Focused - 69: The Intentional Life

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

David and Mike continue to explore the topic of intentionality and the role it has in every area of your life. They also catch up on some listener feedback, David gets ready for a (hopefully) productive work trip, Mike answers David's questions about Masterminds, and they discuss the importance of space and margin in living the life you want to live.

Welcome to Focus, 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. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? I'm doing good. Excited to talk about Focus again. You know, it's funny, every day we have a Focus recording. I just, I get excited about recording the show. I don't know, it's fun.

Yeah, we may have to switch this to a weekly show at some point because it is a lot of fun talking about this stuff. Yeah. Anyway, we got some follow-up, though. Great discussion on intentionality going on over in the forum. Yeah, inspired by your blog post on the topic. Yeah. And actually, it led to some feedback that became part of today's episode as well.

We were going to have a guest, but there were some kind of significant questions I thought we should fix and explain before letting that get too far. Also, masterminds. We talked about that in episode 67 with Laura McClellan. And you followed up on that as well in the forum. And you followed up on that as well in the forum. Yeah. So in the episode, we talked about the topic of masterminds. Laura mentioned she's part of a writing mastermind. I'm part of a local mastermind group.

I know you were interested in the idea. And we had teased in that episode that the Focus Forum would be a great place for listeners to get connected and start forming their own mastermind groups. Well, that episode as we're recording this aired not too long ago, but there hasn't been a whole lot of activity there. And I was thinking about why that might be, and it totally dawned on me that we didn't really explain how to do it. We just kind of talked about it at a high level. But I know from personal experience that starting or joining a mastermind is a pretty intimidating thing to do. So I put together a blog post based on my experience, which I'm hoping will help point people in the right direction. I created a topic in the forum for it. And I also mentioned in the post that I'm

happy to answer any questions that people might have, because I'm really all in with this idea. The mastermind group that I'm a part of has been really influential, really helped me through a couple of difficult situations in my own life. And so I really understand firsthand the value of this. And I just want to help as many people get plugged into this as I can. Well, I'm glad you're offering to answer questions because I have a couple. All right, let's do it. I haven't done it. And I was genuinely interested in the show. And then afterwards, I started thinking about it. Just separate from the ideas of how do you get started is,

you know, two questions in my mind is, do I need to be in one where they're local people, where we go to a restaurant and we talk, or can it be virtual? And then the other question is, am I looking for a mastermind group of other people that are doing things similar to me, or does that matter? And those two questions completely flummoxed me. It's put me in a holding pattern on the whole decision because I don't know what I'm supposed to really be looking for. Exactly, yeah. And I know that Laura mentioned that she's part of a writing mastermind, so I'm guessing that the people who are a part of that mastermind are all writers. So that is one way that you could form a mastermind is around a specific

interest. But in the post that I put, I have a big header on who should I invite to my mastermind group. And I boiled it down to three key components and a common theme or a common profession is not part of that. So number one, you need a growth mindset because the whole idea of the mastermind is that you are going there because you want to improve yourself and you want accountability from other people who are going to help you want to improve yourself and you want accountability from other people who are going to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. And the whole idea of goals maybe turns some people off, but really you just have to be looking for ways to get better, not be satisfied with the status quo. I guess the phrase I'm

looking for here is like, you're content with your situation, but you're not complacent. You're always looking to improve. The second one is that you need people who are committed, people who are going to be all in with the idea. You need people who are going to push you and who are going to respond to being pushed themselves. If people just disconnect when that happens, your mastermind is going to fall apart. And then the third one is you don't necessarily need to be in the same, like have a common interest per se. You don't have to be BFFs with everyone in your group, but you do need to be able to relate to them. So kind of the clarifying question there is like, can you see yourself spending non-work time with them?

That doesn't mean that somebody is in the same industry as you. It could be somebody that's totally in a different area. And actually, an argument could be made that if you get people who are in different situations, that provides you more diversity and perspective in the mastermind. So I hope that that helps people. You don't have to overthink this stuff. You just have to make sure that the people who are there are there for the same reasons as you are, and then it will work. Well, I'm definitely interested. I'm going to read your post carefully. But another question is, what is a reasonable amount of time that someone should expect to put into one to get something out of it? Yeah, that's another great

question. And to be honest, it varies. So my mastermind, we meet about once a month, and it's usually for about an hour. I mentioned in the post, I kind of wish we would meet more often than that. I think weekly might be ideal, but you don't have to invest an hour, hour and a half every single week in order for a mastermind to provide you some value. It really just depends on what you're looking to commit and then making sure that everybody that's in there, whether it's in person or virtual, is understanding the same rules of engagement. You've got clearly defined, this is what this is going to look like, so everybody stays on the same page. Okay. Well, I'm definitely interested. I'm going to be following up on this. Like I said, I had a couple questions that immediately kind of put me in, you know, a block on this whole thing.

I wasn't sure even which way I wanted to go. You didn't answer the one question about digital meeting, you know, like an online group with people all over the place versus do we need to be in the same room? I'm thinking for me, I think actually a digital meeting place would make a lot more sense than getting in a car and going somewhere. Yeah, I think that it really doesn't matter. For some people, meeting in person is just going to feel way different, and they would prefer to do that. I think for myself personally, I would have no issues connecting virtually. I mean, for a while I was part of the Asian Efficiency team, and we connected virtually every single day. So, you know, there are situations where that can be done. I would recommend if you do it virtually that you do use video software because more is communicated through looking at the people in your mastermind than just what they say.

And you really need a tool that's going to allow you to do that. you really need a tool that's going to allow you to do that. But other than that, I don't think it really matters whether you're meeting locally or whether you're connecting with people in the focus form, people all over the world who are just committed to the same ideas of personal development and personal growth. I guess for me, I'd be more interested in getting the right people, even if they're far away, than needing to meet them in person. I guess that's the way I'm looking at it. Exactly. And you know, sometimes the virtual meetings can turn into the physical meetings. I mean, we started doing this podcast before I ever met you. So the technology allows you to cross a lot of borders that your physical location in the past would have limited you to. And I think that's pretty cool.

Yeah, agreed. All right, well, we'll follow up on that. We've got a big topic today. But before we get to that, I have a little one I'd like to talk about. And that's just the general idea of travel and productivity. If you go way back in the old free agents archives, Jason and I did talk once about when you're going on vacation or when you're traveling, how do you get your work done? I'd like to take a little bit more of a productivity focus on this. I'm getting ready as we record this to head out of town to a conference where I'm doing multiple presentations and a whole bunch of stuff. You're getting ready to go on a vacation trip down to, I don't know if I should say where you're going. That's all right. The East Coast.

So you're going out of town with your whole family. And so we both have got these trips planned. Mine is really work slash pleasure with probably more work. And yours is, my guess is primarily pleasure. But how are we going to deal with planning for that, trying to be somewhat productive, but also enjoy the day and live in the moment? Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that initially, my trip was, yes, more geared towards pleasure, given the current state of things. There is going to be some business happening there as well. And also, I'm thinking of specifically the MaxDoc conference last year where I presented and my wife came with me because MaxDoc happens to fall right around our anniversary. And so we kind of use that as an excuse to get away. But also,

we kind of use that as an excuse to get away. But also presenting at a conference can be, at least for me, pretty stressful. So I learned a few things last year trying to balance those. Yeah, I mean, we're recording this show quite a bit early because of all the travel plans. And so I am talking about, for the show for me, is I'm going to be speaking in Chicago

at the American Bar Association. I'm doing two different presentations there with four different other people that I don't know that well. And then we're doing a live episode of Mac Power Users. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on. And the problem with travel for me has always been, the primary problem is I always overestimate my ability to get work done on a trip. I mean, that's just, for some reason, I think, you know, when I go on a trip, a lot of times when it's a business-related trip, I go alone, you know, so I don't have my family. So all of the things I do with them comes off the table, which then I do quite a bit with my family. And then I think, well, and then I'm going to be in this hotel room where there's nothing to do. So I'm going to be like a productivity animal.

I'm going to get eight hours of sleep and I'm going to wake up early. And it's just going to be crazy how much work I get done on this trip. I always leave with that intention. Never happens, though, does it? Yeah, it never happens. I come back feeling defeated and behind. And it even affects my attitude on the trip because I had this expectation going in. And as I'm doing the things that I went there to do, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, man,

email's getting behind. And you promise somebody a contract that you haven't written yet. And so that stuff starts to weigh on you as baggage. And I'm really planning ahead this time. I'm not going to let myself fall into that trap. We're recording this a couple of days before I leave. And I'm already trying to figure out how I'm going to do it this time and not have those problems. That is tough. And I think it makes it tougher if you are in a certain work situation where you have to be able to respond to not just clients, but anybody at a moment's notice, you have to be able to solve problems even while you're traveling. So the way I've done it as I've traveled for work in the last several years, unfortunately, I had been working with a company which understood that there were limitations in terms of what you're able to do when you're on the road. So even in the company calendar at Asian Efficiency, we had travel days, which automatically it was assumed for sprint planning purposes that while you were traveling, you were going to be below 50% in terms of what you were able to contribute towards the team goals during those days that you

were traveling. And one of the things that I picked up that really helped was understanding that you're not going to be able to get all of this stuff done. You may think that, like you said, you're going to get to the hotel room, there's going to be nothing to do there, and you're going to be super productive. But coming to the realization that that is never going to be the case and then being okay with functioning at 50 effectiveness and that's that's assuming that you don't have to balance something like you're doing david where you're giving multiple presentations and things like that too because you're going to have to be solving problems and maybe you know finding the right dongles to connect to the projectors and stuff

like that. And I know you've wrote a whole book on law and stuff, so you're probably prepared for it. But there's things that will come up that will disrupt what you think you're able to do. And then being okay with that and recognizing what are the things that you can do around that, which are going to provide you a greater return than 50%. So, for example, when I travel, I don't work on the plane anymore because I know that I'm not going to be able to do it very effectively. So I'll bring a book and I'll read on the plane because it's amazing how much reading I can get done. And that's one of those things that typically is like, well, I know I want to read more. I know I've got this book on my shelf that I've been meaning to crack open for months now and I haven't been able to do it because there's always one other thing that you have to do. So recognizing that this is kind of the ideal

location for this task, that makes it a lot easier. And also you don't feel guilty when you get there about not getting anything done because you resolved at the beginning that you weren't going to get anything done while you were on the plane. Yeah, I think so much of it is just setting that expectation going in. I actually can get work done on a plane with an iPad.

Microsoft Word is very good. But it just depends on the situation. I feel like I give myself the willingness to punt on an airplane. Like if I get on and immediately there's like three screaming kids next to me or the guy in front of me is the guy who reclines a seat immediately or just various scenarios, I am willing to say, okay, this is not ideal. I'm not going to fight it. It's like, you know, nature is telling me this is not going to happen. So I will read a book. So I get that. But I do think setting some reasonable expectations going in is always a big help. And it's something I'm really trying to do this time. And my goal for this trip, I mean, it's only three business days that I'm gone, so it's not the end of the world, but is to have two hours blocked a day to make sure I deal with all of the email and the most urgent of urgence. So I have two hours, and that's largely going to the law practice. For the Max Barkey stuff, I will have posts written before I leave so I can have some of that stuff managed. And then if I can just get those two hours a day, then I'm going to consider it a

victory. And anything beyond that is gravy. I didn't tell you, in addition, this trip, I don't have isolation because I'm bringing the whole family with me too. So it's just going to be worse. Yeah. Family is a game changer. Yeah, for sure. But I do find on trips, usually, especially when I go with my family, people often like to sleep in because we're doing a lot of stuff. And if I can get up just a couple hours early, most hotels have got a lounge or somewhere you can go sit and get some work done in the mornings. And that's key. And then you get those two hours done, you actually feel okay. You're like, okay, it's managed enough. you actually feel okay. You're like, okay, it's managed enough. And then you can go enjoy the day. You don't have to feel guilty or be carrying around this mental baggage that you've got something you should be doing and you can actually enjoy your time with your family. Yeah. Well, my kids don't sleep in yet. So I guess maybe that's something to look forward to. Yeah, it is. It is, frankly.

But I think the larger point to draw from this is that when you're traveling with your family, Yeah, it is. it's something fun. Maybe it's something that you want to do. But regardless, like you have a lot more opportunity for something to be presented to you that will disrupt your work plans. But even if you're traveling alone, that still is going to happen on a on a more limited scale. But that's kind of why I'm not willing to say like I'm going to set aside any amount of time for getting worked on an airplane because whatever can go wrong will go wrong. I'm going to get stuck in an airport. The guy in front of me is going to recline his seat as soon as the plane takes off. Like, assuming the worst in terms of work productivity is something that I have to do so that I don't feel guilty about it when I get off the plane. And really, that extends to the

whole reason for the trip as well. So in the past, I have been very rigid about, you know, we're going on this vacation as a family, and there will not be any work that's going to get done here. And I'm going to be unreachable. And I don't really have the luxury of that this time, unfortunately. But I've found that as long as I open the window for work productivity, and I hate using productivity in terms of just work stuff because I think it's a lot bigger than that. But if you open the door to that at all, at least for me, I always then am feeling bad about the lack of output, the lack of what I'm able to get done. Because I know how much I can get done in a normal day and under normal circumstances. And it just feels like whatever effort I'm putting forth in this scenario where I'm handicapped, essentially, in terms of what I'm able to produce,

where I'm handicapped, essentially, in terms of what I'm able to produce, it's not going to be, compared to my normal work, it's not going to be to the same standards. And that bugs me. But then every moment that I'm working, when I'm on vacation with my family, I feel bad because I'm not with my family. So you're constantly, at least for me, I'm constantly in this tug of war state where I'm going back and forth between these two things where when I'm with my family, I'm thinking that I should be working on something. And when I'm working on something, I'm feeling like this is a waste of time. I should be with my family. Yeah, see, and that for me is the benefit of the time block. It's like from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., I'm keeping the wheels attached to the thing that pays the bills. And then after that, I can set it down and move on.

And having a time block really helps. Some other steps I'm taking with this trip is where two days before, I just had a client ask me for a big project. I already told him I'm traveling most of this week, and it's just going to be next week before I can get it to you. And, you know, we're normal. That's unusual for me. Usually I'm more responsive

to clients and there's some part of me that's afraid to say things like that. But, you know, his response was, okay, that works. You know, I mean, it was like no big deal. And I think, you know, communicating realistic time estimates to clients as you prepare for a trip is going to be helpful. The other thing I do is I have an assistant that helps me out with some of the email processing and things like that. And I've already given her a heads up, hey, I'm going to be out of town a few days, so I may be sending you more than usual. And, you know, make sure to check it every day and, you know, that whatnot. So I'm kind of getting the pieces in place. But for me, you know, it's just really kind of getting down to accepting that for my situation, a trip like this that involves me doing some speaking, involves some family time, the only thing I'm going to get done is just kind of the daily triage of information coming in, be email, largely email.

of information coming in, be email, largely email. And I'm going to deal with the small emergencies and big emergencies, even. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those. I've never had one of those on a trip, but usually I can find a way to get more time on those as well. But daily triage plus small emergencies, and that's it. And if I accept that going in, I think it really does help me mentally get through the trip. Yeah, I think that's a good strategy. I don't think it would work for me. Just as an example, I mentioned the Maxtalk trip last year. And my wife came with me. We got to Woodstock, Illinois, where Maxtalk is held.

It's kind of a cool little tourist town. It's where they shot the movie Groundhog Day. And it's got this historic square. It's totally the type of place that we like to go. It just has a real chill vibe. And it's just one of those places, that's how we vacation is we go live like a local. We don't go see all the sites. So we got there on a Thursday, even though the conference didn't start till a Saturday and I was prepared for my talk but the entire time that we were there prior to the conference I continued to tweak and stress about my presentation as much as I tried not to and so I like with your situation you're going on this trip your family's's coming with you, you're giving a couple presentations, you're doing the MacStock live event. There's no way I could do that and have

any sort of quality time with my family. What I realized last year is that if I'm going to really spend quality time with my wife and we're going to make this like an anniversary getaway thing, the vacation part has to come after the work part. And so rather than going early this year, we're going down Friday through Tuesday, I believe. So we're going to tack on a day or two at the end because after I don't know that I'm giving a presentation yet, but if I were to give a presentation, that's going to give me margin on the back end where, okay, now I can relax. Now I can be fully invested in this thing that I'm supposed to be doing. That's just the way I'm wired, where if I have to think about that stuff at all, it's going to weigh on me and

it's going to affect every interaction that I have with every other person prior to that. It's just the way I am. Yeah. And that's not true for everybody. I mean, I think I can compartmentalize in that way. I'm jealous. I remember I had a big trial once, and we had a family thing for one of the kids, and I had to go participate in it, and it was a day before trial, and somebody in my firm was upset with me. They're like, how come you're doing this? I'm like, because it's important to my daughter.

If you look at all the time I spent preparing over the last three months you know taking five hours off to deal with this isn't going to make a difference and i won that case and then i was able to kind of stop that nonsense going forward but but i i'm okay at that but the trick for that is i have to know going in like if i'm not ready that's a whole different problem, you know? But I usually like with things like these speaking gigs have been on my calendar now for four months. So the presentation, I'm recording this on Monday. I'm giving it on Thursday. I doubt there's going to be many changes to presentations at this point. It's been polished to the point that now I just need to step away from it.

Yeah. You mentioned you're doing it with other people. So have they been involved in the prep or are you just showing up and doing your part? No, we're doing it together. And, you know, we're sharing the file back and forth. But it's the same thing there. We're all pretty happy with the way things are looking.

So I don't think there'll be much change. Okay. Anyway, so I'm going to try and be more realistic on this trip. It's hard. And I think the trick is having failed at this so many times, I'm really trying to open my eyes wide before I start this trip. It's hard. And I think the trick is having failed at this so many times, I'm really trying to open my eyes wide before I start this time. And maybe I'll get better at it. I'll let you know. Nice. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter

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I'm working through a lot of neuroses on this episode. So the other one is, I received an email from Hans, and I'm going to read that in a minute. But it was just a variety of things happening to me over the last couple weeks. And it all added up to this email we got from a listener. But first thing that happened to me was somebody sent me an article that was on the App Store in China that someone had translated for me. And it was about an app. I don't want to talk about the app.

But they had quoted me as an American efficiency expert, David Sparks says. And that kind of stunned me because I'd never thought of myself as an efficiency expert. And then because I do so much with OmniFocus, I talk about it, I've done screencasts on it, I often get emails from people

complaining about how they can't use it because once they start using an app where they have to track everything or they manage their tasks, they feel like they become robotic and they can't be creative anymore. And I have a different response. I feel like you need stuff like that

so you can have room to be creative. But then Hans sent an email as well after I'd posted about being intentional and we talked about it at the podcast. And he was talking about how that is good sometimes, but being unintentional is also good. And he feels like the balance of intentionality and unintentionality is really important. He says he wants the freedom to be able to define the balance by himself, and that's what gives him the greatest pleasure.

And that kind of pushes some of the buttons about being a free agent, that you really do have that control a lot more than you do if you work for the man. And then he goes on to explain this great trip he took when he was going through New Zealand, and he literally had no plans. He would go to hotels at night, and people would say, where are you going tomorrow? And he's like, I'm not sure. And then he'd wake up in the morning, and he'd say,

well, I've decided I'm going to go north. And then he'd go north, and he he'd wake up in the morning, he'd say, well, I've decided I'm going to go north. And then he'd go north and he'd find some amazing, you know, adventure that he had no intention to be on, but he ended up there. And he likes the idea of having the ability to be unintentional. And I totally get that. And I feel like the combination of the American efficiency expert, I'm holding up my air quotes now, and these emails about OmniFocus and this email, it just got me thinking, sometimes I feel like I'm not getting the point across properly, if that makes sense. The idea of intentionality to me is really to be able to get the hard stuff done so I can make space, so I can have time to go on an adventure or to do things that aren't necessarily paying the bills, but something that brings me pleasure. Sometimes it's just watching TV. Sometimes it's creating music. It could be a lot of things. But that is kind of the whole reason for this stuff. And maybe I didn't explain that enough

in that intentionality post or even in the show we did, you know, two weeks ago about this. But I guess what I'd call this segment is what's the point? And, you know, the point is not to become a productivity machine, but it's to live a fully realized life, you know, to be your best self, to do the things you want to do, but also be able to pay your bills. Yeah. So this section might get a little bit hippie, but I think that the definition of intentionality that you used in your original post is maybe a little bit different than the term as Hans used it in the email. And I don't think that either one of them are necessarily wrong. So I think that it's good that we're addressing this.

But the email begins, intentionality is good, but being unintentional is also good sometimes. And I'm not sure I would use intentional as the the word there i think back to the conversation that we had with chris bailey and he defined productivity as doing what you intended or what you intended to do and in his example where he binge watched a bunch of episodes of a Netflix TV show, but that was the thing that Or maybe Hans has the personality type where he doesn't like to have it all planned out ahead of time. He likes to be spontaneous like that. But I think that whatever format you use for this type of stuff, you are making these decisions at some point. And intentionality is just the measure of how well you follow through with what you mean to do when you decide that you're going to do it. Whether you have figured that out a month ahead of

time, or you figure that out when you get up in the morning. But I think that intentionality is a really important topic because without it, you're kind of stuck going back and forth between all respond to emails and emergencies that might come up. Intentionality is setting boundaries or parameters around where and when that stuff can happen. it's very very easy to slip into the mode where you're just responding to all of the other things that everybody else wants you to be doing and you really don't even have the time to consider what you want to be doing intentionality is identifying that first of all and then following through with that with integrity yeah i mean really that's kind of the reason for that kind of realization for me the reason i wrote that post and said I really want to focus on this for a while is because I do find in hindsight that it's very easy for me to cut myself adrift. You know, even though I may have a great plan for the day, maybe one email comes in and I just chuck everything out the window and get stuck on that for hours.

So I don't want to do that anymore. And I understand where Hans is coming from too. In fact, to me, the reason why I want to be more intentional is so I can have time to be unintentional, I guess to use his phrase. I think there's a common belief that being productive means working longer hours, even when you're more efficient. And I think that's an assumption people make even like when you and I talk about being focused on the show. It's like, great, you can be focused. You can get two hours of work out of one hour. So that means if you work four hours, you're going to get eight hours work out of four hours. And that's not really, at least what I mean by it. Right. No, I agree with you. And also to speak to the point

about being spontaneous, I think this parallels pretty well with the whole idea of budgeting. And that's a common argument with people who don't want to create a budget is that, well, I want to be able to be spontaneous and I want to be able to take my kids out for ice cream and go do whatever I want to in the moment. But the rebuttal to that is that the budget actually fosters the spontaneity because you're being intentional about where your dollars are going. So you have more dollars to invest in those spontaneous things. And I think the same thing can be said about your time. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good. So all that being said, I, you know, the, I, this, this idea that the intentionality allows you to run like a machine,

um, and frankly turn you into a robot is, is not what we meant. And, and I just want to make clear, I think we both agree that's a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Number one is we are not a machine. We cannot be productive. Applying the idea of focus or intentionality has its limits, and there's only so much your brain can do

in a day or a week or whatever. And another know, kind of large point, we'll come back to these is that giving yourself space, giving yourself that room to not know what direction you're going to drive tomorrow morning actually helps you, recharges you and kind of helps you be more productive the next time you decide to be. So the stuff all works together, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, there's a lot of different facets to the areas of your life. And this is kind of in the next segment that I was going to talk about, like the whole wheel of life thing. That's one of the things that I use.

But just as a precursor to that, we can probably all agree that it's not just as simple as we've got our professional lives and we've got our personal lives. There's a lot of different roles and responsibilities and different hats that people wear. And if you'd never taken the time to identify those things, you really have no idea where the demands for your time can even come from. But once you recognize that there's all of these different inputs, all these different angles that people can be requesting your time, then it's up to you to decide which ones you're going to prioritize for this season and which ones you're going to say no to. So you can say for a season that I'm going to absolutely respond to every emergency that's presented by work because I want to show

that I'm this type of person and I want to climb the corporate ladder, yada, yada, yada. Okay. And I would argue that maybe that's not a great strategy, but you could do that. And then once you get to a certain point, you could say, okay, now I'm more that this, this area, this box, this gauge, whatever, this is full now. So I'm going to switch and I'm going to prioritize something else for the next season. The problem I think with a lot of people as they approach this is that work is the default, where that one tends to get prioritized, and then they go years without even considering the other gauges or the other areas. And then by the time they want to switch and prioritize something else, it's too late. So I actually kind of build this in every couple months with my personal retreat, where I take stock of all this stuff and I'm constantly juggling these things.

And in fact, there was a book, I'm trying to remember which one it was. I think it was The One Thing by Gary Keller, where he talks about you're juggling all of these different balls, which represent the different areas of your life. And all of them are glass except the work one. That one's rubber. And you should feel free to chuck that one whenever you want. Yeah, I like that. So anyway, the point of this, all the stuff we're talking about in the show, is not that you become a 24-hour machine and you don't have time to take wild trips. But I'd like to talk a little bit about just the limits on how much you can work, because I do think that there's an interesting thing that happens when you decide to put extra work in.

Like, you can be working hard and say, oh, there's this one more thing I need to do for my work, and I feel like I'm getting behind, so I'm going to stay an extra hour and do that today, right? I feel like I'm getting behind, so I'm going to stay an extra hour and do that today, right? And it's deceiving because if you stay that extra hour, you do get that extra work done. So it feels like you're getting a one-for-one return. You know, say, oh, all I have to do is work longer hours and I will get more done. But it doesn't really work that way. There's like a diminishing returns point. If you continue to work longer and longer hours, you actually get less and less done. Chris Bailey, who was on our show a while back,

talked about this in his productivity project book. I think he even mentioned it when he was on our show. But one of his most interesting experiments was he did a work week, several work weeks where he only would work 20 hours a week. You know, he gave himself a limit. And then he did others where he would work 90 hour weeks. And he wanted to see and quantify how much work he got done with those different, you know, levels of time. And what he found was he didn't get much more work done in 90 hours than he got in 20 hours, you know? And the point he made in the book that I thought was something that people don't realize is, you know? And the point he made in the book that I thought was something that people don't realize is, you know, energy is part of the equation, you know? And when you start working longer and longer hours, you actually do, you become useless, you know? I mean, I know that's my experience. Like, there comes a time where I start reading the same sentence over and over again, and I realize all I'm doing

is wasting my time. And I could better spend this time with my kids or even in front of Netflix than sitting here mindlessly doing bad work. And then the other thing Chris found when he did the 90 hour weeks was he made a lot more mistakes. Yep. Yeah, definitely. I can totally empathize with that one because I'm in the middle of a video project which ended up being probably close to three times bigger than the original scope, but the deadline hasn't moved. So I find myself in this situation. Sounds about right for a video project.

Yeah. Well, yeah. But it is what it is, and I'm trying to wrap it up before I head to Florida so I can, I can disconnect at least there. But last week as we're recording this, I wrote over 35,000 words for the scripts for these videos. And then at the end of the week, I screencasted a whole bunch of stuff and I realized after the fact, as I was going back through things, that I made a mistake. And there was something in the sidebar that I totally would have caught normally, but I didn't realize it.

And I basically wasted an entire day of screencasting because there's this extra thing that I have to get rid of. And I have to go back and redo all that stuff. So kind of the circumstances demand this. But in the future, the lesson to be learned here is that I'm going to make sure that I have more margin before agreeing to projects like this so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen. But also, this is a good reminder for me that you can't, like you're talking about, you can't just, there's not a one-to-one return for this stuff that you can burn the midnight oil,

so to speak, for a little while, but it doesn't take very long for that to catch up to you. And also, the other lesson here is that by the end of that week, I was completely exhausted. I was useless. I couldn't do anything. And so when you are doing that, you have to recognize that you're not going to be able to just get a good night's sleep and then everything's going to be fine tomorrow. If you're going to do that, you are really stealing from future you. And sometimes, you know, you're okay with that trade-off, but it's something that you have to

consider. And when I was doing trials more, and I had a big trial, I would always take usually about two days off as soon as everything was done. Once we finish a trial, I would come back to the office to wrap up. There's always some filings and things you need to do. But as soon as I could get clear of that, I would just take two days off. And the reason I did that was because in hindsight, in the past, when I look at what I got done, when I came back to the office for a couple days after a big trial, I got nothing done. I mean, literally, I was sitting at a desk doing nothing. I couldn't even answer email worth a damn. I was useless. So then I realized, well, if I'm not going to

get any work done, I might as well just go have fun. So we would go to Disneyland for the day or just do something to disconnect. And it always helped me come back and feel energized as opposed to sitting in the office for two days doing nothing. that we had. I heard somebody at one point say that whenever they traveled, they would block out a day before and a day after for recovery. And I think this is a great idea because that same situation happens to me when I fly. I get, by the time I get home, I'm exhausted. I don't even know why that is, but just traveling takes everything out of me. And if I try to go put in a normal eight-hour workday the next day, it just doesn't happen. So there's probably a lot of situations and triggers like this. If you really understood the way that you're wired, this stuff can be really valuable in helping you kind of plan around that so you don't have to deal with it. Yeah, but I really want to dispel this myth that working extra hours is going to increase your output. And the thing that's tricky about it is it does work for the

first couple hours, you know, once in a while. I'm not saying two hours every day is going to work, but once in a while you get in a jam, you have to put a little extra work, and you see the result there. So your brain just says, okay, so this just works linearly. And the more time I throw at this, the more I'm going to get done. But it just doesn't work that way. Yeah, it's a tactic you can implement, but it's not a long-term strategy. Yeah. Okay, so we're dealing with that.

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Thank you to Hover for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. All right, Mike. So we've agreed that the flip side of being intentional and productive is to not work all your time and to have some downtime or some space. How do you define that space? Yeah, good question. So the term that I really like, and I have to give credit where credit is due here. I first heard this from Sean Blanc, but he uses the term margin. And I went to his Focus Course live event, and there's a whole section from that workbook on the importance of margin as a necessary component of a focused life. And he defines margin as breathing room. It's the opposite of overload. I really,

breathing room. It's the opposite of overload. I really, really like that definition. And I think that that speaks to me because I tend to be the person who hyper schedules everything to borrow your term and all of my time is accounted for. And I'm trying to squeeze all of these things in. And then when one thing doesn't work, everything can get blown up. It's like if you're trying to spin all these plates, as soon as you have a little bit beyond your capacity, they're all going to come crashing down. And margin is kind of their space, as you defined it, like that's kind of the thing that prevents that from happening. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Bailey also talked about it in the hyper focus book, you know, that the kind of the flip side of focus is allowing yourself to have room to just let your brain wander and the good things that come from that. Yeah, the hyper focus versus scatter focus, I think is how he defined it.

Yeah, that's a cool definition. But I think even with the hyper focus side of this, he uses a term called attentional space, which I think is kind of powerful if you understand it. Basically, he's saying in the book that you've only got so much attentional space, and there are limits to what you are able to do with your attentional space. You cannot do two complicated things at one time. Multitasking is, in that sense, a myth. two complicated things at one time. Multitasking is, in that sense, a myth. And I think that if you are trying to just constantly maximize your focus, that's also a mistake because there's limits to that and that space or that margin is actually very healthy. It helps make sure that you don't make the mistakes that we were talking about in the last segment where you're working all the time and you're pushing yourself too far.

And that's when things start to break down. If you concentrate on maintaining that margin, personally, I believe that you can make sure that you never end up in that place. Yeah. You know, it's funny, like last week, I went real hard for three days, you know, lots of got a lot of work done. I had a lot, you know, I went real hard for three days. You know, lots of, got a lot of work done. I had a lot, you know, I was thinking about this trip, you know, getting the presentations finalized, all this stuff going on. And at some point, I took a break and went downstairs and just fell into a five-hour Netflix trap.

I mean, you know, I didn't do anything for five hours. From like 4 p.m. to like the evening, I sat there and watched Netflix. And it was a day like the kids weren't home. I had like all this great time to get work done. And I'm convinced that it's just like my brain said, okay, you're done. You know, you got to go do something mindless for a while. And that's, you know, that is a failure on my part not to try and build enough space and if I had built in a little more space over those couple days

I probably could have spent that down time doing something better than watching Netflix yeah and that's the danger is that you don't realize when you've exceeded what you're capable of until it's too late. And then you've already fallen down that rabbit hole and you've invested a whole bunch of hours doing something that you didn't want to do, going back to the intentionality discussion. Exactly. It's like junk food. You can spend that time like, I really like making and writing music.

I didn't do as much during that period because I was so busy. I think in hindsight, I would have rather spent five hours doing that than watching a show. I didn't even really care that much about, you know? And, um, I think you, you, you put yourself in that position if you're not, I hate to say it, but intentional about this stuff. Yep, exactly. And that's why, like the, was it Benjamin Franklin? Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. I think that that totally pertains to this discussion. If you fail to plan your margin, then you're planning to exceed it and everything's going

to come tumbling down around you. Yeah. So if you apply intentionality as we defined it in the first part of this episode and you recognize that I do need to set aside something, some time for something that is regenerative or restorative for me and anybody can figure out what that is for them.

For me personally, I kind of discovered last year that, well, at least when it's nice out, you know, we're in the Midwest in the winter right right now so it's snowing and below zero outside so I'm not going running outside right now but if I'm in the in when the weather is is decent that's one of the things that really kind of hits the reset button for me is I'll I'll write or I'll create until I'm mentally exhausted I'll switch modes and then I'll go for a long run. And by the time I get back, I'm ready to go again. It feels really good to go emphasize a different area. And that's really when it comes to space and margin,

I think that that's another thing that needs to be taken into account is not all space is the same. to be taken into account is not all space is the same. Sean Blanc mentions that there's five areas that we need margin, time, money, emotions, health, and then mental or creative. And so you can kind of switch back and forth between these. And again, you have to check all the boxes. You have to recognize all the different facets that comprise you and make sure that you're managing and stewarding all of them well. And step one to that is to recognize that just because you've got a little bit of time

here, you know, I should be using that to refill this meter over here and forget about that one over there for a little while. And it doesn't have to be as mercenary as that can sound as well. Like I know, for instance, Mike likes to play video games. I'm guessing you probably set time aside to play video games. And that, you know, my family, we have Disney passes. So we set time aside every week or two to drive up to Anaheim and just kind of hang out and be together. And all that stuff, even though we're applying kind of this intentionality and these productivity terms to these things, it's the fun side of this stuff. It's the reason you're doing

everything else. And by blocking that time in for me, and I guess I should explain, I do block time for that stuff. You know, I block time to make music. I block time to go to Disneyland or whatever we've got going on with relation to the family. So all of those blocks I guess, for lack of a better term. But it's not that I'm saying, I'm setting aside the afternoon to go to Disneyland and we are going to get there and we are going to go on the Jungle Cruise ride and then we're going to go eat a hot dog. It's not like that. It's just saying, this is time for us to be together and this is the place we're going to do it yep maybe someday i could say i'm going to block away a week to go wander around new zealand actually new zealand is on my list i want to get there someday and and maybe i would do it like hans i don't know but the um uh but

there's definitely a piece of all of this stuff we're talking about you know the payoff or you know what why are we doing all this stuff is to have that time to play a game or to do something with the family. Yeah, and actually an example comes up here which kind of illustrates the point about how the budgeting can produce more spontaneity. So I mentioned the scheduling piece. I know you do this too, David. You were sharing some forms with me that you use for planning your day. I've got my own and I use GoodNotes to plan out every hour of my day. But what that does is it actually gives me more time for those things because I may block aside

three hours for writing in the morning. And then my goal is to produce an article or write a newsletter, whatever, write the scripts. If I finish early, which often I do, because the more that I plan out my day, the better I get at estimating how long something is going to take. And frequently, I'll get done ahead of time. And then I've got a half hour out of that three-hour block before my next thing starts, where if I want to, yeah, I could go pick something else off of the task list and get going on it. But often what I'll do is I'll use that as an opportunity, reward myself for getting done early, and I'll go play video games for a little while. The current one that I'm stuck on, by the way, is Tetris 99 for the Switch. It's amazing.

If you've ever played Tetris against other people, it's phenomenal. And it only takes a couple of minutes to play a game. And so I can get a couple of minutes to play a game. And so I can get a couple rounds of that in before I have to go back to work. And so that's one way that I, throughout the course of my day, am actually kind of recharging the different meters. And I guess I just didn't do a very good job of explaining that in the last episode. But really, I mean, the point of this intentionality is to be able to do that. point of this intentionality is to be able to do that so and not only do those does that margin as sean would say help out with um you know downtime and recharging but it does also i think

serve a purpose to allow you to bring your creative side to the rest of what you do like if you're working so hard that you really do you know just go to bell to bell every day let's say that you're you're limiting yourself to 40 hours a week but you're going 40 hours a week at work straight through, that there is no margin or space in that schedule, where you just stop and think about what you're doing. I do think that can be a real problem because, you know, you're just, you're spending so much time in the, you know, looking at the trees that you're not looking at the forest or you're not making plans. And I think giving yourself space

to just think about what I'm doing and have room in there quite often can let you make those course corrections that can really change the ultimate success of what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one area of this, which we've talked about before on this podcast, is this whole idea of the personal retreat. That's really what it is. And yeah, I've got some questions that I consider, but there have been times when I've gone up there and I just chucked the handbook and I just do nothing because that's what I need right now. And setting aside the time to be able to do that, that is very healthy, I would argue.

I think another thing that kind of is worth considering with this is that we probably are a little bit harder on ourselves in terms of what we should be able to do because of the work that we tend to do. So we're not doing physical labor for 40 hours a week, and we're not passing out from exhaustion because we've been in a coal mine all day, every day. And so we kind of figure like, well, look at you, you, you've talked into a microphone for a couple of hours. What right do you have to be tired? But the truth is that by the end of a podcast recording, I am pretty exhausted and I have to go do something else because my mental energy is spent. And I think that that's something that we need to recognize and be okay with is identifying our limits in terms of this quote-unquote knowledge work that a lot of people do. Because it's a different type of energy management than just, I've been doing this thing and it's made me physically tired. Yeah. Yeah, it is very different. Well, I do think that, I think we've made the point,

but you just need to, I think intentionality can have repercussions across the fun in your life as well. I do think that you don't need to necessarily bring the same level of detail of intentionality to the fun. But I think having, you know, your time blocked or having a way to know that you've got time to work and time to play. And if you're like me and you find yourself the personality type that will work too much, you know, that if I left to my own devices, i'll sit here and work until i fall into bed um i think bringing some intentionality can help you um be deliberate about planning time to have fun yep absolutely another trick i'd add to that is um when you were talking about margins with sean one of the ways i deal with that and i is when i do time block, I'm liberal with the time blocks. You know, I give myself more time than I think the project will take. And usually, as I've got better at those time estimates,

I'm usually, you know, under the estimate a bit. So I don't feel like I'm running around and not finishing anything. Yep, exactly. Yeah, that was kind of the point that I was trying to make is I don't intentionally set aside more time than I think something is going to take. But we tend to underestimate what we can get done in the long run and overestimate what we can get done quickly. And I find that that applies even to, if I set a multiple hour time block on my calendar. So I'll err on the side of caution. And if I think something is going to take a little more than an hour, for example, I'll set aside two hours.

So I have a bunch of margin there. And then maybe I even get it done in less than an hour. Maybe it takes a little bit longer than that. But forcing myself to think in hour block increments naturally builds in the margin in my experience. If you were to break it down to every half hour, even every 15 minutes, I think you would probably lose a lot of that. So that would be the one thing I would add to that is if you're going to plan out your day like that and you want to build in some of that margin, then work with at least one hour time blocks. Yeah. This episode of Focus is brought to you by FreshBooks. Online invoicing made easy. Go to freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused in the how did you hear about us

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FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. There's no credit card required, and all you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused in the how did you hear about us section. We thank FreshBooks for all of their support of this show and Real AFM. So Mike, earlier you talked about the wheel of life. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, so this is not a new idea, but I applied it in my personal retreat handbook and I kind of defined it my own way. So the wheel of life is kind of an exercise that you use to take inventory of your current satisfaction of the

different areas that comprise your life. And so the one in the personal retreat handbook has eight different areas, and I define them spiritual, career and work, love and relationships, health and fitness, personal growth, fun and recreation, social, and finances. But if you were to apply this, you can really put whatever labels on this stuff you want and then it's a it's a big circle at least the one i have so radiating out from the middle there's different lines from one to ten and you rate your current satisfaction in each of those areas on a scale from one to ten and then what that does in in terms of the personal retreat is it shows you which areas you're not happy with. So those are the areas that you should consider setting goals for

the next couple of months. But I think taking a step back from that, it can also be a very effective tool, even if you didn't decide to set any goals in these particular areas, because it would at least show you the current state of things. And so I can put mine from the last quarter that I did in the show notes so people can get an idea of this. But for me, because I'm going through some work stuff, my career work pie slice wasn't very high. So that's where I set some goals. But also in the past, I've done this and my social one hasn't been very high because I tend to be pretty introverted and left to my own devices. I would rather stay home than go out

with friends. But if you want to have friends, you got to show yourself friendly. So I actually had a 12-week year goal to once a month go out on a double date, my wife and I, with at least one other couple. And that sounds pretty silly to have to set a goal for yourself to do that sort of thing. But it also is a cool example, I think, of how flexible this stuff is. So goals don't just have to pertain to your work situation. Just like being productive doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to solely be defined by how many widgets you can crank out at your job you can prioritize the different areas of your life and make positive changes in them you just

can't influence all of them at once you know we're such nerds and um you know we're exposing ourselves here one of the things i do at the beginning of each month is i have a little kind of monthly sheet where i plan the month out and i have, one of my things every month is I pick four friends. And I basically pledge myself to take as much time as it needs to have a nice interaction with that person, whether it's meeting them for coffee, or if they live far away, I get on an extended telephone call with them. But, and I don't know why I started doing that, but it's one of the things I look forward to every month is picking four friends this month that I can really give some special attention to with the idea that I'm going to do it like one a week,

but sometimes it doesn't work out just that way. But by writing them down, I kind of hold myself accountable to make time to talk to four friends. Yeah, exactly. And the natural argument against this is the same thing that people would say against the intentionality and spontaneity, regardless of the area that you apply this to, is that I don't want to be so rigid. But my guess is that when you call those four friends and you have those conversations,

other than maybe you've got a checklist in your task manager which says it's time to call this person, it doesn't water down the quality of the conversation at all. But that's where people get hung up a lot, is, well, I want to have the freedom to do whatever I want. But actually, it's the intentionality that provides the freedom that you're looking for. And the reason this list exists is because there was a problem where I would go six months without talking to any friends because I get so busy in doing things. And I realized I was losing touch with some people that are dear to me. And I wanted to find some concrete way to fix that.

And so now by doing this nerdy thing of writing their names down, somehow it magically turns into me contacting them. And it works for me. I'm not sure it works for everybody, but it works for me. And I know how crazy it sounds. I mean, I heard from a friend that listened to this show and said, I can't believe you do all this nonsense. you know that's the way i keep the uh keep the the engine running yeah exactly and that's the thing like when it all comes down to it you've got all these different things all these different trains that you're trying to keep running i kind of the picture i get is like the mini metro game for ios you know where you're just trying to keep things from colliding you want to avoid a disastrous collision in one of these different areas.

And so you have to know the current state of things. If you don't understand that you're really pushing it in a particular area, you know, love and relationships, for example, you may all of a sudden wake up one day to find that your partner, your significant other has had enough and is ready to leave. Like you have to know these things. But once you know those things, you can figure out for yourself what are the levers that you can pull? What are the things that you can do that will move the needle in that particular area? So maybe it's not making a list of people that you're going to call periodically, although

I do think that that is a great idea. And I think that would provide benefit for anybody who wants to implement that. But maybe there is a specific strategy or a specific habit that you hear us talk about. And you're like, there's no way I would do that. That's fine. Figure out whatever is going to move the needle for you. But I think the process here is always the same. So you identify the area that needs some attention, some TLC, and then you figure out what is something that you can do in that area. And whether you want to call that a goal or not, that's fine. But what kind of outcome can you create that would have a positive impact in that area? And then from there, it's breaking it down into habits like we talked about.

What are the things that you can do every day, I would argue, but maybe it's not even every day. Maybe it's just consistently every week, whatever, like calling your list of friends. But doing the things that you can do over and over again, which are going to not only move the needle as you implement them, but then once you start doing it, it kind of becomes a habit. It becomes ingrained. And then it's not something that you have to really invest a whole lot of attention at anymore.

So once you've created that habit and you've figured out the best way to make that sort of thing happen, then you're free to go take care of something else. And it's that constant switching, I think, that is really behind the whole idea of intentionality. It's not saying that I'm going to prioritize all eight of these areas every single quarter. Yes, I'm going to make sure that I'm doing things for these areas every single day, every single week, every single month, but I'm not going to be focused on those things. A lot of those things are going to be running on autopilot because of those habits that I've created. And so I'm going to be okay with the current state of this one. And I'm going to figure out what habits I need to create in this one. And then I'm going to figure out what

habits I need to stop doing because they're not effective anymore. Like it's, it's not complicated, but it's not something that you can just set and forget either. Yeah. And I guess I would just kind of wrap this up saying the reason Hans's email combined with those other things kind of really jumped this to the front of the line is I totally understand where he's coming from. And honestly, it's the reason why I've always had a kind of a love-hate relationship with productivity literature and the idea of being productive. of being productive. Because in some ways, if you look at it, it can be a harness to, you know, it's like treating yourself like a monkey. How can I make the monkey work harder? And there is a lot of literature and people talking about this stuff out there that really do have that one-dimensional kind of attitude towards productivity, that it's just something to make you work harder and get more done. But then what really turned me around on it was like talking to Mike and reading books by people

who look at it as a way to get your whole life together. You know, that this isn't just something you apply to work, but it's something you apply to fun. And it actually increases the quality of both. Yeah. Productivity should not enable you to get more work done. Productivity should give you the freedom to live the life you want to live. And that's our goal with this show, honestly. And that's the reason why I'm on this journey because I don't want to just become great at getting contracts written.

I want the whole enchilada. Yeah, exactly. And that's the beauty of it is that you can define for yourself what this stuff looks like. What does productivity mean to you? Maybe that's a definition that we should open up to listeners to put into the forum. It'd be interesting to see how people define productivity or maybe even intentionality would be another good one. But you can write your own definition

and then you can do the things that are important to you, which are going to lead you to the state that you want to be in. Wherever you are right now, whatever your situation, the things that have gotten you here are the decisions that you've made ultimately. And yeah, maybe some things have happened that have been outside of your control, but most of us, we are where we are today because of the decisions that we made yesterday. And so how do you change your future? You change your decisions. Even if you can't completely change your work situation like we talked about in the last episode, control what you can control, but start taking ownership and moving in the direction that you want. And then it's just showing up every day that making the right decisions, the compound effect

kicks in. And then before long, you start seeing the results. Maybe it doesn't happen as quickly as you want it to, but if you're consistent with it, if you identify with this is who I am and this is what I want to become, like James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits, then the score does take care of itself. Yeah, I think that's, let's wrap it up there.

I think that's a pretty good way to summarize this episode. Awesome. All right, so we are The Focus Podcast. You can find us over on relay.fm. Thank you to our sponsors, Squarespace, Hover, and FreshBooks. Thanks to Hans talk.macpowerusers.com. Focus has its own forum there. Mike, anything exciting going on in your life these days? You can keep up with my writing at mikeschmitz.me. I'm going to hopefully start posting there more often. And then the other stuff is faithbasedproductivity.com.

I don't have anything really exciting to talk about, except that I've got this trip planned and I'm trying to do it without pulling my hair out. I'll let you know how I did next time. Sounds good. See you in two weeks.