Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter? Greg McGowan from Essentialism. I'm Joe. That's Kurt over there. And we are dudes in progress. You Kurt.
Hey, Joe.
What's shaking, my friend?
Wow, it's been a long week. I've been busy, dude.
I've been busy too. I'm not going to give you all the gory details, but I had another bout of flu or whatever it might have been over the past three or four days, and it knocked me down again, like I said, I'm not going to give you all the gory details, but suffice it to say, here I am.
I'm proud of us.
Yeah.
We've skipped our regular recording on Tuesday. We're here on a Saturday morning recording, and we're keeping our promise to produce this podcast every week. Be honest with you, even when you said Tuesday, you couldn't make it because you weren't feeling well. For whatever reason, I needed a break. I go in, of course, all day long, get up early in the morning, work on my podcasts with an S and just keep all night. I'm doing shows, recording shows, meeting with people. And Tuesday night I just went to bed early. Yeah, I wonder why I was tired on Tuesday.
Isn't it funny how sometimes 730 rolls around? You think, you know what, I'm going to bed.
Well, in mornings, I get up at 04:00 in the morning. Yeah, I'm not going to be guilty or feel guilty about doing that. And again, we've talked about that is a really productive time for me. I feel I'm doing the podcast thing, editing, a lot of editing. A lot of preparing for shows before my day job.
Yeah, I like that morning time, too, and I've not had it over the past week or so. I've kind of slept in a bit. Just trying to give myself some rest and get over this funk, whatever it is. But I like that morning time, too. My typical wake up time is 430. So, yeah, I do like the mornings. Let me ask you something, Kurt. Do you have anything in your life that you always say yes to, no matter what?
My wife.
Oh, yeah, that's a safe answer. That's a safe answer, honeydews. Always.
Yeah, that's a priority. And if it isn't, she'll make it a priority.
That's funny.
She got after me early to do our taxes this year, and I'm so glad. Last few years, I feel like we've got in on the April. Well, they've extended it. Whatever the deadline was for your federal taxes, we were driving them in that day to my accountant, which means you have to apply for an extension so that I end up paying every year. So I'm going to pay. I think the deadline is like something like don't quote me on this, but it's like November. You got to get everything in the payments and stuff, whatever. But anyways, this year we got them all in. I brought them in yesterday and then we'll have conversations. She said if we get them in by the 15 March, we'll be all set to awesome deadline. Yeah, I always say my kids, family, for sure. I always say mostly yes.
Yeah, me too, me too. And I think we're kindred spirits there. On my phone, I have settings that prioritize how people can get a hold of me and when I put my phone on Do Not Disturb, there are only four people that can get through that do not disturb, and they are my three kids and my wife. And I have made it a rule for years. I've made it a rule that it doesn't matter what I'm doing. If I'm in a meeting, if I'm at church, if I'm sleeping, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. If one of them call me, I'm answering the phone. I like your I'm answering the phone. I've answered the phone in the middle of pretty high end meetings, pretty important meetings, and I said, Gents, ladies, gents. I have to excuse myself for a second. And of course I have that quick conversation, make sure everything's okay. But you know what? I can think of a couple of times that one of my daughters has said, hey dad, do you have a second to chat? And then I'll just fill in the blank with something very important to them. I will say to the guys in the meeting, you're going to have to give me five minutes. I have to take care of something.
I like that rule you have, joe, I love your question. I was thinking about my day job, and that is a place where I do have to obviously say yes to certain things. But there is also I have some leeway in what I can say or have to say yes to even I'm even encouraged by management to not say yes to everything. But it's hard. I like to help people. When someone comes to me with a project, a mini project, a problem, it's my nature to want to say yes, but that can really mean I'm going to have to work extended hours, context switching, the whole thing. So it can be difficult even in my day job.
And it can be a real problem. It can be a real problem for sure if we don't manage it and temper it appropriately. How often we say yes because we're.
Encouraged to work on the most important things. And we are told almost to some degree not to do support in a way and to only work on the things that we can. Share that have importance to help others, that we can maybe create a video or content that we can share with them that's duplicate frequently asked questions kind of thing. Right? So I'm pretty good at it, but it can be challenging.
Pretty good at saying no. Do you think you are? Do you think you have?
Yeah, I'll say pretty good. There are times where I should say no, and I don't.
Well, we are on part two of our discussion on intentional living. We dug into The One Thing by Gary Keller last week, and you presented some great stuff from Gary Keller this week. I am looking to Greg McGowan, the author of essentialism. He also did a recent book called Effortless that we might talk about sometime, if that's a good book as well. But Essentialism has become a classic for me. It's been around for a few years, and New York Times bestseller, just a very good book. And this subject dovetails perfectly into our last subject on minimalism, because they're very related. Intentional living, minimalism, doing the things that you value, right, that move your life, that move your life forward. And minimalism is a good tool to live your values, is a good tool for intentional living. But I want to read this excerpt from Essentialism by Greg McGowan. It's from chapter one, page nine, and it really sets the stage for what to say yes and what to say no to. On a bright winter day in California, I visited my wife Anna in the hospital. Even in the hospital, Anna was radiant. But I also knew that she was exhausted. It was the day after our precious daughter was born, healthy and happy at £7 3oz. Yet what should have been one of the happiest, most serene days of my life was actually filled with tension, even as my beautiful new baby lay in my wife's tired arms. I was on the phone and on emails with work, and I was feeling pressure to do a client meeting. My colleague had written Friday between one and two would be a bad day to have a baby because I need you to come with me at this meeting with X. It was now Friday, and now I was pretty certain, or at least I had hoped, the email had been written in jest. I still felt pressure to attend. Instinctively, I knew what to do. It was clearly a time to be there for my wife and newborn child. So when asked whether I planned to attend the meeting, I said, with all the conviction I could muster, yes. To my shame, while my wife lay in the hospital with our hours old baby, I went to the meeting. Afterward, my colleague said, the client will respect you for making the decision to be here. But the look on the client's faces did not convince me. Instead, they mirrored how I felt. What was I doing there? I had said yes simply to please, and in doing so, I had hurt my family, my integrity, and even the client relationship. As it turned out, exactly nothing came of the client meeting. Even if it had, surely I would have made a fool's bargain. In trying to keep everyone happy, I had sacrificed what mattered most. On reflection, I discovered this important lesson. If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
That's really powerful.
I didn't know that is powerful. That's powerful. That's transparent.
That's deep on a book on essentialism, I wouldn't have thought I guess that was one of the motivating factors for him.
Yeah, well, it's right there in chapter one, page nine, so it's early in the book.
Those are definitely I mean, that was a really dramatic one. They're usually not that dramatic.
It can be.
It could be a baseball game you miss because you work late.
Absolutely. It could be a baseball game. It could be it could be a play. It could be snuggle time. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I love this. If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
Yeah. Right? Yes. I think wasn't that one of the quotes I think we used recently?
We may have, yeah, we may have.
In our quotes for the week.
And I think about this story, Kurt, and I think he knew. He knew deep in what the right answer was, even when he knew that he should have said no, and he couldn't stop the yes from coming out of his mouth.
And he mentions he thinks the coworker was teasing him a bit ingest, which could have been very true. And people do that. They use the sarcasm, and you take it as, well, they probably really do.
Want me there, or many of truths are told in jest. Right. Maybe he framed it in sarcasm, but he kind of meant it. And if it's your boss and you're thinking, okay, well, my gosh, I mean, I need to keep my happy, and then you start to justify, well, I need to keep my boss happy. I need to make money. I just had a baby. If I get fired and I don't have any money, what happens to me and my baby? So I have to go to this meeting. Right.
These are real choices, especially when it comes to your main source of income. And I know what they're talking about. I'm fortunate I don't have a company that I feel is this way. We really try to get what they call work life balance, for lack of using any other term. And I had a situation recently where I said to my my wife was not my wife went in for some serious medical tests, and I said to my boss, listen, I need to be there for her. I need to take her to the hospital. Probably literally I needed to because of what was going on. She was really scared. Turned out okay in the end, but he was like, do what you got to do, right? I don't know. But there are still people, obviously, in our culture that still have these pressures, especially in sales, Joe, in the area you're in.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. I've seen the sales culture where, be darned, everything else. You got to make that call. You got to go to that meeting. You've got to make that presentation. And I've seen people cancel family vacations because their company was short on a sales campaign. Was falling short on a sales campaign. You've got to have your priorities, your values in place. And it's hard to it's it's hard to do that without thinking of the worst case scenario repercussions.
Well, if you take his situation, I mean, let's say he doesn't go to that meeting and there are repercussions. Someone says that to you after. I know I would. This was something that was always important to me, that I was there for my family. If I had a job, I am quite sure I'd be looking for a new job immediately after that. No question in my mind, right? I prioritize. I know you did too. Our family was important in all aspects when our kids, especially were growing up.
I think you know the answer to this question. Everybody listening will know the answer to this question based on the prior conversation we just had. But what is the best skill or habit to develop if you want to live an intentional life?
I think you're telling me the ability to say no.
The ability to say no.
Hey, I finally got a question right.
How about that? The willingness and the ability to say no, that is the best skill or habit to develop. To develop if you want to live an intentional life. In fact, Warren Buffett, one of the richest men alive, one of the richest men in history, said, the difference between successful people and really successful people is really successful people say no to almost everything. And we have to define what success means to us. And whatever success means to us, we have to say no to almost everything else.
You really have to, again, sit down, evaluate what your values are, what's important to you. I think you really have to, because when that decision sometimes these things have to be made right on the fly. And if you have that filter, you know exactly. And you know where I get this, where I have a hard time saying no, is I would say volunteer requests. I'm thinking of maybe at my church, and I want to say yes to everything. But in reality, all the things I have going on, do I seriously have the time to add another thing to that pile? I know the answer is no.
Here's the dilemma that I always had. I always wonder within myself, why do I say yes to so many things when I want to say no? Here's Greg McGowan. Even as the yes is coming out of his mouth, he wants to say no. He knew the right thing was to say no. And so I did a little bit of research on this. I read some articles, a few books over over a period of time. But in preparing for today's show, I have found kind of four things that outline why we say yes when we really want to say no. And I think it's important to understand those four things.
I'm intrigued, Joe.
Number one, we really value relationships. We don't want to disappoint or we don't want to hurt someone. We have this fear of hurting people's feelings or that they will think badly of us. That's part of our social genetic fabric. It's part of how we're built. We're trying to get along. We're trying to be a part of our culture, our society, our clan, whatever it is. And we value those relationships. Those relationships are important to us.
I have this problem. I want to please everybody, right?
You said that earlier. We don't want to disappoint. We don't want to hurt somebody. We don't want to hurt their feelings. We want them to feel valuable. We don't want them to think badly of us. We don't want them to think they're not important to us. So, yeah, I'll go ahead and say yes. So that's one thing. We value relationships.
I feel better if I can say no, and I have a real legitimate reason and to say I really can't do justice to this request. I'm being kind of formal with it, whatever they're asking me, and if I can really give them a good reason, I feel better. And I'm being honest that this is not something that I can do right now. I'm over committed. That's a great line. I think I like that. I'm already over committed, and I have promises I've already made to other people. I use that one at work, I think, quite a bit.
I've shared this on this show. The most recent example I can think of, of something that I said a big no to was when I stepped down as president of my neighborhood's, HOA. And that was a huge decision for me, but it was the best decision I could have made in the moment I was over committed. But it was hard because I wanted to serve the community. There was some ego invested in that too. I wanted to serve the people who asked me to serve and who nominated me, and I wanted to honor that decision that they nominated me and those feelings that they had towards me. But I realized that I had to say no to that. I had to say no to that. And there's been some honestly, there's been backlash from that. No, some significant backlash. And I've disappointed people, and some people are mad at me for it. And there have been some things that there's been some balls dropped on the board that probably wouldn't have been dropped if I was the president, with all due humility, but it was the right thing to say no to. So that's the first main reason that we tend to say yes to things that we want to say no to is we value relationships. Another reason is decision fatigue. When we have so many decisions, when we're trying to make a lot of decisions in a situation and we have so many choices to make and we're trying to decide between Abcde and F and G. Sometimes we say yes to stuff that we have no business saying yes to just because we're tired from making decisions. We're tired from these choices. And we just say yes to the last thing that happened, the last request we had. Fine. Yes. Yes.
Weak moment.
We have a weak moment, and that comes from decision fatigue. The worst decisions are decisions made in desperation. And so we say yes sometimes, many times, because of decision fatigue. We have to figure out a way to line up our values and to put our life together so we don't have decision fatigue. Limit your choices. Limit the choices that come into your life. And that's part of what minimalism is about too.
They wear you down.
Choices. They wear you down.
I was just thinking of this little simple thing where a salesperson has been trying to get me to come to a meeting at work, and he sent me five emails, and I kept saving him, saying, okay, I'm going to get back to this guy. There's no real reason I need to get back to this guy. Cold calling me.
Right.
I do use the software. I wouldn't mind having the conversation with this person.
Right.
But this week I just kept deleting his emails. Forget it, I don't have time for it.
And sometimes that's a hard no that you don't have to justify, that you don't have to explain to anybody.
I still felt an obligation to get.
Back to the guy because he's a human being, right. And you're a human being.
And I feel like, okay, I mean, it's an integral part of my work, right?
So we value relationships. Decision fatigue is a reason. Also, fear of conflict, especially with somebody of perceived authority, like a boss, right? Primarily our boss or somebody that we have given authority to, either emotionally or mentally or whatever it might be. Fear of conflict with that person. And some of this dovetails into the first part of we value relationships, but fear of conflict, we don't want to have that argument. We don't want to have that debate. We don't want to have that struggle. We just don't want to face the conflict. And a yes is an easy way to just not face the conflict.
I had this conversation with a friend, and we do have a fear of the economy going down and losing our job. And you feel like especially if someone in a leadership position asks you to take on something and you do really feel obligated to say yes. We were giving each other a couple of examples where we have said no. That's not a direction I want to go in. It's not part of my career goal. I don't have any interest in that subject. But yet there's leaders asking you to do it. That's a hard no, but I've been able to do that, too, and say no with a little bit of fear in my soul.
Right. Well, that brings us to the next one. This is a big one for me. It's the fear of missing out. The mindset of opportunity scarcity. If I say no to this, will I ever have an opportunity again for this? Or maybe this is the one thing I need to say yes to that will change the whole trajectory of whatever. Right, man. Maybe I should listen to that salesperson's pitch, because this could be a really good tool for me to use. And before you know it, you've invested 2 hours in of a presentation that you had no business investing in. Or it could be a major purchase. It could be a major purchase. It could be anything. I have this I have this fear of missing out. This is one of the biggest reasons that I say yes. I think, okay, if I say no, will an opportunity like this ever come my way again? If a boss comes to you and wants you to work on a project and it's not within your skill set, or it's not within your priorities, or if it's not within the vision that a previous vision that has been set for your role, you might have to say no. Now, there are ways of tactfully saying no, but you may have to say no. One technique that I've used for this is I've been known to show my boss my schedule and all the projects that I'm working on, and I will say, I can say yes to this, but which of these do you want me to eliminate? That's a great technique, and 90% of the time, it's no. You're right, Joe. That's more important. These are more important. A few times they've said, you know what? Let's eliminate that project and work on this one. And that's when the time comes that your boss has just told you what to do when you do it, because he's the boss.
We've talked about my project management that we work yeah. That we use at work called kanban. Every week on a Monday, we review the kanban board. Right. Everyone can see it. It's very transparent. These are the things we have in progress, and it's very rewarding. It takes pressure off us. We know. And if someone wants to come in and get into that place, you have to drop something. That's the philosophy of that project management.
So those are the reasons that we say yes, the overarching reasons that we say yes. Now, there are many sub reasons in these categories, but we value relationships. We have decision fatigue. We have a fear of conflict, and we have a fear of missing out. And once we understand why we say yes when we want to say no, they're easier to manage. Once we understand where this is coming from, where this yes is coming from, it's easier to manage. But you got to know your values. You've got to know your goals. And we've talked a lot about values and goals. I tend to focus on values more than goals. But assuming that you're focusing on either one, either one of those values or goals, you have to keep them simple.
This is a skill, I think, that you're good at, and I think you have to I had someone at a we had a little session at work, I remember a few years ago that really resonated with me. You got to get good at having hard conversations with people, and that is not intuitive to me, but hearing that and knowing I'm not good at it, and when there's a time that I have to have a hard conversation with someone, I've gotten better at it. And when you do have that hard conversation like you had with the board, yeah, it didn't work out. A lot of times it works out just fine. People appreciate those hard conversations, and you get everything out on the open, and you move forward. There are times when it's not going to be a great outcome. I've had that happen too. But it's okay. At least I was honest.
That's a lot of the battle I don't want to say it's half the battle or 90% of the battle, but a lot of the battle is just realizing it's there, just realizing that, okay, these are the reasons that I tend to say yes. When I want to say no. When I think of those times, I have to evaluate, do I have my values straight? Am I clear on my values right now at this time in my life? And if I'm not clear on my values and where I'm headed, that's when I tend to say yes more than I should.
Getting clarity is a very good thing. Whether you have a mentor that you can ask questions of, there are people who are successful. Getting clarity of what the one thing is, like the book that I'm reviewing, what is the one thing getting clarity on that is really important and not that easy to do. And you should be definitely striving for that as often as you can.
Once you have clarity, it's easier to say no. But it's not easy. No still isn't easy because we have years and decades and lifetimes built into our DNA of valuing relationships and this fear of missing out.
I tell you, the reward is worth it. I've never liked being on these boards like you talk about. I talked about being on the church council. I've said yes to that when I wanted to say no, and I just sat there, and it's not a big commitment, too, but one night a month and some other decisions, it can be uncomfortable conversations that are happening in those meetings that I really don't have any interest in. I don't care about the politics that are going on. I am uninterested. I was so glad when I said no, when my time came up to say, do you want to renew your membership here? And I said, Guys, I'm done.
Right. And it's not only the time commitment in situations like that, absolutely there's some emotional timeshare, but you're also using some of your mental share your mental energies, because it's back there in the back of your mind. You have this 1 hour meeting a month, right? But now mentally, you're preparing for that 1 hour meeting, and you're trying to understand, well, what is going to happen, what's going to come up? And you may have that 1 hour meeting, but you also have some time that you have to prepare for that meeting if you want to do a good job on the board. Emails are coming through, the emails and all of that. So you have to count the cost. You have to count the cost of the yes. If what you're doing right now is not pointing to your values or your goals, you have to figure out a way to say no. You have to figure out a way to say no, but you got to be clear on your values and goals and what's important to you. And that's easier said than done. If you want to move forward with an intentional life, you have to be clear on what to say no to.
Well, we like challenging each other and the audience. Maybe there's something out there you need to say no to. Maybe take a look at that over the coming couple of weeks.
Yeah. Let's at least report to each other something that we clearly said no to. Let's be conscious, and I don't want to give ourselves challenge fatigue. We're right in the middle of our 30 day minimalism challenge, which is I'll be honest with you, I'm a guy who leans towards minimalism, but this has been a challenge for me. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later.
So in my tough conversation, when someone asks me for something, I'm going to say, I'm doing this podcast with my buddy Joe Taylor, and he's told me to say no. So my answer to you right now.
Is no, because I got to report something.
Thank you, Joe.
There. You put it all on me, pal.
I knew the reason this was a good idea to do this podcast when.
I first decided that, okay, there's stuff I've just got to say no to, I was not very good at it, so I went the other direction, and I just was blunt and not mean spirited, but cold. No. Hey, do you guys want to have dinner tonight? No. Because that's all. I had, that's all I knew I could do. Right. So I had to figure out ways to be courageous about saying no and to count the costs, but also be graceful about it. There are six things that Greg outlines in this book. The first thing is separate the decision from the relationship. Separate the decision from the relationship. If I'm saying no to you, it doesn't mean I don't love you less. Right. Or I don't value the relationship. It just means there's something that I value more in this moment. And this is a mind game that you have with yourself. But it's also something that I don't think you need to over explain yourself when you say no. But I think you can be graceful about it. And part of the way to frame that is just to separate the decision from the relationship. One has nothing to do with the other. Saying no gracefully doesn't mean you have to use the word no. That's something I had to learn. You can frame it in such a way. I don't like to be wishy washy, but we can be softer. You can say stuff like, I can't take anything else on right now. I don't have the capacity, or things like that. Right. People understand that there are certain ways, and I think with a little effort, we can think of ways to say no gracefully. That honors the relationship, that honors the moment. Also, we need to number three, we need to focus on the trade off. Okay. We need to count the cost here if we're going to say yes to this. What does that mean? And these are all things about building courage to say no gracefully, what does that mean? If I say yes to this, what does that mean? I'd like to say I always have a habit of not saying yes immediately. I take time to think about it. But that's not always the case because sometimes that leads to decision fatigue. For me, I will tend to say no immediately more than I will say yes immediately now. But that's taken some time because if I'm not clear on the trade off, it's got to be a no. So focus on the trade off.
I know at work, we'll look at our schedule and we're talking about I'll say it to my manager. I am definitely saying no to any new requests right now. We are backed up. Everything is a no right now.
Well, Kurt, even this project, the Dudes In project, we had long discussions about, okay, what does this mean?
Absolutely.
What does this mean for our time? What does this mean for our energy? What does it mean for our other projects? What does it mean for our relationship? We had those discussions, right? Yeah. For a long time before we finally figured out a way, okay, we're just going to move slowly. We're going to kind of let it take its life, a life of its own. We're going to let it unfold in front of us, but we're going to start and we're going to be consistent. We decided those two things, and it's a work in progress. It's a work in progress. But we had those discussions about focusing on the trade off. We certainly did. We have to remind ourselves that everyone is selling something. Everybody has an agenda, and it's usually their own. Okay? So when somebody's making a request of you, they may be trying to build you up, right. They may be trying to really help your career and move you forward, but also they have an agenda. They have a reason that they want you to do it. Right. It may be to make them look better, and it may be completely honorable. Hey, I just want to give Kurt this opportunity, or I want to give Joe this opportunity, or I want to give Daniel this opportunity. But again, everybody has an agenda. And let's not be Pollyanna about this. Take a step back. Be realistic, be aware of what's being sold to you, the idea, the viewpoint and opinion. That way you can be more deliberate in deciding what to say yes to. And it's a little cold. Understand? Everybody has an agenda, and we have to remind ourselves that everybody is selling something. Also, make peace with the fact that saying no often requires trading popularity for respect. You got to make peace with that.
I like, you're not popular. Yeah, that's my problem.
Right. And we have that. We have that. Everybody likes to be popular.
Right, right.
But I do like the saying yes to one what you wish you could say yes to all. Like, if if you have a if you have somebody, a lot of people asking you for something for your time, hey, let's let's grab lunch. Or you can say yes to a few what you wish you could say yes to all to. Right.
It's very true.
But you got to make peace with the fact that you're not going to be popular, but you will be respected. The people that I respect I think about the people that I work with, the people that I respect most are the people who have set boundaries. It made me mad in the beginning because they didn't do what I wanted them to do, but they set boundaries. But I also knew that when they said yes, dag gone, it was a yes, and I was going to get their attention.
It is fat attention again, to have your integrity, that when you say yes, you do what you say you're going to do.
Right.
That's important to me. And I know it's in jeopardy when I say yes to too many things.
Absolutely. The fact is, there's going to be a short term cost to saying no, but there's going to be long term respect earned. I believe that I respect people with clear boundaries when they're committed. Because when they do commit, man, you know you got a champion.
Yeah. I'd rather have a commitment from somebody that said yes than someone who says yes and doesn't do what we're working on.
True. And just remember that a clear no can be more graceful than a vague or non committal yes. We'll see. Let me check on that. I agree. Maybe I would rather hear a clear no from somebody then. That sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure.
Agreed.
So remember that a clear no can be more graceful than a vague or non committal yes. This is a good book, just like Gary Keller is the one thing I really recommend essentialism. This might be one of our book giveaways. Last month we gave away or a couple of months ago we gave away atomic Habits by James Clear. You know what? I'm going to commit something right now. We're going to give away essentialism either book essentialism or the one thing to a person that can say that they've said no to something over the next couple of weeks and just send an email. Dudes@dudesinprogress.com. Dudes@dudesinprogress.com, send an email. Just tell us what you said no to. And if you want to give us some commentary on the repercussions of that no, all the better, but email us something that you've said no to. This should be interesting. And we'll give away a copy of either Essentialism or The One Thing by Gary Keller. And we'll certainly great idea. We'll certainly commit to that. Kurt that's going to wrap up my segment on Intentional living. I think it was a good discussion. And just remember, you got to say no. You got to say no. If you want to say yes to your life, you've got to say no much more often than you say yes. Kurt what's going on going on over in the Dudes in Progress Facebook community?
Well, you know, Joe, as podcasters, we love engagement with our listeners, and I like the idea that we're giving away the book that we're one of the books that we're talking about. But we just had a new member join our Facebook group, diane Stewart.
Hello, Diane.
I see. She's a friend of Glenn Kessler's. He's been talking about the content that we've been sharing on Dudes in Progress, and he has a very fantastic teaching program. He's a painter and he teaches painting in a three year program. It's like a college course that he does that is his main source of income. Income. It's his business. But he is using our content in his school.
Fantastic. That gives me the chills a little bit, talking about other listeners and feedback and input. We got an audio from our pal across the pond, Kevin Curtis Allen.
Yeah, I'm going to play it for you right now. You ready?
Before you play it, let's give it some context.
Well, I talked about a movie that I saw on Amazon recently, the movie is called Another Mother's Son. If you want to go out and join, I highly recommend it. It's a story of the only territory or a piece of property that the Germans occupied in England. It's called Jersey. The Jersey Island. And our good friend Kevin Curtis Allen who lives on the Isle of White sent us this audio in response to that conversation we had last or recently on the podcast.
Hey guys, just listening to your last podcast. I'm out of breath a bit because I'm actually walking just to let you know that Jersey was occupied and it's basically France really. It's a French island that we own. That's why it was occupied. The other thing is they landed on the Isle of White. They sent a few troops over and land on the Isle of White in the Second World War. But I think they succumbed to the forces of the island. I mean they're quite a savage lot over here on the Isle of White and I don't think the Germans were any match for the locals. But they did land a handful of troops on the island during the Second World War.
So we got a little context there from a local who knew about the occupation and he also mentions how they landed on the Isle of White but the locals chased them off.
That's awesome. That's awesome. Welcome new member. Welcome. And thank you to Kevin Curtis Allen for your feedback. And man, we really appreciate Glenn's glenn sharing the show with his class. So guys, we can't tell you how much we appreciate you guys and we love you guys and how much we appreciate the community that we're building here at Dudes in Progress. What's your win for the week?
Well, this one's quite obvious. When I said it to you in the preshow, Joe knew exactly what I was talking about. But I actually did produce my 500th episode of Geekin on WDW on Monday.
Congratulations my friend. That's a big deal. 500 episodes without missing a single week. You've published that show every Sunday to be released on Monday, is that right? Yeah.
Now I do it Monday at 02:00 in the morning but who's counting? There was a time when the Apple took a longer time so I would release it Sunday night at 10:00 so it would be show up at people's feeds for Monday morning. But no, I actually missed I think it was almost a month. I had a big decision to make when my daughter started to pod fade on me. I was having a hard time convincing her every week to get on the microphone and record with me and that was during the first year. In the fall of that year, I think it was September, I missed them. So I didn't make every single but ever since then I have but that was a big change for me and a lot of people gave me feedback. How much they enjoyed my daughter Lindsay being on the podcast. But I had to pivot if I was going to continue and be consistent with this podcast to do definitely an interview style and that I would bring in the community and go that route. But it's quite a feat to go those that many episodes every single yeah. What what have you done for 400 times?
Yeah, 450 plus, you know, I mean, my my show, my show, Simple Joe, which I haven't done in in a little bit. I did 365 episodes in a row every single day without missing a recording and posting every single day. So, yeah, when you hyper focus and you commit on something, you can certainly make it happen. But kurt congratulations, man. You have an awesome community over there, and you're a committed guy, committed to your community, committed to your podcast, and you need to be committed.
It's just part of my life now. It's just so intertwined my personal relationships. And I was thinking, people are asking me, you and I have talked to this. How do you get to this level of commitment? And I don't know that we've answered that question.
We have answered it. We have answered it. And I'll tell you how we've answered it. We answered it in our episode in Habits, you fell in love with the process, not necessarily the result, because you knew the process would end up with the result. So you fell in love with the process. And when you fell in love with the process, the result took care of itself. So congratulations.
I was thinking with this 500 for me, because you're right, you did that one year committed. And I can remember times you were coming in wheels of squealing at midnight to get that.
That's my phrase, wheels of squealing.
You would leave a dinner at 08:00 p.m. Or 09:00 p.m. Or whatever so you could get home and do your podcast and get it out there.
Right.
But when you finally said, well, I'm not going to do this every day, you've been really inconsistent in producing that podcast. Right.
Are you calling me out, dude?
Yeah.
Okay.
Hey, you do what you want to do. I'm just saying it's just an interesting perspective.
I might have to edit that one out. Remember, this is my week to edit. So my win for the week was I hired a contractor and we are making progress on the house. The rebuild from the flood is coming along and we've even got a little extras in there happening. So, yeah, we're making progress.
I'm so glad you're beyond those decisions of the contractor, because I know that was a struggle for sure. You are getting conflicting quotes and designs.
The contractor quotes that I received were 75% away from each other, from the lowest to the highest. Think about that. They were 75% away from each other. I had four contractor quotes and one quote was nearly was 75% higher than the other quote. Or more than that. I mean, more than that. No, it was three times higher. The highest quote was three times higher than the lowest quote. And we had a couple in between and differing ideas on what needed to be done and so forth. So anyway, you know, it's funny when insurance companies are involved automatically, contractors seem to seem to think they've hit the lottery and they just want to add everything to it, and I'm not like that. I want what's due me, what will fix the damage and a little bit for, I guess, pain and suffering and inconvenience, but I don't want anything more than that. And however that needs to be done is how that gets done. And there's still some discussions with the insurance company going on as well, but that's my win for the week. Making progress on the house and rebuild from the flood is coming along. We got a 30 day challenge going on, 30 day minimalism challenge. And I'm going to be honest with you, kurt and I lean towards minimalism, but this has been a bigger challenge than I thought it would be, even for me, that was, like, pumped up and excited about it, and you were, too, that thought, okay, I'm going to do this. And I did. I've done, everyone. I missed the last challenge. And as we're recording this, the last challenge that we had was yesterday's challenge Friday's, which was to kind of prune, take care of, clean up your house plants, pull the dead leaves off, do something with them to just kind of bring maybe a breath of fresh air back into them. And when I was writing this, this was your idea, actually. This was one of the minimalism days challenge that you had. And when I was writing this, I thought, man, that's a good idea. And I got up yesterday, look at the list, the minimalism challenge list, and I realized I don't have any house plans. I don't have any house plans.
You either texted me or posted in the Facebook group.
I posted in the Facebook. I'm like, well, what do I do?
I think we got to call an audible that if one of these, like Joe had, you could do something on your own. That's a minimalist.
Well, there was one of the challenges that I didn't clearly communicate and that you got wrong because it was my fault that I didn't clearly communicate it, but it's still your problem.
Which one's?
It was clean your computer desktop. I got it wrong. Okay. Yes, wrong from what I intended it to be.
Oh, you wanted me to I intended.
It to be the digital desktop on your Windows or your Apple Computer desktop. You know, the one just out of convenience, you just throw files and you throw folders on there, and before you know, you have these 40 or 50 files and folders that you don't know what to do with. And the idea behind it was to use the same technique as the junk drawer technique the day before, where you take everything from a junk drawer, just put it in a box, date it, and only take the things out of the junk drawer that you need. And when you take it out of the box, you date the box. And when you take it out of the box to use it, you put it back into the drawer. But only those things that you used, you put back into the drawer. And six months from now, you just throw the box away. Whatever's in there you haven't used in six months, you don't need. You throw the box away. The idea behind the desktop the desktop was to do the same thing. You take all your files that are on your desktop, throw them in a file marked Desktop in today's date, and as you need stuff, you take it out of there. You file it in the proper place, which isn't on the desktop, and then what's in there? A year from now, you just delete the file because you've not used it. So the 30 day challenge itself has been very challenging for me. In fact, we are mid morning on Saturday, and I've not looked at the list.
Let me do my confession. And I called you out here a minute ago. I'm just as guilty here. This has been really challenging for me. I said yes to this challenge. And you'd think, like you said, 30 minutes maybe to spend on each one of these things. And my morning routine is very sacred to me. I have really struggled to find the time to do these things. I did really well with the first one, even on a Saturday. Last Saturday, I had a ton of things going on, but I was able to do that one. I was really excited to get that donate or discard. I did get over to Goodwill and dump things, so I did good on that. But then I started going downhill right from there. And the plan of no spending week, I really didn't spend. I don't want to go into each one of these. I did clear my desktop, so definitely did, but I cleared my desktop.
Your physical computer desk, that physical desk that your computer sits on. Right.
That was on my mind, so maybe I read it the way I wanted to read it.
Well, still check it off, man. That's still a thing you did.
But I think if you've gotten behind on this list, try to catch up. I've done some of these daily things before, and I'm on the weekend here. I am going to run off to spend some time with my daughter this afternoon, but I definitely this weekend want to do my best to catch up on this list.
I want to disagree with you on something that you just said. Don't try to catch up just right now. Let's see. On March 11, we are on day eight of the challenge. Okay? Now, you are probably listening to this on or after March 18. Yes, you're probably listening because we're trying to stay ahead. Yeah, march 11, you were probably listening to this honor after March 17. Excuse me? March 17. So if today's day nine, right? You're probably listening to this 1011. You said we're on day nine, right? I'm not looking at the day eight. Okay, so 910, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So let's say we're on day 15 or 16. Whatever day we're on, just pick day 16 and start from there.
Okay, Joe, thanks for the grace. He's just me grace.
My humility is only overshadowed by my greatness.
I'm thinking of that quote earlier. I'm glad you used it.
One day. That's going to be a quote of the day for me. That's one of my favorites. So there we are with our 30 day challenge. Thank you for your transparency. And I've had a few. I'll admit it's been more difficult than I thought it would be. But if you want to download the 30 Day challenge, just go to Dudesandprogress.com Thirtymc, dudesandprogress.com Thirtymc. Or just look at the link on today's Facebook.
I did have a fun post. Note I did have a fun thing. This week happened. We were in the car. Of course, my wife is all caught up on Dudes in Progress podcast because listen thing that we do, a long ride we take. And that part came up where I said we have to have a tough conversation about the percolator coffee pot. Looked over at her. Luckily, I'd already had that conversation. I had already thrown that out. We didn't get into an argument. So that's a good thing.
How about that? Engendered a bit of a snicker, right? What's your resource for the week?
So this is a resource if you're doing like a side hustle like I do, and we're working on, we're going to be doing that for dues in progress. I was really impressed with I have to get promotional items that we use for the podcast. And I've done this I've placed an order with this company once before as a little test. I bought some little drink whiskey glasses and it came out really well. I was really pleased with it. And the company is called Discount Promos. And of all places, it's on Amazon. And if you think about that, I was really concerned because sometimes you need some personal attention when you're sharing your logo and you have to see what it's going to look like, the color that you're going to use. In their case, for this particular item I was buying had to be black and white. I had to get my daughter to help me get the logo I was purchasing for another podcast that I'm doing an event coming up in another month or so. And I wanted to contribute to the prizes that they were going to give. But I was really pleased with the service that they gave me because the website wasn't really working properly on Amazon to attach my logo. But within a couple of hours, in a chat feature that they have on Amazon, I was chatting directly with the company. I was able to upload my logo. They were able to send me a proof within hours, within the same day, which was fantastic. So the service was at this point seemed really great. But the best part is I still get to use free shipping. And a lot of these bulk orders that I'm doing, if I'm ordering 100 glasses, or in this case, it's not that heavy, but still going to be a fairly large shipment. The cost of the shipping is where kind of makes or breaks me when I'm doing this sort of thing. So I'm really pleased with the service. It's on Amazon and it's also the cost is really coming in cheaper for me than other companies I've used in the past. So it's called discount promos on Amazon. Check it out.
Cool. I will. Yeah. There's some bulk items that I buy for work. There's some bulk items that I will buy for certain events. So I'll certainly check that out. My resource for the week is less of a resource and more of an efficiency focus technique that when I've used it in the past, is when I've had my most efficient days, my most productive days. I have used this technique, and it's called the Pomodoro technique. And I use a little bit of an adapted version of the Pomodoro technique, but basically it's a time management method based on 25 minutes stretches of focused work broken up by five minute breaks. So you focus. And somebody like me that can tend to flake out a little bit, that really needs to stay focused, but can't stay focused for a long period of time, this is perfect for me. So you have 25 minutes where you work hard, you focus, you do what you need to do, and then you take a five minute break. And the word pomodoro is it harkens. Back to that old tomato timer. Pomodoro means tomato. I think it's Italian. It's that old tomato timer that your grandma had in the kitchen and you would set. I remember seeing them. You may not have seen them, but anyway, that's where the name comes from, from that old kitchen timer that looked like a tomato. Don't get hung up on that. But the idea is to just have a segment of time set aside where you focus and take a break. And it's a hard break, as hard break as you possibly can. Even if you think you're kind of in the groove or in it, take this break. Because you'll be more creative and more productive for it. And I didn't believe it until I started doing it. My breaks are a little longer. I mean, my sessions are a little longer with a little longer break. And this is how I got into the groove of getting my steps in every day. So what I would do is I would set a timer for I mean, I would I would start working at on the top of the hour and at ten minutes till I would stop, my ringer would go off. And I would stop. And I'd go do 500 to 800 steps, go walk around the office, go walk around the neighborhood, go walk around whatever it might be, and then I would come back. And immediately on coming back, I would write down what I'm going to do for that next 50 minutes period of time. My dinger would go off and I'd get up and walk around. And when I've done, that have been my most productive, most efficient days by far. And people would look you're taking a ten minute break every hour. Yes. And I'm more productive for it.
I've heard of this idea. I didn't know it had a name. I love this one. Joe yeah.
So that's my resource for the week. And we are going to wrap up with our quotes.
Again. I'm reaching back into the ancient world. Joe it's fascinating to me that this is where I've gone. I didn't intentionally do this as I was searching for something related to essentialism. Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Socrates.
So much is said in so few words, beware of the barrenness of a busy life. When I think about my life, and when I've just been busy, mindlessly, busy, unintentional, just without intention, just busy, busy, busy, and I look back, it does feel empty.
What did I really accomplish?
What did I just do exactly? Did I do anything really of importance, of significance? That's solid right there. Busy life. I like that a lot.
It's really deep. I had to think about this one for a while. It's so short and sweet. The barrenness of a busy life.
That's one of those quotes. It's a mile deep and an inch wide, right? I like it. I like that. Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Mine comes from Arthur Ash, the tennis great Arthur Ash, do you remember him?
Yes.
I think he died several years back. But I like this a lot. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Arthur Ash and I like that because it's so universal and speaks to me specifically and it can speak to everybody because it doesn't matter where you are. You can start right there. It doesn't matter what you have. You can use whatever you have. And whatever you can do, do it. Do what you can. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
My dad has a lot of sayings. Joe one of them is do something, even if it's wrong.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Pretty quick.
Do something. Even if it's wrong. Start.
Love this one.
Yeah, I like it. I like it. Hey, we're going to wrap up right there. Kurt as we go into next week, let's all remember, progress is better than perfection. So let's keep moving forward.
Joe I am going to try to do better next time, especially my 30.
Day challenge, as we all will. I'll talk to you soon.
See you, Joe.