Focused - 116: The Big Reset

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Mike and David take on the new year in their own focused ways as they talk through a workflow for change.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Happy New Year, man. Thanks. You too. Yeah, it's kind of exciting. Everybody was ready to have a new year, and you get what you ask for sometimes.

Yep. It was very satisfying ripping my 2020 focus calendar off the wall and putting up the new one. Yeah. And I've heard from a lot of listeners that got the new 2021 calendars. Those are still available by the way. And it's not too late to get yourself a 2021 calendar. We'll put a link in the show notes. They look great. I mean, we've talked about in the last few episodes, they're dry erase, they go on your wall, they show you the whole year in one nice package. And there's, you know, as much as we like digital tools, this is an analog tool worth having. Yes, absolutely. And it's not one of those things where you've only got a week to get them. So if you're listening to this after January 1st, and you think maybe I missed my chance, you haven't missed your chance, they are still available. Just go to the link in the show notes, newyear.net slash product slash

focused if you want to get your own. And the other thing I'll add here is that we've talked about doing other types of things so people could support the show, like t-shirts and things like that. A lot of podcasts do that. We haven't done that. And this is the one thing we have done specifically because we wanted not just to make a shirt, in my opinion, anyways, we wanted to make a tool that could actually be useful. And so if you do want to support the show, then this is a great way to do that. As a bonus, you get an awesome looking calendar and we will stop promoting it so heavily after this episode, I promise. But they do make nice gifts, too. I'll say that. I gave away a few this year. So did I. Anyway, it is the new year, and this is the time of year

everybody talks about resolutions. In fact, there's two things you can count on in the new year. Number one, a lot of people will start thinking about resolutions. And number two, a lot of podcasters will make fun of them for thinking about resolutions. And I was kind of thinking about that in kind of the bigger sense, because I actually do think the motivation behind resolutions is a good one. I agree with you. I think, though, that the other thing you can count on is that most people who make resolutions will not be able to follow through on them and it won't be because of bad intentions at the beginning and they just kind of got talked into it you may go into your resolutions with every effort that this is going to be the year that things are different yeah and maybe you even had something that happened this year like a health

crisis you know that's typically the thing that causes people to really make some of those fitness-related changes. But even that, a lot of times when it comes down to New Year resolutions, it's just not enough. I personally believe that it's because you set a goal, basically, and from the moment that you make the resolution to the picture in your head of you successfully completing this goal, there's a lot of stuff in between that isn't going to go as quickly as you hope it will. And so it's really easy to get discouraged and lose motivation when you're going to the gym every day for three weeks and the pounds aren't flying off like you envisioned they would. flying off like you envisioned they would. It doesn't mean nothing's happening, but it's hard, especially when there's a whole bunch of stuff going on in your life. When you're in the middle of a global pandemic specifically, it's not going to be ideal conditions to just add one more thing and create positive change. So that's why I really believe you got to kind of break this down a little bit more into the specific routines and habits. We've talked a lot about that, you know, attaching to the identity of

the person who does the thing. Yeah, that's, that's really the key to making this stuff work. But you're right, like the idea is not bad. It's just how a lot of people go about it isn't really setting themselves up for success. Yeah, I think that, you know, too often people are looking for a some sort of binary result from a resolution, like, I am going to lose 20 pounds. And so what happens if you lose 19 pounds? Did you fail at it? Yes.

And another big issue with resolutions is I really feel like there's just not enough upfront investment in the resolution. I mean, I know I'm guilty of this in the past of like sitting there on New Year's Eve saying, oh, it's New Year's. I need to come up with a resolution. Well, next year I'm going to do X. And that's, that's the sum total of my preparation for a commitment to myself that I know at the moment that I make it, that I'm going to break it, you know, you know?

So I also think that you have, and we'll talk about this later in the outline, but I really think 12 months is an arbitrary and over long period of time to judge yourself against. And I think that causes all sorts of issues too. But, but like, like we were both saying, the idea of a resolution is a good one.

For whatever reason, as humans, when the digit on the calendar switches over, it gives us a moment of introspection. And our brains are willing and open to the idea of introspection. So what I think you should do when you feel like you know you're in the mood for that is is go with it you know but do it properly you know um cortex um our fellow podcast on the relay network does a great job of the yearly things and mike and and um and gray do that over here i haven't listened to it yet i can't wait to to listen to i know their episode is out now but the long one is it well that's good um and then but they come up with like a single word or concept that they kind of use to hang the year on which is so good because it's not binary it's something that can apply to multiple circumstances but what i what i would like

to focus on for a lot of today's show is the process of introspection when you're in the mood for it at the new year. So rather than just barf out a resolution, let's go through the process of looking back and looking forward and give you some tools that you can use to actually make productive progress. And as you head into the new year, come up with some ideas for changes in your life, whether it's something kind of overarching, like a theme or even just very narrow and tactical, but a mechanism for you to generate something actually useful for you. And I truly believe that the investment of time that you put into going through this process is why you're going to succeed with whatever comes at the back end. A hundred percent agree. The intentionality, in my opinion, is the real value to any sort of

thing that you would do, whether it be New Year's resolutions, whether it be annual goals, whether it be the 12-week year, whether it be the yearly themes, it's the time that you spend thinking about the direction that you want to set that really sets you up for success. And that's a big reason why I am, we'll talk more about this later, but I've been doing time blocking pen and paper every day since I think it was March or April of 2020. And that has really stuck for me because it only takes a couple of minutes to write it out. It's in ink, so it feels like I've accomplished something. I have made my best intention for how my next day is going to go. And that practice, the other valuable thing as it pertains to these yearly themes and directions is that I have done that now every day and every day it gets blown up. And so the real value I'm learning is in the creation of

the plan, not the execution of it, which is a really important point, I think. You can get upset when you set a theme and a pandemic happens and you've got to change it, but that's not a failure. You didn't pick wrong if that's your approach. You took your best guess and you set an intention at the beginning of the year and then something happened and you had to adjust. And that is completely okay. That is actually a very good formula, I think, if you want to be quote-unquote successful in whatever you set out to do in 2021. And know thyself. I mean, it's the introspective process that you go through in setting that theme or planning those blocks that allows you to adjust and move as things change. And that's okay. And we're going to talk about how you and I both, you know, get sand kicked in our face regularly with our plans. But, you know, the planning still makes a huge difference. And so you're listening to this, it's, you know, New Year's just arrived,

and it's not too late for you to stop and go through this process. I think, you know, just as an overview is the idea is you want to look back a little bit to see where you are. I mean, self-assessment of where you are is super important. If you're going to move somewhere, you got to know where your starting point is on a map before you can figure out what direction to go for your destination. Yeah, exactly. Another big problem. And I think a lot of people feel this around the new year, I know I do, is the assessment of blame, you know, the apportionment of punishment. And I look at like things that I'm not doing as well as I'd like, and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking, you know, damn it, I need to

do better at this, and how come I let that happen, and blah, blah, blah. And really what I need to be saying, okay, this is where things stand now. Is there something I can learn from that? You know, did I make some mistake that I can fix going forward? But, you know, blaming myself for something is not going to help anything. It's more of a just kind of a neutral commander data assessment, make some changes. And then after you do that, then you can make plans for improvement. And, and I feel like that is ultimately, you know, the motivation behind resolutions, but these are, you know, resolutions 2.0. These are a better way of doing this that

can actually make a difference in your life. This is kind of like the scientific method for your goals, if you want to think of it that way. You come up with a hypothesis and then you test it. And I think this is really useful because the truth of it is I really hadn't planned on going this direction. But the results that you have in your life, where you are right now, it's the results of the choices that you made previously. you have in your life, where you are right now. It's the results of the choices that you made previously. And it's the end result of all of the systems in your life that are running. And one of the things as it pertains to assigning blame is to recognize a couple of different things. First of all, the results are the results. They're not necessarily good or bad. Maybe they're not what you wanted. That doesn't mean that you are a bad person or you have failed as a person.

So separate your mental, emotional, any sort of judgment from the results that you have gotten and then think about your life in terms of systems where there is an input, there's a process that the input follows, and then you get the output. When you think of it that way, then you start to understand how you can tinker with some things and maybe produce some better results, but you'll never get there if you're really frustrated with yourself for not being able to stick to your plan. The other thing with this is that there are open systems and there are closed systems. And I think when it comes to New Year's resolutions, everybody is thinking, even if they are thinking of their life in terms of systems, that what they do is a closed system. There is no

outside input to the system. That is 100% not true. You will have different things that will interject and say, hey, pay attention to this. Look at me. Do this thing over here that you were not planning on. And every single one of those things is an opportunity for you to just say, well, I guess this thing is not important to me, and I'm not going to follow through with this because life happened. There's a lot of life that happened in the last year. And that's, again, not a good or a bad thing, but recognizing as you are going into 2021 that even if the pandemic is over, that you still are going to have outside things that are going to impact your open systems.

There are inputs that you cannot account for. And so give yourself some margin, some space, and give yourself some slack when it comes to actually taking action on those things that you want to do this year. Yeah, I guarantee you, last January, January 2020, when I sat down to go through this process, I did not anticipate that my kids would all be back home with me homeschooling or remote learning, that my wife would lose her job, that I'd lose my studio, that we'd add a dog to the family. All these things happen that I didn't anticipate, but that's okay. I was still able to adjust the experiment as we went through the year. And I do think that objective kind of

take on it really helps at any time. And we're always hardest on ourselves, right? I mean, at least I know I am. I give everybody else in my life way more slack than I ever give myself. And I bet you, dear listener, are guilty of the same sin. So just back off a little bit. Look at what worked. And where it didn't work or where you didn't

get the desired result. Let's think about how we can tinker with things to get that in the year coming forward. Now, I think another key piece of this process before we kind of dig into what we're doing is to commit to making this a written exercise. I know a lot of people, when I talk to them about this, they say, oh yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about it last year. And there, in my mind, is a big difference between thinking about it and writing it down. Sure, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Just forcing yourself to drag a pen across paper

or type on the keyboard. It just, it really makes things, it turns things from vapor to solid. Yes, 100%. And the tool that you use to do this really isn't even that important. It's just the fact that you're getting it out of your head and it makes it more real. I've done it pen and paper. I've also got a whole framework that I use for like my personal retreat stuff. And I've done that on the iPad using GoodNotes and the Apple Pencil. Most recently, I've done it using Roam Research as we've talked about the

personal knowledge management stuff and tinkering with that. And I think just try something. But you're right. Get it out, get it down. And then now you've got something that you can work with. At that point, you can apply the tinkerer's mindset. That's the thing as we're talking about this, I think is really, really important for people to catch. It's kind of a cliche. A lot of productivity podcasts will talk about Thomas Edison and inventing the light bulb. And it took 10,000 steps. And how many of us, it doesn't work right away when it comes to designing our entire year. And we go, oh, well, I'm a terrible person. So I guess I can't do this. We pass judgment on ourselves that like, oh, I guess this just isn't for me. And I think we give up way too early and we throw out a lot of really good stuff because

we just think like, well, I can't really come up with anything that's worthwhile. You absolutely can. You just got to find the way to express it that really clicks for you. And then when it does, it's kind of a light bulb moment. There's a very distinct before and after when that happens, at least in my experience, where things start to click. And it's not where everything now becomes easy, but you at least at that point see a path forward. You're not in the dark wondering, well, where do I go next? Yeah. So get a cup of your favorite beverage, get a nice quiet place, get some paper or computer, scratch it in the dirt, I don't know, do whatever, and commit to this. And let's get started going through the process right after this. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought

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Once again, that URL is timingapp.com slash focused. Go there today, download the trial and learn about how you are using your technology. Thanks, Timing, for all of your support of the Focus podcast. All right, so getting started for me is really about kind of just objectively looking back a bit and, you know, some of the things that go through my mind is, you know, what was I thinking when I started, you know, where was I aiming? And where did I end up?

You know, kind of using the sailing, tortured sailing analogy. But, you know, where did I start? And then where did I end the year? And how does that jive with where I wanted to end up? And because we're a show called Focus, I think a focus is another kind of good way to look at that. focused, I think a focus is another kind of good way to look at that. It's like, what in the last year caused me to gain focus and what in the last year caused me to lose focus. And at this point, it's really for me a diagnostic process, you know, what, you know, what, what work, what experiments worked and what experiments didn't, I guess, even to make it more basic.

worked and what experiments didn't, I guess, even to make it more basic. And I think that there's some value in doing that just as a beginning point of, you know, looking back. Do you do anything like that? I've got a couple of key questions, which we'll talk about in a little bit. The other ones that I ask, which are more in line of what you're talking about right now, are what did I accomplish? What went well? What could have gone better? That's the extent of my questions, though. I don't ask a ton of them because I do have a bunch of time that I devote to thinking about these as part of the personal retreat stuff. So I find giving yourself a couple of questions and then giving yourself space to think about them helps surface more things, as opposed to

if I had a bunch of questions, the way I'm wired, I would try to just fill in the blank for each one of them and move on to the next one and not go back. Yeah, well, for me, just as an example, because I've kind of gone through this process or I'm halfway through it for my 2021. And looking back in the last year, things that caused me to lose focus are things like the news. It was a very heavy news year between the pandemic and the election and everything else going on in the world. I spent more time looking into that stuff than was merited based on my ability to affect change you know sure it's important that i understand what's going on in the world but i was looking into a level of detail that was not merited based on my other obligations and i feel like that was a

big challenge for me in the last year and i got better at it as the year went on, but that was definitely a learning point for me. I lost focus adjusting to the pandemic. We had all this upheaval. Getting moved out of your workspace is always kind of difficult, but also just changes in the family. And another thing where I lost focus in 2021 was I did an infrastructure audit. I wasn't happy with the way things were getting managed in the law practice and some of the Max Barkey production stuff. And I spent a significant amount of time rethinking those things. And I think at the end of the day, that actually paid dividends.

But at the time, it me to lose lose some focus and um and you know kind of thinking about those things as i move to the next year actually is instructional for me sure do you with the lost focus kept focus sort of a thing that you've got going on. Do you define this as like success, failure, not as in binary state, but are you looking at this in terms of this is what I was shooting for, this is how close I got? No, this is more looking at, you know, what were kind of to go back to your earlier analogy, what were the outside influences that I didn't expect? Okay. So once you identify these, what's the next step for you?

Is it just figuring out what you're going to do with the information, if anything? Well, I think that, you know, that first level pass at this works. first level pass at this works, but I think, you know, getting back to the point, I think you need to invest time in this is I also think deeply about roles that I fill. And, um, you know, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a max Barkie. I'm a, you know, I'm a student. I'm a lot of things. And I, I like to bring those questions kind of back around on a per role basis, because I think it's very easy to go shallow with these types of questions about how things are working or where you're losing and keeping focus. But when you apply it to each role, it really kind of dredges up things that you otherwise

would miss. That makes sense. That makes sense. I guess 2020 was a little bit different for me because I basically took the opportunity to erase the chalkboard of my life, and I'm still in the process of figuring out what goes back on there. So maybe in the past, I would have taken into consideration all of the roles. And I do have some of those. Some of those haven't changed. But a lot of the stuff that I was committed to, I'm not anxious to just jump back to the way things were. This has given me a lot of margin, which I have really enjoyed this year. And in several areas, I've kind of thrived under it, which we'll get to that part of this in a little bit. But I'm kind of reconsidering all of the roles that I had. And I don't just keep a list anymore of like, these are the ones and what's the appropriate thing to do for the different roles. I've kind of gone back to the drawing board. And I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how to re-engage with things as we go back to whatever normal looks like.

looks like. I don't want to just do things the way that I had been doing them. I feel like the universe has kind of given me an opportunity to write a lot of things that were wrong. And I want to make the most of that. Yeah. Well, I consider this moment of reflection on roles also a moment of consideration whether that role has earned its place and whether it remains like my role as a father changed a great deal this year my my largely grown children are back home and I feel like I'm you know I want to mentor them but I have to do it in a different way than I did when they were younger and you know I have to give them enough space and, you know, the role changed. And so I had, you know, having this, going through this process, looking back, I got that feedback about what did I do as a father in the last, you know, year that actually helped my children? And what did I do as a father

that got in their way? And, you know, how can I change that going forward? So roles do change. And then sometimes roles emerge or fade away. One of the ones that really stood out to me at the end of 2020 is altruism. I feel like I didn't do enough in the last year. I mean, we did things to help people. There's a lot of people in need right now. I mean, we donated some money and there's a food bank locally that we regularly contribute to. But I feel like the whole world is suffering. And here I am making field guides and making podcasts, and I'm not doing enough. And that really stood out to me in this review process, so much so that I have now added a role to my life. I am an altruistic human. And now that goes into the mix for me. And when I do

quarterly and monthly reviews, I'm going to be asking myself, what did I do to help the world this month? And suddenly this is going to be now an area of focus going forward. So I've added roles. I didn't remove any this year, but I've done that in the past as well. But I think this process is a real healthy one where you really just kind of break down the analysis beyond the more, you know, meta, how am I doing as a human to how am I doing in specific roles? Sure. So do you have any examples? I'm kind of putting you on the spot, but like specific things that you have changed from looking at these different roles? Oh, yeah. I mean, I now have habits and actions planned around altruism. And then like,

the husband and father role is very different now than it used to be. And especially with everybody home, and they're going to continue to be home at least for a while. Um, the, uh, as a lawyer, it was a very difficult year. A lot of my long-term clients failed, you know, they're, I'm a business lawyer and some of these businesses didn't make it through the pandemic. And so, you know, it's like the way that I handled those, I looked at very carefully and thought about how I would change that going forward. And I turned up the heat a bit on Max Barkey this year because, you know, of changes in other areas of my life. So, yeah, I mean, this is constantly in motion. Another one that really grew this year, I call it the Padawan learner, you know, because I'm a nerd. But, you know, the student role,

you know, because I'm a, I'm a nerd, but you know, the student role, I think we all should think of ourselves as a student, but the types of things I've been consuming and trying to learn from have changed this year. And, um, and, and I can talk about that more later in the outline, but you know, so, so a lot of roles I view differently now than I did a year ago. And I, a lot of roles I view differently now than I did a year ago. And I, and I've documented that through this process. Sure. Yeah. I guess the thing that I focus on is not so much the roles,

but the core values. Sure. And again, this is from the personal retreat stuff that I, I thought through and created this framework that works for me. You know, some of the questions that I used in identifying our core values is what legacy

do I want to leave behind? What am I passionate about really makes me happy? What do I value? What do I refuse to do? How do I measure success? How do I want people to remember me? And that largely hasn't changed. And what I realize hearing you talk through your roles and how they change is that I have those roles and they are changing. But as they change, the things that I do to express them maybe are a little bit different. But the reasons behind them are still the same and they're still being driven by these core values.

are still the same and they're still being driven by these core values. So as I'm thinking about those and I'm asking my retrospective questions, what did I accomplish? What went well? What could have gone better? And I look back on 2020, honestly, and I shared this in our mastermind, I feel kind of bad, but I also think that this was actually a really great year for me personally, because I was craving the margin that I got. And like I said earlier, this has kind of created an environment where I'm thriving in a lot of areas. One example, I have really stepped up my exercise. I've been using fitness totals on iOS to calculate because you can't do

that easily in the activity app. But I ran 545 miles this year and cycled 1,230. That's crazy. I never would have pictured myself being able to do something like that at the beginning of the year and just recognizing that I've got this opportunity to redefine what's important to me. It reminded me a lot of some advice you gave me when I stopped working with my previous employer. It's like, okay, so this is the time to rethink all of your habits and what's really important to you. Establish those things that are really going to stick going forward. It's a catastrophic event. Maybe that's not the right word, but it's something that completely disrupts your daily routine. Something like a global pandemic that doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that just you have to force yourself to to be sad and to go inward like use those events again going back to the tinkerer thing it is what it is okay so i'm not trying to discount all the the negative stuff that has come with that but just asking yourself okay so this

happened now what what do I do from here? And for me, there was a lot of things that got adjusted. Pretty much all my productivity systems, which we'll talk about in a little bit. I re-evaluated everything. So it's really kind of hard for me to look back at where things were at the beginning of the year and compare them to where they are now because I basically reinvented everything. It wasn't like small adjustments. I went from using a digital task manager to pen and paper. Like you can't, it's like apples and oranges to a certain degree, some of that stuff. Yeah. Well, it's just weird because often people have things in their life, like you had a job change where we have, you know, if you imagine the console of your life,

you know, like the, what is it, do you see Inside Out, that Pixar movie? And you've got that big console. There are occasions in your life where that console transforms and a big red reset button pops up in the center. And you get the chance to push that button you don't get that very often i think you know so often you get stuck in you know the patterns of the same job the same you know relationships everything just moves along but once in a while you get that reset button but never in our lives have we had a situation where that button showed up on the panels for almost

everybody in the world, you know? And so this was the big reset year. And in addition to be a horrible year where a lot of people lost their companies, their incomes, their lives, their health, there are people who were able to hit that reset button and make positive change. And it's almost like you have a survivor's guilt about it because I get it. You know, things change for me for the better this year too. Also things change for the worse.

And I think you do need to, as part of this process, go back and look at what were the challenges that you faced in the year? What were the successes you had? But that underlying unique situation of 2020 the big reset um is something that you can't ignore and it or or you can ignore to your own peril because if the reset button is getting pushed new defaults are going to be set now you can play a role in those new defaults or they can just happen to you.

And I think that's where, you know, all the difference is made. I think another thing that's important in this retrospective process is to think through all the things that you've made it through. You know, this is kind of taught all of us resilience, grit, however you want to define it. And as I think back to this year, I realized that I was kind of prepared for this because of the way that I had lost my job previously. All this was starting and there was all this economic uncertainty, is my business going to be around in the future you go to the worst case scenario no i'm going to lose my job and on one level selfishly i was like oh it's not so bad i've been there done that already yeah and knowing that you made it through something like

that previously makes it seem not as extreme and And that's just the economic side of it. Again, not trying to discount all the other stuff that has happened here. But I do think it's important to find the silver lining and to look at what can I do with the situation that I have. Not get upset because it's not what I want, but going back to the tinkerer's mindset, the systems thinking process, you know, this is what it is. How do I make the most of it? And I also think that kind of related to that is consider your success. You know, look back. I mean, it was a tough year for everyone but as you're listening to this have you stopped to go back and give yourself credit for what you were able to accomplish

despite all of this you know yeah maybe it was you stuck it out in your job maybe you held your company together maybe you were able to keep your family healthy and safe in the middle of a global pandemic. That's a huge win right there. Yeah, I mean, and maybe you kept a positive attitude in terrible times. Maybe you reset things and you are in a better position than you were. There are a lot of, I mean, and I know there's, you know, this is different from the great depression. My parents were depression era kids. So we talked about the depression endlessly as I was growing up. And the one thing that always stood out to me was in the depression, everybody lost, you know, everybody, whether you're rich or poor,

you know, it hurt more if you're poor to begin with. And like my, my grandmother, I mean, my mother, they didn't have any money in the depression. They found an abandoned cabin in the backwoods of Massachusetts. And that's how they got through. My grandfather would go literally hunting for animals. And so, you know, you look back and that was horrible. Now in this current situation, there are people who have thrived through this, you know, and so it's just weird and different. But give yourself credit for whatever it is that you did accomplish.

And that needs to go onto that list as well. I think as you're going through this process and doing the introspection, it's too easy to spend a bunch of time being self-critical and just looking at the challenges and problems you face without acknowledging your successes, which are just as important, if not more important. And like Mike talks a lot about the gap versus the gain, I think this is a golden moment for that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, again, the gap versus the gain thing is all about perspective. And it's not discounting the things that have happened. It's giving yourself permission to be upset that they happened for a little while.

But then at some point, you got to figure out what your next move is. And if you can separate emotion from that, especially negative emotion, you're in a much better place. If you have a negative emotion attached to whatever you're going to try to do next, you're not going to have much motivation to follow through with it unless you're fueled by revenge or something like that. I'd never seen that end well. And so for me, a lot of, as I'm thinking through the last year, there's a lot of stuff I could point to as like, oh, well, we didn't get to do that.

That was disappointing. We found out Wisconsin was locking down the day that we had a, we were supposed to get on a plane and go to Florida for a family vacation that my kids had been looking forward to for months. They dealt with that really well. I was actually really proud of them, how they responded to that. But there were plenty of opportunities for months. They dealt with that really well. I was actually really proud of them, how they responded to that. But there were plenty of opportunities for disappointment. But the thing that creates action for me anyways, going into 2021, is the stuff that went well.

So things like my wife and I started the Intentional Family podcast. I mentioned that there was a lot of forced margin on us, but we took that as an opportunity to figure out how we were going to make the most of our family time together. We've eaten every meal together, I think, since March, which is great. We play board games with our kids almost every night. And it's also been an opportunity to rethink the way that we've done things. So we've got music lessons that we've been taking. All of our kids are in piano. And because there was a certain way that we were traditionally used to doing things, we had done those for a very long time. And Monday nights were crazy. We were at the music store

downtown for about four hours. And it was nuts trying to get everybody there, one right after the other. At one point, we're dropping people off, picking people up because someone else has to get to jujitsu. And it was crazy. So when we had to stop that, we didn't want to stop the music lessons. We started looking for other opportunities. didn't want to stop the music lessons. We started looking for other opportunities. And one of the things that we landed on, which has been really cool, is there's a couple of missionaries that we support in Costa Rica. Rachel and I actually took a mission trip down there last year. And they're both phenomenally talented musicians who are also impacted by the pandemic, and they can't go do all the things that they were doing. And they're looking for ways to raise funds. And so they started doing music lessons. Well, it just happens to be the right fit because they're really good. And my kids, the way they teach, they've really been thriving under this, learning a lot of theory, learning a lot of the scales. I mentioned to you, David, I was a little concerned that it'd be a

little bit too difficult for them, but they thrive under that challenge. So it's been a great fit. And we realized that this is way less stressful. We're no longer gone all Monday night. We can do it from home. The kids go one right after the other. So it's much less stress than both my wife and I. The kids are actually doing a lot better.

It takes a lot less time. And ultimately, it's even less expensive. So it's like a win-win-win. And it's something that we never would have thought of unless we were forced to think about things differently. Yeah, I was thinking about my successes of the last year. And I've got several, too. I think for so many of us, the success starts with, you know, dealing

with family and loved ones during a pandemic. And, you know, we have a 1500 square foot house with a 24 year old and a 19 year old young adults taking the full load of remote learning university classes, a couple 50 somethings, one of which is making multiple podcasts and field guides and practicing law. And we are closer than we were when this started. I mean, I think I've always had a pretty close family, but we eat so many meals together. We watch Jeopardy together on a regular basis. There's things we do now now opportunities we've had that we wouldn't have had if this all hadn't happened. You know,

that's, that's the survivor's guilt in me. It's like, Oh, this has been so terrible for so many people, but I'm closer to my kids now. You know, it's like I got one more chance to spend time with them before they go out

into the world. It's like, it's crazy, but I, that's a success for me. I shipped products. I got field guides out. I made podcasts I'm proud of.

I did good quality legal work for clients. I got some clients through some really sticky situations this year with the pandemic. That's a success. I feel like I need to acknowledge those as I think forward. You know, it strikes me that one of the areas that you picked to add is altruism. And the thing that we're talking about right now where you're feeling that survivor's guilt for making positive changes in your life in the middle of a global pandemic, that is very much at odds with the altruistic goals that you

have. I mean, it's fine to have empathy. It's fine to feel bad that things are happening. But ultimately, the way that you help more people is not just to feel bad for them. There's got to be action associated with it. And the more that you are able to dial things in for yourself, the more you are able to help other people in whatever way, shape, or form that that takes. I've been reading The Practice by Seth Godin, and it's been really good. And he talks a lot about the creative process as being a very generous thing. And for me, going into next year, I know we're going to get into this in a little bit, but that's a big thing I want to focus on is not just the creative process, but the why behind it and figuring out who am I trying to serve and how do

I serve them to the best of my ability? How do I make a bigger difference in their lives? And I think as long as you are focused on the past, that is a natural hindrance to that. So this end of the year stuff, I kind of love this. And I do this every quarter as part of the personal retreat thing. I love these moments where you can look back and say, okay, this happened, acknowledge that these things have happened, these changes have occurred. And then you turn the page, you close the book and you move on to the next thing. There's something that is very healthy about that process, I believe. And that's why I do it four times a year instead of one.

Yeah, definitely. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. 2020 has reshaped the way that we work. Businesses across the globe are being challenged to be their most efficient, which means that every hire is more important than it's ever been. And Indeed is here to help with that. Indeed is the number one job site in the world with more total visits than any other job site according to Comscore. Indeed helps you find quality candidates quickly so you can focus on hiring the person that you need to keep your business going. Unlike other sites, Indeed gives you full control and

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a free $75 credit to boost your job post, which means more quality candidates will see it fast. Try Indeed out with a free $75 credit at Indeed.com slash Focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. This is their best offer available anywhere. Go right now to Indeed.com slash Focused. This offer is valid through December 31st. Terms and conditions apply. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Okay, Mike. So we've, you know, we've been navel gazing for a while now.

Hopefully you filled up some pages as you've gone through this process. But I feel like there's a point where you have to get tactical. You know, you audit these roles, you look at your successes and failures, you've pulled some wisdom out of the past. But, you know, what are you going to do next? Because that's kind of the purpose. And now we're getting into the resolution territory. How am I going to change behavior going forward to get the experiment to run better? Yeah, and this is where the other three questions I think come in is the, what should you start doing, stop doing, keep doing? Yeah, and I think that you turned me on to that as well as Ian Bird, and I have been using that now in my quarterly reviews. And I think it is a super powerful tool, you know, to, to literally just say, okay, make a list. Let's talk through these

things. So why don't we start with one of my favorites is what should I keep doing? You know, which is really follows naturally out of this introspective process. Cause you just got done thinking about what was a success? What was a failure. What are the bits that are working that need to continue? Yeah. I'll jump in here. I will say for this year specifically, the order of these questions does kind of matter to me because like I mentioned in March when everything got shut down, the answer to what should you stop doing at that moment was everything. And so I've took that as an opportunity to reinvent a lot of things and I'm still putting things back in. I've done several

of those this year, which is why we'll get into what should you keep doing. But when it comes to like, what should you stop doing? My typical process of like identifying one thing that I'm going to stop doing for whatever segment of time. I've kind of negated that because essentially everything was put on pause and I've just been very selective and slow about putting things back in. It's like a fresh install on your iPhone. You're only adding apps as they earn their way in. Exactly. That is a great analogy. That's exactly what it's like. I'm not restoring from backup here. This is Mike 2.0. Yeah. What are you going to keep doing? I mean, what stuff happened this year that has made the cut? Sure. Well, the big thing that I am just absolutely in love with is this hybrid

productivity system, which we've talked about, which is my own form of bullet journaling using my fancy notebook. And then basically everything else resides in Roam research. I have kept looking for reasons to leave Rome, places where things are not going to work for me as a justification to say, well, that was a failed experiment. That's kind of in the back of my mind. It's like I'm going to hit that wall at some point. Every time I hit something, though, I figure out a way around it. And this just really clicks for me. Just real briefly, because we've talked about this previously, I time block my day the night before in the notebook, and I jot down up to five things that I am going to work on that day as my list. And then I work off of the notebook during the day, all the ideas and the things as I think of them that I need to do, I will write

down in the notebook in the rest of the space on my page as we record podcasts and things like that. Those sorts of notes will go here too. And at the end of the day, I'll go through that and I will transfer the stuff that makes the cut basically back into Rome Research. That's the brain. And the notebook is the list. And that has worked really well. I absolutely intend to keep moving with that. Yeah, I had no idea when I attended the Relay anniversary event with you, and I was sitting there, and we were talking about pens and paper, that I was in the process of creating a monster.

You unleashed the Kraken. But that's great. I mean, I feel like that is a source of joy for you. I mean, you love talking pins and you buying pins. And I love the way that you buy pins when you ship a big thing. It's kind of like, so now they have memories tied to them. And i think the combination of digital and analog is a very powerful one because you get different chemicals released with the different tools you use and and writing with a pen and paper slows you down and makes you i think more deliberate and so so finding a way to combine those is is really great and and i know that that every time i talk to you you bring bring this up. So I know this must be really helping you get work done. It absolutely does. And tied to this is another

thing which I want to continue doing, and that's maintaining margin. I mean, the only reason this worked is because there were no expectations as to what people were going to be able to get done at the beginning of this pandemic. All of the expectations were wiped out as people figured out what can we actually do in the state that we find ourselves. No one really knew how productive you were going to be, even though I'd been working from home for a long time, you know, a lot of people are working from home from the first time. And for them, it was very challenging. But even if you've been doing this for a while,

there were a lot of things that you had to figure out now with everybody under one roof. This is now the movie theater, the office studio, the restaurant, the school room, the gym. Yeah, like Spaceship U. That was a great video. You had to, everything is now happening in one space and that can be very difficult from a focus perspective specifically. But because I didn't have the expectations of you got to do this,

this, this, this, and this, I was able to slow down, pump the brakes and be like, okay, well, how do I really want to engage with the work that I do? And this was an experiment that I thought maybe could work, but did not anticipate that it would work as well as it did. I do want to maintain the margin though, because I feel like there are other opportunities for experiments like this that could really hit the mark and really have a positive impact on my life. I don't want that to just disappear once the pandemic is over. So I'm going to be fighting very hard to maintain this margin. No is the default. I've talked about that before, but I have renewed energy behind making no the default. This is almost like a zealous cause for me at the moment. Mentioned working from home too.

This is something that I've realized. It took a little while to dial in specifically for this to work every day for me. Like I got the fancy chair. I got the fancy keyboard. I got my office set up just the way that I like it. And what I've learned from taking the time to do that is that I really endure joy working from home. I like being able to open my office door, take a break with my kids and go shoot hoops or whatever. And in the past, I was kind of going from place to place. I had a membership at the co-working space downtown. I was down there a

couple days a week just because I felt like I kind of needed to get out of the house. And I don't feel that way anymore. Obviously, I can't, but I'm not chomping at the bit to like, oh, I can't wait till I can go downtown and work in the co-working space again. I honestly feel like the way I have my office set up now, this is kind of the environment for me to do my best work. Yeah, my co-working space was Batuu in Disneyland. So I miss it, I'll be honest. When I can go back there, I will take advantage of that again. But no, I get where you're coming from.

And so many of the things you're describing to me are the result of you mashing that reset button. So many of the things you're describing to me are the result of you mashing that reset button, that suddenly you had to rethink defaults and you've got a new set of defaults that are going to survive the pandemic. And, you know, I think that may be true for a lot of us. I know in my case, I had similar experiences like the pandemic in in brought new constraints in my life, you know, where I used to have my own dedicated space, I could go and shut the door and do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. So I had complete control over when I recorded and things like that. Well, you know, in our tiny house, suddenly my studio is in the middle of the house. It's no longer in an isolated room. And that really forced me to rethink my schedule, which is something that I wouldn't have done otherwise. And so I kind of, you know, when I realized things weren't working after my move, I realized, okay,

I have to rethink how am I going to do it with these constraints? And I realized a couple of things like my, uh, my kids isolate themselves in their rooms. My wife stays up late a lot of times and does work into the evening. So she'll sleep in. Well, that gives me some golden hours in the morning when I have the entire downstairs to myself. So how do I use that? Well, that's obviously recording time and, you know, um, deep thought time now. So I've built my whole schedule around these constraints and it's made me more productive. You know, I mean, there's no other way to put it. When I was left like, you know, a free and open to do whatever I want, I wasn't getting enough done.

Once I put constraints in my life, that meant that I had only certain times I would do things. So I made that time to do the things that were important. Does that make sense? Yeah, it definitely makes sense. And that's the beauty of constraints. I'm learning a lot about how constraints can make you more creative specifically in the arena of music, because I started taking guitar lessons during the pandemic as well. And I've played guitar for a long time, but this is the first time I've really been challenged to learn all the scales and the modes and all that stuff. And I'm realizing now, because I've been doing it long enough, how these start to fit together and how this just kind of like

opens up the creative toolbox when you've got a guitar in your hands and you're just jamming with a bunch of people. And I think it applies to a lot of other areas besides music. Yeah, well, I've rethought my daily and weekly schedules and I actually track that in my journal. I have like, what is the current ideal weekly schedule? And this is a great exercise I'd recommend to anyone. You know, set aside the, you know, occasional doctor appointment or whatever. But if you had control over your schedule, what would be the ideal schedule? You know, Friday afternoon review and plan for next week, Monday morning, work on the most important project, you know, what, you know, think it through and then compare how you're doing against that ideal schedule. It has changed for me for the better in the midst of all of this.

Another thing that has evolved from my big reset button this year is just, I think I was already on the train with meditation and journaling, but this year more than ever, it really helped keep me grounded through all this. And I realized how valuable those things are. And that's why it kept coming up on the show throughout 2020 is because like journaling in particular was more, was newer to me. I'd been meditating for 30 years, but, but journaling throughout something like this is just so valuable. And that's something I'm definitely carrying forward. And just, you know, the way that I spend time on and about my family is better now than it was. I mean, the kids are here, so it's easier to give

them more. And I really want to continue that even if they do eventually leave, you know? So there's a whole bunch of stuff that happened that I've got on the keep doing list as I think we'll talk about the journaling workflows and how those have grown maybe in deep focus today. But this is not something that when you've taken in the context of the year, I would say I did, or at least did very well. I've made some adjustments just in the last month or so to both of these and seen some success from this, but taken from the macro view of a 2020 retrospective, this isn't something I would hang my hat on. And so this is something that I want to focus on specifically personally going into the next year. Do you have anything that you want to do more of in 2021? So much, Mike. I have so many things I want to do more. Like you, I've exposed, this year also exposed some of my failings and gave me some

chances to experiment with things. And there's a lot of stuff I need to work on more. Before all this began, I had a gym membership and my wife and I went at least three times a lot of stuff I need to work on more. Before all this began, I had a gym membership, and my wife and I went at least three times a week, and I think I was in better health than I am now. I have a system in place for working out from home, but I have not been consistent about it, and that's something I want to do more of going into next year. The music also took a hit for me this year because every time I want to play my sax,

somebody is in a class. It's just like back when I kind of had free reign, it was a lot easier to just pick up my horn and play and be even for 10 minutes in between projects. And that's not as true now. I recently acquired something. In fact, I'll talk about it new and shiny. I acquired a piece of technology to help me with that. Um, the, uh, um, something that I, I was starting on at the beginning of the year was delegation and the idea of, of doing less. And, and this is, you know, one of my big issues is, you know, how you talked about how happy you are with margin. I don't have enough and I need it.

And I think that the pandemic derailed my delegation efforts. Like I have like an assistant and she is a friend and she comes over the house and does filing for me and does a whole bunch of stuff. Well, guess what? The last time I saw her was March, you know? And I think when everything started kind of getting crazy with the pandemic, I just wrote off delegation like, well, she can't come over anymore instead of saying, okay, given this constraint, how can I give her more to do to help me or somebody something to do to help me or somebody something

to do to help me? So I'm not doing all of this myself. Instead, I just did it all myself. And I'm coming out of it like someone off of a bender right now. And I see all of the negative consequences of my life for me failing to get help on things and um that's something i'm going to have to figure out so i'm going to do a lot more delegation going next year um the um you know planned days off you know we talked about uh cgp gray is a popular topic today we talked about his spaceship earth he also did a great video last year called weekend wednesdays where he rethought about his weekends. You know, he works Monday, Tuesday, takes Wednesday off, then he works Thursday through Saturday and takes Sunday off.

And I'll put the video in the show notes, but he explains the benefits of this. But I watched that video and got thinking, huh, I don't take any days off. You know, I mean, honestly, I don't. I mean, Sunday to me is the same as a Wednesday so often because I've got three podcasts, field guide production, a blog to write, and legal clients to take care of. And this is not a sustainable lifestyle. And I need to build in a way to get some days off once in a while. And that's a big thing for me going forward into this year. I'll talk about that later. So I need to do more of that. And then,

uh, the last thing I want to do more of, and this is kind of like your kind of explorations into meditation has been, um, is doing more just learning, you know, getting, putting on that Padawan hat. Um, the, um, when I was in college, I got my undergrad degree. It was in political science, but the focus was political philosophy. I spent four years reading Plato and Aristotle and, you know, a lot of, you know, Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus, and I spent a lot of time reading philosophy and it was so great. I loved it. And I have strayed from that over the years. And suddenly I found myself going back and reading ancients. And I find it very comforting reading this stuff, maybe because of what we're all going through, but reading it critically and thinking

about it again. And I definitely want to make time for that going forward too. So I've got a lot on my plate that I'd like to improve. And honestly, I didn't have any idea about any of that stuff until I sat down and started, you know, kind of writing through and dragging my brain through this process. Sure. Yeah. And I know the, uh, the delegation in the plan days off specifically kind of lead into the things that you have under stop doing. Uh, you want to talk about those real quick? Yeah. I mean, just, just, you know, what, what does that mean? I, I have been, I have known that I need to get more margin for years now. And I've given it plenty of lip service on this podcast, on the blog, in my own journals.

And I feel like I've, I have, I'm all talk and no action on this stuff. And so I've just got to really start making a difference. And I think the ways I get margin in my life, there's a couple. One is, is really critically look at what I'm doing that I could automate or delegate. That's kind of a beginning point. And look, um, I should be hiring people to do things that are not high value tasks that the math makes sense. The control freak in me needs to let go. And, and I have made progress on this over the last couple of years,

but not enough. So like we had Ernie on our last episode, he talked about one of the things he's going to do is pick 12 things and get rid of one thing a month. Well, I've already started my list and I'm not going to wait for a whole month to do it. As soon as I get one thing successfully delegated, I'm starting on the next. But I'm going to look at this next year as an opportunity to get even more critical about

what I'm doing versus what I'm handing off. The other thing I have to do, which is going to be very difficult for me, um, is I'm going to, I'm going to start firing clients. Um, I've just, it's time, you know, um, and not, you know, I mean, it's not, if you're a client listening to this, don't worry. Yeah. Cause I do have some clients that listen to this. But there are clients that ask me to do work that isn't in my wheelhouse, but I've represented them a long time and I'm not going to do that anymore. That's just not, I refuse. And then there are some clients that just give me enough grief to make it not worth the trouble. The people who want to talk to you about the bill after you already undercharged them and stuff.

And where historically I'm like, no, I just got to kind of put up with this stuff. It comes with a job. And even in a time where my wife lost her job, we lost her company health insurance. I got two in college. One's about to start graduate school. And it's like, this is not the time to be giving away income generating, you know, projects. But then,

you know, when you think about it in the bigger picture, actually, these are the clients that are actually getting in the way of me, you know, making money on doing the things I love. So, so it makes sense, but you know, it, but it's like a second level brain function to get there. And it's always hard for me to do that. So I'm going to start firing some clients. I'm going to start delegating more. I need to get to the point where I can at least take Sundays off. Yes, you do. You're right. That's not a sustainable thing to keep working every day but you know the funny thing is mike i've been doing this my whole life you know yeah and i'm it hasn't hit me yet but i'm sure it's somebody well but but i realize that you know i i'm at least self-aware

enough that this isn't working and i got i've got to like figure it out and and i like there's a bunch of stuff i'm doing i like doing i'm figure it out. And I like, there's a bunch of stuff I'm doing that I like doing. I'm not going to stop doing that stuff. But there's enough, if I look at it critically, there's enough in there that I can throw overboard that will give me a little more margin. And that's what I want. I want more time to read Aristotle again. Yeah. And that's really at the heart of all of this stuff is the compromises that you make. And as we talk about what I should stop doing, I kind of mentioned my approach to this is a little bit different because I'm not saying no to one thing here and one thing there in order

to make a little bit of margin so I can do one more thing that I want to do like read Aristotle. I wiped the slate completely clean. And if you were to take the Stephen Covey analogy of like the large rocks in the jar, I dumped out my entire jar in March. It was kind of dumped out for me, but then I was like, okay, this is actually a good thing. Now I get to see what was all in there and I get to choose what I put back. And I feel like I am still in the process of putting things back, but there are things that are very valuable to me, which were kind of being forced out previously, like the eating meals together as a family. And I really do love playing board games with my kids every single night, almost every single night. Those are things that I would not have considered to be big rocks before that

now absolutely are. And so as I get back into other things, those are non-negotiables. So that's the big value in this for me is the changing of the perspective and the redefining of the things that are actually important. But when it comes to end of the year retrospective, what should I stop doing? I feel like I have been so careful with this that I still have margin that I'm going to fill at some point, but I'm not ready to say it's going to be filled with this specific thing yet. So I don't really have anything else on my list here of things to stop doing. But I do want to talk about how I'm going to intentionally fill some of those things in the next section, which we'll talk about right after this. This episode of Focus is brought to you by ExpressVPN, high speed, secure and anonymous VPN services. And get an extra three months for free when you sign up at expressvpn.com slash focused. In the real world, when 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. The thing a lot of people don't realize is that your internet

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Okay, so we've done our retrospective. We've talked about what's been working, what hasn't been working, what we should start, stop and keep doing. Now we're going to kind of transition into 2021. What are we going to do here? And this is where the idea of yearly themes or words for the year, however you want to define them, that's where this fits. I personally don't have a theme, and I know you're not a big fan of the theme because it's a pretty big time chunk to be thinking about. But I do like the idea of the words. For me, this isn't something that I use to quantify, was I successful in different areas? They're just kind of guiding principles

where, hey, you said this was going to be important to you. So as you're thinking through your quarterly themes and goals, this is something that you should be paying attention to. Last year, my words were rest and relationships. Well, the rest definitely came. The relationships did too a little bit. We were doing these kibbutzes that i had picked up from near isle the author of indistractable where he would have a couple other couples over kids would go downstairs and the adults would have intentional conversation so we started doing that had to put it on pause but because we had that focus at the beginning of the year of relationships we reached out a lot more even virtually than we would have otherwise.

Like one of the highlights for me, honestly, in terms of relationships this year was we played FaceTime Yahtzee with JF. That was a lot of fun. So what's your approach to this sort of thing? How do you simplify your message? And then I can share maybe some of the words that I've got for this year. I think the idea of themes is really great. And Mike and Gray do a great job. We'll link their show in the show notes.

And the underlying idea behind that is you're not tying your hands. You're just giving a framework that you can hang things on as you work through the year. And I like that. I think my big problem is honestly the 12-month time frame. And you don't need to write me. I know that Mike and Gray say, you know, your theme doesn't have to be a year. It can be as short or long as you need it to be. But to me, thinking in 12 months is really hard. And in the past, when I've tried to come up with some kind of like theme or, you know, you know, motto for the year, just it's just 12 months is such a long time, it never really has relevance. After 12 months, usually it doesn't have relevance

after six months. So I tried to think about these things more in a kind of like a working tactical structure. Like, okay, I love the navel gazing part of the process we've described, but for me, the payoff is coming out the back end. What those three questions we just talked about, what am I going to do more of? What am I going to do? You know, why am I stopped doing what am I going to keep doing and how do I actually make that a reality? So I, I spent a lot of effort building like habit tracking into OmniFocus or setting up specific projects to, to further those, those ideas. But I look at it as a, as a 12 month process, you know, and like this whole thing, like the, the thing that came out of all of this for me is I need more margin. You know, I mean, there's a lot of things

in my life that are working great right now. So I'm, I'm very lucky, but one thing that really would, the thing that would help me the most is if I built more margin into the system. So, so I've got this whole structure I've set up now about how am I going to delegate more? How am I going to, you know, how am I going to decide, you know, where the legal work needs to back off and where things need to, you know, improve. So I'm going to take action on that over the next 12 weeks. And then when I get to, you know, three months from now, I'm going to look at the sea, ask myself a lot of the same questions we've talked about in the show already to see if I made any progress and what I can do. So I don't really add a specific theme to it, but I do have kind of a general idea of this is where my boat is now. And that is where I'd like to be. And in three months, where will I be now in three

months, I may find that I did an amazing job of delegation. And suddenly, I've got nothing but margin. And I have kind of got that problem under control for now. And I'm going to start looking at what what you know, what else can I improve? Or where else can I change? Or I may find that I've made progress, but not enough. And then I need to dedicate another three months to it. And that's kind of the way I do everything. Like even I do the same thing with field guides. Like I have a list of potential titles for next year, but everything is in motion, right? I don't know if Apple's going to make some announcement or like, you know, some software that I'm thinking about working on is

going to change. So I just have kind of general ideas, but I don't focus on a lot beyond three months. Sure. So you've kind of got an informal theme of margin, but you're not going to label it a theme. You just know that's the direction for right now. And at any point in the near future, you're giving yourself permission to change course. I like that. And I think that's a very valid approach. It's probably the best approach, to be honest, if you're not someone like me who panics because you don't have a destination in mind at all times. So my words words for the year are community and commitment. And these are not associated with specific outcomes, which is why I like the idea of the yearly words. I think you can, if you're going to take the theme approach, have your theme and then attach a bunch of goals to it. And I would

advise you not to do that. I would keep it open ended and not spend a whole lot of time defining what you're going to do in terms of these. But think about what does this change in terms of your day to day? How is your day to day life different after having focused on these words? So for me, community, this is an extension of relationships. It's building personal relationships in my life, not just online ones, although that's a big piece of this too, because community to me, I recently read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. It talks about bridging and bonding communities and different types of social capital. And as I'm combining all this stuff, thinking through all the things that

I've read recently, I realized that there are things that I can do in the communities that exist around the stuff that I create, whether that be focused, whether that be bookworm, faith-based productivity. There are ways that I can, with a little bit of intention, serve the people that are in those communities a little bit better and make those communities stronger. So I want to be looking for those opportunities to make those connections between people a little bit better. An example of this, an accidental example, I guess, because I hadn't really heard about the bridging and bonding aspects of community building prior to this. But someone had tweeted last week that they joined one of the mastermind groups that we helped connect people. That's really all we did is we helped connect people based on where they were and what times they had available. And they mentioned that

they had just published a book, which was a result of that mastermind group that they had started. I didn't have any part to play in that other than getting them connected with some other super smart focus listeners. And I love that. That's the kind of stuff I want to do more of. And I think that there are ways that I can do that a little bit better. I was just going to say one other thing I should have mentioned earlier I want to continue doing

is I joined a mastermind group this year and that has been huge and I will definitely be doing that more next year. Awesome. Yeah, you can check out the last episode of Deep Focus if you want more details on that. The other word for this year is commitment. We talked a lot about this already this episode, but basically I have been very careful about the way that I've reengaged with things as we do go

back to life the way that it used to be. I hesitate to use that. I also don't like the term new normal. I feel like what we're going to end up with is probably something in between. But whatever that looks like, I don't want to just do things because I was doing them before, and now we can do them again.

I want to ask myself, first of all, should I be involved in this thing? And second of all, if I'm involved in this thing? And second of all, if I'm involved in this thing, what does that look like? What are the rules of engagement for this? The piano lessons being one example of how we were able to rethink the way that we did things and it produced a better result in the systems for our family. I feel like there's a lot more opportunities for stuff like that. I want to recognize those things and I want to take advantage of those. Related to that also, the things that I am committed to, I want to double down on. I want to really lean into my role as a creator. We've

talked a lot about this, you and I personally, but I want to do that on a more regular basis. And I know that writing is a big part of that. So thinking through my own daily routine, reading The Practice by Seth Godin, he talks about finding your hour. I've been rethinking my daily routine and finding that hour just for me personally to write about stuff I want to publish on my personal blog more regularly. And as a kind of bookend to that process, which we're going to talk about in Deep Focus, I think I've been revamping my journaling workflow. Because I recognize that what I was doing really wasn't serving me the way that I wanted it to. So thinking through how can I use this practice to get the insights that I'm after. And I have a feeling that that is going to help me in terms of the creative process as well. I feel like the process, and we've described a very labor-intensive process

throughout this episode. It's not just saying, I'm going to lose 20 pounds before you pop a bottle of champagne on New Year's Eve, right? But I feel like the real benefit of it is not only that introspection, but it's the way everything connects when you get through the back end. And so often, many of the ideas that come out of this process just connect with each other.

I feel like what you're describing demonstrates that. Yeah, there's a lot of connections to be made. That's one of the things that I've noticed with a lot of the personal productivity systems I've been tinkering with this year, That's one of the things that I've noticed with a lot of the personal productivity systems I've been tinkering with this year is that there are better ways to connect things, not just keep them in separate buckets. And, okay, I did that over there and I finished that over there. But what's the point? How do they tie together and what does that mean going forward? Yeah.

Well, I hope as you're listening to this, you're inspired to give this a shot. And this isn't going to take you multiple weeks. This will take you an afternoon to go through and kind of ask yourself these questions. Well, I guess it'll take you as long as it takes you. But I wouldn't stray away from this because you're afraid that you're going to need a whole week because you're not. Take a Sunday afternoon and see how far you get. My guess is you'll probably get through the Sunday afternoon and see how far you get. My guess is you'll probably get through the whole process and it can really make a difference.

Absolutely. Mike, what is shiny and new in your life lately? I know you made a purchase. I did. I'm recording this podcast from my brand new M1 Mac Mini, which is a pretty awesome machine specifically for the stuff that I do. I mean, I'm not in Final Cut, but from the stuff that I've seen, this computer could probably handle that as well. ScreenFlow works with it now. Logic is great on the Mac Mini. And this thing is,

it kind of blows my mind that this $700 Mac Mini. And this thing is, it kind of blows my mind that this $700 Mac Mini can kick my 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro's butt in just about everything. The one snag is that I've got two LG 4K UltraFine monitors on my desk, and I have one of those VESA mounts.

And they're both on my desk, but i can only run one of them because they are usbc monitors so i have to order a special adapter because it is almost impossible to find an hdmi source to usbc display cable. Yeah, I feel like Apple didn't kind of nail the external monitor story with these new computers. Unless you want to buy the $6,000 one, I guess. Actually, it's probably $7,000 by the time you get it on your desk.

Yeah. What do you think about, because I know you've been using a single computer for a long time, when you add a second computer that does add a degree of complexity. How's that been for you? It does. I actually kind of like it. The Mac Mini, obviously, that stays on my desk.

And I like that being the hub for just about everything that I would do. But I also like the flexibility, not that I'm traveling places, but I've got the MacBook and even just taking that upstairs when I need to change the scenery. I've been doing that instead of the iPad lately. And the Mac is just home for me. I like my iPad. I take all my sketchnotes on the iPad. I edit audio on the iPad using Ferrite. The Apple Pencil is really great. That interface I like a lot. But for most of what I do, I just love my Mac. So I have not hit anything yet where, oh, this is on the other one and I can't do this here. But I could see that being a possibility. I'm still kind of in the process of getting the Mac Mini set up, but it's got all the TextExpander snippets, it's got all the

Keyboard Maestro macros. It's basically got everything that I would need from my MacBook. And at this point, I feel like I can do just about anything either place. Yeah, and I think the emergence of cloud storage makes this two-computer problem a lot less difficult. Yeah. I bought something, too. I'm actually wearing them right now.

I spent, as I joked on Mac Power, but it is true. I bought a headphones that cost more than my first car. Bought a pair of Apple's new AirPods Max, which are their over-ear headphones. And yeah, no, I just, I've never felt guiltier about buying myself something. And I've bought myself things that are more expensive than this. But for whatever reason, just, I really have trouble in my brain equating $500 with headphones, right? Yeah. But I really love them. And I've been really happy with them.

I got the cord, which is another $35, by the way, to plug in. I'm actually recording the show with them. And I've always been cheap on headphones, and the ones I used for podcasting before never quite fit all the way over my ear. So about this time, my ears would be sore, you know, as we podcast these, my ears fit like within the cups on these. So I'm very comfy right now, which is kind of great. Um, with me working in the kind of central location in the house, noise canceling and, and headphones are super important because, you know, the kids are talking or cooking or watching TV in the next room. And that's a huge distraction when you're trying to work.

So I am putting these on and hitting the noise canceling button is golden. And there's one advantage is these are so big on my head that they realize that I can't hear them. that they realize that I can't hear them. So when I put the AirPods in my ear, they would always be yelling at me, not realizing I had no idea they were even talking. That does happen. So it's been nice.

I paid too much for them, but it's a holiday, and I made it through the year, so I'm considering this my indulgence. But yeah, they're new and shiny, and they do kind of help me focus with the new location. Very cool. I think those are not a... I don't think you have to feel bad about the investment that you made in those. I think good noise-canceling headphones, which it sounds like those are,

they are worth the investment, especially if you work around other people, just for the fact that, like you said, there's a visual indication that I'm in the middle of something. So maybe don't try to get my attention right now. Even if they still try to do that, there's an additional layer of friction there. So the non-important stuff, the idea there is at least, you know, you're not going to get interrupted for that. I think it's, especially if you can use them for podcast monitoring, which it sounds like you can with the cable. I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me. I went through several versions of noise canceling headphones. And the lesson I learned was don't buy the cheap ones because you're just going to end up

spending more money in the long run. You know, if those are the thing for you, then just bite the bullet, get them and be happy with them. Oh yeah. And they're not leaving the house. I mean, these are my desk headphones. I'm not going to be taking them on an airplane.

I've already, I tried like big plastic noise canceling headphones and airplanes, and I hated carrying them. They took up too much space in my bag. I'm not going to do that anymore. And I also, I do feel a little like self-conscious wearing something like this in public. They're just so over the top. But no, they're great for what I'm using them for.

And I'm really happy with them so so we both spent some money and had some fun last month it sounds like yes all right well uh the big reset gang it happened what are you doing about it maybe uh spending a little bit of time reflecting and planning you could do something better in the upcoming year. Give it a try. Let us know. Head over to the forums at talk.macpowerusers.com to the focused forum. I'd love to see how the listeners are dealing with New Year's. Maybe you've got an idea. Maybe you like the themes or maybe resolutions are what really scratch the itch for you. But I'm always interested to see how people deal with a transition period

in ways that are, you know, consciously trying to improve themselves. Yes, absolutely. Glean whatever you can from other people. Don't be afraid to throw out what doesn't work. Thank you to our sponsors, Timing, ExpressVPN, and Indeed. We're going to talk about journaling technology stacks in the Deep Focus today, but otherwise, we'll see you in two weeks. Happy New Year.