Focused - 253: Finding Focus in the Midst of Chaos, with David Roth

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

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

I am doing well. We've got a guest today. I want to welcome to the show, my friend David Roth. Welcome, David. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, David and I have known each other, I don't know, 15 years or so. We bumped into each other at lawyer conferences years ago.

So David is the, I think he is the perfected version of the corporate lawyer I tried to be sometimes. And so he's had a long and illustrious career. He's worked for big, big law firms and in-house counsel for big companies. And currently you're practicing corporate law in Texas. David is a member of the Ex-Barky Labs. And the thing about him is every time he shows up for one of the meetups and he says something, everybody like sits up in their chairs. because he's a very thoughtful guy.

And I thought, you know, what about focus? So we've been talking offline about it. And he brings a lot to the table, gang. So we're happy to welcome a guest who's not selling a book. He's just here to tell us about focus. And David, welcome the show. Thank you. That's very kind of you, David.

I appreciate it. Yeah. Well, I mean, 35 years in that racket, you've got to be focused. Focused and good at survival. Yeah, there you go. The thing that I think people need to understand about the transactional lawyers, that's what you do, is that everything is so detail-oriented. Like, a million-dollar lawsuits are fought over the placement of a comma in a contract.

And David works on very big contracts. And so he's got to have that. But I was thinking, David, when you first got starting a career, did you know what you were getting into in terms of the degree of focus? you needed to bring and what was like your wake-up moment they're like oh yeah this is this is important yeah i thought i had an idea going in but not really um i i i didn't realize the speed with which you have to practice and um uh while maintaining that speed being incredibly accurate and you know that ranges from just the embarrassment of making mistakes in your documents to the comma that results in a judgment against your client for millions of dollars, which has actually happened.

And you sort of live in terror of being the one who makes the mistakes, but on the other hand, that's how you learn as a young lawyer. So when you pick up work to do, that, you know, that note you made about speed plus accuracy. to me that is where something becomes a profession. Like I think about work that you do, like my hobby woodworking. I bring perfection without speed to a hobby because I can. But if I was a professional woodworker

in order to make enough money to pay for my shoes, I'd have to bring that perfection with speed to make enough to sell to make money. I think no matter whether you're an information worker or a woodworker, it's that combination that is so difficult. And I think a lot of people sacrifice, focus, and attention at the altar of speed. Yeah, that's a great point.

It's very hard to do both. And that's why so many in the legal professions suffer from burnout and become addicted to substances because they constantly put the pressure on themselves to be perfect. And nobody's perfect. So you do your best and then you help each other fix mistakes. Yeah. And I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But when I, because I, for folks listening, I was a lawyer almost 30 years and I hung it up like four years ago.

I never realize. And David, you may not realize either how stressful that job is until you set it down. Because I thought I was fine with it. I was like, yeah, I'm good at this. I like it. You know, I'm helping people. And then I got out of it and it's like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe the crucible. I've been in for the last 30 years.

I mean, it really, you have to almost get out of it to realize how stressful that job is. Yeah, I'm sure I don't. My wife often points that out to me that when I make comments about it not being that stressful, she sees the stress. And, you know, with just a little perspective, you realize that it's a hard pace for any human being. Yeah, the David Foster Wallace story always comes to mind in that context of the two goldfish who are swimming and they see the older goldfish. The older goldfish says, hey, fellas, how's the water? And the little goldfish look at each other and say, what's water?

Yeah. But either way, so you had your wake-up moment early in your career. How did you adapt to that? I adapted to that by going on an endless journey of systems that were going to help me. The very first system I saw was a lawyer a little older than me who was a mentor to me early on my career. He would keep a running list on the front page of the latest version of the main document. And that running list was the, you know, don't forget this. Somebody told you this. I want to make sure I check this type list. and I tried to emulate that and it was utter chaos.

I ended up with lists in lots of places. So let me just understand that. So like you have different things you're working on as a lawyer. You've got the Smith contract and the Jones contract. So he had his task list attached to the front of each contract. So you'd pick one up and the list came with you. His list was synchrosink to him. So I amulated behavior.

Okay. It wasn't a shared list. But, you know, I soon began taking the same notes. I'd be in a meeting or on a phone call and somebody who had mentioned something that I knew I needed to do in five days. That would go on the list. As I was drafting, things would come up and I'd put that on the list. And, you know, the next draft, I'd copy what was left, that sort of thing. So it was a very analog system and very imperfect.

Yeah. And just for clarification, I didn't say early. Dave's got a little gray hair. He's been doing this gig 35 years. You and I are about the same age. So there was no internet. There was no cloud sync in back of those days. Correct.

When I started practicing, the older partners were complaining about the advent of the facts. Yeah, I kind of would complain too. And I was a new lawyer at the time. Okay. So that, you said that didn't really work for you. What did? What did? So then I started going on the journey and, you know, became convinced that it was all about having a system that completely captured all of my tasks. And I started out with things like Remember the Milk, which was a early web-based task management system. And it'll become important later that one of the things I like to remember the milk was it was just a big list. And it was, it was up to you to customize it.

Then I discovered GTT like so many in our community do. And GTD seemed to have all the answers to me. Yeah. So I went on the GTD journey and I read the book, listened to the audio book several times, went to a bunch of David Allen's seminars and a bunch of seminars that his coaches put on and kept trying to perfect my GTD practice. and my GTD practice broke down in two ways. One, my list.

I was always chasing, completing my list. And two, I wasn't very good at reviewing my list. And now, you know, later in life, I realized the reviews are everything. And I would even, you know, talk with David Allen when I had a chance in between sessions of a seminar and say, David, I'm so bad at the weekly review. How can I fix that? and he just kind of nod his head and say, yeah, that's important. Well, you know, that review thing, it's like a component to every system, a successful system at least.

I feel like that's not just a GTT thing. Yeah, and I've come to learn that, but it's taken me time. Yeah. So part of my GTT journey was I tried all the software tools. And at that point in time, there was a new software tool coming out every month or every few months. You know, before Omnifocus, there was Kinkless GTT, and later on there was things. And in between there are a bunch of other GTD software and web-based alternatives, like To-Dist and the like. Do you guys remember that app IGTD?

It had a short lifespan. It was in between Kinkless and Omnifocus, had this neon yellow interface. that was when I first started getting into productivity was IGTD. I remember that very briefly, yes. Yeah, you're right, there were so many. And they were all kind of like, eh. They all looked pretty and none of them fixed my problems. And it became obvious to me that one of the biggest obstacles to my productivity was switching systems.

often that it would feel really good to organize a new system and get it set up just right and get all your tasks in it. But it wasn't actually making me more productive at all. And I did that for a couple, few years. And then I finally realized, okay, you know, the switching cost is too high. Yeah, okay. So let's stop right there for a minute because I think that's a point that needs emphasis. The risks of system jumping, you know, this is a thing. that I think our audience and the hosts are susceptible to, right? Because there's always another app with an additional feature that your current app doesn't have. And there's always this imagination that, oh, yeah, if I just get that feature, then all of this gets easy.

And I think that is the underlying driver of that problem. And I think the thing you need to realize is that it never gets easy. You just have to do the work. And you just need something that will get out of the way and let you do the work. And organizing the deck chairs doesn't change the fact that the ship is sinking. So you just kind of get on with the work. Yeah. And I think GTD generally was that for me.

Yeah. It was a system that promised to help me organize all those desk chairs. And I'm sorry, all this deck chairs. and I think it became an impediment, but I didn't realize it. Real quick, I want to just chime in regarding the root cause of that systems jumping that you were talking about, David, because I think I had a moment of clarity when you were describing the balance between the quality and the speed. And I feel like you have to be.

to come to grips with that is a choice you must make. You can't have both. But the allure of the new tool, I think, is that you can. If I just implement the feature the right way, I can do the things that I'm doing faster and they will be better. But that has never in the course of human history resulted in the payoff that we paint in our minds when we go chase the new shiny object. that's very, very true. And then GTT, because I know you and I were both big GTD people back in the day, but back in the day the Internet was in its infancy, and the input cycles were lower.

I mean, the reason why I complained about faxes when I was a young lawyer was because suddenly opposing counsel could tap on my shoulder at any point during the day, whereas in the first few years of my career, that they could only tap on my shoulder with the telehealth. phone or when the mail arrived. And suddenly, I could be on my way out the door and get a ex parte notice in the fax machine, you know, and that I found annoying. And that was just the taste, right? Now we have email and all these ways. People can jump into our lives. And I just think GTT, the system gets overwhelmed when you have that many inputs coming in a person.

I think so. I think that was my problem from the beginning. And it just got worse over time. Yeah. The endless quest to capture all of your tasks. And that, you know, it doesn't just include work tasks, which are easy to identify, but personal tasks and how your goals and your personal values interact with that and what you want to be doing more of, what you want to be doing less of. And, you know, in those days, I would promise myself, I could do all the things that interested me personally once I got all my work done. And as a result, I'd just end up with an endless list of personal things that I wanted to do. And the list was, you know, a source of sadness. Yes. Do you think, though, that that is a limitation of GTD? Because I think if David

Allen were here on the call, he would probably tell us, well, that's why you do the weekly reviews, because you can't do it all and you've got to figure out what's actually worth doing. So it's probably user error and I experienced the exact same thing with GTD where we just try to cram in more than we can handle. So is there a system on this planet where you don't have to worry about culling those things? Is that just like where it's baked in and you don't ever have to think about that anymore? I think at some level you always have to have to be willing to cut things, right? Absolutely. And make choices.

Hey, you know, one of the fun features of my robot task system I've been using lately is it tracks when something's been on my bench for more than three weeks. And it just demotes it. I gave it the authority. Like, okay, if I haven't dealt with it in three weeks, then it's obviously not that important to me. Take it off the list. Right. But you've evolved with this stuff, David. Now, where did you go after that? experience. Okay. So where I eventually went and where I am today is a note plan, which is a not so much a to-do app in itself, but it's a system sort of like, I always forget, what's the obsidian? Obsidian. The complicated one. Yes. But much more simple. So its structure is, that it's a folder full of text notes, you know, markdown style text notes. And it shows those notes to you in a daily view, weekly view, monthly view,

quarterly view, or a free form view. And you can make of it whatever you want to make of it. And when I say it's simpler than Obsidian, I tried installing Obsidian a couple times, and, you know, for me personally, it wasn't a welcoming interface, and it just didn't attract me. And I didn't know where to get started and I didn't want to create something that was that complicated. One of the things I've learned over time with all this system jumping and, you know, all this pursuit is that I like simple systems and simple pieces of software that I don't have to invest a lot of time. learning and becoming a ninja at. And note plan just hit hit me perfectly because I could start with the form of the daily note.

And I can take my notes in there of my meetings and my phone calls. And as you go in note plan, if you want to capture a task, you hit asterisk and then space and write the task. You don't have to keep it on a separate list. You've just captured that task wherever you are. So it might be in your daily note. If you're taking notes, it might be in your weekly note or quarterly note if you're doing a review. But all those tasks can live wherever you want them to live. And then there are filters that will show you all your open tasks, all your daily note open tasks, that sort of thing.

And when it comes to the review, you know, a step in the review doesn't have to be assembling everything in the right place. And that just hit me perfectly. Yeah. And we did, David was a guest on Mac Power Users. I don't know, a couple of years ago now, David, where you shared your kind of No Plan journey. And I'm glad you're still on it. We'll put a link to that in notes. We did a full review and an interview on that, which actually motivated a lot of Mac Power

users to switch over to No plan. So many so that I heard from the developer afterward. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. and have actually made personal friendships as a result of that. And still hear from people. And I'm always happy to help people who are making the journey. And, you know, give them my honest assessment if no plan is a good tool for them or if it's just the way my brain works.

Yeah, I am right in the middle of the two people, other two people in this episode. Mike is a died-in-the-wall obsidian guy. You're 100% no plan. and I can see real benefits to both of them. And I can't make it my mind. I'm going to figure that out, I think, this year. Let me validate David's, you mentioned that Obsidian was not a welcoming interface. And I completely agree with that.

So even as the quote unquote obsidian guy on this episode, I don't blame you for choosing no plan. I had the same reaction when I first opened the app. It was too complicated. immediately quit and deleted it actually was ready to move on to something else eventually I came back and yeah I've dialed it in and created all those those workflows but sounds like with note plan you found the the sweet spot so are you committed to this now or do you still find yourself trying to jump between different apps and systems I'm extremely committed

I had made the decision to stop jumping before note plan and And I was on things for a while, on Omnifocus for a while before that. But I see Note Plan as being the one place for me, at least for the rest of my professional career. It continues to be the Just Right app. And David mentioned the developer, Edward. He is about the most active developer I've ever seen releasing new versions, I think, on a monthly cadence with great new features. And one of the things he's done that truly amazes me is while he makes it more and more powerful, he doesn't make it more and more complicated. If you want just to open note plan and start typing things in the daily note, that's the interface.

And you never have to know about things like templates or cross links or anything like that. If you're the type who wants those things, they're all there. I've tried things like cross lengths and backlinks and forward links and that adds complexity for me that I'm not looking for. Search works just fine, but it's there. That said, I'll recognize that Obsidian is the peak app in this category and that if you want a system that is high, customized, there's nothing like it. I want to take credit for pulling Mike back to Obsidian, because I remember having that conversation with you. Like, Mike, you really got to do this.

It's true. What have I created? Where did you go, Mike? I think he was using real own research. I'm like, no, get on Obsidian, Mike. Yeah. So I think Joe Buellig was trying to get me to use Obsidian for a while, and that's when I downloaded it and deleted it and I was like, nah, forget this. Yeah, Rome was the first place that I got the value of the connections between the notes,

but they weren't actually notes. And that was one of the friction points moving back to Obsidian was, well, now these are all files and I got to figure out where are the boundaries between things. Because with Rome, you could just keep drilling down as many bullets down as you wanted to go. But once I got that realization, which absolutely, David, you can take credit for an assistant in that department, that's kind of when it took off for me. And I started seeing how these things could contribute to the way that I was making things. So both my productivity and creativity workflows kept layering things on top of it.

And the rest is history. And if you're looking for like assistance with like Claude Co-work, Both of these apps are the ideal apps for that because they both have their data model, just a folder full of markdown files on your computer. So the data is portable, it's easy to use, and then AI can get into it and modify it very quickly. So you're both on kind of the ideal app if you want to try and get help from Cloud Co Work, which is a big thing right now. Yeah, I was going to shamelessly plug your robot field guide to it, which I've been,

deep into and having Claude get data from note plan, surface data that may be lurking in the shadows, and help me create a daily note that sort of lays out everything that's on my calendar, all the tests that are lingering, all the tests that have created recently, everything that has a deadline. So my note plan has gone to 11 in recent weeks. Yeah. I'm having a blast with it. Yeah, it's fun. The reason I built the course around Obsidian

because I didn't want customers to have to buy an app in No plan is you pay for it, whereas Obsidian is free. But honestly, once we finish that workshop series, I've decided I'm going to spend a month or two running my robot data out of No plan and then make a decision. but the fact that it's a native app, the fact that it's a small indie developer, there's a lot of reasons there for me to be very attracted to it. I'm going to just withhold judgment for now.

But I also, like everybody else, I just don't like the way Obsidian looks. I've tried so hard to make it look good, and I just don't. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to Squarespace.com slash focused to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. using the code focused. Squarespace is the place you go to to build a website on the internet. It's the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. We've all got a thing and your thing needs to be on the internet.

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And when you're ready to launch, use the code Focus to get that 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's Squarespace.com slash focused with the offer code focused to get that 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the Focus Podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus Podcasts and Oliver Really. Either way, that's not why we're here. What I want to talk about is this evolution of a guy who's doing GTT hyper tracking who says, no, what I really need.

Because you said this earlier in the interview. You said, well, it was important to me to understand that it's a bunch of lists. What is your thinking about task management and management of projects now having gone on this journey? My thinking is that it remains incredibly important to keep track of details and deadlines and all those things that I was writing on the front page of the latest document. and that Note Plan is a place that lets me do that very easily wherever I am. So I'm feeling more secure than ever that I'm not dropping items. And that gives me a lot of confidence and helps me feel very comfortable in my skin. 35 years of practicing.

Well, it helps a lot too. But that doesn't mean you can kind of ever let down your guard. and the stakes just become higher as you move further in your career. But in my productivity journey overall, you know, one of the things that happened about the same time as I started using note plan is I started hearing you and Mike talking about personal retreats. And the idea appealed to me greatly.

And I read everything, that you put out and everything that Mike put out. And they were slightly different versions of similar concepts. So I spent some time saying, okay, I'm going to do a personal retreat. What am I going to do? And trying to come up with a hybrid of the lists that you had both made available of the questions you asked yourself. So now I'm, you know, years into this journey. I've struggled with the reviewing part all that time.

And I come across the personal retreat idea and it appeals to me for a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, but I wasn't thinking specifically, okay, this is going to help me fix the review problem. So I start with the quarterly reviews, which is kind of backwards. from the way most people do it. Most people start with a weekly review. And I found a place to go away. I had prepared my list of questions. And I went through them and, you know,

hand wrote it that first time and found it incredibly transformational because it wasn't about organizing my tasks. and it wasn't about doing things. It was about figuring out what my roles were, figuring out what my values were, who I wanted to be versus who I was, where the things I said I wanted to be or the things I said that I was

weren't the way other people perceived me or on careful examination I perceived myself. and, you know, what came out of that was focus on relationships that needed attention and that I'd just been able to neglect, focus on parts of my life that needed attention, and I'd been able to neglect, and I'd been able to neglect, and sort of a holistic view of who I was, what I cared about, and what I wanted to do. And now suddenly the tasks didn't feel so overwhelming because I had some general direction and I had some idea about in the next 90 days what's important enough that I want to focus on. And I won't say that I was perfect at it the first time. I felt so incredibly good at the end of it and it was so cathartic. But the true revelations came much like.

later after I built a practice of doing this. And, you know, I'm not perfect at the practice. Sometimes my quarterly reviews, there are six months in between. But I've gotten to the point where I feel the desperate need to do a quarterly review. If I haven't done one for three months, and I feel the loss of control and the loss of perspective. So it becomes very important to me to schedule in the next one and to find time for it. If I'm in the middle of a huge transaction or something like that, there's just no way it can go away even for a couple days and get that done.

But I find a way to do it and I do it at least three times a year, I'd say. Oh, that's awesome that gave you that effect. I think you're not alone for people who are willing to put the time in. of this, you do get a transformational kind of hit. But one of the things you said that I think really stand out is suddenly the lists weren't a problem because you knew what the important list were. And I think that's the problem that plagued so many of us, especially in the age of software and cloud syncing, is that the list gets so long that we just try to make a dent in it somewhere every day. And that feels like drinking salt water. It doesn't give you any nourishment. Whereas if

you have knowledge deeply in your guts of what is important, then the list isn't scary. It's just the place you go to find the stuff that actually is important enough to do. Exactly. And to make decisions about the stuff. So question for you, you mentioned that it was transformational, cathartic, like lots of very nice words there about the process. But you also mentioned that sometimes you don't. get to do it because you're in the middle of the transaction or something like that. I'm not a lawyer,

right? So I don't know exactly what the day-to-day workflow looks like. But it seems to me that you struggle with one of the things that ends up being the reason why people believe they don't need to do this, which is I'm just responding to the things that are coming down the pike that I have to do today anyways. So is getting away for a day or two to think my deep thoughts about the future actually going to make any bit of difference. What would you say to somebody like that? What is the difference that it made for you? Yeah, it makes a huge difference.

One of my favorite things is a lawyer in Calgary posted on social media. So is being a corporate lawyer, just getting an email every eight seconds until you die? And that's what it can feel like when you're deep in the transaction. and you're just constantly being reactive. You know you've got the list and you've got to get the list done, but you're also easily distractable. And when I go in these reviews,

I'm pretty disciplined about telling people I'm going to be unavailable, that I'm not going to be checking email, that I'm not going to respond. I may respond in the evenings after I'm done for the day. I may just leave stuff that isn't pressing or urgent until I return. And the people around me have gotten used to that and understand that. And they do a good job of covering for me and helping me truly be away. And I try to do the same for them.

And they're not all going on personal retreats, you know, just when they're going on vacation or they have a family thing. I want them to be able to separate. And, you know, I try to model that value and I try to support them in that value as much as I can. And that's something that came out of my personal retreats, realizing how important that is and realizing how important that I model that behavior and that I respect that behavior and others. In addition to the culture setting, though, in the office, what does the personal retreat do, for you in terms of how you do your day-to-day work. How is it different after the retreat versus before? Yeah.

After the retreat, I'd say I have a better perspective, you know, at the 10,000-foot level of what the next quarter looks like for me. And, of course, you can't always see, you know, much beyond a few weeks, but you think you know what it looks like. and, you know, how to put those pieces together. I've also got some things that I've taken from the retreats that are the most important things to me to get done. And, you know, that can be, you know, doing something that's uncomfortable for me, like business development or, you know, some of my favorite things that have come out of my weekly review are I have two golden retrievers. And one is very demanding of attention, and the other is more quiet.

And I realized the quiet one needed more attention and more intentional attention. And I started doing that. And she and I are as close as two beings can be now. She's my shadow, and I think she's living a much happier, more fulfilled life. And, you know, that's something that's very important to me. there was a quarterly retreat where I realized my wife and I weren't vibing. And we've been married for 33 years, incredibly happy together. And just recognizing that and having a discussion about it helped us fix it instantly.

So the things that come out aren't just organizational, but this is what I'm going to work on. And more recently, you know, I've come to the realization, it took a long time that I was putting off so many personal things I wanted to do, so many things I'm interested in, like AI and tech and all that until my work was done. And I don't want to do that. So I started carving out an hour a day on my calendar and saying, this is when I'm going to do those things. and I'm going to put it on my calendar so people see that I'm busy and I'm going to protect that hour as well as I can every day and every day I get an hour out to do something I want to do. You know, it could be learning a piece of software,

you know, it could be just catching up on things. It could be following rabbit holes because I love to follow rabbit holes and that feeds me. I can read Wikipedia for hours and hours. You know, what I'm going to do with that hour usually comes out of my quarterly retreat as well. And I added a second hour at the last retreat for AI. And that consists of two things for me. One is learning AI and being better at AI and staying current because I feel like in my profession that those who don't are going to quickly

we fall behind. And, you know, I like the idea of being someone who's proficient in it and helps others along and things like that. But, you know, it's also fun for me. So when I'm doing AI, sometimes I'm just doing cloud co-work stuff. The other side of AI, though, is I think it's fascinating and I think it's changing our world. And I think there are some predictions that are going to come true and some that aren't going to come true. But, you know, when I consider things like how it's going to affect young

lawyers who in their first five years of practice are working hard, drafting documents and proofreading and checking references and things like that, if they let the AI do that and they don't understand why the AI is doing that, they're not going to get to the point five years on where people are willing to pay them for their perspective and their advice. So how do we reconcile the two of those? So I spend some time reading and thinking about that and my plan is to eventually start journaling about that. And I view that as sort of writing personal blog entries to myself. And eventually maybe that'll lead to a public blog. But in the near term, it's scratching that niche for me and it's giving me some practice. So just the idea that I needed to carve out those two

hours. Well, and that's, you know, what you described to me is someone who's chosen to live an intentional life, things that are important to you, your dogs, your career, the development of technology. I think that's all stuff that you've chosen to put at the top of the list, which gets back to that thing with the lists. There's so many, there's so many things on it. but you have found the magic sauce for you to not let that become an overwhelming thing because you know what's important. Yeah, that's so right. And it took me a long time to get to this point.

And I'm really happy with where I am right now. You're not alone, brother. You're not alone. It's tough. I feel the same way. It's like it took me a long time and not thinking I can do it all and trying to find some hack or Apple script I could write to make me, me do it all. That's not the way it works. David, one of the things that I really admire is your

ability to get away three times a year. I know a lot of people do this. I do them from home more than I do away. And that's not by design, but just, you know, life. And I really want to make more of an effort to get away for these. I found the little tiny homes up in the woods by my house. I can go that. So there's places I can go. How do you get yourself to motivate it enough to, to, to, to, literally go away for days at a time. When I first started doing it, one of the suggestions that I think both of you made was find a way to tack it on to another trip. Yeah.

And I was traveling a lot for business in those days. So I'd find a way to get there a day earlier, a day or two earlier, or leave a day or two later. And I'd take advantage of the hotel room I was in and do it there. When I stopped traveling as much, then I would just kind of pick a place that was easy to get to and find someplace where I could go. I had some free nights at hotels that came with my hotel credit card. So I would use one of those. And, you know, that would be perfect as long as I had a good desk and a good chair that I could sit in.

It was the perfect away place and I could go, you know, maybe explore the city I was in at night as a break from the process and, you know, just a way to think about how the day had gone, but also recognize the fact that I was exhausted because doing a retreat well is exhausting. Yeah. And more recently, my wife and I started. living in two cities. We live in Houston most of the time, but we have an apartment in Austin. And that was an offshoot of the pandemic. We wanted another place to go because we're getting cabin fever. And so now I have that as a place I can go anytime and be by myself for a couple

days, which is really nice. Guys, I'm going to admit, I've started a crazy project. Are you familiar? familiar with the Incuridian by Epicetus. He's one of the old, I think he was really one of the founding Stoics, but he wrote a thing called the Incuridian, and it was literally in Greek, that means the handbook. And it's a very short, I should go get it. It's over there, but it's a tiny, like, you know, 50-page little book with little nuggets in it, how to live your life. And I started writing my own in Corradian about three months ago. And it's got like my guiding principles.

It's kind of an offshoot of SparkyOS. It's the idea of like what what is how do I, what's the operating system? How do I, you know, associate with, you know, vague concepts in the world and, you know, what is it that gets me working and pointed north? And so I started writing it. And I was thinking as you're talking, I need to take like three days and just go finish that. like in a hotel or a cabin or something, something entirely for myself.

I wasn't even going to really share it with the world that I was working on this because the whole thing sounds so pompous, but it's been a real fun process. And I think I need to go up to the mountains to finish my Incuridian. Well, I feel like that's great context for your robot assistant when it's helping you decide what to put on your list for the day. Yes and no. I mean, so the robot part, I don't give it a lot of like judgment over,

what to do, it can give me a list and I make my decision. In fact, if you look at the operating the skills, because I've told it this so many times, it's like coded into its skills that like my job is to give him a list not to, you know, nag him about this or that thing. And so it, it really is not a brain in the process. The stuff it does do that helps me is like if I don't, if I leave something on too long, it auto kind of demotes it and does a few things like that. But, in general, I don't give it much authority. If the robots become sentient, they will kill me early because I'm completely rude to them and don't really respect their judgment at all.

Well, I feel like Robot Assistant Field Guide 2.0 doesn't require sentience in the equation, but just understanding what you like, what you don't like, how do you think could be valuable. Yeah, it does know my roles and my RETA statements. You're right. It does know that stuff. Yeah, another great source is your readwise. I'm a big user readwise. Yeah. And, you know, have, you know, how many thousands of excerpts in there.

Yeah. And there's a readwise MCP connector to Cloud Co-Work. So have it read what you've saved and ask it what it thinks about you and what's important, what you think is important. Oh, that, that reminds me. Someone like a year ago was showing me what, I considered to be one of the first useful applications of an LLM where he took a picture of the bookshelf behind me and it analyzes the titles of the books. And it's basically like roast my friend based on the books in his collection. That's awesome.

Yeah. Those AI-based roasts are incredibly accurate in my experience. It was a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah. Well, I think it's, David, I think it's great. I didn't realize how much the retreats had impacted you, but you did say it also cycled down for you once you started doing the quarterly that you have now got to a more regular practice with the weekly as well, correct? It did. You know, and once you do a quarterly review, it becomes very important to do a

monthly review of what came out of your quarterly review. Yeah. And make sure you're doing it and make sure you're on track from the, from the, monthly review, then the weekly review. I sort of modified to the way I wanted to do it. It's not so much a complete list of everything I've done during the week or a preparation session for everything I'm going to do the following week. But it's a chance for me to reflect on generally what I'm doing, generally how I'm feeling, that sort of thing.

And one of the things I've been doing lately is dictating that into an LLM tool like cleft. Yeah. And then having cleft organized my thoughts for me and edit it from there. And lately the dreaded daily review, which is really task focused, the Claude Co-Work MCP has been helping me with that. And I have it interrogating me and ask me questions, which, draws me out and makes the process a lot more fun. All right. We've been talking a lot about focus, but let's be real here. We're all nerds. We're all tempted by shiny new objects. So you got anything new and exciting you're playing with,

David? You put EDC in your pick every day carry. And that to me is a trigger phrase because I love EDC. I always want to know what people carry and what they do. This one is not new, but it's in my pocket right now. It is the Leatherman arc that says Max Barky on the side. I had them engraved on me. I've had this like three years now. I carry it with me everywhere and this is the ultimate EDC tool. You want a pair of pliers in your pocket. You want a knife, whatever. I got it all. And I grew up being a Swiss Army knife kid. You know, somebody gave me one as a kid. But as I got older, I found Leatherman and I am 100% invested. So, totally unrelated to focus, but all you got to do is say EDC to me,

and I'm going to start talking about my pocket knife. Nice. Well, I do have EDC. I'm actually going to let David go first, though, before I share mine. And I have mine just because I've kind of gone down a rabbit hole here. But David Roth, what do you got? Okay. I love EDC. I'm obsessed with the topic and the videos and the like. And that's weird because my objective is not to carry anything.

I have matching setups at my house, my office, and the apartment in Austin. So the scanner matches, the printer matches, and I have a MacBook Pro in each location. And I recently decided that I needed to upgrade my MacBook Pro because two of those were still M1 MacBook Pros. and they were functioning fine for everyday tasks, which is amazing to me. You know, they're going on six years. But I decided I needed the AI bad boy. So I bought one of the new M5 MacBook Pros loaded with memory, 128 gigs of memory, 4 terabytes of SSD, and it screams.

And now I can't wait to upgrade the third one, which I think I'll do when the M6 MacBook Pros come out supposedly later this year. And since I was doing that anyway, I went ahead and upgraded my MacBook error, which I had done some damage to the old one. So it was a good time to upgrade it and threw in a MacBook Neo just to see what it was like. And I think the MacBook Neo is really cool. I think it's going to be a great computer for 90% of users, maybe 80% of users, maybe 80% something like that.

I was a little nervous at first because it was doing all the indexing and things that it needs to do as a new computer, and it felt a little slow. But that was the last time it felt slow for me. Where do you see the gap between MacBook Neo and MacBook Air? Like, are there things on MacBook Neo? You're like, oh, boy, that's a lot easier on my error. Yeah.

The main gap is memory that the MacBook Neo tops out at 8 gigabytes. Yeah. And for somebody like me, I want more for that light carry-around computer. It doesn't have to be 128 gigabytes. 16 gigabytes is fine. But I don't want the ceiling on a new computer I buy to hit me as soon as I fear that it will with 8 gigabytes. Yeah. All right.

Well, my EDC journey actually starts at sponsor games, where they split you up into teams. And we had to record using a sure MV88 USBC microphone that you plugged in like the USBC port on your your phone. And I realized while I was there, I was having trouble getting it to stay connected to my phone. And I had the standard Apple silicone case. It was looking kind of ratty. And I was like, there's got to be something better out there.

So it started with the Ridge Base Camp Orange. iPhone case. And then once I got this, I realized there are a whole bunch of other Ridge accessories that go with this. So I've also not bought a new wallet in about 20 years.

They make a Base Camp Orange MagSafe wallet, which clips onto the back. So I got that one. And then I also got the they've got a battery pack, basically like a MagSafe battery pack that is a

10,000. million amp hour that I can just keep in my bag when I'm traveling. I've been traveling a lot. I've been using that battery a lot. And this one is again, orange and small and fits in my bag very nicely. So I kind of went all in with the ridge stuff, but really like it. Yeah, that was going to be my question. Because I've looked at that stuff. I've never used it. So you like it. I do. I do. I mean, I've only been using that a week or two. The wallet, I was coming from a standard like bifold wallet where you open it up and you pull your car. out. So it's taken me a little bit to get used to the design of this because it's basically like some elastic that holds the thing together. The big thing I was really worried about was the RFID

blocking. It's got got that. But you kind of have to like take a bunch of stuff out and then find the one that you want. So it's a little bit more cumbersome to get stuff in and out of your wallet. But I don't go in and out of my wallet all that often anymore. I'm using Apple Pay for stuff. You know, so not that big a deal. Also, it's about a half to a third the size of my previous George Costanza wallets. So that's been really nice. Yeah. We've got a thing in California now where you put your driver's license on your phone.

So I could theoretically just carry it. But I've got this fear that I'm going to get pulled over or something and they're going to like throw me in the pokey because I don't have my ID on me. So I can't help but carry it with me still. Yep. We don't have the IDs yet. But even so, I don't, don't pull the license out all that often except when I'm traveling. So and it's got a really strong MagSafe magnet to it where like it's not coming off the phone once it's on there.

And I feel like just having both of those together when I'm traveling is going to be nice rather than going through TSA. You got to throw your stuff in the bins and things like that. I'm always scrambling trying to remember. Okay, so what did I actually take out? What did I keep in my bag? I think it just cost me some money, Mike. Yeah, we do that. We do that.

So what are we reading, guys? Yeah, I just finished reading the book, Apple and China, which I think is one of the best books about Apple I've ever read. And what I found really interesting about it was not only the detail about Apple's dependence on China, but about the effect Apple has had in making China a sophisticated manufacturer. and, you know, it's sort of a relationship where they both leveraged each other and said, ha, and the modern world we live in is influenced very heavily on both sides. Yeah. You know, I heard back from somebody, because we covered that in the labs, and someone said, you know, they argued, somebody with knowledge of China said, Apple isn't the reason China is so great at manufacturing.

It's, it certainly helped, but they would have been good at it. without Apple. So I wonder if that part of the book is true, but it definitely is as interesting the way that that relationship became so entangled over the decades. Yeah, I don't think it's the only reason, but I think China learned, you know,

from manufacturing cars for other countries, how to build the most sophisticated electric vehicles in the world, and from manufacturing solar panels and windmills, how to build the most of its, sophisticated alternative energy components. So, you know, I think it goes beyond Apple, but it was an interesting view. Yeah. You recommended a fiction book as well.

Can you tell us about that? Yeah. I don't read enough fiction, but I had been, I had heard a piece about the book tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zeven. And I downloaded the audiobook and went in cold and just absolutely loved this book. but the relationship between two people who meet as kids and into their adulthood, during the middle part of it, they become partners in a video gaming company.

And I'm not a huge gamer, so I haven't experienced a lot of the more complicated games. But its description of the worlds that they create in, you know, a really well-done video game was just mesmerizing and beautiful. and the whole book I think is terrific. I don't think you have to want to read a book about people who are in the video gaming industry to enjoy it. And I can't recommend it enough to anyone who's looking for a great read. Oh, Mike, there's another fiction book for you.

Yeah. Trying to get Mike to read more fiction. What about you, Mike? My book this time is sort of a hybrid because it's a Patrick Lentzioni book, the six types of working genius. Are you familiar with Patrick Lencioni? I'm not. Okay, so he's a business guy, but all of his books, the first part is a fable, and the second part is kind of unpacking the model. So it's a made-up story, but based on real events, I guess.

And so the six types of working genius is the most recent one that he's written. It's actually kind of the thing that he's leaning into. recently he's got a company called the Table Group where you can take this six types of working genius assessment and it breaks you down into one of these different styles. The styles fit together. If you want to have a high functioning organization, the idea is that you get people aware this is kind of their unique ability, their strengths, right? You put them in a position where they can leverage that and you put the right people in the right places. You've got people across the organization that fit those different roles instead of a whole bunch of people who approach

problems the exact same way. And that ultimately leads to better, faster, more excellent work is kind of the thought there. So this book is interesting. There's an assessment that goes with it. My background with the family business is in like assessment of skill building systems for emotional intelligence. So every time I hear the word assessment, I go into it a little bit cringing because my basis on like what is a valid assessment is like 40 years of research and 140 doctoral level of papers and books. And none of these have that sort of research basis. It's sort of like, hey, I figured this out one night on a four-hour whiteboard session and I created a model and a quiz about it. And it's a little bit of that. You know, there's some places where I feel

like it falls down a little bit. But the general idea is pretty good. And it's an entertaining read, you know, that's the thing about Patrick Lentzioni is he makes these boring, bland business topics a lot more approachable. And with the fables that he tells, you can kind of see how it play out before he gets into the boring mechanics of how it all works. Excellent. Well, I've got a book I'm really excited about them. I'm happy to share it with the focus audience. It's called The Score, and it's by C-thine-win. Mike, have you ever heard of this book? I have not. I feel like I've heard the title, but I saw the name and definitely don't recognize that. It is excellent. So he is a, I believe, a philosophy professor, but his idea about this book is the way we allow the metrics of a

thing to determine our values around a thing. Like one of the examples he uses is law schools. There was never a law school ranking system. So when people were looking at law schools, say, well, this one is more focused on teaching you how to become, like, go into a community and help underprivileged people. That's like the big focus, or this one gets you, you know, a Supreme Court, you know, in clerkship. Or it's like schools had different focuses, but there wasn't a ranking. And then one of the magazines, I think it was a business review or something, started ranking the law schools. And then everybody just chose the law school with what was the highest ranking. And then the law schools looked at how they were ranked and they changed all their

metrics to teach students or to solve for what the ranking was based on. And suddenly, we're not making good decisions about what law school would go to and the law school curriculum is actually changing to match the ranking. And it just goes through how in life a lot of things we do, it's very easy for us to adopt a ranking system and allow that to get in a way of doing our best work. And I thought it was really insightful. I'm not done with it. yet, but I can already recommend this book. Another example he uses, you know, when he first got started in his career, he loved big questions, you know, somebody who's in the philosophy.

But then he, you know, once you get into academia, you know what the websites are that rank the best schools. And then you have to write the papers that get the best ranking to get you to the best schools. And suddenly he was writing about stuff he didn't care about, but it would get him ranked higher. And I think this is something we can all stumble into. And I don't know, I just found this book with ideas.

is that we're very insightful. He is also a gamer so he contrast throughout the book how games have scoring systems that allow you to, you know, play the game, like the rules of monopoly or whatever, and you have to follow those. So you adopt that scoring system, but in the context of a game, it allows you to be more free, you know, especially if you play a game not to win, but to enjoy the experience. But it's just, I'm rambling. But this is a good book, and I would recommend it to literally anybody. I don't know why this isn't getting more attention, because I think it's an excellent book. Nice.

Okay, gang. We are the Focus Podcast. Dave, I don't know. Do you have somewhere anybody could go if they want to keep up with what you're doing? Not really, I guess. The closest I have is I have a personal website called Bits Not Adams.net. excellent and it's got a short bio of me links to my professional bio and um i just created a now page recently yeah and if you want to like do a merger and acquisition and buy apple Dave could help you

with that like i said we're the focus podcast you can find us at relay dot fm slash focus where you can check out links from the show notes you can also sign up there for deep focus which is the ad free extended version of the show. We would love to have you join that. In deep focus today, we're going to be going deeper since we've got the no plan guy here and the obsidian guy here and just talking about generally how those apps work together or how they differ. So that'll be fun. I hope we can stick around for that. Thank you to our sponsor today's Squarespace. We'll see you next time.