Focused - 168: 2023 Focus Resolutions

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

David & Mike share their words for the year and discuss their plans to live out the first quarter of 2023 with intentionality and focus.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by the one and only Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, wow, that's quite an intro. How's it going, David? You deserve it, man. And it's January. It's the new year. Hope springs eternal, right? It always feels good when you have that transition from one year to the next. Yeah, absolutely. I

know we're going to be talking about a lot of the things that are triggered by this change of the calendar as we go from one year to the next, but worth pointing out right here at the beginning that this is kind of an arbitrary date. You could choose to have a restart literally at any point. So take ownership of that, but the principle still applies in fact we've got a friend mike vardy who his his new year i think he starts it in like september or march something like that it's not actually on the the change of the the calendar year so principle still applies though figure out what events you can use as a place to make a clean start and then go for it yeah it is so weird though i mean that it's just like, yeah, we just went from

the 31st to the first on a calendar, but you feel like you can do, you can conquer the world all of a sudden. I think part of it is like the lifting of the burden. Like, I feel like people give themselves more grace with a new year and say, okay, the past is the past. Now I need to figure out the future. Wouldn't it be great if we could carry that into every morning when we wake up? Yeah. My pastor has a saying, turn the page. Yeah, that's true. The only thing that matters is right now.

So we did the last episode called Looking Backward, and this is the payoff looking forward. Mike and I want to talk about how we approach things like these transitions, what we're doing, and what we're thinking for ourselves going forward and kind of the thinking behind it, hopefully inspire you to have a similar conversation with yourself. And I think we probably should start Mike with just the, the time that we're looking at, you know, I generally am not a fan of big year goals. I, I, I just don't, I think the 12 months for me is too long.

If I say, you know, the next 12 months, I'm going to make a field guide, that means I'll forget about it until about October. Whereas if I do it quarterly, I'm much more likely to hold myself accountable. So for me, this has always been more of a quarterly thing than a yearly thing. more of a quarterly thing than a yearly thing. What about you? I 100% agree. The genesis behind the personal retreat stuff that I did and continue to do, but the point that really got me thinking that way was reading The 12-Week Year, which is a book that essentially talks about how we set these year goals and then we procrastinate on them for 10 months and we scramble at the end and we make a bunch of progress. But minimizing the amount of time that we give ourselves before we hit that point where we reset. So this is all kind of based off of this idea of maximizing your goal achievement,

which that I don't really like. But I do really like the built-in four opportunities to reset throughout the year. I feel there's a lot of value in closing the loop, learning the lessons, doing the retrospective, figuring out what worked and what didn't work, and also figuring out what you want to change or optimize so you can hopefully produce a little bit better result the next go-around. The more loops that you get in, the better off your results are going to be. And so I'm 100% behind the idea of not waiting 365 days in order to ask yourself those important questions. What should I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing? Yeah, I mean, think about it this way. With all those happy chemicals you're feeling right now with the new year,

what if you could do that four times a year? And that's kind of what you get when you go in the quarterly model. How do you square that with the theme system that Mike and Gray do? They talk about a theme for a year. Well, I think if you listen to them, you'll hear that they don't even themselves kind of necessarily keep their themes entire years, but it's just every January they talk about it. I suspect, I don't want to speak for them. I suspect though, that that has a better chance of landing with people in the January mindset than the November mindset. But I like

to think about these kind of, to the extent I think about themes, I just think of them quarterly. And then each quarter I say, well, is this one still relevant? Or maybe I already got this where I wanted it. I can move on or I'm not going to do this one anymore. So I look at, you know, to the extent I have themes, I look at, you know, chucking them overboard or getting new ones four times a year. You know, every quarter, I just kind of take it from scratch. And a lot of times I'll continue something because three months is just as arbitrary as 12 months. But occasionally, you know, that's a good time period for me to make the switch.

I think that makes a lot of sense. You have to figure out where the logical places are for you to reconsider things. I tend to stick to my words or themes throughout the entire year, but the things that I'm going to be doing in those quarters to live out those words or those themes, that is going to be changing. And I give myself permission to kind of reinterpret my words or themes and take them in different directions. I want to point out here real quick that the reason that these words or themes are so great

instead of the goals is that when you set a goal, there's a pass-fail associated with that. You either achieve the goal or you didn't. And so Mike does a great job of explaining this in the Cortex Yearly Themes episode. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. He mentions that if you set a goal to lose a bunch of weight, for example, lose 20 pounds, then if you lose 10 pounds, you have failed the goal. But if you have a theme of like the year of health, for example, and you've done things to establish a more healthy lifestyle, then that is a win that should be celebrated. And so I think that's a really powerful idea. The idea of a single theme,

that's obviously what Mike and Gray do. But I've also kind of combined that with something that Mike Vardy mentioned way back in the Mike's on Mike's podcast. I remember hearing him talk about the words for the year. So that's kind of the approach I take is I have a word that is kind of my theme for the year, but then I have supporting words that give it a little bit more structure. It's like a scaffolding. It helps me to kind of understand what the intention was when I

chose this word. For last year, for example, it was recalibration. I was starting a new day job and I wanted to figure out what does my normal workday look like? What does my creative stuff look like? How do I make all that stuff work? What should I experiment with? Are there options that I hadn't really considered before? And so I kind of worked all of that under this theme of recalibration. And I had different things that I identified during each quarter, but that essential theme carried out throughout the year. I'm not rewriting that every couple of months, although I definitely understand why you might

want to give yourself permission to do so. I like what you guys do, but you know, Mike Vardy and the Cortex guys and you, it's kind of fun coming up with like an inspirational word to be like a guiding North Star for a certain period of time. But in hindsight, I really don't think I do it that way. To me, the big thing with these quarterly reviews is the roles audit, where I look at how am I doing as a husband, as a dad, as a max bar key, yada, yada. And then often something emerges out of that saying, well, when you look at these roles combined and the stuff going on, there is something happening here that kind of ties

them together. And it's just a way of my brain kind of making it simpler to adapt as an example i mean we talked about this in the last episode for me a lot of the last year has been spent thinking about process with me transitioning careers and everything i wanted to get the process right and um so that was like a a theme i hesitate to use a word but it is a a theme that emerged from what I was going through more than being aspirational. But I have been influenced by you guys, and I've been thinking about it, and I kind of have one now as I'm going forward, at least for the next 90 days. And I know you do, too.

So who's going to go first? i can go first if if you want all right let's hear it before i do that i just want to mention that i think it's kind of cool that yours kind of bubbles up organically like you mentioned you can go back and you can see how the theme emerged for the last period of time yeah i think that's a valid approach too. The important thing is to be looking for that unifying thread. It's kind of the boundaries that keep you going in a direction which is going to get you

where ultimately you want to go. You don't want to, in my opinion, you don't want to attach to the outcome. You don't need the whole plan. You don't need the blueprint. You just need the compass. You just need to know that this is the thing that I can show up every day and do and is going to move me in the right direction. Yeah. I love compass analogies, right? You know, you leave Los Angeles and two degrees difference can land you in Hawaii or Alaska or something like that, you know, and just think about it that way.

And it's great. And it really, it really works for people. You don't have to make massive changes. I think that, of course, that's another obvious mistake. And January 1st,

where you try to change everything and then it starts to fall apart on January 10th. And then by January 20th, it's a distant memory. It doesn't work that way yeah yep all right so my big word for the year and again I've got supporting words that go along with this but if I were to pick a yearly theme it is the year of stabilization some of the supporting ideas around this are things like convergence, alignment, structures, and systems. And as I mentioned in the previous episode, 2022, I tried a bunch of new things. I had a new day job.

I mentioned an essay by Derek Sivers, which I will put the link to this in the show notes. But this was kind of transformational for me. It kind of opened my eyes to other possibilities, other ways that I could be successful as a creator. Again, what works for one person does not necessarily work for the next. Doesn't mean anyone has the wrong plan. You just got to figure out what works for you. And for me, what really clicked was this essay that I read by Derek Sivers, where he talked about when you have a day job that pays your bills, then your art can truly be your art and you don't have to make it for anybody else because ultimately nobody needs to buy it. It's not the thing paying your bills. When I read that, I was like, aha, it just kind of clicked for me. And that's not to say that

anybody who does make their art, their work, that that's wrong. It's just I had tried to do that previously and felt the pressure that came along with that. And it just never really felt right for me. It was like wearing somebody else's clothes. It wasn't tailored to my personality, my situation. So for the time being anyways, that's where I've landed with the creative pursuits. That's the YouTube, that's the writing, that's the podcast, things like that. That's disconnected from the day job. And that's a whole nother way where I can live out my life theme and express my creativity. So all that to say in 2022, I tried a bunch of new things. I tried my hand at a new day job and a career that I really hadn't functioned in the role as an integrator before.

But it's been a little bit of a bumpy ride, but I would mark this off as very successful. I've learned a ton about accounting and bookkeeping, kind of view it as like adulting for business. That's a big part of my role now, but it feels good to be able to take this complex soup of numbers and stare at it long enough and teach myself what they are actually telling me. I understand why people don't like that kind of stuff. That was always me, but I was in a position where I had to figure out how to make it work and figure out what story the numbers were telling. It felt good to be able to wrap my head around that and really understand it. I tested writing a bunch

on Twitter through the Ship 30 for 30 cohort. That kind of changed my approach to digital writing is kind of the niche that their whole program is geared towards. And that kind of resonated with me. I never really considered digital writing versus, I guess, analog would be the other one. I just thought writing was writing. But it makes sense to me that you can test things in public and then you can kind of get some signal on like, this is resonating with people. And then you can develop that idea further and it can take other forms. And so I dabbled in YouTube. I went through the Part-Time YouTuber Academy by Ali Abdaal. And I realized through all this experimentation how these things can align. And so that's really

what I want to do in 2023 is I don't want to just continue to do everything. I'm not going to do everything at the cadence that everybody in every program that I went through recommends that I do it. I'm not publishing a YouTube video every week. I'm not writing a Twitter thread every day. But I think there is something here for me where I can connect the different pieces of this and align the development of these ideas. And it can take different shapes, different forms through different medias. And as I do that, eventually I want to get better at what you have done with a lot of the Max Barkey stuff. I want to be able to delegate some of these things. So 2020 year, I was at 2022, I was experimenting

with a whole bunch of things. And then in this year, what I want to do is start to double down on what's working and kind of cut what's not. All right. So from the outside, I would observe that the other thing that I saw you in 2022 is, I think that your self-image changed. I think that you're more confident now, and it seems like you have a better idea of your capabilities. I think that's accurate. Some of it was self-discovery, figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, which maybe that's a little gold nugget there in and of itself is that you're never too old to reinvent yourself. There was a point when I was considering taking this new job and I did not think that I could do what was being asked of

me. And it took some encouragement from some people close to me. You were a big help. Our friend Ernie was a big help. And basically saying like, you know what, you can do this, Mike. And growth is very important to me. Learning is very important to me. I don't want to be in a place where I cannot learn and grow. That is definitely where I am at right now. But I never would have gotten there. I never would have made the leap, probably, if I hadn't gotten an encouragement from people who believed in me. So even at 40 years old, as I am recording this, I kind of reinvented my work life. You kind of did the same sort of thing when you decided you weren't going to be a lawyer anymore. You know, so it's not arbitrary points in your life where you have the opportunity to do this. It's really whenever you take ownership of it and you decide that I want to go in a different

direction. A lot of times you're able to do that. But you need sometimes some encouragement to make that bold choice. Okay, so how does that combine into a theme for 2023? Yeah, so I've tried a bunch of new things, and now I would like things to calm down a little bit. I'm not going to continue to do all the things that I was experimenting with. There's this idea in Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. I don't think he's the one who created this. I've seen it other places too, but this is the first place that I saw it. When you are developing an idea,

you have divergence at the beginning and the funnel gets big and you collect a whole bunch of things and then convergence where it comes back together to a point, right? So last year felt like was a year of divergence and I was doing a bunch of things that I never really thought I was going to do. YouTube was another one of those things where I never really wanted to be a YouTuber, but it kind of became clear to me that YouTube is an interesting medium that I should at least explore. And as I've been dabbling with it, I realized I don't want to publish a video every week.

I don't want to be looking every day at the number of subscribers or the watch length, you know, but I do want to reach people using this medium because it scratches an itch for me. It feels, when I create a YouTube video, I feel like this is something that makes me come alive. The medium itself, it allows me to make connections in a way that even with podcasts, you can't really do because we're not looking at each other as we record this even, but specifically the people who listen to this. It's great as a listener. You can put it on in the background. You where I'm at because I was listening to these people that I called them my internet heroes. You were one of them, David, where these people were speaking into my life and they had no idea who I was. But I was curating the people and the ideas that were coming in. And that ultimately had a positive effect on my life. But that's amplified with video. I feel like when you're able to look into the camera and someone's watching it, it's almost like you're looking them eye to eye.

And so I want to leverage that in terms of making my dent in the universe. But in 2023, what I want to do is I want to converge these things and I want to identify basically like the minimum viable product of this stuff for me. So I don't want to do all the things. And since I'm not going to do all the things, I have to figure out what are the things that are going to move the needle.

And so one of the things I've already started doing is keeping track of a couple specific key numbers and trends for, I'm just calling it Faith-Based Productivity as my creative brand. But specifically, it's the Twitter followers, the YouTube subscribers, the newsletter subscribers, and then the Faith-Based Productivity community members. Because I feel like when I do make something that resonates, that's where I will be able to tell that something has clicked. So I want to just capture those and look at the trends over the years and see like, well, there was a big jump here. So what did I do that week that caused that big jump? One example of an insight from this is like the newsletter, which I have historically sent sporadically.

Sometimes it's just my random thoughts. It's almost like a blog article that I've written. Sometimes these are my book notes in MindMap format from the latest book that I read for Bookworm. So those, I've realized, the book notes, those tend to get a higher bump in terms of people like them, they reply, and like, hey, this is great sort of a thing. Well, that's a data point. I should do more of that if that's what people really like and I'm doing this anyways. How can I take that idea and maybe I record a YouTube video on my insights from a book that I read? So that's kind of what I mean by converging. I want to make noise, listen for signal,

and then amplify what resonates, if that makes sense. And the key to doing that, I think, is to simplify all the processes. If you take any one of these things in isolation, it quickly adds up to being too much. I can't create a YouTube video in a silo and write a newsletter in a silo and record podcasts in a silo. But if I can use all of those mediums to develop ideas and it manifests differently in those different places,

that's something I can do. So I want to simplify this. I want to stop making things more complicated than they need to be, especially with the newsletter. It's what I tend to do. It's got to be perfect. No, it just needs to be consistent. And kind of my mantra here is progress, not perfection. Yeah. You know, I had a very, I was similarly tempted to do something like this because last year was so process centered and figuring out the best workflows to make the labs content and all the things with my life changing that would be uh an easy second step it's like like you said you know first you conquer and then you consolidate you know and this is kind of what you're going through right now.

But that's not what I ended up using. But I'm really enjoying your thought process on this because I think, number one, I'm still going to be doing this to a certain extent. And I think a lot of people are in a similar position. I mean, we came back from COVID. We've, you know, we're not entirely back from COVID. I get that. But it's been a year and a lot of people are back to work and figuring out how their lives have adjusted. But at some point, then you need to like get back to life and figure out a way to, you know, get the new workflows

going and figure out a way to have enough free time and enjoy your life. And I think a lot of people are probably in the same kind of simplify stabilization mindset right now. Yeah. And you can't always simplify. I think you can only squeeze so much juice out of the lemon. That had been my mantra for a very long time was simplify, say no. And then last year was a bit of a aberration for me because that's when I started saying yes to a whole bunch of things. And that felt really uncomfortable at first. I definitely felt stretched. You've shared that analogy of running downhill where you feel like you're going to on the verge of falling on your face. That's kind of how I felt for most of last year. But I also knew that it was okay because it was a temporary thing and it was the thing that I should be doing at the moment. I knew it wasn't going to always be that way,

but I also knew that that's the thing that I needed to do in order to experience some new things and figure out when I dialed it back, what were the things that actually ended up staying in my container, putting the big rocks in, right? Well, I feel like the process of divergence and trying a bunch of things changed what the big rocks were for me in subtle ways. And so this year, it's about choosing what's not going to be there again. You know, it's funny when you mentioned the running downhill thing, I used to think about that constantly. Like I think I was running downhill for like 10 years and, um, I, one of the benefits of my new life is I haven't thought about that in a long time. I don't think I'm running downhill anymore. I mean, it literally just occurred to me as you said it. I think that's the goal,

right? And that would be ideal. I also, though, having just gone through it, I think it's okay for a season. It's just you can't operate that way for an extended period of time or you're going to burn out. It's the whole idea of sprinting and then recovering. That's, I think, very valuable. But also, I don't know, you got to kind of figure this stuff out for yourself. Because there is a lot to be said about just building in a routine that doesn't get you right at that red line. I do think it kind of depends on what you are specifically trying to accomplish, but you have to tactically deploy the right strategies. I would just say, if you are in a season of sprinting, make sure that you stop soon because you can't do that

forever. You do need to take a break and you do need to recover. How do you incorporate this now? So you like try to take these on for a year. So this is you, you're committing to this word. How do you remind yourself of it? How do you make it a daily practice for you as you go through the year? That's a great question. So I think the way that this gets implemented will be different at different points in the year as I do my personal retreats. However, right now, what it means is dialing things back to create a little bit more margin. And margin is one of those things that you maybe don't realize how valuable it is until you start to get it. And so I recognize, even though it's been a bit of a crazy season for me, with the day job specifically, I kind of mentioned this in the last episode. My role has changed three times, I believe, in the last year. And every single time it's been, okay, so this is the need and no one knows how to do this, so figure it out. And that has been challenging. It's been also rewarding because I've learned a lot of new skills that I did not have last year. However, it is time to stabilize. It is time to settle into this is my role. This is what my day looks, my typical day looks like. This is what my typical week looks like.

In the past year, basically, that has been very up in the air. I feel like I have been very reactive to different meetings and things that have popped up. And I want to be more proactive. I want things to settle down a little bit. And that sounds kind of vague, I know. But it's one of those things where the moment that I start moving in this direction, I can tell you I'm making progress because I will immediately feel it. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it does. It does. I mean, once again, it's just the awareness I think that really matters. platform for building your brand and growing your business online. You can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, services, even the content you create. Squarespace has got you covered. With Squarespace, you can sell your products on an online store. Whether you sell physical or digital products, Squarespace has all the tools that you need to start selling online. You can get stuck in with SEO tools. You can use the suite of integrated

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to show your support for the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So David, what does your 2023 look like? Well, this was a challenge for me, you know, coming out of this process. But to be honest, I actually went through this in November, uh, about halfway through November, the share realized, you know what, uh, spending all this time on process has been really great, but now it's time for me to just wind up the machine and start making widgets. And the, um, so I kind of went through this then, and I thought a lot about a consolidation kind of thing. I felt

like, and it was like, yeah, this is what my life is now is I need to, I've got these various pieces of what I do as Max Sparky and my family is at this point in our, you know, this season of life. So now I just need to kind of like lock things down, make sure things are working right and, and deliver. And I really thought about that very simple, very similar to your stabilization kind of theme. But, but the thing that kept itching at me is this idea of intentionality. And, uh, you know, because I think of these quarterly, it's like each one is an opportunity to get better at something. And intentionality, I know, is like a very common theme or idea that people bring into their lives. And we talk about it, we make a podcast called

Focused. So this is not like a destination style goal, as much as it is kind of a lifestyle goal. much as it is kind of a lifestyle goal. And I really wanted to take that to the next level. I think I'm pretty good at intentionality as things are. I have systems in place and I really try to hold myself to a certain degree of it. You know, like worry, none of us are getting out of this alive. We only got so many days on this earth, live each one intentionally, you know, get the most out of it, suck the marrow out of life. I don't know if you've ever heard that saying, but so that's always been important to me, but I thought, what if I tried to take this to something that was borderline unhealthy, you know, but how hard could I go at intentionality? And, you know, I think it's, it's very much a lip service thing for a lot of people i want to be more intentional but

i want to actually experiment on myself with intentionality and figure out how can i get better at it how can i become more intentional what are the tools i need to do that and what are the benefits and detriments of doing so so about a week before Thanksgiving, I decided, okay, what if I really start going hard at intentionality? So that is kind of, this is not a theme that arises from looking at where I'm in life so much as something aspirational that I just want to explore. And then I obviously carry into my roles. I love that idea. I'm kind of curious if there is a point where intentionality becomes unhealthy, I think is the word you used. Is it possible to have too much intentionality? I kind of to me is like being really drilled in on what you're doing in the moment and intentionality is that too but also intentionality i think kind of has a a moment this is what i intended to be doing in this moment uh so they're they're related but

not exactly the same but i think like an unhealthy level for me would be uh getting so hung up on being in the moment at one thing that i let an opportunity of some other thing go by uh i think when you have a family that is the obvious candidate for that um as we record this um you know i've got some family back home with me that. My kids are here right now and they aren't normally. So I'm trying to not let my obsession with intentionality prevent me from having good experiences with them while they're here. That's where it could get unhealthy. But that's not really the problem. I mean, I think I'm good at setting things down.

What I'm really working on here is saying, you know, in this moment, I'm going to do this. I'm going to plan for this. And then as I get through the week, I'm going to make progress on these things that are dearly important to me so I can make my dent while I still have time and be intentional about it. And that's kind of what I'm thinking about. And like I said, I think this is something that's easy to talk about and not so easy to incorporate into your life. Yeah. So I guess the question is, how do you do that? Is there any way

that you're measuring this or is it just journaling at the end of the day and asking yourself how you felt you did? Yeah. Yeah. The answer is yes. So I think, you know, what it means to me is that I'm fully present at whatever I'm doing. And I've always been pretty good at time tracking and journaling and meditating. But I think those three things together are like the technology of intentionality for me. And to take them one at a time is I have simplified, but also automated a lot of my time tracking stuff. So I get better at making sure I don't miss gaps, giving me the, the data I need to make changes on a weekly basis.

Whenever I do my week review, I always look at my, my time tracking data. And I'm trying to be very careful about that without making it a thing that I have to obsess on. The journaling is, I have been leaning harder into interstitial journaling as opposed to journaling, writing journal entry at the end of the day. And I've talked about that on this show before. And sometimes I do interstitial journaling and then sometimes I get out of it and then i just write a journal entry at the end of a day or maybe at the end of two or three days if if i you know get off the the train a bit and i think one practice i can do is just get

really good at stopping everything i do and journaling between one event and another you know everything of significance. Like I don't stop and journal after I take out the garbage, but I'll journal after we record today and, you know, things like that. And that is a great practice to allow you to be in the moment and capture that. And also I find it a great practice to set it down. Like once I finished journaling about this recording that I won't think about it anymore and I'll go into the next thing and be intentional with that. So that's in the early days of this experimentation, I've only been at it a month and a half or so. I'm finding that to be very useful. Of course, you know, this is an

opportunity for me to talk about meditation. And meditation is actually great training for intentionality, because that's the whole idea. It's to still your mind. But I've been doing meditation long enough that I can actually meditate on a topic, and I can do that as well. So I'm trying to put those three things together as a starting point. But I'm also using, because I'm Max Barkey, a lot of my technology to kind of map out days, weeks, and months. And I've got this glass board in the studio.ial journaling, meditation, and tools like that can really help you on the path. Yeah, you mentioned three things specifically, time tracking, journaling, and meditation. However, I want to mention another one, which you kind of brushed over, which was automation as an intentionality tool. I think this is a brilliant idea. Basically, if I were to interpret

this, the thought process here is probably whatever doesn't deserve your attention is robbing you from being able to be fully present. So that's a candidate for something to be automated. Is that the general idea? And do you have any examples? Yeah. I mean, that's really the manifesto of Mac Sparky is like taking technology and using it to be more productive. So this is a great opportunity to develop that. As an example, I run a script before we record the show today. And when it does that, it closes all my windows. It opens just the stuff that is key to to this episode and it lays it out on the desktop so i don't have to monkey around with window sizes like takes all the busy work out of it's like having a little assistant follow me around that is afraid i'm going to disapprove of

something and maniacally puts things together for me you know but it's a computer doing it for me instead and i like that because now as i sit recording, I'm not tempted to look at tasks and OmniFocus or, you know, whatever, you know, distraction of choice you have, uh, because my system set itself up, uh, for one thing to be a, a screen that allows you to make the focused podcast. And it's great for that and terrible at everything else. And, um, you know, I do that for all elements of my life at this point, you know, whether it's the content I'm making, I have one set up for dealing with doctors, you know, where it opens up, you know, my medical notes, the website for blah, blah, blah, you know, you name it, I've got setups for them.

And they're always evolving a little bit. I'm tweaking them. But this year is not about tweaking setups. It's more about just staying intentional and making the changes you need to stay there. The other thing I think is important about this is kind of a radar about it to see, well, when in the day today did I lose that? When did I fall out of the zone? And what caused that? And know, when did I fall out of the zone and what caused that? And, you know, what does that mean? Or is it sometimes like a few weeks ago, I had a day where it was just super

difficult to stay in the zone. And my wife had been on a trip. I drove up and picked her up at the airport. I got back and I had a full day scheduled and I got like half of the stuff done I wanted and reflecting on that day, I realized she'd been gone a week and I had missed her. And I just wanted to reunite with her, you know, and talk to her and give her a hug and figure out what's important in her life. And I was terrible at my other work because my mind was pulled. And like, okay, so in the future, think about that. I mean, you're going to get a loved one. Maybe you shouldn't plan to be as productive on the other stuff that day. Maybe you should be intentional about reconnecting with a loved one. So I sound like such a hippie, but you know, that's the kind of stuff I'm working

on. And it's been really fun because every day is a new opportunity to tune that muscle. You know, I want to be like a, you know, you've seen these guys, these power lifters where they can pump all this iron. I want to be like an intentionality power lifter. So I'm trying to take it to a new level. That's, that's, that's what's on my mind right now. And, you know, I, I review these things in quarters. I don't think I'll be done in three months with it, but I want to, I want to work on this to such an extent that it kind of becomes second nature before I move on to something else. Sure. So if you're going to be excellent in one area that probably necessitates you being okay with not

being great in another area. That's another key idea from the 12-week year, this idea of intentional imbalance. So if you're going to become an intentionality power lifter, have you given any thought as to what are some of the things that you're willing to let go? Yeah, I feel like that was one of the things when I first decided to take this on is, how does this affect everything else? If I'm stopping to interstitial journal and getting all hippie with my journal and these types of things, is it going to affect my production? And I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think it would have to because it takes me longer because I am intentionally transitioning. I'm not going to

just walk out of this recording and then start writing a blog post. There's going to be a transition, which is another thing I've kind of been learning. I've always known this, but something I've been trying to perfect is a systematized or a practical transition from one focus of intention to another, because I don't think we can just jump from one thing to the next. But I have been guilty in the past of doing that, you know, and saying, hey, Mike, great talking to you today, great podcast, turning off the mic and opening up my text editor and started writing a blog post. But I'm building transition in, which means I won't get as much done in the day. So I feel like I'm sacrificing speed

and maybe, air quote, productivity. Productivity is a weird word. But I guess what I mean is, you know, I'm not going to spend as much time producing when I'm trying to account for intentionality. And that's one of the interesting pieces of this experiment. I mean, I wrote down a list of questions that I want to ask myself in the next quarterly review. And one of them is, you know, has the loss of productivity affected me? Has there been an increase in quality as a result of intentionality?

And I think there has been an increase in quality, but I want to spend more time with it. You know, right now I'm in the honeymoon phase of this, so I don't know. But I am intentionally realizing that I am not going to be pumping out as much with this, but hopefully the stuff I do will be better. I would expect that you would see that increase in quality as you create more space. And that idea of transitioning from one focus to another is really important. I want to just mention that real briefly. I've noticed this with the day job because it's a lot of meetings. But one of the things that I've done

over the last year is established a new meeting cadence where we actually have less meetings, but more space between them. And what that allows everyone to do is prepare for the meetings effectively, which means the meetings are better, more gets discussed, more gets solved. We're much more productive, even though we spend less time in meetings. And this has personal application as well. So I would just encourage everyone to think about how can I sharpen the axe? To go back to that quote, if I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first six sharpening the axe. That's true. And it's so easy to just jump from one thing to the next and feel like you're being more productive, you're getting more done, when really the very best thing that you can do

is allow yourself to really just hit the mark. You're not going to chop down a tree if your axe is dull. You're not going to make the same progress with a rubber mallet. That's what a lot of us do with how we spend our time just without any sort of thought behind it. It's easy to click into the default, which is just more, more, more,

but activity does not equal progress. Yeah, and when dealing with other people, I have always, well, not always, but for the last 20 years, built in time before to plan and afterwards to follow up. A lot of times I'll talk to you and we'll get off the phone and I'll be adding tasks to OmniFocus

and setting up projects and doing things that result from the call, capturing the benefit of it. But I guess what I'd say the difference is now I'm applying that not just to other people but to myself. When I go from working alone on one thing to working alone on the other people, but to myself. When I go from working alone on one thing to working alone on the other thing, I try to give it the same process as I would have as if I was dealing with another person. Sure. I like that. You're dogfooding your intentionality.

Yeah. It's a fun... I do try to think of it as an experiment, but it's also real life stuff. If you can become more intentional, if you can always be addressing the other person, looking them in the eye and fully present for them, but give yourself the same gift with your own work and the things that are important to you, it really is a very nice way. I guess this is what I would call anti-multitasking. One of the fun parts of this has been really is a very nice way. I guess this is what I would call anti-multitasking, you know.

One of the fun parts of this has been, you know, the wood shop that I talked about at the beginning of last year is starting to come to fruition. And, you know, I go out there and I peel shavings with a hand plane for 30 minutes. You know what I think about while I'm doing that? I think about peeling shavings with a hand plane, you know, and that there's something to that. So I don't want this to be just thought of as a work thing. I want to carry it over into interpersonal relationships to, you know, to watching TV. Like I hate the idea of watching TV with an iPad in my lap. I, if something is worth watching, then watch it.

And if it's not so good that it can hold your attention, then don't watch it and work on your iPad. So I'm trying to be very careful about that and discover all the trigger points and parts where I fall down and come up with ways to address them. All right, so we've talked about some words that we're thinking about. Let's get more practical and just talk about the next 90 days. We thought it'd be fun on the show to kind of on a quarterly basis, go through some of this stuff and show how we're applying it. So why don't you

go first, Mike, what is your 90 day plan for the next, for the first quarter of this year? day plan for the next, uh, for the first quarter of this year? Yeah. So the, uh, Genesis behind this, um, just real briefly is, uh, since I'm doing my personal retreats every quarter and you're doing your planning every, every quarter, we thought it would be cool to check in every quarter on how did we do and what are we doing next? And if people want to follow along in the forum, that'd be great. So for this quarter for me, there are a couple of things that I want to focus on. And this is really all about a singular habit that I want to firmly establish. And that is the regular writing routine or the regular writing rhythm. I feel like it's time to go back to the thing that got me here, which was way back in the day I had this

idea to write a book, and I started writing for an hour before I went into the office, and I did that every day. And within eight months, I had self-published my book and I had been publishing to my blog and that opened up a bunch of doors and opportunities for me, which have basically led to everything that I do creatively now. So I want to go back to that regular writing routine. Back in the day, it was getting up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour. I don't think I'm going to do that, but I am going to figure out where my hour is. I work from home with a day job, so this is something that I can absolutely build into my routine. It's just being, to borrow your word, intentional, figuring out where that is going to happen.

So that's the first part of this is identifying the spot where it's going to happen. And then what does that actually look like? So previously it was just write based on the book outline. But I don't want to necessarily write a book. I mean, I do want to, I have other book writing projects that I want to eventually get to, but that's not the focus for right now. Right now, it's really in line with the idea development stuff that I mentioned earlier. What does the idea development cycle look like for me as I am developing my ideas and my thoughts on whatever

topics, where are the places that those things get published and what are the stages as that moves from this is a crazy idea I had while out for a run to, okay, now this is complete and I'm moving on to the next thing. And I'm not sure I ever get to the point where I'm completely letting go of some of these ideas. But I think there is value as I continue to develop these things that they show up different ways in different places. So I want to align my content, as I mentioned earlier, in a couple of specific ways. And I don't know exactly what these are going to look like, but I'll share kind of the thought process right now. I went through the Ship30 stuff and I mentioned that there's a lot of emphasis there on writing for Twitter. And I do think Twitter has still got a very good business use case for me. It's not a social network. It's not the place I'm going to hang out with my buddies.

I think the private communities and maybe Mastodon, I don't know. I have no interest in going over there. But the faith-based productivity community that I spun up, that's quickly become my happy place on the internet. So there's value in hanging out with people in other places. But Twitter for me is simply a place to make noise and listen for signal, like I said. So I want to start writing consistently for Twitter. And then once I figure out what are the things that really are clicking with people there, develop those ideas a little bit further, have those appear in the newsletter or maybe blog articles. I don't do a whole lot of long-form blogging anymore, but the newsletter specifically, I think that that could be a place where these things get expressed. And then as I continue to make these a little bit more long-form, eventually those become

YouTube videos. I kind of view YouTube as like the last segment in this content chain for me because I feel like by the time I'm going to show up on camera and talk about it, I really have to have this stuff solidified in my head. So that's kind of the idea and just an example of how this might look. I'm kind of doing the hard part already, I realize, because for Bookworm, I read a book every couple of weeks. And typically, I show up and I talk to Joe about that book and then move on to the next one. But there are lots of other places I could take the ideas that I've developed from those books and talk about them. As I mentioned, I've kind of been doing this, sharing some of my book notes via the newsletter. But then I kind of had this moment of clarity when I was looking at Ali Abdaal

has like these YouTube book club videos that he does. It's just like five to eight minute videos. I'm like, this is what I got out of these books. And I watched one and I was like, I should totally be doing that. So it's just, see, it's the same thing. I've read the book, right? And I have my own ideas that I have gotten from reading that book. The approach that I take to reading books is kind of important here too. I'm not just trying to capture everything that the author is saying. How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler was really influential where, for me, that's one of those classic books that is kind of hard to read, but it's really stuck with me. One of the things he talks about in there is when you read a book, you're essentially engaging in a conversation

with the author and you're weighing their arguments. You're trying to understand what they're saying and then you're deciding for yourself, what does this mean? And you're weighing it against all the other things that you've read and all the other data points that you've collected. So it's synthesizing it down and what does Mike Schmitz think about this thing from this book that I've read? And based on Bookworm, there's a bunch of people who are interested in that. So I just want to figure out how do I squeeze more juice out of this? Because I feel like I'm just reading it for the podcast and then kind of walking away from it. And there's more to be mined there. There's still low-hanging fruit there. And ultimately, what that is going to allow me to do, hopefully,

is to grow my newsletter and ultimately the faith-based productivity community that I mentioned, just reach more people. And this isn't about collecting so many followers or even trying to maximize customer lifetime value. It's one of those business terms that gets thrown around. It's really about, I want to leave a dent in the universe. So why wouldn't I try to reach as many people as I can? I'm not trying to be sleazy about it. I'm not buying followers or anything like that. But I am just consistently sharing the things that I am learning and the things that I care about. And if I can reach people and help people by doing that, why wouldn't I try to amplify that? So that's kind of been my mission, I guess. And as I've been thinking through all of these different platforms that I'm using and the

ways that I can reach people, I want to do things that don't scale. I want to do the things that really change somebody's life. that really changed somebody's life. There's an email that I've held onto from the book that I wrote where somebody had written it to me at the point where I was kind of like, did this make any difference whatsoever? And they said, I was in a really dark place. I was contemplating suicide, leaving my family, walking away from my job, my ministry, and read your book, and it really changed my life. That's the thing that gives me life. That's the thing that I want to do that. I want to do that to more people. And the more people that I can reach through the content, the more opportunities I have to take one of those people and go deep. I can't just

pick someone out of the blue, though. I'm not sure if I'm describing this very well. There's different levels here. And so with the stuff that I'm already doing, it's really how do I get this in front of more people so I can identify the opportunities that are available to me where I can really make an impact. And so I want to grow the newsletter. I want to grow the newsletter. I want to grow my community. I want

to maximize the opportunities for me to have that impact in the lives of the people who actually care what I have to say. Well, I mean, that's a lot, Mike. And I feel like you're telling me kind of the master plan, but how does that boil down to the next 90 days? What's going to happen in the next 90 days to move you on that? Sure. So the next 90 days what what's going to happen in the next 90 days to to move you on that sure so the next 90 days is specifically the regular writing rhythm i'm going to be tracking my habits of writing i've we've talked about the the focus calendar before right there's like the habit tracker that's built in there but one of my colored dots is going to be, did I write today? And I want to, using these note cards, I've been using the Ugmonk analog a lot more recently. I want to start writing the prompt for tomorrow,

the day before. And I can identify those prompts based on some of the things that I mentioned. I want to make noise, listen for signal. If you go and you look for the signal, you can find it. So creating the prompt the night before, and then when I sit down to write the next day, I know exactly what I'm going to be writing about. And it doesn't have to be so many words. It doesn't have to have been published. It's just spending intentional time every day. I'm going to say 30 minutes. I'd like to do more than 30 minutes, but I feel like 30 minutes every day is feasible. Did I move my thinking on this idea forward? Because if I do that consistently, I'll have something to publish in all these different places. Yeah. I mean, I think that's it, man. Break it down to the things that you can do.

And that being said, I haven't done a very good job of that this quarter. Historically, I used to say, well, I'm going to ship this field guide in the next 90 days. And one thing I've realized with my intentionality experiment and just the last year in general is that it's silly to put an artificial deadline on something that doesn't need a deadline. It's more important to get it done right than to get it done fast so uh the projects themselves there aren't a whole lot of like i'm gonna finish this thing in the next 90 days but what i do want to do is of course make more progress on this bizarre intentionality experiment that i'm running um one thing i i don't want to grow a lot this year. I mean,

like you, we were talking about earlier, last year was kind of a year of revolution for me. And this year is more of a year of consolidation. I feel like the feature set and the Max Sparky Labs are pretty good. And the stuff I'm doing is all pretty good. I'm not looking to add another podcast or take on something new. I just want to do the stuff I have well. But there's one exception. I want to start making regular videos for YouTube, for the public, not just for the lab members. I mean, I published something like, I think, 150 YouTube videos last year to the lab. So I've gotten better at that whole process. But I haven't shared any of them publicly,

but there are some things I want to do on YouTube that are more generic than for the Max Berkey labs. And in the next 90 days, I want to make progress on that. Now, hopefully that means I'll ship a few, but it also means that kind of think through what it is I'll do, how often I'll do it and have like a process for that rolling. But that's the only thing I really want to add. Mainly what I want to do is just get intentional about the stuff I have. And because last year was so busy with the growth and the new processes, I would like to be able to report in 90 days that I have a little bit more time actually to make shavings in the wood shop and play with the dog and a little bit more time actually to make shavings in the wood shop and play with the dog and a little bit more time to myself. Um, you know, I, I did get more last year than I've had historically

because it was crazy what I was dealing with before, but I feel like there's a little bit more room there and I'm not looking to like say, well, I'm not gonna, I'm only going to work three days a week or something. You know, I'm still working plenty, but I do want to make more me time and, uh, and stuff that is outside of, of what I do for a living to just, uh, honestly kind of be creative and read books and, uh, and do stuff like that. So I want to make progress on that in the next 90 days. I'm curious what this YouTube thing looks like, and maybe you don't have the details yet, but, uh, I guess I didn't realize that the labs videos were already being published. YouTube. Those are probably just private videos then.

Yeah. They're unlisted. So sure. Sure. But the, but I, I think what I'm going to do, okay,

I'll share it with you guys, but don't hold me to it. Okay. I'd like to put out two a month, one on some sort of nerdy max parking thing and one on a productivity adjacent topic. And I have people that have been helping me with the videos for the labs. I can use those same people for these. I'm not looking to become the next CGP Gray or Ali Abdaal or anybody like that.

But I feel like it's just something I want to get out of my system. And I want to share that with the world and just kind of see what comes of it. So I'm not looking to become a YouTube powerhouse, but I feel like it is one platform I would like to have a public presence on. I already have a massive private presence, but I don't have really much of a public presence. So I'd like to see that evolve. That's really cool. And that's the important thing about anyone who is thinking about YouTube, I think, is don't anchor yourself off of what other people have done. The tendency can be to

look at the people like Ali Abdaal, who have millions of subscribers, and they have teams of people now who are making their videos. But Ali would tell you, having gone through part-time YouTuber Academy myself, start where you are with what you have. Even if all you've got is an iPhone and a little bit of time for yourself, you don't have a team that can help you make stuff. Just start making something. He would tell you that the consistency of publishing something is more important than the quality of the video that you would make. Obviously, everyone's got to figure out like, what is the minimum amount of quality that I want my name attached to with a video? But I feel like you've kind of got that dialed in having done enough of them so i'm excited to see what these look like and you know i also now have a studio you know i spent significant time and money last year putting together a place where i can make video and i want to you know i want to play with my new toys

you know i want to use this wood wall i put up and and some of the cool stuff i have in here so i think i could make some pretty good videos as long as I just, you know, am intentional about it. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. That does it for today. We are the focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focused. You can find our forums over at talk.mech powerusers.com. Thank you to our sponsor Squarespace, and we'll see you next time.