84: Indistractable by Nir Eyal

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1. 00:00:00 Well Joe, the people have spoken.
2. 00:00:02 We have our top books of 2019.
3. 00:00:05 - I'm excited about this.
4. 00:00:07 We certainly do have some good ones here.
5. 00:00:10 - Yes, and to be honest, number one,
6. 00:00:13 it's not even close.
7. 00:00:15 It's number one by a large margin.
8. 00:00:17 - Yes.
9. 00:00:17 - Which kind of makes me happy
10. 00:00:19 because I really, really like this book.
11. 00:00:21 - Yeah.
12. 00:00:22 - So I thought maybe for the beginning of this episode,
13. 00:00:25 we could go over some of the top results,
14. 00:00:27 top three from the poll, and then maybe your top book
15. 00:00:30 of 2019 and my top book of 2019.
16. 00:00:32 - Sure, yeah, absolutely.
17. 00:00:34 - But the number one book, as voted on
18. 00:00:36 by the Bookworm Club, was "Atomic Habits"
19. 00:00:39 by James Clear, episode 63.
20. 00:00:42 And I completely agree with that.
21. 00:00:45 "Atomic Habits" is a phenomenal book.
22. 00:00:47 I actually read it at the end of 2018 when it first came out.
23. 00:00:52 We recorded the episode in 2019,
24. 00:00:53 which is why it was in the poll.
25. 00:00:55 But this is a phenomenal book in,
26. 00:00:58 back in Christmas 2018, I think I gifted
27. 00:01:01 like five different copies of this book
28. 00:01:03 to people that I knew.
29. 00:01:04 - Nice.
30. 00:01:05 - I generally hesitate to gift copies of books
31. 00:01:08 because I feel like I'm a little bit weird.
32. 00:01:12 And if I really enjoy a book, there's a good chance
33. 00:01:14 that other people won't, but James Clear's book was so good
34. 00:01:17 that I took the chance.
35. 00:01:19 - Decided to bring the rule.
36. 00:01:21 - Yeah, I broke the rule.
37. 00:01:23 Number two at 17% of the vote was "The One Thing"
38. 00:01:27 by Gary Keller and Jay Popisan,
39. 00:01:29 which again, I really enjoyed that book.
40. 00:01:32 That was episode 60.
41. 00:01:33 And number three, episode 64,
42. 00:01:36 was "Digital Minimalism" by Kale Newport.
43. 00:01:40 And then there were a lot of others that were 5% or lower.
44. 00:01:44 But thank you to everyone who participated in the poll
45. 00:01:47 and good job picking these three books.
46. 00:01:50 - Yeah, for sure.
47. 00:01:51 I think if I were to go back and pick the top three myself,
48. 00:01:55 this would be pretty similar.
49. 00:01:57 I think these are three very influential books.
50. 00:02:01 And there's a lot of good books on this list to choose from,
51. 00:02:04 but I have a hard time arguing against these
52. 00:02:07 as the top three books.
53. 00:02:09 - I know I had a number of people say like,
54. 00:02:11 I only get one vote.
55. 00:02:13 Like, yes, you only get one vote.
56. 00:02:15 Like, it's all that's allowed.
57. 00:02:16 You're not allowed to pick multiple here,
58. 00:02:18 which makes it quite a bit harder, I think.
59. 00:02:22 But I'm with you whenever I look at this list of books,
60. 00:02:25 the three that came to the top.
61. 00:02:27 Pretty easy ones for me to agree with, for sure.
62. 00:02:31 I honestly, if I had to go to number four,
63. 00:02:34 I'm not real sure where it would be
64. 00:02:37 because there's a bunch of them
65. 00:02:38 that I feel like could fit the number four.
66. 00:02:41 So seeing atomic habits,
67. 00:02:44 the one thing in "Digital Minimalism" at the top,
68. 00:02:46 that's a pretty solid lineup right there, for sure.
69. 00:02:50 - That is, yep.
70. 00:02:51 If you were to pick three books to read from this list,
71. 00:02:54 if you've not read any of them,
72. 00:02:55 that's a great place to start.
73. 00:02:57 So what was your top book of 2019?
74. 00:02:59 - So I, I of course, built the poll that went up there.
75. 00:03:04 So that meant I got the chance to vote right away.
76. 00:03:06 So I don't know if I biased people
77. 00:03:08 by having the first book voted for,
78. 00:03:10 but the one that I put as my number one
79. 00:03:14 was "Digital Minimalism",
80. 00:03:15 which I'm sure is probably not much of a surprise,
81. 00:03:19 but at the same time, like that book,
82. 00:03:22 I think I've read it a couple more times since then too.
83. 00:03:26 So it's one that I find myself continually coming back to.
84. 00:03:30 So I really, really liked that one, obviously.
85. 00:03:34 What was yours?
86. 00:03:35 - Mine is actually one that I just finished
87. 00:03:38 and is not even on this list.
88. 00:03:41 That is "Stillness Is the Key" by Ryan Holiday.
89. 00:03:46 I really enjoyed this book.
90. 00:03:49 It's very Ryan Holiday-esque.
91. 00:03:51 He's a phenomenal writer.
92. 00:03:53 The way that he writes and like the way that he puts together
93. 00:03:56 his stories is just phenomenal.
94. 00:03:58 He's one of the best storytellers I've ever read.
95. 00:04:02 And he just has so many,
96. 00:04:04 like there's a lot of people that have like the one liners
97. 00:04:06 that are very memorable.
98. 00:04:08 With Ryan Holiday, it kind of feels like every sentence
99. 00:04:10 is that way.
100. 00:04:12 So I ended up jotting down a bunch of things,
101. 00:04:14 a bunch of quotes, a bunch of notes
102. 00:04:16 and really, really enjoyed that book.
103. 00:04:18 So I don't know, maybe we'll cover that one
104. 00:04:20 at some point for Bookworm.
105. 00:04:22 - It's almost not even fair to pick one
106. 00:04:24 that's not on a list.
107. 00:04:25 What was your, which one did you vote for?
108. 00:04:27 Like which one was on the poll that you picked?
109. 00:04:29 - Oh, from the list.
110. 00:04:30 I think I voted for atomic habits
111. 00:04:33 because that was the most influential book.
112. 00:04:36 Like I said, I technically read that first in 2018.
113. 00:04:40 So I was gonna pick a different one
114. 00:04:41 if I had to pick my top book that I read in 2019.
115. 00:04:44 - Sure.
116. 00:04:45 - I reread that.
117. 00:04:46 So I guess you could say I read that in 2019 too.
118. 00:04:48 (laughing)
119. 00:04:49 But yeah, I really enjoyed that book.
120. 00:04:52 I think that's the book, the kind of book
121. 00:04:56 that you could recommend to just about anybody
122. 00:04:58 and they're going to get something out of it.
123. 00:05:00 They're gonna enjoy it.
124. 00:05:01 - Sure.
125. 00:05:02 - It's very broad reaching, but also very well written,
126. 00:05:06 very practical book.
127. 00:05:08 And I just, I enjoyed it so much.
128. 00:05:11 - Nice.
129. 00:05:12 Well, good luck on picking another one for the next year.
130. 00:05:16 I feel like this is gonna be a tough one to beat
131. 00:05:20 as I'm looking at these top three books.
132. 00:05:22 Like this is, this is gonna be a challenge, I think.
133. 00:05:25 - For sure.
134. 00:05:26 - But there's always a long list of great ones.
135. 00:05:29 So we'll see what we, so we'll land on in 2020.
136. 00:05:32 But that said, thank you to everyone who voted.
137. 00:05:35 And I'm sorry that I made you pick only one.
138. 00:05:38 (laughs)
139. 00:05:39 But I think it's worked out better in the long run.
140. 00:05:41 But there's that top books of 2019.
141. 00:05:45 - Awesome.
142. 00:05:46 All right, so let's talk about action items now.
143. 00:05:49 Joe, did you figure out what your just cause is?
144. 00:05:51 - I know things that it's not like.
145. 00:05:54 (laughs)
146. 00:05:54 - I guess that's helpful.
147. 00:05:56 (laughs)
148. 00:05:58 - Here's where I am in the process.
149. 00:06:00 I made a list of things that could qualify as my just cause.
150. 00:06:05 When I made said list, it was much longer than I expected.
151. 00:06:10 I had 18 different potential items on this list.
152. 00:06:14 And I have been slowly combining, consolidating,
153. 00:06:17 whittling it down, wondering what I was thinking
154. 00:06:20 or what I was smoking whenever I made the list.
155. 00:06:22 And then I'm down to about four on that list.
156. 00:06:27 But I don't have the full answer yet
157. 00:06:30 'cause holy buckets, this is hard.
158. 00:06:32 (laughs)
159. 00:06:33 This is not a simple thing to just,
160. 00:06:36 I'm gonna go determine what my just cause is this weekend.
161. 00:06:39 No, it doesn't work that way.
162. 00:06:40 So I am continually working on it,
163. 00:06:43 but I don't have the full answer yet,
164. 00:06:45 but I can say I've made progress on it.
165. 00:06:47 - Okay.
166. 00:06:48 - Does that count?
167. 00:06:49 - Well, I also have an action item here
168. 00:06:50 of figuring out what my just cause is
169. 00:06:52 and now you've made me think that I did it wrong.
170. 00:06:54 (laughs)
171. 00:06:56 So I basically tried to combine all of the different things
172. 00:07:01 that I have the life theme, the core values.
173. 00:07:03 And I did land on a phrase which I know to your point
174. 00:07:07 is not gonna be 100% correct,
175. 00:07:09 but I think it's a great place to start at least.
176. 00:07:11 So here we go.
177. 00:07:13 My just cause is to help people make the most
178. 00:07:17 of what they have to work with.
179. 00:07:19 There you have it.
180. 00:07:21 - Interesting.
181. 00:07:22 I feel like that can go so many different directions.
182. 00:07:24 - Exactly.
183. 00:07:26 That's kind of the point.
184. 00:07:27 (laughs)
185. 00:07:29 So there's a productivity angle to that.
186. 00:07:31 There's a tech nerd angle to that.
187. 00:07:33 There's a spiritual church angle to that.
188. 00:07:37 There's a lot of different angles to it.
189. 00:07:39 - No kidding.
190. 00:07:40 - That's the single theme cause, whatever.
191. 00:07:45 That is, I'm gonna mark that as done,
192. 00:07:48 even though like I said,
193. 00:07:49 it will probably evolve and change over time.
194. 00:07:53 - Sure.
195. 00:07:54 - The other action item I had was to consider
196. 00:07:57 how can I build a circle of safety for my kids?
197. 00:08:00 I think there's a lot more work to be done with this,
198. 00:08:04 but I also think that there's some steps
199. 00:08:08 in the right direction.
200. 00:08:10 So kind of going back to the what is my just cause,
201. 00:08:14 I also identified a couple of words for this year,
202. 00:08:17 which David Sparks and I unpack this
203. 00:08:19 in the recent episode of Focus,
204. 00:08:21 but my two words were rest in relationships.
205. 00:08:24 So I had those as like my themes
206. 00:08:28 for my just cause, if you will, for the year 2020.
207. 00:08:32 Like that's what I want to prioritize.
208. 00:08:34 And one of the things that touches both of those areas
209. 00:08:39 and is in alignment with this,
210. 00:08:43 helping me fulfill this action item,
211. 00:08:46 I believe is we did something a little bit different
212. 00:08:49 for Christmas this year,
213. 00:08:50 instead of buying individual gifts for all the kids
214. 00:08:53 and each other, 'cause we've all got too much stuff.
215. 00:08:56 We floated the idea first of all,
216. 00:08:59 and everybody thought it was great,
217. 00:09:00 so we ran with it, but we did a couple of group gifts.
218. 00:09:03 One of them was a puppy named Lucy,
219. 00:09:05 which you have seen, at least in video.
220. 00:09:07 - Hi, Lucy.
221. 00:09:08 - And the other was a ping pong table.
222. 00:09:11 And I liked playing ping pong when I was a kid.
223. 00:09:14 We got a pretty nice ping pong table
224. 00:09:16 with the hope that my kids would really enjoy it.
225. 00:09:18 Like I said, we've talked to them about this before.
226. 00:09:21 We decided to do this this year,
227. 00:09:23 and they were all really excited about it.
228. 00:09:25 So the goal was that they would really enjoy playing ping pong.
229. 00:09:29 I would take more breaks during my day,
230. 00:09:31 like I'd be in a writing session,
231. 00:09:32 I'd come out of my office, my kids are homeschooled,
232. 00:09:34 so we time our breaks together,
233. 00:09:36 and instead of scrolling through social media or whatever,
234. 00:09:40 I can play some ping pong with my kids.
235. 00:09:43 And one of the things that's interesting
236. 00:09:46 is that, and this was the hope,
237. 00:09:49 was that just spending time together
238. 00:09:51 will facilitate conversations,
239. 00:09:54 whether that happens to be while you're playing a board game
240. 00:09:57 or eating a meal together,
241. 00:09:59 also happens around the ping pong table.
242. 00:10:01 So I think that that is just one small step
243. 00:10:05 in how I can help build a circle of safety for my kids,
244. 00:10:08 just by continuing to develop those relationships.
245. 00:10:10 But like I said, there's still a lot more to be done here,
246. 00:10:13 I know.
247. 00:10:13 - Sure.
248. 00:10:14 I feel like this is something you're never fully done with.
249. 00:10:17 - Exactly, yeah.
250. 00:10:19 So yeah, those are my action items,
251. 00:10:21 ready to jump into today's book.
252. 00:10:23 - Sure, I'm focused and ready.
253. 00:10:25 - All right, are you indestractable?
254. 00:10:27 Because that is in fact today's book,
255. 00:10:29 Indestractable by Near I All.
256. 00:10:31 - Probably not completely, but hey, we'll go give it a shot.
257. 00:10:34 (laughs)
258. 00:10:35 - Okay, this was a highly voted for book
259. 00:10:39 in the Bookworm Club.
260. 00:10:40 Near I All is also the guy who wrote the book Hooked,
261. 00:10:43 which was how to make habit forming products.
262. 00:10:46 I knew that as I went into this,
263. 00:10:48 I started Hooked and could not finish it.
264. 00:10:50 That's one of the few books
265. 00:10:52 that I have not been able to finish.
266. 00:10:54 And while I liked the premise of this book,
267. 00:10:59 I have to admit I was very skeptical going into it.
268. 00:11:01 I thought I was not going to like this at all.
269. 00:11:04 I thought this was basically somebody who was
270. 00:11:08 in the startup world trying to capitalize
271. 00:11:11 on the whole essentialism deep work trend
272. 00:11:15 that has been going on the last several years.
273. 00:11:18 I was pleasantly surprised though.
274. 00:11:20 There's a lot of great stuff in this book.
275. 00:11:22 We're not going to go through all the individual chapters
276. 00:11:24 because I believe there are 35 different chapters.
277. 00:11:28 They are broken down into different sections.
278. 00:11:31 And the good news is that, good news I guess.
279. 00:11:35 There's not just three sections.
280. 00:11:37 The also maybe good news is that there are seven.
281. 00:11:40 So that's the way we're going to tackle this episode
282. 00:11:43 is we're going to break it down into these different sections.
283. 00:11:46 And let's start here with the introduction.
284. 00:11:49 I put this on the outline,
285. 00:11:50 even though you maybe didn't need to
286. 00:11:53 because he has a couple of important points
287. 00:11:57 that he talks about at the beginning here.
288. 00:11:59 Number one being the difference between traction
289. 00:12:01 and distraction, which I liked.
290. 00:12:03 Traction is moving towards what you really want.
291. 00:12:06 Distraction is moving you away from what you really want.
292. 00:12:10 And that is going to pop up over and over and over again
293. 00:12:14 in the book.
294. 00:12:15 He's got a little diagram where he's got basically
295. 00:12:19 two different axes and then a point in the middle.
296. 00:12:22 And on the top of the cross diagram basically
297. 00:12:27 is the internal triggers on the bottom,
298. 00:12:30 is the external triggers.
299. 00:12:32 And then on the right you've got traction on the left,
300. 00:12:35 you've got distraction.
301. 00:12:37 So he's got little arrows pointing all these different ways.
302. 00:12:39 Basically what you want to do
303. 00:12:41 and how this is broken down,
304. 00:12:42 you want to master your internal triggers,
305. 00:12:43 make time for traction,
306. 00:12:44 hack back external triggers and prevent distraction
307. 00:12:47 with packs.
308. 00:12:49 And anything else you want to add from this introduction
309. 00:12:52 otherwise we can jump right into the first part here
310. 00:12:54 which is mastering those internal triggers.
311. 00:12:56 - Just the book overall
312. 00:13:00 is specifically geared towards understanding
313. 00:13:02 what causes distraction and then what to do about it.
314. 00:13:06 I haven't read, hooked and I don't own it,
315. 00:13:09 don't have really much of an interest to read it.
316. 00:13:12 But I know that there are a few,
317. 00:13:15 quite a few people that say that it was hard to read
318. 00:13:17 but at the same time I hear other folks say
319. 00:13:19 it's very easy to read.
320. 00:13:20 I was curious, Mike, why did you put it down?
321. 00:13:24 Was it because the style of it was hard to read
322. 00:13:27 or was it the content that caused it to be
323. 00:13:30 like something you didn't want to go through?
324. 00:13:31 - I think it was just the wrong thing at the wrong time
325. 00:13:34 and it just felt icky.
326. 00:13:36 - Sure.
327. 00:13:38 - I tried to read it,
328. 00:13:40 it must have been a couple of years ago now
329. 00:13:42 and I remember getting about halfway through it
330. 00:13:46 and recognizing that everything that he was saying is true
331. 00:13:50 and then at that point saying, oh my gosh,
332. 00:13:52 everything that he's saying is true.
333. 00:13:55 - Sure.
334. 00:13:56 - And I can see how Facebook is using this
335. 00:13:57 and Google is using this and all of these evil empires
336. 00:13:59 are using this against me.
337. 00:14:01 And it just did not sit well with me and at that point,
338. 00:14:04 I gotta put this down.
339. 00:14:06 I can't think about this anymore.
340. 00:14:08 But that's kind of to near IEL's point
341. 00:14:11 is like this traction versus distraction.
342. 00:14:13 Distraction, he talks about in the next section,
343. 00:14:16 what motivates us really,
344. 00:14:17 he talks about distraction being an unhealthy escape
345. 00:14:20 from reality.
346. 00:14:21 So if I'm honest with myself when I was reading Hooked,
347. 00:14:23 I was like, this is reality, I don't like it,
348. 00:14:26 I need to find something to distract me from it.
349. 00:14:29 - Sure, yeah.
350. 00:14:29 No, I think the whole traction, distraction,
351. 00:14:33 internal external triggers, diagram,
352. 00:14:36 and just to expand on that slightly,
353. 00:14:39 with the internal triggers at the top,
354. 00:14:41 the external triggers at the bottom,
355. 00:14:43 you have arrows that come down and up
356. 00:14:45 from each of those respectively.
357. 00:14:47 And then they go to the outside from there.
358. 00:14:49 So you'll have internal triggers from the top coming down.
359. 00:14:52 And it can either go to distraction on the left
360. 00:14:55 or towards traction to the right.
361. 00:14:58 Same thing with external triggers,
362. 00:14:59 they come up from the bottom
363. 00:15:00 and can either go left or right to distraction or traction.
364. 00:15:04 And like, I'm not really sure how this diagram
365. 00:15:07 is supposed to be used other than it's just helpful
366. 00:15:11 to understand it somewhat.
367. 00:15:13 'Cause he does come back to it quite a few times.
368. 00:15:16 And it is kind of helpful to see
369. 00:15:19 just to give you that reference point
370. 00:15:21 and something to talk through.
371. 00:15:23 But I really came away from it
372. 00:15:26 with the more of an understanding of,
373. 00:15:28 okay, if I have internal and external triggers
374. 00:15:31 that can cause distraction,
375. 00:15:33 how do I get that to shift over to the traction side?
376. 00:15:37 Basically, what am I doing wrong?
377. 00:15:39 - Sure.
378. 00:15:39 - That was a lot of what I got from that piece.
379. 00:15:42 But obviously we're gonna go through
380. 00:15:44 a number of these different individual pin points,
381. 00:15:46 but that diagram, although it's helpful at the beginning,
382. 00:15:50 I'm not sure it was super helpful overall,
383. 00:15:52 but that's just me being--
384. 00:15:54 - Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of the diagram, to be honest.
385. 00:15:58 I don't think it's all that helpful.
386. 00:15:59 I think it's helpful in showing
387. 00:16:03 or lending some visible credibility,
388. 00:16:07 maybe to what he's going to tell you.
389. 00:16:10 I don't know, if you have a diagram,
390. 00:16:11 it just kind of looks like you've thought this through
391. 00:16:13 more fully than maybe somebody else.
392. 00:16:15 - Sure, yeah.
393. 00:16:16 - That's kind of the purpose I felt like it was serving.
394. 00:16:19 But I don't disagree with any of it.
395. 00:16:21 I just don't think it's all that helpful.
396. 00:16:23 Sometimes you see those diagrams and you're like,
397. 00:16:24 oh, that makes so much sense.
398. 00:16:26 I can totally see how this is going to help me.
399. 00:16:29 That's not what you get from this diagram.
400. 00:16:31 - Right, right.
401. 00:16:32 - But that's okay.
402. 00:16:34 So first section here under Mastering Internal Triggers,
403. 00:16:39 there's a couple of things I wanted to talk about.
404. 00:16:41 Number one, he's got a whole chapter
405. 00:16:42 on how time management is pain management.
406. 00:16:45 I thought this was fascinating
407. 00:16:47 because this is totally true,
408. 00:16:50 at least I can see it in my own life,
409. 00:16:51 how we try to manage our time in a way
410. 00:16:55 that we don't feel quote unquote bad.
411. 00:17:00 And he says that there are a couple different
412. 00:17:04 psychological factors that make satisfaction temporary.
413. 00:17:08 Number one is boredom.
414. 00:17:09 Number two is a negativity bias.
415. 00:17:11 Number three is rumination.
416. 00:17:12 And number four is hedonic adaptation.
417. 00:17:15 So no matter how great our situation is,
418. 00:17:18 at some point we're going to feel dissatisfied with it.
419. 00:17:21 And when we start to feel dissatisfied,
420. 00:17:23 we're going to look for something
421. 00:17:26 that's going to give us the next dopamine hit.
422. 00:17:30 And that's not a healthy way to deal with things.
423. 00:17:35 Distatisfaction and discomfort,
424. 00:17:37 he says dominate our brain's default state.
425. 00:17:40 And instead of just using them
426. 00:17:43 or trying to placate our brain and medicate
427. 00:17:46 with whatever it happens to be,
428. 00:17:48 whether it's drugs, alcohol or social media,
429. 00:17:50 we can use those things to motivate us
430. 00:17:52 instead of defeat us,
431. 00:17:53 which I think is a very interesting idea.
432. 00:17:56 Feeling bad, he makes the point
433. 00:17:58 in this section isn't actually bad.
434. 00:18:01 And I think that's an important idea worth unpacking.
435. 00:18:05 I really like the concept of time
436. 00:18:08 being the same as pain management,
437. 00:18:11 'cause I don't know how many times
438. 00:18:13 I'm in scheduling conversations.
439. 00:18:15 And it really is which process
440. 00:18:16 or which path is going to be less painful.
441. 00:18:18 Okay, if I'm choosing between something
442. 00:18:23 that's going on at our church and event
443. 00:18:25 that I either need to be at or should be at,
444. 00:18:28 and something that, say a piano recital for my daughter,
445. 00:18:32 that is pain management at its finest, most likely.
446. 00:18:36 So that's one that I struggle with,
447. 00:18:40 but I also really enjoyed his analogy there.
448. 00:18:42 So yes, managing pain, it's not fun.
449. 00:18:46 That's still a thing we gotta do.
450. 00:18:48 - It's not, but it's interesting to think that,
451. 00:18:52 it's interesting to make the connection
452. 00:18:54 between time and pain,
453. 00:18:57 'cause he talks about the four psychological factors.
454. 00:18:59 And the first one being boredom,
455. 00:19:01 when I read this section,
456. 00:19:03 I was thinking of my six-year-old's face
457. 00:19:05 where he's always gotta be doing something,
458. 00:19:08 and if he's not, he's like, "Dad, I'm bored."
459. 00:19:13 And you can see the pain on his face
460. 00:19:15 as he's telling me that he's bored.
461. 00:19:17 And I'm like, "I would love to be bored, buddy."
462. 00:19:19 (laughs)
463. 00:19:21 - That phrases one that doesn't get used in our house,
464. 00:19:25 'cause I'm one of those dads that,
465. 00:19:28 if you tell me you're bored,
466. 00:19:29 I will solve that problem for you right now.
467. 00:19:32 (laughs)
468. 00:19:33 - Well, that's kind of what he discovered too,
469. 00:19:36 is like, "Well, I can find something for you to do."
470. 00:19:39 - No, either make yourself busy
471. 00:19:41 or the baseboards need washing.
472. 00:19:44 (laughs)
473. 00:19:45 Something will be discovered for you.
474. 00:19:48 - Yeah, but I think that maybe we don't deal with boredom
475. 00:19:52 the same way that my six-year-old does,
476. 00:19:54 but we do try to cope with this in some way, shape, or form.
477. 00:19:59 I think this is what drives a lot of social media behavior.
478. 00:20:03 Email too to a certain degree,
479. 00:20:06 although there's a whole section in email
480. 00:20:08 I wanna get into later on in this book.
481. 00:20:10 I feel like email maybe is more associated with work.
482. 00:20:14 And so boredom, I guess, could apply there,
483. 00:20:18 but more so, it's busy work that would appear there.
484. 00:20:22 But anytime you've got any sort of space
485. 00:20:25 in your personal life,
486. 00:20:26 you tend to wanna fill it with something,
487. 00:20:28 whether that be an endless feed in Infinity Pool
488. 00:20:32 or the latest shows on Netflix, Disney Plus, whatever.
489. 00:20:36 I think it's important to recognize
490. 00:20:38 that just because there's some space
491. 00:20:40 there doesn't mean that you have to fill it.
492. 00:20:41 And again, I just read Stillness is the key
493. 00:20:43 by Ryan Holiday, so this is really front of mind for me.
494. 00:20:46 That just because there's some stillness
495. 00:20:48 doesn't mean you gotta make some waves.
496. 00:20:50 - I think we have a habit of,
497. 00:20:52 if you have space or you have time, we like to fill it.
498. 00:20:56 We just read margin, which is the antithesis
499. 00:20:59 to filling all the open gaps.
500. 00:21:01 And it's one that I've kind of been on that train
501. 00:21:06 to some degree, as far as taking advantage of times
502. 00:21:11 when you're in the car and listening to a podcast
503. 00:21:13 while you're driving.
504. 00:21:15 It's pretty rare that I'm listening to anything
505. 00:21:17 whenever I'm on short commutes or even long commutes.
506. 00:21:21 It's usually dead silence.
507. 00:21:23 And I'm fine with that,
508. 00:21:25 but it seems like whenever I recommend that
509. 00:21:28 or mention it to other people,
510. 00:21:29 what?
511. 00:21:31 I could never do that.
512. 00:21:32 - Yeah.
513. 00:21:33 - Well, yes, you could, in fact.
514. 00:21:36 But you don't just jump into that.
515. 00:21:40 You have to have a little bit of the mindset
516. 00:21:42 that you're just trying to make sure
517. 00:21:44 that you have the space to think.
518. 00:21:46 And not everyone sees the need for that or wants that.
519. 00:21:49 - Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense,
520. 00:21:52 but I have to admit that I'm probably one of those people
521. 00:21:54 who would push back against that idea.
522. 00:21:57 (laughing)
523. 00:21:59 - I remember it last time I--
524. 00:22:00 - Took a car ride in silence.
525. 00:22:02 That being said, you know,
526. 00:22:03 I also have been fairly intentional
527. 00:22:05 about pruning back the inputs in my life.
528. 00:22:10 So I don't know, maybe that's evidence
529. 00:22:13 that I haven't gone far enough yet.
530. 00:22:15 I also think an idea kind of tied to this
531. 00:22:19 is this whole concept of ego depletion.
532. 00:22:22 Because when it comes to quieting inputs
533. 00:22:27 or seeking stillness slash boredom,
534. 00:22:30 the, if you're not used to it,
535. 00:22:32 the first thing you wanna do is seek out something
536. 00:22:36 to fill that gap.
537. 00:22:37 It makes you one uncomfortable.
538. 00:22:40 And I think another way to say that maybe would be
539. 00:22:42 that you don't have enough willpower
540. 00:22:43 to just sit there and silence.
541. 00:22:45 And willpower is an interesting idea.
542. 00:22:47 We read a book on the willpower instinct.
543. 00:22:51 And I forget if in that book they talked about willpower
544. 00:22:54 as a finite resource, I think they probably did.
545. 00:22:56 'Cause that's what most of the traditional,
546. 00:22:58 traditional psychology world has kind of
547. 00:23:03 been teaching that model.
548. 00:23:05 But in this book, he mentions a study by,
549. 00:23:09 did you see who this was by?
550. 00:23:11 Carol Dweck, the mindset lead.
551. 00:23:12 - Yeah, I did see that.
552. 00:23:14 - Okay, so this showed that signs of ego depletion
553. 00:23:17 were only found in test subjects who believed
554. 00:23:20 that willpower was a limited resource.
555. 00:23:22 So his point is that maybe this whole idea
556. 00:23:24 of ego depletion or the idea that willpower is limited,
557. 00:23:28 maybe this is something that we've made up,
558. 00:23:32 which is a very interesting idea.
559. 00:23:33 And I don't know exactly where I land on this,
560. 00:23:38 on this debate or this topic,
561. 00:23:40 but I am more and more considering the idea
562. 00:23:43 that willpower maybe isn't as limited as we think it is.
563. 00:23:47 For a long time, I was all in with that idea
564. 00:23:49 that willpower was limited.
565. 00:23:51 And I'm trying to limit the number of decisions
566. 00:23:53 that I have to make in the morning.
567. 00:23:55 Steve Jobs wearing the same turtle neck
568. 00:23:57 and jeans every day so he can use his willpower
569. 00:24:00 and make the decisions that really matter.
570. 00:24:02 But I think that he talks in here about Michael Inzlich
571. 00:24:07 who believes that willpower ebbs and flows like an emotion,
572. 00:24:10 I can totally see that playing out in my own life.
573. 00:24:15 When I'm in a good emotional state,
574. 00:24:19 then I have a lot more willpower
575. 00:24:21 than when things are going wrong.
576. 00:24:24 And I don't know, I think maybe there's something to this.
577. 00:24:27 So what was your reaction to the whole ego depletion
578. 00:24:30 argument that he makes?
579. 00:24:32 - I think it makes an awful lot of sense
580. 00:24:34 that willpower is not something that you can wear out.
581. 00:24:38 I can tell you, the willpower instinct does refer to it
582. 00:24:43 as a muscle, as weird as this is,
583. 00:24:45 I have this book sitting right in front of me.
584. 00:24:47 So I reached out and grabbed it, flipped to the section on this.
585. 00:24:50 Here's a quote from page 57 of the willpower instinct,
586. 00:24:54 'cause that's how fast I got there.
587. 00:24:56 Self-control is like a muscle.
588. 00:24:58 When used, it gets tired.
589. 00:24:59 If you don't rest the muscle,
590. 00:25:01 you can run out of strength entirely,
591. 00:25:02 like an athlete who pushes himself to exhaustion.
592. 00:25:05 So that's right out of that book.
593. 00:25:08 (laughs)
594. 00:25:08 So I would tend to agree with Nier here that
595. 00:25:15 I think it is a thing that you can,
596. 00:25:19 I think it is a muscle to some degree,
597. 00:25:21 but I'm also of the mindset that,
598. 00:25:25 yes, you can develop yourself control.
599. 00:25:28 You can develop willpower.
600. 00:25:31 And I think that in the process of doing that,
601. 00:25:34 you can develop it to the point where
602. 00:25:37 you have more than enough for the entire day
603. 00:25:39 for pretty much anything.
604. 00:25:42 That's kind of the way I'm starting to view it,
605. 00:25:45 given a number of the books we've read lately and such.
606. 00:25:48 That's kind of where I'm leaning.
607. 00:25:50 I don't know if we really need to know the full answer here,
608. 00:25:54 other than if you will work on this muscle,
609. 00:25:57 it will get stronger.
610. 00:25:59 And it won't really ever run out if you don't let it,
611. 00:26:04 'cause there, how many times do you run across folks?
612. 00:26:07 Like at the end of the day, I always give in,
613. 00:26:10 it's like, well, if you give in at the end of the day,
614. 00:26:12 that just means that your triggers
615. 00:26:16 are more prevalent at that time.
616. 00:26:18 - Sure.
617. 00:26:19 - So you're setting yourself up wrong in that case.
618. 00:26:22 Whereas, take for example, my diet stuff
619. 00:26:26 that I've been doing for a year now,
620. 00:26:28 it's pretty easy anymore for me to resist sweets.
621. 00:26:33 And the worst time of the day is at night
622. 00:26:36 when everyone else has made their way to bed
623. 00:26:39 and I'm kind of left alone cleaning up the kitchen
624. 00:26:41 and there's a plate of cookies.
625. 00:26:42 Like, it's not that I'm running out of willpower at that time,
626. 00:26:47 it's just that is the time of day
627. 00:26:48 when it's super easy to cheat,
628. 00:26:49 'cause no one would really know.
629. 00:26:51 You know, like that's the time when it's the hardest,
630. 00:26:54 but it's not because of anything else's going on,
631. 00:26:56 it's purely environmental at that time.
632. 00:27:00 So I think there's a lot that you can do,
633. 00:27:03 but if you're smart overall, you'll be fine.
634. 00:27:06 Like, you can work on this, it'll be okay.
635. 00:27:10 - And he would say that instead of the plate of cookies,
636. 00:27:13 it's the distraction that we willingly embrace instead.
637. 00:27:18 - Right, right.
638. 00:27:20 - By that internal trigger.
639. 00:27:22 You know, as you were talking,
640. 00:27:23 I kind of got this idea of willpower as a formula
641. 00:27:28 and I don't know if this is 100% correct,
642. 00:27:31 but I think there's elements of truth
643. 00:27:33 to all of these different things.
644. 00:27:34 So maybe you've got so many willpower units
645. 00:27:38 and we'll call that W, okay?
646. 00:27:41 And then the number of willpower units that you have
647. 00:27:45 is multiplied or divided by the emotional state
648. 00:27:50 that you have.
649. 00:27:51 So let's say there's a negativity scale
650. 00:27:53 from one to 10, where one is,
651. 00:27:58 you're not negative at all, 10 is you had a really crummy day
652. 00:28:01 and you're just feeling super bad about everything, okay?
653. 00:28:04 So maybe W divided by, we'll call that E,
654. 00:28:08 emotional state, W divided by E.
655. 00:28:11 So if you've got 100 willpower units
656. 00:28:14 and you had a really crummy day, that's reduced.
657. 00:28:17 On the one to 10 scale, again,
658. 00:28:19 just completely arbitrary numbers,
659. 00:28:20 but your willpower then has gone from 100 to 10.
660. 00:28:25 It's significantly reduced based on your emotional state.
661. 00:28:28 I don't know, I guess I'm kind of a logical person
662. 00:28:30 and I've always kind of liked math.
663. 00:28:32 So envisioning it in like a formula like that
664. 00:28:35 kind of helps me understand it a little bit better.
665. 00:28:37 But I think there's probably a relationship
666. 00:28:40 between those two variables
667. 00:28:41 and the emotional state is kind of a force multiplier,
668. 00:28:45 however you want to work that into the equation
669. 00:28:49 for either good or bad when it comes to
670. 00:28:52 the amount of willpower that you have.
671. 00:28:53 Whereas the willpower instinct, that being a muscle,
672. 00:28:55 that just assumes that everything else is constant.
673. 00:28:57 You've always got these many willpower units
674. 00:28:59 and that I don't think is completely true.
675. 00:29:02 - Sure, I don't know that you're wrong.
676. 00:29:03 I don't know if it's right or not.
677. 00:29:05 I'm not sure I 100% followed your formula,
678. 00:29:07 but it's a cool concept.
679. 00:29:08 - Maybe I should write a book on it.
680. 00:29:11 - Definitely.
681. 00:29:12 - No, there's enough of those.
682. 00:29:13 - A little power follow up.
683. 00:29:14 - All right, let's go into part two here,
684. 00:29:18 which is make time for traction.
685. 00:29:21 There's a couple of things I wanted to talk about in here.
686. 00:29:24 Remember traction being the things that we want to do
687. 00:29:28 moving us towards what we really want.
688. 00:29:30 There's four different chapters in this section,
689. 00:29:34 but the first chapter talks about turning your values
690. 00:29:38 into time.
691. 00:29:40 And for anybody who cares at all about calendar management
692. 00:29:45 and has listened to you or I for any length of time,
693. 00:29:49 probably already knows everything that's going to be
694. 00:29:52 in this section.
695. 00:29:54 Basic idea is make sure you have time on your calendar
696. 00:29:57 for the things that are important to you.
697. 00:30:00 But one of the things that jumped out to me in this section,
698. 00:30:04 he breaks down the three different domains
699. 00:30:06 where you spend your time.
700. 00:30:07 He says, "You have yourself, you have your relationships,
701. 00:30:10 and you have your work."
702. 00:30:11 I'm not sure I would break him down into those three buckets.
703. 00:30:13 I kind of think the buckets are kind of pointless,
704. 00:30:16 but that was the thing that kind of tipped the scales.
705. 00:30:20 That was the tipping point in my mind
706. 00:30:21 for understanding how important it was
707. 00:30:24 for me to plan my week every single week.
708. 00:30:29 He's got a weekly calendar template exercise in this chapter.
709. 00:30:33 And I didn't really care for the exercise itself.
710. 00:30:36 I've gone through and I've planned my deal week before.
711. 00:30:38 I tend to do it every quarter when I do my personal retreat.
712. 00:30:43 But after reading this chapter, I got inspired.
713. 00:30:47 I'm like, I need to be doing this every single week
714. 00:30:48 because I need to make sure that all of my priorities
715. 00:30:50 are showing up on my calendar.
716. 00:30:52 And that way I can make sure that I'm making time
717. 00:30:55 for traction and eliminating the time for distraction,
718. 00:30:58 making sure that I'm moving in the right direction.
719. 00:31:01 - Yeah, he goes big into time blocking here,
720. 00:31:04 which is definitely not a new concept.
721. 00:31:08 I think in this case, he maybe struck a chord with me
722. 00:31:13 'cause I've done time blocking.
723. 00:31:14 I've done the whole ideal week thing.
724. 00:31:17 That's a Michael Hyatt deal
725. 00:31:19 that he's been talking about for years now.
726. 00:31:21 And a number of people reference Michael Hyatt
727. 00:31:24 when it comes up.
728. 00:31:25 I'm not sure that he's the author of that concept,
729. 00:31:28 but I think he's the biggest promoter I know of for that idea
730. 00:31:31 at this time.
731. 00:31:33 But I know that I've gone through that exercise
732. 00:31:36 probably four or five times over the last probably three years.
733. 00:31:41 And I always come away with it with a sense of,
734. 00:31:46 this would be amazing and I work really hard on it
735. 00:31:48 for two weeks and then I stop using it.
736. 00:31:51 And in this book, I got the,
737. 00:31:56 I don't know if I wanna say motivation
738. 00:31:58 or the understanding behind it at a deeper level.
739. 00:32:02 And it made me want to give it a solid run again.
740. 00:32:07 I don't know if this is something that will stick.
741. 00:32:10 I definitely stole a shortcut that our friend Max Sparky
742. 00:32:15 put together that lets him set up calendar events
743. 00:32:19 for the day automatically.
744. 00:32:22 So he can trigger a series shortcut that does that.
745. 00:32:24 And I have a couple of those for setting up weekend days
746. 00:32:28 or weekdays and I've been playing around with this week
747. 00:32:32 just as an experiment to see how it would go.
748. 00:32:35 I've always been terrible about following through
749. 00:32:38 on my own personal commitments to myself.
750. 00:32:40 I'm much better at doing them for other people, not myself.
751. 00:32:43 So this is something that I've always struggled with
752. 00:32:45 and I know that, but I'm willing to give it another try.
753. 00:32:49 We'll see how it pans out in the long run.
754. 00:32:53 But I figure it's worth a shot, Mike.
755. 00:32:55 We'll see.
756. 00:32:56 (laughs)
757. 00:32:56 It's worth a try, right?
758. 00:32:58 - Yeah.
759. 00:32:59 I'm a big fan of time blocking myself.
760. 00:33:01 So I've been doing it pretty consistently for quite a while.
761. 00:33:06 And my process of this has been for daily time blocking
762. 00:33:11 where the night before I will actually
763. 00:33:13 as part of my shutdown routine,
764. 00:33:15 go into good notes and I will plan out tomorrow
765. 00:33:21 and give every hour a job basically.
766. 00:33:23 And then when I wake up the next morning
767. 00:33:25 and I'm about ready to do my work,
768. 00:33:26 I take out my pen and paper and I jot down
769. 00:33:29 just a short list of the things that I want to do today.
770. 00:33:32 I have the plan written in good notes,
771. 00:33:35 but at that point, once I transfer it,
772. 00:33:37 it's like that's already done what it needed to do
773. 00:33:41 and provided the intention or direction
774. 00:33:44 for how I'm going to spend my time at that point.
775. 00:33:46 I feel free to chuck it if I want to,
776. 00:33:48 but I also don't feel frantic like I don't have a plan.
777. 00:33:51 But I have not been doing it on a weekly basis.
778. 00:33:54 I've been doing it on just a daily basis.
779. 00:33:56 I want to start doing it on a weekly basis too.
780. 00:33:59 I feel like that's kind of a missing piece for me.
781. 00:34:03 And the hypothesis here is that if I sit down
782. 00:34:08 on a Sunday probably and just spend 15 minutes
783. 00:34:14 thinking through what's gonna happen throughout the week,
784. 00:34:20 I will be able to anticipate the pockets of time
785. 00:34:23 where I can do the things that I want to do
786. 00:34:26 and not waste them.
787. 00:34:28 I don't know if that makes any sense,
788. 00:34:29 but I feel like by doing it on a weekly basis,
789. 00:34:33 I'll get a little bit higher up in the 50,000 foot view
790. 00:34:37 that David Allen talks about, teaser for the next book.
791. 00:34:39 And I'll be able to get a little bit bigger picture view,
792. 00:34:44 which is gonna help me make sure that the stuff
793. 00:34:48 that's lower down in the day-to-day
794. 00:34:50 is moving in the right direction.
795. 00:34:52 - Yeah, how does planning for your day-to-day change
796. 00:34:57 from planning for the entire week?
797. 00:35:01 'Cause my initial run at doing this
798. 00:35:04 has been on a day-to-day basis.
799. 00:35:06 So the night before I'm triggering this
800. 00:35:07 and setting up the next day.
801. 00:35:10 So what is it you're doing different on the weekly basis?
802. 00:35:13 - Well, okay, so let me give you an example.
803. 00:35:15 My oldest son is on a basketball team
804. 00:35:19 and I would typically sit down the night before,
805. 00:35:23 look at the calendar and realize,
806. 00:35:25 oh, he's got a game tomorrow.
807. 00:35:27 And that may or may not throw off everything else
808. 00:35:31 that has to happen that day.
809. 00:35:33 If we have to travel to get to that game,
810. 00:35:35 I'm gonna be at that game regardless.
811. 00:35:37 So usually it's the other things
812. 00:35:40 that gotta get moved around to make that happen.
813. 00:35:42 And the intention is that if I can,
814. 00:35:44 at the beginning of the week,
815. 00:35:45 okay, he's got a game on Tuesday and on Thursday,
816. 00:35:48 I know those are coming up.
817. 00:35:49 So on Monday or Wednesday when I have a little bit,
818. 00:35:53 I find a pocket of time,
819. 00:35:55 I can maybe work a little bit more on my work projects
820. 00:36:00 so that I can cut out a little bit early
821. 00:36:02 in order to get to the game.
822. 00:36:03 Does that make sense?
823. 00:36:04 - Yeah, that does.
824. 00:36:06 - So it's not dealing with things as they pop up.
825. 00:36:09 I've got a little bit more runway
826. 00:36:12 and a little bit more time, warning, whatever,
827. 00:36:15 to make the adjustments necessary
828. 00:36:17 in order to make everything work.
829. 00:36:20 Now, if you have enough margin built in your schedule,
830. 00:36:23 you can probably just go with things.
831. 00:36:26 But I want to build more margin
832. 00:36:29 and then also become more intentional
833. 00:36:33 from the beginning of the week on.
834. 00:36:35 So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
835. 00:36:37 I'm not tackling those one at a time.
836. 00:36:39 Yes, I'm still gonna fill out the day-to-day
837. 00:36:41 time blocking for the next day.
838. 00:36:44 But I'm anticipating that by looking at the whole week
839. 00:36:48 as a whole, that's going to help me out
840. 00:36:51 and provide exponential dividends
841. 00:36:54 in terms of the day-to-day planning
842. 00:36:56 and help me be more effective
843. 00:36:58 in the time blocking on the daily basis.
844. 00:37:01 - Okay, that makes sense.
845. 00:37:02 - Okay.
846. 00:37:03 - Now I might have to do more time blocking.
847. 00:37:05 (laughing)
848. 00:37:06 - Okay.
849. 00:37:07 - It's fun, everybody's doing it.
850. 00:37:08 - That's what I'm told.
851. 00:37:10 (laughing)
852. 00:37:11 - The other thing I wanted to talk about in this section
853. 00:37:13 is scheduling relationships.
854. 00:37:16 It's chapter 11, scheduling the important relationships
855. 00:37:19 and he has a story in here about how he and his wife
856. 00:37:24 host a regular kibbutz.
857. 00:37:26 Do you know what a kibbutz is, Joe?
858. 00:37:29 - Well, I do because I read about it,
859. 00:37:31 but I'm sure the listeners do not, at least most.
860. 00:37:35 - Okay.
861. 00:37:36 So I don't know if this is like
862. 00:37:38 the strict definition of a kibbutz,
863. 00:37:39 but the way that they do it is they've got three other
864. 00:37:41 couples that they get together with.
865. 00:37:43 I think it's once a week and they share like a two-hour meal
866. 00:37:47 and they come prepared to discuss a topic
867. 00:37:50 or answer a specific question.
868. 00:37:53 And that's a lot of formal structuring detail
869. 00:37:57 for this get together, which I'm not 100% sure
870. 00:38:00 I can pull that off.
871. 00:38:01 I would like to, as he's describing this kibbutz,
872. 00:38:03 I'm like, man, how do I get an invite?
873. 00:38:04 (laughing)
874. 00:38:06 'Cause that just sounds amazing to me.
875. 00:38:08 But there are a handful of people in my life that I know
876. 00:38:11 I need to develop more intentional relationships with.
877. 00:38:13 I kind of think if I were to describe the kibbutz
878. 00:38:16 exactly as he's described it in this book,
879. 00:38:18 they'd be like, that's dumb, I'm not doing that.
880. 00:38:20 But I do think that I can 80/20 this
881. 00:38:25 and get people on board.
882. 00:38:27 So I want to start hosting regular kibbutz's
883. 00:38:30 with a couple other couples from our church.
884. 00:38:33 And I need to spend a little bit more time thinking about
885. 00:38:37 how I'm going to frame this to get buy-in.
886. 00:38:40 But I think that this is a really cool idea.
887. 00:38:43 - It really reminds me of like a small group
888. 00:38:46 that gets together on a regular basis,
889. 00:38:49 which is something we do through our church.
890. 00:38:52 But I think this is maybe a little more involved
891. 00:38:54 than that traditionally a kibbutz is actually a community.
892. 00:38:58 Think of it as a small socialist community
893. 00:39:01 'cause they share absolutely everything
894. 00:39:03 and they're self-governed in that way
895. 00:39:05 if I understand them, right?
896. 00:39:07 So it's a collective community.
897. 00:39:09 I think traditionally they were just an agricultural thing.
898. 00:39:12 Anyway, that's all history, Israel, yes, Jewish.
899. 00:39:17 But I think that for us as far as how that applies
900. 00:39:23 in our lives as I know we have our small group
901. 00:39:26 and we'll have like couples over once in a while,
902. 00:39:28 but it's not a regularly scheduled thing
903. 00:39:30 outside of our smaller meetings,
904. 00:39:33 which are every other week.
905. 00:39:34 We always have a meal whenever we do those
906. 00:39:36 and it's as many people can come as they can.
907. 00:39:39 I think there's five couples total in that.
908. 00:39:42 I don't know if that would qualify per what he's getting at,
909. 00:39:45 but I think it's at least pretty darn close.
910. 00:39:49 That's my perception anyway.
911. 00:39:50 - Well, I think it could,
912. 00:39:52 but I also think that my experience
913. 00:39:54 with small groups that it wouldn't.
914. 00:39:56 So a small group, as I've been involved with them,
915. 00:40:01 typically it's like a Bible study or something
916. 00:40:04 and you go there, yes, to be with other people,
917. 00:40:08 but primarily the focus is on the material,
918. 00:40:12 reading the chapter, completing the workbook, whatever.
919. 00:40:16 And at least the way my brain works,
920. 00:40:18 I tend to focus on, well, I gotta get this chapter done.
921. 00:40:21 I don't focus on like, I'm gonna go hang out with Johnny.
922. 00:40:24 So when I'm reading this and I'm like,
923. 00:40:28 I need to host a quibbit,
924. 00:40:29 I want to remove any sort of achievement
925. 00:40:34 from the process, any sort of focus
926. 00:40:37 other than the relationships from the process.
927. 00:40:41 I want it to be something that's not,
928. 00:40:43 there's no expectations associated with it.
929. 00:40:47 And I think that's part of the challenge
930. 00:40:49 for me framing this the right way,
931. 00:40:51 because everybody's busy.
932. 00:40:53 And so I have to frame it in a way
933. 00:40:58 that people understand that like,
934. 00:41:00 we're solely, the whole purpose of this
935. 00:41:03 is to build these relationships.
936. 00:41:06 It's almost like going to somebody to be like,
937. 00:41:07 "Hey, I really want to be a better friend with you.
938. 00:41:11 Will you commit a couple hours every couple weeks
939. 00:41:14 "dangin' out with me?"
940. 00:41:16 Which is kind of ridiculous if you put it that way.
941. 00:41:19 But that's kind of what we're going for.
942. 00:41:21 But I also want to, I think there's value in this
943. 00:41:24 to everybody that I've targeted for my quibbits.
944. 00:41:29 And I think I can cast that vision
945. 00:41:31 and get people on board with it.
946. 00:41:34 I think underlying they probably have the same goals
947. 00:41:39 or desires that I would in terms of,
948. 00:41:42 yeah, we really need to just spend more quality time together.
949. 00:41:47 We're doing a lot together already,
950. 00:41:50 but it's usually service-oriented and we're busy
951. 00:41:53 and we're working even if it's not at work.
952. 00:41:56 And I want to start prioritizing the relationships
953. 00:42:00 and the people going back to my words for the year
954. 00:42:04 more than the tasks or the projects.
955. 00:42:07 - I think this is where our small group
956. 00:42:10 tends to break the mold because we have a running joke of,
957. 00:42:15 are we gonna do material this time?
958. 00:42:17 So we're terrible at actually doing the studies
959. 00:42:21 and getting through whatever it is
960. 00:42:22 where we feel we should do.
961. 00:42:24 So I think for the last nine months or so,
962. 00:42:27 what we've really been doing is we get together,
963. 00:42:30 we always have a meal together.
964. 00:42:31 I think we, what is it, 6.30 when we meet?
965. 00:42:34 And somewhere around 7.45, 8 o'clock,
966. 00:42:39 we'll migrate to a living room or something
967. 00:42:41 and then we just go around the circle and do prayer requests.
968. 00:42:44 And that gives everybody the opportunity to share,
969. 00:42:48 what are you struggling with in life?
970. 00:42:50 What do you need prayer for?
971. 00:42:51 What's the celebrations that you have going on?
972. 00:42:54 And everyone gets the chance to share in that.
973. 00:42:57 And then we do a prayer time
974. 00:42:58 and then it's just a conversation after that.
975. 00:43:00 That is the sum total of what we do.
976. 00:43:02 So it's not like there's any prep work for it
977. 00:43:06 other than food.
978. 00:43:07 So that's why I say I think in our cases
979. 00:43:10 is a little odd and might qualify.
980. 00:43:14 But I also understand like what he's getting at
981. 00:43:16 is building deep longterm relationships,
982. 00:43:20 which I think is something that my wife
983. 00:43:22 and I have been very intentional with
984. 00:43:24 when it comes to other couples and families
985. 00:43:27 in the church that we know and want to get to know more.
986. 00:43:30 So I feel like we have a pretty good setup for it.
987. 00:43:35 I don't think we're gonna get together
988. 00:43:37 with another like two other couples
989. 00:43:39 on a regular Saturday morning or something.
990. 00:43:42 Like it just gets to be too much of a scheduling mess for us.
991. 00:43:46 But if you don't have other couples
992. 00:43:48 that you're regularly connecting with
993. 00:43:50 and having those deep conversations with,
994. 00:43:53 I could definitely see how that's something
995. 00:43:54 that people really want to work towards.
996. 00:43:58 Yeah.
997. 00:43:59 I'll stop rambling now.
998. 00:43:59 No, your small group, it sounds really interesting.
999. 00:44:03 Like I said, it sounds very different
1000. 00:44:05 than every other small group I've ever been part of.
1001. 00:44:07 We break a lot of rules for sure.
1002. 00:44:09 It's also very appealing to me.
1003. 00:44:12 But yeah, so this is a formal action item for me.
1004. 00:44:15 By the time we record next,
1005. 00:44:16 I should have some feedback on how it went
1006. 00:44:20 as I've loaded this idea to different people.
1007. 00:44:23 And to tell you the truth,
1008. 00:44:25 this kind of scares this nod out of me.
1009. 00:44:28 I don't like hanging out with people very much.
1010. 00:44:31 I'm more of a loner.
1011. 00:44:33 I prefer to be at home in a corner with a book.
1012. 00:44:36 Yeah.
1013. 00:44:37 But like I said, this is something from my reflection.
1014. 00:44:39 This is one of my words for the year.
1015. 00:44:41 I know this is something I need to prioritize.
1016. 00:44:43 So this was the right thing at the right time,
1017. 00:44:47 at least this part of this book.
1018. 00:44:49 And yeah, that's gonna be one of my action items for sure.
1019. 00:44:53 - Sounds good.
1020. 00:44:54 - All right.
1021. 00:44:55 Part three is hack back emotional triggers.
1022. 00:44:59 There's a lot in this section,
1023. 00:45:02 lots of different chapters on hacking back group chat,
1024. 00:45:06 hacking back your smartphone, hacking back your desktop,
1025. 00:45:09 your online articles, your feeds.
1026. 00:45:12 Lots of cool stuff in here.
1027. 00:45:14 To be honest, there was a little bit of a desire
1028. 00:45:18 as I was going through this, like,
1029. 00:45:19 oh, we should talk about that one.
1030. 00:45:21 Oh, and we should talk about that one.
1031. 00:45:22 Oh, we should talk about that one.
1032. 00:45:23 But I limited it to.
1033. 00:45:24 - I'm proud of you, Mike.
1034. 00:45:26 - So if you want to, I will put a plug in here though,
1035. 00:45:29 for like hacking back your smartphone,
1036. 00:45:31 'cause you have an article in the mindfulness Monday thing
1037. 00:45:33 that I started over in the suite setup,
1038. 00:45:35 which is very much in line with what I was hoping
1039. 00:45:38 that would turn into is like ways that people
1040. 00:45:42 are intentionally setting up their devices
1041. 00:45:44 to in near our IELTS words, hack back your smartphone
1042. 00:45:50 and your feeds and notifications, things like that.
1043. 00:45:51 So we'll link to that in the show notes
1044. 00:45:52 that people want more of that type of stuff they can go there.
1045. 00:45:56 But the two things I want to talk about here
1046. 00:45:57 were email and meetings.
1047. 00:46:00 Email because you and I have talked about email a lot
1048. 00:46:03 over the years and he's got an interesting formula here,
1049. 00:46:06 which I wanted to talk about.
1050. 00:46:07 And then also I wanted to see how Joe's email situation is.
1051. 00:46:12 - Huh.
1052. 00:46:13 And what would you like to know, Mike?
1053. 00:46:15 - Is this still area of pain for you?
1054. 00:46:21 - I think that it has been somewhat.
1055. 00:46:25 I get around 120 emails a day still
1056. 00:46:31 and always fight with myself over how much time
1057. 00:46:36 to put towards it and am I getting through it enough?
1058. 00:46:40 I can tell you that in the last week
1059. 00:46:42 I've been pretty good about having one scheduled time
1060. 00:46:47 every day to go through and respond to emails
1061. 00:46:51 and try to get back to people in a good time.
1062. 00:46:54 What I didn't know and I only learned this
1063. 00:46:58 because of reading through indestractable
1064. 00:47:01 and near mentioning the concept of writing emails
1065. 00:47:06 and scheduling the time when they should go out.
1066. 00:47:09 - Ah, that's where you found out about send later.
1067. 00:47:13 - So I did not know that mail mate
1068. 00:47:19 has a send later field where you can put in
1069. 00:47:23 the date and time of when you want that email to be sent.
1070. 00:47:27 I did not know that this thing existed.
1071. 00:47:29 And whenever I discovered that I immediately moved
1072. 00:47:34 any and all accounts I have straight back into mail mate,
1073. 00:47:37 I was running dual applications mail mates
1074. 00:47:40 and Apple mail for a bunch of reasons.
1075. 00:47:44 But I did put it all back together into one
1076. 00:47:47 and start using mail mate 100% once more
1077. 00:47:52 and trying to use this send later functionality
1078. 00:47:56 and so far I'm loving that.
1079. 00:47:59 It's made my life so much easier
1080. 00:48:01 'cause I can send, I can put those replies together,
1081. 00:48:04 choose when they need to go out
1082. 00:48:06 and make sure that they're being sent
1083. 00:48:08 to that person at the right time
1084. 00:48:09 because it does matter quite a bit when it comes to
1085. 00:48:12 especially things at a church
1086. 00:48:13 'cause there are a lot of emails
1087. 00:48:14 that I need to send out about a certain Sunday
1088. 00:48:18 but I don't want them to go out before this coming Sunday
1089. 00:48:21 because it'll confuse the people receiving it
1090. 00:48:24 about what day am I referring to.
1091. 00:48:26 Even if they have the date on there
1092. 00:48:28 people still get it wrong.
1093. 00:48:30 One of my frustrations.
1094. 00:48:34 Anyway, I feel like I'm doing better with email.
1095. 00:48:38 I don't keep it on my phone.
1096. 00:48:41 I am better about not checking it multiple times a day,
1097. 00:48:46 hundreds of times a day.
1098. 00:48:47 It's getting better.
1099. 00:48:49 I think I'm slowly,
1100. 00:48:51 and I think some of my work scenario has allowed that
1101. 00:48:54 'cause I'm not necessarily in a client based.
1102. 00:48:58 System, like my work isn't dependent on clients anymore.
1103. 00:49:02 It's definitely service oriented,
1104. 00:49:06 but not, it doesn't have the speed
1105. 00:49:09 with which I used to operate under.
1106. 00:49:11 Does that answer all your questions, Mike?
1107. 00:49:13 - Yeah, good for you.
1108. 00:49:14 I wanna tie this back to the first chapter in this section
1109. 00:49:21 which is ask the critical question
1110. 00:49:23 and this is something that I feel like
1111. 00:49:25 I have done a pretty good job of for a while
1112. 00:49:28 but that also publicly facing means
1113. 00:49:30 that I may come across as a bit of a jerk
1114. 00:49:33 because I am intentionally bad at email.
1115. 00:49:35 But the question that he poses at the beginning
1116. 00:49:39 is is this trigger serving me or am I serving it?
1117. 00:49:42 And I found that the majority of the email
1118. 00:49:44 that I was receiving was requests from somebody else
1119. 00:49:48 for something that they wanted
1120. 00:49:49 which really had nothing to do with the things
1121. 00:49:53 that were important to me or the things
1122. 00:49:55 that I was measuring success based on.
1123. 00:49:58 It was in nears words, probably all distraction.
1124. 00:50:03 At least a very low traction to distraction ratio.
1125. 00:50:08 So I've kind of cut this out for the last,
1126. 00:50:13 I don't even know, probably a couple of years at this point
1127. 00:50:16 but I totally recognize why this is so difficult
1128. 00:50:20 for a lot of people.
1129. 00:50:21 There are a lot of tactics in this whole section
1130. 00:50:23 on hacking back external triggers.
1131. 00:50:25 I don't really want to go through all of the different tips
1132. 00:50:28 that he gives for reducing time spent in email
1133. 00:50:30 but I do like this formula that he came up with
1134. 00:50:33 and this is again not something that is new to me
1135. 00:50:37 necessarily but the way that he described it is kind of new
1136. 00:50:42 and that is that the amount of time we spend on an email
1137. 00:50:45 capital T equals the number of messages received
1138. 00:50:48 or N times T times spent on each message.
1139. 00:50:52 Okay, well that makes a lot of sense
1140. 00:50:54 and if you hear me describe that on a podcast,
1141. 00:50:56 you're probably like, well, there's nothing revolutionary
1142. 00:50:58 there but if you view this as a math problem,
1143. 00:51:00 there are two variables that you can control here
1144. 00:51:03 and you can very obviously see which ones they are.
1145. 00:51:06 Number one, you can reduce the number of messages
1146. 00:51:08 that you receive or number two, you can decrease the amount
1147. 00:51:11 of time spent on each message which is why somebody
1148. 00:51:15 like, I think it's Chris Bailey who has the auto responder
1149. 00:51:18 at the bottom of his emails is saying,
1150. 00:51:20 sorry everything's so short but I keep my replies
1151. 00:51:22 to five sentences or less.
1152. 00:51:24 Somebody does that, I forget exactly who that is
1153. 00:51:27 but you totally understand why they do that kind of thing.
1154. 00:51:30 - I think it's our friend Josh that does that.
1155. 00:51:32 - Okay, no he stole that from somebody
1156. 00:51:35 'cause he's not the first person I've heard that from
1157. 00:51:37 but anyways, it makes that sort of approach
1158. 00:51:42 a lot more palatable when you understand why
1159. 00:51:46 and that's the thing that a lot of people have trouble
1160. 00:51:49 when you suggest something like that,
1161. 00:51:50 I could never do something like that
1162. 00:51:52 because I'm gonna offend people.
1163. 00:51:53 Well, the people that you're gonna offend
1164. 00:51:54 are the people who don't understand how much time
1165. 00:51:57 you're wasting an email and they're just contributing
1166. 00:51:59 to the problems.
1167. 00:52:00 So at some point you do have to, I don't know,
1168. 00:52:03 maybe I shouldn't say it that way,
1169. 00:52:04 you don't have to hurt feelings necessarily
1170. 00:52:07 but you do have to push back a little bit
1171. 00:52:10 and there is a chance that people will take offense to that
1172. 00:52:13 but it's important and when he talks about email here
1173. 00:52:18 and why it's so addictive and how it takes the average person
1174. 00:52:21 64 seconds to reorient on what they were doing
1175. 00:52:24 when they went to check their email, think about that.
1176. 00:52:27 So let's say you used to check your email 100 times a day.
1177. 00:52:31 Every time you checked it, even if you didn't get a message
1178. 00:52:34 that you had to do anything with,
1179. 00:52:35 it took you 64 seconds to reorient,
1180. 00:52:37 that's almost two hours of your day reorienting
1181. 00:52:40 just from checking the email.
1182. 00:52:42 So I think like a couple big takeaways from here
1183. 00:52:46 one you already mentioned is batch process
1184. 00:52:48 and then number two, ultimately, if you can get to the point
1185. 00:52:52 that's great, like I have where you know
1186. 00:52:56 that people are gonna be maybe offended by your approach
1187. 00:52:59 to email but you just choose not to live there.
1188. 00:53:02 That's ultimately where you wanna end up.
1189. 00:53:04 Now I say that because that's one area
1190. 00:53:07 where I have had some success in
1191. 00:53:09 but the other area here meetings is definitely one
1192. 00:53:11 where I have not had success.
1193. 00:53:12 (laughs)
1194. 00:53:14 Oh man, I have been in a lot of meetings lately,
1195. 00:53:19 different organizations and things that I'm involved with
1196. 00:53:23 where they're just not good meetings.
1197. 00:53:28 (laughs)
1198. 00:53:29 And he has in this section a couple of great ideas here
1199. 00:53:34 for making meetings better.
1200. 00:53:38 And I admit that I am scared to try any of these
1201. 00:53:42 but I also think that all of these tactics are brilliant.
1202. 00:53:45 So one of the easiest ways to prevent meetings,
1203. 00:53:48 he says is to require two things,
1204. 00:53:50 that meeting organizers circulate an agenda
1205. 00:53:52 of what problem will be discussed
1206. 00:53:54 and that they give their best shot at a solution
1207. 00:53:57 in the form of a brief written digest.
1208. 00:54:00 I love this, I feel like yeah, absolutely.
1209. 00:54:02 If I was able to convince everybody (laughs)
1210. 00:54:05 that I'm involved with,
1211. 00:54:07 that these are the two rules for creating a meeting
1212. 00:54:10 that would significantly eliminate
1213. 00:54:13 the majority of the meetings that I'm sitting in
1214. 00:54:15 but also probably not gonna happen.
1215. 00:54:18 I do like this other one though
1216. 00:54:20 for maintaining attention during meetings.
1217. 00:54:22 I feel like this one has a much better chance of success
1218. 00:54:24 and that is no screens.
1219. 00:54:27 It drives me nuts when I see people sitting in a meeting
1220. 00:54:31 behind a laptop screen.
1221. 00:54:33 My initial thought is you're not paying attention at all.
1222. 00:54:37 Not that you're playing solid there
1223. 00:54:38 but you are probably checking email or social media
1224. 00:54:41 or something but you're not paying attention
1225. 00:54:43 to the person who is speaking,
1226. 00:54:45 whether or not that's me is kind of irrelevant.
1227. 00:54:47 It just grinds my gears when I see that.
1228. 00:54:50 - You wanna know the screen that drives me nuts
1229. 00:54:52 in meetings?
1230. 00:54:53 - What's that?
1231. 00:54:54 - Apple watches.
1232. 00:54:55 - Ooh, yeah.
1233. 00:54:57 This is one that is usually ignored
1234. 00:55:01 when this topic comes up
1235. 00:55:02 because everybody says phones and computers put away.
1236. 00:55:06 But the moment that happens,
1237. 00:55:07 you know what follows,
1238. 00:55:09 the people with Apple watches are looking down
1239. 00:55:11 at those silly things about every five minutes
1240. 00:55:14 and that drives me nuts 'cause it's just as bad.
1241. 00:55:17 - Yeah, true.
1242. 00:55:18 - So I get frustrated by it
1243. 00:55:21 because the theory that I'm always told
1244. 00:55:23 is meetings are when the Apple watch is shining
1245. 00:55:28 because it allows you to check on
1246. 00:55:30 and get the notifications you really need
1247. 00:55:32 from people who really matter
1248. 00:55:33 without pulling out your phone
1249. 00:55:36 or getting your computer out.
1250. 00:55:37 Like that's the idea,
1251. 00:55:37 which is in my mind,
1252. 00:55:40 an excuse to check a screen when you shouldn't be.
1253. 00:55:44 Like that's my view on it.
1254. 00:55:46 So anyway, that's kind of my pet peeve.
1255. 00:55:50 And it's honestly, it's one of the main reasons
1256. 00:55:52 I don't have an Apple watch
1257. 00:55:53 'cause I don't want that temptation there
1258. 00:55:56 because it's slowly replacing the phone checks
1259. 00:55:59 from at least the people that I'm around that have them.
1260. 00:56:02 It ends up replacing that.
1261. 00:56:03 So you might as well pull your phone out
1262. 00:56:05 because it's checked just as often.
1263. 00:56:07 And I notice it every single time.
1264. 00:56:09 I'm told people don't notice it.
1265. 00:56:11 Yeah, we do.
1266. 00:56:12 It's all over.
1267. 00:56:15 So anyway, I'm gonna get off my soap box now,
1268. 00:56:18 but I am lucky in the sense that I have
1269. 00:56:21 exactly one meeting every week
1270. 00:56:25 that is on the calendar, it's regular.
1271. 00:56:27 It's about an hour and a half,
1272. 00:56:29 sometimes two hours, sometimes it's one hour
1273. 00:56:32 with our entire staff at church.
1274. 00:56:37 And it's run pretty well.
1275. 00:56:39 There's usually, and we have a set agenda.
1276. 00:56:41 It's the same every time 'cause it's event based.
1277. 00:56:44 So we're trying to make sure that we've got all our events
1278. 00:56:48 for the next week, month, two months,
1279. 00:56:50 three months out in process.
1280. 00:56:53 So it's basically a project management check-in.
1281. 00:56:56 And that does work pretty well
1282. 00:56:58 'cause we're covering a lot of ground very quickly.
1283. 00:57:01 Other than that, I have one-on-one conversations
1284. 00:57:05 with people in hallways,
1285. 00:57:06 and that's pretty much the extent of what my meeting life
1286. 00:57:10 looks like right now.
1287. 00:57:12 And I am not upset about that at all.
1288. 00:57:15 'Cause most of my time has spent working on task lists
1289. 00:57:19 instead of talking about task lists.
1290. 00:57:22 Lucky.
1291. 00:57:23 (laughs)
1292. 00:57:24 Yep, I'm not complaining about that one at all.
1293. 00:57:27 (laughs)
1294. 00:57:29 Regarding the Apple Watch thing,
1295. 00:57:31 he mentions this is way in the last chapter,
1296. 00:57:33 but he has this statement,
1297. 00:57:36 "When someone picks up their phone in a social situation,
1298. 00:57:39 he says, "I see you're on your phone, is everything okay?
1299. 00:57:40 I wonder if you could adapt that to...
1300. 00:57:43 I see you keep looking at your watch, is everything okay?"
1301. 00:57:45 (laughs)
1302. 00:57:46 I should totally do that.
1303. 00:57:47 I know you would hate me for that, I'm sure.
1304. 00:57:49 (laughs)
1305. 00:57:51 Yeah, do that and see how it goes.
1306. 00:57:53 Report back, see if people are like,
1307. 00:57:54 "Oh, sorry," or if they're like, "What?"
1308. 00:57:57 Yeah.
1309. 00:57:58 "Why are you calling that out?
1310. 00:58:00 You're not supposed to notice this.
1311. 00:58:02 Nobody sees me do this."
1312. 00:58:04 You didn't see anything.
1313. 00:58:06 So yeah, if you're looking for a lot of productivity tactics,
1314. 00:58:10 there's lots of them in this section,
1315. 00:58:11 lots of broken down in the different chapters,
1316. 00:58:15 but yeah, I think we can wrap that one up here.
1317. 00:58:18 Let's move on to the next section,
1318. 00:58:20 which is part four,
1319. 00:58:23 Prevent Distraction with Packs.
1320. 00:58:26 And two things I wanted to briefly talk about
1321. 00:58:31 in this section.
1322. 00:58:32 Number one is his burn or burn pact,
1323. 00:58:36 which is an example of a pre-commitment.
1324. 00:58:40 And this was where he wanted to lose weight
1325. 00:58:43 so he would tape a crisp $100 bill on his calendar
1326. 00:58:48 and he would either work out that day
1327. 00:58:51 and burn the calories,
1328. 00:58:52 or he would take a lighter,
1329. 00:58:54 which was right by the calendar,
1330. 00:58:55 and he would burn the $100 bill,
1331. 00:58:58 which was obviously painful
1332. 00:58:59 because $100 is a lot of money.
1333. 00:59:02 So I don't know that I'm ready to start burning Benjamin's,
1334. 00:59:07 but I think that putting a price tag as a consequence
1335. 00:59:12 on the, for not doing an action that you want to do
1336. 00:59:18 is an interesting idea.
1337. 00:59:20 I've heard of people doing this digitally
1338. 00:59:23 where like they'll schedule an embarrassing tweet
1339. 00:59:26 to go out in the morning if they oversleep
1340. 00:59:29 and they have to physically wake up
1341. 00:59:30 and manually turn it off every morning
1342. 00:59:32 to prevent it from going out.
1343. 00:59:34 That would be another version of this.
1344. 00:59:36 And I don't have an action item here specifically
1345. 00:59:38 for how I want to start using these pre-commitments
1346. 00:59:41 or create these packs,
1347. 00:59:43 but I think it's an interesting idea.
1348. 00:59:47 And I think the next time that I have a very difficult problem
1349. 00:59:52 that I'm trying to solve,
1350. 00:59:54 I will definitely use this idea of the pre-commitment
1351. 00:59:58 to figure out how I can establish the habit of the routine
1352. 01:00:02 that's gonna allow me to complete it successfully.
1353. 01:00:05 - Hey, sometimes do this with tweets
1354. 01:00:08 where I will tweet out what the topic
1355. 01:00:11 for my next newsletter is, but I haven't written it yet.
1356. 01:00:15 - Nice.
1357. 01:00:16 - So I'll do that.
1358. 01:00:17 Sometimes we're, I'll send that tweet out
1359. 01:00:19 on a, say a Tuesday morning,
1360. 01:00:22 and I've not written that,
1361. 01:00:24 which means that sometime that day,
1362. 01:00:26 I have to make sure that I sit down and write that article.
1363. 01:00:29 - Now we all know whenever we see those tweets.
1364. 01:00:31 - The world knows that it's supposed to be coming
1365. 01:00:34 tomorrow morning, like, "And I haven't written it."
1366. 01:00:37 - Okay, so that's one thing that I do.
1367. 01:00:40 I also will sometimes do that with,
1368. 01:00:43 like for example, I'm working on a new video course,
1369. 01:00:46 and I tweeted out that I was doing this
1370. 01:00:49 and a rough, I don't think I've given an exact date,
1371. 01:00:53 but I will be of when that would release,
1372. 01:00:56 which means that now I have to do that
1373. 01:00:59 because people are expecting it.
1374. 01:01:01 So I'll do pre-commitments like that.
1375. 01:01:04 I don't really do it where a negative
1376. 01:01:06 is the default other than just shame,
1377. 01:01:10 but that's probably about as far as I go with it.
1378. 01:01:15 I don't really do anything that involves dollars.
1379. 01:01:18 That seems silly to me, but teach their own.
1380. 01:01:21 If it works, go for it.
1381. 01:01:23 - Well, you kind of have done that with Bookworm
1382. 01:01:25 because if you haven't read the book
1383. 01:01:27 and we get on the mic to talk about it,
1384. 01:01:29 you look like a fool.
1385. 01:01:30 - There is that, yes.
1386. 01:01:32 - So there is a negative consequence to that,
1387. 01:01:37 but I never really thought about it
1388. 01:01:39 as a negatively charged pre-commitment
1389. 01:01:44 until you were just talking now.
1390. 01:01:47 So I don't know if that fits the description or not, but.
1391. 01:01:50 - I don't know.
1392. 01:01:51 Kind of depends on how you want to look at it,
1393. 01:01:52 but some people are gonna see it and say,
1394. 01:01:55 "Hey, that's exactly what I have to do.
1395. 01:01:58 "I've heard of people that will,
1396. 01:02:00 "like if you don't hit this goal,
1397. 01:02:01 "it will, someone will donate your money
1398. 01:02:05 "to an organization that you are very much against."
1399. 01:02:08 - Yeah.
1400. 01:02:08 - Like I've heard of those as well.
1401. 01:02:11 Again, it just seems odd to me,
1402. 01:02:14 but I get that it works for some people though.
1403. 01:02:17 - Sure.
1404. 01:02:18 - The other thing that I wanted to talk about here,
1405. 01:02:21 just real briefly, is the voter study.
1406. 01:02:24 They had basically one group who answered questions
1407. 01:02:27 about whether they would vote
1408. 01:02:29 and another group that answered questions
1409. 01:02:31 about whether they were voters.
1410. 01:02:33 And they found that the group that was asked
1411. 01:02:35 about being a voter were much more likely to vote.
1412. 01:02:39 And the same effect can be had with statements like,
1413. 01:02:43 "I can't," which is behavior driven or "I don't,"
1414. 01:02:46 which is identity driven.
1415. 01:02:47 This reminded me very much of atomic habits
1416. 01:02:50 and the whole identity based habits versus outcome based habits.
1417. 01:02:54 And I thought that was kind of interesting.
1418. 01:02:58 With voting specifically, it's interesting
1419. 01:03:00 because that's one of those things
1420. 01:03:03 that you typically don't think about
1421. 01:03:05 except for specific periods.
1422. 01:03:07 And it's interesting to me how changing the phrasing
1423. 01:03:13 can make people get out and vote
1424. 01:03:16 where maybe they wouldn't have previously.
1425. 01:03:18 So in that sense, it's almost like driving the behavior,
1426. 01:03:22 which I guess is kind of the same thing
1427. 01:03:23 as the identity based habits
1428. 01:03:25 that James Clear talks about in atomic habits.
1429. 01:03:27 So though, that seems very individual driven
1430. 01:03:30 as opposed to, if I say the right words,
1431. 01:03:33 I can get you to do the right actions.
1432. 01:03:37 That feels a little bit weird to me,
1433. 01:03:39 a little bit manipulative, but I don't know.
1434. 01:03:42 I haven't fully processed that yet.
1435. 01:03:45 - I think the thing it reminded me of
1436. 01:03:47 is I know there are a handful of folks online
1437. 01:03:50 that will talk about calling yourself a writer
1438. 01:03:54 or a blogger or a podcaster when you're first starting.
1439. 01:03:59 So if you wanna write a book,
1440. 01:04:00 start calling yourself a writer.
1441. 01:04:02 And what does a writer do?
1442. 01:04:04 Will a writer sit down and writes every day?
1443. 01:04:06 Well, if you call yourself a writer,
1444. 01:04:08 you can't call yourself a writer
1445. 01:04:10 and not sit down and write every day.
1446. 01:04:11 Like that's the mentality that goes with that.
1447. 01:04:14 So I think there is a lot of truth to this,
1448. 01:04:19 but I don't know how I feel about using it on other people.
1449. 01:04:25 Whenever you start phrasing things in a certain way
1450. 01:04:28 in order to drive things in other people's actions,
1451. 01:04:31 like I don't like that feeling.
1452. 01:04:35 Personally, if I'm talking about myself,
1453. 01:04:37 absolutely 100% on board.
1454. 01:04:39 - Yep, me too.
1455. 01:04:40 - But I don't really wanna be trying
1456. 01:04:42 to do the whole manipulation thing.
1457. 01:04:45 Maybe I do, but I just don't want you to know about it.
1458. 01:04:48 - All right, all right.
1459. 01:04:50 Joe's deep dark secrets.
1460. 01:04:52 - Evil laugh here.
1461. 01:04:53 - No, I agree.
1462. 01:04:54 It's totally different when you're talking about,
1463. 01:04:56 I want to make sure that I follow through
1464. 01:04:58 and I do X instead of Y
1465. 01:05:00 in terms of making positive change in my life.
1466. 01:05:02 But the moment that you start applying it
1467. 01:05:04 to other people instead of yourself feels a little bit weird.
1468. 01:05:07 And so to hear him talk about it in terms of
1469. 01:05:09 the voter study and again,
1470. 01:05:11 you're trying to get people to vote.
1471. 01:05:13 So that's not in any way, shape, or form
1472. 01:05:15 a negative activity, but it still feels weird to think
1473. 01:05:19 that if I call you a voter instead of somebody
1474. 01:05:22 who should vote, that that's enough to get you
1475. 01:05:25 to follow through and take the action.
1476. 01:05:28 I don't know, it just didn't sit real well with me.
1477. 01:05:31 - That's fair.
1478. 01:05:32 - All right, part five is how to make your workplace
1479. 01:05:37 indestractable.
1480. 01:05:38 And the basic takeaway here is that
1481. 01:05:41 for a lot of people you can't.
1482. 01:05:42 (laughs)
1483. 01:05:43 Just kidding.
1484. 01:05:44 - Yep, happens.
1485. 01:05:46 (both laugh)
1486. 01:05:48 - He does have a diagram in here,
1487. 01:05:51 which is this circle.
1488. 01:05:55 It starts with number one,
1489. 01:05:57 people here are always connected.
1490. 01:05:58 That leads to number two, reducing control over one's time,
1491. 01:06:02 which leads to number three to get ahead
1492. 01:06:04 of how I was into be available,
1493. 01:06:06 which leads to number four, increasing expectations,
1494. 01:06:08 to be always on, and then that just keeps going.
1495. 01:06:12 And I work with the Blanc Media Team
1496. 01:06:17 where this is not an issue.
1497. 01:06:18 We use Basecamp specifically because you can't see
1498. 01:06:21 when people are online and when they're not.
1499. 01:06:25 In fact, he mentioned, I forget which section it was in.
1500. 01:06:28 It wasn't this one, but in this book,
1501. 01:06:31 he quoted Jason Fried,
1502. 01:06:34 and let me see if I can find this,
1503. 01:06:37 because this was really interesting.
1504. 01:06:39 And I noticed that he actually just retweeted this message.
1505. 01:06:44 Okay, yeah, it was hacking back group chat.
1506. 01:06:46 Jason Fried says, "Group chat is like being in an all day
1507. 01:06:50 meeting with random participants in no agenda."
1508. 01:06:52 And he literally just retweeted that specific thing
1509. 01:06:54 in Link to a blog post about it today.
1510. 01:06:57 So that was interesting.
1511. 01:07:00 He talks about how Jason Fried does.
1512. 01:07:02 Traffic lights are for automobiles, not people,
1513. 01:07:06 like the green, yellow, red icons,
1514. 01:07:08 where you're either away, busy, or available.
1515. 01:07:11 So Basecamp obviously does not have that sort of thing.
1516. 01:07:15 And then they've got the normal work hours
1517. 01:07:18 and you don't even see your notifications
1518. 01:07:20 when it's outside of work hours.
1519. 01:07:23 As you record this, I'm on a two week sabbatical,
1520. 01:07:25 which feels amazing. (laughs)
1521. 01:07:27 Really enjoy it.
1522. 01:07:29 So I am coming from a little bit privileged position
1523. 01:07:32 as it pertains to this, but I also have worked
1524. 01:07:35 in been in different situations where I totally get this.
1525. 01:07:39 He makes the point in chapter 26,
1526. 01:07:41 how distraction is assigned to dysfunction.
1527. 01:07:44 He talks about high job strain and environments
1528. 01:07:48 with an imbalance between effort and reward,
1529. 01:07:53 predicting a higher likelihood of developing depression
1530. 01:07:56 at work, which costs the US economy alone
1531. 01:07:58 over $151 billion annually in absenteeism.
1532. 01:08:02 And that's a mind blowing figure when you think about it.
1533. 01:08:09 And my mind immediately went to all of the startups,
1534. 01:08:15 I say startups, but there's a lot of companies now
1535. 01:08:18 that promise an unlimited vacation policy.
1536. 01:08:22 But below the surface, you know that there are expectations
1537. 01:08:27 around that unlimited vacation policy,
1538. 01:08:30 and it's not really unlimited.
1539. 01:08:32 And I guess me personally, I would tend to just kind of
1540. 01:08:37 keep pushing until I hit the glass ceiling
1541. 01:08:39 and find out what those expectations really are,
1542. 01:08:41 but most people just don't wanna rock the boat.
1543. 01:08:43 They're not, they're only gonna take one or two weeks,
1544. 01:08:47 even though it's unlimited.
1545. 01:08:49 And so the thing that I've been thinking about is like,
1546. 01:08:54 why do we even need these unlimited vacation policies?
1547. 01:08:58 Well, because the work culture is driving people crazy, maybe.
1548. 01:09:02 And I don't know that there's a lot
1549. 01:09:06 that the average worker maybe can do
1550. 01:09:09 to make your workplace indestractable.
1551. 01:09:12 I felt like this section is kind of geared more
1552. 01:09:16 towards the executive who has control over things.
1553. 01:09:20 But even just awareness of it is probably a good thing
1554. 01:09:25 and can help you recognize if you're in an unhealthy situation.
1555. 01:09:28 I felt like this section was definitely
1556. 01:09:30 for high level managers.
1557. 01:09:32 Maybe that's because in my role,
1558. 01:09:36 the whole point is to be accessible.
1559. 01:09:40 I'm an IT guy.
1560. 01:09:43 People bring problems to me when they come up.
1561. 01:09:46 Guess when they come up all the time,
1562. 01:09:48 which means I'm distracted all the time.
1563. 01:09:51 - Yeah.
1564. 01:09:51 - A prime example is whenever I came back
1565. 01:09:54 from Christmas vacation,
1566. 01:09:57 the first day I was back, I had my coat on,
1567. 01:10:00 had my backpack, had my lunchbox,
1568. 01:10:03 walked in the main doors to the building.
1569. 01:10:06 I made three steps inside the building
1570. 01:10:09 and I heard, "Joe, welcome back.
1571. 01:10:11 Hey, can you come take a look at?"
1572. 01:10:13 Okay, so I go off on the side.
1573. 01:10:17 We look at the thing, we fix it.
1574. 01:10:19 I start working my way towards my desk.
1575. 01:10:22 I get about halfway there, "Hey, Joe, welcome back.
1576. 01:10:24 Hey, while you're here, can you?"
1577. 01:10:27 Now, I still have my coat and backpack,
1578. 01:10:29 everything in my hands.
1579. 01:10:30 I haven't even made it to my desk yet.
1580. 01:10:32 I went through five different requests
1581. 01:10:34 before I made it to my desk.
1582. 01:10:36 - Wow.
1583. 01:10:37 - So after I got sat down, first thing I did,
1584. 01:10:41 work up a coffee, pull out my laptop
1585. 01:10:44 and go hide in a corner somewhere.
1586. 01:10:46 'Cause I knew I was gonna have six, 700 emails
1587. 01:10:51 to work through.
1588. 01:10:52 So I went, found a corner, hid for about an hour and a half,
1589. 01:10:56 got through all of that and then came back.
1590. 01:10:58 But then the rest of my day was,
1591. 01:11:01 "Hey, Joe, welcome back.
1592. 01:11:02 Can you?"
1593. 01:11:04 My whole day was that way.
1594. 01:11:05 - Sure.
1595. 01:11:06 - That's just normal.
1596. 01:11:08 It's pretty common for me to get one or two requests
1597. 01:11:11 for something before I ever make it to my desk.
1598. 01:11:13 That is normal.
1599. 01:11:15 So reading this section, I thought,
1600. 01:11:19 that'd be nice.
1601. 01:11:20 Not gonna happen.
1602. 01:11:21 (laughs)
1603. 01:11:22 - Right, right.
1604. 01:11:23 - There's just not anything I'm gonna be able to do
1605. 01:11:25 about that because that's the expectation.
1606. 01:11:28 The only way I can really come about that is go hide.
1607. 01:11:31 And people seem to respect that.
1608. 01:11:34 At least for now.
1609. 01:11:36 I don't know what that will do long term,
1610. 01:11:38 but I'm gonna take advantage of it while I can.
1611. 01:11:41 But for now, I just have to run away.
1612. 01:11:44 - Yeah, that's kind of my reaction to reading this too
1613. 01:11:48 was not even that I needed to change anything,
1614. 01:11:51 but I instantly had empathy for the person who read it
1615. 01:11:54 and couldn't change anything.
1616. 01:11:56 (laughs)
1617. 01:11:57 I'm like, there's a danger in reading this
1618. 01:11:59 where if your higher ups don't understand it,
1619. 01:12:02 that you'll just get depressed about the way things are.
1620. 01:12:06 - Yeah.
1621. 01:12:07 - But also interestingly in this section,
1622. 01:12:09 they talk about Slack.
1623. 01:12:11 Slack is one of the things
1624. 01:12:13 that Jason Freed was railing about
1625. 01:12:16 in the previous section in this book.
1626. 01:12:19 I think that was chapter 10,
1627. 01:12:21 no, chapter 16 where he had that quote.
1628. 01:12:25 So Slack is kind of the poster child
1629. 01:12:27 for you talk about email being bad.
1630. 01:12:30 Well, now there's the Slack thing
1631. 01:12:32 and everybody's expected to be connected at all times.
1632. 01:12:35 But Slack's got a slogan on the walls of their office
1633. 01:12:40 that says, "Work hard and go home."
1634. 01:12:42 So internally as a company culture,
1635. 01:12:45 they have this belief that it's okay to be offline.
1636. 01:12:49 So that really was interesting to me
1637. 01:12:51 and got me thinking about all of these people
1638. 01:12:53 who are complaining about things like Slack,
1639. 01:12:57 maybe you're just using it wrong.
1640. 01:12:59 Maybe we just tend to default to craving the distractions
1641. 01:13:04 and the interruptions.
1642. 01:13:06 And so we're gonna look for whatever vehicle we can
1643. 01:13:08 that will provide those.
1644. 01:13:10 And if you really need to use a tool
1645. 01:13:12 that is super minimal and eliminates all that stuff,
1646. 01:13:14 great, do what you gotta do.
1647. 01:13:17 But reading this section on Slack
1648. 01:13:19 and the company culture that they have there
1649. 01:13:22 made me at least think from the way that NIR
1650. 01:13:24 just described it that maybe it's getting a bad rap
1651. 01:13:28 when it shouldn't.
1652. 01:13:29 Yeah, 'cause I think that Slack,
1653. 01:13:31 the tool can be extremely useful in some scenarios.
1654. 01:13:36 Having worked in client work with a lot of tech companies
1655. 01:13:43 I was a part of numerous Slack groups.
1656. 01:13:47 And frankly, when you're working on something together,
1657. 01:13:51 half the world away from each other, it's amazing
1658. 01:13:54 to have that communication while you're both
1659. 01:13:57 working through things.
1660. 01:13:58 "Hey, I did this.
1661. 01:13:59 "Can you check on that?"
1662. 01:14:00 And then let them go do it
1663. 01:14:01 so you're not on the phone listening to silence
1664. 01:14:03 most of the time.
1665. 01:14:05 So I think there is definitely a place
1666. 01:14:07 for that back and forth chat,
1667. 01:14:09 but the expectation of those teams
1668. 01:14:14 was that you were on it all the time.
1669. 01:14:17 Now, me as the contractor in those scenarios,
1670. 01:14:21 I was able to say,
1671. 01:14:22 "Hey, I am a part of too many of these.
1672. 01:14:24 "I can't just sit on yours all day.
1673. 01:14:27 "If you wanna pay my hourly rate to do that,
1674. 01:14:29 "sure, absolutely."
1675. 01:14:30 But I don't think you wanna do that.
1676. 01:14:32 So I never really had anybody take me up on it.
1677. 01:14:35 So I was able to get out of that culture.
1678. 01:14:38 It's not one that I have any interest in whatsoever.
1679. 01:14:43 There've been a couple of folks at our church say,
1680. 01:14:45 "Hey, I've run across this Microsoft Teams thing.
1681. 01:14:49 "There's a chat thing built into that.
1682. 01:14:50 "Do you think we should use it?"
1683. 01:14:51 And my instant response is,
1684. 01:14:53 "No, we are not implementing a chat structure at the church.
1685. 01:14:58 "It never has existed and I will fight it to the death.
1686. 01:15:02 "I am not putting that in.
1687. 01:15:04 "Call me if you need something."
1688. 01:15:06 That is what we're going to do.
1689. 01:15:08 So I think it is fascinating to see how Slack, the company,
1690. 01:15:13 they themselves don't promote the always on culture
1691. 01:15:19 that seems to come with using their tool.
1692. 01:15:23 - Yeah, exactly.
1693. 01:15:24 - It's just fascinating to me.
1694. 01:15:26 - Yeah, it would be interesting to talk to a Slack executive
1695. 01:15:32 about the negative press that Slack gets
1696. 01:15:36 in the pockets of the productivity world
1697. 01:15:39 where we tend to hang out,
1698. 01:15:41 which is the one that is focused on the deep work,
1699. 01:15:46 the essentialism, the one thing,
1700. 01:15:49 that whole side of it, not the efficiency,
1701. 01:15:53 the life hacks, that sort of stuff.
1702. 01:15:56 It would be interesting to see their response
1703. 01:15:59 to that type of stuff.
1704. 01:16:00 And also what kind of advice or tips they would give
1705. 01:16:05 on how they define the right way to use the tool.
1706. 01:16:09 So one thing that Neer mentions,
1707. 01:16:11 which I thought was brilliant,
1708. 01:16:13 and I want to try to implement this, but again,
1709. 01:16:16 it's not an action item because I don't know
1710. 01:16:17 if I'll have success is using emoji to communicate
1711. 01:16:22 whether it's just in the reactions.
1712. 01:16:24 So getting everybody to decide on a language, for example,
1713. 01:16:28 for I've seen the message and I'm thinking about it
1714. 01:16:31 and I'll get back to you as opposed to not receiving
1715. 01:16:34 a response for several days and then sending the person
1716. 01:16:37 the direct message, "Hey, did you see my question?"
1717. 01:16:39 It's like, "Yeah, yeah, I did.
1718. 01:16:41 I'm just thinking it through."
1719. 01:16:44 Because I do think that for a lot of organizations,
1720. 01:16:47 communication is super important.
1721. 01:16:49 You've got to be able to communicate well.
1722. 01:16:51 You've got to make sure that you're able to stay
1723. 01:16:53 on the same page, have unity in your vision.
1724. 01:16:56 And so, speed of communication does help with that
1725. 01:17:00 to a certain extent, but also you've got to be able
1726. 01:17:02 to cut out the distractions and focus on the work
1727. 01:17:06 that's important.
1728. 01:17:07 I don't know.
1729. 01:17:08 There's obviously a lot to unpack there
1730. 01:17:11 and the lines probably going to be different
1731. 01:17:13 for everybody and every organization,
1732. 01:17:15 but it's definitely worth considering.
1733. 01:17:18 - Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of different ways
1734. 01:17:19 you could take this and not everyone can do things
1735. 01:17:23 about what's going on.
1736. 01:17:24 So, you really have to translate it to your scenario.
1737. 01:17:28 I don't think there's a one size fits all on this one.
1738. 01:17:31 - Sure.
1739. 01:17:32 Although it does give me an idea for my next bookworm book.
1740. 01:17:36 So.
1741. 01:17:37 (laughs)
1742. 01:17:38 - Okay, here we go.
1743. 01:17:40 - All right, part six,
1744. 01:17:42 how to raise indestractable children.
1745. 01:17:45 I didn't really care for this section all that much.
1746. 01:17:50 There were a couple of things that I did want
1747. 01:17:52 to call out here, but I think this is something
1748. 01:17:55 you got to figure out for yourself.
1749. 01:17:58 He does mention this idea of self-determination theory
1750. 01:18:02 where your body or the body needs three things
1751. 01:18:05 to flourish autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
1752. 01:18:10 And so the question is how can we as parents,
1753. 01:18:14 those of us who have kids,
1754. 01:18:15 how can we help our kids develop those skills?
1755. 01:18:18 One thing that kind of blew my mind was the statistic
1756. 01:18:22 that teens in the US are subject to 10 times
1757. 01:18:25 as many restrictions as mainstream adults,
1758. 01:18:28 twice as many as Marines,
1759. 01:18:30 and twice as many as incarcerated felons.
1760. 01:18:34 It made me really happy that we homeschool.
1761. 01:18:36 (laughs)
1762. 01:18:38 - Yeah.
1763. 01:18:39 Yeah, I think this section is one that,
1764. 01:18:42 like all of his details and the story about his daughter
1765. 01:18:46 and such about how they taught her to come up
1766. 01:18:49 with her own rules around technology.
1767. 01:18:53 Like, it's all great, but there was one thing
1768. 01:18:58 that I got out of this section that he never actually
1769. 01:19:00 talked about that was just kind of a tangential thing
1770. 01:19:03 that I discovered through reading that was that,
1771. 01:19:07 you know, I need to be more focused on teaching my kids
1772. 01:19:10 to make decisions for themselves
1773. 01:19:12 instead of helping them make decisions.
1774. 01:19:14 - Sure.
1775. 01:19:15 - So that was a thing that came out of that.
1776. 01:19:17 I was like, yeah, that's kind of a great thing
1777. 01:19:19 to be working towards, but he never said that.
1778. 01:19:22 And it's not part of this book.
1779. 01:19:24 It was just kind of my interpretation of it.
1780. 01:19:27 But the more time I've spent with that concept
1781. 01:19:29 and marinated on it the last probably week,
1782. 01:19:32 that's hard. (laughs)
1783. 01:19:35 That's a lot harder to help them make decisions.
1784. 01:19:38 When I just wanna say, no, you can't have a cookie right now.
1785. 01:19:41 That's really what I wanna say,
1786. 01:19:43 but they need to come up with that answer on their own.
1787. 01:19:47 And that's a lot harder to do in the long run for sure.
1788. 01:19:51 - Yeah, he also talks, the very first chapter
1789. 01:19:54 in this section is avoid convenient excuses.
1790. 01:19:56 And he talks about how technological leaps
1791. 01:19:58 are often followed by moral panics.
1792. 01:20:01 So don't deflect the blame when your kids don't act
1793. 01:20:05 the way that you want them to,
1794. 01:20:07 don't blame the sugar high is how he puts it.
1795. 01:20:09 And I think that that's something that is happening
1796. 01:20:12 right now with smartphones is people are just blaming
1797. 01:20:15 the smartphones.
1798. 01:20:16 And that's not the right approach.
1799. 01:20:20 He mentions that a lot of parents give their kids smartphones
1800. 01:20:22 so they can contact them,
1801. 01:20:24 but it ends up being too much too soon.
1802. 01:20:25 And that's because they never teach them how to manage it.
1803. 01:20:28 He talks about swimming pools versus smartphones
1804. 01:20:30 and how we don't keep our kids out of the water forever.
1805. 01:20:32 We teach them how to swim,
1806. 01:20:34 but nobody teaches their kids how to use a smartphone
1807. 01:20:36 when they give it to them.
1808. 01:20:37 Well, I want to, you know, I'm not gonna just say here.
1809. 01:20:41 Here's a portal to everything on the internet.
1810. 01:20:44 Now have at it, like that's just stupid.
1811. 01:20:46 (laughs)
1812. 01:20:47 Well, especially when you think about it that way,
1813. 01:20:48 but we don't recognize the danger in that a lot of times.
1814. 01:20:52 So that's not something new from the section for me,
1815. 01:20:55 but I could see for certain people
1816. 01:20:58 that maybe that is the first time
1817. 01:20:59 you've kind of heard those arguments
1818. 01:21:00 and that being valuable.
1819. 01:21:03 But the big thing, the main point here is to teach them
1820. 01:21:07 to set their own limits.
1821. 01:21:09 You mentioned how his daughter set her screen time limits.
1822. 01:21:14 We kind of did the same thing with our kids
1823. 01:21:16 and their video game time,
1824. 01:21:19 where we've got four boys who are very much into video games.
1825. 01:21:23 And we used to limit it to 30 minutes a day,
1826. 01:21:28 but usually it was my wife who was home with the kids
1827. 01:21:31 and she had to manage it,
1828. 01:21:33 which was extremely frustrating.
1829. 01:21:36 She's trying to work with some of the other ones
1830. 01:21:40 and go through school work 'cause we homeschool
1831. 01:21:42 while also trying to keep an eye on the video game time
1832. 01:21:46 out of the corner of her eye.
1833. 01:21:47 And then kids are in the middle of a level or something
1834. 01:21:50 they don't want to quit and they get frustrated.
1835. 01:21:53 So one of the things that we did is we bought
1836. 01:21:55 one of those time timers.
1837. 01:21:57 I can't remember if I showed this to you
1838. 01:21:58 when you were here and not.
1839. 01:21:59 - We have one.
1840. 01:22:01 - Do you?
1841. 01:22:01 Okay.
1842. 01:22:02 So you know what I'm talking about then,
1843. 01:22:03 but it's basically a time timer.
1844. 01:22:05 We had a sit down meeting with our kids and we're like,
1845. 01:22:08 okay, so this is not working.
1846. 01:22:10 We need to change this.
1847. 01:22:12 And we started by asking them the question,
1848. 01:22:14 what do you think is fair for a screen time?
1849. 01:22:17 And they said an hour and we said, okay,
1850. 01:22:21 we can try an hour, but if we're gonna do an hour,
1851. 01:22:23 then you have to be able to manage this on your own.
1852. 01:22:26 Mom can't be the one who's telling you it's time to wrap up.
1853. 01:22:30 So we got one of those time timers
1854. 01:22:31 that sits under the TV now and they get an hour
1855. 01:22:35 of video game time, but they manage it themselves
1856. 01:22:38 and they quit before the timer is done.
1857. 01:22:41 The agreed upon rule is that if the timer goes off
1858. 01:22:45 before the system is turned off, like powered off,
1859. 01:22:50 then they lose their video game time tomorrow
1860. 01:22:52 and they are the ones who set that rule.
1861. 01:22:54 So when they go over, there's no argument.
1862. 01:22:58 It's like, oh, I messed up as opposed to,
1863. 01:23:00 oh, mom and dad are so unfair.
1864. 01:23:02 And I don't know, I guess you could make the argument
1865. 01:23:06 like our video game time, maybe that's too much, whatever,
1866. 01:23:09 but I don't know, it is more than we would have just said,
1867. 01:23:14 okay, this is how much everybody gets,
1868. 01:23:17 but I also thought that it's something we need to teach them
1869. 01:23:21 to manage on their own and in the big scope of things,
1870. 01:23:23 like if you look at your screen time on your phone,
1871. 01:23:26 you probably spend a lot more than an hour
1872. 01:23:27 in front of a screen.
1873. 01:23:29 So if you're gonna say, well, it's unhealthy,
1874. 01:23:32 you can't stare at a screen that long,
1875. 01:23:34 but you are on your phone six hours a day.
1876. 01:23:36 You're a little bit of a hypocrite.
1877. 01:23:39 So even though I've made major strides
1878. 01:23:42 in curbing my unintentional technology use,
1879. 01:23:47 my screen time is a couple hours a day.
1880. 01:23:51 And I think, I wanna teach my kids to be intentional with it
1881. 01:23:56 and if video games are the important thing to them right now,
1882. 01:23:58 that's fine.
1883. 01:23:59 I'm also gonna teach them some positive ways
1884. 01:24:00 to use it like whole family's gotten into dual lingo now.
1885. 01:24:04 They do coding through Bitzbox.
1886. 01:24:08 A lot of their school stuff is done on the computer.
1887. 01:24:12 So they're writing papers, they're making presentations,
1888. 01:24:17 they're even recording stuff inside of GarageBand sometimes.
1889. 01:24:20 Like that's all stuff that I consider
1890. 01:24:22 to be a positive use of the technology.
1891. 01:24:25 And so I wanna obviously limit the quote-unquote
1892. 01:24:30 negative stuff.
1893. 01:24:32 And again, I don't necessarily have a bone to pick
1894. 01:24:35 in our video games, good or bad sort of a thing.
1895. 01:24:38 I enjoy them myself.
1896. 01:24:40 But teaching them that it's okay in moderation.
1897. 01:24:43 And when you're done with that,
1898. 01:24:46 you have to go do something else, which is,
1899. 01:24:50 I don't know, I was gonna say the word productive,
1900. 01:24:53 but that's not the word I wanna use.
1901. 01:24:55 More intentional, you're gonna be making something,
1902. 01:24:58 you're gonna be creating something,
1903. 01:25:00 you're gonna be doing something not just,
1904. 01:25:03 what's the word I'm looking for here?
1905. 01:25:05 - Analog.
1906. 01:25:06 - You gotta do something analog,
1907. 01:25:08 something with another person or something in the real world.
1908. 01:25:09 - Yeah, well we do that too, you know,
1909. 01:25:12 like you gotta go play Legos or something now,
1910. 01:25:14 you gotta take a break.
1911. 01:25:15 But it's more so the mindset behind it,
1912. 01:25:19 it's the create not consume sort of a thing.
1913. 01:25:22 I don't really care whether you are building
1914. 01:25:25 the Lego creation or you're working on a puzzle
1915. 01:25:28 or you're drawing a picture,
1916. 01:25:31 but you need to stop just consuming stuff.
1917. 01:25:36 - Yeah, makes sense.
1918. 01:25:37 So get out of consumption mode,
1919. 01:25:42 and get out of that mode and get into something
1920. 01:25:45 other than that mode.
1921. 01:25:47 - Yes, yes, exactly.
1922. 01:25:49 - Makes sense.
1923. 01:25:50 I don't think our kids are old enough to really need
1924. 01:25:52 to do anything along those lines,
1925. 01:25:55 though they don't really get the opportunity for screens.
1926. 01:25:59 At all, you know, they have no iPads,
1927. 01:26:01 there is no communal computer at all right now.
1928. 01:26:06 The sum total of their screen time,
1929. 01:26:08 it seems like it's Sunday night
1930. 01:26:10 when we watch a TV show together.
1931. 01:26:12 And that's really all my girls get right now.
1932. 01:26:15 Granted, the oldest is six.
1933. 01:26:17 So we're starting to get to the point
1934. 01:26:19 where we need to have this conversation
1935. 01:26:20 and start being a little more proactive about it.
1936. 01:26:23 But right now it's pretty easy
1937. 01:26:24 'cause it's non-existent.
1938. 01:26:27 - Yeah.
1939. 01:26:27 - It's easy.
1940. 01:26:28 - Yeah, I miss those days.
1941. 01:26:30 (laughs)
1942. 01:26:32 It's especially hard for some of the older ones,
1943. 01:26:34 you know, when some of their friends have cell phones.
1944. 01:26:37 Like they have the devices in their hands all the time
1945. 01:26:40 and it's encouraging to hear them talk about how
1946. 01:26:45 they see their friends using stuff in a way
1947. 01:26:50 that they know is not positive
1948. 01:26:53 because we talk about it so openly.
1949. 01:26:56 But I also know that if I were to say,
1950. 01:26:58 "You know, we're not gonna do screens,"
1951. 01:26:59 and then they see their friends
1952. 01:27:01 who are looking at screens all the time,
1953. 01:27:02 the fact that they're not connected to them at all
1954. 01:27:04 is just gonna increase the desire
1955. 01:27:06 that they wanna go see what that world is all about.
1956. 01:27:09 You know, I wanna teach them to navigate it successfully,
1957. 01:27:13 not keep them from it.
1958. 01:27:14 - Yeah.
1959. 01:27:15 - Not saying that what you're doing right now is wrong either,
1960. 01:27:18 but it does get more complicated as they get older for sure.
1961. 01:27:21 - Oh yeah.
1962. 01:27:22 And I know we'll get there,
1963. 01:27:23 but I'm not there, so I'm gonna revel in the moment.
1964. 01:27:26 - Enjoy it.
1965. 01:27:27 (laughs)
1966. 01:27:29 All right, the last section here, part seven,
1967. 01:27:30 how to have indestractable relationships.
1968. 01:27:33 This is literally just two chapters
1969. 01:27:35 and there's not a whole lot in here.
1970. 01:27:38 There is the question that I mentioned earlier,
1971. 01:27:42 which I thought was brilliant.
1972. 01:27:43 And if I have opportunity to use this,
1973. 01:27:45 I totally am going to because I'm not scared
1974. 01:27:47 of making things awkward.
1975. 01:27:49 And that is when you see somebody
1976. 01:27:50 using their phone in a social situation
1977. 01:27:52 to call them on it and say,
1978. 01:27:53 I see you're on your phone, is everything okay?
1979. 01:27:55 (laughs)
1980. 01:27:58 That's under the chapter, chapter 34,
1981. 01:28:00 spread social antibodies among friends.
1982. 01:28:03 I feel like you gotta be careful with this.
1983. 01:28:06 For certain people, they're gonna totally get it.
1984. 01:28:09 For certain people, they're gonna wonder why you're so weird.
1985. 01:28:12 You gotta have a little bit of a solid foundation there,
1986. 01:28:17 I feel like before you would take a tack like that,
1987. 01:28:19 or not care if you'd get disconnected
1988. 01:28:21 from this person.
1989. 01:28:23 So navigate that with care.
1990. 01:28:25 And the other thing is the idea of fubbing,
1991. 01:28:28 which I'd not heard this term before,
1992. 01:28:30 but I thought this was great.
1993. 01:28:32 Fubbing is that is to ignore when in a social situation
1994. 01:28:37 by busying yourself with a phone or other mobile device.
1995. 01:28:41 I've been guilty of this myself,
1996. 01:28:42 but honestly, this is something that I see all the time.
1997. 01:28:47 Like whenever somebody is waiting for coffee
1998. 01:28:51 at a coffee shop or something,
1999. 01:28:52 you see them pull out their phone.
2000. 01:28:55 And I noticed those types of things.
2001. 01:28:58 I tend to people watch.
2002. 01:28:59 (laughs)
2003. 01:29:00 And every time I see it, I'm like,
2004. 01:29:02 "Oh, they made it 12 seconds," or whatever.
2005. 01:29:06 And I like having a term for this,
2006. 01:29:08 but I guess it really is no whole lot
2007. 01:29:11 of practical application of this,
2008. 01:29:12 other than to try to catch myself when I'm doing it.
2009. 01:29:14 'Cause like I said, I do this too.
2010. 01:29:16 - Yeah, I just did this yesterday.
2011. 01:29:19 Not intentionally.
2012. 01:29:20 I was at Costco.
2013. 01:29:22 We were having new tires put on our suburban.
2014. 01:29:25 And they were a little bit longer getting that done
2015. 01:29:28 than we were planning on.
2016. 01:29:29 The whole family was there
2017. 01:29:30 and we were sitting on some tables
2018. 01:29:33 just outside the tire center.
2019. 01:29:35 And my wife went to go look for something.
2020. 01:29:39 I'd forget what it was.
2021. 01:29:40 And it was just me and the three girls there.
2022. 01:29:43 And I had pulled out my phone to do something.
2023. 01:29:48 I think it was jot down a note or something.
2024. 01:29:50 And this kind of goes back to the shaming thing of,
2025. 01:29:53 "Hey, I see you're on your phone.
2026. 01:29:54 Is everything okay?"
2027. 01:29:55 A gentleman who worked at Costco came up to me,
2028. 01:29:59 put his hand on my shoulder while I was on my phone
2029. 01:30:03 and said, "You have three beautiful daughters.
2030. 01:30:06 You're a lucky man."
2031. 01:30:07 Like he made that comment.
2032. 01:30:09 And in that moment it triggered all kinds of things.
2033. 01:30:12 Like he caught me on my phone.
2034. 01:30:13 I think he did that intentionally when I was on my phone.
2035. 01:30:16 I feel like he was sitting back here
2036. 01:30:18 just waiting for me to pull it out.
2037. 01:30:19 That's what it felt like.
2038. 01:30:21 But at the same time I loved him for it
2039. 01:30:24 because he in some way as a stranger snapped me out
2040. 01:30:29 of whatever it was I was doing and realized,
2041. 01:30:31 I'm sitting here with my three girls
2042. 01:30:33 and we're not even talking about anything.
2043. 01:30:35 We're just kind of ignoring each other.
2044. 01:30:36 What on earth am I doing?
2045. 01:30:39 This was yesterday.
2046. 01:30:40 And I was so grateful to that man,
2047. 01:30:44 but he didn't make me feel horrible about it.
2048. 01:30:46 So he was very tactful in his mechanism for doing it.
2049. 01:30:50 So I understand the whole,
2050. 01:30:52 "Hey, I see you on your phone, is everything okay?"
2051. 01:30:56 But I feel like there are a lot of other ways
2052. 01:30:57 that you could apply that
2053. 01:30:58 and other ways that you could bring that out.
2054. 01:31:00 So just mentioning things and talking to them
2055. 01:31:05 and just pointing to them and saying,
2056. 01:31:07 "Hey, what are your thoughts on what we're talking about
2057. 01:31:09 while they're on their phone?"
2058. 01:31:10 Is a great way to just say,
2059. 01:31:12 "Hey, I see what you're doing, stop it."
2060. 01:31:14 (laughing)
2061. 01:31:15 - Anyway, that was great. - Anyway, yeah.
2062. 01:31:17 I was grateful to Costco, man.
2063. 01:31:18 Good job, sir. (laughing)
2064. 01:31:20 - Nice, I love that story.
2065. 01:31:22 (laughing)
2066. 01:31:23 Well, that wraps up the book.
2067. 01:31:25 Talk about action items.
2068. 01:31:26 - Yes, I have a couple.
2069. 01:31:28 You have a couple, ready to set go.
2070. 01:31:30 - All right, so I've got two,
2071. 01:31:32 which I have mentioned already.
2072. 01:31:34 The first one on my list here is to plan my week every week.
2073. 01:31:38 That's the one that I feel is going to provide
2074. 01:31:41 the biggest benefit in how my week goes.
2075. 01:31:46 And the second one is to host a regular quibits.
2076. 01:31:51 And again, I don't know how this is gonna go.
2077. 01:31:53 I'm slightly terrified at the idea of bringing this up
2078. 01:31:57 to the people that I have targeted.
2079. 01:31:59 They are kind of, well, actually I should say,
2080. 01:32:02 they're all couples at our church
2081. 01:32:04 and I know some of them will be on board with it.
2082. 01:32:08 Some of them will be like, "What, why?"
2083. 01:32:10 (laughing)
2084. 01:32:12 So it's a very different, I guess diverse maybe,
2085. 01:32:16 group of people in terms of their view on
2086. 01:32:20 relationships, technology, productivity,
2087. 01:32:21 whatever you want to define that as.
2088. 01:32:23 So, but that is my action item
2089. 01:32:26 and I will report back on that one next time.
2090. 01:32:29 - I'm looking forward to that one.
2091. 01:32:30 And it just is completely unrelated side note
2092. 01:32:33 every time I look at the outline and see quibits,
2093. 01:32:34 I keep seeing kibble.
2094. 01:32:36 - I know.
2095. 01:32:37 - I don't know why that is.
2096. 01:32:39 My two action items, one is to try time blocking.
2097. 01:32:43 So I'm planning out my week, doing the whole batching
2098. 01:32:47 of my time and trying to make sure
2099. 01:32:48 that that lines up with my values.
2100. 01:32:50 We've talked about this.
2101. 01:32:51 The other one is start using freedom.
2102. 01:32:54 He mentioned freedom in the app, in the book,
2103. 01:32:58 at one point, kind of offhandedly.
2104. 01:33:00 I have used freedom on my Mac a handful of times
2105. 01:33:03 and when he mentioned it,
2106. 01:33:04 I remembered that freedom had a problem a while back.
2107. 01:33:08 They're a content blocker that lets you block websites
2108. 01:33:11 and apps and such.
2109. 01:33:12 But they had an issue a while back
2110. 01:33:14 because they were using a VPN to do that.
2111. 01:33:16 And Apple kind of got angry at some companies
2112. 01:33:19 that were doing that and pulled their apps from the store.
2113. 01:33:23 They were one of them.
2114. 01:33:24 And I remember they were still fighting
2115. 01:33:27 and working on ways to bring the app back.
2116. 01:33:30 And I hadn't checked in on them in a long time.
2117. 01:33:32 So I brought it up, checked in on them.
2118. 01:33:33 It turns out they do have a way to do it now
2119. 01:33:37 by blocking content directly through a VPN configuration.
2120. 01:33:40 I guess Apple went back on it.
2121. 01:33:42 I don't know.
2122. 01:33:43 I didn't read up on the story.
2123. 01:33:45 But long story short, I'm using freedom.
2124. 01:33:48 And using it at times when I'm writing,
2125. 01:33:52 but also at night when I'm getting ready for bed
2126. 01:33:54 to just block everything,
2127. 01:33:56 to where it's not even possible for me to get into anything.
2128. 01:34:00 It's really nice at night at bedtime
2129. 01:34:03 because then it's like, if it's scheduled,
2130. 01:34:06 I know at nine o'clock, my phone's gonna be unusable.
2131. 01:34:09 So I really can't get into anything.
2132. 01:34:12 Thus, the only thing I can do is pick up a book
2133. 01:34:14 and go to bed, you know, the thing I should be doing
2134. 01:34:16 and have committed to doing.
2135. 01:34:18 So it's, I haven't been using it extensively,
2136. 01:34:22 but it's one that I want to continue to use more of.
2137. 01:34:25 So anyway, all that to say, use freedom, go freedom.
2138. 01:34:29 - Very cool.
2139. 01:34:30 All right, style and rating.
2140. 01:34:33 So I picked this one because I was interested in the topic,
2141. 01:34:37 but as I mentioned at the beginning,
2142. 01:34:38 did not have super high expectations for it,
2143. 01:34:42 had a bad taste left in my mouth
2144. 01:34:45 when I started reading previous book, Hooked.
2145. 01:34:49 And I was pleasantly surprised by this one,
2146. 01:34:52 despite there being way too many chapters
2147. 01:34:54 and way too many sections.
2148. 01:34:55 - Sure.
2149. 01:34:56 - The last two sections definitely felt like
2150. 01:34:58 they were kind of tacked on at the end
2151. 01:35:01 'cause the editor was like,
2152. 01:35:02 oh, you should really talk about this stuff with kids
2153. 01:35:04 and relationships, definitely a lot lighter
2154. 01:35:07 than the other chapters.
2155. 01:35:10 I feel like there's not as much meat there.
2156. 01:35:12 So it's one of those books again,
2157. 01:35:14 that's probably longer than it had to be.
2158. 01:35:16 The whole section on hacking back external triggers,
2159. 01:35:20 that really kind of,
2160. 01:35:22 it was hard for me to make it through that section
2161. 01:35:25 'cause it was a lot of like the productivity tips,
2162. 01:35:27 tricks, life hacks sort of stuff
2163. 01:35:29 that I've heard over and over and over and over and over again.
2164. 01:35:32 So it wasn't a fan of that section,
2165. 01:35:35 but as we went on in this book,
2166. 01:35:38 specifically on preventing distractions with packs
2167. 01:35:42 and the whole section on making time for attraction,
2168. 01:35:46 scheduling your important relationships,
2169. 01:35:47 there was a lot of stuff in here
2170. 01:35:49 that really impacted me more than I thought it was going to.
2171. 01:35:53 I already mentioned the kibbit's thing
2172. 01:35:55 like that alone was worth reading this book
2173. 01:36:00 in my opinion.
2174. 01:36:01 He does a good job of explaining things
2175. 01:36:04 in a way that is very approachable,
2176. 01:36:06 even if his diagram isn't all that great.
2177. 01:36:08 I feel like it at least makes sense
2178. 01:36:11 and it provides the framework for the rest of the book.
2179. 01:36:14 I think it makes the topic of focus
2180. 01:36:19 more approachable than just,
2181. 01:36:23 hey, you need to pay attention,
2182. 01:36:25 which is kind of the message that you get left with
2183. 01:36:29 when you read a lot of the other stuff.
2184. 01:36:31 You get inspired like, yeah,
2185. 01:36:32 I just need to pick the one thing
2186. 01:36:33 that I should be working on
2187. 01:36:34 and then you get in the middle of things
2188. 01:36:36 and oh, this is also important.
2189. 01:36:38 And you're like, I don't know what to do.
2190. 01:36:39 I just forget about it.
2191. 01:36:41 Like this feels like he gives you more stuff
2192. 01:36:44 to more tactical stuff, smaller things that you can do
2193. 01:36:48 to kind of move the needle in the right direction.
2194. 01:36:50 So I think it's very helpful in that sense.
2195. 01:36:53 In terms of how many stars to rate it,
2196. 01:36:55 I'm gonna rate it 4.0.
2197. 01:36:57 I don't think there's anything super revolutionary in here.
2198. 01:37:01 It would be cool to take the topic of like
2199. 01:37:04 kibbutts and relationships in terms of being
2200. 01:37:06 indestractable and productivity
2201. 01:37:08 and just write a whole book on that particular topic.
2202. 01:37:11 That's definitely the part that struck me the most.
2203. 01:37:13 I don't think that's near Eyal's thing
2204. 01:37:16 or definitely not what he intended to do with this book.
2205. 01:37:21 There were a lot of personal stories and anecdotes in here
2206. 01:37:25 like he talks about his wife wearing the concentration crown
2207. 01:37:28 so that she can't be interrupted.
2208. 01:37:30 I felt like that stuff really added a lot to the book
2209. 01:37:33 and made it seem a lot less like a business book
2210. 01:37:35 and a lot more personal and approachable.
2211. 01:37:38 So I think I would recommend this to just about anybody.
2212. 01:37:43 Although there's definitely gonna be different camps of people
2213. 01:37:47 in terms of whether they think that this book is awesome
2214. 01:37:50 and they get stuff out of it
2215. 01:37:51 or if it's just a bunch of information
2216. 01:37:53 that goes in one ear and out the other.
2217. 01:37:56 But in general, if you're looking for something
2218. 01:38:00 that can help you even a little bit
2219. 01:38:03 to be more focused on the things that are important to you
2220. 01:38:07 or carve out a little bit more in terms of intentionality
2221. 01:38:10 or eliminating some of the distractions in your life
2222. 01:38:13 whether they be personal or professional,
2223. 01:38:15 I think it is worth a read.
2224. 01:38:17 - I feel like there is really one main tip or trick
2225. 01:38:22 that he mentions in the book and that's time blocking.
2226. 01:38:26 And he refers to it over and over and over again
2227. 01:38:29 and uses that as the basis for pretty much
2228. 01:38:31 every tip and trick in here.
2229. 01:38:34 And although that's not 100% true,
2230. 01:38:37 like it's not the only thing he talks about,
2231. 01:38:39 it's his core that he keeps coming back to.
2232. 01:38:42 I think if you're the type of the person
2233. 01:38:44 that needs to understand why things happen
2234. 01:38:46 in order to make changes
2235. 01:38:49 and you're also someone who gets distracted a lot,
2236. 01:38:51 this is an excellent read for you
2237. 01:38:53 because it explains why you get distracted
2238. 01:38:57 and where those can come from,
2239. 01:38:58 both internal and external and what to do about it.
2240. 01:39:01 I think that's super helpful.
2241. 01:39:02 Personally, when it started off,
2242. 01:39:06 I felt like, oh man, this could be a 50 book.
2243. 01:39:10 And then we got to the areas where he's talking
2244. 01:39:13 about time blocking all the time
2245. 01:39:14 and I get a little nervous when that's the core thing
2246. 01:39:18 he's recommending because I've tried that.
2247. 01:39:20 I don't know how many times now and it's not stuck.
2248. 01:39:24 So I don't know if that's me
2249. 01:39:26 or the concept itself is potentially flawed.
2250. 01:39:29 I don't know what the answer there is.
2251. 01:39:31 But I do think that understanding the why behind it
2252. 01:39:35 is super helpful.
2253. 01:39:37 And there are some points here that I got out of it.
2254. 01:39:39 I'll join you at the 4-0.
2255. 01:39:42 It feels like that's about the right place to put it.
2256. 01:39:45 He's an easy author to read.
2257. 01:39:47 I'll give him that.
2258. 01:39:48 It was pretty easy to have with me
2259. 01:39:50 and read through multiple pages or chapters at a time
2260. 01:39:54 just because he is a good writer.
2261. 01:39:56 So well done in that sense near Yale.
2262. 01:39:59 So I'll join you at the 4-0, Mike.
2263. 01:40:03 - All right, cool.
2264. 01:40:05 So let's put indestractable on the shelf.
2265. 01:40:09 What's coming up?
2266. 01:40:11 - Making it All Work by David Allen.
2267. 01:40:13 And what am I?
2268. 01:40:15 50, 60 pages into this one already?
2269. 01:40:18 This will be an interesting conversation.
2270. 01:40:21 I'm not gonna say much more than that.
2271. 01:40:23 I think this will be a fun one to go through.
2272. 01:40:25 Kind of a follow up to getting things done.
2273. 01:40:27 And I have a feeling you're gonna have a lot of thoughts
2274. 01:40:29 on this one, Mike.
2275. 01:40:30 (laughs)
2276. 01:40:31 - All right.
2277. 01:40:32 After that, I mentioned in the middle of this episode
2278. 01:40:37 that I knew what my next book was going to be.
2279. 01:40:40 I want to go through, since we mentioned Jason Free
2280. 01:40:44 a couple times here, I wanna go through,
2281. 01:40:45 it doesn't have to be crazy at work.
2282. 01:40:48 I've read this before as a gap book.
2283. 01:40:50 And I think this will be an interesting conversation
2284. 01:40:54 about how this gets applied not only to the workplace,
2285. 01:40:57 but also to the different organizations like churches
2286. 01:40:59 that you and I are both involved in.
2287. 01:41:01 - That'll be fun.
2288. 01:41:02 - So, and it'll be, a lot of Jason Free's writing
2289. 01:41:07 is like these short little chapters.
2290. 01:41:09 So it'll be another one of those ones
2291. 01:41:11 where we're not gonna try and capsulate everything
2292. 01:41:12 that he talks about.
2293. 01:41:13 We're gonna pick out the things that really speak to us
2294. 01:41:17 and unpack those ideas.
2295. 01:41:18 So, I think that'll make a great episode.
2296. 01:41:21 - Yeah, that will be a good one.
2297. 01:41:22 I've read that one before as well.
2298. 01:41:24 So, this will be a reread for both of us
2299. 01:41:26 and I have it right in front of me.
2300. 01:41:28 That'll be fun.
2301. 01:41:29 - Cool.
2302. 01:41:30 - It's a good one.
2303. 01:41:31 I don't have a gap book still trying to make work
2304. 01:41:34 on the margin thing and adding more books
2305. 01:41:36 doesn't help with that.
2306. 01:41:37 So, do you have one this time?
2307. 01:41:40 - I do.
2308. 01:41:41 So, I ordered Principles for Success by Ray Dalio.
2309. 01:41:46 And if you hear that, you're probably like,
2310. 01:41:47 wait, Principles by Ray Dalio.
2311. 01:41:49 Didn't you read that already?
2312. 01:41:50 Yes, yes, we did.
2313. 01:41:51 Principles for Success is an illustrated
2314. 01:41:55 like kids' version of Principles.
2315. 01:41:57 - Interesting.
2316. 01:41:58 - And yeah, so Principles I absolutely loved
2317. 01:42:03 and I want to see what the simplified version looks like.
2318. 01:42:07 I'm not sure if my kids will like it or not,
2319. 01:42:11 but I don't know.
2320. 01:42:12 I think even if they don't really get into it,
2321. 01:42:17 I think it'll be an interesting review
2322. 01:42:19 of Principles at the very least.
2323. 01:42:21 And hopefully I'll recognize that,
2324. 01:42:24 yeah, there is something here for my kids
2325. 01:42:27 and they can maybe apply some of the principle stuff
2326. 01:42:30 for themselves.
2327. 01:42:31 - Cool.
2328. 01:42:32 Good pick.
2329. 01:42:33 - Thank you, sir.
2330. 01:42:34 All right, well, that'll do it for this episode then.
2331. 01:42:37 If you want to become a Bookworm FM Premium Club member,
2332. 01:42:42 you can do so by tapping the little icon in Overcast
2333. 01:42:46 or going to club.bookworm.fm/membership, I believe.
2334. 01:42:51 And five bucks a month will get you access to my MyNode files.
2335. 01:42:57 Joe has recorded a couple gapbook episodes,
2336. 01:43:00 audios for books that he's read as gapbooks
2337. 01:43:05 and some additional goodies like the Bookworm wallpaper
2338. 01:43:09 that I designed and you will be supporting the show
2339. 01:43:12 for which you will have our undying gratitude.
2340. 01:43:15 So thank you to all of the Bookworm Club Premium members
2341. 01:43:18 who are tuning in live right now as we record this.
2342. 01:43:21 That's another perk of being a Bookworm Club member.
2343. 01:43:23 You can attend the live recordings
2344. 01:43:25 and hear about all my tech issues as they happen live.
2345. 01:43:28 - Those are very fun.
2346. 01:43:29 It's always fun to see, like, get frustrated
2347. 01:43:32 'cause this microphone won't work.
2348. 01:43:34 All right, so let's put in Distractable on the shelf
2349. 01:43:36 and next time we will join David Allen
2350. 01:43:39 in learning how to make it all work
2351. 01:43:42 and we will see you next time.