Focused - 108: Pruning with Ian Byrd

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Educator, speaker, and online course creator Ian Byrd joins Mike and David to talk about quarterly retreats, technology, and focus. David makes a commitment.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I am joined by the one and only Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Oh, wow. That's quite an intro. Hey, David. You deserve it. You deserve it. And we also have a guest today. Welcome to the show, Ian Byrd. Hello. Hello, everybody. Ian, we're going to talk about Ian and what he does in a minute.

Very interesting guy and has a lot of interesting focused angles. Before we start, though, we have a couple of preliminary things we wanted to cover. We did our first membership meetup. couldn't join because of the time. So we're going to try some different time slots to accommodate our international fans. But it was really cool to connect with people on Zoom and see some faces, even meet some other focused fans from my state in Wisconsin. Yeah. I mean, we had people there from Europe. We had people from all over the place. It was really great and a lot of fun. If you want to get involved with that in the future, just go ahead and subscribe to the focus podcast. We've got it right there on the website at relay.fm slash focused. And we're going to be doing these fairly regularly. I don't want to, we're not sure when the next one is yet. We're going to schedule

that actually, since we get done with this call, but it will be soon. And all the members get an email saying, if you'd like to sign up, go ahead and sign up and we've got room for you. So come join us. Yes, and if you join and become a member and support Focus directly, you'll also get access to the Relay FM crossover feed, which is where a lot of your favorite Relay shows, including Focus, are publishing some special content. And we did a video call and we uh we're talking about

fancy pens even before we hit record today but uh in this video you see just how far this rabbit hole goes for me as we share our pen collections yeah guys mike schmitz has a problem i'm just gonna say it out loud is this an intervention can do that? I don't know. But since we first recorded, Mike, you just kept bringing pins out. It was great. It was kind of hilarious. And then he just told me he bought two more. So I don't know. Well, two more came.

I didn't buy two more since then. Okay. All right. Well, either way, it was a fun episode. And we actually put ourselves on video, which is also fun. And it's all good. So if you're a member of any Relay supported show, you'll be able to get access to that. But if you want to get into those focused meetups, which I found really good.

I mean, you know, the people that listen to the show all have kind of a common goal. And it was great being able to talk to some fellow travelers. So if you sign up, please join us for the next time we do that. And we'll announce it on the next episode. All right, Ian Bird, welcome to the Focus Podcast. Thanks for having me. I feel like that was kind of stressful. Did I stress you out with the way I said that?

No, no, I was in the middle of a coffee sip. It felt like inside the actor's studio or something there for a second. No, Ian is over at birdseed, B-Y-R-D-S-E-E-D.com. Also birdseed, spelled the same,.tv. It's a video subscription site. Puzzlements.co, which is a weekly mailer for five curious images and videos. And Ian started as a teacher, but he had a unique specialty as a teacher. And then he went through a couple of career changes. Ian, tell us a little bit about your journey.

Yeah. So when I went to college, I studied computer science and I graduated and I've never really used that degree. Like I've never had a professional computer science job. And I took a couple of years between graduating before I really started my career. Like I've never had a professional computer science job. And I took a couple years between graduating before I really started my career. But I did music. I ended up working as a special ed instructional aid at an elementary school. And that got me interested in teaching. And like everyone in my family are all teachers. So I went back and got my teaching credential. and my family are all teachers. So I went back and got my teaching credential.

And I ended up student teaching. They randomly place you in your last semester of teaching program. I ended up working in the same school district I grew up in. And I got put into a gifted and talented program. And then I ended up getting hired to work with gifted and talented kids at an elementary school. And it was the same program I had actually grown up in. And these are kids that I really connected with and enjoyed working with them. And so I started writing about what I was doing in the classroom.

So I started a WordPress blog, and that's birdseed.com, which was just a random domain name that I happened to have. But I think it kind of fits. But I started writing about what I was doing. And within a couple of years, that led to people reaching out from like state conferences and asking me to come out and speak. So after doing that for a few years while I was still teaching, it started to become too much to do both.

few years while I was still teaching, it started to become too much to do both. So I quit my teaching job and I went like full time trying to do like a consulting business. And I did that for a few years. And I started this video website, which is a subscription lessons. And that was just kind of on the side. And I was mostly just doing the speaking. And I started to experience, I think what what most consultants and like end up having is the burnout from traveling so much. And this is about the same time that we had our first kid. And so I started to try to pull back on travel and focus instead on building up this video subscription site. And so in the last couple of years, that's been my main focus. I stopped traveling at the end of last year, which in hindsight was extremely fortunate timing

because there's no events right now going on. So yes, I've started doing this video subscription site and it's really taken off in the last couple of years and it has become my main focus. It's funny on that, you know, when you describe that, it's like, what I hear from you is like, you've gone through a series of dream jobs. You know, I hear from folks all the time, like, this is my dream job. In fact, I kind of feel like I currently have my dream job. But yeah, it's your dream job. And then until it's not your dream job, right?

Yeah. You know, you wanted to be this teacher and you were very good at it then you became a speaker and now you're a video content producer yeah and there is a sense of like like whittling down what it is about each thing that that i really like doing and like hopefully throughout my life this will be like a like a continuing journey where you you try to figure out what you enjoy um and what you're good at and try to trim away all the rest of it and still make a living yeah now i have to ask because looking at your website before we jumped on the the call here you mentioned that you did work with special education i grew up working with a family business that

made software for special education. And on your website, you have a section here about social-emotional needs. And it even says, when we pay attention to academics, but not to our students' social-emotional needs, we're missing half of the picture. I'm curious, you know, if you don't mind unpacking that a little bit, because that's not something that typically comes up on focus, but I think it has a very focused angle. And what sort of connection is there, in your opinion, between the whole social-emotional side of this and maybe personally how it's helped you navigate your own career path, but really generally, why should people be caring about this particular thing? So when I randomly got this student teaching assignment

to work in this gifted and talented class, it was kind of a life-changing experience for me because it was the first time that I was exposed to this branch of education, which is social-emotional. And particularly with kids who do really well in school, especially early, it sets up a lot of interesting traps where kids get used to being perfect and not just getting 100%, but being the fastest in the class and also getting 100%. And as you move through school, it becomes impossible to keep that up and a lot of kids who do really well early on develop like an imposter syndrome as they move

through school and go to like middle school and high school and for me it was like really when I went to college and just being surrounded with people who were as smart as I was and smarter and no longer being able to do everything quickly and get 100%. I really had like an identity crisis in college. And I think it's a reason, like I mentioned, I didn't really have a full-time job out of college. Because I was like really, I felt like I wasn't, I felt like I was very capable when I was younger and then I had like lost that. And so when I ended up doing the student teaching and like hearing that this was a common theme, it really impacted me. And so that is something that I try to write about and talk about as my own experience as a student, that if we're not aware that of how kids are feeling it is really

hard to um to be successful in educating them um and yeah so that that's been a big that's been a big like the topic of focus being able to say no to things and being able to quit things um i think there's a point in my life where that would have been hard to do because it would have felt like a failure. Whereas now I feel really like I feel happy when I'm able to cut things away and say those aren't things that I'm particularly good at, but I am good at this. And, you know, that's what I want to focus on. A good friend of mine is the dean of students at one of the universities here in Southern California. And he was telling me they even have a term for that. They call it porcelain children, where they show up for college having been rock stars in high school, and then they shatter when they arrive at high school or college because all of a sudden they're in the big leagues.

Yeah. There's always somebody smarter than you are. And that imposter syndrome, you know, you talked about it, Ian, in terms of the kids who are going through this, but this is a theme we deal with on the show over and over again, David. This applies to everybody. You need these social-emotional skills. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, even as an adult, I mean, I feel like I'm having learned about this with what kids are going through. I see it so much in myself. And yeah, talking to other people, especially people doing creative things, that people really do struggle with the same idea of feeling like you need to be better than you feel like you are.

So have you dealt with imposter syndrome? And if you did, how did you overcome that? Yeah, I definitely dealt with it. When I was finishing college, I didn't go on any job interviews because I was afraid of sitting down with somebody across a desk and they're asking me questions. And in my mind, they were going to look at me and be like, how did you even get into college?

How did you even get into college? Like, how did you even get this interview? Um, I think I had been able to do well growing up without ever having a lot of one-on-one with adults. Like I could take tests and turn them in and never having to, um, like something I talk about with teachers is, uh, teachers are good at pulling students out who need like additional practice and they'll pull them over to like the teacher table and give them help but kids who do well are rarely called over to work with the teacher and um like i was rarely called over to work with a teacher and you get this idea that sitting down and like working with an adult is bad and so i have that i have that like i felt very intimidated to like sit

and, and actually like be interviewed. Um, and so that, like that really prevented me from being successful as a young adult. And so as like, as I read about imposter syndrome, um, and I learned that this is like research with kids who, um, who are gifted and talented or who do well in school, um, like this is just a common pattern. And so seeing that in myself, almost becoming comfortable with that pattern that, oh, I'm experiencing that pattern now. And just putting myself out there

to experience small failures, I think, was a way for me to overcome imposter syndrome. As a teacher, it's like really, there's so many things to get good at really quickly that you can't help but be bad at a lot of things at first. And so that's for me, that student teaching experience, having a mentor teacher like in the room, watching me struggle constantly was both like humiliating, but it was also like such a great experience to then like after the day ended, we would sit down and she would like help me get better, which is something that a lot of kids experience. Like that's what school is for a lot of people. But that was really the first

time that I sat down with a teacher and like had some one-on-one instruction and like felt the journey of going from bad to good. Whereas I think a lot of my life, I just quickly got things. And so I didn't really get to experience that journey. So yeah, so I think that's really like the key for me was for the first time really feeling myself go from, I'm not very good at this. Now I've got some help and now I'm feeling successful. Yeah. And that is not a fun place to be. It's completely uncomfortable, but it's also the best thing for you when you learn how to how to fail and keep going.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think just getting used to that, like, you know, you get used to feelings and just knowing that, OK, I'm just like going through the same feeling again. I'm getting better at something, you know, and nothing feels better than like succeeding after going down a rocky road. Yep, yep, exactly. This kind of gets into like the whole mindset thing. You're probably familiar with that book by Carol Dweck. Yeah. And the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. I think I relate to your story because that was kind of me too. I was a good test taker, never really struggled in high school,

got to college and landed on my face. And when you fail for the first time, if you're used to succeeding, it rocks you. Everything you know is wrong. And when I read that book by Carol Dweck, I realized that this is something that I wanted to instill in my kids is learn how to deal with failure and learn how to overcome it. Recognize that failure isn't the end. It just means we've hit a roadblock and we need to try a new way. And I think that's a skill that I've had to develop in my adult life. And the sooner you can learn that, the better. Yeah.

And the sooner you can learn that, the better. Yeah. And as an adult, a big part of that is learning how to praise people, whether they're kids or other adults. But as a teacher working with kids who were succeeding really easily, it's hard to praise them without just being very vague. Like I would say, great job. It's not specific enough to really help them know what they did well. Yeah, exactly.

Especially if something's really easy, if someone comes over and says, great job, it's hard to know what to think of that praise. Whereas if you can say, hey, you, the way that you did this was really impressive. And like giving specific praise is much more helpful. And especially avoiding that fixed mindset is like trying to zero in on like here's why I'm praising you is I saw that you struggled with that part and then you got better at it yeah and that's right out of the mindset book is praising the effort not the result yeah yeah yep yeah and it's hard to do if kids aren't putting effort in because things are too easy for them. Another difficult thing with that is if you're used to succeeding at something and you get praised for doing a good job, you identify your self-worth with the ability to do the thing.

And then when you're not the top of your class anymore, you kind of have this identity crisis. Who am I? What am I good at? Yeah. It's funny. I haven't really talked about this on air, but I think one of the best things that happened to me was I was a slow learner as a child. You know, when I first started, I mean, the stories in my family are legendary about how stupid I was, but yeah, but it took my mom a lot of effort to get me to read. And so at a fairly young age, I realized that I needed to, like, just imagine elementary school Sparky, you know, he had systems and he had workflows, you know, and I, because I wanted to be good at my stuff. And I was a good student.

I graduated with honors and all that. But it was an initial, like, challenge for me that led to the habits that got me started. If it had been easy for me, I'm not sure where I would have ended up. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of evidence that kids who do experience early struggle, they make that transition from high school to college a lot easier. And it's really because you've practiced and you know how to get help and, yeah, you know how to make systems. And so that, yeah, that's like a goal of what gifted and talented programs should be trying to do is to make school, like, to give, to give kids the opportunity to struggle even, like,

early in their, in their school career. So how do we as adults give ourselves opportunity to struggle even like early in their school career. So how do we as adults give ourselves the opportunity to struggle? For me, like saying yes to this podcast would be an example of myself. I like working alone in my little office in the corner here and just like working on the same thing all the time, which is part of like what I think we're going to talk about is like being able to find that success in something is really important. But then also occasionally branching out and doing things that aren't right in your wheelhouse. Those are opportunities to experience something that you're not used to and try something that might be a little bit scary or it's just not in your wheelhouse. And sometimes you find things

that you didn't know you would like by doing that. So there's a mix, I think, of pursuing the thing that you're focused on while also leaving the door open for opportunities to try new things as they come along. Yeah, we have a thing in our house called the hard things rule. We've got it on our fridge. We totally ripped it off from, I think it was Angela Duckworth in Grit. Then I went on a mission trip to Costa

Rica, couldn't say anything, couldn't communicate with anybody there. And I'm like, I need to figure this out. So I got back, downloaded Duolingo, and I've been doing it ever since. But just trying something that you, because especially as kids, if you watch a kid who you ask them to do something that they know they're not good at, their natural tendency is to avoid it. And it's very evident, like they don't want to do this. But when you get them to do it, and put forth the effort and not judge their success or failure based on the outcome, it's kind of cool to see them kind of adapt. And at first, they don't know what to do. But then they start to figure things out, and they get better at it. Our 10-year-old in particular, he's much more fluent in Spanish than I am

because he saw it and he tried it and at first he wasn't very good at it, but then all of a sudden it clicked and the lights come on, you know, and it really makes him come alive and that's really cool to see. But I think you never really get to those moments of inspiration or revelation until you try

something that you don't initially think that you can do yeah you mentioned travel there and i think that's that's been something for me as an adult my wife and i've done a lot of traveling because i had all these um travel miles from when i was consulting like going yeah going to countries where you don't speak the language. For me, that puts me in a place where like, you just, you have to talk to people, you have to figure out a way to communicate. And it is like, it is a struggle, but it's also like, so fun. And to just, to be outside of the normal routine. Yeah, for me, like travel has been a huge way of pushing myself out of a comfort zone. This episode of Focus is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Go to ExpressVPN.com to get high speed, secure and anonymous VPN service and get three months for free.

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Don't be creepy, I just want to be safe. ExpressVPN is also incredibly fast and doesn't slow down your connection, meaning you can stream content in HD quality with no issues. So get the most out of your streaming services today at expressvpn.com slash focused. If you go to that URL, you'll get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. Again, that's expressvpn.com slash focused. Go there now, expressvpn.com slash focused to learn more. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Now, Ian, one of the things you do is a quarterly retreat. And it's interesting because, you know,

you've got this business where you're working on your own all the time but you also have retreats and i thought it'd be fun to talk through that a little bit and kind of get the story yeah so this is something i started doing um like two and a half years ago right after my son was born and i'd heard i'd heard about it from a from several different people but um there's a podcast called Zen Founder with Sherry Walling. And she's a therapist and her husband is an entrepreneur. And they had like kind of jointly came up with this, like a framework around founders of small businesses going on annual or, you know, twice a year retreats. And so a lot of this came out of just reading about what they were doing. So the goal of it is to take time to like work on your business in a way that's different from the day to day. So it's not like a vacation. You're doing a bunch of thinking, but you're

not doing your day to day work. So for me, I don't I don't take my laptop. I'll take an iPad. But I want to avoid being able to just do what I do every day. And instead, I want to like zoom out. And my goal when I, so for me, these became quarterly because I was getting so much out of it. I was like, I should do this more than once a year or twice a year. And so for me, going away for a couple nights and trying to come up with a plan for the next three months that's going to guide me until the next retreat. And so for me, there's just a lot of like reflecting on what the last time has been like and trying to look for patterns where I see like, I keep saying that I want to do something and I haven't done it. And I've been saying that for

like two years. So that either I need to figure out a way to start that or like let that go. And there's a lot of what I would say are like dull moments where I realize something that's obvious, but I would never have the thought if I just sit down on my computer and just start my daily work. So it's really about like changing your context and looking at, for me, like both my personal life and the business from a much more zoomed out point of view. Yeah, I totally get that. I feel like, you know, especially if you're self-employed, but even if you're in a big company, you've got to think of your, you know, your production or your, your worker person and your manager person, you know, and, and it's so easy to get stuck in production. You know, you make videos. I mean, you're like, Oh, I'm away from the family. I don't have, uh, you know,

the two year old here for two days, I could make so much video, but instead you stop and think about, well, what am I doing? What makes sense? What should I change? And, um, everybody that does it has the exact same reaction you do, but it's so hard to remember that. It's like, I don't know. It's like you, your memory gets wiped after you walk away. And it's really hard to like make that into a habit. That's why I'm so impressed that you do it quarterly. Yeah, well, it's been it's had a really big effect. It's really how I started realizing like, okay, if I could, like the three months or six months, it gives you enough time where you can set a larger goal and really like start to work towards it. So for me, it was like, well, how can I transition away from traveling towards just doing this video subscription site, you know, without having a huge drop in our income.

Mary, my wife, is like, she's very supportive in me going away. Like, I feel bad leaving her with our kid, but I think she has seen how much it's impacted me, like, personally and in terms of what I'm doing creatively, that she's, like, very encouraging that I go take time. And then she also will sometimes take a retreat of her own. I like to go somewhere, you don't want to go somewhere like a big city,

like Las Vegas would be a bad place for a retreat. But I live in Oregon, so there's lots of forests that are not too far away. There's tons of Airbnbs in this area. But you could also go to the beach or you could go to a desert or just like going somewhere that's kind of like monkish, you know, where people have like

traditionally gone away to do a lot of thinking. And I like to do two nights because I think you need like one full day at least. And I think, I don't think like three days would be that useful. I think there's diminishing returns, but at least having one full day at least. And I think, I don't think like three days would be that useful. Like there's, I think there's diminishing returns, but at least having one full day.

And that first night when I get there, I usually start with like a personal reflection. And you know, you're like business and your personal life are very intertwined, especially if you're running your own thing. And so really starting with the personal life. And I got these two questions from Sherry Wallings. She has a PDF about these founder retreats. But one of the sets of questions that she's used are like to ask yourself what's giving you life and what is taking life from you. And I find those questions to be like so easy to answer. They're

like really sharp questions where more so than just like, what do you like doing? What do you not like doing? But like the idea of something that's like taking my life from me, like right away, I can say, oh, it's all these emails or this paperwork I have to fill out or, you know, these plane trips that I have to go on all the time. And then the idea of like, what is giving me life? I find that really easy to answer also. And then that, to me, that's just tries to shape what I'm going to be thinking about is like, obviously, how do I get rid of these things that are taking life? And how do I expand the things that are giving me life?

Now, Mike, you do something similar, right? I do. Ian, you and I are kindred spirits, I feel. Awesome. I do. And I actually created a course on my framework for this. I call it a personal retreat because you mentioned a resource here. And it sounds I'm not real familiar with this one. It sounds like this is a founder's framework or for entrepreneurs, but I recognize the value in doing this. Just personally, you don't have to be running a company or even a side hustle in order to benefit from taking some time to step back and consider what's working and what's not. I love those questions that you have, what is giving you life, what is taking life. I think I'm going to add those to mine.

I use a set of questions which I picked up a while back, which is what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? One of the keys for me is picking something every single time to stop doing because that creates the space for me to engage in some some of the other opportunities that come my way that I'm I'm interested in like you Ian I do it for for two nights because I feel like one whole day is really what you need to let your mind unravel these things fully do you have

any advice for people on like where they should start with this sort of thing if they're interested in this, this concept? Yeah. Um, so you don't have to, it doesn't have to be fancy or like, you don't have to go to any place really that special. Like it's really about getting away. Um, I think is the, is the whole thing. And then each one that I've done has been so different, um, that it's, it's's hard to say exactly how you should do it. Because it's so dependent on just how my life is at that moment. But yeah, for me, it's like getting away, unplugging. So taking the minimal internet connected devices. Actually, the first

time I did this, I stayed in like a little side house out in this kind of rural area near the coast in Oregon. And the internet situation was relatively weak. Like I was getting it off of the main house. But I thought that that was a real benefit because I couldn't really spend a lot of time fiddling around on websites or like watching videos and I could access things if I really needed to but there was like a price to pay like I had to wait for it to load and so I think I don't know if that's something

you can engineer into it but really like resisting the urge to just start playing around on the Internet. Doing like if people have like if you want to take your pens, it's like the perfect thing to try to move away from just typing all day. Yeah. So for me, like that's like starting with that personal reflection is just like thinking about. Yeah. And you don't you don't have to own a business.

Like if I were still a teacher, I would I wish that i had done this when i was still teaching like what is it about my life and my job that's really like feeding me and what is like slowly killing me yeah i love i love those those questions because i feel it frames it so simply anybody can can pick that up and run with it basically what do i want to do more of and what do i want to do more of? And what do I want to do less of? Yeah. And you, did you say you do what you want to stop doing? Start doing? Start doing, stop doing, keep doing. I started doing that with my personal retreats. My wife and I do that in our weekly family meetings too. Those questions, they're general. And so you can make a mean whatever you want. And it's kind of cool. You spend enough time thinking about those, what sort of answers your brain comes up with?

Yeah, I've actually ended up with categories like that. So for me, the final morning that I'm there, I try to write up what I've landed on. I call it the shareholder report. And it's mostly just for my wife. So I can tell her, you know, her something like, this is what my plan is and what I've been thinking about. You're deliverable for being out of the house for two days. Yeah, so she gets a kick out of it. But it is fun actually trying to write something up that last morning that I'm there and try to solidify all of my thoughts. But I do have a continue doing, stop doing, and start doing categories. But then I also have a, I do have a continue doing, stop doing and start doing categories. But then I also have a continue not doing category where I like revisit. And after you've done this a few times, you can look back on previous notes and documents from other retreats.

In terms of like focusing, I like the idea of saying, I'm still not going to start doing this thing. And like for me, I've had this idea of doing a podcast still not going to start doing this thing um and like for me i've had this idea of doing a podcast and talking about education with people um like people's early education experiences but it's never felt like the right time to start it so like that keeps going in the continue not doing um category so it's like still there but I'm just choosing to not do it again. That's the most important category is the things that you continually say no to. Because if you were to just say yes to every good idea that pops up in your head, then you're going to be stretched too thin and you're not going to be able to do anything of any real quality.

Going back to like the whole conversation we were having before the break about the growth mindset, that's really the key to developing that stuff is being able to focus and put in an honest effort and not just check the box there. I did that, but what did I learn from this process? It's almost like if you don't take the time to reflect and figure out what went well, what could have gone better? It's like, what's the point? We're just going to keep doing the same things and getting the same results. Yeah, I actually keep, I keep a log of things I say no to. Just this morning, I had a good friend who real smart guy wanted me to a project with him. I told him no. So I actually have a text file where I just write them down every time I say no. And it's

for me, it's kind of a good reminder when someone sends me a request to do something, I'll look at all the other stuff I've said no to. It's like kind of my little contract. I have to read that list before I'm allowed to say yes. And it actually really helps because I remember, because I definitely am of the personality type that wants to say yes all the time. Yeah. The momentum list. Yeah.

I like that. I'm going to use that. You know, now I want to talk to you about getting away for this. So I've been for a long time, I've been doing monthly kind of review and planning and quarterly review and planning. And usually I do it on the last Sunday before the event, like today, as we record this at September 1st, we're recording early this month for the Focus podcast. And just over the last weekend, I spent a bunch of time doing monthly planning for September, where I asked a lot of the same questions you guys are asking, but I did it in my backyard in a comfortable chair.

I have never done the thing where you go and stay away for a couple days. I've tried. At one time, I even booked a room and then at the last minute I canceled it because there was just, you know, family stuff going on. But how big of a difference does it make getting away, guys? Yeah, I think it's key. I mean, it does. It removes you from your usual routines. I think I think that's the real key of it is you're in a new place. You're away from everybody you're usually around. I actually did an at-home retreat in March, like right as the pandemic was

starting. And we didn't know, you know, is it safe to go to hotels or anything? So I did, I just stayed in my bedroom for two days and just like worked like on the bed and away from the computer. my bedroom for two days and just like worked like on the bed and away from the computer. And I still got, I definitely got a lot out of it, but I'm still like, I'm still in the house. I can still hear my toddler making noise. You know, I still like have dinner with the family. And so I'm, I am still in the same context. So I've just found like getting away from the usual routine. It just, it gives me a different experience. And I do think I just have more time. Even into the evening, I do have time to just be thinking in a way that I wouldn't have if I were staying at home. Yeah, it's definitely not the same. You can get some

benefit from it, but you're not going to get the full benefit from it. Because I would argue the value in changing the location and the context, you hit the to get the full benefit from it. Because I would argue the value in changing the location, the context, you hit the nail on the head there, Ian. What that does is it forces you to think about things differently. All of your routines and the things that your brain would naturally gravitate towards, all those distractions, are right there. It would take me a Herculean amount of willpower to be able to do that from home. There's no way I could just sit on the bed and ask myself these questions. I would go nuts. I got to be in a different place. So kudos to you that you were able to get anything out of that. Yeah. Well, it was a very unique time where I was like, is my business going to implode right now? So I really I did have a lot of motivation to do some thinking. Forced focus. Yeah.

personal review of my year and what I want to do. And I always do that like at the beach or in the mountains or something, but I just have never got to the point of, which is kind of silly. I mean, it's not that expensive to get an Airbnb in the, in the mountains or the beach or somewhere for a weekend. Um, I always feel a little guilty to the leaving my wife, but I mean, my kids are practically grown and at some point I guess I have to be a, I don't know. Yeah. I get that. You know, I wanted to call that out because Ian mentioned that you send your wife on versions of this too. I do the same thing. And I think that's very, very important for this to work is there's got to be some reciprocity here. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Mary just went to an Airbnb for a couple of days and just, she took her sewing machine and just, you know, took a couple of days off.

Yeah. So I think you're, you're making a good point. But, and I'm, and so you started doing it every six months and you ended up doing it quarterly, huh? Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like that's a good, for me, at least that's a good, like size, like chunk of time where I can, I can have a goal, and I can break it down into a bunch of, you know, individual tasks that I can do. And I and I do feel like at the end of those three months, I'm sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel. And I'm like, I'm ready to renew my focus for the next quarter. to renew my focus for the next quarter. Yeah. I feel like the, um, that you need this introspection, you know, you need the manager to work on the business or your life. And, uh, I absolutely think this is important. You're just opening my eyes a little bit about the importance of making it offsite. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned that manager. So I bet the book E-Myth Revisited has he talks about these three like personas you have if you're when you're like running a business and that's like the craftsperson who does the day to day work. And then the manager who is supposed to be organizing the craftsperson. And then there's like the visionary or the entrepreneur who is like setting the larger goals. or the entrepreneur who is like setting the larger goals.

And they're all like in conflict with each other. But I feel like these retreats are important to think in that visionary mindset of where I'm thinking like much longer term. And then like breaking it down into tasks is kind of like the manager role. And then I'm free day to day to just be the craftsperson who can look at the task and then just get to work. Yeah, recently I wrote a post at Max Sparky about how I've started in my journaling system tagging whatever I do with one of three tags.

Everything I do during the day is either a maker, a manager, or a consumer. You know, at the end of the day, everything I produce. And it's been a really eye-opening way to look at your day. Instead of looking at your time, look at your tasks based on role. And trying to find that balance, because you need to be a maker. That's how you pay for the shoes, but you also need to be a manager. In my head, I guess I'm combining manager and visionary into the one role. But you need to serve all those masters if you're going to make it work. Yeah.

What's interesting to me with those three distinctions is that the craftsperson needs to be organized and have a vision in order to be motivated to do the work that they're going to do. And that's been my big takeaway from these personal retreats is that every single time that I do one, I come back more motivated to do the work. Do you find the same sort of thing, Ian? I'm excited for the next day. And for me, it's the hardest part of the retreat is to not start doing the work because I'll have this like epiphany early in the day. And I just,

I feel like I just want to get started on it. Um, and so that for me, my least, like my least successful retreats, I've allowed myself to start working. Um, and then I regret it cause I feel like I didn't really flesh out the thinking, but yeah, it gets me very motivated to start tackling these new ideas. And then, like I said, I feel like at the end of the three months, I am sort of starting to not really know what to work on anymore. This episode of the Focused podcast is brought to you by Blinkist. Read 3,000 plus books in 15 minutes or less. Start your seven-day free trial at Blinkist.com slash focused.

With our ever-changing routines, there's never been a better time to learn something new. But with thousands of options available, finding the best way to learn can be challenging. I want to tell you about an app I use called Blinkist. Blinkist works on your phone, your tablet, or in your web browser, and it gives you the best key takeaways from over 3,000 nonfiction bestsellers in over 27 categories. It condenses them down into what they call Blinks, which you can read or listen to in just 15 minutes. And now Blinkist offers its members even more, including exclusive original podcasts from top authors and creative thinkers. There's a series in there by Seth Godin that I've really been enjoying. You still get access to the entire Blinkist library with

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why not try a popular bestseller like Why Sleep Matters by Matthew Walker or The Three Minute Rule by Brant Pinvidic. Right now, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com slash focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D to start your free seven day trial. That's right. Get in there seven days, kick the tires and see what you think. And you get 25% off of a Blinkist premium membership and up to 65% off audio books, which are yours to keep forever. That's Blinkist, audiobooks, which are yours to keep forever. That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash focused to get 25% off that premium membership and a seven day free trial. Go there now and check it out. Blinkist dot com slash focused. And thank you to Blinkist for your support of Focused and Aller Relay FM. So Ian, in the last section, we were talking about the retreats and how that brought clarity

and vision and focus might be another word to the work that you're going to do. But I'm curious, what does the word focus mean to you? So I read the book essentialism a couple years ago and uh in that book it's all about like tearing things down to just working on the essential and he has he comes back to this idea that the word priority is singular but but we almost always hear it used in like a plural sense like these are our priorities um and so his big emphasis is that you can really you can only have one priority but i do think the word focus is even more appropriate for that because like a like a camera lens can't focus on like multiple things um and so when when you are focusing you really have to focus on one thing at a time. And we kind of, we, we lie to ourselves

if we list like five focuses, foci, which is what I had, what I had been doing until I started going on these retreats was really like, I had like four or five different like sub businesses within my business. And I look back on it and i don't even know how i managed to get anything done and i put this image in in our outline that's from essentialism where he has like all these arrows coming out of the circle labeled energy and then he combines all those arrows length and instead instead of a of short arrows, you get this one really long arrow. And that like image really, really impacted me.

Like the idea that, oh yeah, I could be taking the same, whatever, 10 units of energy that I have and putting it towards one thing. And I'm like actually going to make a lot of progress on it. Yeah. And I'll go ahead and put that in as show art for this chapter.

So if you're watching it on a, if you're listening on it. Yeah, I'll go ahead and put that in as show art for this chapter. So if you're watching it on a, if you're listening on a podcast app, you'll be able to see that image. I found the word like pruning to be really useful. A couple of retreats I had gone on, like that sort of became the focus of, I don't need to start doing more things. Like I need to look at what I can prune away and if you think about like gardening and like the idea of cutting off parts of a plant is like healthy for the plant and you'll get you know the plant will bear better fruit um and i've like that's something i've really found is as i've started focus specifically focus on fewer things the impact has been um to me really impressive. I remember reading that section where he talks

about priority being singular and that really impacting me first time that I read it. He makes the point that in the English language, it didn't even have a plural definition until I think it was around the industrial revolution when people started talking about priorities instead of a single priority because it literally means the most important thing. Yeah. And I think that idea coupled with the concept of like boiling water, this just kind of like crystallized it for me. You know, if you are, if your focus is based on this image, you know, pulled in a bunch of different directions, you make a little bit of progress this direction, then you go do something else, you make a little bit of progress there, you're not going to move the needle very far in a

particular direction. And I think that you could use the analogy of heating up a pot of water, and at 212 degrees, it's going to boil. But until then, it's just going to be hot water. And focus is the thing that allows you to go in the one direction, keep that pot on the stove long enough that it gets to that point where it actually changes and it becomes a different state. And as I was reflecting on that in my own life, all of the different side projects and things that I've done where I look back and I tend to be a little bit hard on myself, like, man, I really didn't give that a fair shot because I put in a little bit of effort, but I really didn't sink my teeth into it. I never really got it to that boiling point to

see what it actually could have became. I feel like that's a really powerful idea and very, very powerful, coupled with the whole idea of the retreats, where if you pick one thing is what you're going to work on, and then we're going to really see what's possible with this thing. Do you take like a single goal then from your retreats? You focus on it for the next three months? Or how does that process work for you? Do you have different areas of your life and you pick like two or three? How does that process work for you? Do you have different areas of your life and you pick like two or three? Yeah, the last couple of retreats, I have tried to pick like one main theme or like a focus. And it does like, you probably would want to do one for like a personal life and then the business, maybe do those separately. But yeah, like for one, one quarter, or maybe two quarters in a row, I did the idea of pruning and looking at my blog, which by that point, I had like 500 posts. And I just, I kept writing and adding to it. And then I looked at like Google

Analytics. And like, like really long term, like looking over two or three years and, and like really long term, like looking over two or three years and seeing that 80-20 principle where there's like five posts that I've written that get 80% of the traffic to the website and realizing, oh yeah, like I kind of knew this, but I never really thought about it very deeply. And so the idea of like pruning away,

I don't need 500 blog posts. I should be focusing on these ones that are bearing so much fruit already and like could i rewrite this and could i put it instead of just having a blog home page could i could i make um like some key articles that i want people to look at first um and so that that's like a good three month project is going through rewriting blog posts combining them um and so something like that yeah i could you could probably work on that for three months or six months and that's i think like the 80 20 principle right but if you continue that thought you 80 20 to 80

20 you can continue to pare this down until you eventually end up with the single thing that moves the needle the most. And I think that's something that is easy to overlook when you're just trying to keep all the plates spinning. But it's something that we really need to be honest with ourselves and apply to every area of our life if we really want to make any progress in any of those directions. Do you have a personal example that you'd be willing to share of like this is the the single thing that i want to focus on not from a business context so there's another i'll try to find this post and link to it um but there i saw in like an annual goal um like framework um but

picking picking something like um like culture was was example of like, we're going to try to do more cultural activities in the next three months or six months. And like picking that as a goal, and then you can start thinking about, well, what are things in the city that we've never done? Like, are there museums we've never been to? Or there's an opera here. We've never been to an opera. So picking something like that, cultural goals. Or one time I wanted to start watching older movies. And if you pick something like that as a goal, then you can really break it down into tasks in the same way that I did with my business. Or one time I wanted to do more like friend hangouts. So like, if that becomes a goal,

like I want to see my friends more often than thinking like, well, we could like host dinners or we could set up, you know, a monthly hangout at a restaurant. And so I think you can do those same ideas where you come up with like a one word theme almost, and then break it down into concrete tasks, even in your personal life. I love those examples. I've done something similar. My wife and I decided at the beginning of this year to start hosting a kibbutz with a couple other couples where they would come over.

They've got kids too. Kids would go downstairs. They'd play together. And basically the rule is you can't come up unless you're bleeding because the adults are going to sit and we're going to have an intentional conversation. So someone throws out like a prompt even before everybody gets there that you're thinking about. And it really just guides the conversation. So it eliminates all of the really small talk around it. Because the goal of these get-togethers was develop these deeper relationships with people that we wanted in our lives.

And I think this is something that's so easy to overlook if you don't take the time to think about it. Like what changes do i want to make in my personal life and setting goals in those areas is arguably even more important than setting them in your business yeah yeah so this the idea that i i started with was um the art of non-conformity who uh i don't know how to say his last name, Chris Gublu. But he had this idea of, yeah, you start, you have like three to seven areas in your life where you want to try to do something new.

And so that could be like health, learning, friends, family, finances, things like that. And then really like purposefully, that's where I think I would have stopped is almost like a New Year's resolution. Like I want to be healthier this year but instead like really breaking it down into what is that going to look

like on a weekly basis if I want to be healthier or if I want to learn more and that's where we got the idea of like cultural outings or going through the like top 100 movies of all time and just like picking one out each week yeah it's like goals are great, but you've got to have something on the ground to make them

into something. But from the other direction, if you start at the bottom and say, well, I'm going to start making a list of things I'm going to do, but you don't really have a goal that you're headed toward, it's just as bad. So it really seems to me like those two have to exist together in order to be at all useful. Yeah. You've got to have the reason why you want to do the things to create the motivation to follow through and do the things. Yeah. I always think about it like a sailboat. I'm going to have a sailboat. Am I going to sit in port and figure out how to tie knots on my sailboat, or am I going to go somewhere? And if I'm going to go somewhere, where am I going?

Because if you just leave port and you don't know where you're going, you're just at sea, you know? Yeah. And if you're at sea and you're really good at tying knots, you're still not going anywhere. And I don't know, it's just kind of like in my head the way it works. Now, so you do these on a quarterly basis, but I would assume that

some of these habits you form which is kind of what you're describing then they just become you know part of your your operating system and then that gives you the freedom to pick something else going forward i've never been super great with like the task manager um like i always end up just making a big list of things um and i feel like that works well with the quarterly retreat is like on on the retreat instead of doing the work i i try to generate a bunch of specific tasks that i can do and then i do have like a long you know quarter two list of things i'd like to try to do. And then at the beginning of a week, I can go through and pick a few of those things out. And then those become like my daily or my weekly

tasks that I want to get done. Now, as you are creating new systems and habits, though, those do add up. So even though you maybe at at the beginning you set a goal to establish a journaling habit you do that great but that's one more thing you've got to do so eventually you get to the point where you have to start saying no to things how do you do that do you have any sort of framework for it or just when it feels like it's too much you out of desperation say no i can't take anymore i i think for me it's a lot easier to make a decision when i've i've made a decision in the past to be like very black and white with things um like when i was trying to stop um stop the travel first i started just trying to limit to events that, that like matched what I wanted

to do. But that led to every time someone sent me like a request, I would have to go through this whole thought process and try to figure out is this this event match up with what I want to do. And so I, for me, I found like being 100% in on something or 100% out makes it really easy to know if I'm going to say yes or no. And it makes the no a lot easier because I can just say, I'm sorry, I'm not doing that anymore. Rather than like trying to explain why I don't want to do it. And like I found this true when I've like tried to diet or it's if I just say I'm going to try to eat healthier it doesn't work as well as when I've said I'm like I'm not going to eat any carbs like that either yes or no decision makes it a lot easier to say no to a bag of chips if if I say I'm not going to eat any carbs so for me saying no

if I've made a rule for myself already then saying no to other people becomes a lot easier. Yeah. I mean, that's the challenge for all of us, isn't it? If you're listening to this show, there's a good chance you need to be saying no more often. Yeah. And for me, like putting it on my website, like I'm not, these are things that I'm not doing anymore. And these are things that I am doing. Just makes it a lot. Like you said, David, I do, I want to say yes to things.

Like, I want to be helpful, and I want to be out there trying new things out. But having that as a rule so that other people can see that it is like a blanket rule for me. Like, it just takes a lot less energy for me to say no if it is a black or white rule. Yeah. And where you can make those, it's great. Unfortunately, you can't do it everywhere. But maybe that's one of the benefits of the retreat is it gives you a chance to make a few more of those rules. Yeah. Ian, when we were talking before we recorded, you told me that you have a weekly written paper planner that you rely on. And you know what? We can't let that go by on the Focus podcast.

Tell us about your planner, Ian. It's really simple. It's just a weekly calendar. My wife had bought me like a set of stickers a couple years ago that was just like Monday through Friday. Days blocked out on them um and i i found it really like that week view to me is really helpful um like a month is is too much context um and one day like isn't enough but to be able to map out just like five days in a row and see that the shape of the week for me really fits with how i work um and so i i ordered i got through all those stickers but i ordered this like spiral bound weekly scheduler

that i think i shared the link already yeah i'll put it in the notes here but yeah so you can just you can just flip it over and then you can just see the week and it's got like a little to-do list on the side which is where i put the bigger projects that are, I might not get to that this week, but they're there as like things I could do. And then I just like the tactile nature of this because I can only write so much in each day. So to me, it's like a physical way of showing, of limiting how much I expect for myself in a week and then within each day. I love that. I have a rule for myself where I limit the number of tasks that I try to get done in

a day to five. What sort of limits? I know you mentioned the paper format helps you set those those limits but what are some of those limits for you so just whatever fits in the page or do you have numbers associated with things yeah i i try to do like three things like i'm i'm working on these videos so usually i have a video and so i'll try to get to a certain stopping point um i usually have some kind of administrative work that i have to do. And then the calendar is broken into a.m. p.m. for each day. So I can put like two things in the morning and then one thing in the afternoon. It's hard for me to get away from the idea of I'm going to work a certain

number of hours and instead think about like I'm going to get these things done and then I'm done. And instead think about like, I'm going to get these things done and then I'm done. Like that feels really weird to me to not go all the way to like five o'clock. But yeah, just having like a reasonable number of things to get done. And if I get them done, then I can stop working for the day. That's been a very freeing, like having to work from home all of a sudden, instead of going out to a co-working space, And like having to work from home all of a sudden, instead of going out to a co-working space, having just like a smaller than usual number of things that I want to get done has really like freed me up from a lot of stress of like feeling like, oh, I got to get all this stuff done. And then my toddler is like calling for me outside the door. And so, yeah, limiting it to just like for me, three tasks has helped reduce a lot of the like self-expectation.

Can you describe that transition? I think that's an important point, which we've talked a little bit before, but it doesn't make the voice in your head any less loud when you've done four hours of work, you've accomplished your list, and you know emotionally maybe you're drained, but you still, the voice in your head is telling you, you've got four more hours to put in. How do you overcome that? Yeah. Part of it for me is moving, I've moved away from, like when I was doing the speaking work, like I had to, I obviously obviously I had to be somewhere in order to be doing the work. And now as I've moved to the subscription business,

I have had to change my mindset and realize the business is running even if I'm not really working on it. And I do have a VA who helps with a lot of paperwork and some of the like frontline support. And so that has been something I've like had to get used to is the idea that there's somebody who's helping me and like they're they're handling some of those those like timely issues that I'm that I might feel like rushed like I have to get to. It is very hard even even now to be able to step away from something. But I think like, it sounds weird,

but like having a little checkbox next to each thing, like being able to check them off and then like cross the day off, that feels very final is to be like, this day is over and cross it out on my little calendar. That does help me feel like I've done all that i need to do today and i can like exit the bedroom yeah i do a similar task but i do it digitally um and i just you know i have all my automation tools and whatnot but i'm sharing my little week calendar with you guys in the in the robot here but the um to, I find that just on Sunday,

running those blocks and figuring out the week ahead of you, whether you do it on paper or digitally, it's what enables me to say no. It's like, okay, smart guy, somebody wants you to do something, look at this week, where are you going to do it? And that, I think think is something that everybody should have and and this isn't a paper you must do paper thing i think it paper is great i think

digital is fine as well especially for calendaring um but it is uh it's something that you should have i mean you should start monday with a with a really good idea of what's going to happen on Thursday afternoon, in my opinion. Yeah. And having the retreat plays into that because I do have a larger plan. And if I get an email from someone who's like, oh, I really wish you had this topic covered, my instinct is to drop everything and start working on that. But to be able to like put that in a think about later pile and stay on my focus, I don't know an easy way to do that. Like it takes some kind of discipline

and just like getting used to this, that it's okay not to drop everything if somebody requests something. But that it's just, it's been a very freeing, it's just really freed me up to be able to work on what I think is going to benefit the business in the long term without necessarily saying no to those things but they are things that i can come back to later when i'm doing a bigger review mike how do you do that how do you block your week

is it in paper as well uh it is although i don't do it weekly. I maybe should, but I, as part of my personal retreat, I have a template where I plan my ideal week and I kind of rough out on there where my work blocks are going to happen, where my spending time with my family blocks are going to happen. And I have that kind of in the back of my mind as I time block each day in my paper notebook. And I really just draw a line from top to bottom on the left side, put in the hours from 7 to 9 p.m. and force myself to block off in at least one hour increments the different modes I'm going to be in. Then to the right of that I've got my task list. So I'm not necessarily fleshing out the tasks on the calendar themselves because mine is more fluid. I know some people who will make their plan and then they'll track

what actually happens. I don't really, I know it's going to get messed up. I'm not really worried about that as long as this stuff gets done at the end of the day. So I just rough it out and then I feel free to call audibles and move things around. Like today I had on here that I was going to go for a bike ride because I try to get outside and exercise every day after we recorded this, but I got done with a task a little bit early. So I actually went before, you know, and I'm not, not writing that down on my, my calendar, but, uh, it just kind of sets the intention at the beginning of the day. And I find that when I don't do that, those are the days when I find myself kind of scrambling and thinking constantly, like, what should I be doing right now? Because I haven't taken the, it sounds stupid, just like five minutes to write this out, but

that really does provide clarity for everything going forward. Yeah, like for me, I have legal blocks during the day. I still have a law practice. I'm running smaller than it used to be, but it still exists. But I have blocks of time that I know will get filled, but I don't know what's going to go into me. But I reserve that time. If I'm going to have this as a commitment in my life, I need to have time for it. You know, same thing with like customer service issues. So I understand what you mean there, but I do like

the idea of knowing going in that, yeah, I am Thursday afternoon going to have some time for this, this thing, you know, I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing in it yet, but it's there. Ian, one of the things you said to me that was inspiring, I think when you were a guest on Mac Power Users years ago, was, you know, you got the iPad and the way you took on the iPad was you would look at it. Well, you explain it for us. You know, you had a distinction for iPad work versus Mac work that I thought was really useful. Yeah. work versus Mac work that I thought was really useful. Yeah, well, it comes back to that idea of the craftsperson versus the manager or the visionary, where I feel like if I'm on the Mac, I'm doing craftsperson stuff, like I'm writing or I'm building the videos that I make or working on

the website. And then if I'm on the iPad, it's just some of that stuff's impossible to do. And some of it's just a lot harder. And so the iPad works a lot better for me as like a manager tool, where I can check in on email, or I can, like I mentioned, I have a VA, we can send messages back and forth, or I can do planning. And so I think that separating those two tools out into what they do well is another way to try to separate those two jobs that I have within the job. And just to add on what you said to me that really stuck with me was if I'm doing something on my iPad and I realize I can't do it on my iPad, I ask myself, is this something that I need to be doing at all? Like, you know, and I think that is a great little filter to run when you have limitations on your technology or your available tools. If you need specialized tools to do something, are you the person that should be wielding that specialized tool? Yeah. And really, like at the time that we talked about

that, I was thinking a lot about should I offload the video production more? And as I've gone through that, I have gone back and forth. But I feel like that's my core contribution to the business is how I build these videos. So that is something that I have my whole desk set up is to record and make those videos. my whole like desk setup is is to record and make those videos but things like um filling out a bunch of paperwork is not really something that i should be spending a lot of time on and and it is harder to do that on the ipad for me um so that is something where it's like okay i can forward this email to somebody who can fill it out for me so i do i do still think in that way like they're things that are a little bit harder on the ip are things I should consider. Is this really something that's worth my time?

I like that. It also sounds like you're using some sort of context switching based on the device. So I'm curious if you don't mind explaining that a little bit more. I know you kind of mentioned craftsperson work is happening on the computer. Sounds like some of the higher level thinking type stuff is happening on the iPad. But how do you balance that with what the devices are good at? So for example, I would argue the phone is not a great place for email. Do you do email on your phone? Or what sort of boundaries have you put around? What's accessible where? I don't really use my phone for work unless it's a weird situation. Like if I'm traveling, I might check email on there.

But for the most part, I don't. I don't use my phone for work. And a lot of that is because it is harder to use. There's definitely a context switching where I like to write on the iPad, which isn't really manager work, but it does fit the device well. And that especially worked better when I could go to a coffee shop instead of having to kind of be stuck at home. I could go to a coffee shop instead of, you know, having to kind of be stuck at home. But that was definitely something where, especially in an afternoon, I would take the iPad and go to a second location and do some work that is less computer restricted. A lot of that is planning.

I love like using the pencil on an iPad and just mapping things out. I do a lot of that on the retreat, too. And then I think that stuff is a lot harder on a laptop, where I'm using a mouse and a keyboard to try to draw shapes. It doesn't work as well. So yeah, for higher order, higher, more managerial or visionary kind of thinking, I do think the iPad fits a lot better. There is a changing location that also affects that.

Yeah, I have a craft and commerce is a conference that I've gone to. It's sponsored by ConvertKit, but they give out these stickers. I got one that says, create, not consume. And I put it on my iPad case as a reminder that creation happens here. All the admin stuff, that happens on the Mac. And it has been a little bit tricky

with not being able to go to the coffee shop or to the coworking space, because I'm like you, I used to use both of those places for context switching. I've kind of done a mini version of that we've got a deck up on our off of our kitchen yeah so i've got my office in the basement where my mac primarily stays but i will occasionally go out on the back porch to to write on the ipad i do all my editing when i'm editing podcasts using ferrite on my ipad i do sketch

notes and good notes yeah and i find that very helpful in keeping all the other junk that I've... Part of me wants it on there, but the real me doesn't. Like all the social media and stuff. I can very easily say no to that sort of thing because the iPad is for creating, you know? Yeah. And I find that filter extremely helpful when I pick up the iPad to for creating, you know? And I find that that filter extremely helpful when I pick up the iPad to do something. I'm not tempted by those distractions because the door is not even, it's not even a possibility. The door is not even open. Yeah.

So many people have suffered so much during this pandemic. And I hate to even say this, but one of the hardest things for me has been the lack of context shifting in my life. I mean, there are a lot of people dealing with a lot worse problems than that, but it is real. I mean, getting away and going to a different place to engage a different gear in your brain works, and you can't do it right now. You can't do it right now, but you can do it on a device, and sometimes that's enough. That's the thing I'm kind of learning. And it's kind of cool to hear how you're doing this too, Ian, because it kind of reinforces

in my head that you're not such a weirdo. This is a real thing. Like defining what am I going to be doing on this device? Sometimes just picking up a different piece of technology that could be enough to change that context. But I agree, changing your physical location does help. Yeah. Well, Ian, thank you so much for giving us your time today. I knew that you'd be a great guest on the Focus podcast. You're a very deliberate guy. You've thought through a lot of this stuff. And my congratulations to you for making this successful transition to video. If there's any educators out there listening, we can't recommend enough. Go check out Ian's website at birdseed.com. If you're not an

educator, go anyway. There's some cool stuff there. I am very sad that you live in Portland now because we used to see each other when you were down here in California. And now you don't get to go to Disneyland, but neither do I. So I guess we're even. Where should people look for you, Ian, other than birdseed.com? Yeah, I have the video sites at birdseed.tv. And then I send out this free weekly mailer from puzzlements.co that are just five curiosity-provoking images or videos. It's just this little side project that i do but um teachers uh teachers really respond to it and the goal is just to show students something

that isn't the whole purpose of it is just for them to to wonder and to be like um intrinsically inspired to like try to get more information um so that's puzzlements.co is this little side project. And then I'm on Twitter as ianabird. B-Y-R-D. Yeah. Bird with a Y. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm

slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors, ExpressVPN and Blinkist, and we'll see you next time.