Focused - 231: Overwhelm, AI, and Life's Balancing Acts

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

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

We decided to do a feedback episode. We called out in the various channels and got a ton of excellent and itchy questions, which I really like when people ask you a question that puts you a little bit on your edge. So we got some great feedback questions today we're gonna be going through and talking focused. Yeah, can't wait. Hey gang, before we get started,

one thing I wanted to ask is if you have a young person in your life that may be interested in the Productivity Field Guide summer session, let me know or send them a link. I've got a link in the show notes to a blog post I did. I'm doing that and calling it the Summer Academy. It's for high school and college kids. I did it last year.

It was really successful. I'm gonna do it again this year. So if you are in high school or college or know somebody of that age that may be interested, please send them the link and send them my way. Should we dive right in? Let's just do it. First question to Mike. How do you find calm and focus in chaotic days

or just times where there's a lot slash too much going on? Yeah, so I guess I should mention this question comes from FloGro on Mastodon and I have been trying to be a little bit more consistent about posting on social media. So I did put the call out there. A lot of these came from the forum. You put the call out on the lab. So we've got a variety of places that these are coming from.

But this one was to be on Unmasted on and it hits me at a time where I am in a series of chaotic days where there is a lot slash too much going on. So with Kalman, in that season, I think, uh, my advice would be to try and protect a specific time. Uh, and for me, honestly, lately that has been getting up early. So I'm not really a, a morning person, but, uh, but just I know once the day gets rolling, I'm going to have one thing after the next, just different projects and things

I've been associated with. My wife spent out of town for the last week, so I've been home with the four boys and additional responsibilities on top of that. So having that time at the beginning of the day where I can kind of refocus, gather my thoughts that has helped a ton. But then when you're in the middle of it and you're going from thing to thing, I think the thing that helps me the most is just focusing completely on a one thing at a time. Obviously you can't in certain situations, just put up these huge boundaries and say,

you absolutely cannot reach me right now Well, I'm in my my deep focus mode But when there is a lot on the plate the tendency Is to kind of kind of try to jump back and forth between things But I've definitely seen that I'm much more productive. I can get through the things much more effectively I can get more done and when when, when I'm in that busy season, that's, that's really important when I just focus on one thing at a time and until it's finished and then I move on to the,

the next thing. I think you, you nailed it. The response to overwhelm should be intentionality and it's the exact opposite natural response that we have. Like when you feel overwhelmed, you feel like this is the last time, you know, this is the last time, you know, this is the worst time to be intentional. I don't have time to be intentional,

but that's when you need it the most. So try to find a way to make that work. The other thing I would say is overwhelm should not be a steady state. You know, when these questions come in, one of the things I always like to say is I do have periods of overwhelm, but they're always, you're always short-lived.

It's just like there's, they comes in waves, right? With all the things I'm doing, once in a while, all the waves crash on the shore at the same time, and I'm a little overwhelmed. But then eventually the waves recede back out to the sea and things aren't as bad. And I'm always very aware when I am overwhelmed, I think about well when will the waves start receding again?

And I look at what is actually going on and when will I have that time? Recently I had that experience because I released a new field guide and I had a couple things going on and I knew that I was just gonna be busy for two or three weeks. But then that ended and I knew that I was just gonna be busy for two or three weeks. But then that ended and I knew that period was coming.

Now if you're out there and you're saying, well I don't know when it's coming, it's always overwhelming. There's no rest for me, then you've got a bigger problem. You know, coping with it temporarily is not gonna work. You cannot permanently be overwhelmed because then you're going to do your worst work and you're going to have to make some tough decisions.

So that's a much bigger problem. But if you're feeling overwhelmed, one of the things you should always be asking yourself, is this a steady state or is this a temporary thing? And you should respond accordingly. Yeah, I think I tend to naturally take on too much. So whenever I feel overwhelmed at this point, I recognize that I have made a mistake

when I've done my personal retreat. You played yourself. Yeah, and I force myself as part of that process to every single time pick something to stop doing. That's kind of my systemic way of creating more margin as a way of mitigating against that, because I do get excited about new opportunities and shining new objects and new projects and things like that. But I have recognized that if I constantly keep saying yes to things, I will be in that state of overwhelm pretty consistently.

Most of the time what that does is it means that I can do the things that I need to do without feeling overwhelmed. So it doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it's kind of like a reminder to plant a marker there, drop a marker, put a note that I can review when I do my personal training, figure out what actually led to those circumstances so that I can try to avoid that in the future. Next question.

I'd love to hear some discussion on balancing ambitious goals and plans to meet them with cultivating contentment and not always feeling like you should be doing more. And that was from Jay Claremont on Blue Sky. Yeah. So I've actually met Joel. He's in a couple of communities that I'm in. And this is a great question. So we have a saying at my house, content, not complacent. And basically what that means is that I never want to be at the point where I feel like I've arrived and this is now, you know, I just have to maintain, um,

keep going, keep growing is, you know, one of one of my mantras or personal core values, if you will. But there's also the flip side of that is these ambitious goals. And I think there is the rub right there, that word goals. I don't like goals because I don't like having this arbitrary point in the future where you've decided I should have achieved this specific binary outcome, you know, whether that's 10,000 email subscribers by a specific day or whatever, because if you don't hit that number, you

don't achieve that outcome, then you've essentially failed at accomplishing that goal. But there has definitely been a lot of progress that has been made there. So I kind of have broken this down into these are the things that I want to do consistently and ideally it would be daily. Like for example, I try to get a YouTube video out every week, record these podcasts every couple of weeks. So there's a bunch of things that I'm doing as a creator, but I've recognized that the essence of that is a writing habit.

So I try to write every single day because I trust that if I show up and do that, then it's going to, it's going to prime the pump for when I sit down to create things. And I think reading books is also a part of that. That's a source of a lot of good ideas for me. And I've recognized that my brain just bounces around those things and matches up, matches them up into something new. And that, that becomes the, you know, source material from which I, I create a lot of stuff. Um,

so disconnecting from the goals, I think is the, uh, the important part for me with this. And then kind of just making intentional progress every single day, trusting that the score is gonna take care of itself. But when you get attached to the goals, that's where the discontentment comes in, I think, because you have this goal, you pick this date,

and even if you are really great at planning projects, you don't make as much progress as you'd like, you don't achieve the outcomes by the time you think you should. And eventually that leads to the gap versus the gain thinking that we talked about before. Really, really easy to fall into the gap when you think that you should have done something

by a specific time and those shoulds are dangerous. I kind of want to go a different direction with this one. Just yesterday I was talking to a good friend who has an ambitious goal and she's like like, I really wanna do this thing, I think it would make sense. And I said, okay, what are you willing to sacrifice on the altar of this goal? Like, you have to give up.

This thing is gonna take, let's say, six hours a week. Where else are you willing to give up six hours? And it was a real clarifying question for her because that's really where the rubber meets the road. When you've got something that you wanna do, you think it's a cool thing you wanna do, well, unfortunately, we can't invent more hours. So, and you're already busy,

so you're gonna have to throw things overboard if this is going to be the thing you're gonna pursue pursue. And my answer, you know, to the question, how do you, how do you cultivate contentment, but pursue an ambitious goal is you get rid of the nonsense. So you have time for the ambitious goal, but you still have time for contentment. A little different take. That's all. Yeah. I like it. All right. Next one comes from Scott Deller who says, uh, what does Cal Newport have to say about deep work in AI?

I put this one in here because we talk about Cal Newport a lot. I'm a big fan of his, uh, his podcast. And I think this maybe is going to lead into some other AI related stuff that we have later on the outline. So basically Scott's asking, reading it again now, the message seems basically the same. If you consider AI as a tool or a machine, not sure if you've explored this on focus, yes we have. Using AI as a running dialogue for projects

to generate tasks is an interesting use case. Maybe we use this as a point to maybe just talk a little bit about how we're using AI, where we find the balance between the tool sets and the intentionality. Yeah, I'm not certain where Cal is entirely. I was going to go back and look to see what his recent writing was on it, but I just ran out of time.

But I definitely have my own opinions on AI. And I think we're just at a very interesting phase of this technology shift. And it's definitely a transformational moment. And I think that you should find a way to make it work for you. And, you know, we actually got a bunch of questions for this stuff. I don't think you're looking for AI to replace you, but I think you may be able to enhance some of your workflows. to replace you, but I think you may be able to enhance some of your workflows.

Some of the specific stuff he brought up in this, like, you know, generating tasks that in my experience has not been a particularly good use of AI. I just feel like I need to come up with that stuff and I want to be kind of invested in it, but I like AI in project, um, generation mode as just a backstop to say, okay, here's the thing I've done. Here's my outline. Do you think I missed anything? That kind of thing. Cal Newport is an interesting person to speak about this because he's a computer

scientist. I think that his, his dialogue on it, like just about anybody, I think is sort of changing and evolving a little bit as it gets better. I think he sees a little bit more clearly kind of the big picture and where this could end up. I remember him speaking about it on a recent episode of the Deep Life podcast, so not too long ago. But my recollection of

that conversation is that he's still a little bit skeptical about it and not using it as, you know, push button, get output, now you're done with the thing, more as just like a collaborative partner in thinking about things. He's definitely a big fan of using the tools to support the human work. And the thing that I think about when I think about Cal Newport's approach, like the books that he's written and specifically with AI, is I think it was deep work.

He talked about the different kinds of people who are gonna be successful in the digital economy. It was those with a bunch of resources, those who were the very best at what they did. And then the third category was those who knew how to use the machines. And I think AI is one of those machines. The use cases where that is beneficial

are changing every day based on the improvements with the models and things like that. The specific use case of generating tasks, like that causes me to recoil a little bit. That sounds awful to me. I don't want a machine making up things for me to do. I think it could be helpful if you're trying to figure out what are the tasks that need to be done in this particular project, but that's almost like a brainstorming mode. And that's where I think like using it as a creative partner,

as you think about things and are considering all the options, that's where it really kind of shines for me is, uh, you know, I want a hundred different ideas about this and most of them are going to be junk. Some of them I'm going to have thought of myself, but there's always going to be a couple in there. It's like, oh, that's interesting. And maybe that's not the specific bread I'm going to follow, but it's going to open up a loop in my brain and it's going to show me, you know,

there is something further down this path. And I always get inspired when I use it that way. Okay. So on the first point, I agree. I think that this is something that can be a good, I hate to use the word thought partner, it sounds so weird with a computer, but just like something that can give you feedback, like I don't have someone sitting here.

So one of my favorite prompts to AI is like, here is a newsletter I wanna publish, give me five reflective questions on it. And the prompt is more thorough than that because it says, don't rewrite it, don't, you know, just give me five reflective questions. And it does a good job. And what I find so often is that I make assumptions

when I write things that the reader may not see any, AI is good at pointing that out to me, so then I'll go back and I'll make some changes and then I'll publish it. So it is just like keeping me honest, if that makes sense. There are a bunch of tools to add on, to pile onto your disdain for task generation.

There are a bunch of tools out there now that you can give AI your calendar and your tasks, and it will tell you how to manage your day. And that is insane, I think, because you know your energy levels, you know what you're excited about today, and you also just have way more variables than the AI does. And honestly, you've got to take ownership of that. And I think it's really important on us that we decide what we're going to spend our time and effort on, and not just sign that off to a computer.

So those kinds of things repel me, but I do find it useful for, I think, like feedback on something I'm writing. Or like you said, brainstorming can be useful for that as well. But I also am very cognizant of the slippery slope that AI represents. And just to jump to that question, we had another question about AI. Yeah, it was the how do you find a balance between the AI related

tool sets and the intentionality? Yes. And I thought that that question really got to the heart of it. Like, an example, like my little five thoughtful questions, I have even done that sometimes with journal entries. You know, if I'm working through something and I'll have it ask me five thoughtful questions, well, it would be very easy to have it then incorporate my answer and rewrite the entry. Right.

Okay. Now take whatever I said and, and add it to the entry in a way that makes sense, and it would do that well. I mean, AI is very good at putting words together. But then what have I done? I have offloaded my journal entry to a computer, and you have to ask yourself when you make a journal entry, what's the purpose of it?

Is it to make the most efficient entry, or is it to force yourself to confront difficult things and figure out how you think about it? At least for me, that's what journaling is. It's a form of self-therapy. So you get on that AI bandwagon, and suddenly you start letting it do a little bit more and a little bit more, and before you know it,

you've lost the entire value of the endeavor. So I'm very careful about that. I draw strict lines. When I have really tough problems I'm sorting through, I always do them entirely analog, paper and pencil. Because I recognize in myself that I think I could go down that slippery slope with AI when I'm trying to struggle with something hard.

So I'm very careful about a lot of things. Like I draw very strict lines with stuff, but that's just me kind of looking at this. I do think that there's a lot of stuff we do that we should not be solving for efficiency and speed. That's not the metric we should be looking at. Intentionality and thoughtfulness don't jive with speed and efficiency.

In order to get thoughtfulness and intentionality, you actually have to go slower. So that's where these kind of tools should come with alarm bells. Yeah, I agree with that. The place where I'm using AI the most is not in the actual creative process. But once I have created something, it is very useful for repurposing it to other formats. I think I've mentioned the Spiral.computer app, and that is where you can feed it, you know,

a newsletter or YouTube script or something. And then I've done the hard work of synthesizing my ideas down to, you know, 1500 words or something. But now if I want to share that on social media, it's a lot of friction for me to take that and rewrite it again. So running it through spiral.com computer, it's never perfect, but it breaks it down into these different threads or these

different points and they're considerably shorter. And then when I go in and I can edit a lot faster than I can write, it's almost like I feel a bunch of procrastination at the beginning of sitting down to craft those social posts or something because I've done this already. I don't know why, but it just feels like it's 10 times harder if I've already done it as opposed to doing it for the first time. But I do agree that the analog stuff is really where a lot of the insights and the connections come from. So even as using AI as a thought partner, like that can kind of streamline the creative process.

It can kind of push my brain in certain directions, but it cannot replace the true depth that it gets to when I'm on my personal retreats or I have a couple of hours where I'm just thinking about something. I think the tendency is to grab the machines when we have clarity on what needs to be done and thinking about how can I use this to do this quicker, kind of the efficiency aspect that you were talking about. But going all the way back to Peter Drucker

who had no idea what AI was ever gonna be a, when he said this, but nothing is so useless as to do efficiently that which should not be done at all. And so I think that's the pitfall with a lot of the AI stuff is, well, I can use it for this, I can use it for that. And it's going to make it faster. But yeah, should you be doing it in the first place? You know, that sort of reflective process is really important for me. That happens with journaling and with personal retreats. But really the important thing I think is to have some sort of regular rhythm of that where you do disconnect from the electronic tools, whether they're driven by AI or not. It's not true AI. You know, it's generative AI. It's large language models that can basically just fill in the blanks for you based on a bunch of information that you've fed it.

But that's the term that people are using. But that's not new. I mean, I don't know what to do. I'm going to search Google and get the answer as opposed to just think about it for a minute and land on something that's actually right for me. Well, I mean, I think it's easier now with AI and I just want to kind of even clarify a bit more. Like there's plenty of things

where I'm aiming for efficiency. Like I do these blog posts at Max Sparky where I have friends share their home screen. And a lot of times they send me the text but they don't give me links for the apps. And that's something I used to have to go through, you know, in the app store, find each app, get and copy the link, paste it in,

create a markdown link. It would take like 30 minutes to do it. And now I can take that text and send it to an LLM and say, get me the Apple Store, iPhone, Apple Store link for each one and create a markdown link in the document for each app mentioned. And it does it for me. That's the efficiency that I want.

That's something that used to take my time and now it doesn't. And there's all sorts of things I do with AI that kind of fit in that category. But the thing, and I just wanna be clear on this, is that there are things, and you should know this, or you should have an idea for yourself what they are. There are things for which efficiency is not the metric.

And like I've already said, for me, journaling is one of them. It's also what I would call reading reflection. A lot of times what I do, I read books a lot slower than Mike, but I'll stop in the middle of reading a book and write an essay about something that has inspired me. And I've got this collection of essays. I call it Sparky OS.

Like that is something to me that is very important to me that I drag the little ones and zeros between my ears around and figure out what that means to me and adding efficiency or insight from an LLM actually makes it worse because then I never get clear on what my thoughts are on it. You know? So that's the thing I'm just saying with AI is just be careful. Figure out the stuff where you don't want to be efficient, where the process is the

most important thing, not the result, and steer clear of AI with those things. Yep. I like that framing of dragging the ones and zeros between your ears. Oh, I made it up in a moment. So there you go. Get that one for free. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

Whether you're just starting out or you're scaling an established business, Squarespace gives you everything that you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional looking website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. I love Squarespace because it makes it really easy to get a great looking website for any occasion. I've used Squarespace myself for years for special projects and events, for hosting a

podcast, my personal website, and much more. There's really no limit to what you can do with Squarespace, but it's also incredibly easy to get rolling with it. So you can focus on creating your content as opposed to connecting all the technical pipes. If you have a need for a website, I highly recommend you check out Squarespace. Sign up for a free trial, give it a try, see how far you can get in just a couple of hours, and chances are that'll be all that you need. Because Squarespace gives

you everything. You can get discovered fast with integrated SEO tools because nobody wants to build a beautiful website and have zero people come and see it. That's why every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto-generated site map, and more so that more people can find your site through search engine results. It's also a great way to offer your services and get paid. From consultations to events and experiences, you can showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Think built-in appointment scheduling, email marketing tools, and more. Plus, keep everything cohesive with on-brand invoices

and get paid easily with online payments. Head over to squarespace.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D right now to sign up for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code FOCUS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash focused, offer code FOCUS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash focused, offer code FOCUS to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the FOCUS podcast.

Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the FOCUS podcast and all of Relay. Next question. This one came in from the Max Markey Labs and I'm like this one, I can't wait to ask Mike Schmidt this question. How do you decide against reading a book? Do you ever decide against reading a book, Mike? That's the question. Okay, so the way that this works for me is

usually I start a book and it's either a book for Bookworm or it's a book that I just want to read If it's a book for bookworm, there's no turning back. I got to finish it and we have to have a discussion about it If it's a book that I think I want to read it's actually quite common That I start the process so I've talked about this before but I do all my notes using my note on my phone. So put the the Book cover image in the middle break out the the structure of the book and then I take notes as I go But there are a lot of my note files that I have Which are not complete and they are just the the book cover and the first section has a couple of notes

And then I just lost interest to it lost interest in it and I fell to the wayside. It's not very often what throws me out with this question is it's not very often where I decide, okay, I'm not going to read this anymore, but there are a lot of books that I just never finished and I'm okay with that. So I guess that's it. It sort of happens organically and then I just don't think about it. And I move on to the next one. Cause there's lots of books.

I actually do want to read. If the book doesn't hold my attention, you know, then I move on from it. Yeah. I, uh, I kind of looked at it inversely. I like, I look for books that I want to read more than look for books that I'm not, I don't want to read, if that makes sense. So I don't read as many books as you do. So when like on bookworm podcasts, there's a book that you both really fall in love with. I will put it on my list when a trusted friend tells me

out a book that they think is really good. I'll read the book. So I'm more actually looking for books that I want to read than books I don't want to read. So I'm more actually looking for books that I want to read than books I don't want to read. So that's my way of dodging that question. Nice. Next one, common critique of productivity gurus, and they put that in air quotes,

is their tips often rely on the spouse taking an extra labor to support the other's productivity. How do you ensure your margin rests sabbatical doesn't place undue burden on your spouse? Good question. Great question. And I like the follow-up comment that came with this one. So this is from, that's from Pastor Parrot on threads,

but Liz Fisher replied, exclamation points and jumping up and down for this point right here. We'll never forget the podcast bro, talking about how he meditates and works out for two hours, then walks and goes home to greet his family. No mention of the person making all of that possible. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, yeah, this is something I think that we can gloss over pretty easily. And I try to be intentional and call this out, but, um, all the things that I do are made possible by my amazing wife. Uh, and she doesn't follow the same format or the same cadence for like the quarterly personal retreats and things like that. But we absolutely do try to build in those opportunities for her to rest and have the, you know, not as standard sabbatical or, you know, have enough margin, those types of terms, if I were to talk to her about that,

she would not be interested. But as we record this, she is currently in Hawaii. I am not. For her niece's high school graduation, we have family that moved out there several years. And I have been home with the four boys. She took Adelaide and she's been over there for seven days. She comes back tomorrow.

And those types of things, you know, it's not a regular thing, but when we were considering it, is this the right thing to do? Absolutely, it's the right thing to do. And that's, you know, that's restorative to her. That's what, what she wants to do. And in the, you know, the meantime, I'm, I'm home with the four boys now we're at this point done with, uh, with school for the year. So that makes it a little bit easier,

but it's constant give and take, you know, so most of the time when I, when we're in our regular rhythm, we've divided the labor in a way where she's homeschooling our kids and she's primarily taking care of things at home. Our kids are old enough now that they can do some of the yard work. I have specific responsibilities at home.

Like these are the things that dad does. And I don't know, we just kind of intentionally divided the things that dad does and I don't know we just kind of Intentionally divided the the things that we were going to do and there's this common understanding of you know This is all the things that need to get done. This is who's gonna be responsible for what but it's definitely not a formal process I will say though that there is a lot of this out there. I feel like is that the productivity bro is is definitely a thing. Cal Newport is actually kind of joking about this in his most recent episode about this

avatar he made up for someone who ripped off deep work on Amazon or something. It's like Cal network, you know, and he's crushing it and all these sorts of things. Like that's what people share. And I hope that focus is kind of the antidote to some of that stuff. You know, it's in the description. We're fellow travelers and we struggle with this stuff and we're just trying to do the best that we can

with what we've got to work with. So short answer though to this direct question is that we do have different versions of this for my wife. It's something that we talk about. It's something that we plan for, but it's not a formula and it looks different for every person. Yeah. I mean, I'll just say we're married now close to 32 years. And the secret is you have to care more about her than yourself, and she has to care about more about you than herself.

And we're very careful about not stepping on each other and giving each other space to do what needs to be done. And there's 1000 little ways you can do that. But if you are going to spend two hours every morning meditating and working out and leave your spouse with the kids, that's not one of those 1000 ways. I mean, don't be silly. Yeah, it kind of reminds me, so what you're talking about essentially

is like selfless productivity, right? And it's not just related to productivity. That's kind of the framing of the question there, but a relationship requires a certain degree of selflessness. And it reminds me of something that Chris Bailey wrote about in productivity project way back in the day, which has really stuck with me. And that is people are the reason for productivity. If you're just focused on,

you know, how many things can I get done and how can I push my projects forward? Uh, that sort of trackable thing, then people are a lot of times an obstacle to that, but also people are the most important thing. That's where the depth and the richness comes from. You can't forget that, you know, productivity is just a means to an end in a lot of ways.

A related kind of thing I see sometimes with the productivity bros, now I'm holding up air quotes, is like when you see them and they're doing ice baths and all this stuff and, I don't know, out digging trenches on the beach like Marcus Aurelius, and they've got kids, and I'm just like, okay, well where do the kids fit in this? You know?

I mean, it really is, I mean, it's a thing you have to deal with. Like, I, with some various things in my life, I've taken over some more of the administrative stuff that I do with respect to Max Barkey, but then like, when my kids need me, that stuff takes a backseat, you know? I'm not that productive as a result.

I'm taking care of them, and that's just the way it is. And then the next day you wake up and you try again. I don't know. It's not that hard, but you gotta keep your eye on the big ball and that is the relationships, the people. I talk about it in productivity field, got his roles. My first role is as husband and my second one is as father.

Everything is below that in my mind. That's why I'm on this planet is to make sure she gets what she needs and they get what they need before anything else. And I think it just set your priorities. Yeah, agreed. How do you reset your focus when you fall off the wagon, like after travel illness or just a rough week? Great question. Um, I don't know that I have a specific process for this,

but as I was thinking about this question, there is definitely something that helps with this and that is to simply grab a pen and a piece of paper and just start writing out the things that I actually need to do. I find that when when you get sick, for example, the work typically doesn't stop, especially if you are a creator like we are with deadlines and the show must go on, right? The newsletter gets sent every, every Monday. Um, if you've committed to those, those timeframes, uh, the work can kind of back up. And then when I am feeling better and I'm at the point where I can actually do something again, uh, it's easy to feel overwhelmed because I know that that stuff has kind of been

been piling up in the background. So forcing myself to just take it easy and let's make a big list of everything that that's on there and then we'll just knock down the first one and then we'll move to the next one. And it's the act of making the list that brings the clarity. Before that it's kind of all bouncing around in the back of my brain and I just feel this sense of Before that, it's kind of all bouncing around in the back of my brain and I just feel this sense of overwhelm because there's probably a bunch more stuff that I'm not even thinking of. And then when you write it all down, it just, I don't know, it just brings clarity and calm better than any other method that I know of.

Something I observe in myself is that I generally feel overwhelmed at night. Like that's just my personality, I guess. The, like, if I feel like I'm behind on stuff and a little overwhelmed, it usually kicks in about 7 p.m. It's like, because the days at the end, I didn't do what I wanted to do. There's a bunch of stuff out there, and there's loose ends, and I'm upset about it.

And the best solution I can do for it is honestly put it all down, read a book, watch some TV, get a good night's sleep and tackle it in the morning for me. In the morning, I have the mindset to take on overwhelm in the evening. I don't. And every time I've tried to like deal with that overwhelm in the evening, it's just bad. But that's just me personally.

So what I would say is figure out when overwhelm hits you and when it's hard to deal with it and accept that about yourself and figure out when you're better at it and optimize for that. Yeah, the travel one, I wanna mention this real briefly cause I think that's the one area where my approach might be a little bit different.

So for example, I'm going to craft and commerce shortly, and that has been on my calendar for a while. And so because that is there, when I'm doing my planning, I see that coming up. It causes me to kind of work ahead a little bit, but that's a different approach than, you know, something unplanned happened and it knocked you off the horse and now you have to figure out how to get back on and get back into a regular rhythm. It's easier when you can see it coming. But that's not always feasible.

This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Terminal. Clarity at a glance, you get $15 off for one week only. Go to useterminal.com slash go slash focused. If you ever open your phone to do something simple like check the weather and then found yourself doom scrolling 10 minutes later There's a single purpose device that you may want to check out Terminal is an e-ink display that connects with hundreds of popular apps to show you information you want to see

without distracting you like a cell phone or tablet Most of their hardware and software is open source and there are no subscription fees. So you buy it once and you own it forever. You don't have to write any code to use Terminal, but they do have a simple developer platform with an in browser plugin builder. And over 3000 developers have already built over 6000 custom plugins.

Long before they sponsored the show, I bought my own Terminal and I love it. I've not written any code for it, I've just used existing plugins, but I'm using it at home with the whole family. We actually hung it on the wall next door a refrigerator and every 15 minutes it rotates between some different screens. We've got one that shows the weather, we've got another one that shows some poetry, we've got another one that shows some poetry, we've got another one that counts down towards vacation. In fact, recently I've been sending pictures to my kids

of the terminal with the countdown numbers we head towards vacation. Everybody likes it, super easy to use, you don't need to run power to it because it's an E Ink device. It runs for like a month. When it starts running out of juice, pull it off the wall, plug it in overnight, and then you're good for another month. It's even compatible with Apple shortcuts.

There's no requirement to host anything yourself. Terminal turns your Apple products into your own personal server. Now, earlier in 2025, Terminal was given a shout out by several YouTubers, including Snazzy Labs, and they've been sold out until this week. So if you want help staying focused without cutting yourself off from the world,

check out Terminal. This is one of the few tech things I've bought that my family is super into, and I bet yours will be too. Head over to useterminal.com slash go slash focused and use the code FOCUS for 15 bucks off your order for one week only. That's USETRMNL.com slash go slash FOCUSed and offer code FOCUSed for that $15 off

and you'll own it forever, no subscriptions. As I'm reading this ad, I think I may just go and buy a second one. And our thanks to Terminal for supporting the FOCUS podcast and all of Relay. Can you talk about how your approach to focus has changed as your responsibilities have grown or shifted over the time? Maybe I'm curious to hear this from you because you've had some very drastic

changes over your life. I haven't had the scenario where I've had the high pressure situation like being a lawyer, but I do think that I have a miniature version of that, so I can speak to that. My approach to focus at the beginning was simply, I'm going to block out all the distractions so that I can be a little bit more efficient while I'm at the office, so that I can have a little bit more time at home with my family. What I learned from that is that efficiency just makes the hamster wheel spin faster, and your reward for getting work done faster is more work to do. So I can't pinpoint a specific moment when this this kind of hit me.

But what I realize is that I have to take ownership over things and I have to decide when enough is enough and I have to pick the things that I'm going to prioritize and not everything can be a priority. So for a long time I've tried to maintain the priority of being present for my family. That has kind of like been the thing that we've optimized for for a long time. It's why we homeschool our kids. It's why I've worked on the internet even when I wasn't an independent creator. I wanted flexibility in my schedule

so I could do certain things. But yeah, it's really just deciding for yourself what is important in the moment. And I can retroactively look back and see, even when I was in the family business and when I was working for the digital marketing agency, like agency life, it's not for me. And it was really because I was kind of being forced

to split my focus in different areas. So the big thing I think that has changed for me over time has been the importance of prioritizing one specific thing at a time, giving myself permission to change my mind about that at any given point. The personal retreats are great for that because every three months I've got a built-in reset essentially, but recognizing that when I'm, when I'm going to optimize for this thing, it doesn't have to be forever,

but recognizing that I also can't optimize for more than one thing at a time. So this is the thing I got to focus on for now, going all in with that, and then being willing to adjust and repair as I step back and look at what actually transpired from that. The areas of focus, I think, are the things that have kind of changed for me

for different seasons of life. But the importance of focusing on this particular thing at a time and embracing the whole concept of intentional imbalance, that's where I think the whole idea of focus has matured the most for me. Okay. Well, you mentioned my career change. That obviously changed a lot of things for me. But I don't even think about that in terms of focus.

I think of more in terms of anxiety and stress is just, it's really stressful being a lawyer. And I think, um, in hindsight, like, you know, I talked earlier about how I like to reread and reflect and write essays. That's one that is on my list to write. Now it's been a few years. I wanted to go back and look at that whole period of my life. But I'm not sure I was ever really wired to be a lawyer because I had a lot of empathy.

And I think that's a real struggle when you're a lawyer because people bring really hard problems to you and you can't always get the best result because it just doesn't always work. And you've got the threat of malpractice on top of that. And it just takes a lot out of you. So, I guess to answer the question, by me giving up the career and the income

that comes with it in exchange, I bought a tremendous amount of focus and less anxiety in my life. And now things are just so easy, it's not even funny. I mean, sometimes people are like, wow, you're doing a lot in the labs, you're busy. I'm like, yeah, but it's not what I used to do. You know, it's just like, it's like not even

on the same scale. So that gives me opportunities to experiment on focus and do the show and other things. So yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, but yeah, throw your career overboard and to see how much easier it gets. Well, that's the thing is I go back to the whole idea of like the productivity bros. I feel like that's sort of the implicit message that's out there is you should just quit your job. And then I don't think that's the right,

the right advice. Um, I think if you don't look at the surface and like what people actually did, then you can see a little bit more clearly what were the motivators behind those decisions. And when you understand the motivators, maybe the actual decisions, the external circumstances look completely different, but they might end up being very much aligned. So yeah, I just to clarify on that, like I practiced almost 30 years. It wasn't like, and I did Max Barkey for about 15 years before I hung it up. So it was not a spur of the moment thing.

And when I did hang it up, I knew that even though I was giving up the lawyer income, I was making enough on Max Barkey to satisfy my obligations. I knew we'd be skinny if things didn't go well, but we'd be able to survive. So it's like, you don't do that stuff on the drop of a hat. You have to plan for it. Yeah.

I guess, I'm not sure if I even answered the question. Do you feel tension? What was it again? The approach to focus has changed. Well, the one thing that really changed for me in that transition, and it was a great advice given to me by Merlin Mann saying, hey, you're turning your life upside down.

This gives you a chance to set entirely new defaults because we all have these default behaviors we carry around with us. And when you make a big change, whether it's a career change, a job change, whatever, you can set new defaults. And I was very intentional about that when I did it. The intentionality that I'm allowed now

because of that change is truly a gift and allows me to make some of my best stuff, which is what I really wanna do. Yeah, I think the clarifying question there is essentially what are you optimizing for? At the beginning of your career, when you're trying to be a lawyer, maybe you're optimizing for income, right?

But I think that's the trap that people can fall into is just optimizing for the income and then you buy things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't like. And then it just snowballs. So we were in various, we were always very good about that. We, you know, we bought, we live in our starter home. We don't, you know, we, we were always very careful about that, not getting in over our head. Right.

So which gave you the freedom to optimize for something else at, at some point. And I think that's the thing I would just advise. If I were to go back and give, you know, 18 year old Mike, some advice, it would be, you know, you can optimize for income at the beginning. Don't wait until your kids have reached a certain point. Don't wait until some point in the future where, you know, I've now, I now don't have to worry about this anymore. Like it's always going to be there. It's always going to be a concern, but it's fine to optimize for it for a little bit,

but just recognize there are other things that are ultimately more important and it's a series of trade-offs. You gotta, you gotta say yes to something. But when you do that, you're gonna say no to something else for a period. It's interesting, I'm reading that Ron Chernow just released a new biography of Mark Twain, and I'm in the thick of it right now. And he grew up poor, and his whole life,

he worried about money. And he married an heiress, he probably probably should need to worry about money at that point. But he was always thinking about you know how do i turn this book speech whatever into money to keep us afloat and. It was just kind of almost relief to see someone like that also had these same concerns. We're all in this together. We all worry about things like this and that's just part of life.

Yeah. Next question. Do you ever feel tension between working deeply and the pressure to respond quickly in today's communication heavy world and how do you reconcile that? Let me go first on this one, because my answer is completely entitled,

but I just don't communicate very well. I just decided. I sell things through the Max Markey Labs and Field Guides, and I have pipes in place to make sure those people get answers quickly quickly if they have questions. But in general, like when you were talking earlier about how you're trying to do more with social media, I have not logged on to any social media app

in probably two years. I finally just accepted about myself that I just don't do that stuff. And I'm sure there are costs to me in my business for it, but the benefit is it allows me to really focus in on the stuff and make good stuff. And to me, the cost benefit just doesn't make sense for social media.

And I'm just also not that interested in it. Like, I just don't care that much about, you know, what everybody thinks about the latest movie or what they had for breakfast or whatever. And I know that you're gonna tell me there's ways to do this that are more mindful and all that, but I think I've got to a point where I'm just not interested.

My only concession is the Now page. If you go to MaxSparky.com slash now, it's kind of like my version of social media, like telling you what I'm up to right now, what the kind of stuff you would post on social media. But I'm just not that interested in it. And in terms of the business communications and to get to the questions,

like the more meatier parts of when people ask you a question about scheduling a guest or whatever, I just find that there's no reason that I need to respond to them immediately. There's almost nothing I do anymore that needs an immediate response. So I have blocks of time set aside and I deal with it in due course. And the communication blocks I think are a great tip there. So yeah, I, I interpreted this a little bit differently with the communication piece. I was thinking specifically of like my time at the agency and, uh, email and Slack. Yeah.

Um, so I don't really view social media as that. Social media for me is sort of a broadcast tool, which is very much like what I do with the podcast. I'm putting something out into the world with the YouTube videos, I'm putting something out into the world, the newsletter. That's what social media is for me. It's not a way to have a conversation about something. But those conversations do exist.

And typically I think for a lot of people in the business world, they happen on email and Slack. And Slack, it's interesting. I followed Slack for a long time. And when it first came out, it was everybody loves Slack because it meant that they didn't have to be in their email anymore. And what has happened is that all of the, the quick messages that that would typically happen inside of email, just move to Slack. There's a term for this that Cal Newport uses and I I'm blanking on it right now, but it's really a, it's, it's perfect.

And really what it's describing is almost like a, a substitute to the actual work. It's perfect. And really what it's describing is almost like a Substitute to the actual work. It's like I'm just gonna talk about this stuff and Because I've talked about it and I have to wait for a response There's like this illusion that I've moved things forward but nothing has really happened. And, uh, I think that's the thing you have to push back against. So there definitely is that, that tension, um, depending on the, the place, like the workplace that you may find yourself in and the people that you communicate with,

you may have some degree of that that you're never going to be able to, uh, to mitigate. But the best way that I found to reconcile that was to have honest and open conversations about the expectations around those mediums. A lot of times what happens is you see somebody do something on email, especially manager, supervisor or boss. Um, they do something, they respond to an email at five in the morning. And now there's this implicit expectation that has been communicated to everyone else in the organization that you should respond to email at five in the morning. The boss or the manager may not actually have that view, but that's just, you know, what people saw.

So that's what people will naturally replicate. So what we did at the agency is we created this set of communications expectations. That helped a ton. It didn't alleviate it completely, but just understanding when someone sends me a Slack message and asks for my help, it's written in the communications expectations that I am busy,

even if my bubble is green, and that's to be expected. I'm doing something that's important, but periodically, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to see the message, and I'm going to reply within four hours or something like that. reply within four hours or something like that. Uh, when you talk about the expectations and get on the same page, a lot of times people can live with less direct, less immediate responses than they have been been getting, and that's never a comfortable conversation to have, but I'd never been one to shy away from the difficult conversations. So I was always the one instigating it.

and one to shy away from the difficult conversations. So I was always the one instigating it. Definitely did help a ton though, in terms of creating a calm work environment. And that really is the key. If you're gonna work deeply, you have to have these periods where it's okay to put up the boundaries for a little bit. And going back to the Deep Workbook by Kale Newport,

that was the one that I think probably opened my eyes to this concept that at least initially in that book, he has this story about this person who their boss is constantly asking them for quick responses and she confronts him and says, okay, so what is the thing you think I do that adds the most value to the organization? Well, this is the thing.

Okay, so I don't get to do that when I'm constantly replying to your messages. I need two to three hours in the morning where you cannot reach me in order to do this. Well, okay. Yeah, I guess we can, guess we can do that. So maybe you can't, you know, carve out eight hours of uninterrupted time every single day. That that's fine. Start where you are with, with what you have, but create those expectations. Get on the same page of people essentially,

just having that alignment in terms of what's actually important is the way to do this. And then that's easier said than done, but you have to have those conversations if you wanna get to that point where you are able to disconnect from those things for a while? A trick I learned as a young lawyer

is every time somebody gave me another project, I would have a running list of them. I just did a yellow pad, you know? And it would be like, Bob wants me to write a motion for summary judgment, Tim wants me to write a settlement agreement. I would have this list of all these things that had been handed to me.

And then whenever one of the senior lawyers would come in and say, I need you to do this, I would just hand them my pad and say, okay, tell me where it goes on this list. Which, you know, tell me what the priority is. Do I do your thing first or do Bob's thing first? Just tell me where it is. And honestly, they would stop giving me work so often. It was like the best thing.

Because they'd just see, oh my gosh, this guy's loaded. He doesn't have time for this. You know? And, or they would say, oh, you know what? This isn't that important, put it low on the list. And then I would know. And then I would do the other stuff first. But I didn't read that anywhere. you know 1992 who who was writing about

this stuff but the it was just a little trick I used and it worked so maybe that helps I like that and and I think the version of that which probably gets played out a lot is maybe this isn't even something that I should be doing and the fact that you know they have to decide where this gets slotted in with a lot is maybe this isn't even something that I should be doing. And the fact that, you know, they have to decide where this gets slotted in with all the other things that you have to do. The reaction is, Oh, nevermind. I'll just find somebody else. Yeah, that was common.

This episode of focused is brought to you by incognito. Data brokers are in the business of collecting personal information like yours, which can be an uncomfortable thought for a lot of us. Nobody likes the idea of other people having access to our personal details. Enter Incogni. They reach out to data brokers on your behalf, request your personal data removal, and deal with any objections from the other side. I had heard of tools like this before, but I really wasn't sure if they worked and it was just too much bother for me to actually sign up. But when I tried out Incogni, the signup process was incredibly simple. Within two minutes, I was in and I was able to see the number of places that my data was showing up online.

And with just a few clicks, a couple hundred removal requests were made for me and I was able to see on the dashboard which ones were sent, which ones were in progress, and which ones were completed. I love that Incognate gives you the full activity log, and I love that they have a family plan as well, so that you can add your loved ones to your plan and remove their information from the internet as well. The whole process was super simple and made me wish that I had done this years ago.

With Incognate, you can protect your privacy in three easy steps. You just create an account, grant them the right to contact data brokers on your behalf, then kick back while they get to work. And as I mentioned, I love how they have a couple different plans. Incognito has an individual plan,

which will send repeated automated removal requests to data brokers and people search sites. And with the family and friends plan, you can add up to four loved ones to your annual subscription to keep their personal information off Data Broker and people's search sites as well. So visit incognito.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D,

and secure your data today. Sign up and enjoy a 30 day money back guarantee. Protect your privacy with Incognito and experience peace of mind knowing your personal information is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni and experience peace of mind knowing your personal information is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use code FOCUSED in the show notes and get 60% off an annual plan when you go to incogni.com slash focused.

Our thanks to Incogni for their support of the FOCUSED podcast and all of Relay. Mike, we haven't talked about shiny objects on the show for a while. What are you, what's your shiny new object these days? Yeah, so I mentioned a while back that I got a Steam Deck and I have really been enjoying the Steam Deck. There was a game that I grew up playing, Final Fantasy VII. They came out with a remake that's available on the Steam Deck. So that's, you know, that's my jam right now.

But that's not the shiny new object. The shiny new object is I've been thinking about how I would like to be able to play this on the TV. And there are docs available like the doc for the Nintendo Switch. They make them for the Steam Deck. I found an inexpensive one on Amazon made by Anchor. And so I bought the Anchor Steam Deck docking station, which connects to the TV via HDMI. And then it's got a USB-C plug that you plug into the Steam Deck. And that allows you then to broadcast your Steam Deck to the the big screen And I guess kind of a second shiny new object that goes with this as I bought an 8-bit duo gamepad

so it's a Bluetooth controller specifically for the the Steam Deck and Essentially what that that gives me is the ability to play my Steam Deck with a nice controller while sitting on my my couch and That's been a lot of fun Cool, I have made a big switch with my email in the since we last got on the call together We're gonna talk in the deep focus about my reset week and it turned into kind of a rebuild week instead of a reset week, but email is an issue that I do contend with, and because of some changes in the way we do things around Max Barkie headquarters,

I'm dealing with more email than usual. And I just decided to give Superhuman a try. Superhuman is the, it's $30 a month, it's really expensive to manage your email with this service. I'm a nerd. There's a lot of stuff it does. I have kind of created on my own over the years,

but I just wanted to see what it was like. And I realized that this is $30 a month I am absolutely willing to spend. And so I'm now a superhuman guy. Nice. I am also a superhuman guy. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I subscribed also a superhuman guy. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I subscribed a couple of months ago and I don't think I am using it to its full potential yet. But one of the places that I do see AI being useful in terms of doing things more efficiently is with email. in terms of doing things more efficiently is with email. Yeah. And yeah, it makes a lot of sense to be able to query and find past conversations and provide summaries of this is what's in this thread when you're going to make a reply without having to read all of those different messages. I don't think I'm at the point yet where I'm 100% committed. This is absolutely something I'm going to continue to support, but I've definitely been impressed with the AI in the application.

It's much better than the other ones that I've seen. But again, this stuff is changing super fast. Well, it just feels to me like it's built by a team that is just obsessed with like making email easier and Yeah, and I want everything that they do. I mean they just added a new feature last week So yeah, I'm you know, maybe I'm still in the honeymoon with it But I really like it and it has made email easier which is what I'm looking for So that's my shiny new object. That's the goal What are you reading these days, Mike? Yeah, well, I am reading a bookworm book, so I cannot not finish this one,

but uh, that's okay. I'm enjoying it. It's a, the confident mind by Nate Zinsser. Um, this is very much like the, uh, inner excellence book by Jim Murphy. So it's going to be great for some people. Other people are not going to like it at all. It's really about just mindset, things like that of people who are very successful. Um, the opening sections that I I'm still currently in have been talking a lot

about overcoming perfectionism, stuff like that. So it's a, it's a longer book. I am really enjoying it though so far. And if you're looking for something that really is about kind of like mental toughness and just having a perspective, not in terms of, you know, I'm going to crush it and achieve a bunch of these things, but I want to perform at the highest possible level that I can. This is a good one. I mentioned earlier, I'm reading the Mark Twain book. It's 1200 pages, Ron Chernow. I've read several of his biographies over the years

and I am a fan of him. I think he does a great job of humanizing these great figures through history. And Mark Twain in particular to me is near and dear because my dad grew up in Kirkfield and Mark Twain was from Hannibal. My dad actually played on the Hannibal high school football team back in the like 1940 something.

And so I've always saw lines between my father and Mark Twain, the way they kind of approached life. And it's been real enjoyable reading this book and just hearing about the way he dealt with the challenges of his life. It's kind of refreshing and, and humanizing. And, uh, I would recommend this book. Not done with it yet. Hopefully I will be by the time we get on mic again, but I'm very much enjoying it. Well, 1200 pages.

That is, that's a lot. It goes fast though, because it's a biography and it's an interesting story. True. Chernow does a great job. I think he's one of my favorite modern biographers. He's the same guy who wrote the Hamilton biography that led to the musical.

Okay. So we're gonna have a Mark Twain musical now? I don't think so, I don't think so. You never know. Right. Yeah. He did. He did grant. I read that one and he did Washington. I have not read that one. So that one ought to do that one at some point. Nice. All right. We are the folks podcast find us at relay.fm slash focus. If you'd like to get the ad for extended version of the show, we call that Deep Focus.

We'd love to have you on. You can sign up for it right there. And thanks again to our sponsors. That's our friends at Squarespace, Terminal, and Incogni. And we'll see you next time.