71: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Click any line to jump to that moment.

1. 00:00:00 So listeners, Mike has been gone for a little while.
2. 00:00:04 He just got back a few days ago and he left me in control of our social media accounts while he was gone.
3. 00:00:11 So I did stuff.
4. 00:00:14 Yes, you did.
5. 00:00:16 I did a lot of stuff.
6. 00:00:18 Before I even got back, I had requests for a whole bunch of things.
7. 00:00:22 Yes, yes.
8. 00:00:24 I got a bunch of ideas in my head.
9. 00:00:28 And I kind of just wanted to experiment with a few things.
10. 00:00:33 So I've been posting quite a bit on the Bookworm Twitter account.
11. 00:00:38 So follow that if you're not following it.
12. 00:00:41 I created...
13. 00:00:42 At Bookworm FM for people who are wondering.
14. 00:00:45 I created an Instagram account for Bookworm.
15. 00:00:50 Books are surprisingly easy to take pictures of.
16. 00:00:53 And I don't know why we haven't done this before, Mike.
17. 00:00:55 Just simply taking pictures of the books that we're going through and posting them on Instagram.
18. 00:01:00 That seems very logical to me.
19. 00:01:03 The one that really surprised me was that you have a YouTube channel.
20. 00:01:07 Yes, yes.
21. 00:01:08 I'll get to that in a second.
22. 00:01:09 So the Instagram account, Bookworm.fm, on Instagram.
23. 00:01:15 I'm starting to post some pictures of the books we're going through.
24. 00:01:19 I've been creating some of these audio grams for the episodes.
25. 00:01:23 And I have some more of that I want to do in the future.
26. 00:01:27 But in the process of building the audio grams for Instagram and for Twitter.
27. 00:01:32 I realize, well, I'll just create one for the entire episode.
28. 00:01:35 Well, if that's the case, I might as well post it to YouTube.
29. 00:01:37 So now Bookworm has a YouTube channel.
30. 00:01:41 It's not a simple URL because I just had the idea and created it not too long ago.
31. 00:01:45 So I can't put a custom URL in that.
32. 00:01:47 YouTube never makes anything simple.
33. 00:01:49 No, it's a pain.
34. 00:01:51 Link in the show notes to that channel.
35. 00:01:53 If YouTube is where you want to listen to things, you can do that there.
36. 00:01:57 It's actually kind of cool.
37. 00:01:58 It's an audiogram of the entire episode.
38. 00:02:02 So all the ones I've created so far are for the free to focus by Michael Hyatt Book.
39. 00:02:08 So those are all outs.
40. 00:02:10 They're all live.
41. 00:02:11 I had a lot of fun while Mike was gone.
42. 00:02:13 And then I started asking him for pictures of things and blah, blah, blah, blah.
43. 00:02:18 Joe had fun while Mike was gone.
44. 00:02:20 So to add a little bit more detail to this story, I pretty much right after we recorded the
45. 00:02:27 last one left for a missions trip to Costa Rica.
46. 00:02:32 I scheduled the blog posts so I had to edit it the episode and it was ready to go.
47. 00:02:36 But basically said, can you make sure Joe, because I'll be out of the country, that
48. 00:02:41 things go off without a hitch on that Friday.
49. 00:02:44 And you said, yeah, sure.
50. 00:02:45 No problem.
51. 00:02:46 I'll also tweet about it.
52. 00:02:47 And I went into airplane mode and had no cell signal, no Wi-Fi and was down in Costa Rica
53. 00:02:56 for eight days.
54. 00:02:58 Was working basically from seven in the morning till after 10 p.m. every single day, except
55. 00:03:04 for one day we got to go to the beach right before we came back.
56. 00:03:07 I got up at 3.30 to take the international flight back home.
57. 00:03:11 And once I got back into the states and in Dallas where my connecting flight was, turned
58. 00:03:16 my phone back on and saw all of this stuff.
59. 00:03:20 And I was like, oh, Joe, what did you do?
60. 00:03:24 I have to admit that my first thought was, this sounds like it's a whole lot more work
61. 00:03:29 for me.
62. 00:03:30 But as long as you're happy to run with it, I'm thrilled with it.
63. 00:03:34 I think it all looks great.
64. 00:03:36 I just looks looks like a lot of a lot of effort.
65. 00:03:39 The audiogram in particular of the YouTube stuff, I really like those.
66. 00:03:43 I think that's that's super cool.
67. 00:03:44 So great job.
68. 00:03:46 But don't expect a whole lot of help from me.
69. 00:03:48 No, I just need you to edit the podcast and give me the file.
70. 00:03:51 That's all I need.
71. 00:03:52 All right, we'll do the rest of it.
72. 00:03:54 I was smart and how I did it because, you know, we're taught to batch things.
73. 00:03:57 So whenever I built all of those, I built them as templates so that I can swap things
74. 00:04:03 out very easily.
75. 00:04:04 So yes, but it's fun.
76. 00:04:06 It's kind of cool to do anyway.
77. 00:04:08 Joe had fun.
78. 00:04:09 Joe is back on social media with a vengeance.
79. 00:04:13 Making up for lost time.
80. 00:04:14 I guess, I don't know, I kind of got some stuff in my head and I got to where I was batching
81. 00:04:20 a bunch of stuff using buffer quite a bit.
82. 00:04:22 So that way I'm not spending all my time on social media, but I can get things posted
83. 00:04:26 there.
84. 00:04:27 That's the idea.
85. 00:04:28 There you go.
86. 00:04:29 Anyway, I'm having fun.
87. 00:04:30 One thing I do want to point out, one of the ideas that I want to try and dear listener
88. 00:04:36 hear me out on this, but I think it would be fun.
89. 00:04:38 The Instagram account, I put a tweet out about this.
90. 00:04:42 Because one of the things I want to start showing on the Instagram account is pictures
91. 00:04:47 of listener libraries.
92. 00:04:49 I think it's really cool when people have libraries.
93. 00:04:51 I don't care if it's two books or 2,000 books on your library, bookshelf, whole wall,
94. 00:04:57 entire room dedicated.
95. 00:04:59 I don't care.
96. 00:05:00 I want to see these pictures because I think it would be cool just to see how people store
97. 00:05:04 and organize their books.
98. 00:05:06 So I created an email address, libraries@bookworm.fm.
99. 00:05:16 Shoot me an email with a picture of your library.
100. 00:05:20 And let me know what your Instagram username is.
101. 00:05:22 And I will post that on our account.
102. 00:05:25 Obviously I'll have to filter some of them.
103. 00:05:27 I'm sure.
104. 00:05:28 But send those to me and I'll get them tagged whenever those go live.
105. 00:05:32 I think it would be fun.
106. 00:05:33 I think it'd just be kind of cool to see what listener libraries will play.
107. 00:05:35 So send me your picture, libraries@bookworm.fm.
108. 00:05:39 Which I still need to send you my picture of my library.
109. 00:05:43 Yes.
110. 00:05:44 I told Mike I want pictures of his stuff.
111. 00:05:46 I need to get pictures of mine taken.
112. 00:05:48 One of them is complete nightmare.
113. 00:05:50 But I'm going to take a picture of it as it is.
114. 00:05:53 But I think it would be fun.
115. 00:05:55 And Mike has to owe-- he owes me some pictures now.
116. 00:05:57 I do.
117. 00:05:58 You added to my to-do list.
118. 00:06:00 I did.
119. 00:06:01 Because I can do that.
120. 00:06:02 Apparently.
121. 00:06:03 Which is the opposite of my first action item.
122. 00:06:06 [LAUGHTER]
123. 00:06:07 All right.
124. 00:06:08 I'm done with all the social media stuff.
125. 00:06:09 Let's go through follow up stuff.
126. 00:06:11 OK.
127. 00:06:12 And actually, before we get there, I do want to just point out one more time.
128. 00:06:16 Because I've had a couple people ask me directly, hey, don't you have a coupon code
129. 00:06:21 for a max stock?
130. 00:06:22 Yes, I do have a coupon code.
131. 00:06:23 So as much as I've thought we beat this horse to death, there are still some people
132. 00:06:27 who don't know that there is a coupon code to get $70 off for max stock.
133. 00:06:31 So I'll throw it out there one more time, because this will probably be once this episode
134. 00:06:35 is published the last one before-- maybe there'll be one more-- before max stock in
135. 00:06:42 July.
136. 00:06:44 So max.conference.xpo.com.
137. 00:06:46 And if you use the coupon code Focused at checkout, you will save $70 off of the weekend
138. 00:06:52 pass, which is normally $249.
139. 00:06:54 So it's $179.
140. 00:06:56 It's the same thing as the early bird pricing.
141. 00:06:58 So it saves you a good chunk of change.
142. 00:07:00 But if you don't have a ticket yet for max stock and you're thinking about coming, we'd
143. 00:07:03 love to see you there, and that code will save you some dough.
144. 00:07:06 And if you come, make sure you wear your bookworm shirt.
145. 00:07:08 Ooh, that'd be awesome.
146. 00:07:09 That'd be so cool.
147. 00:07:11 All right, now we can get into follow up.
148. 00:07:14 Hit me.
149. 00:07:15 You got three things here.
150. 00:07:16 I do.
151. 00:07:17 I've got a-- the first one is create a not to do list.
152. 00:07:20 And I did this.
153. 00:07:21 There's a handful of things that I just don't ever want to do again.
154. 00:07:27 Some of them are bigger emails on this list.
155. 00:07:30 I've recognized having been in Costa Rica not touching email for eight days that really
156. 00:07:34 I just-- I dislike email.
157. 00:07:36 I used to say I have a love/hate relationship with email because I kind of was proud of
158. 00:07:40 the fact that I could crank through it in 30 minutes a day or less even though I got hundreds
159. 00:07:43 of emails.
160. 00:07:44 Now I just realized that like if I had never had to touch this again, I'd be okay with
161. 00:07:47 that.
162. 00:07:49 So that's on the list, a couple of other things.
163. 00:07:53 And it's really things that I'm going to have to long-term figure out a way to delegate
164. 00:07:57 that type of stuff.
165. 00:07:58 But none of it is things that I can immediately stop doing, which was kind of surprising in
166. 00:08:03 doing this.
167. 00:08:04 I kind of thought there'd be some things that I was like, okay, I should just stop doing
168. 00:08:07 this right now.
169. 00:08:08 There'd be no negative ramifications from it.
170. 00:08:10 Turned out as I went through this, that really wasn't the case.
171. 00:08:13 There were things that had to be done just not by me.
172. 00:08:16 So figuring out a way to offload those things.
173. 00:08:20 And I don't have all that part figured out yet, but I do have the list.
174. 00:08:25 I've also did the social audit.
175. 00:08:27 This was really interesting.
176. 00:08:28 So the way I did this, I created a note in drafts and I just started listening, like
177. 00:08:34 all of the people I've talked to recently, then I went through my messages and all the
178. 00:08:38 people that I've texted recently went through my contacts listed all the people that I interact
179. 00:08:42 with frequently.
180. 00:08:43 Maybe they're in person.
181. 00:08:44 I don't have a record of it digitally, you know.
182. 00:08:46 And to the right of that, I started putting a plus if when I interacted with that person,
183. 00:08:51 I felt like they added life or energy to me or a minus if I felt like they took it away
184. 00:08:57 from me.
185. 00:08:58 It didn't take very long before I realized that that system wasn't going to be robust
186. 00:09:03 enough to really give me a clear picture of what I wanted to capture here.
187. 00:09:06 Is that because every time I talk to you, you put a minus next to my name?
188. 00:09:11 Nope.
189. 00:09:12 You are actually, your line says Joe plus plus.
190. 00:09:15 I like that.
191. 00:09:16 Joe plus plus.
192. 00:09:17 Yeah.
193. 00:09:18 There are a couple of people on here who are plus plus plus.
194. 00:09:24 There are a significant number of people who are just a single plus.
195. 00:09:27 So like I have, for example, my wife and my pastor as the only two people on here who
196. 00:09:32 I consider plus plus plus or three plus.
197. 00:09:36 And then the other, so everything underneath that kind of is like talking about the bell
198. 00:09:42 curve, you know, like the Joe plus plus is kind of at the top of the available spectrum
199. 00:09:47 for you.
200. 00:09:48 Right.
201. 00:09:49 Because you're not my significant know that you're not my spiritual leader.
202. 00:09:51 That's fair.
203. 00:09:54 But there are a lot of other people on this list that I interact with frequently who I
204. 00:09:58 would even say our friends.
205. 00:09:59 So this list, I was interested in a couple of takeaways from doing this exercise.
206. 00:10:04 They are, and this is not a reflection of the person's character.
207. 00:10:08 This is not a judgment on them as a person.
208. 00:10:12 Like they are a bad person.
209. 00:10:14 If they have a minus next to their name, what it is, is it is a warning sign for me that
210. 00:10:19 when I interact with this person, do I need to be on my guard?
211. 00:10:23 So for example, if I'm talking to Joe plus plus and Joe says, Hey, Mike, can you help
212. 00:10:28 me out?
213. 00:10:29 I'm like, yeah, sure.
214. 00:10:30 No problem.
215. 00:10:31 Joe, whatever it is, I'm there for you.
216. 00:10:32 Right.
217. 00:10:33 Somebody who is a minus, Hey, I need you to help me with something.
218. 00:10:38 Maybe.
219. 00:10:39 What do you need?
220. 00:10:40 Right.
221. 00:10:41 Right.
222. 00:10:42 So that's setting the expectations because right or wrong, I feel like they take more
223. 00:10:49 than they give.
224. 00:10:50 So I would need to be where I am right now on the lookout for people who are just taking
225. 00:10:57 from me, not to say that I can't give to them, but another one of my action items is
226. 00:11:03 stopping other people's problem solvers.
227. 00:11:06 Right.
228. 00:11:07 So just because there's a problem doesn't mean I'm the right person to solve it, just
229. 00:11:10 because you asked me to do something doesn't mean I have the capacity to do that.
230. 00:11:14 So I went through this listing and kind of identified the people in my life interactions
231. 00:11:19 that I have with them.
232. 00:11:20 And then when I'm done interacting with them, do I feel like they've added to me or do I
233. 00:11:24 feel like they've taken from me?
234. 00:11:26 A couple of people here are either plus minus or minus plus, the first one being the, the
235. 00:11:31 one that is kind of the default, but in certain contexts, you know, for example, then maybe
236. 00:11:38 it changes from a plus to a minus or vice versa.
237. 00:11:42 Very interesting exercise and has provided some fruit already even today when I recognize
238. 00:11:49 that someone is making a request of me and right away, soon as I see the name pop up,
239. 00:11:59 then I kind of know like, okay, be ready because they're going to want something from
240. 00:12:04 you.
241. 00:12:05 Right.
242. 00:12:06 Right.
243. 00:12:07 Doesn't mean that I'm not going to give it, but it is going to mean that I'm going to
244. 00:12:09 go into the conversation with my eyes open.
245. 00:12:11 I'm not going to get blindsided by like, Hey, I'm really in this bind and I need you to
246. 00:12:15 do this for me.
247. 00:12:16 Right.
248. 00:12:17 So I'm just going to be able to do this for you.
249. 00:12:19 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
250. 00:12:21 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
251. 00:12:23 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
252. 00:12:25 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
253. 00:12:26 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
254. 00:12:27 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
255. 00:12:28 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
256. 00:12:29 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
257. 00:12:30 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
258. 00:12:31 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
259. 00:12:32 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
260. 00:12:33 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
261. 00:12:34 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
262. 00:12:35 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
263. 00:12:36 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
264. 00:12:43 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
265. 00:12:51 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
266. 00:12:54 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
267. 00:12:55 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
268. 00:12:56 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
269. 00:12:57 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
270. 00:12:58 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
271. 00:12:59 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
272. 00:13:00 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
273. 00:13:01 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
274. 00:13:02 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
275. 00:13:03 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
276. 00:13:04 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
277. 00:13:05 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
278. 00:13:06 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
279. 00:13:07 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
280. 00:13:08 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
281. 00:13:09 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
282. 00:13:10 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
283. 00:13:11 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
284. 00:13:12 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
285. 00:13:13 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
286. 00:13:14 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
287. 00:13:15 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
288. 00:13:16 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
289. 00:13:17 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
290. 00:13:18 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
291. 00:13:19 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
292. 00:13:20 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
293. 00:13:27 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
294. 00:13:34 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
295. 00:13:41 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
296. 00:13:48 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
297. 00:13:55 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
298. 00:14:02 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
299. 00:14:09 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
300. 00:14:16 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
301. 00:14:23 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
302. 00:14:30 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
303. 00:14:37 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
304. 00:14:44 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
305. 00:14:51 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
306. 00:14:58 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
307. 00:15:05 I'm going to be able to do this for you.
308. 00:15:12 I couldn't even tell you their name right now.
309. 00:15:19 You were insensitive sound guy.
310. 00:15:26 I didn't get to it today, of course, but most days I've been pretty good with that one.
311. 00:15:31 I'll keep working on them, keep chipping away at them.
312. 00:15:35 Those have been pretty good so far.
313. 00:15:41 I have a fancy new 11-inch iPad Pro that I needed for a video project that I'm working on.
314. 00:15:51 I did need it because my 10.5 has a different screen aspect ratio for a screencast course
315. 00:16:01 that I am building, which is completely iPad.
316. 00:16:06 Where am I going to get an iPad Pro?
317. 00:16:13 I bit the bullet and got one.
318. 00:16:16 I love this thing.
319. 00:16:17 It's awesome.
320. 00:16:19 I want to use it for just about everything.
321. 00:16:23 The problem is that there is not a single good iOS email client out there.
322. 00:16:29 The best one I found is Spark.
323. 00:16:31 I wrote about it over at the Suite Setup.
324. 00:16:33 It's a pretty decent one.
325. 00:16:38 The one thing I don't like about it because I'm so in with Milmate on my Mac is that the
326. 00:16:43 URL schemes when you send something to a task manager are all Spark URL schemes.
327. 00:16:48 They're completely useless for me inside of my task manager.
328. 00:16:53 That just feels not great to me.
329. 00:16:56 I've been looking for alternatives.
330. 00:16:59 I just raised, I think, $30 million in startup money and is supposed to be this crazy powerful,
331. 00:17:07 really fast, crank through your email client for desktop and iOS.
332. 00:17:14 Looks really cool.
333. 00:17:15 You have to request access to it.
334. 00:17:17 Once you get access to it, guess how much it is?
335. 00:17:20 $50?
336. 00:17:21 I don't know.
337. 00:17:22 Well, it's not a one-time cost.
338. 00:17:24 It's a subscription.
339. 00:17:25 Okay, so guess how much the subscription is?
340. 00:17:30 A dollar a month?
341. 00:17:31 A couple dollars a month?
342. 00:17:33 $30 a month.
343. 00:17:35 Whoa!
344. 00:17:36 Yes.
345. 00:17:37 Huh, so what I am seeing, and this is where the rant comes in, please, just somebody.
346. 00:17:43 Make a decent pay for it once.
347. 00:17:46 Third-party email client that allows me to send tasks to my task manager with the message
348. 00:17:51 colon slash slash URL scheme.
349. 00:17:53 That's all I want.
350. 00:17:55 But that does not exist.
351. 00:17:57 It doesn't exist anywhere.
352. 00:17:59 The only place I can find it is in like MailMate on the Mac and they had to do like an indie
353. 00:18:03 go-go in order to raise enough funding for that to be supported for a couple of years.
354. 00:18:08 I am really worried about this because I feel like we're getting to this point where you
355. 00:18:13 have to just use the crappy built-in tools that come with your operating system or you're
356. 00:18:19 going to have to pay through the nose for something like super human or a subscription
357. 00:18:23 to Outlook or something like that.
358. 00:18:26 And I don't like that.
359. 00:18:28 I feel like I'm okay for now because I've got MailMate on my Mac at least.
360. 00:18:32 But I kind of see this picture of the future where if you want a third-party email client,
361. 00:18:38 it's really, really, really expensive.
362. 00:18:42 You know what the answer to this is, right?
363. 00:18:44 No email.
364. 00:18:45 No email.
365. 00:18:46 At least not on mobile devices.
366. 00:18:48 That's the only option.
367. 00:18:49 Right.
368. 00:18:50 Well, that's the thing with this new iPad.
369. 00:18:52 This is perfect.
370. 00:18:54 I want to use this for my email.
371. 00:18:55 I can use the Apple Pencil or even my finger in order to like the swipe gestures.
372. 00:18:59 Like Air Mail, for example, is kind of the same deal.
373. 00:19:02 But again, proprietary URL scheme.
374. 00:19:05 So an Air Mail has its own issues with you sending emails and you think the people are
375. 00:19:09 getting them and they're not.
376. 00:19:12 But this just really paints a really bleak picture of the email future for me.
377. 00:19:17 Right now it's here on iOS devices.
378. 00:19:20 But long term, I think even on the Mac that were a little...
379. 00:19:23 Do you really need those message URLs though?
380. 00:19:26 I don't use them at all.
381. 00:19:27 Well, that's the thing.
382. 00:19:28 I could work around them.
383. 00:19:30 You know, I could just use like the default mail app and just flag stuff, I guess.
384. 00:19:34 I don't know.
385. 00:19:35 I feel like sometimes they're useful, but I'm going to have to figure out something else
386. 00:19:38 because nobody offers it.
387. 00:19:41 Except for Dispatch, which hasn't been updated since I don't know, three years or something.
388. 00:19:45 A little ways back.
389. 00:19:47 I don't know.
390. 00:19:48 I don't do email on my mobile devices.
391. 00:19:51 So mobile device, I shouldn't make it sound like I have more than one.
392. 00:19:57 I'm an iPhone Mac only type.
393. 00:19:59 Weirdo.
394. 00:20:00 Yeah, that's fine.
395. 00:20:02 That's kind of where I was going, but this iPad is very nice.
396. 00:20:06 All right.
397. 00:20:07 Well, on that note, should we get into today's book?
398. 00:20:12 Yes.
399. 00:20:13 Let's talk about writing.
400. 00:20:14 Which by the way is one of the great things about the iPad Pro is it's phenomenal tool
401. 00:20:19 for writing.
402. 00:20:20 So I'm definitely going to be using this based on what we talked about or what we talked
403. 00:20:24 about in today's episode from this book.
404. 00:20:26 So go ahead and introduce this book.
405. 00:20:29 There's your bad-said way of the month.
406. 00:20:31 Today's book is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
407. 00:20:36 Taglines some instructions on writing and life.
408. 00:20:40 And I was trying to think, Mike, of when I first heard about this book, I read what's
409. 00:20:48 the other one, Stephen King's book on writing.
410. 00:20:51 I read that book way, way, way back whenever I first started writing for my blog.
411. 00:20:57 And I've been recently looking at getting back into writing on a bigger scale, which
412. 00:21:02 is why I wanted to go through this.
413. 00:21:04 But I'm pretty sure Stephen King mentioned this book in his.
414. 00:21:08 I think that's where I first heard about it.
415. 00:21:10 I have heard Bird by Bird brought up in a number of scenarios.
416. 00:21:15 I know Tim Ferriss has referenced it.
417. 00:21:18 Maria Popova of Brain Pickings has mentioned it in a number of scenarios.
418. 00:21:23 And I just felt like if I'm going to step back into writing and do that on a larger
419. 00:21:27 scale that this would be an awesome book to go through.
420. 00:21:31 Also, we review books.
421. 00:21:34 We go through books.
422. 00:21:35 We do like SparkNote versions of books.
423. 00:21:38 It would be helpful to understand what the author goes through to create these things.
424. 00:21:43 So I don't know.
425. 00:21:44 I felt like it was a really good fit for Bookworm.
426. 00:21:47 Yes, I agree.
427. 00:21:50 Potentially.
428. 00:21:52 I feel like a lot of the stuff that she writes, well, I'll just say it this way.
429. 00:21:59 A lot of the advice that she gives can be applied to any context.
430. 00:22:02 But she is definitely approaching this through the lens of you're writing a fiction book.
431. 00:22:07 Correct.
432. 00:22:08 Which that part isn't of a 100% match for like the Bookworm audience because I don't think
433. 00:22:14 we've ever done a fiction book.
434. 00:22:15 Sorry, Clannanda Cave Bear.
435. 00:22:16 We're never going to do a fiction book.
436. 00:22:18 It was a we just got another one of those.
437. 00:22:22 What was the?
438. 00:22:23 Ah, I got to I have to pull it up now because I we just got another one of these things.
439. 00:22:29 I just ignore them.
440. 00:22:30 Sorry.
441. 00:22:31 This is one of those things where like you got to build up the goodwill in order to earn
442. 00:22:37 a response or you got to you got to approach it the right way.
443. 00:22:40 You can't just throw it out there, barf it out there be like, Hey, give me this.
444. 00:22:44 You know, like that's kind of the lens.
445. 00:22:46 I look at this stuff through.
446. 00:22:47 It's like, Hey, you got a podcast.
447. 00:22:48 I want to be on your podcast.
448. 00:22:49 Great.
449. 00:22:50 Here's my my I don't know pedigree.
450. 00:22:53 Like I don't care.
451. 00:22:55 Yeah.
452. 00:22:56 Oh, I found it.
453. 00:22:57 I'm not going to mention it though because then I'm quoting them.
454. 00:23:00 I don't want to do that.
455. 00:23:01 Anyway, don't send us fiction books, but this and does go through like it is about
456. 00:23:07 writing a fiction book, but here and I knew that going in.
457. 00:23:12 I should preface this whole conversation with that that I knew she was going to be talking
458. 00:23:16 about writing fiction.
459. 00:23:18 Granted, Stephen King does as well.
460. 00:23:21 And his book was spot on in that regard as well.
461. 00:23:25 I will say that and Lamont's take on, you know, kind of how should you become a writer
462. 00:23:32 that she has some things like like, how do you build dialogue between characters and
463. 00:23:36 how do you set the scene?
464. 00:23:38 And like she has some pieces like that that I don't think necessarily apply to nonfiction,
465. 00:23:44 except here's the caveat.
466. 00:23:48 That is simply based on experience of the books that we have previously read and how
467. 00:23:55 many times have we read books that have like a story in them.
468. 00:23:58 Patrick Lindsay, only is a excellent example.
469. 00:24:02 Like that concept, we always tend to gravitate towards the books that tell stories extremely
470. 00:24:06 well.
471. 00:24:08 And that concept taken from how you do that in the world of fiction and applying it to
472. 00:24:16 real stories is highly valuable.
473. 00:24:19 And I think that's if you come at this from that lens of how do you tell good stories
474. 00:24:26 in written form, this is something you most definitely need to read for sure.
475. 00:24:34 That's my take.
476. 00:24:35 Yeah, I completely agree that becoming good at storytelling has benefits that extend far
477. 00:24:42 beyond writing a good fiction book.
478. 00:24:46 So I'm glad you called that out.
479. 00:24:49 Yeah, how do you want to do this?
480. 00:24:51 So it's broken down into five different sections.
481. 00:24:55 Half of the book is in the first section.
482. 00:24:58 Yes.
483. 00:24:59 Well, let's just go through the sections here and then maybe we'll jump into part one and
484. 00:25:04 I'll let you kick it off wherever you want to start.
485. 00:25:06 So part one is writing.
486. 00:25:08 Part two is the writing frame of mind.
487. 00:25:10 Part three is help along the way.
488. 00:25:13 Part four publication and other reasons to write part five, the last class.
489. 00:25:18 All right.
490. 00:25:19 So let's talk about the first part here.
491. 00:25:21 Part one writing.
492. 00:25:23 Now, I'm going to read off the chapters that are in here because there are what was
493. 00:25:31 it 15?
494. 00:25:32 14.
495. 00:25:33 Something like that.
496. 00:25:34 I'm going to read these off because I think just seeing the titles can kick a few things
497. 00:25:39 off here.
498. 00:25:40 Yeah.
499. 00:25:41 And I'm going to.
500. 00:25:42 Yeah.
501. 00:25:43 And I'll do this each time, but I'm going to censor a couple times here because Anne
502. 00:25:49 has a mouth honor and I'm sure Mark Manson would be buddies.
503. 00:25:54 Yeah, along with Amanda Palmer, like they would they would get on great.
504. 00:25:59 So anyway, here you go.
505. 00:26:00 Writing started short assignments, censored, terrible first drafts, perfectionism, school
506. 00:26:07 lunches, Polaroids, character plot, dialogue, set design, false starts, plot treatment.
507. 00:26:14 How do you know when you're done?
508. 00:26:16 And this whole part is specifically geared towards how do you build a story or how do
509. 00:26:24 you start the process of coming up with what your story will be.
510. 00:26:29 And if I had to summarize this entire section, I think it would just be a matter of sit your
511. 00:26:35 butt in the chair and let your thoughts run wild and put it on paper.
512. 00:26:40 Like if I had to just summarize the whole thing, I think that's what it would be.
513. 00:26:45 Now, granted, there's a lot of extras and such that go with that.
514. 00:26:50 But I think that's the overarching theme.
515. 00:26:54 And the big one being like how you come up with ideas and you're not going to write
516. 00:27:00 it perfect the first time.
517. 00:27:01 Like there's a lot of those little details I think we could get into.
518. 00:27:05 But again, the overarching here is just let your imagination run wild, but put it down
519. 00:27:11 on paper.
520. 00:27:12 It's had a fair take on that, Mike.
521. 00:27:15 Yeah.
522. 00:27:16 Well, so that is fair.
523. 00:27:19 And I think it extends even beyond this first section.
524. 00:27:23 Really, the big takeaway after reading this whole book is show up and do the work.
525. 00:27:31 Done.
526. 00:27:32 Yeah.
527. 00:27:33 Right?
528. 00:27:34 Like if you want to write show up and write, that's really the thing here.
529. 00:27:38 And there's lots of little tactics that she explains on how to do specific things in
530. 00:27:44 terms of character development, stuff like that.
531. 00:27:47 But yeah, like the big thing here is that you just need to do it consistently.
532. 00:27:54 And at the beginning, as you are writing, but I think this even extends beyond the writing
533. 00:27:59 process.
534. 00:28:00 Like you could apply this model to just about anything.
535. 00:28:04 She's obviously applying it specifically to writing a fiction book.
536. 00:28:07 But the first three pages, she says on page nine, those are going to be garbage.
537. 00:28:14 You're going to throw those out.
538. 00:28:15 But you needed to write those that you get to the fourth page, which has got that one
539. 00:28:19 long paragraph, which is really what you had in mind when you started only.
540. 00:28:22 You didn't know that.
541. 00:28:23 You couldn't get to it until you slog through the three pages before that.
542. 00:28:28 Really another way to state that would be that the result is like whatever you create,
543. 00:28:36 you're not going to be 100% happy with everything that you create.
544. 00:28:39 But that's okay because really the value is in the process, not in the work that you
545. 00:28:46 create.
546. 00:28:47 So don't view it as wasted time for writing those first three pages.
547. 00:28:53 Those were necessary in order to get to the fourth page.
548. 00:28:55 And I think for a lot of people, they don't necessarily get that connection, which is also
549. 00:29:02 kind of sobering.
550. 00:29:03 If you think that you're going to sit down and okay, I'm going to crank out my best seller
551. 00:29:08 in a couple of months, probably not going to happen because the majority of what you're
552. 00:29:12 going to write is going to be garbage and you're going to have to throw it out.
553. 00:29:15 And she tells some stories and she goes through this of how that actually happened to her.
554. 00:29:20 Right.
555. 00:29:21 Right.
556. 00:29:22 And she does go into, and I think this makes perfect sense, like for example, a trend that
557. 00:29:28 I've been noticing is, and this is again a reason that I want to get back into writing,
558. 00:29:32 and I have a lot more reasons.
559. 00:29:34 I'm not sure I'm going to get into all of them today, but there are a lot of people starting
560. 00:29:39 to write much longer articles.
561. 00:29:41 Brett McKay over Art of Manliness has been doing this for a long time.
562. 00:29:44 He writes these really, really long articles and they do extremely well.
563. 00:29:48 Mark Manson, who I think you just mentioned, he wrote an article, I think it was yesterday
564. 00:29:55 about how we need to be writing long form articles again.
565. 00:29:59 It seems like people are getting back into reading longer texts as opposed to these short
566. 00:30:05 500 word articles.
567. 00:30:07 And like for example, the Mark Manson article, the math, they've got one of those calculations
568. 00:30:13 that tells you how long it would take to read it.
569. 00:30:15 The time on it was 26 minutes.
570. 00:30:17 That's a pretty long article.
571. 00:30:20 Yeah.
572. 00:30:21 Writing on long form essay, and when you get to writing things at that length, it gets
573. 00:30:30 difficult to sit down and write it all on one time, briefly go over it and then release
574. 00:30:36 it.
575. 00:30:37 You and I have written blog posts in the past.
576. 00:30:39 They're five, 600 words.
577. 00:30:41 You can sit down, crank them out in one sitting, turn around, edit it in 10, 15 minutes, and
578. 00:30:46 then you can release it.
579. 00:30:47 But I think that's probably not what she would want you to do because you're not going to
580. 00:30:54 have the in depth.
581. 00:30:55 Like you're just trying to get something out the door.
582. 00:30:57 You're probably not putting your heart and soul into it.
583. 00:31:00 You're just trying to get text released.
584. 00:31:02 Well that was the question in the back of my mind as I went through this because she's
585. 00:31:06 obviously talking about this through the lens of getting a book published, which by the
586. 00:31:10 way, it's worth calling out in the first section, getting started.
587. 00:31:13 She has this phrase, which I really like.
588. 00:31:15 She said, "Most people kind of want to write, but they really want to be published."
589. 00:31:19 Yeah.
590. 00:31:20 I think that's totally true.
591. 00:31:21 When really you have to fall in love with the process and you have to want to write because
592. 00:31:26 it's just got to come out of you.
593. 00:31:28 That's the point that you have to get to if you're really going to be consistent with
594. 00:31:30 it and it's really going to work for you.
595. 00:31:32 But the other question in the back of my head was, "How does this apply to blogging?"
596. 00:31:37 So I'm glad that you called that out and that's your perspective as you're going through this
597. 00:31:41 is that's what you want to do, it sounds like, is you want to write more for the web, which
598. 00:31:48 isn't going to be as refined.
599. 00:31:50 But still there's a lot of value in understanding the process, sitting down and doing it every
600. 00:31:54 day and implementing some of the other tactics that she talks about in here.
601. 00:31:58 I can totally see where that has a benefit to somebody who wants to blog consistently
602. 00:32:03 too.
603. 00:32:04 Right.
604. 00:32:05 Just these quick thousand word things or 500 word things, I have a lot of thoughts that
605. 00:32:12 I feel like I want to share.
606. 00:32:15 Again, why I wanted to go through this.
607. 00:32:18 Just to kind of refresh my brain in the tactics and methods of writing long form.
608. 00:32:25 Anyway, there's that.
609. 00:32:26 I also have to call out because we haven't really had a chance to talk or record really,
610. 00:32:34 I think we recorded since I got back from Craft and Commerce, but we really didn't talk
611. 00:32:37 about it a whole lot.
612. 00:32:39 I actually saw Mark Manson speak and I think I dislike him as much in person as I do in
613. 00:32:45 the bookstore.
614. 00:32:46 All right.
615. 00:32:48 It was interesting because he's kind of like the big keynote speaker, right?
616. 00:32:56 And they scheduled it so that the very end of the second day, so right before the conference
617. 00:33:03 there's an afternoon session where he speaks and then this blind girl who ended up being
618. 00:33:09 Miss Teen Canada speaks.
619. 00:33:13 And his whole message was basically screw hope.
620. 00:33:18 I'm just going to sit around in my boxers and play Zelda all day.
621. 00:33:22 And then they get this blind girl that comes up there totally inspirational and she's like,
622. 00:33:26 hope is the thing that got me through like total opposite ends of this spectrum.
623. 00:33:30 And that kind of came across is like, well, he's super successful, right?
624. 00:33:33 So he's doing something right.
625. 00:33:35 He's speaking to somebody, but you kind of get the message from him is like everything's
626. 00:33:41 kind of pointless.
627. 00:33:42 And then she gets up and like there's not a dry eye in the audience.
628. 00:33:46 And it's, I don't know, it could not be more juxtaposed in terms of the message and it
629. 00:33:51 happened to be him and then her and then the conference is over.
630. 00:33:54 Yeah.
631. 00:33:55 Wow.
632. 00:33:56 So very interesting.
633. 00:33:58 For sure.
634. 00:34:00 But anyway, I know that Ann has, you know, the first draft thing is important because she
635. 00:34:06 continually calls out even throughout the book, like you have to get it done and you're
636. 00:34:12 going to have to come back and to use the cliche term, kill your darlings.
637. 00:34:19 You have to come back and edit ruthlessly.
638. 00:34:22 And that is a piece that she's calling out here is like, just get it on the paper.
639. 00:34:26 Now, other parts of this first section, you know, involve like, how do you develop characters?
640. 00:34:35 How do you develop a plot, a dialogue, building the scene, building out what is known as a
641. 00:34:41 plot treatment?
642. 00:34:42 Like she does go into each of those.
643. 00:34:44 Those are interesting, but I don't think those translate as cleanly as some of the other
644. 00:34:49 sections on, you know, whenever you're getting into like nonfiction writing or telling stories
645. 00:34:53 about real things.
646. 00:34:54 Right.
647. 00:34:55 And then you can translate these translate real well.
648. 00:34:58 But I think it's still interesting to learn about.
649. 00:35:00 Yeah.
650. 00:35:01 One section that I liked was the section on perfectionism because she introduces the idea
651. 00:35:07 because we all want to be organized in tidy, right?
652. 00:35:10 It was a Marie Kondo.
653. 00:35:12 It's like the, what's the name of that book?
654. 00:35:15 It's sold like a gazillion copies.
655. 00:35:17 You see it everywhere.
656. 00:35:18 The life changing magic of tidying up or something like that.
657. 00:35:20 Okay.
658. 00:35:21 You know what I'm talking about, right?
659. 00:35:22 I do.
660. 00:35:23 Yes.
661. 00:35:24 So there's that whole kind of current in, I guess, maybe the productivity space, but maybe
662. 00:35:32 it's wider than that of this organization and in place for everything, everything in
663. 00:35:37 its place, right?
664. 00:35:38 And then in the section on perfectionism, she talks about how tidiness suggests that
665. 00:35:43 something is as good as it's going to get, whereas clutter allows you to discover new
666. 00:35:47 treasures under all your piles.
667. 00:35:50 I thought this was an interesting idea.
668. 00:35:53 I'm not sure I agree with that analogy 100%, but I think there is something to the fact that
669. 00:35:58 if everything is just completely tidy all the time there, you never make a mess that
670. 00:36:03 is maybe as good as things are going to get and it's all downhill from there.
671. 00:36:09 So, you know, a big takeaway from me from reading this section is kind of like you don't
672. 00:36:15 have to, everything doesn't have to be perfect, basically.
673. 00:36:20 And that messes up part of the process.
674. 00:36:22 And if something breaks, just don't freak out about it, just figure it out, fix it,
675. 00:36:27 move on, and it's all adding up to the net result of the finished product, whatever that
676. 00:36:37 happens to be.
677. 00:36:38 Fiction book, blog post, whatever.
678. 00:36:40 The thing.
679. 00:36:41 Yeah.
680. 00:36:42 Anything else you want to go through here?
681. 00:36:44 I like the section on Polaroids.
682. 00:36:47 So I should call out like all of these chapters, there's basically a story that goes along
683. 00:36:54 with it and then a main point.
684. 00:36:56 I did not like having just one little note off of the chapter from my mind note files.
685. 00:37:01 So I tried to get at least two every time, which is difficult sometimes.
686. 00:37:05 But this one only has a couple.
687. 00:37:07 But one of the big idea here is that like a Polaroid picture, you take it and you flap
688. 00:37:12 it for a while and then the picture starts to materialize.
689. 00:37:15 And as the picture comes in, you start to see more of the detail.
690. 00:37:21 And you notice little things that you didn't see at first.
691. 00:37:25 Kind of another idea associated with that is like you never know what it's really going
692. 00:37:29 to look like until it's finished developing.
693. 00:37:32 When I was on my mission trip, somebody had actually brought a Polaroid camera.
694. 00:37:36 And it was a really cheap thing.
695. 00:37:38 And they're like, oh, this is so cool.
696. 00:37:39 You know, they take the picture and they're flapping it and then they see it and they're
697. 00:37:42 like, oh, this doesn't look good at all.
698. 00:37:45 You know, they were arguing about like, well, maybe you should position the people over
699. 00:37:51 here because some of them are in the sun, some of them are not.
700. 00:37:54 It's not going to look very good.
701. 00:37:55 I'm just like, doesn't matter.
702. 00:37:56 Just take the picture, you know.
703. 00:37:57 And the Polaroid comes out and you're like, look, you can't even tell who's the sun is
704. 00:38:01 not.
705. 00:38:02 But I thought that was kind of interesting because, you know, I was reading this on the
706. 00:38:05 plane on the way down there and then they've got the Polaroid camera.
707. 00:38:08 And I recognize that like as they're waving, they're like, oh, look, you can see that thing
708. 00:38:12 behind me behind me now.
709. 00:38:14 And a little bit later, you can see additional details.
710. 00:38:17 And I think that that's kind of a cool analogy for the creative process, whatever you happen
711. 00:38:22 to be creating.
712. 00:38:23 I think kind of Bookworm or even a podcast kind of falls into this category too.
713. 00:38:28 If you were to go back to episode one and listen to it and interview Joe and Mike about
714. 00:38:36 what is this thing going to be?
715. 00:38:39 We probably would not have accurately described the place it is right now where we've got a
716. 00:38:46 forum associated with it.
717. 00:38:48 We've got a premium membership as people listening live.
718. 00:38:51 Like there's no way we would have known those details when we started this thing.
719. 00:38:55 And that's okay.
720. 00:38:56 You don't need to know all those details when you're just starting.
721. 00:38:58 You just got to know the next step.
722. 00:39:00 We even had, and I know we'd had it completely wrong because we had a different intent for
723. 00:39:05 it when we started too.
724. 00:39:07 We were expecting people to listen in and then read along with us the whole time.
725. 00:39:13 And that is far from what we hear.
726. 00:39:16 Yeah, it turns out most of you just listen because you don't want to read the books.
727. 00:39:20 Yeah, so we cover it for you.
728. 00:39:24 We are the first one.
729. 00:39:25 Which is fine.
730. 00:39:26 Totally fine.
731. 00:39:27 I don't want to knock that at all.
732. 00:39:28 But I'm glad you called that out because it is a very good example of how like we thought
733. 00:39:33 it was going to serve this role, somebody else recognizing, "No, actually, the benefit
734. 00:39:38 I get from it is this."
735. 00:39:39 Right.
736. 00:39:40 Oh, okay.
737. 00:39:41 We'll try to do more of that.
738. 00:39:42 Right.
739. 00:39:43 And that's exactly, I mean, if you go back and look at the way that things change, it's
740. 00:39:46 totally a creative process like what Anlamad is talking about here because the way that
741. 00:39:50 we built our outlines to begin with, like from the talking point section, like we originally
742. 00:39:55 just put down the high points that we wanted to discuss.
743. 00:39:58 Yep.
744. 00:39:59 And it was kind of just like, let's discuss the book and what we got out of it.
745. 00:40:03 Which we still do.
746. 00:40:04 But if you notice, we changed our outline to follow the outline of the book and we discuss
747. 00:40:10 each section of the book instead of just hitting the high points we want to cover.
748. 00:40:14 Which is, by the way, why we will never cover a fiction book.
749. 00:40:18 There is no value in us providing you a synopsis of the Lord of the Rings.
750. 00:40:23 You already know the story.
751. 00:40:24 The joy is in the journey if you're going to sit down and read all that, getting all
752. 00:40:27 the details for the nonfiction books.
753. 00:40:30 Yeah.
754. 00:40:31 And you want to apply a couple things to your life.
755. 00:40:33 So that's what Bookworm is.
756. 00:40:35 So sorry to everybody who doesn't like that, but that's the nature of the beast.
757. 00:40:41 On that note, sign up for membership.
758. 00:40:43 So you don't have to read all the books and you can look at my Mind Node files instead.
759. 00:40:48 And you can go through those.
760. 00:40:49 See, then you don't even have to listen to it.
761. 00:40:51 You can just read Mike's Mind Node file.
762. 00:40:53 Yep.
763. 00:40:54 And search them, Thoreau C.R.
764. 00:40:58 2, the writing frame of mind.
765. 00:41:01 Here are the chapters inside of this part.
766. 00:41:05 Looking around the moral point of view, broccoli, radio station, KFKD, I'll let you associate
767. 00:41:13 the word there.
768. 00:41:14 And then jealousy.
769. 00:41:16 And summarizing this basically is saying sometimes writing sucks.
770. 00:41:24 Get over it.
771. 00:41:25 Like that's...
772. 00:41:26 Yep.
773. 00:41:27 Pretty much what I got out of that one.
774. 00:41:29 I will say the stories and the point of view are fascinating coming from her.
775. 00:41:34 And I can definitely see a lot of the issues, like just historically when I've been writing,
776. 00:41:38 even recently when I've been writing, seeing some of these things come up in my own mind.
777. 00:41:44 Like I have definitely seen those.
778. 00:41:46 So it was refreshing to see, oh, she deals with this too.
779. 00:41:50 Like I'm okay.
780. 00:41:51 I'm not by myself.
781. 00:41:54 Yeah.
782. 00:41:55 So a couple takeaways from this section.
783. 00:41:58 And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my goodness, they are
784. 00:42:02 like 45 minutes in and they're just through section one, these are going to go a lot faster.
785. 00:42:06 Like I said, part one is half the book.
786. 00:42:10 But there's a couple of things that stood out to me here.
787. 00:42:14 The first one is the first chapter looking around page 97.
788. 00:42:19 She says, "Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what's going on."
789. 00:42:24 This is something I want to do a better job of.
790. 00:42:28 And this is one of the things, actually the only thing that I wrote down as an action
791. 00:42:32 item.
792. 00:42:33 I think I mentioned it on this podcast before, but I was working with a speech coach who was
793. 00:42:39 the runner up for the, was it the World Championship of a public speaking, the big Toastmasters
794. 00:42:45 competition in like 2016.
795. 00:42:49 And he was having me build out a story file, which I kind of walked away from for a while.
796. 00:42:57 The idea behind the story file is that you capture all of these things into a journal
797. 00:43:03 or some digital place, analog, I guess you could, you could do too.
798. 00:43:07 But the idea is that you have this, these collections of stories with all of these bullet points,
799. 00:43:11 all of these details.
800. 00:43:12 And then whenever you need one of those stories, you can select it and you can tell either
801. 00:43:17 like the long version, you can condense it, whatever, but like these are kind of always
802. 00:43:20 in your back pocket, which is a really cool idea, especially for somebody who wants to
803. 00:43:26 get into speaking because those stories, as we are recognizing from this book, those
804. 00:43:30 are the things that really resonate with your listeners.
805. 00:43:33 So unless you are talking to people who have heard it a million times before, that can
806. 00:43:37 be really a tool that you can use to really build engagement with your audience, whether
807. 00:43:42 it's a couple of people, a couple hundred people, a couple thousand people, whatever.
808. 00:43:46 So learning to pay attention to communicate what's going on, that's directly tied for
809. 00:43:51 me, I think, to this story file.
810. 00:43:54 Because if I take the time to recognize what's going on around me and I capture these things
811. 00:44:00 into my story file, and then I can always flush them out later, but just capturing these
812. 00:44:03 things that are happening into that story file in the first place, that's the thing that
813. 00:44:09 I want to take away from this.
814. 00:44:11 Because I feel like there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens all the time that I'm
815. 00:44:15 just so busy that I don't even recognize that it's happening, or I don't appreciate
816. 00:44:19 that it's happening.
817. 00:44:22 So this is really illustrated for me in this mission strip going down to Costa Rica because
818. 00:44:27 culture is so different, people that are so different, there's a thousand different stories
819. 00:44:33 that I could add to my story file from my time down there.
820. 00:44:37 But if I don't intentionally put them in there, then they're just going to get lost.
821. 00:44:41 And if you come and talk to me at max.doc and say, "Hey, tell me about your mission
822. 00:44:44 ships at Costa Rica."
823. 00:44:45 If I never documented those things, I might have that during the headlights look like,
824. 00:44:49 "Oh, I'm trying to recreate the memories from scratch."
825. 00:44:54 The story file makes it so you don't have to do that sort of thing.
826. 00:44:57 And I feel like if you have that sort of thing, then it makes whatever you want, whenever
827. 00:45:03 you sit down to write, you've got those as kind of like starters for whatever you would
828. 00:45:07 write about.
829. 00:45:09 That's a big idea from the first section.
830. 00:45:11 We didn't spend a whole lot of time on, but like really when you write even for fiction,
831. 00:45:14 you want to tell the truth.
832. 00:45:16 You want to tell it in an interesting way, but you want to talk about the things that
833. 00:45:18 are authentic.
834. 00:45:20 And so if you talk about things that have happened to you, that's kind of an easy way
835. 00:45:23 to do that.
836. 00:45:24 Right.
837. 00:45:25 Use your own experience and your own thoughts to get there.
838. 00:45:27 Yep.
839. 00:45:28 So yeah, the writing frame of mind, a big piece of it is pay attention to what's going on
840. 00:45:32 around you.
841. 00:45:34 And be okay with knowing that things are going to go bad sometimes.
842. 00:45:40 If you fall into a rut, you don't know what to write, you feel like you're a terrible
843. 00:45:44 writer, like you still got to write.
844. 00:45:47 You still have to get it out.
845. 00:45:49 That's kind of my takeaway.
846. 00:45:50 The other thing that kind of smacked me in the face was the moral point of view.
847. 00:45:55 So I just launched a product called faith-based productivity, right?
848. 00:46:01 And I feel like I unintentionally kind of fell into this.
849. 00:46:05 Okay.
850. 00:46:07 What she says in here is a moral position is not a message.
851. 00:46:13 And I feel like I do have a message with the product.
852. 00:46:16 So don't get me wrong there.
853. 00:46:18 But I also, this is a good reminder that like just because I have a unique take or unique
854. 00:46:25 position and a unique perspective on this idea of faith-based productivity doesn't mean
855. 00:46:31 that anybody else is going to care.
856. 00:46:35 The rest of it still needs to be good.
857. 00:46:38 So you don't inherit a platform because of your moral stance on something.
858. 00:46:46 And I feel like maybe a lot of people from our religious perspective think that they
859. 00:46:54 have some sort of moral high ground because of their religious belief system.
860. 00:46:59 And that's not really the case.
861. 00:47:01 We're all on the same level playing field and you got to earn the right for people to
862. 00:47:06 listen to you.
863. 00:47:07 Agreed.
864. 00:47:08 All right.
865. 00:47:09 Part three, help along the way.
866. 00:47:12 I think you were kind of getting into this just now.
867. 00:47:16 The chapters within this part, index cards, maybe one of my favorites, calling around
868. 00:47:23 it, writing groups, someone to read your drafts, letters, writers block.
869. 00:47:30 My sense is that this is the practical section, like the, I shouldn't say practical, the tactical
870. 00:47:36 side of the book, you know, index cards, like what you were talking about, Mike, building
871. 00:47:42 out, like writing down stories or writing out exchanges, dialogue, points that you want
872. 00:47:47 to put into your writing, whether it's the writing you're working on right now or one
873. 00:47:51 for the future.
874. 00:47:53 So pay attention to what's going on around you and write things down.
875. 00:47:58 That was my takeaway from that.
876. 00:47:59 And actually this is where my action item is listed in the mine node file, but it really
877. 00:48:05 started in that looking around section because before you can capture it, you need to notice
878. 00:48:09 it.
879. 00:48:10 Right.
880. 00:48:11 For sure.
881. 00:48:12 The next chapter in that section was my book just closed, calling around.
882. 00:48:18 This one, it kind of struck me as a throwback to digital minimalism, to some degree.
883. 00:48:23 But obviously she wrote this way before digital minimalism and Cal Newport had the idea for
884. 00:48:29 it.
885. 00:48:30 But the premise is talk to other people, ask people for advice whenever you have a technical
886. 00:48:36 thing you're trying to figure out looking for expertise in a certain area, etc, etc.
887. 00:48:41 Talk to other people about your idea and getting the details around it.
888. 00:48:46 That was my sense of it.
889. 00:48:47 And I think it makes perfect sense.
890. 00:48:49 If you're supposed to be paying attention and looking around and writing things down
891. 00:48:52 about the exchanges, it would make perfect sense to create those exchanges so that you
892. 00:48:57 have something to write down.
893. 00:49:00 Yeah.
894. 00:49:02 When I was going through that section here, so basically everything except the first chapter
895. 00:49:08 in the section index cards and the last section, writer's block, all kind of has to do with
896. 00:49:15 getting help from other people, even the letters section, I think kind of evokes that, although
897. 00:49:21 it doesn't assume that you have somebody on call who can help you out with stuff.
898. 00:49:26 And I kind of thought that you could bundle all of this together under a chapter called
899. 00:49:33 Masterminds.
900. 00:49:34 Sure.
901. 00:49:35 And I know Masterminds is not a super common idea.
902. 00:49:42 I actually have a blog post on my site that I wrote because we were talking about it a
903. 00:49:46 lot on the Focus podcast and people were like, "Well, how do I do this?"
904. 00:49:52 And so I've been a part of one locally for a while and I kind of wrote up a process for
905. 00:49:57 people to follow if they want something like that.
906. 00:50:00 But I'll link to that in the show notes for this.
907. 00:50:04 But the basic idea here is that you need someone, you need a group of people really
908. 00:50:08 who are going to hold you accountable for what you're, you say you're going to do and who
909. 00:50:13 are going to see your blind spots, who are going to see the things that you don't see,
910. 00:50:18 who are going to tell you the truth but not be a jerk, or at least like you're not going
911. 00:50:23 to receive it hurtfully because you've given them the platform to speak into your life.
912. 00:50:30 And you obviously don't want to open yourself up like that to just anybody.
913. 00:50:34 And so I think the way she presents it is fine.
914. 00:50:39 Everything that she says here is true, but I feel like it's more complicated than it needs
915. 00:50:43 to be when you're talking about, "Okay, who are the people?"
916. 00:50:47 And I'm going to identify them who I can call around and get answers from.
917. 00:50:52 Different group of people, who are the ones that I want to invite into my writing group
918. 00:50:57 who are going to give me feedback, who are going to speak the truth but gently she puts
919. 00:51:02 it, as how she puts it.
920. 00:51:05 And then who is the person that I'm going to allow to read my drafts and give feedback
921. 00:51:10 on what works, what doesn't.
922. 00:51:11 Like those could all be the same people in a mastermind group.
923. 00:51:15 If you get everybody in that group with the same perspective of we want to write and we
924. 00:51:20 want to help each other produce better writing, then you can kind of check all of these boxes
925. 00:51:25 at once I think.
926. 00:51:26 Yeah.
927. 00:51:27 Makes sense.
928. 00:51:28 A couple of pieces here we didn't cover there.
929. 00:51:32 The letters piece and writer's block.
930. 00:51:35 Writer's block, she had an interesting point here.
931. 00:51:37 Like block implies that you're stopped and you're not able to proceed forward.
932. 00:51:43 And she argues that writer's block is actually writer's emptiness.
933. 00:51:47 I don't think she coined that to it.
934. 00:51:48 Yes.
935. 00:51:49 I made it up.
936. 00:51:50 But you're just empty.
937. 00:51:51 You don't have something to write about.
938. 00:51:52 Like you haven't had that spark.
939. 00:51:55 Just calling your friends, starting to write the chapter before that, writing letters,
940. 00:52:02 which is where my action item comes in.
941. 00:52:05 I have for a long time wanted to write letters to my kids for the future.
942. 00:52:10 And this is something that she talks about specifically in there.
943. 00:52:13 And something about the way she posed it finally motivated me to the point where I actually
944. 00:52:18 want to proceed with this.
945. 00:52:20 So I did start doing this this morning.
946. 00:52:22 So I'm planning to continue to write letters to my kids, which I think should be a fascinating
947. 00:52:29 view into my own brain, I think.
948. 00:52:31 Nice.
949. 00:52:32 Maybe a slightly terrifying view into my own brain, but we'll see.
950. 00:52:35 Yeah.
951. 00:52:36 And again, the idea behind the letters section is that you're really stuck and you want to
952. 00:52:41 look through, she calls it like a one inch frame.
953. 00:52:44 So you don't want to try and get the whole picture.
954. 00:52:46 You just want to focus on this one little detail.
955. 00:52:48 And by writing a letter, you're able to kickstart that process.
956. 00:52:51 And pretty soon you've got pages and pages of stuff that you can use for something else.
957. 00:52:57 And the letter emerges kind of like a Polaroid picture, right?
958. 00:53:01 But you could get the same thing from a mastermind group.
959. 00:53:08 I think even the writer's block, like she says, don't think of it as a block.
960. 00:53:12 Think of it as looking at a problem from the wrong angle.
961. 00:53:15 So when you are stuck, when you need somebody to help you get going, that's really the end
962. 00:53:22 result of what we're trying to get through in all of these different things as she's breaking
963. 00:53:27 down this different section is like, when you are not moving, how do you get moving again?
964. 00:53:31 I think that that idea is very key.
965. 00:53:35 When you are stuck, when you have encountered a block, whatever it looks like, whether you
966. 00:53:40 define it as writer's block or not, it is simply you are facing an obstacle or a problem and
967. 00:53:45 you're looking at it from the wrong angle.
968. 00:53:47 Well, if you have other people who can look at it from different angles, it's a lot easier
969. 00:53:52 to say, oh, yeah, you're right.
970. 00:53:54 Like that is the way that I should be looking at this.
971. 00:53:56 And I should try that other thing when you're all you see is the thing in front of you then
972. 00:54:00 though it can be really intimidating.
973. 00:54:02 Yes.
974. 00:54:04 For publication and other reasons to write, there are four chapters within this part.
975. 00:54:13 The first one, writing a present.
976. 00:54:14 So writing in order to give it to someone else.
977. 00:54:17 That's kind of what the letters piece is.
978. 00:54:20 Maybe the letters chapter doesn't necessarily refer to giving that to someone, but in this
979. 00:54:25 section it is like you're writing something that could be then a gift to someone else.
980. 00:54:30 The second one, finding your voice.
981. 00:54:31 I'm going to come back to that one because I actually had an exception to take without
982. 00:54:34 one giving, giving things to other people of time and efforts.
983. 00:54:39 And then publication because everyone always asks her how to be publicized.
984. 00:54:45 Like, how do I get this out in the world?
985. 00:54:48 That's the main reason people want to write.
986. 00:54:49 Like I really like having written, but I don't like writing like that concept.
987. 00:54:54 Yeah, exactly.
988. 00:54:55 So she does go through like, it's difficult.
989. 00:54:58 It's not all it's cracked out to be, but it's really rewarding if you do it.
990. 00:55:02 Like that was kind of the take.
991. 00:55:03 So anyway, coming back to finding your voice, I felt like I was misled by that one, which
992. 00:55:12 I think this was the first time I really felt this way when reading this particular book
993. 00:55:16 because my sense from reading that chapter was she would give you some tips on how to
994. 00:55:22 find your voice.
995. 00:55:23 And maybe she did.
996. 00:55:24 I just missed it.
997. 00:55:25 But I rather got don't take someone else's voice.
998. 00:55:29 Like that was kind of my overarching view of that particular chapter.
999. 00:55:34 Like, come on.
1000. 00:55:35 Yes.
1001. 00:55:36 I was looking for you to like say, go do this, this, this and this and then it will help
1002. 00:55:39 you develop your voice.
1003. 00:55:42 Really what she's saying is just write a lot and don't steal other people's voice.
1004. 00:55:46 Like be real yourself.
1005. 00:55:47 Okay.
1006. 00:55:48 And I feel like the tactics that she does give you in terms of finding your own voice
1007. 00:55:54 are completely negative and pessimistic.
1008. 00:55:57 Like the things that I wrote down are shine light on the monster within and talk about
1009. 00:56:02 the cold things below the surface.
1010. 00:56:04 Like that's really what she's saying in this chapter other than don't copy this one lady.
1011. 00:56:09 I didn't look up that person, but she mentions an author specifically where whenever she
1012. 00:56:14 comes out with a new book, she hates it because she knows that two thirds of her class is
1013. 00:56:18 going to try to copy it.
1014. 00:56:20 And I get that.
1015. 00:56:22 I mean, all you have to do is walk through an airport bookstore and see all of the censored
1016. 00:56:27 book titles to see evidence of that.
1017. 00:56:30 You know, everybody's trying to copy Mark Manson because he's edgy and it doesn't work
1018. 00:56:36 for everybody else.
1019. 00:56:37 And I'd argue it doesn't even work for me anyways with Mark Manson.
1020. 00:56:40 So you'll probably never cover a Mark Manson book.
1021. 00:56:43 You can go ahead and vote for that one if you want, but I may use my veto power on that
1022. 00:56:47 one.
1023. 00:56:48 Um, anyways, like it's really, you don't feel great about about reading this, this chapter.
1024. 00:56:56 You feel, um, you feel kind of hopeless.
1025. 00:57:00 Like, okay, so I'm going to have to just talk about all the bad stuff that's going on in
1026. 00:57:04 my life or otherwise I'm probably copying somebody else.
1027. 00:57:08 And I don't think that's completely true.
1028. 00:57:10 I think that you can definitely talk in your own voice.
1029. 00:57:14 And yeah, you want to like, you want to share the difficult things, but it doesn't all have
1030. 00:57:21 to be the difficulties.
1031. 00:57:23 Like if everything is, is hopeless, I don't know.
1032. 00:57:27 I don't want to read that book.
1033. 00:57:29 Yeah.
1034. 00:57:30 Uh, even if everything is hopeless, which by the way, it's not.
1035. 00:57:34 So, uh, I don't know.
1036. 00:57:36 I mean, a lot of the books, if you look back at, I'm looking at my books shelf right now,
1037. 00:57:43 the ones that have sold like the 20 million copies, the, uh, the seven habits of highly
1038. 00:57:49 successful people, how, how to win friends and influence people.
1039. 00:57:52 Like they promise a solution to a problem that people have.
1040. 00:57:59 And it's successful because it resonates with people and they think, oh, I can do that.
1041. 00:58:05 So I think finding your voice from a nonfiction perspective anyways, and maybe this is one
1042. 00:58:12 of those things that just doesn't translate well from speaking to fiction writers to speaking
1043. 00:58:15 to nonfiction writers, but no one wants to hear about all your troubles unless you made
1044. 00:58:21 it through and you've got some takeaways for people.
1045. 00:58:24 Kind of, kind of my perspective.
1046. 00:58:26 Okay.
1047. 00:58:27 Not only is wrong, I just think there's, I came at this one kind of colored, I think
1048. 00:58:35 to some degree because I know that I have done a lot of reading, just general research
1049. 00:58:42 and such on some of the ways to find your writing voice.
1050. 00:58:48 Generally you hear people just say, write a lot and write short form and medium form
1051. 00:58:55 until you can figure out what your voice is and then go on to long form.
1052. 00:58:59 Like I've heard that.
1053. 00:59:01 And I was kind of curious as to what Anne Lamont's take on that was, but she's definitely a tried
1054. 00:59:08 and true artist and a creative and has, I don't want to say has to, but likes to color things
1055. 00:59:17 with a different perspective.
1056. 00:59:19 And she's very funny in that, but it's sometimes hard to translate into, now what do I do with
1057. 00:59:25 that?
1058. 00:59:26 Like, what does that actually mean?
1059. 00:59:28 Like, figure out your monster is great.
1060. 00:59:30 What do I do to do that?
1061. 00:59:35 That was some of my struggle.
1062. 00:59:37 But again, it's Anne Lamont and I think she's a great writer.
1063. 00:59:40 I just didn't know what to do with it.
1064. 00:59:42 Yeah, I guess, you know, my follow up to that would be, okay, so I've shown light on the
1065. 00:59:50 monsters within, how does that help me with the writing that I do?
1066. 00:59:54 Yeah.
1067. 00:59:56 I don't know.
1068. 00:59:58 It makes sense on one level, like you want to talk about the things that you've gone through
1069. 01:00:02 and how you've overcome them.
1070. 01:00:04 But it doesn't make sense for someone who does writing like I do to just completely
1071. 01:00:10 dwell on those things forever.
1072. 01:00:13 That's not the goal of the writing that I'm doing.
1073. 01:00:16 I'm not trying to evoke and emotion and get you to feel sorry for me.
1074. 01:00:22 I'm trying to help other people, which kind of gets into the giving section, you know?
1075. 01:00:27 But also, I agree, there's not a whole lot of specific details on how to do that.
1076. 01:00:33 So I'm kind of curious, like, have I found my writing voice?
1077. 01:00:39 I have no idea.
1078. 01:00:40 Maybe you could tell me having read some of my stuff.
1079. 01:00:43 Like, I don't think you have.
1080. 01:00:45 Okay.
1081. 01:00:46 That's just my perspective.
1082. 01:00:47 That could be, that could 100% be true.
1083. 01:00:52 So then the next question being the perfectionist that I am then, it's like, it's a good thing
1084. 01:00:58 I didn't know that or I never would have self-published my book and never would have
1085. 01:01:01 written anything, right?
1086. 01:01:03 Because I don't know what I'm doing.
1087. 01:01:04 I'm just faking it.
1088. 01:01:06 There we are.
1089. 01:01:07 But the truth is we're all faking it to some degree.
1090. 01:01:09 So I don't know.
1091. 01:01:12 Maybe it's not necessary that you find your voice before you start writing.
1092. 01:01:17 Maybe it's a process and as soon as you start, you find your voice, but you continue to refine
1093. 01:01:23 that voice over the years that you are writing and producing and creating.
1094. 01:01:29 Because I think not just like the writing of the book or the creation of a course, but
1095. 01:01:35 even podcasting like this.
1096. 01:01:38 How I talk about things on Bookworm in Episode 71 is very different than how I talked about
1097. 01:01:44 things in Episode 1.
1098. 01:01:47 So maybe that's part of the journey of finding my voice, but I agree that I have no idea what
1099. 01:01:53 the process is in order to do that.
1100. 01:01:56 I think you have to write a lot of short form articles and such before you can try out minor
1101. 01:02:04 points in voice and then you have to step into some medium and longer form and then
1102. 01:02:10 expand on it.
1103. 01:02:11 And you kind of have to do that a couple times I feel before you get to where you really
1104. 01:02:14 have it locked in.
1105. 01:02:16 There are exceptions to that rule.
1106. 01:02:18 Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, I mentioned earlier, she has a very specific voice in
1107. 01:02:25 her writing and she spends quite a bit of time on her articles for brain pickings, but
1108. 01:02:30 she's been doing that for a very long time.
1109. 01:02:35 And that's kind of how she's developed that.
1110. 01:02:37 I think if you want to do it quicker, you kind of have to float between short, medium,
1111. 01:02:41 long form writing and be very specific about trying to figure out how you want to write
1112. 01:02:47 and be true to yourself.
1113. 01:02:49 But I don't think that's going to just happen in the span of a couple months.
1114. 01:02:55 Writing every day, doing it for a couple months, you maybe have a hint of what your
1115. 01:02:59 voice is.
1116. 01:03:00 I think that takes quite a bit of time to really get it locked in.
1117. 01:03:05 Just my perspective.
1118. 01:03:06 I agree with that.
1119. 01:03:07 I also want to call out the under-courage people that if you don't think you found it
1120. 01:03:12 yet, don't let that keep you from starting.
1121. 01:03:14 No, if anything, let that be encouraged.
1122. 01:03:16 If I had known what I didn't know, maybe I wouldn't have done anything that I did.
1123. 01:03:24 But I don't know.
1124. 01:03:25 I think there's value in it.
1125. 01:03:26 I think there's...
1126. 01:03:27 I mean, I get messages from people all the time who really appreciate the fact that you
1127. 01:03:32 created this thing or wrote that thing or this podcast, you don't have to have it all
1128. 01:03:39 figured out.
1129. 01:03:40 You just have to teach what you do know.
1130. 01:03:43 And as you progress, you recognize that you weren't everything that you thought you were.
1131. 01:03:48 You don't know as much as you thought you did.
1132. 01:03:50 But that's not necessarily a bad thing either.
1133. 01:03:54 Just keep going forward.
1134. 01:03:56 Don't necessarily look back and judge the past.
1135. 01:03:58 Now, I feel kind of bad because I don't think we've called this out quite yet, but this
1136. 01:04:02 book is written as a print form of a creative writing class that Enlomat teaches.
1137. 01:04:11 Yes.
1138. 01:04:12 And I feel like we've kind of alluded to that a few times, but we haven't pointed it out
1139. 01:04:16 specifically.
1140. 01:04:17 So this book was written as a print form of her class.
1141. 01:04:23 And I say that because the last part here is called the last class and during the last
1142. 01:04:29 session of her teaching to her students, she feels like she's given quite a bit to them,
1143. 01:04:36 but she has just a couple more things she wants to point out.
1144. 01:04:40 And this is a pretty...
1145. 01:04:42 I mean, a lot of these chapters are pretty quick, but there's a piece in the second paragraph
1146. 01:04:46 right at the beginning of it in this chapter that I just want to read this real quick because
1147. 01:04:51 I feel like this is a culmination of so much that she has pointed out and rest the book.
1148. 01:04:56 All right.
1149. 01:04:57 There we go.
1150. 01:04:58 So becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.
1151. 01:05:01 When you're conscious and you're in writing from a place of insight and simplicity and
1152. 01:05:06 real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw on the lights for your reader.
1153. 01:05:11 And to me, that's really important because so much of what she's talked about is paying
1154. 01:05:18 attention to what's going on, being true to yourself, be authentic, show up and do the
1155. 01:05:23 work and share it with the world in some form or another.
1156. 01:05:27 But a lot of that comes back to being aware of what's happening and then figuring out
1157. 01:05:33 how to articulate that to other people.
1158. 01:05:36 So I did really appreciate this particular quote and was definitely one ahead highlighted
1159. 01:05:41 here.
1160. 01:05:42 Yeah.
1161. 01:05:43 Becoming conscious is just the note that I had, but yeah.
1162. 01:05:46 It's a powerful idea for sure.
1163. 01:05:48 I also want to, I would say, reframe maybe this last section.
1164. 01:05:53 I feel like this was restating a lot of the stuff that was in the book, but that's not
1165. 01:05:58 necessarily a bad thing.
1166. 01:06:00 And when you understand it as a class context, like you mentioned, then you understand, there's
1167. 01:06:08 a lot more value in doing it this way.
1168. 01:06:10 In a book form, it's kind of weird because you're reading a lot of the same things again.
1169. 01:06:15 But I could totally see this being valuable in a in person setting where you want to make
1170. 01:06:20 sure this is this really sticks before you never see these people again.
1171. 01:06:24 Right.
1172. 01:06:25 Right.
1173. 01:06:26 So some of this could be you and I go through books pretty quick.
1174. 01:06:31 Yep.
1175. 01:06:32 Sometimes I feel like we get to the last chapter and authors like to summarize because they
1176. 01:06:36 feel like it's taken them people a long time to get there.
1177. 01:06:40 I sometimes wonder about that.
1178. 01:06:42 Like we read this, like Michael Hyatt did it to some degree and summarizing at the end
1179. 01:06:46 of his book, but I read it in two days.
1180. 01:06:48 So that meant that I was reading the summary when I felt like I had just finished reading
1181. 01:06:53 the stuff.
1182. 01:06:54 Sure.
1183. 01:06:55 Wait, hold up.
1184. 01:06:57 I wonder if, you know, with books like this, you know, authors feel the need to summarize
1185. 01:07:03 as a way of closure.
1186. 01:07:04 Yeah.
1187. 01:07:05 But because we're going through it so quick, it doesn't feel like that was necessary.
1188. 01:07:08 I don't know.
1189. 01:07:09 That's speculation.
1190. 01:07:10 I haven't thought that through.
1191. 01:07:11 It could be.
1192. 01:07:12 You know, if you go through it a lot slower than we do, then there probably is value in
1193. 01:07:17 reviewing everything.
1194. 01:07:20 Also the way that I take notes kind of diminishes the value of saying these things again.
1195. 01:07:26 But again, that's just me being weird with my big mind known files.
1196. 01:07:31 Yeah.
1197. 01:07:32 So I don't know.
1198. 01:07:33 I think in a classroom context though, it makes perfect sense.
1199. 01:07:36 So that's kind of the way I viewed this last chapter and didn't hold it against her.
1200. 01:07:40 Yeah.
1201. 01:07:41 Fair enough.
1202. 01:07:41 There is a cool section in here about or an analogy.
1203. 01:07:47 She makes the point basically that you can either set a brick as a laborer or an artist.
1204. 01:07:53 And this is a really cool idea.
1205. 01:07:56 And it reminds me of this story that I know I heard in one of the other books that we've
1206. 01:08:00 covered.
1207. 01:08:01 I don't know if we've talked about it, but like one of my favorite stories, it's probably
1208. 01:08:05 not even like a true story, but it's kind of one of those ones that you to illustrate
1209. 01:08:09 a point is about the three brick layers.
1210. 01:08:11 Have you heard this one before?
1211. 01:08:14 I'm vaguely placing it, but I could not tell it to you right now.
1212. 01:08:18 Okay.
1213. 01:08:19 Well, that's basically what she's saying.
1214. 01:08:20 And the story goes something like there's these three guys who are all working on this
1215. 01:08:26 masonry wall.
1216. 01:08:27 And there's this tourist who walks up to the first guy and he says, what are you doing?
1217. 01:08:31 He's like, what does it look like I'm doing?
1218. 01:08:33 I'm laying bricks.
1219. 01:08:35 And then he walks up to the second guy and he's like, what are you doing?
1220. 01:08:38 And he's like, I'm building a wall.
1221. 01:08:40 He walks up to the third guy and he's like, what are you doing?
1222. 01:08:42 And he's like, I am building a great cathedral.
1223. 01:08:45 You know, and it's the perspective that they have towards the work that they're doing.
1224. 01:08:48 That's kind of the difference.
1225. 01:08:49 Whereas the first guy is just looking at the tacit that he's doing right now.
1226. 01:08:53 He doesn't have a very big vision.
1227. 01:08:55 He doesn't see how it fits into the larger picture.
1228. 01:08:58 And kind of the moral of the story is that because he can't see that, like there's no
1229. 01:09:01 meaning behind anything that he's doing.
1230. 01:09:04 The second guy who's building the wall, he understands a little bit of how this is tying
1231. 01:09:09 together, but still doesn't have the motivation behind the big picture.
1232. 01:09:13 This is what it's going to look like when we're done.
1233. 01:09:16 And the last guy who's building the cathedral, he's got the vision.
1234. 01:09:19 So he's able to bring everything that he has towards this thing because it really has meaning
1235. 01:09:24 to him.
1236. 01:09:25 And I feel like that's what she's getting at here when she says you can either set a
1237. 01:09:27 brick as a labor or as an artist.
1238. 01:09:29 If you're setting a brick as a labor, oh, I just got to crank out some words.
1239. 01:09:33 That's a lot different than I get to craft this story.
1240. 01:09:37 Does that make sense?
1241. 01:09:38 Yeah, absolutely.
1242. 01:09:39 It's all on your mindset.
1243. 01:09:41 Yep.
1244. 01:09:42 Yep.
1245. 01:09:43 And I feel like that is one of the most important things you can do is to cross that bridge
1246. 01:09:49 from viewing it as it's just a task to viewing it as this work has meaning.
1247. 01:09:57 Whether it is a part of your big life theme, vision for your life, whatever, or not, I
1248. 01:10:07 think that's kind of a thing that has to be there in order for this to stick.
1249. 01:10:13 If all you see is the task in front of you for a while, you can show up every day and
1250. 01:10:19 you can check the box and you can say, "Ooh, I wrote my thousand words this morning."
1251. 01:10:24 But after a while, that's not going to be enough to carry you through.
1252. 01:10:28 You're going to encounter that morning when you didn't sleep well and you just don't
1253. 01:10:33 have any energy and at that point you've got to dig a little bit deeper.
1254. 01:10:36 And if you don't have a reservoir to draw from of meaning behind the work that you're
1255. 01:10:40 doing, then it's going to-- that's the point where you're going to give up.
1256. 01:10:44 Right.
1257. 01:10:45 I think that's a good place to end this.
1258. 01:10:47 Unless you have more you want to cover.
1259. 01:10:49 No.
1260. 01:10:50 I will mention the title is interesting and that comes from a story that she tells way
1261. 01:10:57 back in the first section, which we should call out, I feel, because she had a brother
1262. 01:11:03 who was procrastinating on like a science project or something and it was due the next
1263. 01:11:07 day and he had to classify like all these different types of birds.
1264. 01:11:12 Right.
1265. 01:11:13 So he's got his head down on the table, totally dejected, can't figure out how he's going to
1266. 01:11:17 get all of this done by tomorrow and his father's advice to her brother was bird by
1267. 01:11:23 bird buddy.
1268. 01:11:24 Just take a bird by bird.
1269. 01:11:26 It's a good story.
1270. 01:11:28 It's even on the back of the book.
1271. 01:11:30 It's a good one.
1272. 01:11:31 Yeah.
1273. 01:11:32 Action items.
1274. 01:11:33 I have one.
1275. 01:11:35 You have one.
1276. 01:11:36 I might have two.
1277. 01:11:37 I don't know.
1278. 01:11:38 I'm going to write letters to my kids.
1279. 01:11:41 They might be long.
1280. 01:11:43 And I'm hoping to write more for all of you, but I'm not ready to release any of that yet.
1281. 01:11:49 I have been writing for it though.
1282. 01:11:51 Sweet.
1283. 01:11:52 That's that's where I land on action items.
1284. 01:11:54 I'm probably just going to put the letters on the club.
1285. 01:11:57 But is the Zettel castan helping with that?
1286. 01:12:00 Somewhat.
1287. 01:12:01 Yeah.
1288. 01:12:02 That's kind of an odd.
1289. 01:12:04 It's been kind of an odd timing of these things.
1290. 01:12:06 Like, yes, the Zettel castan for those who didn't catch it, how to take smart notes that
1291. 01:12:10 book.
1292. 01:12:12 So with the Zettel castan, that's been helping me develop the habit of writing every morning.
1293. 01:12:18 And then that has kind of grown into, I write in my Zettel castan, but then I turn and
1294. 01:12:22 write work and write on articles and potentially even an email newsletter as well.
1295. 01:12:28 So I've been working on those to some degree, but it's kind of grown out of that, yes.
1296. 01:12:33 Gotcha.
1297. 01:12:34 All right.
1298. 01:12:35 Is that it for your action items then?
1299. 01:12:36 Yeah, I bet it's for now.
1300. 01:12:38 Okay.
1301. 01:12:40 My action item is to build out my story file inside of day one specifically.
1302. 01:12:45 Day one is an absolutely incredible application, which I should call out.
1303. 01:12:50 The suite setup has an updated day one course, which I did the screencast for.
1304. 01:12:56 So if you want to learn how to use it, you should go check it out.
1305. 01:12:59 I saw you tweet about that too.
1306. 01:13:00 So thanks.
1307. 01:13:01 Yeah, not a day one user, but I know it's a good deal.
1308. 01:13:05 Yeah.
1309. 01:13:06 Day one's awesome.
1310. 01:13:07 I have been a premium subscriber for a while.
1311. 01:13:10 It's one of those subscription apps.
1312. 01:13:11 I think it's like 25 bucks a year.
1313. 01:13:14 And I just happily pay it, even though I was invited to the beta and I can get free access
1314. 01:13:18 to it, if I want to, I just continue to pay for it because I want to support the development
1315. 01:13:22 of it.
1316. 01:13:23 And it's just a phenomenal application.
1317. 01:13:25 Yeah.
1318. 01:13:26 So I've got a journal in there specifically for stories and I am going to start building
1319. 01:13:29 that stuff out more.
1320. 01:13:31 That's my action item from this one.
1321. 01:13:33 Sure.
1322. 01:13:34 Nice.
1323. 01:13:35 Uh, styling rating and Le Mans is very, very easy to read.
1324. 01:13:41 And this book is chock full of stories as you would expect.
1325. 01:13:46 And I really enjoyed going through this, Mike.
1326. 01:13:48 Uh, I know I had a couple of qualms here and there.
1327. 01:13:52 Her use of language isn't overwhelming to me.
1328. 01:13:56 I felt like Amanda Palmer was right on the limit for me.
1329. 01:13:59 I'm sure it was a bit much for you.
1330. 01:14:01 I'm pretty sure I won't put words in your mouth though.
1331. 01:14:05 So this isn't even close to Amanda Palmer.
1332. 01:14:07 That's fair.
1333. 01:14:08 That's fair.
1334. 01:14:09 Those two should hang out though.
1335. 01:14:11 I really enjoyed this and would recommend it.
1336. 01:14:12 If you have any hint of wanting to write or understand writing, uh, this one and Stephen
1337. 01:14:19 King's on writing book, like those two are awesome.
1338. 01:14:22 I would pick up this one first though.
1339. 01:14:25 That's, that's my take on it.
1340. 01:14:26 Uh, for a rating, it's kind of a different book than what we normally cover.
1341. 01:14:31 I feel like we kind of even alluded to like it.
1342. 01:14:34 We weren't real sure how to cover this.
1343. 01:14:36 I'm going to put it at a 4.5.
1344. 01:14:38 I don't think it's five territory, but four doesn't seem to do it justice.
1345. 01:14:45 Like this is a really well known book and, and does a phenomenal job of writing and has
1346. 01:14:50 thoroughly motivated me to get into some things I've wanted to do for a long time and has
1347. 01:14:54 given me some of the tools to do.
1348. 01:14:56 So that said, I'm going to put it at a 4.5.
1349. 01:15:00 Really enjoyed the book.
1350. 01:15:01 I recommend you read it.
1351. 01:15:03 All right.
1352. 01:15:04 Uh, I feel like I need to defend myself just briefly because, you know, I, I went to crafting
1353. 01:15:13 commerce, heard Mark Manson speak, they even had like a disclaimer before this talk.
1354. 01:15:18 Like if you're offended by this stuff, you should probably leave the room.
1355. 01:15:20 Like I stayed and listened to it.
1356. 01:15:22 It is fine.
1357. 01:15:23 I, it doesn't bother me.
1358. 01:15:25 I just feel like there are other ways to communicate what you want to say.
1359. 01:15:32 And I feel like with her stuff specifically, there was definitely other ways to say some
1360. 01:15:38 of the things that she wanted to say with Amanda Palmer, it just felt like to me anyways,
1361. 01:15:42 the vocabulary wasn't there to use other words.
1362. 01:15:45 Yeah.
1363. 01:15:46 Uh, that's probably totally unfair to Amanda Palmer.
1364. 01:15:48 I recognize that, but that's the impression that I got from growing through it.
1365. 01:15:52 Sort of the impression that I got going through this again, not nearly the same level, but
1366. 01:15:56 the whole section on like the, the voices in your head, like that's a great idea there.
1367. 01:16:02 But she's totally doing it for shock value.
1368. 01:16:04 And I don't know.
1369. 01:16:05 I feel like that, that detracts from what she is sharing there.
1370. 01:16:12 That being said, there's a lot of good stuff in this book.
1371. 01:16:14 Like you said, national bestseller.
1372. 01:16:16 I'm not even sure how many millions of copies this is.
1373. 01:16:19 This is sold.
1374. 01:16:20 I think there's a lot of great stuff in here.
1375. 01:16:22 I think there's more great stuff in here for fiction writers than there are for anybody
1376. 01:16:25 else who's not writing fiction.
1377. 01:16:27 Like I said, I felt like there's a lot of stuff that translated over to blogging, but there
1378. 01:16:31 wasn't a real clear connection there for me until we started talking through stuff.
1379. 01:16:36 So I'm kind of on the fence of where to rate this.
1380. 01:16:41 I'm like, I'm going to put it at 3.5 because I think there are some great ideas in here.
1381. 01:16:47 I don't think there was anything super revolutionary.
1382. 01:16:50 I mentioned at the beginning kind of half jokingly that you could summarize the entire
1383. 01:16:53 book and just show up and write.
1384. 01:16:56 I think that's kind of true.
1385. 01:17:00 And I also think that for someone who wants to write a fiction book, this is just absolutely
1386. 01:17:08 cool.
1387. 01:17:09 I feel like if you're going to apply this to anything else, you got to do some translation.
1388. 01:17:14 Some of it is easy.
1389. 01:17:15 Some of it not so much.
1390. 01:17:17 And yeah, so I'm rating it from that perspective, but I do definitely think it is a good book.
1391. 01:17:25 I did feel weird reading this out a filter sensor on the way to a missions trip from
1392. 01:17:33 my church.
1393. 01:17:34 I felt a little bit dirty getting off the plane.
1394. 01:17:37 But yeah, it's a good book.
1395. 01:17:41 All right, we can put it on the shelf then.
1396. 01:17:43 What's next, Mike?
1397. 01:17:44 Next is a gap book that I read and a bunch of you voted for called Make Time by Jake Knapp
1398. 01:17:50 and John Zorotsky.
1399. 01:17:52 This is the anti-freetive focus, so this will be interesting as a follow up to our conversation
1400. 01:17:58 from episode 70.
1401. 01:18:01 Lots of little tactics instead of just a big system.
1402. 01:18:04 Yeah, I don't know.
1403. 01:18:06 Part of it's kind of crazy.
1404. 01:18:07 We're over 70 books at this point.
1405. 01:18:11 That's kind of nuts to me.
1406. 01:18:13 Anyway, so after Make Time, one that I have never read, I've actually never even held
1407. 01:18:20 this in my hand.
1408. 01:18:22 And I'm kind, somewhat embarrassed, kind of proud of that at the same time.
1409. 01:18:26 The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris.
1410. 01:18:29 This is up there on the votes.
1411. 01:18:32 I feel like we need to cover this, Mike.
1412. 01:18:34 I feel like it's one of those that we just must cover.
1413. 01:18:38 I have a love/hate relationship with Tim Ferris.
1414. 01:18:40 Me too.
1415. 01:18:41 So I'm not sure how this is going to go.
1416. 01:18:44 Sometimes I think he has some phenomenal things he does.
1417. 01:18:47 And sometimes I'm like, what are you thinking?
1418. 01:18:49 You just don't.
1419. 01:18:51 Anyway, I think it'll be a good book.
1420. 01:18:53 It'll be a good one to talk about for sure.
1421. 01:18:55 I feel like this one is going to have some pretty good rants in it.
1422. 01:18:58 So if you want the complete raw, uncensored, rant-worthy experience, you definitely want
1423. 01:19:04 to attend the live recording of this.
1424. 01:19:06 Oh, that's true.
1425. 01:19:07 Because I typically, when I edit them, I'm like, ah, I came across a little too strong
1426. 01:19:11 there.
1427. 01:19:12 You know, and I'll edit it pretty heavily.
1428. 01:19:15 That's definitely going to happen with this book.
1429. 01:19:17 Yep.
1430. 01:19:18 Yep.
1431. 01:19:19 I could see that.
1432. 01:19:20 Got a gap book this time?
1433. 01:19:21 I do.
1434. 01:19:22 My gap book is Lynchpin by Seth Godin, kind of inspired by your gap book.
1435. 01:19:28 Was it last time you had a gap book by Seth Godin?
1436. 01:19:32 I haven't read anything by Seth in quite a while, but he's a phenomenal writer.
1437. 01:19:36 And Lynchpin is a book that I actually got when I was at Anshar Leadership.
1438. 01:19:41 They gave books to everybody who attended for all of the people who spoke who had books.
1439. 01:19:45 So I ended up carrying home like eight books inside of my bag that I didn't have when I
1440. 01:19:49 got there.
1441. 01:19:50 Yeah.
1442. 01:19:51 This is one of those books.
1443. 01:19:52 And I hear from a lot of people, this is kind of a really good one.
1444. 01:19:55 So.
1445. 01:19:56 Yeah.
1446. 01:19:57 I'm in the process of starting one at the moment.
1447. 01:20:01 So I guess I'm getting ready to go on a trip as well.
1448. 01:20:05 My wife and I are going on a trip to North Carolina to celebrate our 10th anniversary.
1449. 01:20:10 And I needed to pick up a book.
1450. 01:20:11 We were talking about this right before we jumped on.
1451. 01:20:13 So I picked one up and I've wanted to read this one for a while.
1452. 01:20:16 I've had it in my hands for quite some time, but essential manners for men.
1453. 01:20:21 What to do when to do it and why this is by Peter post of the Emily post Institute.
1454. 01:20:26 And I picked this up at some random bookstore for $1.99.
1455. 01:20:35 I feel like I need to go through this because I'm not always the greatest with manners.
1456. 01:20:39 That's my sense.
1457. 01:20:40 Nice.
1458. 01:20:41 So reading it while I'm on vacation with my wife would probably be a little late, but
1459. 01:20:48 you know, you'll, what's that term?
1460. 01:20:52 Speed of implementation.
1461. 01:20:53 So you can be stuff and then applying it as as you go.
1462. 01:20:57 Yep.
1463. 01:20:58 Yep.
1464. 01:20:59 I'll read it that morning.
1465. 01:21:00 Apply it that night and call it good.
1466. 01:21:01 Cool.
1467. 01:21:02 There we go.
1468. 01:21:03 One note, by the way, regarding the gap books, because I was thinking about this the other
1469. 01:21:05 day, you've had like some fiction books in here and stuff like that.
1470. 01:21:08 And people always ask me like, what sort of fiction books do you like to read?
1471. 01:21:11 And I don't read fiction books.
1472. 01:21:12 Is there something wrong with me?
1473. 01:21:14 Yes.
1474. 01:21:15 And I kind of had this moment of clarity.
1475. 01:21:17 So this is my definition for this.
1476. 01:21:21 Okay.
1477. 01:21:22 And you can totally take this apart if you want to.
1478. 01:21:25 But I kind of view the nonfiction books going back to like the reason why we started a book
1479. 01:21:31 where we wanted to read more books and we wanted someone to hold it, hold us accountable
1480. 01:21:35 and apply the stuff that we learned.
1481. 01:21:37 Right?
1482. 01:21:38 And we thought that this was going to have a positive or we thought that anyways, that
1483. 01:21:40 this was going to have a positive impact in our lives.
1484. 01:21:43 So the nonfiction books, the types of books that we cover for bookworm, those are kind
1485. 01:21:47 of like the vegetables, right?
1486. 01:21:50 Whereas the fiction books, that's maybe not like dessert is the isn't, you know, maybe
1487. 01:21:57 that's taking it too far.
1488. 01:21:58 But that's like the less nutritious stuff.
1489. 01:22:01 It's the stuff that tastes good.
1490. 01:22:02 Okay.
1491. 01:22:03 Which is completely fine.
1492. 01:22:05 If you like eating that stuff every once in a while, go ahead and do it.
1493. 01:22:08 But I recognize that because I am weird, I have developed the taste for the vegetables
1494. 01:22:13 to the point where like I'm not even tempted by the raspberry cheesecake.
1495. 01:22:18 Does that make sense?
1496. 01:22:20 I think so, but you should read fiction.
1497. 01:22:24 Probably.
1498. 01:22:26 Anyways, I've been reading Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens lately.
1499. 01:22:30 It's very good.
1500. 01:22:31 All right.
1501. 01:22:32 All right.
1502. 01:22:33 If you want to recommend a book, you can do so at the club.
1503. 01:22:38 You can go to club.bookworm.fm and you can log in, go to the recommended book section,
1504. 01:22:45 make sure that you add the book that you want and then also vote for it because we look at
1505. 01:22:50 the number of votes when determining what books we're going to cover next.
1506. 01:22:55 And you can also find a list of all of the books that we have covered by going to bookworm.fm/list
1507. 01:23:01 as well as all of the books that are planned or upcoming.
1508. 01:23:05 Now there's a few ways you can get involved with the show now because Mike was gone and
1509. 01:23:09 I got over as Alice.
1510. 01:23:11 And the classics right now are Levis and iTunes review.
1511. 01:23:15 Join the club, club.bookworm.fm.
1512. 01:23:18 That's definitely where we hang out the most, I think.
1513. 01:23:21 Share your action items on the club.
1514. 01:23:22 That's something we've been doing lately of posting the action items on the club.
1515. 01:23:26 So you can ask us questions about them, follow up with them, etc.
1516. 01:23:29 What else here?
1517. 01:23:31 Club.bookworm.fm/membership.
1518. 01:23:35 We've mentioned a few times the live show.
1519. 01:23:37 There's some folks in the live section right now.
1520. 01:23:41 You can chat with us while we record.
1521. 01:23:43 You can hear the raw unedited.
1522. 01:23:47 We even do a little bit of a thing before we start recording as well.
1523. 01:23:50 So there's some behind the scenes things that happen there.
1524. 01:23:53 And I have a few other things I'm thinking about for the premium section.
1525. 01:23:57 So definitely support the show that way.
1526. 01:23:58 It's five bucks a month.
1527. 01:24:00 Super easy to get into.
1528. 01:24:02 Follow us on Instagram.
1529. 01:24:04 Check out the YouTube channel.
1530. 01:24:06 Follow us on Twitter because I have all kinds of cool stuff I'm having fun with.
1531. 01:24:12 Follow all the great things.
1532. 01:24:13 All the great things.
1533. 01:24:14 And come see us at MacStuck.
1534. 01:24:16 Yes.
1535. 01:24:17 And if you're reading along with us, then pick up Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zorotsky.
1536. 01:24:22 And we'll go through that one in a couple of weeks.