:34:31 This is the thing I wanna make sure that I do every day.
2251. 01:34:35 That makes sense where you are gonna build it
2252. 01:34:37 into sort of a routine.
2253. 01:34:39 But I don't know.
2254. 01:34:41 Maybe just because of my situation
2255. 01:34:43 with faith-based productivity and trying to think big,
2256. 01:34:45 that's more like project focused.
2257. 01:34:47 That's my approach to reading this,
2258. 01:34:51 where I kind of view it as trying to do all these things
2259. 01:34:56 is kind of ridiculous.
2260. 01:34:59 - Yeah, I think if you read the questions he has
2261. 01:35:03 on the page just on the opposite side of this,
2262. 01:35:06 the questions he asks are not,
2263. 01:35:09 and this is maybe the misnomer here,
2264. 01:35:12 is that he's saying that big is not bad,
2265. 01:35:16 that you should think big to try to get a great answer
2266. 01:35:20 to these things.
2267. 01:35:22 And yet the questions in this specific area
2268. 01:35:24 during the success habit,
2269. 01:35:26 the questions he's asking are not,
2270. 01:35:29 they're not that.
2271. 01:35:31 They're not massive.
2272. 01:35:32 - Yes, exactly.
2273. 01:35:33 - So I don't think that asking this question
2274. 01:35:36 and trying to say, okay,
2275. 01:35:38 spiritual life finances,
2276. 01:35:39 business relationships, personal life,
2277. 01:35:41 my job, my physical health,
2278. 01:35:43 what's the one thing I can do to achieve
2279. 01:35:46 enormous success in each one of those
2280. 01:35:50 and really drive it hard?
2281. 01:35:53 I don't think that's what he's getting at
2282. 01:35:55 in this specific chapter.
2283. 01:35:57 I think he's more saying,
2284. 01:35:58 this has profound effects
2285. 01:36:00 if you ask these questions in these different areas.
2286. 01:36:03 I don't even know if he's saying do them all at once.
2287. 01:36:05 - Yeah.
2288. 01:36:06 - He's just saying,
2289. 01:36:07 this is something that you can do in each of these areas
2290. 01:36:10 that can have a profound effect.
2291. 01:36:12 And I don't think I would argue with that.
2292. 01:36:14 I'm going to attempt to do a lot of these all at once.
2293. 01:36:16 So we'll find out.
2294. 01:36:17 (laughing)
2295. 01:36:18 - All right.
2296. 01:36:20 - We'll see how it goes.
2297. 01:36:22 It's new year, time to do resolutions, right?
2298. 01:36:24 We'll say that's a resolution maybe.
2299. 01:36:26 But that's my approach with it.
2300. 01:36:29 These aren't necessarily going to be big.
2301. 01:36:31 I do have one area where I'm going to push really hard
2302. 01:36:33 similar to what you're talking about.
2303. 01:36:36 Disclaimer, it's not corporate.
2304. 01:36:38 (laughing)
2305. 01:36:38 It's a saying.
2306. 01:36:39 But this is a thing that I think you can do
2307. 01:36:42 in all of these areas.
2308. 01:36:43 It doesn't necessarily mean that you have one
2309. 01:36:46 or that you're going to be huge in all of them.
2310. 01:36:48 I think you're definitely going to be unbalanced
2311. 01:36:51 in one area and that one area is where you go big.
2312. 01:36:54 - Yep.
2313. 01:36:55 - So anyway, that's the way I'm coming at it.
2314. 01:36:57 I don't know if that's right or wrong,
2315. 01:36:58 but it's the way I interpreted it.
2316. 01:37:00 - No, and I think that's the right way to apply this,
2317. 01:37:04 to be honest.
2318. 01:37:05 I guess I'm just lumping this all together
2319. 01:37:07 in my Mind&Note file under Part Two,
2320. 01:37:10 and it's all leading together because in the next section,
2321. 01:37:14 Chapter 12, he talks about the path to great answers.
2322. 01:37:17 This is where he has a picture,
2323. 01:37:20 number one, ask a great question,
2324. 01:37:21 and then number two, find a great answer.
2325. 01:37:24 So if you were to ask a great question,
2326. 01:37:26 to find a great answer and to think big
2327. 01:37:28 about all of these different areas,
2328. 01:37:30 that's where the danger lies in my opinion.
2329. 01:37:33 Maybe that's not what he's saying,
2330. 01:37:35 but that's where my brain went.
2331. 01:37:36 And probably it's because I've been doing
2332. 01:37:38 the Wheel of Life stuff recently anyways,
2333. 01:37:40 and that's what it reminded me of when I saw that visual.
2334. 01:37:44 But yeah, so if you're approaching this as maintenance mode,
2335. 01:37:47 what are the things that I can do in these areas
2336. 01:37:49 every single day?
2337. 01:37:50 That's one very valid approach.
2338. 01:37:53 Another very valid approach would be,
2339. 01:37:54 okay, I wanna set a big goal in one of these areas,
2340. 01:37:56 which one do I wanna focus on?
2341. 01:37:58 But the one to stay away from is to think big and specific
2342. 01:38:02 about all of these different areas at once,
2343. 01:38:04 try to do everything in all those different areas.
2344. 01:38:07 In my opinion, unless you were completely,
2345. 01:38:10 and maybe this is what he meant,
2346. 01:38:11 and this is what he was able to do.
2347. 01:38:14 But for a lot of people, I think you don't have
2348. 01:38:17 complete control over your entire day
2349. 01:38:20 where you can just press the reset button
2350. 01:38:23 and start from scratch.
2351. 01:38:24 Like for your example, you've gotta show up for work
2352. 01:38:27 regardless of what your big priority is.
2353. 01:38:32 You have to work around that thing,
2354. 01:38:36 and that's okay in my opinion,
2355. 01:38:39 but to really just go hard on all these things at once,
2356. 01:38:43 like it does require you to have complete control
2357. 01:38:46 of how you design your life.
2358. 01:38:48 And I think that that's ideal,
2359. 01:38:52 but maybe not realistic for a lot of people.
2360. 01:38:55 - Sure.
2361. 01:38:56 Well, let's talk about the path to great answers,
2362. 01:38:58 and then we'll see if we can lump all
2363. 01:38:59 of part three together all in one shot.
2364. 01:39:01 (both laughing)
2365. 01:39:03 - Yeah, this is a long one.
2366. 01:39:04 All right, so the path to great answers,
2367. 01:39:07 he mentions the asking a great question,
2368. 01:39:10 finding a great answer,
2369. 01:39:11 and the question should be big and specific.
2370. 01:39:15 He's got like the four different quadrants,
2371. 01:39:17 big and broad, small and broad, small and specific,
2372. 01:39:19 and big and specific.
2373. 01:39:21 The reason you want to select a big and specific question
2374. 01:39:25 is that it will force you to change the way you do things
2375. 01:39:30 in order to achieve it.
2376. 01:39:33 And this is the thing that I think is really
2377. 01:39:36 an important point, but can also be something
2378. 01:39:39 that turns a lot of people off.
2379. 01:39:42 Is this idea of, well, I could set this goal
2380. 01:39:45 for this thing that's doable,
2381. 01:39:46 I could set this goal, which is a little bit of a stretch for me,
2382. 01:39:49 or I could set this goal, which is way out there,
2383. 01:39:51 but it is possible, it's just going to require
2384. 01:39:54 a significant change on my part
2385. 01:39:56 in creating new systems and things like that to get there.
2386. 01:39:59 And that's what he's arguing for here,
2387. 01:40:01 which is why I don't think you can do this
2388. 01:40:03 about the seven different areas.
2389. 01:40:06 You gotta really pick one to focus on,
2390. 01:40:09 but extraordinary results, he says here,
2391. 01:40:12 require a great answer and require you to live outside
2392. 01:40:15 of your comfort zone.
2393. 01:40:16 - Yeah, I saw this as a way to come up with a question
2394. 01:40:19 and answer to just do goal setting to nail down
2395. 01:40:22 like a mission of sorts that you should be asking
2396. 01:40:25 the one thing question about,
2397. 01:40:29 or using that to help get you there.
2398. 01:40:31 So that was the only thing I had an issue with
2399. 01:40:33 on this chapter is how do you connect this
2400. 01:40:35 to the focusing question?
2401. 01:40:37 Like it seemed like it was a bit of an ad on top of that.
2402. 01:40:41 So I had a little bit of a struggle trying to figure out
2403. 01:40:43 how he wanted this all to work together,
2404. 01:40:46 but I understand it too.
2405. 01:40:47 You know, it's go big or go home.
2406. 01:40:50 - Yep.
2407. 01:40:51 - Yeah, so I think what he would say,
2408. 01:40:53 and he's not here to defend himself,
2409. 01:40:55 so we'll talk about him.
2410. 01:40:57 - So I'll win.
2411. 01:40:57 - I think what he would say is to set a big
2412. 01:40:59 and specific goal, which is so far out there
2413. 01:41:03 that if you were to continue doing the things
2414. 01:41:04 that you're doing now, there's no way you could do it.
2415. 01:41:07 And some of the examples he mentions,
2416. 01:41:08 like how can we double sales in the next six months?
2417. 01:41:11 That's not possible with the current way things
2418. 01:41:16 are most likely.
2419. 01:41:18 So then you have to figure out what are the changes
2420. 01:41:21 that you need to make, and that does tie
2421. 01:41:24 into the focusing question.
2422. 01:41:26 Because when you're hitting the reset button
2423. 01:41:30 and you're trying to create a new system,
2424. 01:41:32 the focusing question I would argue
2425. 01:41:34 is the most important in that scenario.
2426. 01:41:36 Because of the last part of it,
2427. 01:41:38 which is that it's going to make everything else
2428. 01:41:41 easier or unnecessary.
2429. 01:41:44 So when a lot of people want to,
2430. 01:41:46 that's a general statement, I know that,
2431. 01:41:49 but let's just, for the sake of argument,
2432. 01:41:51 say you want to start a business, okay?
2433. 01:41:55 You don't go print business cards.
2434. 01:41:59 You probably don't even create a website
2435. 01:42:02 unless you're an internet-based business,
2436. 01:42:04 like a lot of the stuff that you and I do, Joe,
2437. 01:42:06 like that would be one of the first things that you do,
2438. 01:42:08 but for somebody who's gonna do carpentry on the side,
2439. 01:42:13 like maybe you don't need the website,
2440. 01:42:14 maybe you need to do something else.
2441. 01:42:16 But those are the things that people get caught up on.
2442. 01:42:18 And if you ask this question, it's easy to say,
2443. 01:42:21 well, I don't need the business card first.
2444. 01:42:24 I need the product to sell or whatever.
2445. 01:42:27 And that's where I think like this can be really helpful
2446. 01:42:30 when you're going back to the drawing board
2447. 01:42:32 and you're trying to figure out what do I need to do
2448. 01:42:34 to get to that point.
2449. 01:42:36 Because you could say, well, if I'm gonna set this goal,
2450. 01:42:40 which is beyond a stretch and it's in the realm
2451. 01:42:42 of possibility, I need to have XYZ and the other thing.
2452. 01:42:45 I don't know anything about websites.
2453. 01:42:46 I don't have anybody who can design me a logo,
2454. 01:42:49 but that's the thing that even though I'm not really skilled
2455. 01:42:51 at that, I'm gonna pick at that and I'm gonna invest
2456. 01:42:54 a whole bunch of time and waste a whole bunch of time,
2457. 01:42:56 I would argue because it's gonna provide a little bit
2458. 01:42:58 of procrastination for the thing that I know
2459. 01:43:01 I really should be doing.
2460. 01:43:02 And that's where the focusing question can really help you
2461. 01:43:05 identify right away.
2462. 01:43:06 Like this is not the thing that you should be doing right now.
2463. 01:43:09 This right here, this is the thing because it's going
2464. 01:43:12 to make everything else easier or unnecessary.
2465. 01:43:15 I think that that really helps.
2466. 01:43:17 That could really help a lot of people.
2467. 01:43:19 - So part three, extraordinary results.
2468. 01:43:21 Here's what I have what we do on this
2469. 01:43:24 since this is gonna be long anyway.
2470. 01:43:26 I think we should go through,
2471. 01:43:28 there's four things we've got in our outline folks.
2472. 01:43:30 We've got purpose, priority and productivity.
2473. 01:43:32 That's all kind of as one.
2474. 01:43:33 Time blocking which I'm guessing we wanna spend
2475. 01:43:36 a little time with.
2476. 01:43:37 Three commitments, the fourth thieves.
2477. 01:43:39 I think we should talk about the three commitments
2478. 01:43:41 very quickly, the fourth thieves
2479. 01:43:43 and then come back and do the other two.
2480. 01:43:45 - Okay.
2481. 01:43:45 - That's my thinking 'cause we'll wanna spend more time
2482. 01:43:47 on the other two.
2483. 01:43:48 - All right, so the three commitments.
2484. 01:43:51 I'm not gonna find this section, there we go.
2485. 01:43:54 All right, this is chapter 16.
2486. 01:43:57 The three commitments are number one,
2487. 01:43:59 follow the path of mastery.
2488. 01:44:01 Number two, move from E to P and three,
2489. 01:44:04 live the accountability cycle.
2490. 01:44:06 All right, following the path of mastery,
2491. 01:44:09 this kind of comes back to what I consider
2492. 01:44:12 to be a misquoted thing he attributed to Anders Eriksen.
2493. 01:44:17 He said that he came up with a 10,000 hour rule,
2494. 01:44:20 but we read Peek and he basically railed against Malcolm Gladwell
2495. 01:44:25 for creating the 10,000 hour rule.
2496. 01:44:27 Or am I misremembering?
2497. 01:44:28 - Mal, yeah, Malcolm Gladwell used Anders Eriksen's study
2498. 01:44:33 to get that number.
2499. 01:44:34 - Okay, okay.
2500. 01:44:35 - So it is, I think he has it correctly attributed here.
2501. 01:44:39 'Cause I'm pretty sure Gladwell used that number.
2502. 01:44:43 He got that number from someone else.
2503. 01:44:44 He's not the one that came up with it.
2504. 01:44:46 I think Gladwell even states that in his book.
2505. 01:44:49 - Okay, but I do remember when we read Peek
2506. 01:44:52 that the 10,000 hour rule was basically a myth,
2507. 01:44:56 but he's saying like the 10,000 hour rule
2508. 01:44:59 is kind of the way to achieve mastery,
2509. 01:45:01 which if you really wanna dig into that,
2510. 01:45:04 you can go listen to that episode.
2511. 01:45:06 - Yep, then there.
2512. 01:45:07 - Yeah, mastery also though, which is worth calling out here,
2513. 01:45:12 it's a path you go down, it's not a destination you arrive at,
2514. 01:45:14 which I thought was an important distinction.
2515. 01:45:16 Mastery is really just giving the best that you have
2516. 01:45:19 to become the best that you can be
2517. 01:45:21 at your most important work.
2518. 01:45:23 So that goes back to the very,
2519. 01:45:25 when we started off this episode talking about
2520. 01:45:27 the early episodes of Bookworm
2521. 01:45:28 and how we were to go back and listen to them,
2522. 01:45:30 we'd probably be ashamed of the quality of those.
2523. 01:45:33 Like that doesn't matter
2524. 01:45:35 because those were steps on the journey to mastery,
2525. 01:45:37 not that we've achieved it yet,
2526. 01:45:39 but we're on the trajectory
2527. 01:45:41 and that's what he's saying the path of mastery is.
2528. 01:45:43 It's not putting in the 10,000 hours
2529. 01:45:46 and after the 10,000th hour,
2530. 01:45:47 now finally you are on the path of mastery.
2531. 01:45:51 - The second one here is move from E to P.
2532. 01:45:54 E being the entrepreneurial way of doing things
2533. 01:45:57 and P being the purposeful way of doing things.
2534. 01:46:00 His point is the E,
2535. 01:46:02 entrepreneurial is our natural approach,
2536. 01:46:06 whereas purposeful is like you're working with mission.
2537. 01:46:09 And I think the interesting thing with this
2538. 01:46:12 is that if you're an entrepreneur,
2539. 01:46:14 you tend to come at things and say,
2540. 01:46:17 okay, here's a new thing that needs someone
2541. 01:46:20 to do something about.
2542. 01:46:21 And you jump in and you're going super fast
2543. 01:46:24 and at some point it gets hard
2544. 01:46:27 and you can either push through,
2545. 01:46:29 but most entrepreneurs have a tendency to say,
2546. 01:46:31 oh wait, there's this other area
2547. 01:46:33 that has this new thing that could use some work.
2548. 01:46:35 I'm gonna go jump in on that.
2549. 01:46:37 So you tend to cap your achievement
2550. 01:46:40 by constantly going just a little ways
2551. 01:46:43 and then stopping and coming back.
2552. 01:46:45 Whereas the purposeful approach is when you're doing,
2553. 01:46:49 as he says, quote unquote,
2554. 01:46:51 doing what comes unnaturally
2555. 01:46:54 where you use things like the systems
2556. 01:46:57 and the models and the focus to drive up your willpower
2557. 01:47:01 in order to break through that natural ceiling of achievement
2558. 01:47:05 so that you can then achieve a much higher level of success
2559. 01:47:08 than you ever possibly could using the entrepreneurial mindset.
2560. 01:47:12 - Yep, yeah, exactly.
2561. 01:47:13 So the four points on the graphic
2562. 01:47:15 that he's got there for the entrepreneurial mindset,
2563. 01:47:17 number one, disappointment, number two, resignation,
2564. 01:47:20 number three greener pastures,
2565. 01:47:21 number four, the cycle continues
2566. 01:47:23 and the purposeful mindset,
2567. 01:47:26 which is the one that breaks through that plateau,
2568. 01:47:29 on number one, focus, number two, models,
2569. 01:47:30 number three systems and number four, breakthrough.
2570. 01:47:34 Basic takeaway, in my opinion,
2571. 01:47:36 would be connecting to your purpose, finding your why.
2572. 01:47:38 That's what allows you to make the modifications
2573. 01:47:40 to the models and systems
2574. 01:47:41 that allow you to break through the glass ceiling.
2575. 01:47:43 - Last one here, the accountability.
2576. 01:47:46 All right, live the accountability cycle.
2577. 01:47:49 This, there's another graphic here
2578. 01:47:55 which I don't think is real great to be honest with you.
2579. 01:48:00 But the main takeaway here for me
2580. 01:48:04 was that the accountability mindset
2581. 01:48:06 is going to be looking for solutions.
2582. 01:48:09 So page 184, he says,
2583. 01:48:10 you can either be the author of your life
2584. 01:48:12 or the victim of it.
2585. 01:48:13 Don't settle for the victim mentality.
2586. 01:48:17 You have control over certain things in your situation.
2587. 01:48:20 Maybe you don't have complete control,
2588. 01:48:22 but figuring out what you can control
2589. 01:48:24 and manipulating those systems
2590. 01:48:27 to produce the results that you want
2591. 01:48:28 will create more control and more freedom.
2592. 01:48:31 And as you take that approach,
2593. 01:48:34 one of the things that can help you consistently follow through
2594. 01:48:36 with that is accountability.
2595. 01:48:38 So you could be, you could apply that
2596. 01:48:40 as accountability to yourself.
2597. 01:48:42 We talked about the earlier,
2598. 01:48:43 the ability to make a promise to yourself
2599. 01:48:44 and follow through with it.
2600. 01:48:46 But also, if you need some help,
2601. 01:48:47 there's nothing wrong with that either.
2602. 01:48:49 One of the questions that I wrote down
2603. 01:48:50 was who's holding you accountable?
2604. 01:48:53 And if you really want some accountability,
2605. 01:48:56 I mean, even something like the Bookworm Club
2606. 01:48:58 is a great place to start.
2607. 01:49:00 It's free, you can go on there,
2608. 01:49:01 you can share your action items from the books,
2609. 01:49:03 cast book club, we're all in this together.
2610. 01:49:06 Even just writing it and posting it somewhere publicly
2611. 01:49:08 for other people to see,
2612. 01:49:09 maybe that's the thing that helps you follow through
2613. 01:49:12 and do the things that you're supposed to do.
2614. 01:49:14 But identifying ways that you can have accountability
2615. 01:49:18 can provide enough traction for you to do your one thing.
2616. 01:49:23 And that's important.
2617. 01:49:24 - Absolutely.
2618. 01:49:25 Now, the Four Thieves, I'm gonna run through these quick
2619. 01:49:28 and we'll come back to time blocking.
2620. 01:49:30 The Four Thieves, inability to say no,
2621. 01:49:33 the fear of chaos, poor health habits,
2622. 01:49:37 and the environment doesn't support your goals.
2623. 01:49:40 Now, he goes through the importance
2624. 01:49:43 of having good productivity.
2625. 01:49:44 I think we've talked about all of these
2626. 01:49:46 to some degree over the life of Bookworm.
2627. 01:49:50 The inability to say no, you're saying yes too many times.
2628. 01:49:53 You have too many commitments.
2629. 01:49:55 This is probably the number one thing I think we see
2630. 01:49:56 in the productivity space probably like,
2631. 01:49:58 as folks have said yes way too many times
2632. 01:50:00 and there's too much on their list.
2633. 01:50:02 Pretty common.
2634. 01:50:03 Two fear of chaos when you start focusing on the one thing
2635. 01:50:07 that you're supposed to be doing in that day.
2636. 01:50:09 It's inevitable that other areas of your life
2637. 01:50:11 are going to fall apart in some degree.
2638. 01:50:14 - Yep.
2639. 01:50:14 - And he's saying that don't let that chaos scare you
2640. 01:50:19 and it's going to happen at least for a time.
2641. 01:50:22 - Oh, it's coming.
2642. 01:50:23 - So, yeah, it's gonna hit you.
2643. 01:50:26 So anyway, don't be afraid of that.
2644. 01:50:28 Poor health habits.
2645. 01:50:29 This is part of what I'm working on right now
2646. 01:50:31 is revamping my diet to some degree
2647. 01:50:34 in order to help me with some health issues.
2648. 01:50:36 So, that's just a thing you need to be aware of.
2649. 01:50:39 But he does get into meditating.
2650. 01:50:41 (laughs)
2651. 01:50:43 - Yeah, he's got a recommended routine.
2652. 01:50:45 - Yep, he's got a whole routine here that, you know,
2653. 01:50:49 okay, sure, I'm gonna do mine.
2654. 01:50:52 - Which by the way, as a side note,
2655. 01:50:54 this is one of the things that like,
2656. 01:50:56 there are a whole books written on these recommended routines.
2657. 01:50:59 This is one small section in one of 18 chapters
2658. 01:51:03 in this book.
2659. 01:51:05 So, I feel like there's a ton of stuff in here
2660. 01:51:08 which if you just took it and applied it at surface value
2661. 01:51:11 would provide a huge amount of value to your life.
2662. 01:51:16 But it's almost lost in the shuffle
2663. 01:51:18 because there's so much stuff in here.
2664. 01:51:20 - Right.
2665. 01:51:21 - And it's not directly tied to the one thing.
2666. 01:51:24 I mean, he does a pretty good job
2667. 01:51:25 of tying it back to that focusing question.
2668. 01:51:27 But the recommended routine,
2669. 01:51:30 there's a lot of great stuff there,
2670. 01:51:31 but he doesn't get into like all the different specifics
2671. 01:51:33 that how Elrod does in the miracle morning.
2672. 01:51:36 But still, like the stuff that he lists here
2673. 01:51:38 is pretty good.
2674. 01:51:39 Main idea for me is just protect the golden goose.
2675. 01:51:42 - Yes, yes.
2676. 01:51:44 The last thief of productivity here,
2677. 01:51:47 I mentioned this earlier when I was talking about diet,
2678. 01:51:49 the environment doesn't support your goals.
2679. 01:51:51 So, if the people you're around
2680. 01:51:54 are constantly bringing you down
2681. 01:51:55 or your work environment is such
2682. 01:51:57 that it makes it hard for you to do your job.
2683. 01:51:59 Like those are all things that are gonna prevent you
2684. 01:52:01 from being productive and working towards that one thing.
2685. 01:52:04 So, do something about it.
2686. 01:52:06 (laughs)
2687. 01:52:07 Don't let it rob from you.
2688. 01:52:09 Okay, now.
2689. 01:52:10 - Exactly.
2690. 01:52:11 - Let's talk about purpose and time blocking.
2691. 01:52:13 Mike, I'm sure you have lots to talk about here.
2692. 01:52:15 (laughs)
2693. 01:52:16 - Sure.
2694. 01:52:17 So, purpose, priority, and productivity
2695. 01:52:19 is the model that he shares actually
2696. 01:52:22 at the beginning of this part.
2697. 01:52:23 So, it's not even in a chapter necessarily.
2698. 01:52:26 There is a chapter devoted to live with purpose,
2699. 01:52:29 live with priority, and live for productivity.
2700. 01:52:32 But he shares the iceberg picture
2701. 01:52:35 in the two page thing at the beginning of chapter three,
2702. 01:52:39 which shows productivity as the top part
2703. 01:52:42 of the iceberg above the water,
2704. 01:52:44 underneath that you've got priority,
2705. 01:52:45 and then you've got purpose.
2706. 01:52:47 So, I think this is a fair representation of this.
2707. 01:52:52 I do like the alliteration
2708. 01:52:54 with the productivity priority and purpose.
2709. 01:52:57 It reminded me a lot of the analogy that I came up with
2710. 01:53:00 for the word hustle, because my book is called "Dowsha Hustle."
2711. 01:53:04 And this actually isn't in the book,
2712. 01:53:06 so don't buy the book expecting to see it.
2713. 01:53:08 I need to revise the book.
2714. 01:53:09 (laughs)
2715. 01:53:10 But the definition of hustle is to force to move
2716. 01:53:13 hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.
2717. 01:53:16 And the point that I make is that there's three parts,
2718. 01:53:18 their vision, purpose, and work.
2719. 01:53:21 And the work he would call productivity,
2720. 01:53:23 the purpose he would call priority,
2721. 01:53:25 and vision as I call it, he would call purpose.
2722. 01:53:27 Like, where's the big thing that you're why?
2723. 01:53:31 And then that's gonna dictate the direction
2724. 01:53:34 that you're moving, but what people ultimately
2725. 01:53:36 is gonna see is the work, or in his case,
2726. 01:53:38 the productivity.
2727. 01:53:40 And I think that productivity for productivity's sake,
2728. 01:53:43 work for work's sake, quote unquote hustle,
2729. 01:53:45 like most people think of it, just cranking or grinding,
2730. 01:53:47 that's not really accurate,
2731. 01:53:50 and that's just gonna lead to burnout.
2732. 01:53:52 It's not gonna lead to the big results
2733. 01:53:55 like you were talking about earlier,
2734. 01:53:56 work in the 70, 80 hours a week.
2735. 01:53:58 That's not the way to get there.
2736. 01:54:00 And again, this is part three extraordinary results.
2737. 01:54:03 So the way to achieve those extraordinary results
2738. 01:54:06 is to tie these things together.
2739. 01:54:09 Also in this section, by the way, the word priority,
2740. 01:54:12 this was interesting to me,
2741. 01:54:13 the original word priority, from the 14th century,
2742. 01:54:16 it comes from the Latin prior, which means first,
2743. 01:54:19 and it's something that means the principle thing.
2744. 01:54:24 So if something mattered the most, it was a priority.
2745. 01:54:27 But it remained unpluralized until around the 20th century
2746. 01:54:30 when it was demoted to mean something that matters.
2747. 01:54:32 So now we've got five different levels of priorities.
2748. 01:54:35 And really the point he's making is that
2749. 01:54:36 there is no top priority or multiple levels of priority.
2750. 01:54:39 There is just a thing that is most important.
2751. 01:54:41 That is priority.
2752. 01:54:43 And so that's how he applies the one thing to this,
2753. 01:54:46 which again is really powerful.
2754. 01:54:48 If you can identify the vision,
2755. 01:54:50 the thinking big about your future,
2756. 01:54:52 the purpose that you want to achieve,
2757. 01:54:54 and then the one thing, the priority, the vector,
2758. 01:54:56 the direction that you want to go,
2759. 01:54:58 that's gonna dictate the one thing,
2760. 01:55:00 the action that you take, the productivity,
2761. 01:55:03 the work that you actually do.
2762. 01:55:04 - Yeah, I think the piece about the priority
2763. 01:55:07 that I really liked is page 150.
2764. 01:55:11 He called it goal setting to the now.
2765. 01:55:13 - Yeah.
2766. 01:55:14 - And I really appreciated this because,
2767. 01:55:18 everybody does goals to some degree,
2768. 01:55:21 especially this time of year.
2769. 01:55:22 And I'll just walk through this quick
2770. 01:55:25 and then we can go on.
2771. 01:55:25 But you have a someday goal.
2772. 01:55:27 So what's one thing I want to do someday?
2773. 01:55:30 Okay, well, great.
2774. 01:55:32 Let's take that to the next level.
2775. 01:55:34 Okay, in order to hit that someday goal,
2776. 01:55:38 what's the one thing I can do in the next five years
2777. 01:55:41 to hit it?
2778. 01:55:42 Okay, well, based on that five year goal,
2779. 01:55:44 what's the one thing I can do this year
2780. 01:55:46 to hit that goal?
2781. 01:55:48 You see where I'm going here?
2782. 01:55:49 So based on the one year,
2783. 01:55:50 what's the one thing I can do this month?
2784. 01:55:52 What's the one thing I can do this week?
2785. 01:55:53 What's the one thing I can do today?
2786. 01:55:55 What's the one thing I can do right now?
2787. 01:55:59 I really appreciated that because although we know that
2788. 01:56:02 somewhat intuitively, no one does it.
2789. 01:56:06 (laughs)
2790. 01:56:06 Like I don't.
2791. 01:56:07 - Yeah.
2792. 01:56:08 - Like I wish I would do that.
2793. 01:56:10 And this is why I say,
2794. 01:56:11 I've got two action items here.
2795. 01:56:14 One is to ask this question,
2796. 01:56:16 the focusing question daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.
2797. 01:56:19 And the goal there is that I'm constantly doing
2798. 01:56:23 this exact process is that I can write down my answers
2799. 01:56:27 to what's my long term goal,
2800. 01:56:30 what is it I need to do this year to hit that?
2801. 01:56:32 Like that's the exact process I'm working through.
2802. 01:56:34 It's probably not gonna happen today.
2803. 01:56:35 It's probably gonna happen sometime this week
2804. 01:56:37 or this upcoming weekend that I'll get through all of that.
2805. 01:56:39 But that's the plan is to use this exact model
2806. 01:56:42 to get there because once these priorities are nailed down,
2807. 01:56:47 answering that question on a daily basis gets really easy.
2808. 01:56:50 - Yep.
2809. 01:56:51 - Really easy.
2810. 01:56:52 - Yeah.
2811. 01:56:53 And that ties into the idea of hyperbolic discounting
2812. 01:56:56 where the farther away a reward is in the future,
2813. 01:56:58 the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.
2814. 01:57:00 So what you're doing when you employ that methodology
2815. 01:57:04 is you're creating momentum for that essentially someday
2816. 01:57:09 maybe goal, that thing that's way out there,
2817. 01:57:12 but it's gonna provide the motivation to take action
2818. 01:57:14 on it every single day because all you've gotta do
2819. 01:57:16 is this one thing, not work on something for 10 years
2820. 01:57:20 and then eventually you get there.
2821. 01:57:22 It makes it a lot more palatable, I guess.
2822. 01:57:25 It's a lot easier to show up every day
2823. 01:57:27 and do that thing when you break it down like that.
2824. 01:57:30 - And one thing that he, one tool that he tells you to use
2825. 01:57:34 that can really drive a lot of this is time blocking,
2826. 01:57:37 which we both have as action items here, Mike.
2827. 01:57:40 - Yep.
2828. 01:57:41 - And I feel like everybody knows what time blocking is.
2829. 01:57:44 You put something on a time on your calendar
2830. 01:57:46 and that's when you're gonna work on the specific item
2831. 01:57:51 and in this case it's your one thing
2832. 01:57:54 and he recommends like a four hour block
2833. 01:57:57 and he has all kinds of reasons
2834. 01:57:59 for how he got to four hours
2835. 01:58:00 and recommends eight a.m. to noon.
2836. 01:58:03 - Yep, yep.
2837. 01:58:04 - That's crazy talk.
2838. 01:58:05 - Right. (laughs)
2839. 01:58:06 - Like that's not gonna happen,
2840. 01:58:09 especially for me right now.
2841. 01:58:11 Like I'm gonna be doing good to get 30 minutes
2842. 01:58:13 towards it every day.
2843. 01:58:14 So I don't see this as a thing
2844. 01:58:17 where I'm gonna put four hours to it
2845. 01:58:19 but I did greatly appreciate that
2846. 01:58:21 this is something you should put on your calendar.
2847. 01:58:24 Keep your commitment to yourself
2848. 01:58:26 and over time this is gonna have a huge impact.
2849. 01:58:29 I totally buy into that.
2850. 01:58:32 I just know that me personally,
2851. 01:58:33 I do struggle with keeping these types of commitments
2852. 01:58:36 to myself.
2853. 01:58:37 It's very easy for me to plan over them and such.
2854. 01:58:40 So I know I'll struggle with this
2855. 01:58:42 so I'll definitely need your help here, Mike.
2856. 01:58:44 But I'm at least gonna give it a shot.
2857. 01:58:46 We'll see how it goes.
2858. 01:58:48 - Nice.
2859. 01:58:49 Yeah, this is from chapter 15,
2860. 01:58:50 Live for Productivity.
2861. 01:58:52 And the point that he makes
2862. 01:58:54 at the beginning of this chapter is page 157,
2863. 01:58:57 putting together a life of extraordinary results
2864. 01:58:59 simply comes down to getting the most
2865. 01:59:01 out of what you do when what you do matters.
2866. 01:59:04 So does what you do matter
2867. 01:59:07 and is what you're doing gonna matter?
2868. 01:59:10 It ultimately is the question that you're asking there.
2869. 01:59:12 But then if you were to break that down
2870. 01:59:15 and assuming that what you're working on does matter,
2871. 01:59:17 then you wanna be as quote unquote,
2872. 01:59:19 I think it I said it again.
2873. 01:59:21 You wanna be as productive as possible.
2874. 01:59:23 So the question he asks is how much is the system
2875. 01:59:26 that you're using worth?
2876. 01:59:27 Because he says money is a metaphor
2877. 01:59:29 for producing results.
2878. 01:59:31 So time is money essentially.
2879. 01:59:32 The time management system that you use
2880. 01:59:34 produces the money that you make.
2881. 01:59:36 So he says, are you using a $10,000 a year system?
2882. 01:59:39 Or is it a $100,000 a year system?
2883. 01:59:41 Is it a million dollar a year system?
2884. 01:59:44 And the question really is how much do you make?
2885. 01:59:47 That's a little bit uncomfortable to ask that,
2886. 01:59:49 but I get the point that he's making there.
2887. 01:59:52 So if you're assuming that the results you have
2888. 01:59:54 are coming from the system that you're using,
2889. 01:59:57 and if you're assigning a dollar value
2890. 01:59:59 of how much you make to the system
2891. 02:00:00 that you're using in terms of what it's worth,
2892. 02:00:03 then maybe if it's not producing the results that you want,
2893. 02:00:07 you should check it and design a system
2894. 02:00:10 that is more valuable.
2895. 02:00:11 That's where he's making the argument for time blocking.
2896. 02:00:14 And he talks about the different time blocks.
2897. 02:00:17 He says, there's three different time blocks you need.
2898. 02:00:19 Number one is time off.
2899. 02:00:20 Number two is your one thing.
2900. 02:00:22 And the number three is your planning time.
2901. 02:00:24 I really like the idea behind those.
2902. 02:00:26 I agree with you that when he shares the example,
2903. 02:00:28 it's kind of like not approachable for most people.
2904. 02:00:33 But the one thing that I really got from this
2905. 02:00:38 in terms of time blocking, well, a couple things.
2906. 02:00:41 Number one, time off being important.
2907. 02:00:44 So having that be your first time block,
2908. 02:00:45 I thought that was a little bit radical,
2909. 02:00:47 but as I thought about that, I'm like,
2910. 02:00:48 no, actually that makes a lot of sense.
2911. 02:00:50 And then secondly, your one thing appearing
2912. 02:00:52 on your calendar, and you're like you said,
2913. 02:00:54 he's doing it four hours a day,
2914. 02:00:56 I probably can't even do it four hours a day,
2915. 02:00:58 even in my current situation,
2916. 02:00:59 but it really made me think,
2917. 02:01:01 what is the thing that I should be doing?
2918. 02:01:03 What is my one thing?
2919. 02:01:04 I think it's writing.
2920. 02:01:06 Writing is also the thing that I tend to not get around
2921. 02:01:08 to doing because I'm fiddling with the systems
2922. 02:01:10 or creating products or whatever.
2923. 02:01:12 - Or buying a Mac mini.
2924. 02:01:14 - Yeah, but I'm recognizing that if I were to simply create
2925. 02:01:19 writing as a habit and do it not for four hours a day,
2926. 02:01:22 maybe it's just an hour or two every day.
2927. 02:01:24 That would make a lot of this stuff that I do a lot simpler.
2928. 02:01:27 When it comes to creating product,
2929. 02:01:29 I've got the stuff written.
2930. 02:01:30 When it comes to sending out the newsletters,
2931. 02:01:32 I've got the articles written,
2932. 02:01:33 this is definitely something I need to do.
2933. 02:01:36 So that is gonna be one of my action items,
2934. 02:01:38 is to implement this time blocking
2935. 02:01:41 with the three different blocks.
2936. 02:01:43 And he also mentions a little bit later
2937. 02:01:45 of scheduling a time block of an hour per week
2938. 02:01:47 to review your goals.
2939. 02:01:49 That's something that I haven't done very well.
2940. 02:01:51 You could say that's part of your weekly review,
2941. 02:01:54 which again, not something I've done very well recently.
2942. 02:01:56 So that's my other action item from this section.
2943. 02:02:01 And again, this is a section where there's a ton of stuff
2944. 02:02:04 in here, a couple of pages he talks about
2945. 02:02:06 Maker versus Manager time.
2946. 02:02:08 We could do a whole podcast episode on that topic,
2947. 02:02:11 but that's another way that could influence
2948. 02:02:14 your time blocking.
2949. 02:02:15 He also talks about not breaking the chain,
2950. 02:02:17 the Jerry Seinfeld story.
2951. 02:02:20 He gives that guy a name, by the way,
2952. 02:02:21 which I never heard before.
2953. 02:02:23 Brad Isaac is a software developer
2954. 02:02:25 who apparently ran into Jerry Seinfeld
2955. 02:02:27 at an open mic comedy club.
2956. 02:02:29 And he asked Jerry Seinfeld how to become a better comic.
2957. 02:02:33 And the story goes that Seinfeld told him
2958. 02:02:37 to get a big calendar, put a red X on every day
2959. 02:02:39 you work on your craft, keep at it,
2960. 02:02:40 chain's gonna grow longer every day.
2961. 02:02:41 You'll like seeing that chain,
2962. 02:02:43 and then your only job then is to not break the chain.
2963. 02:02:46 So again, like this is a productivity principle.
2964. 02:02:49 You probably, if you're listening to this,
2965. 02:02:51 have heard somewhere else, but he attributes it
2966. 02:02:55 and adds a little bit of detail for a story
2967. 02:02:57 that I never really understood the whole thing.
2968. 02:03:00 So I appreciated that.
2969. 02:03:03 And again, like the don't break the chain,
2970. 02:03:05 especially when you're talking about your one thing,
2971. 02:03:06 that's a really powerful idea,
2972. 02:03:09 but it's one minor piece in this one chapter,
2973. 02:03:12 in this big book, which he's trying to tie back
2974. 02:03:15 to the focus in question.
2975. 02:03:17 It's easy to overlook the importance of that.
2976. 02:03:20 - Ready for action items?
2977. 02:03:21 - Yeah, let's do it.
2978. 02:03:22 - I have two.
2979. 02:03:23 I am gonna do the goal setting to now,
2980. 02:03:26 asking the question, perfect time of year to do that.
2981. 02:03:28 So good timing there.
2982. 02:03:30 Two, I'm doing the time blocking thing.
2983. 02:03:32 I've done this to some degree already
2984. 02:03:34 with blocking off weekly time for a weekly review.
2985. 02:03:38 I tend to do it on a monthly basis as well.
2986. 02:03:41 And I quasi do it for a yearly thing.
2987. 02:03:44 It's kind of what I'm doing this upcoming weekend.
2988. 02:03:46 So I do some of it.
2989. 02:03:48 Definitely a time block vacation time already.
2990. 02:03:51 So the piece that I need to do is the actual work time.
2991. 02:03:54 I have not been good about that.
2992. 02:03:56 So that's the piece that I wanna add to the whole thing.
2993. 02:03:58 Like that's the thing I wanna add overall
2994. 02:04:00 to my calendaring method.
2995. 02:04:02 - Nice.
2996. 02:04:03 All right, so for me, I want to revamp my time blocking.
2997. 02:04:07 As I mentioned, the three different blocks
2998. 02:04:09 and the order that he applied them,
2999. 02:04:10 I thought that was really good.
3000. 02:04:12 And I also wanna add one for reviewing my goals specifically,
3001. 02:04:16 but I'll probably just build that into the weekly review
3002. 02:04:18 and create a time block for that.
3003. 02:04:20 I also want to think big about faith-based productivity.
3004. 02:04:24 And that's the one that there's no way
3005. 02:04:26 you'll be able to hold me accountable for.
3006. 02:04:27 (laughing)
3007. 02:04:29 Actually, it's the third one
3008. 02:04:30 you probably won't be able to hold me accountable for either.
3009. 02:04:32 And that is to ask the question, who can I help succeed?
3010. 02:04:35 But I do think that I've already seen some changes
3011. 02:04:40 in the way that I interact with people after reading this.
3012. 02:04:44 And so I hope that that continues.
3013. 02:04:46 I guess if you see me not doing that,
3014. 02:04:48 you can hold me accountable and say,
3015. 02:04:49 "Hey, you said you were gonna do this."
3016. 02:04:51 But it's more just a mindset
3017. 02:04:53 that I wanna change.
3018. 02:04:55 - You could take number three,
3019. 02:04:57 who can I help succeed?
3020. 02:04:58 Do it on yourself and get number two, think big.
3021. 02:05:01 - Oh, there we go.
3022. 02:05:02 Get meta with my action items.
3023. 02:05:03 - Ooh, double dip.
3024. 02:05:06 All right, we'll check in next time.
3025. 02:05:07 Until then, author style on rating, no pressure, Mike.
3026. 02:05:11 - You go first.
3027. 02:05:12 - Okay, that's fine.
3028. 02:05:14 So there's a couple of points here.
3029. 02:05:16 One, he had a chapter, maybe two,
3030. 02:05:19 that felt like they didn't connect,
3031. 02:05:22 which is where I had what was the one.
3032. 02:05:24 The path to great answers,
3033. 02:05:25 where it was kind of like asking a goal setting question.
3034. 02:05:28 I had a hard time connecting that.
3035. 02:05:29 I think you tried to help me understand that,
3036. 02:05:31 but there's that piece,
3037. 02:05:33 there's a few small things with like the wheel of life
3038. 02:05:36 that do work, but we're not real sure how it fits in.
3039. 02:05:40 Just some things that don't always seem to be cohesive
3040. 02:05:44 and that made it kind of hard for me in certain areas.
3041. 02:05:48 Definitely love his style of writing.
3042. 02:05:50 He's a great writer.
3043. 02:05:52 Made it very easy for me to sit down and read
3044. 02:05:54 without having to try to force my way through it.
3045. 02:05:56 That was not an issue at all.
3046. 02:05:58 So all of that to say, like I really enjoyed this book,
3047. 02:06:01 definitely gonna recommend it to quite a few people.
3048. 02:06:03 It's an excellent primer on productivity in general, I think.
3049. 02:06:07 And even people who are in the productivity space
3050. 02:06:09 could really benefit from it.
3051. 02:06:11 But because of some of those qualms I have,
3052. 02:06:13 I am gonna put it at a 4.0, Mike.
3053. 02:06:15 There's just some things I feel like,
3054. 02:06:17 number one, I don't think it fits the 5.0 category.
3055. 02:06:19 That seems to become kind of sacred ground on Bookworm.
3056. 02:06:23 Sure.
3057. 02:06:24 But the 4.5, I don't know,
3058. 02:06:27 it just doesn't feel like it's quite there to that point.
3059. 02:06:30 So I'll stick with the 4.0.
3060. 02:06:32 All right.
3061. 02:06:33 Well, I will definitely go 5.0.
3062. 02:06:36 And I guess let me explain a little bit why,
3063. 02:06:40 because I definitely agree with you.
3064. 02:06:43 There are some things in here
3065. 02:06:45 that don't seem to fit at first.
3066. 02:06:48 And as I read it this second time,
3067. 02:06:51 I'm in a different place of have more experience
3068. 02:06:54 in the productivity world.
3069. 02:06:56 There's a lot of things in here
3070. 02:06:58 that I did not understand how profound they were
3071. 02:07:01 when you shared them the first time.
3072. 02:07:03 And I think that the strength of this book
3073. 02:07:08 is also the weakness in that it is sometimes hard
3074. 02:07:10 to connect those things.
3075. 02:07:12 So when I read it the first time,
3076. 02:07:13 he's going over something like the morning routine
3077. 02:07:16 and I'm totally just not even getting it.
3078. 02:07:18 I'm saying to myself,
3079. 02:07:19 he already told me the focusing question,
3080. 02:07:21 why is he even putting this in here?
3081. 02:07:23 Reading it now,
3082. 02:07:24 I see how he's tying these things together.
3083. 02:07:26 And what it did reading it a second time
3084. 02:07:29 is it filled in a lot of blanks for me.
3085. 02:07:32 So I actually got more reading it the second time,
3086. 02:07:36 I think than I did the first.
3087. 02:07:38 Even though when I read it the first time,
3088. 02:07:41 it had such a positive impact on me,
3089. 02:07:43 enough that I picked it my top book
3090. 02:07:47 in the bookworm draft.
3091. 02:07:49 So I don't know, I think that this is,
3092. 02:07:53 if you were to pick like one book
3093. 02:07:55 that you were gonna bring on a desert island
3094. 02:07:58 in terms of productivity or self-development,
3095. 02:08:03 personal growth, like this might be the one.
3096. 02:08:06 Not just because of the title.
3097. 02:08:08 (laughing)
3098. 02:08:09 - Well it is the one.
3099. 02:08:10 - Yeah, yeah, but there's just,
3100. 02:08:11 there's so much stuff in here.
3101. 02:08:14 Like even in the last chapter,
3102. 02:08:15 he's talking about the journey,
3103. 02:08:16 he's got a whole section on living large,
3104. 02:08:18 which we didn't even cover,
3105. 02:08:20 but there's a couple questions
3106. 02:08:21 and there's an exercise where he says,
3107. 02:08:23 write down your current income,
3108. 02:08:24 multiply it by a number,
3109. 02:08:25 it doesn't even matter what number it is.
3110. 02:08:27 It has to be a number.
3111. 02:08:28 And then ask,
3112. 02:08:29 well my current actions get me to this number
3113. 02:08:30 in the next five years.
3114. 02:08:32 If they will, keep doubling it until they won't,
3115. 02:08:34 then make your actions match your answer.
3116. 02:08:36 The first time you read something like that,
3117. 02:08:38 you're like, well, that's easier for you to say,
3118. 02:08:40 a lot harder for me to do.
3119. 02:08:42 When I read it now, I'm like,
3120. 02:08:44 you know what, that's really profound
3121. 02:08:46 and I completely missed it the first time.
3122. 02:08:48 (laughing)
3123. 02:08:49 He's also got Bonnie Ware's top five regrets of the dying.
3124. 02:08:52 Like I've read now 30 Lessons for Living,
3125. 02:08:54 which is an entire book on this topic,
3126. 02:08:56 but the point that he's making it here is like,
3127. 02:08:58 I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself,
3128. 02:09:00 not the life others expected of me.
3129. 02:09:02 There's so much stuff like that that's in here.
3130. 02:09:05 But also the way that it's presented,
3131. 02:09:07 I feel like it's very approachable
3132. 02:09:09 because you don't have to memorize a complete big system.
3133. 02:09:12 You don't have to memorize the three commitments.
3134. 02:09:14 You don't have to memorize the fourth thieves
3135. 02:09:16 or the sixth lies or anything like that.
3136. 02:09:18 The one, the one thing that you have to do,
3137. 02:09:23 that you have to understand in order for this book
3138. 02:09:25 to impact your life is that focusing question,
3139. 02:09:28 which even after I read it years later,
3140. 02:09:31 like I was still thinking about that,
3141. 02:09:32 I could still quote it,
3142. 02:09:33 what is the one thing that by doing it
3143. 02:09:35 is gonna make everything else easier or unnecessary.
3144. 02:09:39 So I think that this book is kind of unique
3145. 02:09:42 in that it almost doesn't matter where you are
3146. 02:09:46 on the spectrum or whether you're just being introduced
3147. 02:09:49 to personal growth and productivity,
3148. 02:09:52 or you've been in it for a long time.
3149. 02:09:54 This is still going to be a book that is going,
3150. 02:09:58 it has the possibility to significantly impact your life.
3151. 02:10:03 And so for that reason,
3152. 02:10:05 I walk away from this book more impressed with it,
3153. 02:10:08 now than I did when I read it the first time.
3154. 02:10:11 I kind of anticipated going into this book,
3155. 02:10:14 thinking that I'm looking back at it
3156. 02:10:17 through rose color glasses,
3157. 02:10:19 and there's that one question in there,
3158. 02:10:20 but the rest of this is just gonna be filler,
3159. 02:10:22 because I do remember that.
3160. 02:10:24 The one thing he gives you right at the beginning,
3161. 02:10:25 and then the rest of it, I don't remember.
3162. 02:10:28 But going back through it again,
3163. 02:10:29 I'm like, wow, there's actually a lot of meat here.
3164. 02:10:31 And even though it's 230 pages,
3165. 02:10:34 like you said, it's not too long.
3166. 02:10:38 That's really strange for the books that we cover,
3167. 02:10:42 where it's like, okay, I get the idea you can move on now.
3168. 02:10:45 He keeps moving on, and if you're gonna pick one thing,
3169. 02:10:49 if I were to pick one thing that to say negatively about it,
3170. 02:10:51 it's that he doesn't do a good enough job
3171. 02:10:54 of diving into the details
3172. 02:10:55 of some of these different things that he's sharing here.
3173. 02:10:58 It's almost like he has all this experience,
3174. 02:11:00 and he's assuming that he's talking to a peer or a colleague
3175. 02:11:04 who kind of understands this stuff already,
3176. 02:11:06 and if you don't understand it,
3177. 02:11:07 you don't have the opportunity to jump in and ask questions.
3178. 02:11:09 - Sure.
3179. 02:11:10 - Yeah, it's still my top book of all time,
3180. 02:11:14 and definitely a 5.0.
3181. 02:11:16 - Nice, it's a good one.
3182. 02:11:18 All right, we'll put that one on the shelf.
3183. 02:11:20 Coming up next, we were talking about Gladwell
3184. 02:11:23 here just a little bit ago, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
3185. 02:11:26 - Great timing.
3186. 02:11:27 - Have you started this one?
3187. 02:11:31 - I have not at all.
3188. 02:11:32 In fact, I don't even have this one yet.
3189. 02:11:33 I need to order it.
3190. 02:11:34 - Sure. - Thanks for reminding me.
3191. 02:11:35 - I am almost 30 pages in on it,
3192. 02:11:39 and essentially this is about snap decisions,
3193. 02:11:42 the first two seconds whenever you encounter something
3194. 02:11:45 in your gut reaction to it.
3195. 02:11:48 The whole book is about those two seconds.
3196. 02:11:50 That's my take on it so far, so.
3197. 02:11:52 - Interesting.
3198. 02:11:53 - I'm excited to talk through this one with you,
3199. 02:11:56 but yes, that's what's coming up next.
3200. 02:11:58 - Cool.
3201. 02:11:58 - What's your pick?
3202. 02:11:59 - The one after that, I went to the Bookworm Club,
3203. 02:12:01 like I said, I was going to,
3204. 02:12:03 and looked at the top vote getters,
3205. 02:12:05 and there were several which had the same number of votes.
3206. 02:12:09 The one that was the most intriguing to me,
3207. 02:12:12 well, actually there were two that were intriguing to me.
3208. 02:12:14 Quiet by Susan Cain, I did not pick that one,
3209. 02:12:17 but I think we definitely should talk about that one
3210. 02:12:19 at some point, maybe just 'cause I consider myself
3211. 02:12:21 an introvert. - I've read that one before.
3212. 02:12:22 - Have you?
3213. 02:12:23 Okay. - It's a good one.
3214. 02:12:24 - All right, well, to be continued,
3215. 02:12:27 but the one that I did select was the four tendencies
3216. 02:12:30 by Gretchen Rubin.
3217. 02:12:31 Gretchen Rubin is somebody that I've been familiar with
3218. 02:12:34 in the productivity space for a long time,
3219. 02:12:37 but I don't think I've ever read anything by her.
3220. 02:12:41 So that needs to change,
3221. 02:12:43 and when I saw that that was one of the most requested books,
3222. 02:12:46 it was easy for me to select that one.
3223. 02:12:48 - Nice.
3224. 02:12:49 Well, looking forward to that one, that'll be good.
3225. 02:12:52 I don't have a gap book this time, Mike,
3226. 02:12:53 between Christmas and New Year's, starting a new job,
3227. 02:12:58 it just wouldn't happen.
3228. 02:13:00 - Fair.
3229. 02:13:01 The gap book I'm reading right now,
3230. 02:13:04 I picked up as, it was just a comment that was made,
3231. 02:13:09 it was referred to in a different book that we read,
3232. 02:13:12 and I can't remember which one it was now,
3233. 02:13:14 but it's The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz.
3234. 02:13:17 And again, kind of timely because as we're reading
3235. 02:13:20 the one thing, there's a big section in here about
3236. 02:13:22 thinking big, my action item, thinking big
3237. 02:13:26 about faith-based productivity.
3238. 02:13:28 That actually was not even on my radar
3239. 02:13:30 when I started reading this,
3240. 02:13:33 but it was just something that I heard somebody else
3241. 02:13:35 recommend, and I'm just, just started it,
3242. 02:13:38 I'm 15, 20 pages into it.
3243. 02:13:40 And this is another one of those books,
3244. 02:13:42 kind of like the Stephen Covey thing,
3245. 02:13:43 I feel like if you were to read this,
3246. 02:13:45 there's a lot of profound truth in here,
3247. 02:13:47 but it's easy to write it off as like,
3248. 02:13:49 this guy doesn't really know my situation,
3249. 02:13:51 he has no idea what he's talking about.
3250. 02:13:53 And so it's a little bit difficult to apply
3251. 02:13:56 the right mindset to this and to believe that what he's
3252. 02:13:59 saying is actually going to work,
3253. 02:14:01 but this is something that has been around for a while,
3254. 02:14:05 I think on the cover it said there's like
3255. 02:14:06 six million copies sold or something.
3256. 02:14:08 So it's not just this guy who wrote this book,
3257. 02:14:12 like there's a lot of successful people who say like,
3258. 02:14:15 this is a good book, oh I know where I heard about it,
3259. 02:14:17 it was Michael Hyatt who referenced it,
3260. 02:14:19 I think in like best year ever.
3261. 02:14:20 And so Michael Hyatt, he's fairly successful,
3262. 02:14:23 I'd like to achieve Michael Hyatt's success.
3263. 02:14:25 So if he's attributing success to the mindsets,
3264. 02:14:29 approach by this book, then I'm gonna give it a shot.
3265. 02:14:32 - There you go.
3266. 02:14:32 - Which by the way, like this episode's already
3267. 02:14:34 way too long, but there's a section in the,
3268. 02:14:37 where was that?
3269. 02:14:38 It was in chapter 12, The Path to Great Answers,
3270. 02:14:41 where he talks about how books offer great answers.
3271. 02:14:44 He says in the one thing, a great way to get answers
3272. 02:14:46 from someone who has achieved what you,
3273. 02:14:48 a great way to get answers from someone who has achieved
3274. 02:14:50 what you hope to achieve is to read a book.
3275. 02:14:52 And I put as one of my little comments,
3276. 02:14:55 I wonder what do you think about bookworms?
3277. 02:14:56 (laughing)
3278. 02:14:58 - I kinda think you dig it.
3279. 02:15:00 - Nice, nice.
3280. 02:15:02 All right, well, in closing, I guess.
3281. 02:15:05 Mike's been selecting books from our book list,
3282. 02:15:08 the book recommendations.
3283. 02:15:10 How many more are you doing?
3284. 02:15:11 Are you just gonna start picking them from that?
3285. 02:15:12 Is that your plan?
3286. 02:15:13 - Hopefully.
3287. 02:15:15 - Okay. - I wanna see more votes
3288. 02:15:16 in there though.
3289. 02:15:16 - Okay, well, here's your call to action team.
3290. 02:15:19 Like get more votes in on the club.
3291. 02:15:21 So club.bookworm.fm, there's a whole recommendations category.
3292. 02:15:25 Sign up for an account, click the vote button.
3293. 02:15:28 It's that simple.
3294. 02:15:29 And if there's one that's not on the list
3295. 02:15:31 that you want to be on the list, just add it.
3296. 02:15:34 It's that simple, it's not too hard.
3297. 02:15:35 Give it a shot.
3298. 02:15:36 - Yeah, and we mentioned it in this episode,
3299. 02:15:38 but if you want a little bit of accountability,
3300. 02:15:41 as you do your one thing, then share your action items
3301. 02:15:44 on the bookworm club even.
3302. 02:15:46 We'd love to see that sort of stuff.
3303. 02:15:47 Join the podcast book club.
3304. 02:15:50 Also, if you wanna help out the show,
3305. 02:15:52 you can use the links in the show notes.
3306. 02:15:55 Those are Amazon affiliate links.
3307. 02:15:57 So we get a little bit of a kickback
3308. 02:15:58 when you decide to purchase a book or something
3309. 02:16:00 that we talk about if you use those links.
3310. 02:16:02 You can also leave a rating and review on iTunes.
3311. 02:16:06 Joe and I were looking at those even before we recorded here.
3312. 02:16:09 And I really appreciate the feedback that we get from those,
3313. 02:16:13 the people who have asked us to stop saying quote or unquote,
3314. 02:16:16 the people who pointed out that we should add chapter markers.
3315. 02:16:19 Like we do listen to that stuff
3316. 02:16:20 and we try to implement that stuff.
3317. 02:16:22 But even just leaving a five star rating,
3318. 02:16:24 and you don't have to write a big lengthy review,
3319. 02:16:26 that the iTunes algorithm basically takes
3320. 02:16:31 into account the ratings and also the recency of the ratings.
3321. 02:16:34 So that helps other people find out about the show,
3322. 02:16:36 believe it or not.
3323. 02:16:37 And we would really appreciate it
3324. 02:16:38 if you would help us join the revolution
3325. 02:16:40 and take down KCRW as the number one return for bookworms.
3326. 02:16:43 I'd appreciate it anyways.
3327. 02:16:45 - All right, call the actions done.
3328. 02:16:48 Let's pick up our next book next time,
3329. 02:16:50 Blink by Malcolm Gladwell,
3330. 02:16:51 and we'll see what our first impression is
3331. 02:16:53 since that's what we're all about.
3332. 02:16:55 There you go.