589: Learn Less to Achieve More with Pat Flynn

Hello and welcome to the Achieve your goals podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves. And we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go.

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Welcome to the achieve your goals podcast. I am your host, Hal Elrod and today I am joined by a very special human being, a friend of mine for over a decade, Mr. Pat Flynn. You may know Pat Flynn from the smart passive income podcast. You may know him from the book Will it Fly? Or the book Superfans, his new book that he is here to talk about today. Lean Learning how to achieve more by learning less. This book arrived in the mail two days ago. Pat sent me an advanced copy and I cannot tell you, I mean, I guess I can tell you, but I don't know if words will do justice how excited I am to read this book. It's literally, I feel like it's a godsend right now. It's the book that I need in my life right now because I don't know about you, but I am overwhelmed, right? Information overload. As Pat talks about why it is the new normal. And think about what that looks like in your life, where you learn, learn, learn, you consume and you may not make the amount of progress that you want. The measurable progress. And what Pat's new book in today's episode is going to share with you is what he calls lean learning, which is where you define the difference between just in case learning, which is where you're learning a bunch of information that you don't need with just in time learning, where you're identifying what's the minimum amount of knowledge that I need to consume and then how do I act on it immediately so that I create measurable progress and then create this beautiful flow where that's how you learn from now on, you don't learn everything you need to know. You don't read necessarily book after book after book. You learn the minimum that you need to know to create a meaningful result in your life. And then you learn a little more, you create another result, you learn a little more, you create another result. Because information, as you know is not power. If you just learn a ton, and we're all guilty of that I called it what is. I call it personal development junkies. We've become these, like, I'm just going to learn and grow. And then we trick ourselves into thinking that that's actually making meaningful progress in our life. But, of course, what you learn doesn't matter as much unless you actually implement it. He also talks about something today called Micro Mastery, and it's one of my favorite concepts from the new book Micromastery, and I'll let him tell you what that is, but essentially where in order to master any new topic or skill, you don't take the whole topic on at a time. You break it down into one micro miniscule aspect of that topic. And he gives the example of becoming a speaker, how he mastered one small area, such as the first two minutes, how do you open a speech? And when you do this micro mastery strategy, you create confidence and momentum without feeling overwhelmed, and you move on to the next area of micromastery, and so on and so forth. He also talks about how anyone practicing the Miracle Morning can apply Lean Learning principles to their morning routine. So if you are a Miracle Morning practitioner, you'll want to hear that again. Pat's one of my favorite human beings. He has supported me for the last decade, and I've supported him because he's one of the good guys. Like, he's someone that truly cares about the value that he adds for his audience, his community, et cetera, et cetera. So, anyway, I love Pat. I'm really enjoying this new book, Lean Learning how to Achieve More by Learning Less. I highly recommend you listen to this podcast. I think you'll get a lot of value because Pat doesn't just tease the concepts. He really dives in and teaches them in a way where you can walk away whether you get the book or not. I recommend the book, of course, but the podcast will stand alone today to teach you how to apply Lean learning in your life so that you can achieve more by learning less. All right, love you so much. Enjoy today's episode with my good friend, Mr. Pat Flynn.

Patrick Flynn. Good morning, buddy.

Oh, my gosh. Only my parents call me Patrick. That's funny.

No, dude. So it's funny. So Pat Flynn is what it says on the front of the new book?

Yep.

But when we were texting, I saw it said, update your contact record to Patrick Flynn. So I don't know what to call you, dude.

Oh, my gosh. I have to check on that. It says, that's weird, dude. That's weird.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm so grateful to Be here, dude.

Yeah. I thought you were growing up. You got the beard. You're Patrick now.

Yeah, I've matured a little bit since the last time we've chatted. I'm just so grateful to be hanging out with you again. I mean, you've done so much for me personally. You've done so much for my audience. And, you know, with this new book, I'm here to help you and serve your people too.

I'm excited, man. I was texting you, so I got your book in the mail. You overnighted me a copy. I got it yesterday. I started reading it this morning. And it is. I text you. This is the book that I need right now literally in my life right now. I'm dealing with information overload. I'm distracted. My attention's in 20 different directions. I've got Google searches and chat GPT searches and I'm reading four different book. Like, I'm literally who you wrote the book for. And then I realized I'm the common story right now. Like, I represent most people.

Yeah.

I want to ask you this, Pat. So your first two books, Will It Fly? Which is how to test your next business idea so you don't waste your time and money. Loved that book. You followed that up with Superfans, the easy way to stand out, grow your tribe and build a successful business. So both of those are what I would call business books for entrepreneurs. So my question is, what inspired you to write books? Lean Learning. And who is this book for?

So Lean Learning is a result of a number of people who've reached out to me who have asked, how are you able to do seemingly new things in your life and do them very well? And a lot of people who are asking me these questions weren't wanting to build a business. They were wanting to just experience new parts of life and try new things. But we're always feeling like they were fighting the imposter syndrome in their head or just too much information or just not even knowing where to start. And so it really inspired me to think outside the box of entrepreneurship and say, who else can I help and how can I reach and impact more people? And actually your book was really important in that because I started to ask myself, which books have been really inspiring for me that were not business books and yours was one of the first that came came to mind. That and how to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie. Just life changing books that were not even about business, but about productivity, about where to put your time and attention. I mean, you with Your book have helped people silo where they should spend their time with your savers. And to do that in a very systematic way has then opened up so much for so many people, myself included. And I started to dissect, well, how am I able to learn all these things rather quickly? Because, like, I don't think I'm super smart, you know, like, I'm not a genius. I'm not the luckiest person in the world, I don't think. And there is a system there. So by writing the proposal for this book, it really got me thinking, what is it exactly and why is it working for me and not others when we all have access to the same information? You know, I thought it was just like, oh, we have to go find the right resources. But it's more than that. It's more how do you implement and start to take action sooner rather than later. Having the guidelines be created by the mistakes that you make, not by over preparation and, you know, over consumption. And I think what also inspired this, two other things. My kids are getting older now. My son is 15, he's entering young adulthood very soon. And his world, my daughter's 15.

I didn't know your son was 15 too, man. Wow.

Yeah. Oh, man, what a world they're growing up in and leading themselves into. It's so confusing, so overwhelming. And with AI and everything kind of happening so quickly, certain jobs are just not going to be non existent anymore. It's like, how do we stay valuable in this economy? So I wanted to write this for him and my 12 year old daughters to prepare them for the future and to give them options and to help them understand how to navigate things that are moving very quickly around them. And number two, I remember running a survey and this was a live survey I did from stage. So I had people raise their hand in the audience. There was about 2,500 people in the audience and I said, how many people here are subscribed to at least one podcast? And basically everybody raised their hand and I said, okay, keep your head up. If you are subscribed to more than five podcasts, no hands went down. Basically everybody's hands were, was still up. And we got to the point where 25% of that audience, about 500 people, still had their hands up. When I asked how many of you subscribed to 25 or more different podcasts? And this was an entrepreneurial group, so many of them are overachievers over learners.

Sure.

But also very curious. And I think that's just representative of us as Humans, we are over curious and we want to learn so many things. So then we absorb, we consume so much. But here's the problem. How information is no longer scarce. We feel like it is, which is why when we come across it, we want to hoard it. Right. But back in the day when you and I started, information was the valuable thing because people didn't have it. People didn't have access to it. Remember Encyclopedia Britannicas? If you had one in your home, you were like smarter because you could afford information that other people couldn't. Now we all have it on our phones. Yeah. And not only are we at this buffet line of information, now we're getting force fed stuff from algorithms on these platforms that we didn't even know we needed. However, they're built specifically to keep us on those platforms and to have us go deeper into these rabbit holes. We are not set up for success in today's world. So how do we navigate that? That's what this book is about. Like, here's lean learning in a nutshell. Figure out what you want, find the next step that'll help you get there, Learn about that next step and that next step only take action and repeat the process. Because this is the difference between just in case learning, which is what we're all falling into, and just in time learning. And that's the secret to success. Finding the thing you need from the right resource and taking action so that you can find out where to go next and whether to persist or pivot. And this is so needed right now. It's, it's the most important topic nobody's talking about.

Can you elaborate on that? The difference between just in time learning versus just in case learning?

Yes. Just in case learning is you come across an article, a book, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and you feel like you have to consume it because you don't want to miss out on it. You don't need that information right now. It's not even really relevant to the thing that you're focusing on, however you consume it because you're worried that, you know, there could be a golden nugget in there or that you might need it later. And that's how we're taught in school. Right. You read the whole book and then take a test on it. You read a whole book when you're reading self development books and then you might put one or two of those things in action. Right. This is just in case learning and it's not only taking up more time, but you are also getting over inspired. What I mean, by that is it's taking your energy away from the things that you've already committed to and said yes to. And that's very dangerous because we only have so much time to. To give to so many things. So by allowing yourself to say, no, not yet, I don't need that. You know, the joy of opting out is what I call it. Right? Not joy of. Of missing out, which is what some people say. I'm not joyful. Right. That I'm missing out on something. But I am proud that I can say not yet, because I'm going to recommit to this thing that I've already said yes to. So that's just in case. Learning. That's what we're trying to battle against. Just in time. Learning is similar to how I wrote my first ebook for For Architects. This is my first business back in 2008. So I'll go through this exact case study, and you'll see Lean learning in motion. And this is how I've approached pretty much everything moving forward, including an Invention, my new YouTube channel about Pokemon Smart, Passive Income, all these things. Yeah. So when I got laid off, I was inspired to start a business to help architects pass an exam. And by surrounding myself around other entrepreneurs and finding other champions who were doing the same thing, I learned that I should. I should create a study guide to promote to my audience. But I had never done that before. I'd never built a business. And so my first inclination, like many of us, was to literally go to business school. I was looking up business schools. How long would it take? Two years for this program? Okay. $20,000 a semester. Oh, my gosh, so much money. Like, my mind went to traditional learning styles to learn this thing that I didn't have time to figure out because I was moving back home with my parents. Because I got laid off, I was getting married. I didn't want to be in the position I was in. I needed to move fast. So I had reasons to make decisions, and I did. I eventually found out that, okay, well, an ebook requires a few things. Number one, I need to write the thing, then I need to format it, then I need to know how to sell it, then I need to know how to write a sales page. And again, just being very overwhelmed by looking at the whole process. So I said, okay, you know what? All I know is none of this is going to be required unless I write this thing. So let me open up Microsoft Word and just crank this thing out. And in three and a half weeks, Hal, I was Able to create my study guide, but it was. It was not formatted well, but I had all the information in there that I wanted. Okay, so then I went to the next step. Okay, well, I need to format this thing. I went to YouTube and found a video about somebody who was sharing how to format a word file into a landscape book with two columns. I didn't know how to do that before, and I thought that was the perfect look for my book. So I did that. And I did that in a single day. I didn't need it until right then. Then I needed to know how to sell this thing, by the way, in this process, by actually creating as I was going, I was more motivated than ever to actually go to the next step versus being demotivated up front by learning about all of it up front. So at this point, I needed to know how to sell it. So I went to somebody who had sold digital goods online before, and they said, hey, Pat, you should check out this tool called E Junkie. I don't know if you remember E Junkie, but this was an old school tool that you could use to upload your digital file, and it would give you a button that you can then put on your website, and then it would automatically deliver that file to whoever purchased. And I said, okay. And I did that in a half a day. It was very simple, in fact, and I got the button, but I said, okay, well, I don't know what to do with this button. Where do I put it? I eventually learned I needed to create a sales page. And I had never written a sales page before. I said, oh, my gosh, there's so many resources and tools and courses out there about copywriting. If this were easy, what would it look like? That's the guiding light question in Lean Learning. If this were easy, what would it look like? And again, by finding somebody who had done this before, they said, pat, check out this book by a guy named Yannick Silver. This book is called Moonlighting on the Internet. And it's going to have 30 to 40 different ways to make money online. You don't need that. All you need is the appendix in the back that has a Mad Lib style sales page that you could put your product in and your features and benefits. So I bought the book, I went to Barnes and Noble, got the book, didn't need 98% of it. I just needed that one template. And after putting that on my website, putting the button I got on this guy that I had just written, I was able to generate within a year over $200,000 from that product. Not by going to business school, not by like building a business plan and kind of psyching myself out of it.

Yeah.

But by taking action and doing it just like how people who do the savers start to see small results immediately. Right. And then it starts to stack over time. And that business has since earned seven figures. So this is lean learning in action and finding just in time information versus just in case information.

That's incredible.

All right, let me ask you a question. How many apps are you using for your personal development? Maybe a meditation app like Calmer Headspace, an affirmation app like I Am, or Think Up a book summary app like Blinkist, a journaling app like 5 Minute Journal, a visualization app like Envision, an exercise app like 7 Minute Workout, and maybe even a habit tracking app to keep it all together. That is a lot to manage and a lot to pay for. What if you could replace all of them with just one app? Yes. It is called the Miracle Morning app and it is essentially seven apps in one. Hundreds of guided meditations and breathwork tracks a full library of affirmations, plus tools to create your own visualization prompts for 10 key areas of your life. Guided workouts from 2 to 10 minutes long, book and audiobook summaries of top personal and professional development books and a journaling tool with guided prompts. The wheel of life or a blank page to write freely. It simplifies your morning, saves you money and helps you start every day with clarity, purpose and energy. And it's one of the only apps in this space with a 4.9 out of 5 star rating. Try it free for 7 days. Just search Miracle Morning in your app store or go to miracle morning app.com to get started. All right, back to the show.

So you earn $200,000 with this online information product in 2008. Before you, I mean, didn't ought to do it. And by the way, for anybody listening, if you do the math, that's $400,000 in today's income. With inflation, I believe so. Just to put that in perspective. But Pat, this reminds me of. I'm trying to think of what is the coin I termed it was like being a personal development junkie, meaning that most of us, we, our brain, we've tricked ourselves into thinking that the more I learn, the better I am or the more successful I am or I can. I'm being productive.

Div.

Right. But just learning for the sake of learning doesn't add much value to your life.

No and it can actually remove value from your life because you're taking again that time and focus away from something. So, like, you've maybe heard this term before, automobile university. And this is where in your car, at all times while you're driving, you should at least be listening to a podcast episode or some audiobook. And I was that way for years. How. And this was most of us. It was like, you might as well use that time. But I've eventually learned that the more information that I put in that time, number one, again, I'm getting over inspired and getting too much information. Plus, especially when you have conflicting information, it's like one person says that you should do this way and then you listen to another podcast and you're like, no, you should do it this way instead. And now you're left even more confused. But you know what I also don't have time to do? I also no longer had time to just think deeply about things, right? That this is why shower thoughts are a thing. Because the shower is literally the only time where you have no access to anything other than your thoughts in a bar of soap, right? It's like, that's it. So this is why you come up with good ideas in the shower, because you're allowing yourself time to do that. And the car I found has been the best for that. I don't even turn the radio on anymore. It's strange when people come into the car and they just see my habits of just raw dogging it in the car, as they might say. But oh my gosh, like so many new ideas and inspirations come that are from the things I'm already focused on, not new things that are now crowding my thoughts, crowding my brain. Because no longer is the smartest kid in the class who has straight A's, the successful kid anymore, right? It is the one in fact, who has better communication skills, who has more empathy for people, who works really well on a team. These are the personal skills that are going to be valuable in the future. The one who tells a great story. These are the things that will matter because AI is making everything just so available for everybody. And those of us who know more can't possibly retain it as fast or gather it as fast as I could. And sadly, it's here. So we have to figure out what's valuable. What's valuable now is how quickly can you learn new things. That's going to be the skill of the future, is how quickly can you adapt the fast changing world around us.

And how quickly can you Implement. Right. That's what I got from lean learning so far is it's how quickly can you learn the minimum amount of information, knowledge, or strategy that is needed for you to do the thing that will generate the result in your life.

Correct.

And it goes back. I always say, like, it only takes one, not just one book to change your life. It takes one page in one book to change your life.

Right, Right. And we hear a lot from other very smart people who say, like, oh, you know, you need 10,000 hours to be, you know, an expert at something or a master, which may be true, but that doesn't mean you can't get value and find joy in literally our number one. It doesn't mean that you can't learn something and adjust and discover more about who you are and what lights you up in our number one. And so the learning happens when you start doing. That's the sort of fun part about this, is you can actually start to see results faster and start to figure out what doesn't work faster the sooner you do it. Now, once you get going, there are ways to speed things up and amplify that process and probably take less than 10,000 hours to master something, which I talk about in the book as well. But in the beginning, it's about a finding what matters to you and finding that next step, finding one resource to help you with that and just leaning into that for a period of time until you can then reassess whether or not you want to continue or not. That. And. And you may have not gotten this chapter yet, but I know that you. You embody this. It's the importance of having a support system around you, right from the emotional support from friends and family and how important that is to the colleagues and peers that you have who are going through the same process with you so that you can share results with each other, so you can inspire each other, so you can learn from each other's mistakes to the literal mentors in your life who are there to take you under their wing. These three kinds of what I call champions. Again, people who will champion you, people who will be happy that you are successful. We need to find more people like that in our life. Because a lot of times on the surface, people will almost feel jealous or want to pull you back down. Because we live in a bucket of crabs. Meaning there's this metaphor that we live in this world where the more higher you try to climb, the more people will try to tear you down. Because if you have a bucket of crabs, no crabs will leave because as soon as one tries to climb out, the others pull them back down. And that's unfortunately the world we live in. So surrounding yourself with the right people who are there to want to see you succeed and for you to want them to succeed as well is what makes the world go round and what makes it a more joyous place to live.

How do you find those people, Pat?

So, number one, let's start at the level of emotional support because again, I say that with regards to whatever it is that you're interested in, they might not know what you're interested in or even the language of that. Right. Like when I started my business, a lot of my friends and family were like, what are you doing? I don't understand this world, but I'm there for you and I'm there to support you. Unfortunately, not everybody has that emotional support from friends or family because, you know, they might again not believe in what it is that you're trying to do or achieve. And that's where there might be a crab, Right? Right, exactly. In your own family. And so number one, it's hard, but try not to talk about what it is that you're doing in front of those people because all they're going to do is tear you down. It's not you, it's them. And it's a reflection of who they are and how maybe insecure they feel about the choices they've made in their life. So that's really important to understand. But number two, go find people in your community or online. Especially in communities like the Miracle Morning community, there are people who will be there to support each other because you're on this journey together. And those people who may start out as peers and colleagues that are more surface level can become lifelong friends and deep relationships that you know, can bring you so much joy and value in life. And like I said, communities or, or live events, online events, there are people out there and pools of people in these communities. In the online world, especially where like minded people are trying to achieve something, who are there to support one another and go in there and just join the conversations. Like you'll eventually find people who you will vibe with in there. And then from peers and colleagues to virtual mentors or personal mentors, this is where you can kind of get involved in deeper ways. Sometimes it might require you investing in something like a program or something that they might have to get some coaching or mentoring from, or just might require you to ask or participate and be a star student, if you will, and they will recognize you for that I've recognized so many of my own students as far as, wow, this person's doing incredible work. Let me take them under my wing and see how else I can help them. Just like I know you've done with some of your miracle morning students as well. And it's. It's something that a lot of us people who are teaching want to see. We want to see students succeed, and we want to amplify that success because it then brings other people into those communities, too. So you can find mentors by being a star student. So those are just a few ways that you can find those people. But they're out there. But they're not going to happen if you just kind of wait for them. And I say that as an introvert as well. It's very difficult, but the reward is so great when you find those people. It doesn't mean you have to find hundreds of people. It could just be one buddy in the process that could change your life because you're helping each other on that day that you don't want to wake up and do your meditation, they're going to text you in the morning to make sure that you're going to do it with them. And that's such a wonderful thing. And I do see a world with now all the tech, all the AI, all the sort of, like, depersonalization of everything. I think the connection to other real human beings is going to be even more important in the future, more than any other time, really, in the world. That's what's going to be the difference between those who, yes, have access to the same information and are unhappy, but access to that same information, but adding that human element, that's what makes life fulfilling. Yeah.

No, I think the pendulum is swinging. Right before, it was like, it was all community. It was just us spending time with people, and technology was new and emerging, and it could give us advantages. And now it's like, there's more tech than you can consume, than you can utilize, but relationships are more scarce. And I know for me, having my wife and my friends, it can be like that emotional support is crucial. And then with mentoring, I've always said, like, because I know people get intimidated with, like, oh, I don't know where to go for a mentor. I always say, like, like the book. To me, every book that I read is a mentor.

Right.

And. And I know it's not an interactive mentor where I can't ask, you know, I'm not asking you questions in the book, but you spent years crafting, like, the perfect way to explain the information and hold somebody's hand through it. So to me, it's like I'm being mentored by Pat Flynn as I'm reading Lean Learning, which I love.

Right, right. And so, like, imagine a book as a mentor. You are learning from this person in all their years and wisdom, like you said. And imagine having a mentor who teaches you all this stuff and then you just carry on. You just do the same things that you normally do. Yeah, that's what most of us do when we read books. We. We absorb it. We. We learn. And it's a false sense of productivity. It feels good to consume again because we're conditioned to believe that the more we have, the better off we'll be. But the truth is those who are better off are the ones who are taking action and learning and making mistakes. Right. Mistakes aren't there to derail you. They actually create the guardrails that you can now, you know, move forward in and in between. So, you know, if that's the case, then why are we sitting with a mentor for, you know, however many hours it takes to read a book and then doing one or two things? Like you said, it just takes one or two pages. And what's nice about your book especially, and the way that I built Lean Learning as well, and that that book is you can do it as you read along, you know, you're seeing results as you go. I remember doing my savers for the first time, Hal, and like that same day, on day one, I was already experiencing something that I hadn't before. And then adding on now, the community element, other people who were doing it alongside me kept me going. And then you, the mentor, stepping in and sharing in the community and keeping us, you know, motivated. It was just a perfect formula, and there's no surprise why the book has done so well. So I've modeled a lot of sort of this on you and Miracle Morning because it has changed lives. And that's my goal here with Lean Learning as well.

Well, I think you nailed it. What I love about it, you know, you mentioned, like, we learn a lot and we don't do anything with what we learn. And I think that's what's cool about, about this book, is that you're teaching people. It's almost like it reminds me of the whole the sharpening the saw analogy, right? Where the young guy's cutting down the tree and he's chopping, chopping, chopping. He's going fast, he's going hard, and then the older man the wiser man keeps stopping to sharpen his saw, and the younger man's looking over going, dude, what are you. I'm crushing you. What are you doing? And in the end, the older man wins. And to me, it's like, for those of us, if you're listening and you're like, like, I'm not where I want to be. I read the books, I listen to the podcast. I'm not where I want to be. To me, it's like you're that young man swinging that ax over and over and over and over and over, wondering, why is this thing feel so dull? Why am I not getting the results? And it's like, this book is like, no, no, you're sharpening your saw as you read it. And then you're actually going back and chopping the tree as you read it. And then you're coming back and you're sharpening the saw. And then like, it's happening while you're reading the book. And I thought about it like, this book as a mentor is in so many ways far more effective than because the other books are teaching you what to do. This is teaching you how to learn what you need to learn to do what you need to do, that you then apply to all the other aspects of your life. So that's what came up for me.

I love it, Hal. I love it. That's a perfect analogy.

You mentioned mastery a couple of minutes ago and the whole 10,000 hour rule. But in this book, you talk about a concept called micromastery. Talk about that.

Yeah. So micromastery is a way to speed run your skill acquisition to become the master faster. Imagine you are a conductor of an orchestra or a band. Right? One way to get better is to just have the band continue to play the same song over and over and over again, start to finish, every single time. And yeah, every time you do it and you get those reps and it gets better and better. But the way to fast forward that success is to find the parts within that that need a little help, hone in on it for a certain period of time. Like the violas, they have this run in measure 30. That is very difficult. So, okay, hey, orchestra, let's. Let's pause for a moment. Let's focus on the violas for the next five minutes. And let's just work on this two bar measure. Two measures. To be able to kind of master this little run, that is a little difficult. So let's do that. Okay, now let's do one viola at a time to kind of, you know, hone in on it. This is what your learning can be like. And actually got inspired by a runner friend of mine. He's an ultra marathon runner. You know, he runs like 50 miles a day or something crazy like that. I don't know how that's even possible. But what he does to get better, cuz he trains and he wants to be the best, is he will hyper focus on one little aspect of running. Yeah, for like a two to four week period every time. So when he was teaching me this, he was like, okay, so for example, for two weeks what he did was he focused on just how his heel landed on the ground and how he sprung on each step so that he could hyperfocus on the best stride that would then be the stride that he would use and then move forward with. And as he learned like another thing. So he got to the point where he hired a camera crew to slow motion record himself run so we could see how his foot landed on the ground with different shoes and you know, different actions, different angles of trajectory, whatever. Like it's. It was beyond my understanding, but he was able to find a stride that worked for him. And of course that one little incremental improvement stacked over 50 miles is going to save him so much. And so then for the next couple weeks he focused on just his breathing. And he actually like used tape to put over his mouth so he could just breathe through his nose and sort of like do what I like to call a force function. To force that, to be able to learn it and then embody that. And then now he's this like world class runner, which is, which is really cool. I did the same thing when I learned how to speak on stage. I micromastered my way into public speaking. So number one, there are many things to understand when you're public speaking, right? The slides, the hook in the beginning, how do you close the call to action, the storytelling that. What do you do with your hands? Where do you stand on stage? What's the tone of your voice? If you were to again study all of that up front, you would be overwhelmed. You'd be absolutely overwhelmed and mostly feel like that you would never be good at this. But what if you picked one thing at a time? Perhaps maybe the highest leverage thing or the first domino that can knock over the rest. In the world of public speaking, it's storytelling. If you tell a good story, none of that other stuff is really as important. However, if you want to be a master, you focus on storytelling. And what that means is now I'm going to read about just storytelling. I'm going to get books on just storytelling. I'm going to tell stories at dinner with these new concepts in mind. I'm going to watch TED talks, but I'm only going to watch the opening stories so I can learn how they kind of hook me in. And I'm going to master that for four weeks and then put that into my next talk. Okay, cool. The next talk after that, I'm going to focus on just what do I do with my hands. So I'm going to watch a hundred TED talks, but I'm not going to watch them all the way through. I'm just going to watch them and go in the middle and just see what they do with their hands so I can understand like how are they using their hands to emphasize their points and to make people feel like these big points are bigger or these small points are more vulnerable. These kinds of things that you could pick up. And all along the way you are stacking these skills on top of each other to get masterful much faster. Right? And it's just such a beautiful way to approach things because you do it not forever. You focus and hyper focus on these small things that then embody your now style of doing it. And then you can kind of learn the next component of it. Right? Same thing happens with riding, same thing happens with skateboarders, like whatever it might be, right? If I'm a skateboarder and I'm trying to learn how to skateboard, I'm not going to try to learn all the tricks on day one, right? Let me learn how to ollie first because a lot of other tricks are based on the ollie. So let me master this. Let me watch videos on this. Let me maybe hire a coach or a mentor. The 16 year old kid down the block who's crushing it with his skateboard. I'm going to pay him 100 bucks for two weeks to work with me to get me to ollie. And that's all I'm going to focus on. Because then after ollie, I can now, I can now do a kickflip. I can now grind a rail, whatever it might be, right? So Micromaster is the way to mastery in a much. You know, it's even fun too. It's just okay for the month of September. Yeah. This is the one thing I'm going to focus on. I'm going to nail it and then I know I'm going to nail something else on in October. Right. It's so. It's such a fun way to compartmentalize your learning so it doesn't, again, feel overwhelming. And finding the right resources at the right time for that component is much easier because guess what? Those resources are there. There is information about literally everything right now. And this, this is why you don't need to worry about, oh, I need to get it now, because I might not come across it later. By the time you need it, it will probably be even more updated and better. So focus on the now. Micro mastery.

That's the way I love micro mastery as a concept. To your point, it's fun. It's not overwhelming.

Right.

It's the opposite of overwhelming. Right. It's the one you're choosing. The one thing right now that I'm going to focus on. But what I love about it is not only is it not overwhelming, it creates confidence and momentum because you focus on that one thing. How do I open a speech?

Right?

So you just watch the first two minutes of 50 different speeches. You're like, oh, I like the way they open that one. I can borrow that from that one. Okay, here's a commonality I'm seeing between all of them. And then you go, wow, I feel really competent at opening a speech, which is arguably one of, you know, opening and closing a speech are the two most important parts. Right? So. And then you have confidence that I nailed this, I mastered this one little thing, and then now you have momentum. Cool, let's go. What's next? So it's one of my favorite concepts from the book. Another concept that you just. You mentioned it very subtly again a couple of minutes ago. Force functions. You said force functions, but I know in the book you called them voluntary force functions. Can you share what that is? If you have a personal example to bring it home, I'd love that for sure.

Yeah. So a force function is not anything new, but it's rather a situation that gets you to finally do something. Right? It's forcing you to do it. And for me, the reason I call it in the book a voluntary force function is because you want to purposefully do that. Now, you got to be sure that you're not putting yourself in total danger. And I'm not saying, like, quit your job if you want to start a business, although that is an example of this. An involuntary one is one I experienced when I got laid off. Right. I was involuntarily put into a position of heightened pressure to then make decisions that were life changing. For me to start a business and to go down that route of entrepreneurship wouldn't have happened If I had had not gotten laid off, which is really interesting to think about. But a voluntary force function, there is an example of this. And in fact, Tim Ferriss is a really good example of this. He wrote about it a bit, didn't call it that, but it was in his book, the Four Hour Work Week. He also had a show on Apple TV which was essentially him putting himself in situations to learn quickly. So, for example, and then I'll tell you a personal one, Tim, for one episode of this show, I can't even remember the name of the show, but I remember specifically one of the episodes because he was trying to learn how to speak Tagalog, which is the Filipino language. I'm half Filipino myself, so I was very interested in this. My wife and I watched this episode. And to help himself, what he did was he booked an interview with a Filipino news station in about a couple months. Y so that's the voluntary force function. He volunteered to do something that was going to force him to learn how to speak Tagalog. Now, could he learn and be completely fluent within two months? No, but he could learn just exactly what he needed to know to hopefully hold himself in a conversation well enough. And that's exactly what he did. Another thing he did was he moved in with a Filipino family for a couple weeks where they spoke nothing but Tagalog. So he again put himself in a situation to have to learn. And I remember even when I was trying to learn Japanese, I was trying to learn with Duolingo. I very much love Japanese culture. I was visiting Japan more since the Pokemon thing took off and I wanted to learn how to speak the language. So I was on Duolingo again, flashcarding it. It was not sticking. However, I remember the first day there were certain words that I just learned because I was literally there and I had to absorb these words. And I had, like, with Japanese culture, being very, very respectful, being very grateful about things, I learned how to say, finally certain words that were important in that world, like.

Which is thank you very much, but in a more polite way. And I just couldn't remember it when there was no context, when it was not being actually implemented. But when I was there, I learned all these words and many more in the moment. Right. And that was, again, that was a voluntary force function for me, going back to speaking, learning how to speak, combined with micromastery. But the idea that I actually was deathly afraid of speaking before I did my first talk. But it was my buddy Philip Taylor, who runs an event called FinCon, who said, Pat, I really need your help. I would love for you to speak on stage. At my first event, and as reluctant as I was, as much as I was deathly afraid of it, I wanted to help a friend. And I knew that by saying yes, by voluntarily putting myself in this situation, that I would finally get up off my butt and start learning, but not learn everything because I didn't have the time, but learn the right things at the right time that I needed. So when I said yes to that number one, after I kind of was done sweating bullets because, again, I was a little bit nervous about it, I went to some mentors who were speakers and I said, if there was one resource to learn how to speak better more quickly, where would you go? A couple of them said, just watch TED Talks. Okay, cool. TED Talks, that makes sense. One of them said, go check out a book by Dale Carnegie called Stand and Deliver. And I was like, okay, that's the one book I'm going to read. There's many other books. There's Nancy Duarte's Resonate and there's so many others out there. But I'm just going to focus on that one book. I'm going to absorb it and put it into action. And my first talk was in 2011, and I've now since spoken on 350 plus different stages and have earned over seven figures as a speaker. To give you an idea of, like, again, just getting started and putting yourself in a situation to just get started. If you were trying to be a musician, imagine booking or maybe even just telling your friends that you're going to be playing out in Central Park. If you're from New York, like, hey, guys, I'm going to be playing out in Central park in two months. Come watch me play. You've never picked up a guitar in your life?

Yep.

I mean, you're going to figure it out, you're going to do it, and what's the worst that can happen? Well, you might embarrass yourself a little bit, but what's the best that can happen? You're going to start this new journey in your life that's going to bring you so much joy and fulfillment.

Yeah, Yeah. I love that. Committing publicly has been a strategy of mine for, you know, again, never didn't call it voluntary force function, but that's what I've done. Like, miracle morning. I had been working on that book for two and a half years, or two, I guess, two years. And I would have worked on it for the next 10 years. And 2012 started and I went, oh, wait a minute. This year, December 12, 2012, is going to be 12, 12, 12. I think the next time this happens is probably, I don't know, 100 years or whatever. So I just decided, even though my book wasn't even close to halfway finished, I just announced publicly, hey, guys, the Miracle morning book will officially be out on December 12, 2012. 12, 12, 12, mark your calendar. And then I had to back into it. That was my voluntary force function. I had to figure it out. And I was literally, I mean, I was writing it 12 hours a day the last few weeks up until the deadline. Like, but if I hadn't have committed to that date publicly, I wouldn't have done it, dude.

And that book has changed so many lives because of that. Because you selected that date. And selecting a date is an important component of a voluntary force function like that. But there's another side of voluntary force functions which is only allowing yourself access to the thing that you want to do. And this isn't always applicable, but let me give you an example, because this is probably my most recent example. So I'm a big fisherman. I love to go fishing. And I always wanted to. This is freshwater fishing. I've always wanted to learn how to fish with a jig. A jig is a larger hook with like a skirt on it. It's artificial lure. And the thing about a jig and why people want to use a jig is because the bass that you can catch are so much bigger. And the strike or the, the setting the hook is so much more fun because you have to really set it. And I've always wanted that. And so I would always tie on a jig when I go fishing out in the boat, and I bring a bunch of other rods with a bunch of other baits. And I'd start with the jig because I wanted to learn it. And after 30 minutes without getting a bite, I would always tell myself, you know what? I guess I'm just not cut out for this. I'm not good at a jig. So let me go back to old reliable. And I would just throw my drop shot rig and I would catch fish. It would almost like, it would almost validate that I was like not good at jigging and I was good at the other things. So why, why continue jigging? But I really wanted to learn how to do it. So one day I went out on the boat, and this was about a year ago, and I brought nothing but jigs.

Nice.

I brought two rods, both had jigs tied on. And I brought my tackle box. Only jigs. Literally the only thing I could do was jig fish. And so after 30 minutes, again, no bites, my mind was like, okay, I'm going to go back to. Oh, wait, I. I can't.

Can't.

So I'm just going to keep casting. Several hours go by, but you know what I'm learning? I'm casting a little bit better. I'm trying different finessing with my rod tip and all these other things. And eventually I got a bite and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is incredible. I didn't catch my first bite, but it was something that I didn't think was possible, that is now possible because I forced myself to just stick with the jig. Eventually, at the end of the day, I picked up two bass. I actually landed two bass, and they were bigger than I normally catch. And that is now my go to bait. And I've now since caught my personal best with a jig recently, a 5.12 pound bass. Everything's catch and release anyway. But it was so much fun. And again, it wouldn't have happened if I allowed myself to fall into older habits because there was literally no choice.

Yeah, well, and to me, voluntary force function is like, how do you overcome fear? How do you manufacture courage? That's what I would call it. Right? Like, you manufacture courage to do the thing you're afraid of by forcing yourself to do it.

Right.

Because otherwise you might let the fear win and you might continue to, like you said, repeat those old patterns of, well, in the past, this is what I've done. So I'll just keep doing what I've always done versus forcing that. Obviously, a lot of our listeners are Miracle Morning practitioners. I'd say the majority of. So I'd love to know, how can someone practicing the miracle morning apply lean learning principles to their morning routine?

Yeah. You know what I love about this question? You already tell people how to do this in the book, right? It's like, if you don't have a lot of time and you can't spend 20 to 30 minutes per task, just do one minute. Like, let's start small and get it done just to get the motions going. You already, in your book, teach people how to do this. And so hopefully people are doing that. But the other thing about this is, is to find support. So get that community around you to kind of do it together. Whether it's family, friends, or other people in the online community, do it together. That's a very important component of this. And here's my favorite thing that you can do to embody what it is that you're learning from hell. Teach other people. Yeah. About the Miracle Morning, the very last chapter. I know you probably haven't gotten into it yet, but the very last chapter in the book, Hal, is about learning by leading. And an example of this, I had a friend of mine recently who was learning how to play the ukulele. He lives in Hawaii. So of course that's like where the birth of the ukulele and there's all these amazing artists there who, who teach it. So he was paying a lot of money to a person who was teaching ukulele. He was learning all the chords. He had done this for a few weeks and was learning how to strum and do some basic chords. He told me that he was so surprised when the instructor, this world class ukulele instructor, told him to teach ukulele to his son. And his first thought was, wait, I'm the one learning like you're teaching me and you're this master I like. I only know a few chords like, I'm not ready to teach yet.

Yeah.

But the instructor insisted. And through teaching his son, he was able to internalize, because he had to then understand it enough to then share it, that he started to internalize these chords. And it just became second nature to him because he was again, almost in a way like a voluntary force function, if you will, he was forced to figure it out in a way that would be easy for an 8 year old to understand.

Yeah.

And then the joy that the eight year old started experiencing when he could strum a few chords was then energy brought back to him to then go learn even more from this world class instructor. So what an amazing power move by the instructor to say, hey, go teach. That's how you learn. Yeah. And so for any of the lean learn or any of the Miracle Morning practitioners out there, share and maybe even teach others around you, spread the gospel of how amazing the miracle morning is and don't force it. And like, some people might not be about it, but when you teach it to others, because I have the podcast, the podcast has been an amazing thing for me to absorb from others and then teach totally and therefore absorb it for myself. That's how I've been able to memorize the savers and everything for all these years now, because I was teaching it as well on your behalf and feeding people to the book, which again, I'm just grateful to have been able to be a part of that movement with you. Teach that's the most amazing thing you can do. And here's the thing, most people will say, like the ukulele student, oh, I'm not ready to teach yet. I'm still learning. No, that's the best time to teach. Because the truth is, you can be even more valuable to somebody having just gone through a process and learning it yourself. You are more relatable in that way. I would much rather learn from somebody who's just one or two steps ahead of something versus, like, the person on the podium at some university who's 40 years removed from what it's actually like on the field to do something. Right. So teach it.

Yeah, I learned that once you're best qualified to teach the person that you once were. I'm sure you've heard that right, buddy.

Yeah.

And so if you're on step two, you're now qualified to teach step one to someone that's on step zero.

Right.

You don't have to be on step 10 or be the master. And that's for me, the podcast admitting this to the podcast listeners.

Right.

I am not a master of everything I teach. I often will learn something and immediately turn around and teach it. I remember going to a Brendan Burchard event, like 10 years ago, and I came back from Brendan Burchard's event, and I immediately taught what I learned from Brendan on my podcast on the next step. I took my notes, I synthesized them, and I taught it. Right. I had just learned it days before, but now I'm teaching it well, now I understand it even more because a lot of us, like, I'm a verbal processor, so as I'm talking through it, other ideas and thoughts, and I'm relating it to stories and personal examples. Right. So I love that concept as well.

I'm say writing this book A, a force function because I had a date that a manuscript was. Was due. B, teaching the stuff that I had always done, but never, like you said, synthesized or processed in a way that would have been easy to understand because I didn't fully understand it myself. It was by having this book come out that required me to now put it into frameworks, to give things certain names to then understand it so that I can help others. Which has now made me understand it even more and actually define it more in my own life. So a hundred percent, I think that's great. And, you know, there's a lot of concepts in the book, obviously, for anybody, anybody who's doing lean learning wants to be a better person, a better version of themselves, and what this does is helps you get rid of all the extra noise out there that isn't going to help you be your best self and sort of lean out. That right. Like a diet, you're leaning out, but then you lean into the things. You get deeper into the things that matter most. That's what this book will do for you. And I think again, it's a perfect companion guide or book for Miracle Morning.

Where can people find the book and where can they connect with you?

Pat, you could find it anywhere books or are sold. I mean, it's going to be on Amazon, of course, Barnes and Noble. My other books were self published. This is my first traditionally published book. So it's like even a bigger force function for me. There's more at stake. But it's so exciting and I'm just so grateful for you, Hal. It'll also be on like Target and Barnes and Noble and those kinds of things too, which is just wild to me. But again, Miracle Morning has been so inspirational. This sort of message that's kind of easy to understand on the surface, but has levels of depth to it that will change people's lives. The idea of lean learning is not complicated. It's in fact very easy to understand. Right. But it is when you go deeper into the things that matter to you most by clearing out all this extra noise that we're now living with that we've never had before. When you learn how to learn faster, you will become more valuable, but you will also just have more fun. Dude, every time I see anything you're up to, Hal, you're always having so much fun and you embody really the message of lean learning in such a grand way as well. So thank you again for allowing me to share it here. Just anybody who picks up the book, I'm so grateful for you and the movement that we're trying to create here.

Yeah, I think it's so important. I think that when I read just the introduction of the book, I mean, I got excited when I started to read oh, what this book is about. Sounds perfect for me. But when I read the introduction, I literally. And you've been there before, I'm sure. Listeners, Pat, you read like, you know, you're like, oh, this is what I need in my life right now. And for me, I immediately felt a sense of relief. Like I've been feeling overwhelmed for as long as I can remember. And I feel like this book is the answer to not only stop feeling overwhelmed, but to actually make massive progress in the areas of my life that matter most. While not feeling overwhelmed, I'm like, this is win, win, win. I'm totally in. So I'm grateful you wrote this book, man.

Thank you. If I may have a couple more minutes with you, what is one inspiration or learning that you're trying to focus on right now? Of all the things that were kind of on your mind, what's maybe one thing that you're wanting to focus on a little bit more deeply?

For me, there's a contradiction between I'm always like, and you might deal with this at all. But it's like, dad is my number one priority and husband. So I go, I need to read the dad book and the husband book. And there's a book for just being a dad to daughters that I'm reading, and there's a book for just being a dad to sons that I'm reading.

Right.

But then I'm like, I also need to grow this business book over here or grow the business. So I've got this business book. So that, for me, that's a challenge, is like trying to divide my time and attention between being the best husband and father that I can be and. And then actually scaling my business.

There's a section in the book about where to put your time and how to prioritize that, which we're not going to get into now, but, like, it perfectly speaks to that. So when you get to that part in the book, I think it's going to unlock a lot of great things for you, and I think that's not an uncommon thing to feel as well. You want to be an amazing father and husband, and you are, but you want to get better. And I do, too. Imagine even just one concept from each of those books being put into action tomorrow. Like, you could already start to see some results from that. And imagine on the opposite side, spending your whole life reading these books and trying to understand more about being an amazing husband and an amazing father. And all of a sudden your kids are leaving the house because they're going to college. You have to make action happen now because we don't have unlimited amounts of time. We have now unlimited access to information, but we have to know how to deal with it.

Well said, brother. Well, everybody listening? The book is lean Learning how to Achieve More by learning Less, by my good friend Pat Flynn. Or if you're his mom, you can call him Patrick. I love. At the top of the book, it says, number one, learn everything. Crossed out. Number two, get overwhelmed. Crossed out. Number three, give up. Crossed out. And the subtitle is your solution, how to achieve more by learning less. The book is lean learning. Get it where books are sold. And Pat, I love you. I appreciate you, brother. I'm so grateful for you coming on the podcast today.

I love it, too, Hal. Thank you so much, man.

All right, goal achievers. I'll talk to y' all soon. Talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about the Achieve your goals podcast and to get access today's show notes, transcript and exclusive content from hal Elrod, visit Halelrod.com podcast thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Achieve your goals podcast.