Focused - 103: Systems & Challenges

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

David tweaks his shutdown routine and preps for his sabbatical, Mike unpacks his hybrid productivity system, and they each have their own productivity challenge to complete.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I am doing great. I'm excited to talk about systems, and we got some new stuff that we want to announce. Yeah, and we've got some new segments we're adding to the show, kind of make it fun. We've got some new segments we're adding to the show, kind of make it fun. And we are also going to be joining in with the rest of Relay with special benefits for our members.

And the plan for the Focus podcast is Mike and I are going to host once a month a Zoom call that's going to have up to 100 people in it. So we haven't figured out the exact logistics yet. But if you're a member, you're going to get an email or something like that and be able to join the Zoom call. And we can talk focused along with the members on a video Zoom call once a month. That'll be fun. I remember when we did that a while back when we were helping set up some of the mastermind groups. And it was really cool. Some of the discussions that came from that. So I'm looking forward to doing that again. Yeah, me too.

Me too. I think it'll be fun. And just, you know, one more step along the journey. So if you're interested, you can sign up for a focused membership right at relay.fm slash focused and they've got the buttons right there. You can sign up yearly or monthly and we'd really appreciate your support. You know, times are changing a little bit with the way people make money in podcasts, and we would definitely like to increase our membership if we can, but we want to bring you value, and I think that monthly call would be a lot of fun.

Definitely. Okay, so one of the things we were talking about is new and shiny. Mike and I have calls with each other pretty regularly, and quite often we drift into new and shiny. Mike and I have calls with each other pretty regularly and quite often we drift into new and shiny. We thought it might be fun to start off the show once in a while just sharing our admission that we don't think about focus all the time and we do have new and shiny objects in our lives. That's true, yeah. So the idea behind this shiny new object segment is really just to share what has our attention right now. And that might be something that has created positive change. It might be something that we are just distracted by. And we want to share basically the fact that

we don't have this stuff all figured out and we're fellow travelers on this journey. And instead of pretending that it doesn't happen, we just want to be transparent and share what has our attention right now. And it could be anything. It could be, we talked in the last episode with Brad Doughty about a lot of different pens. So I've had some shiny new objects that were pens recently. It could be a new app. It could be a new habit, a new system, a new toy, that were pens recently. It could be a new app. It could be a new habit, a new system, a new toy.

You know, whatever is just fun for you right now. All right. For me, well, there's two really. The puppy is the shiny new object that is an infinity pool of attention. Yeah. It's like a fuzzy new object. Oh, yeah.

I mean, so she's been with us like four months now, but it's still a puppy and we're still dealing with that. And I'm kind of the primary caregiver. So that is a shiny new object with no end in sight, but we're having a good time. last episode where we spent the whole episode talking about physical paper and pens well about a week ago actually a little less than a week ago i was refilling the pen remember how i made the big deal i got the one pen i love i dropped it on the tile floor and the nib is acting a little funny i think i gotta get it fixed my pen is broken oh no and um and i have a couple other fountain pens but i thought you know what i'm

just and then you know we're watching the apple wwc and they're bragging about everything they've done with apple notes i'm like you know what i'm just gonna take a break from the paper and spend a week uh using apple notes and i used apple notes for like 10 minutes and realized it's not any good for the kind of stuff i do and i like the paper better but then i thought well let me just go over and try good notes because i actually scan all of my diary entries to good notes. So what if I just put a piece of grid paper on good notes and wrote in there? And I found I kind of like it, Mike. It's not so bad. No, I, you know, I like some of the, you know, the tools that allow you to draw straight lines. I like the fact that I don't have to carry a second thing with me. If I have my iPad and my Apple Pencil, that's enough. Usually I'm carrying the iPad, Apple

Pencil, and my notebook. So I'm not promising I'm going to stick with this at all. And I've already got a way to print them out and punch them and put them in my Levenger binder. But just for a week or so, that's a new and shiny thing. I'm just doing all my journaling digitally. And with the Apple Pencil, I'm not typing. I'm not dictating. I'm not taking advantage of really much of the technology. Just like I explained in last week's episode, I think the process of slowing down and writing really makes a difference. But you can do that digitally just as well as you can do it on a piece of paper with a pencil.

So I'm trying that for a week. And I'm sure I'll have thoughts on it at some point. But that's the little bit of tech in my life right now that's a different thing and has my attention. I totally get why that would be appealing. That's kind of where I started with GoodNotes and planning my day using a custom template inside of that application. a custom template inside of that application. And I don't think there's anything that would really prevent me from going back to that other than I just really enjoy my pen and paper at the moment.

Now, you've done something with your iPad, though, where you're not using a stock Apple Pencil on the screen. You have one of those paper-like type protectors to make it feel a little bit more analog. Yes, I do. And I wish I had known you were going to ask me that because I don't remember the name of it, but I will look it up and put it in the show notes. It is not the paper like it's, but I got it off Amazon.

It applies very easily and it does give a slight bit of texture as you're writing on it that does make it feel a little bit more like written on paper. And it's funny because between the, you know, rubber-ish nib on the Apple Pencil and whatever the surfaces of this thing have applied, it still writes really smoothly. One of the advantages I do like of the digital over the analog is that I can make the writing entry large. The way GoodNotes works, you can actually make it so I'm printing much larger than the actual print is on the page, and it shrinks it down for you.

It's just kind of a digital trick. But that's kind of cool. But the argument I've always made is I spend so much time with digital things that there is something nice about reverting to paper. And that still may be true for me right now. It is truly new and shiny, and it's just something I'm playing with to see how it works, and I'll report more on that in the future.

But that's a little thing going on in my life. Sounds good. How about you? I've got a new Sonos Move. I got an upgrade deal when I downloaded the updated Sonos app. Recently, they switched, and there's an S1 controller now, which is all of the old stuff, and the S2 is the new thing. And that's the one that they're going to be supporting.

I've got a whole bunch of Sonos stuff at my house. So I switched over to the new one, and then when I opened up the new one, I realized that the really old Play 5 that we have in our basement is no longer supported. Because it's no longer supported, I could get, I think it was 30% off of something new on the store. So I went and looked at what was available. I didn't want to just on the store. So I went and looked at what was available. I didn't want to just get a replacement Play 5. It's really just kind of like a rec room. And I saw this Sonos Move, which is basically like a Sonos version of a Bluetooth speaker. It's got a stand that it can sit in to charge the battery, but then you can pick it up and you can take it outside, which I have been doing a lot lately. I got it initially because we've got a basketball hoop,

and the idea was that kids could grab that, go play music, whatever, while they're playing basketball. But I have found that I like to grab this and go out on the back deck with my MacBook Pro, and that is kind of my preferred way to get work done right now. It's really nice being outside. I've got music that sounds really good. And I just put on something instrumental and start writing and creating. And we've talked in the past about the music you play while you work. Has that changed at all? It has a little bit. I've found when I go into my office in the basement, I tend to request the same things over and over again from the HomePod that's in here. So I've kind of gotten stuck in a rut that way. But with this, I'm basically using it as like an AirPlay 2 speaker. So I will go

into the music app and I've been trying some new things that I've noticed people that I follow, who I respect their taste in music have been recommending. So my latest is the self-titled album by the Olympians, which is kind of a jazzy sort of instrumental album, which I'm really liking. And I can't help but think there's a lot of like saxophones and stuff in it that you might like it too david i'll have to listen you know the term jazzy makes me nervous i have to say it's definitely not not your traditional jazz uh it's not uh it's not pure like snarky puppy like we talked with uh with bob reynolds yeah um but it has some it has some of that feel to me. It feels a little bit less poppy, alternative type of stuff,

which is honestly a lot of the stuff that I tend to listen to anyways. So that's what I've been doing, and it's been a lot of fun. I do think that the fundamental problem you're solving there, the context shift of going in the backyard, I mean, where you live, you can't go outside all year long. So it's nice, right? The weather starts to turn. You go out and enjoy it.

And as we continue to struggle through a global pandemic, a lot of us, myself included, have lost many of our usual context shifts. I used to, I have an office I can go to, but I really can't now. And I used to go to Starbucks and I used to go to the beach with my computer. There's all these places I used to go that I can't anymore. And I do think, uh, as long as we've been at this pandemic and shut in, um, you should be looking for context shifts cause I think you need them. So I'm glad you found one. Me too. And in addition to the context shifts, really it's additionally just getting outside.

I mentioned previously on this podcast that I've been trying to run or bike every single day. That's kind of evolved and progressed where I'm actually doing both on a lot of days. Good. Just because being outside really does improve my mood. So I'm trying to do that as much as I can. Well, today's show is called Systems and Challenges,

and it's not what it sounds like, but there's something that Mike and I also have been talking about that we wanted to cover on the show, and that is some of the productivity and kind of focus systems we're currently using kind of goes beyond the single topic thread of a lot of our shows but more meta but stuff that we both have been kind of growing these lists that we wanted to talk about so we thought today would be a good day to do them and it's a great jumping off point for listeners as well if you can go into the forum and share some of your focus systems, I think I'd love to read those and see how people

are staying focused. So we thought we'd try that today. And the first one I'm going to share is the systems I've been using in the elusive chase of the shutdown habit. And if you listen to the show, you know, I've talked about this quite a bit that I do think that having a daily shutdown routine for me at least is a massive productivity boost, you know, and also just sanity boost for me. I've heard from some listeners that feel like having a morning kind of startup routine is way more important than the daily shutdown. But for me, it's the shutdown for a bunch of reasons. I feel like it's hard for me at night to put the work down and having a shutdown routine puts kind of like a dividing line between working Dave and non-working Dave. um i also feel that the afternoon version of myself is more realistic about priorities and goals and frankly capacity to get work done in the morning i always overestimate

the amount of stuff i can do in the evening i feel like after getting beat up all day i have a better kind of feel for how much i can do in a day um it also helped for me helps prioritize email where it should be prioritized, which is lower down the stack. You know, I, by leaving my email, my real email work till the end of the day, that allows me to spend the beginning of the day working on production things like, you know, writing a contract or making a field guide and stuff that moves the needle for me. And I find if I start the day with email, I get caught up in email for the rest of the day. So there's like a bunch of reasons. That's just three I can think of off the top of my head, but there's quite a few. So you think that this is an easy habit, right? It's a hundred

percent when it has immediate results. When I do it, I always know the next day that I did a proper shutdown. I cannot get myself to just get that as a daily habit, though. Yeah, it's a struggle. You know what you have to do, but it still doesn't mean that it's easy to do. Yeah, I missed it yesterday, too, which is really embarrassing because I worked on this outline yesterday and i know i'd be talking about it today uh but the um i had a client call in with a thing that i knew was going to take he called in at like three and i knew it was going to take like three hours to get this thing solved and i said well i'm just gonna press on you know so i pressed on to like five and then we had family dinner and then i took the dog for a walk so then i got i was back at my desk

at like 7 30 i got done with the client thing like at nine and i hadn't done a shutdown and at nine o'clock you know how much energy i have to do a shutdown yeah it's just zero you know get open omni focus start sorting your tasks for the next day at nine o'clock when my days usually start around 6 a.m it's like by 9 ppm, I have nothing left in the tank. And if I had been smart, I would have stopped at four o'clock, done the shutdown. And even if I've been staying up a little bit later to get the client thing done today would have been a lot easier or even making finishing the client thing a 6am to 7am thing today, you know, making finishing the client thing a 6 a.m to 7 a.m thing today you know but i always fall into this trap um so what am i doing about it uh i i have you know this segment's about systems so i have

now put in a recurring calendar event it shows up it's one of those few calendar events you can say repeat every day because i do it monday through sunday and it's a 5 p.m shows up and says shut down and it's an hour thing with an alarm it's not enough though um i've also created a keyboard maestro script now that at five o'clock closes all my windows it doesn't close the applications. I don't lose data, but it just shuts all the windows down and puts a dialogue on the screen. It reminds me it's time to shut down. I've had that running for a while now, and I've never been able to do something similar on iPhone and iPad, but fortunately with WWDC, Apple just announced that shortcuts will now run, and this is kind of a nerdy Apple thing.

So feel free to think about something entirely different if you want. But shortcuts now has the ability to run a time-based shortcut without requiring a confirmation dialogue. So now I could actually have my iPhone and my iPad give me grief at 5 o'clock too to remind me to start the shutdown. And I haven't got that set up just yet. I just started building it last night. I'm not sure exactly everything I'm going to do with it, but it needs to be similarly drastic. And I understand logically, I think I even understand emotionally how important this habit is, but I can't, I've been working on it for almost two years now, and it's just not sticking.

How often do you finish the day on your iPad or iPhone instead of your Mac? Rarely. I mean, well, actually, once the shutdown is initiated, I actually do pick up the iPad and do a lot of the work there. But I'm usually kind of production- style work is done at my Mac. Okay. I guess I'm just trying to understand more fully how much impact the shortcut would have. It kind of sounds like you know that the trigger is coming on the Mac. So at that point, you kind of switch over to the iPad so you don't lose things.

Yeah. I just kind of like the idea of kind of like the to the ipad so you don't lose things yeah or i just kind of like the idea of kind of like the you know mission control you know everything going off at once you know just to create this sense of panic you know but the uh yeah it's a uh it's a system that i'm working on i guess you know oh another thing i've done now is I'm doing a monthly tab where I go through. And, um, in fact, I've been sharing some pictures with Mike to keep myself honest, where I have a, a page where I have a checkbox. And did I do a shutdown? I make myself every day at the end of the day account for myself. And, and don't get me wrong. I do shutdowns now, probably about 75% of the time, but it feels to me like,

how am I missing it? 25% of the time, you know, like, so yesterday I missed for, I'm guarantee you for the next two days, I'll be smart enough to make sure I get the shutdown in, but then I'll get lazy again after two or three days.

Sure. But the, uh, anyway, so I, I've got check boxes, I've got alarms, i've got technology helping me maybe i need to get my wife involved with it and ask me every day i don't know but the uh

but that is a focus system that is very much a work in progress for me maybe you could set up a shortcut that would turn off your wi-fi router at five o'clock or something although you probably have other people in your house that would not appreciate that. My kids would murder me. But also, I've never been a fan of that kind of drastic limitation. You know, I've never had a... But I'm just being the jerk.

I've never really had a problem saying, okay, put Twitter down and get back to work. In fact, the problem with me missing the shutdown nine times out of 10 isn't because I want to go goof off or do something else instead of doing the act of shutting down. It's because I'm so caught up in what I'm working on that I don't want to stop. Yeah. Not sure there's an easy solution to that.

I mean, you can force yourself to disconnect from the application, but you can't really force your brain to stop thinking about something that you're in the middle of. Yeah. You know, I was just sitting here thinking maybe what I have to do in my fancy journal, whether it's a piece of paper or a digital journal, maybe say, you know what, in the future, if I'm not going to do the shutdown, because I know when it's time, I mean, my life alarms go off all over me. Maybe what I need to do is say, okay, I'm going to choose to not shut down. I need to stop and write a sentence in my journal for the day why I'm choosing not to shut down. And maybe that amount of friction will be enough to allow the logic circuits to kick in and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, just stop and shut down.

I mean, like yesterday was a great example. I promised the client he's got this big emergency, needs me right away. I said, okay, well, I'm going to help him out, but I'm not going to give up my daily workout or my dinner with my family. But you know what? I should have said, and I'm not going to let it get in the way of the shutdown. It has to be just as important. Right. Yeah. Because yesterday is a perfect example where i drew the line and where i didn't right i i like that you're sending me your your pictures of the the stuff to keep you accountable with um maybe that needs to be something that's a little bit

more public i'm not sure if you'd be willing to share that sort of stuff but report back on your shutdown log at some point you just start to see a crazy man you know i'm willing to show the crazy at a certain level but uh anyway but it that is a focus system that i'm very much working on i was i would would have been hoping when i really started taking the shutdown seriously a couple years ago that by now would be something that I don't have to put on the calendar that it just happens like I don't put eating dinner on the calendar but apparently I still need to so there you have it this episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by drafts go to get drafts.com where tech starts. Try it free right now. When we heard the drafts was going to sponsor the focus podcast, Mike and I had a little fight because we both want to do the ad read. Uh, we both are big fans of drafts. I love the application so much drafts is where

tech starts on all your Apple devices. It launches ready to type. In fact, before I knew they were going to be a sponsor of today's show, I included them with some of the content on the show because they are a cool thing that I'm doing to stay focused. But Drafts is the quickest way to jot down ideas and tasks, dictate notes or draft messages and social media posts. You just put it in Drafts. It's where your words start.

There's no need to stumble around and find the right app. You just open drafts and you've got a blinking cursor and you're ready to type. Or if you're really fancy, push the little microphone button and start dictating. It works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, all with fast sync. So your captured text is always where you need it. Here's a power tip from Max Barkey. If you like drafts, put the drafts complication on your Apple watch. So when you're out with the dog, when you're taking a walk, when you're going

to the beach and you think of something that's important, you just hit one little button on the complication, your watch, you can dictate a draft to your watch. And then it's in all those devices when you get back and you can act on it. Drafts has a configurable editing environment, making it friendly, a trusted place to edit and update any text on your iOS devices with whatever fonts and themes you like. Once you capture that text, powerful actions and automation tools let you do almost anything with it. In fact, I'm going to be talking about that later in the show today. But you can send a mail message, you can post to Twitter, you can save it to files, Dropbox, iCloud Drive. You can run JavaScript. You wouldn't believe what you can do with Drafts. It's crazy. Well, I'll go ahead and

tell you right now. When I get off the phone with someone I'm talking to about a legal matter, I press one button in Drafts. It saves the note to iCloud. It uses the name to automatically sort it into the proper folder. It's like automation magic, and it's all because of Drafts. Drafts is always getting better. It's actively developed, bringing support for the latest OS technologies and new features all the time. Try it on your dock for a week right now for free. Just go to getdrafts.com. That's getdrafts.com. Our thanks to Drafts for their support of the show and all of RelayFM. What about you, Mike? You got any focus systems that you're working on right now?

I do. You alluded to it in the last episode with Brad Dowdy, but I have kind of completely redone my productivity system in terms of how I file things and how I get things done. And it's kind of this hybrid system at the moment. And I wrote about it a while back at the suite setup, but I have been anxiously waiting to talk to you about this for quite a while. Basically, what I've done is started to use an analog notebook for basically everything that I can. So that means that it serves as my daily log as I go throughout my day. It's kind of like a bullet journal, although I don't like calling it a

bullet journal because I feel like that's unfair to what most people consider a bullet journal based on the system by Ryder Carroll. Because I don't try to keep everything in there. I basically am using it as the place that I plan my day and then where I jot things down whenever possible. Although you mentioned drafts earlier and I absolutely use that when I don't have my notebook with me. So I wanted something simpler and more enjoyable as we've been going through this crazy year. I've found that I was having trouble maintaining the motivation to do the things that I knew I needed to do. And I recognized that I really got a lot of joy out of using my fancy fountain pens and fancy paper. So I just tried to

think through like how I could lean into that and what were the ways that made sense for me to use this and got an image which I stole from my sweet setup post, which is like the third version of this that I use to kind of like map things out. So any questions before I guess I kind of talk through this on the podcast? Yeah, I want to get a better idea. I'm not sure, is the paper the beginning point or is

it the ending point for you yes that's what i thought yeah so the diagram here which is actually like a kind of like a mind map kind of like a workflow diagram like an omni-graph fold but i drew it out paper pen because i wanted to really think this through. And the pen on the paper, for me, that has more emotional and mental investment attachment to it. So I have these different things, these different inputs, ideas, information, and tasks.

And the bullet journal would say, capture all that stuff inside the bullet journal and then you can move it to a collection, move it to a log, move it to a log, whatever. And so I've kind of been using that as like the collection point for those things. But also I don't always have my journal with me. One example is if I'm out for a run, I typically get ideas when I'm out for a run and I'll open up drafts on my Apple Watch. I've got the complication and I'll capture things using voice dictation on my watch, and it'll sync when I get back. I've also got sketchnotes that I take of like sermons and

talks that I attend, and I've got mind maps when I really want to develop ideas for like products and things. So the sketchnotes happen inside of GoodNotes, the mind maps happen inside of MindNode, and I wanted a way to tie all this stuff together. And the way that I have done that is the application Roam Research, which I guess I got to give a disclaimer here because the people who run Roam are kind of polarizing figures who like to say controversial things.

Definitely put off by the whole Roam cult thing that they use in their marketing. But it is a phenomenal tool. And it's allowed me to connect all of these different things in new ways. And I've found that for the way that I think and for creating, that's been really, really valuable. And so there's stuff that comes out over time, things that they've said, things that they've done. If you dig into some of the stuff that's shared, a lot of it is just mudslinging.

But that being said, I've thrown a bunch of money at them already. I'm not sure if I would do it again. I feel like I have to say that up front. But the tool itself is phenomenal. And it allows me to connect things in new ways, which is exactly what I was looking for. At the same time, I was kind of rereading How to Take Smart Notes by Sanke Ahrens. And so this whole idea of the Zettelkasten has been really appealing to me.

And Rome is the first time that I felt like that's actually within reach. The idea behind the Zettelkasten is basically the ideas connect themselves. And so you're never at a loss for like, what am I going to create? Which that's my job am I going to create? Which that's my job. I have to create. And this approach has allowed me to be a lot more creative as we're

recording this case in point last week, it was WWDC. And I wrote four or five articles that were published last week that were all a couple thousand words. And a lot of that was because the ideas went into Rome and I was able to play with them and connect them and I saw different things in different ways. So absolutely 100% am convinced of the value of this interconnected thought instead of just like a filing cabinet for your ideas. Yeah, so the idea of Rome, if you haven't seen it,

and there's a bunch of youtube videos on it and it is weird i was put off by it for exactly the reason mike was explaining mike was the one who actually told me about it to begin with and i'm like look at all these weirdos with this application that are like i don't know it's just a little it's a little much right but then you start using the app you're like wow this actually is very useful and um the the point that um one of the big advantages of rome is cross-linking so like i i'm trying it i'm not in as deep as mike is but for instance i just i finished writer carol's book about the bullet journal method and even though i don't bullet journal there's a lot of good stuff in

that book and um i read it on kindle so I exported all of my highlights and imported them into Rome. And then I started kind of running them through that Zettelkasten method where you're linking and you're summarizing and picking the most important. And then all of a sudden you find yourself cross-linking to other books you've read. And before you know it, you've got this spider's web of ideas it's really it's really impressive i don't think i can really do a good job of explaining it on a podcast but it's worth it's worth checking out yeah uh and there are other applications that are similar but don't do what roam does like obsidian is one which stores everything in individual text files but you can't

link to individual blocks like you can in Roam. So for me, that's kind of a deal breaker. I am absolutely willing to be shown a better application and would be willing to switch. I've already tested the export of things from Roam and you can export it as either JSON or Markdown files. So it's easy to get things out and put them into something else.

But at the moment, Roam is the thing that allows me to connect all these things. And I'll share just a couple of ways that I'm using it. I have for a long time taken sketchnotes of the sermons that my pastor has preached. And so I just finished yesterday uploading all of them from GoodNotes. And it goes all the way back to September of 2017. So I've got the images of the sketchnotes that I took for those individual sermons, and then I've got links to the individual verses that were mentioned in those sketchnotes. I draw a box around the scripture references. I was able to import a public domain library of the King James Version of the Bible, And there's lots of public

works that people are creating that can be imported into Rome. So you could do the same sort of thing with something else. And then I'm able to take those links, using the backlinking that you mentioned, click a button, all of them are linked now. And what I can do is I can start with my sketchnotes from one day, see a verse, click on that verse, and then see all of the other places in Rome where I have also mentioned that particular verse. And I can open up all of those things side by side at the same time. And I can look at all those things at the same time. And that's really the thing that allows you to connect the ideas. can look at all those things at the same time. And that's really the thing that allows you to connect the ideas. So if that was the only use I got out of this, it would be worth it. But I'm also using it to connect ideas from books that I've read. I'm starting with the

Bookworm stuff. I also use it as the capture location one at my Mac. They've got this daily notes thing, which is very much in line with the bullet journal. They've also got a bunch of things that you can add in a Markdown-based outliner, which are pretty cool, like Kanban boards. You can just do a couple of curly brackets, put in Kanban, and then you've got an outline-based Kanban board. You can drag the tiles around. I've always been intrigued by the idea of a personal Kanban. So I created one for the articles that I'm writing. I've got a column of ideas. I've got a column of articles that are ready to be written, a column of articles that I am currently writing, and then a done column or an archive.

And I've got those linked to the Ulysses sheets. This is getting a little bit technical, but I can click on the link in Rome and open up directly to that sheet inside of ulysses and start typing that kind of thing is is pretty cool yeah i mean it's it's really powerful it's a web app they don't have a dedicated ios or ipad app or even mac app everything is through a web portal and so i i've been playing with it you know kind of following mike's uh lead on this and also watching a lot of videos and how people are using Roam because it's just such a different kind of application. But I don't really see it as a great place for me to do goal planning and manage my daily tasks or even the daily bullet journal kind of stuff. I prefer to do that either on a pen and paper or in something like I'm doing with GoodNotes. But the thing Mike talked about at the beginning,

the combination of ideas and thoughts is very useful. I've used it not only for plotting out legal strategies since I started playing with it, I've also used it. I used it for the whole week of WWDC in terms of mapping Apple's things, and that turned into several blog posts it is a very interesting way to combine thoughts it kind of brings me back to Dumbledore's pensive where you throw a bunch of thoughts into them and kind of see where they connect

and it kind of feels that way and and it's not it's definitely not a perfect app and it's a I think it's a little creaky as a web app, but it is still pretty impressive. Yeah, and really the thing that's exciting to me is just to see the people who are embracing this as a thought process, because I know that it's a different way of thinking. And I know that there are other developers who are already working on their own Roam type implementations

into apps like Workflow and stuff like that. So I think it'll be kind of cool to see where it goes. But really, the value for me is just the elimination of the barriers between the buckets, which might be a little bit scary for some people. But for me, it's been really the right thing at the right time. It is definitely even though it has like basic task management functionality you can do to do's you can assign a date and then it'll create that as basically like the due date and you can use queries to choose like to filter your your tasks and into lists so you can do kind of basic gtd stuff it's definitely not a replacement for omni focus or things or anything like that But if you just need a couple of basic lists, something like task paper, but not quite as

many features, but then you've got the ability to take those things and link them to other pages and other blocks and things inside of your digital brain, basically, then it's been really cool for that. And because it's a basic outliner at heart and it's Markdown-based, I've been experimenting with different like Text Expander and Keyboard Maestro macros and snippets for like project templates. And I've got one for like these daily questions,

which is something I picked up from Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith. And instead of like filling in the blanks with journaling prompts, he rates himself zero to 10 on, did you do your best to do whatever? So this was interesting to me when I read it because the key part of this question is, did I do my best? So it has nothing to do with the outcome, but just the intention. Did you try to fill in the blank? So I've got a text expander snippet, which uses just basic text. And then it converts this into like a sliding scale inside a room. You can drag it and select your score from zero to 10 on questions I've got is like,

did I do my best to grow spiritually? Did I do my best to love my wife, love my kids, learn something new, create something, exercise. And I think this is way better than like in the triggers, he talks about doing it inside of a spreadsheet. Now, this allows me to take that on my daily page, link it pretty much automatically to a daily questions page. And now I've got something I can go back and review, which was one of the things that was difficult for me doing this kind of stuff inside of day one. So the thing that gets confusing for me, Mike, is I know you're like adopting the analog

tools, but then you're also doing what sounds to me like a lot of journaling inside Rome and just having all these multiple places you're doing stuff. Is that something you can sustain? I think it is because basically what I've done is I've consolidated the things that I've been using. So with the journaling specifically, this is something that I've kind of gone around the mountain over and over on. And always been one of my struggles is like, I've got this template set up inside of day one, but at the end of the day, I don't really want to be looking at my phone for

this sort of thing. So I put that part of it, the reflection template part of it inside of Rome, and I'm doing that as I go through the day. But at the end of the day, or pretty much whenever I'm feeling it, I will also do a version of the daily pages or morning pages by Julia Cameron. I've got a whole section in my paper notebook, which is just not like she would define it as three pages of stream of conscious writing, but it is stream of conscious writing. Sometimes it's a half a page. It's always capped at a page. And I'll do that at night to empty my head. I'll do that in the morning just to get clear on what I'm going to be doing. And going back to the diagram a little bit, so things will end up in Rome as the central

repository for things. But then when I do my daily planning for the next day, that's the time blocking, picking my five tasks that I'm going to do for the day. that I'm going to do for the day. I'm also looking at Rome, but also the things that may be coming in from Basecamp because that's what we use at Blanc Media. So if somebody needs help with something, I'm going to prioritize that.

Otherwise, I'll just go see, you know, what are the things that I've assigned to a specific day inside of Rome or what are the articles that I'm currently working on, you know, based on my articles Kanban view. And that's the type of stuff that I'll add to my list inside of the bullet journal. But that's all happening paper pencil still or paper pen. It feels to me like this is very much in motion for you. It is very much in motion, but I've tried to streamline it as much as possible. Like I said,

but I've tried to streamline it as much as possible. Like I said, I've had apps in other places that have done other things for a long time. And I've recognized that having to go do something somewhere else has often been the thing that causes me not to do them. Case in point, I have an inversion table in my bedroom. And I know that when I use it, even for a couple of minutes a day, that my neck and my know that when I use it, even for a couple minutes a day, that my neck and my back feel much better. I don't have any pain. I don't have to deal with any sciatica. But when I don't, after a while, I start to feel it. I also want to do consistent mindfulness meditation, but I have trouble opening up the Headspace app and doing it for a couple of minutes. So I've combined those two things.

And combining those two things has made both of them sticky for me. Yeah, yeah. And so I have kind of, you know, I've been using OmniFocus for a while, but I know I'm not using it to the level that it can be used. I've just been using it for a simple list. Is that something I can do inside of Roam since I'm already using it for connecting ideas? And for me, I think it is. Same thing with like the reflection template. I could go still to day one and do that sort of stuff. And it kind of

makes me sad because I've used day one for years and I really do like the application. But if that's the only thing I'm going to be using it for, is there a way that I can do that somewhere else? And at the moment, anyways, I think there is. I do like your idea of linkage. Maybe that's the solution to my shutdown problem is I just say I'm going to play the sax or hang out with one of my kids every day right after I finish the shutdown. So I could add like a positive linkage to it. I don't know. I got to work on that problem.

But it sounds like, like I said, I know that you're very enthusiastic about Roam Research. It is very much a different kind of beast. I don't even really want to call it a notes app. It's more of like a thought organization app is the way I kind of interpret it. Like I'm not going to put like draft contract language. I'm not going to do like drafts style work in it, but I, uh, but I do think it is interesting. I haven't read as many books as you have, but I've read quite a few books and I've got like 200 books with highlights in

them in my Kindle account that I've read over the last 10 or so years. And, you know, I'm not really doing anything with that and, and getting the highlights out and putting them into Rome and then starting to draw lines between them is really fun for my brain. Exactly. Drawing those lines is a lot of fun. And so basically what I'm trying to do is consolidate down to two places as much as I can, which is either my fancy notebook or Rome research. And the more I play with Rome, the more I feel like this is feasible for me.

So the paper notebook, the idea is that I put the plan in the paper notebook and then I take that and that's what is going to be directing my work and my actions throughout the day. But at the end of the day, I'm going to take all that stuff, put it into the digital brain, mix it all up, get some ideas, and chart my course for tomorrow. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace.

Squarespace lets you easily create a website Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. Maybe you want to create an online store. Maybe you want to create a portfolio or a blog or a podcast. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you do any of those things with nothing to install, platform that lets you do any of those things with nothing to install, no patches or plugins to worry about, and no upgrades needed. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. You can just rest easy knowing that Squarespace has got it covered. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support if you do need any help, and they let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name that fits your great idea.

And all of those award-winning templates that I mentioned are beautifully designed, they look great on mobile devices, and they make it easy for you to show off your great ideas. I am a Squarespace customer myself. My wife and I started a podcast not too long ago called The Intentional Family. And even though I've done web development in the past and I started a podcast not too long ago called The Intentional Family. And even though I've done web development in the past, and I know how to spin up servers and install things, I just didn't want to deal with that. I wanted to just have an easy place where we could focus on creating the podcast, and then the publication and all of that stuff could just be handled simply. And that's what Squarespace gives us. So we built the

intentional family on Squarespace. And it's great because I can just show up when we have an episode to launch, I can upload it to the server, I can push the button, and I know that it's going to be delivered. And I don't have to worry about any of the pipes breaking in the background. I know Squarespace is rock solid, and they've got it all covered. If you decide that you want to use Squarespace, plans start at just $12 a month, but you can start a trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash focused. That's F-O-C-U-S-E-D. And I challenge you to do that. Just see how far you can get. In just a couple of hours, you'll be surprised. You'll probably even get it done. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code FOCUS to get 10%

off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for this show. So once again, that is squarespace.com slash FOCUS and the code FOCUS to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of FOCUS and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Mike, July 7th as the show releases, I'm six days away from starting a sabbatical. Are you excited? Terrified? Yes.

How are youified? Yes. Yes. When I agreed to do this, it was seven weeks away. And I'm like, oh, I got plenty of time. Seven weeks away. That'll never happen, right? But I've been reading a lot of Sean's posts on it and just kind of doing my own little research on kind of break weeks or downtime and sabbaticals. And it's been a real fun process of, of, of like taking this on. And for those who missed that episode, Sean McCabe does this great website on

sabbaticals. And I was bemoaning the fact that I really never take any downtime. I just keep going. And so I committed them to do it. And Sean made me commit to doing two of them, really, seven weeks apart. And so I got interesting feedback. The vast majority of the feedback from listeners and readers was, this is great. You're going to really like this. It's going to really help you get more focused on what is important. And it's going to be life-changing. And once you start doing it, you'll never be able to stop.

Then I got the feedback from, that was like 75% of the feedback. And 25% of the feedback was like, you are crazy. You are a grownup. You're not an internet snowflake. You can't take a week off every seven weeks. People, your clients will leave you and your family will lose family will lose your house and that'll be that you know i mean just kind of like you know doom and gloom so i'm getting different feedback from different people um but i but i'm still you know committed to do i'm gonna do this and i really

feel like it's probably in my interest to try and make this work well it is definitely in my interest to make it work so i've been struggling with what does that mean for someone like me? I do have clients on the legal side that are used to having a responsive attorney that answers their email and solves their problems for them. Just had this happen to me yesterday with something that was kind of an emergency. I had to, you know, like a fire alarm and get it turned around. Doesn't happen that often, but it happens often enough. So I've been thinking about a lot of things in terms of this sabbatical and what I'm going to do. And I thought it'd be fun to talk through them with you, get your feedback on them and just share with the audience my thought processes. Sounds great. I'm curious right away, you mentioned

the thumbs up, thumbs down feedback. Have you been talking to your clients about this and what has their response been? them I talk to once a week. And so what I've decided to do is the people that I expect I would have contact with that week, I'm going to tell them. And the people that I don't expect to have contact with, I'm not going to tell them. I feel like part of my job is not to get in the way, get in their way, and they don't need to hear an update from me, especially if I decide to do this on a regular basis. If every two months I'm going to try and do this, I'm going to need to, you know, I'm going to need to plan for it. And they don't want to hear from me every two months. Hey, I'm taking a week off, right? So what I do, I'm just telling the ones that I think I'm going to be active with, hey, I'm doing some time off that week. You know, I'll still be around if you really need me. And I guess I'm kind of jumping to the punchline here, but I'm going to try and not be available as much as I can.

And I think it'll work fine. I mean, knowing my clients, I think they're fine. And they're used to me, you know, turning around things quickly. As we talked in that episode, I think the idea was that we will just shut down the whole operation for the whole week. And I won't check email and I won't do any legal work. I won't do any Max Sparky work and I'll just have a week to do whatever the heck I want when I wake up every day. And the more I think about it, and the 25% emails have some points for someone in my position. I don't think it's possible for me to just turn off the legal email for a week. I can't sign it off to like an assistant because they're not a practicing attorney. They don't even know

what's going on because of the attorney client privilege. There's a bunch of things I know about that other people don't know about. I just don't think it's possible for me to like shut down entirely for a week i'm curious uh if there's like a there's a hybrid version of this where you could theoretically anyways disconnect and then if there was something that really needed your attention, your assistant, for example, can get ahold of you, but nobody else can. And they say, hey, this came in and you really need to deal with this. So you have like that lifeline if something urgent does happen, but otherwise you can just blissfully assume that everything's fine until you get back. Well is the way my legal assistant works is she is on the reverse side of that transaction all the communication is between

the client me directly and if i need help on something she'll get you know she'll get the instructions on to do the help but she doesn't communicate with the clients directly once again there's privileges and there's a whole bunch of stuff involved. So when I realized that this is not going to be trivial, there's a couple ways you can respond to that. You can say, well, forget it then. I can't do this. I don't have the kind of life where I can do it. Maybe if I went and hired another attorney to work with me and brought them in, then you could go down this rabbit hole of expense and unnecessary complication. Uh, but then I realized it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Um, what if I did have a week where I didn't have any scheduled, uh, field guide production. I didn't have any scheduled podcast

work. If I had all my blog posts written in advance, all the Mac Sparky stuff, I think I can actually pull this off. And what if I did prep the clients that I thought might need me to understand that I'll be less available. But at the same time, what if I spend an hour a day just going through the legal email inbox and making sure that nothing is on fire and understand that if something is on fire, a little bit of my sabbatical is going to be spent dealing with it. And, um, and I think that's probably the answer for me. And then the, the next problem I'm trying to address now, and that's actually what I'm working on as we publish the show is what's the criteria for a fire, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's very easy with someone, I have this self-image as an

attorney who's responsive and my clients ask me to do something and I get it turned around for them pretty quickly. But you know, why not write a carefully worded text expander reply saying, Hey, this week I'm, I've got some downtime, so I'm not going to be able to give this immediate priority, but I will be working on this on Monday for you. But then there are things that may be a fire and then I can just deal with those. But I need to, I'm going to write down like the test in advance because I know that once I'm in the week, it'll be very easy for me to say, okay, okay, I'll just do it. So I'm going to give myself some constraints. But my ultimate decision was if I'm going to make this work, I'm going to give myself some constraints. But my ultimate decision was, if I'm going to make this work, I'm going to have to make some affordances for the kind of work I do. I think that's a reasonable approach, especially at the beginning.

I also can hear Sean's voice in my head saying, David, you're missing the point. Well, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do though. Right. I mean, if I'm going to make this happen, I, there, there isn't a, um, I need to, I need to email Sean, frankly, but the, um, you know, I just don't have, there's attorneys out there that have assistant attorneys that work with them, but I'm a solo practitioner, you know? Yep. Yep. No, I get it. And I think it's, I think it's a reasonable approach to say, okay, this is what I know I can do this time. And I know that I'm compromised in this specific area, but maybe I'll discover something along the way that helps me move a little bit more towards my ideal, the perfect

sabbatical. But for now, I'm just going to do the best that I can with what I have. It's kind of what I did with my last one. I mentioned that I kind of made the mistake because we had scheduled focus. We recorded with Brad Doughty during the middle of my last sabbatical, and then I had also scheduled Bookworm. But those are two things that I noticed in the week of my sabbatical that I can easily avoid these. So maybe you get into it and you realize that, okay, this stuff that I did, that was great, but I could actually do this one additional thing, which would make sure that this other thing doesn't happen. And I've got a little bit more progress towards my ideal sabbatical. well i i don't believe that if it's something

where i have 90 freedom as opposed to 100 freedom i'm going to get zero percent benefit yeah maybe i only get 50 benefit because i lost that last 10 i don't know but i won't know until i try but the um but i also know that you know just, just, you know, the, you know, I don't want to commit malpractice either. Right. And also I don't want to let a client down. And so, you know, it's kind of a trust when someone you agree to be their lawyer, you've got to be there for them when the house catches on fire. So I don't really see how I can do it. Like I looked at like, could I have a contract attorney like do that stuff? And I'm like, no, because the clients hire me and they don't expect someone else to do it, you know?

And there's just really not a good answer for me, but I do think that, uh, I'll get some benefit out of this week. And there's a part of me that said, you know, there's a part of me that wants to say, okay, well, Mr. Fancy Pants, if you can't do it completely, then don't even bother. Just, just cancel it and get on with life. But I think that's a mistake too. But that, that's, that's kind of the belligerent response to saying, well, you know, you're not doing it right. Yeah, I, I agree. I see that point of it too. I think the bigger thing for you is probably going to be the second one so after you do this first one and you have either evidence that you have more ability to disconnect or less ability to disconnect than maybe you thought it'll be easier to justify not doing the second one but i think if you took the approach of, well, I was able to get 90% of it

this time, maybe next time I can get 95. There's lots of ways that that could happen. Just off the top of my head, and I know every situation is a little bit different, but not you specifically, but somebody in your situation. You've got clients that are going to expect you to be on call. Well, you could choose the ones that are going to expect you to be on call that you really like and let go of the ones that you don't like. And the new ones, you lay it out at the very beginning and you say, hey, just so you know, every seventh week, I'm going to be out of touch. Are you cool with that? And that's part of the screening process that kind of naturally gets all the clients that you work with. Okay, with this sort of thing, maybe you still have a couple that, you know you you never are able to get there that's completely okay i think you're going to

discover other ways that you can kind of work around the obstacles that are in your head right now yeah and this is hypothetical i could i've had slow weeks before where there are no client emergencies and i get tons of work done on field guides and I get caught up with a bunch of Eisenhower matrix category B stuff. And those are great weeks, you know? So who knows, maybe my sabbatical week could be that kind of week. So, and then I, then it's all I would have to do is just check every day to see if there's a problem. There's not a problem. I move on with the day. Right. Well, I'm anxious to hear how it goes. The other thing I haven't figured out is when do

I do that check? And I'm really leaning towards doing it at like 4 PM. Sure. Yeah. I don't, I don't think I want to do it in the morning. Yeah. I, I would advise against doing it in the morning too. I feel like whatever time you check it, if there is something that's an emergency, the rest of your day is gone. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All that being said, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm following the Sean McCabe model. I'm not making any plans.

But in the back of my head, I've got some things, some hikes I want to take. I'm going to have fun with the dog. I'm going to do some stuff with my kids. My daughter and I like to boogie board board hopefully we'll get to do that but i'm not sure the beaches will be open at the rate things are going in california uh but the uh so there i'm actually the idea of it as it's approaching that's the part i'm really looking forward to the the whole thing i'm dreading is just kind of all the background noise and getting it set up and making it happen. On the Mac Sparky side of my life, it was very easy. I did some shifts with some of my podcast partners, so I don't have to record anything that week.

And some of the post-production commitments I have have been moved around or I've traded for different weeks. And so all that stuff is handled. I built into the timeline for the new field guide that that week I wouldn't get anything done. So maybe I will, maybe I won't, but I'm not planning on it. And so that stuff was all pretty easy. And the only side that's a little difficult and max sparky is customer service stuff. But I do have an assistant that can help with that. And there's no attorney client privilege involved with customer support on a field guide. So've offloaded almost 100 of that for that week and it's going to be great awesome no obligations that's the key yeah as few as possible that's

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Our thanks to Ahrefs for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. So Mike, in addition to talking about shiny new things once in a while, we've been talking about some segments we'd like to include in the show. And one we've been kicking around for a while is basically making us put our money where our mouth is on some of the advice we give about becoming more focused. Yes, we're going to start doing challenges, productivity challenges, I guess you could frame them as. But it's basically something that we want the other person to do. I'm a little bit nervous, honestly,

giving you a blank canvas to write on my to-do list, but we'll see how this goes. Yeah, well, I mean mean we talk about a lot of concepts here and both of us are trying to incorporate a lot of these into our lives to make them better and kind of share our experiences but why not add a degree of anarchy to it by making allowing the other person to uh to push you into your uncomfortable zone hopefully the anarchy and the accountability kind of work each other out. Yeah, I don't think.

You are actually, I'll go first because I feel like you are the hardest one to give these challenges to because you do like family meetings and you're doing all this stuff already, Mike. It's like I can't, I have very few options to choose from sometimes, I think because

whatever crazy productivity thing i think of you're already doing it well i don't know about that uh i do like the idea of being in like a permanent beta state and being willing to experiment on myself so yeah i am the guinea pig what's challenge for me? I have the one I have for you. I don't think this is super difficult, but it's something as your friend talking to you that I think you would benefit from. And I know that, you know, you're now kind of a believer with journals and that's something that wasn't always true for you. And you've been talking about earlier in today's show how at the end of the day, you do kind

of your right what's on your mind i think that type of therapy is good for anybody but something i do is i don't just wait till the end of the day to do it now that you've got the fancy pen and the fancy paper as you're logging your day i want you to stop after a significant call or significant blog post you wrote. Stop and write about that in your journal right in line. You understand what I mean? So like 2 p.m. finish sweet setup blog posts and then write what you think about that and what went into it rather than waiting to the end of the day. Does that make sense? I think so. So as we finish recording this episode, for example, I would have a free form journal entry on what I'm thinking and feeling after the event is done. If there's something that I want to follow up on next time, I would journal that there. But otherwise, it's just kind of what I'm thinking about the thing right after it happens. Is that close the loop right there? And as a, as a practice I've been doing for some time and I do it two or maybe three

times a day. Like if I get off the phone with an old friend or I finished recording a show that I'm really excited about, I don't feel like you don't have to do it every time you take the garbage out. But I do think it's something worth reflecting on when something significant happens in your day. So I'd like you to try at least twice a day to do that.

All right. It's not so hard, right? No, I think I can handle that. So my challenge for you, because I think this is the pivotal thing at the moment, is for you to sabbatical the right way. I know we talked about the challenge of not being able to disconnect from the clients who might actually have an emergency. So I'm willing to make that concession, emergency. So I'm willing to make that concession, but I would love to challenge you to respect the rest of the boundaries that you can. So specifically, you kind of mentioned like a bunch of things that you wanted to do next week. But one of the things that Sean talked about was like no

obligations. So not actually planning any of that stuff ahead of time, but truly just being in the moment as much as you can. This was something that I got in the last sabbatical that I did that really felt very, very different from the previous ones that I had done. So I want to know next time if you were able to set up those boundaries for no podcast planning or production, no field guide planned production, no Max Barkey stuff. And like I said, if you do have some legal stuff you gotta deal with, I'm willing to make that exception. But like everything else, I'd love to hear

whether you're able to truly disconnect and just be in the moment and from that, kind of what you did and how it went. Yeah, I'm totally down with that. Because like I said earlier, those are ideas floating in my mind of things I'd like to maybe do, but I'm not committing to any of them. If you look at my calendar for that week, it is completely empty, which at this point is not usually the case. So I am totally ready to have some downtime. In fact, my problem is I think once I get there, there's going to be so many choices.

I'm not sure how I'll pick them. I'm curious about digging deeper on Rome. There's some books I want to read. There's a whole bunch of stuff I want to do when I'm curious about digging deeper on Rome. I want to, there's some books I want to read. There's a whole bunch of stuff I want to do when I'm not committed. So, uh, we'll see how it goes. But I think,

I think I got it. You know, I've been reading enough of Sean's posts that, you know, you show up to this thing without any plans. And, um, I think I can do that,

Mike. All right. You know, one example of the no obligations thing and how that played out for me on my last sabbatical is i have a bunch of people who do oh i know a lot of people who do a lot of cool stuff online and i have never been one like oh i gotta attend all these webinars and check in with all this stuff. But I happened to, on sabbatical, notice that Brad Dowdy was doing his live pen addict on Twitch. So I was able to

hop on that live stream. And Joe Buehlig did one for his Analog Joe site on bullet journaling. And so I actually attended a couple of webinars that I definitely would not have attended if I had been trying to get work done that week. I agree. That's exactly the kind of thing that I would like to fall into because my time is so scheduled right now. There's just no space for stuff like that. Yep. Yeah. And sabbatical really gives you that and it feels really good. Well, in the future segments, we'll both report on how we did on the last one and maybe assign each other new ones this is obviously not something we're going to do during guest episodes but i

think it'll be fun to kind of see where we can go with this if you guys have ideas for us let us know you can tell us in the forums or if it's particularly devious for Mike, you can just email me and tell me. I don't know. I think that's a cool idea to get some of the community feedback on what they'd like to see us have the other person do. This could get interesting. What are we going to make the hamster run through next? Honestly, I think, Mike, you have superpowers on this stuff.

I'm going to be challenged to throw anything at you that's going to really challenge you. I just feel like that. maybe i'm wrong well i honestly i am a creature of habit so i am giving you permission to disrupt my habits and that part in and of itself is a little bit scary regardless of what you choose for me to do i just realized something i also have your wife's email address. Yes, you do. This could be bad. All right. Well, that's going to be fun.

In the meantime, we are the Focus Podcast. I hope we were able to help you out today with some systems. If you've got some system ideas, let us know in the forums. Head over to talk.macpowerusers.com. There's a separate room there just for the Focus Podcast, a group of really nice people there with good ideas. Why don't you share some of your focused challenges and systems and uh we'll be back with you in a couple weeks i can it'll be i'll be fresh off sabbatical when we record the next episode so maybe i can report back if you're tired of hearing about this let me know maybe we'll just back off i feel like i've been talking about it too much, but it is an interesting time in my life.

And, um, uh, anything else I missed Mike? No, just if you, uh, have additional ideas for, uh,

for the challenges, uh, definitely want to hear those. So please add those to the forum. All right. Thank you to our sponsors, drafts, Squarespace,

and Ahrefs. And we'll see you in a few weeks. And stay focused out there.