234: Intentional Friction

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mr. Mike Schmitz. How are you today? I'm doing great, Mr. David Sparks. How are you? I have missed podcasting with you. I feel like it's been because of schedules and whatnot. We got ahead and then we got a little behind and we're getting caught up and it's kind of nice talking to you, buddy.

Agreed. And I'm very excited about the topic we're going to talk about today. This is something that's been on my mind for quite a while. And me too. It's funny. We were both kind of talking about this before we hit the record button today. I've just been thinking. lately about the idea of optimization and fast like a lot of the stuff we talk about in the tech world and you know in just kind of modern productivity discussions

It's always about how can I do it faster? But when should we not be solving for fast? And that's something we're going to tackle today. All right. Ready to dive into it? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So I think the place to start here really is to have a brief discussion about systems because I think... that systems are everywhere and a lot of times we don't notice them the things that happen to us feel like they're random but they're

really more often than not, they're the result of the systems that are in our lives. And I remember this phrase, can't remember where I heard it, but it really stuck with me that our lives are made up of both independent and interdependent. So the systems function on their own, but they also influence other systems in our lives. And all systems have three parts. There's an input, what goes into the system.

there's the the process the the parts of the the workflow and then there's the uh the output so what comes out of the system the output is the the thing that people see And it's easy to look at the output and say, I didn't want this output. This is a negative output. This result that I got, I don't like this. I want to change this. But you can't just...

hope for a better output because a lot of times these systems, they work the way that they're designed about 99% of the time. So if you really want to improve the output. the result of the system, you kind of have to take a step back. You have to look at the beginning part of this. You have to look at what am I really feeding into the system, and then what are the parts of the workflow that the...

the information that I feed into this system, for example, what does it go through before I get that end result? Yeah, I think one of the things about systems is the word implies intentionality. When you hear about systems, you're like, well, I don't have a system for that. And often systems arise spontaneously if you don't bring intentionality. And I think that is something in my mind.

that you need to wrap your head around is you are constantly making systems. And a lot of times if you're getting unsatisfactory results, it's because of the lack of intentionality you put into the system to begin with. exactly yeah so the uh the you can design you can live your life by design or by default and i think a lot of us myself included

There are different times in our lives or even different circumstances, probably even currently, where I take my eye off of the system and I just go through the motions. And you have to be looking at the... the the system periodically at least and ask yourself is this still functioning in the way that it should is it still serving the the purposes for which it was designed and then giving yourself permission

to change the the system if it's not in alignment with your vision and your your values the default i think is that the systems in your life produce the the outputs and you just react to those outputs which is really the whole idea behind the title of this episode on intentional friction is that

When we feel a little bit overwhelmed, we feel like, how can I just get a little bit more breathing room? How can I make this just a little bit more efficient? I mean, this is how I got into productivity. i was working with the family business and i was in charge of a development team that had people working all over the world and kind of my first experience with this you know i'm getting notifications after work people are

posting work to be reviewed by the next day, but I've got a smartphone at home and I'm getting the notifications and I catch myself responding to those and working, you know, when I'm supposed to be home with my family. And I wasn't. paying attention to it just sort of happened and then once i had the realization i'm like this isn't okay i got to put up some some boundaries um but the the thing that i was feeling that caused me to get to that moment of clarity was like it's just too much

And the failed approach I tried was, well, I'll just get more productive. I'll get the apps. I'll implement GTD.

i'll do all of these things so i can do my work more efficiently i'll put all the information in the right bucket so i'll have the 43 folders everything will be in projects everything will have next steps you know and your reward for getting work done more efficiently is is often more work to do i discovered that the the hard way the hamster wheel just continues to spin faster and so efficiency is not the thing that we should be

optimizing for or to borrow the phrase you mentioned at the beginning you know we're not solving for speed because that just creates a situation where we end up going faster than we uh than we can control and so the the solution i guess is

this concept of intentional friction. Friction is when things rub together. It causes systems to slow down. Now, that can be good and it can be bad. I think the default... is that productivity you know you should do more you should do it faster you should crank more widgets and the whole the whole uh reason for focused is to push back on that it doesn't mean that you know

efficiency is always bad that's really what i wanted to talk about today is when that friction you know is beneficial and then when that friction is actually a bad thing and deciding for yourself you know where do i apply friction where do i remove friction in these systems in my life. Yeah, if you're listening to the show, there's a part of you that does believe in the myth of speed, that it's always better to go faster on all this stuff.

And I think I had that belief for a long time. And it takes a little bit of rewiring to accept that not always does it make sense to go fast. To me, it's related to kind of process and result, and sometimes a little sand in the gears makes a better product, depending on what you're working on.

Yeah, exactly. And then also, you know, the piece of this, which really kind of opened my eyes to the fact that there are these systems and then... when you apply friction strategically in certain places, it can have a positive benefit, was when I was trying to create on the regular and I kind of did this experiment. where I had this theory if I read more books, I would have more and better ideas, and that would eventually make it easier for me to create.

which was blog posts, which was video courses, which was podcasts, a lot of the same types of things that I do today. So I started going to the public library and I started. getting all of these books and I would carry a book around with me whenever I would go somewhere. I did a lot of reading when I was sitting at the music store waiting for my kids at piano lessons.

And that was a moment where I typically would have just picked up my phone and scrolled through the endless feeds, dipped into the infinity pools. And instead, I would read a couple pages here, a couple pages there. Did that consistently. And lo and behold, I changed the input. I didn't even actually change anything else about the system. Over time, I changed the process and how I took my book notes and things like that. But I did notice...

within a couple of weeks, the improvement in the output. And when I had to sit down and write something because I had these blog posts that I had to write every so often, I had the ideas, whereas before it would... I'd sit down, I got to write something and I have no idea what I'm going to write about simply by changing the inputs. And I would argue adding some intentional friction to the default.

activity of picking up the phone, putting up some boundaries, you know, which made it easier for me to do the desired activity and harder to do the thing that was undesirable for me in that moment. That had a very positive impact on my creative life. So maybe the idea of bringing some friction in can help. And I think both of us would agree on that. That's the argument of this episode, really. But it also depends on what...

area of your life you're working on. I think there are certain points where friction makes more sense than others. Speed still is beneficial in some ways. But let's start with the idea of where friction can help. Yeah, there's a couple that I just jotted down here in the outline.

But I think one of the best examples that I have of friction being a good thing is when I am doing my daily planning. So I have this weird... ritual where I have all my tasks and projects inside of a digital task manager, but I use that as the brain and that just makes suggestions for the things that I am actually going to put.

on my list. The list is the thing that I am going to work off of throughout the day. And that is actually using a completely different medium. And we've talked about this in episodes. We probably have whole episodes devoted to this, this topic. But actually using my fancy fountain pens and making my time block plan for the day and selecting the three things that I am going to work on, putting those as my most important tasks on the side of that page.

slotting them into my calendar and then writing those three things on a note card, propping that up on my desk. That whole process takes about 10 minutes. It's not a ton of time, but it is significantly... slower and it takes longer you could argue it's much more inefficient in the moment than just opening up the task manager using the metadata and getting a curated list of hey here are the things that you should do today

So the reason that I think this is good friction is that I have fallen into that trap where you just put things into the task manager and then you look at the list for today. And it's got 15 things on it. And the minute that you open it, you immediately feel overwhelmed. You immediately feel behind. All of your motivation is gone. The rest of the day is a complete slog.

and you're not looking forward to anything that you're going to do. You're just trying to muscle through it. And ultimately, I think that means that the work that you do is of lesser quality, and also you get less of it done. motivation is is really powerful and so that daily planning using an analog system for that and even though you know there are limiting it to three tasks so that's not a lot you know i could probably select more things on any

given day and actually get more things done for that one day. But I know that that's kind of stealing from tomorrow then if I overload today. So I have this system set up which applies the friction. Instead of me just cranking out the tasks and the projects, it forces me to go a little bit slower. And what that does is it means that I'm a little bit more intentional about the things that I decide to do.

Yeah, I have a similar practice, and I think the extra analog step really is beneficial. I've thought a lot about it because it seems so counterintuitive, like you said. If you're using a digital task manager, you already have all this stuff written down. So what is the point of spending even just 10 minutes writing it down? And I think this is where

we're talking about the sand in it gears. I think in addition to the benefits you were talking about, I just think the process of, you know, committing to it with a pencil, you know, looking at it there in front of you all day, there's just... That is a clear example to me of where slowing down allows that coding to enter the very slow processor between my two ears. And it just makes it easier for me to...

to focus on what needs to get done today and not worry about the rest of it. There's a physical separation between my list of everything that needs to be done and the stuff that I'm just worried about today. Yeah, and the thing that makes that work is you have a step in between where you decide what is actually going to get done. It's tempting, I feel, to offload that decision making to machines, which is why I don't like the idea of AI in my task manager.

I don't want the computer telling me what to do. I feel like I've been there, fallen for that before. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And there's something about just deciding for yourself what is actually worth doing in the given moment. I guess the term I'm looking for is ownership. You have to maintain ownership of the process. I think that the AI discussion I want to have later, because I think this does tie into...

one of the reasons why this is on my mind right now. But I've been doing an experiment. I just shared it with you in the notes where, because I've got this whiteboard in my studio that I don't use very often. And so I started this in quarter two. But what I do is I put in it on the top. I just write down my goals for the quarter.

And underneath that, I write down the goals or kind of plans for each week of the current month. And then underneath that, at the end of each day when I'm doing my shutdown, I write down just a list of tasks to finish that day. like the one I'm sharing with you is today. So you'll see that I've got focused in Mac power users recording, but I've also got some things I want to do today. And it's not three. I think I've got seven listed here.

But I find that's one more kind of like slowing down the process, writing it down. In order to check something off, I have to get out of my chair and walk over to the whiteboard, take a look at it. see what I want to do next. This is kind of partly as a result of our discussion with Paul Lumens, but also just one more way for me to slow down the daily task management. And I find that really useful.

Yeah, so slowing down the daily task management is definitely a place where I would argue friction can be good. Any other areas you want to discuss? One that is very clear for me is... journaling and reflection like and this also kind of ties into the general discussion of ai and how efficient you can make things like this but but i find that when i really have to think something through

quite often the best way for me to do it is really slow with paper and pencil. And that's just a lesson that I continue to learn. That's actually the context for me realizing that... journaling is something i definitely don't want to make efficient i want to make it slow and ponderous i think i agree with you although uh i i've been experimenting a little bit with just

talking through things and audio processing has never been something i felt like i was good at i never felt like it worked for me but i feel like i've had some success with it lately and i think that that could be that could be helpful in the area of reflection and journaling it's not i think exactly what you're describing here though and i do have a very specific journaling workflow which is

not me just rambling and thinking through things. I do think that when you force yourself to sit down... you eliminate all the other distractions and really you just process what has happened or you force yourself to to think through things and decide you know what you what you think about these these things think about what what happened that is That is a very beneficial practice, and I can definitely see where friction would be good in that scenario. Yeah, and it dictated...

A dictated memo to yourself can be a starting point to that. But I think a common thread to all of this is that the friction is best when the real work is happening between your ears. You know, when you're really... Thinking through things, trying to speed bump that using technology usually means that you do less of the thinking between your ears. And that's a problem.

And even though we've got these great devices that are getting smarter and smarter every day, and with the rise of artificial intelligence, which is just getting started, I think it's going to be very tempting for us to offload that thinking work. And I think you're missing out if you do that. So this is something you should be really focused on. Yeah, and actually that leads to maybe implicit point, but I want to just call it out specifically.

where when you need to focus on something when the real value that gets added is that you are applying your full attention to something that is definitely a place where you should look to add some additional friction So that something that is maybe not as important, you've pre-decided that it's going to be harder for those types of things to reach you. So in the outline, I kind of just labeled this as minimizing distractions.

Because I don't know how to make this a little bit more specific, but I think that it's going to be different for everybody in their different workflows. But the real value to be gleaned from this is really thinking about. what are the vehicles where distractions typically come to me? And then how do I make it a little bit harder for that information to reach me? So for example, really basic example.

maybe for some people who are listening to this, but if you find yourself getting pulled into email at work, maybe you should not have your email app.

opened in the background maybe you shouldn't have those those dings you know even if you feel like you're able to push past those whenever you get them if something's really important it still does something in your brain and so Just closing the door on that for a short period of time so you can focus on the thing that's in front of you can make a huge difference in how effective you are with that particular task.

The real question to be asked here really is what are you optimizing for? And if you're not optimizing for something, you're really optimizing for nothing. And I feel like, you know, we've talked about multitasking and attention residue and having your attention being split a bunch of different directions means you're not able to fully engage with the thing and ultimately you're not going to do it.

very well. So just thinking through ahead of time how you can prevent some of that stuff, I feel like is important. And then kind of related to that, you know, if the same thing applies to, I would say, learning or... or synthesizing information if you're really trying to glean a topic you don't want to just put on a youtube video in the background and play it at 2x speed same thing with with podcasts which is why i don't really listen to

podcasts as a form of education and I want to learn things it's really entertainment and if I happen to learn something that's kind of the cherry on top I try to pick podcasts and conversations that I feel are going to be beneficial but if i'm really wanting to learn something i'm going to grab a physical book and i'm going to wrestle with it i'm going to force myself to take those crazy mind node notes because even though it is more work as i

go through the the book i'm investing the time to read this thing anyways i may as well engage with the material and get as much out of it as i i possibly can i feel like if you if you force yourself to uh to engage with the material at a deeper level you can't help but retain more of it and it kind of it sticks with you and has an impact even if you don't see it right away the whole idea like the syntopical reading and the things that you read

You get that information, and if you really understand it, then you start to subconsciously even compare it against other things that you've read, other things that you've learned in different areas, and you sort of like... work through all this stuff and how it all fits together how it all ties together and decide for yourself what you actually think about things that's that's where the the real uh the real magic happens but

It's really not just, you know, how do I get through this course as fast as I can, or how do I get through this book as fast as I can, but it's really how much can I actually get out of the material I'm choosing to engage with here. Yeah, I really think the whole productivity racket is wired for speed. And so much of what people advise and tell you is ways to do things faster. And, you know, I've done that as well, because I think there are some things that.

can be faster. But I really think that the stuff that really matters, the speed is not the measure. And the other piece of that is with the rise of technology, artificial intelligence. Speed is increasingly the currency of that stuff. So people are always going to be thinking about how it can do things faster. But I think the whole premise of this show is that...

Give some thought to the parts of your life, the things you do, that speed should not be the factor. And I think we've identified a few of them already. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash focus to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code focused.

Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need. to claim your domain, to showcase your offerings with a professional website, to grow your brand, and to get paid all in one place.

I've been a Squarespace user since they first started, and I'll tell you the reason why is because they really do give you a full tool set for a very affordable price. They're constantly upgrading the service, adding new features, so... Whatever you need to do with your business, Squarespace has got you covered. People often wonder when they start a new website about SEO and the dark science of all that. Well, you don't have to worry about it with Squarespace.

Nobody wants to build a beautiful website only for zero people to see it, and every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto-generated sitemap, and more. So people find your site through search engine results. And here's one a lot of people don't realize. With Squarespace you can do video.

With Squarespace, you can upload video content, organize your video library, and showcase your content on a beautiful video page. You can even sell access to your video library by adding a paywall to your account. It's perfect for online courses, exclusive tutorials, and premium workshops. If you haven't checked out Squarespace in a while, you should. Head over to squarespace.com slash focused for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Once again, that's squarespace.com. with the offer code FOCUS to get that 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the FOCUS podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the FOCUS podcast and Olive Relay.

All right, Mike. So we've talked about the benefits of slowing down, adding some friction, but friction can still be a bad thing, right? Well... It can be a bad thing, yeah. I mean, really, there are places where you want to eliminate the friction because it gets in the way of the pieces of your system working. And it's not always... just the things that really should be done more efficiently. So one of the prime examples, I think, for me is with the idea development.

You've probably heard from from GTD, you know, on the paper, off the mind, because if you don't write it down, you're going to forget about that idea and it may never come back to you again. So having a simple way, whether it's a. field notes notebook in your back pocket or drafts on your iphone where you have an idea and you have a place where you can capture those things quickly and easily i would argue you want as little friction

possible in that part of the process now it's interesting for me is that I've got this whole this whole system for how I actually develop these ideas and make make things out of the ideas that I've I've captured I've curated cultivated connect and then ultimately i create something with i call that my creative creativity flywheel and so um there's different parts of that flywheel where i actually want friction like the the curate phase you know when i'm

choosing the high quality ideas that i really want to noodle on i don't want a constant bombardment of hey new shiny but when i am capturing these ideas in the first place, I want to make sure that there is zero friction or as little friction as possible there. Because if I tell myself I'll...

well, it's a good idea, I'll write about that when I get home or something and I don't have a record of it, it's never going to happen. Yeah, I think you're right. There are automated... speed tasks that make a lot of sense um we have a lot of information thrown at us in modern the modern world a lot more than our parents did and ways to track and find that information

you know, indexing it, all that stuff. These are things computers are good at. And adding speed to that makes perfect sense. It's not going to really help you do the thinking part, having everything. having you manually index everything. Well, I guess somebody might argue with me that that could help, but I think the bang for the buck is not there. So there are definitely parts of this where I'm...

also in favor of using the automation tools and whatever's available to me to take what I would call the donkey work out of this stuff and allowing me to focus on the thinking part. Yeah. And the thinking part. really you know that's a little bit broader than i intended to go with the you know when friction is is bad you know really it's just the the capturing the ideas um recognizing really

What are the good inputs? And then opening the door for those. And then also recognizing what are the bad inputs and closing the door for those. That's really this whole thing in a... in a nutshell but some of the specific examples i feel maybe are helpful as you're trying to think through where do i want to establish those boundaries another

place where I think friction is bad is when you do need to go look something up. Now, this is a tricky one for me because a lot of the work I do in regards to PKM and personal knowledge management? How am I actually working with the notes that I keep inside of my Obsidian Vault? One of the things I kind of rail against is this.

filing cabinet approach where you stick things in this archive and then you just go dig them up when you have the thought and you can retrieve those things. I actually have a YouTube video. It'll be out by the time this.

this goes uh goes live on the difference between note taking and note making which you know i'm not the one who came up with with all this stuff but i still think this is an important topic and uh a lot of people have a history myself included of just sticking a whole bunch of things inside of of evernote you know i've captured these things i can always go back and get them later

And I recognize that, you know, I don't always do that. I'm missing out on a lot of the value in that specific part of my workflow. But that doesn't mean that there's not a need to just stick things in an archive and then be able to go look them up. I think... prime example would be tax time you know you've got all of the the receipts that you've collected you need to give them to your your accountant you know being able to go

Collect all those things and then upload them to the website. That's really important. And that's not the only type of information that you may need to go back and retrieve if you've got, you know, manuals or something in your Dev and Think database. And you need to...

go see how to reprogram something. That's an example of when looking up that information can be valuable, but there's a difference between just looking up information and actually working with... your uh your ideas and so the information that comes in it's text-based maybe it looks the same you have to be able to decide no this is actually this thing and this is something else this belongs in this type of tool this belongs in something else

And I'm going to optimize those tools and I'm going to set up my systems so that the correct flow happens. I want to change the defaults, essentially. I want to be able to follow this process if I'm developing an idea inside of Obsidian. And I want to limit the additional distractions that are going to come from that thing. But when I'm in Devon thinking I'm trying to look something up, I want to be able to find that thing as quick as humanly possible. And so.

Being able to dig that up when I need it in that particular case, friction is a bad thing. Yeah, it gets complicated. I still feel like a lot of it has to do with, for me, just the stuff where I want to really bring intentionality and thoughtfulness to what I'm doing is when I need to slow down. And creating systems that optimize for speed under those circumstances makes the actual product I make worse. I was just thinking, so I'm working, over the summer I'm doing this.

course with um with kids i do the productivity field guide for kids every summer the second well second summer i'm doing it and i needed to write an email to them and i was struggling with it at the keyboard went to bed woke up the next morning and i had a really good idea what i wanted to say and i wrote it out longhand before i then transcribed it typed it and sent it you know off to them which is not

optimized for speed but it's optimized for you know trying to get a voice to talk to teenagers about stuff like this and that is an example i guess just just to give an example of where i i put friction into the system Yeah. So I think that can be beneficial, but it's not always a bad thing to have friction. I think, or I don't think it's always a good thing to have friction when you are creating something.

So as I mentioned, I got this creativity flywheel framework, which the last part of that is the create phase. And that is where historically, if I just jumped to that without.

actually developing the ideas that's where the friction is good then I struggle because I'm not really clear on what I want to say so it feels like an example that you shared that's really what you're doing there is you're trying to figure out what you want to say and then for me when I actually do the writing that is if I've done the prep work I actually do not want friction in that writing process

I want a minimal text interface. I want some focus music playing in the background. I want to create this environment where it's easy for the words to flow. And for me, that happens to be when I am at my desk and I'm using my fancy keyboard. But I know that you've done a lot of like dictation and things when you're out for a walk or something. And that could be another way of just.

eliminating the friction you know I have this thing I want to say what is the easiest way for me to say it and to get it out so that it can be turned into a newsletter, a video script, a blog post. You know, when it's time to actually do the writing, I feel like at that point, you want to eliminate as much friction as possible.

Yeah. Writing is weird because I feel like automation can really benefit writing with the setup, but when it comes to dragging the cursor across the screen, that's when you have to slow down. let the human take over, right? And I guess it just depends on what part of it you're working on. But I've done all those things. I like to use dictation. I do like to use different formats. And a lot of times I'm using technology in order to make that possible.

Yeah. Yeah. And I would argue that at that point, really what you are doing is you are using the tool that provides the least amount of friction for that last part of the step. It's it can't be the it can't be the thing that is helping you figure out what you actually want to say. You know, the clarity does not come from efficiency. But once you have that, then.

You want to eliminate the friction and you want to be able to do the thing as efficiently as possible, I guess. But it's really also not just cranking out X number of... of words there is a a quality aspect to this as well which maybe we'll get into in the next section when we talk about ai and friction but

One other thing that is maybe obvious but is worth calling out here, if you've got a big, difficult task or project that you're procrastinating on, you've got to ask yourself why. And a lot of times, just speaking for myself, I think the thing is going to be bigger and harder than it really is.

And so a lot of the productivity advice that's out there is really just these like mental hacks to get you to just sit down and do the thing like the Pomodoro method, for example. I'm only going to do this for 25 minutes. I can do this for. 25 minutes even though this thing i think is going to take me eight hours to do i can commit to just doing this for 25 minutes and we'll see if i make any progress and then by the time you've done with 25 minutes

oh my gosh, I got the thing done, right? So we don't see things clearly. And so at that point, whatever you can do to eliminate the friction to just get started with something.

is really important. And so that's where a lot of the tactics, I think, can come into play. But you don't want to just jump from tactic to tactic to tactic and just crank as many widgets as you can during the day either. You have to... at some point decide what is actually worth doing but then when it's time to do the thing and you find yourself find yourself procrastinating on it and it's it's hard to actually just sit down and engage with the the task or the project

that's because there's friction there. And the question you should be asking is, well, what is the thing that I'm dreading about this? How can I eliminate that friction and just get going? And I would argue that like... For getting started, quite often what happens is you create an artificial block. I guess you could call it friction if you want, but you give yourself some reason not to start. And that is very different.

than the type of friction we're talking about that we want to introduce when we're doing difficult thinking work. So, yeah, just do the task. You're right. Just get started. But, you know, also, I'm reading... and laura lecumpte's book again and it's like a perfectly legitimate response is to ask yourself why you keep doing that on that project too maybe that's not even a project you should be working on if it's that hard to get started yeah she uh

I actually just listened to a podcast episode. She was on Nathan Berry's podcast and she talked a little bit about the different experiments that she's run in her creator business. And she brought up the... youtube experiment and how she was going to do that for a couple of months and she did it and the youtube channel was successful but she hated doing it and just decided you know this isn't something that i want to continue to invest in so

The big takeaway from that conversation for me was to consider that emotional data when you're trying to decide whether something is worth doing as well. It can't just all be based on, well.

What is the output that's going to come from this? There's some internal things to consider there as well. Now, we've been teasing this idea of artificial intelligence and friction throughout the episode because... I think we're at a bit of an inflection point on this where suddenly methods to remove friction on things where we think friction is good are available to us. And I think this is another way to look at this whole artificial intelligence kind of disruption we're in the middle of.

To me, the more I think about it, my reaction is to jealously guard the friction, good friction tasks of planning, journaling, things like that, that I want to. continue to hold the reins of as a human and this is something that we have to intentionally do because right now i there are ai tools available to me right now they can do my daily planning for me they can do my journaling for me you know i can just throw a few simple sentences at it and it can write a beautiful journal entry for me and

That is not what I want. And I think all of us kind of need to make that decision for ourselves at this point. And the lines are getting blurred. Yes, yes, they are. Interesting. that we're talking about this part right now, because by the time this goes live, I'll have already presented it, but I'm working on a Mac stock presentation called think different using AI as a creative co-pilot.

And it's all really thinking through what is the positive way I define positive myself here. You know, what are the, the, the good ways to use this technology to. to get the output that i want how do i apply it in my own workflows add it to my existing systems in a way where it eliminates friction in

certain places, but also to your point, I don't want to eliminate the friction in other places. And I absolutely do not want... ai just cranking out blog posts on on topics there are tools out there that will do this and this is kind of where i draw the line you know where you can upload samples in your voice and then say give me a blog post on on this topic

And I have no interest in that. I feel like that is, I don't know where I heard the term, but AI slop, like that, that's what I consider that. And maybe that's a naive perspective and in, you know. certain number of months or years, AI will be a better writer and video producer and podcaster than I am. I guess that's a that's a possibility. But I don't want it to do that. However, it's really useful if I

Tell it, you know, this is my business. This is what I talk about. These are the people I'm trying to help. And this is these are some of my, you know, core beliefs. Now, give me a bunch of ideas. And you know what? I've done this sort of thing where I've got those prompts and it spits back all the ideas and it gives me 20 different ideas. 18 of them are garbage. One of them is OK. And one of them I'm like, hey, actually, there's something there.

And then I'll take it and I'll put it through my human process and I'll refine it. And what comes out on the other end is something that I'm actually proud of. So yeah, I agree. It's easy to just... automate these things that should never be automated. But also I think as a brainstorming partner, it's really effective. And we've talked about that in other episodes. So I don't know how deep you want to actually.

go into, uh, into that topic. But, but for me, that's kind of where I'm drawing the lines is if I can, you know, have a conversation with, with you and whether that's an actual person or an AI agent.

then that can help me kind of crystallize my thoughts on things and it will help me to more clearly communicate what I want to in the piece of content that I'm going to create. I've even actually been messing around lately with... the grok ai model because i've heard that it's it's good for this is in terms of like arguing with it now you may think like why do you actually want more frustration in your life why would you want to argue with and

an ai agent but um just using a prompt like work-life balance is a myth argue with me you know and then it's like well i can what why do you say that and then you know you make your your case like well i can see why you say that but i don't think it's it's actually a myth and this is why you know

Having that conversation, it's kind of like, you know, discussing it with a with a friend. And by the time you're you're done with the conversation, you have a much more clear idea of the piece that you. you want to create. So if I know that I want to talk about something, but I really don't know what I want to say yet, having those conversations with the AI tools, that's where it's really helpful for me.

Yeah, and what you're doing, if you listen to yourself, is you're creating friction with AI. AI becomes an agent of friction. It's arguing with you. It's not accepting what you're telling it. That can be good. Like an example for me is in the journaling thing, because I do dictate a lot of journal entries with my voice.

it's very easy for me to throw that at an AI and say, okay, correct any grammar, don't change the voice, you know, just get the grammar right. So that's the first step. That is a friction-removing step that I appreciate because... Grammar checking to me is not something I want to spend my time on. All right, next step. Correct the grammar and then ask me five to ten reflective questions on this. All right. I've just added friction. It's adding, asking me, it's reading it for me and asking me.

difficult questions based on what i've said you know when you journaled about this relationship with that person are you giving them a fair shake are you you know that kind of stuff um For me, even more particular, I like to include the Stoic virtues and the idea of arete and have it ask me questions about those. Great. Now, I say, okay, now I'm going to answer.

The questions you've asked me, I want to take all of that and combine it into an entry. That is where I hit the brakes because then suddenly I've removed the friction of writing the journal entry and the journal entry wasn't even written by me anymore. And that's a problem. So, you know, it's like we all got to find where we're comfortable with this stuff. And I find that when I really want to do something thoughtfully.

I don't mind using the AI to make it harder on me to ask difficult questions. But I want to own each word at the end. And that's just kind of my take on it at this point in time. You mentioned earlier, well, in a few years, this stuff will be better at writing this stuff than we are. And it can perfectly imitate your voice. But then at the same point, it wouldn't be my voice. And even if it could do a better job.

I mean, part of this whole reason we do this is the process, the transformative effect on us as humans. When we go through the process, you got to go through the process. I don't think that solves the problem either, that it's better. So this is something to think about as we go forward. And it's just interesting that both Mike and I independently have been mulling over this idea of intentional friction.

not solving for speed. I'd like you, dear listener, to think about that in your life. What are the areas that you've been solving for speed that you need to stop doing that on? This episode of Focused is brought to you by Incogni. Almost everyone experiences those annoying robocalls from time to time, and if you ever wondered how they keep getting your number, the answer is data brokers.

And that's where Incogni comes in. They reach out to data brokers on your behalf, request your personal data removal, and deal with any objections from the other side. It's a pretty sweet deal and a huge time saver. In fact, Incogni estimates on my dashboard that they have saved me over 131 hours based on how long it would take to submit each one of these requests myself.

And honestly, if I didn't have Incogni, I probably wouldn't take the time to manually request all of these removals, even though I hate the idea of my information being publicly available online. It just seems like too much of a bother. In the busyness of the day-to-day, I just don't have time to deal with this, and that's why Incogni is so great. In fact, the sign-up process is really simple, only takes a couple of minutes, and then they start doing the work for you.

It was one of the things that I was a little bit nervous about before I tried it, but now that I've gone through the process, I can tell you it really is painless. Another thing I really like about Incogni is that while they do have an individual plan, which will send repeated automated removal requests to data brokers and people's search sites,

They also have a family and friends plan, so you can add up to four loved ones on your annual subscription to help keep their personal information off of Data Broker and people's search sites. And if you want to know where things are at, you like to stay up to date with the progress, a user-friendly dashboard provides updates on the status of all of those removal requests for you. So visit incogni.com

and secure your data today. Sign up now and enjoy a 30-day money-back guarantee. So protect your privacy with Incogni and experience peace of mind knowing your personal information is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, via the link in the show notes and you'll get 60% off of your annual plan. Check it out now, incognite.com slash focused. Our thanks to Incognite for their support of the FOCUS podcast and all of Relay.

Shiny new objects. Mike, you've been buying stuff. What's up? Well, it's kind of your fault. Okay. And Jason Snell, you had Jason on an episode of Mac Power Users a while back. And he mentioned the Insta360 Link cameras. Yeah. And I have two of them now. Okay. Shortly after that, there was a big summer sale. on their their website and they were like 50 off so i got them and i have them hooked up to a video switcher which took a little bit of uh finagling but i have um yeah i have

So the YouTube setup in my long skinny office where I record my videos. And then I have a desk on the other side now, which is an L-shaped desk. And that's actually where I do a lot of my writing. And one of the Insta360 link cameras.

is on a little bit of a boom arm and hangs down in front of the monitor a little bit so it it forces the the eye contact for like zoom calls and then the other one is set up on the l of the desk for a top-down shot if i'm gonna sketch something out and i love these little cameras they're 4k cameras they're what is it pan tilt zoom the ptz yeah so um they they move around hence the the name i guess it's the 360 you can point them just about anywhere there's a

auto tracking feature which I don't really use although I'm thinking through like maybe that would be cool to set that up and then I could go over to the whiteboard and record a video of me diagramming something on the whiteboard. But these cameras are great. The video quality is much higher than I thought it would be. And would highly recommend these for anyone looking for a...

a quality webcam. But get the Insta360 link, not the Link 2. The Link is like a little square base. It's got a little... arm on it, and then it's got the tiny little head that moves in a bunch of different directions. The Link 2 looks different. It's more rectangular. And these... squarish insta insta 360 link cameras are the the ones that jason told me like you want to get these not the the link twos and uh he was right i love these

I am, you know, we just had father's day and my kids got me an analog watch. Nice. Yeah. I have not worn an analog watch in a long time. So I've been having a good time wearing that. And I am not. Giving up on my Apple Watch, but I feel like there's times in my life where it'd be kind of nice to have something that is completely incapable of bothering me on my wrist.

So I've been kind of just figuring out where this fits in my life. But it's kind of fun having a bit of less technology on my wrist. At this point, I'm not sure I could go back to wearing an analog watch. I love my Apple watch. I use the fitness stuff all the time on it, though.

I'm sure there's ways around it, but... Well, I mean, there's other fitness trackers, but honestly, I do wear the Apple Watch when I go to... to do workout type stuff and you know like i said i'm just figuring it out but it's it is kind of fun and uh it's a nice little watch and uh another thing to uh

to allow me to have a little less digital in my life so i get it do you uh do you have to wind it is it battery operated or is it one of those no this one winds itself when you wear it but you know if i leave it in the drawer for a week i'll probably have to wind it sure nice what are you reading these days mike

I am reading Lean Learning by Pat Flynn. People who are listening to this podcast probably know Pat Flynn from his smart passive income brand. He's one of the... the OG internet creators, I would argue. He has an interesting story. You know, he started off, he was in architecture school and was creating these study guides and sold them on online. And that was kind of his.

foray into the the creator economy and then from there he uh taught people how to how to do that sort of thing um but more recently what he's known for actually i should ask you do you know more recently what he's known for no i don't Okay, I didn't think so. He basically decided, I'm going to start another YouTube channel from scratch, and it's going to be about Pokemon. And it was something that he could do with his son.

And he grew that channel to millions of subscribers to the point where people are paying him to go to Ford Field. in uh in michigan during the the thanksgiving football game you know at halftime he's on the field opening up a pack of pokemon cards and i have to admit that i know nothing about pokemon so this is like a a world i i am not familiar with

But what's interesting to me is how he decided to do something so drastically different and he did it successfully. So Lean Learning is basically a book about how he... built both of those channels uh he gave a talk at craft and commerce and he kind of shared some of the the takeaways from the different you know experiments and things that he was running and the different takeaways

he got from different videos and different types of videos that he was creating. And the whole idea behind the book is that we tend to accumulate much more knowledge than we actually need to get started doing the thing we want to do successfully and i feel like he is personally attacking me with that description that's totally me I tend to over-research and over-research and only when I have completely figured something out do I actually do it. And yeah, I feel like this book is about...

how people learn effectively, but it's not written by the, you know, the academic person who typically writes these kinds of books. And so far, it's a breath of fresh air. I really enjoy this book. I'll have to check it out. I'm rereading, as I mentioned earlier, Tiny Experiments. In the Max Berkey Labs, we have a book club, and we're doing Tiny Experiments right now. We're going to be doing a couple meetups.

to discuss the book actually later this week. So I'm just rereading it for the second time. You know, we had her on the show. This is a great book. I feel like this is, this is one of the better. books of this ilk that i've read in a long time so good on her yeah so i got to meet her at uh at craft and commerce she was one of the the keynote speakers and she did an amazing job but even before that

I was there for... Jay Klaus has his lab community, and they did a live in-person event a couple of days before Craft & Commerce. And as part of that, Jay had a couple of... of, uh, special guests that he didn't announce ahead of time for like these fireside chats. Yeah. Um, one of them was and Laura the koof and, uh, was able to talk to her then. And, um, she's just super smart, super friendly.

one of the nicest people you will ever meet. I'm really glad that her book is taking off. I did a video review of that book, by the way, recently, and she ended up finding it. sharing it and reached out to me and said, you know, thanks for the, this is an incredible summary of the book. I'll put a link to that video and the show notes that people are, are interested in it, but.

I'm really happy to see the success that she's having. Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Yeah. And if you haven't read that book yet, check it out. Agreed. All right. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus. Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Incogni. If you'd like to get the ad-free extended version of the show, sign up for DeepFocus. You can do that at relay.fm slash focus.

We'd love to have you on board. Membership helps keep the lights on around here. Today on Deep Focus, Mike and I are going to be talking about his new improved writing workflows and some very cool obsidian trickery he's up to. So I'm looking forward to getting into that. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.