80: Principles by Ray Dalio

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1. 00:00:00 Okay, Joe, you did something last episode that made me very nervous.
2. 00:00:03 We got to find out what is the book that you are going to be picking next.
3. 00:00:07 See, you got kind of nervous about this and got kind of worried and I sensed that, but
4. 00:00:15 I felt like it would be just fine.
5. 00:00:17 But we did have a winner and they picked a really good one too, Mike.
6. 00:00:22 So the problem with this going so well is it makes me want to do it again.
7. 00:00:27 Oh boy.
8. 00:00:28 So I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I feel like this should become a game in
9. 00:00:33 some form.
10. 00:00:34 I need to figure that out.
11. 00:00:35 But for those who didn't attend the live recording, here's how this went.
12. 00:00:40 Joe sprung it on me live and I basically was like, absolutely not.
13. 00:00:43 I hold veto power.
14. 00:00:45 Yadda yadda yadda.
15. 00:00:46 And then I edited it all down.
16. 00:00:48 And if you listened to the downloaded version, none of that was in there.
17. 00:00:51 So basically you were left with the impression that whatever was going to be picked was going
18. 00:00:56 to be the book that we were going to be covering, or you were going to be picking next.
19. 00:01:00 Yeah.
20. 00:01:01 And that's kind of the way I wanted to leave it as an experiment.
21. 00:01:04 And this one was successful.
22. 00:01:06 So I guess that maybe proves your point that it kind of works, but also I was kind of,
23. 00:01:15 I guess, in the back of my mind, hoping that this would be a disaster and we wouldn't
24. 00:01:18 have to do it.
25. 00:01:19 Just being honest.
26. 00:01:20 That's a fair assessment, but this one went really well.
27. 00:01:25 We do have a winner.
28. 00:01:26 It was awful.
29. 00:01:27 Otter chose the infinite game by Simon Sennick.
30. 00:01:31 Now that means, so today we have our book and then my next choice I'll talk about later,
31. 00:01:38 but it will be the one following that on my end.
32. 00:01:41 So today my next choice, Mike's choice, and then the infinite game will come at that point.
33. 00:01:48 So that would be episode.
34. 00:01:49 What is it?
35. 00:01:50 81, 82, it'd be episode 83.
36. 00:01:54 This is what that'll be.
37. 00:01:55 The infinite game by Simon Sennick.
38. 00:01:57 So well done, awful Otter.
39. 00:01:59 Congratulations.
40. 00:02:00 Well done, I guess.
41. 00:02:02 Thanks for reinforcing Joe's habit of springing stuff on me as we record live.
42. 00:02:07 I like springing things on Mike and I don't know why.
43. 00:02:10 I'm sorry, sir.
44. 00:02:12 You like to see me freak out probably.
45. 00:02:14 I feel like I get better genuine reactions out of you if I spring it to you live while
46. 00:02:19 we're recording.
47. 00:02:21 That is probably true.
48. 00:02:22 So we are going to be doing the infinite game, which is cool because I saw that Simon Sennick
49. 00:02:28 had a new book out and I was kind of the back of my mind hoping that that one would come
50. 00:02:32 across the club and people would vote for it, which is how I typically pick the books that
51. 00:02:38 we're going to be covering.
52. 00:02:40 So this one I'm excited to read.
53. 00:02:43 I'm a big fan of Simon Sennick's.
54. 00:02:45 We've covered start with why before, but I've read leaders last two and I was a big fan
55. 00:02:49 of that book.
56. 00:02:50 It makes us to dive into this one.
57. 00:02:52 I own the book leaders eat last and I ran across it at a thrift store.
58. 00:02:58 I don't know why I love hunting books at thrift stores.
59. 00:03:01 It's like a thing I do and I was rummaging through them and I ran across leaders eat
60. 00:03:07 last and it occurred to me.
61. 00:03:09 This is kind of in a weird spot and I look up and I'm in like the cookbooks area.
62. 00:03:14 It's like someone had stuck leaders eat last in the cooking section.
63. 00:03:20 So fun times, but I have done, I sent out, we've talked about my email newsletter a few
64. 00:03:26 times here on the show, but I sent one out here a couple days ago about a new project
65. 00:03:32 that I have undertaken and that a few people are pretty excited about.
66. 00:03:36 It's going to actually come out very quickly.
67. 00:03:39 I think it'll be out.
68. 00:03:40 Let's see.
69. 00:03:41 When does this release?
70. 00:03:42 It'll be on Friday.
71. 00:03:43 It'll be about five days or so after this episode releases.
72. 00:03:49 This will be live, but I'm revamping and redoing working with OmniFocus.
73. 00:03:55 This is my third time revamping this.
74. 00:03:57 So it works out well.
75. 00:03:58 It's like working with OmniFocus 3 and we're on OmniFocus 3.
76. 00:04:03 This works great.
77. 00:04:05 So I'm in the middle of all of my outlining and planning and scriptwriting and such for
78. 00:04:11 all of that and have been doing a little bit of recording.
79. 00:04:15 I know my speed with that sort of thing.
80. 00:04:18 So I know I should be in pretty good shape to get that done and released.
81. 00:04:23 I think it's November 20th is the release date for that.
82. 00:04:27 So I'm pretty excited about this one, Mike.
83. 00:04:30 It's been a while since I've gotten into the whole screencasting thing and released something
84. 00:04:35 in that space.
85. 00:04:36 So I'm excited to get back into it.
86. 00:04:37 It has been a while and I'm curious once you start doing it again, if you have a big
87. 00:04:42 learning curve or if it's riding a bike and you just pick up where you left off.
88. 00:04:46 I'm really hoping for the latter of those.
89. 00:04:49 Well, screen flow is basically the same.
90. 00:04:52 Yeah, and I'm still on the old version of it.
91. 00:04:55 Yeah, it's been a while since I've seen a Joe Buellig screencast.
92. 00:04:59 I can't say I'm at screencast online quality, but one of the things I wanted to put out
93. 00:05:05 about that is I have been like, I'm not a huge mind mapper, but I have been for this
94. 00:05:10 particular course, I've been doing a lot of mind mapping and mind node.
95. 00:05:15 Just because I know you use it all the time and of course the members of the show get
96. 00:05:21 access to your mind node files and I was building out my outline for this.
97. 00:05:27 When you texted me, your fun news with my node, which I did not know was possible.
98. 00:05:34 How did you do this?
99. 00:05:35 Yeah, so I texted Joe and I, well, actually I didn't let you know as it was happening,
100. 00:05:43 but I sent the final version and then I put in the details, I let you know that I thought
101. 00:05:48 I broke my node, which is true.
102. 00:05:51 I thought I did because one of these nights this week as I was finishing today's book,
103. 00:05:56 which is 540 something pages, I went to open my mind node application on my iPhone where
104. 00:06:05 I always take notes when I'm reading books and when I opened it, I usually leave the mind
105. 00:06:12 node file that I'm working on as the open document.
106. 00:06:15 When it went to the mind node application, I got a pop up message that said that the
107. 00:06:21 file was corrupted, the only thing I could do is tap OK and then the file was immediately
108. 00:06:26 deleted from iCloud.
109. 00:06:29 So I couldn't find it on any of my devices and I was a page like 480 something at the
110. 00:06:35 time and I was like, you got to be kidding me, I just lost the entire mind node file for
111. 00:06:40 principles because my approach to this, well, I've shared before that typically when I read
112. 00:06:46 a book, I'm just jotting down the things that stand out to me.
113. 00:06:49 This book is a little bit different.
114. 00:06:50 This is a summary of like everything Ray Dalio has ever learned and he's got a handy reference
115. 00:06:56 in the middle of the physical book that I wanted to kind of recreate as a digital version
116. 00:07:01 that I could search because I think that this is something I'm going to want to go back
117. 00:07:04 and reference down the road.
118. 00:07:07 And so I said about to do that and this file, the mind node file, which includes mainly
119. 00:07:15 text a few images as there's different diagrams and things and I would snap a photo on my
120. 00:07:20 phone and embed it in the mind node file.
121. 00:07:23 But this mind node file alone is 168 megabytes.
122. 00:07:29 So I thought to myself, well, this thing just got so big that mind node can't handle it
123. 00:07:34 and it just freaked out when it's open the file.
124. 00:07:37 What actually happened, I think, is that iCloud was being iCloud and there are issues with
125. 00:07:43 iCloud.
126. 00:07:45 People share stories all the time about, oh, my shortcuts disappeared or whatever.
127. 00:07:49 Like, there's weird stuff that's going on with iCloud right now and I think that iCloud
128. 00:07:54 did something while it was syncing with that package file that it just didn't, it was an
129. 00:08:00 Apple thing.
130. 00:08:01 It was not a mind node thing.
131. 00:08:02 I was able to go into iCloud.com on my computer and go restore the file and then once I opened
132. 00:08:09 it again, I've had no issues since then.
133. 00:08:12 But it's gotten me a little bit nervous about things.
134. 00:08:17 At least I know now that I can go back and find them because when I opened it up, I'd
135. 00:08:23 drill down into the settings in my iOS devices.
136. 00:08:26 You can't find it that way.
137. 00:08:27 The only way I could find a file was going into iCloud.com and then you can see a list
138. 00:08:31 of the files that you've recently deleted and you can download one to your computer.
139. 00:08:36 That's what I did.
140. 00:08:37 Then I moved it back into iCloud and it seems to be working.
141. 00:08:40 For a moment there, it was a little bit scary and I legitimately thought that I had hit
142. 00:08:44 the limit for what my node can handle in terms of size.
143. 00:08:49 If you see this thing, you'll understand why I thought that.
144. 00:08:52 Yeah.
145. 00:08:53 I would say we were talking about this a little bit before we jumped on and I pulled
146. 00:08:58 up Mike's file for this particular book.
147. 00:09:02 It's intense.
148. 00:09:06 There is a ton of information about this book in that my node file.
149. 00:09:12 I might have to spend some time with this mic and I read the book.
150. 00:09:15 This is nuts.
151. 00:09:16 Well done.
152. 00:09:17 Well, like I said, this is not my standard approach.
153. 00:09:21 I'm not trying to recreate the book.
154. 00:09:23 99.9% of the time when I read it.
155. 00:09:26 What I saw when I looked at the physical copy of the book, that there's a special section
156. 00:09:31 in the middle that's easy to find and then it's got two different bookmarks for the different
157. 00:09:35 sections which we'll get into in a minute here.
158. 00:09:38 I just thought to myself that, oh, this is intended to be a reference book.
159. 00:09:42 I make a digital version of this.
160. 00:09:45 Can I do that with my node?
161. 00:09:46 It might be a lot of work.
162. 00:09:47 Nah, it won't be that bad.
163. 00:09:48 It was that bad.
164. 00:09:49 It wasn't a ton of work.
165. 00:09:52 But I'm glad I got it done now and it's searchable.
166. 00:09:55 So that's cool.
167. 00:09:56 Hey, there's that.
168. 00:09:57 I just took pictures of the references in the middle.
169. 00:10:01 I could have done that probably.
170. 00:10:03 But take pictures, OCR it and call it good.
171. 00:10:06 I'm a nerd.
172. 00:10:08 Like you mentioned, I upload my My Map files to the club.
173. 00:10:14 If you are a premium member and you're giving us a couple bucks a month, first of all, thank
174. 00:10:19 you so much for your support.
175. 00:10:21 Also, go check out the book notes section because that's where all of these things live.
176. 00:10:25 There's a lot in there.
177. 00:10:26 There is.
178. 00:10:27 I try to upload them all for every book that we read.
179. 00:10:29 I include my gap books when I do them.
180. 00:10:31 My nodes for them also.
181. 00:10:34 They're all PDF files so you can download those and they're not super huge.
182. 00:10:38 The PDF for this one I think is like five megabytes.
183. 00:10:40 All right.
184. 00:10:41 So should we talk about today's book?
185. 00:10:43 Yes.
186. 00:10:44 This will be fun one.
187. 00:10:45 This is a big one.
188. 00:10:46 It should be a ton of fun.
189. 00:10:48 This is Principles by Ray Dalio.
190. 00:10:50 I know you had picked this as a gap book and you had had it as a gap book for a couple
191. 00:10:54 different episodes.
192. 00:10:55 At the time, I just thought honestly you were being slow in reading it.
193. 00:10:59 Now that I have it, I understand it's 540 something pages.
194. 00:11:04 So it is a very large book.
195. 00:11:07 It is a good book and it's an interesting read because a lot of the books that are in
196. 00:11:14 the personal development of the business type space, the productivity type books, they
197. 00:11:18 tend to be, here's a system, follow this, you'll get awesome results.
198. 00:11:23 This is kind of the opposite where it's like, here's my story, everything that I've learned,
199. 00:11:27 try to apply the stuff that makes sense.
200. 00:11:31 And it really inspired me like seeing this and reading this book, I was thinking to myself,
201. 00:11:38 man, it would be kind of cool to create something like this as a legacy to leave, not just my
202. 00:11:44 kids, but anybody who would be interested in that sort of thing.
203. 00:11:48 Now, Ray Dalio has been fairly successful.
204. 00:11:50 So people want to know what he did.
205. 00:11:53 - Fairly.
206. 00:11:54 - I don't think this is something that you could justify just anybody doing, but also
207. 00:11:59 like, that's where my brain went is, that would be kind of cool.
208. 00:12:02 If everybody at the end of their life had to think through, not that Ray's at the end
209. 00:12:06 of his life, but they think through all of the things that they've learned and they actually
210. 00:12:10 write them down, they document them.
211. 00:12:12 That's kind of cool.
212. 00:12:14 And I got thinking to myself, you know, if there was a thing like this that existed for
213. 00:12:20 all of the things that I value and all the principles that govern my life, that would
214. 00:12:24 be awesome.
215. 00:12:25 We've got our Schmidt's Family Core values, which is kind of like a step in this direction,
216. 00:12:29 but this is obviously a lot deeper than that, given how long it is.
217. 00:12:33 - Yeah, this is one that, like, it's in three parts.
218. 00:12:38 And it's borderline three books in one.
219. 00:12:41 Like, it's darn close because it's so long.
220. 00:12:44 It's, you know, and just to kind of summarize, like, what those parts are, the first one
221. 00:12:50 is essentially an autobiography of Bridgewater by Ray Dalio, Bridgewater being the investment
222. 00:12:58 firm that he founded and runs.
223. 00:13:01 So that's part one.
224. 00:13:03 Part two is life principles, the principles that he developed as part of building Bridgewater,
225. 00:13:09 just to live a genuine life.
226. 00:13:13 And then he goes into part three, which is the work principles.
227. 00:13:16 So he's been taking that same concept and applying it to business and such.
228. 00:13:22 So it's a fascinating read, but at the same time, there is a ton here.
229. 00:13:29 I have a single action item off of this book, which we'll get to later, that is actually
230. 00:13:34 like a massive project.
231. 00:13:38 So you can't really, I mean, and you have some here too.
232. 00:13:42 You can get individual action items out of this particular book, but it's more, it's
233. 00:13:51 more like an inspirational motivational type book, I think.
234. 00:13:54 Yes, you can act on it and you can build out your own set of principles.
235. 00:13:59 But to me, the core helpfulness from this particular one is pure motivation and like,
236. 00:14:07 be true to yourself and get stuff done.
237. 00:14:10 Like that's the sort of read that I feel that this is.
238. 00:14:13 So I really enjoyed it.
239. 00:14:14 Ray does a great job writing it, which is kind of unique given.
240. 00:14:19 I don't think he's done any writing prior to this.
241. 00:14:21 Yeah, I'm not sure.
242. 00:14:22 From what I can tell.
243. 00:14:23 I mean, he does a lot of writing, of course, internally for his business, but I don't think
244. 00:14:28 he's done any public writing previous to this.
245. 00:14:32 But no, it's a great read.
246. 00:14:34 I'm glad you picked it.
247. 00:14:35 It's a fun one.
248. 00:14:36 And it's especially interesting to go through a second time.
249. 00:14:37 Yeah, what was the main difference for you going through it a second time as opposed to
250. 00:14:43 the first time?
251. 00:14:44 Just from a high level, your thoughts and feelings on the book in general, did they
252. 00:14:48 change at all?
253. 00:14:49 I can't say that they did, to be completely honest and upfront.
254. 00:14:55 It was kind of hard to reread part one.
255. 00:14:59 Sure.
256. 00:15:00 Like that particular one.
257. 00:15:01 I mean, yes, it's super engaging in it because it's all story.
258. 00:15:05 But when you know the story and you know the outcomes and you know the punch lines, it's
259. 00:15:11 not as interesting the second time around.
260. 00:15:15 So I'll be honest, I kind of skimmed over some of those pieces in the first one.
261. 00:15:20 I'm not going to discount the book as a result of that just because I know my impressions
262. 00:15:26 from it on the first time I went through it.
263. 00:15:29 So I'm going to be gauging it based on that.
264. 00:15:31 Part two and three, like getting into the principles themselves.
265. 00:15:36 To me, it was very refreshing because I know what's coming and I know the rationale behind
266. 00:15:42 each point.
267. 00:15:44 And yet there's it's just so dense with material on those two parts that it's hard to come
268. 00:15:52 away from it feeling like you just reread a book.
269. 00:15:55 It feels very much a new read, even though I've been through it before.
270. 00:15:59 So I can't say that there was anything different just that it's it rekindles what I originally
271. 00:16:06 went through because there's so much there.
272. 00:16:09 So sure, it's it's one that I feel like if you have read this, it's worth reading it
273. 00:16:14 again.
274. 00:16:15 If I were to come back and try to do this a third time, I might skip part one the third
275. 00:16:20 time around and just go to part two and part three because I feel like that's where the
276. 00:16:24 true reference material level hits.
277. 00:16:26 Okay.
278. 00:16:27 So that's the part I find is super valuable for the long term.
279. 00:16:30 Yeah, that makes sense.
280. 00:16:31 And the reason that I ask is that the book is laid out in a very strategic order.
281. 00:16:38 So if you know what's coming, I'm sure that changes how you are reading the different
282. 00:16:44 sections.
283. 00:16:45 Right.
284. 00:16:46 So it starts with part one is called where I'm coming from.
285. 00:16:50 And this is kind of his story.
286. 00:16:52 That's where we'll start.
287. 00:16:53 We'll impact that in a minute, but just real briefly, the kind of the outline of the entire
288. 00:16:56 book, part two is the life principles.
289. 00:17:00 And then part three, which is the bulk of the book is the work principles.
290. 00:17:05 And those are the principles that they use at at Bridgewater.
291. 00:17:09 So part one, his story, I like this part because he's sharing not just the things that he did
292. 00:17:17 well to bring credibility, but he's also sharing all the stupid mistakes and how arrogant he
293. 00:17:23 was.
294. 00:17:24 Yes.
295. 00:17:25 Yes.
296. 00:17:26 So this is how he's a he was an economist, maybe is the right term where he was trying
297. 00:17:33 to predict things and he was right at the beginning.
298. 00:17:38 And he thought that, okay, I understand this stuff and I'm an expert.
299. 00:17:41 And so the next time he saw something and he thought that it was going to play out a
300. 00:17:46 certain way he went on national TV and he's like, yeah, this is the way it's going to
301. 00:17:50 go.
302. 00:17:51 And it didn't go that way.
303. 00:17:52 And then he realized that everything that he had worked for, he kind of checked out the
304. 00:17:58 window because he had picked that hill to die on and it didn't pan out the way that
305. 00:18:02 he thought it was going to pan out and then he starts doing some soul searching.
306. 00:18:06 Like, well, why did it?
307. 00:18:07 Why did it go that way?
308. 00:18:08 Why was I wrong?
309. 00:18:09 And that kind of sparks this thing in him where he has this new perspective, he says in
310. 00:18:14 chapter three where he just wants to be right.
311. 00:18:16 And he doesn't care if the right answer comes from him.
312. 00:18:19 And that is a theme that pops up through the rest of the book in both life principles
313. 00:18:24 and the work principles, which is an interesting perspective.
314. 00:18:28 I think you can identify for yourself whether you work in an organization which has a leader
315. 00:18:36 or maybe above you or you have worked in an organization where they've either exhibited
316. 00:18:41 those skills or not exhibited those skills or that perspective.
317. 00:18:45 And I found through going through this that it actually caused me to get a little bit
318. 00:18:51 emotional, both grateful for some of these things that I've kind of understood prior
319. 00:18:57 to him defining them here.
320. 00:18:59 But he's saying like, this is how I've done this and been successful in this particular
321. 00:19:03 area, whether it's life or work and the principles that are driving it.
322. 00:19:09 And I saw a lot of overlap with some things that personally I believe but haven't been
323. 00:19:14 able to articulate exactly why.
324. 00:19:17 I know this is right but I can't explain it.
325. 00:19:20 I know I like this and I don't like that but I can't tell you exactly why.
326. 00:19:25 And as I was going through this, I realized that my intuition in some areas has been correct
327. 00:19:29 and then he kind of painted a picture of why it is that way.
328. 00:19:33 And it made me both kind of frustrated for some things that I probably stuck with maybe
329. 00:19:39 a little bit too long in the past.
330. 00:19:40 And I was like, man, that was difficult, it didn't really need to be that way and now
331. 00:19:44 I can see all the underlying causes which caused it to be difficult.
332. 00:19:47 And I just don't want to be associated with that anymore.
333. 00:19:50 But then also it caused some gratitude for current situation and the qualities that I
334. 00:19:56 see and some of the people that are above me right now.
335. 00:19:59 And just thankful for the situation that I have.
336. 00:20:03 I'm curious if you had a similar sort of reaction, either the first or second time that you went
337. 00:20:08 through this or if it's just me being weird that it hit me so hard with his personal
338. 00:20:12 story.
339. 00:20:13 Yeah, I mean, the thing that so the first time I came through it, I have a handful of
340. 00:20:17 notes from the first time I went through this in a notebook and I pulled all those out and
341. 00:20:23 some of it struck me the same in that like I know that I have a tendency to trust my intuition
342. 00:20:32 on a lot of things.
343. 00:20:34 I just do to a fault in a number of areas when it comes to certain business decisions or
344. 00:20:41 if it comes to like, should I write this article or that article, I have a tendency to just
345. 00:20:47 trust my gut.
346. 00:20:49 And a lot of times it means that I'm spending too much time on things I shouldn't be.
347. 00:20:55 And it's because I don't have a good sense of what happens when like when I do X, does
348. 00:21:03 it lead to Y and Z?
349. 00:21:05 My assumption is it leads to F or G. And I'm completely wrong on things quite a bit.
350. 00:21:13 So going through it the second time, I realized that at a deeper level than I did the first
351. 00:21:19 time I believe.
352. 00:21:21 And I'm not real sure the details on how that will play out over time, but I do know
353. 00:21:28 that it makes me want more gut checks in place.
354. 00:21:33 It wants me to have more systems in place that I can rely on that keep me from trusting
355. 00:21:40 my intuition when a lot of cases, I probably shouldn't be doing that.
356. 00:21:45 It can cause some problems.
357. 00:21:46 Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of his whole ethos here, right, with principles is that
358. 00:21:53 you have to understand the truth and then you have to have the principles that are going
359. 00:21:58 to govern your decisions.
360. 00:22:01 And those will apply to both your life and your work.
361. 00:22:06 But you really need to articulate them because they are going to be the driver for everything
362. 00:22:11 positive or negative that happens to you.
363. 00:22:13 Right, right.
364. 00:22:14 And it takes some time to figure that stuff out.
365. 00:22:16 I mean, if you look at the mind map for this, this was not written in a couple of months.
366. 00:22:24 This is a mammoth tome.
367. 00:22:29 And to be honest, it could have been a lot longer because he goes through basically everything
368. 00:22:35 that he considers to be true and provides very short descriptions of why he thinks it's
369. 00:22:41 so.
370. 00:22:42 It's very quick hitting and it's lots of these little digestible chunks.
371. 00:22:46 But there's some principles that he talks about that we've read a whole books on.
372. 00:22:52 And he just keeps it real short and like, no, these are the things that apply to me.
373. 00:22:58 And I think that that does a couple of things.
374. 00:23:00 One, it gives some credibility to the principle because he's Ray Dalio and he's successful.
375. 00:23:07 But also it kind of keeps the door open to define them for yourself, which is kind of
376. 00:23:14 interesting.
377. 00:23:15 It's almost the opposite effect where it's like, well, this is true for me.
378. 00:23:17 It may not be true for you.
379. 00:23:19 And there were some things as I went through here where I was like, I don't know if I'm
380. 00:23:23 going to apply that one.
381. 00:23:26 But I guess we're kind of wandering a little bit here.
382. 00:23:29 Coming back to part one where I'm coming from, I'll just try to summarize this real quickly
383. 00:23:32 because part two and part three, that's really where the meat is here anyways.
384. 00:23:35 As I shared, he talks about the things that he was successful in and also the things that
385. 00:23:40 he messed up in.
386. 00:23:41 He talks about the three different stages of life.
387. 00:23:44 I really like this where the first one is we're dependent on others and we learn.
388. 00:23:47 The second one is that others depend on us and we work.
389. 00:23:50 And the third one is when others are no longer depend on us and we no longer have to work,
390. 00:23:55 we're free to save our life.
391. 00:23:58 And I think this is probably where he is, but also how you save your life is open to
392. 00:24:06 interpretation.
393. 00:24:08 Everybody's got their own version of that.
394. 00:24:11 And just the fact that he put this together, this is a lot of work.
395. 00:24:17 And I feel like the fact that he's sharing all of this, everything that he's learned
396. 00:24:24 essentially, he has a little bit of a perspective of I want to help others get to the level
397. 00:24:31 where I've been.
398. 00:24:32 I don't want them to continue to banging their head against the wall and to make things
399. 00:24:37 harder than they have to be.
400. 00:24:38 If you can learn from my mistakes, go ahead and do it sort of a thing.
401. 00:24:42 Otherwise, there's no reason to share all the mistakes that he made, which he shares
402. 00:24:49 a ton.
403. 00:24:50 Most of the time when he talks about the good stuff that happens, by the way, when he gets
404. 00:24:55 into the work principles, it's these people did this and it was the right thing to do.
405. 00:25:03 But then all the negative stuff, it's like I needed to realize that I wasn't good at
406. 00:25:07 this, that and the other thing, which is a very effective perspective.
407. 00:25:12 But this whole part one, this is really the foundation which makes him believable in the
408. 00:25:17 second and third parts.
409. 00:25:18 I don't think just picking up in reading part two or part three, I would have been as interested
410. 00:25:23 in what he had to say had I not read this first section.
411. 00:25:26 Right.
412. 00:25:27 Right.
413. 00:25:28 Yeah, absolutely.
414. 00:25:29 I will say that second time through part two and part three had a larger impact because
415. 00:25:39 once you go through part one and you understand who Ray Dalio is and I've kept up with some
416. 00:25:44 of the investment world over time.
417. 00:25:47 So I knew who Ray was before I picked this up the first time, but I didn't understand
418. 00:25:53 Bridgewater near as well as I did when I finished reading it the first time and especially the
419. 00:25:58 second time, but the gap between those two, I've noticed and paid attention to Bridgewater
420. 00:26:04 more because I'm aware of them even more now.
421. 00:26:08 And I'm fascinated by the way that they work in today's world.
422. 00:26:13 So part two and part three have, to your point, they have a bigger impact once you understand
423. 00:26:19 the company Ray and where they've been.
424. 00:26:22 Exactly.
425. 00:26:23 So let's jump into part two here, life principles and there are, let me explain how this is kind
426. 00:26:29 of put together.
427. 00:26:30 So there's each of these different sections and then there are chapters inside of these
428. 00:26:36 sections, although in part one, for example, there are eight different chapters.
429. 00:26:43 And then when you get to life principles, he's really just numbering the principles.
430. 00:26:47 So it starts over at one and there are five here in the life principle section.
431. 00:26:51 We're not going to go through all of these.
432. 00:26:53 There's no way we could do that and make this episode interesting for people.
433. 00:26:59 So we're going to pick and choose the ones that really kind of jump out to us, but I'll
434. 00:27:03 real quickly just cover the five that are in here.
435. 00:27:06 Number one is embrace reality and deal with it.
436. 00:27:08 Number two is use the five step process to get what you want out of life.
437. 00:27:13 Number three is be radically open minded.
438. 00:27:17 Number four is understand that people are wired very differently and number five, learn how
439. 00:27:21 to make decisions effectively.
440. 00:27:25 So the things that I really liked here, not necessarily the five step process that felt
441. 00:27:31 like a system, I 100% believe that, you know, he through trial and error landed on this and
442. 00:27:37 this absolutely works for him.
443. 00:27:39 Reading through that does feel a little bit weird in terms of, okay, I'm going to try to
444. 00:27:44 apply this myself.
445. 00:27:46 Do you agree with that?
446. 00:27:47 Yeah, I think there's, I mean, the five step process is interesting.
447. 00:27:53 It's not one that I think I'm, I mean, basically set goals and go after them if you want that.
448. 00:28:01 Yeah, so I guess real quickly, you know, first is have clear goals.
449. 00:28:05 Second is identify and don't tolerate problems.
450. 00:28:08 Third is diagnose problems to get to their root causes.
451. 00:28:10 Four is design a plan.
452. 00:28:11 Five pushed through to completion.
453. 00:28:13 And there's this little graphic goals, problems, diagnosis, design, doing, and it's like this
454. 00:28:18 little loop, loop sort of a thing.
455. 00:28:21 I think the visual is communicating is that you're going to set goals.
456. 00:28:25 You're going to encounter obstacles.
457. 00:28:27 You're going to have to figure out a way around them.
458. 00:28:28 And then eventually if you take that approach, you're going to keep moving upward.
459. 00:28:32 Is that fair?
460. 00:28:33 Yeah, absolutely.
461. 00:28:34 I mean, when you're building out or living life, like you always have downturns to some
462. 00:28:40 degree and generally speaking, he's talking about set goals, go for them.
463. 00:28:45 You're inevitably going to have something that goes wrong or something that has a downturn,
464. 00:28:50 evaluate it, figure out how to get past it and push through that way you can keep moving
465. 00:28:54 forward.
466. 00:28:55 Like that concept is it's very systematic, but that's Ray Dalio.
467. 00:29:03 Like that is the way that he does life and he does everything in this book that way.
468. 00:29:08 It's all, the whole point behind the principles is to give him guidance in making decisions
469. 00:29:15 every day.
470. 00:29:17 Yep.
471. 00:29:18 So with all of the five steps or each individual piece being open-minded, radical transparency
472. 00:29:25 and radical truth, these are things that he's all for because he wants to get the raw facts,
473. 00:29:32 make decisions based on those raw facts that are consistent and repeatable.
474. 00:29:38 So that he can alleviate the pressure on his own mind and his own intuition to enjoy
475. 00:29:43 life.
476. 00:29:44 Like that's really what he's going for, his success through systematized, repeatable decision
477. 00:29:52 making.
478. 00:29:53 And that's not a simple process to come to.
479. 00:29:56 I mean, when you look through each of these principles and what he has written here, yes,
480. 00:30:02 they're amazing principles.
481. 00:30:03 Most of them.
482. 00:30:04 Like almost all of them I agree with, but if you think about the mass number of guiding
483. 00:30:12 steps here, it's kind of hard to get your head around how you could use all of this
484. 00:30:18 to make decisions each day.
485. 00:30:22 I mean, it's incredibly valuable, but there's well over, I think there's probably about
486. 00:30:27 a thousand or maybe more principles at a small scale in this book.
487. 00:30:32 Probably have a counter to mall.
488. 00:30:34 Yeah.
489. 00:30:35 And if you think about trying to just be aware of that many guiding principles in making
490. 00:30:41 decisions, like that's borderline impossible.
491. 00:30:45 So like the practicality of using this as a system, I feel is very difficult.
492. 00:30:51 But having gone through the process to write and expand on these principles, I feel like
493. 00:30:58 would cement them in your brain and in your organization quite a bit more than just taking
494. 00:31:03 what he has and trying to implement it.
495. 00:31:06 So I think it's incredibly valuable.
496. 00:31:08 I just think it's kind of hard to get your head around, which is why you kind of have
497. 00:31:13 to go through the process of doing this on your own.
498. 00:31:15 Yeah, it is hard to wrap your head around.
499. 00:31:18 The five step process makes it seem just like every other system that we've talked about
500. 00:31:25 on bookworm, but it's really kind of vague in general because the specifics of your situation
501. 00:31:31 are going to be different and you have to figure out for yourself in those different
502. 00:31:35 areas really what's true.
503. 00:31:38 If I were to summarize this section, I think there's a couple key things.
504. 00:31:43 First, he mentions the very first principle he talks about is be a hyper realist.
505. 00:31:47 He even mentions that people who create great things aren't ideal dreamers.
506. 00:31:50 They're totally grounded in reality.
507. 00:31:52 So you have to know what is true in order to connect the things around you in the ideal
508. 00:32:01 way.
509. 00:32:02 And he really believes in this idea of evolution, not like a large macro as a species topic,
510. 00:32:11 but just personal evolution where you encounter something, you're able to learn from it.
511. 00:32:16 You're able to get better, get stronger, become a better version of yourself.
512. 00:32:22 And you just keep doing that over and over and over again throughout your entire life.
513. 00:32:28 And I think that that is a very important perspective to have.
514. 00:32:33 I think that's a mindset shift that nearly anybody could benefit from going back to the
515. 00:32:39 book on mindset that we covered by Carol Dweck.
516. 00:32:41 I mean, it's really the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset.
517. 00:32:45 This is just growth mindset to the nth degree, in my opinion.
518. 00:32:51 For sure.
519. 00:32:52 Yeah.
520. 00:32:53 First, how am I going to learn from whatever happens to me, but I want to realize as much
521. 00:33:00 as I can, the ultimate truth of the situation around me.
522. 00:33:04 And then once I am enlightened to the degree where I understand what's true, then I kind
523. 00:33:10 of will know what to do.
524. 00:33:13 I'm not sure if that is simpler or more complicated than the five step process.
525. 00:33:18 It feels a little bit more simple to me.
526. 00:33:19 I think there's just a couple pieces there.
527. 00:33:20 And it's not these things that you follow in order.
528. 00:33:24 They're more, again, principles.
529. 00:33:25 They're kind of like the foundational guardrails behind your approach to everything.
530. 00:33:31 It doesn't really matter.
531. 00:33:32 You're not going to find yourself at stage four in the five step process.
532. 00:33:36 You're going to just continue to approach things with an open mind, which is something
533. 00:33:40 that we'll talk about here in a little bit.
534. 00:33:42 And then you're going to constantly be asking, how can I do better next time?
535. 00:33:46 Yeah, absolutely.
536. 00:33:47 You got three specific pieces here you want to go through.
537. 00:33:50 You want to start with the first one?
538. 00:33:52 Sure.
539. 00:33:53 So there's a section here where he talks about disagreements, which I thought was interesting
540. 00:33:58 because most people view disagreements as people are fighting about something and someone
541. 00:34:05 has to win, someone has to lose.
542. 00:34:08 And the usual perspective when you have a disagreement, I think, is I want to prove
543. 00:34:15 that I know better than you do, but he kind of talks about disagreements in a different
544. 00:34:20 light.
545. 00:34:21 He mentions that disagreements aren't threats as much as they are opportunities for learning.
546. 00:34:26 So don't be afraid to disagree because the fact that you are disagreeing may show you
547. 00:34:32 that somebody else has another aspect of truth that you haven't realized yet.
548. 00:34:40 And I think back to most of the disagreements that I've had, and I know it's a general
549. 00:34:48 statement, but I think it's totally fair to say that.
550. 00:34:53 And it's hard in the moment to have that correct perspective.
551. 00:34:59 So this isn't necessarily an action item for me, but I want to recognize that the fact
552. 00:35:06 that I am in a disagreement is actually an opportunity to learn.
553. 00:35:09 It's not something that is hindering me from making progress.
554. 00:35:13 And the fact that we're here isn't necessarily a bad thing.
555. 00:35:16 Just shut up and figure out what you can learn from it so that you can get better instead
556. 00:35:20 of trying to impose your will and dominate the other party, whether that's my wife, a
557. 00:35:24 co-worker, my boss, you know, anybody, because I think this applies both up and down the
558. 00:35:30 chain of command to borrow the term from extreme ownership.
559. 00:35:33 Like, people who are above you, people are below you.
560. 00:35:35 So I might get in a disagreement with my dad.
561. 00:35:38 I might get into disagreement with my kids.
562. 00:35:41 Okay, same principle applies here.
563. 00:35:43 Don't try to justify myself.
564. 00:35:45 Try to understand things from their perspective, right?
565. 00:35:47 Right.
566. 00:35:48 And then figure out where I might be wrong.
567. 00:35:49 Yeah, absolutely, because I know that whenever we get into disagreements, it's easy to get
568. 00:35:55 into defensive mode and start explaining your own side of the story right away.
569. 00:36:02 When in most cases, I mean, you're just flipping the coin to your own side, as opposed to
570. 00:36:08 trying to understand the other side.
571. 00:36:10 So I can't say that I'm good at this, but this is a piece that stood out to me the first
572. 00:36:17 time I went through it because I've tried to learn since then how to ask questions when
573. 00:36:24 I'm in the middle of a disagreement, because essentially what that does is it takes the
574. 00:36:30 burden of explaining a point of view off of me and puts it on the other person.
575. 00:36:37 And burdens may be the wrong word there because I don't want it to be a bad thing.
576. 00:36:42 It's just that asking that other person what they think about their point of view or how
577. 00:36:48 they came to that or tell me more about this specific piece.
578. 00:36:53 All of those questions can eventually lead to a deeper conversation.
579. 00:37:00 And I think that in the midst of that deeper conversation, that's when you can start to
580. 00:37:06 understand why you're disagreeing and why there's a difference between the two of you,
581. 00:37:11 because you may get to a point where you understand that the foundation of how that other person
582. 00:37:16 came to believe what they think is drastically different than the foundation that you stand
583. 00:37:22 on.
584. 00:37:24 So yes, there's a disagreement there, but asking the questions as opposed to defending
585. 00:37:29 your own.
586. 00:37:31 At least in my opinion, can drive a better, I don't want to say argument, but a debate,
587. 00:37:38 maybe a more productive argument, maybe.
588. 00:37:40 Yeah, or maybe productive discourse.
589. 00:37:42 It changes from, you know, I don't want to say hate filled, but a heated conversation
590. 00:37:51 to genuine back and forth about a given topic.
591. 00:37:56 That's kind of where I come from on that.
592. 00:38:00 But that originally, like I hadn't really come to that conclusion until I read this the
593. 00:38:04 first time through.
594. 00:38:05 So it's interesting to me that you pulled this out, stuck it in the outline because this
595. 00:38:08 is a piece that truly struck me heavily the first time I went through this and reading
596. 00:38:14 it again the second time, I was like, yep, absolutely.
597. 00:38:17 I still stink at that, but I will continue to agree that yes, that is a thing I should
598. 00:38:24 be doing.
599. 00:38:25 Sure.
600. 00:38:26 And the thing that's tied to this, I think, is the whole section.
601. 00:38:31 Principle number three, be radically open-minded.
602. 00:38:33 I think if you are open-minded, that's the key to whether you can embrace a disagreement
603. 00:38:42 through the right lens and turn it into a positive instead of it being a negative.
604. 00:38:47 He talks through the different characteristics of being closed-minded versus open-minded.
605. 00:38:53 And this, again, sounds a lot like fixed mindset versus growth mindset, but closed-minded,
606. 00:38:57 you don't want your ideas challenged, you're more likely to make statements and ask questions,
607. 00:39:02 focus more on being understood than on understanding others.
608. 00:39:04 I mean, all of this is stuff we've heard before, right?
609. 00:39:07 So Stephen Covey is the one who said, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
610. 00:39:11 Right?
611. 00:39:12 Right.
612. 00:39:13 Right.
613. 00:39:14 We talked about mindset by Carol Dweck.
614. 00:39:15 Say things like, "I could be wrong, but here's my opinion."
615. 00:39:17 You know, closed-minded people block others from speaking.
616. 00:39:20 They had trouble holding two thoughts simultaneously in their minds.
617. 00:39:24 They lack a deep sense of humility.
618. 00:39:26 When you compare that to somebody who's open-minded, they're more curious about why there's a
619. 00:39:29 disagreement.
620. 00:39:30 They genuinely believe they could be wrong.
621. 00:39:31 The questions that they ask are genuine.
622. 00:39:33 They always feel compelled to see things through other people's eyes.
623. 00:39:36 They know when to make statements and when to ask questions.
624. 00:39:38 They're more interested in listening than speaking.
625. 00:39:41 They can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind.
626. 00:39:43 They go back and forth between them to assess the relative merits.
627. 00:39:46 They're able to compare things.
628. 00:39:47 They're not just so fixated on.
629. 00:39:49 This is the thing that I believe before we started talking.
630. 00:39:51 This has to be true and I'm going to yell louder.
631. 00:39:54 They approach everything with the deep-seated fear that they could be wrong.
632. 00:39:57 I don't think fear maybe is the right word there.
633. 00:40:00 Curiosity maybe is a better one where you want to discover the things that are true.
634. 00:40:06 That's something that I try to embody in my own life, but I know that I could be better
635. 00:40:10 at.
636. 00:40:11 I want to become better at being open-minded.
637. 00:40:16 I think that the place that that plays out most often and most practically in my day-to-day
638. 00:40:22 life is in the disagreements that pop up.
639. 00:40:26 That's the acid test for me.
640. 00:40:29 Next time I'm in a disagreement, how do I find myself responding?
641. 00:40:34 How do I find myself responding?
642. 00:40:35 If I'm going to take my emotional temperature in the moment, am I cool, calm, and collected
643. 00:40:42 and trying to figure out where I missed it or am I frustrated and angry and feel my
644. 00:40:47 blood boiling because the other person just doesn't get it.
645. 00:40:51 I'm ashamed to admit that that one happens a little more often than I'd like.
646. 00:40:58 Sure.
647. 00:40:59 I specifically noticed this one in my marriage.
648. 00:41:03 My wife and I can't say we have a lot of fights.
649. 00:41:09 We have some heated debates, probably regularly, but I can't say it's a full-blown fight most
650. 00:41:15 of the time.
651. 00:41:17 Most cases I find that those heated conversations and the fights come from me not being willing
652. 00:41:28 to see her side of the story.
653. 00:41:31 And essentially not being open-minded to her side of the conversation.
654. 00:41:37 It's not a good place to be in 99.9% of cases.
655. 00:41:42 I can say that in recent months over the last year, I've specifically been targeting that
656. 00:41:49 thought process because I know it's not helpful.
657. 00:41:54 And going through the process of trying to understand what raise take is on being open-minded
658. 00:41:59 and such, just kind of rekindled that, Mike.
659. 00:42:04 It's been one that I've had conversations with my wife about it in that I'm trying to
660. 00:42:09 just be willing to admit that I'm wrong.
661. 00:42:12 I have to be okay with that.
662. 00:42:16 And there's a lot of cases where she'd say the same thing, but it's a back-and-forth,
663. 00:42:21 obviously, in a marriage trying to understand each other.
664. 00:42:23 But you always have to be open-minded to the other person's point of view.
665. 00:42:27 And if you're not, you're going to have disagreements that you don't resolve or that you don't
666. 00:42:32 come to an agreement to disagree on.
667. 00:42:35 So I appreciated this.
668. 00:42:39 And I can't say that it's one that's super groundbreaking right now, but it's one that
669. 00:42:44 was at least encouragement.
670. 00:42:45 This is why I say it's a motivational type book occasionally.
671. 00:42:50 That was another motivator and another kickstart in the right direction, for sure.
672. 00:42:55 Yeah.
673. 00:42:56 And the question then, if you decide that you want to be open-minded is how do you become
674. 00:43:04 open-minded?
675. 00:43:05 And he has a section on that.
676. 00:43:07 A lot of this stuff is just general, recognize what's going on here, stuff like use pain
677. 00:43:12 as your guide towards quality reflection and make being open-minded a habit, get to know
678. 00:43:16 your blind spots.
679. 00:43:17 If there's a number of believable people who say you're doing something wrong, you're
680. 00:43:20 the only one who doesn't see it that way, assume you're probably biased.
681. 00:43:24 But the one that was interesting to me, and this is one of my action items, is to meditate.
682. 00:43:31 And good job, Mike.
683. 00:43:33 All right.
684. 00:43:34 Yeah.
685. 00:43:35 So I've mentioned this a couple of different times, I think now that I've been working
686. 00:43:38 on this article for the sweet setup by the time that this goes live, that article will
687. 00:43:43 be published on the Best Mindfulness Meditation app.
688. 00:43:46 So this has kind of been culminating in coming to ahead, but the reminder that they gave
689. 00:43:51 me here in principles, this is the thing that I think finally has cemented this and is
690. 00:43:56 going to make this a habit.
691. 00:43:57 I've been doing headspace now, my current streak is 12 days in a row.
692. 00:44:02 And it seems to be working.
693. 00:44:05 The thing that has kind of flipped the trigger for this, in my opinion, is, and this is a
694. 00:44:11 little bit of a tangent, but I feel like this might help people who maybe struggle with
695. 00:44:15 this like me, where I've always thought, you know, my situation isn't that bad compared
696. 00:44:22 to other people.
697. 00:44:23 I don't have, I'm not in a office environment and people are barging in all the time and
698. 00:44:27 giving me a bunch of things to do.
699. 00:44:28 So meditation is probably great for those types of people who just can't handle the
700. 00:44:34 situation they find themselves in, but I shouldn't need that.
701. 00:44:38 I think ultimately that's kind of my hesitancy to the idea of mindfulness meditation, because
702. 00:44:46 I understand the science behind it.
703. 00:44:49 I also a long time ago got over the whole woo woo spiritual aspect of it.
704. 00:44:55 There are different meditation styles and practices that get into that stuff and those
705. 00:44:59 I'm not interested in at all, but mindfulness meditation, I definitely am.
706. 00:45:05 I want to train my brain to focus and to regulate my emotions and things like all the physiological
707. 00:45:10 benefits that come from it.
708. 00:45:12 There's nothing spiritual about that.
709. 00:45:14 You can apply it spiritually, you know, we talk about our faith on this podcast.
710. 00:45:18 Some people say too much, but that's a big part of who I am.
711. 00:45:22 So I can apply these principles and think about the people I'm praying for or the verses
712. 00:45:28 that I'm reading.
713. 00:45:30 But that's not something that even if you are completely turned off by everything spiritual,
714. 00:45:37 there's nothing in just mindfulness meditation that will cause you to do that.
715. 00:45:44 It's simply just training your brain on whatever you want to focus it on and then recognizing
716. 00:45:48 when it wanders and bringing it back.
717. 00:45:51 The fact that you keep bringing it back, keep bringing it back, keep bringing it back, that's
718. 00:45:54 the thing that helps it to stay on track more.
719. 00:45:57 And I've recognized I think that this isn't something that I necessarily need to do, but
720. 00:46:03 it is something that will be helpful and that has turned it into something that I want to
721. 00:46:07 do.
722. 00:46:09 And especially as he frames it here in principles as being a thing that can help you be open-minded
723. 00:46:14 and recognizing that, hmm, sometimes you're not so hot at being open-minded.
724. 00:46:19 That kind of highlights the point that, you know, you really could use this.
725. 00:46:25 So that's one of my action items.
726. 00:46:27 Well done.
727. 00:46:28 I'm proud of you.
728. 00:46:29 And I'm sad that 10% happier didn't make it.
729. 00:46:32 It's a solid app.
730. 00:46:33 You have to read the review.
731. 00:46:35 Okay.
732. 00:46:36 But it's expensive.
733. 00:46:37 I get it.
734. 00:46:38 It is.
735. 00:46:39 I'm with you on the meditation thing.
736. 00:46:42 Obviously I've kind of switched sides.
737. 00:46:44 I struggled with it for a very long time, but I've been noticing a lot more of the benefits.
738. 00:46:52 It's kind of this weird chicken and egg thing because it's like you need, it's almost like
739. 00:46:56 you have to be into meditation to understand the benefits of meditation.
740. 00:47:03 And when you're not or you're just trying it out, but being skeptical, like you haven't
741. 00:47:07 bought into it.
742. 00:47:08 So then you're not aware of it.
743. 00:47:10 It's so weird.
744. 00:47:11 Like it's kind of back and forth.
745. 00:47:13 I find.
746. 00:47:14 But the more I have dedicated to the practice and making sure that I do that on a daily basis,
747. 00:47:20 I've noticed I'm a lot more of a calm person than I used to be.
748. 00:47:25 I let things go quicker than I used to.
749. 00:47:28 And I don't get as fired up as quickly as I used to.
750. 00:47:32 So at this point, I'm pretty much sold.
751. 00:47:36 Yeah.
752. 00:47:37 And that's the goal.
753. 00:47:39 I think for me is when I am in a disagreement and I feel myself getting frustrated, the fight
754. 00:47:45 versus flight is kicking in.
755. 00:47:46 And it just shows that I haven't yet developed that to the point where I can catch it early
756. 00:47:51 enough to control it.
757. 00:47:53 And obviously each situation is a little bit different, but that's what I want to get
758. 00:47:57 to you is exactly what you just described where no matter what happens to land in my
759. 00:48:02 lap or whatever happens around me, I can respond appropriately and I can see it the right way.
760. 00:48:09 And I feel like meditation is something that mindfulness meditation specifically is something
761. 00:48:14 that can help me get there.
762. 00:48:16 Sure.
763. 00:48:17 What else we got on life principles?
764. 00:48:19 I got lost in the outline.
765. 00:48:21 Yeah, I kind of jumped over all over the place.
766. 00:48:24 But the last thing I wanted to talk about here comes from section five.
767. 00:48:28 He talks about synthesizing as the collecting and interpreting of dots.
768. 00:48:34 And this was interesting to me because I've shared on this podcast before one of the things
769. 00:48:39 that allowed me to be creative and consider myself a writer, podcaster, creator, whatever,
770. 00:48:46 was reading Austin Cleon's book, "Steal Like An Artist."
771. 00:48:49 And he talks about how when you create something, you're literally just connecting dots in a
772. 00:48:53 way that they haven't been connected before, but the dots themselves are not completely
773. 00:48:56 original.
774. 00:48:58 So when you're talking about synthesizing in this book, that's a term I thought of obviously
775. 00:49:04 he's using this in terms of doing this for making right decisions.
776. 00:49:10 But I also thought back to that book by Austin Cleon and how synthesizing can also be used
777. 00:49:15 in the creative process.
778. 00:49:17 And I thought this was kind of cool.
779. 00:49:19 Not just as a validation for something that I've talked about before, but really just highlighting
780. 00:49:26 this as a life principle and how this can keep you on the right path.
781. 00:49:35 I think the way he presented it in this book made it seem a little bit more approachable
782. 00:49:40 for just about everybody.
783. 00:49:41 Because with Austin Cleon's book, "Steal Like An Artist," people have a lot of questions
784. 00:49:45 of trouble identifying themselves as a creative person or as an artist.
785. 00:49:49 And I talked about that my Max Talk presentation that really everybody is creative.
786. 00:49:56 When you give a kid a box of crayons, they don't sit there and say, "Well, where are
787. 00:50:00 the instructions?
788. 00:50:01 What am I supposed to do?"
789. 00:50:02 They just start drawing unless they've had some prior coaching one way or the other.
790. 00:50:09 But by default, we're naturally kind of curious and we want to experiment with things.
791. 00:50:17 So synthesizing the situation at hand, synthesizing the situation through time, these are all
792. 00:50:24 different things that he talks about in terms of making good decisions.
793. 00:50:30 And I think that when you view collecting these dots and interpreting these dots and
794. 00:50:37 trying out all these different things, it's kind of a license to be more creative.
795. 00:50:44 And creative is probably not the right term.
796. 00:50:46 Maybe it's more adventurous, I don't know.
797. 00:50:49 But the takeaway for me as I read this was don't put yourself in this box because of
798. 00:50:55 the things that you have traditionally done.
799. 00:50:58 Or maybe you tried something a long time ago and it didn't go exactly the way you wanted
800. 00:51:02 it to.
801. 00:51:03 So you're afraid to even try it again.
802. 00:51:05 This is part of making good decisions, is trying things and failing at them.
803. 00:51:11 The key though is to recognize the truth, right?
804. 00:51:15 To see why things failed or why you didn't get a good outcome.
805. 00:51:20 And you might just surprise yourself at what you're able to find when you view this synthesizing
806. 00:51:25 as just collecting as many dots as you can and then figuring out what they actually mean.
807. 00:51:29 We're just letting the connection happen naturally.
808. 00:51:32 I mean, we do this all the time with Bookworm in that we read a ton of books.
809. 00:51:38 Sometimes they overlap, a lot of times their system books and Mike loves them to death.
810. 00:51:43 And sometimes we find things that are just completely contradictory to what we believe.
811. 00:51:49 I'm sure Mike's looking at Amanda Palmer right now.
812. 00:51:53 So these things happen and you collect a lot of information about a lot of different areas.
813. 00:51:59 And over time, you start to put those dots together in ways that are new to you and might
814. 00:52:07 be new to the world.
815. 00:52:09 And I think a lot of the art side can come out in that, but you have to be willing to
816. 00:52:15 make that commitment to connecting or at least collecting those dots.
817. 00:52:21 Whether it's reading a bunch of articles online or experimenting with a guitar or playing
818. 00:52:26 around with screencasts and such, no matter what it is, playing around with it and learning
819. 00:52:33 about it is to your point something we're naturally inclined to.
820. 00:52:38 But it can lead to a lot of really cool things.
821. 00:52:41 So yeah, I love Bookworm because it gives me a schedule for collecting dots.
822. 00:52:47 And it's an easy avenue.
823. 00:52:51 Books are to gathering a lot of information very quickly.
824. 00:52:56 So I'm of course a big fan of the dots being originated in books.
825. 00:53:02 Obviously I'd also like to play around with things as well, both of which do a great job
826. 00:53:08 at collecting dots.
827. 00:53:09 So thanks Ray for encouraging my habits.
828. 00:53:14 Yep.
829. 00:53:15 The last thing that I wanted to call out in this section is something that's pretty short
830. 00:53:20 near the end.
831. 00:53:21 As you mentioned in order to have the best possible life, you need to one, know what
832. 00:53:26 the best decisions are and two, have the courage to make them.
833. 00:53:29 And I feel like this is kind of related to collecting dots because you can't know what
834. 00:53:34 the best decisions are unless you've collected enough dots to weigh them against each other
835. 00:53:39 and then having the courage to make them, that's obviously its own thing.
836. 00:53:45 But it's not just stepping up blindly and hoping for the best.
837. 00:53:51 It's trying a bunch of things, doing a bunch of tests basically and then determining the
838. 00:53:56 best course of action.
839. 00:53:58 Once you see what the best course of action is, even if it's going to be hard or it's
840. 00:54:02 going to be scary, having the ability to overcome the fear and do what you know you need to
841. 00:54:11 do, that's the thing that's going to get you ultimately to a fulfilling life.
842. 00:54:16 Ready for work principles?
843. 00:54:18 Yeah.
844. 00:54:19 Let's talk about work principles.
845. 00:54:20 Let's talk about action in this one.
846. 00:54:22 Yep.
847. 00:54:23 Now there is a ton here.
848. 00:54:25 Number one, trust in radical truth and radical transparency.
849. 00:54:28 Number two, cultivate meaningful work and meaningful relationships.
850. 00:54:33 Number three, create a culture in which it's okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not
851. 00:54:36 to learn from them.
852. 00:54:38 Number four, get and stay in sync.
853. 00:54:41 Number five, believability, weight your decision making.
854. 00:54:44 Number six, recognize how to get beyond disagreements.
855. 00:54:47 Number seven, remember that the who is more important than the what?
856. 00:54:50 Number eight, higher right because the penalties for hiring wrong are huge.
857. 00:54:54 Number nine, constantly trained, test evaluate and sort people.
858. 00:54:58 Let's see.
859. 00:54:59 Number 10, manage as someone operating a machine to achieve a goal.
860. 00:55:03 Number 11, perceive and don't tolerate problems.
861. 00:55:05 Number 12, diagnose problems to get to their root causes.
862. 00:55:08 Number 13, design improvements to your machine to get around your problems.
863. 00:55:12 Number 14, do what you set out to do.
864. 00:55:13 Number five, use tools and protocols to shape how work is done.
865. 00:55:16 Number 16, for heaven's sake, don't overlook governance.
866. 00:55:19 I share all of those just to illustrate to the point that there is a lot in here that
867. 00:55:25 we are not going to talk about.
868. 00:55:27 So don't base a judgment on this section based on what you hear in here us talk about.
869. 00:55:33 Right, because this section, so this is part three, part three by itself is 259 pages.
870. 00:55:40 That's a book by itself.
871. 00:55:42 Yeah, and the thing that is, the thing that is really interesting to it in this, there's
872. 00:55:50 a couple of big themes.
873. 00:55:51 That's kind of what I tried to pick out here.
874. 00:55:53 Number one, he talks about this concept of an idea meritocracy.
875. 00:55:58 This I think is the crux of all of the principles in this section.
876. 00:56:03 I really like his definition of an idea meritocracy, which is radical truth plus radical transparency
877. 00:56:09 plus believability weighted decision making.
878. 00:56:12 I didn't really like the whole believability weighted decision making when it came to the
879. 00:56:16 life principles because there are some things that I haven't understood that I've done anyways
880. 00:56:21 and they've ended up being the right thing to do.
881. 00:56:24 But I think it makes sense in a business perspective in a lot of different organizations.
882. 00:56:28 Now there are obviously going to be situations where you are going to, you're going to overrule
883. 00:56:35 those, I think.
884. 00:56:37 I don't think you can get away from that completely.
885. 00:56:41 But I do think if the goal is to make yourself replaceable as you create this organization
886. 00:56:48 or this business or this thing, you have to have this embedded in the fabric of the organization.
887. 00:56:56 So I understand the value of it.
888. 00:56:58 But the two things that really stand out to me from this are radical truth and radical
889. 00:57:03 transparency.
890. 00:57:04 Well, here real quick, before you get into that, let's define what the idea meritocracy
891. 00:57:09 is.
892. 00:57:10 Because I know when I went through this the first time, that's a really cool term.
893. 00:57:15 What on earth is that?
894. 00:57:17 That's kind of a hard one to get your head around.
895. 00:57:19 And I think in his case, essentially what they're after is a way to collect ideas from
896. 00:57:27 anyone and everyone and weigh them all equally.
897. 00:57:31 Yes.
898. 00:57:32 And so I shared the formula that he shares at the first section of this where it's about
899. 00:57:36 how he thinks about organizations.
900. 00:57:39 So there's the three different components, radical truth, radical transparency, believability,
901. 00:57:43 weighted decision making.
902. 00:57:44 What does that look like?
903. 00:57:45 I think that's kind of what you're getting at.
904. 00:57:47 Radical truth doesn't matter what your title is.
905. 00:57:51 If you are wrong, you are wrong.
906. 00:57:53 And anybody can be right.
907. 00:57:55 Number two, radical transparency.
908. 00:57:58 Everybody can see everything.
909. 00:57:59 And then number three, the things that govern how decisions are made, they're based on logic,
910. 00:58:07 basically.
911. 00:58:08 The believability weighted decision making, this makes the most sense.
912. 00:58:12 So this is the thing that we're going to do.
913. 00:58:14 Data driven decisions might be another way to define that.
914. 00:58:18 And so I can't think of any organization that I've worked with that is this based on the
915. 00:58:25 definition that he outlines here.
916. 00:58:27 And I don't think that they necessarily should be either.
917. 00:58:30 But I do think that these three ideas that combine the idea of meritocracy, this, I can
918. 00:58:39 I can definitely see value in this.
919. 00:58:41 I would like to build elements of this into the organizations that I am involved with.
920. 00:58:49 The challenge is, how do you do that if you're not the person who is the CEO calling the shots?
921. 00:58:55 But I do think that radical truth and radical transparency specifically, like always seeking
922. 00:58:59 the truth and always sharing it, those are things that anybody can apply.
923. 00:59:06 But this is, it requires the people involved to be trustworthy.
924. 00:59:12 Yes.
925. 00:59:13 And full of integrity.
926. 00:59:15 And I say that because I've been burnt by this one, because I, the first time I went
927. 00:59:21 through this, I embraced this one wholeheartedly and went down the path of radical truth, radical
928. 00:59:27 transparency within the business that I was in the middle of at the time.
929. 00:59:33 And it bit me hard.
930. 00:59:36 So yeah, you cannot just join an organization and say, I am going to embrace radical truth
931. 00:59:41 and radical transparency.
932. 00:59:42 Right.
933. 00:59:43 Because that will have negative ramifications if the people above you do not embrace the
934. 00:59:47 same ideals or below you in this case.
935. 00:59:50 So I'm not going to go into any details other than that, but it is very easy for people
936. 00:59:56 to take advantage of an organization if you embrace this.
937. 01:00:02 So the people who are in the organization have to be bought in 100%.
938. 01:00:07 If there's any question about their loyalty or their integrity, like you have a different
939. 01:00:17 issue, which I think is why like he's got part three broken down into three subsections.
940. 01:00:23 Like the first one is getting the culture right, which is where this radical truth and
941. 01:00:28 radical transparency piece comes from.
942. 01:00:30 And he quickly follows that up with getting the people right.
943. 01:00:33 Right.
944. 01:00:34 And I think that's why, because if you get the culture right, it has to have the right
945. 01:00:37 people in it.
946. 01:00:39 And I have screwed that up in the past.
947. 01:00:43 Culture is people.
948. 01:00:45 See, there's that too.
949. 01:00:46 He makes them separate though.
950. 01:00:47 Yep.
951. 01:00:48 And I understand it.
952. 01:00:49 You know, he's talking about from his perspective as a CEO and growing and scaling this company,
953. 01:00:56 right?
954. 01:00:57 So he is driving the ship when they're small.
955. 01:01:01 And then as they grow, he's having to delegate to other people.
956. 01:01:05 And by creating the culture first, he has a better chance of everybody being on board
957. 01:01:10 with the vision that he's casting at the very beginning.
958. 01:01:13 You cannot just collect a bunch of people and assume that they will create the right
959. 01:01:18 culture.
960. 01:01:19 You do have to have the direction dictated by the culture.
961. 01:01:22 First I think, but the way that it plays out is in the people who are a part of the organization.
962. 01:01:29 I mean, there are a lot of organizations that have mission statements that sound great,
963. 01:01:35 and then they don't live out any of them.
964. 01:01:38 So they might have the right corporate culture on paper, but everybody in the organization
965. 01:01:45 knows that's not how they actually do things.
966. 01:01:48 And so that's why I say that culture is people because they're the ones that have to live
967. 01:01:54 it out.
968. 01:01:55 Yeah, sure.
969. 01:01:56 For sure.
970. 01:01:57 All right.
971. 01:01:58 Another thing that talking about culture that stood out to me in this section is I put
972. 01:02:04 disagree, but commit, he has a little bit different way of saying that number six recognize
973. 01:02:14 how to get beyond disagreements.
974. 01:02:16 He mentions 6.4.
975. 01:02:18 So that's basically how he writes this is he's got the principles and then a whole bunch
976. 01:02:23 of point principles and then a whole bunch of sub principles below those or sub sub principles,
977. 01:02:29 I guess is how he defines those.
978. 01:02:31 But 6.4, once a decision is made, everyone should get behind it, even though individuals
979. 01:02:36 may still disagree.
980. 01:02:39 This one jumped out to me because I've sort of studied this already, but I think this
981. 01:02:47 is the thing that kind of makes this all work.
982. 01:02:52 Like if you embrace all of the principles up until this point, and then you've got a
983. 01:02:57 disagreement and you can't get past it and people stay offended about something that
984. 01:03:01 goes away that's different than they think it should, then ultimately it's going to break.
985. 01:03:07 So this is kind of the bottleneck or the choke point I realized is that once you have a decision
986. 01:03:13 that's made by the team and you're using the idea of the idea of meritocracy, these believability
987. 01:03:19 weighted decisions that you're making, you have to be able to disconnect your personal
988. 01:03:24 feelings or what side you were on before the decision was made from the actual decision
989. 01:03:31 and then work to see the end goal that the organization has come about.
990. 01:03:38 You got to be able to see things from a higher level.
991. 01:03:43 The disagree but commit, this is the way that I heard it defined and I think it was Jeff
992. 01:03:47 Bezos who originally I saw talk about this.
993. 01:03:53 But I think this is something that is simple maybe to understand a lot harder to practice.
994. 01:03:59 Oh yeah, definitely.
995. 01:04:00 But something that I think is really, really valuable.
996. 01:04:06 So, and this is something that you could apply as if you're at the head of an organization
997. 01:04:12 and you say, I want my people to understand that there's going to be disagreements.
998. 01:04:16 So this is a principle we're all going to share in like disagree but commit.
999. 01:04:20 But I think the more valuable application of it is if you're not at the top of the food
1000. 01:04:24 chain recognizing that you're not always going to get your way, if you can start practicing
1001. 01:04:29 this, it's going to severely impact the quality of your life.
1002. 01:04:34 You're not going to get so upset about stuff.
1003. 01:04:37 Because this can apply at home.
1004. 01:04:41 I don't always get what I want.
1005. 01:04:42 I've got a wife of five kids who also have things that they want to do in places they
1006. 01:04:48 have to be and so I may want to stay home on a Saturday.
1007. 01:04:52 I'm going to go to soccer practice anyways.
1008. 01:04:57 It could happen in a church organization or where I've got people above me who are going
1009. 01:05:04 to ask me maybe to do things that I don't really want to do or I don't think I've got
1010. 01:05:11 a whole lot of extra time and yeah, I'd love to do that sort of thing but I just got to
1011. 01:05:15 step in and feel a need.
1012. 01:05:17 And obviously there's a work context here too but I think even though this is talking about
1013. 01:05:23 work principles, the interesting thing to me about this is how this can be played out
1014. 01:05:28 in all of these other arenas.
1015. 01:05:29 For sure.
1016. 01:05:30 Yeah, I can think of all kinds of scenarios where I don't agree with what's being done
1017. 01:05:35 but the decision is made, the decision is outside of me.
1018. 01:05:38 So guess what?
1019. 01:05:40 We get to commit to following through on it the way it was decided because it's outside
1020. 01:05:44 of me at this point.
1021. 01:05:45 So this happened at our local church.
1022. 01:05:50 We had a building project here a few years ago and there were quite a few folks against
1023. 01:05:55 it, a number of folks for it.
1024. 01:05:56 It essentially went through, was passed and has since been built and paid for and everything.
1025. 01:06:03 But the group that was against it bought in and was all on board as soon as that decision
1026. 01:06:10 was made and we didn't have any issues past that point.
1027. 01:06:13 So kudos to that particular team for following through on it but that is not simple.
1028. 01:06:20 Like that is a hard thing to come to grips with and to follow through on.
1029. 01:06:26 So a very, very important principle here in even if you have a disagreement, follow through
1030. 01:06:34 on the decision once it's made.
1031. 01:06:37 I don't know what else to say about it other than that but it's a hard thing to actually
1032. 01:06:40 do in real life for sure.
1033. 01:06:42 It's a hard thing to do but what's crazy about it is let's just say that you're not the one
1034. 01:06:48 driving the change, making the decision from the top of the food chain.
1035. 01:06:54 How quickly you can disagree but commit and get over your own preferences has a direct
1036. 01:07:01 correlation to how happy you're going to be.
1037. 01:07:05 And not only on a personal level but if you have people who can't get over that then
1038. 01:07:12 it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
1039. 01:07:14 They will sabotage the situation like the building project for example.
1040. 01:07:18 There are enough people in that group who didn't want to go through with it and they
1041. 01:07:22 fought tooth and nail after the decision that's going to end in failure.
1042. 01:07:28 And then you can look back and you can say, oh well I guess I was right but what does
1043. 01:07:32 that gain anybody at that point?
1044. 01:07:34 Congratulations you were right and you killed the organization because of it.
1045. 01:07:38 The organization, the mission is greater than the individual and it's kind of interesting
1046. 01:07:45 to me that if you can get your eyes off of your own individual stuff that oftentimes
1047. 01:07:53 that ends up better for you as the individual.
1048. 01:07:57 It's kind of contrary to how we're wired to think about others first but when we do we
1049. 01:08:05 end up better because of it.
1050. 01:08:08 It's kind of a paradox I guess but it's tied to what we talked about in the life principle
1051. 01:08:15 section where you have to be open-minded and embrace the idea that you could be wrong.
1052. 01:08:23 And when you are okay with the fact that you might be wrong it's a lot simpler to just,
1053. 01:08:28 oh well okay didn't go my way, let's do it anyways and get on board with where everybody
1054. 01:08:33 is going.
1055. 01:08:34 For sure.
1056. 01:08:35 But you should also keep asking why am I?
1057. 01:08:38 Yeah again there's so much in here I try to just pick out a couple things but near the
1058. 01:08:43 back of the book he has an exercise in principle 12 I think it was, diagnose problems to get
1059. 01:08:51 to their root causes where you use a drill down technique to gain what he defines as
1060. 01:08:58 an 80/20 understanding of the department or a sub-department that's having problems but
1061. 01:09:03 you can apply this in any area of life I think.
1062. 01:09:07 And where you list the problems you identify the root causes you create a plan you execute
1063. 01:09:11 the plan but when you keep asking why you eventually get to the root causes that's really
1064. 01:09:19 the step two the identify the root causes.
1065. 01:09:22 And he has a visual in the book an example I don't have it in front of me where they
1066. 01:09:27 keep asking why.
1067. 01:09:28 It reminded me of the five wise exercise that I've heard about before and it's something
1068. 01:09:34 that I don't do enough of.
1069. 01:09:37 I want to and I don't have an action I'm associated with this but to keep drilling down until
1070. 01:09:45 you get to the truth and it was a good reminder for me and kind of shocking to me honestly
1071. 01:09:51 how much I get to maybe level one level two and then I see a justification something that
1072. 01:10:01 masquerades is a root cause and I guess that kind of makes sense and then I just leave
1073. 01:10:05 it.
1074. 01:10:06 I don't want to do that.
1075. 01:10:07 I want to spend enough time with the things to really figure out what's going on.
1076. 01:10:11 Sure.
1077. 01:10:12 Yeah I don't do this in business stuff enough.
1078. 01:10:16 I really should be asking why things happen.
1079. 01:10:20 If you work in the world of an online business which I of course have a full time job at
1080. 01:10:24 the church but I still do my side business stuff online and with that I have a tendency
1081. 01:10:32 to like the first inkling at an understanding of why something happened like oh interesting
1082. 01:10:38 okay I'm going to run with it that way then even even without second guessing it when I
1083. 01:10:45 should probably you know drill deeper and deeper and deeper to figure out what the actual root
1084. 01:10:50 cause is because most likely I'm just looking at a symptom of the root cause and saying that
1085. 01:10:55 that's the real deal so yes.
1086. 01:11:00 Keep asking why does he even I don't remember does he give a number of times to ask.
1087. 01:11:05 I don't think he does but that's why I wanted to call it out here because I think as a general
1088. 01:11:09 rule you could just say five wise and eventually by the fifth why you're going to get there.
1089. 01:11:15 And that's probably not 100% true in all situations but I think it's a good place to
1090. 01:11:20 start and then again there's a ton of places where this can play out if your kids are acting
1091. 01:11:27 out.
1092. 01:11:29 Keep asking why eventually you'll figure it out or even if you're in a work situation
1093. 01:11:35 like I'm kind of doing this right now we're trying to figure out what our scoreboard looks
1094. 01:11:39 like and what are the things that really drive the business forward.
1095. 01:11:44 Well keep asking why and eventually you'll land at those don't just stop at the first
1096. 01:11:49 thing that sounds good and make okay let's track this.
1097. 01:11:52 Sure.
1098. 01:11:53 Because you could track it for a month and then realize that oh that was a waste of a month
1099. 01:11:57 right.
1100. 01:11:58 Right.
1101. 01:11:59 Right.
1102. 01:12:00 Driving things forward for the business.
1103. 01:12:01 So the question why it forces you to think the right way.
1104. 01:12:07 A lot of finding the right solutions is simply asking the right questions and you really
1105. 01:12:13 can't go wrong when you keep asking why.
1106. 01:12:17 I'm really inspired by his approach of I want to know what's true.
1107. 01:12:23 I want to be humble enough for anybody to tell me and show me where I'm wrong.
1108. 01:12:28 He's got some examples in this work section of letters that his subordinates sent him
1109. 01:12:33 and like hey you really did a poor job in this meeting because you did this that and
1110. 01:12:37 the other thing.
1111. 01:12:38 You didn't let me talk and you tried to be the expert and you don't know what you're
1112. 01:12:41 talking about.
1113. 01:12:42 It's like wow that's radical candor.
1114. 01:12:45 No, can't.
1115. 01:12:48 But I try to do that myself.
1116. 01:12:50 I want to know the truth.
1117. 01:12:53 But sometimes the truth is going to hurt.
1118. 01:12:58 Sometimes if you're not it's hard to hear how you're messing things up or how you're
1119. 01:13:03 not doing things right.
1120. 01:13:05 But I want to know that stuff so I can get it fixed and as I'm reading through this section
1121. 01:13:12 that's one of the approaches I want to take.
1122. 01:13:15 Sure.
1123. 01:13:16 Well just keep asking why and whenever I see a result ask myself why.
1124. 01:13:20 What's the system that produced this and what needs to maybe change in that system.
1125. 01:13:25 Right.
1126. 01:13:26 Right.
1127. 01:13:27 You ready for action items?
1128. 01:13:29 Did we really get through the book?
1129. 01:13:30 Well we did.
1130. 01:13:31 I mean there's tons more in this work section but we got through the peaks of the mountains.
1131. 01:13:41 None of the valleys.
1132. 01:13:43 Yeah actually let me there is one other thing here putting it all together the very last
1133. 01:13:48 section in part three I believe.
1134. 01:13:52 He mentions that we work with others to get three things and I found myself getting emotional
1135. 01:13:57 when I read this.
1136. 01:13:59 Number one leverage to accomplish our chosen missions in bigger and better ways than we
1137. 01:14:03 could alone.
1138. 01:14:05 Number two quality relationships that together make a great community.
1139. 01:14:08 Number three money that allows us to buy what we need and want for ourselves and others.
1140. 01:14:14 And I was getting emotional because I literally before I read this section like the day before
1141. 01:14:19 was talking to somebody at my co-working space about we walked over and got coffee and
1142. 01:14:26 he was asking me how's work going and I explained my situation and what I was doing now and
1143. 01:14:32 he was like that sounds pretty awesome.
1144. 01:14:35 He's working as a systems analyst for this company remotely and he's talking about all
1145. 01:14:41 the junk he's got to put up with on a daily basis and he makes good money but he's frustrated
1146. 01:14:47 with what he's doing and he gets to work as early as he can so he can get off as early
1147. 01:14:54 as he can and the whole time that he's there he's just agitated and angry and I recognize
1148. 01:15:02 that where I am right now that maybe I don't have all three of these things figured out
1149. 01:15:08 but I got the important ones.
1150. 01:15:10 I feel like what I'm doing now I'm able to fulfill my chosen missions in bigger and better
1151. 01:15:15 ways than I could alone.
1152. 01:15:19 And number two quality relationships I feel like bookworm, blank media, focused everything
1153. 01:15:26 that I'm involved with I'm blown away with the quality of the people that I get to do
1154. 01:15:31 stuff with.
1155. 01:15:32 I could not pick a better group of folks to call my friends and the money that's going
1156. 01:15:41 to come.
1157. 01:15:42 In the past I have tried to cram as many things in as I could have been guilty of that and
1158. 01:15:49 I've recognized over the years that people are the reason for productivity going back
1159. 01:15:54 to Chris Bailey and I just feel like where I'm at right now I'm kind of in alignment to
1160. 01:16:01 maximize both of those first two areas.
1161. 01:16:04 And I know we've talked about your situation too I don't want to get into all the details
1162. 01:16:07 if you don't want to share them but you're kind of thinking this way too probably so
1163. 01:16:11 I'm curious what kind of reaction you had to this section.
1164. 01:16:14 Yeah, no it's a good one because I know that I've had a lot of rough things come my way
1165. 01:16:20 in the last year or so a couple of year and a half or so and some of those I could control
1166. 01:16:26 some of those I could not some of them have put me in a very difficult financial situation.
1167. 01:16:33 Some other people have put me in some difficult financial situations so it becomes a process
1168. 01:16:40 of you know if the people are part of the problem in that case yeah I need to get those
1169. 01:16:44 people out of my life like they are not helpful you know they're causing me to think down
1170. 01:16:50 and I can't do that.
1171. 01:16:52 So I guess from a higher level stance like one thing that we you and I do a lot Mike is
1172. 01:16:58 productivity tools systems services you know etc etc we love this stuff but something I've
1173. 01:17:06 become more and more aware of and Ray is a good timing with this book because Ray is
1174. 01:17:12 a guy who thinks very very big and his systems the way that he does things are on a whole
1175. 01:17:20 nother level if not multiple levels above what you and I do on a regular basis like
1176. 01:17:25 people talk about how big success requires big systems and big thinking it's very easy
1177. 01:17:31 to focus on yeah I'm going to put together this omni focus course and kick it out and
1178. 01:17:37 it'll be great it'll be a good time I'll love that process you know it's always fun but
1179. 01:17:43 Ray would probably never even consider doing something like that because it's not anywhere
1180. 01:17:48 near big enough for what he's thinking about now the bigger you think the more finances
1181. 01:17:54 typically come with it as well but you have to be willing to alter your systems to a higher
1182. 01:18:00 level in order to hit those higher levels of success as well to me this particular piece
1183. 01:18:06 that you're talking about is a motivator to do that you know yes I have been through
1184. 01:18:12 a lot in the last year and a half in the last probably week I've been week and a half two
1185. 01:18:18 weeks I've learned of some more difficulties with that with like a mold infection and such
1186. 01:18:23 so like I'm trying to work through a lot of that but at the same time I also know I have
1187. 01:18:29 been sick for so long that I'm now sick of being sick and I was talking to my specialist
1188. 01:18:36 about it and you know what I've been fighting illness for so long that I just kind of expect
1189. 01:18:42 to feel bad when I get up in the morning and that doesn't help me heal like that doesn't
1190. 01:18:48 help me in the process of getting past that sure so what I've been coming to lately is
1191. 01:18:53 you know what I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna be healthy today like as weird as that sounds
1192. 01:18:58 is just make that decision like that's kind of where I'm at like yes I know that I have
1193. 01:19:04 some health concerns I'm not shirking that but I'm also not going to assume that I'm
1194. 01:19:12 gonna have a bad day because of it so I'm gonna be super better exactly and you know
1195. 01:19:17 some of this comes from that some of it comes from principles you know it comes from a lot
1196. 01:19:22 of different things growth mindset grit like it comes from a lot of these things these
1197. 01:19:26 books that we've gone through of like you know what it I'm just done I'm done and in
1198. 01:19:33 some cases you know what as I reevaluate some of this right now and go through like I'm in
1199. 01:19:38 a really good place now I'm in the process of rebuilding some of what was in some cases
1200. 01:19:45 taken from me and some things that I did incorrectly like I'm rebuilding some of that
1201. 01:19:50 now and trying to do it in a better way and some of that is primarily debt because of principles
1202. 01:19:59 and radolio it's the one action item I have yet from this book is it as I'm working through
1203. 01:20:05 all of this stuff I know that one of the things I've not done well is systematizing some of
1204. 01:20:11 my decisions in the business that I run so I've been shifting it I've kind of got two
1205. 01:20:17 businesses of sorts that I'm working through right now and I want to systemize some of
1206. 01:20:21 those decisions that I make for those from a numbers stance I've never really done that
1207. 01:20:26 you know people talk about like sales funnels and such and like I've never been into that
1208. 01:20:32 and I think that's a detriment like my systematic thinking in all of this is too low of a level
1209. 01:20:40 to say that it's been truly successful so I'm trying to raise that bar and take it to
1210. 01:20:45 that next level of some degree so this is a long winded way of saying I like this book
1211. 01:20:51 yeah it's it's a it's a good book we'll get into style and rating here in a second you
1212. 01:20:58 already shared your action item so I'll share a couple of mine I mentioned already that I
1213. 01:21:03 want to create the mindfulness meditation habit using headspace been doing that hopefully
1214. 01:21:08 I can continue to do that I also mentioned I want to embrace radical truth and radical
1215. 01:21:13 transparency however and wherever I can that one is kind of generic I know the other one
1216. 01:21:20 that is interesting to me because he talks a lot about the different personality type
1217. 01:21:25 assessments he mentions the Myers Briggs he didn't mention the Colby it would be cool
1218. 01:21:30 to hear because I really enjoy that one I think there's a lot of insight to begin from
1219. 01:21:34 that one strengths finder you know that type of stuff but I've gone through a bunch of
1220. 01:21:39 those things and my wife has gone through several of them as well I know that there
1221. 01:21:45 are kids versions of those types of things but even if they don't go through those formal
1222. 01:21:51 assessments I do think that there is some value in the idea that he mentions of creating
1223. 01:21:57 baseball cards he talks about it in the organizational perspective is what people are good at and
1224. 01:22:03 they have these things publicly listed so when you need someone who does something you
1225. 01:22:07 look at their baseball card and you can see that they have the skills to do this thing
1226. 01:22:11 you shouldn't try to do it yourself I want to create baseball cards for my family and
1227. 01:22:17 I don't think I'll have this done by the next episode I think this is going to take some
1228. 01:22:20 time but I also think that this could provide some identity in some direction for my kids
1229. 01:22:27 to understand their own unique talents and abilities not that they're set in stone you
1230. 01:22:32 know growth mindset we do hard things but I do think this would be kind of cool and give
1231. 01:22:37 them some confidence so I want to want to do this for my family
1232. 01:22:40 I think that'll be a cool one I don't think I'm gonna do it but I think it'd be really
1233. 01:22:44 cool for you alright style and rating sure we got I really enjoyed this book it took me
1234. 01:22:51 forever to get through it because I created the largest mind map that anyone has ever
1235. 01:22:57 created probably maybe that's not true but it was something that I really think is valuable
1236. 01:23:06 and something that I would like to do at some point in my life I would love to have a Mike
1237. 01:23:12 Schmitt's principles like this I think that this is one of the most valuable books anybody
1238. 01:23:21 can read again it's his principles so you have to recognize that but it is the sum total
1239. 01:23:27 of his life experience written in a way that he can transfer as much of it as possible
1240. 01:23:32 to you in as little even though it's 500 something pages as little time as possible I
1241. 01:23:39 think if you have the right perspective as you're going through this book there is so
1242. 01:23:42 much that you could glean from this and you don't have to try to get it all so you does
1243. 01:23:48 take the right perspective going through this book if you if if you're the type of person
1244. 01:23:52 who when you read through a book you want to keep all of it front of mind that's not
1245. 01:23:58 going to happen that's kind of why I created this ridiculous digital reference but you
1246. 01:24:03 don't have to do that either he even gives you a little cheat sheet section in the middle
1247. 01:24:06 the pages I think are tipped in red so you can find it real simply and he's got a index
1248. 01:24:11 basically of all the different life and business principles that he outlines in this book
1249. 01:24:18 there were a couple things that I heard him talk about some of the principles and I was
1250. 01:24:23 like I don't think I would I would do that one that particular way but that's all just
1251. 01:24:30 based on values differences and it really wasn't something that I got hung up on I struggle
1252. 01:24:36 with what to rate this because a lot of the 5.0 books that we read they're kind of life
1253. 01:24:46 changing they give you something that allows you to see things in a totally different way
1254. 01:24:53 and this book didn't do that for me but it did give me a lot more concrete ways to think
1255. 01:25:02 about things that I kind of understood already so I feel like this kind of cemented some
1256. 01:25:06 things for me that he explained it in a way I didn't understand it before this felt like
1257. 01:25:12 getting coffee with somebody who was really super successful and he's just sharing everything
1258. 01:25:18 that he learned and if that idea appeals to you then this is easily a 5 star book if
1259. 01:25:27 that sounds boring to you you're not going to get anything out of this that's totally
1260. 01:25:31 right up my alley though so I'm going to rate this 5 stars nice well I I can tell you that
1261. 01:25:41 having gone through this the second time like I have referenced this book more than I have
1262. 01:25:46 any other and like I I have a tendency to keep all my books easily available because I underline
1263. 01:25:53 and I have my index in the back of them which is why I don't really have a good way of sharing
1264. 01:25:57 it with people so I know that sometimes I'll have something come to mind and I go grab a
1265. 01:26:05 book from the shelf because I know it came from mindset but I don't remember what the
1266. 01:26:10 exact was and I just want to refer to it so I go flip through the index and I look up the
1267. 01:26:15 reference of what I was going for and I find what I'm after I pick up principles more than
1268. 01:26:21 just about every other book I'm pretty sure so this is one that I know will come back over
1269. 01:26:28 and over and over again and I already know there's some sections I want to go reference
1270. 01:26:32 in the midst of doing my action item over the next week or two like I know that I'm going
1271. 01:26:37 to be pulling it back out quite a bit to me this is an easy five oh like this this is a
1272. 01:26:43 an awesomely written book rate as a great job of writing it and is giving you tons of information
1273. 01:26:52 to share I've got a handful of potential business ideas as a result of reading this all of which
1274. 01:26:59 I should probably say no to so like it's one that can spark a lot and one that I think
1275. 01:27:07 anyone could clean at least something from so I do highly recommend this one but you've
1276. 01:27:13 got to be I think you have to be a dedicated reader to do this because it is long yeah
1277. 01:27:18 like this is a big book you're not going to sit down and read this on an evening that
1278. 01:27:22 will not happen Michael make fun of you if you read it for two four weeks at a time that's
1279. 01:27:27 okay but it is one it's worth going through and one that I do really enjoy so thanks for
1280. 01:27:35 making me go through it again Mike yeah for sure thanks to the club for recommending it
1281. 01:27:40 I do want to call it real quickly here again you have to have the right perspective don't
1282. 01:27:44 just go by the fact that Joe and I both rated this as 5.0 that this is the right book for
1283. 01:27:49 you if you are just trying to get the gist of a book which I know is what a lot of people
1284. 01:27:55 do when they listen to bookworm then you're not going to like this this is not something
1285. 01:27:59 that you can get the blinkest version of and there are some books that blinkest would
1286. 01:28:06 have been great for that we've covered right because it's a simple thing that should have
1287. 01:28:11 been a blog post and they stretched out to 200 pages yeah like bring this is 540 pages
1288. 01:28:15 that easily could have been a thousand plus if the idea of sitting down with somebody like
1289. 01:28:21 Ray Dalio and getting coffee and trying to learn from him is appealing to you then 540
1290. 01:28:27 pages will fly by and you're going to wish this was longer but if you want just like
1291. 01:28:32 the too long didn't read version whatever time you're going to invest in this you're
1292. 01:28:37 going to feel like is a waste so make sure that you have the right perspective before
1293. 01:28:42 you decide to pick this one up and go through it for yourself otherwise it will be kind of
1294. 01:28:46 a waste of time sure absolutely well throw not that disclaimer there yeah it's probably
1295. 01:28:52 a good good one to throw out there but let's let's put this one on the shelf next time
1296. 01:28:57 we are going to go through you are awesome by Neil Pessrisha again these were advanced
1297. 01:29:04 copies that were sent to us and Mike yours is on the way but it should be a good read it's
1298. 01:29:09 obviously very new so it'll be it'll be a good one to go through I was not familiar with Neil
1299. 01:29:15 and I went through and kind of looked at all of his back catalog and kind of the stuff that he's
1300. 01:29:22 written he's a speaker I think this is going to be fun yeah it should be a good one to this one too
1301. 01:29:27 what you got next all right I'm looking through the the club right now and one that jumps out to me
1302. 01:29:33 is highly voted for margin by Richard Swenson this is something that I've wanted to talk to you
1303. 01:29:38 about for a long time so awesome I'm going to pick that one and then gapbooks I know you don't have
1304. 01:29:44 one at least on the outline here I don't life has been busy yeah I've got the I'm going to pick the
1305. 01:29:50 same one I had last time because I really do want to dig into stillness is the key by Ryan Holliday
1306. 01:29:56 if I still can't get to it during this one maybe I'll pick that for the bookworm too
1307. 01:30:01 here you go I know that this book is going to be going to be awesome and I've heard lots of
1308. 01:30:06 great things about it from all the other people who have been raving about it online so that's my
1309. 01:30:12 gapbook that's the plan anyways all right so thanks everybody for listening and thank you
1310. 01:30:18 specifically to our premium club members as I mentioned I've got a ridiculous mind map which
1311. 01:30:24 is available to club members if you want to join the club it's five bucks a month you can also pay
1312. 01:30:29 an alumpseum for a yearly plan that helps Joe and I keep doing this and it gives you access to some
1313. 01:30:38 extra stuff including all of the mind maps for all of the books that we we cover here so if you
1314. 01:30:43 want to download all that stuff you can join the club by going to club.bookworm.fm/membership
1315. 01:30:49 or if you're listening in overcast just tap on the little icon on the the bottom of the player
1316. 01:30:55 which will take you right to that page awesome well look forward to seeing you guys in the club
1317. 01:31:01 and if you are reading along with us pick up you are awesome by Neil Pissricha and we will go
1318. 01:31:06 through it next time.