This is probably gonna sound obvious, but if it was more of us would do it. Before we can be effective and motivated we have to know what we want to achieve. Not what needs to get done, there’s a big difference. And there should be alignment in your personal and professional life in what you're doing. If I do X then I can do Y. Here are some things I’m trying to regain my sense of perspective and progress.
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Carl: Is the Cold Open still a thing? Should we keep doing that or is that run its course?
Gene: Make it natural.
Carl: Yeah, it doesn't ... yeah. Anyway.
Gene: Any who. Welcome to episode [crosstalk 00:01:11].
Carl: This is our final episode.
Gene: So, Owner's Summit went well?
Carl: Owner's Summit was great. It was smaller. I think we had about 35 attendees, probably about 40-ish people overall with people that were helping out in the avad3, who is amazing streaming provider and a member of the community, because we're going to work with members every chance we get.
Gene: Excellent.
Carl: Become a member. If you're not a member, sign up for the newsletter. That's not right. If you want the newsletter, sign up for membership. I don't know, just do something. It's funny because right now, I just had a call with Adam Fry-Pierce, which I mentioned to you. Adam used to run design leadership form over at InVision. It was something he had started before that. We were just talking about all the things flying around.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: There's so much, and so what I was hoping today was we could just talk about how do we find focus.
Gene: I know. I was getting my coffee before the episode.
Carl: Caffeine? Caffeine, does that help you focus?
Gene: Yep. I was talking with someone and I said, "How's it going?" And they said, "Ugh, I just had a call with someone and they wanted to do some work." I said, "Well, I won't have availability until next week." They said, "That's fine. I'll just go somewhere else if you don't have time." There's distractions, but it seems like everyone is so distracted and busy and I don't understand. Help me understand.
Carl: I understand. Basically, every shop has more work than they can do and can't get a team to do it.
Gene: Right. Cool. End of episode.
Carl: End of episode. Make sure you have plenty of time to listen because you're not busy. But no, I think that's it. Then even if you're running a shop, or especially if you're running a shop, you have to figure out what to focus on and how to focus and when. I mean, I guess you should always focus, but the other thing is I don't know how this plays out based on science, but there can only be so many hours a day that we can truly focus. Right?
Gene: Yes, absolutely.
Carl: I know you can only do nothing for like two hours before we get desperately bored.
Gene: I can go for about-
Carl: You, maybe longer.
Gene: Yeah. I can go for awhile.
Carl: But what about ...
Gene: It's interesting. She said that, "Well, I guess I just need to learn how to say no anyway, so that kind of helped me out because I didn't really want to do it."
Carl: Okay, so say no.
Gene: I was like, "Wow, you can say no?" She was like, "Well, I'm getting good at it." I was like, "Wow, I don't know if I've ever gotten good at it."
Carl: That's a good point. You know what? There are people who say, "You need to say no more," and then there are people who say, "Why don't you say yes occasionally?"
Gene: I know.
Carl: It's like, "Will you be my maybe, baby?"
Gene: Which is it?
Carl: Right? But I think it's saying no to the wrong things. This is part of it. If you're going to focus-
Gene: How about saying yes to saying no?
Carl: I'm pretty sure that's not how that works.
Gene: No?
Carl: I'm pretty sure no means no. But you have to have a goal, right? If you're going to focus, you have to know if what you're focusing on is moving towards something or else it's never going to be your focus. I don't know about you, when I'm looking at my day I'll basically ... I've got a to-do list. I've talked about it before, I've got a to-don't list. I've got all these things that I look at, but if I don't have a goal that something is leading towards then I'm doing it because somebody else needs it, expects it, or it's just taking up head space, and I can't get past it.
Gene: What are we talking about?
Carl: Okay. No, but if you're going to focus I think you have to make sure you're focusing on something you care about otherwise your brain's going to be like, "I don't want to look at taxes."
Gene: Exactly. That's the problem because I don't want to do any of this.
Carl: What do you want to do? If you could have done anything today, besides hang out with me, I know how you are-
Gene: That's pretty much the day.
Carl: Yeah, but what would be the thing you would focus on? Would it just be stuff for the gym?
Gene: I would focus on creating content that I want to. I have a couple things that I'm writing.
Carl: Oh, I'm sorry. Are you currently creating content you don't want to? Is that what you just said? I shaved, damn it.
Gene: I thought we established this. But this, I would do this all day. I would just do podcasting and write articles. That's what I would do.
Carl: I think I'm kind of in that boat.
Gene: Today.
Carl: There's the whole paying for stuff.
Gene: Yeah, whatever.
Carl: We're not Conan. We're not Brene Brown. We're not going to get to just make content. You might, Gene, hey, just say, "No. No Carl, you're wrong. We can do this."
Gene: We can do this.
Carl: Everybody listening is ready to help.
Gene: We can get done.
Carl: [inaudible 00:06:54] send us a thousand bucks each, that'll be $3,000, good with the math. Focus on the episode. Let's try that for a change.
Gene: I'm just watching this episode play out.
Carl: You're just watching it play out. Okay. For me, when I'm figuring out what I'm going to focus on, it's not so much about the thing as it is getting in the right head space and environment.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: So I can focus.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: I think if you take nothing else away from this except that we are hacks, think about that. How do you get yourself in a position where you can focus? What is it for you? When do you find yourself in that flow state, like you were just-
Gene: Well, I will tell you it's a hack of mine, but it's called procrastination, Carl, and I need a deadline. I do my best work the day before the deadline.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Here's the thing, what I've found ... we're talking about just getting shit done and you mentioned things that pay the bills. I kind of need to give myself false deadlines I've found. Because what I've found, personally, is that if I have a month to do something, whatever it is will take a month. If I have two days to do something, whatever it is, will take two days. I tend to move the deadlines up and then I'm sort of not that bright, so I'll forget that I did that and it will work.
Carl: For you, it's not necessarily getting in a certain environment, it's about creating a certain set of circumstances so that you feel pressured.
Gene: Well, two things: I cannot work at home on client work. I cannot do it. I've tried. I tried recently last week. I can't do it and I can't work remotely. I need to be at my desk with things set up a certain way. I've tried to recreate it at home, too, but I can't. I need to be in an environment to do work that I don't want to do. Not that I don't want to do my client work, but you know what I mean? If it's like big work, your job, I'd rather do things that are fun like research things and create content or whatever. I can do that anywhere.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I've found. [crosstalk 00:09:19]
Carl: The functional work as opposed to [crosstalk 00:09:23] work. Can you split them that way?
Gene: I can and I can't do the functional work standing up. I'm at my standup desk right now and I'm standing up. I find that I record things or whatever standing up, but as soon as I try to write some code or work on some information architecture or something, I have to be sitting down.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I have to have the environmental things specifically laid out, which is weird.
Carl: I don't think it's weird. I think it's human nature. If we think about, I'm going to say it wrong, feng shui, is that right?
Gene: That's how I've always said it.
Carl: That's how you've always said it? And you say it a lot.
Gene: I do.
Carl: I just want to get that out there. It's like I'm surprised you don't wear feng shui clothes or something. Is that a thing? For me, when I think about it and with what you just said, there are things that make our brain feel like everything's fine extrinsically. It's funny, with my backdrop, I can't really work with clutter. I need, in my visual area, I need it to be clean. I work outside really well because outside is big and open and there's enough noise, I think. It's not noisy like city noise, it's just birds or whatever. It's such a lovely existence to have.
Gene: There's not a lot of clutter, unless you [crosstalk 00:11:06].
Carl: Exactly.
Gene: Unless you are redneck and you've got lawn mowers and stuff in your yard, yeah.
Carl: If I have a lawn mower in my yard I'm a redneck?
Gene: [crosstalk 00:11:13] like a car on blocks.
Carl: Oh, none of that. [crosstalk 00:11:18] are just blown out, but it's still on wheels.
Gene: You know what I mean.
Carl: I think there's a lot to that. I think one of the biggest things is creating that optimal environment for us to be able to focus. I need, also, something to write on. I've talked about this either in other episodes or maybe in the newsletter, but there are times where something comes into my head while I'm working on something else. We all have this. We [inaudible 00:11:50]. I need somewhere to jot it down quickly and it can't be open an app. The thing that's going to distract me the most that's going to cause me to lose focus is if I open my phone to add something to my app and then to do it and then I see the other things that are piling up. We're talking about people who ... I'm an inbox zero kind of person, but I think it's to my detriment because it distracts me every time and it takes 20 minutes from me. I'm going to get pulled away.
Carl: I think a big part of it, for me, is to have analog, not digital, when I'm trying to focus on something. I need to write something down and not have it tell me the seven things I haven't seen.
Gene: Right, I know. I find that even things like writing notes, I cannot take notes on my laptop. I cannot take notes on my phone. I have to write it down, any kind of notes, because I find the act of using the piece of computer or whatever takes me completely out of the room.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: That's really weird. I think it might be because I'm old.
Carl: Is it?
Gene: I don't know, because my kids use Chromebooks and iPads and they rarely write stuff down. It's weird.
Carl: Yeah. It could be.
Gene: I've been in meetings with people where they're "uh huh, uh huh," typing, typing, and I'm like, "Why aren't you paying attention?"
Carl: That's definitely a generational thing because you and I, if we're doing that, we're going to say, "Hey, I just want to let you know that I'm taking notes. I'm not surfing the web." Younger people, they don't feel the need to disclaim that they're-
Gene: Yeah, I think it's because they live in that world where they're in the room, someone's talking, they're writing, they're looking shit up, they're doing ... it's all happening in the pre-metaverse.
Carl: Let's say you get into that space, let's say you get into your flow state, one thing that's interesting Rob Harrah was saying this, and I've said it a bunch of times, I think a lot of us have, but the difference between in a groove and being in a rut is perspective. If we can get on ourselves in that right environment then we can get in a groove.
Gene: Yeah, I love that analogy, man. That's the first time I've heard that and that's so true because even in relationships one person can be like, "Man, things are happening everyday. It's like awesome." And the other person can be like, "We do the same shit everyday." I think it's perspective. I think you're right.
Carl: It's interesting because when you get the environment right and then you get your mindset right and you can dump out all the other things that are floating around and get through that, then you get to a place where you can focus. Now, what you said earlier about procrastination, that definitely derails all of this. What do you fill that time with? If you've got a month for something that would take you an afternoon?
Gene: Right now I have an email newsletter that I have to code up. They want this html newsletter and I haven't coded in html newsletter in, I don't know, three or four years.
Carl: I think it's more than that.
Gene: Probably longer than that. I was supposed to have it done in January.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And they're super awesome. They haven't bothered me about it or anything, but I've just found everything else I can do but that thing.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I set a deadline today. I was like, by Friday this thing needs to get done. What I did was I actually emailed them and I said, "Look, I'm super sorry [crosstalk 00:16:04]."
Carl: "I just evidently don't care enough."
Gene: No, I was like-
Carl: "I'm not feeling the pressure. If you could yell at me."
Gene: I said, "If I can't get it done by Friday, I will either find someone else to do it."
Carl: Wow.
Gene: "Or you don't owe me anything and I'll refund the deposit stuff." So, because I needed to burn the boats. I needed to create something that makes me get it done. I think you can battle procrastination with things like that. That's probably extreme. It's a side little thing. It's like 800 bucks, it's like nothing. That's one of those things I probably should have said no to, but I think you can do that on a certain level. I don't know about giant projects. It's probably not a good idea.
Carl: No, well those come with their own pressure. If you've got a giant project-
Gene: Yeah, that's [inaudible 00:16:55] pressure.
Carl: When you get to that point where you've experienced enough projects like that.
Gene: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Carl: You know that four months from now is tomorrow and so you just go. You just start right away. I think, for me, and this is different, because I'm like you. I procrastinate on stuff. There's some things that I've just accepted that I'm not going to do until the day before.
Gene: I think maybe that's what I'm talking about.
Carl: What's that?
Gene: I think that's maybe what I'm talking about because I don't want to send a false thing and say it's like I procrastinate on everything. I don't. There's big important things then there's important things in business and there's important things with clients and customers that you have to make sure to take care of. I don't procrastinate on those things. We're talking about the things that I don't necessarily want to do, like this email thing.
Carl: This email thing. So real quick on procrastination. I had some people that I worked with in the past. I remember one of them saying, "Sometimes when we procrastinate it's because we don't have everything we need, we just don't know it yet." It's like it could be something ... Our brain has been through this so many times that it knows we're going to get 25 minutes into this and then there's a question we don't have an answer to and all this type stuff. I think procrastination's good, but if it's taking up head space the whole time, then it's bad.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Because it's getting in the way of you accomplishing other things. I started this really today. I'm going to start it after ... you know what, I'll start it next week sometime. That wasn't a procrastination joke, but it turned into one. I'm basically only allowing one big item to be on my list everyday. It's like, did you ever see that, I don't know if it was an Instagram account or what it was, but somebody had this thing called A Fix A Day, and they were just going to fix one thing that bothered them everyday.
Gene: Oh man, yeah I don't remember who that was, not a sausage, not a sausage.
Carl: Oh, was that Patrick?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: I didn't realize that was Patrick. Wow.
Gene: Yes. Yeah.
Carl: I still like it. Don't get me wrong, now that I know. Hey Patrick. But to me that was so great. I think we should think about that at work as well. And yeah, we're going to get distracted, but because other people are going to need things, but here's another thing. When you set up that environment for focus, I think it's important to tell your team, "Hey, for the next three hours I'm going to be focused on this so I can make some progress on it. I will check back in if I have a break or at the end," so that they don't think you just went awol.
Gene: That's super important. Do you do reverse calendering? How do you [crosstalk 00:20:00]? How do you run your calender? How's your calendar set up?
Carl: I still don't know what that means. [crosstalk 00:20:07] your personal calender, the bureau calender [crosstalk 00:20:10].
Gene: How does that work?
Carl: Oh, so this is a whole nother episode.
Gene: Yeah, probably.
Carl: Because I fucking hate Calendly.
Gene: Oh, I love Calendly.
Carl: You love going into other people's calendars and picking a time?
Gene: No. No.
Carl: You love using it. You don't like when you have to use it. You like it when somebody picks the time with you.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Okay. See, my problem is it feels super rude and I know that's just [inaudible 00:20:46], but it's also the whole ... and I know there are people listening to this that are going to come at me, which means we finally hit the episode, just start deleting before this. Calendly, to me, feels like, "Hey, if you can find a time when I'm available, then I'm good to talk to you." Then you go and look and it's only going to be at 4:00 every other Wednesday and you're going, "Okay, I wasn't even the one who started this conversation. You wanted to meet with me and now I'm having to go try to ..." Then I've got to go look at my calendar next to Calendly because it doesn't pick up everything. It's a hot fucking mess, but the way I view it is using a different tool, Mixmax, and it just allows me to set up some times and then I just say, "Hey, if any of these work for you, feel free to pick one. If not, let me know." That way I'm not saying, "Hey, pick a time where we can maintenance your car." I'm saying, "Hey, I would like to meet with you. This works."
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: To that point, I know again, we're getting distracted on our focus topic.
Gene: We are, but I will tell you [crosstalk 00:21:58]. It really helps me focus, though. I have certain hours of the day ... I'm not physically in this little room until nine everyday and I'm here until noon. The people that I work with know that. After that, I have times where people can book times. I meet with people from the gym. I meet with contractors and do things like that. I don't do project meetings outside of the first half of the day, but so the second half of my day is open in Calendly and there are some times in the first part of my day that are open in Calendly for meetings.
Carl: Okay.
Gene: For, like, fucking painful shit, like Zoom meetings and stuff like that, because nobody likes a Zoom meeting. Yeah, nobody likes Zoom meetings.
Carl: They don't?
Gene: I had to tell you.
Carl: Nobody's told me this.
Gene: This is new?
Carl: No, I'm just going to set up two laptops so I can Zoom myself.
Gene: [crosstalk 00:23:00]
Carl: ... the whole time.
Gene: So you said that, that it feels super rude, but I feel like if you're setting that expectation with people that, "Hey, you can get me. This is how it works."
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And it's just always there, I don't know. I'm not in everybody's head, maybe they're like, "That Gene's a dick. He always sends me a Calendly link."
Carl: "Get out of my head, Gene. There's not room there for both of us."
Gene: But I've had clients, they take advantage of it. They're like, "Cool, I'm going to use it and meet with you."
Carl: All right, I think this is what's happened with Calendly. Enough people have used it long enough that they realize that people are going to book time with them and then they look and they realize, "Oh shit, that whole day is gone." Then they say, "From here on out you only get 1:00 or 4:00. I'm out."
Gene: I like those boundaries for my personal ability to focus more.
Carl: But I'm doing it as well. I don't ask that person to come into my Calendly. I don't know why that feels weird to me. Anyway, I will say this-
Gene: I'll never send you my Calendly link. Don't worry about it.
Carl: Yeah, you will.
Gene: I know.
Carl: You jackass. Jason Fried was on the podcast a few years back and we talked about taking control of your calendar. When you let somebody else in ... Now granted, you set the boundaries, but I think that's an important thing, to see-
Gene: That's a huge thing [crosstalk 00:24:43]. Yeah.
Carl: Because you do time blocking, or did you?
Gene: I do. Yeah, I do.
Carl: How do you do it? There's a lot of different ways to do it, but I agree. I think if you're really going to focus, I think you should block off, at a minimum, 50 minutes. I know some people do a 50/10, like 50 minutes focus work, 10 minutes take a break kind of thing.
Gene: Wow, I'll do like three hours.
Carl: Okay, but you don't take any breaks during that three hours?
Gene: I go use the restroom or grab coffee or whatever. Yeah, I don't know, I think me personally, I think you're trying to control it too much if you're down to 10 minutes. You know what I mean?
Carl: No, I'm with you. Yeah, yeah.
Gene: I think the flow, 10 minutes is so nit picky. Just make it an hour and go pee when you need to pee.
Carl: I think the idea behind it is that you basically take an hour and then you give yourself a chance to get up and move around-
Gene: Yeah, yeah.
Carl: Before you come back and sit down again because-
Gene: Right. Well, that's good, especially if you're a developer or something or a writer and you're writing for hours at a time.
Carl: Other people will do a 60/60/30 where they do an hour, they take a short break, five minutes, they do another hour, and then they take a 30 minute break. I think it's all about who you are and what stuff you have to get done.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: When I finish something, I celebrate.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Mostly that celebration is going to be me taking a 20 minute walk and just letting it all go and figuring out what's the next important thing.
Gene: Let's talk about that, though, because we're talking about time blocking so that you can have focus time. I find that, for me, the time blocking is like whatever. Over the years I've found out the best times of the day when I work best on this type of work or that type, but I really find is the battle is actually battling the interruptions. I find that that's really the thing. My phone, I have to turn it over so I don't see all the shit popping up on it. I will sign out of Instant Messenger, Slack's always open because we have team members that sometimes need questions or whatever, but it's like, "Man, sometimes I got my focus hour and I'm going to work," and it's like, "bing, bing, bing," and then there's somebody at the door, "I have a question." And you're like, "Well, I had shit to do, but that's not going to happen."
Carl: But you chose to work in the office.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: You said you couldn't work anywhere else and now you're saying you can't work there.
Gene: Some days.
Carl: I agree, though. It's like [crosstalk 00:27:39] Yeah.
Gene: ... be interrupted. You're, "I'm working," and then it's like, "Oh, I got to do this." [crosstalk 00:27:45]
Carl: I've got a community of about a thousand people. I don't know what that's like to be interrupted. Honestly, every time they interrupt me I'm like, "Thank you." They're the reason I have a job, so it's a little different. But no, I think, for me, and I'll do this in the bureau Slack all the time in the team side, I'll basically say, "Hey, I'm turning off all the things."
Gene: Yeah, it's important.
Carl: [crosstalk 00:28:09] your phone upside down. I will say there are all these different levels of do not disturb now, like on the iPhone.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: [inaudible 00:28:20] living in airplane mode because unless I know something could happen, like my mom or we've got some people at the house right now. We're finally getting rid of our collector's items which were these 1970s bathrooms are finally getting ripped out. I may get a call, "How do we turn off the main water" or something like that. If there's something like that going on I'll make sure that I am ... I think that's another part of the process for focus, is to make sure you get those things taken care of.
Carl: I did today, I was thinking as I was leaving, 'What is something that the contractor's going to need that he doesn't have?" I said, "Do you want me to show you where the water main is?" I did that kind of trying to protect this time. Or it could be, on Friday's I take my daughter to musical theater, so maybe it's like I know that I can't focus an hour before that because I'm going to be worried that I'm running out of time.
Carl: I think that's another thing, when you look at your focus time make sure it's not going to butt up against something else that you're going to keep checking the clock to make sure.
Gene: That's so genius.
Carl: You need an app on each side that allows you to go. I do like time blocking. I do it and then I don't do it. It's weird because it feels like I do it when my list is really long and I got to knock shit out, but these are never important things.
Gene: It's a tool. It's a tool to use when you need to use it. It's not like, "Hey, here's a system that you should use every single day of your life." If we can cyber work, if that's how you live. You ever see those millionaire or billionaire daily routines, like the Mark Wahlberg routine where it's like, "I get up [crosstalk 00:30:18] and I read and I pray and then I drink coffee, and then I go work out for an hour, and then I spend time with my family, and then I'm over here." I tell you-
Carl: "And then I sign a deal for eight million dollars to make Bad Daddy 7."
Gene: [crosstalk 00:30:32] that one time and felt great about it and they wrote a tweet on it.
Carl: Wait, I'll acknowledge this. Do you remember when I was doing the project where I would just help people? They could just email me and I would just help whatever it was.
Gene: Yeah, that was cool, but yeah.
Carl: I was making a lot of money at the time. That money's gone.
Gene: And time.
Carl: It is really easy to be disciplined when you're sitting on a stack of cash.
Gene: Right.
Carl: You know, nothing is going to derail your mortgage.
Gene: When your Mark Wahlberg.
Carl: [inaudible 00:31:06] for days, baby.
Gene: You can go to bed at 7:30 pm.
Carl: I was tired, okay? That's not a normal thing.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Jackass. I think something you said earlier, though, is really important, which is that idea of being just intentional with your time. By that I mean knowing when you're at your best.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: You know what? I write best when I first get up. If I'm working, like on the newsletter today, I knew yesterday one of the things I had on my list was figure out what you're going to write about for the newsletter. [crosstalk 00:31:53]
Gene: ... focus.
Carl: It is, right? The thing, for me, is at night I can kind of do some research and stuff. I shouldn't be working at night anyway, but sometimes it's something I really care about, like I love the newsletter. So I don't see that as work. I see that as fun, but with a deadline.
Gene: It's a fine line between work and self improvement.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Something like this, this is like therapy.
Carl: Absolutely. It's [crosstalk 00:32:26] therapy in front of others.
Gene: You're researching how to get better at focusing.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: You could do that at 9:00 at night. It's okay, you know?
Carl: Here's another thing, I used to think it was certain days of the week I was better. I used to tell myself, "Monday is a shit day. Just do whatever you want because you're not going to get anything real done." And so, then I used to load up Mondays with calls and stuff. I'd be like, "You know what? I'm not going to be able to focus on Monday anyway, so I'll do that."
Gene: All right.
Carl: But then that started making Tuesday bad. I guess the point being, there are certain days of the week where you may be better, too, because you've gotten by something else. Like Wednesday is a super functional day for me because Tuesday I've got the podcast, which gets me excited. I've got the newsletter, which I'm going to get feedback on. So, Wednesday I normally hit it with a lot of energy because I found that [crosstalk 00:33:28] for the community. If I need to make big decisions I try to make them on Wednesday because I'll be at my best mental state.
Gene: Yep.
Carl: Also, Wednesday's are a run day for me. If I get in a nice run, coming back right away what I want to do is focus on that decision because I'm in the best head space I'm going to be in-
Gene: Yeah. Yeah. That's another thing that helps focus, that I think is probably the last thing we're mentioning here, but probably one of the most important, is physical exertion, like exercise. Go wear yourself out. For some reason I can be in the worst mood, I can have the most shit weighing on me, if I go and work out hard for 45 minutes, after that shit's kind of easy to decide. It's just kind of in focus.
Carl: Do you know the science behind that?
Gene: No, I don't, but I know it works.
Carl: Can you research it and let me know because I'm really interested? I think ... and this is just [inaudible 00:34:34] ... maybe I read this, I'm not sure. I know for running, when your body knows that you're going to be occupied for at least an hour doing something, your brain relaxes like, "What's going on?" Because it knows, "Okay, the body is going to be making this motion for the next hour, so what was that thing we were trying to figure out?" And so, even though you may not really be thinking about it, like it might not be at the front of your mind, your brain is starting to relax a little. I forget what they call it, but if you try to just solve one thing and you can't, it's an acute stress you've put on your brain where it can't see it because you're staring at it so hard.
Gene: I believe that.
Carl: That's why people figure things out in the shower or in traffic or whatever, because they've stopped asking their brain to answer the damn question and your brain's like, "Oh, by the way that thing you've been bugging the shit out of me about, here's the answer."
Gene: Yeah, you make it more important than it actually is, probably.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Yeah, and you're falsely lifting it up higher on the chain of important shit and your brain just, "It ain't important, bro. Just do whatever."
Carl: I do think there's one last one here, at least for me, and I did see it when I was researching some of this stuff last night. This gets back to something, actually, a friend of mine had shared that they do. They actually have a mantra when they go to bed each night. It's basically letting go of the day and welcoming the next one. I think there's something to that. You can do it the way that they do it, which is basically saying either today was good or today was not good, or whatever. "Today was a struggle, but it's over. Tomorrow is a new opportunity and I'm going to be great." Whatever it might be, they just kind of do that.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: For me, I almost find that if ... like right before I go to bed, about 7:15-ish, if I ... Gene, I don't really go to bed at 7:30.
Gene: I know.
Carl: You were like, "What? Were you up all night or are you just, like, back from Denny's and your [inaudible 00:36:53]?"
Gene: Back from that [inaudible 00:36:55] dinner.
Carl: If I have a routine, if I stick to it, I will journal about the day and just stuff I was happy with, stuff I wasn't happy with, and then I've got another journal, which is just kind of like a focus journal. It's right here, Gene.
Gene: Good job.
Carl: You see anything on it?
Gene: There's nothing on there. It's blank.
Carl: That's right.
Gene: So you can focus.
Carl: Behind the uncarved block. But I like to write down two or three things that are going to be important the next day.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: And I think part of that is it lets my brain know that I've captured them so it doesn't have to keep circling, but the other thing is that next morning or when I'm fresh and having that cup of coffee, and my brain maybe stewed over these three things. One of them will come to the top and that's how I'll be like, "This is the one thing I've got to get done today. Everything else is circumstantial. This has to happen."
Gene: I know for a fact I cannot multitask.
Carl: Humans can't.
Gene: I cannot do it. [crosstalk 00:38:03]
Carl: Humans cannot multitask.
Gene: One thing at a time.
Carl: Yeah, we can shift attention quickly and some people are great at it. I know people who have four or five projects at a time and they just try to move everything forward a little bit. I get paranoid when I do that [crosstalk 00:38:23] something's going to break or I'm letting somebody down. These are not good reasons to do things or not to, but it's human.
Gene: Yeah, it's real. All right. Well, that's good. I think you helped me focus a little bit.
Carl: Yeah?
Gene: For sure. Yeah, I learned some new stuff.
Carl: There you go.
Gene: I dig it.
Carl: Well, edit this down because I think there's, maybe, two minutes of value here.
Gene: Yeah, thanks for letting me brainstorm your newsletter with you. It's been a great episode.
Carl: I appreciate [crosstalk 00:38:55].
Gene: Get busy, bro.
Carl: All right, everybody.
Gene: Thank you.
