Focused - 191: Multi-Scale Planning

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast, but 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 great. How about yourself? Excellent. Time for another episode of Focus. Today, we're going to be talking about the Cal Newport multi-scale planning and just kind of the idea of review and planning in general. I think this is a great episode as we head towards the kind of the idea of review and planning in general i think this is a a great episode as we head towards the end of the new year or i guess as we head towards the new year not head toward the end of the year yeah i came across this concept when i was listening to a

recent episode of the the deep life podcast and he kind of revisited this, this, uh, system that he's put together. And to be honest, we were chatting before we hit record. It's not a brand new system. This has been around in some way, shape or form for a long time, but I like the way that Cal Newport as Cal Newport does puts it very simply. And here's the key pieces that you need to be thinking about with this whole concept of multi-scale planning and what it really is designed to do is make sure that the roles and the values that you have as you think about what you want your life to be about, how those get translated down into the quarterly, weekly, and even the daily plans. And we talked not too long ago about those daily plans and time blocking and

time tracking and how the plan is really your intentions for the day. And then you need some sort of measurement to see how you actually did so you can make adjustments and do better. I think we were talking about that in terms of the PKM stack, but this is kind of another way to think about that. And I thought it would be a cool conversation. Yeah. I mean, I really feel like there is the daily tasks you do and there's the big picture stuff. I call it roles-based, you know, ROT. And, you know, everybody's got a different way, I think, to think about the big picture.

But how do you get the big picture translated into the actual stuff you're doing every day? I think that's a lot harder than it sounds. And Cal Newport is not the first guy to come up with this. But like you said, he does frame it really well. But it's often planning. Taking your big goals, your big roles, whatever you call them, and translating them down to action items requires planning. And that's what we're going to be talking about today.

And the thing that I really like about this is when you consider the concept of, I've got this great big vision for my life, and I want to make sure that my quarterly plan is in alignment with that, and then my weekly plan is in alignment with that, that my quarterly plan is in alignment with that. And then my weekly plan is in alignment with that. And my daily plan is in alignment with that. That sounds good and aspirational, like who wouldn't want to do that? But it also feels like a whole lot of work. And I don't think it needs to be that bad. I think if you take these pieces individually, you can kind of connect them with the next one in the stack, and you can kind of make sure that you have alignment all the way up and down here. But

I think it's worth unpacking the concept and then maybe even talking a little bit about how we do this. Yeah, yeah. And I think we're going to be talking in Cal's lingo a bit, but we're also going to be bringing kind of our own take to some of this stuff as we go through the show. Yeah, in fact, the first part of this is what Cal calls roles and values. And I immediately thought of when I heard him talk about that, the term I've heard you say, roles and goals. Yeah. you say, roles and goals, where you've got the different hats that you're wearing in your obsidian system, and am I functioning in this role to the level that I want to be going into the whole concept of arete and stuff like that. But I do think that the roles and the values and the goals, these are all kind of different ways of describing really what is a vision for what you want your life to look like. And this is the thing that I would argue

everyone needs to spend some time thinking about this stuff. Now, I'm in the middle of, as we record this, going through the life theme cohort with my wife. And that's kind of what we do is we help people dial in their personal mission statements. And that's kind of what we do is we help people dial in their personal mission statements. And it's interesting to me, there's a guy in there who he joined the first one, but I had some back and forth with him before we went through the first one. And he's 76 years old. And he was kind of at the point where, well, I don't know if this is really going to be beneficial to me. And I'm like, well, just come be my guest and hopefully you'll get something out of it. But if not, no worries. And then he came back for the second one because

he's like, this was amazing. And the takeaway here, I think, is that it doesn't matter what stage you are at your life. It's kind of like investing. If you would have started investing when you were 20, that would be ideal. But if you haven't been, that doesn't mean that you can't do it going forward. And there's value to be gleaned from this no matter where you are in your life. The analogy I like to use is a sailboat. I feel like we're all at sea. And when you have a clear vision, when you know which direction your compass is pointed, it really helps.

I mean, because it's very easy on a sailboat to get really good at furling the sails and coiling the rope and doing all the things a sailboat needs. But if you are not sailing in a definite direction, then what are you doing? You know, you're adrift. So I think that's a necessary first step. We're not actually going to focus on that today. Maybe we need to do that in a future episode. I do it by identifying my roles and kind of finding my ideal self. But we've talked about that in the past on the show, and I'm sure

we will again. But you do, as Mike says, you need that vision. But then you need to grab that vision and you need to turn it into concrete results. Because I think for a lot of people, the process of creating a vision often does not translate into daily tasks. And it does not actually move the needle for you. It doesn't get you closer to that vision. And that's super frustrating, right? To know where you want your sailboat to go, but realize you're still just going in circles. That's no fun.

No, not at all. No, not at all. And this is where Cal advocates for the quarterly planning and kind of noticeably straight from the rules and values to the quarterly planning is that the quarter tied to the whole concept of the 12-week year is enough time to make some significant progress, but it's also short enough that you have multiple iterations. So you have multiple feedback loops and you're able to make several rounds of adjustments so that you can course correct more frequently than if you just set the annual goal and you forgot about it until the end of the year, which is, I think, probably the way that most people handle their New Year's resolutions.

No, I agree. I think that there's like a cultural norm that you do your planning on an annual basis. And I mean, the only thing worse than that would be if you did your planning on an annual basis. And I mean, the only thing worse than that would be if you did your planning on a five-year basis because there's just no room for improvement. I mean, 12 months is a long time. You're going to lose track of it. In fact, I think quarterly is the maximum amount of time you want to do this kind of stuff

where you're actually able to go in four times a year course correct and decide well that's not working or maybe that's not as important to me and and more and just as importantly see how you're doing on them like uh three months ago i said i was gonna do this thing that was gonna help you know along my vision and now that i look at it i really haven't done anything so what's happening? You'd much rather find that out after three months than 12. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's an argument to be made of why not do both? Why not have the annual plan and then consider it quarterly? And I would say that the reason why you might not want to do that is just the complexity.

You have to, every time you set a new quarterly plan, go back and adjust the annual plan as well, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the more layers that you add here, the more complex this whole system becomes. And I think there's something to be said about making your multi-scale planning system as simple as possible, but no simpler. I actually have a wrinkle for that. And I do have a role for an annual review, but I don't want to talk about it yet. I'd like to kind of get through this multi-scale because I don't think it really is part of it. It is something separate for the exact reason Mike describes. You don't want extra complexity. And there's something really, I think, magical for me in the three-month cycle. It's like, it gives me enough time that if I work hard, I can do something challenging,

but it's not so long that I forget or lose sight of it. It's just a really good increment of time for something like that. I mean, there's a reason why the 12-week year is a best-selling book because I think they kind of nailed it. They didn't make it the 8-week year. They made it the 12-week year for a reason. Yeah, and if you go further down the stack, then the next obvious unit of measurement would be the month. Now, I don't actually do this, and I don't think Cal talks about this, but sounds like you do. So want to talk us through what role the monthly planning has? Yeah, I just think it's a more refined check-in on the quarterly plan. You know, just like some people would argue, you should have an annual plan and check on it

quarterly. Well, I have a quarterly plan and I check in on it monthly. And it's a chance for me to go back and review what I did on the quarterly plan and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks. And we're going to both talk through our methods here later in the show. But I find that the beginning of the month is another kind of refreshing and another opportunity for a feedback cycle loop to make changes and see, like I had a big plan for the quarter. And at the end of the first quarter, I've made a little progress on it. Well, what do I need to do to, to make that work? I don't find doing it that deeply every week works for me, but monthly it does. Sure. Okay. I, I can understand that, but I still don't think you're going to convince me to do it

because, uh, the, the, there's gotta be a specific couple places where you're looking frequently, I feel, with this in order for it to stick. Maybe as you get momentum with this, you can add more layers. I could see that helpful. But I'm kind of following the Cal Newport model where we've got the roots, the roles, and the values. And then the question to be asked during the quarterly planning is that, is this quarter in alignment with my roots? And then the next level down that I go is the weekly planning, where I'm kind of doing what you've been describing, where I'm checking in with the quarterly plan document on a weekly basis instead of a monthly basis, not necessarily to the point where I'm changing my plans, although that does occasionally happen. But with the weekly plan, really what I'm asking is, is this in alignment with my quarterly plan?

And that just feels like a good, that gap there, you know, it's large enough that if I check in on it, I can answer it yes or no without having to get real granular. But also, it's long enough that there's 12 different weeks in a quarter. So if I have a bad week and I don't execute on that plan, it's long enough that I can kind of make that up. But really, when I'm thinking about the week plan, you know, did I win the week? If I didn't win the week, I've got another chance and there's enough margin there that I can make up some of that lost ground if I need to. Yeah. Well, I think either, no matter how you do it, having a regular increment of time in which you check your work against the quarterly plan is an essential element of this. I am much more tactical on the weekly

stuff, but again, we're going to get through this as we go through our own workflows. But I do think a weekly plan is more important than a monthly plan because I think every week you've got to really have a plan heading into the week if you want to avoid wasting a lot of time. Yeah, because one of the things here you kind of touched on this is that this is the tactical plan for the week. The connection with the quarterly plan and really ultimately with the values and the vision, that's kind of the cherry on top. But the weekly plan is essentially what it talks about. So you're putting on your weekly plan the big meetings that are coming up, the things, in my case, the things that I'm going to try to publish this week, the podcasts that got to go out, YouTube videos, things like that.

Those are going to be on the weekly plan, and then I'll kind of fill in around that. But then where the rubber really hits the road is the daily plan, which is, as we've talked at length on this podcast before, that's the time block plan. And so when you look at the daily plan and the weekly plan, I feel like this is where there's some untapped potential for a lot of people and myself included in this. If you just do the daily planning without considering the weekly planning, it's hard to gauge whether you are actually successful with that day. You can look at the things that you put on your plan in isolation and say, yeah, I got them all done or no, I didn't. But when you take it in context of the weekly plan,

that's really when you can see whether it was successful or not. Yeah. And the daily plan is where it's easy to use my sailboat to spend the day coiling the rope and not paying attention to the compass. And that's why it's such a mistake to think that's where you do your planning. I mean, the daily plan is the payoff of all the work you did to get there. And if you just try to do daily plans, I would argue even just try to do weekly plans, you don't have enough foundation under your house. You don't have your compass pointing in the right direction. You are getting good at coiling rope and furling sails. And at the end of the year, at the end of your life, you're going to look back and have all these things you wanted to do and realize that you spent all your time coiling rope.

And that's why we're talking about it today. I think this is something super important. You know, again, to put structure on this, you've got whatever system you use. I like this roles and RTA system. There's but that's just weird. I'm weird. I like the old Greeks. But whatever you want to call it, key values, core values, I mean, it doesn't matter. But you come up with a system to figure out your vision, and you've got to have this intermediate

step through planning to translate that into action. And if you don't, then it's not going to make any progress. It's really that simple. Yeah, exactly. And then there's a tool that you can use to kind of tie this all together, which we happen to have made. Oh, yeah. There is, isn't it? Pretty convenient. Yeah.

The focus calendar is the year at a glance calendar. But one of the things I love about it is it breaks it down into quarters. And it's not going to be the only thing that you're going to use for your multi-scale planning, but it is an helpful tool where if you're going to put like the big deadlines or the things that, you know, I'm at a conference and I'm going to be gone for a week, you know, I'm going to put that on there. So I know when I'm doing my quarterly planning, I have to work around that. And we would be remiss if we did not talk about that a little bit in this section, since it fits so perfectly. Yeah. And now's the time they're on sale. I just got delivery of mine. I'm going to take it in, get it mounted on foam, put it up on my wall for

next year. Uh, you know, Mike did a ton of work on making these great and they are, it's a calendar that you get to see the whole year. Um, it's wet erase which is the power tip i got from mike really makes it work well you can you know just take a little water to get it off but it's semi-permanent when you're right up there and there's a ton of great uses for it we've heard from many listeners i was i was thinking the other day mike how many years have we been doing this now is this the fourth year i think it is i think it's the fourth year yeah yeah so you know have we been doing this now? Is this the fourth year? I think it is. I think it's the fourth year. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we've been doing this, we've really got the format to the point where we like it. And I love hearing from the listeners that have bought them and are using them. Me too. Yeah. So you can get yours. We've got a link in

the show notes and it's the time of year to do it. If you order it now, you'll have it by the new year. Just in time to do your next multi-scale plan. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Electric. Go to electric.ai slash focused and unbury yourself from IT tasks and get a free pair of Beats Solo 3 wireless headphones when you schedule a qualified meeting. When leading your small business, it's not all glamour. In fact, sometimes it's a matter of spending hours onboarding an employee, which you're well-equipped to deal with, but maybe you don't have the time for.

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Go there now and get your free pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones today for scheduling a meeting. And our thanks to Electric for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Okay, so now that we've laid down kind of the general idea of multi-scale planning, I thought it'd be fun to talk through ours. And we're opinionated folks. We don't do exactly the same, but you're doing some fun stuff. Why don't you walk us through, Mike, how you're doing this?

Sure. Well, the vision and the values, that is essentially my life theme. and I do have a set of personal core values, which that's all documented as individual notes inside of Obsidian, obviously. And then from there, I've got those things that I'm trying to use as my North Star. And when I do my quarterly planning, I do it following my personal retreat process. And it's essentially considering where I'm at. So one of the first things that I do with that, I'll just walk through the whole thing real briefly. But I consider my life theme, I consider my core values, see if there's anything that I want to change with those. my life theme. I consider my core values, see if there's anything that I want to change with those. And then I go through the wheel of life exercise where I rate my current happiness in eight different areas in my life. And I've got a little polar area chart inside of Obsidian that renders

based on those results. And then from there, I identify there's maybe some areas that I want to make some changes in. I'll deconstruct those scores and make bullet lists of what are the events that happened in the last 90 days that have kind of led to me giving it that score. And then I'll make a list of all the things from the previous quarter, you know, what went well, what could have gone better, that sort of thing. But then the planning part is essentially considering three questions, which we've talked about before, but what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? Those three questions are kind of magical if you ask me

because they are so open-ended. Just by asking those questions and then giving myself an extended period of time, I always spend at least two hours considering those questions because after about 30 minutes, my brain comes up with a list and the temptation is always, well, there you've mined the whole, everything you're going to get from this. So it's time to move on. But if you stick with it, then you always get to some really good stuff. And I believe it's because those questions are so open-ended that I'm able to do that. those questions are so open-ended that I'm able to do that. From there then, I'll set a couple of objectives for the next quarter. And this all is in a single note in Obsidian. And I will, from there then, kind of break down what are the things that I need to do consistently or the habits that I need to establish that are going to move me forward

in the direction that I want to go. The basic premise there is essentially what can I do that would make the completion of that goal inevitable? If I just show up and I do this thing every day, how is that going to translate into the result that I want? Because I don't want to think about the result while I'm doing it. I don't want to set the goal and be so focused on the outcome and crossing that finish line. Because as we've talked about, when you cross the finish line, then you look for the next finish line. It's almost like the finish line just moved on you. And so if I can just try to win the day every day and do that consistently, then when I do my next personal retreat, I'm going to have some progress that I can celebrate. You know, I would add to that, that I think this emphasis on process over results is golden. And almost every good productivity system you bump into, whether it's Cal Newport or Aristotle, seems to be focused on

that. What are you doing to your process? And I don't think that gets acknowledged enough, right? Because we're so often in society judged on our results. And I think it's easy when you're trying to get more productive to focus on that. And I think that's entirely the wrong way to do it. Mike's got it. Focus on changing your process so a good result is inevitable. But even then, I would modify that to say, just focus on your process to make sure the process is right. And don't even think about whether the result is inevitable. Just do the right process and let it go. Because sometimes, even though the process is right, you don't even think about whether the result is inevitable. Just do the right process and let it go. Because sometimes, even though the process is right,

you don't get the result that you want. I remember you were talking once about the NFL. And all the teams have the process to win the Super Bowl. The only one who wins the Super Bowl. You don't always get the result. But if you get the process right, that's the way to get there. And fretting about the result to the peril of the process is going to make sure you don't get there. And I think having read a lot of these books and thought

about this, it seems to me like I think that's something a lot of people miss. seems to me like I think that's something a lot of people miss yeah winning is not achieving an outcome winning is doing the process every day it's the consistency that's the thing that if you can learn to love the process then it's completely revolutionary in terms of what you are able to accomplish in terms of I I'll say productivity, but really just like goal setting. I really do believe that the path to long-term significant results is those, the consistent habits, the routines, the things that you do consistently. And so that's where I try to just put the focus. It's easy for me to drift. I think we're kind of naturally wired as humans to look at the score and focus on the outcomes

and to compare. You mentioned the sports ball stuff. Only one team is going to win the Super Bowl, so the rest of the team's essentially and uh that's you know you can look at somebody who's doing something and maybe they've got a bigger audience than you or they're doing something that you aspire to do and if you start comparing it's just going to sap the motivation that you have to do the thing that's in front of you but the way to get to the point where that person is is just to do the thing consistently. And over time, the results are, are going to come. I mean, I'm in the middle of building an email list. I know exactly what that's like. So yeah. But, uh, then from the quarterly plan, uh, comes the weekly plan.

And this is the switch then from the aspirational, or maybe not aspirational, maybe that's the wrong word, but the conceptual stuff, that's the thinking about the vision and the values and what Cal talks about is the roots document. I like that term roots document, by the way, because it feels like that's the thing that grounds you. The roots are the thing that holds the tree upright. So that is worth considering on a regular basis. But then when it comes to scheduling your day and your week, you got to actually do the stuff. And that's where it becomes more tactical. And it's about the time, energy, and attention management, which is why focus is a superpower for people who are going to actually pay attention to this and try to manage it well, they're going to be starting from a better place than the people who

are just trying to manage their time, in my opinion. But the weekly plan then is essentially what are the big things that are going to be happening during this week. And ideally that happens on a Sunday afternoon, although occasionally that will happen first thing Monday morning. that will happen first thing Monday morning. However, I've made a change with this and I have been doing the weekly planning inside of Obsidian. And basically I'm using the periodic notes plugin. Maybe we'll get deep into this a little bit later, but I've got a template which is just dropping in, you know, this is the couple different sections. And then I'll look at my calendar and I'll bring stuff over there. These are the meetings that are going to happen, the podcast recordings that are going to happen. I'll also pull in some tasks for the week using a query in the Obsidian task plugin. Again, we can get into the details later maybe, but

that's just showing me like these are the big things that are due this week. showing me like these are the big things that are due this week. And that's being displayed then for me. And I look at that whenever I sit down to make my daily plan, which is always analog. I've been using the fancy notebook that I have. And then I'll plan my day there with the time blocking. And then I'll identify the big tasks that I need to get done again using the weekly plan in Obsidian as the reference. But I am using the little stand with the cards as well because I've got one actually at my desk here at home in my home office but I've also got one at the co-working space because occasionally I'll be working from there. And when I get to wherever I'm going to be working for the day, I will transfer those items that are on the list, not the whole time block plan, but just like this is my hit list for today.

And I'll put that on the card and I'll prop that up and just off to the side of my monitor. So it's always in front of me as I'm going throughout my day. And I think it's important that that is analog. And Cal even talked about this in a recent podcast episode when he was revisiting this idea of multi-scale planning. He talks about how you want to use digital tools for some of the big picture stuff. But when it comes to the day-to-day stuff, you don't constantly want to be checking that screen for the list. And I'm kind of curious what you think about that. Because I'm at my computer all day. I could theoretically have that list up there, but I just really enjoy having that analog. There's something about making that list and then putting

it off to the side. And then having that kind of in my peripheral vision as I'm working on the work tasks on the digital tools in front of me, it kind of helps me, I feel, to monotask the thing that's in front of me. I'm editing a video or I'm writing something. I'm not jumping back and forth between a bunch of different things, my task manager being one of them, so I can look at that list because I've already transferred it to the note card and it's off to the right. Yeah, I definitely feel like what I call the last mile of productivity, being analog, is something that I've been experimenting with

off and on over the years, but it seems to be really landing with me in this last year. And I do think it helps. I don't think my system, I'm not somebody who could run an entirely paperless system. I'm sorry, an entirely paper-based or analog system i know there are people that do that uh joe occasionally does

that over on uh with you you know joe bule does that sometimes i don't know if he's doing it now or not but uh that's great but i need i need a system i'll talk about when i go through how i do this stuff but i also think that having the card, filling in the card, even some of the paper journaling stuff, I find useful. And I keep coming back to Chris Bailey's most recent book, Calm. And the quote in there that I highlighted was, you know, digital tools are efficient and analog tools are thoughtful or i think that thoughtful wasn't the word he used it was um meaningful analog tools are for something more meaningful and i think that that process of filling in the card of the stuff i'm going to do today

which for me is usually done the night before. But seeing that there, it's like a little bit of a contract, right? It's more of a contract because it's on a piece of paper than it would be if it was in a widget on my screen. And it's less convenient. I mean, if I had it on a widget on my screen, it would also be on my phone and my iPad and my future Apple glasses or whatever. It'd be everywhere. This is just on my desk, but it seems to work for me. And I'll get into that more when it's my turn, I guess. Yeah, I like the term that you used, the last mile. I feel like that's a great description for this.

I'm also reminded of something that Sean Block said, that computers are for creating. And I feel like that applies here too. Also with the plans, like you can have the computers are for creating the high level plans, but it's also the tool that I use for the actual creation of the media and the content and the things like that. But for whatever reason, the actual management of the daily tasks in the digital task system just feels icky to me. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like fingernails on the blackboard. It just feels wrong and it just causes me to recoil when I think about something like that determining what I am going to do day to day. And yeah, I'm using it as the basis for it, but there's just something about,

okay, so thank you for your input, task manager, but I am going to now decide what is really important as I make this plan. I'll take it from here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And i'll take it from here yeah yeah yeah exactly and i'll get it across the finish line thank you very much i mean one of the things i did this year is i when i put it on a card i check it off in omni focus and purists are like saying well then your omni focus data is bad you checked it off as monday and you didn't do it until tuesday doesn't matter i don't care i never look at that stuff you know but to me it's okay, now I have officially taken the task out of the bank, which is, you know, kind of the, the, the big list of tasks you get with your digital task management, whether it's OmniFocus or Obsidian or reminders or whatever. Now I've taken it off of that and I've put it

into these cards for this last mile. And that's that, you know, it's no longer in my digital system. It's here on this card and this is the one place in the world where it's going to be. And I don't know, it kind of works. One of the questions I had for you on your system was, as you were talking about it, you're saying you use the cards, but you also use the UGMAC journal. Why don't you just write your tasks on the daily page in the journal? why don't you just write your tasks on the daily page in the journal? I do do that, but then I don't have the journal out on my desk as often as I used to.

I started doing that and I called it my hybrid digital bullet journal when I was working from home all the time. When COVID had started, I figured that was the time. If I was ever going to embrace a purely analog system, this was the time. And I found that the purely analog thing didn't work for me either. So I did have elements of it which were still digital. But over time, I have found that I don't like capturing things to that journal. I will occasionally take out that journal and go to a blank page and just start mapping out things and start writing things. But the notes will either be on the card because it's smaller. I literally have one right now. It sits on my mouse pad because I have a bigger... I've Ugmonk everything in my office. But I have this leather mouse pad, which is a little bit bigger.

So there's plenty of room for me to move the mouse. And then also I've got the note card, which is right below the fountain pen that I'm choosing to use today. And that just fits much better. I can have that even though I have a much smaller office at the co-working space. I still have plenty of room for the card and the pen and it's just easier for me to to capture something that way so that's the one that's always going to be at like at my my fingertips the the notebook is

purely for when I'm going to be doing the planning stuff at the beginning of the day, or ideally the night before. Honestly, often it happens at the beginning of my day. But then I'll write that down in the notebook, and I'll do that in a place where I'm not actually working. At the co-working space, they have these booths out in the big co-working space with the floor-to-ceiling windows. So I'll go out there, sun's rising over the river. It looks really nice. That's a great place to do my daily planning. But then when I go back into the little fishbowl cubicle thing that I have back into the hallway, that's when I'll transfer it to the note card. So it's a different mode and I don't really know

how to describe it, but it just feels natural to me. I feel like it's a little bit of a manager maker thing. Like you're putting yourself in a different space. You're using a different medium. The manager has a different set of tools from the maker. Um, the, uh, I, I was, the question was a bit of a setup because I recently asked myself that too, cause I do, I do some paper journaling. I'll talk about a minute and why not put it down in my little book? But I think that the card on the desk looking back at me all day, that's a useful feedback. And I like the card. I like pulling it up and adding things to it quickly if something comes up. I even like the process of filling out the cards. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I think maybe it's my turn.

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only for a limited time, so claim your $75 credit right now at Indeed.com slash Focused. That's I-N-D-E-E-D.com slash Focused, and show your support for the show by saying that you heard about it here on this podcast terms and conditions apply need to hire you need indeed our thanks to indeed for the support of the focus podcast and all of relay fm we've talked on the show about roles in arete but you know to give you the the very short version um i was looking for a system to kind of ground myself and i was looking you know so much of the productivity um material talks about you got to have you know life-changing projects and whatnot and that stuff never

worked for me and then i kind of stumbled backward into roles, which is the foundation of the roles I serve, you know, as a dad, as a husband, as a Max Barkey, as a healthy human. So I've got different ones. So I've identified my roles. And there's this ancient Greek term, arete, that talks about the ideal man or the virtuous man. There's different translations. But, you know, the idea that these Greeks had was, you know, what is the ideal man? They were man. There's different translations, but the idea that these Greeks had was, what is the ideal man? They were asking these questions that we still haven't answered. And arete is the term they use. And I loved it. I used it in law school, and then it came back to me 10 years ago or so. And I use it now with each role. So as a father, I've defined what I think the ideal father would be.

And I'm trying to become that. And it's for every role in my life. That's the real short version. But so I have these lofty goals and these lofty ideas of my roles in life and my arete. And my goal is before they put me in the ground to get as close as I can to that ideal. Maybe I'll never get there, probably won't get there, but if I'm closer, that's the goal. But then the question becomes, well, that's great. You wrote all that down. You did all that navel gazing. How does

that translate into what you're going to do next Tuesday? And that's where this planning stuff comes in. That's where that gives you the bridge to get from the roles in the RIT to next Tuesday. And I, like Mike, I mean, it's funny, so many of us that think about this stuff, we all land on that quarter as a way to do it because it's just so good as a, you know, as a, as an increment of time for planning as a human being, I think the quarter is like the perfect unit. It's, it's long enough that you can make progress, but short enough that you're accountable. You know, it's long enough. You can pull something big off, but short enough that, you know, you don't lose track of it like you do over 12 months. And it's just the perfect

increment of time for this stuff. And it does not surprise me that Cal Newport multi-scale planning uses quarters and Mike Schmitz uses quarters and the 12-week yearbook uses quarters and Sparky uses quarters and probably you are using quarters too. It just seems like such a great increment of time. So I fully adopted that. What I do each quarter is I try to do a retreat. I wish I was as good at this as Mike Schmitz. You get out to an offsite location. Like I know you guys have like a family cabin you can retreat to. You've been doing some of those little mini places lately. That's cool.

They're less expensive where you live and you have your own car. That helps. Where I live, they're more expensive and my wife and I share a car. So me just saying, I'm going to take the car for three days and go out into the woods. She would be probably fine with getting me out of the house, but she wouldn't be fine with not having a car if she has to go to work. So it's just harder for me to pull this off. But I really want to get better at doing them off-site. That being said, I do them quarterly. I take that very seriously. And often, I do them off-site locally.

Someplace that I can get to on a bike is basically where I go. And I try to give it a half day. And I do think about distinctly that this is a manager role, not a maker role. I think that's important when you do something like this, when you're trying to build that bridge from your lofty ideals to your daily list, treat it as a manager task because that's a manager problem. The side of you that's making the stuff that's fulfilling the lofty goals, that's your maker. But your manager needs to get you there.

it's fulfilling the lofty goals that's your maker, but your manager needs to get you there. So when I do these quarterly retreats, I make a point, I don't write blog posts or plan field guides or podcasts. I just sit there and think about how am I going to move the ball forward on my RTA with these roles. And I really treat it as a manager task. So get away from the house. If I have to, I can do it at the house, but I even like do it in a different part of the house. I just really try to separate where I do my maker work from this, this project with me so far. Yep. Okay. Um, so my, my quarterly plan starts with an audit of my roles and I just go through them. How am I doing? How are the RTA definitions? What have I done? And it's very backward facing at the beginning of the process. You know, I go back and read what I wrote down, you know, three months ago about how I was doing,

how I wanted to get better. And often there are areas of emphasis in a quarter last or this year, as we finish up this year, we had some family challenges that required a lot of my time. So several of my quarters, I accounted for that saying, okay, this quarter, I'm going to spend a lot of time helping this family member with something challenging. And, you know, I want to get better at this and be more useful to her and supportive

and all these things. And then I would look at it at the end of the quarter. Well, how'd I do on that? I specifically called out that one role for this quarter that was going to get an area of emphasis. Did I do good at it? Where was I good? Where was I bad? How can I improve on that? So I go through and question myself about this stuff. And I do that on each role as part of this quarterly plan. And then I go through and question myself about this stuff. And I do that on each role as part of this quarterly plan. And then I go through back through each, each, each role. And then I decide, okay, so what is it that I need to do going forward to move this closer to the RIT? And, and I usually have a list and that's when things start getting written down in terms of like actionable tasks. And a lot of times it turns into contact with other people too. Like

I'm sure Mike has, Schmitz has been on the receiving end of some emails from me around the end of a quarter where I thought about something that we should do on this show. And I blast out emails to Mike saying, let's do this or that. And it's kind of the time where, you know, I kind of developed that, that part of it. And it usually takes me a day kind of to go through and do all this stuff, but I find it very enriching. I feel like there, there's a feeling you get from the end of it. Like, yeah, I am making my life matter. And I know this sounds super like cringy when I say it, but it's true.

And I think having that time to like reflect on it and then pull it into future action is very inspiring to me. Like, oh yeah, I can get better at this. I can be a better human if I just put this effort in. And so, so the process for me and I, we, in the labs, we've gone through it and I could talk a long time, but basically it's a very reflective process of looking backward and then taking the wisdom from what you failed at and what you succeeded at and turn it into a plan going forward for the next three months. And then also, then you get into projects like, okay, so what's a project that I need to work on as part of this RTA pursuit? Or what's a habit I need to work on? Like with some of these roles, habits are way more

powerful than projects. So you just figure that out and then you try to put that into action for the next quarter and you write it all down. Because what you want to do is have a source document you can look back at as you go through the quarter, as you're like, well, what was I supposed to be doing? Or like, how come I'm spending so much time on this family thing and not doing my work? And then you look back, oh yeah, I knew this was coming and I planned for that. That's okay. So it just gives you a feedback mechanism. And ideally, I think the real payoff of writing it down is when you get to the next quarterly review and you read it and you can put yourself back in that headspace and then pull yourself back and kind of figure out

where adjustments need to be made. So quarterly is huge. That's where you make the big decisions. That's where the manager is earning his pay. Then at the month level, I do a smaller version of that. I don't go through each role and analyze them, but instead I look, okay, so what were the projects and habits I took on? How did I do in the last month? Am I going to be able to hit my target? Do I need to, you know, do I need to pick this one up? A couple of times halfway through, I've realized, you know, I decided I was going to make this quarter all about this thing, but you know, events have overtaken me and I realized I'm not going to be able to. This is particularly true when you've got other humans in your life, right? Sometimes things come up and you need to help them out or be more involved with something and maybe some other project has to get put on

the back burner. So it gives me like a check-in on the quarterly plan at the month level. It's not as intense and I get why a lot of people, Mike and Cal Newport would not bother with it, but for me, it gives me a kind of refresh and it is really a bridge of the bridge, right? It really lets me go from the lofty ideas of the quarterly planning to the much more mechanical, tactical, weekly level. And it gives me kind of something in the middle. I also really like the turning of the month. It's so silly that it's the 31st one day and it's the first of the next day, but I feel refreshed for some reason. It's just like the new year effect and that works on me. So I take advantage of it. One of the things I like to do during that month review is just fill out my UGMON cards for the next month. I get a stack of 30 of them. I put the date and the weekday at the top of each one.

I lay them out on my desk Monday through Sunday. And there are some repeating tasks that I don't even bother putting in a system. Like I know on the 15th of every month, I'm going to pick the labs content for the next month. You know, I know every, you know, Thursday I'm going to record the lab report podcast.

I know, you know, there's certain things that just happen and I just write them on the cards then. So I don't need to track them anywhere else. And, and that there's something to that. Right. And then, then looking at the calendar for the next month, okay, what's the big stuff coming. And, and you look at that in comparison to your

quarterly plan, it just gives you kind of a structure. And again, this is a manager test, not a maker task, but it helps me out. And, and so I find the practice somewhat useful. And so I find the practice somewhat useful. I have to admit, I really like the idea of implementing 43 folders with 43 note cards. Okay, there you go. That's the picture I get of you having all your note cards for the next month being planned out. The observation with your system is it feels like you have purposely figure out a system that feels natural to you and the thing that really makes that click i think maybe you can respond to this and say whether you agree or disagree but you kind of mentioned like you you have the quarterly plan and then you look at

it again when you do the next quarter. And I feel like it's not until you've done multiples of these that things really start to click. You don't really know what's working until you've done a couple iterations. But once you do that, then you kind of just know what's working without all the data. You have a feel for this worked, this didn't, and this is what I'm going to change. Yeah, totally. And you do have to get some reps in. One of the things you do that I don't is you're heavy on scoring. And I admire that.

You've got all these DataView plugins with Obsidian, And you really get things down to a score in a lot of areas of your life, which I think is a great objective feedback, or I'm way more touchy-feely. I don't look at my score as a father. I just say, okay, this is Arte. Where am I getting better at this, and where am I not getting better at this and how can I get better? I don't score myself so much as I just say, what progress can I make on the journey in the next month? And it's much more hippie and nebulous, but I have found over time that for me, it's very encouraging. Like I said, hey, I got a 4.6 as a dad this month i i don't that doesn't work but if i say oh yeah i finally nailed down this thing where i want to um tell my daughter

something she's good at at least once a week you know and that like that's okay good dad you're you're doing better no now what else you know and and um and so that's kind of the way I do it. And I don't think that my way is right or Mike's way is right. I think this is a very personal journey, and you have to figure it out for yourself. But I'm telling you, if you get the reps in, you'll figure out what works for you. But you got to do the reps. Yep. All right.

So the month is a much less intense quarter for me. And then we get to the weekly planning. And the weekly planning for me, I've been trying to put time estimates in these, but it's roughly an hour on Sundays. And I am religious about that. Every Sunday I do it. I look forward to it. It's funny because I'm not normally a manager type. I'm normally a maker type. But now that I've kind of embraced the system, I actually like the process of going through and setting the week. And that's when I do the same thing, though, because I write down every week how I'm doing

and what went well and what didn't go well. I have an expectation going into a week, and sometimes it doesn't get satisfied. I try to figure out why and what can I do next time to make sure that doesn't happen. Sometimes, just last week for me, it was exceeding expectations, giving myself more to do than I really had time to do. And of course I failed at that. And that's a lesson that I need to learn, but I get 52 chances a week to get better or 52 chances a year to get better at it. So I do a little bit of, you know, again, backward and forward looking. And then I, you know, then I get to the digital tools for me, OmniFocus, Fantastical, you know, these banks of tasks and, and, and events. And then I start filling in the RTA around that. Like if I look at

fantastic, how this person this week, as we record, this is busy for me. I've got a obsidian field guide webinar. I've got three field guides. I'm I've got a lot going on, but I do have RTA bits I want to work on. And I say, okay, well, it looks to me like Thursday is almost wide open. bits I want to work on. And I say, okay, well, it looks to me like Thursday is almost wide open. What's the arete I'm going to go after that day? And I realize that there's any Greek scholars listening that I am completely bastardizing the word arete. I've changed it to my own definition. But either way, I use that and it inspires me. And that gets done at the weekly level. That's where we get tactical with the big lofty stuff. And then finally, to get back to this last mile of productivity,

I like these analog tools, Mike. I bought the Ugmonk cards, but I also have the Ugmonk Week card. So it's one card that is about, I don't know, it looks like about eight and a half wide and about three inches high. And it's designated for each day of the week with Monday at the beginning, as a gentleman would do. And I fill that out and it's got all my appointments for the week and stuff like right now I'm looking at mine for this week and Friday the 17th and Saturday the 18th, it just says record productivity field guide with big lines through it. And now if anybody says,

hey, you want to do something with me on Friday? I say, Nope, I'm already booked. My UGMONC card will not let me see you. And, uh, and that, that feels good to me to kind of have that analog tool there, uh, staring back at me in the face. You know, I also do the same thing on our, um, on the focus calendar, but it all, it all kind of ties together for me nice yeah the the ugmonk weekly cards are great i also have that but i haven't really used it it never really stuck for me and the weekly planning and obsidian just did but yeah i do think those are that's a great great product and uh i think that's the the place that is place that was the hardest for me to find the thing that worked

was the weekly plan. The daily planning was easy. The quarterly planning, I've been doing that for a while. The vision and values stuff, I've had that for a while. But the weekly plan was kind of the missing piece for me. Is there a piece of this that is harder for you to follow through on? No, I feel like this stuff has come pretty natural to me because I kind of grew it organically. Yeah. The, the, the linchpin for me was figuring out the roles in the RTA. And then I'm very

inspired by that and I want to make it happen. So now I do what it takes. And it's just over the years, I've kind of developed slowly through iteration. I think there's just such a role of self-review and iteration for productivity stuff that you need to try and just figure out what works for you and just keep like narrowing your aim. And eventually you're going to hit the bullseye. And I've been doing it long enough. I kind of nailed this stuff down for me, but I'm always also playing with stuff like recently, because I've historically written all this stuff down in Obsidian. Like I've got a massive file here in Obsidian with all my reviews in it quarterly, monthly, weekly, and they were all linked together.

And I realized that I almost never look for those links. You know, I, I look for them when I'm doing the work. Like I'm like, well, what was, you know, where was I last year on this? Or where was I last quarter on this? And, and I'll go look it up, but it's not like it just you know pops into my existence as i'm working through my day it doesn't you know the idea of obsidian links to me is they should they should surprise and delight me and these don't really do that they're just it's just data i've got in there um for a while years ago i used to do this in day one uh both of these are double encrypted you know end-to-end databases, because I feel like this is personal stuff and I don't want anybody else reading it. And I have been experimenting just recently with these tote books. I got some tote books from

Studio Neat, and I'd been doing some daily journaling in them. I like the idea of the time blocking by analog. I have been trying to make time blocking work digitally for years, where I set them all up in my Fantastical planner or whatever. And then my watch gets the notifications, time to switch to this thing, blah, blah, blah. But it just never really lands for me. And so, I don't know, about six months ago, I started putting them in these tote books. In fact, I can tell you it was March because I'm looking at the March book right in front of me. And writing them down with analog tools worked. I actually tried for a while to put them on the back of my UGMAT card, like just turn it on the other side and just write down the center, you know, six, eight, 10, 12 through 20,

you know, just for the hours. And then I would just write down the plan versus what happened during the day. And that didn't really work for me either because it's on the back of the card and I forget to update it. So I started just doing a notebook with some journaling in it, but not all journaling. And that seems to be working pretty well for me. And I've just last quarter, I just got a blank, I'm sorry, blank tote book, which is the studio neat little notebook. And I just put a label on it that said reviews. So I did the Q for 2023 review in it just with paper. And I did the November monthly review in it with paper. And it's too early to tell. Whenever I try something new, I think there's an initial honeymoon phase.

This doesn't give me links to anything. It's only in one place. If the house burns down, I lose it. Yada, yada, yada. But going back to Chris's idea of meaningfulness versus efficiency, I don't think I'm as interested in efficiency in this process as I am making it work. And I may go into next year keeping these analog, uh you know is a shock and surprise to myself but that's something i'm playing with right now i'm not going to commit well i like the idea of the full analog for the larger review i feel like anytime you insert a digital device into that process you are opening a potential

door to distraction which can sabotage the whole thing so i haven't i myself have not found the right tool for that for me yet though well that's my my version of cal's multi-scale planning. So I go quarterly, monthly, weekly. And then when I get down to the day, I've got the card, which is the last mile of productivity. And I just try to get the work done. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Factor. This holiday season, you might be looking for nutritious, convenient meals to help keep you energized on jam-packed days, and Factor is America's number one ready-to-eat meal delivery service, so it can help you fuel up fast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef-prepared, dietician-approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. You'll save time, you'll eat well, and you'll stay on track with your healthy lifestyle while tackling all of your

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But then I realized that over the last five or so years, I've actually developed an annual planning thing without realizing it. How's that? realizing it. How's that? Well, let's walk through what you do because I still don't do a whole lot with the annual planning, but I do do a couple of things with the new year calendar. So maybe I could talk about some of that stuff. This whole idea of roles in RTA to me are fundamental to me. They really work. And as I said earlier, everybody's different. But I love this idea of being on the same struggle journey that Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and Marcus Aurelius, all these people were on to figure it out.

And I feel like that connection with these old words helps me. And I don't know, about five years ago, actually, now that I look at it, it was longer than five years ago. At least, I know it was while Obama was still president. So that's at least 2015. But anyway, I started going away on my birthday. And so I would just go away on my birthday and give myself kind of a scorecard rating thing. But very quickly, that turned into a roles audit. I talked earlier about I have these roles in this ROT.

But I really enjoy my birthday getting away and just looking at those roles very carefully. Like, is this still a role that I serve? I mean, like for many, many years, one of my roles was lawyer and it isn't anymore. You know, as we hit January, it'll be two years. That has not been in one of my roles. And it was from one of those birthday reviews that I started to question whether that was a role I wanted anymore. And, you know, there are some that are non-negotiable, you know, your husband, father, et cetera, but, but there are other roles you'll pick up that, that you can throw overboard. And so on my birthday, I go through and the first question is, is this a role I want? And if it is,

how are you doing really like write 10 pages on this role, kind of, you know, really dredge it all out of your brain at this point, how you're doing, and get to the bottom of it. And what is it that you really want out of this? And what do you really want to do? So it is an annual review of sorts. And that stuff does translate into quarterly planning. But there's no actual planning done. It's more of just a reflection on the roles, but I really enjoy doing it and I can write a lot about it once a year. And I often get insight to myself that I didn't have otherwise. So is that an annual review? I don't know. What do you say? Uh, well, I think having heard how you define this section on annual planning,

I think I'm more in alignment. I'm more on board with it now. The fact that there is not much planning going on with the annual review. I think annual review maybe is a good term. And I don't have a formal process for this, but you've kind of inspired me because I feel like this is powerful. And the larger timescale in terms of review, I feel like that fits in perfectly with the whole concept of the gap and the gain. So the year and even longer than that,

like a five-year window, that's a long time. And if you were to look back at where did I start, you know, how far back you want to go to where I am right now, you can create a lot of positive momentum, I feel, in terms of look at all the growth that has happened while I was focusing on the process and just showing up every day. focusing on the process and just showing up every day. And I feel like this is kind of, my wife and I are in the middle of kind of doing this right now because as I mentioned earlier, we're going through this life theme cohort. And she brought up in the first session, the original thing that kind of instigated all this for us was her and I getting away and creating this vision for where we wanted our family to be by the time our kids got to be teenagers. And she was sharing that she was reflecting on that recently. And it was encouraging to her because she was able to see like, well,

we're on the right path. And obviously we still have a ways to go, but we're starting to realize pieces of that vision that we had created all those years ago when we sat down and made the document. And I feel like doing that on an annual basis in terms of looking backwards and appreciating what has actually happened, that makes a ton of sense to me. That makes a ton of sense to me. I'm still not going to set my intentions or the plan for the year because every time I've tried to do that, they've been just completely wrong. Even the quarterly ones shift and move a lot. So I don't think annual planning is the thing I would encourage anyone to do. But an annual review, yeah, I can get on board with that. To me, it's even more nuanced than that. I'll share in my

father role. I have taken a very active role in my children's lives. I wanted to be there for them. I want them to know that I've got their back. But they're both now in their 20s, but they're both now in their twenties and doing it through this kind of birthday review thing. I realized that the RTA of a parent of a 20 year old, isn't the same as a parent of a teenager. And like one of the things I'm trying to do, one of the principles or the RTA principles I'm working on is I let them make some of their own mistakes. I don't always try to, to, um, to coach them around these stuff. So long as it's not, you know, a critical mistake, I almost want them to make some mistakes and, and,

but as a father, that means sometimes I have to sit back and just be ready to deal with the after, after effects. as a father that means sometimes i have to sit back and just be ready to deal with the after after effects and like that wasn't in my job description as a teenager parent right as much so like it changes and so i find that when i go through this birthday thing sometimes the definitions change so i'm not saying that it's really turning into projects and habits or whatever, but the actual, the compass destination sometimes adjusts. And this once a year thing gives me a chance to do that where I don't really take the time to think about it in the quarterly, in the monthly reviews. And doing it on the birthday to me was the trick. It really started as a lark. I think one year on my birthday, everybody was at

work and I was alone. I'm like, well, maybe I'll just go think about things, you know? And, and it was me and Jason talked about it on this podcast, like in its first year. But it just, it just really works for me on the birthday. And it doesn't work for me with respect to the new year. Like the whole thing with a new year, I think is just a minefield. You know, I avoid that, but the birthday, I think that's a good time to reflect on your life. I like that. Uh, I don't think the birthday works for me because my birthday tends to be around a major holiday. So usually, uh, that is when we are getting together with uh extended family members which is also the problem i feel like with doing this sort of thing on january 1st yeah but i do like the

idea of picking a date and that is the day that i'm going to do an annual review. And I feel like the date is sort of arbitrary, whatever is natural and fits for you. And that's cool. I like the way that you stumbled into it with your birthday. And I kind of wish that could be the case for me. And kind of what I'm thinking about is, well, since the birthday is not going to work, is there a way that I can make this or I can apply this still? And I think there is. It's just, I got to pick a different day. That's all. I think I have the day. Groundhog Day. That's a good one. Yeah. All right. Well, that works for me. You're right. It's not really planning. I don't know what it is, but it's a thing I do. And the reason I wanted to save it till the end is because it has nothing to do with this quarterly, monthly, weekly cycle I'm in.

It's a completely different thing. I think the first time, as I figured out this roles and RTA thing, that was the first thing I did is I wrote down the definitions and stuff for myself. And I realized that those are not static. I wrote down the definitions and stuff for myself, and I realized that those are not static, and I needed a way to kind of check in on them, and the birthday seemed like the time to do it. And again, there is something about that date that's refreshing to me. It's like, okay, got another year of my life. What am I going to do with it, and how am I, and what are the things that are important to me now? It just gave me a framework to hang that on.

I'm not trying to, if you're listening, I'm not trying to convince you to do all my weird Greek stuff, but it works for me and you need to find what works for you. That's kind of what we're saying. I think another way that this could work for me without having to pick a different day could just be to modify the approach on the personal retreat a little bit once a year. So whether that's the first one of the year or the third

one of the year or whatever, a 12-month period where I do the same personal retreat process in terms of thinking through what has happened over the last period of time, but extending that out over the full 12 months instead of just the past three months. I feel like that would be a pretty easy way to start moving in this direction. Or am I missing the point here? No, I think that'd be fine. Although, to me, I find it enriching to do a quarterly plan, but I also find it exhausting. I'm not sure I'd want to do both of those things

in the same event. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Whisper Memos, a new sponsor to the podcast and one for which I am already sold. I love the idea of voice-to-text transcription, and it's getting really good these days, and Whisper Memos is a perfect implementation of it. Whisper Memos lets you record audio memos to your iPhone and sends a transcription back to your email within seconds. It uses OpenAI Whisper for very accurate transcriptions, which I can attest to. And it's so much better than iOS dictation. And GPT will divide the text into paragraphs based on the talking points. So you get a super digestible email, not just a wall of text.

You've really got to try this out, gang. You get 10 free memos when you download the app so you can kick the tires on it. The memos can be up to 15 minutes long. It auto-detects the paragraphs. It auto detects the language. They've got a thing called private mode where they delete the memo after they send it to you. And the transcription is really accurate. Something that really landed for me is that you can put a widget on your home screen and you can just start dictating the memo right from there. I love that. If you're on the go and you want to capture ideas, this is a great way to do it. Whisper memos, you want to check it out. You can also use Whisper memos on your Apple Watch. Just start recording by tapping a complication or use the action button on your Apple Watch Ultra for this.

And the Apple Watch app works with Wi-Fi, cellular, or offline, so you can take it on your run off the grid and still record voice memos. Plus, there's a new Zapier integration that allows you to send your thoughts to virtually any productivity app, including Notion or Trello. This app is a great idea, and it's well executed. You'll want to check it out. Whisper Memos. You can capture all of your best ideas and thoughts. Just go to whispermemos.com. That's whispermemos.com. Check it out now. And our thanks to Whisper Memos for their support of the Focus Podcast and all of RelayFM. Mike, we haven't covered shiny new objects lately, but you have an entry in the outline

that says, David, don't click this link until we get there. Can I click this link? Uh, you can click the link, but before you, uh, you remark on this, I have to tell you that this is a shiny new object that I paid $0 for. Okay. So I see it now on the screen there is a so sailor is a manufacturer of a fountain pens and uh and both mike and i are fans of sailor when when we use fountain pens and there's a famous sailor called the king of pins fountain pin which of course is the king of pens. And it sounds like you got one. It is, but there's a whole nother level here to the king of pen. There is the ebonite material, which I don't even know exactly what the benefits are of this. It's just really fancy and really expensive.

And then the Naganata Togi, that is a hand-ground nib that if you hold it kind of perpendicular to the writing surface, it's real thin. But then as you bring it down more parallel with the writing surface, then it gets wider. So a while back, we did a members episode for the the the annual special and we walked through our pen collections and one of the questions that you asked me was do you have a whale pen yeah like a a grail pen like the one that you just really want but you can't justify spending that much money on it. Yeah. I've been thinking about that since you asked me and the grail pen for me has a couple of different criteria and it is a king of pen. It is a pen made of ebonite and it is a pen with a fancy Naginata Togi nib. So Anderson pens had one of these and I traded in about 20 other pens because I just,

I have amassed a collection over the years and I've figured out which ones I really like. So I have a bunch of them, which are nice, but they're not great. And I just don't use them all that often. So I was thinking, well, I could try to sell these. Where do I try to sell them? I could sell them like the pen addict Slack, but i don't want to create the separate messages for all of these i don't want to misrepresent any of these pens because well i do know a bit about pens i don't know as much as the people out there i don't want to tick anybody off because oh you said it was this and it's actually that so i brought him into anderson pens and i'm like can i just trade these into you and he's like well i well, I can't give you, you know, top dollar for him, but we'll see what

we can do. And, uh, went back and forth a little bit and I'm like, is there anything in the store that, you know, if you got a little bit more margin on you, you could give me a little bit of a better of a deal. And he's like, all right, how about this? Yeah. So, yeah, uh, I have this with, uh, uh, Naginata Togi broad nib, and it's amazing. Well, you know, having just one or two really good ones, there's something to be said for that.

Yep, totally. So this is this if there was going to be like a pen for like the fancy calligraphy, you know, writing the handwritten letters to people. This is the pen for that. It's a broad nib, so it's quite a bit bigger than some of the ones. I'm not using this on the Ugmonk cards. The cards are too small for me to write any amount of text that's legible with this type of pen. But it is so buttery smooth, and it's it's uh absolutely a joy to use um and uh yeah i never thought i would would own this pen but this is my shiny new object all right well since you manifested that i'm going to tell you about my my my in-game pen someday you know what i'll probably never get this because i

don't use fountain pens enough but the the Nakaya is another Japanese manufacturer, and they make one called the dorsal fin. And I was at a pen show with Mike Hurley and Brad, and I had mentioned on the show that I thought these were cooling pens, and a guy walked up to me who had listened to the show. He says, you want to play with my dorsal fin? And that's, you know, not creepy. So I played with his dorsal fin and that's you know that's not creepy and so i i played with his dorsal fin pin so nice yeah someday i'm gonna i i would trade all of my pins frankly for one of these and i think that'd be all i'd use and that'd be it but yeah but i

don't know i i i have kids college tuitions i got i got all sorts of important things. I got to buy a pair of these Apple Vision Pro things. So I'm going to spend all my money next year. But someday I may get one of these dorsal fins. I think that that's the end game pin for me. Although I have to say, they look cool, but they also feel really good in your hand. It's just a strange pin. Just to describe if you're listening,

it's got like a an arc to it that fits in your hand so it's not it's straight but it also has like a curve to it and that's it's kind of nice but anyway and i think they they show up in america like once or twice a year like they make a couple of them and then you can buy them it's a very rare and unique pin yeah i'm looking at one right now two thousand dollars yeah that's not going to happen anytime soon yeah but yeah that's uh that's the kind of thing i like the kind of dorsal fin although you know it's funny mike i've said it on the show before but i'm really enjoying using pencils again i'm using all that journaling i was telling you about i've been doing in graphite

and uh it's kind of fun i. I like the therapy of sharpening it and like stopping and thinking for a minute. I mean, one of the things I've really tried to embrace this last year is some of this review stuff we talked about today is stop. I want to stop thinking about it as something that needs to be done as quickly as possible. I actually want to intentionally slow it down, which is why I'm thinking about maybe handwriting some of these out and, and doing some of that. So I think I might be getting a little more insight going slower. Nice. We also are trying to add a segment to the show about books we're reading. And I think it'd be fun to check in. I'm a little intimidated by this topic, frankly, because you read so many

books. It takes me longer, but Mike, what are you reading these days? I am reading a book for Bookworm currently that I really, really enjoy, and I'm sure is going to make its way over to Focus at some point. That is Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. And this one is just fascinating. I've read a couple Adam Grant books before. The last one was Think Again. And this one, I mean, it's right in the name. It's really about realizing your full potential. on the focus podcast before, but he's a really good writer and he has a lot of these like pithy one-liners that are kind of new ways of thinking about some of these things that I've read about and even studied myself for a, for a long time. There's a lot of new stuff in here. There's some really cool visuals in here. Um, and I did not know that Adam Grant was actually a, uh, a diver at one point with aspirations of making the, uh, the U S Olympic diving team.

But, uh, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good one. I'm not quite finished with it yet. And we're going to review the whole thing in its entirety for, uh, for bookworm, but I'm, I'm really enjoying this one and, uh, kind of perfect book for our audience. I feel. All right. I've added to my list. Um, you know, because you read so many books, I think my condition on us adding this segment is that you only tell us the good ones. Is that fair? Sure. Sure. That's fine. Just share the ones that are good. Yeah. So anybody listening knows that if you talk about in the show, it's something you should read. I've got a good one.

Morgan household has a new book called same as ever, which I thought was kind of interesting because, you know, I've studied Buddhism and the idea that of impermanence is fundamental to it. And I really believe that is true. And his book is same as ever a guide to what never changes. Well, I,

my whole point is everything is changing and uh but this you know the way it's kind of a play on words but what he's doing is taking concepts that don't change over time with human nature i think is really what he's aiming at with this book and i'm about a third of the way through it and i've got tons of highlights and i i'm really enjoying it and it's a it's an easy read too It's not super long and it's written. Um, it's written in a way that that's easy to digest and each chapter is a unique, so you can pick it up and read it anywhere and just kind of do one chapter at a time. It's a good book. Same as ever by Morgan Housel, same guy who wrote the psychology of money. Awesome. I have that one, just haven't started it yet. Looks really good though.

All right. I think that wraps it up for today. We are The Focus Podcast. Thank you for listening. You can learn more about us over at relay.fm. If you want to join the membership program for Focus and get the Deep Focus episodes, which are the ad-free longer episodes of the show, you can do so at relay.fm slash focused. If you want to get one of those new Focus calendars before we hit the new year, we've got links in the notes for it. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next time.