Focused - 74: Moving the Needle

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

David & Mike unpack David's new system to help focus on important work, talk about stepping off the hamster wheel of efficiency, and discuss what to do about productivity shame.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hello, Mike. How are you today? I am doing well. How about you? I wish we were together. I feel like I want to give you a hug. We haven't talked for too long. It's time for a Focus show where we can just talk about productivity nonsense.

Yeah, it's true. We've had a couple of great guests, by the way, but it does feel like it's been quite a while since we've been able to just chat about things, which is why I think this episode is going to be great. I'm excited to talk to you about moving the needle here today. All right. Speaking about moving the needle, we do have a couple of announcements here to make. As we record this today, you've have a couple of announcements here to make. As we record this

today, you've got a new product. Yes, the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide is out. That's something I've been working on for about six months. It's a video course all about this great Mac app called Keyboard Maestro that allows you to automate just about anything. And if you're a Mac user, it's worth checking out. You can find it over at learn.macsparky.com and it's four hours, 76 videos. It's like the whole pitch is on the website. But if you want to automate your Mac, this is something worth checking out.

But it's an introductory price of $24 as opposed to $29. And I'm keeping it open for this podcast because this one releases a little bit after the initial release, but I'm keeping that price lower just for the listeners of Focus. So if you want to go check it out, I'd really appreciate it. But the thing I want to talk about today, which is even more relevant to this show, is your new thing. And Mike, I know you've been working on faith-based productivity for a long time. This has been something that's been very important to you. And as we release this podcast

today, it is now open for business. Yeah, kind of scary as we're recording this prior to the launch, but it's getting close. I'm dotting the I's, I'm crossing the T's. I'm adding a bunch of stuff to it that I never really envisioned. My buddy Joe Buelig actually came to visit last week and convinced me that we needed a community to go along with it. So he spun up a discourse. He's the guy for that. He made a whole bunch of integrations. So all of the discussion gets pulled into the course pages. It's got a little wizard thing. So it helps you as you sign in and create your first post. And I've had a lot of people who have reached out over the last couple

of years and they've seen the stuff that I've done different places. And they've said, you know, I'm a Christian too. I really wish there was a place where I could talk openly about my faith and how it influences my productivity. So I'm excited to offer this. And that's going to be a separate thing. That's going to be a community which will have a cost associated with it. But Joe is a wizard and he built in the ability to automatically recognize

if you purchase the course. And so anybody who purchases the course gets free lifetime access to the community as well. In addition to a coaching call, there's the planning templates that I use as I plan out not only my wheel of life and my monthly plan and my habits and things like that, but also the weekly and daily planning templates that I use. There's top-down videos that show you

how to fill all that stuff out. And then the other courses that I've released, the Personal Retreat Handbook and the Journaling Bootcamp. If you want to buy just faith-based productivity, you can do that too. I've been very fortunate to work with some really talented people in producing this thing. And so it's really cool to see this finally get out there. It's been available for pre-order, and I appreciate everybody who has made an investment. You're going to get all of the stuff at the discounted price, but basically now it's real now it's out there. So, uh, it's exciting. I think that one's the bell. Mike, I just know that this, I was thinking as you were talking, I'm like, this is something you've been working on years. And I thought,

no, this is really something you've been working on your entire adult life. And, um, and I'm just so happy that you were able to get that out the door and And I wish you the best of luck with it. Thank you. You know, it's funny you say that because I didn't really view it that way. But I think you're totally right that this is the culmination of pretty much everything I have ever done since I started working in the productivity space. When I first got that idea to write the book all those years ago, this is kind of the culmination of all of that. And I'm really proud of the end result. There's still, I'm sure it's not going to be perfect when I release it. I'm going to miss a few typos here and there, but I've been collecting some testimonials from people who have been going through and kind of beta testing it. And the feedback has been

phenomenal. So I can't wait to get this out there and have people benefit from it on a larger scale. And I know it's not going to be for everybody either. So I tried to, if you go to the course page, you can get a feel, there's a sample video, look at that and decide for yourself if this is the thing for you. But I want to serve a certain group of people

to the best of my ability. And I know that I can't please everyone. So I'm just going to double down and try to do what I my ability, and I know that I can't please everyone. So I'm just going to double down and try to do what I do. Well, I think it's going to be great. I think you're going to have a ton of success. Let's get to the content, though. We have talked a lot about time lately, about hyper-scheduling and whatnot.

And we have on our list of topics for the show time tracking. But I'm taking a little hiatus from time tracking right now. We are going to come back and cover that at some point in the future, but I wanted to take a little break from it, and I've been evolving something. I felt like I was the Unabomber sending you my manifesto when I started sending you pictures of pages from my notebook the other day. Yeah, I loved it, though. I think it's great. I think you articulated in those screenshots that

you sent over the underlying issue that I have had with time tracking for a long time. And time tracking is one of those topics that has been on the list. We've decided we were going to sit down and record an episode on time tracking, I think, three separate times now. And every time it's been trumped because neither of us, I think, really are 100% on board with just, well, I used my time well. But it's a little bit different when you ask yourself a different set of questions at the front end and really determine what is the single best use of the time that I've got. And I love the phrasing that you had with that on moving the needle. I think that just encapsulates it perfectly. Yeah, so I've been doing this new thing that I'm calling moving the needle. I have always loved that phrase, you know, it just, you know, harkens back to a baby nerd Sparky as a little kid looking at like the pictures of the NASA launch center with all of those dials. And, you know, I just like the idea, you know,

moving the needle means making the dial move, you know, having an effect. And then recently that phrase came up. I don't know if it was on focus, but I think it might've been on Mac power users when Michael Hyatt guessed it. He, I think he might've used that phrase, but it just kind of stuck with me. And I was looking at all this data I have for time tracking. Like I like the timing app on my Mac. We're going to do a show on it so i guess i shouldn't get go down that rabbit hole but the bottom line is i wanted i got to the end of these days and i had all this time tracking data and i realized i'm not sure what i'm supposed to do with this i mean i have used time tracking data in the past to find things to offload to other people but the real

fundamental problem that i have in my life often is getting to the end of the day and feeling like I didn't move the needle. That even though I worked all day, the really important stuff just didn't get done. And I know a lot of people have similar feelings about it. So I started kind of evolving. And there's a lot of parents for this idea. Part of it is that the concept of moving the needle, part of it is like the stuff Sean Blanc talks about, some of the stuff we talk about in this course. There's a bunch of people now, Jocelyn Gly, who was recently here, people talking about saying, you know,

let's talk about not so much being busy, but actually getting work done. And another inspiration for me was Matt Ragland, I think is his name. He's a YouTuber who does some of the stuff on daily journal books. But everybody's got these ways of tracking time. Matt did it with these little squares where he would fill in how much time did he spend in meetings and how much time did he spend on this project and that project. And it got me thinking, what if instead of tracking all that nonsense, I just, at the beginning of the week, made a list of the things that will move the needle for me. And it's real easy for me. The list is pretty small. I mean, what moves the needle for me is working on a field guide, writing something for the blog, podcasting, or getting actual legal work done for clients.

You know, it doesn't include the administration of any of that stuff. Doesn't include email. Doesn't, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff I do that doesn't make that list. Yeah. So what I did was, I just took a page in my notebook, and you could do this with a spreadsheet

or with an Apple Note or anything you wanted. Is that on Sunday, I just make a list of those four items, you know, field guide, blogging, podcasting, lawyer. And I, you know, I have an idea in my head that like, I would like to really get, you know, 15 solid hours done of this, of this task. And maybe I'd like to get, you know, six solid hours done of that task. And so I just made, um, I started out with just rectangles and I sent you a picture of it. Maybe I'll, um, I'll have to look at it. I think I could probably share those notebook pages and you guys can see my horrible handwriting, uh, in the show notes. I just want to make sure I didn't write anything

in there that's going to, uh, get me in trouble. But anyway, so then what I do is at the end of each day, or even sometimes during the day, as I spend two hours on the field guide, I'll just go back to that page in the notebook and color in two hours worth. And then at the end of the day, if I spent four hours on legal work, I'll color in four hours worth. And it has to be actual work, you know, not admin or other stuff. And then at the end of the day, I look and see how much moving the needle I did. And I write down in my, you know, my little summary of the day, hey, I spent five hours today moving the needle, which is actually pretty good. That's really good. Yeah. And so I try to do that. And the thing about this little method, this little hack I'm using, is that it's constantly present in my mind that, you know, what I'm doing right now, moving the needle.

Do I get to fill in a block for doing this? And if not, why am I doing it? Yeah. Does it count? You know, and there are some things that don't fill in a block that I like to do. Like, I'll take a break and play my horn for, you know, 30 minutes. That's okay. It's not going to move the needle, but it's something that makes me happy.

Yeah, exactly. And I know you can make the argument, well, then you should have a line for that. No, the whole idea for me here is the stuff that actually furthers my work, you know, that gets stuff done. And so I started this about a month ago. It's evolved over the month. I started, you know, just collecting my thoughts about it. I sent Mike some notes on it and it's been working pretty good. And it's not time tracking because I'm not tracking all of my time, but I am tracking the work that moves the needle. And that really does kind of seem to help me move the needle, if that makes any sense. It makes perfect sense to me. I think we need to unpack this a little

bit more maybe for people who aren't familiar with this, but I want to share something with you. I'm going to post this in the Skype chat. This is immediately what I thought of when I saw your blocks. There is a blog post and a calendar basically by a website, Wait But Why, and it charts really your entire life or the average human life in all of these little blocks. And I remember the first time that I saw this blog post, really the intended effect that it's supposed to have is to get you to realize how short your life is because you locate where you currently are in that calendar. And then you kind of look at it and like, oh, I've got this much time left. Like

it kind of quantifies it. And at that point, obviously you're inspired to finally do the thing that you really wanted to do. And it doesn't matter where you are, whether you are 17, 27, you are, whether you are 17, 27, 67, the point is to make the most of the time that you have, because none of us really know, regardless of your religious belief system, how much time you've got left on this earth. But you want to make it count. You want to make the most of it, whatever that looks like for you. And that's why you can define it you use the word work and i think you meant it as like work that results in something that you want to make through the lens of or the perspective of a creator but what's yeah what's really the key takeaway here is that it doesn't have to be work it can you can fill in the blank with whatever the desired result that you want to achieve is. But then there are certain

things that you have to do to get those results. It's not rocket science. You just have to be consistent. You have to show up every day and screencast if you're going to ship a keyboard maestro field guide. And it's the process that produces the results at that point. It's not your desire or your willpower. It's the fact that you showed up every day and you recorded screencasts and you followed the plan that eventually allowed you to get there. And the principle here is, I think that as humans, we drastically underestimate what we can get done in the long run and overestimate what we can get done in the near term, the short run. And so it's easy to

go through your day just responding to the things that pop up without being intentional and feel like you have accomplished a lot at the end of the day. You could even look at the data that your time tracker generated and say, oh yeah, I got a lot done. I was, quote unquote, productive. But that's not necessarily moving the needle. And so define for yourself what moving the needle looks like, and then check the boxes. Because if you check enough boxes, the needle will have moved. You will have produced the result that you want. And the great part about that is that everybody gets to decide what that looks like for themselves. Yeah, I mean, everybody's needle is on a different gauge, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

If we could torture this anymore. But for me, it was really easy because I know, I mean, I love creating stuff as Max Barkey, and that's super important. There's a reason why those are on the top and legal is on the bottom. But also, you know, I need to make enough money to support my family. And I also like being a lawyer. So, and I can't spend my time being a lawyer on stuff that doesn't actually result in client work that I can make money for. So like, this was a combination of problems that this was developed to solve. And I just kind of fell into it. Like I didn't sit down and say, okay, today I'm going to invent some new system for being more productive or staying on focus better. But it

just kind of came together as a result of discussions on the podcast and just ideas in the back of my head. But this has been very productive for me. And as I go through and log my day, it does inspire me. And I was very curious to see if that would wear off because I've been doing it about a month now. And it hasn't. You know, a lot of times these systems work just because they're different. You know, I heard from a listener talking about hyperscheduling after we talked about it a month or two ago who said it's like changed his life. I'm like, great.

But see if it's still changed his life i'm like great but see if it's still changing your life in six months you know the the real key to this stuff is you gotta hang with it over time and this is true for this as well i mean i haven't been doing it long enough to say oh this is a sure thing but at least for the way my brain works maybe it's a little bit of gamification of this problem but um being cognizant of the work I do as the day develops and making sure I'm actually moving the needle as opposed to just spinning my wheels and then getting to the end of the day and say, wow, I worked 10 hours today and I didn't actually do any legal work I could bill for and I didn't complete anything on a field guide. So why did I get out of bed? Yeah. Coming back to that term,

moving the needle, I think it's important to kind of talk about how to identify what actually moves the needle for you. So in the faith-based productivity course, I've got this concept of a life theme. And mine from going through the course is to help people answer the question, why am I here? By inspiring, encouraging, and teaching them to connect to their calling, discover their destiny, live the life they were created for. So when I'm evaluating whether things are moving the needle for me, I kind of filter it through that lens.

me, I kind of filter it through that lens. And you can kind of arrive on that vision for your life a number of different ways. You might call it core values. You might have just some dream that you've always wanted to do this thing. And so if you're able to show up every day and take consistent action and move towards the production of that thing, then that is moving the needle for you. But I guess when you're talking about, because you sent me the sheets and you've got the boxes and you've identified the things that move the needle for you, but I think this is something that everybody's probably got to spend some time wrestling with in order to land on what is the thing that actually moves the needle for you. Because you could be in a job where you are doing something that you are very skilled at, and it's not moving the needle for you. And you could also be in a position where you're doing something that you love, but you don't really have the skills to do it very well, not moving the needle for you. you. It kind of comes back to that NPU episode with Michael Heide. He talked about the passion compass. And there was an interesting conversation that spun up in the forum after that because he's

got these four different quadrants, the desire zone, which are the things that you're passionate about and proficient in, the distraction zone, things that you're passionate about, but you're not proficient in, the disinterest zone, things that you're proficient in, but you're not passionate about, and then the drudgery zone, things that you are neither you're not proficient in. The disinterest zone, things that you're proficient in, but you're not passionate about. And then the drudgery zone, things that you're neither passionate about or proficient in. And I agree with that model mostly, but my one issue with it is that use of the word passion. And it seemed like some of the listeners had that issue too, where, well, it'd be great if I could just pick the things that I really like to do and that I'm really good at, but I don't have that luxury.

So what do you do in the meantime? And I think that's an important question because I would argue you're not going to get to that point unless you are able to bring passion to what you are doing. One of my favorite quotes is by Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy. He says, don't follow your passion, but always bring it with you. And I think that your approach to the work that you do and the perspective that you have as you sit down to do it, it could be tied to, I'm going to do this to the best of my ability and I'm going to learn, I'm going to grow, I've got a growth mindset. I'm going to develop these skills to the point where I'm no longer doing this for somebody else. I can do this on my own. But it's worth thinking through those things and applying it to your current situation, not just wishing that you could get there. Where the things, as you architect

your own day, man, it'd be great to plan my own day. That's kind of the dream for everybody who doesn't work for themselves, but wants to work for themselves. And then when they start working for themselves, they realize that they don't have the focus to the self-discipline. I'll put myself in that category too. Like that's something you have to, you have to learn. And so there's this moving the needle concept. I think this is really powerful and I think it could transform your life no matter what situation you happen to find yourself in. Because I would argue, you know, going back to your discussion or your comments about the system and is it going to wear out? I would argue that when you are able to

apply intentionality and say, I want to do this thing and I'm going to do it well, and then you are able to follow through and do it well, that that does something inside of you. You won't get sick of a system that produces those results. Where people tend to get sick of the system is when they're just following the system itself. And they think that because they're able to crank through their email in 30 minutes a day or less, that is going to all of a sudden make everything better. It's not. It's the perspective that you bring to the work and you get to choose whether it's going to be something that you're passionate about or something that you're just disconnected from. But being able to apply your passion to the things that are important is the key. I've got this blog post, which maybe we can put in the show notes. My problem with passion, which is kind of my

written response to that whole discussion, I made this Venn diagram with these two circles, things that are important and things that suck. And I put real passion as the point where they intersect. And I think, again, you can identify for yourself the things that are important, but moving the needle is not going to be something that is just automatic or easy for you. Sometimes you are going to have to push through those things. But The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, he kind of talks about the fact that you have to exert yourself, the fact that you really have to push through some things in order to overcome them.

That's the rewarding part of the journey if you learn to view it the right way. That's what I think moving the needle is all about. It's interesting because as I've done this experiment, it's actually, this experiment arose out of a discussion of hyper-scheduling, but the experiment has also affected for me hyper-scheduling because all of a sudden I'm looking at, I'm so results-oriented on this stuff. I'm like, I definitely want to fill in those blocks today

that I am clearing the decks, especially in the AM hours, only for needle moving tasks, if that makes sense. I mean, historically, I would do a thorough email sweep in the morning and a very cursory email sweep in the afternoon as I was finishing the day. And I realized, wait a second, I'm like, I'm on in the morning. That's when I'm best at recording screencasts and writing and doing legal work. Why am I spending an hour of my precious time on email, you know, when this is the morning has become much abbreviated. And now I do the big email sweep in the afternoon when I'm already brain dead. So it's just, it's interesting how this is affecting other things as I get comfortable with the idea. Yeah, exactly. That's a great description of how productivity, I would argue, is supposed to work. So the efficiency is supposed to create the space for you to be effective. And I know we'll get into that in a little bit here, my

problem with that term efficiency. But that's the thing. You had that light bulb moment where I want to make the most of my moving the needle time. And so you're reconfiguring things. And that's where hyper scheduling can provide the structure to help you move the needle to the maximum impact every single day. But until you identify what moves the needle, you can be efficient in all these different things. And it doesn't do anything inside of you. It doesn't bring you any life because you're not sure whether what you're doing is moving the needle. You question in the back of your head whether you should be doing this thing anyways.

eliminates because I don't have any doubts. I know what works. And partly, and that is a result of me having kind of grown this publishing business over 10 years and being a lawyer for 25 years, I know what needs, for me, what moves the needle. And I guess that's something that is a benefit for me that not necessarily everybody has. But it was very easy for me to say, okay, what is it that I need to have done at the end of the day to make myself feel like I'm making progress? And I'm lucky in that way, but also there's been many years, this has been many years in the making. Yeah, I guess, you know, if you were to take my personal retreat concept and modify it, you could just get away for an extended period of time and just ask the question, what moves the needle? That would be another approach. But that's a question that everybody's got to wrestle with. And you don't have to wait until you've done something for 25 years to identify it. And I'm not saying that that's what you did, David, but I just want to throw that out

there because there may be people who think like, well, I've not done this long enough to really identify what moves the needle. You don't have to have a certain amount of experience to identify this stuff for yourself. Or just start somewhere. Just start somewhere. Exactly. You'll figure it out as you go along. Speaking of moving the needle, we need to pay the bills. This episode of Focus is brought to you by our friends over at

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focused and all of RelayFM. So the big question, David, is it's great that you have identified what moves the needle for you, but what do you do with all of the stuff that you need to do that's not needle moving work? Yeah, I mean, this kind of is the greatest hits of time tracking things you don't want to do. You know, this is something a lot of people have talked about, but I made a little list here. If I'm working on something that doesn't move the needle, I just immediately ask myself, is this something that needs to be done at all? And surprisingly, sometimes I can get away with saying,

no, this doesn't need to be done. So I can move on. Another question I ask myself, if this must be done, can I automate it or delegate it? I am getting increasingly happy to delegate and automate things. I've always liked automating things, but I've always been too much of a control freak to delegate. But as I realize, wait a second, this isn't needle moving. Why am I doing it? So I'm happy to try and find someone to do it for me if I can. And then if it's something

that I must do, you know, what's the least intrusive way for me to accomplish it? And that kind of gets back up to the idea of, you know, moving the email to the afternoon or gang up that work into like having an admin day where I know I'm not going to move the needle much, but I'll just put all that stuff into one afternoon and just say, okay, this day, I'm not going to move the needle up, but I'm going to take care of the stuff that I have to take care of. But I've been more actively asking myself questions because frankly, this whole process forces you, or at least in my case, it forces me to question anything that doesn't allow me to fill in a block in my little notebook. I'm like, well, why am I doing this?

I'm constantly asking that. So I've come up with a couple ways to deal with it. This is a similar list. I'm sure you've heard it in other people that talk about delegation. I think Michael Hyatt had a similar list in his book. But for me, this is the list. Nice. but you know for me this is the list nice i i think the big takeaway from that whole thing is asking that question of why do i think i need to do this that's not exactly the way you phrased

it but that's kind of the the thing that goes off in in my head because so often we just assume that these are the things that i have to do and i'm going to figure out a way to get them all done. And if I can get them done a little bit ahead of schedule, then great. I've got some time for things that are important to me. But that additional space always gets filled up with more work for a lot of people. Yeah. a lot of people. And the minute that you ask that question, what's happening is you are taking control. Even if you say, yes, I have to do this, there's something that changes about the way that you approach your work instead of just being told what to do by maybe it's your boss, maybe it's

your task list, maybe it's the things that you didn't write down that are nagging at the back of your head, those open loops that you never closed. But without asking that question, you're kind of at the whim of that voice wherever it's coming from telling you what to do. But the moment that you ask, do I need to be doing this in the first place? Then you've kind of taken control of the situation. And you may find that for 95% of the things, the answer is still going to be yes. And you don't really want to do it, but you have to do it. But for the one or two things that you are able to say, no, I don't want to do this anymore. it feels really good to have that control and say, no, I'm going to let that go. Yeah, one of the experiences I've had is, as I've been playing with this concept, is I do find myself settling into needle-moving work better, if that makes sense.

When I sit down to write a brief, I'm like, hey, I'm actually getting work done. And it's a good feeling to know that you're putting time in on something that's important. Whereas, um, time that doesn't, you know, non needle moving work. Uh, I don't want to use the word anxious, but it does, it's like a little itch. Like why am I, you know, it's, it's a present that I'm not really making progress. I mean, really the source of all of this was just getting to the end of the day too often and realizing that I really didn't get anything done that day. And that's what this was designed to try and help solve. Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit.

I'm curious how you came to that conclusion because you were doing time tracking, right? So were you looking at the time that you had tracked and then realizing that the time that you spent on the things that weren't really moving the needle, you ended up spending a lot more time on those things and the things like the keyboard maestro field guide, maybe you weren't putting enough time in or what was kind of the revelation that you got where the way that I'm working isn't working and I need to make some changes? I think that for time tracking, for me, I was using it to look for problem areas for the, I guess, you know, the admin, the blocks of time for things that I shouldn't be doing. So I was looking for the non-needle moving work. I was looking for the inverse of what I'm looking for now. As I kind of talk through it, it kind of makes more sense to me. I wasn't really

using time tracking to look at the important work so much as looking at it to find the unimportant work that was getting done. And it was just, it's just a lot of data. And look, I am going to still time track at some point. I've never professed to be a permanent time tracker. I'm not going to get to the end of the year and know exactly how many hours I spent working on the Focus podcast. But I do go and every couple months, I'll track a week just to kind of do a checkup and see how things are looking. But the real data I wanted was just like, how much of my time am I spending doing the stuff that's truly important? And this kind of new mechanism really pushes you toward that. So, you know, the experiment affects the result. And it's easier because all I'm doing is at the end of the day

saying, okay, for two hours, I worked on the focused podcast. All right, we'll fill in two hours for Focus today. It's easier. And it does focus on getting the work done as opposed to finding problem areas. And maybe that's, it depends on who you are. Maybe you need to find problem areas more than what I'm talking about with this moving the needle thing. But at least for me, it works.

I would think that hopefully some folks out there could help them as well. Yeah, I'm hearing you talk about that. I'm reminded of a formula, I think from Deep Work by Cal Newport, where he defines deep work as time spent times intensity of focus. And I think the intensity of focus part could be modified to be, I'm not sure exactly what to put there. Something along the lines, though, of the needle moving work. It's not as simple as, I guess what I'm saying is it's not as simple as just putting in the time. And that's what time tracking gives you, is it can tell you

that you spent so many hours working on a specific task or in a specific application. And I found myself, because I use timing, which does that automatically, that's the only thing that has ever worked for me. I found myself looking at these reports, and I even get little notifications that says, you spent six hours and and 34 minutes yesterday and it's been creeping upwards. And I've had a couple like 13 hours and 29 minutes. And the question always is then I spent so much time working on that stuff. What did I actually get done? the time that you spent working, you're not able to apply 100% intensity or laser focus on the thing that you want to be doing at any given moment. And yes, the more that you do that,

the more that you are able to focus on something and curb the distractions and not respond to dings and notifications, you do develop that focus muscle and you are able to enter into those states of flow for longer periods of time. I do believe that. But I still think that we have this picture in our heads that we're some sort of focus superhero, where anytime we want, we have the willpower to be completely engaged in whatever we're doing. And at that point, it's just a matter of putting in enough hours to get the thing done. But in reality, there's our biological prime times, there's the rhythms, there's recognizing that I work best on these things in the morning, so I'm not going to be doing email then. I'm

going to be working on the Keyword Maestro Fieldestro field guide at that time and what that does is it kind of multiplies the time that you would be spending on something and I hesitate to kind of say it that way because then it kind of feels like there's some sort of shortcut or or hack there and I don't think that that's really true you do have to show up every day whether you feel like you're gonna. You still got to do the work. Exactly. The consistency is the thing that's going to pay off in the long run. And it's not always going to be something that you are looking forward to doing. You're going to have to overcome the resistance, as Steven Pressfield calls it. But I think there's something there where we have to kind of shift how we approach the work that we do. And it's not just going to be how do I do it faster or how do I do it better, but it's going to be lining up the right thing with the right time. And that's

going to be the thing that kind of multiplies the results. Yeah. And the process of having a simple quantification of it as you go through the day makes it more present in your mind. And that's the hack that I've done with this. And honestly, I usually, most of these blocks that I'm going to fill in in a day are done by one or two in the afternoon. There's not much left in me after that. Right, right. But I start very early. So between five and one is when this stuff happens for me.

Yeah. And I think the thing that I love about the model that you sent me is that you now have a different method for quantifying what is a successful day. It's not just how much did I get done? Or even a step back from that would be how long did I work? Which is kind of what time tracking gives you is both of those things. But it doesn't answer the question of the thing that you got done. Was it the thing that you were supposed to have got done? I wrote a blog post about the productivity hamster wheel. And I kind of got this picture of how a lot of people view productivity and work.

The goal is kind of more efficiency, right? I want to get my work done faster so that I have more time for the things that are important. And that's kind of how I came into the productivity world too. So I'm not condemning that viewpoint. But when you do create a little bit more efficiency, if you don't have any sort of system for identifying what's going to move the needle or what is important to you, usually what happens is that the additional space or margin that you've created gets filled with more work and then because you now have more work to do you strive for more efficiency but as soon as you have a little bit more efficiency you fill it with more work and so on and so on michael hyatt said it

this way in a world of efficiency your reward is more work you're playing a losing game yeah so i kind of get this picture of like running on this wheel because I, in the post, I talk about how growing up I had this, this gerbil name. I called it Jacques. My brother had one Gus Gus from Cinderella. And my gerbil would hop on this wheel and he'd start running. He loved running on this wheel and he'd run as fast. He'd run faster and faster and faster until eventually he couldn't keep up anymore. He'd slip. And then the wheel would just like spin around with him on the floor. And I feel like that's what we do with this efficiency stuff is like, we just want more space. We want to be able to go faster, but we don't have the

focus or the self-discipline to stay in our lane. And so we rev the engine, we go faster, and then eventually another car appears in front of us and it's a spectacular crash. And that's why I think moving the needle is kind of a different way to phrase it, but it's a paradigm shift. It's changing the script from how much did I get done to what impact did I have? What happened today, not what did I do today? Those are two very different questions in my mind. As I'm sitting here thinking, Mike, I'm going to write a blog post on this. I'll have it up by the time the show publishes because I'm looking at my handwritten notes. Who wants to look at this madness, this lunatic? But I will kind of explain it and have

some pictures and diagrams of what I'm doing. But it works for me. But I understand what you're saying about running so fast that you fall on your face. I get that all the time from people who get my OmniFocus field guide. And the problem with the app is it's so powerful that they suddenly think that they have superpowers.

And I get the emails from them saying, this doesn't work for me. I have 10,000 tasks and I can't get them done. I'm like, well, the problem isn't the software. The software in between your ears is the problem because you can't do all that stuff. You got to stop and delete two-thirds of it or nine-tenths of it or something.

Tools cannot do the work for you. And you have to be the adult to make the tough decisions about what gets on the list. And I do think that is always a problem. And it's something that I've always strived for with my work here in Focus and Mac Power Users is, you know, the idea of this stuff isn't to make you more efficient so you can add more work to the load. The idea is to get you home sooner. To give you time to work on that passion project, to take a walk and go to the beach or hang out with your kids. That's the idea. Yeah, but we never get there without a constant reminder of that thing is the important thing.

You can phrase it however you want, but you do need to keep in front of mind, which is why I've got the life theme, you phrased it, moving the needle, but identifying and being able to tick the box of, yes, this is the important thing. Because like you mentioned, OmniFocus, any task manager really, is not going to be able, as powerful as they are, they're not going to be able to look through those 10,000 tasks and say, you know what, this is the one that really matters. You can organize it by date, you can organize it by tags, context, whatever, but it's a machine. It's not going to be able to tell you this is the thing that is in alignment with, I'll call it, your life theme at this particular moment.

And so the other 9,999, don't even worry about those. This is the one. And then you've got email, which compounds the problem because email now is a task list that other people can write on. And they don't care about your vision or your values. They just want this thing done. And if it's somebody who's higher up the food chain than you, the natural reaction is, well, I got to make this work. I thought from the Jocelyn K. Gly episode, I went back and listened to it again. One of the most profound things she said was when she was working with her boss who was an extrovert and she was an introvert. And she basically changed the terms of engagement.

And whenever he was saying, I want to do this, she kind of had a default reaction where it was like, well, let me think about that for a day and I'll get back to you. Like most people, introverts especially, I would argue, because I self-identify as an introvert, that they're not going to push back at all like that. They're just going to try to do things according to the expectations of the other person. They're not going to be able to stand up for themselves, or if they do, they'll do it kind of in a hostile way because they've reached the point where they've taken so much and they just can't take no more. And that's not healthy either. I think that this whole idea of purposeful productivity, this is something that the more I get into this, the more I realize there is such a need for this. Because everybody is trying to get more efficient.

Everybody is trying to carve out a little bit of extra time. But the entire system is working against us. We've got these, I mean, we recorded that episode with Shahid, and he talked about how he made his phone a dumb phone. Most people aren't willing to do that. And so you've got every single application that you install on there vying for that little bit of extra time that you've worked so hard to create via efficiency. And with one notification, you're

scrolling through an endless feed, an infinity pool, and you've just thrown it out the window. So the challenge, and I don't have a simple answer for this, but I do think that the way that we overcome that is keeping the main thing the main thing. If you've got to write it down on a post-it note and put it on your computer monitor because that's where you spend most of your time, then do that. But whatever it is, figure out a way to constantly be bringing that thing to the front of your mind because that is going to filter everything else that you do and that's going to naturally produce some of the results that you're looking for. There is still going to be some additional effort. You are going to have to establish some boundaries, but that will go a

long way towards designing the life that you want to live. There's a reason why the motto of this podcast is life is more than just cranking widgets. Yep. We say it at the top of every show, but we mean it. Yep, absolutely. Alright, let's take another break here. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain name, award-winning templates, and more. It doesn't matter what you want to do. Maybe you want to create an online store. Maybe you want to create a portfolio. Maybe you want to create a blog. Maybe you want to start a podcast. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform

that lets you do all of that. There's nothing to install. There's no patches you have to worry about. No upgrades needed. You don't need to worry about any of that stuff. Squarespace has got it covered. You can just build your thing. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support if you need any help. They let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name. And all of those award-winning templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas. These templates are amazing. I've done web development for several years off and on. And I have people come to me all the time who want just a simple website, right? And when I talk to them about the options, if I were to develop it for them, usually that's too

much. So I say, go check out Squarespace. And the site that they get from Squarespace honestly rivals what I would be able to build them, but it's just ready to go out of the box. And they can modify it themselves. They can add their message, their content. I even had a guy who wanted an online store. So we were able to set that up in Squarespace. He's not technically inclined, but it doesn't matter. He can go in and update his own inventory. I don't have to manage it for him. And he doesn't have to pay me to do that. So Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month. You can start a trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash focus. That's focused with one S. And when you decide to sign up, use the code focus to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for this show.

So once again, that is squarespace.com slash F-O-C-U-S-E-D and the code FOCUS to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So Mike, let's talk about productivity shame. Yeah, we're referring to Jocelyn K. Glyde quite a bit this episode, but I listened to an episode

that she recorded of Hurry Slowly, which is a great podcast. And she talked about this topic of productivity shame, which I thought fit with this episode very well. And she defines it a couple different scenarios. I'll just try to encapsulate it real briefly. The idea here being that we have this picture of how productive we're supposed to be. And then when we measure what we actually do, we always feel like we have not been productive enough. And I think this is a very real thing and something that I've struggled with. And I wanted to call this out because I think recognizing the fact that this is going to show up, that can help you overcome it to a certain degree. One of the main changes I'm going

to be making to my journaling template-based stuff off of this episode is I've got the five-star rating system that I've been answering at the end of the day. And I've been noticing lately that I've been having quite a few three-star days and even two-star days. And every time I have to tap three stars or two stars, I feel bad about it. Now, a lot of times, what happened during the day and the amount of work or how productive I was, what I was able to get done is completely not my fault. It's just stuff happens. We're recording this. We were going to record this last week. You know, I had my dog decided to freak out. We had to take him into the vet and had to put him down.

That obviously derailed the entire day in terms of getting any actual work done. But that's just life. Like that happens. And so I'm going through my reflection template at the end of the day. And I'm recognizing that I'm feeling bad because I didn't get anything done. And I'm like, wait a minute, I just had a pretty traumatic experience. Cut yourself a break, you know? And that's something I think like maybe the circumstances of your situation are going to be different. But that idea of cut yourself a break, that's something that we need to get better at as a whole. I think I would argue

everybody listening to this podcast, they probably have that same mindset, the growth mindset. They want to do better. They want to get more done. They want to ship their thing faster than they can. And so when you compare what you have in your head as the ideal to what you actually got done in reality, you can look at yourself and say, man, you're a slacker. And I don't think that that's right. Why are we so hard on ourselves, Mike? It's something that

I think I've talked about this on this show probably more than anything else that I think often we are harder on ourselves than anyone else in the world. And even when you're successful, you can't give yourself a break. I just shipped this keyboard maestro field guide. I've been working on this thing a lot. And for some reason, as I'm seeing, I'm very happy with a launch. Everything's going great. You know, there's always kind of a little bit of work after you launch one of these to make sure, you know, customer problems are handled and all that. But I'm very near the part where I can stop and breathe. And I'm already starting to think about what am I going to do next? I'm not giving myself time to just appreciate what I've accomplished.

And even though I preach this stuff, I don't really live by it. But we do need to go easier on ourselves. Yeah, so there's a couple of concepts there. I mean, I guess number one would be to celebrate your wins, which I get it. That can be difficult. You're always looking for the next thing. But even to go a step beyond that would be being okay with not being productive. And that's something that I struggle with. As I mentioned with faith-based productivity, that's kind of like the spiritual why behind all the productivity things for me. So kind of in the back of my head, I kind of feel like if I'm not being productive, if I'm not making the absolute best use of the

time that I have on some level, like I'm not being a good steward of the time and the talent that I've been entrusted with. And I don't think that's completely accurate either. I think that's kind of self-inflicted. I think that it is okay to have fun. It's okay to take a day off. And it's okay to celebrate the fact that you launched this guide and you don't need to know at that moment exactly what's going to come next. I think maybe the doubt that comes with that and the reason that we're constantly looking for those things is the fact that we're always questioning whether what we're doing is the right thing. Maybe in the back of our head, we're always questioning whether the thing that we're doing is really moving the needle. And we kind of expect that we've missed it and that what we're doing isn't going to work. At least that's the way my brain goes. And I guess maybe I'm kind of a pessimist that way, where I feel like, well, other people

can do this thing and they can have this great successful launch and their product can be amazing. They can be a New York Times bestseller. But in the back of my head, I suffer from that imposter syndrome. And I feel like, well, I can't do that because as soon as I get to the position where I may be able to do that, they're going to realize I'm a fraud. Yeah, I mean, that's another common theme here on the show, frankly. But the other thing I was thinking while you were talking about it is,

let's look at it from a selfish perspective. I mean, you are going to have downtime and you are occasionally going to run to it. I don't care even if you've got fancy charts and you move the needle every day, there are going to be days that just don't work and we all have them. And I think maybe one of the things by, by this, you know, productivity shaming and this idea that you have to be effective every day, if you were, if you're better able to be more self-aware and say, oh, I can already see this day is not going well, why don't I go in the car and head to the beach right now? And I know not everybody can do that, right? But if you can identify these areas, you could be, quote unquote, productive by being unproductive, I guess, if you were to give yourself some downtime.

And we've talked about this on the show in the past, but I do think that's something to definitely be aware of. And it's a lesson I could learn as well, to be honest. Well, I think that you're right. Having downtime is important. And probably most people who are listening to this would admit that downtime is important. And probably most people who are listening to this would admit that downtime is important. But I think where we can, trying to figure out the best way to say this, where we compromise in that area is when we compare ourselves to other people. compare ourselves to other people. Especially in the online world, you can look at the fact that, oh, Max Parkey just shipped another field guide, and I've been working on my video course for two years, and I still haven't gotten out the door. And so that thought, once it plants a seed in the back of your head, causes you to feel bad about the time that you would be taking off. Every time you go to the beach, then that voice in the back of your head is saying,

you know, you really should be working on that thing that you've said you were going to do for a long time. Man, you can't follow through on your commitments. It's a very negative cycle from that point on. But just being able to disconnect what you do from what other people are doing, I think could go a long way towards not only reducing productivity shame, but ultimately, you don't have those negative feelings of comparison. You probably, if you're able to completely disconnect that, you do get a lot more done and you ship a lot more stuff just because you feel good about what

you're doing instead of negative about the fact that you can't do it as fast as somebody else. Also, just kind of take a step back and look at how ridiculous you're being when you make comparisons because everybody's different and everybody does different things. I mean, comparisons don't really work if you apply logic to it. Yeah. I mean, there's no way I could ever make the faith-based productivity guide like you have. Yeah. up on but um you are if that is a if that is a a big concern that you have often uh and you identify that in yourself try to find a way around it because that is not helping you at all right right and the other thing i think i would call out here is that if you think that by finally shipping that thing writing that book starting that side hustle whatever if you think that by finally shipping that thing, writing that book, starting that side hustle, whatever,

if you think that as soon as you accomplish that goal, that things will all of a sudden click and get easier, that is not the case. And if you go into it with those expectations and you compare it to the results that you actually get, I think that could contribute to this productivity shame as well. It also produces, or I guess, steals from the motivation to keep going. That's the thing, like, the motivation to keep going, to keep showing up, even though it doesn't play out exactly the way that you would have liked it to play out in your head that's difficult especially when you have other responsibilities and other things that you need to be doing we were talking before we hit record you know it's been kind of a rough six or seven months for me but some things have happened recently and things have started to click and i

know it's because i've been showing up every day and I've been consistent. And eventually that stuff clicked. And I forget who said it, somebody said it this way, the universe makes way for the person who knows where they're going. But it's not going to just roll out the red carpet after a week of showing up every day. You do have to show up and be consistent in it. And sometimes it takes, not sometimes, I guess week of showing up every day, you do have to show up and be consistent in it. And sometimes it takes, not sometimes, I guess most of the time, it takes longer than you think. You can't really foresee how your journey is going to play out. All you can really do is look at the next thing and do that thing to the best of your ability. And as soon as you start comparing yourself to the ideal, that's where the productivity shame comes in. It's kind of the concept of like the

gap versus the gain, which I first heard this from Dan Sullivan. He said that we tend to picture our ideal, where we want to be versus our current situation. And when we measure how much further we have to go, we get discouraged because we're looking at the gap. But that's where journaling can really help. It changes your perspective. Instead of looking at the gap, you look at where you are now versus where you were. And when you chart that growth, that's the gain. You can be in the exact same situation, but you can feel positive or negative about it based on your perspective. And productivity shame will always try to get you to look at the fact that you're not where you think you should be or where you could be or where you want to be

and plant those doubts that you're never going to get there. I'd say this whole idea of this moving the needle thing really did come out of daily journaling in a lot of ways because it was at the end of the day that I'm being more cognizant of what I finished, getting more upset with myself when I don't finish things and, uh, and looking for ways to, to increase that percentage, you know, or, or fix that problem. Uh, well, we, we've covered a lot today, Mike. Yeah, I guess we had a lot of, we had a lot pent up. Yes. Yeah. I guess we had a lot pent up. Yes, yes. A lot of pent up intentionality discussion.

These episodes are honestly some of my favorite when we dive deep into this stuff because this is a conversation that is happening more frequently in the productivity space. So it's kind of fun to see that. You know, Jocelyn Kiglai's podcast, Hurry Slowly, her newsletter, that was a great conversation having her on. That was one of my favorites.

There's a lot of people who are kind of championing this idea now, but it historically has not been present. And I feel like the more technology we have, the more information we're exposed to, the greater the need is going to be for this dialogue. And the crazy thing is that, you know, I've read a lot of these books and heard a lot of these ideas, and it can almost become familiar to me. But then I talked to some other people about it. We talk about it in the forums and it's amazing who is just coming in to this world and this is the first time they've encountered this idea. That's the really cool thing about this and why I will probably never stop talking about it because

I really think that this idea, this is something that whenever you hear it and you get the revelation of this and you start applying this idea of intentionality to productivity instead of just efficiency, this has the potential to completely change your life in every single area. And we may talk about it on 100 episodes. 99 episodes from now, somebody gets it and they're like, oh my gosh, hyper-scheduling. This totally changed everything for me. That's what it's all about. It's all about the impact that the idea can have, not the fact that you and I are talking about it or that we're extremely skilled in breaking this stuff down,

but just championing the cause and helping people to become more productive, not just through the efficiency lens, but doing what they actually want to do in terms of moving the needle. No, I totally agree. And I think there is a movement afoot right now with a lot of people, ourselves included, that are trying to move the discussion of, quote unquote, productivity past efficiency.

And, you know, what is it that you really want to do with your life and how are you going to get there? Yep. I was very happy that we named the show Focused because that's the goal. because that's the goal. Yep. Yeah. It's interesting because we made the shift from free agents

and it seems like ever since we've done that, I have heard from more and more people who have told me, you know, I kind of like the show and it's free agents, but I was never going to be a free agent,

so I never really listened. Yeah. And now, like, they love it. So, I think that this is the thing for a lot of people in a lot of different situations, and it's just going to become a bigger and bigger deal. And it's just constantly on my mind. I mean, I think that I have in the last two or three years, you mentioned Cal Newport earlier, his Ork Deep work was a real eye-opener for me. And I am constantly

thinking about that now. And there's a reason why now I will have shipped three field guides in the last year. Because suddenly I'm putting this stuff into practice and I'm getting results from it. Yeah, that's the thing, getting results from it uh we didn't i didn't ask shahid this in the episode that he was on but i asked him afterwards after we we stopped recording what was the impact of simplifying your iphone and reclaiming your attention because he mentioned that his it kind of turned his his business. He wasn't going to be able to make payroll and now he's doing really well. And I basically thought I would ask him, like, what percentage of that would you contribute to being able to focus? And he said, 100%.

You know, the stuff that he talked about in that episode, that was the thing that made it click for him. So people, again, we think we have this ability to just at a moment's notice, direct our attention or focus at the thing that is really important, but we can't. We have to put the systems in place, which is why creating your own moving the needle, you know, the process is so important. You know, figure out what works for you, but then follow that because it really does work. It really does produce the results. You don't have to feel frantic all the time. And until you break away from that, like Shahid did, you kind of view people who talk about that stuff as like, well, that's some crazy pipe

dream, but it really does work. Yeah. And you don't have to do it all at once. Just pick some little piece of it and implement it and then make it your own. That's the key. Yep. Travelers on the journey. We have a lot of listener feedback. Some of it is really great. We don't have a, I don't think we have enough time to cover it all,

but we've got some good stuff I want to talk about. But before we do that, I want to talk about our last sponsor today. And that's our friends over at Moo. I am so happy to have Moo as a sponsor of Focus because I feel like it's such a good fit. Moo is an online print and design company. They offer a variety of premium print products, including business cards, postcards, notebooks, and more, and they deliver to happy customers all over the world. Networking is an important part of your career, whether you're a designer, a novelist, or a CEO, and you don't want to get caught out by not having a business card at that important moment. You also don't want to get caught out by having like a really lousy business

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and all of RelayFM. Moo, let's get physical. Alright, we got some great feedback in the forums. One of the things which has been there for a while but we never really unpacked was what do you do with forced downtime? Yeah, it was an interesting thread. Uh, one of the listeners had, I believe it was a medical procedure. Um, and as a result, uh, I'm not sure if it's here or she, because of the name, but let's say she was, uh, going to have some downtime and she thought,

well, what, how can I use this productively? And there were some really great thoughts in the commenters on this thread. Yeah. The thing about this is that everybody is going to have this at some point. It maybe isn't a health thing. So this person had minor surgery and in their words, got four kids at home, don't often get time like this to reflect. So what's the best way to make the use of this time? And there's a lot of different suggestions here. One of the things that I would recommend

during this time would be to think through some of the questions that I outlined in like the personal retreat course. Just take stock of the current situation. How did we get here? And is there any modifications to the systems that have produced this result that I need to make? You can boil it down to those three questions. What should I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing? But I think that just giving yourself the space to let your brain unpack some things is a totally valid use of that time, whether it happens to be, you know, one to four days or even longer than that. I mean, sometimes you just need the time for your brain to unravel these things. And often, you know, as soon as we have the ability to do something

else, we go to something else. And so it's difficult. I know it's easy to say, like, just be in the moment and let your brain sort through that stuff. But that is a very productive use of that time. Yeah, I think the important point here is that it's non-rushed introspection. Yes, yes. This practice I've developed over the last several years of spending a good chunk of my birthday navel-gazing has been really good for me. And it's the same thing. I'll just sit down with pen and paper and start writing down questions about what I like, what I don't like, what I want to change. But just give myself space.

Maybe take a walk and then come back to it. If you've got this downtime and you're in bed for three or four days, don't make this a half-hour exercise. Make it a four-day exercise. You don't have to do it all at once. But let your subconscious brain work on these questions too, but get them out of you. I think just spinning them around in your brain is not enough. I think whether it is you get a tape recorder out and you start talking, whether you type it into a text editor or you write it down with a fancy pen and a fancy notebook, whatever

floats your boat, but you need to get it out of your head. And if you had three or four days, do treat it like in some sense a retreat and let yourself stew on a little bit. I think that's where the real benefit comes in for me. Yeah, use it as a reset. I want to throw out one thing that you should not do. As someone who reads a lot of books, I would say, if you find yourself in this situation, do not say, I'm going to read this book or get it done because I have this time. It's kind of the same concept of people who bring a book on vacation and then they bring the same book on vacation the next year because they never got around to reading it. Be okay with the fact that you may not get something done. And that's where the reflection, I think, is kind of

the ideal activity there, because that can take as much time as you want to give it. And if you're able to just tell your monkey brain, I'm not going to be doing anything during this time, if you can become okay with that, then just having a pen and paper and journaling the thoughts that come to you, you'll get a lot of clarity from that. That's going to be the most productive use of that time that you could have. But you're going to have to fight that urge. Even something like reading a book, for example, that's something that if you're dealing with something physically, you might still think, well, I'm going to be laying in bed, but I got to do something while I'm laying in bed. So I'm going to read that book and then it doesn't happen. And then you feel bad

about it, you know, and then that has actually further impacts when you get back to work because you feel bad about the fact that you were going to do this thing. You didn't get it done. You kind of view yourself as someone who can't keep their commitments now, even subconsciously, and that has further ramifications. Yeah, maybe this goes back to the productivity shame thing, but I would like everyone listening to this sometime in the next month to pick some time to wallow in unproductivity. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Just embrace it. Say, you know what? This is just nothing's going to happen today. I am going to enjoy the heck out of not getting anything done today. And just do that and just do it as an experiment. There is no guilt to be assigned, you know, no punishment to be meted out. Just give yourself the day off. One of the things I did with this latest field guide is I hired somebody to help me edit it and it was expensive but it gave me a little bit of space to have to be okay to go to my daughter's concert and not be thinking

I need to be editing right now you know and um and I think there's something to that yeah but but look forward to it and enjoy it you know know that seems contrary to our show, but really just wallow in it. Yeah. So kind of one thing that comes to mind because you had posted something on your Instagram, I believe, of you were catching up on email at Disney World or Disneyland. Sorry. I don't want to make that mistake. But it could be as simple as I'm going to go to Disneyland and I'm not going to check my email. Yeah. Well, I mean, so my wife was working that day. I drove her to work. So I just went in and said, okay, I had some stuff I needed to get done, but I can drive her. And why not make everybody feel bad to know that i'm at disneyland but the uh but i'm glad you so let's just imagine hypothetically that my wife works

for a company that has theme parks and the theme park is about to open a um a new land that is centered on completely hypothetically a fictional universe that since 1977 has been a significant part of my life and my own philosophy. Let's just imagine that sometime in the next week, they're going to allow employees to bring one person with them in to see it before it gets open to the public. Now, if hypothetically I was going to get that opportunity that is something i will wallow in i will not be doing email yeah exactly and that's the challenge if you do those things in those spaces occasionally is like oh i could just go over there for 15 minutes and got my ipad with me in my backpack i could crank out some emails you know yeah wallowing as you put it that's completely disconnecting from that which is kind of why in the personal retreat course i say go somewhere

you don't normally go but i like your your challenge to have everybody wallow in an unproductive state and if you can do that in a situation where you have previously forced yourself to be quote unquote productive then that's even better because you've kind of taken back control of the situation and now you're not dictated. What you're doing isn't being dictated simply by your environment. Yeah, and let us know in the forums how it goes for you. I'd love to hear about that. Something else that's happening in the forums is everybody continues to write about their personal retreats. Mike,

it just seems like it's an evergreen topic. And that is one where I'm feeling, I'm feeling guilt or I'm feeling edgy. Like how come I can't get my act together enough to do that? Well, no condemnation from me anyways, maybe from some of the other listeners. Although I do love the fact that so many people are on board with this idea.

I feel like if this was the only contribution I made to the productivity space, that it would still be worthwhile. And I am excited to see people talk about the clarity that they get from the process, not even necessarily my process from the formula that I outlined in the course, but just the fact that they've done it and they've gotten more clarity on what to do next. That's really exciting to me. I can't wait for you to do it and share your results. Yeah, I'm looking at my calendar right now. I've got a big wall calendar and I see I'm going to WWDC in the first week of June, but I don't see anything happening after that in June that doesn't mean I couldn't take a weekend off at some point. Or maybe even, you know, maybe if I'm really clever, I can do it on a couple weekdays and still have my weekend for the family. All right. I'm going to get on that. You guys can bug me because I need to do this. As much as I get out of that birthday thing, I'm sure a personal retreat would be very productive for me. I keep using that word productive and i use it too generically and uh i'm not sure what i mean

but i think it could be beneficial yeah no that's that's the challenge about talking about a lot of the stuff that we talk about is that that term productive comes up all the time we're gonna have to come up with a new word for that yeah i mean just like we were talking about earlier it's like you know it's it's it's weighted towards efficiency and it's just, you know, every, I know what I mean when I say it, but not everybody hears it the same way. Yep. Exactly. Yeah.

All right. Well, I think that's enough, man. We, we, we, uh, we went deep today, but it was good. It was good. We got needles moving. We got productivity shame. We got it all. We got productivity shame. We got it all. We got hamster wheels.

Yeah. And we've got wallowing and unproductivity. I mean, what else could we do in one show? That's a lot. Yeah. Well, it was fun catching up with all this stuff on you. Mike, congratulations once again on faith-based productivity. I think it's a great course and I'm sure you're going to have a lot of success. Thank you. Congratulations to you too on the Keyboard Maestro course. Alright. We are the Focused Podcast. You can find us

over at relay.fm slash focused. Thank you to our sponsors. That's the folks over at ExpressVPN, Squarespace, and Moo. And we will see you in two weeks.