Focused - 183: Practicing Focus

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

David & Mike discuss how they inject focus into their workdays & Mike shares about his tiny house retreat experience.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz. I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. How about you? I'm doing well. I understand you had a victorious presentation at MaxDoc over the weekend. Yes, I did. I talked about one of my favorite topics, PKM. But the real highlight of the conference was not my presentation. It was my wife's. She presented this year on the case for

the lifelong learner, which was an idea that we had pitched to Mike Potter a couple of years ago before COVID and it got postponed. And then when the theme this year was learn, we sort of revisited it and Mike had the idea, hey, how about Rachel, you present on your own. And I kind of had to talk her into it. She was a little nervous about it, but she absolutely crushed it. Nice, nice. Well, congratulations, Rachel. And I've heard from several people that were at the event who said that they really enjoyed your talk. So that's awesome, Mike. I wanted today to talk about our roots. The show is called Focused for a Reason. And I've been thinking a lot lately about what does that mean? How do you incorporate it into your life? If you are serious about focus, what are some of the ways you can practice

it? What are some of the hacks you can use? So we've got a lot of material today to kind of go through that. And I'm looking forward to talking about it. So I guess we should just get started. I really believe in this principle of focus. I feel like that it's something that in the modern world, we are strongly encouraged to not develop the muscle. It's just everything is constantly given to us in smaller increments. And I'm conscious of the fact that I sound like the cranky old man telling kids to get off his lawn. And I don't want to be that guy. But even just over the weekend, I was talking to my kids, one of which is a high school teacher.

And I was making the comment, like when she was in high school, I always knew who the popular artists were because she was listening to them and I would want to hear the music she was listening to. I said, I think I've lost touch with, you know, what high school kids are listening to these days. And she said, well, she's like, like if you want to know it's just the music on tiktok you know you know there's little snippets of music on tiktok and that's what they like the most and you know as a teacher that's her observation maybe she's missing out on something but um tiktok videos are 10 to 15 seconds and it's just i just found it shocking to think about the fact that now kids attention span for music is even shortened. And I don't think this is something that just affects

teenagers. I think it affects all of us because the way the technology has evolved, everything is engineered to give us short spurts of information, very little, you know, long form stuff. So the focus podcast is here to work on that because I believe, and Mike believes too, that if you can get focused, you can make important decisions wisely and do the right thing. So, so we're working on it, but we talk about it on the show, but what are we actually doing? You know, what's the, um, you know, what are some of the daily steps we're taking to make sure that we can stay focused? And I thought Mike and I could share some of the things we're doing,

some of the challenges we're facing. And I would really like to see this one hit the forum too, where people can talk about some of their little routines and hacks they use to stay focused. So that's the primary goal today. We've got some other content too. Mike went to a tiny house. I can't wait to hear about that. But let's start with this idea of practicing focus. What do you think, Mike? as like long form versus short form. Do you think it's possible to practice short form focus or is that just not the right approach at all?

I think it is. I mean, I guess if we were going to use the muscle building analogy, short reps still benefit you, right? But I do think the harder problems in life take more than 15 seconds. And even if you focus really intently for 15 seconds, you're not going to get where you need to be.

So you've got to be a big girl or a big boy about making those decisions. But I do think a key issue is because the way technology and media have evolved, it really does encourage you to have very short sessions of attention. And that's not normal. And I think that we should actively be working on building the muscles to be able to focus on a topic for longer than 15 seconds. Yeah, that's the thing. I agree with that, too. I was thinking back when I was a kid kid one of the biggest complaints was i'm

bored right and i think with the constant 15 seconds everything changes like there's the dopamine activation with something new and a novel that we've talked about before and chris bailey kind of unpacked for us too when he was on the show and so we don't really have the opportunity to just not have that stuff thrown in our face all the time. And that is the thing that I think atrophies the focus muscle. You know, part of it is strangely, you know, there's good and bad reasons why. Like, I feel like one of the strange dichotomies here is we have access to so much information. As a kid.

You do have free time. And when I was a kid, if I got an interest, I didn't have the internet at my hands to tell me everything I needed about it. I had to like go explore it, find it, go to the library, do whatever.

You know, I remember I mean, I was such a nerdy kid, Mike, I can't even tell you. I, in a sandbox, I tried to build a, of Rommel versus Patton in the sand. So I went and got books on it.

Now you could build a 3D model. And I'm not saying that it's worse now, but it is immediately accessible. And there's no hunt left in it. But I really think that this whole thing, as I hear myself say these words, I'm like, you really do sound like the cranky old man. But I think this is something worth pursuing. I mean, if I didn't, I wouldn't be making the show. And I want to stop talking about kids for a minute because you see it. I think this is something worth pursuing. I mean, if I didn't, I wouldn't be making the show.

And I want to stop talking about kids for a minute because you see it in adults too, right? I mean, I just think the whole world is engineered. I mean, the example I always use because it's so easy and everybody sees it as the shopping store. Like if you ever go to get groceries and you just look at all the people in line in front of you, they always have their phones out. I mean, you're sitting there for two minutes and you cannot resist getting the dopamine machine out of your pocket for two minutes. Just be alone with your thoughts. I feel like it's okay. So how do we optimize for this? I thought I'd start by talking about routine a bit. And I feel like that is something that we can make a difference on right now. And that is like, what's your process?

How does focus weigh into your decisions about the way you wake up, you go to sleep, you move about your day? And I feel like this is where the stuff we talk about with day and week planning really kicks in. I understand the desire to want to have what I would call a free-range day, and I have them occasionally, you know, and that's where you don't have a plan. You wake up and you just say, well, let's just see what happens today, and let's go through life this way. And I actually really like the idea of that, of being able, you know, free to do things. In fact, that's why I think, you know, some of

us that are interested in focus intentionally plan those days where we don't have a plan. But in general, I think if you want to bring focus into your life, more often than not, you need to have a plan. And so I try to incorporate that into my life. I do every weekend make a plan for the week, every night before, or every morning I make a plan for the day with full knowledge that I may not live up to that, that something may happen. Yesterday is a great example. I had a big plan to do a bunch of work yesterday and something happened in the morning where I was, you know, kind of pulled away and the whole day went away. By the time I got back home, it was seven o'clock and I was exhausted and I did no work. So that happens right once in a while

and that's okay. But, but the fact is that you start with a plan means you have a much better chance of staying focused throughout the day. Agreed. And I'm with you on the planning the day. I need to get better at planning the week. And when you first introduced this topic to me, I was a little bit apprehensive about it because I recently gone independent. And so I feel like my plans are even more worthless than they were before because I am discovering daily the things that I need to do in the systems I need to create basically all of the things that are, are missing and unchecked, you know, that just creates this pressure and this burden of, oh, there's so much

that I have to do and have to fight back against that. But the plan is honestly the most effective tool for that. So it's sort of a dichotomy there or a paradox because you don't feel like you want to make the plan because of all the uncertainty, but the is the thing that helps with all the uncertainty okay so i want to go down a little rabbit hole on that for a second because you are in a period of transition and i think focus during transition is one of the hardest skills right because everything is different and changing and you're not really sure what's expected of you and where the problems lie because it's a new thing and we all go through this in our lives i it took me a year and a half to make my transition from being a lawyer plus max sparky to just max sparky which is kind of

shocking because i was already max sparkykey. I already knew what was involved, but just trying to say, well, now this is a full-time thing. What does that mean? Where does my focus go? It took me a year and a half to get there. And I think anybody going through transition needs to be extra permissive with themselves and forgiving because you're really in data collection mode right now. You don't know what the focus needs to be. You don't know where the dragons are. And until you figure all that out, it's going to be really hard to make consistent plans to deal with them. Yeah. You described my situation to a T. You're not alone. There's a lot of people out there doing the same thing. I just went through it. I just in the last like three months got to a point where i'm like

okay i don't think i'm in transition now i kind of have the lay of the land of what i need to be working on and suddenly things are a lot easier and um but i know and i think the other problem with the transition and focus is you put this pressure on yourself to say, well, I know this stuff. I should have it figured out. It should take a week. It shouldn't take a month. It shouldn't take a year, but it might. And if you do it intentionally and are serious about it, it's going to take a long, long time to kind of really dial all this down. And you just have to give yourself some grace. Yep. And the difficult thing for me, and you just have to give yourself some grace yep and the the difficult thing for me and you kind of described this but just uh for full transparency i guess here i'm going independent

but i don't know what the one thing is i have an idea at this point uh through a lot of conversations a lot of trial and error right uh that the the thing that Mike Schmitz is going to be known for, at least for the near future, the thing I want to actively build is Obsidian University. But I've been dabbling with a bunch of other things. I've got the podcast that I do this one, Bookworm with Joe Bielig. There are other things that I do. And ultimately, with a family at home, I have to do other things while I build that in order to pay the bills.

And so kind of where I've landed on this as it pertains to routines is identifying that, OK, Obsidian University is the thing that I want to be building. So every day, how am I moving the needle in that specific area? That becomes the top priority. It's not the only thing that I'm going to do. And it may not be the thing that gets the most time and attention throughout the day. But the goal is now, what did I do today to move Obsidian University forward? then that progress helps a lot with that anxiety and that dull roar in the background of this thing needs some attention. Just the act of writing down my most important thing today. That sounds like a pretty basic time management strategy. Just identify the one thing that if you did this today it's actually a win.

The highlight I guess. But for whatever reason, it really does work. You know, it's funny, just on that point, I have gone a little away from that. For the last couple of months, I've been doing a little bit more analog journaling, like a hybrid system we've talked about in the show. But rather than write down the one thing for the day, I just asterisk it on a written list. Like I pick one thing on the list. I don't make it as much of a big deal as I have for years. And I'm not sure if that's going to stick or not, but I just, I've kind of turned down the volume on that one thing a little bit, but I'm getting in the weeds. I don't want to do that just yet. Cause I want to talk a little bit more about routines. I think one of the things with the

routines and focus is to try and figure out your best focus time. Like I talked about yesterday where we had a family thing and suddenly my day got, you know, shot all to hell at the, uh, uh, But the 7 p.m., I'm finally free to do work. And I realize I don't have what it takes to do work right now. It's just, you know, it's just my own knowledge of my body. You know, maybe if I was in my 20s, I could spend all day on a family thing and actually focus on working in the evening. But I just didn't feel it, didn't have the energy. I knew whatever I made was going to be terrible. So I just, you know, went out and sharpened blades in the shop and just kind of gave myself some, some freedom to be down. And I think understanding

when you're good at this stuff is important. You know, our, our buddy, Mike Vardy like turns on at 10 PM and goes until 3 AM. You know, me, it's more about kind of a 7 a.m. to noon kind of thing where I'm at my best. But I think figuring out when you can bring most focus to the game really should inform your routines if you want to get better at this stuff. One of the things that I've been struggling with this is that when I get up, but basically the moment that I get up, because in the back of my mind, there are all these things that need to be built is the moment that my feet hit the floor. I feel like I should be going and forcing myself not to just jump into the work and follow the morning routine. I know that the morning routine is the most important investment I'll make in my personal well-being all day. And I'd say probably 95% of the time, I've still been able to be consistent with that. But it's been surprising to me how

every single morning, my first thought when I get up is to go start the project that I know I need to work on. Mike, I've been doing this a long time, and I still get that itch sometimes, especially if you feel like you're getting behind on something, right? I think that's when it's the worst. You're like, ah, yesterday I didn't get as much done as I want. Today I'm going to eat the frog. I'm going to wake up and just go straight into that thing. And I'm going to skip the usual planning and morning routine. And I will tell you that every time I do that, it doesn't work for me. And ultimately, I guess I should not say that. I think it can work. Maybe you could go and spend eight hours working on the big thing

and ignore the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is still happening. And if you don't have a plan to deal with it, the benefit of those eight hours is kind of going to get lost because over the next two or three days, everything's going to be in chaos. So it really is worth it to spend, you know, 20 minutes kind of getting things handled, dealing with the worst crisis or whatever before digging in. And I do think that when you do it that way, that which is the right way, I'm just going to call it that, um, you're, when you do focus on the thing, when you go over to a city and university or for me, a field guide or whatever it

is that you're you're doing for work you have more of a free mind and conscious to focus on it because if you leave all that stuff out there and don't even address it there's like this low level buzz going through your head the whole time that makes it really hard to actually focus on what you're supposed to be doing yep but it it is a thing you just have to do it i mean in like you have to know better like okay there goes my monkey brain again uh telling me lies you know i'm going to just do do it i have a system i'm going to follow the system and when you don't it's okay but get back on the get back on that train and keep doing it. The idea of free range days though, I think are okay, but I think you plan for them.

Like a lot of times I like to have one of those on the weekend, especially if my kids are home, I don't make a lot of plans. I would like to be here and available for them to, to do stuff with them or, you know, maybe give myself some downtime, pull, you know, work in the garden or whatever. And so there's nothing wrong with that but i think when you plan on getting things done planning really is a huge part of practicing focus and you plan around your own body you know what works for you and what

doesn't and i think that can make a big difference in sticking with focus agreed when you say free range days i had a little bit different interpretation of this, but something that I noticed that works for me is kind of in the practice of sort of related to time blocking where traditionally I'll have the most important tasks. I'll select three to five of them. I'll put those on the calendar around the meetings and events that are happening. And really, it's just carving out the time for that thing to get done. And I haven't done this as much recently because it's been clear to me what the next most important project is. But I have occasionally just put different modes in my time blocks without the

specific, this is the task or project that I'm going to be working on here. I did this when I was kind of building out the idea for Obsidian University, and this allowed me, for whatever reason, when I didn't have a specific task that I was working on or something that specific that I was building, just having, you know, Obsidian University as the time block, that's the time where I started to play around with things. And I could think more creatively about what are the possibilities and the opportunities, like what could this actually be? And I think you could apply this not just to something creative but something administrative you know if you know you have to build a whole bunch of processes or systems or SOPs right

documentation for how things are going to be working you could just schedule a block of this is my SOP time or this is kind of what you do with like the email and the community the the comms time too it's like there's nothing specific as an anchor of what i'm going to be doing here but it's sort of the mode that i'm going to be in and carving out time to do that and then when you go into that that time block or that that period of time you go into it with without an expectation of producing something by the end. For me, that helps a lot with alleviating the burden of, well, I've got to have some sort of output associated with this. It more so just makes it like an act of play almost. It sounds weird to define different aspects of work as play,

but it kind of is. I can go into it with a curious mindset as opposed to, okay, it's time to get this thing done. I actually distinguish that all the time that like when I make blocks, some of them are very specific. You know, I have a block later today to do all the ad reads for the shows that I make. That's going to take an hour. Or I've got a three hour block to work on on field guides and that's very specific but I often also just have what I'll just call a max sparky work block and then I just head up my task list and whatever is you know present there gets handled and I don't micro schedule everything

and I think a lot of people who hear about planning and scheduling and, you know, block scheduling are turned off because they think that like you, you, you schedule your bathroom break and you schedule when you're going to answer that email to John and all that. And that's, that's insane, right? You spend more time scheduling than actually doing the work. But, um, I do have these kind of large blocks often where I just handle the stuff and I treat that as a box. You know, I'm going to do two hours worth of that and whatever's done in two hours gets done. And whatever doesn't get done in two hours goes to another day. And that's fine. But what I was talking about is particularly when dealing with family and, and, uh, friends, but you know, when my kids are home on the weekend, they sleep in, you know,

they're kids. Right. And so I get up and work in the morning, but once they wake up, if they want to go to the beach or if they want, if they want me to do something with them, I'm going to go do it. You know? I mean, they're growing, they're, they're basically adults with the fact they want to spend any time with me. I'm going to look at it as a gift, right? So I'm not going to get hung up on saying, well, I can't cause I have a two hour block to do this. You know, I just, I let those days kind of evolve and work around them because, you know, soon enough, they're not going to be coming back here.

They're going to have their own houses and I'm not going to be able to do this stuff. Yeah, I get, I get that uh i i guess i'm advocating for a different sort of in between those two yeah where it's not i've got a list and i'll crank through as many of these as possible and it's totally open-ended and maybe i'll work maybe i won't but i think that the sweet spot for me and the thing i want to do more of as it pertains to routines is schedule the mode but go into it with no intention. That maybe sounds bad but the thing I have in my mind is like the sabbaticals that Sean McCabe talked to us about. Like whatever I feel like working on in this particular block it will still be work. It'll be related to this overarching mode or or theme like

you mentioned max sparky it's a perfect example but obsidian university would work for me but going into it without even looking at the list just okay what about this is interesting to me right now that's the kind of stuff that i really enjoy doing and i realize that if i don't protect time for that i I'll just continue to grab tasks from the list. And that feels very, very different. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Vitally. Customer success teams today are facing a problem. How do they connect customer data back to their work? And Vitally changes that. It's a new kind of customer success platform, giving you an all-in-one collaborative workspace

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Okay. I think another big piece of practicing focus is the tools you work with and this topic in particular is one that i i talk to a lot of people about because as max barky i am always testing out tools sharing thoughts you know we do this on mac power users all the time but it can it does have a dark side you know obsessing on the apps and tools is another way to avoid focus so the question is how do you walk that line without turning the the process of finding the perfect app into just another crutch to actually not do the work and i've got some basic rules you know i i just went through this with paper because you know we we've been going back and forth and i i went all digital and i do i've now kind of come back a little bit i'm doing a bit of hybrid and it was very easy that's the

kind of thing that i could really get hung up on. You know, like, well, what notebook do I use? And where do, you know, what do I do? And, you know, do I go for a binder or a ring system? Do I go for this? Or, you know, and it's like, it'd be very easy for me to get lost in that. And this time I was conscious of it. I saw that those parts of my brain were starting to fire. So I said, okay, I'm going to give myself two choices. And pick two right now that you think would be good. And so I have a little traveler's notebook that I bought years ago. So I bought some refills for that. And I bought a pack of these tote books from Studio Neat.

And I said, one of those two is going to be the decision. And I tried each one for a couple of weeks and then I chose tote book. And now I've got more tote books in a drawer here. And when I use one a month and when I'm done, I open another one each month and everything that seems to be working just fine. And I really took some intentionality at that decision. I didn't buy every kind of notebook. I didn't get hung up on reading reviews of notebooks. I just found one that would work for me and I moved on. And I think that's something that to me is important when choosing tools is that you don't turn it into a race race that you know gets in the way of actually

doing work a hundred percent i was thinking about this over the last weekend because i was at the max dot conference and typically that scenario i walk away with a bunch of a bunch of recommendations for other apps that sound kind of cool. And it kind of struck me as I was on the way home yesterday that I didn't really have that. I have one screenshotting app that I'm going to look at. But for the most part, the things that people shared and other people talked about, I recognize reaction was uh different than it would have been in the the past because uh for a long time i wrote about the and recorded videos for sweet setup screencasts online on whatever the hot new thing is right so i always had my antenna up

oh this looks interesting this looks interesting yeah that task manager over there has what features right and i kind of realized that at this point i'm perfectly fine with the tools that i have and i was thinking about why that is i think part of it is that i'm in a different spot i have a different mindset as it pertains to productivity now where i realize that the limitation is not going to be the computer it's not going to be the tool that I'm using. It's going to be me. It's going to be my brain and my ability to focus on what I'm trying to do that is really going to exponentially increase or decrease what I am able to get done.

But the other thing I think is just where we're at with the maturity of platforms like ios like i remember every single task manager that came out i would download and i would look at it because there weren't there wasn't a parody of features and they're not all exactly the same but for the large part you know there are apps the omni focus was the only one for a long time that had the start dates. That was the killer feature. And they were the only ones who had the ability to send the link from an email message to the task manager so you could reply to it later. But that is available in a lot of other applications now.

So I think that's part of the reason why I don't feel like whenever I hear about something new, oh, I better go check that out. Because honestly, the quality of the tools that I have and that I'm already invested and committed to is pretty good, even if that new app really is the incredible new app. It's not going to go so far above and beyond what I currently have that I'm recognizing it's not worth dropping everything just to figure out what might be possible over here. Yeah. And I do think that there's also a certain level of maturity that comes from that. I mean, I just wrote an email to a listener recently and he was bemoaning that he has all these great apps and he's still can't get his work done. And, you know, what I tried to tell him nicely in the reply was, yeah, that's because you have to do the work. There's no app that will do the work for you.

And people can have super powerful software and they can feel dissatisfied that whatever it is they want to focus on isn't getting focused on. And the answer is that the software isn't going to do it for you. And, you know, OmniFocus is a good example. OmniFocus is a very powerful tool, but it doesn't actually do the work. You have to do the work. And, you know, there could be a person using OmniFocus, which is probably the most powerful task manager I've worked with. And there could be another person sitting next to him that uses the old Merlin man, you know, pile of index cards with a binder clip. And, you know, the one using OmniFocus isn't necessarily going to be the most focused and productive. So it really comes down to what you do with them. And I think when choosing tools,

I think as geeks and nerds, we tend to lean into what's most powerful, but I think you should solve for which one gets you to do the work. Like, is there one that maybe an easier one would be the one that gets you to actually do the work. And so when choosing the tools, don't necessarily just look for the most powerful. If you want to practice focus, choose the one that makes it easiest for you to sit down and do your work. That was a theme at Mac Stock, honestly,

was people sharing all these different tools and the different things that they could do. And ultimately, the closing statement from a lot of the speakers was, choose the one that makes you happy. Or framed your way, choose the one that enables you to actually follow through and do the work because the app is not going to do the work for you.

The other thing I would add to that is, and you have this in the outline, we want this to be as simple as possible, but we don't want it to be any simpler. So don't bemoan the fact that you have to use these different apps, but also don't look to just add something new because it can do something else. The big question to ask is, how does this app, how does it enable me to be more productive and creative how does it benefit my workflows not how can i adjust my workflows to accommodate this feature that everybody is is talking about in my presentation i talked about this Clayton Christensen story where they were working with a fast food chain to increase the number of milkshakes that they were selling.

And I think actually our friend Ernie shared this video with us. And they were trying to answer the question, you know, how do we make better milkshakes? And they realized after interviewing a whole bunch of people that the real question they were asking is, what job did you hire that milkshake to do? It wasn't really that people wanted a milkshake. They wanted to not be hungry at 10 a.m. and they had a long, boring drive to work alone. So they wanted something they could drink slowly and would leave them feeling full by the time they got to work and i reframed that in my talk about what job am i hiring this app to do yeah and if you've got a clear job for that application and you see how it fits inside of your workflows go ahead and add it but if you don't then say no yeah and i wanted to modify that that saying i think einstein was the source of something like

that when he's talking about complexity like as complex as it needs to be but no more and then um for years i've been kind of equating that to choosing apps like task managers but i feel like there's another angle to this and say figure out how complex you need it and get something slightly less complex. Like don't go up to the level that you think you need. Particularly if you're using the complex tools and you feel like you're not getting your work done, try something slightly less, you know, see, see how that works. It doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be a lifetime commitment, but just try to use something slightly less complex and see if that helps you get the

work done. And understand that the first few weeks, it will always help because that context changes always affects you and gets you to do more. But I feel like over a period of a few months, using a slightly less complex tool, does that improve? I mean, pay attention to the work you're shipping and the focus you're bringing to the table and solve for that. Don't look at the app feature list. Look at the effect on the bag of tubes that is you. Exactly. the focus on the functionality to the friction that is potentially decreasing or stopping your creative or productive output altogether. And you have to recognize that whenever you add complexity,

you are increasing friction. And that's why making it simpler oftentimes is enough to get the wheels turning again. Yeah. An example of this in my life is I have a team, but it's very small and it's primarily two people, me and JF, but there are some other people helping too. But we wanted a collaboration tool to manage projects. And right now the hotness is Notion. Everybody will tell you, you got a team, you need to build your own custom Notion and make it really cool and have all the tools in it. And there's a lot to like about Notion. And I get it, but I didn't want to deal with it. I just wanted to get work done. And so we took a look at craft, which is work done. And so we took a look at craft, which is less than Notion, but it's native and it's easy and it had the collaboration stuff we needed. And we just started using it and we haven't like

spent time looking at Notion and how it could be better because we're good enough with craft. And that's an example of me of intentionally choosing something slightly less, but enough. And it gets out of the way and we get the work done. I mean, what's most important is that we're shipping stuff, not that we have the world's greatest checklist and notion. Yeah. I think the biggest example I can think of in terms of simplifying for me has to do with my personal task management stuff. It's kind of interesting because you're obviously still very heavily invested in OmniFocus. So that is probably the most complex task manager out there.

But when it comes to the team based stuff, you pick the simplest solution. And I see why, you know, when you're working with a team, you want minimal friction. But for me, I'm using Notion with my assistant and other people that help me out with things. But my personal task list is essentially just the time block plan at the beginning of the day. I've got some tasks and projects sprinkled here and there, but I really don't have a database of 10,000 things that I want to do. And I'm just kind of, we talked about this earlier, I'm focusing on the next step in front of me. That part is always clear. When it's not clear, that's when I know that I maybe need a little bit more complexity and I can add the different things in the metadata to help the computers show me this is the thing that you should be thinking about now. But essentially, like I could get by with an analog list and just writing out the three

to five tasks that I have to do today. That essentially is my task management system. I've got some lists of projects and things and some checklists for when I publish podcast episodes and stuff like that. But I don't have this big database of tasks. And we've talked about that before on the show, but and how that has kind of made me feel a little bit nervous, but I've kind of just embraced it and realized that this is the way I like to work. Yeah, I agree. And I don't think everybody in the world needs to use OmniFocus. I mean, one of the things I've done with this craft system is the project-related tasks just get generated as part of the craft note. And I've got one craft page that links me to every active

working project. And I manage tasks for those through there. I don't do those through OmniFocus anymore. And which is silly, you know, a lot of people tell you don't have your tasks in two places, but for what we're doing, it works, you know, and this is very simple. But, you know, getting back to the idea of practicing focus, I think part of it is choosing tools that can let you stay focused, you know, that gets you in that zone and don't get in the way. And I think all of your apps, you should be looking at that apps and analog tools and just all the infrastructure around doing your work. Um, like woodworkers talk about this all the time. Um, uh, Chris Schwartz said you should, you should treat

hand planes like cats. If you get too many of them, you're weird. And I think there's truth to some of this stuff. As you get into any discipline, is it about managing and figuring out the tools or is it about doing the work? And if you look at yourself honestly and realize that you've strayed too far towards the Look at yourself honestly and realize that you've strayed too far towards the fancy tool department. Then step back, simplify, and see if that helps or makes a difference in getting the work done. I mean, if you need a powerful tool to do the work, use the powerful tool. But if the work isn't getting done, the answer may not be give me a more powerful tool. The answer may very well be give me a more powerful tool. The answer may very well be give me a less powerful tool.

And the other thing I'll add to that is when you have an app, let's just use Obsidian because that's the one that I love. You can make Obsidian be anything that you want, right? Adding everything into Obsidian or, I don't know, maybe you could do this with Craft, maybe you could do this with Notion. I've seen people who have their habit tracker in Notion, their content calendar is in Notion, and they just keep adding different aspects of their life into Notion, right? So insert your favorite do-everything app. Don't make it do everything. do everything app don't make it do everything yeah uh it feels like that simplification because oh i don't have to go to a different app to get this but there's a fine line there between whether

that is really the right approach and whether that's actually just creating this ambiguity and additional complexity because this thing that used to be known for this this is what i did here now when you go in there your brain doesn't doesn't know it's what what are we actually doing here and that is another thing that it's got to figure out which doesn't seem like a big deal but i don't know over time it adds up yeah and so i it reminds me of like the you talk about the hand planes, right? You've, you have,

you don't want too many hand, hand planes because you don't want to be the crazy guy, but you also don't want to try to do all of your woodworking with a Swiss army knife. Yes, exactly. The one tool that does it all is not the best tool for any individual job, most likely.

Yeah. I mean, I think, um, let's talk about obsidian for a minute because I think that is just a perfect example of it. It is a tool that can get turned into anything and especially with the plugins.

And there's a lot of people running tasks out of it. I don't know. Are you running tasks out of obsidian at this point? I'm dabbling. Okay. So there's always some level of that, but people use it for everything. And I do think that while it can do

some fairly complex things that other apps do, it becomes fiddly at a point. 100%. And it also, I think, starts to corrupt what it's best at because it becomes noisy. So there's an arc there. In fact, I'm making the obsidian field gallery and I recorded a video called kind of like the obsidian progression where you start, you're not

sure. Then like at some point you're like, this is amazing. I'm going to only use this app for everything. And then most people dial it back and they find where it's useful for them. And I think that's true for a lot of tools, but if you're going to stay focused, don't get yourself down those rabbit holes too far, like where you've created some very complex machine to get your work done because it's very tricky and you can show your friends what a nerd you are. Don't do that.

Just get what you need and keep moving, you know, keep the work flowing. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by NetSuite, the leading integrated cloud business software suite. Get a special one of a kind financing offer with no interest, no payments for six months. Just go to netsuite.com focused. Being a business owner or working closely with business owners means knowing your numbers. If your business earns millions or maybe tens of millions in revenue, stop what you're doing and take a listen because NetSuite by Oracle has just rolled out the best offer. NetSuite gives you the visibility and control you need to make better decisions faster. And for the first time in NetSuite's 22 years as the number one cloud financial system,

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More than 36,000 companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, and they've gained visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, e-commerce, and more. If you've been sizing NetSuite up to make the switch, then you know this deal is unprecedented. No interest, no payments. Take advantage of this special financing offer at netsuite.com slash focused. That's netsuite.com slash focus to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E dot com slash focused. And our thanks to NetSuite for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So we talked about apps and routines. I'd like to talk about crutches a bit. Like, this stuff is hard. What are some of the things we do to try and keep ourselves focused,

knowing that we're in this game and that we're trying to make this work? What are some ways that we do that? We already talked about planning, but we've done plenty of content in the show and past and time tracking. But I think time tracking can be a really useful tool in two ways. First, if you are throwing the time tracking switches, it depends on what app you use, but even the apps that automatically track, there is some intentionality in setting that up. And secondly, when you see the data, like I look on Sundaysays i look at my time tracking data and it really gives me an idea of how focused i actually was during the week you know did i put time into the things that are important to me and i think time tracking is really a pain in the neck

a lot of people write us and tell us i don't want to do that. I mean, it sounds like, you know, the idea of tracking your time can sound very tedious, but the process of doing it and the data you collect can really help you on your focus journey. It's a great crutch for me. The payoff is definitely worth the investment there. And really, that's the thing that shows you what is actually happening. If you're going to try to practice focus, you need to start where you are. I had this conversation multiple times over the last weekend because there's a lot of the intent. The default for someone who hasn't done this i think is well i don't really want to know yeah and i understand that but if you don't know then you can't make improvements

and with rachel's talk specifically because she was talking about being intentional with our technology she's talking about screen time and being aware and moving the needle in the right direction. And the thing that people get hung up on is the numbers, right? You look at screen time and you see, oh my gosh, I was looking at my devices for 13 hours today. And I want to just say when it comes to any sort of tracking, but time tracking specifically, don't get caught up in how much time you're actually spending on the things that you really want to be spending it on. Because initially when you look at those numbers,

they are going to shock you. And you're going to feel very bad about the unintentional habits maybe that you have created. But that's actually a good thing that you're aware of that and disconnect from the numbers and focus on the trends. So if you spent 13 hours staring at a screen or I don't know, insert whatever metric you want. Maybe you're on social media three hours a

day, right? And you cut it back by 30 minutes and next week you're averaging two and a half hours per day. That's a win. And that's the right approach when it comes to time tracking. I use this too. It's really important. I actually built a whole time tracking dashboard using Timery's widgets on my iPhone. So I can see it and I frequently see it when I open up my, take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it. I'll see all that data. It'll all be broken down by the different categories and things.

This is one thing that just absolutely has clicked with me. And for some weird reason, I actually enjoy tracking my time. I don't like the numbers that I see sometimes, but I like knowing that I have a glimpse as to how I am actually spending it, because that's the resource that I'll never get back. So as long as I'm doing my best with it, I'm not so focused on the output. I want to make sure that I'm moving in the right direction and that I'm making progress.

So it's never going to be perfect, but as long as I can do a little bit better, then I feel good about that. I feel like there's a lot of truth to that. You know, it's just, it's, it's something that I guess what I just want to emphasize is if you're hesitant to do it because it sounds like such a pain in the neck, understand that the benefits are there. You don't have to do it forever as well. I feel like there's nothing wrong with, you know, running time tracking, you know, for a week, each quarter, that's still way better information than not running it at all. And it does give you a starting point, but, but it is something that else. And eventually,

as you start to get better at the focus stuff, it really does give you a metric to, It really does give you a metric your your feelings and what what emotions are going on based on what has happened in your life that's totally valid form of journaling the one that i really have gravitated to is this kind of quantified self journaling and this is all based on the the daily questions and giving myself a one to ten score different areas based on did I do my best to, and the things I have there are like grow spiritually, love my wife, love my kids, things that I want to make sure that I'm paying attention to. And I track all those numbers in Obsidian, of course.

But that is part of the personal retreat process for me. That is very valuable information to have when I sit down and I think about, okay, how did I actually do over the last 90 days? I can look at those numbers, at least my intentions, right? And where they're low, I can figure out why are they low? What happened during those days or those periods that completely zapped me of the energy and motivation that I had to do what I had identified previously as important. And then I can figure out what adjustments that I want to make from there. So the journaling, but specifically the daily questions journaling is another huge crutch for me and very supportive of my focus practice. Yeah. I mean, there's kind of two levels to that. There is the idea of checking in with yourself in the morning or in the evening and figuring out how focused you feel. And journaling specifically on that topic, I think, really helps you be more aware of it throughout the day. you write down, you block your time in your journal. And a lot of people do that. I mean, Cal Newport will sell you a journal that has the hours down the center of the page. So you can see what you plan versus what you did, or you could make that yourself. It's not that difficult. You could even just write down in the morning. These are the things I want to do during the

various times of the day, but I feel like that's another really great tool. And I call it a crutch because this stuff is hard and it's easy to fall off the wagon and this helps you stay on. Meditation practice helps me. We've talked about that enough on this show. I don't really want to go down the rabbit hole of meditation, but I find that, you know, the whole idea of meditation is focusing on the breath when you get started, and I think that is an excellent focus practice. I think when I first started meditating was when I learned how hard focus is, because it is an idea of quieting your mind, or observing your mind, I guess would be a better way to put it. But it is difficult. Serving your mind, I guess, would be a better way to put it. But it is difficult.

It is so easy to see how frazzled and wild your brain is when you sit down on a cushion. I mean, if you haven't ever tried it, try to sit down for 10 minutes and just focus on counting to 10 and see how long you last. Because it won't be long and you won't be alone. I feel like that has been something that people ask me cause I've been meditating for 30 plus years at this point or is it 40 now I think about it. But either way, the I've been doing it a long time and people ask, well, what's the big benefit?

Have you found Nirvana or, you know, are you some enlightened being? I'm like, no, of course not. But I get a little bit of space between when something happens and how I react to it. You know, I'm a little bit more aware of what that wild horse between my ears is trying to do to me.

And that's good enough. I'll take it. Yeah, this is still not something that has really stuck for me. I have an on and off, on again, off again, relationship with it. But I continue to keep, keep attempting it because I definitely see the value in it. Well,

you don't get the benefit the first time you do it. And that's, that's something. And, but it does help over time. At least it does for me. And if you try it and it doesn't work for you, that's okay.

You don't have to do that. I mean, I'm for you, that's okay. You don't have to do that. I'm just talking about my crutches. It doesn't have to be yours. Sure. Well, another crutch for me, and maybe crutch is the, not the wrong word, but maybe people have a negative negative view of that, that word. But essentially what we're meaning by this is something that helps you through walk the journey uh even when you got to just limp along uh so it's a good thing maybe another another version of this might be like focused training wheels um in terms of like riding a bike help you help you keep upright but one that definitely helps me is exercise specifically running but i try to go to the gym or go for a run six days a week because I realize that the days that I don't, I feel anxious. I feel tense. Everything just feels like it's a little bit more of a big deal. And running specifically, in addition to the physical exercise of it, which that alone

has a whole bunch of value and benefits. I think our friend Sean Blanc talked about how if you work with your mind, you should rest with your hands, something like that. The basic idea being like you've got physical energy and you've got mental energy and they're kind of different modes. And so getting out of one mode, especially for someone who thinks and creates for a living and going and doing something with your body or your hands, that actually fills the mental tank. But running specifically when I am out for a run, I'm not at my computer. I don't have the notifications. Nothing else is stealing my attention. That's when

I get my best ideas without fail. Every single time I go for a run, I am capturing some sort of idea, which is usually related to a problem that I've been working on or something I've been trying to solve or something I've been noodling on or something I've been thinking about in the work context for the last couple hours, days, weeks, whatever, when I go out for a run, that's when it all comes together and it gets unlocked. I'm not trying to continue to think about that thing. I'm focused on the run. to continue to think about that thing. I'm focused on the run. But usually after a couple of miles, that's when I get the breakthrough. So I'll capture that idea on my watch. So it really does help me practice focus at work. Because if I were to sit at my desk and try to figure that thing out, because if I were to sit at my desk and try to figure that thing out,

I could do that for hours and days and not make any progress. But then when I stopped trying to figure it out and I go do something physical, that's when the solution comes. I can't explain it, but it happens consistently. Yeah, I think running is one more way to deal with this. I mean, the idea of these things is that this is hard, that even though we make a podcast about it, we both struggle with it as well. And we all have to find our little bag of tricks

that helps us stay focused. And whatever it is, that's okay, right? And these are really good ones for us. But you may have something different for you. I had a friend who used to needlepoint. He was like a tough dude, right? He's all muscly and everything, but he liked to needlepoint. And I said, why do you do that?

He says, that's when I think. So maybe if he needed to focus, he'd needlepoint. So everybody's got their own tricks. And I think you should, that should be part of your strategy. If you're trying to be more focused, you should figure out what are the little hacks that help you. And that's what we really wanted to cover today. The last piece of this I wanted to talk about is what happens when you fail to focus. And I'll tell you that it happened to me in the last 48 hours where I had a half day that just kind of went out the window and it happens. It's okay. You know what happens when

you fail to focus? What I try to do is I laugh at myself about how bad I am at this sometimes. And I try to say, okay, well, let's start over. And that's all I do. It took me a long time to figure that out. For the longest time, I would beat myself up. Oh, gee, you're terrible at this. This is where the meditation really helped me because I started at a very young age. And the first several years of meditation, I spent most of my meditation yelling at myself for being a bad meditator. You know what I mean? It's like count to 10, but you get to seven and you start thinking about, I don't know, Star Wars or something at work or whatever. And then after you do that for five minutes and you finally catch yourself, you're like, wow, I'm terrible at this.

So guess what you do? You spend the next five minutes berating yourself for being terrible at it instead of getting back to the breath. So at some point, even someone as dense as me starts to figure out all the stuff you do to yourself is just getting in the way. When you fall off the wagon, try to intentionally laugh at yourself. That's what I do. That's like an intentional act for me. It's like, okay, silly, you did it again. That's all right. You make a podcast about this, but sometimes you still suck at it too. Let's, let's get started again. And I feel like that's the way you deal with it when you fall off the wagon, when you, when this gets hard for you, don't spend any more time than that on it. If you do, you're, you're counterproductive.

Oftentimes I fail at it. I wouldn't say sometimes yeah exactly the thing that i recognize um causes me the most trouble uh for is uh that i tend to get focused on the short term instead of the the long term and what i mean by that is i will get myself in trouble by consistently stealing from future me. I'll just squeeze in a couple more tasks. I'll just start this project now. And instead of quitting at the end of the day when I should, when my energy and resources are depleted, I try to get ahead. and resources are depleted, I try to get ahead. And that maybe succeeds in the short term, but it never is just a short term thing for me. It's always, well, it worked yesterday,

so I'll try it again. And then there's this compound effect that kicks in. And pretty soon, I'm working 60 hour weeks because my office is right in the same place that I live and there's it's so easy for me to just go down into the office and continue to work on something yeah and then I'll go in that mode for weeks at a time until I realize what in the world am I doing everything is harder than it has to be and usually it's like this crushing burden that I feel. It's like I used to be excited by this. I was wanting to work as soon as I got up. Now I wake up and I dread having to start my day. That is the trigger for me.

It's almost like a form of depression. It's not. It's very short-lived. And I know exactly what the source is every single time. But I know exactly that feeling, and I know exactly what causes it. And every single time I get to that point, my immediate thought is to your point, like, you dummy, what are you doing? You know better than this. And so it's, okay, let's's reset let's put the boundaries back in place and let's try again yeah but take out the you dummy part because you're just you know you're just a human that's what we do right our brains are are honed to look for saber-toothed tigers even though there are no

more saber-toothed tigers you are correct i. I use that term though, because I feel like that's the narrative that you will tell yourself. Because if you just go into this the normal human way, you think, well, if I get the right information, I get the right system. If I get the right strategy, that is the thing that is going to solve this for me. And it's not, it is not an information problem. It is a behavioral problem. And there are a whole bunch of other factors that go into this. And so the tendency is, well, I know better than this. Yeah, you know better than this, but that has no implication on whether you're actually in the place to follow through on the intention or not. We all know

what to do after a certain point and that's kind of like very very basic level there's a whole bunch of other things you have to pay attention to a whole bunch of other things that need to be managed in order for this to really click and for you to follow through on that which is why we will never run out of topics for a podcast called focused yeah and while you will never get perfect at it, you will always, you know, have instances where it's hard. You can get better at it. And we've shared a few tips today, and I'd love to hear in the forums what, you know, how do you practice it? Where do you fall down? How do you get back up? This episode of focused is brought to you by Indeed. When you're faced with aggressive hiring goals,

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say that you heard about it here. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Now Mike, speaking of Focus, you did something interesting since we last spoke. Tell us about your getaway house. Yeah, absolutely. So a getaway house is, uh, it's a tiny house that is set in nature and it's kind of positioned as a retreat for people in the city. That sounds interesting to me, but when I first heard about it, I figured there is no way anything like that is even remotely close to where I am in central Wisconsin. As it turns out,

these are all over the United States, but there happens to be one about 40 minutes from my house. happens to be one about 40 minutes from my house. It's interesting because on the website, it's listed as the Milwaukee one, but Milwaukee is quite a ways away and it's actually about two hours from Milwaukee. So it's closer to me than the city that they are anchoring it to. But I understand why they do that. They are very nicely built trailer tiny homes that they park on these campsites. Mine happened to be on a old Boy Scout camp. And as I was telling my brother about it, he knew exactly where it was. His wife's family has a cabin on the lake across the street. And I went for a day as part of my personal retreat process. And I got in the car, I drove to the site, you pull into the

driveway and straight ahead, there's like the big warehouse where they have all the supplies. Straight ahead, there's the big warehouse where they have all the supplies. But you take a right and there's this big loop. And you go past all of these individual campsites, which all have these interesting names. They're not just numbers on an address. You're staying at one called Chloe or Rebecca or Taylor or whatever. Like they all have individual names. So I find mine, I park and,

uh, it's this house on a trailer. There's a, a fire pit there. There's a picnic table outside. Um, but I really didn't know how it was going to, to work for my personal retreat process.

I just thought it looked really cool. So I needed to try it out. And I have to say, I am very impressed with these things. They are really well built. You walk into this tiny house and you've got this kitchen in front of you, which has like a couple of burners and a gooseneck kettle for tea or coffee a little mini fridge a sink they are very well well stocked with the essentials so you've got your coffee and your tea there you can also have this like food box delivered there so you can cook pasta and you know whatever you don't have to go anywhere the entire time that you're there it's kind of the whole idea is like you are in this this tiny house but you're in the middle of the

woods and you don't see anybody else there's a queen bed kind of up on a platform on one end of the trailer and behind that is this giant window though the length of the and the length and the width and the height of the cabin. So that is looking out into the woods and it really feels like you're in this, this tiny house, but you are essentially sleeping in the middle of the woods. They're air conditioned, they're heated. I mean, they have all of the amenities that you need, but often they have no cell phone service. They tell you that when you sign up. So they say download the map ahead of time and they even have this cell phone lockbox

that it's intended you put your phone in when you get there. And it was really cool. I've done personal retreats before by going up to my family's place in Door County and that's nice. It feels like you're getting away, but this is like a whole other level because there was no cell service for me. There is no internet. There's obviously

electricity and there's a full bathroom with a shower and hot water and everything. So it's not really like roughing it like you would traditionally think of camping. But it really does feel like you are completely disconnected from everything around you. I mean, there were probably 30 sites in this area where I was, but where my site was, you don't see or even hear anybody. And most of the sites when I went had somebody there. But I don't know, maybe it's just the type of people that it attracts, you know, by saying that this is a getaway for people in the city by the time they get out there,

like they're not there to have a party or anything like that. Like it was almost eerily quiet. And I definitely would recommend this as an experience for people, whether you're going to use it for a personal retreat or not. This is an awesome service. Yeah. I've always been interested in these tiny houses. It really pushes buttons for me. I love the idea of the simplicity of it. So much so that now YouTube knows that. So they're always throwing me videos of people living in tiny houses in the mountains somewhere. And this is an easy way to try it, right? You can rent it. They've got them in Los Angeles too, which is, you know, this company has got them all over the place. And I'm sure there are private owners doing it as well.

But I am sorely tempted to do this for my next retreat too. If you want for an extra $50, you can bring your dog. That's kind of fun. Yep. Yeah. In fact, the, uh, the picnic table that is outside on the campsite, they have like the dog leash that's kind of wrapped around there. So, uh, yeah, there are even bunk bed ones that instead of having a queen bed, they've got two bunk beds. So you can get a two bed tiny house, I guess. And I may try that because they do have those at the site that is near me. It's an experience. I mean, anybody who's gone camping probably knows what this feels like, but you have all of the amenities of really like a well-stocked hotel room. It is obviously a tiny house. If you're not comfortable with that idea, you know, I could see how it might feel a little bit claustrophobic. There's not a whole lot of

room in there, but I mean, as long as it's not raining outside, I guess, which it wasn't when I went, uh, you just walk outside. Yeah. There's a couple of those, I guess they're Adirondack chairs. Is that the, the really comfy chairs by the fire pit? They have a weatherproof, at least the one that I had, um, had a weatherproof Rubbermaid outside by the fire pit. So you can bring your own firewood if you want to. I did not, but they have prepackaged wood and fire starters that you can just take and use. And just like a hotel, you know, they've got everything stocked and they'll come in and clean it when you're done. And whatever you've used,

they'll add to your bill. I think the firewood and the fire starter was an extra 10 bucks. So it wasn't outrageous. Um, I mean, you could buy it cheaper, obviously somewhere else and bring it with you, but having it right there and having it all, it's all very, very simple, very easy. And, uh, yeah, I sat and watched that fire by myself for hours and it felt amazing. Yeah. They'll talk about moments of focus, right? Yep. Yep, exactly. You know, I went there for my personal retreat process, which I do every couple of months and I do my personal retreats in obsidian. Um, so I brought my MacBook pro and I did it in obsidian, but there was no cell service. There was no wifi. So there was no temptation to go check whatever. Cause I, I couldn't. I was literally

just in Obsidian the whole time. I wasn't working on anything else. I couldn't get access to anything else. It was just like offline making a plain text list of all of my thoughts. And it really is a great environment for that. Not even having the possibility of being interrupted, I don't know, I feel like I do a pretty good job of turning off my notifications and do not disturb, focus modes and all that kind of stuff. Most of the time when I go for a personal retreat up in Door County, I'm able to focus

for large amounts of time, but this is a whole nother level. It's not even an option i can see how it might actually make some people feel a little bit uncomfortable because you're there by yourself wrestling with with your thoughts i also think for you like because you historically do it in the family cabin but the family cabin is full of memories right i mean so it isn't really a context shift entirely because you go there and you think well this is where my son and i used to wrestle on the floor or whatever

you know when i was a kid this is where i used to go because it was your family like even from when your childhood right yeah uh well so this place that we have isn't i didn't grow up here but there are definitely memories that have been made here for whatever reason when i'm there on a personal retreat i'm able to focus on what i uh what i came there to do but also right there is like there's wi-fi there's the the tv in living room, there's the restaurants in town. Like I almost every time I'll go there, I'll bring a bunch of food. But at some point, I'll feel like I just got to go into town. I got to pick up a pizza or something. Right. So I'll do that. And that's not an option at this getaway house. I mean,

I don't know if they're all like this. Maybe they're not all out in the middle of nowhere, but the closest restaurant from where I was was a 30 minute drive. And at that point, I'm almost back home. So it's like, well, you're stuck here, buddy. You're just going to make the best of this situation. And that removal of the options, I mean, talk about focus, right? One of my big takeaways when we talked to Nathan Berry was he mentioned that focus is this good thing that we think about, but it's actually the elimination of options. It's this cutting, it's this removal and it hurts, right? So that is essentially what this did for me. It did feel very different being here. And I know that they are priced differently, different places. The one where I am is very affordable. I just checked it today

for doing another one. And depending on when you go, obviously there's like peak seasons and things like that. But I mean, it's less it's less than a hotel room, just about anywhere. I know that's not always the case. The one by you, David, and I know you looked at it and it was significantly more expensive, but I would at least encourage people to take a look at them. And they do offer these like packs as well. So you can buy like a six, a six day pack and it's a flat price. And then you can use those for any of the different getaway houses throughout the the country so i actually would like to visit some other ones and see how different they are location wise from the one that i visited

yeah i can tell you that like um in california it's about 2 2 30 for a weekday and about four 30 for a weekend. And I, which is a lot of money. Uh, yeah, but the, you know, this is a very population dense area and this is the only thing like this

around here. So, you know, they charge what they can get away with. Yep. The one in Wisconsin, currently they have a 25% off sale, uh,

for a, uh, for the summer, but it is one 17. Yeah. So, I mean, that's,

that's a pretty, that makes it a lot easier. Yep. Yeah. But these are, these are great. I would recommend if you have the, the option,

you should definitely check this out. And if you're looking for a place that you want to do a personal retreat, I think this is the perfect spot, honestly. I know, like I've mentioned, I've gone to the family cabin, but I've also entertained the idea of getting an Airbnb at different places. And I've looked at several of them, been close to booking them previously. I know you booked an Airbnb for one once. Yeah, I've done that a few times now, and they're fine. And they're a little bit more money than this, even for a simple cabin up in the same area. So these are affordable compared to what else is available if you want to go up in the mountains in Southern California.

Yeah, but even if you aren't in the mountains of Southern California, if you've considered an Airbnb for a personal retreat, that obviously can work, but I think these are better. This is the perfect complement to the whole reflection process. It's the perfect environment for it. You really can't beat it. So if you can find one that is affordable, I would definitely recommend it. All right. Well, we're going to wrap it up there. Like I said earlier, let us know how you're focusing, where your friction points are, and how you get past them in the forums. You can find those at talk.macpowerusers.com. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. Thank you to our sponsors,

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