Focused - 175: The To-Don't List

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

David & Mike get caught up on listener feedback as they discuss journaling data, power naps, and choosing the things you aren't going to do.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you doing today? Doing great. How about you? Good, good. It's a new quarter, baby. And that comes with all the excitement of new opportunities. I feel like quarters are like New Year's to me because of this whole 90 day thing we do. Yeah, they absolutely are. It's, uh,

it's exciting. And, and we're actually gonna talk about, I think some of our stuff for the next quarter, maybe in the next episode, but we got a lot of feedback that we got to get caught up on. Yeah, we're behind. We are indeed. So the first thing that we want to follow up on here is with this journaling review. We had a comment that came in that said, you guys have mentioned journaling on many occasions. I had used day one for a while. I have all this data for about a year,

but I don't know how I can use that data for any practical use. So how do past journals help in the future? Seems like I just have a bunch of notes of the past. How would you respond to this? Several ways. I think the first question I would say is, do you need it to matter for the future? One of the big benefits of journaling is the process of journaling in the moment and capturing it. I feel like me journaling as I go throughout the day helps me process as I'm going and it helps me transition from one thing to the next and helps me keep context of my life in the moment, if that makes sense. I've got a good friend who journals extensively, handwritten journals, and then he throws them in the shredder at the end of the week. So the first argument I would make is you may not need to get a long-term benefit out of a journal because I think there's a lot of benefits that come out of a journal that have nothing to do with review. But to continue the thread, I really do think journaling does give you long-term benefits

through the course of time because you're doing it on a daily basis. It gives you the ability to see trends over time. And just the other day, I was reading, because day one threw up at me, a journal entry from a year ago. And there was a problem with a person in my life that I was writing about then. And then that same person is a problem in my life right now. And this happened to be that I saw that. And I'm like, oh, this is not a short-term problem.

And maybe I need to make some changes in my life so this doesn't continue to be a long-term problem, you know, and maybe I need to make some changes in my life. So this doesn't continue to be a long-term problem. And I think that it does give you some perspective when you go back and read them later. Another thing you can do is if you start doing like a 90-day review process, going back and reading your journals for the last 90 days even can be quite helpful. reading your journals for the last 90 days even can be quite helpful. So how's that for a bunch of answers? It's great. I think that there is two different approaches here and your approach is a little bit different than mine. And I think there's definitely value in the just free form journaling and you go back and you can read those, but that's actually not the approach I take because I have experienced this same sort of problem where I have just a bunch of entries and there's no common thread

throughout them, especially on the surface. And maybe if you dig deep enough, you can discover some of that stuff. But we've talked about before, I've got my own process with journaling that I do inside of Obsidian, and I've kind of boiled it down to these different areas of my life that I want to, to borrow your term, move the needle on in a consistent basis. So the way that I get around this is I actually assign number values to a lot of these things. And I won't go through the whole system again, but it's all based off of the concept of the daily questions, which is inspired by Marshall Goldsmith and the book Triggers. And it's just, did I do my best to in different areas? And I give myself a score, completely completely arbitrary score. If I am not feeling

great and I push through and I go for a run and I run two miles, I'll give myself a 10 for exercise for the day. But if I'm training for my half marathon, which I'm doing right now, and it's my day to go for a long run and I cut it short, I'll give myself a lower score. It has nothing to do with the outcome itself. It's just based on my intentions. Then those scores actually get averaged out. So every 90 days when I do my personal retreat process, that's how I review regularly. I look back at those charts and I see the averages of the scores and I pick the lowest ones. I'm like, this is probably something that I should take some action in. And then the other part of this is just the regular habits that I try to implement consistently. So writing, reading, and planning, I want to do those every day. And I have little

check boxes. Did I do this or did I not do this? And I have those streaks that those appear in another note. So I think you got to think through what your review process is going to look like. And then once you have identified that, and it could be as simple as, I'm just going to trust that day one surfaces these things on the appropriate days, because that's a really great feature. If that's all you want to do for your review purpose, then go ahead and do that. But once you are okay with, this is how I am going to review, then you can kind of craft your journal entries in a way that they will provide value for you in the future. I think if you just do it in the moment, that's fine. You get a lot of value from that. But if you journal, you get to live life

twice. And so don't miss out on that other opportunity without thinking through to future you, what are they going to see when they go back and review these things? And maybe you can format it in a way where it's a little bit easier for future you to understand what was really going on there. I will say, though, in my case, that first point of just journaling in the moment to get the immediate benefit, it really matters. I feel like that, to me, is the primary benefit. But the scorekeeping is interesting to me. The idea that Mike is using to keep score in it

and to give himself trend lines he can look at over time. First of all, that does not surprise me in the least, knowing you, Mike, that you have an analytical system to keep score because that's how you roll, baby. It's true. But I think you can also keep score without keeping score. And that's kind of my experience with it. I am aware of things that are concerns.

And going in every quarter and looking at the various roles I'm in and seeing how I'm doing, without having a score, I know where I'm doing good and where I'm doing bad. But mine is way more binary than yours. It's like, this could be better or this is doing well. And maybe I should consider the way you're doing it. But for me, the simpler method seems to be something I'm more comfortable with. I don't like judging, giving myself a number score every day. I tried it and it just didn't work for me.

I started Mike with, I think, because Marshall Goldsmith, giving myself a number score every day. I tried it and it just didn't work for me. I started like Mike with, I think, because Marshall Goldsmith, didn't he recommend a one through 10 and he had like an Excel spreadsheet? Yeah. And then I did it. Oh, that's too much. Like, how do you know the difference

between a seven and an eight? You know, so I just said, well, I'll just do one to five. Then how do you know a difference between a four and a five? And then I went to uh one to three you know it's like i did bad i did okay or i did good that was like the the scoring system and then ultimately it's like did i try that's all i want to know is did i try you know what's that saying

effort not results you know and yeah did i make effort well, that's my scoring system. And that's really all you need. I would argue if you just look at my system and try to copy it, it's probably too much for most people. But that's true of just about every piece of productivity advice. You got to figure out how to make it your own. The real valuable thing worth considering, I think, is how can I make adjustments to my daily actions in a meaningful way that is going to translate into me being able to spend more time, attention, and energy on the things that really matter to me. I think if you are just journaling for the moment and you are not planning on using those insights that you glean in any way, shape, or form to direct future action, you're kind of missing the point. It's not an activity just to say that you did it. It should be helping you discover things about yourself. And that can happen in the moment.

That can happen when you review these things in aggregate on a regular basis. There's no right or wrong way to do that. But I would encourage people to go into the process with the approach of whatever I'm going to encounter here, what am I going to do about this? Yeah, I think we're on the same page there. I don't view myself as Abraham Lincoln and historians are one day going to pour over my journal entries. The process of capturing a moment is what I'm arguing brings the actual ideas, concepts, and trends to the front of your mind. I mean, it's so easy to go on autopilot through your life.

And journaling forces you to stop and consider. It's, as I said many times on the show, I think it is like a great partner with a meditation practice because it's another flavor of the same thing, reflection. You know, reflection is what lets you get better. If my email inbox and the feedback in the Max Barclay Labs is an indication, people have a lot of questions about journaling, and they're trying to put together their own workflows

and trying to figure out why they should journal. Maybe we should just talk real briefly about that. What are we doing these days? Sure. Well, mine is in obsidian and, uh, if you want all the gory details, I've got a, a course I put together on it actually. Um, so it's all based on the concept though, of the daily notes, which I think is kind of a killer feature of obsidian. It's not just obsidian. This is what a lot of these PKM apps are, are built around is this concept of the, the note that you create at the beginning of the day. And then whatever you put on that note has that date anchored to it, which I think is, is pretty great.

So I have, as far as the journaling aspects of that daily note go, I've got the checklist for the habits, the writing, reading, and planning. So basically what I'm trying to reinforce here is I want to write every day because writing is the basis of all of the creative stuff that I do online. I want to read every day. And that is specifically a book, to read every day. And that is specifically a book, sometimes for bookworms, sometimes not. And then planning. So planning my next day, the night before. And I do not do all of those things every single day, nearly as much as I would like to. And that's why it's valuable to have, did I do this? Yes or no. And then the separate note where I can see the trends. Then I've got the daily questions, which I kind of mentioned, did I do my best to, and my areas, you can figure out your own, grow spiritually, love my wife, love my kids,

be a good friend, learn something, create something and exercise. Every one of those has a tag associated with it. And then that tag gets assigned a score and then there's a plug-in that calculates all those scores plots them over the last 90 days or actually since the beginning of the the quarter that we're in so we're recording this on march 28th right before my and my next personal retreat so it's showing everything everything from January 1st up until this point. And I'll continue to just jot those things down. And then on my personal retreat, when I get away for that entire day, I'll review all of this stuff along with some different wins, journal entries, gratitude entries that I've captured in other sections. And this is just a couple of sentences with a tag associated with it. So for example, last weekend we decided to

go up to the family cabin in Door County. It's basically spring here in Wisconsin. It's been like 40s and 50s lately, but we went up there and we got 14 inches of snow. So we got snowed in with all of the kids and their cousins were there. So it was a pretty cool time. And I jotted that down as a journal entry because I want to be able to recall that event when I go back and review those things. But I don't have a ton of those. I usually have one every day. I try to go in and practice that interstitial journaling that you were talking about, where right after the moment you capture, this is what happened, this is how I was feeling about it, that sort of thing. All of the stuff that bugs me though, I typically don't capture those here.

I've got, you know, Nick Milo talks about this map of content idea, and that's kind of like a mental squeeze point where you're just trying to figure out your thoughts about things. Usually it's pretty clear to me what are the triggers for the things that are causing me anxiety and stress. And so I'll create an MOC about those things and I'll just dump it all in there. And that's where I'll kind of freeform journal. It's not necessarily tied to the daily notes, but that's where I sort through what do I actually think about the things that are happening. What about you? My system is more interstitial. I think it's kind of evolved to that

where I do a lot of journaling throughout the day. But I also do it in the morning. And the technology, I've kept with day one. I read Chris Bailey's book. I keep being tempted to try and do paper journals, and I don't. It's just the electric stuff works for me. That's all.

It's like we're in this age of analog where everybody's going back to the analog tools, but I'm old enough I grew up using them and I don't have the romance with them you do. I just remember how hard they were. Yeah, that's fair. I do like, for context, you mentioned Chris's book, and I think you're talking about How to Calm Your Mind. There's a great chapter in that book about analog versus digital,

and Chris has the best delineation between those two things that I have ever heard. Basically, when you want something to be meaningful, make it analog. When you want something to be efficient, make it digital. It's probably not quite that simple. You probably do have to think through about specific use cases, but I think it's a good rule of thumb. And so if you're coming to journaling for the first time, what would you recommend people do? Would you say practice it analog first and you can always make it more efficient by switching to a digital tool, or since we're all using smartphones anyways, that's the place to just start capturing your thoughts?

I would say try a few different things and use whatever you enjoy doing the most. I agree with that 100%. It really does need to click with you. You really have to enjoy the way that you're doing it. There are lots of different methods out there. I've tried lots of them. Sounds like you've tried lots of them too. And they never really stick until you stumble on the one that really fits for you. For me, that's been Obsidian. My journaling habit was off and on until I got to

that point. And then it's clicked and I just keep adding things to the daily notes over time. I keep adding different pieces to the journaling workflow. But if it didn't have that base, if it didn't resonate with me the first time that I came to it, it never would have the momentum that it has now. Yeah, I think for me, it is the ease of use for day one, but it's also the ease of dictation. I really like dictating journal entries, you know, just talking. And I find that when I dictate them, pieces come out that I wouldn't have written. It kind of frees me up a little bit. So I like that. I mean, maybe if I just did it into a tape recorder, it'd be better. I wouldn't have written. It kind of frees me up a little bit. So I like that. I mean,

maybe if I just did it into a tape recorder, it'd be better. I don't know. But day one kind of fits that for me. And I've tried handwriting them. I get what Chris is saying. I don't agree that if it needs to be meaningful, it has to be analog. I think I do very meaningful things with digital tools. But I get the sentiment behind it. But yeah, I just open up day one. I think I do very meaningful things with digital tools, but I get the sentiment behind it. But yeah, I just open up day one, I start talking, and before you know it, I learn things about myself. Sure, and I think Chris would probably agree with that, but the default tendencies of the technology, I think, are for efficiency. And so it's probably a good default mode to a good filtering lens to approach these different activities.

And there are lots of things that are kind of in the overlap of those two circles and you got to figure out what really works for you. You definitely can do meaningful things with digital tools, but I would argue it's probably not the default. Yeah, we did a little bit of a crossover. On MPU, we did a whole episode on digital distraction.

And I'm going to put a link for that in the show notes. But I feel like a lot of the reason people are avoiding digital tools is distraction. And it's a legitimate concern. I think for some people, it's just irresistible. If you're on an iPad, not to go to YouTube. Or if you're on an iPhone, to go to Instagram. Or whatever your distraction poison of choice is. And if you can't resist it, then you should go to analog or do something but i feel

like if if you're okay with putting some tools in place the focus modes in the uh in the apple ecosystem are outstanding and you you really could create a focus mode that would not throw any distractions at you if you wanted to work do do serious work on a digital tool but you know i don't really want to go down the whole rabbit hole of it today but go listen the episode if you're curious but i do think um people have written off digital because of the distractions and i think with some discipline you can do fine with digital tools. Sure. That's fair. And the focus modes, I agree with that. Follow up from a deep focus episode, you challenged me to put together some focus modes, and I have done that. I have one specifically as a Sabbath focus mode, which is great

because there are a few specific people who can get through to me on Sundays now. And it is my pastor, a couple people specifically, leaders in my church who may ask me to do something for a PM service or something. So I need to be able to hear from them. But basically, nobody else. Sundays is church day. And I like the fact that I have a focus mode that can filter out everything else so I can focus on the thing that's most important for that day. Yeah, I just recently had, there's a guy that was going to come to do something in my house and I was working on a field guide and I was in work focus mode and he had called like four times during the course of the day. And at the end of the day, I closed the focus mode and I saw he had called. So I called him and he's like, I've been calling you all day.

I said, yeah, I know. He says, well, how come you didn't call me back? I said, I was busy. He's like, okay. People are baffled, right? Because we live in this world where a lot of folks have come to expect instant gratification when they try to reach out to you and try to not give that to other people for a little while and just see how that goes. Maybe you'll get something important

done. Yeah. And to close the loop on this, I feel like that's one of the big benefits of journaling. However you decide to do it is you disconnect from the urgency, whether it's others imposed or self-imposed, you know, you, you take time to step back, zoom out, and reflect on what actually happened. That's a very valuable practice. This episode of Focus is brought to you by CleanMyMac X. Mac is a crucial tool for work, education, and life, and it's developed by MacPaw,

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for the best designed Mac app in 2021. In the free version of CleanMyMacX, you have a free menu app to check your Mac's health. CleanMyMac X, you have a free menu app to check your Mac's health. CleanMyMac has been around for 14 years and basically invented Mac cleaning. And all Focus listeners can get 5% off, so check out the link in the show notes now or go to macpaw.app slash focus, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. That's macpaw.app slash focus or click the link in the show notes. Our thanks to CleanMyMac X for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Okay, so we got an email from a listener about to-don'ts lists and asking if we use them. And this is all starting with this article from Inc. Magazine

about why everyone should have a to-don'ts list by Jessica Stillman. Yeah, this is an interesting idea. Inc. Magazine about why everyone should have a to-don'ts list by Jessica Stillman. Yeah, this is an interesting idea. Basically, it's a list of the things that you are not going to do, which sounds ridiculous on the surface, but I think it's a cool exercise and it can help you maybe identify some of the boundaries that you want to create to make sure that you have the space to follow through on the intentions that you set. The basic underlying principle of this article is that the to-do list is constantly throwing in our face another thing that we should be doing. is constantly throwing in our face another thing that we should be doing. And you can just follow that list and not think about whether you should really be doing this thing in the first place. And I know I've been in that situation where I look at my to-do list and I see the things that are on there and I resent the fact that I have to do them. Do you keep one of these, Mike?

So do you keep one of these, Mike? I don't, but I thought it would be a fun exercise for each of us to make our to-don't list. Yeah, I kind of have one, but I call them lessons learned. Okay. And I was looking at my lessons learned list. And so every month and quarter, I ask myself, what did I learn in the last quarter? And a lot of times, it's messages that could turn into don'ts. So I went through a bunch of those and pulled a bunch of them. And I think I'm going to put together a to don'ts list.

And I like the idea of it because so often, we are the architects of our own demise. And there are things that we could do to help avoid that yeah well the the things that they recommend on this in this article they they have a whole section on what should you add to your list and so they have a few suggestions and then short descriptions of these i I'll just run through these. Number one, don't allow jealousy into your life. Number two, don't spend time with emotional vampires. I like that term a lot. If someone leaves you feeling drained and unhappy after you spent time with them, for

the love of all that's holy, stop spending time with them is the description there. I just like the term emotional vampires. I mean, I was kind of referencing that earlier when I was talking about this entry in my day one that happened a year ago. And then again today with this person, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to get out of that. Yeah. A long time ago, Joe and I read a book for Bookworm and I totally forget the book that spurred this action item. But one of the things that I had to do was make a list of all the people that I regularly interacted with, and I would rate

them from minus minus to plus plus plus. And that rating represented when I come into contact with this person, do I feel like they are going to take life from me or they are going to add life to me? And so that is emotional vampire. In a nutshell, emotional vampire is a much more succinct way of saying it. But that action item was really eye-opening. This isn't the point of this segment necessarily, but I was able to recognize when this person comes up to me in whatever context, usually it's because they want something from me. And so just recognizing that and knowing what their rating was, I was a little bit more on guard whenever we interacted. I wasn't a jerk to them. I was pleasant, but I wasn't quick to just agree to whatever it is they were going to ask me to do. I kind of went

into it with my, my shields up and it completely changed the interaction. And it definitely reduced the number of things that, uh, number of obligations that I had that ultimately I resented over time that I had said yes to those things. So that's a cool one. And I would challenge you to flip that and say, who are the people for whom I only approach when I need something? And I realized that when I, I think I read that book too. I remember when you guys covered that on the show and I realized there were some people in my life that I only contact when I need something from them. And I decided I'm not going to do that anymore.

So I made a point. I added them to my systems. And I call those people now regularly just to shoot the breeze and see how they're doing, see what I can do to help them. So I don't feel like I show up with my hat in hand every time. Yeah, there was one person specifically that I recognized whenever I came into contact with them because they oversee a lot of different ministries at our church. And just, it's hard to communicate with them for whatever reason. I'll own my responsibility in that too. But the result was I found myself whenever I was at a service, kind of tracking them down and asking them questions. And I could, I could tell there was like this moment of clarity.

They were talking to somebody and I approached them and I could just see like their shoulders slumped and their eyes went down. Here comes that Schmitz guy. Exactly. I was like, I'm not going to do this anymore just because it's convenient for me. Another one recommended by the article is don't listen to negative mental chatter. This has been an ongoing theme on this show. And Mike and I both have talked about it. I personally struggle with it. I think a lot of us do.

There is a person inside of you that seems to hate you and lies at you all the time so realize what that person is a hateful liar you know don't don't listen to them you know and maybe that's one of the reasons why i'm so happy to be a meditator and a journaler because i feel like that voice is much quieter in my head than it ever was earlier in my life. Yeah, that's one I got to get better at. The next one is don't complain. And this I think is kind of the genesis of some of the stuff I was talking about in the journaling segment previously, where I don't want to go back and reread all my journal entries and have them be just me complaining and venting about things. If I need to do that, I will do that. But I think there's limited value in going back and reliving all those negative feelings. I want to remember

the things that were positive because if I look for them, they're there. So it's not saying that my life is perfect or it's not saying my life is awful. It's just choosing to see the positive things that are happening. Yeah. I think that is actually one of the benefits of journaling is when you see yourself falling into that trap. For me, it was like, oh, today I didn't finish what I wanted to do today. I didn't like this went on for years and I realized, oh, I need to rethink what I want to do.

So I don't, you know, I don't get to the end of the day and feel defeated. And it was journaling that really sent that home for me. I think you're right. That does help. Paying attention to those thoughts going through your head can also be an agent of change. Yes, absolutely. A couple more on this list. Don't do what you should rather than what you actually want. And that's kind of where the value of the to don't list for me comes in, because I think it's easy to just default to the things that need to get done. And if I were to ask myself for all of these things that I'm doing, do I really want to do this? Or does somebody think that I should do this? There's a lot more shoulds on that list than I'd care to admit. And I think that comes with age. As you get older, you realize the clock is ticking and you're less willing to go a direction that you don't believe in.

Yeah. They kind of allude to that in the article. They mentioned that the most common regret of the dying as related by a hospice nurse is living your life according to other people's expectations rather than listening to your own heart. I'm not sure I would say it exactly that way, but I get the idea. Yeah. Another one is don't spend all day indoors.

Um, just try to get out, get outside. I agree with that one. Don't schedule meetings or calls with no agenda. Oh man, this one resonated with me. This is actually number one on my personal list. I'll go through that one in a second. And then, uh, don't work more to fix being busy. This is another one that I tend to fall into. I think a lot of people can fall into this. And this is why time tracking is so valuable. I only track my work hours, but I get done with the week and I'll see on there, oh my gosh, I worked 55 hours this week. That's too much. I got to make some adjustments. That's not sustainable.

I think you should consider trying to track all hours. That's the way I do it. And it gives you a ton of insight. I would be willing to accept that as a challenge. I'd have to definitely add some additional categories to my, my time, but I definitely see the benefit of,

of doing that. So it gives you more context. We just did in the max hierarchy labs, the, cause we do a quarter planning call with the members. And I was, I was talking about in the last quarter, I had a bunch of family things happen.

Daisy got a new job and we had some other stuff going on where things happened that made me spend a lot more time with family this first quarter than I intended to. Not that that's bad. I mean, family is number one for me. But when I got to the end of the quarter, and I'm like, well, I didn't quite finish all the stuff I wanted to do. But then I look at the hours for family. I'm like, oh, OK. Well, that makes sense. And it just gives you more context.

Sure. Yeah, I can definitely see the value of that. I don't know, timing might be right for me to try that experiment. And it doesn't have to be granular. Like, you don't have to say, well, I spent this much time playing board games with my kids or I spent that you know don't go crazy you know just yep I spent this many hours on family or if you really want to go crazy you can break it down by person but honestly I have a category called family and I just put it all in there and at the end of the quarter again I know what it was like I know what what took extra time this past quarter I don't need to break it down by person. Sure.

You want to, you want to get when you're time tracking, you want to make it as easy as possible for yourself. The other thing I always tell people is hours, not minutes, right? Don't worry about the minutes. Yeah.

So the way that I do time tracking, I do have, and I will heed your advice. You know, I'm not going to track the different categories with time spent with family. But I do want to track the different modes that I'm in when it comes to the podcasts that we're recording. So I'm not sure if you saw in a recent Timery update, in the widgets, you can track the tags individually. As opposed to, you know, I have a focused recording timer that's running right now,

which has a couple of tags applied. Podcast is going to be one recording is going to be another. And previously those were on a single line in the widget podcast comma recording, and then podcast comma editing was something different. Yeah. Well, I recorded a video video sent it to the developer and asked for the ability to break those apart so now you can see you know the total time for a podcast even though it's one of multiple tags that are applied to multiple different timers and then separate ones for recording and editing what that ends up doing if you enable that mode is that the this week timer may actually be less than the sum of all the individual tags because a lot of those timers have multiple tags but that was a feature that was added because of my request that i'm really grateful i really like

being able to see not just the total time devoted to podcast mode, but the individual aspects of it. And Joe, who's the developer of Timery, is one of the good ones. And that's totally on brand for him to just make that for you. So do you want to hear what's on my to-don't list? Let's just go back and forth, why don't we? All right. Well, the first one that I put on here, because it resonated with me when I read it on the other list, was don't go into a meeting with no agenda.

This has been a pain point with the day job, and I feel like we're making progress here, but this is one of those things that when I read it, I was like, yes, it would be awesome if tomorrow I was able to snap my fingers and I did not need to go into a meeting without an agenda ever again. So I'm going to draw a harder line here and push in this direction and we'll see what happens. I have one. Never commit without a night's sleep. That's a good one. Gets me in trouble. Like people say, oh yeah,

I'll do that. And I wake up the next day. I'm like, uh, what have I done? I don't have time for this. And so I feel like I just need space because there's a part of me that wants to please. And, uh, people ask me to do something and I'll say, yeah, but if I have a rule that says I'm not allowed to commit without a night's sleep, um, then I just have to tell people that. And then I'll see how I feel after I get out of the, what is it, the happy commitment distortion field. Yeah, I should probably adopt that one myself. It's not currently on my list though. The next one on my list is don't stay up past 11 p.m. And context for this is that when I stay up past 11 p.m., I typically do not sleep well and the next day is affected.

Sleep is important to me. I think I've talked about this in the podcast before, but I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 18. talked about this in the podcast before, but I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 18. And one of the things that can trigger a seizure is not getting enough sleep. So I am very careful to make sure that I do everything I can to protect the quantity and the quality of my sleep. And this is an easy one that if I'm not careful, I can just blow right past this because I'm doing something, that if I'm not careful, I can just blow right past this because I'm doing something, right? Probably one of the other things that are on my list, but that's when I want to draw a hard line on. Are you like a gremlin, Mike? Are we like not allowed to feed you after midnight?

Well, you can, uh, no, the, the, in midnight, it, it won't be, it'll be fine like that day, but, uh, the next day, uh, it, it really does affect me that day but the next day uh it it really does affect me and really the big thing is it's not one night of bad sleep that could end up triggering a seizure for me but it's not something that you can like feel that it's coming yeah and i want to have a normal life i want to be able to drive all those sorts of of things. So in order to do that, I just need to be careful. One, I, this one was inspired by the article and it's a new one for me. Don't consume any news via video. And so I started this a week and a half ago. And so now if I see news, if I'm scrolling through YouTube or flipping the channels. I just turn it off. I don't,

I consume news through a website now, not through video. And it's been really good. Nice. Next one for me, don't hang out with people who only talk about themselves. This kind of gets back to that action item I had for bookworm where I rated the,

the quality of the interactions. in my head for Bookworm where I rated the quality of the interactions. But I did notice that one of the common threads here is a lot of people talking about the things that they were going to do. And I find myself kind of rolling my eyes like, yeah, sure, you can do that, but you won't do that. And it's just one of those things that really bugs me, if I go into a conversation with somebody, first time I met them, and all they're doing is they're talking about the things that they've done and their accomplishments, and they're not asking questions and getting to know the person that they are communicating to. That's a pretty good indicator for what the rest of the relationship is going to be like, in my opinion. I try not to associate too much with those types of people. Yeah. I kind of find it fascinating, that personality trait where people need to tell you how important they are.

And I really think that what it exposes is an insecurity. In general, that's been my experience, people who act like that, that they're very insecure and they really want to impress you. I almost get into an observation mode when I meet someone who does that. And then when they get to the point where they ask me about what I do, I always lie. I don't know, I just don't feel like getting into the game i under you know like i'll like i remember um i remember once i was at a disneyland event it was like um for employees sometimes they have

special events and this was during my wife's first act for Disney. So this was like down at 25 years ago or something. And we're in line and this lady is behind me and with her husband and she's like, ah, my husband works for corporate and he does this and he's so important and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? And I was thinking, first of all, I don't care. And second of all, why are you telling me all this? And then she's like, well, what do you do for the company? And I was just there as a spouse, so I don't do anything for the company. But I said, I am the vice president of churro acquisition. That's awesome.

It just came out of me. It was great. And then she's like, what? What do you mean? I said, well, I'm in charge of all the churros at Disneyland and Florida. And she's like, that's a job? And I'm like, yeah. She's like, well, what do you do?

I'm like, oh, we're working on strawberry. I really am pushing for chocolate, but we haven't got corporate to sign off on it yet. I was just kind of making stuff up. And eventually her husband shows up, and she's like, Mike, you've got to meet this guy. That's amazing. But yeah, I know it's kind of silly. Uh, you know, that was a, an excuse for me to tell a funny story, but I, um, I have a similar one where, um, and I haven't really verbalized this into my list yet, but I was thinking about it earlier when we were talking about, you know, turning it on yourself. Are you someone who goes to people and just ask

for a question? I'd like to make one that says something along the lines. I don't ask for anything until I've talked to a person for five minutes. Like, can I make it where any person I talked to isn't going to start with an ask? Yeah, that's a good one. That may annoy people though, too. Like it's like, Oh, this guy, he talks to me and then he slides it in at the end. You know, I, I don't know that there's a way around it. I'm not sure. I do like that one though. Another one I have, uh, don't start the day without journaling. I guess this is turning into a quasi journaling episode, but, uh, that is a very, if I, if I fall down on journaling, it happens in the morning when I say, oh, but this is just one blog post. I could just get that up really quickly or just, just one phone call, or

it's just one, whatever. Or I could just go on OmniFocus and set, set some things up really quickly. No, I just need to journal first. And that gets me off on the right foot. And when I don't, when I say I'm going to do it in 10 minutes, quite often I don't. Nice. Uh, I've got a couple related to eating. So number one, don't eat too much. Uh, there was an idea from the Ikigai book that you recommended Harahachi Boo, where you eat to 80%. And, uh, I started doing that and immediately lost five pounds. So I think that's a great approach. I intend to keep doing that, but this is the to don't list. So it's got to be things that you're not going to do. And that is something that I really enjoy food, especially good food. So if I'm out to eat and food's really good,

I'll just keep eating it without thinking about it too much. And I want to make sure that I don't do that. Also related to that, don't eat with my phone. And this is primarily when other people are there, but I find that I tend to do pretty good in this area for a while. And then when I, like today, we're recording this on a Tuesday, my family is out of the house, so I'm eating alone and I'll look at my phone while I'm eating. And then that behavior will carry over into meals that we eat together. And I don't like that. So I just want to draw the line, don't eat with my phone. Related to that, when you eat with your phone, you're not actually eating.

You're not paying attention to what you're eating. You're not enjoying the flavors. It's a mindfulness practice as well. Absolutely. I mean, to turn it on its head, this is not a to-don't list, but when you eat, eat. Taste your food. Digest it. Enjoy the experience. There are people in the world, as our moms always said to us, right?

Yep. Got anything else on your list? As we were talking here, because the journaling one I have been using, but maybe I need to make one that says I don't finish the day without shutting down. And I still continue to go up and down on that. Like some days, I just don't get there. And I always pay every time. It's like you would think that if every time you did something, you got slapped in the face, at some point you would stop doing it, right? But with me, that's me shutting down.

That is a really good one. I may steal that one. A couple others I've got. This is kind of clumsily worded, but makes sense in my brain. Don't spend time where you're not appreciated. So my pastor has this saying, go where you're celebrated, not just tolerated. And I think there are specific situations I can picture in my head where it's like, oh, Mike's here and he's just, I don't know. It's not that I have to be the center of attention. I'm very much an introvert.

I actually don't like that at all. But you can tell when people are authentically glad that you're there and they want to spend time with you to be part of the group and where it really doesn't make a difference. I want to be the the people where it actually makes a difference yeah i want to not get sucked into the endless feeds so that's how i phrased it don't get sucked into the endless feeds whether that is social media email recognizing slack is is that for me with the the day job as. And then the last one, don't play too many video games. That one's kind of purposely vague because I tend to go in these spurts where I just work, work, work, work, work, and then hit a wall. I just need to unwind and

I'll play video games and I'll play a lot of video games. Oh, really? Yeah. so it's feast or famine with this one and uh i want to enjoy them in moderation yeah well do you play them with your kids uh sometimes the ones that i tend to get into are not really multiplayer type games uh civilization six VI is the one that sucks me in the most. One more turn. Exactly. And it's on the iPad now, so that's terrible. Actually, it's awesome. It's a great experience, but it's dangerous for me.

I recently got a new video game because I had played the Jedi Fallen Order like four or five times. You know? And I got the new harry potter one and i realized immediately that that is dangerous for me so yeah going very slow although with kids i will say that uh a video game experience particularly i found with my with my nephews was a really good way to connect with them.

Like when you get to that awkward age where you don't really want to talk to adults about what you're thinking about, there's something very disarming about playing a video game with them. And I think part of it's that they don't make eye contact with you. Sure.

And I'm bad at them because I don't play them very often. So they were just destroying me in the game. I think maybe that gave them a sense of power. I don't know, but they would tell me about whatever was on their mind when I played a video game with them. This episode of focus is brought to you by Indeed. The thing about running your own business is that every single hire counts, and no hiring partner understands that better than Indeed. Indeed is a hiring platform where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Don't spend hours on multiple job sites

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Lie down flat on your back with your hands on your stomach. Don't move. You might fall asleep. You might not. You will wake up in 20 minutes. If you didn't get the sleep, you will feel rested. You agree? Yeah. I mean, you don't need to convince me. I think you're the person with the nap anxiety. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Uh, although I have come around on napping, it's still, it's still difficult to do during the week for me, but I think it's probably been several months now where I have taken a nap every Sunday afternoon. I call it my Sabbath nap. I'm not sure that counts, man. Just one day a week. afternoon. I call it my Sabbath nap. I'm not sure that counts, man. Just one day a week. Well, yeah, it's hard for me currently to disconnect from everything that is going on, especially in the day job. I don't know. I tend to get wired up by the things that need to get done

during the day. I'm not saying it's always going to be that way. And I think I probably should be looking for opportunities throughout the day to squeeze in a quick 20 minutes here and there. You know, I love this piece of feedback from Anne-Marie. This is very, it feels like this was written for me. It's very detailed. It's very prescriptive. Instructions.

All you have to do, instructions, exactly. High fact finder i know exactly what to do here and it doesn't matter if i fall asleep like i i can i can try this i can get on board with this actually that that advice that you don't need to fall asleep is really freeing for people who are anxious about naps like i don't want to invest the time and not get a nap well it doesn't matter you get a benefit even if you don't fall asleep and the crazy thing is once you accept that you probably fall asleep would it help mike if we said okay you need to do all this and at the end you need to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on how good the nap was would that help maybe yeah i don't know

the uh the uh the sabbath nap would nap would be some pretty consistent tens. This is pretty great. So we have this routine when we get back from church on Sunday morning where my wife a long time ago introduced me to these really old murder mystery movies called the Thin Man series. Are you familiar with these? No, I'm not. movies called the thin man series are you familiar with these no it's a black and white movie it's actually six different thin man movies um and they all star william powell and myrna loy they're shot in like the the 1920s 1930s and uh they are kind of ridiculous um but they are movies that we have watched over and over and over and over and over again. They just kind of never get old for us. So Sunday afternoons, typically we will put on a thin man and I'll make some coffee. When we come back, I'll have a cup and I'll fall asleep. And usually about 20, 30 minutes later, I wake up and feel completely rested and it feels great. And I don't always drink the coffee beforehand.

If I don't drink the coffee beforehand, it's definitely a couple of hours. Probably means I need to get a little bit more sleep. I don't know. But I do track that stuff pretty carefully, like I mentioned in the previous segment. But this is one of the things that I really look forward to on Sunday afternoons now. Yeah, I've been napping for decades. And I did it when I had a job where I went in every day.

I would just go down to the parking structure and I'd just move the car to a quiet place and put the seat down and I just moved the car to a quiet place and, and, um, you know, put the seat down and take a nap. Eventually I got smart and had them tent my windows. So it wasn't totally obvious to people walking by. I was asleep in there. Um, but my system, uh, like Anne Marie, I quickly realized I got rest whether or not I slept and, but also found that I was very easy. I find it very easy to take a quick nap. And I set a timer on my watch for 35 minutes when I do it because it takes me about five minutes of all sleep and it gives me 30 minutes of sleep. You definitely don't want to

nap for two hours. You don't want to get into that REM cycle and then that messes you up for the rest of the day. But just a short nap, I find very powerful. Now, I don't do it every day. I've never done it every day, but I do it on an as-needed basis. I don't drink coffee, so I don't really have the caffeine buzz to help me get through a day.

And often in the 1 to 2 p.m. range, I'll feel tired. And if I just take 35 minutes to do a nap, the rest of the day, I will get way more done than if I just tried to power through. Sure. It's easier for me now because I work at home so I can just go in the other room and lay on the couch. But I don't like the nap in the same room I work. I don't know. Maybe that's just weird. But and I have a dog, so that makes it even easier because she always wants to take a nap if i go in the other room and put a blanket over me she is like immediately at my feet and asleep and uh that kind of makes it easier right um so 35 minutes for me is the magic number and

it does it's great i mean if you're out there and you're afraid to nap but winston churchill did it look up online there's a million people that took naps that got a lot done there's like the stigma with naps like you're lazy if you take a nap but actually you get more done doggo snuggles definitely make a a nap better i think mike if we had another challenge for you because i'm giving you so many today doing it during a work day you would would find is just as refreshing. Yeah. That's kind of scary. Um, but yeah, you're right. I will try to give this a shot. I never told anybody at my work that I did that, you know, I would like, you know, just pack like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or whatever. And that would be my lunch. I'd eat quickly and then go take a nap

for 35 minutes. So how often do you actually, you mentioned as needed, is this like a couple times a week then? Um, well the weekend now, not kind of on a work week of the five days of work week, probably three, maybe four. Okay. Sometimes two, but let's say three is the average. On the weekends, all bets are off, man. There may be some naps on the weekend. Sure. I also take them like we often on the weekend, Daisy and I will go to Disneyland together.

That's like our weekend trip. And we usually go in the afternoon, and I always take a nap before we go. So I'm refreshed before we get in the car and go up there and walk around a lot. That makes sense. I remember my, my dad who owned his own business, he had, uh, in not in his office, but to your point where didn't like taking the nap in the same room, he had an old daybed that he had kept from his parents. And for a while, the family business was in this old farmhouse and his was the only office upstairs.

And he would go in the other room and lay down on that daybed. And sometimes you didn't hear from him for a couple of hours. That's too long. Yeah, I find occasionally, like I have done that where I take a nap longer than 30 minutes and there's a point where you kind of go into full sleep mode and then it's hard to get up and work. But I really think the trick,

like Anne-Marie recommends 20 minutes. For me, 30. But maybe I only actually sleep 20 minutes. I me, 30. But maybe I'll only actually sleep 20 minutes. I don't know. And the other thing I find is odd, having done this for years, I just wake up anyway. I don't need the alarm to go off, but I just do it on my Apple Watch. You know, 35-minute countdown, and then I'm up and off to the races.

I really feel refreshed when I do it. And like I said, you don't have to do it. And, uh, and like I said, you don't have to do it every day, but you should try it if you're at home listening and you, uh, and you do get the afternoon doldrums, you'd be surprised. Have you ever used one of those nap pods? No, I haven't. I'm kind of curious, you know, we, we had Dave Hamilton on, remember, that went into one of those... Float tanks, yeah. Yeah, float tanks. To me, the couch works. Yeah, that's fair.

I have yet to try one of those float tanks, but that's an interesting idea to me as well. I don't know how similar that is to these power naps. I know Dave mentioned that you're just kind of completely relaxed while you're in there. And if it really is not that important that you fall asleep, maybe that's a substitute for people who are looking for a place to get away and do this. Because kind of what I was thinking about was the day job, the office downtown, right? The town that I'm in isn't huge, but there's float tanks a couple of blocks from there.

So even though there's not a place that I would hunker down and take a nap at the office, I could probably get away for an hour and try a float tank. Yeah. Well, for me, the car was fine. And especially like if you just got a section of the structure that's not too crowded, you just go fall asleep and it's not a long nap, right? So you're going to be okay. How are you doing on sleep anyway? You said earlier, you think you're getting enough or you're not getting enough? earlier? You think you're getting enough or you're not getting enough? Well, I think I am getting enough because I track it pretty consistently. For the most part, I am in bed by 10 p.m. every night

and my alarm goes off at 7 a.m. So that's nine hours if I mouth the minute that my head hits the pillow, which frequently I am and I I'm generally up before, uh, before my alarm goes off. We have hue lights in our bedroom and there's an automation where you can set it to simulate a sunrise. So we've been, been doing that and helps me wake up refreshed. But yeah, I have, I hit my goal, you know, to get the little Apple Watch reminders, to hit your goal so many times out of 14 the last two weeks. Frequently, that is 14 out of 14 for me. Yeah. That was one of the big benefits of stopping being a lawyer for me is I am regularly getting eight hours of sleep.

And I wasn't for years before that. But it turns out if you have just one job, you can actually get eight hours of sleep. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by ZocDoc. Go to ZocDoc.com slash focus and find the right doctor right now. It really stinks when you go to a doctor's appointment expecting to be the center of attention

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And our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, so we've cranked through a bunch of feedback. I thought it might be kind of fun to report back on some shiny new objects, if you've got them. And mine are actually not tech-related, and mine are actually not tech-related, but I definitely think they are in line with one of the things we talked about earlier was the playing games together.

Well, we don't play a lot of video games together as a family, but we do play a lot of games. Yeah. And so there are two, actually, that I want to share with you. One you will probably appreciate as a woodworker, and that is this cribbage board made by the House of Cribbage that is available on Amazon. It's got three different tracks tracks and it's basically handmade that center row is

they call it bloodwood and it's just really well made and we got into cribbage when my kids came back from a church camp where they had played a lot of cribbage and this has kind of been our favorite family game recently we play this you know one-on-one, my, my son, Toby and I have played hundreds of games at, at this point, but Joshua is getting into it as well. And Rachel had learned how to play cribbage a long time ago and kind of refreshed it. So we've been playing teams and, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's been a lot of fun. I don't know the rules of cribbage. I've never played that game. Really?

Well, there's your challenge. Play some cribbage. There's an app that Toby came across, which actually, that's one of the better ways to learn some of these games that you don't know how to play. It was featured by Apple several years ago, and it hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works perfectly fine.

It's called Cribbage with Grandpas. And basically, there are digital grandpas, and they have different personalities. And you can design your own grandpa, and then they play cribbage with you. So it's a virtual cribbage game, but each game is different based on the grandpa that you choose to play with. Nice. Nice. How's your game board working at your game board table? The board game table. Yeah, it's great. It's starting to show small signs of wear, but we use it all the time. So I'm not really discouraged by that. We've had to apply some lacquer. I don't know. I'm not a woodworker at all. My wife is actually the handy one,

but we've had to refinish it basically. And it looks brand new, but we really, really enjoy it. And I still would recommend that as a table for people who are just getting into it or they're not sure that, you know, board game table is really going to be something that they use a ton because it does have the leaves that you can put over the top and use as a dining room table. That's primarily what ours is set up as most of the time, but very easy to take those off. And we still play games probably not every night, but a couple nights a week, there's a board game going on. Cribbage tends to happen on top of the table. We don't take the leaves off for that because it's real easy.

Everything is self-contained in that cribbage board, which, like I said, is just really well made. And then there's a deck of cards that we got to go with it. So that cribbage board actually doesn't come with a deck of cards. And I found this deck of cards by a company called AreaWare. They are very minimal cards. And what I like about these is they have this coating on them, so they're almost plasticky.

They're very flexible. They, uh, make an incredible noise when you shuffle them and, uh, they're just really, uh, well-designed, I think. Uh, I mean, the, the design's not going to be for everybody. Uh, the designs are pretty small. So, you know, if you are used to the standard cards with the, the, the big icons for the clubs and the hearts and the diamonds and things like that, these are very small and shapes in the upper and lower corners, but we really enjoy using these. I have two picks. The first one, since you picked a game, I'm going to pick one too. When my kids were younger, we obsessively played a game called Mastermind. And this is like

a classic old game. It's like a code-breaking game. And it is a very small footprint. You don't need a special table. You can play it on the couch but uh i just saw it on the shelf the other day it hasn't been open in years because the kids you know kind of outgrew me but that was a great game to play with the kids that is a great game we've we've gotten into that one as well it's classic but my actual new and shiny is it's going to be an oddball pick but i love my sterlite 18 quart clear plastic stackable storage containers so since we last like did this um you know the kids have grown up uh they may some of them may be coming back you know how it is with careers and grad school and all that stuff but but i've really daisy and i have been paring down and me more than her. I am definitely one of the people that doesn't like

to keep a lot of stuff. And now that I have the studio space, I've decided I got some of these Sterilite containers and all of my stuff is going to fit in the containers period, right? It's a, containers, period, right? It's almost like a sickness with me. I just can't keep stuff. And so I've been giving away stuff. I've sold some stuff on eBay. But these containers are so great for me because it's like, okay, my stuff needs to fit in these containers. And it's like, there's a part of me that just loves that, that now I have a constraint to work against. And so the last several months, I've been going through cleaning out, getting rid of stuff, and then going back and starting over again.

And I'm slowly getting to that point where everything's going to fit in these containers. And it just makes me so happy inside. I don't know what to say man that's just me the professional organizer inside of you is is happy with these yeah i don't know what it is but i just i have too much stuff you know like this morning i think i made the decision really to just cut the cord with these clicky keyboards and just like call it a day say it ain't so i may be sending you one okay then i may be sending you more than just a keyboard i've got some keycap sets too i i feel

like i just it's just too much man just too much that's fair i realize it's not not for everybody and how could um just some little pieces of plastic make me so happy? Because I like to get rid of stuff. That's why. Nice. Actually, you're coming to visit me soon. You'll see it. You'll see the sterolite, wall of sterolite.

Awesome. So that's all inside of Endor Studios? Yep. Do you have any sort of rack? I do. How do you have them organized within Endor Studios? I assume you have a bunch of them. Are they just piled in the corner?

I'm guessing not, given what you just shared. No, they're stacked on top of each other. That's an impressive amount of stuff you got on a couple of racks there. Yeah, I know. Well, that's all my stuff. Sure. Not counting woodworking tools and underwear and things like that, but that's basically my stuff.

Awesome. Anyway, so that's what's new and shiny for me is storage and organization. You have to pull my label maker out of my cold, dead hands. All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Focus Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. You can find the forum over at talk.macpowerusers.com. There's a special room there just for the Focus Podcast.

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