Focused - 75: Intentional Constraints

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

The conversation on moving the needle continues as David and Mike talk about intentional constraints. Mike embarks on a task management spirit quest, David shares his Bullet Journal advice, and together they consider the balance of process and results.

Welcome to Focused, 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? Good. I mean, it's Focused Day. I always enjoy recording this show. That's right. I kind of feel like I should be at your house just like everybody else. Yeah, as we're recording this, I've got Rosemary Orchard. I've got a whole bunch of people hanging at my house right now

because it's right around WWDC time. I'm a little jealous. Next year, we'll get you too, Mike. All right, sounds good. The Sparks Hotel. So following up the last episode, we spent a lot of time talking about moving the needle. And there was quite a bit of feedback on that.

I mean, I heard from folks, not only in the forums, but I also got a lot of email. I think that was a good one. Yeah, I heard from several people who said that that was their favorite episode that we have done. And I have to agree, because I reviewed that episode before we published it. And I feel like that was the most pointed episode we've done. I guess if you were to kind of define it as like the strongest opinions in line with kind of what we've created as the focused brand of not just the efficiency, but productivity being more than just cranking widgets. I feel like that message came across stronger in that last episode than probably all

the other ones that we've done. Yeah. Well, it's hard because this productivity stuff is such a loaded word, and it is easy to try to do the right thing in terms of productivity and do the wrong thing. One of the things that I heard from a lot of folks was that they hadn't really thought about productivity in the sense we were talking about in that episode. And that made me feel really good. I really feel that the battle for folks in the next 20 years is about focus. I mean, that's the reason we named the show this. That's the reason why a lot of people are doing things. You know, Sean Blanc has that great focus course and Mike Hyatt just did a book on it. But this principle of being able to figure out what it is you want to do and do it,

despite the enormous number of distractions that as humans we've never faced before, that's the superpower that you have to master if you want to get anything done. Absolutely. I like the fact that you call it a superpower because it's really kind of what it's becoming because it's standing out more and more, this ability to just focus your attention on the

thing that you want to do and then actually follow through and do it. Sounds super simple. And everybody listening to that would like to think, myself included, that yes, I have the ability to do that at will, but sometimes you don't. The entire system is kind of working against you. And there's a lot of people that define it different ways. I really like that term that you came up with, moving the needle, which was the name of the episode that we recorded last. And you created your kind of whole system about that. I've been thinking a lot about that system. And there's lots of different... There's a lot of different ways that you could probably

implement that because I'm looking through everything that you did in those sheets. I'm thinking to myself, that looks really cool, but I don't think I could get myself to follow through and do it that way. And it evolves between the time I sent you

those sheets and the time I publish. So what's the system that you're thinking would work for you on this? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but I have been kind of looking at how are other people measuring that sort of impact. I had a discussion with somebody the other day about task managers, and they're like, well, which one do you like? And I'm like, well, honestly, I'm kind of at this point where I don't like any of them because all they can tell you is these are the things that you have to do, but there's no way to surface to the top the ones that are really going to move the needle to borrow your term. And one of the things that was posted in the comment thread or the topic for that episode in the forum was by Corn Chip and he had a link to David C and he's got this thing called the concrete goals tracker.

I'm not sure if you saw this, but it's a PDF that attempts to do, in my opinion, the same thing that you were trying to do, measure how much needle moving work you've done. So this thing, he's got like seven different days for the days of the week. And then he's got definition on a scale of one to 10 of what is a 10, what is a five, what is a two, what is a one? Just some examples like life sustaining billable work or signing up new business, that's a 10. If it's publishable code, if it's sharp visual design, if it's concrete planning or accounting, that's a five. If it's self-promotion, if it's a new article for the blog post,

if it's social or business development, then that's a two. If it's maintaining or if it's an old relationship or making a new relationship, there's no business being driven from that yet, that's a one. And then he's got like these different boxes for Monday. How many 10s did you do? How many fives did you do? How many twos? How many ones? And then you add up all those and you get your total for the day. And then you add all those up for the end of your week. It's a different way of articulating this. And I cannot for the life of me figure out an easy digital way to do this. I feel like that's too much quantification, honestly.

That's just too much for me, listening to that. Right, exactly. Well, the sheet that he's got, I think this is too much for me, too. But I'm trying to reconcile in my head, and I don't have an answer for this yet, is how do I blend something like this, which can show me after the fact, like these are the things that really moved the needle, that really contributed to what David C calls concrete goals or the things that are important to me. And how do I combine that with the strengths of a task manager, which can just show me a list of tasks, because the list of tasks is great, as long as there's not more than you can actually get done,

which is kind of always the case if you've used a task manager for more than a couple weeks. Yeah, if you're a grown-up, that's for sure. I think you have to recognize a task manager for what it is. It is something that's better than our monkey brains at holding all this stuff together. It frees us from trying to remember everything that we need to do and some degree of organization and review.

Like I use OmniFocus. They've been a sponsor for a long time. So I, you know, people say whatever, but I like it because it has all thoseend tools that allow me to professionally manage the tasks. But I also kind of look at that as the well that I go and I draw the daily water from. And it's not, you know, I don't like, I'm not going to dive into the well, you know. I'm going to just pull out the bucket of water I need for that day. Well, I'm getting good at this as I talk through it. Anyway, so that's why I have a little hybrid system with some paper. And every day, ideally the night before, I write down for

the next day the things I pulled out of OmniFocus that I really want to get done that day. But I think those are really two questions. Number one is how does a task management system fit into getting work and staying focused? The second question, though, is how do you quantify if you want to do this move the needle measuring? One of the most interesting things I've noticed since that show went up is I've heard from a lot of people and everybody has a different system. Somebody sent me a picture of a book they have where they make a pie and they have like five pieces of pie and they color in the pieces of pie as they get things done during the day. They want to fill up the pie chart as they get through the day. Some people do it in a spreadsheet, you know, just like numbers or, and everybody's using it. And you could use a text field. I mean, there's a lot of ways you

could do it. I think for me, what makes the system work for me, and between the time I initially sent you my initial thoughts, what I'd done, gang, is I had started using the system, and after I'd done it a couple weeks, I wrote it down. I have a commonplace journal. I just wrote out what I was doing just to kind of get it out of my head and think it through. And like a crazy man, I sent pictures of those pages to Mike. But between the time I did that, the time we record the show, and the time I wrote the post for Max Barkey, the system refined even more. Because initially, I would make these really fancy bars, and I would color them in, and I did all this stuff. And the more I do it, the more I realize you want as little interference or friction as possible to recording this stuff

so you can do it as you do it. Because as you record it as you get through the day, at least for me, that's big motivation to keep going. And so now all I do is I just take a blank page on a dot grid bullet journal page and I just put a little hash every four dots. So as I start the week and I can fit with the size journalize, I can, there's enough dots there to fit six hours on a line, you know, six groups of four. And then, and depending on which task it is, like, you know, for the max sparky stuff, I usually, I'm not going to spend more than 12 hours a week

working on the blog. That's rare. So I will have two lines worth of those. For a field guide, I may have three or four lines. So then we get to 18 or 24 hours. So the legal is usually 24 hours. So I've got enough time. I'm not necessarily going to use it all, but I just want to have enough space on that page. And then all I do as I work through the day, if I spend an hour on legal, I just take a marker and just fill in one of those hashes, four dots.

I just draw across it. And then it's very visual as you get through the day. And it's just a great way to do it. The downsides of the way I do it is it tracks it for the week, not necessarily the day. So if you're having a slow day, it may not be obvious on Friday because you've already got a lot of blinds filled in. If you did it on a daily basis, that might be more, give you even better feedback. But I just don't want to go through the process of creating it seven days. I just want to do it once a week. And I'm kind of interested in the

weekly trend more than the daily trend, because I do have days where things come up and I know not everything's going to get done. So that's okay, as long as the other days are going well. But so I've simplified it that way, but I could see you doing it digitally. I'm super curious about the ways people are implementing this. But what really pleases me is hearing from folks that are trying it and having success. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things from what you just shared there.

The weekly thing, I think that's the better way to do it. Because as James Clear talked about in Atomic Habits, you can miss once. The key is not to miss twice. And if you're doing it day to day, I know I've been there where you start off real strong and then by the end of the week, you're exhausted. And so you could end it on a Friday, not having a great day and feel like, oh, I am a failure going into the weekend. But really, if you take the context of the week, maybe you did get a lot done. And again, you can define what a lot means or what productivity means. But that's the initial thought. The other thing is I heard you mention the term bullet journal.

And I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I think that is probably what I'm going to end up doing. Because I found myself in this place where I don't capture everything into a task manager because not all my tasks belong in one specific task manager anymore. Different projects, different teams, they have different places for these things. And it just feels redundant to have to recreate them inside of a task management app but also there's something about the analog writing out of the plan I mean I kind of do that hybridly with the planning templates that I have inside of good notes and I use the apple pencil to plan out my day but I'm finding more and more kind of the surprising thing as I as I've been doing that that I don't go back to the task manager to draw from that well as often as I thought I needed to.

And as I'm describing this, I'm probably not doing a very good job because it's not just me trying to remember everything that I have to do either. There's different lists, there just happen to be different places. And I think the combination of doing it analog and then also the journaling at the end of the day, kind of recentering and recognizing what did I actually get done? What did move the needle for me today? Those are the key pieces. It's not the fact that everything is in this one place. The fact that the real benefit from a productivity perspective is that you've got this system

so your brain can let go of the things you kind of alluded to that when you made a comment earlier. Or as long as you've got the thing where you know, once I put this in this place, that it is going to resurface in the right context at the right time,

your brain doesn't have to worry about that anymore and you can focus on the thing that really is important. So I don't know, I guess I'm kind of backing myself into a corner with this bullet journal thing. I think I have to commit to at least trying this by the next episode. Because I've heard it talked about, you know, and I've resisted it for a long time because full-on analog like that just never really was something that I was drawn to. But the more I hear people talk about it and the more I see your system and people trying to put together different things and gauge moving the needle, that seems like a great place at least to start with the system for tracking that sort of thing.

Mike, you realize that now you're going to have this crazy man sending you a bunch of pictures again of his books, right? Yep. I'm okay with that. I'm going to do that. No, I listen, it's interesting to me. I famously, I wrote a book called paperless and people often question, well, why are you using a journal? And you know, you're the guy who wrote, did the OmniFocus field guide. But the difference for me is, I totally believe in digital tools. When I hear about people who can run their whole task system out of a paper book, like Joe Bulek was doing that for a while. And I'm just thinking, bless him, man, that he

can do that. But there's no way I could do that. My system, I have way too many commitments. I've got have way too many commitments i've got all these legal clients i've got all these deadlines on the max barkey side i i need the power of an omni focus to get through life but it was what you said that really resonates with me and once i tried experimenting with this stuff is there's something about writing it down. I don't know what it is. I mean, I think, I think part of it is like, to me, the fetish of it where I've got, I buy the nicest notebooks. I get these Rhodia notebooks with the paper quality that is like butter. I mean, it's just crazy. I have some, some fancy fountain pens now and I haven't gone full Mike Hurley here,

but I have some nice fountain pens that when you write with them, it feels good, you know. And I have a couple different nibs. So one nib, like for drawing that line, when I fill it out, I've got an architect grind, which draws a nice wide line as I draw it. So there's part of it that is, I think, kind of like a fetish of, oh, wow, this is something different and new. But I've been doing it for over a year now, so I guess it's sticking. So there's a part of that, but there's also a part of just the idea of sitting and committing it to paper in this digital world, especially someone like me who has so little paper.

It's like a secondary level of commitment. And as much as I use OmniFocus, especially at the end of the day to figure things out, there's really something to be said for sitting at your desk in the morning. If you did a proper shutdown the night before and having a page open that's got a very manageable list of things to do during the day in front of you. And as the day goes by, you check them off and then you flip back to the page and log the the moving the needle time and that i can tell you the days that i can stick to the plan man i feel so good at the end of the day and i make so much progress you know uh so there's something to it i think it's worth a try yeah but i but i'm not a traditional like when when I started, you know, bullet journaling, I was doing this paper stuff before I was even aware of the concept of bullet journaling.

For some reason, it just fell off my radar. I never paid attention to it. But then I went back a few months ago and started watching the bullet journal, you know, YouTubers. I mentioned Matt Ragland on the last episode. He is probably my favorite because he's very simple. But a lot of these bullet journalers, they make works of art out of their bullet journals. And I think that's great. I mean, I think it's, it could be a really fun thing to do. I mean, that's the kind of thing I could get lost in as well if I had time, but I don't, I mean, I'm going to share some pages with

you, Mike. I don't think I can put really any in show notes because it's always got client stuff on it, but I'll describe what I'm doing on the show, but it's very simple. I don't spend time doing fancy lettering. I don't have a bunch of different colored markers. You know, I use green ink and it goes, you know, it just, it's just a list and I don't do anything fancy. Sure. Yeah. No, I, for me, I don't really get into the pen stuff and maybe that's just because I haven't gone down that slippery slope yet. I definitely am. I am with you on the Rhodia notebook paper. I used to use those when I did sketchnotes. I've kind of switched over to using good notes on my iPad with the Apple pencil for sketchnotes. So kind of in the back of my head, I'm thinking maybe I can figure out a way to make some PDF templates that are my own flavor of the bullet journal and create like a notebook template inside of GoodNotes for that, because then I've got the benefit of planning everything analog, which is kind of what I'm doing now. But then

you've got the OCR, so you can go back and you can search things. I feel, I don't know enough about the bullet journal to really, really understand all the ins and outs of it, but it sounds like you kind of tie these things together. So being able to search seems like it would be useful for me. I get it, you know, for people who do want to go full on analog and do all the fancy lettering and all that, but I don't think that's me. I'm just looking for something that provides me a better picture and maybe more joy than a list of things that I completed in my task manager. Well, I mean, because you're indie, like I know that you have some groups you work with that work out of Basecamp and some groups that work out of something else. And I think it's crazy to try and combine all that into one task manager.

Because that's just a way, that is a very elegant form of distraction. It makes you feel like you're doing stuff, but you're not actually doing anything. So using something as the end point of your task for the list for the day makes a lot of sense. The digital versus paper. I think what you say about GoodNotes makes a ton of sense. In fact, I fell into that kind of experiment for a month or so.

A few months back, we talked about it in the live Mac Power Users episode in Chicago when Mike Hurley came over because I was torn between using the paper and I had these really good GoodNotes templates. We'll put it in the show notes. I shared those templates so you can use them if you want. And Mike, I think I even shared the source documents with you. I'm going to keep promising people I'm going to post those. I am going to post those by the time this publishes. but anyway so i i made these in omni

graphel and uh so you can kind of customize them in a lot of ways it makes ton of sense because it's already digital i've got an ipad in front of me all day i've got the apple pencil i'm great it's digital from good notes you can save it as an image directly to day one if you're a day one person. So you can record it, you can write on it with the ability to zoom in. My handwriting always looks better on those good notes ones I do because I can pinch it, you know, as big as I want and erase and get it just right. Whereas when I'm sitting here scratching with a pen, it gets pretty ugly sometimes. But for me, I really found that the process of using the paper was so enjoyable to me that I was willing to put up with those downsides. And one of the things I do is I take a picture every day of the daily plan and the log, and I save it to day one

in a paper journal, quote-unquote paper journal diary. And that way I've got access to them. They're not really searchable, but I figure at some point they will be. Technology will catch up. But anyway, I think we kind of fell into a little bit of an unexpected rabbit hole there. Yeah, well, it wasn't completely unexpected for me. I'm not sure how much you've been following the show notes, but I've had on this and I've deleted several times

Mike's task management spirit quest. So yeah, but it really was initiated with the last episode. So this is a very long follow up from episode 74. But thank you to Corn Chip for sharing that, that a link to the David C. concrete goals tracker. And that really just got me going down a path that I hadn't anticipated on going down, but I feel like it's something that I needed to sort through anyways.

Well, and one takeaway I would recommend to folks is if you've got multiple task manager sources because of work or whatever, or even if you have one big one like I do, don't feel like you can't put together a small list every day of things you want to get done. In fact, maybe you should try it just to see how it works. Yep, absolutely. I'm recognizing that even if you don't create that on paper or whatever you're going to use, your brain is trying to do that anyways. It's trying to gather all the inputs from all the different lists and distill it down into

here's the thing that you should be focusing on right now. But at least in my experience, until you write it down and get it on the paper, it's kind of like shiny new object all the time then because it's constantly flashing things in front of you and you're just distracted by all the things that you could be doing but when you get them on a list you feel like okay i can let this go and have a natural progression to work through one of the big moves i've made is just having that list done at night so the next morning i wake up i can just go and um, for a while I was feeling like on the legal side, I wasn't living up to my commitments to my clients, you know, where like, they'd say, Hey, I need this. And I'd say, I'll get it to you in two days. And I wouldn't get

it to him for three days. And, and at one point I, for several weeks, my daily habit was don't make a promise that I can't keep, you know? And I got better at that, but it's funny how all this stuff organically works together. It was in that kind of crucible that, that, that moving the needle kind of rose up for me that I started doing that. And it was in that, that I started to realize, oh wait, mornings really is my, what did you call it? Primetime. I think that was the word you used. Yep, biological prime time. Yeah, so mornings really is that. So I need to make that work. So suddenly I'm being really serious

about waking up at 5.30 and getting two and a half hours of legal work in and then having still at least a couple hours in the morning of Max Barkey work when I'm really on. And suddenly all this stuff starts to fall into place. And that's what I've been going through personally the last couple of months. Sure. Yeah. Jocelyn K. Gley called it when she was on that episode, I believe, The Golden Hours. So different term, but basic idea

is the same. If you can figure out when you are on your game and then do the most important things during that time, it's going to be a lot easier than trying to do it at the end of the day or whenever you don't have the energy because you can have the time to do something doesn't mean you're going to be able to apply the energy. If you've, if you're out of energy, you know, you can have the time to work on something, but you're still not going to get done what you need to get done because you don't have the resources to throw at it. Yeah, you've got the time, but that's just one piece of the formula. And I'm not trying to say, you know, look at me, I'm a morning person. I think that's a silly thing to brag about, but that just happens to

be when I get the work done. If it was 7 p.m. to 2 in the morning, that's cool. Just make sure you figure out how to get the best work done then. Yep. True. Yeah. Which again, comes back to the whole idea of moving the needle. You got to recognize what you're able to get done that really matters, not just the number of tasks that you can crank through. That's the thing for me is like the list and OmniFocus tend to be like, oh, I can check off all these things. But those are the things that don't really matter that much. I don't know why that is. Maybe I need to get better at defining different projects and things inside of my task manager.

But I think I've kind of verbally committed, and I think it makes sense to try out the bullet journal system before the next episode. So I'll report back on that. Yeah, I want to hear how you're doing and I'll share some thoughts with you on that as well. Cool. 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 big idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. So maybe you want to create an online store.

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referred people like that to Squarespace so they can build their own thing. I don't have to maintain it. And they are absolutely thrilled with what it looks like. They're able to accomplish their goals. And I'm able to rest easy knowing that I'm not going to get a request in the middle of the night to help them quick fix something on a website that I even forgot how it works because I built it years ago. So Squarespace is great for people who just want to get their thing out there. Even if you have no tech or web development experience, you can use Squarespace to get your message out into the world. And Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month. You can start with a trial. There's no credit card required. Just go to squarespace.com slash focused with one S F O C U S E D. When you decide to sign

up, use the offer code focused to get 10% off of 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 FOCUSED to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of FOCUSED and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. I've got another kind of follow-up thing here from the Moving the Needle episode. We talked a little bit about productivity shaming, which again comes from Jocelyn Kiglai. She recorded a great episode on that topic, which really got me thinking. So not to rehash that whole discussion, but productivity shaming was basically the idea that internally we shame ourselves because we aren't as productive as we think we

should be. And I kind of think there's an inverse to this as well, which I'm going to call productivity bragging. And this is the thing where people will publicly state or brag about how much they've got done. I feel like this is very closely aligned with this whole moving the needle discussion because a lot of the stuff that people brag about that they got done, I cranked through my OmniFocus list. Great. Strike up the band. I was hashtag productive today. That's kind of the picture that I get. Now, I fall into this too, though occasionally, as we're recording this, I'm in the middle of launch week for faith-based productivity, so maybe people have seen me sharing some stuff. That's not normally what I do. I tend to, I would say, if I fall into one of these camps, be more towards the productivity shaming end. But I kind of think that if you

really want to be productive, again, define for yourself what productive really is. It's kind of in between here. So you're not feeling bad about maybe you had a bad day, but you're not bragging about the things that you got done either. I think this kind of comes back to, in my course, I have this definition of the word hustle, which is to force to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction. As I was thinking about this since that last episode, that's the part that stood out to me is this unceremoniously part. I think that the real key here is not to be too hard on yourself, not to get too high, not to get too low, not to be on

that roller coaster and not be focused so much even on the results. So if you had a great day moving the needle, that's great. Don't celebrate too hard. And if you had a really bad day moving the needle, don't be too hard on yourself because tomorrow you've got another chance to set things right. And that's something that I struggle with is just not being concerned about the result, the unceremoniously part. I kind of view that as like, you put your head down and you go you know you you trust the process and uh that's something that is difficult for me and i wanted to to bring that up here and kind of get your thoughts on it well there's a couple things you raised there the first is this idea of process versus result i think that you are going to be successful at this stuff if you focus on process.

I mean, that's the key. It's the founding, you know, blocking and tackling. You've got to figure out how you're going to make this stuff work for you and internalize that process. I mean, one of our first shows we did when we rebranded the show was talking about habits and, you know, building up these muscles that allow you to have these processes that will get you through. And I totally agree with that.

I think that is super important. Although it's kind of interesting because this whole episode of Moving the Needle was about measuring results. It wasn't about measuring process. But I think they are related. I mean, in my mind, you know, because I'm, I'm now trying to quantify moving the needle. I am thinking more about process, you know, like the change in when I do my email is a process change that resulted from looking at data. Um, so I, you know, they work together and that the bigger question you bring about productivity bragging is something that I worry about, honestly.

I mean, it's the reason why I was a little hesitant to even make this show, because there's so many people on the Internet that feel like or act like they have all the answers on this stuff. And I will be one to tell you that I definitely do not. on this stuff. And I will be one to tell you that I definitely do not. I'm hesitant to talk about things like hyper-scheduling and moving the needle and the little hacks in my life that I come up with for a couple of reasons. One is I don't think anything I come up with is actually new. I think everybody in this, you know, everybody that, people have been thinking about how to get their work done for a lot longer than I've been around. And there are very few new thoughts. So I feel guilty like I'm not sharing anything new. And then the second piece is, then it sounds like, hey, look at me.

Like earlier when I was talking about my 5.30 thing and I went out of my way to say, well, if you're at 7 p.m., that works too. Because I don't want to be the guy who's like, I'm special. I get up every day and do my work and by the time you're out of bed I've done more than you'll do in the whole day you know that kind of like you know and I hate that and and also I'm a complete fraud I mean just the last couple days where I'm getting ready to head out to the Apple developer conference I've had some stuff come up that was unexpected. My little daily pages where I write down the things I'm going to get done have a bunch of blank spaces next to them where I didn't

get the things done. And I blasted into this podcast with not enough preparation because I had to go pick up a friend at the airport. It's just like all this stuff is happening. So look, nobody is that good about this. So when you hear people bragging, I always just kind of question that. But I don't want to come off that way. It's a challenge. I guess it's a podcaster's challenge, I guess. But at the same time, I think what I have to do is just drop my ego

and just say, well, this is what I do, and this is what works. But I will also tell you, dear listener, that I suck at a lot of this stuff quite often. Yeah. Well, I think because I have been on the opposite end of that. Actually, I've been on both ends of this, I think, where I've thought to myself that who am I? I have nothing to share. No one wants to hear what I have to say anyways. I fail at this stuff all the time. Who would want to listen to me, right? Yeah. But the truth is that you have figured some things out, you have accomplished some things, and there are people always who are not as far along on their journey as you are. So Sean McCabe had this concept that

really resonated with me when I first heard it of teach what you know. And I don't know if he came up with that or if he got it from somebody else, but I heard him talk about it first. So I'm going to give him credit for it. And the basic idea there is just that you don't have to be an expert in order to teach somebody from the mistakes maybe that you've made. Now, on the other end of that, the people who do project an image of, I've got this all figured out and I never make a mistake, that's probably taking it too far. taking it too far, but there's probably a lot less people who err on that side than who don't think that they have anything worthwhile to say. I think there is, especially for podcasters like yourself and me, we have the platform, I guess, where a lot of people listen to this. So it can come across that way a lot easier. Um, and so I'm, I'm with you.

We don't want that to be the message that people get from, from focused. But, uh, really the, the thing that kind of stands out to me with either of those is like, whether you think of yourself as not being able to do anything or thinking of yourself as I've got all of this stuff going like that again is looking at the

process and, and the, or that again is looking at the process and then the, or looking at, not looking at the process, looking at the results and kind of lag measures versus lead measures saying I was successful or I was not successful. But the question in my head based on that is, so what, what happens next?

You know, what do you do with that information? And that's kind of why we're talking about today the intentional constraints, because I feel like if you can click into a solid process, then all you've got to do is look at that process. And I think James Clear's message around this is solely around the idea of habits. If you can create the right habits, you can accomplish pretty much anything, right? Yeah. But I think maybe you don't have to narrow it to just habits. I think process is more open. You can kind of apply your own work process that way. But when it comes to the idea of constraints here, the thing that's fascinating to me as I think about this is like last time we talked about what moves the needle,

okay, or moving the needle. That's the first step is identifying what are the things that are going to move the needle for you. But after that, what does the process look like? And I created this diagram as I was thinking this through, because I feel like no matter where you are in this journey, this cycle just keeps repeating itself. Yeah. And let me describe it for you. We're going to put it in the show notes or make it downloadable or something. We'll call this the Schmitz diagram. Oh boy. Okay. So the first thing you say is, it's a circle. And above the circle, it says,

identify what moves the needle. That's what we talked about last week. Figure it out. And to some extent, we talked about measuring it. But then there's an arrow that points down at a circle. And the circle has four points on it. I'll call them north, south, east, and west. And the north item says do the thing.

And then it has an arrow pointing to the uh to the east section that says get distracted and stop okay does sound familiar anybody okay and then it's got then it has an arrow that ports points to the south point of the circle that says get mad at yourself now this has got to be familiar because it's really familiar to me and then then the arrow points up to the west point of the compass it says recommit which we all do and then it points up to the north side and says do the thing and uh and that's the uh that's the problem that is the solution right yeah so as we're talking about constraints really the the thing that stands out to me as i'm thinking through this diagram is like how do you break this cycle it would be don't let yourself get distracted that's the thing that's going to get you to stop so as it pertains i don't think that's

going to work yeah well it's not it's not going to work 100 of the time that's that's for sure but i do think that that that's where you insert the constraints so that there are points as you're starting to go down this circle, you've got the constraints, the safeguards, kind of like those bumpers in the bowling alley. When I take my kids bowling, they put the bumpers up so they can't just throw the ball in the gutter. Yeah. I really wish they had those when I was a kid, by the way. I'm just saying. I really wish they had those when I was a kid, by the way. I'm just saying.

I don't think I've been bowling in a very long time, but I do remember those gutters. The gutter guards or whatever they're called. And I feel like that's the thing we need for whatever the work process is for ourselves. And which is why you hear people talk about, oh, just turn off your email or just shut down social media. And you're like, oh, that's easy. I could do that if I want to, but I won't, you know? And then you get into the topic of time tracking, which we've kind of talked about. And we will eventually talk about it on the show.

But that shows you that, hey, you spent three hours on Twitter and you're like, oh, okay, this time, this time it's not going to happen. I'm going to focus, I'm going to write, you know? Yeah. But a simple constraint could be that when you sit down to write, and I'm going to use that as an example, because that's kind of the thing that launched me into the online

world is writing my book. And I know that I'm not alone in wanting to do that. Something like 80% of people believe that they've got a book in them and that they should write it. But a lot of people don't do it. So when I sit down to write, I can sit down and I can have Twitter open in the background, my email open in the background. And again, this kind of ties into the shutting down stuff that we'll hopefully get to at the end. But you know, if I open up my computer, because I'm going to write or my iPad, whatever, and I see a whole bunch of other things and not

my writing application or the prompt that I want to answer or whatever the thing that I could have put there that was going to get me to do the thing that I really want to do. It is very, very easy for me to get distracted and never even get to the thing that I intended to do with the time that I had set aside for this thing. So as we're talking about constraints throughout this episode, that's the perspective I took when I ran with this was, okay, so this is the spot where the constraints would go. So what are the things that are going to provide

the biggest bang for my buck in this area in terms of allowing me to direct my attention intentionally at the thing that I've declared is important. It's interesting because I hadn't really thought about it in that context, but in the process of being focused and getting serious work done, there are weak points in the process. And if you're aware of them in advance, maybe you can avoid them through the application of constraints. Yeah. One example of this, I think I heard about this, I guess it was a study. I don't know. The Royal Air Force in Britain, I believe,

wanted to, during World War I or World War II, I can't remember exactly which one, they wanted to, must have been World War II, they wanted to prevent their planes from being shot down. So they hired this guy to reinforce the parts of the planes so that there was less chance of them being shot out of the sky. And the Royal Air Force was bringing back these planes that had been shot down. Actually, they had not been shot down. But the airplanes that returned, they would notice that there were

bullet holes in these specific areas. So their idea was, well, let's reinforce these areas. But the person that they had hired is like, no, you got to reinforce the other areas because these are the planes that came back.

The ones that didn't come back, they got shot in the fuselage or wherever, you know. So that's really the thing. And that's a big distinction there. And a lot of this stuff when it comes to your work process isn't life or death, but it could be life or death in terms of your time block. The two hours that you had to work on the thing that was really important, you know, it's very easy for that entire time block to be shot down. And so that's kind of the approach I took was like, what are the constraints that I can put on myself to limit my own monkey brain from doing that to me? We've had so many guests on Mac Power Users over the years that come in and say,

I like the iPad because it gives me one app at a time. And a lot of writers like it because there's nothing else to distract them. They're putting constraints on through their platform. Yep, exactly. It's not rocket science. It's just recognizing your weak points. The thing I put in the show notes or the outline is why is it so hard to just tell our monkey brains what to do?

Yeah. And I think that's really step one is recognizing that you do have a monkey brain that is going to hijack your work session and chase the shiny new object. If you are not aware that that's a possibility, there's a good chance that you're going to succumb to that. I'm just kind of like talking here. This is another example of why I'm not a productivity guru. But to me, a basis of constraint isn't necessarily,

I think a lot of people think about email and social media as the constraints they need. But I think there's something more fundamental to it. And that is, uh, you're there, you have a limited amount of focus and attention you can bring to any problem. And like the earlier one, I made the comment that it's impossible to not eventually get distracted. I think that's kind of true. No matter how many social medias you turn off, if you sit down and try and do focused work, there is going to be a period of time where you become bad at it because you just can't do it forever. You can't do it. It's a muscle. And some people can't do it for 15 minutes.

Some people can do it for an hour. I don't know. But there's a limited amount of time you have. or an hour. I don't know, but there's a limited amount of time you have. And I do think one of the ways to avoid this mess is to constrain your own time and expectation. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm such a fan of time blocking is I realize, okay, I've got a good hour in me on this problem. And then afterwards, I'm going to go play scales on my saxophone or take a walk or something. And that's good because if you have this optimistic view that you can just sit down and do this for four hours, you are inevitably going to get trapped in the Schmitt's loop. You're going to get distracted. You're going to get mad at yourself. You're going to do all this damage to yourself when if you had been more realistic going

forward, you would have been able to avoid that. Yeah. Managing expectations, especially your own expectations, is, I think, a big piece of this because every time you go around this loop, kind of the thing that's missing from this diagram is the fact that after you recommit and then you do the thing again, you get distracted and you stop and you get mad at yourself, then you recommit. By the time you get to recommitting again, you believe yourself less. You have less, I guess, this really isn't the right term, but kind of like personal integrity. You know, you have your word

to yourself means less than it did the last time that you went through this loop because you know this, you know, this pattern. And that's a really dangerous spot to get to is the fact that when you say, I'm going to go do this thing, I'm going to achieve this goal that the back of your mind, you're like, there's no way you can do that. Well, at that point, of course, you're not going to achieve that. You're not going to write your book, publish your thing, whatever, because the back of your head is going to be that that voice is going to be speaking consistently. And it's like, it's just a matter of time. You're going to mess up. You're going to let this go, just like everything else. You're not going to follow through. And then eventually self-fulfilling prophecy, right? You drop it, you let it go. And you're like, oh, well, I guess I was right about myself.

Yeah. And getting back to another common theme on the show, the whole idea of getting mad at yourself. Why not be easier on yourself? Because when you get mad at yourself, you're spending this precious resource of energy and focus. I mean, don't kid yourself. I mean, the process of self-loathing, nothing sucks more energy out of you than that. Yeah, true. So even assuming you can pull out of it and recommit yourself, you now have less energy than you would have if you had been more realistic and applied the constraints to begin with. Yeah, the constraints, in my opinion, allow you to maximize the energy and attention that you have available to you for the time that you have available.

So one of my favorite quotes is by Benjamin Franklin. It says, does thou lovest life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life's made of. does thou lovest life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life's made of. And I think that managing your energy and your attention is the way that you don't squander your time. And so when I'm thinking to myself about what are the constraints maybe that I need to create or reinforce, maybe I had them at one point, but just over time that those fences have been broken down and wild animals are getting in, you know, where do I need to mend those things? That's kind of the perspective I'm taking with this is, you know, I've got the time available.

So how do I make the most of that? And there's definitely things that I can do to make sure that when I sit down to do my most important task, that I have the energy and the attention to follow through with it. And sadly, it doesn't always work that way, but I have the ability to do that, I believe. Awareness is key. We're going to talk about that. I want to talk about how we're creating constraints for ourselves, not only in terms of applications, but time. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how we're using, we're creating constraints for ourselves, not only in terms of applications, but time. And I want to talk about that. But before we do, I want to thank our next sponsor. And that's our friends over at Hover. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Hover. If you've been thinking about building an online

identity, you can get started with one simple step, buying a domain. With Hover, you find the domain that shows the world who you are and what you're passionate about. I have been a Hover customer for a long time, way before they were sponsors of the show, because they're just such a great service. So often when you go to some of these domain services to purchase a domain, it feels like you're diffusing a bomb. You know, it's like there's all these check boxes and, you know, if you don't hit the right one, you're paying extra for something you don't need. Hover doesn't do that to you. It's a simple service. They provide excellent service and they don't try and trick you when you purchase domains.

When my kids were born, I bought domains for them. Like their names, I've purchased their domains. When my kids were born, I bought domains for them. They like their names. I've purchased their domains. That's in hover. Max Sparky is in hover. My legal website is in hover. Everything I do, I've moved to the service because it's a great group of people that you can work with. If you move your web service or your website to another, you know, server, they are right there with you. They have instructions and people to help you to make sure you get the transfers made without any problem. It's like having your own, you know, personal web backend team. I like Hover so much that I also have all my email hosted through them because I, you know, I like to use IMAP email. I like to be completely in control. I not only want to own my domain, I want to own my email server. So I do that through Hover. And it's just been rock solid for all these years.

It's a great company. There's no upsells. It's a clean user interface. They've got best-in-class customer support teams. The Hover Connect feature is cool because you can connect your domain to many website builders, and it's just a couple clicks. They just take all the stress out of it. With Hover, every domain you buy has free who has privacy, so the bad guys don't get your information. They've got over 400 domain name extensions to choose from, which can help you brand yourself online. You can get all your usuals like.com and.io,

but maybe you want something like.coffee or.ceo. I think I need to get that davidsparks.ceo, and I'll put it on my card, you know, like Wile E. Coyote used to do, or.photography. Whatever you want to showcase to the world, you can do it with Hover. Now, if you're new to Hover, you can get 10% off any domain extension for your first year, go to hover.com slash focused. Make sure you go ahead and do it. Make that first step toward building your online identity today and have your home on the internet. That URL once again is hover.com slash focused. Thanks to Hover for all of their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, let's get in the weeds a little bit on constraints. What are you doing to create,

you know, I think the theme we were kind of getting at before the break was creating your own constraints can help you avoid that trap of the self-loathing and distraction. What are you doing for that, Mike? Well, there's a couple of things that I put in the outline here, but this is definitely not a complete list. So one of the things that I've talked about a lot is not having email or social media on my phone. And as I was thinking through these constraints, I recognized that somehow Twitterific had worked its way back onto my iPhone. Really? On your home screen? worked its way back onto my iPhone. So really on your home screen, not on my home screen, but it's there and my brain knows it's there. So the muscle memory to like switch over to the other page as we're recording

this, I am deleting the little bird icon. Okay. But I know, cause again, I've, I've been there. I've,

I've done this. I know that not having that there creates a lot less, maybe stress isn't the right word, but it's kind of a mental burden. I can be more intentional with how I use my technology because I've got a couple things on my home screen, like tracking my daily habits, doing my journaling in day one, creating the MindNode files for the books that I read. If I just have those things on there and not the distraction things and just have a different context for those things altogether, again, not giving up Twitter completely, but just controlling where I can access it. That kind of changes everything for me. So that's the first one.

Another one, which again, I've kind of found myself moving away from this and I need to recommit to this, is shutting down my email client when I'm working. A lot of times I've got it open in the background and I don't even realize it until I hear the ding. Oh, I should go, and I don't even realize it until I hear the ding. Oh, I should go. Wait a second. You know, so recognizing that that has been happening, that's, you know, I need to change my process for how I do that. And a lot of that, I think, is the shutting down routine at the end of the day. I've got to make sure that that thing is closed when I walk away from my computer so that when I come back, it doesn't leave the door open. Another thing that I kind of need to recommit to is eliminating screens at night and just focusing on reading instead. This is probably tied directly to Twitterific working its way

back onto my iPhone, but looking at the screens and scrolling through the feeds and responding to people. And that's kind of how I think I justify it in my head. head is like, well, I'm in the middle of this product launch. I have to have Twitter on my phone so that I can reply to people, right? Not really. And even if I absolutely had to, like that's a one week period and then I should get rid of it after that. But what happens in my experience is I find a justification for having it on there, and then it just stays there. And then I kind of retrain my brain to all these negative habits that I've broken before. So I want to get rid of that. The other big one that really has helped me a lot, and this isn't necessarily something that I've been struggling with, but I want to call this

out because I think there's probably a lot of people who can benefit from taking this same approach, is what I call my non-negotiables. Okay, so everybody's work situation is different and maybe you have control over your day, maybe you don't, maybe you only have control over a part of your day. It doesn't really matter. Whatever time you've got available to you, you want to make sure that you're putting the things that are really super important in there first. So for me, those are things like getting to the gym every single day. We go to church a couple times a week, so that's on there. Date nights. I have this habit of doing these one-on-ones with my kids. Those are the things that if I don't put them on my calendar first at the beginning of the week, I can easily justify not squeezing something in like a one-on-one

because I've got so much work to do. But if it's on the calendar at the beginning of the week and it's non-negotiable, the work happens around that and I get the work done. Work happens around that and I get the work done. In The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, they talk about how in your life, you've got to juggle all of these balls, right? And a lot of them are made of crystal, but the work one is made of rubber and you should feel free to chuck that one whenever you can. So that's kind of the approach that I've taken with that stuff. And that goes a long way in creating the constraints around the space for the things that are really important to

me. Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, while you were talking, I was thinking about it. And I don't know, we really made the case for constraints going in I mean I think one of the premises of the show is of this particular episode is that constraints it's very easy to think of constraints as a negative like a constraint limits you right but a constraint can actually a thoughtfully created constraint can make you can give you space to do what's most important you know unlimited constraints are uh are part of the problem i think it's part of the problem with the digital minimalism movement you know that people have access to all this information it's so easy to run off and and stop doing the work that's important to you and making the things you love

but um i i think you need if you're listening, I think something you should consider is how can I make a constraint a positive thing? You know, what kind of constraints can I add to my life that are going to allow me to get the work that's truly important done and give me time to do the things, you know, to hang out with my family, you know, or in my case, you know, go back to Star Wars, Disneyland. By the way i got there we talked about last episode and i got there and i'll tell you i did not answer any email in batuu i was in star wars um but the um so but i i think that is something that it's easy because i think there's this negative connotation with constraints but no constraints are what can make some of your best work.

And I would agree with a lot of things Mike said. I think that it's very important to be aware when you're working of what it is that distracts you, that takes you away from the thing you're sitting there to do. And, you know, getting back to the theme of self-loathing and self-love, I think that in order to be successful in this kind of stuff, you really have to err on the side of self-love. You know, you have to stop being so hard on yourself because if you immediately go to attacking yourself because you get distracted, that's a mistake. When I was learning to meditate, one of the best pieces of advice I was given was, you know, because's a mistake. When I was learning to meditate, one of the best pieces of advice I was given was, you know, because meditation is hard. It's the idea of clearing your mind, but your mind doesn't want to be clear, you know? It's constantly surfacing things.

And if you meditate and, you know, thoughts start coming up, negative or positive or whatever, and you say, oh, bad meditator, you're bad, you're bad. You keep thinking, you know, that's, that creates a whole loop. Whereas if you just say, Oh yeah, that was interesting that that came up and then you just let it go. Um, that's a whole different thing. And I, I learned that like 30 years ago. And I feel like that's a skill that translates very well to this productivity bracket, you know, of stuff that, and distraction, you know, because distractions do arise. But if you've got the discipline to number one, not beat yourself up for something that's going to happen to everyone, you're, you know, it's not like you're defective. We all have distractions and have things happen.

But if you can just accept that and just like observe it and let it go and get back to work, that is it, man. You just, you just crack the key. And, um, and, and the trick is in my mind is when this stuff comes up, if you're aware of it and you don't punish yourself, but say, oh, that's interesting. You know, when I open email to send an important email, I frequently find myself looking through my inbox and then looking through my spam box and just doing anything I can to avoid writing an email. Okay, so how is the monkey going to avoid that in the future? Okay, what if I just write the email in a text editor and I find some app like Drafts where I can send the email without opening my email?

Okay, well, then I'll avoid that. I'm putting a constraint on the way I handle email. But if you can be observant of that stuff without beating yourself up, you can actually come up with proactive ways to address the problem. Yeah, and getting back to what you mentioned about constraints being perceived as negative, I think that is true, but it's not a negative thing. Just like a budget is not a negative thing, a budget is a constraint. A budget will tell you, you can't spend money on this thing because you have not set aside money for this thing. But everybody who finally does a budget will tell you that in the long run, the budget creates more freedom. That's really the goal of the constraints. It allows you to be more free,

more spontaneous, more creative with the resources that you have available to you. So many of the hacks I have shared on this show, the hyper-scheduling, the moving the needle stuff, it's all engineered around putting myself in a space where I can get what I think is important to me done. And in essence, it's all a constraint. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think time-based constraints deserve separate attention because it's easy, I think, when you get on the subject of constraints to say, okay, separate attention because it's easy, I think, when you get on the subject of constraints to say, okay, I'm going to delete Twitter. That's my constraint. But I think putting yourself on a deadline is a great constraint. Just a few weeks ago, because I have, since I went out on my own

four years ago, it's rare that I don't work on the weekend. It's just between the Max Barkey stuff and the legal stuff, there's always something I've got to do. We're recording this on Friday afternoon. I had a tweet, I'm sorry, tweet. I had a message from a client right before we started recording saying, hey, I really need that contract. It's like, am I going to commit to writing it over the weekend now because they want it? But so it's a very common thing. So something I've been playing with is being more deliberate about putting time constraints on myself. The idea of saying, what if I just say, this is the weekend that I'm not going to work. And I'm not deciding that on Friday afternoon, I'm deciding that on Monday.

Exactly. Yeah. And what happens? And I put that constraint, what's going to happen? Well, I'm deciding that on Monday. Exactly, yeah. And what happens? And I put that constraint, what's going to happen? Well, I'm probably going to work a little harder each day. I'm going to feel a sense of urgency. And I'm going to have that at the end. And what kind of benefits am I going to get from that? And that's a constraint you can put on yourself.

And it sounds silly, but it works. Yeah, or something like, I will put a constraint on 30 minutes dealing with email or like a Pomodoro timer sort of a thing where when this time block is over, I'm done. And I'll crank through as much email as I can. But if you have that approach as I've only got this much time to devote to this and I'm going to make as big a dent in it as I can, you will probably get more done in less time as it pertains to the thing that you really want to do, the intentionality behind that time as you had budgeted according to your time blocking or your calendar or whatever. Those constraints, they're almost like a multiplier if you use them correctly.

constraints, they're almost like a multiplier if you use them correctly. Yeah. And I would recommend, try it. Put some time constraints on yourself. I mean, I talked on Mac Power Users, and I believe on this show as well, about how I have this keyboard maestro script that runs at 4.30 every day that shuts all my apps and says, time to shut down. And now that is ingrained in me. I know subconsciously that is coming every day. And it impacts my work, you know, because, you know, it's like, you know, you understand what I mean? It's like, the problem I was facing is I would just keep working because I could. And I realized through experimentation and testing that if I plan the next day, the night before, I am significantly more productive and focused.

You know, the difference between planning it the night before and planning it that morning is huge for me. And that's not true for everybody. Maybe it doesn't work for you. But for me, if I spend some time setting up the next day, the night before, the next day, I crush it. And but even though I know that, I know that in my bones, Mike, even though I know that when it gets to four o'clock, five o'clock, I'm like, oh yeah, but I'm making progress on this thing. That can wait.

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Even though I know that I'm, I'm screwing myself over for the next day, you know, and I do it knowingly and I will do it every day. So I finally just made a script that just shuts my apps down at 4.30 and literally, you know, pushes me into this job that the thing that is

the most important thing that I do at the end of the day. And so, you know, constraints, I guess, can help. I guess that's what we're saying. Yeah, that's a great example of a constraint. I love that.

I may have to steal that. Yeah, but the one point i would like to come through as we kind of finish up the segment is the the thing i glossed over kind of rambled through earlier is is this is not a battle you're not at war with yourself i really am trying to not talk about um productivity stuff or just getting your work done in terms of battling more. I think that's the wrong analogy because you've just got to be kind of forgiving with yourself and a little softer, for lack of a better word. As things come up, if you can observe them and learn from them, that's so much better than just beating yourself up and taking extreme measures.

Little course adjustments, you know, that 1% every day thing, it really, really can make a difference. Yeah, cut yourself a break and wallow in unproductivity, right? Wasn't that the goal from last episode? Yeah. How'd you do on that? I definitely had an unproductive day. And actually, after we recorded that, that was in the back of my mind.

I was going through the day and I just had not slept well the night before and was dealing with some stuff, trying to sort through some things and was not getting much done. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to chuck it. I'm not going to work today. I'll work tomorrow instead if there's something I really need to get done. But I'm just going to be okay with not being productive today. if there's something I really need to get done,

but I'm just going to be okay with not being productive today. And I credit that episode with giving me what I needed to actually make that decision because in the past, I think I probably would have tried to muscle through it and try to do something, you know, but really I wasn't accomplishing

anything of value anyways. So it was much better that I was able to just shut it down. Yes. Swim with the current, not against it, man. Yeah. It's a trick. It's down. Yes. Swim with the current, not against it, man. Yeah. It's a trick. It's good.

I, I wallowed in, uh, unproductivity. As I mentioned earlier, I went to, I got in early to star Wars galaxy and the, uh,

you know, being a kid, I was eight years old when the first movie came out, Mike, I, man, I had so much fun. It was amazing.

It was amazing. I, I, I could see how I could get addicted to going to that place because it's so immersive. I wrote it up at Max Sparky. I'll put a link in the show notes. And I also guested on a Star Wars podcast because that's what you do when you're a nerd like me and you have a microphone. And if you want to listen to that show, I'll put that in the show notes too. But yeah, you know, put some constraints on yourself. Maybe that's the experiment for the listeners is why

don't you try between now and the next episode to figure out something in your life that where a constraint could make a positive change and give it a try. Don't be so hard on yourself. Right. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Timing, the app that tracks your time automatically instead of manually. In today's fast-moving world, the next distraction is right around the corner, which makes it harder and harder to stay on track with your projects and determine how much you really worked, how much you really moved the needle. And that's why you need an app to help you stay on top of your time. But manual time tracking can interrupt your workflow. Timing

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that really got me into time tracking because I had tried the manual things and I would start a timer and I would forget about it. And then I'd get home at the end of the day and realize that I had a eight hour travel timer. And that just made me not trust any of the data that I was getting. So timing was a huge thing for me because I could just let it go and it created the data for me. I could go back and look at it after the fact and I could identify the things that I needed to change. We're talking about constraints this episode. I recognized that I was spending a lot of time in social media and email applications. So I created constraints around how I used my computer regarding those

specific applications. And timing made this really easy to do because all the information is right there. Obviously, it's still up to you. You have to put the constraints in place, but timing is the thing that helps you see these things. It was really beneficial and really eye-opening. Now, timing is so confident that you'll love their fuss-free approach that they offer a totally free trial.

You can download the free 14-day trial today by going to timingapp.com slash focused and save 10% when you purchase. Once again, that is timingapp.com slash F-O-C-U-S-E-D and save 10% when you purchase. Timing, stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead. We thank Timing for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. work instead. We thank Timing for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. You know, I've been thinking since we talked earlier in the show about process and results. It's been itching at the back of my brain, you know. And I think that in my head,

at least, you need to pay attention and, you know, that mindfulness, that stuff I was talking about before the break about making adjustments. You need to be focused on process for that, but you need to also observe results. I think it's a nice feedback loop if you do this properly. Does that make sense? It does. I'm glad that you called that out because I do think that there is a balance that needs to be struck between these things. I guess for me, really the rebellious side of me is looking at all of the emphasis on the results and something inside of me is just going, that's wrong. So I'm

pushing back against that. But you do need the results. I mean, timing's a sponsor of this episode. Timing gives you the results. It shows you how much time you spent in different applications. You can't argue with those results. If it says that you spent three hours on Twitter, then that's where you insert the constraint. That's where you put up the roadblock to keep you on the road and keeps you from falling off the cliff. But yeah, you got to have both sides. Yeah, like process is the verb. It's the thing that moves. It's the thing you can change.

Results is the thing that hopefully gives you feedback on that change. I was thinking about an effort, you know, going back to kind of the moving the needle thing. One of the big reasons why this has stuck so well for me is because the feedback I get from recording the time moving the needle actually affects how much time I spend moving the needle. You know what I mean? When I wrote the post on it at Max Berkey, I explained that I usually, you know, I can see those, I can see those numbers coming in through the day because it's a very simple process. I just draw a line. But, you know, if by 10 a.m. I haven't significantly moved the needle, as a person who knows that he does the best at this in the morning, it's kind of like alarm bells go up. It's like, oh, what have you been doing all day?

You know, you need to fix that. And so it affects the process. So these can work together, but I don't think if you just look at yourself by the results, that's going to be really great. I mean, when I released, in the push-up to releasing the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide and the week after with all the customer feedback, if you look at my moving the needle numbers,

they were off the chart because that was just mandatory because of what I was doing. I was finishing a product and getting it launched. But what really matters is when you're not under the gun. How are you doing at it? And that feedback is what really makes the difference for me. So I think there's a relationship between them. I don't think you should ignore one to the peril of the other.

But I think if the most important thing in this process is process, you know, it's like, what am I doing to get my work done? And what are the steps I'm taking to remain focused? That's what's going to change the results. Yeah. I feel like I'm talking in circles. Well, if we're talking about feedback loops, so it is circular. Yeah. But I think you're right. As I think about the different ways that this feedback loop can be activated, I think there's a positive way to do it. And I'll say a less positive way to do it. because I think if you start with the results, all you have is a picture of maybe what didn't work. Okay. And so you can say, well, let's go back to the drawing board and let's try something else. Okay. So you start with results, then you go to the process, then you look at the results again, and then you can measure maybe there was a change there. But I feel like if you take that approach,

it's kind of like you're spraying all over the place. You have this shotgun approach and you're just trying all these different things that are all over the board. You may be all the way over on the left with this one thing and it doesn't produce the results that you like. So you're going to go back and you're going to try something all the way on the right. I feel like the more positive way to implement this, the thing that will produce results a lot faster, would be to start with the process. Okay, this is the way that I am doing things currently, and these are the results that it is producing. So what adjustments can I make to my process which can improve the results even a little bit? Because then, you know, you're not just grasping at straws. If you focused on the results first and you decide to try something totally different

because you weren't happy with the results, it's very possible that you pick something else more wrong. Your productivity, your moving the needle gauge actually goes down. But I feel like if you are just concentrating on starting with the process and you're focusing not on these big sweeping changes because you're not happy with where you are, but you're making the small adjustments which are going to produce even just a little bit better results. That's the thing. If you were to follow that feedback loop for any length of time, you'd be very happy with the results that you've gotten.

Whereas the other way, it's just kind of hit or miss. Maybe you'll get lucky. And I think the mistake can be made not only when you see poor results. A similar mistake loop can exist if you have positive results. Like if I look at the week before I launched the field guide and I say, whoa, man, this guy is crushing it. So the lesson is give yourself a deadline and a massive amount of work to do and you're going to move the needle. Well, that's no way to live your life, right? Yeah, false positive.

Exactly. And just like as you were talking, I was thinking through it. The reason I talked earlier why I was afraid of this show, the reason I love making this show is because I'm obsessed with this stuff. I think about it all the time. I'm always thinking about how can I get better at it?

How can I steal Merlin Mann's face? Phrase, how can I make, you know, steal Merlin Mann's face? You know, how can I make things I love? And what is required of that? But when I think about the energy I put into this, it's like 95% of it is focused on process. It's like, what can I do to do this? You had a phrase, which I want to call before I get too far from it. It was, how can I get better at this? That is very different than maybe I should try this thing, which I feel like a lot of the productivity advice that's out there, a lot of the systems, that's kind of the approach is like,

you've been doing this completely wrong for all these years. I'm the expert. I'm the guru. I've got the three simple steps you've got to follow and everything's going to change. But there's a journey to get from point A to point B and there are no shortcuts. Maybe that system even works for that person, but you're not going to be able to take that system, plop it into the way you work, your process, and produce the exact same results. You're going to have to figure out what is the thing from that that maybe I can use to make the small adjustments which are going to net me some positive gains,

but I can't just copy-paste what that person is doing. Yeah. I may be the only crazy person on the planet that makes these hash marks and moves the needle and has hyper-scheduling,

but you know what? It helps me. At least at this point in the journey, it's helping. But, but just to kind of finish the thought, if 95% of my mental energy on this is on process, 5% is on observing results, but it's an important 5% because it, it creates the feedback loop that gives me more data to work with on that other 95%. Okay. I think, I think data to work with on that other 95%. Okay. I think the horse is dead on that. One more thing before we go.

I know we have other stuff in the outline, but I have to do this. So you said earlier you were going to try bullet journaling. Maybe there's a couple listeners that are too. I have some advice on this. I've been down this road. All right. Let me hear it. I want to advice on this. I've been down this road. All right, let me hear it. I want to make sure your experiment works.

Okay, so first thing is, Mike raised the point of, why don't I just do this in good notes instead of fancy paper and a fancy pen? And I think that is a splendid idea. I think for a lot of people that are listening to the show that have an iPad and Apple pencil, or even have a iPhone with Apple notes in it, you know, it doesn't have to be handwritten. You could write this stuff down. I mean, there is almost an unlimited number of applications and digital devices that you could do this with. And I think that the medium that you use, whether it be digital or written, makes no difference on this. It's completely up to you. It's what works for you.

Like, if you're more comfortable pulling your phone out of your pocket, like if I gave this command to my kids, you know, make a list every day of the five things, I guarantee you it would be done on their phones, probably in Apple Notes. Yeah. You know? And that's fine. I mean, you use what works for you. So don't get hung up on Sparky talking about Rodeo paper or Mike talking about GoodNotes. Think of the thing that would be natural for you to open or use. I think that's the first step.

And then the second step is do not go down the rabbit hole of watching all the YouTubes on bullet journals. That's the thing I think that has kind of kept me from doing this, is I know that there is a very vocal community around this idea of bullet journaling. And I wasn't ready to be all in with it. Yeah, it's intimidating. Assuming that you're going to handwrite, not do it with a typewriter or a keyboard, Do not get hung up on your handwriting. I fell down that hole. I watched the YouTube videos and the handwriting. I had a little book. I was practicing my Zs, you know? And then I realized this is stupid. I'm writing this down for me. I can read it.

I'm not writing it down for, you know, someone 200 years from now. So write it. I prefer to print. It looks like chicken scratch. Mike's seen it. But I can read it. Were you able to read it, Mike? Yeah. Good enough, right? No issues. Don't get hung up on the handwriting. Okay. Don't get hung up on the colored pencils. Don't worry about making the perfect icon for, you know, the moved item. If you really want a simple start, I forget the name of the guy. He is the guy who has the Bullet Journal website. I'll put a link in the show notes.

Ryder Carroll. He's got a book about it too. Yeah, you don't really need that. He has like a 10-minute video. If you go to, I'm going to say bulletjournal.com, but that's a guess, but I think that's the name of his website. He has an introductory video there. It's like 10 minutes. It gives you everything you need to do. And that's assuming you're using paper. Assuming you're using digital, you could throw a bunch of that stuff out. But I really think the key to it is just collecting from your various inputs a manageable list every day and having it in front of you as you're working.

It has the same effect as the old sticky pad on the monitor. It's just in front of you and it gives you something to work from. Yeah, well, I've committed. I'm going to go watch that video. I'm going to be bullet journaling by next week and I will report back whether I'm still sticking with it or what

modifications I've made. But I feel like that's the next step in my journey. So appreciate the advice. I'll check out the video and anybody else who's interested in it, definitely go look at that too. Ryder Carroll's got an interesting story. I've heard him on different podcasts and stuff. He kind of created that method because nothing else was working for him and he was kind of freaking out about all the things that he had to do. So that's the thing that worked for quieting his monkey brain. Yeah. And Ryder is able to put all of his tasks into this bullet journal. I mean, so what I do is very much a subset of bullet journaling because I don't have all of my various tasks or I have them in Omni focus but um and then i guess i would i'd

share finally is um and this is an evolution you know if you look at i've been journaling like this for over a year i've got now four notebooks on my shelf if you looked at the one i did on the first day compared to the one i do now it's very different and i'm sure in another year it'll be different as well but uh what i do currently is um at the top of the page i write the date and then i say daily priority and it doesn't say priorities it says daily priority why colon and it'll say keyboard maestro field guide it'll say enjoying sarah's concert you know my daughter's concert it'll'll say, you know, make a great episode of Focus. That's what it says today, actually. So, it's just one thing

every day that if I go to bed having done that, I'll feel like, you know what, not such a bad day, right? So, I write down a single priority for the day. Then underneath that, I will write down a meditation of some sort or another. It could be a prayer, whatever. So I just give myself a little bit of motivation. And I write down the daily priority and the inspiration for the day the night before. Then underneath that, I have two columns. One column is entitled The List. And under that is somewhere between five and ten at the most things that i want to do and under that and next to that to the right of that is one called the plan and underneath that

i write down the perfect day in terms of time you know i would you know the plan is 5 30 to 8 a.m., legal work. 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., exercise, meditate. 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Max Barkey work. And then I just write down the plan. Now, I'm going to share a secret with you. The plan does not always come true. Right, yeah. But it's nice going to bed having a plan. What's your favorite thing you always say about plans with Eisenhower?

I forget, what was it? Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. Oh man, I want to get that tattooed somewhere. But anyway, so I, but I have a plan. And so that's one page in a A4 notebook. And then when I wake up in the morning, I just make a running log as the day goes through. You know, 5.30 awake and work on this matter. And then, and then as I finish blocks of time that, you know, I've blocked, we've done

hyperscheduling. I go ahead and log that into the moving the needle list. And then as the day goes by, maybe I'll write down some reflections to it. Sometimes it's just one page, sometimes it's two or three. And then at the end of the day, I've got a day logged. And that's my version of bullet journaling nice yeah that's the thing i feel like bullet journaling gives you the flexibility to really make it your own and again i need to dig into it and understand all the nuance i started to a long time ago and just wrote it off and this

isn't for me but i feel like that's kind of where I'm at on this journey for tracking needle moving work for myself, creating constraints to help me pick the right things to work on. This is just something that I need to take a look at and kind of make my own, but I don't know. That's the beauty of it. And you don't have to make your own. I mean, like for instance, even though I watched that writer video, I don't use his shorthand. I don't, there's a whole bunch of stuff he does I don't do. And there's some things I do that he doesn't do. My wife, having watched me go through this process is, you know, she was interested.

She's like, but she doesn't want to sit and write it out and plan it out herself. So I got her some of those Michael Hyatt, was it Focus Planner? I think Fully Focused Planners. Yeah, Full Focus Planner, right. Full Focus, those are great. I mean, because the days are laid out for you. It has pages for you to write down your priorities.

I mean, that's an absolutely legitimate solution to this. If you want to go analog, not everybody wants to go analog, but she likes those because it's just laid out for her and it's got the three priorities. And even look at that stuff as you're planning your own if you're going to do your own. But I

would recommend giving it a try, whether it's digital or analog. And if you're listening to this and you're tempted, let us know in the forum. Send us some feedback. I'm sure this could be something we talk about. Join me on my bullet journal journey. I hesitate to call it bullet journal because I don't even really bullet journal, you know, but the, but, but, you know, Ryder was onto something and, and I, I get something out of

the analog. Not everybody does. And you don't have to is the, I guess the big point I want to make, just use whatever works. And if you've got a fancy system and there's no reason why you don't have to is the i guess the big point i want to make just right use whatever works and if you've got a fancy system and there's no reason why you can't just stay in omni focus with that list but for me what i do with this has gone beyond mere task management um yeah it's kind of a time management tool and so so in essence i'm using the paper to kind of combine some very powerful technologies I'm using on the back end. It's an intentional constraint. Yeah. Hey, there you go.

What a great way to end. Yeah. Well, anyway, we are the Focus Podcast. I hope you got something out of this. We love the feedback and we love hearing from you. And hopefully we can help you get a little better at this stuff too as we keep explaining we are fellow travelers we make a lot of mistakes yep learn from our mistakes along with us yeah thanks to our sponsors

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