Focused - 147: Task Management & Focus

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

David & Mike revisit the topic of task management to talk about Mike's Obsidian task management experiment and their (very different) use of checklists.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I am fighting a little bit of a cold, so my voice probably sounds a little bit funny. But other than that, I'm doing good and excited to jump into task management. Yeah, I think it's an interesting topic. It comes up a lot on the tech podcasts I make,

but I think there's a focus angle to it, and I know you've been making a lot of changes, and I just wanted to kind of go over that today. Is that all right? Yeah, actually, this was something I've been itching to talk to you about since I mentioned back in episode 143. I believe that I had not been using a task manager for the last couple of years and was kind of ashamed to admit that because that was kind of a big tipping point in my productivity journey.

And it was surprising to me that I had gone away from it. And I had to wrestle with that, whether that was okay or not. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was okay. But you also said you were going to Tribe City and I made a prediction. So I want to hear how that's going. Yes. But, you know, task management, I mean, aren't all focused people, don't they have a big pile of tasks that are very specifically organized and indexed? I mean, that's the thing, right? Well, that's what I always thought until that wasn't what I was doing. Yeah.

the right approach for some people. I think you kind of have to figure out the system that works for you. There isn't one tried and true, this will work for everybody thing, which is kind of the beauty of the topic in my opinion. But as I said, it was surprising to me because it was such a big point in my productivity journey. I mean, that's how I got into doing all of the things that I do now and how I eventually got connected with you was I can trace it all back to a point where I was overwhelmed with too much to do at the office and was trying to just squeeze out a little bit of extra time with my family and read GTD and downloaded OmniFocus because I wanted a way to become just a little bit more efficient to carve out a little bit of time for the things that were important to me. And it worked for a season, but then it snowballed and I've kind of come full circle now and having trouble reconciling this. Hopefully

you can act as a little bit of a therapist for me today. Okay. Well, first thing I'm going to tell you, Mike, is it's okay. It's okay. I really think that task management is a topic that really every person has to address individually. You can't copy somebody else. You've just got to decide what works for you. And it's relative to your obligations and responsibilities. Like when you had the day job, you had a bunch of things to keep track of that you no longer have to keep track of. When I was a law student, I had my task management system was literally a napkin. Every morning I'd have a cup of tea and I'd write down three things on the napkin

and I would get them done by the time I went to bed. And at that point in my life, all I had to do was study law. I didn't have any, I wasn't married. I didn't have any kids. I didn't have any outside obligations. I had to pay my rent once a month. And, you know, I just almost had nothing in my life except this one thing. And that made it super easy to have a simple task system. And that worked great for me, you know, but then, you know, fast forward and I've got kids and wives and social commitments. And, um, you know, I, uh, I had, you know, up until last month, I had like 150 clients and I had all this stuff going on. And I needed real big boy or big girl task management in order to keep track of it.

I mean, the index point to me is, are you getting the things done that you need to on time and without failure? If you're dropping the ball on things, then your task management system is probably not giving you what you need. But if you're able to meet your deadlines and do everything, then whatever system you're using is probably okay. Yeah, and that's the scary thing is if you're not dropping the balls, you are probably fine. I agree with that in principle, but the thought of dropping an important ball absolutely terrifies me. I don't want to be in the point where someone has to point

that out to me. I want to make sure that I'm, and this is probably just the people pleaser part in me. I want to make sure that I can take care of everything everybody wants me to do. But you can't take that approach either. So kind of where I've landed on this is that I'm going to do my very best and I'm trying to become more mindful. You are definitely a voice in my head during this whole process and just making sure that things are not bigger in my head than they really need to be. And a big impact in that has been the last couple of years because you don't want to drop any balls, but then all of a sudden COVID happens and all of the balls just got chucked to the side and no one was catching any of them anymore. Everything got reset. We did a whole episode about that and nobody was productive. Everything got reset. We did a whole episode about that. And nobody was productive.

Everything was harder than it used to be. And so it was an opportunity to kind of reset things and relook at things and redetermine the expectations and the rules of engagement with things. And that's when I started messing around with the analog stuff. I thought to myself, if there was ever a time when the pen and paper would work for me, it would be the time when I never have to leave my house. It's always right there with me. I don't need to do anything in the phone or the computer because my notebook is always going to be within a few feet of me. And I had heard lots of people talk about the joys of the analog system, and I was curious to try to share the story about how I met you and Brad at San Francisco

and determined right there that when I got back into town, I was going to go into that Anderson Penn store that Brad was raving about. And that was the beginning of a slippery slope. And that ended up in this hybrid system that I've been using for quite a while. And that hybrid system was great, but I noticed something with that too over time was that I've got a whole bunch of extra things that I was tracking in different places because everybody wants to use a different system for the team or the organization that they're in. And I was condensing all that down into a single place.

And over time, I just stopped condensing it so much and just started working off of a very simple list. And the extra stuff that I thought was necessary. I all got to get this all in one place so I can see everything. I found out that wasn't really necessary. And I'm a little bit worried because I've kind of let that go. And it seems fine. But like I said, I've always got this thing in the back of my mind that I don't want to be the person who's dropping the ball and makes everything break. the back of my mind that I don't want to be the person who's dropping the ball and makes everything break. Yeah. I mean, I just experienced that this week. As I'm going to talk about later in the show,

I'm doing some experiments with checklists outside of OmniFocus. And there was an episode of Automators that I have a checklist item that OmniFocus tells me to upload things. And I, it didn't, didn't trigger. Cause I, I put it in Obsidian trying to be clever and I didn't really set it up right. And I totally forgot to upload files and our editor, you know, had a little last minute crisis because I hadn't done my job. So I dropped the ball on him. And, um, so that, that's where you have to be cognizant of this stuff. And it happens, right? I think, you know, the thing that you have to do when you make a mistake is, you know, be a little forgiving on yourself, it happens, but then say, Okay, what did I learn from this? How do I make sure that doesn't happen again, you know, and that's kind of what it's all

about. Finding a way to, all about, finding the right balance. But the flip side of it is making your job become a project manager or task manager and not actually doing the job. And that's a risk that people get into as well. I would say, though, if you're worried about that, that you do some time tracking. Because I generally find, even with a fairly complex task management system, I spend very little time in it overall. I mean, it takes a little while to figure out the system. But once you have the system in place, it kind of runs itself. And I do think that this idea that, oh, all I'm doing is managing tasks often isn't true, even if you perceive it as true. When I started time tracking, I thought that I was

spending too much time in task management. I realized I was spending like 30 minutes a day. But 30 minutes a day for the payoff of not dropping the ball and getting the right things done is, to me, an easy investment of time. Agreed. That's the sharpening the saw piece for sure. And I time track every minute of my workday. We've talked about that in a previous episode and that's provided a lot of insight for me. I think that's honestly the key to holding this simple task management system together for me is that I do have that to fall back on. I can see I put in the work, so I know things are getting done.

But when it comes to what I'm actually doing for task management in a day, I'm messing around with some of the Obsidian stuff. We'll talk about that later. But what has been working for me is just a simple checklist. I've got actually now these note cards. We talked about this in Deep Focus not too long ago. We talked to Patrick Rohn and he sent me on a rabbit trail looking for fountain pen friendly index cards. And I finally found some. So I'm using those with my Ugmonk analog. And I pick five tasks at most that I put on that card. And I just work off of that checklist. And that is completely fine. I don't need to see, oh, this is the thing that I should be doing the minute that I switch

into this context or arrive in this location. I really enjoy just having a simple list staring at me all day, but it doesn't feel like a big burden. And I know if you're really managing your tasks inside one of those digital tools and you know everything is in its proper place and that's the advantage of the computer is it can surface the right thing to do at the right time for you, except in your case, you know, when it doesn't, maybe human error, maybe something broke. I don't know if it's an update, whatever. But the simple list is actually the thing that has allowed me to disconnect from that worry about what I'm supposed to be doing and engage with the task at hand. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of it, man.

It really isn't that hard. You want a task management system that is complex enough to take care of what you're doing in your life and no more complex than that. Additional complexity is not the job. But if additional features make the job easier, then why not? You know, and, uh, and I, I really think that it's, it's really like that. I, I, I hear from so many people because I've been using OmniFocus so long and I've done the field guides on it. And I, I get emails from people all the time and, and usually the, a lot of them are complaints about, um, OmniFocus, right?

Because I did a field guide and they're like, well, I don't like that app because... And usually the because is not the software's fault. It's usually because they haven't learned to say no. I mean, they're like, well, I don't like this app because I see these 10,000 tasks. Well, the problem isn't the software. You know, the software didn't add 10,000 tasks. You did. Sure. I was thinking about that too, because part of any task management system is the ability to see what you got done. And I understand the compulsion to break things down

into the tiniest little component parts. You reduce the friction that way. So when you have low energy, you're in the right place, you can take at least one step in the right direction on whatever it is that you want to do. But I was thinking about that. And I think for myself, part of breaking it down into all those steps was I liked to see a huge long list of things that I got done. And then I started doing personal retreats. And then I read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. Yeah. And that book kind of rocked my world because this is a productivity person who has kind of gone against the grain with a lot of the productivity advice because it's very stoic, memento mori, you're not here

for very long, nothing that you do matters. And that sounds kind of depressing when you just say it like that. But the underlying idea there is this cosmic insignificance theory, which is actually very freeing. You don't have the pressure to produce something all the time. And after I wrestled through that, I realized that that actually was the impact it had on me. I am not what I do. And that is actually a very good thing. Somebody said once, I think it was Albert Einstein, that not everything that counts

can be counted. And that kind of got me thinking about tracking the things that I get done and the number of things that I check off or even the quality of the things that I check off in a given day, that doesn't really matter. That's not a good barometer of whether today was a success. And I've started doing some other things like the daily questions and the journaling to help measure whether I'm moving the needle in the appropriate areas. Yeah. No, I agree. I've never been a devout follower of GTD. And I understand why David Allen came up with that idea of saying, you know, break it to its component pieces. But for a lot of things, I don't do that. take those steps where I feel like I need, I don't really, it's something new and I'm not really sure what I'm doing and I'll take the time to break it down. So I know what the steps are, but even like

field guides is a good example. That is like some of the most important work I do. And there are no tasks for it in OmniFocus, except like if there's a customer support question or something like that. The actual production process, I know what I need to do when I sit down to make one. I have an outline that I work from. I have an air table that I use with my editor and I have screen flow and I work and there's, there's just no, it's like, I don't say, well, I finished video 8.3 and 8.4 today. So I'm going to go check that off. I, I, they don't exist in my list, you know? Um, and so I think we all kind of find our own balance with this stuff. Um, just this morning I had a thing where the

insurance lady wanted, uh, the car mileage from the cars, you know, cause the insurance company doesn't believe that we don't drive anymore, but we, we really don't drive anymore. And so I, um, went out and I had to go take pictures of the odometers and all the cars. And like, I could see breaking that down into like a six item task. Right. But instead I just got the car keys and went outside and took pictures and emailed them to her and it never got into the task system. So I do think there, you know, I do think if, you there is a temptation to make all of this stuff so literal and it doesn't have to be. Does that make sense? It does.

It reminds me of Occam's razor, the simplest solution is the best solution. Simplest solution being the amount of structure that you need to follow through and take your intended action without unnecessary detail. Yeah. Or like when I had a client, a legal client had a bad lease and he wanted to get out of it and the landlord wasn't really letting him out. And they had a really weird clause about when he has to give notice to avoid the lease renewing right it had to be done like within 30 days like 90 days before the renewal period like so like if i don't remind him to do that he's stuck there for another five years right so i need a task management system that's going to handle that for me that's different than you know getting the mileage in the car and and everybody is somewhere on that

spectrum and i think if you want to leave lead a focused life there's a good chance you do need a task management system but the question is what more structure is just, do you feel like you don't have clarity on the things that you need to do? And I feel that long before I actually drop the ball. But that's kind of the barometer for me. If I start to feel stressed out that I'm constantly scanning for things that I might have forgotten, it means that I probably don't have enough structure, haven't spent enough effort planning those things. And also I've got some major changes to my work life happening now, which are going to require a little bit more structure. So I know that's coming and I'm trying to set up a system that will accommodate that without getting in the way too much because I do find that I am, I work better without the rigid constraints. Mike, I think you're okay, you know, but I do have some thoughts, you know, you remember during Antenna Gate with Steve Jobs and Apple, where if you held the iPhone 4 wrong, the signal

died. And he famously wrote one of the customers complaining. He says, well, you're holding it wrong. That was like the worst email he wrote in his life. But I'm going to say it anyway. You're holding it wrong. I think with task management, people treat it too much as a list of things that they have to do today. I like to think of task management systems as like this bank of things that I'm going to do at some point in my life. I don't even think in terms of a week or a month or a year. But this is the stuff that I've decided is important enough that I want to do that. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do them today.

And there are a lot of really great task managers out there. I always talk about OmniFocus because that's the one I use, but there are a lot of great task managers out there that let you slice and dice that information to just give you what you need to see today, whether it's through perspectives or flags or tags or whatever. And I think that people who put stress on themselves over the number of things in their task management system are holding it wrong. I mean, you just got to look at it as a whole list of things that, you know, you think are worthy of doing. And maybe you'll look at that list and do reviews and decide, well, this thing isn't worth doing anymore. I'm going to delete that or archive it or whatever. But I don't feel any stress over the size of my database in a task manager. Where I feel stress or where I create stress for myself

is when I block my day, that I want to get certain things done in the day. But the task manager informs that, but it's not driving that. I think there's a distinction in my head between a checklist of things that I want to get done today and then all of the projects with the actions that need to be done at some point. And I think that's the thing that obviously is going to reduce the number of tasks that I am managing if I'm just looking at the hit list for today. But that also requires that you've got notes of all of the things that need to be done at some point in that project list. And really the thing that got me thinking about this was when I was going through the Linking Your Thinking workshop with Dick Milo and I saw somebody walk through their Obsidian setup and they were running several companies and several nonprofits and they were managing everything that they were doing every single day from Obsidian.

And it kind of blew my mind. And Obsidian actually has come a long way since then. So I kind of couldn't believe that they were able to do that, to be honest. But that seed was planted in my head at that point where I've got this note in Obsidian, which has all the project information. And yeah, tasks are part of that, but so is a whole bunch of other stuff, a whole bunch of random notes and ideas and thoughts on whatever, diagrams, images, files. And I really like the idea of keeping all of that project stuff together. But I don't need any of that when it's time to sit down and work today. And so for me, I've kind of made that distinction and I totally get it. There are lots of great apps that can combine those. But for me, it's

actually really helpful to say, okay, I've looked at the projects every so often. I know these are being taken care of. But now I'm just going to set all of that aside and not think about that at all anymore and just focus on this list of five or less things that I'm going to do today, no matter how busy or free my day happens to be. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. If you're ready to turn a passion into profit, you'll need the right team to make it happen.

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sites combined, according to Talent Nest. So start hiring right now with a free $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. This offer is valid through March 31st. Go to indeed.com slash focused to claim your $75 credit before March 31st indeed.com slash focused terms and conditions apply need to hire. You need indeed our thanks to indeed for their support of the focus podcast and all of relay FM. All right. So several episodes ago, you said you were going to do this experiment with Obsidian and I predicted success. Tell me, how's it going and what are you doing?

Yeah, it's going well. And I want to just frame this a little bit by saying that I discovered some plugins that could do some things with test management that I never thought I would be able to do in Obsidian. So I kind of written this off completely, to be honest, until I looked again and saw a couple specific plugins that allowed me to do repeating tasks, attach start dates to my tasks, and also, I'm not sure I'm going to use this one, but the ability to trigger system-level notifications.

So I can actually get, if I'm sitting at my Mac, a notification from macOS that it is time to do something based on a time trigger inside of Obsidian, which is pretty cool. But what I really wanted to do with this was build this task list for the day inside of my daily notes. Daily notes have become important for me in Obsidian,

but mainly from a journaling perspective. So if I open up my daily note for today, the stuff that's been there forever has been the daily questions. I've talked about that before, just grading myself on my effort in the different areas that I'm trying to move the needle in. And then I've got separate sections for learnings, journal entries, and gratitude. And I fill out the daily questions piece every single day, and I try to fill out the other sections

every single day, but I don't have an entry. I don't require an entry there every single day. Just as stuff pops up to me, I'll add it with the Quick Add plugin. What's new here is at the top, there is a section called Do Today.

And this brings in a query of everything that I've captured anywhere in Obsidian that is not done, that is due or overdue with today's date. And this is possible because of a plugin called Tasks. This plugin is insane. Have you messed around with this? No, I'm using it. I'm doing some experiments too. I mean, that's what I was thinking about when I told you I thought this was going to work. If you combine the Tasks plugin and the DataView plugin, you can recreate a pretty powerful task manager inside Obsidian. create a lot of a pretty powerful task manager inside obsidian yeah i had looked at this plug-in i think when it was labeled something else uh and it just wasn't quite there but it's come a long

way and uh basically what it allows you to do at any point in anywhere in obsidian you can trigger through the command palette uh this this action to create a task, and it gives you an interface, kind of like OmniFocus Quick Entry, where you put the description, you can put a priority, you can put a recurrence, you can put a due date or a start date. They've also got scheduled dates, and I don't really use that. I use the due date, which is this is the day the thing has to be done. And start dates are basically when it becomes available. The due date is what shows up on the daily note. But I'm intrigued by the start dates because there are a lot of things that you can't do

until a certain time, but they're not due at a specific time. until a certain time, but they're not due at a specific time. For example, winter in Wisconsin, snow, ice, all that kind of stuff. I have to do certain things around my house, but it basically just needs to be done before the first snowfall. So typically, I'll put a start date, like October. You start doing certain things in order to turn off the faucets outside, put the hoses away, things like that. And that's something that doesn't have a drop dead due date, but I would put a start date and it's really kind of cool that I can do that kind of stuff inside of Obsidian.

And then you can use the queries, that's the other part of this, to pull in all of this different metadata and show you only the tasks that you want to see. Now, that sounds pretty average, I guess, because task managers have been doing that for a long time. But I think it's kind of amazing that it can do that inside of Obsidian because my database is probably hundreds of thousands of notes at this point. And I've got videos and images in here too. So it's like gigabytes worth of data that it is sorting through and displaying in a query with no lag. It just shows up.

And the ability to slice this stuff any way that you want and have it embedded with within all of the other project stuff i think this is this is really really cool yeah um the uh just to kind of explain a little bit more it's a you know obsidian is a markdown based text editor so every file in obsidian is essentially a markdown file. Now, Mike also has video files and things, but the operative documents are text files or markdown files. And so the way the Tasks plugin works is you have a syntax you put into the task, you know.

And, like, one of them for me is I have to hit pound task, and now Tasks will consider it a task. If I don't put that on it, it doesn't show up as a task. But then they have, I think it's an airplane taking off emoji followed by a date. Well, that's the start date. And so they've got their own little simple syntax they've made to give you things like start, repeat, do. And then you can search that. And I use the DataView plugin,

which is another very powerful plugin that can look at different types of data and combine it. And the way I use it is it gives me things that are tasks that are within specific folders so like if I add tasks to the Mac Sparky folder which has all the Mark Sparky related markdown files in it it'll it'll sort those for me separately and show me the ones that are available now you know have start dates now or I can do the same thing with just the podcast folder and that was the reason for my big failure with jim last week is i didn't mark the upload the files as task and that then they didn't show up on my task list you know and if i had done it in omni focus

everything in omni focus is task it would have shown up and so that's me thinking okay is this am i going to be able to put this kind of data here? Or, you know, was that a failure of software or a failure of the operator, you know, kind of thing. But you can very easily kind of build your own system. And then there are a lot of ways to slice and dice and get the list that just you need to see. So it's really impressive. I mean, especially when you consider it's a folder full of Markdown files. There really isn't an overlaying task management software here. It's just some clever plugins people have written in their free time. Which is a strength, but also a weakness, like you said, because you hit on an important detail with the tasks plugin in Obsidian.

What it does is it applies a global filter, it's called, and it takes everything that has this tag is considered a task, and so that will show up in the queries. And I have mine set to to-do. So if I tag something with to-do, it shows up as a task. But if you don't have the tag, then it just shows up as a checklist item because checklists and tasks in Obsidian use the same markdown formatting. It's the dash, space, left bracket, space, right bracket. And so that can get you in trouble if you're trying to roll your own

solution. So you can see why this is kind of compounding that fear that I'm going to drop a major ball and disappoint somebody because I do not trust myself as I'm playing with all this and trying to figure it out. Yeah. But it is very appealing. The idea of managing all this stuff in plain text, like you said, folder full of Markdown files, completely future-proof, take it anywhere you want,

you know, always going to have this stuff. That's really appealing. Yeah. And then like, so for me, historically, I've always put,

kept everything in OmniFocus and OmniFocus, one of the things it does very well is URL links to everything, whether it's a perspective, a project, a task, or whatever. So I would just put a link on the Obsidian project page to that specific list in OmniFocus. And then I get the benefits of OmniFocus, the reviews, the quick entry, the better iOS experience, all that. I get all those benefits, but I also have it embedded essentially in my Obsidian page. But, you know, I'm with you. I can see the advantage. Wouldn't it be nice if the tasks were just listed here too?

Yeah. There's also, it depends how far you want to go with this stuff. I mean, a lot of the features in task management systems, you can cobble together, but you got to recognize that you're kind of holding this stuff together with duct tape, like the reviews.

There's actually a very good review plugin, which I find that's valuable, not just for reviewing tasks, but reviewing projects. I mean, yeah, you could create a task in OmniFocus to review a project and link to the project in Obsidian with the linking mechanism that you mentioned. But with the review plugin, you could just say, I want to review this project note every week, every month, and it shows up on your daily note. The daily note is really interesting. If you're not using the daily note inside of Obsidian, I feel like you're missing out on a large part of what the app can really do. And it's kind of a shame, in my opinion,

that it's not built in. You can actually turn it on and off inside of the core plugins. It's not key to the application like it is in Roam Research or LogSeek. And I feel like the opportunity to turn that off actually can limit a lot of the power in Obsidian, not just for task management, but for journaling and anything date-related. But if you take a little bit of time to set it up and you couple it with that calendar plugin so you can jump to whatever daily note you want, it can do a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds to me like you're leaning towards making this your system. I am, although I still am kind of torn here between what qualifies as tasks and what do I want to just keep as projects or notes or things because, for example, I have messed around with another plugin I shared with you about taking all these tasks

and displaying them in Kanban boards. It didn't quite click for me. Some date formatting inconsistencies kind of prevented that from happening. But I've been using the Kanban plugin for a long time to manage my writing projects. And I intend to do that even though those cards don't show up in the queries inside of the tasks plugin. For me, I know when these need to be delivered and published. I don't need a reminder on a date, hey, this is due today. I also don't need a reminder like, hey, it's time to start working on these.

These are just constantly top of mind for me. I'm not worried about these. I don't feel like these are going to fall working on these. These are just constantly top of mind for me. I'm not worried about these. I don't feel like these are going to fall through the cracks. I know when I sit down to write or create, these are the projects that I'm working on. And I like having that Kanban view where I can see these are all the things that I'm working on. These are all the things that I got done. This is what's sitting in the backlog, ready for me to work on next. And so that is disconnected. And again, kind of had to wrestle through, are these tasks? Are these projects? And kind of where I landed is these are more like projects than they are tasks. And so for me, they just don't need to be inside of that

task-based system. So again, I don't think I'm going to end up with a ton of tasks inside of Obsidian, but I love the way that these plugins can work together. And I also like the ability to have these checklists of tasks inside the project notes themselves for something that would require more complexity. I don't need a checklist of all the different things I need to do when I record a podcast or write an article. I've done these enough before that I don't need that level of structure, but I can totally see where if there's something new I'm going to be

working on, I'm going to want to sit down and plan it all out. And I intend to do all that inside of Obsidian, add the tasks there, and then use the task plugin and the queries to surface those when I need to see them. Yeah, see for me, and we're going to talk about checklists in a minute, but to me, I have a checklist on podcasts because I don't want to forget to email the file to Jim, you know, that, that kind of stuff I just need to keep track of. And it's, it's not there because I don't know how to do it, but it's there because I've got other people I'm working with and I don't want to drop the ball. So it really depends. But I do think that these new emerging text editors, you know, on steroids can work as another contender as your task manager.

And I think this is great. And how does this fit in with your, you know, kind of your resolution toward paper? Well, the idea is that this is going, and I say the idea because I feel like I'm still in the testing phase of this because I don't have a ton of stuff in there yet. So I feel like I really haven't put it through the paces and can prove that it's going to work yet. But the idea is that check the daily note at the beginning of the day, and that shows me everything that I need to do today. That's what ends up on the index card that I'm staring at the rest of the day. So it kind of shows me the things that I need to do.

I've also got my calendar that I'm looking at for meetings and things. So I don't have a task to record this podcast today because we have a calendar event to record this podcast. And that ends up on the note card as well. So I feel like this is going to be supplemental to the things that already are on the calendar that I already have to do. They're ending up on that note card. This will just add a few other things that are time sensitive that I need to be staring at. And I'm going to use that as part of my planning process at the beginning of the day.

And then after that, I don't need the query anymore. I can also capture things in the daily log, assign due dates, whatever. One of the queries you could do is you can find everything that doesn't have a due date. So if something falls through the cracks, I can go look at a note that's showing me everything that doesn't have a due date. And then I can go through there and I can fix all that stuff and make sure that those do have due dates, start dates, whatever, like all the necessary information that you would need to, like in OmniFocus, you have to assign certain, there's a setting where you can assign certain metadata

and then it cleans it up out of your inbox. That's kind of what I'm going for. But again, I'm still kind of kicking the tires with this. I haven't done anything with the DataView plugin yet because I haven't needed the complexity. I'm really intrigued by that and I intend to play with that, but I haven't done anything with it yet. With respect to, because I knew we were going to talk about this today, so I've been doing some experiments as well, and

the tasks plugin, I think there's like, I guess we're going to come back to checklists, but I think there's certainly a place for it in my life with checklists. But in terms of using it as a proper task manager, some of the friction points I saw was quick capture is really not that quick compared to a tool like OmniFocus. Another thing that stood out to me is I often like to put a lot of notes on tasks. Like if somebody sends me an email, maybe I'll put a paragraph of text from the email related to the task or a link to the email, which you can do with a task. You can just designate it as a task and make it really long, but it's super ugly and not really kind of made for that. How do you handle like additional metadata and things with the tasks you're adding through the system i just intend

to use links for that sort of stuff i haven't gotten to the point where i've linked emails i did that back in the day with roam research though via a keyboard maestro macro so if i get to the point where i need to manage a bunch of email related tasks. That's how I intend to do it. And then for anything that requires more information, I'll just create a new note for it. For whatever reason, the plain text files, my brain has just clicked that these are really small and it doesn't matter how many of these I have. I resisted that at the beginning, but then when I was forced to kind of let go of the way I had been doing the block references in Rome and just embrace this atomic notes idea in the obsidian where everything should be broken down into its smallest component part, the minute I got past that, the sky was the limit in terms of the number of notes I was going to drop in there. So even if it's something temporary, I'll create a new note as a scratch pad, even jot a whole bunch of stuff down there

and then delete it when I'm done with it if I don't want it anymore. Yeah, and linking emails does work. I tested it, it's fine. You can put a URL link to an email and you can jump back to the email. But if you want to do more than that, it gets a little wonky.

But yeah, no, I'm with you, Mike. I think this can work. And just to report in for me, I'm still a big fan of OmniFocus, although I do see the benefit of what you're doing. The scotch tape and chewing gum element of it makes me a little nervous and I have enough varied responsibilities. I'm not sure if I'm at a simple enough level that this could be enough for me. And also, frankly, these things are evolving so fast. OmniFocus is getting a new version and these plugins are evolving. Not to mention, there's a rich assortment of really good task managers also separately developing out there. So I'm not really sure where I stand on

this. I suspect that I'm going to be looking at a lot of options over the next year because I don't have 150 clients and I don't have a lease that needs to be given notice on the 2nd of November 2026 anymore. So that may give me more options, but I'm not sure where I stand with it all. However, the analog stuff has rubbed off on me a little bit. I did buy a set of the analog cards after we did that interview.

And every day, you know, whether it's coming out of Obsidian or OmniFocus or Reminders or whatever, and that's one thing I didn't mention, the Apple Reminders app is getting really good. But wherever you get the list from, writing down, you know, three to 10 things a day and putting it on a physical card that's on my desk that I see all day, I find that super worth it. You know, I know it's extra work to write it down after it's already in my digital system, but I do it almost every day. And, and I think it helps me. Agreed. And I think we'll get into that in the next section here when we start talking about checklists. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Timing, the intelligent time tracking app

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is telling me. So timing was the first thing that allowed me to get an accurate picture of how I was spending my time. And it gave me a couple of really important insights. Number one, it showed me that I wasn't really as productive as I thought I was. I wasn't working as much as I thought I was. And the other thing that it showed me is that as a creative, I can't put in eight hours of creative work every single day. My sweet spot is about four hours for writing or creating. And once I understood that, now I can start to make some improvements and I can build upon that. But I had to figure out my own baseline first and timing helped me do that. And the way it helped me do that is just running effortlessly in the background, just watching

what I was doing and giving me a real picture of how I was spending my time. You can't argue with the numbers when they're staring you in the face. So if you want to take control of how you spend your time and improve your own productivity, want to take control of how you spend your time and improve your own productivity, download the free 14-day trial today by going to timingapp.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, and you'll save 10% when you subscribe. That's timingapp.com slash focused to try timing for free and save 10% when you subscribe. Our thanks to Timing for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So we've been talking about tasks. We haven't really been talking about checklists. We've been really cute about it so far in the episode. But I think both of us kind of see checklists

as different than task lists. Do you agree? Well, I think so. When I think of checklists, I think of like a hit list. These are things that need to get done right now. And you could take the approach of today's tasks. That's a checklist essentially for me. But then task list is essentially a library of all of the other things that need to get done at some point. of all of the other things that need to get done at some point.

And it's totally fine to have those in different places like we talked about, whether it's a task manager, project files inside of Obsidian, which I think is how it's going to land for me. But this concept of making a short list of things so you don't mess anything up, I feel like this is really powerful and this could be

applied to the tasks that you need to do today, but really just anything that you need to do where you need to make sure that you follow through in a specific way when the stakes are high. Yeah, I think that second category is where I really lean into checklists. It's not necessarily that I need to know that I need to do this. It's just I need to keep myself honest with some projects. And checklists for me often involve projects that have other people in them. Yep, definitely. So there's a couple different types of checklists, which we'll get to in a second here. But I think that you should look for opportunities to use these. And again, the flag for me, you should look for opportunities to use these.

And again, the flag for me, like you should really be thinking about making a list right now is when I start to feel a little bit anxious about maybe I'm forgetting to do something. So example, packing to take a trip. For whatever reason, that freaks me out. I'm always scared that I'm going to get there and I'm going to forget something. And every time before I travel, I think to myself, I don't need a checklist.

This is simple. I've done this hundreds of times. I just can grab the stuff. But I always feel much better when I sit down and make a list of the things that I need to grab and then check them off as I put them in the suitcase. Yeah, but you don't want to be standing up to speak and say,

oh, HDMI adapter is still in the drawer at home. Exactly, exactly. But the thing that really interests me about these checklists is how and why do they work? I read a book a long time ago called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Are you familiar with this book? Yeah, I read the book as well. He's a surgeon. Really good book. Yep. Very, very smart. And the gist of the book is that there were a lot of really smart people in a lot of different industries who thought, I'm smart enough, I don't need to write all this stuff down. And every single time that they wrote things down, they got significantly better in what they did. good checklist. And I think this is important because I think I've fallen into the camp where I've made checklists and haven't really benefited from them because I've made them the wrong way.

And so I wanted to review these real quickly. He says in the book that checklists cannot be long. that checklists cannot be long. Ideally, they are between five and nine items. And that was interesting to me because I've definitely made a lot of checklists a lot longer than that. And I think that's not saying that you can't make a long checklist, but just if you want this really to provide maximum value

or you want to set yourself up to not miss the checklist, this is kind of the thing that you should be aware of is that it's not so long that you look at it and you instantly think this is a huge burden because then your brain goes into that, well, I know what to do. You don't need this and just trust me mode. Another thing is that a checklist can't have too much information. And this is kind of interesting as I'm thinking about how this applies to my task management, because you were talking about an OmniFocus. You can have all the notes and things.

The tasks that I have on my card, I just write a couple of words. And that's all I need in order to follow through with them. But I understand why you might want to have a whole bunch of supporting materials associated with a checklist of things. I'm trying to wrestle through this myself, like when I would want that and when I want to just keep it simple. And that kind of gets into the two different types of checklists and kind of the project management stuff that you were talking about earlier. But the checklist also should only remind you of the critical steps. So as I've been thinking about this, I've mentioned moving the needle a couple of times. I've really been thinking about that episode that we did

on moving the needle and how this applies to my task management system. And I feel like a checklist really is best suited for critical steps in needle moving work. And I guess the phrase I came up with was stuff that moves the needle for the needle moving work. That's the thing you want to put on the checklist. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not sure about that for me. Moving the needlework often doesn't have any checklist or task list associated with it. The actual production, I have a pretty good idea of what to do. It's more like the little nitty details that I need checklists for.

Sure. And that gets into the two different types. You know, there's the redo checklist, which is like a recipe. And then there's the do confirm checklist, which this I think gets into team collaboration and project management. So what you're describing, correct me if I'm wrong here, but a list of things that you want to make sure you don't forget, that would be a redo checklist. I have to do these and I'm going to go to the checklist, find the thing and then check it off. Right. And then the other one is interesting to me. I read the book a long time ago and when I reviewed the notes from it, this one I've been wrestling with a little bit because it kind of seems to invalidate the

checklist from a productivity perspective. Why would you just do something and then come back to a checklist and check it off? But I also have to admit that over the years of using a task manager, I'm definitely guilty of that. So it's kind of freeing to hear Atul Gawande say, well, actually, that's a valid way

to approach a checklist too. You know, again, and I'm going to keep saying this, this stuff doesn't take that long if you set up systems for it. I'm a big fan of checklists. And this is where I find Obsidian may replace OmniFocus for me. Because historically, I would run a script that would create a new project in OmniFocus for a new podcast. Well, I've got a page in Obsidian with all the notes of the show, the links to the various documents, the guest links, everything on one page. And the checklist is really kind of a, you know, I think it's almost a redo and do confirm. It's just something as we're heading towards publish date, I want to make sure I've taken

care of everything and checked all the boxes. And it's trivial to make one of these lists inside an Obsidian note as part of an automation scheme. So I make these checklists and I don't even make them as tasks. You know, I don't flag them as tasks. And that got me in trouble this week. You know, I've been talking about this failure I had a few days ago. So what I've done is I've changed the template where the upload files is now listed as a task.

And so now that shows up on the radar in the system in Obsidian. But I find the idea of checklists related to projects much easier than kind of a traditional task management system. Does that make sense? It does. I'm kind of curious where you draw the line between complex project management, figuring out all of the details so you have all this stuff in your task management system and then creating the list

when it's time to actually do the things. Maybe you have it all in there on the front end. And I think that's a valid approach. You just capture everything that you possibly will ever need for whatever project you're working on. And then you can use the computer to surface whatever you need to see at any given moment. But I also think maybe there's a version of this that works where you've got enough structure for the projects, which is really anything that has more than a single step, right?

So we have all these things in our Obsidian or OmniFocus databases that we maybe haven't completely thought through. And I guess I lean a little bit more towards the checklist process is so powerful that that's okay when it's time to actually sit down and do this thing. If I make the checklist,

and I do it the right way, I will make sure that I do the necessary items and nothing's going to, going to fall through the cracks because that's ultimately the, the goal, right? Is that none of the balls get dropped. Yeah, agreed. And I'm not sure where the lines are drawn either because this stuff is evolving so quickly. I'm not sure where I'm going to land with it. I'm experimenting and, um, and I guess that's why you and I are excited about it. It's always fun to experiment and try new tools, but, but my general impression is this is powerful and it can do a lot, but it's also a little bit squirrely, you know, because it's not like

an application that has a full-time development staff on making task manager, you know? So, yeah, uh, yeah, I'm not sure where i land with all that to tell you the truth but but i do like the idea of checklists and um and i know you've got some other checklist software you're using as well yeah i've been very excited about uh the the whole idea of checklists recently and uh i've been making them for all sorts of things. And one of the things I realized as I was preparing for this show today is that a lot of the teams that I'm a part of, a lot of the organizations that I work with, even the stuff we do for our church, they all have these different ways of getting things done. And in the past, I would have been responsible for creating all of these tasks ways of getting things done. And in the past, I would have been responsible for

creating all of these tasks inside of my single task manager. And I would have been the only person who was managing my tasks that way. Everybody else just kind of knew what they needed to do, or they were working out of email. But times have changed. And every team I'm a part of Times have changed. And every team I'm a part of wants to use their own platform. And I felt this pressure of trying to get all that stuff into a single task manager or a single list. And I gave up trying to do that. I gave up trying to bring all of this into a single database.

And I've embraced that we're all going to use these different tools, and when I'm doing this thing, I'm in Notion, and when I'm doing this other thing, I'm in ClickUp, and when I'm doing this other thing, I'm in Asana. And I've kind of leaned into that as a form of context switching,

which I think is going to work. Yeah, I have similar demands on me where the Max Barkey team is on Basecamp and then some of the work I do with people is in Slack. And I've got different things that I do, even though I don't do client work anymore. I've got the Relay folks and the Max Barkey folks

and the Field Guide people. So I've got all these different people I'm working with. And the way I've solved for that problem is not making a combined list because that's just busy work. But as part of my shutdown routine is I check the various inputs. I know that I need to hit all of those at the end of the day once just to check in. And that seems to work for me. for me. And that I think is the trick. You got to make sure that you check all of the inboxes. And an argument could be made to bring those inboxes into a single place. I think it kind of depends on the person. But I used to be that way. I wanted everything in one central location where I could just look at it all. But when it comes to the things that I need to do specifically for work, I'm fine using whatever tool this team wants to use. And I just embrace it as a mode shift. I'm leaving doing this one thing and I'm

going to go do this other thing now. And back in the day, I used to go from coffee shop to coffee shop and I would use that time in the car as like a reset and go to a co-working space. And every time I would take a five to 10 minute drive, I would use that time to get ready to go into the next mode, the next task that I was going to be working on. And I'm not physically changing locations, but using different browsers even for different teams and different projects. browsers even for different teams and different projects, that's helpful to me. It gauges my brain. It sounds stupid to say it. You're just switching an application. It takes no time at all. But it does kind of get me primed into, okay, I'm going to be doing this other thing now. I totally agree. And it's just a question of finding the right fit for you. I mean,

I keep saying that today, but like everything we do on this show, the way we do it isn't necessarily the way you do it. And I think the important takeaway here is that ask the right questions to make the right decisions for yourself. I mean, maybe the napkin in the morning with three items on it is enough for you and bless you if that's the case. But if you need more complexity, there are so many gradients now. There are so many ways to do this. complex system, don't discount making a simple checklist on the back of the napkin. Because whatever you have handy, just to jot a few things down and get it out of your head, I found that to be extremely helpful. And when I get done and I look at it, sometimes I'm like, this is so simple. How can it provide that much relief? But it really does help. It brings the clarity and it allows me to be intentional and engaged with whatever I'm trying to do next. Yeah, that's one of the biggest changes since I released the OmniFocus Field Guide is the

addition of these note cards. And to me, it's kind of like where the rubber hits the road. It's like the stuff that I write down on that card are the contracts that I'm making. That's the things I'm going to actually get done today and block time for. And while I don't mind having a lot of tasks uncompleted in my system, because that's just the way it works, if I routinely see tasks not getting checked off on that card, then I need to like think about what's going on. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Shopify. Grow your business with Shopify and start your 14-day free trial. Just go to shopify.com slash focused in lowercase.

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Go to Shopify.com slash focused right now. That URL, one more time, Shopify.com slash focused. And remember, that's all lowercase. Our thanks to Shopify for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So David, you have something new and shiny. I got an email about it this morning. I'm very intrigued. So Rosemary Orchard was using this thing called the Rocketbook. And we talked about the remarkable and why I felt like it just wasn't for me. And at that price point of like $600, it was just too much. But I did kind of get interested in this. And the Rocketbook is like an analog and digital combined device. It's a physical notebook with paper in it. I think it's got about 20 pages. And it comes with a Pilot frictionless pin,

which is a special pin from Pilot that the ink will erase with heat. So you can erase it by rubbing it or you can take a wet cloth and rub it, or you can even with some versions, stick it in the microwave, but you write in it like a notebook. So to begin with, it's just an analog notebook. The microwave one is the one that I had backed on Kickstarter. Oh, you have one. You have one of these. Well, I have that one and I gave up on it a long time ago because I did not, I just could not put a notebook in the microwave. Yeah, but

just in all fairness, Mike, you backed it. So, I mean, that's true. It's true. I did. Yep. All fairness, Mike, you backed it. So, I mean. That's true. It's true. I did. Yep. I'm assuming it's come a long way since then.

Yeah. So, the one I have is you just, I think the best way to erase it is just take a wet cloth and rub it. And I've used it for a week now. The parts of it that I didn't mention earlier is there's a couple of nice features. Because there's an app that goes with it. And, like, on each page there are symbols. is there's a couple of nice features because there's an app that goes with it. And like on each page, there are symbols. And if you circle or put an X on the symbol, that's like a code to the software to do something with it. Like if I, if I X this box, then automatically email it to my email address or put it in Dropbox or put it in iCloud. So, you know, all the usual suspects are there. So you can automate

the process of digitally capturing it. Another thing they've done that I think is clever is each page has a black border around it. So when you scan it with the phone, you always get a really good scan because, you know, one of the problems with scanning is figuring out where the borders are. And by putting a black border around a white page, the software always gets it a hundred percent. And so that there's some real benefits there. And like if you're a student or if you go to a lot of meetings and you don't want to use an iPad, which for some people is disruptive, this thing can do that job. And it's also obviously not running on battery. So you don't have to worry about whether or not it's charged and then you can very easily digitally capture it. So I've been playing with it for a week and I see a lot of benefit in it, but I'm not sure,

you know, I'm too early to like to render judgment, but I'm not in love with it after a week. I mean, it's good, but the paper is very shiny. It's almost like writing on glass because it's a weird texture to the paper. You've got to use these pins, which, you know, I don't, they're fine pins, but I'm not sure I'm into that. And, you know, I'd like to, when I journal and stuff, I like to use my nice fountain pen on nice paper. I like the feeling of it. And I can scan that very easily with decent scanning software. So I'm just not sure if the benefits outweigh the detriments of

using specialized paper and specialized pens. But it's an interesting device and it costs like 30 bucks to get into it. So it's much less of an investment if you're interested in like an easily digital capture physical notebook it is clever and it it sounds like it's a lot better than when i looked at it when i used it i don't think they had the option to wipe it you had to put it in the microwave yeah it's crazy but yeah yeah i still don't think it's for me i'm i'm too invested in my fancy pens to have to use that frictionless pen because i the version i had came with that too it's it's fine i mean it's it's better than a stylus on a piece of glass but it's uh definitely not a fountain pen you're not gonna trick your brain into thinking this is a really nice writing

experience but you are gonna to get some benefits. The Black Borders is really clever. I had never even thought about that for scanning. But yeah, that would be a big help. Well, I'll tell you, it's closer to a stylus on glass than it is to a fountain pen on paper. I mean, it really doesn't feel like a normal writing experience. But the iPhone has a good camera in it, so the scan is really good. The OCR did not work for me really at all, but that's because I write in block caps.

And so anytime you write in block caps, OCR is going to think everything is a capital letter. And I don't blame the software. It's just the defective way that I write. But I think if you wrote with lowercase, it would probably do a pretty good job. I did some tests and it worked better with lowercase. I don't know. I think it's actually something worth trying. If I don't stick with it, I think I'm going to give it to my daughter who is in class all the time.

And I think this would be a great backup for her. And she could use it in class and take notes and do whatever she wants with it. But I'm kind of leaning towards, like you, doing all my writing on my nice notebook with my nice pen and just shooting a picture of it. But I do digitally capture almost everything I write down at this point. Nice. How about you? You've got something weird. I need to hear the story of this.

Nice. How about you? You've got something weird. I need to hear the story of this. So there is a product called the Light Phone that I have purchased for my teenager. I'm trying to think how I want to frame this. The Light Phone is basically a phone that is designed to be used as little as possible. And I will start by saying that I am seriously considering getting one of these for myself as well. So we got this one kind of as an experiment because he's getting to the point where he's got to be places and we need to be able to get in touch with him. But we're not super excited about the idea of giving our kids smartphones because I feel like just content-wise, taking that out of the picture, they need to be in a position where they can handle the distractions. I've struggled with this. My wife has struggled with this. We've talked openly with our kids about this. We've

instituted a whole bunch of policies at home for this. They get it, but giving them a smartphone and then just saying like, here, we trust you just to figure it out, feels kind of like giving them a grenade to play with. No, you know what? I was just talking to a friend about this. You know, social media in a lot of ways is horrible. And like the whole business model is designed at taking advantage of some of our worst instincts.

And when you combine those, that level of, you know, hostility with a teenage brain, you are just asking for so much. I mean, when you look at, you know,

increases in suicide rates and depression, and I have seen people in my own friend and family circles with kids that really got into trouble with these phones. I don't know what I'd do. My kids are in their 20s now. So it's like we kind of dodged the bullet because this stuff wasn't as insidious when they were little. But I don't know what I would do now with a teenager and knowing the kinds of trouble they can get into on phones, even good kids, you know? Yep. Yep. And they are good kids and they've got devices so they can get to this stuff if they really wanted to. But there's just something

about the phone that it's so accessible. So that's kind of where we've decided to draw the line. And the Light Phone is basically this tiny little phone that can make calls, it can receive texts, and it has an e-ink screen. It can also do things like get directions, and it's got a podcast tool and a couple other things, but it doesn't have any apps. So absolutely no social media, no web browser, no streaming music, which I think is the one thing that is a little bit of a downside for this. If it had integration with Spotify or Apple Music, this would be probably perfect for us. But it does everything that I would need to do on a phone, which is why I'm considering it. They actually have a plan where you can get the light phone, you can use it to tether.

And I remember talking to Chris Bailey in his experiment with the iPad mini phone. I'm kind of thinking maybe this can serve that role for me where I can listen. I use Overcast for podcast listening and I really enjoy that app. But if I didn't have that and I could still listen to the podcast that I want to listen to, it wouldn't be a huge downgrade in my opinion. So I'm toying around with the idea. You manage everything on the phone from a web interface, which is kind of clunky. It's not super user-friendly, but it does the job.

And it's not something that makes you angry when you're using it. You go into it with your eyes open because it's an intentional choice. The website, if you go to it, has a little disclaimer, like the cookie things is that the internet can be sketchy. No kidding. You know, like we were talking about and we've watched the social dilemma with our kids. So they kind of understand like how the system is designed to work against them just so they go into it, their eyes open. We're not telling them you can't do this stuff, but we just want them to be aware. Like, don't just give stuff away, right? Because you're just a commodity. No one really cares about your well-being when it comes to this stuff. So you just got to recognize that they don't have your best interests in mind. And what really matters is the here and now, being in the moment.

You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the mindfulness stuff. And for me, it's going a lot deeper than just establishing a mindfulness meditation practice. I'm trying to become more mindful in everything that I do. And it's having a lot of benefits. And I want my kids to experience that as well. So I feel like this is a great tool. kids to experience that as well. So I feel like this is a great tool if somebody is in the same situation that I am. You want to be able to interact and you have kids or loved ones who are in different locations and you need to be able to reach them. This is a tool that will allow you to do that, but then also it's not something that is going to get in the way.

I mean, even if you just struggle with internet or social media addiction, this could be a great tool because it takes all of that out of the picture. It's kind of like if you have trouble eating snacks, like don't keep the cookies in the pantry. That's essentially what this does. He's in the pantry. That's essentially what this does. Yeah. I mean, I totally see it for your son. I'm not sure I would want one of these for myself. I have enough discipline that I don't get lost in the phone and the social media stuff.

And I don't mean that as a bragging point. It's just for whatever reason, I don't, I just don't, I'm too busy with other stuff to get hung up on it. I mean, almost to my detriment, where like, you know, with the Max Barker stuff, it would help me to do more on Instagram and to be more present on Twitter. But I just never seem to find time for it. So it's not really an issue for me.

And I do like the benefits. Like I, I will sit up at night and watch somebody cut a dovetail joint on YouTube in bed. So I don't really want to give that up, but the, um, uh, uh, you know, for kids, it's a, it's a no brainer for me. If you start using one of these personally, I would be interested to hear how that goes. Yeah, well, I'm toying around with the idea of at least trying it myself for a period of time. I know someone on the Blanc Media team, Isaac, actually had a light phone for a while. And he really enjoyed it. And the thing is, if you get the tethering, I've always got my iPad mini with me anyways. If I really wanted to do something, it's not going to prohibit me from doing it. It's just that it's not going to be as accessible.

And I feel like that intentional friction could have a lot of mindfulness benefits. Yeah, yeah. You should try it. Let me know how it goes. The other thing that I would really miss is Siri voice to text, the ability to dictate text. That's true. You are the voice dictation guy. Yeah. It's just not for me, but I get it. And it seems to me like they've done a good job with this hardware, just looking at the page, you know, the idea of, you know, giving people some

of the things they need, but not making it crazy. And with the e-ink screen, it must have a forever battery, right? Well, it's really tiny, so it doesn't last forever. I forget what the battery specs are. We plug it in every night with everything else in our charging station in the kitchen. So it hasn't ever been an issue, and I don't anticipate that it ever would be. I think if you are on calls, it can go down pretty quick. But yeah, the E-Ink screen isn't going to take a lot. All right. Well, let us know. What's your son think of it? Is that his first phone? Yeah, it's his first phone and he loves it. He also has an

iPad. So if he wants to do messages, he can get to people that way. And he's on Discord for some of the stuff that he does. He actually has this thing where he builds these Lego puzzle cubes and actually helped him set up a business. He creates these plans and instructions and sells them online. So he's involved with this community on Discord. And we just talked through and walked through with him. This is the kind of stuff you stay away from. This kind of thing is okay. These people are going to do these things. And when they do that, you just don't get involved. Teaching them how to interact. It's a community that has a lot of guidelines. So it's a safe place, a sandbox as you can play in for that kind of stuff.

But we want to teach them how to handle it the right way. So we know that stuff's going to come up and we're not trying to shelter them completely. We just want them to be able to know what to do when that stuff happens. And we check in with him frequently and talk about things. And I feel good with that kind of stuff. So again, we're not trying to let him be exposed to these things. It's just how accessible it is. We don't want it to be within arm's reach all the time. I agree. With my kids, and like I said, it wasn't as bad when they were young, but you know, we have a flip phone that was in a drawer

and I'm like, look, you know, this, this smartphone is a, is, is a, is a privilege, not a right. And so if you use it in ways that I don't agree with, you're going to get the flip phone, you know, and they knew it was there. And I really feel like that, that was enough of a detriment, the thought of like trying to text their friends when they have to press the three key seven times to get to the L or whatever, you know, I think that probably was enough to keep them out of trouble, but, but I think it's a lot harder now. And I don't envy you for having young kids coming up in this. Let's talk a bit about challenges. We have both been doing some challenges we talked about last time.

My big challenge this year, which has kind of almost become a yearly theme for me, is about being mindful about the changes in my life and the ways of work. And I'm still working on that. I think that's going to be an ongoing challenge for me for the next, next year. But you have a challenge here that I think kind of fits in that theme and is one I think we should both consider doing between now and the next content show.

You want to talk about it? Yeah. Well, a wise man once told me that when you're going through a significant life change, you should use that as an opportunity to re-evaluate all of your habits and routines. So that's exactly what I am doing. my ideal week and the routines that are a part of that. I mentioned some of the work stuff has changed for the last several years. I have been full-time with Blanc Media, but I am actually taking a different position. I'm going to continue to work with the suite setup crew on the side. As a contractor, I absolutely love the team and want to stay connected with them and love the work that we do there and proud of the stuff that we make there. But I'm going to be doing something a little bit different in the realm of business. And so a lot of my work stuff is changing. I have the ability, though, to influence this. And so I want to set the parameters for how my work gets done. And I want to, between this episode and the next one, actually write out my ideal week, take a week calendar every single hour, block it all out like I do in my personal retreat process. I want to do that again. And I know some things are going to look significantly different,

but that's also very exciting to me. I think I've fallen into some ways of doing things which aren't necessarily bad, but I think it could be better. And so anytime that you have the opportunity to put everything under the microscope and you have the ability to move some of the things around, that's an opportunity to really create an atmosphere which is going to severely increase your happiness and joy, I would say. All right. I'm going to commit to the same thing. Are you okay sharing it with me? Yeah. Okay. Let's share them back and forth. And I would say to the audience, why don't you do the same thing between now and the next time we talk about it?

We don't do these challenges on guest shows, obviously. So I don't know if our next show is a guest show or a content show. But it may be two weeks from now or maybe a month from now that we actually report back on this. But we want to both kind of nail down our ideal weeks. We both are going through some change. And if you haven't done it for yourself, this is a great opportunity for you to do it as well. In terms of tools, you could just take a piece of paper or you could go into like a calendar app and just print out a blank page and get a highlighter. There's a lot of ways you could do it. So I'll leave that up to you. But Mike and I are going to share between now and then,

and we'll talk about this on the next episode. In the meantime, we are The Focus Podcast. On the deep focus today, I am considering something kind of drastic. I'm going to share it with Mike, and we're going to talk about it. How's that for a tease? And I want to thank our sponsors today. And that is all of our friends over Indeed, Timing, and Shopify. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D.

We have forums over there at talk.macpowergames.com. There's a special room for the focused folks. And we'll see you next time, gang.