Focused - 236: Focus Traps

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Welcome to Focus, the Productivity Podcast, about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my co-host, the one and only, Mr. Mike Schmitz. How you doing, Mike? Pretty good. Thanks for that wonderful introduction. Oh, you deserve it. You deserve it. Oh, thanks.

I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. Although lately, sometimes I've been catching myself getting out of focus. And I'm like, that's not good. I make a podcast called Focus. So I started collecting a list of focus traps, and I thought today it would be fun to just share some of the ways you and I fall off the rails. Yeah, well, sharing about how we fall off the rails sounds maybe not fun per se, but I think this will be a good episode. I've actually ran into quite a few people recently who have been at a conference that I was at or just sending me emails who said,

that they came into my, I came into the radar because they were listening to the Focus podcast. And one of the things that they always say they appreciate it with Focus Podcasts. And really the goal is that we want to share basically our experience, not just the shiny stuff that works well, you know, but it's in the tagline for the show. We're fellow travelers. So I feel like these episodes maybe are not the most fun from a online productivity expert perspective, but you and I would not profess to be experts. And these types of shows typically tend to be some of my most favorite episodes and the ones that have the most longevity. So it's an important topic and I'm glad we're talking about it today. Well, the dirty secret is that

you and I have met some of the big online productivity experts. And some of those people have at the least together if anybody I've ever met. So it's okay. It's okay. So we're all trying. We're all trying. But you and I talked about this. We started collecting a list. And it's kind of a fun list. And maybe you fellow travelers can relate to us and some of the ways you have trouble staying focused. And we're not going to just talk about the traps, but also maybe how we get out of the traps or avoid them. So we got a big list here. Mike, why don't you start it off? All right. So the first one I wrote down is open loops or set another way maybe failing to capture. And I feel like there's two different versions of this for me, which is why I would tend to stumble into this occasionally. And the two different types of things that could cause open loops, I feel are things that I need to capture that are going to be like, content ideas, things that I want to make something about, whether that's a YouTube video,

a podcast, a newsletter. And then also there are things that really aren't needing to go through the whole creative process, but it's just something that I need to remember to do. And I don't capture all of the tiny little details of everything that I need to do into my task management system. We've talked about that before. So when I publish a focused episode, for example, I have published focused on my task list. And then I've got a checklist of things that go in there. So the checklist is a separate node in Obsidian. So I can go through and I can make sure that I hit all the things. But if there's something that's like, oh yeah, I got to remember to do this later today, most of the time I capture that and I put a reminder on it or something like that. But I realize that when

I don't have an idea for something like that that capture bucket is very clearly defined that is drafts but also I'm recognizing that there is this space for what Cal Newport would call the working memory dot TXT file you familiar with that concept yeah yeah it's literally just a text note that he keeps open on his computer where he jots down everything that he might need to think through and I recognize that when there's something that you know I may need to do something with, but it's not really a task. It doesn't need to go and to do or something like that. And it's not really a content idea. Those things can kind of fall through the cracks. So lately I've been using the app taught on my Mac, which is this beautiful little menu bar app to just jot down things when I

need to basically put it on the back burner. And then as part of the shutdown routine, go through those at the end of the day. And I find that having a place where I can put those things that don't really belong anywhere else has been really helpful. But when I don't, like that the open loop, that's the trap. You know, when it's like, oh, I'll remember to do that thing later. I'll remember to get back to that person. I remember to reply to that email later. If I don't write it down, then I've forgotten those things often enough and I feel bad about letting people down that that creates that open loop. And my brain just constantly comes back to that thing. It makes it almost impossible to focus for more than five to ten minutes at a time on whatever thing

I happened to be doing. And it sounds so stupid that, you know, the minute that I'm like, okay, fine, I'll follow the process and I'll just write out the thing that's, that I'm thinking about on that top page that all of a sudden the burden is lifted and I can focus on the video project or whatever it is that I'm trying to do. Yeah, I really think that that is something a lot of us struggle with, and you answered it. I mean, the question is, have a reliable capture system. I also use drafts. Over the last, you know, I have realized that there's, in my life, there's a need for some analog stuff. I just, I do like the process of writing things down. It kind of helps me in my peanut size brain sometimes. And so I have bought over

the years a lot of field notes. Like I subscribed for a couple of years, and I have like this big pile of them. And now I'm going through them where I just keep one in my pocket. And there's a variety of things I use for them. But one of the things I do is the back page of it. I just write ideas at the top. So in addition to drafts, sometimes I'm not somewhere where I want to get to drafts or can. But I always have this thing in my pocket with a little pencil. And I write down capture of ideas there. I mean, the big goal for me is I don't want to lose ideas. They're too precious. And and they're very easy to lose. So it's the same kind of thing for me.

I don't want those open loops. So I've got both a digital and an analog solution. And I think one of the things you could take from this discussion is both of us have multiple capture systems. And that's okay so long as you clean them out. Yeah, exactly. That's the balance is you don't want to create too many inboxes that you don't check them. But it's worth it to have separate inboxes for different types of things. I feel that you would need to capture. There's something about when I'm going into

tot, it's these types of things. When I'm going into drafts, it's these types of things. And you have to find the balance there for yourself. But basically, you want the path of least resistance. You want your brain to know whenever I go into this thing, this is what I'm going to find here. This is what I'm doing when I'm engaging with this particular application. And this all fits into, you know, I've got a framework for this. I call the PKM stack. and I actually did figure out, you know, these are the different levels, information, ideas, actions. And then at the top, there's my identity, which is kind of like my vision and values. And one of the most valuable exercises I did was I wrote down for those different levels,

all of the tasks to be done at each level and chose which app I was going to use for each one of those things. But then you still have to review it because things change. And you'll find that, you know, just because you documented some stuff, there still might be something. things that are falling through the cracks. So figuring out where those holes are and plugging them is important for me. Yeah. One of my traps that stands out for me is what I call ignoring energy and plowing through. I mean, the work I do, it's creative work and it needs to be good. And sometimes I drag myself through something and then at the end I look at it and I'm like, that's not good. And the reason is because it wasn't the right moment to make that thing. And I know this sounds really

precious, but I think that really even applied back when I was a lawyer. Like there was times when I did not write my best briefs. So I've been really trying to be more cognizant of my energy levels and just like kind of where my creative juices are flowing and really like tie into that and do a better job of pulling that together. Like, I know that often, after I take a little break, which is kind of adds to another one, but I, you know, after I take a little break and, like, spend some time in the shop

or take the dog for a walk, I actually come back and I always make some of my best stuff when I give myself that break. And so I'm trying to be more cognizant of that energy level versus plowing through. And it's hard to hold on to focus when you're trying to force the, you know, the monkey brain to do things that the monkey brain doesn't want to do.

Yeah, let's unpack that a little bit. I do the same thing, but what do you think causes you to feel like you need to plow through? Like, there's a lot just in that phrase. What does that actually look like and what's the root cause you think? Honestly, part of it is block scheduling, right? You block scheduled the time for it now. So you're like, well, this is the time I've set for it. so by gosh, I'm going to do it. And that's not really ideal. You know, this is something that's evolved

for me, you know, talking to Paul Lumens on the show got me thinking, I didn't go the full no-list Paul method, you know, but I am being less stringent about block scheduling. I do have blocks that need to get done every week, but I'm not preordaining them to times. I'm trying to be more flexible about when I use them based on energy level. But but you know if I say well last Sunday I thought this was the time that I could write this thing so I'm going to do it that's really not ideal yeah interesting so the the time blocking that's actually the next one on my list anything else you wanted to say about this before otherwise we'll just use that as the transition I guess yeah so time blocking for me has a little bit of the opposite

effect. But also I feel I understand where you're coming from and there have been instances of that. It's just not a trap that rears its ugly head, I guess, all that off. And for me, the time blocking, the thing that would get me to not time block is feeling like I have more to do than I can possibly squeeze in. And so when I time block, I know I am forcing myself to only bite off what I can actually chew. And still in the moment, there'll be times where it's like, well, really, these things have to get done today. So you just got to figure out a way to make it work. And at that point, my brain says, well, what's the point of time blocking? And every time that I don't time block, it's the same thing. It's my brain just cannot focus on the thing in front of me

because I haven't predefined what are the things that I'm actually going to do today. And it's different than the weekly planning where it's like these are the things that I need to get done this week and I find when I make that list, those things often kind of self-organize into the appropriate days. You know, focus comes out on Tuesdays. So that's the day to do that. But when I am actually time blocking my day, I'm forced to wrestle with my own natural constraints, my biological constraints, my physical constraints. And I don't like that. So the trap is that I'll feel like, oh, you know, I don't want to be held back by the time block plan. And I know how ridiculous that sounds, even as I say it. But sometimes I just try to borrow your term plow through. You know,

that's what that looks like for me. It says, it's like, I have this list of things that I need to get done in the next two weeks. And I know it's going to be a Herculean effort to get all these things done. So I just got to keep cranking. I got to go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. And that always sabotages me. I always end up doing less and feeling worse about it when I do this. But this is just the battle that rages in my brain. So what's the solution to this? It's simple. Just time block your day. And there's different, you know, things that I've added to my time blocking process, which I feel make it more successful for me. Like I never use a block that's less than an hour. And I force myself to pick the three things that are

that are most important for the day. And I get, you know, from a logical perspective, the benefit of that. But then every once in a while, the rebellious gray matter is like, now we can totally do more than three things today. And it's like, well, I guess, you know, we'll skip time blocking. Yeah, I want to go back to that question, what's the solution to this? Because I thought you were going to go different direction. And I think the solution to this is to do less. And that is so easy for a privileged podcaster to say to you on a podcast. I used to be a lawyer and I carried 100 business clients and I know what it's like to be overwhelmed. And I think when you're dealing with that, where you're the fire, hose is spraying more water than you can drink. Time blocking is essential because it really does allow you to at least pick the stuff that's most important. But there's kind of an underlying assumption there that you're not going to get it all done. Yep. And when I think about my life now, I have really gotten diligent about things like, I shut down a podcast with one of my best friends

last year because I realized that there just wasn't enough time to do it all. And I just had to make a decision. And making those decisions often means giving up good stuff. But the benefit is for me, I really do have enough time to do the stuff that I've chosen to keep on my plate. And I generally get it done every week. And sometimes things happen, right? Life gets in the way. But my life at this point is much calmer because I've said no to some I've made some really hard noes and and I think that that makes it easier. So I'm not saying that that's necessarily something everybody can do. I know if I was back in the days when I was making Max Barky stuff and practicing law, I would just roll my eyes hearing advice like that. But I will tell you that if you decide to

to do less, your life will not end, you'll probably be just fine and you will not have that constant feeling that you're running downhill. I used to talk about that on this show all the time. Mike, I just feel like I'm running down hill. I don't feel like that anymore. And it's because I made some big decisions, gave up a bunch of money, but still I'm doing fine and I'm happy and I'm making good stuff. And that was a really big thing for me. It's something I knew in my guts, but you have to make the leap of faith.

You've got to do the Indiana Jones thing where you stick your foot out and just fall forward. And I don't know. That's a big one. It is. And I think you're right. I framed it differently,

but it's really time blocking is the forcing function, which makes me do less. Yeah. And the struggle for me currently is still trying to build the independent creator business. Yeah. Sure. It's the hardest thing I've ever done and it's taken the longest, it's taken way longer than I thought it was going to take. So they're still kind of like, well, you got to figure out something. You got to solve the next problem. And that is definitely a contributing factor. And I recognize that that's kind of my season right now. It's not always going to be this way. I do want to do less. But the, the, the, the, you know, really what are you optimizing for is the key question there. And I love the choices that you made and what you're choosing to optimize for. I feel like that's a little bit aspirational for me at this point. And if you're in a spot like me, I think the best thing to do there is just to not

get upset because you can't get to that point, but make progress where you can. It's the little things that if you can make those small 1% adjustments. So maybe there is a, you know, something that I should be saying no to and that's part of the personal retreat process why I ask those questions every single every single quarter because I feel like if you are consistently thinking about it and you're making small decisions eventually that's going to compound so it's not always going to be this way yeah I was just talking to my daughter about this the other day because like look you're way ahead of me I I practiced law 30 years and I spent 15 years doing a side hustle at the same time and I ran down hill for a long time, you know, so, but I'm just saying, keep, keep at it. I think the goal is to get

to a point where you can say enough knows that you don't feel like you're running downhill. Because it's a lot easier to focus when you're not running downhill. Right. Another one for me that's been really helpful is what I call mode shifting. And I, you know, we've talked about this in the past in the show, but I have got, maybe this is one of the benefits of the fact that I have had said to know enough is there's a couple things in my life that I have decided are non-negotiables. You know, I spend an hour a day in the wood shop and maybe I'm just sweeping a broom or maybe I'm cutting dovetails or doing something fancy, but at least an hour a day I go out there and it's a complete, you work with your hands, not your brain. It's like a complete reset.

Likewise, I do a meditation practice, and likewise I do what I call. The newest one is read and reflect, where I spend an hour reading a good book and writing about it, what I read. So it's a very slow process for me to read a book. When I find something that's interesting, I sort out my own thoughts on it. So that's a couple hours a day to do all that. And I think there's 24 hours in a day, I can claim two for me. But the benefit of it is it's a huge focus game because when I come back from doing those

things and then get back to work, my brain is like reset. You know, it's like waking up after a good night's sleep. You're just ready to go. And I knew that, you know, intellectually, but now I know it my bones because I'm experiencing it. And like even just last week we had a family thing we had to go to. So I was out of town for three days. And so I was really, really pressed for three days to get, you know, five days work done in three days.

I still said, you know, they're non-negotiable for a reason. And I still took those times and did the mode shifts. And I find on days when I try to give myself an excuse not to do it, that my focus just goes, goes all wacky on me. So what are the excuses that you give yourself not to do it? I'm curious. Well, I mean, it's just like, this is more important. this is how I pay for my shoes. I need to get the work done. The labs members are depending on me. Mike is depending on me. I need to spend more time doing the stuff that pays the

bills. Yeah. And then what's the conversation in your head like when you're able to win that argument? I am now 57 years old. My expiration date is going to arrive. And when they put me in the ground, I want to have spent more time in the wood shop. Also, you know, it's just like I know, I know it's just like the meditation thing is a good example a lot of people will write me because i've kind of come out as a meditator and they're like i get it i think it's a great idea i just don't have the time to do it and and my my personal experience is that when i spend 30 minutes 60 minutes on a cushion i get those minutes back with focus throughout the day and it's like a time you get the time back you know and i feel the same way with the reading and

and the handwork time. It just makes me feel more fulfilled. It makes me happier and it also makes me more creative when I do the work. And I just try to remind myself of that. Like, oh yeah, you need to do that because it's going to make the other stuff better.

Sitting here, you know, getting back to an earlier point and plowing through, just never is satisfactory. Yeah, those little things, those investments, those are hard. to justify in the moment when you have a to-do list that is longer than the hours available to you

in the day, but they do compound and they definitely provide a outsized return on the investment. You just got to maintain the perspective in the moment to actually follow through on that stuff. I was just thinking this morning when I woke up, you know, we have, near my house, there's a two-mile hike that goes up into the hills so it's really good cardio and i was just reading how like people who exercise regularly don't deal with dementia they live longer they're happier and and i do exercise i have different things i do to exercise and i do this hill like a couple two three times a week and i was thinking why can't i make that a thing also that i just do every day just every day i don't know in the morning and the evening just do the walk do the hike and that's another one that's on my on my board now

I'm thinking about. And my advice to you if you're out there and you're really busy, find some sort of separate work that you can mode shift into, even just 30 minutes a day and just do an experiment and do it for a month, but make it non-negotiable for a month. Every day, spend 30 minutes doing something. Maybe you like to do crochet or maybe, you know, you like to teach your dog tricks or whatever. But find something like that that lets you disengage your brain from the work and then observe how effective you are when you come back. But give it 30 days. Don't just give up on it after a day or two. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

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Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. So speaking of non-negotiables that are sometimes negotiated. One of my focus traps is failing on my morning routine. And when I was making this list of things for this episode, I was honestly surprised to see this one show up because for a long time, this was rock solid for me. I knew exactly what I did every single morning and I followed through with it without fail. And I noticed that lately, it's not that I have really failed to do a morning routine, but I have failed to do my morning routine. Basically, there are different aspects of it that it's like, I don't really have time for that. And there are, you know, if you're traveling or something,

there's the concept of like having an 80-20 of your morning routine because it's a different environment. You don't have the time. That's not really what I'm talking about here. It's really just I go into an urgency mindset because I know there's a big project that I got to work on or something. And it's like, oh, I'll just cut this short and let's get to work. And that's such a mistake. So specifically here, you know, my morning routine itself hasn't really changed. The first thing I do when I wake up is I will read my Bible and I'll spend some time praying. And that I've been able to follow through with still every single day. That's not a problem. I'll drink a, I've got my water bottle. So I try to drink 20 ounces of water. First thing when I wake up, because that

gets me going. And, you know, you start the day hydrated. One of the best things that I've done over the last several years is just start monitoring how much water I was drinking and making sure that I was drinking enough. That gave me more energy, solved a whole bunch of just like minor health problems. So I recognize the value of that. But lately I've been finding that I can't quite get through all of the water bottle anymore. Like, why is that? Because I get distracted by something else. And I'm not just, you know, enjoying the morning routine. The other thing that I've been doing as part of my morning routine for a very long time, I've dealt with sciatic nerve pain in the past. And so while back I went to a physical therapist and he gave me these stretches. I've been doing

them every single morning for years. And lately I'm recognizing that I'm having this mental battle in my head about whether I have time to do the stretches. And 95% of the time, probably even more than that, you know, I still follow through and do the stretches. But I recognize that there are times when I do my morning routine where I'm sort of going into it with the attitude of let's hurry up and get through this, which I know kind of defeats the purpose, especially some of the mindfulness stuff that I do. And yeah, so I want to get back to just carving out that, that sacred hour in the morning and just enjoying the morning routine again. And this isn't, you know, every single day. This is just, I feel like I've got this, this busy mind that I'm,

I'm trying to rush through. There are days when I still am able to follow through with this, and probably the majority of the days, to be honest, because it's so firmly ingrained. But I've been thinking about this lately, and I'm recognizing that the door has been cracked open to this in a way that I'm uncomfortable with. So I wanted to call it out and recognize that it's worth fighting for.

Yeah, I mean, the fact that you notice, I think, is huge. And I think the mindfulness piece of this should not be underrated. The reason I was talking about the mode shift stuff earlier is because I really, when I go out to the shop or do the walk or whatever, just leave the work behind and just focus on enjoying the moment of what I'm doing. You know, if you can't do that, you're really losing the benefit of it. So the practice of the morning routine is huge for you. I mean, that's funny because I had one too. we put these lists together independently, but I have one. I just call, you know, blowing shutdown, right?

You know, because I do so much of the planning stuff at the end of the day. You know, it's like when my brain is kind of fried at the end of the day, I find it's actually an excellent time to plan for me. And that one, if I miss it, the next day doesn't go that well. And it's just, it's just always the case I have experienced this so many times. I've talked about it so many times I'm not going to do. dwell on it but it took me a long time to develop the habit of a daily shutdown routine now that i have it i hold on to it greedily but i do miss it occasionally and it it messes me up so i i know i know

the next day focus will be more of a challenge because of it so i'm pretty good at it as well i'm not i don't see any bad trends right now but it is something i'm always aware if you're like you know when alcoholics say, I've been sober for, you know, 200 years, you know, I've been sober for 200 days or, you know, they've got some, like, I don't know how AAA works, but they've got like a thing where they talk about how long they've been sober. I feel like I am that way with shutdown. You know, I've done the shutdown now for three years, you know. But when they say, I'm an alcoholic, but I haven't had a drink for 200 days. Well, you know, I am a shutdown violator, but I haven't done it for three years, you know, kind of thing. so yeah when you find a routine like that that's beneficial to your focus you really have to hold on to it dearly yeah and you have to i think recognize that that fight of because the struggle that's going on in the moment is really am i going to get the benefit now or am i going to get the benefit in the future and i don't know why it's so easy

to slip back into, well, I just need a little bit more right now. Yeah. Like I know, I know the power of the compound effect. And I know that these little things that you do, do them consistently, are going to contribute outsized returns. I know that is the important thing. And still, in the moment, doesn't make those voices any quieter when they show up and they say, hey, you know what, it'll be okay.

You can, you can skip it today. it's fine you know when you when past you decided that the shutdown routine was important that the morning routine was important you know they didn't know that you were going to have this much to do today and they'll totally understand it's fine yeah he he is a productivity bozo and ignore him because you're getting good work done now I think part of the explanation is momentum like for me at the end of the day maybe I'm working on something and it's going well and it's like well I don't want to give up the momentum, you know. So maybe a productive hour, extra hour right now is worth it to wreck tomorrow, you

know, and like it's not. It never is. In fact, the deal, one of the key things that helped me get past this was I would tell myself, okay, you have momentum. That's great. Do your shutdown and then you can continue with that momentum right after the shutdown. Like I make like a deal with myself. And sometimes I do that after I finish this.

shut down. I'll go back to what I was working on. But more often, I'm like, yeah, you know what, that's good enough for today. You know, I can pick up this momentum. I mean, that's another benefit of journaling is, you know, interstitial journaling. You write down where you left off. And then that kind of allows you to just like reengage your brain when you pick it up again. Yeah, I like the idea of momentum. That actually leads to probably a root cause of my next one on the list here, which is trying to do too much, which we sort of talked a little bit about here. But also the thing that I think triggers this for me is exactly what you were describing. It gets to be four or five o'clock when typically I would do my shutdown.

And I've got momentum. And I've got this big project that I need to do. And I feel like the conversation in my head goes something like, well, you've already overcome the initial procrastination. and you're in your in flow. So why not just keep going? Because this is the most productive time you're going to find to do this this week. And more often than not, you know, I'll give into that. Well, more often than I care to admit, it's not, you know, that I give into this all the time. But that is the trap is like, yeah, you're right. You know, I'm in the, I'm in the zone. I'll just keep going on this because I know when I try to come back to this tomorrow, it's going to be hard to pick up at the exact spot where I am right now.

be, it's going to take more effort if I don't stick with it right now. And at the beginning of the week, it's easy to borrow your term plow through in those scenarios. And then by the end of the week, you realize, I'm exhausted. What is my deal? Oh, that's right. Monday and Tuesday. You know, I worked 10, 12 hours because I didn't want to stop doing the thing. One of the other ways that trying to do too much manifest for me is I get real excited about new things. And it's easy for me to say yes to new opportunities. And I kind of, if I'm honest with myself, I justify it now because it's like, well, you got to figure out the business thing. So you don't know where the next thing is going to, next hit is going to come from. So you just got to try stuff. And there is some truth to that,

but that doesn't mean that I can just keep adding things. And one of the things that I've done with the personal retreat process, which is sort of a systemic way for me to push back against this, is that every single quarter, I force myself to pick something to stop doing. And what that does is it builds in some margin and it builds in some buffer. It pushes back against the version of Mike who in the moment is like, no, we got to figure this out. We got to make this work. by getting into a different location, I feel like that's the key for me.

That's why I go away to those tiny cabins because when I'm in that place, it's almost like a different person is reflecting on all of the things that I have been doing over the last 90 days. And that person can see real clearly, no, this is going to kill you. You've got to stop this. And so I've just kind of resigned myself to the fact that every 90 days, I'm going to have to have a hard conversation with somebody probably because I'm going to pick something that I said yes to previously, which is no longer the right thing for me to be doing and I'm going to have to stop. So this is a bit of a tangent here, but it's real for me right now. Every time

that I've had those conversations with people, I feel like I don't want to let these people down. They're going to think less of me if I say I don't want to do this thing anymore or I can't do this thing anymore. That's 90% of the time. That's a lie. If you're doing work with good people who actually care about you, you know, the lie I was telling myself with something specifically was, well, you know, if I don't do this, someone else, no one's going to be able to do this is going to be this whole, like, I'm the guy, I have to figure out a way to make this work. And then I had the conversation with the person and they're like, you know what, you should have taken a break a long time ago. In fact, I told you twice, you should take a break from

this thing. And I was like, oh, yeah, you actually did. You know, they understand. And I put more pressure on myself to honor these obligations that I've made to people. people. And maybe those are not obligations that are worth honoring anymore. Maybe we should have, you know, I should have those difficult conversations with people and get the clarity that I need. Yeah. And that, you know, that's the way you push yourself to do less. And it just solved so many of the problems like we talked about earlier. A couple things in your, which we were just discussing that stood out to me is that person that you take to the retreat is kind of the manager version of yourself. And I often think that the manager is, you know, underrated for me. Because I like to make

stuff. You know, the manager is like the suit and I don't want the suit in the room. But the manager really is the person that gets me to do the shutdown to say no to things. Like, I think you need to indulge that that part of you sometimes more. Another thing that I thought of when you were talking about like working later, because I have that experience too sometimes. Or it's like, like these field guide videos are so time intensive to make. It takes so long to make them. And sometimes I get going and I'll record to like 10 at night. And then I think that I'm like just killing it, right?

And then the next day I'll come to do the edits on them and they're garbage, you know, and they're just not good because I was tired. And I sound tired and I'm not like on my game. And I realize that that two hours or three hours I spent making them was wasted. because no, I have to throw them out and do them again. And you read these studies about multitasking. You know, how people think that like when they're multitasking, they're like on top of their game.

And when you look objectively, when you actually test people, they're doing really poorly while they multitask. I think the same thing works with momentum pushes. When you get to the end of the day, you keep going. You're not doing your best work. And I think that's another thing to tell yourself when you get tempted to do. It's like, look, do I want to do my best. work or do I just want to grind this out? And in my case, I don't want to grind things out. I want

to do my best work. And part of that is just acknowledging, okay, I'm not going to make anything worth sharing any, you know, at this point. So I'm going to stop. And that's something to keep in mind when you get to that tipping point. Yeah, that's definitely true. The quality for sure suffers after a certain point. And that is something that I understand logically, but it's still something that in the moment I can convince myself. No, no, no, no. That doesn't apply to me. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Incogny. Go to incogny.com to take your personal data back. Use code Focus to get 60% off an annual plan. Did you know data brokers can collect, aggregate, and sell personal information, including names,

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there's a dashboard which provides updates on the status of removal requests. Go check it out with a 30-day money back guarantee. Go to incogny.com slash focused and secure your data to date. day. Protect your privacy with Incogni and experience peace of mind knowing your personal information is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni and don't forget to use the code Focus to get that 60% off of an annual plan. Check it out now at Incogni, I-C-O-G-N-I-C-N-I-C-O-G-N-I.com and our thanks to Incogni for their support of the Focus Podcasts and all of Relay. one that actually causes me to lose focus are what I call focus stunts you know because of the show

we make and stuff people send me apps all the time to try and and I'm always on the lookout for the latest like clever gizmo to help you stay focused and my general experience is that that stuff actually gets in the way I don't need you know to record to the minute various focus modes on different things I do. I don't need, you know, all the like gizmos and apps that show up that are supposed to help you do all this stuff. I generally find that stuff doesn't work. I think when you're on this journey and you find kind of a simple recipe that works for you, just stick with that and don't, don't turn it into like some sort of, you know, hunt for additional focus where you actually don't actually don't

actually do the work. Yeah. The new shiny, basically. Yeah. That is the trick, I feel like, for anybody who is as interested in productivity as you and I are, is balancing just work what works and experiment with new things. And you had a rule, which I liked. I don't remember the specifics of it, but it was something like,

I'm only going to allow myself to tweak my systems at a certain point of the year. Do you still do that? Yeah. I mean, I only allow myself to change big tools in the week between Christmas and New Year's. And so if I'm experimenting with stuff that looks interesting, I run it on a slow burn. Like in the Max Barky Labs, a bunch of the members are super into note plan, which is kind of a, it's kind of an obsidian light, but it's a native app and a lot of people

really love it. I've got some data in there and I'm playing with it, but I won't even consider switching to it until December. And then if I do, I'll do it at the end of the year. I'm not going to get in this game where I'm jumping between tools every month. Another thing I do is I give myself research time, like a research block of time each week to try new tools, but I don't let myself try new tools while I'm in the middle of working. If that makes sense. It does. So the research time, I don't actually have, I don't have it labeled that way. But I basically have been giving myself permission to play with things. And the way I justify it is I'm going to create content out of it. Yeah. I've been experimenting with live streaming. I mentioned in the last

episode, I met Doc Rocket at Max Doc. And he turned me on eCam live, which is a phenomenal piece of software. So I've been starting to do these YouTube live streams on Wednesdays, and I'll go into it with like a topic, and then I'll just kind of poke around in things, and based on comments people are leaving and stuff like that, I'll sort of explore things live, which sounds, I'm of two minds of this. I have for many, many years, created very polished videos, which condensed information into short periods for video courses. and things like that. That has been my jam. But there are a bunch of people who just want to turn you on in the background and just kind of watch you play with things. And I'm experimenting

with that. I don't know how that's going to really stick. But I do kind of like that. And it has triggered some different things and ideas for like the newsletter and videos that, real videos that I'm going to make real videos, quote, unquote, like the polished YouTube videos. So I don't know. In the past, I feel like I would have just, you know, written that off. Like, no, just stick with, stick with what works. But I do see the value of having, like, systemic space in your, your schedule to kind of play with that stuff. Yeah, mine this week is Mero. You know, I've been using Apple's, you know, free form, but everybody tells me I need to try Mero.

And so I'm going to spend some time on that this week and look into it. You know, it's like, so I've always got a list of two or three things I want to look into. And sometimes that will result in a workflow. or a new process or content and sometimes I'll be like, I don't think this is worth sharing and then I'll just move on. But the key here is just because you're in a content creation business doesn't mean that you can drop your obligations at any moment to play with the new and the shiny.

You have to put some discipline in. Right. Yeah. Well, focus stunts. I get myself into trouble with those. All right. the next one for me is something that I thought that I had solved when I left the digital marketing agency. And that is just basically scheduling too many meetings. So I don't

have a ton of meetings. My schedule is still pretty light, but I do try to batch these. And I have occasional meetings with, and I have somebody who is helping me with my YouTube videos. I have somebody who is helping me with some of the stuff with my community. And we have weekly meetings to go through those things. I'm starting to do because people have asked for it. Individual productivity coaching. And I want to compartmentalize these things into 30 minute blocks, 60 minute blocks. And especially if you break them down like the coaching stuff specifically into 30 minute blocks, you know, what do you do with the other 30 minutes? The temptation is, well, to schedule another call after that. We can get two done in an hour instead of one, right? And then

there's live events in the community that I host. And so there are obligations that are on my calendar that maybe weren't there, you know, six, eight months ago. And so as I'm trying to protect the other time to actually make the things, the pressure or the urge, I guess, is to, you know, compress these things into a smaller chunk of time. And every time I do that, and I don't give myself a buffer between things of at least 10 to 15 minutes, I find that, you know, I get done with a meeting and I've taken the notes, but I don't have the time to process them and they just, you know, it's an open loop that sits out there. That's really stressful for me the rest of the day. If I build in that buffer and I can actually close the loop after the meeting and do the things that I said I was going to do and just take care of it right away while I'm there, then that actually helps out a ton in order for me to be able to focus on the thing that I'm going to do next.

So it really is a thing that it's not going to have, well, arguably you could say it will compound. but the place where this, this really affects me is not, you know, if I have back-to-back meetings today, tomorrow is shot. But it really does make whatever else happens the rest of the day harder. It kind of ties back to the open loops that I mentioned at the beginning. But I recognize that these back-to-back meetings, if you just schedule them back-to-back, you don't give yourself the time in order to process those things, you're guaranteed to have those open loops. And it will it will cause me to be derailed in order in terms of my ability to focus what I'm trying on what I'm trying to do the rest of the time.

Yeah, you know, it's funny to me that like it feels to me like there's a lot of common themes in these focus traps, right? And part of it is, you know, ignoring things that we know better on and back-to-back meetings as ones, we know better. We've talked about it. I mean, that's a very basic lesson. but what it is about us that makes us feel like we can get around it or cheat on it. And it just, I do the same thing sometimes.

It's like, as my kids would say, Dad, you played yourself. That's a great way to put it, yeah. One for me is I am a neat freak. It's a weird thing, but I like all of my stuff and everything organized. And this has gone back into childhood. Like when I was a little boy, I had ways I wanted my toys organized. You know, it's always been a part of me. Maybe I'm neurodivergent at some level or something.

I don't know. But I find it incredibly difficult to get work done when I'm in a cluttered environment. And it sounds like I'm saying that I use that as an excuse not to do work. But that's not what I'm saying because I really find it hard to get the work. work done in a cluttered environment. So I have to really be aware of that. And when I'm doing things that make a mess, I have to clean up the mess as soon as I'm done. I can't leave the mess or I'm going to have a real hard time. I know that about myself, that that's a trap for me. Like, leaving a mess around means it's going to be hard for me to work. And like just last night,

I got a new dood that I can test my thunderbolt cables and lightning cables to test the speed and, you know, what the power surges on them. So I had all my cables out, and I had been labeling them all, because that's what I do, right? So I got, this one is 15 watts and 20 gigabytes per second. Okay, put a label on it. But it was bedtime. This is the kind of thing I'll do while I'm watching TV at night.

And I was going to go to bed, and I'm like, oh, no, I can't leave these here. They have to be put away and organized before I go to bed. Because if I wake up tomorrow morning and try to record focus, and I have all this stuff on my desk, it's going to drive me insane. And so that's a focus trap for me, as weird as it is. It's something, I don't know that this is useful to other people, but, you know, kind of know yourself, like, know the parts of you that are going to get hung up on things and don't put yourself in the position to get hug up.

Do you think this is, you kind of alluded to there that know yourself, right? So maybe different personalities are affected more by clutter. but you see those pictures of like the really famous creators and they have the messy desks and offices. Do you feel like they were creative in spite of that? Or is there actually a personality where that's an environment where they can actually thrive? No, I feel kind of inadequate when I see that. Like, oh yeah, you know, Picasso could have a mess and make a beautiful painting. And like I have to have a perfect desk and I'm like struggling to get words out of my mouth on a podcast. I feel like there's something wrong with me that I can't work with it,

you know, but at the same time, that's just who I am. And a cluttered mess is going to make it hard for me to focus. So just accept it. Yeah, but I guess the thing I'm driving at is it doesn't affect me as much as it sounds like it affects you. But I also don't think that clutter is a positive thing for me. I think it maybe is not as big of a stumbling block. But in a perfect world, I would wager that less mess is usually better. Would you agree? For me? Yeah, I would. But I think there's also some people who are completely agnostic and it doesn't matter to them. Like, even just like you and I video call each other all the time, right? I don't know if you still do it, but you used to have, like, all of your fountain pen

inks on your desk. They're off to the side now, but yeah. You show me that one. That would drive me nuts to have that on my desk all the time. It's like, what is this here for? I don't need this here. This can be put somewhere, you know? It's like, that's the kind of thing that, like I said, I don't know, maybe I'm on some

kind of spectrum, but the, but it's just, for me, it's a thing. And I need to just acknowledge it and realize that if I'm going to do a focus, work, I need to have a clean environment. So I need to do whatever it takes to get that done and not be, you know, I don't want to get to the point where it's time to do the work, but I have to stop the clean. So I try to like work around it. But, you know, my point here is that's just a little weird thing about me. But I suspect a lot of people listening have other little weird things. It may not be about cleaning. It may be something else entirely. But acknowledge that. And just don't judge.

yourself, just put yourself in a position to do focused work. Yeah, I guess that's the, if we were to summarize everything that we kind of talked about today, the focus traps are really obstacles that tend to, you tend to fall into. And the whole approach with protecting your focus, the whole idea behind everything we talk about on the podcast is really put in appropriate guardrails so that you don't fall off when you encounter those things that you know you're susceptible to. And just it's sort of like playing defense instead of playing offense, I think. Yeah.

You can do certain things, you know, with your focus, but a lot of it is really just protecting it to the best degree that you can and recognizing that it's not going to be perfect. You're never going to achieve perfection and you're going to be able to focus. and you're going to be able to focus for eight hours a day every day and just completely crush it in a permanent state of flow. But do what you can to protect those moments and make the most of them when they come. This episode of Focus is brought to you by HelloFresh.

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10 free meals plus a free item for life. Our thanks to HelloFresh for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. All right, Mike, what's your shiny new object these days? Well, I got some new running headphones. The power beats, too, came out, and they came out in orange, which is the best color. So I got those, and they're great. I had an old set of power beats that I was using prior to this, and for my longer runs, the batteries would not even last the entire time.

So there's sort of the same idea, the same form factor. You've got these wireless headphones that hook over your ears that actually get stored in a case a lot like the AirPods do. But these power beats too, they have some additional features like the heart rate monitoring and stuff like that that I don't really care about. But the battery is so much better that these have made a big difference for me. And it's also the cases smaller, which. is nice. I have at the YMCA, which is a block and a half from the co-working space where I'll

go work sometimes, they have this thing where for like 10 bucks a month you can get a locker and they have the towel service. So I keep my clothes and my shoes in my locker and I'll go change. I'll walk in with my water bottle and my headphones. Go for a run. I'll go outside usually because it's close to the river in the woods that I like to, I like those trails. So I'll run outside. I'll come back. You know, I'll take, take a shower and throw everything in the laundry with the towels. And then they'll wash it and put it back in my locker for me.

But having the headphones, those are the ones that I carry back and forth, obviously, because I've got to keep charging them and things like that. But I think I've been for like probably eight to ten runs now and haven't had to charge them yet. Nice. So they're really nice. They're a little bit lighter. They're great. You know, I'm not sure that I would have bought them if they weren't replacing a current set that really wasn't working anymore.

But because I had those previous ones and I tended to like those, these are much better in every conceivable way than the previous versions that they replaced. And they were a little bit expensive, but because I use them multiple. times per week. I feel like it's a worthwhile investment. Well, I mentioned earlier I was testing my cables. This isn't my device. I actually borrowed it from a friend, a nerd friend. It's called the B-L-E-K-B-R-Q-R-Q-A-B-E-R-Q-U-E. I am struggling to find it on the internet. It's not on Amazon, but I did find it for 106 euros at some European store. So I will put a link to that in the show notes. and see if I can find a better link before the show publishes. But it's expensive.

But you plug it into a USBC power source, and then you take a cable and you plug it into both ends of the cable into it, and it gives you all the data you need. It tells you how much data the cable can transfer and how much power it can transfer, and gives you a rating on the cable, It lets you know about the cable health, that there's any problem with it. I've got a drawer full of USBC cables that are a mix of Thunderbolt and USBC.

And the problem is they don't label the cables on the ends. I feel like they should be a standard where you can just look at the cable in and know what it is. And I don't know which ones are like fast for backing up and which ones can do a lot of power for charging. So I was telling my buddy, I'm like, man, it just drives me nuts. And he's like, oh, I have the thing for you. So I borrowed it. I feel like every community of nerds should have one of these that they passed around. Because, like, I used it last night.

I tested all my cables. I labeled them. I'm going to give this back to him now. Actually, I think I'm going to make a labs video about it first. But it's like, this thing is amazing, but I don't know if it's worth, you know, 100 and 100 plus dollars just to do that. But if a group of you had it and you could pass it around between each other, it would make more sense.

see what I mean, because it's not like you need it every day, but this thing's kind of amazing. Like, I now know all of my cables, so that's good. Yeah, so looking at the listing for this, there's an LCD display on this thing, which has three tabs, overview, specs, details, it shows the data speed, it shows the charging power, and it shows the cable health. Yes. What, how is it measuring the cable health? I'm guessing it's running every pin and making sure that it's connecting.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I can definitely see how this would be a useful gadget to have around the house, especially for a Mac Sparky who has all of his cables neatly organized in bins in his office. Yeah. But you know exactly what you have when you pull it out of the bin. This thing is pretty great. I mean, I went to bed last night thinking about it.

I was so happy. I'm going to now print custom 3D printed bins for the different speeds and charging powers. So now I can just say, oh, this is the bin that has the ones I do the backups from. This is the bin that I charge from. So I'm very happy. And I also discovered that the Apple USBC cables are very slow for data speed. They're like half a gigabyte per second, you know, where I'm getting like 20 on some of the other ones. But, you know, it's fast enough.

it works. I use them all the time. But it's just interesting for me to see the various qualities of these cables. I don't know. This is the kind of thing I get excited about. It looks like there's an accompanying app. What does that do? I don't even know, man. I just plug this thing in and started using it. I didn't, it's a borrowed piece of equipment. But yeah, I really like, I don't think I would buy my own because I have access to this one. But if my friend suddenly told me he didn't have it anymore, I don't know. I might buy one. I don't know. It's a lot of money, you know, for what it does. But boy, it's pretty handy. Do you have the one with the hard shell case? No, it's just a piece of plastic with some ports on either end. Gotcha. Yeah, because looking at the website, you can get it with or without the hard shell case, with or without the screen protector. Yeah, yeah. No screen protector. It's just a little scratched up.

this one has seen a friend of mine he works for apple he's the one who knew about it and um okay my guess is this has seen some some use but uh he's gonna want it back i i i really like it though and um i don't know if you if you've got cable problems you don't know what they uh what they do you may want to get one of these yeah that's pretty cool all right what are you reading yeah just i was talking about my reading reflection thing i've just got a collection of books i'm I'm picking through. I'm trying to spend a lot of time lately on source materials. So the collected works of Epicetus,

I talked about the Enchoridian that I was going through, and now I'm just going through his other stuff. I really am a fan of this based of virtue-based life style, and it's just shocking to me. It continues to be shocking to me how these really old guys wrote it all out so long ago. and it's so relevant still now. Yeah, nothing is new.

Yeah, and it's funny because the way, and it's partly the translations, of course, but the way they approach a lot of these questions, it's completely addressable. You don't need someone to interpret these old books for you. Just get one of them and read it, and it makes sense. So the collected work goes to appetitis,

I think would be a good one if you want to try that. All right. I have a book. Sorry, go ahead. Your book title is intriguing to me. Yeah, so full disclosure, I did not pick this one. This is a future bookworm book. But the title, and the only thing that I have put in the outline, is AI Snake Oil.

The full title is AI Snake Oil, What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind, Narayanan, and Syash Kapoor. who are two people on times top 100 people in AI. So this book is actually pretty good, but I have to admit that I definitely did not like the framing of this. I'm a fan of AI. And AI is a very general term. There's lots of different versions or flavors of AI. And this book actually is a pretty good job of speaking about the different kinds.

So generative AI, general, what is it, AGII, artificial general intelligence, the sentient kind, you know, all that kind of stuff. The thing that they really have a vendetta against is the predictive AI. And I can understand that, you know, predictive AI, meaning these systems that they'll put into hospitals to determine whether a patient might have sepsis or they have lots of examples of places where they've done this at a municipal. level and it ends up just amplifying biases basically and prejudices. And so that's not a good thing. We should not be automating that. So that's the big argument. It's roughly 300 pages. And I went

into it skeptical, but it ended up being a pretty good, pretty good conversation, pretty good episode of Bookworm, which will be out shortly. Definitely will be out by the time this goes live. and I'm not I'm not sure what to do with this one to be honest I don't think I would just blanket recommend that people read this one I sort of feel everything that they shared in this book is relevant and it's useful right now but I also don't know how well this ages I feel like there's very high possibility that this is wrong in six to eight months yeah and even if it's right, it's kind of like, so what. It's a very academic book. Lots and lots and lots of citations. So definitely not one of my favorite books, but I am glad that I read it. And if you're

looking for something that really is just trying to take an objective look at everything that is out there right now in terms of AI, and you do, I guess the thing I didn't really love about it is just the academic tone. A lot of books that I read, even if they are nonfiction books, they're written in a way to tell a story, like the sentence structures will vary and they'll have like certain phrases. They're really just trying to hammer home. This is just kind of like fact after fact, after fact, after fact, after fact. There's like 65 different citations in each of the eight chapters. So like if you really want to dive deep into it, you know, this is probably a decent book to

to do that. But I think I would still recommend co-intelligence by Ethan Mollick as the, you know, if you're going to pick one book on AI, that would be the first one. Yeah, agreed. Although, you know, the one thing I feel like Mollick doesn't really address that I am increasingly

thinking about is the alignment problem or it's like, do these things really think along the lines of what's best for humanity as they get smarter and smarter? and I feel like that's something that needs to be addressed. I'd like to see a good book on that from somebody who knows what they're talking about. But yeah, I mean, AI is useful, but you do need to understand that there are limits to it.

And we live in interesting times. That is the truth. Okay, Yang, that's going to wrap it up for Focus Traps. We want to thank our sponsors today, Squarespace, Incogni, and Hello Fresh. And we also want to thank you deep focus subscribers. You are helping us keep the lights on. If you haven't checked it out, go to relay.fm slash focus to sign up for deep focus.

You get the ad-free extended version of the show. Mike and I have been getting a lot of questions about how we use reviews of our journal and our process. We're going to tackle that today in deep focus. So if you're a deep-focused subscriber, stick around. We're about to get started with that. Otherwise, thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Thank you.