Focused - 217: The Anxious Generation

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast, but more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, the one and only Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike, how are you today? I'm doing good. I am a little bit anxious about this topic today though.

Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, we, you know, Mike has a podcast about books, but there is a book out that I think so resonates with the mission of the Focus podcast. I thought we should cover it here. Today we're going to be talking about The Anxious Generation. It's just an excellent book, I think, just to kind of tip the Indian here for you. But I read it recently.

I've talked to several people in education and child rearing and whatnot. And this book seems to be making real waves. And I thought it was enough on the radar that we should cover it here on the Focus podcast. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about this, but before we get into the specifics of the book, I know you have mentioned this to me several times in the last, I don't know, month and a half maybe. And I'm,

I'm kind of curious right at the beginning here, I'm going to put you on the spot, but why does this book seem to resonate so much with you? Why does it seem to be so important? Uh, it's affirming more than anything else. I feel like, you know, for a long time, to me it's been clear that one of the big problems with focus is the interruptions caused by mobile devices.

I see it in kids, I see it in adults. I've got a high school teacher that lives with me. My daughter is, I have a deal with my kids. I tell them they can come back and live with me so long as they save enough money each month to pay rent and put it into their house pay, their house fund, you know. So right now she's living with me,

but she teaches high school and she comes home every day with the stories of the kids who genuinely cannot stop using TikTok to their own demise. And so I hear about it from her, but I also see it in the world with my own family. Frankly, I see it in adults too. And I think this is one of the challenges right now. If you want to be a focused individual,

you need to master digital devices and the constant flow of sugar covered interruption that they they offer you. And this book, you know, goes in deep on the science on it. Yeah, it definitely does. And, um, just to address right at the beginning here, the anxious generation is really about technology use in the lives of kids, but there is definitely an adult-oriented application of this. The principles and the concepts, I feel like, are important for the general focused audience.

So if you're going into this thinking, oh, I know what that book is, it's a book about kids, I don't have kids, this isn't applicable to me, we're going to do our best to steer away from that side of it. But it was interesting to me at the beginning, well I guess it wasn't at the beginning, it was towards the end of the book he mentioned, that at the beginning of the process he had set out to write a book about how social media was a threat to democracy. And then he discovered this bigger issue where actually it's ruining the lives of our kids. So that was the angle that he took with the book,

but there's a lot of takeaways here that we can apply to our own lives if we want to do more of what matters. Yeah, and that's really the challenge, isn't it? The reason we named the show Focus is because we all have things that are important to us, and I think in the modern world more than ever, more than any point in history really, it's hard to stay on target because there is so much out there offering you nice convenient interruptions.

And it starts with these digital things in our pocket which are really useful. I mean, don't get me wrong. I have an iPhone. I have no intention of giving up my iPhone, but I understand that it's also got a dangerous part to it in terms of my focus. And I'm going to be aware of that and use it in ways that help me avoid that. Right. And actually that maybe is a place to go into a concept that he talks about at the, about during the introduction,

where he contrasts the real world and the virtual world. And I think as it pertains to the context of the book, he's sharing these as a way to help parents understand where kids maybe can't make those distinctions, but I couldn't help but think about how I have trouble making those distinctions sometimes. So I think that's the big threat is when you use the digital devices. And I think specifically he's kind of talking about social media specifically throughout the book, but I think it applies to other contexts as well. But social media is the place where this manifests the most.

Where what you do on the device, because you can switch back and forth from, you know, what you're doing in real life so easily, it feels like you're not leaving one place and going into another place, but there are some very distinct characteristics of the real world versus the virtual world. And the more time that you spend in the virtual world, the less connected you become to the real world. And if that sounds sensational, I'm sorry, but I think it really is true.

The things that really anchor us in the real world, it talks about how we use our bodies to communicate. And if you're just going to send a text message or reply to a post, you know, with by typing something out, you know how the message loses a lot of the context. And all you're left with is the words that you wrote. Even with like emails, you got to be careful sending emails to your, your coworkers because how you say something can be misinterpreted, which honestly like is Apple's releasing their Apple intelligence.

And there's all these AI tools to help us write better emails. I feel like this is actually one of the positive applications of that kind of stuff. It can help us communicate the tone that we want the right way, but you lose a lot of that stuff. You lose the, the, um, the high bar for entry and exit. You lose the, the synchronous of, uh, synchronicity of things happening at the same time, which helps us kind of create these,

these communities and feel a part of the, the, the groups that we're engaged with. I'm kind of curious, you know, how you see those, those distinctions and maybe what you do to keep those things separated. Well, I mean, Aristotle said man is a social animal. And I think what makes, you know, the social media apps in particular, so, so difficult is that they,

they try to tap into that. But in an inferior way, as humans, we need human connections. And that's the reason why it's really hard for us to stop refreshing in these apps, because we want validation from other humans. But it's like the worst kind. It's there to sell ads, it's not there to make connections.

And I get it, like these guys in Silicon Valley have really nice cars and houses because of this, but it's not really helping you, and it's just so hard to get that through to people. I was just reading maybe a little bit of a tangent, but something super concerning to me is the development of chat bot relationships. Are you even familiar with this, Mike?

A little bit. I mean, I confess I haven't dug too much into what people are actually doing with this kind of stuff. Every time I see a headline, it's kind of like, I don't want to go there. Yeah, well, I mean, and one of the points he makes in the book is that there are generally categorized different risks for boys versus girls. Um, um, and we can talk about that in a minute,

but like one of the risks for boys is, is lack of socialization and inability to kind of interact with the world. And this, these chat bots, I think, are primarily aimed at boys and men, by the way. I mean, if you read articles about this, there's plenty of men that get trapped in this. But it's like a fake robot girlfriend, I guess for lack of a better word.

And it can be as innocent or as explicit as you can imagine. and it can be as innocent or as explicit as you can imagine. And people have these relationships. They tell their feelings to these chatbots and some of them really get invested in these relationships. And then the interesting thing is if you read about it, I was reading about one example where a teenage boy was in a chatbot relationship and he ended up committing

suicide and looking at the logs, they're not sure, well, would you think the chatbot kind of helped him along to that decision? And so now they've, that company has scaled back the explicitness and advice that these chat bots give and now everybody that's in relationships with these chat bots is upset because they feel like their girlfriend just got lobotomized, their digital girlfriend. It's just such a strange concept but underlying it all is people that are not

creating human relationships with other humans and they're further getting sucked into this strange world. And I think I might have gone way off of the target of your question. But this all is of a piece to me. These digital devices are really useful, but they also bring inherent risks. And people are monetizing those risks to their own benefit, but not to yours.

And I think the most important piece of this, and I gave a talk to high school kids in one of my daughter's classes, is to understand these people are getting rich off of you, but they're not there to be your parent or your friend. They're there to get rich off of you. And if you want to be successful in life, you've got to find, you know, a way to walk this path without getting sucked into their game. The conversation kind of reminds me a lot of what we talked about in the, uh, the episode we recently did on AI,

where, um, we've got a lot of possibilities and opportunities tools that are available to us to do things that we haven't done before or do things in ways that we haven't done them before. But the approach seems to me that we have to go into it the same way, kind of with a sideways eye towards these technological tools. Assuming that the intentions of the platforms that we're using, just like the AI tools, that the incentives are not aligned in order to improve the quality of our life.

But that doesn't mean that you can't use those things in a positive way either. So we'll probably rail about social media and justifiably. So I would say quite a bit in this episode, but I want to say at the very beginning here that social media isn't all bad. It is bad if it replaces the deep meaningful relationships, which is kind of what you were talking about, and you are just okay with that as a cheap substitute. But if you're gonna use it as a tool, like most of the creators that I know use social media not as a way to stay in touch with

their friends or have conversations about topics that are important to them. They've moved to different avenues for that a long time ago, but social media is still where there is a lot of attention, where their potential customers are. And so it's a great way to connect with people that are looking for something that you may be able to help them with. I use it kind of that way as an outreach tool. And when I was, as I was thinking about the anxious generation, I was, the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking about the way that I use social media and kind of putting it under the microscope and thinking about, you

know, am I doing this right? Should I be changing how I approach some of these things? And I guess the, what I landed on was for me, it's kind of primarily a broadcast medium for putting a message out into the world, which is that making it better or is it making it worse? I'm hoping that it makes it better. I'm hoping that the things that I contribute are actually positive and life giving and can kind of, uh, maybe drown out a little bit of the negativity.

But if everybody who has something positive to contribute just disconnects from the tools and leaves and takes their ball and goes home, like that's not, that's not really great either. So I kind of feel a little bit of a, a burden of responsibility to be a positive citizen in these arenas because they exist. This is where people are. It doesn't mean I have to spend the majority of my time there. It doesn't mean that I have to continue to be there if the interactions go south. But I do feel like the solution to this is not just to give up on social media altogether. There should be some,

some people championing for like a positive way to use these things, which I think maybe is a little bit missing from, from this book, because again, it's geared towards the effect that it has on kids. And I think, you know, when you're talking about kids specifically, it's easier to draw a firm line in the sand. Like you shouldn't do this before you're 16. In fact, that's one to draw a firm line in the sand. Like you shouldn't do this before you're you're 16. In fact, that's one of the rules that he instituted. He's got four different points.

Like this is what I would do differently. And one of them is no social media before 16. And I it's basically the approach that we've taken with our kids. So I can see the benefit of that. But as you get into adulthood, I don't think that just. Avoiding it altogether is necessarily a good thing. Yeah, I think I'd agree with all of that.

And, you know, I mean, the point he makes is your brain, before 16, is just really susceptible to the dangers of social media. But I also would argue that, you know, when you're in your 50s, you can also get hooked into this stuff in an unhealthy way. The trick is knowledge, right,

to understand where it's useful and where it isn't. It's good to plan a barbecue, but if you're using it as a substitute for human relationships, it's bad. You just gotta figure that out, right? It's also, I think, you know, there's different elements to it. I caught myself last week,

because I don't do a lot of social media, I'll be honest. It's just, I'm just too busy, honestly, and I've just chosen that that's one part of my life that is not gonna go deeply explored. But I was sitting on the couch and I watched a YouTube short and then I just let them start playing. And then I looked at my history and I had gone through like 30 of them in like 15 minutes.

And it's like, wow, you know, I can see how this thing, not only is it a problem with human relationships, it's also really a problem with focus, just to sit there and just let this stuff pour into your brain randomly. But I do feel like I'm jumping all over the place in this discussion of this book. So let's get a little more structured. With respect to children, the danger, like I said, is that their brains aren't quite there.

And we're not going to go into all the details of the book. I recommend, I absolutely recommend you read this book if you've got any children in your life, children, grandchildren, students, whatever. I think this gives you a lot of insight as to the challenges they face. With girls, a lot of it is the comparison problem, looking at themselves and their bodies

and everything in comparison to everybody on Instagram and the other places. And the data's there. I mean, teenage suicide spikes, and there's all sorts of problems girls are facing. And I think the data's pretty clear that social media plays a big role in it. If you look at, you know, the numbers before the distribution of mobile phones compared to after, it's not hard.

Or as my daughter told me the first day, the very first day she taught high school, she came home, she says, Dad, these phones are a real problem. Mm hmm. Yeah. The thing that kind of stood out to me about the, um, the effect that it has on kids is that it's a little bit different. Well, it's pretty different actually between, uh, girls and boys, but the, um, the thing that is so insidious about it is not even the content that is created by other users, which is typically where you would go to go to identify blame for some of the like body shaming and things like that that you were kind of hitting on a little bit. But the real issue is the psychological mechanisms that are built into the

platforms. I thought that was kind of interesting. I guess I kind of knew, but I didn't really know how the like button, for example, was created at Facebook. They knew that they were manipulating people psychologically by instituting this, but they did it anyways. And then the Endless Feeds is another piece of this. And it's sort of like a perfect storm. It's like once you made the first decision and you went against Tristan Harris, they talk about this. This is the first book that I heard about this, but they mentioned Tristan Harris and the PowerPoint that he put together while he was at Google saying, we got to be good stewards of our audiences attention. And he was kind of lauded for it at Google at the time, but

then nothing happened. And they just continued down this path because the thing they were optimizing for was engagement, attention, and ultimately money. And he got frustrated. So he leaves and he goes and he starts this foundation and he testifies before Congress. And basically like, this is really, really bad, but the door, the door to Pandora's box has been opened. The cover is off. So it's kind of hard to stuff it back in there. So that naturally raises the question of like, well, what do you do about this? And that's where I really liked this book is I feel like he doesn't just paint a doomsday scenario of look how terrible all this stuff is. He does give specific things like this is what you can do as an individual, as a parent, connecting up with with other parents.

But the place to start is to recognize the effect that this is having on people. And you mentioned girls, let me just touch on boys real quickly, because I've got four boys who are right in the middle of this, 17, 15, 13, and 11 essentially. And, um, the big thing for, for boys is, is sort of, uh, well you kind of touched on the relationship stuff and substituting the virtual world for the real world. If I were to encapsulate it, that's what, that's how I would put it. Uh,

the big thing with a lot of boys is video games and the amount of time that they just invest into these things. And as a boy growing up playing video games, I can, I can empathize with that. I have definitely sunk more hours into a video game than I intended to on on multiple occasions. And that's the thing that kind of stood out to me is, is it's fine to do that stuff in moderation. But when you drop six hours at a time,

because you get so sucked into the world that you're creating or you're participating in, whether it is something as simple and innocent as Minecraft or you're playing call of duty and you're shooting people like that, the, the quality of the interaction, I don't want to make judgment calls on that kind of stuff. But the virtual world that you immerse yourself in does affect

you. And it kind of talks specifically about when boys spend too much time in the virtual world, they tend to be snippy. They have this attitude. They're angry. And like my wife and I have seen that so much with our kids, especially as they're younger because we try to introduce them to the technology and get them to use it and practice self discipline with using it. They've all got this timer, they manage their own video game time, they get an hour a day,

which some could argue it's too much, but it's seemingly less than a lot of their friends. And they understand because we pointed out every single time, you know, like when they're, when they're little and they're getting used to it, they'll play their game and then they'll get done. And then they'll just have this attitude and we'll just kind of play it out and be like, Hmm, well, maybe you played too much video games. Maybe you can't handle it yet because listen to yourself, listen to the way that you're talking to your mother.

Yeah, no, I agree. And I do think a point that you made that I want to emphasize is it's the algorithm, right the I'm not saying that the you know that TikTok or Facebook or any of these Platforms have to tell people what to post. Although I guess there are cases where people are posting hate posts and I guess you know now I think about it, there are cases where I think they should be moderated. But what really gets me is that the algorithm

is engineered towards rage. And it's not just in social media, you see it in the news sites and everything else. The more they can get you wound up, the more time you spend there, the more time you spend there, the more ads they can feed you, the more money they make.

And that's what it's all about. And I really think these algorithms are just rough for kids because it will, like on the body shaming topic, it will just continue to show them other girls that are gonna make them feel worse and worse about themselves. And that's because that's what the algorithm figured out

is gonna keep her there and they know it. And it's rough. But yeah, if you've got kids or like I said, kids around, you should check it out. I really think that his recommendations are spot on. We just passed a law in California that's gonna go into effect, I believe in a year and a half that is basically banning phones from schools, where as I understand it, when you arrive at school in the morning, there's going to be some sort of a locker that you put

your phone in, and then you get it back when the school day is over, which will solve a lot of problems for my teacher daughter. but that doesn't solve the problem of what they're seeing when they get home. And you've got to, you know, I think this is not a solution where we can just ask Apple or Facebook or TikTok or anybody to solve it for us. I think it's something with kids that everybody has to participate in.

And my inclination is the social media companies are gonna do it kicking and screaming because they're making a lot of money. They got stockholders, you know, I get it, you know, but that's okay. Maybe we can sort that out. But I think, you know, this is something that we need to be aware of

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And you were kind of talking about the impact of the things that we consume. And that kind of reminded me of something that he says on page 71, which is that books, words, speakers, and ideas that caused little or no controversy in 2010 were by 2015 said to be harmful, dangerous, or traumatizing. And I think that this is an important point because I think one of the things that happens with these digital devices is that you kind of are naturally pushed towards one of two ends of the spectrum. And I think that that is the result of a lot of the rage and the anger that comes from the depression maybe that is associated with these

the anger that comes from the depression, maybe that is associated with these devices. It's kind of like watching a train wreck, but you can't turn your eyes away. And I think as it pertains to adults, the thing to recognize here is that we do the same thing, not just with social media, but with the news and different world events, things that are going on. And when you get sucked into that stuff, I don't know, I'll speak for myself. When I get sucked into that stuff, I tend to lose all this time and all of this energy.

And I look up, you know, three hours later, and it's like, where did the time go? And now I feel depressed and I can't do anything. And I think this is where this conversation is relevant for every single focused listener, because it's really easy to fall into that trap. And it's not useful. It's not helpful when you get there. And it's, it's simple, but not easy, I guess, to just say, well, disconnect from some of those things that are making you angry. Disconnect from some of the news that's making you upset.

But this is where the rubber hits the road for all of us, I feel. And I think it's too simple to say, well, just disconnect from it because the argument is this is my world. But I do think that my own personal experience with that stuff is, because I've been in that trap before where I spent too much time doom scrolling the news and you have to realize that there's only, number one, so much you can do about it. And I think because it's online,

maybe there's an element of it. And this is just speculation why we have. I don't know, but when I was a kid, when you read the newspaper, you felt like, okay, that's what's happening. But it seems a bit more unbelievable when it's in pixels on a screen. I don't know.

Maybe it's just my age kicking in. But you have to accept that it's reality. Whatever you're reading about in the news, yeah, there is a wildfire and it is close. So rather than reading about it, why don't I start packing up and being ready in case the wind changes direction and I need it to bug out? Or apply this to whatever bit of news is bugging you.

And spend your time dealing with reality and not being stuck in the news cycle. And again, these guys are the same. They want you to keep reading them because the more time you spend on the site, the more ads they can feed you. They're not there to necessarily be super informative. They're not there to necessarily be super informative.

Yeah, their objective thing they're optimizing for is to keep you glued to the site so they can serve you more ads and they can make you and they can make themselves more money. And the thing that that that does that better than anything else is this, I'll say online sensationalism. And this isn't to say that things aren't happening, but I feel like it's just kind of natural and expected now to paint this in a real extreme light, regardless of which side of the spectrum you fall on. It just keeps nudging you a little bit more towards this, you gotta wake up, gotta realize all this stuff is happening, the world's gonna end if you don't fix this, and it just creates this kind of us against them mentality,

which I don't think is helpful for anyone. And I feel like I can identify people in my, my life who don't share the same views as me, but that's okay. Like going all the way back to liminal thinking by Dave Gray, one of my big takeaways from that phenomenal book was that we've got our experiences is one, it's just a tiny fraction of what is actually reality But on top of our experience and our very limited conscious attention

We build all of our judgments all of our beliefs and we surround ourselves with people Who tend to echo those beliefs and I think that is especially true online and we kind of build this this bubble and we should be looking for people who are going to pierce the bubble and are going to have a productive conversation about differences of opinions and belief systems. And that just seems to become harder and harder to do in the virtual world. But going back to the thing at the beginning, the real world, I've had lots of great conversations with people in the real world around that. But anytime you try to do something like that in the virtual world,

it just feels like like an impossible task. And then the effect that that has is in terms of your focus and your productivity, it's going down the tank. Any any time that your focus is is, I'll say, stolen. He mentions the book Stolen Focus, which I haven't read yet. I'm curious to dig into it. I know that there's some conversation about that one as well. But I would define focus as your attention and your energy, your intention being directed in a specific way that is serving your needs. Productivity is essentially doing more of what really matters. It's following through on the things that are

important and focus is a tool that is very powerful and is very helpful for doing more of what matters. And I mean, there's all sorts of research about the attention residue and when your focus gets broken, it takes this long to go back to the thing that you were doing. And we know that, but then we still sabotage ourselves a lot of times. So my big takeaway from this is, you know, be more firm with these boundaries. I don't know exactly if that means, you know, more focus modes or I'm just, and do not disturb even more than I currently am. But I really want to know what I'm getting into whenever I unlock my iPhone and recognize that, you know, with this incredible technology, there's a lot that

I can do with this in terms of creativity and and sending out messages into the world. But also it's opening a portal where literally anybody can send me anything if I'm not careful. And that stuff can be upsetting and it can completely derail me if I'm, if I'm not aware of those threats going into it, I feel like there's a much higher chance that I stumble into that stuff. Yeah. I mean, the science behind, you know, this goes back to us being on the veldt and being afraid of saber-toothed tigers. And the thing about these algorithms is they tap into that same thing.

So they make you feel threatened with just information to your eyeballs, which really isn't that true, right? I mean, occasionally, like I used an example before of a wildfire near my house. Well, there's a good example of maybe using, but so often the information thrown at you doesn't have that much impact on your life,

but it's delivered in a way that dramatizes that and you don't get to spend the time on what's important to you, which is maybe getting back to why I wanted to discuss this book on the Focus podcast, because I think this is such a threat to your focus. Whether it be social media, news outlets, whatever it is that an algorithm can be applied to divert your consciousness, the stuff is things you need to be aware of. I do think there's a mental health cost to this stuff for people.

I mean, I definitely have seen in adult friends, their slow radicalization. And I don't mean that just with respect to politics. It comes out in all sorts of different weird ways that has happened through them just getting diverted by some algorithm somewhere. Exactly. And so that kind of hits on what he calls the great rewiring and he's got

statistics to talk about the impact that this has on kids. But I think the real takeaway here is to recognize that we are being rewired as adults. And it hits on what you talked about with the saber-toothed tiger. He talks about back in chapter one, the surge of suffering, the difference between fear and anxiety, where fear is the emotional response to a real or perceived imminent threat.

And that is the saber-toothed tiger. You better get out of there or you're going to die. But then anxiety is the anticipation of a future threat. And that's kind of the low level stress that is triggering the same parts of the fight versus flight system. Fear triggers the full response system at the moment of danger. But he mentions that anxiety triggers part of the system when a threat is merely perceived as possible. And having that activated all the time is not a good thing.

And it's not normal. This isn't something historically the human species has had. Yep. And also it's not something that you can just fix with information. He talks about how you can't just snap out of it or you can't tell somebody who is dealing with a depressive disorder to just toughen up. That's like the worst thing that you can do. And I don't want to encourage people to self-diagnose with this sort of thing. I'm not a doctor, but I do think that you can identify what impact the things that you are consuming are having on you. Essentially, it's an open door to allow people to speak into your life. And it's important to think about what impact those voices are are having,

because it could be building you up and it could be life giving or it could be life taking. It could be stealing. And I think that's what you know, you have to recognize the the incentives not being aligned. That is much more natural than the positive application of this when you go into a lot of these platforms and these technological tools, recognizing, you know, that you are the product, not the customer is an important perspective to have.

Yeah, I was telling my kids about this book over dinner and I said, you know, there's a thing you'll note in social media, I call it puppies and rage. And most social media, the algorithms feed you something that is one of two, like either something to make you more angry or if you like look at videos of puppies, it'll give you more puppies, right? It's just looking for a way to keep you there.

But if you look into the research, the rage always wins. The rage is gonna keep you longer than the puppies. And, but you see it so true. I even see it like in YouTube, like so there's two or three different categories of YouTubers I follow. Woodworkers, saxophone players, Star Wars enthusiasts, things that I like in my life.

And in any one of those platforms, even something as simple as woodworking, you'll see that there's a course some YouTubers go on where they start out trying to be informative and share things, and then they do one or two videos where they're like, the reason I hate the Stanley four and a half smooth plane, and you look in their numbers on that video are high.

You probably, because you've studied it, right? You do a lot of YouTube. And then you'll see suddenly, if you look at their YouTube history, they just start making hate videos because every one they make where they're angry about something gets a higher view count. And it's like, then I unfollow them.

I don't like that. But it seems like there's a whole like subculture of people who make videos with false rage because the algorithm rewards them. with false rage because the algorithm rewards them. Yeah. That's an, and then ultimately the algorithm is a reflection of people's preferences. You know, it goes back to the human psychology stuff where those things that make us angry, that's the stuff that we tend to gravitate towards. Uh, not that we want to, if you were to interview any individual and be like,

what do you want to see online? You know, you could say, Oh, I want more, I want more puppies. But the truth is you watch one puppy video and you're done. Whereas if they show you something that riles you up, you're going to watch the next thing and you're going to watch the next thing. So again, recognizing the incentives are misaligned here. You can fix it by considering what is this actually doing to me. But most people, and this is difficult, so I'm not trying to cast judgment on anybody for this. This is something that I struggle with continually. But the question I think that's important to ask is

whenever you get done with watching a video or scrolling through social media for any length of time and you recognize, you know, I spent 15 minutes here, I should really get back to the thing that I was doing, use those context switches as opportunities to ask yourself, okay, so what just happened? And am I okay with that? If not, maybe let's tweak the systems. Let's put some additional boundaries in place that kind of just nudge us towards the positive uses of the tools and the positive uses of the technology, which is kind of the approach I've taken with the iPhone home screen. I think I've shared this with you. I've got a home screen that has just text on the front. It's got the date at the top,

and then I've got a couple links for capturing things into drafts, adding things to my mind maps, looking at Obsidian for my daily notes and journaling at the end of the day. But that's an attempt to funnel myself whenever I open up the smartphone into specific paths, which I know are going to benefit me as opposed to just opening up a social media

app. Now you could take the extreme measure of just, well, I'm not going to be on social media. I think that that actually has less of a negative impact than some of us. Some of us would realize, I mean, you look at people like Cal Newport who is not on social media and he's doing just fine. So even as a realize, I mean, you look at people like Kale Newport, who is not on social media, and he's doing just fine. So even as a creator, you know, I don't have to be there if it's really having that big of a negative effect on me. But even if you don't want to just delete the apps, I mean, you could you could certainly certainly do that. Delete the apps off your phone. Every time I try to do that, though, I realize I end up reinstalling them at some point. So it's much better rather than, you know,

to say, well, I'm not going to go on this thing anymore. If you're able to crease that, fine, great. Good for you. But it's, it's more, it has more practical value for me to just kind of nudge myself down the paths that I want to walk instead of stumbling into the ones that I don't. Yeah. down the paths that I want to walk instead of stumbling into the ones that I don't. Yeah. Forwarned is forearm though. And if you're aware that these platforms are trying to feed you the rage in order to monetize you, that maybe you can be less susceptible to it. And you know, pay attention to your own habits. I feel like if this is a problem for you, if you're listening and saying, yeah, I definitely am getting caught up in it,

I would recommend journaling. Once again, I keep coming back to stuff over and over again on the show, but sit down and write down your thoughts when you catch yourself in a rage cycle of social media or news scrolling or whatever, and just sit down and write down what you were thinking and how it caught you and acknowledge it.

It's not good enough, I think, just to think about it. I think it's better to write it down. I think that helps you avoid the trap the next time. The traps are there for adults just as easily as they are for children. As adults, the good news is our brains are more fully developed and we're a little more aware and able to avoid it. But I think that can be overcome easily enough by the algorithm. One question that comes up to my mind, Mike, is do you think it's realistic to expect that

the algorithms could be, you know, that we could force these companies to stop pushing for rage and push more towards puppies? That is a great question. I'm not sure. I do think that there are regulations that could be passed that would help with this. But as I have kind of alluded to several times, I just feel like at a base level the incentives are misaligned. They are companies. Their primary objective is to make money. And I think even if everyone in the world got upset about this and

demanded change from the big players, what would happen is that slowly people would be less engaged with those tools and there would be a new one that would pop up that would not be playing by the same rules and people would gravitate towards that one because of the the loophole in our psychology. So I don't know, I feel like it's not ever going to be solved, but it can definitely be helped. And then I also think that I don't want to trust that eventually the the big companies and the governments are going to do what is necessary in order to protect me and my family from this, I'm going to take action myself.

And that's kind of how he ends the book is these are the things that that you can do at at home. And there's there's four things which I'll just call out here because this is you know, the book in a nutshell, if you don't want to read it because of the conversation that we've had so far, I totally understand that. But four reforms he mentions, no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone free schools. So I'm really excited to hear about your daughter's school, having the lockers and far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.

Those are the four things that he hits on. And as I was reading through those, I was like, we've basically done that. Not that we've done it perfect, but our oldest just got his first smartphone when he turned 17, actually. And then Joshua, who is 14, he's doing different things. He's in drama and theater, stuff like that needs to be able to contact us. So he's using a light phone. And that's good enough for now. They've got iPads. They don't have social media on them, and we're trying to teach them to use the technology to create and not consume. Again, not that we're doing it perfect, but giving them low stakes opportunities to make mistakes. And then they can learn from them, and they kind of develop this proficiency while they've got some training wheels on is important.

Yeah, I agree with you. First of all, I think you're doing a great job with the way you've managed it. Looking at my past, one regret I have is when the kids were of these ages, to the extent they had smartphones, I was kind of early in the smartphone era, I let them take them to bed. And I didn't know. My kids now tell

me, yeah, I used to spend up all night playing Angry Birds. It's not as dangerous as a social media platform. But at the same time, that was bad. I shouldn't have done that. And in hindsight, I should have known better. I would have a charging station in the kitchen for everybody's phones, mine included, and just we would all not be taking them up to the bedrooms. But overall, I was lucky because my kids grew up before this really kicked in.

But I do think that, depending on the government or these companies to like suddenly solve the problem for us is unrealistic, it's not gonna happen. You're right, the kids will find out the one service that doesn't follow the rules, it's just, you know, it's not enough. We all need to be taking a role in this, not only for our children, but for ourselves.

And I think just awareness and being aware of what happens when you get caught up into these algorithm feedback loops and you know you wreck a day or wreck a morning because of it, you got to figure out how to stop that. If you want to be focused, this is one of the big oppositions or obstacles you're gonna face that our parents didn't have to face, but we do. So you gotta get serious about it. A couple other things I would recommend is, I've already said journaling.

I think journaling helps you. It's social media for one, you know? That makes sense, right? One of the reasons I think I don't put a lot of stuff on social media is I write a lot into day one into my paper journals to myself and it's just for me to help me make myself better and that kind of scratches the itch for me. So I feel like that's one reason. And then I've had a lifelong meditation practice which gives me a lot of time for introspection,

which makes me just, I think, less vulnerable to this stuff. Like, I just don't, I've never felt the need to delete social media apps, but then I might go six months without opening one, just because I just don't get around to it. So, you know, for me, I've been lucky, just with my life's path has taken me in a direction where I'm just not that interested in these things.

But I do think we all need to kind of address this where we are and come up with a plan, not only for our kids, but for ourselves. Yes, a hundred percent. I want to go back real quickly before I get into some of the stuff that I'm going to personally do as a result of reading this book. But you had mentioned one of the things that you would have done different is putting the phones in the kitchen. And you mentioned yourself included in this, I feel like is something we really need to hammer home. The reason that this has been so difficult is that the parents got the smartphones

the same time the kids did. And the kids are the digital natives who figured out what the phones are actually capable of. And the parents didn't really even know. So I think you kind of sabotage the whole thing if you're not willing to model the behavior that you want. So we have one of those charging stations at home and all of the devices go there every single night. And the thing that makes that work is the fact that my wife and I put our

devices there as well. If we don't, we're hypocrites and we talk about how dangerous this stuff is, but our kids see us just going against our own advice. That just completely undermines everything. So it's difficult, but it's worthwhile. I think we have to recognize that the model, we have to model the behavior that we want to see. So this book isn't just, oh, you got to make sure that kids don't get these devices. You got to make sure that you're using them in intentional and productive ways as well. And I want to, uh, I want to, um, also, uh, reaffirm,

I guess your recommendation for day one because I have, I don't use day one personally for journaling, but I have long described day one as private social media. If you write, if you want to capture an audio note of something cute that your little baby said, if you want to put pictures in there, it's perfect for all that kind of stuff. And then it can bring those things back.

You know, on this day last year, this is where you were, this is what you're doing. And every single time I look at those things, it triggers a positive memory. And you get the warm fuzzies is like, Oh yeah, that was something that happened and that was really cool. So I think that is a great suggestion. Now I still struggle with the, with the mindfulness meditation piece. I,

I'm hesitant to even say that I'm going to, going to try to implement that again. I realized by the way, I was talking through something with Cory on Bookworm. I forget which episode it was, but I realized that a lot of the same benefits from meditation you get from a prayer practice and that is, you know, firmly ingrained for me. So I kind of the place I'm my piece with this is I'm going to try to practice the mindfulness meditation when it comes to mind, but otherwise I'm just going to trust that I'm getting a lot of that benefit from

from the regular prayer routine and the journaling beginning and ending of the day. Yeah I mean I don't think it's for everybody. It's fine. I mean you've definitely tried it. It didn't work out for you. I have tried it. I mean, you've definitely tried it. It didn't work out for you. It's okay. I have tried it. I mean, I have some friends that meditate a lot more than me and I don't. I'm usually about a half hour a day kind of guy. It's fine, Mike. You don't need to keep trying. But I don't wanna like sugarcoat.

For a long time, I never talked about the fact that I meditated because it's so woo woo, you know, but the, but it really I think helps me. And I think it does give me like an extra degree of pause before reaction, which is kind of the antidote to algorithms. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. You want to respond intentionally as opposed to just react to whatever the

algorithm or the screen happens to show you, which is probably designed and engineered to make you upset at least every so often. Yeah. The thing that I really want to do from this is to kind of do a technology audit and to recognize where I am not being intentional with my technology use when I go into certain modes and I do certain things. I'm reminded of these three questions that I picked up from Jim Rohn back in the day.

Who am I allowing to speak into my life? What effect is that having on me? And is that okay? And that last one is really important because is that okay? Essentially is putting the responsibility for changing it on me, which I don't know, just asking myself that question kind of is empowering because then it's like, well, yeah, maybe all this stuff is happening, but I don't have to just accept it. So what can I actually do about it? Well, I have the ability now having asked that question to turn off the news. Yeah. And you could, you could make the argument. Well, you gotta know what's,

what's going on. I was like, do you really need to know what's going on? If it's going to be that upsetting to you, why don't you just make the difference that you can where you are with what you have and not get upset about the things that you cannot control. So I want to go through basically all of the ways that I use my devices, all of the, the platforms where I engage with people. Even like auditing the newsletters that I'm subscribed to for email and the podcasts that I listen to and recognize, you know, this one is not serving me well

anymore and so I'm going to unsubscribe from that one. And if you do that for the Focus podcast, like fine, more power to you. You're putting it into practice. I hope you don't. But I do think that, you know, it's it's better that you're intentional and you're selecting the sources that you're thinking about the things that you are consuming and recognizing the effect that that is having on you. And then being OK with that and actually like signing up for it. So you're you're opting in for it as opposed to opting out of it. But that's what we have to do,

I think, with a lot of the stuff and the algorithm specifically is it's not something that we signed up for necessarily. We didn't opt in to get this stuff served to us via YouTube and all the different social media platforms that are out there. But we have the ability to say, you know what, I don't want to see that anymore. And so that's kind of the approach I want to take is just to go through everything, put it all under the microscope and kind of curate and audit a lot of the sources of information that I have not looked at maybe intentionally for several months. Yeah, or longer. And I would add to that when you do that audit to pay particular attention to

anything where you're subjecting yourself to an algorithm and, and look for alternatives, you know, like with YouTube, I, which is probably the thing I watch most in terms of content consumption, but it's like I have certain channels I watch. I do it like the way they don't want you to do it. I'll say, well, what is new from the mountaintop joiner? And I'll watch his show, almost like an old-fashioned TV feed, as opposed to just whatever the algorithm throws at me. And you can go even deeper on those workflows, there's applications and whatnot

to kind of like queue specific videos up and watch them. But that's just an example. Anytime you're subjecting yourself to an algorithm on a daily basis, stop and pay attention because that's where the dragons are. Yeah, exactly. Um, another thing that I'm, I'm going to lean into more. Um, I mentioned that I do, I have decided that I do want to maintain a presence on social media, but if you're following me on any of my social media accounts,

you'll notice I'm not there very often either. Uh, and that is because I tend to get sucked into these things when I open up those specific apps, because those apps again, are engineered for the people who are consuming the information. And really what I want is to be able to post information. I want to be able to reply to people who have replied to what I've posted. I want to be able to reply to direct messages and things like that, engage with the people who are engaging with me, but I don't need to see how many people opened up that

message or how many people liked it or how many people reposted it or any of that stuff. So there's lots of tools out there. The one that I am currently kind of kicking the tires on is Typefully and it's a service that's fairly expensive. The creator mode I think is like 200 bucks a year but it allows you to not just create but also schedule these posts and publish them to the different platforms without having to dip your toes into

the infinity pools, which I think is a really important feature. That's specifically for me, you know, if I have to go into an app and open it in order to respond to something or to see, you know, what somebody had responded to me. And if I before I even am deciding it this is this is something I want to Respond to just to actually you know see the message that is the thing that that's the the slippery slope for me So I want to really kind of lean into using these tools that allow me to post in multiple places without going into the The platforms themselves as much as as humanly possible going into the platforms themselves as much as humanly possible. Yeah, I am so torn on this

because I think what I do could benefit from me having a more regular presence on social media. And it's not even like a judgment thing. Like it's not me, this is before I read this book, right? I wasn't good at social media. It's because I just find it hard to find time to do it. I just never make it a priority. I read, Derek Sivers has this idea of a Now page.

And so if you go to his website, slash Now, the way he describes it is a page explaining what I would catch up an old friend on. Like if I saw an old friend, they said, what are you doing? I just write down the stuff that I would tell that person. And so three or four months ago, I added one to Max Sparky. I have a maxsparky.com slash now page. And now when people say, well, you never do social media,

I'm like, well, if you go to my now page, you can see what I'm doing. And I update it every week or two. And it's like right now, I've got a picture of a woodworking joint on it that I'm cutting. And it is kind of a social media thing where I don't really engage in social media but I give you an update.

I'm not sure if that's really the answer but I actually struggle with it. I have the opposite problem with social media in that I just don't want to do it at all and I think that's not necessarily the answer either. So I don't know where I'm at with this stuff but at some point I need to figure it out because I want to be doing Max Sparky stuff in 10 years.

I don't want this to be a flash in the pan and I've got to use the platforms that are available. But when you read books like this, you're like, man, maybe we should just burn all this stuff to the ground. Come back to talking to our friends. I mean, that wouldn't be a, that would not be a net negative if we did that. So I will say that.

I don't think that's the solution either. I think the now page is a interesting idea and that's something that I should probably do. I think that's a cool way to, if people are interested in what you're working on right now, that is a way that you can communicate that stuff to them. But that kind of leads into something else. I just want to double click on real quick regarding social media in general. I don't think social media is the place to have deep meaningful conversations. In other words, it's not the place where relationships get built.

This is one of the things that I have long admired about podcasting and why I'm such a big fan of podcasts. Even before I recorded a single podcast myself, I'm in the middle of Wisconsin. There's not a huge tech productivity community around me. So that was my connection to those worlds. And I was listening to podcasts and I felt like I had a seat at the table with these people and I was developing these relationships, even though it was a one sided conversation. I was listening to them talk and I could not actually speak directly to them.

There was still something that was very helpful and encouraging about being a part of those conversations. So I like podcasts. The other thing I want to just call out is newsletters. This is the one that I have really leaned into in the last year or so. I send out a newsletter every single week and I do my best to make sure that this is the best thing that I make. So there's an original essay every single time that I send my newsletter about a productivity

or creativity related topic generally associated with PKM. I link to something cool, which is usually obsidian related, and then I share book notes from a book that I've read. And I really think that newsletters are the text based version of podcasts in terms of how much they can build relationships with people. And the people who reply to the newsletter, I not, I don't get a ton of replies, but every single time that I get a reply to a newsletter, I feel like I have made a positive impact. That is, that is the thing that I feel like I make the biggest difference Because it's not trusting an algorithm to surface something to somebody who they may or may not be interested in.

With the newsletter, the way I do it, because I don't just automatically confirm people who sign up for it, these are people who have opted in. They want to hear what I have to say. And so I take that responsibility seriously and I try to deliver a top notch product for that, even though it's free. I still think this is my most important product. And I know you've been working on some of the newsletter stuff as well. So I think if you're gonna pick one,

social media or something like a newsletter, the newsletter is the thing that's gonna make the biggest difference. And not in terms of I'm gonna reach a bunch of people, I would rather be, what's the saying? You can be a mile wide and an inch deep or a mile deep and an inch wide. I'd rather, you know, go deep and help the people that really want my help via the newsletter mechanism rather than, you know, having a gazillion followers on whatever social media platform.

Yeah, agreed. You know, newsletters are a great source also to avoid, like we were talking earlier about if you're getting caught up with the news too much. Like one of the things I've done in the last year is I've actually started supporting some content creators, some newsletter, sub-stack people and non- non subsector people that I think are really interesting and Where I would have a habit a year ago to you know to go to the news app and doom scroll Now my habit is to go read interesting essays by people who I think are smart

that make me think about things in my life and learn more and You know, I spend I've spent a few bucks subscribing to some of them. And that was a huge improvement for me in terms of ways to divert my attention. Whereas where I'm not inclined to get caught up with social media, I can get caught up in news apps if I'm not careful. That is a kryptonite for me. Yep, we've all got it.

We just gotta identify what that kryptonite is so we can avoid it. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by ExpressVPN, high speed, secure, and anonymous VPN services. Go to ExpressVPNslashF focus to get four months for free for a limited time. In the real world, if you're looking for privacy,

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I've got ExpressVPN installed on all my devices. Anytime I'm out, coffee shop, hotel, whatever, I've got that thing turned on. I don't want to give them my data. I think at some point in the future people will look back on the way all this stuff was open and be shocked, but not me. I'm protected with ExpressVPN. Right now you can take advantage of ExpressVPN's Black Friday Cyber Monday offer to get the absolute best VPN deal you'll find all year. Use the special link, expressvpn.com slash focused to get four extra months with a 12 month plan

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but I'm glad we did it. I think it definitely weighs in on Focus. Let's go to something fun. Anything new and shiny in your life? Yes, there is. So our mutual friend, Mike Hurley, has long extolled the virtues of the Mode keyboards and I have purchased a Mode Sonnet mechanical keyboard.

And this is the most expensive keyboard I have ever owned. This was sort of my treat to myself after the Life HQ launch because it went really well. It's a mechanical keyboard. It's kind of the 10 keyless design so it's got all the number keys, it's got all the modifier keys, it's got all the the function keys but it is they use their own switches they have just these high quality components you can buy them all and you can put it together yourself or you can pay to have them do all of the the soldering and put it all together for you and I just really am a fan of this this keyboard I would not have purchased this, to be honest,

just looking at the website. It looks really nice. They've got a lot of really great videos on their products and things like that, but it is a lot of money. I think it was like 300 bucks, something like that. It's not a cheap keyboard, but Mike has talked glowingly about these keyboards

for a long time. And I really can say that this keyboard is phenomenal. If you are going to write for a living, it makes sense to invest in your tools. And not that there was anything wrong with my previous keyboard, but this one thing has brought me a significant amount of joy in the time that I have been using it. Yeah I am kind of relieved that I never really got caught into the keyboard disease because I can see how it would be because I'm looking at the website and you can like customize everything on

this thing it's like do you want a carbon fiber plate? You know, this is the kind of stuff that would normally like trigger me, but for whatever reason, I've bought a few of them over the years and I ended up giving them away to friends and I've kind of taught myself just to stick with the Apple keyboard, it's easy. And I'm probably for the better for it. But yeah, good on you.

I'm glad you like it and it looks like a really pretty keyboard. What was your keycaps? Which one keycaps did you get? Yeah, so I can walk through kind of how I built it. Like I said, I have the ModSonic and what's really neat about their website is whenever you select a different component, the three pictures that they provide you get updated. So I selected a blue gray top. My accent, which is that little metal strip that goes across the top, I did Dawn.

And I actually really like the way that that looks. The bottom piece is also Dawn. So it has this cool two tone effect. If you look at it from the side, the internal weight, I think I just left that as black because you weren't going to see that. My plate, I think I left the polycarbonate one for the keycaps. You can either use your own or they have three different options available. One is tomorrow. One is I don't even know how to say this anthracite.

Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. Obscura, which is kind of like a dark black one. Actually, it's four. Then there's a Lotus one. I didn't see that one previously when I built it, but I ended up choosing the tomorrow key. So it's kind of like a very dark gray for the, the modifier keys and like the return and the arrows, but a slightly lighter gray for the modifier keys and like the return and the arrows but a slightly lighter gray for the space bar and all of the letters. And the switches I used the tomorrow tactile switches. Now if you dig into the website you can see that they've got like different videos on the different types of switches that they have and that

they don't match. They don't match perfectly to you know, cherry browns. But basically the tactile switches, they are they've got the bump so you can actually feel them but they do have the clacky noise. So this isn't something that you want if you're going to be in a open office and you'll annoy people with your typing. But I like that sound. That is actually very motivating to me when I'm writing and it keeps me going. So that's what I ended up with. And then they also sell some accessories. So they have, for example, what do they call it?

A desk mat. I bought the Tomorrow desk mat, which kind of has this like spacey theme on it. And it's a big desk mat that sits on my desk in the coworking space. And that actually has a soft pad for the keyboard itself, but also it's a great surface for a mouse. So yeah, that's kind of my setup with this.

And it's really nice. Well, good for you, man. Good for you. I have the opposite. I, good for you, man. Good for you. I have the opposite. I'm doing the inverse SNO, I call it, the inverse shiny object. I'm getting rid of stuff, man. If you've seen pictures of my studio,

I have these racks with all these clear plastic bins in them and basically everything I own that's not a woodworking tool or clothes is in my studio. I kind of gave the rest of the house to my wife. And I was just looking at it. I've been in here a couple of years. There's a bunch of gear that I haven't touched in two years since I moved into the studio.

And as I figured out the workflows, there's certain things I didn't need. Like at one point I built like a little rolling cart that I figured out the workflows, there's certain things I didn't need. Like at one point I built a little rolling cart that could attach the camera to, but I just used a tripod, it's a small space. So I filled up the car with gear that I haven't been using. I went to the local high school video program and they were super happy to get a bunch of gifts from me.

And I've just been doing that kind of throughout all the stuff I do. Like I am now firmly invested in plotter. I'm getting rid of a lot of pads of paper and stuff that I bought that I don't see myself ever using. And just trying to get it down to just the basics. So I'm doing the opposite of shiny new objects lately. I'm scaling down. You're curating your shiny new objects. There you go. That's what I'm doing the opposite of shiny new objects lately. I'm scaling down.

You're curating your shiny new objects. There you go. That's what I'm doing. It feels pretty good too, to tell you the truth. Cause like those bins, there were two racks. One is entirely gone. The other one is gonna get a new home after the holidays, but we're using it to store stuff in here

during the holiday decoration, you know, madness. We go pretty serious when it comes to holiday decorations in the Sparks house. So yeah, but eventually those will all be gone. And I kind of like that, just kind of simplifying. And you know what? I don't have a problem with that at all. I'm very good at getting rid of stuff. It feels good to me, you to me to get rid of things.

Awesome. What are you reading? Still working through Meditations for Mortals. He recommended reading it. Oliver Berkman, knew Oliver Berkman, but he recommended reading it one day at a time, so I decided I'd do that. Every morning, I've been working through,

I got the Chicago Press Seneca books, and there are a lot of them and they're thick. I just put on my Christmas list the remaining three. So I do a bit of reading out of those in the morning and then I'm reading the Oliver Berkman book. I'm not really actively reading a book, I guess you could say, like, you know, just like sitting down and cranking through a book right now.

I'm really busy with some production stuff with Max Barkey and I I want to focus on getting that done but but I'm slowly working my way through Seneca and Oliver Berkman. How about you? Nice well I will I will just put my plug in for the Oliver Berkman book as well Meditations for Mortals. It was really good. We did that actually for the last episode of Bookworm. So I did not do it the way that you're supposed to do it, which is the way you're doing it a day at a time. That's kind of how it's designed to be read. But if you're interested in the Focus podcast,

you're gonna like that book, I think. The book that I am currently reading is another book for Bookworm, and that is Free Time by Jenny Blake. Now this book I had bought a couple of years ago when it came out, never actually read it. And then I went to Sean Blanc's event in Kansas City and Sean's events are top notch.

One of the things that he does really well is he puts together these like goodie bags for everybody that came. And there was in there, I mentioned the analog pen back in the day. That was one of the things that he had given people who attended. He also had a copy of Free Time by Jenny Blake

that he gave to everyone, but he knows Jenny. So Jenny had written a personal message to each person and signed the inside of that book. And so that came back on my radar when I received a signed copy of the book. And then I was talking to Corey about it and he was interested in the topic. It's essentially a business systems book with soul, I'll say. If you don't like a lot of business ebooks because they are cold and impersonal and you can care less about MRR and net revenue and all that kind of stuff, this is the book for you because she has run a successful business.

She has this whole model. She talks about heart-based businesses. So it's talking about a lot of the types of concepts that I am familiar with from reading a lot of these business type books, but very original perspective and tone to this one. I feel like this is the business book for everybody. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff in here that's kind of specifically towards small business owners. I think even solopreneurs, part-time creators could benefit from reading something like this.

But just recognize that, I guess, if you're going into it. If you have no interest at all in owning your own business, even if it's as a side hustle type of thing, then there's probably not a lot here for you. But I am really enjoying this one so far. And I'm looking at it on Amazon and the first testimonial is from Oliver Berkman. So how's that?

Nice. Sorry, I just had to pause a minute to buy it. That's all good. Yeah, thank you. You'd probably like that one. Yeah, I'll check it out. I like the idea of less busy work. Although I've made a lot of progress on that

in the last year. Brought in, hired somebody, and I've been much more mindful about where my time and effort goes, and hopefully things get easier. All right, we are the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm slash focused. We want to thank our sponsors today, ExpressVPN and ZocDoc.

For those of you that are deep focus subscribers, first of all, thank you. We appreciate your support. It really does help. The deep focus podcast is the ad for extended version of the show. Today Mike and I are are gonna be talking about getting work done when we're out of town. We had some interesting revelations and I thought it'd be fun to talk about on Deep Focus.

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