Ever feel like you're racing a treadmill, not moving anywhere fast? Well, today we explore the surprising paradox. Sometimes the smartest thing to do is slow down. From studies showing slower paced teams outperforming others to Navy SEAL strategies like slow is smooth and smooth is fast. We'll dig into why setting boundaries, doing fewer things well, and pausing before action can turbocharge your performance without the burn. I'm Joe and my pal over there driving in the slow lane, he's Kurt. And we are dudes in progress. Hello, Kurt.
Hey, Joe.
What's, what's shaking, my slow paced, easygoing friend?
You know me well. You know, there's this road I travel fairly often to see my grandson and my son and daughter in law. And it's Route 84, which I've traveled so many, so many miles in my life because it's the route from Hartford to Boston. And I swear the drivers just in general are getting faster and crazier. And I watch the license plates go. Now I'm gonna make fun of people from New York and New Jersey, cause it seems like there are the guys like flying by and this is a three lane road, so I do stay over to the right and just keep my pace and let them go.
Sometimes you have to. I, I have a real struggle with this, especially driving. I, I tend to find that space between cars and wiggle my way in and figure out a way around traffic. And that's, that's, that's an issue for me, let's just put it that way. Do you go through times, have you ever gone through times when you constantly feel like you're rushing and in the end it actually made things harder or actually took longer?
Oh, for sure. And you know what? The thought that comes into my head is you make mistakes. I'm thinking as I was thinking about this topic, and I told you before we hit record, I know where you got this topic from because you mentioned in one of our resources, the book Effortless, which I immediately purchased and I finished reading today and a chapter in that book. But then you confessed you didn't even know that's where you got it from.
Yeah, when I was thinking about, okay, what do we want to record for this week? And what is the natural progression of things we've been talking about and what's coming up? I thought about the fourth of July weekend, some time off work, time to slow down and maybe refocus a little bit with a long weekend and spend time with people who love you and you love. I thought, man, I just need to slow down. And then I thought about this concept that we've heard a lot. Go slow to go fast. We've heard a lot. But I kind of forgot that it is a. It's a whole chapter in Effortless. And I love those two books, Essentialism and effortless by Greg McGowan. Those are two books that, in fact, I give away a lot. I've probably given away a dozen of each, maybe to co workers and to people I know that I think could benefit from it. And what the heck. Let's. Let's say we'll. We'll give away a book for today's show. If anybody wants to reach out to us for a. For the book Effortless, we'll send it to you. How about that? I didn't expect that, but there we go. My. My problem, Kurt, is whatever I'm doing, I want to be finished. I just want to be finished. Whatever it is. I'm doing this podcast right now. I'm like, okay, let's. Let's get this. Let's get this finished. Let's. Let's see what's going on next. Instead of just slowing down and being in the moment and letting myself enjoy the time and reap benefits from the productivity of slowing down, it is a bit of a paradox, isn't it? What does it actually mean to go slow, to go fast?
Yeah, I didn't get to finish answering your question, but an example for me, that I was thinking of, and this helps, the definition, I believe, too, is that we'll take a home project, like my bathroom remodeling. I didn't know all the answers. I had to do a lot of research, which can be tedious, but time saved in the end of doing it properly the first time. Of course, you know the saying, measure twice, cut once, and boy, do you learn. That is so true when you're building.
Something, especially when you actually are measuring and cutting. Right.
Exactly. Or I was building. My wife and my daughter bought me the Blackstone Grill, the 36 inch one. And have you ever started to build something and you're looking at the directions and you're thinking, I don't know. I don't quite. Sometimes if you're a guy, you don't even look at the direction. You just start building it right, and.
Then you're left over. You have leftover parts, three screes, three screws and two bolts. You're like, oh, boy.
Or it's upside down, you've assembled it and something's backwards, which is typically, I mean, you got a 50, 50 shot. And I usually make the wrong choice, but I was very patient with this, and it's really not a difficult thing to put together, but you certainly can put something on backwards. And I, boy, do I hate rework. So I think slowing down, reading the directions, which can take time, and then trying to do it the right way, the first time is a great example of going slow to go fast.
Right? Yeah. This is a. This is a big issue, and it is a bit of a paradox, isn't it? It's a bit of a. You have to wrap your mind around the concept, and we're going to talk about some of these concepts, the science of slowing down, even explore a kind of a weird philosophical concept called Einstein Time from Gay Hendrix, the Big Leap, which. I don't know if you've read that book or not, but I've. I've read it and it's pretty interesting book. But I do like this concept because it works. It's efficient, it's productive. It works to go slow, to go fast.
It goes back to the old Aesop fable, the Tortoise and the Hare, just that slow and steady progress is going to be faster than trying to. Again, making all the mistakes, just taking your time. But steady progress is something you say every week on our podcast, right? Just making progress, thinking about what you're doing.
It's one of those phrases or little slogans that sound clever and, like I said, maybe even contradictory, but it's based on the real idea that shows up again and again in leadership, in sports, in the military, in everyday life. It's about slowing down on purpose to create the space for clarity, good decisions, high quality work, instead of just rushing through almost on this mindless, brainless autopilot. Slowing down means pulling back, right? Get present, focus on doing fewer things, but doing them really, really well. And I struggle with this, man, I'm reading my mail out loud. But this is. Slowing down is something that I. I really struggle with because before I, like I said before, I have this mindset of whatever I'm doing, I want to be finished, right? Because I don't know, when you go fast without direction, to me, it leads to burnout, it leads to mistakes, stress. You have to do things over again. As that saying goes. Ain't nobody got time for that, right?
You know, yeah, we all struggle with patience. I think that's got no patience for things. But you're right. It's amazing. Sometimes the opposite, what you think is the truth.
There's something I implemented in Meetings. When I'm scheduling meetings to help me slow down, I bookend meetings now with a prep time and a debrief time, a personal prep time and a personal debrief time. Instead of just going into a meeting, I schedule a half an hour before the meeting and a half an hour after the meeting, maybe 15 minutes so I can slow down, so I can stop, take some notes, think about the meeting that I was just in action items and close it out, slow down and close out that meeting. And that's another part of just slowing down and thinking about what we're doing. The idea is it's not just philosophical, right? It's really data backed. KURT Burnout rates in the workplace have absolutely skyrocketed. We're always rushing, we're always going, we're always trying to move, we're always, every company's trying to be leaner. Do more with less people. A report as recent as 2024 by Abilene Christian University showed that 62% of people reported feeling burned out at work. And that's up from 43% just the year before. So that's a big jump. That's almost a 20 point jump from the year before. And we're in the age of work, from home and we're supposed to be, it's supposed to be a more ideal workplace now, but people are feeling burned out, man. From 2023, from 23 to 24, it jumped 20%. It's massive. Here's the thing. Working more or working faster doesn't fix burnout, it causes it.
Yeah, I think I've lived by this value pretty much my whole life. I really value balance. I've always, you know, demonstrated by my vacations that I insist on taking or, yeah, not working past a certain time, starting and working during that period. But yeah, I'm separating the work from my home life. So I, yeah, I, I, I'm easily burned out. And even during the day, you know, your, your brain can only really fill up. You're, you're useless. At some point, you really, if, if you don't think so, you're kidding yourself because you're like a, you're like a computer's RAM memory. The more you churn and churn and churn, the more, especially if you're turning on things that are useless, those things get in the way too, right? And your brain reaches a point where you're really running on fumes and the progress you're making is horrible. Instead of stopping and starting the next.
Day, refueling, it's an Epidemic. I really think it's an epidemic. It's a problem that this culture faces of moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, get it done, get it done, get it done. And we want to look busy, but just looking busy. Sometimes it's a, it's posturing, right? You want to look busy because of your co workers. You always. We have this phrase, we have these phrases that say, oh, I've got so many emails, I've got so much to do, I don't have time. Oh my gosh, I'm just so, I'm just so stressed out. We have control over this, right? On the flip side of that whole thing, studies have found that when people intentionally slow their pace, Kurt, whether through focus blocks, and we can talk about that if you want rest periods, mindful work habits, productivity and creativity increases. Time magazine back in 2022 highlighted how even micro breaks just a few minutes of stepping away from work boost your mood and energy and your mindset, your cognitive performance. So as it turns out, and I think you hit on this, Kurt, our brains aren't built for constant hustle. We need space, we need room to breathe, we need balance.
Yeah, I'm thinking as you're talking about that your subconscious brain is so smarter than your conscious brain. So when you're grinding it out, trying to figure out something, you're using your conscious brain. And we, you know, in the modern world, we work on, a lot of us work on very complicated tasks all day long and that stresses out your brain and it's amazing. Again, I've talked about this so many times. You be struggling with something, trying to burn the late night hours and you're frustrated and you're getting nowhere. You say, forget it, I'm going to bed. You wake up the next morning, maybe in the middle of the night, you've been something, some idea pops in your head or in the shower and you're.
Like, ah.
Well, that was your subconscious brain working on that problem while you were sleeping. While you're early morning waking up and all of a sudden you've got a light at the end of the tunnel to go to go finish that problem. It's. Or you say, you know what, I'm just gonna ask somebody else. I had this with a problem at work recently and I was, boy, I was hitting this thing hard and I was getting nowhere. I'm using ChatGPT and other sources. I'm getting nowhere. I had someone gave me an idea, I went, try that. I was like, oh, this is it. And I really thought I had it figured out and it still didn't work. And I finally, I had a meeting set up with a system administrator engineer. Come to find out he was the only one who could fix the problem because he had access to an administrative tool. In the error message was a URL. Plug in this URL, it'll tell you pretty much exactly what the problem is. And it was basically a permission issue. He had to change the permission and I couldn't do it. So here I'm banging my head against the, trying to burn extra hours. At the end of the day, I needed help from somebody else.
And you don't get that help unless you slow down. You don't get that help unless you slow down and think about, okay, I just gotta stop this and slow myself down. And I'll say this throughout this episode, Kurt, this is a really tough thing for me. I have to be very, very intentional to slow myself down. I'm not trying to wave the banner that I'm so busy and that I'm. I've got all this stuff to do and I got to rush from one thing to another. Usually I have to rush because I've been inefficient. Usually I have to rush because I've procrastinated. Usually I have to rush because I didn't do it right the first time. Usually I have to rush because I didn't seek the proper counsel like you said. And it's all self inflicted, man. I have to intentionally slow down and stop and think. It's difficult for me, man. You know how I like. I love studies and I love research and I love real world examples. And just to talk about this a little bit, there's lots of real world proof that slowing down works. It's not just for people, but it's for teams and companies too. Toyota is, is famous for this. They have a rule that allows any worker on a production line when they notice a problem, they can stop the production line when they notice a problem. Now it sounds like it could be a recipe for delays and slowdown and unproductive work, Right? But the reality is it reduces defects and keeps everything running more smoothly. Toyota has proven this long term. They've been doing this for a long time. There's a phrase for it and I can't remember what it is, but they fix issues in the moment instead of just rushing past them for the sake of productivity, for the sake of getting out the order. It avoids those big messes to clean up later on.
Yeah, and they're huge messes. The car goes out with A defect. Think of the cost. It could be a defect that causes injury or death. And is kaizen the word you're thinking of?
Yeah, kaizen. No, kaizen is the process, as I understand it, is developing the process. You're having a kaizen event. That's where you. You get all the stakeholders in the room and all the geniuses and you start brainstorming and you start putting. Developing a process to be more efficient or leaner. But yeah, it's in that same culture. You're right.
It's a cultural thing, too, in that we don't think you're right. We think we got to go faster, and we don't want to stop the line because we got to get this amount of cars out at the end of the day. But, yeah, what a huge difference. I was thinking of a story, Joe, and I think this came from the book Effortless. And by starting and going faster, are you really doing the right thing? There's a question to ask yourself. Is there a simpler way or. I think he tells of a. A professor who reaches out to this woman. She's involved with video videotaping in the tech part of the college. And this woman who does all this video work is extremely busy. She's flat out tired and burnt out stressed in. This professor comes to her and says, I need you for a month to record this class for whatever reason. And this video person, she goes into this whole thing of, oh, my gosh, this is, you know, the production that this is going to take and the editing, and this is like a month. I don't have this time for this month. But she slowed down. Instead of going through all that burnout and stress, how can I make this easier? And an idea that popped in her head was, why don't I just have one of the students on their iPhone record this in class and present that to the professor. You know what? The professor was excited about that idea.
Yep. I remember that story in the book effortless by Greg McGowan. Part of that story is because she slowed down and thought about it. She realized that she wanted to put all these transitions and this whole big production quality, and you make it look highly polished and highly professional. And come to find out, it was just for a couple students that couldn't attend the class.
Right.
And. And didn't need all this stuff behind it.
Exactly.
She saved herself days, hours, weeks of. Of effort and frustration because she slowed down and understood the scope, the true scope, and the reason, the reason of the project. There's a piece on Medium by Reagan, Bach. That's. They studied 343 companies over three years. And the. The organizations that took the time to pause and reflect on their strategies on a regular basis rather than just charging ahead. And I know a lot of companies that do this, that just charge ahead ended up with 40% higher sales and 50% higher profits. Slowing down is a strategic advantage if you're running the business. If you're running the company. Slowing down gives you an edge. It gives you a head start, believe it or not. Here's my favorite. Here's my favorite. The U.S. navy SEALs have a saying. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Now, these are people operating in the most high stakes environments, Kurt. Higher stakes than you and I can even imagine. And they're trained to slow down, not rush, because they know that precision, being calm and controlled, those concepts win the day. And when you're deliberate, you avoid costly mistakes, and you actually move faster in the long run.
Yeah, I'm thinking of the preparation that goes into missions. Now, I don't know a lot about the Navy seals. And by the way, Happy Independence Day. We're talking about military and our good friend, shout out to Kevin Curtis Allen, who always wants to post in our Facebook groups and messages, Joe and I, happy treason Day to us peasants.
Yep. It certainly is a tradition of his. And I'll let him have that. Right. He sends it to me, and I think he sent it to you and posts it. And we'll let him have that because we know who won. Right.
I was thinking of a couple examples like D Day, and we didn't jump right into that war in the World War II. And I love the band of brothers and all of the preparation and practice and execution. Did you hear the. That just popped in my head, too. The B2 bomber mission runs that over Iran. They practiced that for 15 years, that mission. Do you hear that?
No, but that's amazing.
I don't know what they did. Maybe simulators, but they've had that particular mission for that particular site. They've been training for 15 years on that.
Wow.
And we'll probably never. I don't know if we'll understand how difficult that mission was and to pull it off with amazing accuracy and precision. But I think that's what the Navy SEALs talk about. They'll practice every aspect of a mission and try to know as much as they possibly can ahead of time before they execute.
Right. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I've seen that in a movie too, somewhere. But I love that saying, man. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And again, these are in situations of the highest ramifications, the highest stakes, and we can't even imagine. I mean, this is, these are lives, these are governments, this is global impact. And their idea is to slow down now. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for Joe. Trying to figure out how to do a project and just not ramming it through. Right.
Yeah. It's a fantastic example. I love that.
Have you ever heard of this thing called Einstein Time?
Now, I've read this book, the Big Leap, so I'm sure I've been introduced to it. And Einstein, he's kind of a smart guy, so you're gonna have to describe it to me.
I'm not sure I can completely. It's one of those concepts that you have to chew on after I read about it intuitively, you know it's true. I don't understand it, quite honestly. I'm still chewing on it, I guess you would say. But it's important enough, I think, to mention here because we're talking about slowing time down and being in control of our time. It's a little philosophical, so just grant me some grace here. Stay with me. But it's super practical, dude. In the Big Leap, you mentioned the book the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. He introduced a concept that he calls Einstein time. And most of us live in what he calls Newtonian view of time, where time is a limited resource and we're constantly running out of it. You've probably said things like, I've said things. I just don't have enough time. I'm so busy. Where did the time go? My gosh, I can't believe it's that late. I, I just, I, I, I can't believe it's. I've run out of time. That's Newtonian time thinking. According to Gay Hendricks in In the Big Leap, which is a really good book, Einstein Time flips that mindset. And this is what I love about it, because it's a mindset shift. It says, you are where time comes from. Now, just that statement. I'm wigged out, right? I'm like, okay, Joe's about to flake out because he doesn't get it. But time isn't out there, right? Controlling you. You create it by how you choose to spend your time, your energy and attention. It sounds a bit weird, it sounds a bit wild. I get it. But think about it. When you're really present, doing something really in the zone, doing something you care about, time either flies or it stretches. That's Einstein, Time in action. He argues that when we are aligned with what we're doing and stop rushing, we can actually generate more time because we stop wasting it, stop worrying about. About it. We don't. We don't spend our time in angst and being distracted and doing rework. I, I've done this. I, I've. I've allowed myself to just be in the present moment. It's almost, it's almost magical, dude, to be in the present moment where I think I'm running late for work and I just say, you know what? According to the clock, it looks like I'm going to be about 10 minutes late or I'm going to be about 5 minutes late, but I don't care. I'm going to be present. I'm going to not worry about it. I'm not going to let myself be anxious about it. I'm going to just be present and allow this and allow it to smooth out. And I'll be darn if I didn't get to work early. Can't tell you how, can't tell you why, but this has really worked in a practical sense for me. It's worked on projects for me where I'm sitting. I said, okay, I've got an hour to get this thing done that I've had a month and a half to do. Yeah. Now, shame on me, right? Yeah. But I took five minutes of that hour and walked around the block. Yeah, walked around the block and then I sat down and I said, okay, what's the next best thing I can do? And we've talked about that concept. And slowly and steadily, what felt like when I only had an hour, I felt like I got a week's worth of work done in that hour. It's so weird. Stuff just flowed and came to me and I'm working through stuff, and before I know it, I had a reasonable presentation together. Now, it would have been much, much, much, much better had I started when I was supposed to and went through a steady pace and finished it the right way. But this is the. It's this weird mindset, this weird concept that I. I don't quite understand and I can't quite wrap my mind around it. But when I don't let time take me over and I realize that time comes from me. I give time, I provide time. It comes from within me. There seems to be more time.
I'll add on to that. Joe, let's say you have five things to do today, and most of us think you'll multitask on these five things during the day and I'll get them all done. But the truth of the matter is, if you focus on the first one and get it done, and then focus on the second one and get it done. We did this exercise. It's part of, again, software development philosophies called agile. Did this exercise with pennies and a team. And there were rules. They'll demonstrate this thing and they'll time this activity of you moving these pennies through a production line. The first time you go through the exercise, you try to pass all the pennies through, kind of in a multitasking. I forget the exact exercise that you're doing. And everyone thinks that's going to be the best way. When in fact, when you really focus on one get it done and move it to the next person and then they get it done, it multiplies upon itself and you end up getting more accomplished in productivity. So that that focus time, and then you add that to working on the right things, make sure you're working on the things that are the most important. First is the best productive way to go.
That's a huge strategy. It's a huge practical way to slow down, give those tasks your full attention. Whatever you're doing, focus on that single thing that you're doing. Don't multitask. There's no such thing as multitasking. I think study after study after study has shown that there's no such thing as multitasking. We can talk more about that at another time. Just trust us. Don't scatter your focus. Just do one thing well, then move on to the next thing. Right, Kurt? Yeah. We got to be able to say no more often as well. Stop filling our plate with obligations that don't ally with what we're trying to truly accomplish. Fewer commitments means more focus. And harken back to what you said. More balance and more breathing room. Think about this Einstein time thing, too. Let's not let the woo woo aspect of it stop us from really thinking how practically it could be or that it could be be true that we really are in control and in control of time, and it comes from within us. It's a small mind shift, but there's something there, man. There's really something there. And here's the big one. We got to drop phrases like I don't have time or I'm so rushed and stop wearing this as a badge of honor, right?
That's right.
Let's just say it's not a priority right now. I think it's more honest. If somebody asks us to do something, we try to wave that banner, either say to yourself or even to the person. It's just not a priority right now. It's more direct, forthright, honest. It reminds us of how we can spend our time is ultimately our choice.
Yeah, I think in our culture we think the more getting more done is the badge of honor when really I think the impactful things you could do. One impactful thing that's important is much more important than ten semi impactful things.
There's wisdom in what you just said and it helps you do your best work. Slowing down. It reduces stress, improves outcomes, helps avoid burnout, and let's face it, it actually helps me enjoy what I'm doing along the way. I notice that when I slow down, I enjoy the process much, much more. So it's okay to breathe, it's okay to pause, it's okay to choose the slower, more deliberate path, not just because it's easier. If you really want to get things done, if you want to be hyper efficient, if you want to, if you want to accomplish all those great things you want to accomplish. Slowing down is going to get you there. Believe it or not, it's going to get you there in the end. You gotta go slow to go fast.
I love this topic, Joe, and thank you so much for this because I am slow. I mean that in a good way.
Yes, yes.
I mean when I'm at my best, I'm analyzing things. I had an example this week. I was, as you were talking, I was thinking about I was getting frustrating building an application and I took a step back, went to a YouTube video of a trusted resource. He does a lot of great Microsoft videos. And I took the time, and you think about it, 20 or 30 minutes to sit there and watch a YouTube video can be frustrating. But the, the light and the bells went off in my head. This is the way to go and just follow this process that he's got a proven thing and what I was doing, matter of fact, this was an example where ChatGPT was not getting it done for me. And I'm using a combination of these resources. But to sit there and watch, you know, say first thing in the morning, that was another great example. I was frustrating. That night I went to bed going, oh, this is not working out great. I'm going to watch some videos, take another approach. And sure enough, when I showed it to the person I'm working with, she was like, oh yeah, this is awesome. And I said, you know, you can follow this Video too, and finish up the work. So, yeah, thanks for this topic. I love the idea of going slow and you always gotta remind yourself that slow, that slow and steady pace always wins the race.
It does. And most people will push against this. Most people will. They'll push against this.
Oh, God, yeah.
Yes. And understand you are in control of you. You are in control of you. You're in control of your own time, you're in control of your own pace. You're in control and you'll get more done and you'll accomplish more. So, yeah, this was good for me too. When I started going down this path and rethinking this way, I realize that I've lost control. Let's get into our stuff, man. You have a win for the week.
Yeah. Once again, this is the thing that's always hard for me to think of, which it shouldn't be. We should be striving for wins every week focused on what things we're doing. But I was a guest on the Cliff Ravenscraft podcast recorded. He recorded a couple of live stream events over the past week and he sends out an email to his listeners and I missed the first one. He does them like at 3:30 in the afternoon. And I was caught up in work, but I did attend the second day and I only went on the show during this live event. He does ask me anything is really the topic and really the reason Joe and I know each other is through Cliff because I attended an event at his home in Cincinnati area and that's how Joe and I got to know each other. So again, it's kind of. I asked, I talked about this with Cliff. It's interesting the impact some things have on your life that you don't expect or things that you do that have impact on other people's life. But we got it. I don't know why I was just going to sit there and listen. There weren't a lot of people there and he asked me to come on and we just started a conversation and it was a pretty impactful conversation. It was kind of an embarrassing conversation. I seemed to stumble with him a little bit more than usual and. But listening back, you know, sometimes you feel like you were kind of a real idiot, especially when it was over. But the topic we went into is really about imagination and dreams and thinking about what you can accomplish or what you want to accomplish in the next three years and think about it as a little kid would think about it. And he took me through an exercise and I fumbled on this two or three times. But that's okay, right, Joe?
Oh, sure, of course, Kurt. I heard this, I listened to it, and you did fine, man. You did fine. And in fairness, his question caught you flat footed, and you responded very well. And part of that is you stayed in the process. Right. You let him engage with you and you answered him honestly and you let him take you down that path, and I love where you ended up. And also, in fairness, the question that he asked you was awesome. He answered the question for himself. But you know that he's had opportunity to think that through, and he's practiced that in his own head. And he, you know, he just didn't make that all up on the. On the cuff like he was. Like he wanted you to. But it does serve as an example of what our imagination can do. So I. That's definitely a win. I loved that little piece. And if you want to. If you want to learn a little bit about how your creativity can create a path forward in life, I would invite you to hunt down that. That episode of the Cliff Ravenscraft show and listen to Kurt's conversation with him, because it really is insightful. Not just into my. My buddy here, Kurt, but it's insightful on that process, which it felt like you got a lot from it, Kurt. And it felt like I got a lot from listening to you, even though I know you pretty daggone well.
Yeah, the concept wasn't totally new about dreaming about things, but the vivid way and think about it as a kid and very specific ways. What would you do? How would your day be like? What. What would you be doing? Yeah, I mean, it kind of surprised me that I'd never gone through that exercise before. I've done the 50, 50 things you'd like to achieve before, but I think this was even more impactful to really put it in your imagination and think it through. I'm gonna build off of that. And yeah, check YouTube or his podcast if you'd like to. It's a two hour one. So he also interviewed for three others that. Well, he interviewed more people. But, you know, it's part. You know, I've always been kind of a introvert, and to have that out there in the world was. Is a challenge for me. But it's a good challenge.
I think it's very valuable. I think. I think it was great. I really do. Good for you, man. Well, this week I just wrapped up Camp Grampy Joe with my grandkids. They came down for less than a week. Sometimes it's a week, sometimes it's Less but Wednesday. This isn't necessarily part of Camp Grampy Joe, but it's kind of a primer for it. I took a group of middle schoolers to Kings island and we hung out there for six hours. And in six hours time we rode 14 rides and we rode all the big ones. It was awesome. Then the next day my grandkids came over and then we went back to Kings island and spent. Spent time at the water park. My granddaughter did the. What we called the Floor Drop Slide. I don't know what it's actually called, but it's called the Floor Drop Slide, where you stand on a platform and the floor just drops out from underneath you and you go straight down into a tube. And God bless him, my oldest grandson didn't want to do it, but my granddaughter, who is three years younger, two or three years younger than him, couldn't wait to do it, right? And she got on there and it dropped straight down and you could hear, I could hear her screaming and wooing and woohooing the whole time, right? And then we, we rode bikes and we went to the zoo and we ate ice cream and just had an awesome, awesome time. And man, when you get to that stage in life, in your life situation where you're a grandfather and I know that you are now a Grandpa Kurt, and when that little grandson gets older, you stay there, man. Stay in their lives, stay engaged and take care of yourself too. This is a little. I'll go down just this path a little bit. Take care of yourself so you can keep up with them, so you can play with them, so you can be right there with them as they're running down the street or riding a bike or riding rides or whatever it is that they want to do. We went fishing. My grandson Woke up at 5 o' clock in the morning and knocked on the door and asked if we could go fishing. So I got up and we got some poles together and we went fishing and caught a few bluegill, which was fun. So, yeah, this was a good time. Campground Pitou is my win for the week.
When are you ever going to grow up, Joe?
I'm not, dude. I'm not.
That's what I love about that.
We had an old episode about that quote. I can't remember the phrase that that's used, but I don't want to, man. I don't, I don't want to. I don't. I never want to.
You were doing an episode on Play Play.
I, I can't remember the name of the. Yeah, it's kind of the mindset. It's. It's still that mindset, right? Yeah. That childlike mindset. Let yourself have fun.
So my grandson is 1 years old when I last saw him. And at that age they change every time you see him. It's incredible, the difference. And he was playing and the thing he was doing. Now you come from this busy adult life and you show up with your grandkids and the most fascinating thing to him. There's a couple things going on right now with him. He had this tube with little holes in it with blocks that you would drop in the sides like it'd be a star. Or you try to, you know, match it and drop it in there. And his mom was telling me how he's fascinated with this thing. The only thing he hasn't figured out, that's part of the game to put the right square block in the square hole. So he puts everything in the top so he spills them all out and then he puts them in one by one. And it's the most fascinating thing there is. And you're like coming from this world of complexity and you've got to bring yourself to the thoughts of a one year old.
Right.
It's not a simple thing to do.
But man, when you let yourself do it and you get there, it's glorious.
You got to. Yeah. You gotta remember I haven't had little kids like that for a long time. So it's a mindset to get back into.
You got a resource for us?
Father's Day. My daughter is always so generous to me. You know, we love stuff like electronics, Joe and I, we like microphones and headphones. I think Jo shares this with me, especially headphones for me. And I had this realization. She bought me these for Christmas one time. These Bose in ear. The ones that have the suction cups kind of on them but noise cancellation, which is fantastic. I wear em on the planes. They're very convenient. On the train to New York or even walking around. I'm not sure why I got into this because I have a pair of Sony over the ears that I love. Very expensive. One of the best models from Sony. I love those. Over the year doing the tractor. But I seem to have headphones for every purpose. We got the headphones we use for podcasting that we're wearing right now that are Sony's. So I love headphones. And I was somehow caught my eye on the. And I had The Apple Pro AirPods and I put them in the wash. Joe. They were. They were left in My jeans. And they went through the wash a couple times. I think the second time they died. And that was so frustrating. I really love those for that noise canceling feature. But they came out with a new model, the AirPods. They have like three different models now. There's the Apple AirPod 4 without noise cancellation, and there's one with noise cancellation. $170, something like that. For the. And then there's the AirPod Pros, which have that suction. The thing I don't like about the suction is that like when I'm walking, I feel like a thud when I'm walking and there's just too much blocking going on there. So I said to my. I explained this whole thing to my daughter, I have all these different headphones. But you know what? I'd really like to try these AirPod fours.
And she got em for me for Father's Day. That's awesome.
So I love them. I absolutely. I would recommend them to anyone. They're great for walking because I like the way they fit in my ear. I know some people still have problems, but they don't have the suction and they're smaller. But they added this noise cancellation, which is excellent. It's very. It's good. As a matter of fact, it's good enough for walking where I don't really hear the cars. I gotta keep my eyes open. But it blocks the cars enough that it's so enjoyable. They're so comfortable. They sound good. Yeah. And they also have that transparency. You just click it and your music will turn on or off. And if you hold it, you'll get that transparency. And this is perfect when you're walking in from the house and your wife has always got a question for you or a honeydew to do. And I got my headphones on and she doesn't realize I have my headphones on and I can't hear a word she's saying. So now I know. Stop the music. Transparency on. And I can walk in the house without any frustration. The question that's coming to me, I am loving my AirPod 4 headphones.
I'm not an Apple guy myself, but yeah, I can certainly see the value in these. We call it gear acquisition syndrome. We both have gas, right?
Yeah, I do. And I love that I have a different pair for different situations because I'll still use the Bose ones on the train because they're very light and convenient. You put it in a little box and I won't bring the big heavy, the big, big Sony cans with the case and everything. But, yeah, I'll use those on the airplane and stuff. They do block it better. But when you're sitting down, it's fine because you're not walking. You don't get that thud.
Right, right.
Yeah. What's your resource?
Mine is an interesting resource because it may seem like, man, that's a lot of money, Joe. And it's really not in the big picture. The air conditioning in my home just does not make it upstairs, downstairs. It's awesome. Last Sunday, the air conditioning completely went out in my house right in the middle of the day. It was like 98 degrees outside or something like that, maybe even approaching 100. And I'm one to keep my thermostat pretty low in the summer. I mean, I'm 68, 70, mainly. 68. I keep it. They call it. They call it shelter for a reason. Okay. And. But I had it set at 68. And it's running like, it's running, running, running, running, running. But the temperature's going up and up and up till finally it was like 81 degrees in my house. And this was on a Sunday. And so I called the heating and air guy that I know, and lo and behold, he answered the phone. Actually, his wife answered the phone. Pardon me. And I didn't expect it. This was a Sunday evening at this point. She answered the phone, and I said, wow, I'm surprised. I was just going to leave a message, but I got a situation. Can you have Tony come as soon as he can to look at my air conditioning? And she said she scheduled me for actually, Tuesday, but he was able to come Monday. So he came out Monday and did his thing. He cleaned out some stuff. And I needed some coolant. I would call it Freon, but it's not called Freon anymore. But I need a recharge of coolant. And so I started talking to him about how do I get my upstairs cooler? And he said, that's just the way it is, man. I mean, we can do some stuff. And he explained to me what. What we'd have to do. And it has to do with putting more returns in the rooms and. And moving the. Moving the duct work around and all that stuff. And he said. And I said, I mean, just a quick and dirty. How much do you think something like that would cost? He said, man, that would be thousands of dollars to do thousands of dollars in your house would be. I mean, we'd have to tear into your ceiling. We'd have to tear out ductwork. It would just be a It would be a mess.
Nobody's got time for that.
Yeah. And. And I. He said my house is exactly the same way. And what I did is I just bought one of those little portable air conditioners. And now this is a heating and air guy with 35, 40 years of experience. I mean, this guy's seen it and done it. Yeah. And he could. He could easily just do it himself in his own home. And he chose to buy one of these little portable air conditioners that vents out the window. It's low profile. It vents out the window. And he and I talked about it, and I think, man, if it's good enough for the heating and air guy, it's good enough for me. I found one on Amazon, $230, I think it was, that vents out the window. And I put it in the kid's bedroom because they were there for that week, right? Now I didn't want them. God forbid. I want them to be uncomfortable. Right. And so I put it in their bedroom so they were nice and comfortable and cool in the evening. Meanwhile, my wife and I are sweating our butts off in our room. But I want the grandkids to be comfortable. Yeah. And it worked so well that I bought two more for each one of the rooms. Yeah. And now we're talking about an investment at this point of almost 700 bucks. But when you think about how cool it is upstairs now and how cool each room can be, and I've not completely installed the other two yet, but it does an amazing job. Dude, this little air conditioner, that's a Black and Decker. I got it off Amazon. The 5100 BTU. Don't know. I don't know what that means, but a portable air conditioner with a remote control works like a champ. Dude, it was amazing.
If it's in the window, why do you call it portable?
Because it's. Because it vents out the window. It doesn't sit in the window.
Okay.
And that's the difference. This is low profile. It doesn't sit in the window like a window unit. It just has a small vent tube that runs to the window.
And now I got a bigger question for you.
Yeah.
As a podcaster who's been sweating it out in my room podcasting because of the sound. Is it loud?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah. You're not going to want to have this thing running in the background unless you have really, really good noise removal. And what you do, I mean, you can easily remove the noise.
Podcast duo better. You know, this. This technology for what I'm is definitely better than my previous version.
Right. For that, I spent almost 700 bucks for this, for these three portable units. And maybe it's a. Maybe it's overkill, but, dude, I'm telling you, it works like a champ.
Put the link in our notes, Joe. I want to check that out. I will.
I certainly will. So let's wrap up with our quotes.
Man, Joe loves quick and easy quotes. This is one of the most famous, the oldest on this topic there is. Slow and Steady wins the race. Of course, we all know that's from the Tortoise and the Hare, an Aesop fable.
Yeah, you almost stole your own thunder earlier in the show, bringing up this quote, but that's it, man. Slow and Steady wins the race.
We all learned this as a kid. And the reason, if you look through the story is because the hare starts out running like crazy and exhausts himself, finds a comfortable place to rest, knowing that the hare is going to be so slow, he's got plenty of time. But what does he do? He falls asleep. And the little tortoise passes him out. And Hare doesn't even know until he gets to the end of the race and realizes the tortoise is already there.
When you think about this fable, slow and steady wins the race. What visual pops into your head?
I think of the cartoon as a Bug Bunny cartoon.
The Bugs Bunny cartoon. That's exactly right. That's exactly what pops into my head.
That's funny.
The Bugs Bunny cartoon. That's awesome.
You know, an example of this, I was thinking of my podcasting with my podcast that I've been doing for 11 years. Slow and Steady has won the race because in its habits, too. Every single morning I get up and I do a little bit on that editing of that show and. Or I'm doing. Reaching out to people to schedule, and I'm spending that time in that first hour of my day, working on my podcast every single day. I did some today, and that is. And you could apply that to anything important that you're doing, I think.
Yep.
You know, studying things, learning something new. Slow and steady. You know, I. I think back to when I was working on my jump shot. Every single day, I worked a little bit on that jump shot and tried to improve my skills and to a point where, boy, I could really shoot the basketball and sometimes better than other people in my league. So. And it wasn't because I was so fantastic. I really trained myself. That same MO motion over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah, Slow and Steady wins the race.
Well, my quote is appropriate to the subject matter of today's episode comes from Lao Tzu, the Asian Chinese philosopher. You see these. You see Lao Tzu's quotes often, especially in deep thinking type of situations. But I love this quote. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. The tree doesn't go fast, dude, right? And it's there for a long, long time, you know, even in nature. This analogy just came to me. Even in nature. Do you know what does grow fast? I mean, super fast. Sometimes weeds. Weeds. And do you know what else? Mushrooms. Have you ever walked in your lawn one evening and then you get up the next morning and you see a dozen or so mushrooms that have popped up overnight?
I've had. I've been doing. I'm really a win for my week would have been my garden that I've got really looking good right now, Joe. And I also have. I had a couple extra plants. I put them on my deck and I had three mushrooms grow, like you said. I don't remember seeing those. And all of a sudden, there's three mushrooms in this pot on my deck.
So mushrooms grow fast, but they don't last. Oh, okay, right. They don't last. They follow.
I pulled them, I threw them on the ground.
They'll topple over easy. They. They rot or weather or whatever. Easily. They grow fast, but they don't last. And I didn't mean to rhyme when I said that, so I'm not a rapper. But a tree, on the other hand, grows slow and it lasts a long time. So I love this quote. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
Lao Tzu, you never see bees in a big hurry, but they're working it every day.
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.
Gathering that honey. I love it. I love nature. Great quote, Joe.
I think we're going to wrap it up right there. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to reach out to us, you can email us dudesudesinprogress.com and I think I made a promise earlier in the episode to give away a copy of Effortless or even a copy of the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. Both good books. First couple people to reach out to us. We'll give you either one of those books. Dudesudesinprogress.com dudesudesinprogress.com Remember, dude, slow is fast, right? Slow is fast. That's the mantra of the day. Slow is fast. You'll make progress by going slow. It won't be perfect. It won't always be pretty, but it'll be progress. Progress is better than perfection. Slowly, steadily. Just keep moving forward.
Take it easy, Joe. This week?
Yeah.
Consistent. Hey, Joe, can I. I want to read you something. Speaking of fourth of July, I found this in my X feed. Not that I look at X very much, but I've never heard this, and I love American history, but it's. It looks like a sign or a gravestone kind of thing in the ground, but it says, by signing the Declaration of independence, the 56Americans pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It was no idle pledge. Nine signers died of wounds during the Revolutionary War. Five were captured or imprisoned. Wives and children were killed, jailed, mistreated, or left penniless. 12 signers houses were burned to the ground. 17 lost everything they owned. No signer defected. Their honor, like their nation, remained intact. That's no idea.
Yeah, this. This country was founded by the best and bravest among us, right? And it's protected by the best and bravest among us, so. I love that you said that, man. Thank you. That's a great place to wrap up. Talk to you soon, pal.