Focused - 95: Five Years of Freedom

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

David shares the big lessons he's learned from five years of working independently. He and Mike talk about the fear of failure, intentional constraints, effective delegation, and the impact David's furry new coworker has on his productivity.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. This is going to be a little bit different. I know you just had a free agency anniversary, so we're going to do a little throwback to the free agents' roots and talk about your, uh, your big milestone.

Yeah. Five years, man. I can't believe how fast five years went by, but it was five years ago that I stuck it to the man, cleaned out my desk and started on my own. Nice. So the big question, maybe the place to start with this would just be overall, how is the indie thing going? You know, it's going great. I really can't complain about anything, although I have a few in the show outline. But I'm just really happy, Mike. It's been the right fit for me. I know it's not the right fit for everyone. That was the thing we used to always talk about on Free Agents, don't quit your job just because we say it's fun. But for me, it's been really fun. What do you think the thing is that made it the right thing for you? Is it just that you are now unemployable or was it a mindset thing? For me, it was a journey for sure.

I mean, if I had done this straight out of law school i would have failed miserably at it um i need to kind of spend some time working with other people and learning the trade but also i think i just needed supervision and guidance for a long time um so but it was the end of i i spent i, 22 years in a firm. And I was ready to be independent. And it's just kind of a personality trait of mine as I've gotten older where I just want to be in control of what I do. And there's tons of costs for that independence. But it was something that I was at a point in my life I was ready for. independence, but it was something that I was at a point in my life was ready for.

My kids were just, you know, they're growing up, but there was still enough time to get quality time with both of them. And that was a big part of it for me. But it's just, it's really been great. Yeah, the kid seems to be a common theme with a lot of people that I talk to when they are weighing more freedom, whether it's completely going independent or just trying to work from home or have a little bit more autonomy in their day. It's the realization that the kids are growing up in front of them that kind of kickstarts that. Do you think, though, you mentioned that you worked for the firm for 22 years and you learned a lot in the process. Do you think it took you 22 years to get to the point where you could go independent and make that leap? Or could you have done it sooner and you just kind of put up with it for a while? The second.

I could have done it sooner. We hear from some listeners, especially back when we did free agents, that are just miserable and work with people that are miserable. And that wasn't the case. I worked with nice people who were good to work with. But there was this part of me that just needed to get out. And it was really kind of changing my personality in ways I didn't like. And I was bringing that home a little bit. And I didn't want my kids to look at a career as something that you endure. I wanted them to think of it as something that you enjoy and that you

jump out of bed in the mornings. And I just wasn't feeling that anymore. And also, I had this passion for the Max Barkey stuff that I wanted to give more time to. So there was kind of a bunch of stuff mixing around my head as I made this decision. Oh, did I answer the question? Yeah, I guess I did. I should have done it sooner in hindsight, but I was afraid. Sure. What was the most surprising thing to you now that you have some distance here, five years, about going independent? Yeah, you know, I knew, well, a couple things. Because I had done so much work on building the Mac Sparky stuff, I wasn't in as much trouble as I thought I was. You know, I had a way to earn money.

And the same thing with all the deposits I had made with my legal clients over the years. They were all happy to come with me as I went solo. In fact, I got more legal work than I ever anticipated when I went solo. And it was a combination of people in the community that other lawyers that I'd worked with over the years heard I went out and they're sending me work just to kind of help me out. And also the Max Parkey community. A lot of people out there were like, well, now if he's on his own, maybe he can be my lawyer. And several listeners are clients of mine at this point. I mean, it's kind of a narrow gap to get through.

You have to be doing something that I do and be in California and all that. But it worked out really great. And so that was a surprise that I that I wasn't, you know, immediately, I felt like I was in solid footing. Another surprise for me was the autonomy, which is silly in hindsight, of course, you're going to have a ton of autonomy. But it's still you have to experience experience it before you can really appreciate it. Some of the best advice I've received at the time, and I think I've said it already in the show, so I apologize if you've heard this before, but I was talking to Merlin Mann on the phone and he said, this is your chance to reset all of your habits and he told me that like right before I

started and I kept that in mind and that is some of that it was just great advice for make any big life change if you're going to college if you're changing jobs look at it as an opportunity to reset all of your habits and so I did I looked at every habit I had and thought is this something that needs to stay is this something I need to enhance something I had and thought, is this something that needs to stay? Is this something I need to enhance? Is this something I can throw overboard? And that was really great. But I didn't expect to be doing all of that at once. I remember you giving me that same advice. And it's kind of interesting. I think that was really the kind of tipping point for me when I started to realize that this stuff doesn't just apply to people who want to work independently and

ultimately why we made the switch from free agents to focus. And when we did that, I heard from a lot of people who said, you know, I always was interested in free agents, but never gave it a listen because I wasn't an independent worker. So I just figured it wasn't for me. And the realization is that everybody can hit the reset button on their habits at any given point. It doesn't have to be a major life crisis or not even a crisis, but a major life event that allows you to reset those things. But recognizing that when the moment is right to hit the reset button and viewing that as an opportunity, that's really important too, I think. Another thing I didn't see coming was the change in business model. Several things changed.

On the legal side, you know, I was, for 22 years, I did litigation. I went to court and did trials. But at the same time, about 10 years into it, I started picking up these clients that I would represent through trial, but then I would just become their general kind of corporate lawyer, you know, business lawyer for companies too small to have like their own in-house lawyer. So I wrote contracts and formed companies and made partnerships and broke partnerships and did all the things that general business representation needs. And I always enjoyed that. Over the years, I found myself enjoying it more and more because I always felt like that's work that at the end of the day, you move the ball forward for people. It's very productive. Whereas litigation

is very destructive. And sometimes it works, but often it doesn't. Even when you win, the other guy declares bankruptcy and you still don't get paid. I mean, there's just all these things that can go wrong. And it's such a negative space. And I know there's lawyers listening to it right now that do litigation and love it and have all the respect in the world for you. But something in me started changing about the same time I left. And after I went out on my own, I was doing a trade secret case. And I went and I was taking this deposition. I can tell you a transitory moment in my life. It was I was taking a deposition of this can tell you a transitory moment in my life. It was, I was taking a deposition of this guy.

He was lying through his teeth. His lawyer, this very young lawyer was lying through his teeth on the record under the penalty of perjury. And I remembered earlier in my career, there was a time when I caught people perjuring themselves. I would be like high-fiving people back at the office. I'm like these guys they're going down at trial they just lied i'm gonna prove it you know and um and after that deposition i just felt like i felt like uh someone had just like drained my emotional bucket entirely i just felt empty you know and it just made me sad that these people so willingly do this stuff.

And I realized at that moment that I'm no longer cut out for litigation, you know? It's just something snapped, you know? I think it was already happening, but that was like the moment. And so I had just gone out on my own, and I realized that the work that I do that earns the most money, you know, litigation for lawyers is very lucrative because you spend tons of time in court and preparing for court. But I realized, oh, wait a second. Something that used to be my identity, something that I always thought I was really great at, is something that maybe I'm no longer competent at. I guess competence is not the right word. It's something that I'm no longer engaged in, something that no longer sparks joy.

So suddenly I realized, well, the business model probably needs to change. And the good news was I had picked up a lot of business, general business work, and I just started finishing up the litigation I was in. I didn't want to abandon any clients, but I just told people, I'm just not going to do that anymore. And so that income went down, you know, so that's not always very smart after you leave your job and start a business to cut out some of your more lucrative products, I guess, for lack of a better term. Right. But it, you know, I did it it so litigation was part of the plan when you went independent and then you started doing it and you realize this isn't really who i am so i have to

figure something else out what else maybe is different about the work that you do now from what you pictured when you decided to go independent five years ago well i mean i didn't know i was gonna add two additional podcasts, which I've done, which, you know, takes significant time. But it's something I, they're both podcasts that I'm passionate about, including this one. The Max Barkey, you know, the iBooks author thing was running out of gas. You know, Apple has not updated the application in a long time.

And I wasn't getting straight answers from the people I knew inside Apple. So I knew I had to change that because I didn't want to be making for a platform that was going to no longer exist or, and also honestly, uh, there's a two gigabyte limit on those iBooks author books. And I, the videos I make are bigger than two gigabytes. You know, when I make a video product i wanted the the customer to get as much content as possible and i was cutting content so i realized i had to pivot that so i went on this whole spirit quest and ended up with the learn.mex parky site so i changed a whole bunch of stuff in the first couple years

man that was exciting broke ibooks in the process, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah, it did. Well, the iBooks are still supported, but there's not going to be any more of them. But so that changed. I didn't expect it. I thought it would be just kind of business as usual, at least for a while. But of course, nothing is static. And if you're going to make it independently, you have to be willing to pivot and change and be aware of your surroundings. And so I'm proud of myself for making those changes. And in hindsight, it was all great. I was just thinking as you were talking

about the litigation thing, I think that was probably one of the reasons I was unhappy at the firm was because it was so litigation focused. And in hindsight, it wasn't really the need to be independent, but maybe the need to stop doing that. Sure. But it just hadn't really surfaced yet. But for me, it was vivid as I walked out of that

deposition saying, you know what, this is not for me anymore. That's interesting. I mean, I think for you, probably still made sense you were going to end up independent anyways. But for somebody else, there's a lesson there i think to find out what the real root cause is and maybe you don't have to drastically change your situation you can just modify one piece of it and maybe you know switching from litigation isn't an option where you are so you you do have to make that leap anyways but yeah it's at least worth considering how you can start to make those positive changes without blowing everything up i I think. Yeah, exactly. So speaking of the changes, were there any after you went independent that were significantly

harder or easier than you thought they were going to be? Yeah, more hard than easy, really. I figured. You know, I mean, because of course, when I'm a single man law firm, you know, I don't I figured. and I can do all the admin, and I can still have time to make more Mac Sparky stuff. And it's going to be great. And of course, the first year or so was me just chasing my own tail of trying to get order out of chaos. In fact, that's the reason this show was made, because I knew I needed more tools and training at the time.

So I started diving deep into this land of focus. So the lesson is, if you need to solve a problem, start a podcast. I guess, for me at least. But yeah, I really, I struggled. I mean, the first year after I went out, there weren't that many, you know, field guides and, you know, and things didn't, I didn't drastically have a bunch of extra time. Suddenly it took a lot of work to kind of get myself to that spot. So that was harder and it was, and it was an evolution. It's, it continues to be an evolution. Um, the things that were easier than I expected though, would be, um, working at home. Um, everybody that I, well,

not everybody, but many people told me, Oh, you're working at home. Everybody that I, well, not everybody, but many people told me, oh, you're working at home. That is never going to work for you. You know, you're going to be distracted. Your wife's going to want you out of the way. You name it. I was told that it would never work. And everybody said, well, you know, go ahead and try working from home. But within three months, you're going to go rent an office somewhere. And that has just never been a problem. I mean, my wife works, but for some period of time while we do this, she didn't work. And the kind of work she has, sometimes she gets extended times off anyway. And we just kind of give each other space, you know,

it's fun to take walks together and stuff, but we don't like, feel like we have to be with each other every minute. You know, we try and give each other space the um uh i i set up a a nice studio slash office at home for me it actually took a couple years to get to that but um i have a really great workspace and i love not only working at home i love you know throwing my laptop in the car and going to the beach on some days to work and or getting on my bike and riding down to Starbucks. So it's just, I guess it's because I worked in an office environment for so long. I am, I still feel giddy every day that I get to get out of bed and work without putting on a tie and going into an office.

Nice. So now that you've been doing this for a while, do you feel like I got this, I can sustain this, or do you still deal with the fear of failure and having to go ask for a job again? year anniversary. But it was interesting to me because in the, you know, probably years leading up to me leaving the firm, I was thinking I need to make a change. What am I going to do? And as soon as I got established in this change, I realized I no longer am looking to make a change. Now my only thought is how do I sustain this? So, you know, it's never, you never get the end of your problems, right? You know, when you find the dream job, you want to keep the dream job. So that fear is there. And honestly, I need to keep on track constantly because I don't have someone making me accountable. I have to do it myself.

to do it myself. And the reason that I do things like hyper scheduling and the reason like we did that show on tracking, uh, or, you know, tracking the needle or moving the needle. I just really want to, on a daily basis, get in and do the basics and, you know, hit my targets and make stuff. You know, I wanted to deliver for my clients. I want to make field guides. I want to make podcasts. That's, that is what I do. And I need to constantly be aware of asking myself when I'm working, am I doing one of those things? If I'm not doing one of those things, then I need to stop what I'm doing to do one of those things. And, uh, and, uh, that has not left. I still have that fear. Sure. I think everybody has a picture of the independent worker as the person who, like you,

is able to work from home without any distractions. They work from their pajamas. They work whenever they want and it's just super chill. And they have this view of all of the advantages that come along with it.

But what are some of the disadvantages as well that you've encountered through? Well, there's several. I mean, one is you must be self-motivated. If you don't have that drive, you will fail. You have to be able to push. And not only on the days that it's fun to be independent but the days that it's not fun um you also must um you are going to spend money that you wouldn't if you were an employee you know the big one being health insurance i

mean health insurance costs my family two thousand dollars000 a month. I mean, that's $24,000 a year goes to keep us insured. And people internationally listening are smacking their foreheads right now. And that's all I'm going to say is I understand. But it's crazy that I have to find enough money every month just to get health insurance for that. So that's something you have to think about. If you have a family you gotta you gotta deal with that um uh the um maybe one day that'll get better i mean one of the reasons my wife has gone to work is that hopefully someday she'll get a job that includes health insurance i mean that that's a i mean that's not no lie you, that's one of the reasons why she's doing this, you know, two in college is another reason. But, you know, so that's a, that is a huge problem, you know, and then, you know, and you need to manage your finances.

You need to like, if you're going to have a business, you probably need to hire an accountant. There's all sorts of extra administrative and other stuff that I knew intellectually existed, but you've got to experience it once again, before you understand how important it is. The other disadvantages are there. If the, if you don't work, the company is not earning income. So like going on vacation is great, but I'm really never truly on vacation because I represent a bunch of companies and there's always something coming up and I can't just pass it off to somebody else because my clients expect me to do it. But for me, that's always kind of been the case for me even when I was in the firm. So it's something I can deal with And I've gotten very good at saying no and realizing that you want me to work on vacation because it's convenient to you versus you want me to work because it's an emergency to you.

And I can draw the line very clearly for clients. So it's just, you know, there are disadvantages to this stuff. But for me, it's just been a great move. What about the day-to-day? You kind of talked about the big picture stuff, being responsible for all the things, but your average day, are there advantages or disadvantages as opposed to working in an office or working with the firm? No meetings is the huge advantage. I mean, you know, I mean, I have client meetings, but even a lot of those are done by phone and Skype now. So I, um, which is substantially better than getting in a car and going somewhere. Um, so no meetings is probably the huge advantage.

Um, the, uh, you know, all the office politics stuff, you know, I was talking to a lawyer friend and just hearing the inside politics of their office and what this person has to do to kind of keep the peace and at the same time, not, you know, jeopardize her future career. And I was just thinking there is no way I would last in that at this point. I just could not put up with all of that nonsense. The so I mean, it's just the day-to-day stuff is for me a joy. It is a little lonely sometimes. I'm here in my home studio. If I'm not talking to a podcaster, quite often I'll go many hours without talking to another human, sometimes whole days. So that's weird. Yeah, we'll talk more about that in a little bit, I think. Yeah, I have a fix in the works. Yeah. I got a couple more questions about the lessons that you learned from this, but maybe we should take a quick break here and thank our first sponsor.

Sure. This episode of the Focused podcast is brought to you by Blinkist. Read over 3,000 books in 15 minutes or less. Start your seven-day trial by going to Blinkist.com slash Focused. Hey, if you love productivity, Blinkist is for you. So with Blinkist, you can get one of the most useful apps on your iPhone to learn all about productivity or catch the latest book. It can be hard to find time to read, and when you're super busy, it's hard to work on personal development. Blinkist takes the best key takeaways and need-to-know information from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them into just 15 minutes for you to read or listen to. Successful

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I actually have a workflow for this. When I get back from the walk, I then read it again on Blinkist, and I take notes on it. So I kind of really capture the walk. I then read it again on Blinkist and I take notes on it. So I kind of really capture the information. And while I'm not going to get every word out of the book, I always get the key points out of it. And that's just what I'm looking for. If you want to give Blinkist a try, why not find out how great leaders inspire action with Simon Sinek's Start With Why. There's some more really great books right now. Learn about how successful nations

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trial. And you'll also save 25% off. But only when you sign up with Blinkist dot com slash focused. Our thanks to Blinkist for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. All right, so what is the biggest lesson or lessons, if you can't narrow it down to just one that you've learned from this whole process? If you're going to go independent, you have to be self-motivated. I mean, you must, and it's so much more than just saying, yes, I really want this. It means you have to do the long-term planning, the short-term planning. You have to do the daily planning. You have to move the needle. You have to hyper-schedule. All that stuff is what you're going to need if you want to make that more than a little experiment.

Sure. You mentioned earlier the conversation that you had with Merlin and the advice to reset or rethink your habits using going independent as the launching off point. Was there anything else that was a huge help to you either before you went independent or at some point over the last five years? The biggest help to me was the support of my friends and this, you know, wonderful community that I'm in. You know, as soon as I went independent, so many lawyers contacted me to wish me luck and ask what they could do to help me. You know, I've been in this community for, you know, over 20 years. So I have a lot of friends and they didn't, it wasn't just lip service. They wanted to help me. And I've always remembered that

in the five years since I've done the same thing for other people that I know have gone independent now. And then the Max Sparky community, you know, including the focus community, everybody was just so supportive when I went out and they it's just, you know, you always get the few negative emails from people. And because I live such a public life with the Max Barkey stuff, I get criticized for everything I do. But the vast, vast majority of it was super positive. And it just felt so good knowing I had some wind at my sails from that community support. I think that honestly, Max Barkey is the only reason I ever had the guts to do what I did. that honestly max sparky is the only reason i ever had the guts to do what i did so okay interesting follow-up then i guess if you were you but you lacked the relationships that you had when you had decided to go independent do you think it would have worked or what maybe would have been

different about that would that be a deal breaker for somebody who's considering to go is considering going independent but hasn't built up that support system yet? For me, I think it would have been very hard for me to leave without knowing I had the support of the local community and the bigger community. I think everybody is different, but for the kind of work I do, I really needed to have community support with local lawyers. I really needed to have support from the Max Barkey audience if I was going to try and turn that into something bigger. So I guess it kind of depends what you do. It's contextual. Sure. How have you grown personally or professionally over the past five years as a result of the decision to go independent? Personally, my relationship with my family is better.

I mean, I never had a really bad relationship with my family. I'm very lucky in that regard. But I'm tighter with my family than I've ever been. tighter with my family than I've ever been. And health wise, like I go to the gym and I, it's just like suddenly I have so much control over my schedule that I can put in things that I wasn't able to do before. So I think I'm in a better place now than I've been in my whole life. Professionally, it's the same thing. I was able to make a big transition and say no to a bunch of work that I no longer felt I wanted to do without going bankrupt. And that's great. And as time goes on, I get even more picky about accepting work. I mean,

for every person that contacts me to hire me as a lawyer, I think I accept about one in four. So, and it's not because a personality is quite often just like, oh, the thing you're doing is related to what I do, but it's not exactly what I do. So let me give you the name of somebody that does that. I just don't, you know, I'm able to be very picky. I'm very fortunate that way. Yeah. Which again, interestingly, I think ties back to the relationships that you have. You're able to say, no, I don't want to do this and still help somebody out by pointing them to somebody who can help solve their problem. Yeah. Whereas if you didn't have that, maybe you feel, well, I'm the only person that they know that can do this sort of thing, so maybe I'll take this on. Yeah. It also occurs to me that you mentioned your first goal, the way you've grown, is to spend more time with your family.

But you also made the decision to leave litigation. So, which you mentioned, that was a fairly lucrative revenue stream for you, the type of lawyer work that you did there. So, could it have gone the other way? Could you have found yourself in a situation where, yes, I'm doing this for my family, but now I have less time to spend with my family because I'm trying to pay the bills? Yeah, if I had let that spin out, probably. I mean, what would happen is, I mean, there's only so much time in the day. If I had had continued doing litigation it would have meant that i produced less as max barky and then i did less of the business transactional work which like i said is the stuff that i feel like actually moves the ball forward for people so um and uh and i wasn't

you know it just it would reduce other work sure but i guess i should i didn't mention but i mean of course, critical and all this is Daisy, my wife. I mean, I told her, I said, honey, I'm going to, you know, the thing that makes two thirds of my money is being a lawyer. I'm going to stop doing that now. And she's like, okay, just figure it out. You know, she's, she's great, you know? So it sounds like you're happy with the transition. And I'm assuming that if you were given the opportunity to do it again, you would all things equal. Absolutely, man. I would have done it sooner, given what I know. Okay, yeah, that was my next question. Is there anything that you would have done differently? So other than doing it sooner, anything that you would have changed about the process?

so other than doing it sooner anything that you would have changed about the the process you know what i i'd like to say that i would go into it with the wisdom that i have now but i think i needed to bloody my nose a few times to get the wisdom so i don't think there's anything i would really do differently sure so if you could sum up the last five years in a single word, what would it be? Joy. You know, just joy. I mean, when I saw this question, that's the word that jumped to my mind. I'm just so happy now. You know, I wrote this in the post I did at Max Barkey, but recently I had one of those. I was signing up for an online account and they said, you know, they had your secret questions and one of them is, what's your dream job? And I'm like, my current job is my dream job. I like helping people as a lawyer in the way, in limited ways I do.

I love being Max Barkey and making these field guides and making these podcasts. I really, if I could sit down and design the perfect career for myself right now, it's the one I have. So I don't know what else I could ask for. Awesome. I just got to keep it up. Yeah, don't break it. All right, let's switch gears a little bit here. I want to talk a little bit about technology and focus. Those seem to be themes that we talk about a lot on this show. What sort of boundaries or intentional constraints, rules have you set up around how you use your technology?

And how has that kind of changed since you made the decision to go independent five years ago? Well, I mean, something I've always had to do with technology is I make a living talking about technology. So I'm very technology, you know, I like to explore technology and look at new apps and new technologies to see how they work and see how they can help me. But I also like to harness technology for both the legal and the Max Barkey stuff to help me get my work done faster. And I remember years ago, I've never actually shared this, but you know, I've always been a fan of modal jazz. And it was an era of jazz in the 50s where they would pick one chord progression and they would work through it for an extended period of time and then go to another one. And that was a way that they could have enough time to really explore something like explore a melody without having to jump you know with bebop jazz nobody nobody cares about this stuff mike but with bebop jazz the the tempo is very fast and there's a new chord

change every four beats so it's massively you know it's like there's no time it's a lot of tricks more than it is a melody exploration and so i one of the reasons I love mobile jazz is a great musician can take that mode and just do some amazing spontaneous composition around it. But I brought that into kind of productivity in my mind where as I started to kind of solidify about what I need to do to keep this dream job is I need to be like a mobile jazz player. I need to find a mode and stick there. And so I think about that in terms of a lot of the stuff I do, like I'm now in the contract writing mode, or I'm now in the field guide production mode. And it just kind of gives me a something, kind of a philosophical framework to hang what I do on. So that's how I came up with hyper scheduling. That's how I deal

with technology. i i like to think about technology in modes so like uh there's a new app out called tot everybody's going crazy about it so i'm like okay i'm gonna spend some time using that i'm in the exploration mode for that right now but then i needed to actually do some work that involved a bunch of writing and i used drafts because that's what i used to do this writing in, even though it's kind of a competitor of taught. But so it's like, I change modes all the time. And in technology, I'm particularly aware of that. Nice. So it sounds like you use some intentional constraints to kind of force yourself into little buckets or sandboxes for how you want to invest your time. I heard somebody describe it

one time as like a mental scaffolding. And I like the term modal jazz. I confess, I'm not a jazz guy. So I understand a little bit, I think, of the music theory that you're describing behind this, but I'm not very familiar with it. But I know as a musician that that's one of the things that people always push back on a little bit is, well, I want to be able to be spontaneous and play whatever. And I'm like, that's what the chord progressions give you. Yeah. The ability to be more creative based on the constraints. So I like that a lot.

But the wrinkle of modal jazz is that it gives you longer on each chord. Okay. And I feel like, you know know i guess that kind of ties into focused but i just you need enough time in each mode to do the work but when you change the chord or when you change the mode then you got to leave that behind and start over again and i just i don't know it just works for me i i know that's very obscure i i like it it makes sense to me i hope not just because i'm a musician but i do think that there's a lot of value in identifying that this thing over here is going to check this box for this type of activity. And then after a while, I need to go do something that's actually going to pay the bills. Yeah.

this thing that I'm exploring may not be anything. You may be playing with that for a while and decide that you just really don't like this app and you're not going to write anything about it. So is that wasted time? Not necessarily if you view the time that you spent with that app as research instead of writing time, for example. Exactly.

So do you have different modes then for your different devices and how you use them? Like, does your iPhone serve a specific purpose, your iPad, your Mac, etc? Not really. I know there's people that do that, like their iPad, they only use to write and their Mac, they only use for research or, you know, some variation. I like to have the tools to do my work on all of my technology. I do like to get out and about. I love the idea of taking the iPad down to the beach or Starbucks or whatever and getting real work done.

So I need to have all the necessary tools. I do kind of use, extend that mode thought, though, into the way my devices are set up. Like, I'm a big fan of shortcuts. I wrote a whole field guide on it. And I just recently published a screencast on Mac Sparky with my home screen. And I took the idea of modes into shortcuts. So I have like an icon on my home screen that is a lightning bolt, and that's the Mac Sparky one. If I tap on that, I can go directly to the Mac Sparky inbox and email. I can go to the

Mac Sparky perspectives and OmniFocus. And I can, you know, it takes me, it takes me to the mind node that I'm working on, on the next field guide. So it's a way to directly go and stay within the mode when I'm working on Mac Sparky stuff. And I have another one for legal stuff and one for personal stuff. So I've tried to kind of convert my devices instead of being app centric to be mode centric. Uh, so that's a little bit of a hack I've done and it's not super difficult. I'll put the video in the show notes. You can watch to see how I did it. But, um, I, I find that, you know, the more I can bring the idea of staying in the mode to my workflow, the more likely I am to stay in the mode. How do you break up the modes that you cycle between throughout your day or your week?

Do you say, I want to spend this much time writing per day, per week, etc.? Or do what you feel like? How does that work? When I do it, I feel like I fail miserably. This is where, you know, hyperscheduling comes in. You know, when everything is working right in my life, I spend time shutting down the day before. I set blocks of time the following day for different modes. You know, like today I've got a big block for focus because we're publishing the show the same day we're recording.

I've got a big block for focused because I were, we're publishing a show the same day we're recording and I had to get all the work done to get the show published and the show prep and recording. So I've got a massive block this AM on focus this afternoon. I've got a three hour block for legal stuff and it's going to be some flags in the specific contract for a client. And then I've got two hours in the afternoon blocked for the next field guide. So those are the modes for the day. And then I set alarms on those appointments and I follow the modes.

When the alarm goes off, I put the other thing down and start the next. And that's how I do it. And that's something that I didn't know when I first went independent. It took an evolution for me to get to that. Sure. And then you mentioned shortcuts. So what role does automation play in supporting those modes

and the intentionality you want to apply to the work that you're doing? It's just, you know, it's just, once again, it allows me to focus on doing the work and not the tedium. I mean, automation for me started out as a way to kind of get work done without support. But really, it's evolved over time.

Now it's more about speed and accuracy for me. I'm willing to get support if I need it. But, you know, there's a lot of stuff where automation is just there for me. I mean, the whole point of this show, Focused, is to stay focused, right? And if you get stuck in the tedium, you're not doing your best work. You know, you're not doing that thoughtful work that we all should be working on. So automation is another way to break free time to do the important stuff. And I imagine time tracking fits in here too. So you can make sure that you're

spending the time on the things that you say are important to you. Yeah, I'm doing time tracking in two ways. I track moving the needle time every day. At the end of the day, I look and say, how much time did I spend on a field guide? How much time did I spend on a podcast, Max Barkey work, like writing and legal work, actual work for clients, not admin work. in legal work, you know, actual work for clients, not admin work. And, you know, in my head, I want to get that number up to, you know, on a good day, five hours on a bad day, three hours,

but at least three hours a day, that sounds like not very much money, very much time in a 24 hour day, but it's actually quite difficult. You know, I mean, yesterday I had a six hour day and I'm like high five and myself, you know, so it just depends, you know, but, but so that's one way I track time. And then I also actually do the full on time tracking. I'm doing that right now. I've got, I've been doing it for two weeks. I go through phases where I do it just to kind of check up to see, you know, where I'm spending all my time. Sure.

I remember when I first started time tracking and you do a three-hour writing session and you think that you just crushed it and then you see the report like you spent three hours writing. Good job. It's not even half a day. Yeah, I know. It's hard. All right. Well, speaking of time tracking, let's take a break here and thank our next sponsor, which is Timing. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Timing, the app that tracks your time automatically instead of manually. That's the thing that made it work for me. Let's talk about why you should be tracking your time. For anyone billing their hours, it's pretty obvious. But even if you are employed or you're

billing per project, it can still be helpful to estimate how long a specific task is going to take and then see how long it actually takes. Time tracking helps you stay on track with your estimates and make sure that you don't end up in the red with your projects, which can help to make more accurate estimates in the future. That's where timing can help. Instead of making you start and stop those timers, manually timing automatically tracks how much time you spend on each app document or website. It shows you exactly when you were working on what, when you slacked off and how productive you actually were. So you know how to improve your productivity. But work doesn't just happen at your Mac like we talked about in this episode. That's why the timeline can automatically make suggestions for filling in gaps in your timeline. That way you will never

again forget to enter a meeting, for example. And with the automatic sync feature, your track time will magically appear across all of your Macs. So even when you work on the go with your MacBook, you'll have the full picture on your iMac once you get home. You can also track your time on the go from your iPhone and make use of the Zapier integration that lets you connect timing to services like FreshBooks. And something for fans of shortcuts, timing has shortcuts ready for you to use, which make time tracking even easier. I mentioned I had trouble with time tracking. It was one of those things that I knew I should do, but starting and stopping the timers was always a deal breaker for me. I remember one specifically, I started a travel timer, forgot to turn it off, and then realized the next day when it said I spent five

hours in the car that I did something wrong. And what did I actually do with those five hours? So installing timing really was the thing that got time tracking to work for me. I could just let it run in the background. And then when I log in and see my data, there's no arguing with it. If it says I spent two hours on Twitter, I know that I spent two hours on Twitter. And from there, it's not the fact that I wasted those two hours. That's a big deal. But I can start to make the improvements and set up the intentional constraints like we talked about to help push me in the direction that I wanted to go.

And I've learned from using timing that the initial shock of how I was spending my time was pretty easy to overcome. It didn't really take a Herculean effort to get to the point where I was being intentional with how I was spending my time. And timing was the thing that kind of showed me what adjustments I needed to make. And from there, it was just the little things that translated into the ability to do the things that I really wanted to do. And being as easy to use as it is, timing made it, it really was crucial to this becoming a habit for me. And it's not just me. Timing's so confident that you'll love their fuss-free approach that they offer a totally free trial. You can download the 14-day trial today by going to timingapp.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D,

and you'll save 10% when you purchase. Once again, that's timingapp.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, and you'll save 10% when you purchase. Once again, that's timingapp.com slash focused to save 10% when you purchase. Stop guessing how you spend your time and instead focus on doing what you're good at. We thank Timing for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, so we talked about focus and technology, but I'm also curious what sort of focus adjustments you've made in the other ways that you work. Like, for example, you mentioned earlier that when you first went independent, you were doing everything solo, and over time, sounds like you've started to work with other people. So was that difficult for you, asking for outside help? Yeah, I have a personality flaw where I just don't like anybody else to do things.

I just want to do everything myself. And it gets me in all sorts of trouble. But I've had to really confront that in these five years. And now I have some people to help me. I mean, it's part of time tracking. I know the timing ad is getting lots of play here at the front end and back end, but the timing is great because I can see where I'm spending a bunch of time that doesn't really require me.

The test I picked up, I think I got this from Michael Hyatt, but it may have been someone else, but it's like, is, do I like doing this? And the second question is, does this require me? And if the answer to both of those questions are no, that's kind of my personal point where I'm like, can I automate it? Can I send it off to someone else to do for me? And I've been getting better at doing that over time. And if you're out there and you're like someone who has a hard time delegating work, get the right people, delegate a few things. And as much as you don't like delegating, the joy of not doing

drudgery work yourself is absolutely going to outweigh it. I promise you, if you just try it. So do you have any examples of the types of things that you have delegated to other people based on whether it was something that you didn't like doing or something maybe even that you did like doing but didn't require you? Yeah, I did a big segment on this week's Mac Power Users episode, because this five-year thing came up there a little bit, but it was kind of a different angle. And I talked about how I'm using Basecamp for a lot of my legal stuff, but I wanted to get some files uploaded to Basecamp. I don't want to sit there and upload files to a web service. I just gave it to my assistant to do. Every month I run bills and the process of sending the bills I do myself. I want to read every bill before it goes out, but

the process of generating them, I pay somebody to do that. A lot of the posts at Max Sparky go through, I have an editor that helps me and she reads them before they go up, go through, I have an editor that helps me and she reads them before they go up, catches any typos. And she's the one that logs into Squarespace and sets up the post to publish. So just, I've found all these little spaces in my life where I was doing stuff that didn't need me. And, and I know there's lots of people that are even better at this than I am, but I, you know, I'm slowly adding things to it. And it's kind of like learning shortcuts. You get one thing mastered and you get an assistant that's doing it just the way you want it, then you can start looking for the next thing. I don't think you can do this all at once. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. When you were

looking for people to help you with some of the things that you just decided were not the things that you should be doing anymore. Did you rely on people that you knew in your network relationships that you already had? Did you look for an online service? Yeah, I started with the online service and it didn't work for me. And that was really my fault. I think you have to spend a lot of time if you're going with a stranger to make sure it's the right fit. And I never put enough time in. I tried a couple times and it just, I never really got much out of it. But I did know people kind of in my own personal network. Some of them were really qualified. And one of the things that I learned, because when I first decided, okay, I'm going to get some help for whatever reason in my head, I was like, oh, I'm going to hire one person who's going to do all these things for me.

And I realized, well, that doesn't really make sense because generating legal billings is way different than working with publishing blog posts. And these aren't necessarily the same skill sets. And so I have several people that help me and they have different areas of, you know, focus for me. And that's something that kind of happened. I didn't really expect it to work that way, but I've got a kind of a little team and that's great. What was the hardest part about getting the team up to speed to the point where you are able to delegate these things effectively and trust that they're able to get done?

The hardest part for me is just communicating to them because I know internally what I want. And I have so much feelings for my old secretaries and paralegals I worked at the firm because I think I'm not good at handing things off. So I try to be super deliberate about it. Like when I give someone, like when I wanted her to start publishing blog posts, I went into the Squarespace site.

I showed her how to log in. I showed her how I did everything on screencasts. And I say, I make movies for her of everything that she's going to do in that regard. And I will not give her a task without an accompanying movie. And that's a base camp project. So all those movies are saved there so she can go back and watch it if she wants, because some of the stuff I give her won't happen repeatedly. You know, it'll only happen every two or three months. Another one is like to issue a refund if somebody asks for a refund on a field guide. And there's a process for that. And I've made a video for her so she can see

how to do that. So it's just, you know, all that stuff, making it very deliberate in terms of instruction. And the other thing is that I didn't do at the beginning of this stuff is just plan for check-ins. So like, you know, the bozo I am, I'm like, okay, I'm going to give you the work, you do the work, that's the relationship. And that's not good enough. You have to once a week, do at least a check in call and see, you know, what's working? Where are they having trouble? Where can I help? Sure, yeah, solve all the problems that you didn't, didn't foresee. And I think if you don't communicate, have those regular check ins, then the people that you've delegated the work to maybe are hitting these roadblocks, you don't know that they're hitting them. They don't even know that there's

a better way to do it. And that could cause a lot of friction. So that makes a lot of sense. I've heard that from a lot of other people who have worked successfully with an assistant or somebody that they've delegated work to. They always say that the thing that really makes that work is the regular communication. And also, frankly, they're humans and they're doing great work and really helping me and I want to be able to express that to them. I think if you don't set aside time to be thankful, they're not going to understand how much you appreciate it

and I think it's harder for them to do the work. Yeah, for sure. Other than working with other people, how has your work styles changed? Like, for example, we've talked a lot on this show, I know about the moving the needle, and you've shared some of the journal pages that you've created. And you got me hooked on fancy fountain pens, but you are Max Sparky. So what facilitated the move towards the analog tools and kind of where else do you intentionally slow down to make sure that you're doing the right things? Yeah, the analog tools are an interesting thing as I've been trying to get better at the bigger planning steps of things. Like I felt like I had a good handle on daily planning and, you know, with OmniFocus, I'm really good at figuring out what's on deck for the next day. But I felt like I wasn't doing enough in terms of looking down the road weeks

and months and even years at a time. And that's something that I wanted to separate myself from the computer for. I just wanted to do, even though I can dictate speech into text and do all these great things, I found that taking a piece of paper and a pen to write those out slows my mind down. We talked about this just last week with Matt or last episode with Matt. But I really think that, you know, kind of deliberately going slow on some things once in a while is good. That's something I didn't, that's some wisdom I didn't have when I started this free agent journey. And, and I really learned that frankly, from kind of the birthday, you know, self-evaluation. I always would on my birthday kind of self-evaluate a little bit. But then I got, I think about three years ago, I started writing things down and I realized, oh, wait a second,

this really helps me sitting down and writing it and forcing myself to go slow enough so the mind can catch up with the pen. And then the mind would come up with ideas I wouldn't have otherwise. So it just seemed to work. And now I've got a regular regular kind of journal practice it's not a bullet journal in the sense that i don't plan my whole life around it i still use digital calendars and task managers but um the paper component really helps and uh that's a place where i i intentionally go slow so we've talked about the the paper stuff previously but i'm i'm curious because people probably wonder what tools are you using has that changed at all oh man mike it is constantly in flux yeah um the i've got uh so i i i for the for about six months i was working out of a leavenger disc based book and i like that

because i can move the pages around and I can take them out and scan them. But my pen is a platinum pen with a architect nib. So I like the way my writing looks with it. And I guess I'm going to be that guy. And uh really love the way that pen writes on rhodia paper and just recently i picked up one of my old rhodia books and wrote something and i'm like that felt so good that i may be just switching back to rhodia at this point i don't know we'll see i i put that that's one of those things when i was talking about modes i'm like okay i'm aware that i'm having questions about my system but but I'm not going to deal with it until I can set some time aside to really think about it. But yeah, so I do

it in there. And I don't, like I said, I don't bullet journal every moment, but I do use it to kind of keep track of how I do on my time. It fits into the daily plan. I mean, there's at least one page in there for every day. And there's a lot of pages when I sit down to do like weekly, monthly, quarterly planning. Yeah, that Rhodia paper, it's buttery smooth. Plus that platinum pen, I just cannot, I don't know. I mean, it feels like when I write on that and go back to the Levenger paper, it feels like I'm writing on sandpaper. So I don't know what's going to happen here. Well, I think we know what's going to happen.

It's just went. Yeah. Is there any other place that you've intentionally traded efficiency for focus or intentionality in getting your work done? Yeah, with the switch. And this is expanded on much greater

in this upcoming, or the past week's Mac Power Users episode when this one releases. But the Switch to Basecamp took away some of my automation tools. It's a web service, but then I found new automation tools with Zapier and stuff to automate Basecamp.

But I felt like the system I had, as great as it was and as Max Barkey as it was, wasn't solving the problem. Because a lot of my clients, because I do so many transactions, I want to keep all the emails, the notes, the memos, the documents, and everything in one place and have an easy but safe way for the client to access it. And that really took some of the wheels off automation for some of the legal stuff I do. But it felt like it was worth it because it solved a bigger problem. And the automation cool system I had wasn't getting the job done. So I realized that maybe the solution was something slower as opposed to something faster, which was kind of a big thing

for someone like me. Yeah, that's a tough one for people, myself included, to wrap their head around sometimes is that if you want to speed up, you actually have to slow down and make sure that you're doing things the right way. Define right for yourself, but it's not always just what's most efficient. All right, so we've talked a lot about a lot of positive things and adjustments that you've made, your systems. But I'm sure that there are a couple things that aren't quite where you want them. Is there anything that you would like to improve about the way that you work? It's a good question.

One that, actually there's several now I think about it. One that is on my mind a lot is external accountability i mentioned that earlier in the show i don't have that you know it's me doing my thing and i really you know i know that there's like these genius groups um i know that like some people they have like these retreats with other people that do similar business. There's all these different ways to try and hold yourself accountable and have peers. And when you're on your own, I think that's something easy to miss. And I'm definitely missing that. And I don't know what the answer is.

But that's a problem I would like to solve. Because I don't have any external accountability at this point. Yeah, the masterminds can be cool, but they definitely require the right mix of people. And I don't want that to become just another thing I do. If I were to do it, I would want it to actually be right. And I think it would have to really be with the right people. And I'm not even sure who that is. And so that's the thing I keep pushing down the road.

You know, a rock I keep pushing down the road you know a rock i keep kicking down the road sure uh consistency as much as i sound like i have it all figured out i don't and sometimes i go for stretches of a time where i don't have my day scheduled right or i don't follow the schedule and i don't you know and i i get behind um i had a real long session like that towards the end of 2019 because I miscalculated on some things I said yes to. So it's just, you know, I'd like to get more consistent. And every time I fall off the horse, I feel like my muscles about consistency get a little stronger. So I look at that as a positive thing, but it's a journey for me still and um you know another thing i'd like to

do is sabbaticals i mean you you talk to me about because you i know you do the sabbatical once a quarter for a week and we try to not record that week so you can just have a week down i need to do something like that and i'm not sure how i'm going to do it yet because i i'm mixed you know i have two careers one is you know i could shut down field guide production for a week and the world would not end. The customer support stuff could get handled by somebody else. But the legal stuff, I can't really do that. And that's another one I know it's a problem I need to work on. And I just never get around to it.

Sure. Yeah. You know, we had a, we had an episode where we interviewed Sean McCabe and at the time he was talking about sabbaticals taking every seventh week off, which actually at Bonk Media, we take every eighth week off. So it's a little bit more than every quarter. And, uh, that's been a breath of fresh air for me. I didn't realize how much I needed that until I was forced to start taking regular time off. Definitely in a better mental and emotional state since we started

doing that consistently. But Sean McCabe is actually in the middle. When we talked to him on the episode, he talked about how he was planning to take the entire year of 2020 off as a sabbatical because that's the seventh year since he started these cycles. And he's doing it. It's still early in the year as we record this, but he is chronicling his journey. And I can't wait to have him back on the show and find out what sort of insights and clarity he got from doing that. I really do think that's a a critical component for people who really want to maximize their their long-term success whatever that looks like for you it's it's not you know the amount of money that you would make but just in order to uh to reach your

full potential i do think that we undervalue the the time off we think we can just power through things and and we can't occasionally i will like take a day off and go to disneyland you know like my wife is um works for them so i'll ride in with her and i'll spend the day in galaxy's edge and then come home and and sometimes i'll bring work with me sometimes i won't but even then i often find myself working on the weekend to make up when i do that so i really haven't experienced the sabbatical you know high that everybody's telling me about and right you know i i've just got a i'm gonna write it down if we finish recording today i just this is the the way i would try and solve this problem is i would block time to like give real serious thought to it and then i would probably just schedule one but maybe

not for a whole week maybe for two days or something to start but um sure but it's just something that i never seem to be able to find time to do yeah baby steps yeah i know i mean i i feel like i've come a long way and and a lot of the stuff it's a journey like if you ask me a year from now i feel like my daily you know my planning routine and stuff is what's really holding it together. And that's always in flux. New habits are always being formed and, and hopefully it's even better in a year. Right. Yeah. So last question I have for you on this, you meet 18 year old you in an elevator, you've got two minutes to give him some advice.

What would you say to him now that you've gone through this transition? I guess I would say it's your life, so live it. I mean, I'm already in my 50s, and I feel like just the other day I was collecting baseball cards at eight years old. So it goes fast. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, we've got one other topic here, but maybe let's take our last break. Yeah. This episode of Focus is brought to you by ExpressVPN. High speed, secure and anonymous VPN services. Get three months free with a one year package. You might think nobody wants your online data or to snoop

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with a one-year package. Take back your online privacy, expressvpn.com slash focused. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. All right, so one other thing that you have changed regarding how you work recently is... Yeah, big change in my life, man. You have an office mate.

Well, maybe not an office mate, but a co-worker. I added a law partner. She's three and a half pounds, and she sleeps at my feet. Yeah, we got a puppy, which is really fun. A friend of mine who's an attorney said, oh yeah, your kids are getting older. Whatever you do, do not get a dog. He said, you know, that's going to be your inclination. Well, I think that's an empty nest thing. I'm not an empty nest and I don't think I will be for many years. Daughter number one's coming back home because she's going to graduate school. But we haven't had a dog in our marriage because when we had kids, I love dogs. I used to take

care of them. And I've always felt like if you can't have a dog, you have to really be there for the dog. You can't have a dog and leave it in the yard all day. I'm just, you know, I want it, I want it to be, you know, treated right. So, but I also realized I've been doing this for five years now. I guess I'm going to be doing it a while longer and I'm home all day alone. And I just thought it would be fun to have someone to keep me company. So we got a puppy. Nice. Now the, there's a whole bunch to unpack here as it pertains to productivity, focus, and especially with a puppy, how that impacts your day-to-day work. It is impacting me, that's for sure. The fact that I moved the needle six hours yesterday and had a puppy, that was like a big win for me. We've only had her a couple weeks now,. So, you know, we're kind of early in

the process, but, you know, just getting them potty trained and, you know, them getting adjusted to the house and you takes, takes time, but we're so what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks is working instead of in the studio, working downstairs in the room where we keep the puppy. And so I'm using the laptop and the iPad a lot down there. And I'm tracking. It's one of the reasons I'm tracking time. I'm tracking how much time I spend with the dog as well. Which sounds really like kind of gross. But I just want to know.

Yeah. So I realize, you know, I can quantify how much time the dog takes, and I'm adjusting for that. I've talked a little bit over the last six months how I have this online role-playing game I've been playing. Well, that went out the window with the dog. I haven't even logged into that game since we got the puppy. And I'm sure I'll be back in it. But you know, the puppy stage is very, uh, time intensive at some point, she'll just be a dog that hangs around and follows me around. And that'll be a lot easier. Um, the, uh, um, the sleep schedule has changed as well around the

puppy because I'm really trying to get her potty trained. I don't have an accident or crate. So, uh, I wake up at like five now. So I go to bed earlier. But, you know, so that's been kind of weird. Really, that's not about focus. I just wanted a dog, you know, and but but you do have to if you want to get your work done. It's like I was talking earlier. I, you know, the law practice doesn't make money.

Field guys don't get produced if I don't do the work. So despite the fact that we have a dog in the house, doesn't mean I get to stop doing my work. Yeah. Well, there is an interesting aspect to this, I think, as it pertains to allowing you to do your work, because you mentioned one of the difficulties for you was working from home and there's nobody else around. And sounds like you can kind of push through that feeling of loneliness and do what you need to do. But I think there are people for whom they would just not be able to do that. They would just feel like something is wrong and that would be enough to kind of throw them off their their groove and so ultimately if a

dog is a thing that brings you joy then that joy doesn't just affect the time that you spend with the dog it puts you in a better mental and emotional state and it affects everything that you you do so it's yes it takes time but ultimately i would say that the the trade-offs are are worth it to you oh yeah and everybody in my family just loves the dog. And anytime you add a bunch of love to your household, that makes things better. And my kids are having a lot of fun with her, my wife is enjoying her. And once she gets old enough and gets all her shots, and I can take her on my walks, I take a lot of walks and hikes, and I can take her with me on that stuff and take her to the park. I think it's going to be a real fun thing uh right now i'm right in the middle of puppy

biting and potty training so this is like i feel like probably the the hardest part of having a dog but but we'll uh we'll get we'll get through yeah we have a puppy as well quite a bit bigger than yours she's about 45 pounds right now she's a golden doodle so she'll get a little bit bigger but not a not a whole lot and uh she's about six months old so we're not too far ahead of you but i can tell you that there's light at the end of the tunnel it does get does get easier so all my friends tell me and it's fine we've got four adults here we're humans and it's a dog we can handle handle this. Yeah. You know, um, but,

uh, but because I'm the one that's home during the weekdays, um, I'm on shift for a lot of that. In fact, uh, we had a break in today's podcast when we were recording that listeners don't know about it because I was looking at the puppy cam and realize the pacing

she was doing down in the crate was something that needed to get her outside very quickly. Yeah. But the, uh, it's all good good. Actually, it's really fun. And like I said, it's going to be fun having a little companion with me after so long. Was this something that you kind of did as a celebration of being five years independent? Was this something you were thinking about, oh, it's been five years, I guess now would be as good a time as any, or are these totally separate events? They're kind of related. It's like, I'm starting to feel like, okay, because I was so panicked when I started that I would have to go back. I, you know, I thought about it earlier and I'm like,

not yet. You know, I want to prove that I can do this. And now I feel like I have. So I'm going to, you know, this is a little bit of a reward. Sure. Yeah. Well, I think that's, I think that's important. Even if it was completely a reward, go ahead and celebrate your success. Yeah. That's something that I struggle with is you get done with a project and you ship something and you don't take the time to celebrate it.

It can almost be a depressing thing when you, when you launch something. It's like, okay, well, there goes my reason for existing for the last three months. Yeah, and then you just climb into the machine and start cranking up the next one. And that is why I need to figure out sabbaticals, because that's been my modus operandi for too long. Sure. If anybody's curious, dog's name is Ahsoka. You want to explain the story behind this it's not that hard if you watch the star wars uh clone wars podcast or stallion's clone wars

animated series you'll know who she is yeah so it is a star wars dog yeah it is i mean she really looks more like chewbacca but she does but my uh my daughter and I really enjoyed watching that together as she was growing up. And that's a character we both love. And we said, it's a girl puppy. Let's name her Ahsoka. So we did. Nice. Well, congratulations, my friend, on five years of being independent.

Thanks. Thanks. It doesn't feel like five years. Well, it's one of those weird things where it feels like just yesterday, but it also feels like it was a lifetime ago. Yeah, I bet. It seems like quite a while ago, even though it wasn't even five years ago, that you were giving me advice as I was going through a job change.

So I totally get how you can just get caught up in the moment. And it feels like, in some ways, it feels like this is what you've been doing now forever. But in other ways, it feels like you just started your journey. Yeah. And you said earlier that I was unhirable. I really think that's true at this point. I mean, the thought of, you know, I would do whatever I had to do to take care of my family. If that meant that I had to go get a firm job,

I would, but man, just the idea of going to meetings and dealing with internal politics and stuff like that, that would be really difficult for me. Yeah. All right. Well,

I, I'm really happy, man. I, like I said, joy is the word. Yeah. And we are,

we are happy for you. Thank you for, for, uh, unpacking this in, uh, this throwback free agents episode. Uh, I think that this is a, this was really cool. This was great to, to get your perspective now, compare it to when it was, what it was when you initially made the decision and see how, have changed and also kind of what adjustments that you've made. And I think there's a lot here even for people like myself. I don't consider myself an independent worker at this point, but a lot of stuff in here where it's like, I can see where I could benefit from your experience. The way that you did this and navigated this situation,

I can figure out how to apply that to my situation too. So hopefully there's a lot like that the listeners can get out of this episode too. And I just want to thank the focused audience for being there for us. I mean, we talk about this stuff every couple of weeks and we hear from you and we know that this stuff helps you out and we're really happy. But it's, you know, listening to these shows and everything that allows me to be on this journey. And I just want to thank everyone. Yes. Thank you to everybody.

If you want to get involved with the conversation, you can do so over in the forum. I want to say thank you to our sponsors for this episode, Blinkist, Timing and ExpressVPN. You can find the show at relay.fm slash focused. And we will talk to you all in a couple of weeks.