Focused - 237: Everything is Figureoutable, with Max Roberts

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Welcome to Focus to Productivity Podcast, but more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about you? Excellent. Very happy to be back on the microphone with you talking about focused topics, and we've got a guest today. Welcome to the show, Max Roberts.

Hello, hello, guys. Thank you for having me on the show. Absolutely. So I've known Max for a while, one of the people that I, met on the internet who has gotten to be a pretty good friend. He came and stayed with us and we did the live life theme event a couple months ago. Max is in my community. He's one of the more active members there. And you're a pretty great video editor. So you actually been helping me with all of the good looking YouTube videos that have come out on my channel recently. It was in one of the week calls you wrote down that you needed to do something with video when I spoke up. Yeah. You are a man of many talents, though. You also work with your dad on a company

called Point of Curvature, which you want to explain that real quick? Yeah, so point of curvature the company is we help mostly construction companies with risk management, mitigation, documentation control, training materials, like filming and editing videos for those, and productivity management. So, and so in construction, a point of curvature, I might botch this from a surveyors' perspective, but it's the point on a line where you can then make the turn that you would need. And so the idea is we come in and help companies, you know, make the turn and head where they want to go. It's the idea with that. I could go down such a rabbit hole with you, Max.

I mean, because I used to be a lawyer that did a lot of construction law. And I remember early in my career where we'd sit there and argue about whether the plumber was there on the 23rd or not. And as I understand it these days, they'll put a camera on a balloon or something. And now none of those things are questions anymore. All that stuff is starting to do. They are not questions. I remember my dad buying GoPro's a very long time ago and filming job sites to see. how long it would take to lay a piece of pipe, you know, in this hole. And then how could they

streamline that process and things like that? So he's been, he's been doing that sort of thing for a long time. Yeah, it really has changed a lot. But that's not why we're here today, is it? No. I mean, it was part of it. We're actually here to talk about, we're actually here to talk about the Nintendo Switch, actually. That's what we're here today. David, I could do that for a whole podcast for sure. Absolutely. Well, Max, you, you started with a journalism degree, which is, that's a tough degree these days. It is. So when I was in high school, I was listening to video game podcasts from IGN and the

sort all over the place. And one day while working at Kmart, I remember vividly where I was. I was in the stock room off to the side of the store, which is where we would put all like bath towels and soap dispensers and things like that. And it dawned on me that these people were being paid to talk about and write about video games. I was like, well, that sounds really fun. I do that already. So I would like to maybe get paid for that. And so that set me on the course of wanting to work for IGN. And the people that I was listening to, they had journalism degrees. And so I was like, okay, this is what we need. I need to go

to school. I went to UCF and in their journalism program at the Nicholson School of Communication. And during that time in high school and then in college, so between 2013, to 2018 or so, the entire industry shifted from more of a heavy writing focus to more video, podcast, show presence, more entertainment. And I was in straight up journalism, not broadcast journalism. I was the, you know, wear your shoe leather out, write a newspaper kind of journalism, which was declining and still is declining depending on where you where you read. And while I was in college, I met my wife. And so I kind of had to come to this decision of, well, I have this degree to write newspapers, but I don't really want to write about

local news. I want to write about video games. And all of the work at the time was primarily out west in California, in San Francisco specifically. And David, I know you're out in California, but I cannot afford to live out there. Yeah, it's expensive. Especially in San Francisco. And so I decided that I couldn't do that specifically and stayed here in Florida. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't end up working for IGN actually during college. I did freelance writing for them for their video game guides, so their wiki guides,

how to beat bosses, certain games. And I worked on a lot of stuff from, I want to say 2014, yeah, 2014 all the way up. through 2019. I worked on a variety of things from the legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. We talked about that David Red Dead Red Dead Redemption to God of War and anything in between. There were also some bad games in there. Actually, I did, do you guys remember the Monopoly game at McDonald's where you'd get fries and a soda and they'd have the little pieces? They wanted a guide on that one year. Yeah, that was a big deal when it came out, I remember, but I never participated. But yeah.

They wanted a guide for that. like on odds and so I had to go to McDonald's for freelance work and you know get fries and a coke so that was fun that's one of the goofier ones that I did so it's for work it's for work it's for work it's a good excuse to you know I need to I definitely need this game or this console because it's for work I've been trying to justify that well you know I haven't been to McDonald's in years but I will tell you I have fond memories of those french fries and I do think about them on occasion I think about them a lot. I don't eat them a lot, but I think about them a lot.

What it is about those fries? I don't know, but yeah. There's a secret sauce there for sure. And so I did work for IG, and I actually did eventually visit them. My dad was on a project out in California. Actually, Apple's campus, the big spaceship, he was working on that. Sure. And so I got to go visit, and part of that was a detour in San Francisco, and I got to meet the people that I was working with.

That was super fun. but there was never really a remote opportunity until later actually most of the team I think is remote to some degree now because of COVID they were able to adapt in that sense but I never really could break into the game's journalism side of things even when I was freelancing at other sites and eventually I just got tired of the

like chasing that and I took a little bit of a break but eventually I realized that I still want to write about these things, whether or not I am being paid for it. And that led to starting my blog, max frequency, and that led to more podcast on my own and stuff. And so all of those things come together where I make YouTube videos and I write and podcast and do all these things. Because while I was always interested in them, in the beginning, those were the things you needed to do to get the job. But I've always loved doing the things. And so even though The job part isn't there necessarily.

It is in different ways from editing mostly in video work. I still do it for fun. And I have to say, like, I am, like, video game adjacent. I like video games, but I rarely play them. But I spent time, like, watching your channels. We were prepping for today, and your coverage is great, Max. I feel like maybe you're better off, just making it yourself, because the kind of stuff you're covering, I can't imagine, like, a big news source

doing this stuff, but it's very good. very, it's interesting. I would recommend everybody go check out Max's stuff. Yeah, thank you. That is the big thing that I noticed when I would write at an outlet, because I did freelance work at news outlets where I'd write articles. The game is at the time, I'm sure it's shifted a little bit with chat GPT and, you know, LLM type web searches and things like that. But the game was always get SEO traffic on Google. We need these to be trending post. when a big game would come out like Red Dead or Zelda. The question would be, what are people searching, make the page for that, and then populate it and fill it in?

So it was always very targeted to what will draw eyes and obviously add revenue and clicks and traffic. So your writing would feel very, you know, hollow at times and how many searchable words can you put in there? How long does your headline need to be? All these types of things. And that's, as someone who enjoys writing, that can be pretty soul-sucking. Yeah, constraining, right? It's like, you know, you want to write about big thoughts around games and they're telling you, well, you just got to tell people how to get the saddle, you know, that has the extra gym on it or something, right?

I hunted all the animals in Red Dead, so I definitely had to get certain saddles and hats and, yes. Red Dead, that's a cowboy game, isn't it? It is, yes. you play as a cowboy. Did you get all the the Korox in Zelda? Was that you? I was assigned that at the beginning

and I did a map about 200 of them and then the internet found out what the final reward was and my editor was like well we're going to put you on something else for now. So I did not get all of them

but I was assigned to that task and that was a bit grueling. I'm still playing that game. It's a good game. all right um so you went on a journey max and uh you discovered some things uh at some point you ended up working for mickey as well right i did i worked for the mouse so that guide writing and the journalism degree is all very technical or accurate and that lent itself to becoming a technical writer at walt disney world where i would help write maintenance manuals for the attractions from a

all sorts of different manuals primarily um most of my time there was on new attractions that were being built so i was there while the galaxy's edge was being built actually across both coasts and the hotel the star wars hotel uh which was very short-lived here i worked on mickey and minnie's runaway railway railway guardians of the galaxy cosmic rewind romey's ratitui adventure stuff like that but i did work on some older attractions like Peter Pan's flight, the Wildlife Express Train and Animal Kingdom. And basically the way I've summarized it to people

in the past was, is Space Mountain goes down, theoretically depending on the issue, they're going to look at the maintenance manual and how to fix it. And so I would meet with engineers or architects, people designing the attractions,

understand and translate engineer speak into maintenance and upkeep speak and then document those things by taking pictures um we were implementing some video stuff for trying to but that didn't get into effect by the time that i left but i'd be at disney at two in the morning when the park's empty to take pictures of these attractions you know with all the lights on and you know peeking behind the curtain so that was very very fun and that uh led to some really cool experiences like seeing

the hotel while it was being, Star Wars Hotel was very impressive. It was very expensive, but the technology inside it was astounding, quite honestly. Yeah, man, I don't know what happened there. I think they just kind of missed the vision of it. Like, I'm a big Star Wars fan. When I saw the initial video of it, it looked like Star Trek. And also, I can take my wife to Hawaii for that much money, so that's another thing. I think that was the crux of the problem. It was, you could spend Hawaii money to stay in central Florida for two days. Yeah. I don't know if we want to do that.

And then, so these days, Max, what are you doing? In addition to the podcast and the YouTube and production assistance. Right. And your dad, yeah, you're busy. Yeah, my dad. So I left Disney for a job at a smallish military subcontractor doing technical documentation for them. And that was because my wife and I were getting ready to have our daughter at the time and the pay difference was quite substantial. And that justified a lot of things. And so I did that. But about a year after joining that company, my position was no longer required because the government decided to end the contract out of convenience and they didn't really know what to do with the technical writer. And so that led to me working with my dad at point of curvature. Now, while I was at Disney, I did work with my dad on a project in Atlanta,

documenting and filming the training for a project there. So I would take vacation time from Disney and go film and edit these videos up in Atlanta and then come back and work at Disney. And so I was very familiar with that process. And it's, I think, a great service to burn into point of curvature. But also the other thing that I did to my father was he was asking, he has all these documents. You would know this, David. doing being a lawyer and having an experience with that just documents out the wazoo contracts

specifications all the things and he's like i need to manage this and link them together and me having poked around and done a bunch of documentation throughout my career up to this point i knew he didn't want to use the likes of adobe frame maker or madcap flare or the things that would be like the microsoft word industry standard for technical documentation And having listened to Relay Podcast or Federico over at Mac Stories, I knew about an app called Obsidian, where I had looked at it actually, we were looking to leave Framaker at Disney. So I was poking around an obsidian to pitch that. Same thing eventually at the next company.

And I was always poking around an obsidian. I'm like, you should check this out. And so he did. and then he actually ended up finding your field guide, David, and watched that, and became a power user, I would say, of Obsidian. And so when I came in, I was using Obsidian and jumped in both with your field guide and then Mike's practical PKM cohort and sunk our teeth super deep into Obsidian, where we're using it to, we say, blow up the contracts, make them atomic, interlink them. And that's,

We use that then to track risk and potential issues on projects and jobs and make our clients aware of what does it say? Where does it say it? And point this out to them using all of the tools that we have in Obsidian. And so that's my joby job, as Casey List would say. That's my joby job by day. And I help him with that. And then also filming training materials. And then part of that, when I joined my dad knows that I'm not a construction person I don't have 30 years of experience building wastewater plants and huge office buildings and all the sort he wanted me to make this nook of the company within it where I could do things and expand what point of curvature is it doesn't have to fit in this box of just construction yeah or risk and so that led to exploring

opportunities outside, like editing videos for Mike. In my head, I think of that as a point of curvature. That's where it kind of nestles in. And actually through Mike, I've met another person who's a potential client and I'll be working on videos for them hopefully soon. And we have another big project coming up in Alabama that should be quite exciting. And so that's, I'm figuring out how to, I guess, be an entrepreneur, which is not something I have a inclination towards, but also how to help people understand their documentation and be effective. In my life theme that I did with Mike when we were up there, it's I cultivate and curate curiosity, sharing my findings with those around me to spark and satisfy their sense of curiosity.

I've always been a curious person, and whether that's how do I beat this boss in a video game or how are you supposed to build this giant construction project. I'm curious about those things, and I help people figure that out. And that's why I'm able to, I guess, adapt from video games to Mickey Mouse to construction to military simulations. Because as long as I'm curious and I can write about it in some way, it seems to keep the engine going.

Yeah, I mean, communication seems like you're, your skill set and translation, right? Yes, I translate engineering speak. Yeah, and you've applied it in a variety of contexts, but you keep, you know, honing your craft.

Good for you. Everything is figureoutable. Everything is figureoutable. It is shocking how, like on Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, which is a trackless ride and it's in the dark,

things are lighting up all over. the place, but when you actually understand how it works, it's quite impressive. There's a bachillion projectors, essentially. And that's exciting to figure that out and understand it, and then help someone else figure it out and understand it, or how to properly document something or beat a game. I love figuring things out. I mean, even this morning I was telling you, I was helping my dad figure out why his Mac wasn't outputting video. I like figuring things out. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Incogni. Almost everyone experiences robocalls from time to time.

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is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni and use code Focused via the link in the show notes to get 60% off of an annual plan. Check it out now, Incogni.com slash focused. Our thanks to Incogni for their support of the Focus Podcast. and all of Relay. Well, Max, the technical writing field, I feel like, is something that was an excellent living for a long time,

and now it has a big question mark over it with the artificial intelligence kind of explosion. Where do you see all this stuff going, being someone who's in the weeds with it? I think when you live, look at it as a tool is quite powerful. I mean, you could dump all of the manuals into notebook L.M. for Space Mountain and ask, where is this, you know, I'm having trouble with X part, X thing. Whereas it could, that type of search power is unprecedented in my experience

of this field. When most of these documents are PDFs with OCR or even at Disney we were delivering printed binders you know three and a half inch ring binders one discipline at Rise of the Resistance was 15 volumes printed and you would have to

flip through that to find something I think if you could train this sort of stuff locally within your company you could leverage this in an unprecedented way now what happens to the people who write those documents and maintain them

and update them. That, I'm not sure, because it's so, like chat GPT, for example, just to use one model, for example, you could put in Gemini or Claude or what have you. They can write very clinically and directly and clearly. But I don't know if I would still trust it to properly cite which part needs to be put,

here or how to properly do something. You could tell it, but that doesn't mean it's going to spit out the right answer. I was using Gemini not long ago to try and code something, and I noticed that it was, it type, it capitalized something that shouldn't have been capitalized. And I pointed that out and said, you don't need to make that mistake anymore, just use this. And it kept making the mistake, no matter what, even after apologizing to me, saying you're right, as these do. And so you still would have to cross-reference, verify, all of this. So from the writing perspective, I just, I wouldn't trust it enough, especially when it comes to safety in these projects. I just, you don't want to take that type of risk. But I think managing large amounts of information and finding references

to things that you could then cross-check yourself, that would be super powerful. I search is where I think this could be huge in technical documentation. I mean, the problem with hallucinations is that the AI is 100% certain in the way it writes the hallucination. And if it's about like bolts on a roller coaster, you don't want to have a hallucination about that. You know, I mean, but I agree with you on the point of notebook LM. I think that's one of the unsung heroes of AI. It doesn't get discussed enough. But there are so many things. I think about back when I was a lawyer and someone would give us, you know, just thousands and thousands of documents and what a great tool, notebook L.M, must be for people to throw all that

stuff in there and be able to find the needle in a haystack so quickly. And I'm using it in my own production now for similar reasons. And there's definite, like, room in there to provide assistance. But I agree with you for especially things that involve safety. I, I, would not trust. I just don't trust AI to write. I mean, that's, I was thinking about that. Because you know, as we record this, Chad GPT5 is out. And like everybody else, I've been kicking the tires on it. And I'm not particularly invested in getting it to write for me. But every time I try the newest and the latest and greatest models, they're, they're perfectly adequate at putting together vanilla words, but they're not writing with Pinesh, as I would like to say. And

and frankly, the hallucination problem is still there. I use notebook LM all this. I actually used it to prep for the show because I have written about using it in the past, but I didn't know which newsletter or blog post or what have you that I wrote about it in. So I went into my notebook that has, you know, my blog entries in it or my newsletter entries in it

and said, where did I write about this? And it found it like that. And then I was able to go link at it and read it and remember exactly what I was saying about it. So it's my favorite. I actually wish I could put more than 300 things inside a notebook. I wish I could just be unlimited to a certain degree or an obscene amount of more than 300, please, would be super nice. But then there's, you know, like the podcast feature in it.

I'm not using that. I don't need to listen to two robots talk about something. Now, in ninth grade, when I had to give a speech and memorize it, I did use page. Ages narration, like, you know, basically Siri talking, and I recorded that and just listened to that on repeat. So maybe if I was still in high school, I would use notebook LM to learn about a subject or a speech or something. But search, search is where it's powerful because it can just find the text. I love it. I love that sort of stuff. The other thing I find AI useful for, and even more so with ChachyPT5 is criticism of my work.

I don't have a person here that I can drop things by. I actually have a few people on my team that do read what I write, but it's not the same as having someone say, hey, tell me, poke holes in this, tell me where I'm wrong. And I find it actually pretty good for that type of work. I don't really want it to say, okay, and this is how you fix it. I'm more interested in identifying problems, but I have various versions of that prompt

as a lot of Texas Matter snippets for different types of things I do. And for that, AI actually I think makes me a better writer. I would agree because, so I'm old school. When I write a large project, whatever it might be, I still print it out and mark it up with a red pen. But even then, I'm the one writing it. my brain is probably auto-correcting mistakes it sees just because it knows what it's supposed

to say, even though I may have typed it incorrectly. And in the past, I'd give that to a friend who might be willing to read over it or share it in a Google Doc to a small group. And if someone is willing to give the time, these AI tools are always willing, not willing, they're always available to look at work. And I don't want it fixing it for me. I want it pointing out. I want it pointing out the mistakes and then because I feel like if you just if you just hand it over to it and say fix all the grammatical mistakes in this or clean up some of the language at that point it's just going to strip all the personality out and it's going to become that clinical stale AI writing speak like I watched the GTP 5 reveal where they talked about creative writing

and I paused and read what it wrote you know in chunks I was like, this is just not good, period. It might be technically, AI slop. It may be technically correct, right? These AIs understand the rules of the English language and other languages because they can translate and do all the things. But I remember when I was learning to write in school, and I didn't like writing at all, actually. I was definitely more history-oriented as a kid and math, because it was easy until I, discovered geometry. But when I was learning writing, you would learn all these rules. You know,

you can't, I before E, except after C, or other rules where you don't start a sentence with the word and, for example. That would be something in an elementary and middle school. Don't start a sentence with and. And then you'd read something by a professional in a book or whatever, and they would break a rule. And I would point that out and be like, aha, see, I know the rules. But the teacher told me once you know the rules you can break them and breaking them has an impact and whether you there's a reason to break the rules and generally these lms i suppose they could know that but they're going to call it a mistake and so if you just pass it if you give it to it to look over and you just go through you could flag well here i need to fix this but i don't need to fix

because that's what I meant. Or this is exactly what I wanted to say. And you could just brush that correction aside as your own self-editor. So I think it's a good tool for a big pass. Your spell check and grammar check at large, right? You don't necessarily need grammarly or the built-in native tools. You could just give it the whole thing. But as soon as you start letting it write the thing for you, then you're losing the whole point. of whatever you're trying to write because writing is meant to communicate an idea, a feeling, an emotion. And that could be in technical writing, which is very, we are communicating practices and procedures. Or it could be an essay about something you're passionate about. It could be

instructions. It could be field guides. It could be cohorts, right? It could be all these different things. It could be fiction, nonfiction. and when you let the robots write it it's going to all sound the same and have absolutely no soul to it yeah that was my big complaint when i wrote the books for wiley press when i did the um i did the mac at work and ipad at work books and i had an editor and they really did not want they did not want like the mac sparkiness of the voice in the book you know and i understand like they're making a book to put in Barnes and Noble and they don't want, you know, me being goofy. But to me, in technical writing, which I believe a lot of the stuff I do is technical writing, the

humanity and the bits of whimsy are what make it bearable for people. And that's eventually why I just didn't do any more books with them. I just felt like my voice wasn't there. You got to slip a joke in every now and then, like, not only just for your own sanity as the writer, but also it's like a nice treat as someone is reading these super boring things. Or, you know, they can be super boring. And like, it kind of wakes them up a little bit. It's like a little jolt. You know, you could link to something or have a reference or what have you. You slip in a little word play, you know, reference acknowledged kind of behavior. And that's the stuff that I enjoy doing. And I will say if you're listening and thinking about, well, maybe I should use AI to be a little more critical

of my stuff or give me feedback, and you've tried it in the past and you found that it was too obsequious, that's not true anymore. I feel like that's the big improvement we're getting. It's no longer is it pandering to you. It's much more willing to give you, I think, objective criticism. I think the models were built to please the humans a bit too much to begin with. I would agree. They, I mean, even just writing, having it helped me code these snippets, because I have no computer science training outside of having to learn CSS and HTML in school. So I've used it to help write certain scripts or whatever.

And whenever I point out a mistake that I'm catching or I'm experiencing, it's like, oh, you're so right. I'm like, you don't need to just tell me how to fix the thing. Like, we don't, you are a robot. There's no feelings here. Just give me what I want. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Zoc Doc. As you get older, you may find yourself thinking I should go to the doctor more.

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and Olive Relay. Guys, I vibe-coded for the first time the other day. Okay. I, uh, I, well, it's, I don't think it works yet. But I'm trying to make an obsidian plugin. Sure. There's a service that I've been playing around with called Lex.com page where you can upload your own style guides and make it sound like you.

And basically what I want is something that can take something I've written originally like a newsletter, which I have really put my blood, sweat, and tears into. And this is crafted, you know, but I also don't want to publish it. I don't want to rewrite it 12 different places and share it on. LinkedIn and Twitter and threads and all that so you can have the style guys this is what you know LinkedIn post should look like whatever and I know that lex dot page has an API so I went into clod and I'm like hey help me build a a plugin and it actually opens up a side window you know and it says okay so here's you know the basic bones of the plugin now what is it you want it to do is there

documentation for lex dot page turns out there is so you can just like feed in that link and it helps you craft all that stuff. And I haven't, I just haven't had the time to take what it gave me and put it into obsidian and test it yet. But that's where I think it's, it's useful for me is in helping me do things that there was no way I was going to be able to do this on my own.

I don't have the, it's not just hours. It's like days, weeks, months, maybe years to develop the coating chops to build something like that. but I can experiment with it and it's not going to be as nice as all the stuff it's in the community plugins directory

but it doesn't matter like it's going to help me do a thing and then from there once you do the thing then you can make it better and that's where you know if you just offload it to the AI to do the thing all the time

you're never going to develop that skill I think that should be kind of the focus especially with writing like the quality comes from putting in the work and if you're constantly just offloading the work you're kind of missing the point you know you're going to the gym to work out but you're not putting any weight on the bar the bars i would say that on that mic though i because i it surprises me that this is the first

time you've tried this because knowing you and obsidian i figured you'd already have two or three rolling but the um but don't i would i'd be hesitant to share that um a vibe coded plug in 100% because i don't know how secure it is i mean the AI is not that great at that stuff i I would definitely have somebody who knows what they're doing and look at it before I shared it. But yeah, it makes sense. And that's an option we have available to us now, just to try for the Max Barker Labs. I vibe coded to this week. I just told it to make a version of Lunar Lander, which was a popular video game that I used to feed quarters into.

And it did not do a passable job, but I only gave it 10 minutes. But I did build a Lunar Lander, but for whatever reason, when I... when I shift it to the left, it goes to the right. So there's something going on with my code. But like you, I didn't have a lot of time to sink into it. But yeah, these things are available to us now. And the kind of thing you're doing now for people who are interested in, like, custom tools, it's more possible than ever.

I mean, I've written so many great shortcuts with regular expressions that were just beyond me a few years ago, because now I can just have an AI write a regular expression for me. me. Yeah. I too vibe coded a couple weeks ago. All right. I guess we're all, we're all laying it out. What'd you make? I had this strange idea that I wanted to share the music that I was listening to in real time on my blog, like old MySpace days, where it would show what you were listening to or your top song or what have you. And I figured it was probably possible. And it recommended Last FM and Scrobbling, which I had heard about but never done. And I figured out how to get it to basically put it in the sidebar of my blog.

So whenever I have Apple music running on my phone or on my Mac, it live updates what I am listening to. And usually that's just some sort of lo-fi instrumental music or usually not anything too crazy. Now I will say in the car, if it sinks up, it might be wheels on the bus. or your ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which I think is kind of funny. But it's science of life. And I never would have figured this out, right? It's got to have, there's APIs, keys,

how to fit all this in, get it to run in the sidebar of the site. I never would have figured that out. And it, after a lot of back and forth and pointing out issues and using the web inspector, we were able to get it to work and update it. I learned a couple of things along the way, but it was pretty fun. Max, I'm going to, I'm going to rescue you right now. And everybody listening to Who Has Kids, I have the best car album for kids ever made.

Okay. I'm going to put a link in. It's an old album, it was made when my kids were little, but it's called Singing in the Bathtub, and it's a bunch of old fun songs sang by John Lithgow, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. okay all right i'm just telling you life changing because kitty music is so bad sometimes but we we discover this album and my kids now one of them is nearly 30 and we still sing some like you know from the indies to the anties and his undies we can still sing that together so

all right i'll give it a try yeah what we do is an apple music playlist we just share it between the two phones so whoever's driving can play the music yeah and um just find different sounds. And so some songs are fun for my childhood that she ends up liking. But some are just very generic. Here's the Five Little Ducks. And I've heard the Five Little Ducks a lot lately. This is a great one. This is a great one. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. Hiring the right person for your team is critically important. Get it wrong. You can expect stress for everyone involved. Thankfully, Indeed is here to help you get it right the first time.

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All right, so where do things get tough for you, Max, as it pertains to focus and following through on what you intend to do? When you guys asked me this question the other day, it's been rolling around in my head for the whole weekend. I think the biggest thing is really a combination of hyperfixating on something, getting so sucked in. Like that music thing that we just talked about, the plug-in on the website, that became an idea I couldn't let go of, and I had to get it done.

And that was to the detriment of some work or just my evenings. and I just had to make it work until it was done. And then combine that with when I'm not interested in something or I lose interest in something and then projects, personal projects, I always get my work done, but personal projects will not ship, they'll just be dead in the water.

There are countless drafts on my computer of things that never were published or ideas that weren't executed. Podcasts left in my wake that are just, sitting out there somewhere on the internet. And I think all of that really stems from ADHD. And when I was talking with my counselor therapist last year, and I was talking about my brother who was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and treated him for that with medication and different school practices and things like that.

but when we were looking at how I work and function and live my life, and then you look at the standard of how they would diagnose it if I were to go to a doctor. It's like you, you know, you check the list off. And so while I haven't seen a doctor, I'm not taking medicine or anything, like the odds are probably pretty high. So we'll just fit it in that camp. And then I actually read, after figuring that out with him, I read How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe.

She gave a TED Talk. I could find a link for you guys, but she gave a TED talk that I had watched previously. I rewatched it. It resonated. I bought her book. The book's super resonated. It's written in a very interesting way

where you could bounce around in it as someone who may lose focus or interest on something. You want to just go see the topic that is fascinating to you in the book. It's pretty smart. Well done. But those kind of opened my eyes to, well, that's why from February to June, I wrote 18,000 words about the history of Nottie Dog at 4 in the morning, because that's all my brain could think about. And that was also like in the beginning of COVID where I had a lot more time. So those two things kind of went together. But then that's also why once that project was done and I was thinking about, well, how could I do like a version two of it? this, I quickly lost steam because I did it and I wasn't interested in the next phase of that

as a full-blown production. And this stems with my family and my work. I work at home. I am surrounded by lots of fun toys, ideas, things. I would love to just futs around with cables or video games or all sorts of things. I would love to write, but my kid, Eloise, she wants to play. And I want to play with her, but my brain won't let me focus on playing. It wants to go do this other thing. And that's frustrating to deal with. It's really hard to pay attention when my wife is talking to me, but my brain is spinning the wheels. I had actually, when the Nintendo Switch 2 came out,

it came out June 5th, my birthday. When it came out, I had a major issue with my capture setup, how I record gameplay footage. A very long story short, I wrote about it, but I was having major video issues

where I was unplugging everything, figuring out the gear, I have quite the apparatus. I could not sleep. let alone focus on dinner time with the family because this system that was working so well wasn't working now and i needed to know why and that's super frustrating as both well if i could just go sit here and do this i'd get it done but it could take an exorbitant amount of time and i would lose track of time that also happens quite a bit um but also i want to be present i want to do these things with

my family. I want to go to the park, the library. I do want to go to a two-year-old's birthday party because that's what Eloise wants to do. And that's a real struggle. Before she was born, I made a very conscious decision to leave Twitter and has nothing to do with its ownership change or anything like that. It was just I was full-blown addicted to it and I would just scroll and think about what's happening over there. I actually, before we got married, I was off of it the week before the week of and the week after on the honeymoon. That was like a three-week stint of no social media. And I remembered equating the first pull down to refresh back after that as what I assume like the first drag of a cigarette would be like to someone who likes to smoke. Like it just,

the dopamine felt really good. But when she was, Eloise was getting ready to be born, I was like, I don't want her to think that I'm on this thing all the time. And so something that takes my focus away like that, I've removed it all from the phone, and I'm still balance using my phone around her anyway. We try not to give her very much screen time at all. But all of these distractions around me, wanting to focus on different projects,

you know, idea comes up. I can't usually just write it down and come back to it later. it's usually like a full-blown rabbit trail. And just being present and struggling with that split in my head and what I need to do slash want to do slash what my brain thinks I need to be doing. So what do you do to help you maintain your focus on the things that are important? You talked about a few of the things there.

You know, I would describe deleting or leaving a social media platform like Twitter. That's kind of a form of a form. environmental design, I would say. Yeah. But also you mentioned that like you want to sit and play video games and you've, I know in your office you have a whole bunch of old like retro video game systems and having those things right there all the time. That seems like maybe that's a little bit, I don't know, uh, the, the siren song,

you know, I'm going to get as close as possible without hopefully crashing. Yeah, no. What sort of systems do you put in place for this? So my biggest thing is waking up way before everyone else. The morning, I've shifted my time a little bit now that Abby is taking a more part-time role in teaching. But for the first two years of Eloise's life, I was up at 4.30, and I would have from 4.30 till 6 or 6.30 to do my thing. Whether that was play a video game, edit a podcast, write, blog, like those two hours were my time.

And I remember, I want to say, oh, I'm blanking on his name. Mike, you would know the author. He wrote Blue Like Jazz, but then has become Business Made Simple or something. Oh, yeah, Donald Miller. Donald Miller. One of his books, probably Business Made Simple, was talking about basically how like the front half of your day, you're the most productive, like what you give first. And I'm sure there's plenty of books that talk about that. So I really treasured those first two hours of the

morning. And that's where I would get the game time or write or read or whatever. And then you're right. It is like Odysseus being tied to the mast while listening to the siren, sitting out here with all the games. And I'm honestly not always the best at it, not playing, but maybe I want to try and figure out something technically or what have you. I really try to just be chunk the time, make it the carrot at the end of the stick. Like, when you get done with work, depending on the evening schedule of the day, maybe you have an extra hour where you can play, apologize to Sase Attorney. Or, well, I'm going to play this game with my friends tonight.

You know, maybe we're going to play Fortnite or Hell Divers or something. And so I look forward to things and try to chunk it into my schedule that way, instead of being drawn just wherever it takes me. The computer is a much more difficult place for that because everything is at your fingertips. One thing I definitely did was I got the phone out of my room.

And lately I've been thinking about maybe I need to get the phone out of the office, which is so silly because the computer and the phone can do the exact same thing. But I have to use the computer, but it doesn't stop me from picking up the phone to check something, you know, just this dopamine-filled habit.

So try to definitely keep things out of reach and away and schedule the time. Think about it as an intentional slot. Like, well, this is what I'm going to do this morning. Now, the problem with giving yourself that hour and a half every morning, that hour in the morning, is Eloise doesn't always stay asleep until she's supposed to. or I have, I need to edit a podcast and I want to play a video game. Both are things I want to do, but I don't have time to do both. I can't edit during the day.

Like, I'm fitting all of the hobbies into the one slot in the morning. So I'm trying to juggle that. Like, maybe I need to do it almost how, you know, in a movie someone might label their underwear days of the week. Maybe I need to label like Monday is this, you know, game or Monday. Tuesday is podcast editing time and chunk up projects that way. That's something that I've been mulling over. The problem is then following through an execution with it. That's kind of what I do most of the time is try to lock in here and keep my time chunked up.

So that way I'm not, I want to play this right now. So I'll do this other stuff later because I never get to it later, especially if it's not in that morning front half of my day after lunch i'm a lot more useless well that's good to know right um because that's when you should be probably putting the desk away and hanging out with elise that's when you can give her your attention you know you're not any good at the other stuff then you you are um doing this with a high degree of difficulty having a little one around because especially when it's your first one um it's very that's probably that little girl is probably way more attractive to you than any video game in terms of

wanting to spend time and she's there while you work. I would suggest a slightly different approach. I feel like I hear a lot of people talking about these challenges saying, well, what I need to do is get the phone out of the room or I need to get the video games out of the room. And I think, now, what you really need to do is you need to work on the focus muscles, you know, and just start getting, you know, get a, get one of those school timers where it counts down and just say, I'm going to give 30 minutes to editing, you know,

and everybody, you know, everybody who gets into productivity freaks out when they learn the Pomodoro because it works, you know, and it's like, it's changed my life, you know,

but, but the, but what you're really doing with a Pomodoro technique is you're building that focus muscle, you know, and, and, you know,

find ways to find intentionality. Mike and I keep, I keep banging on about meditation. and Mike and I both keep banging on about journaling, but those are great ways to be present. And I think that, you know, the distractions are going to be there. Eloise is there for the rest of your life. Probably another one's going to come at some point.

It's going to do the same thing. I can tell you because I've been there and I'm still there, but you need to perfect your focus muscles for her benefit as well as your own. because if you get those focus muscles now down, you can not only do your work mindfully, you can spend time with her mindfully. I remember when my kids were little, and this is a long time ago, there was something distressing going on at the office, and I came home, and she just wanted to play Lego.

And I got on the floor with her and spent 30 minutes and did not, I was not in the room at all. I remember thinking that was 30 minutes of my life, I wasted for some client that doesn't care, you know, and this little person suffered, you know. So I've, for a long time, I've been working on this. And I think that the answer really is not mechanically removing things or playing tricks on you with, you know, clever software. It's really just, you know, to go back to Mike's analogy, go to the focus gym, you know, and figure it out. It's funny. say that because we bought Eloise a timer that is an hour. It can go up to an hour. And it's

analog where a rainbow just disappears. And we use that. She's transitioning out of nap time, it seems. And so we're using that to indicate a quiet time where she would just play by herself in a room, just chill out for the afternoon, give mom a break. So we're teaching her to build a focus muscle and her attention obviously is everywhere. She wants to play pillow fight. She wants to play doctor. She wants to play hide and seek, which she's not very good at right now. She always jumps out. She's like, I'm here. I'm like, well, you're supposed to stay hidden. You know, so we're teaching her to build a focus muscle using a $12 rainbow clock that we got on Amazon. on, I'm sure I have infinite tools and timers in front of me that I could also be flexing.

And if I'm trying to teach her this discipline at two, maybe the 31-year-old should also maybe practice a little bit what he's preaching. The fact that you're thinking about it means you're way ahead. I mean, honestly, you're going to be fine. But look at those muscles, not at, like, putting something out of the room. When I hear that, it's like, well, you're not really addressing the underlying problem at that point. You're just putting it somewhere else physically out of reach. I will say getting the phone out of the bedroom, though, has made me read more books and just like wind down in the evening a little bit better.

I will say that. That helps a lot. But in the office, I don't know. I'm using it as a webcam right now. It is a helpful tool. And, you know, sometimes I miss. You would think I wouldn't miss a notification with the Mac and the watch and the phone, but sometimes I do, and the phone is always there to show me what I missed.

To David's point, the goal isn't always just to remove things. Sometimes that's necessary. And I think if you are, because you said this yourself, I'm not putting words in your mouth and I'm not trying to generalize here, but you mentioned undiagnosed adult. ADHD, you kind of know what your traps are. And so maybe you do have to be a little bit more hypersensitive to some of that stuff. I think I trend that way also. When I was at Craft and Commerce, had a friend Jesse J. Anderson, who's been on the show, wrote the book Extra Focus. And he pointed me towards the adult ADHD self-report scale. And my scores were

indicative of undiagnosed adult ADHD. And I know it's a it's a spectrum and that's not official. Sure. Yeah. I haven't gone in and gotten it checked out. But also it kind of is just helpful to know a little bit more about your tendencies so you can craft some strategies to to stay on target. Now you mentioned you schedule things. What does that look like? Are you full on time blocking everything or is it just I've got a calendar and these are the big things I'm going to work on today, you know, how do you stay focused as you're going through your workday back in the video game shed here before you go hang out with the family? That's true. I am in the video game shed. I am in a detached garage and that helps tremendously

in general. So if you can keep your work out of the house, or at least sometimes, I know David, you go to Galaxy's Edge sometimes to write and work as well. So sometimes it helps to get out of the house. But as far as the day goes, I have a field notes notebook and the Cortex Sidekick notebook. I am a big write things down scratch pad kind of guy. And I've found that where sticky notes would be scattered everywhere previously, these two things help keep it all in one to two places. And they're always on my desk. So those help. I use my calendar pretty intensely

of like this is what needs to happen or these are the deadlines for things so I use my calendar

I was time blocking days and I felt I could track it it would be in a field note in the drawer back there but I

could track when I stopped fell out of habit and I need to get back because that was actually quite powerful I've started

writing we do these win of the week calls community, Mike, where we talk about, like, the three to five things that we want to do that week. And I've, I use those to help keep me on track for the week as well. Like, well, I finished X, what can I be doing here now? Like, what else is on the list? So keeping just a list of loose frameworks and goals to accomplish that week is usually what I do. And I'm pretty, I write a lot of

stuff down. Public accountability for the win. Yes. This episode of Focus is brought to you by OnePassword. If you're a security or IT professional, you've got a mountain of assets that you need to protect. Devices, identities, and applications. It's a lot, and it can create a mountain of security risks. Fortunately, you can conquer that mountain of security risks with one password extended access management. Over half of IT pros, say securing SaaS apps is their biggest challenge.

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you can learn more at OnePassword.com slash Focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. That's the number one-password.com slash focused, all lowercase. Our thanks to OnePassword for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. All right, Max, we always like to end up the show talking about what we're reading and shiny new objects. And do you have graciously agreed to participate? Mike, you want to go first? Got any new, shiny new objects in your life? Sure. I do have a shiny new object. Maybe Max has seen this because it was mentioned by somebody in the library, but there is an app called TaskForge, which is not the most beautifully designed application, I will say, but what is,

it does is it pulls in all of your tasks from Obsidian and gives you a native task manager. So you can set the system level notifications, all that kind of stuff. It's a one-time purchase for the premium version. It's available on iOS, MacOS, and soon Android, and $29.99 U.S. dollars unlocks it everywhere. I've been playing with this. this the last couple of weeks, and I absolutely love it. The way it works is it actually integrates with the Obsidian TASP plugin, which is the thing that powers all of my task management and obsidian. It's the thing behind that task dashboard that I made the YouTube video about. And this basically gives you an app that pulls in all those tasks, and you can mark them off. You can add new ones.

You can even choose the file that you want to add new tasks to. So I can point it to my big master task list file. And when I add something via TaskForge, it'll automatically show up there. So you can essentially quick capture from your computer as opposed to going into the the Obsidian app. And I know that this is way too complicated and way too much for most people listening, but this makes me so happy because it solves the one problem I've had with Obsidian Task Management, which has literally been you can't do the notifications. And this gives you a way to do it. it feels like you've gone full circle like you had a dedicated task app and you moved it all into obsidian and now you have a dedicated task app again i mean you're not wrong but what's nice

about this is it uses the obsidian task plugin so all of my queries for that dashboard i can recreate those exact lists inside of this app and uh essentially i can consult my task dashboard now from anywhere, even if I'm not at my computer and have obsidian open. So this is not, I'm not using this because it is a full-fledged task management system. I'm using this specifically because it's giving me the notifications on top of my roll your own task management system, which admittedly is way too complicated for just what everybody listening. But that I'm committed to.

Like that is working. I love that system. And if I could just add notifications on top of that, that would be, you know, the cherry on top. That's what TaskForge gives me. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't really have a lot of, I haven't been buying much lately. I will tell you that I have discovered the world of Paracord and I've been making lots of like things for the family, key chains, whatever. It's been a very fun little hobby I've been doing lately of tying knots into things. And I've, I'm just looking at my Amazon list. I bought a bunch of various metal, you know, capture clips and whatnot.

And I guess that's my shiny new object. I don't know. That's a good. There you go. If you want to work on your focus, sit there and tie knots. That really does, doesn't give you an option. My dad is into the same thing right now. He is making bracelets for Eloise and Avi. He's making keychain holders and ties for his backpack so he can grab the zipper easier yeah he is he's got all the paracord things he is a way into it right now it is very satisfying when you take a a blow torch to it at the end to like seal it up i have to admit that that is very satisfying but yeah i don't i don't have much uh many new shiny new objects lately but paracord give it a try what about you max so mine is new to me shiny

I recently was able to get a 2023 MacBook Pro 16 inch with the M2 Pro chip in it I've been running an M1 IMac fully kidded out

since they were announced back in June of 2021 I want to say I think it showed up in July and that machine's been great I definitely probably should have waited until that October when the

MacBook pros were announced, mostly because I do a lot of video work and audio work. And the baseline M1 just doesn't like go all the way to what I would need to do. And so the stars aligned where we have a pretty big work project coming down the line that's going to require a lot of video work and is off-site. So portability is a factor. And then I had a close friend who decided that they were more of an iPad and iPhone person and didn't really need that their MacBook Pro anymore and they were selling it. And so the two lined up

and we were able to buy the new new to me MacBook Pro. And so I'm back in its laptop as desktop land and the last time I did that was with a 2017 MacBook Pro. I have to say, Apple Silicon makes it a little bit easier. Yeah, it does. Doesn't it? Yeah, and I'm on the M2 as well.

But mine is the studio, the desktop version of that computer. And it is, it's amazing. I mean, I toyed with the idea of upgrading it with the M4, but that's nuts. I mean, the M2 is a very powerful computer. It's going to serve you a long time. I think you'll be very happy with it. Now, when you get a new MacBook, do you, like, build it from scratch or do you, do you, like, do migration?

How do you come over? I built this one from scratch because my friend bought basically the base model of the time. So it only has a 512 SSD, and my iMac has two terabytes. Yeah. So there couldn't be a full conversion. And so since this is primarily going to be a lean video editing machine, I put all of the applications that I need for that type of work. And I do have, you know, a 2 terabyte SSD plugged into it.

Sure. So that I can move things around off of. But this one was a clean setup, which was interesting to, you know, set up audio hijack again. I had to figure out how to move over. over custom profiles and compressor export settings and things like that. So that was kind of fun to figure out, dig around in the library folder on your Mac, do so safely. So this was clean. Previously, I have done a migration assistant.

Like when I moved from the MacBook Pro to the IMac, I just Thunderbolt cableed and moved it over. That's a lot easier. But for me, I build them from scratch you because I put so much test software in mine by the time I get new one. I don't want to bring all that legacy stuff over. There's an untold amount of croft in my iMac, I'm sure of it. Mike, what do you read these days? All right, well, I just finished this book for Bookworm. It'll have been out for a little bit by the time this goes live, but I have to mention this book since I haven't, I don't think yet on this podcast. And that is from Strength the Strength by Arthur Brooks. The subtitle is basically about

managing a midlife crisis. If you look at the listing, which is why I put it off for a long time. And this is such a good book. The first chapter really is he's telling the story about how he's on this airplane and he hears this guy behind him. And he's talking about how he'd be better off dead and his wife's trying to encourage him. And then as he's getting off the plane, he turns around and he sees that it's this really famous guy. He doesn't reveal his name. But like right away, you're emotionally invested and then even in the second chapter he's talking about how there's this inevitable decline but it doesn't have to you don't have to crash and burn basically you can you can jump to a different different curve and just like a different skill sets required for the second part of

your uh of your life and arthur brooks is a great writer and i just feel like this was so helpful for me not that i felt like i was going through a midlife crisis an argument could be made i guess I'm about that that age. But I feel like the things that he talks about there are really relevant for anybody that's going through a transition in their life. Navigating that stuff is difficult. There's not really a manual for it. I remember having helpful conversations with people who are close to me, including

you, David, when I was going through stuff and you gave me advice on, like, use this as a reset, you know, re-revaluate the routines and things like that. So it's like that sort of thing. Anyone who wants to live a more intentional life, like this is something that I think could help you. And for sure, if it doesn't apply to you personally, it will apply to somebody that you know. I anticipate that I will probably gift many, many copies of this book to people that I'm close to. Really, really good. How old are you supposed to be when you hit your midlife crisis? I don't really know that much about them. I don't know. You seem young to me.

I feel like it wouldn't hit you yet, but yeah, I don't know. Well, I'm in my 40s. Let's just say that. I'm still waiting for mine because I feel like, don't you get to get by a Porsche or something when you hit your midlife crisis? Isn't that though? Either buy a Porsche or quit the law practice. I think that's the... Maybe that was it.

Maybe I did it and didn't even realize it. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really like the term midlife crisis, but I do think that you reach a point in your life where you do reconsider things. Yeah. And that's why I say, you know, if you're going through a transition, this book is very applicable, I think. Yeah, sounds good. I'm going to put on my list. Thanks, Mike. What about you, Max? I have been rereading the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown. I'm currently in the book Dark Age. I guess that's like penultimate book to where what is published. There's one more book, which is what prompted me to reread them this year because I thought that book read God was going to be out.

this year. Nope, it's going to be next year. He takes a while to write, but he's no George R.R. Martin, so it will come out eventually. And so anyway, this is the fifth book in the series. He wrote an original trilogy, and then a few years later came back and kind of expanded the universe a little bit more and continued with the characters. So this would be the fans as a quadrilogy. So there's a trilogy, there's seven books total. Anyway, I've been rereading that. It's basically about if the elevator pitch would be man has colonized the solar system and there's a caste system

from the low reds who mine the planets all the way up to the golds and then there's a bunch of colors in between and the reds basically find out that they have been lied to and the uprising that ensues. There's a little bit of the hunger games in there there's a lot of Greek and Roman influences

to the structure of the people in their culture. And it's a very good stuff. I think I'm going to have to try it. If you enjoy sci-fi and a lot of conflict, this is for you. I will check it out. I do like those kind of world-building type books where, and sci-fi in the not-so-distant future is also of interest to me.

You know, it's like giving you some idea of where things could go. Yeah, I'm going to do that. I usually do those as audio books. That's kind of my fiction medium. I think this would be great as an audiobook. I haven't listened to them, but I hear they're supposed to be quite good. And I love that you picked a fiction book because I'm always trying to get our friend Mike to read more fiction. You can learn a lot.

It's true. Yeah, I read probably too much fiction. I will say, though, really quick, if I could one more short book, which is, somebody in the three blayers is very popular in my house right now, which is a twist on Goldilocks. So if you have a two-year-old, maybe somebody in the three blayers would be up your alley. Basically, a bear visits a house and does the Goldilocks thing. I'll give a fiction pick. Just that's good. I just started, this isn't my actual pick for the week, though. I just started, Anne Lecky has a new book called Lake of Souls, who's another science fiction writer who

I really like in respect. She's won a bunch of awards. And that one I just started, but I'm already enjoying it. But my book this week, Mike, you'll be happy. It's a physical book. I bought it. It's one I've wanted for a long time, but it's been out of print and it's been very difficult to get for a rational price. It's called the Unknown Craftsman by Suetsu Yanagi. And it's just a story about craftwork in Japan. And, you know, the respect we should have for not the high-end artisans, but the everyday ones that make the cup you drink out of. And it was written in Japanese, but it's been translating English.

Like I said, I finally found a copy that I could afford and I bought it. And it's just been delightful. I've really enjoyed it. And it came with presents because this book, you know, I bought it used. And as you do, with books out of print. you guys will love this. It's got like newspaper articles in it and letters in it. The guy who had it before had left in, I don't know the story behind it, but it was, you know, newspaper articles kind of related to the subject and some handwritten notes about the subject. And it just reminded

me how nice that is to see that this book has a history. And another person experienced it. And it inspired them to write some things down and I love that. That's very cool. When my parents bought their house up in Dorr County, they bought it from these people who had in the basement all of these bookshelves all over the place with a huge library of the most eclectic collection of books you've ever seen, everything from classical opera singing to psychology. And there was a a rare hardcover version of Flow by Mihali Cheeks Sent Mihali or Mihai Cheek Sent Mihai. Yeah. And in that book, which that book in and of itself, when I looked it up on eBay, it was

like hundreds of dollars. But there was a typed note from a typewriter from this professor who was recommending this book to the person that he had given it to and why he thought it was going to be going to be great. I love that kind of thing. Yeah. it's it's fun well anyway unknown craftsman if you are interested in craft this book is very inspiring all right well that will wrap it up for us thank you so much max for coming on we are the

focus podcast max where can people go to find what you're up to you you can find all the personal stuff over at maxfrequency dot net the podcast the youtube channel the blog it's all there and then professionally point of curvature.com that's where you can find us and talk to us about any risk management documentation or training material stuff. Well, I'm very excited to hear about your journey, Max. It seems like you just keep finding ways to leverage your skills to find new things, and I can't wait to see what you do next. We are the Focus Podcast.

You can find us at Relay.fm. If you want to sign up for DeepFocus, that's the ad-free extended version of the show. You can do it right there. We'd love to have you on board. Helps keeps the lights on. Thank you to our sponsors. That's our friends over at Incom. Cognito, Zoc Doc, Indeed, and OnePassword.

On deep focus, we are going to go down the rabbit hole of video games and productivity. So I'm looking forward to getting started on that. And have a great day, everybody. We'll see you next time.