Focused - 240: Q4 Planning

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. Good. We have a busy show today.

We're going to be talking about quarter planning. Hopefully inspire a few listeners to follow along and play along. Yes, exactly. The quarterly planning, I guess, you know, maybe we should do a little bit of an intro for the concept. behind this, but it's kind of loosely based on the 12-week year. And the idea behind that is a lot of people set annual goals, New Year's resolutions, things like that. They wait about 10, 11 months to get started on them, crank at the end, almost get there, fail in their goals, feel bad, and then repeat the process next year. So the better approach is the quarterly planning. You and I both agree,

putting words in your mouth here, but where you set those intentions for 90 days, and then you have a chance to reflect and figure out what worked, what didn't, what changes you're going to make. And you get four cycles, basically, in that same 12-month period, as opposed to the single year. And as a result, you're able to make a lot more progress on the things that are really important to you. I mean, the more I work with this stuff, the more I teach the stuff I realize. The key to all of this is feedback loops. It's just like giving yourself repetitions, giving yourself some goals, checking in how they're going, figuring out what went wrong. And honestly, I mean, quarters are great, but also months are great and weeks are great.

It's like the more of these feedback loops you give yourself, the better you get at this stuff and the better that you get at pursuing what's important to you. And one year is not enough. So both Mike and I are big quarter planners. Yes. Amen, brother. Speaking of planning, you made a planner. I did. All right. What's here about it?

Yeah. So it's an analog planner that I worked with Jesse at New Year. He's the guy who did the focus calendars, which, by the way, those are going to be available soon. There was a production backup, basically, because he does calendars for a lot of other people as well. And some of the printing took a little bit longer. But by the time this episode goes live, the page will be up. The calendars may not be shipping just yet, but they will. be available. And so we've got those focus calendars, which break things down into quarters. And I talk every time we do one of these types of episodes about my personal retreat process. I don't want to get too into the weeds with that here today, again, because I think people are familiar with that. But it's basically the multi-scale planning concept where you align the quarterly intentions with the weekly plans and then the daily time block plan. You want all of those to align. That's really how you make progress on your goals. So I've been following this format for quite a while and I built it all into an analog planner. I've been doing it in Obsidian for a long time. I'm a big fan of analog tools,

a big fan of fount pens. So it just kind of seemed natural that at some point I would figure out a way to create the type of page that I wanted and have all that stuff in a single place as opposed to taking a blank page and drawing it all out in my fancy notebook every single day. So I had some back and forth with Jesse and, you know, is this something you even want to do? Does it make sense? He sent me lots of different prototypes. We dialed in a lot of the details. Like, for example, the paper that he used, of course, wasn't good enough for me at the beginning.

So tried a whole bunch of different types of paper, ended up on this. Cuckoyo business paper, which is real fountain pen friendly. So that's part of this. It comes with an example personal retreat. So it's actually one of my personal retreats that I did previously. And then there's a section for your, I call it a life theme, but it's your personal mission statement, your core values, the wheel of life. You've got the retrospective where you ask the questions, you know, what did I accomplish, what went well, what could have gone better? And then the three big questions for me, what should I start doing, stop doing, keep doing?

It helps you identify your intentions. You plan your weekly, you know, perfect week template. And then you've got from there, you know, weekly plans and daily plans and it all lines. So I'm real excited about this. I don't know, honestly, how many people are going to be interested in this specific thing. I basically made it because I wanted it to exist. But if you are interested, it is now available. So we'll put a link to it in the show notes. And on the sales page, there's also a video which walks through all the different parts. of this planner if you want to see kind of the thought process behind it. Yeah. And if you're at all interested, I recommend watching this video. It's excellent. Of course, Mike did it. And I can tell this thing was made with a lot of love, Mike. You know, it looks really nice. Congratulations. Thank you.

Yeah, it's got a wire binding. So you can kind of like fold it back on itself. It's got a chipboard cover, which is sturdy enough to not get bent as I throw it into my backpack every day. Yeah, I really am I'm very pleased with how this turned out. That video, by the way, I recorded that in my fancy desk setup where I've got the two different install-link cameras. We've talked about this before. I have one set up as like a top-down camera. I set that up just so I could record this video, honestly.

But yeah, I walked through all the different parts of the planner. You see me flipping through the pages and things like that. That's about a 15-minute video, but really wanted to just kind of concisely, that video talk about the thought process behind the personal retreat process. And I do these every quarter. I get away to my postcard cabins. I usually bring my laptop and do it in obsidian. But honestly, I'm really looking forward to just grabbing this notebook and doing it with this and going forward. It really is a different experience. If you have a bent towards analog tools, you know, this is, I think, a good one. Just think how nice it'll be on your shelf when you

have two or three years worth of these, and you can just pull it down and look and go in the time machine and see what you were thinking six months ago or two years ago. That's really beneficial. That will be pretty cool. I should mention, I guess, the price is $29.US. There is a subscription option. I basically just seeing what other people were doing, and it looks like Michael Hyatt's got his planner. A lot of them have, like, if you buy a year's worth at a time, it's a little bit less to ship and then you're in the subscription. So they send you four at a time and it's an annual subscription. So Jesse figured out a way to do the same thing. If you want to subscribe, you can say 15%. Otherwise, 29 U.S. dollars. I wanted to make this affordable. And I'm not making

a ton of money off of the sale of these. But Jesse puts them all together individually by hand. So I wanted to make sure it was worth his trouble. Unfortunately with New Year, I know folks to email us every year about the international shipping prices for the Focus Calendar. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot I can do about that currently. So same issue with these planners, unfortunately. But I am looking into some of the other options with that. We don't have a solution yet, but stay tuned. And, you know, it's less than $10 a month to have a disciplined system to manage your life.

So that is not that expensive. A lot of people spend $10 a day. at Starbucks, right? So you're good. I think the price is right. And I think it's a really nice product and recommend everybody go check it out. Awesome. Thank you. I should have you write the sales page for me. There you go. Well, you've been working on this for years. I know. This is a big deal for you. And I'm really happy that it exists now. Yeah, it definitely has been a labor of love for a long time. I kind of approached Jesse about it, I think about two years ago. I'm like, is this even a possibility? Is this a really stupid idea? And he's like,

well, I don't know. I've never really done something like that before. He does have kind of his action pads and things that he sells on his site. But this is way more custom. And that was part of the hard part, honestly, was we had to figure out exactly how these page spreads were going to be created. It's kind of like if you're going to publish a book, you know, you've got like the design file and you've got all the side by side pages and you've got to make sure all the pages are in the right place so that things overlap correctly. Like we had to do the same thing with the planner. And Jesse is the one who is printing and cutting and binding all of these things. So I feel felt kind of bad. But he figured out a way to do it where it wasn't a,

you know, a complete pain. He was able to make it worth his while. And so yeah, I'm real excited about this. I brought a sample of this to the content entrepreneur expo in Cleveland when I was there about a month ago and showed it to a couple of people just, you know, as I was talking to people and planners came up. I'm like, actually, I got this one. What do you think of this? And the feedback I got in person from people who were looking at it was overwhelmingly positive. I'm hoping, you know, that it helps a bunch of other people. But like I said, this is really just something that I wanted to exist in the world. And what I did is I kind of, you know, I have all the analog space for the personal retreat stuff.

So you've got the, you know, the Wheel of Life that you can actually color in and things like that. But I really spend a lot of time thinking through, you know, how would I, if I could create my own custom analog system, translate everything I do in Obsidian over into like an analog planner? And that this is the end result. and I think it's, I think it turned out better than I, I, I, uh, dreamed it. It could have been. The, the, the weekly planning pages specifically, you know, I've, I've seen different versions of, of this page before, but basically there's a couple, a couple, like three spaces at the top where you can put your, your big objectives. And it's kind of, the whole thing is kind of forced around

these constraints. So you can't pick, you know, 12 things that are really important this week. You do three of them and then you put, you know, why they're important. And then there's like a five by two grid for the days of the work week where it's kind of like those UGMunk weekly cards, but I don't have the weekends on there. I may maybe should add that at some point in the future. But there's an AM and a PM block. And the idea is that you put one thing that's important to do in the AM and one thing that's important to do in the PM for each of those those days on the week. And then that kind of sets the stage for the daily plans. So people who purchase the focus calendar, we have that action pad that people can print off

and use or put it in good notes or something. It's a modified version of that. It's basically the same, but it's tweaked a little bit. And it's actually inside the planner as the time block plan. So there's hours along the side. So you can block your whole day and then the space for the notes, the daily gratitude, the highlight, you know, stuff like that. And having used this all in one physical product, it's really cool how your brain just kind of naturally

moves from, okay, this is the quarterly plan, this is the weekly plan, these are the daily plans. Like I said, the goal is to create the alignment between those because I believe when you get that alignment, that's really where the magic happens. What it does is it creates the motivation to show up every day and take consistent action the things that are important, but also the focus angle to this, it provides the clarity to cut the things that aren't. And so it's really easy to get lost in the weeds, I think, of the day-to-day. You know, I got to do all these things by the end of the day. And you never really have something that ties you back to, oh, yeah, I said this was the thing that was important for me. So that's what

I'm trying to try to do with this. I'd like to dial in a little bit on this analog element because you're a guy who like famously does everything in obsidian and now you're you're switching to analog I myself have been experimenting with analog for some of these things and you know how's it going for you switching to analog I mean it is a big change for someone who is so deep into obsidian you're right and I honestly don't know exactly how it's going to shake out but this is how I think it's going to shake out well I should say I have done the analog daily plan for a very long time. But the weekly planning and then the personal retreats have always been in Obsidian. I've got the personal retreat template file, uses all the plug-ins, and I do like

having all of those things linked together in my periodic notes. So this is how I think this is going to fit in for me. I know, for example, that you for a long time would journal analog and then you would like take pictures and send them into day one, right? So I think there's a system where I do the work analog and then I transfer it to the digital system and then that helps me with the daily notes and things like that. It is a little bit of extra work. However, when you go through the process that I've laid out in the planner, it's all in one section and it's all very tight and it's all right there. So I think the hard part is just going to be pulling in the things that I normally would just look at and say, oh, yep, that's good. I don't need to update that. Like my life theme,

my family core values, my personal core values, my ideal future, you know, those are things that exist as artifacts inside of my obsidian vault and they're just linked to in my personal retreat template file. Well, I'm not going to rewrite all of those things in the analog planner. So how I think I'm going to do this is I'm actually going to have those with me and I'm going to review them and I'm going to use the planner as just a place to jot down any notes or changes that I want to make to those. I think a lot of times when I look at it, I'm just kind of like, yep, that's good. And then I move on. So I'm hoping that by having the space in the analog planner kind of forces me to to maybe make a more frequent updates to to those things it sounds

kind of silly you know you've got this this text file it's really easy to to make changes to that no i think i think you're on to something i'll tell you i so i started the you know my quote-unquote system is the artae rolls based system and one of the big key elements of it is every quarter to review each role that you've taken and write down what the best version of you where that is and just like a year and a half ago, I started doing these quarterly things with analog tools. And I rewrite them every quarter. I rewrite the rolls. And I don't look at the text file.

I don't even look at last quarters. I write them anew. Just like I just, you know, open my mind and write it again. And of course, there's overlap because I'm thinking about these things all the time. But coming at it fresh every quarter and then I read the old ones and then kind of add stuff. but I feel like I get a real benefit from that the physical act of writing them down by hand every three months that like wires them into my brain even harder if that makes sense and um and I think that this is something where you don't solve for efficiency you know this is not

something you need to be fast at and I would encourage you to um to almost take it from scratch try that one one or two quarters and just see how it goes because forcing yourself to think about those are the big questions of your life, you know? And yeah, you should be thinking about them deeply, frequently. I mean, isn't that more important than, you know, whatever dumb thing you're watching on TV, you know? So I feel like, yeah, this is something where you want to go slow. And my experience has been with the analog tools that, yeah, it slows me down. It gets me away from the computers and AI and all the other distractions in my life and forces me to just get really personal with, you know, the direction of my life, my compass and what direction is pointing.

And to add to your point, I know I'm saying a lot here, AI does become your friend when you want to digitize that. You can create kind of an AI routine with any of the major, you know, frontier models. It reads my handwriting, so I'm sure it'll read yours. And you just, you know, you build it out and then you can digitize it and add it. to, you know, whatever, you know, day one or obsidian or whatever. So you can still get the benefit of having that stuff digital at the end. But try to do it slower with the analog tools just to see how that goes. Yeah.

The other thing that it does, I think when you have to transfer it to another system is that it gives you another like round of review. So for example, I have built into. to my process exactly what you're talking about forcing yourself to go slow. The second part of the retrospective where I asked those three questions, what should I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing. I force myself to take at least two hours just for that part of the process because I've found that after 30 minutes, I've got things under each one of those bullets as options for things that I could start, stop, or keep doing. And my brain is at that point ready to move on.

Okay, yeah, we check the box. Let's go complete the next task. And if you force it to just stay there and wrestle with it, usually about an hour and a half in, that's really where it breaks through to a whole new level and you'll give yourself permission to consider things that you never considered before. You know, maybe it was just something that, oh, that's not an option because, you know, you don't, you don't explicitly know this, but what you discover is you don't, you're the people pleaser, you don't want to have that difficult conversation. You told this person you would do this thing and so you just continue to do it without reevaluating it. And then when you force your brain to, oh, come up with more, come up with more. It's like, okay, well, uh, I,

I guess, you know, how about this hard thing? And, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And then, you know, when I was with the day job, we would do these, these off-sites for the leadership team. And we would have the big sticky notes and put them on the wall, you know, and we write everything down. And then after we got done with the off-site and we took all that stuff, we moved

into the notion. When we did it, it actually got tighter. You know, it was not quite as lengthy, but it was also punchier. And I think the net result is that it actually is. more inspiring. It's more motivating. It's more effective. So I think that's probably what's going to happen there. And I do like your idea to just write it from scratch every time. I think it's going to be hard for me to do that with some of this stuff because my life theme is so ingrained that, I mean, I review it every single day. So my life theme is, you know, I help people

multiply their time and talents, leave a bigger dent in the universe. So it's going to be hard for me you're like, okay, forget that and come up with something new. But I like the idea. And I think it is a valuable piece of advice to, you know, don't get anchored into the stuff that you've had previously, the historical artifacts and the way things used to be. Give yourself permission to think about things through a new lens. That's really, really important.

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for their support of the Focus Podcasts and Olive Relay. Okay, Mike, so we are doing quarter four planning and I volunteered to go first. So here I am. To me, the quarter planning process is analog with some digital pieces as well. And I always call it review and plan. I don't just call it plan. To me, a key element of the quarterly review is to look back at the last quarter. I know, do you do that? Yeah, I do. My whole process, I kind of outlined in the personal retreat process. But there's two parts of that retrospective. The first part is really about

considering what happened. And then the second part of the retrospective after I take the break, that's really the part where I think about the future. I think that one of the things that looking back helps me with a lot is recognizing what I actually accomplished and what went well. I am very good at just on to the next thing. And taking the time to celebrate your wins during the personal retreat is very important. Well, I wouldn't even say just celebrating your wins, but it's just to me, it's, like I said earlier, it's the feedback loop. Like, you know, I write a check at the beginning of the quarter and then at the end of the quarter, I look to see if there's enough money in the bank to cash it. And it's important to go back. And often I will go back and find

that I didn't do everything I had planned for the quarter. And that gives me an opportunity to ask the question why you know sometimes it'll be you know because you know there's something else came up in another one of my roles you know family member needed a lot of help and it gave me less time for work or like i can tell you in quarter three uh we had an extra one week vacation that we didn't know we were going to take it was it's a long story but you know we got a good deal and ended up going out of town for a week and that put a little bit of a dent because you know there's only 12 weeks and you take one away and then, you know, when you go away for a week,

that means the week before you work twice as hard and the week after you work twice as hard, you know, how it is. But it also kind of gets in a way of kind of big ticket production stuff for me. And so that put a little dent in it. But going back and looking at the past quarter and looking at what my aspirations were versus what I did, I really like that loop because sometimes I do nail it. And it's like, wow, I did everything.

In fact, I did more because I had extra time. and and uh but you know we're all not just you know it's not about just keeping score here just about figuring out how you move your life forward and um this this quarter you're looking about a quarter three i had a pretty good quarter i mean we had that extra trip which allowed me to kind of be there for my wife a little bit more but we also i was also able to get a lot of the big stuff done the big max sparky project for me this quarter was i have a new field guide that's going to come out probably a few weeks after this show airs. It's going to be called the Apple Productivity Suite Field Guide. So I took apart the Apple apps, you know, notes, reminders,

calendar, free form, because they've got really good. And I think for a lot of people, that's enough. But, you know, figuring out how to teach it and record, you know, 100-ish videos about it takes a lot of time. So that was a big project for this quarter. As I talked to you today, all of the videos are done. They're all in post-production now, and that feels really good. So I hit it with that one. Another big goal for me this quarter was the concept of non-negotiables. This is something that's kind of been coming up for me.

It all started at the beginning of the year when I was looking at my woodworking hobby and realized that I was going to have to stop saying I'm a woodworker because I never do it. And I didn't like that. So I just said, okay, I'm going to spend an hour a day out there. You know, and I'm not going to have a plan, but I'm going to find an hour every day to go out there, whether I'm sweeping or cutting dovetail joints or whatever, I'm going to find an hour to work with my hands. And it's been a really great solution because, like, taking the pressure off of having the plan what I'm going to do, but you say, no, you're just going to go out there for an hour a day. That's part of what you do. It was just, you know, it's obvious probably to a lot of people listening, but to me, that experiment worked.

fantastically well, so much so that I have expanded it. And so now I've got three hours to count it for. I say, I'm going to spend an hour a day using my hands in the shop. I'm going to spend an hour a day reading and reflecting. That's just who I am now. And I'm going to spend an hour a day doing some form of exercise, whether it's walking or we do Pilates. And there's a bunch of different things I do to X swimming. And so I'm going to find an hour a day that I can give. So that's three of the 24 that I'm giving to what I have now called non-negotiables. And it's like, no, that's just going to happen. It doesn't matter how busy you are.

You're going to find three hours a day to do those three things. And I've been locking that in this quarter. Fell off the wagon a little bit with the trip and also towards the end of production on the productivity sweetfield guide. I didn't keep up with it every day. But I feel like overall grading myself, that's a problem. pretty major change to account for three hours a day, and I'm doing it. Nice. I'm interested why you mentioned those three hours out of the 24, right? So is sleep not one of the non-negotiables?

Well, yeah. No, I always get enough sleep. That's kind of wired into me, you know? But I know how I produce when I don't get enough sleep, so I get enough sleep. But I really feel like I need to treat these three areas of my life with the same, with the same, you know, kind of commitment because it really makes a difference for me, like getting away and doing the, like, the handwork I really find helps and, and I think the read and reflect is good and the exercise. I want to keep, you know, doing this. I want to be around a while and you got to take care of your body as I'm getting a little bit older. So that, that went well. Another big goal. of mine for the quarter is more free YouTube content. Like I've been making a lot of YouTube

content. I think I've got something like three or 400 videos I've made for the labs now over the last few years. But it's all behind the Max Barky Labs. So if you look at my public YouTube channel, it's like crickets, you know. And I've got a list of ideas I want to make YouTube videos about. Like even just that idea I was talking about earlier today that we shouldn't always solve for fast. I've got a YouTube video outlined on that. I've just never recorded it. And I want to start doing that, you know, as part of what I do is Max Sparky, that that stuff just goes out there. You know, I'm not saying every week, but, you know, once a month at least, right? And that's been a goal of mine now for multiple quarters. And this is one more quarter. It didn't happen.

So that's one piece of it that didn't succeed. And that's the one that keeps getting pushed back. So now I'm going through a process of saying, well, why is that? Why is it that you never seem to find time for that? And I have good reasons, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give up on it. So looking back on this quarter three, I'm pretty happy with what I did. I feel like I had a good quarter. Things were solid. I'm proud of the work I did. But there was some areas that I didn't hit. But if there was one that I would miss this quarter, I think it would be the YouTube stuff. I think the non-negotiables and the new field guide were definitely the priority. I 100% agree. And I want to unpack that a little bit if you're cool with that,

because I think the place that I always start is picking one, maybe two intentions for the quarter. And then as you go, you give yourself permission to change things. You do want to make sure that you are connected to the thing that is the most important. I think that's the goal there. But how do you process, I guess, those things that you didn't complete in this quarter. How do you decide whether you're going to roll that forward and you're going to, well, that didn't work this time, but we'll try it again. Or say, you know what, it didn't work. Maybe that's not meant to be. And you just let it go. Yeah. I think it just depends. I mean, like one of the things I would look at there is how long I've been trying to do this. Like this YouTube one is

getting pretty long in the tooth for me. But in fairness, trying to get that rolling while I was researching and producing an entirely new field guide was probably a mistake like looking back quarter three Dave in his planning session was a little too optimistic and you're looking for in quarter four I'm not going to be making a new field guide in quarter four so I think this will be a much better opportunity to do that so I'm looking at this problem like okay um one of the things that I haven't done with it is break it down enough into its component pieces you know to to research what what that would mean to do this and like I've already been talking to my editor and he says yeah I can do that extra stuff and so I'm just figuring out what the pieces of it are um in this case I am not

going to be throwing this one overboard but there have been goals that I saw drift through several quarterly reviews that I finally said you know that's just not going to happen now and maybe I throw it overboard entirely or maybe I'll say I'll think about this again in a year or two um but the but this one I I think it's important that I do it and I kind of want to do it. I've got some good ideas and this is a platform that would be kind of perfect for those types of videos and I just need to make them. Yeah. So one thing that you mentioned, you know, you're figuring out the different pieces of this

and just kind of a general piece of advice I think for people who are trying to do something like you just defined it in the outline as more YouTube. Like what does that mean? Like maybe you can't do more YouTube this. quarter, but you could make progress on figuring out what are the things that I need to put in place so that I can do more YouTube. So you made progress even if you didn't complete it. And if you are struggling with something, breaking it apart like that into the different

phases or the components might be how you start to get some traction on something that seems to be stuck. Yeah. Well, this one I will get unstuck. It's just a question of when. I'm not going to give up on this one. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Incogni. Take your personal data back with Incogni.

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code focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D via the link in the show notes and get 60% off an annual plan. That link is incogni.com slash focused, and our thanks to Incogni for their support of the Focus Podcasts and all of Relay. You want to hear about quarter four what I'm planning now that I've gone through the debrief? Let's do it. So quarter four, first of all, I will say, and I think everybody should think about this, quarter of four should come with a warning label because quarter four includes Christmas,

Hanukkah, New Year's. It includes a lot of holidays. And I think just usually inevitably there's a lot of family time and maybe even a end of year trip or something. So just be warned going in. I always feel like this is the quarter where I most need to be careful about not overbooking myself because, you know, there's just going to be stuff going on. That is fair. Yeah. For me, I feel like it's quarter three that is the worst because my whole family plays soccer. So we frequently have to be in three different places, three different cities at the same time.

But yeah, you got to see that stuff coming ahead of time and adjust accordingly. Yeah. The other thing about quarter four going in is like I don't, so there's one week a year. that I allow myself to change horses. And what I mean by that is all the tools I use. Like the tool sets, you know, do you use obsidian or Omnifocus or no plan or whatever. I find myself personally always tempted to switch. Like every time there's a new app that comes out that's got something shiny,

there's a part of me that's like, oh, yeah, this will solve all my problems. I should spend three days moving all my data over, you know. And I've learned that that's not really very healthy. So what I do during the year is I'll play with new toys coming out. That's part of my job is Max Sparky. But I won't like commit to any until the end of the year. And at the end of the year, I make a decision, okay, for the next year, this is the tool set I'm using.

And I find the week between Christmas and New Year is a great time if I decide to switch something to make that transition and get things set up. So that's coming. So I always think about that heading into quarter four. It's like, well, is there anything you want to switch this year? you need to make a decision by Christmas, basically, if you're going to do that. So that's one of the things coming into the year. But that's just kind of like every quarter four I have that same question on my list.

But my actual plans are quarter four. Number one is I want to further lock in these non-negotiables. You mentioned sleep earlier. I didn't add sleep to it because I just get enough sleep. That's who I am, right? Non-negotiables aren't that much of my identity yet, but I would see a point in the future where I don't track these and make a big deal about it, but every day I spend an hour in the shop, an hour reading, and an hour doing exercise.

You know, I think that's something that could become, you know, part of the core operating system for Sparky if I just stick with it, but I'm not there yet, and I want to kind of keep making that an area of my attention, like every day am I doing these three things? So that's a big deal for me. On Max Sparky, I'm continuing the YouTube, and I've written it down as YouTube strategy, so I'm not committing that I'm going to start releasing one every month in this quarter, although I may, who knows, but I'm definitely going to have everything,

all the pieces in place by the end of the quarter. So I hit the new year with that. I don't have a new field guide, but I've got some product updates I want to do, you know, like shortcuts. has got updates and I want to release updates to that and Omnifocus. But those are relatively small projects compared to developing a whole new product. And so that's that's kind of the big pieces for production stuff. Other stuff out of Max Barkie I've got going in is this year I added a second person to the team and he's been doing great and I want to delegate more. So I've got to

figure out what that means. I'm a control freak. So it's hard for me to delegate. But I feel like that I've got time in the next quarter to really think about that. And, you know, the infrastructure update I've already mentioned. There's another concept, though, I'm also interested in that's been developing. And this comes out of, frankly, handwriting out quarterly reviews is this idea, because this year I have increasingly become infatuated with the maker movement and craft work. You know, I've been reading a lot of good books about it. And I feel like there's a big overlap between the philosophy of craft and makers and the way I approach Max Barkie. And I think there's something to this idea of craft or maker as a way of life. And it's just a nebulous concept in my brain right now,

but it's something I want to think about, write about, and just ponder. And I'm going to make sure I give time to that whole concept in this next quarter. Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of maker spaces that are springing up all around where I live. And I've seen some of them and they look really interesting. It's not really, I think, the thing for me, but I can definitely see why that would be interesting to you with your emphasis on the getting in the wood shop and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm definitely into the maker movement. Like I have a 3D printer. I have a laser cutter. I have some stuff, you know, and I do leather work. So like my attitude towards it is, you know, whatever your problem is, I'm going to figure out a way to solve it. But that statement right

there is what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that people who are interested in productivity or people are interested in, you know, kind of pursuing their best selves need to go out and become makers. But I'm saying that mentality of what's the problem and I will come up with a solution to it, even though, you know, I mean, that kind of self-reliance of it, there's a piece of that that really resonates with me, and I think it makes sense for, it's something that I think people need to hear with respect to this intersection of Apple technology and productivity has nothing to do. I'm not saying I'm going to tell everybody to go out and start, you know, sewing their own socks. What I'm talking about is, I want you to take that mentality of, yeah, I can solve this

problem. And, you know, I'll put it together. I think right now we're at this time, like the AI based automation tools and like there there's a lot of tools out there that I think if people can get the right attitude coming to this stuff they can really solve a lot of their own problems and I I don't know I just think there's something to it like I said it's very nebulous I almost hesitated to share it during the show because it's not really solid in my brain yet but it's something I've been thinking about a lot about lately maybe it's just me but I think it's something that people could to dig. So I need to work on that. I've got a whole bunch of personal stuff too, obviously. I don't want to share all that. But there is one. I'm going to make a bookcase and curio cabinet for my wife.

So I'm looking forward to doing that. She wants that. Nice. All right. So one thing separate from my review, and this kind of relates to what we were saying earlier about the analog tools, but I don't think this is just limited to analog. This whole thing we're talking about, this Q4 planning for me, is not just something. in my brain. This is things that I have written down on paper and, you know, transcribed with the ones and zeros into my Mac. And I think if you're, if you're considering a quarterly review, I just want to take a moment to talk about how important it is that you get out of your head with this stuff and you write it down. And by writing it down, I'm going to be very broad

here. That could mean that, like I said, you're writing it in digital form or analog form or scratching out on a shovel like Abe Lincoln, you know, whatever, but you've got to write it down. Yeah, 100% agree. Every single time that I feel like, oh, I know what to do here, I give into that and I fall into that trap. I will eventually start to feel overwhelmed. That's my cue. Just grab a piece of paper.

Just start writing down the things that you've got to do and the clarity comes. And I think the same concept applies to the, the core. really planning that we're talking about here. There's something magical about thinking externally, whether that's on a keyboard or a notebook page. When you get it outside of your brain, you can kind of see it for what it really is. And that's important for figuring out what you're going to tweak and the changes you're going to make to the systems in your life in hopes of getting better outcomes. You can't write down like things feel off. That doesn't work, right? You know, you can think that. But you can't write that down.

If you write that down, you're going to feel compelled to answer, why do they feel off? You're going to go deeper in the process of writing it down. The other thing I find is that, like, there are gaps in my thinking. Like, working through this YouTube thing and working through this maker thing that I was talking about, by writing it down, I will solidify. You know, it's just working it through on paper or on a computer are going to force me to to put structure and actual, you know, meat behind this, this issue. And I think that's something that you just can't do in your head. It's just, I've never been able to do it. I doubt, I doubt anybody can. The other thing is memory is a terrible historian. You know, three months

from now, you're not going to remember why you made certain decisions. When I talked about my reviewing quarter three review, I mean, that's what I do is I go back and read the whole review I wrote at quarter three, and it feels like jumping in a time machine, because as silly as it sounds, the version of me that wrote that on, you know, three months ago is not the version of me today. Like, I have been through another 90 days of life, and I have evolved, and I'm a different person. You'll see it even more if you keep doing this. Like, when I go back and read a quarter review, I wrote two or three years ago, that's really a different person. And so, like, going and writing down gives you the opportunity to try and travel back and get the actual, you know,

thoughts and emotions you were having at the time to explain why you did and what plans you made. Another advantage of this is pattern recognition. I think that, like, the woodworking thing, that was a good example, well, at the end of last year, when I said, oh, I want to woodwork more, and I looked back and I had written that in like the last five quarterly reviews and had barely made anything. That's when I said, okay, buddy, are you, is this for real? I mean, is this something you need to throw overboard and sell your tools, or are you going to do this? And that's what really gave me the kick to get the first non-negotiable on the books. So you get to see patterns with it. But there's some other benefits of writing it down. Well, one question I have

for you, do you ever use mind mapping in this role of writing it down? I don't, but I'm, I'm game? How do you do it? What do you do? Well, I don't think I use it in this context, but it occurs to me that mind mapping is a really great tool for making sense of things. Like I just, as we record this, published a newsletter slash blog post on the difference between cranking and creating, which was an idea that I captured months ago. And then when I was thinking about what am I actually going to send in my newsletter this week, that idea came up and I, grabbed it and I was like, I have no idea what I want to say about this. And I put it on the mind map and I created the one node for cranking and the one node for creating. And then I just

started jotting down one or two things under each one of those and it's like, oh, okay, now I see how that actually applies the other thing. It was sort of like the catalyst that allowed me to almost within, you know, five, ten minutes. So it's like almost instant, you know, the clarity comes in the fact that you are externalizing the thoughts. It's a little bit different application. So it doesn't necessarily apply to the quarterly planning reflection process. But I think you could use mind mapping as a very effective tool for this. Yeah, I mean, it sounds to me like your cooking ideas, which is I'm a big fan of that. But the, yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting question. Maybe I should toy with that like in the roles planning or something. But I will say that,

you know, writing it down gives you that time machine effect, which is really powerful. The other thing is it allows you to document your decisions. I was thinking, you know, while you're talking, the, when I decide to stop doing something, I'll write down why. And then if I'm tempted later to pick it up again, I'll go back and read why I stopped in the first place. And that often gives me a little perspective that I don't necessarily carry around in my head. You see your progress. That's another thing. I think is really nice about it is when I go back and read quarterly reviews I did two, three, five, ten years ago, not always that a different person, that is less, a person that is

not as far along as I am currently. I see the progress. I see how I am more aligned with the things that are most important with me. I'm making more progress on the things that I want to do with my life. I see the development. And I feel like it's because of these reviews. that I'm able to witness that. I don't think I would notice it if I just hadn't written it down. Yeah, noticing is the important thing there, planting those flags so that you can go back and recall those things. And I agree with you with the whole idea of the cooking ideas.

I guess if I were to frame it differently for the sake of the conversation today, it's kind of like cooking reflections. I don't know, but I think. I think it can absolutely work. You just need to have some sort of activation tool that flips your brain into that mode. And I think my mapping can definitely do that. You know, there's the saying that thoughts of sentangle themselves, your lips and pencil tips. I feel like that's what you're hitting on with this.

It could be clicky keyboards. It could be mind maps. It could be a lot of other things. It just needs to get you thinking about things in a little bit different way so you can notice all those details. Yeah. It's just, maybe you could summarize it saying unwritten plans are wishes. That's what, you know, they're just not, they're too nebulous. They don't, they don't affect change. When you write it down, you make actual plans. And like I, I mean, we've actually talked about this on this podcast before, but like, I've been teaching the productivity field guide a few years now. And by far, the barometer of success is the people who do the reviews. When I talk to people who say, you know, it didn't really work for me. And I'll say, did you do the reviews? They're like, oh, that was too much work.

You know, and then the people are like, this changed my life. I'm like, do you do the reviews? And they're like, yeah, I love the reviews. That's how I figure it out, you know. And it's like if you do a review process, I'm not saying you have to use my system. You can do anything. You can use my system, make your own, whatever. But doing the reviews is some of the best time you can spend.

Yeah, it helps you see the forest through the trees. And it's just like, and I understand, it's like, yeah, what you're asking me to do is spend three hours gazing at my navel and writing things down about my feelings and figuring out what's important. I get, that's hard. But just like, think all the stuff you waste time on. We all do it. Like, I just watched the entire run of a foundation.

What was that, like 10 hours, 12 hours? One third of that was enough to do a good, good review, right? You know? So, yeah, make time. for it. It's important. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Gusto. You started your business to do what you're good at, not to spend hours calculating tax withholdings. That's where Gusto comes in, to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and

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One more time, gusto.com slash focused. Our thanks to Gusto for the support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. All right, I guess it's my turn. Talk about my Q-3 wins and my Q-4 plans. The Q-3 wins, and just to clarify, you had mentioned the do you had asked me do I ever go back and and look at what uh evaluate what happened in the last quarter I do do do have the the goals that I've attached to that that quarter and I do look at those um but I also you know I mentioned celebrating my wins that's the part where

I really struggle I have no problem figuring out what's broken and what I want to change I guess I'm a little bit of a natural pessimist in in that regard uh so So by emphasizing the wins, I'm sort of focusing my energy in a certain way because if I get so bogged down in all the problems and the things that are broken, I can get discouraged. And it's hard to maintain that motivation. So that's just my quirky little approach to this. But as I reflect on the last quarter, I actually accomplished quite a bit. I have my Life HQ, the done for you, Obsidian Vault, with all my workflows and things. Obsidian released a major new feature called Bases, which kind of changes the game for

obsidian in a lot of ways. It replaces data view for a lot of people. Basically, if you had a plain text note taker and, you know, markdown editor and Notion and they had a baby, that's basically what Obsidian Bases is. And it's kind of incredible. So I updated Life HQ with all that stuff. You know, it was in beta for quite a while, but the basis feature was. and then all of a sudden it was released and it was important to me that Life HQ was updated on day one to support that.

So I was able to get that out. I also created a new product that I haven't really talked about because it was tied to a YouTube video that I released not too long ago where I walked through my whole booknotes library. I've got this crazy system for taking book notes where I take them in my note,

I transfer them over to Obsidian. Well, with bases, it's really ideal, for like these libraries or these catalogs. So I did this crazy thing, David, where not only did I show people how I built my booknotes library or I can sort it by rating and all that kind of stuff, but I packaged up all 217 of my book notes with the three sentence summaries, the mind maps, the text-based notes, the ratings, all that stuff into an obsidian vault. And I made it available as a pay what you want product because I had no idea what to charge

for it. Yeah. So you can get it for free if you want, if you want to do it. donate some money and support my my career as an independent creator you can do that but that is actually available now i'll put a link to that in the the show notes that people are interested it's just practical pkm.com slash notes and then obviously we talked about the the planner that was not you know something that i zeroed in on this quarter this last quarter but it came out this this last quarter so that's super cool um the thing that i was focused on though during all of this

was really the YouTube strategy. I really wanted to get consistent with YouTube. I really wanted to develop my systems for YouTube so that I could publish a video every single week. And I was largely able to do that. I even added a little bit of an experiment in August where I published a short every single day. I'm not doing that anymore.

I did figure out a strategy for shorts that I think I'm going to build into the normal flywheel for videos. But the big thing that I figured out this last quarter was that rhythm of publishing YouTube videos weekly and that has actually led to me hitting a pretty major milestone for me anyways you know it's a drop in the bucket in terms of some YouTube creators but I crossed 10,000 YouTube subscribers last week

yeah I'll take that and I think the big thing you know as I was focused on dialing in that YouTube rhythm the big win is really just learning what makes a great YouTube video and then figuring out how to do that systematically because it takes a lot of trial and error for something like this. Even though YouTube seems like the natural medium for me, I do a lot of video courses, things like that. I feel like I'm just starting to learn how to make a good YouTube video.

But as I publish them and I get the feedback, you know, the last three videos that I've released have been like the YouTube will show you when you release a video where it compares in relation to the other videos, last 10 videos that you launched. So kind of what you want is this one of 10. You know, my last three videos have been one of 10, which is not, you know, that I caught lightning in a bottle. It just, I think that shows that I'm learning from the feedback loops, a little bit of a verification there.

Do you worry that the algorithm starts changing your content? You know, like you start, you start thinking about how to make one to get a lot of, you know, a lot of juice at YouTube and suddenly you're pursuing something that is not as interesting to you? Not really. I mean, I definitely get where that's coming from, and I think I was worried about that at one point, but there are certain things that I wouldn't have done just naturally. Like, if you look at my thumbnails, usually there's some gooberish expression of me

pointing at something that's obsidian-related. I don't really love that I have to take those kinds of thumbnails, but that's part of the game. In terms of the content, though, I don't. don't feel like it's changing what I make. Because I think YouTube specifically, I mean, all social media is kind of algorithm based. So it's not, you know, you've got 20,000 followers and you release something and 20,000 people see it. You're trying to make things that people will want to engage with. And with YouTube, I think they're aligned where I want to make good stuff

that helps people. And they want to show people good content so that they continue to use the platform. And so I think those kind of align for me and the type of stuff that that I make with the educational YouTube content. But you do have to kind of learn a little bit. I don't like the phrase learn to play the game because that's not really what it is. It's really kind of like customer research and then building the thing that people want. I don't do the, you're never going to believe, you know, type of titles. I try to make it very clear. This is the thing that I'm making, and then I just try to deliver as much value as I can in the videos. So even like that book notes and bases video that I did, it's 27 minutes long, I scripted the whole thing

word for word because I don't want a bunch of filler. I can't stand it when people are showing a screencast and they're trying to find the thing that they're going to show. That's just me. Some people actually prefer that because it moves a little bit slower and they feel like they can stick with it a little bit longer. But I just really want something tight and punchy that's going help people and not waste a single second of the the time that you give me, just my approach to it. But yeah, you do have to kind of, I wouldn't say it changes the content. It changes the packaging of the content. Let's put it that way. You know, I'm learning how to write hooks. I'm learning how to write titles. I'm learning what text needs to go on a thumbnail in order to get people to

click. But there's this like use car salesman type of, you know, I don't want to create clickbait, but it's not clickbait if you deliver on the promise that you make. That's kind of my approach to it. I'll tell you one of the things. Like I'm thinking, as I've said, I'm thinking about this, looking into it. I feel a lot of the YouTube productivity advice is really shallow. I mean, not you. Your stuff is great.

But that's one of the things I think I want to make sure if I make public YouTube channels to extent their productivity advice, they're not kind of stuck in the life hack, you know, kind of like how I'm going to change your life thing that so many of the YouTubers too. You know, you see them get on this kind of like treadmill with it. Yeah. I mean, that's really it's just what's going to make you stand out. That's the thing you got to be thinking about. I think no matter where you publish.

Yeah. To your point, I actually got a comment the other day from somebody who said most YouTubers, just parrot some book or system that they discovered, and they appreciated the fact essentially that I put a lot of effort into explaining the why behind it and how I'm using it, things like that. So that's the goal. You know, if you make good stuff, people, well, the algorithm in this case is going to reward you for it.

And ultimately, you know, I want to help people multiply their time and talent, leave a bigger dent in the universe. This is a vehicle that allows me to do that. So it sounds like you had a pretty good Q3. I did. But the thing I want to just click on here, double click on, before we move on, is that with my goals, you know, I had this kind of generic goal. I wanted to get better at YouTube, right?

So how do I apply that in a way that it's motivating for me? I didn't say I want to hit 10,000 YouTube subscribers. I said I wanted to publish a YouTube video every week. That was the lead measure. And if you set your quarterly intentions with something that you can't directly influence, I feel like it's real easy to lose motivation there. So I just wanted to call that out. Effort not results.

Always. Always. Exactly. Exactly. And then with Q4, what I want to do here, you know, I kind of feel like I'm getting some momentum with the YouTube stuff. and then kind of tied to that as another measure of success in the business obviously is growing my email list. So YouTube is the thing that I use to get attention. And then I have my

city and starter vault. Now I've got this library of booknotes, you know, these different things that will get people onto the email list so that I can communicate with them directly and not rely on the algorithm. That is actually working. So the last three days since I published my last video, the email subscribers that I get per day is almost doubled. So I'm getting almost 50 email subscribers a day at this point. I want to continue to build that motivation or that momentum. So I really don't want to do anything completely different. If I were going to pick one objective over the next quarter, the thing that is the most important is to continue to publish a YouTube video every single week

because I feel like that flywheel drives my creator business and if there's one thing that has to get done, you know, that's it. However, I do have a pretty big second intention for Q4. Yeah, you just dropped this in the outline. I'm like, what? Yeah, so this is something I've been wrestling with for a while. I mentioned I went to the Content Entrepreneur Expo in Cleveland. That was a pretty great conference, actually.

It was a couple hundred people, so it was pretty small. I got to hang out with a bunch of people who I look up to. And then the conference was put on by a company called Lulu. And they're all, so that's a self-publishing house. But then they also have like a hybrid publisher arm called The Tilt. And there were a lot of people there who had self-published. their books. There were also people there who were, they had published, you know, they had the publishing deals with the big four publishers or they were in the process of

getting, getting one of those. And I attended a session where Fernando Labitista, I think his name is, I'm sorry if I'm messing this up, but he talked about writing a book as like a business asset around a word that you can own. And, When he was talking about that, I was like, personal retreats is the thing for me. And I left that thinking, well, you know, maybe I should write a book about personal retreats. And I have wrestled with this for many weeks, David. Corey picked a book for Bookworm called Published by Chandler Bolt, which is another sort of like hybrid publisher. You can self-publish through them, basically.

They have processes to help you do all the stuff, and then they help you get the hardcover and all that kind of stuff. So we went through, we recorded that episode, and then Corey's like, so you're going to write a book with me? And I was like, I don't know. He's like, come on, you should do it. You have any idea what you would write a book on?

I'm like, well, yeah, actually. So it's going to happen. And the planner, you know, that's important to me, not only because I want to have that tool out in the world. I do use that every single day and I love it, but I want to be the personal retreat guy. And that's, you know, another flag I can plant in the ground. I'm working on a video right now. I don't think it's going to be out yet by the time this goes live, but I recorded yesterday

a 45-minute YouTube video, which is a complete deep dive on my entire personal retreat process. You know, I'm just creating these big assets around the idea of a personal retreat. to start talking about personal retreats more. As I started to think about, is there enough there to write a book on personal retreats? Absolutely there is. When I started putting you that script for the YouTube video, it's almost 7,000 words. I mean, I'm like a fourth of the way there already. And there's lots of stuff in there. Again, I'm trying to keep it tight for the YouTube video. I can expound on that stuff. I can add more color, add more detail. And I'm realizing that when it comes to writing a book, if you're not, you know, trying to get a publishing deal and get in

advance and all that kind of stuff, which I don't think I want to go down that path. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but I really want to have complete creative control over what I put out there. And I think I kind of have a clarity and an idea for like where this is going to go, what it's going to look like already. Now I just got to do it. And I'm recognizing that when it comes to actually doing the writing. It doesn't have to take six months in order to do it. In that book published by Chandler Bolt, he's got a whole challenge. He forces people to write the first draft in 30 days. So I think that's probably what I'm going to end up doing as part of like nanorimeo or something like that. I'm not going to write a novel, but I'm going to commit to writing something.

Now, as I said, YouTube is priority one. If it comes down to you can either publish a YouTube video every week or get the book written, it's going to be the YouTube video. But I'm slowly coming to grips with the fact that I do need to write this book. Excellent. I'm looking forward to reading it. Wow. Well, good look. Mike, I think sounds like you've got a plan.

I hope so. And it's really, you know, Q4 plans. It's not really a very detailed while I'm going to write this many words every day. It's really just sort of this is the direction I want to go. At this point, it's kind of an intention more than it is a goal. that's one thing I think that is important to me when it comes to planning these things is I don't take the smart goal approach. I really don't care about tracking my progress every single day towards this. I mean, a lot of people would give you that advice. That's fine if that works for you.

But really, I just need enough structure to know what it is that I'm supposed to do every single day, which is pretty clear. I want to write every day and make progress on this thing. How much progress? I don't really care. I just want to write something every single day. well at least starting in in November but there's a couple other things that are kind of tied to this you know I have on my list here down in LinkedIn strategy because as I'm thinking about personal retreats and talking about this sort of stuff you know I'm not going to create different YouTube videos on personal retreats all the time I think people would get sick of that but when it comes to text-based social media there's lots of options out there in the platform

that I feel has the best vibe for me right now believe it or not is LinkedIn A lot of creators on LinkedIn, it's kind of, it's not, you know, the old business networking site. It's not really that anymore. But I want to be able to communicate more consistently and just in higher volume. You know, when you are writing something for a text-based platform, you can publish three times a day. People don't really care. If you're publishing three videos a day, you know, people aren't going to watch all those. Yeah.

But it's a place to test the ideas, I think, for the book. And so I don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet, but I want to dial in that strategy. And then I'm committed to taking two weeks off when it comes to Christmas time. And I'm hoping that's going to kickstart the sabbaticals that we keep talking about on the show. But time will tell. Yeah, in theory. Yep.

I don't know. Like I took a week off for this little vacation we had. So look, I'm taking enough time off, but I am not landing. on those sabbaticals or reset weeks, as I want to call them, like I'd like to. And that's something I'll think about heading into next year. But this quarter is kind of already planned for me. But I'll definitely be taking time off around the holidays. We have, you know, family stuff going on and things like that.

But just kind of the time to yourself downtime that, you know, Sean talked about that got us started on this trip, I just can't seem to get there. yeah but yeah the eternal struggle at the same time like i i have a lot of controller of my schedule like one of the things i've been doing um off and on over the last four or five months is what i call a monday rucking where i wake up early and i go to disneyland and i get there at seven 30 and i walk like seven to ten miles just you know i'm done by lunch and i go home like maybe I'm not getting a sabbatical, but I take a long walk every Monday morning through the Anaheim resort. You know, it's like, isn't that, isn't that kind of like doing this stuff,

having this kind of control of your life pretty nice? Yeah. I mean, ultimately that's what you're after is you want to live life on your terms. I don't think you have to follow a specific pattern. I do think that for someone like me whose personality is go, go, go, go, go, going, go. Having an occasional rest week is probably a good idea. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Hello Fresh. Fall is here and with it comes cooler nights, hardier meals, and the craving for something warm and satisfying.

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The biggest surprise for me with Hello Fresh though was how much my kids love these meals as well because we've got some picky eaters at home who would have pizza and hamburgers every single meal if they could. So they're a little bit skeptical the first time we made a Hello Fresh meal, but everybody loved it and they continue to love it.

Now when they know that we're making a Hello Fresh meal, we don't have any problems with anybody finishing their dinner and many times people ask if they can have that. Again, it's just so good and it gets. us to try things that we wouldn't normally try. It also makes it possible for us to eat meals together, even though this is the busiest season of the year for us. So thank you, HelloFresh, for helping us to have more family dinners instead of grabbing fast food on the way to soccer games. The best way to cook just got better. You can go to Hellofresh.com

slash focused 10 FM right now and get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. One per box with active subscription, free meals applied as discount on first box and new subscribers only varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com slash F-O-C-U-S-E-D-10 FM to get 10 free meals and a free item for life. Our thanks to HelloFresh for the support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. Mike, you got any new shiny new objects you want to share? I do. Well, it's not actually a shiny new object. It's a place you could get shiny new objects, let's say. I shared the story on this podcast about how I met you at the, I think it was the Hyatt in San Francisco for Relay's fifth anniversary show. And we

were getting in the lift and I was meeting Brad Dowdy for the first time. And he's asked, you know, I'm asking me where I'm from. Oh, some small town you never heard of Appleton. He's like, oh yeah, Brian and Lisa, Anderson Penns. Right. That was my gateway into the fountain pen rabbit hole. Well, kind of a sad story with Anderson Penns because they expanded to Chicago. They took out a lease in a historic building right before COVID. They couldn't occupy the location. And there was a lot of drama associated with that. The ruling came down and long story short, you know, they've told this story on their

YouTube channel, but they had to shut down Anderson Penn's. Very sad day for the fountain pen community as they, you know, had to figure out what they were going to do next. Well, they're back as Cardinal Pins, which is fantastic. It's Brian and Lisa, same people. They no longer have the brick and mortar store, but they were doing a lot of stuff via the internet anyways. And so I've been kind of following this online store

as they've built it out and they've got a new YouTube channel. So they're continuing to share about the pens that they're selling. And little by little, they're adding back all the, the pieces. You know, they've got the sailors, the Twisbees, the retro 50 ones, the pilots, and two of the nicest people that you will, will ever meet. So I'm thrilled that they are back in the fountain pen world and just wanted to call attention to their new venture, which is Cardinal pens. You can get all of your fountain pens at cardinalpens.com. And I'll put a link to this in the the show notes, but they've got everything.

So if you're looking for something, I highly recommend you talk to some people who really care about this stuff and really are passionate about this stuff. That's definitely Brian and Lisa. And so, yeah, I would just encourage you to look here first next time you need a new fountain pen. All right. I've got two.

One that the audience will care about and one that they probably won't. First one is I ordered my Plotter refills for next year. They're available now. We talked today a little bit about analog. I love the PlotterSysa.com. And right now they're selling the 2026 refills. So if you want to get in there and get all your, you know,

monthlies and weeklies and all that stuff, they always sell out. So this is a good time. get them if you're interested. And I don't know if I'm going to use them or not. I use digital calendars. Like I really kind of, as much as I like analog, digital calendars make more sense to me. But I decided to take a shot on it for next year. And I'm not saying I'm going to replace my digital system, but I think there'll be some overlap. And I'm going to do some experiments with that. So that's something I ordered. The other thing is the one that people probably

won't be uh care about is i found a new app that i absolutely love uh as a musician uh there's a lot of these like play along apps where you can say i want to play autumn leaves and it'll digitally create a backup band for you you know bass drums and you know the problem is a lot of that is done by computers and it doesn't feel like it doesn't have like a natural swing feel to it um i discovered uh recently this app for the iPhone called Quartet. It's made out of England and it's a group of jazz musicians and it's live recordings of humans. So it has a real swing feel to it. So I can just turn it on and play along with these guys and it's really fun. They've done the app in a way where I can speed up or slow down the tempo or change the key and it doesn't sound bad. And just, you know,

suddenly I've got a new backup band and I kind of like it. It's very affordable. The way they're doing it is they sell different versions of the app like they'll put like 20 or 30 songs and then they'll make that an app and then you can get you know now they've got four of them out i bought all four of them i think it was like 36 bucks to buy all four of them you know it's like such a deal and then they're going to continue to release more and like i really love that i've got a backup band on my phone now nice so have you used the uh the i reel app back in the day yeah well i reel i didn't want to say i reel because i don't want to like disparage them but it's very algorithmically generated which is not i don't care for that i mean i look i i go back on this stuff i used to buy the old

jamie abersall records when i was a kid and jami abersall was a jazz guy who would hire musicians to record these backup backing tracks like you know ron carter would play on them they're just great um so those were really good they had a great feel to them um the i reel stuff is just, if you listen to it, it's very stale to me. Sure. Well, I mean, you're, no offense, a little bit of a jazz snob. Yeah, okay. I've used I reel before, and I agree with your assessment of it, but I also think it's a

pretty great practice tool. So your mileage may vary, but I definitely understand what you're describing here as the difference between these two apps and definitely understand why the human stuff seems like it would be very much in your wheelhouse. Oh, yeah. And they like, they even like kind of follow, like they do one like all blues and they play the baseline like Miles did, you know. I mean, they can't call it all blues because, you know, and they don't play the melody in it, but it's just the backing tracks, you know, so it really has a great feel. So it's fun to sit here and jam along with it.

Nice. what are you reading david i am following up with the uh with the library of soetso yunagi i talked i think a month or two ago about the unknown craftsman the book that i had been hunting and finally got uh he wrote another book that's a lot more available called the beauty of everyday things and he's a kind of a japanese artist um philosopher guy and you know his idea is that um need to cherish anonymous craftsmanship, that the stuff that's in our life every day that's made by people who care about what they make. And, you know, he died in the 60s. So, you know, he was kind of there at the beginning of the industrial kind of development. His

big argument was that mass production and commercialization have led to decline in the quality and beauty of everyday objects. That's the real key idea of this. And, And his argument is you should look for that in your everyday, find things that have love behind them like Mike's planner. And, you know, support those things. And those should be the things you pursue in life. I really like it. It kind of ties into what I was talking about earlier, about a philosophy that you can

carry into the way you conduct yourself. And I'm enjoying the book. And like I said, this may not be for everybody. But if you're interested in that topic, he has a lot of interesting things to say. Nice. Looks great. I am reading a book called Time Anxiety by Chris Gillibow, which is not actually as stressful as it sounds. Have you heard the name Chris Gillibow before, by the way?

Oh, yeah. I went to World Domination Summit years ago. Okay, I was wondering if you had ever been to that. Yeah, that's where most people will know Chris Gillibow from. He also wrote a pretty successful book called The $100 Startup, if I'm not mistaken. He's been an author for quite a while. But this was the first truly productivity style book that I had seen with his name on it. And it had a lot of recommendations.

So we are reading this one for Bookworm. And I just started at him about 30, 40 pages in. But so far, I am really enjoying. this. And it's an interesting take on time management. He's basically talking about at least at the beginning, the emotional perspective that goes into how we manage our time. Like the chapter that I just finished is all about how catastrophizing affects your ability to manage the time that you have available because it causes you to procrastinate on the things that you really should be doing and then things back up and you've got to ship them at the very end, you know, stuff like that.

It's sort of like, you know, I've read a couple books on ADHD. It's kind of like that neurodivergent message that is in a lot of those books and kind of a different way of thinking about productivity. That's kind of what this is towards the topic of time management. And so far I'm really enjoying it. I am curious. Let me know when you get to the end if this is one I need to read. I'm going to let you be my filter here.

We'll do. All right, we are the Focus Podcast. Thank you for listening. You can find us at Relay.comfm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors today. That's Squarespace and Cogny, Indeed, and One Password. If you'd like to become a member and join DeepFocus, go to Relay.fm slash Focus.

You can sign up right there. That gets you the ad-free extended version of the show. Today on DeepFocus, Mike and I are going to be doing a social media check-in, something that I desperately need. So I'm looking forward to that. And we'll see you next time.