Focused - 98: Floating with Dave Hamilton

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Dave Hamilton joins in to talk about how to keep your focus in the workplace and during a pandemic. Also, Dave uses an isolation tank and we have questions.

Welcome to Focus, 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. Hello, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? I'm doing great, my friend. And did you know that we are about to hit episode 100 of the Focus podcast? I did. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, well, we were thinking about it.

We wanted to celebrate it, so we wanted to include the audience. So what we'd like you to do is get out your iPhones or devices of choice and make a recording for us and sit it in. Let us know your focus success stories or maybe your focus questions. And we're going to incorporate a bunch of that into episode 100. So take some time, send it into us. It's very easy. If you've got an iPhone, the Voice Memos app does actually an excellent job recording. So you can do that. Email it to us. Where should we have them email it, Mike? I believe if you go to relay.fm.focus, there should be a contact button with an email address, I believe, which will get to us. Otherwise, I would say you can post it in the forum as well. We'll keep an eye on that and add those things. Yeah, that'll work. So just get it to us. If you can't find a way to get it to us, use this as a last resort, please send it to

david at maxbarkey.com and just say focused recording in the subject line, and I'll create a rule that puts all those aside as well. But get it to us one way or another. We're going to include it in the show. But let's get on with today's show. Welcome to the show, Dave Hamilton. Hey, thanks for having me, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really stoked. Yeah, Dave, you've been on our list for a while because I know you do so many different things. Nerds in the audience may know Dave. He's the operator of the Mac Observer and Backbeat Media. He's also a podcaster.

We'll talk about all the different podcasts Dave makes. And you're a drummer and you're a dad and you just, you're a guy who has a lot of plates in the air. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they come crashing down all at the same time and that's that's always a fun day but you know it's it's it it's better than the alternative of having nothing to do i think yeah there you go keeps you busy right and you know actually i can i put an asterisk on that

i have a lot of my my tricks that we will probably go through here today at least some of them are are mostly brain hacks right and i have one of my more recent ones is i've stopped saying that i'm busy i've started replacing that word with productive because the amount of time we spend doing things is not important unless someone else is paying us by the hour and even then i would argue you know there's a different conversation to have uh But it's all about being productive and actually getting things done and not just spending time trying to get things done. So I like to say I'm productive, not busy. Dave, are you just trying to play up to me? Because I as well hate that term. The bragging right of busy is something we need to expunge from the popular language.

Totally. Totally. So maybe you're not so upset that I interrupted you because there we go. Yeah. Yep. I have to ask since you made the clarification here right at the beginning about productive versus busy. And I think I have a hint based on your follow-up comment, but how do you define productive then? What does productive mean to you personally? Yeah, that's a good question. And we probably spend the whole show talking about that. But in general, it means getting results that I want to get. And I mean, that can be quantified very easily in some ways. I have a programming project I need to get done. I finish it. Okay, it's done. I was productive. I produced a thing. Same with a podcast, right? I produced a thing. Great. a productive well i mean i don't know that i've ever have used the term productive dad before other than you know when we made the children um but um you know like like being i also would never have said that i'm a busy dad i i'm an attentive dad right like there's different

language matters here and i i well i like to be an attentive dad i i i will argue and i'm sure my kids will argue that I'm not always succeeding at that, but I fail all the time. Mistakes are the thing that, you know, that's my tuition. That's how I learned. But yeah, productive means I accomplished whatever it was I set out to accomplish. And sometimes you find that you accomplish things you didn't set out to accomplish, and that can be good and bad. Yeah, that's an interesting point. And that's kind of why I asked the question, because I've seen a lot of stuff recently where people are kind of pushing back on the idea of productivity. And I think maybe it's because they have a corporate view of it in terms of

number of widgets produced. But being productive doesn't always mean that you accomplished so much output or even that you outputted the thing that you thought you were going to output. Like you just said, you could be productive and you end up doing something totally different than you had planned to do. And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It really comes down to, I think, for everybody, it's a little bit different. For me, I would use the word intentional. So did you do what you intended to do? Did you follow through on the commitment that you made to yourself? Are you proving to yourself that you are the type of person who can keep a promise to themselves and

to other people if that happens to be what's important to you? But really, that's what it comes down to is defining what is important to you and then designing your life in a way that you're able to maximize the amount of value that you get out of that. And again, value doesn't mean a certain dollar amount, number of hours spent on something, but just basically what is it that really makes you tick, that makes you happy, that brings you joy, which where we find ourselves today is very important. No, that's very true. Yeah. You used another one of my favorite words and that's intentional. Intention matters with a lot of things and especially with productivity for sure. But yeah, everything needs to be intentional. Even when it's, I'm intentionally going to not worry about it, you know, and just improvise

here. That's okay. But, you know, knowing self-awareness is really what this all boils down to, right? And just knowing yourself, knowing how to live with yourself and accepting all those things and tweaking the things you want to change and all that good stuff so yeah and to bring it around i think busy does not imply intentionality not necessarily unless your intention is to show someone that you logged a lot of hours yeah yeah i mean you can be very busy and not be intentional it's just totally in fact a lot of times that's the problem you're so busy, you can be very busy and not be intentional. It's just totally. In fact, a lot of times that's the problem. You're so busy that you can't be intentional. ADD or anything, I've never been diagnosed, but I certainly have a lot of those traits. I like to have, like you said, a lot of plates in the air. And so that means I can, like, it's easy for me to jump around from thing to thing. And jumping around isn't necessarily, in fact, is usually

not a good way to be productive. You can feel like you did a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean you got done what you intended to do. You know, I find and then there's the whole conversation about multitasking, which is, you know, not a thing, at least not a productive thing. Spotlighting. I like the term spotlighting where, you know, you really are focused on a thing. And then the trick is getting good at shifting from one thing to the other without losing all of that transition time. And that's a real, that's another one, you know, real trick for me anyway. I like that term that you just used transition. I feel like if all you did was change the language from I'm going to go do thing B instead of thing A to I'm going to transition from thing A to thing B, you would be a lot more effective in applying the intentionality and the

focus that you want as you go from one thing to another. Because it kind of implies that there's a bit of a process here as we ramp down this one thing and we ramp up the next thing instead of just assuming that as soon as I hit stop on this thing and hit go on the other thing that all of a sudden, you know, zero to 60 in a matter of seconds, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. There's a latency there for sure. You know, I think about it as, you know, you go down a hole and then you need to come out of that hole to go down the next hole. And, and as there, there is, I have yet to find a way to, you know, jump from the depth of one hole to the depth of the other. I got to come out and go back down. And

that takes time. It, there's a distraction level, uh, like a sort of inherent distraction level, but then there's also the explicit distraction. If I've been deep in on something like, you know, I'm recording this show. So in theory, as far as you guys know, this has 100 percent of my attention right now. Right. And it does. But when I finish with this, I could say, all right, we're finished with this. You know, we're supposed to finish it, whatever. Three o'clock. Great. I don't have a hard stop, by the way, but let's say I did, you know, and at three o'clock I had something else.

Well, there's there's the natural transition. But then there's the well, should I check my email in between and look at my text messages and all of that? And now suddenly, you know, you're not even intentionally transitioning yet to the next thing you're spending time in that limbo of, you know, distraction and who knows, it could go in 18 different directions. So like all that stuff matters. I, you know, that's a, that's a problem I deal with a lot because I block time, you know, that's the way I get through my day. And I've come to the conclusion that I am not a robot and there is no circumstance where

I will finish recording this podcast, close the window and open up a legal contract and start writing it immediately. So I plan around it, you know, I mean, if you looked at my block today, there's a half hour after the time I think we're going to be done recording before I take on another real project or another block. And maybe that's the answer is you build for it, but just assume that you're not going to be able to be a robot and jump from one mode to the next. And if you can like like, write me, tell me, find me, because I'd love to see if I can adopt that too,

but I don't, I have yet to find anyone or any way of doing that. Yeah. We're not robots. Yeah. So how do you transition from one thing to the next? David mentioned you have a lot of different things that you do.

So you do have to minimize the amount of transition time, it sounds like, in order to get done all the things that you want to get done. You must have some sort of system that you use to effectively do that. I do. I mean, it's constantly ever evolving, right? But there is the sort of the easy things. If I know that it is time for me to transition into something, as opposed to transitioning out, right. But transitioning into doing something, you know, checking my email, looking at, you know, messages and social media and all of that stuff is off the radar, right? Definitely not doing that because, because that means I have yet to begin the transition into the

thing. So I do have a process where I'll sit down and say, okay, I know I want to do this next thing. Music really helps me. The right kind of music really helps me focus. If I don't have music running at my desk while I'm trying to do most anything, I will be far less productive at getting it done. I just have far less focus. And the way I explain it, and I have no idea if this is right or not, but, obviously false. But if I have music running it, that fills the cycles in my brain or enough of them that I can just like focus my, my, the intentional part of my brain on the thing that I want to have going now, the wrong kind of music. If there's too many lyrics, that can be distracting for me. So I like stuff that has – I can have some lyrics, but I like a lot of instrumentals. So I'll listen to a lot of jazz or I can listen to classical music.

It can be very complex music usually. Again, there's some things that just pull me off my radar. But, you know, very – actually actually complex music usually is a good thing. And as long as it's got lengthy instrumental passages, then I'm then I'm fine. And I and I really can kind of get lost in the work that I'm doing. I kind of get into a zone and and I'm good to go. So. So how do you trigger that? Do you just, hey, lady in the can play this kind of music or do you have specific go-to tracks that you use? Yeah, I usually play it on my computer, but I sometimes, you know, talk to the A-lady or whatever and have that happen. I am a fan of a lot of prog rock.

So, you know, in the early days of my youth, Rush fan, Yes fan, ELP, you know, that kind of stuff. So there's long instrumental passages, complex, but instrumental passages. So that's great. Probably for similar reasons, I wound up getting into the band Fish later in life, which also, you know, has a lot of instrumental passages. I have a couple of podcast listeners that are always on the lookout for live recordings of bands and music that they think I would like. And they're constantly sending me things and I just dump them all into an unplayed playlist. Uh, and I just play that, uh, when, when something, when I've played through a show or, or, you know, some album or something that somebody sent me, then I take it out off the list. But I think the last time I

looked, I'm usually between 10 and 15 days of music in that list. So it's constantly new stuff, although it might be songs I've heard, might be different interpretations of them or something. But, you know, so yeah, I'm fortunate. I lead a charmed life. Somebody just fills my list for me all the time. It's great. That's pretty nice. I have a couple specific albums that I tend to play a lot. And that can work as a trigger too, I've found, because, for example, the Monument Valley soundtrack or anything by Tycho, where it's just instrumental, but there's a couple of albums specifically that I will trigger.

And then hearing those, it's almost like I recognize that as the cue to transition into writing mode. There you go. almost like I recognize that as the cue to transition into writing mode. There you go. I do admit that I do often wish that I had some more suggestions piped in from people who knew what I was looking for. Yeah. I found that the suggestion engine does a great job with that. So I tend to stick with the five or six that I hear all the time.

Yeah, it's great having a human in charge of that. Um, I highly recommend that because he'll, you know, there's, there's a couple of them, but there's one, one guy in particular that, that really is just constantly sending me stuff. And it's great because he, he knows he's like, Oh, what did you think of that? I'm like, Oh, I really liked that. You know, I just finished listening to a, uh, to a Stephen Grappelli concert from, I think it was at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, and it was just killer. And so now I'm starting to get more stuff like that from him, which is great. So yeah, it's good. Have you ever experimented with something like Brain.fm or Focus at Will, where it's kind of the engineered tracks, which are specifically

without lyrics to help get you into a focus state. I didn't even know that these things existed. So, uh, now I will try those out. Yeah. I'm just kind of curious. Cause I know that you're a musician and a fairly accomplished musician. So, uh, I I'm curious if you think like those aren't interesting enough to work for you because it kind of sounds like you're getting new stuff all the time. And so somehow you have this balance where you're able to listen to the new thing and figure out if you like that thing so you can get back to the person who picked it for you, but also still focus on the work that you have to do. but also still focused on the work that you have to do. That sounds like a pretty heavy mental load for myself,

but I don't know. So if that's the way that your brain works, I'm guessing that maybe some of these tracks that are not designed to be musically incredible, you know, like they're not designed from a music perspective. They're designed from a focus perspective. So I'm curious, you know, what someone like you would think about something like that. Yeah.

Like yesterday, for example, I got back to my desk after maybe having lunch or something. And of course, digesting food is a massively distracting thing. I've noticed your body's just doing a lot of different things. And I'm like, I really need something simple. But I know that I need music playing to, to make the rest of the day productive. And for whatever reason, it like it, I wanted reggae music. And so thankfully Apple music has a, you know, a reggae roots, reggae station. I hit play and it was like, yep, this is what I want now. I mean, I like reggae music, but it is not complex. Like the things

that I, I talked about. It's very groove oriented, very, you know, repetitive in a lot of ways, right? That's sort of the point of it. And sometimes I will find that distracting because I'll start really thinking about like, wow, listen how they're playing that groove like over and over again and really locking in and like that'll start taking me off on tangents. But yesterday it didn't, it was having the reggae going was great. So I,

you know, there's no, there's no one type that, that I've found that I, you know, it doesn't always need to be complex. Evidently. Yeah.

I tried brain FM and I know it works for a lot of people. I hear from them, man, it did not work for me at all. So I, I'd be curious to hear if you'd give it a try, Dave. Yeah. Yeah. I'll definitely give it a try and we. I hear from them, man, it did not work for me at all. So I'd be curious to hear if you'd give it a try, Dave. Yeah. Yeah. I'll definitely give it a try and we'll, uh, yeah, we'll see what happens. It is funny though, how plastic our brains are. I find the same way

I'm able to absolutely program, you know, the cells between my ears with music and playing different kinds of music is a great way to context switch if you work on it. Yep. Oh, that's true. I have not done that, although maybe yesterday I did do that without really intentionally doing it, but changing the style of music to go from one project to another, especially if it's, I want to spend more time on that project, but I need to address this other thing first. I like that. That's interesting. Huh? project, but I need to address this other thing first. I like that. That's interesting.

Huh. Yeah, but then I'll start getting these Pavlovian responses and who knows what goes on. What about playing music? Do you use that to context switch? Do you ever find yourself in a creative project and you feel like, I'm tapped out, I just need to do something else? So you take out the sticks and bang on the drums for a bit. And then when you go back, is it easier or harder to get back to work or do you not use music in that way? Yeah, no, I do. Playing music is something that is all encompassing for my brain. It truly is

the kind of, don't get me wrong. I've certainly been guilty of playing a bar gig and realizing I'm watching the, you know, whatever game on the TV, on the other side of the bar or whatever, like that definitely happens, but it, it is an immersive experience for me for sure. Um, and if I'm reading music while I'm playing like sight reading something that adds a whole other level of immersion to it. So, yeah, for sure. That's a great way to kind of force me to detach from a thing that I'm, you know, heads down on and don't want to let go of, but know that I need to. Yeah, going and playing the drums, even for 10 minutes, is a full reset of the

brain, for sure. I do believe there's something to that. I think a lot of people, the common wisdom is if you're working really hard with your brain, you need to do something that's brain dead for a little while before you resume. But I find that playing music or engaging in something that really requires you to use your brain, but in a different way is equally valuable and resetting and getting yourself kind of sorted out. Yeah, I find that the brain, the disengaged brain, I don't want to say brain dead, but the disengaged brain time, you know, is hugely valuable. The disengaged brain time, you know, is hugely valuable. And especially now, you know, I've been working from home in a home office for decades. So I had to sort this out a long time ago, whereas a lot of folks are sorting this out right now. That commute time, you know, the drive home is often that, you know, brain lack of attention time where you can just sort of detach. And I find that hugely valuable because I'll, you know, like all of us, I'll have my things that I'm trying to solve and I'll be in it and just doing it and one thing after another and after another.

But I, you know, there's value in taking a step back and sort of letting things percolate a little bit. And that detached time, the intentionally, the forced detachment of a drive home or I find showering is great for that. Anything that's either meditative or approaches that meditative thing where you're just letting your brain process by itself without you guiding it is awesome. by itself without you guiding it is awesome. And it is something that you, I really need to make sure I carve out time for, you know, when I first started working at home, I found, oh, okay, maybe when I leave my desk, instead of just leaving my desk and going up to the kitchen,

you know, when I had my office in the house or whatever, it would take me hours to really, truly detach from work because I, you know, there was a 30 second gap between I stood up from my desk and now I'm up with my family, but my head's still at my desk, you know, and going and taking a shower for 10 minutes in the middle there kind of allows that pressure cooker to, you know, let its relief valve off. And just all of those thoughts just sort of pour out of your head. And, and sometimes like, oh, hey, wait a minute.

That thing that I was fighting with four hours ago, I think this would be the answer to that, you know, right there. Good to go. So yeah, it's good to find ways of being, you know, being able to, to give yourself that time. I'm a huge fan of flotation tanks for exactly that reason, because it really does take away all of that external stimuli and just kind of gives you the opportunity to let your brain process and do what it's going to do without any guidance. without any guidance. This episode of the Focused podcast is brought to you by Blinkist. Read 3,000 plus books in 15 minutes or less. Start your seven-day free trial today at Blinkist.com slash focused. There's a lot of great productivity books out there, but there just isn't enough time to read them all. That's why I want to tell you about one of the ultimate life hacks. It can be hard to find

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and get 25% off your new subscription. That's Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.com slash focused to start your seven day free trial. And you'll also save that 25% off when you sign up. But only when you sign up at Blinkist dot com slash focused. Our thanks to Blinkist for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Okay, we have to unpack that a little bit more. I'm familiar with the concept of a flotation tank, but can you explain what it is and how it works? Yeah. A lot of people call them sensory

deprivation tanks. That's not really true. You aren't deprived of any of your senses. Nothing changes with you physically. What it is, is it deprives you of any sensory input. So the idea is this flotation tank, you get in, the water is filled with like 800 pounds of Epsom salt or something so that you will float. Like even people that don't float will float. No question. And the water is set – the water and the air are set to the exact same temperature as your skin. And it's dark in there. So if you want it to be.

Some people are not comfortable with the dark. So they leave the light on or leave a door open. That's fine. It's all, you know, up to the operator. Right. And the user, not the operator. So the idea, though, is that you get and most people get in the tank naked. You don't again, you don't have to. But the idea is you get in the tank and you start to lose sense of where your body begins and ends because you're not really feeling the difference, you know, between your body and the water or the air because it's all the same temperature. It's all set to basically skin temperature and actually a little warmer than skin temperature. And then you're floating and it's dark and it's quiet. And so you can open your eyes. You can close your eyes.

It doesn't matter. You know, there's no sensory it's quiet. And so you can open your eyes, you can close your eyes. It doesn't matter. There's no sensory input coming in. And what I find with that is the first thing I do is I kind of, I just breathe. And I do simple meditation of like breath counting or something where you breathe in and out, just count your breath up to one to four. And then after four breaths, just go back to one because you don't want to get into a scenario where you're competing with yourself. That's bad.

That's distracting. And your brain will bring up all these things. And you just kind of let it. And notice your thoughts, but don't interact with them. Just let them kind of happen. And for me, after about 45 minutes of that, I usually spend 90 minutes in the tank. Most people say start with 60, and I think that's a good idea. But I found that I was getting frustrated because it took me 45 minutes to get to the point where my brain was no longer adding things to the mix. for me, clear thought. Like there's literally no thought in my head. And that's a really kind of magical thing. Not to mention the value of those 45 minutes where your brain is just able to just

let everything out that it that's sort of been packed in there because you're too busy to let it that like that's hugely valuable too. But the icing on the cake for me is that that moment of like, oh yeah, I'm not thinking of anything. Like, this is pretty cool. Sounds to me like mindfulness meditation in space. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was created by a crazy person named John Lilly, Dr. John Lilly.

And he was taking a lot of DMT, dimethyltryptamine, which is a powerful psychedelic. which is a powerful psychedelic. And he was, he felt like he couldn't get the full effects of the psychedelic because he was being distracted by, you know, all of these environmental factors. So he decided, oh, I'll build this tank that'll isolate me from the outside world. And then, and only then will I truly be able to see,

you know, what this drug is trying to show me or whatever. So, you know, there you go. So you've got one of these in your house? Oh, I would love to have one of these in my house. No. So I have not been able to go because the, the place near me that has isolation tanks has been closed. They say they're going to open in May and they've, they've got some, uh, you know, some

procedures in place to keep everybody safe and all that stuff. So we shall see. How often in the normal world do you use the flotation tanks? I would like to go twice a month, but generally it's, you know, three times every two months at best kind of thing. So, cause it's a lot of time, you know, it's a 90 minute time in the tank and then 30 minutes, you know, or whatever, 20 or 30 minutes each way to get there. And so, yeah. I have, I know some people who absolutely swear by this and they, they say whenever they do it, that like you just described, you can finally think clearly and you see things for the way that they, they really are. And that's when they get the aha moments and everything

becomes clear. They know what they're supposed to do, do next. Uh, the way you described it though, what they're supposed to do next. The way you described it, though, because I have not done it myself. I know several people that I have several friends who have talked very highly of this process. But the deprivation tank, like you talked about, that sounds kind of terrifying to me. Yeah, it should, because it's not a normal thing. And if you have even an inkling of claustrophobic tendencies, just the idea of it, it will be terrifying. I do not suffer from any claustrophobia, the thought of the claustrophobia is much worse than what they've experienced when they get there, because the reality is you are 100% in control. Like there's no one else in the room with you. Usually the tank is in a small room. And so you, you, you know, the operator of the establishment lets you into the small room. They tell you, you know, when your timer is going to start or whatever, then they leave.

You get undressed, you shower, you get in the tank, you close the door, you turn off the lights. So you are 100% in control. And if you want to get out, you just get out. You don't, you know, when, when your time's up, there'll be like a little, you know, usually it's a nice little alarm or something that, that tells you it's time to get out and shower and leave. But no one's locking you in for the duration. After I'd been in the tank many times, I remember one moment where I was in it and I'd done a 90-minute session.

I was maybe 20 minutes in and I just couldn't get into it. I was like, crap. So I just got out. And I showered and I sat there I just couldn't get into it. And I was like, crap. So I just got out and I showered and I sat there for a minute, kind of reset and got back in the tank. And you know, it's like you, you, you get to, you get to pick and there's no wrong way of doing it. So now that your habit has been thrown off by not being able to go there anymore. What sort of things are you trying to do at home that maybe aren't going to provide the same effect, but try to do the same sort of thing?

I spend some time breathing, just doing breathing meditation on a semi-regular basis. I do not do it every day. I'm sure it would be great for me if I did it every day, but, uh, but I do not carve out the time to do that. Um, so you know, a couple days a week I'll do anywhere between five and 20 minutes of breathing meditation. And that's usually pretty good for me. I definitely notice, uh, how I feel on the days when I don't do that and the day after I don't do that, those kinds of things. So, yeah.

Yeah, I feel like that is a natural. I mean, because what you're describing is a mindfulness process. Totally. I would think that, yeah, you should absolutely try a daily mindfulness meditation to go along with it. I think not only would that help you, I think when you went to the flotation tank, you'd probably get to the headspace a lot faster. Definitely. If I'm, if I'm meditating regularly before I go and get in the tank,

it's yeah, it's a practice, right? It's if you're not in practice, it takes you longer to get there sometimes. Yep. Yep. Absolutely.

I think Mike, we have to do this. I think you and I have to both, once everything clears up and we can actually leave our homes, we have to both go try it once. Let's go float and report back. My guess is, Mike, you and I just met, but my guess is you would like it. David, I will be shocked if you don't like this. So, yeah. I've been scouting it out. There's a place downtown Appleton, even in the smaller city where I live.

It's not super small. It's about 100,000 people. But I know the place. I know where I need to go. I know the prices. I just haven't been able to pull the trigger. See, and I've always thought it was something for weirdos. I have to be totally honest. As a guy who meditates daily, I'd never looked into it enough.

It's always sounded to me like a Steve Jobs kind of millionaire thing. Oh, no. I was always interested in it. I had seen Altered States, which is a movie about John Lilly. Obviously, the whole transitioning into a werewolf like that didn't happen to John Lilly. But the movie is about him and about the tanks and all of that. And I'd seen that when I was a kid or whatever. And it always just struck me as something I wanted to do. And I don't know, maybe seven years ago, I'll say,

I said, I just happened to mention casually one day, I was like, oh yeah, I'd love to mention, you know, casually one day, it's like, oh, yeah, you know, I'd love to do a isolation tank someday. But, you know, they're just there. There aren't any, you know, and I looked and there weren't, you know, this just wasn't a thing. And the next day, my wife hands me a gift certificate and she's like, here you go. I'm like, what's this? She's like, oh, I found it. She's like somebody in Portland, Maine, has an isolation tank in her house and she rents it out and you're good to go. Just call her and set up a time.

Holy crap. Like, how'd you find this? She says, you know, Google. Like, oh yeah, right. Yeah. Okay, cool. So yeah, it, but for a long period, like it was big, I think in the, in the seventies for sure.

And then, then they sort of lost their, their luster and people got, you know, into different things or whatever, but, but they, they're still around and, and now there's new places opening up with the, cause the first tank I did in that woman's house in Portland, uh, was one of the old style tanks. And, uh, but it worked great. It's actually still one of my favorite tanks to have used, but now there's companies making new tanks and new technology and the whole thing. And it's all predicated on reverse osmosis filtering. So as soon as you get out of the tank, it churns through 100% of the water that's in there and cleans it so that, you know, so the next person coming in is actually getting a clean tank and all that stuff. Nice.

Well, that'll be fun to talk about someday. Thanks for turning me on because I, like I said, I'd never even given it a thought, but, but, but I do think when you described the process though, it's exactly what I do in a daily meditation practice. It is meditation. It's just meditation in a different environment. The way I do it, I don't know, you know, I haven't researched a ton about what other people do, but yes, what I'm doing is, is very basic, you know, simple meditation laying in a tank. Yeah. Some people go sleep in them and they say they get the best sleep of their lives. It's fine. I mean, again, there's no wrong way. It's like, oh, okay. I never even, I never even thought about falling asleep in a tank, but it makes perfect sense. It's quiet and dark. Yeah. You also mentioned, Dave, that you've

been working from home for a while. And I'm curious how you have differentiated, because you kind of alluded to it where you have the ability at any moment if you work from home to go back into work mode. So what are some of the boundaries or friction points that you've put in so that you don't do that? Or do you just let yourself do that and you're one of those people who works all the time because that's the way their brain works? Yeah. So I'm going to talk a good talk here, but the reality is I fail this test all the time. I work more than I should. Although lately, and when I say lately, I mean, you know, now that we've been locked down at home, I have been very careful not to spend my weekends working

because that's the time when we can spend time together as a family and everybody kind of needs to lean on each other a little more because we don't have all of our things that we're fortunate enough to have going on during the week still so i've been better about that for sure um but yeah i having a place where the only thing you do there is work if you can and i realized even just saying that as a luxury, but if you can do that where, you know, you have a separate computer that you only use for work and a separate room if you can. And now, you know, with the house that we're in

that we've been in the last 15 years, the prior owner had built a separate building with a two-car garage and an office in it and an upstairs that was unfinished, which is where I am now. It's a music and podcast studio. But having the driveway of distance between me and that place I call work is awesome. It doesn't mean that I don't still check my work email on my phone. I mean, everything's all the same. It's just me. So I wind up doing

some work from the couch late at night or whatever. I like to be a productive person that there's things I want to get done. So, uh, so I will do that, but I, I do carve out time. I really value family dinners. Uh, so we, you know, we all put our devices down and especially nowadays, like it's actually been like, that's one of the silver linings of this is we've had family dinners every night, you know, for the last 30 days or something. So it, which is great. It, you know, we all really enjoy that. Um, I find that, you know, I, I will, I will give credit where it's due to my business partner and co-host of our small business show, Shannon Jean, who taught me this particular little mind hack. But he likes to say, you get to write your own story and you get

to pick what story you're going to tell when you get to the end. And that is a great way of sort of deciding, you know, you decide who you want to be, and then you just get on the path so that you can tell that story. And it totally takes discipline out of the equation for the most part, because now you're driven to, I want to tell that story. Well, the only way I can tell that story is to do this. And one of the stories I like to tell is that I'm able to balance work and family and all that stuff. Again, I fail at it most of the time, but I am constantly thinking about, okay, here's how this is going to work. I know that it's good for me to do this work, but I also, as we just talked about, I know that it's good to give my brain downtime so that I can

get the work done, right? That's actually an important part of the process. And I think that's where that brain hack comes in. Like, nope, I know that I need to have detached time in order to be able to say that I was productive and got all those things done. If I was working 24-7, I wouldn't be nearly as productive as I am right now. And I have convinced myself of that. I've proven it to myself. But the proof is sort of irrelevant. I've convinced myself of it either way. And so I, you know, I, I, I do carve out that time. It, it, some days are better than others.

Some months are better than others. You know, just kind of how it works. I don't, um, there, there are times I try to keep a normal work schedule. I get up in the morning. I, I don't go to work in sweatpants, which I know a lot of people are having a blast with right now. And it's great to have a blast with that. It's great for the first couple of weeks. It's great for the first couple of weeks. But yeah, I actually, yesterday was the first time in probably 15 years that I wore sweatpants to the office and it felt wrong all day long. Maybe that's why I played the reggae music yesterday. Who knows?

Yeah, I think there's a definite correlation there. start getting my things done. I organize my schedule. I'm a big fan of not just to-do lists, but to-did lists. So I'm constantly giving myself credit for all the things that I've done so that I can check those boxes and feel, okay, I have a paper trail here. There's breadcrumbs. I did a thing. Look. How do you track that, Dave? How do you track your to-did list? On my to-do list. So I not a gtd guy i've i'm aware of the system i don't want to say i've experimented with it because i've really never lived in it it seems too complex for me uh i don't i have yet to find value for me in spending time managing how i'm going to spend my time. And maybe that's a false statement

because we've just talked about how I've spent a lot of time managing my time, but I've not found the desire to do it that particular way. I keep a very simple to-do list. I started a long time ago with a calendar called Now Up to Date, like probably 1993. Sure. And, uh, and it, it, it, it, it took some, some dark detours there, but, but it reemerged as busy Cal a number of years ago, same developers and, and their to-do list functionality works perfectly for me. It's just a very simple, here's the things I'm going to do on this day. Uh, sometimes I will block out specific time. If I know that something's going to take me more than say, you know, five or 10 minutes, I will, I will actually calendar time for myself

so that I'm, I know that I, you know, I'm going to spend this time doing that thing. I think you said you do this, something similar, David. And, and, and so that's, that's it. And if I wind up doing something, you know, it's like, oh, I'll just put it on my list and check it off. There is something to be said about not spending too much time crafting the perfect plan because it's going to get blown up anyways. Yep. So I've been struggling with that myself, trying to figure out from me personally, because I do think it's a very personal thing for a corporate executive. Maybe GTD is the perfect fit and you should follow it to the letter of the law. And all of the review stuff and all of the planning stuff makes perfect sense and it just clicks. But I struggle with that. I'm currently rereading Ryder Carroll's The Bullet Journal Method, which is a phenomenal book. He created this paper-based system because he was diagnosed with ADHD, I believe, and he just was trying to cobble together something that would work for him.

And kind of the beauty is in the simplicity with that. I'm not sure I'm all aboard, you know, the whole system that he outlines there too. I think there's probably pieces of it that I'll use. But he did say something interesting in here that I really liked about failure. Because you said, Dave, that you struggle with this and you fail at this all the time. And I think that that is completely fine. You have to give yourself permission to fail at this stuff. He says failure is inevitable.

We will make bad decisions, but we should try to understand why. And that's what I try to do is to put a couple minutes into my time block plan is how I typically do it. And I'll block hour blocks throughout my entire day, paper pen in a barren, fake, confident notebook. So that takes me like five minutes just to lay that out. And then once I do that, I find that I can kind of let go of the plan because I can look at that at any point and say, Oh yeah, this is the thing that I said I was going to do. But it also gives me permission to check the plan, call an audible and do something else entirely because I spent some time thinking about it. And that kind of gives my brain the release to not struggle with

what is the right thing to be doing right now. I'm able to just kind of go with the flow more. That's fascinating. I've never thought about approaching my workday this way, but what you described is exactly how I approach most gigs with my bands in terms of building set lists, right? One band that I probably don't play right now because obviously, but this band Fling that I've been in for years, we found that most of the time at gigs, we're much better off if we just read the crowd and call audibles all night long. truly like audible because I will spend an hour or two the day before crafting meticulously, you know, a set list or, you know, for the entire night, like we could go in and follow this list and we would have, you know, the perfect amount of material to play. But that process of going through and creating that list lets me think about the songs transitions from one song

to another what's i'm really always very careful like what song would work here and and how would this transition how would the energy in the room change like all of those things and i'm the first one to throw out the set list like despite the fact that i've spent all this time crafting it the day before you know it's this work of art, but it gives me, like you said, the confidence to know if I don't know what to do next, I already know what to do next because I've already figured it out. I spent some time in advance doing that. But if I do know what to do next, forget the plan. I like, if this is working, stick with it, like go have fun, you know, entertain, right? Because that's the point.

But I never thought about it. And I'm sure I do this in my workday all the time. I've just never thought about it before. I like that. That's good. I never made the connection until you were describing it just now. But as I think about time blocking, that's basically what it is, is it's a set list for your day. It's a set list for your day. Oh no, you were, yeah. As you were describing it, I'm like, oh, he's building a set list. I know, I know this. Yeah, that's exactly it. But then, you know, you know, you know what your plan is, you know, the, you know, to relate it to the set list, the important songs that you want to make sure you play. If somebody in the band is particularly keen on making sure that one song is included,

you've already processed that and thought of that so chances are even if you're calling audibles you won't skip it you know you'll you'll remember uh right for you know for that guy we got to make sure we play this song and if there was a request from the crowd or something you know like those sorts of things all factor in because you spent some time thinking about it yeah it's it's good. And to continue the analogy, you don't necessarily have to play the set in the exact order you planned, just like a block schedule day. You know, people get hung up on, you know, I have to do it in a certain order. And I like the analogy of it's more like making soup. You know, you still have to put the salt and the tomatoes and

the chicken in, but you don't have to put them in in a certain order. No, you really don't. And you can play your biggest song first if you want. You don't have to save it for the end. It's totally fine. There's no rules. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Agenda. Agenda is a note-taking app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, which has a focus on dates. It's tightly integrated with Apple's built-in calendar and reminders apps, which makes it great for planning and tracking your projects. And it incorporates all your notes as well, arranged in a unique timeline that follows your project through time. It's a unique approach that's perfect for meeting notes, a daily journal, day-to-day lists like groceries, task lists, planning, even revisiting past decisions.

It's beautifully designed. It won an Apple Design Award in the launch year 2018. And recent additions to the app include things like drawing and handwriting with the Apple Pencil, scanning of documents on iOS and iPadOS, and the integration that I mentioned earlier with the new Reminders app. Coming soon to the app are things like localization in non-English languages, a powerful sharing sheet for iOS so you can get stuff into Agenda more quickly, and templates to provide a starting point for your new notes. The cool part about Agenda is that it is free to download and use forever, and premium features are available via an in-app purchase. It unlocks all current premium features, plus it gives you any premium features are available via an in-app purchase. It unlocks all current premium features,

plus it gives you any premium features that are added in the next 12 months following your purchase. How great is that? So once a premium feature is unlocked, it will stay unlocked forever without a subscription. So you can go right now to agenda.com for more information and to download the app for iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. Again, that is agenda.com. Our thanks to Agenda for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. I think one point I would make is, you know, planning your day, I still think there's a lot of merit to that, and I think it gets a bad rap in terms of the amount of time it takes. I think a lot of people think it takes a lot of time. I know I used to think that I spent too much time in OmniFocus.

And every time I do a time tracking experiment, I don't track my time all the time. But every couple of months, I'll track my time for a week. I'm always shocked by how little time I spend in my planning tools. Because it feels like I spend a lot more time there. Because I guess it really is the director of my day. It drives me. It's the manager for me. But the actual time I spend in it, especially when you're an entrepreneur, but certainly even if you work for somebody else, if you're at home and not in the same room or the same building as them, you are in charge of deciding what you should be doing next in many cases, certainly not all cases. But as an entrepreneur and business owner, you're definitely in charge of that. And oftentimes there is no one to tell you this is the thing you need to do today. So spending at least some time being intentional about, hey, how am I going to spend my time either, you know, this day, this week, this month? You need to think about that kind of stuff. Working, you know, this day, this week, this month, you need to think about

that kind of stuff working, you know, the, the, the common phrase is, you know, you want to work on your business some of the time, not just in your business all of the time, because you need to tell yourself what to do. And you said, you know, OmniFocus becomes your director. Well, it's not OmniFocus from some, you know, mystical cloud. It's OmniFocus that you have programmed, right? You've built this and now it's you telling you what to do. But there are, even for those of us that are control freaks and business owners and couldn't even imagine

working for someone else again, there are those moments where it's like, I wish somebody would just tell me what to do right now. Like, what's the right thing to do next? Because sometimes, oftentimes, you don't get to know whether it's the right thing until after you've done it. And so having that plan and then being able to sort of, you know, fall into the dutiful role of just completing the plan you set out that there's a there's a beauty to that. Yeah. Reverse is sometimes your most important gear. Yes. I like that. Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah, that. Yeah. Reverse is sometimes your most important gear. Yes. I like that. Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

So how do you, how do you then, uh, or what would you say is the difference between, um, someone who is running a business or running their, their day? And I'll kind of use those interchangeably, versus somebody who is used to working in an office, but now they're having to work remotely and they don't have somebody, maybe they're used to having somebody tell them, this is what you do. And now they have to kind of figure that out for themselves. Any tips for somebody in that situation who's trying to figure out the best way to work from home? I would go back to what we were talking about before. Create a structure for yourself and overdo it at first. Set an alarm, get up, get dressed, eat your breakfast, do whatever,

feed the pets if you have to, whatever that morning routine needs to look like for you as the person at home, and then go to work and work might just be in the next room or it might be in the same room if you live in a studio apartment, who knows, but get to work and now be in work mode. And, and, you know, those things where, you know, it's easy to say, well, I'm going to go check on the laundry or do this. No, carve those out for the evenings when you would have been home to do those and really be overly intentional. Exaggerate the distinction between home and work until you really start to fall into those habits and find yourself getting lost in the work and really able to stop being distracted by the home going on around you. And, of course, if you've got other people in your home, that might take some conversations and saying, hey, here's the thing. And the kids need to learn.

I remember when I was working from home, my kids were young and my office was one converted bay of our garage. And my kids were playing with their friends in the room next door. And they told me about this later. I didn't know about it at the time. And one of their friends was like, oh, we should go see your dad. And they're like, well, he's at work. Like, this was a completely foreign concept to my kids. Like, well, we, of course we don't go in there. He's at work.

Like that, you know, that, that door is not breached. You know, the one time my daughter came in, she came in apologizing and, and, but she was panicked. And she told me, she's like, oh and, and, but she was panicked. And she told me, she's like, oh yeah, Lucas, her younger brother is choking. I'm like, oh, she said, but I'm really sorry to bother you. I'm like, I thank you, but like, let's go fix Lucas. You know, you came in, this is great. But it was even in that moment, she knew she was supposed to come in and interrupt me, but she also knew that she should not be doing this in all but the most dire circumstances. Thankfully, Lucas was fine. But, you know, like your family, and this will probably

be for many people, a mutual conversation. Everybody's going to have their own things to do. And you kind of need to have that discussion about how to compartmentalize yourselves for the day. In my house, thankfully, we have the day. We, in my house, thankfully we have enough room. We're, we're fortunate, but we don't see each other during the day all that much during the week. You know, it's, it's sometime between four and 6 PM that we all sort of descend into the common area of the house and, and, you know, start interacting for the evening, make dinner and have dinner and all that stuff. But, you know, there's sometimes we all go to the kitchen to eat, but we don't schedule to have lunch together or anything. And there's been a couple of days, but not many over the last month

or so where we've all, all four of us have been in the kitchen at the same time making lunch. Then someone, you know, will acknowledge it and be like, Oh, this is not how this is supposed to have happened. You know, this is an accident. But that shows the intention that everyone has to really kind of do their own thing during the day and create your own path. And I think you just, you know, we started the show talking about intention. That's the key here to being successful working from home

is be intentional and have some distinctions. You know, put on your work clothes when you're finished with work, then go and have some distinctions, you know, put on your work clothes when you're finished with work, then go put on your sweatpants, you know, and, and have that, have that be part of your, your routine. All of these routines are really just little micro meditations. You know, the, the, the idea of changing your clothes from, from work to, uh, you know, to, to home clothes, the idea of brushing your teeth, like all of these things are very little, you know, meditative moments and they can really help be that transition. So use them that way. You mentioned the conversation and getting everybody on the same page regarding

the expectations. And I've found that that's one adjustment that we've had to make is that since we are all home together, I have five kids at home, I'm going to be interrupted and it's going to happen with more frequency than it normally does. And I've had to just make a mental shift to not get bent out of shape when that does happen. And that if my kids pop in when I'm in the middle of a writing session and I'm in the flow and I'm cranking out the words and they interrupt that and they say, hey, dad, you want to go play basketball? It's worth it at that point. My flow is already interrupted. Just go play basketball. Go play basketball. Play lightning for 10 minutes. Yeah. Then come back and try to get back to where you were. And you are going to be less productive that way. You're not going to be

able to get the same amount of output, but that's okay because of where we find ourselves right now. No one is going to be able to be at a hundred percent capacity compared to where they were before all this stuff was, was happening. Well, and that, you know, that's worth sort of identifying even without the natural interruptions of it, all the other people in your home is that I am very thankfully not someone that that suffers from anything I would describe as chronic anxiety or depression or anything like that so what I've been experiencing over the last month has been a little bit new for me certainly I've had moments of of being anxious or moments of being depressed but I realized that I was having days and it even it's about one day a week where I find that I'm just distracted and productivity isn't where it should be. And I've found that I kind of have to give myself permission that that's OK right now.

And so and that's the best way to sort of get through it is is to just not try to fight it. OK, today's one of those days I can do some, some grunt work. I can, you know, or, or not, uh, just get stuff done, but it, it, you know, it stems for me from this simmering anxiety that's sort of there because you don't know when the next shoe is going to drop with any of this stuff. And, um, and that's new for me. was going to drop with any of this stuff. And, um, and that's new for me. So it's, it, and it's exhausting. That is really what it comes down to is, you know, sort of carrying that, even if, if it's on a low simmer, it's still, you're still carrying this level of anxiety and it's, it's exhausting. And it, for me anyway, it catches up with me every now and then it's like, okay,

I just gotta, I gotta let that be okay. be okay. And it's not only just for yourself. All three of us have families and you have this empathy for these other people you live with. And, you know, I talked about this on this show a few episodes ago, but, you know, I've got a high school senior and she's missing out on so much. And it just breaks my heart, but I don't want to make a big deal about it to her and make her sad. But it's just like, you know, we got the refund yesterday for grad night, you know, just like all this crazy stuff that, you know, everybody else gets in their life. And I understand there's people that are sick and out of work, and this is a small thing, but, but I see it and I'm living with it. And you're trying to like balance that in addition to hold

on to a focus. Yep. So give yourself a break and just keep swimming. Yeah. I have a, I have a senior too. Our son is, uh, is wrapping up high school and he will be going off. So he's been in the last month making his final decisions about where he's going to go. Sure. And he chose a school in a city that none of the four of us have ever visited. So this is really interesting. And we had plans to go visit. He's going to go to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. And we had plans to go visit this month, but obviously, you know, we didn't. So, this has been, in addition to, you know, graduation not being a normal thing and prom and all of those things being wiped off the schedule, you know, there's been this stress of figuring out where he's going to go to school.

And, yeah, it's just, but it, like you said, in the grand scheme, it could be perceived as trivial and is if you choose to perceive it that way. But it's a big deal when it's in your house. I want to go back and talk about the inverse. I asked you kind of what is your advice for people who find themselves suddenly working from home. But what if you are a business owner and you're used to being in a location where you can communicate, you can look people in the eye, and you can tell that your message is getting across and now you have to figure out things digitally. How do you make sure that your team stays engaged, that you know that they're doing okay and they're able to focus on and do the work that they need to do while also balancing the fact that we've already talked about no one's's going to be at a hundred percent capacity, maybe. So understanding that and accommodating for that. Yeah. All the things that, that, you know, are in vogue right now, that all the zoom video conferences, uh, you don't have to use zoom.

There's a zillion different tools you can use, but getting people together, communicate, communicate, you know, over communicate. This is something we learned over the last 20 years that the natural sort of interactions that happen at the water cooler obviously don't happen when everybody has their own water cooler. So you have to create that water cooler and those scheduled conferences, but also just having a tool. Slack is a great one, but it doesn't have to be Slack. There's HubSpot and there's zillions of others, but something where you have that virtual water cooler where people are communicating, not just about work, but having a channel where they can share the stupid thing that came up because that's what we do when we're humans in the same space together. It's not a hundred percent work,

a hundred percent of the time we're reminding each other that we're also humans. And so you have to allow for that. Again, you know, you got to manage it so that it doesn't all become cat videos and that's all anybody's doing all day. But you, you know, there's nothing wrong with some percentage of the communication being cat videos. It's fine. We're all humans. We get it. So sure. Do you, do you find anybody pushing back against the, I mean, zoom seems to be the de facto standard for everybody who's trying to replace face-to-face stuff with video conferencing. But have you run into anybody who resists the idea of Zoom or just the video conferences

in general? And then if they do, is there other ways that you maintain that communication? Or how would you recommend you deal with a situation like that? Yeah. I mean, certainly I think my son's high school, uh, banned zoom because people, the participants could record the thing and I record the conference and I told him as well, you know, you, you want me to get out screen flow and you can record whatever it is they've chosen to use and send them the video to show them that it's pointless. And he said no. But so there's been that. And then, you know, Zoom has not always gotten security right.

They have prioritized. I always say that there's no such thing as ultimate security or ultimate convenience. We all pick our spots on the continuum that lies between those two. And Zoom had often picked where they thought was a good spot leaning towards convenience, theirs and their users. And obviously they've hit that mark wrong a few times, at least in terms of the general consensus or the witch hunts, depending on how you look at it. So yeah, I've seen some folks and, you know, so you use Google Hangouts or you use Slack or you use, you know, you can use FaceTime if everybody's on iPhones. Skype will let you do it.

There's all kinds of tools. I will sort of take this in a different direction in terms of managing people. There's a lot of anxiety right now about things that none of us can control, right? How this virus evolves. Obviously, we can control at some level how it spreads by doing what we're doing and staying home and all of that stuff. But your employees are going to have financial anxiety. And while everyone knows that the place from which they get their paycheck, the health of that place matters. Most employees don't choose to think about that most of the time. In fact, they sort of that's part of why they want to be employees is they don't want to have to sweat that stuff. And it's up to you as the business owner, the boss or whatever it is to make sure that, you know, checks there's money in the accounts and checks can get paid. It would be very difficult right now to avoid hearing about all the, you know, needed stimulus packages and businesses having trouble and all of that stuff. So I just

encourage everybody that has employees or even, you know, regular contractors, people that rely on you for their recurring income, have a conversation with them, tell them how the business is doing, tell them, you know, it, it hit me. Thankfully we were at a point where we could, you know, survive for at least several months, um, with reduced cash inflow. And, and I felt pretty good about that. Like it was like, Oh, thank goodness. Like this hit at the right time. If this was a couple of years ago, that might not have been the same, You know, I might have it might had a different answer. And I felt really good about that for about 24 hours. And I'm like, wait a minute. My employees have no idea where we are with any of this. And so at the next staff meeting, I said, all right, we got to talk about this and told him I said, look, you know, we're good for a few months. We have no plans to make any layoffs. Can't guarantee anything beyond that. Cause there's no crystal balls in the world. You know, if you've got one, let me know. But you know, certainly for three months, we're, we're, we're looking okay here. We'll let you know if that changes. And every single person said,

oh, thank you so much. It, you know, even if you had come in and told us that we needed to take, you know, three quarter pay or half pay or whatever that was just knowing means a lot helps sort of reduce that big question mark and, and, you know, question marks lead to a lot of anxiety. So I would just say, if you do have employees have that conversation with them, if you haven't already, you don't need to obsess about it, but, you know, spend five minutes, tell everybody where things are and what they can expect and help them manage their expectations. You'd be amazed at how much relief and loyalty that will that will bring. Yeah. And I would expand on that to say, if you are an employee, then have that conversation with the people in charge. Let them know that you're worried about it. I mean, I had the conversation. My wife was worried the other day that, she's like, are we going to make this?

You know, she had no idea because I don't really talk to her much about, you know, how I'm doing with the practice and whatnot. So just think about all the people in your life. Yeah, family too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, communication, it seems to me,

is the solution to a lot of the problems, whether they be business or family related. A lot of the assumptions that we make, speaking personally, my wife and I, when we end up at odds with each other, it's because we haven't communicated and we're not in agreement or alignment pulling in the same direction. We don't intentionally try to work against each other. It just sort of happens as we do our own thing. So communicating about the current state of things, communicating about the expectations, communicating about where we want the family to be in the future. You know, you mentioned kind of designing the life that you want, telling the story that you want. Well, if you are in a

business or a family, then there are other people that are involved in that story. So including them in the conversation, I think that does a world of good. Can we go back that for a minute? Because I really like the idea of, you know, writing the last chapter, at least in your brain and working towards it, which is, I guess, kind of what you're talking about. Did I get it? Yep. Aaron, you're right. What did you do?

I mean, did you sit down and write something down or is it just something you're carrying around in your head? What what's a way somebody could get started on that if they're listening? Yeah, that's a good question. Again, I will give all the credit to Shannon Jean because he really taught me this and has has this part of it figured out to every year with his business and with his life. He writes an executive summary and he loves it. Like it's only for him, although sometimes pieces of it make sense to share with, say, your bank if you're trying to get a loan or something and showing them what you're doing. And the executive summary does two things. You just write a narrative of all the things you did last year. Give yourself credit for the things that you got done.

Acknowledge the mistakes that you learned from, right? It's always good to have some optimism in there, though. You don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole of all the things you screwed up. And then write the story of the next year. Here's where we're going to be at the end of this year. Here's the things that we will have gotten done. Here's all we're going to be at the end of this year. Here's the things that we will have gotten done. Here's, you know, all of that stuff. And just the act of doing that really makes a difference. It makes it so much easier because you've written it down. You've,

you've sat and thought about it. And again, like, you know, we were saying with meditation, it's a practice, right? By doing that, you get better at it and you wind up thinking that way all the time. You know, when it's like, oh, here you go. Like with my son, you know better at it and you wind up thinking that way all the time, you know, when it's like, oh, here you go. Like with my son, you know, we were at this crossroads where it was, he basically was choosing between a school that he had visited, but was going to cost a fortune far more than any school should, or a school that he had not visited that was going to cost the right amount.

And on paper, both of them are fantastic schools. And I said, OK, well, kiddo, look at the end story. Fast forward 10 years and you're either going to tell the story of I spent way too much on college and here's how I made it worth my while. Right. Or I flew across the country, sight unseen, dove in headfirst, and here's how I made that workout. Right. And, and that way, and if you start looking at everything this way, all the decisions start to get a little bit easier because you're doing a, for instance,

for yourself and you're painting that picture and you're like, wait, I can, I can see what the end of that looks like. It's not, you know, yes, it seems like a huge thing and it is a huge thing to choose in this case, a school without ever having been there. But you know, how long are you committing to this? At most four years, if it's truly a disaster, it's one semester, right? Then you figure something else out. It's fine. This is how life is going to go anyway, get used to it. And so writing that story at the end where you presume success, you'll start thinking about this with everything. And then those hard decisions start to get a little bit easier because you're starting to

have what a lot of people will call vision, right? But no one really knows. You're just making it up, but you're aiming somewhere. And then you get to answer all those questions. Okay, well, what do I have to do today? Ah, well, I know where I want to be tomorrow or in a year. So here's the things I can do today to make sure I stay on that path. I love that. And I completely agree that you can apply that in any different scenario. So the executive summary, maybe that term scares some people away because they don't own a business. But my wife and I basically did the same thing with our family. And I didn't know any other terms. So at the time when we sat down and we crafted our Schmitz family core values, standard operating procedures, but we started with just telling the story.

And the story was that when our kids got to be older, because our oldest is 12 right now, when they are in high school, we want to have the type of relationship where they feel comfortable talking to us about anything. So assuming that we were successful in that, what were the things we needed to do in order to make that happen? And that's where we've got the core values. We've got them framed and hanging on our living room wall, you know, and all these different things that try to just point us in the right direction. So we make our daily decisions so that we end up at that place. So that when they are in high school and they're dealing with some more serious issues that they don't feel that they can't talk to mom and dad

because they don't understand that we've cultivated that. And I think that that's a great approach. And it can be scary at first because you don't know what the end of the story maybe should be. But if you just start thinking about it, you'll start to get some details, my experience anyways. And then like you said, you can always change it. But the fact that you don't know what it is, that produces more anxiety than taking even five, 10 minutes just to let your brain noodle on it and start with something. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. Start monitoring your website performance and availability today and get 30% off when you use

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Real User Monitoring is an event-based solution, so it's built for scalability, meaning you can monitor millions of page views without compromising the fidelity of your historical data or breaking the bank in the process. Get live visitor insights today with Real User Monitoring from Pingdom. Go to pingdom.com slash relayfm, R-E-L-A-Y-F-M, right now for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. And when you go to sign up, use the code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, at checkout to get an awesome 30% off your first invoice. Thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of FOCUSED and all of RelayFM. Yeah, so I do the same thing on my birthday every year. Basically, I don't call it an executive summary, but it's funny how all of us gravitate towards documenting this plan because I think there's something to be gained from doing more than just thinking about it. That's the key, is taking some action and having some pinpoint in time

where you spent the moment to intentionally log it, cogitate about it, something that makes it a thing. Yeah, makes sense. So Dave, you do a great job of maintaining focus, at least to the outside world. I'm always impressed with everything you hold on to. But you also do have a lot of employees and a busy family life. How do you share that with the people that work with you without being like the boss that is forcing this stuff down people's throats?

When you say how do you share that? What are you specifically? The idea of these values are staying focused with your work. I mean, you've got one of the things that I've always, you know, been impressed with you is you manage companies that are diverse across the country. You know, you've got employees all over the place. You know, how do you hold on to that focus with a company vision for the people that are working with you when you're not in the same room with them every day yeah you i i you gotta hire the

right people is the key one of the big like that's the foundation of that and they need to be people that are doers that get things done on their own and are interested in some level of autonomy. If somebody wants me to, you know, baby them, I mean, certainly there are times when we all need training and there's one thing that, you know, we can learn from another. And obviously that goes both directions. I learned tons of things from my employees. Hire people that are smarter than you. That's the other thing. But they need to be self-starters. If they're not, it's very, very difficult to keep them moving along. If you feel like, oh, I got to check in with this person three times a day to make sure they're doing their job, that can work very well in an office environment. I'm not sure that I would want that, but it can work. In a detached way, it doesn't work. You need to be

able to trust. I need to be able to trust that these people are going to get their job done. And the conversation I have with my employees, especially when they first come on board is, look, I am a terrible micromanager. I'm a massive control freak, and I want to make sure everything is done the right way. But I don't like being a micromanager. I just know that I am. So you and I are going to have a deal because you don't want me to be a micromanager, and I don't want to be a micromanager. So get the things done that you're supposed to do, and then we won't have to have any conversations about me telling you how to do the nuances of the

job that you need to do. Let's keep talking. Tell me what you're doing. And we can both avoid this scenario that neither one of us wants, which is me becoming micromanager with you. And most people take that very well. You know, usually it ends with some laughter or whatever, but like, I'm serious about it. I don't want to have to micromanage people, but if I don't know what you're doing or if I feel like especially nothing's getting done, I will get all up in your grill and neither one of us is going to like it, but stuff will get done. It's just not going to be the fun way. So that conversation is usually very helpful, but you got to know that you have the right people before that even happens.

that you have the right people before that even happens. So it's just getting to know people and making sure you're hiring the ones that really can deliver and want to deliver. I think that's a big key. How do you make sure that people are delivering on the work that needs to be done? Are you, I know you mentioned you're not a big fan of the GTD and the task management systems. So I'm guessing you probably don't have some complicated scrum board set up that the company is working off of. It depends. We have, I mean, you know, everyone does slightly different things. So we have different ways of tracking that. But there are output metrics,

certainly, you know, but like take our salespeople, for example, right. It's very easy to look at how many sales did you book last month or, you know, what was your total volume of sales or what should, you know, that, that kind of thing. That's great. But that's the by-product of a really good system. I'm not a, I'm not a fan of goals. In fact, I like to say goals are for losers. Systems are the key because if you can build a system where you know, look, if I make 25 phone calls a day or 100 phone calls a week or whatever the number is, some percentage of those are going to turn into interests and some percentage of those interests are going to turn into contracts, right? So you just start, you build the system, and then the byproduct of, you know, sales in that sense just happens.

That's the, you know, that's the end. But just we're always refining the systems here. So while I say I don't like to be a micromanager, we do talk a lot about everyone's workflow. And we're small enough that each person can kind of have their own approach to things. Certainly, there's some things that we found that work, and so we have everybody do things that way. But people have a lot of autonomy here to do things and how you do that and how you track it. And so it's, again, it's, it interview I was watching, but someone made the point that you interview the team that wins the Super Bowl or wins the championship. And there's kind of this bias because they always say, yeah, we set the goal at the beginning of the year and

we worked really hard and we accomplished it, but the other 30 teams in the league had the same goal. So the goal isn't the thing that pushed them over the top. It was maybe something that they had in common with the other teams that didn't win the championship, but that wasn't the thing that made them excellent. So what is that thing? And I agree that a lot of times it's the systems. I'm curious, how do you... And sorry, Mike, to interrupt, but that was the James Clear book on habits. To make your point, he said the difference wasn't the goal. It was that the team that had the better habits is the team that won. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes sense because he also interviewed, I remember,

the British cycler who they were going to get 1% better every day, and they ended up winning everything because they took that approach. So how do you do that in your day to day? Like when you're working with people on their workflows, what sort of things are you looking for to make those 1% improvements and to refine the systems. Well, that's it. It's refining it and looking at, you know, what did you do? Let's take a look, you know, let's break down what last week looked like. What did you do? Like, let's go through it, you know, and we don't do this every week, but we'll do it maybe once a quarter

where we just get really granular. And, you know, what did you do? And was last week a success or a failure, right? And the timeframe and all of that is sort of dependent on whatever the job is. But was last week a success? Okay, let's break down what you did. Let's abstract that from trying to ask

why last week it was a success or a failure. Although that is the big question we're trying to get out of it. But let's just look at what you did. And okay, these are all the things that you did. All right. Well, now let's look at a week where you either had more success or less success and compare what did you do differently? What were the different factors? And okay, so these things that you're doing in this column, it turns out they're irrelevant. We've learned something. Cool. Now we know. Don't do those anymore. We don't have to waste our time with that. But these things that

you're doing here, these are in common on all the weeks that you had success. So let's spend more time doing that. Let's expand that. Let's dig in on that and let's refine., that sort of thing really works. I had somebody that was really, they were a good employee, but was really only goal focused. And so finally I sat him down and I said, okay, cool. Do you want to double your sales next year? And he said, yeah. I said, great. And then you want to stop right there, right? That's the end of that. You then you want to stop right there, right? That that's the end

of that. You don't want to, you don't want to do it ever again. You just, whatever your sales are at the end of the year, then that's it. You're done. He's like, no, I want to double them again. Mike, well then great. Stop worrying about the goal. Don't worry about doubling your sales. Let's worry about refining the process so that you never stop improving and you never stop building on what you've done. And it worked. As soon as we stopped focusing, we look at the numbers. We're aware of the numbers, obviously. But we stopped making that the main point of focus.

And we made the system the main point of focus. And without seeming like we did any more work, we doubled our sales. It was easy. And it was easy. Like, because there was no expectation of, oh, my gosh, you know, there's this pressure of this goal and this thing. No. It's just like, let's just do the system. We'll trust the system.

And you see successful sports teams do this for sure. You know, you know, I I gave a talk last year at Google about the exact this exact thing. It was goals versus systems. And and I showed, you know, a a soccer goal with the goalie standing in the goal and the the ball's already in the net. Right. And so, you know, in that, that moment, which team is more driven to do better in the next moment. And it's the team that just let the goal in the team that's celebrating. They've stopped now in reality, if they're a good team, they haven't stopped. But in that moment, you know, you're, you're looking at the past now, how great we were in the past. Well, that other team is looking at how much better they can be in the future. And that's where you always want to be. You want to be hungry.

You want to be pushing forward because that's the thing that matters. And then the goals are just a byproduct of that. Yeah, the goals aren't the thing you really want to be focusing on. That's the lag measure. The lead measure is the thing that you can make a system around and do over and over and over again. The score is going to take care of itself. Yeah. And when we hit some big metric or some number that's divided by 10, because we humans like those, I always delay the celebration for that by about two weeks.

Because you'll remember you hit that number. Nobody's going to forget. But if you give yourself that two week gap, you're now already working on the next thing. And so you're not losing that momentum by saying, Hey, let's stop and pat ourselves on the back. No, it's okay to pat yourself on the back, but you don't want to stop and pat yourself on the back, keep moving and then celebrate the fact that you hit the goal and haven't stopped. And, and that's a really good thing. And this is not to be confused with, you know, vacations and things like that. We all like there's huge benefit in, in detaching from work and taking a vacation and all the stuff that we talked about before, but in terms of, you know, the entire company stopping, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's as, as a, a very successful salesperson said to me once, he's like, you don't go and take a lunch on the day when you close no sales in the morning and you need to reset so you can come back for a successful afternoon.

It's like, yeah, exactly. I like that. But how do you square that with the idea of, you know, telling your final chapter or, you know, telling your executive summary between that? You know, what's the difference between that and a goal in your mind? Well, I mean, we're arguing semantics here, but it's never the end, right? The trick is making sure that you're not writing your executive summary saying, and therefore we made it. You know, it's here's the barometer that we have hit to know that the system is working and we're focused on these things. Because you do need to have some kind of focus. So, yeah, I mean, this, you know, goals are for losers is a very tight definition of goal.

But it's, it's the idea of getting something and stopping that's really dangerous. I think. I think I have a personal example of this because a couple of years ago, I set a goal to run a half marathon and I did it. I over-trained the week before my patella tendon slipped off my kneecap. So day of the race came and I didn't care. I was going to finish it anyways. I finished it. I mean, that didn't do like long-term damage to my knee or anything, but I was, I was in pain. And I remember you cross crossing the finish line, getting the medal and then thinking to myself, now what? And I had to deal with 12 weeks of physical therapy before I could run again. And I struggled with that because I had that goal and

my only focus was crossing that finish line. And then immediately after you cross the finish line, there's like this big letdown and it's like, well, do i do yeah yeah yeah and i i think that if there's one theme you know if you could boil this entire podcast down to one thing the idea that you never make it that would be a pretty good candidate because i think if once you start thinking that way you're gonna crash yeah i've made it i'm good you've never made it you've never made it. I'm good. You've never made it. You've never made it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Well, Dave, I am so happy you came on the show today.

As always, you had a lot of insight. Folks that want to hear more from Dave, especially from the small business angle, you have an excellent podcast, the Small Business Podcast. We're going to put a link for it in the show notes where you talk about stuff like this and also just the mechanics of running a small business. If you're a nerd, the Mac geek gab, you know, we made a big deal about Mac pairs just hitting episode 500. I think Mac geek gab is in the eight hundreds now or something.

Yeah. We just did eight 11 this week. We'll have 15 years in June. We're whippersnappers on Mac power. So, so go over and check out MacGeekGab. You and John are two of my favorite podcasters. MacObserver is the website that you help run that covers the Mac and Apple-related news.

Where else can people find you, Dave? On Twitter, you're DaveHamilton on Twitter, right? It's at DaveHamilton on Twitter. Yep. MacGeekGab.com, like you said, for, for that podcast, business show.co for the small business show. And in fact, Shannon and I just released you'll. So speaking of being a whippersnapper, uh, we are whippersnappers to you because we just released our first book about mistakes. We mistakes are some of our favorite things to learn from. And,

uh, and so we just released a book about mistakes and you can find it on Amazon, but if you go to businessshow.co slash mistakes, that'll get you there. Excellent. Well, it will now. It should be businessshow.co slash guides because we're doing a series of guides,

but I'll make sure slash mistakes points to that book too. Excellent. Glad I could help you out with that. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it should be there. So now it will be. All right.

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