Focused - 157: Non-Traditional Measures of Productivity, with Mike Vardy
Episode Date: August 2, 2022Mike Vardy is back to talk about the rhythm of work and why some people feel "productivity" is becoming a dirty word....
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Welcome to Focus, a 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?
Doing great. How about you?
I am doing well, but I'm struggling because I realize I've got two Mikes with me today.
Welcome to the show, Mike Vardy.
It's great to be back.
Are you just going to call us by our last names like we usually come across whenever we're around other, you know,
multiple Mikes often constitutes last name usage i think right mike
yep yeah and then you know if i want to be really clever i'm talking into a mic as well so
i wasn't going to make the mics on mike's reference no
schecter would approve though you know what, I don't know that everybody knows about Mike's on Mike's Mike already.
Tell us about that.
So Mike's on Mike's was a podcast that I,
uh,
probably one of the first actually dual or duo hosted podcast,
I guess that I did with Michael Schechter.
My goodness.
It's been a long time.
We were on the,
we were on the five by five network for a little while.
Um, and, uh, yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was just me and him doing this,
kind of doing what you guys do, but with not as much focus, a little bit more random. And we had
this segment that people seem to love, which was called, uh, what are you drinking? Which we, uh,
started off every episode with, but we weren't drinking coffee or tea or anything like that.
It was usually, uh, something with barley and hops and malt in it.
But it was a lot of fun.
It was a cool little productivity podcast that we did for a number of years.
And Schechter's gone on to do his thing with a little company, I think.
When he left, he was going to work for a company that is owned by some guy named Warren Buffett.
I don't know if you guys know who that is.
And I went on to do my own thing, which I'm doing now.
Warren Buffett. I don't know if you guys know who that is. And I went on to do my own thing,
which I'm doing now. I think Warren Buffett is that, um, that non-player character in that paper boy game that Apple made. Isn't that who that is? I think so. I think so. I didn't even
know he existed, but apparently anyway, what a coincidence. Um, either way, Mike Vardy,
you've been on the show in the past, but it's been years. And we love talking to you because you've always got interesting thoughts about what's going on.
Mike Vardy, for folks who don't know, is over at theproductivityist.com.
We'll put a link in the show notes for it.
Mike does some online courses.
He's been a podcaster for a long time.
And he thinks deeply about productivity.
And I mean that in the best of ways i feel like a lot
of folks uh get into productivity and they're you know thinking about the five greatest ways to
you know answer your email or whatever mike mike farley goes deeper on it that's why i always like
having you on the show and i think maybe we should start with that you know because we were talking
as we got ready for today about
the word productivity and its dark evolution. Yeah, it's, I've been spending some time thinking
about this more and more as I work on my latest project and I'm a word nerd. So as a writer,
I'll go deep into the origins and history of a word and the word productive initially like its origins are
rooted in latin and then french adopted it and the idea was to bring forth into being that's
what the concept of productive was and then productivity uh like it's a derivative produced
right yeah a derivative derivative produced yes so the ability to bring into a being. Uh, and what was
interesting is that the word productivity was not the first instance of someone who was productive,
like exhibited a level of, uh, productiveness is what they called it. So, I mean, there was a level
of productiveness you had not productivity. And then the term productivity came along, I think
it was like early 1800s.
And it just meant the quality or ability to bring forth into being.
But fast forward to now and even a little bit before now, obviously, and Merriam-Webster
defines productivity as the quality or power of being productive, especially in abundance.
of being productive, especially in abundance. So all of a sudden there's this quantitative measurement added to it, which, which to me creates an imbalance between what I believe
productivity or being productive should be about, or, you know, is the idea of making quality things
hope with the eventuality of maybe getting a little bit faster at it or making more of it,
if that's your goal, but it's not the end game isn't quantitative and i think that's where the dark side comes in
is that i think we're focused too much on let's do as much as possible as opposed to let's make
good stuff and let's produce quality stuff and then quantity sure we want some of that but let's
not make it the the ultimate yeah i, don't you think that goes back to
kind of the industrial revolution and the idea that productive or productivity is getting,
you know, more model Ts out of the Ford factory? It's not like what it is today.
You know, it's funny. I just got back from a trip to the Yukon. I was telling you guys about it,
you know, in a different conversation, an earlier conversation. And one of the things that
we did is we visited, uh, a parks Canada site called dredge number four, and it was a dredger
that was used to mine gold, uh, during the gold rush. But this thing was massive. It was the
largest one. Uh, one, there were two large ones built and they could um they could they had 22
dredgers on it that allowed you to like just the sheer tonnage of soil and ground that was being
moved just to find gold at a more rapid pace was astounding and it was you know they had smaller
dredgers sure but this these two dredge three and dred, they had smaller dredgers, sure. But this, these two,
dredge three and dredge four, and only dredge four exists now, was just, it earned its money back.
I think it cost like $450,000 back then in the late 1890s. So you could imagine with inflation,
how much it really is worth. It earned its money back in the first year, bringing that much gold.
and how much it really is worth.
It earned its money back in the first year,
bringing that much gold.
But the consequences of that,
as I watched the automation and how it all worked,
it was fascinating.
But the land that it destroyed in its wake while doing that was an afterthought.
And I kind of feel that that's part of it.
The pursuit of like riches and wealth
and the gold rush is a good example
of people who went up to the Klondike and many did not find gold.
It was a lot of cases they're ruined.
But in this case, like they just dug and dug and dug and dug and dug at the fastest pace possible with as much automation as possible and yet didn't have any thought about what was lying, what the after effects would be.
And I think that that is kind of a parallel of what happens here.
When we try to do as much as possible,
maybe we don't think about what really matters
or what the cost is or the hidden cost of trying to do things
either at a high quantity level or as fast as possible.
I love that visualization that we're turning ourselves into human dredgers,
you know, because you'd like to say it's the boss doing it, but so often,
you know, we're doing it to ourself. Yeah, it was, it was, I couldn't help. And I mean,
while I was in that getting the tour and them explaining it going, there is so much that went
into making this go as quickly as possible.
And by the way,
there are only four crew members on these dredge dredges to these big,
large dredges.
There were,
there were not huge crew members watching this guy who is called the winch
man at the top.
And I mean,
just the amount of things he had to do was a classic example of,
you know,
multitasking.
It's formed back in the 1890s.
But yeah, it just, to see this idea of fortune
and this idea of the pursuit of riches,
there was just such parallels that I couldn't help but notice it.
And I think it kind of drove my family nuts a bit,
which is why I kept it quiet for a while.
Like the drive home, I didn't really say too much.
My wife kind of knew.
She's like, you saw something there
that's going to relate back to work.
I'm like, as always, yes,
I will probably relate this back to the work that I do
because I connect those dots.
That's one of the things I tend to do.
Yeah, but I mean, really kind of getting to the thread,
productivity grew out of that.
You know, productivity experts were the ones
that learned to turn mechanical tools into
being more efficient and human beings. And I feel like we have carried that, at least in the
subconscious mind, to the present in terms of productivity. And in a world of knowledge workers,
And, you know, that in a world of knowledge workers, it's not so easy to measure productivity.
I've got my air quotes up right now. And the, you know, and yet we're still carrying this dredge mentality, I think, into it.
Well, I mean, a good example of that is email management, right?
Like the idea of people trying to get through as much email as possible because that's the work.
And they're using inbox zero as it's been reclassified.
Because we all know what Merlin meant when he said inbox zero.
It is not what people classify it as now.
It's been corrupted into this idea of getting your email to zero.
But why?
Because you can measure it.
I had 183 emails today and now I don't have any.
Yeah, but what about that report? You're supposed to work? Yeah. But 183, right? Like,
cause you can count it and, and you're that that's way easier to measure. And the larger the institution, the more likely they are to measure numerically and quantitatively and forsake
qualitative productivity, because to your point, David, it's really hard to measure. And it's doable, but it's not nearly as easy as saying, well,
you know what, we need to hit these numbers. And if you hit those numbers, then you're,
quote, being productive. Yeah, what a mess. And we're in the middle of it. And it feels like,
you know, when the internet came around,
it took the word productivity and stuck to the old paradigm
and put people in that box of how much email can you answer?
How many Excel sheets can you create?
I mean, just anybody listening to this probably has examples from their own life
where productivity was measured in a way that makes no sense in hindsight.
And the thing is,
is that I see having been in this game for a while,
there are a lot of people like us that are trying to say,
hold up,
hold up.
What about this?
And it's,
it's akin to swimming upstream a little bit,
right?
Like it's doable,
but I mean,
there's no way that we could sit here and
reasonably expect that if we were to, uh, you know, kind of announce or go out and declare,
this is what inbox zero meant. Guys, get your, get your heads together about this.
We would be fighting an uphill battle because it's just been so proliferated as no, this is
what this means. And that's the, that's the hard battle. And it's, you know, but to me, it's interesting because I almost feel like at the stage of my career,
it's one of the mantles that I'm willing to take on in, in as much as traditional,
non-traditional ways of taking a look at how productive your day was like journaling or,
Hey, let's forget the adjective in front of balance and just strive for that. Like those
kind of things. Um, that's the mantle I'm willing to go, you know, take up and go afterwards.
Before, I don't know that I was. I was probably just tired of swimming upstream. But now that I
know the terrain a bit better, I'm a little bit, you know, actually, I'm a lot more comfortable
and even confident going that route.
As someone who wrote a book called Thou Shalt Hustle, I completely empathize with not being able to redefine a word.
No, be lively.
Don't hustle.
Nah, hustle.
I'm curious, though, because you mentioned that it's easy to measure quantity.
It's harder to measure quality, but it can be done.
How do you balance quantity and quality in your own quest for what you define to be productivity?
So I think for me, productivity is always about intention plus attention, like those
two active links, right?
So what do you intend to do?
How are you going to pay attention to it?
And I think the quality comes from the amount of attention that you give to it. This is where the
time, effort, energy factors that we hear about, you know, help. So the way that I try to elevate
quality is by, again, doing things at the right time for me is a big one. So I'm not going to
try to do any real heavy lifting first thing in the morning because I am not a morning person.
I'm a night owl.
So knowing having that heightened sense of awareness helps me figure out what to do at that time.
So I'm still it's not like I don't do anything in the morning.
I just do things that are more aligned with what I'm best suited to do in that at that time of day.
It's the same thing with my, you know, my daily themes, which I know we've talked about before. The idea of, hey, what does today mean? I wake up first thing in the morning and I don't
say, all right, what am I going to do today? I know what day it is. Oh, it's Thursday. Thursday's
training day. And I have a jumping off point, which helps with me giving the proper amount
of attention to those intentions. Plus, those intentions land in those attention kind of
waypoints, right? So I know that if I don't get all my training quote stuff done today,
that the next landing spot for that wouldn't be tomorrow as the default, it would be Tuesday,
which is my next training day. So I think that's how I do it. I mean, I'm human. So there's going
to be elements where I fall down. I mean, there's no there's no, well, perfect system. There's just, you know, you try to perfect it and play with it.
I'll give you a quick example. I used to try to write later in the day because I'm, you know,
a late a later day kind of guy. But, you know, it was happening. I wasn't writing. I just wasn't
getting the writing done. So I actually had to say, okay, nope, I'm going to do what Pressfield
suggests. And, you know, as he says, put your ass where your heart wants it to be. And that's what
I'm going to do. I'm going to, although I am standing at the standing desk, so, but, you know,
and I will sit and I will write for, you know, set aside the mornings to do that. And it's working.
So I will experiment, but I'm always trying to be personal about my productivity.
I think that's where the quality can, I think that's where anybody can really improve their
quality.
Say, you know, they know that there's objectives that they have to reach.
How do they work subjectively to reach those objectives?
And I believe that organizations can do this too.
It's just, they have to put in a little bit more forethought. They have to be a bit more mindful, thoughtful. They may have to
slow down a bit initially, but it's worth the effort. So you mentioned intention and attention,
which both seem to me like qualitative words. Do you just not worry about the quantity at all then? Well, hold on
though. That's a good point because one time someone said to me, I don't call my tasks or
to-dos tasks or to-dos anymore. I call them intentions. So one time I was doing a workshop,
I think, and someone said, well, I think of intentions as big lofty goals. I'm like, that's fine. I go, but for me, I need to give
every task in that term because then it has a greater power, right? So if I say I intend to,
you know, reply to Mike about his, you know, this thing he's working on, I'm not going to
count that as a task. I make, I qualify it as an intention. So if anything, I do worry
about quantity. I obviously want to make sure I get, you know, the right things done. I have a
number in mind of qualitative things I want to do every day. If I can get six of my things done
every day, not necessarily external demands, but if I can kind of say, okay, what are the six things
that I absolutely want to get done? And they're either aligned with the daily theme maybe, or a project that I'm working on or something like that, or,
or they could be just a random thing like calling my mom. That's an intention I want to live up to.
If I can get those done and then deal with the external demands, which I don't put a
quantitative effort on, like I will try to do as much as I can for others and then illuminate those
six I want to do.
That's where that lies in.
But, but that's a good point because I think a lot of people go, what are your tasks?
What are your this?
Well, again, a task clearly defined is a single object, but then you hear, uh, Victor Frankl
talk about like your life's task and things like that.
Well, that's not a life's task is not a single step, right?
So you can get into semantics
here, but that's why I, I, every task on my to-do list is an intention. And if it's there, then I
intend to do it at some point. All I need to do is draw a place for where it's going to get my
attention. Sounds to me though, like you're basically identifying the areas that you want
to move the needle. And then're focused on the the habits or the
routines and you show up and you do those things instead of being so focused on the outcomes or the
the goals which we've talked about on on this podcast before i think that's a better approach
but i think it also ties back to this whole idea of like the dark side of productivity because that's so focused on achieving the outcome without thinking about
the process at all. I think that's a dangerous mindset to adopt. I'm kind of glad that light
is being shown on this, not by us only, but like Cal Newport, the last episode we talked about GTD,
and that's kind of the same
sort of deal. He wrote this article in the New Yorker about GTD still work, you know, and it's
not really anything that David Allen said that is out of date or wrong. It's just the way that
people are trying to apply it with the urgency bias. And I got to do this thing right now without
taking a long-term approach. I guess if I were to summarize productivity for myself, it would be play the long game,
you know, do the things that, that have meaning to you with a eye on the future.
Is that kind of your approach or how would you define productivity for yourself?
I would say that first off, again, it's a very subjective thought, like what you're,
what you believe productivity to be. First off, I'm getting, I almost think that for me, again,
when I, when I come back to that, that definition of what I believe productivity to be, which is the
active partnership between intention and attention that's given in, I want to keep in that mind in the moment. Right. So, I mean,
David and I geek out a bit about star Wars and, and, you know, we've talked about like what,
you know, Qui-Gon Jinn says your focus determines your reality. Right. And I used to get really
caught up. And I think a lot of productivity practitioners, at least in the early phases,
and maybe even, maybe even people who are
not, in fact, I would argue that there are, get caught up in the planning as the doing,
as opposed to, or the tinkering as the doing, right? As opposed to the actual doing, which can
lead to the being or the being that can, because I think the being and the doing can flip. I think
there's a polarity there a bit. But I also think that there's an ebb and flow to it,
especially when you're dealing with apps and things like that. So there's often a prescribed
way you're supposed to do things when you're dealing with any kind of technology, right?
It says this is because they have to give that. There has to be some opinionated elements to it.
An example I give is Todoist has the priority flags, right? Priority one, priority two, priority three.
They're called priority levels.
People by default make the red priority one flag urgent
and the orange flag priority two important.
I flip it.
So I make the red important and the orange urgent
because the way that the software works
is the red rises above everything. So I want
my important stuff to be at the top. And the flag still signified. So if it's orange, I'm like,
oh, this is urgent. I got to get this done. But I don't want to focus on the urgent first,
or at least I don't want to focus on the urgent on its own. And then there's other things I do
where, again, to give an example,
Todoist has now recurring, right? So recurring, you can just say, I want something to be recurring
and it makes it recurring. But the problem is if you don't put a priority level on it,
it mixes in with all the things that are not recurring. So I keep using the priority three,
which is the blue flag as recurring, because then I don't lose sight of any of these recurring things along the way.
And so that's the way I do. It's very simple. It's the way I think. And I've now rewired my
brain to think that way. And I think I've had to do that with the way I approach my intentionality,
my attention, productivity as a whole is making plans is fine, but I could count on one hand
the amount of times that a day or a week has gone exactly according to plan.
And I believe like when I plan meals for the week, that all it is, is there as a sort of
safeguard as, or the default. So that way, if we don't have mac and cheese tonight for dinner,
we can have other options. But the fallback is mac and cheese, not nothing. Right. So I think
that that's the role I feel that plans are in to a degree, at least, you know, shorter term plans.
I still think about long term goals and long term plans, but I believe in one step at a time now
more than I used to be, you know,
thinking way down and it's hard. It's really hard because I want to think about the future and I
want to have that. But I also know that if I don't take action in the moment, then all the other
stuff is just theory. Yeah, exactly. If you, uh, we're bad at, we're bad at estimating. We tend to
overestimate what we can get done in the short term, which is
why if you're just focused on what you got to do now, you can bite off more than you can chew,
and you have 50 things on your task list, and you're burned out at the end of the day,
and you get to look forward to doing it tomorrow. But if you go out long enough,
say, I want to do this five years from now, now ten years from now you don't even have to go that long but long enough out and okay then i'm just going to consistently chop wood carry
water right that the score is going to take care of itself by the time i get there well the other
the other problem is uh we often forget that tomorrow keeps compounding and compounding and
compounding so that's something. So that's why daily themes
work for me because I need another D I need another planned day. I need another default day.
If I don't get my podcasting and audio media stuff done on Wednesday, I may have to do it Thursday or
Friday, but I won't have to do it all because the next default day is Wednesday. So those little
things, which again are rooted in things we've done forever. I mean, people, when people have
told me that they can't theme a day, I ask them, okay, so do you go to church? And they're like,
yeah, every Sunday. I'm like, so Sunday's like church day. It's like the Lord's day for you,
right? Or if it, you know, maybe they're Jewish and they go Saturday or something. Yeah, yeah,
totally. I'm like, so that's like the theme is like the Lord. And they're like, oh, I'm like,
yeah, you do. or football, American football.
Like we already do it.
It's just maybe giving it a greater definition or being more precise about it.
So that way you can go, oh, because there's just something freeing about knowing.
I didn't get this done today.
I might have to do it tomorrow.
But if I don't, there is another day that I've set aside for that area of focus, as
opposed to
seeing tomorrow pile up and pile up and pile up.
It's the same thing when someone calls in, like, if you're not feeling well, I love to
use this idea of low energy modes.
I have mode based, part of time crafting is these idea of modes.
And one of the modes is energy based modes.
There's nothing better, especially when you work remotely, than I can't
work very hard today or I'm not feeling well, but I'd like to be able to do something. So I will
look at all the tasks that I've labeled as low energy, either with a down arrow, maybe in your
bullet journal, or maybe you have another way of doing it. And then you do that stuff. So when you
are healthy enough to go back to work, you're like, well, I did do stuff along the way. Or even
when you're not healthy enough at the end of the day, you're like, look, I did, this is where quantity can help.
I did 12 things today. It was as productive as I could be. That's where quantity can help
because quality probably will suffer a bit. But if you're doing low energy tasks or low
energy intentions or whatever you want to call them on a day where you're not feeling a hundred
percent, you're doing things that may that you may be able to do at a
higher quality because you're pointing yourself in that direction. And a lot of this is just
pointing ourselves in the right direction. Yeah, I do the same trick. I feel like sometimes
you do have a day where it's just not working, whether you're a writer or an accountant.
Sometimes it's just not working. And giving yourself permission to say,
rather than sit here and beat myself up about the fact that it's not working,
let's just turn the page, do something else. Sometimes it maybe is taking a walk or maybe
it's cleaning your desk or whatever. But I think you should do that without guilt.
Absolutely. You have to have grace. You have to give yourself grace because a lot of what we face is very inhumane. We need to be more humane with ourselves,
especially people who we have a lot of agency over our schedules. Mike, I know you don't have
as much as David and I do, but we have a lot of agency. And I can say that it took me a while to
be more humane with myself, even though I had that much agency,
like I would create higher expectations that I was able to accomplish. Like you said, Mike,
why am I not getting all this stuff done? I'm biting off more than I could chew. And I've
gotten better at that. And some, but some people are at the mercy of a, of a, you know, of a boss
who is, you know, gives them too many things to do, or they have a calendar that's teaming with
meetings.
You have to be willing to give yourself some grace along the way because we face
like these inhumane expectations or inhuman expectations, but we're very human. So there's
only so much that we can accomplish. So it's best to try to find some balance between the amount you
can do and how well you can do it. And to me, if you can find the balance between the amount you can do and how well you can do it. And to me, if you
can find the balance between how much you can do and how well you can do it, and you feel and others
see this too, that you've done that, that's a productive day. That's a productive period of
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all right so in the previous section Mike you mentioned the low energy context when you're not
feeling well and giving
yourself a break. And it's really about the intention, not the quantity. And that immediately
got me thinking about the daily question type journaling that I do. I know journaling is on
our outline, so I'd like to go here now. First, I'll just ask, are you familiar with the daily
questions format? Yes, somewhat. I mean, I am so free form when it comes to journaling that
I probably have lost my way with it a bit, but I have some familiarity with it. Yeah.
Okay. Well, the short version of it is, this comes from the book Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith.
And he got frustrated with journaling about the results, the outcome, what he was able to do,
and instead shifted it. He's got six questions. I morphed it and changed them a little bit. So
I've got, I think, seven of them. But did I do my best to, and then fill in the blank.
So it has nothing to do with the outcome. One of the things that I want to measure is,
the outcome. Like one of the things that I want to measure is that I do my best to exercise. I try to exercise every day. Well, if I'm feeling great, I can go for a long run. I run half marathons,
eight mile run. That could be me taking it easy on that specific day. But if I'm not feeling well
and I get out and I go for a mile and a half, you know, then that is a win. That gets a 10.
You rate your effort on a scale of 1 to 10.
And I feel like judging the intentions is a great way to measure productivity,
as we were talking about it in the previous section. But journaling, obviously, this is a
whole new can of worms. And I'm curious how this fits into your productivity workflow. You mentioned freeform journaling,
but what are you doing in terms of journaling? And then how does that feed what you are,
your plans and what you're trying to accomplish? It's interesting you bring that up because one
of the things that I do talk about in my journal entries is, did I live up to my daily theme today?
So that's almost like a question, like, did I do my best my daily theme today? So that's almost like a question.
Like, did I do my best to follow
whatever today's daily theme was?
So if it's Monday, did I do my best to follow
the maintenance work?
Did I do a chunk?
And if I did, then I mean, because I can see that, right?
I can look at my task list.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of like,
if I can look at the daily driver,
which is a paper planning tool that I use.
If I see like all those things on there and most of the six that are on there will probably be
maintenance tasks that I set out. Yeah, that was pretty darn productive. I don't necessarily rank
it. I don't say, well, I got a 10 out of 10 for that. It's more, I guess, anecdotal than,
than, you know, numerical. I am, I have worked on, and it's still very much in its infancy, this idea of a
productivity ROI. And I tend to use it with bigger clients, this realized objective index. And it
tends to have to, you know, it tends to go with what are the things you needed to do? What are
the things you wanted to do? And then there's this other ambiguous element, like, what did you,
what did you think you ought to have done? And the ought to really is about making a decision, whether it was a need or a want,
and then you would get a score from it. I've done it with a couple of business clients and
they really like it because it does give them a score for the day. And it's a, it's, it's,
you know, it's an index and then they can compare it week over week if they're using daily themes
or they can compare it day over day. So they get the sense of it. I haven't applied it too much to personal because I feel,
and I might be wrong in this,
I feel that it might be too much in the weeds as opposed to just,
because getting people to journal is hard enough.
There are so many people that just are like,
well, I don't see the point.
And the way I'm able to kind of
hopefully illustrate, and a lot of people who are members of Time Crafting Trust, the membership
community I run now journal, because the way I do it is I'll say, well, give me a date in the last
10 years. And they give me a date and I can go back and read my journal entry. And it's very much
like, you know, almost like a, again, like a free flowing story of the day. And they're like, wow.
I'm like, yeah, I don't have to remember of the day. Um, and they're like, wow. I'm like,
yeah, I don't have to remember what that day looked like. Cause I can go back and relive it.
And Jessamyn West, uh, she said, uh, uh, one of her quotes that I, that I really love is
those who journal get to live life twice. And there's something about that, that I appreciate
because if you can go back and see that stuff, it evokes things that
are very emotional, very human, gratitude, appreciation. You see patterns that you
wouldn't see on your calendar or on your to-do list necessarily. And I think that while the
calendar is kind of the directory of your days and the to-do list is the details, right? Then
the journal is the story, right? It's the story of your days, your weeks, your months, your life. And so I think that when
I journal, it's very much part of my evening routine. It's part of what I call the evening
examination. And it empties my brain. It kind of closes out the day, very meditative, maybe almost
prayer-like. And then I can go to bed and I will write down, you know,
what does tomorrow look like? Like I will project that a bit, but that's it. And I dictate it.
Number one, I dictate it because the journaling app that I use recently, they moved to a new text
editor. So on iOS, it doesn't auto-correct.
So my journal entries, when I type them now,
would look, I wouldn't know what I was saying because I keep hitting the O instead of the I
and stuff like that.
But I tend to actually write them in drafts anyway.
I tend to write them in the drafts app
and then I just copy and paste them
into the journaling app that I use.
And that's how I wrap up the day.
And that's another thing I'll tell people
if they're like, oh, I'm so tired at the end of the day of journaling. I'm like, dictate it. Like wrap up the day. And that's another thing I'll tell people if
they're like, oh, I'm so tired at the end of the day of journaling. I'm like, dictate it.
Like, just dictate it. Like, you can talk. And if you take five minutes at the end of your day
to journal, it will pay off. Speaking of the long game, like you're talking about, Mike,
it will pay off. And if you are using social media, if you're on Facebook or Instagram and
you're posting things on there, you're journaling for the world.
And I would think it's a far better thing for you to do than journal for yourself.
I think it would make social media a better place to, if people journaled instead of putting
everything on social.
But I think if you, if you spend that much time on social, giving the gift of your experience
to others, you should give at least that much to yourself through the,
the art of journaling.
Yeah.
I have a geek angle to that.
Like you remember star Trek,
right?
Captain Picard would have like aliens invading.
His ship would be blowing up.
And you know,
at the end of the day,
he always had time to do a captain's log,
you know,
even did supplemental ones.
Yes.
Yeah. So, so like if, and, and since I talked to so many geeks i'm like you know the card could do it you can sit down
and in day one it does a transcription for you right in the application or but actually on any
device now you can transcribe because um the siri dictations got good or whether using google or
whatever you can dictate anywhere.
You could dictate into Mike's beloved obsidian if you want it.
It's true.
I think that,
and I mean,
historically,
not just captain Jean-Luc Picard,
captain Kirk also did it,
but also other people like Benjamin Franklin,
the book meditations by Marcus Aurelius was his journal.
It's not like he had a book deal.
Yeah, it was his journal that went out there.
So there's a lot that there's a lot that can be learned.
And no one has read my journal at all.
When I'm gone, they can read my journal because there's some things in there that I probably don't want people to read while I'm alive.
And that's OK, because some days you have bad days with certain people.
And that's what that journal is for. It's for me to share thoughts, ideas,
aspirations, um, frustrations, all that stuff. And it's been, it's, it's the most undervalued
and underrated quote productivity quote tool. I think that you could use.
As somebody who's meditated my whole life, I find journaling to be very similar in the effect that allow you to work through things.
But two things you've said I want to follow up on. The first one is just this idea of dictation,
just to put a point on it. I find the dictated journal entries are different than the typed ones
that like when I just start talking, sometimes the entry is more interesting. So for whatever reason that if you've never tried it
before, I'd recommend, you know, giving that a try. And the second thing is being clear about
the use of your journal. Now I know some people make journals because they want to hand it down
to their kids. And I think that is a completely legitimate use of journaling.
To share a slice of your life with them.
Someday you're going to be worm food.
You know, none of us are getting on this alive.
So if you want to do that, that's great.
I use it as a tool for myself.
And just like Mike, I decided really early, this is not something they get shared.
If they do read it, I hope I'm dead, you know,
because I don't want them to read it all.
But that is why it's so useful to me.
I'm convinced.
If I tried to make the legacy journal, it'd be like, you know,
it's like, you know, people that like put posts up on Facebook
and you read it and you're like, oh, that's all BS.
I know that guy. That's not what that guy is, Right. I feel like if you try to do a legacy journal,
you're inevitably going to head down that path. You know, I, Matthew McConaughey has booked
green lights. I got the journal for it. Um, and I really like it, but I think that there's also,
like you said, there's different type of journaling. Like I have that journal and I will sit and it does, it almost feels orchestrated.
Like it doesn't feel as, it doesn't flow as easily.
And sometimes that's good because it's asking tough questions and things like that.
But I think that's where a lot of people face friction is they think that a journal is supposed to be this deep, you know, onerous thing that, you know, and I don't I remember talking to somebody about this and they said, I don't want this.
I don't want to make a journal because what if somebody gets their hands on it?
Like, there's lots of solutions to that, you know.
So I think that that if you're struggling with it, um, there's, there's so
many frictionless points, dictation, digital tools, all that. Um, don't call it a journal,
call it a log, call it a chronicle, call it what, like, I mean, again, it's very subjective,
but I think it's, it's one of those things that when you start doing it, you realize the value
and the power that it has, and it can help really like shape what you do going forward.
Gives you superpowers. Absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned earlier about eliminating the friction.
And I thought that was a really important point and was planning to come back to that and kind
of reemphasize that, that if you're struggling with a journaling habit, keep it simple. It
doesn't need to be complicated. It doesn't have to have 20
different prompts. Just start with one. Or don't even have a prompt, just write freeform. I mean,
there's a million ways that you can do it, but you want really whatever system you're going to use
to give you enough structure to provide direction, but then you want it to just get out of the way.
You want it as simple as possible, but no simpler.
You know, Mike, we had this conversation a few months ago
where you asked me in a conversation
why I stopped to take a photo of this pathway
that I was walking down when I was taking a walk.
And I actually thought about that.
I mean, I used that picture for my journal.
And I think that's another thing too.
If you have a phone, which everyone pretty much does,
that has a camera on it and you're like,
I don't know what to journal about.
Go through your phone and see what you took a photo of.
And that could be a jumping off point.
But I, again, and this is such an interesting thing.
I was going so far the other
way that I was seeking photos for the day. And I used to be very, you know, rigid about that.
And after that conversation, I realized like, I don't necessarily, this is such a strong
ingrained habit. Now I don't need to do that. Sometimes it's nice. And I would say 90% of my
journal entries all have photos, but the ones that don't, again, I dictate them to your point,
David, they are fascinating because I actually am more in like when I go back and read my journal,
which I do on a, I'd say every at minimum every year, but I try to do it every season,
like every quarter, I guess.
And those ones are the ones I'm most intrigued about.
Like, why is there no picture there?
Like, what was going on in my head
that I didn't need a picture?
Like, because the picture offered a clue.
There's no clue when I go back and read those.
And some of those are the most fascinating things.
And they spur on me reading journal entries around it because I'm like, what was I thinking the day before?
What was I thinking the day after?
So, again, the process will morph the longer you do it.
So that was just an interesting side story because I never thought about it that way.
And now that I don't make that like an absolute, I think my journaling is as
elevated or as benefited from that. Yeah. I think another issue is like in the modern era,
we've got this social media chemical addiction and so many people go through life looking for,
oh, what's the next thing I can Instagram? And what's the next thing I can tweet
about something clever? And what's the next thing I can, you know, make a Facebook post on? And I
really think that there's a loop going on in a lot of people's heads about that. And that is kind of
like, it's like, it's like journaling for, for posterity. It's not pure.
I don't know if that's the right word,
but that's the way it feels to me.
And it really makes a difference when you start journaling,
whether it is with a fancy app or a legal pad and a pen.
But when you say, this is something I'm going to shred
when I'm done writing it,
or this is something I'm going to not let other people read,
but this is just a tool I'm using to get my life in the direction I want it.
There's a magic to that. And it's so easy to get the lines crossed. That's why when we talk about
it, I always am so careful because it's great to put up cool pictures on Instagram and put
things on Twitter or even make a journal for your kids, but it's not the
same thing. I'm curious, David, you mentioned pen and paper in that last segment. Yeah. And
you also mentioned that the dictated journal entries are different than the typed ones.
I know you've done analog journaling too. Have you noticed a difference in those types of entries as well? Yeah, I do. I mean, I use all mediums when it comes in. To me, the underlying technology of
journaling has been day one for many years. So I've got this rich history in here. So whether
I'm typing something into an Obsidian node or writing on pen and paper, everything gets ultimately sent to day one.
And day one has a feature where you can take a picture. And like we had a thing recently where
the girls wanted to go to a local shopping mall. You know, COVID, we haven't done a lot of that.
So I thought, well, I'll go with them. But I didn't want to go shopping. So I brought my paper journal and a fancy pen and I found a
really nice spot in the mall and sat there and just gave myself the question, it's been six
months since I stopped being a lawyer, how's it going? And I wrote for an hour and writing it
with the pen and paper was different than if I had dictated it. So yeah, I'll use all the tools, baby, whatever it takes.
What do you use, Mike, in terms of the tools?
And really, you can get as specific as you want with apps if you desire to go there.
But really, I'm just kind of curious.
What is the intentionality you apply to the methods for your journaling?
So I use drafts for the actual writing of the journal entry, the daily journals,
because I know that the dictation works there.
Plus, I can do interstitial stuff if I want.
So if something comes to mind, I can tag it as like, this is the beginning of the day.
And, you know, I get to see maybe more of the journey along the way.
And then I will copy it into an app called Reflection, Reflection.app, which is made by the Holstie folks who did the Holstie manifesto.
It's multi-platform, which I like.
But I also like the fact that they have, and they've had these features for a while, the monthly review.
They have built-in tags. They only allow for one
photo, which I actually like because then you're not going to be like, I'm going to make, I'm going
to add like 12 photos. So I like that. It's also web-based. So there's that as well. In terms of
handwritten journals, I do have, again, I have the Matthew
McConaughey journal, which I have written in on a few occasions. I have a couple other handwritten
journals and they're just notebooks that people gave me. Like my mother-in-law gave me one. So
I've used that as a journal. My wife gave me a couple as well. So I don't use those for, those
aren't, you know, journals that I'm going to have notebooks rather I'm going to dispose of, but I
have nice pens too. You and I are both pen nerds. I think, you know, so I've liked some good Baron fig pens, some good studio
neat pens. I have, uh, uh, some nice fountain pens as well. So I will, I like using those for
the handwritten journal entries and I'll probably, I don't have a rhyme or reason of when I do those.
So like David, like, you know, if, if my kids are like, Hey, Dad, you want to go to the beach? And I'm like, sure. And they go to the beach and play and I'm sitting, I'll just bring one of those along and do the same kind of thing. So because I feel that at the in those moments, I'm probably at my most, maybe not present, but able to think about that kind of stuff without the worry of,
you know, anything else. And if I, if I end an entry, cause my son wants to go
in the water with me or whatever, then I can, right. You know, it's not like anything else
that I do. Yeah. Agreed. And I do think, you know, just getting yourself out of your usual pot and going somewhere else and journaling is really helpful.
Can I just go on a sidetrack for a minute about Matthew McConaughey?
Sure. All right. All right. All right.
Yeah. So everybody told me I had to read that book. And I got like a quarter of the way through. honestly I could not finish it. I mean, there's two things about that book. First of all,
he broke up with Penelope
Cruz, which in my mind is probably
the most beautiful woman in the world. So
next to my wife.
And I can never
forgive him for that. But the book
really felt to me like the
vanity journaling kind of stuff.
Did you read it
or did you listen to it? I listened to it. Oh, okay. Interesting. And about a quarter of the. Like, did you, did you read it or did you listen to it?
I listened to it.
Oh,
okay.
Interesting.
About a quarter of the way through.
I'm like,
I can't do this anymore.
Maybe it got better at the end,
but I just,
that's one of those books I didn't finish.
So have you ever,
I remember going to see dumb and dumber two in the theaters and I hated it.
I hated it. And then I saw it, I think three months later and I hated it. I hated it.
And then I saw it,
I think three months later and I thought it was great.
So,
I mean,
I'm not saying that that's the case here.
Cause I mean,
he is,
I would say like,
I really,
I appreciate where he's going with his stuff.
Now this outlaw philosophy kind of stuff.
And I really,
when I listened to that book and I was the one was one of the ones that recommended it to you,
I was going on a personal retreat.
And so him reading that as I drove from my house
up to about four hours north of here,
it was almost the ideal companion book
that was priming me for what I was getting.
So I may have had an elevated sense of,
this is really great.
I do watch his YouTube channel now,
and there's some really cool stuff.
I'm glad he makes the video short.
I will say that,
because there's only so much that I think anybody can do of that stuff.
But I think sometimes when you read a book
or when you watch a movie or take something in,
that your mood, your state,
probably plays a factor in it.
And I will probably,
I should actually go back and listen to it again and see,
I don't know that it'll have the same effect probably because I've listened to it,
but I could see where you're coming from and printed books are better.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But when he reads it though,
there's that,
there's that draw.
Like if I like memoirs being read by the person.
I really appreciate that.
But I do have the paper version of it as well.
Someone gifted it to me.
And it's a well-put-together book in terms of the design.
But I did enjoy him, quote, reading it to me.
Well, maybe I need to read it instead.
But since I had that experiment, I actually have decided to stop
listening to productivity books because I just don't get it. I'm better reading those kinds of
books. Fiction is for audio now. So maybe I need to go back and try it again. But I feel like an
outlier. It's like everybody I know tells me what a great book this is. And I was like, I can't take
this anymore. I haven't read it yet, so I can't break the tie. You know, it's interesting because while I would consider it to be productivity elements in it,
I'm with you now, David. I think we talked about this before as well. I used to read
audiobooks that were nonfiction, and I'm getting away from that other than if they're memoir.
Memoirs I'm okay with as long as the author's reading it. If the author's not reading them,
Memoirs I'm okay with as long as the author's reading it.
If the author's not reading them, like, why is this happening?
But then fiction.
Like, I'll read fiction now as audio, and I'm really enjoying that.
But in terms of productivity in nonfiction books, it's generally either Kindle, which I finally got a little over a year ago after trying to use the iPad. iPad Kindle app for a long time and it not landing for me as well. And then paper books.
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Mike, you did a thing online the other day that made me smile. It's the kind of thing,
kind of rabble that Mike Vardy rouses. You posted a poll. Do you manage your tasks in
your calendar or your task manager? How'd that go?
So I asked on Twitter,
what do you consider to be your primary productivity tool?
And I only gave two options.
Didn't even give an other.
It was either calendar or to-do list.
And I did qualify by saying analog slash digital.
So that way people, and people did reply, which was fine. But it went 50-50.
It was a 50-50 reply, which is fine, but it went 50, 50. It was a 50, 50 split, which is,
I actually can appreciate that because when I work through productivity training with people,
the first question I ask is, are you a calendar person or to-do list person?
And I think no matter which way you come at it from, there is this meshing eventually that has to happen.
I think you need both.
I do.
I think that putting all your tasks on a calendar is a recipe for overwhelm.
And again, I mentioned earlier, like no day goes according to plan.
No week goes according to plan.
So if you overload your calendar, and David, you and I have had this conversation about hyperscheduling, what you believe hyperscheduling to be in my definition of hyperscheduling. Hyperscheduling to me is that your calendar is so full, like you've filled every block on your calendar with very specific tasks. You've got very precise. then what happens? The house of cards can fall apart. By the same token, you can't just use a to-do list and not have the calendar because the calendar has the frame of dates and things like
that. And some things are related to time specific things. And, you know, we can go back to classic
getting things done of appointments can go in there, but then you can modify it. Like that
writing block, that horizontal theme that I have from nine to 12,
Monday through Friday, it's writing. And that's an appointment with myself at my Hemingway to
write. Like that's what that's there for. So I consider that to be, you know, writing. Now,
when I'm looking at that writing block, I'm like, well, what am I going to write about? Well,
the to-do list will tell me or the intention or whatever you want to call it. Like that's where that D those details come in.
So it was very fascinating to see that the mix of, and it looked for a long time, by
the way, the calendar was a way ahead.
Like it was like a 70 to like 30 for a while.
And by the, by the time the 24 hours up is 50, 50.
So I think there's a decent mix of people who rely on their calendar first and their
to-do list second, or may not lose it, use it to do list at all. I don't know very many people who use a to-do list and don't
use a calendar. So it was a very interesting, and I tend to use Twitter as like a testing ground,
like an open mic to kind of figure out what people are thinking. So I haven't done anything
with that poll yet, but I can't wait to see what that looks like because it's going to be,
it'll lead to something.
So I have a beef here with the way this poll is presented.
It was not a scientific poll.
You say primary productivity tool. And I think the word primary could have a couple different definitions here. It could mean most important, in which case the 50-50 split is not surprising.
Right.
But I think if it means the one that you have to start with, like the first one in the chain.
Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
The calendar has to come first, right?
Yeah, that's actually a really good point.
Yeah.
I should have maybe worded it like, what productivity tool do you rely on the most?
Might have been the most.
Sure. Leave it to me to overanalyze your well you know there but
we're all word nerds i was just like that's the great thing about using twitter as an open mic
you know i could be as an open mic night for a comedian i'd be like it was funny i saw somebody
uh tweet holstie actually tweeted about um what ge George Carlin defined because you've heard of deja vu,
right? But George Carlos a bit where he calls it veja do, which is the opposite, which is
experiencing something similar. I think it's experiencing something similar as if you've
done it for the first time instead of the other way around. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to geek
out on that at some point, because I think that that has a lot
that can work out in terms of productivity and habits and things like that. Like you can find
excitement in the mundane. There's a lot of gold to be mined in story outside of which is we talked
about books, which is why I've expanded my reading a bit to go into things like Star Wars, the Marvel
Universe, Dr. Fate, and things like that.
Because I think there's a lot of elements of story that there's a timelessness to it that
can be applied to the work that I do and the work that you guys do here as well.
Yeah. It lands with you when you see it in story. For me, at least, it's the same thing. That's why
I'm trying to get Mike schmitz to read more fiction
but i'm not having much it was it was interesting to read um so i saw elvis last night uh with my
daughter as we're recording this so like and i really like baz lerman's filmmaking style so
there's this is another interesting thing because sometimes filmmakers you if you know that a
filmmaker makes a movie you're like oh martin scorsese i'll see that a filmmaker makes a movie,
you're like, oh, Martin Scorsese.
I'll see that because it's a Scorsese film.
But if you don't like Martin Scorsese,
you don't like Baz Luhrmann,
you're like, nope, you automatically,
there's a buy, like, I know I won't like this.
But if you like Elvis, you might give it a chance.
And it was really good.
I really enjoyed it.
But Tom Hanks' character in it,
like the end, I mean, there's no spoilers here.
We know that Elvisvis died and so
what what yes it's true um and so uh uh colonel tom parker uh said the character said that you
know he died not from this or this but he died because of love and i'm like wait a minute hold
on hold on hold on. Because every,
every story that I've been reading to,
whether listening to a reading or seeing Ms.
Marvel,
all these other movies is like fear.
You can either live in love or live in fear.
Right.
And the very beginning of that movie,
Baz Luhrmann has his logo on there.
And this quote is from the very first film he did which is
called Strictly Ballroom and he goes to live a life in fear is to live is to live a life half
lived and so it was very interesting to kind of like when you start to compartmentalize all these
works of fiction and all these other you can start to say okay well the opposite you know and as a
Green Lantern fan well fear the opposite of fear as well, is it, maybe it's love. So these are the kinds of things that once you start exploring
things beyond the scope of, you know, whatever your area of expertise is, and especially fiction,
those connecting of those dots is, it's just, it opens up your mind to so many different things that you can start to talk
about and write about. And, and, and to your point, David, that's when people can go, Oh, I get it.
Like a project people will say to me, like, you know, Oh yeah, that's like, I'll look at their,
their to-do list. And I'll say like, you know, go grocery shopping. I'm like, Oh, so that's a
project. No, it's not. Yeah, it is. No, it's not. I'm like, okay. Have you ever taught someone how
to go grocery shopping? What are all the steps? And then they broken out. Oh my project. No, it's not. Yeah, it is. No, it's not. I'm like, okay, have you ever taught someone how to go grocery shopping?
What are all the steps?
And then they broken out.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, it is.
I'm like, so is doing laundry.
So is driving a car.
I go now, you don't need to do that for yourself because you've done it often enough.
But if there's something new that you haven't done, or you're not very confident in it,
break it down.
So when you can bring like story or real life or something that is quote, you're not so
close to, and they might be,
you can relate to that. There's power in that. And that goes back to the days when I was doing
stand-up and improv. That comedy bit, the root of comedy is about making the ordinary extraordinary
the extraordinary ordinary. And I'm diving deeper into that, especially now that I've spent so much
time learning about productivity. Now it's time to kind of connect more dots.
Yeah. And I would also argue that it's about connecting with people and that's the way you
get the message across. And that's what comics do too.
You said something earlier, I forget the specific terms, but you mentioned the details and you
mentioned that journaling was the story.
Do you mind diving into that a little bit deeper here and how these things all tie together with the journaling, the task manager, and the calendar? Sure. So I've said this a few times before,
but the idea of, I believe the calendar is the directory of your days. So if you're to look at
your calendar, it says, here's where I need to be and here's where my attention needs to go.
But it doesn't offer a whole lot of details in most cases, right? Like I got to the dentist appointment,
but you don't know what happened at the dentist.
You're not going to go back in your calendar and go, well,
I had a root canal and it kind of sucked.
Or here's all the steps that are required for me to go to the dentist,
right? Or, or the, whatever it is. So that's the directory, right?
It kind of points you in the direction that you need to go.
And that's daily, weekly, monthly, whatever.
The to-do list offers the details of your day.
So that's where you can see the quantity, maybe not necessarily the quality, depending on what you're using and
depending on how you're relating with it. But you can definitely see like, here's what I did today,
and here's all the things I did this week, and so on and so forth. So it offers the details.
And what I find fascinating is that the devil is often in the details. So when people
use their calendar as a to-do list, it can be problematic. But the devil is often in the details. So when people use their calendar as a
to-do list, it can be problematic. But the journal is the story of your life because that's where the
emotional components come in. That's where the patterns show up. That's where you can say,
hey, I have on my to-do list work out, you know, like you said, Mike, like working out.
If that's on your to-do list and you check it off, that's going to say, I did it. But maybe you felt like crap, or maybe you did something for the first
time that you had never done before. Maybe you said, you know, I'm going to try Tai Chi now
because I want to have more of a mindful workout. And maybe that's part of it. So the journal kind
of offers, to me, it offers the, it ties it all together, I think. And so when I say that to
people, again, it's funny because I wish I could offer journaling at the beginning. The journal is
a story of your life. And this is because often by the end, they're like, well, yeah, but you know,
I don't, I'm more worried about the calendar and I'm more worried about to-do list. But
I think you, the, the, the place you pay attention to, if you see in your journal what's going on,
you're going to be able to make corrections
to those things on your to-do list
and maybe have the right directory
for your days on your calendar.
Yeah, if you understand the story,
then everything else sorts itself out.
I think people are coming at this
from the wrong direction too often.
Stephen Covey had it right
when he said begin with the end in mind.
Yeah.
But I mean, to get back to the beginning of the show, even, I feel like the whole thread
with productivity about, you know, doing, getting more gold out of the ground, getting
more Fords off the assembly line.
It's so easy for us to personally do that and stop thinking about whether even we want
to be in the car business.
And that, I mean,
that's where people lose it. And you get to the end of your life and you realize you didn't want
to be in the car business, but then it's too late. And that is the tragedy. People ask me
why I do what I do. Like I get, I get those questions on podcasts and even people who
are in my community. They're like, why do I do what I do? Like, why did I decide to go down this
path of productivity? Like what, I mean, Mike, you were working at Costco, you could have done
anything, but yet you stuck with this. You went from like a productivity parody guy to a productivity
enthusiast to now you're like, you've got your own framework and
you're, you're more philosophical about this, which, you know, our mutual friend,
or he says philosophers, there's no money in philosophy or whatever he said, but,
but I'm thinking more about this stuff. And I think that thinking about it is leading me to
better conclusions and better directions with the work that I'm doing. And I just said, you know,
at the end of the day, I don't, I want
to have, I want to, I want to end my day and my weekend, my month, where when I look at what I've
accomplished, we talked, we've talked about legacy privately as well. Like it's deeds and descendants,
right? Like to me, it's like the deeds you did and the descendants that you leave behind. I think
that's ultimately what a legacy probably is. But the things that matter to me is the time I spend with my kids.
My son and I yesterday went shopping at a thrift store when I could have been sitting
writing or doing any number of things, building, buying stuff for my Star Wars costume for
Disneyland.
And then when we finished that, what was interesting is he came home and started adding things
to it.
And guess what I got to do? Right. I got to come down. He was doing his thing, but we did that, what was interesting is he came home and started adding things to it. And guess what I got to do?
Right.
I got to come down.
He was doing his thing, but we did that thing together.
Before we hopped on this podcast today, I was out buying stuff for my son's birthday scavenger hunt.
I could have been writing.
I could have been doing these other things.
But I have chosen and I have the ability to choose when I do certain things based on, you know,
what I prioritize, what my intentions are and how I'm going to pay attention to it.
It doesn't mean I'm not going to write later today.
I'm going to.
I know I'm going to.
I built that.
But in that moment, I'm like, you know what?
I only have two hours here.
I'm just getting back from vacation.
I know this birthday thing's important.
And I went and I took care of it.
And you know how I feel after doing that? Absolutely great. Because we know what, I know that that was a goal. That's
the most important thing this week is my son's birthday, period. So if you start, like you said,
David, with like that place, then maybe you're going to, you know, make better choices. If you
find out what the people that matter in your life want from you, you to make better choices. If you find out what the people that matter in your life want from you,
you might make better choices.
Again, that Elvis movie, he was doing so many things.
And at one point in the movie, Priscilla says,
we just want you to be happy.
We don't care about the money.
We don't care.
We just want you to be happy doing what you're doing.
And that led to the comeback special in 1968, which was huge.
So I think if more people thought about that stuff,
then they'd be willing to make sacrifices and compromises in the parts of their life that maybe they haven't thought about
whether or not they matter nearly as much as the others that do.
Something that occurred to me recently,
I mean, I've never really been too worried about death.
And Mac and I are probably going to do a show on this at some point.
But something that occurs to me, now that I have made all these changes in my life,
and I'm really on the path that I want for myself and I feel I belong,
it's like I have no fear of death.
It's like I'm doing what I want to do.
If my day comes, my day comes, but I won't have any regrets.
And it's just, I know it's a very morbid thing, but at the same time, it's true.
And I do think that is a result, not a, that's not a step one, that's a step five.
And I do think a lot of people, you said earlier, you know, it helps if you hear what people, you know, want for you or around you think.
But also, I think a lot of people don't think enough about what they want for themselves.
And that's why all this journaling and this meditation hippie stuff I talk about, I think, can help you get there.
Gets us stuck in the busyness, which is really just stuff that other people want from you without ever
taking time to identify what really is important to you. Well, it's no surprise then that you
default to what's urgent instead of what's important because you never took the time to define it.
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okay so we've been dancing around this idea of work-life balance.
This is like a trigger point for Mike Schmitz.
Mike Fardy, I know you have thoughts.
Where are you on work-life balance, Mike?
Is it okay?
Are you balanced?
Is that what you need?
See, you removed the adjective in that last sentence,
and that made me feel better about it.
It doesn't require an adjective. Balance is balance. Like you get to work in life or so for so integrated,
I think at this point, whether, whether it's by force or by choice, you know what I mean?
Like, I think like, for example, I get to choose how I work and how I operate. So it's part of
like, there's, there's some identity wrapped in there for sure. Uh, for others, you know, it's maybe a bit more by force,
but when you, when you add that adjective in front of it, I think it, it focuses the, the,
the idea on work life, not on balance. Like the idea of balance to me, because it's not working in a lot of cases,
people swing too far one way or too far the other. They either go too far to the emotion or too far
to the logic, and they don't go towards reason. This idea of you're either ruthless or reckless,
but they're not reasoned. And I think that balance doesn't require an adjective. You should be
seeking balance, harmony, whatever you want to talk
about it. But it drives me nuts because it doesn't... Say you want to leave a balanced life
then, just a balanced life, because work is part of that. And life will go on until you don't have
it anymore, but your work will evolve. So I just say balance is what you should be seeking.
I still have a little bit of an issue with the word balance. It's better. It's better.
I agree. Work life doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there's just
your life and you got to figure out what to do with it. But the issue I have with the word
balance is it feels reactive. It feels like you're trying to stay in the center. And so you realize I swung
too far this way, so I'm going to move a little bit this way. And I know from talking to you,
Micah, the whole idea of agency has even come up in this podcast a little bit, but
I prefer to believe that I can put my finger on the scale and I can tip it in the
direction that I want it to go, not just as a reaction to going too far that last time.
I wonder if balance, to your point, is the quantitative response and harmony is the
qualitative. That could be. Yeah, I like that. I just, I want people to err on the,
if they're going to default one way or the other, don't default to the,
there's nothing I can do about my situation. Right. Right. So I'm going to take action
in some way, shape, or form. It's easy to feel helpless, especially if you're stuck in a day
job and you have a manager or a boss who's breathing down your neck and telling you exactly
what you have to do. And you have to be in email and all those different things that we talked
about. Like, hey, you just got to, it's easy for the productivity experts to be like, hey,
just disconnect from your email, right? But if you're a salesperson, it's not so easy.
But you can start where you are with what you have, and you can start to
take back a little bit of your time, a little bit of your attention, apply a little bit of
intention, and move the needle in the areas that are important to you. Even if where you want to
be is so far from where you are right now, start where you are with what you have and make progress.
That's the most critical thing well
and you're seeking it like you're seeking that stuff i think when you're when you're that far
away or you feel you're that far away then when you're seeking it then you have to take incremental
steps to get closer to it um the idea of balance to me isn't it doesn't feel reactionary it feels
i think when you start putting like terms
like work life in front of it i know my our my friend eric fisher and i know you've chatted with
eric before as well he said the reason that some people do that is so that they know what to give
balance to but that's the that to me is the exact problem is you're not you're not specific enough, even with that. Work life is not like the one thing.
Just work life.
Life, does that mean you're not living when you're working?
It doesn't even make sense.
No, no.
But the thing is, I would guess,
I would even go as far as to guarantee that if you journal,
you will probably get closer to this idea of harmony and balance
than you would if you don't. For sure. And I think I understand the application of that tag. One of
the revelations I got with work that really changed the way that I thought about what I did
was reading the book, Your Money or Your Life. And the big idea there is that you go to work and
you trade your life for a certain amount of money so that you can live. And when you are at work,
really what you are doing is not a job for most people. You are trading your time for money. You
are trading a portion of your life and that money that you get represents the portion of the life
that you gave to get it. And all of a sudden, when you start thinking about money that way, you're not so
quick to spend $5 here and $10 there because it costs you a lot to get that. It's a valuable
resource. So I think it's easy to default into that. And there's obviously benefits of that approach when it comes to budgeting.
But I would argue that that's probably not the most healthy approach to thinking about
your professional career.
I would also argue that the idea of sunk cost fallacy is much harder to overcome when you
put time into something than when you put money into something, especially in work.
You're like, I've been here so long, or I've got this thing.
to something, especially in work. You're like, I've been here so long, or I've got this thing. It's so hard to break free of that because you're not going to get that time back or it's too late.
You know, I've got to keep going. Or you've spent, you've over committed yourself to certain
financial obligations. And that to me, this is again, why it should be like, you know,
when you think about balance in general,
it's like, okay, well, I've had people say, well, you know, I can't afford to do that.
Or I can't, I can't do what you do because I have all these mortgage payments and all this stuff.
And I will, I mean, I understand those problems. I have a mortgage. We know all that stuff. My
wife's just made some career changes herself. And I've said, well, you know, do you, what if
you went and looked for something else to do for a living? Why can't, like, what am I, why can't you? I mean, they're making choices, choices
are being made. But I argue that, that I would think that sunk cost fallacy for that, like,
you know, well, I've already committed this much time to it. I mean, if you've committed years of
schooling and years into a career and expertise towards something and saying, you know, I'm going to throw that all away or and just move on to something else.
That's hard to do.
Wouldn't you agree, David?
Yeah, I had 35 years into the law between school and practice.
But you know what?
Strangely, it wasn't that hard for me to walk away from it.
I don't know.
But I do think there
was resistance for years to even considering it. Once I considered it seriously, it was a fairly
easy decision, but there was a massive barrier to get to that mind space.
But that barrier, correct me if I'm wrong, that was all mental. That was entirely your perspective.
The longer you went as a lawyer,
it should have been harder for you to make that switch, right?
Yeah. Yeah, right. It's all in my head.
Well, it's all in all of our heads. The point I want to get at here in this last section,
Mike, is this whole idea of agency. And you talked about theming your days and the rhythm
and just instilling some hope in people that even if you feel trapped,
recognizing that there are elements of your schedule and your to-do list that you can control.
And maybe you have more influence over those than you think.
Well, I think the other thing too is that when people go seeking for help through frameworks, platforms, ideas, is that often they go there when they feel they're at a point where they need they
need to absorb it all right so one of like they'll adopt getting things done or they'll look at all
these and then they'll try to do too much of that all at once and when one piece doesn't work
the bias is creeping well if this doesn't, then the whole thing can't work.
And I might as well just go back to the way things work because they haven't had a chance
to give it time to stick.
And one of the things that I really strive to do with the work that I do, especially
through time crafting, is saying like if people say I can't see my days, I'm like, OK, well,
theme one, try one.
Or I can't use what like what are these five categories of modes?
I can't use all five.
You're not supposed to.
Use one.
Pick a starting mode and a reliever.
Like, use baseball as a metaphor or whatever.
Like, don't.
Or just start with journaling, right?
I think that there is a predisposition for people to try.
Like, your money or your life is an example.
I remember reading that book, and the first step in that book is try to gather.
Think of every dollar you've earned ever. Like
that's the primary, the very first, see primary, very first thing that you have to do. And my brain
was like, wait, what? Like there was a big resistance to that. Once I did it, I realized,
oh, I've earned lots of money. I could definitely, wow, that gives me perspective. So I think that if you were to take things on bit by bit and view this as more of a process
as opposed to the outcome, like you're talking about, like looking at like step by step and
make small changes that have a chance to be sustainable, I think you're going to put yourself
in a better position to realize you have more agency over what you do and who you want to
be than you would. It's just about maybe having a better productivity diet of sorts.
I mean, just to use myself as an example, going back to quitting being a lawyer,
I started MaxBarkey.com in 2007, but I had already been doing stuff in the community for
a year or two before that.
And the day I bought that domain at no point did I say, well, in 15 years,
I'm not going to be a lawyer.
I'm going to have turned this into an empire, you know, and, um,
none of that was intentional.
It happened piecemeal along the way until one point I looked behind me and went,
oh, wait a second. My life has changed, you know? And I think that's the way until one point I looked behind me and went, oh, wait a second.
My life has changed, you know, and I think that's the way to go about it, honestly. But it's the journaling, it's the meditation, it's that stuff that allows you to connect with it as you're going
through the process. And it's the stuff that doesn't give you immediately measurable results
that makes it harder for people to wrap their head around and adopt.
Yeah, so true.
I'm kind of curious, because in addition to the journaling, I believe the retreats are
an important part of this.
And I know, Mike, you just did one.
Do you mind just talking real briefly about that experience?
And we can start with that point that David just made.
real briefly about that experience and we can start with with uh that point that david just made you know did you get any sort of insights and in terms of like a true north from from doing it
yeah um so i went on a three-day retreat uh just on my own staying in a in a shipping container
in portland oregon it had windows and there was other things there don't it was the nicest
shipping container you've ever seen it's the nicest shipping container you've ever seen.
It's the nicest shipping container I've ever seen.
As opposed to the kind of shipping container you'd find a body in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so I went there and I had goals for the three different days.
The first day was just about reflection and introspection.
The second day was about eliminating.
And then the third day was putting an action plan together. And truth be told, I took elements from both the retreat
product that you have, Mike, as well as the retreat product that David has offered.
So I combined elements of those as well as some of my own. And I thought the second day was going
to be the tough day, the day where I have to eliminate. But nope, not by a long shot. The first day where I just sat with myself and went through very deep questions,
which is what you need to do if you're doing something like that, where you're looking at
milestones, figuring out... I was looking at a whole bunch of different areas. I went through
a whole cascade of emotions on that day. Didn't come in contact with anybody. And it was both liberating and terrifying all at the same time.
Because when I left, when I finished that day, I was like, first off, I wasn't giving myself
enough credit for where I was. But secondly, I was like, and you are capable of so much more in so many different
areas. So now it's about getting rid of the stuff that doesn't really matter. And what I found was
once I did day two and eliminated the things that I'm like, I'm not going to do this. And then when
I looked at day three, I realized at the end of it, I'm like, oh, so all the stuff I was doing was like 75% was the stuff
I eliminated. Like that was the stuff I was focusing on. Why? Because it was easier. It was
easier to do. It wasn't as, it was, it was, you know, not as challenging. It was more,
it didn't scare me enough. And so it was really powerful. I don't think everybody can get away
for three days like I did. I mean, I have two kids too. So it wasn't like, I mean, I, I asked
my wife if I could have that time. You could, you could compartmentalize it a little bit. You could,
but I think if you were going to, you would have to have day one just to do what I did.
And then day two, you could probably eliminate and put an action plan in place the same day.
to do what I did. And then day two, you could probably eliminate and put an action plan in place the same day. I think two days is probably good. But it was, I came out of it with this idea
that my job is to help people. That's what I do. I help people in all areas of my life. I mean,
and some of it is absolutely thought out and some of it is instinctual.
And a great example happened before we went on the podcast today is I was at the shopping
mall and in the distance, I could see an elderly person struggling to open the mall door.
And I ran to open the door for that person.
I didn't think about it.
I just did it.
I'm not saying that to brag. And I mean, I'm just like, it just was, I finished it. I didn't think about it. I just did it. I'm not saying that to brag.
And I mean, I'm just like, it just was,
I finished it.
I'm like, oh crap.
Like that was just something I do.
And that will probably end up in the journal.
So there you go.
You get a preview of a journal entry.
But it was like, that's what I feel.
That's my, that's my, is I help people.
And I want every, I want to be able to help people
as much as possible in the areas that I know
quite a bit about.
And I want to get better at knowing those areas too.
So it was,
it was great.
I highly recommend it.
Yeah.
I think there's a,
it's a very important piece to this whole idea of balance.
There's a book called the road,
less stupid,
but Keith Cunningham. And he talks about
this concept of thinking time. And Keith Cunningham is really successful, but he basically says,
I don't need to do more smart things. I need to do less stupid things. I feel like if you just
get caught up in, I've got to do this and I got to do that, and you're running from commitment
to commitment, it's easy for you to get off center.
And you don't realize it,
because all you're looking at is the next thing that's in front of you.
And when I take a personal retreat,
that returns balance to the force.
It's like after I do that, I can see clearly the path forward.
You can only focus on the now.
That's all you can do when you're on
a retreat, especially when you're by yourself. The faster it is you drive down the road,
the harder it is to read the signs. Yeah. I would highly recommend if you have the
opportunity, and summer is a good opportunity for me at least, because productivity isn't exactly
the top of people's minds in July and August.
That was the perfect time for me to do it.
And I will probably do it annually.
I missed one last year, but the year before I did it, and it wasn't as good.
So again, retreats you get better at the more you do them, too.
That's the other thing. It's like the more you get better at the more you do them too. That's the other thing.
It's like the more you do something, the better you get at it.
And I got a lot more out of this retreat than the one I did even two years ago.
Is it weird that, so I'm going on vacation.
We have a vacation club that we're in.
And because of COVID, our points are about to expire.
So we get to take a 10-day vacation.
We haven't done a 10-day vacation.
I don't know if we've ever done one that long, you know, and it's weird. I was thinking about
the trip thinking it's going to be fun to be with the family, but what if I peel off for a day or
two during the vacation to do a little bit of a retreat? I'm seriously considering it because I'm
like 10 days, I could probably get away. They're going to have days. They want to go out and do things and I could find a nice place to do it. But I, I guess what
I'm saying is there's no excuse. Anybody can find time to do one of these, uh, do it on the weekend.
You don't have to go out of town. You don't have to get a fancy cabin. You don't even have to stay
in a shipping container, but you should give it a try. All right. Well, listen, we are
the focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. We have a forum. It's over at
talk.macpowerusers.com because we're, we've hitched our wagon to them. Mike, where do people
find you? You can find me. I've got an interesting project I'm working on right now. So I'll send you
there as we're recording this and it'll be available even no matter when you listen to this, go to productivityist.com slash diet, and there'll be
some cool stuff there waiting for you. And it'll relate to a lot of what we talked about today.
So I'd love you to check that out. Productivityist.com slash diet.
Yes. And are you on the social medias, Mike?
I am. I am at Mike Vardy on Twitter, which is where you'll see me more often than not on social.
That's probably the best place. And if you just Google at Productivityist, you'll find me on other places as well.
All right. Well, like I said, we're the Focus Podcast. We want to thank our sponsors for today.
That's our friends at NetSuite, Squarespace, and Indeed.
Thank our sponsors for today.
That's our friends at NetSuite, Squarespace, and Indeed.
In the Deep Focus episode today,
Mike and I are going to talk about Focus and Star Wars.
That's right.
I have been looking forward to this conversation my entire life.
I can't wait to get started.
We'll see you next time.