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Brian Solis - Scaling Life and Breaking Free From Distraction - Brian Solis had a book to write, but doing the work proved impossible. He cleaned his garage, re-organized his library, everything except write that book.
Get Brian's Book Life Scale here It wasn't writer's block, he's authored plenty of books...sorting through this problem lead Brian to shelve that book and start a new one examining how to get his life, attention and order back into his life. That book, from Wiley is called Life Scale and it's fantastic. For more on the Pomodoro method, click here Haiku Brian Scales Life Let’s break free from distraction Taming our Cyborg Similar episodes: Vinnie Tortorich Larry Sanger Dr. Tracy Gapin |
Transcription
Jon Leon Guerrero 0:00
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is digital anthropologist Brian Solis. He's our favorite expert on the impact of technology on our lives, our relationships and our ability to adapt to this new kind of input. Specifically, the magic box of knowledge and distraction that we all keep in our pockets. It's the most powerful tool of information any generation of human being is that access to and like a toddler with a matchbook. The access has dangers that we must not ignore.
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is digital anthropologist Brian Solis. He's our favorite expert on the impact of technology on our lives, our relationships and our ability to adapt to this new kind of input. Specifically, the magic box of knowledge and distraction that we all keep in our pockets. It's the most powerful tool of information any generation of human being is that access to and like a toddler with a matchbook. The access has dangers that we must not ignore.
Jon Leon Guerrero 0:00
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is digital anthropologist Brian Solis. He's our favorite expert on the impact of technology on our lives, our relationships and our ability to adapt to this new kind of input. Specifically, the magic box of knowledge and distraction that we all keep in our pockets. It's the most powerful tool of information any generation of human being is that access to and like a toddler with a matchbook. The access has dangers that we must not ignore. Now Brian's been talking about the effect of the speed of technology and what it's done to our lives our expectations and the way we conduct business since way before anyone else and he's authored a series of books which are all available at Brian Solis, calm about the various ways are changing world has changed us, including most recently. WTF what's the future of business? x the experience when business meets design, and his latest book life scale, how to live a more creative, productive and happy life. That is perhaps the most practical book for all of us walking around distractible, and he's going to talk more in depth about the subject today. Now, today is Wednesday. And there's just one more day to register and come out and support our favorite cause. Save the brave, read about them at save the brave.org by participating in the Simon are Liberty Memorial golf tournament at Temecula Creek in golf course. It's this Friday, October fourth, save the brave is a certified 501 c three nonprofit organization in the tournament will help fund their ongoing mission to help veterans cope with post traumatic stress. You can register for the tournament at save the brave.org slash event. And that link will be on our website. Do it fast tournament slots are almost full and the tournament is this Friday. It's going to be a great time and a great way to put your phone away and soak up some real life and fresh air and be actually social with actual people. So while you still have your phone in your hand, though, I'll shamelessly ask you to help us out for two minutes by rating and reviewing the break it down show, especially if you like us on iTunes, Google Play Spotify, I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to find podcasts like ours. Every positive review helps more listeners find out about the show. And we always like to grow the tribe. And you can do that while you're still engaged. double duty multitasking. While you listen to our guest today. Here's Brian Solis
Joel Manzer 2:39
lions rock productions
Jay Mohr 2:44
This is Jay Mohr
Unknown Speaker 2:44
and this is Jordan. Texture from the naked Sebastian youngsters Rick Morocco Stewart
Unknown Speaker 2:50
Copeland
Unknown Speaker 2:52
Baxter Gabby Reese, Rob Bell,
Jon Leon Guerrero 2:54
this is Jon Leon Guerrero
Pete Turner 2:55
and this is Pete a Turner
Brian Solis 2:59
Hey, this is Brian Solis. I'm the author of life scale I am here coming at you on the break it down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 3:08
And now the breakdown show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.
Pete Turner 3:15
Yeah, this is cool. So Brian was on popping the bubble was Sandra and I A while back. And if you don't know Brian's work, let me just tell you, he's got cash by my count about eight books, and the most recent one being live scale. And Brian, the array of where you kind of started and where you're at now. It's it's a remarkable path, I wouldn't call it growth, I would just call it like this constant evolution as to how you see things. His book is called Life scale, published by Wiley, they're friends of ours. And Brian has done us all the service by looking into how our new Cyborg selves, you know, our cell phones, our wearables, all these things, how they impact our lives in terms of our production, our creativity, our happiness. And and this this is your city unfair, like I really, Brian, really thank you for writing this because it does give us the chance to understand how to get up and how to get away from our, our phones, our alerts, how to manage our lives better to give us the chance to know people always say work life balance, but you also gotta balance Brian and all that stuff. So let's talk about the book. And let's go from there.
Brian Solis 4:20
Yeah, what an introduction. I really, I really appreciate it. In fact, I think the last time when we sat down together in San Francisco, I was actually working on this book. That sounds
Pete Turner 4:30
right. Yeah, you just done some work for a major national brand. And you were talking about our kids and their cerebral cortex getting smaller from the, from the devices and the access to
Brian Solis 4:42
it. That's right. And I think I shared a little bit about the international beauty brand that I was also doing research with about self esteem and happiness in terms of how they view their own beauty on Instagram, and Snapchat, it was a lot of a lot of it opening stuff. So parallel tracks, and all ended up is as the book life scale. And I'll tell you, though, one of the interesting things that I've learned since we last sat down together was, you know, I was surprised by just how much work it was going to take, and it is still going to take to get people to be aware of maybe the opportunity, or the need to read a book like this, I was really, really, really taken aback by how few of us actually realize that we are distracted. And the impacts of distraction in our world,
Pete Turner 5:32
if fitness is is primarily about the food that you would take, I would think and I'm going to use the phone as the greater distractors. But phone, TV, where of all these things that, quote unquote, help us and improve our ability to be productive. Your book opens with realize, realize what this thing is doing to you, as well as for you. And I think that's just a great place to start with the premise of the book, because you do map out all these things. And it's reorientation, it's realizing all of these things that take where we're at, and force us to kind of assess how we might do it better, or just assess what we're doing.
Brian Solis 6:16
Yeah, the fact very, very little of the book is talks about the, the impact of technology in our lives, I only really needed, you know, a chapter to kind of get in there and just kind of shake you and say, Look, look, look at what we're doing to ourselves. Yeah. And it was it was by design. So it's not really our fault, per se, but now that, you know, what are we going to do differently moving forward. And what what I had realized, you know, and kind of telling, telling the backstory here is, I was distracted, this book is the result of me trying to fix my life, because I was actually trying to write another book. And I was, by no means means an expert in how to fix your life. What I just couldn't find, however, was how to fix my life, there was a lot of, there's a lot of stuff out there like, you know, yoga and meditation and mindfulness practices, and maybe even getting apps like calm to help or headspace to help you kind of get into into the right space. There were all kinds of techniques that you can, you could use, you could practice, but none of them are really getting to the heart of the matter, which was the result of what technology has done to us when it's rewiring our brains and our bodies. Right, the chemistry involved with that was, was profound and actually upsetting to continue considering the intentionality of how those chemicals were manipulated to get us hooked and get us essentially addicted. Right. So part of it was fighting technology distractions. The other part in my research I ended up having to figure out was how to deal with the rewire of ourselves and the chemistry of ourselves. And that's, that's what took a really, really long time. And in the end, I was just completely, both befuddled, and also just shocked and disappointed at how little this has been studied up into this point. So the premise of me fixing my life was to actually write another book. Yeah, when I and for those who don't know, I couldn't finish my other book, which is when I realized I had a problem and spent a year soul searching trying to figure out that it wasn't writer's block. But long story short, I realized that if I need this book, and if I have to go through all of this, this research and work to find out what works and what doesn't work and put it together, in what ended up becoming the life scale journey, then maybe other people might need the help to and and my friends at Wiley, thankfully, allowed me to throw them a curveball and write a very different book, of which I still carry around with me everywhere I go.
Pete Turner 9:10
Let me say this about Wiley to they are masters of this very thing, taking professional people that have audiences and impact and pulling out of them, but needs to be there. So maybe this wasn't the design, but this book, seriously pride, it's great. But let me just illustrate for the friends that are listening, you have this book you're trying to get it done. And let's see if this sounds familiar to anybody, anything except for writing the book was getting done even stuff that we're like, prioritize things that you would never do, like clean the garage, mop the floor. So we've all done that where we have, you know, everything else to do except for the work we have to do. I think we see this the same way back, you say it in the book, a lot of these things are based in ego, they're based in fear of that, that, you know, we have to sit with this work, whether there's some kind of psychological barrier, because look, you know how to write you've got seven books at this point written 1000 words, you can do that, you know, you can repeat it. So it's not writer's block. It is something else talk a little bit about that.
Brian Solis 10:16
Well, yeah, I in the look, I'll be honest with you, the life scale journey is, is one that's continual, right? Essentially, what you're doing is you're, you're, you're taking a look at what it means to be alive today, right? Even though every single generation has had its technology disruption, you know, where, where technology has helped for better for worse, define and change generation, we are collectively the first series of generations, right? So you matures down to Centennial, those that have had to deal with this level of bombardment, essentially, mass mass addiction, without calling it addiction, right. So essentially, we're set another way where the first or the first generations of human beings that are being completely rewired all at once without an instruction manual, or essentially guide us through that process. And so you have two different camps. Within those groups of generations, you have folks like you and me who, you know, know what, what analog is, like, you can talk about days where we used to play house, or, you know, or then you have kids who only know this, and so that that chemistry that's happening in their body that angst and anxiety that the self doubt, self esteem issues, that's just normal to them. And so there's, there's, there's no real help for them in the everyday life, whether it's school, or whether it's at their doctor, or whether it's with the whomever is their primary care. Because the understanding of what's going on inside of them, versus what's going on inside of us, is still kind of up up in the air, right. And so what what started is trying to get through and writing a book, you know, actually turned out to be something much more profound, I think it was is my purpose. And I had to go through the exercise of trying to find what my purpose was, which is what I share in the book. And what everybody I asked them to go through is essentially, we're living in an analog construct, in incredibly disruptive times, and that construct is broken, meaning that it's dated. So our standards for happiness, our standards for success, our processes of learning, our operations of working, everything is just old, and not actually designed for all of the all of the stuff we have access is to all of the stuff that's happening to us. And then more importantly, all of the things that now that we're mindful about it all, can intentionally move in new directions. So set another way, life scale ended up becoming a manual for a modern life, right? Here's your instruction guide. Let's reset everything now that you know all of these things, what are we going to do differently moving forward? It wasn't, you know, I thought it was, Hey, I just need to get back to where I was when I was creative. And when I can focus, but then I realized No, no, it's not about going back in time. This is about being awake, and looking around us and saying how can I use technology because I don't want to abandon that I don't want to put my phone away, I needed to do the things now that I want to do with purpose. Now that I know what I know, how can I use technology to be greater than ever? How can I be more creative? How can it be more productive? How can I be happier? And that's that's what the journey ended up going after it was resetting your life for these times to say, you could do anything you want to do. So what do you want to do? Let's not live our lies to the standards of our parents and the standards that were passed down to their parents, and so on and so forth. Right? Because once we figure out what we can do, we can change our life. And we can change everything about it about it, right. So if you look at Centennial, who are dealing with all of this crazy stuff, that distractions, just a way of life, that their brains are just completely hardwired, where our brains became hardwired, to be distracted, to multitask, to work on all of these things, to feel the need for constant attention and validation, to sort of cast out this what I call the or selfie aspiration of not who we are, but who we project ourselves to be, then how would you change the education system? How would you How would you change sort of the guidance counseling or, or or therapy to deal with that brain and focus that brain in a certain way? Like so all of these things now become possible? Because we're aware that we're living in different times and what our standards are holding us back against? So life scale? Is these my manual for a digital life. But living an intentional life differently than we had been brought up? Kind of raised to follow.
Pete Turner 15:08
Yeah. What do you want to do? And then designing some kind of plan for that? That's fantastic. And so you say Centennial, I so far, and you know, these things move around. I like digital natives, which kind of goes to the conversation that we're having now is they've got a whole new road to hoe. We often talk here in our house about how we just have to wait in line for things. Like just stand there. Maybe you knew someone next to you, maybe you struck up a conversation, maybe you just stood there in your own thoughts, but concert tickets, registering for classes, you know, just all these things were your world just slow down to just simply waiting in line. And we didn't want to wait in lines. But that just was how it was. Now, when you wait in line, you're like, Oh, well, let me check my bank balance. Oh, let me check my friend friends on the internet. There's all these distractions. The reason why I set all this up was like I flew back in from being a Missoula seeing my aunt and uncle up in Montana. And a lady had turned her phone on, and she apparently keeps her alerts on. And so it was going bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and I'm like, Oh, my God, it sounds just like a slot machine. You know. And so over the course of the day, these 40 or 50 dings and bongs must just be when you hear it compressed into one, you know, little short hunk of time. It was it was one it was annoying as hell sitting on the, on the shuttle with her, but to like, it makes you realize just how much attention the phone takes away from you in a way that is it truly productive. I mean, you can set up specific notifications, you know, like you can make your email check less frequently or, or, you know, hit certain accounts and everything. But I think she had a wide open gate and cash that's just got be crushing to her concentration.
Brian Solis 17:03
It's crushing to her concentration, and she doesn't even know it. And that's the challenge is how do you sell a book about distraction to people who don't know that they're distracted. I mean, I didn't even know I needed this book. And one of the, one of the realities is, is that you know, on average, we get about 200 notifications a day. Notification management is just it's, it's, I call it an attention hack. Because it's not a solution, it's just sort of freeing up your mind, to at least be able to move it in a particular direction. When you allow yourself to be distracted. It takes you time, to get back to the headspace you're in before or you just follow the rabbit hole, which most of us are doing these days, because the term multitasking is a misnomer. You're not actually working on multiple tasks. And the same caliber, you would if you were single tasking, right, what it's simply what is simply is task switching, right. So whatever you're doing, and then you get a notification, you're expanding. What basically, we'll just call it fuel, because the chemicals in your brain that it takes to task switch are expended, every time you do that, every time that notification begins off, you're you're expending energy and fuel to do those things. And by the end of the day, you're just done. But between the beginning and the end of the day, essentially, your brains getting thinner, your your your brains getting tired, your you're not doing things you're because you're having to accelerate all of these things to keep going and keep up that when when you are doing work, you're prone to mistakes, you're you're actually damaging yourself, you're affecting your short term memory and your long term memory, all kinds of bad things, right. But we see it as sort of like a superpower. That, that we could do all of these things. Actually. It's It's It's our weakness. Yeah. And that that's the that's the fight that I'm trying to go out there and, and in fight but not, you know, realizing that actually I can't win by telling people they're distracted, hey, turn off your notifications, you know, like, get off, get off my lawn. Yeah, it's backing into the conversation, which became the subtitle of the book, which was how to live a more creative, productive and happy life. So if you saw it sitting on someone's desk, or if you saw it in a bookstore, you wouldn't say, hey, let's, let's fight your digital distractions. I mean, it just says, Yeah, who wouldn't want to be more creative, productive or happy? And that, that's where I learned the doorway was to have this conversation. But yeah, those notifications, and our multitasking is exactly where we're debilitating ourselves.
Pete Turner 19:50
The book is just full of thoughts. And and, and you call them hacks on how to how to get better at these things, you know, talking in terms of doing like a short run of production on a given task, like, right now, we're going to do this conversation for approximately 30 minutes. And then I'm going to work on publishing one of the two shows I have to publish this morning. And so, so more, a little more task orientation, and then also accept that, as you build up the capacity to have to focus again, right, it takes some time, you know, you have this desire this addiction to do other things. I thought that was just eye opening, Brian, because, you know, I have a lot of tasks to manage, right? I have, I have to manage social media, I have to participate, I have to engage news I have, I have this, this social machine that I have to have to deal with. But I also have to do pre production. I mean, heck, you and I think about the amount of time that we spent just trying to get together in this space. You know, that times 400 other episodes, you know, it's a lot of a lot of time spent, that that task switching is really challenging for me as I tried to get through that, because there's things I want to do. They're all things I need to do. But what do I have to do? What must I do, and that's a real problem. And then let me add this in its element. And as well, I have multiple shows to produce, right, I put four to five shows a week out. So if I just lock in and become much more of a grind, as I episode, you know, edit Episode Five for the week, you know, so I've taken on your counsel, I've taken to doing shorter bursts, you know, let's get through 15 minutes of editing, and maybe I'll eke out a couple extra minutes just to, you know, increase the percentage of the show that I've done. But then I get up and I do something totally different. Maybe I'll go do a small tour around the house, maybe I'll just go spend some time paying attention to my girlfriend, you know, whatever it is I try to completely change how I approach my day. How am I doing by doing this? Do you think
Brian Solis 21:48
that's, that's, that's great, because it's an intentional use of your time. It I think one of the one of the stories I just wrote about today was about regret, and how we could have spent our time differently. The the idea about this is that you're mindfully making decisions about what you're going to do. And as you do that, you're training yourself to get better at that one of the techniques that I talked about, in the book early on, was kind of helping helping you get your brain ready to, to, to, to focus to go through some of these deeper exercises to learn how to spend more time on a project to give yourself more to it to, to train yourself to allow your brain to open up for greater creativity, whatever that creativity is. And the Maduro technique was one that worked for me, which is where you you focus for 25 minutes on a single task, and then take a five minute break. And then do it again. Yeah, it's a few minutes. It was it was it was ridiculous. I started the focus on task, I did all the things that I asked you to do. You know, go to the bathroom, get your drink, whatever you need, turn off everything else and, and focus. And within a few minutes I had reached for my phone without a notification. It was just like muscle memory just right, reached for the phone. And that's so what you're doing is exactly right. You're you're literally reprogramming yourself to do these things for this amount of time. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And also, if you were if you wanted to even I did this, if you want it to compare your work to previous work before these exercises, you see a stark difference. Yeah.
Pete Turner 23:38
You also, I usually put the phone in the other room during these times of the day, when I'm just focusing, I still have my laptop, right? Because that's where a lot of my work is. But I'm a toddler. So I'll tab like crazy to get to different tasks. But I try to stay off of the internet. And that's that's really where my work is right now is how do I avoid popping over to Twitter to tweet something, when it's time for me to tweet, there's this great line in your book. I'm not sure if it's Brandon Crawford's or if it's yours. It's distraction is autonomy run amok. I love that. It's just
Unknown Speaker 24:18
that's my quote.
Brian Solis 24:21
But that that is it. If it is my goodness, I'll that would I would, I would be smart. But that is a great is a great quote. And that's the thing, one of the challenges that we're giving this gift of information, we're given this this gift of convenience, we're giving this gift of access. And, you know, again, to no one no one's there to sort of help us learn how to drink from the firehose, I started liking it to, you know, if you were to become a celebrity overnight, you know, most of the time, we're going to make all of the mistakes, our favorite celebrities, you'll make that we we get the chance I said before, right? You look at if you look at publications like TMZ, or people or us, you know, most of the time, they're talking about all of the mistakes celebrities are making in their life. Right? It's it's all look at them. And we take sort of great, great entertainment and being able to point at them. But but we're doing the same exact things. In our own world, we're making those types of mistakes. Because we have, we need more followers, we need more likes, we need that more attention. And we're and we don't see ourselves slipping. And more importantly, we don't see ourselves moving our center of reference. So every every day that we live this life, our center of reference moves along with it, because say, for example, last week, you had 100 followers, and that was good enough, but this week is not yet doing, you're doing more of the things to get that attention to keep that lifestyle, going to feed your body those chemicals, every every single time you do this. So you're moving your center of reference, because now you're starting to do things differently than you would have done otherwise, the week before the you know, the year before. And so data muck part about this is this is where the chaos is in our life, you're making decisions without any real moral foundation. And he values any sense of purpose, any sense of vision or mission or long term, long term focus. That that is that's that's literally dangerous, right? I mean, I can mean the research I did on this was mind blowing right by but I can't tell these personal stories, but I can tell you my personal story, I was making decisions that were literally ruining my family, and my relationship and, and all kinds of all kinds of things that in hindsight, I can't even believe that I was doing. And so I ended up writing this quote, in the story I wrote, yesterday, I received a letter from someone who is a startup founder, who his father was diagnosed with cancer, and passed in 10 weeks, he talked about how he would regularly play golf with his father, he has a son that he keeps putting off time with, get his company going. And he realized what he would have given to play one more round with his father. And he's never going to say that about his son, he's going to make the time for his son. And one of the I asked him if I could share that story. And one of the things that I wrote sort of, at the beginning of of sharing that story was, what's what's important in the moment is quite frequently measured in the moment and not against a greater construct of values, time and purpose. And that's, that's where the amok can get us.
Pete Turner 27:50
You know, you right in here, you say procrastination is subconscious attempt to avoid unpleasant emotions stirred up by the task we're meant to be doing. And that right there a little, you know, just learning how to be resilient, or develop resilience in those kind of things, some of the things we have to do suck, and they cause bad feelings. And, yeah, that's why you procrastinate. But all of this stuff, like building attention, you know, investing in your life, we talked about work life balance, but that's kind of where the conversation stops, you know, like, you went several times about your daughters in the book, and you're tucking them in at night, and spending time, but you have to take care of several things. Yes, your career is, is of course, essential. But you also have to look at your, your significant other, and you have to put time into them, maybe they need something, maybe the two of you just need to do nothing together, just slow down for a moment and have some wine, or, you know, whatever it is read some books together, all of these things are individual efforts that if you don't account for them, you know, you quickly run out of time in the day and you never get to them. So, you know, you know, constantly taxing your brain, not good for your brain are there rest of your body, because, you know, the body is a system. And though it seems like a perpetual motion machine, you know, you are taxing it, you know, like if you attack your liver with a lot of drinking your liver functions at let's say, 80%, will you do that over a timetable of 65 years and all the sudden your body's been poisoned a lot over the you know, all these things, take management, you know, your relationship with your kids, with your peers, with your wife, your happiness, these things all actually require attention. And it just it blows me away, when you think I don't have enough time to manage things, you really often saying, I don't have enough time to manage, you know my life in a very specific way, not in this kind of a raid focus with all the things that invest in your happiness, right. So if you're not investing in your happiness, and you talked about this at one point in the book, and I can't find the page here, but I found that to be really valuable to look at your body, your mind your life, as a system that needs provisioning in a variety of areas.
Brian Solis 30:00
Yeah, it's this is, this is one of the the more interesting challenges I had and still have to be honest,
Pete Turner 30:10
hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions, we create podcasts around here. And if you your brand, or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me, I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan is show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you that's sustainable, that scalable and fun, hit me up at Pete at breakdown show. com Let me help I want to hear about
Unknown Speaker 30:34
challenges I had and still have to be honest. You know, it's like, like the food we eat. The way we exercise our bodies, is essentially the way that we should what was said, say another way, right? If you if you have a car that you love, you know, and you wash it, and you keep it super maintained. And every everything's always clean and meticulous inside and has the best stereo system, you put the best gas and in the best oil in it. You know, the thing that's just mind blowing? Is that we don't do that for ourselves. Yes. That, in fact, there's zero psychological reasons why, you know, sometimes we, we we don't, there's, there's just all kinds of other reasons why why we don't keep up with it or promise that we will get to it. But yet, that's the very thing that defines our core, our health, our wellness, and so Fitness, Food, guilt, Information and Technology. All of these things, how we use them isn't just about balance, it's about wellness, and about being our best selves, right? Our true best selves. The hard thing is that it's it's a discipline, and most of us don't have that discipline. And also, it's about who we surround ourselves with, right? If everybody around us doesn't have that discipline and makes having that discipline difficult, if not impossible, plus, it's not, you're the you're the abnormal one in the group. So we have to kind of first see that what we're doing today, even though it's normal, doesn't mean it's right. And then to I talked about this idea of surrounding ourselves with the board of directors, you know, people who can inspire us to live the way we want to live and, and and be, you know, you don't have to be 100% Health and Wellness all the time. But if you're not able to see that the way that you live, your life isn't the best for you. And the best for those around you. We get lulled into this sense of complacency, where we feel entitled to have this aspirational life or this aspirational attention, this aspirational validation because of the fact that we're just living this way when in fact we're not earning it. And that's that's the that's the that's at the core of a lot of this work is that we feel entitled to the stuff that we're not doing the work for, but we have to do the work and doing the work is what's hard, which is why a lot of us don't maintain health and fitness and and strong diets. In the end, we get out of it, we get out of life we put into it.
Pete Turner 33:19
Yeah, I know, we only got you for a couple more minutes. So let me just say a couple of things. A lot of us are running life at max capacity, you know, between that, let's say 50 to 60 hours a week we give to our job, including commuting there, you know, supporting our kids endeavors, which of course is essential, you know, and and just getting through the day to day things like oh, I have to tighten up that doorknob and all that you really do quickly run out of time, right? Like it can be overwhelming. And you and I both know having a creative endeavor is it's just it's fuel for everything in your life that you do. Pete caught us of co host on the show, one of his best buddies is Dr. Rich doctor whose NGO talks about fitness and says, you need if you do 90 minutes of exercise in a day, everything else you'll do, you'll do at a higher level of efficiency because the this these workouts, so Pete Pete says you have to do 28 hours of working out a month, you know, and so you quickly can just simply run out of time, you have to have seven and a half to eight hours sleep You just have to. So what do we do? Brian? How do we manage all of these things that I just described that I just described? You know, a week that doesn't have enough time in it?
Brian Solis 34:34
Yeah, no, there isn't enough time for everything. And I if you don't, you know, obviously, the prescriptive time to do all of these things is is sort of an ideal state. But even just making any time helps you like Like, for example the Commodores technique, making 25 minute bursts for work. It just, you just get better and better and better. And you and I think what ends up happening over time, why don't think I know what happens over time as you just get better at how you use your time. And remember, when you're distracted or when you're doing all these things, you're reaching for your phone, what might have taken you, let's just say make it up half an hour, do something is not going to take you over an hour, something and so you're literally wasting time. And there's there's a massive cost to that, you know, one is emotional, because you're frustrated that it took you that long to get that done, and you're not happy throughout the entire process. But you have to make the time but to make time you have to go through the work that life scale teaches, which is what, who are you? Who do you want to be? What's your vision for that? What are your values? What's your purpose? What's your path to that you you literally create your life scale journey to get there. And along the way, you're making time for those things, your car, you're building the discipline, you're keeping a schedule, you're writing these things down and the exercise is kind they get you to go through that. But it's not an overnight thing. It's It's It's just something that you continue to do and practice until it's just the new normal.
Pete Turner 36:08
This is Brian Solis, Brian Solis, calm. If you can't find him on his website, you can hit me, I will get you there. He's on Twitter. He's in a lot of places. But let's seriously you guys, this book has helped me quite a bit in managing what I do. And it's one of those things where I, Brian, I keep going back to it because I keep pulling. There's so much insight in it and things where I can tune up how I live scale. So and this is I'm just telling everybody like this is a fantastic book, Brian Solis The book is called Live sail, and it's published by Wiley, our friends over there. And I'm not getting paid to say this because it sounds like I am. But I'm telling you get this book and start reading through it. And you will see, we covered maybe the first 35 pages in this book. That's all we did. And this time, the book is packed with things. So Brian, thank you for coming on. Seriously. Thank you and come back again soon.
Brian Solis 37:00
Thank you. It's been my pleasure. It's always fun to talk to you and thanks. Thanks for reading the book and thanks for sharing the story. Then Yes, please, if you do read the book, reach out to me. You can get the book on Amazon or your neighborhood bookstore.
Pete Turner 37:13
Keep those guys in business and the URL is life scaling.me
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is digital anthropologist Brian Solis. He's our favorite expert on the impact of technology on our lives, our relationships and our ability to adapt to this new kind of input. Specifically, the magic box of knowledge and distraction that we all keep in our pockets. It's the most powerful tool of information any generation of human being is that access to and like a toddler with a matchbook. The access has dangers that we must not ignore. Now Brian's been talking about the effect of the speed of technology and what it's done to our lives our expectations and the way we conduct business since way before anyone else and he's authored a series of books which are all available at Brian Solis, calm about the various ways are changing world has changed us, including most recently. WTF what's the future of business? x the experience when business meets design, and his latest book life scale, how to live a more creative, productive and happy life. That is perhaps the most practical book for all of us walking around distractible, and he's going to talk more in depth about the subject today. Now, today is Wednesday. And there's just one more day to register and come out and support our favorite cause. Save the brave, read about them at save the brave.org by participating in the Simon are Liberty Memorial golf tournament at Temecula Creek in golf course. It's this Friday, October fourth, save the brave is a certified 501 c three nonprofit organization in the tournament will help fund their ongoing mission to help veterans cope with post traumatic stress. You can register for the tournament at save the brave.org slash event. And that link will be on our website. Do it fast tournament slots are almost full and the tournament is this Friday. It's going to be a great time and a great way to put your phone away and soak up some real life and fresh air and be actually social with actual people. So while you still have your phone in your hand, though, I'll shamelessly ask you to help us out for two minutes by rating and reviewing the break it down show, especially if you like us on iTunes, Google Play Spotify, I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to find podcasts like ours. Every positive review helps more listeners find out about the show. And we always like to grow the tribe. And you can do that while you're still engaged. double duty multitasking. While you listen to our guest today. Here's Brian Solis
Joel Manzer 2:39
lions rock productions
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This is Jay Mohr
Unknown Speaker 2:44
and this is Jordan. Texture from the naked Sebastian youngsters Rick Morocco Stewart
Unknown Speaker 2:50
Copeland
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Baxter Gabby Reese, Rob Bell,
Jon Leon Guerrero 2:54
this is Jon Leon Guerrero
Pete Turner 2:55
and this is Pete a Turner
Brian Solis 2:59
Hey, this is Brian Solis. I'm the author of life scale I am here coming at you on the break it down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 3:08
And now the breakdown show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.
Pete Turner 3:15
Yeah, this is cool. So Brian was on popping the bubble was Sandra and I A while back. And if you don't know Brian's work, let me just tell you, he's got cash by my count about eight books, and the most recent one being live scale. And Brian, the array of where you kind of started and where you're at now. It's it's a remarkable path, I wouldn't call it growth, I would just call it like this constant evolution as to how you see things. His book is called Life scale, published by Wiley, they're friends of ours. And Brian has done us all the service by looking into how our new Cyborg selves, you know, our cell phones, our wearables, all these things, how they impact our lives in terms of our production, our creativity, our happiness. And and this this is your city unfair, like I really, Brian, really thank you for writing this because it does give us the chance to understand how to get up and how to get away from our, our phones, our alerts, how to manage our lives better to give us the chance to know people always say work life balance, but you also gotta balance Brian and all that stuff. So let's talk about the book. And let's go from there.
Brian Solis 4:20
Yeah, what an introduction. I really, I really appreciate it. In fact, I think the last time when we sat down together in San Francisco, I was actually working on this book. That sounds
Pete Turner 4:30
right. Yeah, you just done some work for a major national brand. And you were talking about our kids and their cerebral cortex getting smaller from the, from the devices and the access to
Brian Solis 4:42
it. That's right. And I think I shared a little bit about the international beauty brand that I was also doing research with about self esteem and happiness in terms of how they view their own beauty on Instagram, and Snapchat, it was a lot of a lot of it opening stuff. So parallel tracks, and all ended up is as the book life scale. And I'll tell you, though, one of the interesting things that I've learned since we last sat down together was, you know, I was surprised by just how much work it was going to take, and it is still going to take to get people to be aware of maybe the opportunity, or the need to read a book like this, I was really, really, really taken aback by how few of us actually realize that we are distracted. And the impacts of distraction in our world,
Pete Turner 5:32
if fitness is is primarily about the food that you would take, I would think and I'm going to use the phone as the greater distractors. But phone, TV, where of all these things that, quote unquote, help us and improve our ability to be productive. Your book opens with realize, realize what this thing is doing to you, as well as for you. And I think that's just a great place to start with the premise of the book, because you do map out all these things. And it's reorientation, it's realizing all of these things that take where we're at, and force us to kind of assess how we might do it better, or just assess what we're doing.
Brian Solis 6:16
Yeah, the fact very, very little of the book is talks about the, the impact of technology in our lives, I only really needed, you know, a chapter to kind of get in there and just kind of shake you and say, Look, look, look at what we're doing to ourselves. Yeah. And it was it was by design. So it's not really our fault, per se, but now that, you know, what are we going to do differently moving forward. And what what I had realized, you know, and kind of telling, telling the backstory here is, I was distracted, this book is the result of me trying to fix my life, because I was actually trying to write another book. And I was, by no means means an expert in how to fix your life. What I just couldn't find, however, was how to fix my life, there was a lot of, there's a lot of stuff out there like, you know, yoga and meditation and mindfulness practices, and maybe even getting apps like calm to help or headspace to help you kind of get into into the right space. There were all kinds of techniques that you can, you could use, you could practice, but none of them are really getting to the heart of the matter, which was the result of what technology has done to us when it's rewiring our brains and our bodies. Right, the chemistry involved with that was, was profound and actually upsetting to continue considering the intentionality of how those chemicals were manipulated to get us hooked and get us essentially addicted. Right. So part of it was fighting technology distractions. The other part in my research I ended up having to figure out was how to deal with the rewire of ourselves and the chemistry of ourselves. And that's, that's what took a really, really long time. And in the end, I was just completely, both befuddled, and also just shocked and disappointed at how little this has been studied up into this point. So the premise of me fixing my life was to actually write another book. Yeah, when I and for those who don't know, I couldn't finish my other book, which is when I realized I had a problem and spent a year soul searching trying to figure out that it wasn't writer's block. But long story short, I realized that if I need this book, and if I have to go through all of this, this research and work to find out what works and what doesn't work and put it together, in what ended up becoming the life scale journey, then maybe other people might need the help to and and my friends at Wiley, thankfully, allowed me to throw them a curveball and write a very different book, of which I still carry around with me everywhere I go.
Pete Turner 9:10
Let me say this about Wiley to they are masters of this very thing, taking professional people that have audiences and impact and pulling out of them, but needs to be there. So maybe this wasn't the design, but this book, seriously pride, it's great. But let me just illustrate for the friends that are listening, you have this book you're trying to get it done. And let's see if this sounds familiar to anybody, anything except for writing the book was getting done even stuff that we're like, prioritize things that you would never do, like clean the garage, mop the floor. So we've all done that where we have, you know, everything else to do except for the work we have to do. I think we see this the same way back, you say it in the book, a lot of these things are based in ego, they're based in fear of that, that, you know, we have to sit with this work, whether there's some kind of psychological barrier, because look, you know how to write you've got seven books at this point written 1000 words, you can do that, you know, you can repeat it. So it's not writer's block. It is something else talk a little bit about that.
Brian Solis 10:16
Well, yeah, I in the look, I'll be honest with you, the life scale journey is, is one that's continual, right? Essentially, what you're doing is you're, you're, you're taking a look at what it means to be alive today, right? Even though every single generation has had its technology disruption, you know, where, where technology has helped for better for worse, define and change generation, we are collectively the first series of generations, right? So you matures down to Centennial, those that have had to deal with this level of bombardment, essentially, mass mass addiction, without calling it addiction, right. So essentially, we're set another way where the first or the first generations of human beings that are being completely rewired all at once without an instruction manual, or essentially guide us through that process. And so you have two different camps. Within those groups of generations, you have folks like you and me who, you know, know what, what analog is, like, you can talk about days where we used to play house, or, you know, or then you have kids who only know this, and so that that chemistry that's happening in their body that angst and anxiety that the self doubt, self esteem issues, that's just normal to them. And so there's, there's, there's no real help for them in the everyday life, whether it's school, or whether it's at their doctor, or whether it's with the whomever is their primary care. Because the understanding of what's going on inside of them, versus what's going on inside of us, is still kind of up up in the air, right. And so what what started is trying to get through and writing a book, you know, actually turned out to be something much more profound, I think it was is my purpose. And I had to go through the exercise of trying to find what my purpose was, which is what I share in the book. And what everybody I asked them to go through is essentially, we're living in an analog construct, in incredibly disruptive times, and that construct is broken, meaning that it's dated. So our standards for happiness, our standards for success, our processes of learning, our operations of working, everything is just old, and not actually designed for all of the all of the stuff we have access is to all of the stuff that's happening to us. And then more importantly, all of the things that now that we're mindful about it all, can intentionally move in new directions. So set another way, life scale ended up becoming a manual for a modern life, right? Here's your instruction guide. Let's reset everything now that you know all of these things, what are we going to do differently moving forward? It wasn't, you know, I thought it was, Hey, I just need to get back to where I was when I was creative. And when I can focus, but then I realized No, no, it's not about going back in time. This is about being awake, and looking around us and saying how can I use technology because I don't want to abandon that I don't want to put my phone away, I needed to do the things now that I want to do with purpose. Now that I know what I know, how can I use technology to be greater than ever? How can I be more creative? How can it be more productive? How can I be happier? And that's that's what the journey ended up going after it was resetting your life for these times to say, you could do anything you want to do. So what do you want to do? Let's not live our lies to the standards of our parents and the standards that were passed down to their parents, and so on and so forth. Right? Because once we figure out what we can do, we can change our life. And we can change everything about it about it, right. So if you look at Centennial, who are dealing with all of this crazy stuff, that distractions, just a way of life, that their brains are just completely hardwired, where our brains became hardwired, to be distracted, to multitask, to work on all of these things, to feel the need for constant attention and validation, to sort of cast out this what I call the or selfie aspiration of not who we are, but who we project ourselves to be, then how would you change the education system? How would you How would you change sort of the guidance counseling or, or or therapy to deal with that brain and focus that brain in a certain way? Like so all of these things now become possible? Because we're aware that we're living in different times and what our standards are holding us back against? So life scale? Is these my manual for a digital life. But living an intentional life differently than we had been brought up? Kind of raised to follow.
Pete Turner 15:08
Yeah. What do you want to do? And then designing some kind of plan for that? That's fantastic. And so you say Centennial, I so far, and you know, these things move around. I like digital natives, which kind of goes to the conversation that we're having now is they've got a whole new road to hoe. We often talk here in our house about how we just have to wait in line for things. Like just stand there. Maybe you knew someone next to you, maybe you struck up a conversation, maybe you just stood there in your own thoughts, but concert tickets, registering for classes, you know, just all these things were your world just slow down to just simply waiting in line. And we didn't want to wait in lines. But that just was how it was. Now, when you wait in line, you're like, Oh, well, let me check my bank balance. Oh, let me check my friend friends on the internet. There's all these distractions. The reason why I set all this up was like I flew back in from being a Missoula seeing my aunt and uncle up in Montana. And a lady had turned her phone on, and she apparently keeps her alerts on. And so it was going bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and I'm like, Oh, my God, it sounds just like a slot machine. You know. And so over the course of the day, these 40 or 50 dings and bongs must just be when you hear it compressed into one, you know, little short hunk of time. It was it was one it was annoying as hell sitting on the, on the shuttle with her, but to like, it makes you realize just how much attention the phone takes away from you in a way that is it truly productive. I mean, you can set up specific notifications, you know, like you can make your email check less frequently or, or, you know, hit certain accounts and everything. But I think she had a wide open gate and cash that's just got be crushing to her concentration.
Brian Solis 17:03
It's crushing to her concentration, and she doesn't even know it. And that's the challenge is how do you sell a book about distraction to people who don't know that they're distracted. I mean, I didn't even know I needed this book. And one of the, one of the realities is, is that you know, on average, we get about 200 notifications a day. Notification management is just it's, it's, I call it an attention hack. Because it's not a solution, it's just sort of freeing up your mind, to at least be able to move it in a particular direction. When you allow yourself to be distracted. It takes you time, to get back to the headspace you're in before or you just follow the rabbit hole, which most of us are doing these days, because the term multitasking is a misnomer. You're not actually working on multiple tasks. And the same caliber, you would if you were single tasking, right, what it's simply what is simply is task switching, right. So whatever you're doing, and then you get a notification, you're expanding. What basically, we'll just call it fuel, because the chemicals in your brain that it takes to task switch are expended, every time you do that, every time that notification begins off, you're you're expending energy and fuel to do those things. And by the end of the day, you're just done. But between the beginning and the end of the day, essentially, your brains getting thinner, your your your brains getting tired, your you're not doing things you're because you're having to accelerate all of these things to keep going and keep up that when when you are doing work, you're prone to mistakes, you're you're actually damaging yourself, you're affecting your short term memory and your long term memory, all kinds of bad things, right. But we see it as sort of like a superpower. That, that we could do all of these things. Actually. It's It's It's our weakness. Yeah. And that that's the that's the fight that I'm trying to go out there and, and in fight but not, you know, realizing that actually I can't win by telling people they're distracted, hey, turn off your notifications, you know, like, get off, get off my lawn. Yeah, it's backing into the conversation, which became the subtitle of the book, which was how to live a more creative, productive and happy life. So if you saw it sitting on someone's desk, or if you saw it in a bookstore, you wouldn't say, hey, let's, let's fight your digital distractions. I mean, it just says, Yeah, who wouldn't want to be more creative, productive or happy? And that, that's where I learned the doorway was to have this conversation. But yeah, those notifications, and our multitasking is exactly where we're debilitating ourselves.
Pete Turner 19:50
The book is just full of thoughts. And and, and you call them hacks on how to how to get better at these things, you know, talking in terms of doing like a short run of production on a given task, like, right now, we're going to do this conversation for approximately 30 minutes. And then I'm going to work on publishing one of the two shows I have to publish this morning. And so, so more, a little more task orientation, and then also accept that, as you build up the capacity to have to focus again, right, it takes some time, you know, you have this desire this addiction to do other things. I thought that was just eye opening, Brian, because, you know, I have a lot of tasks to manage, right? I have, I have to manage social media, I have to participate, I have to engage news I have, I have this, this social machine that I have to have to deal with. But I also have to do pre production. I mean, heck, you and I think about the amount of time that we spent just trying to get together in this space. You know, that times 400 other episodes, you know, it's a lot of a lot of time spent, that that task switching is really challenging for me as I tried to get through that, because there's things I want to do. They're all things I need to do. But what do I have to do? What must I do, and that's a real problem. And then let me add this in its element. And as well, I have multiple shows to produce, right, I put four to five shows a week out. So if I just lock in and become much more of a grind, as I episode, you know, edit Episode Five for the week, you know, so I've taken on your counsel, I've taken to doing shorter bursts, you know, let's get through 15 minutes of editing, and maybe I'll eke out a couple extra minutes just to, you know, increase the percentage of the show that I've done. But then I get up and I do something totally different. Maybe I'll go do a small tour around the house, maybe I'll just go spend some time paying attention to my girlfriend, you know, whatever it is I try to completely change how I approach my day. How am I doing by doing this? Do you think
Brian Solis 21:48
that's, that's, that's great, because it's an intentional use of your time. It I think one of the one of the stories I just wrote about today was about regret, and how we could have spent our time differently. The the idea about this is that you're mindfully making decisions about what you're going to do. And as you do that, you're training yourself to get better at that one of the techniques that I talked about, in the book early on, was kind of helping helping you get your brain ready to, to, to, to focus to go through some of these deeper exercises to learn how to spend more time on a project to give yourself more to it to, to train yourself to allow your brain to open up for greater creativity, whatever that creativity is. And the Maduro technique was one that worked for me, which is where you you focus for 25 minutes on a single task, and then take a five minute break. And then do it again. Yeah, it's a few minutes. It was it was it was ridiculous. I started the focus on task, I did all the things that I asked you to do. You know, go to the bathroom, get your drink, whatever you need, turn off everything else and, and focus. And within a few minutes I had reached for my phone without a notification. It was just like muscle memory just right, reached for the phone. And that's so what you're doing is exactly right. You're you're literally reprogramming yourself to do these things for this amount of time. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And also, if you were if you wanted to even I did this, if you want it to compare your work to previous work before these exercises, you see a stark difference. Yeah.
Pete Turner 23:38
You also, I usually put the phone in the other room during these times of the day, when I'm just focusing, I still have my laptop, right? Because that's where a lot of my work is. But I'm a toddler. So I'll tab like crazy to get to different tasks. But I try to stay off of the internet. And that's that's really where my work is right now is how do I avoid popping over to Twitter to tweet something, when it's time for me to tweet, there's this great line in your book. I'm not sure if it's Brandon Crawford's or if it's yours. It's distraction is autonomy run amok. I love that. It's just
Unknown Speaker 24:18
that's my quote.
Brian Solis 24:21
But that that is it. If it is my goodness, I'll that would I would, I would be smart. But that is a great is a great quote. And that's the thing, one of the challenges that we're giving this gift of information, we're given this this gift of convenience, we're giving this gift of access. And, you know, again, to no one no one's there to sort of help us learn how to drink from the firehose, I started liking it to, you know, if you were to become a celebrity overnight, you know, most of the time, we're going to make all of the mistakes, our favorite celebrities, you'll make that we we get the chance I said before, right? You look at if you look at publications like TMZ, or people or us, you know, most of the time, they're talking about all of the mistakes celebrities are making in their life. Right? It's it's all look at them. And we take sort of great, great entertainment and being able to point at them. But but we're doing the same exact things. In our own world, we're making those types of mistakes. Because we have, we need more followers, we need more likes, we need that more attention. And we're and we don't see ourselves slipping. And more importantly, we don't see ourselves moving our center of reference. So every every day that we live this life, our center of reference moves along with it, because say, for example, last week, you had 100 followers, and that was good enough, but this week is not yet doing, you're doing more of the things to get that attention to keep that lifestyle, going to feed your body those chemicals, every every single time you do this. So you're moving your center of reference, because now you're starting to do things differently than you would have done otherwise, the week before the you know, the year before. And so data muck part about this is this is where the chaos is in our life, you're making decisions without any real moral foundation. And he values any sense of purpose, any sense of vision or mission or long term, long term focus. That that is that's that's literally dangerous, right? I mean, I can mean the research I did on this was mind blowing right by but I can't tell these personal stories, but I can tell you my personal story, I was making decisions that were literally ruining my family, and my relationship and, and all kinds of all kinds of things that in hindsight, I can't even believe that I was doing. And so I ended up writing this quote, in the story I wrote, yesterday, I received a letter from someone who is a startup founder, who his father was diagnosed with cancer, and passed in 10 weeks, he talked about how he would regularly play golf with his father, he has a son that he keeps putting off time with, get his company going. And he realized what he would have given to play one more round with his father. And he's never going to say that about his son, he's going to make the time for his son. And one of the I asked him if I could share that story. And one of the things that I wrote sort of, at the beginning of of sharing that story was, what's what's important in the moment is quite frequently measured in the moment and not against a greater construct of values, time and purpose. And that's, that's where the amok can get us.
Pete Turner 27:50
You know, you right in here, you say procrastination is subconscious attempt to avoid unpleasant emotions stirred up by the task we're meant to be doing. And that right there a little, you know, just learning how to be resilient, or develop resilience in those kind of things, some of the things we have to do suck, and they cause bad feelings. And, yeah, that's why you procrastinate. But all of this stuff, like building attention, you know, investing in your life, we talked about work life balance, but that's kind of where the conversation stops, you know, like, you went several times about your daughters in the book, and you're tucking them in at night, and spending time, but you have to take care of several things. Yes, your career is, is of course, essential. But you also have to look at your, your significant other, and you have to put time into them, maybe they need something, maybe the two of you just need to do nothing together, just slow down for a moment and have some wine, or, you know, whatever it is read some books together, all of these things are individual efforts that if you don't account for them, you know, you quickly run out of time in the day and you never get to them. So, you know, you know, constantly taxing your brain, not good for your brain are there rest of your body, because, you know, the body is a system. And though it seems like a perpetual motion machine, you know, you are taxing it, you know, like if you attack your liver with a lot of drinking your liver functions at let's say, 80%, will you do that over a timetable of 65 years and all the sudden your body's been poisoned a lot over the you know, all these things, take management, you know, your relationship with your kids, with your peers, with your wife, your happiness, these things all actually require attention. And it just it blows me away, when you think I don't have enough time to manage things, you really often saying, I don't have enough time to manage, you know my life in a very specific way, not in this kind of a raid focus with all the things that invest in your happiness, right. So if you're not investing in your happiness, and you talked about this at one point in the book, and I can't find the page here, but I found that to be really valuable to look at your body, your mind your life, as a system that needs provisioning in a variety of areas.
Brian Solis 30:00
Yeah, it's this is, this is one of the the more interesting challenges I had and still have to be honest,
Pete Turner 30:10
hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions, we create podcasts around here. And if you your brand, or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me, I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan is show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you that's sustainable, that scalable and fun, hit me up at Pete at breakdown show. com Let me help I want to hear about
Unknown Speaker 30:34
challenges I had and still have to be honest. You know, it's like, like the food we eat. The way we exercise our bodies, is essentially the way that we should what was said, say another way, right? If you if you have a car that you love, you know, and you wash it, and you keep it super maintained. And every everything's always clean and meticulous inside and has the best stereo system, you put the best gas and in the best oil in it. You know, the thing that's just mind blowing? Is that we don't do that for ourselves. Yes. That, in fact, there's zero psychological reasons why, you know, sometimes we, we we don't, there's, there's just all kinds of other reasons why why we don't keep up with it or promise that we will get to it. But yet, that's the very thing that defines our core, our health, our wellness, and so Fitness, Food, guilt, Information and Technology. All of these things, how we use them isn't just about balance, it's about wellness, and about being our best selves, right? Our true best selves. The hard thing is that it's it's a discipline, and most of us don't have that discipline. And also, it's about who we surround ourselves with, right? If everybody around us doesn't have that discipline and makes having that discipline difficult, if not impossible, plus, it's not, you're the you're the abnormal one in the group. So we have to kind of first see that what we're doing today, even though it's normal, doesn't mean it's right. And then to I talked about this idea of surrounding ourselves with the board of directors, you know, people who can inspire us to live the way we want to live and, and and be, you know, you don't have to be 100% Health and Wellness all the time. But if you're not able to see that the way that you live, your life isn't the best for you. And the best for those around you. We get lulled into this sense of complacency, where we feel entitled to have this aspirational life or this aspirational attention, this aspirational validation because of the fact that we're just living this way when in fact we're not earning it. And that's that's the that's the that's at the core of a lot of this work is that we feel entitled to the stuff that we're not doing the work for, but we have to do the work and doing the work is what's hard, which is why a lot of us don't maintain health and fitness and and strong diets. In the end, we get out of it, we get out of life we put into it.
Pete Turner 33:19
Yeah, I know, we only got you for a couple more minutes. So let me just say a couple of things. A lot of us are running life at max capacity, you know, between that, let's say 50 to 60 hours a week we give to our job, including commuting there, you know, supporting our kids endeavors, which of course is essential, you know, and and just getting through the day to day things like oh, I have to tighten up that doorknob and all that you really do quickly run out of time, right? Like it can be overwhelming. And you and I both know having a creative endeavor is it's just it's fuel for everything in your life that you do. Pete caught us of co host on the show, one of his best buddies is Dr. Rich doctor whose NGO talks about fitness and says, you need if you do 90 minutes of exercise in a day, everything else you'll do, you'll do at a higher level of efficiency because the this these workouts, so Pete Pete says you have to do 28 hours of working out a month, you know, and so you quickly can just simply run out of time, you have to have seven and a half to eight hours sleep You just have to. So what do we do? Brian? How do we manage all of these things that I just described that I just described? You know, a week that doesn't have enough time in it?
Brian Solis 34:34
Yeah, no, there isn't enough time for everything. And I if you don't, you know, obviously, the prescriptive time to do all of these things is is sort of an ideal state. But even just making any time helps you like Like, for example the Commodores technique, making 25 minute bursts for work. It just, you just get better and better and better. And you and I think what ends up happening over time, why don't think I know what happens over time as you just get better at how you use your time. And remember, when you're distracted or when you're doing all these things, you're reaching for your phone, what might have taken you, let's just say make it up half an hour, do something is not going to take you over an hour, something and so you're literally wasting time. And there's there's a massive cost to that, you know, one is emotional, because you're frustrated that it took you that long to get that done, and you're not happy throughout the entire process. But you have to make the time but to make time you have to go through the work that life scale teaches, which is what, who are you? Who do you want to be? What's your vision for that? What are your values? What's your purpose? What's your path to that you you literally create your life scale journey to get there. And along the way, you're making time for those things, your car, you're building the discipline, you're keeping a schedule, you're writing these things down and the exercise is kind they get you to go through that. But it's not an overnight thing. It's It's It's just something that you continue to do and practice until it's just the new normal.
Pete Turner 36:08
This is Brian Solis, Brian Solis, calm. If you can't find him on his website, you can hit me, I will get you there. He's on Twitter. He's in a lot of places. But let's seriously you guys, this book has helped me quite a bit in managing what I do. And it's one of those things where I, Brian, I keep going back to it because I keep pulling. There's so much insight in it and things where I can tune up how I live scale. So and this is I'm just telling everybody like this is a fantastic book, Brian Solis The book is called Live sail, and it's published by Wiley, our friends over there. And I'm not getting paid to say this because it sounds like I am. But I'm telling you get this book and start reading through it. And you will see, we covered maybe the first 35 pages in this book. That's all we did. And this time, the book is packed with things. So Brian, thank you for coming on. Seriously. Thank you and come back again soon.
Brian Solis 37:00
Thank you. It's been my pleasure. It's always fun to talk to you and thanks. Thanks for reading the book and thanks for sharing the story. Then Yes, please, if you do read the book, reach out to me. You can get the book on Amazon or your neighborhood bookstore.
Pete Turner 37:13
Keep those guys in business and the URL is life scaling.me
