Focused - 144: Enough, with Patrick Rhone

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Patrick Rhone joins us to talk about analog productivity, knolling, mise en place, and staying focused while wearing many hats.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Excellent. We are here today with a guest that I am super happy to be putting on a podcast after I haven't heard from him for a while. Welcome to the show, Patrick Rohn. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor to be invited. Yeah, Patrick is a fellow traveler on the Focus Path,

I guess we'll call him. Yeah. Used to do a lot more podcasting, Patrick, I remember. Yes. In fact, Mike was saying how he heard you years ago. What was that you were saying, Mike? Yeah, my revelation that I got from Patrick, which has paid dividends for lo these many years, was when you were on the Mike's on Mike's podcast back in the day. And I remember you talking about calendars and tasks. And I always kind of just believed tasks don't belong on a calendar. Those are for meetings. And you said that

everything you need to do needs to take place within the context of time. And I really think that's the seed of I'm big into time blocking now. And I think that's the thing that got me there. Well, thanks. I'm glad to have inspired that. And it's something that i believe in and um it comes down to honesty for me you know just being honest about what this is and and when when it's going to happen um and until you're unless you're honest about that stuff it's it's a dream it's a hope it's a wish it doesn't actually uh have uh you know it's there's no guarantee it's going to happen. Yeah. The calendar is where the rubber meets the road.

Well, it's where you make, that's where you make commitments with the things that really matter. Yeah. I shared in the Max Barkey Labs, I shared my block schedule for the week a few weeks ago, and I got a ton of email from people like, hey, wait, you're the OmniFocus guy. Why are you doing all this blocking? It doesn't even make sense. And the thing I usually say is that, look, task lists are infinite, and time is finite, and that is the difference. Yep. You know, task lists are where you put your hopes and dreams, and calendars are where you achieve them. Yep. You know, task lists are where you put your hopes and dreams and calendars are

where you achieve them. Yeah. And that's where you, you pick which ones get attention today. Well, yes, yes. Uh, we can talk about this more. I'm sure that there's like the, the normal, like, Hey, you know, here's what you do, Patrick. Here's the, let's introduce them to the audience sort of thing. We're kind of jumping right into the meat of things. here's what you do, Patrick. Here's the, let's introduce them to the audience sort of thing. We're kind of jumping right into the meat of things. Yeah, I don't mess around, man. I don't mess around. Okay, well, I'll do that.

Patrick wrote a great book called Enough years ago that I thought was excellent. And you can still get it. We'll put a link in the show notes. You are an author. You're a tech consultant. you are an author you're a tech consultant um these days patrick is very busy uh coordinating a home remodel with a beautiful home remodel he he made the mistake of sending me the link because he's he's blogging his home remodel that's woe to wow.com we'll put the link in the show notes and if you're into like home restoration at all um i don't know whether to tell you to go to this link or to tell you to avoid it.

Because on a show called Focus, I lost like an hour going through looking at your banister to begin with. But anyway, so Patrick is doing all that stuff. And then you're a family man. You're doing a lot of things. And somebody with so many irons in the fire, you know, who's thought about a lot of this stuff. I thought it would be really fun to talk to you today. So how's that? Is that good?

Yeah, no, that's pretty good. You know, I can add a few things. He's also a very handsome guy. Very handsome. I wasn't going to add that. I was going to add like some of the other time sucks I have, um, you know, not the least of which is kind of being the, you know, the, the household manager, as it were of, uh, of, of my, cause my wife is, is a consultant, a consultant with many clients who's very, very, very busy. And so that leaves me as kind of the cook and the cleaner and the chauffeur for our daughter to get her to her various places because she's very, very busy.

And that all leads back to, you know, why having a calendar is important. But also, things that take up my time at different other times are I'm president of the board for Mental Health Minnesota, which is a local mental health and wellness organization. And as well as I do circus rigging. Yeah. Yeah. You told me that once I was going to call you and you're like, oh, I'm going to be rigging a circus.

I'm like, okay, well, I guess we can't talk that day then. Yeah. My, my, my daughter does circus at a place called Circus Juventus.

It is European-style circus, Cirque du Soleil. Cirque du Soleil, except with kids, and they're all between the ages of 2 to 22. And so when there are performances going on, it is the largest youth performing circus in the world it uh i'm i'm the lead volunteer rigger so i i coordinate all of the uh movement of equipment and and and setting it up and breaking it down and all of that stuff and you know the funny thing is when you told me you were doing that i was like didn't question it for a second i'm like of course patrick would be of course have the skill set to rig a circus i mean that it's just like i feel like that's something it's like if you said to me like something like oh yeah and also i need to like you know move some depleted uranium i'd be like he probably probably knows how to do that i i i do have a lot of disparate disparate skills that come into play

uh often at odd times so so yes i am doing a lot a lot a lot of of stuff and it is different stuff and it is constantly um moving and changing and um and and switching gears you know what i mean like like you know the gears that i need to you know troubleshoot a client's machine for a problem are different necessary are a bit different than say um sanding and ripping boards for trim, for instance, creating custom trim to match existing trim, which is something I sometimes find myself doing. And it's just different than setting up a flying trapeze. Do you find that, I mean, really, I was just thinking about this.

I mean, the mode shift, because we talk about mode shift on the show and how it can help unstick you. But you have really built mode shift into your entire day. Oh, my gosh. Do you find that there's some help to that? Well, I mean, it certainly keeps things interesting, and I don't get bored. And my mind is always met with different challenges. So it's not kind of the cranking widgets of kind of the same sorts of things every day, all day. Yeah.

That said, it's always a grass is always greener thing. Like I would, I would love to be able to just do one thing and have that be my one thing. Uh, like in my fantasy world, that's, you know, that's how I operate. Um, but, uh, the truth of the matter is that I would probably get bored pretty quick. On that topic, do you feel like if you were to do one thing, that boredom is the thing that would keep you from doing it more? Or do you think that there are inherently these limits for these different domains and maybe just context switching and I'm focusing and i'm writing and i'm using a computer you know that's one mode and then when i go rig a circus i'm doing something physical that's a totally different mode and it's not a some of the parts sort of a deal

it's using tapping into like a totally different reservoir yeah yeah and you know different part of the brain although there are things that overlap right you know when something's not uh you know one of the things i love about um about the circus rigging for instance you know is you know uh circus gventus mounts these pretty you you know, impressive scripted, you know, shows, uh, where, you know, you kind of have to figure out, okay, you know, here's, here's the act that's, that's on now, you know, uh, here's the next one coming up. And how do we say, figure out, you know, we've, And how do we say, figure out, you know, we've got 30 seconds, 30 seconds to break down and remove the flying trapeze and at the same time set up hoops and get that going. And how do you do that and has to be done exactly in the right order with exactly everybody having, knowing their job and what to do and how to do it and what comes

next. Everyone knowing, you know, the right knots to tie and the right, you know, the, you know, the right tension on, on the lines. I mean, all of that stuff. Right. And so in a way, on the lines. I mean, all of that stuff, right? And so in a way, it engages that kind of troubleshooting part of my brain, right? The same part that I use for figuring out why, you know, I can't get Microsoft Office to activate on this one particular machine because of Office's weird new licensing scheme that they've put in to try to defeat piracy. And now it's not working because it needs to do something that I'm not familiar with. And you can't just stick in a product key and have it work anymore. Don't get me started.

That's a totally hypothetical example. Totally hypothetical example. Um, but like, you know, so that's also a troubleshooting and figuring out, okay, you know, I, you know, I'll try this and this and this and this and this boom doesn't work. Okay. Well then I'll try it this way. Boom. Doesn't work. You know what I mean? So yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I, I think it is, um, there's overlap, certainly. And if you really look close enough, you'll see that between these various things that I do, there's certain skills in common. They're just engaged in a different way. really pictured it from that perspective but uh i think there probably is if you look deep enough some sort of unifying thread between all of the things that are interesting to you it kind of sounds like that's the criteria you use for this stuff you use the word board a couple of times yeah so well and i and i i think that that is know, when we talk about about focus, right? If you're really interested and engaged in something, you don't have to worry about focus. Because you'll be excited to do it. It's not like, you know, when, you know, if if I'm, you know, excited to to to I don't know, to restore the, you know, banister at an old house. You know, if I'm,

you know, I can just sit there and I can just, it almost becomes addictive, the scraping away of the old paint and the sanding down and the, like, it becomes almost meditative, right? I don't have a problem with focus. I'm not sitting there while I'm sanding things down, thinking to myself, oh, you know, I should check Twitter. No, that's not, it's just, I'm there, you know, and I'm engaged, right? It's the stuff that I don't really want to do or the stuff that's hard to do or the stuff that is not as exciting to do or, you know, for, for whatever reason, I'm just not as engaged in it. That's where the problem of focus comes in. Yeah. Finding yourself in the zone. That's, you know, there's a lot of ways to call it. Um, and we've all experienced that where time

kind of stops and you're into something and then you look up and three hours have gone by. Right. How do you get that more? Right more right and and and i i would say even more importantly that's great and it is effortless for the things you really enjoy and love and care about the question is how do you get that for the things you don't right like like that's really what what what the the problem is, right? The problem isn't engaging with the things that you want to do. I was literally just about to ask you that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and how do you get to that? Well, um, I think there are ways, um, I don't think that they are, you know, always 100% successful. Um, um, I think if there are recurring things that you really,

really, really have a problem just kind of engaging with or whatever, maybe you should ask yourself some tough questions. Like, does this really have to get done? Or is there someone else who would be more engaged with this, who might do it better. And, you know, and I don't think that that is a, I don't think saying no to something is a bad thing. I don't, you know, we've got a friend who, you know, we wonder, okay, gosh, you know, she's always like hiring a cleaner to clean the house or hiring, like, you know, someone to mow the lawn or hiring, you know, like, she hires out those things. But she hires out those things because they're things that she has, she doesn't want to

do herself. And it is worth it to her to free, to just hire someone to do these things she doesn't want to do to free up the time for the things that she loves doing and the things that she loves doing. She, she's really great at, and she's really engaged with and, and kudos to her. handle that you know you talked a little bit about how you create the motivation for lack of a better word to be focused on the things that you don't really want to do and if you're in a position where you can pull all the strings with your schedule in your day that's that's great but if you're in a cubicle yeah yeah with a boss how do you do that yeah and you don't really right and and you and you don't have to uh you you don't you don't have a choice right um i wouldn't say you don't have a choice you always have a choice right the choice is walking away i'm not doing that job i'm sorry you know and i'll i'll be perfectly and it's a lot's like, well, that's not really a choice. I need the money.

Well, whether or not there are reasons why you are making that choice is a whole nother matter. The truth of the matter is that everything we do in life is a choice. Getting up out of bed is a choice. Right. And there's nothing you have to do. Right. You could decide, make a choice to just sit in one spot for the rest of your life and do nothing. Now, you know, there's a lot of consequences to that choice, but it doesn't mean it's not a choice. So the first thing we need to understand is that everything we do is a choice.

Second thing we need to understand is that there are some things that we choose to do, that we decide to do, even if we don't really want to do them, okay? And that now that we have made that commitment, we've made that commitment to somebody else, or more importantly, we've made it to ourselves, really. Because even the commitments we make to somebody else, we're also making to ourselves to do, right? And so the question becomes, maybe the way to engage with that is to not to think of the task at hand, but think of the result or reward of said task, right? And to focus on that. And I think that that's oftentimes what gets me through the things that I don't really want to do or don't like to do is the fact that I know that

by doing that, I will make, make my wife happier, make my boss happier, make my, you know, I don't have a boss, but you know, you know what I'm saying, right? Like, you know, or, you know, hey, I'm focused on, um, I'm going to make sure that this shows up in my yearly review when I sit down with my boss. Right. One of the things I, I did, uh, at, uh, when I did have a boss at an old job, um, is, uh, I kept what I like to call a yay me file. And the yay me file had two purposes. Number one, things that I was especially proud of getting done at work, especially, I would put into the yay me file, right? So when the yearly review came around and there was that inevitable question of, you know, what would you say are the things that you were most proud of this year? I didn't have to rack my brain thinking about it. I opened up my YAMI file and I

copied and pasted it into the yearly review prep document. But the other part of that too was to be able to look and see like, oh wow, the results of that thing that I didn't really want to do, I was actually pretty proud of at the end. I really like that for a couple reasons. I feel like a lot of people go the opposite way. They have a bad me file that they carry around in their head, right? Yes, exactly. You only remember, like I recently did a webinar and one of the attendants told me, oh yeah, the problem with my journal is I look at it and everything in there is negative. And I think that is a very common behavior from people.

And it's such a mistake because, you know, it is that human thing to focus on the negative. You know, you get 100 positive emails, one negative one. That's the one you think about. positive emails one negative one that's the one you think about you know people and i don't know if it goes back to like saber truth tigers and trying to avoid getting killed or whatever but people are so damn hard on themselves yeah yeah they are you know and and i think that this also comes down to back around to the you know do you, how do you motivate yourself to do those things that you don't want to do? The truth of the matter is, is that, you know, a big part of that is we focus on the negative, right? And by focusing on the negative as opposed to focusing on the positive,

right? You know, the negative being the work that we don't want to do, the positive being the result of said work, the reward for said work, that that is really what keeps us from really enjoying and engaging, you know, engaging that task that we don't want to do, right? And if we just switch that focus to the reward, boom, all of a sudden, now we might be more excited to do that task. I have a somewhat related strategy. I think it may be the same. I'm not sure. But for me, if I'm doing something I don't want to be doing, I always ask myself, what can I learn from this? And it can be from writing a terrible customer thing or even dealing with a bad person, you can always learn

something from those experiences. And then I find that that engages me, you know, it's like, oh, wait, I can get something out of this. And even the worst people in the world can teach you something. And, and the, um, and the most horrible jobs in the world, you can learn something. And, and I do think that helps me. But I don't know. I mean, we're all like taking shots at this stuff, right? It's hard. Yeah. And at least a couple of jobs I've, you know, the, the kind of the person that people tell you to avoid at work because they're mean or they're, they're, they're not very helpful or whatnot. I almost always go out of my way to befriend those people. Like, like, you know, the first thing, like the most thing, the thing you can almost guarantee, uh, will like make me become

friends with someone is to tell me that they're a horrible person that they don't like they're not very helpful and blah blah blah blah or they drive me nuts or drive people whatever right because i will go out of my way to find out what makes that person tick and to find out why is it that everybody feels that way about that person and and honestly one of the actually actually two of my longest friendships are with those people that i was told to avoid i just had that experience last night with the at the dinner table my daughter was telling me because she has a job at school and she said all the co-workers say oh stay away from that guy he's a total jerk and so she is one of the supervisors and she started to get to know him she says you know he just wants everything done.

Right. I don't know why everybody hates him so much. He just wants it done. Right. And I, I got thinking about, Hey, good job, dad. Yeah. My friend for my friend, uh, Michael, this was a, you know, tech support situation. I was in kind of first tier tech support and he was, he was one of the second tier people that we would, uh, you know, especially the newer folks would want to go to and, and for, for suggestions or help. Um, and I was told, oh, he never helps

anyone. And he, like, he just yells at you and, you know, makes you figure it out and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, um, the first time I had a problem, um problem that I couldn't figure out, I went to him and I'm like, OK, so here's the problem. I tried this. I tried this. I tried this other thing. And now I'm out of possible solutions. Do you have any suggestions? He's like, yeah, do this. Went back, did that. It worked. Came back, thanked him.

And after a few times of that, I said, hey, you want to go grab some lunch? You know, sure, yeah. So we went out to lunch. I said, you know, everyone told me that you're an a**hole, right? You know, that you're mean and you're surly and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and came to find out it was because people would hear the problem and instead of actually trying to fix it would go straight to him and he was like i have no patience for that because you haven't even tried

like i'm not going to sit there and tell you the basics that you should know right i'm gonna you come to me as a last resort otherwise i'm gonna have people lined up my my desk all day long so that's perfectly understandable. You know, in general, you know, people as well as tasks are a pain in the a** for a reason. Right? And once you find out the reason, they become less of a pain in the a**. they become less of a pain in the ass. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Indeed. Go to indeed.com slash focus to get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.

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Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus Podcast. And all of RelayFM. So Patrick, in the previous section, you talked a little bit about the concept of honesty and dealing with disappointment, the things that you don't want to do, stuff like that, stuff like that, commitment, choices. And it occurred to me that there's a very real difference for a lot of people between the commitments and the choices they make that are going to benefit others and the ones that are only going to benefit themselves. I know myself personally, I have struggled in the past. I know listeners, if I relate to this, have no trouble keeping my commitments to other people. I say I'm going to

be somewhere at a certain time. Yes, I'm going to follow through with that, but maybe not so great at following through on the commitment that I made, even if I put it on my calendar that this is going to be me time and I'm going to plan my day or whatever. That's the stuff that kind of slips through the cracks for me. I'm curious if you struggle with that and maybe you have some advice for people to help overcome that. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, of course I struggle with that because, you know, you break a commitment to somebody else and now they're disappointed in you, right? You break a commitment to yourself and well, it's, it's just on you and it's just your internal monkey brain that's kicking yourself for letting yourself down. Um, but K no one has to hear that and no one has

to see your silent shame. Um, and so it's, it's, it's a lot, uh, you know, it's a lot easier. We don't want people to be mad at us or disappointed at us or let other people down, unless you're a sociopath. We want people to be proud of us. We want people to be happy, especially those that we care about. happy, especially those that we care about. And I would argue that, you know, if we're feeling any guilt about it at all, it's because we care, right? And so, yeah, you know, how do you deal with that? How do you, for instance, with time blocking, you know, make an appointment with yourself blocking, you know, make an appointment with yourself on the calendar and keep that appointment and make it as important, as unbreakable as any other meeting that you've been invited to or, or have made with somebody else. And I don't know that I have the answer for that. I'm not necessarily always very good at that with that. And especially as other things pop up, you know, I'm the first one to move my task or the thing that I have blocked that time out for and replace it with what that other person needs.

other person needs. Um, uh, but, but the, the, the truth of the matter is, is, is that, um, you're just as important, you know, you are just as important as anyone else. And we were talking earlier about like, you know, that kicking yourself for, you know, for not doing this or not doing that. Right. Well, what leads to that? Well, what leads to that is breaking those commitments with yourself, breaking that contract with yourself. Yeah. I think that is totally related. I mean, you feel like you're letting yourself down, so then you loathe yourself. you feel like you're letting yourself down. So then you loathe yourself. Right. Exactly. Right. And, you know, uh, Brene Brown has written a ton of stuff on, on this kind of shame, um, that I highly encourage, uh, folks to, to read and engage with.

But at the end of the day, um, one way that helps me is to not think of it as letting myself down. But if I have, especially if I have blocked out that time to deal with tasks, right? Um, those tasks are on my list because they are things that I care about doing. They are things I care about getting done. And instead, I kind of, I guess, play a mental trick with myself of thinking of those tasks as meetings with people. Like, so if it's calling to make an appointment to get my headlight replaced, a recent example, by the way, you know, I think of it as like, You know, I think of it as like, oh, okay, this is a meeting with my car mechanic, right?

And, you know, and my car but for him despite the fact that he doesn't know i'm calling doesn't care whatever you know but in my in my mind if i try to think of my tasks as people i don't know what better way to put it okay my my mind is spinning right now with like examples of this. Yes, yes. We have too many ants in the backyard, so I have a meeting with them where I'm going to murder them tomorrow. Yeah, I've actually worked at companies where we've had similar meetings. So it is equally unpleasant. So it is equally unpleasant, you know, to and especially if you're the one left left standing and and you know that all of your friends just got their slips. So, yeah, you know, I think it really is just kind of a matter of, like I said.

Trying to focus on. On the reward for doing so right you know that that even the stuff that seems only for you has a reward yeah and that reward may be not feeling the shame of not having done it yeah and we started we started the show on, uh, on block scheduling, but I think this is kind of related, you know, where you break these appointments with yourself. And a tip that helps me is to build in a feedback loop. You know, it's not enough just to schedule time to write your novel. Uh, you need to account. And at the end of the day, say, you know what I did, I has blocked two hours to write my novel. I didn't do that. know how can i make changes so the next time i do that i can do it and don't judge yourself don't be a jerk just say okay well that didn't work um and and let's

see what changes i need to make so the next time i make that block that i can live to it and and that really i think is, is just small changes. Yeah, that's great. I also think the honesty piece ties in here because you have to be, going back to something you said at the very beginning, Patrick, honest about what you're able to do in addition to honest about the things

maybe that you want to do. And that's, for me, kind of where time blocking comes in. Those forced limits. I'm not going to try to do more than five things today because I know if I, even if that schedule looks open and I add those things to my list, there's a good chance that I'm not going to do them, which creates this perpetual self-loathing. Oh, you can't follow through on the things that you said you're going

to do. And so the next time I go to make a commitment, maybe I'll drop the ball on this one, this one as well. I kind of am wondering how you personally handle, you're looking at all the things that you're doing, and maybe it's the criteria is the things that you want to do regardless you have all these things and the rocks don't fit in the jar anymore what's the process that you go through do you default to well the the things that i want to do for other people those i'm absolutely going to make room for or do you default to you know what i need to put my own oxygen mask on first and i'd rather disappoint other people than myself yeah well um in in my case it usually is the other people um because uh you know i i very much i'm i'm a pleaser i'm a helper um it's what i do and

if you if you look at one common thread through everything I do, uh, it really does come and come down to that. I, I just, I enjoy helping people. That's what fills my cup. Um, you know, that, that said, um, one of the ways that we can be most honest with ourselves in regards to the things we have to do and whether or not we have to do them is to be honest with ourselves about time. The truth of the matter is, is that there is only one time that exists and that time is right now. Right. there is only one time that exists and that time is right now, right? And that as much as we may time block and as much as we may want to schedule things for a future now, the truth of the matter is that the only one that really is guaranteed to exist is right now. And so instead of necessarily when you get into those situations, focusing on

what you want to do or what you're never going to do or what have you, I guess for me, I instead focus on, okay, what can I do right now? Like what right now would, in this moment, would, as I look through this list of things, would provide the most value? Most value to me, the most value to others, doesn't matter, just the most value in general, right? And I think that's especially important when you do have a lot of different different things that you could possibly do that are kind of staring you in the face and are on your plate and being honest about like okay i've got now this is what i have what can i do yeah i i think focusing on now um is a and focusing on what time we really have is about as honest as one can get with oneself.

Yeah, but there's another piece to that. Because if I was a guy who was remodeling a house, cooking every meal, taking care of the family, writing books, doing tech consulting, and rigging circuses, sudden, you know, how do you figure out what gets now? I mean, how do you, I'm not sure it's playing the right word, but I mean, how do you figure out how you're going to get through each day and what the big rocks are as you get started? Well, I mean, honestly, I start every morning by just kind of looking at the day. I look at, like, what do I have on the calendar, right? I look at my, you know, I have kind of a giant, big, overarching, like, task list, right? Think of it like OmniFocus except all on paper.

You know, but like, you know, this is all the things. And I regularly do, you know, a GTD style brain dump, you know, where, you know, I will kind of, you know, sit down for an hour on a weekend, you know, probably a Sunday with a pen and paper. And just try to dump everything that I'm thinking of that needs to get done out of my brain and get it down somewhere. But then on a daily basis, I look at the calendar. I look at how much time I have for things that aren't already scheduled. You know, I mean, like there's like today, right? Today I have very little time. The truth of the matter is I'm going to get off this call. I'm going to, you know, go, I'm going to take a shower. I'm going to have three other places to get to before I have to pick up my daughter from school, uh, and later get her to circus. Um, so I mean, I, I really don't have a lot of time. Um, and so when I look at that big task list, the honest,

the honesty comes in with, well i got two choices i can skip the shower which isn't going to make anyone who needs to be around me for the rest of the day happy or um i i can i can just say you know none of this is going to get done today yeah and be okay with that that's a lot better than saying a bunch of it's going to get done and being mad at yourself at the end of the day. Exactly. And also it's better than knowing or it's the honesty of I couldn't do it is far better than the honesty of I wanted to but failed.

Yeah. No, that's absolutely true and so often we're dishonest with ourself about this stuff right yeah all the time you know it's like i have a big thing i tell people like i plan my day the night before because the morning version of me is a well-intentioned jerk because he thinks i can do everything i like that the morning me is a well-intentioned jerk because he thinks I can do everything. I like that. The morning me is a well-intentioned jerk. Is that before or after the coffee?

Yeah, it doesn't matter. I jump out of bed. I'm ready to go, baby. And I'll take on the world. You know, I mean, I'm going to cure cancer. And then I'm going to, you know, it's like, and then you get the end of the day. Of course, you're like, oh, what happened? So I find that figuring that stuff out at night when I'm tired gives me a more realistic plan for the next day. But we all got to figure out our own little hacks around this stuff.

Well, yeah. Yeah. And in general, so we haven't gotten into the actual tools and methods and everything else. I'm sure people just love to hear that stuff because they think it's somehow going to solve their life. Then the dirty little secret is that everybody has to come up with their own way on their own. I mean, it's nice to see how other people do it and to get some ideas and suggestions, but at the end of the day, those aren't going to work for you. What is going to work for you is the thing that you came up with yourself.

The reason that's going to work for you is because it fits with who you are and the way that you think. And so you're not doing someone else's deal. You've got to do the work. That's what it comes at. Yeah. So for me, it's index cards. I have an index card that I used to use one a day. that I used to use one a day.

And then at the end of the day, kind of had the ritual of tearing it in half and putting it in the recycling. But I don't do that any longer because I'm scared of running out of the index cards that I use because they're no longer available. All right, so we just made fun of tools, but we got to talk about this because you have a sickness here patrick i do all right tell the story all right so so okay so here's the deal um

aaron mankey uh who is a fairly well-known podcaster, has a podcast called Lore that became kind of a hit, so much of a hit that, like, there were a couple of seasons of an Amazon Prime show made out of it and the whole nine yards. But before Aaron became famous, Aaron was a graphic designer.

became famous, Aaron was a graphic designer. And Aaron designed this line of paper products that he called frictionless. He had like a paper pad, but he made these index cards. And these index cards are nice and they're thick. That's what they sound like when you flick them. are nice and they're thick. That's what they sound like when you flick them. They're nice and thick and they take index or they take a fountain pen ink very well. And they're great. The only problem is, is that as Lorb started to rise in fame, he realized I'm not going to be doing this graphic design thing anymore because now I'm a Hollywood producer.

And so he killed that business. And you cannot get these cards any longer. And so I bought a whole bunch when he said he was going to close up shop. I've got maybe about, I'm going to guess somewhere between 800 and 1,000 of these things left. And I'm absolutely petrified of running out of them ever. So I want these to last for the rest of my life. Okay, and these are cards that have, if my memory serves, they've got a red stripe on the top right corner, right? Yeah, so they're kind of red and gray at the top and and and bottom um and then they've got a a grid uh pattern for the uh for the lines a very small micro grid

pattern and i like them for uh lots and lots of reasons i, I think Patrick, I have at least one pack of those in my garage. And oh my gosh, I find them. I'm sending them to you. If you have them, well, then I am going to have to send you in return something that you really, really love and enjoy and would find valuable.

And I'm sure that's probably star Wars related. So give that or a Selmer mark six saxophone that would work too oh there you go i didn't know you played the side all right okay sorry i went to see we said tools and tricks but you know we can't we all have our weaknesses right so you've got you've got your bespoke note card so what goes on there is it like just a list of items you're going to do, or is it notes for the day? Yes. Uh, yes to both. So, um, in general, uh, I will put, you know, a little dash cause I, I have a, uh, you know, a system I call the dash plus system. It really was developed for processing meeting notes post facto, but I also use it for tasks. So generally, I look at the giant list or I'll just kind of know off the top of my head.

Maybe those things aren't on the giant list. Maybe there's other things that popped up that I'm like, yeah, I need to get that done today. And I will mark them on the card, um, put them down. Um, in general, I keep that card, uh, next to my, uh, next to my computer, um, somewhere, whether if I'm at the dining room table, I've got it out sitting next to it. If I'm up at my desk, my desk. Uggmonk makes a productivity system called Analog. And as part of that, there's this very beautiful index card holder that also allows you to prop an index card up vertically so it stands up and stares in your face. And so I've got just the holder for that, uh, up at my desk where I literally have this thing kind of just like next to my computer, always looking at me,

always trying to capture my attention to say, Hey, do me, do me. Um, but I also then like throughout the day, maybe I'm, uh, you know, maybe one of my tasks is to, I don't know, call our energy company and pay the heating bill. And after I take out the second mortgage by calling the bank first to be able to pay that bill, I will like write down the confirmation number that they give you to, you know. So if there's any question about, oh, we didn't get the payment, I can say, no, I called and I talked to this person and here was my confirmation number. So I will use it as kind of a scratch pad as well throughout the day. But generally I do that on the reverse side of the card. So one side has all the tasks and such, and on the reverse is like a scratch pad. And like I said, I used to, at the end of every day, rip it up and be done with it. But now I kind of just add tasks

until there's no room on one side to add tasks or add notes until there's no room on that side to add notes. And that's when I'll change out the card. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to help you build your online presence and run your business. From websites and online stores

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can handle this themselves even if they've never built a website before. And I even use Squarespace for my personal projects as well because even though I know how to do all that stuff, I don't really want to have to worry about it. I just want to focus on making the content. And that's what Squarespace allows me to do. So head to squarespace.com slash focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D for a free trial right now with no credit card required. You can build your entire site, see exactly what it would look like when you launch it, but you don't have to pay a dime. When you are ready to launch, you can use that offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash focused. And when you decide to sign up, use the offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to get 10% off your first purchase.

And show your support for the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So with all the talk about the analog tools, I got very excited. You mentioned fountain pens. Maybe we'll put a pin in that for now. But what I really want...

That would be a whole other show. We should go on Brad Dowdy's show to talk about that. Yeah. I am curious, though, about the Dash Plus system, which I believe you came up with this. I heard about it from you first anyways, and the stuff that I found on it is fairly old. I know my friend Joe Buelig uses it to this day.

Is that still something that you do, or how has that changed for you? Yeah, no, I use Dash Plus all the time. Like I said, how I notate my task list. So let's say that I have an Envis card that I fill up with tasks, and there's no more room for any more. And so I pull out a new one. Well, any of those, despite the fact that I don't actually keep these index cards, I still, um, will use dash plush to mark up those, those various items, uh, on that are left undone on that card as i transfer them to the new one right so i transfer the undone items to this to this new one right um and then i take the old card and i throw it away but um here's the other thing i i um i I should say, Dash Plus is not, people go to it looking for, like, some productivity system, and it really wasn't designed for that specifically.

What it was was this. work, jobby job with a client or whatever, would take notes. I tend to take notes in outline style and my bullet points, as it were, always were a dash, right? And so I would, you know, someone would say something, I'd take a note, dash, you know, Mark said, blah, blah, blah, you know, or dash need to do this or dash, you know, here's, here's, uh, you know, here's a important note I need to know. Right. But then, you know, so I would, you know, walk out of the meeting, you know, with my notebook and look at all these bullet points and it would all just kind of become a blur to me. Um, you know, and I found myself kind of become a blur to me. You know, and I found myself kind of losing tasks and important notes and things like that were somewhere in those notes and trying to find what was what was really difficult and trying to, more importantly, capture like where those things needed

to go. Like the task shouldn't just stay in the notebook as part of the meeting notes. The task should go into a task list without actually going to like, here's all the things I have to do. You know, the important notes shouldn't just necessarily stay in the notebook, right? It maybe it's an important note that should be go somewhere else, right? Somewhere else where I'm going to see it when I need to see it. So dash plus was, So Dash Plus was, I came up with it as a way to take those dashes and to make them helpful. So that when I scanned through that page, I could easily pick out, okay, these are the tasks. These are the notes.

These are the, you know, these are the things that I'm going to defer for a later time or that we've decided to defer for a later time. Here's the things that I'm going to hand off to somebody else or that I need to hand off to somebody else. So it really was post-meeting, here's how I make sense of all this stuff. Real quickly, do you mind if we just kind of talk through the system? And I want to make sure I'm describing this right. So you're taking notes in a meeting, let's say, and just like in Markdown, you have a dash which converts to a bullet list.

That's essentially what you're doing in the meeting. And then after you have that dash, there are different things that you can do with that dash that indicate different states. So just the regular dash is it's undone. You put another dash vertically. That is an action item that's done. And this is on your website. So we'll put a link to this in the show notes.

Yes. You put a forward arrow on the right side of the dash. That's waiting. Left side of the dash arrow that's delegated. You make it into a little triangle that's data point and then when you circle it you move or you carry it forward to a to another list and i think this is pretty brilliant in its simplicity and it doesn't require you to decide when you're taking the bullets themselves what that information is

you're just capturing it and then you're figuring it out what is this thing really later is that accurate that is accurate yes and um so the only part of that that i would use say for my daily for my task list is just the dash and the plus right and that's well i wouldn't say that that's really not correct is it because if i do take a note on the back side of the card i will put the you know i'll it'll become a dash data point right or like you know if it's uh you know something that's waiting on something else i'll put it like an arrow next to it so yeah i guess i do use fair chunks of the dash plus system on the cards themselves i'm lying to myself okay there we go thank you um so um but uh but the other way it comes into play is i also keep um a daily log so um i have a Hobonichi Techo, um, you know, diary, um, Japanese diary. Um,

once again, fountain pen friendly, Tomoe River paper. It's very, very thin yet. It takes a fountain pen beautifully with no bleed through. It's great. Um, uh, I'm sure they'll link to it in the show notes, but get them at JetPens, uh, in the U S that's probably the best for the U S place to get them. Otherwise they ship from Japan. All of that is to say that, um, my task lists are the things I have to do. My daily log is the things that actually got done. My calendar is also the things that I have to do. My calendar is also the things that I have to do. Those also end up in my daily log.

And you're thinking to yourself, well, why do you, why? It's like you're keeping those things in two places. Well, part of it is because number one, like I said, these index cards are ultimately disposable. Number two, it's nice to kind of have, you know, everything I actually did, if that makes sense. Because even on the calendar, sometimes a meeting will get canceled. I won't actually remove it from the calendar sometimes. But in my daily log, you know, it won't be there, right? So when I finish a task or a meeting, like right after we get off of this, I'm going to write on my, you know, in my daily log, you know, 10 AM, because it was 10 AM my time when we started recording this 10 AM focus

podcast with David and Mike. Right. And so I can go back to any day in the past. Let's see. I started doing that before the Hobonichis, any day in the past 17 years and tell you exactly what got done on that day. Wow. Including what I made for dinner and including how I slept the night before. That's pretty incredible. So I want to dig into that a little bit. When you're tracking what you made for dinner and how you slept and things like that, do you have some sort of shorthand system that you're doing with this? Or is this just

a standard note? Once again, Dash Plus. So you went through kind of the main dash plus things that i used when i originally created it for meeting note notes i have since add added a few symbols that i turn those dashes into um one of them is a diary or thought um which is an asterisk basically i draw an x through the dash and kind of turn it into an into an asterisk and and this is linked on the the dash plus page to like these other things that i have done and so generally like something like the sleep or the dinner is a asterisk in my daily log and these are just observations. You're not trying to look for trends with sleep or anything like that, right? Um, I do have, uh, uh, there, there was certainly a time, uh, in my life where I was, I was

actually trying to track my sleep for better sleep purposes. Uh, and, uh, that was great. Um, and then we bought a bed that does that for me. Um, so, so then, um, uh, but I, I still kept up the habit just because it's, it's just nice to know, uh, because how I slept the night before is going to affect the rest of that day. right? And so one of the things I could say is, you know, if I look back, say, at, let's see, random page, 26, Wednesday the 26th of 2014, you know, I can say, oh, actually, I got a lot done that day. But let's say I didn't. Let's say I didn't get a lot done. I could say, well, that's because I didn't sleep well up early because of the dogs. And that tells you everything you need to know about, oh, okay, that's why there's not a lot done.

I don't know. that tells you everything you need to know about like, oh, okay, that's why there's not a lot done, right? I don't know. It's just one of those little things I make note of and got in the habit of it and still do. Well, I'm fascinated by the topic of sleep tracking. Shared what we talked a little bit about it in the last episode, but I was diagnosed with epilepsy the summer before my freshman year of college.

Oh, wow. And one of the things that triggers a seizure is not getting enough sleep. Yeah. I have been tracking my sleep very diligently for a very long time because if I don't sleep well or don't sleep enough, I better not drive that day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes. Right?

And I have a sleep number bed for what it's worth. And the one that we got a couple of years ago has, it tracks your sleep, which is pretty fancy. But what I find interesting, and we could, oh, there's a whole other deep dive. What I find interesting is that we could, oh, this is a whole other deep dive. What I find interesting is that there are more times than not when I myself feel like I didn't get good sleep, that the bed gives me a high score. And vice versa, where I get a low score from the bed,

but I feel like I slept pretty well. And I suppose if you really are interested in sleep tracking, that's a very interesting data point. And that would be another benefit of not just letting the bed do it, but actually, you know, because it's not just about like how you slept, it's also about how you feel like you slept. So what do you do with that sort of information? Then is there anything actionable that comes from that not really i'm sorry i i want to get nerdy about it but it's not um i guess you know i i guess only like i said there was a time in my life where i wasn't getting very good sleep and i actually saw um i actually know somebody who is a sleep specialist. It's what she does.

Like, and, and so I met with her a few times and it helped her to give me suggestions. Knowing I had, I came with all this data of like, okay, you know, here's what's going on in my life.

And here's, you know, didn't sleep well here, didn't sleep well there. Here's when I, you know, oh, the night before I went to bed at X or the night before I did this or I ate dinner here, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, and try to understand why it was, what the real cause behind my not sleeping well was. Which, you know, turned out just to be I had a very stressful time in my life right then. And it was no surprise I wasn't sleeping well, but go figure. And it's just like, I know this comes up on our show once in a while, but I feel like we don't talk about it enough. It's like getting enough sleep is the foundation of anything, of any focus.

Like if you are suffering from a lack of sleep, your day is burned. And I know, Patrick, you have a feedback loop. You know, you write down what you're going to do. Then at the end of the day, you have a list of what happens. So you see the results and you can score yourself. You know, I mean, I don't know if that's the term you would use but we i do the same thing i have a way of checking at the end of the day to see how i did and i can guarantee you when i don't have enough sleep the night before it's going to be a bad day and yeah it doesn't take like three or four nights

of bad sleep it takes one night of bad sleep for me and um you know anybody listening you know you want to get focused the first thing you need to do is get eight hours of sleep or however many hours your body needs yeah yeah yeah um and you know just it sounds simple, but it works, right? Get to bed earlier. You know, turn off the computer an hour beforehand or any screen. Don't look at any screen. Paper books. That's where it's at. You know, if you really want to get some good rest.

You know, not eating late at night. You know, not eating late at night, you know, uh, you know, eat, eat earlier. I mean, just it, you know, this is not rocket science. It's just stuff that oftentimes we find difficult to do or we're lazy about it or, you know, that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, most of it is solved by very simple changes in behavior. Yeah. And the flip side of it is you don't have to wake up as early. I mean, I know some folks have jobs where they've got to be somewhere at a certain time, but if you have, if you have control over that and you're just somebody who stays up until midnight, then plan on sleeping until eight, there's nothing wrong with that. When I see these books, they're like,

if I wake up at 5.30, I am going to conquer the world. I think they're really insidious, right? Because they only tell half the story. They're like, oh, yeah, waking up at 5.30 means you're going to be better than everybody else in the world. And that's if you go to bed at nine. Exactly. They never say that, though. And that's if you go to bed at nine. Exactly. They never say that though. Um, and I'm not that person. I, I'm, I'm very much a night owl. I do just about every piece of writing that's of any consequence that you've seen for me

has happened somewhere between midnight and 2am. Um, that's, that's my, like when everyone else is in bed and the house is quiet and the dogs are asleep and I'm, you know, and I'm not hearing the traffic outside. I mean, that's, that's when my juices start to get flowing. Right. And oftentimes that's why I'm not getting good sleep is because my writing brain decides to turn on just about to hit the pillow. And now it's ready to go.

It's like, oh, now we're getting started. And I can't turn it off. And so I got to get up and get it out of my head. Well, I don't envy you there. Because I feel like that would make it really hard if that's your best time. I can't string a sentence together after 9 p.m. The whole world is engineered around people who get their work done in the morning. It's hard if your prime time is in the middle of the night.

It is. Unfortunately, I don't do as much of that anymore because the dog and the kid, I am woken up at 7 o'clock regardless of when i get to bed yeah you know the dogs the dogs are ready to get outside and and uh we've got three dogs and there's kind of one one dog that is the time keeper and she will start pacing and you can hear her nails on the hardwood floors go click click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And then she'll start like dancing around.

And it's like, okay, I'm getting up. I got to let her out. It's always a ring later. No kidding. That's especially true. This episode of focused is brought to you by Ahrefs. Improve your website's SEO performance and get more traffic from search. To learn more, click the link in our show notes.

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your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content, and discover how making changes can blow up your traffic, which could do a lot for your business. This stuff isn't dark science. You can figure it out with Ahrefs at your back. It's time you started getting Google to work for your business. Go to ahrefs.com slash webmaster tools to get the free tool now or click the link in the show notes. That's hrefs.com slash webmaster dash tools and our thanks to hrefs for their support of the focus podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, mise en place. Patrick, what does that mean to you? All right.

Misen plus. Patrick, what does that mean to you? Well, you know, it is that traditional thing in the kitchen, right? And I experienced this just last night. Made this recipe from our local food co-op. It was in their newsletter. It was really, really good. Oh, it's so good.

It's definitely one of those that you are happy to stumble upon and uh and you know it add to your regular rotation um but uh you know i was thinking about being on the show and i was thinking about like like the idea of mise en place is this for anyone who doesn't know and is not familiar with cooking, especially French cooking. And that basically is having everything in its place, like having everything prepped and prepared and whatnot, and in this place before you start cooking, preferably in the order that you're going to use them, you know, arranged nicely, ready to go. And the reason why that is important, and this is something I don't do enough, but when I do manage to do it, when I do remember to do it, I'm just like, why don't I do

this all the time? It's one of those I kick myself about it. So, you know, this was one of those recipes that, you know, had a fair bit of prep, right? Chopped yellow onions and chopped mushrooms and chopped carrots and some red chard and some polenta that you cook on the stove while you're, you know, making this basically kind of vegetable stir fry sort of thing to go over the polenta. So good. And so it's really helpful in those situations to have like everything, all that prep done so that you can focus on cooking, right? So that you can, you know, put the onions in, in the carrots and cook those and not be distracted by, oh, shoot, I need to put in the mushrooms yet. Next, let me chop them. No, they're already chopped and they're there. They're waiting, right? You can focus on the cooking, right? And that's the whole purpose behind it. It's not just so that you're, you know, a nice organized person, you know, sort of thing that doing all that prep, organized person, you know, sort of thing that doing all that prep, all that organization ahead of time, lining things up so that you have everything where it needs to be when it needs

to be there is to help you focus on the task at hand, which is cooking. And not only that, it makes the product better because when you've got a hot oven and you need the carrots to go in at a certain time, you need to know where the carrots are. Yeah. And they need to be ready in the form that you need them in. Yeah. Because having a carrot sitting there is not going to help you. What is going to help you is having the carrots sliced, you know, as they're supposed to be for the dish and and then have that to put in agreed right and i do this uh you know i and you know here's how the other direction this took me as i was

thinking about this while cooking not really focusing apparently on on cooking the carrots but no i could cook the carrots and you can just make this great meal and it was fantastic let me tell you um while also letting my mind kind of wander off in this other direction, thinking about it after the fact. And that is that I do kind of a similar thing with my tools at the house that I'm restoring called knolling, where, you know, basically knolling is taking your tools and kind of laying them out neatly and well-organized, you know, on a table, right, for instance, or on a desk or, you know, on a workbench in my particular case, right, and just having everything nicely organized so that

you know, you know, you don't have to dig through a bunch of stuff to find the Phillips screwdriver. Boom, it's right there. You don't have to dig through a bunch of stuff to find the jigsaw. Boom, it's right there. You see it. Everything is neat and organized and laid out. And sure, in the process of working and whatnot, I'll just throw things back and it'll create some big mess or some big pile or whatever. But before I start the next job or even at the end of the job I'm working on, I do try to then go back and renoil everything. But once again, I do that so that I spend less time searching and more time focusing. Does that affect your ability to work? Like if things are messy, do you find it harder to do the work? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was saying earlier when kind of I think before we started recording, we were having a little chitchat. I was saying that I hadn't been up at my at my desk in a while.

I've been working downstairs. Do you want to know why that is? So my desk was a mess. I haven't dealt with it. And so, um, uh, so yeah, I, I came up here to be able to record the podcast. So I, you know, you didn't have three dogs, uh, you know, scooting around and hearing in the background or whatever and, uh, found, Oh shoot. Yeah. Well, you know, my, my keyboard's out of battery is, is my track pad and I, Oh, shoot. Yeah, well, you know, my keyboard's out of battery. This is my trackpad.

Oh, this is a new machine. I haven't connected them to the Bluetooth on this machine, so now I've got a pair of them now that I've, you know, given them some power. All of that, right? And that caused me to be late, right? It caused me to be a few minutes late calling in because I was having to deal with not having any of that stuff already prepared. You know, like my dad made furniture.

That was his passion. And I grew up at his elbow. Of course, whatever your dad's interested in, you are. So he taught me from a very early age about the principle of laying your tools out and always having things very clean because you know we're in a room where you could lose a finger so make sure everything is right and i really i've carried that throughout my life and it applies to my workspace when i was a lawyer other lawyers would walk in my office and say either you don't have any clients or, you know,

like, where is everything? Cause most lawyers you walk in their office, there's boxes everywhere. And I, I just, my office was always clean. And, and I wonder sometimes, is that a good thing for me? Or is that like a sickness where like, I, cause I like literally can't work in a messy room and I'm not sure, but, but I'm with you. Yeah. Well with you yeah well and i you know i i really do need to have you know so uh you know one of one of my problems one of my issues um that people know about is that uh uh while i'm kind of a minimalist who's generally needs things pretty organized and that sort of thing, my wife is kind of the exact opposite of that, as is my daughter. They are maximalists who actually work better when there's piles and piles and piles and piles of stuff around unorganized. But they could tell you exactly where anything is in those piles, let me tell you.

Patrick, why is it people like you and me always marry people like that? Well, because they need our help. Or maybe we need their help. I don't know. No, seriously. I love them both, obviously. And I've been with my wife now 17 years, and I'm still just as smitten with her as the day I met her. But, you know, this is a difference between us. And it just doesn't bother her, right?

Like the clutter, the mess, like, you know, she's perfectly comfortable in the middle of it and can work just fine. Me, I'm just overwhelmed by it, just being amongst it. So kind of how it's become is the third floor has almost become like her domain, and I've been relegated to somewhere less messy. somewhere less messy. Um, so, um, so yeah, uh, the bottom line of it is that, um, it's a focus issue, right? You know, this title of the podcast, I'm going to keep bringing it back there. Right. You know, that for my, for me to be able to focus on the task at hand, I need to have all the things I need for said task in a well laid out, organized fashion. Now you talked about yourself being a minimalist. Um, you wrote a book years ago called enough. Yes. Tell us about that. Oh yeah. It's been a while. Um, and I've actually slowly been

working on, uh, I don't want to say a followup to to it, but certainly taking it and applying it to particular struggles within my life. Enough is really about, I guess the way I like to describe it is enough is the journey that may bring you to minimalism, but maybe not. Right? Because what is enough for my wife, for instance, is much different than what is enough for me. Right? And so we're all on our own journey with enough. So a lot of people kind of lump enough the book and the idea and me into this kind of minimalist category. And I try to pull it away from that and say, no, this is how, this is about ideas and tools

that you might be able to use to get there if that's where you want to go and uh i read that book years ago when you released it and i thought it was a really good job and um oh thank you and and the thing i like about it is it kind of gives you a framework for thinking about this stuff yeah and um i think that you know kind of getting back to the idea that everybody has to figure out their own journey, I think that really helps. Yeah. Well, and I think that there's a lot of folks and a lot of people that will tell you this is the way that you need to be or to live. And I am certainly not one of those people.

I really think that everybody's got their own jam. And I think that's one of the ways, you know, you said, well, how, how do guys like us end up marrying people, you know, who are kind of the opposite of us in these sorts of areas. And the, I think the way that, that I've come to understand and accept and appreciate even that is I've come to appreciate that how I like to work and how I like to, what works for me doesn't necessarily work for everybody else. And that what works for my wife works for her for particular reasons. And works very well. particular reasons, um, and works very well. I mean, she's, you know, she is, I mean, you know,

no shame. I mean, she, she's, she's incredibly, um, busy and gifted and smart and in demand. Um, and, uh, I mean, and she, you know, she makes way more money than I do. Um, uh, at least until we sell this house that I'm fixing up. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, is, is the clutter affecting her in any adverse way? No. Does it, you know, does her, you know, not focusing on dealing with that, allow her free up her focus on a million other things that I can't even fathom having to juggle? Yes. Yes, it does. Great.

She found her enough. Good for her. You know what I mean? That's an interesting way of talking about it i think with mise en place specifically it's the kind of thing where i probably tend a little bit more towards the maximalist scale if that's a spectrum yes yes it is uh and so i remember reading a book about mise en place and buying into the idea because it was written in a way that like most productivity books are here is the system and if you do these three things in this order your life will be perfect exponentially better and uh i think i implement it in some areas but definitely not as a general practice

and i was getting discouraged as like well why am I having so much trouble getting this to stick for me? And I feel like this even ties into the self-loathing that you were talking about. You can think of yourself as, well, I'm just not a very good person because I can't even practice this. And if there's one takeaway I think that people should attach to, it's that you have to figure this stuff out for yourself and there's no shame in trying something and not having it work for you right and and even even more importantly there's no shame in accepting that this is just who you are and that maybe your desire to be this other way or to be the like this person or that person or whatever is distracting you from

and filling you with more shame and giving you more work and giving you, you know, giving you putting, you know, putting tasks on your list that are not supposed to be there because they're not who you are. And the quicker we can embrace, be comfortable with, but more importantly, you know, stick a line in the, you know, stake in the ground and line in the sand and say, no, this is me. And this is just, this is what works and I'm going to be okay with that. Right? No productivity book in the world is going to tell you who you are. I think that's a great place to end. Patrick, I want to thank you for coming on.

I know you've been a busy guy lately and taking time to come on our show. I really appreciate it. For me, it's just a joy having you back on a podcast and hearing what you're up to. We've got a bunch of links in the show notes, everything ranging from home remodels to books about enough to circuses. So I think if people want to keep up with Patrick, they can, and including your blog, too. So anybody that wants to learn more from Patrick, i encourage you to go check out these links um patrick do you do you do any social media stuff i don't know that you do yeah yeah yeah you know i'm i'm on twitter that's right you i used to get all these pictures of you and your nice suits you used to do you don't do that as much anymore yeah i'm on instagram i

you know both of those things i've i've kind things I've kind of taken a step back from. I don't post as much anywhere anymore as far as those are concerned. And a good chunk of what you might find on Twitter you'll also find on my blog, but not necessarily like, oh, he just posts links to his blog. No. Actually, my blog is kind of a micro blog and so i tend to post short 280 character or less things there as well as longer posts as well as pictures and occasionally only occasionally those short posts i will cross post to twitter for, because I feel like it would be a good place for them to be also.

Well, we are going to put links to all that in the show notes. Everybody go check that out on deep focus today. I know that the topic of fancy paper and pens came up. Mike Schmitz has been sitting on his hands rocking for the last hour. So we're going to talk about that in Deep Focus today. But we are the Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm. We want to thank our sponsors today,

and that's our friends at Indeed, Squarespace, and Ahrefs. And we'll see you next time.