74: The Second Mountain by David Brooks

Click any line to jump to that moment.

1. 00:00:00 So Joe, you have been crushing it with your newsletter lately.
2. 00:00:04 I'm digging the weekly impulse.
3. 00:00:05 You like that?
4. 00:00:07 It's kind of fun.
5. 00:00:07 It is, but you have some explaining to do.
6. 00:00:10 Oh, I think I know where this is going.
7. 00:00:14 I know where this is going.
8. 00:00:16 So what is what is going on with the 10% happier experiment?
9. 00:00:22 I have been daily meditating for about two weeks now.
10. 00:00:27 This if you're new to bookworm, that doesn't seem like that big a deal.
11. 00:00:31 If you've been listening for a while, you understand how much of a bombshell that is.
12. 00:00:34 Well, I had OK, so the full story is I had a an appointment with my Lyme specialist,
13. 00:00:44 longtime listeners, Joe fights Lyme disease.
14. 00:00:46 But in the midst of that appointment, she made a comment that just kind of got me
15. 00:00:55 thinking about meditation because she's been trying to get me to do something
16. 00:01:00 in this realm of mindfulness for quite some time.
17. 00:01:04 And this will actually tie into our book for today later on, too.
18. 00:01:10 I was kind of dumbfounded how it all connected, but she she got me to think
19. 00:01:14 about meditation in a way that I hadn't really thought about because she basically
20. 00:01:20 showed me that I've been reaping the benefits of meditation, even though I don't do it
21. 00:01:26 regularly.
22. 00:01:27 I have a tendency to try it, leave it, try it, leave it, try it, leave it.
23. 00:01:31 And she was showing this like, well, the fact that you keep coming back to it shows
24. 00:01:36 me that the meditation is teaching you to keep coming back to where you should be.
25. 00:01:40 Oh, come on.
26. 00:01:42 So you're telling me that whenever I think meditation is doing absolutely nothing,
27. 00:01:47 it's actually working quite well.
28. 00:01:50 So she pointed me in the right direction.
29. 00:01:52 I decided that if I were to make an actual commitment to meditating on a daily basis
30. 00:02:00 via financial commitment by actually paying for a service, I will dedicate time to it
31. 00:02:07 every single day and focus on it.
32. 00:02:08 Thus, Joe is now meditating every day.
33. 00:02:12 And I'm trying to notice where meditation has a positive impact on me outside of just
34. 00:02:19 focus.
35. 00:02:20 That's kind of where I've pointed my eyes in the past.
36. 00:02:24 And she's kind of helped me broaden that perspective quite a bit.
37. 00:02:30 So 10% happier.
38. 00:02:33 It's where I spend time each day now.
39. 00:02:35 Nice.
40. 00:02:37 And for people who want more information, you also have a newsletter about this.
41. 00:02:43 I'm not sure if they can go back and read the old episodes.
42. 00:02:47 No, actually can newsletter.
43. 00:02:49 It's a news letter.
44. 00:02:51 But yeah, people should definitely go sign up for that because I I've been getting
45. 00:02:58 them because I was subscribed, I think, to your old newsletter.
46. 00:03:01 Right.
47. 00:03:02 Right.
48. 00:03:02 But they are very well written.
49. 00:03:04 It's one of the few newsletters that I look forward to receiving every week.
50. 00:03:07 So well done, sir.
51. 00:03:08 Oh, thanks, sir.
52. 00:03:10 No, they're fun.
53. 00:03:14 I'd spend a lot of time on them each week.
54. 00:03:16 So it's a good time and you'll like the one coming out this week too.
55. 00:03:19 Awesome.
56. 00:03:20 Looking forward to it.
57. 00:03:21 It's totally your fault.
58. 00:03:22 Excellent.
59. 00:03:24 Oh, fun times.
60. 00:03:25 That said, follow up.
61. 00:03:27 One of them on my list here is to apply the 80/20 rule to my work and where I spend
62. 00:03:33 my time, one of which was the newsletter and my blogging and where do I dedicate
63. 00:03:41 my time and those are.
64. 00:03:45 Those are definitely sticking around for a while.
65. 00:03:48 So because they definitely play into that 80 side of the 80/20.
66. 00:03:52 So I am focusing on that.
67. 00:03:54 So who knows to, you know, you for promoting it because I'm going to keep it.
68. 00:04:00 Awesome.
69. 00:04:01 So that's that's a piece that we'll stick around.
70. 00:04:05 There's a few aspects that are minor behind the scene that I'm going to cut out
71. 00:04:09 of what I do each day.
72. 00:04:10 I'm not going to talk about them because some of it's a bit sensitive.
73. 00:04:15 But it has been working really well.
74. 00:04:17 I have some lists on my side of things, but it's been a fun, fun experience.
75. 00:04:21 So I don't know what to say about it.
76. 00:04:25 So there you go.
77. 00:04:26 80/20 rule apply to your work.
78. 00:04:27 It works really well.
79. 00:04:28 The other one is to test a potential business idea.
80. 00:04:32 I actually ended up testing two, Mike.
81. 00:04:35 OK.
82. 00:04:37 One of which I'm going to come back to because I will talk about it this time.
83. 00:04:45 And it's mostly because it's going to be part of the newsletter, but this episode
84. 00:04:49 will release after the newsletter comes out.
85. 00:04:51 So anyone who's on the newsletter, if you get my newsletter and you're listening
86. 00:04:56 to this, you already know about this.
87. 00:04:57 So you already have a teaser of what I'm going to talk about later.
88. 00:05:00 But the other business idea that I tested completely fell on its face.
89. 00:05:04 So I'm glad I did not dedicate time to that one.
90. 00:05:07 Basically, it was a community of sorts that I wanted to build out and opted to not
91. 00:05:13 because almost nobody was interested in it.
92. 00:05:15 Thus, I saved myself a whole bunch of time.
93. 00:05:18 Nice.
94. 00:05:19 There you go.
95. 00:05:20 So I tested two, one I'm going to move forward with the other.
96. 00:05:24 Goodbye.
97. 00:05:24 All right.
98. 00:05:26 I've got a couple here.
99. 00:05:29 One was to look into a VA.
100. 00:05:32 But when I said this, I said I was not going to do this immediately.
101. 00:05:35 So I did not do anything with this.
102. 00:05:37 Although we did get some feedback in the club from Tulip
103. 00:05:42 girl who encouraged me maybe not to delegate my planning of a Disney
104. 00:05:47 vacation to a VA, which was an interesting idea.
105. 00:05:51 I never thought of it from that perspective before, but she's basically
106. 00:05:54 saying that part of what makes a Disney, something like a Disney vacation.
107. 00:05:58 So fun is the anticipation.
108. 00:06:00 And I agree with that.
109. 00:06:01 I tend to just obsess over all the little details that don't really matter.
110. 00:06:05 Like you would never do such a thing.
111. 00:06:09 What do you mind?
112. 00:06:09 When I book flights, it's usually like a seven day process starting with
113. 00:06:16 Southwest and then looking on Expedia and then looking at every individual
114. 00:06:21 airline site and then going back to Southwest and then repeating like three
115. 00:06:26 or four times it.
116. 00:06:27 It's insane.
117. 00:06:28 The amount of hours that I spend looking for an ideal flight because there
118. 00:06:32 really aren't any ideal flights from close to where I am from Minneapolis.
119. 00:06:35 You can kind of direct flight anywhere, but even Milwaukee,
120. 00:06:39 you're going to have connections.
121. 00:06:40 And so like as we're recording this next week, I'm going out to San Francisco
122. 00:06:44 for the relay five year anniversary show.
123. 00:06:46 I'm going to be a part of it, which is pretty cool.
124. 00:06:48 Party time.
125. 00:06:50 Yeah.
126. 00:06:50 Uh, that was ridiculously hard because I didn't want to get into San Francisco
127. 00:06:57 at 11 o'clock, which is like one in the morning my time.
128. 00:07:01 I also didn't want to leave at five in the morning my time.
129. 00:07:04 So yeah, just an example of how I tend to make things.
130. 00:07:09 More difficult than they need to be and where a VA could really help me
131. 00:07:13 with some of that probably.
132. 00:07:14 Sure.
133. 00:07:14 Sure.
134. 00:07:15 So I don't know exactly where I land on like the Disney vacation type stuff.
135. 00:07:19 I do think though that there are a lot of things like booking a flight for
136. 00:07:23 something that I do want to do.
137. 00:07:24 Uh, that's totally something I could have somebody else do hotels too.
138. 00:07:30 I mean hotels in San Francisco, you're not going to find a good deal and you
139. 00:07:33 got to be careful where you get.
140. 00:07:34 So I'm trying to find like a decent hotel.
141. 00:07:38 My wife's going to be with me as close to the venue.
142. 00:07:41 And I've never been to San Francisco before.
143. 00:07:43 This is paralyzing to me.
144. 00:07:45 There are literally thousands of hotels in San Francisco.
145. 00:07:47 Uh, but finally we made a decision.
146. 00:07:51 I don't have to deal with that at least till next time.
147. 00:07:53 Hopefully by next time I'll have a VA to do that.
148. 00:07:55 But I think like coming back to the comment that tulip girl had made, like
149. 00:07:59 some of the anticipation side of it was that in the process of doing the
150. 00:08:04 research and trying to figure out the details of how that trip should go.
151. 00:08:07 You learn more about the venue and the event that you're going to participate
152. 00:08:12 in.
153. 00:08:13 And that's what helps you build that anticipation.
154. 00:08:15 I think something like what you're talking about, I just need a hotel somewhere
155. 00:08:19 close.
156. 00:08:19 I just need a flight that gets me there within these parameters.
157. 00:08:23 Like doing the research on that isn't really building anticipation as much
158. 00:08:28 as it is frustration.
159. 00:08:29 Yeah.
160. 00:08:30 True.
161. 00:08:31 I mean, this was kind of like a anniversary birthday part two.
162. 00:08:37 Part one was max stock.
163. 00:08:38 So it is kind of like a reward fun trip sort of a thing.
164. 00:08:45 So, you know, I didn't, I don't want to stay at like the hotel that we're
165. 00:08:50 staying at is like a, a Marriott downtown.
166. 00:08:52 It's fairly decent, not a five star hotel or anything, but it's a nicer hotel.
167. 00:08:55 I probably wouldn't have picked that if Rachel hadn't been going with me.
168. 00:08:59 But I don't know.
169. 00:09:01 I could have said, go find me a nice hotel in San Francisco.
170. 00:09:06 Sessing over all of the options.
171. 00:09:08 Sure.
172. 00:09:09 Sure.
173. 00:09:10 And then, okay, so to wrap up this rabbit trail, all of those deal sites, they give
174. 00:09:17 you like the, you know, 40% off or whatever.
175. 00:09:20 And they change based on the time that you are looking at them.
176. 00:09:26 So as I'm doing all of this unnecessary research, I'm seeing the prices change.
177. 00:09:32 Some are getting more expensive.
178. 00:09:33 Some are getting cheaper.
179. 00:09:34 And so like as soon as I make a decision about, oh, this one seems like a good one.
180. 00:09:37 All of a sudden it's more expensive and then something else has like got a flash
181. 00:09:40 deal going on.
182. 00:09:40 So that obviously reinforces the fact that, hey, don't hit the big red button yet.
183. 00:09:45 Yeah.
184. 00:09:47 But anyways, that's just the first one.
185. 00:09:52 The second one use, how can I help you instead of how are you?
186. 00:09:55 I mentioned I was going to do this sparingly.
187. 00:09:57 I haven't done this at all.
188. 00:09:58 Feels kind of sleazy, especially as I started reading this book.
189. 00:10:03 Yeah, more to come on that, but yep.
190. 00:10:06 I do think I will still deploy this tactically.
191. 00:10:09 My last one was start learning a second language.
192. 00:10:13 I really didn't do a whole lot with this, but I did download Duolingo and I did go
193. 00:10:18 through a couple of lessons.
194. 00:10:19 And I do think that's the thing that's going to work for me.
195. 00:10:21 I still have trouble speaking Spanish.
196. 00:10:24 That's the language I'm going to start working on.
197. 00:10:26 But so far I haven't had to roll my R's.
198. 00:10:29 So I'm good.
199. 00:10:30 All right.
200. 00:10:33 Well, probably in the next time we record or maybe the following time, I will ask
201. 00:10:38 you to roll an R on air.
202. 00:10:39 Oh boy, not going to happen.
203. 00:10:41 All right.
204. 00:10:43 So what to keep up in the club.
205. 00:10:46 So we've mentioned this a couple of times.
206. 00:10:48 Tulip girl had mentioned some things on the Bookworm Club.
207. 00:10:53 And I just want to make a quick call out.
208. 00:10:54 Like that's where we spend most of our time when we're interacting with listeners
209. 00:10:59 of the show.
210. 00:10:59 Like that's where we do it.
211. 00:11:00 So club.bookworm.fm.
212. 00:11:02 If you're not a member there, join us.
213. 00:11:04 You can have conversations about the books and our action items.
214. 00:11:07 Kind of a fun little place to chat.
215. 00:11:09 Yep.
216. 00:11:09 Hey, I got to real quickly call out another piece of feedback that we got
217. 00:11:14 regarding the club.
218. 00:11:17 So let me find this.
219. 00:11:19 It was posted by T.
220. 00:11:24 Bombadil, which is an awesome username.
221. 00:11:26 I like that.
222. 00:11:28 Yeah.
223. 00:11:29 I'm not sure if it's a person's actually named Tom, but that would be amazing.
224. 00:11:33 They mentioned that on episode 68 and then episode 70, they listened to those
225. 00:11:41 episodes, basically back to back.
226. 00:11:42 OK.
227. 00:11:43 And they found it interesting that the smart notes book landed at 2.5, 3.5.
228. 00:11:47 Well, Michael Hyatt's book, "Fritifocus," landed at 4.5 and 4.0 respectively.
229. 00:11:51 And basically challenged us and said, "Fritifocus is kind of fluffy."
230. 00:11:59 And how to take smart notes, even though it's not written very well, there's a
231. 00:12:02 lot more meat there.
232. 00:12:03 And I think that there's some truth to that statement.
233. 00:12:06 I wanted to call this out because I went back and I looked at the scores and
234. 00:12:12 basically was like, well, did I rate this wrong or what influenced the rating
235. 00:12:17 that I gave it?
236. 00:12:19 And actually, my scores were pretty similar.
237. 00:12:21 Mine was the 3.5 and the 4.0.
238. 00:12:23 You were the 2.5 and the 4.5.
239. 00:12:24 So I'm the wild crazy one.
240. 00:12:26 You're the wild card here.
241. 00:12:29 But I do also think that maybe what attributed to this, at least for me, was
242. 00:12:36 the readability of the book.
243. 00:12:37 You know, we're rating this in terms of recommending this to other people.
244. 00:12:42 That's part of what goes into the equation, at least for me.
245. 00:12:44 But also kind of the point here was it seemed like the how to take smart notes
246. 00:12:50 really had a lasting impact while there was nothing new and free to focus.
247. 00:12:53 And while I would agree with the not a whole lot new in the free to focus part,
248. 00:12:57 I also wanted to check in on the how to take smart notes because I know at the
249. 00:13:01 time we were all like, oh, we got to build our Zetal castons.
250. 00:13:04 I pretty much have checked that out the window.
251. 00:13:06 I'm still using drafts to capture ideas.
252. 00:13:08 I'm using Ulysses to flesh them out, but this is totally not a Zetal cast.
253. 00:13:12 It's serving the same purpose for me, where I collect ideas and then I've got a
254. 00:13:16 place where I can develop them and publish them.
255. 00:13:18 But I just wanted to kind of push back, I guess, on the impression that we left
256. 00:13:24 after episode 68, where it's like, oh my gosh, this is transformational.
257. 00:13:27 Turns out really hasn't been super transformational for me.
258. 00:13:30 And I don't know about, but you maybe you want to weigh in on this.
259. 00:13:33 Maybe you don't, you know, but I wanted to just chime in on that.
260. 00:13:36 No, that's fine.
261. 00:13:37 I don't do the Zetal cast on it all anymore.
262. 00:13:39 Like that's it's a really cool idea.
263. 00:13:43 And I think if you are someone who wants to write a ton of nonfiction or
264. 00:13:48 exploratory, like do a lot of that type of work, I think it would make sense.
265. 00:13:53 But it's kind of a fun little side thing here and there, but I don't take or have
266. 00:14:01 the time to dedicate to doing something like that daily for a while I did.
267. 00:14:05 But it's kind of falling off like it just doesn't stick.
268. 00:14:09 It's a cool concept, but it kind of stays there.
269. 00:14:12 It is a cool concept.
270. 00:14:13 And I guess, you know, if I were to analyze the way I've implemented it, I've kind of
271. 00:14:18 80 20 to for my needs where I'm not doing the Zetal cast in, but I'm getting, in my
272. 00:14:24 opinion, the benefit of the Zetal cast and where I can see how things connect.
273. 00:14:29 And I never run out of stuff to write.
274. 00:14:31 That was really my goal.
275. 00:14:32 And I went through it was like, I just want to be able to sit down and know exactly
276. 00:14:36 what I'm going to write.
277. 00:14:36 And that has been the case.
278. 00:14:39 And I've also been pushed lately in that area where I do need to crank out more
279. 00:14:43 words and write more articles and it's going really well.
280. 00:14:46 So looking back on it, I still think that there was value for me in reading that book.
281. 00:14:50 And I'm happy with the results that I've gotten from it.
282. 00:14:52 But also I want to call out that, you know, we get excited in a particular
283. 00:14:56 episode about something we're going to try.
284. 00:14:57 It doesn't mean that it's going to stick forever.
285. 00:14:59 And that's okay.
286. 00:15:00 Number one, it's okay if it just completely disappears.
287. 00:15:02 But number two, the real value in all of this stuff is figuring out how it works for
288. 00:15:07 you and then applying it that way, not sticking to the system that they describe.
289. 00:15:11 So, you know, we talk about that a lot, but I wanted, because we just got this
290. 00:15:15 piece of feedback and it was really well written feedback.
291. 00:15:17 And I was glad to see it come through in the Bookworm Club.
292. 00:15:21 You know, I wanted to call it out and then also just reiterate the idea that, you
293. 00:15:25 know, you really don't know how this stuff is going to play out and impact you,
294. 00:15:28 which is why you just keep collecting new dots and trying new things and figuring
295. 00:15:31 out long term, you know, what's really going to stick.
296. 00:15:33 Thus bookworm.
297. 00:15:35 Woo hoo.
298. 00:15:36 Thus bookworm.
299. 00:15:37 And thus today's book, which is the second mountain, the quest for a moral life
300. 00:15:45 by David Brooks, right on the heels of Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week.
301. 00:15:49 Couldn't have planned that better.
302. 00:15:50 This, this is such a different book.
303. 00:15:55 We went through last time.
304. 00:15:57 Such a different book.
305. 00:15:58 So Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week.
306. 00:16:01 And by the way, I want to call out because we were I was, I'll just say it that way.
307. 00:16:06 I was a little harsh going through that.
308. 00:16:09 I didn't think I went completely off the rails like I thought maybe I would
309. 00:16:12 when we recorded it.
310. 00:16:14 But I definitely got some feedback from people saying that Tim Ferriss is really
311. 00:16:21 had a positive impact in my life.
312. 00:16:23 And I think that's awesome.
313. 00:16:24 I think that that is probably Tim Ferriss's goal and everybody else that we read.
314. 00:16:28 Like at some level, that is their goals.
315. 00:16:30 They want to, they want to make a difference.
316. 00:16:31 And that is completely fine.
317. 00:16:33 Tony Robbins, you know, another guy that not my cup of tea, but does a ton of good.
318. 00:16:38 I think when he wrote the money book, he mentioned that like he gave away 40,000
319. 00:16:43 Thanksgiving meals or something like that.
320. 00:16:44 I got the number wrong.
321. 00:16:45 I know, but it was a ridiculous number.
322. 00:16:46 And it really stood out to me when I when I started listening to that book on
323. 00:16:50 on Audible because it was so long.
324. 00:16:51 I was like, man, that's, that's really cool.
325. 00:16:54 You know, and he tells a story about how when he was a kids, somebody dropped off
326. 00:16:58 a Thanksgiving meal for his family when they couldn't afford one.
327. 00:17:00 And so that really stuck with him and he's still, you know, paying it forward.
328. 00:17:03 I think that's awesome.
329. 00:17:04 So nothing against Tim Ferriss, the person, but I didn't really obviously enjoy the
330. 00:17:10 the four hour work week.
331. 00:17:11 And you can go back and listen to that episode for all my thoughts on.
332. 00:17:14 On that, the big takeaway, if I were to encapsulate it was that I felt it was a
333. 00:17:19 little bit self serving.
334. 00:17:20 I use the term selfish, egocentric, whatever.
335. 00:17:24 David Brooks is on the complete opposite end of that.
336. 00:17:27 Yes.
337. 00:17:28 Uh, this whole, this whole idea in the second mountain is that people tend to
338. 00:17:35 take the Tim Ferriss approach and seek individual success, purpose, meaning
339. 00:17:42 whatever they climb that first mountain, they achieve their goals, they get to
340. 00:17:46 the summit, they look around and they're like, zis it.
341. 00:17:49 And then they see a second mountain and then they're like, Oh, that's the one I
342. 00:17:53 should have been climbing the entire time.
343. 00:17:55 Is that a fair synopsis?
344. 00:17:58 Yes.
345. 00:17:59 But the trick there is that you also have potentially a valley between those two
346. 00:18:04 mountains.
347. 00:18:04 Yes.
348. 00:18:05 Exactly.
349. 00:18:05 There's, we'll definitely have to cover that.
350. 00:18:08 We've got a few points here to go over that.
351. 00:18:09 But that first mountain is all about achieving success and define success.
352. 00:18:16 However you like, it doesn't matter.
353. 00:18:18 So once you reach that peak, that's when to your point, you realize, well,
354. 00:18:23 okay, is that the point?
355. 00:18:25 No.
356. 00:18:26 And then you go through this valley.
357. 00:18:28 Not everyone does.
358. 00:18:29 He does call that out.
359. 00:18:30 It's like, not everyone's journey is the same.
360. 00:18:32 Some people start in the valley, climb the first and then just keep going onto the
361. 00:18:36 second.
362. 00:18:36 Some people do skip the first mountain and go straight to the second mountain.
363. 00:18:39 But that second mountain, I guess we'll get into some details about what it is,
364. 00:18:44 but it's basically what is the purpose behind your life and how do you go about
365. 00:18:48 achieving that?
366. 00:18:49 And it's always bigger than yourself.
367. 00:18:50 Exactly.
368. 00:18:51 It's always based on what could you can do for other people, which is where Tim Ferriss's
369. 00:18:57 book left off, which makes sense.
370. 00:18:59 Rode a while back.
371. 00:18:59 You were to interview Tim Ferriss today.
372. 00:19:01 Probably has a totally different mindset.
373. 00:19:03 Somebody also had mentioned, you know, when he was going, when he
374. 00:19:06 wrote that book, he had basically just been jilted by a girl that he thought he was
375. 00:19:10 going to marry.
376. 00:19:10 And then I totally can see where that would throw you for a loop and then you
377. 00:19:15 got to figure something out and, you know, where do I go from here?
378. 00:19:18 Sort of a thing.
379. 00:19:18 But again, we'll, we'll leave that in the past for now.
380. 00:19:22 Let's dive into the book itself.
381. 00:19:24 It's broken down into really two different sections, although there's five parts here.
382. 00:19:29 The first part is the two mountains.
383. 00:19:33 And then the second part talks about the four different areas, basically, that you
384. 00:19:37 would climb your second mountain.
385. 00:19:39 But those are broken down into their own individual parts.
386. 00:19:41 So thus we've got five different parts here in the outline.
387. 00:19:44 Let's dive into part one, which is the two mountains here.
388. 00:19:47 We kind of touched on this a little bit, but I wanted to find this first mountain
389. 00:19:52 using a term that he uses in this book, which is going to appear again and again.
390. 00:19:56 And that is hyper individualism.
391. 00:20:00 And he talks about how this is not a new problem.
392. 00:20:03 He uses an example, which I thought was interesting of the colonists when they
393. 00:20:10 came to North America, that the colonists occasionally would defect to native tribes,
394. 00:20:19 but the natives would seldom go the other way.
395. 00:20:24 The colonists thought that they had the superior civilization.
396. 00:20:29 But really, he makes the point that people were voting with their feet the other way.
397. 00:20:33 They would train the natives and then the natives would always go back because
398. 00:20:38 those native cultures were communal and they had these close attachments and the
399. 00:20:41 colonials just couldn't figure that out.
400. 00:20:43 They thought they were superior.
401. 00:20:44 That's basically what hyper individual individualism is.
402. 00:20:48 You think that your life is superior to the people around you, which when I read
403. 00:20:52 that, I'm like, yes, that is exactly the impression that I got from the Tim Ferriss book.
404. 00:20:56 You described it way better than I did in an hour and a half.
405. 00:20:59 Thanks a lot, David Brooks.
406. 00:21:00 I feel like an idiot.
407. 00:21:01 I do love that story though, because there's another aspect of it where there were
408. 00:21:07 occasions when the natives would kidnap some of the colonists and the colonists
409. 00:21:14 would then go about rescuing the those who had been kidnapped.
410. 00:21:18 But whenever those who had been kidnapped were rescued, they would run and they
411. 00:21:24 would run away and oftentimes would find themselves back with the natives because
412. 00:21:31 they prefer that lifestyle once they had become familiar with it.
413. 00:21:34 Yeah, really, really interesting.
414. 00:21:37 And just kind of shows that we tend to have a bias towards our own way of life.
415. 00:21:45 But I think there's a lot of value to consistently asking the question, is there
416. 00:21:52 a better way?
417. 00:21:53 Is there something out there that is at another level from what I currently know,
418. 00:21:59 we tend to stick with what we currently know because it's comfortable.
419. 00:22:02 But I don't know the whole idea behind the second mountain is really appealing to me.
420. 00:22:09 And to be honest, a lot of this stuff that he talks about, these are questions
421. 00:22:13 that I've been asking for a while.
422. 00:22:14 David Brooks is just a much better writer than I am.
423. 00:22:18 He's very, he's a really good writer.
424. 00:22:22 We'll get into author's style when we get to the the rating at the end.
425. 00:22:26 But this is a very, I won't say easy read because it is very meaty.
426. 00:22:33 Actually, when I was reading this, it reminded me a lot of a class I had in
427. 00:22:38 college where we had to read a CS Lewis book.
428. 00:22:40 And then we would have discussions on it and we would have to write a one page paper,
429. 00:22:45 which sounds super simple, except that you were basically forced with the
430. 00:22:51 constraint of a one page paper to write a really, really good paper.
431. 00:22:54 Get all of your thoughts out and articulate them well.
432. 00:22:57 And it was actually one of the most difficult papers that I've ever had to write.
433. 00:23:00 But it was taught by a professor who was probably friends with David Brooks,
434. 00:23:04 just super, super smart and really just challenged everything.
435. 00:23:11 It was very different.
436. 00:23:13 I remember thinking when I was in that class that a lot of the classes that I was
437. 00:23:19 in, the goal of the teacher would be just to get you to verbalize any random idea
438. 00:23:27 that you had.
439. 00:23:28 And if you threw something completely stupid out there, they would just reinforce it.
440. 00:23:32 Oh, that's really interesting.
441. 00:23:33 I never thought about it that way.
442. 00:23:34 But this guy, like he wouldn't discourage you from doing that, but he would always
443. 00:23:38 ask the follow up questions and you would always have to have some sort of thought
444. 00:23:43 process behind the idea.
445. 00:23:44 And whenever you could totally tell there are people in that class that like they
446. 00:23:48 had never been challenged like that before, what do you mean?
447. 00:23:50 I have to defend my beliefs.
448. 00:23:52 Like this is, I've never had to do this before.
449. 00:23:55 You know, just the fact that I had this idea that makes it valid, right?
450. 00:23:57 No, no, you got to put more thought into it.
451. 00:24:00 And so it was really interesting.
452. 00:24:02 You know, he just thought on a whole new, a whole different level.
453. 00:24:06 And he didn't do it in a way that was, was mean, but he would just ask questions.
454. 00:24:13 And he would provoke you to think deeper about things.
455. 00:24:18 You know, you couldn't just settle for the surface level of opinions in, in that
456. 00:24:22 class. And that's, that's what, that's what this book reminded me of is like, when
457. 00:24:27 we read that CS Lewis book, you had to read it over and over and over again to
458. 00:24:32 catch really what he was saying.
459. 00:24:34 And that's kind of the, the impression that I had with, with this book and to,
460. 00:24:38 it's too long for me to have read it multiple times before we recorded it.
461. 00:24:41 I barely got through it.
462. 00:24:42 I finished it this morning, actually.
463. 00:24:44 But it is so much meat here.
464. 00:24:48 And he also brings in a lot of stuff from other people, which support his ideas.
465. 00:24:55 And a lot of books have been written on, you know, like a one paragraph thing
466. 00:24:59 that, that he mentions.
467. 00:25:00 There's a lot here.
468. 00:25:01 And if you just skim over it, you're going to miss a lot of the depth that's in
469. 00:25:05 this book for sure.
470. 00:25:07 I do want to come back to this hyper individualism concept because he does
471. 00:25:13 give the history of where this comes from.
472. 00:25:15 And I think that's kind of important to lay that foundation before we get into
473. 00:25:19 the rest of this mic.
474. 00:25:20 Yep.
475. 00:25:20 Cause he, he goes into how from like the 1910s into like the 50s, I believe,
476. 00:25:28 where because of the World Wars and a number of other factors, we had built a
477. 00:25:34 society and a culture that was communal and was driven by looking out for each
478. 00:25:43 other.
479. 00:25:43 We're all in this together, that mentality.
480. 00:25:45 And once we got past the Second World War, there was a bit of a, a start of a
481. 00:25:53 rebellion against that in the 50s and 60s and came into a head in roughly the
482. 00:25:59 70s.
483. 00:26:00 But there was this rebellion against we're all in this, in this together and it
484. 00:26:06 came through in the form of, I'm free to be myself.
485. 00:26:10 So we ended up creating a culture that focuses inward more so than outward.
486. 00:26:19 And he does go into quite a few results of that, one of which is what he calls
487. 00:26:27 the Instagram life or the aesthetic life where we have a tendency to catch the
488. 00:26:32 high points.
489. 00:26:33 Look, we've, we've heard this before.
490. 00:26:34 We've talked about this on the show before where people like to share the
491. 00:26:38 best moments of their life.
492. 00:26:39 Yep.
493. 00:26:40 And it makes us look amazing.
494. 00:26:42 You know, you got the fancy car, you got the fancy house, you got this, you got
495. 00:26:46 that, you're doing this experience.
496. 00:26:48 You're going here, you're going there.
497. 00:26:49 But we only share those highlights as a way of showing off what we've accomplished.
498. 00:26:55 This is one of the sub points I wrote down was centrality of accomplishment,
499. 00:26:59 because this is something I feel like we see a lot of in that we put a lot of
500. 00:27:03 emphasis on, especially with students, how they are driven towards succeeding in
501. 00:27:11 sports or academics in school, you name it.
502. 00:27:15 Even when we get into adulthood and in a career or a job, like that's, it's
503. 00:27:20 something where we put a lot of emphasis on how well we achieve something.
504. 00:27:25 You know, I even see this today in my own life, like I find myself kind of working
505. 00:27:31 towards achievements that would make it look as if I'm successful.
506. 00:27:37 And I always want to paint things in that way.
507. 00:27:39 And I don't want to do that.
508. 00:27:41 Like that's not my intent, but that's what everyone around me does.
509. 00:27:45 Like everybody I wrote into is in that same mindset.
510. 00:27:50 And it all comes from this hyper individualism mentality, which in our society is
511. 00:27:57 driven by this individual accomplishment goal.
512. 00:28:01 Yep, totally.
513. 00:28:03 You know, if I had not pretty much completely given up Instagram already,
514. 00:28:08 this chapter would have been enough for that to be an action item for me.
515. 00:28:11 There you go.
516. 00:28:12 Yeah.
517. 00:28:14 Um, so I guess to, uh,
518. 00:28:20 borrow all of the productivity terms, let's open up the kimono, take you back
519. 00:28:25 stage, reveal the deep dark secrets here.
520. 00:28:28 Mike is the insecure overachiever described in chapter three.
521. 00:28:33 Actually, I should say when I read that I felt like this was me.
522. 00:28:39 In fact, that was the note I put in my mind known file is I think this was me.
523. 00:28:42 Exclamation point.
524. 00:28:44 I feel like I'm on the road to recovery.
525. 00:28:47 Focused has helped a lot with that.
526. 00:28:48 Bookworm has helped a lot with that where it's kind of just challenging the
527. 00:28:53 norms that are out there, you know, what people see because nobody really has all
528. 00:28:59 this stuff figured out.
529. 00:29:00 Nobody has it all together.
530. 00:29:02 And I think that there is a lot of value.
531. 00:29:06 And I hope that I'm guessing, but I believe that listeners of bookworm feel the
532. 00:29:12 same way that it's refreshing to hear people who will share their honest
533. 00:29:19 struggles about things.
534. 00:29:20 Now there's obviously a fine line there because no one wants to hear you just
535. 00:29:24 complain about all the stuff that you're going through.
536. 00:29:27 But this whole idea of the insecure overachiever, this is focusing solely on
537. 00:29:35 what you, what you were just talking about, the individual achievement.
538. 00:29:40 They call it the meritocracy in that chapter on the insecure overachiever, where
539. 00:29:45 the focus is on productivity, grit, self discipline instead of love, service and
540. 00:29:49 care.
541. 00:29:49 Community is a group of talented individuals competing with one another.
542. 00:29:55 And the soul flattening influence is only survivable if you have your own
543. 00:30:01 competing moral system or values.
544. 00:30:04 When I read that, it kind of smacked me in the face.
545. 00:30:08 It made me feel a little bit, what's the term I'm looking for here?
546. 00:30:11 I want to be careful.
547. 00:30:13 I didn't feel great maybe about some of the stuff that I have done in the past.
548. 00:30:22 Um, I recognize that, you know, it's, it is a journey and part of the fact that
549. 00:30:30 you put out stuff that is wrong in your eyes later on, like that's, that is part
550. 00:30:36 of the journey and there's no way to escape that.
551. 00:30:38 The only alternative is not to do anything.
552. 00:30:39 And that's something that I dealt with for a long time.
553. 00:30:42 You know, I've been delivered of that, I'll say, and I'm glad for that.
554. 00:30:47 But there is always in the back of your head, like, I don't want to put out
555. 00:30:50 something that's going to encourage somebody to do something the wrong way.
556. 00:30:53 I don't want to build the wrong beliefs.
557. 00:30:55 You know, I want to help people in a positive way.
558. 00:30:56 And when you are climbing your second mountain, you look back at some of the
559. 00:31:01 stuff you did in the first one, you're like, what an idiot.
560. 00:31:05 Yeah.
561. 00:31:06 You know, so I recognized myself in, uh, in some of that, the aesthetic life.
562. 00:31:13 Going back to your main point, I feel like this is completely on display in most
563. 00:31:17 of the, the productivity world.
564. 00:31:18 I'm glad to see not just focused bookworm, you know, stuff like that, that I'm
565. 00:31:24 involved with, but things like hurry slowly.
566. 00:31:27 Jocelyn Keglai, um, make time, which we covered Jake Knapp-Johns-Aratsky.
567. 00:31:33 Where they are explicitly saying, this is not a productivity book, you know, and
568. 00:31:37 it really is, I would argue, but it's taking a different approach to things.
569. 00:31:41 I feel like that's really healthy.
570. 00:31:43 I'm hoping that that continues and that this, this wave, I don't know what even
571. 00:31:49 what to call it.
572. 00:31:50 It's not exclusively relationalism, like he's talking about at the end of this
573. 00:31:54 book, but just people challenging the idea of hyper individualism, even if they
574. 00:31:58 don't know what hyper individualism is, like, I can see this as a trend that's
575. 00:32:02 happening and I hope that it continues.
576. 00:32:04 Yeah, I agree with that for sure.
577. 00:32:06 And I feel like you and I have been promoting that to some degree or another.
578. 00:32:12 Uh, in most every book we come across, it might be a theme that we find ourselves
579. 00:32:18 hunting for simply because, you know, we struggle with it in the productivity
580. 00:32:25 space and in that world of self improvement, it seems like it's easy to
581. 00:32:30 share and talk about the pinnacle of how things should operate.
582. 00:32:35 And, you know, I can talk about how a journaling habit can help you be more
583. 00:32:41 reflective and I can talk about all the tips and tricks on how to find the time
584. 00:32:46 and develop the time to work on that particular habit.
585. 00:32:51 Same thing with reading.
586. 00:32:51 You know, we read tons of books.
587. 00:32:53 I had a conversation with a guy at, uh, Max stock, Tony.
588. 00:32:58 Hi, Tony, about the process of starting to read more books and how when you and
589. 00:33:07 I started, we didn't read this many books.
590. 00:33:10 Like this is not a case where Mike and I were reading a book a week and we're
591. 00:33:14 like, Hey, you know what?
592. 00:33:15 We do this all the time.
593. 00:33:16 Maybe we should just start recording these.
594. 00:33:17 Like, no, this is, that's so far from the truth.
595. 00:33:20 Like I think I read three books in the two previous years leading up to bookworm.
596. 00:33:26 Yeah, we did it because we wanted to change our, our default behavior to that
597. 00:33:32 of one who reads books.
598. 00:33:34 Exactly.
599. 00:33:35 So with that in mind, like, you know, we made the commitment to starting to
600. 00:33:42 build in this habit and, and make that commitment to reading books, because
601. 00:33:47 it was something that we wanted to develop in ourselves.
602. 00:33:50 So like, I just want to kind of quell that perception.
603. 00:33:54 Cause a lot of people I've, I learned at max.dot got the perception that, you
604. 00:33:58 know, we do this all the time.
605. 00:34:00 I was like, well, we do now.
606. 00:34:01 Three years in.
607. 00:34:03 Yes, we do this now, but yeah, not then, not back when we started.
608. 00:34:08 That's interesting.
609. 00:34:09 I agree.
610. 00:34:10 And I raises the question in my head, you know, we read atomic habits by James
611. 00:34:14 Clear, which was a phenomenal book on, on habits.
612. 00:34:18 And he talks in there about if you want to become a writer, you show up and you
613. 00:34:25 write.
614. 00:34:25 Okay.
615. 00:34:26 So if you want to become a reader, you show up and you read.
616. 00:34:29 That's what we did.
617. 00:34:30 We said we want to become readers.
618. 00:34:33 So we're going to read more.
619. 00:34:34 At what point along the journey though, do you think we transitioned from
620. 00:34:39 somebody who doesn't do this to somebody who does do this?
621. 00:34:41 Oh gosh, I don't know.
622. 00:34:42 After 10 bucks.
623. 00:34:43 I don't know.
624. 00:34:44 Six months in, you know, we're three years in.
625. 00:34:48 It's kind of interesting because people join in now and they say, Oh, yeah,
626. 00:34:52 you read a book every week.
627. 00:34:53 But at what point did you feel okay, saying, yeah, I read a book every week or
628. 00:34:58 every other week, you know, without the gap books?
629. 00:35:00 Yeah, that's a good question.
630. 00:35:02 I think you it's hard to nail that down.
631. 00:35:04 But I think it has to be somewhere in the realm of when reading the books, like
632. 00:35:10 you don't have to work at making it happen.
633. 00:35:13 Sure.
634. 00:35:14 And reading 25, 30 pages a day is just kind of normal.
635. 00:35:18 Yep.
636. 00:35:19 Wherever that happens, that's probably that point.
637. 00:35:22 But is that a month in?
638. 00:35:24 Is that 18 months in?
639. 00:35:26 Where is that?
640. 00:35:27 I don't know.
641. 00:35:28 Yeah, exactly.
642. 00:35:29 You can't look back and say this was the point where I became a reader.
643. 00:35:33 Right.
644. 00:35:33 Which is interesting to me because this is a journey.
645. 00:35:37 We talk about how we're on this, this same journey.
646. 00:35:40 Everybody else is.
647. 00:35:42 And really, you don't know when you've arrived, although I would argue, maybe
648. 00:35:46 you never actually arrive.
649. 00:35:48 Or like, here's here's another way of coming at it with this particular
650. 00:35:51 show is when would you call yourself a bookworm?
651. 00:35:54 You know, right?
652. 00:35:56 Everyone who listens to this, like my tendency is to think that everyone who
653. 00:36:00 listens to this is a bookworm.
654. 00:36:02 So hello fellow bookworms, but I'm a bookworm when I have my library with
655. 00:36:05 the sliding ladder.
656. 00:36:06 See, even you and I wouldn't as like, I, the show was called bookworm.
657. 00:36:12 But I struggled to call myself a bookworm at the same time.
658. 00:36:15 Aspiring bookworms.
659. 00:36:16 There you go.
660. 00:36:17 So, so welcome fellow aspiring bookworms.
661. 00:36:21 There you go.
662. 00:36:22 Yeah.
663. 00:36:24 Well, that's a tangent that I really hadn't planned on.
664. 00:36:27 I'm sorry to, but I think it's, it's really important.
665. 00:36:31 This whole idea of the aesthetic life, this just kind of smacked me in the face.
666. 00:36:35 And I think Instagram has always, not always.
667. 00:36:40 Let me rephrase that.
668. 00:36:41 Instagram, if you hear people talk about social media, at least in the tech circles
669. 00:36:48 that we tend to pay attention to, you will hear a lot of people saying, Oh, Twitter
670. 00:36:54 is a cesspool, Instagram is the good one.
671. 00:36:56 That's where I hang out.
672. 00:36:57 But when you describe Instagram as basically the tool for supporting the aesthetic life
673. 00:37:05 and hyper individualism that is attached to it, it really kind of paints it in a
674. 00:37:10 negative light, which I think is more fair and more accurate and I'm okay with it.
675. 00:37:14 I just thought it was, I thought it was interesting.
676. 00:37:17 An interesting observation is I was going through this.
677. 00:37:19 And I will say that like that whole Instagram life and like kudos to you for being
678. 00:37:26 honest about the insecure overachiever thing.
679. 00:37:29 It's not easy to just come out and say, but all of that revolves around in the
680. 00:37:34 scheme of first mountain valley, second mountain.
681. 00:37:36 It once you become aware of it, that's where you're in that valley.
682. 00:37:41 You know, there's more to that and there are other crises that can put you into
683. 00:37:44 that valley when a massive issue causes you to stop and reflect on the things
684. 00:37:51 that you do every day.
685. 00:37:52 And it makes you wonder, like, am I doing the thing I should be doing?
686. 00:37:55 Like that's when you're in the valley is when you're almost in a moment of
687. 00:38:00 despair or are in despair.
688. 00:38:02 I will say that like me personally, I feel like I'm slowly starting to come out
689. 00:38:08 of that valley to start climbing the second mountain.
690. 00:38:10 Yeah.
691. 00:38:10 That's where I personally feel like I'm on, on this journey.
692. 00:38:14 But he, he tells story after story after story about folks who were in the valley,
693. 00:38:20 what their valley was and how they came up out of it.
694. 00:38:22 And I compare, because I can't help myself, I compare their valley to mine.
695. 00:38:27 And I think, well, maybe I just had a little dip.
696. 00:38:29 Like, I don't know.
697. 00:38:30 Like it doesn't seem that bad when I look at those.
698. 00:38:33 Yeah.
699. 00:38:34 No, that's, I'm.
700. 00:38:36 That's true.
701. 00:38:37 And the definition for being in the valley that he uses in the book is the
702. 00:38:43 telos crisis.
703. 00:38:45 It's defined by the fact that people in it typically don't know what their
704. 00:38:50 purpose is when it happens, they become fragile.
705. 00:38:53 This is also where he uses that quote from, I don't know, Hasey.
706. 00:38:56 Nietzsche.
707. 00:38:57 Nietzsche.
708. 00:38:57 He who has a why to live for can endure anyhow.
709. 00:39:00 Not something that people have, at least in the productivity space heard for a
710. 00:39:05 long time because it's attached to the idea of, I'll just find your why.
711. 00:39:08 Not so simple.
712. 00:39:10 I developed a whole course on helping people do that, by the way, which I still
713. 00:39:16 feel really good about that specific thing.
714. 00:39:19 I do think that focusing on that question, like that's one of the things
715. 00:39:22 that is on my second mountain, but I also don't want to rehash the whole thing.
716. 00:39:28 But I did tell the story of how I got to where I am today and the things that I'm
717. 00:39:37 doing and how it kind of came as a shock to me.
718. 00:39:39 I'm not going to retell that, but I looking back on it as I'm reading this whole
719. 00:39:44 section on the valley, I realized that that was kind of my valley where I was
720. 00:39:50 working with a family business and then thought I found my thing and then my thing
721. 00:39:55 was ripped out from under me.
722. 00:39:56 And then it's like, okay, where it's my other thing.
723. 00:39:59 Is there another piece?
724. 00:40:02 Yeah.
725. 00:40:02 Is there another thing?
726. 00:40:03 Hopefully.
727. 00:40:04 But the whole idea of going through the valley that he talks about in here,
728. 00:40:13 there's nothing really intrinsically noble about the suffering, but going through
729. 00:40:21 stuff, I would argue, having read this is a valuable experience.
730. 00:40:27 It does kind of shift your perspective.
731. 00:40:30 He says specifically that there are three things that suffering teaches us.
732. 00:40:34 It teaches us gratitude.
733. 00:40:35 It calls for a response.
734. 00:40:37 So when you are suffering, you want to do something to alleviate it.
735. 00:40:41 And then also it shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency.
736. 00:40:44 So that is very true.
737. 00:40:46 I can tell you that from personal experience.
738. 00:40:48 If you think you are all of that and then all of a sudden your thing is gone and all
739. 00:40:53 of a sudden it's not about you anymore, that will destroy your self-sufficiency.
740. 00:40:56 That will make you think, oh, maybe you're not as great as you thought you were.
741. 00:40:59 And to be honest, I never really tried to anyways, portray that.
742. 00:41:06 I had it all figured out, but we're just talking about how that's kind of the general
743. 00:41:11 tone of the productivity space.
744. 00:41:12 And this book helps me realize really the big issue that I have with it, like why
745. 00:41:18 it bothers me so much when I see that now.
746. 00:41:21 And that's basically a part of it is I think it just kind of glosses over.
747. 00:41:27 Maybe, you know, the people who are spewing that stuff, they haven't gone
748. 00:41:33 through the valley yet, but it kind of it's dangerous, I think, because when you read
749. 00:41:37 that sort of thing, it kind of diminishes the fact that the valley is there.
750. 00:41:44 And I don't know, I guess, you know, looking back on my experience, didn't see the valley
751. 00:41:50 coming.
752. 00:41:51 Maybe I thought, you know, well, maybe some people have to go through the valley, but
753. 00:41:55 I don't have to.
754. 00:41:55 I'm just going to skip it because I know better.
755. 00:41:59 No, not what happened.
756. 00:42:00 Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about what this second mountain is.
757. 00:42:06 Um, before we jump into some of these other pieces, because we need to get into those.
758. 00:42:10 This is the big one, by the way, I mean, yeah, when I was reading through this, I'm
759. 00:42:15 like, half the show is going to be part one, half the show is going to be all the
760. 00:42:17 other parts combined for sure.
761. 00:42:19 So the easy way I think to compare and contrast this is with the four hour work week.
762. 00:42:27 Perfect timing.
763. 00:42:28 That's why we were seeing that earlier.
764. 00:42:29 The four hour work week is the path and journey of hitting the peak of the first
765. 00:42:35 mountain.
766. 00:42:36 That's kind of the way I saw it, Mike.
767. 00:42:37 Like that, that whole book was designed to help you get to the peak of the first
768. 00:42:42 mountain.
769. 00:42:42 But I think some of the issues that you and I took with it were that that whole
770. 00:42:50 lifestyle is one that tends to be geared, at least the way Tim Ferris, but it was
771. 00:42:55 geared around travel and such.
772. 00:42:58 Obviously you can extract that from it.
773. 00:43:00 He does call that out.
774. 00:43:01 Um, but I think that once you hit that peak,
775. 00:43:06 and you start to ask the question, is this all there is?
776. 00:43:09 That's the point at which you can start to fall into that valley and wonder,
777. 00:43:15 well, what was it all worth?
778. 00:43:17 Now to Tim Ferris's credit, he does at the end say that whenever you're at these
779. 00:43:23 trips and you're doing all the new rich things, like you have to focus on helping
780. 00:43:28 other people as a part of that.
781. 00:43:29 Um, it was kind of an afterthought it felt like, but anyway, yeah, I'm not going
782. 00:43:35 to give Tim Ferris credit for that.
783. 00:43:36 All right.
784. 00:43:37 So you hit this valley.
785. 00:43:39 We've talked about that.
786. 00:43:40 Um, me personally, I had hit a point when I was having a lot of success in
787. 00:43:45 corporate jobs and such and then ended up in a scenario where I was, uh, doing a
788. 00:43:51 lot of web development and such and a lot of that has come crashing down on me.
789. 00:43:55 Uh, a lot of that has to do with my own health that has just taken a nose dive
790. 00:44:02 and has forced me into this valley and made me stop and rethink a lot.
791. 00:44:08 This is one of the action items.
792. 00:44:10 I don't have anything outline yet, but one of my action items is to this afternoon,
793. 00:44:15 go have a conversation about a lot of this with my wife.
794. 00:44:17 Cause there's a lot of these things that I'm because of this book, I'm just now
795. 00:44:22 starting to be able to put words to I've been feeling them, but I didn't really
796. 00:44:25 understand them well enough to relay them.
797. 00:44:27 So kind of getting some fresh thoughts here on bookworm, but I'm going to be
798. 00:44:31 sharing some of this with, um, my wife this afternoon as well on a much deeper
799. 00:44:36 level and a more personal level of course, but hot takes.
800. 00:44:40 I know, right?
801. 00:44:41 What I'm, what I'm trying to do is understand what does this second mountain
802. 00:44:46 look like?
803. 00:44:46 Because the main thing he talks about is trying to determine where that
804. 00:44:52 second mountain or which second mountain you're going to climb.
805. 00:44:55 Cause there's a few different areas you can do this in or need to do this in.
806. 00:45:00 And I'm trying to nail down exactly what that looks like for me, mostly from a,
807. 00:45:07 a vocation point, which we'll get to right here.
808. 00:45:10 And I have a process that I want to go through in order to understand what that
809. 00:45:17 is for myself.
810. 00:45:18 And I think I have at least the starting point for it.
811. 00:45:20 That's, I'll explain it here in a little bit, but anything else you want to add to
812. 00:45:25 that before we move on?
813. 00:45:25 Yeah.
814. 00:45:27 So the Tim Ferriss thing, um, the thing that really encapsulates the difference
815. 00:45:34 of perspectives here, I think the best is in chapter eight, we're talking about
816. 00:45:40 the second mountain.
817. 00:45:41 And David Brooks says that second mountain people know why they have been
818. 00:45:44 put on this earth.
819. 00:45:46 And like you talked about earlier, it's also, it's not individual, uh, it's not
820. 00:45:51 individual gain.
821. 00:45:52 So there is a bigger purpose that involves other people and you know
822. 00:45:55 exactly what that thing is.
823. 00:45:57 And that's the piece that I felt was missing from the Tim Ferriss book.
824. 00:46:01 That actually does not diminish the quality of the book itself.
825. 00:46:08 Like I mentioned, I wrote stuff, made stuff when I was sending the first
826. 00:46:12 mountain and I look back at it now and I'm like, man, young Mike Schmitz was a jerk.
827. 00:46:17 Yeah.
828. 00:46:19 Uh, maybe, maybe I was still a jerk.
829. 00:46:21 I don't know.
830. 00:46:22 I'm constantly trying to get better.
831. 00:46:24 100% but I are all jerk completely.
832. 00:46:26 Well, I don't want it like I said, I don't want to assume that I've arrived.
833. 00:46:31 Like this is peak Mike right here.
834. 00:46:32 Definitely not the case, but the whole idea of like second mountain people
835. 00:46:39 know why they've been put on this earth.
836. 00:46:40 That phrasing challenged me.
837. 00:46:42 I created faith based productivity.
838. 00:46:46 I have that cheat that I created with my life theme on it.
839. 00:46:49 Like that's a big part of what I've been thinking about and brewing on for the
840. 00:46:53 last, I don't know, say year or so.
841. 00:46:55 Maybe longer than that, but I feel like even what I have currently isn't like
842. 00:47:02 the final version of that.
843. 00:47:04 I think that is the thing that I can, I can use to answer honestly, if someone
844. 00:47:11 asked me, like, what is your purpose?
845. 00:47:12 You know, I will rattle off that life theme and it's to help people answer the
846. 00:47:17 question, why am I here by inspiring, encouraging and teaching them,
847. 00:47:20 connected, they're calling, discover their destiny, live the life they were
848. 00:47:22 created for.
849. 00:47:23 A hundred percent believe that, but I also a hundred percent believe that
850. 00:47:26 that's not going to be the thing five, 10, 15 years from now, it's going to be a
851. 00:47:29 derivative of that.
852. 00:47:30 And I don't know what path that's going to take.
853. 00:47:33 One other thing here, which I think is an important difference between first
854. 00:47:39 mountain and second mountain is the distinction between a commitment and a
855. 00:47:43 contract.
856. 00:47:44 So a contract, David Brooks defines as a transaction, whereas a commitment is a
857. 00:47:50 relationship.
858. 00:47:50 So right there, we're back to the idea being that productivity is really about
859. 00:47:57 other people.
860. 00:47:58 It's not about what you can accomplish hyper individualism.
861. 00:48:02 Contracts are based on the benefits, how they can benefit you.
862. 00:48:08 Commitment is about the transformation.
863. 00:48:11 And really, I would argue the benefits that you can give the other person.
864. 00:48:15 Ed Cole is another author that I really respect said it this way.
865. 00:48:20 Love is the desire to benefit others at the expense of self.
866. 00:48:24 And lust is the desire to benefit self at the expense of others.
867. 00:48:29 And that's kind of the picture that I got here between a contract and a
868. 00:48:34 commitment.
869. 00:48:35 We'll get into the marriage stuff later, but the commitment being like, I'm in
870. 00:48:39 this for better or for worse.
871. 00:48:41 Contract would be, I'm in this until I don't want to be anymore.
872. 00:48:45 No, I think that's a good way to look at it.
873. 00:48:47 There's there's four mountains here that he says that we need to climb.
874. 00:48:52 Four second mountains, four different areas that you need to climb a second
875. 00:48:56 mountain within.
876. 00:48:57 Vocation marriage, as Mike alluded to philosophy and faith and the fourth one
877. 00:49:02 is community.
878. 00:49:03 He loves philosophy and faith together into one.
879. 00:49:05 Let's go into vocation first because he does call out the difference
880. 00:49:11 between a career and a vocation.
881. 00:49:13 So career is a path of jobs that you're going to go through in order to achieve
882. 00:49:19 success in the first mountain.
883. 00:49:21 Vocation is where you're starting to tap into your inner desires and your
884. 00:49:28 inner ways of helping others.
885. 00:49:31 That's when you start to climb that second mountain.
886. 00:49:35 And yes, it might be called work, but it isn't for any other gain other than to
887. 00:49:41 help someone else or for your own to fulfill your own passions, which need
888. 00:49:47 to be others center, others focused.
889. 00:49:50 Is that a fair summary, Mike?
890. 00:49:52 Yes, definitely.
891. 00:49:54 The whole idea in this section on vocation, because I feel like we've kind
892. 00:50:01 of talked about that quite a bit already in terms of your vocation is bigger,
893. 00:50:05 others focused, but there's an idea that's tied to this, which is the
894. 00:50:08 Annunciation moment.
895. 00:50:10 Do you remember this concept?
896. 00:50:11 Yes.
897. 00:50:12 Okay.
898. 00:50:13 That's fine.
899. 00:50:13 So the definition of an Annunciation moment is the moment where something
900. 00:50:18 sparks an interest or cast a spell and arouses a desire that somehow
901. 00:50:22 prefigured much of what comes after in life, both the delights and the challenges.
902. 00:50:27 Typically happens when you're young as something enthrals you.
903. 00:50:31 And I'm curious.
904. 00:50:34 Do you have an Annunciation moment?
905. 00:50:38 Uh, I think there's two actually one that happened to me when I was little
906. 00:50:44 and another that I think I might be in the middle of right now, which is kind
907. 00:50:48 of weird when I was little.
908. 00:50:51 And when I say little, I think I was nine.
909. 00:50:54 I had like a week long trip.
910. 00:51:00 I don't know what it was.
911. 00:51:01 It wasn't a camp.
912. 00:51:02 It wasn't like a church camp or anything.
913. 00:51:04 It was a week long trip of some sort.
914. 00:51:07 And for the life of me, I've not been able to figure out what it was.
915. 00:51:09 But at the end of that trip, I told my mother that I felt like I needed to go
916. 00:51:16 into the ministry in some form and I had no idea what that meant.
917. 00:51:20 I knew I did not want to be a pastor.
918. 00:51:22 I knew I didn't want to be going to seminary or anything, but I wanted to go
919. 00:51:26 into ministry somehow.
920. 00:51:27 And a lot of years later, I'm now working full time at our church.
921. 00:51:36 And whenever I told my mom that I was accepting a full time position at our church,
922. 00:51:43 she's like, oh, yeah, I knew you would eventually do that.
923. 00:51:45 Thanks, mom.
924. 00:51:47 Thanks.
925. 00:51:48 Love you.
926. 00:51:49 So that's that was kind of the first.
927. 00:51:52 I think I had a moment like that.
928. 00:51:54 And I'm only just now starting to.
929. 00:51:58 So maybe now is not the enunciation moment.
930. 00:52:01 It's it's more about now I'm coming to the realization of what that is.
931. 00:52:06 But I also know that like the way that that comes out in me, because I have
932. 00:52:15 such a strong background in the tech space and, you know, we talk about this
933. 00:52:19 whole being intentional and mindfulness thing.
934. 00:52:24 It comes up a lot.
935. 00:52:25 I'm definitely fascinated by a lot of it.
936. 00:52:28 You call me analog Joe all the time.
937. 00:52:31 Like it's it's a thing.
938. 00:52:32 I do.
939. 00:52:33 But I think that like the analog thing is is always a fascination to me.
940. 00:52:39 Like people get on to me if I ever mentioned anything remotely about
941. 00:52:43 listening to an audio book, because I'm big on the paper books.
942. 00:52:46 I do a lot of things with physical objects in some degree versus the digital side.
943. 00:52:55 So I've been having conversations about this with my wife and a few other folks
944. 00:53:00 and a few of you have emailed me about this over time.
945. 00:53:04 And then Mr.
946. 00:53:05 Mike Schmitz texted me when was this three weeks ago, four weeks ago, he looked up
947. 00:53:10 to find out.
948. 00:53:11 I have no idea what possessed you to do this, but and I was kind of angry at you
949. 00:53:15 for doing it at first, but I'm coming around to it.
950. 00:53:17 But he hunted down and discovered that analog Joe.com was available.
951. 00:53:24 You can't just leave that sitting there.
952. 00:53:27 You have to acquire this.
953. 00:53:29 So I made the purchase for analog Joe.com and have been trying to figure out what
954. 00:53:35 that becomes.
955. 00:53:36 And in the in the like the last week in having these conversations with a few
956. 00:53:44 folks, because I played around with what to do with that domain.
957. 00:53:47 Like do I set it up and just have like a list of all the gear I use in the analog
958. 00:53:51 space, but that seems kind of weird to me.
959. 00:53:53 I debated making it its own business of sorts.
960. 00:53:57 And it has occurred to me that a lot of people are asking for a way to get
961. 00:54:04 together, not about analog productivity necessarily.
962. 00:54:07 Like that could definitely be a piece of it, but they're looking for a community
963. 00:54:12 of sorts that's just analog period, whether it's analog music, analog, like
964. 00:54:18 cooking methods, there's like ways of interpreting analog coffee making versus
965. 00:54:23 like all the digital ways of doing it.
966. 00:54:26 That might be the thing that gets me in there.
967. 00:54:28 I know, I know, right?
968. 00:54:29 Because you use that whole robot thing to yours.
969. 00:54:31 So these these conversations have come up with me quite a bit.
970. 00:54:36 And I think I'd like to do something about it, because this is something that
971. 00:54:41 I feel very strongly about because I I know that a lot of people struggle with
972. 00:54:48 being intentional because all of these digital tools and digital devices and
973. 00:54:53 the screens everywhere, it gets to be a lot.
974. 00:54:56 And there's a large number of people that are looking for ways to get off of it.
975. 00:55:03 Now it's a bit weird to think about building a digital community to help
976. 00:55:07 you get off of digital.
977. 00:55:08 I get that juxtaposition going on there, but it's something that I'm going to
978. 00:55:16 give a try.
979. 00:55:17 And oddly enough, my wife is interested in this.
980. 00:55:21 I finally found something that she's interested in participating.
981. 00:55:26 I know it's crazy.
982. 00:55:27 So she she is considering how her role and this is going to play out.
983. 00:55:34 But right now I have no idea what this actually means per se, but the goal
984. 00:55:41 is to take analog Joe dot com and build a community that is geared towards
985. 00:55:47 stepping away from digital devices and how do you engage the real world
986. 00:55:52 in this space of digital abundance that we live in.
987. 00:55:58 That's the concept because I've had a very strong passion towards that.
988. 00:56:01 And I think that combining that in different avenues between what I do at the
989. 00:56:06 church and what I do on my own, like they're they're kind of coming into
990. 00:56:10 a conjunction where they're going to collide.
991. 00:56:12 Now I'm still keeping some of them separate depending on how you come at them.
992. 00:56:17 But for me as a whole person, like they do have a tendency to to overlap.
993. 00:56:21 But that's what I'm shooting towards.
994. 00:56:23 So I think this all started because of you, Mike.
995. 00:56:26 So thanks for that.
996. 00:56:28 But reading the second.
997. 00:56:30 The world is to my house.
998. 00:56:31 But but reading the second mountain, like I don't know how many times I was
999. 00:56:38 reading through, especially this vocation section.
1000. 00:56:41 I was like, yes, yes, yes.
1001. 00:56:44 And I have all kinds of like these little one sentence phrases that I've written
1002. 00:56:48 down in my notebook about how this could come to a realization in my own life.
1003. 00:56:54 So thank you for picking this book and for sending me a domain.
1004. 00:56:58 I did not want to buy it originally.
1005. 00:57:00 So thank you, sir.
1006. 00:57:01 No problem.
1007. 00:57:04 You know, a lot of the stuff that you were just describing gets into some of the
1008. 00:57:08 stuff from chapter 12 with vampire problems, it's called.
1009. 00:57:12 Yes.
1010. 00:57:13 And I love that.
1011. 00:57:15 This whole chapter is weird.
1012. 00:57:16 The story at the beginning is basically that you are faced with the choice of
1013. 00:57:24 becoming a vampire or not.
1014. 00:57:25 And you don't know what you're going to be like.
1015. 00:57:27 If you get bit by the bat, whatever, it makes it sound like it's your choice, but
1016. 00:57:32 you don't know what the other side is going to look like.
1017. 00:57:34 That's really the point that he's making.
1018. 00:57:36 There's really nothing else about vampires in here, but yeah, I probably would have
1019. 00:57:40 phrased it a little bit different, but I understand what he's saying.
1020. 00:57:45 And there's there's a lot of value in this.
1021. 00:57:47 He talks about when you're choosing a vocation, don't discount interest.
1022. 00:57:51 And he says that knowledge is plentiful, but motivation is scarce.
1023. 00:57:55 So what you were talking about with the analog stuff, something that you're
1024. 00:57:59 passionate about, you know, there's a lot of people who maybe have written things
1025. 00:58:03 about the benefits of analog tools.
1026. 00:58:05 But really the thing that makes analog.
1027. 00:58:07 Dot com work is the fact that you are passionate about it and you're willing to
1028. 00:58:11 show up and build a community around it.
1029. 00:58:13 And, you know, we're talking about this now, like it's already happened.
1030. 00:58:17 Maybe.
1031. 00:58:18 So I guess pressure is on you now.
1032. 00:58:22 But yeah.
1033. 00:58:23 Yeah.
1034. 00:58:24 Well, by the time this releases, you'll be able to go there and sign up.
1035. 00:58:27 I'll put it that way.
1036. 00:58:28 OK.
1037. 00:58:29 OK, cool.
1038. 00:58:30 But I, you know, I wanted to call that out because as much as I
1039. 00:58:33 reel against the idea of passion and just doing what you love, there is
1040. 00:58:37 something to be said for that.
1041. 00:58:39 And I don't think it's actually too far off when you consider like the real
1042. 00:58:43 definition of passion, which is something that you're willing to to suffer.
1043. 00:58:46 Just come see about we've talked about that before.
1044. 00:58:48 We don't have to go there again.
1045. 00:58:50 But that's really what it comes down to is motivation is something that you are
1046. 00:58:55 willing to push through the obstacles that are going to appear.
1047. 00:58:58 You know, when you are setting this thing up, it's not going to go, even if
1048. 00:59:03 you set up a thousand websites, you're going to encounter some point of friction
1049. 00:59:05 along the way and motivation is going to be the thing that allows you to push
1050. 00:59:09 through and actually follow through with the thing.
1051. 00:59:11 So that's a really powerful idea.
1052. 00:59:15 And I like the way that he he frames it here.
1053. 00:59:18 You know, what am I motivated to do?
1054. 00:59:20 That's an important question to ask when you're trying to find out what your
1055. 00:59:25 second mountain is all about.
1056. 00:59:27 He also mentions that when you're in search of a vocation, say yes to
1057. 00:59:31 everything, there's these moments of obligation you calls them and you never
1058. 00:59:34 know where the next thing that you say yes to is going to lead.
1059. 00:59:37 I think that's maybe a little bit different than a lot of the traditional
1060. 00:59:41 advice that you would hear now and even that I would give people where the
1061. 00:59:46 default needs to become no, I don't think these are these are ideas that are
1062. 00:59:49 at odds with each other.
1063. 00:59:50 This is really speaking to 18 year old me, 22 year old me when you get out
1064. 00:59:56 of college, try some things, don't just automatically go into your career,
1065. 01:00:02 figure out some things.
1066. 01:00:04 And I feel like I've kind of done that later than maybe I should have in life.
1067. 01:00:08 I've talked about how I really enjoy public speaking, but that was never
1068. 01:00:12 something that I anticipated I would enjoy doing.
1069. 01:00:14 It took me recording some screencast and then recording some podcasts and
1070. 01:00:20 then being scared out of my skin to go to a toastmasters meeting, but doing it
1071. 01:00:25 anyways and realizing that, oh, hey, actually, I really enjoy this.
1072. 01:00:29 Yes, it freaks me out, but I feel very fulfilled when I'm doing it.
1073. 01:00:34 You know, just as an example of like the kind of path that you can't really
1074. 01:00:38 predict, he says it this way, think of yourself as a fish hoping to get caught.
1075. 01:00:44 And then when you feel those those tugs, like the one I just described
1076. 01:00:50 public speaking, then you ask a couple of follow up questions, you know, is it big
1077. 01:00:53 enough in my uniquely positioned to make this happen?
1078. 01:00:56 And am I truly passionate about this thing?
1079. 01:00:58 So I don't know.
1080. 01:01:00 I thought that was really valuable advice for somebody who is maybe
1081. 01:01:04 reconsidering their vocation.
1082. 01:01:06 I want to go back to the enunciation moment idea here for a minute because I
1083. 01:01:09 put you on the spot and you shared yours.
1084. 01:01:11 Yeah, but I also want to just real briefly share mine and then encourage
1085. 01:01:16 everybody who's listening to this to kind of identify theirs.
1086. 01:01:19 I won't tell the whole story because I have told it before, but really my
1087. 01:01:25 journey into this productivity space started for me when I was, uh, I had
1088. 01:01:32 gone through Bible college in our church because we had a satellite campus.
1089. 01:01:36 And I got my Bible college degree.
1090. 01:01:38 Basically I say for funsies, you know, my goal was not to become a pastor,
1091. 01:01:42 but I just wanted to learn more.
1092. 01:01:45 And so they had a way for me to do that.
1093. 01:01:49 And I was just eating it up and loved it.
1094. 01:01:51 So got my Bible college degree, then they asked me to teach a class on
1095. 01:01:56 personal management.
1096. 01:01:57 And as I was going through and studying the syllabus on personal
1097. 01:02:02 management, I was reading things like Matthew 25, the parable, the talents,
1098. 01:02:06 and really just got this revelation of how seriously I believe God takes
1099. 01:02:12 productivity and stewardship.
1100. 01:02:14 And, you know, I was looking around and I saw the problem in front of me,
1101. 01:02:18 like, man, people just don't get this.
1102. 01:02:20 They sit and they wait for things to happen, but I believe God's waiting
1103. 01:02:24 for you to do something so he can help you multiply the talent that he gave
1104. 01:02:27 you and can't be multiplied.
1105. 01:02:28 If you don't take action, you know, all that sort of stuff that led to me
1106. 01:02:33 writing my book, that led to me getting the job with Asian efficiency,
1107. 01:02:38 getting connected with everybody else that I do everything with, you know,
1108. 01:02:42 I met you through a, I met David Sparks, Sean Blanc, I believe through there, too, like
1109. 01:02:49 as much as I look back on the time there and I have mixed feelings about
1110. 01:02:56 how things went down at the end, there's no doubt that that was part of my journey
1111. 01:03:02 and I can look at it and I could be grateful for the things that have come
1112. 01:03:05 from it, the relationships, essentially, that have come from it.
1113. 01:03:07 To David Brooks' point, this is all about relationships.
1114. 01:03:11 It's not about the things.
1115. 01:03:12 I don't look back and be like, man, I'm really glad that I built that course
1116. 01:03:17 or I did this thing.
1117. 01:03:18 Right.
1118. 01:03:18 You know, it's like, for sure, I met these awesome people who I get to
1119. 01:03:21 continue the conversation with.
1120. 01:03:23 That's the valuable thing.
1121. 01:03:26 And so, you know, just to wrap this up with the enunciation moment, I would
1122. 01:03:30 challenge everybody to kind of think about what's yours.
1123. 01:03:32 And maybe you have an enunciation moment, but you haven't viewed it as an
1124. 01:03:38 enunciation moment and you're doing something that really isn't, you're
1125. 01:03:43 climbing a mountain, but it's not your true second mountain.
1126. 01:03:45 I think there would be a lot of value in identifying that and course
1127. 01:03:49 correcting as soon as possible.
1128. 01:03:50 If that is you, it doesn't mean you have to just all of a sudden make a leap
1129. 01:03:53 either, you know, you can start to move in the right direction.
1130. 01:03:57 You don't have to drastically change your life.
1131. 01:03:59 Maybe you can't.
1132. 01:04:00 Maybe you're like me, you're married.
1133. 01:04:01 You got five kids at home, like you're not just going to walk away from a job
1134. 01:04:05 and say, I'm going to be an artist, you know?
1135. 01:04:06 Right.
1136. 01:04:08 Yeah, it really did.
1137. 01:04:08 Yeah, but you do want to recognize, you know, where where this is all, all
1138. 01:04:14 heading and it's kind of funny because you get yourself around the right
1139. 01:04:17 people who can, who know you and they can kind of see your life's trajectory.
1140. 01:04:22 And they can help point you in the right direction.
1141. 01:04:25 You know, it's kind of funny that you'd mentioned the story about your mom
1142. 01:04:28 like, Hey, I'm full time at church and I knew you're going to do that.
1143. 01:04:31 Like, well, why didn't you tell me?
1144. 01:04:32 It can save me five, 10 years, you know?
1145. 01:04:36 Okay.
1146. 01:04:37 Well, it's because you didn't ask and you didn't want to know.
1147. 01:04:39 And I've been in the same position.
1148. 01:04:41 It's not a knock on you, but well, and my character hadn't been built to the point
1149. 01:04:45 exactly that I was ready for that.
1150. 01:04:47 And I hadn't been through the experiences that were necessary to enable me to do
1151. 01:04:51 that, do a good job in this role.
1152. 01:04:52 So yep, but if you're younger and you're climbing the hyper individualism first
1153. 01:04:57 mountain, let me tell you, you can save yourself some heartache and some time.
1154. 01:05:02 If you open yourself up to the idea that maybe other people are right more than
1155. 01:05:06 you are.
1156. 01:05:07 One one side note on this vocation section.
1157. 01:05:12 He calls out Victor Frankel.
1158. 01:05:14 Yep.
1159. 01:05:15 And man search for meaning and tells Frankel's story.
1160. 01:05:20 If you if you don't know what we're talking about, go listen to that episode.
1161. 01:05:25 We we did that book, Victor Frankel, man search for meaning.
1162. 01:05:27 And he then comes back to Frankel throughout the rest of the book.
1163. 01:05:32 After this point, it just made me happy.
1164. 01:05:34 I was like, okay, that's that that's probably a pretty good mark on the positive
1165. 01:05:39 side of the columns for this one.
1166. 01:05:42 Bring up Frankel and talk highly of him.
1167. 01:05:44 I knew Victor Frankel was going to be mentioned at some point.
1168. 01:05:47 I just didn't know where it was.
1169. 01:05:48 Yeah.
1170. 01:05:49 So part three is when we get into marriage and the concept of maximal marriages.
1171. 01:05:56 How would you summarize this, Mike?
1172. 01:05:58 Uh, how would I summarize this?
1173. 01:06:01 Um, well, I forget which episode it was.
1174. 01:06:05 Maybe it was the last one when I was talking about relationships and.
1175. 01:06:12 How for me, basically, there were no other options because I am committed to my wife.
1176. 01:06:21 And I felt a little bit clumsy making that argument, but I knew.
1177. 01:06:29 I knew I was resolved in my spirit and I knew, you know, what I believed about it,
1178. 01:06:34 but I just felt like the way that I was describing it, if you didn't understand
1179. 01:06:38 already where I was coming from, it sounded a little bit weird.
1180. 01:06:41 And reading this section, I was like, man, I wish I could just go delete that
1181. 01:06:47 full argument from the internet and do it again.
1182. 01:06:51 Because he talks about how marriage is a decades long commitment in, in his, his
1183. 01:07:00 words, passion peaks among the young, but marriage is the thing that peaks in old
1184. 01:07:05 age.
1185. 01:07:06 And when you get married, you have no idea what changes you're going to go through
1186. 01:07:13 or what the other person is going to go through, but you're committed to the
1187. 01:07:18 relationship, and so you're willing to figure that out as you go.
1188. 01:07:23 The whole idea of like the contract versus the commitment that we mentioned
1189. 01:07:27 earlier, this is where I feel like that is really exemplified.
1190. 01:07:33 A maximal marriage is really one that stands the test of time and not just the
1191. 01:07:40 fact that you don't get divorced, but you completely remove yourself from that
1192. 01:07:48 culture of individualism, which in David Brooks's words undermines the maximal
1193. 01:07:53 definition of marriage.
1194. 01:07:56 So marriage is constantly dragging yourself away from the goals of self, your
1195. 01:08:02 heart yearns diffuse with others, he says, which can only be done through joint
1196. 01:08:05 surrender, not joint autonomy.
1197. 01:08:07 And he uses a quote by Mike Mason, we must return to an attitude of total
1198. 01:08:12 abandonment.
1199. 01:08:13 And if I were to describe my view on my marriage, it is that phrase specifically
1200. 01:08:19 totally abandoning all of the other options for the rest of my life and being
1201. 01:08:24 completely okay with that, which I, you know, as we talk about hyper
1202. 01:08:29 individualism and the focus on the self and I define less versus love earlier
1203. 01:08:33 and just focusing on like what's in it for me, you will never get to that point.
1204. 01:08:39 It's a, I recognize a very different way of looking at things.
1205. 01:08:44 But this is kind of what he says is how great marriages are measured.
1206. 01:08:50 It's not about your victories.
1207. 01:08:53 It's about taking joy in your spouse's victories.
1208. 01:08:56 He mentions on page 143, people talk about settling down, but in fact, marriage
1209. 01:09:00 is a hopeful revolution to people undertake together without any real idea
1210. 01:09:04 of what's on the other side.
1211. 01:09:05 Yeah.
1212. 01:09:06 You know, for your marriage to work, you've got to know that you're
1213. 01:09:09 spouse ball enough to love her in the way that will bring out her, her
1214. 01:09:13 loveliness.
1215. 01:09:13 You know, you can't, it's not about, it's not about you.
1216. 01:09:16 I guess if I were to summarize this whole chapter, that's that would be it.
1217. 01:09:19 It's not about you.
1218. 01:09:20 Sure.
1219. 01:09:20 No, I think that's a great way to look at it.
1220. 01:09:23 You know, my wife and I have been through a lot of ups and downs and with my health
1221. 01:09:28 problems of late, it of course turns up the heat and forces you to have
1222. 01:09:33 conversations that are not fun.
1223. 01:09:35 And we've been through a lot of that and reading this section, like, you know,
1224. 01:09:40 one of the things I think, you know, we need to work on is being more focused
1225. 01:09:43 on the others needs.
1226. 01:09:44 We do a pretty good job of that.
1227. 01:09:46 I'm not saying that this is a huge flaw.
1228. 01:09:49 We've talked about this quite a bit in our marriage, but maximal marriage is.
1229. 01:09:54 He does mention a number of ways that this comes to fruition.
1230. 01:09:59 And one of those is by seeing and noticing the nuances of how that other
1231. 01:10:05 person lives and likes to live and being willing to help them in that process.
1232. 01:10:12 It's definitely a long-term relationship and it's a commitment to interdependence.
1233. 01:10:17 And so much of what we see in a lot of the books that we've read for bookworm
1234. 01:10:24 is how to become better as you as an individual.
1235. 01:10:27 Yeah.
1236. 01:10:28 And in a lot of cases, it's how do you, when marriage is brought up, which isn't
1237. 01:10:33 a lot, but it does come up when it's brought up, it seems like there's this
1238. 01:10:38 error of, you know, taking care of your side of that marriage, which I'm not
1239. 01:10:44 saying is bad, but I also don't know that we've really caught that in the past.
1240. 01:10:49 And I would guess that if we went back and reread a lot of those sections,
1241. 01:10:52 that we would notice it more now.
1242. 01:10:53 Yeah.
1243. 01:10:54 Because having this view of interdependence and like we are here to work as one
1244. 01:11:00 isn't something that's talked about a lot, but you're making a commitment to do
1245. 01:11:05 things together instead of individually, which and not even not even the
1246. 01:11:10 interdependence where we're going to work as one, but the, I would, I would say
1247. 01:11:15 taking it a step further, the belief that we have to figure out how to make this
1248. 01:11:20 work because there's no going back.
1249. 01:11:22 Correct.
1250. 01:11:23 You're fully 100% all on board with, we have to figure out how to work together
1251. 01:11:28 in order to achieve a common goal.
1252. 01:11:33 And this is partly why I'm saying I want to have a lot of this conversation
1253. 01:11:38 with my wife, obviously on a deeper level.
1254. 01:11:42 I love you, Mike, but, you know, I want to have that conversation with her as well,
1255. 01:11:49 because this is something that we're going to have to go on a journey for
1256. 01:11:52 together.
1257. 01:11:53 So that's, that's something that we're that I'm planning to initiate this
1258. 01:11:59 afternoon, because this is something we are never done with, but you were always
1259. 01:12:03 on that journey of achieving.
1260. 01:12:05 Yep.
1261. 01:12:06 Exactly.
1262. 01:12:07 And then the thing that makes it work, David Brooks argues, is the fact that you
1263. 01:12:15 burn the bridges or burn the boats, so to speak.
1264. 01:12:17 He says that marriage is a sort of thing that is safer to go all in.
1265. 01:12:21 It's dangerous to go and have hearted.
1266. 01:12:23 So that's the part that I know is going to be radical to a lot of people.
1267. 01:12:27 Is this idea that like, wow, you really are all in for the rest of your life?
1268. 01:12:34 Yes, absolutely.
1269. 01:12:35 I am.
1270. 01:12:36 And that's not to discount that people will get into bad relationships.
1271. 01:12:42 And, you know, if you're, if you're significant, other is, is abusive, I would
1272. 01:12:47 argue like you want to get out of that.
1273. 01:12:49 But for the most part, it's, it is a commitment and it's up to you then to make
1274. 01:12:56 it work.
1275. 01:12:57 And the way that you make it work is not by thinking about yourself.
1276. 01:13:01 He mentions later on that divorce doesn't happen when conflicts increase.
1277. 01:13:05 It happens when positive things decrease.
1278. 01:13:08 And if you're focused on yourself and what you are getting, it's impossible for
1279. 01:13:14 the person to read your mind and they're probably just as selfish as you are.
1280. 01:13:19 So they're not going to give you everything that you want.
1281. 01:13:21 And when you don't get what you want, you will stew and brew and be negative.
1282. 01:13:25 If you are focused on the other person and you're constantly asking the question,
1283. 01:13:31 how can I bring surprise, joy, delight, show love, then you're going to create a
1284. 01:13:37 lot of positive things.
1285. 01:13:38 And so it's easy for me to see how people can get stuck in either a negative or a
1286. 01:13:44 positive cycle.
1287. 01:13:45 I want to break every negative cycle that ever happens because it will happen.
1288. 01:13:51 You know, it's not all puppies and rainbows all the time.
1289. 01:13:53 Newsflash for anybody who's not married.
1290. 01:13:56 The person isn't as perfect as you think they are and you're not as perfect as you
1291. 01:14:01 or they think you are.
1292. 01:14:02 But recognizing that that stuff is happening and making the shift back over to
1293. 01:14:09 the positive, that's kind of my goal.
1294. 01:14:12 My big takeaway from this is to, as he puts it, overwhelm the negative by increasing
1295. 01:14:16 the positive as much as I can.
1296. 01:14:18 So part four, philosophy and faith, he goes deep into Christianity and his
1297. 01:14:28 religious backgrounds in this section.
1298. 01:14:30 I think we can skip the majority of that because, yeah, it's basically his story.
1299. 01:14:35 But he does, he does talk a little bit at the beginning about something that he
1300. 01:14:40 saw happen in American universities from like the 1950s until now, where he says
1301. 01:14:46 that they used to believe in this humanistic idea, which is the teleological
1302. 01:14:50 purpose to help students answer the ultimate questions in life, kind of
1303. 01:14:53 teaching to the whole person.
1304. 01:14:54 And over time, they drop that humanistic ideal.
1305. 01:14:56 They embrace the research ideal, draws your focus away from the whole of our lives
1306. 01:15:00 and requires you focus on some small aspect instead.
1307. 01:15:03 I thought that was kind of interesting and he's an academic.
1308. 01:15:07 So his perspective as he recognizes this is kind of interesting to see
1309. 01:15:11 like the journey that he went through from a Marxist to a Jew to a Christian
1310. 01:15:15 to a Jew to, you know, all over the place.
1311. 01:15:17 You know, by the end of the story, you're really not even sure where exactly.
1312. 01:15:20 Yeah, I'm still not sure where he lands.
1313. 01:15:22 Yeah.
1314. 01:15:23 It's one of the longest sections in the book.
1315. 01:15:25 And most of it is his personal journey, which is interesting, but probably not
1316. 01:15:29 for bookworm listeners.
1317. 01:15:30 No, which like I enjoyed it.
1318. 01:15:34 I'm sure you did as well.
1319. 01:15:35 It's a fascinating journey.
1320. 01:15:37 If I have one complaint with the book, like that's probably going to be it.
1321. 01:15:41 Like that was probably a bit long, but I still found it interesting.
1322. 01:15:44 But that's because it fits exactly what I'm fascinated by.
1323. 01:15:47 So there you go.
1324. 01:15:48 Yep.
1325. 01:15:49 Actually, you know, it's not an outline, but one thing that was interesting
1326. 01:15:52 about this section in the last chapter in the section 22, Ramps and Walls, he
1327. 01:15:56 talks about the siege mentality, which is us against them.
1328. 01:15:59 And he talks about how this is the approach that a lot of Christians have.
1329. 01:16:04 This part really resonated with me, not because I think I embrace the siege
1330. 01:16:08 mentality, but you can totally see it from other people.
1331. 01:16:11 Like most, most people who are not Christians, they think of Christians and
1332. 01:16:14 they think of like the Westboro Baptist, the people who are like.
1333. 01:16:17 Yelling at people all the time, telling them they're going to hell, that sort of
1334. 01:16:21 thing.
1335. 01:16:21 And that's really very counterproductive, even if you think that that is your,
1336. 01:16:26 your mission is to proselytize people that way.
1337. 01:16:29 But he talks about how these different things that people typically do can
1338. 01:16:34 construct walls, things like bad listening, invasive care, you know, giving
1339. 01:16:38 help when people haven't asked for it.
1340. 01:16:40 Right.
1341. 01:16:41 Intellectual mediocrity was another one.
1342. 01:16:44 And then there's other things that are ramps, which make it easy for people to
1343. 01:16:48 embrace, I'll just say spirituality.
1344. 01:16:51 I think that's kind of how he'd find it in the book.
1345. 01:16:52 It's not a specific religion, but things like rituals, unabashed faith, prayer,
1346. 01:16:57 spiritual consciousness, language of good and evil, things like that.
1347. 01:17:02 I thought that part was, was really interesting.
1348. 01:17:04 And then there's one other idea here from this section.
1349. 01:17:09 Trying to find it now.
1350. 01:17:13 It also comes up in the community section, which we'll talk about next, but
1351. 01:17:17 this whole idea of down and out, basically, where you, you focus first on
1352. 01:17:27 yourself and then outward to other people.
1353. 01:17:31 And it's not, you know, using the tactics of building walls, but the
1354. 01:17:35 tactics that would build ramps, showing people that you care, not invasive care.
1355. 01:17:42 But I'm trying to think of a good example of this to kind of explain what
1356. 01:17:48 I'm talking about.
1357. 01:17:49 My church recently, we did a thing we called a block party.
1358. 01:17:54 So there's an area in our town, which is not, you know, small town.
1359. 01:18:00 Definitely don't have the extreme poverty like bigger cities do.
1360. 01:18:05 But there's an area which is government housing and the people who live there.
1361. 01:18:09 You know, it's not real great.
1362. 01:18:11 In fact, one of the buildings just got condemned that people were living.
1363. 01:18:14 So we show up and we have this block party in like this big open area.
1364. 01:18:19 And we set up human foods ball.
1365. 01:18:21 We've got like an inflatable obstacle course.
1366. 01:18:24 We've got like a hundred people from our church that are there.
1367. 01:18:26 There's music.
1368. 01:18:27 We give away stuff like a, we give away a gas card for people, a bus card, bikes,
1369. 01:18:33 scooters and things for kids.
1370. 01:18:34 We cook up all this food and we just give it all away.
1371. 01:18:37 It's completely free.
1372. 01:18:38 And like everybody from these apartments like comes and hangs out and obviously
1373. 01:18:42 they're like, well, why, why are you doing this?
1374. 01:18:44 You know, well, we just want to tell you God loves you.
1375. 01:18:47 You know, you, you're valuable.
1376. 01:18:48 And that's different than busting down the door and saying, Hey, get to
1377. 01:18:53 church.
1378. 01:18:54 Yeah.
1379. 01:18:56 You know, and that's, that's where the invasive care idea comes in as opposed
1380. 01:19:00 to like, we're just going to show up and we're going to do this thing for you.
1381. 01:19:04 If you want it, you know, you can obviously stay inside and decline the free meal.
1382. 01:19:08 There's plenty of people who do that.
1383. 01:19:09 But, um, you know, that's, that's the kind of thing that, uh, is going to be,
1384. 01:19:15 could be more beneficial for everybody involved.
1385. 01:19:18 That's kind of my, my goal.
1386. 01:19:21 You know, as I'm reading this, the section, I obviously have my own belief system.
1387. 01:19:27 You know, the reason why you, you do things and ultimately it is a second
1388. 01:19:31 mountain goal and that is to help other people, uh, but not just so that you
1389. 01:19:36 can check off the box and say there I did what I was supposed to do.
1390. 01:19:39 It's genuinely caring about the people and wanting to see their situation
1391. 01:19:43 improve and not using, well, I know better as the ultimate Trump card in order
1392. 01:19:49 to see that.
1393. 01:19:49 Right.
1394. 01:19:49 Right.
1395. 01:19:51 And I think that's what this whole section really comes down to is that you're
1396. 01:19:55 going to climb the second mountain.
1397. 01:19:56 Faith is going to have, uh, a role to play in that to some degree, even if you
1398. 01:20:05 claim to be an atheist, you're still dedicating faith in something, even if it
1399. 01:20:11 is just money and power.
1400. 01:20:12 I think that's definitely something you can put your faith in.
1401. 01:20:15 You'll always think you need more, but, you know, that's your choice.
1402. 01:20:20 So I do find this as an interesting section, but I'm not sure what else to
1403. 01:20:26 talk about with it.
1404. 01:20:27 So that said, let's go into part five community.
1405. 01:20:31 This is where this is some of what instigated my interest in, uh, this whole
1406. 01:20:39 intentional life community of sorts, which side note, I'm not building on
1407. 01:20:45 discourse, by the way, ooh, uh, I know that'll throw a wrench in things for
1408. 01:20:49 people.
1409. 01:20:50 Um, so, but this whole section on community is building relationships, really.
1410. 01:20:56 And so much of this book is that in a nutshell is building relationships and
1411. 01:21:02 being intentional with sharing life together and finding the way of doing that.
1412. 01:21:11 That helps you to truly feel like you are helping improve the world on a small
1413. 01:21:18 scale or a large scale.
1414. 01:21:20 Doesn't matter.
1415. 01:21:20 It depends on you.
1416. 01:21:22 Yep.
1417. 01:21:22 But this is something that I think all of us need to do, like of all the sections,
1418. 01:21:27 like, to me, the vocation section is incredibly important.
1419. 01:21:31 If you're married, the marriage section is super important.
1420. 01:21:35 The philosophy and faith piece, I would say is, is vital.
1421. 01:21:38 But the community piece, I think, is like the most down to earth.
1422. 01:21:42 Absolutely.
1423. 01:21:44 Everyone, no matter where you're at in this process, like you can jump
1424. 01:21:48 on board with this right away.
1425. 01:21:50 Yep.
1426. 01:21:50 Totally agree.
1427. 01:21:52 As I was reading through this, kind of when he was describing community, I was
1428. 01:21:57 thinking of like physical community, like where you live.
1429. 01:22:01 Right.
1430. 01:22:01 And I know that that is definitely one aspect of community, but I would argue
1431. 01:22:09 for me, it's not the primary one.
1432. 01:22:11 And the question that I had in the back of my head and kind of an action item
1433. 01:22:17 associated with this, though nothing super specific with this, the question
1434. 01:22:20 is basically, how can I build my communities?
1435. 01:22:23 Or basically, what can we build together as a community?
1436. 01:22:28 And when you look at something like the Bookworm Club, it's kind of cool to see
1437. 01:22:33 what that has evolved into.
1438. 01:22:36 But it's not something that you could have ever just done by yourself from scratch,
1439. 01:22:43 even if you had a vision for this is what this thing could be part of community
1440. 01:22:48 growth.
1441. 01:22:49 Kind of what I got from going through this anyways, is that it kind of has to be
1442. 01:22:54 organic.
1443. 01:22:55 It has to evolve over time.
1444. 01:22:57 You can kind of set it up to go the direction that you want.
1445. 01:23:01 He talks about how the community narrative has four different parts.
1446. 01:23:05 Framing, which is the context, the narrative or what's going on, the identity,
1447. 01:23:09 which is who we are.
1448. 01:23:10 And then the behavior, which are the actions that define us.
1449. 01:23:13 Like you can set the defaults for those, but then if you really want to build a
1450. 01:23:17 thriving community, you have to be willing to adapt those, I would argue,
1451. 01:23:21 which is kind of interesting and also kind of challenging.
1452. 01:23:28 So as I'm going through this, I'm kind of getting a different blueprint, I guess,
1453. 01:23:36 for how I am supposed to be interacting with my different
1454. 01:23:43 communities.
1455. 01:23:44 It has to be the key you mentioned a little bit earlier is the intentionality behind it.
1456. 01:23:50 You know, just the fact that you've got people gathered together doesn't mean
1457. 01:23:55 that there's a community connections have to be made.
1458. 01:23:58 So the question in the back of my head is kind of how do I facilitate that
1459. 01:24:04 connection making?
1460. 01:24:05 For sure.
1461. 01:24:06 Like it's a difficult thing.
1462. 01:24:08 Like I just finished reading The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
1463. 01:24:14 And that's a lot of what she talks about is how do you put together these events
1464. 01:24:20 or these, these gatherings that draw people in and have people continuing to talk
1465. 01:24:27 about them.
1466. 01:24:27 And so much of that plays into this because exactly what she's talking about is
1467. 01:24:31 building communities.
1468. 01:24:32 She never says that per se, but that's what she's referring to.
1469. 01:24:38 This is the same thing in that whenever you're putting together moments or events,
1470. 01:24:43 whether they're in person or they're online on something like the Bookworm Club
1471. 01:24:48 or on the new analog Joe thing, no matter where those are, the whole point
1472. 01:24:55 is to connect with other people in some form.
1473. 01:24:57 I have all kinds of visions of how that could happen in person.
1474. 01:25:02 I have thoughts on how you can do that online.
1475. 01:25:06 I think both have their place, but again, if you're intentional and you make a
1476. 01:25:11 decision about how you want that to happen, don't think about it in the way
1477. 01:25:18 that it needs to happen super long term, like making a 10 year plan.
1478. 01:25:22 Like I could see where you want to do that.
1479. 01:25:23 It's where like making the plan is everything, but having a plan is nothing
1480. 01:25:27 like that whole concept.
1481. 01:25:28 Like you're going to deviate from it.
1482. 01:25:31 But that whole mentality of like, let's decide what we're going to be
1483. 01:25:36 intentional about in this next interaction and then grow from there.
1484. 01:25:41 Like that, that to me is super important.
1485. 01:25:44 Yeah.
1486. 01:25:44 And just to clarify, I guess a little bit because in the code of the neighbor
1487. 01:25:49 section, he talks about this concept of having 30 year eyes where you do look
1488. 01:25:54 30 years into the picture or into the future, right?
1489. 01:25:56 Right.
1490. 01:25:56 About the thing that you're building, but that's different.
1491. 01:25:59 Like you're not interacting with the people around you in your community today
1492. 01:26:04 with the specific perspective of what can I get from you in 30 years?
1493. 01:26:09 Correct.
1494. 01:26:10 Yes.
1495. 01:26:11 That's that's the difference there.
1496. 01:26:13 And then the other thing that's kind of crazy about this, especially as people who
1497. 01:26:18 work in the productivity space and are huge tech nerds, is that relationships
1498. 01:26:23 don't scale.
1499. 01:26:23 Yeah.
1500. 01:26:25 There's no automation to this.
1501. 01:26:27 No, there's no technological way to make it more efficient.
1502. 01:26:30 Like you just got to put in the time, but obviously the whole just of the book is
1503. 01:26:35 that the relationships are the main thing.
1504. 01:26:37 People are the main thing and that it's worth it.
1505. 01:26:38 I like that.
1506. 01:26:39 Anything else you want to add to this before we wrap?
1507. 01:26:43 I don't think so.
1508. 01:26:45 I mean, I put in the outline, this idea of the central journey.
1509. 01:26:48 There's really not a whole lot to say about this.
1510. 01:26:50 I think we just kind of encapsulated this, but this is the term he uses for
1511. 01:26:53 making that move from self to service, where it's all about me to it's all about
1512. 01:26:59 other people.
1513. 01:26:59 And I like that term, essential journey.
1514. 01:27:02 So I'll probably use that going forward.
1515. 01:27:05 If you hear me drop that term, that's what it means.
1516. 01:27:07 No, I like that.
1517. 01:27:10 I like ending there.
1518. 01:27:11 So that said action items, Mike, what you got?
1519. 01:27:15 I have a couple of action questions, not action items.
1520. 01:27:22 So the first one, well, I'll mention the one that I mentioned already, which is
1521. 01:27:26 asking myself the question, how can I build my communities in a more effective
1522. 01:27:30 way, not more efficiently, more effective, so deep in the relationships that I have,
1523. 01:27:37 basically.
1524. 01:27:38 And then the other question that I want to ask myself comes from the first section,
1525. 01:27:46 I believe.
1526. 01:27:48 I can't remember if it's the vocation section or if it's the very first section
1527. 01:27:52 where he's talking about the two mountains.
1528. 01:27:54 But he talks about the concept of mentors a little bit and how mentors kind of
1529. 01:28:02 inspire you to push through things.
1530. 01:28:07 Let me see where I wrote that down.
1531. 01:28:09 Oh, yeah.
1532. 01:28:10 Chapter 11, what mentors do?
1533. 01:28:11 He makes a point that there's some things you can't learn in books and mentors teach
1534. 01:28:16 us what excellence looks like day to day.
1535. 01:28:18 They teach you how to embrace the struggle.
1536. 01:28:19 And I really liked that definition and it makes me ask the question, who do I
1537. 01:28:26 consider to be my mentors?
1538. 01:28:29 I don't think I have a formal mentor relationship.
1539. 01:28:32 I do have a couple of people specifically who I would argue they do have to be
1540. 01:28:37 older than you because there is value in the life experience that people have.
1541. 01:28:43 There's a couple of people in my life that I can think of specifically who
1542. 01:28:47 kind of serve that role for me.
1543. 01:28:49 I'm not sure if I've ever told them that they serve that role for me.
1544. 01:28:52 So one, obviously, is going to be my dad.
1545. 01:28:56 One is going to be David Sparks, my co-host over at Focused.
1546. 01:29:01 And one of them is going to be Mike Diamond, who is a guy in my Apple
1547. 01:29:05 to mastermind, who I've learned a lot from.
1548. 01:29:07 But I want to ask that question and think about who are the other people that I
1549. 01:29:13 have access to that could be mentors for me.
1550. 01:29:16 And it doesn't have to be something where like, OK, we're going to meet once a
1551. 01:29:19 week and I'm going to bring a notebook and you just say whatever you want.
1552. 01:29:22 But I think the value is in recognizing the people who have the potential to be
1553. 01:29:28 my mentors and then placing more emphasis, attention, importance on what
1554. 01:29:33 they have to say, if that makes sense.
1555. 01:29:35 It does.
1556. 01:29:36 It does.
1557. 01:29:37 I think that was in the whole mentors thing is in the vocation section.
1558. 01:29:41 Right.
1559. 01:29:42 And they're, oh, by the way, I'm an idiot.
1560. 01:29:44 One other one, I do have to call out because I do have like a regular
1561. 01:29:47 relationship, but I just described, you know, I do regular discipleship with my
1562. 01:29:50 pastor.
1563. 01:29:51 He's another person that I would definitely define as a mentor.
1564. 01:29:54 Um, I just am so used to it.
1565. 01:29:56 I guess that didn't, my brain didn't go there.
1566. 01:29:58 Nice.
1567. 01:30:01 Well, I've got two action items here.
1568. 01:30:02 One is, and I've mentioned this a few times, this talk with my wife.
1569. 01:30:05 Uh, I just want to work through some of this.
1570. 01:30:08 There may be more action items that come from that.
1571. 01:30:10 Hopefully not on a honeydew format, but, you know, here we go.
1572. 01:30:15 Uh, another one, this one just mentioned in passing.
1573. 01:30:17 They were referring to a certain area where there was a family and they got
1574. 01:30:22 around a table and then after they were done eating, they would go grab a piano
1575. 01:30:26 and play music and sing.
1576. 01:30:28 My wife and I've kind of wanted to do that for a long time of just starting to
1577. 01:30:33 get together with our girls and play a piano and, you know, play a record or
1578. 01:30:38 something and sing with it together.
1579. 01:30:40 Like that's something I've wanted to do for a long time.
1580. 01:30:43 I think it's about time we started doing it.
1581. 01:30:44 I'm going to do that tonight.
1582. 01:30:46 We're going to start this mic.
1583. 01:30:47 Awesome.
1584. 01:30:48 I love that one.
1585. 01:30:49 It'll be a fun one.
1586. 01:30:49 All right.
1587. 01:30:50 Style and rating hit me.
1588. 01:30:52 All right.
1589. 01:30:53 Uh, this is a very meaty book.
1590. 01:30:56 It's a very good book.
1591. 01:30:58 It's also kind of different.
1592. 01:31:00 Um, from a lot of the stuff that we read that I really, really enjoy.
1593. 01:31:05 Like I mentioned, I barely got this one done.
1594. 01:31:08 I've been reading this one actually for almost two weeks, but it's a kind of
1595. 01:31:12 thing where like I'll sit down to read it at night.
1596. 01:31:13 The chapters are short.
1597. 01:31:14 I'll read eight pages and then I just got to like come up for a breath and kind
1598. 01:31:18 of think about what I just read.
1599. 01:31:20 So very felt very different than a lot of the other books that, you know,
1600. 01:31:25 even crank through in a day or two.
1601. 01:31:27 And when I was considering author style and rating, I was thinking back to like
1602. 01:31:32 how I've read this book compared to some of those other ones, like mindset.
1603. 01:31:36 I really just devoured Victor Frankl, you know, his man search for meaning.
1604. 01:31:40 We mentioned a couple of those other ones make time that I just like, I
1605. 01:31:44 couldn't put it down.
1606. 01:31:45 This was definitely not one that I couldn't put down and it made me question
1607. 01:31:48 like, well, does that diminish the quality of the book?
1608. 01:31:51 And after talking through it, I think I've decided that no, it does not.
1609. 01:31:57 Uh, it's definitely not going to be for everybody.
1610. 01:32:00 There is also obviously a faith based component to this.
1611. 01:32:04 I wouldn't, I would say it's not.
1612. 01:32:07 It's pretty subtle, like he mentions it where it's appropriate, but it is
1613. 01:32:11 definitely not beating you over the head with it.
1614. 01:32:14 And you can definitely glean everything out of the book without subscribing to,
1615. 01:32:21 to his belief system, which you really don't even, like we mentioned, we really
1616. 01:32:25 don't even know exactly what it is because he's just kind of sharing his, his
1617. 01:32:29 experiences.
1618. 01:32:30 And I should say that I didn't really, like, it was quite a ways into it before
1619. 01:32:35 I fully connected that he was a Bible believing person in some form.
1620. 01:32:43 It took me like it was probably two thirds of the way through the book before
1621. 01:32:46 I even connected that.
1622. 01:32:47 Yeah.
1623. 01:32:48 So it's definitely not a religious book.
1624. 01:32:50 It's not a faith book.
1625. 01:32:52 It is, you know, the subtitle says it all the quest for a moral life.
1626. 01:32:56 It's a character building book.
1627. 01:32:58 Uh, it's kind of interesting to hear him talk about the lessons you learned
1628. 01:33:01 from the previous books that he had written.
1629. 01:33:04 You know, he's a New York Times best selling author.
1630. 01:33:05 He's a really, really good writer.
1631. 01:33:08 Sometimes it's a little bit detrimental because he's so smart that you kind of
1632. 01:33:13 have to stop and think about what you just read to really understand it.
1633. 01:33:17 You know, like, if you write online, there's tools that'll help you write
1634. 01:33:20 like a fifth grade reading level, like, uh, what's that?
1635. 01:33:23 Yoast SEO, I think is the plugin for WordPress, where I tell you, like your
1636. 01:33:27 readability is too high.
1637. 01:33:28 Well, if you struggle with that, then you're not going to like David Brooks for
1638. 01:33:33 sure, but, you know, if you don't mind something that is, uh, you know, a
1639. 01:33:39 little bit that requires you to chew on it a little bit, then this book is, is
1640. 01:33:44 phenomenal.
1641. 01:33:44 I'm really glad that I read it not just because he seems to like the same themes
1642. 01:33:48 that, that I like, I feel like reading this.
1643. 01:33:51 I learned a lot.
1644. 01:33:52 I gained a lot of insight.
1645. 01:33:54 I understood a lot of things in a different light.
1646. 01:33:56 You know, the light bulb went on a couple different times like, oh, that's
1647. 01:33:59 why I have an issue with this.
1648. 01:34:02 It's a long book for sure.
1649. 01:34:03 He cites a lot of other stuff from a lot of other people, which if I had one nitpick
1650. 01:34:08 with this book, I would say that that would be the thing.
1651. 01:34:12 You know, somebody told me one time that I have been in this space long enough
1652. 01:34:17 that I can synthesize these ideas and have my own spin to it and not have to give
1653. 01:34:21 people credit every single time I mentioned, you know, an idea.
1654. 01:34:25 Uh, and that's kind of what he does.
1655. 01:34:30 So and so says this and this book, they say that, you know, and that got a little
1656. 01:34:34 bit old for me because really what I wanted to know was what David Brooks was
1657. 01:34:37 saying.
1658. 01:34:37 You know, I get it.
1659. 01:34:38 There's a lot of value in how he pieces all of this stuff together, but it would
1660. 01:34:44 be a more interesting read, I think, if it was, you know, just him speaking and him
1661. 01:34:49 not trying to like download everything that he has learned in his entire life
1662. 01:34:53 into one volume, if that makes sense.
1663. 01:34:56 Uh, I'm going to write it at 4.5 stars just because it is a little bit difficult
1664. 01:35:01 to get through.
1665. 01:35:01 I can totally see a scenario where somebody hears us talking about this.
1666. 01:35:05 They go pick up the book, they start reading it and they just, they can't get
1667. 01:35:08 through it.
1668. 01:35:08 Yeah.
1669. 01:35:09 Uh, but I would encourage you to push past that if you can, because there is a lot
1670. 01:35:14 of great stuff in here.
1671. 01:35:15 I feel like the, the journey that he describes is something that is inevitable
1672. 01:35:20 for just about everyone.
1673. 01:35:21 And so if you're able to glean a little bit of wisdom before you get there, that
1674. 01:35:28 would definitely be a good thing.
1675. 01:35:29 You know, I mentioned, I feel like I've kind of gone through some of this stuff.
1676. 01:35:33 I probably have to go through it again at some point, but also in the back of my
1677. 01:35:36 head, I'm like, man, I wish I would have read this earlier.
1678. 01:35:37 I probably would have responded a little bit more appropriately when I had to go
1679. 01:35:44 through that stuff.
1680. 01:35:44 Sure.
1681. 01:35:45 And again, you know, you can't look back and say, well, that was a mistake or I
1682. 01:35:51 wish that wouldn't have happened.
1683. 01:35:52 It happened, learn what you can from it and try to do better next time.
1684. 01:35:55 So, but yeah, I really enjoyed this book.
1685. 01:35:58 Uh, I'm glad that I, that it was recommended to me.
1686. 01:36:01 I'm glad everybody in the book room, well voted for it.
1687. 01:36:03 I'm glad that I got to talk to you about it.
1688. 01:36:05 Well, I, I love this book.
1689. 01:36:09 I'm with you in saying that I wish I had finished reading this one much earlier.
1690. 01:36:15 I would have liked to have read this twice before we recorded it, but I love it.
1691. 01:36:20 I mean, it's a great book and there's a lot of stories to it.
1692. 01:36:23 I really liked that.
1693. 01:36:24 He's an extremely well read author, uh, which I always tend to appreciate.
1694. 01:36:30 To your point, this is not a third grade reading level.
1695. 01:36:34 This is definitely higher than that.
1696. 01:36:36 I definitely appreciate that though.
1697. 01:36:38 In, in my case, like I, it was kind of a breath of fresh air to some degree.
1698. 01:36:42 It's like, okay, you're not just going to spoon feed me everything.
1699. 01:36:45 You're going to make me actually process through this.
1700. 01:36:48 So this is not one.
1701. 01:36:50 Like I had a hard time putting it down.
1702. 01:36:51 I will say that, but it's not one that I found myself, uh, struggling to read.
1703. 01:36:58 But maybe that's because we've read so much at this point.
1704. 01:37:02 That could be the case.
1705. 01:37:03 Uh, it definitely got to me a little bit when he started getting into some
1706. 01:37:08 evicted or Frankles things in my head.
1707. 01:37:10 I was like, oh, he mentioned Frankle.
1708. 01:37:12 Mike's going to rate it a five.
1709. 01:37:13 Like that's what went through my head.
1710. 01:37:16 Definitely not necessarily true and definitely shouldn't hold up just by that.
1711. 01:37:22 Well, kids could be made for sure.
1712. 01:37:24 Yeah, because Victor Frankles has been brought up in other books that were not rated well.
1713. 01:37:29 So that, that can be a factor there.
1714. 01:37:33 I will join you at four point five, mostly because there's there.
1715. 01:37:39 I don't think it's for everybody per se, because it is a little bit more
1716. 01:37:43 difficult to read.
1717. 01:37:44 There are a couple sections.
1718. 01:37:45 I wish he had shortened and shouldn't have elaborated on.
1719. 01:37:48 I think there was some of it.
1720. 01:37:49 He just wanted to tell his story.
1721. 01:37:51 And although some of that is good, I think he overdid it and sure it took away
1722. 01:37:58 from what he was trying to say and lengthened a section that shouldn't have been.
1723. 01:38:02 Thus the book ended up a little bit longer than I felt it should have been.
1724. 01:38:05 But I really, really enjoyed this and it has prompted me to ask some hard
1725. 01:38:10 questions that not every book will ask or cause me to ask.
1726. 01:38:15 So I'll join you at four point five.
1727. 01:38:17 It's a great book.
1728. 01:38:18 I definitely recommend it.
1729. 01:38:19 Awesome.
1730. 01:38:20 So what do we read next?
1731. 01:38:22 Up next, getting results the agile way by J.D.
1732. 01:38:26 Meyer.
1733. 01:38:26 This one's been on my list for a while.
1734. 01:38:28 It's kind of a companion to GTD way back episode one, but has its own flair on things.
1735. 01:38:36 So I'm, I want to drag you along with me on this one, Mike.
1736. 01:38:40 All right.
1737. 01:38:40 The next book after that is not Sapiens.
1738. 01:38:44 Sorry, Josh.
1739. 01:38:45 Just because I feel like this book was was more than I thought it was going to be.
1740. 01:38:54 I need a little bit of a breather before we tackle that one.
1741. 01:38:57 But the next highest voted for book on the club is range.
1742. 01:39:03 Why Generals Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.
1743. 01:39:08 And this, I know nothing about this book other than what people shared in the book
1744. 01:39:13 or in club when they recommended it in the discussion that followed.
1745. 01:39:15 Sounds fascinating though.
1746. 01:39:17 And I'm very intrigued by this topic.
1747. 01:39:18 When we were at Mac stock, this was on one of the shelves there.
1748. 01:39:21 I kind of flipped through it.
1749. 01:39:22 I don't know if I handed it to you or not.
1750. 01:39:24 Hmm.
1751. 01:39:24 I should have bought it.
1752. 01:39:25 It looks like an interesting book.
1753. 01:39:27 So that's nice choice.
1754. 01:39:29 Well done, sir.
1755. 01:39:30 For a gap book, I have this one sitting on my shelf.
1756. 01:39:34 Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon.
1757. 01:39:36 I'm picking it up like this morning is when I first picked it up.
1758. 01:39:40 I don't really know what I'm expecting out of that, but it sounds like an interesting book.
1759. 01:39:45 All right.
1760. 01:39:46 My gap book was recommended to me by several different listeners.
1761. 01:39:52 And that is Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.
1762. 01:39:55 This is a guy who has gone through some stuff.
1763. 01:39:58 I don't know.
1764. 01:40:00 I haven't started this book yet, but I do know that from what I was told about it.
1765. 01:40:05 But anyways, that he's a Marine, I believe.
1766. 01:40:08 And when you join the Marines, you have to go through what they call Hell Week.
1767. 01:40:12 And the goal of Hell Week is to get you to quit.
1768. 01:40:15 The majority of people I believe do or something like 40% do.
1769. 01:40:19 He had to go through it three times.
1770. 01:40:21 So this will be this will be an interesting one about resilience, I believe, and
1771. 01:40:28 and grit to borrow Angela Duckworth's term.
1772. 01:40:31 And it sounds interesting.
1773. 01:40:33 Yeah.
1774. 01:40:34 I don't think, you know, this is primarily a story, I believe.
1775. 01:40:37 I'm not sure that this, there's a whole lot of necessarily like straight out advice in this, but
1776. 01:40:43 that's okay.
1777. 01:40:44 It's a gap book.
1778. 01:40:45 And if you want to join the club and recommend your own books, you can do that
1779. 01:40:50 over at club.bookworm.fm.
1780. 01:40:53 Lots of cool conversations happening over there.
1781. 01:40:56 Lots of cool people hanging out there.
1782. 01:40:57 So go join the club.
1783. 01:40:59 Yeah, we've really enjoyed the club.
1784. 01:41:01 It's been kind of fun.
1785. 01:41:02 And, you know, I don't know how many times we've mentioned it on this show, not intentionally.
1786. 01:41:05 It's just kind of come up quite a bit, whether it's premium members or on the free side.
1787. 01:41:11 It's just a, it's a fun place to have conversations about these books.
1788. 01:41:14 There's even conversations going on about some of the gap book recommendations that are coming out now.
1789. 01:41:19 So it's kind of fun.
1790. 01:41:20 So thanks for joining the club.
1791. 01:41:22 If you're there, if you haven't, join us over on club.bookworm.fm.
1792. 01:41:26 And that said, let's pick up Getting Results the Adjaw Way by J.D.
1793. 01:41:30 Meyer.
1794. 01:41:30 We'll go through it next time.