Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Focus Podcast. I'm David Sparks and joined by my pal and yours, Mr. Mike Schmitz.
Hey, Mike, how are you doing today?
Doing great. How about you, David?
Oh, man. It's raining here, but it's nice. We don't get that much rain, so we don't mind it so much in Southern California.
And so it's a nice gloomy rainy day, but it's a good day to stay in, turn on the fireplace, pet
the dog and talk about productivity.
Yeah, specifically reflection.
That sounds like the perfect environment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the focus today is reflection.
I'll tell you the reason for this show.
I did the productivity field guide in early 2024, and now I'm in the midst of the new
version, the 2025 version's out, and we're doing this webinar series.
And I gotta say, the webinar series with this field guide,
there's 12 of them and that's partly just because I want
to talk to these people 12 times.
They're so good, these webinars.
People have interesting questions,
dealing with interesting problems.
For someone who's normally talking about Apple scripts
and shortcuts, this kind of stuff to me is,
I find, fueling.
But the other thing I've seen is people who have succeeded
kind of using the things I teach over the last year
versus people who fell off the wagon.
And without question, the biggest indicator of success
of this program is the review.
People who do the reviews make a ton of progress,
and the people who don't, don't.
And looking into this deeper, this is a problem,
I think, no matter how you figure out your life,
whether you use my idea of R.I.T. in roles or Mike's Wheel of Life or whatever.
I feel like review is so important that it's just that we need to address it on the show.
Yeah, and I'm with you with the power of review.
Like you mentioned, we've kind of got our different systems for this. But I remember specifically the the 12 week year by Brian Moran and Michael
Lenington. I read that book and thought that was a great idea.
You know, why not work in these sprints? You can get four of them done in a year.
You can focus on something for a little bit and then you can get some feedback
and you can adjust. And I got all excited about it.
And the first time I tried it, I fell flat on my face.
I made no progress, you know,
and didn't accomplish any of the goals.
And I was like, well, what the heck, you know,
what happened here?
This seems like this is a good approach.
And I immediately implemented a reflection process,
which has kind of become my personal retreat process.
And the very next quarter, you know,
I was kind of shocked at the difference
because I went from, you know, not achieving any of the goals that I had set
to achieving all of them because I had so much more motivation to do them.
You know, the reflection provided the reason for the goals that I had set.
And that translated into to success.
I think if you don't do the reflection piece, you miss out on a lot of that motivation.
And it maybe sounds kind of fickle, but it really is true.
We need that motivation in order to consistently show up
and take action on the things that are important.
Yeah, I mean, if I want to give you a TLDR
on this whole episode, in my mind,
I think this all comes down
to the question of intentionality.
Like, it doesn't matter how you try to organize your life and get important things done.
The measuring stick is always going to be intentionality it's like if you can stay intentional about what it is you're working on.
You're gonna feel a lot better about your life and you're gonna get this things done that are most important to you cuz you're intentional.
and you're gonna get these things done that are most important to you,
because you're intentional.
And just review is such a weapon
in terms of building intentionality in your life,
because it forces you to stop and think about
what happened and why.
And it is a high yield activity
when you're searching for intentionality.
And like I said, I don't think it matters
what you're doing or how, you know,
what your system is. I'm holding up air quotes, but you've got to bring intentionality to the
game. And I just think review is, you know, I've kind of reverse engineered my way to this thought,
but review is what makes it possible. Yeah. I remember when we talked to,
to Ann Lor in the previous episode, she kind of made the same observation
that a lot of effective productivity advice
kind of centers around this intentionality.
And I think it's easy to dismiss that.
It feels like, well, that's simple.
Just focus on the thing that's worth focusing on,
but that's easier said than done.
It's hard, yeah.
It is very hard.
And you can have all the intention in the world to do that,
but then when the bullets start flying,
no, you go into reaction mode,
and you don't even realize it,
but if you do a review, you'll catch yourself.
Exactly.
And then you also, with the review process,
regardless of what the review process looks like,
really what that does is it incorporates these feedback loops, which was another thing that Ann Lorre
really hits on with her book, Tiny Experiments.
You try something for a little while and you get some feedback and then you decide what
adjustments you want to make.
And it's not something that you decide, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life,
but you are going to approach it like a scientist
and you're going to see what comes of this.
And I feel like that approach to reflection specifically
is a good one because it kind of forces you towards
being curious about these things as opposed to,
you know, the standard, I would argue,
productivity mindset is, well, here's the thing on my list. I got to get this done and I got to
figure out how I'm going to get it done. You know, when you are pushing it with a sense of
curiosity, it's like, what is actually worth doing here? And then how do I do more of that?
But you give yourself permission to change your mind as you go and the reflection periods are the
places where you get those insights and you make those important decisions. Yeah. And the other reason I wanted to
make this episode is because I personally have struggled with review. Like I knew it was important
to me. This has been a recurring story on this podcast and other ones I make that I really
struggle with like the end of the day review,
like keeping up with the monthly and the quarterly. At this point in my life, I'm actually pretty good
at it, but I can tell you it was not easy. At one point, I would have my Mac every day just shut down
at four o'clock and close all apps. That was the only way I could get myself to stop and consider today and plan tomorrow.
And it just, I had to build all these hacks into my life
and eventually my brain came around to it
and I think it is a point that I realized the value of it,
so much so that now I'm willing to really make an effort
to do it right because I see the payoff,
the payoff being intentionality.
But it took me a long time to realize that.
Even though I knew intellectually,
it just had to, I had to like really get it
at the bones level, you know?
Yeah, so you're talking about reflection
and it sorta sounds a little bit like you're also talking
about journaling which I think journaling is a form of reflection but I
don't think that journaling is by default the same as reflection and
this is one of the struggles that I had is I knew that I should be journaling I
understood all of the benefits that came with journaling
and it was really hard for me to make journaling a habit. It would come and go and it would never
really stick. The thing that made it stick was understanding how the regular journaling routine
that I had at the end of the day was actually going to be useful for me in the future. When I did my quarterly personal retreat. Yeah.
So having a reason for the daily practice,
that was the thing that kind of unlocked this for me.
And it, it was kind of shocking to me that I had so much trouble with journaling
because it wasn't like I never sat and
thought about what is actually worth doing and what are the projects that I'm
engaged with.
But until I had a regular reflection practice of the the quarter quarterly
personal retreat, you know,
where I would periodically go back and read all of those, those journal entries,
that really is the moment that it really stuck for me.
Yeah. And I do, maybe this is artificial,
but I do believe that you can have
a successful review process without journaling.
I don't preach that everybody has to journal.
I feel like that's asking too much,
but I also think that you get a huge benefit from journaling.
So I guess what I'm trying to talk about
in this episode today, and thanks for that clarification,
is really just the review process of going through
on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis,
taking a look at what you're doing, making a plan,
checking in with the plan you made in the last segment,
and going through and becoming more intentional as a result.
Make sense?
That's the process right there.
I mean, we could shut it down right now.
Not just kidding.
All right, you wanna stop it?
But that really is.
All right, just kidding.
That really is, don't overcomplicate it
is really the point I'm trying to make here.
The specifics of how we do it are gonna be different,
but that is really the meat of it right there
is how are you thinking about things
on these different time scales?
And then how are you making sure
that these things are all in alignment
so that you can do more of what matters?
Yeah, so let's start in.
I think one of the key distinctions I wanna make
and something I had to discover
is that a review is active reflection.
And I think a lot of people I talk to
are doing what I would call passive reflection. And I think a lot of people I talk to are doing what I would call passive reflection.
This is coming straight out of some of the webinars
in this field guide.
But people are like, well, I thought about it.
I sit down every week and I sit down every month
and I think about it.
And I'm like, that is not enough.
You need to engage with it.
And you need to engage with the last months review
or the last quarters or last weeks.
What did you plan?
How did it go?
Why did it work or not work?
And what am I actively going to be working on this week?
Where is my plan going to hit the concrete wall of reality
and how am I gonna deal with that?
You need to be active about it.
And frankly, you need to write it down
or dictate it or type it or do something.
Just sitting there and thinking about it,
this passive idea of review,
I don't think it gets you over the line.
Yeah, do you mind unpacking that a little bit more
because I think I get what you're going for there,
but what are some examples of just passive reflection?
Where's the point where you go from passive reflection
to active reflection in your mind?
Well, I think, for instance,
sitting in your easy chair on Sunday night and saying,
I spent a few minutes thinking about how last week went
and how next week's gonna go, and I'm good.
I did my review.
That's not enough.
Right. I agree. It's got to be something to attach to.
First of all, I don't think it's enough an execution. I think you have to read last week's
review and then you have to look at next week's calendar and next week's list of things that you
want to do and you need to work how, first of all, what happened last week
and why, success or failure, either way you need to figure that out. And then looking at next week,
how realistic is the plan? Do I have 16 appointments and more tasks than normal?
Well, that's not going to work. So right now is the moment to fix that.
So I think you've got to do that. And then the second piece of it is, it's moment to fix that. So I think you've got to like do that. And then the
second piece of it is, it's got to be documented. You have to take the time to put it out in the
world. And I agree that you're just putting it out there for yourself, but it is the act of writing
it down, typing it, dictating it, whatever that I think solidifies it in your brain. What does your active reflection actually look like?
Because I've been thinking about this myself.
You know, Ann-Laure talked about her plus minus next method
that she uses and it is brilliant in its simplicity.
So I feel like that's one of the keys to this is,
you know, don't make it too hard.
The harder you make it,
the more friction there's gonna be in doing this.
And really the value is in doing it consistently.
So what is your reflection, weekly reflection,
as you walk through the process you just described?
You think about the last week, you plan the next week.
What do you do and how long does that take?
Let's do the monthly,
because I actually did my monthly late this March.
We're recording this in mid-March.
We went on a little vacation.
So I was out of town on the first of the month.
So I didn't get like till the fifth, I didn't get a chance to do my monthly review.
But what I did, the first thing I did is I sat down and I read my February review and
February plan.
At the beginning of each month, and this is gonna fall into March too,
but I make a plan for the month.
What are the big things I wanna get done?
This is where I start thinking about goals.
We talk about how goals are not the underlying system,
but goals do, they become tactical.
Each month, well, this is the stuff I wanna get done
in the various roles of my life.
Some roles are each month.
Some roles play a more prominent role than others.
And in February, I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to do.
I wanted to get that field guide launched
and get started on the webinar series,
and I had some other stuff.
So I had a bunch of things written down
that I wanted to succeed on in February.
And I went back, and February was a good month for me.
I actually got pretty much everything I wanted done.
So then I said, okay, well, how was that success?
Well, the reason it was successful is frankly,
I worked harder in February than I should have.
Frankly, I think I bit off a little bit more,
but it's unusual for me to have completion of a field guide
and a webinar series.
I had a bunch of stuff going on
where I don't usually like overlapping,
that I don't usually like to overlap
because there's only so much bandwidth in my life.
And I knowingly took on through February and March
a little bit extra, but it's gonna be okay
because once I get to April,
I'm gonna have a lot more downtime.
But I had to analyze that.
Well, how did that really go?
Was I able to still be a normal human,
even though I took on a little more work?
And I acknowledge, well, how much longer
is this gonna be necessary?
So I thought about, it was a success,
but there's a long-term cost to that success.
So the warning bells are going up that,
no, you can't do this pace for long.
In fact, I'm already planning my little sabbatical.
We're going to talk about that in the extra part today.
But I realized, you know, but I checked in with that to make sure I'm not like overdoing
it.
And then I carried that into my planning for March.
I've got specific goals for March as well.
The month is already short because I'm doing I'm doing the review or you know, later in
the month.
Then I sat down and I just started dictating into Whisper Memos, an application.
I had an initial draft of a long essay about my thoughts and how I was going to do it.
Then I took that over to the computer and started organizing it.
Sometimes I write them out by hand.
This month I did it with voice and a keyboard.
But at the end I had a nice kind of explanation
of where I was, how I did in February,
what I'm planning for next month,
and some specific goals and specific roles.
And now I got a plan for March and I know what it is.
I actually write it down so I can see it.
It's on my computer at all times.
And I got marching orders for the next month.
And this all fits into my quarterly plan.
And I check in with that as well.
So it's all kind of derivative.
The quarter is the biggest unit for me.
So it all fits.
Nice, yeah, I agree.
Having it all anchored in the the quarterly plan is key.
I don't do the monthly plans like you do.
I do basically quarterly, weekly and then daily plans.
But the goal is the same.
Keep everything in alignment.
I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier about just
sitting in your chair and thinking about things isn't enough.
But it sounds like it's not too far from that if you apply a little bit of intentionality. You could maybe sit in your chair and talk about things and
dictate those in a specific format. Maybe you've got some prompts or
questions that are guiding your thoughts on that, and as long as you've got that documented somewhere, I think that's the,
the difference between thinking about it versus actually doing it. Is that accurate?
Yeah. I think sitting in your train and thinking about it is a starting point.
Yeah. But I think you have to take action on it.
That's why I say active review.
You've got to engage with it more than that because you know,. Because you just have to go through the process
to appreciate it, but analyzing your success and failure
and planning around it, it really is the way
I become intentional heading into these segments.
And it's what keeps me on track as I go through them.
Like when things come up that aren't on the plan
for the month, then I have a moment where I'm like, okay, is this important enough to like change the
plan or is this just a diversion trying to pull me away from the plan? Yeah, it's
a very important distinction and I think the big takeaway there is if you don't
have the intention set, then it's real easy to get swept away by things
that look more important than they really are.
Urgency masquerades as important a lot of times
if we don't know what truly is the most important thing
that we could be doing at any given time.
Yeah.
It's tough, and that requires a commitment, right?
Like you get to Sunday night or the first of the month
or late in the quarter and you're like,
I could be watching Severance
or I could be doing something fun
and Mike and Dave are telling me
to do this life homework project.
Why on earth would I do that?
Well, it is such a time benefit.
In fact, I guess what I would say is,
if that is your resistance to it,
go ahead and watch Severance.
Do this review during your work hours,
because you are going to get so much time back.
This is a thing where you put an hour or two in,
and you get tens of hours back in terms of your work.
You don't climb the ladder against the wrong wall, et cetera.
It's just so worth it.
But it is hard to get that through to people.
I think some people will listen to this
and understand it intellectually,
but still not do it because it's just hard.
Yeah, it is impossible to overstate
the value of intentionality.
And you won't realize the value of it
until you start to apply it,
but once you do, it's a game changer.
And then I got thinking about, well, you and I aren't alone.
We try to teach people how to become more intentional.
There's a lot of people like us,
and I feel like, you know, David Allen,
granddaddy of GTD, What's the big thing about his program
that everybody fails on?
Weekly review.
The weekly review, yep.
You know?
Guilty.
Ryder Carroll, Ryder Carroll, bullet journal guy.
What's the most important thing he ever talks about
every time he gets up and talks about bullet journal?
Reflections.
Cal Newport does multi-scale planning.
You've talked about that on the show.
You know, I try to look older.
I couldn't find too much stuff in like the Greeks, cause they didn't get as
proud, they didn't get down to the granular level that we do now.
But you know, Marcus Aurelius, the meditations are basically a review.
That's, that was his personal review.
He never intended that to be published, you know, but that was a review. That was his personal review. He never intended that to be published,
but that was his review.
Benjamin Franklin, daily questions
and evening reflections review.
I mean, this is not rocket science.
Nobody's inventing anything here.
Our barely evolved monkey brains benefit from reflection.
End of story.
The GTD, the bullet journal, the multi-scale planning,
all that stuff, that I'm familiar with,
but you might go in a little bit deeper
on the Benjamin Franklin's daily questions.
So I was familiar with his evening reflection routine,
but I don't think this is the same
as the daily questions that I use, but maybe it is.
What exactly are those?
I believe it came in a letter to his son.
I'd have to go research it, you caught me.
But yeah, I remember reading a letter he had written
to his son about advice on life.
And he basically told him to time block.
So this stuff is not new.
And my point is that anybody who has any success
at life,
getting the important stuff done,
finds their way to intentionality,
whether or not they ever use the word.
And it seems like everybody that does it
has some form of reflection.
Yep, totally.
The daily questions stuff, that is meaningful to me
because I've incorporated that
into my personal journaling routine. But we can put a pin in that for for now I think
your larger point is is definitely valid like every this is a critical component
to pretty much every productivity system that's out there and they they're all
different you know everybody's got their own way of doing this there's not you
know one specific way that that is the right way to practice reflection.
Yeah.
So I went on the internet and started researching review.
And, you know, having just interviewed Ann Lohr,
you know, I thought, well, I'm not a cognitive scientist,
but I can pretend to be one.
And through the use of, generous use of Google and ChatGPT,
I found a couple points.
One is that this concept of neural consolidation
and memory formation review allows you to consolidate
the open circuits in your brain
and allows you to bring all that stuff together.
So there's actually a benefit to closing the loop
and you get that in a review.
When you leave open loops, that's a problem.
The other thing it does is
how it allows you to avoid decision fatigue
because you're going through and putting your own logic
and intentionality to what happened and what will happen.
And I have personally experienced this
because when I make a plan for a week,
I already know where the tough spots are
and I've already sorted them out.
So when I hit them, it doesn't bother me
and I don't experience the same degree of decision fatigue
I did back in the day.
Because you're not required to make the call,
while the bullets are flying, you've already made the plan.
There was a concept I called, saw the Zygarnik effect,
have you ever heard of this?
Yeah, the Zygarnik effect, and that is basically,
yeah, the open loops and how that keeps you
from focusing on the task at hand.
I think it's kind of linked to this whole idea
of attention residue, which was fascinating
to me when I came across it.
Essentially, you know, when you're jumping back and forth between different things, you
can't just bring your focus from one task to the next.
A little bit of it remains on the tasks that you were doing, which is why at its core,
multitasking is not a thing.
But it's definitely got applications with the with the reflection process here as well.
I can totally see how this benefits this reflection process because if you don't have some sort
of practice to close the loops, your brain will continue to think about those things.
And this is something that I fall.
I've fallen into over the years where if I don't journal to end my day and I
don't have the markers dropped so that I can pick up something the next day,
my brain will just continue to think about things and I'll have trouble sleeping
because I'm thinking about this thing that I'm trying to,
trying to do at work or this, this conversation that I had that, you know,
I feel didn't end well and I want some closure, that sort
of thing.
Those open loops, they can be nasty.
So then I got thinking, well, why is it that this is so hard?
Why was it so hard for me?
Why is it so hard for people in this webinar series?
And last year, I took all of the webinar transcripts and I loaded them in my own personal notebook
LN. This is a Google product.
It's basically an AI that only works
on the material you feed it.
It's like a private little AI.
And so I've built one called
the Productivity Field Guide Notebook
and it's got all of my research notes,
it's got all the webinar transcripts,
it's got all the video transcripts,
it's got the book I wrote,
it's got all that stuff just in there.
And so I'm just kind of like asking this meta cognitive
artificial intelligence that has all the stuff I've written
or talked about and then I can like pull against it.
And so I started asking it, well, why,
what are the excuses to avoid review?
You know, just thinking about all the webinars
we went through and it threw a few back at me
that came up from the webinars.
And I think the biggest one was like
the fear of confronting incomplete tasks.
I think a lot of people don't wanna do it
because they're like, ah, I sucked last week.
Why do I wanna go review that?
And I think that's a mistake, right?
You gotta go into this without your judgmental
hat on, but with your tiny experiment hat on, your open mind to look at, well, things
didn't go, let's figure out why. And that's the feedback loop that's going to allow you
to fix it for next week. And you just have to go in with that. And I think a lot of people bring like a large degree of self judgment
and and just a lot of baggage into this that prevents them from successfully doing it.
I think that's the biggest reason people have trouble with this stuff.
100 percent.
You know, I've fallen into that, too.
That's kind of the genesis of my spin on those daily questions is
I got to the end of the week or end of the day
and I would answer the prompts, you know, what did you get done? I didn't have an answer that
was satisfactory so I just stopped journaling. Two other reasons that people failed at it was
perfectionism was one like you're like, well, it wasn't perfect. So I don't want to go back to it.
You know, so this is not like you're judging yourself, it's just that you're holding yourself
to such a high standard that you can't even confront it.
And I think that's a problem.
And then the third one was the mistaken concept
of lost time.
It's like, I don't have time for that.
I don't have time, I got too much going on,
I don't have time to do a review.
And I'm like, if you don't have time to do a review,
you really need a review.
You know, because, you know,
and that is, I think, really hard for me.
That, to me, was one of the big challenges for me.
Like, I'm not too hard on myself.
I try to be open with myself.
What I always tell myself is treat yourself
like you treat your best friend.
Like, you know, would I go to Mike Schmitz
and tell him he's a jerk and he doesn't know what he's
doing and he can't figure it out. No. So why would I do that to myself? You know,
so I'm pretty good about that, but the lost time fallacy,
that was a tough one for me.
Yeah. You, I forget exactly how you just said it,
but the alternate version that came to my mind was if you don't have,
it's not that you don't have time to do the review,
it's that if you're that busy,
you don't have time not to do the review.
Because it's gonna provide so much benefit
when you sit down to do the actual work.
If it's really important that you squeeze
every bit of output from every hour that you have,
the best investment you can make is
getting clear on what really matters first. This episode of Focused is
brought to you by Indeed. Hiring the right person for your team is so
important. Get it wrong and you can expect stress for everyone involved.
Thankfully Indeed is there to help you get it right the first time.
When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. So stop struggling to get your job post seen on
other job sites and use Indeed's Sponsored Jobs to help you stand out and hire fast.
With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates.
So you can reach the people that you want faster and it makes a huge difference.
According to Indeed data worldwide, sponsored job posts directly on Indeed have 45% more
applications than non-sponsored jobs. But here's the thing, it's not just the number of applications,
it's the quality of the applications. And as a happy Indeed user myself, that's where I believe
Indeed really stands out.
I've used it several times to hire for open roles
when I was at the day job,
and I've worked as a consultant with other people
to help them hire people for their roles.
And we've used Indeed every time,
and every single time that I've used it,
we've been blown away by the quality of the candidates
that we've gotten.
In fact, one person that I worked with said
that the hardest part about the process
was choosing between so many qualified candidates. The other cool thing about Indeed is
that you don't need to be a rocket scientist in order to make it work. It's a pretty simple user
interface and they make it really easy to track people at all the different stages of the hiring
process, which is especially important if you don't have a full-time HR person who can manage
the whole thing for you. But regardless of whether you are an HR person who is trying to make sure that
you get the right person for the right role or a solopreneur who just needs the
easiest way to get a quality candidate for your open role, I highly recommend
that you use Indeed. And with sponsored jobs there are no monthly subscriptions,
no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast does that all
happen? Well in the minute that I've been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed according
to Indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. You can speed up your
hiring process right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75
sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility when you go to
indeed.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. So go to indeed.com slash focused right now and show your support for the Focus Podcast by saying that you heard about it here on this show.
Once again, it's I-N-D-E-E-D dot com slash focused.
Terms and conditions apply.
Hiring Indeed is all you need.
Our thanks to Indeed for their support
of the Focus Podcast and all of Relay.
All right, so let's get into a little deeper
about what we're doing with our regards to the focus podcast. So, we're gonna go ahead and get into the focus podcast. Focus Podcasts and all of Relay.
All right, so let's get into a little deeper about what we're doing with our reviews and cadences.
You have already told us you do quarterly, weekly,
and is that it, quarterly and weekly?
Quarterly, weekly and daily.
But it's a little bit different for each of them.
Do you wanna talk about the general buckets first
or do you want me to get into my specific workflow
with this?
Yeah, just explain your workflow.
Let's just go through it that way.
Okay.
So it all anchors in the quarterly plan
which is the personal retreat
and that is a specific process
where I review my journal entries,
I review my life entries, I review my
life theme, my personal core values, I go through the Wheel of Life that you
alluded to, I asked myself some very specific reflection questions on what
went well, what could have gone better, those sorts of things. The three key
questions which probably have come up hundreds of times in the course of
Focus where I asked myself what should I start doing stop doing and keep doing and
Then after all of that I set a couple of intentions for the next 90 days and
They're not
Specific goals at least not in the traditional sense of goals where I clearly define everything that needs to be done
And it's going to be done
by this time. It's more so these are the directions that I want to head. So it's kind of, I'm working
towards this thing and I want to show up every day and make progress on this thing, but I'm not
anchoring success in a specific outcome, if that makes sense. So then working back from that, you know, I review those, those intentions periodically.
And I've got inside of Obsidian where all of my, my planning happens.
You know, I've got the links to the, to this quarter's quarterly note in all of my templates.
So I can review it when I do my weekly plans. I can review when I'm looking at my daily plans, like all this stuff kind of rolls up inside of
Obsidian. But the weekly plans pull in tasks from my task management system,
like these are the things that absolutely have to happen this week. I'm
looking at the calendar, kind of blocking you know the big things that need to
happen, and then I'm painting success. You know, this week is successful if I'm able to
and then I make just a single sentence
that encapsulates everything.
I'll have usually five bullets of like,
these are the things beyond just the tasks
that need to be done this week
or the meetings that have to happen.
Like, we're recording this podcast.
This happens every two weeks, right?
So this is something that is important.
It needs to get done,
but it's not gonna be
a primary focus for me in terms of those five bullets,
because this is something that we've got a normal cadence.
Like this is going to happen on a regular basis,
and my rhythms are kind of adjusted to that already.
So it's kind of like when I don't have things
that I quote unquote need to be doing,
what are the things that I want to be doing in terms of moving forward on those quarterly intentions. And then
where the rubber hits the road is the daily plans. So again there's the daily
note in Obsidian which shows me these are the things that need to get done
today. So for today for example it's gonna have on their record focus, it's
gonna have on their publish focused, those things will show up
and I'll time block those. But this is where things leave obsidian. I actually time block the plan
on an analog notebook and then I transfer the big things that I want to get done today onto a note
card. And then that note card I prop up on my desk and that's what I work off of. And that's, you know, getting into now, I guess, you know, time blocking,
and it's not necessarily reflection, but I feel like the reflection powers the time blocking.
And at that point, it is important that I break free from that digital system and I put it
on an analog card in front of my face. I can't articulate exactly why,
I can just tell you that it eliminates all of the compulsion
to go check the task manager and see what's next.
Because I have taken just a couple of minutes
and I've made an intentional plan for my day,
my brain is now free to stop scanning the horizon
for what I may have forgotten
and focus on the things that I have already decided is important.
And it allows me to go through my day with focus and intention and this like sense of
calm that's completely missing whenever I don't do this.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, so let's start with that last part about having an analog component
to it.
I think that is an absolute option.
And I don't think you have to have a analog component.
I don't think you have to have a digital component if you love analog, but I do think when you're working through this stuff, you should give some thought to that.
Like one thing I would, I would say as you're planning a review system
is spend abundantly your time on making the process work.
Like if it takes an hour and a half to make it twice as good
than it would if you did it in an hour,
then spend an hour and a half.
The time math here is in your favor.
If you do a regular review process, I guarantee you,
you're going to get the stuff done that matters and you're going to not feel as pressured for time,
because you're going to cut out stuff that doesn't matter. I mean, the reason often you're
pressured for time is just you have too much, right? It's in the review process that you get
to figure out the wheat from the chaff. And so it's worth it to spend a little extra time to get it right.
And if adding, you know, a bespoke, um,
index card or a fancy notebook or adding, uh, you know,
this the perfect app or whatever is what makes that more enjoyable and more
productive for you. I think you should absolutely do it.
Yeah.
And I think there's something about having the
right tool for the job. It's easy with the computer and especially the
smartphone, which is essentially a computer in your pocket, to try to use it
for everything. But I think it's really important to consider the the job that
you're hiring, the apps that you're using to do, but also the role of the technology
that you're going to use in your life.
And just one example of this,
which is not reflection based necessarily,
but like when I use Obsidian,
I'm using it very differently on my Mac
than I am on my phone.
I'm only syncing over a small portion of my notes
and I'm basically using the phone
for the journaling aspect of it.
And I use the desktop for everything else.
And that's because the form factor of the phone
is great for a couple of things.
It's great for dropping those things in my daily notes.
It's also great for quick capture.
I've got to use a different app for that, unfortunately,
because obsidian's quick capture is not great.
But recognizing that these are the strengths of the mediums.
When it comes to creating focus and intentionality
for the day, there is something magical about writing it
with a fancy pen on a note card
and propping it up in front of my face, at least for me.
That is the thing that just, it's like a switch gets flipped.
It's the night and day difference,
my ability to focus on the task at hand
when I do that versus when I don't.
Yeah.
And I think everybody's gotta find that spot.
We're not telling you to copy what we do,
but to be generous with yourself
in finding a process that gets you there.
Exactly, experiment, find what works for you.
But I don't think our processes are very different, frankly.
I don't think we're very different
from Benjamin Franklin and Marcus Aurelius.
This stuff just, I don't think it changes that much.
Like you, I focus on the quarter.
I think that's, to me, that makes the most sense.
I do an annual planning thing on my birthday, but it's not really
traditional annual play.
It's more of just a temperature check on my life, you know, and that's
what I can really stop to think about.
On the, on the big level, like in my end roles, I don't belong to, it was those,
those thoughts and reviews that led to me quit being a lawyer and, um, but, but
the more, you know, more reasonable or practical method I do
is the quarterly stuff.
Every quarter I sit down and talk.
And for the longest time I did it offset,
like starting in February and then going three months.
So because of the holidays I thought
everything was such a mess that November to January
was always a mess.
But I've kind of conformed now and I do it on a yearly basis January through March April through May etc
But that to me is the big one and you know
That's the one where I think like an offside is good and you and I have talked about reviews and get in personal retreats
There's a lot of overlap between that that concept and quarterly review to me
There's a lot of overlap between that concept and quarterly review to me.
But I do think that it's at the quarter level
that I have my big wins,
because that's when I can really stop and say,
realistically, where would I like to be in three months?
Not just with getting a product shipped,
but also on a personal level.
Well, how can I improve as a dad in the next three months?
What can I do to make me a little
better at that? Or, you know, how can I work on my reading and reflection better? And where would I
like to be in three months? So it allows me to kind of step away from the noise of life and really
make intentional choices about the battles I want to fight over the next three months. So that by far is the most important.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And just to kind of double click on the quarterly,
I think there's something magical about that,
that quarterly timeframe because it's long enough
that you can make significant progress.
And I think traditionally people would approach,
how you and I would probably recommend you approach the the quarterly intentions that's kind of by default how people approach the annual
intentions because it's sort of human nature that we overestimate what we can get done in the
short term but underestimate what we can get done in the long term. And three months is kinda, you know, the sweet spot there where you're forcing yourself
to set these big intentions in a smaller timeframe.
And what that does is it creates,
essentially if you do it every single quarter,
four different feedback loops instead of one.
So you may not achieve your quarterly goal 100%.
You may not be able to do everything
that you set out to do at the beginning. That's okay, you're still gonna make a bunch of progress and not be able to do everything that you set out to do
at the beginning. That's okay. You're still going to make a bunch of progress
and you're able to course correct and make adjustments as needed. Whereas if
you set the annual goal only, you're kind of just, most people anyways,
procrastinating on it for about 10 or 11 months and then trying to cram it at the
end, almost getting it and then realizing that that was a
failure. So we'll try again.
We'll set a new year's resolution next year
and repeat the process.
So the quarterly intentions are kind of like boundaries
or guideposts that work really well,
I think, for this sort of thing.
Yeah, and I think sometimes it's easier to see this
in other people than yourself,
but going through the productivity
field guide now, I've got people going through it again
who have had four successful quarters, right?
They've done the process, they've done the reviews,
they've done iterative improvements on themselves
for a year, and not a year, but really four quarters,
and it's like they have religion, they believe in it.
Like it works, they've seen the changes.
And that's why I tell people,
you gotta have faith the first six months,
but after that you'll have evidence.
And it's like that iterative process.
And that's why I agree with you,
the quarters are really golden here.
No matter what kind of system you go with,
shorten your iterative process to a quarter
and you'll see a lot more results
than you would in a 12-month process.
But there is a limit to that approach as well.
Like you can't just keep forcing the timeframes shorter
if you try to just crush it every single month.
There's a point of diminishing returns there. A quarter is kind of the sweet spot if you tried to just crush it every single month.
There's a point of diminishing returns there. A quarter is kind of the sweet spot
because when you set the intentions,
you may feel like, well, I'm gonna have to push
a little bit to get this done.
And there are times when you bite off more
than you can chew also, but for the most part,
I feel like a quarter is long enough
where if life life's you you have enough
margin that you can kind of roll with the punches a little bit and you can get
back on track because there's kind of a little bit of a natural buffer built in
there because of that human nature like I said where we tend to underestimate
what we can get done in the long term as long as we keep bringing our
intention and intentionality back and making sure that we're doing things that
are in alignment with that you know that the score kind of takes care of it itself. Yeah. And I really believe that,
you know, you have to, you have to get some big wins to make this work for you. And you can't do
a big win in a week. You need a quarter. You know, so yeah, that's why I agree. The quarter is,
is the sweet spot of that. Now that raises the question, well then why does Sparky do monthlies?
And monthlies for me are check-ins on the quarter.
What I found was sometimes, you know,
you talked earlier how if you do it on an annual basis,
you might wait till October to start.
I found that sometimes even on a quarterly basis,
I might blow off six weeks or eight weeks
and get to the beginning, you know,
get to the end and realize I was out of time.
So that monthly is just a little temperature check.
Okay, well this is what you said you do,
what's your progress on it and why?
So it's not me reinventing the wheel,
it's just me checking in on the quarter plan
and making sure everything's on track.
And frankly, sometimes things aren't on track.
You may have a thing in your personal life that blows up
and suddenly you're gonna spend a bunch of time
with a family member.
And you realize that one month in,
well, don't wait until the end of the quarter
to give yourself that hit and say,
well, that didn't go well.
That gives you a moment to adjust.
You're like, oh, you know,
Aunt Suzy has a big problem. I'm going to spend a bunch of time helping her. Well, I'm going to
adjust the quarter goals then because the time I'm giving her is going to mean I have less time to
do this other stuff. So some things are going to have to get pushed away.
RG Yep. Yeah. You make a pretty compelling case for the monthly.
AC Yeah, you know, it works for me.
I think I'm an outlier. I think most people that do this stuff don't do this.
Does Cal Newport do a monthly?
I don't know. Does he?
No, I'm pretty sure he's quarterly, weekly and and daily.
Yeah, I think I don't think a lot of people do the monthly because I
and I think the the the negative to it is like,, well wait, I just did this big quarterly thing,
I gotta do it on one thing.
No, I'm not saying your monthly should take
as long as the quarterly.
The quarterly plan takes me about a day, you know?
And ideally I get off-site for it.
We're treading into personal retreat land.
But the monthly to me is an hour or two.
Like I did my March 1 just last week, and it took me about an hour and a half,
but it was time to really reflect on how things are going and make some
adjustments and keep going.
We're heading into the third month of this quarter,
so it's crunch time for me in terms of my goals.
So it was worth time well spent.
Yeah. The monthly, the monthly review,
you kind of mentioned how you were traveling,
vacation, you know, whatever.
What happens when you don't have that fall
right on the first of the month?
I guess two questions here.
One, what does it look like normally?
And two, do you do anything different
when you're not able to follow your normal monthly routine?
Well, I mean, normally I do it in the last few days
of the prior month.
Like I would have done it in the last few days of February,
but February's a short month and it kind of got away from me.
But all I, what I do with that monthly review
is I look at the quarterly review
and then I also look at the quarterly review and then I also
look at the prior month.
And I guess I should clarify.
Okay, so let's say it is January, right?
I don't do a monthly plan for January so much because I do the big quarter plan.
But I do have an idea and I write in the quarter plan what I want to, the progress I want to
make in January.
It's not the same thing.
It's a lighter monthly plan,
because I just put all this effort
into the quarterly plan.
But then when I get to February,
then it's a proper kind of month review.
It's like, okay, well, how am I so far on the goals?
What do I want to do?
What do I anticipate are going to be problem areas
at the next 30 days,
and how am I going to get past them? So I have like a bit of a plan. And then when I get to the beginning of March or late February,
I'll look back to see how that went. And just like with the weekly stuff I said earlier,
be generous with yourself. Don't be mean, but just see, well, did it succeed? If so, why?
What lessons did I learn from that that I can bring forward? If it failed, why? What lessons did I learn from that that I can bring forward? If it
failed, why? What lessons can I bring from that? Sometimes the reason for a failure is
nothing out of, it's something completely out of your control. Maybe some other thing
happened that diverted your plans. You could never have predicted it. Well, that's okay.
Just make adjustments. But then do ask yourself, could I have predicted it?
Could I have seen that coming to where I could have been
in a better place?
Because if you handle it in the planning and the review,
you have less decision fatigue, you have less stress,
you feel like you're the captain of the ship.
And so that's what I do, like I said,
it doesn't take that long.
And then I look into the next month and trying to look for the same thing.
Where can I predict problems in the next month and how am I going to get around
it?
Do you ever find yourself having to do reflection triage
where, you know,
I'm going to skip the monthly review this time and it's
going to be okay. Or is it just, I can't do it right now,
but I'm absolutely going to get to it
within the next couple of days,
even if it's not a full on monthly review.
I have always, you know, look,
this was a very hard habit for me to build
and I'm very leery about skipping.
So I almost always do it.
And it doesn't take that much time and And I feel better about it afterwards the format
out of it, it just kind of depends on my mood. Sometimes
I'll use some of my fancy plotter paper and pencil.
Recently, like I go back and forth between analog and digital
tools. I actually really like talking through it. And you
know, I've got a room here in the house that I can work in,
I can shut the door, nobody's around.
And I like just talking to a transcription robot
and just talking through it and thinking through it.
But I made my living for years talking,
and I've done a lot of dictation.
So that's something, that's a medium
I'm very comfortable with.
But I find in general that when I talk through them, the results are better
because I don't filter my brain as much
when I'm talking as I do when I'm writing.
Like when I'm writing, whether it be the keyboard or pencil,
I filter out what gets actually to the pencil tip.
Whereas when I'm talking, I just kind of blather on.
But that's a first draft, and I go back and read it and make modifications.
But sometimes I get insight from talking through it
that I wouldn't get otherwise.
That's for me personally.
I'm not saying everybody has to do it that way.
But that's a great option now with the whisper,
the existence of this transcription engine.
You can say anything
and it does a pretty good job transcribing it.
Yeah, the verbal processing is interesting uh, is interesting. I,
I'm not, I don't know. Maybe I should, uh,
maybe that should be one of the challenges at some point is for me to try that,
but it's, uh, it feels very uncomfortable to me to, uh,
to do things that way. I would much prefer to type them.
Yeah. Yeah. You really have to be honest with yourself and just talk it through.
Channel Captain Picard, you ever watch Star Trek Next Generation?
You too young for that?
Yeah, yeah.
I remember that.
Captain's log, you know?
Give yourself a Captain's log.
You know, do it at the end of the day and just let it go.
Just let it go and turn the button on.
I mean, close your eyes if that helps and just talk it through, just let it go and turn the button on. I mean, close your eyes if that helps
and just talk it through and think it through.
You're not gonna have it as your thoughts as organized
as you would if you typed it out.
But even that is like there are AI options for that
where you can say don't rewrite what I did
but just organize it and just let it organize it for you.
But I do it by hand.
My workflow is Whisper Memos.
This is a Mac Power Rangers thing, but there's this great app called Whisper Memos and they've
got a watch complication.
So I just push a button on my Apple Watch and it dictates me and then it automatically
sends the result to drafts.
So I don't have to touch anything.
I just push a button, talk for a bunch of time,
then I go over to my computer, open drafts,
and it's waiting for me.
This episode of the Focus Podcast
is brought to you by ZocDoc.
Go to zocdoc.com slash focused
to find the right doctor right now.
You can sign up for free.
Have you ever tried to see a primary care doctor
with a literal six month wait to get in for a visit?
Or drove over an hour to see that one specialist
in your insurance network?
The good news is you don't have to settle anymore
when it comes to finding the right doctor.
With ZocDoc, you've got options.
ZocDoc is a free app and website
where you can search and compare high quality
in-network
doctors and click to instantly book an appointment.
We're talking about booking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every
specialty from mental health to dental health, primary care to urgent care, and more.
You can filter for doctors who take your insurance and are located nearby, are
a good fit for any medical need you may have, and are highly rated by verified patients.
Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings, choose
a time slot that works for you, and click to instantly book a visit. Appointments made
through ZocDoc also happen fast, typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking, you can even score same day appointments.
I love ZocDoc because I lived that nightmare
where you'd call and get stuck on hold for 30 minutes
and then find out they didn't even cover your insurance.
It's nuts.
ZocDoc takes all the friction out of getting
a doctor's appointment, which can be really handy
when you're sick.
Stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to zockdoc.com slash focused to find and instantly book a top rated
doctor today. That's z-o-c-d-o-c dot com slash focused. That URL one more time, zockdoc.com slash
focused. And our thanks to ZockDoc for their support of the Focus Podcast and all of Relay.
All right, so we've been talking about review now for a while.
I think what I'd like to tell you, dear listener,
is number one, you don't have to copy anything
that me and Mike are doing.
You don't have to do some goofy watch dictation thing.
But I think you should really try to implement
a review process along the lines that we're talking about.
If nothing else, quarterly and weekly,
I'd like to challenge you to do it for 90 days.
Just try it.
The thing we didn't say is enough, I think,
is that by going back and reading them later,
you get a lot of insight as to yourself. Because the version of me today is not the version of me
six months ago. We're always transforming as humans. And going back and reading the reviews
over the past year, to me, give me a lot of insight that I wouldn't have otherwise.
It's like my own personal therapist.
Like I've never had professional therapy,
but when I read reviews that I've written myself,
it gives me a lot of that insight.
And I'd like you to try it.
Honestly, I'd like you to try it for a half year,
for six months, but I'm gonna say 90 days.
But give it a try.
We've got a forum over at talk.macpowerindustries.com.
You can check in there if you're taking us up
on this challenge, let us know how it goes.
But figure out what a good review system means to you.
Because remember, as we said at the beginning,
the reward for review is intentionality.
Yep.
So what do you, if someone're, someone's going to take up this challenge,
what do you think is the minimum viable review product?
Like what, what are the timeframes that they should
absolutely consider for this and any other sort of
parameters you would put around this to kind of guide
people in the right direction?
I'd say minimum is quarterly and weekly. I
agree. You know for bonus points monthly and daily and
the daily does not have we didn't really talk about daily too much
But you know to me it's it's reflections at the end of the day, you know
I kind of do interstitial logging for my day
So I've already got a bit of a journal but
Reflections that make sense at the end of the day and the payoff on that is when you go back and read them.
But now we're kind of treading into journaling.
And I don't want you to feel like you've got to do that.
But quarterly and weekly in a format that suits you,
and maybe try a couple different ones
to see what matters.
Write it out on a piece of paper, dictate it,
type it out, be a blinkin' and carve it in a shovel
with a piece of coal, I don, type it out, you know, be a blink and carve it in a shovel with a piece of coal.
I don't know, just whatever.
The format doesn't matter, but there needs to be a format.
Yep.
It has to be more than just you thinking about it.
I guess is my point.
Active, be active.
Yeah, active and there's gotta be a historical artifact.
There you go.
Some sort of note somewhere, in some way, shape or form. Yeah, and you don't have to be a historical artifact. There you go some sort of note somewhere
Yeah, some way shape or form. Yeah, and you don't have to share it with anybody
In fact, you shouldn't because then you're gonna start writing for
Posterity just just keep it to yourself
All right. That's enough of that. Let's let's talk about what we're reading these days. What are you reading Mike?
All right, so I'm not sure if you watched any of the NFL playoffs, but there was a point in one of the
the playoff games where AJ Brown, the receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, was caught on the sideline
reading a book and the announcers kind of had a heyday with that. And it came out after the fact
that he does that all the time, but the cameras happened to catch it in the middle of this
high profile playoff game. So they like what in the world is going on.
As soon as I saw that book appear on screen, I was curious as to what it actually was.
And it is Inter Excellence by Jim Murphy. And after that game, this instantly became, you know, one of the,
the top selling books on Amazon.
Good for Jim.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's an interesting book because it's, it's basically, uh, it's,
it's a kind of a productivity mindset type book, but a lot of like the,
the blurbs for this one are by PGA tour professionals.
So, I mean, if there's one sport where you really have to be mentally tough, a lot of like the blurbs for this one are by PGA tour professionals.
So I mean, if there's one sport where you really have to be mentally tough,
it would be golf. Yeah. Uh, and so, um,
I talked about it with Corey and we're actually going to cover this one for a
future bookworm episode. And, uh, I'm going to bring in this one on,
on vacation and I'm interested to see if it lives up to the hype.
All right. Well, um, I'm halfway through a book. I got this book out of Meditations for Immortals, Oliver Bergman referenced Paul
Lumens, I've Got Time, which is a Zen Monk's guide to a calm, focused, and meaningful life.
I thought I'll give it a try. So it's a pretty short book.
I'm about halfway through it.
And I'm not sure I'm learning anything new,
but he's coming at it from a slightly different perspective.
And just like we talked about today,
I think he really is emphasizing,
be easy on yourself and accept that the universe
is not gonna let you do everything.
And I think it's a pretty good book.
It's a good pairing with the Oliver Berkman stuff.
Nice.
Shiny new objects, Mike?
Yes, I do have a shiny new object,
which you would probably approve of as a craftsman.
So we're going on vacation and one of the things that
we like to do when we get together with my parents is we like to play cribbage.
So we got my dad actually for his birthday last year. We got him a very
nice cribbage board, handmade, and my Joshua, who is the artist of the family,
drew a card for him in the style of the old iOS app,
Cribbage with Grandpas, and we gave it to him.
So we play cribbage every time we get together.
They are snowbirds, they went down to Florida,
and they did not bring the cribbage board.
So we're gonna to go visit them and we need to,
we need to bring something so that we can play cribbage.
And I don't want to bring a big board like that. We, we thought about, you know,
we could go to their house. We could grab that board.
We could bring it down with us because they drive down.
They got plenty of room in their car. We're flying down as a family.
We're not checking any bags. So space is at a premium. And I, as you do, started doing way too much internet
research for best travel cribbage board. And I came across this one which is on
Etsy. And it is a handmade leather
garbage board that kind of folds around
a deck of cards. So I'm going to actually
create a link here so you can take a
look at this if you want. We ordered
this it's currently sold out because
they hand make them and it's basically a
board that folds flat and kind of wraps
around. Yeah it wraps around this deck of cards. So, you know, it's very small,
takes up like no space, but the cribbage board is very well made.
The pegs are very secure.
It's a really high quality cribbage board that once you, you know,
you fold it up, it's,
it's about a little bit bigger than a,
than a deck of cards because that's what sits in the middle of it.
So we got this about
a week ago and we've been playing a lot of cribbage at home just with this thing
because it's so nice. And yeah if you are looking for a travel cribbage board
this is by far the best one out there. It looks really nice and like I see
they've got laser engraving and they've got some leather work. Yeah, I do.
This is very well made, you can tell.
Nice.
Yeah, and I don't know how to say the name.
It's Nody, I guess, or Noddy, K-N-O-D-Y.
They've got a store on Etsy where they make these things.
And I'll link to it in the show notes
for people who want to pick one up.
I'm not sure when they're gonna be available again,
but I can definitely vouch for the quality of this.
It's very, very well made.
Yeah, that's what Etsy's best for, right?
People making stuff like this.
I have a bit of tech I bought.
This is usually not the show I premiere new tech I bought, but I thought, why not?
So I bought a terminal. Have you heard of this thing? TRM.
Oh, yes. I have one of these.
Oh, you do? Okay.
Yeah. I haven't mentioned it on the show either, but mainly because I haven't really figured out
a great use case for it. We use it for a family calendar currently and that's it. But these are neat. Yeah, so it's a little E Ink tablet that connects
to a server and updates itself like every 15 minutes.
You can change the frequency,
but I think the shortest is like 10 minutes.
It doesn't do much, but go to a server
and grab whatever data you give it.
But like you can feed, like Mike was saying,
like if you have a calendar with iCloud or with Google,
you can get a public link to it
and then subscribe to it on your terminal.
And then it just lists your calendar.
And then it's got a bunch of little segments.
Like you can use, they have a countdown timer.
And our big vacation is in 103 days, I can tell you,
because my terminal's telling me 103 days till we leave.
You can have it put the calendar up.
They've got artwork, you can have it display.
There is just so many different little plugins
you can use with it.
And I've only had it a few days now,
so I'm still in the honeymoon period with it.
And I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it.
The whole thing, I think it was under $100,
but I don't remember how much I paid for it.
But it's, I don't know, I actually could go to the website.
They have different versions of it.
I got just the basic black one.
I'm sorry, it's $129.
But it's just really clever.
And the website behind it I really like.
And I may turn it into a family thing
or I may just keep it here under my monitor.
Because one of the things it does,
it just gives you your week calendar.
And it's always there.
Although I do kind of like my Augment cards.
So I'm not sure that's gonna happen.
But it's an interesting bit of low stress tech.
And it's if you want a toy to play with, order a terminal.
Yeah, this is perfect for the Focus podcast.
And the reason for that is the E Ink
that doesn't refresh all that often.
So you mentioned you can set how often
you want it to refresh,
but it is not the buttery smooth scrolling
of an iPad screen, and that's kind of the point.
Yeah, this is cool.
I can't wait to see what you end up doing with this.
Yeah, I've already tried a couple different options,
but I think I want to keep it simple.
Like the weather display is great, you know,
as a family like dashboard, I think it makes a lot of sense.
I suspect ultimately this is going to end up on the fridge.
That's what I thought ours was going to do as well.
It hasn't yet, but I think that's ultimately
where it's going to end up because it's so thin
and it's so light and you only need to charge it
every couple of months, depending on, you know, obviously how long or how often you refresh the screen.
But yeah you can stick it just about anywhere.
Yeah.
All right.
Well that's it for this one gang.
Go try a review process if you've not done it give it the 90 day challenge.
Let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Thank you to our sponsors today.
That's our friends over at ZockDoc,
and indeed we are the Focus Podcast.
You can find us at relay.fm slash focused.
If you are a Deep Focus subscriber, stick around.
I'm gonna talk about reset weeks.
Otherwise, we'll see you next time.