Focused - 246: A Cleansing Palette of Joy

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Welcome to the Focus Podcast, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mike. How are you today? Hey, David, doing pretty good. How about you? I am doing well. This is a fun episode we would like to do every year.

Can we get to the end of the year? We do a little reflecting, a little thinking going forward. I know that you and I are both big fans of the quarterly retreat and kind of quarterly planning. But there is something special about January 1st. And I think for a lot of people, it's a really good time of reflection. So let's just lean into it. Yeah. Let's do it. You know, we could, this one's going to be heavy on reflection. So maybe we just call this the hippie episode every year. I'll go with that. Yeah. Let's do that. I do think reflection is important, you know, thinking about how things have gone allows you to, to improve on the future.

I mean, that's the reason why we like the quarterly and the monthly stuff, because the more of those cycles you get in, the more chances you have to improve yourself. Yep. Before we get started, though, let's take care of. We've got a little bit of business to take care of. What's going on over a practical PKM? Yeah, I've got a live cohort that's kicking off on January 5th. So I've got the hybrid cohort, which is one of the things that I accomplished this year. We'll talk about that later.

it's a sort of hybrid between the live cohort experience and the self-paced video courses, 84 videos from the live cohorts that I had done previously, custom AI agent. So you got kind of like a PKM coach available whenever it's all trained on the material and then monthly Q&A calls. But then I really like doing the live stuff. And I've had a couple people in the community ask when I'm going to be doing the next one. So I put it on the calendar. And what's interesting about this one,

is that I'm trying something different pricing-wise for this. So the hybrid cohort currently sells for $497, and you get lifetime access to it. You get the monthly Q&A calls. You get the custom AI agent that's inside the circle community. And if you have purchased the hybrid cohort, you'll get access to this one live. But if you haven't purchased the hybrid cohort,

I want to make this one as affordable as possible. So I'm trying something new. My community, the pricing is $49 a month for the pro tier. It gets access to all my courses, all the hybrid cohorts. You get the life theme one as well. And that is $49 a month, but you pay it quarterly, so it's $147 for the quarter. And when you are a member, you get access to these cohorts, right? So if you want to join the Practal PKM live cohort in January, you can do so by just joining

the library at that $147. I've never done it with this quarterly pricing before. It's always been an annual or above because cohorts tend to be pretty expensive. I saw one the other day that was $1,500. But if you want to join this one live, you can by getting the three-month membership essentially for $147. And I'm hoping that's going to make it more accessible for people to come join us and dial in their PKM stacks because I was listening to a podcast the other day. I think it was Nathan Berry interviewing Ryan Holiday and kind of how he landed on the Stoicism stuff. And he mentioned that you want to find something that is both timely and timeless, right? So PKM is bigger than Obsidian, even though I love the app.

And this cohort is really about plugging the right apps into the right places so you can facilitate the flow of information into and out of your systems, align it with your vision and value. and do more of what really matters. So that's the goal. It's going to go for six weeks. It starts January 5th, and you can find out more, and you can sign up. You get access to it with either of the options on the join. Dot practical pkm.com page.

That is the official hybrid cohort page, but if you join either of those, you'll get access to this live cohort in January. That is a steal. And I think anybody who wants to master their PKM, that's a very good investment. I hope, Mike, that a lot of listeners. join in with you. I will be doing something. I'll have a formal announcement yet, but with the productivity field guide, this will be the third year. I'm going to do the webinar series. I've now done the webinar series twice, and I've also done it twice with students. I did during the summer.

I do the kind of productivity academy with the students, and I feel like I've really got my arms around that course and how to teach it. I'm updating the book, and I'm going to have stuff more. to announce on that after the new year. But that's going to be coming down the road for me as well. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm already hearing from people asking if I'm going to do it again. The answer is yes. The details will be after the show ships, though.

So just keep an eye on maxbarkey.com and they'll hear all about it. The best way for me to keep up with new stuff I'm doing is just sign up for my newsletter. And sign up for our newsletters. We'll put links in the notes today. I'm proud of the content I put out in a newsletter. It's a nice mix of tech and. and philosophy and productivity and Mike has an excellent newsletter as well and we would both appreciate it if you just went and signed up. Absolutely. I've mentioned before I treat my

newsletter as my most important product. Yeah. So I love geeking out about things and doing deep dives in the newsletter. This week as we record this, I moved my entire content publishing calendar. So my master calendar of everything that I make is now inside of Obsidian using a calendar view for bases, which is extremely nerdy for some people, and it went right over their heads. Other people are geeking out right now, and that's the type of stuff that I do there. Yeah, you know, bases and, I mean, this show is, that's kind of beyond the scope of the show, but the bassist feature in Obsidian, if you haven't played with it yet, it is such a game changer. I basically took all my data view out of my obsidian database.

The bases are so much faster, and they're frankly easier to build. Mike get a great video on it. Maybe I'll link that as well if you're at all interested in obsidian and watch Mike's video on bases because it's a great kind of primer to get you going. But they, you know, the obsidian team is really clicking on all cylinders lately. Yeah, it's incredible how much they are able to ship. Yeah, I can totally see. I'm kind of surprised you didn't already have your content calendar in a obsidian because it's totally doable at this point.

It does require a little bit of extra nerdery currently because I got a calendar view, which technically isn't available yet. The other thing I'd like to say, as we're kind of getting rolling here, is for deep focus today, which is the ad for extended version of the show, Mike and I are going to take a moment to reflect on. joy and gratitude from 2025. In this episode, we're going to be criticizing ourselves. I don't know, reflecting on where we could have done better, I think it'd be good to end the show talking about the joy and gratitude of the year. I think anybody that's thinking about year-in, quarterly stuff, should always do that.

So we're going to have a cleansing palette of joy and gratitude, I think, to the show for those of you subscribe to Deep Focus. All right. Let's get started, Mike. Looking back at 2025, both you and I have a lot of thoughts. We have an outline here. And I thought, why don't we just start bouncing back and forth? Let's start with a question of what went well. Looking back at 2025, Mike, what went well? Well, the first thing I jotted down that went well is actually several things. I've grouped it together under the point of significant systems upgrades. This is work-focused specifically, but as I was going back through the calendar and recognizing when I did this and when I did that, I did a lot. I moved my whole online presence to a new web platform, which is Ghost, and I've been publishing consistently there all year. I redid all of my sales pages for LifeHQ, for the practical PKM hybrid cohort,

for, what am I forgetting, the library, and then also the starter vault, which is kind of like my big lead magnet that I mentioned in my YouTube videos. And that I feel like kind of gives me the foundation that I need to really crank out content. And crank out content sounds bad because I'm not just trying to become a content machine. But I don't have to worry about what's this going to look like when I publish it, if that makes sense. I don't have to worry about, well, I'm using a black quote here. So is that going to render weirdly in my CMS? I can just trust that I can take my mark down, throw it in that editor hit publish, and it's going to look great.

I even did things like for my longer articles, I have a post type that has a table of contents. So if you look at one of my posts like the one on the tier list rankings of the Obsidian Core plugins, it's got a table of contents. You can click the section and jump to that specific spot. And that all kind of just happens when I select the title. It grabs the headers automatically. And that makes me so happy.

I got a couple other significant systems upgrades too. without getting too into the details, because it's extremely nerdy, I really dialed in my YouTube production system. And I kind of have been off and on with YouTube over the last maybe year and a half, almost two years, probably at this point, where I would publish consistently and then there'd be a month or two where I didn't publish anything. And then I get back to publishing weekly and then another month or two or I'm not publishing anything. And really it was just because I was able to focus on it and sprint for a little

while, but then wasn't able to stick with it because once the initial motivation is gone, then it becomes one more thing and I can't keep up with it. So the solution to that has been to build a system, get a little bit of help. We had Max on the podcast a while back. He actually has been a big help with me getting out the videos. And it's more so the mental part of that than it is the physical editing, because there's still a lot of back and forth and collaboration that happens there. And I, you know, honestly, from a time perspective, if I wanted to take over the entire process and do it myself, you know, it wouldn't take me a whole lot longer, but the videos would not be nearly as good because he has a different perspective and he's, hey, we could

use this little clip right here and make it more fun, you know, stuff like that. So really happy with how that has developed. And then I also, under this significant, systems upgrade. I've done a lot with the content that I write for the newsletter. I mentioned earlier, I consider that my most important product. So I've been taking this, the stuff that I send in my newsletter. And I've been thinking about what are the other ways that I can leverage this asset, this work that I did of writing. How can I repurpose this? Sort of like newsletter shorts, if you want to think of it that way. And I've developed this weekly thing now where I write for the newsletter, I turn it into the blog post. And then I also will record the,

audio version of the newsletter and I'll make a podcast. I'll embed that on the website. So essentially from the newsletter, you know, I get the newsletter. I get the blog post and I get a podcast out of the same piece of content. And I've been doing that for several months now. I know, it's got to be like six or seven months since I started that podcast. And I'm really happy with the flywheels that I've built basically. That's kind of the next point, but it's looped into this is that the content flywheel is really working. YouTube is going well. I just crossed 12,000 subscribers not too long ago. The email list is growing. It's less than that because I'm actively pruning out people who just don't want to receive my emails anymore to improve the

deliverability. But yeah, I feel like that part is it's not set it and forget it, you know, and it's not autopilot. It still takes a significant amount of effort, but that part is really going well. Yeah, I feel like from the outside, it seems like in 2024, you had a lot of ideas. In 2025, you've got a lot of clarity about what you want to pursue. Like, just talking to you, I can see in your eyes that you know what you're doing now and you know what your path is. And as your friend, it's nice to see that you've kind of found that. That's a good way to describe it. because I was thinking about where I'm at this year versus where I was at last year. And, you know, we're still not out of the woods yet.

I'm sure we'll get to that and that could have gone better. I'm still feeling some professional stress, shall we say. But I've not, I don't no longer feel like I am grasping at straws, trying to find something that works. I feel like I now know what works and it's time to double down on it. and all the systems investments that I made this year, they were a lot, but they give me a firm foundation for the future. So, you know, in a different scenario, because I've gotten some feedback from focus listeners, I appreciate the feedback. Someone wrote in and was concerned about

me. So maybe you need to just take care of your family. I appreciate where that is coming from. And I have felt that. I have thought that thought many, many times. I have applied for jobs. I am willing to do whatever it takes. But I also, at this point, in December of 2025, feel like I have more momentum than I have ever had before and more confidence that I am on the right track and this is actually going to work. It's just how quickly do I get to the escape velocity

for the airplane really takes off. Yeah, yeah. But you're on the right runway and you are. building speed. That's the impression I have. You also did a live event this year, right? That was a big step. I did. Yeah, we hosted a life-themed live event. That was back in May, and that was probably during the period where I was still trying to figure out what was going to work. That was not a financial success, I will tell you that, but it is one of the things that I enjoyed the most from this year. Maybe we can talk more about that in the deep focus part because getting a few of my

favorite people together in town where I'm able to curate the experience that they have and see them have a really good time was a lot of fun. I also made a planner. I almost forgot about that one, but that's not a small thing. That's actually been a couple years in the making. But I love that thing. I use it every single day. And if nobody else bought one, I would still love that it exists, but there have been quite a few people who have bought one and given me feedback and like, hey, this is great. This is the first time I've been able to stick with my quarterly intentions. Awesome. I love it. That's the goal. There's a lot. Looking back, Mike, you've had a substantial year. Yeah. And I don't know if you want to go back and forth with the what went well

things. I got a couple other things on this list, but maybe I'll give you a chance to chime in with some professional things. And you broke it down into the different categories as well. Yeah, I think about it in terms of roles. I mean, that's kind of my thing. Like, what are the roles? And I try to make work one role, but not the only role. But on the work role, the Max Sparky role, this year felt really good. I, you know, when I quit the law practice, there was a couple years of adjustment. You know, I built out the studio and I was just kind of figuring out what this new lifestyle meant to me. And, you know, it takes a few, it took me longer than I expected, but, you know, about as long as I should have expected to kind of get comfortable with that, but I feel

like I am comfortable with that now. And, you know, my workflows are pretty settled. I released two field guides last year. I kept up with the podcasts and all the lab, stuff and I feel like I delivered the goods for a year and it wasn't crazy, which, you know, is kind of the goal. The productivity field guide also has really emerged as something that's near and dear to my heart because that of all the things I ship, that's the one that gets me the most really positive feedback. I mean, people do like the stuff I make about, like how to use the Apple productivity suite. Lots of people enjoy it. But, you know, it is, you get happy chemicals when people tell you that you've changed their life for the better. And that one does that the most.

So it feels like, because this is the second year I've been doing it, it feels like that's part of my thing now. And nobody's telling me I'm out of my lane anymore, which is kind of nice. And that has given me the ability to teach it to kids, which is fun. And also just kind of learn more about it. You know, you're talking about when you had your live event, it didn't make money. But you probably learned a ton about your customers and the problems people face and doing these productivity webinars to me is the same thing. It helps me kind of really get to the root of the problem of where people are suffering.

One of my big insights this year is that so often the difference between any of these practices working, whether it's mine or any other one, and not is having a reflective practice, which leads me to talk about journaling more on the show and meditation and ways to be self-reflective because that truly is the path to improvement. But overall, I mean, professionally is Max Barkie, I don't know how I got so lucky. I don't honestly know what happened in the universe to get me to a spot where I get to do this every day. It certainly wasn't the plan.

but the universe put me here and I'm going to take it and I'm super happy. I'm like, I love my job. So that's good. Well, on that topic, I don't think it's completely luck that you ended up in this role. One of the things that you do really well is you show up consistently and you have done that for how many years now since you started Mac Power users? Well, really, as Max Sparky started in 2006, so we're coming up on 20 years. Yeah, yeah. So I would argue that if anybody is looking at, you know, Max Sparky and saying, I wish I could get the overnight success that he has had show up for 20 years and it'll happen.

Yeah, I do believe. I mean, I'm not, you know, false humility. I do think that I was lucky, but I also think that I capitalized on the luck. You know, I put a lot of hours in and, you know, and gave up other things to make sure that this worked. And it was never a guarantee, though, even having done all the work, it could have, you know, failed miserably. And, you know, I, you know, I'm not rich. I'm doing okay financially, but I just love what I do, you know. And it's like, who cares, you know?

I mean, I don't need a private island. I want to enjoy every day and I do that now. And interacting with the labs members, interacting with you and Stephen and the people that I work with is just a joy. And the other thing for me is I am the guy that used to be a lawyer. And being a lawyer has real negative sides to it. You know, you deal with people who want you to lose. And, you know, just the whole system can really tear you down. And I was fine with it.

I was able to get comfortable with it. I did that for almost 30 years, I'm also very glad to not be doing that anymore. So I'm very thankful, you know, of where I am now versus what I used to do. I just couldn't be happier with my professional life. Awesome. The other thing I want to, I want to mention is you talked about the productivity field guide. And I remember when you first came out with that. and I asked you some version of the question,

do you think this is going to become your signature product? And you kind of were like, well, I don't know, it's a product. And even now you're talking about how people are not telling you you're crazy or you're, you know, you should get back on target. I feel like that is the thing that is the most max sparky thing you've ever done. And I, like, that's the, and you've mentioned this, like, if there was one thing you want to be known for your legacy that you're going to leave, it's the productivity field guide. And so hearing you describe how it's gone over the last couple of years, I can sort of see,

what's the word? is it like validation in your your eyes like i had this crazy idea and it actually worked and people aren't mad at me doing it anymore and uh when i first saw the the product i i saw that and i it's cool to see that uh it's it's gaining more and more traction and i think that's going to be a trend that that continues i hope so you're like in my mind like after i'm gone that's actually something that people could still benefit from you know yeah yeah and honestly it just been so useful to me. It's a system that I designed for myself. I never intended to share it and sharing it has been a joy. So that's worked out great. My next kind of role set is family and

friends, all my roles that face other people, you know, husband, father, friend. And I feel like I'm doing a good job taking care of them all. You know, I view myself as a caretaker for those people. And again, I think I'm doing pretty good. The kids are doing well. My wife is happy with her life. And in the past few years, there's been a few people in my life that needed special attention. And that wasn't as much the case this year. So it just kind of allowed me to kind of enjoy those relationships. And so that's going well as well. And I guess I could just continue. The other one under success for the last year is in the other roles for me are the personal roles, the ones that are self-facing. And honestly, those are the ones that needed

probably the most work heading into 2025. And one of my big challenges, if you go back a year and listen, I think we talked about this last year. But like, I really got into my wood shop after I stopped being a lawyer. It's like it was like almost immediate because I used to be really into it. My dad built cabinets. It was kind of, it's a connection to my father. And it's also very enjoyable to work with your hands when you work with words all day. So I wanted to do that again. And I kind of slow walked into it for a variety of reasons, but got the shop set up. But at the end of last year, I realized I really hadn't made much over the last couple of years. It was more of a talk than action kind of thing. And in my reflection, I had to ask myself, like,

Is this really a role that you're going to do or not? Because, you know, if you sit here a recorder and say that you are a craftsman, but you don't do any craft, then you actually aren't a craftsman. And maybe you should just sell the tools and accept that you don't have time or you're not going to make time to make it important. And I decided to really tackle that in 2025. And my technique, which we've talked about in the show, was I just decided rather than make detailed plans of what I'm going to do each quarter,

I'm just going to make a commitment to spend an hour a day doing craft. You know, and some days that's cleaning the shop, some days that's designing a piece of furniture, some days it's making a piece of furniture. And over the last year, I have really come to relish that of the 24 hours I'm given every day, one is going to be out there, you know, listening to some jazz. and doing something with my hands. And it's like cheap therapy for me. And that has worked tremendously well.

It's a great technique I'd recommend if someone is trying to pick up something is don't put a bunch of weight on yourself, just commit to an hour a day. So much that I expanded that during the year. You know, often I try to wait till the new year to add on, but it works so well that by the middle of the year, I had added an hour of day of read and reflect,

where I have a little corner over there. I sit and read a book or write about something that's on my mind. And then I've also added health because that's another piece for me this last year. So three of my 24 hours go to shop time, read and reflect in health. And that has been a really big success this year. Nice. The personal stuff, that is one of the areas that I need to improve. before we get there though a couple other things that went well this year for me

I ended up doing a fair amount of traveling for conferences primarily but I really enjoy getting in person with people and I have this somewhat useless skill also I can go to these conferences and even if everybody else is like, oh, this conference is terrible. I know this stuff already. I get so inspired and I learn so much and I come back and I'm like, I'm going to do this, this, this thing. But it's not just like wish casting and, oh, I should totally build this thing because somebody

said I should. I figure out how to take some gold nugget from whatever somebody is sharing and oh, that's a great idea and I could totally apply this. in this specific way. So every time I come back from a trip, even though I am very introverted and being around people drains me, I come back and I feel replenished. I feel rejuvenated. And I think part of that is the ideas I'm able to gain. And then also the relationships that I've been able to build. We had several guests on this year who were people that I met in person as I went to different events.

And when I'm at an event, it's not like I'm going from thing to thing to thing to thing. There are definitely times when I'm like, okay, I've reached my people quota, time to go back to the hotel room and disappear for a while. But I really enjoyed that. And I'm actually going to try to do that a little bit more next year. I also really enjoyed coaching soccer this year,

which was something that I almost didn't do because I was definitely feeling the stress of all the stuff that was going on. And kind of like, I don't have time for this. Someone else is going to have to do it. And I kind of just sort of didn't really formally commit to it until the last minute, hoping somebody else would step up and do it. Nobody did.

I'm like, well, I guess it's me then. But it was also one of the most rewarding years of coaching soccer that I've ever had. Part of the reason was the team was different this year. It was a little bit smaller team. and we didn't have any real superstar players. We had to play as a team, which is hard to do when you've got a bunch of middle schoolers and some of them had never played soccer before. But really just enjoyed the group of kids and how much they grew.

Oh, and I guess one other professional thing I did, which is worth celebrating, is I launched a small group coaching thing, which actually just wrapped up. I did 10 weeks of what I'm calling the Creator Business Accelerator. So I basically took everything from the launches that I did. And primarily it was the Life HQ launch because that one actually did go pretty well. And that was sort of a tipping point for me in the summer was I had this idea for, you know, I launched these things and people ask questions like what sort of emails should I write for a launch? And I have the blueprint.

And whenever I share it with people, like, oh, thank you so much. That's so valuable. But then I never really viewed myself as having the credibility to teach other people how to do it because my business is not insanely profitable, right? I don't have the success on the tin that other people do. And I was talking to somebody and they were like, dude, you have all the credibility that you need to do this thing. And they broke it down and they're like, you know, you did this and you accomplished these results. And as he's going through the list, I'm like, yeah, actually, I did do that. So he's like, well, you can teach other people how to do that.

And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll, I guess I'll try it. But that went really well. I think it's probably still a little too early because we went through a ton of stuff in 10 weeks. You know, people aren't, you know, launching their product yet. But I have no doubt that that is going to be one of the most fruitful things that I do. And I'm looking forward to working with another small group at some point in 2020. Yeah, a couple things you said I wanted to follow up on. First is I think the soccer coaching for you is a form of margin.

I mean, you have got your head in the weeds so much with kind of getting the business to be more successful that I think it's very easy with your personality to like just kind of not live the rest of life. And you do need to focus on those other roles like dad and soccer coach and all that as well. And giving yourself that, I think, was a gift to yourself and as well as the other people around you. So definitely, you know, do more of that next year if you can. And then I also know why the conferences work for you because, I mean, you live up in the colds of Wisconsin. You're not around other people that are doing what you're doing. It always feels good to get around other people that are doing what you're doing. I would like to get to a point where I can do more of those.

there's been a lot of scheduling things and frankly for me i just wanted to get good at what i'm doing get comfortable in this lifestyle of creator before i went to a bunch of these i kind of feel like a fraud when i go to these things so um i got to get a little more comfortable with myself before i'd go to some of these but i think in the future i'd like to participate in more of that as well but the thing one thing i hear from you is like even watching you as we we do this and by the gang you can watch now if you go to the show notes we've got a youtube channel where these things get the videos get recorded but i can see like the happiness in your face as you're going through what went well and i can even see you convincing yourself oh yeah i did pretty good this year and

that should be true for everybody i mean you know this idea of this end-of-year reflection you should really spend the most amount of time thinking about the success because as humans, we always focus on the negative, you know, we always think about where the saber-tooth tiger is. That's just our programming. And you should counter that. And you should, when you do these types of reflections, really spend time writing down all the stuff that did go well and the stuff where you did well, because you need to understand that you're making progress. You know, it's the, you know, it's the game, not the gap. Yep. And I think it's easy. I think that's one of the reason why people are resistant to reflective practices

is because they feel like I'm just going to feel down on myself afterwards. And the way we're doing it here is the way you should do it. Spend time, go through, look at every role, look at all the areas of your life and really document the successes. And I think that will really help. Amen, brother. Another part for me when I kind of think through years, another question I like to ask myself is, you know, what was unexpected that happened last year? A lot of times this kind of

helped set me up for what I can improve on. It also gives me a little bit more grace because you go into a year with a plan, you know, and then, you know, it was a man laughs. Was it man plans? God laughs. I forget what the saying is something like that. So you go into the year with a plan and things kind of go a little haywire because of unexpected reasons. It doesn't hurt to kind of document that as well and think through, what did go different than I expected? And maybe that explains particular success or failure at your plan. So this is my list. Last December, my wife had a heart attack. It was a big deal. And she's okay. And she's healthier now than she has been in a long time. And so might. We decided, you know, that's our wake up call. We're both, you know, getting closer to

60 than 50. And we want to stick around a while. And as you get older, metabolism slows down and things happen where you've got to pay way more attention to your health. So I'm doing lots of long walks. I'm doing lots of Apple Fitness Plus. I'm at Pilates three to five times a week. I mean, we're doing in a lot of ways, my core is stronger than it's ever been. But something I realize as I get to the end of the year is this health project was almost like

the equivalent of making a field guide, like learning about what? what's going on with my body and her body and how to be more healthy. That was a much bigger project than I thought it was coming into the year. So that's one thing that was unexpected. You got anything unexpected that happened to you last year, Mike? Several things. The big thing that kind of threw me for a loop right from the very beginning was some very unexpected family drama.

that we had to sort through. Honestly, we're still kind of sorting through it. But that felt like the rug was ripped out from underneath us. It's the only way I can describe it. Our support system basically got upended. So we felt, what's the word? It's not like we didn't know what to do. We weren't like a drift.

A drift, but a drift, yeah. Okay. So yeah, kind of like being tossed by the waves for a little bit. Yeah. My dad is also battling lung cancer. So that is always in the back of my mind and creates honestly guilt with working on the business stuff because it's like he's getting older anyways. I don't know how much time I have left with him, which, you know, Memento Mori, I think that's important. And actually, I wrote about this in the newsletter not too long ago, but right before his cancer diagnosis, we had started meeting regularly for coffee. And when we found out that he had lung cancer, I was so grateful that I had taken that

step proactively. It didn't take the cancer diagnosis in order for my perspective to shift. But in the back of my mind, you know, there's, I have a very limited amount of time left with my dad, and I want to just stop everything and just hang out with. him as much as I can. He's in town most of the time. So that's, that's tough, is finding that, that balance there. As I mentioned, the business financially is, uh, is still struggling, but we're making progress and it's not, uh, false progress. I guess, you know, last year I had the Life HQ launch and I thought, you know, that took us to another level and that was going to, you know, slowly trickle

off, but it would be somewhat sustainable. But I didn't really have systems to support it. So surprise, surprise, you know, it shouldn't have been a surprise in hindsight. But it kind of dropped off precipitously at the beginning of the year. And then I was kind of wondering, like, well, where's the money going to come from? What am I going to do? So I feel like this year, I've kind of built things in a more sustainable way. And I don't have to worry about that quite as much. But I have been, to borrow your metaphor, running down. full speed for almost the entire year, probably longer than that. And I feel like I am this close to falling on my face. So I need to figure out a way to slow down. I need to figure out a way,

take some time for myself. I want to delegate more. I have had some success with like the YouTube stuff. And I have somebody who is helping me out with some of the community stuff inside of the library. But it's really hard for me to ask other people to help me do things. I guess I still buy into the lie. I know it's a lie, but still, if I'm honest with myself, this is what I do. Nobody cares about this thing as much as I do. So I'm just going to do it. And that's not healthy. It's not sustainable. So it's not that I can't get help. It's not that people aren't willing to help. It's that I'm unwilling to ask for help. I'm like that. That's a lifetime habit for me as well. Even as a lawyer and I had paralegals and secretaries, I always just want to do it

myself and it's a control-free thing for me. I've come to realize it. No, I just want me to do it. I want to know that if there's a problem, it's my fault, not somebody else's. And that is a lifelong challenge for me. Yeah, me too. But hopefully we'll make more progress. now that I've put it on the list. You know, that's part of the value of this is process for me and why I do it every quarter two, you know, what went well, what could have gone better is if I see this pop up over and over and over again, eventually my dad has a saying that when pain is sufficient, change will come.

Yeah. And I made progress on that this year as well because I have a second person now. I have one person that helps with the edits and one person that helps with the posting. And it's just, you know, the Max Sparky Empire is not very big. I don't need a lot of help. Like one of the things I did this year is I took back customer support email so I can know what's going on with the customers. It's not that much work.

You know, it's not, I'm not like one of these huge YouTube presences or whatever who has thousands of emails coming a day. And so it's manageable, but I'm getting a little bit of help. Another couple of unexpected things for me in 2025. And these, these don't aren't necessarily all like. bad or surprises that negatively affect you. Like, I did not realize how successful this non-negotiable three hours would become for me. But I, like, as the year went on and I expanded it from just shop time to also reading and

reflecting in health, I really cherish it. And that was like one of the surprises of the year that just kind of made life better. So, you know, sometimes unexpected is not necessarily. a difficulty. And likewise, because it was the second year of productivity field guide, this is the year I kind of realized, oh, this is really a thing and people really like it. And I need to do more of this. And I'm also hearing from people who like started it with me in 2024, who are now have been doing it for a couple of years. And they're experiencing the kinds of changes that I felt like I got out of doing it. And, you know, when you

you first start teaching it, it's all kind of an article of faith. It's like, no, you do this stuff. It really helps. But now it's evidence. People are, they have the reps in. They see how it's helped them. And they believe as well. And that, that's great. Awesome. Another thing I like to do at the end of the year is just kind of like, this is more Mac power users kind of thing, but just kind of a tool system's reflections. You know, like, what are the systems going? I know you are like settled on Obsidian. Last year, I did a lot of work. the Apple productivity suite, reminders, notes, and calendar because I was building a field guide on it. I still came out of the year with more respect for those applications, but they're not the

only apps I use. I feel like this year, I kind of have really found peace with Notion, which is what we use as the back in for the show, and I use it back in the Mac Sparky. I never really liked Notion because it's just a web app, like it's so much a web app, which are not really my favorite kinds of apps. But I really found this year that, no, this is a great place for collaborating with other people and just, you know, let it do that thing. And don't try and make it more than that because I did some experiments. I'm not going to put my whole system in Notion. But, you know, I found peace with Notion and a good way to use it. Another kind of tool reflection I have at the end of the year is just the evolving nature of artificial intelligence, like what it is. The

I know this is a moving target, but I feel more than ever comfortable with the idea that AI for me is the source of doing donkey work, you know. And I keep using that term because I think it perfectly categorized. I just made a video for the labs where I had used an MCP model context protocol to talk from Claude to Omnifocus. and I had this big list of 280 things I had put in Omnifocus of ideas for future content. You know, every time I see a good idea, I think of an idea, I just dump it into this content ideas project.

But because of me making that new field guide, I had moved the data out to notes and then I moved the data into reminders and I moved it back to Omnifocus and I knew there were duplicates in there, you know. And I knew it was going to be a couple hours to kind of sort it out. So I just asked the MCP, go through it. that list and find duplicates. And it did. It found like 100 duplicates. And it removed them for me. And then I said, okay, go through that list and fix any grammatical, you know, whoopsies in the project name did that. So like stuff like that it can do for me. And, you know, as I kind of round the corner to a new year, I'm realizing, yeah, AI can really be of assistance to me to do that kind of work. And I'm building kind of towards that. So that feels like kind of a reflection work.

of my time. And then the third reflection is really the analog kind of hybrid balance. I've struggled with this for years. People who listen to the show know that. But this is the year I kind of figure out, oh, it's okay. I do some stuff, you know, paper and pen and some stuff on the computer. And that's just the way I live my life. Nice. One other thing I'll add for me in terms of things that could have gone better. It's not really what could have gone better. It's more like a lesson learned from a thing that could have gone better is that I really don't love doing side projects. I convince myself that this one's going to be different and it never is. It's always frustrating. And I'm going to try to minimize the number of side projects that I do in

the next year. I wish I could just cut them out completely, but not at that point yet. and there are a couple of things that I've done for so long that I'll probably continue to do them forever like the screencasts online stuff you know at this point it's pretty easy for me to create a video module on something that I'm excited about and there's not a whole lot of friction in that I've been doing it for gosh 10 years now um but the other projects that you know I need something to help pay the bills, and this one looks promising. They almost never pan out the way I think they're going to. And what ends up happening is it steals my attention and my focus from my stuff.

So I sort of get in my own way with how I approach these projects. It's really not the side project's fault. It's really me. And when I got this thing and I, you know, I'm trying to get this thing done, it dominates, everything else. And so I really need to make sure that I prioritize practical PKM. Maybe there's a way for me to figure out, you know, how to do this stuff secondarily. But I have been pretty fantastically bad at it in the past. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Incogni. Almost everyone experiences robocalls

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is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use the code Focused via the link in the show notes and you'll get 60% off an annual plan. Check it out now, incogni.com slash Focused. Our thanks to Incogni for the support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. all right mike so we've celebrated our success of 2025 how can we learn from that going forward in 26 well um we can not repeat the same mistakes but i think we probably will anyways uh we can keep trying things i think that's the the fewer to condense this whole process down into uh an overly

simplified statement. It's keep running experiments. Look at what works. Do more of that. Cut what doesn't work. I have some specific intentions for 2026. One of them is the result of an experiment. That is to finish writing my book. I made progress on this. I mentioned I was going to be writing this in November. And I got I think like 15, 20,000 words in. So I made progress on this, but then came to the realization that this personal retreat book that I'm going to be writing, really needs a framework to hang this stuff on. And I am terrible at coming up with frameworks. I can figure out how to create these visualizations for things that makes sense in my head.

But most of them, when I try to communicate them to other people with the exception of a couple that I talk about publicly, they end up just being overly complicated and people like, I don't even know what to do with this. So at one of the events that I went to, I got connected. with somebody who runs a business called Signature Framework. And she creates these visualizations of these frameworks. She did the one for Ali Abdal in Feel Good Productivity. So I went for Justin Moore with his sponsor wheel.

Just really takes these things and creates very powerful, simple frameworks for people who are trying to make stuff. Like it's, when I talked to her about it, it was obvious. that this is, this is something that I am missing. And, you know, the one thing, they talk about the clarifying question, what's the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary? You know, if I really had a signature framework that I could talk about everywhere, I feel like that makes it so much easier to point people to things, to sell things. So I'm going to be working on that, actually, at the beginning of 2026. But the book, I am wanting to publish this in 2026.

I got connected, well, I should say connected, I became aware of some interesting self-publishing options, including one called Otterpine Press, which actually looks like they published the Derek Sivers books with those woven covers. It happens to be in Asheville, North Carolina, the same place that my son's writing retreat is going to be at. So I'm going to take them there and hopefully, you know, visit Otterpine Press and talk to somebody. you know, I'd love to meet someone in person, find out a little bit more about the company before I would, you know, yeah, this is the person I want to work with. Because that was one of the things is like there's so many self-publishing options out there now and I've overwhelmed even, you know, where to even start. But this one looks pretty cool. So that is, you know, if I'm going to pick one intention for 2026, that's the big one. That's the one I want to have done by the end of the years. That book is published and available. You can buy it. there are a couple other things though you know i've mentioned i got clarity on the the product portfolio you know for me it's the starter vault it's how people get on the list the first thing

that people buy if i'm the right fit is life HQ then it's the practical pkm cohort and then if you really you know love your experience you want to keep it going there's the membership community which is the library so i've got the pieces in place and now i really want to focus on growing the this year doing more live cohorts, growing that small group coaching program. But it all takes place inside that community and just making that the most awesome place I can. I also want to connect in person with people more. So I actually, on my 2026 focused New Year calendar, which is hanging up over there, I have all of the conferences that I am going to next year. and I think there are seven of them on there,

which in the past, if I would have seen that much travel on my calendar, I would have been like, oh, man, I don't want to be gone that much. Honestly, as I think about it, I'm excited about those conferences. So just recognizing that, you know, a couple days here, a couple days there,

that is, that's what charges my batteries. So I'm trying to do that more regular. and I kind of had this big aha moment as I figured out how the products fit together. And I realized that there are a couple things that I want to update. Like I've got a personal retreat course that I want to reshoot the videos in a digital journaling course, which at some point I'd like to reshoot those videos. But the courses that I offer, you know, most of them are available inside the library with that pro tier.

But I don't really want to make anything new. I think the wild card here is AI because who knows where that goes and maybe I find some killer PKM application of AI that I'm just like, oh yeah, totally, you got to do it this way. But I haven't had that aha moment yet. I use it different ways. I actually shared some prompts inside that creator business accelerator with folks, ways that I'm using it. But I don't see a new course that I feel like fills a whole in the products that I offer under the practical PKM brand. And so that actually feels really good to know that, you know, I can just focus on making the current stuff better.

Yeah. Also, I'm focused on YouTube. And this is sort of like a crazy number to throw out there. But thinking about this gets me excited about it. I don't think it's totally unrealistic. I think there's a chance this could happen. But even if it doesn't happen, chasing this goal will provide a lot. of benefit to the business. I would love to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Get that silver

play button. And I say that that is not, you know, completely out there. I mentioned I've only got 12,000 subscribers currently. But with YouTube, I've noticed that when you are consistent, the algorithm rewards it. So if I can publish weekly and I start to do a little bit more with the shorts, I feel like that is not so far out there. I don't need, you know, a video to go viral and get millions of views. I could have a couple of videos that go mini viral, you know, and that just, they sort of take off in my niche. And a couple of those compounding could get me there. On the non-professional front, I also want to travel a little bit more with, with Rachel. I actually have this companion pass that I need to use in the next 10 months or

something, so she can fly free with me somewhere, and we got to figure out where we're going to go, but really loved going to London with her. I didn't get a chance to do anything like that this year, not that we're going to travel internationally, but would love to just get away with Rachel for even a weekend, but hopefully like a week. That would be nice. And then the big one, which probably overrides everything, to be honest, is my oldest son is graduating from high school this spring. So I want to help him transition into whatever he decides to do next. He's not sure yet. He's going to go look at some colleges. He's looked at the technical college. We're not really pushing college if he doesn't know what he wants to do. If you were to ask him,

you probably would say I'm going to take a gap here. And to be honest, Rachel and I are totally in support of that. I feel like your brain's not even developed enough by the time you have to make these important decisions to make them correctly. So we'll take our time, but help them figure things out. My youngest, you know, she got in UCLA and, but her first, her freshman year was the COVID year. So she actually stayed home, you know, one more year before she left. And that extra year, I think, made a huge difference in her ultimate success of being able to go and live on campus and do all that. So that's a fun year. He's going to have the Ferris Bueller moment where you're in between, you know, a childhood and adulthood.

And it's a great moment as a father. Really enjoy that. I want to step in on the 100,000 subscription subscribers on. YouTube. I'm not a fan of that as a goal because I feel like, so what happens if you hit $99,000? Did you fail? You know? Um, yes. See, I, I think honestly, you are too hard on yourself that way. You should say I'm going to do the best possible YouTube content or find, you know, it's the effort, not the results. And I, uh, that, I rebel against that one a little bit, but that's just my personality. well, that's fair. And I think on a certain level, I do too. I mean, I teach people that goals are

stupid because they're arbitrary. And that is an arbitrary goal. I guess the thing that makes this one different for me is, I tried to mention this when I was describing it, but I don't think I did a very good job. If I have that as the thing that I am chasing, and I only get to 50,000 subscribers. That is still probably life-changing for the business. Like 50,000 represents independence to you. If you get that many subscribers, you'll be able to be okay. I mean, 20,000 maybe represents independence. You know, it's, I don't know. I'm not a big fan of chasing specifically like vanity metrics. But this is the one. This is the top. of the funnel. So if I were to focus on one thing business-wise, that's probably the one

that I should focus on. Now, I'm choosing the book instead because I feel like that is more significant to me personally. That's the legacy, you know, that's part of the legacy I want to leave. Here lies Mike Schmitz. He wrote the personal retreat book feels a lot better than here lies Mike Schmitz. He got 100,000 subscribers. But But yeah, so I understand. And in my, in my head, it's not a binary goal. You're right. Make the best YouTube content I can because that will ultimately lead to the number of subscribers. But it's a little bit different, I guess personally. I approach it a little bit differently if I'm just focused on make good content versus get a bunch of people to like this. It's so,

So with YouTube, I'm learning, you kind of have to play the game a little bit. And so this is me saying, I'm going to play the game. I'm going to do it in an authentic, genuine way. But I am going to try to get as many subscribers as I can. Yeah, I mean, and like I would take it even deeper than just like make good YouTube content. I'd be like, I'm going to publish regularly so the algorithm likes me. I'm going to use all the thumbnail tricks. I'm going to, you know, I mean, figure out all the things you need to do to be.

be successful at YouTube and make that your goal rather than some arbitrary numbers all. You know, with everything you've been through, I don't want you at the end of the year down on yourself because you didn't hit some arbitrary number. That's all. Yep. That's fair. Okay. For me, again, I'm just kind of breaking it down by roles. On the Max Barky side, I always am looking to evolve the content a little bit. You know, I want to address good topics that I always address, but I'll So I want to skate to where the puck is going. So I probably will have a bit more content next year on making AI useful because that's

something right now that a lot of people are struggling with. Likewise, I want to have more productivity field guide adjacent material. Like, you know, what are some things you can do in addition to what I teach you in the course to have a more fulfilling life and, you know, live a life consistent with your roles and your, and your virtue? I just, I'm so obsessed with the idea of virtue-based living. I think it would cure so many sins that we have right now in society if people just re-adopted the idea that virtue is an important value.

And so I want to lean into that more and be more explicit about it. So that's a couple of things I want to do going forward. The YouTube for me is kind of the problem. And it's odd because, like, I think last year I probably released about 130 or so YouTube videos, maybe more. Because I do two tutorials a week in the labs, plus we do meetups and book clubs and all sorts of

things. But when you get to the end of the year, it's certainly over 100 videos a year I'm publishing, but they're all for the labs members. And I only release, you know, I think three or four public YouTube videos last year. So I want to

fix that. I said this last year too. So this is something I'm struggling with. And this is one of the things I didn't do in the past year, but it's still a goal for me. I think that was probably my biggest, you know, kind of failure to launch in 2025 was more public YouTube. And then the other one, which we talked about on a recent feedback episode, was sabbaticals and reset weeks.

Last year, you and I both declared we were going to put it on the calendar and for a bunch of reasons that are good, but still true, neither one of us really did. at one of our listeners called us out pretty directly. And, well, I'm really going to try this year. You know, I'm really going to try. You know, we're recording this in mid-December. And the last week of December is when I really get serious about next year plans and things. So I don't, I haven't done it yet.

But I'm going to get some, some sabbatical time into the calendar. Like at one point this year, I started talking about it reset weeks where you would just take a week to kind of reset on things, but that was still work. I really want to take a week off where it's not like family vacation, but it's just me taking a week off. I know that's a privilege thing I'm doing back in the day when I had a 9 to 5 job. That wasn't an option. But you know, I gave up a bunch of money to be Max Barkie and not a lawyer. So I might as well get some of the benefits of it too. And I understand that's not for everybody in our audience. But man, I'm going to really try this year to maybe get a couple weeks where, you know, I'm going to do it. I'm not really

at the point where I think I can do it every 11 weeks like Sean did, but at least a couple, I think I can find some reset. I feel like this year I actually did way better on margin, and that's mainly because of these non-negotiable three hours a day. That gives me this margin that I wanted. And I do get plenty of margin. You know, my wife and I, go to Disneyland all the time and I walk the dog and I do all this stuff. So I do have margin in my life, but I don't really have the kind of breaks that a sabbatical can give you. I'm still like we're at like 780 something episodes of Mac Power's. I've never missed one, never missed an episode of this show. I never missed an episode of Automators while I had its run.

So I'm always like on locked in. But I think this year I'd love the break. some of those streaks and take a little time off once in a while. So that's something I definitely want to work on going into next year. Well, you have my support for breaking the streak if need be. But the other thing with sabbaticals is I think if you wanted to maintain the streak, that doesn't mean that you can't do the sabbaticals either. They're not mutually exclusive. We could plan ahead you know and make that happen and i would would love to do that for you i am going to try to do these this year too but uh at this point i kind of feel like if i say i'm going to do it and i don't do it yeah so i'm hesitant to say anything and you're right now you just i mean you've been

open like you're at the point where your business is it's like on the margin right now you know you're not comfortable enough i'm comfortable enough i can take a week off the world isn't going to end, you know. But right now, you know, you're still getting the plane off the runway to use your earlier analogy. So that's not the time for the pilot to take a week off. And I get it. And it may be, you know, this may not be the year for you to do that, but maybe it will be. Maybe you'll get that 100,000 subscribers next month and you'll start to feel like you've got a little bit more space to work with. But I do have the space for it, but it's my control freak nature and my, you know, my parents' depression era work ethic that was drilled into me that just makes

it really hard for me to do it. But I'm going to really try and make the effort. Like I said, I don't have it scheduled yet or anything. I've got to figure it out. But that is high on my list of things I'd like to get better at next year of that and kind of get consistent with public YouTube. Switching roles to the relationships with other people. I have been doing pretty good at scheduling friend calls and like finding time when friends are in town to go visit them or have them over the house. And I think I did better at that in 2025 than I had in the last couple years because of that transition period. It was really hard. But I feel like I can do better at friendship next year. Like I was looking, Mike and I, we worked together. I haven't had

a friend call with him all year. And that's not good. So I want to do more of that going into next year and I'm going to put systems in place to kind of keep me and check on that. I have enough time to give to my friends now and I want to do more of that. Another relationship thing that is on my radar. I mean, always my wife is hugely important to me and I want to make sure she has everything she needs. But we are our relationship, I mean, we've been together since, well, we started dating in 1987. So I don't know how long is that like? It's a long time. But we have a very good understanding of each other. Our relationship is very stable.

But something that I think needs particular attention and learning from me next year is, at this point, I'm the father of adult children. And, like, they have different needs and problems, but they still have needs and problems. My father died when I was just starting to enter adulthood. So I didn't really have them around to kind of give me advice about stuff like that. And I had to figure out a lot of stuff for myself. And I'm really trying to lean into, like, what are the things that I had to figure out for myself that it would have been nice to have his help? And really kind of making sure, like, teaching them about money and just like all sorts of, you know, just normal adult things that you are challenged with.

And do that without being oppressive because they're adults now. They don't want you, like, leaning over them all the time. and sharing with them, like, the struggles and worries I have. So they understand being adult means you have struggles and worries and you're not alone. So being the father of adult children, I think, is something that's on my radar for next year. I want to lean into a little bit more. Nice. And then I guess the last one for personal.

Like, I always break the roles down into, I kind of work, relationships, and personal. And personal to me, the non-negotials were such a huge success. I'm really happy with it. And the health thing to me, I feel like is only half fulfilled. I'm doing really good at exercise. I'm eating better, but I'm not eating good enough. And I want to lose some more weight. And it's not happening as easily as I used to.

It's just the metabolism slows down. So I'm going to really lean into that next year. And I want to do even better at the health stuff. Like the Pilates, it's weird going to Pilates. I'm like usually the only guy there. but it's actually quite physical and hard. But now I'm getting at the point where I'm getting pretty good at it. I'm a lot stronger so I can go more often.

I just really want to kind of get stronger and eat better. And I don't want to go out of middle age into later age. I don't want to just surrender. You know, I want to go into it working on my health and being able. I want to be the 85 year old that still walk. and does things and you know what I mean and I'm still a long way from that but um this is the time where I need to start acting to make sure that that future is available to me so I'm accepting that's another field guide level event for my life next year too so that that's another piece I can

improve on David sparks lean mean distraction fighting machine well I mean you know in order to talk about stuff you have to be alive you know yeah turns out I mean, I love what I do so much. I would love to still be making this podcast with you in 20 years. So just take care of myself so we can, you know? Yeah, and it'll be even more important than. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Gusto. Get your payroll, HR, and benefits simplified.

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All right, Mike, let's talk about some shiny new objects. what's on your desk? It's actually not on my desk. It's in the computer. Right, what did you get? But I have been playing around with an app that I heard about on David Perel has a podcast, How I Write, and this company sponsored is his podcast called Sublime. And it's basically one of those note-taking apps where you have the cards and you can

create the connections and things. things like that. What's interesting about this one is that the whole reason for it existing is that you've got this inspiration and then you are going to make something new out of it. So there's a bent towards creators. And then in addition to the things that you capture and the connections that you make, it does a great job of recommending additional things that other human sublime users have captured. So if I'm going down a rabbit trail and I'm searching for a particular topic, you know, I really want to get better at Focus. The Focus podcast comes up. And I capture that to Sublime, you know, because David and Mike are talking about it in this particular episode,

then it'll recommend for me a whole bunch of other, you know, probably Cal Newport's podcast and all these other things that are tangentially connected to the thing that, you know, I captured. They also have this thing called podcast magic, where you can, using Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can take a snapshot of a moment in a podcast and send it to an email address. It transcribes it and it creates a little text-based snippet card for you as well. And I recently just did a screencast online module on this particular app. So I've been diving into it a little bit deeper and been very impressed with this. I might have mentioned this previously, but this is kind of my favorite type of AI powered tool. It's not the one that is

going to, you know, crank out the words for you or here's the outline, but it's going to augment your creative thinking process. And I think it's really cool. I'm interested to see where this where this app goes in the future. I, too, have been playing with Sublime, and I will second the nomination. I think it's a great app, and it is a very interesting take on these types of apps. I really like the social element of it that, like, well, here's a quote that you picked. Here's some other quotes like it that other people have picked, and it does give you kind of a way to kind of plug into the matrix on ideas.

And honestly, it's early days with sublime and all the people using it are super into this stuff. So the signal versus noise is really high. Yep. And I suspect that that will always be the case because not many other people would sign up for an app like this. Yeah. And that's kind of why I mentioned it. I have this nagging thought that I have probably mentioned this in the past. But I want to mention it again because I just really like what they're doing.

Like, for example, one of the things that they ran. recently they had like a Black Friday special where you could sign up for the lifetime option which was like 400 bucks or something like that at a 25% discount and if you bought the lifetime they actually shipped you a physical candle of the word deadline on it and the whole idea is you create this ritual where you light the candle when you're working on your book or whatever and then you get the book finished before the candle burns down like that is that sort of ethos like that's the type of app that I and company that I want to support.

Yeah, yeah. All right, well, we're both sublime bams. I also, as we're heading in the new year, I bought the Plotter calendar inserts for 2026, which is something I've never done before. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, Mike, or a bad idea. But, you know, because I use a digital calendar and my calendar is often changing with the way things are in life,

I don't know if it makes sense to have an analog calendar. Here, I'll show it up for the people watching. Like, here's December. I've got December already filled in because it started with December. But it also kind of feels good to write it down on paper and have it available to me. So I don't know. This is going to be something that sticks or not. But that's something I'm going to be experimenting with going into the new year,

having an analog calendar that I carry around in addition to the digital one. I may ultimately decide it's just extra. work and out of date all the time. I'm not sure, but it's a, it's a thing I'm going to do. Getting another calendar was sort of inevitable after talking to Patrick Rohn, right? Yeah. But, you know, Plotter sells it, so I buy it like a person that buys Plotter thing. So I guess, how are you not going to do it? Yeah, true. What are you reading, Mike? well I am reading a super secret book that it's not available as this podcast publishes but

we'll be shortly so I'm going to mention it here go go pre-order it intentional by our friend Chris Bailey it's a it's a really good book he's got some great frameworks and things in there that I think are maybe some of the best work that he's ever done and as I mentioned to him, I feel like this is really him finding his voice. I guess from The Legend of Beggar Vance, they talk about, you know, finding your authentic swing. Chris has found his authentic swing with this book. Yeah. And it's a great pick for the hippie episode because it's hippie, but in the best possible ways. I am reading the same book. So I guess I'll just say that. And I agree. I think it's his best.

All right. Well, I think that wraps it up today for the Focus Podcast. Hopefully, we've inspired you to do a little reflection on 2025 and planning into 2026. Key takeaways, I would say, is spend time really working on what went well last year. Give yourself some grace. Think of ways you can do better. And it's all of these little reflection cycles that will make you better. So check it out. Let us know what you think. You have questions, send them in for our inevitable feedback episode. We'd love to hear from you. You can do that over at relay.comfim slash focus. There's a feedback form right there. We'd love to hear from you. Also, thank you to our sponsors today, Gusto and Incogni. For you deep focus

subscribers, getting the ad for extended version of the show, Mike and I are going to reflect on some joy and gratitude from 2025. Stick around. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.