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Welcome to Focus, a podcast about more than just cranking widgets.
I'm David Sparks and joined by my co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz.
Hello, Mike.
Hey, David.
How's it going?
It's going great.
I'm looking forward to this book we just both read, wrapped by Winifred Gallagher.
We got a lot to talk about, a book about the topic of our show.
So that's going to be the big topic today.
Before we get started though,
I just wanted to tell everyone
I have a new field guide out,
the OmniFocus Field Guide.
It is about OmniFocus, of course.
OmniFocus version four came out
and I ended up making a field guide about it.
It's seven hours, 92 videos.
There's gonna be a six part webinar series.
It's gonna be really good
if you're looking for a powerful task manager
and you want to get some help with that,
check it out at learn.maxbarkey.com.
I realized as we were prepping it,
I didn't announce this in the last episode,
which was a bad idea.
So the actual, the introductory pricing has ended
when the show publishes.
So I'm creating a special discount code
just for focus listeners,
OmniFocused with a D on the end, OmniFocused.
Nice.
Well, I guess with an ED on the end really, 10% off.
So use that, get 10% off if you're an OmniFocus user
and you'd like to bone up on the application.
I feel like I did a pretty good job of this
and it can really help you.
Awesome.
Yeah, well I am no longer an OmniFocus user,
but I've gone through the older versions,
and you're the guy to explain this,
so I'm sure this new one is amazing.
You're not gonna get me to switch from Obsidian,
unfortunately.
No, I feel that, Mike, you found where you belong.
It's interesting though,
I guess on as a little side note,
because this is the fourth time I've done this course
with each version.
And it's really interesting how my thinking
about task management has evolved since then.
And it changes the material in the course really.
And I feel like in a lot of ways my feelings
towards task management are a lot healthier now.
So hopefully I think this helps people figure out
a task management system that isn't quite so demanding.
Awesome, I love it.
One other bit of follow up, I saw there was a bunch
of comments in the notes because I had said
in the last episode I was trying to do
Courage's method of kind of picking my blocks by day.
And that experiment officially lasted a week.
I'm still a block scheduler.
So there we go.
I thought I'd give a little bit of feedback
because it seemed like a good idea,
but for me I feel better having the blocks designated
because they're so essential to what I do
in terms of staying on target.
Yeah, agreed.
Now I had some feedback on that last episode too.
Someone had asked me since I only pick three to five things
that I'm gonna work on in a day,
when do I get all the smaller things done?
So I'll just add some quick follow up here too.
Basically what I do is I essentially batch those tasks
or I squeeze them in during the margins.
So speaking of the block scheduling,
my blocks are big enough essentially
that I can get them done a little bit early
and I have a little bit of breathing room
and that allows me the time to,
oh, I gotta send
this email or do these smaller tasks and then if they're bigger, they're gonna get deferred,
obviously, to the system and then I'll decide when I'm actually gonna do them. But yeah,
I got a lot of great feedback on that episode on tasks and calendars. So maybe we gotta get into
the nitty-gritty of the workflows a little bit more often.
Yeah. Yeah. And I,
the way I handle that problem is that end of the day block called bench work
where all the little stuff gets done. But you know, it's just one block and that's an example of where I use OmniFocus for,
I can go and just kind of tap into whatever's on my plate in the
application.
Right.
Actually, we're here today to talk about the book
Wrapped, R-A-P-T by Winifred Gallagher.
Mike sent me a note saying,
hey, do you want to do a show on this book?
And I jumped on it because I have heard
about this book for years.
So Winifred Gallagher,
she had a cancer diagnosis and treatment and she decided the way she was going to deal with it was to not get lost in the future or the past, but try
to focus on the present as she went through all her treatment and, you know, happy ending
to the story. She successfully survived her cancer.
But I think it gave her a lot of insight
about paying attention, being present, remaining focused.
And she happens to also be a social science writer.
So she collected the research and did the job
and wrote this book all about the idea
of staying focused and attentive.
Yeah, I like this story.
It resonated with me a lot because I have
an older family member that got a recent cancer diagnosis
and likewise they are doing great,
but it was definitely a focusing point
and their perspective on life was altered
through that experience.
And they wouldn't tell you that
they're glad they got cancer, but they are happy about the change that it produced in them. They
are more appreciative of every day that they have. They're able to focus on the things that are going
well instead of all the problems. And it doesn't have to take a cataclysmic event like that
in order to make those shifts, which I think is the intention behind the
book. It's 14 chapters, I believe. We're not going to go through all of them chapter by chapter,
but we're going to pick out some of the major themes. I really like the framing of a lot of
the stuff that's in here as it pertains to focus. I've heard about this book and it's
actually been on my bookshelf for a long time. I have this habit where whenever somebody that
I respect recommends a book, I buy it immediately. It's kind of a running joke in our calls.
Someone recommends a book and it's like, oh, there's the first one that cost me money.
But I didn't pick it up and read it until I saw somebody else mention it in a podcast episode
that I was listening to not too long ago. And then, you know, I was out for a run,
heard about that. When I got done, I sent you the text message and like, we really should be
reading this book. It sounds like it's the perfect subject matter for this podcast. So even though I
have a whole separate podcast where all we do is talk about books,
I felt like this is the book to talk to David about on this show.
Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, I would agree. And people who are interested in the topic of focus
should, should read the book. I think the central thesis of the book starts on the first page.
And she says, who you are, what you think, feel and do,
what you love is the sum of what you focus on.
And then later she says conversely,
the things you don't attend to in a sense don't exist.
And that's the point, right?
There's a lot of stimulus coming at you,
but the stuff that you choose to let through the filters is what creates your
reality. And I thought there,
I haven't heard it summarized as well than any other thing I've read about
focus,
but I thought that was a great way to kind of summarize it.
And then we jump into the book to kind of get techniques and ideas.
That idea is really well stated
and it's also stated again at the end.
The last thing I wrote down for my notes on this book
is that heaven or hell depends on what we focus on.
Which is kind of the theme throughout the book.
This is a really interesting read.
I know we're gonna get into the specific ideas
here, but just real briefly on the style. It's not your standard productivity self-help book,
which is got an outline and a rhythm and you know exactly what's coming. It reads more artistically. The sentences are very interesting
in terms of the varying length and the words that she uses are very intentional. If you can take
an idea and expand it into 200 pages, that's what a lot of the productivity books feel like. This
one feels like even at 200 pages, it's very condensed and
it could easily be twice as long, three times as long if she
were to continue to wax poetic about these different ideas.
But it's just so tight and I love how it all fits together in
the end.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if we're going meta on the book, a couple thoughts, I
thought the first couple chapters were rough sailing.
I mean, there was some great stuff in there, but for whatever reason,
it didn't grab me till like, I think, the third chapter.
And maybe it's because I've thought so much about focus already.
But then, like Mike said, it's a very dense book.
I feel like every chapter to some extent
in the modern world could be a book, you know,
where people, I could see people taking one of those
chapters and turning it into a book.
So I dig it.
One other question about it, it's a 2009 book
and she reports tons of scientific experimentation
in social science studies
in the book.
One thing that occurred to me is as I read it,
and I was like, well, this was a long time ago,
I wonder if those studies are still valid or not.
You know, I know a lot of times,
modern tests or new tests will replace old ones.
But everything in the book rang true to me anyway,
so I didn't really get too hung up on that.
I agree.
I don't think that it has diminished at all in terms of the validity of the,
uh, the science that's reported here.
I think if anything, it's probably more, uh, more powerful.
Like the, the, the, if you were to do the same sort of studies today, they
would have an even bigger impact.
But that's complicated, I know.
There are books written specifically about scientific studies
that are cited in books like this that don't replicate.
I kinda don't care.
Yeah, me too.
I feel like you get the ideas and you figure out
if it's useful for you and use it if it is,
discard it if it isn't. But I would venture a guess that this stuff is more valid today
than it was when she wrote it.
Yeah. And the reason I raised the point is because that was a question in my mind as
I started the book. You know, you turn the page, it says 2009. But absolutely, by the
time I got to the end, I didn't care either.
And if anything, I feel like she's ahead of the wave here
because as you look at the book and she talks about
distractions and how hard it is to focus
with social media distractions and whatnot,
this is before social media really became a thing.
And it's almost quaint the way she refers to it because it's become such a monster for
focus and attention since 2009.
But I feel like she kind of saw it coming.
And that kind of was an interesting point to me.
Not necessarily the reason to read the book, but it is to some extent a little bit of a time capsule before
this crisis focus we have now really emerged.
Yeah, she liked Focus before it was cool.
Yeah, there you go.
There's a quote in the first chapter, which I absolutely love.
Maybe we should change our tagline to this.
I don't know.
I'll live the Focus life because it's the best kind there is.
Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the all-time great quotes to this. I don't know. I'll live the focus life because it's the best kind there is.
That's one of the all-time great quotes on this. But the majority of the book isn't specifically talking about focus itself. It's more this idea of attention. So maybe that's the place to start
if you're ready to jump into the content of the book itself. Okay. Let's do it. Okay, so in the first chapter, or the introduction,
I guess, it's choosing the focus life.
And this is kind of laying the groundwork
for a lot of the stuff that she's gonna share
in the rest of the book.
But a couple things that stood out to me from this are,
number one, there's that quote that I shared.
But then also she defines attention
as the concentration of mental powers
or the direct
application of the mind to any object of sense or thought, which sounds kind of duh, but then
she kind of explains really well throughout the rest of the book how you can leverage that.
Because the big idea right at the beginning here is that your life is the sum of what you focus
on.
And that really hit me probably because as she gets into later in the book and we'll
discuss like the negativity bias, I definitely fall into that.
So right at the beginning, I'm realizing that even for someone who has a podcast on this
topic, I still got a lot of work to do. I guess, you know,
it's kind of the premise is that we're all travelers on this,
this journey and we're, we're walking the road together.
But I think when it comes to attention and focus, uh,
you can get better, but you never really arrive. It's a constant battle.
Yeah. And I think there's, um, I mean,
the reason we make this show,
I think is because there's a tendency towards autopilot. You know,
a cancer diagnosis will force you to take the wheel of your life.
But for a lot of us, it's just so easy to wake up every day, go to work,
come home, you know, watch something dumb on TV, rinse and repeat.
And I think quite often you don't realize until too late
that you were on autopilot and this is your time,
why would you wanna be on autopilot during your time?
And I think this book is a call to action
to a certain extent.
I like to think this show is too,
but the experience she had really forced her into it
and then she saw the benefit of it.
And I think that the message here is like,
like you said, you don't need a cancer diagnosis
to decide to take charge of your life.
You also don't need to wait until you have enough skill
in a particular area.
That's the big thing as she leaves this first section,
she's essentially admonishing us that the difference
between passing the time and time well spent
really depends on making smart decisions.
You can start making smart decisions right now.
And that word smart decisions,
maybe you're listening to this right now
and you kind of rankle at that.
What do you think is smart?
You get to decide what is smart.
I remember Chris Bailey was on the podcast
the first time talking about how if you intend
to watch Netflix for eight hours a day
and you watch Netflix for eight hours that day,
that's the most productive thing you can do.
It's when we fail to follow through
on the intentions that we set that it's a problem.
And that's getting back to the default mode that you were talking about there.
And then also, I think there's so many books in the productivity self-help space. Let's just
talk about habits, for example. James Clear's Atomic Habits is probably the most famous one,
right? And that's all about tiny habits that are going to produce significant changes, but he talks about how
the skillful management of attention is the first step toward any behavioral change.
You don't get any of the results of those habits if you don't learn to direct your attention.
And really you get to choose what you direct that attention at. Maybe you can sustain that
for a while. Maybe you just get excited for a moment on new year's Eve because you're
frustrated with the way things are and gosh darn it, this year is going to be
different and then it fades.
But for that moment in time, you were able to direct your attention and say,
I'm going to set this goal to lose this weight and get to the gym.
So if you can do that once, you can do it again.
And learning to manage your attention is the thing that's going to help you to
continually bring that back and shine the spotlight on the things
that are important. Yeah and I think the problem is as barely evolved monkeys
it's hard for us to focus. It's hard for us to keep attention at the top of our
mind and it's very easy to go back into autopilot. This episode of Focus is brought to you
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One of the things she talks about,
I believe that's the next chapter,
is the bottom-up versus top-down focus concept.
And bottom-up focus is involuntary attention.
And that's the one that's etched into our brains.
The thing that we got when we were on the veldt,
trying to not get eaten by saber-toothed tigers.
Anytime there's something different, a different noise,
anything that could be a threat,
something that might eat us
or something we might be able to eat,
our brain immediately snaps to attention
and focuses in on it.
It comes naturally to us,
which is the instinct that Silicon Valley
has harnessed so well to our detriment at this point.
But then there's another type of focus,
a voluntary, a top-down focus, saying,
I really want to work on this thing.
I'm going to give myself a two-hour block tomorrow
and concentrate on that.
And I'm going to focus on that
and do something that's important to me for two hours,
the stuff we preach about on the show.
And that is more recent. That's not wired into our brains.
That requires action by us.
That is where you take the wheel.
But I had an insight from this chapter
that I'd never thought of before
because I've always been a top-down kind of focused guy.
You know, just my nature.
You know, in fact, in one of the sections
she was talking about,
I think it was people were juggling,
and they did a study where it had people juggling,
and then they had a gorilla walk by and beat its chest,
and then continue, and then they had people
watch the video, but they gave them assignments
like count how many times they juggle,
or if the red team drops it it or the white team drops it.
I don't remember the exact details of the study.
I do. My sons went through this exercise for their schoolwork not too long ago.
So they basically have these basketball players that are passing the basketball back and forth
and they're supposed to count how many passes or how many people, you know, are on this team.
And in the middle of it, the gorilla walks through.
And I saw the video, I did the same thing.
I'm like, what, there was no gorilla in that video.
You watch it back, you're like, there it is.
Yeah, well, and that's my tendency too.
It's kind of legendary in my family.
Even as a child, if I was reading a book or something
Anything could happen and I would not be aware of it. Hey, you know my mom anyway, it's a long story But but yeah, that's always been a thing that comes easy to me to like dial in focus
When I'm when I want to
And I always was proud of that, you know, but one of the points she makes is top-down focus isn't everything.
Bottom-up focus is what sometimes where joy
and delight comes from.
And if you get really good at top-down focus
and you can just cut the world out at will,
what about the moments of delight that happen
and are worthy of focus and attention?
And that really got me thinking, honestly.
Yeah, the bottom up attention she defines
is when you are involuntary,
is when you naturally tune into the thing
that is the most salient or interesting.
So you use the example of staying alive in the Savannah
when the saber-tooth tiger is trying to eat you,
but that isn't the reality that we're in anymore.
So a lot of times those things that are interesting are reality that we're in anymore. So a lot of times those things that are
interesting are things that we want to see. It's when you just default to that involuntary
distribution of your attention without any sort of reflection maybe on whether the things that
you're paying attention to are actually helping you because that's where the negativity bias can kick in. Just because it popped up on your radar doesn't mean that it's
worth ruminating on. That's where I kind of get into trouble. So you have to recognize where your
attention is going and then decide, is this the thing I really want to be focusing on right now?
And so it is a balance of, I'm just going to respond to the default
things that are interesting in my surroundings. And no, this is really the thing that I should
be focusing on for the time being. I'm going to block out the other stuff. And I feel like
we talk about this a lot and we've kind of described it as a muscle. I feel like that's really, this is where that's evidenced,
is you figure out where you flow
between these different modes.
It's really important, I think, as you get into creativity.
We'll talk about that maybe later.
But you have to be able to switch back and forth
depending on what is most beneficial in your current situation.
And most people don't think about it.
Thinking about it is the first step.
And then once you start thinking about it, probably the next step is to try to start directing your attention.
And then when you start doing that, you'll realize, oh, I'm really bad at this.
That's OK. Just keep going. You'll get better.
But I can mention at the beginning, I don't think anybody really ever fully arrives here.
Yeah. I mean,
the top down focus is what we try to try to preach on this show,
because I feel like that's the one that you don't get for free.
That's the one you have to build up to,
but also being aware that the bottom up has value as well. If you,
if you, if you find the balance. Yeah, you well if you find the balance.
Yeah, you do have to find the balance though.
All right, Mike, what about inside out versus outside in?
This is another juxtaposition of two different perspectives which I like.
So chapter one was really about the bottom up versus top down.
Chapter two, I know you mentioned the first couple chapters
really took a little bit to get your attention so it's kind of interesting that these were the
ideas that we picked for the outline here. But inside out versus outside in is kind of focusing
on how you feel about the things that are happening to you versus choosing something positive
about the things that are happening to you versus choosing something positive and focusing on that.
It's sort of a different way of describing
what we were just talking about
with the bottom up versus top down.
But the outside in, I feel,
is where the negativity bias can kick in.
And I definitely find myself succumbing to this.
The negativity bias theory is that negative
emotions are more powerful for your anger, sadness. So when something happens externally
and it makes you upset, you can get attached to that thing and just continue to ruminate on it
for hours, days, weeks at a time. And you don't notice any of the other positive stuff that's
going on around you. Whereas I think the inside out would be focusing on the things that are
going well and starting from a place inside of you and focusing on the things in your
environment that are actually useful. Which maybe this is starting to sound a little bit woo woo at this point, but I think
it's really important because there are very few circumstances that are 100% bad she talks about.
And I was challenged when I read this book, like, yeah, she's right. I really need to put some conscious effort towards looking for those things
instead of just letting the default mode run because my default mode so easily attaches to the
the negative. Well and that's our wiring again coming into play and I think it's something you
have to become aware of. Like I argue that when I was a younger man,
fear was a big driver for me. I think that's true for a lot of people.
It's fear or anger for most people, right?
One of those two that turns their brain off.
What did Frank Herbert say?
Fear is the mind killer.
And I do think as I've got older,
that's something that I've got much better handling.
You know, it doesn't bother,
I don't get too wound up about stuff,
but it is wired into our brain for a reason, right?
The negative emotions and anything that could be a problem.
Like you said, this is kind of the other side of the coin
of the bottom-up attention.
But is it something that,
that now reading this book has given you some tools
to attack?
It has.
I mean, I think those kind of kick in later on,
but there are some useful ideas here
and some useful frameworks maybe.
I don't know, she talks a lot about mindfulness meditation,
which she describes in a very different way
than I've ever heard described before.
But let's put a pin in that,
because I'm sure we'll get to that in the later chapters.
The thing that really just kind of got me
with this section though about outside in versus inside out
is that she calls out
specifically older brains remember stimuli differently. You're twice as likely to remember
something positive. So I think as you age, you get better at this. But I also don't think
that it's necessarily that it ever necessarily becomes the default. I remember reading a book a while back
called 30 Lessons for Living,
which was a really cool book where the author,
Dr. Karl Pillemer, went into these nursing homes
and basically found the people there
who were just living their best life
and interviewed them about what made their life so great. He interviewed like 10,000 people like this who fit this description and then condensed it all
down into these 30 lessons for living. And I remember when I read that book, the whole idea
is essentially don't wait till the end of your life to do the things that you really want to do
to show appreciation to the people who are important to
you, all that kind of stuff. So this specific chapter, this section of the book, the big
takeaway for me in terms of how do I actually improve this is just find that stuff. I've got
a gratitude habit built into my journaling routine. And I recognized actually about a month or two ago
that I had let that slip a little bit. And I've really been doubling down on that even before I
started reading this book. And I've noticed that that has helped a ton. I think that's the biggest
thing, which again, this whole book's written just on the whole concept of gratitude. But find the
things that are going
well. Focus on those things. Don't ignore the fact that you maybe are in a negative situation, but
recognize that it's probably not all bad and focus on the positive stuff because that is more helpful.
Based on the science, there's several different places where she talks about this is the thing
that helps people live longer, healthier, happier lives. Well, this is one of those things that if you can
focus on the positive, looking on the bright side, she said, that's an important predictor to a
longer, happier and healthier life. You know, I just went to buy 30 lessons for living and I already
own it. You must have talked about it before.
Yeah, probably.
It's on my Kindle.
Well, okay, I'll take it with me on vacation.
Sounds like a good book.
The hard part though is that you can't just try
to feel happy all the time.
She calls that out in chapter three,
that that will not work.
So you can't create something that's not there,
but I do think, like I mentioned a couple times already,
the good stuff is there, you just have to learn to find it.
Finding the silver lining, I guess,
is another way to say that,
and that's something that my default mode is terrible at.
I mean, part of my insight on this
was practicing law for 30
years. There's always a problem and things are always going to
go wrong. And I think when I was a young lawyer, I would lay
awake in bed at night like, Oh, no, it's gonna happen. And then
I realized, well, you deal with it when there's a problem.
That's what you do. And you can't paralyze yourself the rest
of the time.
There will be problems and you will deal with them.
And then I think once you can accept that
and have confidence in yourself to do that,
the rest of this gets a lot easier.
Yeah, and then the other thing I think that really
you can take away from this is she mentions
in chapter six about relationships
and how when you focus on other people,
that really has a positive effect
on your attention and your focus.
That paying attention to someone else is, in her words,
again, the biggest predictor of a longer, healthier,
more satisfying life.
I don't know if that's specifically because your vision gets bigger, your world gets bigger, but I think
when you can learn to see other people instead of focusing on everything that's going wrong in your
world, that definitely has a positive effect. But it pertains to this inside out versus outside in
discussion, I believe, because when you are focused on
the problems, you're focused on all of the things that are going wrong, all of the injustices
that are happening to you.
And then when you start to notice other people and the things that they're going through,
you feel better about your own situation.
But then also I feel like when you actually make a difference in somebody else's life,
even if it's in a very small way, then that feels really good.
That feeling is very hard to replicate,
probably impossible to replicate if you're inward focused all the time.
And then she gets into the idea of focus and productivity,
which is a red meat for the two of us.
It starts out with her taking on multitasking.
And this is, I don't know if in 2009,
if this was new science or not,
but I think it's fairly well established at this point
that multitasking doesn't really work.
I just got in an argument recently with a friend
who was telling me how she can multitask so well.
And I said, no, you can't.
And she would not be convinced otherwise.
But when I was reading this, I was thinking about her.
I think one of the interesting things about multitasking
is the way our brains trick us into thinking
that we're doing it good, even when we're not.
Yeah, and this actually, like there's a chapter in here about productivity and then further around there's a chapter about focus
interrupts. And that is where the multitasking piece comes. But I added it to this spot in the
outline because you can't talk about focus and productivity without talking about multitasking.
And you're right. Like we've heard a lot of this stuff about multitasking before, but again, she discusses it in a little bit of a different way. Like she starts
off by saying, you can actually multitask when there's something that doesn't require your full
attention. You can go for a walk and listen to a podcast, but you can't multitask when you have
two things that you must actually focus on.
And we've probably even heard that description before, but because she spent
so many chapters prior talking about the science of how we can focus our attention.
By the time she says that statement, you're like, oh yeah, that makes sense to me.
Now.
Yeah.
There's lots of drawbacks.
She's mentioned that the biggest one is, is inefficiency at the startup costs each
time as you reload everything into a, into memory.
Uh, but the, the other thing that really just kind of gave me another puzzle piece
to this was that your brain, she talks a lot about brain science, different parts
of your brain and which ones get activated when you're focusing on different things, how things get encoded. And she talks
about how different parts of your brain are activated with multitasking. So that ends up
meaning that the things that you're paying attention to, they don't get encoded as well,
which we probably all experienced this, you know, you're not paying attention to something and then you
get to the end of the audio book or the podcast and you're like, what were they talking about?
Because your brain drifted or you're doing something else. Well, multitasking is essentially
voluntarily giving that stuff away. I guess the big takeaway here is that if anything is worth doing, then it's worth doing it as the sole focus. Uh, yeah.
I mean, you could summarize this all as like, don't multitask,
but I think there's a little bit different perspective to the conversation here.
Yeah. A couple of years ago,
I decided that I was only going to watch TV that was worth
watching without an iPad or a Mac in my lap.
And if you understand what I mean,
a lot of times these days,
I don't know if this is in your family too,
you sit in front of the TV
and you're doing email at the same time or something.
And the result is you do very little email
and you barely pay attention to what's on TV.
Yeah, so I just said, that's it.
If it's good enough to watch,
I'm gonna make a conscious decision.
Like, my wife wants to watch Bridgerton with me.
And I'm like, all right, it's important to her,
I'm gonna watch it and I'm not going to have
something in my lap, we're just gonna watch it.
And that's kind of like a decision I make now every time I choose to consume media.
And it's one of the best things I ever did in terms of enjoying entertainment.
Yeah, 100%. I think back to college and I had a large collection of DVDs and basically I would
always study in my room and there'd be a movie playing in DVDs. And basically I would always study in my room
and there'd be a movie playing in the background.
And I realized now, you know,
that was just me giving in to the need
for dopamine-fueled stimuli
instead of developing the focus muscle,
which I would have worked on that a little bit more.
She also talks about flow.
Yes, yeah. She also talks about flow.
Yes.
Yeah. And this was interesting because right after this, I listened to a deep life
podcast episode by Cal Newport where he sort of talked about flow.
And, um, I think that kind of gave me a better picture here for how this fits.
So the, the section in here about flow,
we've heard this before,
we even have done a whole episode on the topic of flow.
It's based on the research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
that when you do something that's just outside
of your ability, like you're really stretching yourself
to do this thing, then you can get into this sense of flow,
you get in the zone, time seems to stand still,
you're so engaged with the thing,
and then you look up and three hours have passed.
And that is kind of held up as this gold standard in the,
I don't know, is there like a subset
of the productivity space?
Like shows like ours where we're focusing more
on the intentionality.
This is the thing that everybody gravitates towards.
It's like, oh, you gotta get into flow.
You gotta get into the flow.
The thing is you can't just activate flow.
You can invite it, but you can't force it.
So I think there's maybe a negative ramification
of that where if you hear people talk about flow and then you have trouble getting into it,
you kind of feel like what's wrong with me? Is my brain broken? Is this something that other people can do, but I can't? And I don't
think that's the case. I think that there's a balance here between flow and deliberate practice.
So flow is the state where the words are just coming and you're engrossed in what you're doing.
the words are just coming and you're engrossed in what you're doing.
Um, and that is sort of like the performance mode,
but as Cal talks about in the podcast episode, there's also the deliberate practice side.
And when you're doing deliberate practice,
you're trying to develop a skill and you're putting in the reps cause it's not
just the 10,000 hours that makes you a master. You have to be intentional about how you're putting in the reps, because it's not just the 10,000 hours that makes you a
master. You have to be intentional about how you're practicing. And when you're practicing,
you are in a state that is almost the exact opposite of flow. And I never thought about it
that way. But as a musician, for example, David, you play the saxophone. So when you're learning
a piece or you're going through a scale, you're practicing a particularly
hard section of that music for the first time. That's not flow, right? And you do it over and
over and over and over again. And you maybe feel at that point, like, is this ever going to get easy? And then eventually it clicks.
And then, uh, kind of the picture I get is you're, let's say you're a professional
musician, you're performing, you know, when you're performing, that's when
you can just let it go.
And I think that's kind of when flow tends to come, but I just wanted to
encourage people, I guess, as I guess, as she's talking about flow,
don't make that the gold standard
of whether you are being productive.
I think it's great when you can get to that point,
but all you can really control is the intentional practice.
And then at some point you just have to let it go
and that's when you realize the the results but it's a very small percentage
of the the time that you invest in honing a craft I would argue yeah I kind
of look at it in the same way I look at my meditation practice which often is a
struggle and sometimes is easy and flow is like those easy meditation sessions
where it just comes naturally.
And I don't know, I almost feel like
it chooses when to show up.
And I don't really have any control over that.
But maybe I'm being silly.
But yeah, I understand where you're coming from.
I hadn't really thought about it that way,
but you're right there.
Flow is not the end all be all, but it is really nice when you can achieve it.
Deliberate practice does play a huge role in getting there.
Yes, yep, exactly.
The other thing I wanted to talk about with focus on productivity is productive downtime.
I'm curious before I jump into my thoughts here,
did anything jump out to you in this section?
Because I know you typically time block your work day,
but not your downtime, sort of intentionally.
Yeah, but I also am intentional about what I do
in my downtime, if that makes sense.
Like earlier I was saying, I'm intentional about what TV I watch.
They're one of the reasons why I've set up a wood shop is so I can spend my downtime
making things or playing music.
So I've put a lot of structure into the things I can do in my downtime that bring me joy
and kind of growth as opposed to things that waste me away.
And so I'd like to think that I've gone through this,
but you're right, I don't actually block time for that stuff.
Well, I'm not, I didn't put it in here
to call you out for that.
Be like, ah, see, she said to schedule your downtime.
I think you're right.
Like, really the intention here and why she's arguing
that you should schedule your productive weekends
and evenings is that that meaningful downtime
doesn't just happen, it has to be intentional.
And there's a much better chance of it being intentional
if you think about it ahead of time.
I am sort of in between on this.
So I do time block every hour of every day
but I typically do that only on the work days. When
it comes to the weekends, I tend to be a little bit more loose with my time. I don't know if that's
good or bad because there are definitely times when I get a little bit frustrated because my
expectations for how the day is going to go don't align with my wife's. And if we communicated more effectively ahead of time
and had a plan, then it would go a little bit smoother.
But also, that requires effort.
And at some point, you gotta draw a line.
That's just not feasible.
Five kids at home.
And you have five kids.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's not.
It's like, daddy can't play Lego.
I'm supposed to be reading a book in this hour.
That doesn't work. Yeah, it can't play Lego. I'm supposed to be reading a book in this hour. That doesn't work.
Yeah, it can't be perfect all the time.
So I'm fine with the imperfection.
I'm doing the best that I can.
We'll try to do a little bit better here and there.
But yeah, I think that the intention
is the important thing there.
If you can go into your downtime being okay
with what you've chosen to do
and not feeling the pull to do all the other things,
that's really where the payoff is.
I do think that,
like one of my roles is creativity, you know, creative human.
And the fact that I do a weekly review and I face that
actually helps me make time to do my creative works.
Like I'm tracking stuff I'm building
and music I'm working on,
and every week I kind of bring myself to account for it.
But maybe I should run an experiment
to try and block time for that stuff.
I don't know.
I'm getting to a point in my life where it's easier
because my kids are older. Maybe I could even pull that off, I don't know. I'm getting to a point in my life where it's easier because my kids are older.
Maybe I could even pull that off, I don't know.
But I do like the concept of productive downtime
for certain because that to me goes back to the idea
of are you the driver or are you on autopilot?
And I have a certain bent towards making things
and creativity.
So I know that I am happiest when I give myself time
to do that stuff.
To me, consumption feels like empty calories too often.
So I'm very careful about it.
We talked about on a prior show how I realized
that I can't do fine work in a wood shop with the TV on.
Like we had, for a while I would play YouTube videos
of woodworkers or whatever while I was out there.
And I realized that I did not enjoy the time
as much when I did that.
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All right. So you were talking about creativity and that actually leads into
another section that I wanted to talk about this from this book, which is the
balance between creativity and flow and our creative, creative focus, I guess, because there there are a couple different kinds of focus here
and you were kind of hitting on this a little bit I think in the last segment there but there is the
tunnel vision when you're working on a task which is typically associated with the flow piece you
know you forget where you are time disappears but then there's this exploration phase, which I think this is a
really powerful idea where you are intentionally kind of zooming out and you're finding more
facets to consider and focus on. Do you find yourself with your creative process going back
and forth between these two modes intentionally? Yes, I actually have blocks called research time.
I actually have blocks called research time.
And that to me is where I'm looking to to learn more versus do the work.
Yeah, that's that's the the thing like you kind of mentioned intentionally consuming things.
I remember being at Craft and Commerce last year and hearing Sahil Bloom
talk about how everything that you create is downstream from something that you consume.
The problem is again, the defaults where we just consume things indiscriminately.
But when you have a filter, I feel like consuming things is one of the best
things you can do for your creativity.
You just got to make sure that the stuff that you're consuming is actually useful.
Yeah.
And like, just to share a story out of my life is
I've really tried to become more aware of that
in the last few years.
I subscribe to several sub stacks
which add up to significant amount of money,
but they're from writers that I think are really smart
and I like reading what they have to say.
And I'd rather do that than watch the news.
Like that's an example.
And that enriches me as opposed to frustrating me.
Yeah, and I think it's more,
it goes beyond just like that.
I'm gonna avoid feeling frustrated.
We both create for a living.
And so this is sort of like a different mode, a forced interrupt.
And when you change up your state, you can find new energy to engage with something in a different way.
We kind of talked about that not too long ago.
I remember sharing like when I get stuck with a creative task, I'm writing a script or something for a YouTube video,
then going for a run, doing something physical that kind of helps me reset. And then when I come back, I can engage with the creative task again. But I realized as I read this, these two distinct modes
where we're switching back and forth between the tunnel vision, this is what I'm going to actually focus on and the exploration where you're finding more facets to consider and focus on.
That's something I could be a little bit more intentional with. I guess I kind of lean a little
bit too much in my opinion after reading this book on the tunnel vision piece where this is the thing
that I'm going to be doing.
And a lot of the consumption stuff that I do is like books that I read and things like
that, which, you know, I mentioned Bookworm previously, like I have to read certain books
for that podcast and that becomes fodder for things that I want to create.
Those are essentially the mental Lego blocks that I can use to put back together and make something new again
But I like this idea of exploration exploration to me kind of feels like we don't know exactly
Where we're going and I feel like even when I am
Consuming I maybe have a little bit too much tunnel vision
maybe have a little bit too much tunnel vision. Maybe I could do a little bit better job of exploring the things on the fringe because she actually talked about that earlier in the book
about how when you focus on something, the things that are around it that are kind of in the same
area or vicinity, those things get a focus boost as well. I mean, there's so much in this book.
That just the whole science of the
brain and how you can direct your focus is kind of amazing. But I need to, I
think, be more in this scatter focus mode where you're just kind of being a little
bit more curious, a little bit more playful, kind of looking for things that
are surprising and delightful. Well, the way I do it, and I do it with discipline,
so I'm not sure if I'm really on track
with what she's stating here, but I save,
I use it, I have sub-projects called research
in the various areas of my life.
Max Barkey, woodworking, family, all these,
and so interesting ideas come across that I think,
oh, that might be something interesting to explore.
Well, I'll just save them there,
and the reason is because historically, across that I think, oh, that might be something interesting to explore, well, I'll just save them there.
And the reason is because historically,
I didn't have a process like that,
and something like that could divert me.
I'd like go exploring and not get the work done.
And I still have to ship.
So I put them into, whether it use tags or a separate project,
I put them aside.
And it's like a bucket of fun for me, just sitting there.
And then I make a point of blocking time to go into those
and then I just play in that bucket.
And whatever looks interesting to me
in the time I've allotted for it, I start exploring it.
Like I did this with a lot with AI tools
as they started to emerge over the last few years.
I've spent many hours doing just
research without a purpose on artificial intelligence tools and how they can help me
and how I can bring them to my lab's numbers and things like that. And I find that that's actually
really enjoyable to me in a manageable fashion. Yeah, makes a ton of sense.
manageable fashion. Yeah.
Makes a ton of sense.
Want to talk about motivation and attention?
Sure. Sure. Well, let's start with decisions.
Sure. So I mean, motivation and attention. There's a ton that you could talk about here,
but the thing that I really wanted to talk about was how we
make decisions because she walks through the scientific
process and there's a phrase that really struck me. We are reasonable enough beings who sometimes
focus on the wrong things. Which if you think about the decisions that you regret or you wish
you would have chosen something different, you can kind of see how you
got sucked into things. But that has only so much value, I feel, being able to go back in the
retrospective and figure out what went wrong. What are you actually going to do about it?
going to do about it. And I think one of the bigger perspective shifts that's necessary is that nothing is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it. That sounds simple,
borderline stupid, but when you take into context everything she said up until this point in the
rest of the book about how we have the ability to choose
what we're going to pay attention to. A lot of us know in the back of our head
that there are these competing motivations inside of us. There is the motivation to be healthy,
gain muscle, lose weight by going to the gym, but there is also motivation to consume the piece of pie that's in the refrigerator. And I think it's important to recognize that there
is this short-term motivation because the pie looks and tastes good. And then there's the longterm motivation.
Now the longterm motivation is interesting to me because I feel like that's at the root of a lot of
the theories behind goal setting. And I have issues with goal setting because you can get so attached to a goal that this has to be
the thing. I'm going to achieve this and then everything is going to change. Things are going
to be better. It's never exactly how it plays out. If you achieve a goal, great, but then the goalpost just moved. So the achievement of the long-term motivation isn't
enough for a sustainably healthy focused life, I think. But then also you can't just do whatever
feels good in the moment. So I feel like this whole section about managing our motivation, like this is really the important thing,
managing the motivation, not setting the goal of like, I'm going to achieve this outcome,
but learning to manage your motivation in a way that I'm looking forward to going for a run,
I'm looking forward to going to the gym. Those preferences can be changed.
And I feel like this section of the book
did a really good job of giving me some levers to pull
in terms of managing my motivation
and recognizing what is the source of this motivation?
Is it gonna be helpful or is it gonna hinder me
in terms of my long-term happiness and growth and then recognizing, you know, if
this isn't going to be useful, then I recognize you and I'm going to dismiss you and focus
on this other motivation instead.
Yeah.
I mean, I think like she talked about it a lot in terms of diet, right?
And, you know, and trying to lose weight and the various, you know, things that go through our brain as we're
trying to deal with that. But you're right with the also the
idea that the cake tastes good. And that's right. And that's
right here right now. It made me think about the idea of like,
you know, as humans, just on the idea of health, right? We know
we should go to the gym, We know we should eat better. But
again, I like to contrast it with the original humans that were out, you know, on the Savannah.
And they didn't have to worry about that stuff because they didn't have a lot of food and
they had to walk a lot every day. Right? And so that person, if you said here's a free meal
and a comfortable place you can stay that's safe,
they would absolutely stay there
and eat the comfortable meal, right?
So we are in the position of comfort now,
even though our brains were developed
in a time where we didn't have it.
So we're going against programming
to force ourselves to go to the gym
because I think our natural state is to conserve calories.
And I do think that's why all this wiring is necessary
because we should be smart enough to know better
that in the modern world, no, you do need to build muscle
and challenge yourself and not overindulge with food.
But boy, it's just so easy.
Yeah, because there's this juxtaposition of what she calls the experiencing self and the remembering self.
And they have different attentional perspectives.
And those, those perspectives are constantly battling, which is ordering and limiting our experience.
And that's what makes big decisions hard.
So what do you, what in the world do you do about this?
I think number one, you got to recognize what's going on inside your brain.
Sure.
She mentions that we commit to things based on that long-term goal.
Then we shift to the present as the deadline gets closer.
I'm too busy.
Why did I commit to this?
as the deadline gets closer, I'm too busy, why did I commit to this? And that is the thing that I think can get you in trouble as it pertains to goal setting specifically. But then I feel like
there's ways that you can, I hesitate to use this word, but hack this maybe because you've got the
remembering self, which is the one that is gonna, once you get done with the workout or because you've got the remembering self which is the one that is gonna once you get
done with the workout or once you've lost the weight once you're able to run a half marathon
you're able to look back and be like I'm proud of what I actually accomplished but that's you know
again in contrast to the experiencing self which wants what it wants right now so the the thing
that I took away from this section,
we're gonna get into some takeaways here in a second,
but I wanna optimize for small experiential joys
instead of those big things that, you know,
we create this picture of what it's gonna look like
when we achieve this big goal,
and it always kind of lets us down because,
like I said, the goalpost move,
when we gotta set another goal
that's even more amazing.
So if we can learn to love the process,
if we can learn to enjoy going for a run,
not I'm gonna kill myself to get to a certain pace
or run a certain distance, but it's a nice day
and I'm a healthy person.
So I'm going to enjoy going for a run. Those moments can create a lot of joy.
And then that can be the thing that will help you make that a consistent habit or routine.
And ultimately, it's those things that we do consistently. That's what determines who we are.
And at this section of the book, I'm just
really realizing how important our attention, our focus is to following through on the things that
intellectually or logically or analytically, we say and know this is what I should be doing,
but we have so much trouble doing them in the moment. Yeah, it's almost, and I know you're
hesitant to use these programming analogies, but a lot of our default settings are no
longer appropriate. But attention gives you the ability
to flip them. But the problem is they're a default setting. So
every morning, they're they're back to the default. And the
only way you can keep flipping them to the right setting is to
be intentional about it.
Yeah, yeah. And then that kind of leads into the last thing I wanted to talk about here, which is grit. She mentions grit by Angela Duckworth, which is a very good book.
Are you familiar with that one? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. This whole concept of grit, she kind of talks about it in terms of this is something that we should be trying to do.
She talks about how it can, people who have grit, a lot of times it's something that they develop as
they're being brought up. But I'm kind of curious, you know, with this whole concept of grit, when you
read this section, when you walked away from it, did you feel like this is actually something like I can develop or does it feel like a little bit
out of your reach?
No, it feels to me like something that you can develop.
I mean, Daisy and I talked about a lot as our girls were growing up.
We did not want them to go through life as victims. And we're very careful about when they had problems
about forcing them to confront it and get through it. In fact, we used the term grit before I knew
the book was written. I think it's something you can absolutely instill in people and yourself.
I agree. I think when I read this book, it didn't feel as approachable as I believe it is. And I
think the term grit, maybe that's the thing I have a little bit of issue with because that kind of
feels like you think a grit, you think of you're a woodworker, so probably sandpaper, how rough something is,
how much it's able to wear down
and smooth out a piece of wood.
But there's another word I would use, I think,
instead of grit, which is resilience.
And resilience is absolutely a skill that you can develop.
I grew up in a family business and my dad created
assessment skill building software for primarily a special education audience.
And one of the emotional intelligence skills that his programs develop is this
resilience. And what was interesting to me, I always loved those programs
because they were research-based. There were like 140
doctoral-level papers and books that were written on the effectiveness of the assessments that he
used. It was primarily taught to a population where they... Emotional intelligence still is
kind of like this black box. People have trouble understanding what exactly it is, how exactly does it work. And then when you think about a special needs population,
specifically that can be tricky for people to understand.
So when you have an evidence-based assessment
and you're able to prove this is where we started
and after going through some video modeling
and interventions to develop these skills,
this is where we are now.
It's kind of astounding.
And I guess, you know, the takeaway for me
from this section was not to think of grit
as something like, well, if I just keep practicing
my attention, then focusing my attention,
then eventually I'll get there.
But really just recognizing that there are actual strategies that you can use to develop
this.
I think one of the easy ones is do hard things.
You know, you mentioned you tried to teach your daughters to do these hard things.
We actually at my house for a while had a hard things rule where everybody had a specific thing that was outside their comfort zone that they were going to do.
It's probably time to revisit that because some of those things like learn
Spanish for me you know I've kind of gotten into a groove with that and just
constantly looking for the the things that you can't do right now putting
yourself in a position to stretch yourself.
Because when you do that, all the focus and attention stuff kind of comes along for the
ride. But the big thing, the big benefit from it, I think, goes beyond that. And you surprise
yourself and you sort of develop this growth mindset that everything is figureoutable.
And just because I failed at something doesn't mean that I'm a failure, but I can figure out a way
to make this work.
Yeah, and the way you do it is you confront a challenge
and when you succeed.
It kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier
about my lesson of being a lawyer.
It's not, the goal is not to avoid having bad things happen
because bad things are gonna happen.
The goal is getting the skills to deal with them.
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In the fashion of the Bookworm Podcast, Mike,
I wanted to add a section about some takeaways
and maybe some things we might wanna work on
now having read this book.
Do you wanna go first or you want me?
I can go first.
Okay.
Yeah, so we've got action items essentially here.
A couple of these I've mentioned before,
a couple of these we didn't actually get to
because there's so much in this book
that pertains to the topic of focus.
But I did mention earlier that pertains to the topic of focus. But I
did mention earlier that I want to, as I'm walking away from this book, optimize for small moments
of experiential joy. As this was framed in the book, I think this was juxtaposed to acquiring
things. So I don't know if this is like a root of consumerism in me or something, but you kind
of feel like, well, if I buy the fancy new MacBook, then I'll be able to do the thing
that I want. Or, you know, I play a guitar. So if I get this really nice guitar, then my music
will take off. And it provides a temporary boost, but it wears off and you still
got to practice, right? So I want to kind of reframe that and start looking for the things
in the moment that are going to be enjoyable for me. Another thing that she talked about in this
book is kind of the, I won't say the science, but kind of behind
mindfulness meditation. But she takes a really strong stance in the book about how you really
don't need to have any of the religious aspect to this. And I've heard that before, but for
whatever reason, the way that she explained it here again was like, oh the really valuable thing
and you're gonna go and roll your eyes is just focusing your attention. So I am inspired yet again
to try mindfulness meditation. I don't know why this has been so hard for me but I've got
renewed motivation to give this a shot. And then there was another smaller action item
from one of these sections.
I forget exactly where it was,
but she was talking about how people who record
or who keep a record of what they eat
actually eat about a third less food
than the people who don't.
And this is totally me.
I kind of justify it. I'm not a big
guy to begin with, but I'm really active. I'm working out six, maybe seven days a week, but
it doesn't mean that I'm being intentional about the food that I eat. And I probably could eat a
little bit healthier. So I've got an app on my phone. I think it's called Food Noms that I used to use back in the day for tracking calories
and things.
And I want to try doing that again, not because I'm concerned necessarily about I got to hit
this number of calories or grams of protein or anything like that, but just keeping a
log of what I am actually putting into my body.
I feel like that could that could have some positive effects.
If you write it down, you eat better.
It's really, that's been my experience.
I had the same thought because I've struggled with my weight.
As you get older, your metabolism slows down
and suddenly you're like,
hey, you're a little chunky, buddy.
And so Daisy and I joined Pilates,
I don't know about a year ago, and now I so Daisy and I joined Pilates,
I don't know, about a year ago,
and now I'm doing that like three, four times a week
and getting good at it and I'm pretty strong,
a lot stronger than I have been.
But I haven't really lost much weight
and reading this section reminded me the same thing.
Even though I can say I have intentional mode
for a lot of things I do,
I think I'm going bottom up too often
when it comes to food, right?
It's there, I'll eat it.
So I actually also use food noms,
and without us talking, I re-enabled it
and put the widgets on my computer
and I'm back to tracking food as well.
I think that'd be a good thing for me
to practice mindfulness on.
But I really think that overall, this book was be a good thing for me to practice mindfulness on. But I really think that overall,
this book was just a good reminder to me
of the importance of focus and why we make this show.
I really think that in the years that have elapsed
since this book was written,
focus has become even more of a challenge
because so much of what's thrown at us now
is using science of its own to keep us from focusing.
And I think this is something that we all need
to take an active role in if we're gonna have any chance
at all to get off autopilot.
So one of the things that stood out for me from the book
was being more mindful of bottom up sources
of focus in my life.
Because even though I like to think
I'm pretty good at top-down,
I am also good at getting distracted by bottom-up sources.
And I'm trying to just be aware of that.
I guess some examples for me would be the Apple News app.
I think that I catch myself going in there once in a while
and just reading about nonsense
when I could be making myself better or creating something.
And that's a bottom-up source to me, really,
because I unintentionally fall into it.
Talking to you today has got me thinking now
about maybe time blocking some of the other things I do.
When I made the Productivity Field Guide,
I called it time blocking joy.
And I've kind of fallen off the habit of it.
But I'm getting to a point where I think I could
actually realistically block like shop time
on some days and music time.
I think I'm gonna try and experiment with that.
But those are really the two ones for me.
What I would say, I wanted to go back to your idea
about going back to mindfulness meditation,
and I would like to give you,
let's combine it as a focus challenge.
If you're serious about it, why don't you try it again,
but do it the old school way, the way I learned.
Don't get it up, don't have anything in your ears.
Sit on the cushion and try and keep your mind focused.
All right, yeah, let's do it.
You use counting, I mean, that's a good technique.
That's when I first learned, they just said count to 10
and just do it repeatedly and you'll be shocked
how often you can't stay on that.
I would go up to 10 and down to one,
and on the return stroke I'd get to seven,
and then my mind would go off to some song I wanna learn
or some client problem I was dealing with,
and it was shocking to me that I could not even count to 10
and back down to one without getting my mind distracted.
And that was when I said, oh yeah,
I really need to do this more.
But as much as I'm a fan of the apps,
and I just bought the app for a close friend recently
who needs to learn how to meditate,
I really think that it's all about
being alone with your thoughts.
And if there's somebody talking in your ear,
it's just delaying the hard part.
Sure.
Yeah, well the thing that kind of stood out to me about the
whole practice as she describes it in this book, like I said, she makes a very strong argument at
the beginning that you don't need any religious background to this as it pertains to focus.
The sole benefit of this is the direction of your attention. And for whatever reason, when she said that, that kind of freed me up to think
about it differently.
I kind of wrinkle at the Eastern religion aspect to it.
Even the phrase like sit on the cushion that creates an image in my
head that feels weird.
But when you say just count to 10 and backwards, like I can completely get on
board with the benefits
of that approach and not that you're necessarily doing it to achieve a certain outcome, but that's
kind of my motivation for it this time is you made a really compelling case on how if you're able to
control your attention better and you're able to focus more you're going to have a better life and
I'm in a spot where I know that's something I need to get better at
We've talked a little bit about in our mastermind meetings, you know
Went full-time as independent creator
business is still
trying to get off the ground. And I deal with a lot of negative self-talk as
a result of that. So at this point in my life, you know, when I read this section and how
practicing directing your attention can make you a lot happier, because again, it's not not all bad,
but that's where my brain tends to fixate on. And if I'm not careful, I can let that rumination create a really negative state for myself to the point where I'm just sharing this.
Hopefully this is helpful to other people who are maybe in the same situation or been in the same situation, you know, where like, I'll get up in the morning.
And if I have not controlled my attention, and I've continued to ruminate on the things
that aren't going well, like it's hard to get out of bed in the morning. You feel a lot of
depression and anxiety from stuff like that. And I think that there are points when you absolutely
need to go see a counselor, maybe I should, I don't know.
But anyways, I feel like now is the time for me to take this stuff seriously before it really
does hit the fan. I see enough of the red flags. I see the warning signs. And reading this book,
I kind of anticipated that it was going to be a little bit of a negative tone and the world is going
to hell in a hand basket because of all these distractions and we really, you know, just
agitating the pain point. You really got to be able to focus. That's not the tone at all.
It's actually pretty positive and she's focusing a lot on the good outcomes that come from
your being able to focus. But as I read it, that was the one that kind of stood out
to me is like, this is really something
that I need right now.
So yeah, let's do it.
A couple of other thoughts about it.
I learned to meditate at a Zen center
because back in 1992, that's what you did.
The YouTube didn't exist and all. You know, YouTube didn't exist
and all these great resources we have didn't exist.
But interestingly, one of the ladies
that I learned to meditate with was a Catholic nun, you know?
And nobody at the Zen Center cared
that she was a Catholic nun.
And nobody was, you know what I mean?
It really, I think a lot of meditation
is not about religion, at least as taught in
the United States.
Maybe in other parts of the world, there's more of a religious overtone to it.
But I don't think about it in terms of enlightenment, and I'm holding up air quotes as I say that.
To me, it's really just a question of being comfortable in my own thoughts and being in
the driver's seat rather than being
an autopilot.
And I do it 30 minutes a day, almost every day.
It's very rare that I miss and it is a muscle.
And I really hope that this one sticks for you, Mike.
But I do think maybe for a guy like you, the trick is to not use the apps and stuff.
Just do the counting, observe your breath,
and see what happens.
What you'll find is, I can tell you what's gonna happen,
is that your brain is gonna run into the stuff
that you're struggling with.
It's gonna just keep surfacing in your mind.
And then what you need to do at that moment is say,
oh, look at that, that brain just did that thing to me again.
Okay, well that's funny that you did that brain,
but I'm gonna start again at one.
And you don't judge yourself.
The worst thing you can do while you're meditating is say,
oh, I'm a bad meditator
because I keep thinking about these problems.
No, it's just you observing this brain
and what a wild horse it is,
and you taming it by not being angry,
not being afraid,
but just going back to one and starting over again.
That's really all there is to it.
Yeah, well, let's give it a shot.
Because like I mentioned at the beginning,
the quote that really stands out to me
from this whole book, I'll live the focused life
because it's the best kind there is.
I am more motivated than ever to do just that.
So if old school mindfulness meditation
could help me get there, and I believe it can,
then let's do it.
Maybe we should make that the new subtitle.
I mean, we've been using the widgets one now for years.
True.
Well, let's think about it.
Yeah.
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Today on Deep Focus,
we're going to be talking about takeaways
that Mike got after just attending the Craft and Commerce,
I guess you'd call that the conference, right?
Craft and Commerce conference.
Yeah, I can't wait to talk to you about it.
We started talking before we recorded.
I said, hold it, I wanna hear about this on air.
All right, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Otherwise, we'll see you next time.