Focused - 229: Workflow Check-In

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

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

Excellent. Today, we thought we'd pick up on a few focus related topics that we've been wrestling with. I thought it'd be fun today to do that. Before we do that, however, just a couple of announcements. You've got a new hybrid cohort. I do. I'm calling it a hybrid cohort, but it's kind of like a video course plus plus. So basically I've done the Practile PKM cohort four times now, and I feel like I've really dialed in the content that I present, but it follows the PKM stack framework that I've shared about on this podcast before. So I kind of condensed it into,

for the cohort format, four weeks. And the feedback I got after the last time that I did this, you know, I hopped on calls with people, asked them what they thought. Everybody basically said, the content is amazing, but it moves too fast. So I took that content, I recorded 84 separate videos, which you can now go through at your own pace,

but then the hybrid cohort option here is the monthly Q&A calls that happen inside of my private community. So the intention is that you can go through the material on your own, but there's still a live component where you can get feedback and ask questions and things like that So I'm really excited about this. There's gonna be an option which is gonna be just the videos and that is gonna be $197 for 84 videos I haven't even added it all up But it's it's got it got to be like six to eight hours worth of video altogether.

It's a lot. And then with the hybrid cohort option, that's the one that gets you the live calls and then also is going to be bundled with Life HQ. That's going to be $397. So I've got a page which will be live by the time this This podcast releases if you want to find out more and that will be join dot practical pkm Comm and if you are looking for help dialing in your pkm system So you can get more out of your notes and ideas help you be a little bit more Productive and creative and you are all in with obsidian like I am. I would love to help you out and you are all in with Obsidian like I am, I would love to help you out. Excellent. I've got a pitch too, Mike.

I would like people to sign up for my newsletter. I've been working really hard on it. Now it goes out Saturday mornings with something fun and interesting. Maybe it's a little back productivity, maybe it's a little focus related topic, but there's a link in the show notes and I'd appreciate it if you signed up.

Yeah, side note on that. I noticed you started sending your newsletter a little bit more regularly and I think you're doing a good job with it, so keep it up. Thank you. It's another avenue for me to express ideas and I enjoy that. And I think moving it to Saturday was a good move for me.

Everybody told me that's not a good day for a newsletter. Whatever. I like it. Yeah. The thing with the newsletter day is really just to be consistent with it. I think it's totally fine to send it on a Saturday. Actually, a lot of the newsletters that I subscribe to seem to send on Saturdays. So I think you're good. All right. So today we're going to be talking about workflows and thought we would just check in on several different workflows.

Where do you want to start? Well one that I've been thinking a lot about is time blocking. And so I've made some changes on that and I thought it would be worth checking in on. So I guess I'll start there. So you know, I've always been very much a time blocker. I'm a big fan of the idea of giving your time a job, but I've been getting a little softer on it recently. The whole thing started with Kourosh Dini,

who was a guest in the Max Berkut Labs, and he talked about this softer approach to time blocking where he just has a list of things and he like will think about them. He's like, well, am I feeling like doing that one right now? And if he's not, he doesn't do it. He doesn't like assigned time in advance. And that's very similar to what Paul Lumens kind of talks about. We had Paul on the show recently. And I like that idea of adjusting for energy level

with your time. And the reason why I was thinking about it is a lot of people wrote in as I went through the productivity field guide saying like this time blocking thing is just too much for me. You know, I hate that. I wake up and I don't even have a say in how my day goes. Right?

And I can argue with that. You do have a say. You say, you're the one picking, blah, blah, blah. But I also understand it, and I've been trying to kind of look for ways to get around it. So a couple things come to me. The first is what I would call is limited time blocking. My wife, for instance, had something going on at work, and it was weighing on her that she couldn't get it done. But she's not gonna time block.

But I said, well, why don't you pick, how long is this gonna take? Three hours, okay. Let's pick a time, like when you don't have any meetings and you know you can get three hours uninterrupted. Okay, when's that? Next Tuesday afternoon. Okay, so she put it on her calendar as a time block.

And she got that immediate sense of relief you get from setting time blocks with things that are troubling you. She's like, okay, I've addressed it now. She didn't say it out loud, but you could just see it, right? And then the next Tuesday night at dinner, I said, well, how'd it go? Did you get your block done?

She's like, yeah, it was great. And I finished it, now it's off my plate. I said, now, how'd it go? Did you get your block done? She's like, yeah, it was great. And I finished it, now it's off my plate. I said, now pick the next one you're worried about and do that. And she's been doing that now for like six months. She'll pick one thing that's bugging her and she'll block it. So I think that's another form of time blocking

that's lesser. What do you think? Time blocking light, I like it. Okay, but I think for people who aren't willing to sit down or just don't, even with her calendar, I'm not sure she could block it out that specifically because she's gotta respond to other people.

I really like the, I'm gonna call it time blocking light approach. I feel like that's a great way to get started with time blocking and I think I may actually use that as advice that I give people who are struggling with that with time blocking, just to pick a single thing and block the time for it because the pushback is always, well I don't have complete control over my time and so it just feels completely overwhelming to even start to try to block out

when you're gonna do all of the different things that you have on your list for today. But it's pretty easy to just pick one and put that on the list. I feel like you should coin a term for that though. I mean, you could use time blocking light if you want, but. So I called that simple block scheduling in the productivity field guide,

because it's simple, just pick one thing and do it. And I think that's a great way to help people, like you said, get started on the path, or even maybe that's the end of the journey. I'm not going to convince Daisy to get serious about time blocking all of her time, but this one little tool for her has become useful. So that's good enough, right?

Then I do, I've been experimenting myself with what I call fluid hyper scheduling or fluid time blocking. And the idea is not to take it quite so seriously as I have historically. Like my usual plan is like I sit down Sunday night and then like I figure it out and I block out the week. And if you look at my schedule on Sunday night,

you see that things are in line, right? And the problem with that is so often they fall out of line that there is a bit of a karmic bounce that you get. It's like, ah, gee, none of this stuff is working. And I feel like what if I gave myself a little more fluid reaction to all this? So rather than on Sunday night, plan out each block, on Sunday night,

I start just thinking about what are the themes of each day, what am I gonna do each day? What am I going to do each day? As an example, today is a podcast recording day, so I'll be recording shows in the morning. But in the afternoon, I'm wide open, and I've got ideas here for the Max Sparky Lab. So I'm going to record some tutorial videos. I'm going to do some admin work.

I've got a bunch of different things there. And I don't know when each is going to get done. Once I finish recording, I'm gonna take a little break, probably take a little walk, and then come back and look at this list and see whichever one speaks to me and just start with that one and work through them through the course of the day.

Whereas in the old days, I would have known in the morning exactly what time I was working on each one of those items. Does that make sense? Yep, yeah. So you are embracing the time-surfing lifestyle a little bit, sounds like. Well, yes and no. I mean, because he was even more hippie than I am on it.

Kind of saying, well, no, I don't feel like doing that today. I'm gonna do something else. And my life isn't of such a nature that I can really pick and choose that way, if that makes sense. Like, there's a part of me that wants things a little more organized than that. But I'm giving myself just a little more freedom

as to when and how. And honestly, if I get there and I really don't feel it, like I just can't record a video today, I don't have it in me, then I'll have to deal with that. But I'm not taking it on with as much specificity as I historically have. And I've been doing that now for three or four months, and it works fine.

But you know, I'll get curious and go back and try the other thing and get more granular at some point. That's just me. All of us are on this journey, right? We have to figure it out. But this more fluid-based block scheduling for me has actually worked fine. Nice.

I'm still pretty rigid, I guess, with the time blocking, where I will still time block my day in the analog notebook and then write a couple of things on a notecard and prop it up on my desk but I feel bad every time that I do it now after talking to Paul like maybe I'm committed a little bit too much to this structure yeah so I my time blocking workflow has basically remained the same but I think it is actually in a spot where it's primed to be disrupted.

I don't know exactly what that looks like, and I'm not looking to throw it away necessarily, but I do find myself kind of craving a little bit more flexibility. So I'm not sure what that means or what it'll end up looking like, but. Well, I mean, try what I'm talking about. I mean, you said cards.

I'm assuming you're using index cards or Uggmunk or something like that. Just write down on it, you know, the three or four items that you want to get done today and don't put them on your calendar. And instead, when you sit down, look at the list and say, which one is jumping at me at this moment? And do that one, take a break, and look at it again, you know,

just be a little more fluid with it and try and see how that works. I mean, it's worth experimenting on just to report back if nothing else. Yeah, I think I'll definitely experiment with it. My hesitation with that though is simply that there are things on that list that I don't want to do sometimes I feel a lot of times I'll sit down to do the things that I know I

need to do like cranking through a whole bunch of video edits for the the practical PKM hybrid cohort yeah for example and the minute that I start thinking about it I I feel exhausted. So if I leave, you know, there's these options. I feel like there, there was a scenario where there's an option on there that I just keep kicking down the road. If I give myself that out, you know, by putting it on the calendar, it's sort of a forcing function for me. Yeah, I can see that. But also I think, you know, being grown up. You know, it's like, yeah, the edits have to get done and that's gonna be the thing I do now, you know.

But I mean, just try it. I don't know. But that's me reporting in. So I've been making some adjustments on time blocking. Not quite as serious on it. Not quite as loose as Paul was talking about. But I do think there's something to this idea of giving yourself a little grace

and a little more control in the moment. But at the same time, I still have a list of things I need to get done. So I'm not sure how far off I really am. Maybe this is all a little illusory. Maybe this is all a little illusory. I do have one workflow which I have made significant changes to. I'm not sure how committed you are to the GTD style

weekly review. Do you still do that every single Sunday afternoon I think was the spot that you were doing it? Yeah? Not as I used to. I mean, the way I manage projects now, there aren't as many. So I actually kind of manage reviews

as I go through the week. When I have a sponsor block, then I kind of look at the whole world of sponsor work as an example. So, yeah. I don't really do it as much as I used to. I mean, when that really was most helpful for me, was when I had 100 legal clients.

You really had to have a kind of a system to make sure nothing fell through the cracks. But I have fewer projects now. Yeah, that's fair. Basically, when we talked to Ann Lor, I have fewer projects now. Yeah, that's, that's fair. I, uh, basically when we talked to Ann lore, um, and she talked us through the plus minus next to planted a seed and, uh, she talks about this on her blog and in,

even in the tiny experiments book, um, and even in our conversation, I think she, she referred to it as sort of a journaling workflow, like a weekly journaling reflection practice. But I knew when I first came across the idea, I didn't like the sit down at the end of the week and create these three lists approach. So I've just kind of been thinking about, well, how could I maybe do this in a way that this could actually function as a weekly review tool?

And I figured something out using shortcuts and Obsidian. So I've got a video which I can put in the show notes that people wanna see how it's put together, but essentially what I'm doing now is I'm adding those plus minus next headers to my weekly note in Obsidian. And the weekly note is what I use when I plan my week. It pulls in the tasks that are due or scheduled

over the next week, and then I manually put in my priorities for the week in a single sentence of what success looks like this week. So below that basically are the headers which are for the three different lists. Plus basically is the things that went well. Minus is the things that did not go well and next is sort of things that come up that I should be thinking about for the next period. And so at the top of the weekly note, I kind of use that for weekly planning,

and at the bottom of the weekly note, now I've got these headers that I'll use for weekly review. And I created this shortcut, which basically is a simple shortcut that asks you to select from the list, plus, minus, or next, sends you down the appropriate path, you capture the text,

and it appends it underneath the appropriate list. So I've actually been using this now for several weeks and this works really well. I find myself in the moment that's the point when I got to capture this stuff. If I sit down at the end of the week and I try to think about it, it feels like a huge mental lift. It's almost like my brain is going into bracing itself for like personal retreat mode. But if I capture it during the week, when something happens, I'm not trying to, oh, this bad thing happened,

well, it's not really all that bad, I don't need to write anything down, or this great thing happened, oh, give it some time, it's not really all that big a deal. I think there are actually scenarios where it's a positive thing to lean into those emotions. And so I'm kind of just giving myself permission to whenever I feel that sort of stuff, I'm capturing that stuff with my plus minus next shortcut. And then

it depends it to the weekly note. I look at that on Sunday afternoons. That'll be like the first part. You know, I just look at the things on that list. And then because I have the note open already, I'm planning the next week. So yeah, this has really helped me be more consistent with my weekly review. And it's definitely not a canonical GTD style weekly review, but it gives me the 80-20 basically. I feel like I've got a good handle on what happened. I've got a good primer for the things that are coming up.

And then when you couple that with the task management stuff that I've got in Obsidian and the things that I should be thinking about over the next week, this has really clicked for me. Nice, nice modification to the workflow there. Thank you. It uses the, I mean, I don't know how much you wanna get into the weeds with this,

but I will say I can put a link to the shortcut in the show notes that people want to use it, but it does require the Actions for Obsidian app, plugin, whatever. I don't know. Actions for Obsidian is basically a bunch of shortcuts hooks. So one of those hooks is you can actually append to a note, but one of the options there is a periodic note so you could take the same approach for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even yearly notes. I just happen to be using the weekly note version and again I've got a video which walks through how to set it up if you want to tweak anything. I've been experimenting with my reviews as well

weekly, monthly, and quarterly where what I do is I just sit down and dictate for a long time, and I go kind of random, just kind of talk about what's on my mind. I don't start with the outline. I mean, historically, the way you would do this stuff, right, is you'd go through and you'd fill it out and say, okay, for me, it's like, how about the husband role? How am I doing?

What can I improve? That kind of stuff. Instead, I just go through and just talk about whatever's at the top of mind for review, almost like a therapy session with myself. And then I do it in two or three sessions. And then at the last session, I go through and look at my outline of my roles and our take statements.

And I look for anything that I haven't talked about, and I talk about those too. And then I feed the outline and all the recordings to ChatGPT and just have it organize it for me. And the instruction is, don't rewrite anything, just take this outline and take everything I said and put it in some sort of order. And it's kind of useful, you know?

I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are cringing about the idea of sending that to ChatGPT, but at this point I'm trying to go out on the edge a bit and experiment with this stuff for the labs and other reasons. It's an interesting methodology because I'm eliminating structure and instead I'm just going for it.

And then the transcription has got so good and the LLM is smart enough to take and organize my thoughts and there's always a few things that gets wrong that I can clean up. But then I go through it with my keyboard and clean it up. But it's been a fun experiment. Yeah, I know the focus of this episode is not on the AI tools,

but that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately too is the apps that don't just give you an audio transcription verbatim of what you said, but they kind of create this summary as you are dictating to the app. And I think that's really interesting. Plus you kind of combine that with the ability for the LLMs to look at the input that you've given it

and ask the follow-up reflective questions. I think that's really powerful. I think there's gonna be some pretty cool stuff that's gonna come out in the near future around that. I'm playing around with some different apps just as like creative collaborators, you know, like one is called Voice Palace developed by Ali Abdaal actually, where you capture your idea and then it gives you a whole bunch of like tangential offshoots from, you know, the thing that you've captured and just keeps asking

questions and you keep developing the idea until finally you've got something that you could potentially share. This is sort of like the reflective version of that. Too bad there's a book called Personal Socrates, otherwise I feel like this is the Max Sparky AI agent that you should totally make. Well, I've already, I mean, it's a custom GPT in ChatGPT, and that's the other half of it,

is after it gets everything, it's a custom GPT in ChatGPT, and that's the other half of it, is after it gets everything, it asks me reflective questions. So it'll ask me five to 10 questions, and I'll just hit the microphone and just answer it, and I'll say item one, and I'll answer the question, and then item two, and I'll just go through and answer them all, and it'll incorporate those answers as well into the thing that gets juggled around

and matched up to an outline. And it's a very different way to do it. I've been enjoying the process because my brain doesn't always think linearly. So just sitting down and talking, I've got the perfect spot for it. My studio, I've got a comfy chair and you sit there and close your eyes and just talk through stuff. I find it gets a lot. I had been trying to hand write the reviews

for like six months and what I found was they were shorter than when I dictated them. And I think I wasn't getting as deep because I edit myself when I write and when I speak I just kind of let it flow. And then I can always go and edit things out later but it gives me more source material when I do it this way.

Yeah. Do you ever do it while you're walking or are you always sitting in your comfy chair? I mean, I'm constantly dictating. I have a thing that, you know, I have the Apple Watch with the button on it, the Ultra. And so I've got that hooked up to an app called Whisper Mos where I can

just press the button and then talk to it. And usually, sometimes the app flakes out, but usually that gets dictated, transcribed, and uploaded to drafts. So every time I open drafts, there's a bunch of stuff in there. Like I mean, I just do it constantly, but the heavy review stuff I found myself doing in my comfy chair, or I did one at the beach a couple weeks ago. I just went down to the beach and did it.

And so it just depends on what you're feeling. Ideally, me going up to one of those tiny cabins in Big Bear like you do, that's on the list. I have my own car now, Mike, so I can do stuff. I can get away. So yeah, I's on the list. I have my own car now, Mike, so I can do stuff. I can get away. So yeah, I might do that eventually. But yeah, those are usually more planned. And when I know the reviews are coming up,

like as we record this, we actually record two weeks early, gang. So we're heading to the end of April and I'm already, my brain is already cooking a little bit on my April review. And so I'll have thoughts by the time I sit down, but I just kind of hit the record button and let it rip. And then I do that a couple of times,

get up, walk around, come back later, maybe even the next day, and then just keep doing that until I feel like I've exhausted my demons, and then I feed it to my custom GPT. Very cool. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

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of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. All right, so the next one on the list, you have reading and processing new books on the edge of my seat to hear how your reading workflows have changed. I am, you know, so you were pulling me towards analog books. I built a bookshelf. Everything's good.

I'm still reading some, like the book I'm currently reading is a paper book, but I have to admit, Mike, I've fallen off the wagon a bit. I've been reading some ebooks. It's okay, but I am curious how do you how do you process The mixed media like that Do you just continue with the digital workflow that you had piping things in via? Readwise and then you supplement that with the things from the physical books or how are you making sure that? All those processed notes

and ideas end up in the same place, or do you not worry about it? I don't worry about it as much as you do. I'll tell you that. But even when I read a physical book, most of the stuff I do is just notes in the margin or check boxes, and then at the end, I take some notes on the book.

I don't go through and really, I don't think I go as far down the rabbit holes as you. And what kind of triggered this was, I started using Readwise's reader app. You know, they have a separate app that is like an RSS reader, but also a collection of your linked articles and emails and things.

It's a great app, you know. And I noticed that my, because I really do like the read-wise summary of quotes and things that you've highlighted. And I just noticed none of the new stuff was getting in there, because I don't, you know, when you read a paper book,

it just doesn't get into the system unless I go type it all in, and I haven't been doing that. And I miss that, you know? I really like the spaced repetition stuff that Readwise does. And so I started reading more books on Kindle. But I think the line I'm drawing is like

stuff I really love. I'm reading at paper. Like right now I'm reading Seneca's Letters on Ethics and I'm reading that on paper because it just feels like that's a book you should read on paper, you know? Yeah. But I'm not 100% in on paper books.

And I felt like I had to fess up to you. I mean, I know I'm gonna disappoint you, and I just had to get it off my shoulders. I didn't want you to discover it by accident. What if we were having a friendly lunch or something and you saw the Kobo book on my phone and your heart would be broken and you'd be like, you didn't even tell me.

You didn't even tell me. It's true. Well, at least it's not audio books. Yeah. Audio books are for fiction. I still do some audio books with fiction, but I don't do any like nonfiction. Not sure. Um, I still have, by the way, on the topic of audio books,

I still have a, an audible subscription and I find that, uh, the audio books are great when I want to review something like I want to, um, listen to a book again, not because I want to go back and reference a specific thing that they talked about, but just I kind of want the material from that book to be top of mind for me again, as I'm working on a specific problem or something, you know? Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, all right. Yeah, poured in your brain one more time. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I car ride. Just like pour it into your brain. Yeah, pour it in your brain one more time, yeah. Exactly, and yeah, I can go look through my mind node file, but it doesn't hit the same as somebody, like specifically the author. If I find the audible books where the author is reading the book, those tend to be the best ones.

After I just said that I only listen to fiction and audio books, I'm gonna fess up. We're doing a book club in the Max Barker Labs for 4,000 weeks, and I've read that book twice, and I just, I listen to it this time. So I do occasionally, but only because I've already consumed the book, and I just wanted a refresher before we do these book clubs.

Yeah, that's the thing. I don't think I would ever listen to it as a substitute for reading the book in the first place, but it is a great way to kind of review material and read it again. It's not again, not the same thing as actually reading it again, but it does. It does give me more than just reviewing my mind map file from what I gathered out of it the first time around. So this isn't an obvious thing, but just a tip for people,

because if you go to Audible, they've got like the different plans and they start at a credit every month and they go up from there. But I don't know if this is still the case but it used to be where you could cancel your gold membership whatever then they would give you an option for a plan which wasn't publicly available which I think was the silver where instead of one a month it's like one every other month so I kind of don't use it for a while and I build up a bank of credits and

then they've got, you know, the two for one sales and I'll go see what books I've read that I could add to my audible library. And then every once in a while, you know, I'll go back in there and I'll listen to things, but it's a secondary information source for me. But I do think it's a worthwhile tool to keep around. So I do have an active subscription. I actually think it would be a useful information to the world to know which books Mike Schmitz thinks are worthy of audible purchase, right? Cause you're only going to buy the audibles on ones that like, you're like, wow, that was such a good book. I want to, I want to get it again.

And because I'm Mike Schmitz, I'm not gonna get a fiction book. I'm gonna get a nonfiction book. And this is the ones that made the cut. Yeah, for the most part. I mean, there are a lot of, I don't know if memoir is the right category, but it's like the biographical stuff,

the like Creativity, Inc. for example, it's a great biographical stuff the like creativity Inc for example. It's a great great audible book but the rest of them it's kind of I Don't think I would Be comfortable saying this is a list of things that I recommend It's it's specifically things that are solving a specific problem like one book that I've gone through And I don't really like the book itself, but it has great information in it is a hundred million dollar offers by Alex Hormozi. If you follow Alex Hormozi online,

like he rubs me completely the wrong way. He's like this jacked bodybuilder type guy, you know, Jocko Willink style is like not someone I'm going to hang out with, but he knows how to put together internet offers. And so when I'm thinking through the marketing for some of the stuff I do online, like the Practile PKM hybrid cohort, I had a big drive up to Door County

and I noticed that that book is about four hours total audible time, well five hours, and then if you speed it up just a little bit, then I could crank that out on the way there and back. So that's what I did. I'm like, oh, I'm going to get the book for that. Or like I said, everyone somehow I'll get the emails, you know, the two for one sales and I'll just see if there's anything that's interesting in those categories. And a lot of, a lot of it is stuff that I've read before.

Oh, you know, I'm going to get the book for that. Or like I said, I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that.

And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. And then I'm going to get the book for that. Or like I said, every once in a while I'll get the emails, you know, the two-for-one sales and I'll just see if there's anything that's interesting in those categories. And a lot of it is stuff that I've read before. Oh, you know, I've got this book and I got that book, but I can get both of them for a credit just in case, you know, at some point I want to listen to one of those. I'll build a library that way. I guess there is one book I would

recommend, and that is they have an audible, these like complete collections of some of these classic works. And one of my favorite, uh, favorite people to listen to, he was an author, um, is Jim Rohn. Um, I've probably talked a lot about him on the podcast, but he was a sort of one of the original self-development people along with like Stephen Covey, Andrew Carnegie. So he's an older guy but I really like his, I think he's passed away at this point, but he did a lot of

speaking and so he's got books that he's published but a lot of this material which has been recorded as audio and you can get for a single credit, you know, like the complete Jim Rohn library and it's like 25 hours worth of stuff. And so whenever I have, I'm not sure what to listen to, I'll pop on that and a lot of it is stuff that I've heard in other places before, but because it's Jim Rohn, you know, it's just kind of fun for me to listen to.

So I'll put a link to that one specifically in the show notes that people are interested in it. But the rest of it is kind of fun for me to listen to. So I'll put a link to that one specifically in the show notes that people are interested in it. But the rest of it is kind of just like, what am I dealing with right now and is there something out there that could possibly help me with that? And for me, almost all of mine are super long, epic, like sci-fi and fantasy books.

That's just kind of my choice. Or maybe a little bit of Cold War spy fiction thrown in there, but that's what I like to listen to. Just kind of, that's my version of what my wife, my wife loves the Hallmark Channel. Those books are like my version of that. I mean, they always have kind of the same ending. I got through one book, I was like 100 pages into it

and realized, oh yeah, I listened to this book, or I read this book like 30 years ago. It just, it took me 100 pages to realize it because they are all so close to the same, you know? Yeah. But that's what I do. And it's just kind of like downtime, you know, fiction. I've got a weird thing going on, Mike, right now.

I was talking to my daughter about this. I'm just not really into television and movies right now. I just cannot get into it. Historically, there's usually something I'm excited about watching, and the new version of Andor is coming out just in a couple days. I'm going through a weird phase

where I just don't wanna to watch anything on TV period. Interesting. I've kind of struggled with that in the past and I've completely given up keeping up with TV shows. I forget there was one that you told me about which sounded interesting. You described it as like Goonies, but in Star Wars. Oh yeah, the Star Wars, the Star Wars thing. I forget what it's called. Skeleton Crew, yes. Okay, yeah, I remember you telling me about that. I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting. I should check that out.

The excitement lasted about two days. I still see the thing every once in a while when we end up watching something on Disney Plus as a family, but at this point I'm just like, eh, whatever. Maybe that's just because there's so much Star Wars stuff that has come out that I just feel like I can't keep up with it. But yeah, I used to feel like,

oh well, I wanna watch that. But yeah, at this point, I'm like you, I don't have time for that and it is not even appealing to me anymore. Even more so with video games. Like, you know, I, I've never been a huge gamer, but adventure kind of driven story driven video games. I've always found kind of fun. You know, it's like living out a book, right? They came out with a new Indiana Jones game.

It came out like four or five months ago and I bought it. I had pre-ordered it. I sat down, I spent like 30 minutes playing it. I'm like, I have other things to do. And like, I just look at it like, I don't know, it's just weird, you know? It's just maybe I'm getting old or something, I don't know. But yeah, it's just a thing I've observed about myself lately is just I'm just not interested in that stuff.

I'm much more interested in my Seneca books and other nerdy stuff. Anyway, that's a thing. I'm dealing with it. I'll figure it out. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Incogni. Data brokers are in the business of collecting your personal information,

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of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. All right, Mike, you have changed your workflow regarding your writing a bit, right? I have. So this was actually spurred by a new website. So in addition to the practical PKM hybrid cohort I mentioned at the beginning, I rolled out new web pages for everything in the practical PKM universe. And that includes the starter vault, that PKM universe and that includes the starter vault, that includes Life HQ, that includes the library. I think maybe we

mentioned that one in the last episode. Alright, we talked about not too long ago that I was working on that. The other piece of that is an actual home page for PracticalPKM.com. So I have never really had a blog that I published content to regularly and my primary product, place where I have been doing most of my writing, has been my newsletter. So the newsletter at this point I've been sending it every Monday for about a year and a half and I've got a very specific structure that the newsletter follows. There's an original essay, there's a link to something cool

which is usually obsidian related, and then there's my mind map notes from a book that I've read recently. And I've grown the newsletter to about 8,400 subscribers at this point, but I wanted to take those essays and give them a home online. I have built this site, PractilePKM, using a platform called Ghost, which I am a huge fan of. Makes it really easy to write and publish and kind of got the the home page dialed in now so I can just log in, paste the mark down, hit enter and it's published. But I realized that most of the newsletters that I publish, I didn't want to just copy

and paste that whole newsletter. I wanted just the essay part. And then even just the essay part, I realized that when I was publishing this for the web that maybe this should be a little bit different on these two different platforms. So I, what I've ended up doing is condensing the material based on feedback from people who get the newsletter, just a couple of highlights and then a link. If you want to read this full essay, you want to dive deeper on this topic, click here and it takes you to the website. deeper on this topic, click here and it takes you to the website.

So what that means is that I used to, Friday, Saturday, crank out what I was actually going to publish in the newsletter on Monday morning. And I would do that in Obsidian, and I've got the template, and I manage all the projects there. So I got that writing workflow down, right? I can write it in there, copy that text over, paste it into the the kit editor, add the images, check

the links, stuff like that. After the writing process it's basically like another hour to just get everything ready before I hit publish. But having this practicalpkm.com site actually throws a monkey wrench in things because the first version of this really has to be the longer blog post version. So what I am kind of changing in my workflow is writing for the the blog first and then from there I'm taking that essay, condensing it, adding the link to something cool that I found that's obsidian related in the book notes. But I didn't stop there because I realized that actually if I'm gonna take this piece of content

that I'm writing already and I'm gonna repurpose it, if it's gonna be written for the blog and then it's gonna be repurposed for the newsletter, what are the other versions of this content? What else could I do with this thing that I have already put the hard work into developing the idea and writing about? And it's still kind of early days with this,

but what I'm realizing is that I can potentially write this thing for the blog and have that, the place that people can go in and read it if they prefer to read it that way. I can send the newsletter version if people prefer to get it in their inbox. It also is the basis for the potentially the YouTube videos that I create. And I want to increase the cadence of my YouTube videos where ideally, you know, I hesitate to put this out there, but I would love to publish a YouTube video every single week.

Now I need some help in order to get that, get that out the door, but I'm making progress working with an editor on terms of like developing thumbnails and helping me with like the initial edits before I add the screencasts and stuff like that. So I think it's gonna take me a little bit yet to really get this content flywheel spinning, but I am very excited about the possibility of taking what I already believe to be great content and creating high quality versions of it for people basically wherever they want to consume it and then having it all point back ultimately to that website, practicalpkm.com. It feels really great to have an internet home

that I can point people to. Yeah, maybe in deep focus we can talk about some of the specific workflow stuff with that, but just generally, conceptually, that's kind of what I'm thinking about in terms of this content creation workflow. And I'm excited about where this is going. Have you ever seen Walt Disney's Flywheel?

I'm not sure. I remember seeing the map style graphic. Is that the one that you're talking about or is this something different? I'll put a link in the notes, the blog post I wrote about this. I just think it's fascinating because this is way before people were talking

about flywheels. Nice. But he came up with this idea that like, how do the various properties of the Disney company feed to each other? And it's this interesting image. I guess go look at the link in the notes to the page I wrote on.

That's probably the easiest way to get it. But he looked at everything, merchandising, TV, music, theatrical, Disneyland, comic strips, publications, and how does all this stuff feed each other. And it's one of the most interesting things about it is almost all the arrows point at Disneyland because the success of the theme park is based on people loving the characters they make

in the TV shows and the movies, right? But then that feeds back to the merchandise and licensing. It's very, it's kind of just fascinating to me. It's a little bit of a word salad, but it's definitely worth looking at and thinking about in terms of your own life. I mean, I don't think this just applies to content creators. I think everybody, no matter what you do,

kind of want to find that way of making everything feedback on everything else. And it just makes, you know, so that way, anything you do makes everything else a little better. Yeah this graphic is great my favorite detail with this is all of the little mickeys that are running along the lines to indicate the direction that they're supposed to go. Yeah yeah it's cute but it's also pretty pretty sophisticated um thoughts you, and back in the 1950s, this was, you know, this is, this is not new. What is it?

There's a date on the bottom, but I can't read it. Let's see here. Can you see that Mike? No, it's pretty, pretty blurry, at least in the version. It's like 1937 or 1957. Either way, it's old. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing is, it's old. You know? Yeah. Yeah, nothing is new. Shiny new objects.

What have you bought, Mike? Yeah, so I've actually had this for a little bit. I realized that it kept getting bumped from episodes like we had guests on and things like that. So it's kind of a surprise that I haven't mentioned this on the show yet, but I'm using, I'm listing it here because I actually got the chance to use this a couple weeks ago in the the intended use case. So I bought a Shure MV2XU which is an audio interface that is about the size of a battery that plugs into an XLR microphone

that acts as a USB-C audio interface. I'm not sure if you've seen these before, but if you've got a mic boom and you've got your microphone on it, where you would plug the XLR cable into and then you would run that to the back of your desk where you would have typically the interface. It actually plugs right into the microphone and then you use a USB-C cable to hook it up to, in my case, my Mac. And it adds, there's an app that goes

with it which you can use to dial in the specifics, but it's got phantom power so it has a quite a bit of gain. You can use it with even a really gain-hungry mic. And I got this as a last resort for, if I'm at the co-working space and I wanna take a call, I had an extra microphone, could this possibly work there? And then I had the thought, you know, maybe this could function as a backup audio interface when we go up to, as a family, my parents have a place in Door County, and I've got an extra

microphone up there and like a little workstation with a monitor that my dad will use when we're not there. But when we are there, it's off to the side so I can do some work when we're there. So I've we are there, it's off to the side so I can do some work when we're there. So I've got the microphone, I've got the boom, everything is set up there, but I'm always nervous about packing up an audio interface and bringing it with me. But this thing is so small that you could literally throw this in your backpack and you wouldn't even know

it's in there. And I did that last week. I brought it up there and I did a couple of sessions for the library. And I am very impressed with the audio quality of this thing, to be honest. It's sort of like if you were to break apart, you know, Shure's got some microphones now,

like the MV7, which is designed to have like an all in one thing, but it's like a big round, like the microphone itself is pretty gigantic. And then you plug the USB into it. And I've had one of those and I wasn't real thrilled with the audio quality. I always really liked the Shure SM7B is a good mic. I've got an Earthworks Ethos.

That's a really good mic. The Neumann KMS obviously is like the really, really nice one. I've got microphones laying around and I thought, could I get better audio using this thing and one of those XLR microphones? And the answer is a hundred percent. Undoubtedly. Yes. This thing is great. I'm really happy with the audio quality and the thing that it's replacing is

actually the, uh, Elgato makes an interface. Um, the wave XLR, like the big button that you could use as a mute switch, which I like in theory, but the problem with that, that's actually the thing that's up in Door County currently, the thing with that is if you don't use it every single day, and even when I was using it every single day, I noticed every once in a while, it would kind of forget my settings.

And then I would record something, and the gain would be turned way up high and it's compressing the audio because it's got that built in clip buster or whatever they call it. And the audio that I would get back would be completely garbage. It's like, I can't do anything with this now.

So I basically didn't trust it if I was ever gonna record a podcast. And yeah, this little thing is great. It's even like for an audio nerd, like people like us, it's like a great backup, like if your usual XLR device just doesn't work, right? Yep. Yeah, I had that wave XLR

and I had similar experiences and gave up on it. But this is nice. I remember they made something like this years ago, that in my early podcast days, that was my device. It was a Shure thing that you plugged in. Didn't look like this, but I have no idea where that is now. But yeah, years ago I had something similar. Well, since we're talking about microphones,

let's just go all the way. And I bought a microphone as well about a month ago, and I'm really liking it. It was like $100. It's called the Holley-Lind Lark M2S. And this is not for podcasters, so don't turn the channel. This is for anybody who just wants a good audio when they're sitting at their mic or their phone.

It has a little, I got the cheapest one. They have different setups of these. You can get one with a SLR camera connector and different things. But I got the one that just has the basic USB-C receiver. It's very small. It can plug into the bottom of your phone or into your computer.

And then it has two little microphones. And the microphone runs on a battery, so you can get two channels, but you can also just have like when the battery dies and when you can swap it, which is what I primarily do with it. And it's got really good reception, and it sounds really good,

and the whole microphone is like a clip, like the guts and the battery are in a little like quarter-sized disc, and it's got a little like hook on it, that's got the microphone on the other side, so little quarter-sized disc, and it's got a little hook on it that's got the microphone on the other side, so it clips onto your collar. And man, I use this thing so often,

because like I was talking earlier, I talk a lot to AI, and I talk a lot to just general dictation stuff, and I answer emails with my voice and things like that. And I do have a very fancy podcast mic here, but it feels really weird pulling that out to just like answer an email. Not to mention this microphone is engineered

for you to keep your mouth at a certain spot, which I'm good at doing, but I don't wanna be using like mic technique to answer an email. And the other thing is I like to walk and talk. And with this, you can get up and pace around the room and talk at the same time. It's just, I just find it super useful.

And this is not something that I would record a podcast with, but if I was in a jam, it would sound okay. I've sent audio samples to my editors and they're all like, yeah, this would work if you had to. It's not as good as your usual setup, but it'll work. So I just feel like this thing has become a real utility player for me. This is really interesting.

And I'm looking at the website now and I'm having trouble not adding this to the cart. Yeah, sorry. I have the DJI mics, the, and those are similar. I think to these where it's like a self-contained microphone thing that translate it transmits back to a receiver that you could plug into either your computer or your, your phone. And there's a magnet that you can use.

But what I like about these over the DJI mics is that the DJI mics are these big blocky things that show up in the video. And this clip, basically, you know, if you're wearing a dark shirt, you can't see these. It disappears, yeah. Yeah, so my initial thought, that was my follow-up was like,

well, how does the audio sound? But I feel like if you're vouching for the quality of the audio, this is Kind of great. Yeah, look at the website. They got a bunch of different They're showing a bunch of different people using it in different scenarios There's even one person who's got it clipped on their collar while they're riding their bike yeah, you know, I feel like this looks like it would be much more secure than the DJI mic stuff and much less obtrusive, I guess. Well, the DJI stuff, at least the new ones, they're set up in a way where you...

It's like lossless audio, so you can go and fix bad audio with them. This doesn't do that. This is just a microphone with a receiver. But the levels are fine and it's just so handy. I just love this little thing. And like I said, we have an editor for Relay Gym and I was thinking about, because I'm going to be doing some travel

and I might need to record some stuff for the labs and maybe even some, like what if an ad up, I have to re-record it. I don't want to bring my whole podcasting rig on me when I'm out of town. So I sent some samples to Jim. He's like, yeah, that can work. And it's like, it sounds pretty good. I'll send you a sample, Mike,

and you can tell me what you think. Or maybe after we finish recording, we can get on Zoom and I can talk to you. But the, it wasn't that expensive. I got the cheapest version of it because I just wanted the transmitter, I mean the little mics and the receiver. You can get like more parts

if you wanna connect it to an XLR cam, I'm sorry, to a mirrorless camera and do things like that. But I just intended to use it for this, but I find it really useful. Another thing going on in my life is I have hearing aids now. I for this, but I find it really useful. Another thing going on in my life is I have hearing aids now. I don't really want to get into it right now, maybe another day. But because they're Bluetooth, it gets confused sometimes. And when I plug this into my phone, I always know I reliably have a good mic working into

my phone. Yeah, these look nice. Nice little purchase and I'm glad you dig it. What are you reading these days, Mike? I just finished one of the best books I've ever read. And that is The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. Yeah, I know that that's a strong statement from someone who reads hundreds of books. Has a whole podcast dedicated to them, but I really feel like this is a great book.

So a lot of the productivity books that are out there, they kind of follow the same format, right? And they've got the three different sections, they're gonna tell you a story, they're gonna get into the principles, they're gonna give you some action items. A lot of the same people are going to end up blurbing each other's books. You know, that's not what this book is. In fact, the main blurb on this book on the front is from Tim Cook. So yeah. And Sahil is a real interesting guy. He,

it sounds like he shares a little bit of his story. It sounds like he was climbing the corporate ladder. He was an athlete at Stanford. He was a pitcher in college and he came on my radar when I saw him present at the Craft and Commerce Conference a couple years ago and he said something at that conference that really just resonated with me and I've been a fan of his ever since. He said, everything that you create is downstream from something that you consume. And really got me thinking and just seemed like a really thoughtful, intelligent kind of person.

And he was talking at the conference about how he was writing this book and he was trying to build this newsletter list. He told everybody publicly, and he had like 100,000 subscribers at the time, he's like, I'm gonna try to get it to a million. Well, he didn't quite get there. He got it to 800,000 before this book actually published. And this book is great. I mean, all that to kind of talk about

who Sahil is as a person, but it kind of starts off with a conversation that he was having with his friend about how often he sees his parents. He mentioned, because they were living in California at the time, and his parents were, and his wife's parents actually are both on the East Coast. So they see him about once a year.

And then his friend made the comment, okay, so they're mid-60s, you see them once a year, you're gonna see them 15 more times before they die. And Seheil was kind of shook by that. He's like, that's not okay. So that's kind of the primer is like, well, money's not the only thing that matters. And he gets into these five different types of wealth.

He's a great storyteller. It's a really easy read. And then he, each chapter kind of follows the same or each section follows the same format. There's a big question that he asked at the beginning, like one of the things that I got from this, there's different versions of this, but the one that he used was basically, when you die, who's going to be in the front row at your funeral? You know, talking about social wealth. Like, who are the relationships that are really important to you?

And then he's got a whole bunch of tactics and things that you can do. Some of them are, you know, things that we've heard before. Some of them are like spins on things. Like, he talks about Ikigai, but he takes out the part about the work stuff so it's just the three overlapping circles yeah just a really thoughtful person really great writer and gives you a lot to think about it's not a like systems book not a prescriptive you know do this do this to this he's got a really great quiz that he developed that goes along with it just is really well put together,

does a great job of kind of walking you through, identifying for yourself what really matters, and then more importantly, what are the things that you can do to build your wealth in these different areas with the financial one being the least important. He kind of describes that's the one that upholds all of the others.

And a lot of business productivity books, you know, they're focused on that one. So kind of a breath of fresh air and really, really enjoyed this book. Definitely recommend it to people who listen to Focus. If you like this podcast, you're definitely gonna like that book, I feel. I just purchased it, so I'm in.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm back in Seneca's Letters on Ethics. I mentioned it earlier in the show. It's just such a good book. The Chicago Press translations are really good. I really like these old books because it's so interesting to me that they're basically dealing with the same problems.

The human condition hasn't changed much, and that's very interesting to me. The way I've been reading this one is if I find a passage that sparks a thought, then I'll sit down and write an essay about it. So I'm going pretty slow. I mean, you wanna talk about a slow way to read a book, that's a slow way to read a book.

And I'll probably go pick up a new book before I get through this one. But this is the one that's currently on my shelf and it's a fun process. Nice. Okay, that'll wrap it up for today. Hey gang, we're gonna do a feedback episode in the near future.

If you've got some feedback on the Focus podcast, send it to us. There's a form right at relay.fm slash focus where you can send us feedback. We'd love to get it so we can include it in that show. Speaking of the website, you can go there to sign up for the Deep Focus podcast, which is the ad for extended version of our show.

We'd love to have you on. Thank you to our sponsors today, Squarespace and Incogni, and we'll see you next time.