Focused - 207: What Would Sparky Say?

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz. I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about you?

I'm looking forward to this show. We haven't done a feedback show in a while on the Focus podcast, but we've had a lot of feedback coming in. I've been noting the emails and the forum posts and we've assembled them. We've got lots of feedback coming in. I've been noting the emails and the forum posts and we've assembled them. We've got lots of feedback today, so I think we should just get started. Let's do it.

All right, so the first one was we did a show on Cal Newport's latest book, Slow Productivity, which brought in a bunch of questions and comments. Mark wrote in that the biggest takeaway from slow productivity is scheduling time for new projects. So what the technique he talked about was before you take on a new project, you block schedule it before you say yes.

And the idea was to make it harder to say yes, put up a little bit of a barrier, look like, take a look at how this is gonna look on your calendar before you say yes. This was a technique I'd never used before, reading the book, and I found it useful, and I've actually implemented that a few times now. I had to make a couple big decisions about some trips,

and I put them in the calendar to see how they look. I kind of tried them on before I committed or decided to not commit in a few cases. I like it in theory. I don't think I am gonna practice this because the place that I would put that would be my focused New Year calendar. And I use the dry erase markers.

And if I was putting on everything that I was thinking about doing before actually doing it, I'd be erasing a lot. And I have so much on there that it would just get really messy. Okay. But I think I've kind of dialed in the sweet spot for me. So maybe it was just trial and error. I think this is a good tactic and a good strategy,

especially if you have trouble saying no to things any sort of any sort of justification you can give yourself to say no and I think is a good thing and Putting it on your calendar and seeing how you know There's actually a whole lot going on here and I can't squeeze this in you know, I see the benefit of that. Yeah. Yeah I see the benefit of that. Yeah, yeah. Jason wrote in, he said, I read this low productivity book after you covered it. Kyle wrote about making other people work more,

but you didn't talk about that. Thoughts? You know, it's funny, he did have a section in there where he talked about one solution is to get more help. And, you know, I never really thought about this as a delegation book, but that's certainly one of the tactics. I mean, there were a lot of tactics in this book in all fairness.

But I thought that was a good question and it gave us an opportunity to kind of check in on how we're doing with delegation. I know that was a challenge for you in one of the recent shows, Mike. What's, uh, what's up with delegation? Are you getting better at it? You getting some help? I am getting some help.

Uh, one of the limiting beliefs I think with delegation, uh, for me has been. I'm a solopreneur. I want some help, so I need to find someone full-time and it's gonna be this huge investment. And I would still like to get to that point, but just because I'm not at the place where I can hire a full-time assistant right now, it doesn't mean that I can't find some help

in a couple of areas. So I actually had somebody in my community who raised their hand and said, I'd love to help out with some of the stuff. Do you have some smaller things that I could do? And so we landed on a couple of things that they're helping me out with. And it's been a big help. It's a small investment. Cause I was upfront at the beginning,

like I don't have a lot of money to throw at this problem, but if you could do this and this, you know, that would be really really helpful so that is what they've done. I've also you know I've mentioned before that my son edits my other two podcasts the intentional family and bookworm and he has expressed interest in helping me with the YouTube stuff. So one of the things that I do when I record a YouTube video, I put it in ScreenFlow and I make like a first cut. I just basically tighten everything up before I add in all the screencasts and do all like the actual post-production. So he's been doing that for the last couple of YouTube videos and that has been a big help. So I'm making progress here. I think I

probably still have a lot more to go. But the other thing I wanted to just kind of double click on with this feedback, the way this is worded, making people work more. I think delegation is one aspect of that, but I think another aspect of this is not just assuming that you should be the one doing the task when someone asks you to do it. And he didn't really get super deep into this in the book, but I definitely saw some of these themes where if you're always the easy button and people need something and they ask you and they know that you're going to do it, then they're just going to keep asking you to do those things.

And as a recovering people pleaser, that was the thing that kind of stood out to me from this comment as it pertains to the book is try not to do that anymore. If you are the right person to jump in and help with something, then that's fine. But if someone can figure this out on their own and it's not a deal breaker and they're just asking you because you're convenient, then it's okay to maybe ignore that request for a little while and see if it goes away. I remember back when I was a lawyer, a younger lawyer, we had one year where we set up an entirely new computer network

and we put the firm on the www web. I mean, this is back in the day, right? And I spearheaded that for the firm, both of those things, choosing the hardware, basically acted as an IT manager and as a webmaster for the firm, both of those things, choosing the hardware, basically acted as an IT manager and as a webmaster for the year, because nobody had a clue, and they were too cheap to hire anybody. And then at the end of the year, they're like,

oh yeah, your hours are down, so we're not gonna give you a bonus this year. And I was like, wait a second. I did all this free work for you guys. And then they never really got on board with me. So it's like, that's when I learned the lesson of, which is because I can do something for you, I might not have to, it might not be a good idea for my own benefit. Law firms are weird, Mike.

They're very weird places. Well, there's a larger point in what you just shared, which I think is kind of tangential to slow productivity. So let's unpack that a second, which is you need to understand what it is that you do that's valuable, whether that's for the organization or if you're a solopreneur like I am, what are the things that really,

to borrow your term, move the needle? And then do those things, and then try not to do the other things. That doesn't mean you're not doing the other things that you're drawing these hard lines and I'm never going to do this thing again. You know maybe if you really hate doing something that's a clue that you should try to find a way not to have to do this but sometimes you got to do the things that you don't want to do but always have in the back of your mind what are the things that really are going to make a difference and have an impact?

And just try to optimize for that stuff. Yeah. My story was, that was my goal of first quarter of 2024. Each quarter I picked one big admin problem to solve. And the biggest of big problems for me was getting help because for the longest time I did all customer service for all the field guides I sell and the Max Marquis labs and if people need a password reset

or any kind of little problem I took care of it. But I'm also the content creator. I'm the guy making and deciding on and building the videos and it just was too much. So I hired somebody. And I had already got help from my friend, JF. He was helping me with the edits, and he expressed interest in doing customer support,

and we decided to give it a trial, and it worked out really great. And I can tell you, we just did the OmniFocus 4 field guide, and it was, for me, the easiest launch of any field guide ever because I wasn't the one dealing with the password resets and all the, you know, anytime you release a new product, people find issues with their accounts and they need help. And I didn't do any of that.

JF did it all and it just all happened in the background. We've set up the email in a way that I don't even see those emails now. They just go straight to him. And it was great. And I do feel like now I'm thinking, I've got this itch in the back of my brain, like is there something else I can hand off?

I think I've got a JF at capacity now, but like would it make sense to bring on a virtual assistant or something? And this is something I've been a JF at capacity now, but like, would it make sense to bring on a virtual assistant or something? And this is something I've been kind of weighing in the back of my mind. I'm actually heading out to vacation after we record the show today.

And I think I'm gonna think about that on the trip, but honestly, the answer is probably no. Cause I think most everything I'm doing now is kind of creative decisions or creative work. And I want to be the one doing that stuff. But it's at least, you know, a question on my mind. Well, I think there's always opportunities to delegate more. You mentioned the things that you're doing are the things that you want to be doing, because they're related to maybe content that you're creating. But there are probably ways to get even more pointed about this is the part of creating this thing that I really enjoy. And so I understand you've separated essentially the creative process from the

distribution process, getting it posted to the blog or to the community. But I think there are ways to get even more granular with this. I'm not suggesting you do this, but as an example, Ali Abdaal has 20 people working on his team. And I got to see him speak at the Craft and Commerce Conference this week. And he's a very genuine guy.

I really am impressed with him. But I know that he doesn't do all of the research and all of the writing for his video scripts. That doesn't mean that when he sits down to talk to the camera that it's fake and these aren't things that he actually believes. But he doesn't have to be the one that has to go and collect all that stuff before he turns on the camera and records. He recognizes that that's the most valuable aspect of the production process. The thing that, you know, if he's viewing this as the team, and I don't know what he would call his team, Ali Abdaal Enterprises. This is the thing that he brings a value to the team.

And there are other people who maybe do the research a little bit better than he does. And it's, it's easy for those types of things to be like, well, I'm the best at this for me because I care the most. And that may be true at the beginning, but I think if you look for opportunities to communicate that stuff for other people to do it in the way that you would actually do it, they are there. We just tend not to see those a lot of times.

Yeah, and I definitely have a limiting belief about spending money. I think this definitely is a carryover for my depression parents, but I wanna be doing this in 10 years. And there's at least a part of me that believes doing this in 10 years means not wasting money in the process, right?

Don't spend a bunch of money on things that aren't going to help me make this continue. Well, you could make the argument that spending money on more help is what's going to allow me to continue to do this for 10 years. I mean, I know the flip side make the argument that spending money on more help is what's going to allow me to continue to do this for two to 10 years. I mean, I know the flip side of the argument on an intellectual level,

but I don't feel that in my heart at this point. I am spending quite a bit of money to get help, but I'm not sure I wanna spend more just yet. And so there's issues there for me that I need to work through. But also I thought if I had a virtual assistant, someone said, boom, magic wand, you got 20 hours a week of virtual assistants. I'm not sure what I would give them. Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. the stuff that was bugging me before with all the customer support email. People do write me with technical questions sometimes

and I try to respond to those, but I can't hire somebody to do that for me because they don't have the knowledge I do and the opinions I do. And people write me for my opinion and knowledge. So, I don't know. I feel like I've made a lot of progress on this recently, but there's always, I guess as you can hear

from my own questions, room to get a little better at it. Well, I'm gonna push you a little bit there because I feel like that is a little bit of a limiting belief. You're right that people write to you because they wanna know what Sparky says, but could you not, if you invested enough with somebody, get them to answer the question, how would Sparky answer this or what would Sparky say? I feel like you're,

you're not hiring me to do this, but I know you well enough where, if someone were to ask me those questions, I might be able to answer some of them, not all of them, but, uh, yeah, I would just encourage you to think about that a little bit. Because I don't think it's something that you're in the position to do anything about right now. But I think it could open up some doors for you maybe in the future.

Yeah, maybe. But I also feel like they're writing me to hear what I say, not what someone I paid to say. That's fair, that's fair. Yeah. But yeah, so there's thoughts like that. And we're both on the journey Well one thing that we're doing

You know having somebody now work harder for me and more often is We've got I mean this guy is one of my best friends So that is makes it very easy and we're completely honest with each other if there's a problem it just it's a very good relationship, but we don't do a lot of writing back and forth. And this is something I picked up from the law practices. I just like to have set times, and we get on a phone call once a week, sometimes twice,

and we just work through lists together. And I find that to be way more beneficial when having somebody help you. That's been something that we've kind of implemented over the last two or three months, and it's really working well. Yeah, that was the other thing I wanted to hit on from this was kind of the meetings and the office hours

that he advocates for. I think that really is important if you're gonna be working with people and collaborating specifically on projects. So Cal talks about these regular docket clearing meetings where you crank through the issues. Sounds like that's what you're doing there. And then he also mentions office hours

to help reduce meetings. Having worked at an agency, I can tell you that meetings are like rabbits and they will multiply. So you really have to work to create constraints around these. And I thought, out of everything in the book, in terms of actionable information, do these specific things. Because it is very conceptual and you have to figure out for yourself how you're going to Do fewer things and work at a natural pace, etc

But if anyone has meetings, there's some real great advice here on how to wrangle those I feel But eliminating them is not the answer Which I think is probably how most people think about it If you are feeling stressed out because you're going from meeting to meeting to meeting, the natural reaction is, I hate all these meetings. I wish I didn't have to do these. But really the question to be answered, I think, is how do we make these meetings more effective? Because if you can figure out a meeting structure that allows you to resolve all of those issues and then move on and actually do the work, a meeting is the best thing for your team or your organization. It's when you have a list of issues, there's 50 things on

the list, you've got an hour and a half for the meeting and you end up just discussing two or three of them and then you come back next week, there's 10 more issues added to the list so it keeps getting longer. That you got to ask yourself, you know, what are we doing here that's not working? Why do we have to have all of this discussion about these things? Who's really the person to make the right decision and implement this and the solution, take action on it? There's got to be more action than there is discussion with a lot of this stuff. Not all of these things necessarily, but that's the thing I see people fall into. The talking about the issues becomes a placebo for actually taking action on them. And then when you've got

new information, then oh, well, this changes everything, we better have this discussion again. No, you already made the decision. Just move forward, there'll be more decisions that you can make and ultimately, you can course correct over time. One single decision for the most part

is not going to make or break your future as an organization. But what will cause you to quickly become irrelevant is if you move very, very slowly because you have all this overhead and you can't actually do anything, you just talk about it. Yeah. Back when I was a lawyer, this came up in the OmniFocus for webinar series because I talked about the relationship of block scheduling to task lists and somebody said, well, I don't understand. I work in a fancy office with a lot of people and the block scheduling isn't going to work because people need to get ahold of me. And I explained that when I was in the firm, um, I had,

everybody knew an open door policy every day at 4 PM. And I literally walked over and opened my door at 4 o'clock and just left it open. And if people wanted to talk to me about something we were working on together or had questions, they could come in then. But they also knew that from, you know, 7 to 4, the door was closed and that they couldn't bother me. And it was a little quirky at first. People thought I was a bit of a snoot, right, you know, for doing that, but then they got used to me and they just understood, I'll put on my list,

I'll go see David for and get answers then. Secretary and I had a 3.30 standing meeting where she came in and it was the same thing. She accumulated all the questions through the day. I always said the only reason you come in my office any time before 3.30 or four is because something's on fire. And it needs to be on fire.

And I would call people on it. They'd come in and say, is this really on fire? No, it's actually not. Okay, come back later. And it's just people got used to it. I think there's ways to manage this stuff. Yep, but it does require intention. If you just give into the defaults,

everything appears more important than it really is because of that urgency that's attached to it. And just because something is urgent to somebody else doesn't even mean that it's urgent for you. So you could end up, if you're a people pleaser like me, doing all these things for people that are neither important nor urgent really, but they come disguised as,

hey, this is both important and urgent and you should drop everything and do this right now. Yeah, another thing I did was I returned calls at two. So you can see my day. It was really like, I was doing deep work before deep work was written, but I was trying to get the hard work done in the morning, early afternoon,

and my secretary was under orders that if anybody called me before two, just to take a message and say I'm not there. And it didn't matter if it was a client or a judge or whatever, and then I returned calls at two. But I hated being in the middle of something and have somebody on an unrelated case call me to want to talk about it. You talk about that context shift is expensive. Yeah.

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I enjoyed the rituals and locations discussion in the book. Your thoughts, Linda, you know that I was going to grab onto this like a piece of red meat, right? I love rituals and locations. I spent all this money to build the studio because I wanted a space where I could go through the ritual of the creative act that I do. I have, yeah, I really am into it. I have locations in my, um, Apple vision pro.

I have locations that I get on my bike and go to. I have locations at Disneyland, on my bike and go to. I have locations at Disneyland. A context shifting, using locations and rituals to do that. I feel like that is a hack that not enough people take advantage of. I wanna ask you, what is your favorite location, specifically? So like, I know you like to go to Batu and work, but yeah, where is the single place that you look forward to getting to? And when you get there,

you're like, ah, now it's time. I'm going to answer to the, uh, the first is, is Batu because it's such a privilege, you know, and I mean that in the privilege sense of the term, that I can go sit underneath the Millennium Falcon and do work. I mean, and my brain is wired such that even though there are a bunch of tourists around me doing, having fun, doing their thing, I just kind of get lost in it.

They have the, you know, if you go to Disneyland's Batuu, their Star Wars section, one of the things that's interesting about it is they don't play a soundtrack there. In most of Disneyland, there's music playing. But in Batuu, they made the conscious choice. They wanted the guests to feel like they're in a foreign land on a different planet.

So they don't sell balloons and popcorn and like everything there is kind of meant to be on this foreign planet. Everything's written in different languages and one of the parts of that is the soundscape. So you hear the noise of a community, you know, and they're very specific about it. They've got these massive speakers

on the roofs of buildings so they can make it sound like a ship is flying over occasionally. It's trippy if you've ever been there. I mean, you've been there with me, so you know. But there is like a soundscape to it, and I find that very conducive to me stopping to get work done.

I wrote so much of the Productivity Field Guidebook sitting under the X-Wing, I'm sorry, under the Maloon Falcon. And so that's probably my favorite because it's just such a lucky thing. Most people don't live close enough, don't have the passes, don't have a wife that works there. So one of the excuses is I'll drive her to work and she'll spend her shift in the administration building doing her job. I'll send my shift under the Falcon getting a big project done. And so I like that because I'm so lucky. So that's the first one. And the second one is when I do an offsite personal retreat in like a nice cabin, I feel like that is really a payoff. Interesting. Yeah, I was thinking about that.

I was going to mention the person retreat location as well, because for me at this point, I always go to the getaway house and they all look and feel exactly the same. And they're at the, I go to the same location I get a different cabin every time but there's essentially you're in the middle of the woods you know exactly what's gonna be in that tiny cabin you know exactly what how the camp campsites gonna be configured and then a big part of that is walking this trail which leads to an old boy scout camp.

I actually wrote about this in my newsletter this week. And that is, I realized as I was thinking about that question that I asked you, that has become a specific, one of my favorite specific locations, even though I only go there a couple times a year. I think the other ones that really stand out to me, I had a little bit of trouble thinking of specific locations. There's several and I've used them at

different points for different things. One of them is not my office. My office is in the basement of our house, has no windows, and so this is my focus cave. I'll go here when I need to really focus on something specific. It's great for doing podcast recordings like this because it's fairly quiet. It's also great for doing YouTube videos and webinar presentations, but I realized that I don't like being in here for long periods of time because I like the natural light. So I think one of the other places that I really like is there's a co-working space in Appleton that has these great big floor-to-ceiling windows that

overlook the river. And even when I had a permanent office in that co-working space I would frequently not sit in the office. I would go sit by those windows, look out over the river. And that was where I got inspired to do a lot of the writing. So I think there's a lot that you could kind of dissect from that. I think that nature is really important to the creative process. I think it definitely changes how you think. And if you have the ability to get out by some some trees or some water, it definitely helps, at least for the

type of work that I do. But there are other locations that I have been to. And I also think that when you are at a space doing a thing, you really can't, at least for creative work, you can't doing a thing, you really can't, at least for creative work, you can't just sit there for eight hours and do the thing, at least not regularly. So I actually had for a while, before I had a home office, what I would call the circuit, and I would get up in the morning and I would go to a coffee shop and I would work there for a bit. And then I would, after a couple of hours, go down the street to the public library and work there for a little bit.

And I had all these locations and I would go to three or four different locations per day and I would basically just work until I hit a roadblock. And then that was kind of my cue, like it's time to get up and change the location. So I have, you know, in this, this area where we live, probably 15 or 20 different places that I know I can go here and this is a nice location fairly quiet and I can get some writing done both indoor and outdoor spaces obviously the outdoor spaces aren't quite as accessible in the winter in Wisconsin but I like that context shift that comes

from moving from place to place. Yeah. One of the things for me is like I made this great studio and everything's all set up the cameras and I can do all the production work I need, but I sometimes need to get out of this space. So like I've gotten the habit of going out in the afternoon or late afternoon with my laptop and answering email and just general communication, Slack and all that stuff. I have a nice add around deck chair out there under a tree and I sit there and do that and I find that kind of

beneficial to have a different space even for that at the house. So I'm with you in all this stuff and I do think, getting back to Linda's question, this is something that you should do. And if you, I understand a lot of us have like jobs where if you make the circuit in your office, people are gonna look at you funny.

But also I think now more than ever, we've got the opportunity for more remote work. And even when I was a lawyer in a fancy office, often I would just disappear from the office when I was a lawyer in a fancy office, often I would just disappear from the office when I needed a big project, and I would go down to the beach and work in a coffee shop to overlook the ocean, or I had haunts I would go to. And try that as, just give it a try,

of going somewhere, putting your body in a different space. I think Mike's right, association with some sort of nature I think improves it for me too. One of the reasons why I wanted to have big windows in the office, I just bought myself a little Japanese maple tree in a pot that I've now put outside my window and I just love looking at it and going out and trimming it.

And so you find ways to incorporate nature into it and it is a cheat code for sure. Now I have to ask you, because you have a Vision Pro and there are these environments. Do you find yourself using those? And if so, are there specific environments that are associated with specific kinds of tasks?

Like I do this when I'm here. Yeah, I go to Yosemite to write and I go to the Lake to journal. And those two are the only thing I do there. And all the, you know, brain functions that you think can be tricked, get tricked because it's real enough. You feel like you're there. I mean, I was working in Yosemite and it's snowy in that environment. And I didn't have shoes on. I was in my pajamas. And my feet felt cold, you know,

I mean, it's just weird how that convincing visual can, can, you know, push all the buttons in your brain. But I find it really useful for that. I know it's very expensive, and I don't think it's probably worth the money. But it is, since I bought it, and I wanted to talk about it as Max Sparky, I actually am using it for that stuff. And I go there all the time.

I set up the, I've got the little Apple keyboard in my lap with the Magic Trackpad and a the, I've got the little Apple keyboard in my lap with the magic track pad and a little plastic tray I got off Amazon. And I just go completely immersive into Yosemite and I'm in there three or four times a week writing. So yeah, it works. You forget where you are when you go into it. And that's the only way to put it. I hope Apple makes more environments cause I would like to have more,

but the few that they have are very good. Cool. I was curious if that was going to be something that sounded good, setting up these environments and doing certain types of work there. And then you realize that it's not as effective as the actual locations that we just talked about. And you kind of stop doing it after a while. But it sounds like you continue to function in these modes months after you got the Vision Pro, is that correct? Yeah, but to be clear,

it's not the same as going to Yosemite. Right, right. But it is good enough to give you, to make you feel like you're in a different space, which gets you all those benefits. Yeah, it's enough to trick your brain so you can do what you need to do. And I would say that I am sensitive to this stuff. I am always paying attention to context and the idea of ritual around getting hard work done. I mean, part of the problem is with this stuff,

when I do these webinars, I learn so much. and somebody said, well, how do you kind of continue to make it fun? And I said, I don't think the goal is to make it fun. I think sometimes it's just hard work and you just have to do the hard work. And I feel like, but the idea of ritual and location change can make it easier. And so I'm sensitive to that. I know a lot of people about the Vision Pro that aren't using it this way and it didn't really stick for them, but for me it easier. And so I'm sensitive to that. I know a lot of people have bought the vision pro that aren't using it this way

and it didn't really stick for them. But for me it did. Nice. Yeah. I had made mention to the way I had, cause I wrote, read this book, uh, analog, uh, style. I just bought the book and I'd wrote, I'd written down, I'm sorry, a bunch of tasks for myself in the back of the book, and I'd mentioned it on the show when somebody wrote it and said, well, can you tell me everything

that you wrote down in the back? I don't think I want to do that. There's a bunch of them here. I'll read a couple random ones. What I did was I just wrote down an assignment for myself and a page number, just to give you a couple random ones here. Track and limit current missions, page 70.

I think he had written that you should only be doing a few things at once. I'm already doing that pretty good. Schedule time for new projects before saying yes, page 74, we talked about that already. Spend more money to simplify, page 95. Huh, I never really did that. Consider additional ways to spend more money to simplify.

Like get a better service or something. That's something I may actually need to think about. Like some of the processes and systems I use, maybe they're a little antiquated and a little bit too intricate. Maybe I can find some better simplified ones. That's what I want to look into. Consider, what does it say?

Consider take longer strategy in page 125. Oh yeah, that's right. He had said just take longer to do things. I like that. Consider five year plan. In fact, you and I, I may want to do a show on that. Page 129, consider a five year plan. In fact, you and I, I may want to do a show on that, page 129, Consider a Five Year Plan. I've never been a fan of those long term plans.

I always feel like they're kind of silly. And, but I don't know what your thoughts are. Let's put a pin in that one. Maybe we'll come back to it sometime. But either way, it's a good book, Slow Productivity. Cal Newport, he's a great writer. He's very steeped in productivity, technique, and lingo, and I feel like anytime he writes a book,

there's a few things you can learn from him. Agreed. I've got a couple of action items which I've shared in the Bookworm episode that we did on this, but I'll share them here too. So one was to create my autopilot schedule. That's kind of like planning my perfect week. Another one was to simplify my daily schedule. So essentially larger time blocks and try to whittle down that three to five things that I commit to. Maybe we

can keep it to three or less. And then the implement work cycles. I started to do this. This is kind of like the the sabbaticals every eighth week like Sean Blanc does for the the the Blanc Media team. I want to do the same sort of thing with my solopreneur creator business. But at the moment I cannot take an entire week off. So I have these on my calendar and essentially I'm kind of doing like a soft version of these where there's certain things that have to get done. But I am trying to during those those quote unquote off weeks do more just fun things with friends and family. Go up to the cabin. You know, I'll still do a little bit of writing. Uh, I'll still do a podcast recording if I have to,

but the rest of the day is a lot more flexible. And I feel like that has been very important for keeping me sane the last several months. Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like, um, Sean's idea of a, you know, occasional week off is a great idea. He does it on a rigid schedule, and I'm not sure that works for me, but I'm thinking even with around release cycles, like when I get a new field guide out, there's always kind of a...

After you release it, it's not done, because I usually do a webinar series, but I'm thinking once I finish the webinar series, maybe that's when we take a week off before we dive in on the next one or resume work. But I'm still figuring it out. And this year, for a bunch of reasons, I'm traveling a lot, so I feel like I'm already giving myself time off for all this travel.

So it's a weird year to address it, but I feel like there's more work to be done in that for all this travel. So it's a weird year to address it, but I feel like there's more work to be done in that for me as well. Sure. And the big idea there essentially is make sure that you build in some rest and recovery. So you don't have to be strict about this and every eighth week you shut things down.

But I think for a lot of people that forced application is the thing that's going to get you to actually do it. The other thing I noticed in myself is like, this is the year of travel for me. I've already noticed, like when I get on an airplane and you know, poor me, all this travel is fun. It's, you know, related to my kids or vacation or a relay event or whatever. But every time I get on a plane and go out of town,

I always get ahead on all the like the labs content stuff. So when I leave town, I can have a little bit more free time. But I always find myself coming up with ideas for new content or maybe you know maybe massive changes to the business. The idea to bite the bullet and hire somebody to do all customer service happened when I took time off. And every time I take time off, without really meaning to, I always come to some insight

about the way I should be doing things. That's one of the reasons why I'm thinking about maybe the possibility of a VA, something I'll approach on vacation because it's just gonna grind in the back of my head while I'm there. But I always find that. And that's just an obvious, to me, explanation

that I don't have enough margin because as soon as I get some margin, my brain starts grinding on that stuff. Yep, makes sense. We did hear from, we did the show on tasks and calendars and we got some interesting feedback on that. In the forum, Jay said, hey, I'm surprised, Max Sparky stopped doing the time block

planning on his calendar. I bet he will get back to it after a few weeks of his latest experiment. Yes, I didn't even last a week. You know, Kourosh is such a smart guy. Anytime he comes up with something interesting, I want to try it. And his idea was like, you just visit an item

and don't commit to it until you're actually with it. And that doesn't work for me. I just have too many things going on. And I really like the comfort of knowing that the blocks are set, and it means that I get the most important work done. And yeah, I try, when we recorded that show, I was in the midst of the experiment,

but it did not last. You're right, Jay. From Mike, Mike wrote me, and he said that, because we did that show, and I shared what I, I like to think of as, I call it modern task management. It's kind of a pull-based system where you have lists of tasks, and you go back and list the episode if you haven't,

I explain it much further, but you have lists in your task manager, and rather than have the task manager generate things you must do every day, you set blocks for your most important projects and work, and then during the block you go to the list and then you work off the list, and you work as much as you can

than the time you've given it and no more. So when you get to the, once you finish the block, whatever's left on the list just remains on the list. I find that it's more of a, it's a softer approach is what the word I use where you don't feel like you're failing every day. You actually feel like you're making progress. And if you set the right blocks in the calendar,

then you actually get to work on the things that are most important and you make progress. It's a system that took me a long time to kind of evolve to. But Mike wrote me, nice guy, we had several emails back and forth about this, but he's also a lawyer. He says, well, you're obviously no longer a lawyer

because if you were a lawyer, there's no way you could do this. And I disagree. And I think that this absolutely could work. I think that if you are a fancy business person and you've got a lot on your plate and things with varying deadlines, of course you use all those tools in your task manager

to surface those things, but they should also translate into blocks. So you're working on the stuff that's coming due soon and you keep that under control. And I know, I was a trial lawyer, which was one of the most out of control jobs in terms of managing your own time that exists, because at any point the phone can ring

and you run off like a fireman. And, but I still believe that this system could work for someone like that. You know, you just gotta be a little more flexible for emergencies, but I think I turned him around over a series of emails. But I wanted to share that here because I feel like Mike and I are privileged

with our creator jobs that we do have more control over our calendar than most people. But the stuff I'm talking about here isn't meant for precious snowflakes like me. I think anybody can use that stuff and I'd recommend going back and listening to that show if you didn't. I agree with you.

And I think that if you don't implement a version of the system that you're describing, essentially what is missing is any sort of filter as to prioritization. If everything that shows up on your list must get done, then you just continue to extend your days as your lists grow, and then eventually you can't extend them anymore,

and then you start dropping the ball. And I can tell you, if you're working with a team, that is the most frustrating thing because you know that there's too much to get done. And you know that when you have this meeting again next week that all these things that people have said they're going to do are not gonna get done, but you don't know which one

is gonna fall through the cracks. And that's really frustrating. At least if you've got a prioritized list, you know what order people are going to be working in and this is what they're going to be doing. And if they run out of time, the stuff on the bottom of the list isn't going to get done. But I feel like you have to have that shared understanding if you're going to work effectively as, as a team, I think maybe it's a little bit different than the lawyer scenario that you were describing, but I guess, you know, just from my own experience in the agency world that, uh, it applies there too. Yeah, I agreed.

And honestly, I wish I had more of a handle on this back then. I think it would have been less stressful. I talked about in that recent webinar, what I consider kind of like a, I don't know what I would call it, maybe a task management flywheel. But if you think about it, there's four components. There's your key principles, in my case it's roles.

I think I'm gonna like flesh this out more for a future productivity field guide update. But you've got, you know, the key things, the things that are driving the boat for you, in my case roles, and people have different versions of this, but you've got your key principles I'm gonna use for lack of a better term. And then that pushes into the calendar blocks.

Like you create calendar blocks based on what's important to you, and then you do the tasks based on what's in the calendar blocks. Like you create calendar blocks based on what's important to you, and then you do the tasks based on what's in the calendar block. And then I recommend like, then you use your notes system to follow up and plan and consider, and then that feeds right back

to the core or key principles. And then you've got a nice little circle there that just drives itself. And the key point that I'm making with this discussion with Mike is that if you design the calendar blocks around the key principles, then the tasks are easy. It's easy to know which ones you should be doing and you don't feel like you're missing things.

And that is a very useful system. So sometimes when I get negative feedback, I find it can be very educational. That doesn't mean I want you all writing me emails telling me how dumb I am, but you know, you know what I mean. Yep. I get it. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better, but when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all.

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and support the Focus Podcast by saying that you heard about Indeed on this show. Once again, that's indeed.com slash focused, terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for the support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay FM. Okay, so we did an episode called Revisiting Journaling, and that one pulled a lot of forum feedback, and I thought that was interesting. A lot of people weighed in on it. There was a lot of love for day one that came out of that.

Several people went back and resubscribed or gave testimonials to how much they're using day one. And that was refreshing for me and kind of affirming because I don't know if you recall in that episode, I've been challenged because I love the idea of analog journaling and I keep trying it, but it never really works for me. I think day one is better in the sense that like I can import pictures and they date to the picture

and I like dictating and I get nice long entries when I dictate, but ultimately I found kind of a hybrid approach where I do have some paper and pencil journaling I do, but I just scan it into day one as well. And something I didn't really say in that episode, but I think it was important is when you journal, you need to figure out what your deliverable

of the journaling is. Like I'm not really making this to leave a historical record for the ages. I don't think I'm that important. But what I'm really doing here is giving myself working papers for the quarterly and personal retreats to go back and read through. And again, having it in a digital form

makes it really easy to do that. So I'm pretty comfortable with my journaling routine, but it was fun reading this thread. We'll put a link to the thread in the show notes because lots of people are also struggling to figure out, you know, what the right mix is for them. Yeah. I like hearing you say that it's basically the foundation of the personal retreat process. That is exactly what it is for me too. And for me, that is a justification for why it's always from now until the end of time,

going to be an obsidian. Because that is a statement. Yeah. Well, every time I do a personal retreat in obsidian, I find additional ways to tweak it just a little bit and it gets even better in my opinion, more effective. I go through the exact same process every time, but I've been doing these personal retreats since 2017 every single quarter. And I think the process at least for me is kind of nailed down at this point, but there

are a couple specific elements here that just really make at least for me, is kind of nailed down at this point. But there are a couple specific elements here that just really make it work for me. The daily questions stuff is a big one. And I won't go all the way through that whole process again, but I do have a YouTube video which explains all that, which I'll link to in the show notes that people wanna see how deep that rabbit hole goes for me. I've gotten consistent with the logging of the journal entries, the gratitude and the wins. And because those are

all tagged, I can very easily just pull up a, I click on the tag in the sidebar and I see all of the entries sorted chronologically and I can go through and review those real easily. I mean, if Obsidian at this point for me is not a notes app, it really is a tool for thought. I'm using it very specifically for thinking about the way that I do my work and then some of the thoughtful work like the writing happens there as well. But I mean it is the perfect thing for a personal retreat in my opinion. Having all that stuff just kind of baked in. I can review the life theme. I can review the core values. I can do the wheel of life. Having it all in one single place really just streamlines the whole process for me and allows

my brain to really wrestle with the questions and the prompts that I'm asking as well. Now that's not going to be the right solution for everyone, but I think the approach is the important thing and that's what you hit on is that the way that you journal in day one is an important... it lays the foundation for the effective reflection process, the personal retreat. And I don't know that, you know, the personal retreat is the only way to do that sort of thing, but I think there's something powerful about regularly every couple of months taking a break, you know, getting a different

perspective, kind of zooming out and looking at all that stuff in aggregate. Not that you're trying to find specific data points, but just reviewing all that stuff. It kind of gives you this context for thinking about your current situation and also planning your future that's really important and hard to quantify. But it just it sets the stage for better and more effective thinking in my opinion. Yeah, I'm looking here. My first entry in day one is in February, 2011. So yeah, I've been using that app for a while. One of the things I liked from that thread, by the way, in the forum was someone made the point that they just kept thinking of new ideas for journals. And I think that's where day one really shines, is that you can have journals for anything. And back when I used day one consistently, I had, I think like 12 different journals. And one of them was like a quotes journal.

I would capture quotes when I came across them and I would store them as markdown inside of, of day one. And I think that's really, if you're going to use day one, you should be thinking about what are all the different sorts of collections that I want to have in there. And it's not just dear diary. This is what happened today. You're kind of missing out on the real value proposition of that app if that's the only way that you use it. There's value to that process as well. But take advantage of all

of those journals that they give you and think about the ways that you might want to slice these tidbits and memories that you're putting in there. I have consolidated mine, Mike, but would you like a list of my current day one journals? Let's do it. There's a lot. Okay. The one called journal, which is kind of a catchall. One called one thing, which is the one thing I try to do every day. I have a gratitude journal, one called meditations, where I write down deep thoughts on things. One called Meditations, where I write down deep thoughts on things.

I have a Time Block Journal. I've decided when I make my time blocks in my calendar, I take a screenshot and save it to a Time Block Journal. I've got one just for Max Sparky entries. That used to be Max Sparky plus Field Guides, then there was one for podcasts. I had like different ones for different areas of Max Sparky. Those have all been combined into one now.

I have one called Max Sparky Love, where people write me nice things. I put them there so when I'm old, I can read them again. I have one called Wellness, one called Focus. Focus is where I put a lot of my thoughts about ways to get more focused. I have one called Travel, one called planning and reviews, all the weekly, monthly, quarterly reviews are in there.

I made one for the book Personal Socrates. I have seven entries in it so far. I haven't really been doing as much of that as I should, but every time I read a section of Personal Socrates, I fill out an entry in day one. I have one for personal business, when the plumber comes and does something, I take a picture of the bill and with the work they did

and it's all stored in day one. Which is not necessarily what the app is made for, but I found that useful. I have one for gardening and I track my plants. I have one called Maker and I track my woodworking projects and 3D builds and all the other Maker stuff I do. I have one for my Uggmunk daily task cards. I have one called Paper Journal,

where I take pictures of paper journals that I fill out. And honestly, I'm like halfway done. I should stop. This is getting boring. But yeah, there's a bunch of them here. Music, well an interesting one I made was called greeting cards. People send you a nice card. I just started taking bunch of them here, you know, music. Well, an interesting one I made was called greeting cards. You know, people send you a nice card.

I just started taking pictures of them and putting it into the journal. Then I don't feel bad throwing the card away. Nice. I made one, a new one called book journal, where I'm starting to write down thoughts of books I've read. Yeah, just interesting stuff, man. You can do a lot with day one.

That's the way to do it. Now if anybody's still listening, let's continue. All right. Random feedback from the forum. R Sims pointed to Ann-Lori LeComf. I never know if I pronounced her name right. She did a blog post. I'm gonna take a stab at this.

I think it's Ann-Lor. Okay. But very smart lady and great blog, great link to rediscovering IkiGuy. Yeah. I thought it was a really good blog post, good enough to mention in the show. I went ahead and linked it.

Did you have a chance to read it, Mike? I did. And I think I agree with most of the premise here. You want me to try to summarize it quick? Sure. Sure. Okay. So Iki guy is this concept with the four overlapping circles. That was actually a newer application. The article talks about how that was created in 2011 and the concept of Iki guy goes much further back. Ikiai, I don't have the exact

definition but it's essentially you know your life's purpose. What are you here for and the overlapping circles that are made popular by this. It's what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for and what you're good at. And kind of at the center of that is this Ikigai. And basically the article is saying that that's not really an accurate description of what Ikigai is. And then there are a couple of tactical tips for actually living out Ikigai as it was originally thought of by the Japanese culture, I believe is where it came from, including lifelong learning. Don't try to save the world. Stop trying to find your one true passion.

We're multifaceted beings. And I really agree with this approach. Even though I teach a cohort on like identifying your, your life theme, I always mentioned in there that it's going to change, it's going to evolve. And really the value of, of that is having something that brings motivation to show up and take action on the things that are important and clarity to cut the things that aren't and it should change. It should evolve because you're constantly changing and evolving, going back to the whole concept of Theseus's ship. I know we talked about that in a previous episode as well.

So, you know, you, you need something that's going to be useful enough to help you do what you need to do, but it's not going to be the be all end all for your entire life. And I think this makes a lot more sense than trying to implement those four overlapping circles. Yeah. I've written a couple of books on Iki guy now, and my own personal definition is that, uh, Iki guy is having a reason to jump out of bed.

And I feel like it's that simple. If you've got something you're living to do and in different seasons of your life, that's gonna be different. Like I'm seeing that in my own life as I've made career transitions, as my kids have got older. I know that in different eras of my life, there'll be a different reason,

but you have to have a reason to jump out of bed. And if you don't, you're wasting it. you have to have a reason to jump out of bed. And if you don't, you're wasting it. Agreed. And in fact, you know, I've found it at the, uh, the actual definition roughly translates to reason for being. So whatever it is that gives you your, your reason, that's essentially what you need, but you don't need to, uh, identify.

The overlap of what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and that's your profession and what the world needs and what you can be paid for, and that's your profession and what the world needs and what you can be paid for. That's your vocation. That's sometimes helpful to think about these things, but don't get caught up in the specifics of those Venn diagrams. They're essentially tools to get you thinking

in a certain direction. And then once you are able to do that, you no longer need the visual training wheels. Yeah. Jasmine wrote in with a question that kind of broke me. She said, can you really do a quarterly retreat at home, even the first one, for a little further context? She listened to the show with Jason Snell.

She's on board. She got two kids. She's a single mom. We emailed each other, so I know a little bit more. And she wants to do a retreat. There's no way on earth she can get away for three days. And she's like, I wanna do this, but I don't think I can do it

the way you guys are recommending. Should I even bother? And it's like, ah, this question kills me because I think that if you get away, it's so much easier. But if you just can't, I don't want you to not try it. I would ask you to even like try out, do you have any family members that can watch the kids for a few days?

I mean, it's very, I don't wanna be presumptuous. It's hard when you're a single parent. I've never been a single parent, but my wife worked at Disneyland and had really weird hours and I felt like a single parent, I've never been a single parent, but my wife worked at Disneyland and had really weird hours and I felt like a single parent a lot. And I don't know how you don't have time or space for anything, but yeah, when she wrote me this, I honestly didn't know what to say.

So I threw it at Mike. Well, I empathize with the situation. And the very first thing I would say is that you don't need to do it for multiple days. In fact, I would encourage you not to start by going for multiple days. At the beginning, if you're not used to thinking in this way with the deep stuff is going to be really uncomfortable. And after a few hours, you're probably going to be like, I don't want to do this anymore. So that extra time would would you definitely see diminishing returns at the very least. And I think there's a good chance that you're just like, I forget this. And the rest of the time is shot. I do think if you can get away overnight, that's still ideal. But if I was in this situation, I would be shooting for a couple of hours Just a morning or an afternoon

And I would echo what you said if you've got family members who can watch the kids for even a short period of time Then do it that way. I remember When our kids were little there was a gym that was down the street from our house and my wife used to go to the gym every day, not because she's a huge fitness buff, but because she could drop off the kids for a couple of hours and she could get some time to herself. You don't have to be working out at the gym. Frequently she would do a short workout and spend the rest of the time just going through some stuff

that she needed to get done. So maybe get creative with it a little bit and don't try to do too much at the beginning. If I were to offer advice on a place to start, I mean, I know there's a whole lot of context in terms of your roles in Aruate. In my version, it's the life theme and then the core values. But even without that stuff,

I think you're gonna get the most traction by asking the three questions I ask later on, which is what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? If you can squeeze out a couple of hours to wrestle with those questions without getting into the specifics of why this stuff is, is being triggered in your brain, just making those lists as things come to you and then later on you can go

back and you can look at those and decide what of any of that you're actually going to take action on that would be the place to start, in my opinion. Yeah, and I would just reiterate with Mike, think of all the options to get some freedom from the kids, like even for a couple hours or a day. And at the end of the day, please try it, even if you can't. I know it's not ideal circumstances, but this stuff works. And if you're thinking about enough to write me about it,

I feel like you've got it in you, you can do it. Let us know how it goes, Jasmine. Yeah, agreed. And one other thing with this, I guess, I forgot to mention the main question, which is can you do this at home? I absolutely would not if it can be helped. If you absolutely have to do it at home,

maybe you could do that. Maybe you could get up early before the kids get up or stay up a little bit later after they go to bed and think about these things, but it's not the ideal location. If you're at home, your brain is gonna automatically just go into the way that it's been thinking about things in that situation, in that environment.

As we talked about earlier, the environment is really important and can kind of help you think about things differently. So even honestly, just changing the environment to something that's new and novel is gonna get you to think about things in a different way. I think it's gonna be much harder to get into that mode if you are in your home or a place that you go frequently.

Yeah, it's funny. And we were talking about Disneyland Batu earlier, there's a separate area of Disneyland, and it's a very specific table where I do retreat type thinking. And, because sometimes I find myself doing it there, and there's a table I go to, and I know when I sit at that table, that's what I do.

And even when we're visiting the park with family and friends, and I walk by that table, I always look at it and smile, like, oh, that's my retreat table, you know? But the idea is my brain is hooked to that now. Like, if I sit there, that's the kind of work I do. But I don't think it's that easy to do that at home because you've already got that space absorbed

with other tasks you do there. Okay, well, good luck, and let us know how it goes and we're rooting for you. Mike, we've been doing this a lot lately, but I think it's kind of fun. What are you reading right now? Well, I am reading a book on artificial intelligence called Co-Intelligence by Ethan Ethan Malik. So very timely.

And I've looked at a lot of different resources about artificial intelligence. And this was the one that got recommended the most from people that I look up to. And when it comes to picking things to read, um, I, I shared, uh, when it comes to picking things to read. I shared recently that one of the biggest life hacks for me, I hate that term, but it really is, like when someone that you look up to recommends a book,

buy it immediately, stick it on your shelf, build your anti-library, you'll never run out of interesting things to read. So that's kind of what happened with this. And then for Bookworm, my co-host, Corey, he wanted to read a book on AI. And so I'm like, well, this one looks interesting. I have it on my shelf already.

And I think this one's gonna be really good. I've just started it, but I feel like this is the most tempered approach to artificial intelligence that I have come across so far. Really, it's a balance of how are we gonna learn to work with these machines as opposed to, oh, this is nothing but a gimmick, or the other extreme is it's gonna take everybody's job

and the AI is gonna take over the world. This sits kind of firmly in the middle there, and so far it's really good. Yeah, Ethan Molek is a professor, and I discovered him a year or two ago. And I'm actually one of his supporters on what do you call it? The where I get his newsletter. He's got a sub stack.

Yes, I'm a supporter of his sub stack. And so I've never read his book, but I read his blog posts and he puts two or three out a month. They're always well thought out and I really enjoy them. And I feel like he's a great voice in this stuff as well. I know he wrote a book, but I never, never read it because I feel like I'm kind of up on his current stuff with his blog posts, but let me know what you think about it. Maybe I'll have to read the book too.

We'll do. What are you reading? Well, you know, the new Ryan Holiday book is out and just arrived in my mail a few days ago. I'm leaving for vacation. So that'll be the book I read on this vacation. He's been doing a series on the stoic virtues and this is the justice book.

It's called Right Thing Right Now. Good values, good character, good deeds. I'm not 100% in on all the Stoicism stuff, but I do really like the ancient Greeks. I think they have a lot of good ideas. And I really like the way Ryan Holiday writes. So I'm looking forward to reading it. I told a friend, he writes every sentence

like it's the last one of his life. And that kind of stuff appeals to me. Yeah, he's a very good writer. I've got this one actually as well. I'm looking forward to diving into this. I thought it was kind of funny. His blurb at the top is from Arnold Schwarzenegger. A message all of us need, a message all of us need to hear.

I, Arnold is now like in the productivity racket apparently. Yeah, I like your Arnold impression there. Yeah, well, you know, there you go. But the, yeah, I'm looking forward to reading it. I like what he writes. So this has been a good series. So that's the next one I'm reading. I wanted to catch up on focus challenges as well.

We've had a couple challenges. We gave ourselves challenges two or three episodes ago. I wanted to do a systems freeze, saying, look, I'm done trying to implement new systems until the end of the year. I'm testing and stuff for Max Sparky and sharing, but I'm not moving all my data again throughout the year. And so far, mission accomplished,

but I was pretty serious about that one, so I'm not going to drag myself through a bunch of systems changes. Instead, I'm just trying stuff on, looking at it and talking about it without making it my whole thing. You had one you gave yourself called Operation Delegation. and talking about it without making it my whole thing. You had one you gave yourself called Operation Delegation. We already kind of covered that, I think.

But most recently, you gave yourself one about taking meditation on. I know it's only been a few weeks, but how's that going? Yeah, so actually to, to, uh, break the, the, the time illusion here, we're recruiting this a week after that episode. So I feel like I've made progress here, but still way too early to tell if this is really going to stick. The thing that you encouraged me with this was don't worry about the apps. Don't have any of the guidance, just sit and count. And that's what I've been doing. I think if I were to give myself a grade, it's probably like a C because I haven't done it as

often as I would like to. There are days that will go by and oh yeah, I didn't meditate today. But I am tactically deploying this so far and it's been very helpful. I think I wanna continue to try to work this into the regular routine, but I don't think I'm ever gonna get to the point where, okay, I'm gonna do a 30 minute session now. It just doesn't work for me that way. Maybe I'll get to that point,

but whenever I do take a break and force myself to slow down, take the deep breaths and count, I'm always glad that I do it and always kind of resets me. So I do see the value and I'm hoping that this one will stick this time. Have you had the experience of banging into your loud brain yet during a meditation session? Oh yeah. It's crazy, right? Frequently. Yes.

It is the, that's why I call the brain the wild horse of organs. Man, that thing just wants to pull and fling you around. Yeah, I hope you get to a half hour because honestly that's where the payoff really starts. Once you get good enough out of it, you can sit there for a half hour. It really clears you up and then you get the time back. There's no question in my mind.

In fact, I just saw our mutual friend Chris Bailey and now he's like looking at doing like two hour sessions and he totally believes he's getting those two hours back every day just by spending the time meditating. But it works. It's not just for hippies meditation. How's that for an endorser? It's true.

I like it. We are the Focus Podcast. Thank you everybody for an endorsement? It's true. I like it. We are the Focus Podcast. Thank you everybody for writing us in and engaging. We love making the show, but we love hearing from you too. And it was fun to do a feedback episode. We're gonna do this more often. I wanna thank our sponsors today, Indeed and Squarespace. They help us keep the lights on.

But you know who helps us keep the lights on? Our supporters, the deep focus supporters. They get the ad free extended version of the show. Today in that extended section, I'm gonna talk about focus preaching. It's a long story, but I found myself focus preaching, Mike, and I need your help.

You can learn more over at relay.fm slash focus, and we'd love to have you. Again, thanks to Indeed and Squarespace, and we'll see you next time.