Focused - 170: Holistic Productivity, with Tim Stringer

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Tim Stringer joins us to talk about mortality, reinvention, and the fight to live a focused life.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. How about yourself? You know, I love January. I don't know what it is. I just love getting rolling, and there's something refreshing about a new year, and I'm full of optimism right now. And it's interesting, I guess maybe that's a topic for someday. I remember there were years when I was, you know,

in the midst of the firm and dealing with all that, where we would get to, you know, the end of the Christmas break in January, and I would have this overwhelming sense of dread about going back to work. And fortunately, my life is not there anymore, but I would have this overwhelming sense of dread about going back to work. And fortunately, my life is not there anymore, but I'm sure people are dealing with that. Maybe we should approach that someday. But for me, man, it's all roses right now. Hope springs eternal. There we go.

There we go. And we've got a guest today. Welcome to the show, Tim Stringer. Yeah, thanks. It's really great to be here. I've been listening to Focus since it was called Free Agents, I believe, in the early days. Yeah, I've just been a big fan of the show for many years now. Yeah, we took a little bit of a turn towards just, you know, focus and productivity. I just was getting too worried that I was making too many people quit their jobs. So we wanted to

like go this direction a little bit, but the Tim, Tim is the guy over at learn OmniFocus, but so much more. Tim and I have been friends for, I don't know, over 10 years at this point, I would think. But he has such an interesting journey. We're going to talk about it today. He had an illness that kind of forced him to make some changes. But I think in hindsight, maybe for the better, at least for the rest of us, it's for the better because we get so much great stuff from Tim. And I know Tim is very thoughtful about productivity and focus. So I've always had you on my list, Tim. So I'm really glad you were able to come join us today.

Yeah, well, it's a pleasure to be here. glad you were able to come join us today. Yeah, well, it's a pleasure to be here, and yeah, I look forward to sharing some of my own story as well as some of the kind of the things that have come out of, very fortunate things that have come out of some unfortunate experiences over the years. Yeah, you know, it's, what is the story of the Chinese farmer? I don't know if you've ever heard this one i i share with people all the time but it's um the farmer um uh has a son and the son uh gets some horses and you know like some catchers some wild horses and everybody's like oh that's so so great for you and he says well we'll see you know and then the next day the the son goes and rides the horses and breaks his leg and everybody says oh that's so terrible for you and he says well

we'll see and then the next day the conscription agents from the army come to take the take the young men out to be in the army and fight the war, but they don't take the son because he has a broken leg. And they say, well, isn't that great for you? And he says, we'll see, you know, and I'll put a link to it. It's Alan Watts tells the story much better than I do, but it's a, it's a really good way to think about life. And, and Tim, you had something like that happened to you about 10 years ago. Tell us a little bit about what you dealt with. Yeah. I'll maybe go back a little further than that just to give some context to all of this. I have a degree in engineering going way back to 1990 in electrical and computer systems engineering. And then I worked in the corporate world for 13 years. And it was kind of an extension of my education in

many ways. I definitely learned a lot working for a large company and a couple of smaller ones. And then I started a company called Technically Simple way back in 2003, so 20 years ago, pretty much to the day. And my intention from the beginning was to support people in making productive use of technology because I saw all of this amazing technology emerging and I saw how it was having some benefit but also creating a lot of stress. So that's been kind of my mission from the beginning. And I wasn't quite sure what I was doing as a new entrepreneur.

I kind of tried a bunch of things. I was kind of a generalist to begin with and I kind of found my way sort of in the early days but then life changed very unexpectedly in 2008. I was diagnosed with a very advanced cancer. I was in a lot of pain. I pretty much had to put work on hold at that point. And suddenly I found myself spending many weeks in hospitals getting chemotherapy. I went through a major surgery that year as well. And I was in this radically different perspective in life and going from, you know, what's my next service going to be to am I going to live to see Christmas this year? And there's part of

me that's, I think, really a student of life that's fascinated by whatever circumstance I find myself in. And even though it certainly wasn't a welcome circumstance, it was something that gave me a whole new sort of window into life and mortality and things like that. And during this time, I read David Allen's Getting Things Done book. And I also just, since I had a lot of introspective time, I really didn't have the energy to do very much. I had a chance to kind of look at my circumstances and say, okay, if I were to kind of mine the wisdom of this experience, what would it look like? And that's where I planted the seed for developing

what I call holistic productivity. I'm sure we'll be talking about that a little bit later. And then fortunately, that year ended on a very positive note. I got a clean bill of health just before Christmas. And really, it felt like the world was my oyster at that point. I could reinvent myself, my company, whatever way I chose to. And ultimately, I really had latched onto that getting things done and the holistic productivity and that planted the seed for the work that I'm doing today. And there were a number of serendipitous events that happened in the coming years like uh being interviewed by by david allen um getting an interview and a speaking gig at the uh with the the omni group and getting to know them really well and really connecting with with what they were up to that's

that uh not in a really sort of planned way but the i was i was kind of aware enough, I guess, to notice the opportunities within the sort of uncertainties and mold it into something that's become very tangible and successful to this day. You know, I do think there's really something to understanding of mortality. If you look, it's actually a common tenet in Buddhism to understand that none of us are getting out of this alive. And you had it really in your face. But the fact is, it's true for all of us. And I think it's easy to forget about it and not be aware of that.

And I think it can be a really positive force for you if you appreciate that. I'm not saying you sit around as a sad sack all day and say, oh man, I'm going to die someday. Yeah, well, you are, but you're alive today. And I think that's the point. Yeah, it's almost like waiting till the last day of your vacation to enjoy yourself and unwind and things like that. It's really just noticing that, yeah, time is finite. And it's kind of, there's a difference between sort of understanding that intellectually and having kind of a visceral sort of experience of that as I did way back in 2008.

And one of the reasons I like to tell the story is maybe a little selfish. I like to remind myself of the lessons that I learned back then, because it is easy to get disconnected with them as I maybe settle into taking life for granted again. So yeah, so I appreciate the opportunity to tell my story. Yeah, and you did that. You've been living your best life. You've got a bunch of things you're doing. Learn OmniFocus is an amazing community that is focused on learning OmniFocus, but really it's a productivity community.

I've been a member for years, and I see all the stuff you cover in there, which some of it is really about OmniFocus, and some of it's barely about OmniFocus and some of it's barely about OmniFocus. And I think that's by design. Yeah, definitely by design. Something I've noticed in general is people will discover methodologies like GTD and they'll say, okay, this sounds great. I really want to apply this. But then they get stuck when it comes down to the, you know, how do I practice this day to day? What to the, you know, now how do I practice this day to day? What does that even look like? What tools do I need? And so forth.

So I think what really works about Learn OmniFocus is there's one thing that everybody has in common. They all use OmniFocus as their task manager. And that kind of grounds the practice to say, okay, I've decided what tool I'm going to use. And now I need to see what other tools do I need to complement it? And what sort of soft skills do I need to learn and develop in order to really put those tools to good use? And at the end of the day, it's not really about the tools at all. I've heard Jason Snell talk about the task manager as a scaffolding. And I think that's a really interesting way of looking at it. If you're building a house, you don't want to be

focusing on the scaffolding all the time. You want to have this beautiful home. But you still want scaffolding that's safe and supportive and does the job. And you probably want scaffolding instead of a ladder or something like that, that both will kind of get the job. And you probably want scaffolding instead of a ladder or something like that, that both will kind of get the job done, but one is going to get it done much more efficiently and safely. Yeah, but you want to build a house too. And I feel like so often in the tech community, it is easy to get hung up on the scaffolding and not, and not the house and, uh, but you get it and, uh, and you really cover that.

Um, Tim, you, uh, have this idea of holistic productivity, um, which I think kind of ties all this together. Could you explain that? Yeah, sure. So first of all, I want to share my own different definition of productivity because it's a word that's thrown around a lot and it's almost lost all meaning so i think it's it's essential to have kind of a at least an agreed upon conversation uh an agreed upon definition in order to have a conversation about it so for me productivity is is very much a creative process that produces some sort of a result so as david Allen, I like heard him

say once, he said, if you go to a party to dance and you don't boogie, it wasn't a very productive party at all. So I think sleep can be productive. Meditation can be productive. Creating a video can be productive. It's really saying there's something that doesn't exist that I want to bring into existence. And productivity is the process of that manifestation. And then the holistic side of things really acknowledges that life is multifaceted and all of these facets are intimately connected. You can't create a shift in one area, whether it's negative or positive, without impacting all the other areas, at least to some extent. So something that I use in holistic productivity is a tool that's used in a lot of coaching contexts as well called the wheel of life. And if you imagine a wheel, it's

got different elements to it, career, money, health, friends and family, significant other, personal growth, fun and recreation and physical environment. And those are the ones I use as kind of default. Sometimes people will kind of play with the names and the categories. But the idea is if you create a shift in, let's say, your health, and that's going to probably mean you have a more successful career. That's going to mean you're more effective at work if there is something around the environment where your home environment really isn't working for you and you give that your attention then you might find your financial health and increases and your relationships and things like that so it's it's really an invitation to evaluate each of these areas of life and I usually rate them from a score of one

to 10, where one is this just isn't working. Five is kind of like, it's fine. You know, it could be better. It could be worse. And a 10 is like this, this area is really dialed in. It's firing on all cylinders. And I haven't met anybody who's had 10s in all areas of life. So it's part of our human journey is to give these areas some energy and shift them in a positive direction. But we can't be focusing on all of these areas intently at once. So part of the process of holistic productivity is to say, what's the most strategic area to give my attention to. So if somebody is really struggling at work, for instance, they might say, okay, I'm just going to give more and more time and energy to work until I get that under control. Whereas that might actually be one of the least effective

ways to create a shift. Maybe the real issue is that they are not getting enough sleep at night, or there's something about their work environment that just isn't working, or there's a relationship in their life that's challenging. So instead of saying, okay, I'm just going to focus on work, you say, okay, I'm going to give my health some attention. And the tendency is for that to naturally shift work in a positive direction without necessarily giving work the attention. I love this idea. I do this every quarter as part of my personal retreat stuff. And I always pick the lowest area as that's the one I'm going to put some attention on, because like you said, Tim, they tend to be interconnected. And so if one area improves,

there'll be improvement in other areas, but you can't just address them all at once. You get overwhelmed that way. But I've found this to be an invaluable tool for bringing clarity on what to do next. I'm curious, David, have you done the wheel of life like this before? No, I have not. I think it's a great idea too. I do think kind of my roles approach is a version of this. I evaluate each role and I just don't put it in a wheel. So, to each his own. But I think the important takeaway here is that productivity is not just looking at how good you're doing at work. I would say this even exists at a level above roles, like the roles exist within these different areas, but there can be some value in looking at this kind of independent of roles, because there might not even be a defined role within health or money or something like that. So I think there could still be some value, and I definitely see the value in roles as well.

roles as well. Something else to point out too, and this is a methodology that I've taught many times over the years. I've taught a lot of corporate courses. I've taught a lot of public courses as well. So it's been interesting to see the trends. And I find the tendency is if people have a low score in one area, they say, okay, that's the area that I need to work on, that I need to fix. And I think that sometimes is the area to give the attention to. But I've also seen people that take an area that already has quite a high score and focus on that instead. And that sometimes is the most strategic way to bring up the area that has a lower score. the area that has a lower score. So there's this sort of indirect relationship between them that I think if we stop and think and sort of imagine how life could be, that can help us to help to inform, you know, where do I put my attention? Where do I put my focus? I like that. And I think

it kind of ties back to something you mentioned earlier about reinvention you had kind of mentioned it in getting the positive report after the health scare and the world was your oyster and you had an opportunity to reinvent yourself but what I have found from the wheel of life is it's kind of a forced reinvention although on a smaller scale on a regular time frame yeah yeah totally and it's kind of a forced reinvention, although on a smaller scale, on a regular timeframe. Yeah, yeah, totally. And you could see the whale of life as just kind of a way of, it's metrics in a sense. You're just checking in without,

hopefully without attaching too much emotion to it to just say, okay, my career is at an eight now, money's at a nine, health is at a six, et cetera, et cetera, without making those things mean too much. Because you could look at those same areas tomorrow or a week from now or something like that and get quite different numbers. So it's more like kind of, you can almost imagine a series of dials where you're just making sure that the things are moving in the right direction. There's nothing that really needs attention in the moment. And then I'll maybe go through the pillars to help to kind of ground it. There's four pillars that represent the practicing of this approach.

So the looking at the wheel of life is kind of the first step. Okay, so the first pillar of holistic productivity is what I call inner reflection. And this was really motivated by a quote that I read years ago by a couple of Harvard University psychologists, Robert Keegan and Lisa Lay. And they said, we're already the most over-informed, under-reflective people in the history of civilization. And that really struck me as, that sounds a little harsh, but I had trouble disagreeing with it as well. So the inner reflection really emphasizes the necessity of looking inward in a world that really encourages us to look outwards. And it's really how we get to know ourselves and really get to really be able to operate

and to be able to focus at such a key point. And practically speaking, that could involve things like journaling, doing like a mind sweep, a GTD mind sweep, anything around meditation and mindfulness practices really represents a practice of this first pillar. And then the second pillar is acceptance. And this is a concept I don't hear talked about very often, but I think it's such an important practice. And it really is a practice. I don't think anybody can go around accepting everything 24-7. And the idea is if you're not accepting life as it is in this moment, there's a resistance that occurs. And resisting life takes

a lot of energy and it really keeps us stuck. So even going through the cancer treatments and being diagnosed with cancer, those moments where I could accept that, okay, this is the way things are now, were the times that I could actually move forward where I felt a release of energy. And acceptance, I think, is just noticing when that resistance comes up and not making us wrong for having resistance, but really saying, okay, hi, resistance. Good to see you. I've seen you before. And just really, really allowing that. And once we sort of accept the resistance, then the life can have more of a flow. And a few concrete practices too are letting go of perfectionism. And I call myself

a recovering perfectionist. But if we can accept that things won't go perfectly and we won't do everything perfectly, that takes a lot of pressure off. Gratitude is something that I practiced a lot going through my cancer treatments. And I definitely continue that practice. It's pretty hard to be a victim and be grateful at the same time. So there's a lot of power to gratitude. And I've been teaching yoga and meditation for many years. And I think really that's one of the gifts of these practices is being able to go into a neutral state around, you know, life is the way life is. And I can at least have moments of feeling peacefulness and acceptance within that. All right. That's a lot. Let me,

let me break that down a little bit. I mean, gratitude is something we've talked about several times. I think it is a very helpful practice. How are you acting on it? practice. How are you acting on it? So that's where the journaling comes in. Very often I have a journal entry I do in day one every day. I think it's been about probably going close to two years since I've missed a day. So it's definitely a very ingrained practice. In my case, I capture at least three wins every day. And a lot of those

wins have an element of gratitude. And then something that I learned goes on the list. Sometimes there's one thing, sometimes there's a few things. And it's a way of hitting the pause button and, you know, acknowledging there were some positive things that happened today even even if things went a little south at some point um and just uh yeah just making that a practice not something that's just kind of a good idea and also if i do find myself kind of getting into that victim state i i invite in the gratitude or at least i try to and even when i was going through cancer there was so much to be grateful for the support I was getting from friends and families, the amazing medical support that I was getting. Like I even in my sort of darkest days of that journey, I could still probably come up

with 100 things pretty easily that I could express gratefulness for and gratitude for. And then that's really, I think, what helped to kind of keep my spirits elevated. And not that I don't want to sugarcoat it and say that I didn't have some rough days and some anger and frustration. These are, you know, very, very human emotions as well that we need to acknowledge and be with. well that we we need to acknowledge and be with um so it's not all it's not all sort of there's there's this sort of i think belief in sort of a new agey way that if we just be positive all the time life is going to flow and i think that's ironically kind of a recipe for disaster we need to we need to be able to welcome in the the gratitude as well as the anger, the frustration, the fear, knowing that this is all part of being human and just not get caught up, I guess, in any of it and ultimately

come back to more of a neutral sort of nonjudgmental state. Tim, Mike and I have been, for the duration of the show, honestly, been talking about forms of inner reflection. We're both big journalersers i'm a meditator i think mike uh we're working on mike on getting him to meditate but the um i do think that um this quote you you had read about this being what was it this is the worst or the worst at reflection we're already the most over-informed, under-reflective people in the history of civilization. Yeah, exactly. I do think getting to know yourself has so many positive benefits for people. And I know there's people out there listening who are interested in this message. They've heard us talk about it.

They've heard you talk about it. But they're not sure how to get started. If someone came to you and said, you know, I think you've got something, how can I get started in a way that makes sense for somebody who's not really spent time on inner reflection historically? I think I see mindfulness as kind of a stepping stone to meditation. So it could be something as simple as just sitting still and closing the eyes and just noticing the breath. And the breath is our, if you're going to be grateful for anything, I guess the most fundamental thing to be grateful is the breath, because that's the most sort of fundamental element of prosperity we have as humans. So something as simple as just sitting still for 60 seconds

and watching the breath flow in and out. It's incredible how profound an experience that can be, especially for people who have never done it before. In fact, I even threw that into one of my Learn OmniFocus sessions. I was a little hesitant to put that in there, but I thought, oh, I'm going to try it as kind of an experiment. So we actually took a minute and I guided people through inhaling and exhaling. And then I invited people to type in the chat box once we were done the minute.

And it was just amazing the profound realizations that people had life and simplest practices and taking something profound from that experience potentially. podcast playing or something like that and and just being curious about you know kind of noticing every little detail every sight every sound you know the people you walk past on the street you know they looked stressed or relaxed or upbeat or downbeat i don't know if that's a word so just just being kind of curious i think about what's right around us. And I think that in itself can be enough to kind of stimulate sort of a curiosity that can lead to journaling and meditation and things like that with very little sort of investment. I would add to that, just consider your inputs. If you're trying to get started, try and find time in the day when you have no inputs. And that means no TV on, no people talking to you, no podcast in your ears, as much as it hurts me to say that.

But just spend some time alone with your thoughts and see what's going on up there. Because if you don't have inner reflection, you don't know what's going on up there because if you don't have inner reflection you don't know what's going on but the thing is things going on between your ears are definitely impacting the way you carry yourself around and uh if you're not aware what's happening uh you're on autopilot yeah and just add to that as well too it's paying attention to the thoughts but even just or like physical form like where is tension being held in the body and how am i walking right now and are my shoulders rolled forward or drawn back those little cues those physical cues if we notice them then we can create a shift we can just adjust our posture or how we walk or you know are

we confident or kind of hunched over and those those can have a profound effect as well in terms of how we present ourselves to ourselves as well as to the world in general. This episode of Focused is brought to you by ZocDoc. You're trying to find a cause for your symptoms and you stumble down a TikTok rabbit hole. Now you're more worried than before. There are better ways to get the answers that you want and the care that you deserve from trusted professionals, not random people on the internet. ZocDoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need and deliver the type of experience you want. ZocDoc is the only free app that lets you find and book doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance,

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just a little bit. We were talking about pillars, but we only have two in our building. We need two more. Yeah, sure, yeah. So, the four pillars, this might be getting a bit into that hippie territory, but there's a Taoist concept called the yin and the yang, and I imagine most people have heard about it. And the first two pillars really represent the yin, and yin is the kind of the passive elements of life. Like sleep is a very yin practice. Meditation is yin.

When I went into my cancer treatments, I was kind of forced into a yin mode. I needed to hit the pause button and just be still and be with my thoughts and things like that. And then the second two pillars, or the third and fourth pillars rather rather getting into more of a young element um and the next one is a perfect one to talk about on this podcast is focus and focus is kind of what we were talking about earlier about you you can't impact all areas of life all at once by trying to focus on those areas you literally can't focus on all of life all at once by trying to focus on those areas. You literally can't focus on all of life all at once, but you can impact all of life by choosing a few specific areas to focus. And one of the exercises that I've taught in my courses for years is to have people choose what's

an area that they've identified where they want to give it some attention and some it's interesting especially in the corporate courses where some people came into these intent that they need to you know get better at work stuff but then they i'd say at least half of them ended up focusing on non-work things so like somebody might focus on some aspect of their health or they might say i'm gonna gonna renovate my basement because I want to be able to practice my music down there or something like that. Or there is a relationship in my life that's keeping me awake at night, and I really want to give that some attention. So it's really, I think it's almost giving ourselves permission to say, there's a lot of

things that I could be focusing on right now, but for now I'm just going to focus on this thing. And I find choosing a sort of a period of anywhere from 30 to 90 days tends to work really well, where it's short enough that it's contained, but it's long enough that a significant impact can be made during that time. So it's about saying, yeah, for the next, let's say 90 days, I'm going to give this area of my attention, area of my life, some attention. And then that leads us to the fourth and final pillar, which is inspired action. And I think the way a lot of us, maybe a lot of people tend to approach productivity is to say, okay, I need to do a bunch of things so that one day I'm going to

be happy and relaxed and successful, whatever that means. Inspired action is really an opportunity to step into our creative side or imagination, something that was probably very alive when we were five years old, but as maybe that muscle has atrophied a bit and we want to get it going again. So this is something I've done in many courses over the years is to invite some people in the group to first of all state what is my 90 day focus. And then they'll actually step forward 90 days from there and talk about having arrived at that place. So they say, okay, I want to clean out my basement. And then they say, okay, this is me 90 days from now talking about what it's like to have the basement cleared out.

And it's like, oh yeah, we've been having these social gatherings and I've got my music going again. And I just feel there's a part of my life that's come alive. And it's really fascinating to watch people express these things because their whole kind of being changes. They made me went from being tense to very relaxed to kind of somber to being joyful. And I invite them in that moment to capture what is that like in that imagined place 90 days from now? What emotions are present? imagine place 90 days from now, what emotions are present, how did you actually get there?

And then the idea is to take that wisdom from this sort of invented place of the future and bring it right back to the present day. So if somebody felt very relaxed in imagining that future 90 days, they can actually be relaxed in the moment. And that's something that's going to really serve them as they give that some attention if they had a sense of humor around it then they can bring that sense of humor to the present as well and and so not just approach it as a series of tasks things that need to be done but also approach it from a level of what's sort of a a way of being that really supports me in moving forward and creates motivation? And even if it's something kind of mundane and where there's sort of procrastination that could kick in, what's that sort of visceral feeling that allows me to go through that in even a joyful way? that something that you just do every 90 days or is there a recurrence that a period that you would recommend to go back and look at that that uh future statement i'm kind of picking apart some

of the details here it sounds like you're writing it as a in a past tense like it's already happened and i can see the value of that because then you can kind of identify with that future scenario that future person who is experiencing that thing that you've just described but it seems to me that if you don't review it frequently then that maybe uh would cause you to disconnect from it and also maybe slip back into that victim state that you mentioned earlier yeah yeah totally so this is part of the the practice too is to have an accountability partner. So somebody that, and when I do courses, I'll pair people up with different partners. So they're checking in, some of them would check in every day, some would check in once a week, as a way of kind of keeping things alive. things alive. And then the idea is if someone sort of slips in that area, then they can always go back to that future place and express, you know, this is the way life is now that I've lost this weight or I've got this job or this relationship or I've completed this report or I've

built Endor Studios or whatever it happens to be. All of these things do exist at some point as kind of a dream. It's really bringing the dream alive in a way we can really relate to be. All of these things do exist at some point as kind of a dream. It's really bringing the dream alive in a way we can really relate to it. And then having a process in place, which I find it is very helpful to have another person to engage with. So that that thing doesn't just become kind of a moment of inspiration that never gets any legs, doesn't go anywhere. of inspiration that never gets any legs, doesn't go anywhere. So as an example, I taught this. I was at this yoga retreat, co-teaching a yoga retreat in Costa Rica.

And the fellow I was leading the retreat with, we decided we were going to keep our 90-day processes going because we each created our own 90-day process when we were in this beautiful retreat center there. And then we just kept going from one to the next. So when the 90 days was up, we just invented another one. Sometimes it was the same area of life. Sometimes it was another area of life. And just kept going from one to the next. And eventually, I think we probably did about, must have done at least 10 of these.

And then we kind of moved on. And I've got somebody else I do accountability with now. It was just an amazing process to involve someone else in my journey at that deeper level. And I think that's really a key part of this. We can't really do this in isolation very well. very well. It's really having trusted friends, coach, somebody that is interested and committed to you being, you know, the ultimate expression of you and creating those relationships and fostering them and having an element of mutual support. So I completely agree with the value of having somebody who can hold you accountable. Do you mind going a little bit deeper with that, though, in terms of what are the benefits that you experience when you have someone like that in your life? You did a good job of explaining

who that should be and kind of the outcome of that. But what does it feel like when you have someone that you are invested in and is invested in you and you're holding each other accountable via the partnership that you just described? Yeah, sure. So one part of the partnership is it's really, I find, very gratifying to be a part of somebody else's process as well. I think I get as much fulfillment out of that as I do out of having them support me. So that's one key part. It's not just about helping someone else. It's about having an opportunity to support them. For myself, I know I'm going to be keeping that dream, that 90-day process alive if I know I'm going to be checking in with someone, whether it's every day or every week or something like that. Because I want to show up to our next

call, our next meeting and say, this is how it's going. And I think it takes the pressure off as well if I'm really stumbling on this and things aren't going as I'd hoped. I know there's somebody there who's going to at least kind of coach me through the process of getting things back on the rails. Or sometimes it's even just kind of reinventing what is the focus. Maybe it was a little too ambitious. Maybe it was not ambitious enough and just kind of fine tuning things. But I think through all of this, bringing kind of a playful sort of spirit to it as well. Not getting too hung up on producing something very specific. Because sometimes the thing that we dream of producing is not ultimately the most useful thing to produce or the most fulfilling thing to produce.

So having it be a process that has kind of an innate creativity to it, where there's a support, there's an externalization by having conversations with that other person. And I find when I do share things out loud, I understand them better than if I'm just trying to figure things out in my head. And then just yeah just having some fun with the process no matter what happens there's always an opportunity for learning because by nature this is something that's done in an intentional way it's something that is kind of its own mindfulness practice in a way just because we're we're setting a commitment to something whether or not that thing actually uh takes the the form that imagined it would at the beginning?

I think one of the challenges of that is, I mean, the inclination would be to use a close friend, right, as your accountability partner. And I've done that. But it has to be a close friend that is just as invested as you are. And that's where the rub is. A lot of times you may be interested in doing this, and maybe your close friends think it's a little crazy, and they don't really, they're not invested in it. And so if you're looking for an accountability partner, I think the first thing is you have to find someone who's equally invested. And if they're a friend, that's great. But if they're not invested, that's not going to work. And sometimes it can actually work best when

the accountability partner is someone we don't know very well. Because I think we kind of tend to train our friends and family to some extent on, you know, sort of what, or they maybe have a sort of a view of us that's maybe gotten a little outdated or it's limited or something like that. Whereas if it's somebody you don't know very well, then you can, part of the sort of reinvention process is to present yourself to that person in a way maybe you've never presented yourself to anybody else. So that's another thing when we do the courses, sometimes it's a bunch of strangers going through this course together and they find themselves kind of taking deep dives into each other's lives as they become accountability partners and i found that can especially when you get a really really good pairing that can produce pretty much magical

results i think the vulnerability is the key there and i would also say that if you're going to enter into one of these relationships, these accountability relationships specifically, I think it can be helpful to go into it with a mindset of giving more than you take. At the beginning, it's scary because you go into it because you want the feedback, but also there's a part of you that doesn't want to hear what maybe a stranger thinks are your weaknesses and the things that you need to get fixed. But my experience, I have found that when I go into it and I just try to offer more help, if I look to offer more help before I ask for it in return, that opens up a lot of doors and it makes it a lot easier process to engage in. Would you agree with that, Tim? Oh yeah, for sure.

And that was one of the core lessons from my cancer journey as well, is it's, it's kind of along those lines is it's okay to ask for help because I was in a situation where some days I was like too weak to walk more than about 10 feet or I was, you know, just needing people to come and help clean or bring food or something like that. So I've never been in such a, I guess, a place in my life of really needing the support of other people. And I think previously thought that if I asked someone for help, I was adding to their burden. But I really realized when I asked someone for help, I'm actually giving them the gift of contributing to my life and my healing and saying, okay,

Tim's doing great now. And I was a part of that whole process. And that's a fulfilling thing to have as a human. I think that's one of the core sources of happiness comes from serving other people and being a part in their journey. And also, I think the flip side is allowing ourselves to be served because I think most of us probably have one tendency or the other where some people are very giving, but they have trouble sort of accepting the support and help of other people. And other people are maybe asking for a bit too much help and support and not providing enough service. And it's a matter of finding that sort of balance point between the two. And there's kind of an equilibrium that's created, I think, when we get to that point. Tim, you said you have gone two years without missing a day of journaling.

That is impressive, my friend. How are you journaling? Well, I'm using the Day One app, first of all. There's something about using that app that just makes it compelling. I guess being a techie as well, having a really, really slick app that's designed just for journaling makes it very easy. It's also, I think people think about journaling as writing, as text, which I love words. I love playing with words.

And for me, journaling, that's a big part of it. But something I've been doing a lot in recent years is dropping photos in as well. Just something that caught my eye from that day when I was out for a walk or maybe there was somebody in my life that got married or a new baby that was born or something like that and just dropping those into my journal entry. And I think the more I journal, the more I'm motivated to journal, especially in day one because sometimes I'll say on this day and I'll have like 10 journal entries or something going back 10 years. And I just realized the kind of value I've created for myself by having that sort of being able to kind of know what my self 10 years ago was thinking in that moment or what were some of the concerns or what were some of the gifts.

And just noticing, you know, have I sort of changed my mindset? Some things have stayed the same. Some things are kind of radically different over the years. But yeah, I think it's one of those things. The more I journal, the more I'm motivated to journal. And I don't put a lot of pressure on myself to say I need to spend an hour journaling. Sometimes I spend 30 seconds and drop in a photo from

my walk earlier today and call it a day. Other days I might, I think I'd rarely spend more than about five minutes in there and just get some things out of my head, kind of send a message to my future self in case it's useful. And in the process, kind of offload and process some of the things I've been dealing with for the day so I can let them go and have a good night's sleep and move on, knowing that there's some lessons I've learned along the way. Yeah, I mean, that is more inner reflection. Once again, you know, you're finding ways to insert it into your day. Yeah. And it just doesn't feel like a chore anymore.

It's something I actually enjoy doing. Occasionally, I might leave it a little late in the day. I'm feeling a bit tired at that point, but I always make a point of saying, okay, I'm at least going to give this a minute of my time. And I know my future self is going to appreciate it. And there's that kind of victory of not feeling like doing something and doing it anyway. I think that is another benefit to it all. One of the things that I have done recently with my journaling habit is I have invested in an e-ink tablet, which allows me to do the digital journaling that you're talking about, Tim, at the end of the day. I find it a little bit of a distraction. I use Obsidian not day one, but the principle is the same. I have things that I want to add to my journal every day. And at the end of the day, usually if I haven't done it, I'll try to do it then. But I don't like looking at the blue light from the screens. How do you combat that? Is there any sort of routine you have as like maybe an evening or a shutdown routine where you go back and fill out your journal if you

haven't done it throughout the day? I tend to do it, let's say the afternoon is when I tend to journal the most. Occasionally I'll leave it till the evening, but it tends to be more of an afternoon practice and I think just the fact I'm not spending a lot of time at it means it's never really become an issue occasionally I'll dictate as well sometimes I just need to get my eyes a break so I'll just hit the little mic button on the keyboard of my iPhone and just start talking and not worry it's not being published anywhere. Nobody else is going to read it. So I don't worry about it being being perfect. And I think the biggest breakthrough really was just adding photos in there because I really enjoy

photography. And it's as I'm going out for a walk or something, I think the fact that I know I want a photo to put into my journal means I'm paying more attention to things around me. And it could just be some little close-up shot of some new plant I've never seen before or something along those lines. It might be just something that kind of captures the mood of the day. Maybe it's sunny or rainy or foggy or something like that. And yeah, I think it's really kind of just getting creative with it. I'd like to get into doing some audio clips. I think it would be really, really cool to listen to myself like 10 years from now, listen to what I sound like in 2023, or maybe even dropping in some short video. Or if I'm at a party or wedding or something like that, maybe just having a little sound clip from that to kind of capture that. So I think it's journaling, a lot of people think about is I need to carry this book around with me and write in it.

But once it becomes more of a multimedia sort of practice, then it can take on all kind of creative elements. And you can kind of say today, I'm more in a photography mood, or today, I'm more in a writing mood, or, or there's, I just love the sound in this forest I'm in right or today I'm more in a writing mood or there's I just love the sound in this forest I'm in right now I'm just going to take a moment to to capture that so I I can recall it if I choose to in the future I like the multiple mediums that you're talking about and the audio medium specifically I have leveraged that with my young kids, capturing them, saying something cute. My youngest daughter just turned four a couple of months ago, and for a long time, she couldn't say marshmallow, so she said farm fellow. We still call them farm fellows to this day, and we always laugh when we say it, but over

time, you kind of forget about those things, so it's nice to have that record that record and you go back and you can listen to those things again. I'm kind of curious though, do you just dump this all into a single journal or do you have like a place for your photos, a place for your audio is a place for the gratitude. Like how do you divvy all that stuff up and how do you go back and review it? Uh, is it compartmentalized and I'm going to go review all my gratitude entries or is it just, you're going to go back and whatever happens to be there, that's just the thing that you're reviewing when you go back and look through your journals? because I do like very structured systems and so forth. And I think a bit of structure in journaling can be useful, but the whole idea is to kind of give myself freedom to capture kind of whatever I want, however I want.

And having said that, I do have a, I've got one journal I call Groovy Winds, and that's where I put my three wins and at least one lesson from the day. I just have another one just called Private, not a very original name, but it's a place where I sort of capture some sort of private thoughts and things that don't fit into the groovy winds. I've got one for social media. So that, that gets fed automatically. I think it's through if this and that. So even when I'm just posting

on social media, then that's going into my journal. Beyond that, I haven't felt really sort of a need to organize. I know I can search very easily. I can find things if I need to. So yeah, keeping it fairly loose and just focusing, I think, more on the capture. And day one, I know, can expose the information to me very easily without me having to get overly organized with it. So yeah, that's the benefit of day one, right, is that you can capture things so easily. And it's absolutely great for that. I saw they even have a feature where you can enable prompts. So you get a notification with a different prompt every single day just to help you ingrain that journaling habit, which I think is very valuable.

What sort of review cadence do you do? Do you go back and you look at your journal entries at the end of the week, at the end of the month, the end of the year? Because it sounds like you tend to just capture a lot of the things that happen in the day, like the audios or the videos or the pictures, whatever. And then, like you said, it's all digital. It's all on day one. So you can go back and search for it if you want to. But do you have any sort of way to go back and regularly stumble into those things and maybe spark some joy of the experiences that you captured previously? I don't have kind of a formal practice around those things. It'll be more sort

of an impulse to say, oh wonder you know what else happened on this day and that's when i'll open up day one i don't have like a ritual of looking at at the end of the day i think it would be a useful thing to kind of put into place just to to uh make sure that i'm i'm really getting that that sort of insight from my past self. And at the same time, I think if I journal and put something into a journal, it's the sort of act of creating the journal entry is sort of therapeutic in itself, even if I never look at it again, because it is, it is sort of giving me an opportunity to, to look at my life, how did my day go? What was significant to kind of notice things that I wouldn't already notice. And, and it's, what was significant, to kind of notice things that I

wouldn't already notice. And it's a way of kind of slowing down and acknowledging things. And I think I learn the lessons more deeply if I'm capturing them in some form, whether it's in the form of photos or text or audio or things like that. I think the simple act of capturing becomes kind of a mindfulness practice in itself. I agree with you 100%. I recently came across a quote which I really loved about journaling that said, those who journal get to live life twice. And I really like that. And it's really got me thinking about the regularity with which I go back and look at all the things that I captured because I'm recognizing that, yeah, I dump all these things in there because I want to process things in the moment

and I want to have the data points that I can go back and I can look at, like your groovy wins. I've got a couple different areas. I've got journal entries that I capture. I've got gratitude, and I've got my couple different areas. I've got journal entries that I capture. I've got gratitude. And I've got my own wins section. But then I realized that a lot of times those would just sit there. And I'm trying to be a little bit more intentional this year about going back and looking at those regularly.

Every 90 days is fine, but I've noticed they can provide me more inspiration if I do it a little bit more regularly. Something I found as I went ahead and gave my money to Day One last year, and I had the 2021 journals printed in a book. And it turned out to be four books because I had a lot of entries, but I got a four-volume book set of that year. And I've just kept it out. And I've enjoyed going back and reading through those entries so much so that I'm going to do 2022 and maybe go back. Because I've been using day one for 10 years. I'm going to go back and figure out some of the prior years too and just make these as books and

and that really is kind of nice yeah we've done that we have one for each of our our kids and it's probably at least once a week that they get them all out and they look through them they just absolutely love it because we've got them printed and we've got them available. They go look at them very frequently. In a sense, it's kind of like the scrapbooks that I grew up with. And to this day, I enjoy going back and looking at things like that. And this is maybe the modern version of kind of capturing those key moments in life. Well, particularly with the way you do it, Tim, and I do the same thing. One of my weekend tasks every weekend

is just to look through my photo library from the week. And you take all these weird pictures. I mean, with my family, we probably go to Disneyland once every week or two. So there's a couple of pictures from Disneyland and I can add that to day one and journal about it. But there also may be a picture of the dog on bath day or my daughter and I, you know, building Lego or whatever, something fun we did. And journaling that really is so much more enriching than just having it in

your photo library. But then when you take it to the next level and you print those books out, and I actually do use a lot of different journals in day one because when I print the books, you can tell it, print the stuff from the fun pictures journal, but don't print the stuff from deep, dark thoughts journal or whatever. So you can decide what makes it in the book and doesn't, um, uh, depending on what you're going to do with them. But, uh, so I, I, I'm also a fan of day one. I've been sitting on my hands here.

Cause I don't want to, I don't want to just start, you know, preaching about day one again, but it is, it is a great app. Yeah. Agreed. Something else to just, um, bring up as well too that's related to journaling. And it was years ago, one of my clients I worked with is a personal historian, and I didn't even know that was a thing. But he basically creates documentaries about people's lives so that those memories will be alive for future generations. So I thought that was such a cool concept. And he generously gave me the questions that he uses for his interviews. So I decided to interview my dad a number of years back. And we recorded, I think there's probably a few hours of audio and video. And it was just such an amazing experience. I learned some things about him that I had no idea about because we hadn't

sat down before. And I think such an intentional way to learn more about his life. And that's something I'm editing into a video that I can share with other people in the family and future generations and things like that. So I think that's a really valuable thing to do at any age, but especially as people are getting sort of older in their life, I highly recommend just taking the time to interview them. And I can pretty much guarantee you'll learn all kinds of interesting things from their stories and their trials and tribulations and successes and things like that.

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all your devices. The fact is, once you connect to ExpressVPN, you don't even realize you have it on, but your connection is secure, your data is encrypted, and you can spoof your location so you can have access to content available outside your region. No wonder it's been called the best VPN by CNET. So right now, go to expressvpn.com slash focus and you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash focused to get that extra three months for free and let them know you heard about it here on the Focus podcast. Expressvpn.com slash focused and our thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay FM. All right, Tim, you know, listening to you, you've just got it so together. And honestly,

that's been my impression of you as your friend for all these years. Every time I talk to you, you're like, oh yeah, I've got a whole workflow for that, or I've decided how to handle this. And you are a very intentional guy. And I like that about you. So people listening are going, well, it's never hard for Tim, right? I mean, you never have a problem staying focused, do you? No, no, I focus perfectly all the time. I think you said I wouldn't be allowed on the podcast if I were too perfect. So yeah, I definitely got some challenges that I face. And there really wouldn't be much point in life without challenges. So yeah, I definitely got some challenges that I face. And there really wouldn't be much point in life without challenges. So sometimes it's about seeing them as opportunities

rather than kind of burdens or curses or something like that. Sure. So where does this get hard for you? I think for me, one of the areas is I tend to do well when I'm focused on one thing for a period of time. But if I'm kind of being pulled in multiple directions, maybe there's something related to the business that needs my attention right away or something unexpected that happens in the day. It's those kind of switching gears and getting back to where I was that I think, I don't know if I'm average or maybe even a bit below average on that,

but I try to carve out that time and really get into the groove on things. But it's really working to see how can I more easily sort of switch contexts when there's kind of a need to switch contexts. There's kind of sometimes I think almost an unavoidable need to go from doing one thing to something else to back to what I was doing. So that's very much a work in progress, but I think I'm getting a little bit better at it over time. Tensionality is the eternal struggle for everyone. Just when you think you've got it nailed down, there's a new shiny object or a new project or a new something that you want to do, and then you have to figure it all out again.

a new something that you want to do, and then you have to figure it all out again. I think part of the challenge too, is that sort of perfectionist element and doing the sort of work that I do, wanting to definitely be seen as someone who's kind of got it together and, you know, doesn't fall flat on his face sometimes. But the reality is, yeah, if I weren't falling flat on my face every so often, at least I know I need to be playing a bigger game that I'm not challenging myself enough. So that's something I think to, again, to kind of notice that sort of expectation I put on myself to do things perfectly and get everything done according to the goal and just realize that that's not possible. That's not even desirable in some ways. And I think part of it is just practicing self-acceptance and saying, okay, today didn't go as well as I would have liked.

You know, I wasn't as focused as I could have been or I got sidetracked or whatever happened along the way. And just take whatever sort of learning is available from that, acknowledge it. And, and just, uh, yeah, just kind of give myself a pat on the back for, for what I did do. And, and, um, yeah, notice those sort of tendencies to, to, uh, kind of put myself down for things that I didn't do. Cause those because those, those, that putting down is, is ultimately unproductive.

It doesn't really serve any purpose. It's just something to be noticed and acknowledged and say, okay, what can I do differently tomorrow? You mean, you mean one of the answers is to be kind to yourself? Yeah, it's a, it's one of those things. It's a practice within itself. And again, it's not always, at least speaking for myself, it's not always easy to be kind to myself. But I,

again, it's something I think I've gotten better at over time. And then every so often I'm going to slip and I'll be unkind to myself. And, and again, just notice that and move on. So, yeah,

I think I say that every week. It's just so hard. It's so hard, but it's just so important. I mean, if you get one thing out of this show, be nicer to yourself. This stuff is hard. And I imagine the people who listen to this show that even have focus on their radar,

they're probably actually accomplishing an incredible amount already. They're playing a big game, and they're making a big game and they're, you know, making a big impact in people's lives. And I think it's, again, coming back to things like journaling, just to say, yeah, today felt like a bit of a write-off until I actually went into my groovy wins journal and realized that there were like 10 wins from today or three wins or valuable learnings or something like that. And then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, maybe today wasn't such a waste after all. There's actually a lot of roses among the thorns. How does procrastination

feed into this perfectionism and the battle for intentionality? Yeah, procrastinations are a really interesting topic, and this is one I've included in my courses for years. It's one that I've really sort of taken a deep dive into. And if you break the word down to its roots, it literally means this belongs to tomorrow. And there's some things that literally belong to tomorrow. They don't belong to today. don't belong to today. But there is the sort of procrastination where I could have done this yesterday or a year ago or 10 years ago, even something like that. And at some point, we're going to run out of tomorrow's. So we need to evaluate that thing and say, first of all, is it

really important in the first place? I found myself putting off things where I kind of intuitively knew that they weren't even worth doing. I just needed to identify, yeah, this is not a good use of my time and energy. So I'm going to realize that and let it go. There's sometimes things where there's a fear associated with it. So I'm afraid I'm going to get even more overwhelmed or I'm going to fail or fear of success is kind of one that I think holds people back as well. You know, if I write this book and it's, you know, amazing, you know, people aren't going to let me off the hook for writing another book, or I'm not going to be able to hide off in the shadows and things like that. I think there's procrastination. This is one I run up against very often because there's things that I'm really excited about doing, but I don't necessarily put the time and energy into it. And I think in those cases, it's really just that I

don't, I'm not really clear on where to go next with this thing. I need to kind of pull out the mind map and just start getting thought out and playing with them and and just kind of being in more of sort of an incubation stage where i can unearth the the actions and the you know the next steps the outcomes and so forth so i think that's that's a big part of it uh and then there's even procrastination where even at a a nervous system level there's there's a pattern within us that kind of stops us in our tracks. And I remember David Allen talking once about how, I think he was quoting a psychologist or something, whereas somebody, when faced with filing their taxes, they kind of freeze up and they kind of go into almost a fight or flight mode, say, okay, I'm going to do everything except do the taxes.

Because to them, at kind of a programming level that goes even below our sort of conscious thoughts, they say, okay, if I file my taxes, they're going to find something that I didn't declare and I'm going to go off to jail or something like that. So for them at a level of the nervous system at an unconscious level, they associate filing the taxes to going to jail. And the antidote that Dave and Alan presented was to break it down to things that are much more tangible, like, okay, I can take all my receipts and sort them according to the date or something like that. sort them according to the date or something like that. Or I can give my accountant a call and arrange for an appointment or something like that, where we're not focused on that sort of big scary thing. We're just kind of focused on cranking widgets that are ultimately contributing to the outcome that we want or even are required to produce.

You mentioned mind mapping as a way of overcoming procrastination. Do you mind unpacking that a little bit more? You kind of talked about how, I'm assuming it sounds like you're creating a mind map and you're just kind of exploring the depths of this idea and the clarity that comes from brainstorming that I assume is one of the things that comes from brainstorming that, I assume, is one of the things that can help you overcome the procrastination or using it a different way. And if it's an area where I'm stuck, I'll tend to use it more to kind of get my thoughts in front of me into a more objective form. And sometimes I might even do the mind map while

somebody else is present or I'll share it with them after. So I can kind of get their input, use them as a sounding board. But sometimes I'll be creating a mind map and I'll have a section on what are my concerns? What's the worst things that could happen if I move forward with this? What questions do I need the answers to in order to move forward? It's really just having a really sort of almost like an honest conversation with myself about why am I stuck and being willing to see, sort of explore, you know, what could go wrong. What are those lurid nightmare that could could show up if i uh were to move forward and um and that actually comes from a david allen quote the lurid nightmarish

scenarios because he talks about the people that procrastinate the most are the ones who are the most creative and intelligent because they can kind of see everything that could go wrong and then they sort of their their creativity and those you know things that could go wrong and then they sort of their their creativity and those you know things that could go wrong sort of stop them in their tracks in that moment so i found mind mapping as a way of objectifying that process of of saying okay these i'm going to give myself permission to put these things down that are concerns or fears or whatever and then i find once they're externalized, they're not so scary after all. They're not so heavy or dramatic or all those things,

especially if I present it to another person and I say, okay, these are my concerns. And as I speak it out loud, I say, okay, these are kind of silly concerns. Or, you know, as I tell you about it, these aren't as big and lofty as they seem to be in my head. So I think objectifying things by externalizing them is really one of the keys to unlocking any sort of stuckness. I like that a lot. You also mentioned using mind mapping. It sounds like in front of somebody else or as you're discussing something, It sounds like in front of somebody else or as you're discussing something, can you maybe talk a little bit through that process and how that maybe can bring alignment with the person that you're working with? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so there's a fellow, Michael, we've been friends for a long time and we essentially coach each other and we'll come to our Zoom calls with whatever the theme is for the day.

And sometimes I'll show up to a call and just say I'm really stuck about this thing. And I'll actually share my screen and just start to throw things on a mind map as we're talking through. And then he'll get curious about something that he sees that I put on the mind map and he'll ask me questions and that'll lead to more things showing up on the mind map and things being moved around and reorganized and things like that. And it's a bit hard to, I think it's one of those things you need to try for yourself to see if it's valuable for you. But I found it's one of those things that's probably going to hold at least some value for pretty much anybody. Cause it's, again, it's having a sounding board there. It's me maybe expressing something that's half baked and having someone else ask questions about it and get curious about it and saying, you know, you know, what do you mean by this? Or tell me more about this. And, and it's peeling back the layers of onions

until we really get to the meat, the really important stuff. And the end decision that comes out of that might be, yeah, this is not worth doing, or I can't wait to get started on it, or I'm not going to do this, but I know someone who would really appreciate having these insights

and they can take them and run with them. So it's really, I think it's, I love that word incubating. I mentioned that earlier as well. It's about being willing to take something, whether it's heavy or light or significant or potentially insignificant, and just play with it, spend some time in the sandbox and just see where it goes and not have any attachment to it taking any form at all. I think that is a very important idea, the whole concept of playing with things. And I think specifically you're talking about ideas here in this context, but do you mind describing that a little bit more let me just

frame it a little bit so when I have an idea I will capture it I'll transfer it to the system but I recognize that when I transfer things or when I have those ideas in the moment I typically don't know what that thing is and it's not till I've put it in the sandbox for a while, like you mentioned, that I really start to see what I've really got here. Yeah, one area, one specific area where I've been using this for years is developing the sessions and courses I lead for Learn OmniFocus. And often I'll just be out for a walk or meditating or something like that, and I'll or maybe talking to somebody maybe in one of our office hour sessions they might have this interesting idea and it's it's kind of like

what would it be like to cover this specific topic and I might not cover that topic even for a couple of years but I give it a place to grow and it's kind of like planting the seed in the garden. Often in the form of a mind map, it could be a note as well. And then anytime I have thoughts about it, I have a place to go and interact with that sort of thing. And I think that's one of the value of a lot of what's emerging around the sort of personal knowledge management and second brain and things like that. Sometimes it's as simple as just having a place to develop an idea. And without having the pressure of doing anything with the idea today or this year or maybe ever, I think that lack of pressure tends to really invite a creative space.

And when I do decide that I'm going to do something with it i've got it feels like half the course is done already i just need to give it some form and give it a name and things like that and uh and some of the things they don't go anywhere but even the the process of thinking them through and exploring them is liberating within itself because I'm still kind of understanding how things fit together. So I call it an idea bank. So anytime I'm adding an idea and developing it, I'm working within this sort of framework of idea bank. And I know I've got a really rich bank of ideas that I can do a withdrawal upon at any point if I need a new session or if I'm giving a piece of something else or maybe it's maybe it's extremely useful

maybe it doesn't have any sort of value so i like that description of the idea bank david do you have something similar to this uh yeah i mean the mine's just called ideas but you know it's all the same i've moved mine around over the years it was in omni focus it's been in obsidian i currently keep it in craft so i can let the people on my team see it and let them weigh in on it um but i mean this is all for me similar to what i call cooking ideas you know it's like you get an idea and you just give it time. And the subconscious mind is so powerful, and it does the work for you. It's like no heavy lifting. I don't know.

It's like the ultimate hack, right? I mean, do you ever feel, Tim, like when you come back to one of those things after you haven't looked at it for a week or two, it's like suddenly you've got the solution to all the problems on it? Yeah, or sometimes I go back and look at something and say, well, this is brilliant and i don't even necessarily remember even having these thoughts yeah yeah there's this just this real richness i think that the tendency of this is maybe where people get stuck as well too is um

is kind of kind of trying to do right brain creative things while in sort of a structured left brain mode. I think we need to unleash our creativities in order to produce something, but not do it in an overly structured way. And I tend to be, I'm a very much a systems thinker. So, you know, I like things to be nicely organized and, you know, outlined in a very specific way and that's still I think a very valuable thing but I think a big breakthrough for me over the years is is just saying I can just being in more of that sort of free-form way of thinking I can be really creative I can I can create without necessarily having to produce anything beyond what showed up in that moment. And then just doing that in a sort of a non-pressure environment,

just growing some things that are in the idea bank, not knowing if I'm ever going to sort of cash out on those, has really been profoundly useful and has allowed me to explore things that I don't think I would have explored in a kind of more linear structured way. Yeah. As I say the words, I also think, you know, it's time, you know, for subconscious mind to think about them while you're gone, but also it's a different version of you, right? Two week ago version of Tim is not today's version of Tim. And I think that's part of it too. But this is a vastly underused thing that people don't do. I think the reason is so often in the modern world,

we're under time crunch, you know, and you don't have the time to give it the space. But it's worth exploring. And if you haven't, I mean, Mike and I did a whole show on mind mapping. And we've heard from several people that found that enlightening. So maybe that's something you should look at. then it's going to be very, very self-limiting. I guess sometimes I'll do like a meditation in the morning or something like that. And then I'll have this, sometimes in the middle of the meditation, I'll just open up drafts and just start typing furiously in there. And I'll have this whole sort of flood of ideas that I probably, I could have spent a week trying to come up with the same thing and fallen short. Whereas there are already things

that are, I think, within each of us. We just need to relax. We need to go into more of that yin mode so that we can allow those things to flow. We don't have to kind of pressure them out of ourselves. We just need to go into more of our lock states and just allow them to naturally sort of unleash. Agreed. I think that it's a bit of a paradox, especially for anyone who is creative on a deadline specifically. You think, well, I need an idea. I need to publish something. I need to create something. And the more you focus on those dates and having to have something instead of creating the time just to play with the things and not having the pressure of this idea be the one that ends up being the workshop or the blog post or the course module, the more creative you are able to be. Reminds me of a quote I heard one time that nothing

is so dangerous as an idea when it's the only one that you have. And I think a big part of that, a lot of the clients I work with, they have these amazing ideas and they almost see that as something that's holding them back because they're trying to do these work. know every time they talk to somebody or go for a walk or something like that they're getting more and more ideas and they say oh and this is getting overwhelming what do i do with all these things and so this is i think why it's so important to have a place to capture those things where it's digital or analog or a combination of the two and just make that as convenient as possible so that you can kind of get them out of your head into the system,

knowing you can relate to them again, and then maybe even just forget about them for the next month or year, whatever it happens to be, knowing that there's more and more riches being added to that idea bank over time. I could say, I think everything that I've ever worked on with space has been better than it would have been if I hadn't had space I mean I I just think it's a a universal rule and uh can't recommend it enough you got an idea bink mike oh yes it's an obsidian right it is we've kind of talked about my process for this I call it the five C's of creativity, but what Tim is talking about where it's just kind of incubating, I call that cultivating.

And it's providing the right conditions for an idea to develop, in my opinion. And part of that is connecting it and viewing it alongside some of the other things that I've learned and other ideas that I've collected, including all the stuff that I read in all the books that I read for Bookworm. But a very important piece of this, though, is not having the pressure for any one of those ideas to be the thing. You just give it the conditions to grow and then you objectively go look at it. And eventually, you know, sometimes it turns into something awesome. Sometimes you're like, oh, this seemed great in the moment, but it really isn't a whole lot here. And you can either cut it loose or just let it continue to sit there.

But that's the thing that freaks people out, I think, is I've got all these things sitting there. I should do something with them. No, you shouldn't. You should just let them sit until they're ready. And I think even the act of capturing them is doing something with them. And that can be very informing within itself. It can start to train our thinking, cultivate curiosity and things like that. So when I'm incubating something, to me, that's very productive work.

Even though I'm not producing necessarily a product today or next week or something like that, I'm still producing sort of, I'm exercising my brain. I'm producing curiosity and sort of playfulness and things like that. And to me, that's highly productive. Yeah, another benefit, which I just wanted to be clear. Sometimes I come back and say, wow, that was a really dumb idea. But the space gives me the room to realize that too. Either way, hey guys, put some space in your ideas. See what happens.

Let us know. Tim Stringer, thank you so much for coming on. Just for the audience's benefit, we got through half our outline today, which kind of doesn't surprise me. Tim's got a lot to share, and we'll have to have you back again soon. In the meantime, Tim, where should people go to find you? Yeah, sure. So technically simple.com is the website for my company that I founded all those years ago. And then learn OmniFocus.com is my membership based community that's really about understanding productivity in the context of OmniFocus. I'm on Twitter, for now at least, Tim Stringer, T-I-M-S-T-R-I-N-G-E-R.

And I'm also testing out the waters over at Mastodon under that same name. Excellent. Well, we are the Focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm.com. All our shows are there. We've got a little corner of the Mac Power Users Forum. Go to talk.macpowerusers.com, and you can weigh in on the episodes and thoughts that you have

concerning the issues we've talked. Maybe you're using space successfully. We'd love to hear how you're doing that. We want to thank our sponsors today, and that is our friends over at ZocDoc and ExpressVPN. And we'll see you next time.