Focused - 87: Nerds Like Us, with Myke Hurley

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Relay co-founder Myke Hurley joins us to talk about the power of yearly themes, becoming more intentional, and working with other humans.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm your host, Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. How's it going today, David? I am doing great, Mike. I understand you're feeling better. I am. Yeah, I went to the doctor earlier this week, and the drugs are doing wonders. So hopefully no coughing fits during this podcast we've got a super special guest here today to talk about some analog productivity stuff that we started to hit on in the last episode so welcome mr mike hurley i like being called super special so thank you for having the show guys mike i i

think he's here the first crossover guest you came on the show when you talked about being a free agent now you're going to come on the show to talk about being focused. Let's say we will talk about focus. I don't know if I can talk about how focused I am, but we'll see. We'll see about that. There you go. Well, I say super special because I've been wanting to talk to you

about your theme system journal ever since you announced it. And I've got some questions, which we'll get into in a little bit here. And I know you're big into the analog world. We were talking a little bit before we hit record. This is something new to me, but you are very much steeped in this whole idea of analog productivity. Oh, yes. So I think this is going to be a fun conversation. Yeah.

So Mike is a founder of RelayFM, a podcaster of many podcasts, the pen addict among them. So if you're interested in the analog stuff, you should definitely listen to that show. But the other one, Mike, where you talk a lot about productivity is over on Cortex with Gray. Mike, where you talk a lot about productivity is over on Cortex with Gray. And you've been kind of on your own journey, both as a friend and as a listener over the years, I have noticed that you have become a little more intentional. So I thought I'd start out just kind of talking about your journey a bit. For listeners that don't know, Mike worked for The Man for many years. You were in the, I guess, the bank in London, somewhere you were working for a bank.

Yeah. Well, so I had kind of like two careers. I mean, I started work at 18 because I was heading to university, but decided that I wanted to change what would be my major um too late so I was going to university to get a degree in English literature then remembered I don't like to read yeah that's the problem I enjoy talking about media you know it was that was my favorite part of English literature yeah I forgot that I could actually just do a degree in media studies instead. Um, so then I decided I'm going to change,

uh, my degree. I want to do media studies of the six universities that I was accepted to. Only one of them would allow me to change it because of how late I decided to make the change. Uh, that university was based in London and I didn't want to, I live inon and i didn't want to i live in london and i didn't want to uh go to university at home i was going to go i wanted to go and have the

university experience in another town right where i would actually live away and i wouldn't have been able to do that so i decided i'd get a job and i got a job at a bank and like just working in a bank branch and then work my way up to bank branch management which was the worst mistake i've ever made in my entire life was thinking that that was a career path that i wanted to go down because i did not want to go down that career path i realized that on like day two of becoming a branch manager at like 21 years old then i spent a few years in absolute work hell i hated it until i was able to find a job in a marketing team in the bank's head office. That took me about five years. And then I was there in the marketing team for about five more years, where whilst I do not enjoy a lot of the things that go along with corporate life, I enjoyed the work. a lot of the things that go along with corporate life i enjoyed the work um marketing was a passion of mine um and i got pretty good at it and i enjoyed it um but at the same time and had been

building uh this side career like my side hobby of podcasting which next year i will have been podcasting for 10 years, which is a horrific thing to think about. It doesn't make sense to me to think that I could have been doing this for 10 years considering I'm 31. It just seems so peculiar, like that such a portion of my life has been occupied by this medium now. I do question your use of the word horrific, though.

It's something that brings you joy Why would you think it's horrific? As in that it makes me feel old Oh, come on It's just to think that I have been doing this for so long Is such a wild thing for me to think about That like I have been around for 31 years And I have been podcasting for 10 years

Because it just doesn't feel like it could have been that much time, right? Like the time has gone quickly in that regard. That's what I mean. It's just like it's a brain-breaking thought for me to think about that. As you get older, those fractions start showing up. Like I've spent half of my life doing this. Yes. Like my wife and I have been together longer than we have not in our lives.

You know, stuff like that. Yeah, it's like me and, I just realized this recently, that me and my best friend have known each other for more than half of our lives now. And it's just like, wow. It's just stuff like that. It's like, that's madness. It's kind of fascinating the first few times you figure it out. Then after a while, you just get used to it. Don't worry about it anymore.

I guess these things just happen more and more at some point, right? Yeah. used to it don't worry about it yeah i guess these things just happen more and more at a certain point right but yeah um so yeah then i the podcasting thing took off and then started relay fm and then quit my day job like a month after because things just went really well and uh as of like last weekend i've been self-employed for five years now good for you congratulations thank you yeah what is that your quidversary yeah i guess so yeah mine's in february yeah like even the naming around things i've actually been struggling with recently so like a lot of people that i know would say and i'm sure many people on the show would say, Oh, I've been independent for five years. Right. Um, or things like that. Like, like I'm an indie or like we're an indie company and I don't really think of myself like that anymore. Um, I, I, I like to use terms like small business

and self-employed because it just indie seems like something when you're starting out, but like, I feel like at five years doing this, we're pretty established now. Like, I don't think of RelayFM as, like, this indie podcast network. We're just a podcasting company now, you know? Do you know what I mean? Like, how long are you indie? Yeah, you're indie when you do your work in Starbucks, you know? Yeah.

And you're a one-person shop you don't have anybody helping you that's in my head yeah i just feel like at a certain point like when you have uh people that are effectively employees you have contractors that work for you you know what i mean like it gets to a certain point and it's like there has to be a changeover but i don't think that there's a definition on it but i just know how i feel and i feel that we are a small business now and i am self- are a small business now and i am self-employed small business owner as more than anything else that's kind of where i think of myself yeah and that comes with a whole different set of headaches it's a whole yes it's a whole

different kettle of fish because when you're when you consider yourself an indie you kind of the responsibilities are different when you are a small business there are many more people that rely on you yeah and i want to talk about that later about how you deal with other humans and focus but it is uh but during those years your years for the man um how much was you know the concept of productivity and focus and things like this on your mind at the time oh big time because it was the only way i could do everything because so like i uh i you know i even while working in the day job i used omni focus right like i and i know it's strange but i feel like it's not something a lot of people typically do nobody that i worked with used a productivity tool to arrange their work tasks yeah right like and i feel like it's this is a thing it's very normal in the community that i'm in now of you know like

of people like us um like nerds like us or even like lots of people listen to the show we use these tools right but and i would expect that probably quite a lot of people that listen to this show see a similar thing in their office that that nobody's using GTD systems of any kind, right? So I always did that because it was the only way that I was able to keep my mind running right and also for me to keep on top of things. working two jobs, right? Like I worked my actual job from nine to five. And then when I got home, I worked from like six to 12 on podcasting. There's no way I could have kept everything in check without using a to-do system. You almost feel like you have a dirty secret that nobody else has these tools. And for some reason, they're just sitting there and they don't use them. Yeah. Yeah. I also feel like that there is a, there is a little bit of a stigma with this type tools and for some reason they're just sitting there and they don't use them yeah yeah i also

feel like that there is a there is a lot of stigma with this type of stuff in banking anyway because like there are data protection laws and stuff like you have to be really careful about using your own systems and i always was like i never put incriminating information into a system that wasn't bank controlled but like it's kind of discouraged anyway so which makes it a little bit trickier to do it effectively but that was kind of basically it was it was a case of i don't use these types of systems the work won't get done so let's let's pick our poison yeah and also there's kind of the historical stigma the law is the same it's like when i was using stuff like this the old lawyers would be like ah we never did never did that. We don't need that stuff, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know. But meanwhile, they've got like three assistants and they can't remember, you know, what they

ate for breakfast. And I'm wondering what the hell is going on. It's kind of interesting because also I think in the corporate arena, that's typically where people develop a bad taste for the word productivity because the focus is on what you're producing, the widgets that you're cranking out. And it's kind of interesting that there's individuals who will apply these systems that allow them to do the things that are important to them like you did, Mike, when organizationally there's a reluctance, it seems, to embrace those sorts of things. And I think maybe that's kind of tied to how you define productivity. So I'm kind of curious, from the beginning of your journey at the bank to managing your personal projects and starting podcasting and OmniFocus, how has your definition maybe of productivity kind of evolved or changed? That's a big question. And I don't even know if I really have an answer. You know, like,

I think the easiest thing for me with the type of work that I do, there are very easily defined outcomes, publishing the episode on time, right? Like like making sure the ads are sold right like these are things that for me they're very clear to define uh a lot of there are i like to put constraints around my even my creative projects you know like i set deadlines for myself and stuff like that and for me like the element of being productive is meeting those right it's meeting the goals meeting the the deadlines like that's for me how i think of productivity like it's to meet what i've set out to achieve i i don't know if i could work any other way like i don't know if I could, how productive I would be today on a project that didn't have

defined outcomes to it. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess what jumps out to me, based on your story and my own story and lots of other people that I know, is that there's an element of productivity when you just take the corporate definition as the number of work units that you've produced that's missing that has to do with the joy in doing something intentional and creating the outcome that you want, whether that's designing the life that you want to live or creating something and putting it out into the world that you're proud of. Ideally, both of those things together, you know, and I struggle sometimes with how to explain that to people, but I really feel like

one of the best things you can do for your productivity is to infuse meaning into the things that you're going to choose to do. There's a reason we called it focus and not productive. Yep, exactly. focus and not productive yep exactly but at the time you were at the corporate level stuff you were using this actually to pursue your passion project like you said earlier it was using all these tools that gave you the the time to create the focus to create the podcast you know that which eventually led to where you are today and it's's also, you know, it's the off-board brain idea, right? Like it's clearing my mind by having somewhere to keep track of everything. I don't have to keep track of everything.

Yeah. Which is a big thing for me, big time. What does focus mean to you today? It's changing a lot where I'm starting to value my free time more than I used to. And I mean, there has been a lot of time in my life where focus meant work as much as humanly possible. Like when I am intending to work to put everything I can into that specific time to allow myself more of my own time. And that is serving its many purposes. Having my own time again is allowing me to explore other creative side projects to enjoy hobbies again. Because I've realized recently that I have no hobbies anymore. And I want to find hobbies again because i've realized recently that i have no hobbies anymore and

i want to find those again and also to spend more time with my family it's becoming more of a concern for me like in a good way right like i want to focus more on that and so my work focus is becoming more that like when I am working to be as productive and as focused as possible so I can therefore do what I need to do. The other part of it for me is in delegation, being happy to allow somebody else to have the focus on certain things and taking the good and the bad with all of that to make sure that i can more easily live the creative work life that i want yeah let's let's take apart the idea of delegation for a minute um i know that you do a lot of time tracking um we don't need to explain the mechanics of it if you if you're a listener and you go over and sign up for the cortex podcast there's a lot of content on there and how you guys set up your time tracking

but how does that time tracking help you on this journey the first thing that it showed me before we hired anyone was it allowed me to understand where my time was going, right? So like I time track all my work time. So every now and then I can refer to it and see how I want to make changes. You know, so I've seen over time where it was like this amount of hours were going on admin and this amount of hours are going on recording.

And I could sit and look at it and be like, all right, what do I actually want to be doing with my time? And when I can see that I was spending X percent of my time doing admin work that I didn't enjoy anymore, then maybe it was time to bring someone on to help, right? So like I could actually see and one of the big things for me is with with the

time track and stuff, and I think this is actually a good kind of rule of thumb for everybody. is actually a good kind of rule of thumb for everybody unless you have the data you don't know how you're spending your work time and i guarantee you that your brain will trick you yeah you will think that you spend more time or less time on something than you actually do and unless you have that information you can't make informed decisions about what you want to do and how you want to spend your time like your brain 100 will trick you um even even just like i was surprised that i felt like i was working all day every day but then when i actually got those figures it was when i started time tracking it's like oh i actually don't work as much as i thought so why do i feel like i do you know that kind of led me down a different path of

discovery but the the time tracking stuff enabled me to work out what I wanted to get rid of and then it also helped me work out how many hours do I need somebody for yeah right and and so that was a huge huge thing for me um in starting down that journey and it's changed a lot i mean we hired a administrative assistant who has become a sales manager right just because she is incredibly talented and was able to to find different things that she wanted to do so we expanded her role but that was like another big thing for me where it was like the advertising sales felt like you know in my mind i'm the only person that can do this and then being able to trust somebody else to do it and then to allow them to get better at it than i am and like to accept that that is a thing this has like been a big journey for me

but one that i'm ultimately very happy with did you guys see the the martian that movie the martian i haven't seen it well there's a great scene and and it's a guy stuck on Mars, and he wants to get home. And they've got a capsule there that can blast him into space. But the problem is weight, right? And so, there's this portion of the movie where they just start throwing everything off the spaceship they can. And they question everything. Do you need a seat? Everything you can think mean and they question everything you know do you need a seat you know everything you can think of they start throwing off i feel like that is what time

tracking brings you to your time it brings the ability to look at everything you do in your life and chuck everything overboard that's not essential that's not the focus of what your passion is and man if you can successfully do that, suddenly you can start thinking about your hobbies again. That's a really nice way of putting it. I'm interested with the pursuit of the hobbies because I'm guessing that your journey probably went something like podcasting was a hobby, then podcasting became the job and you just never replaced the hobbies. Do you mind sharing a little bit about how you've landed on what those hobbies are for you and maybe what role they have in allowing you to be creative? I realized I have a selection now of what I like to call jobbies

because I have a selection of shows that encompass the things that I'm interested in. So different levels of technology, video games and pens and all the things that were my hobbies became things I would make podcasts about because they're the things that I love. I still love those things, but I also now I'm in a situation where I need to think about them differently. I can't just enjoy this stuff. I also have to think about it in a way to be able to communicate about it. So it changes the relationship to those things. led me to that discovery but i think i was just having some conversations with friends and they were talking about the things that they enjoy and i realized that all of the things that i talk about are also things that i do in my work time so i'm exploring now what hobbies would look like for me i haven't really landed on anything um i like i've become much more interested in in taking pictures and editing pictures and stuff like that that's like something that i've really been

enjoying recently um and making kind of like conscious efforts to go to places because i think i might be able to take some good pictures and this is all just happening on my iphone because it's all kind of coincided perfectly because the iPhone 11 Pro's camera is just so frigging good it takes a lot of the work out for me and I can just enjoy the part that I enjoy which is like opening the photos in VSCO and tinkering with them and making them look the way that I want

and framing them and stuff like that I enjoy that and at the moment I'm kind of like I'm in a discovery phase of trying to find something a little more meaty as a hobby but i've not i've not landed on anything yet yeah but you're at the point of your life where you know you may have some kids in the future and all those hobbies are going to go away anyway well but this is part of it though where it's i feel like if I don't do this now, I won't do it.

You have to also pledge to yourself, if you do land on a hobby that you particularly love, to not make a podcast about it. Oh, I have done that already. So, like, also a thing that a new interest that I have is wristwatches. Like, I've become much more interested in watches and I consume a lot of watch-related media, especially on Instagram and stuff. And even though people would love to hear me do a watch

podcast in the same vein that I have a pen podcast, I flat out refuse to do it. I won't do it. I want to have things that I'm interested in that are just for me. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea

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When you decide to sign up, use the offer code focus to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the Focus podcast. Once again, that is squarespace.com slash focused and the code focus to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Mike, something you do over on Cortex every year that I think is really great for people who want to bring more focus to their life is this concept of the yearly theme.

Could you explain that a little bit? So, this is something that it kind of came out of an idea that my podcasting partner, CGB Gray, had been working on for a while and this was like multiple years ago now i think we first spoke about it on cortex in 2016 was the idea of having a theme for a year so rather than a resolution or a specific very specific goal that you would have kind of a word or a phrase or a sentence that would encapsulate what you were attempting to achieve over a year and then you could have kind of like a north star that you could face towards that would allow you to be always kind of focused on something when you were setting different goals and objectives like an example both me and gray have used the term the year of less so we both

felt like we were oversubscribed to our work and we wanted to focus in different areas so for example in the year of less it was the first time in the maybe the six years preceding i had not started a new podcast and i only did not do that because I always had the year of less in my mind. And that was also the year that I started getting help with my work to help lighten my workload. But when I was having opportunities come up, I was assessing them under the idea of the year of less and was making decisions that way. And I've had many other yearly themes since, right? Like, I had one the year of adulting when I got married that year, like, it just felt like I was growing up. I've had the year of, actually, I mean, sometimes I will have like a couple of different

words that encapsulate the year thing that I'm going on. And right now now one of mine is stabilization like in 2019 i wanted to just steady things up in my working life um not focus too much on growth and really just make sure that things are in place for the future and also diversification which was for me personally i wanted to branch out into some other areas And that ended up including something that we're going to talk about in a little bit, which is the yearly theme notebook, the theme system, the journal that we created. But that was kind of where the idea came from. So it's not about setting a resolution that you will definitely never meet by the end of January. It's not about setting a very specific goal. It's about coming up with an idea that you would like to ladder everything up towards over a 12-month period.

Yeah, I think it's such a great idea because all of us get in trouble with the daily decisions. Somebody asks you to go to a conference or to do a speaking gig, and each one of these in their isolation are perfectly fine. And it's easy to say yes to things like that. But when you have this filter of your yearly theme, it's a great thing to pass through any decisions you make to make sure that you're not, you know, losing track of what your real goal is this year. And as the year, you know, we're wrapping up towards the end of the year as the show publishes, I would encourage listeners to think about that and maybe come up with their own yearly theme for 2020.

Listen to Cortex when you guys, you guys always announce them like, is it at the end of the year or the beginning of the year? But yeah, it's like a big reveal. Yeah, it's either we do our yearly themes episode every year and it's typically either the end of December or the beginning of January is when we do the episode. But yeah, we are both working now on the yearly themes episode for 2020. How do you balance sticking strictly to the yearly theme and making concessions along the way i assume that it's not just a hard fast rule well i said this is the year of less so i can't say yes to any new projects how do you reconcile that in your head without a list of decision criteria well i think that's this is

exactly what um makes in my mind themes different to a resolution you know like a resolution is like a is a resolve it is one thing right like you are doing this is what you do this outcome yes where a theme is much more like a guide and it's more of a case for me where I weigh up decisions against the idea. Like, does this meet what I'd set out for? And that can be a yes or a no, but it doesn't mean I won't do it. It just means that I give myself an extra consideration point. But this also goes like in the inverse. When I feel like, if I feel like I'm stuck, if I feel like I'm lost, if I feel like I want to pursue something new, I think about, all right, so what did I decide I wanted this year to look like?

Okay, so let me go out and do that. So for example, this year has been the year of diversification. So I came towards the end of this year and I was thinking, you know what, I want to add a new creative project. And so I thought to myself, well, what does that mean? So I'm working on something right now, which is very early, but it will be different for me. And that's the idea of diversifying myself and the things that I do. So that's kind of been a good thing for me to have a principle that I'm following that will allow me to consider new things good and bad, right? So, it's like it's less of I want to do this, I don't want to do that. It's more what

am I thinking in general? And I will and do set goals and objectives based on my yearly theme, but that's not all it is, right? Also also i can come up with things that i never had in a goal or objective but i can weigh them up against what i want my yearly theme to be and and it try and help and i use it to try and help inform my decision making sure do you ever modify or evolve your theme as you go kind of the scenario i'm picturing in my head is you decide this is the year of less and then halfway through your situation completely changes and now you're stuck with this theme or you can modify it in some way. How do you do that? I allow myself the freedom to do it. So this is only for me at the end of the day. No no one's marking me no one's judging

right like i make the decisions and there was an example where towards the end of one year gray completely changed what his theme meant the name remained the same but he changed what it meant because his life changed in a big way so he kept the name but made some big changes and i think that's perfectly fine and in fact like we've both done this having multiple themes maybe one kicks off six months into the year right and it's like an offshoot or maybe one ends so like the year of adulting when like when that ended after i was married right because it was like i bought a home was getting married and it was all happening within a one-year period. But come August of that year, well, it was done. So I just let it go. So it really is something that, even though it seems like such a daunting task to set something for an entire year, we 100% believe in the flexibility of allowing it to change so like for example in the uh the theme system journal which we'll talk about in a bit which is

this ended up becoming something much bigger for me but we allow people to create like we give them pages in the in the journal to to write in what they want their theme to be we put four pages in just like you just change it like people say to me a lot like oh it feels too daunting to start you know what if i pick the wrong theme it's like just do it do it for a month and if it's not right cross it out and pick another one sure you know the the biggest thing when starting this process is the practice like the first year is the hardest year but after that you understand how it goes like just set one for a few months and just change it if you don't like it but once you've done it

for a bit you understand kind of how it can work for you um is this stuff is always daunting to to change but i don't i don't believe in the preciousness like don't write it out and like put it in a frame and put it on the wall like just just allow yourself some flexibility and that's kind of for us what the theme system is all about is about flexibility it's very important to me yeah i mean 12 months is completely an arbitrary number oh you can do like seasonal themes i just do it for every quarter right like you don't have to do every like you just just do it however you want but we like to set them for an entire year because it seems fun but you're right like you could start in may and then the next may doesn't have to be

january to december like do whatever you want or maybe the year of less needs to be years of less maybe you need years to get a theme like internalized but that's you have to be your own judge on that stuff. Yeah, and you can reuse one. We've both done that. And be willing to use it as a guide when it's useful, and when it's not anymore, be willing to say you were wrong and try something else.

Exactly. Well, it's a great concept, and it's so easy to kind of get across. And it's really quite powerful because I do think that where we fall off the wagon with this stuff, where we lose focus, is in the little day-to-day decisions. And having a North Star that you've been intentional about can really help you avoid that trap. Can you maybe describe what that's done for you? I'm trying to think how to phrase this. I guess, you know, when I set, in the past, when I have set goals or projects, deadlines, I get so focused on the outcome, which again, the themes are designed to work against

that. Can you, since you've done this for several years now, kind of describe the mental freedom that that gives you in your day-to-day compared to the traditional way of setting goals? I feel like I'm in control of it as opposed to feeling like I am a slave to it, you know? Like, I feel like if I set too many rigid goals for myself, that I'm just working for the goal. But I feel like with the theme, I feel like I'm way more in control of it because it's less rigid. I look to it when I need to think about something.

I keep it in the back of my mind when assessing things. It feels like it's way more coming from my own brain and helping with my own creativity as opposed to if I'd set a bunch of rigid goals for myself. For example, let's say maybe something around health, right? I could create a year of health and it could mean a bunch of things and that's way easier for me to feel like i can achieve something than if i'd said that i want to lose 25 pounds by march 31st because like health can mean it could mean mental health and right like i can change it i feel like i have the ability to make that change as opposed to feeling like i have to meet this

resolution that i'm telling everybody about you're back working for the man the man just happens to be previous version of you exactly i don't want to do that that guy sucks how often do you think about the theme i mean is it something that crosses your mind daily weekly very frequently because i i make it a big part of what i want to achieve in in a year right like it just becomes like i feel like i'm deciding this now and i want to try and see it through right like i want to keep coming back to it and if i feel like that this is the thing that makes the most sense for me i want to i want to go for it and the whole of the time i'm also thinking about what i want to do next year as well like the theme that i'm going to be uh embarking on in 2020

i came up with it in july because at that point i feel like i'd understood what stabilization and diversification meant for me i was following those things through and then started thinking all right so if i do continue down this path what would i want the year following that to look like and then i came up with another set of ideas for 2020 which have kind of coagulated around one word that i'm working on so it's something that i think about all the time because it gives me peace and comfort to feel like I have something bigger that I'm working towards you have any tips for people who are maybe wanting to try the the yearly theme for the first time and they're just overwhelmed at all the options find something that's frustrating you like that maybe there's a set of things that you would like to change or there are

a set of things that give you some level of concern or anxiety in your life and think about what would it take to change them and if you were to do that what is the word that describes them right so like for me like with a lot of stuff is like oh i feel too busy i have too much stuff going on i have too many people that require my time and i have no free time anymore so for me when i was working in that kind of situation i was like right so what i think is i i need some help from people i need to learn how to say no to things i need to make more time for myself i probably need to work less there we go year of less right like all of those things can ladder up but i think it starts with like really being introspective thinking about yourself your

work life your personal life whatever it is you're hoping to make some changes in and spend some time thinking about like what are the key things that are frustrating me and then is there a way to tie them up and like i like to be snappy and say it's the year of something it's one word but you could have a whole sentence right like it's totally up to you right like you could call it like the year of trying to make myself happy and then just think about what it would take to make you happy and go down that route well that's the uh the marketing gene inside of you yeah i like to brand it all right yeah i mean and also like there is a you kind of from the truman show perspective of it like my yearly theme is content at the same time so i have to kind of make it snappy so that's just how i think of it nobody else has to do it that way yeah i do think there's some value in doing that though because even if

you're not publishing it anywhere coming up with something that you're kind of proud of probably helps it stick i agree i mean it really does And it also helps you remember it and it helps make it feel like a thing. But it can also be a stumbling block for people getting started if they're trying to come up with a cool sexy year theme phrase. So think of that maybe year two or maybe like halfway through year one, you've come up with a word. Right. But like the word is not the prerequisite of beginning otherwise you you may get stuck on it forever although i would add to that that if you try to say well i'm not going to make it a single word be careful because more words add specificity yes and i think that that is the road to madness here you gotta be broad yeah yeah well it's it's really a great system. And I think that a lot of people could benefit from trying this out. And the other thing that's kind of a misnomer about it is the terms you're of, because as you were saying earlier, just having a, I mean, what you're really doing is telling people have a North Star, you know, have something, some problem you want to

solve and create that filter that you're going to pass all significant decisions through. And that's not as sexy, but it really is what you're doing. And, and it does, I think it can help a lot of folks. This episode of Focus is brought to you by FreshBooks, online invoicing made easy. Go to freshbooks.com slash focus, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to get an unrestricted 30-day free trial. One of the hardest things about being a free agent is getting paid. And you don't want to spend all your time getting paid. You want to spend your time actually producing things for your clients. That's where FreshBooks comes in.

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We thank FreshBooks for their support of the Focused podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, another idea from this theme system is the idea of the daily themes. And on the website, you've got some of your examples i'm curious if you wouldn't mind just walking through those and maybe how you landed on those to decide that these are the things that are important to you yeah it's probably worth me introducing what the theme system is to people at this point right because we had the yearly themes and then at the same time, I started journaling. It felt like something I wanted to do. I wanted to start just every day taking a bit of time to reflect on what I was doing in my life. So I started journaling. So I started writing down

some things that were good, some things that were bad in my life, things I was looking forward to, and I would do this every day. Then I read a book called uh triggers um and this had a concept of effectively what is now referred to very frequently as habit tracking you know so like you have a selection of things that you want to be making some moves towards every day um and so i then was like oh okay i have some broad ideas that i want to be focusing on that actually work towards my yearly theme so there are things that i want to be doing every day to make sure that i'm staying on course with some of the things that have come out in my yearly theme so then i started doing this every day so i had like a list of seven things

um that i wanted that were important to me some of them focused around hitting my theme for the year some of them were just like you have to do these things every day otherwise you will implode as a human being and then basically after doing this system for a while myself, I felt like I had stumbled across a way to wrap all of these things together and create a system that I felt other people could benefit from. And that was when we came up with the idea of the theme system. After a year of development, system. After a year of development, we have created a journal, which is sometimes in stock. We are trying, we're building a business, both me and Gray, called Cortex Brand, which makes physical products. One of those products is the theme system journal. And the theme system journal encapsulates yearly themes so you write down

your yearly themes there is then a journaling section we give enough journal pages for 90 days for a quarter basically but you can they're not numbered they're not dated so you can take as many as much time as you want it takes me about um about six months to go through one of the journals because i don't journal every day i only journal on working days and i don't journal when i travel um so when i'm at home in my office that's when i do it so i don't journal 90 days consecutively it takes me about six months to get through one of the books uh and then also the third section of the the book is the daily themes so it's a section that allows you to write down a selection of things that you want to be looking at every day, and then gives you the way to mark them off in some manner. So for me at the moment, the things that I'm tracking every day, I have eight things,

and they are, I'm actually opening my theme system, they're just a bunch of words that I want to every single day do something that I feel like moves the needle on these ideas a bit. So I have create, advance, revenue, teamwork, marriage, relationships, engage, and health. So create, make something, advance, push one of my ideas forward and this kind of layers up into the year of diversification for me because i want to be moving into different areas so advancing new ideas revenue that's in stabilization i'm going to make sure that my company is stable that means generating revenue for my company the same with teamwork making sure that i'm working well with people even if i'm trying to find other areas that i want to move into. Then friendship stuff and relationship stuff, marriage and relationships, making sure

my family and friend ties are strong. Engage. It is important for me to be engaging with my audience, the people that listen to my shows, because that's how I'm able to keep doing what I'm doing. And then health, which is one that I added in about halfway through the year. I just wanted to make sure that I was looking after my health, which I put more effort into my health in the last year than I have for as long as I can remember because I'm finally paying attention to it every single day.

So I score myself out of eight. So there's eight things there. I give myself, the book, it has like a little circle with a line through it. And the idea is like people could write down a score number or what I do. I just either leave it blank, a color in half or a color in full, and then top that up every day and give myself a number. And it's just an additional data point where like I did something recently where I was

like, when did I score myself an eight? Right. Because usually my scores are around six, um, every day. And then I was thinking, oh, on like June the 12th, I scored myself an eight. So then I went back to my journal page. I did this yesterday, actually. I like read it back and was like, what happened on that day? That meant I scored myself an eight out of eight and read the day. And I was like, oh, okay, scored myself an eight out of eight and read the day and i was like oh okay maybe i need to try and have more days like that so uh yeah that was that's kind of the system and then we turned it into a notebook um which has been selling very well so far and we're uh we're still trying to like build a sustainable production method um in trying to make sure we can keep this thing in stock.

But I'm making some tweaks to it next year. I have like a second edition. We're just changing some layout stuff, basically. And then it will be a much more, hopefully, stable in stock product from then on. But that's kind of it. That's the daily themes and that's the theme system.

We have a website if you're interested, which is thethemesystem.com. And it explains everything in a bit more detail, if I've not been clear enough. It's a difficult thing to explain in audio, so I had to write the instructions down and publish them on a website. No, but it's great. And we definitely will have links to this in the show notes. And it is a way, and it's interesting for me, knowing you as a friend, I mean, this is a way that you were able to combine your love of these concepts

combined with you know fancy pins you know and yeah it is a very well-made high quality paper notebook because i yeah it was it was a thing for me where i realized during the production this has to be really well made because i am also a pen and paper person and nobody would ever forgive me if i produced a poor quality notebook so. So that's one of the reasons that it took a year to make the first set. I do think, however, you're missing out by not journaling when you travel because it is really fun to go back and read those later. That is a very good point. The thing for me, though, is my journal is very focused on work. Yeah. um the thing for me though is my journal is very focused on work yeah it's very focused on work

and that's one of the reasons that i don't do it when i travel is that my work is very inconsistent when i travel but i could make changes to it so like this is one of the things the most the thing to me that is core about the theme system is it is a flexible structure in which you can work. I cannot stand the products that exist that are all pre-printed of all of the things that you should be looking at every day. I don't want somebody else to prescribe to me how I live my life.

I want to do it myself. And that's what the theme system is all about, right? Like, so every day in my journal pages, I track four things a good thing a bad thing things that i'm proud of and something i'm looking forward to but that's changed even this year like it wasn't like what the box was that now says proud used to say what am i thinking about but that didn't work for me over time and i wanted to look at something different i wanted to list things that made me happy about the stuff that i was doing what was i proud of

and so like i changed it because i write the headings in every day they're not printed in the book and that's an important thing for me because all of these other journaling systems never worked for me because i felt like i was having to answer to somebody that wasn't myself and so we created a notebook system which is basically three pre-printed sections that are just empty boxes and we make suggestions on the website as to what you should be putting in them but it's pretty open-ended And from that, we've had lots of listeners that use the notebook, write in and tell us the many, many different ways

that they use it. And it's fascinating to me. People use the daily theme section as a way to keep track of their school work. It's like brilliant. Use it as a to-do list if you want to. But this is like an actual set of pre-printed pages that we think work for many people's different systems

without kind of like prescribing them to one way of working. Sure. I started journaling a couple of years ago, and I just cannot get over the tremendous value I get out of it. For something that I did kind of on a lark, thinking that, boy, that sounds like a waste of time. I really don't have extra time to spend on that. But I get so much back from it. You are the most prolific journaler that I know.

Oh, am I? Big time. Well, I don't know. I've sent you a couple of my pages, so I guess. Well, the last time I saw you, I don't know. Because the other thing, though, Dave, is that I know that you love to change your system. You had two different journals the last time that you showed me everything. Yeah, yeah.

I have like the commonplace journal stuff and I have the daily journal. But now I'm actually using a ring system now because I want to keep it all in one book. Amazing, amazing. But I'll tell you, to to me it dovetails with meditation a meditation practice calms your mind in the morning and to me a journaling practice brings everything to the ground in the evening and yeah it is a nice way to rid myself of some thoughts and reflect on things yeah it is a really nice thing to do every day i journal at five o'clock every day yeah you clear the cash you know before you go to bed well i don't go to bed at five

o'clock in fact typically i tend to work after five but five o'clock is just a good time for me to it's kind of like a lot of the times it can actually be like the middle of my working day in a weird way um but that it just works very nicely for me as a time of day times, it can actually be the middle of my working day in a weird way. But it just works very nicely for me as a time of day to do it. And the nice thing about the Theme System Journal is it's portable. I mean, it's high quality, but you can take it anywhere. It's a very small footprint. Yeah, but it's about a five-size softcover.

I think it makes sense because you have your entire, the way you described it, your theme system is built around your work life. So it just makes natural sense to me to incorporate that into your workday. Also, I'm kind of curious because you mentioned you've been getting into photography. Could that be maybe a form of journaling that you're embracing for when you're traveling, which is maybe why you don't feel like you need to write about it in your theme system? Damn, Mike. Damn. Wow. Yes. I'm going to say it is. That's what I'm doing. That's fascinating because that is when I take the most photos is when I'm traveling, when I'm going places. So, you know what? Yes, that is what i'm doing i'm so pleased you noticed i watched your instagram feed so that's that's kind of what jumped out to me is

you're taking pictures of all this cool stuff and all these things you're doing and you want to have like a visual reminder of the things that you've done but maybe the photo photograph medium is better for that sort of thing even than writing it because you can't capture what this place looked like yeah in in. So I think that's kind of cool. I'm so happy you noticed that I was definitely doing that. I'm also curious for the scoring for your daily themes. I think this is different than a lot of other systems that I've seen. You mentioned people use it as a to-do list, and I'm thinking in my head that these could kind of function as like the check circles in OmniFocus, although you can't

half check a check circle. But that is, see that for me is in the system that I created. It's about being kind to myself. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's really cool. So do you have any examples of what you determine as like, well, I kind of did this, I have did this, or I fully did this? Yeah, I do actually. Revenue is a good one. So revenue is like making money for my business. If I have like signed a deal with someone, an advertising deal, that's an easy, like I can fill in that revenue box because I made money for the company today. But that doesn't happen every day. But what I can do every day is something that enables it. So maybe I wrote a contract today, but nobody signed it.

Or maybe I was communicating with a company today and we're working on a deal i didn't make money today but i definitely made i moved the needle to allow me to make money on another day and so that's a good like half check for me nice mike and i were actually uh texting and sharing pictures with each other when both of us were working on coming up with our daily lists and it's funny because we both at the same time independently however moved our systems from i don't i don't know i know mine started with a five tier five step system yours i think had even more but very quickly we both agreed that it's a three step you know picking between four and five was. It made, we were talking about this, me and Dave were talking about this. Like, I couldn't work out what constituted a 4 out of 5. Like, I didn't know what it meant.

Like, a 2 out of 5. Like, the numbers became too difficult. So, then it was kind of just like, you know, it's 0, 0.5, 1, effectively, right? Yeah. In my head, it's like, no.5, 1 effectively, right? Yeah. In my head, it's like no effort, some effort, rocked it. You know, it's one of those three. Definitely.

So how often do you rock all eight of your areas? I know you mentioned you were going back into June to find your last eight-point day. Do you find that that is frustrating sometimes that you're not able to to hit that no because i mean i've i've since i've been working on this system i have and that has been since june the 10th and today is november 15, I have scored eight out of eight twice. Um, but that doesn't bother me. Like for me, I just want to see that really,

if I'm, if I'm scoring like four, that can still be a good day because I, maybe I did half of all of them. Sure. So I still did a bit, you know, like all,

all this really is for me is like, I should be focusing on these things um and i like i what i like about the the fact that i can see each day on the page is i can look at it and be like oh man over the last four days i've scored nothing in health well that's a bad you know like it's more like a it's like it gives me patterns and i can see stuff i care more about that stuff i care more about that and i care more about moving the needle a little bit every day than then scoring a full mark system which is one of the big reasons why i moved away from the five point scale because it

was like that's it was it was too much it was making me focus on it too much it doesn't bother me that i don't score it out of eight because a six can be really good, right? That's like a bunch of these things I did completely and then some of them I did a little bit in. So, that's a good day. In my case, one of mine is parenting, you know, and one of my kids will have a crisis and I will spend a good portion of the day working with them, which gets me, you know, full marks for that parenting. But by its very nature means that the Max Barkey stuff or the legal stuff is probably not going to get full marks that day. And that's okay. But just being mindful at the end of the day to see how did I do today? Boy, that's really powerful. Yeah, exactly. Is there any overlap between these daily themes and the time tracking? Because I'm guessing that this isn't as simple as I spent time on these things today. I don't really relate these things to each other unless I'm looking for an answer to something.

So sometimes I'll have a question for myself, and then I will relate what I'm scoring or what my journal is saying to the time tracking. what I'm scoring or what my journal is saying to the time tracking. Because then there's like two, I consider them mostly like separate sources of data that I can use to make correlations, but I don't do it as a hard and fast rule. Sure. That's the thing I'm getting from hearing you describe this that I think is really cool is that all of the rules, quote unquote, that you have are meant to be broken whenever you feel like they're not serving you anymore oh yeah like i i give myself more than enough uh leeway to rip

everything up and start all over again if i want to because i just can't i cannot like lock myself in otherwise because then i i feel like i've i've i'm doing a disservice to myself at that point sure uh what sort of growth have you noticed in any of these areas since you started tracking them as your daily themes uh making more of an effort my marriage is one uh it's thinking every single day like have i have i actually been a good husband today um it's been a good it's been good for me and i said my health is another one um and the other the other big one is is the advanced column um spending time every day thinking about what i want my future to look like has been eye-opening for me and is helping me think about things in the long term that I want to be pursuing to make sure that I have a career in 10 years' time. one that we could probably unpack for an entire episode, but I think it's worth thinking about, you know, just today I had somebody ask me the question, if you were to jump ahead three years,

what would need to happen so that three years from now you could say you were successful personally or professionally? And just taking the time to think about it, it's difficult initially sometimes because you just kind of get stuck in what you're doing and all you see is the next project and when you have to think out further than that and what do i really want and sometimes where do you want to be in five years it's like the worst question anybody could ever ask you because you're not ready for it when people ask you but what i found is in spending a little bit of time every day thinking about things along those lines i'm getting a clearer sense of what i want it to

be and what i don't want it to be you know yeah that's really good but don't ask me i feel like i'm setting myself up for being asked where do you want to be in five years because i still don't think I actually know the answer. I was just thinking about the question, actually. And I think there's some value in it to be asked in a more incremental way. Like, where do you want to be next month? What are the things that are on your plate now that you want to be? Where do you want to be in the next quarter, the next year?

And I think those... Because you can actually picture that. Yeah. And you can work your way up to years, but you've got to start with months. And I think one of the themes throughout today's... You see how I did that? One of the themes is Mike's willingness to change course, to course correct as he goes through this. And I think that is such a benefit. I mean, so many people get into this stuff and they're so hard on themselves.

They turn the idea of becoming focused or productive into just another burden that they have to carry. And they're doing it all wrong. burden that they have to carry. And they're doing it all wrong. Yeah. I think a lot of your story, you mentioned where you were going to go to university, you decided to change, then you got the job and you made it to manager at 21 years old. A lot of people might look at that and say, well, look, you're a manager, you're 21 years old, that's pretty successful. And when you were telling that story, I was thinking about, remember back to my economics classes and the terms of the sunk cost. And I feel like there's so many people who pay so much attention to those sunk costs,

the decisions that they've made in terms of the life that they want to live. And one thing that's encouraging and admirable, I think, from your story is being willing to say, I'm in this situation now. I've made some decisions. I've invested some things to get to this point. But at any point, I'm going to give myself the ability to say, this is not what I want to change course. Yep. I agree completely. This episode of Focused is brought to you by UpHabit, the personal CRM that helps you create strong relationships with the people that matter to you most. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it's a tool that's used in business to make sure you have up-to-date details

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for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Mike, one of the things you do that I, watching you when we're together, you do such a great job of working with all the hosts. So just for the listeners at home, right? Mike is the co-founder of this podcast network. Podcasters are like very special snowflake cats, right? They wander around. Anybody who creates content is like this, I think, to a certain extent, you know, the artist mentality. And Mike does a great job of managing that. I know that you have managed me very well,

and I'm not easy to manage. And it's just something that you do, but you're also into this productivity stuff and focus stuff. But then you bring in messy humans. But you don't have just one or two humans you have to manage. You've got a whole flock of them. How do you do it? It's a difficult question. A lot of my life, working life and just the time that I spend

thinking about anything is related to dealing with other people. And that can be challenging sometimes because everybody wants what they want, right? And sometimes because of the situation that I'm in, well, actually quite a lot of the time, I have to be willing to bend them on what I want if it is in the service of making somebody else happy. And that can be, it can be tricky. It's very rewarding, but it comes with a lot of hard work and a lot of thought and a lot of consideration one of the things that is useful to me um is working with like-minded people that's what i have to be able to do and it's one of the big things about working with anyone at real afm it's like are they

a like-minded person like and the creative people the ambitious and engaging and interesting and friendly and like these are a lot of the things that i think sum up all of the people that we had the pleasure of working with and that enables us to all have common ground and that makes it easier for me it's like one of the trickier things about management in a bank was you're you're working with people varying levels of interest like a lot of the people that they don't care about anything except the fact that they got a job they don't care about the work that you're trying to assign to them they don't care about the goals that you have to set to them. They're just, they're coming in and then they're putting their hours in and leaving.

And it just didn't gel right for like what we're all, everyone else's moving awards. So managing or working with all of the people that we work with is easier for me because we all share common ground and interests and stuff like that and that that makes that stuff much more doable and enjoyable um so really like it you know whilst i spend a lot of my time dealing with and thinking about a lot of people i don't resent it in the way that i used to when i was having to do it for the bank i i hated it i hate everything about it but i don't have that anymore the one

you know and then one of the other things one of the other bigger changes is uh rather than working if we have our podcast hosts i feel like we work together we nobody works for me we all work together but now my business is getting to the point where we have an organizational structure of which people fall into now. And that has been a big change for me was having someone who looks to me. So they are an independent person, very smart, but at the end of the day still has to ask me, okay, is this what you wanted? Or I say, do this thing, right? Like it's delegation. And that has been a trickier thing to get used to again. But again, I've been lucky in finding somebody who I can work very, very well with.

I've been lucky in finding somebody who I can work very, very well with. And she's the perfect person for the role. But it still brings with it challenges again, you know, and trust and all that kind of stuff. And that can always be difficult. And especially when it's your own business. Oh, it's so much harder when it's your own business. Oh, it's so much harder when it's your own business. When it's somebody else's business and you're just in it and you're the manager of someone, I mean, if they screw up, it doesn't really matter. Accounting will work it out.

But for us, it's very different. And everything, if there are any mistakes, it's like it's my business that it's affecting. So even though there aren't mistakes, I always worry that there might be mistakes in a way that I didn't care about when it was, you know, it's there's a lot on the line all the time whenever don't have to conform to a managerial structure and regime that is created by 40 years of experience that doesn't make any sense anymore you know so it is a it is a challenging thing it's a difficult thing it's something that i've gotten better and worse at in equal measures over time depending on where i am and what people need from me but it's an important part of my job and I treat it with respect and luckily over time I've been able to get people to help. So you mentioned that there were challenges as the organization grows and the differences between managing people who care about the work that they're doing as you work together as opposed to the people who were just there to to get a paycheck um as relay has grown and people have viewed you differently

have there been any surprises to you in addition to the challenges um probably i don't know because again it's like i don't really know how people think about me that's i think the thing that thing that I struggle with sometimes. Oh, I can answer that question. They think about you a lot less than you think they do. Well, yes. I mean, I don't even really know what people think of me a lot of the time. You know, like, how do people view me as part of my business i don't

really know and i do think about that sometimes um especially and i think one of the things that we're getting pretty we're getting pretty deep here guys one of the things that's tricky for me is everyone i work with is also a friend and then there's like this business as well and it's like it adds so much for me a lot of mental complexity it's like this business as well. And it's like, it adds so much for me, a lot of mental complexity. It's like the biggest family business ever. Yes, that is a beautiful way to put it. And like, so it, I know that it helps keep me on the straight and narrow when it comes to decision making, because I don't want to upset anyone because I love all these people.

to decision making because I don't want to upset anyone because I love all these people. And so that helps a lot for me with like, when it's like, what is the right decision? Well, I know what the right decision is. Like, what is the one that makes me feel the most comfortable? And I know we'll make everybody else feel the most comfortable. And I like that. I like that, that kind of inbuilt natural accountability through working with people that i don't want to screw over right um but it does add this upper part in for me which is i i don't like how does everybody see me i don't know i don't know what the answer is and that is one of the challenges for me sometimes well it's definitely i i think a challenge to think about like focusing on the projects you really want to focus on while you're dealing with these other people.

But I guess another way to look at it is, no, that's part of what I need to focus on, you know, to allot time to manage this. But then you sound like a robot. I think it's a challenge. I don't really know what the answer is. I think it's a challenge. I don't really know what the answer is. I don't think there is one. Because I don't think that there are a lot of businesses that are structured like mine and actually work.

You know? I run this company with my best friend. That shouldn't work. Right? A lot of the time it doesn't. But me and Stephen work well together together and we don't have problems and we're very good at keeping our personal business relationships separated and i don't think a lot of people can say that um and so we are both lucky that that we're able to work the way that we do uh and and so it is very the type of company that we have is a peculiar one

um to have longevity but but we somehow made it work well i mean it is a very good marriage you know knowing both of you and and that those are the ones that work and so you hear about them but they're you know the there are very many shipwrecks where people try to do what you've done but they didn't have the right they didn't have the right flexibility combined with seriousness to to make it work and um so anyway i guess i'm being able to being able to separate the personal and professional aspects of the relationship is a huge thing as someone having experience working in a family business that's difficult to do and everybody's gonna give a top tip for how we do this yeah um we keep our personal and business communications

in separate places so we only talk business in slack and personal stuff in iMessage and the two never get mixed up which sometimes means we're having multiple conversations at the same time but it means that I'm never gonna be having a conversation with Stephen about like oh how was your day today like how is how are things with your wife and also by the way can you sign that contract right yeah that's good that was we we were like that and i realized that i was starting to value the time that we spent communicating less because i never knew what was going to happen you know but now we are able to we have those things completely separated and it has made things easier so much for the both of us.

That's awesome. I'm also curious, uh, your approach and maybe what focus looks like for you on a particular project when you compare something like any of the podcasts that you do with the people that you do them with and you kind of know what to expect versus something like the relay five-year event where you have not only a whole bunch of people who are variables but a whole bunch of other variables that you're trying to figure out well let me tell you mike that was the most terrifying thing i've ever done because i had literally no idea what was going to happen and it was a fantastic success but like that going into every live event that we do it's meticulously planned and we know exactly how it's going to go well going into the five-year anniversary event

we play family feud with 20 relay fm hosts i had no idea what was going to happen i had no idea if the technology would work it was so complicated it worked perfectly because everyone's a professional but it was like i have no idea what's going to happen if we explain the rules clearly enough like it was that that was a very stressful thing um because it it took every variable and turned them up to 11. That was a terrifying afternoon and evening, but it worked perfectly. It was brilliant. Yeah, it was great. So, I had no idea you were going through that. Oh, God, it was so scary. Well, congratulations. You hit it well. Well, Mike, congratulations in general on getting this journal out. I think that the idea of a yearly theme

is something that can help a lot of people who are at the perfect time of year to say, don't spend December thinking about how many pounds you're going to lose next year. Instead, come up with a theme. Pick up one of Mike's theme journals. I know they're out right now, but you guys are working on it.

There'll be more of them out there. Yeah, if you will allow me a moment of self-promotion. Yes, please. If you go to thethemesystem.com, you can sign up. There's an email address list there. You can put your email in, and we'll let you know when we have more in stock. We're working on it. Literally, as I speak, there are some production samples being sent to me for another run,

and we're trying our best to keep them in well keep them in stock because we're trying our best to stock them as frequently as we can uh with a view to be able to keep them in more permanent stock next year that's the plan physical products are very very difficult to manage it It's a very, very tricky thing. Because we could buy 10, 20,000 of them. That's a lot of money if nobody buys them. So, it's a very tricky thing to try and manage properly. But we're getting there. Yeah, we get it. We get it. But it is something that really helps people. And I think that, you know, the goal of this show is to help listeners get more focused about what's important.

And this is something that could help you out. So go check it out. Go check out the cortex podcast, especially at the new year to hear Mike's new themes. I'm curious. I want to know what it's going to be next year. Maybe it'll be the year of more video games. I don't know.

Maybe. And everybody, so check that out. If you're going to get a new theme system journal, listen to The Pen Addict. That comes with a warning. It should come with a warning, at least, because it could cost you some money.

I wasn't going to buy any new pens. I've bought some nice fancy pens, courtesy of Mike, and now they've released Star Wars pens. I'm doing all sorts of crazy stuff to get my hands on one of those Star Wars pens. Can't help myself. Uh,

Mike Hurley, thanks again for coming on the show, sharing your theme system with us. I, again, I think it's a great idea and, um, and we will see you next time.

Definitely. Thanks for having me on guys.