PAT FLYNN: Opting Out of Learning Overload

23:02It's not going to look good, but it's going to be at least there on paper. And two weeks later, I had about 74 pages of notes that were in this essay format that didn't look great, but it was there. And it was much further than I would have gone if I just kind of kept getting overwhelmed with the entire process. And then I said, okay, now I need to take all this information and format it. That was now my next step. And thankfully, there were some resources to do that on YouTube. I just looked up a video and in 10 minutes, I had the exact way that I needed to do this. And by the week end, I was able to have it formatted the way I wanted to.

23:34Amazing, perfect. Okay, now how do I take this and sell it? I don't know, I've never done that before. Oh, just create a PDF file and then put it on a website like eJunkie. I don't know if you remember ejunkie.com from back in the day. But you could upload a digital product and get a button back to put on your website. And that literally took 10 minutes after. And I was so excited to do it because I already had the book available as a PDF. It's like, okay, now I'm driven. Now the momentum is building. The snowball is rolling. Then I needed to know how to write a sales page, which again, I went back to old habits.

24:07How do I become a copywriter? I have to go to copywriting school. I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to do this. if this were easy, what would it look like? And I asked a friend who gave me some incredible advice. He said, Pat, there's a book called Moonlighting on the Internet by Yannick Silver. And it's this like 300 page book with all different kinds of ways to make money online. He's like, you don't even need the book. Just read the appendix in the back because in the appendix, there is a Mad Lib style sales page. Just plug your product in, plug your features and benefits and just use that word for word.

24:40And I was like, really? it could be that easy. He's like, yeah, the framework's already there. So I copied that. And that is still the sales page I use today, 17 years later. That's because that website's still up. I've generated two and a half million dollars from a single ebook. Not by learning everything upfront, but by figuring out what my next step was, and then finding a resource to help me on the next step, and then finding another resource to help me on the next step. And then it happened. And none of it would have if I'd just gotten overwhelmed like we often do. such a great story. It's so relatable because I think, you know, we've all, or at least we wish we would have been in your story instead of the version where we did get stuck trying to figure it all out ahead of time.

25:21So I love that from an inspirational standpoint. Pat, one of the things that you talk about is the idea of optimization and, you know, how that can be such a trap. And I think as people who, you know, in our community for sure, and I think we ourselves, we care about reaching our potential. We're just like natural optimizers, you know, and there is just no bottom to optimization. Like you can literally just go forever. Talk about some of the traps that are a part of that and also how we can break the habit of optimization in a like pathological sense, which is where I think it ends up for a lot of us.

26:01Yeah. This is really hard for us overachievers because A, we feel like we can do it all and B, in general, in many times we can. But should we is the big question. And again, it's a matter of where do you believe your time is best well spent? I learned this from our mutual friend, Chris Ducker. He said, do what you do best, delegate the rest. And that has been so life-changing. Even though I could do those things myself, by having other people do them, I'm able to then get time back because something that I think, and Mike, when we were in Nashville recently with Donald Miller at our author's retreat, a theme across most of the people there were not optimizing for revenue, not optimizing for scale.

26:42It was optimizing for peace. And that was huge to think about. It's so different than how it used to be. We used to all talk about scale, money, driving sales, et cetera. And now it's like, kind of want to move to a farm. You know, and all these other things. There's like, what would make life peaceful again? And in many ways, it is not. optimizing everything there is about your business. It is being okay with the fact that maybe you are leaving sales on the table, but in exchange for leaving sales on the table, you are more at peace. I think that's valuable and that is worth it. Actually, that mastermind, I think I was the first one to introduce it in the very introductory thing where we went around and told, gave our names, but to give credit where credit's due, it was Megan's idea.

27:28And I think one of the things we've seen over the last several years is we've been optimizing for scale. You know, how can we build it big and how can we build it fast? And we literally, Megan, you can speak for yourself, I don't even care about that anymore. You know, my company is as big as I want it. I'd like to be a little more profitable, but it's as big as I want it. There's no value in making it any bigger. And particularly my age, you know, I want to optimize for peace and for joy. You know, to be able to have more time with my family and my grandkids and all the rest. Which has a trickle-down effect to also your health.

28:06Yes. Right? How many of us know people who are so burned out because they're over-optimizers, because they're going too big too fast? Yeah. As hard and terrible as COVID was, it was such a huge reset for me and my family because I was going too fast. I was saying yes to every speaking opportunity. I was taking every opportunity for every partnership and saying yes to everything. And not only was I burning out, my audience was burning out and my team. So I feel like, again, this sort of slowing down and stepping out of the moment to ask yourself, what is really important here? Where should I be spending my time?

28:47What is working and what is not? And is it okay if it's not? What is actually the thing that matters most? And I feel like, I mean, we hear the time, we hear it all the time, people who are much, much older, who reflect back on their life, and they say, man, I wish I didn't work as hard. I wish I spent more time with my family. I wish I spent more time having fun. And that's something that I'm grateful to have been planted into my brain early on or earlier on in life, because that's what I've been doing now. And it's been great. Even before we hit record, I was talking about my son. He's 16 almost.

29:21And he'll be out of the house soon. And we're trying to enjoy as much time as we can. And yes, I could probably scale the business even bigger. And sacrifice the time with my kids? No way. No way. So I appreciate this conversation. A lot of times, maybe the listeners might need a little kick in the pants every once in a while because it's very easy. I mean, we get so bogged down by hustle culture, comparison culture. You know, we see everybody's highlight reels on Instagram and Facebook. But knowing what you are doing and why you're doing it is going to be absolutely key to everything. And I think that sometimes we optimize for the sake of optimization.

29:59There's just this desire to keep figuring out how to do that thing better. Recently, I've started taking sauna and doing cold plunge, not because that just is the trendy thing to do. I actually sort of roll my eyes at the whole thing, to be honest. um however for my health i have some heart issues and you know because i care about my family and i want to be around a long time and have a big family and all the rest that's something that i've chosen to prioritize and it was funny we have a family text thread and the other day one of my sisters was like hey if you're if you're taking sauna like here's a bunch of stuff that you need to make sure you're doing at the same time and it was like take this supplement make sure you do this before that it was like 20 things and i was like at the point when i have to do those 20 things on top of already finding time to do this thing, which I do feel like is a good trade-off given my risk factors, like I'm just out, you know, like, like that becomes, it takes on a life of its own.

30:56And I'm sure there's scientific validity to some of those recommendations, but I just thought, man, this can become a part-time job. And the point is not to fill my life with sauna and cold plunge and red light and whatever else. The point is I want to be healthy enough to spend time with the people I love. That's what matters to me. That's what I'm actually optimizing for. And this is totally a means to an end. And it's not my hobby. It's not where I get my joy or my peace from. That's from the rest of my life and especially the people that I love the most. And so I think part of what I'm trying to ask myself in this stage, in the season of life is, what is the point of the optimization?

31:39Is it just because you know that 10 % more is possible? And what will that actually get you compared with what you'll have to pay literally or figuratively to get it? Because usually there is a trade-off there that is kind of invisible. We don't really realize till we find ourselves overwhelmed later on. It reminds me of the, um, the fable or some, it's a fishing story of the busy person who takes a break and goes on vacation, goes fishing and finds that this fleet of boats, it's like two boats big, has an opportunity to grow into a fleet of a hundred. And they take this idea of the, of building a business around it.

32:15They moved to Mexico and do this whole thing so that one day he could have a vacation and go fishing. You know, that kind of story. So it's like, you know, you might already have the things you need. And so why do you need more? I think also for me, a part of the drive initially in my early days as an entrepreneur was always feeling like the things that I created were going to eventually die or fail. It was like, I need more just in case, like things go under. And that was my excuse. And maybe there was some validity to that. But I also know I sacrificed a lot to stay afloat, if you want to call it that.

32:52But now I'm at this point where like, if everything goes under for whatever reason, I know I can get back up and get it going again. Like I am that confident and sure of myself now. And it takes time to get there. But I was creating and, you know, doing things for the wrong reasons, you know, more in the sense of fear versus in a sense of confidence. And I think when you create from a place of confidence, more opportunities happen, more opportunities come out. And then it's a matter of, no, I don't need that anymore because I got what I need already. Like how much is enough, right? How much is enough?

33:26What is that number for people? I think a lot of people don't even know what their number is if there is a number for some. Or what does life look like in a perfect world if you could snap your fingers? What if you're there already? And maybe you can put away some things that you've been working on to put more time into what really matters. Kids, family, health, a lot of people sacrifice for health. We know people who have gone and become hospitalized because of how much work they've done. And it's crazy because they've become an entrepreneur to create the life that they want only to get into a point where they're doing the things they don't want to do anymore.

33:57Yeah. You know, I asked one of my private coaching clients the other day, I said, who are you without your business? Because their identity was so wrapped up with their business. and she immediately started crying. She said, I honestly don't know. Wow. And, you know, we've all met people like that. And I've probably been close to that myself. But man, I do not want to be in that situation where my identity is so bound up with my work that I don't have an identity based on anything else. And to me, work is important. There's no question about it, but it's not the only thing. And it's got to, you know, talk about time blocking.

34:38It needs to be constrained because it can definitely take over everything in your life. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. This is like a lighter question. That was very, yeah, we got pretty heavy. That was very deep, people. This is like an inquiring minds want to no question, Pat, which is what do your daily learning consumption habits look like now? Like, do you watch the news? Do you read books? Do you listen to audio books? Like you said, you don't listen when you're in the car, for example. But like, what do those habits look like now? And how does that compare with what they look like before? So my goal is to consume more conversation with my kids than it is to consume from anybody else.

35:22That's what I'm optimizing. Oh, I like that. I don't listen to the news or audiobooks unless, for audiobooks and podcasts, unless, like we talked about earlier, there's something I'm trying to figure out. Like recently, I just launched a merch line for my Pokemon YouTube channel, and I wanted to learn about how to roll that out and what tools to use. Great. I'm going to learn about that. And I give myself a container of time, again, to time blocking. I give myself a container of time to learn about that. And it's almost like once that time is over, once those blocks are done, then I'm going to take action some way, shape, or form.

35:57I've only given myself that much time to learn because Parkinson's law comes into play here. If I give myself five months to learn, I'm going to take five months to learn it. If I give myself five hours to learn, I'm going to take five hours to learn it. So I almost use time as a tool to help me get to the point of action and then understanding sooner. But no, my consumption is from doing. There is so much more value from the act of creating and seeing what happens versus consumption and wondering what happens. And so I try to get to the point of action as soon as I can. So the only times I am consuming anything that is similar to news is in a 30-hour block of time I have every day to just flick through TikTok or X or Instagram or wherever.

36:46And typically, the big news things that need to be seen are going to be seen when I show up there. either that or my wife or somebody will just be like, hey, did you hear about, you know, recently there was a typhoon in the Philippines, which was terrible. And I have family members there. So that, you know, led its way to me. And then we did what we could to support. But no, actively seeking out information that I know is just either going to get in the way and or make me upset. Like, why would I allow that to happen? Versus, like I said, I want to collect conversations. I want to build memories, like a memory bank with the kids.

37:22That's what's important to me right now. I used to be a news junkie, true confession, that I woke up one day and realized it's pretty much the same every day. Yeah. And when you realize they're basically optimizing for eyeballs and clicks, so it all gets sensationalized. But now I've just decided to, I do watch the evening news, but that's it. And once you skip through the commercials, you can actually watch it pretty fast. But that's it. I've got to watch myself too. I mean, there's just so much information that doesn't serve what we're trying to do either emotionally or spiritually or physically or whatever.

38:00I salute you for that.

38:08So you started out as an architect. Yes. Then you founded a company called Smart Passive Income, hugely successful podcast. and you basically taught people how to create passive-ish income, vibrant community and all the rest. And then somehow you stumbled into Pokemon and have built a business around that. So I want to take everything we've said up until this point and how has that informed the building of this new business, which from the outside looking in has been wildly successful, maybe even more successful than anything you've ever done. Where do I start with this? It's an interesting story.

38:46So actually, let me take you back to 2017. So the Pokemon channel started in 2020. But in 2017, I started to get a creative itch. I always have a creative itch. And for a while, it was always kind of haphazard and kind of all over the place. And then I started to implement lean learning principles to just focus on kind of the things that matter. However, we've also always heard this strategy of just focus on one thing at a time, right? Jay Papasan and Gary Keller. One thing, that's their book. Even Alex Hermosi right now is very, very loud about just one thing, do it well, nothing else matters.

39:22Just grind on that one thing and you'll get good at it. I tried that and I didn't like it because I am just too much of a curious and creative person to just stay in one lane. So yeah, many people are that way. And so we're fighting against who we are when we're just focused on one thing. So what do we do? We try everything. And that's not good either because we spread ourselves too thin. So I've developed this rule called the 20 % itch rule. And that is, out of all the things you do, 80 % of your time is dedicated to the things you've already committed to, the responsibilities you have, the things that you've already said yes to.

39:5820 % of time, allocate that for curiosity, for play, for experimentation. And this 80-20 thing is seen in many different places. Google uses this with their employees. 80 % of their time or four days a week are used to do whatever is their job description is. And then 20 % of the time they can create, they can use whatever Google resources they have to create and develop new things. Gmail was one of those things that was created in a 20 % of time kind of thing. I know a good friend of ours, Ramit Sethi, who created an incredible business. He uses Fridays, 20 % of his time, to experiment with new copy and new marketing related things.

40:34Everything else is related to creation, but marketing happens on Friday for him. So for me in 2017, I got an itch. I went to a video conference and I noticed that everybody was using this tool called a Gorillapod to hold out their cameras further from their face. And it was just really odd because that's not what it was meant for. And so my videographer and I said, there must be a better way. And we had a niche to create and invent a new tripod. And this was a tripod that went through a number of iterations and different prototypes. We had never invented a real life physical product before, but we were curious about it.

41:05And I said, you know what? I'm going to do this. That's going to represent the 20 % of my time, my experimentation and play. Everything else, smart passive income and my other work is going to be still done. So even if this were to fail, that's okay. I'll still have the 80 % lifting the load. But imagine what would happen if it did work. Or even if it failed, imagine what I could learn from this and what I can then implement and bring back to the other thing. So 2017 rolls around, we develop some prototypes, we go to different YouTuber events, talk to a lot of people about what this thing should look like and how it should behave in general.

41:36If you imagine a tripod, a handheld tripod, the legs can fold into each other to create a handle and they can fold out to create the tripod. It's called a switch pod. It was really fun. And I learned so much about e-commerce and inventing and patenting and creating molds and manufacturing the whole thing. And it launched in February of 2019 and it generated$418 ,000 in 60 days from a 60 day Kickstarter campaign. And it's still for sale today on Amazon. We've sold over a million dollars worth of product since then. And, you know, speaking of optimizing for life, my partner had twins, I had other things going on.

42:11So we've just automated the business, we chose not to scale it. And it's done very well for us. So we stepped back, we were successful with the launch and said, cool, let's just automate it. And here we go. So that's been running. So now I had time for a new thing. And in 2020, when the pandemic came around, my kids got me into Pokemon. They were collecting these cards, and I started to dive in and anything the kids do, we kind of want to try to do with them. We try to learn the language that they're speaking. And we did this with Fortnite when the kids were playing video games and into Fortnite, I learned Fortnite.

42:41How did I learn? I hired a kid on Fiverr to teach me, 14-year-old kid. And it was awesome. Two 30-minute sessions for$50 each. He probably made out like a bandit, like a 14-year-old kid with a hundred bucks. And I was able to hang with the kids in this virtual world playing Fortnite with them. And it's created so many amazing memories. That's just, again, a quick way to learn things. But anyway, they were into Pokemon, I couldn't hire anybody for Pokemon. So I dove into the world of YouTube to learn about Pokemon and who was there, what parts of this world exist. And I started to really fall in love with the community, became a moderator for certain channels, and just really started to understand what was going on here, started to collect cards myself.

43:18And then in 2021, I decided to create a YouTube channel, taking all the years of YouTube that I know and apply it here, the years of storytelling, the years of titles and thumbnails and all these things. And people seem to really enjoy the kinds of videos we created. In a very lean learning kind of style, we experimented with different kinds of videos until we landed on a couple frameworks that people tend to enjoy, which are the challenge videos that we do. Pokemon comes out with various sets a few times a year, and these sets have a couple hundred cards in them. And so I've created a video series where I try to complete the set in 24 hours or 48 hours or in two hours, whatever the case may be.

43:55and these videos have seen tens of millions of views and just from the ad revenue alone on the long form channel we're seeing anywhere between 80 to a hundred thousand dollars a month in just ad revenue alone from just youtube not to mention the brand sponsorship deals that can happen on there from working with companies like ebay and others to who spend a lot of money on advertising we've built partnerships with them i now have a official partnership with pokemon they know who I am. They've invited me out to Japan to kind of go and participate and do certain things. Now, like celebrities and their families watch the channel.

44:30It's just absolutely wild. And then in 2024, last year, I started a separate channel in the Pokemon space, a Shorts channel. So I was always curious about TikTok and Reels. I was always very adamant about long form only. Long form is the way to build relationships. I had this Deep Pocket Monster channel is the name that it's called in the long form space. It's two million subscribers about. And I wanted to try something in short form though. So I started a channel completely from scratch, did not link to it from anything, did not show my face on it. I open a pack of cards every day. And it's a series called Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed?

45:07Because then in the beginning, I asked that question. At the end, I opened the pack and many times I should probably have kept it sealed because I lost value because there was nothing inside. It's a fun show that is now a worldwide phenomenon. I remember this was one of those experiments, another example of an experiment. I said, you know what, I'm going to try this for 60 days. I'm going to go daily on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. And we're going to see how this goes. This will be a win for me if I just get to day 60. I don't care about the views. As my friend Alex says, count uploads, not likes, because that's what you can control.

45:40You can't always control the views or how people will respond, but you can control hitting record and hitting publish. So here's how this went down. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to record these videos every day. A lot of time, but that's all the time I had. Now, in fact, even just after 30 days, that editing time went from one hour to 12 minutes because I just had repetition. I did it every day. I got to learn the shortcuts. I used the same jingle. I used the same audio files and I used the same font and all this stuff. It's all in a template that I learned how to do only after doing it so often for 30 days.

46:13I also had 30 points of data after 30 days. If you imagine somebody going once a week on something, you only have 52 opportunities to learn in a year. I had 30 opportunities in one month and I started to learn what worked and what didn't. Day 35, one of those daily videos that were averaging about one to 2 ,000 views a day, which wasn't super great, hit 750 ,000 views. It just exploded. And the whole channel grew as a result because I gave it time and because I didn't care about the views. I cared about just showing up every day and learning every day, not by reading about it and eventually not doing anything.

46:51So now this channel, which now has, the separate channel now has 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube, 2 million subscribers on TikTok, 1.3 million Instagram followers, Facebook, across the board. We're seeing 10 million views a day per day across all of those platforms. And in and of itself, the Shorts alone, the Shorts channel, the short form videos are generating anywhere between 15 to 20K per month on just ad revenue alone there with 12 minutes a day. And because I'm batch processing these, it's about an hour per week I'm putting into this. And I'm getting these more brand deals. I got invited by the Detroit Lions to open Pokemon at Ford Field.

47:31Player from the Los Angeles Dodgers who recently won the World Series reached out to me the other day and was like, yo, I love your stuff. I'm a big fan. I'd love to chat more with you. All these crazy things are happening only because I took action. And again, I didn't know anything about Pokemon five years ago. And now we have the number one channel because I just took action. Wow. Such a fun story. How did you keep or how did you exercise constraint in that? Because it would have been really easy to just go all in to the detriment of everything else in your life. What kept you from doing that?

48:02Kept me from going all in on the Pokemon thing. and yeah because i'm sure it would have been based on lean learning based on your commitment to your family and everything it would have been easy to really just get sucked into that opportunity and told yourself the story that like this is a once in a lifetime thing if i just get it to a certain level you know i'll never have to think about income or anything else it'll be great for my family you all the lies that we tell ourselves how did you keep that from happening i just said you know what i just want to keep having fun i'm optimizing for fun everything else is a byproduct of that.

48:36And I feel like with the videos, both on the entrepreneurial channel and on the Pokemon channel, the more fun I have creating these things, the more fun it is for the audience to watch them, which increases the watch time, which gets them excited about being a part of the brand. I now have a live event that goes with this Pokemon brand. We just hosted our fourth event in Seattle last October, and we had 8 ,000 people at this event. That's exactly what I talk about in my book, Superfans, right? Bringing your community together. I'm just doing it in a completely different world now. And all the things still remain true about what it means to build a brand and build community.

49:12As long as I'm doing things and optimizing for funding, the other cool part about this is the family's involved, right? They're in the videos. The kids are actually employees of the company. So they're getting a salary now. I'm taking advantage of that tax opportunity. They're getting to learn how to use money and what it's like to actually run a business because it's not all fun and games all the time. And it's bringing us some bonding time together too. So all these great things are happening as a result of just allowing myself to experiment. But even if the Pokemon thing failed, that was 20 % of my time.

49:42I would have still continued to do it anyway because it was fun. And I still had SPI and the podcast and the newsletter and the systems built there to keep things up and afloat. Love it. Okay. So Pat, we have three questions that we always ask our guests at the end of each episode. The first one is what currently is your biggest obstacle in getting the double win? And the double win means to win at work and succeed at the rest of your life. I'm still battling with how curious I am. I recently got into fishing again. I used to fish a lot when I was a kid. Mike knows this. We've gone on fishing trips together.

50:19And it is so hard for me not to create a YouTube channel about fishing. because I know I could do it. It would be fun. It would work. But I want to protect that part of my life from anything that would feel like I have to do this and I need to kind of get back on that hamster wheel. Fishing to me is the escape from all of that. It's not that I hate all that. I love what I'm doing, but it's important to have breathing space in some recreational format. And that has been life-changing for me. So I have to protect that. And I have my wife and many other people to hold me accountable to protect it because I have brought the camera out on the boat before.

51:01And I say, oh my gosh, this would be such a fun story to tell, but I have to keep that from you. So that's probably the biggest thing that's happening that I have to struggle with is just that urge. And again, I always go back to that. You know, if I were to say yes to this, then what would I be saying no to? And thankfully that keeps me in check. I love that. That'd be a good word for me too. I know I'm getting the double win, but there's room in my life for fishing. Amen. Yes, that's it. Okay. Period. How do you personally know when you've got the double win other than you're out on a boat or standing in a river?

51:33I mean, those are definitely indicators for sure, being on a boat or standing on a river. But I think another indicator is having the opportunity to just be. To just be and smile in the moment, right? It's coming back in from the grocery store and seeing the kids playing video games and knowing that a lot of this was created as a result of the decision to focus on what I decided to focus on. It's the trips that we go on and not having to worry about what next email I need to send or just like scoring myself on how productive I was today, but I just being satisfied. And in fact, it's the gratefulness.

52:11If I can continue practicing gratitude, which is another thing I've learned from you, Mike, is to think about the gratitude. And if you can express gratitude, then there is nothing, even though there might be things that are not going exactly the way you want it to. As long as you consider that there are things that you can be thankful for, then you've done it. And for me, when I can go through a day and just be grateful for just being with people, then I know that I would have experienced the double win for sure. Okay, lastly, what is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do? There's a lot of rituals and routines that I practice.

52:51it's interesting and I you know I remember one time Mike I heard a story about you before you go on a webinar for example you have this trampoline I don't know do you still do the trampoline thing I don't you don't that's okay but I just remember that I was going wow what an amazing way to just get your blood going and to get your body moving before you need to show up and I thought that was really really important so I don't do a trampoline but I do push-ups. And this is a routine whenever, before I go on camera, before I hit record, before I go live, I just try to get 50 push-ups in, not often in a row, maybe two groups of 25 or five groups of 10 sometimes if I'm not feeling good that day or whatever.

53:32And it just gets me going. Just a little movement of the body goes a very, very long way. So that's something you taught me. That's so fun. Yeah. So just some push-ups. I learned it from Tony Robbins and I think he still does it. I wouldn't be surprised. Yes. he goes out there as you know on stage for 12 hours 14 hours at a time and is the energizer bunny amazing yeah well pat thank you so much whenever i'm with you like this or like we were in july at our mastermind i just think man i just wish we had more time together but we'll just keep loving the time we have together and take advantage of it when we do and i hope you get to go fishing with us this year.

54:13I hope so. I hope so. Megan, it was great to finally chat with you for more than just a few moments here. I love the show. Likewise. Thank you so much for the support and the great questions and the fun conversation. And thank you to those of you listening as well.

54:35So Megan, I know you haven't had the opportunity to spend as much time with Pat as I have over the years. But what are your thoughts? Yeah, well, my gosh, he's simultaneously a prolific entrepreneur and creator. And also, I think really doing some hard work around reckoning with limitations and how to think about that in a way that is a counterbalance, as he said, to that kind of insatiable curiosity that he has. I appreciated that, appreciated how he shared that that's still a challenge for him. I think a lot of us can relate you know, to that. And yet the need for not having those things be unbridled because man, if they are, it's a runaway train.

55:15Well, I think my biggest takeaway was I felt like I got permission to not constantly be consuming information because every time I read a book or I watch a YouTube video, there's like 10 to-do items that flow out of that. Yep. And my life is pretty full. And so to think about adding more to that, I think I just need to stay focused and not add more information. You know, and the real challenge is when you network with people and get relationships, people will say to you, oh, you've got to read this book. And I think, wow, that sounds amazing. And there's just not enough time in the day. And I like the just in time learning.

55:59Yeah, that's a neat concept. Where there's a lot of things that I still am trying to learn and trying to get better at. And if I can consume based on that, rather than the other way around, which is basically to consume and then let the task flow from that. No, I'd like the learning to sort of fuel the task, but relevant in that way. And if it's not relevant, don't worry about it. You know, I wrote in a newsletter recently, just this kind of reckoning that we have to have with ultimately our mortality, such a sexy topic. But you know, the reality that we're just not going to accomplish as much in this life as we would like to.

56:40And I think, you know, you and I are coming from a Christian worldview. And from that perspective, like we also get eternity, which is really cool. You know, like it doesn't just end here. And I think that's a great comfort. But I think just realizing like our time is so finite. And for most of us, if not literally all of us, most of that time is spoken for already, you know? And so when we try to do something like read 50 books in a year or 25 books in a year, and we think how great that's going to be, you know, the reality is we don't have any like hope of a chance of implementing that many ideas in our life.

57:14Like there's no way. And if you think back on your life, the information that you have consumed that has really changed your life. You know, you can maybe think of one or two or maybe three books that, for example, if you're thinking about books that have really changed your life. And how much better would it to be to read a couple books a year or even a few books a year and go deep on those and read them slowly and really be with them rather than like, what's the value of volume? Like I don't, there's, there's some kind of like manic scarcity thing that happens where we've just got to get as much as we can.

57:48And I don't think there's actually any value in that. Well, especially when you look at how many new books are written each year. Yeah. You literally can't make a dent. You can't make even a pockmark in the universe if you're trying to consume all the information or even enough of it. You know, I've got an entire library of physical books in the house, most of which I haven't read. I've got Kindle books that I've bought and I haven't read. But at this point in my life, I don't feel a lot of motivation to do that. You know, I do want to read, but I feel more motivation to read fiction. You know, not consuming for information, but just for joy.

58:28I love stories. Yeah. I think it's just a good reminder of what's the point of the activity. Like, why are we doing this thing? And I feel like Pat did a great job of giving permission to kind of roll the train back a little bit and say, wait, why are we doing what we're doing here? Because learning in and of itself is no longer scarce. You know, that that is so abundant. And I loved that point that he made and just how that's changed in my lifetime and your lifetime dramatically. Well, guys, the book is Lean Learning, How to Achieve More by Learning Less. That's such a counterintuitive, countercultural idea, but I love it.

59:08Lean Learning, How to Achieve More by Learning Less. You can buy it wherever better books are sold. And as we part company for this week, we just want to ask you, if you would, to take time to rate this podcast. And if you're so inclined, and you can use AI to do this, just dumping it your best thinking, a couple senses of what you like about the podcast, and let it help you write a review. But that would mean the world to us, because it makes the podcast more visible so that more people can discover it and listen to it. as we're on this quest together in pursuit of human flourishing and the double win.

59:42So until next time, have a great week. Have a great month. We'll see you soon.