So welcome back Cory, we've got some follow up items here. They're all yours. So what is your positive edge? Did you figure it out? Not really. Not to where I came to like some real strong, you know, like, I mean, it's got to be teaching like I think that's that's the helping people get from one place to another. What I don't know about and what I wasn't able to like resolve is like, does that mean classroom teaching?
Does that mean mentoring? Does that mean coaching? So it's like, there's a bunch of words there that all kind of work together and I don't know what it actually means, but it's got to definitely be helping people advance or, you know, get better. Add value to their life. I don't know what it might be. I'm going to try not to like say the same thing that yours is because it's like mine. I can tell you that when you say yours, mine is different than yours.
I can tell you that. Like I know that inherently it's different, but I don't know exactly no house. So now that's the best I can give you on my on my positive edge is still needs to be sharpened or refined. I want to double click on that because you mentioned it has to be teaching. Is that because you feel like if it's something else, then your whole life is lie or you know that it's teaching and you just have to dial it in a little bit more.
No, but I think it's like whatever, whatever this word is teaching coaching mentoring, whatever it is, right? Like I've known that since I was, you know, I don't know 10, 11, like it's been a really long time that I've known that it just so happens that it aligns with my current profession, which is good because you know it all works out kind of a kind of that way.
But but even like I think about leading the boys, you know, different groups that the way I do with the boys or volunteer in a church or whatever it might be, it's all around this idea of like education mentoring, you know, kind of thing. So I think that's just the thing that I'm naturally going to do, you know, and that's the thing that I think I, you know, God has gifted me at doing, which is, which is pretty cool.
Gotcha. Yeah, I figured that was the case, but the way that you said it was kind of like, we have to clarify. Okay, so the next one I had was, what's the thing I can't not do? What am I, what am I naturally doing? What does that mean? So like I told you naturally teaching, but I don't think that's the thing I can't not do. Like I don't see those two things as being, as being true. I think the thing I couldn't not do is care about technology.
Like I really like technology. I've always really liked technology. I mean, ever since I would take computers apart from like sitting on my sitting on, you know, my parents kitchen table and my mom would be like, what are you doing it? I'm like, I'm taking the computer apart and she'd be like, why am I like, why not?
I mean, let's see what, let's see what it's made of and let's see if we can put it back together and she's like, yeah, but that's really expensive. And I'm like, oh, we find everything's going to be okay. And then even when I, I have gone through seasons where I tried to delete all of my nerdy tech podcasts and like, I'm just like, I'm not going to listen to nerdy tech podcasts.
I'll last, you know, like a couple weeks and then it's like, nah, like I just naturally find myself like walking to my car, downloading the latest episode of, you know, whatever nerdy tech podcast, just to see what's going on in the world in the tech world. So I think that's the thing I, at this point in my life, I can't not to do, which is kind of weird kind of telling, but there you go.
Nice. So all of this and actually the last episode leads very well into the, the life theme cohort, which I have to mention here briefly, I don't actually have any follow up action items from the last book we did, which was good work by Paul Miller. And I still am very excited about that one two weeks later. How do you feel about it? You still think it's a double five star book?
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I got a lot of that when I reflect on the different aspects of it, you know, a good bit in the last two weeks, even while we're reading another book or another book and a half depending on what you're reading right now. So yeah, I like that book a lot. Yeah, me too.
So it's kind of interesting that that leads into the whole concept of the life theme you talked about the positive edge and comparing it to to mine. And that was a conversation that we had in that last episode was kind of what makes us, what makes us tick. So the life theme cohort basically is a six week cohort that my wife and I co lead on helping people dial in their personal mission statements.
So there's a five step process that we walk through where you first you identify the moments of impact, the moments where you really came alive, you dream big, you create an image, a specific image of your ideal future that you're working towards you identify your personal core values, then you condense it all into a single sense life theme.
And then the sixth week is basically everybody gets on a call and we share ours really can't overstate how much more valuable this process is when you do it together. I mean, I basically just gave you the whole process and those those five different steps.
And I do have a free email course for people who are just kind of kicking the tires on this sort of thing. But as as this episode is published that life theme cohort is actually kicking off on Monday. So it starts on November 11th, you can probably join after that if you wanted to and you wouldn't be too far behind.
But I did want to make sure that people knew that this was happening and I kind of revamped how I do my cohorts everything is now bundled inside of the community. So this is actually the first time now that the community is is open under this new format.
But essentially when you join the community, you get access to all the cohorts that happen within one calendar year. So that would include this life theme cohort, which starts on November 11th, then it wraps up I think December 16th. It's basically a Monday to a Monday. And then there's a practical PKM cohort, which is all the obsidian stuff that's going to happen in January.
There's also monthly workshops. So I did a personal sheet workshop, did a mind mapping workshop, going to do a journaling workshop, all of those video replays and everything are in the community as well. And the cost of the community is 500 bucks a year. So if you are interested in joining the life theme cohort, you actually just join the community and then you can opt into the cohort and everything is is there.
And that website, if you want to learn more about the life theme cohort specifically is Mike Schmitz dot com slash life theme. I didn't actually even share this with you, but yesterday I recorded a little promo video, which is at the top of that that page now, which which I like a lot.
Nice, just like a little two, three minute promo video. And yeah, so that's happening. And if you want to walk through the process with us, then Mike Schmitz dot com slash life theme is where you would go to do that. Very cool. I think that's clean, right? Like that, that seems like a very clean way to do it where it's like a one time thing for the year, right? Am I understanding that correctly? Yep. It's a one time cost for the year, but then I can participate in as much as I want to.
Yeah. And so just for for disclosure here, like I've kind of I'm trying to I'm experimenting still, but my thought with this is I want it to be simple. And this is either going to make sense and you're in or it's not for you. And that's fine. But what I don't like is the escalating cost of the cohorts, like I'm going through right a passage right now. It's the last one, but it was $4,000. And I applied for a scholarship and I got in for $500. And I was like, OK, I'll do this for $500.
I can't do it for four grand. And then I was like, well, I don't know. I just charge $500, you know, for the year. And then whoever wants to join can join. And I don't have to worry about trying to get as many sales as I can during the initial period. So that's the thought process there. Yeah, I like it. I like it. It's a good. I think it's a good way to do it. And if nothing else, you'll learn, right? I mean, you know, you'll learn from it. So.
All right. Well, let's let's jump into today's book, which is Meditations for mortals by Oliver Berkman. I didn't really know what this was when I picked it. And I feel like I owe you a little bit of an apology. No, no, this is so good. Because I'm thinking the same thing. I start reading this book and I thought this book is nothing like I thought it was going to be.
And it was the title for me. I thought it was meditation for mortals. It's meditations for mortals. And that S really changes the books. I'm so glad you said that. I'm sorry I cut you off, but I was so excited that you said that.
Well, the reason I said I think I owe you an apology is that this really isn't a great format for a bookworm book because it's essentially it's an Oliver Berkman book. And I really liked 4,000 weeks. I highly recommend people go read that one. And that there's a lot of the 4,000 weeks. A lot of those ideas show up in this one as well. But the way this one is formatted is it is essentially like 28, it's a 28 day personal study.
And I didn't know that when I picked it. I think the the quote unquote correct way to go through this book is probably one of these per day. Although the Amazon listing says you can do one a day or you could just do it in a couple of different sittings.
I did the couple different sittings. I do think it's probably better if you bite off one of these a day and then just kind of chew on it. But I don't know it's still still a cool book, but it's broken up into 4 different weeks, which are kind of the sections. And I feel like that's probably the best way to tackle this book. So week one is on being infinite week two is on taking action week three is on letting go week four is on showing up.
So if you are listening to this in a podcast player that supports chapters, those will be the chapters is those different sections. And then inside those different sections, I think we probably each pick one day with a key idea that we really want to talk about. Sound good. Sounds great.
Okay, so this is a pretty short book. There's lots of different chapters because each day is a chapter essentially. And I think it's still in like 160 pages, but a lot of those, you know, because there's so many chapters you have a couple sentences on the last page and then there's a whole bunch of blank space.
So there's not a whole lot here in terms of, you know, I got to, I got to get through a bunch of material. It's a very easy read, I would say, although as mentioned, we did it wrong. We probably should have taken more time with this. There's those four parts and then there's also an introduction at the very beginning and then an epilogue. So I think we probably jump in to the introduction here first, which is on the imperfect life.
There's a couple of quotes here. The one I really liked is things look shoot, I wrote this down wrong. I said things a book about how the world opens up once you realize you're never going to sort your life out. There we go. Change that in the mind. Yeah, that would actually make sense. Yeah. Which I think is the perfect introduction.
Yeah, which I think is the perfect introduction to this, which is why I wanted to call out the quote, I mean, on the tin, it's a 28 day guided whatever. It's not a course. It's not even like a daily reader. I don't know what you would call it, but I feel like this just sets the system.
Yeah, I think that's the perfect introduction to this, which is why I wanted to call out the quote, I mean, on the tin, it's a 28 day guided whatever. It's not a course. It's not even like a daily reader. I don't know what you would call it, but I feel like this just sets the stage really well. I think that's the best thing about how most entrepreneurs are just a walking anxiety disorder, harness for productivity. And I felt a little bit targeted by that. That's funny.
Yeah, but also I think the other thing I jetted down here, which is really important going into the rest of this is you have to take it as a given that you'll never get on top of everything. I've hosted a lot of stuff together because I had that exact same one I wanted to bring up to so keep going. Okay, well, I'll actually hand it off to you there because that's harkening back to 4,000 weeks a little bit. And I'm curious as to your perspective here with the imperfect life in the introduction.
Yeah, so what's really interesting to me on this is it takes a very defeatist start. And like not, I don't mean defeatist in like a give up on the world, kind of a defeatist way. But in this idea of like get rid of this thought that you can actually do some of the stuff that you want to do or that you can have this perfect life or you can do all the stuff. And here are the key words I would have for this.
You'll never get on top of everything imperfectionism is the outlook that understands when you give up on the unwinnable struggle, right? I mean, there are all these like it's a very negative opening section like this introduction is incredibly negative, but like not in a way that turns turn to me off from reading the rest of the book almost in like a refreshing way of like it wasn't self help motivation.
And wasn't this like raw raw syspoon ball like go out and slay the day, you know, blah blah blah. It was more or less like, all right, here's deal. You're not going to do this. You're never going to win. It's get rid of perfectionism. And then once you've accepted that, now let's take 28 days and think about, you know, like what what we can do in spite of this whole thing. So like in spite of might be the phrase that I come out to is like in spite of this being reality.
And then we get the 28 days. So it was a it was kind of a refreshing. I'm by no means like an overly negative person, but it's kind of refreshing take on on a way to look at, you know, not meditation because that's what I thought it was. But on this way of thinking about life and about productivity and about, you know, being successful.
So this is kind of a harkening to in 4,000 weeks, he talks about the cosmic insignificance theory. Have you heard me bring this up before I have. Yeah. Yeah. And every time I try to explain this to somebody, it sounds kind of depressing. But the whole idea behind the cosmic insignificance theory is that you have such a small part to play in the universe that what you do doesn't really matter.
It's sort of the idea behind memento mori also it's like remember you're going to die someday you're not not such a you're not so great there hot shot. And I actually built that a mental mori piece into my obsidian daily note. I see the percentage of my life that has has passed by on the average 80 year lifespan every single day when I journal, which freaks some people out.
But the he talks about in 4,000 weeks and he loads to it in this book to a little bit the idea that it's actually pretty comforting because now you don't have to put all this pressure on yourself to completely change the world. And maybe some people they don't really get that they don't think that's that big a deal like why don't you just chill out dude but that that's me.
That's me in a nutshell right there so when he when he said that in 4,000 weeks I was like I really needed to hear that yeah yeah. And he gets into it in this book a lot more which I appreciate the fact that doesn't mean you're not trying to do things doesn't mean that what you do doesn't matter at all. But it's sort of like you have to accept the fact that you are limited in the amount of impact that you can really have.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing I mean you could completely change somebody's world you just can't change everybody's life in the entire world probably. But yeah I don't want to get too far ahead of myself because he does kind of address that specific thing later on in the book. So let me let me hit on one thing we had a campus pastor when I was in college.
I don't understand people have a bunch of different world views but this is what made me think of is he would draw this line on the whiteboard or the chalkboard or the screen. He would talk about like our time on that line where the line is like in eternity and it's like God's perspective is this gigantic line. And then he'd come in with like the tiniest little dot and he'd be like and he'd like put the dot on there he'd be like that is your impact.
And that is like where you stand on God's eternal line and I was like oh dang like that is so such a small piece of that. And I got a got a same vibe here is just there wasn't the Christian the Christian aspect of it as well. So I liked I liked the approach to it. All right let's move into part one. Okay cool. So part one is really weak one and that is being finite.
And I don't know if you were to summarize this whole thing it's probably a lot like we were just talking about but how would you describe the whole week one. In a single sentence. I don't know I think it's I think setting is it setting expectations is that what I would say it's this idea of like let's look at the way the world thinks about this and then let's look at the reality of it or let's look at a different perspective on it.
So like in some of these turned to me away so I think about like day one title it's worse than you think you know what I mean it's like oh man that's incredibly it's incredibly negative. And then he talks about the the idea of the the kayak and the super yacht right like so I think about like I think about all these things. And like it it's basically like resetting the foundation for a way to think about life like I think that's what I would that's how I would summarize part one.
Okay yeah I like that and you brought up the kayak and the super yacht I mean we could talk about that specific thing too that that was day two and there's a whole bunch of those visuals that he gives you and he kind of eludes to against. Throughout this book that was a good one that I liked but the one that I wanted to call out was day five too much information.
There's a quote here from Idris Shah that says people today are in danger of drowning in information but because they have been taught that information is useful they are more willing to drown than they need be. And this that quote kind of feels like justification for I just got back as we're recording this I was in Boise last week recording videos for the PKM stack video course it's going to be part of life HQ. I'm going there Monday to record another one I'm the creativity flywheel.
But so I just record a whole bunch of videos on this PKM stack concept and it was really around like being intentional about the stuff that you you consume you can't collect everything that just feeds FOMO there's the answers out there somewhere really it's just let's find what's useful and get more on what we we have. But he has a way to describe to describe this in this chapter which I thought was was brilliant is treat your to read pile like a river not a bucket.
And this I I fallen into this with RSS I kind of felt like well I'm bad at RSS because I never can keep up with it I said all these things up and then I go look at it and and I get overwhelmed by the number of things there and I kind of always had this completionist attitude towards. RSS stuff because this is stuff I've chosen to subscribe to I should be listening to this I should be reading the same with podcasts I think.
And this is the best way I've heard this articulated where you don't have to complete all this. And the idea of the river I mean that was actually one of the videos that I record is be a be a river not a reservoir.
The whole idea of things is like flowing in front of you I think is really cool and it reminded me of there's a sushi place my wife and I go to and we never do the all you can eat but they they have an all you can eat and they have the chefs in the middle and their chop and the stuff up and they'll do the special request sometimes if it's if it's slow.
But essentially they just make things and they put them on these plates and the boats drive like we'll go by in the channel and you just pick the things off that you want and I was like that's the right approach to RSS. I love that idea. So I could not agree with you more that this was the one I wanted to bring up from day five.
And you know he's so you further that further that that statement says that is to say think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up that it's your job to empty but as a stream that flows past and I think about this to not only with read it later or podcasts or whatever it is.
But I started to think about this with email like I just can't keep up with all the email like I just can't do it and I understand is going to tie into a principle later on down the road that we're going to talk about later on in this episode I understand there's going to be consequences for that.
But like what I found is if I try to respond to every email that comes in and do it in the way that I would want to I like it bothers me I freak out like I am really stressful and really really anxious because I'm like I can never hit anyone zero.
I can never have a zero inbox and then as soon as I do it it fills back up again and like it's super stressful to me and I was like oh not just my my to read pile what if I do this with my email to yeah it's like ah beautiful with any sort of information input this is this is the right mindset because the other thing is to resist the urge to stockpile knowledge that's what people did with ever
note is they just stockpile these things and they stuck them in there I can find that again if I if I need it which I think is totally the wrong approach for reasons I get into the big cam step course. It's all it's all fresh in my mind right now but yeah you don't really need to collect more things you just need to make more out of the stuff that you've already got if you were able to make that one single change you feel a lot less stress and anxiety about how much information is
out there. Yep. Alright so let me go to my day my day was day three here and it might give this isn't how you want to do this I let me know but we both get the pick a day don't we? Yes go for it. Okay. Alright, cool. So my my day was day three day three heads of the title of you need you need only face the consequences and what I like about the
intention of this this whole day is basically like nobody's making you do anything. I love this almost picked this one I'm glad you picked it they never have been making you do anything you are making up the fact that you think they're making you do anything but what you need to understand is the choices you make have consequences and be okay with that.
Yeah right like and and I was like oh my goodness like what an interesting way to think about life like and I'll say one quote I mean I could list a bunch of them but it's like freedom isn't a matter of somehow wriggling free from the cost of your choice that's never an
option right it's it's basically just are you willing to pay the cost and I'm like that is such a good idea freedom is about being willing to pay the cost for doing what I want to do and I hadn't thought of it that way and I think that's a really it's a really fun way to think about it. Yeah you know it's interesting to me because I sort of went through this when I quit the day job I wrestled with this like well how can I quit my my day job I've got five kids at home I've
got family to feed I've got bills to pay and it's not that I was making a ton of money at the day job and had these golden handcuffs so to speak but yeah yeah I empathize with like the general advice you would get from some of the brush online personalities is well just quit your job you can do it
it's like no I can't yeah yeah and I had to work through that and Rich I went through if you're setting exercise kind of thought you know what is the worst case scenario what what if everything went wrong you know what what what what would we do and that kind of helped us work through it but this is the best way I've heard this articulated like yeah you are free to do whatever you want you just have to face the consequences and he also
said that the consequences aren't optional basically whatever choice you make there are going to be consequences because I think we can often get real stuck in what's familiar and what we know and what we're currently doing and we feel like there are no consequences if we just maintain our our current path but that was one of the things that was highlighted to me as I was thinking through the the process and should I quit my job the thing that
really got me to do it was we've got kids at home and they've all got this kind of entrepreneurial bent and we tell our kids because this is what good good parents do like you can do anything right whatever you put your mind to I mean there's limits there but you get the idea you want them to feel like they are capable and we want to infuse a growth mindset into our kids where if they fail
at something it doesn't mean that they're terrible human beings or they can't do something that just means you got to figure out a different way to to get what you want so this has kind of always been at the forefront of of our minds and I was thinking like well I tell my kids this I have to model it because more is going to be caught than is taught and if I'm telling them yeah go you know do your thing I guess a side note here it's easy to think like well I am let's just say over 40
so I wish I could be 18 again and I would start a blog and I would do all these things but my my time is past you know that's sort of the argument that happens in your head and I think like there maybe is a little bit of truth to that but it's not totally true either and so I had to fight
that you know I really just embrace the belief that you know if I really do believe these things that I am telling my kids then it's not too late for me I can make this happen and as you talked about in the last episode feel like it's taken a while but we're kind of there now so
it's a different conversation then you know a couple of episodes ago if we would have read this but that was the thing for me is like well if I'm going to teach my kids this mindset I really have to show them what it what it looks like and that was that was the thing that got me to
pull the trigger it's like I can't get to the end of my life and wonder you know what would have happened if I did that I would have I felt like if I if I didn't have the guts to do this right now it was sort of like well then everything that I've been saying is kind of a lie
yeah yeah it's like you really like what's that that's seen from Indiana Jones you know where he's got to step out into the the chasm is like now we find out what you really believe yeah yep I got you no I mean it's a matter of you know what you're dealing with there's opportunity
cost right like okay like like if you stay in the same path then there are opportunity cost to you but you don't often call those consequences you just think of those as like oh that's just the you know thing I'm going to give up but like there's 100% opportunity cost
there yep all right we ready we moved week two you want me to take week two for a minute go for it all right so week two is taking action and essentially what we're going to do now is we're into like kind of go from this okay we realized that our current status we realized
how we are we realized some of these details and now we're going to think about like how do we move forward right how do we actually do something so you get a lot of different the days here all around this idea of doing something or take you know I and it's called taking action but
like go to the shed the three hour rule rules that serve life you know all these things so my day in this one is day 12 and it's rules that serve life and he references Jerry Seinfeld and he references the process that you know Seinfeld would go through and what I what I like
about this is basically like he calls out the rule that people think Jerry Seinfeld lived by and then the actual rule that that makes sense he says a much better rule indeed one that I think more accurately reflect Seinfeld approach to his work is do things daily right just show
up and do stuff you know like and can I can I jump in real quickly because the Seinfeld strategy that you're talking about this is something that's prevalent in the productivity space and it's basically the story of how Seinfeld meets this young comic in the comic
and how can I become good and he's like well the way to become good is to write good material the way to get right good materials to write every day so get this big calendar put a big red ax on every day like that was one of the first things that I encountered when I
started studying productivity so people kind of hold up this thing is it's got a high like elevated rank in the productivity world but it was he mentions because he was talking to Seinfeld so this is like direct directly a direct source Seinfeld said that that was
a throwaway comment that he made and he forgot all about it he thought it wasn't that big a deal which is an interesting detail that you miss and all the other places that you will hear about the Seinfeld strategy yep so basically it's do things daily ish right like just keep
doing keep doing and then what the other one I like here is it's a real small phrase but it's like make concrete imperfect progress here and now make concrete imperfect progress here and now and what I like about this is I think a lot of times we get in our
own way that says oh well the context around me working right now isn't right or I'm just not in the mental space to do the work right now or I'm not going to do good works I'm just not going to do anything at all and like I think we make a lot of excuses
in terms of actually doing the work right and actually getting things done when if we really just sat down or stood up or do whatever was and like took the five minutes to work through that little bit of friction then everything would just start flowing like and it may not be great it may not be our best day our highest quality of writing or anything like that but at the same time we did something that day we created something that day and I know you have principles that tie right into
this that you you may want to unpack too but it's like I love this way of thinking about it in terms of show up daily ish don't let there's the other rule that says like don't let two days go so okay you miss one day don't miss two so like get back on the wagon you know the next time and I just really like this principle
so that's day 12. Yeah I love this principle too and again I almost picked this one but the other thing that I jotted down from this which I love the unsdated appeal of lost productivity of ice of lots of productivity of ice lies in the bewitching idea that there might be a rule or set of rules that
would force accomplishment to occur so essentially it's like if we dial in these these simple things which is why like the standard advice is just do these three simple things and you'll save an hour a day every day for the rest of your life like it's these little life hacks that's what is appealing to people but I like the fact that he takes the contrary and approach to that regarding doing things daily ish I guess the the way that I do this is I do
track some habits on my daily note and obsidian and I try to get to the point where I can check the box at the end of the day I can't always do it I've got the the chart so I can see the the chains but I think you're right that I have
gotten to the point where I'm not putting the pressure on myself to don't break the chain and like that's just this big thing that's hanging over me I would prefer to write every day if I don't write then I'm a little bit disappointed but I'm also not beating myself up I know that if I write more often than I don't write then I'm going to have material.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The one that I picked from this which probably just because I'm thinking about the life theme stuff but look for the life task the life task he mentions is something that your life is asking asking of you
so it's a little bit different than our approach to the the life theme but I like this this framing where the life task is really about not you know what do you want to get out of life but what is life asking of you it kind of reminds me of that that famous quote I forget which president said it but
don't ask you know what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country it's sort of that idea but I think there is something powerful here I think it is very much aligned with some of the stuff that we talk about in the life theme cohort so for example he mentions in this
chapter or this day that a life task is something that only you can do I do believe that your life theme is really tied into the things that you are uniquely positioned to do so like if you're going to talk about passion passion isn't doing what you love it's actually actually means to suffer so
you're going through some things but it's so important to you that it's worth making it happen so it's really like things that are important and things that suck and if you had a Venn diagram it would be you know the place where
that overlaps and I feel like you could also kind of take that Venn diagram approach and that place where it overlaps that sort of you could relabel that your duty in terms of the life task and I think if you are looking for that the fulfillment and the meaning and the purpose kind of come along for
the ride if you're able to to really narrow that that in now I don't think it's super simple and you probably have to try a bunch of stuff and you'll might be surprised at the things that really bring you life I mean that's the
whole part of the life theme process the very first thing we do is the moments of impact like when were the moments where you really came alive it's probably you know we've seen this a lot of people that we work with and that cohort they're probably things that were scary to you at the moment at the
moment but you went out and did it anyways and then afterwards you found oh actually that was really cool I think I want to do that again doesn't mean you're not terrified of it but it's worth it yeah can I so let me ask for clarification because I interpreted something differently and I don't know
so did does he say in here that the the life task is something only you can do or that it's something you can do or does he say both of those things because I grabbed it as like it's something you're actually able to do like even though
it's hard you actually can do it well the thing I jotted down was the line a life task is something that only you can do okay okay but also the very first thing I jotted down under this section was never mind what you want what does life want view yeah so I think there's probably a little bit of
overlap there I think the thing that that he's really hitting on here not saying explicitly but you know I mentioned the passion doesn't mean what a lot of people think it it means so the idea here is not look for the things that are fun but if you're looking for the things that only you can do you're finding these things and you're thinking to yourself or somebody should really do that but then you look around and you're like well no one else is in a better
position to do this than I am I may as well do that and those are the things that ultimately I think become meaningful those are the hard things so it does require you to have that a little bit of that sensitivity where it's like this is something that needs to be done nobody's doing this I'll raise my hand and I'll I'll do it obviously there's a caveat with that because you can't just you know assume all of the world's problems and try to fix them all that's very
much contrary to what he was talking about at the very beginning of the book but I think you get what I'm saying here yeah do all right all right should go to go to week three yep week three all right so week three is titled letting go and again seven different sections here the the one that I wanted to talk about is day 21 but I have a little bit of different reason for doing that so I'll let you go first here if you want what do you want to talk about from week
three so Mike and I both actually picked 21 and 21 has the title of what's an interruption now the reason why I picked what's an interruption is because lately and I don't know how long this has been it might be years like it might I've no idea how long this has been going on but there is this thing where I feel like oh I'm constantly being interrupted I'm constantly being interrupted I'm constantly been I'm trying to do a thing and I'm constantly being interrupted and
it's not by any specific thing it's kind of by everything and I start to think to myself well hold on right like I don't think everything else is the problem I think you are the problem like I think this is a this is a you thing you're
quarry and I'm like ah dead gone it it probably is a me thing like it's probably something that I have to work through and this one really made me think about like how do you live in a world where this stuff is going to happen and you don't treat it like an interruption but you treat it like part
of every day life and you treat it like this is the way the process works and how are you okay with that because like I put like right now I can tell you that I don't feel like I'm okay with it like I don't feel like I want to keep living in a world where I feel like I'm being interrupted but I think I'm the problem so I have to figure out what do I do about that yeah okay so the what you do about that I think there is a strategy you can take here so as I was
reading this I was remembering hyper focus by Chris Bailey and he's got a grid in that that book one of those like two by two grids it like kind of like that is an hour matrix yep and it was about dealing with distractions and
interruptions and I'm trying to do this from memory so forgive me if I get the labels wrong on the top so from left to right there were things that are annoying and then things that are fun and then on the Y-access and top to bottom there are things that you can control and things that you can't
control okay so hopefully that gives you a picture the things that you that that you can't control that's where the approach is simply if it's annoying you deal with it and you get back to what you were doing if it's something that you can control whether it's annoying or fun you really want to do what you can to set the boundaries so that that doesn't happen yeah but then the one that was kind of shocking to me was the things that you can't control but are kind of
fun just go enjoy them and I remember reading that thinking to myself because I was working at home having little kids that I'll just barge into my office it's like well I was writing and I was in in flow state and now like that's completely out the window because you wanted to play and I can be upset about that which actually means that it's going to take me longer to get back to what I was doing or I could just well I'm interrupted I may as well just go shoot hoops
for 15 minutes and then come back and pick it up again so hold on let me quote once your focus has already what your focus has been diverted once the child has burst into the room yeah or the anxious thought you know blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah don't fight that fact and I was like oh dang like that's really good yeah so that that grid that Chris Bailey talked about that really what what came up in the way that he was describing it here and I think there's
a lot of a lot of good stuff there the reason I called this one out and I might actually pick a different one now because I didn't realize that you would pick this one too but my talking point here comes from the very beginning and all I wrote was don't be talking bad about time boxing and I should say that I don't disagree completely with what he's what he's saying he's basically saying like don't hyper schedule a bunch of stuff and then get all bent out of shape when it
doesn't go exactly according to plan but when I'm talking about time boxing which I think is one of the most effective productivity strategies I've ever implemented but it has required me to get to the point where okay this is the intention it's never going to go exactly this way and that's completely fine and I've also over time gotten more and more loose with it so my blocks are bigger and it's more just like a couple of things I'm trying to get done throughout the
day as opposed to I got to figure out where all 12 of these tasks are going to gonna happen like that doesn't work so if that's what he's talking about a time boxing that I totally agree but time boxing in general I think is actually worthwhile or time blocking so well that's what changed time boxing for me too right because I it never resonated with me when it was super fixed and super structured but as soon as I said really what time boxing is it's a structured way
for me to plan and then by doing that planning process you know I'm more productive throughout the week than it actually is having the plan that I've checked everything off of that list it's like otherwise I'm just kind of going into it haphazard so I agree with you I could not agree with you more all right so did you want to pick another one for this week yeah I do want to just touch on one other thing which was day 20 set a quantity goal okay because this is
also something that I talk about a lot but he articulates it differently which I really appreciated he said that often the way to do the best work is to forget about the quality and the easiest way to do that is to focus on the
quantity instead there's I mean that makes a ton of sense when I presented at Max talk a few years ago I actually talked about the creativity flywheel piece and one of the things that I mentioned in there was that quantity produces quality and the slide that everybody liked the best was where I've
got like three different poop emoji and then the diamond okay and I really do believe that that if you want to get good at something really what you need to do is not be a perfectionist about it but you need a whole bunch of feedback loops yep and the thing that stood out to me as an example of this was when I first started podcasting the very first podcast that I did I remember Zach and I recorded like a demo episode for the productivity show before it came out
and it was like a 30 minute podcast and it took me like five hours to edit it because I said um probably about a thousand times and when I went back to edit it I was trying to get out every single imperfection so I was trying to edit out every arm and then I remember getting done with it and being like this wasn't sound natural and at that point I was like you just got to get better at speaking dude so I went and joined a toast masters group and that helped out a
ton but I look like I don't go back and I don't listen to those old episodes and I don't go back and I don't read things that I wrote a long time ago and even like some of the video courses that I made a long time ago I have a real hard time going back and watching them again because I just
it's very obvious to me how much I've learned and grown since I did that and it's painful to go back and watch the early work so I guess the thing that I would echo here is just keep going and just keep growing don't worry about producing something good just produce something he talks about focus
on focusing on quantity is the thing that overpowers perfectionism and that was exactly what I needed several years ago having gone through it I can tell you this is really good advice there were there are two aspects of this
that I've been taught elsewhere in life that I think are really really great to my doctor advisor basically when we would write a paper when we'd write anything she would no matter what stage of the writing process we were in it would come back and have read all over every aspect of it and you're
thinking like this is the fifth revision of this like why is it still read everywhere like at some point we have to stop doing this and then you know at one point she to she explains to us she's like she's like writing is revision right it's 100% revision and she's like you're never done revising you just hit a deadline and like those were the two the two concepts that I took away from that is one writing is revision I'm just going to keep writing I'm going
to write I'm going to write I'm going to write I'm going to write and then I'm going to revise and revise and revise and revise and revise and revise and then the other thing is like I'm never done doing that I just hit a deadline where I actually have to hit submit and therefore it's going to be as good as it's going to be when I hit when I hit that submit deadline and that has really changed the way I think about a lot of different things don't try like I mean it's not that
you're not trying to hit a goal it's almost like you're trying to get above a floor yeah realizing that you'll never get to the top of the ceiling because that the ceiling keeps going up as you get better the ceiling goes up further and and that's okay like that's a that's a good way to live life
yeah which kind of gets into the whole idea of goals versus versus habits but yeah so I think that's all I got to say about that though anything else you want to say before you move on to week four nope I'm ready to go to week four
okay so week four is titled showing up and this is kind of where he's focuses on doing the actual work and I like this one I think this is a real effective way to end it and he sort of is taught he's addressing maybe some concerns that you've had from the very beginning about being finite
and nothing I do really matters this is kind of where he's like well it does matter it just doesn't matter maybe as much as you thought it did prior to this this whole journey but the one that I really wanted to talk about from here although I could probably talk about any of these I really
like this this this whole section but day 23 is how to start from sanity and I think this is something I have fallen into where you get into this thing where you're chasing sanity and you and this is sort of coupled with that that goal mindset where once I achieve this goal once I do this
thing once I have this then everything else gets easier and things settle down a little bit so with the with the goals you're kind of are attaching this sanity to once you get across the finish line or once you get the ball into the end zone and once you achieve that goal never
produces the result that you think it's going to you just see the next step now and you realize that the goal posts have moved and you have to keep going so chasing sanity is sort of a pointless endeavor and he says you can't strive for sanity you have to start there which he defines sanity
as groundedness even in times of unpleasantness so this actually ties to task management as well so we mentioned the RSS being the river and I really liked that that visual the other visual I really really liked comes from this section where he says treat your to do list as a menu
and I was like yes this is it because I again like I've been working on these scripts and recording these videos on like the lifehq stuff all the task management my my philosophy with the essential list and every time I talk about this is the the brain and it's giving me the suggestions but I'm
making my own list and I'm choosing three things that I'm going to add to that people are like but but those things are due and I never really could articulate exactly how I was able to just like disconnect from that it's like well yeah the every I might have a whole bunch of things that I do but
the reality is I'm not going to get to all that stuff I have to be picky about the things that I'm going to engage with and I'm not trying to optimize for urgency I'm trying to optimize for importance what's the really important thing for me to do today and embracing my limits
and my my limited time I limit resources and the analogy of the to do list is a menu is perfect because there's all these different things that are presented before you and you could pick any of these that are associated with all these different projects that's essentially what my task dashboard is
in lifehq that's the menu right and then the the things that I am choosing you know by by forcing myself to just pick a couple of things it's sort of like you get an appetizer you get a main course you get a dessert but you're not going to you're not going to bite off more than you can chew
you may like 12 different things on the menu but you can't eat them all so yeah I love this analogy and I was curious if it resonated with you too yeah I was going to call this one out but since since you called this one I get to call my other one from this section okay so in the last
I don't know in the last two or three years I have fallen into something that he describes really really well basically I'll get like a year and a half two years of like email and then I'm like okay I'm never going to get back to the beginning of that and by this time like whatever was written
you know a year and a half or two years ago it doesn't matter anymore like it really cares so I create a folder that says like 2024 2025 right because I work in academic school years and I take all those emails and I dump them into that folder because I know I can search for things if I need them
so therefore if I need to get to it I can if I need to find that random email from a year and a half ago I can but it clears up my inbox and I and I don't have all that weight you know it's sitting on me the same thing happens with my desktop because I use my desktop as a working
interface right like files go there that I'm working on in real time but then I'll forget to go off and clear it and like you know so then there's like a million files all stacked on top each other on the desktop well every so often you just create a new folder you put them together you drag and you drop all those files in there and you're like I can find the stuff if I need to you know if I ever need to do down the road like and there's this just happens in so many areas
of my life to where it's like okay all of that craft that I've built up you know over the last year and a half if I just pile that up and then I put it in a box somewhere and I've not had many instances maybe even any any instances where that's come back to bite me and say oh you really
should have kept all of those emails all those thousand emails because of that one and it's like no it just hasn't happened yeah and he describes this really really well in this chapter and I like I like it a lot so I want to give you maybe a suggestion I'll share something that I do to
battle the the craft not with the emails specifically but with the desktop okay so most people have a computer desktop and the put files on there so they can drag them into other places I don't do that the place that I put things that I can drag them other places is actually an app called drop zone it's a shelf app but there's an app called desktop curtain have you heard of this I have not heard of this basically it hides all the icons in your desktop
I'm going to look at this so that's what I do and I initially came across this app because I had a couple things on it that I don't want to didn't want to move yet when I was doing screencasts and now I just leave this running all the time and the desktop is essentially like a folder like my to review folder the things that they sit on the desktop until I I actually process them but because desktop curtain is always running it just hides all those files so it's not cluttering
when I'm looking at my computer this is a great tip I'm going to have to look into this tip this is a great tip see their great tip or my secret shame no no no no because I mean it I've learned about myself over the over the many many years now I'm not going to stop doing this yeah fun of me
this you know I've looked at it and felt bad about it and then I'm like this is just how I operate like this is how my computer works and I'm okay with it like I at this point it's just like I'm I'm stopping fighting it I'm not going to fight it anymore
all right so are we ready to go to my day next yeah let's do it all right so my day is day 24 and it's called Scruffy Hospitality and the reason why I like Scruffy Hospitality and I was thinking through this is I grew up in a Scruffy Hospitality home so this feels very like home to me
so it means you're not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends right it means that like basically you're okay with who you are and that things exist in a certain way and it doesn't mean that you're like you don't do anything
it just means you don't try to reach perfectionism before you go out and like serve others and share with others and I really love this idea and what I really like about what he brings into it later is he talks about the fact that you're being generous towards these other people too
because like they walk into your house and the house is the best example of this but like they walk into your house and like everything's put together it looks like nobody's lived there and it's like we've got four kids we've got four boys trust me people live in our house right like
the the banisters are going to be scuffed you know the what is the thing on the bottom where the floor meets the wall you know what I'm talking about right the floorboards the floorboard like like that stuff is going to be scuffed because kids are throwing toys at it you know like matchbox cars
and stuff so you can't live like this perfect life and when people walk in and they go oh okay normal people live here like this is a this is a house where normal people live and it's not some house where you know it's like you're walking around in like bubble or like egg shells and stuff and I'm
like this is this is the way my brain works yeah I won't tell you that this is exactly the way my home works so Mike you can read between the lines on this one but what I will tell you is this is the way my brain works and I really like this idea well I think that's kind of the whole point
of this particular day is he calls out that you know if you're going to have people over then you want everything to be perfect but if you are going over to somebody's house and you see imperfection you actually feel better about that then so it's sort of like this double standard where you want
things to not be like completely buttoned up for other people you want to you want things to be authentic and real when you go somewhere else but then when people come to your house you want everything buttoned up and perfect which just the way that he describes it as he does so often
throughout this book it's just kind of like yeah what the heck yeah exactly but you don't you don't live that way like so yeah because I walk into somebody's house in so like Mike if I came over to your house and it looked like normal people lived there and there were toys on the floor and there
was like homework setting on the table and all this stuff I would think oh yeah like these are real people like these are normal people there's a couple dishes in the sink but there's not you know they're not slabs you know kind of a kind of a thing and it's like oh I'm in a home like I'm not in like some fancy facility that where they have servants walking around like taking care of everything I mean that's why yeah yeah exactly I should actually call
out one other thing from the day that that I picked if you're cool with this before we go to the vlog he mentions a book which I think is very intriguing just based on the title which is anti-time management by Richie Norton you're pumping your fist because I wanted to do the same thing I wanted
to call it out and I actually was going to maybe think about it as a book where book for the first so well I mean I technically don't have a book yet for my next one if you look at the notion document I forgot to fill that out so across that bridge and we get to it but I ordered this one already so awesome I called it out because I wanted to read it for sure cool all right shall we talk about the epilogue let's do it epilogue okay so the epilogue is just an effective way to end this I think he's
tying everything together but it's it's not you know this is everything you need to know and now do these these 12 things which seems like that's sort of the formula for a lot of these productivity books is I'm going to give you one topic for each of these chapters and then I'm just going to recap them all in a bunch of single statements at the end to really drive my points home so you really get this the first thing he says in the epilogue is that the journey
is never complete and it's certainly not going to be done in four weeks so it's like hey thanks for coming along on this journey with me but by the way this is just beginning you get a lot more work to do which I don't know how that makes you feel but this is very in line with what I know of
Oliver Bergman and I was like of course he's going to end it this way and it feels very authentic and real which I actually appreciate he quotes a guy in here and he says pick a trait that bothers you the most right and then ask yourself like how do you feel if that bugs you and he literally says it might dog you until the end of your days and I'm thinking myself what a terrible way to think about this like think about the thing that bothers you and say
it's never going away you're going to do that forever until you die like you're going to do this right and and basically he's based he's just saying like hey you could be like all upset about this and you could be all whiny about this and then you could just be like well if that happens it's not that big of a deal like everything is going to be okay and I need to stop letting this bother me and I was like man what a what a different perspective on life
yeah so one of the things that he that I jotted down from this is that in some ways you may never change your life at all which I think is sort of addressing I shouldn't say addressing it's sort of like challenging this belief behind why a lot of people read these types of books is I am going to
read this book because this guru has this system which is going to fix this pain point that I have and I think there's some good in that specifically the addressing the pain points I think like that's actually pretty good advice look for books that are attempting to solve a problem that you are
facing I think that's actually that that's a good way to a good filter for picking books to read but I think the other side of that is no single system is going to just fix everything and this is sort of something that I've learned over the hundreds of books that I've read as part of this bookworm
process both of the books for the podcast and also all the getbooks is you have to pick and choose the individual things from each book that resonate with you and figure out how that fits in your own life you can't just copy paste somebody's system which going all the way back to the very first
bookworm book was getting things done by David Allen and this is the issue that everybody has with getting things done is it is this prescriptive system you buy 43 folders you stick them in a filing cabinet and now everything has a
place and everything just clicks and first couple weeks people are doing stuff like yeah this really works and then eventually it just becomes too much and all this doesn't work at all the truth is somewhere in the middle there's some good ideas here that you figure out you have to figure out how to
apply for yourself so I don't know I mean I know Oliver Bergman well enough at this point because I've read a couple of his books that I knew he was going to kind of take the contrarian approach to this and I don't think that you can't make change by reading books I think you can change quite a
bit from reading these books but there's something valuable about recognizing that you may read the book you may understand some things you may try some things they may not work and you may not change at all from that whole process and learning to be okay with that is is a little bit difficult
sometimes but I think it's important you I don't have anything else from the Apple log mic so I'm good to start wrapping it up okay well I got I got a couple more things I'll just real briefly touch on he mentions that our limitations actually make fresh starts impossible I'd never really thought
about this before and I feel like again this is a little bit of a contrarian take but sort of there's some there's an element of truth that I completely agree with in this as well where the fresh start thing that really just reminds me of like the annual New Year's resolutions this is the year I'm
going to make fresh start and those never work my approach to that has been the personal retreat process where I do a personal retreat every quarter and I I'm not making a fresh start with that though so I feel like that the term fresh start this is very carefully chosen and probably is central to this argument yeah you probably can't make a complete fresh start that doesn't mean that you can't change certain things you just can't change everything and so
the fresh start that's kind of like the big sweeping change I think the better approach here is the small you know I'm already doing this thing and I'm tweaking this habit a little bit change some routines and that's ultimately going to produce the results that I'm looking for but the the whole like
fresh start the whole annual goal setting those dates are completely arbitrary so the last thing that he mentions here is that each moment represents a choice to be made so it's not like January 1st came and went you missed your opportunity to set goals this year and achieve something you have the
moment you have the opportunity at any given moment to make the choice and the way that he says this kind of implicit I think in here is that any one choice is not more important than any other choice and I think there's some
some truth to that I don't know there's a lot of choices that are being made and you are the sum total total of the choices that you've you've made so we just need to get better at at making better choices but I also don't think they're all exactly the same you know the choice to to leave my job or
not was more significant than the choice of what I'm what am I going to eat for lunch today yeah so recognize that that's not like that's not what he's saying here either but I just in the course of the conversation I feel like
that's important call up all right so I got for the epilogue you ready move on I am okay so next is action items and I actually have to grab mine from my outline here and I'm jotting down the timecode so if you're good with it why don't you go first okay so I only had one and
I'm trying to okay it's from the interruption one so I'm trying to figure what chapter that was Earth but that was it's day 21 so mine is I want to try to actively rethink interruptions and I want to try to like ingrain this into my daily activities right so I think all of this is going to look like
from an action item standpoint is I'm in the middle of working I'm in the middle of doing something my kid busts into the room and all I want to do is not think interruption you know what I mean like I want to think like okay engage with your child and then get back to work or I'm in the office at work and I'm working on the lesson prep and a student walks in right and I don't think interruption I think help that student right like be hospitable help that student
and then get back to your work afterwards and if I can in you know a couple weeks a month or whatever it might be if I can like reframe that to be like this is life and you don't get this perfect little cocoon of you know focus thought with your non-learical music in the background you know like if I can think that that's a win like that's a win on this action item for me so that's my only one that I'm going to take away from this book what about yours Mike
all right well I've actually got two of them well of the first one is actually related to a previous action item so this is sort of long term follow up but from story worthy I talked about how I wanted to start capturing those stories and I've done that a couple of times but one of the things that he mentioned in this book and let me find the specific spot this comes from I think it's day 19 a good time or a good story so basically everything that happens
to you is either a good time or a good story and I want to recognize the things that don't go my way the quote unquote bad things I want to start recognizing oh there's a story here and I'm hoping that by because there are those those things that that happen that I get frustrated about and that's
really what I'm looking for with this is that frustration trigger that actually causing me to think about what is the the story that I can capture from from this moment that's that's happening right now that's the first one and then the second one is from the day 23 how to start from sanity where
sanity being groundedness the action item here is to pay yourself first with your time and I sort of already started doing this the goal with this one I think we talked about this a little bit in the pro show because I got the crazy new studio set up and then I've been going to the co working space
and doing the writing there because it's a better environment for that that's how I see that playing out is me going to the co working space which talked about the coffee maker and things like that that's because I want to get there early and I wanted the stuff there to make the coffee when I get
there as opposed to making it at home waking people up and then just dragging out being my being able to get into the office I want to be able to go there do my thing lunchtime comes now you know whatever happens happens I'm going to go home and record some videos I'm going to do whatever
that's the the goal with that that's what I mean by pay yourself first with your your time the thing that I want to really just kind of focus on with that is the writing that is the place where the writing happens if I end up going there early paying myself first and then falling into
admin mode that is a failure in my opinion so that's not what I'm going for with this kind of specifically I want that that place and that environment to kind of be for writing and the creative process and I feel like if I could just do that for a couple of hours every single day he
talks about that in here too we didn't talk about that when I think it was maybe taking action week two about the three hours the three hours is all you're going to get some real deep creative work well if I can get there by eight do my three creative hours take a break in the middle for a
cup of coffee I can still be done by noon exactly exactly so those are mine awesome okay style and rating your book you start yeah it's hard to to rate this one just based on the format of it and I don't know if that's just me not being able to get over the fact that I picked
like a daily reader for book which is a terrible idea okay it's not you I'm struggling with the same thing yeah so the stuff that's in here is really good a lot of the stuff that's in here is I'm not going to say a rehash of 4,000 weeks but it is he has talked about these things before I actually
got a lot out of reading this after reading 4,000 weeks he lose 4,000 weeks a couple times but I feel like at this point he's had more time and more experience and so he's sort of gone through a process of distilling these ideas down and so when he talks about him again in this book doesn't
read like the same sort of thing it real it reads fresh but it's also very much in alignment with the material from from that book man I don't know how to how to rate this I think if I was doing this myself I would tend to rate this a little bit lower just based on the 4 week 28 day format I will
say that the way we worked through the outline I think was was cool and I got a lot out of the conversation I think that probably bumped it up a little bit in in my estimation I also absolutely love 4,000 weeks I really like Oliver Berkman I don't think I can rate this a 5 star book though just
based on the format I think this is I definitely would recommend this one I think everyone should pick this one up if you are interested in bookworm at all I mean this is going to speak to a lot of the topics that we talk about but as we mentioned throughout this episode he presents things in a different way than most other people in the space and that is very refreshing I like Oliver Berkman's tone it's almost like I'm a productivity guy but I'm going to
be sarcastic and make fun of it a little bit yeah yeah which I I appreciate I think that's that's that's needed in in this space so I'm going to rate it at four stars I'm kind of curious where you land on this and that's just my own you know I'm not doing half stars anymore I think you know if you
look at the five star books that we have have read even the most recent one with with good work it's it's not quite to that level but it's almost not the books fault it's like it's not trying to be that it's a more approachable let me just give you a bunch of things to think about as opposed to let me completely change your world yeah yeah and I think that's I think that's a good thing you know that's that's not a that's not really an argument could be made
that that's not a reason to to dock at a star you could make the opposite argument that's actually a reason to give it another star so but I really do it I really do like this book I think I think people should pick it up and it's a really easy read I would recommend you probably read through it the way that it's designed to be read not the way that we did it so a day at a time go through it and really marinate on the the ideas that are are in here but a lot
of this stuff is not you know brand new transformational never thought of it that way before but definitely add some some context and some commentary for a lot of the things that I have been chewing on just based on all the other productivity books that we've read and really I'm glad that we took the time to go through this one all right so I said earlier I came into this one thinking it was a very different book right I thought it was meditation for mortals
and he was going to talk to us about meditation and quickly realized that there was meditations for mortals and it was very different than what I thought it was going to be but what I'll I'll say from that is I really like this book so I have read 4,000 weeks before I came in with a positive view of
Berkman and in his style and the content that he produces I thought it was I thought it was good I thought it lived up to you know the expectation that I had coming in from from one of his books I would wholeheartedly agree with you that if if somebody's going to read this do it in the way that he suggests you read it do it as a four week book do one day at a time I think it'll it'll be a better book it'll sorry you'll have a better experience with the book doing it
that way I think the things that he talks about are very relevant there are a few caveats where like I just didn't resonate as much with one of the days right then I was just like oh well you know that day was fine but I don't really care like I could never read that again and be be okay but then there were other days where I was like man that that's a good one I need to remember that and like reread that later on down the road just to kind of you know rehash that point
when it becomes relevant for me I thought this one was a fun one to talk about even though we read it in a way that it wasn't meant to be like it was it was a fun one to break down because the ideas were very distinct in like you know day by day so you could actually get to those individual ideas but at the same time they were bundled in a in what I thought was a really authentic and kind of reasonable way even though he was probably trying to get it seven of them you
know wrapped up into a week you know kind of a thing but I didn't think it felt forced which was which was really good all right so now we get to the rating I think so I'm going to rate this book four stars I feel strongly that if we have read it in 28 days the way it was designed I think I'd rated a four and a half I don't think this book gets to a five for me like it's good it's not that it's bad or or anything like that I just don't think it raises to the level
of the books that I've thought were five stars or the takeaways that I've gotten from from other books this one was more of a confirming things that I thought about and in a lot of times expressing them more clearly than I've expressed them in my own head so that's what stands a four and a half star
book from a five star book and then the other half a half a star is probably our fault right like in the way that we chose in the way that we chose to read it so that's probably not fair but at the same time this is our rating seeking and it's our show so we get to we get to do it we're gonna do it so hopefully hopefully people don't read that and think like oh four star book you know less good it's more of four star book that's because it's meant to be read in a certain way
but overall I'd I'd definitely recommend this to people especially people who are I'm gonna say this and hopefully it doesn't offend people especially people who are like more type A more gold driven more perfectionist type people I think this would be a really really good book for them to just have a different perspective to think through and they may hate it they may not resonate with it but at the same time I think it'd be a really good read for them to like just kind
of see a different a different what a different but well articulated way of thinking so that's that's where my rating goes yeah I think this might be the only double four book that I would absolutely unequivocally recommend to absolutely anybody that's interesting that's
that's an interesting you're kind of like the baseball stats guy right like where you can find a stat for anything my well I don't know that that's completely true I have to look back to the catalog but I agree with you the he he had directly addresses the entrepreneurs that you were describing at
the beginning of the book so those are the people who need this the most I would argue and I think I'm probably one of them so yeah well there's a lot that I resonated with in this book too so I'm with you on that cool so let's put meditations or mortals on the shelf what is next Corey so the next book is called free time lose the busy work love the business by Jenny Blake and Mike this is one that you recommended that I stole from you and I'm happy to
steal it it actually interestingly enough all of her Berkman endorses this book so he's he's one of the people that yeah so he's one of the people that endorses this book and it's basically a book about time and a book about the
importance of time and then how like free time plays into that you get into this idea she's gonna walk us through this three-stage free time framework which I'm interested to see how that goes but she is co-creator of Google's career guru coaching program so interesting background interesting
context for a book it's basically not about being lazy or about not doing work it's about rethinking about your time and and how that that goes into it so our next book is free time lose the busy work love the business by Jenny Blake pick that up if you're reading along with us Mike how about you what's two books from now I'm gonna go ahead and pick the one that you were excited about the anti-time management by Richie Norton I have heard of Richie Norton before I've
never actually read anything that he has written I know I have another Richie Norton book in my house somewhere but the whole idea of the anti-time management I just think that at the very least that's gonna be a really fun conversation reclaim your time and revolutionize your results with the power of time tipping who interesting yep time tipping sounds interesting you got any gap books so I started a gap book last time it's called just do something I'm
gonna keep doing that one I got about halfway through it so I'm gonna finish that one in this gap period okay I probably will not get to a gap book I didn't even pick up my gap book from last time and I'm gonna be gone all next week I'm gonna be recording more videos and then I'm going to a conference so I probably will read something but I don't know what it's going to be yet and it might just be free time awesome we'll see awesome all right well thank you for listening and
thank you specifically to the Bookworm Pro supporters if you want to become a Bookworm Pro supporter help us keep the lights on that would be very much appreciated you can go to patreon.com slash bookworm FM and for seven bucks a month you can support the show and you get a couple of bonuses you get access to a bootleg feed which gets uploaded right after we get done recording so that's there's no editing in this bootleg episode you get to hear me stop the
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so again if you want to support the show you can do that patreon.com slash bookworm FM for seven dollars a month thank you all and if you're reading along with us let's pick up free time lose the busy work of the business by Jenny Blake and we'll talk to you all next time