85: Making It All Work by David Allen

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1. 00:00:00 So Mike, we talked about this a little bit before we started recording, but I have a shiny new MacBook Pro, and I'm very excited about it.
2. 00:00:11 Nice. So give us the details. What did you get?
3. 00:00:14 So this is the 16 inch and it's large. I don't have another way to say that.
4. 00:00:22 It is. I have never owned anything other than a 13 inch way back to the days before I owned a MacBook Pro and just had the base MacBook.
5. 00:00:33 It was the 13 at the time as well. So this is this is quite a machine.
6. 00:00:39 And it's like got the upgraded processor. It's got the upgraded RAM, upgraded video card. Like it's got a lot of that stuff not completely maxed out but not far off.
7. 00:00:50 And it's phenomenal. That's all I can say. And I told you this before we started as well.
8. 00:00:57 I've been setting up all my command line, like all my terminal stuff.
9. 00:01:01 And I have to say the one feature I am absolutely thrilled about is the escape key.
10. 00:01:08 That is my one feature I am absolutely thrilled to death about.
11. 00:01:14 I don't use the escape key, but I have a 16 inch MacBook Pro myself and I am loving this keyboard. This new old keyboard.
12. 00:01:22 Yes. It's funny how when we go back in time, it can be better. Good job, Apple. Thanks for listening.
13. 00:01:30 So I'm going to post something in the live chat. This is an app that you need to buy for this MacBook Pro.
14. 00:01:37 And it is called Turbo Boost Switcher Pro. And what this does if you care at all about how the fans will spin up and your MacBook may get freely warm.
15. 00:01:51 This basically disables the Turbo Boost mode. I heard about this from Marco Arment.
16. 00:01:57 And he's been running it on his MacBooks for a while because he complained about how the fans would spin up.
17. 00:02:04 It would get hot and it would cause his hands to sweat when he was typing. He didn't like that.
18. 00:02:07 So this app basically disables the Turbo Boost, which on the 16 inch MacBook Pro, for the most part, you're never ever ever going to need that.
19. 00:02:15 Except if you are doing something that does require all of those cores. And at that point, you can disable Turbo Boost Switcher Pro and let it do its thing.
20. 00:02:25 Sure.
21. 00:02:26 But for the most part, just make sure that your computer is quiet and it stays cool.
22. 00:02:30 I don't think I knew that this thing existed, but I'm really happy to know about it.
23. 00:02:35 I will say that whenever I was doing some setup on it, I was able to get the fans to kick on pretty easy.
24. 00:02:42 Sure. Yeah.
25. 00:02:43 Maybe that's me. I don't know. I have learned I'm very hard on computers.
26. 00:02:48 Well, mine does too when I have it hooked up to the dock that I use at home.
27. 00:02:54 And it's not loud enough to affect my podcast recording.
28. 00:03:00 But as soon as I take my headphones off, I do notice that those fans are pretty loud.
29. 00:03:04 Sure.
30. 00:03:05 So I'm like, "I'm not doing anything. I'm not exporting out of screen flow or anything. Why does it need to be running like this?"
31. 00:03:12 And it just kind of automatically switches over to that Turbo Boost mode when it doesn't really need to a lot of times.
32. 00:03:17 So Marco's got some stats. He's got a whole write up on this.
33. 00:03:20 We can put the link to Marco's article in the show notes.
34. 00:03:24 Sure.
35. 00:03:25 But he did some speed tests with this on and with it off.
36. 00:03:28 Unless you are doing something specifically designed to max out your cores, you're not going to notice any speed difference.
37. 00:03:35 This is really good to know. Thank you for this.
38. 00:03:37 For sure. Pro-tip.
39. 00:03:39 I needed to get that nerd session out of the way. Thanks for indulging me.
40. 00:03:44 Let's do some follow-up. How's the kibbit?
41. 00:03:47 I have planned my kibbit.
42. 00:03:51 It is going to occur right after we record the next one.
43. 00:03:57 So I won't have done it yet by the next book we're recording, but I actually have it on my calendar right here.
44. 00:04:03 It's scheduled for the 2nd of February.
45. 00:04:06 Nice.
46. 00:04:07 And it's going to happen. It is also causing me, I think, we'll see to call an audible on the next book.
47. 00:04:16 The next book that I'm going to pick.
48. 00:04:19 What?
49. 00:04:20 So stay tuned.
50. 00:04:23 Okay. There's a teaser for the end of the show.
51. 00:04:27 Yep.
52. 00:04:28 Great fun. Okay.
53. 00:04:30 Interested in that? I will wait with bated breath.
54. 00:04:33 Yeah. It's on the calendar though, and we have confirmation that people are coming.
55. 00:04:37 So unless everybody gets sick, which has happened a couple times recently,
56. 00:04:44 then this is going to happen.
57. 00:04:47 Sure.
58. 00:04:48 Well then, okay. Do you know what the plan is for what you will do during this kibbit?
59. 00:04:54 Or do you just have the date and the people aligned up?
60. 00:04:57 Ah, therein lies the tale of potentially the new book.
61. 00:05:01 Okay. So wait till the end.
62. 00:05:03 Okay. Okay. All right. All right. I'll stop trying to jump ahead and drag this out of you.
63. 00:05:08 Okay. All right. Moving on. Have you been planning your week every week?
64. 00:05:12 Not really. So the first week, the first week, I didn't do it at all.
65. 00:05:17 And I got to the end of the week and I'm like, Oh, I was supposed to plan my week.
66. 00:05:22 The next week I was like, I'm going to plan my week and Sunday came.
67. 00:05:27 And I was like, let's do this. And then I got super sick.
68. 00:05:31 So I spent most of Monday and Tuesday in the fucking into graphic in the bathroom.
69. 00:05:38 I fell asleep on the bathroom floor at one point. So I plan my week starting Wednesday.
70. 00:05:42 I don't really think that counts though. So I am going to say that this is not completed,
71. 00:05:48 but it will be for next week.
72. 00:05:51 I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I know that like one of the things I was trying to do as well as like doing the whole time blocking,
73. 00:05:58 planning your week outs, I have done it the last two weeks.
74. 00:06:01 Like I can tell you that that has been a success. So I'm not going to complain too much about that one.
75. 00:06:09 But I do know that the concept of planning out my week ahead, I really have to have each day down to the point where like,
76. 00:06:19 here's what I'm going to do my morning ritual. And here's when I'm going to stop doing my writing.
77. 00:06:24 And here's what I'm going to do. Things off of my available list.
78. 00:06:27 Like that whole process is what I have to do. It seems to work out pretty well.
79. 00:06:32 I'm not going to argue with it, but I have done it the last two weeks. So does that mean, you know,
80. 00:06:37 I'm going to say I get a gold star on that one. Can I give myself a gold star on that one? I like that idea.
81. 00:06:42 Well, even if you can't, I will give you a gold star. Yes.
82. 00:06:45 All right. My other action item was to use freedom.
83. 00:06:49 And I did something to my phone, Mike. And most nights I'm angry that I did this.
84. 00:06:57 But freedom, if you have the subscription for it, which I have one of the lifetime deals, I don't remember when I bought that.
85. 00:07:06 I don't remember paying full price for it. So it must have been on a sale at one point.
86. 00:07:11 But I have a lifetime account with freedom. And I set up one of the scheduled recurring sessions.
87. 00:07:18 That starts every night at nine o'clock and goes till about 10 30.
88. 00:07:24 Now, that's really important because I usually go to bed at about nine o'clock.
89. 00:07:30 But my tendency is to want to check up on a bunch of things before I go to bed.
90. 00:07:35 But it's also rare that I get to that point where I'm ready to start checking things quickly before I go to bed.
91. 00:07:40 That like never happens before nine o'clock, which means that whenever I go to do that, quick check before
92. 00:07:47 I go to sleep, it has my phone on lockdown and I can't do anything with it.
93. 00:07:55 So it's a pretty good instigator to just shut up and go to bed. That whole thing.
94. 00:08:03 So I get frustrated by it, but I think it's a good thing. I'm going to say it's a good thing.
95. 00:08:09 Probably. Cool. So you aced all of your follow up this week.
96. 00:08:14 I think so. I don't know that I'm going to be able to say that the next time we record.
97. 00:08:18 But for now, I'm going to go with it. So.
98. 00:08:21 All right.
99. 00:08:22 That said, let's jump into today's book, which is one I've wanted to do for a while and I have a feeling is going to have a lot of strong opinions coming behind it.
100. 00:08:34 But making it all work by David Allen. I think this is going to take us all the way back to episode number one,
101. 00:08:41 where we did getting things done, which by the way is our most downloaded show of all time for Bookworm.
102. 00:08:49 I haven't quite figured out if that's because it's episode one and a lot of people start there thinking they're going to go through them all or if it's just that popular of a book.
103. 00:09:00 I don't know. I think it's because it's GTD. It could be. Yeah. That's very likely the case.
104. 00:09:05 I will say that one of the frustrations I had with this book from the get go is that you don't really get to what I would say is new material until what is it page 60 or so.
105. 00:09:21 Like the first you found new material.
106. 00:09:24 Yeah.
107. 00:09:26 Put a pin in that one.
108. 00:09:28 There's.
109. 00:09:31 It's almost twenty five twenty twenty five percent of the book is how great GTD is and how it has spread across the world.
110. 00:09:39 I don't really care.
111. 00:09:41 I like that it has been successful and that a lot of people like it.
112. 00:09:46 But that's just unnecessary.
113. 00:09:51 Just needed to get that one off my chest.
114. 00:09:54 I did enjoy going through this one though with a lot of caveats to that of course.
115. 00:10:00 I think that's expected.
116. 00:10:02 Yes.
117. 00:10:03 What's your gut reaction to it Mike?
118. 00:10:04 If I were to summarize this book it is basically GTD 2.0.
119. 00:10:10 Is that fair?
120. 00:10:12 What makes it 2.0?
121. 00:10:14 It adds a lot of additional detail and I feel like he tries to fill in a lot of holes that he noticed people were responding to GTD in specific ways.
122. 00:10:28 Sure.
123. 00:10:29 Basically thought through how to respond to those objections criticisms and then wrote this book with also reviewing everything that is in GTD.
124. 00:10:39 He doesn't get into all the details of GTD to the level that he does in the getting things done book but more than enough that you could read this one and not that one in my opinion.
125. 00:10:49 Yeah.
126. 00:10:50 I think that's fair.
127. 00:10:51 I can't say that I would say it's 2.0 as much as he filled in the gaps that he should have filled in on the first one.
128. 00:10:59 Okay.
129. 00:11:00 So 1.5.
130. 00:11:01 All right.
131. 00:11:02 I could get behind that.
132. 00:11:04 It's an extension of GTD. It's not something even that is like a companion to GTD in my opinion because so much of this is based off of GTD.
133. 00:11:14 Right.
134. 00:11:15 Right.
135. 00:11:16 So it's not like GTD is over on this side and making things work is over on this other side and when you put them together you get a complete picture.
136. 00:11:23 You just get a little bit fuller picture of where GTD is coming from.
137. 00:11:27 Right.
138. 00:11:28 Right.
139. 00:11:29 Which I think is probably why in my case going forward.
140. 00:11:33 I'm probably going to reference making it all work before I reference getting things done.
141. 00:11:40 And it seems like I'm not alone in that.
142. 00:11:43 My perspective has been that folks who talk and write about GTD regularly have a tendency to reference this book over the original more often.
143. 00:11:55 I hadn't noticed that but that's interesting.
144. 00:11:57 Yeah.
145. 00:11:58 It's kind of weird to think about that that the folks who are big into GTD actually reference the follow up book more than the original.
146. 00:12:06 I don't know.
147. 00:12:07 It's kind of fascinating to see that.
148. 00:12:09 I think there might be some validity in it in that if you have been through GTD you know that process.
149. 00:12:18 You know how it works and you're kind of and I think I fall into this category and you're kind of getting to that point where the fundamentals like keeping the.
150. 00:12:27 Tasks and the projects in line like once you get that under control and you're trying to figure out like what.
151. 00:12:34 Like you're obviously missing like higher levels and you're trying to get a perspective on that piece like that's.
152. 00:12:41 Part of why I selected this because I feel like I'm at that point and that's more what this one is geared towards helping you.
153. 00:12:49 So I think the people who once you get the runway under control and want that higher perspective they tend to go to this and then they get the clarity from this so then they tend to reference it more often.
154. 00:13:00 I don't know how much truth there is to that.
155. 00:13:02 That's my speculation though.
156. 00:13:04 Sure.
157. 00:13:05 There was the book did not start on a good note for me.
158. 00:13:10 Page two he says making it all work is a manual for getting anything and everything on track from a bloated email inbox to a significant professional challenge where your next vacation the same principles and practices are applicable to them all.
159. 00:13:22 When these techniques are incorporated across the spectrum of life and work a wonderful integration takes place work takes on a lighter quality life itself becomes a successful enterprise.
160. 00:13:30 My response to that in my mind not file is the rolling eyes emoji.
161. 00:13:35 I believe that everything that he shares in here is good and it can help deal with a lot of the pressures of the day to day stuff that a lot of people feel overwhelmed with.
162. 00:13:50 But this introduction chapter on like from getting things getting things done to making it all work.
163. 00:13:57 I kind of felt like he's selling us on how awesome his previous work was.
164. 00:14:06 And I don't know maybe just my perspective coming into this book.
165. 00:14:13 I really was not in the mood to hear about how great you are like I'm here just teach me.
166. 00:14:20 Because he also talks about like three levels of GTD practitioners in this level in this section those who think they got it but they really didn't those who got some of it realized they didn't really apply it like they should those who really got it and really implemented it to an advanced level.
167. 00:14:32 So basically he's like if you've tried this and it didn't work you're doing it wrong.
168. 00:14:36 And I think there are people that fall into that category but I also think it's unfair to say that GTD is the thing that is going to work for everyone everywhere.
169. 00:14:46 I don't think that's entirely true.
170. 00:14:49 One of the things I did appreciate about this book we'll get into this later on is he talks about how this is not necessarily a system but it's a systematic approach and so you can kind of apply this stuff for yourself.
171. 00:14:59 I think that kind of redeems a lot of it. If you view it as he's talking about the system at this point you have the reaction that I did in the first chapter it's like give me a break.
172. 00:15:10 He does seem pretty excited about the success of GTD.
173. 00:15:14 I wish he wasn't.
174. 00:15:16 He has every right to be.
175. 00:15:18 I mean from I don't know the whole story but from what he talks about in here and some of the details he shares later on about how he came out with this thing and it ended up being really successful and his wife had to decide like how about the next thing.
176. 00:15:28 That's pretty cool.
177. 00:15:30 You're very successful.
178. 00:15:32 You have every right to toot your own horn.
179. 00:15:34 Just maybe tone it down before page 68.
180. 00:15:38 Sure.
181. 00:15:40 We already bought the book.
182. 00:15:42 I'm trying to remember when was the original GTD book released.
183. 00:15:48 Do you remember?
184. 00:15:50 Was it 2001?
185. 00:15:51 Oh goodness.
186. 00:15:57 I used to know this.
187. 00:15:59 I don't know.
188. 00:16:01 I think it was late 90s early aughts.
189. 00:16:04 This one was released in 2008.
190. 00:16:08 And by that point it had had a decent amount of success obviously.
191. 00:16:14 I think we'll get through what the differences are.
192. 00:16:24 If you look at the outline it's going through the five steps of GTD and then going through the six levels, the six horizons.
193. 00:16:32 He called them at the time the 10,000, 20,000 foot view and such.
194. 00:16:36 I do that because I feel like we can talk about the differences that he calls out between this and GTD.
195. 00:16:43 That would potentially help folks figure out if this is worth reading.
196. 00:16:47 That's kind of the way I'm coming at this one.
197. 00:16:49 Sure.
198. 00:16:50 But the first point here, this isn't until page 62.
199. 00:16:54 So I don't have a talking point until that point because it's at that point that he explains this self-management matrix.
200. 00:17:04 And I don't recall this out of the original.
201. 00:17:07 I should have gone back and looked to see if he put it there.
202. 00:17:10 But he didn't. Sorry about that.
203. 00:17:13 But think of this as your traditional two by two squares.
204. 00:17:18 So there's four squares.
205. 00:17:20 On the left side there's an arrow from the bottom to the top that is perspective.
206. 00:17:24 On the bottom from left to right is control.
207. 00:17:27 So bottom left corner, if you have little control and little perspective you are a victim.
208. 00:17:34 If you have a lot of control but not much perspective, you're a micromanager.
209. 00:17:39 Bottom right.
210. 00:17:40 Top left, a lot of perspective, little control, crazy maker.
211. 00:17:45 And top right, a lot of perspective, a lot of control.
212. 00:17:49 You're a captain and commander.
213. 00:17:51 And I appreciated one thing about his explanation of all of this.
214. 00:17:57 And that was that you can be at different points with different areas of your life.
215. 00:18:03 And I think that's very true because there are definitely some areas in my life where I feel like I am certainly the victim.
216. 00:18:08 But there are others that I feel like I am that captain and commander and I have it fully under control.
217. 00:18:13 So my question to you, Mike, is that as you saw this or worked through some of it,
218. 00:18:21 do you feel like there's one of these quadrants that you fall into most of the time?
219. 00:18:27 Like just as your life in general, do you feel like you fit into one of these?
220. 00:18:31 I know why.
221. 00:18:32 Interesting.
222. 00:18:33 Yes.
223. 00:18:34 So are you familiar with the EOS system by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters?
224. 00:18:40 No, I'm not.
225. 00:18:42 EOS is basically a way to run a business.
226. 00:18:46 I have some entrepreneur friends who are really into it.
227. 00:18:50 There's one book that they wrote though called Rocket Fuel and it talks about, I think I read that as a gap book.
228. 00:18:57 It talks about how successful businesses pair and they use these terms, visionary and implementer.
229. 00:19:07 And they have a quiz to figure out which one are you.
230. 00:19:12 And that book was interesting because they talk about how there are lots and lots of visionaries,
231. 00:19:17 but there are not very many implementers, even though visionaries tend to be the people in the startups, the CEOs,
232. 00:19:24 obviously who are casting the vision, but really like David Allen's talking about here,
233. 00:19:29 they can just be crazy making unless they have somebody who can help them implement their vision.
234. 00:19:35 And I am almost 100% an implementer.
235. 00:19:40 So that is definitely where I fall in between one of those two.
236. 00:19:46 This particular diagram I didn't really care for because basically it's talking about perspective and control.
237. 00:19:53 I want both of these, you want to be captain and commander, but then he backs it up and says,
238. 00:19:57 "Well, not all the time actually because there's times when this is bad."
239. 00:20:00 And all the other ones he's like, "This is bad most of the time, but actually it's good in these cases."
240. 00:20:04 So the diagram itself really isn't all that helpful.
241. 00:20:07 Other than to locate yourself, I guess, and figure out what you tend to do.
242. 00:20:10 Yeah, that's fair.
243. 00:20:12 That's fair.
244. 00:20:13 I think I definitely fall into that whole visionary, crazy-maker category.
245. 00:20:17 I'm pretty firmly over there, thus the thousand new ideas that I always want to run with and don't always get.
246. 00:20:27 I was going to say, from working with you on projects, I would definitely have picked you as the visionary.
247. 00:20:34 You're just like, "Let's do this thing."
248. 00:20:36 'Cause I'm typically the person who's like, "Well, wait, how are we going to do that?"
249. 00:20:40 Yep.
250. 00:20:41 Which is why whenever I come up with crazy new ideas, I run them by you and you're like, "Well, yes, but..."
251. 00:20:47 [laughter]
252. 00:20:48 So I always appreciate that 'cause I need those people in my life.
253. 00:20:51 Otherwise, it gets out of control.
254. 00:20:54 [laughter]
255. 00:20:55 Oh, great fun.
256. 00:20:57 Let's go into GTD and...
257. 00:21:01 If we have to.
258. 00:21:02 If we have to.
259. 00:21:03 And go through these five steps.
260. 00:21:05 Before I do that, I should ask 'cause I definitely still...
261. 00:21:10 use the GTD methodology day to day every week.
262. 00:21:15 Do you still do this in totality or do you just pull different pieces out of it for your day to day?
263. 00:21:22 That's kind of getting at my big action item from going through this.
264. 00:21:29 I recognize, and I'll tell them myself, from going through this, I found that I had tended to fall away from the GTD.
265. 00:21:39 Model, just using my paper pen, using base camp as my justification for like, "I'm just going to figure out my work when I do it."
266. 00:21:48 And as I was reading this, I found myself going into omni-focus and capturing things that I wouldn't have captured before.
267. 00:21:55 I'm like, "Oh, I've been kind of lax on this."
268. 00:21:58 [laughter]
269. 00:21:59 So I think historically I have not been great recently at implementing GTD as it is.
270. 00:22:06 I recognize I need a little bit more of that GTD structure in my life.
271. 00:22:10 I don't think I am 100% on board with the GTD process that he outlines here.
272. 00:22:17 And I don't really thought through which pieces I want to incorporate, which ones I don't necessarily.
273. 00:22:24 The two things that I know I need to get better at are getting things into my task management system, which is omni-focus.
274. 00:22:30 And also being more regular on my reviews.
275. 00:22:34 I have trouble defining if I follow the rest of it or not, because I feel like I do know what I need to do.
276. 00:22:41 I feel like I've got things organized enough that when I sit down to work on them, there's stuff there.
277. 00:22:47 I also think that I tend not to go through all four of the steps and then finally do the work.
278. 00:22:54 So probably if I have to say yes or no, I would say no, I don't really follow this.
279. 00:22:59 But I probably need to do a little bit more.
280. 00:23:01 That's fair. That's fair. I think I, being a bit of a crazy maker, I see that I need something like this.
281. 00:23:11 And it's the only one, it's the only real system I have seen that goes from day-to-day tasks all the way up to purpose and principles.
282. 00:23:22 It's the only system I've run across that covers that full spectrum in a way that makes sense to me.
283. 00:23:28 So I have a tendency to lean towards it just as a result of that.
284. 00:23:33 I can definitely join you in whenever we go to the first step here, capture.
285. 00:23:40 When he's explaining that, I found myself capturing things like you're saying that I normally wouldn't have.
286. 00:23:46 Writing things down like I need to resolve a relationship with one of my siblings.
287. 00:23:51 It's nothing major that is a problem. We need to communicate more often.
288. 00:23:56 So writing something like that down is not something I would have done before.
289. 00:24:02 And I think that's because in making it all work, he does explicitly call out that those types of problems or ideas or things that you should be capturing,
290. 00:24:16 which I don't really think he did that in getting things done.
291. 00:24:19 So that was kind of the difference there.
292. 00:24:25 Even something as interesting as what are one of the principles that you want to implement in your life,
293. 00:24:34 it may not be something you want to capture a long term, but it could be.
294. 00:24:39 So write it down. Explore it when you have time to think through it later.
295. 00:24:42 I think that was a lot of what I got out of the capture piece this time as opposed to write down the tasks that you've got coming up.
296. 00:24:50 I've been doing that for a while. That's not something new.
297. 00:24:54 But trying to capture the higher level pieces is definitely something that I found intriguing and actually kind of difficult because I find myself admitting that some things are problematic when I normally would have just glazed over it.
298. 00:25:09 So kind of related, I think, is something that I'll post it here in the chat for the premium club members.
299. 00:25:18 You can see this too. This is something that was published as we record this today on the Suite Setup.
300. 00:25:23 And as much as I reel against systems, I realized that I do actually have a system for capturing, which is what we're talking about here, but also developing ideas.
301. 00:25:32 And this is something that doesn't really fit GTD, but I'm recognizing that this is something that allows me to do what I need to do and create the outcomes that are important to me, which is what GTD is designed to do.
302. 00:25:47 You want to create the outcomes that are important to you.
303. 00:25:51 I just think that the thing that I shared with you basically as I was thinking about this, there's a couple different steps.
304. 00:25:58 I'll just walk through this. I've got this little diagram that I drew in good notes, which I kind of like where I capture things, and that's GTD.
305. 00:26:07 From there, I put them into my test management system. I collect them. That, again, is GTD.
306. 00:26:15 But then I develop them. And this is almost the exact opposite of clarifying because it's almost like I don't even know what this thing is going to become.
307. 00:26:23 So I'm going to spend some time mind mapping this and see what it turns into.
308. 00:26:28 I'm going to let my brain go. And then I'll decide from there, is this something that I should turn into an article or a video or whatever.
309. 00:26:36 And what I've learned from this process is that that develop piece, that's really where the magic happens for me because when I mind map something and then I set down to write it, I can crank it out.
310. 00:26:48 It almost writes itself because I know the story arc. I know all the details are right there as opposed to if I just sit down to write something, if I were following GTD specifically, you know, I've clarified that I want to write an article about X topic.
311. 00:27:02 Okay, now it's time to do that. I sit down to write it. I might stare at that blank cursor for a while and be intimidated, hit writer's block, or I might get rolling, but then realize that there really isn't a story here like I thought maybe there was.
312. 00:27:17 And so I got to chuck that and start over like both of those have happened to me.
313. 00:27:21 So I've got this system to help me do the thing that I want to do.
314. 00:27:26 But in my opinion, this is kind of very different from GTD. I'm trying to reconcile how like this fits inside of GTD and I really don't know.
315. 00:27:35 Are you sure it's different?
316. 00:27:37 No, I'm not, which is why I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile this.
317. 00:27:40 And there's basically another step in the develop phase, which I don't know, maybe he would call that review.
318. 00:27:46 I would.
319. 00:27:47 I don't know, but it's different than just going through a list of tasks and saying is everything here.
320. 00:27:53 Yeah.
321. 00:27:54 It's really saying it's really spending some intentional time just letting my brain wander about a specific problem that I want to solve or a specific topic that I'm just trying to see like what all is here as opposed to everything is here.
322. 00:28:08 Do I still want to do this?
323. 00:28:09 Sure.
324. 00:28:10 Well, okay. Let me just walk through the whole thing here.
325. 00:28:14 The methodology, if you're new to GTD capture, capture the ideas, clarify, make a decision about it.
326. 00:28:21 What is it like? Do you have to act on it? Is it something you store for a long time?
327. 00:28:25 Organize it have some way of keeping your lists or keeping that information in an organized way.
328. 00:28:31 Review it regularly to make sure it's up to date and then act on it.
329. 00:28:35 So capture, clarify, organize, review, and do your thing.
330. 00:28:41 I think you're working on, Mike, in that you're capturing the ideas, but they're not something you're going to act on.
331. 00:28:49 You're just kind of developing those ideas and letting them grow, I guess, would be the term for it.
332. 00:28:55 Well, the do part of it is the develop and then sure the actual writing, which is what David Allen probably would define as doing something because you're creating the article.
333. 00:29:04 At that point, that's where that doesn't come to the very end.
334. 00:29:09 Sure. I think it's in my mind because I do something similar with my writing.
335. 00:29:17 I don't do it in mind maps of sorts, but I'll make a file for a new article and capture the ideas in there and continue to work on those over time.
336. 00:29:29 I have a tendency to think of that as the review process just on a daily basis at a lower level because I think one of the pieces that I caught from this book versus GTD is that reviewing happens at different times at different levels.
337. 00:29:46 Reviewing your runway, the stuff you actually have to act on happens daily if not five or six times a day, but reviewing your project level, that's what people think of as the weekly review.
338. 00:29:59 You get to the higher horizons and there's different timeframes for when you need to review those and what you need to do during those.
339. 00:30:05 I think a lot of what you're doing is a midday review of potential work to be written, but it is a work in itself in that you're developing those concepts and trying to flush them out.
340. 00:30:19 It's a mismatch of reviewing clarifying.
341. 00:30:22 Yeah, it is because you're kind of doing clarifying, organizing review repeatedly midday if you follow me.
342. 00:30:30 So you're reviewing what you currently have. It gives you potential new ideas. You're capturing that right into the document where it's going to go clarifying where it needs to go in there, making sure it's organized, looking at it.
343. 00:30:41 And then, oh, yeah, that could be this. And then you go back to the beginning and you do it all over again.
344. 00:30:45 That's kind of how I'm seeing it, but that's me being the promoter of David Allen and saying, oh, yeah, you're doing exactly what he says.
345. 00:30:54 Sure, just rapidly.
346. 00:30:57 Yeah, no, that makes sense. And that's why when you asked if I was following it, I'm like, maybe?
347. 00:31:05 I don't know. In my head, the way that my system works compared to what I understand of GTD, not really because it seems like GTD has a very specific 12345 and I kind of go one, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, two, three, four, five.
348. 00:31:21 Nice.
349. 00:31:22 But nice.
350. 00:31:24 Yeah, I don't know.
351. 00:31:26 I do think, though, that a big thing I got from this book later on, kind of jumping all over the place, sorry about that.
352. 00:31:31 That's all right.
353. 00:31:32 Was that it's a system, but also you should be able to modify it to your needs.
354. 00:31:40 And he does talk about a systematic approach, not a system earlier in the book, I think that was like chapter three.
355. 00:31:46 But that point towards the end of the book about figuring out how this works for you, that was kind of exciting to me because I did not get that.
356. 00:31:55 When I read "Getting Things Done," when I read "Getting Things Done," it was kind of like, "This is what you do.
357. 00:32:00 Don't deviate from this at all, or you will crash and burn."
358. 00:32:04 Right or wrong, that's my impression. And I haven't read it in a while, so maybe that's completely unfair.
359. 00:32:09 I don't know that.
360. 00:32:10 But when I read it at the end of this book and he's basically saying, "Yeah, take these principles, apply them how you want."
361. 00:32:16 I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I can get on board with that."
362. 00:32:18 Yeah, I think there's...
363. 00:32:20 He mentions this just about it.
364. 00:32:22 If you listen to his podcast, he talks about it all the time.
365. 00:32:25 Pick what works for you and drop the rest.
366. 00:32:28 The one thing that he tends to push pretty hard, though, is the weekly review.
367. 00:32:32 That one is pretty hard for him to let go, I think.
368. 00:32:37 I know that that's one that I've kind of railed on in the past.
369. 00:32:41 This is so important. The people who get big into it seem to do that.
370. 00:32:46 I get it because it seems like that's what keeps all the projects and stuff I have going on up to date.
371. 00:32:53 But at the same time, I think the flaw that I've had in the past is what to do during that weekly review.
372. 00:33:03 My resistance to it is kind of around how much should I be doing at that.
373. 00:33:09 I've had the tendency to throw a lot on it and thinking I need to review every horizon that I have every single week.
374. 00:33:17 No, that was my big takeaway out of this, is that that's not actually true.
375. 00:33:21 I don't think that's what I should be doing.
376. 00:33:24 I should be doing those at different intervals and being okay with doing reviews at different intervals.
377. 00:33:30 Yep, agreed.
378. 00:33:32 It's also kind of interesting reading this book in particular.
379. 00:33:34 I don't recall this from GTD, but it's probably in there too, is David Allen's coming from a very certain perspective.
380. 00:33:40 And you can definitely apply GTD in pretty much any situation.
381. 00:33:44 But he definitely comes from a corporate background.
382. 00:33:48 And that comes through in a lot of the examples that he uses.
383. 00:33:52 And when he tries to select examples outside of the corporate environment, like Gracie's Gardens.
384. 00:33:59 Oh my word.
385. 00:34:00 I kind of roll my eyes.
386. 00:34:01 Yeah, he should have left that out.
387. 00:34:04 Just my take on it.
388. 00:34:07 He does have a hard time letting corporate go.
389. 00:34:10 You could tell he wants to be an executive.
390. 00:34:12 Which is fine.
391. 00:34:14 I mean, you are what you are, just own it.
392. 00:34:16 And I think he does.
393. 00:34:17 But that is one of the weaknesses of this book in particular, I think, is for people like us who are remote workers making stuff on their own,
394. 00:34:30 the whole gig economy sort of thing, entrepreneurs, you got to kind of figure out how to translate some of this stuff.
395. 00:34:41 If you are a knowledge worker solo-preneur, you're not dealing with corporate drive-bys, like he's talking about somebody popping in and giving you something to do that's urgent.
396. 00:34:54 But you are fighting to keep your attention away from your email inbox or social media or whatever.
397. 00:35:03 And not that one of those scenarios is better than the other or one approaches right versus wrong.
398. 00:35:12 It's just that the corporate background doesn't translate to some of the other situations that he tries to use to illustrate that JTD can be used in lots of different places.
399. 00:35:22 I think that's fair.
400. 00:35:23 I mean, it is a case where you have to translate quite a bit.
401. 00:35:27 I know some of those cases, it was pretty easy for me to translate because I don't have corporate drive-bys, but I have drive-bys for sure.
402. 00:35:37 Because, hey, Joe, can you take a look at this?
403. 00:35:41 Like, even I was leaving the church early today in order to come home and do a little bit of testing for my audio on this.
404. 00:35:49 And to play around with the new MacBook in the recording setup.
405. 00:35:53 So making sure all of that was in working order.
406. 00:35:56 I threw a scarf on, threw my coat on, grabbed my backpack and started to walk out.
407. 00:36:02 And, hey, Joe, could you do this before you leave?
408. 00:36:06 I'm walking out the door right now.
409. 00:36:11 No, I can't.
410. 00:36:13 So that does happen.
411. 00:36:18 I see those a lot.
412. 00:36:20 I think that might be why one of the reasons I continue to gravitate towards this.
413. 00:36:25 Because it just means I have a lot of inboxes that I've made it easy for other people to throw things into.
414. 00:36:32 I won't necessarily work on things right away, but there's at least a place that they know I will go look.
415. 00:36:39 So that does help that much.
416. 00:36:42 I know.
417. 00:36:43 I do think...
418. 00:36:45 And again, we're bouncing all over here.
419. 00:36:49 I didn't really get a lot out of, say for example, to clarify and organize levels here or the do.
420. 00:36:57 Sure, go to work.
421. 00:37:00 Pretty straightforward.
422. 00:37:02 But clarifying, yes, making decisions about the thing takes time, but it's not really anything different than what we've known.
423. 00:37:10 Organize, it's... if I have anything to say on that, really, that's different, is that he does spell out, and I wasn't really expecting this.
424. 00:37:22 He does spell out what he expects those to look like.
425. 00:37:27 And one thing that was interesting is he did share that with the lower levels, the stuff runway, the things you're working on every day,
426. 00:37:38 managing that in the systems that you use to manage it need to be more complex,
427. 00:37:44 as opposed to all the way to the top, like your purpose, principles, visions, and goals.
428. 00:37:49 Those can just be simple lists or a simple mind map.
429. 00:37:53 It doesn't need anything complex.
430. 00:37:55 You could just throw it on an afghan somewhere and scan it.
431. 00:37:58 There's all kinds of ways you can do those that are all very basic.
432. 00:38:03 But the further down you go from the top, the more complex it needs to be.
433. 00:38:08 I had not really connected that before, but it makes perfect sense.
434. 00:38:13 I agree, and I also think that's why connecting your purpose and your vision, your values to what you are working on is one of the most important things that you can do.
435. 00:38:27 He recommends in this book, man, I'm blowing up your outline, sorry.
436. 00:38:32 He talks about how you don't want to do that high top level down.
437. 00:38:38 You want to go from what's staring at you in the face right now on the way up.
438. 00:38:42 Again, I think that probably works ideally for somebody in a corporate environment.
439. 00:38:47 Maybe not somebody who is struggling to be motivated as they work from home every day.
440. 00:38:52 In that case, I would argue go ahead and figure out what your purpose and your values are
441. 00:38:58 and let that infuse meaning into the things that you have to do.
442. 00:39:03 But I also think that this is interesting from a perspective of somebody who maybe works with a team.
443. 00:39:09 If you are the CEO or you are the manager of a team, it occurs to me from reading this that the more vision you can impart,
444. 00:39:23 the more motivation that you can create for the mission, going back to the Simon Sinek book that we read, The Infinite Game.
445. 00:39:31 If you can say this is our just cause and get everybody on board with that,
446. 00:39:36 then that means that maybe you don't have to manage the individual tasks so much.
447. 00:39:41 I have a friend who is kind of dealing with this right now, switched over to Basecamp and loves Basecamp,
448. 00:39:48 but his team is kind of frustrated because they were doing full-on scrum.
449. 00:39:53 We are talking about it and I basically told him it sounds like really what it comes down to
450. 00:39:59 is your team needs to be able to plan their week.
451. 00:40:03 It's not hard, but people got to take responsibility and they got to do it.
452. 00:40:06 Maybe there are some things you can do like have a meeting on Monday morning
453. 00:40:09 where you ask people what are the three things you are working on this week
454. 00:40:12 and what are your potential roadblocks and stuff like that.
455. 00:40:14 There are ways around that.
456. 00:40:16 As I was talking about that and I was reflecting on what we read in this book,
457. 00:40:19 it occurred to me that if you can just get people excited about where you're headed,
458. 00:40:24 they will probably sort the rest of the details out on their own to your point about how
459. 00:40:30 the more mundane the level you're trying to organize, the more complex your system has to be in order to manage it well.
460. 00:40:35 If you're able to elevate the level of importance for the things that you are doing,
461. 00:40:42 maybe the complexity of your system, there's an inverse relationship there
462. 00:40:46 where it can actually be simpler.
463. 00:40:48 Yes.
464. 00:40:49 [laughter]
465. 00:40:51 Agreed.
466. 00:40:52 And this is why, like, when you see people's systems,
467. 00:40:57 generally speaking, you'll see their runway, like bottom level day-to-day tasks,
468. 00:41:03 and you'll see their projects.
469. 00:41:05 When we build video courses around tools that GTD is used to
470. 00:41:11 or is implemented within OmniFocus being the big one,
471. 00:41:15 those video courses mine included are generally talking about how do you manage your next actions,
472. 00:41:22 how do you manage your projects.
473. 00:41:24 And sometimes you'll see folks talk about areas of focus, the third level up.
474. 00:41:30 So those are the ones that get a lot of, you know, they get a lot of airtime.
475. 00:41:36 Those are a lot of the discussions, and I get it.
476. 00:41:41 I mean, that's kind of the hard piece in the midst of all this is how do you manage all of that?
477. 00:41:46 How do you keep all of that organized?
478. 00:41:48 And that's where a lot of people want to spend a lot of time.
479. 00:41:50 But when you get to goals, you know, the one step above areas of focus, your goals,
480. 00:41:56 what are you planning to do in the next year, or five years, or whatever that means to you, six weeks.
481. 00:42:02 You know, whatever that level is, it can just be a simple list.
482. 00:42:07 It doesn't need to be anything fancy.
483. 00:42:10 You throw it in reminders, throw it in a note.
484. 00:42:12 Like, it's not complicated.
485. 00:42:14 Same thing.
486. 00:42:15 If you go one level up from that, your vision, what is your vision for the next five years, ten years,
487. 00:42:20 whatever you want it to be, what is that?
488. 00:42:23 And you go one above that, your purpose and your principles, same thing.
489. 00:42:27 And just simple lists.
490. 00:42:28 That's all it needs to be.
491. 00:42:30 I think with these pieces, these perspective pieces, I'm blowing up my own outline now, Mike.
492. 00:42:37 Thanks.
493. 00:42:38 You're welcome.
494. 00:42:39 This is going to be an episode where we're going to jump all over the place.
495. 00:42:42 Chapter markers are going to be difficult this time.
496. 00:42:44 Yep.
497. 00:42:45 Good luck with that one.
498. 00:42:46 Those higher levels.
499. 00:42:49 Generally speaking in my past, I have reviewed the goals, the vision, the purpose and principles.
500. 00:42:55 So in today's GTD terms, Horizon 3, 4, and 5, I've tried to review those on a weekly basis,
501. 00:43:02 and that just doesn't work.
502. 00:43:04 I think the thing that was a little bit liberating to me is that, you know, I can review my goals
503. 00:43:10 about every other every three weeks.
504. 00:43:13 I can review that vision maybe once or twice a year, and maybe yearly on purpose and principles.
505. 00:43:21 And that's fine.
506. 00:43:22 Like, that's, that's okay.
507. 00:43:24 And it, I guess there's a follow up to that in that he does, you know, as much as I didn't
508. 00:43:32 like the story about Gracie's Gardens, you know, just to expound on that, he, he tells
509. 00:43:38 a story of a guy who inherited a business and how he uses GTD to get it under control.
510. 00:43:47 And it's very idealistic.
511. 00:43:53 There's probably no way that it's actually going to happen the way he wrote it.
512. 00:43:58 But with that particular story, it does show how if you have a struggle, if you have a
513. 00:44:07 difficult time getting an understanding or under, like finding what it is you should be
514. 00:44:12 doing at a certain level, that's a good time to do a review.
515. 00:44:16 And you should be able to do a review of that.
516. 00:44:19 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
517. 00:44:22 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
518. 00:44:25 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
519. 00:44:28 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
520. 00:44:31 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
521. 00:44:34 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
522. 00:44:37 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
523. 00:44:40 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
524. 00:44:43 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
525. 00:44:46 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
526. 00:44:49 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
527. 00:44:52 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
528. 00:44:55 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
529. 00:44:58 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
530. 00:45:01 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
531. 00:45:04 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
532. 00:45:07 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
533. 00:45:10 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
534. 00:45:13 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
535. 00:45:16 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
536. 00:45:19 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
537. 00:45:22 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
538. 00:45:25 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
539. 00:45:28 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
540. 00:45:31 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
541. 00:45:34 And then you should be able to do a review of that.
542. 00:45:37 He's making there.
543. 00:45:40 But the thing that I think about GTD that is, it gives me a little bit of a little bit of pause,
544. 00:45:47 is the emphasis on the next actions and the projects, the things that are staring you in the face.
545. 00:45:56 I think this is the thing that is appealing about GTD to almost everybody who comes across it,
546. 00:46:02 is you've got all this stuff and you just need a little bit of breathing room.
547. 00:46:08 So GTD gives you a structure to create that breathing room by giving you a system that deals with the next actions and deals with the projects.
548. 00:46:17 But the thing that's standing out to me from the Gracie's Garden story is like,
549. 00:46:23 do you really want to manage this business?
550. 00:46:26 Is that in alignment with the purpose, the values, the vision that you have for your life?
551. 00:46:34 If I got a call out of the blue, it's like, hey, you want to manage this business in some totally different market than you've ever been in?
552. 00:46:42 Probably not.
553. 00:46:44 And that's the thing that I think people miss when they first come to GTD, is yes GTD can help you sort out the best way to get all the things that are on your plate,
554. 00:46:55 done, but it doesn't help you answer the question about whether you should be doing those things in the first place.
555. 00:47:02 And again, corporate bias, if you have a bunch of things that have been given to you by a boss,
556. 00:47:08 you do not have the ability to say, no, I'm not going to do those things.
557. 00:47:11 I mean, yeah, I guess you could say I quit and go figure something else out,
558. 00:47:14 which ultimately I think is the identity crisis that a lot of people come to is,
559. 00:47:20 okay, so do I really want to be doing this for the rest of my life?
560. 00:47:24 And if not, what do I want to be doing instead?
561. 00:47:27 And I kind of feel like that question is worth answering sooner rather than later.
562. 00:47:34 And that's kind of not the way that he prescribes you do it.
563. 00:47:36 I think what you were trying to say early on, as we were getting started, GTD 2.0,
564. 00:47:42 it is kind of next level, kind of giving you grief over using a programmer's versioning.
565. 00:47:49 But the thing that I found helpful here, and I've kind of been jumping around it,
566. 00:47:58 is it's kind of two parts.
567. 00:48:00 And this is where my action items come in, in that I have not done a good job of capturing high-level ideas.
568. 00:48:09 Yes, I can capture someday maybe.
569. 00:48:11 It's like, what blog post should I write or what gift ideas do I have for my wife,
570. 00:48:16 places I want to travel to, books to read, movies to watch.
571. 00:48:18 Sure, that's great.
572. 00:48:20 But trying to capture, I am at my best win, fill in the blank.
573. 00:48:27 Yes.
574. 00:48:28 And try to do that for each of the areas of focus that you have.
575. 00:48:33 Those are not simple questions.
576. 00:48:35 Like, those are not ones that you're going to just sit down and, oh, yeah, this is easy.
577. 00:48:38 Do this.
578. 00:48:40 Maybe that's the case.
579. 00:48:41 Maybe it's something you've already thought through, but it's not one that you have written down.
580. 00:48:47 And I think that's where some of this comes in for me, in that I know what some of my goals are.
581. 00:48:54 Like the goals area, like I have some of those written out.
582. 00:48:57 Vision and purpose.
583. 00:48:59 We've bounced around the purpose concept a handful of times.
584. 00:49:03 We went through a book called Principles.
585. 00:49:05 Like those are, you know, very high-level thinking.
586. 00:49:10 And it's not simple to come up with the answers to those for yourself.
587. 00:49:14 Like, I want to try to figure those out.
588. 00:49:17 Like that horizon four and five.
589. 00:49:19 Like, I've written some things down in the past, but it's never been, it's never been formal enough.
590. 00:49:25 I feel to give me direction.
591. 00:49:28 Like, I have some, like, that's a great idea.
592. 00:49:31 And I'll write that down because I think that's probably what I should be doing.
593. 00:49:33 Like, well, is it what I want to be doing?
594. 00:49:36 Like, probably not in most cases.
595. 00:49:38 That's, that's the part of it that I struggle with.
596. 00:49:41 But I think some of that's going to take time because historically, whenever I capture things,
597. 00:49:48 I'm capturing, like, sent an email to David about, you know, new projector, whatever it is.
598. 00:49:56 New church database or whatever it is.
599. 00:49:59 Like those, those things are what I have a tendency to capture.
600. 00:50:03 This book really taught me and showed me the importance and the value of writing things down.
601. 00:50:09 Like, improve my friendship with, you know, name your good friend with Mike.
602. 00:50:14 Like, you know, if I want to improve my friendship with Mike, what does that mean?
603. 00:50:18 What, what do I actually have to do?
604. 00:50:19 Well, obviously it needs to be a project.
605. 00:50:21 Am I going to do it now?
606. 00:50:22 Am I going to do it later?
607. 00:50:23 I'm a project.
608. 00:50:24 Is that what you're saying?
609. 00:50:25 You're totally a project, Mike.
610. 00:50:26 You need a lot of work.
611. 00:50:28 That's, you know, that's the impersonal side of it, you know?
612. 00:50:33 Like that's, that's where this isn't really designed for others.
613. 00:50:38 To be going through your system.
614. 00:50:41 But if writing that on a list and keeping it in front of me is what actually gets me to,
615. 00:50:46 you know, build a better relationship with my brother and sisters, like sure, maybe that's what I need to do.
616. 00:50:52 But I haven't been good about doing that in the past.
617. 00:50:55 I don't know if I should be or not, but my gut tells me I probably should.
618. 00:51:00 So I'm trying to capture things like that more often and trying to work through the decision-making process
619. 00:51:07 I need to, to nail down what my next five-year vision needs to look like.
620. 00:51:11 What do I want to, what do I want to be doing in five years?
621. 00:51:14 Like that vision can be extremely helpful, but I have not been good about it.
622. 00:51:19 So this at least sparked that.
623. 00:51:22 A lot of things about the book I didn't like, but it at least got me to come to that realization.
624. 00:51:28 Now I, I agree.
625. 00:51:29 And like I said, I find myself capturing things in OmniFocus where I wouldn't have necessarily done that before.
626. 00:51:35 Literally just this week was having a meeting and had an idea for something, several things.
627. 00:51:40 You know, I find myself by keyboard memory, like doing the quick entry shortcut and putting it in OmniFocus.
628. 00:51:47 And oh, you know, last week I probably would have just kept that in the drafts note on the side of my screen
629. 00:51:52 that I usually have open when we're having a meeting.
630. 00:51:55 And I think that's a positive thing.
631. 00:51:58 But I also think that he undersells the value of the vision and the purpose.
632. 00:52:06 And take that with a grain of salt, because I have a whole course built on specifically finding your purpose.
633. 00:52:14 So I really believe in the power of this stuff.
634. 00:52:16 This is the thing that really jacks me up.
635. 00:52:18 And I think the connection here for me, which is why I have a little bit of an issue, which just capture everything that has your attention.
636. 00:52:25 Not everything that has your attention should be having your attention.
637. 00:52:29 And until you know what the vision and the purpose is, you really don't know what you can say no to.
638. 00:52:33 And I kind of think that there's probably a lot of stuff that if I just capture what had my attention, that I would look back later.
639. 00:52:41 And this is part of the system.
640. 00:52:43 So he would rebut this and say, well, yeah, that's kind of the point.
641. 00:52:46 Then you can decide what you want to do with stuff when you review it.
642. 00:52:49 But I kind of think if you know the vision and the purpose, you kind of know, like, oh, that's out of bounds.
643. 00:52:54 I'm not even going to go there.
644. 00:52:56 And some of the examples that he shared in here to communicate the value of the system are just ridiculous.
645. 00:53:03 Like chapter nine, getting control, engaging, he has a story about how when you're walking down a dark alley at night, you don't want to be distracted by unprocessed emails.
646. 00:53:13 And I'm like, who is distracted by unprocessed emails when they're walking through a dark alley in the middle of the night?
647. 00:53:19 I guarantee you, I'm not worried about that stuff.
648. 00:53:23 And I get his point, like you want to be able to pay full attention to what you should be paying attention to in the moment.
649. 00:53:28 But some of those examples, I'm like, that just undermines your credibility in that particular case.
650. 00:53:34 Sure.
651. 00:53:35 Maybe that's just me.
652. 00:53:36 Maybe it's just the way I'm wired.
653. 00:53:38 But I'm looking for like, is there someone about to jump out at me over there?
654. 00:53:42 That's where my mind is.
655. 00:53:44 It's not worried about email.
656. 00:53:45 Am I about to die?
657. 00:53:48 Exactly.
658. 00:53:49 It takes precedence over emails about carpet color.
659. 00:53:53 There's one thing you were talking about, like, should this thing have your attention to begin with?
660. 00:53:59 Should you be capturing it?
661. 00:54:00 It's like, I can tell you, I have done this in the last two weeks, having gone through some of this reading.
662. 00:54:08 I found myself writing things down that I knew I was going to say no to.
663. 00:54:14 And a good example of this is a gentleman from our church came up to me and had a business idea.
664. 00:54:22 I'm not going to share what it is because it's not my place to share it.
665. 00:54:25 But he had a business idea, but it would require someone with a lot of technical experience in web development to pull it off.
666. 00:54:33 And he wanted me to join him in this venture.
667. 00:54:37 It's one of these, he'll be the sales guy and do the marketing side of it and I would be the brunt and build some stuff.
668. 00:54:45 And I knew as soon as he launched into his sales pitch that my answer was no.
669. 00:54:52 But knowing this gentleman, I knew that saying no at that time wouldn't be a satisfactory answer.
670. 00:54:59 He would come back later.
671. 00:55:01 So I wrote it down and he didn't see me write it down.
672. 00:55:06 So it wasn't for his sake.
673. 00:55:07 But I wrote it down just to, you know, I need to think through this in a way because I'm going to have to give an answer to it.
674. 00:55:14 And I processed it like I would any other task.
675. 00:55:19 But the thing that it did, Mike, is that by having it written down and processing something that I knew I shouldn't be, it shouldn't have my attention.
676. 00:55:29 But writing it down got it off my mind.
677. 00:55:32 And then whenever I processed it later, when I clarified what to do about it, it meant that I had thought through it enough that I didn't, it never came back up in my mind at all.
678. 00:55:45 Now, me as the idea person, the visionary, crazy maker here, I love ideas like that.
679. 00:55:51 I can sit down and just ruminate on it and try to figure out how to say yes to it.
680. 00:55:56 Like that is what I do. And that was not what I needed to do here.
681. 00:56:01 But just having it work through that system meant that I never really did that.
682. 00:56:05 I never found myself sitting down trying to find a way to say yes to it because I had processed it correctly and knew what the answer needed to be because I had done that.
683. 00:56:16 Do you follow what I'm saying?
684. 00:56:18 I do.
685. 00:56:19 It has a lot to do with just getting it off my mind when if I didn't process it, it would have stayed on my mind.
686. 00:56:25 Yeah, and that one specifically, somebody coming and talking to you about something that you really can't control what has your attention at that moment and go ahead and capture that thing.
687. 00:56:37 That's kind of not the point I was trying to make.
688. 00:56:41 But I totally understand that specific use case and how GTD could be helpful.
689. 00:56:46 But the thing that I was kind of talking about just to give you a little bit more context maybe is limiting the inputs because not everything that has your attention should have your attention.
690. 00:56:59 Your attention is a precious commodity.
691. 00:57:03 So pay attention to what you give your attention to.
692. 00:57:07 As an example, in chapter 11, he talks about the read review example.
693. 00:57:13 And I know from working with people that this always messes them up because they've got too many things that they want to read.
694. 00:57:20 And so they just collect them to a read it later service or they add another book to the list of books that they want to get through and they never get to everything.
695. 00:57:28 And they feel bad about all that stuff that's supposed to be in there.
696. 00:57:31 And David Allen basically recommends that you go through that stuff and you give them different priorities, which right away that word priorities.
697. 00:57:39 That's a red flag to me because I remember I think it was Greg McKeown talking about how priority up until the 19th century was singular.
698. 00:57:47 The primary or the thing that you should be paying attention to is that you can't have multiple levels of priority.
699. 00:57:53 You've got a priority.
700. 00:57:54 And so that to me is just like, well, you could do that.
701. 00:57:58 You could spend a lot of time classifying all that stuff and maybe that helps.
702. 00:58:01 But that seems like a lot of maintenance and doesn't solve the real issue of there's too much stuff coming in.
703. 00:58:07 So that's why when he talks about dealing with the tactical stuff that's right before you, I tend to look at let's ask how we got here.
704. 00:58:17 What are the things that are contributing to this to the fact that I have too many tasks to handle?
705. 00:58:24 That's just where my brain goes.
706. 00:58:26 And so dealing with the tactical stuff before thinking big picture that's, you know, I don't really agree with that because it eliminates the important versus urgent part of it until later.
707. 00:58:41 And the thing that really irks me about this is what if there is no later.
708. 00:58:49 If you wait until things are fine, things may never be fine.
709. 00:58:53 So maybe what we should do is figure out how to decrease the number of firehoses that are filling our tank.
710. 00:59:03 And this is again, in front of mind, because Isaac Smith just posted something this week on the Focus Course blog.
711. 00:59:11 He's taking the digital declutter idea from KELNU port's digital minimalism and he's starting a 30 day challenge.
712. 00:59:18 I just posted the link in the live chat.
713. 00:59:21 And I think this is a really powerful idea that everybody should take not just to the feeds that you subscribe to or the podcast that you listen to or the books that you want to read,
714. 00:59:31 but what are the voices that you're allowing to speak into your life and what impact are they having on you?
715. 00:59:36 And if it's not positive, then don't just try to deal with the fallout from those things, get rid of those things.
716. 00:59:42 And again, corporate, maybe you can't, right?
717. 00:59:44 So I get where he's coming from, what he's saying is not wrong.
718. 00:59:49 He could probably destroy me in a debate on this stuff, but this is my reaction as I read this.
719. 00:59:55 Sure.
720. 00:59:56 Yeah, I think there is the point that you mentioned.
721. 01:00:01 Yes, we have a lot of firehoses of information in today's world.
722. 01:00:05 I had this conversation with somebody here about a week ago and that books today are written differently than they used to be.
723. 01:00:12 Like a take, for example, a Dickens book, Charles Dickens book.
724. 01:00:16 I'm reading a Tale of Two Cities at night right now.
725. 01:00:18 And that book is one that you could read five or six times because there is so much density in his wording.
726. 01:00:27 And yet it's a long book that you're never going to catch everything that's in it.
727. 01:00:33 A lot of today's books are like, they're almost calling cards of sorts to try to get you to subscribe to an account.
728. 01:00:41 Almost.
729. 01:00:42 Like that seems to be the way they go.
730. 01:00:45 So they're very low level writers.
731. 01:00:47 I don't want to say low level writer.
732. 01:00:49 You're writing at a lower level, like a third grade reading level.
733. 01:00:52 If you write at that level, it's easy to skim and it's easy to feel like you've gotten everything out of the book.
734. 01:01:01 So there's not a need to read even more to read it again.
735. 01:01:06 A lot of our society is very similar in that, yes, the information that's coming at us doesn't require a lot of deep thought.
736. 01:01:14 But the volume of it is ridiculously high.
737. 01:01:17 Yeah.
738. 01:01:18 You know, we used to have, you'd get a Dickens book and you would have that book and you may only have two or three in the house.
739. 01:01:25 I've got stacks of books sitting around me right now.
740. 01:01:29 It's just a very different world today.
741. 01:01:32 So because of that, we have these fire hoses of information coming at us, which means, yeah, you got to limit the number of inputs that you've got coming at you.
742. 01:01:41 But there's also, like, if you read the number of books that we read, you come up with ideas left and right.
743. 01:01:47 At least I do, you know, crazy maker here.
744. 01:01:49 And, you know, the more of those I come up with, the more of them I need to process.
745. 01:01:55 But I, you know, this is where freedom comes in, limiting the number of times when that can happen or the types of mediums that I'm consuming information through.
746. 01:02:08 Like that I feel like can help.
747. 01:02:10 Is that kind of what you're getting at?
748. 01:02:12 Am I following you?
749. 01:02:13 Yeah, totally.
750. 01:02:14 Okay.
751. 01:02:15 I think that's, that's completely fair and it's kind of missing from this book.
752. 01:02:20 Again, probably because of the corporate background corporate, I understand is a totally different animal where you don't get the freedom to choose your inputs.
753. 01:02:32 You know, I've worked with people who were in a corporate environment and they would completely agree with some of the advice that I was giving them, but they would always push back and that sounds great.
754. 01:02:44 Wish I could, but I can't.
755. 01:02:46 Right.
756. 01:02:47 Right.
757. 01:02:48 I recognize that I don't have that perspective.
758. 01:02:51 And so I am limited in my ability to speak to that scenario and what he's saying for that scenario is probably a hundred percent correct.
759. 01:03:01 Sure.
760. 01:03:02 You just got to deal with the stuff as it happens and having the system in place to do that most efficiently.
761. 01:03:09 That's the thing that's going to provide the most relief, satisfaction, happiness, whatever.
762. 01:03:14 The stage that I am in my life though, I just don't want to waste my time on junk.
763. 01:03:20 I shouldn't be thinking about it.
764. 01:03:22 That's true.
765. 01:03:23 Ain't nobody got time for that.
766. 01:03:24 Sure.
767. 01:03:25 Keep in mind this book was written in 2008.
768. 01:03:26 Yeah, true.
769. 01:03:27 This book is 12 years old now.
770. 01:03:30 So the volume that we deal with today is very different than it was when he wrote this.
771. 01:03:37 And I think that I don't think he would change his tune because just having listened to some of his podcasts in recent years, he has a tendency to just say that, you know, we just have more information, more inboxes than we used to.
772. 01:03:55 So there's more time spent processing.
773. 01:03:57 And if you don't like the amount of time it takes to process at all, you got to cut back on your inboxes and how much goes into them.
774. 01:04:04 Like I've heard him say that before.
775. 01:04:06 So I can't say that that comes through in this book, but having listened to him in recent years, I think that's still where he, like, I think he would agree with that.
776. 01:04:17 But you're not going to catch it out of reading, make it at all work.
777. 01:04:20 Right.
778. 01:04:21 Right.
779. 01:04:22 All right.
780. 01:04:23 You ready to do action items, Mike?
781. 01:04:25 One more bone to pick.
782. 01:04:26 Ooh.
783. 01:04:27 Okay.
784. 01:04:28 Hit me.
785. 01:04:28 So he talks about in chapter 14, getting perspective at the 20,000 feet view.
786. 01:04:33 Actually, real quickly, we should probably go through one thing I found very helpful in here was the questions that he gave you at the different levels.
787. 01:04:41 Sure.
788. 01:04:42 So next actions, he said, the big question is, what do I need to do?
789. 01:04:46 Usually there's about 100 things on the next actions list, according to him.
790. 01:04:50 Getting perspective at 10,000 feet, the projects, big question, what do I need to complete?
791. 01:04:54 Usually there's between 30 and 100 projects, which each project has one action item, but whatever.
792. 01:05:02 Chapter 14, getting perspective at 20,000 feet.
793. 01:05:05 Big question.
794. 01:05:06 What do I need to maintain?
795. 01:05:07 Usually 10 to 15.
796. 01:05:09 Chapter 15, getting perspective at 30,000 feet goals and objectives.
797. 01:05:12 Big question.
798. 01:05:13 What do I want to achieve?
799. 01:05:14 40,000 feet.
800. 01:05:15 Big question is, what would long term success look, sound, and feel like?
801. 01:05:20 And 50,000 feet purpose and principles.
802. 01:05:23 Big question is, why am I here?
803. 01:05:25 Specifically though, my issue is with the 20,000 foot level, the areas of focus and responsibility.
804. 01:05:33 He says, he's got a couple of different things in each one of these chapters about when to review these.
805. 01:05:40 And when to review the areas of focus and responsibility, he says to do it regularly, but every month or so.
806. 01:05:47 And then he also says, whenever you feel that areas are out of balance.
807. 01:05:51 So my question to you, Joe, is what is balance?
808. 01:05:55 I like to think of it as tension.
809. 01:05:57 Right.
810. 01:06:00 But this is the art of stress-free productivity.
811. 01:06:03 So tension shouldn't be there, correct?
812. 01:06:06 I'm being a little snarky, but you kind of get what I'm drilling at here is, balance is this ideal state that we chase.
813. 01:06:16 That never is going to exist.
814. 01:06:19 So by saying you should evaluate these areas when you're out of balance, you're out of balance the entire time.
815. 01:06:27 You're just out of balance in a particular way that you choose acceptable.
816. 01:06:32 And that was a big thing I got from going through the 12-week year.
817. 01:06:36 And I really liked that idea of intentional imbalance.
818. 01:06:39 I think that that really clicked with me.
819. 01:06:41 And now every time that I hear this word balance, work-life balance, all that junk, it's like fingernails on the chalkboard to me.
820. 01:06:50 Sure.
821. 01:06:51 Because I'm like, what exactly are we chasing here?
822. 01:06:53 Just by using that word, I feel like we're painting this picture of a rosy future that people can never really attain.
823. 01:07:00 And if you were to sit down with David Allen and have coffee, he would probably define balance a little bit differently.
824. 01:07:06 And he would probably agree with that.
825. 01:07:08 Like you're not going to be focusing on everything at once.
826. 01:07:11 You're going to pick the thing at the right moment to do the right thing.
827. 01:07:15 And that part I agree with.
828. 01:07:16 But just the way that this is worded, I think this kind of encourages people to pursue an ideal that doesn't really exist.
829. 01:07:23 Keep in mind it was written in 2008.
830. 01:07:25 The whole life balance thing was everybody loved that concept.
831. 01:07:30 That was the hot topic, yeah, for sure.
832. 01:07:32 So he's in that culture at that time.
833. 01:07:39 That was the buzzword and everybody loved that concept.
834. 01:07:43 So you have to kind of realize that it didn't age well.
835. 01:07:48 Yep.
836. 01:07:49 It didn't coincide very cleanly.
837. 01:07:53 But I get what you're saying.
838. 01:07:54 Yes, it's not necessarily a balance.
839. 01:08:04 But I also know that people in the corporate world definitely think about it that way.
840. 01:08:12 Because you're like leading two different lives.
841. 01:08:16 At least in my case, that's the way it always felt was that you would go to work and you had to manage everything at work.
842. 01:08:18 But then you would try to come home and the goal is to do your best to leave work at work and keep those two in check with each other.
843. 01:08:27 That sounds miserable.
844. 01:08:28 Why would anybody do that?
845. 01:08:30 Welcome to the norm.
846. 01:08:32 That is the way it works though.
847. 01:08:35 There's not really a way around that unless you're up high enough to be able to have the power to change that.
848. 01:08:43 But that's why they have a tendency to refer to it as balance.
849. 01:08:48 I even refer to it as balance whenever I work there or have done contracts there as recently as a year ago.
850. 01:08:54 I did that.
851. 01:08:55 So I can't fault the terminology or the mentality because if you're working with executives, boards, corporate people, that's going to be the mentality.
852. 01:09:06 But in our worlds, the way that you and I have the opportunity to live our lives, it just doesn't make sense.
853. 01:09:15 Because it's life.
854. 01:09:17 Let's just do life.
855. 01:09:19 That's the way we tend to come at it.
856. 01:09:21 So I get it, but it doesn't translate I think to you and I.
857. 01:09:25 And that's probably getting at the root of my issue with this book is that I am just completely repulsed by everything corporate.
858. 01:09:33 And it's probably less to do with the actual system and the principles that he outlines than just the language and the tone and the environments that he's describing.
859. 01:09:45 I want nothing to do with.
860. 01:09:47 Sure.
861. 01:09:48 Sure.
862. 01:09:49 One other thing I did think was kind of helpful here was the last chapter.
863. 01:09:55 It's the last chapter I took notes on.
864. 01:09:57 Chapter 19 making it all work in the real world.
865. 01:10:03 He talks about building your own system.
866. 01:10:05 And there's some great tips in here.
867. 01:10:06 Make sure you've got capture, good capture tools, set up your calendar, set up your action list manager.
868. 01:10:10 He talks about structuring effective workstations.
869. 01:10:14 And he mentions three specific scenarios, personal work and transit.
870. 01:10:19 Personal actually talks about having a personal home office, which this I could very easily translate to.
871. 01:10:26 My situation because I've got my home office work, I would consider the co-working space when I get out of the office and I want to work.
872. 01:10:34 And transit is whenever I end up flying or going anywhere and I don't want to bring all my stuff with me.
873. 01:10:41 And I realized that I kind of have set up these different workstations because I do have my home office where I've got my Thunderbolt 3 Doc.
874. 01:10:48 I plug my MacBook into and all my recording gears here.
875. 01:10:51 That's my my home office set up.
876. 01:10:53 My work set up.
877. 01:10:55 I've got my still running everything off of my MacBook Pro.
878. 01:10:58 So that's what I'll take and go to the co-working space or coffee shop or whatever.
879. 01:11:02 And then transit.
880. 01:11:03 That's the role of the iPad in my opinion.
881. 01:11:06 I find that I do use my iPad a lot for a couple different things.
882. 01:11:11 One would be writing annulises.
883. 01:11:13 Another one would be mind mapping in my node.
884. 01:11:17 And there's other things that the iPad can do obviously.
885. 01:11:20 But that is two of the primary uses of it for me also editing the podcast in Fairwright.
886. 01:11:29 But I like the definition of those different work spaces and identifying the tools that you're going to use to get work done in those different scenarios.
887. 01:11:40 I feel like that's worth considering for a lot of people.
888. 01:11:45 It just happened that I already had the tools in place to do it.
889. 01:11:49 I was kind of working this already.
890. 01:11:50 But I can see value in thinking that through.
891. 01:11:53 Right.
892. 01:11:54 No, that makes sense.
893. 01:11:55 Yeah, I've got my office at the church.
894. 01:11:57 I've got an office at home.
895. 01:11:59 And then I treat my backpack as kind of the transport office of sorts.
896. 01:12:04 Like it's just got everything in it.
897. 01:12:06 So yeah, I get it.
898. 01:12:08 I could see that.
899. 01:12:09 Did you have any action items from this book at all?
900. 01:12:11 I do. I didn't put them in the document because they're basic GTD stuff.
901. 01:12:16 So number one, I recognize I need to do a mind sweep.
902. 01:12:20 It is overdue.
903. 01:12:22 And the other thing that I need to do is I need to figure out when and where in the process that I am going to do my regular weekly reviews.
904. 01:12:32 That's something that has not been very consistent for me.
905. 01:12:36 Sure.
906. 01:12:37 Good call.
907. 01:12:38 Do them.
908. 01:12:39 Do them good.
909. 01:12:40 I have three.
910. 01:12:42 One is to continue.
911. 01:12:44 Here's our hard.
912. 01:12:45 I know they're hard ones.
913. 01:12:47 Capture high level ideas, which I've kind of talked about a little bit here and there, but you know, capturing these mostly relational type scenarios.
914. 01:12:58 And then determine my vision and determine purpose and principles.
915. 01:13:01 I don't think this is going to be done quickly.
916. 01:13:03 And it's probably not one that is going to be easy to keep me accountable to because it's going to require the first of those three and capturing high level ideas.
917. 01:13:12 And it's going to take some time, I think, to get it fleshed out correctly.
918. 01:13:18 But I'll at least endeavor to take it on.
919. 01:13:22 So that's what I got.
920. 01:13:24 Alright.
921. 01:13:25 Style and rating.
922. 01:13:33 This one's tough, I find, because it did spark a lot of, I think, very beneficial pieces.
923. 01:13:36 But I'm not sure I could recommend it to anybody.
924. 01:13:38 I think this is a case where if you are someone like Mike and I who we read a lot of books.
925. 01:13:48 So if you read a book every week or at least a book every month and the value in selecting your next book really isn't that high because you know you're going to go through it quickly.
926. 01:13:59 Like that, if you're in that scenario, yeah, sure, pick it up, read it, you know, in a week or so and get the motivational value out of it and move on.
927. 01:14:10 If you're somebody who reads, you know, three or four books a year, skip it.
928. 01:14:15 You know, if you've read GTD, it's probably not worth it.
929. 01:14:17 Listen to this episode and call it good.
930. 01:14:19 It's kind of my thought there, which is why it's kind of hard to rate this because I think that if you're someone who goes through a lot of these and you want the motivational value, I feel like it would be a better book to go through.
931. 01:14:32 But if you're just going through, I don't want to say just, but if you are only able to go through a handful of books in a year, probably not going to be up there.
932. 01:14:43 Which means I have a tendency to want to put it middle of the road. So I think I'll put it at 3.5.
933. 01:14:47 You know, there's a lot of repetition and a lot of unnecessary here.
934. 01:14:55 But personally, I found a lot of motivational value in it.
935. 01:14:58 So I would want to rate it higher just personally for the spark to get to work.
936. 01:15:06 But I don't think the literary quality of this warrants that.
937. 01:15:12 So sure.
938. 01:15:14 I'll go 3.5.
939. 01:15:15 Where do you want to go, Mike?
940. 01:15:17 Well, I was ready to hate this book from the beginning.
941. 01:15:24 And for a long time, felt like that was justified.
942. 01:15:31 And then, like I said, I found myself changing my default behavior and starting to capture things because I recognized as I was going through this, that there is a kernel of truth here.
943. 01:15:41 What he's saying is right.
944. 01:15:43 And I haven't been doing it.
945. 01:15:45 So I have to adjust my thought process at that point and say, "What's wrong with my approach?
946. 01:15:55 Why am I feeling so strongly about what I am reading and make sure that I'm able to understand what he's really saying and not miss the value of what's here?"
947. 01:16:09 So that being said, I think there is value in the system or the systematic approach because it's not a system, but it is.
948. 01:16:18 I think that this is something that is probably worthwhile read if you have not read "Getting Things Done."
949. 01:16:26 If you have read "Getting Things Done," you can skip it.
950. 01:16:29 Or this is probably the type of book that I would recommend for something like Blinkist because you can get the gist of it in the 15 minutes synopsis.
951. 01:16:42 And that probably is the thing that gives you the most value from it, is just understanding how the pieces fit together and then you're spending some time figuring out how to make it work for yourself.
952. 01:16:52 I already mentioned I really don't like the style. I really am repulsed by everything corporate in here, but that's just my preference and my personal situation.
953. 01:17:04 So I can't hold that against them at all.
954. 01:17:07 I think I'm going to join you at the 3.5 because you really can't argue with the results.
955. 01:17:14 Like I said, I was in the middle of hating this and then found it impacting how I do things day to day.
956. 01:17:20 I really want to hate this, but it works.
957. 01:17:23 Yep, yep, exactly.
958. 01:17:26 But I do think that for me, again, because I read GTD, I don't like there was anything super transformational in here.
959. 01:17:34 There wasn't anything that was like, "Ah, now I get this."
960. 01:17:38 I don't think there was really...it's almost 300 pages.
961. 01:17:44 If you're going to spend the time to invest in reading 300 pages, I can find you much better books that I think will be more impactful.
962. 01:17:52 Sure.
963. 01:17:53 But, you know, it did have an impact.
964. 01:17:57 So I'll join you at the 3.5.
965. 01:18:00 Alright, sounds good.
966. 01:18:02 So, I need to go all the way back to where we started this episode because we were talking about your kibbutts.
967. 01:18:10 And you were saying we had to wait till later to figure out how you're planning, like what you're planning to do for that kibbutts.
968. 01:18:21 Can you relieve me of my curiosity?
969. 01:18:25 Yes, well, I still don't know what I'm planning to do for my kibbutts, which is why I am changing my upcoming book.
970. 01:18:35 I really want to go through it doesn't have to be crazy at work. We're going to come back to that one for sure.
971. 01:18:40 But when I looked at the dates coming up and the fact that I have a kibbutts a couple days after the next recording of bookworm,
972. 01:18:52 I felt like I had no choice but to select the art of gathering by Priya Parker.
973. 01:19:01 I had this recommended to me, I know you've read it as a gapbook.
974. 01:19:06 And I told somebody that I was going to be doing these kibbutts.
975. 01:19:11 These kibbutts is and they said, "You need to read this book."
976. 01:19:14 And I bought it, my wife started it, my intention was it was going to be a gapbook, and then she's like, "This is amazing."
977. 01:19:21 So I think that will be a really interesting conversation and a deviation from maybe the type of thing that we typically do here on bookworm.
978. 01:19:31 Sure.
979. 01:19:32 Not completely off topic necessarily, but I think it'll be an interesting discussion.
980. 01:19:37 Yeah, that's a good one. I've read that one. I actually did a gapbook episode on that one.
981. 01:19:43 So pro members, members of the bookworm club, you can go listen to that one right now.
982. 01:19:49 That's a good book. That one has informed my way of processing and planning for our small group events,
983. 01:19:58 which sound very similar to what you're planning with the kibbutts.
984. 01:20:02 So this will be a good one. This will be a fun way to go through a bookworm. I'm excited about that one.
985. 01:20:08 Good call, Mike.
986. 01:20:09 All right. I'm glad you like it.
987. 01:20:11 Yeah, but following that, after the art of gathering, I would like to go through thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman.
988. 01:20:21 I've wanted to go through this for a long time as well.
989. 01:20:24 Apparently this is a season of Joe going through books he's wanted to go through a long time.
990. 01:20:29 Who knew?
991. 01:20:30 So yes, I think that'll be a good one. I think it'll be a fun one to go through.
992. 01:20:33 It's long though.
993. 01:20:34 I am forewarned.
994. 01:20:35 Yes, yes, yes. Do you have a gapbook?
995. 01:20:37 I do. I don't know who the author is. It's sitting on my coffee table over there. I can't see it.
996. 01:20:42 It's a white book that says Making Websites Win.
997. 01:20:46 Oh, I heard about this.
998. 01:20:48 Yeah, I think it's a book I'm about 60 pages in, so I don't know exactly.
999. 01:20:52 But the people who wrote it, they kind of have a web business based on conversion rate optimization,
1000. 01:21:01 which I'm kind of apprehensive approaching that stuff.
1001. 01:21:06 But everything that they have taught so far in terms of just designing a good website that answers the questions that people have and gives them what they come to your site for makes a lot of sense.
1002. 01:21:18 And as I'm reading this book, I'm realizing how many websites don't do this, right?
1003. 01:21:24 Sure.
1004. 01:21:25 So I want to go through this with the intention of thinking about how I can use this to improve the delivery of the things that people would come to my websites for.
1005. 01:21:37 Sure.
1006. 01:21:38 Yeah, I want to go through this one as well.
1007. 01:21:40 Dr. Carl Blanks and Ben Jessen are the authors of that one.
1008. 01:21:45 Founders of, what is it? Conversion rate experts.
1009. 01:21:49 Yep.
1010. 01:21:50 So, yeah, no, that should be a good one.
1011. 01:21:52 That'll be a good one to go through.
1012. 01:21:53 I want to go through that one as well.
1013. 01:21:55 Such a long list.
1014. 01:21:57 Fun times.
1015. 01:21:59 Actually, this might be a bookworm first.
1016. 01:22:02 I have two gapbooks.
1017. 01:22:03 I noticed that this has got to be a bookworm first.
1018. 01:22:06 So, I finished reading, making it all work, and had a book given to me for Christmas, Wired for Healing by Annie Hopper, that I really, really wanted to do it.
1019. 01:22:22 I really wanted to read, and I finished making it all work a little bit earlier than I originally planned.
1020. 01:22:28 So I picked this one up and really, really liked it, read it very quickly.
1021. 01:22:33 Wired for Healing is about how your brain thought patterns can cause or help heal a lot of mysterious illnesses, some of which I have personally.
1022. 01:22:48 So, like, trying to work through that. Fascinating stuff.
1023. 01:22:53 So, I finished that one very quickly and thought, "Huh, well, I've got about five or six days before I need to start my next bookworm book.
1024. 01:23:03 What am I going to read?" And I was looking through the books that I have here that I have not started and realized, "Oh, I have tribes by Seth Godin. I should read that one too."
1025. 01:23:11 So, I'm about three-fourths done with that one too.
1026. 01:23:14 So, I have two gapbooks.
1027. 01:23:16 This time, I'll finish up tribes and then jump into the next bookworm book.
1028. 01:23:21 But I am planning to do some gapbook episodes for both of those.
1029. 01:23:26 Not sure when that'll get done and get out, but that'll be fun.
1030. 01:23:30 So, it'll be a little perk for club members coming soon.
1031. 01:23:33 Nice.
1032. 01:23:34 Which, if you haven't done, go to bookworm.fm/membership
1033. 01:23:40 and that will get you to the page where you can sign up to become a member. There's all kinds of perks.
1034. 01:23:47 One of the first things I did on my new MacBook Pro mic was get the bookworm wallpaper from the club.
1035. 01:23:53 Beautiful.
1036. 01:23:54 But up there, had to. Just had to do that.
1037. 01:23:57 So, that's a perk for club members. You get to listen to the shows live.
1038. 01:24:02 All of mics, mine node files are made available.
1039. 01:24:06 These gapbook episodes that I'm doing are available to members as well.
1040. 01:24:11 So, it's a simple $5 a month membership. If you're interested in any of that,
1041. 01:24:16 bookworm.fm/membership will get you there. And we'd love to see you in the club.
1042. 01:24:21 Awesome. So, if you are reading along with us, go ahead and pick up the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker.
1043. 01:24:28 And we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.