Author’s Corner: Nir Eyal

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1. 00:00:00 Hello fellow bookworms, welcome to a special episode of Bookworm. I'm Joe Buellig and it's my pleasure to introduce you to a new segment Mike and I are trying called the author's corner.
2. 00:00:11 This came about from a conversation that I've had with a couple authors recently and in this particular case,
3. 00:00:18 I reached out to the author of one of our more recent books, Near I All, about, you know, thinking him for writing the book "Indistractable".
4. 00:00:27 I reached out to him on Instagram and he responded and said, "Hey, you want to do a Q&A?" and we thought, "Yes, in fact we do."
5. 00:00:35 So we set up this time and we had a wide ranging discussion with Near everything from kabuts to the books he recommends,
6. 00:00:44 the tools he used and how to develop a gathering of friends and why that's important.
7. 00:00:49 We dive into a lot of different pieces of "Indistractable" and reiterate on some of those tips, but from the mouth of Near I All himself.
8. 00:00:58 So I hope you enjoy this particular episode. Hopefully this is something we can do more in the future,
9. 00:01:03 but enjoy this conversation with Near I All on a discussion about his book writing process and his more recent book "Indistractable".
10. 00:01:11 So maybe we should start there. How did you actually go through what was your day-to-day process for getting this out into the world?
11. 00:01:19 How did you actually write the content that came into "Indistractable"?
12. 00:01:24 Yeah, so the medium I used, I've blogged out the book. That's kind of my methodology that I write about what I'm kind of wrestling with on my blog.
13. 00:01:35 And then if I do that for enough time, eventually it turns into a book, so that's what I've done with both my books.
14. 00:01:42 And it's really fantastic, I think in another way that many people don't realize, you know, many people keep their ideas inside.
15. 00:01:48 They say, "I don't want to share them with anybody because they're so good. What if someone steals my idea?"
16. 00:01:52 That's ridiculous. There's nothing new under the sun. It gets your ideas out there because the ancillary benefit to that is when you publish number one,
17. 00:02:01 you build an audience, which is very important for any future audience. For a future author, that's my number one piece of advice,
18. 00:02:06 is start collecting emails from people who want to read your stuff. But then also, you get criticism. You get feedback.
19. 00:02:13 And so when you struggle with an idea and you put it out there and someone thinks it's not a very good idea or it's not fully baked,
20. 00:02:20 then they'll say, "Yeah, but you didn't consider this piece of research or you're wrong on that point or here's what you can be improved."
21. 00:02:25 And let me tell you, that really did make the book so much better. So, you know, I wrote "Indistractable" because I was distracted.
22. 00:02:34 It was something I wrote for me and that's really why it took me five years to write the damn thing because for the first three years,
23. 00:02:41 I was kind of flailing. You know, I'd written my first book and when I wrote my first book, I was a lot less busy.
24. 00:02:47 It was kind of, you know, I also blogged that book over several years and then ended up teaching a class on it at Stanford and then it actually was published as a book.
25. 00:02:56 But at the time when I first published my first book, I wasn't getting nearly as many emails and requests and all good things, right?
26. 00:03:04 They're great problems to have, but they're problems nonetheless because the one thing that had made me successful, the writing, I wasn't doing because I was constantly distracted
27. 00:03:13 with this opportunity and this email and this thing that needs to be handled. And so that's really why I wrote "Indistractable."
28. 00:03:20 And along that time in the past five years, this has become something that you don't have to be an author to feel this problem.
29. 00:03:27 Everybody today feels like they're distracted and so that's why I figured, you know, if I'm struggling with it and I understand the deeper psychology of why we get distracted,
30. 00:03:36 then there's a good chance that other people might have a similar problem as well.
31. 00:03:40 Love it. Now you mentioned that it started off as a blog and you were trying to figure out and wrestle with some problems that you were dealing with.
32. 00:03:49 And you were getting feedback and you were getting people who were giving you criticism and saying, "Hey, did you ever consider this piece of research or whatever?"
33. 00:03:56 My experience, most of the internet is not going to frame it so nicely.
34. 00:04:01 So did you have some sort of process for filtering out the feedback and the criticism that you should be listening to versus the stuff that really was just people being negative?
35. 00:04:14 So I have one rule that I always stick to which is you don't deserve a response unless you use your real name.
36. 00:04:20 I like it.
37. 00:04:21 So on Eddie Sude Anonymous, I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, Sude Anonymous, you'll correct me on that one.
38. 00:04:28 Any platform where you're allowed to use a pseudonym, if you do choose to do that, then I don't respond to you generally.
39. 00:04:37 Unless you leave something nice, then I'll say thank you very much.
40. 00:04:40 But if it's criticism and you're not willing to stand by it with your identity, then it doesn't deserve a response.
41. 00:04:47 And you know what? That's pretty much 99% of trolls don't use their identity.
42. 00:04:53 And so they don't deserve a response. Now, some exceptions that I will make to that is if somebody comes to my website and I have comments section in my article, and if you've taken the time to actually come to my website versus Twitter or Facebook where it's really easy to say something snarky.
43. 00:05:09 And to put this in perspective, I almost never get snarky comments. It's pretty darn rare.
44. 00:05:15 And if I do, it's always somebody who hasn't actually read the article.
45. 00:05:19 But if you come to my website and you have a thoughtful comment, I love the ones that disagree with me. That's the best thing in the world for a scientist to have critique of their work.
46. 00:05:29 That's how we discover the truth.
47. 00:05:31 Yeah, for sure. I know there's a number of cases.
48. 00:05:34 So I work as an IT director at our church near.
49. 00:05:38 And one of the things our lead pastor refers to is it's pretty common for him to get letters of feedback on something that someone has in mind.
50. 00:05:48 Someone has an exception with something he said from the pulpit or he has criticisms of some sort that come in.
51. 00:05:56 His first step is to look at the bottom of those notes and see if there's a name on it.
52. 00:06:02 And if there's a name on it, he will then go back and read that whole note.
53. 00:06:06 And if there's not, it goes straight to the trash and he won't even read the thing to see what the feedback was.
54. 00:06:12 Yeah, I like that.
55. 00:06:14 Yeah, that's me too that.
56. 00:06:16 I want to ask you specifically here about something in the book itself, which is this idea of the kibbutts.
57. 00:06:22 And I don't know that I'm saying that correct, but I love this idea.
58. 00:06:27 And you talk a little bit about it in the book, but I'm curious if you wouldn't mind just kind of walking through that for the listeners.
59. 00:06:35 And then maybe, you know, has your kibbutts format changed at all over the time that you've been doing it?
60. 00:06:41 And maybe have you learned anything since you about the process, since you put it in the book?
61. 00:06:46 Sure, yeah.
62. 00:06:47 So the idea behind the kibbutts is to have a regularly scheduled time for interacting with people you love in your life.
63. 00:06:54 And this comes from this idea of making an implementation intention, which is just a fancy way of saying,
64. 00:07:01 planning what you're going to do and when you're going to do it.
65. 00:07:04 And I talk about in-indestractable how we have these three life domains.
66. 00:07:07 We have you at the center, you have your relationships, and then the next concentric circle is your work.
67. 00:07:14 And what we find in terms of time studies is that the vast majority of people don't plan their day.
68. 00:07:20 Those who do will sometimes plan their work day, you know, meeting here and appointment there.
69. 00:07:25 But the vast majority of people don't even do that.
70. 00:07:27 And of course, the rule here is, and this is a really important part of becoming indestractable.
71. 00:07:33 It's step number two of four, which is that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.
72. 00:07:41 You can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.
73. 00:07:44 Because if you've got lots of white space in your day, everything has a distraction.
74. 00:07:48 We have no right to say, "Oh, I got distracted."
75. 00:07:50 Because what did you get distracted from exactly?
76. 00:07:53 And so what you have to do is do what I call turning your values into time.
77. 00:07:58 You know, all of us, we protect our homes with alarms.
78. 00:08:03 We have security systems on our cars.
79. 00:08:05 We put our money inside banks behind vaults to keep our stuff safe.
80. 00:08:09 But when it comes to our time, something that everybody on earth gets the same amount of every single 24-hour day,
81. 00:08:15 most of us just let anyone come and steal as much of it as we want, as they want.
82. 00:08:19 Whether it's our boss, our kids, whatever is happening on Twitter or Facebook, we just let all these things take up our time.
83. 00:08:25 Don't even get me started about the news media, right?
84. 00:08:29 All these people want to do is to take your time to monetize your attention.
85. 00:08:32 So we have to start deciding for ourselves in advance what we want to do with our time.
86. 00:08:37 And so one of the reasons I think that we are suffering through a loneliness epidemic in this country,
87. 00:08:43 and psychologists tell us that loneliness is as detrimental to our health as smoking and obesity.
88. 00:08:49 It's a serious problem and it's growing in this country, is there has been a precipitous decline
89. 00:08:54 in the number of Americans that schedule time for social interaction.
90. 00:09:00 And this is not something that Facebook did, right?
91. 00:09:02 This is not a new phenomenon.
92. 00:09:03 Robert Putnam wrote about this in his book, "Bulling Alone" in the early 1990s.
93. 00:09:07 That it's the decline of the church group, the Kiwanis Club, the Bowling League, the buddies getting together to have a drink together after work.
94. 00:09:15 Any of these kind of planned social interactions that are on your calendar is what keeps us sane,
95. 00:09:23 to be perfectly frank.
96. 00:09:24 It's really an important part of our mental health and well-being.
97. 00:09:28 And it's a big reason why we see a spike in depression and suicide in this country,
98. 00:09:32 is that people are not preserving that time to be together, whether that's your church group every Sunday,
99. 00:09:39 or the Bowling League, or whatever it might be.
100. 00:09:42 And so one of the solutions that I propose, if joining your local community meeting group of whatever it is,
101. 00:09:50 it doesn't resonate with you.
102. 00:09:52 Something that we do in our life is we have this kibbutz.
103. 00:09:55 And kibbutz is, you know, I was born in Israel, I left when I was three years old,
104. 00:10:00 but in Israel they have these kibbutz's, which are these communal farms.
105. 00:10:04 And so we just use that term.
106. 00:10:06 There's nothing religious necessarily about it, but the term kibbutz means gathering.
107. 00:10:11 And so it's four couples with kids, and every two weeks we get together,
108. 00:10:17 same time, same place, everybody brings their own food.
109. 00:10:20 So you don't have to do a big fuss about cooking for everybody.
110. 00:10:23 And we sit down together, and we take turns, we go around with these eight adults,
111. 00:10:29 where every time we meet it's someone's turn to propose a topic.
112. 00:10:34 And so one time it was someone was struggling with their job,
113. 00:10:40 that they'd founded a company and they ran the company and they weren't really happy with it.
114. 00:10:43 They had like four or five employees and they were struggling with their job.
115. 00:10:47 Another time it was a question around, you know,
116. 00:10:51 should we force our kids to play piano or to learn a skill that they don't really want to learn?
117. 00:10:55 Or whatever it is, it's just a topic like what's on your mind.
118. 00:10:58 It's almost like an interactive TED talk, right?
119. 00:11:01 Very little preparation, but just a question I've been struggling with.
120. 00:11:05 Let's discuss it.
121. 00:11:06 And it's really a vehicle to have an excuse to get together regularly.
122. 00:11:12 And it's amazing. It's such a good time.
123. 00:11:15 And the reason it works so well is that it's planned for.
124. 00:11:19 It's every two weeks, rain or shine, same place, same time, everybody knows that they, you know,
125. 00:11:24 what they have to do, they just bring their own food, you don't have to cook for anyone else.
126. 00:11:27 And the fact that it's on our calendars and that we reserve that time makes all the difference in the world.
127. 00:11:33 Because you know how many times have you told a friend, oh, you know, you're really, we should get together for some coffee sometime.
128. 00:11:38 Yeah, right.
129. 00:11:39 We never happens, right? It's just an aspiration. It's not, it's not real.
130. 00:11:43 It doesn't actually occur because it's not scheduled for.
131. 00:11:46 And so that's one of the many things that I described in the book on around how we can regain this law social connection by actually planning time for it.
132. 00:11:53 I love this concept and I have lots of questions.
133. 00:11:56 So you mentioned that the kids come.
134. 00:11:58 Yes.
135. 00:11:59 Do the kids do their own version of this or do you just have them all together and then the kids?
136. 00:12:04 Go somewhere else, play in the adults do their thing.
137. 00:12:08 Yeah, that's a really great point because, you know, part of the things that, one of the things that I talk about in the book is that distraction is not limited to technology, that indestractable.
138. 00:12:17 You know, when you read the book, I argue that distraction is nothing new, that Plato talked about distraction 2,500 years ago.
139. 00:12:24 And I really bristle at people who say technology is the source of our distraction.
140. 00:12:28 It's technology's fault, it's Facebook's fault, the iPhone's fault.
141. 00:12:31 That's rubbish.
142. 00:12:32 That is not true.
143. 00:12:33 We've always been distractible.
144. 00:12:34 And one of the greatest sources of distraction, I might get some hate mail for saying this, is our kids.
145. 00:12:40 No, I got that.
146. 00:12:41 I got that.
147. 00:12:42 I got that.
148. 00:12:43 They are all giant distractions.
149. 00:12:44 Right.
150. 00:12:45 And you're absolutely right because, you know, when you try and do something, if you're trying to focus, if you're trying to do some work, if you want to have a conversation like a normal adult with another, one of your friends, and your kid comes up to you and says, "Mommy daddy, he hit me."
151. 00:12:59 Well, that totally interrupts the conversation.
152. 00:13:01 Yes.
153. 00:13:02 So we said kids are invited.
154. 00:13:05 They can be there, but they can't interrupt.
155. 00:13:08 And here's the kicker, unless someone's bleeding.
156. 00:13:11 That's a nice kid.
157. 00:13:12 Well, then.
158. 00:13:13 So if someone's bleeding, you can interrupt.
159. 00:13:16 And they've known, you know, because originally we didn't set this rule.
160. 00:13:18 So I remember that one time, you know, one of our friends was really, you know, kind of bearing their soul.
161. 00:13:22 They were talking about their relationship with their parents and it was really troubling to them.
162. 00:13:25 And they were, you know, we were getting close.
163. 00:13:27 You know, friendships are about being understood by others and having them understood you understand you.
164. 00:13:33 And that only happens, that joyous celebration of our bond and our trust only happens when people aren't interrupted.
165. 00:13:40 You can't be distracted and go back into that level of depth.
166. 00:13:44 And just at that moment when he was talking about this difficult situation with his parents, his kid comes up and says,
167. 00:13:49 "I need you to do this."
168. 00:13:51 And totally blows the atmosphere.
169. 00:13:53 And so that's when we set this rule.
170. 00:13:55 And so we do this for a few reasons.
171. 00:13:57 Number one is because we want to have that level of intimacy with our friends.
172. 00:14:00 And number two, and just as important, is that we want to model what adult friendships look like.
173. 00:14:07 We need to show our kids that the fact that this person in my life is important to me should tell you something.
174. 00:14:16 I'm talking to the child here, right?
175. 00:14:18 That friendships are important throughout life, that the world doesn't stop for you, the child, just because you say so.
176. 00:14:28 You have a place in this world, and you need to respect the fact that my friendships are incredibly important to me.
177. 00:14:34 So if this is an emergency, if someone's bleeding right now, okay, you can interrupt.
178. 00:14:38 But short of that, there's nothing you can't solve for yourself in a certain age, right?
179. 00:14:44 We don't, nobody in the group has very, very young babies anymore.
180. 00:14:48 But for the most part, as long as the kids can walk, they can take care of themselves.
181. 00:14:52 People have been taking care of themselves as kids for a very, very long time.
182. 00:14:56 They can figure it out.
183. 00:14:57 And in fact, letting them figure it out, there's actually a whole section in the book on how to raise indestructible kids,
184. 00:15:02 where I talk about how this epidemic of over-parenting, of over-regulating our children is messing up our kids,
185. 00:15:11 and kids need the kind of agency and autonomy.
186. 00:15:13 Sometimes it's wonderful to give the kids a stiff arm, and to tell them you need to go figure out on your own,
187. 00:15:20 do not interrupt us unless someone is bleeding.
188. 00:15:23 I think that helps them as well.
189. 00:15:26 Now, the flip side of that, and I'm not saying be a coarse, mean parent,
190. 00:15:31 the flip side is when we are with our children, we need to be fully present.
191. 00:15:36 When we do give them that time, when it is time for story time, or play time,
192. 00:15:41 or a special few hours together to have daddy daughter time,
193. 00:15:46 then you have to be fully present without any potential interruptions.
194. 00:15:51 Yeah, the model that you show them by saying these relationships are important,
195. 00:15:57 you have to have that same approach with your kids at a different time.
196. 00:16:00 Otherwise, they're not going to respect it, they're going to resent it.
197. 00:16:02 That's absolutely right.
198. 00:16:03 I like to say that kids are hypocrisy detection devices.
199. 00:16:07 I love it.
200. 00:16:08 They have these little sensors built into them,
201. 00:16:11 and if they scan around and see you being a hypocrite,
202. 00:16:15 they love to call you out, particularly when it comes to our devices.
203. 00:16:19 I see so many parents telling their kids, you need to stop playing Fortnite
204. 00:16:23 as the parents scrolling through Facebook.
205. 00:16:26 It doesn't work that way.
206. 00:16:27 If you want to raise an indestructible child, which we all should,
207. 00:16:30 I mean, if you think the world is distracting these days, just wait a few years.
208. 00:16:33 It's only going to become more distracting.
209. 00:16:35 It's imperative that we raise indestructible kids,
210. 00:16:38 and if you want to do that, if you want to give your kid the ability to regulate
211. 00:16:42 themselves, to control their attention and choose their life,
212. 00:16:45 you have to become indestructible yourself.
213. 00:16:47 Sunir, one of the things that you mentioned as part of this,
214. 00:16:51 you're putting together rules for a kabut is,
215. 00:16:55 when you did that, that can sound kind of cold.
216. 00:16:59 Whenever you have a group of people that's getting together
217. 00:17:02 and you're talking about putting rules on that,
218. 00:17:04 it's pretty common that people think they don't want to do that.
219. 00:17:07 It needs to be free-form, let it go where it's going to go.
220. 00:17:11 You've got to be spontaneous, man.
221. 00:17:14 Absolutely.
222. 00:17:15 We just finished reading a book and released an episode on the art of gathering
223. 00:17:20 and the process of what that should look like and should you put those rules in place
224. 00:17:24 around a gathering and when you get together and how do you do that well?
225. 00:17:28 When you introduce those rules, did you have pushback from the other people in your group?
226. 00:17:34 This is something I do with a group of friends that gets together,
227. 00:17:39 which is actually happening tonight.
228. 00:17:41 We put some of those rules in place, but it was something we approached very
229. 00:17:46 sensitively because trying to put rules on a gathering like that can seem very cold.
230. 00:17:52 How do you get everybody on the same page, basically?
231. 00:17:55 I don't think that the rules or the particular way that the group functions
232. 00:18:00 is the important point here.
233. 00:18:02 The important point is to schedule it on your calendar.
234. 00:18:05 That's not debatable.
235. 00:18:08 Once you all agree, we're going to get together every Thursday night,
236. 00:18:12 the first Thursday of the month or every other Thursday, whatever it is,
237. 00:18:15 that's the part that can't change.
238. 00:18:16 That's the point I'm trying to make when it comes to the importance of using
239. 00:18:19 these implementation intentions, not just with our friends at work,
240. 00:18:22 when it comes to making time for ourselves.
241. 00:18:25 It's about living with personal integrity.
242. 00:18:27 It's about doing what you said you would do.
243. 00:18:29 I don't really care what you do in that group.
244. 00:18:32 You can go bowling, you can have a debate team, you can have a speech club.
245. 00:18:35 I don't really care.
246. 00:18:36 The important thing is that you have that time scheduled to invest in the people
247. 00:18:41 you care about.
248. 00:18:42 Sure.
249. 00:18:43 You mentioned the implementation intentions, and you shared the story about
250. 00:18:48 a friend who was bearing his soul when the kid interrupted.
251. 00:18:52 If that's the intent, which it kind of sounds like it is from how you've
252. 00:18:57 described it both in your book and also here today, how do you facilitate
253. 00:19:05 getting people to that point?
254. 00:19:07 Is that something that just happened automatically right away with the group
255. 00:19:11 that your specific group?
256. 00:19:13 Or did it take a little bit of time to foster the trust where they felt
257. 00:19:18 comfortable going to that level?
258. 00:19:20 I see.
259. 00:19:21 You mean in terms of opening up with their friends or you mean the ability to say
260. 00:19:25 we should ignore our kids for a little bit?
261. 00:19:28 No, specifically the person being willing to share the very personal stuff
262. 00:19:33 about what's going on at work.
263. 00:19:35 I think there's a lot of people who are listening to this, and I'll group
264. 00:19:39 this in here as well, where we have quote unquote friends.
265. 00:19:44 But if I were to say, "Okay, let's get together and just bear our souls."
266. 00:19:47 They'd be like, "Why?"
267. 00:19:49 Oh.
268. 00:19:50 Yeah, that's creepy.
269. 00:19:51 I want to be a fly on the wall in those scenarios.
270. 00:19:54 Yeah.
271. 00:19:55 Yeah, that's super creepy.
272. 00:19:58 So this was a group of people who we all knew each other before we had kids,
273. 00:20:04 and those conversations had happened in business school.
274. 00:20:09 Of the four couples, at least one person in each couple was in the same
275. 00:20:15 business school class together.
276. 00:20:17 And so we had had these conversations before we had kids on late nights
277. 00:20:24 or just at parties or just in the process of becoming friends.
278. 00:20:29 We had gotten to that level, and what we saw when we had kids,
279. 00:20:32 and this is incredibly common, the kids become more important than anybody.
280. 00:20:37 And I think we live in a society where in many ways we overvalue children.
281. 00:20:44 Not that children aren't extremely precious, but we treat them like they run the place.
282. 00:20:49 And I think that's a mistake sometimes.
283. 00:20:51 Because what we saw is when people were doting on their children,
284. 00:20:55 they neglected their friendships, and we were disconnecting from each other.
285. 00:21:00 And so this was an effort to bring back those bonds that we missed when we became parents.
286. 00:21:06 So to answer your question, we had an established relationship already.
287. 00:21:11 Okay.
288. 00:21:12 So you mentioned that these types of conversations happened in business school,
289. 00:21:16 and you've got four different couples there.
290. 00:21:18 So was everybody present in the business school group,
291. 00:21:21 or did you experience a little bit of resistance maybe when significant others
292. 00:21:26 were introduced to the group?
293. 00:21:28 So the couples were all friends previously,
294. 00:21:31 but I have seen in other groups that I've been involved in when someone comes in,
295. 00:21:35 when someone goes out, there's a norming process.
296. 00:21:39 And I think the most important criteria, by the way, is selecting the right group.
297. 00:21:44 I think we all know the type of friends who we think we can go deep with,
298. 00:21:49 we think we can be vulnerable with, people who are like-minded in terms of valuing that kind of stuff.
299. 00:21:54 I think not everyone realizes how important it is to connect with others at a more than superficial level.
300. 00:22:02 I mean, for God's sakes, how much can we talk about sports?
301. 00:22:05 How much can we talk about the weather?
302. 00:22:06 How much can we talk about the stupid elections?
303. 00:22:09 I mean, seriously, there are more important things in life than this stuff.
304. 00:22:13 You know, the really important stuff that's going on in our life,
305. 00:22:16 we have to open up about that.
306. 00:22:18 And it's wonderful if you're lucky enough to have a spouse you can talk about this stuff with.
307. 00:22:23 I would argue that's not enough.
308. 00:22:26 You need to be known and to know others.
309. 00:22:28 And this doesn't have to be a lot of people.
310. 00:22:30 I think even just a handful of friends, maybe even two or three other people that you can confide in,
311. 00:22:36 that you can be vulnerable with, that they can be vulnerable with you,
312. 00:22:39 that you can keep their secrets and they can keep yours.
313. 00:22:42 I think it's really important for personal growth, right, to have an issue out there that you toss out and say,
314. 00:22:50 "Look, I'm struggling with this. I'm not really sure which way to go."
315. 00:22:53 You know, what's interesting when you have those kind of conversations is that most of the time,
316. 00:23:00 it's not about soliciting an answer from the group because 90% of the time,
317. 00:23:06 just the process of being allowed to talk about this out loud,
318. 00:23:10 you reveal the answer to yourself.
319. 00:23:13 Sure, yeah.
320. 00:23:14 It's just that, I mean, this is why people go to therapists many times.
321. 00:23:16 It's about having a place where you're allowed to talk about this stuff.
322. 00:23:21 Now, some people do this through journaling. This is why I love writing.
323. 00:23:24 That's very therapeutic for me to talk about these questions I'm struggling with by writing them out.
324. 00:23:29 But there is also something very special about talking about this with other people.
325. 00:23:34 And so that's really the function of why it's so important for our psychological well-being to have close friends.
326. 00:23:40 Do you think that there is a limit on the group size where people wouldn't have the ability,
327. 00:23:49 like the space of the time, in order to authentically share like that?
328. 00:23:52 You know, I haven't seen any studies that would say that,
329. 00:23:55 but the rule of thumb that I like to follow actually comes from Amazon.
330. 00:23:59 Jeff Bezos calls it the two-pizza team.
331. 00:24:02 So how many people can eat two pizzas? And it's about eight people.
332. 00:24:07 Eight people seems to be the, you know, if you have eight people, then you need to order two pizzas.
333. 00:24:11 That's the right amount of people, two pizza team.
334. 00:24:14 It's also by the way, the right size, you know, in a business context as well.
335. 00:24:17 Like you've probably been in part of teams where, oh my gosh, there's 20 people on this team.
336. 00:24:21 This is way too many people. You know, that two pizza team rule applies in other contexts as well.
337. 00:24:26 For sure. So we've been talking about, you know, rituals and routines of getting together with other people.
338. 00:24:32 You were talking about how, you know, if something's important to you,
339. 00:24:36 you're going to set aside time for it.
340. 00:24:38 You're writing process.
341. 00:24:40 You're daily routine.
342. 00:24:42 Did you have to do that on a daily, weekly basis in order to get these books written?
343. 00:24:47 Or are you one of these people that can just haphazardly work your way through it?
344. 00:24:51 No, no, no, no. I mean, so this, again, back to like why this book took me so long to write is that I wasn't
345. 00:24:56 utilizing these techniques at first.
346. 00:24:58 And there's so much misinformation out there. There's so many myths that actually hurt people.
347. 00:25:04 I mean, one of the most prominent myths is the myth of the to-do list.
348. 00:25:09 And again, I'm going to shock some people here, but it turns out there's not much research that shows that to-do lists are very effective.
349. 00:25:17 I know we've all been told that's how you get things done. You've got to keep a to-do list.
350. 00:25:21 And I'm here to tell you that actually a to-do list can backfire.
351. 00:25:24 And here's why.
352. 00:25:25 You know, one of the common threads you read it in the book is this idea of self-image.
353. 00:25:29 That behavior change is identity change and vice versa.
354. 00:25:34 That it's imperative that we control our identity to serve us as opposed to us serving our identity.
355. 00:25:42 And so what we see with a lot of people is when they get into a narrative of blame and shame,
356. 00:25:50 this is where they really do things in their life, that backfire.
357. 00:25:57 and so here's how the to-do list really can backfire I call it the tyranny of the
358. 00:26:02 to do list if you think about the to-do list and this is what I used to do
359. 00:26:05 before I wrote this book because that's you know the standard advice all the
360. 00:26:07 gurus say to get things done keep it to-do list but here's the problem. If you're
361. 00:26:12 anything like I was I would have this big long to-do list and a good chunk of
362. 00:26:17 that to-do list I wouldn't finish, right? I would just recycle it from one day to
363. 00:26:22 the next day to the next day to the next day these things I didn't get to and it
364. 00:26:26 turns out that this has a pretty important impact on our self-image because when
365. 00:26:30 you see another day went by and I didn't do what I said I'm going to do you are
366. 00:26:36 reinforcing your identity as someone who does not keep promises to themselves. Yeah
367. 00:26:42 you can't trust yourself. You can't trust yourself. Another day went by and I
368. 00:26:46 didn't do what I said I'm going to do, loser and day after day week after week
369. 00:26:50 year after year you begin to believe this self-image. Furthermore it's
370. 00:26:56 particularly toxic because even when we have leisure time even when we spend time
371. 00:27:01 with our family even when we decide we want to watch some Netflix we want to
372. 00:27:04 relax we want to just you know chill out we have in the back of our brains oh I
373. 00:27:08 didn't finish the things on my to-do list I still got more stuff I got to do and
374. 00:27:11 so that's why I'm so anti-to-do list. To-do lists are great as a temporary
375. 00:27:16 repository for what should go on your calendar and the reason that timeboxing
376. 00:27:22 is such a more effective technique is because when you finish a time box
377. 00:27:27 period of time your only goal should be one thing and that one thing is not to
378. 00:27:33 finish anything let me say that again your goal should not be to finish anything
379. 00:27:37 this is the problem with to-do list to-do lists are all about aspirations for
380. 00:27:41 for the output right what you want to complete but it doesn't consider the
381. 00:27:45 input the input is of course your time so I don't want you to measure yourself
382. 00:27:49 based on what you finished okay your only criteria for measuring whether you
383. 00:27:55 were successful was did you work on what you said you were going to work on
384. 00:27:59 without distraction for as long as you said you would that's it if you said I'm
385. 00:28:04 going to pray for 15 minutes if you say I'm going to meditate if you said I was
386. 00:28:08 going to work on this big project if you said I'm gonna write for 30 minutes
387. 00:28:11 that's all you have to do don't worry about finishing that's the problem with
388. 00:28:17 the to-do list your only goal should be to work on that task without distraction
389. 00:28:21 for as long as you said you would and if you do you are reaffirming your
390. 00:28:26 identity as someone who lives with personal integrity you are indestractable
391. 00:28:30 after time box after time box after time box throughout your day and so that was
392. 00:28:35 one of these techniques that I discovered so to your question around you
393. 00:28:38 know how do you structure your data right my calendar has from 932 1130 that is
394. 00:28:44 my writing time and it has to be something you know again somebody has to
395. 00:28:47 be bleeding to interrupt that time that is my sacred time for writing and and
396. 00:28:52 nothing can interrupt that because I take very seriously this time box
397. 00:28:55 counter because I know if I don't plan that time and then this came from you know
398. 00:28:58 hard hard fought lessons that I had to learn over the years the writing won't
399. 00:29:02 happen right it doesn't just spontaneously occur even if you put it on
400. 00:29:06 your to-do list unless you put that time on your calendar it's not gonna happen
401. 00:29:10 so with your your blog then do you publish things when you think that they
402. 00:29:16 are done or do you have any sort of deadline where I'm gonna publish in
403. 00:29:20 these dates and if you do how do you reconcile that with your writing
404. 00:29:24 process because I think that's the thing that a lot of people might push
405. 00:29:26 back on is yeah well that's great here because he can sit down and write but I
406. 00:29:31 got to have something by Friday so right right about me right so he that's a
407. 00:29:35 great point thank you for bringing it up and and so here's the thing number one
408. 00:29:40 it turns out the studies find that people who use this technique that I
409. 00:29:44 describe the time boxing technique the setting the implementation technique
410. 00:29:47 rather than the to-do list technique number one they're just more productive
411. 00:29:51 so your output funny enough will increase when you don't focus on it it's
412. 00:29:57 one of those things kind of like you know if you want to be cool don't try and
413. 00:30:01 be cool if you want to find love don't push people to love you it's the same
414. 00:30:05 thing with productivity if you worry about the output all the time you stress
415. 00:30:10 yourself out and you don't do the input of actually doing the work and so what
416. 00:30:14 most people do is they procrastinate and so they wait and they wait and they wait
417. 00:30:19 and then the deadline comes and then you know what happens a couple hours maybe
418. 00:30:23 a couple days before the big project is do well I'm gonna work real hard and
419. 00:30:26 try and crank it out and of course the workout put sucks our workout put is a
420. 00:30:30 fraction of how good it could be if we work diligently on it day after day
421. 00:30:34 with plenty of time so that's number one number two your time box calendar is
422. 00:30:40 not set in stone for the day it is once you say okay today it's Thursday I'm
423. 00:30:44 going to work on exactly what I said I would now it's set in stone but every
424. 00:30:48 week part of the process I describe on how to become indestructible is that you
425. 00:30:51 sit down and it takes 15 minutes a week and you reassess your calendar for the
426. 00:30:56 week ahead so if you say to yourself you know what last week I only got through
427. 00:31:01 so much right I didn't finish the emails I didn't write the pages I was
428. 00:31:08 expecting to write I didn't I didn't make enough progress well then your job
429. 00:31:11 in the week ahead is to adjust accordingly to make time for you to live
430. 00:31:16 out those values whatever it is that you value in your life you're going to
431. 00:31:19 adjust the calendar for the week ahead so you need to think of yourself as a
432. 00:31:23 scientist rather than a drill sergeant right it's not about punishing yourself
433. 00:31:27 if you didn't meet those objectives it's about okay what can I adjust how can I
434. 00:31:31 change how can I reconfigure my time box calendar next week to make me more
435. 00:31:36 likely to accomplish what I say I'm going to do yeah that was one of my big
436. 00:31:40 action items from reading the book was to plan my week every week that and I
437. 00:31:44 like the way that you described it in the book where you mentioned that this is
438. 00:31:49 not something that needs to take hours it's literally in minutes where you just
439. 00:31:52 ask yourself a couple of questions absolutely and in fact I'll give you a
440. 00:31:55 so many people ask me about you know how do I get started how do I do this I've
441. 00:31:59 never kept a time box calendar before what kind of tools that do you use so I
442. 00:32:02 actually built an online tool that anyone can use is completely free don't
443. 00:32:06 sign up for anything you don't have to pay anything it's completely free and
444. 00:32:10 I'll give you a link for the show notes but I think one of the undiscovered
445. 00:32:14 attributes and benefits of a time box calendar is that when you have a time
446. 00:32:19 box calendar you have an artifact that you can show other people and so in my
447. 00:32:24 life you know my wife and I we've been married for 18 years and before I wrote
448. 00:32:29 this book we would constantly fight about household responsibilities that I
449. 00:32:34 wasn't doing my share around the house you know my wife would complain what you
450. 00:32:37 know you can see our daughter has a need why don't you just feed her or you
451. 00:32:40 know you can see the trash needs to be taken out just take it out or the laundry
452. 00:32:43 needs to be done and my excuse to her was always you know honey if if something
453. 00:32:48 bothers you if I need if you want me to do something just ask me right that was
454. 00:32:52 what I always told her and of course what I didn't realize until later was that
455. 00:32:56 by me asking her to do that I was giving her yet another job right now she needs
456. 00:33:02 to be my babysitter and it turns out that in two-income heterosexual
457. 00:33:06 households women still take on a disproportionate share of household
458. 00:33:11 responsibilities this will surprise no listener who's a female right now so
459. 00:33:22 but but let me tell you know so one of my values and I'm not saying it needs to
460. 00:33:25 be your values I'm not trying to preach my values on to anybody else I'm just
461. 00:33:28 saying my values one of my values is to be in an equitable marriage right I
462. 00:33:33 want to pull my weight to be the kind of person you know the definition of a
463. 00:33:36 value is the attribute of the person you want to become and so I want to become
464. 00:33:40 the kind of person that is in an equitable marriage and so what that
465. 00:33:44 required me to do is to sit down and assess wait am I really pulling my weight
466. 00:33:48 am I giving my wife more jobs than she needs to have and so here's the thing
467. 00:33:51 keeping a time box calendar eliminated this problem we never have these fights
468. 00:33:58 anymore because once a week we sit down every Sunday night 15 minutes and we
469. 00:34:04 look at each other's time box calendars and so now it's very clear I will cook
470. 00:34:09 the you know I'm one of my responsibilities to is to meal prep so okay
471. 00:34:13 it says on my calendar when that's gonna happen it says when I'm gonna take
472. 00:34:16 other trash it says I'm gonna take these do these various tasks so there's no
473. 00:34:19 guesswork anymore she can count on me and frankly I can count on myself to do
474. 00:34:23 what I say I'm going to do right yeah that's that's really good you know I
475. 00:34:27 forget which book it was Joe that we just read where people were asked to
476. 00:34:32 estimate their contribution to running the household and everybody overvalued
477. 00:34:37 their own contributions every time every time right so I like that you know
478. 00:34:42 having that conversation and then figuring out okay how is this actually
479. 00:34:46 going to work because what's natural to you just ask me for help you know that
480. 00:34:52 maybe not natural to your significant other either so having the plan for
481. 00:34:57 making it work for both people I really like that absolutely and just one other
482. 00:35:01 point in the workplace it's also incredibly powerful because you know
483. 00:35:07 there's this terrible trope that we hear all the time in the personal
484. 00:35:10 productivity self-help community which is if you want to be more productive you
485. 00:35:15 have to learn how to say fill in the blank what is it yes
486. 00:35:21 guys get your act together I needed that in harmony you have to learn how to say
487. 00:35:26 no right now we've all been told this it's such rubbish you're gonna tell me
488. 00:35:31 you're gonna look at your boss the person who pays your bills and you're
489. 00:35:35 gonna tell them nope I'm not gonna do that give me a break that's ridiculous
490. 00:35:38 that's always a pushback people have and it's totally legit it's yeah yeah I
491. 00:35:42 don't know who can do I couldn't do that to my boss that's that's horrible
492. 00:35:45 right so instead what you want to do is you're not the one who says no you need
493. 00:35:50 to make your boss the person who says no and how do you do that well you take
494. 00:35:54 your time box calendar to your boss and you show them you say look boss here's
495. 00:35:59 all the stuff you asked me to do this week here's when I'm going to do it okay
496. 00:36:02 now you see this other piece of paper over here you see this other sheet this
497. 00:36:06 is where I wrote out down all the stuff that I couldn't find time for can you
498. 00:36:09 help me reprioritize you would be amazed how few managers have no idea what
499. 00:36:15 their teammates are up to they just lob tasks at them all the time with no
500. 00:36:19 clarity with no visibility into how they spend their time and so the solution to
501. 00:36:24 this is sitting down for 10 15 minutes on Monday morning and showing them your
502. 00:36:28 time box calendar they will worship the ground you walk on it is a complete
503. 00:36:32 game changer a few years ago I was working in a corporate scenario and I
504. 00:36:39 had set up a keyboard shortcut on my computer at the time that would pull up
505. 00:36:43 two things one was my job description and the other was you know in corporate
506. 00:36:49 world you always have your annual goals that they have you work towards so that
507. 00:36:53 keyboard shortcut would bring those two up and every time my boss would ask me
508. 00:36:58 to do things that I knew I would not have time for I would send him my job
509. 00:37:02 description and I would send him my list of my goals it's like okay does this
510. 00:37:06 fit because I got a lot of things that do fit that I'm working on right now so
511. 00:37:10 you got to tell me what you want me to do here so I would do that on a regular
512. 00:37:14 basis the first time I did that he came over and glared at me
513. 00:37:19 Joe what are you doing over there yeah I mean if that works that's fantastic I
514. 00:37:25 think the the the one area for improvement I think is around the
515. 00:37:29 visibility into how you spend your time so it's not about this judgment of look
516. 00:37:34 this you know is this should I be doing this it's okay if you want to do that
517. 00:37:37 but when should I do that and another benefit of this is that it stops the
518. 00:37:42 interruptions in the workplace you know so the section the book about how to
519. 00:37:46 hack back external triggers and I talk about of course how to hack back your
520. 00:37:49 phone your computer that's kindergarten stuff that's easy peasy I can tell you
521. 00:37:53 how to do that very very quickly the harder problem and the much more
522. 00:37:56 important problem is what 80% of knowledge workers say is the number one
523. 00:38:02 source of distraction the number one source of distraction according to
524. 00:38:05 American knowledge workers it's not their phone it's not their computers it's
525. 00:38:09 other people yep right other people tapping on the shoulder saying hey do
526. 00:38:14 you watch the big game last night or can I ask you that big thing can I ask you
527. 00:38:17 one quick thing about this big big sales deal we got coming or whatever it is
528. 00:38:20 it's never a quick sec right it always takes you off track and the studies
529. 00:38:24 fine it takes us about 20 minutes to get back to what we were doing to get back
530. 00:38:28 into that concentrated mode and so we can we can start to hack back all those
531. 00:38:33 external triggers that come from other people part of it is by sharing our
532. 00:38:36 calendars that's that's a very effective technique another thing we can do is
533. 00:38:40 that every copy of indestractable actually comes with this cardstock
534. 00:38:46 screen sign it's yeah okay so you saw this in the book I wasn't sure the
535. 00:38:51 ebook or not so you pull it out of the book you fold it into thirds and you
536. 00:38:57 put it on your computer monitor and it says I'm indestractable at the moment
537. 00:39:01 please come back later and so it's an incredibly effective way it's very polite
538. 00:39:05 right you're not you're not gonna use this all day long but you're just
539. 00:39:08 sending a clear signal to your colleagues look for the next hour 30
540. 00:39:11 minutes whatever I need some time to think please come back later just don't
541. 00:39:15 leave it up all day or it's not gonna work that's right come on please
542. 00:39:19 near a couple things here as we near a time to wrap up here but what specific
543. 00:39:28 tools did you use to write write the book you know are you creating text files
544. 00:39:33 you know I've heard a lot of authors use something like scrivener or you know
545. 00:39:37 Ulysses or something what what tools did you use to write the book so early days
546. 00:39:41 I use scrivener because I like the way that scrivener lets you rearrange you
547. 00:39:45 know in the when you're doing the developmental editing of okay what's
548. 00:39:48 the right order what's the framework what's kind of the steps that was very
549. 00:39:51 useful and but the problem with scriveners that you can't collaborate
550. 00:39:55 with others so when I wanted to show a chapter to my wife my wife you know
551. 00:39:59 Julie help collaborate on the book with me quite a good deal it's very
552. 00:40:04 difficult to do over a scrivener so then we moved over to Google Docs question
553. 00:40:07 I know Joe you want to get into some of the tool stuff but regarding the writing
554. 00:40:11 the writing the book this is typically the kind of thing that people would set
555. 00:40:15 as a goal and you spent a bit of time talking about how checking off the tasks
556. 00:40:22 aren't valuable it's the practice or the habit of being indestructible and doing
557. 00:40:27 what you intended to do so when you wrote the book did you have a goal did you
558. 00:40:32 have a deadline or did you just write it with the intention that someday I'll
559. 00:40:36 have enough blog posts and this will be a book well in the very very early days
560. 00:40:40 before I submitted the book before I had the deadline it was just an
561. 00:40:43 exploration of the topic so for me you know the the seminal moment where I
562. 00:40:47 decided I needed to understand what was going on and made me reconsider my
563. 00:40:51 relationship with distraction was I was with my daughter one afternoon and we
564. 00:40:57 had this beautiful afternoon planned and we had this book of activities that
565. 00:41:02 daddies and daughters could could play together and one of the activities in
566. 00:41:05 the book was to ask each other what superpower we would both want and I
567. 00:41:11 remember the question of her baiting but I can't tell you what my daughter said
568. 00:41:14 because in that moment for some reason I decided to look at my phone and my
569. 00:41:19 daughter got the message that whatever was on my phone was more important than
570. 00:41:22 she was and she left the room to go play with some toy outside and when I left
571. 00:41:26 looked up for my phone she was gone and so that's when I really had to reassess
572. 00:41:30 this relationship I had with distraction not just digital distraction but all
573. 00:41:34 forms of distraction and I I that's where I came up with this idea of you know
574. 00:41:38 what superpower what I want I just wanted the power to do what I said I was going
575. 00:41:42 to do right because day after day I would say I was going to exercise but I
576. 00:41:47 wouldn't I would say I would eat right that not so much I would say I was going
577. 00:41:51 to do what you know do a big project work I'm gonna create a blog post and
578. 00:41:55 get a procrastinate yet another day and so that's where I decided man if I just
579. 00:41:59 want one superpower one skill I want to be indestructible kind of like
580. 00:42:03 indestructible right what a superpower that would be and so at first I just
581. 00:42:07 started blogging about it and I didn't really have a deadline but then when I
582. 00:42:09 saw you know there's something here I think you know I was I was getting
583. 00:42:13 good feedback from my blog subscribers and and I wanted to know more about it
584. 00:42:17 I really wanted to crack this code and and what really drove me was how much how
585. 00:42:22 many apple carts I was overturning how much bad research and bad you know urban
586. 00:42:28 legends or folk psychology is out there that really is hurting people and was
587. 00:42:32 hurting me that's when I decided you know what I really want to get serious
588. 00:42:34 about this so after I sold the book proposal and now I did have a deadline
589. 00:42:39 then very quickly what I started to do yeah I was also using these techniques
590. 00:42:44 at that at this time you know about you know two three years in I I started
591. 00:42:47 putting together the model and using these techniques and everything I
592. 00:42:49 described in the book not only is it backed by peer reviewed studies you know
593. 00:42:52 I I really wanted to have good science backing up all these claims but I also
594. 00:42:55 use all these techniques and still do every day in my life and and so then the
595. 00:43:01 next step was to say okay well how how much progress am I making and then just
596. 00:43:05 as we said earlier I was you know I adjusted my calendar week to week to
597. 00:43:08 make sure that the following week I had ample time to to get to that final
598. 00:43:13 objective sure so do you how do you reconcile then like the goal setting
599. 00:43:18 process with what you do where you're planning your week or do you just focus
600. 00:43:21 on these are the things that I know I need to do and if I'm indestractable in
601. 00:43:25 these moments then the goal is going to take care of itself the goal is going to
602. 00:43:29 take care of itself exactly exactly so you can have this like you can have the
603. 00:43:32 deadline of okay I know that on this in this date I need to have such and such
604. 00:43:37 finished and then well how long does that take me to do so most people have no
605. 00:43:41 clue how long something takes them to do and the studies are pretty unequitable
606. 00:43:44 that people a task typically takes people three times longer than they
607. 00:43:49 estimate we are just horrible at estimating how long something takes so
608. 00:43:52 unless you have that process of you know working without distraction seeing how
609. 00:43:58 much output you you gain from that input and then making an estimate you're just
610. 00:44:03 shooting in the dark and that's why you know people freak out at the last
611. 00:44:06 minute say oh my god I'm so far behind because they didn't have a accurate
612. 00:44:10 assessment of how long it takes them to do something and so that's why this
613. 00:44:13 process is is so important to do because without it you're just shooting in the
614. 00:44:18 dark you really have no basis in terms of of so fast we've learned is authors
615. 00:44:24 generally read a lot and I assume you are no exception to that rule you've
616. 00:44:29 referenced a handful of books as we've been here and obviously Mike and I read
617. 00:44:34 a lot as well but what are some of the books you recommend them most lately you
618. 00:44:38 know we have kind of our own set that we have a tendency to to recommend to
619. 00:44:42 people but what's what are some of your favorites here lately oh there's so many
620. 00:44:45 I have many many author friends who who I don't want to offend by not
621. 00:44:52 recommending their books so I have to be there's work by a psychologist that I
622. 00:45:02 admire very much Carol Dweck wrote the book Mindset I'm guessing you guys have
623. 00:45:06 probably read that one well that's a great book in terms of writing a book
624. 00:45:12 that really influenced my writing style and I think the you know it's I really
625. 00:45:16 like writing that's surprising I've been you know when we talk about nonfiction
626. 00:45:20 of course that it's it's the kind of book that you say you know I thought the
627. 00:45:24 world was one way and now I see it a little different maybe you know what
628. 00:45:28 what I like to do for people is overturn their apple cards that's that's
629. 00:45:32 what I most enjoy is you know wow this is this is not really based on science I
630. 00:45:35 believe what I believe because I've been told but it's not really the truth and
631. 00:45:40 the studies show it's not the truth and so I think an author that does that
632. 00:45:43 really well as Paul Graham he wrote the book Hackers and Painters and it's a
633. 00:45:47 series of essays and I just I've always liked his writing style and I read you
634. 00:45:51 know religiously anything that he writes I think he's he's really great so that's
635. 00:45:55 a great book I think a book everyone should read is Factfulness I'm not sure
636. 00:46:00 if you did you guys review that one on the show not yet on the song that's that's
637. 00:46:03 a great book I think that's it's it's basically it's kind of in the same vein
638. 00:46:07 of Steven Pinker's Better Angel Better Nape Better Angels of Our Nature where
639. 00:46:13 it's about you know what's really going on the world you know there's every
640. 00:46:16 generation thinks that this is the worst time in history that things are you
641. 00:46:19 know go you're the world's about to end and basically what he's showing in this
642. 00:46:23 book is when you look at the the facts when you actually look what's going on
643. 00:46:26 things are getting better in almost every way we can imagine and it's it's a
644. 00:46:31 really eye-opening book and it's interesting how he shows how even
645. 00:46:34 academics get it wrong don't understand how much better the world is actually
646. 00:46:38 getting and so I think it's a good reality check for everyone so those are
647. 00:46:42 a few that are kind of top of mind I gotta ask because you said you may
648. 00:46:46 comment of course nonfiction and one of the things I get chided for all the
649. 00:46:50 time is the fact that I don't read fiction do you read fiction books you
650. 00:46:56 know I don't read much fiction I have to admit I'm right I'm not alone thank you
651. 00:47:01 I love you know I love plays I live in New York and so I love going to see
652. 00:47:09 shows sure but I don't I don't read a lot of fiction I don't know it doesn't
653. 00:47:13 at this point in my life maybe I'll get back to reading fiction at some point
654. 00:47:17 but at this point in my life I don't read a lot of it but I do like I see in
655. 00:47:20 dramas for example one of my favorite shows I saw a staging of Moby Dick the
656. 00:47:24 book itself is really hard to get through I'm not sure if you ever try to
657. 00:47:27 read Moby Dick it's it's a slog but the it's really a shame because it's such a
658. 00:47:33 great story you know when we talk about these themes of around
659. 00:47:36 indestractable around why do we really get distracted around the deeper reasons
660. 00:47:41 for the psychology around why we do things against our better interest I mean
661. 00:47:45 that's it's all encapsulated in this great American novel in Moby Dick so I
662. 00:47:49 highly recommend you see the show if you can't see the show maybe check out
663. 00:47:52 that is as a piece of fiction for sure well near it's been a pleasure to have
664. 00:47:58 you on our first ever authors corner what's what's the best place for people to
665. 00:48:02 find you online yeah thank you so my blog is near and far.com but near is
666. 00:48:07 spelled like my first name so it's n-i-r-n-farr.com and if you go to near and
667. 00:48:13 far I should mention by the way we have an 80 page workbook that we had to cut
668. 00:48:16 from the final edition of the book but it's completely complimentary and you
669. 00:48:19 can download that to become to help you on your journey to becoming
670. 00:48:22 indestractable and if you're particularly interested in the book
671. 00:48:25 indestractable then you can go to indestractable.com if let me just give a
672. 00:48:29 quick plug here if you do end up buying the book of course no pressure but if
673. 00:48:33 you do get it make sure you keep your order number whether it's on Amazon or
674. 00:48:38 your local bookseller keep the order number because if you go to indestractable.com
675. 00:48:42 there's actually a complimentary video course that goes along with the book
676. 00:48:46 that you can download and all that's free there's a bunch of tools all kinds
677. 00:48:50 of resources that you can download all that's at indestractable.com. I didn't know that.
678. 00:48:55 I'm guess what I'm doing when we're done here. Definitely gonna go there well
679. 00:49:01 near once again thanks for being on the show and I'm sure we'll see each other
680. 00:49:06 online once again. I appreciate it thanks so much for having me on. Well there you
681. 00:49:11 have it bookworms this has been a fun conversation with near I hope you really
682. 00:49:16 enjoyed that that discussion you know it's something what we we want to do more
683. 00:49:20 of but before we wrap up this particular episode just a couple quick reminders if
684. 00:49:25 you want to join the club bookworm.fm/membership that'll get you into the
685. 00:49:30 premium area on the club which is at club.bookworm.fm and that'll get you
686. 00:49:34 some special features you know you can listen to the shows live there's some
687. 00:49:38 special bookworm wallpaper that you can get there as well as well as some
688. 00:49:44 gapbook episodes that I've recorded but probably the the biggest thing that I
689. 00:49:48 know a lot of people absolutely love are the book notes that Mike takes in his
690. 00:49:51 mind node files you hear him reference these things all the time and he does
691. 00:49:56 post all of those for the bookworm books and his gap books as well he posts all
692. 00:50:01 of those on the club so if you're interested in any of that bookworm.fm/club
693. 00:50:07 and again we hope you enjoyed this special episode with near I/O and hopefully
694. 00:50:12 this is something that we will do again in the future so stay tuned for the
695. 00:50:17 upcoming books and we will catch you soon