Focused - 227: Quarterly Planning

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about yourself? Always excited to talk about getting focused.

I just recently heard from an old friend who told me that she, she said, I never really understood that Mac thing you knew, but I really love focused. And I'm like, okay, well, thank you. Um, this is a fun show to make and I'm glad we're helping people out. And today is going to be all about quarterly review. Yeah, exactly. Um, well, quarterly planning, I guess we, we did talk about the importance of review in the last episode. So we'd sort of talked through a little bit of our process,

but what we didn't get to in that last episode was what we are actually planning for the next quarter. And since we sell a calendar that is based off of this quarterly planning concept, it probably makes sense for us to share our thought process behind the, behind that, that kind of stuff. So I view this as kind of like part two of the importance of review episode.

And we're gonna get into kind of what we're planning for the next 90 days. Yeah, just us getting into the weeds a bit about how we did our quarterly reviews and what we're working on. Yep, exactly. So do you wanna go first or you want me to kick it off? You know, I was thinking, why don't we start out

just talking about what we did to do the reviews. Let's just both share that and then we'll get into the details afterwards of what we're actually planning. Okay, sounds good. Okay, so my process, it should come as no surprise. I followed my personal retreat format, and this is a very specific format for me at this point, and it takes seven and a half to eight hours.

I've timed out each individual step of the process, and just to talk through it quickly I do the whole thing in Obsidian and I have all of the the documents linked to my template. I actually did a webinar on this a couple of weeks ago so I can link to the the replay if people want to see how the sausage is made but the first part is reviewing some specific notes one One is my life theme document. That's like a personal mission statement and I find it helpful to review that and also my personal core values every single time that I do a

personal retreat. I give myself permission to change those things if something there doesn't resonate but most of the time I'm just looking at that stuff and it sort of recenters me, you know, this is my vision and my values and really what I want my life to be about the type of legacy that I want to leave that sort of thing. That's interesting to me because like, you know, folks who go through the productivity field guide know I like, I like what I call these are a taste statements,

these statements of my ideal self and my roles. And I start by handwriting those out without reference to prior ones, just writing them from scratch. So we both start with kind of big picture stuff when we do this stuff. I thought that was interesting. Yep, you got to start there.

I feel like that's sort of beginning with the end in mind. And you can't just like fall into that sort of thing. You got to be intentional about that. That's really what the whole focus podcast is about. We've got different flavors, you know, different ways to implement it. But essentially, yeah, that's that's what focus is about deciding what sort of things are worth doing and then figuring out how to do more of that. I've also got below that a couple of notes. Like one that I've had for a long time is this ideal future note where I talk through the specifics of like what I want a day in the life of future me to look like. And part of that is aspirational. Like there's no way I could do that right now,

but part of it is, you know, what parts of this can I start living out right now? And so I'm consistently making progress towards that. Eventually I get the, you know, every once in a while I get detoured and I got to make course corrections. But it's helpful to look at that. And then I've recently added kind of a book into that, which I is a note that I call my eulogy. And it's, it's literally word for word, what I want read at my funeral. And it's all about, you know, the type of relationship that I had with my, my wife and with my kids. And then it gets into some specific accomplishments. For example, there's a line in there about how I've sold multiple New York Times bestselling books and donated over $10 million to causes I believe in. Like that's not something I can do right now. That's such a big, hairy, audacious goal so far in the future,

but it's inspiring to look at that. After that, I review all of my journal entries. So I've got the Steely journaling process inside of Obsidian, and I've got these notes where all those entries get rolled up. So I'll look through my journal entries. I'll look through my wins and I'll look through my gratitude entries. And then after that, I get into the wheel of life stuff. So I'll rate my different areas of my life, my happiness based on a scale of one to 10. I've got bullet points below that where I kind of give a couple of details about why I gave it the score that I gave.

And that kind of helps me understand You know, this is something that really needs some attention. I'm not gonna try to do all of this I'm gonna focus on the areas that are the lowest and I'm gonna set some intentions that are hopefully going to move the needle in Those those areas you'll see that when we get to the things that I've selected for my My planning because the lowest area for me currently starting new business is finances. So it's really all about how do I pay the bills.

From there, there's a retrospective process. I know you've got one too. The questions that you ask here I think are real important, so mine are real basic. It's what went well, what could have gone better, what did I learn? And then the three big questions where I spend a couple of hours, we talked about this in the last episode, what should I start doing,

what should I stop doing, what should I keep doing? Basically just jotting down a whole bunch of options. I'm creating these lists and then from there I will take action on those later. But right now I'm just considering all the possibilities. From there it's selecting a couple of intentions. I always pick usually two intentions. I give myself permission to do more occasionally. I've done less, but two seems to be the sweet spot for me. They're not goals in that I want to achieve this outcome by this time. It's really this is the thing that I want to be building. This is the direction I want to be moving. And so everything that I'm going to do in the weekly and daily plans

is hopefully going to point towards that. And then at the very end, I'm reviewing my ideal week, my perfect week where I've got a planning calendar and I'm figuring out the different modes that I want to be in and essentially time blocking a week. So everything from Sunday to Saturday, but not to the level where this is the project that I'm working on. It's more just as this is the mode that I'm going to be in.

So there'll be fun stuff on there, too, like family night board games, training for a half marathon. So I got to make sure that like Saturdays are my long runs. That's that sort of thing is on there. And yeah, that whole process usually takes about eight hours. I go overnight and I usually do the first part of it the night before, wake up in the morning and do the second part. Most of the time I go to the postcard cabins.

Those little tiny houses in the middle of nowhere, it's a perfect place to do your personal retreat. And yeah, like I said, I got a webinar where I walked through the whole process. So if people really wanna know more about it, that will actually show everything. But that is the the personal retreat. And that is what I did for this one. I didn't actually get to postcard cabin.

We've got a family cabin up in Door County and my parents are snowbirds. So they're not there currently. It's empty and a couple of hours away. But I can go up there and great, great, uh, environment for doing that sort of sort of thinking as well, especially in the winter. There's nobody indoor County. So, uh, it's a great place to, to sit and think your deep thoughts. What does your process look like this time around?

Well, first, I think that's really nice that you have that place up there where you can just go and get by yourself and do this very easily. I did not go off site. I admire that you do it every quarter. I still haven't got to a point where I can, but I'll get in there. We've got those tiny cabins,

but they're up in Big Bear in Southern California, which is really nice area. I mean, I brought you in there. We've got those tiny cabins, but they're up in Big Bear in Southern California, which is a really nice area. I mean, I brought you up there. You've been up in that area. But Big Bear is like another 45 minutes past where you and I were in Running Springs. The thing that I'm afraid of in the winter is just the roads are so curvy and the snow and the ice is up. So I'm afraid to drive in it. But I'm gonna get up there once things thaw out. I have my own car now so I can do that. But for this one, I did it at home.

Like you, I start kind of with deep thoughts. And for me, it's the RIT statements going through them and also reading the journal entries. I mean, there's a lot of overlap with our methods. I think journaling is so helpful with all this stuff. I don't really want to tell people they have to journal, but I think that if you do journal as part of this, it makes it more informed and kind of helps you. So I rewrite my RTA statements and I read the journals and I go back and read them again. To me, the statements of the ideal self

are something I visit several times throughout one of these processes. But I don't think I do it as rigidly as you do. To me, I kind of follow the energy a bit. But I always wait until the very end to actually do future planning. Like what am I actually gonna do? For me, a lot of it's just kind of getting in touch

with how I'm doing in my various roles, what is it that I wanna do better, and just kind of like working from the outside in, if that makes sense, and then at the end, coming up with ideas for what it is I wanna do in the next quarter, whether it be something with my kids or something related to work. And I know those ideas start percolating,

but I resist the urge to start writing them down until towards the end. Because I just feel like you need to give yourself time to just kind of be with the process. You know, it's not very often that we take time to be introspective. So if you take time to be introspective. So if you make time to be introspective, jumping immediately into the practical,

like how am I gonna do this, this, and this, is just another excuse to not be introspective. So let yourself just kind of be with it. This time after writing, and I've been doing them a lot lately just writing, but I decided to use dictation again. I'm just such a fan of dictation in terms of my own personality. I have an office at home where I can shut the door and just talk at length, and my family's

used to seeing me through the window and hear yacking at a computer. So I will just talk into a Whisper application. I'm using Whisper memos currently. And I don't even sit at my computer, I sit in my comfy chair, and I just talk through thoughts I had. And this is where things got interesting this time. I've never done this before, Mike.

And I wonder if people are gonna be judging me here. But I did several of those sessions. So I had like 20 minutes of dictation by the time it was done, not all in one go. And so I'd whisper, transcribe it all. And I was very just top of mind about it, like looking at my questions, looking at my roles and what I was thinking.

And then I'd go back over them again and say some more, then I'd go to something else, and then I'd come back. So I had just a jumble of words that I had done about these various topics. And for the first time, I went to ChatGPT and I gave it the whole file and said, I'm working on my quarterly review. Um, here is my texts from my dictation. And here is, um, my last two quarterly review text, um, ask me reflective questions about it. And then it did,

which was kind of like having your own little computer therapist, but some of them were insightful. And so then I dictated more in answer to those questions. And then I said, don't change my voice or words, but organize the text I've given you. And it did that. It kind of put the role stuff together and whatever. And so that gave me a big long essay.

And then I went through and edited that and rewrote some of it. And that was my quarter on review. And then at the very end, then I started saying, okay, what am I going to, what are the tasks I'm going to do out of this with the projects I'm going to take on? But it, um, but I'd never done anything like that before, but it allowed me to be very stream of conscious in the recording of the words, you know? It didn't add it,

because my instructions are explicit, don't write for me, just take what I've written and organize it. And the reflective questions, I thought were actually pretty good. And I didn't hate the process, although I've now given some computer somewhere a lot of information about me.

But it's for science, what can I say? I have so many questions. The big one is really just, do you have any examples of the questions that it asked you? I'm a big fan of questions and I'm already a little bit skeptical, but maybe you can change my mind. Well, I mean, I don't want to get too personal,

but there are some people for whom I'm struggling with certain things right now. They asked me questions about that, that actually gave me some different insight. I thought that was interesting. One of my big points, well, here in a minute is, this is supposed to be a kind of a low quarter for me, like a low energy quarter.

I've had two very busy ones. And it said, because then I, you know, I talked through, well, there are certain things I'd like to work on. And it said, well, this is Lurangie, how are you gonna work on all these things? And I thought that's a pretty good question. So, I mean, it wasn't terrible, you know what I mean? Cause I had two prior quarterly reviews

and it had all this tech. So it sees the obvious irony in some of the things I say, you know, in terms of wanting to get, cause one of the big points I made as I talked through it is I'm like, I do believe that we can have slow periods and hot periods. You know, you need a little bit of, you know, recovery. And, um, and it made me question how much I'm going to bite off for the second quarter.

it made me question how much I'm going to bite off for the second quarter. One of the things along those lines that I've done in the past when I was working with agent efficiency and even the suite setup was kind of alternating offense and defense. So offense was making new things and defense was improving things that are already there. Yeah. Fixing systems, plugging holes, things like that. You can change the terms if you want. Now I'm a sports guy, so that resonates with me, but I find that helpful to have those two different things

that you can go back and forth to. I haven't done that since I went out on my own with my own personal retreat stuff, but it's probably just because there is lots of important and urgent things that need to get done. Yeah, well, I mean, you're getting it off the ground. Once you get into flight cruising level, then you can have a little more space.

But I had mentioned this idea in one of the meetups for the Productivity Field Guide. What if I just threw it at an AI and asked it questions. The two things it did for me is it did give me reflective questions. I have found that as an excellent use for artificial intelligence in general. What I do often now is when I write anything substantive like a newsletter or a substantive blog post, I will throw the text at AI and say, ask me five reflective questions on this.

And then I'll take those questions, because often it does come up with questions that I hadn't thought of. And then if they're good enough to answer, then I'll rewrite that into the section, answering the question. You know what I mean? And I do think that often when we live with this stuff and we're sharing it, we take a lot for granted. And having kind of a, you know, something to ask you questions on it is actually

kind of nice. So that wasn't a new technique I'd used, but I'd never tried it with a journal before, but I did here just last week. And, you know, I don't think it used, but I'd never tried it with a journal before, but I did here just last week. And I don't think it was terrible. I'd probably do it again. I don't know what the, I do worry about the privacy implications of it, honestly, but I wish Apple had got on the ball and had a private version of this

where I could have had it do that. And the other advantage of it was just organizing it because it really allowed me to jump around a lot and not be so organized in my thoughts. And I could do this with a keyboard, you know, where you go through and, you know, just move the cursor. And when you go back to a topic,

you can go back and fix it there. When I do it by analog tools, I can't really do it, because when I write a new heading down, then I've moved on unless I want to write more later. But the idea of just talking kind of Captain Picard style Captain's Log into it over several sit-ins to me gets a lot out of me that I probably wouldn't get out in front of a paper and pencil and even maybe a keyboard. But getting that organized would have been a huge project that I didn't really want to do myself. So I had the idea. Nice. But it was an interesting experiment. And at the end, I had a nice review with some thoughts, some interesting thoughts in it. And then, you know, made a plan.

with some thoughts, some interesting thoughts in it. And then, you know, I made a plan. Awesome. Should we talk about those plans? Yeah, let's do it. Why don't you go first? All right. So there's really two big intentions for me. I mentioned I don't like to set specific goals with this,

but these are two things that I want to be building in the the next 90 days. And as mentioned in the previous section, I have to fix the finance thing. So the Life HQ launch was great, but it's not to the point now where you know doing that big launch every single month and gotta figure out how all the pieces fit together to produce an income that's gonna support the family. And for me, that means that there are a couple different pieces to this. And I'm probably gonna get a little bit

internet markety here for a minute because that's really the bones of the systems that I'm building right now. There is life HQ, which I consider to be my signature product. There are a couple other courses that I've made, which are kind of tangential to that. But the big thing that I want to build is a community and it's called the library. I kind of had a false start with this, I feel last year

when I tried to make something which was just sorta like, hey, come support me as an independent creator, give me 100 bucks a year. I know you do that model essentially with the Max Sparky Labs, so I know it can work, but it is not the thing for me. The thing for me I think is gonna be multifaceted, there'll be different levels with this, but the one that I really am excited about building is one that has a whole

bunch of live programs, not just live events. So I got inspired by some of the stuff I see with like Jay Klaus in the lab and Ali Abdaal with his productivity, I think it's actually called Productivity Lab. And the big benefit of those is like, you're with a group of people for a specific purpose and you've got accountability to do a specific thing. And my whole brand identity, I guess, is around personal knowledge management or PKM, but not, you know, the tangential,

I'm sorry, like the high level conceptual stuff. Like it's great that you can connect these notes in all these interesting ways, but what are you actually doing with that? There's got to be an output, you know, so there's an emphasis on creating something new with this, getting more out of your notes and ideas and helping people to do that. And some of the ideas that I've got and things that I'm building into this library community are like these quarterly retreat sprints. So if someone wants to get some accountability

for a quarterly personal retreat, they can go through the framework, share their personal retreat in the group, and then we'll even have live calls on Mondays where they can share a win from the last week and share their intentions for the next week. So public accountability to show up and do the thing with the belief that the value that you get

from actually being able to follow through on that stuff is gonna be worth the price that you would pay for that. I've also been working on, in the last quarter, taking my cohorts. So I've got two specific cohorts that I've done over and over again. I think I've done four of them for each. One is the practical PKM cohort, which is really just dialing in your PKM stack, identifying the apps that you're going to use in specific ways. What job are you hiring those to do, you know, dialing in your systems so that you can have an output and create consistently. The other one is the life theme cohort where we walk people through, my wife and I, the process of like identifying your personal mission statement, your personal core values, really that

identity level of the PKM stack and getting solid on that so that you've got things in alignment and then it makes it easy for everything else. You've got clarity to cut the things that aren't important, you've got motivation to show up and consistently take action on the things that are important. So I've actually recorded all the videos for the life theme, I'm calling it a hybrid cohort.

So essentially it's videos that you can go through which are self-paced, kind of like a video course that's gonna be built into the library. And I'm doing the same thing with the practical PKM cohort because that was the feedback I got last time. Is this material is great, but trying to crank through all of it in four weeks is too much. Well now you can go through it at your own pace,

but then also there will be live events in the library where you can at any point in the process jump in and ask questions and get live feedback. So that's sort of the direction that I'm going with this is I want to give people tools to help them take action on the knowledge that they're trying to manage and do more of the things that are important. I've shared with you, I'm working on a new website for this, which as we record this is technically live. So I guess I'm committing to sharing that link

by the time this actually publishes. But basically there'll be different levels of the library for people who want additional levels of support. And at the very low level, if you just want, you know, the private community, which where you can talk about workflows and PKM without, without all the the forum bros coming for you. Like that's one of my pet peeves online. I am a participant in the obsidian discord and in the obsidian forum.

But I see people reacting. And someone will ask a question and the kind of the default response is, well, you should have searched first. You know, that's not the vibe, not the vibe I want. I want a nice welcoming place for curious sense makers who, you know, you can ask your questions, you can get feedback like nothing's,

you know, off the table here. We're just a nice place on the internet essentially. And that's going to be real cheap. It's going to be like 47 bucks a year. And that's like the real easy one. You can just go to the private circle community and participate there. But then there'll be another tier which has all like the live calls and the additional coaching support.

And that one will have access to all of my courses, all of my workshops, all the cohorts, all that kind of stuff. And then there'll be another one beyond that, which is for people who want everything, but also want direct one-on-one coaching. And that one's a little bit experimental. I've done a little bit of coaching. Like I've been doing some hot seat sessions

inside of the library where people can come and show up on the call, but essentially the person who scheduled it, it's their 30 minutes, and we kind of have a private coaching call in front of other people. And I've got great feedback from those sessions. So, you know, the belief here is that

I can do that pretty well, and I want to be able to help people do more of what matters. You know, that's my life theme. I'm a multiplier. I help people multiply their time and talent, leave a bigger dent in the universe. So just trying to find the right mix of ways that I can do that.

And the library is basically the thing that I will be building over the next probably the entire year. But for now, you know, I'm committing for the next quarter. I really want to just show up in here every single day, contribute to the conversation, do all these live events, because when I get people in a live event that I can tell like that's really when connections get made and when they start getting value from things. So that is intention.

Number one, I've got a second one here, but I've been talking a lot. You have any questions about that piece? No, no. I mean, it makes sense. You know, the, um, I, I'm looking forward to see how it develops. Yeah, me too. Um, so the, that So that's the big one. Like ultimately, if people are gonna go all the way down

the Mike Schmitz rabbit hole, that's ultimately where I'd love for them to end up is the library. But on the other end of this is YouTube. And I have had success with YouTube, but it has been limited just because of me. I have only done a couple of YouTube videos in the last several months and I'm not okay with that. I know that this is kind of the top of

funnel thing for me. So I do the free YouTube stuff and that's typically where I'll walk through a specific Obsidian workflow. I'm going to be doing some different types of videos like I'm actually working on right now, so it'll be out by the time this goes live. A video that's inspired by Jason Snell's Apple report card. I didn't have time to go around and get feedback from everybody in the Obsidian community, but I recorded like a 20 minute video where I rated the different areas of obsidian so that one will be out and then I've actually got two people who are helping me with video projects now one of them is cranking through the video material for the hybrid cohorts so that'll be done probably in the next couple weeks for the PractilePKM cohort. But the other one is somebody that is in my library community. They've gone through my cohorts previously and they know how

I think. They also are a good video editor. So I've actually worked with them on the last couple of the last couple of YouTube videos. So specifically the people note video that I did and then the the Obsidian Report Card one which is going to be published shortly. And what I love about working with Max is that I don't have to explain, you know, this is the PKM concept that should be visualized here. And he does a really good job of understanding what I'm trying to communicate and grabbing visual elements to highlight it. So like for example, in the Obsidian Report Card video, there's this line that I wrote in my script

at the beginning and I just kind of thought this would be maybe a little bit of a catchy way to say this thing. It's like the desktop version of Obsidian is a lot like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. And he found, you know, the clip from Mary Poppins where she pulls out the tape measure and put it in there, you know, stuff like that, uh, where I don't. And then also, uh, just understanding this is the screencast part that should, should appear here.

So he thinks a lot, a lot like me, and that's making the editing process go a lot smoother obviously there's a learning curve in terms like well this is the type of transitions that I want you know this these are the brand colors and things like that but it's been it's been really great working with him on that and I'm also going through Tintin Smith is the ex-channel manager for Ali Abdaal. So he helped grow that that channel. I think it was from like 3 million to 6 million subscribers, something like that. He knows all of the details on like what makes a successful

YouTube channel. He went out on his own and he started this mastermind group for people who want to build a YouTube business. And I had been following him. I purchased actually his thumbnail masterclass when he first went out on his own at the end of last year. And when he mentioned that he was doing this mastermind, he's doing a discount for the first round. I was like, this is the guy I got to learn from.

So I'm joining that. And it's been good accountability. And I've got a weekly 30 minute call with him because it was one of the first 10 people that joined it. And he's holding my feet to the fire. Like, Hey, so you said you were going to do this last week. Did you get it done? And I've got to follow through because I don't want to show up and be like, no, I invested all this money in your mastermind group and I'm not doing the things that you're telling me to do.

like, no, I invested all this money in your mastermind group and I'm not doing the things that you're telling me to do. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of things that are in motion with YouTube currently and this quarter, I just want to get consistency with publishing. Specifically, what I'm looking for from this is to see how high I can get my AdSense numbers. So I actually, my channel is monetized,

which is fairly difficult to do, actually, my channel is monetized which is fairly difficult to do, but now that it is monetized, you know, I make a hundred bucks a month on ads. It's nothing really, but I know that if I consistently publish videos that number goes up. So I want to consistently publish videos for the next quarter. I know it's going to do two things. One, it's going to help me grow my email list. So when it's time to sell something, it's easier to do that. But also I want to see if I publish consistently, what is the, what can I get that, that AdSense number two, because even if I got it to $500 a month, I mean, now that's, that is a significant amount of money that could help a lot. And you know, it's something that I've known as important, but just been limited in my time.

So I haven't been able to really put my foot down on the gas with this, but I've got the help now. I've delegated enough of the process that I have no more excuses anymore. I've got this nice studio. So literally all I have to do is write the scripts, show up, record the videos. And if that doesn't happen, then it's my fault. Yeah. You've got a lot going on, buddy. I do, but it's necessary right now. My dad has a saying when,

when pain is sufficient, change will come. Right. So I'm feeling it. And it's not always going to be like this, you know, uh, some of the projects that I've been working on, like the website for the library, like that is actually something that I've been working on for a couple of months. Yeah. And, uh, it's kind of all coming together. I'm looking forward to pieces of this being done and being shipped so that I can focus more on like the,

the YouTube stuff and the programming inside of the library, but it was all necessary stuff. These were all holes in the systems. And yeah, so the last quarter was a lot about plugging those, those systems holes and now it's time to make stuff. Good. Well, as I teased earlier, I have I've got a little bit of a slower quarter ahead of me, and I'm hoping.

I had a good two quarter run, just looking back at what I did. I got two field guys released and I recorded the next one. I've done all the recording on that now. It's being edited by somebody else. That won't release for another month or two. You know, I've just been really busy. And then, you know, we had a health scare in December. My wife had a heart attack and she's okay.

But you know, that has changed kind of some of the ways we approach health and life. So I've been focusing a lot more lately on just like, you know, taking care of her, taking care of myself better. And I want to continue doing that. And this quarter I don't have a big production thing ahead of me, you know, I'm kind of in a lull and that's really good.

So I can kind of catch up with things. So that's my goal is to not turn it into a big production quarter. I've got some things that have been sitting in the background that I want to work on. The three are I want to do a little better with my affiliate program, with my field guides. I have one, but I don't really use it to much value. I want to get a little better at managing sponsors that I have on the various platforms I'm on. And I'd also like to do a little bit more with public YouTube. I mean, I publish.

You know, the Max Berkut Labs is busy. Like, we do about 100 tutorial videos a year in there. And then we have a lot of meetups and we have deep dive sessions on specific topics. I mean, we do a lot of the stuff like you were talking about you're bringing into your new system. So that's a lot of content. And I'd like to be able to do a better job

of using the knowledge I've gained, making all that stuff, because it's all private. None of that stuff gets put publicly. It's all just for lab numbers. I'd like to bring some of that out to the world. And so I'm going to probably have some select labs content that I re-release publicly, and then I'm going to make some entirely new content. I've got a bunch of ideas of things I'd like to kind of get off my chest.

And I haven't decided exactly what that's going to look like, but it's going to be on YouTube. And I guess you could say I look at it as marketing or whatever, but it's just content that I... Most of the stuff I do is stuff I have to get off my chest, you know? So I'm going to get it out there and see what happens with it. But I'm gonna build up some of that during this slow quarter where I'm not actively pursuing and recording a field guide.

And also gonna spend even more time on myself and hopefully out in the shop. So that's kind of my goal going into this quarter quarter and the trick will be not letting something new and shiny Have me take you know, I've got space now. So I don't want to dump a bunch of stuff on top of it Makes sense Yeah, I know you we've been talking a little bit about the affiliate stuff and the the YouTube stuff Do you have any more detail on what you think that will look like? Or for YouTube specifically, is there a cadence that you're

shooting for? Or just whatever you're able to produce as free YouTube content is great? What are the parameters around the non whirlwind stuff, the non podcast, blogs, lab stuff, the usual output? Yeah, what I think is a reasonable output for me on public YouTube is two videos a month. One would be some sort of labs content to share and then the other one would be something new. And I think that's a fair amount.

And this is a good quarter to kind of get that that flywheel rolling because I don't have a lot of other stuff going on. So I've got time to like do it properly do it properly and figure out the look and the edit and all that, but, so I would guess within a month or two, that rhythm is gonna be established. The field of stuff I don't really wanna talk about too much now, because I'm still researching

and deciding what that means for me, but the, but the YouTube stuff, I think it's two a month is good. I mean, I do a lot with the labs. I mean, it's not just a, hey, you want to support me thing. People that get in that get a lot of content, but that takes a lot of time. And those are my supporters and they go first before I get into this other thing.

But, but I do think the other thing has a place and I've gotten a lot better now at like optimizing, you know, I have, you know, I, I over the years, I have a helper JF who I pay him increasingly more to do increasingly more. And that gives me time to work on the more creative stuff that I want to do. And that opens up, you know, enough space to do it. And I love doing it. So it's like, everything is kind of in a, in a good space for me right now. I feel like my plane is now at cruising altitude, but I also, there's stuff on my mind

that I wanna get out into the world. And I wanna figure out the best way to do that. Sure. Yeah, and just to clarify, cause I wasn't trying to imply that you're just cranking out stuff indiscriminately. When I was talking about my approach with this, what I'm really trying to do is not create a library of content. I feel like I've done that before other places that I've gone and I want to be more intentional about kind of creating programs that people can join. There's obviously accountability and commitment that is required.

But with the intention of, you know, we're going to build we're going to build this thing together. So like as an example, I'm doing a beta group right now with this creative coaching. So basically taking what I've learned from going through, you know, part time YouTuber Academy and ship 30 and helping people identify, okay so I want to I'm collecting all these things all these ideas these notes I want to start sharing those publicly somewhere. As I share those publicly somewhere I want to start building an email list. Also with those things that I am

creating going to repurpose them into a digital product which I will eventually sell the email list. And the goal is to make your first dollar online. Like that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. So it's a, it requires a little bit more, uh, more vision, I guess, for me in order to sell that sort of thing. Uh, I gotta be clear about, you know, this is what I'm going to help you do. And to be honest, at the moment, I don't really know what all that stuff is going to be. So that's going to be part of figuring this, uh, the, this stuff out. Well, you've got a busy quarter, buddy. Um,

one thing on my quarter list is I have a week set aside two weeks from this week actually, and on my big wall calendar it says reset week. I didn't have the guts to call it a sabbatical because I don't really feel like it raises that level, but I like the idea of reset week. We've mentioned it in the past. I am a little concerned about it though,

I'll tell you frankly. I have one productivity field guide webinar that week and I had previously about it though, I'll tell you frankly. I have one Productivity Field Guide webinar that week and I had previously scheduled it. It's a 12 week webinar series. It goes for a long time and I don't wanna let them down so I'm doing one webinar that weekend. One of the things I realized because I've given so much work to JF,

I have taken back customer support from him for the month because he has like something like 110 videos to edit for me. So he has a lot to do. I'm gonna be doing customer support the month. So that means I'm not sure I can really have a reset week if I'm checking email. So I'm not really sure what that week's gonna be.

I haven't decided yet. I've got a couple weeks to decide. I may just punt it to sometime in the future. But we'll see, we'll see. Or make it just a slow week. Not so much a reset week, but a slow week. I know you would not approve, but that might be what I have to do.

We have a big family vacation at the end of June, so that was kind of like, I know that's not what we call a reset week, but that's coming too. So I'm not sure how this all fits. But one thing I realized now, because I had, when I planned these, I thought, well, the best time for me to do this would be after I finished recording a new field guide, but before it releases. Because during that period, that's when JF is working on it more than I am. And that would be a good time to take it off. But what I didn't consider is that

JF is gonna be working really hard on those edits, and there are other parts of Max Sparky that need to be maintained. That he normally maintains, but he may not be able to. So yeah, I don't know. I guess another option would be to get another person to help. But I don't know. This is all kind of caught up with me in the last week or two that I realized this might be a problem. If nothing else, I'm definitely going to take a day or two that week. And like, I want to go up

to the Japanese gardens in LA and the gamble house is something I've always wanted. So I've got like a list of like fun things I want to do. So I'm going to have some fun that week, but I'm not sure it's going to be an entirely reset week. So here I am, my cat in hand, fessing up. Well, uh, I'm, I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to get mine either, to be honest. I'm not sure when I'm gonna be able to get mine either, to be honest.

I am hoping that once the library officially launches, which launch is not, you know, the link is available by the time this episode goes live. It's really, I've dialed in the value proposition of this. I know the things that I'm doing here are valuable and worth the price that I'm going to charge for it. And I've, you know, I can clearly communicate that not just on the web page but also with like an email sequence. And I'm a ways from that yet. But once that happens, I feel like that's

the last piece of this puzzle for me. Now obviously, I can go back and I can update Life HQ and add more workflows to it, things like that. There's always gonna be projects for me to do, but the hard part for me is I see the big hole that needs to be filled, and I feel like I can't take a week off until that hole is filled. So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing this again in Q3 and saying I've got my sabbatical planned So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing this again in Q3

and saying I've got my sabbatical planned and feeling confident that I'm actually going to follow through on it. I haven't given up hope yet. This is where the focus calendar comes in handy because you can look at it, you know, and maybe the right answer was not, you know, take the week off while production is out of your hands, but maybe the right week is like a couple weeks

after release. Because this next one is about Alfred, the Alfred app, and there's no webinar series, so once it's out, it's out. So I'm looking at my calendar thinking, maybe in the middle of May I can do it. And I'm just gonna have to take a look. I might just punt it a month and still be able to pull it off.

But you know, I also feel a little guilty about that because I'm taking a week off at the end of June for a family vacation. But maybe I should get over it and just take a week off in May. Yeah, don't feel guilty. If you can take the week off, take the week off. That's like a general life rule, I feel.

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna look seriously at that. Now that I'm looking at the focus calendar, I'm thinking, yeah, I almost, maybe I should just work through that week and then after the thing releases, give it a week for customer support, bomb. Whenever you release a new product, there's always a lot of email and things.

Give that a week or two and then just take a week off then. And yeah, that might be what I do. Well, I'm glad I talked about this. I'm starting to feel better about it now. Awesome. Okay, well, that was the process for me this year. I used AI for the first time as part of it, but really more as a therapist than as a writer.

But I'm a big fan of AI for donkey work. It's good at putting words together and organizing them, not writing for you, but organizing your stuff. And I'm game for that. And the reflective questions, if you're playing with AI and you write something important, try it sometimes. Just send up, you know, if you write a long thing,

say this is the thing I wrote, ask me five reflective questions on this. And just see what happens. I think that's where it's kind of good for those kinds of things. You should try it, Mike. let me know what you think. I will do that. This episode of the Focus Podcast

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Go build a beautiful website today with Squarespace and our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. Okay, Mr. Schmitz, shiny new objects. I think you got something fun this month I did so This thing is actually replacing the previous Shiny new object. I think which is the the terminal. I'm gonna still gonna find a use for that but

Or those who are just tuning in last episode I talked about you mentioned the terminal and then I mentioned that I bought one too with the intention of using it as a family calendar. It didn't quite work for that purpose, however, and we have since bought a Skylight family calendar, which is this 15-inch touchscreen that comes with an incredibly heavy metal base so that you can put it on a counter and it's not going to get knocked off. And you could definitely piece this together with like an iPad and several other apps,

but having it all together in one place eliminates a lot of friction and if you have a busy family that is important. So the device itself is the 16 inch screen and if you look at the website it's got like a family calendar on there so that just ties into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, stuff like that. So you can see everybody's calendar, you can filter the calendar just like any other calendaring app. But then in the sidebar there's several other apps that tie into this Skylight service. So one of these is a list of chores for each of the individuals in the household. And so you can see for this day these are the chores that Malachi needs to do or Joshua needs to do. And they check the

boxes, they get credit for it, and then if they needs to do and they check the boxes they get credit for it and then if they do all their chores they get the the stars or whatever and then you can even set rewards in there so when you get so many stars you know this is the reward that you get some of the things that we put in there for example we love books right so half-price books or every once in a while we'll go to there's a place place nearby, it's actually a chain, but it's bricks and mini-figs. So it's like a used Lego store.

And you can build your own mini-figures out of the big bins of, you know, have all the heads and the bodies and the accessories and stuff. So we do that sometimes for like group rewards for our family. So that sort of stuff is like the rewards that we built in. It's also got a meal planning piece, which is kind of nice.

And yeah, I'll get into more details, I think, with this in the deep focus section. But if you're looking for something that's just gonna take all of the stuff that goes into coordinating a family, this is actually a pretty neat device. And I was skeptical about this when I saw it initially. I actually went to my brother's house and they had one

and they were showing me how it worked. I've seen these things come across my Instagram feed so many times. And I was just like, who needs that thing? It's way too expensive for what it is. And then I saw it in action. I'm like, okay, actually that's pretty cool. Yeah.

So how good is integration with the Apple calendar? Have you tested it? To be honest, we don't use the Apple calendars. We use the Google calendars. So I don't really know. Google calendar is great though, I can tell you that. Well, I have a lot of questions. Well, let's talk about this in deep focus

because I think this is something that there's all, I could do, I could talk a long time about this thing. So speaking of screens, my shiny new thing is I caved and bought a second screen for my desktop. It started with you, you were telling me how you're using one with your laptop and just like there's so much of the recording stuff I do where I have recording tools and scripts and whatnot,

and you don't want them on the screen you're recording. And it just made too much sense to just get one. And I had access to a used studio display. I almost bought it off this guy before, but I didn't. And I called him up and said, are you still selling that? And he said, yeah, so I bought it. And it was one that was set up for a Visa mount,

which was great, because I put it up vertical, just to the right of my big display. And it really is just a system screen. You know, like right now, it's got all the podcast recording stuff over there. It's worth it for what I do. I honestly did not want another screen.

It feels like it just starts to get overwhelming. And I don't like, you know, all this stuff bombing at me. Like I'm not going to keep my email open on it so I can see the moment an email arrives, but I am finding for production work, it's actually kind of nice to have a second screen. So I caved and bought one. Nice. So I actually, well, I 100% agree that it is valuable to have the other screen. Maybe this is a function of me not having a big primary screen. So mine is actually a third screen. But I use it the same way. It's all of the stuff that is going to be supplementary.

So like the notion outline that we're working off of audio hijack, the calendar, that sort of thing is all on that screen. The other two screens though are basically like the USB tablet screen on my desk and then the teleprompter. The teleprompter can't do a whole lot other than hold the zoom call.

So it's kind of just a zoom monitor. But yeah, it's kind of funny how you don't even anticipate maybe how useful that extra screen real estate is going to be. And I think it's important to, if you're gonna do this sort of thing, kind of let it develop organically. So I've done this before, it was,

oh, I've got access to four screens. I'll hook all these up, you know, and I'll decide ahead of time what I should put on each different screen. And then it just becomes cumbersome. But it's sort of like the principle here, I think, is like, if you've heard that story about when they create the paths at the colleges and universities,

they just let the students walk and then they pave those paths that naturally wear out. That's the approach that I would take to this sort of thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was admittedly resistant to it. In the old days, I had two, I had three screens. I had the main iMac and like ears on it, one on either side.

And I kind of got the point, I didn't want that anymore. It just felt like too much. And with the, I have a giant 6K screen. So I, you know, it's not like I don't got the point, I didn't want that anymore. It just felt like too much. And with it, I have a giant 6K screen, so it's not like I don't have enough pixels, but the fact is I record off that screen and I can't have stuff on that screen being recorded that isn't part of the product, right? So, but honestly, I like it, it's nice.

I'm glad I did it, but I was resistant to it. And you're right, I only am. It's nice, I'm glad I did it. But I was resistant to it and you're right, I only am really using it for production stuff. I don't keep a lot of random stuff over there on the side and when I'm working, I'm primarily looking at my primary screen, but it's working out. I did get a high visa amount for it because I'm gonna build a shelf underneath.

That's gonna be something I do hopefully next month or two. And I want to cover it. Yeah. I have plans, Mike. I have plans. Yeah. I envision the next time I get to see your studio, you just have shelves everywhere. Well, I think the idea of a shelf under your computer is a good one. I mean, they they like a monk sells them, but they're really expensive. Like the nice ones. And like I have the skills and the ability to make one on a budget that would be nice and something I like and I made and something

things I make make me feel good. You know, and so I'm and I can like make the height exactly for my Mac studio, and that's nice. I Had a crisis. I had a crisis since we last talked I tell you that No, somebody offered me money for my my Mac studio. I almost sold it, but I ended up Ended up keeping it anyway, so the big question I have though is what Greek quote is going to appear on this shelf? Not sure.

There's a lot of good ones. And I might just burn the Max Sparky logo into it, you know, with the laser. I guess that makes sense, yeah. But I don't know, I don't know. First I'm gonna make it. True. I've gotta I don't know. I don't know. First I'm going to make it true. I've got to find the right board. I spent I went to the lumber yard and I looked through a whole stack of

walnut, nothing, because I'm going to look at this thing all day. So I want I want the grain to be right. I want the board and me to be friends and I didn't find the right one. So I got to find I got to find the right one. So I gotta find the right board. Yes, I can be hippie about picking lumber. Nice. What are you reading these days, Mike? I have just finished Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy,

which I think I mentioned last time. That's a really good book. At least I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was not at all what I expected to be honest, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The next book for Bookworm is The Five Types of Wealth by Saheel Bloom. I think this is going to be very much different than the one that I just finished. But I am a fan of Saheel Bloom. I heard him speak at Craft and Commerce a couple of years ago when he had a pretty big email list at the time.

It was like a hundred thousand people or something like that. And he talked about the creative process and one of the things that he mentioned in that session has really stuck with me that everything that you create is downstream from something that you consume. So I guess another plug for being intentional about your information sources. But at that session, he was talking about how he was writing this book. It was published, I think, a couple of months ago now, and he was sharing a public goal.

He was trying to get to a million email subscribers before the book was launched. I don't think he quite got there, but he got pretty close. The Five Types of We wealth is really a book about If I had to summarize it, it's like Living a rich life like you can be you can have a lot of money and you can not have a lot of time And I just appreciate his perspective, you know, he's always

Sharing things about how you know, he has these these opportunities and things that come up and he's prioritizing his family. He's got a young son. And so there are different ways to live your ideal future essentially. So this is a book about those five different types of wealth. Money isn't the only thing that matters. And that message obviously resonates a lot with me, but I haven't really dug into this book yet. I just finished Inter Excellence yesterday. So this is

the next one on the list. I haven't even cracked it open yet. My wife has started this one though, and she keeps sharing sections from it with me. Like there's one thing in there that he's got a chart of the time that you spend with your kids over time. And so when they're really young, it starts out a little bit lower. And then as they get a little bit older before they leave, you know, it goes way up. And then after they go to college, it kind of trickles down from from that point. And kind of a mental moreish in terms of like, don't don't take for granted the time that you've you've got with with your kids, things like that. I think it's going to be a be a very introspective book.

And so that's probably a little bit of the reason I'm a little bit hesitant to open it up, is because if I'm honest, you know, talked about the Q2 plans and there are things that I absolutely need to do now, but I'm not happy with some of the concessions that I've had to make. And I feel like this book is gonna challenge me to put things back in their proper place.

I've got an introspective book too. I recently bought Shinrio Suzuki's Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. They made a 50th anniversary edition a few years ago and I saw it on Amazon and I ordered it. I read this book when I was 17 years old. That was 40 years ago. I was kind of at the, you know, at that time I didn't know much about Zen Buddhism, but I thought the book was interesting. And since then, I've learned a lot about that and other traditions and ideas. And coming back and reading a book 40 years later, man, let me tell you, that's something, if it's a good book.

And I've talked in the show before, my theory that every seven years, you replace all yourselves, you're a new person. So this is like six versions of me ago that I read this book. And this book hits even harder for me as a 57 year old than it did as a 17 year old. But just an excellent book.

Here's something I highlighted. When you do something, you should burn yourself completely like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. This is a good book. Anyway. Shinrio Suzuki, he was a Japanese monk who came over to the US and started the first Zen center in the West.

And he wrote this book to kind of, it's like a collection of his sermons and ideas. And it was very popular back in the 70s when it was first released. And I don't know how much it's really in the zeitgeist anymore. But if you're looking for an interesting book, you don't have to be a Buddhist to read this book.

There's a lot of good wisdom in here, no matter what your faith is. And I'd recommend it. Zen mind, beginner's mind. Interesting. All right, we're the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsor today, Squarespace.

We appreciate it very much. Also, thanks to our deep focus supporters. Those are the folks getting the ad-free extended version of the show. You help us keep the lights on and we appreciate it. Today we're gonna be talking even more about Mike's fancy new Skylight gadget. And we'll see you next time.