Focused - 235: Practical Wisdom for Mindful Living, with John Chandler

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

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

Excellent. Did you enjoy your time at MaxDoc? I did. It was fun to hang out with all the nerds again. It was great. I met some really cool people. I hung out with a couple of people from Ecamp, specifically one who maybe you've run into in the past, Doc Rock.

Doc is great. Yeah, he's awesome. I didn't know he was part of the unofficial Apple weblog back in the day. Yes, he was. Yeah, it's a good time. And he's over in Hawaii still, I believe. I'm not sure if he still lives over there or not. Yeah. Doc is awesome. Yeah. I'm glad you got to meet him.

Yeah. He showed me all sorts of fancy cameras, which I have resisted buying up until this point. That sounds like it's not determined that it's not a certainty that you're not going to buy them. Well, I am really pleased to welcome to the show an old friend of the Mac power users and just a friend of mine in general. Welcome to the show, John Chandler. Well, thanks guys. It and welcome to the show an old friend of the Mac power users and just a friend of mine in general Welcome to show John Chandler

Well, thanks guys. It's good to be here. I am a long time member of the focus family I think I've heard every episode that's that's excellent here. What was love to hear that John tell us a little bit about you for folks who don't know you. Well, yeah, I am. I would say for purposes of our conversation today, I am a champion of wisdom, which is not to say I am a champion at having wisdom, but I see myself as someone who wants to help explore and bring wisdom to the world. But of course, there's a long story behind that. I live in Arizona. I was really embracing the desert lifestyle. I love being kind of close to the mountains and withdrawn and being able to engage in urban life and wilderness at the same time. But primarily for what we're talking about today, a little bit of my backstory is I spent 25 years in church leadership as a pastor in several different settings.

Alongside that in the latter season, I did website work and I've built many, many websites. David, I had to look this up because I built the Mac power users website that was live. I looked at archive.org. It was like 2014 to 2015. I think you helped us out at the beginning. You know, well, it wasn't the beginning, but it was in that period.

Yeah. A little blast from the past. So yeah, that was great. You helped my wife too, at one point with her website. Yeah. Yeah. John is a, uh, he is a WordPress, uh, wizard. You still do that, right?

Is that still something you do? I still do that. Yeah. That's really my, that's really my primary work. As they pay for the shoes, yeah. It definitely pays for the bills better than most of the other work that I do that we'll be talking about here.

Over the last five years or so, I've worked as a spiritual director. After leaving my last ministry role, I was really trying to explore what would be next and really wanted to turn my life to investing more in other people. At that point, I was nearing 50 years old and so I was imagining what would it look like to give of myself and offer myself to others. And spiritual direction is probably not something a lot of people are familiar with, but really

what it means is I sit with people and just ask questions, explore, particularly in a Christian context, you know, that means trying to hear what they believe God's some kind of sacred voice might be saying to them. More recently, I've realized that there's a need and a benefit for people who might not even have a defined set of spiritual beliefs to be able to explore conversations like that. And so I've, alongside spiritual direction for people who want kind of a Christian angle on it, I've started offering what I call wisdom sessions, which is really just a chance to sit with someone.

Oftentimes it's maybe towards a particular goal that they might be working towards, like maybe discerning a life change, a transition, or desiring to just explore some new habits or practices for their own personal growth. So I sit and meet with people and just ask good questions, really, you know, provide a, provide a voice for them. And then alongside that, I am a very, very fledgling YouTuber, which that is to say, I just, I wanted another outlet. I suppose after being a preacher for 25 years, you just kind of get used to having something to say all the time.

And I realized even though I've fancied myself, a blogger or a writer in different seasons, I really like talking out loud. I'm used to that. So, and I guess I've done podcasting as well, but I decided early this year, I would start recording some YouTube videos just to say some of the things I wanted to say. So when I was working on the show, I wanted that, you know, added your YouTube channel and then I went down the deep dive on it right and

About deep. Well, I mean, yeah, it's not that deep you're right But you know you in an hour to you kind of get through it and it's it's really great John knowing you Watching these videos I can see you kind of Developing through these ideas about wisdom. And you can just see kind of the gears turning as you're recording, which I really kind of appreciate. Like you're kind of open about it as you work through this. And I think a lot of us need that.

You know, you need somebody that's willing to be a little vulnerable and share thoughts on this stuff as it develops. And honestly, there isn't enough talk about things like wisdom these days. So as I saw what you're doing, I couldn't wait to have you on the show. Well, thank you, David. I appreciate that. YouTube kind of frustrates me to get on there because there's a lot of really good stuff

on there, but you have to wade through a lot of things to get to the good stuff. And so I, I just hope that by having meaningful, helpful things to say, you know, that someone will find it and it will be beneficial to someone. So I really appreciate you saying that, that that's kind. Yeah. Do you guys, do you guys find that you watch primarily YouTube when you watch the content at this point? Am I the only one?

What do you mean? Like, I, like, so Apple just released the new season of Foundation. And I, like, I loved those books as a kid. I'm a big fan of the show, even though it doesn't really follow the books, but I'm not that precious. But, you know, like, I really look forward to watching it.

But that's right now the only hour of program television I will watch in a week. Whereas when I do want downtime, I've got favorite woodworkers and saxophone players and philosophers and people that like, I have kind of a select people on YouTube, that those are the people that I watch media in front of. Yeah, that's a tough one for me to answer

because even though I would say YouTube is my primary social media platform at this point because I create content for it, and after MaxDoc and talking to Doc, I feel like I'm gonna get into probably shorts and live events on there as well. I don't find myself consuming a lot of content via YouTube. However, the more time that I spend on that platform via those other formats, I feel like that's probably going to change. I sort of resolved in my head that that's the place I do want to

engage with people. So I think long-term, yeah, absolutely. That's going to be where I end up watching things. I don't really watch TV. There's no series that I'm following or anything like that. But, uh, in terms of YouTubers who actually watch YouTube, I'm probably on the low end there. Yeah. Last night I spent 30 minutes watching a guy sharpen his chisels. That made me so happy. Yeah, I find that I go there when I just have a little bit

of time. And it's almost like I've never been a record store junkie. So I don't even know why I'm using this analogy. But it's almost like you imagine somebody who loves deep cuts of records, going to a record store, and having to pilfer through a lot of things that don't interest them to find that one hidden gem. And I feel like that's kind of how I experience it, you know, is flipping through and hoping I can find something that sparks a little bit of curiosity and, you know, the 15 to 20 minutes

I might try to watch. But yeah, I don't lose hours to it. I don't go deep down the hole like that. Well, I mean, I think there's definitely a risk there. If you just subject yourself to the algorithm, then you really can get lost in it. But the way I do it is, like I said, I've found a few creators that I really like. I favorited them. And when I want to watch something,

I just go into my list of subscriptions and say, well, hey, that guy made a new sharpening video. I like him, I'll watch it. So mine is more selective. And honestly, I don't have the problem you do, John, of getting a bunch of garbage, because at this point, I've found the people that I like and that's enough for me.

So yeah, but I just noticed recently, I was reading a business article about all these streaming services, Disney, HBO, Apple, all these ones, and the commenter was writing how they thought they were competing with each other, and what they didn't realize is that they were all competing with YouTube, and it made me realize,

that's true, because you know, if I watch four hours of television a week, that's probably about what I do. One hour of it will be an episode, a foundation and three hours of it'll be YouTube. Makes sense. I think that's probably pretty typical. And I like YouTube because in my opinion, it's the one social network where the algorithm is actually aligned with the creator's interests.

And I think that actually opens up a question for you, John, about why you choose to talk about wisdom on YouTube. What's the thought process that goes behind that? Is it just, I want another outlet to talk about these things? Or do you think about what just walk us through the process of like, you're going to create a video for YouTube. What does that actually look like? What are you hoping to do with your videos? What impact are you hoping to have on people like myself and David who may stumble across your channel? Well, thanks for asking Mike. I think I hope that I can offer somebody 12 minutes

that will just cause them to rethink. I don't mean a massive life change. I feel like half the YouTube videos say this will change your life. And then somebody talks about this journaling method they've been doing for three weeks. And I don't mean that kind of massive life change, but just something that will spark some kind of curiosity for someone. The way I describe my channel is practical

wisdom for mindful living. And the idea of that, when I talk about mindful living, for me, that is living with an awareness of how you are living. You know, not just mindlessly working your way through life, but trying to be aware of what you are up to and the choices that you are making. And so I like to ask questions, explore ideas in there that help people live with an awareness of how they're living. And then again, alongside that,

offer some practical wisdom for what that might look like. So I chose YouTube because it's a low bar of entry, quite honestly, Mike. It's just, it's really easy for me to sit down and record. It's not so easy for me to edit. I don't have much patience for editing, so that might come up in my videos. It's just such a low bar of entry

to sit down and record some thoughts. My goal is not to be a full-time YouTuber. That's not what I'm shooting for. I'm not trying to beat the algorithm. I feel like I have something to say that I hope can be helpful to people. And I hope the right people can stumble across it as I share the thoughts there. So that's why I'm doing it. The primary is it's the low bar of entry and then maybe a handful of people will find something

helpful out of it. Which I think is a cool approach. I think we as creators tend to overthink things. The low bar to entry is definitely the place to start. And I'm a big fan of asking questions. What are some of your favorites or what kind of questions are you you asking? Let's give people a taste. Oh, boy, that's an open question.

It is so context for this, I guess. One of my favorite books is Personal Socrates by Mark Champagne, who we've had on the show. And the tagline of that book is, a single question can change your life. It's a whole bunch of character sketches, couple pages, and the questions from the stories that Mark shares from those character sketches. Just a thinking time prompt and, you know,

asking the right questions, the answers typically, you know, the answers become clear. So a lot of people are looking for, you know, better outcomes. They want to find the answers. Really what they should be doing is asking different questions, I feel like. So I consider myself a collector of questions.

I mean, honestly, it's a, it's a very broad question, but I feel like the question I most often try to ask myself, and this is something that I've learned, honestly, even in the last few years of my life, and a question that in spiritual direction or, you know, when I'm meeting with somebody in wisdom sessions, I'm often trying to explore what was going on internally that caused you to react that way. So what was going on underneath the surface, what was going on behind the scenes that caused you to respond that way, because we don't always in the moment pay attention

to what emotions we're feeling about something. And those emotions are heavily weighing on how we engage in a given moment. So I find that for myself, when I am going back and I'm journaling, say, and reflecting on yesterday, I want to be aware of what emotions when I think about the moments of my day that really stood out, I want to be aware of what emotions were present and might have been driving me that I wasn't even aware of at the time to understand how I responded in a given situation that might be beneficial

for me and might be something that I just want to linger on. I had joy when I had this moment with my son or with my daughter, and I want to make more moments like that. Or I realized I was short or I was curt because I was stressed or anxious or frustrated about something else. And I want to be more aware of that in the moment. So that's a question I tend to explore a lot is just like what emotions were underneath the surface

when you had that experience? I love it. And that's not a instant life changing question. That is a slow burn, right? So to speak, that's a question that you explore that hopefully you become a more self-aware person, as you continue to explore that day after day. Those are the best kinds of questions, the slow burns.

I mean, that is such a result and goal, I think of a journaling or meditation practice is simple awareness of emotions and mental state. It's like, where is your brain at in this moment? If you can just keep track of that as you go throughout the day, it can really help. Like, oh, right now I'm feeling agitated and anxious. Okay, so take that into account in your reactions to the world. And, um, but so many of us just have no idea what's going on in the moment. I,

I feel like that's such a benefit of trying to meditate or, or, um, or journal is that it gives you an awareness into yourself that you don't normally have. Yeah. Yeah. When all my kids are young, they're all between the ages of 17 and 23. Did you hear me pause there to think about that? Yeah, I'm at that phase too. I had a conversation with one of my kids the other day where they got really frustrated. And I said, I don't understand why you're frustrated with me. And the conversation just kind of stopped.

We were walking the dog, so it just didn't continue for a while. And then after we got home, I'm not even going to designate gender. I don't want to sell one of my kids out here. But this child of mine said to me, I'm sorry. Sorry I got frustrated. It's just the things we were talking about caused me to realize how overwhelmed and stressed I'm feeling about all of these things. And I just pulled them aside later and just said,

hey, that was really healthy. I'm really proud of you for taking the time to step back and just acknowledge why not. I appreciate that you apologize to me, but even more so to recognize why you spoke to me that way and to be that reflective. So I just really wanted to encourage them to help set a pattern for them.

Because that's certainly not something I had that kind of awareness of when I was that age. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by ZockDoc. Go to zockdoc.com slash focused to get the right doctor right now. Sign up for free. Remember that doctor's appointment you were supposed to make a while ago? The one you meant to book, but you got sidetracked and completely

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Our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. John, we've been talking a bit about wisdom, but we haven't defined it. I feel like this is the kind of squirrely term that probably needs a definition. How do you think of the term wisdom? What does that mean to you?

I have a very simple definition because like you say, it is a very big, broad idea that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me, it's wisdom is the guidance or means to act toward the best outcome. And that's funny because you asked this question, I put it in chat GPT and chat GPT, you know, even said like what is right or true. And even that gets pretty hard. Yeah, that chat rubs against me a little bit. I'm not sure that's it.

And so that's why I even said to act with the best outcome because even determining or trying to imagine what the best outcome it's going to be, it's going to be something that is going to require a little bit of wisdom and a little bit of discernment. to imagine what the best outcome is going to be. It's going to be something that is going to require a little bit of wisdom and a little bit of discernment. And as you go through life, your understanding or your expectation of what that might be might change.

And so that comes with wisdom. One of my favorite ways of describing wisdom comes from a book called From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks, which has not, that I see, been a book on the Bookworm podcast, and I would suggest that, Mike. I'll put it in the recommendations. Arthur Brooks, basically what he talks about is as we go through life, we go from one strength to another. And he talks about how as we get older, it's not so much that we have the capacity to quickly learn things and quickly put skills in place,

but we start to develop what he calls a crystallized intelligence, meaning intelligence or knowledge that we have learned across many different disciplines, many different experiences of life, they all start to work their way together. And I would liken it sometimes to like, I'm an avid reader. And so I often read multiple books at once. And it's surprising to me how often something I'm reading in this fiction book will also seem to inform something I'm reading in this self-help book or this philosophy book or

something like that. inform something I'm reading in this self-help book or this philosophy book or something like that. And so that's what I think of when he describes this idea of crystallized intelligence. I think he's talking about wisdom. He's talking about as you inform yourself and have experiences in multiple different areas, you start to see how they fit together and then you can start to see how they interact differently. And then that, that helps you discern, you know, what's going on in your life and how you are going to choose to move forward as you have more awareness of all these different pieces going on in your life. Did you hear that Mike?

Sometimes fiction can help. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. I get it. I want to talk about the crystallized intelligence idea a little bit, and I wish I had read this book so I had more, more context here, but the term intelligence, like I feel that could take a lot of different shapes.

So there's emotional intelligence, for example, which is really a combination of interpersonal and intrapersonal communication skills. There's spatial intelligence. There's physical intelligence if you're an athlete. So does this term crystallized intelligence go across domains or is this really just kind of like what you've learned from your lived experience? Yeah for him he describes it as it goes across them He when he breaks down the book of from strength to strength the second strength that he names is crystallized intelligence And for the life of me, I don't remember what the first strength is It's a different he uses a different way to define intelligence

Gosh, I'm sorry. I should, I should have jotted that down. That's okay. I'm just curious is all. So the way he would describe it then is when you're younger, it's easier for you to learn new things and grow in intelligence in different areas. And so the crystallized intelligence is the idea of taking all these different forms or these different experiences of intelligence or areas that you've grown in knowledge of or experience of and starting to work them together, right? Because then you have a knowledge to even project more outcomes because you've seen how these different dynamics might come in and play

together. So crystallized intelligence would be seeing the interplay, I would say, between all those different areas of intelligence that you're describing. Okay, and as it pertains to wisdom, it's really not just experience for the sake of saying, well, I did that thing, but it's really reflecting on the experience

and figuring out what you can take forward so you can do more of what matters and get better outcomes. Is that accurate? Yeah, I think that's a pretty good way to say it. You know, I think one of the challenges, challenge that we have culturally right now is perhaps more than ever we don't,

and I think that's what he's trying to get at in this book is we just don't value wisdom. And that's probably not fair to say. It's not that we don't value wisdom. We don't have time to consider wisdom because so much of what is around us points in a different direction. An example of that would be what I would call the polarization of viewpoints. I don't want to get into politics, but as an example, our politics have become so extreme that it's hard to find someplace to land in the middle. If you watch a news show, it's talking heads that are on either extreme of it, pulling people one direction or another, rather than navigating, uh, the complexity of the middle,

you know, of what might be happening there. You know, the very, that one of the early beauties of the internet and media was, you know, I, I grew up in Colorado. I was a huge, I still am a huge Denver Broncos fan. And when I moved away from Colorado, I missed opportunities to talk with all of my Denver Broncos fans. And so one of my earliest website projects

was a Denver Broncos message board, running an old message board system called V Bulletin. But for me, living in Arizona, and then later in Seattle, there was delight in carving out this little corner of the internet where all the Broncos fans could come together and talk bad about the Raiders and the Chiefs. And we really enjoyed that. And that was helpful and good, you know, to have that in something as safe and nonchalant,

so to speak, as sports. That also reflects where the internet has gone in a lot of ways where we can quickly put ourselves in a corner where we're not challenged by many other ideas because we just find all of the ideas that become an echo chamber for what we already think. And I think that's contrary to wisdom. The other piece of that is what makes wisdom, I think,

challenging for us is we celebrate information or content. Celebrate might be a strong word, but we pursue content and information more than we ever have. They are a primary currency. There's just always something else to know. There's always something else to learn. And on one hand, that's beautiful. I consider myself to be a very, very curious person. And I love learning about new things. But content or information alone is not where wisdom comes. So there have to be, you know, potential, potential areas of reflection or time that is made on our, on our part to take all of these, these are the intelligence, right? These are all these areas of intelligence and then learn how to hold them all together and start to make more sense of them rather than just feel like,

ah, there's one more thing I got to learn. Oh, there's one more sense of them rather than just feel like, ah, there's one more thing I got to learn. Oh, there's one more thing I got to learn. There's more information out there for me to take in. Oh man, you tripped the landmine in my mind. There's a million different directions I want to go with that. I guess the question I want to ask is really how do we go generally speaking from information to wisdom and I feel like you're hitting on a very important point which is

something that I encounter a lot with the like PKM coaching type of stuff that I do everyone wants to have more and better ideas and for a lot of people really it's just stop consuming more information because you have really everything that you need already and if you could just figure out how to work the stuff that you had you know you would you would never run out of ideas but because we don't get to a certain level with things we feel this FOMO and the right piece of information is the thing that's going to cause everything to click.

I feel like there's a parallel there from going from information to wisdom. Curious if you have any specific tips for people who maybe are intrigued by this topic, you know, just starting to think about these things. How do I go from feeling overwhelmed and drinking from the fire hose to actually crystallizing some of this intelligence? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is giving yourself some space.

I can get practical about some of this in a little bit too, but I think part of it is even just having a posture where you afford yourself some kind of space. I think one of the best ways I can describe that is this is such a clear memory to me. And I'm not sure why it stands out to me from like 10 or 15 years ago, but when I was a pastor and I was preaching two or three times a month, there's a lot of work there. You stand up and you talk in front of people for 25 to 35 minutes. Some go longer than that. That was not me. But there's such a process there

of, for me, it was just gathering so many ideas of what it was that I would want to say as I would have, you know, study the text that we might be doing or other ideas. I want to bring it around it, other illustrations or examples. But ultimately, what would happen then is I would have this huge paper full or wasn't a paper, this huge note in my computer full of all of these ideas of what I wanted to say. This huge note in my computer full of all of these ideas of what I wanted to say. But, but I always then had to step back and just mull it over. David, I'm thinking of cooking ideas yet again, the office, the opportunity to conversation. But the point of that is I remember just laboring one time over this particular sermon that I was preparing, I was going to

actually guest preach at a friend's church. And I was grilling in the backyard on Friday night and kind of feeling the stress of, this has not come together for me yet. And as I was grilling, I wasn't listening to a podcast. Sorry, guys. I wasn't listening to music. I was just standing out there quietly and it crystallized. Really is what happened.

Like the various different ideas finally came together for me in a way that I could put it all together. And I think part of the reason that particular experience stands out to me is because I got really kind feedback after that, probably about as kind as I ever got about any sermon. But the point of all that is there was just space. You know, I was, my hands were occupied because I was

flipping burgers or whatever I was grilling that day, but my mind was not. And my mind just had the space to roam and wander, to, you know, stroll around these different ideas that were going on in my head and try to make sense of them, try to put them together. So to the point of your question, I think a lot of what we have to do is just be intentional about finding some kind of space to think more widely rather than, oh my gosh, I have contrary to what I said earlier, I have 15 minutes to spare right now.

What can I find on YouTube? You know, what instead might it be to just say, I have 15 minutes right now. What do I wanna think about? You know, what am I feeling right now? What's going on in my mind that I just wanna mull over a little? That opens an interesting question to me.

Is the scarcity of wisdom a result of the lack of margin and downtime? Like, do we have time to be wise when every spare moment can be filled with TikTok? Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right, David. I think that's exactly right. I think that's the case of we just we don't reflect well, we want to, you know, I think all of us feel this point of pain. And so we have to be intentional about being intentional. We have to choose to find time and find ways to reflect when I was

We have to choose to find time and find ways to reflect. When I was, I was the youngest, okay? And David, I was born in Orange County. I lived in Fountain Valley until I was three years old. And because I was verbal early, I started talking pretty well. Like I started talking when I was nine months old and it was pretty, but I did not walk until much later. And part of that was because I was so verbal,

I would ask my older brothers to get things for me or do things for me. And finally, my mom said, and I obviously don't remember this, she told me this later, but my mom finally said, stop getting stuff for him because he's not having to engage and do it on his own because you guys are doing it for him. And I think that's part of, you know, wisdom is not letting somebody else do our thinking for us. And so it's not just consuming what somebody else has said,

somebody else's ideas, it's doing a little bit on our own. And so we have to build those muscles a little bit. That was a long analogy or long story to get to that. So how do we build the muscles? I mean, like, how do you do it? Do you set aside specific time every single day for reflecting? I know you mentioned a little bit earlier about journaling. I'm assuming, I assume that's a piece of it.

And then kind of related, you know, someone is realizing that they haven't been intentional about being intentional. Where do they start? Yeah, I mean, I came up with this little formula. It's really helpful for me, which is oftentimes we think of wisdom is knowledge plus experience, right? As you as you do have knowledge, that's some of those areas of intelligence we described. And you have life experience.

Your life experience starts to inform the knowledge that you have and wisdom is born out of it. And that's a simple little descriptor or formula for wisdom that I've seen. But it occurred to me, as I've been thinking over this, about this stuff, even over the last couple of years, that the multiplier for that, you know, in that formula is engagement.

And that engagement, I think, is that reflective piece, meaning, yes, of course, you do start to gain wisdom as you merge your life experience with what knowledge you have, but it's really going to flourish that wisdom when you multiply it through engaging with your thoughts about those things. Meaning, taking the time to reflect on what your experience has been, taking time to reflect on knowledge. And so the question then are what are practices of engagement that can help you multiply wisdom. So yes, for me, personally, but I can talk about ideas that others might consider as well. But for me personally, I have a very particular journaling practice, which for me is really rooted on daily pages. And I go over there and sit in a little corner of my office over there.

And every morning, you know, I just sit down and I just try to write about whatever is on my mind. I don't have any hard guardrails on it. The one thing I've tried to be more intentional about with this practice is trying to name some emotions that I have been thinking about or feeling or experiencing because that's not something I did. I did not have much emotional intelligence when I was younger in life. And that's something I've tried to be really intentional about cultivating. And I'll talk in a minute about how that came about. But yeah, for me, it's journaling. I have tried meditation or other forms

of meditation. There's a Christian practice called centering prayer. I practice those sometimes and I struggle my way through them. David, I admire it. I think you've said that you can meditate for three hours every day. I don't, that's not true. Well, I meditate for 30 minutes every day.

I think maybe two hours is the longest I've ever done it. Chris Bailey, on the other hand, can go three hours a day, yeah, so. But yeah, for me, from re-journaling, and but alongside with that then, I think it's really important to review your journal. I think it's really important. And I did not start doing this until the last few years.

I actually have a YouTube video on this, but I journaled for almost 20 years, hardly ever going back and reading through it. And a couple of years ago, I used the Day One app on, I think it's on every platform now, but I use the Day One app. And I use that on this day feature. And I actually look forward to every morning after I do a little reading in books, every morning I go back and I look at my journal entries from on this day and I see what I was experiencing. I certainly haven't journaled every day for the last 20 years. There's some big gaps in there, but seeing where I was and I just through that started to see different patterns in my life.

I became really aware as I read some of my journal of feelings I was experiencing at different times that I just wasn't even naming or I was avoiding. But now in hindsight, I can see them. And there's wisdom that comes out of that. There's wisdom in seeing how I was engaging at that time, at that place wasn't working well for me, you know, and so what can I take away? So that kind of journaling where you're regularly reviewing it, even if it's, you know, I know you guys have talked about quarterly reviews or people have different ways they review their journal. I just find

it really helpful to review long term, you know, stages of my journal like that to see what things have looked like for me. I'm actually writing right now also a practicing reflection email course. Maybe that will be live by the time we post this interview. If not, it will be soon after. But it's the idea of a little, it's a daily stand-up with yourself, meaning it's just taking time to sit down. It's roughly based on an ancient Christian practice called the prayer of examine. But it's really just sitting down for a little bit every day and working through a few steps to reflect, you know, through some gratitudes, through some reflection, through some imagination of how you want the next day to go. Because again, I think it's really helpful just to have space,

Again, I think it's really helpful just to have space, to have some attention towards how are you living with an awareness of how you're living, right? Going back to that idea of what I describe as mindful living. So I think journaling can be fantastic for that. But the other one is, I just think it's really beneficial to be in conversation with someone, intentional conversation just about, hey, what's going on in your life? I have a good friend who I get together with every couple of weeks, sometimes over coffee, sometimes over beer, whatever it might be. He's a therapist and I'm a spiritual director.

We're not practicing on each other, but it does mean that we're, you know, comfortable exploring what's going on in our lives. You know, we don't consider it to be therapy or spiritual direction. It's just friends who are getting together and talking and validating one another and asking each other how we're doing. And I look forward to that, you know, when when something gets in the way, and

we're not able to get together, I really miss that. David Brooks, uh, in a book called, um, I'm looking over at my bookshelves, how to know a person, just one of the best books I've read in the last few years, but he really crystallized some of this wisdom stuff for me in a book about how to know other people because the last chapter, I don't think this has been on the bookworm podcast either. I will point out. It has not. Second Mountain has, but.

But all that to say, the last chapter, he talks about one of the fruits of knowing other people is wisdom. And he describes in there how wisdom is not something that is contained in a single person, but wisdom exists, so to speak, in the space between us. And so as we are in meaningful conversation with other people, wisdom is cultivated because we're engaging with their knowledge and experience and we're engaging with our knowledge and experience and that just begins to multiply the awareness, the wisdom that might come out of

a conversation like that. So, and, you know, all that to say that's part of why I do the work that I do, you know, when I talk about this idea of wisdom sessions, when I talk about spiritual direction, because it's a chance just to sit with somebody and explore with them to try to engage with what knowledge do you have, What, what experience do you have? But let's engage that. Let's think more deeply about it. Let's ask good questions about it to make sense of what it means that's happening in your life and how can you live in a way that points you more towards a flourishing way of living.

That is something I have actually been pursuing actively the last few years is cultivating deep friendships, particularly with men. I look at my wife and her and her woman friends are very good at getting together and crying each other's tears and dealing with life. And I think that as men, we are not. And I have been really working on that with some good friends

where we regularly have deep conversations. And man, it has been like, it's a third leg. I've talked so often about meditation in journaling, but I think this practice of having someone that you can talk things through with is just so important. And I wish I had had that particularly when I was younger. Yeah, it's not modeled for us, especially probably David, you're the generation that you and I are part of.

My dad was a loving, expressive man, which I'm really thankful for. But I don't know what kind of friendships he had. And yeah, I think as a man, we've just been really comfortable talking about all sorts of other things, but not talking about ourselves or our, or at least our inner lives. We might talk about sports or woodworking. Yeah. And with my dad, he died just as I was kind of

coming into manhood. So I didn't even have him to talk to as a young man. So I really did not have like a guy. And I had friends, but I didn't have that kind of friends. But at this point in my life, I do, I'm very fortunate. And if you're out there and you don't start making efforts today, find some people that can be your buddies and that you can talk to about more than the Broncos.

Right. So how do you, how do you do that though? Like what advice would you give younger David? Or I guess the same question then to John, you know, what, what advice would you give people who recognize that's a void in my life, but I don't even know then to John, you know, what, what advice would you give people who recognize that's a void in my life, but I don't even know where to find those kinds of people. I suspect if you're thinking about that, you already have friends that could fit that category. What I did is I actually approached a couple of friends

and told them about the problem. I said, I don't have intimate friends and I would like you to be one. And we just started scheduling calls. I mean, that's how I did it. Same, I have a friend that I primarily know through the internet, but we've hung out together in person many times over the last,

gosh, we've probably known each other almost, well, 20 years now. And he was actually here not long ago. His son was here for a baseball tournament. And I mean, he and I are on messages in and out of messages all day long with one another, even though we've never lived in the same state. But he was here and we went and we got pizza one night while he was in town. And we just had a great conversation and talking

about ourselves. You know, we talked about our dad some and we've had some of those conversations in the past, but they're, you know, they're just usually our conversations are mindless messages back and forth, but we both talked about afterwards like, let's do this more often, you know? And so I think to your point, David, just knowing who you already know and you already enjoy spending time with, I've had this experience now with a few other men where I say, I would like to do this more. Can we do this more? Can we be very intentional about just setting a time to catch up? So, you know, one of my personal goals right now, I think this came out of my roles on a rate, one of my, you know, one of my roles is to be a good friend. And so one of

mine is I want to, I want to have a meaningful conversation with a friend at least once a week. It's not always the same friend, you know, I try to have enough that I know that once a week, I'm going to have meaningful time with a friend. Some of those are, you know, every other week some of those are monthly but I just want to have enough of a circle around me that I can have those kind of conversations with. Yeah so I asked that question a little bit seeding the answer because I feel like one of the things that maybe can keep people from doing that is, well,

that seems like an awkward conversation to have or what if they don't respond the way I want them to. And I feel like those are just stories you tell yourself most of the time. I guess there is a risk that people could respond negatively to that sort of thing, but my experience, most people don't. And so, just by asking that question, you'll kind of naturally find those types of people. And also it's interesting to me to hear you say, John,

about the other friend that you met on the internet that you hung out with in person. I recognize that that's me also. Most of my best friends I met on the internet first. Yeah, I'll tell you, you know, when exploring that conversation with friends, I don't know that I've said to somebody, I would like to do this more and have more conversations like this. I don't know that I've been turned down in that. And I suppose there is,

I still feel the risk of that. And I suppose there would be somebody who would say, that's not for me, you know, and that would hurt, you know, cause I would think they don't like me or whatever. Obviously that's a risk, but I would, I would guess that for most of us, our batting average would be very high. Well, I think what it is is,

you know the people who can be vulnerable and are willing to. And like I have friends that I would never see as someone I could have that kind of relationship with. And that's okay too. But I'm actively looking always for people that do kind of fit that. And also of course I'm looking for the people

with the wisdom and the integrity that I would want to trust to a relationship. It's not like you can't just do this with anybody. And so, you're always on the lookout for friends that are like, that's a quality person and it would benefit us both to have that relationship. I've never had a therapy relationship. I've never really felt the need of it,

but I feel like I've got all these little things I do instead that give me a lot of the benefits that people often tell me they get from therapy. And it's just from having dear friends, from having an introspective practice of journaling and meditation that it's like, I feel like I kind of get the benefits I need for myself. Yeah. It just feels, it feels scary. I think that's the thing I want to,

yeah. I want to double click on when you're, when I ask a girl out, sometimes you're going to get turned down. It's okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean it, it, it a hundred percent feels scary, but Mike, I think so much of what we're talking about today a lot of stuff feels scary because part of the reason we go to tik-tok or YouTube or Endless scrolling is it's it even feels scary to be alone with our thoughts, you know Part of that is

Sitting back and saying what am I avoiding? What what's and and then as we start to sit with those thoughts and as we start to make space is sitting back and saying, what am I avoiding? As we start to sit with those thoughts and as we start to make space and start to become more self-aware, that's where wisdom, that's where maturity, that's where health can start to come in our direction. But we have to take risks. There's no growth without friction. And risk means going into the friction

to have the kind of life that we want to live. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. Hiring the right person for your team is so important. Get this one thing wrong and you can expect stress for everyone involved. Now thankfully, Indeed is there to help you get it right the first time. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

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slash focus that's f o c u s e d just go to indeed.com slash focused right now and support our show by saying that you heard about indeed on the focus podcast that's i n d e e d dot com slash focused terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. So let's talk about books. What are you reading? David, you wanna go first? Yeah, I've got a weird one, but I really love it.

In fact, I feel like this is a mindfulness practice. As I've mentioned a few times on the show, I like woodworking and I do a lot of hand tool work. The most important, one of the most important things is that you have sharp tools, sharp blades on your hand planes, sharp chisels, and woodworkers can really turn sharpening into an obsession. And I don't think I really do that, but I did want to know more about it, and I found the Bible of sharpening. It's called The Perfect Edge by Ron Hawk.

And the book goes into the details of metallurgy and how steel works and how it's made, and tells you how to sharpen anything from a kitchen knife to scissors to woodworking tools. There's like 15 pages explaining rust. And I am enjoying this book so much, Mike, I can't tell you. And I will just tell people out there,

if you'd like to sharpen your own kitchen knives and things around the house, this is a hobby you could pick up. It's not that expensive. There are like water stones you can get off Amazon, probably under $100. You can have yourself a nice setup and make everything in your house very sharp. And this book would be an excellent book to read if you want to do it. I'm not sure that there is a focus angle to it, although sharpening requires a tremendous

amount of focus. I will say that. Yeah. Well, I'm kind of surprised it took us this long to find a book with a woodworking application to be honest. Oh, I have several. I mean, like, James Kranoff books would be perfect for our audience. But I don't know, I just really have been enjoying this.

But I've been doing this for a long time and one of my favorite things to do, I keep extra plane blades for my hand planes because when I'm actually working and the blade starts to dull, I don't want to stop and sharpen it. So I have two or three spare tires ready to go at all times. And one of my favorite things to do on an evening

is just sit in the shop, listen to Miles Davis, and sharpen all my tools. And I do it largely, you know, I have Japanese water stones are what I use. And it's just so fun to sit in there and just quietly get a razor sharp edge on everything. And it's just, it's part of the practice, but it is meditative, honestly.

Like I don't do it watching TV or anything. At most I will play music and it's just a, it's a very nice practice. I'm sure you have thoughts come to your mind while you're doing that. Oh yeah, exactly. I mean, the thing is, if you give your brain space, it will do some of its best

work, but you got to give it the space. All right. What are you reading, John? I'll name another. I've called out a couple of books that were really helpful to be between from strength to strength and how to know a person. But I'll name one that I finished recently that was actually recommended to me by somebody who I was doing spiritual direction with. And it's a book called Transitions by a guy named William Bridges. And I'd never heard of it. It's probably like 40 years old, but it's just one of those books that has, you know, it's still in publication. It has a long staying power because it's a beneficial book. And it's really just a book where he talks about

what does it look like to go through life transitions and go through them well. Whether you're discerning relationship changes, whether you're discerning job changes, whether you're discerning location changes or smaller transitions. I think what I appreciated about it was, hey, this was a book written 40 years ago.

So this wasn't a book where a publisher approached a guy because he had an audience, right? This wasn't a book. He was a school teacher, as I recall. He didn't have a YouTube audience or whatever. And so, Hey, you must have something to say publish a book, you know, which is how so many book deals happen now. I'm sorry. Uh, I just appreciate that this is a book because someone had thought deeply about all of these things and started developing their thinking about it enough that they could pitch it to a publisher and they would say, yeah, this would be a good book.

I love the backstory of it. I don't know the full backstory, but I love that it's a book that's 40 years old. It's still meaningful and still beneficial. And I think there's some, to use a phrase I've used throughout today, there's some practical wisdom in there about how to approach transitions in your life, how to make the most of them. He talks even specifically about every transition as a beginning, a middle and an end. And I think we really try to compress that middle part of transitions. We know when there's a decision that's about to be made and then once the decision is made, we're quick to move on to getting past it.

But there's often kind of a hard in between where we just need to give time to maybe that transition means letting go of something that we weren't ready to let go of. Maybe that maybe that transition is something to just sit with and celebrate more. But I just really appreciated that perspective that there's this in between part of a transition that we need to spend more time with. Nice. I like it. So my book, I just finished Lean Learning by Pat Flynn yesterday. That was the previous one. And I picked up a book when I was in Woodstock for Mac stock. There's a bookstore that I love there called read between the lines.

L Y N E S a play on the owner's last name. And they had their 20th birthday, you know, that celebration happening in Woodstock when we were there. But that's one of my things is whenever I go to Mac stock, I go to that bookstore and I ended up buying, buying a book there. And the one I got this time is called Moonshot, a NASA astronaut's guide to achieving the impossible. I haven't started this one yet, but it looks really interesting.

I mean, Moonshot is the term for, you know, the thing that could change your life, but seems impossible. And he has in the bullets in the description on Amazon and also in the little blurb you know one in a million is not zero the odds are against you do it anyway I don't know feels like an interesting take on a lot of the motivational productivity type stuff which is sort of my jam anyways but I the the framing of this through a NASA astronaut talking about you know the space application of this and it looks like there's a bunch of personal story that's gonna be told in here and it's also not a super long book so I feel like this one will

be easy to to get through, which is a breath of fresh air in the productivity space for me and a lot of the books we've been reading lately for Bookworm have been like 300 plus pages. This one is, I think, just over 200 with all of the front and back stuff. I have hovered over this book so many times, Mike. I don't know why, but Amazon keeps throwing it at me and I am super curious about it.

So I'm going to let you read it and then tell me because I could follow you down that rabbit hole I think. I will do. All right. What about shiny objects, Mike? You got any new shiny new objects you want to share? I do. I almost have lots of shiny new objects, as I mentioned.

The cameras that Doc Rock was showing me at MaxDoc were pretty cool. But I have something less expensive that I have been using because I've taken a couple of trips recently. I went to Boise for Craft and Commerce. I went to less space that would allow me to charge my iPhone, my AirPods and my Apple watch. And I ended up stumbling upon this anchor Maggo UFO three in one charger. UFO is the perfect description for this because there's like these two half circles that fold

on top of each other. And then the little puck that charges the Apple watch piece folds on top of that. So you unfold it and there's three things that charges the Apple watch piece folds on top of that. So you unfold it and there's three things that are connected in a row and you plug one USB-C cable into it. But when you fold it all up, it looks like it looks like a UFO. But this thing is great. Have you have you used one of these?

I have one of them. Yeah, I figured you might have one of these. It's great. It takes like no space. Yeah. And you can charge three things. Excellent. Look, you know, anchor, I am so in the bag for those guys when it comes to like batteries and battery related stuff. I've just had such good luck with them. Recently, I heard they had recall on something, like they had a battery that went bad on something. But the fact that they're doing a recall just tells you that they're kind of reputable and like they stand behind their products. And there's a lot of people

making batteries that they don't. And you got to trust somebody, right? And I'm definitely an anchor fan. Yeah. What about you, John? Yeah, I mean, anything I say is new and shiny, right? Because I don't have to say something every two weeks. Yeah. Sometimes we skip it. It just depends how we're doing as participants in the capital of society. For me, I have over to my left, I'm sitting in my office right now, my office at home, and I have over to my left.

What it is, is I have this empty section of wall when we first moved in this house, and I just realized I want to have another space that's just for more slow kinds of work or thinking work. So I originally just set it up and I mean, it is a Frankenstein of a woodworking project underneath there. David, I would never let you see the underneath side because it's like two by fours and big ugly hinges and two by two. I built my own mechanism so that I can hold it down against the wall when I want to get it out of the way, but I hardly ever do. And so I've had that for a few years and I've used it for different things.

Sometimes it's even a little tiny makeshift workbench and I've used it for other things along the way. But the new shiny object is a few months ago. I got just one of those us. I don't even know the brand cause I got it. I think I got it on eBay, just cheap, but I got one of those USB-C monitors that you can plug into an iPad and it's 1440 resolution. So it's not terrible to look at when you're looking back and forth between your iPad. But I did. So I have over there, it's my little, maybe I could call it my wisdom desk, right? Because expanding my iPad onto a bigger screen

that's elevated up at eye level, I've got a little shelf for it, you know, and I hook up a keyboard and a touch pad to my iPad. And that's where I start my work day, so to speak. I spent a little time in my reading chair over here, but then I move over there and that's where I do my journaling every morning. And that's where I also do like after a journal,

I kind of plan my day. I look at my to-do list for the day and determine what are gonna be my primary tasks for that day that I wanna make sure I get through. And it's really helpful just to have another space to do that kind of work that's different from my big desk where I'm sitting here with my Mac studio and my big monitor in front of my face right now. I like having something smaller and simpler that's focused

really is what it's, I actually have a YouTube video recorded about this that hasn't been published yet. So perhaps, perhaps that also will be live by the time we do this, but the point is that that little monitor really makes the iPad useful to me in a new way for so, so many years. I had the fantasy of the little focused workstation, focused computer where I could go and I couldn't do anything on it but write. And I finally kind

of have that over there with just, but in a much nicer looking screen and a much nicer keyboard. I love starting my day over there every day. I kind of wish I spent more time over there. I think the quality of my life is defined by how much time I get to spend at that desk versus this desk. That's interesting, like an indicator of how you're spending your time. It's like yeah, I'm doing more deep work I'm at that desk. I I'm a big fan of multiple desks if you have the room and I think a set of two by fours and a piece of plywood on top of it are perfectly acceptable I at when I was a lawyer. I built myself a standing desk It was a little fancier built myself a standing desk.

It was a little fancier out of walnut. And I would practice opening and closing statements at it. I would do all my proofreading there. This is before the iPad existed and you'd print it out and I'd have a red pen and I'd sit over there at the standing desk and proofread and plan my day. I used it for so many things after I kind of got out of the practice of law.

Even when I left the firm and started my firm from home, I didn't have room for it, so I gave it to a lawyer friend and it's still being used for that purpose. And currently I have my own kind of like thinking slash writing desk in my studio that I work at. I think that's a great practice if you're listening and you've got space to set up a card table could be enough to maybe give you that break breakthrough.

And the beauty of that monitor is, you can temporarily create that space anywhere. Yeah. There's something that's something about shifting your context to do different kinds of thinking at different places. So even if it's just something that you can't occupy all day long, but you could set up a little monitor like that at your kitchen table, you know, or something like that.

Just so you know, when I'm in this space, I'm doing something different. Yeah. Jeff Sheldon's been a guest on the show and he's just a really thoughtful guy. And whenever he comes out with a new product, I'm like, Oh, I don't need that. And then I order one, you know, and I, uh, he came out with a new product and a three or four months ago called capture cards. And they're like,

I think a little bigger than double the size of his analog cards. And he's got a nice little steel tray. And I ordered a set of them thinking, well, let me just get some as an experiment. And it's just having a nice thick card stock, large piece of paper on your desk. I just find so many uses for these analog capture cards. And so I'm going to go ahead and call them out.

If you're looking for a way to have something you can jot notes down and think with a pencil and paper on your desk, this may be something you wanna check out. Very cool, I've seen these and been tempted by these, but I have resisted so far. Yeah, they're nice, they're really nice. And I also have the plotters and some of the other

stuff. But like I said, when you're at your desk, sometimes it's kind of nice just to knock it out and they've got a really subtle dock grid on it. So you can even sketch furniture with one. Yeah. My entire office space is littered with Thug Monk stuff. Litter is the wrong word because it's beautiful. Everything that he makes is beautiful. But yeah, if my office was sponsored by a single company, it would be Ug Monk. Well, John, I am just so happy to see what you've been doing lately. And I think your voice is one that the internet needs.

So I'm really glad that you're taking the time to do it. Where do people go if they want to learn more about what you're up to? I mean, the easiest place would be johnchandler.me, which is that just directs to my micro blog. Like you've talked about, you're probably not very active on social media. And that's my micro blog where there's no comments and there's no likes and I have no idea how many followers I have, but I's my micro blog where there's no comments and there's no likes. And I have

no idea how many followers I have, but I really love micro blog, like micro.blog. And I probably only post little blog posts there like once a month, but primarily also there is, I have like a page and an about page where links to my YouTube channel and my spiritual direction website and my WordPress work. All those are linked from there. So that's where you can find everything. John Chandler dot me. Excellent, we will put it in the show notes.

We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus. If you'd like to sign up for Deep Focus, the ad for extended version of the show, do it right there, relay.fm slash focus. Today on Deep Focus, the ad for extended version of the show. Do it right there. Related.fm slash focus today on deep focus. We're going to be talking to John about his journaling practice. Mike and I just can't resist, of course. Uh, thank you to our sponsors today.

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