Focused - 88: Annual Check-Ins

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

As we approach the end of the year, Mike and David check in on their own Focus journeys. Also, David has a secret life as a Jedi and Mike is using coffee to hack focus.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? It's going great. You know, we're getting towards the end of the year. We got some cool end of the year content for the show today. Looking forward to talking about that. But we also have that calendar out there. But we also have that calendar out there. Yes, we've sold a bunch of these. So thanks to everybody who has purchased one. But if you haven't purchased one yet and you still want to, there is still time. The link is in the show notes, but it's newyear.net slash products slash focused. And we don't need to go into all the details with this, but there was a lot of thought

that went into the design of this calendar. I think it looks great. I've got several on the way. And I know you've got a couple that are coming also. But now is a great time to get your calendar as you're thinking about next year. One question I had for you, Mike, is one of the things we've got on this calendar is kind of the Jerry Seinfeld, don't break the chain tools. We've got a thing at the bottom with, I think it's five different colors. And you can mark off if you want to meditate every day or plan your day or whatever. You can track that with this calendar. Have you got a plan for that?

I've been thinking about this and I track my habits differently. I use streaks and I like it because you can automate a lot of stuff with Siri and with shortcuts. So like I can open up my Bible app and it automatically marks it as finished for me. But if I was not doing this digitally and I wanted to track my habits manually, this is definitely the way I would do it. There's nothing in the calendar itself that forces you to do it. So all of the day spaces are blank, for example, but there is the key at the bottom

where you can put in the things that are gonna be recurring. And if you wanted to just mark in the lower corner of every single day, the day that you meditated, for example, and that was a specific color, just add a dot to that day. And that's that build, the don't break the chain thing that you were talking about. So it's, it's

not something I'm going to personally do just because of where I am. But if you had talked to me a couple years earlier, I probably would have done it that way. Well, I've been doing it analog for some time now, you know, every month, I kind of make a sheet and I track several things on it. Every month I kind of make a sheet and I track several things on it. But I like the idea of it on this thing that faces me all day and I have to look at it. So I'm going to actually move over to that for 2020. I'm going to use that system. So I'm looking forward to doing it.

Anyway, Focus Calendar is still out there. Still a good deal. And you can still buy them. We'll put a link in the show notes. So I just got back from vacation, Mike. I did the catch-up day again it worked still works man awesome so talk us through the specifics of your catch-up day i just i um make no appointments make no telephone calls schedule no podcasts have a full day to get through whatever email backlog and other things piled up while you were away. And rather than making yourself miserable for a week trying to dig out from that hole, just spend one day digging out and be done with it.

Nice. Yeah. The trick is to put it on the calendar, like we've said in the past, put it on the calendar the day you schedule the vacation. Sure. Yeah. we said in the past, put it on the calendar the day you scheduled the vacation. Sure, yeah. I am kind of dealing with a lack of a catch-up day today because I just got back from a trip and fortunately no delays or anything like that. And it was kind of a fun trip, but there were some

things that had to get done this week. And I guess if I were to implement the catch-up day in the future, I maybe wouldn't travel Tuesday through Thursday, leave things to Friday that need to get done this week, maybe move the whole thing up a day, travel Monday through Wednesday, take Thursday as my catch-up day, and then still have Friday to get back in and do whatever needs to get done. But I am failing in implementing the catch-up day at the moment, and I'm kind of feeling it a little bit. Yeah, well, I was gone for a week, so I needed a catch-up day. I would think for two or three days, you could have a catch-up day at the moment and i'm kind of feeling it a little bit yeah well i i was gone for a week so i needed a catch-up day i would think for two or three days you could have a catch-up morning or a catch-up afternoon but the um but i think that it just has to be part of every trip planning for me now going forward it makes such a big difference and uh i

i've got religion about that so anytime like i like I've got a couple of speaking engagements in 2020, and in addition to sticking them on my wall calendar, I'm going to be putting that catch-up day in for each one. I just think it makes a lot of sense. My friend Mike Curley does a thing where he goes to an event or a conference and he'll stay for a few extra days. And he talked about that on the most recent episode of Cortex. He calls it, I think, Hurley days or something like that. I don't know if that makes sense for me. It's an interesting kind of take on it because I think it could make sense for you with five kids. With me, my kids are grown enough that when I get home, I say, look, I need to be left alone

for a day. They'll leave me alone for a day. So I'm not sure I need something like that, but, but just having space after travel, uh, to get all the little things taken care of that, that really caused me a lot of distraction. If I don't take care of them right away is a good idea. Totally. Yeah. And I think you're right that the early day approach probably works a little bit better for me. The thing that's always held me back from that is typically when I travel, I just want to get home. But you're right. As soon as you get home, then five young kids, it's back into the whirlwind. At the same time, you're leaving your home, your wife home with five kids. It's like you need to relieve her, right? So that's tough. Well, she actually came with me this time, which was kind of nice. But yeah, the basic idea, I think, is to think about where you can insert some margin. I'm kind of going through my own margin spirit quests. I'm thinking about the

end of the year, rereading that book by Richard Swenson and recognizing the value of it in a lot of different areas of my life. Yeah. In fact, that really kind of fits into our next segment. And we wanted to talk about scorecards, I guess, for lack of a better term. But we've been making the Focus podcast for a year. Mike and I made this transition to the show to Focus because both of us feel so strongly. I mean, I think I said it when we first started this show, but I think to me, the ability to focus and get blocks of work done is what's going to make the difference going into the future.

I think that's something that people have lost a little bit with this attention-grabbing culture we live in. And if you can figure out focus, it can be your superpower. And we talk about it, you know, we talk the talk, are we walking the walk. So I thought we'd both kind of take a moment to scorecard ourselves on focus and what's worked and not worked for us over the last year. Sure. And even before that, a general observation as we've been talking about focus for an entire year. I don't know how you felt when we started it. I anticipated that we would not tire of talking about the topic.

But in the back of my head, I was kind of thinking, well, maybe there's only so much you can say on this topic. And by the time we get to December, are we going to be sick of it? Have we exhausted everything as it pertains to focus? Is the well dry? And that definitely is not the case for me. The more I talk about it, the more jacked up I get about the topic of focus and the more I want to talk about it. Same experience for you? Yeah, I mean, there's layers to this that I feel like we've only scratched the surface of. my own journey on this i still have a long way to go as the last month can attest um so it's just um no i i feel like there's a lot left in the tank on this yeah and i think that's the other thing is you mentioned we still fail at this stuff all the time, which is kind of interesting as we're

talking about how we've done over the last year. I proposed something kind of in response to what Mike had talked about when he was on the last episode with the yearly themes where they pick a word and that's the word for the year going forward. I just was at the Blanc Media team Christmas dinner and Sean asked everybody to pick a word that summarized the last year. So kind of to reflect on what has happened. And I think there's value in both of those approaches, but I thought it might be kind of fun to sum up the last year as it pertains to our focus on the things that move the needle, you know, to touch all of the things that we've talked about over the last year. You know, what's the one word for you that encapsulates how everything is gone?

And I guess you want me to go first? Yeah, go for it. Okay. What's your year in a word? My year in a word is reset. And I struggled with this one when Sean asked me about it. Because honestly, this has been one of the most difficult years of my life. So the first thing that actually came to mind was something like turmoil. But I didn't like the negative connotation associated with that, because there has been

a lot of good stuff that's happened too. But basically, from the beginning of the year till now, a lot of the things that I assumed were true had been wrong. I've basically had to rethink a lot of different things. And that's been challenging. There's been several significant changes that have happened both in my work and my personal life. There's a lot of positives that came from it, though that's kind of what I want to focus on here, and that's why I chose the word reset. So the one big thing which has come from my current work situation, is that I've regained a lot of margin. And as I've been rereading that book Margin by Richard Swenson, it's really impacting me this time around because I recognize now that a lot of the stuff that I was feeling and dealing with at the beginning of the year was my own fault because I had neglected margin. In the book, he talks about a couple different areas, time, finances, physical, emotional. Emotional is the biggest one for me. And Richard Swenson

actually says that that's the most important one too. We've got a whole episode devoted to the topic of margin with Sean if you want to go back and listen to that. So we won't rehash it all here. But basically, I found that I had no margin. And then when I got pushed past my limit, I didn't have the extra stuff in the tank to deal with it very well. I made a lot of mistakes. There were times when I just felt like I don't want to do anything. You know, we talk about focus and motivation and all that type of stuff. But truth is that there were times over the last year where I was like, I don't know if

this is ever going to change. And I don't have enough to keep going. Those seasons never lasted very long, thankfully. But just baring my soul here, that's something that happened this year. related. As my day-to-day work has changed, one of the big things that has helped a lot is that Blancmedia operates with these eighth-week sabbaticals. So the whole company basically shuts down every eighth week, and you're forced to take a break. When I first started doing it, I didn't want to do it. I wanted to keep working on my projects. But I found that that has helped a lot, especially with the emotional margin. And as I've gained more emotional margin, everything else gets easier too. I feel better, even though I've been dealing with some sickness recently. Physically, I'm feeling pretty good. I've got more margin in my time.

We've got more margin in our finances, which has allowed us to kind of change the perspective too. If you find yourself, because I was there and I recognize that now that I've got a little bit more margin here. Like if you find yourself overspending, a lot of times the cause can be that you have no margin and you feel like, well, I just need to buy something. I need to buy the new AirPods or I need to buy myself a fancy dinner as like a way of coping. And I've recognized that as I get more margin, it's actually easier to save. And that's kind of applied in all the different areas. Now, I contribute a lot of that to how my day-to-day work has changed.

Yeah. I mean, you've been through a lot this year. I mean, because your job changed, your main job changed. And that's one of the, you know, huge stress indicators for people. I mean, one day you think you're good in one place and find out that you're not there anymore and you still have five children to clothe and feed. And how do you figure that out? Yep, exactly. And the more margin you have, the better you're able to deal

with the pain that comes from some of that stress. The stress isn't necessarily bad unless you can't handle it. And if it's systemic too, if there's certain things in your life that are causing you a lot of stress, you probably want to change those. But I guess the revelation I got was that an event that causes stress shouldn't cause me and my life to go off the rails. And it kind of happened. It wasn't, like I said, wasn't super, I almost hesitate to talk about it because I know that there are people dealing with much more serious issues than I did. But as I look back, I recognize that, you know, where I was wasn't great. Where I am now is a lot better. And it's because of, it's totally because of margin. So what did you do to affect that?

Well, uh, the big thing was the, the, the work that I was doing, uh, changed a lot working with Sean and the expectations and the company culture changed a lot. And we've talked about Basecamp before. There's a lot of things that I don't like about Basecamp. But the big thing I do like about Basecamp is it completely changes the expectations in terms of communication and how you're not expected to be on call, basically, like you would be using another team communication tool like Slack. And again, it's in how you use it. I know that. But Basecamp, their whole company ethos behind, I guess now it's just called Basecamp, used to be 37signals. But Jason Fried's company has been this calm company. He wrote the book.

It doesn't have to be crazy at work. That's helped a lot. And as I've achieved margin there, it's kind of affected every area of my life. I recognize I have more margin in my personal life. In fact, the other day, my wife made a comment. She seems to always make the comments at the right time that bring the clarity to my situation. She said something. I was upstairs taking a break from work, goofing around with the kids. And she said something along the lines of, it's good to see you joking around like that again or having fun again or something like that. I was like, hmm, I guess you're right. I haven't been doing that in a while. And I recognize at that moment, because it felt so natural,

obviously, in the moment that, yeah, I guess I have made a lot of progress, to borrow your word, in that area. But it's helped everything. It's helped things at home just seem like not that big a deal anymore. It's something that you can deal with and overcome as opposed to here's all of these things that are going wrong and every single one of them is an attack on me personally and getting bent out of shape about those things. It's just no big deal. Yeah, I do think that, you know, it's easy to lose perspective when you lose margin. I mean, I think that's one of the other benefits of having that extra time is it gives you kind of a better view on things that go well and things that don't go well. And that allows you to kind of

free up your personality that, you know, your joy comes out more when you've got space. Yep, definitely. I've got a couple other things here I'll list, but margin is definitely the big one. I could probably say my word for the year is margin as well, but I feel like there's a lot of specific ways for focus listeners where this could be applied that's probably a little bit more helpful. I also reinvented the way that I plan my day. And I still use GoodNotes. And I still plan my day using the template that I created. But we've talked about this before. I do that now in the evening, the night before,

instead of the morning of. And really, actually, I used to do it sometimes the night before as well, but the approach to it is really the thing that's changed. Instead of me filling that out and saying, this is the plan for the day, it's kind of a shutdown ritual. It's my way of getting it on the paper and off the mind in terms of the things that I'm going to have to do tomorrow or that I want to do tomorrow. So I time block everything. I write down my most important tasks, but that's kind of a way of clearing the decks now. And then when I wake up in the morning, I look at that. I also look at Basecamp to see if there's anything anybody needs help with. And I feel that because I did that when I shut down at the end of the day

yesterday, that it gives me permission to kind of just chuck it. It's like, oh, that's old. And if I want to do something totally different, I can do that. And I simply write out three to five things in my Baron Fig notebook using my fancy fountain pen, which I just got another one. I got a TWSBI 580, the piston filler one. All right. I write those things down in the morning. It forces me to kind of slow down and reevaluate things.

And it's one of those things that does bring me joy. And I find that very effective in terms of guiding the work that I'm doing throughout the day, but also not interfering with it. I don't feel like I have to manage the system. Just jot it down a few things and occasionally I'll look at it and go, yeah, I got to do that. And when I'm done, I check it off and it feels good. And occasionally I'll look at it and, oh, yeah, I got to do that.

And when I'm done, I check it off and it feels good. How much time do you find yourself putting into that process of creating the list the night before and the morning of? It's really not that much. Probably the day before is a little bit longer, maybe five to 10 minutes. But usually the most important task that I list on there, and I've capped it to five. So I force myself to say, you know, these are the five things you're going to do the next day and not more than that. And usually then one of two things will happen as I transfer it to paper. I will, well, actually one

of three things. If I feel like that's still accurate, I'll just jot it down. If I feel like it's too much, I will cut off usually the bottom thing or maybe the bottom two things, bring it from five to three. Or I will look at Basecamp, see something that is more urgent, like someone needs help with something that we're going to launch soon. And I'll jump in and help with that. And I'll just check the entire list. And I'll jump in and help with that. And I'll just check the entire list. And that process only takes a couple of minutes. That decision making regarding what goes on the paper list for the day is almost instantaneous. And it just feels like intuition. It's like, yeah, this is obviously the right thing to do, no matter which of those three scenarios I pick. I feel the same way. I was always resistant to additional

planning because I felt like, well, I'm doing it already and I'll be focused. But taking the extra step to write it out to me, number one, helps a lot. And I'll discuss that when I talk about my year. But it also takes remarkably little time. So if you're thinking about doing this as an experiment, don't think that it's going to cost you an hour a day to do this. It really doesn't. But that was something in my head I was thinking. That's the reason why it took me so long to kind of give it a shot, because I was thinking, I don't want to spend more time working on planning. I want to spend more time getting things done. But just adding a little extra step

does make a big difference. Well, that kind of goes along with the whole margin idea is to simplify. That's a big theme for me too, is I've been reconsidering all of the things that I'm doing and all the systems that I've created. And are they too complicated? At the beginning of the year, when the crap hit the fan, there were some things that were too complicated that I fell off on. And then it's kind of given me the ability to reinvent those things and restart some of those habits in a way that's more sustainable. One of the things, I'm also rereading Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, and they have a phrase in there, the enemy gets a vote.

They have a whole chapter in that book devoted to simplicity and making the plan simple as it pertains to leadership and communicating it to the people that you're trying to manage. But I also think that this applies personally. The more complicated the plan is, the more opportunity there are for things to mess it up. And so if you just keep things really simple, you have a much better chance of things going according to plan. And then also, when you don't have all that complexity, that adds more mental margin for you to deal with things as they do pop up, because this is just the way things work.

It's almost on autopilot at that point, but it requires that things be as simple as possible. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. You also this year, I understand, got more serious about meditation. Yes. I don't know if you could say serious yet, but I have been meditating using Headspace. I did break my streak the other day, but it's back up to like 13 days. And again, I'm just trying to keep it simple. So I'm using Headspace because I can choose how long to do it for. And I started with just the three minute one just so I could start doing it every single day. And that's gone up to five minutes now. And it may not go any further than that. I really don't know because I don't want to make it difficult to the point where it adds more friction

and every single morning I'm struggling to make this thing happen. It's got to be simple. It's got to be easy. And so far that has stuck for the first time. Again, I'm not ready to declare this a complete success yet because it's only been a couple of months, but that is something that I've restarted this year. I've also reestablished my journaling habit. That was something that kind of fell by the wayside at the beginning of the year, which looking back on it now, it's kind of like that's maybe the worst thing that I could have done is stop journaling when I was going through all that stuff. But hindsight is 20-20. And I have been journaling every day now for a couple of months inside of day one without

missing. I've switched my structure and how this works. I used to have a template inside of shortcuts where I would fill out the prompts and then it would format it into a table. But day one has these awesome looking templates now and I found that it's more work than it's worth. And so I just transferred a couple of prompts. I simplified it again. I cut out a couple of the questions that I was asking myself. And now I'm basically

just a couple of quantified self-type questions and then a rating for myself. I know we talked with Mike about how he doesn't like the star ratings. I don't really struggle with that. I give myself a rating every single day from one to five stars. Five stars is just I absolutely knocked it out of the park. If I had a good day, that's four. And then everything under that is three, two, or one. I really haven't had any ones, knock on wood. But I'll record that. I'll record something that I'm grateful for. I'll record what the highlight was if I worked out that day. And then I ask myself, what did I get out of the day? So I always want to leave with some sort of learning or some sort of observation. I jotted one down over Thanksgiving because we actually spent Thanksgiving with both

of our families. We went to Rachel's family in the morning, my family in the afternoon. with both of our families who went to Rachel's family in the morning, my family in the afternoon. When I was journaling that night, I put, I have people limits. I reach a point where this introvert just wants to be alone. I got to recognize that because it could create some awkward situations if I am in a scenario where I am desperately needing a little bit of alone time and I can't get it and I get pushed over the edge. And margin helps manage that stuff too. But recognizing that is valuable. And next time I'll try to build in a little bit more people margin as well. Yeah. One of the things that I realized this year is that the combination, I kind of knew it, but it really sunk in for me this year. For me, the combination of a active meditation practice, which mine is a little more extensive than yours,

and a journaling practice, it's just a great, those two things combined for a sense of self-knowledge that I didn't have before. And it's the combination, I think. It's the combination of the meditation and sitting down at the end of the day and writing down some thoughts, not for future generations, but just for my own kind of like navel-gazing tendencies. And it really helps for me to stop and do that every day. And when I don't, things start to fall apart. So that was a big helps for me to stop and do that every day. And when I don't, things start to fall apart. So that was a big realization for me this year. Yeah, totally. And again, we've talked about that stuff at length in other episodes, but I completely agree with both of those things, that meditation kind of sets the course and helps you

see things the right way as you, for me, it's at the beginning of my day. So as I start my day as part of my morning routine, and then journaling helps me close the book on the day and release things that would have maybe kept me up at night as my brain just can't let them go. If you jot them down, it's like a mental release and it helps me to sleep so I can do it again tomorrow. Yep, agreed. I've also rethought some of my technology uses. I've started this series over on The Sweet Setup called Mindfulness Mondays,

where we've done interviews with people, but also just a lot of posts on what I consider to be positive uses of technology. We've talked to John Zorotsky of MakeTime. That's kind of where this all started for me, I think, or where I really started to take it seriously. I recognize that I don't really want to have social media or email on my phone because it's going to eat up a bunch of time. But the reading that book that was kind of the, the catalyst for, for taking it more seriously and building the systems into my technology where I'm not just

eliminating things, but I am substituting things. So I have on my, my home screen now, nothing except my Bible app, my prayer app, my habit tracker, shortcuts. I've got MindNode so I can take notes in my doc when I am reading books. Day one, so I can journal, OmniFocus, and drafts. So if I want to jot down something, it's right there. But all of the other stuff is in the back. And I've tried to substitute the time that I was using on things like Twitter, which happens to be the one thing that I keep falling back into with positive things like

I installed Duolingo and I started learning Spanish. I'm still not very good at it, but I've got a 114 day streak going. And it's kind of cool now as I go through it, I recognize every time I open the app, I see my streak counter go up when I complete the lessons. And on one level, it's cool because it's the don't break the chain concept and it brings motivation. But also 114 days, it's really not that long. And I go through these activities now and I can comprehend and even speak things that there's no, I had no idea what any of that stuff meant even a couple of months ago. And so that's kind of cool to see the growth that has happened in the short amount of time just by

making a positive intentional technology use habit. Yeah. Well, Mike, it sounds like you did reset this year. I did. And as I was thinking about this, I was challenged to give myself a grade. I'm not sure how specific you want to get with the grading stuff here, but I'll just share. For me, I'm going to give myself a B. And I'm going to give myself a B because while there was a lot of stuff that didn't go according to plan, especially at the beginning of the year, I think the real important thing for me is that I recovered and I'm on a much better trajectory right now. I also, as I reflected on this last year, recognized that a lot of the habits that I had created prior to going through that difficult period, they helped me navigate what was honestly one of the most difficult periods of my entire life. And I'm not sure I would be in the position I am today if I

hadn't pedaled before I hit the hill, if that makes any sense. Getting that momentum in terms of the Bible reading and the prayer specifically, I don't miss a day with those. And if I didn't have those, then even though the journaling fell off and meditation didn't really stick, those things were rock solid. And without those, I think maybe I had less of an anchor, a little bit less stability. Who knows how that could have ended up. I feel like I wasn't there for you, man. I didn't realize it was that hard for you. Well, that's my own stinking fault because I tend to just say everything is fine, right? And probably a lot of us do.

I think specifically if you listen to podcasts or social media or anything like that, that's the tendency is to project that everything is okay. And there's a lot of value in taking an honest look. And that's why journaling is so important, I think. You have to be honest with what is actually going on. The fact that you are feeling a certain way, that's not a judgment against you as a person. And you need to have someone or something, even if it's just writing it down in your journal, a way of expressing that. If you keep it bottled in, it's not going to be good. So I don't blame you at all. It's my own problem. I try to do it

all myself. I have to get better at trusting people, opening up to people, sharing my failures. Joe and I talked about that recently on Bookworm, which is why I'm honestly going into as much detail here as I am, because I recognize that this is something I got to get better at. Well, overall, though, it sounds like you're in a better place now than you were at the beginning of the year. Yes, absolutely. Just a couple other thoughts, I guess, you know, like just to summarize, I mentioned this earlier, but my lack of margin quickly became evident and I needed to rethink pretty much everything that I assumed was true. And to be honest, David, since you were beating yourself up about not being there for me, I will say publicly that you were one of the people that was there for me. And I did talk to you and you talked me through some things and helped me to see things the right way. So I want to thank you publicly for that and encourage everybody else to find

somebody that you can contact and talk to in your darkest hour. You need to be able to have those people who will talk you off the ledge. And you were definitely that at different times over this last year for me, David. So I thank you for that. And ultimately, if I were to encapsulate all of this, it would just be to say that I feel like I'm in a much better and more sustainable place now. Like I said, when I was going through it, it didn't even seem that bad. But now that I've got the distance and I have more margin in my life, I recognize how much more difficult things were in the moment. It's just like, oh, here's the next thing in front of you. You got to figure out how to do it. And you do it and you move on. But now that I'm looking back at it, I'm like, man, that was actually pretty difficult. And I feel like I'm

in a much better place now. Well, I'm happy to hear that. All right. Well, we're going to talk about my scorecard right after this. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Enter offer code FOCUS at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. So what is Squarespace? You've probably heard about it, but maybe you haven't. If you're making a website, Squarespace is the place you need to go.

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no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash focus, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. So when you decide to sign up, use the offer code focusedCUSED to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the show. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash FOCUSED with the offer code FOCUSED to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Well, Mike, I feel like, I already feel inadequate because you did such a good job of summing up your year of focus. Yeah, but that's okay. I do have some thoughts about

kind of looking back on myself and grading myself for the past year. And this has been an ongoing journey for me. I feel like I, you know, this show, one of the reasons we made the show is I came in as the alcoholic and you came in as the therapist. It's always been an issue for me. Margin has always been an issue. My year in a word came to me immediately when you said, let's put a summary on the year. It was progress. I feel like this whole journey of focus is not a destination thing. You're never going to get there. In fact, I've had a reminder of that over the last month or so with where I've fallen off the wagon a little bit, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But you're never going to get there, but you can get better at this if you're mindful of it. And that's the reason why we show up on your podcast

player of choice every two weeks with a guest or this content, because we want to get better at the journey. We want you to get better at it. And this year I definitely made some progress. Some big changes that helped this year is I got more intentional about the shutdown. That was the part that I always knew I needed to be more intentional about. And this year, I just really put the hammer on myself to do that. And what I mean by that is for me, and this isn't true for everyone, and I've talked about this a little bit previously on the show, but for me, that time at the end of the day where I plan the. And I always seem to find an excuse not to do it. Well, this is the year that I kind of refused to accept excuses. I did crazy things like I have a keyboard maestro script that every day at 4.30 puts a big thing in the center of my screen and minimizes applications and says, stop what you're doing and shut down. That's pretty extreme.

and says, stop what you're doing and shut down. That's pretty extreme. Well, you know, but that's what I needed because, you know, and even though I have the feedback loop now, now that I've been doing it and I see how much more productive I can be the following day if I take the time to shut down, I still have days where shutdown time comes and I say to myself, eh, I don't really need to do it today. It's okay.

I can make an exception. And so I'm not going to say the habit is in yet because I still miss it on occasion. But I appreciate the value of it. And I've taken more extreme measures this year to make that shutdown happen. And I think that has helped me make progress. that shutdown happened. And I think that has helped me make progress. So what's all involved with your shutdown routine today? Is it still what it was a couple months ago when you started it? Or how has it evolved? Well, I mean, I've been doing it basically all year, but it's, you know, first shutdown is shutting down the current day. So I go back to email, I make a pass through email and I look for if anything

came up because I don't check email frequently. So if something came up in the afternoon, I need to deal with it right there. I'll deal with it. But the default answer to email during the shutdown review is just to know it's there and have it on the radar for something I may need to deal with tomorrow and plan into tomorrow. But I also will deal with an emergency. If there's something there that needs my attention right then, then I will stop and deal with it. So that's part of it. So that's the first step. The files on my desktop, I always take a look at those. This is part of the shutting today down part. So I look through the files on my desktop. If always take a look at those. This is part of the shutting today down part. So I look through the files on my desktop. If I've got stuff on my desktop, I try to get it

filed away because just having kind of a clean desktop at the end of the day. I also then start thinking about the following day. And I take a look in OmniFocus. I've created very specific perspectives around the three areas of my life, my personal, the Max Barkey stuff, and the legal stuff that show me the key tasks for today and the key tasks coming over the next week. And I go through those at the end of the day and I try to get realistic. This is one of the definite rocky areas for me where I can crash because even though it's the end of the day and I'm tired,

I still am over-optimistic about the number of things I can do. So one of the things I have to be aware of during the shutdown is, okay, am I biting off more than I can chew for tomorrow? So not only at this point am I looking at what I finished today, I'm also looking at what I'm going to be putting on deck for the following day.

I look at the calendar, do the same thing. And then I open up a blank piece of paper in my journal and I write the next day on the top of it and I document the stuff that I've now committed to. And that has evolved over the years. I'll talk about the journal in committed to. So, and, and I, that, that has evolved over the year. I'll talk about the journal limit. Let's just put a pin in that. But that's, that's, that's the main thing. And then afterwards I go back to the current day in the journal and I just write notes about what happened today and, you know, where, what kind of space I'm in. So

that's where I do journaling as well. The whole process, it sounds like a lot, it doesn't really take that long. At the most, it takes an hour. Usually it takes about a half hour. The advantage of this is when I hit

the desk the following morning, it's like 0 to 100 in 1.2 seconds. You're just going. A Tesla of productivity. Yeah, exactly. There we go. And also, like you, it helps me sleep at night. And kind of the shutdown evolves through the night too, because sometimes it allows me to have a clear break off point between work and play. So once the shutdown is done, then I can go spend time with my family, watch a little TV. Sometimes I'll journal more through the evening if I've got a lot on my mind. But it's just a

really great thing that I did this year. And that really made a lot of progress for me. And I can tell you that the times of this year where I have lost focus are the times where the shutdown has got sloppy or not happened. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think it's probably human nature. I found myself doing the same thing. But we know exactly what causes us to function at peak effectiveness. And then as soon as we get there, we think that we don't need to do the things that allowed us to get there. And then we reap the harvest of the seeds that we've sown of neglect. Yeah, I've been hinting at that.

But I really, you know, I fell into that trap in like mid-October. An attorney friend of mine had a big project that he needed help with. And he's a friend of mine. He's done a lot for me over the years. I felt like my internal voice said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. You have too much going on right now. Right. And then, and then some part of me said, yes. And it was because looking at it in hindsight, it was really to help him because I knew he needed this help. And I felt like I was one of the few people in his life that could give it to him. And I'm still really perplexed about this because it has caused me to not be as reliable to all my other commitments as I would normally be. It has cost me a margin, I guess, to put it simply.

And that whole thing is wrapping up now, but it's delayed some of the field guide stuff. It has, like I said, it just made me less reliable. And I don't like the feeling I've had over the last couple of months so much so that I wasn't doing the right things. I wasn't doing the shutdowns and stuff because I just felt like I was out of time and out of space. And I felt really strung out for the first time in a long time, right before I just got back from vacation. We did our vacation this year, the week of Thanksgiving. Once you get a kid in college,

you'll know why you do your vacation on Thanksgiving. But anyway, so that came just in time. And having a solid week of family time, and even though I had to work on that project while I was on vacation, I still had a lot of family time too. It kind of reset me and I came back and I feel better and I've got some kind of perspective on it now. And now I'm in it, I just got to finish it. And I'm still a little bit stretched out, but I can see the light

at the end of the tunnel at this point. But it's just a lesson for me. It's like, yeah, you think you got this focus thing figured out, you you're getting your field guides done you're getting your podcast you're you're a reliable partner to the people you work with and then it just takes one thing yeah you know and um and that was a good reminder for me about you know a sloppy yes can can cause a lot of problems in your life right right yeah that's really not that, you know, that's not part of the report card for the year. Although I will say, you know, I did, well, I think I made progress during the year. I had to stumble at the end of the year and I'm recovering from it, but I'm also learning from it. At least I'd like to hope I'm learning from it.

Another thing I did this year was I went on a spirit quest about journaling because I became a believer in journaling last year, but I wasn't really happy with the nerdy workflow on it. And I think I found my happy place on this. I've gone through a couple different types of journal books and applications. And now what I think I really am using is I got a ring system. I got the Levenger ring system. But there's a bunch of them. You can get them cheaper than Levenger. But the ability to take pages out and reorder them and combine them into different books makes sense. And I just feel like all the fiddliness of that has seemed to kind of faded away at this point. And now I'm just using the tool. And I just feel like all the fiddliness of that has seemed to kind of faded away at this point.

And now I'm just using the tool. And I'm kind of glad because I was kind of unhappy with myself by how long it was taking for me to figure out how I wanted to do it. You've almost convinced me to give the Levenger Disk System a try. And I did recommend it to somebody the other day who was asking about if I knew anybody who could custom print like a Baron Fig Confidant style notebook. I think it makes a ton of sense if you want a lot of structure in the analog productivity planning workflow. And I am excited to see how this changes by the next time I see you. I want to see it in person and see you snap the things in and out. That's the one thing I think that kind of holds me back is I feel like

that would, that would, uh, the paper wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily, uh, be sustainable if you, if you do that a lot. But, um, I think that this is for someone who wants a kind of build your own system and has the ability to design and print things yourself, this is a solid system. Yeah, so what I did, and I'll explain it more next year as I'm kind of solidifying what I do, but I basically have three ring binders. I have one, which is just the yearly journal. And so as I go through pages, I take a picture of them with GoodNotes. GoodNotes has a really cool scan feature.

It's a recent update. And so it scans it in. So you've got a digital version of it at the end of the day. And then, so I have the small ring binder that I carry around every day and I write in and do work in. And it's got the monthly stuff and it's got tabs for legal and max barking and whatnot. But then when I, and a lot of blank paper in that one.

And then when I finish, like when I finish a day, I take it out of this ring binder. And then I put it in that separate ring binder that's just a journal for the year. And I can go through that later as I need it in that separate ring binder that's just a journal for the year. And I can go through that later as I need it and access it. But it's just, I don't carry it with me at all times. Within a few days of me doing a daily journal, I put it into the, I guess I'd say the archive journal. And then I've got a separate one, which is to me kind of like a commonplace book. Like when I see little quotes I like, I write them, I carry them in the daily carry journal. But once that fills up, I put it into the commonplace or,

um, I went and watched one of my daughter's plays. My daughter does a lot of playwriting stuff. And I wrote down a whole bunch of thoughts after I had watched that. And then I put it into commonplace, you know, and the reason why I really went to the ring system was I was doing that before with bound journals, but I had this crazy indexing system and you had to like go to, you know, journal two page 38 and then journal four page 22. And it was just like, it was just nuts. And I like, I just wanted the ability to, no matter when I write this stuff, to put it in a logical order. And the downside of the ring system is the paper isn't as nice as some of the bound books.

But it's nice enough. And the upside of putting logical order to it without having some really nutty index is the big win for me. And the other thing is you can get a punch for this journal. And like I had a client meeting the other day and we're working on an extensive contract. So I just took my copy of it with all my red lines and I punched it and put it in my daily carry journal. So then I sat down with the client, I was able to flip through it, you know, and, you know, it was, it was really nice having my reference material right there. So I could write on it during our meeting. And, you know, it's just, you know, so I find all sorts of uses

for it. Another thing I do is at the beginning of the week, when I've got my week mapped out in the calendar app on my Mac, I print out that in color and I just punch it and put it in the book for the week. So I have it there as a reference. So there's just things you can do with it that you wouldn't be able to do with a bound journal. And it's been a real win for me. I'll talk about this more at some point, but the big win for me is like, I was fiddling with that way too much for several months of this year, buying different notebooks and not liking this one. And, you know, I mean, it's like it started to feel like, you know, that thing where you spend all the time talking about the tools instead of actually using the tools. Yeah.

And that's no longer a thing. Now I've got a system. I think I'm I suspect I'll still be using this next year at this time. So that's good. You also started moving the needle. Yeah. I really rethought this year, the way I track time and I still am a time tracker and I still like to look at my timing app data on my Mac and some of the stuff Apple does now, but I wanted to be more focused on tracking and being kind of aware of the time that matters every day, the time that moves the needle. And we did an episode on this. But that is still a daily thing for me. And it still continues to kind of push me

forward and encourage me to spend time being focused every day. Like when I get to the end of the day, I can see. And it's happened to me, especially every day. Like when I get to the end of the day, I can see. And it's happened to me, especially in the last month where I get to the end of the day and I had a full day, but I didn't move the needle or I moved it very little. And that's that feedback again that immediately tells me, hey, buddy, you got a problem. And like I know I've been in trouble the last month or so

with this extra yes, but I knew it immediately because of the systems I built. And I think I've been kind of compensating for it better than I would have otherwise. But it's also like this daily reminder to me that you just can't, you know, I just have to be so much more careful about saying yes to things. Sure. No, that makes, that makes sense because you can, if you can identify the cause of the pain that you're experiencing, you can tell yourself, well, I just won't do that again next time. But if you don't know where it came from, then you just resent the fact that it's there. Yeah. Yeah. But it's been a big help, all this stuff. And I have done more focused time. I think the field guides I've released this year have been the best that

I've ever made because I was able to focus on them. I feel like the work I'm doing as a lawyer is top-notch and the podcasting and the writing. I feel like I'm clicking on all cylinders because of the focused superpower that I've been working on. I still have a ways to go. You know, some of my big feedback coming out of the year is, yeah, I can do this. You can teach an old dog new tricks. I can get better at this. But I also like, I was feeling pretty cocky around October by getting, you know, two field guides out and thinking, man, I'm right on track to get another one going. And I screwed up by, I think, thinking that, oh yeah, I can take on the world now. I think it's just something that comes out of this naturally.

And, you know, I stumbled, but that's okay. It's not like like I wasn't going through something like you were going through. It's not like, you know, but I did make some mistakes. And one of my takeaways, as I sit here, is, you know, focus is definitely not a destination. It's a place you need to struggle to stay at. Yeah, definitely. As I say, how do you think you did overall? You know, it's been a good year for me. I feel like I'll get, you know, I'm not good at this. I'll give myself a B.

It might have been a B plus except for the last couple of months. But I don't think I'm at an A yet. But I definitely, you know, talking to you, making the show, I think helped a lot. And also just being more self-aware. I think I'm making progress with this stuff. Awesome. We'd love to hear from the listeners, by the way, how you, how you feel like you did this year or even your word for the year, if you want to continue that theme, that is a really interesting exercise. I'm glad that you were willing to go through it with me, David, because when I did it the first time, it was a really,

really powerful just to think through and encapsulate everything that I had gone through. It really brought a lot of clarity to the things that I've been through, things that honestly I've overcome and made me feel a lot better about where I'm at right now. So if you want to contribute, we'd love to hear what your word for the year is or what you would grade yourself in the forums. Don't be so hard on yourself, Mike. You had a good year. Right. Yeah. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Ahrefs. Whether you work for a big brand, you run your own small business, or you do freelance work, getting

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apprehensive about the topic of SEO because you don't know where to start. You don't understand what you need to do. And I walked out of that session with a much better understanding of what was possible for me using SEO. One of the things that I got from that session, and Sammo also does all of the YouTube videos for HRFs on their YouTube channel where he explains a lot of this stuff for even if you're a complete beginner to help you wrap your head around this, is search intent. So if people are searching for something and you're able to answer the questions that they have, that can be one of the things that can help you rank highly. Well, how do you know what people are searching for? You go into Ahrefs like I did and you look at the questions that people are asking. And then you can create content which answers those questions. And that's probably

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We did. Caffeine in the afternoon. I don't do caffeine after about two o'clock. I don't do caffeine after about two o'clock. Yes, we did not touch on caffeine. That was an oversight. But after I saw that tweet, I realized that if we would have covered caffeine, it would have been a two-hour episode because I have lots of thoughts on caffeine. Yeah, you've been talking to me about it offline, and I thought it'd be fun to talk about caffeine as a tool towards focus. Yeah, I probably like a lot of things in my life take my caffeine consumption

way too seriously. So I've looked into this and I'll try to distill down my findings here. But the bottom line is that caffeine is a drug and you need to recognize that because you can use it positively, but also it can become a negative addiction. There's a lot of things that go into the impact that caffeine has on your body. And as you drink more caffeine, your body gets used to it. So a cup of coffee when you're just starting off and you aren't drinking caffeine is going to have a higher impact than after you've been drinking the same cup of coffee at the same time every day for several years. But that being said, there is a general safe zone in terms of how much caffeine you should

be drinking in a day, this is according to the Mayo Clinic, they say up to 400 milligrams per day is kind of the safe zone. The average eight ounce cup of coffee, because 400 milligrams, what does that mean? I had to look this up. The average eight ounce cup of coffee has about 100 milligrams. So that's about four cups of coffee. And if you are an espresso drinker, a single shot has about 63 milligrams. A double shot's about 125. So three double espressos in a given day. The caffeine that you consume, back to your original point about not drinking coffee in the afternoon, caffeine has a four to six hour half-life, which means that four to six hours, about half of the caffeine

that you consumed is still in your body. So if you drink caffeine later in the day, that will definitely mess up your sleep cycles. And I know people who say, well, it doesn't have any impact. And my response is always, well, your sleep is really messed up if it doesn't have any impact. Yeah, I know. We go to Disneyland frequently. That's the advantage of living in Orange County. And so often we'll be leaving in the evening and I see people just pouring out of the Disneyland Starbucks with their cups of coffee at like 10 at night. And I'm just thinking, what are you doing? I can't imagine. But I want to talk about kind of the positive effect of using caffeine for focus, because I know that you kind of game the system, right? I don't know if I game the system, but I try to optimize it.

Let's put it that way. Another thing you need to recognize about caffeine is that it does not give you energy, but it prevents an energy dip. So the people who are pouring out of Starbucks after the sun goes down, it's already too late for that caffeine to have any impact because the reason that they're going in there, most of them, is that they feel tired. And at that point, it's over. You need to drink it before you feel it. So optimizing caffeine, there's actually a great resource for this, by the way, in Make Time by John Zyrowski and Jake Knapp. They have a whole section on optimizing caffeine. And when I read that, they basically do the same thing that I had been doing. And they recommend that you don't

drink your coffee right after you wake up because when you wake up, you have high levels of cortisol, I believe, that are kind of helping you ramp up as you start your day. And if you were to consume caffeine at that point, it's going to have kind of minimal effect. So if you wake up at six, really the prime time to be drinking coffee is more like 9.30, a couple hours later. This is what I try to do. And sometimes I'll drink it a little bit earlier because my wife and I both drink coffee and we'll make it. Sometimes she's on her way to the gym or something in the morning. And so she'll make some coffee before she leaves at 8.30 just so we don't have to make it twice. Okay, but whenever I can, I will drink my first cup of coffee about 9 a.m. And then your energy naturally is going to dip a little bit in the

afternoon, which is honestly a great time for a nap. I know you're a napper, David, but if you can't take a nap, that's also a great time to have some caffeine. So kind of last call for me is about 1.30 to 2.30. I usually try to drink my second cup of coffee right after lunch, so about 1 p.m., and then that gives me the energy that I need to make it through the rest of the day feeling alert and focused in whatever I'm trying to do. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, because I think Chris Bailey talked about this too, in the productivity project book. It's just a lot of people who want to be productive, fight against that, you know, late morning slump, using, I guess, you know, this, this deployment of coffee. Yep. Yeah. And they, I guess the common mistakes that people make when it comes to coffee is they drink it too early, they drink too much, and they drink it too late.

Yeah. Yeah. So the more you understand about the process, you can kind of use this tactically to maximize your energy and your focus. But also, like I said at the beginning, your body gets used to this. So in addition to like my coffee ritual, I have a automated pour over thing. It's a Chemex automatic. So I can grind the beans, set it up, hit the button, and then it basically makes a pour over coffee for me, a larger Chemex. So usually my wife and I'll split like a five cup Chemex in the morning. And a five cup, by the way, I don't know exactly what that equates to. It ends up being about two eight ounce cups of coffee for me and one for my

wife. And then in the afternoon, we'll each have another. So it's less than the 400 milligrams. But like I said, your body becomes accustomed to this. So occasionally, I will go on a coffee fast. And at the beginning of the year, just go 21 days, absolutely no coffee to kind of give myself a caffeine reset. And this, a lot of people will talk about how when they don't have their coffee, they have headaches. That kind of is an indicator that you become too accustomed to this. The last couple of times that I've done this, I have not had any of the headaches. The first time that I did it, I did. And that kind of showed me that maybe I'm a little bit more addicted to this substance than I realized. But again, you can use it tactically, and there's a lot of positive benefits that can come from using it in moderation.

But you do need to recognize the impact that it's having on your body if you want to use it effectively. Yeah, my wife, when she was pregnant, stopped drinking coffee both times, and it was rough for her, that transition. Yep. Well, I feel like I'm missing out on something. I don't drink coffee. For me, it started out as a grudge thing.

My sister told me when I went to college that I'd be drinking coffee within a week, and I just wanted to prove her wrong. And so I just didn't. But I just don't care for the taste of it. That's, you know, I have not, I was thinking about this as we were prepping the show. I don't think I've drank a full cup of coffee in my life. I've had sips of it on occasion, but I can't think of a time that I've actually drank a cup of coffee and I just don't care for the taste. Um, I have been self-medicating caffeine as well though through tea. And, um, and one of the things, tricks I use is matcha. Matcha is a kind of, it's, it's, it's a green tea, just like I usually drink green tea, but matcha is ground

up green tea into like dust and you mix it into the water. So you're literally drinking the tea leaves and it's got a higher caffeine as a result of it. And often if I'm feeling down or like I need a little pick me up, I will drink a cup of matcha and I can tell a difference between drinking that versus drinking normal green tea. I just did a search while you were talking about matcha versus coffee and the internet is just full of advice as usual. Of course, yeah.

But I have to tell you, I'm a little coffee curious. It's like, should I like try and figure this out? Am I missing out on something? But to tell you the truth, I'm just probably going to go make a cup of matcha. tell you the truth, I'm just probably going to go make a cup of matcha. Well, caffeine to me is probably what fountain pens are to you. It's not something that you need. You don't need to have a fancy pour over coffee every morning, but I choose to because it's one of those things that I like the taste and it brings me joy. And it started off as a whole process and it was a manual process and it took 15 to 20 minutes every single day. And that's a lot of time, but it was, it became part of a ritual. It was almost like my reward for completing my morning routine is I would go through this process

and I enjoyed the process. And then at the end, I had a delicious cup of coffee made from beans that most people would say that's way too expensive, you know, but this is one of the things that I choose to spend some money on. Because again, it brings me joy for people who are just looking to optimize their caffeine. Don't go start drinking pour over coffees. But if you really like coffee, then be okay with that and make some compromises in some other areas. You want to have some margin. You can't do everything, but by choosing the things that are going to bring you joy, ultimately, that's going to make you more productive because happy people are productive people.

Yeah. For me, it really comes down to taste. We had a recent family gathering. There was some brown ice cream. I assumed it was chocolate. I took one bite and I'm like, oh, what is this? And it was like, I don't know. It's not coffee flavored, but it was Coke. I don't remember. Whatever. But so for me, it's a taste thing. But I do use caffeine via tea. However, tea is a poor substitute to coffee when it comes to the amount of caffeine you get out of it. Sure, sure. It definitely is an acquired taste too. I mean, my own coffee journey, I started off with the really sugary, like the caramel macchiatos from Starbucks. And then I'm fortunate, fortunate maybe, to have a brother who is an extreme coffee snob who kind of got me hooked on black coffee.

And when I figured out that I could buy the pour-over stuff and make my own at home and control the end product. And just like, again, I just, I enjoy the process of doing that. I enjoy the sound of the, as corny as this sounds, like, I enjoy the sound of, of doing that. Uh, I enjoy the, the, the, the sound of the corny as this sounds like I enjoy the sound of the fancy grinder that I have grinding my beans. I enjoy pouring the water over the coffee and seeing it bubble up. I enjoy hearing it drip through the, the filter. Like that's, that's fun for me. and it kind of puts me in a positive state then for the the rest of my rest of my day um but you're not just gonna start drinking black coffee no matter how great the beans you buy are you're gonna have to you're gonna have to get accustomed to it and for some

people i totally get why they think it's gross. I always thought it was gross too. It's only actually been in the last five or so years that I've developed a taste for coffee. Well, I think if I were to do it, I would probably like go for an espresso where it's just like pure caffeine infusion with as little coffee drinking as possible. Yeah. The problem with espresso is that if you want to make that at home, the good espresso gear is way more expensive than the good pour over coffee gear. The more we talk about this, the better my matcha and tea sounds to me. When it broke, don't fix it. I actually like the taste. So there you go. But I'm like you. I will not even drink a matcha in the afternoon because a matcha definitely has a higher caffeine feel to me than a regular green tea does. So my goal or my kind of caffeine deployment is like yours.

I don't do it first thing in the morning. I like to, as we've talked about on the show, in the morning, just get up and work. And so the whole system is planned around me having two or three hours of solid focus time before I do anything. But then I will go maybe work out and make a matcha and or or a regular tea and drink that through the morning. And then usually after lunch, I'll make another one if I want. Not always, but but often. But that's it. Like after two, three o'clock, I don't consume any more caffeine because it does keep me jittery and awake if I do that. I'm curious because I know you are a napper.

Have you experimented with caffeine naps at all? Yeah, I'm aware of them, but I've never tried it. I do these on the weekends sometimes where I'll have my second cup of coffee about one o'clock and then immediately after that, because it takes a little while for the caffeine to be absorbed into your system, you can take a nap and you'll wake up 20, 30 minutes into it. But at that point, the caffeine is kicked in and you feel very alert and very focused, at least my experience. And again, I don't do this during the work days typically, but it definitely does work. If you, if you need to, if you want to take a nap, but you don't want to sleep for

an hour and a half, that's typically what happens to me when I lay down for a nap and I'm not drinking coffee beforehand. That's probably why you're not a napper. If you do an hour and a half. I sleep, I sleep hard. But not when I drink coffee first. The caffeine nap really does work. Yeah, I always set an alarm for like 35 minutes. That's kind of, I figure it takes me about five minutes to fall asleep and I'll get a 30-minute nap. And Apple Watch is great for that. Your wrist starts vibrating, you wake up. You get back to work. And that's the key to napping is not to do the REM cycle. Just get a short nap. And when we were on vacation, we were swimming in the ocean a lot.

And one afternoon, my wife and I were like, let's just take a nap. And I'm like, great. And that little thing in my head said, well, don't set an alarm. You'll be fine. And I slept for like three hours. Exactly. Exactly. Yep. So even on vacation in the future,

I will be setting an alarm when I know. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by FreshBooks. Okay, you free agents, you want to save 192 hours? There's a way to do that. And that's what our friends at FreshBooks can help you do with their super simple cloud accounting software.

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So if you're listening to this ad and not using FreshBooks yet, now is the time to try it. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of the show. There's no credit card required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused in the how did you hear about us section. We're always hearing from listeners that are starting some kind of indie project or side hustle. If you want to get paid on that side hustle, just set up a FreshBooks account. For very little investment with FreshBooks, you've solved the getting paid problem, which is probably the fundamental problem of getting out on your own. So we thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, David, talk to us about your other life.

Yeah, I am taking on a new life as a Jedi Knight. I was talking about how I got a little frustrated over the last couple of months. I felt kind of strung out and I realized I needed something to do. Sometimes in the evening, I was just too wound up about everything and I wanted a little escape, right? And we've talked about video games in the past in the show. I generally like video games, but I'm not really very good at them or that interested in what I would call twitchy video games, you know, where you've got to be like the first person shooter kind of stuff. And I just wanted something kind of fun as an escape. And I can't play my saxophone at 10 o'clock at night when I'm finding myself wound up. So I started looking for alternatives. And there's been something on my radar for literally

nine years. It's an online role playingplaying game called Star Wars The Old Republic. And it's an old game. You know, it's been around for a long time, but it's what you call a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. And I actually have a history with games like this. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on this show, but I played the predecessor. This was called Star Wars Galaxies years ago. And of course, the fact that it has Star Wars attached to it is going to attract me

because that's kind of my little corner of fandom. I don't have time to keep track of all the different fandom things, but Star Wars is the one that I do keep up with. But I didn't have a good relationship with that game where I wasn't able to really control myself. And I distinctly remember myself, I was playing the game too much. Then I had these mines in the game. The game had the ability to mine resources that you could then sell. It had its own economy. And I remember driving home from work one day and thinking to myself,

I need to get home because the minerals shifted and I've got to move my minds. You know, I've got to run my Star Wars business. And then it occurred to me I have two little kids at home. And the reason I need to get home was to cancel my Star Wars online account. So I didn't spend time moving minds when I had two little kids at home. So I literally did that. I drove home and I canceled the account and never thought about it again. So I've always felt like this is kind of like maybe my dopamine addicted personality is not fit for an online game like that because I could get sucked into it too much.

But at the same time, when I was thinking about all the things I could do for a little bit of escape, this one really called out to me something that I think I would enjoy. So as somebody who makes a show called Focus, I decided I'm going to try and go down that rabbit hole again, but this time with limits. So over the last month, I've set up this account, and I have my little Jedi Knight, last month, I've set up this account, and I have my little Jedi Knight, and I went into it with my eyes open that I am not going to get sucked into this more than I need to be. So I thought that'd be the part that'd be fun to share. Obviously, very few people are interested in playing this dumb old game, but I think you do need to think about limits when you take on things that can take over your life.

So when I downloaded it, first I wanted to see if it worked. I happened to have a Windows install on my laptop because of something else I'm doing. So it was very easy. It's a Windows-only game. But that actually gave me my first benefit in terms of setting boundaries is you can run Windows on a Mac via Parallels, or you can run it via Bootcamp. Now, Parallels allows you to run Windows at the same time as your Mac. And with a nine-year-old game, it's fine. It's going to look great and be fine on a Parallels install. But one of the first choices I made about it was I am only going to have Boot Camp

installed on my computer. I only had Boot Camp anyway for the project I was working on. I'm not going to add something like Parallels where I can open the game anytime I'm sitting at my computer. So that was the first boundary I set. And then the second one I decided to set was I'm only going to play this game when I schedule time for it or when I have successfully completed a day. So if I have, like, if I feel myself kind of stressed out and I want to take a little break, maybe I'll schedule an hour for it in the afternoon and put it on the calendar and make it that intentional, you know, me time. And I'll play it for an hour, but it's on the schedule. Or if I have finished the day, done my shutdown, move the needle, got into the evening, maybe my daughter has gone into her homework cave. My wife is not interested in watching TV with me and I'm sitting there alone. Then I'll open it up and play it if I want.

And then the other thing I did was looked at it because these online role-playing games, they are dopamine machines. You know, they, they want you to say, well, not only should you level this character up, you can now with this game, I could create multiple characters. I could create a bounty hunter and I could create a dark Jedi. i could create a you know a whatever you know and i said i'm not going to do any i'm not going to fall for that trap you know i just wanted a little time to pretend i'm a jedi knight so i've got a character that's a jedi knight and this game has kind of unlimited content and you can play you can play it singly or you can play it with other people but there's many many missions in there uh. But there's many, many missions in there. And there's many planets.

I don't even know how many planets there are. I haven't explored enough of it to know at this point. But there's a lot. And every planet you go on, there's somebody that needs help finding lost orphans or stopping a supply of illegal weapons or whatever. or stopping a supply of illegal weapons or whatever. And as a do-gooder Jedi Knight, I can pick up one of those missions and run it. And usually I'm done within 30 minutes to an hour. And I go report back and they give me the little dopamine hit of, oh, here's some experience points and here's some money for helping us out.

And I feel good because I found orphans. And found orphans, you know, and then I log out of the game and, and finish the day. And it was a little escape for me, but so I've been doing it a month. I've been successful so far. I told myself, you know, do it for a month and then look back on it to see how much time you actually spent on it. You know, did you fall into the trap? And I realized

this is another thing that's not a destination. It's an ongoing thing you have to keep aware of. But something that was a little afraid of could take too much time. I'm not doing too much with it. And it is giving me that little break I was looking for. Nice. I think you're approaching this the right way with all of the structure that you have in place and using it, unless you've got scheduled time for it, using it as a reward, I think there's a lot of value. And that's something that I'm not very good at is giving myself rewards for doing a good job on things. Even achieving goals that I had set out to get done by the end of the year, whatever that standard goal setting protocol is that you give yourself a reward when you're done. I tend not to do that sort of thing. I think there's a lot

of value in that. I do think that with an MMORPG specifically, you're playing with fire. I know it. I'm aware of it. So report back, I guess, if everything breaks. No, I have told myself that, look, you know, as fun as this is, paying for my daughter's college is probably more important. So I'm going, you know, I have an omni-focus task to actually track the time. This is one where I do do time tracking, you know. And it's like I looked in the last week, I spent three hours in it. And assuming a 15-hour day, that's 3% of the week I spent on it.

And that's about right for me. Even like five hours would be okay if it was a week where I got a lot of work done and I happened to have a lot of downtime in the evenings. But I am very aware of this and I know my personality and I love Star Wars, so I could see myself saying, oh, now I want to make other characters. And, but I I'm keeping myself in very much under limits with this. And one of the best things I did was the whole bootcamp thing, the technology part of it, where in order to play it, I literally have to turn my computer off and restart it. Yeah. and restart it. Yeah. And I think that if I had put it on with a Parallels install, which is an app that lets you run Windows on a Mac,

then that 3% would be like 10%. Yeah, it's too accessible. Exactly. So I'm real happy with myself about that. That's something I've done okay and given myself a little reward without creating problems. But I'm going to be...

You'll have to keep me honest on this, Mike. Will do. But it's fun and I'm having a good time. And I feel like focus doesn't mean just working all the time. And I wanted to make the point that if you do get some focus in your life, why not find a way to reward yourself? But just make sure you're self-aware about it. You can have a cookie once in a while, just don't keep them in the pantry. But you are absolutely right. We're talking about caffeine being a drug. For me, Star Wars is a

drug. So I have to be very careful about the way I play this game. Yeah. Speaking of focus and work, there's an interesting thread in the forum that I wanted to talk about here real briefly called How to Stay Focused in an Open Office Environment. The original post by Shilko says, I work in an open office environment. I constantly struggle with intrusions on my concentration network. I work as a sole marketing person in my company. So my day is essentially a constant stream of people coming to my desk to request graphics or document edits. I've tried to encourage people to send requests via email so I can prioritize and triage based on priority, but that never lasts long. Put headphones on when I'm really trying to focus to discourage people from talking to me in person, but it rarely seems effective. I'm struggling with the constant abrupt project switches and I find my days so unproductive and I'm exhausted by the end of it. Any advice is appreciated. There's a lot of people who have chimed in, a lot of great stuff in here, but the one specifically that I wanted to call out here is from Jay Koopmans. He has a sign. I guess I'm assuming this is a he. I'm not sure about that. They have a sign on their desk and

they posted a picture of it. And I'm just going to talk through this. It's very top. It says, if headphones are on colon and then big bold letters, do not disturb. I'm trying to get work done. Then there's a section about exceptions checklist. Number one, are you on fire? And I'm the only one who can put you out. Number two, am I on fire and don't realize it? Number three, is it judgment day? And are machines becoming selfaware? Remember, Skynet is coming. And then there's an FAQ section. And then the first question is, how are you doing? Answer, good. Next question, what are you working on? Answer, stuff. Next question, how's stuff going? Answer, see answer one. This is brilliant. And then the last one. What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? 42.

He says that when people stop by and he has headphones on, he points to this sign and then they laugh and move on. I thought this was brilliant. It's great. I mean, I think this applies even beyond the open office. I mean, anytime you work with other humans, people want to interrupt and come visit you. And I talked about this. We had an episode earlier this year where there was a young attorney that wrote in and I'd given some advice.

And one of the things I do, like if you can wear headphones, I think that's great because headphones are just such a clear. And I would get the biggest, ugliest, like really colorful over the ear cans you can find. So it's obvious that you're wearing them from far. But if you're not in a place where you can wear headphones, I would just. I would when people ask me a question, I'd say, OK, why don't you let's schedule a meeting and give me all and we'll sit down and go over all the questions you have. Yep. And we'd schedule the meeting right there when they walked in and we'll sit down and go over all the questions you have yep and we'd schedule the meeting right there when they walked in and we wouldn't discuss it any further and um

and then you only have to do that a few times with people and then they start to understand that's how you work they may not they may not like it but they understand that's how you work and then before long then you start getting an email it says hey can i schedule a meeting with you to go over some things and you don't get the interruption. There's other ways to deal with this too, but I really like that sign. I just love the way everybody in the forum pitched in on this. Yeah, I mean, obviously there's some humor associated with this, but the real thing that's worth calling out here, I think, that's of value to people who do

want to shellcode create some uninterrupted focus time, is managing the expectations. And there are lots of ways that you can do that. I remember hearing about a couple of researchers who shared a desk and they had a pencil in the middle. And when one of them had a question, they would pick up the pencil and bring it to their side of the desk. And that was a them had a question, they would pick up the pencil and bring it to their side of the desk. And that was a visual indication, no words were spoken, that I have a question, the next time that you have an opportunity, I need to talk something over with you. And then five, 10 minutes go by, and then they see that the pencil's gone, and they stop what they're doing, and they solve the problem, and they resume their work.

stop what they're doing and they solve the problem and they resume their work. You can do other things with cue lights and different signs and things. I've actually thought about that. I record podcasts in the basement office in our house. And the basement is also where the kids tend to go to play. And there's a light right at the top of the stairs where as long as they're out of the basement, I don't have to worry about any noise being picked up. They can be bouncing off the walls upstairs, and I'm not going to hear it down here in my work cave. But I've thought about putting a Philips Hue light at the top of the stairs. And when I'm recording a podcast, tapping a button on my Elgato stream

deck that you convinced me to buy, David, that turns it red. And that visual indication that as soon as they open the door, they see the lights red, oh, I'm not supposed to go down there. There's lots of different things that you could do with that. And automation has made this easier. But again, you're still going to have to have that conversation about the expectations. easier. But again, you're still going to have to have that conversation about the expectations. Agreed. Agreed. Well, we went a little long today, but it was fun kind of looking back at the prior year. And I feel like we both made progress this year. We did. And hopefully everybody who's listening has made some progress as well. Focus on your wins, not your failures like I tend to do and share them in the forum.

Yeah. Let's hear from you. And maybe we'll bring some of that up in a future show. Thank you to our sponsors today, our friends over at Squarespace, FreshBooks, and Ahrefs. And we will see you in two weeks.