Focused - 185: How to Be Miserable

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

David & Mike discuss the satirical self-help book How to Be Miserable by Randy J. Paterson and share the dysfunctional skills they are particularly good at.

Welcome to Focus, the 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? Doing pretty good. How about you? Are you miserable? I am not, but I think I'm going to learn how to be if I really wanted to be. Yeah, I do have a tendency to make myself miserable sometimes. And we both read a book that was really great.

And we're going to talk about that today. But before we get into the weeds, we've got a few things to share. First is the Obsidian Field Guide lives. Amen. So if you're interested in using Obsidian and you'd like some training, some learning up on that, I've got that for you. We'll put a link in the show notes. The Obsidian Field Guide is 78 videos, six hours long, and really teaches you how to use

Obsidian. So it's something I've been working on about eight months now. And I'd love for you to check it out if you're interested. I'm excited about this one, obviously, because I love Obsidian, but also because I know you've been talking to me about it for a very long time i know how much effort went into this one so i think this is going to be one of the best ones yet obsidian is hard to teach you know of all the things i've ever done a course on because this one is such an it's so open it's got kind of a steep learning curve and you can take it simply or complex. It really depends, you know, teaching someone how to use it really requires kind of threading the needle.

And so it took me a while to figure this one out. I know you too. I mean, you've got that great, you know, Obsidian university, which does cohort based learning on this stuff. And I think you're, you're, you're trying to tackle the same problem of a very powerful tool. That's not that easy to get your arms around. That is true. Yeah. The cohort is going to be coming up shortly.

I'll share more information when I have it. But yeah, the cool thing about Obsidian is everybody uses it slightly differently. And every time you see somebody use it, you get new ideas. And so I cannot wait to go through the field guide and see how Max Sparky uses Obsidian. Because I know you've walked me through different things here and there. But really, when you dive into the weeds, that's when you start to see how things can be made you know you can apply it to your your own system and uh that sort of thing you know just seeing how someone does simple little things or the types of settings that they they toggle that's enough to to trigger some inspiration and that's the really cool thing uh thing about it you can learn from just about anybody

it is a very interesting application and and it is just like you said it's there's so much to it it's so open and that's what really makes it fun so i'm curious david do you have anything that you'd be willing to tease as some crazy workflow that you have used obsidian for i know that on your other show, you try to avoid the topic, but this is a safe space here. So go ahead. You know, I really think of it as the home of SparkyOS, my operating system. And the thing I get most out of Obsidian, and I've used it for a lot of stuff over the years, there's an arc to Obsidian. In fact, I have a video about it in the course where you learn it and you're like, this is amazing. And you want to push everything you do into it. And then eventually you start to realize, well, maybe I went a little too far

and I don't want this to hold everything. But for me, the arc was, I really push it to the limits and I scaled back a bit. But the thing that really lands for me is Sparky OS. And what I mean by Sparky OS is I have documented my thoughts and feelings about all the things that are important to me and, you know, concepts of spirituality, ethics, operating systems, workflows, everything that I kind of believe in and writes my operating system, I have written it down or I've slowly been working on writing it down. And I found it to be such a great experience because I always knew kind of what I thought about this or that, but forcing

yourself to write it down, you know, sometimes I find links and research in relation to it, or sometimes I don't. And how this idea or principle ties to some other principle or thought that I believe in, you know. I mean, my goal is when they put me in the ground to be Aristotle's virtuous man. I want to be someone who did it right. And I find that codifying it, writing it down makes it more real for me. And it changes my attitude towards things where they're not loosely held beliefs, but they're true values. And so that's, for me, that is the gold that I get out of Obsidian is a platform that allows me to easily do that and tie this stuff together. Is that an answer that, uh, that I know is kind of a hippie answer, but that's really it for me. Oh, I love it. I love it. I can't wait to see this.

The thing I wrote about sitting in the marketing page was master the app that helps you master your thoughts. And I feel like I should sell that to them because it really defines the app. It's just a crazy it's just a crazy app, man. And it just keeps, they just did 1.4. They added, you know, properties. They got, they just keep making it better. You and I are both excited about it. It's kind of funny. I was thinking about it this morning because you're the one who's told me you've got to see this thing research. It's crazy. And you turned me onto it. Right. And then I remember having the same conversation with you or I'm like, you and then i remember having the same conversation with you

i'm like you got to see this thing obsidian and you and i are fellow travelers on this i think both of us totally appreciate and understand software tools that help you think and it's very fun to be helping spread the word yeah absolutely tools for thought is a really cool idea category whatever you want to call it it. It's something that really just pushes all of my buttons. So yeah, credit to Max Barkey for getting me into the Obsidianverse. Well, I don't think, I just gave you a nudge, buddy. You did all the work. That's true. That's true. There is a, the standard version, which gets you the 78 videos in six hours is $50. And there's a extended version for $100 that we're going to have a webinar series

and a bunch of guests. Mike Schmitz may even be there. I don't know. I have to get his confirmation. But we'll have different people come in that are using it in different ways and webinars. So that's $100. But they both have a 10% off coupon for a short time um

so just you know go check it out we'll put the link in the uh in the notes uh the 10 off coupon from the focus will be uh focused obsidian how's that for a unique discount code. Love it. Focused Obsidian, no space, and you get 10% off. That's only for a limited time. And go check it out, gang. The other thing that's happening is Relay is about to have its 10th anniversary. And we had a fifth anniversary party in San Francisco. It was a live show. It was a lot of fun.

Mike came and Rachel, and we got to spend a lot of time together that was really fun strangely that was the last live event that relay did believe it or not yeah five years ago and uh we've had a lot of water under the bridge and a few pandemics between then and now but we're ready to do another live event. This one is going to be in London. So that's kind of fun. And it's the 10th anniversary in London. It's on July 27th, 2024. There's a link in the show notes.

We'd love you to join us there. We're still working on getting Mike Schmitz there. I'm giving him a little nudge. Hopefully we'll see you there, Mike. I know you've got some planning. It worked last time. Yeah.

Well, I know there's some planning with five kids and things. It's not something that's an easy yes for you, but hopefully we get to see you there too. But either way, it's going to be a lot of fun. And if you would like to join us, just go get yourself a ticket while they last, and we'll see you there.

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So if you're a customer success decision maker actively seeking cs solutions working at a b2b software as a service company with 50 000 employees and you're willing to explore changing customer success platforms if you already have one in place schedule your call by visiting vitally.io focused and get a free pair of AirPods Pro. That's vitally.io slash focused for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting. And our thanks to Vitally for their support of the Focus Podcast and all of RelayFM. So Mike Schmitz, about two months ago, you told me about this book by Randy Patterson called How to Be Miserable. And you told me the basic premise behind it. And I was like, yes, I want to read

that book. At the time, we didn't know that we would make a show about it. It was just two friends talking about a good book. But I've really enjoyed reading this book so much so that I've been bugging you to do a show about it. And I know you have another podcast where you talk about books, but we're going to take a different angle to it. But tell us about How to Be Miserable, Mike. Yeah, so this is kind of a satirical productivity book, I guess. The full title is How to Be Miserable, 40 Strategies You Already Use by Randy J. Patterson. 40 Strategies You Already Use by Randy J. Patterson. And when I read the title and I started flipping through the sections, I realized right away that it could also be called How Not to Be Focused. And so this book is kind of fascinating in that if you're used to reading self-help or productivity type books like I am, where you have these authors who are telling you, don't even worry about trying to figure all this out. I have gone through all the stuff and I've condensed it down into a system and all you got to do is listen to me.

This is like the exact opposite of that, which is actually kind of a breath of fresh air. But every single one of these is written from the perspective of, you know, like lesson one, for example, is avoid all exercise, right? And it talks about how if you exercise, you feel better. So if you really want to be miserable, you should stop doing that. And it is an entertaining read for sure, but I thought it would make a cool discussion as we talk about what are the strategies that we have inadvertently been using to break our focus and make ourselves more miserable. Yeah, the author, Randy Patterson, is a mental health professional. more miserable. Yeah. The author, Randy Patterson, is a mental health professional. And some of the things he talked about in the introductory sections really landed with me. And one of them is a story he tells it in the first part of it called Adopting a Miserable Lifestyle. And he was

talking about talking to his patients. And he would often ask a question at the end of their interviews. He'd say, look, let's take 12 random people, and I'm paraphrasing here. He said, let's take 12 random people on the street. Tell them how you're living your life, your exercise, your diet, the type of work you're doing, your relationship with the work, and the people that you choose to spend your time with, and let's see if you think they would be happy or miserable. And his patients inevitably say, say no they'd be miserable and then trying to like open the the door to the thought

that maybe um if we're not happy in life it's because of the actions we're taking and and how we're almost solving for miserable instead of solving for happiness. And I thought that was such an excellent kind of counterpoint to look at this stuff. Like instead of just saying this is what you need to do, say, no, this is what you're doing that is creating your condition. And I thought, well, at least I'm happy and I don't have these problems. And then I started reading through the book. I'm like, wow, that one's close. And I went through and I started't have these problems. And then I started reading through the book. I'm like, wow, that one's close. And I went through and I started marking them up. And by the time I got to the book,

I had seven or eight that I was like, okay, I'm going to really make sure that I start taking action to not let these things drag me down. There were several in here that I am currently actively doing to make myself miserable. The book includes 40 total miserable strategies, I guess, for lack of a better term. And so then me and Mike started talking about, we're like, well, let's do a show and we're both going to pick the five we're best at.

And that's in quotes, you know? And I thought, you know, we could share it with the audience, talk about what we're doing about it and maybe inspire you to you to take steps along with us and also read the book. Because there's 30 more. We're only covering 10 in the episode today.

But we found the ones that we are at the top of the class on. So we're going to do that today. Yeah, the ones that really resonate, right? Yeah. But it's a good book. And it's a fun read too which isn't always true with this stuff but i i think the whole the way he turns it on his head allows you to bring kind of a lightheartedness to the topic that too many productivity

books don't give you and uh and i think that really makes it easier for you to say oh yeah boy i suck at this too i'm gonna try and make some changes. And overall, I just really wanted to share this with the audience because I think you picked a good one, Mike. The description on the back of the book is pretty great. It's the ultimate don't do it guide. And then below that says, are you tired of overly earnest self help books promising love, happiness, and a fabulous life? Would you rather hone the habits that keep you feeling stuck and unhappy? If so so how to be miserable will help you pinpoint the tried and true behaviors that increase feelings of dissatisfaction zap your energy and ultimately sabotage your life it's uh it's good and then the the bottom of the blurb says you know but if by

some strange strange desire you decide you want to be happy instead this witty irreverent guide will show you what not to do. And that really is at the heart of the thing that kind of inspired me to want to talk about this is it occurred to me that a lot of the books that we read and probably a lot of the podcasts that we listen to and a lot of the places that we go for self-help advice, typically they are telling us this is what you should do they are very prescriptive on you need to do this thing but there's also the possibility that the things that you are doing are causing you to be unhappy and you could simply stop doing some of those things right so there's the the commission where it's intentional act that we're going to do something but then there's omission where it just happens by default and i thought that's a fascinating concept as it pertains to not only happiness but focus there are things that we do that sabotage our focus there are also things that we just don't do that are causing us to not be able to focus and likewise not be be happy i really do think there's a pretty

firm connection here between the focused life and the happy life. I've been reading some other books on what is a good life, what is a life worth living, that sort of thing. And at the core of it, essentially, you want to be happy, right? Well, what are the things that ultimately make you happy? Is it that you live a long time? Is it that you are well off and you can do whatever you want? I think more closely related to happiness is our ability to focus on the thing that we want to do and then could follow through with that intention. We can define for ourselves what that intention is. Maybe we have some selfish intentions, and I'm not going to judge that. Maybe we have very selfless intentions because we hear stories of people

who were very selfless and they lived a short life. They died believing for a cause that they really believed in, and no one would argue like that was a wasted life. Right. But at the heart of all of that is this ability to focus on what is really important. So I don't know. There's a bunch of different layers to this. I feel like one that comes to me is chickens and eggs. Do you need focus to be happy or do you need to be happy to become focused?

Yep. I don't know yep i don't know i don't know i do think that if you're miserable focus is very difficult yeah agreed so let's stop doing that how about yeah let's stop doing that exactly uh so let's just take we've got 10 here listed uh we're gonna we're gonna just start taking them, why don't we? And the one that really stood out to me and one that I am particularly good at is called Constructing Future Hells. If you're listening, maybe you can go along with me on this. I think maybe being a lawyer did this to me. The idea of constructing a future hell is finding a future where everything is terrible and deciding to live there rather than in the present. This is a weakness of mine that I've had my entire life. What if this happens and that happens and then this happens and then

I'm homeless and my wife doesn't like me and my dog stops talking to me. And, you know, I think this is something that I am particularly adept at doing. Maybe it's an effect of being a creative person that you're able to imagine these universes up, these alternate universes. You know, but the fact is I am constantly generating a multiverse of hell around me. And it's something that I have to really stay on top of myself about. Have you ever experienced that, Mike? Yeah. So another way to describe this maybe is like thinking worst case scenario all the time. Yeah.

And I totally do this a lot. In fact, at the day job, I learned after a while that I had to preface things because I naturally thought about the problems and I realized that not everybody thinks that way. And so me constantly bringing up, well, what if this happens or what if that happens, That was having a negative effect on people. You're bringing everybody down. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I tend to think about, well, this is the worst thing that could happen in this situation. And if we just think about that ahead of time, then we can probably avoid that. But maybe that's not so good after reading this section. There's a line there, I think, between being prepared for things and just dwelling on that stuff.

And that's the only image that you're creating is this one where everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong. Yeah. So there's two things to this. I feel like I want to talk about the impact of living a life where you construct future hells and how to cope with it. Um, the first one is the impact and you brought one up. If you keep doing that, you bring everybody else down, right? You're always like, but what if you do this, you know, whatever the problem you know um uh you people don't want to be around you at some point right they're like that guy's such a downer you know yep tell him way i just won the lotto but what if you spend all the money you know it's like you know whatever the problem is you're finding and i don't think i went that far but i do have a And for me, I don't share it so much

as I carry it inside me, but that has the same, that has an impact on my own psyche, right? If I'm always thinking about the worst case scenario, then I'm not able to stop and smell the roses and enjoy them now. And that's all we really have is now. So why am I burning it up in future hell when I should be enjoying what's happening to me here and now? And I think that the impact on me of this, the negative impact is that I lose the ability to appreciate the moment that I have. That's all you have when you think about it is you've got this instant right now. Whatever happened to you five minutes ago is in the books already, doesn't matter. Whatever's going to happen in your future is in the books already. It doesn't matter. Whatever's going to happen in your future hasn't happened yet, so that doesn't matter.

But you have this moment, so why waste it worried about future hell? And that's the price I pay when I do that. And I think that's a pretty expensive price. The other price to it is if I'm always going to the negative future i think it makes me more risk averse and less willing to try things that could be really good for me and so i think that this whole idea of constructing future hells when i think about it is something that's been really toxic in my life um uh however i do have a coping mechanism. This isn't in the book, but I thought I'd share it anyways. When I first started meditating, that was one of my big challenges is getting lost in fear and what ifs and future hells. And my meditation coach, it was a Buddhist

thing. She talked to me about, well, why don't you take that journey all the way? And this is a very standard kind of method in Buddhism is like, consider, they actually encourage you to construct future hells. But the problem is as most people, uh, we, we just stop at the point that it becomes hell. We don't like take it to its natural conclusion. You know, well, what if I lose all my money and my wife leaves me? Well, you know what? I can still read books and learn and work on myself. You know, it's like, no matter if you take yourself to the end point of whatever it is you're afraid of, just go all the way with it. Get beyond the part where it's miserable.

It's like, well, what would your life be like that? Usually you find out it's not that bad. It's okay. You would figure a way through it. And then at the moment you get beyond the thing about it being hell and realize that if this happened, I would still be okay or I would learn how to cope with it. Then it doesn't,

it doesn't own you anymore. Yeah. It reminds me a lot of the, the fear setting idea, which is just putting a name on the worst case scenario. And then you realize, oh, well, it's really not all that, that bad. The problem is when you do that on every possible scenario instead of just the important ones. Yeah. Well, my advice is if you have one that grabs you, just take it. Don't stop. Just continue down the road. And at some point, it'll let go of you. But at the same time live in the moment it's life's too short so uh that's one of my my power moves is constructing future else want me to pick one yeah yeah all right so the number one on my list has got to be insist on perfection. And this is kind of what it says on the tin. So this is something that I have struggled with for a long time with creating anything, really. I, for a long time, didn't want to do anything that I wasn't good at so even something like the sketch

notes that I do now I was very hesitant to start with those because just like anybody who's just starting with something I was really bad at drawing back somewhere on the internet there exists a an image of my first sketchnote, which is a stick figure and a bunch of words. But I've developed a skill over time because I have learned to beat this. But when you insist on perfection, you're not willing to let something go until it is just right. And this is not just from a creative perspective. They talk in the book, the author talks about these people who are happy and he equates them to golden retrievers. And they tend to split their expectations into a minimum level performance about which they would feel content and an aspirational level, which they may not seriously expect to reach and to

which they do not feel extremely attached. And the problem for people who insist on perfection is you don't have the ability to reach that aspirational level, but you have so much importance tied to it that anything that falls short of that you feel like is a failure. But the real secret to getting to that level is iteration and feedback loops and doing something a bunch of times. And every time that you do it, you've got the learning loop and you learn from some of the mistakes that you made and the next time is better. I have not, because I'm too scared to, go back and listen to some of the first podcast episodes that I recorded. But I know if I did, I would instantly be able to see all of the things that I did wrong back then, and I would be able to see how much better I've become over time.

But you don't see that in the moment. You just keep doing the thing, in my case, thousands of times, and you naturally become better at the thing. So one of the hard parts for me was learning to detach from that feeling of, well, this isn't quite ready yet, and I'm going to put it out there anyways. And the first time that I did that, I was terrified to do so. But I guess the takeaway here and kind of the way that I am continually learning to beat this is to just ship it, just put it out there, do the best that you can and then let it go. of my list because I have learned a lot and I've grown a lot in this particular area, but it's still something that I struggle with literally every single time that I make something. I always get nervous before I push the button to release the podcast episodes or to share the sketchnote files. Every single time I think this isn't ready yet. It's not good enough. And

I've just had to force myself to, you know what, just get it out there. Well, it's funny because when we did the outline for the show, I filled it out first and I was looking at all the chapters. When I saw insist on perfection, I said, Mike is going to pick that one. I said that to myself. And that's your first one. I think the thing is, I don't suffer from this as much as you. I think we all have a degree of perfectionism, but I learned very early that I get better when I publish. It's the process of putting it out there, getting the feedback. Um, it's the process of putting it out there, getting the feedback. It, that iteration is the best road to perfection. You know, the, the natural thought of perfection would be, I should never release it until it's perfect.

But I think what you, what, what I try to think is, well, I want to get to where these are nearly perfect, but the first one is not going to be. And no matter how long I spend cooking it, it won't be. But you know, once this soup, it's like gumbo. I learned how to cook gumbo. My first gumbo was not great, but my 10th one was pretty good. But if I just spent, you know, all that time trying to make the first one, it's still, I wouldn't be where I am now with my gumbo. Yeah. And then there's another application of this too, where it's not just you insist on perfection from yourself, but you insist on perfection from other people, which again, I'm guilty of this, where if you just insist that everyone never make

a mistake and make a mistake, that's going to burn people out. There's a fine line there. I feel there are some positions where you're a manager, you're a leader, you need to insist on the excellence, but you can't just assume that people are going to be perfect. The net result of that is that no one wants to do anything for you because they know that you're going to find something wrong with it. something wrong with it. And that can be said for everything we're talking about today out of this book. They're kind of like rules, right? And they are rules taken at extremes. Construct future hells does not mean don't think about the future. Or always insist on perfectionism,

just don't care about the quality of the thing you make. But it is those extremes that create the misery, I think. Yep. the cracks start to emerge. And things that you used to do in a day are now taking a week or longer. You have too many manual processes and you don't have one single source of truth. It's never a good feeling when everything in your business is disjointed. You have too many processes and too many places. You want clarity. You want one place where all that important stuff lives, where it all happens. And the solution to untangling that disjointed feeling is NetSuite. NetSuite is a software company that has developed a cloud-based business management platform that can help your team deal with key business processes like enterprise resource planning

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I see this in myself, but I also see it in others. I think that particularly these days, I mean, when I was growing up, the news was very limited. I mean, it was on TV for like a half hour and the newspaper got delivered to the house. There was no internet. So I lived in an era where the news was a somewhat unique thing. Like it was not, there was not an unlimited amount of news. It was, you know, you, there was very little of it for you to consume. But during my lifetime, it's turned into something entirely different you know we've got 24 7 cable news and we've got the internet that's constantly trying to algorithm you into some sort of news cycle that'll get you wound up and it's just my relationship with the news has completely changed

over the years as a result yeah this is a a lesson i feel like we all kind of learned when the lockdowns happened. But it goes beyond just the feeding on the news sources, like you said. The Be Well Informed, I could have added this to my list as well. But the picture I get of what this does to you um have you ever seen the movie that thing you do yeah i is that the one about the one hit wonder band with tom hanks yeah yeah yeah well before for the drummer goes and joins with the rest of the band he's working for the family business and they own a supply and store yeah right and that the dad has got his newspaper open he's like well let's see what telemark is up to today yeah oh they got barbecue grills

you know yeah at the end of it he's like i don't know if i want to be in a country where you got to be open on sunday to support a family you know and his wife takes the paper away from let's just put that away now yeah you can see him getting all agitated because of what somebody else is doing now they're not doing that to him directly. He's just going in there to find that stuff. If you want to go find that stuff, you can find it. And it will upset you, but it's not worth it. Yeah, he's got some qualifications in this section that I thought were humorous and enlightening at the same time.

He said, look, if you want to really be miserable first there's some qualifications first you must not ask yourself why it's so important to learn about all the tragedies all over the world and the celebrity firings um uh second you must not ask about the actual information content the stories presented you know that you must see them as completely true in their own right uh you should discount the fact that they're all heavily filtered, which is even more true in this algorithmic age where they filter them to give you what they think you want to read, not what's at the actual news. And then the last one, which really landed for me,

is the similarities between modern television news and reality television programming should not occur to you. It's so true. I mean, you go on some of these news networks and it's like, they've built a whole narrative. They have a hero's journey in the news that has nothing to do with the news. And they're trying to just get you wound up every night. So yeah, I feel like that's something that gets a lot of us. I, when I was a lawyer, I had a couple of clients that were really just got into that. And I would just tell them, just take a night off. Go fishing or do something because watching the news can really mess you up. And I am just as vulnerable as those clients if I let myself be.

So I'm very careful about it. The way I cope with it, there's a few things I do is number one is I don't watch any news on YouTube. Like YouTube is probably my TV channel of choice of all of them. But I like to watch people playing the saxophone and people cutting dovetail joints or the history of Harry Seldon and the foundation or whatever, you know, nerdy thing I'm interested in star Wars, something or another, but I really, really try to never click on any news item on YouTube because that is the ultimate algorithm. And if you do click on a news item, no matter where your, uh, your political stripes are, I guarantee you, it will keep you tied up in knots.

political stripes are, I guarantee you it will keep you tied up in knots. So YouTube, no news. Television, I never watch news on the television. The local news programs to me are just like, I never watch those. And then I try to get news from family members and friends saying, oh, did you hear about that thing over there? And I'm like, no, I didn't. And then I may go explore it a little bit if I want to. But I figure I'm using the people around me as a filter because they're nice people that are around me that aren't getting hung up on this stuff. And I figure if it's important enough for them to comment to me about it, then I'll look into it. But I am not as enlightened about current events as you might think and that is okay yeah well i mean that allows me to do other things that are more important with my life you know yep because it really the the news can really just take over your life and and that that point he made that

you know like what you know why are you getting so hung up on a coup on the other side of the world you can't do anything about it right you know a good example the maui fire right the maui fire happened uh a friend of mine told me about it i looked into it it's terrible um i sent out a newsletter and asked for people to make contributions to the red cross and tried to make and i gave money and i tried to do a few things in my with like we have have, um, California and Hawaii have a very close relationship. Uh, there's a local shop surf shop that has a, a sister shop in Maui. Uh, they, they were collecting blankets, blah, blah, blah. They were sending a whole shipment over there. So we gave stuff to them. It's like, you hear the news say, what can I do about this?

You know, and you do something about it but then you know you turn the page that's it like that's all i can do for the maui fire give them money and stuff yeah do something but then don't feel like the entire outcome is on your shoulders yeah but uh yeah i thought that was interesting he included that one but i think that is definitely a recipe for misery to be well-informed. All right, give us another one, Mike. Next one for me is to react to their motives, not their messages. And this whole chapter is kind of about the importance of communication and how hard it is.

So one of the things that they mentioned in there, probably not exactly how I wrote this down in my notes, but the kind of takeaway for me was that communication is hard, so don't assume that you understand completely what somebody means. The way that they tell it in the narrative is, if you want to be miserable, jump to conclusions and assume that whatever somebody says word for word,

your interpretation of that is exactly what they meant. I think you can kind of picture, all can probably picture scenarios in our lives where we've done that. And then someone's like, oh, well, it's not what I meant at all. Right. And then you talk through it and like, oh, I guess I really wasn't as big a deal as I, I made it. Um, but I, my, myself, I try to be an excellent communicator. Uh, I fail sometimes, but also, uh, I inadvertently apply my perfectionism to how other people communicate to me. So I will

get frustrated if I don't get the details that I feel like I need in order to understand something. And sometimes, you know, I'm able to go back and ask for those things. But other times, the temptation there is just, well, this is what they gave me, and so I guess I just got to figure it out. And that is a trap for me because I will almost always look too far into certain things. There's an author who wrote the men's curriculum at our church, and he said it this way. He said that we judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions. He said that we judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions, right? We know that, oh, I didn't actually mean it that way. But we kind of naturally just judge other people by exactly what they do and never really give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, I agree. It's so hard. And like, it's so hard to put yourself in the mind of another person anyway, right? Anytime you do that that's a that's a loser's game so how do you combat it well the the big thing is just forcing yourself to to slow down and and kind of give other people the the benefit of the doubt so there are certain times when when you have these established relationships and you know the people that you work with well enough. Let's just use the people at my church, for example.

I serve in ministry with these people. They're great people. the moment from what I know about serving with them for the last 16 years, right? It's easy for me to be like, oh, well, I obviously don't have the whole story. If I'm working with somebody new or my first interaction with someone, it's a little bit harder to do that. But really, it's just reminding myself that, you know, they're not a bad person. This isn't something that they would do. The minute that I ask myself that, like, would they really do something like this? It's like, of course not. You know better than that.

But the monkey brain just tries to jump to conclusions. Oh, well, they meant to do this and they have it out for me. You know, then you get angry and it's downhill from there. And, you know, we're all carrying all this baggage inside of us. When I announced to my family that I was going to stop being a lawyer, one of my extended family members got angry with me. He was like, so you're just not going to be a lawyer, just giving up your career, like, you know, very accusatory, like aggressively. So, and, and it kind of put me on my heels a bit. I didn't know how to respond to it. And then I stopped to think about it. And this person is not, this person's life isn't going

exactly, I think, as he wished it. And I thought about, I'm like, well, here I am with a good career and I'm just walking away from it. And he'd kill for that career right and he finds it offensive that someone like me would take a risk when i have you know i've got the bird in the hand why would i go in the bush and and i don't think he meant it out of anger at me but maybe concern or just like frustration compared to what he's going through and then all of a sudden I like a switch went off in my brain. I'm like, okay, I get it.

He's, he's dealing with stuff and, and I need to be patient with him and you know, how can I help him? So he doesn't feel that way about himself, you know? And so I think that's, that's a good one.

Thanks for sharing that one. I've got another one. Just real quick to tag onto that. You kind of touched on another kind of way that I cope with this is exactly what you said. Well, they must be going through something. And I'm not great at this. I still fail to make that connection. I don't even know how many times.

to make that connection. I don't even know how many times, but I am doing it more and more often and just recognizing that life is hard. Everyone's going through something. So let's just give them a little bit of grace right now. Yeah. I don't know if this is one of the rules. It must be. I can't think of one offhand, but just the idea of it's not about you. I guess you want to be miserable, think it's always about you. Because usually when you talk to people, it's not about you. It's about something else. All right, I got one more. Measure up, measure down. And the whole idea of comparing yourself to other people.

And I have done that in the past, and it's never made me happy. It's so silly. Why do we do this as humans? Each one of us has a unique experience. Each one of us has a unique history. And what we do with our lives is different. And why do we have to compare each other? And the author does such a good job.

At one point, he writes in this chapter, for maximum misery, spend the evening comparing yourself to others, but, and here's the key, not to everyone, choose carefully. Yeah. Right? We do that. We pick the one person that's doing something we wish we were doing. They're like, well, why can't I do that?

And you don't think about any other element of their life. You don't think about all the other people that aren't doing anything like that. You only think you fixate on the one that has the thing that you, you know, the cookie that you want. And I feel like that is, I think that's something we all can fall into. Absolutely. Especially doing anything on the, uh, the internet because, uh, you compare your real to everybody else's highlight reel. Yeah. Right. So I don't do that. I don't find myself doing that with my, with my internet career. is you compare your reel to everybody else's highlight reel. Yeah. Right?

I don't do that. I don't find myself doing that with my internet career. I think I found myself doing it more as a lawyer because I was, as any measure would be, I think a fairly unsuccessful lawyer. I mean, my clients like me. I thought I did good work, but I never made the big bucks. A lot of lawyers, people who went through law school with me, but I never made the big bucks. You know, a lot of lawyers, people that went through law school with me are millionaires and they've got big firms or,

you know, they've run these big companies and that was never me. But, you know, if I would compare myself to it, I'd always have to stop and say, well, wait a second, what's the cost of that? You know, what, what, what did they pay out of their life's blood to make that happen? And would you have been willing to pay it? And then you realize, no, I wouldn't have been. So why are you trying to compare yourself to them when you're not willing to make the sacrifices they did? How do you cope with that, with the measuring? It's hard, but I try to force the focus back on myself.

Uh, it's hard, but I try to force the focus back on myself. Um, we talk about the gap in the game fairly frequently on, on this show. And, uh, that is the, the antidote in my opinion, I can't do anything about what anybody else is doing. And, uh, even personally, like I'm not going to try to compare where I'm at with where I want to be or where I think I should be. I'm going to try and just continue to get better. And every once in a while through journaling and my personal retreat process, I'll go back and I'll look at the progress that I made. And that's encouraging and I'll keep going. But the rest of the time, I'm trying not to measure. Again, funny entries from the book about this.

Always look up to the person. He said, select the person with the single best haircut and feel like a slob. Or find the owner of the Lamborghini and feel humiliated by your old beater. But no matter what the measurement is, money, cars, career, family, whatever, as humans, we always want to compare ourselves to the person we think has got at the top of the heap. And I think, honestly, the best coping mechanism for me is just to have an alarm bell go off anytime I catch myself doing that. I had always heard this quote by Mark Twain, but now researching it for the show, it's been compared to Theodore Roosevelt. Nobody really knows who said it, but comparison is the thief of joy. Have you ever heard that? I've heard that quote before. I never knew to attribute it to Roosevelt, but I don't think anybody knows who to attribute to at this

point. But if you're listening, say you came up with it. That's fine. Just don't compare yourself anymore. But I love that idea, the thief of joy, because that's exactly what you're doing. It's another way to state that it's going to cause misery every time you catch yourself comparing. Just remember that, first of all, that's an internal dialogue. Rarely are you having that with someone else. And and secondly the only person who pays a price for that that thought is you yep nobody else pays but you so why are you doing this to yourself just stop this episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by indeed Go to indeed.com slash focused and join more than 3 million businesses worldwide using Indeed to hire great talent fast. When you're faced with what might be considered aggressive hiring goals, you're not worried because you know you don't need a miracle.

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slash focused. That's I-N-D-E-e-d dot com slash focused to support the show by saying you heard about it here on the focused podcast terms and conditions do apply but do you need to hire you need indeed and our thanks to indeed for their support of the focus podcast and all of relay fm so next one for me is filter for the negative uh and this is really about just always finding the things that are wrong i kind of talked a little bit about this before and actually that's another observation i have with with a lot of these is they don't exist in isolation there's a lot of overlap but between these different things but um talks about how the human mind is not capable of paying attention to everything at once this is something that was really driven home for me in liminal thinking by by dave gray and it talks about all the billions of bits of information that we're

exposed to every nanosecond right and? And we can only, our conscious attention can only focus on a tiny little sliver of that. It's like a needle on a record player, right? So if we are filtering for the negative, the things that we are choosing to see are all of the things that are going wrong. And again, I'm definitely guilty of this primarily because I tend to identify those things and then stay on those things. So the kind of coping mechanism as it pertains to this for me

is recognizing that while that tiny little thing that I have fixated on is in fact happening, that's not the only thing that is happening. And that little tiny piece of reality may actually be something wrong or bad, but it is not the totality of everything in reality. And there's always going to be something wrong. There was always going to be things that are going well, though. And so not letting myself just continually fixate on the things that are negative, but finding the things that are positive. And one of the best ways to do this is, in my opinion, gratitude through daily journaling practice. Finding something specific that happened throughout the day and expressing gratitude for that. And I try to,

with this practice, I try to pick something very specific and something that I haven't picked before. I'm sure if you go back through all my journal entries, there's probably some duplicates in there. But for the most part, I try to pick something fresh. One of the things that he mentions in this chapter, by the way, which is kind of a takeaway for me, is that your emotions are governed not by your circumstances, but by the circumstances that you pay attention to. So I can always find something that's going wrong. I can always also find something that is going right. And the difference between me being miserable or me being happy is really just what I'm choosing to focus on. Yeah. I also, something that really helps me with the filtering for the negative is when I realized that as part of our DNA, as part of our programming, you know, I always talk about, you know, avoiding saber-toothed tigers. And when we lived out on the plains and we wanted to stay alive, we needed to know where the lion was. So we're looking for the lion. We don't care about the

beauty of the sunset as much as where is the lion right now. And I think that genetically, we're not very far away from that guy. But as a result, we see lions and saber-toothed tigers and negative podcast reviews and snarky emails. We see it in places where it's not actually our existence being threatened, but we focus on that instead and we miss all the positive reviews and positive emails or whatever it is that we're measuring ourselves by. But when I finally grokked that, oh yeah, this is just the way we're programmed, that gave me some tools to combat it and realize,

oh, there's the lizard brain kicking in again. I need to just let go of that and be okay with it. Yep, yep. But gratitude journaling, second that. I mean, if you find yourself being too negative, start writing about things that are positive about make a point of documenting, just like I was talking about with Sparky OS earlier, it writing it down makes it bigger to you. It makes it more important and, uh, focus on some of the good stuff. That's kind of a powerful idea, right?

To think that you can either minimize or magnify certain things just by choosing to focus on them. Yeah, right. But it works. Yep. It works. One of mine that you're good at, but I'm, actually you're bad at, I'm good at this misery, is avoiding exercise. I'm not good at exercising regularly. I've had a meditation practice for over 30 years, no problem. But sometimes I just don't want to go out and exercise. And that has an impact on you. That's one of the first, I think it's his very first trick to being miserable is to don't exercise. And I've really made efforts the last couple of years. And,

you know, I'm not a person that enjoys running like you do. And I have some physical things that make other things not that possible, but I found ways to exercise better. And the trick was just finding things that I enjoy to do that get me up and moving my body. I do a ton of gardening and I handle woodworking is exercise. If you want to get a sweat, go try and flatten a board

with a hand plane. Um, but the, uh, but also, uh, I've been trying to do more social exercise lately. My wife and I, my wife does Pilates and I joined it. I am usually the only guy there, but I don't care because we get to do it together and it actually is a pretty good workout. So, so I'm trying to find ways to exercise that I can enjoy, but I've just never been a guy who's going to go out and run a half marathon. It's just not, it's just not me. Well, I think that's, that's fine. Uh, you got to find the thing that, that works for you. And it's more important that you find something that it is that you run a half marathon. I mean, I have my limits too.

My brother this weekend just ran a 50 kilometer trail run, which, you know, that is my version of this person's doing this thing. And nope, that sounds crazy. Everyone's got their their limits there all right give me another one all right so the next one on my list which is a little bit related to something that i said earlier but it is a separate point here is to hold high expectations of others and the reason that this is separate is that there is an important idea here which is worth talking about. It's called unconditional positive regard. And that is the belief that one's feelings or affections should be unwavering.

Well, for me, it means that this is something we assume that other people are going to have this unconditional positive regard. Their feelings towards us are not going to change, basically no matter what we do. I have definitely burned some bridges in the past through some of the stuff that I've already talked about, demanding the perfectionism and you got to give me more information. Recognizing now that it's not all about me, but kind of how it comes off, at least from those moments that I can identify from my past, it was all about me, at least in the eyes of somebody else. And just recognizing that every time you do that, you are making a withdrawal from that emotional bank account. So I'm trying not to do that as much,

and I feel like that is one way that I've been coping with this and getting better at it. But the other way is recognizing that I can flip this and I can give other people the benefit of the doubt. And I really need to do that on a more regular basis. I get so fixated on, well, this, this person is late every single time. Like, don't they care? Don't they know any better? And that's, you know, tangential, but this is kind of the thing that's been triggering for me is like, well, no, they're, they're probably going through some something right

now. So they're a, they're a good person, you know, who they are. And yeah, it would be nice if, you know be nice if this thing that is a minor annoyance to you could be fixed, but that's not really that important. It's really not that big a deal. And just kind of forcing myself to recognize that and then give other people the benefit of the doubt and moving more towards that unconditional positive regard in my own life for the relationships that are really important to me. Yeah. Something that really helped me with this was, and it took me 20 years to figure this out of, of, is this trying to limit myself to quality people in my life? And what I mean by that is like early in my law career, we had clients and

just, there were, there were people I dealt with that were not what I would call quality people. there were people I dealt with that were not what I would call quality people. And so every time you have a transaction with them, a discussion with them, you always knew there was some game afoot. And it made you defensive and it made it really hard for you to have an open heart toward that person because you knew that it was going to be trouble if you did open yourself up. And then one day it occurred to me, what if I just stopped dealing with people like that and then started using that as a condition in my life?

And this is about, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago now that I decided to make that rule. And it's not 100%, but it's almost 100%. Everybody in my life are people who have chosen to make part of my life. And if, if you think that you start the conversation with, this is a quality person, you have so much more patience before them. You have so much more grace for them. If you know, Hey, this is a good person, whatever's happening is happening, but it's not because they're a bad person. person. That's kind of how I got around that. Although you still bump into the occasional bozo, but then my goal is when I encounter bozos, my immediate thought is not that I'm going to argue with them or fix them or change them. My immediate thought is how do I get this

person out of my life? And I'm pretty effective at it. I've gotten pretty good at it. Usually you just ignore them and that's enough. But the trick is to get bozos out of your life. And then suddenly this becomes a much easier problem to solve. Yeah. You mentioned the phrase you used was open your heart towards people, I think, something along those lines. And you're right, when you have set up the filters ahead of time and you have quality people in your life, then you don't have to be on guard for that kind of stuff. And that is the key, right? Is not take it on a case-by-case basis, but a person-by-person basis. Be more strict about who you're going to allow into the inner circles, but then be less strict about the specifics of the situation once they're there.

as the child of depression era kids, this idea that, you know, don't take risks. And it's something that has always been kind of an underlying risk constraint for me. And as I've gotten older, I've gotten better at dealing with it. But I think that the unwillingness to take a risk and get out of the comfort zone is an excellent way for long-term misery. Yeah, this one was interesting. One of the things they talk about is how if you want your comfort zone to grow, you have to leave it, which, I mean, it makes sense when you sit and think about it, but I remember that really resonating with me when I read it. It's like, oh yeah, so the feeling of this being uncomfortable, that is the way. Yeah. A quote from the book, the zone of comfort hides a secret. The longer you spend in it, the smaller it gets. Yep. That is something, but I'm aware of it,

and I actively fight against it, but it took me a few years to figure that out. That one felt pretty personal to me. Yeah, me too. When I, when I read that one, last one I've got is to give a hundred percent to your work. And I wrote this one down because I feel like this is something that is easy for me to slip into right now. Not going back into all of the details, but leaving my day job, going out on my own, trying to get this thing going as quickly as I can. The tendency is always, well, just do one more thing, do one more thing, do one more thing. And there's always something else that is clearly needing to be done for the business right now. So forcing myself to, nope, that's enough for today. I'm going to shut down now and disconnect and not pick this up until it is time to do so tomorrow. And in the chapter, they talk about how you really should just be giving.

They even kind of make fun of the manager who asks for 110%. They want you to give your life to your job, and then you don't have anything left over for any of your family, any of your friends, any of your own personal interests. And I saw a little bit too much of myself in that description for comfort. And yeah, I've worked for people like that too. You know, it's like where there's a sense of betrayal if you are not working every moment. And that's tough.

It's a tough pressure to put on yourself. That's something I think I was talking on the recent episode of mac power users uh to a guest and i was thinking you know people give millennials a lot of grief but i think millennials get that better than prior generations do true that you know there's more to life than just work and i respect that about them yeah all right well the book is called how to be miserable by randy j peterson We just covered 10 of our hangups. That was kind of fun. I feel a little better. Mike, thanks for indulging me. I was just thinking as you were talking, this would be a fun experiment to do with my wife,

to have us both read the book and talk with each other about where it's hard for us. This might be something useful, but it's a good book. There's 40 of them. And I found it to be a fun read, but also something that caused me to think about changing my actions in ways a bit. And definitely, if you want to get focused, you're going to have to nail some of this stuff down. So go check it out. We'll put a link in the show notes for it. And we got more for you on the Focus podcast right after this. This episode of Focus is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You probably heard you should be using a VPN when you connect to the internet.

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So let's make it feel, let's make ourselves feel better by sharing, sharing it. All right. You want me to go first? Yeah. All right. Well, I, this isn't actually shiny, but it is a new object. I definitely have some shiny objects, too. But I have a paper copy of Cal Newport's second version of his time block planner. And Cal Newport is, in my opinion, the time block person. He's the person who I first heard about it from and this planner has existed the first version of it for a while but he recently redid it and made a couple of upgrades to it and it's an analog planner essentially with a wire binding so that it lies flat. The beginning of this

planner has a section on time blocking, so it's actually a really good concise intro to the time blocking message if that is something that you're looking for some help getting going with it. you're looking for some help getting going with it. But the big thing that this gives you is a layout that allows you to do time blocking the way that Cal describes it. So there is a side-by-side page here for the day. And on the first page, there is a list for tasks and ideas. There's a section at the top for daily metrics and a checkbox for a shutdown complete. Let me just walk through this real quickly because the daily metrics, I don't think I have a daily metric I want to track here. But one of the examples that he shares in the description of this layout is that this

can be something like if you're a salesperson, you're trying to make 100 phone calls, you have a little tick every time that you make one. I've been in sales. I've actually done that. I did it on a notepad. So I think there are some cool ways that you could use those daily metrics, but that's not how I'm using daily metrics in terms of habit tracking or anything like that. But then on the right side of the spread, there are four columns for your time block plan. And so the idea here is that you write out the first version of the plan, but that plan is not going to, it's not going to stick when it encounters contact with the outside world. It's going to change. So there are three other columns where at any point you can change the rest of your day and redraw your time block plan, make

adjustments for how the rest of your day is going to go. I just got this, but I've been using it for the last couple of days. And I think that that's a really cool exercise i can see how that would totally stick for some people hasn't really stuck for me i'm curious when you do time blocking uh i know you've gone back and forth you've done it fantastic how you've done it analog when you were doing an analog were you following this method or were you just making one version of the plan and that was good enough? I've tried them all. It seems like my journaling is always in motion. But what I have done is drawn down the center of the page on a dot grid, the hours. And then on the left side, I put the plan and then the right side, I put how the day actually went. Sure. I don't do that all the time though. I don't do that all the time though.

I don't know that it's worth it to me. I can't make my mind on it to be honest. Like on some days today I'm doing a bunch of podcasting recording and labs meetups. So everything is going to just track because I have no choice. They all involve other people. But then on other days, sometimes I do get taken off of the plan for good reasons. And I don't really feel like guilty about it. So usually when I do not follow my blocks, it's for good reason. And I don't feel necessary to review it. I think this is a very good practice when you're starting time blocking.

Because one of the big mistakes you make when you start time blocking is you make too small of blocks. And by forcing you to go and update them, you learn pretty quickly how long it takes to do something. And it's usually twice as long as you initially thought. But then after a while, you just start blocking for properly, the proper amount of time. And it's not as big of a deal. So I'm not religious about this, but I do occasionally use the technique. If I have one now, it's primarily I'll write down the big events or blocks of the day and a list at the top of the

journal, whether it be digital or handwritten. And then I'll do some degree of journaling throughout the day as I move between big things. And then I can look back and see how that compared to the actual plan. And I find that's kind of the happy medium for me yeah that makes a lot of sense in fact Cal kind of talks about that both in the planner and then also I've been listening to his podcast recently and he's been talking about time blocking there is as well and he mentions that time blocking in his estimation allows you to get twice as much work done in the same time, same amount of time. I don't know the science behind that or if it's just a gut feel, but he does talk about how in order to effectively time block, you have to be

able to compare your initial plan and have those different feedback loops and look at what actually happened versus what your initial plan was. And so this almost feels like to me, a forced way of updating the plan and seeing what is actually playing out as you go without doing any sort of time tracking. But I think that's the ideal version is that you've got a plan for how you intend to spend your time. And then you have some sort of record to look at how you actually spent your time. And over time, if you compare those two and you make small adjustments here and there, eventually they will become probably not the same, but they're moving in that direction anyway. Yeah. I think if you're getting started with time blocking though,

the two things, two of the best things you could do for yourself is read, um, his, uh, deep workbook and buy one of these journals. I think that's like a very easy way. It's like, it's almost like giving yourself, um, giving yourself a boost in terms of getting that practice down. Yep. Maybe in the long run, you don't need, you don't need to do it that, that deeply every day. But I think for the first six months, it's the best way to do it that that deeply every day but i think for the first six months it's the the best way to do it yeah agreed uh i i do like this this planner for someone who is getting started with uh the time blocking now cal talks about how he chose this paper for the new version because of the specific types of pens that he uses. And let's just say that we have very different opinions about what is good

paper, but, uh, that being, uh, you know, I'm a fancy fountain pen guy. So,

um, that's not going to be great for most people who are trying to do time blocking anyways, you're going to smear and yeah, it's, it's just not practical, but it feels really, nice um so i think i would recommend this for people who are looking for an analog resource for getting into time blocking

but i don't think it's gonna stick for me personally ultimately for me my analog books are all dot grid i love it i love the um the freedom of dot grid so if i feel like oh this is going to be a complicated day, maybe I will do the Cal Newport thing with the hours down the center of the page, or maybe not, but I can choose each day what I'm going to use those dot grids for. Yep. One other thing with this planner, by the way, adjustment that he made is that he thinks you should not plan all of your downtime. He's basically saying you should time block your work time. And so the weekend pages aren't giving you a full spread

like the rest of the pages. It's a more simplified version of it, which I think is kind of a cool idea. And interesting to me that that was something that he saw people doing and he's like no you really shouldn't be doing it that way again opinionated choice there i think an argument could be made the other way too but i like the way that he's kind of modifying this planner to fit the the system that he is telling people to follow yes yeah because i disagree with that i think

you should time block downtime i feel like that's just as important as work time. The, the, the, the slippery slope with time blocking is you start time blocking everything for work if you're not careful. So I like the idea of time blocking downtime. So,

yeah, but you know, teach his own Cal wrote the book on it. So, you know, he's, he's got some pretty good ideas. I'm sure.

Yep. All right. My shine, I have two shiny new things actually. Um, the, uh, I am working, you know, as obsidian field guide ships, I'm working on the next field guide, which is going to have a larger than usual written component on it. And I've been trying to do some kind of mode switch proper writing lately where I just sit down and write. And I was doing it on my iPad. So I thought,

well, what if I kind of set up my iPad as a really truly like a, a just write me on me device. So on my writing desk, I have an extra iPad and I've got IA writeriter installed, which is just a beautiful writing app that's kind of a typewriter app. And I got my clicky mechanical keyboard and paired it with the iPad. And I've built a little writing station when I want to write. And I open the iPad. It's turned off of all connections. There's no distractions at all. And I've made like a, i don't know what you call it

a 2023 typewriter out of it and um i've been having a lot of fun with that the last few months nice yeah so the trick is just get a stand i looked at different apps i also looked at hanks writer you know tom hanks is a big typewriter fan and and he made his own or he worked with somebody make an app that like simulates old typewriters that was just a bridge too far for me it's i just wanted to to type on the screen but but ia writer does sync i can turn on the sync when i want and uh i've got a little machine here now that that functions as my typewriter but this is where, this is where it takes a turn. Doing that kind of reminded me of being a kid and having a typewriter like, and using it. And I got thinking,

I never saw myself as someone that would ever want to use a typewriter again. You know, I was so happy when computers showed up and word processors, but I also often send little note cards and things to friends. And I got thinking, wouldn't it be fun to like type those on like an old timey typewriter. And so I started this, it took me about a month of research cause I didn't want to like, you can spend a lot of money on a manual typewriter.

And I definitely wanted a manual one. I didn't want an electric one cause I learned to type on a manual. And I found, I'm pretty sure that because when I was in middle school, I took typing, which was a great class for someone back then because I've used it my whole life. But I learned on a German typewriter, it was an Olympia. And I found, I think the one that I learned on, it's an Olympia SM3. They were made in the fifties and it was ancient when I used it as a kid, but, uh,

I found somebody selling one and I bought one. So I spent $300 on a typewriter. It's not here yet. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but, uh, I don't see myself like writing the next field guide on it, but I think it would be fun to write like notes and cards to friends on it

and just kind of find little odd uses for it. And hopefully it's in good shape. I ordered it from the Netherlands. So it's got the letters reversed for German because I think the Z and the Y are switched. So I'm going to have to type slow on it. But I do like the idea of it. And I haven't received it yet,

but I wanted to share it with somebody. I thought if anybody could appreciate this kind of madness, it'd be you, Mike. Yeah. So I don't know anything about typewriters. I just looked up the Olympia SM3 that you mentioned. I think I get the appeal though this does look like a pretty cool classic machine um one of the things that the article i

found talks about is replacing the ribbon so i'm kind of curious if this actually sticks and you start using it and you make it through uh a maintenance cycle with it yeah but i got the appeal of the nostalgia. Well, it's been around since the 50s. I feel almost like a stewardship for this thing. I have to take care of it because it's lasted this long. It's got a few scratches on it. I saw pictures of it.

Like I said, you can spend a lot of money buying an old antique typewriter. But I was actually looking for what you would call a lot of money buying an old antique typewriter, but I, I was actually looking for what you would call a user, you know, uh, something that I could use that's in good shape for use, but not necessarily super valuable. And, uh, and that's the one I got. And, uh, I can't wait for it to get here, but that's, uh, that's my shiny new thing. A 1955 Olympia SM three. That's my shiny new thing, a 1955 Olympia SM3. I love it.

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