Focused - 150: Optimize for Intentionality

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

David & Mike celebrate episode 150 by talking about focus traps and answering a bunch of listener questions.

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 are you? Show 150. That's a lot of focus. Yeah, it is. Well, I mean, we didn't start out as Focused.

You know, Jason and I started the show about free agency, but it turned into Focused, and I feel like we've got a pretty good run going here. Yeah. I have been reflecting on that journey recently and was scrolling through the list of episodes that we released. And we've had some really cool guests on the show. Yeah. They've all talked to some really cool people. And I'm very excited about some of the guests

we've got coming up as well. 150 episodes in, I don't think we're slowing down or getting ready to stop anytime soon. Yeah, I'm famous for making podcasts that people think have no legs. This is just one more, but I feel like this problem of focus continues to be a problem.

If you're listening, you probably agree. Figuring out how in a very distracting world, continues to be a problem. And if you're listening, you probably agree. But, you know, figuring out how in a very distracting world, how to keep your eye on the ball and do the work that's most important to you is what it's all about. And I feel like I'm going to keep making the show as long as you guys will keep listening to it. So, you know, thanks for listening and being with us on this journey. And, and, uh, I thought it'd be kind of fun to reflect a little bit, uh, just personally, you know, how are we doing? You know, we make a show called focus, but our, how are we doing personally in, uh, keeping our eyes on the ball? You want to go first? This is a tough question to answer. I know. And I put

it in at the last minute too. So you didn't have a lot of time to think about it. That's probably good for me, so I don't overthink it. But my initial reaction to a question like this is a couple different perspectives on it. On the one hand, I feel like having practiced this and being aware of the need for focus and developing my focus muscle, the initial reaction is, I think I'm doing pretty good. But then you also realize the further that you go with this stuff, the more that you know, the more you realize what you don't know. the more you realize what you don't know. It's almost like the better you get at it, the more you realize how much further you have to go,

how much you miss the gold standard in your own head. So it's hard to measure this and give yourself like an objective score on it. And I just want to call that out because anyone else who's on this journey probably feels those two things. One, like I'm doing pretty good. Maybe I don't need this anymore. And then the other thing is, I still have so much more to go. And who am I even to be talking about this because there's still so much that I could grow in. very natural things. And you have to reconcile those in your head and recognize that the fact that you realize how bad you are at it,

that's actually proof that proof of progress. Yeah. And, uh, I, I think that I've personally got a whole bunch of things that I've, I've tweaked and I'm constantly experimenting with my, my day to day and trying to create a little bit more focus.

Um, but I don't think that this is ever going to end. I don't think you can achieve peak focus and say, there, now my journey is complete and all I have to do is work the system that I've created. It's progress, not perfection when it comes to this sort of thing. I really think that focus is kind of a way of life or a state of mind. It's not a destination. You have to, something you have to constantly, you know, babysit.

And I'm with you. You know, you often talk about the gap versus the gain. I feel like I've made a lot of progress personally at getting more focused, but it's also made me much more aware of when I'm not, which is good. You know, I mean, and I don't think the goal is 100% focused. Nobody is capable of that. We're humans, you know, we're barely evolved monkeys. Never forget that. But I do think that, you know, bringing the intentionality to the game can really help.

You know, I was thinking about this show and that idea of sometimes I feel like I come and we do this show and I've got something really important to share. And sometimes I feel like I'm going in to lead an AA meeting, but I'm actively drunk. So it's hard to figure out how any of us can really have all the answers on this, and we don't.

We've said that before. But I do think, in this case, the desire to become more focused is so important that I think that's almost more important than success at becoming focused. I mean, it's the awareness that you need because the world just never stops throwing distraction at you. Just the other day, I went down a black hole of news, you know, and the whole news industry has really perfected the algorithm of getting you upset and getting you in on their, you know, their, uh, whatever their agenda is. And I realized I had just blown a half hour on it. And I'm like, okay, step away, you know, step away from the TV, Mr. And, and I think that's something that I probably wouldn't have realized before we started making this show.

Yeah. I've been going through a book recently called the messy middle And it's a book by Scott Belsky, really talking about when it comes to the typical, like he's the founder or one of the founders of the Behance Network, which got acquired by Adobe when they launched Creative Cloud. So he kind of lives in the startup world. But he mentions that when it comes to these startup journeys, people talk about the beginning where they started with nothing and they like to talk about the end where they reached their goal and they got the acquisition, they got acquired and had the big payday, whatever. But no one talks about how difficult the middle of that journey is. And there's a whole big section in the book on optimize. And there's several different things that go underneath that but one of the things that kind

of stood out to me is that you're always optimizing for something and I think there's a personal application of that as well you can look at how you structure your days or your weeks the things that you do to manage your relationships and try to create the best scenario for yourself and the people that you love. And we're always, even if we're not aware of it, optimizing for something. It could be comfort, it could be ease, it could be an early retirement. But I think the thing that is kind of speaking to me as I'm going through this book and I'm reflecting on 150 episodes of Focus is that there is more reason every single day to optimize your life for focus. And there are lots of opportunities to do so. And that's why I don't like the term life hacks. And I generally don't like the quick productivity tips and things like that. But when it comes to focus, I feel like there's a lot of things that can help a lot of

folks when it comes to that. I mean, we're going to get into some of the questions later on. We're going to do a Q&A for episode 150 here. And we got a bunch of questions about specific scenarios. And really what everybody's trying to do is just get a little bit better, get 1% better in optimizing their life in the area of focus, believing that the intention that they bring to whatever they're doing and being able to be present and in the moment and sync everything that they have into what they're doing, that is going to lead to an increased quality of life. And I think that is absolutely true, no matter what your end goal or what your ideal future looks like.

I find the best thing for me is the days that I, for lack of a better term, optimize for intentionality, right? And it's interesting because this show is considered a productivity podcast, but it's a focus podcast. It's an intentionality podcast. I don't think being at my most productive is what makes me feel the best. I feel the best when I'm most intentional, where every stroke counts, if that makes sense. counts, if that makes sense. And that's the reason why we keep talking about things like meditation and journaling and interstitial journaling and all the things we do, or time tracking even, all the little hacks and tricks that we've developed to help move our monkey

brains from one task to another intentionally and be focused on what we're doing at the moment we're doing it, that's not the fastest way to do some of this stuff. And I think the general thoughts of productivity is that if it's not the fastest way, it's not the most productive way. But I'd like to turn that on its head. And that's the whole reason the show exists. That's why it's called Focused. But I do believe that I'm getting better at that. And more importantly, on days when I'm frazzled, if I stop for a minute and think about it, I know why.

Because I'm optimizing for productivity. I'm optimizing for something other than intentionality. And the moment I step back and set a timer and journal my way into the next task and put everything away and just work on one thing at a time it's like immediately restorative for me that's the weird thing about it is it's not complicated but that doesn't mean it's easy yeah and uh i agree that the the thing that is kind of our rallying cry, and I think this is more and more important and more and more of a noble cause, is pushing back against that standard definition of productivity. You are not the things that you produce. You are not the work that you do.

produce. You are not the work that you do. Your value goes way beyond what you're able to make. And that's the easy thing to attach to and look at and be like, this is what I did. It's harder to measure intention and focus. But if I were to redefine productivity, and focus. But if I were to redefine productivity, that's how I would do it. Productivity is not doing all of these things. It's being able to follow through on the things that you actually want to do. It's being present. It's being mindful. It's being in the moment. And if you're able to do that throughout your day, you've been productive, whether, no matter how many tasks you, you completed. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And, and that's the goal. I mean, that's why we, we do the show. That's why we do the interviews. And, uh, I do, you know, just to follow up, it is a, it is a journey. I have days where I'm really good at it and days

where I'm not so good at it. And I think that that means that we need to keep making the Focus podcast, Mike. Let's do it. Before we move on from this, though, I want to ask you, is there any place specifically that you tend to struggle with Focus? It's difficult for me when I lose track of the fact that I should be optimizing for intentionality. I mean, it's very easy for me when I lose track of the fact that I should be optimizing for intentionality. I mean, it's very easy for me to fall into the trap of trying to be too productive. I think also, it's difficult for me when I don't say no enough. Like this week, as we record this, I did two webinars in two consecutive days with quite a few people in each one. And, you know, that wasn't smart. You know,

how can you be intentional when you're trying to like, you know, run up for two big public speaking appearances on consecutive days? In hindsight, I set myself up there for a problem. But the trick for me is just keeping track of my little tricks that I use to be very intentional about the way I go through my day. And when I do that, I always feel good. And the interesting thing, Mike, it's not about the number of tasks I complete. It's about doing the stuff I chose to do that day and doing it well. And that's like, to me, that's the ideal day. Yeah, I agree.

To me, that's the ideal day. Yeah, I agree. One of the things that I still struggle with, I say struggle, most of the time I don't let it derail me, but almost every single time that I think about time blocking my day for the next day, I hear this little voice in the back of my head saying, you don't really need to do that. Okay. I am able to quiet it most of the time and just follow through and do the thing. this little voice in the back of my head saying, you don't really need to do that.

I am able to quiet it most of the time and just follow through and do the thing every once in a while. At the end of the day, if I really had a long day or I'm just really spent, I don't follow through on that. And every time I do it, I regret it. I go into the next day and I wish I had that plan. Yeah. So I have a similar experience with the shutdown next day and I wish I had that, that plan. Yeah. So I have a similar experience with the shutdown. There's a little voice says, you don't really need to shut down. It's fine.

And then the next day I pay. That's the focus trap. You know, reminds me of that, uh, star Wars scene at Admiral Akbar, right? It's a trap.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is funny. Cause like you learn that and you experience it like routinely you experience how much it costs not to do that. And yet there's a part of you that still thinks you can ditch it. And I don't, I don't really understand it. Like I said earlier, we're barely evolved monkeys. And sometimes you have to just remember that and not let the monkey take over. Yep. The other thing that trap that gets me every once in a while is on the days that I'm not working or I don't have a lot that I need to do. The days that I have some flexibility,

there's a temptation to not try and structure it. And I think there is some value to not being overly rigid with that plan and scheduling every minute of your day. But I also have found that on the weekends specifically, the thing that causes friction in my family is different expectations of how those off days are going to go. So I can get upset because no one else communicated to me about what they wanted to have happen on that day. Or I could just take responsibility and put together my quick version of it and run it by people and be like, is this what you were all thinking? And every time that we do that and we get in alignment, it goes well.

Every time we don't, we get frustrated. Yeah. I'm kind of famous in my family for like on Monday and Tuesday asking my wife and kids, so what's going on this weekend? You know, it's like I ask very innocently, but in my head, I'm planning the weekend already

and I just want to know where I'm expected. Like, I just found out I'm doing a 5K run for a Muppet 5K through Disneyland Sunday morning at 4 a.m. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, I'm going to plan around that. But, yeah, it is trick. It is tricky to stick with it. It is tricky to stick with it. But I do feel like that distinction between productivity and intentionality is one that is an important one.

And I hope that if you're listening, you would give that some thought. Because getting the most widgets cranked, it's in the name of our show. Cranking widgets isn't everything, right? Getting the most widgets cranked really isn't the purpose of all this. And even if you get really good at cranking widgets, but they're the wrong widgets, you're not going to be very happy. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by collide. Endpoint security powered by people.

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email when prompted, you'll get a free Collide gift bundle after trial activation. Our thanks to Collide for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Okay, Mike, we got a bunch of questions from folks knowing that we're coming into show 150. You want to start going through a few of them? Let's do it. So Fernando wrote in,

your thoughts on managing a house move and relocation. I'm moving soon from London to Melbourne and getting my head around it. Have done quite a few moves before, but curious about your approach, tools, processes, and wisdom. Well, I am the wrong person to ask this. I've lived in the same house now since 1996, 95. So, yeah, I don't know. It's been a while since I've moved too, so I'm not sure I've got a whole lot to add to this other than to say that it is going to take significantly more work and time than you think

it is going to. I've moved a handful of times and every single time I recall distinctly that the moment when we're packing up the very last things and I think to myself, this was way harder than I thought it was going to be. Next time I'm not going to get caught off guard. For some reason, I get sucked into that every time. Although at this point, like I said, it's been eight years since we moved. But I would say that, you know, there's that talk about the waterfall method versus the Kanban boards and Scrum, you know, and they say the waterfall method approach to project management, it always ends up going over budget and it takes way longer than you think it's going to. Well, moving is the ultimate waterfall project. Yeah, my wife is a pack rat and I am a minimalist.

So in a way, I'm always like, anytime I open a drawer, I'm like, what is in this drawer that I can throw away or give away? And so that I'm constantly doing that, but my wife isn't. I once joked with her that we should rent a moving van once a year and we should pack the whole house into the moving van and then drive the thing around the block and then unpack it just to force ourselves to, you know, just decide what we really want and get rid of the rest. And she looked at me like she was legitimately going to murder me. So I never brought that up again. But there was a part of me that was kind of like thinking that might be fun. You know, let's really like just pare down.

But yeah. So sorry, Fernando. I don't think we have a lot for you there. Justin and several people wrote in asking about sabbatical updates. What's going on with sabbaticals? I think we got nervous about sabbaticals because we did two or three shows on it and got some complaints. Hey, guys, stop talking about sabbaticals. We've heard enough of this.

But I know people do want to hear about it, too. So, Mike, where do you stand on your sabbatical journey? Oh, that's a great question because we talked a little bit on the show, but I have had a job change recently. So I'm no longer full time with the Blanc Media team. So I don't have them baked into my schedule anymore. So I actually have not had a sabbatical this year, although I sort of built one in the middle of it. It wasn't an official sabbatical, but we took a family trip and then we had our retreat. So I did have some extended time off there in the middle. I still 100% am behind this idea. I have

floated it at the new company, and I think this is what the organization is going to be working towards long term. But at the moment, I don't really have a structure for a regular sabbatical. And unfortunately, I probably don't have the flexibility in my schedule to just implement this on my own anymore. This is an aspirational goal for me. And when I hear the word sabbatical, I'm thinking about it like Sean described it. You take a week off and you don't have a plan and you have this downtime week. It's not a family vacation. It is a sabbatical.

I do have a family vacation on the books for the summer, which I'm really looking forward to, but I haven't got to the point yet. Now, always before my hangup was that I had all these clients and the legal clients have something come up. You got to like deal with it. You can't just ignore it. And because I was solo, I didn't even have like someone I could push it onto. Well, that excuse is gone. But right now I'm in a period of transition. You know, I spent a lot of time getting my law practice wrapped up and now I've spent a lot of time building up new systems around the Max Barkey labs and just the way my life has changed. I turned everything kind of upside down in January. And right now I am still figuring out what that means. Like what are the friction points in this new life? What are the new workflows that I need to have with all the

new kind of thing commitments I've taken on? And I was just telling Mike offline recently that I'm starting to figure that out now. You know, I feel like after a recently that I'm starting to figure that out now. You know, I feel like after a few months, I'm starting to see what are the problems people have? You know, what is the content flow for the labs members and what, you know, all the stuff that I'm kind of figuring out now. And now I feel like I'm getting to the point. I just realized this in the last week that, okay, I'm starting to get my arms around it enough that I can start thinking about automation and delegation. You know, at the beginning, it really had to be me doing all the work because I had

to understand the problem before I could fix it. Well, I'm starting to get my arms around what that means. And so now I'd like to start a process of trying to delegate some of that off. So that was a very long answer to the question. I do see a time in my life where sabbaticals will be a thing I can do. I don't know how often I'll do them, but I really would like to get to that point. I'm not there yet. Right. I think the sabbatical for me is a larger version of the personal retreat, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit later. We get to those questions.

So that's the one that I kind of refuse to compromise on. The sabbatical at this point for me is nice to have, and I would love to get back to the every eighth week you take the week off. I'm toying around, though, with how could I do this on a smaller scale as well? And I think once I get my feet under me at the new gig, that I'll be able to do a smaller version of this at least once a quarter. Yeah. You know, I don't know what that means for me either, but I like the idea of that.

And I think that the downtime would be very beneficial to me, but I've just got to get there. Well, let's jump to that question about retreats. Mike wrote in, what changes, if any, did you make after doing them for a few years? Questions do you pay less attention or more attention to? He, in Mike's experience, after a few routines, he spends almost all of his time in retrospective, what went well, poorly sections. How has that been for you, Mike?

Well, I can say that from my experience personal retreats, I incorporate them everywhere that I can. Any sort of retrospective, whether it's family meetings with my wife or in the organization that I'm working with now, we want to figure out what's working and what isn't working. Just asking those simple questions brings a ton of clarity. For me, that's more important than what has happened. What has happened is important too. I mean, they're bookends. You have to understand the results that you got and then figure out what tweaks you want to make in order to try to get better results for the next time. So I think I would, I could see a way where certain personality types, for example, like Mike, maybe they just kind of naturally gravitate towards that retrospective.

But for me, the real value is in what are we going to do differently? So those are definitely the questions that I gravitate towards. And the other thing that I really gravitate towards is that wheel of life exercise from my own personal retreat where I rate the different areas of my life on a scale of zero to 10 and how satisfied am I in any of those different areas. That also brings a ton of clarity for me. Yeah, my focus really is on the role evolution. Where are the roles? Where are they going? I think we're all kind of circling around the same concepts with different tools. But I find that I spend some of the least amount of time saying, well, what am poorly, how are the roles evolving. The other stuff just kind of writes itself for me. It's very easy to come up with ideas how to make things better

once I get a really good understanding of where I think things need help. Sure. Yeah, I could see that. Absolutely. In terms of my promise, I think I said on the show I was going to do two off-sites this year. The first one I intended to do late March, early April, and I ended up doing it as a day long retreat. I went to Laguna beach and spent the day there. I didn't do an overnight and I've just got right now a lot going on with my family and I just really couldn't get away. And then the summer one, I'm going to hopefully be in the middle of construction by then. I'm adding on to my house, so I can't really see myself leaving for that either.

So I suspect I'm going to do one off-site where I'm away for nights at a time. And I wish I did more, but it is what it is. I also did a several-day-long retreat with the Creators Guild that we're in, and I didn't really want to take another multiple days out of the house from the family with everything going on right now. So, yeah, I haven't really lived up to my goal of two multi-night off-site personal retreats, but I am keeping up with them quarterly, even with the scaled-down versions. quarterly, even with kind of the scaled down versions. Nice. One other thing I want to add with this and the questions here, we had the opportunity to talk to Mark Champagne, who wrote Personal Socrates. And on that book, there's a phrase, something along the lines of asking the right question can completely change your life. And what I love about that book and Mark's approach is that there's a whole bunch of

questions there and each one is going to hit people differently. And you don't know which one is the one that's really going to impact you. So I love this question that Mike asked about what are the questions that you pay more attention to. But the real value here is in recognizing what are the questions that really impact you personally. And even if you can't get away for an entire day overnight for a personal retreat, the 80-20 here is continue asking questions. And eventually you will find one that is going to rock your world. Yeah. Joe wrote in, he says, what have been your most effective tools for overcoming procrastination?

Is procrastination a problem for you, Mike? We haven't really talked about it a lot on this show. It probably is in certain areas if I pay enough attention. For the most part, though, I would say that it is not. One of the things that I did a while ago, which helped me with this, was I got one of those fancy Pomodoro timers. What's it called? The Essington timer. It's like this fancy hourglass with these nano beads, they call them. And you tip it over and it makes this this noise, you know, and that's supposed to be like the initiation of a ritual. The whole idea behind the Pomodoro timer, if you're brand new to this, is that you set a timer for 25 minutes, you do your thing

that you're procrastinating on, and then you take a five minute break. And you just do it for 25 minutes, and then you get to take a break. So it's not, it kind of eliminates that giant feeling of engaging with a task that feels really heavy, or this is going to take a ton of effort. And then once you start doing it, you realize it doesn't take as long as you thought it was going to. So those are the things we typically procrastinate on is the things that we build up the argument in our head that they're going to be really, really hard or they're going to take a really long time. So the Essington timer for me for a while was that where it wasn't even the number of Pomodoros that I was doing or tracking it. I just use it to start the cycle. I would flip it over and be like,

okay, there. Now I've made my commitment, 25 minutes focusing on my writing or whatever it is. And then I wouldn't even notice when it ran out. It was just the act of turning it over that got me past that initial friction. But there's other ways that you could do that too. You could say, I will just, right? I will just write for five minutes. I will just spend five minutes on the treadmill, whatever. And then once you get to the gym or you get into that environment

and you're actually doing the thing, then it's easier to go longer than that. Yeah, I find that one of my best weapons against procrastination is time blocking. You know, usually procrastination comes with that sinking feeling in the back of your brain of like, uh, I've got this thing, I need to do it. And, and that's the drag on you. Like you can't do anything else with that hanging in your head by saying, you know what, on Thursday at 10 AM, I'm going to deal with that.

And then, of course, the second piece of that is you have to actually deal with it on Thursday at 10 a.m. You can't just ignore it. But once you get to where you can trust yourself that you can put a task that you're dreading on the calendar and actually do it in the allotted time, then all the mental overload of it goes away. And that's how I deal with it. I like that. And I would actually add to that another thing I do that I believe helps me avoid procrastination is that I keep the number of tasks that I'm going to try to do in a day short. I've heard people say you should only write down like three things that you're going to try to do in a day. And I kind of took that as my starting point, which three things sounds like not a lot. And that's kind of the

point because what's more important than having one superstar day where you crank through 12 tasks is consistently following through and doing the things that you say you're going to do. And so by starting with three, I found that I was able to do those three things every single day, regardless of how crazy my day was. And so I kind of forced a filter on myself to pick the three things that were the most important. These are what I'm going to try to get done today. And if I get these things done, then the day was successful and I'm not going to worry about anything else. And over time, I've grown that to five just because I've learned my limits and kind of the way that I manage this stuff. But the bottom line is I never pick off

more than I am able to do because I don't want to break that chain of being able to ship all the things that I said I was going to do. And every once in a while, I will not be able to follow through on those things. Every once in a while, i'm not feeling well or whatever i just don't have it in me and i can't i can't do the thing but i want that to be by far the exception and not the norm yeah makes sense jake wrote in what are your personal methods if any to unfocus you know i'm struggling with shutting my brain down after the work i love love this question. Yeah, me too. What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what I don't find successful is sitting like a potato on the couch watching TV. That doesn't help me in focus. It's not engaging enough. I feel like to unfocus, I need to do something that engages my brain. And I spend it talking to my family and kids, really talking to them.

Daisy and I have a thing where I like to make her tea. And we sit on the table. There's no distractions. We look each other in the eye and talk for a half hour. That's a great way to unfocus for me. Playing my saxophone, I'm sure you get the same with your guitar. It engages your brain. I'm going to talk later about woodworking that I'm kind you get the same with your guitar. It engages your brain. I'm going to talk later about woodworking that I'm kind of getting back into it. And I look at that as an excellent way to use my hands and unengage from the other stuff I do. I just think if you're lucky enough that you can just sit on the couch and turn the TV on and it helps you unengage, then go for it. But I need something that engages me more than that. That was my insight into that question.

My reaction is to say that I'm not sure that's even possible to intentionally disengage by watching TV. But I do do that occasionally. I just don't think that that is where I would recommend people look for anything restorative. I think if you're just going to consume information from a screen in front of you, there's no intention being applied with that. And when it comes to unfocusing, I still think there needs to be some intention in how you're going to do that. My own experience, I've found that the things that I've felt were maybe they were difficult. They were things that I would tend to procrastinate on. If I intentionally use those as mode shifts, those actually become very restorative.

And those are the things that I actually enjoy to do. Reading has become one of those things for me. I don't read something because I have to get it done by a specific time. At this point, it's just kind of a ritual for me. And it's a different way of engaging my brain. But it does feel much more restorative than sitting down and watching a movie. I like to watch basketball. I'm in Wisconsin, so the Milwaukee Bucks have been bad for a very long time until they won the championship last year. They're in the playoffs now. So I'm a big sports guy. I like watching those things. But every single time I get done watching a three-hour game, I don't feel energized. I feel drained. I feel not like I've wasted a bunch of time,

but just recognizing in that moment, like, that didn't really have the effect that I thought it was going to have every single time that I sat down in front of the TV. See, I don't really feel that. Like, when The Mandalorian came out, my daughter and I watch every episode, and we really enjoyed it. And it would spur additional conversation and theories. You know, I love that a lot of the serial TV where they make you wait a week and it gives you time to come up with your own ideas. But so there is some of that.

But I think the idea that you can just turn the TV on at any time or like the idea of like you sit in front of the TV with your laptop or your tablet and it's like you're not engaged in either one of those things. That's the kind of stuff that I feel like is really empty calories. Sure, yeah, the social stuff, I can see that. I think I agree with you there.

The other things that I do for unfocusing, mentioned books already. The other big one would be board games. Love playing board games. We've got a new one that we've been playing recently called Parks, which is a lot of fun. The whole idea is you try to visit as many state parks as you can

in the four seasons that it takes for you to go through the entire game. Takes about an hour to play, and it's pretty easy. There's a lot of really cool artwork that goes along with it. But board games are a surprisingly fun way for me to recharge. It's not even something I was interested in several years ago. And then my son got really into it,

and we started playing board games every night when we were all stuck at home during COVID. And we just kind of tried to keep that going. You talked me into buying a board game table, which is in our kitchen now. And the rest is history, as they say. Yeah. It's amazing what your kids teach you, right? Yep. They teach me a lot about myself, which is kind of surprising. The other thing I want to call out here, because I don't really consider this unfocusing time, but I think maybe a lot of people might think it would be, is like physical exercise or for me, running. I really like going for a long run, but a long run for me is not unfocusing time it is thinking time and if I'm chewing on a problem

and I'm trying to figure out how to solve it I found the very best thing I can do is just stop actively thinking about it and go for a run because there's no pressure to come up with the answer while I'm out for the run and that's where my brain has the space to untangle some things. And usually in the middle of that, I'm capturing a draft on my Apple Watch because all of a sudden it's become clear. Yeah, that's why I like the idea of a sabbatical so much. You know, just like taking the heat off your brain and then seeing what pops out. Yep.

Noah wrote in, I'm curious about how you and mike use your pkm systems within your collaborative projects do you find yourself porting notes into shared documents this is a great question without a good answer i think yeah well i i really feel like for me pkm which is secret code for obsidian for me, and then like task management, which is currently OmniFocus and has been for a long time. Neither one of those apps are collaborative, really. You know, they're really about your personal stuff and you manage it there, but they do a really good job with that. And I actually like having a wall of separation between my data and other people's data in this regard. But both of those apps make it very easy to share out. So I do that all the time.

Like, you know, I've got a good example is the shortcuts for Mac Field Guide. I'm trying to get it finished right now. And I've got all these notes in Obsidian. trying to get it finished right now. And I've got all these notes in Obsidian, but you know, when I send those to my editor, he's only getting the edit points of those notes. He's not getting the full blast of all the data I have stored there. And I like kind of having those things separated.

It does create a little extra work, but you know, kind of getting back to the theme today, it's about being intentional, not being super productive. And that system works for me i it just it just um fits with the way my brain works yeah i agree i like having the the walls around my stuff which is in obsidian uh that was another question that we got i didn't add it to the list here because I don't think it really fits with the content of the episode, but someone had asked, when is OmniFocus going to allow you to share tasks and projects? And I was thinking about that

and thinking about it and pertaining to the stuff that I do in Obsidian. I'm not sure I really want to do that. Obsidian even has a publish feature. But one of the things that makes that useful, in my opinion, is that you can choose which parts of it you're not going to share. Maybe it'd be nice to say, here's a link to a project and you can check it out. And that's kind of the way Obsidian Publish is meant to be used, is it creates a public version of Obsidian that people can just surf through your stuff. They can't contribute anything.

But that really does not appeal to me in the least. In fact, when I made the move to Obsidian from Rome, Rome was just starting to toy with that sort of thing. They were calling it multiplayer, and it was going to be the next big thing, and I had no interest in it whatsoever. Yeah. It's okay having those things broken into pieces,

and I'm more interested in having it be efficient for me personally than being something I can easily share, but to each his own. We heard from Nemmo on twitter uh i have a 1.5 year old one and a half year old there we go doesn't like me working on a keyboard trying going analog no luck would you have any suggestions well i don't know i mean does that mean you're not allowed to use your computer for the rest of this child's lifetime? I don't know. Well, I would maybe try a different keyboard.

Maybe he or she doesn't like the noise of it. I don't know. But that's just such a wide question. You want to go analog? There's a lot of ways to do it. I guess you do it with a tablet. So that'd be digital slash analog or you get paper. I don't i want to get mike schmidt started on the pen and paper train right now yeah i'll save you all from uh from that rabbit hole but uh this question is a little bit

general and um i don't know like not working on a keyboard, that's one problem to be solved there. I think maybe that problem evolves a little bit as your child gets older, too. So just I'm projecting a little bit here, but unpacking this, there's the sound and that you can figure out ways around with like you were talking about different keyboards and things like that. ways around with, like you were talking about, different keyboards and things like that. But as they get older, really what you want to do, I would argue, is model the correct way to interact with technology. And I say correct, everyone can define for themselves what correct means. For the purpose of this show, I would say it's intentional technology use. At our house, we have this mantra, create, not consume. So from the moment that my kids start to get interested in technology, I'm trying to shift the focus and the mode of interaction with the things.

So they're not just watching the shows they like on Netflix or whatever, but they're using the device to make something. So Toby, my 14 year old, actually edits my other podcasts on his iPad Pro. Joshua, my 12 year old, is really into graphic design using Affinity, not photo, I forget the illustrator type one, probably designer, I think is the name of it. And there's a board game we play all the time called Root that has these cartoon characters and he's recreated the character profiles from scratch inside of Affinity Designer. And that's really cool. I have no problem with them using stuff for that sort of thing. Everybody does Duolingo in our family and Joshua's got a longer streak on it than I do. I think that's great. So just teaching them the ways to use it in the way

that they want rather than subjecting themselves and consuming the things in the way that other people want. Because the standard things that we waste time with on technology, I've just come to the realization in the last couple of years that their goals are not in alignment with my goals. And that's not any fault of any big technology company. That's my fault if I just give away my attention and my focus and allow myself to get sucked into some bunny trail, clicking on this, that, and the other thing, and watching all these YouTube videos that I'm really not interested in, that kind of thing, just like the mindless stuff. It'd be great if companies had an altruistic approach to

being good stewards of people's attention that they're engaging with. Tristan Harris kind of started that whole thing at Google, but I think it's past that point. You just have to recognize going into it that this is the objective of the people on the other end. It's not in alignment with what you want as you pick up your device. And so you have to be very careful not to give that away for free. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. If you're ready to take your business to the next level,

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Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. We also had a lot of questions in the Focus forums. One that really stood out to me was from Mark. He said, I would like a focus episode that covers a problem. I think many business owners have, and that is cover my life with many roles. I mean, the fact is it's really easy to maybe nail this focus stuff down with

respect to what you do to pay the bills, but you're also often, you also have a family and you have other interests and, you know, how do you combine all of that stuff and, and how do you not like, you know, apply these rules to one role without applying them to the others? I think that's kind of what he was going for. Yeah. So any thoughts on this? Yeah. So any thoughts on this? It's hard. I mean, the, you know, roles are a central focus of how I think about anything related to focus and productivity. I kind of have a role system. You know, I've broken my life into various roles and the hats I wear and I try to look at it as holistically as possible. And one of the things Mark had written is, is the problem is that my personal life, I never make into my day

and only gets done at random, you know? And it sounds to me like he's doing such a good job of managing things for his work life that he's having trouble finding time for his personal life. his work life that he's having trouble finding time for his personal life. So a couple of ways I address this. The first is my kind of roles are, like I said, the focus of my whole system. And I audit them routinely, not just at the quarterly retreats, but, you know, monthly and even weekly. And I actually listed my roles in order of importance. Like the very first role I

have is husband. It's more important to me to take care of my wife than to make this podcast. That's a higher role. Father falls right below that and so on and so on. And that weekly reminder that these are in order of priority really helps me remember that, you know, I can't spend all my time on the podcast. I need to make time for my wife. And then once I've got this role system in mind, well, it's another role. It's just as important, if not more important. So how am I going to quantify that? And in Mark's case, I would try to build that into the system. Like when you're planning your week out, plan out time to do your personal role stuff too.

That is just as important, if not important. I mean, at some point, none of us are getting out of this alive. At some point, they're going to put you in a box, and you're not going to wish that you had done more work. Absolutely. The other thing I would add to this is this myth, I would say, of work-life balance. I hate that term because I think people chase it and they don't really

understand what exactly they're going for. What they really want is a little bit more breathing room. They want to feel like they have the time and the margin to invest in the people and the things that are most important to them, which is often not what they do for a living. And I think a much healthier approach to this is to recognize that there is just your life. And yes, there are obligations that you have, and work would be a big one. And yes, there are obligations that you have, and work would be a big one. But you have to manage all of the things that you have to do, and there's no artificial distinctions between personal and professional. There's no firm boundary, no line drawn in the sand, especially for people who work remote. This is getting harder and harder because you don't have a physical location, an office

that you go to, and then at five o'clock you can punch out and leave work at work. If you can do that, great. But then even when you do that, we're constantly connected. And so there's the temptation to check email when you're at home and people reach for their phone the first thing when they wake up in the morning so they can see what they're walking into when they get to the office. And all that stuff steals from what is really important and the people who are really important. The rest of your life, which most people would say is more important than the work that they do. So recognizing that this is all kind of on the same playing field and any of it can control your time and attention at any

given moment, recognizing that for me has gone a long way in helping me balance all of these things. And yes, the roles and the goals are an important part of that. But the first thing to recognize is that if you can manage your professional stuff successfully, you can manage your personal stuff successfully too. You just got to quit thinking about them as separate projects because the root issue is not that I'm good at professional and bad at personal. The root issue is that those are actually combined and maybe there's too much there. Maybe you got to decide,

this is the thing I'm going to focus on right now. This is my one thing. I'm going to set aside everything else. That's kind of the approach I take with that wheel of life is I try to boost an area and then I leave it for a little while. I'll create systems and habits to make sure that it's taken care of, but I'm not going to try to do all of these things at once. I'm going to pick the one that has the greatest need right now, and I'm going to invest in that, and then I'll come back and reevaluate next time I've got a personal retreat. Yeah, I would add that I think the fact that you realize that you're not addressing that is a good first step, but then you just have to take action on it. And that means if you're filling your day with work and there's no time for personal, that means you're going to be being a lawyer. It's because I didn't have enough time to do that and Max Barkey and my other personal obligations and live my life.

And it was a real cost. I mean, I made good money as a lawyer and that I haven't seen any of that, you know? So I, uh, but it was worth it to me because I realized that there's only so many hours in a day and I got to make some choices here. And, uh, I'm not telling you it's easy, but you know, that's at the end of the day, that's, that's what you're up against. And just on that topic, we tend to think that there's multiple priorities. There really isn't. I think it was Essentialism by Greg McKeown where he talks about the word priority actually means the first thing, the prior thing, the most important thing. And so to have multiple priorities, really what that's saying is multiple things are the most important, and that's saying is multiple things are the most important and that's impossible. So when everything is a priority, really what ends up happening is that nothing really is.

And so make a decision and say, this is the most important thing. This is what I'm going to focus on right now. And recognize that that decision is not permanent. You can change your mind at any point in the future. And that's what the personal retreats do is they give me those places every couple of months where it's a built-in opportunity for a micro reset. And I can say, you know what, that choice didn't quite work out the way that I thought it was going to. So I'm going to try something different next time. Another good question was from Backy Girl, who said, hello, wonderful people. I have acknowledged my issue resides with being consistent in action

and intention. Are there any tricks you guys have? What she asked for was books and posts, but how do you stay consistent with action and intention? You want to take a crack at this? Oh, this is a great question. And I think it's going to be different for every single person. You have to figure out what works for you. I would say that when it comes to action, the number one thing that you can do is create that intention. And the way that you create the intention is you focus on a singular thing. There are some great recommendations in this thread, by the way. The very first one from Webb Walrus. I love this, Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg. That is actually the book, if you were

looking for a book, that I would recommend on this because B.J. Fogg does a great job of explaining where that line is and what causes us to either follow through and take action or not. And once you understand your motivation and your ability, so basically the harder something is, the more motivation is required to land on the side of that line where we do actually follow through and take action.

And you can create the prompts which trigger the attention. And at that moment, that's where you have that behavior equals the motivation times the ability times the prompt. So you can make it easier to do. You can increase your motivation to do it. These are all individual things that you can manufacture in your environment with a little bit of intention. And we've all heard these before. It's something simple, like if you want to create a regular exercise habit and go to the gym more frequently, put your gym bag by the door so you grab it on your way out of the house in the morning.

And then during your lunch hour, you just get to the gym. And once you're there, you'll follow through and do the workout, stuff like that. But for me, the things that helped me follow through on this is, we kind of talked about this with the time blocking already, the simple plan of I'm going to only pick three things, or in my case, five, that I am going to work on today. And I'm going to slot those into my time block plan. What I've done now is I've already identified the space where this is going to happen, the time this is going to happen, and what I am going to do. And so by alleviating all of that, it's a lot easier for me to say, oh, it is 12 o'clock central time, and now is the time

that I'm going to show up and record focused with David. And that's easy because I don't want to let you down. I've made the obligation to you, right? But viewing these obligations that you make with yourself as just as important as any meeting that you would schedule is easier said than done. But moving towards that direction, I think, can help you follow through and do the things that you really want to do, whatever that happens to be.

It's interesting to me, Mike, that so much of productivity advice boils down to do less. And I think that also applies to consistency. The reason it's hard to be consistent is when you feel overwhelmed and too busy. And as a result, things start falling by the wayside. Earlier in the show, I made a big deal about focus on intentionality, which really is just a fancy way of saying do less. All this consistency stuff, really, usually the reason consistency is so hard is because you feel overwhelmed, and you're putting out fires that you don't have enough time to slow down and be consistent,

and that's the problem you've got to figure out and i get it you know the world keeps throwing stuff at you but you got to fight back at this i'm not saying you're going to necessarily get everything you want but try to take back control as much as you can the other thing i would say is consistency doesn't have to be the end-all be-all. I have this subscription to ReadWise and I had a 200-day streak going of doing my space repetition every day. And last week, I had a busy day with the family and I woke up the next day, I'm like, oh, you know what?

I forgot to check ReadWise yesterday. Well, the whole streak just got blown up in one day, right? But I didn't get hung up on it. That's okay. I still generally check ReadWise most days. If I miss it once in a while, it's not the total end of the world. I guess I would say don't be so hard on yourself about it, but also if it really is an issue, think about trying to become more intentional or doing less so you have space to to get that consistency that you're looking for yeah i like that idea of doing less i think the phrase that comes to mind is less but better yeah so pick one thing do it really well and then from there you

can layer on the other things. But if you haven't, that's also where you get in trouble. That is where you get in trouble. But I think you're more likely to have success there than you are if you're just I'm going to make all of these sweeping changes at once. So definitely pick one thing that you're going to focus on and get that to an acceptable level. And then once you're there, you can figure out what the next thing is. And yeah, there is going to be a point of diminishing returns. Look out for that for sure, where you can't just always squeeze one more thing in. That's going back to the personal retreat stuff and those three questions that I ask why I force myself every single quarter to pick one thing that I'm going to stop doing. Because if I can pick something

to stop doing, I have created margin now to try some of those new things. But if all you do is add, you're right. You get yourself into trouble. Yeah. Another topic in the forums Ted had written in about time blocking with analog tools. And at one point I was time blocking in a Levenger Circa notebook where I would just draw a line down the center of the page, you know, very Cal Newport kind of analog style time blocking where I would just lay out the plan

and then the other side of the line I'd write in how the day went. I'm not doing that anymore. The way I do it currently and for some time now, and it seems to be kind of the solution for me is I plan the day in the calendar. Just the digital tools are just too easy for me to not use, right? I mean, it's so easy to set up the blocks. I can use automation and shortcuts to create them and have them on my phone, my watch, my iPad, my computer screen at any one time. So I just find time blocking digitally is the right solution for me. But then that gets to the question of how do you see how the day went versus the day was planned? Because, you know, at the end of the day,

your blocks aren't going to match reality. You know, that's just the way of the world. So what I do, and I know this adds extra time to my day, but when I do the shutdown, I actually adjust the blocks to match how the day actually went. So I'll drag and add some new entries. And I find that creates a feedback loop for me. Like, you know, I talked earlier that I did two webinars this week. The one I did on calendars of all things ended up taking a lot longer to prepare than I expected because I rebuilt my keynote theme and some other stuff. And so I ended up spending several more hours than I expected. But the process of going in and adding that to the calendar

after the fact really helped me remember in the future for that type of webinar, I need to plan on having a lot more time in preparation. Now, the way I compare them is in the morning when I start my day, I have a little shortcut I run that just goes into my calendar and creates a text list of my blocks for the day and it adds it to Obsidian. So my daily note in Obsidian has the list of the time blocks for the day. And then at the end of the day, I can, through interstitial journaling, I can see how it actually went. So I get the comparison without doing it in analog tools.

Was that too much? Did I go too far with that in the nerd stuff? I guess we'll find out. But I followed you and I'm fascinated by this. find out but i i followed you and i'm fascinated by this so i uh i i think that's that's pretty cool how you've coupled that together with digital tools and digital tools are definitely easy um i'm still doing it analog and i don't foresee myself changing at any point. But I also don't try to do everything that you described there because I'm not really concerned about the actual execution of the plan. I know that's part of time blocking canon as laid out by Cal Newport. You've got the plan and then what actually

happened. But for me, the time tracking that I do through Timery is good enough for that. I can go back and I can look at that if I need to. But often, really what I'm concerned about is, am I able to follow through and do the things that I need to do, which is that short list. And like I said, I've kind of optimized here to make sure that I can 100% finish that every single day. And the days that, I've kind of optimized here to make sure that I can 100% finish that every single day. And the days that I don't are very, very rare. And the way that I follow through and take action on those things is I time block my day. And that's good enough. Just the fact that I've done it and did I do the things, that's really all I care about. And I don't need a record of that kind of stuff. I do actually keep

my pages. I have the, the, um, Ugmonk, um, it's the heirloom journal. So it's a circus style where you can punch your own paper. And we've talked about that before, but when I'm done with the sheets, I put in new ones and I take the old ones out and I use some bigger circuit disks and I do keep a log of all that stuff. I've never gone back and looked at them later, but I have them in case I want to. Yeah, I actually look through them when I do the reviews just to see how it's going. And, you know, all of this, you know, it's just one more hack at getting more intentional for me. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by timing. Go to timing app.com slash focus and save 10% off your purchase. Timing is the intelligent time tracking app you can trust.

Whether you're billing by the hour employed or billing per project, you might need to estimate how long the task is going to take. Or maybe you just want to be better at understanding where your time goes so you can make some positive changes. Time tracking helps you stay on track with those estimates to make sure you don't end up in the red with your projects and to make more accurate estimates in the future. But in today's work environment, work changes so quickly that you can't start and stop timers for everything. The good news is your computer already knows what you do, so why not have it track time for you? Timing automatically tracks everything you do

on your Mac without having to lift a finger. You can trust it to always give you the complete picture. Timing will detect when you are in a video call and lets you record what the meeting was about afterwards. And there's even more magic like this in timing to make recording your time as easy as possible. Plus, you can enjoy the activity screen, which presents your app usage, including websites, file paths, and window titles. And if you want to, you can start and stop timers within the main timing app. I just love the way the application works, and I love how smart it is. It figures out what I'm working on based on what I'm doing. I don't have to worry about throwing switches.

And if you're collaborating with colleagues, Timing's Teams features lets you share projects with them and record everyone's time in a central location, which lets managers get a quick overview of where their team members spend their time while also preserving their privacy. Because which apps, documents, and websites each team member use stays private and is not visible to managers. Plus, with a super slick onboarding process, everyone will be up to speed in no time. I am a big fan of time tracking. I think it helps me figure out things I can delegate and where I'm making mistakes about how I plan my time. And the thing about timing is it is brutally honest, and that's exactly what I need. I don't want to throw a manual timer that I'm working and then

spend an hour in Amazon. No, that doesn't work for me. But timing will tell me when I spent an hour in Amazon so I can try and change that behavior. Using timing, I've learned so much about my work habits and where I can improve and when I can delegate and automate. It's a great tool to have. And once you set it up, you don't even have to really think about it because it takes care of all the hard work for you. So if you want to take control of how you spend your time and improve your productivity, download the free 14 trial today by going to timingapp.com slash focused and save 10% when you subscribe. Plus it lets timing know you heard about them from us. Once again, that link is timingapp.com slash focused to try timing for free and save 10% when you subscribe.

Our thanks to timing for the support of the focus podcast and all of relay FM. support of the focus podcast and all of relay FM. All right, Mike, last time we, uh, we had a show without a guest. I gave us a challenge about coming up with our ideal week. Did you do it? I did. Did you? Yeah, you bet, man. You bet. So what'd you learn? I learned that I have more time for creating than I thought I did. That was kind of the intention behind this exercise for me. I've shared that I'm going through, as we're recording this, the Ali Abdaal's Part-Time YouTuber Academy, dabbling with YouTube and video just seems like a natural next step for me. So I want to find time to not only record YouTube videos, but also the foundation of that for me is writing. And I have done that before where I have established a consistent

writing habit. That's the thing that allowed me to actually write the book, which got me into all of the things that I'm doing online right now. So I want to reestablish that. And that was my goal going into planning this week was where am I going to create? And what I found by doing this is I took a template from my personal retreat course, but you could do this on a sheet of paper I made every single day, Sunday through Saturday, or Monday through Sunday, if you prefer, and then broke it down every hour. So it's kind of like this great big grid. And then I just started coloring in the places where things were going to go. So we've got the work hours, we've got the regular meetings from the day job, we've got the regular podcast recordings. And what I found from

doing this is that at the beginning of my day, I could definitely squeeze out regular time to create when I added up all of the time blocks that I identified. It was actually something like 10 hours per week that were available to me if I got a little bit more intentional about how I plan my days, where I could write every single day. I've got some additional accountability in doing that because I'm signed up for another online course, Ship 30 for 30, where the whole intention is that you publish something every day for 30 days in a row. So that combined with this homework that we had here for figuring out when this was going to happen, I'm hoping is going to become the foundation for all of the things that I do online and the things that I write about at the beginning of my day every single day here are going to turn into topics for podcasts. They are going to turn into newsletter articles and ultimately YouTube videos as well.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really great exercise to sit down, you know, and in your computer or on a piece of paper, just make a seven day, seven columns and block out in rough blocks. I'm not saying you should be saying you're my ideal week means on Thursday at 2 PM, I go to the bathroom, but you know, what are the things you're working on during certain blocks of time? You know, with the idea that I, I think I'm most efficient in the morning and with creative work, I tried to like engineer it around that. One of the things I learned was that because I have three podcasts, there's a lot of commitment with that.

But I wanted to make it, I made two ideal weeks, I guess is what I'm saying. I have what I think of, like I say, podcast production week, where we record the majority of our podcasts. And that those are a week and a half before they publish. So there's one week where I record Mac Power Users, Focused, and Automators. And then the alternative week, I will only have one podcast to record. And that gives me more time to dig in on the field guides and the other stuff that's important to me. And so I have alternating weeks.

And it doesn't always live up to that. Sometimes we have to delay a show for one reason or another. But just kind of figuring it out for me was a great exercise. And this for me is going to be part of my quarterly retreat. I want to, I want to revisit my ideal week every three months. I think this is something that ideal week, this is kind of figuring out where the blocks can go on a higher level. And really what this does for me is it gives me kind of a template to work off of when I sit down to time block my day. template to work off of when I sit down to time block my day. It's not that I'm referencing this all the time, but by putting the thought into where are these things going to fit, that makes it easier to time block my day. I don't walk into the day saying, well, I've got to record a podcast

because it's this day and I've got to do all these other things. And where in the world are these going to, how is this all going to come together? I've kind of already thought that through by creating this template. And I agree that this is absolutely something that you should look at on a regular basis. I had done this several years ago and I had done it again when my work life changed. Anytime there's a big change in your life, I think you told me that that's an opportunity to look at all of the habits that you've established and prime opportunity to make any changes that you want because everything's kind of up in the air and you figure out a new normal

anyways. But I definitely want to make this part of the regular routine every couple of months, filling this out. Because what I found is even though I just did this a few months ago, by doing it again, I walked out of the exercise feeling a lot better about things. I felt like I had a whole lot more clarity and felt a lot better about all the things that I was currently committed to and how are they all going to fit, it felt a lot less burdensome. If you don't do this sort of thing, there's kind of this noise in the back of your brain of like, you're trying to do too much. You've got too much going on. But the moment

that you put it all on the calendar, you either realize, yeah, I really do have too much going on or actually this is doable. This all fits together. Yeah. The other thing I did with my calendar is I drew a box around Wednesday and I said, Wednesday is my meeting slash guesting day. And I've really been trying to stick to that. If somebody wants to have a meeting with me, wants to do a phone call, wants me to guest on a show or something, Wednesday is when I do that. And I'm trying as much as possible to make that the only day that I have those sorts of obligations. And so far it's working for me. That would not have worked for me when I was still practicing law. So, you know, it depends on what your job is, but my job is now more solitary where I'm

creating things. And that allows me to limit the amount of time I spend doing those sorts of meeting engagements and having them focused on one day really helped for me. I mean, if you need to do more of that, maybe you make it Monday and Friday or, you know, Tuesday and Thursday or whatever, but having days that are kind of like that type of day, having days that are kind of like that type of day. I find it, it's much better to, to, to stack all that into one day than have those types of distractions every

day. Yes, absolutely. Shiny new objects. Mike, you have anything new and fun? I do. I have some AirPods max,

which I am absolutely loving. The big ones. The big ones, yep. So with the new gig, I had a technology budget. And I had some leftover in the budget after after got the computer. And yeah, there was a sale on Amazon where they were a hundred bucks off. And so I pulled the trigger and these are great. The previous headphones that I had had

were the Bose QC35s, I think. And I had gotten them several years ago. And those are great headphones too. The ones that I had were custom ones from the previous position I had at Asian Efficiency. And every time I looked at them, I just couldn't do it anymore. So I gave them to my son.

And he used them for editing. So I didn't have any and I was looking for some. These were always really expensive and I wasn't quite sure I could justify the cost. Having purchased these now, I can say these are much, much nicer

than the Bose ones that I had. They are way more comfortable. The noise cancellation is incredible and they're great for just working around the house. I have this office in my basement, but there's no windows down here. And so I can't stay in here all day. I kind of come in here, I call it my focus cave, do my thing, and then I got to get out of here. But by using those headphones, I'm able to actually work other places in the house and not be distracted by everything else that's going on.

to actually work other places in the house and not be distracted by everything else that's going on. Yeah. And it's obvious you are not engaged with other humans when you've got those on your head, right? Yep, exactly. I bought a tool. So I think we talked about this in deep focus towards the beginning of the year that it was, I used to have a real passionate hobby of woodworking. You know, I made a lot of furniture that's kind of stopped like 20 years ago, you know, between the kids growing up and work and the law practice and kind of the emerging max parking. But when I threw the law practice overboard, I did suddenly find myself wanting to go back into the shop. But my garage, which is where my shop is, has 20 years of detritus in it.

You know, my wife had an online store at one point. I mean, it's just, it's like right now, the wood shop is buried in there, but I have started slowly digging it out and thinking about what I want to do. One of the things I always wanted that I never bought the last time I was into this was a low angle jack plane, which is a special kind of hand plane. And so I bought one kind of as like a commitment to myself. I've got it now. I don't have access to my workbench enough to really use it, but now I've got a tool which is going to like help me kind of get there. And I've started to kind of reacquaint myself with the modern state of woodworking. And I'm really, really enjoying kind of, you know, the learning

process of learning again and starting to get a real good idea about how I want to do this. You know, they answered the question earlier of how do you, you know, how do you spend time away from work and, you know, engage your brain other ways. I want to really focus this on hand tools when I get back into it, which is the slowest way to make things in a wood shop. And the more I think about it, I really want that. Because looking back when I was woodworking, my favorite tasks were getting these wispy, thin shavings as I would plane a board smooth, and the satisfaction of cutting a dovetail joint, and the satisfaction of cutting a dovetail joint and just like all the little things that you do

that are just like tap, tap, tap kind of jobs, not like set up a big industrial saw and get the jig just right, make sure you don't cut your finger off. That stuff to me wasn't fun. I'm not going to say it wasn't fun, but it wasn't really what I really enjoyed. The stuff that I really miss doing is slowly working at a workbench like I live in 1700

or something. And the more I think about it, that's what I want to do. I want to get the shop in the shape that I can make little boxes and maybe some small furniture very slowly. The exact opposite of what I do as Max Barkey. I want to be the most unproductive, inefficient woodworker on the planet, but I want to have that as something I do. And I am really excited about it. I didn't know really where else to talk about it. So it kind of fell in here, but I did buy myself a shiny new thing. I bought a jack plane that I'm going to use once I get all that put together.

Very nice. I think there's a gold nugget there, by the way, where you're talking about you want to be the most, I forget how you phrased it, the deliberate, slow, inefficient woodworker. That makes total sense to go in the opposite direction from what you do for a living. I've heard somebody say one time, like, if you work with your head, you should rest with your hands, right? Yeah. So I think that's actually very smart. If you're going to be digital and everything else, and you're going to try to create all these systems and automations to be as efficient as possible, you have to give yourself permission to go all the way the other

way, wherever you can. And so for you, that's woodworking. And I think that's great. Well, I mean, it's a hobby for me. It's not like I'm not running a cabinet shop. I don't need to be fast. And I said inefficient. It's not really I'm not running a cabinet shop. I don't need to be fast. And I said inefficient. It's not really inefficient so much as just using techniques that bring me joy over using techniques that are fast. And there's something to that. I also have a challenge for you. I have another one for you.

This one is very self-indulgent because it's something I need to do anyway. So I thought by laying this on the table, I would force myself. I want to, for both of us, between now and the next time we have time to do a show where we can check in on these challenges, I want to look into a method for systematizing delegation. You know, how are we going to go about? I talked earlier in the show that I'm starting to get to the point with the labs and some of the other stuff I'm doing that I don't need to be doing everything. And I know that is something that's very important to me to kind of get there. But it's a nebulous thing for me.

It's like, yeah, I know I should do that. But how am I going to do that? How am I going to decide what I'm going to do? I think I need to work on the process of delegation and figure out how I'm going to do it and share that. And I know that you've had a job change too, so maybe it would be a good challenge for you as well. Does that make sense for you too?

Yeah, let's do it. I mentioned the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, which we're going to talk a little bit more about, good challenge for you as well. Does that make sense for you too? Yeah, let's do it. And I mentioned the part-time YouTuber Academy, which we're going to talk a little bit more about, I think, in deep focus. But part of that working for me consistently is going to be delegating some of the post-production and the editing and things like that to someone that I've worked with who's helped me with all the sermon sketch notes, videos and stuff like that. But also I mentioned a couple of my sons have creative interests and I'm thinking about how to,

how to loop them into the process as well. So definitely have things that I can delegate and people to delegate them to. All right. Well, happy one 50 buddy. Thanks. Here's to 150 more. All Thanks. Here's to 150 more. All right.

Thank you to our sponsors. That's our friends at Collide, Indeed, and Timing. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. You can weigh in on those forums over at talk.macpowerusers.com. Focus has its own little wing of that forum. Love to see you there. And let us know how it's going for you.

And if you've got challenges, that forum would be a great place to do that. There are some very nice people there with some very good ideas. Hopefully they can help you as well. See you next time.