Speaker 1: That good wolf wants to be fed, and I want
Speaker 1: to have a really, really big good wolf by the
Speaker 1: time I'm done on this earth. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. M Thanks for joining us today. Our guest
Speaker 1: on this episode is joel's Aslovsky. Joel is a speaker, author,
Speaker 1: and self proclaimed obsessive spreadsheet creator. With his website value
Speaker 1: of Simple dot com, Joel provides guidance on simplifying and
Speaker 1: organizing life's details while having a blast doing it. Here's
Speaker 1: the interview. Thank you for being with us today, Joel.
Speaker 1: As you know, our podcast is called The One You Feed,
Speaker 1: and it's based on the old parable that goes something
Speaker 1: like this. There's a grandfather who is talking with his
Speaker 1: grandson and he says to him, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always battling each other.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, stands for love and kindness
Speaker 1: and joy. The other is a bad wolf, you know,
Speaker 1: stands for greed and and anger and self paid. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and thanks for a second and says Grandpa,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So our podcast is really about how people feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf in their life. So my first question for
Speaker 1: you would be sort of what comes to mind when
Speaker 1: you when you hear that parable? And and and what
Speaker 1: do you sort of first resonate with. Yeah, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I want to say thanks guys for having
Speaker 1: me on the show. You two are up to some
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff and I appreciate the opportunity to chat.
Speaker 1: As for what comes to mind first when I hear
Speaker 1: that parable, I've had a pretty charmed life. I'm thirty
Speaker 1: four years old and a lot of things have been
Speaker 1: really easy for me. They've been handed to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of guy who used to think that
Speaker 1: I got the third base and I hit a triple,
Speaker 1: But in reality, I was born on third base. So
Speaker 1: when I think about the good Wolf, it's very different
Speaker 1: for me now than it was four years ago before
Speaker 1: I started what I call my personal renaissance. And I
Speaker 1: won't get an to that unless you want to know more.
Speaker 1: But feeding my good wolf now, the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is doing something that's selfless, doing something
Speaker 1: that's beyond me that builds to a community, whether it's
Speaker 1: my local community, whether it's the English speaking community that
Speaker 1: I can reach on the internet personally or through my business. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really about a legacy. And I realized that a
Speaker 1: legacy takes a really long time to build, and so
Speaker 1: that good wolf wants to be fed. And I want
Speaker 1: to have a really, really big good wolf by the
Speaker 1: time I've done on this earth. So it's how can
Speaker 1: I build my legacy? How can I generate value for
Speaker 1: other people. One of the themes that's that's come up
Speaker 1: a couple of times, and I think it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting one is um sort of the concept of selflessness
Speaker 1: versus um selfishness in in selfishness in a sense of um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the people around you may not be thrilled in
Speaker 1: the short term with the time that you needed to
Speaker 1: vote to the things that you think are important. Do
Speaker 1: you run into any of those sort of challenges. I
Speaker 1: don't because one of the reasons, or one of the
Speaker 1: ways in which I add value, I feel is through relationships.
Speaker 1: So I actually block off hours of my week to
Speaker 1: do what I call peer development, and peer development my value,
Speaker 1: my version of a peer is any other human being,
Speaker 1: because I feel like as humans were all equal, regardless
Speaker 1: of how much success you've had in life, whatever that
Speaker 1: looks like, whatever that means, we're all pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: So I actively am seeking always to help other people,
Speaker 1: and if anything, people ask me where do you find
Speaker 1: the time to help me? As opposed to folks coming
Speaker 1: to me saying how come you didn't return my call?
Speaker 1: How come you didn't get back to my email? What's
Speaker 1: the deal? Man, I don't understand why you're being so reserved.
Speaker 1: So that's that's really not a problem for me. Actually
Speaker 1: have the opposite problem, which is I'm too eager to
Speaker 1: put myself out there and help sometimes that it may
Speaker 1: hold me back in terms of being able to spend
Speaker 1: time with family, and I think that was sort of
Speaker 1: the question really more sort of around family. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the musicians we we talked about, he's a musician
Speaker 1: and author, and he was talking about how, um, you know,
Speaker 1: he has to find time to sort of devote to
Speaker 1: his art um. Even though in the short term it
Speaker 1: may not make his wife always happy, it's the best
Speaker 1: long term thing because it it feeds him, it makes
Speaker 1: him happy, makes him a better husband, and that there's
Speaker 1: always sort of a little bit of um challenge there
Speaker 1: in determining the best way to spend his time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel that too. Then, the last nineteen months
Speaker 1: of my life, which is March two thousand twelve, it's
Speaker 1: now October two thirteen as we're talking. I quit my
Speaker 1: back in March two thousand twelve, and I was making
Speaker 1: a cushy six figure income and things were great and
Speaker 1: comfortable and stable, which was one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I decided to move on because I and want that
Speaker 1: stability anymore. I wanted to embrace risk. I wanted to
Speaker 1: feel a level of uncertainty, and what I've been doing
Speaker 1: for the last nineteen months from at least the outside
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's best for my family. I've made
Speaker 1: very very little money, and my wife especially has made
Speaker 1: a major sacrifice for me, and she's cut me a
Speaker 1: ton of slack of these past nineteen months. So I
Speaker 1: know that I can build something big, but it's slow going. Uh.
Speaker 1: And therefore I'm really happy and grateful that I have
Speaker 1: the support from my wife and from my family to
Speaker 1: allow me to do things that are really slow building,
Speaker 1: but hopefully we'll gain momentum. How do you sort of
Speaker 1: feed your good wolf in times like this that that
Speaker 1: our challenging? And I heard when you know, describing on
Speaker 1: one of your recent podcasts, how things are you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things that you had hoped would be
Speaker 1: happening by now in your business are not happening. How
Speaker 1: do you keep yourself? How do you keep your head up?
Speaker 1: How do you keep you know, sort of on the
Speaker 1: positive side of that? And how my which does doubt
Speaker 1: plague you as you as you make this transition. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of doubts, but I also have a
Speaker 1: lot of confidence, perhaps too much confidence, because I'm not
Speaker 1: quick enough to adjust course. At least that's the way
Speaker 1: that I felt, but it's it's pretty easy for me
Speaker 1: to keep my head up because one I'm an optimist
Speaker 1: and two I have rituals throughout the day, gratitude rituals. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the first bite of food that I eat
Speaker 1: through every meal, I close my eyes and I think
Speaker 1: about what I'm grateful for. Or when Melinda, my wife,
Speaker 1: and I at dinner, we will verbally express gratitude as
Speaker 1: we take our first bite, and we will tell each
Speaker 1: other what we're thankful for. It could be, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that to be slept through the night the
Speaker 1: previous evening. It could be the wonderful gift that our
Speaker 1: family provided to us. It could just be something as
Speaker 1: the small gesture that we gave each other. So I
Speaker 1: feel if you and incorporate rituals, habitualize certain small things
Speaker 1: throughout the course of your day, it's really easy to
Speaker 1: keep your head up and to keep positive and to
Speaker 1: continue to experience contentment and see the abundance that's in
Speaker 1: front of you, even when you're feeling like what you're
Speaker 1: doing is not enough. Having those little habits throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the day help keep me centered. One of
Speaker 1: the things I've noticed in looking at some of your
Speaker 1: you're writing in different things is is you seem to
Speaker 1: be a very organized person um so, and that's interesting
Speaker 1: the way you talk about ritual um and organization as
Speaker 1: a way that sort of keeps you, keeps you going,
Speaker 1: and keeps you strong. Can you elaborate a little bit
Speaker 1: more on how organization is important to you and the
Speaker 1: ways you do some of that that that you think
Speaker 1: relate to kind of what we're talking about. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: there's so many different facets of organization. There's your physical environment,
Speaker 1: which I don't have to try too hard because I'm
Speaker 1: a minimalist me. I don't need a lot to be happy,
Speaker 1: and in reality, the more that I have around me,
Speaker 1: the more uncomfortable I feel. So I like to keep
Speaker 1: my physical environment pretty spartan. And unless you have the
Speaker 1: easier it is to organize. So the physical challenges, a
Speaker 1: lot of people talk about decluttering. I don't ever declutter.
Speaker 1: I don't need to de clutter, and that that kind
Speaker 1: of makes me happy. The bigger challenge from an organizational
Speaker 1: perspective is in my brain. Because I have a leaky brain.
Speaker 1: I have a really, really bad memory, and I've had
Speaker 1: to set up systems for remembering wins the last time
Speaker 1: I contacted somebody. Other folks will know, Oh it's it's
Speaker 1: been thirty one days since I last contacted my best friend. Well,
Speaker 1: I can have months go by without realizing that I
Speaker 1: haven't talked to my best friend. So I set up
Speaker 1: reminders in Google Calendar, or I'll set up certain categories
Speaker 1: of people within my contacts, saying that these are the
Speaker 1: triple A people that I need to make sure that
Speaker 1: I reach out to once a month. These are the
Speaker 1: folks who want to reach out to every few month.
Speaker 1: So I have all of these systems that kind of
Speaker 1: build on each other that keep me organized, so that
Speaker 1: I've basically outsourced the memory portion of my brain to
Speaker 1: my wife, to spreadsheets, and to various technology things that
Speaker 1: are all sync together. It's kind of a grood little deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I don't think I'm nearly probably at the level
Speaker 1: of of systematizing all that that you have, But I certainly,
Speaker 1: several years ago sort of came to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: my brain was the wrong place to keep anything. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't doesn't work if I go, I gotta get
Speaker 1: it down somewhere. And and I really like that, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a leaky brain idea, And because I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that when I think about
Speaker 1: sort of feeding the good wolf or staying away from
Speaker 1: negativity or being positive, is reminding myself to do that
Speaker 1: and reminding that myself that I have that choice, that
Speaker 1: I can sort of choose how I think. And I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting to put things sort of in your
Speaker 1: way in your case that you're describing that sort of
Speaker 1: keep bringing you back to that, because it is easy
Speaker 1: to just sort of spin off into normal life and
Speaker 1: forget sort of the things that are important or fetus.
Speaker 1: At least that's you know, my experience and a lot
Speaker 1: of people I know. Yeah, it kind of reminds me.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite quotes is one by a guy
Speaker 1: named Henry Adams, and he said, chaos is the law
Speaker 1: of nature. Order was the dream of man. So I
Speaker 1: believe that the default in life is chaos. The default
Speaker 1: in life could be feeding your bad wolf. So we
Speaker 1: need to actively work against ourselves, against our primal nature
Speaker 1: to feed that bad wolf. And I do it with systems,
Speaker 1: I do it with organization, I do it with habits.
Speaker 1: But it's a constant challenge to fight that battle against
Speaker 1: yourself to try to combat what I feel is our
Speaker 1: default mode, which is just chaos and having things go nuts.
Speaker 1: So another I think passion of yours and I think
Speaker 1: you're writing a book on it is around uh curation.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got this kind of nutty concept I call experience curating.
Speaker 1: Where again, the foundation or the origins of it, I
Speaker 1: should say, are my leaky brain. For over thirty years,
Speaker 1: I let it hold me back. It was a source
Speaker 1: of laughter. I joked and poked fund of myself that
Speaker 1: I can never remember someone's name, or I can never
Speaker 1: remember an experience. Who did I go to that restaurant with?
Speaker 1: What did I eat? Was it a good value? What
Speaker 1: neighborhood was it in? What even what city was it in?
Speaker 1: And I got so tired of not remembering my best
Speaker 1: experiences in life that I thought, Okay, how can I
Speaker 1: curate meaning? And there's a if you guys want to
Speaker 1: know more, I there's a six step process I call focus, filter, archive, organized, context, access,
Speaker 1: and share. It's through those six steps. Where As of
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and I basically instituted this
Speaker 1: practice I called put in a spreadsheet if it's important
Speaker 1: to me, if it was a right experience, I put
Speaker 1: it in a spreadsheet that are categorized and organized, and
Speaker 1: it's an archive that I can access wherever there's electricity
Speaker 1: and I have my laptop or smartphone. So the main
Speaker 1: point is, if you're going to spend or more of
Speaker 1: your life putting yourself in position to have wonderful experiences,
Speaker 1: why don't you spend about one percent of the rest
Speaker 1: of your existence consolidating those gains and using them for
Speaker 1: your own benefit or for the benefit of others on
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you care about. For me, I
Speaker 1: love simplicity and organizing and personal finance and curation and
Speaker 1: spreadsheets and nerdy things. Being able to curate my existence
Speaker 1: my best experiences in each of those topics allows me
Speaker 1: to be useful to other people when they need a
Speaker 1: resource related to them. From a curation perspective, what's your
Speaker 1: process of going through what's important to keep in what's not.
Speaker 1: It's really subjective. There's no checklist that says, Okay, if
Speaker 1: this experience just met eight out of these ten things,
Speaker 1: then put it in a spreadsheet. It's mostly a gut
Speaker 1: feeling where there's a recipe that I've wanted to try
Speaker 1: for a while and it was a dud. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: I told you that for the most part, I curate
Speaker 1: my best experiences, but I also curate the ones where
Speaker 1: I have high expectations and they don't meet them because
Speaker 1: I don't want to re attempt to have the same experience,
Speaker 1: which I will do because of my leaky brain. Um.
Speaker 1: So it could be recipes, it could be books, it
Speaker 1: could be movies, it could be conversations with friends. It's
Speaker 1: just this feeling that I have that there's something significant,
Speaker 1: you know, out of the two hours of a conversation,
Speaker 1: Let's say the talk that we're having with you guys,
Speaker 1: you and I will hopefully will say at least a
Speaker 1: couple of cool things that people will think, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I should do something as a result of it.
Speaker 1: So normally what I curate is something that could be
Speaker 1: action oriented, where I can use it to achieve a
Speaker 1: certain outcome later in life, whether that's to become a
Speaker 1: go to resource on a topic that I care about,
Speaker 1: or maybe to help somebody develop a website and have
Speaker 1: a technical resource. It's basically just a gut feeling. Um,
Speaker 1: And I've and I really don't know anyone who does
Speaker 1: curate that has an objective method of identifying that was
Speaker 1: worth filtering, that was worth keeping. I was gonna ask,
Speaker 1: you know, spreadsheets, is is an interesting way to do it,
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about, you know, what do you
Speaker 1: think about other you know, ever note or a variety
Speaker 1: of other other tools like that, or do you feel
Speaker 1: like spreadsheets are the optimal? Well, I won't get into
Speaker 1: spreadsheets salesman mode, which I try to sell everybody on
Speaker 1: the benefits of Microsoft Excel, because it's a little super amazing.
Speaker 1: I perhaps it is from my corporate days. I worked
Speaker 1: in financial services for over a decade and every other
Speaker 1: email that I got had to spreadheet attached to it.
Speaker 1: So it's just been ingrained in me, like this is
Speaker 1: the way that my brain operates. But for most people,
Speaker 1: know Excel spreadsheets is not the way to do it.
Speaker 1: And although it works for me, there's no right way
Speaker 1: to curate. I know a way, and I can help
Speaker 1: people do it in a similar way. But I also
Speaker 1: my goal is to not necessarily tell people I want
Speaker 1: to be prescriptive do this. It's more of here's a
Speaker 1: descriptive method. Take these principles, Take these best practices and
Speaker 1: apply them to your unique situation and your needs, because
Speaker 1: you're not me. I just want you to have the
Speaker 1: benefits that I've experienced with curation. What's the Continuous Creation Challenge?
Speaker 1: The Continuous Creation Challenge, or the c c C as
Speaker 1: I call it, is something that I thought up about
Speaker 1: a year and a half ago. I was planning on
Speaker 1: fasting for seventy two hours, and I know that sounds
Speaker 1: like an incredibly long period of time for people. I'm
Speaker 1: an experimenter. I like to say that I'm the mad
Speaker 1: scientist of my own life, and I have I do
Speaker 1: something called the Paleo diet, which allows me to intermittent fast,
Speaker 1: to go without food for twenty four hours, for example, easily.
Speaker 1: And I thought, what would it be like if I
Speaker 1: fasted for seventy two hours? And then I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I'm not going to consume food for seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: maybe I should just not consume anything and channel all
Speaker 1: of my energy and all my focus into creating. Because
Speaker 1: for that first month and a half after I became
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, all I did was consumed. I consumed videos
Speaker 1: and blog posts and podcasts about how you set up
Speaker 1: your podcast, and and how you do online marketing and
Speaker 1: how you set up WordPress and all these things, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't actually generating any value. I wasn't creating anything.
Speaker 1: So I went on a creation binge with my own
Speaker 1: set of rules that I never thought anyone else would do.
Speaker 1: And for those seventy two hours, I created birthday cards,
Speaker 1: I created blog posts or blog posts, I created a
Speaker 1: whole host of things. And after those seventy two hours
Speaker 1: were over, I thought, Wow, this is I felt wonderful.
Speaker 1: You'd think that I would have been drained without reading
Speaker 1: or listening to music, or eating or watching videos, but
Speaker 1: I felt so energized and wanted other people to experience
Speaker 1: this binge of creation because so much of our existence
Speaker 1: is spent consuming. I feel like everybody has something to
Speaker 1: add to the world. And if you can have a framework,
Speaker 1: if you can have a continuous creation challenge where I
Speaker 1: can give you some guidelines for you to apply to
Speaker 1: your own situation, people can achieve some really cool things
Speaker 1: and realize that they can be their own creative force.
Speaker 1: And that's what I would like people to do, is
Speaker 1: realize that despite the fact that for thirty years I
Speaker 1: didn't think that I was a creative guy. All I
Speaker 1: could do is draw stick figures. I had no way
Speaker 1: to channel my creativity. But once I gave it a shot,
Speaker 1: I realized I had a lot to add. And by
Speaker 1: giving people the opportunity to reduce or eliminate consumption and
Speaker 1: focus on creation, I feel like it's a gift back
Speaker 1: to the good wolf. There is there is something about
Speaker 1: about creating things that is it is really empowering, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of amazed by as I as I've grown older,
Speaker 1: the various ways you can create that it's it's far
Speaker 1: broader than we tend to think of when we think
Speaker 1: of creative work. There are there are so many opportunities
Speaker 1: to be creative, and it's you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it seems like it's a mindset more than an activity.
Speaker 1: It totally is, And at least in America, as we
Speaker 1: go through the public educational system like I did, we're
Speaker 1: trained to not use our creativity as we progress through
Speaker 1: the school system, We're trained to conform, We're trained to
Speaker 1: consume in a certain way. So again, I'm a rather
Speaker 1: unconventional guy if you didn't notice before. But um realizing
Speaker 1: that creative he expresses itself in a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: ways that you might not have thought about before. Is
Speaker 1: a really cool thing. Well, how about you two, I
Speaker 1: mean you probably experienced this. When you're passive, there's a
Speaker 1: greater temptation to feed your bad wolf, at least I
Speaker 1: feel like. But when I'm active, when I'm being intentional
Speaker 1: with what I do, and when I'm being creative normally,
Speaker 1: that's being channeled into my good wolf. Do you guys
Speaker 1: feel the same way? Absolutely? Yeah, there's a there's an
Speaker 1: old there's an old phrase that says, uh, depression hates
Speaker 1: a moving target, and uh, you know, being active is
Speaker 1: is really key. And the thing that I find so
Speaker 1: interesting about all this stuff is one of the principles
Speaker 1: I found is one of momentum. You know that if
Speaker 1: you can just get going with something, it's so much
Speaker 1: easier to keep it going. But boy, once once you're
Speaker 1: at rest, it takes a lot more effort to kind
Speaker 1: of get back into the game with whatever that that
Speaker 1: thing is for you. And so momentum is one of
Speaker 1: those things that I really think a lot about. How
Speaker 1: do you and how do you how can you help
Speaker 1: people get to momentum because then it's it's a lot
Speaker 1: more self sustaining. Yeah, it's a principle of physics. Objects
Speaker 1: at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in
Speaker 1: motion tend to stay in motion. And I want to
Speaker 1: be an object of motion. I want, like you guys,
Speaker 1: to be a catalyst for other people to get in motion.
Speaker 1: Whatever that may look like. Hopefully it's by simplifying their life,
Speaker 1: by removing a lot of the excess physical, emotional, spiritual, mental,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that's holding them back and preventing them
Speaker 1: from leading an intentional life. But as long as you're
Speaker 1: moving forward in a positive direction, I I love seeing
Speaker 1: the way that people are sparks for other folks, and
Speaker 1: I think you guys are too. Like I said, I
Speaker 1: enjoy what you're doing here. Thank you. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: simplicity for a second, because that is sort of the
Speaker 1: title of your your website, and you know, sort of
Speaker 1: seems to be one of the key foundational things. What
Speaker 1: are some of the things that people can simplify in
Speaker 1: their lives. I know everybody is different, but some general
Speaker 1: thoughts on things people can simplify in their lives that
Speaker 1: allow them to do more of the things that feed
Speaker 1: their good wolf. Oh boy, um, You're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: to cut me off at some point in time because
Speaker 1: the things that you can simplify it's it's this huge umbrella,
Speaker 1: and it means different things to different people. But I'll
Speaker 1: just rattle off some things. Technology. So using the fewest
Speaker 1: number of technology tools possible to achieve an end goal.
Speaker 1: So instead of having a process that involves ten different things,
Speaker 1: each of which are dependent of each other, can you
Speaker 1: do that same process and the same amount of time
Speaker 1: with two tools. I only use Dropbox and spreadsheets to
Speaker 1: curate in my existence. Other people might use an intricate
Speaker 1: lover of digital or series of digital levers and pulleys
Speaker 1: to do the same kind of thing. Um For parents,
Speaker 1: the simplicity in the gifts that you give or that
Speaker 1: you receive, the number of toys that you have your
Speaker 1: children play with, and their expectations that they set in
Speaker 1: terms of how much they need to be happy. Kids
Speaker 1: can be really really happy with a very minimal amount
Speaker 1: of things, and you can exhibit a lot of simplicity there.
Speaker 1: Um decluttering. You know, we've talked about physical decluttering. For
Speaker 1: a lot of people, there's a lot of ways to
Speaker 1: simplify their um emotional attachments, sentimental items. It's a big
Speaker 1: barrier for a lot of folks. They've got boxes in
Speaker 1: their basement that they've moved from house to house or
Speaker 1: apartment department and they can never part with them. Well,
Speaker 1: if you can exhibit some simplicity in your life, you
Speaker 1: can break some of those chains that bind you to
Speaker 1: the things that are holding you back a little bit. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: I could go on, guys. We could talk about healthy
Speaker 1: relationships with money. We could talk about work and entrepreneurship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could just go on and on. But there's a
Speaker 1: it's it's it's huge. There's so many things that you
Speaker 1: can simplify. One of the things I think people fall
Speaker 1: into a trap with. UM. You know, we've have got
Speaker 1: a you know, particularly uncertain sections of the internet, a
Speaker 1: a culture of productivity, UM, where people spend all their
Speaker 1: time fussing with their tools and their methods. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're clearly very focused on tools and methods. How
Speaker 1: do you how do you know where to draw the
Speaker 1: line on that so that you're not spending all your
Speaker 1: time thinking about being productive but actually being productive. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is a seriously good question, uh, and a big
Speaker 1: question right there, boy. Um, I I have to admit
Speaker 1: I struggle with this, and there are probably people who
Speaker 1: can answer this one a lot better than I can.
Speaker 1: I won't say that I'm constantly seeking the new best tool,
Speaker 1: but there's shiny objects syndrome. The more time you spend
Speaker 1: on the Internet, it's like every single web page you
Speaker 1: go to, oh, squirrel, I need to go in that direction,
Speaker 1: you need to chase that squirrel and go down that
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. I do that a lot, guys, um a
Speaker 1: little more than I'd like to admit. So when it
Speaker 1: comes to drawing boundaries, sometimes I have to realize from
Speaker 1: a productivity perspective whether something is going to give me
Speaker 1: an incremental gain or whether something could be potentially transformational
Speaker 1: and revolutionize a system or a process or some kind
Speaker 1: of outcome that I have. So that's the primary lens
Speaker 1: in which I view the tools and methods that I use.
Speaker 1: Is I try not to chase the things that seem
Speaker 1: like they might be one or two percent better than
Speaker 1: what I'm currently using or what I'm doing. I normally
Speaker 1: try to focus my time on new things or new tools,
Speaker 1: on the things that seem like, wow, that could be huge.
Speaker 1: And here's why. If I can't conceptualize and explain to
Speaker 1: myself why it is that I would benefit from it,
Speaker 1: then I know that that's a bad symbol. And then
Speaker 1: I'm going after the shiny object syndrome, and I should
Speaker 1: probably just cut myself off. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: answers your question, but that's one of the ways that
Speaker 1: I stopped myself from just spending so much time not
Speaker 1: being productive and remembering you should actually be doing something
Speaker 1: and contributing something as opposed to chasing things that don't matter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love your insight on the continuous creation challenge because
Speaker 1: that is the that is so easy to do, spending
Speaker 1: time consuming things that seem to be about what what
Speaker 1: you do. So you talked about starting you know, a podcast,
Speaker 1: and and you know, reading about podcasts and and learning
Speaker 1: and learning about word press, and it's so easy to
Speaker 1: spend so much time doing that stuff and not the
Speaker 1: time on on actually doing How often do you do
Speaker 1: you do the continuous creation challenge? And then how do
Speaker 1: you take that from a principle that you apply for
Speaker 1: seventy two hours and how do you distill that down
Speaker 1: to one that is useful for your kind of day
Speaker 1: to day? Yeah? Well, I have done three full on
Speaker 1: continuous creation challenges. So the first one I did was
Speaker 1: seventy two hours, and then I did and a one
Speaker 1: in September twelve I did. I thought maybe I can
Speaker 1: make it five days. I couldn't. Actually, the first time
Speaker 1: around three days was easy, but the second time around,
Speaker 1: after two days, my stomach and my brain were just
Speaker 1: in full on revolt and they're like, dude, if you
Speaker 1: do not do something for me this second, I'm just
Speaker 1: blowing up the whole plan. So I caved after forty
Speaker 1: eight hours. Um, it's easy to focus on the things
Speaker 1: that seem really hard, like for for some people, they
Speaker 1: can never give up reading, or they can never give
Speaker 1: up music, or they can never give up food, or
Speaker 1: they can never give up whatever it may happen to be,
Speaker 1: whatever things that they love to consume. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I lasted a seventy two hour one back in April
Speaker 1: of this year, and then I realized I was doing
Speaker 1: it in part to prove something to myself and to
Speaker 1: other people. Maybe I was doing it not for the
Speaker 1: maybe for some bad wolf of reasons to impress people, like,
Speaker 1: look at how extreme I can be, Look at this
Speaker 1: challenge that I may aid and how far I can go. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there could have been some some alternate reasons why
Speaker 1: I was doing it as opposed to just the the
Speaker 1: benevolent ones that I thought I was doing. But I created.
Speaker 1: If people want to check it out, they can go
Speaker 1: to value of Simple dot com slash c c C.
Speaker 1: So that stands for Continuous Creation Challenge, and I have
Speaker 1: the origin story. I have other people's experiences with the
Speaker 1: continuation or Continuous Creation Challenge. They can get a couple
Speaker 1: of different things. They can get a checklist if they
Speaker 1: like checklist, or they can get a planning guide on
Speaker 1: how they can do their own. So it's I don't
Speaker 1: like to focus so much on me and what I've
Speaker 1: done with Continuous Creation Challenge. Initially it was just for
Speaker 1: me and it was a personal experience, but but now
Speaker 1: I want other people to experience this. I want to
Speaker 1: have other people be talking about it and not have
Speaker 1: this be about me. This is about other people and
Speaker 1: just simply creating a tool and a resource for other
Speaker 1: folks to do it. So um, I'll with permission, guys,
Speaker 1: I'll stop talking about me, and if you want to
Speaker 1: hear about what other people have done, some cool things
Speaker 1: that they've done with the Continuous Creation Challenge. I love
Speaker 1: to talk about them because it's pretty cool what other
Speaker 1: folks have done and what kind of rules they've applied themselves,
Speaker 1: because it looks totally different for everybody, and that's part
Speaker 1: of the rad part. Let's hear one story about that,
Speaker 1: and then I want to get your thoughts on how
Speaker 1: you apply the principles of the Continuous Creation Challenge, how
Speaker 1: you apply that principle of it's important to be creating
Speaker 1: and not always consuming, and how do I do that?
Speaker 1: Besides for the seventy two hours or whatever it is
Speaker 1: every few months that you do the challenge, Yeah, most
Speaker 1: people start with twelve hours or twenty four hours. That's
Speaker 1: a lot more manageable. Twelve hours is the minimum that
Speaker 1: I recommend because this is intended not to be extreme,
Speaker 1: but it's intended to get you out of your comfort zone.
Speaker 1: It's intended to make you break your routine and to
Speaker 1: re establish some things that you might not have done
Speaker 1: since you were a kid, when all you wanted to
Speaker 1: do is just build sand castles and snow forests and
Speaker 1: and all these kinds of things which we we scoff
Speaker 1: at as adults like, that's not worth our time. Play
Speaker 1: is really important, and play can be a pretty big
Speaker 1: part of a continuous creation challenge. There's one woman, her
Speaker 1: name is Jane Robinson. She's an amazing artist. She's an
Speaker 1: inspiring creator. I've known her for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: And she painted and painted and painted some more. She
Speaker 1: walked her dogs in the countryside, she did yoga and meditation,
Speaker 1: like this is what creation challenge looked like. And it
Speaker 1: was only for twenty four hours. Um, you know, I've
Speaker 1: had people who you've got the artist. And then there's
Speaker 1: another guy, a friend of mine named a Meat. He's
Speaker 1: a hardcore happiness reach searcher. If it's not empirical, it's
Speaker 1: junk to him. And so he spent a ton of
Speaker 1: time creating comprehensive blog posts on the science of happiness.
Speaker 1: And he did that for two days before he crashed
Speaker 1: and burned. Actually he was trying to go five days
Speaker 1: and then he realized he couldn't do it. So there
Speaker 1: are some people who, at least their first time around,
Speaker 1: they attempt it and then they realize, I can't do this.
Speaker 1: And that's cool because people should be testing their boundaries
Speaker 1: and their limitations. But when they hit them, they should
Speaker 1: stop and they should pull back and not try to
Speaker 1: complete something just because they originally set out to do it. UM.
Speaker 1: So those are a couple of examples of other people
Speaker 1: in terms of what they've done, how long they've gone,
Speaker 1: and in terms of what people have abstained from. UM.
Speaker 1: Some people will abstain from the various categories that I
Speaker 1: was talking about. UM, nobody except for me, is crazy
Speaker 1: enough to try to do it without food. Though, I'll
Speaker 1: say that, how do you keep yourself in creation mode
Speaker 1: between challenges? It's it's difficult. UM. I tend to do
Speaker 1: what my calendar tells me to do, so of course
Speaker 1: I'll shift things around if something comes up, if if
Speaker 1: one of my sons is sick and I need to
Speaker 1: take care of him, or a friend is in town.
Speaker 1: Then they stopped by and they're like, hey, I'm in
Speaker 1: the Twin Cities. You want to go to lunch? Well,
Speaker 1: of course I want to go to lunch with one
Speaker 1: of my good friends is in town. But whatever my
Speaker 1: Google calendar says I do is every Sunday night. I
Speaker 1: will schedule my week of activities and sometimes they'll even
Speaker 1: go out and I will I will schedule a lot
Speaker 1: of creation time, whether that's blog posts, whether that's new
Speaker 1: products and services, whether that's some kind of simplicity event
Speaker 1: that I'm planning. By the way, that was a not
Speaker 1: so subtle hint that there's a simplicity event that I'm planning.
Speaker 1: Guys pretty excited about that. Um. But I block off
Speaker 1: at least twelve to fifteen hours in the traditional business
Speaker 1: hours and Monday through Friday from nine am to five
Speaker 1: pm to just create. And I don't have an internet
Speaker 1: browser open at that time. I just have a single
Speaker 1: window on my laptop because pretty much everything that I
Speaker 1: create as digital since I have an online business. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I just I just get to it because my
Speaker 1: calendar told me I should. And I'm not gonna argue
Speaker 1: with my calendar. Because old Joel, the one who is
Speaker 1: thinking about his good wolf on Sunday night and what
Speaker 1: it was going to take to feed that good wolf,
Speaker 1: he knew best. And if he said on Tuesday afternoon
Speaker 1: from two to four that I should be creating a
Speaker 1: podcast for next week, That's what I'm gonna do. A
Speaker 1: good strategy to stick to what you've planned, not what
Speaker 1: you feel like. All Jewel knows a lot better than
Speaker 1: current Jewel does, so I tend to trust him a
Speaker 1: little bit more than I trust current Joel. What would
Speaker 1: happen if Google suddenly disintegrated tomorrow? Would you give me?
Speaker 1: Give me some content? X? Guys? Why do you ask
Speaker 1: that question? Because your life is all on the Google calendar? Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like, of course, in a spreadsheet all of
Speaker 1: the various reoccurring business tasks that I do. There's eighty
Speaker 1: eight of them that I do anywhere from daily to annually,
Speaker 1: and I have everything that is in my Google calendar
Speaker 1: in a spreadsheet. So if Google goes poof one day,
Speaker 1: at least I can put it into a different system.
Speaker 1: I have backup or redundancy if you will. I'm not.
Speaker 1: Although I'm a PC guy and I love Google products
Speaker 1: and services, I actually don't like Google Search results. I
Speaker 1: feel like they're commercially driven. They are there's so many
Speaker 1: inherent biases against the little guy and in favor of
Speaker 1: big business and big entities. So I try to stay
Speaker 1: away from Google Search as much as I can. I
Speaker 1: would much rather rely on curators. For example, if there's
Speaker 1: a specific topic or niche in which I want to
Speaker 1: get into, I will look for an expert on that
Speaker 1: outside of Google, whether it's by tapping a friend who
Speaker 1: knows something about it and having them recommend a specific
Speaker 1: website or resource for me. UM. I would be okay
Speaker 1: if Google went poof UH tomorrow, but only in some
Speaker 1: of the things that they do. Hopefully the Google Calendar
Speaker 1: and some of the other cool services will stick around.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you want you feel like we
Speaker 1: should cover in regards to this topic that we haven't
Speaker 1: We haven't touched on. I have trouble feeding my good
Speaker 1: wolf all the time, and there are lots of times
Speaker 1: where my bad wolf wins for a day, for a week,
Speaker 1: maybe even a month. I have a lot of issues
Speaker 1: with sugar. I have a sugar addiction, for example, and
Speaker 1: there have been times where I've binged that doesn't feel
Speaker 1: good physically, it doesn't feel good emotionally. And that's me
Speaker 1: feeding my bad wolf. That's me doing something for the moment,
Speaker 1: for a periodic sensation that I will resent for a
Speaker 1: long time to come. So when it comes to feeding
Speaker 1: your good wolf, I guess it's getting back on track quickly,
Speaker 1: developing some kind of resiliency, whatever that means to you,
Speaker 1: Because we're all going to feed our good wolf. We're
Speaker 1: all going to feed our bad wolf plenty. But when
Speaker 1: you start feeding that bad wolf, you need yourself or
Speaker 1: you need someone else or some kind of system to
Speaker 1: snap you back out of it and to get you
Speaker 1: back on the path to that good wolf. So basically,
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is that's why I feel
Speaker 1: like the habits that I have are so beneficial because
Speaker 1: I can do things that are self destructive or aren't
Speaker 1: in someone else's best interest on any given day or
Speaker 1: at any given moment. But then I have a certain
Speaker 1: system in place to tell me this is what you
Speaker 1: should be doing instead. And like I said, I trust
Speaker 1: my rituals that I've established over the years to guide
Speaker 1: me back towards that good path. Let's wrap up with uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were to give, say you could
Speaker 1: give one piece of insight to one of your boys
Speaker 1: about feeding their good wolf, what would it be? I
Speaker 1: guess it would be spot too much? Yeah, No, I
Speaker 1: like being put on the spot. It would be to
Speaker 1: be curious and to try new things, because so many
Speaker 1: of us just get stuck in the status quo and
Speaker 1: in a rut. And again it's going back to that
Speaker 1: inertia thing, and that momentum is when you experiment, when
Speaker 1: you're curious, when you try new things, you're not nearly
Speaker 1: as frustrated. And if you can go through life having
Speaker 1: to take a really long time before you get frustrated
Speaker 1: with something, then I think you're going to be going
Speaker 1: down the path towards feeding that good wolf. So I
Speaker 1: would tell them to be adventurous, to be curious, and uh,
Speaker 1: to blow stuff up, not literally, of course, but to
Speaker 1: blow up paradigms that I've established for them or that
Speaker 1: they've established for themselves, and just try something completely different
Speaker 1: and see what happens. Great. Well, thank you very much, Joe.
Speaker 1: We've enjoyed the conversation. We will put links to your
Speaker 1: website and all that stuff in the show notes and
Speaker 1: we will talk again with you soon. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the time to be with us this evening. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, this has been a treat. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Joel Saslovski and this podcast at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash Joel