Focused - 77: You Can't Hack the System

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

David and Mike are sick and tired of being sick and tired, so in this episode they share some things they've learned about managing energy. They discuss staying positive, Mike continues his digital Bullet Journal experiment, and David spends some time "reseaching" the perfect notebook.

Welcome to Focus. I'm David Sparks, joined by my host, Mr. Michael Schmitz. How are you doing, Mike? Doing well. How about you, David? Excellent. Excellent. We have another show with just the two of us. Yep, but that's okay. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people. The last several episodes seem to really resonate, strike a chord. So I'm not saying that we don't have some interesting guests that we want to have on the podcast in the near future, but we're kind of riding this wave of intentionality. Yeah, there we go. And we've actually got some pretty cool guests lined up. So good stuff coming forward. But something we talked about in the last show that I think both of us at

one point said, oh, we need to give that a whole show, is the idea of energy management. So guess what we're going to talk about today? Yep, energy management. Yeah of energy management. So guess what we're going to talk about today? Yep, energy management. Yeah, energy management. I tried my best to talk about it in the last episode, but you kept me on track. So we have a whole bunch of notes about the topic of energy management

that we'll get through today. Plus we'll check in on some of the Bullet Journal stuff. And yeah, this will be a good one. I'm excited. The thing about energy management for me is it's kind of the secret part of this productivity racket. It's the part that you don't, it's not obvious. Like so often, like when you start thinking

about being more productive or more intentional, you think about how am I going to manage my time? You know, what projects am I going to say yes and no to? You know, what's important to me and how do I spend my time? And you think that's all there is to it. But there's this secret element that will sneak up and bite you if you're not aware of it. Yeah, exactly. Everybody wants the tips and the life hacks.

Nobody wants to be told go to bed earlier. Yeah, yeah. I mean, energy management, it is really, I think it is one of the keys to really making all of this work. But it's also kind of like a second level thing. You know, it's a, you got to get in at the first level. You got to figure out how you're going to put your time together and what's important to you.

But then you still, once you do all of that, you still have to manage your energy. Yeah, exactly. I kind of view time management as like setting the direction that you want to go. And then energy management is kind of the velocity or how fast you can move in that direction once you set it. And then focus or attention kind of applies too, because if you're moving in a direction and you get distracted by the shiny new object you pulled off course, that obviously makes your trip take longer. So I think like the time management stuff is great in terms of you just coming to this stuff and you want to be more productive. You want to be more intentional. You want to be more focused on the things that are really going to move the needle to hit all of the bases of the things we've talked about recently.

But then once you do that, you can find yourself in a situation where you know exactly what you need to do. The thing that is going to make the most difference in the quality of your life that's going to move you forward and help you accomplish your goal, create your ideal future, whatever. You still got to have gas in the tank. Exactly. Exactly. You may know exactly what to do,

but if you have no energy, you cannot do anything. And this is actually exactly where I found myself this last week because I'm getting back from a missions trip to Costa Rica, which was awesome. We were talking a little bit about it before we hit record, life-changing. But they had us running from seven in the morning till we got back to where we were staying,

usually after 10 o'clock at night. So we did that eight days in a row. And then you've got travel. It's an eight hour flight from where I am in Wisconsin to where we were in Costa Rica. And I did not realize when I got back that it was going to take me, really it took about four days

to get my energy levels back where they were. I thought I was gonna be able, we're getting back on Tuesday about 5 p.m. into Milwaukee. I'll get home about six or seven. I'll wake up the next day and I'll just be able to go right into work mode. Did not happen. Yeah. I think that was part of my frustration last week or last episode was talking about how when I came back from WWDC, it took me several days to get myself righted. DC. It took me several days to get myself righted. Yep. And to make matters worse, I had a project that I needed to wrap up by, as we're talking now, I was recording this. That was last week that I had traveled. And it was Monday, yesterday, as we're recording this, that I had to deliver the

thing. So I really had four or five days to do this project. And I had no energy during those days. But I had to deliver this thing by Monday. So I found myself in this uncomfortable position. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners can relate to this, where you know you need to do this thing. You don't feel like doing it. You cannot motivate yourself to do it. What do you do in that situation?

Maybe you've even got time blocked. It's not a question of you don't have time for it. You put time on the calendar for it. But you sit down and for some reason it doesn't happen. And you've got a deadline staring you in the face. You know, you've done everything that should be producing the motivation that you need to take action, but you still can't bring yourself to do it. Like all you want to do is lay on the couch.

Like that's where I was. I was completely useless. Or you find some secret game. Like you suddenly think this is the moment to scan your email or scan your paper mail, or this is the moment to start labeling the label maker, you know? Yep. Yep. That's, that's kind of a whole side topic, which maybe we should unpack of the things that are kind of the placebo to being productive or intentional. The low energy things, maybe like the admin type stuff might fall into that category. But those can definitely, like you just described, be the things that distract you from the thing that you really need to be doing. And I'm not sure I have a solution for recognizing

when those things are pulling you off course and when is the appropriate time to tackle that admin stuff. I think time blocking can definitely help with that, but I don't know. I think that you should be aware of when you have this thing staring at you, this big project, this big deadline, something that you need to do and you're overwhelmed by the size of the task in front of you, that that is a prime opportunity for the little things to become

the distractions and get you off course. Yeah, I do think those little things to me are like an energy indicator. When I find myself compelled to label the label maker, that usually is a sign that I'd have low energy. And it's like just my brain trying to find some distraction, some other way to do it. Obviously, if you spend the whole day labeling the label maker, then you've got a different set of problems. But it also can be something that you can use as an indicator to help you out. But, you know, I think we've kind of jumped forward a little bit. I just want to talk generally about the idea of energy management as opposed to time management. I mean, we've talked plenty about blocking calendars and creating space in your calendar and your time. But this energy thing really is, it's just a piece of this that I just think a lot of people don't even want to acknowledge exists. Yes, definitely. Now, we've had a couple

people on this show even who have talked about this. So Jocelyn K. Gly talked about the golden hours, Chris Bailey talked about biological prime times. And the basic idea with both of those, I think, is a very good place to start when it comes to somebody who's approaching energy management for the first time. Basic idea is recognizing what are the times during the day where you typically are more focused and you've got more in the tank. Because you are going to have ebbs and flows throughout your energy throughout the day. There's going to be times when it's very easy for you to sit down. And for me, example, I do a lot of writing. So if I sit down to write in the morning, I find that I can crank out a thousand words in 20 minutes. The words tend to flow, but if I do it immediately after lunch, it takes me a lot longer. So that's

good information for me. I recognize that in the morning, that's my golden hours or my biological prime time for that deep focused work of writing. I'm going to try to schedule my writing tasks during that time. Doesn't mean it's always going to happen. There's going to be some times when the afternoon is the only time that I have available to do that thing. But generally speaking, I'm going to try to slot those activities into the place where I have a greater chance of success for doing them efficiently and effectively. Like the quality of the work is just going to be better if I can align those things. I think one of the keys to making this work for you is understanding that this is energy management. You know, that's why we talk about it as that. It's something that you

need to be aware of, but the simple act of being aware of, it doesn't give you extra energy. It just, you know, it's not like you get, it's not like a video game where you unlock unlimited energy by being aware of it. By being aware of it, it just gives you the power to manage it better and understand you're going to have high points and low points and be thoughtful about how you spend that. It comes up on the show once in a while that I have a musical instrument I like to play once in a while. And I find that a great low energy exercise.

I like naps too, but I mean, this is an alternative to a nap in the sense that it engages my brain at a different level or at a different section of my brain, I guess. And then when I come back, I feel like I'm re-energized, you know, to use the term. And then I feel like I've got another, I've got gas in the tank now to get back to doing the hard work that moves the needle for a little while. But from my own experience, I never can do high energy work for longer than about an hour without having some way to kind of recharge it. Yeah. And that's a great way to recharge it is just kind of change your state or to change your mode. I do the same thing with my guitar. Occasionally I've got it sitting right next

to my desk. It's outside of the case so that at any point, if I'm just not feeling it, I can grab my guitar, I can play for even 15 minutes and it kind of is a reset. Then when I go back to my computer and I'm going to start writing again or working on an outline for a podcast or working on a video, like a screencast sort of a thing. Those are all things that I tend to be in the same mode. And sometimes just switching things up is an effective reset. And recognizing the different levers that you can pull for that, those are great tactics that you can apply throughout your day. I would argue that that's kind of the ideal use case of these.

I hesitate to use the word life hacks because it's very overused and I think it's got a very negative connotation. But like, that's the one place I would argue that they can really be effective is recognizing what's going on and then using that to direct, uh, to direct your, your actions, but recognizing also that there are no shortcuts. Yeah. Okay. So I can play guitar for 15 minutes and I can kind of reset and my energy, my mental energy for the technical stuff that I'm going to be doing when I come back is going to be higher. But that doesn't mean that I can do that 10 times per day and hack the system. And now I've got

a bunch more focus and attention to drive at this thing. It's still going to be limited. And you still have to protect the golden goose. Yeah. And it's just like, it's funny because you can't, you really can't hack the system. You can't sit here and say, well, today's an important day for me. So guess what? I'm just going to rough it out. I'm going to spend four hours writing, you know, without a break. And that's just the way it's going to be. And you can say that to yourself, but you know, the rebellious organ between your ears is going to have something to say about that. And, uh, you're going to maybe have a good hour of writing in three hours of

garbage that you'll probably end up throwing out or, you know, the, you know, the result, you're just not, it's not going to work, I guess is the point. And, um, that's something that you need to consider, uh, when you're planning your day. I, I think there's kind of a virtuous cycle between, um, uh, timing and planning your time and energy management. If you take both into consideration, uh, and you're right. I like it. Mike's right. I do think, um, life hacks do, it kind of has negative connotation, but there, there

is a bit of a hack to it. Even just the idea of your golden hour. What is the time when you are most productive? Well, what that really means is what's the time that you have the highest energy for the hard work? And plan your time around that. I talked a month or two ago on this show about how I realized that I'm always high energy in the morning. The afternoon, I'm not. And that's just me. Not everybody in the morning. You know, the afternoon I'm not, and that's just me. Not everybody's the same,

but I realized I was spending a disproportionate amount of my golden hour time doing the big email sweep. You know, I do one big email sweep a day. And I realized, and generally I was doing that like around 9, 10 a.m. I'm thinking, well, why am I spending an hour or so of my most precious time on email, right? It's silly. So I turn my morning email into a sweep of like 10 or 15 minutes just to

catch anything that's urgent. And then I do the actual real email sweep in the afternoon when I'm low energy. And it doesn't matter because email doesn't cost that much. Right. Yeah. And just like there is a management and it does relate to time management too, but it's something that can work together, but it can be a virtuous cycle or it can be a, I don't know what's the opposite of a virtuous cycle. There's probably a word for that, but it can be a terrible cycle too, because if you don't consider energy management, when you're putting together your time management, you could be setting yourself up for failure. Yes. Yeah. And the thing that makes energy management a little bit more difficult

is that when it comes to time management, it's easy to see the limits. Everybody's got the same 24 hours in a day. It's hard to quantify your energy. But maybe this is where time tracking can help too, because I've heard it said before that when it comes to deep focused work, you're not going to get eight hours in a day. You're lucky if you're going to get three or four, and that's pretty much the limit if you're running at maximum capacity. And recognizing that not trying to bite off more than you can chew is important because that's going to have a cumulative effect. You're already behind when you start the day, the next day, and you are starting to feel overwhelmed about the size of your task list that you can't get through everything.

And that's kind of why when I was talking about the bullet journal stuff and the template that I use, I have like the five things that I write out maximum of five things every day, because I know that that's my limit. And it's worthwhile recognizing that limit. Time tracking can maybe help you do that. But I think that it's probably not worth it for me personally. I feel like it's too much mental overhead to maintain a system. But it would be interesting if you were able to see how many mental energy units a task was going to take. And you recognize I can do 20 energy units worth of work in a day. And anything more than that, I know I'm not going to be able to do it effectively.

I feel like that would be an interesting practice. Yeah, it's like OmniFocus added tasks last year, and I'm sorry, tags last year. And for a while, I was experimenting with what I call high energy and low energy tags to tasks and just seeing, you know, what, how many tasks on my listed air, high energy versus low energy. But then it just became a thing where I was like, I was shuffling the decks of the Titanic. I'm sorry, the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. I mean, I know intuitively what stuff is high energy for me. It's, it's a stuff generally that moves a needle and probably a few other things too. And, and I just need to plan for that. And, um, uh, but, but bringing energy into consideration really is a, uh, is a ninja

level skill at this stuff, but it can be maybe what pushes you over the top as well. Yeah. So like to take that analogy a little bit further and just kind of clarify what I'm talking about. I'm familiar. I've used like the high energy, energy low energy stuff too but i guess kind of what i'm thinking is like if you were able to quantify a high energy task takes five energy units a low energy task takes one energy unit and then what can i do total number of energy units in a given day yeah because that's really what you're dealing with even if you don't have a number associated

with it it's great to just have an intuitive knowledge of this is what I can do. But if you never take the time to figure that out, you're kind of playing from a position of weakness. You're kind of set up for failure already. Because when you don't have a number on that sort of thing, or you don't have a gauge in mind, it's very easy to get to the bottom of that gauge if you never look at it. And then someone says, hey, can you do this one more thing? Oh, yeah, sure. I can squeeze that in. And then pretty soon you're sacrificing sleep and all these other things. And that is just kind of that negative cycle that you're talking about. The cycle of suck, I don't know. Where you get to the point where you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, but you don't see a way out of it.

Energy management is really the way out of it. And the sleep thing specifically, we don't have to talk a ton about this, but this is kind of important to me. I've talked a little bit about this. I don't think I've shared a whole lot of details, but when I was 18, I had a seizure standing in line at a McDonald's. I was diagnosed with epilepsy, which the summer before I'm going away to college was kind of a shock. I've learned it is scary, but you know, I've kind of learned to manage it and recognize this is what it is. And really the thing that I need to be aware of is that a lack of sleep is one of the things that can cause my brain to misfire and have a seizure. Obviously, that's a huge problem if I'm driving a car, things like that. So if I don't want my quality of life to be affected, if I still want to be

able to do all the things that I do, then I need to make sure that I am getting enough sleep and that the sleep that I'm getting is of good quality. So I kind of have an added incentive to monitor this stuff. But I feel like this is the thing that has allowed me to do what I've done and accomplish the things that I've accomplished, create the things that I've created. And I feel like anybody can apply this. You just need a kick in the pants to say like the way that you have been doing things, getting six hours of sleep every night, that's not going to be sustainable. And it's only a matter of time before you crash into a wall, whether you see the wall coming or not. You know, I can kind of see it coming because if I don't sleep well, I know that it's only a matter of time till I get to that point. So I'm going to make sure that I never get there. Most people

think that they can get away with less sleep, but that accumulates. It's the whole concept of sleep that if you miss 30 minutes every day and you do that for an extended period of time, it's not going to be too long before your brain just can't physically function the way that it's supposed to. And obviously, when you're talking about deep work, attention, focus, intentionality, that's going to make it so that you physically can't do those things. So it pertains to energy management. This is the place to start. Yeah, well, I do think that sleep is step one for energy management. I mean, what we said earlier, you can't give yourself an unlimited amount of energy.

You can squander the energy you have if you don't have adequate rest and you don't, you know, eat right and take some basic care of yourself. Yeah, diet pertains to this too. I mean, your body is an amazing machine, but you've got to put the right stuff into it in order for it to function properly. And you may not recognize it the day of or the day after when you're trying to cheat the system, you know, when you're not taking care of it. But over the long term, it's like not getting an oil change for your car. The engine is eventually going to stop running. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting turning a negative into a positive. Your epilepsy has put you in a position where you have an affirmative reason to make certain you always get sleep. You've never tried to cheat the system because you know the negative consequences for you are so big. And I have to think that over the years, that's really paid off for you because there's so many of us that have tried to cheat the sleep system and we just don't get as much done and we aren't as productive because of it. I mean, I know I'm guilty of that as well. Yeah. And I don't want to

paint the picture that I've mastered this stuff. I deal with this too. When I was in Costa Rica, I mean, first time I've been out of the country and totally outside of my comfort zone. first time I've been out of the country and totally outside of my comfort zone. So I'm in this totally different place, totally different culture. It was a shock to me. And to be honest, I didn't sleep well, but I did everything that I could. I recognized that by going down there, there were going to be things that were outside of my control. It's the same thing when you go on a trip, when you're going to WWDC, when I'm going to craft and commerce, when we're both going to max stock later this year, there are going to be things there that I can't control. And I have to be in a position at that point where I can just roll with things. And so I'm going to control what I can control the rest of the time so that when I'm

put in that position where there's some additional stressors, that it doesn't hit the fan, that it isn't a big deal. Because I've put myself in a position where I can handle those sorts of things. It's kind of like exercise factors into this too. I try to go to the gym or go running or biking, something six days a week. I take Sundays off, but I've recognized that by going every day and making that a habit, I am more effective for everything else that I do. Yes, it takes additional time every single day, but it makes the rest of my day much more effective. I feel much more sharp, much more focused. I have more energy when I come back from the gym. Again, it kind of doesn't make sense.

You're going to the gym, you're expending energy, but when you come back to work, you feel like you have more energy. Why is that? I don't know. But you do that enough and you can kind of see over the long term that that does add a lot to what I'm able to accomplish. Yeah. Well, and I think the reason is we're talking largely about mental energy, I think, in this episode. Do you have the focus energy that you need to work on the hard project we're not necessarily talking about digging ditches and um i know there's some relations and i'm sure people are going to let me know in the comments but but the um i think that's the distinction hey i want to talk about some ways to use this knowledge of energy and uh and maybe

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make your next move, make your next website. All right, before we get into the tips for boosting your energy, I do want to circle back and address one other thing you mentioned before the break. And maybe I'll save you some follow-up email. Right. There's this concept of the energy pyramid, which I first heard about from The Power of Full Engagement. I think it's Jim Lear and maybe Tony Schwartz. And there's in that book, four different levels of energy and they kind of build on each other. So at the bottom, the base level is the physical energy. And then above that, you've got emotional energy. Above that, you've got mental energy. And above that, you've got spiritual energy, which doesn't necessarily mean religion, but that's kind of like your why that's driving everything. So they're definitely

all related. And kind of what we've been talking about with sleep, exercise, eating healthy, that's kind of the physical stuff. That's the place to start because if you don't take care of that, then the others are going to suffer as well. But just kind of to paint a picture in your head, that's at least their model on how this stuff all ties together. Yeah. And it makes sense. I mean, you're right. If you don't have any physical energy, if you go out and dig ditches all afternoon, you're not probably going to have the mental energy to write a complex article. Yes. But I will say that it's worthwhile to recognize these things as well because you can take care of the physical energy and still have some negative ramifications from

not paying attention to the others. So for example, my wife and I try to have a date night every Tuesday night. And I have to be careful about what I'm going to try to get done work-wise on a Tuesday, because even though I may have the physical energy for our date night, I've found that I can be very quiet and I just don't want to talk. And when we go to dinner, if I have not managed the emotional and the mental side of that as well, I don't want to rob from my wife who I would argue like that's priority number one for me is my family. So every time that happens, I get a little bit upset with myself. I'm like, how could you let this happen? Because they're suffering because you couldn't manage your own

stuff as it pertains to the work that you have to do. That's the thing that, you know, talking about spinning plates or juggling all these balls, like work is the rubber one that you should feel free to chuck at any time. But I find myself not doing that sometimes. And I get upset at myself when I do that. Can you give me an example, like on a Tuesday, like what do you, how do you do that? How do you manage that? So you've got enough energy to engage with your wife on your date? Well, we typically, we're creatures of habit. So we'll go out to dinner and then usually we'll go for a walk and just talk. But if I am trying to write a whole bunch of words or recording a podcast is another thing that typically is very draining for me mentally and emotionally. I attribute that to the fact that I am generally so introverted. So if I were to record a podcast right before date night,

it's not going to go well. I'm just going to be exhausted when we're there. So I'll try to schedule these things either earlier in the morning so I have more time to recover or schedule them even better on a different day so that it doesn't impact the evening. I have to keep an eye on that stuff as I go through and I slot the things into my digital bullet journal, you know, that I'm going to try to accomplish that day. Yeah, I am like I do a lot of block scheduling as you know, and listeners, but one of the lessons I've learned is never schedule myself to do high energy, move the needle work immediately after a podcast is recorded because it's the same thing. And I don't think it has anything to do with being introverted, but you know, when you're trying to put your words together

and not sound like a complete bozo, it does take a bit of energy and I do need downtime after I record a show. I can usually for me, if I can have it a half hour, I can resume work, but I will take a walk or even take a nap or play my sax or whatever, you know, make a cup of tea. But I always give myself like a half hour of just, you know, downtime afterwards. And I think there's a lot of people listening that don't necessarily record podcasts, but have some equivalent to that in their life. And if you can recognize that about yourself and build that into the system, you know, use the block scheduling stuff you learned to block that downtime and then come back, you'll be surprised at how much more productive you are than if you had just like gone straight

into the next thing. Yes, exactly. And this is another thing that I picked up from the power of full engagement. There's a two by two grid, as you do with everything productivity related. Apparently, there's a sale on those when they started doing this. Yep, this is the model, everybody use it. But the dynamics of engagement, and I really like this because you've got two different axes, basically. And on the top of the Y-axis, you've got high energy. On the bottom of the Y-axis, you've got low energy. And then on the right of the X-axis, you've got pleasant energy, they call it, or positive. And then on the left side, unpleasant, they call it, or negative. And the trick with this, according to the authors, is to stay on the right side of the diagram where you are positive and you're going back and forth between high and low

energy. But you cannot just stay in the high positive energy zone all the time. You're going to burn out if you try to do that. So kind of what they advocate for, if you go through and you read that book, is that you've got high positive energy where you're fully engaged. And then there are going to be times where you do exactly what you just mentioned, David. You get done recording a podcast, maybe that's high positive. And then you've got to transition to low positive. You're strategically disengaged at that point by going for a walk or doing something, playing

your guitar, your saxophone to kind of reset. If you don't do that, though, I would argue the other transition that will happen is you will go from high positive to high negative. And that's the point where you're really in danger of burning out. You can find yourself going from high negative to low negative, which is kind of the place. I would argue this isn't exactly where I was when I was describing coming back from Costa Rica, but it's kind of the same feeling where you know what you need to do. You kind of resent the fact that you have to do it, though. That's the difference. And then you have absolutely nothing to throw at it.

At that point, you're just like, ah, forget it. Like, I'm going to disappoint people because I just can't do it. And recognizing how these things tie together, I think, is important because if you can direct the shifts, you can control this and you can stay on the positive side of this. It doesn't mean that nothing is going to happen that's going to try to throw you off course and that you're always going to have complete control over your situation. You may have your boss pop in and say, I need you to do this thing right now. And you have a whole bunch of more work that you weren't planning on.

You know, you can't control those things, but you can control what you can control. And by applying that intentionality, you've got a much better chance of staying on the positive side of this quadrant. And I think for me, at least, one of the big eye openers with all of this was just being mindful of my actual output. I mean, this is partly, I would say, time tracking and moving the needle stuff. But just realizing that I was forcing myself into, I guess what Mike would call high negative that I would, um, you know, get to a point where I was tired or I didn't take a break

and I just kept trying to push through and then stopping at the end of the day to look at my actual output. You know, maybe this is kind of, um, that, you know, the issue where you get to the end of the day and you feel like you worked really hard and you got nothing done. Maybe that's a symptom of poor energy management. Yeah, I think it definitely could be. The other thing I want to call out here as it pertains to this high versus low energy and the negative versus positive is that there's this saying that people throw around all the time, and there is some truth to it but they say life is a marathon not a sprint yeah have you heard that before yeah

okay i have issues with this okay and then also like i've got the perspective i ran a half marathon not too long ago so i understand like you have to pace yourself. But really, as it pertains to the dynamics of engagement in this quadrant here, I feel like it's more accurate to say that, yes, life is not a sprint. You cannot just stay in the high energy zone. But it is a series of sprints. So it is okay to run as hard as you can, as fast as you can towards something that's important to you for a period of time. But you also need to then take time to walk for a bit and let it recharge. You cannot just keep running all the time. That's the thing I think where a lot of people miss this. Yeah, I think the sentiment behind the saying is you got to keep at it for a long time. But you're right. I mean, on the daily battle,

it really is a series of sprints and rests, at least for me. Yeah. And the whole idea of scrum is built on this, where you've got, they even call them sprints. And usually they're like one week to four weeks and you do as much as you can. And then when you get done, you recognize what went well, what didn't go well, what did you actually ship? And then what are the adjustments or the tweaks that you need to make to the system in order for it to, in order to make it better, you know? You're not just sprinting after sprinting after sprinting after sprinting. You have built in kind of this idea of like the sabbaticals or the week off. You know, you have to give yourself time to be strategically disengaged where you've got low positive energy. There's got to be that balance there. Otherwise, you're going to automatically make that switch to the high negative energy and ultimately to the low negative energy.

You just won't recognize it until you get there and then you feel burnt out. And how did I get here? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do think this is this energy management thing. The reason we've been harping on it for a whole show is honestly, it's that important and be aware of it, plan for it. What are some tips, Mike, for people to help them do a better job of managing it? Well, there's a couple tactical things that you can do. We kind of talked about some of them, making sure that you get enough sleep, making sure that you're eating right,

getting some exercise. You mentioned changing your state, going for a walk, playing an instrument. I think another thing that maybe is a little bit next level, I guess, would be this idea. We mentioned it last episode of mental overhead. So recognizing the systems that you have in place and whether they are more complex than they need to be. There's this idea of Occam's razor, which is that the simplest solution is invariably the best solution. invariably the best solution. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. That's kind of the driving force behind my experiment with the bullet journal stuff, because I didn't want to maintain a bunch of different systems in a bunch of different places. I wanted a simple list that took me a

couple of minutes every day that provided the intentionality for the things that I was going to do. And I think that you can take stock of the way that you run things. Again, you can control what you can control. There's some things that you're not going to be able to control. Be okay with the way things are and make some tweaks to your systems in order to simplify them so that you don't have to spend so much mental energy maintaining them. That would be, I think, the thing that's going to provide the biggest return on investment for a lot of people. Yeah. Or just, I mean, to simplify that, just to provide the biggest return on investment for a lot of people. Yeah. Or just, I mean, to simplify that, just be mindful of where you're spending the energy

and question that, just like you would question your time. Like if you find yourself doing a bunch of things that you could give to somebody else or that you don't need to be doing, then you shouldn't be doing those things. And the same thing with energy. If you're using a bunch of high energy tasks that don't necessarily move the needle for you to go back to that, maybe it's time to do something with those. Yep. The other thing I'll throw out there, because it's very underrated, and again, I kind of struggle with this myself. Have some fun doing some things that are not going to provide any productive benefit, but are going to just be something that you enjoy, can be something that kind of boosts your energy levels. You know, it could be playing Zelda.

It could be playing a sport, you know, joining a bowling league, a softball league, whatever, like find something that you can do just for recreation that you don't need to get something out of. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I am, I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of unproductive creation, because for me, that's something that I felt like I was kind of missing, you know, so much of the stuff I've been working on, I mean, the Mac Sparky is something I love doing, but it's also a business. It's how I pay the bills. And I wanted to do something that was just creation

for the sake of creation alone. And if you listen to Mac Power Users, you know two things about me. I love Disneyland. We live close. We have houses. I also love Star Wars. I grew up with it. And now, you know, my worlds have collided. You know, Disney has opened this amazing Star Wars area called Galaxy's Edge. And so I've been going

quite a bit when I can to take pictures and just be in Star Wars. And I wanted to do something creative around it. So I made this Instagram account. It's called, if you're interested, it's called Batuu Rebel with an underscore. But the idea behind it is just not me posting a bunch of pictures from Galaxy's Edge, but I wanted to create a fictional character. And it's a rebel spy living on the run in this area. it's a rebel spy living on the run in this area and I'll take a picture, but then I'll, I'll write a story around it.

And the stories are really fun. Yeah. Like, so my opinion, some of them are scary and some of them are vengeful, but you know, it's just, it's like a fiction project. And I found that this is an energy restoration tool of infinite power for me

because I do find myself getting burned out in the afternoon and I'll stop and I'll write a story for this guy. And it pumps me up. It's a great way of doing energy, you know, putting your energy back. And I don't know, it's just an interesting idea. And it's unproductive creation that to me really fits within the theme of what we're talking about. Yeah, definitely. And also I want to call out here, it probably is the case on, since you're talking about the Batuu Rebel thing, I also want to call out like the Max Sparky thing. So when you started doing this, my guess is that that was your creative,

that that was your creative, unproductive creation piece, you know? And there's a switch that happens when you make your side project, your main project. It no longer is that. It does not, and that's okay, but you have to recognize that because I feel like there's a lot of people who listen to this who maybe have like a side hustle and in the back of their head, they're thinking, wouldn't it be great if I could just do this for a living? Well, when you just do that for a living, it changes the nature of the work of the task. And you have to recognize that that this thing that brought you life before all of a sudden is it can even be overnight is going to be a drain on you. And that's not necessarily a bad thing again, but you have to recognize that that is something that, that happens there. So there is

value in finding something that you do just to create and is completely unproductive and keep it in that, that state. You know, you don't have to make the Batuu rebel thing be a thing that, have to make the Batuu Rebel thing be a thing that pays the bills. And I would argue, you know, because I know the types of things that you do, David, you're probably fine just keeping it there. But for a lot of people who have like that side project and they enjoy it and they see some positive response to it, the natural progression in the back of your head can be like, well, how can I make this a productive thing? How can I monetize this? How can I do this more? Don't necessarily be looking to do more with it.

Just appreciate it sometimes for what it is. It's interesting for me because I have the added complexity that I'm doing two things, the law practice plus the Max Barkey thing. And the, you know, the practice of the law actually gives me fodder for the Max Barkey because I'm always solving problems that I face, you know, actually getting my work done. And there's so many levels to this because Max Barkey in a lot of ways does reenergize me when I, when I step off the law thing. And one of the things I do quite often is I will, when I time block, I will bounce back and forth between those two disciplines throughout the day. And that's a way to help me kind of keep the energy level managed and actually move the

needle on both ends of my life. But a contra example for me is woodworking. I always loved woodworking. If you come to my house, you'll see I've made most of the furniture in my house. But occasionally, years ago, I had people ask me to make something for them. And I thought, even at that point in my life, I was thinking, well, maybe I should just become a furniture maker. This is really fun. You make something at the end of the day, you can look at it and admire it. And people are willing to pay me for it. Exactly. You know, and, and so a couple of people like commissioned me and that was an example of something that it was like throwing a switch. It went from pure joy to pure misery in one day, you know, and maybe that's a sign that,

and it quickly disillusioned me of the idea, oh, this could be something I could do for a living. Whereas the Max Barkey stuff, when I did start making some money on it, it didn't become work for me. It still was a lot of joy. And so that was a, maybe that's another way of looking at,

you know, is the side hustle gonna be something that can really really turn into something is, you know, how does that impact you when you start doing it for money? Yeah, definitely. We're off topic a little bit, but yeah, it definitely, I think it does relate to energy too. Yes, yes, definitely. One other thing pertaining to energy management and a tip to help maintain positive energy that I want to touch on quickly could end up being something really big. But there's this whole idea that I got from Jim Rohn about the people in the company that you keep and recognizing what impact they're having on you. And he's got it boiled down to a couple of questions.

Basically, who am I allowing to speak into my life? What effect are they having? And is that okay? And I think that if you ask those questions or some derivative of those questions, you can quickly identify the sources of negative energy in your life. And maybe you can't eliminate them completely,

but you want to do everything that you can to quiet those things. Because those voices that you allow to speak into your life, those are going to be the things that influence you and get you, they manufacture the state that you're going to find yourself in. I think it was also Jim Rohn who said that you're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. Well, if every single one of those people is negative, guess what? average of the five people that you spend the most time with. Well, if every single one of those people is negative, guess what? You're going to be negative too. And so if you want to try to stay positive, which I would argue that there are a ton of productivity benefits associated with that in terms of intentionality and effectiveness and creating your ideal future and having the type of

life that you want. Yeah, exactly. Then you need to take stock of those things and you need to control what you can control about those things. If you have somebody in your life that you can't just completely disassociate from, you don't necessarily need to respond to every text message right away. Or you can take control when you recognize that they are starting to be negative. You can jump in and, you know, I'm sorry, but I'm trying to stay more positive. And, you know, this conversation really isn't helping me. Can we talk about something else? That may sound ridiculous until you actually try to do it.

Because a lot of times the people I've recognized in my own life who are negative, they don't recognize that they're being negative. And it's not their intention. They don't want to be negative. But they are without realizing it. And so just by putting a stake in the ground and be like, okay, this is what it is. Maybe we should shift this, talk about something more positive. Like they're, they're usually very willing to do that. You know, this is a lesson that I waited. It took far too long in life for me to learn. I, if you're listening and you're young, you know, put a marker in this and just listen to what Mike said two or three times in a row. I am, I've always been someone that can get along with

just about anybody. And because I knew that, I would allow myself to keep the Dementors around. And I don't know, it was in my 40s, I had a conversation with a friend and we walked away from each other. I thought, wow, he's such a great person and I feel so good right now. And it was like a hallelujah moment. It's like I got hit on the head at that moment. I said, why don't I spend all of my time with people that make me feel that way?

And stop being proud of the fact that you can put up with negative people and instead just spend your time with positive people. I mean, it's so obvious in hindsight, but I literally was in my 40s when I figured that out. So if you're listening and you're younger than your 40s, jump on that one, please. Yeah, yeah, exactly. One last thing I would say about energy management is you should put that into your project planning as well consider energy levels I am I have by the time the show publishes I will have announced I'm

working on two field guides simultaneously I'm going to do a whole new Siri shortcut field guide and a new photos field guide they're going to come out at or around the time that Apple releases iOS 13 so I've I've been off a lot for the next three months and I'm already, you know, feeling that. And, and I'm considering energy now as a criteria, as I say, yes and no to projects. Someone offered me some legal work. It wasn't extraordinarily time consuming, but the nature of it, because of what the job was, I knew consuming, but the nature of it, because of what the job was, I knew it would have been lucrative, but extremely energy sapping just because of the type of work it was. I don't want to get into the details. And I turned it down, you know, and I, I turned it down directly because I'm looking at my

project management. I'm looking at my calendar ahead of me. And I know that I've got these two big things I'm going to work on, and I can't, you know, there's only so much energy I have. So I made a bet, you know, that I'm going to the, the enjoyment I'm going to get out of making these products and the money I'm going to make off making them is going to make up for what I'm giving up

on the other side. And it all, it's not really a time management question. It was really an energy management question. So I think that's something to consider when you're saying yes to things. Yes, absolutely. That's a great place to wrap it up, I think. So let's take a break right here. And let's thank our next sponsor, which is Hover. This episode of Focused is brought to you by our friends over at Hover. And if you've been thinking about building an online identity, you can get started with one simple step, which is

buying a domain name that reflects your idea. With Hover, you can find the domains that show the world who you are and what you're passionate about. I checked it before we started recording. I actually have 10 different Hover domains because Hover is the first place that I go whenever I have an idea. I want to make sure that I'm able to get the identity for the thing. That's what I did with Faith-Based Productivity. My personal site is on Hover as well, MikeSchmitz.me. And that's the first place that I go. I've got several domains in there that started as an idea for something and they're just on the back burner that maybe I want to do something with that someday. But I know that if I were to build out that site, make that thing, that I control the identity. And that's important to me.

The Hover signup experience is also very easy. You can search all the different domains and you can find something that really reflects your idea. If you need to negotiate with somebody because they control a domain that you really want, Hover will even jump in and help with that. There's no upsells. There's the clean user interface. And one of the things that really is kind of like a hidden feature for me that people really need to know about is that Hover Connect allows you to connect your domain name to many website builders with just a few simple clicks.

allows you to connect your domain name to many website builders with just a few simple clicks. That's important because a lot of domain register, a lot of hosting companies will lock you in when you get the domain with them. And then they make it almost impossible to transfer it. I'm dealing with that right now with somebody who has a site with another company that I won't name, but they make it almost impossible to transfer that domain, even though he just wants to give it to somebody else. They can build out a new website. Well, with Hover, you don't have to worry about any of that. They can handle it all for you. They've got 400 domain name extensions that you can choose from, which help you brand yourself online. You can get all your usual ones like.com and.io. But if you want something different, they've got those too, like.coffee,.ceo, or.photography.

Whatever you want to showcase to the world, you can do it with Hover. And if you're new to Hover, you can get 10% off any domain extensions for your first year. Just go to hover.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. Make that first step towards building your online identity today. Again, that URL is hover.com slash focused to get 10% off any domain extensions for your first year. Our thanks to Hover for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Okay, Mike, I want to hear more about your bullet journal. How's it going? Okay. What's changed?

Well, it's been a success and a failure in some regards because I, while I've been in the States, have been doing it every day and it's been great. However, I also went to Costa Rica for eight days and did not touch it while I was down there. So I kind of feel like I had some momentum going, I went away and then I had to kind of reset it, but it is going well. I do like using GoodNotes and the Apple Pencil. I did get a fancy new iPad Pro, which I needed for a screencasting project. So I enjoy using that with the upgraded Apple Pencil. I don't know, it's a little bit shorter.

It feels a little bit different. And it's just- Feels more like a pencil. It feels more like a pencil, yeah. And it's kind of hard to describe exactly what it does, but it does bring more joy when I use it. So I'm all in with this idea. I feel like I'm going to probably tweak the templates over time. But as I mentioned, I've got the week where I kind of roughly outline how I think this week is going to go. And then I use that to kind of direct my daily stuff.

I'm not tracking all of my tasks in there. I will jot down some notes in my daily thing if there's something that's coming up in the future that I need to make sure that I budget time for. Like I'll jot the note down there, but all of the repeating stuff, I've kind of kept that in a different task management system still using OmniFocus. I'm very tempted by the new reminders,

but I'm too scared to install the beta yet. But all that to say, my version of the bullet journal is going well, although people who are bullet journal purists will look at that and say, my version of the bullet journal is going well, although people who are bullet journal purists will look at that and say, that's not a bullet journal. I think that's a mistake. A journal is a journal, and everybody should make theirs the way they need to work for them. And I think most people would agree. I don't think there's a lot of purists out there. The question, though, when you were in Costa Rica, did you journal at all?

I mean, I know, setting aside, you know, writing down what you're going to do for the day or tracking major tasks, did you do diary or journal entries at all while you were down there? I did not. I felt kind of bad about that because there's a bunch of stuff that I want to put into day one, obviously. But I found that by the time I got back, I was too exhausted to do anything. So that's actually on my list after we record here today. I'm taking off for a family vacation for about a week. And I've got a bunch of pictures and notes jotted down, not like full-on stories of what happened, but just like people's names.

We went and helped out at an orphanage one day and there was this little boy, Samuelito, who was fascinated by my wife's Apple Watch. He kept going into the activity monitor and like triggering the guy running and then he would just run in place to match the guy. So that's the kind of thing that I want to have that as a story inside of day one. And I don't have that story.

I've got the pieces yet. And so over the next week, I'm going to kind of create not a reflection template for that type of stuff. I'm probably going to create a whole separate journal just for things that happened in Costa Rica and memories like that, that I want to remember. Yeah, I am. I really think when you take trips and I talked about my disappointment with some of the things that happened to me at WWDC was I feel like you should really block time in to journal when you're on trips. I think like maybe if you're going on a family trip, make sure that you find a way every day to write down, you capture some pictures and capture some thoughts because, you know, it's great that

we journal every day. And so often my journal is just reflections on how I'm doing and things that I need to improve and stuff like that. But when you go on a trip, it's something entirely different. And it seems like that's the time that it's easiest to stop doing it. But those are going to be the entries you're going to cherish the most. So yeah, try to build that into your trips. I'm speaking to myself as much as anybody else. I think that's a great, great tip. You know, for me specifically, it was like I mentioned, I can't control my time while I'm down there. So I'm just going to chuck the systems and pick them up when I get back. But one thing also that I want to call out, which is kind of a different version of that in terms of remembering the memories and

the feelings and all that stuff that happened while you were at a place. There's quite a few tech savvy people who went down. And I had the idea on the way back to set up a shared iCloud photo album. So we did that, got everybody to join it. Everybody's showing or sharing their favorite pictures. And there's a lot of people who captured things that I did not capture. I was just enjoying the moment when people were throwing chicken wings off of the bridge and the alligators were going nuts trying to get to them, you know, but they're able to upload that video and now I can relive that. So we had a group of, I think, 18 people down there. Another place where I think this might be handy would be something like, like Mac stock.

So if you're, if you want to create a visual history of an event get some other people kind of crowdsource the creation of those memories and and i guess one other other thought i'd give to people about if you don't have enough time when you go on these trips like day one has an excellent recording mechanism you could just open the app on your phone press the button and record, just talk for 10 minutes and record the thoughts from the day. And if you're a subscriber, it does a transcription, which isn't too bad. You could also just take a little pocket recorder with you. You could probably get those off Amazon, less than $20. Just, you know, do something. You don't even have

to have an internet connection, I guess is my point, to capture those memories. But I think I'm off topic a little bit. Back on the bullet journal, some of the feedback I got after the show was people saying, well, I don't understand why you're doing this if you also have OmniFocus. Well, OmniFocus for me is I need that because I have so many things that I do. And OmniFocus is the bank. I think that's the way I referred to it last time. And I go to the bank every day, and I make my withdrawals.

But I just write the tasks down, and the act of writing them down I think helps me get them done. But if I don't have the bank, I'm going to go bankrupt, I guess. Yeah. Just stretch this out too much. And the other thing people ask me is,

well, how do you resolve the paper journal with day one? I literally just take a picture of the paper journal. I also use day one and I have entries in day one that are separate than the stuff in the journal. But just every day I have a day one journal called paper journal and I just take a picture of the pages I wrote. So I guess if I've got a record of them, if I ever need, I rarely go back and read them. But, you know, day one does those kind of fun prompts that says, you know, you want to see what you said this day two years ago?

It's kind of fun to go back and look at what was on my agenda that day and what I thought of it. So anyway, so there's ways to combine this with the digital, if you're interested in both of those things. The last thing I wanted to talk about in Bullet Journals, I just felt like I had to share this with the listeners

because do as I say, not as I do kind of thing. I have, for the longest time, I used the Baron Fig large notebook, which is, I always get these numbers wrong. I think it's A5, but it's in that ballpark. It's a bigger size,

closer to eight and a half by 11 if you're American. But it's a bigger size book, but it's got a hard binding. It's really nice. And then my friend Mike Hurley turned me on to these Rhodia notebooks that have, this is butter smooth paper. And if you've got a fancy pen and you write on this paper, it is something else. I'll just say, you know, I've never had paper like this rodeo paper. So one day I decided, well, I like the bigger size, but I like the rodeo paper. I'm going to find some on the internet. You know, it started out as a little diversion, maybe a low energy moment. Right. And, but it wasn't an obvious answer. And

suddenly I went down this rapid hole of looking, well, what did they sell in Europe? And, you know, what did the Japanese doing on, you know, because everybody's got stationary nerds in every country. I looked up, I had spent like over two hours looking for the perfect notebook. And it's just like, I had a laugh at myself. I think I even texted you that day about like what, you know, how easy it is to do, you know, to be, you know, I'm holding up air quotes productive. Right. And it's just like looking at the way my brain, you know, fooled me into like blowing an afternoon looking for a notebook, which I never did by the, by the way, find.

So shiny new objects can be paper notebooks too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just so, so silly. So don't let yourself fall into the trap. Yeah, that's, that's a big thing. And we've talked about that in the past. We could probably devote several other episodes to that whole shiny new object syndrome. But if you find yourself in the place where you're trying to justify new tools to increase your productivity, I would argue there'd be dragons.

Yeah. To borrow your phrase. Yeah. It never works that way. You, if you can get to the point where you just use the tools that you have until you hit the glass ceiling and say, you know, to go to the next level, I really need to be able to do X. That's the time to look for something just to pick on you because you shared the specifics. You know, you're using the big Baron Fig notebook. There wasn't a point

where you're like, oh, this paper is physically too big and it's preventing me from doing something. Right. You're just like, I wish there was something a little bit nicer, which is always the trap. You know, this thing that'll do one additional thing, this one additional feature, it's going to make my life so much simpler. No, it'll give you maybe a little bit more efficiency, but chances are the fact that you're looking at it in the first place. Yeah, exactly. Because the fact that you're looking for something else in the first place, you're kind of using that as the excuse. And it shows that you don't have the focus, the intentionality to provide the benefit anyway. You out how to use them to the best of your ability. But then don't be looking for something to replace it simply as a productivity benefit. Obviously, there are some things that do fall into that category.

If you're doing video work on the original 12-inch MacBook, getting a new MacBook Pro and being able to export videos much, much, much, much faster is going to provide you some productivity benefit. But for the most part, people aren't in that position. It's not a physical limitation of the tools that they're using. It's a mental limitation because they can't apply the intentionality that they need in order to move the needle. That's where hopefully we can help. Yeah. I mean, sometimes your tools just don't work anymore for whatever reason. And in that case, you got to find the right tool. But in my case, I was just trying, you know what, there's just no way I could justify what I did that day. But, you know, I did it. And I thought I'd share with the audience, you know,

we're all on this journey together. Yep. It's going to happen. You know, nobody's perfect. You're going to be distracted by something. The big thing is not the fact that that happens. I would argue. It's what do you do when that happens? Do you beat yourself up and feel bad about it the rest of the day? Or do you say, well, those three hours gone. Oh, well, I'm going to hit the reset button and I'm going to apply intentionality now. What I did is I had like a moment of realization.

You know, when I realized I had like seven tabs open and I was in a conversation with Brad over at, you know, Pen Addict. I had all this stuff going on and I just realized, suddenly looked at my screen. What are you doing, Sparky? I just laughed at myself. I'm like, ah, you did it again. You did it again. And I think I sent you a message and I added it to the next outline for Focus. So I turned it into something I could talk about on the show.

But yeah, it was just dumb. And, you know, know, I just, I, I, I turned the page and went back to work, but I, I did blow the better part of an afternoon looking for the perfect network. I mean, it's so obvious in hindsight and it's just like, uh, whatever. Anyway, uh, speaking of, um, making fun of myself, I, on the last episode, I have entitled the show after, you know, I think a failure across the board or something like that. People were giving me a hard time in the feedback saying, hey, it wasn't that bad. You had a really successful week for Max Barkey. Don't be so hard on yourself. And you know what?

You're right. Thanks. I do want to be more intentional than when I travel. And one of the best pieces of advice I got was from, let me open the link real quick. Um, well, I don't want to say the name because,

you know, getting in trouble with it in all say it in Mallard, uh, said, Hey, you know, maybe you just weren't paying attention to what you were actually getting done.

And you're just thinking about the stuff, the usual stuff you weren't doing. And that's, that's a good point. I, I want to be more intentional on trips going forward. The net result of that trip was kind of a wake-up call for me. I had one trip in the meantime, but it was only a three-day trip.

And I did a much better job of managing things on that trip. But we'll see. There was also some tips in there for me as I go back and read this. Mentioned that they live in Brazil and a lot of their trips involve like those longer flights with the hours of jet lag. And I feel like I've got more appreciation for that right now. And they mentioned that after years of failed experience, you know, they change their routines. they mentioned that after you use a failed experience, you know, they change their routines.

And I feel like that's something to keep in mind too as you're thinking about the trips that you have to take is that the routines, we didn't really talk about this in pertaining to energy management, but that is one of the ways that you can kind of maximize your energy is create a morning routine that kind of hits all the bases and sets you up for success the rest of the day.

But recognizing that when you travel, all that may get thrown out the window can kind of set you up for success too. If you don't have that expectation that I'm going to do this, that, and the other thing, then you kind of give yourself some grace. And that allows you to go back to your experience, David, because he mentions like maybe send fewer emails, but you got to meet Apple big shots. You got to interview people that you wouldn't normally get to interview. If you don't clear the decks, then those types of things maybe don't get a chance to happen, or you don't recognize those opportunities when they present themselves. Yeah. And I went back and looked at the journal entries I did have for those days. And I think in hindsight, I kind of judged myself poorly because every day I have what I call the daily priority

and it's only one thing every day. It could be enjoying my daughter's play or it could be get a bunch of legal work done. But the days I was up there, the priority was do an excellent interview and make sure I'm present for the keynote and things like that. And I did that stuff.

I actually lived up to my priorities those days. I think what happened was I just, you know, I didn't allocate. I guess that's not the right word. I didn't give myself enough credit. And also, I bit off more than I could chew, thinking I could also get the legal side, you know, keep that on track more than I actually had time for time and energy. Sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, one other thing that we should follow up on is somebody had asked how you went about creating your monthly planner

desktop wallpaper that you talked about in the last episode. They asked if you use OmniGraffle, use OmniGraffle for just about everything. So I'm assuming that you use OmniGraffle. You used OmniGraffle for just about everything. I'm assuming that you used OmniGraffle for that too, right? Yeah, so what I did was, and I will I'm going to put a post up at Max Barkey by the time this episode airs, and I'll put up the template as well, but basically, I take a

flat color for the background of the wallpaper, and then I make an OmniGraffle template that matches the same colors. There's like, in my case, it's a gray square. And then I just wrote, I put it, used additional layers to lay out the months and the actual tasks in text on it.

And I save it as an image, but then I just set it as a centered wallpaper image. I don't use the full size wallpaper, if that makes sense. But since I'm using the exact same color for the square and the background, you can't tell. And that way the text doesn't get like readjusted or mangled, you know, when it tries to adjust the wallpaper to fit and suddenly the kerning or the you see jaggies on the text. So I like to look really clean. I just want it centered. So I'll share a template with that at Max Barkey and we'll have a link in the show notes for that. But I made it an OmniGraffle. You could also do that in preview

if you wanted. I just like OmniGraffle because the alignment guides are so good and I've been using the app forever. Yeah, it is a slick program. It wasn't really hard. And now I can share it because I've outed myself about these next two field guides. I didn't want to disclose those back then, but so you'll see those in there. And the stuff, the projects I have after that, I'm going to take out for the post

because I don't want to commit to that one just yet, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to do after that. But anyway, so I'll put it up and you can download it. And the other thing is I use a custom font. It's a version of Futura about years ago that I really love. So I can't share that because I don't want to get sued. But you can use whatever font. In fact, the one I share, I'll change the font.

So it'll be a system font. So you can just have it running. But I really like it. I'm looking at it right now. And it's really an experiment that stuck for me. Because the way I work, I often use the reference monitor. So a lot of times, I like to clear the decks of the main screen before I start a project. So those monthly goals are staring at me every day. And just as we record this, we've entered July on June 30th. I went,

went back to my Omni Grafell template. I removed June out of July. It helped me a little accountable, but also made me think about, well, what's December and I've updated the wallpaper. So it's working out great. Nice.

All right. So we are the focus podcast. You can find us over relay.fm slash focus. Make sure to check the show notes. If you are at all interested in star Wars, please subscribe to bat to rebel. He's always looking for a few more subscribers and thanks to our sponsors over at Squarespace and hover.

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