Focused - 197: Feel Good Productivity

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Welcome to Focus, the Productivity Podcast, but more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and 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. Looking forward to talking about feel-good productivity with you today on the podcast

and other things that grow out of that. Yeah. This is an interesting topic, which has been popular lately because Ali Abdel wrote a pretty good book about it, but you know what makes me feel good, David, is reading. So I figured we should probably follow up from the last episode where we had Marianne Wolffon, and there were a couple big things that happened

as a result of recording that episode. that happened as a result of recording that episode. The first one was that I started reading fiction, and I am still doing that. I'm not doing it every night because it's been a little bit crazy the last couple weeks. I've been helping out with a youth camp for our church. So some late nights in there, but for the most part, I'm reading a chapter or two every single night. And I think this is going to stick, believe it or not. Well, I think it's, I'm not surprised at all.

I was sad that I didn't land with you on the Douglas Adams book, because I don't know. I just feel like there's a lot to learn from fiction. Yep. Well, I think you're right. And I think I am finally seeing the light. So I don't think it's going to replace any of my nonfiction reading, but it will definitely supplement some of my nonfiction reading. And having the fiction book on the nightstand

as the last thing I do before I go to bed has been pretty great. My sons have warned me that because they like to read fiction that I will reach a point in one of these books where i won't want to put it down and i'll end up staying late watch reading my fiction book but that hasn't happened yet i've been exhausted enough by the time i actually get to bed that i can only make it about 10 or 15 minutes. Well, they're probably right. I mean, I think we've all had the point where you get close to the end and you want to see how it all turns out and nothing wrong with that on occasion. The way I consume fiction books is almost entirely through Audible. I listen to fiction books when I want to pull weeds or whatnot. This actually informs something else we're going to talk about later in the show today. So maybe I should go back and read a couple of fiction books just as books. I don't know. I think if you did, we maybe have some deep focus fodder there.

Yeah. What book are you currently reading? What fiction book are you reading? I'm reading the one that Jason Soll recommended, The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor, I believe. And I'm still early on in the book. It's a pretty big book, so I haven't really gotten to the real inciting incidents or anything. I know a little bit about the story of it based on what Jason mentioned in the Upgradies episode where he recommended it. I haven't gotten to that point yet where we've encountered the main characters it sounds like. There's a couple I'd recommend. One is Daniel O'Malley, who writes these books where there's kind of like a supernatural world.

The first one is called The Rook, and's just really fun and I enjoy that book. I also am a pretty big fan of Anne Leckie, L-E-C-K-I-E, and she's won several awards. Her books are very interesting too. But yeah, now you got me thinking. Well, the big thing that came out of me reading Marianne Wolf's book and us talking to her was Wolf's book and I was talking to her was this idea of reading more physical books. And that really started for me late last year. You've got in my head on this as long as well as Chris Bailey and some other people. And the pile continues to grow here. So I have bought, I have acquired some walnut and I'll be building a bookshelf.

So I'm just making the steps. Awesome. I'm curious, what's in your pile or your collection there? A lot of old stuff. Like I'm actually, there are books that I read repeatedly, Epictetus and Aristotle among them. And I bought them on Kindle, you know, and I've been reading them repeatedly on Kindle.

I've been going through them now in physical form and I'm starting to kind of rebuild my library of that stuff. So there's some old stuff, but there's also, you know, kind of the mix of productivity. I've always had books on furniture making and design because I felt like those always made sense as physical books. Looking at my pile here. It's an eclectic mix. Next time you come see me,

you can look at it. Nice. And then I'm curious, you mentioned that you've used ReadWise for a long time and a big fan of the service. So what is your reading workflow for these physical books? It's kind of sounded like when we were talking to Mary Ann that you were marking up the physical books, but do you have any sort of system for how you're doing that? That is still in motion. I'm trying different things. I'm definitely marking books up. The question is, do I add to read wise?

Do I just write it in the margin? I'm not sure yet. This is a thing that I'm looking into. So I don't have a final decision yet. Like I do find myself capturing passages sometimes in my journal, but that's really not the answer either. So I'm still figuring that out.

Yeah, I know Readwise has the option for the supplemental books. I've been playing around with that a little bit lately. But I still can't get myself to actually use it on a regular basis. I don't know why. I mean, it makes sense that I would take the quotes from my mind maps and I would just dump them into ReadWise and then I'd have a tool for space repetition, but that part has just never stuck for me.

Now, honestly, Mike, you mind map every book, every nonfiction book you read. And if I was in your shoes, I would just print it out and fold it in half and stick it in the front of the book. And if I wanted to do space repetition, I would just occasionally open up a random book and look through that mind map. I call it a day. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I kind of do that digitally. I mean, I've got all that stuff inside of Obsidian, so I'll review those mind maps occasionally there. But printing it out and putting it in the book is an interesting idea. printing it out and putting it in the book is an interesting idea.

Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm kind of leaning towards just, you know, in addition to the margin stuff like Marianne just putting the real key points in the front and the back spine and then just doing that. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I'm hesitant to commit at this point. I'm still figuring it out. All right. Well, we got a point of feedback from Will, which I thought makes sense to talk about on a podcast because it's about podcasts. It says that one thing I would be interested in you addressing is the place of podcasts in life and finding appropriate places for listening to them. The way I find them is that they make a boring task more enjoyable, but they also prevent you from doing the task at your best. Sometimes this is what's needed to get me going on a task I don't want to do, but it's not without trade-offs. As makers of podcasts, more importantly is people who are more together than I am. I don't know about that, Will. I am interested in your thoughts about when is the best time to listen to them and what activities you

will do with someone talking in your ear. What do you think, David? I like the question because it's something I struggle with. I mean, to me, the ultimate hack is mindfulness and the idea of being mindful of what you're doing and the moment you're doing. I feel like if we could just do that, I feel like everything else gets so much easier. that, I feel like everything else gets so much easier. And this is in contrast to that, right? It's the exact opposite of mindfulness. It's trying to multitask intentionally. I remember, this is like over 30 years ago, when I was first learning how to meditate, I talked to my teacher, I'm like, you know, and because so much of that meditation practice is mindfulness practice. It's just learning to be mindful. That's really all it is.

And I'm saying, I don't know, like when I drive, should I be listening to music or, this was before the existence of podcasts or talk radio, like is that going to hurt my ability to be mindful? And she just laughed at me,, you know, listen to you getting caught up into your own little traps here, you know, and, and I feel like, like, Will, like, I, I struggle with that sometimes, like, where do you draw the line? Example for me is podcasts. I do listen to some podcasts, but I'm pretty careful about when I do it. For me, gardening and driving are two places where I feel comfortable listening to podcasts. Pulling weeds is not something where I need to be super 100% mindful.

It's just busy work that I enjoy doing, but I think having something in my head doesn't hurt. And I'm able to focus on what's happening. Same thing. I live in LA or Southern California, so we have legendary traffic here. Quite often, I'll go to pick up my kid up in LA and it'll be like a three-hour drive. And I would much rather listen to a good podcast than just sit in traffic and be mindful of the traffic. So those are places I'm willing to draw the line. However, uh, like I discovered when I'm in the wood shop, I don't listen to

podcasts or have a TV out there that I used to put on that, like, have YouTube playing in the background. And I realized, no, when I do that, I want to be 100% present, partly because I'm working with sharp tools, but also because the experience, the reason I'm there is for the experience of being there and the act I'm doing, not really for what I'm making.

And I want to be fully present for that. And I think all of us just have to go through and look at our activities and kind of make mindful decisions about our mindfulness. And I don't think there's a single answer to this will, but the fact that you're asking the question means that you're on the right track. Agreed. And I also think it depends on what you're listening to the podcast for. This has always been the issue with me.

And one of the reasons I don't really like audio books, as opposed to physical books, is that an audio book, I can find myself kind of tuning out for a little bit because I'm distracted by something else, especially when you're driving, let's say, you might miss something because something's going on in traffic in front of you for a little bit. And then your attention is snapped back to the podcast and, oh, what did I miss? What did they just say? That sort of thing. And there's no easy way to just go back and find that spot. And if there's something that

really stands out to you, you want to jot down a note and doodle on that later, then there's not an easy way to do that either. I know that there's features that are built into certain apps that allow you to do that kind of stuff, but I don't like having to interact with the phone. That's typically where I listen to podcasts from while I'm listening to a podcast because a podcast is always in the background when I am doing something else. And a lot of my activities, I don't have a garden and I don't have a woodshop. But I will listen to podcasts when I am at the gym. Usually when I'm out for a run. Locationally I'll just not listen to anything and just go for a run.

But for the most part that's when I am listening to those things and also when I am. In the car for car for driving. But, I view podcasts primarily as entertainment. And so, that framing is what allows, it frees me from not having to feel like I miss something important. And it's a little bit weird doing a podcast called Focus, a productivity podcast and telling people, oh, don't worry if you missed something.

Because on one sense, you're like, well, the stuff that we're sharing and the reason behind the podcast is that people need to hear this stuff, right? But I just, I can't apply that myself. Podcasts in their medium are kind of like, it's a nice to have, but it's not essential. The information I consume when I am reading a physical book is on a totally different level

than the information that I consume when I am listening to a podcast. And the information itself may be actually the same, but it hits different based on the medium for me, and that's just the way that I've chosen to characterize this. has a hits different based on the medium for me. And that's just the way that I've chosen to characterize this. So I don't know what, how do you, how do you decipher this, this sort of stuff? Like if you're listening to a podcast and something is really, really hitting, it's impacting you, it's resonating, you want to do something with this, like, do you have any sort of

system for doing something with that? Or you just kind of let it go and if it's important, it's going to come back? Yeah, it's funny because I'm a little different from you. To me, I am kind of a story person. And when I hear someone on a podcast sharing a story about the way they do things, like the stuff we do here, it actually, a lot of times, lands way better than me for me than if I read it in a book or read it on a blog post. So I think it's the human connection bit that works for me. So I am an ideal podcast listener. And to such an extent, if I listen to a podcast where they say something that moves me to action or wanting to try something out, I just stop what I'm doing. And then I actually process that into some action or a Reddit and Obsidian,

or, you know, I do something with it. Now you say, well, how do you do that when you're driving down the road? Not very easily. I usually just save a reminder historically, but just recently I tried a new app out. In fact, I made a video for it in the Max Barquette Labs. I'm going to share it with our audience here. We'll put a link in the show notes. It's called pod highlighter.

And it just adds a shortcut where you just say, hey lady highlight, and then it grabs the timestamp. You have to use overcast to work, but it grabs the timestamp, it grabs the recording, and then it uses AI to summarize it and sends you an email with a link to the exact spot in the podcast.

So it's just a really easy way to grab something out of it if you're gardening or driving and that comes up. So there are ways out there. There are workflows there. They've never been that good. Pod highlighter is the best one that I've seen. It's just a little app. It's a subscription you got to pay for it, but I find it useful because I do listen to enough podcasts that I find good bits coming out of it.

But in fact, I also happen to know that the developer of that is a listener of the Focus podcast, so that's kind of fun. Awesome. But a point you made earlier about working out, see for me, Daisy and I do Pilates together, and I find that something that requires a tremendous degree of focus. Like, I could never listen to a podcast while doing that because I think a lot of that, that is actually a mindfulness practice because getting your body in the right position and using the right muscle groups and everything actually to me. And I've only been doing it about five months now, but I really need to focus on what I'm doing. So, and that just kind of gets back to Will's question. I think we all have our own lines to draw here. There is no magic number here or magic answer.

draw here, there is no magic number here or magic answer. Yeah, so my ideal version of going to the gym is one where I can walk in with my headphones on and not look at or talk to anybody until I leave. Yeah. Yeah. So it's an isolating mechanism for me while I'm at the gym. No, it makes sense. Yeah. And that fits your personality too. Like you like that, right?

Yeah, exactly. I do want to mention though, you brought up the human connection and I agree with that in terms of the value of podcasts. I actually wrote about this in my newsletter this week about how the voices that you allow to speak into your life are important, and podcasts are very personal by nature. You can listen to a podcast and feel like you have a seat at the table with somebody.

I've used the term Internet Heroes before, but I really do think that that is a really cool technology to feed on things that you've decided are intentionally useful. So I do think that they're really valuable. And I like the story element as well. I think like you, the stories do tend to stick with me. I'll remember somebody talked about this. In fact, I've got a couple of those bits when we get into the meat of today's episode from

podcasts that I've listened to where people were talking about different things and it really kind of stood out to me. If I'm going to capture something from those though, I'm not worried about the timestamps. I'm not worried about the links most of the time, but I will use drafts and I will capture something usually like if I'm at the, for a run, I'll use it on my watch, you know, idea colon, and then capture down whatever I want to remember. And then about once a week, I'll go through that inbox.

It's not every single day. And about once a week, when I go through that inbox, sometimes those ideas, I stumble upon and I'm like, oh, that was a really good idea. I should go back and dig into that and I'll go to the show notes and I'll click the links because I remember what episode that came from whatever. But other times I'll just be like, yeah, it seemed important at the time, but it doesn't seem like a big deal right now. So I'm actually pretty ruthless about the ideas that I will actually just delete.

And then I trust that if they're really valuable, they're going to come back to me at some point in the future, which is usually what happens. And if there's something that I should have taken action on that fell through the cracks, oh well, I've got enough fodder for my creativity flywheel and my PKM stack. So I feel like I'm getting the 80-20 there. Although I'll admit sometimes something on a podcast is so inspirational that I'll immediately

start taking steps on it. Like I'll hear it, I'm like, that's a great idea, and I'll start setting it up. And I'll hand, I can't think of the last time I did that, but it happens, ideas come up. Like I heard you recently, I think if I was on the show or just in a personal call,

you were telling me you had adopted Cal Newport's project status flags. And I'm like, yeah, that's the kind of thing where you hear somebody's got a good idea. And you're like, yeah, I'm going to immediately implement that and see how that goes. Yeah. And that actually wasn't even immediate. That was just me listening to Cal's podcast has kind of become part of my regular rotation. And I mean, Cal talks about so much stuff.

If you were really trying to not miss anything, you'd be taking notes the entire time he's listening to those episodes. There's so much meat there. But he publishes one every week, they're usually about an hour long. And a lot of the ideas keep coming back, especially as he's clarifying them and kind of whittling them down and they're evolving as he's getting ready for his new book on slow productivity that's coming out in a little bit. So it's not your only chance to hear that sort of thing. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Vitaly. Customer success teams today are facing a problem. How do they connect customer data back to their work? Which is important because you need that information in order to deliver the best in class customer

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slash focused to get that free pair of AirPods Pro. That's V I T A L L Y dot IO slash focused for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting. Our thanks to vitally for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay FM. Okay, so talking about books, you have done extensive coverage of Ali Abdal's new book, Feel Good Productivity. You guys did a full episode of it on Bookworm

and you mind mapped it, you've been through the entire book. What do you think, Mike? I like it a lot. And I was actually nervous about it because of the title. And that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it with you on the Focus podcast, because I think that it's not really obvious what this book maybe is about. So feel good productivity kind of in my mind hearkens back to the passion mindset. And I'm a big Cal Newport fan.

So that's something that he's been talking about for a long time. I think goes far back is so good they can't ignore you. Where he basically says, follow your passion is terrible advice And I agree with that however I think the word passion maybe is used a little bit out of context here when most people are talking about passion and what Cal Talking about the passion mindset is do what you love. Okay, so that Obviously kind of leads into this whole topic of,

at least on the surface, feel good productivity. So productivity is the stuff that makes me feel good. I mean, that's not what Ali is necessarily saying here, but you can kind of get, you know, where this could be interpreted a little bit wrong, I believe. Now that the book itself is really good and it's broken down into three different sections.

So the first part, as most productivity books are, right? But the first part is kind of about getting going. Ali talks about energizing. Part two is unblocking. So that's kind of like overcoming procrastination. And then part three is sustaining, and that's really where the alignment piece comes in. But I wanted to just take a step back

from the contents of the book here and just talk to you about this concept that Ali does a really good job of introducing, which is this whole idea of feel good productivity, where he makes, because Ali's a former doctor, he makes a pretty compelling scientific case for why you should try to infuse joy into the work that you do.

So he talks about how positive emotions affect many of our cognitive processes. They help us broaden and build so our minds open up and we can create a reservoir of mental emotional resources for the long-term when we have a positive mental state about the work that we're doing. It boosts our energy, it reduces our stress, it enriches our life. I mean, you start just in that first introduction and you kind of feel like,

okay, Ali, you've kind of convinced me. Now, how the heck do we actually do this? So that's the part I want to kind of pick apart is I've kind of always heard this advice that happy people are productive people and that kind of makes sense. When you understand why what you're doing is important, then it's easy to show up. The motivation is there, but it's not always there. So is this the right approach? I think the antithesis of this, and then I'd love to hear you chime in on your experience here.

But the opposite end of this is probably like the Jack-O-Willink, the discipline equals freedom, get up at 5 AM and just do the thing. Ali, I think if I'm summarizing the book fairly, it's basically saying that joy is actually better long term than discipline because discipline can get you to show up and do the thing in the short term, but if you never find any sort of meaning

or any sort of joy in that thing, eventually it's gonna lead to burnout and you're just not gonna do it anymore. And I'm peculiar, in particular, interested your approach with this with your history as a lawyer, because you've talked about that previously on the show and how that was the work that you didn't really love to do.

And then when you got to Max Sparky, it was like, I kind of have to pinch myself because I get to do what I enjoy doing all the time. Right? So kind of how does this fit with your journey? And where do you see this being valuable? And then maybe other places where, you know, sometimes you do just have to build up your discipline muscle and push through some things. You know, discipline is a resource that can be exhausted for certain. I guess reflecting on my legal career, there's a tremendous amount of discipline involved because you're doing important things. You're helping people with some of the biggest problems in their lives. I mean, I think doctors have, you know, they help you stay alive, but lawyers help you

keep your business and stay out of jail and all those other things that are so important in your life. So you're taking on very serious problems for people and there is a degree of discipline to that profession that just is mandatory. You can't blow it. But I don't think I thought about it as like a disciplined marathon when I was practicing law. I think anybody who can survive in that profession has to have a different relationship with it than kind of the jocco just grunt through it kind of thing. You have to get some satisfaction from

it. And I did the intellectual pursuit, you know, writing briefs to making arguments, finding evidence and finding legal precedent and finding ways to move the ball forward on your client's behalf based on the law and arguments of the law. I think that the intellectual exercise of it can be stimulating. And I wouldn't really view that as a gut-checked discipline so much as an intellectual exercise, which can be rewarding in itself. So I don't really look at it entirely that way. I will say that I was a lawyer nearly 30 years, and I think my

satisfaction with the job changed over a course of time. But I don't think that's unusual. I mean, one of the things I've learned, releasing the productivity field guide, is a lot of people. In fact, back when I announced I was going to stop being a lawyer, I got so many email from people that had jobs where they quote unquote made it, you know, head of surgery, tenured professor, those kinds of people who are like, yeah, I wish I could do this. I wish I was like you and I could get out of it. I'm so, I'm so done with this. And I think as humans after about 30 years, you are kind of done with whatever you've been doing. I think it's just a natural desire to repot yourself. But to get back to your question, I'm not sure that discipline played as large of a role in my legal career as you would think. I mean, it's certainly required, but it's not,

it can't be the driving force or you don't survive. Like I remember when we were in law school, there was a student at my school who was very good. She was like, always had the answer to the question, top of the class, you know, did great. And then one day, you know, the story was told to me from another student in my class. She didn't show up for work and everybody didn't know where she was. They called her apartment, she wasn't there. Well, they found her in the parking structure of

the building. And fortunately, she hadn't hurt herself, but she had a mental kind of breakdown, you know, where the stress of it, she just couldn't do it. She got to work and she couldn't get out of the car, you know. And that's the kind of stress that comes with, especially being a new lawyer. It's very hard when you're trying to adjust to that. But again, I don't think that's a disciplined thing. I think it's more of just the reality of saying, okay, now this is about real people and the decisions I make really affect them.

Yeah. That's really the thing with Ali's kind of resonated with me was that That's not an uncommon story if you're not paying attention I think it's probably a very much a net positive thing that the light is being shown on like mental health in the last Decades and the importance of it and I feel like what Ali's got here is an important piece to that because the natural result, if you just try to muscle through things and make it work, is that burnout piece. He talks about conserving and recharging in the last section here. here. But I think that is honestly kind of the natural progression, the natural end state, if we aren't aware of what are the things that are bringing us energy, what is our perspective on the

work that we get to do. And sometimes the work doesn't necessarily need to change. Sometimes our perspective about it has to change, which is kind of the other thing that stood out to me from this is to stay curious and to have this playful mindset. He talks a lot about these side quests and things when you're thinking about making your plans for the day. I just think there's a lot of good here in a package in a format where they're framed as experiments. So it's not a system, it's not you just do these three things and then the score is going to take care of itself. Each one of these chapters has like six different things that you could try and some of them are going to work. Some of them are not going to work, but you got to find something that works. Otherwise,

you will eventually reach that state of burnout. I think that's more common than people care to admit. Yeah, no, I do think so. And a bigger question that comes to my mind with the existence of this book is, why is it that we need to have this book? Why is it that people feel like there needs to be a book written that productivity can foster happiness, you know? And what has happened to the word productivity so that we need this book now?

Does that make sense? I mean, I feel like productivity has really kind of been through the ringer in the last 50 years. And for a lot of people, productivity, I know me personally when I was at the firm, whenever the firm brought in the productivity people, it was like a way,

it felt very much for me like a way for the firm to figure out me, like how to manipulate me to work more for free or whatever. It did not feel like, oh, we want to make you happy. It felt more like, how can we get more, you know, juice out of the orange? How can we squeeze more juice out of the orange? It didn't feel like, and I just felt like the orange getting squeezed harder, you know? And I think there's a lot of people who feel that way. And to me, I think, you know, the bigger question is,

you know, how did productivity get to this point? Because the stuff he's saying here makes sense. But also, I think we also need to think about our relationship to that word that we need a book like this now. Yeah, that is completely fair. The thing that comes to mind to me when you describe that situation and squeezing the orange is the Mark Drucker, the effectiveness versus efficiency and nothing is so meaningless as to do efficiently that

which should not be done at all. And that's from a corporate perspective, a manager's perspective, probably the person trying to squeeze the orange in your example. So I think the mindset shift, which is the important one here is that the managers are not the ones who should only not

the only ones who should be making those types of decisions, you should take some ownership over your situation and decide for yourself. What are the things that should not be done? And if you don't like it, you know, you can create a different situation. I think we'll talk a little bit more about that in another segment here. But sometimes you do have to make those drastic decisions, but sometimes it's just, this really isn't so bad. I'm just looking at it wrong. The first chapter in this book is about play and that mindset, that word specifically play, I like that. That really resonates with me because when I have tasks on a list, especially if they're on a shared list that somebody else is seeing, I can get so attached to, I have to do these

things and come high, hell or high water, I'm going to get those things done because I've made this promise to somebody else. They're expecting this from me. I don't want to let anybody else down. But play is a totally different mindset. It's like it almost doesn't matter what gets done. It's the attitude that we have when we do the things and being curious about things and tinkering with things.

I think for a lot of knowledge workers, that is the important mindset and is ultimately going to lead to better work being done. Anyways, so the whole like personal growth aspect of this, I see being much very much in alignment with that that play piece and how you know when you're playing with something you don't have to put the pressure on the outcome. Like I have to win. Success, he talks about in the book is how about how you frame your failures and failures as an invitation to try something new. It's easy to say, it's easy to listen to on a podcast. It's very different to actually apply that to your life, especially if you're someone who is used to meeting a certain standard.

You know, being told that you're not meeting that standard can almost be like a threat to your identity. Yeah, and I think another piece of this is just the limitation of the word productivity to your work, I think. And maybe I'm slicing the onion here, but I feel like you should expand the idea of productivity to your entire life.

A productive person is a person living in alignment with what's important to them. If you only limit your productivity to cranking your widgets, it is going to have a negative connotation. But if you can find a way to think about it holistically, it can make a huge difference for you. And I think that's the focus. And I think this book is another example of that, like aiming for that.

I mean, he clearly is looking at more than just cranking your widgets here. He's looking holistically at the word. And I think once you adopt that relationship with productivity, it's not as scary or mean anymore. It's actually a tool to help you live a better life. I like that word holistic. I think that's spot on. That is definitely the approach that Ali is taking with this book. And then kind of the last part of it is about thinking like a productivity scientist. He talks about how productivity isn't about discipline. It's

really in the long run about what makes you feel happier, less stressed, and more energized. And on the surface, you know, you can look at that and be like, I don't know if I agree with that. But really what he's talking about there is meaning and alignment with your vision and your values. And that's when I, once I started to make that connection, I was like, yeah, this, this makes total sense. And I really liked the part said he's broken it down into a really like the experiments. I've been kind of kicking the tires on some of this stuff a little bit. Some of it is things that I've heard before, but not heard in, in a particular way.

There's some really cool stories in here. There's one story in particular I really like about Benjamin Franklin. So this kind of goes back to the reading piece at the beginning. In 1737, Benjamin Franklin was running for reelection in the Pennsylvania Assembly, and he had this arch rival who was basically anti-everything

Benjamin Franklin. His propaganda was threatening Franklin's reelection campaign, and he just figured, I got to win this guy over somehow. I have no idea how to do it. He heard that he had a rare book, so he asked to borrow it. When he returned the book to the guy, he put a kind note in the book. And even though they had completely different political viewpoints from that moment on, they were friends.

And that guy became one of Benjamin Franklin's supporters in the long run, even though they had opposing views just because they got to know the other person. That's from a chapter called People, which obviously is an impactful one. For me, a reminder of Chris Bailey talking about the reason for productivity is people and something that I've struggled with, just focusing on the tasks at hand and going to get these done. But really, the important thing is protecting the relationships. So lots of good stuff here.

Definitely recommend that people read this. I wanted to bring it up here. Number one, an interesting topic. Number two, I remember when we were talking about what we're reading. I said, I was reading this one. You said, let me know how it is. Well, here's my recommendation. Five stars. And if people want to take a look at the notes that I took from this, I actually put

together a landing page so you can just go download the mind map. The link will be in the show notes that I took from this. I actually put together a landing page so you can just go download the mind map. The link will be in the show notes that people are interested in that. I started to build these into my weekly newsletter as well. If you want more book notes, that's the place to go. Yeah. As a young lawyer, I started this practice of whenever I got a new case and I had opposing counsel, it was litigation where we had a new case and I had opposing counsel, you know, it was litigation where, you know, we had a trial date and we're going to be trying a case against each other. As soon as the other counsel joined in the case, I would invite them to lunch

and say, and they're like, well, what do you want to talk about? I'm like, well, I think we should just get to know each other. We're going to be in this relationship for the next two years, you know, and when I first started practicing more often than not, they'd agree. And you know, we talk about life and kids and travel and you know, really not the case. And I'd always try to get across, look, I'm going to be fighting hard for my client. But you know, if you go on vacation, let me know, and I will make sure that we don't file motions that mess up your vacation. And, you know, we can do this as adults, right?

It doesn't have to be Rambo litigation, which was the word back in the day, right? And, and, and as I got towards the end of my career, increasingly, they would refuse to have lunch with me. And it was just a change in the culture, right? That's kind of one of the reasons I got out of it, frankly, because it had changed on me where you couldn't have an amicable relationship with the opposing counsel at the same time that you fought like hell for your client. And, and, um, and. And that's a problem.

And these kinds of stories, like I'd heard the Ben Franklin story before, but I do think that that's something that modern society needs to hear. We have tribalized ourselves in such a way that we're willing, not only not willing to have lunch with the other guy, we're, in some, some, in some cases, I'm willing to admit that they're humans with legitimate thoughts. And I just feel like that's something we can all get better at. Yeah, Marianne brought that up in the last episode too. And she did a great job of framing her argument for that. If you missed that episode, definitely go back and listen to it because Mary Ann is a very smart lady. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Nom Nom, healthy, fresh food for dogs

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That book is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I'm curious, David, have you heard the name Bill Burnett before? I have not. Okay. Well, Bill Burnett worked at Apple for, I think, seven years and had several award-winning designs for hardware devices. So it comes at this from a design perspective, but it's very much in alignment with what Ali was talking about and feel good productivity, kind of doing more of what matters and ultimately designing the type of life that you want to live. So designing your life is by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans,

who co-founded the Stanford Life Design Lab. And I'd never heard of this before, but it sounds awesome. Apparently it's been around for about 10 years. And there is a class at Stanford, which I believe they said was the most popular class at Stanford was designing your life class that they do. And I think this is very much in alignment with infusing meaning and joy into what you

are going to be doing. Obviously, there's lots of different methods that you can use for this. But I guess before we get into some of the specifics here, have you ever gone through anything like this where you have kind of specifically and intentionally planned out the next several years of your life? You know, I've always toyed with this idea of future planning like this. And there's a part of me that's resistant to it in the sense that I feel like I need to be more nimble. And I think that sometimes if you get locked into like in 10 years, I want to be this.

Um, that, that I think it gets you get in trouble. I also really, really skew towards effort, not results in, in my planning and how I think about myself. So I worry that making a five-year plan is going to give me a focus on results when I should be focused on effort. So I guess the answer to your question is I really haven't given it the try that I probably should have because of those reasons. Well, I think those are very valid reasons, to be honest. the the try that I probably should have because of those reasons Well, I think those are very valid reasons to be honest

That's kind of natural like what's the point of making this this 10-year plan when I have no idea what the next 10 years are Going to look like. Yeah, I think that Bill Burnett and Dave Evans would agree that you have no idea what the next 10 years are going to look like. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't go through the thought exercise and allow your brain to kind of wander into what is actually possible here. So one of the things that they talk about in this book is these Odyssey plans. Now interestingly, these Odyssey plans, I had never heard about these before. However, I now have a new co-host for Bookworm, who is a college professor who has literally

done these Odyssey plans with his students for several years. So he knew exactly what these were. I had a lot of experience with these. It was kind of a cool perspective. Had no idea about that when I selected this book for Bookworm. But essentially, the Odyssey plan is where you go out five years and you plan three different paths, essentially. One is if you just do what you are currently doing, what is that going to look like? And then there's a timeline and you kind of draw pictures. So for the major events that you would like to have happen over the next five

years. But then the next thing that you do is just assume that whatever you're doing right now, you can't do that anymore. What would you do instead? And then you plan out the next five years that way. And then the last one is the one that is of interest to me, is if you could do anything that you want. If there were no limits on the resources that were available to you, what would you do? And I think there's a lot of value. Did you hit the lottery? That's the lottery question kind of, right? Yeah, essentially.

Yeah, that's a good way of framing it. And they have these different gauges that you can use for how much is this going to take in terms of time and energy and money and things like that. They have these different dials that they use, which honestly, those didn't really click with me. They have this whole format for the assessment for where you're at, where they identify these different areas. Honestly, the whole wheel of life actually makes a lot more sense to me than some of the stuff that they're talking about here. But life actually makes a lot more sense to me than some of the stuff that they're talking about here.

But I do like this dreaming exercise. And this is not necessarily the way that I would implement it, but I think it's valuable and maybe this alternate way resonates more with people than the way that I have previously done this. But I just went through the life theme cohort with my wife and a bunch of other folks and one of the steps in there, and this is the one that people always struggle with. Honestly, it's the one that I struggle with too. There's a step in there where it's like, okay, let's dream about your ideal future.

Assuming that there was no limit on your resources, what does your life look like? People have so much trouble with this. people have so much trouble with this. I have so much trouble with this. Just removing those boundaries and those barriers. Let's just call them chains. I don't know. They keep you anchored to, well, this is what's actually possible. And sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's not. You won't really know until you give it a shot. The weird thing for me, Mike, is at this point in my life, I'm living the life I would live if I won the lottery. Yeah, I've kind of expected you to say that. It's a strange realization. I mean, when it hit me was when I was filling out an online form and they had, you know,

had the secret questions and they said, what's your dream job? And I'm like, my current job is my dream job. And I know life changes and things, nothing is permanent and who knows how long I'm on this Max Sparky ride. But I mean, I love it. I mean, I just love what I do. And so much of it feels accidental to me that I, you know, I didn't

have the plan. Maybe I did secretly without telling my conscious mind. I don't know. But the, yeah, it's a, so I'm interested in this book. I'm going to read it because I just ordered it because I feel like, yeah, my answer to your question wasn't very satisfactory. I should try and think through some of this stuff and how it works, but at the same time, through a group of fortuitous circumstances, I somehow ended up exactly where I feel like I need to be. Nice.

I'm gonna put you on the spot. Five years from now, Max Barkey Labs have been successful. What is different about it? Anything? It's better. I'm even better at doing it. And people who are in it get even more out of it.

And I don't know. I mean... I mean, that answer is fine, but I've been kind of thinking about this for myself because a newly independent creator is still trying to figure things out. Yada, yada, yada. Well, one of the things I've kind of landed on lately is just consolidating everything under MikeSchmidt.com, the domain that I now actually own. And I really want to start building one community that I can just deliver a ton of value there.

So eventually that will be all the book notes, they'll be the coworking, they'll be the workshops, all that kind of stuff. And I've been kind of thinking through like, if this really were awesome, what would it look like? And I think there's one piece of that which is really exciting to me which is the Kind of like a live mastermind piece where it's not just like I'm facilitating the masterminds But I'm like well facilitating is the right word. I'm not just connecting people like we did for the focus masterminds a while back

I mean you connect smart people and good stuff can come from it. But I would love to just work with small groups of people who are really motivated around specific topics and facilitate those Mastermind groups. Cause I know that if I was able to do that with the right people, that would just be an amazing experience. I have a picture in my head of how awesome that would be.

And just how much value the people who are part of those things would get from that. And it's not something that I'm even remotely close to being able to offer at this point. It's there's too much effort going into building that everything else for me to devote that much time and energy into that small group of people. But I mean, that's exciting to me.

That picture of that in the future is kind of what pulls me down the path. So I like this, this whole, uh, the way that they're kind of nudging you to, to think about these things because you can kind of get stuck in. Well, I can't do that until I become that, but really you have to become that in order to identify like I am that type of person. And then that identity is the piece that allows you to do it. It's kind of circular.

And at some point you just got to be like, screw it, I'm just going to do it. And then start spinning that wheel. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I will, I'm not trying to, um, you know, whistle blast the graveyard here. I have ideas for future things I want to make and stuff like that. But, you know, to me, I, I'm just so in alignment right now.

The big limit here for me is frankly time, and I'm trying to take steps to get more help and figure out ways to solve that problem. But that's for another day. But yeah, I'm interested in this book. I'm going to, like I said, I just ordered it and I'm going to see, you know, what I get out of it. But, but I'm very fortunate and it sounds very, um, Felix, it almost sounds kind of arrogant, right?

You know, because I know there are people listening right now who are very unhappy with their jobs and Sparky's here saying, well, I'm living my dream job. Ha, ha. You know, but it's also been a journey to get here. Exactly. And that's the whole point of the Odyssey plans, I think, is you start to think through what would be required for that journey. And I highly recommend if people haven't done this sort of thing, give this a shot. I'm not sure if there's a resource this sort of thing, give this a shot. I'm not sure if there's a resource outside of this book where they explain these, but it's basically this visual graphic timeline, and you got a title for each option in the

form of a six word headline. So that six word headline is going to resonate with some folks. The timeline is going to resonate with some folks, but there's basically all these pieces that come together. And then there's some key questions that this version, remember this applies to what you're currently doing, what you would do if, what you're currently doing wasn't an option and what you would do if you had no limits on your resources. And then they have this dashboard where you have these gauges for resources, likability, confidence and coherence. Basically, is

this an alignment? How confident are you that you can do this? Is this something that you'll really enjoy? Do you have the resources to do this? And they even have in the book, like these little instrument cluster style gauges, like you would see in a car, like a speedometer, for where you can draw the lines for those sorts of things. And I get how that's valuable to kind of think

through that stuff because it always feels, in the back of your mind, you may have this idea, I really want to do this thing. But until you start to put it on paper, it feels like, well, there's no way that will ever happen. It's just a pipe dream. Or maybe the alternate to that is, well, I could always take action on this. But the minute that you do, now you've got to deal with the reality of maybe this thing is what you think it is, maybe it's not. So there's a lot of great stuff in this book also, but just the combination of the Feel Good Productivity plus this designing your life, this was kind of the right thing at the right time for me. And I think there's a lot of good

stuff here for people who are interested in this kind of thing. So, are you going to take further action on this? On this book specifically, I don't know. I mean, we covered this one for Bookworm 2. So, there are a couple of action items that were part of this. The big one for me, and I kind of already talked a little bit about this, was the planning for my community. And that is exciting to me. The blank slate, we get to do this from scratch. What is this going to look like? And doing it in a way, because I have a whole chapter in this book about building a team, but it's not like a team

like an organization or a company. They talk about a team and there's different roles, different people have. So you got supporters, you got players, the team is the people that you're sharing the specifics of your life design with who I'll track with you on a regular interval. So that's kind of like an accountability group. And they talk about the characteristics of community. And this is the thing that when I read this, I'm super excited about building this. You got a kindred purpose, you have an explicit mission. For me, that's like personal growth and doing more with the resources that you have available, the information that you have available.

You got to meet regularly, you got to share common ground, and you got to have people there with the right intention and purpose. I've been kind of asking people who are involved in the different cohorts and courses that I've been doing because I've kind of been in scramble mode. I got to find something. It seems like there's some signal here. Let's try this. Basically, what people have been telling me is personal growth and PKM. Okay. So how do I leverage those in helping people live a more intentional life.

That's the thing that really resonates with me. I've got the life theme and the core values and stuff like that. They're kind of complementary pieces to what they talk about in designing your life, but this kind of helped me get some additional details. Give me a few more puzzle pieces so I could see the picture a little bit better. Yeah. I mean, you're at a transition in your life where I think this would be really helpful, you know, to work on this stuff.

But I have faith in you, Mike. You're going to figure it out. Thanks. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code FOCUSED. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. I've recommended it to friends and family for years. Squarespace is more than just a website to announce you're having a baby or getting

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That's squarespace.com slash focused with the code focused when you decide to sign up to get that 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the podcast. And our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay FM. of Relay FM. One of the questions that came out to me thinking about Ollie's book and just the question of happiness and productivity together is, in addition, it seems like the focus of the book and I haven't read it. Mike is the one who's read it. I've ordered that as well. I will read it. But it seems to me this is talking about happiness or joy in the process. But I also think that one of the things people lose track of is what's the goal of productivity? Is it to just crank more widgets? But I would argue that I think the true goal of these types of inquiries is ultimately your own personal happiness.

And that is, I think, you know, as I talked about in the productivity field guide session we did a few weeks ago, it's like living in alignment with what is important to you ethically, living this life where you're doing important work, but you also have time for other pursuits. And I think happiness is not only something we think about in terms of the process, but we should also think about it as a destination when you're pursuing quote unquote productivity. 100%. That's the thing where at first glance, well, we should just do what makes us happy. We should do what's fun. We should do what's fun. We should do what we love going back to the passion mindset.

Not necessarily, but that doesn't mean that what you do can't be fun and that you shouldn't measure how much happiness and joy you're getting from the things that you are doing. Kind of one of the things that really spurred me into really thinking about this. I mentioned Kel Newport, and he's got his podcast. He actually had an episode where Ali Abdaal was on. At first, I was like, well, wait a second, how does this lineup? Cal and Ali seem like different types of people. But as I listened to

the episode, I realized that they were really talking about the same concepts from different angles. So Cal's whole thing is the deep life and doing what matters, and he rails against the passion mindset, but ultimately the work that matters is the stuff that is meaningful, and that's going to bring you joy, and you could redefine that as happiness. And then Ali's kind of talking about it from the front end.

So if Cal is talking about the lag measure, you get to the end of your life and you look back at, did I do X amount of things that really mattered and you feel good about that? Well, Ali's on the front end being like, well, let's enjoy the journey, not just the outcome. And let's figure out ways to infuse this into our day-to-day work. But you're right. And this is something I struggled with. I've mentioned a couple of times. I get so focused on why I got to do these things. But then when you have that approach, you've basically sucked all of the joy and all of the happiness out of the thing. It could be there. The things that I get to do as a full-time creator are

things that I've always wanted to do, but that still doesn't mean that I'm not prone to falling into looking at my list and being like, oh, man, today is going to be a rough day I got so much to do. No, I should be thankful. I get to do any of it at all. And you know, I've been thinking about my dad. We had the 30th anniversary of his death recently. And he was, he worked in a lumberyard, I've ever talked to you about my dad's job. But I mean, he started, you know, loading wood into a machine that cut it. And then like he eventually got into sales. He would, he would like, if you needed to build a house or a building, he would tell you how much wood you needed. And

his boss at the lumberyard would ship it to you. You know, he was getting sales towards the end, but he had a lumberyard job. And that was his, his life, but it was not his life's purpose. You know, he was active at church. He had four kids. He liked to play in the wood shop and make his own furniture. His joy did not come from the lumberyard. But I feel like in the modern world, there's all this pressure on us to make the thing we do the source of joy and happiness. I'm not sure that's normal. Yeah, that makes sense. I think you're right.

There is a lot of pressure to find joy in the work itself. I think that's possible. I don't, I think even at the lumber yard, you could find meaning in doing those things that you're doing, and that would make the work more enjoyable and make the work that you do probably better. So maybe that's at the root of it, I guess, is maybe the quality of the work.

But the distinction is, I feel like there's, in the modern world, people want to get their entire sense of self out of their work. Yeah, that's true. I feel like it leans way more. Like getting back to that word holistic, I feel like we've lost track of it. And I think one of the reasons why happiness does not result from productivity is because you're an orange getting squeezed.

And if you take a different approach to productivity, it actually can lead to an enriching life. I mean, releasing this field guide on productivity has been a weird experience for me because usually I release a field guide and people are like, oh, that's great. Well, tell me how to do this thing with shortcuts or tell me how to make a script that can get this thing done. But now people are writing me and saying, I am unhappy with my life and I need to find direction. That's not a question you get when you make a field guide about keyboard maestro.

But you hear it out there and people are in pain and out of alignment. And I feel like there is a disconnect in the modern world that I think we need to kind of find our way out of. And I can't wait to read this book. I feel like this is another step in the right direction. Bring joy into the process. But I would also argue, aim for happiness. What is the thing that you want at the end of this process? Yeah.

And that's where the Wheel of Life exercise, I think helps me out a lot because that kind of touches on the different areas of your life that you consider to be important. And, um, Ali talks about nine different areas of his wheel of life. Um, and I actually got inspired when I read those and kind of reworked mine a little bit, but essentially they're broken down into three different categories. There's myself, others, and then the work. And like there's a category now for like meaning or mission, but that's one piece.

And you can't, with the Wheel of Life, you've got all of those slices of the pie that you're looking at together, and each of them is weighted equally. I think it's easy to put your thumb on the scale with the work one to your point. You know, we have this pressure that we have to find this meaning of fulfillment and everything that we do. Well, that would be great,

but ultimately it's one smaller piece of you as a person. And that Wheel of Life exercise, essentially, the question on the topic of happiness is how happy am I with this part of my life? And then it doesn't matter if you value the work one more than any of the others. You're going to look at this objectively and you're going to look at the lowest area and you're going to try to move the needle in that particular area over the next period of time. For me, it's every 90 days.

But I think that forces you to take a more holistic approach. You're right. Without ever thinking about how all these component parts fit together, I think it's easy just to focus on, well, what do you do? In fact, that's the question that we get asked whenever we meet somebody new is, well, what do you do? In fact, that's the question that we get asked whenever we meet somebody new is, well, what do you do? I have this profession, you know, our entire identity for this person is wrapped up in the thing

that we do for a living. That's kind of messed up. I'm gonna judge you with the next two words out of your mouth. Yeah. I always like to give funny answers to that question. You know, what do you do? I'll say I do as often as I can.

And they just don't know how to handle that. Or I make up professions. I would tell you my churro story, my vice president of churro. Yes, yes, you should tell it again though. I've told this to my kids after you told me, I think we were at Disneyland when you told me and they thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard.

When they opened up Disney's California Adventure, me. I think we were at Disneyland when you told me and they thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard. When they opened up Disney's California Adventure, this is 25 years ago now. My wife worked for the company and they had an employee event where they were like, okay, all the employees can come check it out before we open the public. I'm in line and this lady behind me was very proud of her husband who did something very important for, for the Disney company from the studios and she's telling me, Mike, he does this and this and this and she's like, well, what do you do? And it's like, I felt like on the spot all of a sudden and all,

my wife had gone off to get it to buy something or whatever. I was there alone. And so I said, well, I'm the vice president of churro acquisition. And she says, what? I said, well, I'm in charge of finding churros for all the Disney parks. And she's like, well, is that a job? I'm like, Oh yeah, I mean, we have to get strawberry. We have to get cinnamon.

We're thinking about expanding. And I just started BSing what a churro vice president would do. And I impressed her so much that her husband joined us. And she said, Mike, you got to meet this guy. He's the churro vice president would do. And I impressed her so much that her husband joined us. And she said, Mike, you got to meet this guy. He's the churro vice president. But I mean, it's just like, I don't know. I just hate that when people ask you, what do you do? And then of course, when you're a lawyer,

you never want to say you're a lawyer because then you get a variety of reactions to that, none of which are net positive. But yeah, so I don't like the question, but I also don't like that that's the identity, right? And even like if you're listening to us right now, is your identity your job? And if it is, there be dragons,

because eventually that is job is not gonna be your job. And then what happens to your identity then. And, you know, Mike has this wheel, I talk about roles in Arte. I haven't gone through all these books, but I'm sure he talks about it this way too. Kalmoo Portak. Anybody who thinks about this stuff, I think really tries to encourage you to think about your life in the big picture. Because if you get caught in this trap of thinking your job is your life, which is your identity, you're ultimately going to have a problem. 100% agree. I saw these people as a lawyer who would just refuse to retire.

They had more money than they needed. They had a wife, kids, grandkids, whatever, and they were healthy enough to enjoy life, but they could not retire. The reason always boiled down to it was their identity, and they were terrified of giving up their identity. As a result, they spent the rest of their life working until they got put in the ground, and they missed out on probably some of the best things that they could have enjoyed just because of that identity problem. I saw it repeatedly.

It was so obvious, but you don't see it in yourself, so be careful. Be careful. And I think if you're listening to this podcast, you're already kind of a step ahead because the whole idea behind focus is there's all this information that's coming at us. And all of this information may in fact be accurate, but facts don't equal truth. And you get to choose what you're going to pay attention to what you're going to prioritize. You may not get to choose everything, but you get to choose your intention. And by choosing that, you are already set up to take the first step down the path that matters. And ultimately to end up at the place that Ali is talking about with Feel Good Productivity and Bill Burnett and David Evans are talking about designing

your life, which is you get to the point where you are actually doing the thing, doing more of what matters and living a well-lived, joyful life. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. When you're hiring, it feels amazing to finally close out a job search. But what if you could get rid of the search and just match? Well, you can now with Indeed. If you need to hire, then you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. So ditch the busy work and use Indeed for scheduling, screening, and messaging so you can connect

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Just go to INDEED.com slash focused right now and support our show by saying that you heard about Indeed on the focus podcast. Once again, that's Indeed.com slash focused terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay FM. All right, Mike. That was stepping to something a little less deep. Let's talk about shiny new objects. What are you playing with these days? All right. Well, my shiny new object I am playing with vicariously through my son.

But it is the Chestnut Evo. Now have you ever used a chess computer before? Yeah, ages ago. Ages. Okay. Well, they've basically all been the same. It's this computerized board and you can press the piece on the square and then move it to the next square. The computer knows that that piece now is at that location

and then based on whatever model they've got, it trained on what level you've selected. You can play against the computer instead of playing against a real person? Well, that has changed significantly in the last couple of years. For a long time, it's been the same. I mean, I had a chess computer 30 years ago that, you know, they still make models that are very much like that. There's not a whole lot to it. But this chess.ev0 is kind of the next, it's even in the name that the EVO, it's an evolution. It's a totally different thing.

It's the chess board, the computerized chess board, but then inside of the same unit, so inside of the same frame, there is a large portrait style Android OS driven computer screen. So that computer screen, you can use a lot of different ways. Out of the box, it's gonna have access to some different models that you can play against. I don't know specifically the difference

between like the stock fish versus the whatever different computer models, but they're models that play different ways. However, on this color screen on the side, you can also get access to these different, like there's chess apps, like Leachess I think is one of them, and there's some others where you can play other people online. So all of that stuff actually integrates with the board. So if you were to sign up for a Leachess account

and you get matched with somebody and you're playing a game via this app, the board itself can show you the moves by highlighting the squares. And then when you make a move on the board, it sends it via the Leachess app to the person that you're playing. So instead of playing on a screen, you're playing on the board and it's pretty cool.

It's also got like a training mode. So there's different like colored LEDs. If you're trying to teach somebody how to play chess, for example, you pick up a piece and it'll show you all the squares that it can move to and the squares that are bad moves are highlighted in red, the squares that are good moves are highlighted in red, the squares that are good moves are highlighted in green, the okay moves are yellow. So it's a great like learning tool. But the thing that that Toby is really going nuts with is that you can actually watch like YouTube videos about chess and it will, I don't know how it does this, but it will

look at the video and it'll kind of understand what's going on in the video and it'll translate it into the computer. So, ever since Toby bought this thing, he's been playing like hours worth of chess every day, which warms the concles of my heart because that's who I was when I was in high school. I was part of a chess club and played in all these tournaments and stuff like that. We play a lot of games, have not really played a lot of chess. This computer has changed that.

It looks like a lot of fun. I'm looking at the website. It's quite a chess computer. My experience with them back in the day when I was a nerdy could play in a lot of chess was I would destroy a chess computer until there was some level and then the computer would destroy me. I never felt like I could get a competitive chess computer. It was either me wiping the floor with you or you wiping the floor with me. It was never competitive, if that makes sense. This looks like something that could probably fix that problem.

Yeah, they say it's a human AI powered chessboard. And it's not cheap. It's over 500 bucks, but it really, when I saw it online, I was like, I don't know, Toby, you sure about this? He's like, oh yeah, I've done all the research. This is the good one. Like, well, okay. But it really has been a ton of fun since he got it.

So. And good. And you guys are playing together as well, I would presume, on it. Not a ton, because you've got basically these accounts for these different apps. So you could use it as a normal chessboard, I suppose, but essentially it's logging all your games and you can go back and you can analyze them later using the AI and stuff like that. He doesn't want me messing up any of his statistics. Gotcha, gotcha.

Well, it really is a discipline, you know, and he's at a point in his life where he's got time and I'm glad that he's pursuing it. Good for you. Yep. Well, my shiny new object isn't in my possession yet. It will be in a couple of days, but, uh, as we record this, I'm just a few days away from picking up my new vision pro.

And, uh, I don't know what to think about that. I am, uh, I, you know, I, I'll say I'm excited about it. It's a new product from Apple. That's a thing I really like. I love when Apple makes a new user interface. I want to see what that's like. But I'm super curious for this thing as a focus device. Can I teach my brain that when I'm on the moon, I write blog posts or something? You know, I don't know. But that's something in my future. And I'm sure we'll talk about it on the show after I get my hands on it. But that's a thing that is shiny and new and quite expensive, but in my future.

Yeah, I have so many questions about this from a focused perspective. I can't wait for you to get your hands on it because I'm definitely not going to get one. Yeah, it's a lot of money. And it's like, I could justify it. I'm not going to. But I really think that this is something I need to try. And I'm going to try it. But I'm also nervous about it because I do feel like of all, you know, Apple product

launches, this is the one that still seems like it needs to, might need to cook a little bit longer. Yeah. That's fair. What are you reading, Mike? I am reading a book called You Are the Brand by Mike Kim. This was recommended to me by our friend Ernie. And just very much in alignment with some of the stuff I was talking about, we're bringing everything under MikeSchmidt.com. The long story there is that I have been making payments on MikeSchmidt.com to a squatter

for a very long time, but I've always been hesitant to move things over to that site. Number one, I couldn't do a whole lot. I could basically just forward it until I owned it. But also, I didn't really want to invest a whole bunch of effort into an online home that I didn't truly own. However, I now have the keys to the MikeSchmidt.com kingdom. So it's an opportunity to plant my flag in the ground online.

This is who I am. This is what I stand for. And I've really just been thinking through like what are all the pieces that get plugged into there? Obviously there's the obsidian piece. Obviously there's the book's piece, the life theme piece. But how do they all tie together? And how do I tell a coherent story with all this stuff? This book has been pretty helpful in helping me think all of that through. But it's also, I mean, confirmation bias here, probably a little bit. But I think that is the right move, though. And

you've kind of given me counsel that same way is like like, yeah, just lean into, this is who I am. That just seems like the best choice for me. For number one, it's the most authentic. This is just what I do. I read books and I talk about personal knowledge management. You know, that's kind of me in a nutshell. So I'm excited to have an online home for that, and this book is kind of helping me figure out what are all the different pieces of that gonna look like. Yeah, but I think there's more to you than that as well. And that's the reason why I think it would be a really good idea to have one home on the internet. Yep.

I am going to let you pick what I read next because today I've ordered two books while we've been sitting here talking. I ordered all these books and I also ordered the Designing Your Life book. So Mike, you pick. Which one am I reading next? Let's do Feel Good Productivity by Ollie Abdel. And Ollie, maybe you want to come on the Focus Podcast and talk about it with us.

That'd be cool. Well, either way, I'm going to read the book. So, um, yeah, I was letting you test this one out for me. Honestly, the title turned me off a little bit, you know, yeah, me too. And so I wasn't sure this was for me, but everybody says it is. So here we go, baby. All right. All right. We are the focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus.

If you want to join the discussion, head over to talk.mcpowerusers.com. We got a room there for the Focus Podcast. We'd love to hear what you're thinking about. Thank you to our sponsors, Non-Nom, Squarespace, Vitaly, and Indeed. For deep focus subscribers, that's the ad for extended version of our show.

Mike and I want to talk a bit about music today, so stick around. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.