Focused - 140: Your Brain is Not a Computer with Cory Hixson

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Engineering professor Cory Hixson joins the Focused crew this week about staying on target, not letting your kids eat take your brain, and why you are not a computer.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my intrepid co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, thank you for that wonderful introduction. How are you, David? Well, you deserve every word of it, brother. Oh, thanks. Five kids, and he actually gets his work done. Mike wins. Let's just put it that way. But not to be showing up, we have a guest today. Welcome to the show, Corey Hickson. Thank you both for having me. way but not to be showing up we have a guest today welcome to show cory hickson thank you both for having me it's fun to be here the intrepid cory hickson the intrepid cory has four kids so i feel like both of you have um have really managed this i mean i'm i'm barely holding it together with two and they're growing up on well i think i think mike's gonna

win because i think we're done i mean i think know, just we're old enough at this point. Nope, we're good. We're done. Not a race. I remember I came home distinctly from work one day and one of the kids had taken crayons and drawn on the wall. And my wife says to me, David, I think it's time to talk about a vasectomy. Okay. Was that too much information? I don't know it's foreshadowing one of our future topics for

this episode so it's relevant there we go i i can't help myself guys i'm sorry uh cory hickson um welcome to the show we're going to talk in deep focus today with cory because he is struggling with obsidian and craft and mike and i honestly resist. You dangle that in front of us, we're going to cover it. So we're going to do that in Deep Focus today, but Corey's actually here to talk about Focus. He's an engineering professor at Colorado Christian. He does both research and teaching, majority of research. It's actually, it's the other way around, majority teaching. It switched recently, right? Yeah, it switched recently right yeah it switched recently so i used to be majority research now i'm majority teaching so you've got to figure out how to stay focused

with a completely different set of tools now yes but he's also got experience with project management people management um when we were doing the prep call with cory he made a statement that we wrote down because i loved it so much. My time is not my own. Yep. I mean, it's gone. It's gone forever. And I just try to grab some of it every once in a while. Doesn't everybody feel that way though? I mean, that the fleeting nature of time, I mean, whenever this comes up and I'm talking to my kids or somebody that doesn't listen to a podcast, I always talk about Bill Gates. He has all that money, but he only gets 24 hours a day just like you and me. And it really is, I think, one of the reasons we make this show is how do you get a feeling for that?

The crazy thing for me is I look at the end of the week, right? So in the rare occurrence when I do a weekly review, I look back at the week and I go, oh, I had so much time here and here. I wasted this time and I wasted this time. And then I get to the week and I'm like, I don't have enough time. I don't have time. So that's why I'm here. That's why I like your show. Well, I mean, none of us are getting out of this alive, and we don't need to dwell on that, but we do need to consider it in our daily decisions. And, Corey, you also have an excellent podcast called Talking to the Internet. I say it's excellent because you have excellent choice in guests, both Mike Schmitz and myself. But just a really nice fellow who's trying to figure this stuff out, and I thought it would be fun to have you on the show and talk through some of these issues. Well, uh, again, I'm, I'm excited to be here. Uh,

thanks so much for, for having me and, uh, hopefully some of my experiences can help out the audience. So thanks. So we have often and hear from, uh, listeners who are going through like the process of becoming professors, you know, the, you know, the educational requirements, often dissertations, extra work. And there are a lot of great focus workflows for that. But what happens when you get to that end of the road, you know, you've got the good housekeeping seal of approval and you need to start, you know, imparting that knowledge and wisdom to your students. And I think that's something that I want to talk about on the show. One of the things that I know is important to you is the importance of writing things down. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yeah. So there's so much that happens in the course of a day, right? So, you know, you start the day and, um, if I'm able to get up early enough, I have a window of an hour, um, maybe two at the most where I can actually get really solid focused work done. And then after that, you know, kids helping out with the kids in the morning and then taking off for work. And then when I hit the office, I mean, things just run right. And, And a lot of the stuff, it's almost like catch and react as opposed to drive the show. So a student needs to talk about this thing or the boss comes in and wants to talk about this project that we're working on or the new thing that we're doing. And all of that's good. It's just a matter of the fact that it's so easy to lose the details when I don't write the individual things

down or when the idea pops into my brain and I don't have a way to capture it and then process that well. It's really, really easy to lose those. And I find myself driving home in the afternoon and I go, I thought about seven things today and I can only remember two of them and the other five were good. And I don't. And so it's like that key is you know writing that down now more specifically in the work that i've done from a phd standpoint or from a research standpoint we've actually done some studies on the fact that actually writing things down on like an entrepreneurial canvas i don't know if you all ever heard of the startup canvas have you guys ever heard of that no but i'm I'm interested. What is it? Okay. So there's a couple of different forms of it. A colleague of mine, we actually developed

a different one, but the startup canvas got really, really popular because what it did was it said, instead of writing a business plan, let's look at this graphical canvas and let's try to fill in the key aspects of this graphical canvas. And it allowed you to present the information in a way or communicate the information in a way that made a lot more sense for the people who were really caring about it, the venture capitalists, right? They could see it more easily. They could see the connections. They could see how things fit together. And then for the company that was doing it, they actually could process through things and say, wait, we thought that was a connection. That's not a connection at all. So the visual nature of that took your business plan, which could get really artificial,

if that makes sense, and made it... It was like the previous step or the before step to writing that business plan. And it really helped you through this process that was coined customer discovery. Who are my customers? Why are they my customers? Et cetera, et cetera. And what we did was we studied that. We said, okay, does the canvas actually matter? Does the canvas, you know, does writing the thing down matter? And what we found is that is, we think that is the key. The key point of that is writing it down removes it from me personally. And now it's a thing we can discuss. That's a bad idea. You're still a good person.

That's just not a good idea. Or that's a great idea, and we didn't see that idea until we wrote it all down and we tried to make those connections and tie those dots. Well, there's so much to unpack there. The first is I really like the idea of disembodying startup speak from the actual idea. Like the startup canvas, I just did a quick Google search. There's a bunch of great images here. I'd recommend you guys do that if you're interested. But I don't see the word.

I don't see any of the trigger words in here, like disrupt and, you know, innovate. You know, all these people make these startup proposals that are just a bunch of word solid nonsense that doesn't actually tell you what they're going to do and what their challenges are. This is a much simpler idea. Yeah, and it really focuses on that. What are we doing? Who are we doing? Who are we doing it for? And how do we provide value in doing that? So it's

really, it was a revolutionary way. And that's been five or six years, maybe more than that ago. And you're seeing it, you know, just all over the place, especially in the Valley and especially in New York and places like that. So, you know, it's almost a version of a mind map or um like the term canvas always gets my interest because i love the idea of a sheet of paper whether it be digital or or actual paper where you can explore ideas with a pencil and and kind of just like see where things go do you incorporate that into your other work now or is that you know do you, when you say write it down, what does that mean? It depends on the context, right? So there are certain contexts where writing it down means taking a note from a book or taking a note from a journal article or taking

a note from a, you know, more academic source and then trying to figure out what that note means and how that note connects with other things. And that might look like doing it via just text or highlights that I export out of Kindle or whatever it is, Apple Books or whatever. But, you know, and that's a way to do the writing it down. The other way is I will often sit down and just say like, okay, the center of the mind map or the center of the thing is my research question. What am I trying to answer? And I try to connect that to the sources that I'm finding and figuring out ways that they connect into the sources that I'm finding on a more like I'm moved

less into research and I'm more in the teaching focus now. But I mean, I, I show the students, the curriculum via a flow chart, right? So here are the way the courses line up here, semester one, here's semester two, here's semester? So here are the way the courses line up. Here's semester one, here's semester two, here's semester three. Here are your prereqs with arrows and the different arrows mean different things. Like my brain works more visual and then I take that visual and I turn it into words if that's what people want. Mike, where do you lie on that spectrum? Are you a visual thinker or do you like to have the words? you lie on that spectrum are you a visual thinker or do you like to have the words yes okay i think it depends on the context because all of the notes i take for like if i

tend to talk i'll do like the sermon sketch notes so i have the visuals there and that's kind of like a mind map except i'm drawing all of the symbols and things from scratch but there are other times like book notes I'll take that in a mind map and eventually it ends up in an outline and it's just the text that I'm putting into obsidian and I'm connecting that and making quotes and things like that that I can reference in the the future so I don't know I think it depends on the the context for. I am kind of curious about the capturing thing that you mentioned, Corey, where you have seven different thoughts, but you can only remember two of them. You know the other five were good. Do you ever get to the point when you are capturing all of these things that you have too many things written down,

too many ideas to take action on. If you're going to dive into research, eventually you got to select the ones that are important. And that is where this whole process comes in with the canvas, right? Yeah, yes. And it happens in a couple of different ways, right? So if I'm teaching students or if I'm supporting students as they're developing a new design

for a product, so I teach engineering, right? So if we're developing a new design for a project or we're trying to innovate on something, right? So we've got a coffee maker, let's make the coffee maker better, something like that. There are different ways that we will capture. So the first phase of capture often looks like anything, anything and everything, right? So what I'll actually do with my students is I'll imagine a funnel, but you take two funnels and you stack them on top of each other. So the funnel

gets wider and then the funnel gets smaller and then the funnel gets wider and then the funnel gets smaller. That's what you want to do. And whether it's design or whether it's research or whatever it is, you want to intentionally let that funnel get wide. You're pulling in as much as you can. You're pulling in as much as you can. And then you stop and you go into a different room with all of that stuff you pulled together. And now you say, let's get that funnel narrow again. And then you ask yourself the question, should we make the funnel wide again? Oh yeah, because we forgot to even look at this aspect of the design. Okay. So we let that funnel go wide again and then it comes back in. And what will happen is as you move wide, narrow, wide, narrow, it gets smaller every time. And eventually you'll get to that point

where you're at the narrow spot and that's the thing you're going to work on and that's the thing you're going to act on. So if I'm doing a design course or if I'm trying to help a company or a startup figure out what they actually want to do, I'm trying to get them to that point where we're at what that smallest funnel is that still provides the most value that you can. And we've researched a ton of stuff around there. Now, that's the teaching side of it or that's the working with people side of it or with company side of it. If I would move to my personal, do i ever write down too much stuff all the time right all the time and and where the rubber meets the road isn't the writing the stuff down where the rubber meets the road is taking the time to go through that filter it refine it and say what's

important out of this because it's not all important and if you try to think it's all important you're overwhelmed so you try to figure out what's the important stuff. And that's where you kind of have to let yourself... I don't know how to explain it. But it's like, you have to let yourself sit in that area where it's really uncomfortable, and it's not very fun, and you feel like it's chaos. But you know that at the other end, you're going to come out with connections, and you're going to come out with things that actually make sense. And it's hard to work through that. And that's, that's one of the benefits of a PhD process, right? Is you work through that over and over and over again to where it's like almost second nature to you. Yeah. I feel like the legal

education is the same thing. It's just teaching you a way to think more than anything else. It's teaching, it's not teaching you knowledge. it's teaching you a process. Yes. But just going through the day, I'm sure there's people listening that struggle with this as well. When you get into the reaction mode at work and you're dealing with lots of students and admin and things like that, just getting through the day, I like the idea of saying, every time I make a commitment or have a follow-up item, write it down. Just mechanically, how are you doing that? Yeah, so this has been an ongoing journey for me.

My challenge is I need to do it on the thing that's available. I need to do it on the thing that's right with me all the time. And the problem I have is that isn't one thing. I don't ever always have my phone with me or I don't ever always have a journal with me or something like that. So like the little field note journals. I don't ever have all of that stuff with me at one time. So my best mechanism here is that I have two areas.

I have one on my phone and that looks like an obsidian note, right? Called scratch. That's my scratch pad. That's just where I drop things. And I'm going to refine those. I'm going to go through those at the end of the day or every couple of days I'm going to go through those. But then I'll also have either a note card or some other way that I write things down because if I'm in the middle of it and you know, I've got six students that want to talk to me after class, I can't get out my phone and jot all that stuff down. So I just write those down on the note card and then I transfer those into the mechanism. But that review process is the key piece of it for me.

So what do you do, though, for the personal side in terms of the review? I mean, the Startup Canvas seems like the tool that you would use in a very specific context, but it doesn't seem like it would lend itself to the rest of your life very well. No, it lends itself to big projects. So it's like if I want to start a big project, it works well there. Or if I really need to think about why am I doing this thing, what am I doing, and what areas could it be improved? That's where the Canvas concept in general, because the startup Canvas is very focused on starting a business.

There are many other Canvases to help you think through things. I lead a workshop that does one for academics and does your value connect to other things, right? So this Canvas idea is very, very broad. Now, to get to your question, my personal stuff looks like at the end of the day, two days, three days, maybe week, if I've had a really crazy week, I've got six different things that have notes on them. And I have to come together and I say, okay, these all need organized.

The things that don't make sense anymore can just be crossed off and let go. And then the things that need to be prioritized need to be prioritized. So what that looks like for me is it comes together. Usually I sit down at my desk or I sit down at the couch or something like that with a cup of coffee and I'm going through these things and I'm saying, okay, does this matter anymore? Yes. Does this matter anymore?

No. Does this matter anymore? Yes. One of the interesting things is my PhD advisor once told me, she's like, you know, a lot of problems will solve themselves. She's like, so if you don't act on something right away, there's a chance it's going to solve itself. She's like, that would sometimes bite you. So you got to be real careful with what you let solve itself. She goes, but a lot of stuff will solve itself. And that's really true. Like you don't have to solve every problem because six students come up to me and they're

saying they're having this problem. And then two days go by and they tried seven other things and it worked so now they don't have that problem anymore so it's okay to let certain things rest for a period of time within reason anyhow so once where does it go once i refine it it goes into two different places if it's a note it goes into the note system uh du jour? It depends on which one I'm using, which we can get to that later. If it's a task, it goes into OmniFocus, but that needs to change because OmniFocus isn't working for me. So I got to figure out what to do there. Sure. Real quickly on the problems resolving themselves, I was going back over my book notes from Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday just the other day. And I came across the section where he talks about Napoleon Bonaparte and how he loved not opening his mail for three weeks because he took so much joy in discovering all of the urgent matters that had resolved themselves before he looked at

it. And you all know CGP Grey, right? He has the backup mantra that is two is one, one is none. Well, I kind of feel that way a little bit about problems that arise, certain problems. Now, there are certain problems that come to my doorstep and it's like, I work on that right away. That takes my time. David, you've talked about this before. Certain clients call you and we solve that problem right now. Like there's no, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. But then there's other problems where it's like, okay, if I haven't been talked about it twice, if we haven't talked about it twice, do we really need to, do we really need to handle that? And it's really just a way to filter out

what's really important and what's not. It's not me not caring about the thing. It's really just a matter of a lot of things that are important aren't really important, but at the time they feel like an emergency to somebody else. Yeah, the confusion between urgent and important is one I think we all need to constantly be on guard from. How do you handle balancing your priorities versus other people's priorities when your job is literally to help other people? Yeah, so scheduling is a big part of that, right?

So I have to make sure that I schedule time for my priorities, right? So this ties into what you all talk about, hyper-scheduling, know, block scheduling type things. I need to make sure that I put my time on that schedule for me to focus on the things I want to focus on. And then I'm okay with kind of letting the rest of the time be time that I know a student's going to pop in or, you know, the Dean's going to pop in and we're going to want to talk about, you know, strategy on something like that's okay with me. So I kind of have to let my brain be

okay with that because if I try to stick too rigid, if I try to be too rigid to it, especially with the family, when you pull the family into things, right. If I try to be too rigid to it, I get really frustrated. I get really upset because it's like, no, I had a plan and the plan was awesome. And now I don't get to do the plan and I get frustrated by that. So I prioritize and focus on the areas where I want to. And then I say the rest of it, it's just going to be, it's going to go the way it's going to go. And I'm okay with that. And I have to be okay with that. Yeah. Kids are not a productivity booster. Those little monsters will mess with your perfectly laid out plans.

productivity booster. Those little monsters will mess with your perfectly laid out plans. This episode of Focused is brought to you by The Intrazone. Finding a new podcast to listen to can be a lot of fun and it can be really interesting as you branch out and you get some different voices and some different perspectives. In fact, some of my favorite podcasts are ones that when I first heard about them, I wasn't sure that I was really going to like them, but I'm really glad that I gave them a shot. So if you're looking to broaden your podcast horizons and you're looking for a new show to listen to, then check out the intro zone, which is a bi-weekly podcast with conversations and interviews hosted by the SharePoint team on how SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Viva, and more can work for you. You'll hear from guests and experts behind the scenes and out in the field. So you can see how SharePoint and Microsoft 365 can fit into your everyday work life.

And you can learn more about the flexibility when working with content, workflow, search, and more. Each show covers a bunch of segments like news and announcements, a focused topic of the week, guest perspectives from product experts inside and outside Microsoft, and upcoming events, conferences, and workshops. And the topics for each show are really interesting. Previous episodes include content and collaboration, employee experiences, knowledge management and search, and much more. I listened to an episode called Modern HR, which was about the challenges of creating culture when you're not coming into a physical office. A lot has changed about the way that we work in the last couple of years, and I really enjoyed this episode on the challenges of

HR making people feel seen and feel valued, and the ways that Microsoft is creatively doing that using virtual onboarding and the importance of systems to make sure that things are done in the proper way. I also learned a lot about Microsoft Viva, an employee experience platform that I didn't really know anything about. And I love the way that it brings together communication, knowledge, learning, resources, and how it can be used to help employees become more knowledgeable about systems and processes, help them feel connected, and how it can be used to build team culture even when you're not in the same physical location. It was really cool to hear how Microsoft does this with their

over 160,000 full-time employees all around the world. And I learned about the importance of data and insights from Microsoft HR employees, including Kathleen Hogan, the chief HR officer. Go check it out now. Just search for The Intrazone wherever you get your podcasts. That's I-N-T-R-A-Z-O-N-E, or just click the link in the show notes. Go check it out now. Our thanks to the IntraZone by Microsoft SharePoint for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, Corey, early when we started talking about this, you talked about how in the morning

you get your Cal Newport-style deep work done. You got a couple hours before you go into the maelstrom of the university. Is that the time that you, is that the only time you get to put into deep work every day? No, that's the consistent time, right? So my body, the way it works in, you know, my dad was the kind of person that was up at four, four 30 every morning, um, from the military, right? He had, he had done that since he was in the military. And for some reason that got ingrained into me that if I get up, even if it's, I mean, super early three, four, you know,

four 30 in the morning, I can power until, until the boys wake up. Um, and I can do that pretty much every morning in the other parts of the day, it's really hit or miss. So context switching will help me a lot. So if I'm having a really crazy day at the office, going to a coffee shop will really help me focus. If I'm having a really crazy day at the office, just going home and working from my home office sometimes will help. The boys present a pretty big challenge there depending on how easily i can slip downstairs but it's like the context switch really helps me the other thing that that'll help me is um if it's a if it's a tight deadline you know i can figure out a way to to really really focus

in on that but i don't like to rely on that because that's not you know that that's not the best way to do things relying on the tight deadline it's just i can find myself i can figure out a way to focus if that's the case i love the idea of context switching i used to do that all the time i do it a little bit now but it's definitely less than before everything got shut down i remember though there was a season where I just had a bunch of different places that I rotated between coffee shops, co-working spaces, local libraries. And I would go somewhere and work for usually about an hour and a half to two hours on a thing. And then when I got stuck, I would just get up and go somewhere else and do another work session somewhere else. do another work session somewhere else. So I totally understand the value of the context switch because I found that if I were to stay there and try to go on to the next task or continue working on the current one, I couldn't do it. It just was garbage in terms of my output. But the

minute that I got in the car, drove 10 minutes, five minutes, whatever, got somewhere else and sat down to do it again, I was able to re-engage with it right away. No idea why that works so well, but it definitely worked. And it does for me too. I mean, my research world, I can write a paper significantly faster sitting at a coffee shop than I can if I'm in my office. I think it really gets to the idea of the fact that the brain is not a computer. And people say, well, it's just a computer. You sit down, you turn your brain on, it spits out information or words or whatever you're thinking about.

And it doesn't work that way. It works different in different contexts. Like my Mac is going to work exactly the same whether I turn it on in a coffee shop at my home or in Batuu at Disneyland. It doesn't matter. But my brain is not at my Mac. It works differently depending on where it's located. And we all got to get away from this idea of the brain as a computer.

That also, I think, ties into how a lot of people just view work in general, because if your brain is not a computer, you can't just exponentially multiply the time that you spend on things. And I think the fact that there's this number, 40 hours is like full-time work, especially with knowledge work. And I would guess that research is very much like this too, Corey. I'd love to hear your perspective on this. You're not going to ever do 40 hours of that type of work.

You're going to get in the zone for short bursts and you might have a really great week where you're doing 10, 15, 20 hours at the most of that type of work, even if you're putting in the full-time hours to do it. Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I try to teach my students to get into the mindset of projects, right? So my job, nobody tells me, one of the benefits of working at a university, one of the benefits of being a faculty member is for the most part, nobody tells me where or when I have to be other than teaching my classes. So if I teach my classes and I show up and I do that, the rest of my week is whatever I want my week to be. So if I am home by two o'clock every day and hanging out with the family,

but then I work from four to seven every morning, that's fine. Nobody, nobody cares. So it's very much what we'll call project-based work. If I'm getting the projects done or if I'm getting the activities done that I need to get done, we're good. Nobody has any issues with that. And I try to help my students. My students come in and they come in with this. I show up at school at 7.30. I leave school at 3.30 and they've controlled every ounce of my day. Even the time I get to have fun with my friends at like lunch in different places, it's still controlled because I have to stay in this room and I have to stay at these tables and I'm not allowed to run around or whatever it is.

So it's like, I try to get my students to break out and just say, are you getting the work done? Like, that's what you have to ask yourself. Are you getting the work done? If it takes you six hours to get the work done, great. It took you six hours to get the work done. If it takes Mike four hours to get the work done, great. It doesn't matter. Like we got to get the work done, great. It took you six hours to get the work done. If it takes Mike four hours to get the work done, great. It doesn't matter. We got to get the work done. That's the key. I'll very much have periods where I'm very focused and it goes well and I get a lot done and then other ones where I'm just noodling on different things and I have to be okay with that. and on different things. And I have to be okay with that. I feel like there's a lot of people who would confess that, yes, the work getting done is the important thing. But in the back of their mind, they don't go all in with that. And there's a little bit of judgment if you're not putting

forth the six hours. If you can get it done in two hours, they maybe feel you didn't give it an honest effort. So I'm kind of curious what your perspective is since you work with the startup canvas and that world. Is there like this big push towards this results-only work environment or is there resistance to it, but people are doing lip service to it? And how do you advise people to navigate that? Yeah. So the best way you can

navigate that, and if I was mentoring a student in this area, you just got to read your context. So you're going to go into a certain context, and they want you to be there eight to five. Now, they're not that worried about whether you're working all of eight to five, but they want you to be there eight to five. Now, they're not that worried about whether you're working all of eight to five, but they want you to be physically present eight to five. Okay, great. I got to be there eight to five. Then you go into other places and they're like, hey, get this done this week. And they don't really care where you are, why you're there, or how long you're there, or anything like that. So my big thing is you have to be able to read the environment. You have to be able to read the environment. You have to be able to read the people that are around you. And if you can't read it, ask the questions, right?

So the other thing too is you got to the point of where somebody's like, oh, well, they didn't put in the six hours like I did. So therefore, they didn't do as much work. It sounds like I'm being nonchalant with it, but I'm not. You can't worry about that. If the job is getting quality work done, which I think in the most part, when people look back on the work that you do, they're not going to look at whether or not it took you 80 hours to do that project or whether it took you 20 hours to do that project. They're going to say, was the project good? Did I get value out of the project? And that's the key. Now, and you can't worry about whether or not somebody gets upset with you.

And I see students do this all the time. Oh, I'm working every night and doing all this stuff and doing all that. And so-and-so only has to work, you know, half the time. And it's like, okay, there's going to be a class where they have to work more than you. Just deal with it. Like, that's okay. Like, that's the way things are. Yeah, I mean, it's just like the whole thing is so broken i mean the this 40-hour work week what is that like an industrial

era invention when people worked on you know assembly lines connected to steam engines and now we're judging ourselves on it i it's madness you know one of my very first jobs i was told by the partner it's like see that other partner? You need to be here every day before he arrives, and you need to be here every day when he leaves if you want to get ahead. And it was dumb. It wasn't about doing good work. It was just about, I guess, proving that you were willing to screw over your family. And I do think things are a little more enlightened now, but not enough.

And all of us, the people getting started, your students going through the system, but honestly, the people at the other end of the spectrum who are in charge of these companies need to question all of these things and really turn things around. And I think that is a huge impediment to focus if you can't control that. And we study that. So our primary degree here is industrial and systems engineering. So we have a work methods class where we actually study how people work and why they work that way. And we study what happens when you have a person and they do a single task for eight hours a day or 10 hours a day. What happens to them throughout the day?

And you can see that their attention goes away here, so they're less productive and different things. But we're thinking about it often in terms of the manufacturing setting or often in terms of the repeated cycle of we do this over and over and over and over again, where when you get into knowledge work, like you're saying, all of the, all bets are off, right? Because different people do knowledge work in such different ways. And how do we measure that?

How do we evaluate it? It's a really fascinating and fun, I think it's a fun area to think about. So when you say knowledge work, I'm kind of curious what your definition is. I think my approach to knowledge work is kind of through the lens of a creator. But I think there's a lot of other ways that knowledge work can be applied.

For example, if you're a C-level employee, a lot of your time maybe is meetings, but also I think there's situations where a lot of that time is solving big problems. And I had somebody actually say to me recently that that's what you get paid for when you're at that level is you solve difficult problems. So what sort of arenas does this approach apply to? I'm guessing it's a lot more than maybe it first seems. So specifically, what arenas does knowledge work apply to? Yeah. When you're talking about the studies that you're doing with knowledge work and the single task for eight hours a day versus, you know, knowledge work and cutting it up into little pieces, whatever that looks like, you know, what are some of the places

that people can benefit from this besides just the internet creator? I'm making a podcast, writing for writing a blog, making videos, et cetera. Yeah. I would tell you, so I would say your C-level employee is doing knowledge work. In my mind, they're doing knowledge work, but it's different than the person who writes a report, right? So the person who writes the report is doing the knowledge work in terms of creating the report. The C-level employee is using their knowledge to answer questions. It's using their knowledge to drive the company forward.

It's using their knowledge to take the organization from a place that they were to a place that they could be or helping them avoid that situation. So I think both of those examples are knowledge work. The way I see it, I guess the best way I can describe it is it centers around this idea of value and what kind of value. So the person who is doing, they're making the widget and their job is to meet a 5,000 widgets a day quota. Their value is in a tangible good, right? Here is this thing. I made 5,000 of these today. There's your value that I added to the company today. I didn't really necessarily have to think that hard about it. I know exactly what I'm doing, right? So I just do that thing. And I do it 5,000 times a day. Your knowledge work adds value in terms of there isn't necessarily a tangible thing. There might be. That's your

creator situation where you have to use immense amounts of knowledge to create that thing. But there's also just that thing where the concept or the idea where I use my knowledge to do something. And that's kind of the way, the add value in some different way. And I don't know if this is answering your question or if this is getting at what you're driving at, but that's the way I see those two breaking apart. Yeah. So if I could kind of restate it, I guess you're talking about the difference here between the quantitative, I'm going to crank out so many widgets versus anything really that's qualitative could be defined as knowledge work uh yes i mean i could i can see that being very very true

um in a lot of different settings because like if i'm let's say let's say i'm on a factory floor right if i'm if i'm a quality control person my job is to use my knowledge or to use the knowledge or to go find knowledge to figure out why we're getting a defect in every 30-second part. Whereas the – now, if I'm good at that, I will talk to the people who are doing. They're making the parts. But the person making the part often doesn't feel the responsibility to figure out why every 30-second part comes out wrong. So they're more just doing the quantitative. So that makes sense. The quantitative side versus the qualitative side.

I can see that being true. Yeah, I guess what's fascinating to me about this as we're talking through this is I have a brother who is very involved in the startup world. is I have a brother who is very involved in the startup world. And I never viewed the startup world really as knowledge work before for some reason. But I'm recognizing that a lot of the jobs that someone could have in those startups could classify as knowledge work. Very few of them, I think, kind of fit into the cranking out X widgets per day. Yeah, let me give you an example

in the startup world, right? Like I can design, I can teach people to design apps, but there's a big difference between designing an app and then designing an app that people want to use. And the key difference between those two is knowledge.

Are you going to go find the knowledge and then put that into practice? Or are you just going to make an app? And that is a fundamental difference between knowledge work and then just doing the work, if that makes sense. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Setapp. More than 200 powerful apps for your Mac. Try it free for a week. Just go to the link in the show notes. Getting things done is a challenge that everyone struggles with.

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That's Setapp, S-E-T-A-P-P dot com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. Join me as a Setapp subscriber and start getting some great apps. Our thanks to Setapp for their support of the Mac Power users and all of RelayFM. Corey, as somebody who studies this stuff, I'm sure it must be always on your mind, but it's not easy for you either, right? Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. You were telling me about a story where you were walking with your son instead of working on your PhD and started beating yourself up. Share that story yeah so i was telling um the guys earlier that i feel like every child i have a piece of my brain leaves right and it goes to the children and i don't have that piece of my brain to do quote-unquote productive or focused work anymore and while it's it's like a funny

story and it's a dramatic story there's a little bit of truth there right and and i beat myself up for this sometimes because you know there's a portion of the day where it's like a funny story and it's a dramatic story. There's a little bit of truth there, right? And, and I beat myself up for, for this sometimes because, you know, there's a portion of the day where it's like, okay, I want to be home or I need to be home or I should go home and help, but I still have my list. I still have my things that say, you need to get this done today. You should get this done today. Why aren't you getting this done today? Um, so I'm constantly fighting the drive to be productive, to drive, to stay focused with the drive to go home, spend time with the kids where we literally get nothing done from a metric standpoint, but we're having quality time. And it's like, I, I highly value that quality time. And I know that, you know, if I didn't want to do that quality time, I shouldn't have had kids. That's my perspective on it. And there are probably people who would disagree with that. But it's like, that was a choice that my wife and I still don't struggle with the fact that I really want to get this piece of this project done, this assessment project done. But I also know that the boys need me to be at home or my wife needs me to be at home and just take the boys for an hour. And that means I'm not going to get to work on this for tomorrow

or until tomorrow and maybe not get to work on until next week. And I have to figure out, and I've had to learn to figure out how to be like, okay, that's okay. It's okay. The project will still be there. So tell me this, Corey. If one of your students came to you and said, hey, I got this big project I'm working on,

but I had this thing yesterday with my son where he had a baseball game or we went to the park and played Frisbee for an hour and I can't get over how i made the huge mistake of spending time with my son instead of doing the work you assigned me what would your reaction be to that your priorities are off yeah right right why do we do this to ourselves though that's the interesting thing you know i mean uh there there's something to be said for i think disambiguating those

situations where you find yourself beating yourself up about that is, is take it away from yourself personally and stick, stick Mike Schmitz in. I'm going to start using Mike anymore. And when I start beating myself up on something, well, what if Mike came to me with this problem, what would I tell him? You know, you know, and, um, I think that once you separate it and, and remove your own ego and, you know, your own personal hangups and just look at it as if it was a third party, the answers are so easy, aren't they? Well, and, and you're absolutely right. And I mean, it comes down, you know, not, not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but it, it, it really comes down to like pride, right? Like why me publishing another paper and for the rest of my life has very, very little impact. I think it will have very, very little impact on the world, right? Me pouring into my children and,

you know, helping them be, you know, more responsible, you know, you know, I mean, teach it, call her a Christian. So let's just call it out, right? Helping them know the Lord more, helping them be more responsible, right? These things are things that will last for generations for them or for years for them. And it's like, that's where I should put my priority. But my pride says, no, no, no, you've worked for 30 some odd years of your life to be able to write and develop and assess different things and do all this kind of stuff and earn money and whatever it is. And it's like, I really have to shut that down. But my pride gets in my way a lot of times. Yeah. And it's just silly.

I mean, and honestly, the answer isn't that you quit your job and just take care of your kids. It's a balance. But I do think so often we beat ourselves up for useless stuff. Well, and to get to your point, if that student came up to me every week and said, hey, I didn't get it done because I was with my family. Hey, I didn't get it done because I went to this baseball game. Hey, I didn't get it done. I'd be like, okay, hold on. Yes, you need to prioritize your family family but do you want this degree because if you don't like if you're going to do that you're not going to get this degree that's kind of the way this process works and we'd have a real heart to heart with that so there's there's a line obviously but that's not what you described to me no it's

not at all yeah you know david as you were you said this, quit your job and stay home with your kids, that's not an option, right? But until you were to do that, you're always going to beat yourself up for not spending enough time with your kids. Yes. Oh, man. I had this thing when my oldest was two years old. She stayed with her grandmother for the first two years when we were at work. And then we put her in daycare when she was two. And grandma just wasn't up to it anymore.

And I remember, and Daisy had the privilege of picking her up. I had the job of dropping her off. And the first day I dropped her off, she was fine. The second day I dropped her off, she knew something, right? She knew that it wasn't that I was going to leave her to play for 30 minutes. I was going to leave her there for like six or seven hours. And she flipped out. And it was raining that day.

And everybody at the school said, hey, you know, a lot of times they cry at the beginning. They love it. It'll be okay. Just don't make a big deal out of it. Don't make it worse for them. And I'm walking and says, they just turn away and walk away. Give her a hug. Tell your lover, mommy will be here. And so I did that. I'm walking away. And this little girl says, daddy, save me. She screams it out. Daddy, save me. Right. As I remember, I was walking. It's one of the rare days it rains in Southern California. I sat in my car in the parking lot of that daycare center.

I cried like a baby. Oh, me too. I was going to, I literally had my phone out. I was going to call my work and say that I quit. Sorry, guys, no longer a lawyer. I am now going to be taking care of my daughter, you know? And it took me like 20 minutes to work through it and then go to work. And, you know, of course, like a week later,

I dropped her off and she didn't even say goodbye to me. She just hit the door running because she wanted to go see her friends, you know, but, um, but boy, you know, as a parent, it does get you and you really can get caught in those traps very easily. Yep. One of the things that has helped me with that, because I beat myself up about that all the time. And my wife stays home with my kids, homeschools them, and does a lot. So when I compare myself to her and everything that she does, I feel always like I am not doing enough. And we talk about it frequently. And the only way that it works for me is she assures me that I am doing a good job as a father because the voice in my head keeps saying, you're not there enough.

You're not there enough. You're not doing enough. And I don't think it would be quiet until I just stopped doing everything else and stayed home with my kids every moment of every single day. And even at that point, I'm not sure that I would ever be able to completely turn it off. Yeah, Mike, do you know the voice that would turn on in your head then, if you're staying at home every day? you should be making something, you should be creating something, you should be developed because, because this is, and we didn't get to this and we might later, but it's like, my work is very cyclical, right? Like the semester is crazy. It's crazy. And then winter break happens and it's, it's significantly less crazy. Like I have

free time. I spend a lot of time with the family. Semester hits again in the spring. Crazy. Summer hits, and I can do whatever I want pretty much. Again, that's a benefit of going to school for a million years. So in that summertime, my you should be doing something itch goes insane because I'm getting all the family time and I'm spending more time with the family, but then I'm, I'm getting jabbed in the side of like, you should be making that thing. You should be developing that thing. You'd be writing that thing. So you would get,

you'd get hit either way. So how do you manage all that? How do you balance everything? And how do you determine what you should be doing at any given moment. Because you're not just balancing the work as an engineering professor and family. You've got side projects. We talked about talking to the internet, things like that. So it's not just those two things and you're in one mode or you're in the other. You've got a bunch of different plates

that you're trying to spin. I don't do it very well sometimes, right? I mean, that's just the reality of it is there are times where I get really frustrated because I know I'm not doing it well, but I can't fix it right away. And then there are times when, I mean, I'm firing on all cylinders and I feel really good about what's getting done and how it's getting done and I'm balancing things really well. And I think the way that I attempt to work through it and the way that I attempt to handle it

is to I say keep saying review but it's like to actively sit down and go okay how was the last month how was the last week how was the last three months am I do I feel like I'm on I'm on the right path or do I need to course correct and it's constantly having that feedback loop that allows me to adjust and then looking across the scope of the six months or the year or the two years. So it's like, I feel this way sometimes about talking to the internet, right? So let's use that for an example.

There's 13 episodes out. I, in my brain, when I started that project, would have loved to have done one once a week, right? At a minimum, my idea was once every two two weeks but it just didn't happen that way so I look back on that and I say okay well does that make the work that I've done with talking to the internet bad or does it make it not good no like I'm still really proud of that work it's just not on the regular schedule that I wanted it to be on and the way I work through that is I have to be, I have to come down to it and say like, okay, if you still want to do that cool thing,

it may not happen like every other podcast in the world that's on a weekly or two week schedule. It may be you do a batch of them and then semester goes crazy. And then you do a batch of them and then semester goes crazy and then you do a batch of them and that's okay right or it may be like we talked about earlier you maybe you get some help you recruit somebody that when your semester gets crazy they can pick up a little bit more of the slack and like you can partner with somebody on this and it's in it's a it's a balance it's dynamic right like there is no one answer to me and that's something i've had to teach myself or i'm trying to learn i guess is a better way to say that. I think there's a big lesson to be learned there about the gold standard of this thing you want to do and coming to terms with the fact that it may not ever be feasible to do it that way,

but that doesn't mean that you can't do it at all. Yeah. I mean, if you ever heard me play saxophone, I'm a living embodiment of that. Yeah. But no, I also think though, something you, some good advice you gave is the audits, you know, the idea of a review process. And, um, for me, um, the foundational kind of idea that we've talked about it on the show's roles, know it's like i audit myself as a father once a week i audit myself as a father even bigger like we just we're recording this early december i just did my monthly audit on myself on my roles and um i think that um forcing yourself to confront that in a loving way you know know, uh, you know, be nice to yourself, but actually look at how you're doing in the various roles that you've chosen to, to adopt. And one of them for Corey is

a father. Um, I think that can really help you get perspective as to how you're doing. Yeah. And, and I, one other piece I'd add here is measure daily or whatever smaller time interval makes sense, but then assess and determine quality based on more aggregate data. Right. Like, so, you know, like you guys talk about habits all the time. Right. Instead of, you know, Mike, I know you're big on instead of goals, you have habits. Right. Yep.

Well, okay. If you completely lose it because you missed one day, that derails you and then you stop doing the thing altogether. Whereas if you kept measuring and you measured every day and you measured every day and then, oh, by the way, you missed the one day and then you measured every day and you looked back across the month, you'd go, wow, I ran once a week the entire month, or I ran four times a week the entire month. That's pretty awesome. Instead of going, oh, I missed that one day. So it's like, I have to remind myself that and I don't do it well all the time, but I have to remind myself, measure daily, assess across the aggregate.

When you assess across the aggregate and you have a realization that stuff just isn't working and you feel like you need to make a change, what sort of process do you go through in terms of identifying when to say no to something or when to shut something down? Yeah. So, you know, I, I listened to you all and I listened to some other places that just kind of helped me help remind me kind of what what are best practices in the area or what are what are ways that you can keep yourself honest with things like this and one of the ones that's been the best for me right is you know I think Mike do you call it a you call it a life theme don't you yes I do yeah and then like um Mike Hurley and the CDp gray they call it you know the yearly theme and david sorry if you have one and i don't remember it but um do you have one

and i don't remember it not really i'm not a fan of working in years i work in quarters yeah okay so so that but that's how i determine i say like okay this isn't working. And I try to assess like, is it because it doesn't align with this, this overarching, um, theme for lack of a better word. And if I can find that it doesn't align with that overarching theme, that's a pretty good indicator to say, you know what, that was fun. What did I learn from it? And now go away. Like, and I prune it and I cut it off and I, and I throw it away. If it's something that's not working and I, um, and it, uh, it does align and it's something that I'm still interested in and I'm still, you know, still adds value. Then I go, okay, why doesn't it work? Like what's happened? What's going on? So for instance, I talked to you guys, we'll use talking to you there as an example. Still, I talked to you guys about one of my big

drivers. It does align with what I want to do, right? Like Still, I talked to you guys about one of my big drivers. It does align with what I want to do, right? Like it aligns with, you know, the theme, it fits in with what, where I want to be and what I want to do, where it falls down for me is scheduling guests. It takes me too much time. It takes me too much mental energy and I struggle there, but it doesn't fall down on the recording editing portion. That's fine. Like I tend to do okay on that side of it. So it's trying to do that, Mike. It's trying to figure out like, does it align? If it doesn't align, why doesn't it leave? Because it should leave probably. And then I push that off as best as I can difficult when stuff does align and you still feel overwhelmed because you have too much on your plate. One of the things that I do with my personal retreats

is I force myself to say no to something every couple of months, just because that's a systematic way to have some margin to say yes to some cool opportunities. And then I'm constantly re-evaluating things because I have to pick something to say no to. And maybe that feels arbitrary to some people, but I tend to want to do all the things. I've got FOMO real bad when it comes to new stuff that seems exciting. And so forcing myself to look at everything on a regular basis, and I think the time period really isn't that important. It's just the fact that you do put everything under the microscope every so often. I think it's very important that you consider things whenever the seasons of your life change. And a season is not every 10 years or every five years. It happens more

frequently. And it's very easy to just get sucked into the trap of, well, I said yes to this thing, so I'm going to figure out a way to continue to make it work. sucked into the trap of, well, I said yes to this thing, so I'm going to figure out a way to continue to make it work. Yeah. So I just wrote a blog post about writing yourself project proposals. So writing personal project proposals for the things that you want to start and really evaluating whether or not that makes sense in what you're doing. And I hadn't thought about it when I wrote the post, but listening to you talk, I think in part of that project proposal should be off ramps. Like it should be, okay, I'm going to do this thing and then I'm going to assess at this point.

And depending on that response, I have an off ramp. I'm giving myself the ability to go, nope, I'm done. That was a good project. I learned a lot and I'm done. Or to say like, okay, now the next one is going to be up here and the next one's going to be up here because I tend to be like you and I like to learn things. So one of the things is like, can I make a show and can I get people to come onto my show and can I have anybody listen to it? And I learned those things and that was a way for me to go like, okay, good. And there was an off-ramp there that said, I did this thing.

Now the next phase of that is, okay, should this keep going? And then there's that phase. And then you evaluate there. And should it keep going? And should it keep going? And I think your personal retreats are a way to naturally have that off-ramp or that assessment brought in. Unless I force myself to do it, it doesn't happen. That's the problem. I know I need to say no to

things, but unless I force myself to every couple of months, I won't. I'll just continue to add new things, which is fine for a little while. You can make it happen in the the short run but it's not sustainable yeah you're gonna wear yourself out and then you're no good to anybody call you know i i was thinking about that idea of existing commitments and how do we get into these traps you know and we all have things that we do that we are on autopilot doing. And I would encourage anybody listening to sit down and try and make a list of what you think are your autopilot obligations, the things that you don't question anymore. And for me personally, a lot of it has roots in old Sparky, you know, maybe it 20-year-old kid or somebody a little older,

but somebody who doesn't exist anymore, who signed me up for something. And that person had the best of intentions in signing me up for that. But that person isn't here. And now I'm here to deal with this stuff. And I think, once again, disambiguating, just separating yourself

from, from the original decision and looking at it objectively is something that I know me personally, uh, I have not done enough because I just haven't been aware enough of it. So maybe take some time to think about what are the things you're doing now just because of momentum. And to tie back into what we talked about before, David, is write it down, right? Because then you're evaluating the thing you wrote down before, and it's not the memory of what you wrote down before, which you can skew really easily. And it's also, oh, it's just a thing that's written down now. It's not the thing that I hold as my precious kind of a situation. down now. It's not the thing that I hold as my precious kind of a situation. and product. Being a founder means you have to wear a lot of hats. Let Indeed take over recruiting and hiring off your plate so you can focus on more pressing matters. Indeed is a hiring partner

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So, Corey, in the last segment, we were kind of talking about goals and themes and all that stuff. I'm kind of curious, how do you handle these projects that overlap? And then maybe that leads us into some of the ways that you handle some of the focus problems that you encounter in some of your creative solutions. Yeah. So I'm interested in a lot of different areas. It's a problem. It's always been a problem for me. I mean, ever since I was a little kid, I just want to do a lot of different things. That's the way my brain works. And I can dig in and get really deep into something, and that's great, but then I always want to dabble in other areas. And then some of those will take off,

and I want to dabble in different areas. So one of the things I learned at some point along the life is, okay, is there a way that you can do a project that fits more than one of these areas? So a specific example of this would be like, the idea of podcasting makes so much sense to me. And a lot of the stuff that I think about when it comes to podcasting is interviewing other people. Why? Because I've got that research side of me, that scholarship side of me. and I have that side that says I want to create a thing. I want to make something and put it out there and hopefully add value and provide value to people. So it's like that is a project that checks two of those boxes for me.

And it's much more likely to stay if I can have them check multiple different boxes. So another example would be right now um i'm i want to learn iphone videography i don't know what i'm going to do with it but i really want to learn iphone videography well ccu call art christian right we we need more videos that promote the engineering program so in my mind bam that's an immediate two like it benefits the engineering program so it's part of my part of my job there even though i'm not a marketer it's still part of my job there and i can learn iphone videography at the same time so it's like that's one of the ways that i try to develop projects that overlap and then they tend to stick around longer the ones that are completely one focus area or one area um they're easier for me to ignore, neglect, whatever word you're looking for there.

I like that. I think that's a cool way to scratch the itch of wanting to learn new things is finding some sort of need or problem that that solution can solve. I remember a friend of mine told me one time when it came to developing a consistent reading habit to look for the books that solve a problem that you're currently experiencing. And that really clicked for me because my brain is going to attach to this problem anyways, and it's going to think about this problem. And so if I'm going to spend that time thinking about that problem, I may as well do some research and figure out a solution to that problem. And in the process, that's going to develop a skill for me, which is going to help me fulfill this desire to keep learning and keep growing. Yeah. My, my area right now, the, the one that's going to start ramping up here, um, you know, probably this summer is where it'll start, but I'll, I'll start in the spring here, um, is technology ethics. So what I've learned about myself is I'm always

interested in technology. I'm always interested in technology. I'm always going to be interested in technology ever since I would take apart the brand new computer that my parents bought and almost had a cow because I took the part, took it apart in the kitchen table to till now. It's like, I'm just interested in technology. It's a common theme. Well, I need to do some sort of scholarship or I want to do some sort of scholarship, but engineering education is like, okay, that's really where my research area is, is engineering education and entrepreneurship education. So that's okay, but that isn't as much of an interest or it isn't as much of a focus as it once was. But this area of technology ethics allows these two things

to combine, right? What does it mean if the metaverse happens and then people sit in their house all day? Is that morally and ethically good, right? What does it mean if the metaverse happens and then people sit in their house all day? Is that morally and ethically good? What does it mean if we don't have to carry around a physical ID and our ID is digitally now? What are the ethical implications of that? a one of our, a couple of our faculty when, when I was in grad school, um, they would tell us like, so we take these classes and basically grad school for those who have never been there. Um, so engineering education is a social science, right? So social science, you're studying humans and you're studying humans the way they do things. Um, so the actual courses are you read a ton and you write, you read a ton and you write, and that. And that's the whole process. Well, when we would write for the class, our faculty would be like, okay, if you can, don't just write a paper for this class because that's a waste of time. Write a paper for this class. Sorry, it's not a waste of time. Don't just write a paper for this class. Write a paper for

this class that will also go to a conference talk, that will also go to some other, and it'll check that other box. So I know we're driving home on this probably too hard, but trying to combine these two areas or the trying to check multiple boxes with the same project, that's a big one for me. It's a lot, it makes a lot of sense really. And once again, I think that gets back to those role audits where you can look at what are the things that are important to you so you can start building projects that serve more than one master. I think this is maybe not quite the direction that we were going with this, but I think that overlap idea is really powerful. And when it comes to what you're going to do with your life, I think this is a valuable idea to consider. Not just the job listings that appear in the options the guidance counselor gives you in high school, but I've got

all these different interests. What are the ways that I can combine these things to craft a career for myself and do work that is meaningful. I also am kind of curious with taking this approach to your work, and then you have these set points where everything changes. How do you handle that in terms of your day-to-day work and your routines and things like that um it's very difficult like this is an area of my life that i that i find very difficult um because you know during the semester, a decent portion of my week is scheduled for me. So I know that up front and I put that in my calendar and those are blocks that I never get back. But depending on the course, it depends on how much prep time I need for that course or how much grading time it's going to take me for that course. So then there's that that fluctuates every semester.

The other thing that fluctuates is, okay, is the university doing a thing that requires more of my attention or less of my attention, right? So you got to think about that. But then we get to the summer and the world's my oyster, right? I can figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it. And I can's my oyster. I can figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it. And I can go from there. And a lot of times it takes me at least a week, maybe two, to make that adjustment, to get into that new mental model of, okay, the schedule has changed.

The routine has changed. What's going to be the routine for this period? So one of the ways I handle it is I don't try to plan past that next, I'll call it a chapter, right? Because it's not a consistent. So, you know, David, you talked about planning in 12 week blocks. I can't do that, right? Like 12 weeks doesn't work for me because there's artificial breakdowns on in the 12 weeks. So mine is, okay, what am I doing? What are my goals for this semester? What are my goals for winter break? What are my goals for spring? What are my goals for summer? And I only try to plan out as far as that goes. And it works okay. Sometimes it works

better than others. Sometimes something happens and it all blows up and you just try to adapt and hang on until that period of time's over. Yeah, that kind of goes to why I'm not a big fan of the year planning. It's just such an arbitrary number and quarters work for me. But if you've got the kind of career where you may have like a five-month stretch and then a two-month stretch, then planning in the natural flow of what you're doing makes a lot of sense. And I think that's something that everybody should consider. I mean, what is the time frame for you where you can finish a big project or get through something career or related?

And I like that idea that you're willing to be flexible. Well, and I've learned that I have to be because I've tried to do it the other way before, right? Like I've tried to do, you know, this period of time, you know, two months, two months, two months, or I've tried to do a whole year. I've tried to do six months and I've, I mean, just failed miserably. And it's like, okay, that plan isn't going to work. What is the chunk of time? And that's, I got to that plan or that method that I use. What happens when in that chunk of time, things radically change for you? You talked about the importance of being flexible, but how do you, in the midst of those time

periods, roll with the punches, so to speak? Yeah. So an example of this would be, we plan to have a baby right as the semester ended, because then we'd have new baby over the summer when my schedule is a lot more flexible. Well, for life reasons, new baby didn't come until the first week of the semester. Yeah, I think it came like right as the semester started, which I mean, that's just like throwing a gigantic boulder in this placid pond right like because you can plan for it and everything's great and like you've got your you've got your stuff prepped and front loaded but you don't know when the baby's coming you don't know you like you don't know when the baby's actually coming you don't know how everything's going to go you don't know the routines they're going to get established and it's going to sound bad but in certain situations it's almost like I just got to

hold on, right? Like I have to be okay with the fact that for this period of time, I'm holding on and holding on doesn't mean throwing my hands up in the air and not trying to be as productive through holding on means, okay, this was the plan that is now gone. That plan goes out the window and in a shorter period of time, I try to replan. I study and have done a decent amount of things with Agile and Scrum. Are you all familiar with Agile and Scrum? Sure. Yeah. So in those situations, the concept of Agile and Scrum comes up. It becomes very, very useful. And for those who are listening

to don't know what agile scrum is, agile scrum is a, it's a way to project plan, but you do these little sprints, right? And then you, you reassess at the end of the sprint, but then you have these daily daily standup meetings. So in essence, that's what happens when, when things go off the rails, I move into agile scrum mode, and it says, okay, today, here's what we're getting done today. Here's what we're trying to get done in the next week. Here's what we're trying to get done in the next two weeks. And the actual timeframe of that just depends on how bad it blew up, how bad did the plan blow up, or what's the issue that really happened? I really like the scrum model. I don't really like all of the canonical scrum as outlined in the

book by the guy who created it. But I do think there's a lot of value in that approach of the sprint then recover, sprint then recover. And I have not figured out a way to apply that to all of the different areas of my life, but I think it definitely could translate. Well, and I think, and I don't know if you said it meaning this or not, but just the way you worded it, all the areas, I don't think it applies to all the areas. I don't think it'll ever apply to all the areas. Sure. Okay.

Yeah. I guess I'm kind of thinking like personal Kanban is a thing, but never clicked for me. Figure out the areas where it applies and go from there. You know what I mean? figure out the areas where it applies and go from there. You know what I mean? And run with it then because there are other longer term projects.

I'm sure you've got another course or you've got another something that you're working on that needs a much longer timeline that has, it's more of a Gantt chart than it is a Kanban board kind of a deal. So much of what you're talking about, Corey,

is just being flexible and objective with what works for you. And I think I hope people are listening to that because that's what we all need to do. And flexible doesn't mean willy nilly, right? Like, so if you're out there thinking like, oh, well, you just don't have a plan. No, no, no. Trust me. I plan a lot. I probably plan too much instead of and I need to work more and plan less.

But at the same time, I can't, you know, David, you always, you always talk about things being precious, right? Like I can't let things be overly precious because I've got four kids because my coworker is going to get COVID and they're going to be out for six weeks, right? Or however long, you know, it's like, I can't do that. I have to be a little more flexible in the planning and it's been hard to learn how to do that. Well, it sounds to me like you did something you need to be flexible in the planning, but flexible in the execution. I mean, that's my, and I, I've banged on this drum for a long, long time, but you know, making a plan is a great idea. Treating the plan as something that you can't change is a really bad idea. And it's just like,

I don't know. It's just, it's kind of the equivalent of, what was those monks who used to flail themselves? I mean, why are you doing this to yourself? It's true. It's true. If COVID has taught us anything, it is forced flexibility. Well, look, it's not COVID, man. This has been true since the beginning.

It's just COVID slaps you in the face with it. It does. And maybe that's a with it. It does. And maybe that's a good thing. All right. Well, Corey, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. I want folks to go check out Corey's podcast. And he's not happy with the release frequency, but you got some great guests.

There's some great conversations on there. So everybody head over. We're going to put a link in the show note for it. But the name of the show is Talking to the Internet. Boy, what a broad name there, Corey. How'd you come up with that? You know, I wanted to talk to people who talk to the Internet about why they talk to the Internet. Well, it works. It works.

So check that out, gang. And Corey, I wish you all the luck navigating all these fields. I want to thank our sponsors as well. And that is our friends over at Setapp, the intro zone by Microsoft. And indeed, we appreciate those sponsors. They help us keep the lights on.

We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. If you want to join in on the conversation, head over to talk.macpowerusers.com. There is the talk Mac power users forum there, but focus podcast has his own little room there. You can go check it out. There's some great conversations going on in there at all times. And maybe you've got some ideas about flexibility or what past you did to screw over present you. You're not alone.

There's people there you can talk to. We'll see you next time. And thanks for listening.