219: Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

All right, so we are gonna be talking about a book today that I think is one of my all-time favorite books. And you sent me a text message saying that you were mad at this book for making you rethink a bunch of things, which I thought was pretty funny.

I had a feeling like you were gonna start the show off with that. And it's like, it's so true. Like I read this book and I got to the end of it and all I could think was, well, can I reread it right now? Before we record again, right? Like I wanted to read it a second time just 'cause I felt like there was so much I was missing. Like I probably took more notes in this book than I've taken in a book in a really long time. So good choice, Mike, good choice. I mean, we're putting the cart before the horse, but good choice on this one.

Yeah, well, this one has been a long time coming. I, yeah, we interviewed Anne-Laure for the, Focus Podcast, which at this point it's out now, so I can finally put the link to that episode in the show notes. But this has been on, you know, I've been looking forward to this day to be able to talk through this book with you. Before we get there, I guess we should do some follow-up with these action items. So I've got one and it was, how can I make it easier for people to try my products and services? I actually have something made for this, but it's not available for this, if that makes any sense. Uh, so we talked about the different things that I could do with Life HQ, the community, stuff like that. So I'm in the middle of significantly revamping the community. I'm starting to do these free hot seat coaching sessions, which are 30 minutes. We connect and then other people can join the call and they can ask questions and comment in the chat. But otherwise it's like a private coaching call. It's happening in front of other people. I've done one of those. It went really, really well this week. I've got another one scheduled for when we get back from our vacation. I did a separate coaching call also this week, and coaching is, is fun. It's kind of my jam. I like it a lot. So the, the library as it exists is going to have all my courses. It's going to have these hot seats. It's going to have these Q&A sessions. There's going to be a whole bunch more programming. In the library, and that's the one that's going to be, I'm thinking, $597 a year. Um, okay, because it's got like thousands of dollars worth of courses that are going to be included in it. And once you have like Life HQ, you've got it, you know. So, um, all that stuff is going to be rolled in there. But then I'm gonna make a light version of that, which I'm committing to this publicly now, I guess, but, uh, My thought is I'll take just the forum part and I'll make that available to people so they can kind of have a feel for what the community is like. And I will charge $47 as a one-time payment for that. So $47 once you get in there. And I feel like having the paywall there is, is important because it shows that people are a little bit more serious about this stuff. But my whole goal of that part is like the Obsidian Discord and the Obsidian forum, but nobody is yelling at you because you didn't search for something first or you formatted something a little bit wrong. It drives me nuts when I see stuff like that.

Me too.

But it happens all the time. Uh, I want it to be a nice place for curious sensemakers who wanna use their PKM systems to achieve their goals and do their best knowledge work, stuff like that. So, um, yeah, I'm thinking of, of doing that and, and it's like such a big, leap there. I'm not sure if that's actually going to work, but that's kind of my thought is you can trial it for a little bit without any of the live stuff, essentially without any of the courses. And then if you like it, you like the vibe, you like my, my approach, then, then you can make the investment in the upgrade. And then there'll be another tier, which is really just like more consistent one-on-one and group coaching. I actually did a call with somebody yesterday who has a successful group coaching program, and I picked his brain about How do you set this up? What are the types of things that you do? What are you looking for in terms of delivering success to the people that are in your program? So I got a lot more clarity on what that could look like. But really the exciting part to me is just that entry-level tier. Yeah. Being able for people to try it out without committing to a pretty hefty subscription.

What's your, like, in the next 6 months, in the next year, like how soon do you want to try to roll this thing out?

That is a great question. To be honest, I don't know. I am working on like a whole practicalpcam.com revamp. Yeah, the website's going to change, but also I'm also launching several like mini sites. So there'll be one for the cohort, which is going to become a hybrid cohort. That one actually was like the first step. So when I launched the live cohort last time, that was the new look and feel. That same design is going to be applied to, uh, the Starter Vault page, so that like the free Starter Vault that people can download, and the library page, the Life HQ page. So those are all like microsites that are going to go live, and they're all kind of tied together. So like Life HQ, there's two versions there. You can get just Life HQ, or you can get it with, uh, a year— you get access to the library and you get it, get it for free along with all the other stuff. With the library, there's multiple tiers there. One of them includes Life HQ, right? So there's there's things that connect these different pages. They're, they're separate, they're independent, but they're interdependent, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So that's, that's all gonna launch when it's ready essentially. And it's close, you know, I'm, if I had to guess, probably the next month or so.

All I can think is like your systems integrator hat is like, or like your, your neurons are firing like crazy cuz it's like, how do I connect all these dots and how do I get people to flow from here to here and, you know, go in the right direction and all that stuff.

Yeah, that's not, not too far off. Yeah, it's, it's a lot though. It's a lot to, a lot to keep track of. And there's, there's multiple pieces here from multiple projects managed by multiple people.

Yeah.

So I'm ready for it to be done. But anyways, all that to say, I think that I do get a green checkmark for my action item this time.

Good, good. Okay, so I'm up now. I'm 50/50. So where am I settling for good instead of great? That was my first one. I think one of the areas where I'm settling for good instead of great is leadership at home right now. So like, it's one of those, you know, not to get too into the weeds on it or too personal, but it's like, I just keep getting that feeling of it's like, I should be doing more, I could be doing more. And not in like a woe is me kind of way, but in like a, okay, Cory, step up, like step up, you could be doing more, you should be doing more. And the reason you're not isn't a lack of ability, it's not anything like that, it's just the fact that you're not prioritizing it. Enough. So you need to prioritize it more. Now, the other thing on this one, so I'm going to give myself a green check mark on that one because I identified like a really major one for me. But the other one is like, this book kind of goes against that idea, like completely not, not like, you know, um, today's author isn't trying to say like, don't do great things, but it's like, give yourself the ability to try and experiment and learn as through these growth loops. So I kind of like am conflicted now because it's like, yeah, I want to be, you know, I want to go for great, but I don't want to go for perfection. And we're going to talk about that later as we, as we move into this today. The next one was do a force field analysis on something. And I just lost this one. Completely lost it. I'm going to blame it on sickness. So, I mean, I get a, I get a red X, but no, I just completely, completely lost that one. It may have just not bubbled up to the top. Of the week that there was nothing pressing from a force field analysis standpoint. So I'm 50/50 today.

All right, well, you ready to talk about today's book?

I am, I am.

All right, so as alluded to, this has been a long time coming for me. We are going to be talking about Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and, uh, this has been— this was just released, but this is something that Anne-Laure has been working on for quite a while. I think it's safe to say that everything that she wrote at her website Nest Labs has kind of led up to this, but I don't think this was her goal at the beginning. You know, I'm gonna do all this stuff with the end goal of I'm actually going to publish this book. Now, I have been following Anne-Laure for a long time. I am a paying member of the Nest Labs community. She has a little bit different take on community, which we'll probably talk about in the, the last section of, of this book. And, um, yeah, I don't know what else to say. I guess we should just jump into it. I guess I could talk about the structure because we're not going to tackle it chapter by chapter.

Can I say one thing first?

Yeah, go for it.

Mike, are you looking at the—

that is a physical book. I see this is a physical book.

Okay, this is a physical book. I want you to know that Mike, I read the entire physical book and I took notes via the physical book and I hated every second of the physical book process.

You don't have to do that. I know you mentioned the same thing last time.

Like, yeah, I tried again, right? I tried again and it just doesn't work. Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me what we do. So now we can go in and talk about the book. Tell me the structure of the book. Tell me about the structure of the book.

So there's an introduction, there's a conclusion, and then in between there are 4 parts. So the first part is PACT: Commit to Curiosity, 3 chapters. Part 2: ACT: Practice Mindful Productivity. Part 3: REACT: Collaborate with Uncertainty. And Part 4: IMPACT: Grow with the World. So 12 chapters, but like I said, it kind of fits into those, those 4 different sections. And I think we'll tackle this section by section. Thoughts on the overall structure of the book before we get into the specifics here.

Yeah, I didn't have any issues with the overall structure of the book. Like sometimes it, you know, it just kind of rubs you the wrong way and you can't figure out why. And then eventually, like, you'll figure it out. This one, I mean, it was your standard multiple parts, 3 sections in each part kind of a thing. But like, it didn't feel forced. It didn't feel like— I can't even tell you that I think any of the chapters felt like fluff, like they didn't need to be there. Like, it just actually flowed well. Made sense. I, you know, the PACT, ACT, REACT, IMPACT, like I thought that was pretty clever in this sense and not like overly forced. So no, like there really wasn't anything about the structure of this. I thought it worked really well.

Cool. So let's start with the introduction then. And this is where you basically get a little bit of Anne-Laure's backstory. She, uh, was a, an employee at Google and kind of had considered that her dream job and then quit, and her parents kind of thought that she was crazy when she did that. She went from there and started a company with a co-founder, a tech startup that failed, and then from there she started writing online with a single-packed to write 100 articles in 100 days. It's kind of how she got her start. She wrote all these articles. She was going to school at the time. She has since gotten her PhD. So, um, she is taking a lot of these neuroscience classes and she's writing about the things that she's learning on, on her blog. And that's probably the reason that she came on my radar, to be honest. I've always kind of been interested in the topic of neuroscience and the plasticity of the brain and how we learn and stuff like that. And there is a good bit of that, I think, in here, but it's, it's also, uh, I think, very focused. It's sort of like a productivity book on how to, uh, how to achieve great, like, big things, I would argue. But the way it's framed with the tiny experiments is very unique and it kind of gives it a very approachable on-ramp for a lot of people.

Yeah, so I was gonna ask you this question in the intro section here. I didn't feel like this was as much a productivity book as it was like a life direction book, or, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't see this as a, as much of a productivity type of a book the way I typically think of a productivity book. So, you know, reading the blurbs on the back, you know, different people would refer to it as, you know, productivity. And I'm like, nah, it's not really that. And then, you know, Newport, Cal Newport says, linear goals, falling uncertainty, bloom into possibility, and emerge organically. It's a life design book. Like, I felt like it was much more on the— in lines with Design Your Life. Than it was something like, how do I get more productive in, you know, the 168 hours I have every week, right? So I thought that's maybe what made it better for me. Like, as I was working through it, it was like, okay, it's this exploration book, not a here's another system, put your, put your info into the system and turn the crank. You know, like it was much more of a here's a possible way to explore life and what you want to do and how you want to be creative and how you want to generate things. So I like that one. This is kind of summarized in, you know, I think it's the last line of what she writes in the introduction, or it's very close to it, but, uh, ask big questions, design tiny experiments. And I think that's a really cool way to, to orient, you know, thinking about things is like, what are the big things that I care about? And then how do I design like the smallest possible way to learn more about that or to get exposure to that? So, um, Yeah, like, I really like the— I guess the goal of this book, if you will, kind of resonates with me a lot.

Yeah. And I guess I talk about it being a productivity book because that's kind of the, the on-ramp with the first couple sections specifically. But then you're right, it does kind of get to the point where it is more talking big picture. And that's part 4, you know, impact, grow with the world. It's really How do you fit in in the larger worldwide community? And gets into like this idea of social flow and the protégé effect and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, so there's a really unique arc here, I think. And it's quite the journey she takes us on. I think it's a pretty effective journey, obviously. So I've talked pretty glowingly about this book because I've read it actually a couple months ago at this point. I've actually read it again for, for the podcast here and did not disappoint rereading it.

Well, and I told you, I did. I tell you, I don't know if it was the start of the show or if it was in the pro show, but it was like, this is one of the books I wanted to read again. Like, as soon as I got done with it, I wanted to read it again. So I agree with you completely. Like, really good off as soon as you open it up. It seems really good.

Yeah. So let's start with the first section and I'll mention the chapters here, but we can kind of pick from whatever you want to talk about inside these chapters. I am kind of curious, you know, this is the second time that I've gone through it. You've gone through it once. You've got a different perspective on this maybe than I do. So I want to give more room maybe than I normally do for any questions or perspective that you want to share in discussion, discussing this. It's my book, I picked it. So typically, you know, I'm going to initiate the discussion here as we go through the outline, but feel free to jump in here wherever you want. So the first section, Commit to Curiosity. What is not explicit in that first section is explicit in the first chapter, Why Goal Setting is Broken. I love that.

Obviously she gave, she gave you a gigantic hug with chapter 1.

Yeah, it's true. Chapter 2, Escaping the Tyranny of Purpose. And then chapter 3 is A Pact to Turn Doubts into Experiments. So I like the, the right away first chapter addressing the elephant in the room, basically. Yeah, why goal setting is broken. And if I were to summarize this, it would be that when most people think of goal setting, they think of SMART goals. And if you follow that format, it ends up being a very linear approach, in her words, which is wildly out of sync with the way that how many of us live our lives. When you are using these linear goals, they often stimulate fear, they encourage toxic productivity, and they're based on competition and isolation. I think that last one maybe is a— that you could argue is a little bit of a stretch, but the other two I think are absolutely non-negotiable. They 100% push you down that path. I don't think it has to necessarily trigger competition and isolation. But I do think that is kind of a natural byproduct of, of goals. There's this scarcity mindset that comes along with it a lot of times, and it's because you're so focused on, I've got to get to this outcome, that you kind of really don't care what else happens. And so it sort of forces you to do whatever is necessary in order to achieve the, the outcome. And I've fallen into this myself. This is kind of the, the reason why I, I don't like goals. Now, in the past, I have kind of said disconnect from the project-based, you know, we're going to set a specific SMART goal around this thing. And instead, how do we just develop a habit and learn to love the process? I do think that is, generally speaking, the right direction here. But the whole kind of approach with the pact is putting a time limit on that. It's, I'm going to do this for a little while and then I'm going to I'm gonna take a step back and I'm gonna look at the feedback that I've gotten. And I think that actually maybe is a little bit more approachable because you're not committing to this thing forever. It's kind of like I'm trying this out and I'm gonna see what happens. But the desired effect, I think, is that we break free from this outcome-oriented, SMART goal approach. And then when we do that, we replace it with this curiosity and that's where the experimental mindset comes in. So it doesn't mean that we're not ambitious, we're not trying to get things done, but we're also going to hold things lightly and we're gonna see what comes from stuff as we play with it.

Yeah, I think of this, her description of this in this first chapter, the second chapter, even into the third chapter, it kind of smushes together what I've heard you talk about with habits, right? And moving from goals to habits, or, you know, James Clear's Atomic Habits or BJ Fogg, you know, Tiny Habits, like what I've heard in all those different places talking about habits and then themes. So life theme, yearly theme, right? Like it kind of takes those two ideas and it smushes them together. In my mind, like the theme can be too like, ethereal, right? Like, oh, I have this theme, but like, what does that mean? Like, I don't know what that— like, am I going to do anything about it or I'm just going to have the theme, right? Whereas the goal on the other side of the spectrum is like, oh, if I don't achieve it, I failed. If I don't, you know, live up to it, I failed or whatever it is. And like that, I fall into that trap all the time where it takes this idea of habits, but it gives it more, you know, like I hate to use the word purpose because the second chapter is Escape the Tyranny of Purpose, but it gives it more of a goal. It gives it more of an objective, if you will. Right? Like, so my habits now have a goal, but they're, as you said, they're like time-limited. So I can then reevaluate and I'm given the ability to, or I'm given the emphasis or the, what's the word I'm looking for, Mike? Like the encouragement, right? To actually look at those, you know, in 6 weeks or in 4 weeks or in a week or, you know, 100 essays or 100, whatever it is. Like, I really like the kind of smushing together. And I think she did a really, really good job making that very clear. Like when I came out of this, I was like, oh, I clearly understand. Here's a question for you. Did you realize PACT was an acronym at first?

Uh, yes, but I think I— so that I think I heard about on her blog.

Okay.

First, like, I, I knew it was an acronym, but I did not know what it stood for.

Okay.

Um, I like it, you know, purposeful, actionable, continuous, trackable. And, and that is very different than the SMART goals. That trackable piece seems like it maybe is a little bit, a little bit contradictory, but it's really— it's not tracking progress towards the completion of a goal and the, you know, achieving an outcome. It's really, did I do the thing today?

Yep. And the reason I ask you the question is because she actually doesn't write it in a way that you would know it's an acronym unless you pay attention to it. Right? Like, so this is, this is an interesting aspect of the way she writes. Right. Which I actually like a lot. It was almost like there was an Easter egg in there. It was like, it took me, you know, until like a little bit later in the book, I was like, wait a minute, PACT, Purposeful Action. I was like, oh, that's like, she's, she wrote PACT because it's an acronym for the, the points that she wants to bring up. And it just didn't, you know, she never called that out explicitly. So some people might think that's a flaw. I thought that was actually pretty, pretty cool. But then this, gives like credence to, you know, Ship 30 for 30, which you've done before. You know, the idea of some of these different— so there's one in the fitness world. It's basically all marketing, but it's called 75 Hard, right? Where you do these things for 75 days and you set this specific timeline on it. Like there's a bunch of these different things and it gives some of this idea of, okay, it's, it's purposeful, not a grand life purpose, but just like I want to learn X. Then it's, you know, oh, I have the resources to do this so I can actually do it. It's repeatable. I can try and try and try and like get that iterative nature in it and then I can track it, which I agree with you completely, 100%, that it's, it's yes, I did or no, I didn't. It's not I achieved this level of success or, you know, didn't achieve this level of success or whatever. So I liked— I really like that. She also calls out the fact that a pact isn't a habit. It's not a New Year's resolution. It's not a performance metric, and it's not a resource-intensive project. So I like that she gave us the counter of that because that's, you know, where my brain starts to go is like, oh, I'm trying to make— I'm trying to make this into a habit. No, no, no, no. A pact is not that. A pact is not a habit. You know, it has a— it has a start and an end and is more contained than that.

Yeah. One thing I picked up right after that, I wasn't familiar with this, this statistic before, but the fact that most New Year's resolutions are abandoned by January 12th and that's actually called Quitters Day.

Yep. Yeah.

Which 12 days, that's, that's not a very long time for a resolution to, to last. The PAC thing, by the way, to come back to that, it's, it sets the tone for the other sections, obviously the ACT, REACT, IMPACT. But I don't think that there are— the acronym basically just applies to this first section. So it was like this was the thing that she had written about before that kind of sparked the idea. And then how far can I take this? And that's where the rest of the stuff comes from. I, um, I like the, the formula she has for a pact, which is I will action for and then trial period.

Yep.

So having the trial period, I feel like that makes it much less intimidating. It's a lot less scary if you're gonna commit to writing online for 30 days. That's different than I'm going to commit to writing online every day for the rest of my life. Yeah.

Or just setting— or just setting up an open-ended, like, I'm going to build a habit of writing every day.

Exactly. Exactly.

It's like, are you really? Like, probably not. So yeah, like, I like that a lot. Like, I like that it's more confined.

Yeah. The other thing which really stands out to me is chapter number 2, Escaping the Tyranny of Purpose. So this seems a little bit contradictory to a lot of the life theme stuff. Right? Finding your purpose. A life theme is a single sentence mission statement. And I would argue that it's not, but that's only because having gone through it a bunch of times with a bunch of people, there's a couple important aspects of this that people often overlook. It's not written in stone. It's going to evolve and change. And then even if it stays the same, how you exercise that or live it out is going to, to change. And you basically use it in its form as long as it is useful, and then you give yourself permission to change it when it's not. And so she talks about with The Tyranny of Purpose these cognitive scripts that we get stuck in, which I think is a really interesting concept. I hadn't heard it described this way before, but she mentions that cognitive scripts basically create a predictable mode where the outcomes are predefined. And there's 3 categories of cognitive scripts. There's the sequel, where we follow our past, the crowd pleaser, where we follow the crowd, and the epic, when we follow our passion. And again, the word passion, like, every time I hear that, I want to, I want to argue about it because it's not really, uh, I don't use it the same way that a lot of other people use it. For context, you know, my definition comes from Todd Henry, who I forget what book it was, but he defined passion as the root word is the Latin word pati, literally means to suffer. So it's not, you know, do the thing that you love, but really the thing that's important to you. You want to see this thing come to be, so you're willing to go through some stuff in order to see that happen. You know, that's really what following your passion is. It's kind of the Venn diagram, you know, it's the over— over the middle ground of the things that are important and the things that suck. Yeah, that's, that's really what passion is. And the big takeaway though, I think, is not to get stuck into one of these cognitive scripts. I think it's really, really easy to do. And just the way that she defined it, I feel like can help people identify that. And I think if you identify it, you've got a much better chance, obviously, of breaking free from some of that stuff. It's not automatic. And there are questions that she gives us that we can use to help avoid traps. But I think that's a really cool framing. And then there's an action item that comes from this chapter for me, which really isn't associated with what I was just talking about, but it's consider what's missing. And so what that means is when I am doing my reflection at the, uh, the end of the day, and I'm jotting down these things, I'm kind of noticing the things that are going on in my life. I'm always asking myself, basically, is there something that should be here that isn't here? It's kind of my interpretation of that. I don't have a formal process for that. I don't know what that's going to look like. She does actually have a formal process for a, a review template, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, later. But, um, yeah, I like the whole The whole message of this first part, like observation, question, hypothesis, and being willing to try these things out, and the emphasis on thinking tiny, you know, what's the smallest version of the experiment that you can run, very, very important in terms of creating that initial action, which you're going to need to, uh, to follow through with the rest of what she's going to talk about in this book.

Yeah, I think the difference between the way she's talking about purpose and then something like you do in, in the life theme, right? Is I think what you do in the life theme actually sits as like this bigger umbrella over top of running then these packed, like designing these tiny experiments and having this packed like below it. So I think if you, if you do what she's describing in this book and you are completely aimless, you're like, you have like absolutely no direction at all, I think there is a chance you're going to sit there and you're just going to spin and spin and spin and spin and the growth loops will be fine and you'll grow. But I think it's actually a little bit better, right? And I don't, I don't know how much she talked about this or not. So you can correct me where I'm wrong. But it's like if we're like growing in a direction, you know, like, or if we're growing in like a confined space or it's like, you know, I want to grow in relation to this following thing. Well, I think that's where your, your stuff really, you know, adds value on top, on top of this. I think what she's trying to talk about is the fact that it's like, I'm going to be a doctor, right? Like, my purpose is to be a doctor. Well, why?

Okay.

And then like, you get like 30 years later and you're like, my purpose is to be a doctor. And it's like, is it really still to be a doctor? Or is there this other thing that you've been really, really passionate— sorry for the word, but it's like, is this other thing that you really, really want to dive into and you're just afraid to do it, right? That you're trying to do the the crowd pleaser, you're trying to, you know, so it's like, I really like the way she kind of, I guess here's the way I'll say it. It's easy to see me doing this or ways that I've done this or me doing this in the future. So like, I like that she almost directly calls you out and is like, hey, are you doing this? Like, if you're doing this, you're not, you know, I don't think you're, living in the right way from a purpose standpoint, why don't you think about it from this other perspective? And then the other perspective in chapter 3, like, I haven't heard a lot of people try to pitch, pitch it, and they definitely haven't pitched it in the way she has. So she's unique in her space the way, the way she does. So let me— let's— we may as well go out and define the 4 aspects of the tiny experiment because she does that in chapter 3. So unlearn your cognitive script, whatever's blocking you, collect data on your life, brainstorm a potential thing to test, and then make the pact. So we went straight to the pact. We went to step 4 of that, but there are actually 3 steps before that. So unlearn, collect data, figure out what you're going to do, and then make a pact. So I get to my first action item right here, right where I'm trying to do the unlearn and collect part right now to figure out what I want to test and what I want to be my pact. And what I'm struggling with right now is there's, there's a professional one and a personal one, and I don't want to do them at the same time. Like I just think that's going to be too much to do. So I'm, I'm figuring out, do I do the professional one or do I do the personal one? And I haven't, I haven't made a decision yet. But what I'll tell you is I have to make a decision by next Friday because there's a whole— there's another thing that's kind of coming at the same time, and I want these two things to overlap with each other. So by next Friday, I'll have made a decision. I just don't know what it's going to be.

All right. Well, we'll have to follow up on that for sure.

Yeah, you will. You will.

One other thing I want to mention about the PACS is that it focuses on outputs rather than outcomes, which sounds— the prof— how profound that statement is can be lost just by, um, just by hearing it. But the, the output really, that's what action are you taking in terms of conducting the experiment. So actually, the 'did I do the thing today' Yes or no, that's not exactly what trackable means. Uh, she uses the example in one of her blog posts on this of like a heatmap style thing for words written. If you've seen like the things on GitHub, I actually added one of these to my Obsidian daily note recently using a plugin called Keep the Rhythm. And basically you tell it, don't look at my daily notes folder, but everything else that I write in Obsidian counts, you know, show me the number of words that I wrote today. And you can kind of define the ranges, and based on the number of words that you wrote, the green gets lighter, brighter, whatever. So you can kind of see a heat map of, of what you were able to do. And she's got one in that blog post of her writing during the, those 100, 100 days, I think. So, um, it's, it's not necessarily binary, but it is important to focus on, you know, did I do the Did I do what I could do? And it's not just semantic, but it's important that you disconnect from the outcome. So the outcome isn't, did I publish the blog post, yes or no? That's kind of getting back into the SMART goals, right? And in the blog post, which I'll try to dig up for the show notes, there's so many of them though, so I don't know if it's gonna be the exact same one that I originally found, But I remember reading that and she had some examples there of like learning to code. And the question that she kind of asked was, at what point do you consider yourself having gone from not learning to code to being able to code? Yeah. There's no binary state there. So looking for the point where that is completed is kind of pointless. It's really, am I gonna Show up and code for however many days in a row. And it's kind of like you're focused on constant progress as opposed to, uh, I've moved this far towards this destination that I have arbitrarily identified as this is what I got to get to.

Yeah. So, so this is a good place where I told you, like, I felt like the spotlight was put right on me. You know, we've talked about the, we've talked about the Children's STEM Book before. And it's like I was trying to— the goal or the end of that was have an agent, have a contract, right? Like, that was the thing. So therefore, I've told you before, like, I lost steam on that because that wasn't happening. My goal wasn't to get better at being a children's book writer, you know what I mean? Which would have been a much better way to do it. Or my goal wasn't to write a page of a children's book every day. You know, for 50 days, it was get an agent and get published, which I don't think that's a really good metric anymore. Right? Like, that's, that's a bad— if I do this practice, you know, there's a chance it'll happen. There's a chance it also won't happen, but I'll learn a ton through that, through that process. So it's like, this is where I felt like, you know, one of those spotlights was put right on me and I was like, oh, daggone it. Like, I messed up, you know, before. Like, I did not do this the way she's describing. And I only say I messed up, not that like her, her idea is like the end-all be-all and, you know, 100% right. But it just resonates so well that it's like, oh, this would have been a much better approach. Write a page or two every day and just try to get better at the craft of writing children's books and then eventually see how the author thing comes along.

Yep, totally agree. Well, we should probably go on to the next section or this is going to be a 3-hour episode.

We should. I thought the same thing. I was like, should I even make the last comment that I just made? I was like, or should we just move on?

No, no, that's a great, great, uh, great point. All right, but the next section, section 2, is ACT. So Practice Mindful Productivity. And this is basically a lot of the productivity advice that has been like catnip to me over the years. Uh, starts it off with the discussion of a calendar called Your Life in Weeks. Have you seen this calendar before?

I have seen this calendar. Yes, I have.

Okay. So this is basically takes an 80-year average lifespan and lays it all out on a calendar. And the intention is that you fill in the boxes for, you know, however old you are and you see the portion of your life that has passed. A related concept to this is Memento Mori. Which I'm actually a big fan of. I've got a code snippet in my daily note in Obsidian which is Memento Mori, and it shows how much of my, my life has passed based on the 80-year lifespan. And some people will hear that and they'll think that is really depressing. Why would you think, think about things in that, that way? For me, it does a couple of things. Number one, it places the emphasis on the fact that you're not gonna live forever and the world's gonna exist without you, kind of like Oliver Burkeman's Cosmic Insignificance Theory. And for me, that's helpful because I tend to put the weight of the world on my shoulders. Like, well, this is going to happen. I got to do it. It's like, you don't have to do it all. Yeah, just do what you can do. The other thing is it kind of encourages me to make the most of the time that I've got left. So essentially, like, you don't have a day to waste. And that again, you know, this is a fine line between well, I got to be super, super productive today, then it's really just like show up and do the best that you can with what, what you've been entrusted with. So that's really cool. You know, that's from Chapter 4, A Deeper Sense of Time. And she talks about mindful productivity here being, you know, managing your physical resources, your cognitive resources, your emotional resources. Chapter 5 is Procrastination Is Not the Enemy. There's a whole discussion we could have there. Chapter 6 is The Power of Intentional Imperfection. You know, I can think of books that have been written on each of these different topics. So I'm not sure how it all really ties together. And I'm happy to talk about whatever you want. The one thing I really want to hit on, though, is probably the two Greek words for time from Chapter 4.

Okay. Before we move too far away from the "your life in weeks" thing, I think the second version of this— because she actually puts two versions of this in the book. She puts the one that Bergman puts in, which is basically like all the weeks are evenly spaced or they're the same size. And then she puts the one that she actually thinks represents, you know, the real idea where some weeks are really short, some weeks are really long. And all I can say is like, if you've never had a child, like, oh my gosh, right? Like, because there are certain times when you're like, this week will never end. Oh my gosh, I just need the baby to sleep. Like, please sleep, baby. Like, that's all I want you to do. And that week feels like it takes 7 weeks, and then, you know, like, they're 2 years old and you're like, oh my gosh, like, what just happened? Like, how did this go? So it's like, I really liked her second version of that because it just— it resonated with me. Um, it resonated with me a lot. So now we can go— because I didn't want to move too far away from that— so now we can go to the 2 different versions of, uh, time. Or, um, it was time, wasn't it?

Yeah. So are you familiar with these, the chronos and the kairos?

I've heard of them before, but not the way she described them, so this was good for me.

Okay, yeah, so chronos is the Greek word which essentially means a quantity of time. And when you think about time management, this is really how most people, uh, approach it. It's like, how do I get more efficient? How do I preserve the time that's available to me? But then kairos is really the quality of time. Now, my, my wife is a former wedding photographer, and her business was called The Art of Kairos. So literally, like, the right or opportune moment. That's another way to define it. So I guess I've got a little bit of a background here with, with that term, but I feel like Anne-Laure does a good job of describing this. And the big takeaway is that not all moments are created equal. So the, the shift that needs to happen here is we need to shift from what we do with our time to how we experience each moment. And that's a general idea that's been communicated probably 1,000 different ways in the books that we've read so far about you got to be in the moment, you got to be mindful. But there's something about the way that she described it where it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. I'm going to do that. Does it?

Does I don't know if it's, you know, just she's an incredibly intelligent person or if the neuroscience side of it came through or whatever it was. But like, it just like there's so many times in this book I was like, oh, that just makes a lot of sense. Like, this is, this is like thinking about your life and/or productivity or whatever you want to call it. And I was like, and that just makes like a ton of, a ton of sense the way you describe that. And by the way, I've been doing it the way you told me isn't the ideal way for a really long time now. Yeah.

Yeah. And then that's kind of like the mindful productivity piece being where you're managing these different things because it's not just managing your time. That's kind of like the low level. You can have the time to do something, but if you don't have the energy or you don't have the attention required to do the thing because you're just spent at the end of the day, you know, it's not going to happen.

Well, and this is where you, you know, David, like when you're, when you're talking about it's more than just cranking widgets, right? Like, so that you're getting at Kairos, right? Like that's 100% what you're doing is you're saying, if we're going to use our time, let's use it wisely. Let's use it for quality activities. And then, you know, you think about Newport and you think about like minimalism and block scheduling and you think about like all these other, other tools, they all serve to fill this. How do I make the time that I'm going to commit to something higher quality. Like I'm just trying to make it higher quality. So like your point is really, really well made. If you're thinking about it from a, like, how do I fill out the hours in a day? Like a timesheet kind of a thing. You're thinking about it all the wrong way. You gotta think about it from a, how do I do the most valuable items during my day? And you know, and I, do I even know what those valuable items are? You know, like, and do I learn from them?

The other thing that I think is a mistake that people make when it comes to like that low-level time management is they assume that if they've got the time, then they're going to be able to follow through. So they kind of disregard the fact that, as Anne-Laure says, you can't always be at your best. You're going to have these natural energy rhythms and learning to navigate those, I think, is an important part of this. Now, the next chapter is sort of a bookend to this because when you don't manage your time as well as you think you should, you don't get all the things done that you thought you should have because you haven't taken into consideration all the other factors besides, is there something on the calendar right now? Is that you tend to procrastinate. And procrastination, she says, has two arrows. The first one is what we do instead, the actual procrastination. And then the second one is our emotional response to it. And that's the one that hurts the most.

Yes, it absolutely does.

We beat ourselves up about the fact that we were procrastinating instead of doing the thing, and what the heck is my problem? And she actually says procrastination is not a moral failure, it is a listening failure. I like this chapter, and I like the framing of procrastination because she defines it as simply not doing what we think we should be doing. And then, you know, why do we not do the thing that we think we should be doing? There's questions that we should be asking, and there's sources or reasons for this procrastination. It could be your head, it could be your heart, it could be your hands. So, you know, is the task appropriate? Is the task exciting? Is the task doable? There's solutions associated with each one of these. We can redefine the strategy. We can redesign the experience. We can request training or support. And this kind of, you know, gets into some of the Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal territory, which when you just hear that title, you're kind of, you kind of feel like, well, what would this look like if it were fun? That's, that's stupid. He obviously doesn't work in an office like I do. But the book is really good. You know, spoiler alert, it was one of my top 8 books from 2024, that video that I did. I think it's— I think there's a lot of things in there. And this is sort of getting— it's complementary to that idea, I think. And it's really just figuring out, you know, what is the thing that is causing me the resistance? What is adding the friction right here where I'm not following through with this thing that I have confessed is important and I should be doing, you know, finding out why and so that I can fix the system. And that's a totally different approach than, well, I just got to, you know, make the plan and then I do my best to stick to the plan. And if I don't stick to the plan, then I'll beat myself up so that next time, you know, maybe I'll stick to the plan like that. That sounds stupid, but that's what we do.

Yeah. Yeah. Like this section, this procrastination section, was, was so spot on in terms of I've been feeling this, I don't know, for the last, you know, year or two or whatever it is. Like there are just certain things where I'm like, I'm going to do this. I know I'm going to do this. I'm without a doubt going to do this. And I don't do it. And I could never like put my finger on why I wasn't doing it. Right. Like I just knew that there were reasons why I was procrastinating on a thing. And this almost gives you like a license to then go meta on that. Right. And go, hold on, you've said you're going to do this for the last 4 weeks. You haven't done a thing on it. Why? Like, what is the reason why you're not doing that? Here, it might be in these 3 buckets. But then the other thing that I loved about this section was what she says kind of towards the end of the chapter. The activities we turn to when procrastinating are expressions of our genuine interest. And I was like, oh dang, right? Like, okay, so I'm not doing the thing. So what am I doing? I'm probably distracting myself by doing some other thing. Yeah, that's, that's really what I want to do. Like, those are the things I really am like passionate or interested in. And I don't think that's true all the time because you might like be doing something just to pass the time or just to avoid that. But I think there's a lot of truth in that, in that second statement that like it might just be something that you're more passionate about or is rising to a level that your, your other thing isn't. And then go back and critically analyze why are you doing that? Like, why are you procrastinating? And this is, I think, especially true for people who— let's just say I'm trying to figure out how to word this and not sound terrible— people who actually, like, achieve in life, right? Like, so people who aren't just chronic procrastinators, right? Like, so you've had some level of success in some area of your life. So it's not a matter of like you're just this chronic procrastination personality. Like, there are those people, the people, it's like, what do they do? I procrastinate for a living. Like, that's, that's what I do. Like, I don't do, you know, but like, for the people who don't, but then you're finding these areas where you procrastinate and you're like, wait, why? I don't procrastinate in this other area, but I'm really struggling in this one area. It gives you a framework to look at and say like, why? Oh, is it rational? Is it affectional? Is it, uh, practical? And I liked, like, I thought that was very helpful to me personally.

Yeah, I love the description of this. I also love the description of intentional imperfection in, in Chapter 6. I guess framed a different way, this is sort of like intentional imbalance, which is a key tenet of my personal retreat stuff. It's like you're gonna focus on one area for a little while, and then you're gonna, you're gonna get some feedback, and then, you know, you'll make some adjustments. You'll focus on a different area for a little while. But you're not going to try to like touch everything all the time. You, you can't split your focus that many ways. So you gotta, you gotta choose where you're gonna, gonna focus. But the singular phrase from this, which I will never forget, is that intentional imperfection, which is basically just us choosing to focus on one area and bolster it to get it better while neglecting another area just for a little while is the adult version of you have to put down the ducky if you want to play the saxophone. So good.

Yeah, yeah. I— this, this got me too when she was talking about Shonda Rhimes. So Shonda Rhimes is a show writer, made a bunch of really, really popular TV shows. And basically the quote that she brings in from Shonda Rhimes is, if I'm excelling at one thing, something else is falling off, and that's completely okay. And the part of that that like I really like is that's completely okay because this gets at it. It really hits at that like work-life balance thing, right? Where you and I have talked about this before, like there is no such thing as work-life balance, right? Like you know, like that's, that's a completely ridiculous idea. There are ebbs and flows in where and what gets more of my attention at any given time. So I need to acknowledge that, that I only have a certain amount of cognitive attention, emotional attention, whatever it might be. And that's going to ebb and flow throughout my life. And really what I think makes sense to look at is I look at it on the balance of the year or I look at it on the balance of the quarter or, you know, whatever your time period is and say, all right, so this past quarter I gave a ton of attention to my work, like my job. Is that okay? Well, yeah, it was. I had a bunch of proposals due, you know, this thing was really, really difficult, whatever it might be. Okay, cool. For the next quarter, I'm not going to do that. Like I neglected this one area. I got to, I got to shift that around. And like, not trying— because what my gut reaction is, is my gut reaction is to try to say like, I'm gonna give everything the attention it deserves always, and I'm never gonna mess that up, and I'm gonna— and it's like, no, because you don't have 300% attention.

Yeah.

To where you can actually do that. So stop, stop setting up that, that, you know, goalpost you'll never achieve, or that, you know, that, that bar you'll never hit.

Exactly. Ready to go to part 3?

Let's do it.

All right, because I really want to talk about part 3. Uh, part 3 is React: Collaborate with Uncertainty. And again, 3 chapters. I'll just name these pretty quick. So chapter 7 is Creating Growth Loops, chapter 8 The Secret to Better Decisions, chapter 9 How to Dance with Disruption. But the big thing that stood out to me from this section is that creating growth loops— so first of all, growth loops I think is a great visual. Like, that definition is not one that I had heard before, or that term is not one that I'd heard used to describe this, like trial and error and you're learning from the feedback. But that makes so much sense. And she's got this visual where trial and error creates a circle and growth is in the middle. So you kind of have to have quantity that produces the quality. The trial and error are inseparable. She says that you don't go in circles, you grow in circles. Kind of cutesy way to say it, but I think it's true. However, there is a, a specific exercise in here that I think is pretty genius, and that is the plus minus next. And this is basically, you, you take a sheet of paper and you make 3 columns: plus, minus, and next. And then these are positive observations, negative observations, and what's next. And, uh, talks about how this is— this works because it's fast, it's flexible, and it's future focused. I think she hits the nail on the head with that. I think it's a pretty brilliant approach to kind of like a weekly review, and weekly review has always been something that was difficult for me to do. I now have a weekly note inside of Obsidian, which is primarily used for planning because I use it to identify— this is the stuff that I— big things I want to get done this week. I paint success, and here's the one-sentence definition of what this week is successful if this, you know, this happens, but I don't have a current way of review, like a formal process for my weekly review. It's really just looking back at that note and how do I feel like I did. So plus minus next, I think is really an interesting approach and I'm gonna try this. So this is my, an action item. Now I've already taken action on it.

Hold on. Hold on. So the non-technology people would get out their piece of paper Yeah. And they would draw this table that she draws and it'd have a plus and minus next.

Yep.

Mike, you didn't do this. I did not do this. Mike, you sent me a video. Tell me what you did.

Yeah, so here's the thing. I don't want to sit down at the end of the week and make a list of things in each one of these columns. That I know right now is too much friction and I will just not do it. Or I'll just put some really lame stuff on there and I'm not gonna get much out of it. Okay, when I really feel strongly about something is in the moment. So I want a way to capture this, and I'm not always going to have that piece of paper with me. So like I said, there's this periodic notes stuff that's built into Obsidian. I've already got a weekly note, so what I did is I created a section in that, that weekly note where it's, uh Level 2 header and it says review, and then underneath that are Level 3 headers for plus, minus, and next. Then I used, I created a shortcut which pops up a button basically, so it's like a review shortcut, and then it'll ask you which category do you want, plus, minus, or next. You tap on the category that you want and then it asks for the feedback, so you type in your one sentence thing. It turns it into a bullet, and it sticks it on a new line underneath that third-level header. So there's basically like 3 branches of this depending on, you know, which list item I choose at the, the beginning. And this I shared with you because I knew when I saw this, I jotted this down as an action item. I'm like, there's no way this is going to be successful unless I have a mechanism to capture this stuff in the moment. Let me see how difficult this would be to create this. So 15 minutes later, I had the shortcut and I shared the video with you.

I was gonna ask you, how long did it take you to make it? My next question is, um, did you record the video yet for Practical PKM? And then my third question is, why haven't you recorded the video yet? So, so you don't have to answer any of those questions, but, uh, there you go. I think that would be a video that everybody would eat up.

So yeah, I'm gonna make a YouTube video on this, and I'll make the shortcut available with the, the starter vault when it's when I actually get to that point. I'm working on a different video currently, which is going to have another resource which is going to get added to the Starter Vault. So it's, it's going to be coming. It's not coming probably by the time this is out yet. If it is out, I will add the link in the show notes. But otherwise, yeah, I don't think it's, it's going to be available yet. And, you know, I really wasn't planning on saying like, I built this, this thing necessarily. I just wanted to share with you, like, I'm taking this action item seriously. I know this is like a prerequisite to the actual action item I'm going to be sharing. So, but yeah, I, I, now having used it, I think it's pretty cool. And I think that other people will benefit from it. So I do intend to share the shortcut when, once I have a chance to make that video.

Well, and, and my goal wasn't to social pressure you. My goal was like, I looked at this thing and went, Oh my gosh, that's genius. Like, that is absolutely the way you should do this because it just eases the burden of entering it or remembering to write down what you thought you were going to write down. Like, it's just so smooth. It's so—

I will say, the thing that makes this work is an application called Actions for Obsidian, where you can insert things in not just a specific note based on the note title, but ties into like the periodic notes stuff. So you can have it tie— add it to a weekly note, for example. And then once, you know, once I had that, I'm like, I know I can make the rest of it work. It's just gonna be some trial and error till I figure it out. And I figured it out.

Nice. Nice. All right, where are we at? So we did growth loops, we did plus minus next. So here, here was one of the other things I got out of this React section. Is she throws out these ideas that we have 3 options at the end. So we've got persist, we've got pause, and we've got pivot. And I like that, you know, like, again, I say again, I think we've talked about this. None of this is really new, but the way she packaged it in the order and the flow, like the logical flow with which she packaged it is really, really well done in terms of like, okay, I do this loop, what's my off-ramp? Well, my off-ramp is I just, I just go, okay, I'm done. I learned from that. I acknowledge it. I think it's either in this section or later. She talks about doing a postmortem on it where it's like you'd actually figure out, you reflect on the learning that you got from it and you're done. Like you just, you call it a day and you pause that, that pact. Or I say I didn't learn what I wanted to learn. I'm going to extend this another 10 days and I'm going to see if I can, I can get to what I want to get to. And then the last one would be, you know, you actually tweak and you, you change the pact a little bit. Keep doing it, but you, you change that, that pact a little bit. So I thought this was a really good way to like say, okay, what do I do when I'm inside of this growth loop moving forward? This ties into my nerd engineering world because this is what we do in the engineering design process. This is what we do in the continuous improvement process. Like we 100% do these things. We just use different words for them. And then they're like more or less engineering-y. Like, so like this, maybe I guess I didn't think about that until right now. Maybe that's why this resonates with me so much is because she's just doing personal continuous improvement. Like, it's 100% what she's doing. And I was like, oh, that actually is really cool.

Yeah, I agree. I really like the approach here. I think the main point she's making with those 3 options is that you don't necessarily have to automatically just go chase the next big goal, which is sort of the default, at least for, for people who are driven individuals like, like myself. It's like you achieve a goal, there's this vacuum. What do you do? You fill it with a bigger goal.

Bigger goal.

That is not necessarily the, the right way to do it. I don't think there's a whole lot I want to hit on from Chapter 9, but it's sort of getting into the the, uh, the stuff behind why that is, you know. And when things don't go exactly according to plan, how do you deal with that disruption? And, uh, she mentioned specifically that it's not, you know, the emotions that we feel, but it's how we interpret those emotions that are the thing that causes suffering, which is kind of interesting. So, you know, why am I feeling this way and, you know, we kind of just label things as good or bad. And I think she would encourage us to dig a little bit deeper. You know, what am I actually feeling right now? And then err on the side of acceptance rather than control. That's some pretty profound, profound stuff in there. But it's not, you know, this is the action item associated with this necessarily.

I— this was more like you said, background. The idea of active acceptance, I had not heard of that, but I like that. Like, that seems like a good, tangible way to process these things that, you know, okay, when it goes wrong or when it doesn't go the way you thought it was going to, accept that, acknowledge it, learn from it, and then boom, move on. So, you know, this is a concept that you, you get in the startup world, right? Like, so the entrepreneurial startup world where it's like fail forward fast.

Yeah.

So it's like, if we're going to fail, we're going to fail and we're going to learn and fail forward. And we're going to try to do that as quickly as possible because then we don't waste as many resources. So this active acceptance tied me into this idea of fail forward fast. Um, uh, so yeah, it, it resonated, but at the same time, chapter 9 wasn't, you know, there wasn't a lot of stuff I was going to take away from that one either.

All right, cool. Well, let's go on to the, the last section then, which is section 4, Impact: Grow with the World. And, uh, The first part here, Chapter 10, How to Unlock Social Flow, hits on the community stuff. So I definitely want to unpack that a little bit. Chapter 11 is Learning in Public. Chapter 12 is Life Beyond Legacy. But the whole idea and emphasis on community here, I think, is kind of interesting. Now, I've been thinking about community for a while, and I think I've got a different perspective on this a little bit than what she's coming at this from, not based on the content of the book, just based off of my experience in her community. Okay, so her community is— I think it's like $50 a year, and, um, I'm involved in that community. I'm also involved in some other communities that are much more expensive than that, and I can tell you there's a difference in the interactions that happen in the $50 per year community versus the $2,000 per year communities. And that's kind of to be expected. And I don't think one is necessarily right or wrong, which is why, you know, going all the way back to the beginning, one of my action items, I kind of want to try both. I'm going to experiment, right? I'm going to offer a version of this which makes it easy for people to try it. I'm not on the hook for a whole bunch of stuff. So if it doesn't work, you know, we can figure something else out, but I'm not committing to doing live calls for people who pay me $50 once and only, you know, a handful of people do that. We can just kind of try this out. But she talks about some things specifically with community, which I think kind of tap into this larger need for being a part of a community. And that's why I want to offer something like that in the PKM space. It's like, okay, so you wanna talk about this sort of stuff. Where do you go? You go to forums, you go to Discord. I don't like either of those places.

Me either. I agree with you. Me either. Yeah.

So why don't I try to build a place that's actually cool and can kind of build on the, the things that she's hitting on here, you know, where it's something where you, you kind of are committing to learn and growing together. Like, that would be pretty cool. So I think, uh, you know, there's not one right approach to this. I think her community is, is actually pretty neat, but it's also not the type of place where I find myself hanging out a ton. So kind of ask myself like, well, why is that? You know, and the things that she really hits on here that I want to figure out how to incorporate into my own community and the different levels of that, like how it actually works. There's this pooling effect she talks about where a community gives you access to a collective set of knowledge, skills, and assets that far exceeds your own. I feel like with PKM and Obsidian, you know, forum-based solution where people aren't going to yell at you because you formatted your post wrong or whatever is, is like, I can see that being a great way to accomplish that, that goal. There's 3 levels of community engagement: the Apprentice, the Artisan, and the Architect. I feel like with that, you know, if you're going to follow those different levels, you're going to naturally kind of look for what is next. And so offering another level for people to go to makes a lot of sense. But the big thing here, and this is the thing that drives me nuts about a lot of the stuff that I see online, uh, she mentions a curiosity circle, a community center around a genuine connection and pure learning. You know, that's the part that you don't get in a forum or in Discord. That's the type of, you know, those are places where people go because they want a a prescriptive answer to a specific question. And it just— by asking the question in a way that they're not going to get yelled at at those forums, they're, they're dampening the curiosity. It's like, I don't even know what the other options are, but I'm not going to explore them because someone's going to yell at me if I, if I do.

I don't want to take us too far down a, down a rabbit hole here, but this is in my mind one of the, one of the benefits of AI. Right? Like in LLMs, right? So it was one of the benefits of LLMs is I can engage with those forums without having to risk that. So I can still be curious, but I'm being curious with the LLM, you know, and like actually asking my questions and interacting with it that way. And I'm not worried about the fact that it's like, hey, you know, you capitalized the first 4 letters of that word accidentally, you know? Like, so, I mean, we're being facetious, but But like, no, your point, your point is incredibly, incredibly well made. I do have a question for you, and if I take us too far, let me know. What she's describing sounds a lot like mastermind groups.

It could be. I don't think it has to be. I think that is a very specific form of community which allows you to go a lot deeper than some of the, some of the more obvious ones. But I think the whole idea of community is going to become a very big deal. I was at the Newsletter Marketing Summit, talked about that in the last episode, and there was a Q&A session with Sam Parr from The Hustle and one other person, and they made a throwaway comment about how, you know, everyone who's there is there to talk about newsletters, right? So there's independent creators and then there's like VC funded startups, and they're all talking about how newsletters are the growth engine for their business. And Sampar makes this comment about how he thinks that the next big opportunity is communities. And the way that he was talking about it was sort of like a private Discord or a WhatsApp group for people to connect with other people. I think that's the thing. You want a place for people to connect with other people. A lot of the communities that I've seen, it's kind of based on a personality. You know, so I don't want the library to become the Mike Schmitz Show. Like, I will set the tone because I have the vision for what this could be, but I recognize that the thing that makes it valuable is the people that are in there and the way that they interact with each other. So I want to, you know, kind of set the culture and the tone for that and then get out of the way in a sense. There's another thing in the next chapter, the protégé effect, where you explain something to somebody else and it reinforces your own understanding. So as I'm thinking about like the library metaphor for this community, show up and do a presentation at the library, you know, just by sharing something that, you know, it's solidified in your own workflow and other people can benefit from it. I mean, it's exciting to think about that stuff for me, but I'm still kind of noodling on like, what are the best ways to do this? But I have a lot more clarity now than I did a couple of weeks ago when I was still kind of noodling on this stuff. And I think, you know, Sampar is right. I think Anne-Laure Le Cunff is right. I think my version of applying what either of them talked about is going to look totally different than what either of them have in mind.

Yeah, I would agree with that too. I mean, like, it's hard to read Chapter 10 and not think about creating a community.

Yeah, right.

Like, so like you work through that and you think of the ones that you've been part of and then you think of the ones that you've like wanted to grow in and then you think of like, okay, if I was going to start a community community, this is what I would, I would make it look like, right? So I think, um, from a launching standpoint, you know, it's a, it's a really cool chapter. Are you okay to move to Chapter 11?

Yeah, uh, that's pretty much, you know, what I had to say about this whole section, to be honest. I know Chapter 12 is, you know, Life Beyond Legacy, so go wherever you want.

Well, so Chapter 11 resonated with me a lot more than Chapter 10. It seems like Chapter 10 resonated with you because of where you're at. Chapter 11 with me because I think this is gonna have something to do with that pact I talked about, my action item.

Okay.

Is it's going to have to be— it's going to be something around learning in public. So, um, I have two different, um, app ideas. One is an Apple Watch app and one is an iPad app. And it's like, I want to learn how to do this. Like, I actually am not as worried about the app actually ever getting out there and, you know, being something that you can download from the App Store. I wanna learn how to develop apps just for fun, like just to goof around with it. But then I feel guilty cuz I'm like, oh yeah, but that's like, that's kind of dumb, right? Like, you know, like you don't really care if it gets out there and you don't have this bigger goal. And you know, and again, we're going back to the previous chapters where I'm, I'm essentially like shutting down my own creativity, you know, growth, growth loop. But it's like, is that okay in this situation? Because there's, there's a personal, you know, there's some personal ones that I think might be more valuable or aligned with my values a little bit more, especially right now with, with where I am. But even then, I want that to be a learning in public type of a thing. So it's like, how do I, you know, how do I do that in a way that I'm comfortable with? The bigger one is how do I do it in a way that I actually have time to do it and it doesn't suck a bunch of time out of a different responsibility that I have.

Sure.

Because it's like, you know, I don't have like just, you know, hours a day just sitting around to like figure out how to learn in public. So I'm trying to figure out what is the least friction source that allows me to learn in public around the thing I want to. And I don't know, I don't know what that is yet, but like, I really like this idea. You know, she, she gives out a bunch of different ideas of like what learning in public is. And then she has this, this really clean, super simple. It's a public pledge. I say I'm going to do something. I put it on some sort of public platform. Here's where I'm going to post my updates. And then I actually do the thing. Public practice, right? Like I actually practice that thing and it's like, it's so simple. Like I just need to figure out what's the public pledge, what's the platform I'm going to use, and then what's the public practice. And my challenge is, is every time I start to look at like, what's the public platform? I get lost in the weeds of like, is this the right platform? Or is this the right platform? Is this, you know, do I, you know, like, so that's where I'm struggling right now. But that's my, I would say my section action, my second action item out of this book is definitely gonna be thinking about that pledge platform practice. And again, that's gonna roll out by the 21st, right? So, or, you know, it's gonna roll out by next Friday.

Nice. The thing about, you know, where is the platform? And you're talking about like doing it in, in public. She has a question here, you know, when choosing who you're going to share this with, you have to ask, will they support my learning journey or promote unhealthy comparison? So I think there's a balance to be struck here between what she's talking about here with the pillars to learning in public and then the public platform that you would use as the tension mechanism for like a creator business. So I 100% would say, you know, YouTube is not the place to— that's not necessarily— doesn't fit with the model that she's describing here. Or posting to LinkedIn or any other place publicly on the internet, that's sort of like where this stuff lives, but that's not where— that's not— that's outside the, the model that she's sharing here, I would argue. Where— so the public pledge, public platform, public practice, uh, in her experience, I think this is all based on her experience within her community. So she's sharing with her community that she's going to do these things, and then she's posting in there, I did this thing, here's the link to the thing that I made. But that's where you want the, the peer pressure, is with this smaller group of people who are aligned with the what you want to actually have happen. If you try to do that publicly without some sort of boundary, it's really easy to get frustrated by all the trolls and the people who think you're stupid and are going to point out every single mistake that you ever made. You know, that's going to happen the minute that you share something online. Yeah. So I just want to call out that difference there.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. All right. Life Beyond Legacy is chapter 12. Uh, I like this idea. I, I, the biggest rub I have with this chapter is like the word, uh, generativity. I just didn't like the word generativity. Right. And you had to read it a lot in the, in the chapter. Uh, it was in there a lot, but in terms of, um, of what she's getting at is I really liked the framing of this where legacy is something that is realized after I'm gone. Right. Or a long time into the future. Right. Is this idea of legacy. But that's the way it's always like, what's your legacy? Like, what do you— what do you want your legacy to be? And like, it's always bothered me because it's like, I don't know if I care. And then I kind of feel bad that I don't know if I care what my legacy is. But hers is more focused on generativity, which she calls a psychological principle that emphasizes using your personal growth to positively impact those around you. I like that a lot. Like, what am I going to do? I want to impact the people around me every day in a positive way. Like, that's what I want to do. I want the people who are around me every day to leave better than, than when they came in. Am I, am I good at that? Some days. Am I bad at that? Some days. But it's like, that's what I would want to have happen. So I really liked— I really like that. And she lays out 5 points. I'm not going to call it the 5 points. You can if you want to. But she lays out 5 points on how to do that, like how to, how to use this more generative approach.

Yeah, I think the big thing that she's hitting at here is kind of tied to the cosmic insignificance theory that I mentioned earlier, where You don't want to put all this pressure on yourself to do all— make all this big impact, but you want to show up every day and do what you can. So it's really disconnecting from the goal-setting mindset again, you know. It kind of comes full circle to this whole concept of legacy. And this is a great bookend to this, uh, this book, to be honest. You know, we've gone through the 4 different parts, there's still the conclusion, but this is essentially the, uh, the end here, and it's a great way to end it.

Yeah. And the conclusion is just a two-sentence summary of every chapter, which I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's just that's what it— that's what I got out of it is, you know, we're going to— we're going to essentially use two sentences to wrap up every, every chapter, essentially.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which actually, I'll, I'll just share what I jotted down for these if you want, because I don't even have two sentences. I have forget the finish line, unlearn your scripts, turn doubts into experiments, let go of the chronometer, Make friends with procrastination, embrace imperfection, design growth loops, stay nimble, dance with disruption, seek fellow explorers, learn in public, and let go of your legacy.

And what was more beneficial to me— and you won't be surprised that you're probably picking up my pattern at this point with these books— the appendix was the— was more valuable to me.

Like, I knew you were going to say that.

That experimentalist toolkit, right? Like the image. Where can I start? You know, how can I maintain momentum? What can I do next? What can I keep growing with? Like, I really, really loved that visual. And I thought that was a great way to wrap up the overall book.

Yeah, there was a lot of great stuff back there, you know. So I got the digital version initially before the book was actually published, obviously. And it was kind of like a final proof. They give you the version and it even says, you know, this isn't the final version, wording may be slightly different, whatever. Most of the time that the text is the same at that point. But I don't remember all that stuff in the appendix being in the digital version that I saw, which would make sense, you know, that she got basically the text done, delivered it, and then focused on all the other bonus stuff that she could add to it.

Yep.

So that's probably what happened there, but I don't know that for sure.

Well, and in true, like, books these days fashion, so this is not a slight. I will freely tell people when I disagree with it or like when I think they're doing it wrong. You know, she points you to her, her website and her email list in order to get the, you know, the digital copy of, of Appendix A or whatever it is. And it's like, and that's in my mind completely appropriate, right? Like she's telling me what she's doing. I understand what she's trying to do. You know, one of the ways that you promote yourself is through newsletters and things like that. So I'm totally good with that. The ones that always get me is like at the end of every chapter, go to my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to, you know, and it's like, geez, like, do we have to do this every time? But I thought she did it tactfully in this book and it didn't bother me. Like I get it. Like you run a community. Yeah. You want me to go sign up for it? Okay, I get it.

The other thing is with the newsletter list specifically, that's kind of the thing that led to the, the book. You know, she was creating these blog posts. She was building her newsletter list. The newsletter list— I forget which one came first, the blog or the newsletter, but I know the newsletter has been around for a really long time and she's had a bunch of subscribers for a really long time. Like, I remember when I first came across it, couple years ago at this point, it was like 60,000 subscribers. I was like, holy cow. And you could just look at all the things that she had written and the consistency that she had and just like this high-quality stuff, you know. So this is not, you know, something that someone wrote a book and they're trying to start a business off of it. And so the reason that they put stuff at the end of every chapter is like, I got to grow this newsletter list as fast as I possibly can, you know.

Agree.

She's playing the long game. So it feels much more authentic.

Well, she says in the beginning of the book, right, her goal is to share a set of practices that are the antidote to burnout and boredom, a counterforce to fear, overwhelm, confusion, and loneliness. Basically, like, I'm going to take all of the experiments I've done so far and all the stuff I've learned in this community, and I'm just going to package it into a book and I'm going to— I'm going to give it to you all to hopefully make your life better.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I agree with you completely.

Really well done. I think it's probably time for action items.

Yep. Okay. Would you like me to go first?

Sure. Go for it.

Okay. All right. So I have two. The first one is to determine a pact by next Friday. All right. So I'm going to determine a pact by next Friday. And the second one relates right to that. This pact, I would like it to be public in some form. So a form of learning in public. So I need to figure out what the pledge is or what the pact is. I need to figure out what the platform is going to be. And then I need to figure out what the actual practice is going to be. So that is my, or those are my two action items for this book. And I guess my third action item, which I'm not going to write down, but my third action that I want to do that I'm not going to be able to do is reread the book. Like I actually want to read the book again. So What I might do is I might get the audio version and I might listen to it while I exercise or while I run. That'll be a good enough version of, you know, reading it, reading it again for writing.

I did, I did check the Audible listing. She reads the book. So anytime an author reads a book, that's ideal. But she's got a really awesome accent. So just don't get distracted by the accent.

Okay. Yeah, because you've got to run when you're listening to it. All right, Mike, how about you? Uh, what are your action items?

All right, so I've got to also, um, I'm going to, in my words, consider what's missing whenever I'm doing my review processes. And I feel like that's really just filling in the blanks with, um, the ideal future. I don't know, it's hard for me to explain exactly why this sort of triggered me this time, but I feel like I do a pretty good job of reflecting on, you know, what happened, and then I do a pretty good job of creating this vision of where I'm going. But the way that she framed that, of like considering what's missing right now, it felt like a bridge between those two. It's kind of like, where are the holes and what can I do right now that's gonna fill those, if that makes sense. So yeah, I want to, I want to take that approach with, uh some of my Reflections stuff. And then also using Plus/Minus/Next for the weekly review. I've already got the shortcut built, so I got no excuses now. I can start capturing things. I'll be on vacation next week, but so I'm not sure how much, you know, valuable stuff I'll have there for a review. But that's the intention, is to use that process going forward. Outstanding. All right, style and rating. You ready?

I am ready. Okay, you're going first because it's your book.

Yeah, well, so I guess, you know, this— my rating, it was probably known for like the last couple of months that, uh, I really like this book. I'm gonna give it 5 stars. I think it is a 5-star book. I think this is on the level of something like Atomic Habits. I don't know that it'll get to that level of success. I think Anne-Laure told me that she and James Clear had the same agent. So maybe I, I don't know, but I think this is a really well thought, well articulated book about a very important topic presented in a way that is very approachable and done better than just about every other productivity book I have ever read. Uh, if you want a productivity book that is not your standard productivity book, like if the whole idea of reading a productivity book rubs you the wrong way, this is the one that you should pick up because it's very different. Her background definitely comes through in a lot of the stuff that she talks about. She is a neuroscientist, but that doesn't mean that there's going to be a whole bunch of big words, and it's going to go over your head, which honestly, that's sort of what I was expecting. Like, I've read some of those other books. I'm interested in that topic. So I've read even some different research papers on that sort of thing. And it's kind of like, well, I don't like this, but I'll muscle through it because I really want to understand it. And this was like a breath of fresh air. It's not watered-down material, in my opinion. You know, some academics who are neuroscientists may disagree with that because they're used to the academic format of the, the papers and stuff like that, which she's written those, you know. But she, uh, I forget where I heard her talking about this, but she's been on so many podcasts recently because her book just came out. Uh, one of the interviews, she was talking about how the writing the 100 posts in 100 days, the exercise of that was kind of like forcing herself to learn to write in a way that normal people could understand it. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I feel like that was a worthwhile investment. Like, it comes through in this book. I don't know how to describe it. Like, you want something that's fun and entertaining to read, but you also don't want to be talked to like you're a little child. And she strikes the perfect balance there. The stuff that she talks about, the stories that she tells, the different research-based anecdotes, you know, she makes a really compelling case for the whole Tiny Experiments framework. If I had one nitpick with the book, I think it's just the naming of the 4 different parts. Like the pact I really like, act makes sense, react, maybe, and then impact. Okay. Like the whole— not metaphor, but whatever. Like, I don't think you needed that for the 4 different sections of the book. And maybe it's just coming off the heels of the catalyst where it was very forced. It was like, okay, here we go again. It's not nearly that bad. You know, but it does feel like maybe a little bit of a stretch. Maybe you didn't have to name it that way. Not that I have a different suggestion like I did with The Catalyst, like, hey, you should have named this chapter Social Proof because that's what it is. You know, I really have nothing like that for this particular book. But that was the one thing, you know, looking at it, it's kind of like, meh. But everything else, like, I absolutely love this book. And I think that 5 years from now, I will have recommended this book more than any other book in my library. You know, time will tell whether that's true or not, but I've already recommended it a bunch and everybody that I've recommended it to, now that they picked it up, now that they've read it, they're like, "That was really good." I'm like, "Yeah, I know." I kind of am curious where she goes from here because she's got her PhD, right? She's got her community. She's written a really great book. So, is the pressure now to like make another book? What's that one going to be about? I don't know how you top this, basically. Kind of like James Clear with Atomic Habits. Where do you go from there? I don't know. But Atomic Habits just continues to sell like gangbusters. So I hope the same is going to be true of Tiny Experiments. Yeah.

Yeah, I— without a doubt, 5 stars. This is a 5-star book. So this is one of those ones that— what do we call it, Mike? When we—

a golden book.

A golden book. There you go. Great. So this is definitely a golden book for us.

Check your chapter artwork for, uh, updated version for the golden book.

Nice. Uh, yeah, so one of— and one of my takeaways with this is, um, this is 100% a book I would refer students to. So I get students that come in and they're just like, I'm just not sure like what I want to do or like where I want to go or anything like that. And like there weren't a lot of books you could point them to before to like help them get direction or help them figure that out and, and try to help them kind of organize their mind around that idea. And this is without a doubt the best one I've ever found that it's like, okay, go read Tiny Experiments. Like, just go read Tiny Experiments and, and think about what your next step would be and what the next, you know, tiny experiment that you could do that's going to help you get closer to learning and get closer to learning and closer to learning. But it doesn't just apply to college students, right? Like, I think if you had a mature high school student, right, they could, they could read this book and get a ton out of it. I think if you had, you know, somebody who's graduated college or has been out or they're 70 years old, right? Like, I think it spans such a wide range of applicability for, for people in terms of the style. Like, the biggest thing is it wasn't distracting for me, right? So, you know, it was easy to read. It wasn't distracting. Things made sense. Things, you know, flowed in a logical way. When, when the figures and images and tables came up, they made sense. I understood why they were there. You know, the stories, when she broke into story, they made sense. When, you know, she didn't feel the need to over, overflood us with stories that, you know, weren't really relevant. But when the stories came in, they made sense and they fit into what they were doing, or they launched the chapter forward or whatever it might be. Without a doubt, 5-star book. Um, liked pretty much everything about it. The biggest thing I didn't like was not her fault. It was the fact that I read it in a paper, paper form and not in a digital form. So had I, had I not done that, it would have been even better.

Debatable, but sure. Yep.

And, and the ever-going saga between Mike and I will continue forever until the end of time.

All right, so let's put the paperback version of Tiny Experiments on the shelf. What are we reading next?

Oh my. All right, so next we're going to read a book called Inner Excellence, uh, and Inner Excellence is by an individual named Jim Murphy. Part of the reason why we're reading Inner Excellence is because it kind of got popular, uh, by accident via an NFL football player reading it on the sideline of football games. And then, oh, by the way, we went and looked at it and it looks like a pretty good book. So Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. Uh, it is touted by a bunch of, uh, professional golf coaches and/or professional golfers. So that's kind of interesting and wild. Uh, it has a disclaimer that I think is very interesting. So on the Amazon listing, it says the number one New York Times bestseller, 200,000+ copies sold in 3 weeks. So I mean, that's a really interesting statistic. It's just like in, in 3 weeks, like you can't just say it sold over 200,000 copies. Like you got to say in 3 weeks. So, so that's interesting. But if you're reading along with us, Jim Murphy, Inner Excellence, pick up a copy of it and hopefully we get a lot out of that one or as much out of that one as we did out of Tiny Experiments.

Yeah.

Mike, what's after Inner Excellence?

All right. So after that, We're gonna read The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. I saw Sahil Bloom speak at Craft and Commerce a couple of years ago and was a really smart dude. This book has kind of been on my radar for a long time because I've been following him ever since, and it's kind of cool to see how popular this has become. When he spoke at Craft and Commerce, he was kind of publicly setting this, this goal, you know, I want to get a million email subscribers before I launched this. And at the time he had a couple hundred thousand, so it wasn't like crazy, crazy, but it was still a lot more than he had currently. So he was talking about the flywheel he's going to build and I don't know, his session was really good and I just like the way that he, he, he presents this stuff. So I bought this book when it first came out. So we've had it in my house for several weeks now. My wife has picked it up and started going through it and she's really liking it. I don't think there has ever been another productivity type book that she has picked up before me and finished before me. So, okay, uh, Rachel, I'm putting a lot of pressure on you with this one, but it sounds like this is going to be, uh, very broadly, uh, applicable. And, um, yeah, I really don't know a whole lot, uh, I don't know a whole lot about what to expect from this other than, you know, Sahil Bloom wrote it. I haven't spent enough time to really, really dig into it. But yeah, so far all of the reviews, both what I've seen online and from within my own house, have been very positive.

All right, that's good. That's good. Rachel, the challenge has been posted, and Mike, hopefully you can step up and beat her. Hopefully vacation doesn't Vacation doesn't get in the way of that.

Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. All right. Got any gap books?

So, no, because Inner Excellence is, at least on face value, listed as 360 pages.

Yeah, it's a big one.

And because it's listed as 360 pages, I'm not going to take on a gap book right now.

Yeah. And I'm going on vacation, so I don't got a gap book.

Yeah, that's— you're going to read like 7 books while you're on vacation.

Probably. That is what happened last time.

Yeah, so like you don't have a Gap book, you have a whole stack of books, as many as will fit into the suitcase.

All right, so thank you everybody for listening. Thank you for supporting the show, and specifically thank you to the Bookworm Pro members who support the show financially. It means a lot to us, helps us keep the lights on. We are working on getting some ads. We've got some booked now, so that's cool. But the $7 a month that the pro members contribute helps us out a ton. When you sign up for the Pro Show, you get a couple of things. You get— the Pro Show has an ad-free extended version of the show, so when there are ads, they are removed. And then also you get a bonus section. So in this episode, Cory helped me talk through some, shall we say, live event logistics. You also get a pro feed. So that's the pro feed. You also get a bootleg feed. The bootleg comes out after we get done recording this, which is typically about 2 weeks before the actual episodes get, gets released. That bootleg gets uploaded the moment that we get record— we get done recording. So you get the episodes early, you get a 4K Bookworm wallpaper, and if you want to sign up to support the show that way, you can do so by going to patreon.com/bookwormfm.

Alrighty, uh, thanks for reading Tiny Experiments with us. Uh, pick up Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy, and we'll talk to you next time.