Focused - 82: The Hustle

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

In this episode, Mike and David tackle The Hustle. Is that a good thing or bad thing? The hosts also get around to gratitude and virtual help.

Welcome to Focus, a podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. It's another episode of Focus with no guests, so we get to get super nerdy about Focus together today. All right. Let's do it. I'm ready. I'm ready.

Before we do, though, it is September, and September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And we are doing something really special at the Relay Network. It's the very first time St. Jude has partnered with a podcast network. And we're super happy to be part of it. We're both friends with Stephen. We know that his family and Josiah have been dealing with St. Jude for many years. They saved his life, and that's what they do. They take sick children, and they take care of them. And they don't charge you for that. They just take care of sick children. So we want to help them raise money, and this is the place to do it.

We're going to have a bunch of stuff going on at RelayFM. You'll notice that we've got these gold versions of the RelayFM artwork going on later this month and later September. Steven and Mike Hurley are going to do a six-hour, I guess, kind of telethon-style podcast. It's going to be a big deal. I know I'm participating in a little part of it.

I would guess maybe, Mike, you will too. Who knows, right? Maybe. But it's going to a little part of it. I would guess maybe, Mike, you will too. Who knows, right? Maybe. But it's going to be a lot of fun. And the whole idea here is for folks to contribute a little money. The goal of the network is to raise $75,000 for St. Jude. That is a totally obtainable goal. We can do it.

We would really appreciate your help. And if you want to help out and let them know you came from the Focus podcast, just go to stjude.org slash focused. F-O-C-U-S-E-D. We only bought one S, gang. Just focus with one S. So go check it out, donate, and we really appreciate it. Yeah, I just want to add to that.

You may have noticed the new show artwork, which is done in a gold color. That's in support of the St. Jude campaign that we're doing as well. All of the shows on Relay have this gold-looking logo for the month. And I just want to echo that I am super excited to be helping out with this. I just want to echo that I am super excited to be helping out with this. This is one of those things that I am 110% behind. Even before I knew about the St. Jude partnership, even before I knew I was going to be on a part of the Relay family at some point, I was looking up to Stephen and his wife and everything that they had gone

through with Josiah. We'll have a link in the show notes to something that he shared recently, which is a really well-written piece about everything emotionally that they went through in the two years. This was written in 2011 after they found out that their son Josiah had this cancer. And this is pretty heartbreaking stuff when you really think about it. And it's easy to gloss over it, but this article is really well written. There's some great pictures in here. It really makes it real. As a parent myself, when I was reading this stuff and understanding a little bit of what they went through, it really just broke my heart. So I'm very excited that

we're able to help out not just Stephen's family, but tons of other families who wouldn't be able to pay for the care that they need for their kids, but St. Jude provides it anyways. Yeah, it's amazing. And there's such inspiration in the way Stephen and his family just powered through this. You know, I don't know that I would have that strength. And they did it because that's what you do. And I don't know. We're both big fans of the Hackett family.

But this isn't just about the Hackett family. This is about St. Jude helping lots of children. And we really, you know, we do appreciate it. If you've got a little money to spare, you could throw it their way. We'd appreciate it. And once again, that link is stjude.org slash focused. Speaking of Relay, we had the Relay fifth anniversary trip last month.

That was fun. That was a lot of fun. And we, for those who haven't looked at it yet, the video is out of the live show, which was a Family Feud-style game show. Jason Snell was the game show host. He did a great job. Steven and Mike were managing the technical things

and running the scoreboard. There were four different teams, and I was really nervous about participating, but it was a ton of fun, and it was a really cool event. The crowd really got into it. I think there were about 350 people that were there in that theater. So it was great to meet some of the focus listeners. Got some great feedback from the people that I talked to about the show. So thank you, everyone who stopped by and said hi.

I got to see a side of you, Mike, before the show. You really were nervous about it. I was terrified. Yeah, I told somebody, you know, if I had to write a 10-minute speech and give it in front of 400 people, no problem. But the fact that I have to answer these questions on the spot and I have no idea what they are because I did not peek at the survey that went out ahead of time. Yeah. That really made me nervous.

But it wasn't that bad. And it was a ton of fun. Sean Blanc actually was there. He filled in for a couple people who couldn't make it last minute. So he ended up being on my team, which was super cool. And then at one point, Mike and I went against each other. We were standing at the table together. You know, the initial family feud question. Right. You were quicker to the bell than I was. I don't remember what it was. I don't

remember who won it, but I remember us sitting there together like, oh boy, here we are, Mike. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Go check it out. There is a focused angle to it though. You know, first of all, Mike, you were thinking about not going at all and then you decided to go. What was going through your head at that point? I had pretty much decided that it would be cool to go, but I could not afford it. And then I guess my wife was talking to you via email, kind of behind my back, and figuring out some of the details that would need to fall into place in order for this to happen. She also mentioned to me after she had the details that I was thinking

about organizing an overnight getaway for the two of us for your birthday anyways, which was in early September. So we figured out that we could just combine this. I could be a part of the relay event. This could be our getaway. And it was really cool that she was able to share that experience with me. When I go to these types of things or even like Mac stock, there's a lot of people who come up to me and they say, oh, that's so cool that your wife came. I don't think my wife would ever be interested in something like this. And it's not just a male-female thing. It's just the projection, I guess, that the technology crowd, the nerds, there's nothing there for me, you know? And I have to say that my wife's experience has been nothing but amazing with that community. And at first she was a little bit apprehensive about, well, I don't want to come to Mac stock with you because I don't think I'm going to get

anything out of it. Those really aren't my people. But she kind of discovered that even though she doesn't consider herself a nerd, even though she's not a techie and obsessed with this Apple hardware and software stuff like I am, that those really are her people just because everybody is so amazingly nice. So on one level, it was awesome that I was able to go and my wife was able to be there with me. It's important to me, especially given where I live, where I don't have this type of community just around me all the time, that I'm able to share this with somebody

that is close to me on a day-to-day basis. We get on the mic and we talk, and that's awesome. But you're in California, I'm in Wisconsin. We don't get to see each other all that often. So having somebody close that I can share this stuff with is really great. And then also,

if I would have just bought into the stigma that she's not going to be interested in this and not even asked her, that would have been a limiting belief, I guess. And I would just challenge people who think that there's people close to you who maybe wouldn't be interested in this stuff. Chances are, once they get exposed to it, that they'll like it as much as you do. They're probably not going to nerd out about it quite as much. The way my wife judges if she's going to go with me on a tech trip is if Hamilton is playing in the city that we're going to. I think that's her criteria. When I met Rachel the first time in MaxDoc 2018, I'll tell you, my perspective was

she's here to make sure this new guy that her husband is podcasting with isn't a complete doofus that's that was my impression there may have been an aspect of that i can't well you know i'm sorry to disappoint her um the uh but you know something else you said to me that i thought was interesting was you know about just your revelation about, you know, that trip and your thoughts about it afterward. Yeah, well, that's really the thing that Rachel realized and that I realized again after being there is that relay people equals good people. And a lot of the people in the Apple community, that is true of also.

So while I was there, it was awesome getting to hang out with you and getting to meet some people on the network that I hadn't been able to meet before. We had dinner and I chatted for quite a while with David Smith, underscore. I got to know Brad Dowdy of The Pen Addict. And lots of people like that. Casey List, I met for the first time. Lots of people who I knew of them and I'd interacted

with them on the Relay Slack, but I'd never met them in person. To me, it extends even beyond the hosts of the shows, but I'll just use that as my frame of reference, because that's really who we hung out with while we were there. We kind of had an agenda being part of this show. So we kind of were all at the same places at the same time. And when I was leaving, I was reflecting, you know, we're waiting in the airport to board the plane back from San Francisco to Wisconsin. And I'm reflecting on the whole event and I kind of was like overwhelmed by how awesome it was and also like appalled at the fact that I was even considering not going in the first place. And I know I'm fresh off of the experience at that point, but I think the revelation still holds true that the thing that's really important to me is not the things and not even necessarily the experiences, but it's the people that you would experience those things with.

You really can't put a price tag on the relationships that were built and strengthened during my time while I was there, even though it was only like a 48-hour period. We flew in Wednesday, we got in late afternoon, and we left early Friday morning. early Friday morning. So not even 48 hours, but I feel like it did something inside of me that's going to carry on long after I've returned to Wisconsin and the snow falls and we're in the middle of our polar vortex and sunny San Francisco is just a distant dream. The connections that you make, that's the thing really, as I was reflecting on this, I realized that that's what I need to prioritize. I need to not just get to the relay thing, not just get to max stock, but constantly be looking for those opportunities to build those connections with people. Because even being introverted like I am, that's the thing that

really means a lot to me. Well, and I think that's kind of the payoff, right? We talk so much on this show about cutting things out of your life and getting focused and bringing that intentionality to bear every day. And I think when you can, that gives you that opportunity to go to things like that and engage. And we're talking about this in relation to a podcast party, in essence. But I think this applies to the day job. There are things you can do on your day job that you should not feel like going to that conference is a drag. It should be an opportunity.

It should be something where you can build those relationships. It's not a bad thing, but you have to, we get so stuck on the treadmill that we don't realize that. We don't have time to think about what an opportunity those things can be. And I guess you just kind of got reminded of that. Yeah. And it applies beyond the conferences, in my opinion. Like one example, practical, personal example with my family is this one-on-one thing that I do once a week with my kids. Basically, the gist of this is a couple of years ago, my wife and I were talking and I had the revelation that if I wanted to have a platform in my kids' lives when they're older, I needed to start building it now. And the way that I was going to do that is I was going to spend intentional time with each one of them. Now we've got five kids, so it gets a little bit harder. But once a week, basically, the person that I take to coffee rotates, but I'm going to spend at least an hour once a week, just one-on-one with one of my kids. going to spend at least an hour once a week, just one-on-one with one of my kids. And they really look forward to that stuff. I know how much that means to them, but I can find myself in the busyness of the day-to-day saying, you know, maybe I should just skip it this week because I have

this project that I need to do. But the projects aren't the important thing. So I need to remind myself regularly that the thing I want to be intentional about is the relationships, whether that is prioritizing family over the day job or figuring out a way to make a trip work that I don't think fits into my schedule. work that I don't think fits into my schedule. The truth of the matter is you can make those things work. It just will take some planning and some organization. But if you identify that this is the thing that's really important to you and this is what you want to be intentional about, then it's worthwhile. Yeah. And that really plays into something we're going to talk about later in the show today about hustle. But I think the intentionality there is just so key. Well, I'll tell you, before we move on, I got something out of this trip as well. I've talked on this show and just to friends offline for years about how I always screw up when it comes to a trip.

You work twice as hard before you leave, and you work twice as hard when you get back, and you feel like, you know, for a week or two that you're just behind the eight ball. I finally, Mike, did something, and it's obvious. I mean, when I say this, a lot of people listening are going to be, like, laughing because I'm making a big deal about it. But I scheduled a recovery day. I just had never got around to doing that before. So when I planned this trip out,

I blocked off the Monday after we came back as recovery day. And so as we were leading up to the trip and people wanted to have phone conferences and meetings and other things, I said no to all that stuff. And I came back, I had one day to do nothing but just catch up with email and just kind of get things resorted. Even though it was a short trip, I was only gone a couple days. You still suffer when you do that. And I had a day to get caught up on everything.

And it was glorious. First of all, I'm proud of you. Good job. Second of all, I think what you just shared is really important that even when it's only a couple of days, the tendency can be to project that, oh, it's not going to be that bad. I don't really need this. And recognizing that it's going to be worse than you're anticipating is really important. And regardless of whether you are coming back from two weeks or two days, I think this is a really important system type thing that you can add, which is just going to make everything easier. I'm really glad that you were able to do it. I'm kind of curious how difficult it was for you to work around keeping that day clear. You mentioned people wanted to schedule things and you just told, nope.

Did you find that they were pushing back when you did that? And they were kind of upset that you weren't going to be available? Or did they respect your boundaries? And it really wasn't as bad as you thought. The most difficult person to deal with was the inner me, the little guy inside my brain who said, oh, I shouldn't, you know, I was too timid to not even want to say that to people. It's like, I didn't want to say, oh yeah, it's my recovery day. I'm sorry, I can't do it then. And in fact, I'd never said that. I

just said, no, I'm not available that day. I didn't explain why. But nobody gave me any pushback on it, but I was giving myself tons of pushback. And then even a few days before we left, there was a big thing I need to work on for a client, and I knew there was no way I'd get it done in San Francisco. I'm saying, well, I'll just block three hours on that Monday, and I'll get it done. I'm sure I can do it. And then I said, wait, wait, wait. You're already doing it. So it wasn't even an appointment with another person. I was going to give myself a three-hour engagement, which I wouldn't have had time for, you know. And, but for a few minutes, I think I even had it on the Monday calendar until I moved

it to Tuesday. And you know what? It got done on Tuesday and everything was fine. But if I had done it on Monday, I would have been behind on email and other stuff. And so I would have been back in this thing for a week feeling uncomfortable because there are things that are not handled. So the biggest form of resistance came from myself. And I've had success with it. Now I just need to keep doing it. We have a vacation plan later this year. I've already booked the day after I come back as recovery day.

And I think it's just like so often, let's turn this into a habit now. You know, I've done it once. Now I need to do it twice. And I just need to start doing it every time. And the trick is for me, number one, when you book the trip, when you put the time on your calendar that you're going to be gone and you buy your plane tickets or whatever, book the recovery day right then. I don't care if it's a year away, do it. Book the recovery day at the same time. And the second thing is don't listen to that little insecure inner voice that

tells you you have to work that day on other stuff too. Yeah, that's great advice. I also want to touch on, you shared that the biggest critic was inner you. Yeah. And I struggle with that too. One of the things that I have learned the hard way, and I still find myself tempted to do this, but when someone asks if I can do something, I don't have to give them an explanation. I can just say, no, I have the ability and the right to do that. nation, I can just say no. I have the ability and the right to do that. And obviously there's some dependencies on the specifics of the relationship and the person that's asking

you to do it. If it's a boss that's asking you to do something, maybe you can't tell them, no, I'm not going to do that. No, I get that. But for the most part, we're our own worst enemy when it comes to this stuff. And I find myself even now when someone asks me if I can do something, trying to say no and then filling in the blank with the excuse. I have to catch myself and just force myself to stop after the no. But you project that people are going to request that explanation, and sometimes they do, but more often they don't. And you can just learn to say no, and it will give you a lot more freedom. Yeah. I think one of the benefits of a meditation practice, because you listen, the idea of meditation, honestly, is really listening to

that inner voice and realizing what a liar it is. But once you start to acknowledge that the inner voice quite often is a malicious agent, it gets easier to not listen to that person. It's like, you know, when they used to do on TV shows, they'd have like the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder. You know, I think with the reality is there's one person in your head that wants to do good for you, that wants you to do good. And there's another one in there that's just a complete jackass. You've got to not listen to that jackass. But anyway. He's the guy that wants you to keep hustling. Yeah, exactly. I like how you did that.

This episode of Focus is brought to you by Blinkist. Read 3,000 plus books in 15 minutes or fewer. Start your free seven-day trial with the link in the show notes, blinkist.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. So what is Blinkist? It's an app that you can put on your phone and it's one of the most useful things you can have. It has all these great books to help you make yourself better.

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That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T, Blinkist.com slash focused to start your free seven-day trial. I just listened to Atomic Habits again because I think that's when I've got to really drill in. And I'm going to get that 25% off at Blinkist.com slash focused. But only when you sign up at that URL. Our thanks to Blinkist for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. All right, Mike, I have a little war story to share with you. All right, let's hear it.

So I just, as this book, I'm sorry, as this podcast gets published, I'm on the verge of publishing the new Shortcuts Field Guide. Real happy with it. 106 videos, like six hours of content on shortcuts. A lot of work. So I've been working really hard. There was a little family kind of getaway thing going on

that I didn't go on. My wife and kids went without me. And I stayed home and worked. And I've been working weekends and nights and a lot for the last two or three weeks. This is a big project. And I was talking to my daughter and she's like, man, dad, you've been working really hard on this. And I said, yeah, it's all about the hustle. You got to hustle. And I was thinking of it as a teaching moment. As the words came out of my mouth, you know how words spill out of your mouth and you're like, what did I just do? Yeah. And I realized in my head, Mike, as much as I rail against busy and the cult of busy, I am doing something similar with the word hustle. Yeah. It just shows that nobody is immune to this stuff.

You can easily find yourself in a position you didn't plan on being in. Now, I do need to throw out a disclaimer here because I actually have a book with hustle in the title. Yeah, I know. That's the elephant in the room here. I would argue that I tried to define hustle a little bit different in that book. In fact, at one point, I was talking to somebody who is a New York Times bestselling author, and he was telling me that that's a big buzz right now, and people would be interested

in that book because it would kind of help them reclaim the term from the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world where that's typically what people think of when they think of hustle is always working always grinding and surviving on three hours of sleep every single night and I just want to say right now that I am completely against that definition so I'm with you we're talking about the same thing. We'll get into the semantics in a little bit. Yeah, it is. But it's funny because I have trained myself to really avoid being busy and trying to get control. But then it's like I gave a typical lawyer, I gave myself a backdoor. I gave myself a contract exception with the word hustle, you know, a backdoor. I gave myself like a contract exception with the word hustle,

which is, as I use it, almost exactly the same thing as being busy. Yeah. And I think for most people, it is exactly the same thing as being busy. The definition that I use and the way that I define it, I think kind of puts it in a little bit different light with more of an intentionality focus. But I totally understand that this is just my definition and I have long lost the battle for what hustle means in the eyes of most people. As I sit here, I almost think that hustle is an affect and busy is an effect. Does that make sense? I feel like, uh, what'd you explain a little bit?

Hustle is something that you almost embrace. Oh, I'm going to embrace the hustle. I'm going to hustle. I'm going to make it happen. I know that I'm going to work harder than the next guy. And because of that, I'm going to succeed.

That that's like, that's an intention. Whereas busy is what happens to you. I wake up and I suddenly realize I'm too busy. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's a fair way to put it. Yeah, and there is a mindset around hustle that it's a good thing,

that working this hard is a good thing. And I must have somehow picked a little bit of that up. I literally didn't realize I was thinking that way until I heard the words come out of my mouth. I had to verbalize it for it to hit. But, you know, it's funny because it's just the opposite. This field guide has been a massive project. I've logged over 130 hours making this thing.

And by the way, if you like shortcuts, go to maxbarkey.com. It'll be out like the day go to maxbarkey.com. It'll be out the day after this thing publishes. Either way, so I put a bunch of time in it, but it's time on a project that had a hard deadline. Since I got out of the litigation business, I haven't had a lot of hard deadlines like this, but I wanted to have this out before Apple releases iOS 13. And the whole conversation with my daughter and just kind of catching myself saying that caused me to do a fair amount of introspection about what

I've done in my life. It's like, I intentionally got out of the area of life where I make the most money. Litigation attorneys make way more money than people who write contracts. And I gave up that money because I wanted to get off the busy slash, you know, crazy, uncontrollable schedule lifestyle. I just didn't have it in me anymore to do that. But I feel like, and so now I jumped on it again for this one field guide, but this is kind of an an exception the next field guy i do is not going to have an apple imposed deadline on it so it's this is a famous last words my friend well we'll see but i mean i can tell you like with the keyboard maestro one we were working it i wasn't happy where it was we pushed it back a week and it was fine nothing yep the world didn't end but with, I don't have that extra week. I can't do

that. I want to have it out on the first day. So anyway, but getting back to it, I was thinking, I don't think even though, you know, I talk about it on a podcast and I've written in my journal about it, I don't think I fully embrace the idea that I've removed a lot of deadlines out of my life compared to what I used to have. And with, you know, am I making the most out of adding intentionality to my life or am I secretly just hustling more and not really being as intentional about it as I'd like to be? And, you know, once I really started thinking about it, I realized that indeed I have not kind of got the full benefit of that decision to give up that extra money and be more intentional with my life. It was a real eye-opener for me.

It's kind of funny how you stumble into these things. But I realized that, no, I have not been as intentional as I'd like to be. And I still am embracing the cult of busy a little bit more than I feel comfortable. Yeah. So if I can redefine this, you tell me if this is accurate to what you just described. Busy feels like I am just running from thing to thing and I have no control over what I do. Hustle is I'm running from thing to thing, but at least I'm the one who's causing the busyness. Yeah. And like busy, it almost becomes a point of pride. Yep. It's like, I can stop anytime that I want, but I don't. There's a Disney movie. I don't remember the name of it. It's the one

where the animals, it's the little rabbit police lady. I forget what the movie is. Zootopia. Zootopia. And at some point she approaches, because we watched it together as a family, the fox has this really, he has this scheme where he gets a big popsicle,

he turns it into a bunch of little ones, and he sells them. And she approaches him and he says, it's called the hustle baby, or something like that, you know? Yep. And in my family, every time one of us gets really busy, we've always said that to each other since that movie came out. Oh, it's called the hustle.

Hey, you're working real hard. It's called the hustle. I'm like, I don't, you know, I feel like I got off one treadmill and I'm putting myself on another one. So it really, I don't know, maybe this is silly and just semantics, like you say, but it's really caused me to stop and think a lot about some of the things I'm doing.

Yeah, well, there's another aspect to what you just shared too, where hustle in that sense can also mean like a scam. And as we talked about, I forget which episode it was, but we had one called, Can't Cheat the System. Basically, there are no shortcuts to this. So pushing really hard on something may feel like a cheat code. But the truth of it is that if you continue to do that, you're going to burn out.

Yeah. There's no avoiding that. At some point, it is going to happen. But I personally think that hustle, traditionally, as people think about it, it is synonymous with busy, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. So the definition that I use, and I kind of unpack this in Faith-Based Productivity specifically, the book itself, I want to go back and update because I've got some different mental models that I've developed about how I think about this stuff since I wrote it. But the definition that I use is to force to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction. And on the surface, if you just hear

that definition, it probably sounds pretty similar to busy, but I think you can kind of unpack that into three separate parts. So first is the specified direction. That's kind of like where you want to end up, your vision, your ideal future, whatever term you want to insert there, having an idea for the destination that you want to end up at. And then you've got the middle part, which is the moving hurriedly or unceremoniously. Hurriedly definitely sounds a lot like being busy. I think hurriedly is kind of a byproduct, though, of knowing what you want and working towards achieving it. It doesn't mean that you have to be hurried all of the time, but there will be seasons like your Shortcuts Field Guide where you will have to push down on the gas a little bit

more when something is really important to you. I think that's completely fine. But the more important takeaway is the unceremoniously. And this is where I really take issue with a lot of this stuff that people think about hustle because typically it's attributed in the productivity space to people like Gary Vaynerchuk. And Gary Vaynerchuk is very public, although from what I understand and know of him, even now, he would probably say, if you were to talk to him about hustle, you know, that's not what I meant. hustle, that's not what I meant. He's just so driven by the vision and people look at the lifestyle, the work, that's the third part of this, the movement, that's what people see. And then they're like, oh, that's the part I'm going to replicate. But if you never stop to think about how effective you're being with that part, then it really makes no difference in the world. It's exactly the same as being busy and having no control about where you want to end up. But there is a formula, I believe, in here which you can apply without running at a breakneck

pace all of the time. And that is starting with division or the destination that you want to end up at, and then figuring out the route that you are going to take. And then once you know where you want to go and how you're going to get there, do you get in the car and you actually drive? You can just get in the car and start driving. And if you know the general direction that you're going, maybe you'll get there eventually. If I were to get in the car now and just head west, maybe eventually I'd end up at David Sparks' house. If I were to get in the car now and just head west, maybe eventually I'd end up at David Sparks' house.

But if I don't know the route that I'm going to take, even if I were to eventually get there, it's going to take me a lot longer and I'm going to be distracted. I'm going to end up going in the wrong direction at some point. That's where I believe hustle can be beneficial, when it is something that you are using to check where you're going and why you're doing it. But if you just use it to mean like, I've always got to be doing something, then that's not healthy. Agreed. Well, the strange thing is I'm actually a lot closer to my destination than I ever was. You know, I'm doing much better at figuring out I get this much time,

you know, block scheduling. And some of the stuff I've been doing has made a big difference for me being able to keep my day contained and not have work take over everything. But I feel like for this last mile or so, you know, whatever they call it, what's the last mile?

I've got to throw the idea or at least this traditional concept of hustle like, oh, yeah, I need to be hustling all the time. I need to throw that overboard and get even more vicious about working smarter than harder and figure out what are the pieces left that I still shouldn't be doing. left that I still shouldn't be doing? How do I get this manageable to where I can produce content and also handle the scaled back law practice and also eat dinner with my family, watch a movie once in a while, not have times where I have to stay home and work where they go on trips without me because of that. I need to work on that some more. But I can see the destination. And I do think for me, this traditional concept of hustle was something I was carrying around inside me that I didn't even realize. Yeah.

Well, it's easy to, especially if you have a considerable amount of control over how you spend your time the tendency can be to always be working on something and like i said if there are seasons where you make some adjustments because you have this firm deadline of i want this thing to be out before ios 13 ships then you can be okay with that choice of sorry sorry, gang, I'm not going to be there for dinner. I'm not going to be able to go to the family thing. But you have to weigh those decisions against that vision of the destination. And it could be something that's short-term. It could be something that's long-term. I don't think it really makes a difference,

but the danger is in when you default to, I've got more work to do, which is very, very easy to do for a couple of reasons. Number one, I just read this book, Range, by David Epstein. And it basically challenges the traditional belief that you have to pick something and start at it very young if you really want to be good at something. So an example of this is like Tiger Woods, where there's a lot of video about he's walking around in a diaper and his dad is teaching him how to putt. And so people think there's kind of a selection bias there. Well, if I want to be really, really good, this is what Tiger Woods did. This is what I should do. But he compares that with other people who are really, really good at things like Roger Federer, who's kind of a Michael Jordan of tennis.

And he didn't pick it up until high school. He was doing a bunch of different things. He played soccer for a while. And then he finally found his thing and he was, and then he kind of committed to it. So that's number one is we feel like we're already behind because somebody started earlier than we did. make a decision that I'm going to stick to this deadline, this is more important in the short term than being at every family dinner or going to this one family event, the tendency can be to repeat that pattern. So if you're making that choice for this specific season, and then I'm going back to my default being, I'm absolutely not working during these family things because that's what I've decided is important to me and that's always going to come first. If that's the rule instead of the exception, that's completely fine. But once you start doing it once, then it's easier to do

it again. And in this range book, he also talks about how the more involved you are with something, how the more involved you are with something, the more confident you feel in predicting the success of the thing. So a lot of these big construction projects, for example, it's kind of famous in the Scrum book. They talk about how if you just say, I want to do this thing and you plan everything out, you end up going over budget and it ends up taking way longer. And I was thinking to myself, is it really as simple as just switching to a different system like Scrum? That doesn't seem right. These people know what they're doing. How can they not account for this? And in Range, they basically share how once you really know how something works, you kind of are overconfident that you're able to overcome all of the obstacles.

So for you, this is not your first video course, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you're sitting down and you're saying, okay, 106 videos, this should take so many hours. And you feel like that's a padded estimate because you've projected for the worst case scenarios. But then when you sit down to do it anyways, it's still going to be worse than you thought. It's that inner David, inner Mike that you mentioned earlier, that guy is a jerk. He's going to screw you if you're not careful. A lot of times you don't even realize it because you think you know better, but you don't. Yeah, and I don't really have regrets about working really hard to get this thing done

and putting in some long hours for a while. The thing that the shocking part for me was when I heard the words come out, I realized that I had inside of me, still a part of me, like a point of pride that I hustle, that I'm going to hustle. I'm going to do extra work. I'm going to work harder than the next guy. I'm going to put more stuff in. And I was like, well, that's not something I want to do. I mean, I want to be smarter about the way I work. I want to enjoy life too. Yeah. That's not a point point of pride that is something you've got to do because you were an idiot yeah exactly make up for it something i it's something negative consequence

you want to avoid in the future right exactly like i i had three months i could have probably done this better you know um anyway so uh you know as we say so often, this is a continuing journey for all of us. Me more than you sometimes, I think. Everybody struggles with this stuff. And really, it's just adjust and repair. I go back and I listen to even the episodes that we've recorded of Focus since we moved it over from free agents. And I can see these cycles of things where I'll say something and I'll really believe it at the time. And then I'll stumble and fall. And then I've got to reevaluate. And if I would just go back and listen to my previous self, I already know the answers, but it's not a knowledge problem. It's

an application problem. Yeah. Yeah. 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, more importantly, to determine how much you really worked. Is how you're spending your time lining up with how you think you're spending your time? You need to stay on top of this stuff and you need an app to help you stay on top of your time. But manual time tracking can be a pain and it can interrupt your workflow. And that's why I like timing. Timing is different because it automates your time tracking, saves you as much

time as possible, and makes sure that your data is accurate. It automatically tracks how you spend your time on your Mac, and it's broken down by app, website, or even document. So if you're going to write something in Ulysses, you can see how much time you spent on that specific sheet. Timing's functionality is similar to iOS 12 screen time, but for your Mac, and it eliminates the manual tracking and adjustments that you typically would do. Those are still possible with Timing's automated approach, but you don't have to fiddle with that stuff. Plus, it looks awesome in dark mode. So you're using Timing for a while, which you end up with can be a lot of data to work through, but Timing lets you use drag and drop to create rules, so your time gets categorized automatically. It'll also make suggestions to

fill in gaps in your timeline so you never forget to track a meeting, for example. It can even automatically ask you what you did whenever you return to your Mac. And with the automatic sync feature, your track time will magically appear across all of your Macs. So even when you work on the go with your MacBook, you'll have the full picture on your iMac once you get home. The thing that I really like about timing, and I can't emphasize this enough, is that it tracks your time automatically. I am a big believer in time tracking. I tried it for many years and tried to do it starting and stopping timers like a lot of those other services. But I never could remember to start and stop my timers. I would start a timer for travel to the

co-working space and then forget to turn it off until two hours later when I had been working on a big project. And now I've got a whole bunch of data that doesn't really mean anything. So being able to just install timing, turn it on and let it go, that provided me much more accurate data. And I don't look at that data every single day. But what I do is I go look at that every once in a while just to make sure that I'm on track. We talk a lot about intentionality and focus. I want to make sure that how I think I'm spending my time is lining up with how I actually spend my time. And timing makes that super easy to do. Timing is so confident you will love their fuss-free approach that they offer a

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Another thing that came up in the members-only episode, the hijack episode, was this idea of gratitude. And this is something my wife mentioned, and I knew this was going to be a topic that we should unpack on Focused. And I really think that coming right off of the members special, this might be a great time to do that. Yeah. I had a listener write me months ago. I'm not going to try and dig it out, but she had said that the reason why it's so easy for us to ignore the

good and get hung up on the bad, I think we had mentioned about one negative review versus 100 good reviews that you remember the one negative is it goes back to our caveman ancestors you know caveman sparky he didn't admire he couldn't admire the grassy plane because he was worried about the saber-toothed tiger hiding in it to kill him right right and and that we've carried that forward and that's why we always are pulled towards the negative that's why i feel like the news is covered the way the news is. I feel like that's why the advertising on the internet is done the way advertising. I mean, so much of the world is explained through the lens of the fact that humans are naturally more

attracted to the negative than the positive. And I think that's something that we have to address. I think that's something that we have to address. Yeah, it's one of those defaults. I believe it was Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. He kind of unpacks the current news and political climate and basically connects the dots from where we were a while back to where we are today. And there's a lot of details in there that I'm not going to dive into. But basically, you look at the situation we're in, and you see the Congress people and senators, and they show up for their meetings, and they yell at each other, and it's us against them. It didn't used to be that way. And there's a couple things that have

happened procedurally where, again, Simon Sinek would argue that that kind of led to this climate where we dehumanize the other people who are on the other side. So we feel like we're constantly in combat with people who don't share our thoughts, opinions, ideals. And then you mirror that with the changing regulations about what you have to show on the news. It used to be that you had to share contrary opinion pieces and you could only have a certain percentage of stories that were negative and you had to share positive stories. But those things were relaxed and bad news sells. That's the way that we're wired. So we have this culture where that's constantly what is going in. And garbage in, garbage out. If you're not careful and you don't

set up any sort of constraints around consuming this type of stuff, it's very easy to see how that bleeds over into the other aspects of your life. Personally, that's why I don't watch the news. I'm on Twitter. That's the only social media that I'm on. And the trends basically are enough for me to have a pulse on what is going on in the world. And you could make the argument that I should be better informed. But to be honest, in the day to day, I don't need the negativity. I don't want it. So that's just a fence that I've put up to protect as much as I can my positive attitude. But gratitude is the other piece to that where even if you do find yourself in a negative situation, a negative mental state, there are things that you can do to change that mental state.

Yeah. I mean, and that's kind of where I was going. So you're in this climate where negative stuff is thrown at you constantly. And it's not just on the news. I mean, it's even in the workplace. And I think one way you can take control of this is to stop and notice the good things. Because there's a lot of good things happening to all of us. Honestly, I mean, if you're in a position where you have enough free time to listen to a podcast, you know, and you've probably got food on the table every day, there's a lot to be grateful for. And we need to stop and do that. I think it can really change the way you look at your life, and it can change your ability to get things done too, honestly.

Yes, definitely. I know I've shared this before, but I just want to real briefly touch on the idea of the gap versus the gain. This is something I picked up from Dan Sullivan, and it's exactly what you're talking about. Really the comparison to people who we consider to have more or better things than we do. And this is something my wife and I are kind of going through right now is just challenging all of those defaults, all of those traditional beliefs and figuring out for ourselves, what are the things that are really important to us? Going all the way back to the things we were talking about at the beginning of the show with my revelation about the things that matter. The fancy car, the big house, maybe that stuff is

really important to you, but don't just assume that it is and try to keep up with the Joneses. So this gap versus gain idea, really what it comes down to is we have this idea for where we want to be. We have a goal in mind. So we start moving towards that goal. And after a while, we get discouraged because we feel like we should be further along than we are. And all we see before us is how far we've got to go. That's the gap. But where something like journaling comes in and can really provide a benefit is you look at where you started and then where you are. And now, instead of looking at how far you have to go and you're upset because you're not getting anywhere, you look back and you say, wow, I've actually come quite a bit. I've grown quite a bit over the last six months, year, whatever. And that's the gain.

So recognizing that the positive things, what that does is it really switches your focus from the gap to the gain. Instead of the things that you don't have, it makes you grateful for the things that you do have. And one of the most powerful ways that you can instantly change that focus, in my opinion, is to verbally express gratitude to people. There's a Mark Twain quote, comparison is the death of joy. Yeah, it's so true. So let's talk about that. So gratitude was something I hadn't really thought about in terms of my own personal development much. But when I decided to take on, in like January of 2018, I got serious

about journaling every day. And gratitude just sprung out of that. It wasn't reading it in a book or hearing it on a podcast. It's just I found myself writing about things I was grateful for at the end of the day. And I'll tell you, that's one of the big benefits of journaling for me. I mean, to me, the two are very much tied together, the idea of journaling and gratitude. Yeah. And if you are just starting to do something like that, you might be surprised at how difficult that really is. It just shows you how entrenched that negativity is. When you sit down and you're answering a prompt like, what are you grateful for right now? And you're like, do I have anything to be grateful

for? But once you do it for a while, you recognize that you have a lot of things to be grateful for and it starts to flow. That's my experience anyways. Do you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. It's never been a challenge for me. I'm very fortunate. Yeah. Gratitude is kind of a muscle that you have to develop. Yeah. But having a place to write it down. And I didn't mention it earlier. When you had talked about you were reflecting on the relay trip at the airport, one of the things I do now is whenever I take a trip, whether it's a vacation or a work-related trip, I journal on the flight home about the trip. And particularly with kind of work-related stuff, I think about

what was good about it, what was bad about it. I even like ask myself the question at the end, would I do this again? You know, and I feel like that's the best time to do that. And then if someone asks you you like you go speak somewhere and you write down about then they ask you to come speak two years later i go read that entry i can get a better idea of whether i should say yes or not you know um and the gratitude thing works the same way it's like when i finish something particularly interesting and i'm just feeling warm and fuzzy i will sit down and write about it. I mean, it might be an afternoon spent with one of my daughters. It may be the release of a project I've been working on. You know, it may be just a heartfelt conversation with a good

friend and I hang up the phone and I'll pick up and write about gratitude about it. And like I said, I know there's some books about this stuff. I haven't read any of them, but it just kind of started for me when I started journaling. I found writing about this stuff and it sets a mood in me that feels really good. And I think it puts me in a good space to, to be productive with my work, but also be a more pleasant person to be around. Yeah. From a productivity perspective specifically, happy people are productive people, however you define productivity. But I would argue that I agree with the second part of that, that really the more important thing is not what you get done, but the type of person that you become. And again, you can define for yourself the things that are important,

the character traits that you wish to have. But I have not met a single person who has said, you know, I wish that I was more cynical or negative, and I could just think more poorly about people and things. Usually it's the opposite. You know, I'm so consumed by this negativity. I tend to see the things that could go wrong, and I have trouble just appreciating the simple little things. And I'm no different. I mean, that's why the gratitude practice, the verbally expressing it, that's been kind

of a big revelation for me. And for me, it's made me more mindful of when I start to fall off the wagon on this stuff and I see it in myself and then I have an opportunity to fix that. But Mike, let's say somebody is listening to us and as we're talking about being grateful and gratitude journals, how do you get started at this if you've never done it before? Well, with a gratitude journaling practice, the simple thing would be to just add a prompt or get a journal. There's lots of pre-printed journals that have this built in. Something like the five-minute journal even would work. But force yourself to answer that question of what am I grateful for? But really for me, the multiplication effect happens when you express

that gratitude to other people. So the thing that I would challenge people to do is whether it is a phone call or even something simple like a text message send a message to somebody expressing gratitude for something that they've done or just who they are and what they mean to you and see what kind of impact that has not only on you but on the other other person. Agreed. Agreed. I think it starts internally, but it ultimately has to be external as well. Like if you've not done it before and you don't have to go buy fancy paper and a pen, you could do it in a text file on your computer. But at least once a day, I am grateful for. And if at the beginning you're having struggles, say, I'm grateful for

the chocolate sundae I had today after lunch. Keep it simple. That's what it is. But just make a habit of it. One of the things I do is I actually write about being grateful in the morning, the first thing in the morning, and then I also do it at the end of the day when I shut down my day. But it's expanded for me into other, like I said earlier, other contexts. When something happens and I'm feeling particularly happy about it, I'll sit down and write about it. The external part, though, is the multiplier. That's honestly where the magic happens, because you can be in a state where you don't feel

grateful for anything. And if you had to just sit down and write something down, it would be really hard for you to find something that you are grateful for to answer that prompt with. But when you build in systems where you are forcing yourself to express to somebody else gratitude, that can snap you out of that negative state. So just give you an example. My wife and I have this thing that we do and we need to get better at it. This is, again, one of those things where we know the value of this thing, we practice it, but we can let it slip. And we have this thing where on our date nights, we usually will wrap it up with expressing verbally gratitude to the other person for something that happened in the last week.

And there have been times, I'll tell them myself, okay, I'm not going to project this onto my wife, but me personally, there will be times when I am just so upset at the things that did not happen. All the ways that I in the moment feel like she let me down sort of a thing, you know, because we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge other people by their actions. And so it's easy to project, oh, they did this on purpose, right? Yeah. Well, when you have this system built in where this is what we do on Tuesday nights and a system within a system where I have to pick something that I have to express gratitude for, just the act of me verbalizing something, not only does it lift her up and it builds her up and ultimately, I guess marriage advice, the way that you treat the other person, that kind of creates the person that you're married to in a sense. I guess somebody would say it this way, if you want a queen, you got to treat her like a queen. Well, I also think that's not just marriage advice. That applies to the people you work with the people you see every

day i mean yep exactly exactly you have to give people basically the benefit of the doubt see the good in the people that's kind of what gratitude forces you to do and again this is on my marriage context because that's kind of where our system is built in but you know i i force myself to do that not only does it build her up, but instantly it changes my attitude. I challenge you, next time you are in a negative state and you're just consumed by all the things that are going wrong, express gratitude to somebody. And if you really want the expert level of this, express gratitude to the person maybe who caused the situation. Find something good and verbalize it. That's the important piece. Verbalize it and see what it does. I've heard it said, I find it's kind of hard to believe, but it's totally been my experience,

that it is impossible to express gratitude and remain negative and bitter like that. And I don't, it just doesn't seem like that would be true, that there would be a way around that, that you could fake it somehow. But I haven't figured that out yet. Well, it's funny because I'm just the opposite. To me, it has to start in the heart.

So the idea of journaling and creating and quantifying my gratitude and then carrying that to a conversation with somebody, that's usually how it works for me. But either way, I know this is all hippy-dippy, but it works. I guess this is what I would say. And if you're listening and rolling your eyes, try it for a week or two. You might be surprised. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Squarespace.

This episode of Focus is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. So if you're going to make your next move with Squarespace, what are you going to build on the web? Maybe you want to make an online store, a portfolio, or a blog. You can do all of that stuff with Squarespace, getting a unique domain and using their award-winning templates to create your own custom website. Squarespace is just that. It's an all-in-one platform that allows you to build your website. You don't have to install anything.

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the way I wanted. I love that about Squarespace. The other thing I like about it is it just always runs. Sometimes I get linked by a big website, get a lot of traffic, doesn't matter. Squarespace keeps the thing running. And I don't have to worry about, you know, making sure my upgrades have, or my plugins have the latest upgrade. And, you know, I just don't do to worry about, you know, making sure my upgrades have, or my plugins have the latest upgrade. And, you know, I just don't do any of that stuff. Squarespace takes care of it all for me. And Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can start a trial with no credit card required

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Thank you, Squarespace, for your support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. All right, Mike, we had some feedback. We did. So the first thing here is a question from WVU Mountaineer, who was listening to a recent Bookworm episode that Joe Bulig and I did on Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek. Got thoughts on that book, but did like the idea of using a virtual assistant to do things that were in line with designing the life that I wanted to lead. I used a specific example in there, I think of something like a Disney vacation, because you and I had been talking about that. And that's the kind of thing where like,

I'll put off the research on where to go, where to stay. And I know you're the expert. So I would talk to you first anyways. But that just as an example of the type of thing that I might be able to have somebody else do that research for me. And maybe that translates into the thing actually happening. So the question here specifically was if anybody had any experience with a service called Zirtual. And Zirtual has been around for a while. They kind of made news several years ago when they kind of abruptly folded and then almost overnight came back. It's a US-based virtual assistant company where everybody I believe has been college educated and really the thing about Zirtual is that you can assign pretty much anything to it, but it also is a little bit expensive. I think the plan started almost

$300 for 12 hours per month. So almost $30 an hour for an assistant, which sounds like a lot of money. And I wanted to pick your brain on this because working with a virtual assistant has been something I tried a long time ago and failed miserably at. But I believe you've done this to some degree where you have some people helping you out with hustle and having a little more sanity in my life, the takeaway for me that I didn't say at the point was I need to offload some more work. I need to do this in a way where I can have these pushes and not have my life go completely bonkers. So there's more stuff to be assigned out. And I dipped my toe into this a couple of years ago, and I have had some success. I've had some failures too. I have a virtual assistant that was referred to me by a client. I set up the account with this person.

And as soon as I said that, I realized I didn't know what I would give to them. So you kind of got to go into this with open eyes. But I have some other assistants that are not so virtual. They're around here. I've got some friends and people I know that could use some extra work that are smart people that I have helping me with things. And it's kind of a combination of a lot of things we've talked about on today's show we talked about timing we had a sponsor timing tracking my time was a big help in figuring out what are the things i'm doing that don't need me touching them and then i would take that list and then start finding

well who would be someone that could do that for me or is there a way to automate that process so i don't have any humans involved? Frankly, a lot of stuff did need humans involved. So I've been getting some help from people on various pieces. The things I'm getting help with are a lot of the administrative stuff on the legal practice, some of the administrative stuff on Mac Sparky, some of the post-production on some of the field guides. But the stuff that still needs a lot of work for me is there's still admin things. There's still a lot of email that I don't need to be the one that handles that.

And so I still have places to get better. One bit of advice I'd give is have a long conversation with somebody. Always be slow to hire and quick to fire. So figure out whether it's a good fit or not, but also be realistic in your instructions to them. When you hire a virtual assistant, you just can't jump something on their lap and expect them to know how to deal with it. So I actually screencast every time I give my assistant a new task. Like let's say I get a special,

an email question from a client. And actually that would be a customer from a Mac Sparky Field Guide. They want something in particular that I know is going to be a frequent request. And I find myself doing it often. I will reply to that person, and I'll go get the information they need, but I'll screencast the entire thing. And then I'll send the video file to my assistant to say, okay, when this type of email comes, this is how you go find the information they need and give it to them. Or this is how you go find whatever asset they need and give it to them. And by making a video, she can watch that over again. If we get maybe only one of those questions every couple months,

she can watch the video every time if she needs to. And it's been really helpful for me in terms of giving her realistic understanding of what needs to be done and allowing me to keep myself honest that I hand something off to her in a way that she can actually do. That's a lot of words, I know. It's great advice, though. I think there's some great nuggets in there, regardless of whether you decide to use a virtual assistant or somebody in person. It's cool to hear you say that you're working with some people locally, too, because that was Corn Chip's advice to this. He mentioned that if you find somebody local, you can meet in person if you want. You don't have to pay the VA agency's overhead.

And you develop a working relationship. It's a real person. You can promote them if things go well and your business allows for it. That's something that I would prefer. As I'm thinking through this for myself, that's kind of my preferred way to do it. I don't think I've found that person yet. my preferred way to do it. I don't think I've found that person yet, but that makes me a lot more comfortable than just picking somebody off of the internet. Although it's a little bit critical for me to say something like that because we podcasted before I met you and pretty much

everybody that I work with now, I met them on the internet first. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong on the internet first. So yeah, I mean, it's, I don't think there's anything wrong with the virtual assistant. You just had to, I think having that initial call and spending time developing the relationship before you turn it into a working relationship is time well spent to, to get a good feel for each other. And that video stuff I do, I would do regardless, you know, whether it was somebody down the street or somebody on the other side of the world. Exactly.

The other thing I would say is that don't go into this thinking you have to get one person to do all these things you want done. I kind of went into that with that mindset, like I'm going to hire a person. But then I realized, well, look at all the things I do. Some of it is legal work. Some of it is video editing. Some of it is administrative work. And I realized there probably isn't one person that could do all of that. And getting specific people to solve specific problems is an entirely rational way to go about this. And it's also a nice way to do it slowly.

Just pick one problem, find the right person for that problem, and solve that. And then work your way to the next one. But just take it one at a time. That's great advice. Yeah. And there's a whole other aspect to this, which you mentioned the screencasting. I like that example because that really just illustrates the point that it doesn't matter if it's somebody virtual or somebody local. You have to have the right systems in place where it's very clear what the expectations are on the work that you're trying to delegate. Delegation isn't just dumping a job on somebody's lap and saying, here, figure this out for me. Although I guess maybe that could be a form of delegation, that can't be the general rule. You'll have a lot more success in delegating

if you're able to communicate all of your expectations around the task. And that's probably too big a topic for this episode. But lots of ways to do that. Another piece that's helped me is my Basecamp subscription because with Basecamp, we have shared task lists. And the video we share, we've got a library of these instructional videos now on Basecamp. So she can go back and watch whatever she wants.

She's not particularly tech savvy, this person that helps me out. But the way Basecamp does task items, I can assign the task. It gives her a notification when she gets it. And. It gives her a notification when she gets it. And then it gives me a notification when she finishes it. So it's just Basecamp has been really good for this type of work for me. I'm not saying you have to use Basecamp. Maybe there's some other service. But you need some kind of system to keep everybody honest and keep the ball moving forward.

And that's another piece of it. I think you have to have that in place before you start this. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. One other piece of feedback here was from Wired Fractal. And this thread in the forum is how to use your iPhone less. The thread starts by saying that they took their phone to fuji i believe and their face id stopped working so that caused them to use a six digit passcode to open their phone and kind of the unexpected consequence of this combined with the fact that Apple Watch shows the important notifications is that they use their phone a lot less. This is interesting to me because I really am all in on the intentionality train when it comes to using your technology. In fact, I've

started a series for the suite setup. We call it Mindfulness Monday. It's basically articles, apps, interviews that's really focused around the idea of applying these intentional constraints. So this is an unintended constraint, but really the benefit here again is that I'm only using my phone for the things that I really want to be using it for. I'm not just pulling it out all the time because of all the friction that's been added to the workflow of unlocking it. But I think this is an idea that everybody should consider is, how do I make the things that I want to do on my technology easier? And how do I make the things that I do not want to do on my technology harder?

Putting in friction for those things so you can reinforce the good habits. I feel like on this subject, I sound like the old man yelling about kids on his lawn a little bit. I don't think you should make it that hard for yourself. You know, I mean, honestly, it's like the face ID and the touch ID is great because it's secure. But then when you do need it, you can get to it quickly. You just got to not use it as much. You know, I don't know. Yep. I don't know.

I haven't really kind of like thought this all the way through why my reaction to like, it's like I have a friend who has an app he runs on his Mac that turns off his internet connection and then he can't get back on the internet without actually rebooting his Mac. And I'm like, why don't you just not use the internet when you need to work? I don't understand why you need to go to these efforts sometimes. That is completely fair. The problem is just that we have trouble with that sometimes. The beauty of the smartphone is that it can do anything.

The problem with the smartphone is that it can do anything. The problem with the smartphone is that it can do anything. Yeah, no, and I get it. I think maybe I'm lucky in that I don't get caught up in those traps as easily. But like, for instance, earlier this year, I realized that my infinity pool was the news app. That stupid news app. I would open it up, and not only would I spend too much time in it, I would close it more agitated than I was when I opened it. And I realized when we talked about Infinity Pools on the show, that's when I realized, oh, wait a second, I do have one.

And so I just don't open the news app anymore. If I do, when I open it, it's like I have a caveat in my head. Okay, Sparky, don't go crazy here. And I just don't open it that much anymore now. So I don't know. There's a lot of things in my life I'm bad at, but apparently that's one area that I'm pretty good at is, I guess, app discipline.

Sure. For lack of a better word. And I guess I should be more understanding. For some folks, it's harder and whatever you whatever you need to do to not waste your time on your phone you should do it ignore what i said earlier this thread is interesting because it was a accidental incident that now you're faced with the question of do do I replace my phone? Do I pay the hundreds of dollars to get this fixed? And at that point, you have to answer the question, well, what is it worth to me? What am I going to gain by paying the $400? And what am I going to lose by continuing

to use this phone where I have to use a six-digit passcode instead. And I guess I'm kind of projecting here a little bit, but the realization in that situation can be, actually, it's not that bad because we get so used to the default. And really, that's the thing I want to call out. If you're able to apply intentionality and have discipline when it comes to using your smartphone specifically, that's great. I know the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, he shares a statistic about, I forget what the generation is called, but basically the kids that are in high school now, they use their phone up to nine hours a day. phone up to nine hours a day. And it's hard for me, even being a millennial, to wrap my head around that. And you probably have the same sort of reaction. Well, it really can't be that hard, can it? But I think that there's a lot of different factors that go into everybody's situation. Part of it could be just the expectations of your peer group and how you're expected to communicate and things like that. But what you need to do, no matter where you find yourself on this spectrum, is ask yourself if the way that you're using your device is the way that you want to use your device. And if no, then you

have to make some changes. Some changes are more drastic than others, but really it comes down to that intentionality. We had John Zeratsky on the show. And in his book, Make Time, he's got this quote that I absolutely love. He says, when we use our smartphones to navigate an unfamiliar city or have a video call with a friend or download an entire book in mere seconds, it's like having superpowers. But by default, we don't just get the best of modern technology. We get all of it all the time. We get futuristic superpowers and addictive distraction together on every screen. The better the technology gets, the cooler our superpowers will become, and the more of our time and attention the machines will steal.

That's what we want to fight against. And if the machines aren't stealing your time, great. You're probably the minority though. No, and honestly, that's why we make the show. The name focused is there because I believe the superpower of the next 20 years is going to be the ability to work for four hours a day uninterrupted. Yep. you would otherwise. And I think that is a skill that's harder to develop now than ever because of this stuff. So forget what I said earlier. Really, if you need to, heck, put in an alphanumeric passcode so it takes 20 seconds to get your phone unlocked. If that's what you need to do, do it. I guess a humble brag that I don't need that. I'm okay with that part. But not everybody's the same. No, I agree. And I agree 100% with the observation you said about focus being the superpower. It occurs to me, a lot of the studies that are out there say that if you can accomplish four

focused hours of work a day, you're doing pretty good. And the tendency as a quote unquote knowledge worker is to say, well, I can do more than four hours, but the truth be told, you really can't. And coming all the way back to something else we talked about in this episode, the idea of busyness and hustle. If you were able to focus for four hours, you wouldn't have to hustle so much. You wouldn't be so busy. Yep. Right? That's what it comes down to.

And so this stuff, even though it really is just, the tendency can be to say, oh, this only applies to the four hours that I'm going to be working. Really, it has an effect over the rest of your day. Really, if you can master this stuff, and I hesitate to use the

word master but let's just say you're able to do this with 100 intentionality all the time what would your life look like if you could get 12 hours of work done because you're so distracted by everything else you have to do in those four hours what else could you do with all that extra margin yeah or how much better would your life be yep if you didn't feel like you had to work 12-hour days. Right. And weekends and all this. Wow, we covered a lot of ground today, Mike.

We did. Well, we are the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm slash focus. We'd love to hear from you.

We have a little alleyway on the Mac Power Users forum at talk.macpowerusers.com. You can go in there and talk in the forum. There's lots of folks in there always sharing ideas. Thank you to our sponsors, Blinkist, Timing, and Squarespace.

And we will see you all in two weeks.