Focused - 110: Focus with Michael Hyatt

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Michael Hyatt joins in to talk about staying focused, drift, scaling back on social media.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? It is going well, and I'm really pleased to have a guest with us today, someone who's been on the back power users a few times, but someone who belongs on the Focus podcast. Welcome to the show, Michael Hyatt. Thank you, David. Thank you, Mike. Great to be with you guys. So Michael is an author and also a video producer and someone who spends a lot of time

talking about being focused. In fact, Michael, you have a book about focus. I do. It's called Free to Focus, and it's basically my whole system for productivity. Yeah, it's an excellent book. I highly recommend it. We'll put it in the show notes. But you just have such a great voice for getting through to this. We talk about on the show so often about why focus is the superpower of the next 20 years, I think, with all the distractions we have.

If you can't stay focused, you're going to have a problem. And your message just resonates so well. I think I've told you this offline, but I got my wife some of your free to focus journal books. Yeah, the focused, the full focus planners. Yeah, sorry, full focus. And then I hooked her up with your videos and she is just like, she is like a Michael Hyatt believer. I'll tell you, I, in fact, when I tell her later that I got to talk to you today, I finally will impress my wife.

So there we go. That's awesome. That's a great story. Thank you. Thank you for that. But it, you know, how did you get to this point, Michael? I mean, clearly you didn't, maybe you were a 12 year old that was very focused. I don't know.

Well, I, I kind of feel like if'm honest, that I've really struggled with focus. You know, it's one of those things where I have sort of a heightened sense of curiosity. I'm easily distracted. I love researching things. But kind of when I get locked into some research, I mean, I get like intensely focused. You know, focus plus intensity in my marriage equals annoyance. And so just recently I was shopping for a kayak, a fishing kayak, which Gail and I are bought a house at a Lake and I'm really into fishing.

And so, I mean, like I watched probably, this is no exaggeration, 40 to 50 hours worth of video. And I just like shut the outside world out. And so that's something that I do think is a superpower today. But I think that for much of my life, I was very distracted to go from this to that, had all these to-do lists that were half done. And some of them I hadn't looked at in months and just had a really hard time bringing things to completion. I feel like that's a common story for a lot of us that are into this stuff. I mean, if it comes natural to you, you don't need to think about it. You don't

need to podcast about it, but when it's hard, that's when it becomes of interest. Yeah, exactly. Because I think that we can kind of be the proxy for the people that need it. And if we can scratch our own itch, solve our own problem, then I think we can do it in a way that we can articulate that the people to whom it comes natural, they don't know why they're good. They don't know why it just comes natural to them. They can't really provide a recipe to anybody else. They just do what they do. But for those of us that have struggled with it,

we have to kind of think through it. It's easier for us to deconstruct it and to be able to share it with others. But free to focus. It's just, it's a great book and it's got different kind of concepts in it. I went back over my, my Kindle highlights before we started today. And I, I found I had a bunch of stuff in here that I pulled out of it that I thought that was useful. But, but one of the things I liked about your book is that a lot of productivity books seem to focus on kind of entrepreneurs and business owners, but this book isn't written with that voice. I mean, this book is really written towards everyone. Yeah, I really intended to do that. I mean, the truth is that most of my business, at least half

of it, you know, I coach entrepreneurs and coach business owners. We have about 600 people in our business accelerator program. But the biggest part of our business is the full focus planner business. And those are people that are at every level in every company for profit, nonprofit, military education, everything. And so I was very conscious of that when I was writing the book that I had to have information that was, you know, helpful to the person who had an executive assistant, but also helpful to the person who didn't have those kinds of resources who had to do it themselves. goes back to like Stephen Covey and was Hiram Smith, I believe the guy. And the people I was reading back when I started as a young lawyer, the buzzword was productivity, but now the word is focus. Why do you think that switch occurred? You know, I've never thought about that. It's a great question. I think that focus is the means by which we gain greater productivity. You know, I've never thought about that. It's a great question. I think that focus is the means by which we gain greater productivity. You know, you can't focus on everything. You know, that leads to overwhelm. Most of us can only focus on a few things. And the question becomes, what are the few things that we need to focus on to be more productive?

Yeah. And I would even argue, in addition, I feel like focus is more under attack now than it ever has been. Well, we've got multi, multi-billion dollar companies who invest billions of dollars in trying to capture our focus. You know, I recently got off social media completely. This was about two months ago. And so I'm a guy that wrote a book on this. I wrote a book called Platform. I wrote a book called platform. It was a New York times bestseller. It was all about how to build a platform based on my experience in building a social media platform, build it a blog and all the rest of it, launch this business.

But I got convinced to the point that, that, you know, social media basically was capturing my attention, repackaging it and selling it to advertisers. And, and basically the algorithm was, was determining what I would see. And I didn't like the choices it was making for me. And I didn't like how much time it was sucking out of my day. And so even though, you know, I wrote free to focus, even though I've talked about focus, you know, I, I calculated, this was a couple of months ago that I was spending, you know, an hour to two hours a day, replying to direct messages, trying to figure out stuff to post all of that. And when I tried to look at, you know, what did this really, what does this really add to my life? What does it add to my business? I mean,

we're still doing Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff, but me personally posting, to my business. I mean, we're still doing Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff, but me personally posting, what is it ad? I said, really nothing. So like I, like I typically do whenever I try anything new, I always sell it to myself and sell it to my colleagues as an experiment. You know, so I'll say something, I'll say something like, Hey, I'm not saying I'm going to get off social media forever. And I wouldn't even say that now, but I want to try it as an experiment. And so I said, just for the month of August, I'm going to be off social media. And then I'll report back on the results. And my oldest daughter who happens to be our COO, she was influenced by some of the same sources. And she said, yeah, I think I'm going to do the

same thing. We haven't looked back. I mean, you know, maybe I'll go back to it. I do still use Facebook's group function because there's some, you know, maybe I'll go back to it. I do still use Facebook's group function. Cause there's some, you know, user groups that I'm part of where I like, like a kayak group that, that I love, but just my general feed, you know, I just avoid it. Well, I would argue like a, a targeted group, like, you know, the Mac power users discord group or the, our discourse group or the one we have for focus. Um, I feel like that is an alternative to social media, but you know, the general fire hose

is a whole nother story. And now have you missed anything since, since shutting down your social media interaction? Well, let me just say that at first when it happened, I noticed that this was a really compulsive behavior because typically what I would do is just reflexively check my phone. If I got bored, if I was waiting in line, if I was stuck in traffic, obviously not moving, I would just check my social media feeds. And so then I said, okay, this is, this is beyond just kind of my ability, my conscious mind to override it. It's just happening, happening reflexively because I've got muscle memory. So I'm going to remove the apps from my phone. So I did that. So the behavior persisted for a while and then it stopped altogether. Here's what I've noticed. And if

you had asked me, David, eight weeks ago, does social media make you anxious? I would have said, no, that's ridiculous. Even though I've read the studies that says it does. But I feel like I have less anxiety. But here's the big one. My family has said this to me as recently as last night at dinner. Dad or honey, you just seem to be more present. I mean, it's noticeable. And I love that. I'm just, my mind isn't somewhere other than where my body is. I love that. And I think that there's an emphasis on the term right now of doom scrolling. But I think any time that you just get stuck in social media right now is some form of

doom scrolling. And I love that as you're talking about this and you're talking about productivity and focus, you mentioned the definition of true productivity in your book is doing more of what's in your desire zone and less of everything else, which that right there is kind of the definition of focus. You're focusing on one specific area, the things you want to let in. And if I were to summarize what you just described, you can tell me if this is accurate, but it sounds like you mentioned the social media feeds and the algorithms showing you what they think you want to see. It's like you're taking back control of your life's own algorithm and picking the things

that you want to see instead of subjecting yourself to what the computers are trying to pick for you. I think that's really true. I mean, I think that this is only going to get more intense as AI gets better. You know, they're going to be able to zero in on how to more efficiently capture our attention. And so we're going to have a choice to make, you know, either we just get kind of controlled by the AI and what's really behind that is the business model for these big, you know, media giants. Or we just say, look, you know, maybe, maybe I'm just trying to stick my finger in the dike and stop it. But at least for me, I want to take control of my life. And I don't want to think my own thoughts.

I don't just want to be controlled by everything that somebody else or even an algorithm serves up. Want to reconsider the defaults? Yes. You know, I feel like it's even more wicked than that because it gets into your subconscious. Like I, I remember one time I was at Disneyland with the kids and we were having a great time and something funny happened. And I'm like, Oh, I could make a really funny tweet about this and make a picture. And it would be really clever. And everybody on Twitter would think I'm really funny. And the whole time this thing is going down with my kids and I'm sitting

there trying to compose a tweet in the back of my head. And I caught it like halfway through the process, realize, oh, wait a second, this stuff, I don't even have to have my phone out for this stuff to get into my head. That's a perfect example because in a sense, social media, particularly something like Instagram, it takes you from being a participant in your own life to being a spectator. And so instead of actually being in the moment with your family, you're thinking you're, you're not present. You're thinking about how can I frame this up for a great, you know, Insta story or Instagram post. Yeah. And you're suddenly taken out of the experience and now you're sort of like a third party observer and you're so busy trying to document your life that you miss life.

Yeah. You're not, it's your life, but you're not participating. Yeah. It's, it's kind of crazy. I mean, maybe you got, you know, a great Instagram feed, but the other thing I noticed too, is that, um, and, and all the social media, you know, research has been done show that, you know, shows that it creates a lot of envy and jealousy because let's be honest, you know, when people are serving up social media feeds, they're, you know, they're putting on their, you know, their best foot forward, their, their packaging, curating their life. And, you know, to be honest, my life is not that interesting. You know, it's not, it's not one amazing moment to the next amazing moment.

But I think if we're not careful, we create the perception that it is, which makes everybody else that looks at that think, gosh, my life must suck. Because, you know, I don't do all these things. I don't have all these amazing experiences. Well, nobody does. But according to their Instagram, everybody except them does. Right. You know, that leads me to another question because you have in the Free to Focus book, you talk about limiting beliefs. And I think these are really powerful. And a lot of people don't know what they're really capable

of because they've subscribed to these limiting beliefs, whether they realize it or not. So some of the ones that you use as examples, I just don't have enough time. I'm just not that disciplined. you use as examples. I just don't have enough time. I'm just not that disciplined. Highly productive people are born that way. And I think that one specifically, you can kind of get that from the social media feeds. And I'm wondering, do you think there is a link between the algorithms will say, and like you just described being a spectator in your life instead of a participant and those limiting beliefs that exist in people's lives. And if so, what can we do about it? Well, I think one of the most challenging but important things that all of us have to do is to develop self-awareness. And we spend a lot of time thinking about other people's thoughts.

I mean, even when you're reading a book, which is certainly a worthy pursuit, you're thinking about other people's thoughts. But few people think about their own thinking. And to just become self-aware about our thinking, and particularly our beliefs, I have a big sign in my kitchen that says, don't believe everything you think. That's great. our beliefs. I have a big sign in my kitchen that says, don't believe everything you think. That's great. And, and, you know, there's a lot of thoughts that go through my mind, things that I got from my parents, things that I get from our culture, things that I get from the media, things that I never really examine, but to constantly be a skeptic of those things and ask myself, is that really true? Is that really limitation? You know, or, or could I transform that into a, what I call in the book, a liberating truth, you know, something, something that's way more empowering than that limiting belief.

And one of the worst ones is, is the one that you talked about, Mike, which is, you know, I'm productive people are just born that way. I guess I'm just not that productive. Well, all that does is keep you stuck. And most things in life can be learned. You know, if you have a little bit of focus and some commitment, determination, most things can be learned. You can become more productive. No doubt about it.

I just had this conversation with one of my daughters about, I'm like, the biggest jerk in your life is that lady in your head. I mean, more than anyone else, that person is going to lie to you more, belittle you more than anyone on the outside world. If you can just manage that person, the world is yours. It's so true. One of the limiting beliefs that I'm really fighting right now with my business coaching clients is what I call the hustle fallacy.

It's the idea that if you're going to get ahead, if you're going to be successful, you've got to work harder and longer than anybody else. And probably the poster child for this is Elon Musk, you know, who advocates and practices working 80 to, I've even heard him say 100 hours a week. And all the science I've read in my own experience says just the opposite is true. So when the pandemic began back in, you know, or at least we started acting on it, um, it was like mid March. Well, the first part of April, we realized with two weeks of experience under our belt, We have 40 employees and most of them are young parents. And now all of a sudden they're trying to juggle work and they're trying to juggle family,

kids underfoot, no daycare, you know, all the challenges that that presents. So we got together with our executive team and we said, you know, contrary to the hustle fallacy, And we said, contrary to the hustle fallacy, what if we cut our work hours from 40 hours a week? And we have a strict policy on not working on the evenings and weekends and vacations and all that. We're very focused on that. But we said, what if we cut our work week to 30 hours a week? We're just going to work six hours a week from nine to three.

We're not going to dock anybody's pay. We'll try it as an experiment. And we'll see if we're as productive with 30 hours a week as we've been with 40. Okay, so there's a lot of ways you could measure that. I can't tell that there's been any slippage. And in fact, we are now projecting to finish the year 40%, on the bottom line, 40% ahead of what our original budget was, which was already a significant

increase over last year. So it's actually, I would argue that contrary to that limiting belief, you know, that I've got to work longer and harder to be successful. No, actually you need to work fewer hours because that forces you to prioritize and focus on the 20% that drives the 80% of the results. You don't have time to goof off on social media or do things that are low leverage. You have to focus on the high leverage stuff. Yeah, and it forces you to bring energy and intensity to what you're going to do because you're going to be doing it for a shorter period of time. And you know when this task is done in a couple of hours, I'm going to get to take a break.

Yes. Have you guys read the book Shorter by Alex Pang? Not read that one, but I've read another book called Rest by Alex, which was really good. This one is his newest book and it's phenomenal, but he makes the case from science why fewer work hours leads to greater productivity. And he gives example after example, after example, we read it actually after we made the decision, but it just kind of reinforced the conviction that we already had and we're practicing. Yeah.

I am a hundred percent with you on this myth of hustle. And it is something that I think people are just really waking up to. Cause it was like hustle was like the term hustle and busy were like badges of honor for people for too long. And I think culturally, we still like give you credit for being someone who hustles, you know, people admire Elon Musk for his schedule. Or when you meet a friend that you haven't seen for a while, you ask, well, how are you doing? The first thing they want to tell you is how busy they are. And I feel like socially,

we need to turn that around. I mean, that's not a badge of honor. That means you're screwing something up. It does. You're not doing it right. And I know you guys have done an episode on rest and sabbaticals and that type of thing. And it's something we really believe in our company and practice. And again, I think the sort of conventional belief is that if you're going to rest, that's a reward for working really hard. And I think based on my research, it's a prerequisite for productive work. Exactly. Yeah, definitely agree. If I spend the weekend, for example, like I did this last week, fishing and boating with my kids and literally not thinking once about work, then when I hit the ground running on Monday, I'm all about the work, man. I'm

totally focused. I'm rejuvenated in a way that back when I was practicing that crazy hustle fallacy that I couldn't be. It was just like total work, never-ending work. And it was exhausting. It doesn't make sense rationally though. The fact that you aren't thinking about work actually improves the work when you do it. You have to trick yourself to believing that, I think. Well, also, I mean, it goes against the traditional model. I mean, my father made his living, you know, loading, running a sawmill, loading lumber on a truck and going like every moment he was there, more lumber got created, you know. So there was a clear definition between time that the saw is running and product. And now I'm a knowledge worker.

And I'm trying to apply the model that he showed me to a completely different paradigm. And I do think that there's just like a disconnect there. And our generation is kind of bridging that. So it's harder for us. It is. And I think a lot of people are waking up because it's just not sustainable. You know, if you, you can't ultimately succeed at work, if you're not building, you know, a viable personal life as well. I mean, if you,

if in the service of work, you forgo taking care of yourself, for example, you don't practice appropriate self-care or you don't attend to your most important relationships. I mean, there's nothing more disruptive to your work than having a health crisis or going through a marital crisis or a crisis with your kids. You know, I've seen it all. I'm in my fourth decade of business and, you know, I've seen people burn out and quit and wash up and sadly, even some commit suicide, all these different things. even some commit suicide, all these different things. And so if we don't approach balance and really be focused, not just at work, but when we're at home, be focused at home, then we're just kind of setting ourselves up for a big fall. And I think people are seeing that people are realizing that. And I think the market is ripe for a message that's different.

Yeah. When I was a young attorney, one of my first big trials, the judge says to me, he says, well, Sparky, he says, just expect that, because the time estimate was one month. How long is your trial? I said, it's going to take us a month. And he says, well, just understand that

you will have as many marriages in your life as you have one month trials. Whoa. And it really made me think. And boy, I can't agree more. This is a challenge for people, though. I mean, hustle and busy still are in the lexicon. And if you went out on the street to most people, it's a good thing.

Yeah, it's really true. And I think the secret to this, and I advocate this in whether I'm talking about goal achievement or I'm talking about business coaching or I'm talking about your life, but you got to begin with the end in mind, as we learned from Dr. Covey. And it all begins with a clear vision. You know, and I think to ask yourself the question, why do I want to be more productive? Or maybe ask it this way, is it possible to achieve more by doing less? Is it possible to be fully present with the people I love so that when I'm at work, I can be fully present there

and not worried about the things at home? You know, I think, again, this takes vision. My new book, the one that just came out this past spring, interestingly, on March the 30th, is called The Vision-Driven Leader. And it's all about how to create a vision for your business. But I wrote another book prior to that called Living Forward that's all about creating a life plan. But the thing that both those books have in common is that you got to start with a vision. And I would say the same thing is true with productivity. What's your vision? What is productivity going to allow you to do? Is it going to help you to accomplish more so that you take even those discretionary hours that you currently have and fill them up with

even more work? And that's, of course, the great deceit of technology, because we all bought into technology thinking it was going to save us time. You know, it's never saved anybody time. You know, it allows you to do more, but we fill up that whatever time we save, we fill right back up with more work. Exactly. We get, we get more efficient. We get less effective. That's a good way to say it. I'm curious with productivity and you mentioned living forward and you talk in that book about drift. I love the idea in that book of all the different life accounts. And I think most people, when they think of productivity, they think of cranking X number of widgets. They're measuring the output from the specifically work that they do. But do you think that

productivity can apply to these other life accounts as well? Can we be productive in our relationships with our spouse or with our kids? Absolutely. And again, I think it partly starts with vision. It also starts with kind of coming to terms with our own limitations. None of us are good at everything. And so when it comes to my personal life, you know, I learned a long time ago that I suck at handyman kind of things. You know, can I learn it? I mean, today you could learn just about anything with YouTube, but, but it's not the best and highest use of me. You know, it's much better for me. Could I mow my own lawn? Yeah, but I don't. I'm a huge believer in outsourcing.

But I don't because that's time I could be investing in my grandkids. That's time that I could be out, you know, swimming with them or on the boat or taking them fishing or doing something else. But instead, you know, I'm doing those things. I had to convince my wife of this years ago. You know, she was insistent, because this was the way she was raised, that she had to do the housework. And if she was standing here with me, she would tell you she wasn't very good at it.

She wasn't gifted at housework. And I mean, obviously, people listening to this go, wow, that's a traditional model. Yeah, it was. I mean, this is, you know, three decades ago. And so I finally convinced her that we need to hire some help. And I get that not everybody can afford this, but I was bringing it. I said, let's just bring in somebody for a half a day every two weeks just to help you with the heavy lifting. She said, no, I just feel like I need to do that. And I said, but here's the

thing. This is taking you longer than a half a day because you don't do it all the time and you're not that good at it. It's depriving you of time that you could be investing in our kids or in your friendships or self-care. And this is what really got her. I said, plus you're depriving somebody else of work that they're good at and where they need the employment. That finally got her. She, she, she's totally on board with that. And she now has, we have somebody that works at the house as her assistant halftime every day. You know, so they're there for half the day. And then somebody that's our house manager for half the day. And we try to, we try to outsource everything we can. So why? So that we can stay focused again on

the things that really matter to us, but it all starts with that vision and then recognizing our limitations and then focusing on what we're good at. And we're not good at that much. Some things we're amazing at. And those are the things we want to focus on. And that really ties in with the idea of not working 80-hour weeks. I think a lot of the reasons people get themselves in that trap is they're unwilling to let go of things. In fact, our friendship started when you and I talked the

first time you're on MPU and it was an eye-opener for me. And I've turned over so many of the things that I used to do to other people at this point. And that makes the conversation possible to say, yeah, I could probably work less now. And that's a limiting belief, I think, is the fact that, well, I hate this, so asking anybody else to do this, they're going to hate it too. I know. It's really true. And that really came home with the first person that Gail, my wife, hired to help her with the house cleaning. It happened to be our niece, who was a single mom who needed the work. And oh, by the way, our niece who was a single mom who needed the work. And oh, by the way, love, loved, loved cleaning and organizing. And I kind of get that because this sounds crazy, but there's the one

thing I really enjoy doing. I love doing the dishes after dinner. Now I wouldn't want to do it full time, but I like the sense of making progress in that little part of my world and get everything clean and organized and just the feeling I feel after I do that. And there are people that are like that. I don't care what it is. They just enjoy doing that. And it's fun to, I think it's part of what makes the world go around is that we have such diverse talents and capabilities and interests that we can have the division of labor, which makes it easier and easier, the more our civilization advances, to get focused and even hyper-focused on the things that you do best. And in my own experience, the more I focus on those high leverage things, the things where I have passion, things I love to do, things where I

have proficiency, where I'm skilled to do it, the more I do that in my professional life, the more money I make. And the more I do that in my personal life, the more satisfied I am. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter offer code FOCUSED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. With Squarespace, you can easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. Whatever it is that you want to create on the internet, whether it be an online store, portfolio, or a blog, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you do just that. There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, and no upgrades needed. You don't have to worry about any of that

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required by going to squarespace.com slash focused. And when you decide to sign up, use the offer code focused F O C U S E D to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the focus podcast. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash focused and the code focus to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of the focused podcast and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. How has COVID kind of stepped on that for you? I can tell you for me personally, a lot of the stuff I was offloading required people to be here or working on machines around me. And it's really crimped some of my ability to delegate.

Well, we've always kind of been a remote team. We had a co-working space that we owned. And so that was our office. Nobody was required to go in, but everybody was welcome to come in anytime they wanted. So we already had some ability with, with remote work. I think it's actually made us more productive. Now there's, I don't want to discount the value of being together face-to-face and human engagement, but just take my life where pre COVID, I did a lot of traveling, a lot of speaking, and that's pretty time consuming

just to be on the road. Yeah. And now all that's done via zoom. Like I'm on one nonprofit board and that was three days, twice a year out of my life. Those are now six hours zoom meetings, which, which sounds horrible, but you know, we take a lot of breaks and make sure that we keep it interesting. But that's basically given me four days back a year. I think looking back on COVID, I think for a lot of people, they're going to see it as one of the greatest gifts they ever received. I don't want to discount the grief it's caused for people that have lost loved ones and all that.

But I think for a lot of people, certainly a lot of my clients, what it's done, and this happens in every crisis, it accelerates decisions you probably should have made before COVID. Yeah. I totally agree. COVID is an accelerant. As a lawyer, I see it even with my clients. Businesses that were doing poorly are now doing poorly much faster. Businesses that were doing well are doing well much faster. I think it's just an accelerant across the board. I think so. And it's kind of agnostic in that way.

You know, you can't confine it to any given industry. I mean, there's some industries that have been super hard hit, travel and hospitality in particular. And I've got clients in that industry. But even for some of them, you know, they didn't buy into the limiting belief that, oh, well, you know, we can't have in-room dining. So I guess we were dead in the water. You know, I have one, I have 40 clients that are all part of one giant fast food chain in America. I won't say who they are, but you would recognize the name. And what they discovered is

the most profitable business that they do is their drive-through business. And in-room dining is not as profitable. And so their profits have done nothing but gone up. And they still, to this day, have their dining rooms closed. And it's more economic than the pandemic. Dining rooms closed. And it's more economic than the pandemic. Now, you're at a stage in your life where you're a grandpa. You're not a father of little children. But you are working from home more now.

What's the good and the bad parts for you? Well, I don't know that I could pinpoint any bad parts other than I do enjoy getting together face to face. I'm very relational. I'm an introvert, so that's good. But I think there's a lot of misconceptions about introverts. I do like my peeps. I enjoy being with the people that are closest to me. That's not an energy suck for me. To me, the thing that drains my energy is being with people I don't know. So being at home is great. And because we have a couple of people that are here working at the house, you know, that we have a little cadre of, of people that we sort of have that social interaction. Yeah. But, but the thing I do like about working at home is it just feels more casual, less stressful. I feel like I'm more focused. I mean, I literally finish work every

day by three o'clock and all of a sudden I, I, I can't tell you how I'm almost giddy at the end of the day because I feel like I've got an entire day left, but I'm trying to be a good example to the team and do what, what the team is all doing, which is we're all knocking off at three, but I've, I've, I've got newfound time that I've been able to reinvest in hobbies and my relationships, and I'm just enjoying the heck out of that. And at 4 p.m., the fish are usually biting. That's right. That's right.

You mentioned that COVID is forcing people to make decisions that they maybe should have made anyways. And I've definitely noticed that it helps you think it also helps you create new solutions and reconsider things that you just kind of always accepted. So like one example for us, we have five kids, my wife and I, and Monday nights typically was all night at the local music store for piano lessons. And when we couldn't go to the local music store anymore, we started looking for other options. And now the kids all do virtual lessons with actually a

missionary that we support in Costa Rica, which we had no idea that was even a thing that we could do until we started to look at what are the other options here. And I'm curious, what sort of changes, what sort of things have you reconsidered with the way that the Michael Hyatt company runs? You mentioned working 30 hours instead of 40, getting done at 3 p.m. But I'm curious, what other forced changes or at least accelerated changes have been encouraged by COVID and not being able to meet in the same space? Yeah, one of the things, one of the big parts of our business is business coaching.

And the way that that's worked in the past, we have almost 600 clients and they come in and into Nashville where I live in cohorts of 50. And then they meet for a full day, once a quarter with their coach. Now I coach nine groups and then I have other coaches that coach some of the other groups. And of course, once the pandemic hit, and in fact, we were in the middle of one of those cycles right after the president made his speech and fact, we were in the middle of one of those cycles right after the president made his speech and we all kind of got the gravity of the whole situation. And so we had to pivot on a dime there and I delivered different content. I started talking about leading through crisis and we ended up literally creating a course in a week.

And it was primarily based on my experience of leading through the great recession when I was running a big public company. And that was like a huge hit. But we didn't know how it was going to impact our revenue. So we thought, man, let's spin out something that's relevant, that's going to address our clients' needs, and maybe we'll have a wider application. And that worked terrific. was that we had to figure out how to do those live events as virtual events, but not make people want to poke their eyes out at the end of the day. Because we've all been on those Zoom calls where people don't take breaks and they just drone on and on and on.

So one of the things that we did was we got together as a leadership team and we said, okay, the question is not, as a leadership team and we said, okay, you know, the question is not, how can we create an experience that's, you know, as good as we can do. But instead we said, how can we create an experience that's even better than what we could do in person? So much so that if not all of our clients demand the virtual experience going forward, we hear from a lot of them that this is even better than the live experience. So that was kind of the standard. So we met together with a video production company, and we kind of explained what we wanted to do. And we said, what are the capabilities of Zoom?

And one of the things that we always did in these groups is I would teach for about 20 to 30 minutes, and then we do breakout groups. Well, Zoom conveniently has that built in breakout rooms. Yeah. And it's been phenomenal. And it's, you know, people don't have to travel. They don't have to spend a day getting to Nashville. They don't have to spend a day going back. And again, I think everybody wants to get back together face to face.

They miss that. But we just amped up our service to our clients. I started a weekly one-hour call our service to our clients. I started a weekly one hour call with all of our clients. So we have, you know, it's, it's available to all 600. We usually have about a hundred on this call and then the less, the rest of them listen by replay. But that allows me to address and coach in real time, the issues that they're, that they're facing. And that's been a huge hit. And so I think our customer satisfaction has gone way up because we've had more time to think about how can we take a good experience and make it extraordinary? How can we be even more focused on delivering

extraordinary results? And so our client satisfaction numbers have gone up. I think people have gotten more concrete help and they feel like this has been a lifeline for them getting through the pandemic and the economic recession and all that's followed on the heels of that. But you can't do that without a vision of how you want to help the people that you're serving. And I think that's one thing I've noticed in the middle of this pandemic is that the companies that are focused on themselves and what they have lost tend to struggle. But the ones who see the need and try to meet the need around them and just serve the people that are a part of their audience and their community, that has gone really well. It really has. And Mike, one of the questions I like to ask whenever I face any adversity is, what does this make possible? Because most of us ask the other question, how this adversity shuts down possibility and sort of limits us. But what if it were the opposite?

and sort of limits us. But what if it were the opposite? What if this adversity, this pandemic made things possible, a new level of innovation more so than before? One of the questions I ask our clients early on is I said, look, my definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who solves problems at risk to themselves, but for a reward of some kind. It may be a financial reward. It may be esteem or status or some other form of compensation, but entrepreneurs solve problems. Then I ask this question, do we have more problems today than we had 12 months ago? The answer is absolutely. We have more problems than probably most of us have ever seen in our lives. For people that have an entrepreneurial mindset, and I'm not talking to just about business owners or people that start companies, but it's a mindset. People who have an entrepreneurial mindset, they see a problem,

they say, oh, that's an opportunity because if I can solve that problem, there's probably something in it for me. There's obviously going to be something in it for the person who has this problem, but there's also something in it for me. And this is a very target rich environment. Yes. More problems than ever. Lots of opportunity. More opportunities than ever. Yeah. That's right. But it's a mindset. And I think that that's, that kind of goes back to what I was saying before about, we have to take or become self-aware of our thinking. And I listened to this one psychologist podcast, Brooke Castillo, and she has something called the Life Coaching School. And she mostly talks to

women who are life coaches, but I've found her podcast phenomenal. But she talks about our thinking a lot. And she says that the thoughts typically show up as sentences in our head. So what's the sentence that you're not aware of that you're repeating to yourself? Like when you're talking to yourself, what are you saying? Like when you see a problem, is it like, oh, here we go again. Or why does this always happen to me? You know, as opposed to, you know, something more empowering, like, okay, that's hard, but what does it make possible? Yeah. I love the, the topic of becoming conscious of your own thinking. I'm not sure if David mentioned this to you, but tomorrow, right, David, you're going away on a personal retreat. It's something that I do every couple of months.

Do you have anything that you do routinely to make yourself more conscious of your thinking? Well, one of the ways we get access to our thinking is our language. So in other words, our words kind of betray or at least eliminate our thinking, our word choices, our syntax, what comes out of our mouth. And so one of the things that we try to do in our thinking, our word choices, our syntax, what comes out of our mouth. And so one of the things that we try to do in our company, because we really believe that thinking drives our actions and our actions lead to our results. So if you want to kind of swim upstream and get to the source, you got to get to your thinking. So we've given everybody inside of our company, and we practice this constantly, and we've even done it inside of our family,

is to give people permission to catch us when we're expressing a limiting belief. Because that reveals what our thinking is behind that expression, behind that statement. And my youngest daughter, Marissa, she's a hoot. But one of the things that she will say when you have a limiting belief. So you say something like, for example, like my wife recently said, she said, I just don't think I'm good at golfing. And so Marissa will say, well, if you say so. Yeah. I like that. Sometimes thought police can be helpful. Yeah, they can. And I think if it's all in the, so sort of in the name of self-awareness and self-improvement. I really

think that thinking thing is so, so foundational and so important. And when you, when you can look at it at a corporate level, you know, what's this team thinking? Because every, every team has a culture. And one of the things that I teach our coaching clients is that culture is the unseen force that drives operating results. But it's the water that the fish are swimming in, and the fish are unaware of it. And so to be aware of the culture, which is created by the thinking and the actions, particularly the leaders, you can shift an entire culture. But it's got to be deliberate and conscious. And Mike, you were mentioning my book, Living Forward, where I talk about the drift. I mean, to me, there's only two approaches to life. There's probably more than this, but there's two main approaches. One is just kind of to drift where

we don't have any vision. We just kind of react. But the problem is nobody ever drifted to a destination they would have chosen. Usually the drift, you end up at a destination that you regret. The alternative to that is to design the future. You know, and that goes back to vision. So whether it's our personal life, whether it's our health, you know, I found myself 20 years ago now, very successful in business, but ended up in the emergency room three times thinking I was having a heart attack. And it turned out to be panic attacks and it had nothing to do with my heart, but I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't exercising. I wasn't eating well.

And I realized that I had to get a different vision for my health if I was going to go the distance. And thankfully, through the help of an executive coach, that's where I first put together a life plan and started to envision and focus on what I wanted in my health. And one of the principles I learned along the way was sort of the power of incremental change over time. Sometimes we think we have to take these massive actions to create change in our lives. No, it's really more like the law of compound interest. Just a little investment every day in health

can have a transformative effect, and it doesn't take that long. Yeah, exactly. James Clear teaches the 1% principle, where if you got 1% better every day for 365 days, you end up exponentially better off than you were at the beginning of the year. But 1%, that's not even big enough to notice a lot of times. It's so small. But it makes a difference. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Go to expressvpn.com slash focused for high speed, secure and anonymous VPN services. And when you sign up

there, you even get three extra months for free. In the real world, if you're looking for privacy, you close a door. But online, we leave doors open everywhere we go. Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like never closing doors behind you. Your internet service provider like Comcast or Verizon knows every single website you visit. And if they want to, they can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants. ExpressVPN creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet so that your online activity can't be seen for anyone. Now this is useful when you're on public Wi-Fi, but it's also useful when you're home connected to your cable modem. You still want

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is your business, secure yourself by visiting expressvpn.com slash focus today. Go to e-x-p-r-e-s-s vpn.com slash focused f-o-c-u-s-e-d and you can get an extra three months for free. That's right, three months for free if you sign up at expressvpn.com slash focus, thank you to express VPN for supporting the focused podcast. You know, you mentioned this idea of the inner voice, whether it's applied to corporate culture or on the individual basis. I think that really resonates with a lot of people, but I also know, even in my own personal experience, I'm aware of it. I lecture my kids about it, but I forget. And I, I, I treat that voice as gospel way too often. Yeah. What are some tips you would give somebody that's struggling with that? To me, David, this is one of the biggest arguments for a coach of some kind,

a coach. And I'm not, I'm not here, you know, advocating for my coaching services because I use coaches in every area, even fishing. You know, I hire, hire guides routinely. A coach will get you further faster than almost anything else because there's just sort of a natural accountability in it. You know, first of all, if you've got the right coach, I don't care what you're trying to learn, whether it's, you know, fishing or kayaking or how to read financial statements or whatever it is, you know, you're going to get, you can learn on your own for sure. You know, you can do the research. There's so much, there's more information available than ever before, but what's the cost of having to go do it yourself versus invest in a coach,

even if it's short term. Like one of the things I've learned in the last three years is to play the Native American flute. And so I said, okay, there's a lot available on the internet. I could watch YouTube videos. I could do all that. Or I could hire a guy. And that's what I did. So I hired a guy and I've been doing zoom lessons, but here's to speak to the exact issue you mentioned, David, you know, if I do the YouTube videos, I know that's available. It's easy for me to procrastinate because there's no accountability. Yeah. But when I know that I've got a zoom call on the calendar, that, that makes me behave in a different way, knowing that I'm going to give an account to him.

And he's incredibly graceful. He's not overbearing. He's not demanding, very forgiving. But just having that appointment, you know, gives me the traction I need to keep moving forward. And so I have a lot of different coaches in different areas. I have a fitness trainer too.

This is pretty interesting. So for several years, I hired a trainer that met with me three times a week at the gym. And that was awesome. But then he got out of the business and I decided to go another route. So I hired a lady who meets with me once a month on Zoom for 30 minutes. who meets with me once a month on Zoom for 30 minutes. She gave me an app called Trainerize, which is an amazing app. I think it's only available to trainers. You have to sign up as a trainer to do it,

but it's amazing. And every day I log whatever my workout is. Like this morning I did just cardio. And so I logged my walk. Tomorrow I'll do strength training. I'll log that. So she's seen my results. Plus with Apple iOS, tomorrow or do i'll do strength training i'll log that so she's seen my results plus with with um with apple ios all my health data is being transferred to that app so she sees how many

steps yeah my sleep all that stuff so she has an incredible amount of information about me and just having that call with her once a month gives me the impetus every day when I'd rather just stay in and not work out. I think to myself, Lisa's going to see this data at the end of today. And if I'm not working out, she's going to see that. She's going to know that. And it's a little thing. I mean, what do I care? Except that it creates that little bit of accountability that causes me to follow through.

Why is it so much harder for us to let down other people than ourselves? I don't know. Great question. You also don't know what you don't know, but a coach does. They can look at what you're doing and say, well, this is the thing that's going to make the difference for you and can save you a lot of time trying to figure that out for yourself, even if you are measuring all the results. It takes time and it takes analysis to figure those things out.

But if you have somebody who's been there before and knows how the system works, they can accelerate the learning curve. Well, and just to go back to the kind of the theme I persist with here, because it's top of mind, it's fishing. But when I hire a guide to go out and go fly fishing, could I learn that through YouTube or trial and error? Yes. And there's maybe a certain amount of fun. Some people like to do that, but I want to get into the fish and there's no way that I, who do it occasionally,

can compete with a guy that's on the water every day in all kinds of situations, all kinds of seasons, who knows that body of water backwards and forwards. And that's the advantage of a coach. who knows that body of water backwards and forwards. And that's the advantage of a coach. They can get you further faster. Yep, exactly. I love that. What other areas have you used to coach either personally or professionally

just to give some people some ideas of maybe they've never used a coach before. We've mentioned the fitness example. We mentioned the fishing example, the business coaching,. That makes sense. But what are some other areas that maybe people should think about getting some outside help? Well, I would say, first of all, just to use this rubric, wherever you're not getting the results you want, consider hiring a coach. So, for example, years ago, I felt like I had a pretty good marriage, but I felt like it could be taken

to the next level. And so we hired, you know, they, at that time they were called a therapist, but today it would have been called a coach. And there are plenty of marriage coaches out there. I mean, if you're in a relationship where you're just not satisfied, you don't have to settle. And you don't also don't have to just, you know, and I get that divorce is sometimes, you know, people's only option and sometimes it comes to that. But before you get to that point, why not invest in coaching? It's a whole lot cheaper and a lot more effective than sort of buying into the thought that the grass is always greener on the other side. You get into another relationship and you suddenly realize, oh, you know, I didn't trade all these problems

for no problems. I just, now I've got a different set of problems. So why not go to work on it with the help of somebody that all day, every day coaches people just like you on how to have an amazing relationship. They know the shortcuts. They know the mistakes. They know the pitfalls. They can help you avoid all that. Relationships is something you could use it for. Yeah. And the thing that stands out to me from that example specifically is that you don't have to wait until things are falling apart in order to go see a marriage counselor in hopes of making things better. The real effective way is to pedal before the hill and to recognize that this isn't maximized. This isn't where I know it can be. So let's get some help and help it grow. Well, Mike, I think it goes back to that

thing about vision too. You know, we say, okay, this is the vision. And so if like in my life plan, I'm very clear. I have a paragraph vision about my marriage, you know, what I want to see in 25 years where I want to be with Gail. And so then that always, there's always, once you see that vision, then there's a gap, there's sort of the vision, then there's your current reality. What's the fastest way to bridge the gap? Because if the vision is compelling, I'd rather get there sooner than later.

And the fastest way to get there in my experience is coaching. Sometimes, you know, I would say hire the best coach you can afford. Sometimes that's buying a book. Sometimes that's subscribing to a course, but like an example, Mike, you were talking about at the sweet setup, you know, could I learn Ulysses on my own? Yeah. But I could also take the course that you guys created. And that was amazing. And that, that got me further in my proficiency with Ulysses than I could have gotten on my own. So start with a vision, assess your current reality, and then say, what's, what's the quickest way to bridge that gap. And oftentimes a coach in some form can be really helpful. I'm curious, you mentioned the gap,

and that brings to mind something I picked up from Dan Sullivan when he talks about the gap versus the gain. I love that concept. Okay, yeah, I figured you might be familiar with that. So the gain is measuring the growth, basically, where maybe you don't feel like you're growing, but when you look back to where you were last year and you realize that using an exercise example, you can run a lot farther or you can lift more weight, that's encouraging once you see the growth. So is there some sort of journaling or reflection piece to this for you? Yeah, I've been an avid journaler now for about 10 years. And so the first thing that, or one of the first things that I write in my journal, I've got a journal template. I have eight questions that I ask myself every day and I've been doing this for years. But one

of the questions I ask, and I did learn this from Dan, to stay out of the gap and focus on the gain is what were my three biggest wins from yesterday? So I do that in my journaling. I do that at dinner with my family who's ever present and all my daughters, I have five daughters, they're all grown, but whenever they come over, they always insist and also practice with their families, the same thing. What was your, and we usually focus on one, what was your biggest win for the day? And then when Gail and I go to bed at night, you know, that's the last thing we ask each other before we drift off into sleep. Okay. What were your, what were your biggest wins for the day? And it just gives us, and this is another term that Dan has, what that

gives us a positive focus because we get to choose what we can focus on. Speaking of focus, we get to choose what we focus on because usually in any day, there's some bad things that happen and there's some good things that happen. And I'll never forget. Gail asked me one time, I, she said, oh, how was your day? And I said, oh my gosh, it was terrible. You know, and I kind of went through it. And she said, well, it sounds to me like you didn't have a terrible day. You had about, you know, a really bad 30 minutes.

Yeah. And I said, wow, that is exactly right. It was a pretty good day. But again, it all depends on what I focus on. Isn't it nice when your spouse can just set you straight? I love that. But I think it all fits together. You know, the idea of looking at your wins and any of the daily gratitude journal, all this stuff.

I mean, we've talked in this episode about that jerk in your head that wants to ruin your life. But these are ways you can hack your way around that. I feel like, you know, thinking about gratitude, thinking about your life. But these are ways you can hack your way around that. I feel like, you know, thinking about gratitude, thinking about your wins, it's just, it's just a, it's a solution to that voice that I think a lot of people don't consider. Yeah, I think so too. And I think it, it allows us to rest control, you know, from that oppressive voice that, that really doesn't really empower us. And we can choose a more empowering perspective or framework and really accomplish amazing things.

But choosing which voice we're going to listen to can make a huge difference in terms of the results that we get. But also just reverse engineering, to follow another theme earlier in the show, by taking the action of writing down, whether you do it on a computer or a piece of paper, the things I did today that were wins. I feel like gratitude journals are just as valuable

in the same way of being thankful for anything. Maybe it's dumb. It's the person that made that toy that your dog loves, whatever. But just being thankful and looking at your wins, it just kind of pushing that back up the chain toward negative thought patterns. It, it, it helps remove them. You know, one of the things Dan Sullivan teaches too, is that, you know, one of the things that's really important if you're going to achieve big things in life is confidence and confidence requires you to focus on where you're

winning. And our confidence is so important. We've got to protect it. And one of the best ways to do that is to realize, I don't think it's making stuff up. It's just realizing that all of us are winning in ways that may seem small at the time, but add all those up over the course of a year, over the course of a decade, it really leads to big things. Absolutely does. I'm curious with the gratitude because it sounds like you believe in that too, Michael. And we had Ryder Carroll, the Bullet Journal method creator on the show not too long ago. He mentioned gratitude as well, but he said that he forces himself to be specific with it and pick something different every time. What sort of, what does your gratitude practice look like? Well, one of the questions in my journal, I have the first question about what were my wins from

yesterday. And I think it's a separate thing. Then I do a gratitude thing. So I force myself to list three things that I'm grateful for. And I don't, I like that. I like his idea about forcing yourself to make it different every time, because I do find that I'm grateful for a lot of the same things, but I just try to notice, you know, the things that happen. I could probably use some improvement in that area, like maybe doing gratitude at different times during the day, instead of just in the morning morning when I do it, you know, might yield a different result. I don't know. That's given me something to think about. One of the things that we do at, at Blanc Media, we have a weekly meeting where we, we work through everything we got to talk through,

but we always end the meeting with gratitude and everybody goes around the circle and expresses gratitude for something usually that somebody else on the team had done and helped them out with throughout the week. And I think there's different ways that you can implement this. I think if you do it in that sense, with other people specifically, what it does is it changes your attitude towards them. your attitude towards them. Personal gratitude probably has a little bit different aim where it's focusing on the things that went well instead of the things that didn't go well. But I know from experience with my wife, because we have these family meetings too, and the last thing we do is we express gratitude to each other. And there have been times, telling on myself, where I don't feel like going through this family meeting. I don't feel like expressing gratitude. But the minute that the words leave my mouth, it's like any negative emotions that I had, any anger that I had towards my wife is now gone.

It's physically impossible for me to express gratitude and hang on to that negativity. Yeah, it's so true. I've experienced the same thing. And I've often said, you know, whatever you acknowledge and affirm, you get more of. That's kind of a focus principle. Whatever you acknowledge and affirm, you get more of. And like with your spouse, when you acknowledge,

you know, by being grateful and affirm what they've done, not only does it make them feel great, makes you feel great, and it builds a relationship. That's a culture-creating kind of behavior. And when you do that in a company setting, like you were talking about at Blanc Media, you know, it has the same kind of effect. You know, that creates a different kind of culture than the kind of culture where people are complaining about each other and gossiping behind their backs. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Ahrefs. Do you work for a big brand?

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Get reports on your website, see what's performing well, and figure out your next move. Whether you have a personal website you want to get a following on or your company needs more traffic to convert into sales, go there now. Ahrefs.com. Get that $7 trial. Our thanks to Ahrefs for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Michael, I have added something to my journaling routine the last couple months and i call it sparky kryptonite and at the end of the day a lot of times i don't have an entry for this every day but i'll think back about what was it today that got in the way and it could be something like negative thoughts but for me it could also be something like getting lost in testing an application far beyond anything rational.

But I like the idea of keeping awareness of the things that divert me. What's the Michael Hyatt kryptonite? And when you say by kryptonite, like the thing that cripples you, that robs you of your superpower? Yeah, the thing that takes away your focus. Well, I experience less of this now that I'm out of social media, but I'm a recovering people pleaser. Sure, we all are. And I think if I think I've disappointed somebody, I can kind of spin out on that and give way too much energy to it. Yeah. You know, I had, I had a guy that, uh, I mean, this is like silly,

but it's proof that I have a lot more work to do. But, um, I had a guy that I texted, this is like a new friend and I texted him and he didn't respond like for four days. a new friend and I texted him and he didn't respond like for four days. And so I found myself creating a whole narrative about that. You know, like, well, maybe he's angry with me or maybe he's got issues. Or, I mean, you know, I just like came up with all, you know, maybe it's my problem. Maybe it's his problem. You know, my wife kept saying, look, wait to worry. You know, it's probably nothing. And as it turned out look, wait to worry. It was probably nothing. And as it turned out, it was completely nothing. He just missed the message.

I've done it before. You've done it before. But I can sometimes take sort of a few facts and create a narrative that's not warranted. And that's usually what's my kryptonite. Yeah. I get it, man. I get that. I struggle with that too uh i read a book by ed cole uh he wrote

several of them that are part of the men's curriculum at our church so i forget which book it was specifically but he mentions that we tend to judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions totally i've heard that before. Yeah. Yeah. And so I try to remind myself every time I, I noticed something and start getting upset about it. Like that's probably not what they intend. I get, I look at the email I get as Max Parkey and I get for every truly negative email I get, you know, sometimes I just get a nasty email written to me, but for every one of those, there are hundreds, if not maybe thousands of good email. And yet I go to bed thinking about that one negative one, you know, you're normal. What's wrong with me? You know, come on, man.

I do the same thing. My, my wife is infinitely better at this and she's a good reminder to me, you know, and we talk a lot about assuming positive intent. I'm not sure where we got that from. I mean, I think it may, I can't remember where it was, but at any rate, but she always has the positive intent. I'm always, you know, ruminating on that and yeah, it's not good. It's not good.

But I'll tell you what, getting off social media, I get a lot less of that because most of those things that I get are from people that don't even know me. Yeah. You know, that they're just having a bad day, you know, the dog bit them or whatever. And because they could send an email or post something anonymously or otherwise online, you know, do i care those people i you know it's like somebody flipping you off in traffic that you don't know it'd be like yeah john acuff friend of mine says it's like like if somebody flips you off in traffic and you run them down in your car and you you force them to stop and you say what did you mean by that you know i mean it's just like why do you care it's just not that big a deal.

Yeah. And you just have to remember that we're going through this social upheaval. I mean, the entire way that humans communicate with each other has been the same until the last 15 years, 10 years. I mean, this is a massive transition. I think that's the other thing, too too about social media that's particularly disturbing. I read somewhere, some research that the most relationships that we can maintain, people that are kind of in and out of our life, and we have some kind of relationship, is about 150. And yet for some of us, we will have hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of followers

on social media. And I've also stopped watching most news. Maybe once every two weeks, I'll watch the news. I used to be a news junkie. But for the people that, for example, at the time we're recording this, and particularly last week that we're in the Northwest, all these fires burning out of control. Well, it's horrible for them. It affects them locally. But here in Nashville, Tennessee, there's not a thing in the world I can do about that. It could make me feel bad. I can feel anxious. I can spend a lot of time reading about it, wringing my hands.

But I don't think the human spirit was meant to carry the weight of the world in that sense. Just, just the awareness of all these problems. And Dr. Stephen Covey talked about, you know, our circle of concern versus our circle of influence. And one of the things that I'm trying to do is stay more focused on my circle of influence. What are the things that I can directly impact versus all the things I can read about because of the internet, because of social media. And I can invest a lot of energy in things that I can have no impact on.

And I'm trying to learn, trying to learn to focus on my circle of influence. Yeah, that sparky kryptonite entry has lots of things that involve watching the news of influence. Yeah. That's sparky kryptonite entry has lots of things that involve watching the news too much. Yeah. Well, it's hard right now, especially, you know, at this, this time politically where everything seems so weighty and people have such strong feelings and you can't say anything, you know, without, you know, it seems like without getting canceled and, you know, we're all kind of feel like we're walking on eggshells and you know

it's just a challenging time well i i can tell you because i've been tracking that when i consume less news i'm happier and more productive and i don't want to say that in a cavalier way that i don't want to be aware of the world but i have drawn very careful boxes around the news that comes into my life and no longer am i going to go down those rabbit holes because the algorithm works there too. You know, totally. If you go online and start reading the news,

it starts giving you the news that thinks you want to read. And before you know it, you've spent a whole day getting yourself agitated and not producing anything. Well, if you think about it, part of what the algorithm produces is, you know,

fear and conflict drive clicks. Yeah. And I I've noticed that even Facebook back when I was on it, they wouldn't just, you know, not only did they, did they relegate me to a silo of what they perceived to be views that I had, and they were, you know, frankly, more often right than wrong because of the algorithm, but they also would just put stuff in there that they knew would tick me off just to keep me focused. And of course, everything gets enhanced and amped up for the sake of clicks. You know, we see this, I mean, the most obvious example is clickbait. Yeah. But it's like everything has become clickbait now you know you you read some alarming headline and then you read the article and like it's not that headline's not warranted by the article but

the article is what got you to click to read the article and just the whole business model for all these social media companies is just that engagement equals dollars and it's not healthy no but um we're not going to solve that problem today although i am impressed with your you taking a hiatus from social media yeah that's how that's how i think of it if you're looking for something else to read besides the news uh i know you are an advocate of reading books. You actually have a service called Leader Books. I do. Where you put together summaries and a community around reading books and taking action on them. I am a big reader myself, and I can't let you leave the show without at least one book recommendation.

Well, I would highly recommend that book, Shorter, by Alex Pang. Because it's such a paradigm-shifting kind of book, it really challenges conventional wisdom and the contemporary model that I think is very, very destructive to a lot of people that are in business, you know, and, and sort of serving as sort of the celebrity entrepreneurs that everybody else is trying to mimic to their own detriment. I bought that when you mentioned it earlier in the show. So this one has already cost me money gang. I got it written down in my fancy notebook. I'm buying it as soon as we hang up here. You know, books like this lately, I've kind of changed my workflow

because Amazon is so smart. The algorithm at work again. For 10 bucks, you can always add the Audible. And I will listen to a book like this and then I'll go back and read it. And then I'll do my highlights and stuff. The listen is like the first pass through it. And they just make it so easy. I do the exact same stuff. The listen is like the first pass through it,

and they just make it so easy. I do the exact same thing. I always start with Audible, and I listen to books typically when I'm working out. And if it's really good, I go back and buy usually the Kindle version. I used to buy the physical version because I'm really a big analog guy, but I'm just flat out of space to store books in my house,

and Kindle is, you know, it's unlimited. Well, you're going to like the recent MPU episode where I went deep on my Kindle highlight thing. We're going to get you hooked up with Readwise. You're going to automatically, there's a whole lot of stuff going on with Kindle highlights these days. Fantastic. I can't wait to listen to that. All right. Well, I, Michael, want to thank you so much for coming on the show. We, you know, with the show named Focus, you've always been on my dream list of guests for the show, and you delivered as always because you've thought through so much of this.

And I know you gave myself and the audience much to think about today, and I can't thank you enough for your time. Wow. Thank you, David. Thanks for having me on. Always a pleasure. If you want to learn more about the stuff Michaelael's doing where should they go michael uh probably the best place is michaelhyatt.com that's got links to everything i'm doing including my podcast lead to win yeah and we didn't even get

to all these books you've published lately he's done these these small book publish runs that have been amazing the virtual assistant one is sitting on my desk right now. And, uh, I just, you know, you're clicking on all cylinders, brother. Thanks, man. I appreciate the encouragement. Keep doing the work you're doing because, you know, I'm a big MPU fan. In fact, I'm on your camera, what you call it, but the premium service where I don't get the ads. Love that. Love that brilliant move. And Mike, for all that you're doing with Sean, you know,

keep up the work there too. Cause I'm a fan, fan of both of you guys. Thank you. All right. We are the focus podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm slash focused, and we'll see you in two weeks.