Join Dean and Dan as they talk about procrastination in transition.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep036
Dean: Mr. Sullivan...
Dan: Mr. Jackson, pleasure.
Dean: That's me.
Dan: This was a quick week. This was a quick week.
Dean: It really did feel like that, didn't it?
Dan: Yes.
Dean: Have you been in Toronto all week?
Dan: Maybe it's because it's the high point in my life.
Dean: We get right to it. That's exactly right, from mountain top to mountain top. Have you been ... Not to mountain top, have you been in Toronto all week?
Dan: Yeah. So, for March and April, except for a week in Chicago in each of the months, I'm here until I leave for London in May. So, this is a good stretch for me.
Dean: Nice. I head to Phoenix, this week, for Genius Network and then back here and then to Chicago in ... I'll actually be going to Miami first. We're doing an event with Ari who's speaking at his, Less Doing event, in South Beach and then I will be up in Chicago for Game Changer. I'm very excited about it.
Dan: Yeah. Well, I'm making great progress to know ... Its back stage time, it's working a new Broadway Musical.
Dean: Yes. I can't wait to see the new dance.
Dan: I mean you get more excited but there's equal amount of fear and excitement as you go, which are the proper octane mix for doing new things.
So, yeah, we're six weeks out now. It's coming together really nicely. But I wanted to check up on your emails once a day.
Dean: Let's say I'm noticing that that is a wonderful theory, but I would like to ... That's a wonderful thought that I would like to test. I have not yet done that.
Dan: You know what I found about that, I have lots of tools that I've created in strategic coach, but this, it strikes me as a strategy circle rather than an impact filter exercise in the sense that you do establish some time in the future when you are going to be able to do this.
And I would just put it down as a day in the future where, in fact, you do not check your emails until evening and you set it up so everything is understood by people who are trying to get a hold of you that you are not going to do that, and you put that out there.
It could be a month. It could be whatever time period you want. And then you use the Strategy Circle and you identify five things that are going to be true about that day that are the way you wanted.
And what you're doing is you're recognizing that there's possible obstacle to doing it today, but on a particular day in the future, everything will be cleared up and there'll be of the day as you imagine it could be. Not only technically, but you're actually experiencing the freedom that you're looking for from that.
And then you come back and you identify all the present obstacles that would prevent you from having that day and then you just think through each of them and flip them into some sort of a decision or a communication or action that has to be taken to do it.
And then you literally create that day through taking the obstacles to it and transforming.
Dean: So, that sounds like exactly the right course of action and that fits exactly with my ... I hadn't thought about using the Strategy Circle for these things of ... Because I mentioned that I'm unconsciously taking time to think, what would I like to do tomorrow as part of my today.
And, so I have been doing that, but actually that's a really good insight. That'll be a good strategy to pick the day.
And I literally could while I'm ... Because I may as well since I'm going to be in Phoenix anyway. I'm going to be at Genius Network. So I'm traveling on Tuesday and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so this would actually be a good week to implement that, to do it.
Dan: Well, the big thing here just strikes me is, probably since you got your ... Started using the cell phone or maybe phones, period, in your life, since you've started using phone, you haven't had a day like that accidentally, but you didn't have a day that was intentional.
And I'm just putting that out as a possibility.
Dean: Right, yes, it's true. I think you're right.
Dan: Yeah. So the whole point is the first step in establishing it as a new reality is just have the experience of one day where you're totally conscious of what you're doing and just see what that feels like.
Dean: Yes. I like that Idea of what that looks like. Yeah that's defining what it looks like.
Dan: It's almost like before you begin thinking about being totally committed to another person for their own lifetime, why don't we just concentrate on having a first date?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah, it doesn't even have to be ... It can just be lunch.
Dean: Together for coffee here, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, it could be together for coffee or sitting on the park bench sharing a Popsicle.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Dan: So, my feeling is that people demand ... And this is another, I think, goes into the procrastination mindset, is that they a possibility of a different way of operating, but then they demand in some part of their brain that they do that immediately and then it's 100% that way.
And I say well, there are habits. There are habits that didn't go along with that and there may be practical necessities that the engagement that you have with a whole bunch of people right now where that's not ... First of all just doesn't make sense because there's obligations and there's things that have to be followed through on.
So I think that there is this kind of demand that we make shifts in our brain. This is just us talking to ourselves, it's not anyone else talking to us. It's just we're talking to ourselves and saying, "That's right. This is the way to go. No answering of emails until night time and then I'm going to do that for the rest of my life."
Well, kind of check out, kind of ease into it. First of all, let's just see what one day actually feels like doing that. Yeah, so that's a project and there may be even some obstacles that we have to transform even to have that one day.
Dean: You know, it's interesting that it's not so much about ... It's not that I have so many emails to answer, because I think I send very few emails, now that I really think about it, but I sometimes look at them and then think, "Oh, I should reply to that one" or "I'll reply to that one later."
And what I don't have is a habit of replying to emails at a certain time. So, that's an interesting ... I think exploring it like that, really looking what I'm really trying to accomplish there, because I'm just constantly kind of, I just, throughout the day I get my emails on my phone and stuff, so I'm constantly looking at things.
Like I'll look through ... It's just in the loop, look at Facebook, look at whatever and look at my emails. But not ever with the, that I'm going to reply to them right away.
This is good. It all comes down to this idea of really being clear on my intentions for my time.
Dan: Yeah and I take the whole point is that this isn't, as you're explaining it right now, this actually doesn't have anything to do with your connection to the world, but it has to do-
Dean: No.
Dan: It kind of has to do with your connection with yourself.
Dean: Yeah, so what do you mean by that, that my friend?
Dan: Well, in other words there is almost like two deans here. And I can say the same thing about myself when I want to do this, but I do I really want to it.
It's almost like there's a conversation going on, but they're inside my brain. I think there's just one person there, but it sounds like there are two people there and they're having this discussion.
And "Do I want to do it? Yeah, I really want to do it." "Yeah, but ... " But this doesn't put at risk anything about you to the world. It's just you having probably a clearer and a more peaceful way.
Dean: Oh, yeah, that's true and I've got the whole ... The reality is that 90% or more of all my emails are addressed and answered by my team, if I don't have ... I'm not a cog in any of the systems that are happening. Nothing is-
Dan: Those are serving you.
Dean: Right, exactly. So, the emails that need to get need to get responded to are responded to and the important ones are always out there, but I'm just really becoming conscious of my, I don't know what to call it, margins or whatever the ... We mentioned before the kind of frequency of things.
Back, I remember a time when the frequency was once a day. It was the mail coming and the periodic pager notification of a phone call, but it was the rarity. It wasn't the frequency that every time we're definitely hooked up to the ... Whatever the chemicals are that the dopamine fixes.
Every time you go to Facebook there's new stuff there. Every time you go to your email there's new stuff. And so there's that sort of thing working counter to the real purity of thinking and brainstorming and my power things.
I never have a problem with it when we're in the middle of doing a podcast. That's never a thing because I'm fully engaged, present in that.
Dan: Or when you're in one of your breakthroughs and you're totally engaged in the conversation. It's inside of a structure that you've created for people to really zero in on where their profitability in their company actually is and is there a systematic way of actually setting this up and everything like that.
No, I get that since ... Here's the truth of the matter, this is an observation going back to the very beginning, I would say that the outside perception of you in terms of having your act together is that you're at the level of a Zen Master in most people's perception of you.
Dean: Right. It feels like ... And I would say if you really ... I'm nitpicking now, in a way, like I'm looking at and I'm talking about the internal thing, but on all the things that matter, I really do have the primary things together.
But I look at the ... I'm thinking now about more the quality of the time as I realize, as I see this migration that we're talking about to Cloudlandia, just a society, that we're up in there, majority of the time, that there's definitely a deeper and more powerful gravitational pull to Cloudlandia than to the real world.
I'm not sure whether I sent you that article from the New York Times, "The tyranny of convenience"?
Dan: No, I looked it up immediately after our phone call and I downloaded it.
Dean: Okay, good.
Dan: I went to Cloudlandia and I said, "Hey, there is something up here that I need, please send it down to the analog world, please. I don't want to spend too much time here, so I'm just after one thing."
Dean: Right. That's so great, yeah. But when you look at it that it's really, that's the thing it's becoming, I think the word that they used was, require such a special type of dedication to being anti convenient that it is misinterpreted as eccentricity in a way. That it seems eccentric.
Dan: Yeah, well it's very interesting. Yeah, well, I'll give you a really good example, I want to come back to the fact that we're debating the merits of the analog world versus the digital world and how we put our days together.
What we want to ... I don't think it's nitpicking. I think it's fine tuning.
Dean: Fine tuning is a better word, yes.
Dan: I mean, which would you rather do, nitpick or fine tune?
Dean: No, it's fine tune. You're absolutely right. Yeah, that's fine tune.
Dan: We're totally for a world of fine tuning, so no nitpicking. We're not nitpickers.
But, anyway, I came across a very interesting ... I was just surfing as I do and it was a really interesting thing on why probably self driving cars won't do deliveries. In other words pizza, they used the example of pizza places if they would have this fleet of self driving cars.
And the reason is that the car can bring it to the curb, but it can't bring it to the house.
Dean: Oh, yeah we have to. Nobody is going to walk out to the curb to get it, yeah.
Dan: Yeah. You might do it if you lived in the suburbs like you actually have a house and there is an address and they can pull up right ... And you live in a nice climate weather.
So, you might be inclined for a minute to walk out and get the pizza and bring it back in.
Dean: No way.
Dan: But, here's the thing in the city, it's even more problematic. First of all there's no parking and the other thing is you might be on the 20th floor.
Now, the pizza guys, the guys who actually deliver the pizza, they'll just take their chances with no parking zones and put on their blinkers, and they're just calculating can they get it up and get back down without getting a ticket.
But the human is successful because the human is breaking the rules and no, you can't have a self-driving car that will be legalized that will break parking rules and everything like that, so they're limited.
We break all sorts of rules when we chose to.
Dean: Yeah. As long as you put the hazards on, right? If you put blinkers on.
Dan: Yeah. Human beings, they follow rules and they're lawful until it doesn't suit them.
Dean: Right. And it's value because you can imagine that the parking situation especially, I'm just going to leave it here for a second, but I'm going to put my blinkers on so that people know that I'm just here for a second. That makes it okay.
Dan: Well, there is some sort of higher logic at operation here that not only does the person think that is going to be okay for them to do it, but people walking by say, that must be a delivery.
Dean: Yes, exactly that's right. Yeah, okay, I was going to have to leave a strongly worded letter on their car here, but.
Dan: Yeah. But it just shows the limitations of thinking that the Cloudlandia world is going to occupy every piece of space that there is in human experience.
Anywhere where it's up to an individual, conscious individual, intentional individual that he might do the rules, he might not do the rules, depending on the situation. It's very hard to program a piece of technology to do that.
Dean: Yeah, I get it. The gray. It's hard with the gray areas.
Dan: I was in Italy. I did three hiking tours in Italy. Very enjoyable. And in one case we were driving a bus and this is down on the coast.
So we were driving in a bus and we came to a perpendicular, in other words we came to a cross street where you couldn't pass through, you had to turn. And very clearly the arrow pointed that it was a one way street going to the right and the bus driver turned to the left.
And I was seated almost right across from the driver and I said, "I think it's one way, the other way" and he said, "Merely a suggestion."
Dean: Oh, my goodness. So he knew, because he was only gone a little ways from there.
Dan: Yeah, but you see, he had made a judgment at the corner, whether he could pull it off or not, and therefore the rule saying that he should go the opposite way was to him not a law, it was merely a suggestion.
Dean: That's something.
Dan: Yeah, but that's human nature.
Dean: Yes. And that's what I see, I mean it is human nature, you're absolutely right.
That's what I'm kind of ... I think part of it, what I'm recognizing in myself is that all of the things like the highest value things that we're doing are really main land things distributed to a Cloudlandia world.
None of the value is actually, I don't think, as I'm just talking it out loud now, being created in the cloud itself. It's taking the root things that we're creating in the mainland in real time.
Like these, we're talking right now, I would say, this is a mainland activity having conversations just between you and I, but the fact that it's being recorded we're using a Cloudlandia tool in the conference to be our buffer to it. But now, then it will be released, all the value will be received in Cloudlandia.
So more of these things. That's the thing, it's all of the creation, the thinking. When I look at all the ... When we do our ABC list, all the C activities that we talk about are primarily mainland things.
Dan: Well, you know it's really interesting because the plans were just announced recently here in Toronto that Google has purchased and is developing a 16 acre section of the lake front. So they've been at this for a while to have acquired 16 acres the lake front.
Dean: Where is that? Between you and-
Dan: Well, if you think of where red patch sugar is, right down on the thing and then you go towards the duck lands, it's somewhere in that area. I haven't actually identified exactly on the map where it is, but it's in that Cherry Street area.
It's going to be a total digital city, so every ... It's going to be a smart city. They have this new phrase called the smart city and everybody who is there, whether you're ... And it's going to be condos. It's going to be commercial. It's going to be retail. It's going to be entertainment.
Everyone who is there agrees by contract that if they're there, they're connected to a central Google master computer and they are a part of an experiment to see how people actually live and how people can live better. But this will all be recorded digitally. So, 24/7 your life is digitally observed, digitally monitored and digitally recorded.
They're going to use this as scientific bases for designing other smart cities.
Dean: Wow!
Dan: To me it sounds a bit like the game in Star Trek, where they get you to look into it and then you're part of the mastermind and the only person they can't get is data because data doesn't have a nervous system and he doesn't respond to the game.
But, my feeling is it would be a nice experiment to see how deeply into Cloudlandia people can actually get, yeah and so...
Dean: I was having a conversation with somebody at Starbucks the other day that we, were talking about how 20 years ago, I remember seeing articles like mainstream publications, like magazines. It was riveting journalism to write an article of, I locked myself my New York City apartment to see if I could survive with just a connection to the internet.
My only contact to the outside world was through the internet. It's so funny to think about that now.
Dan: Now some people couldn't survive if they weren't connected to the internet.
Dean: That's what I was just going to say now, but that was a daring thing. Now the daring journalism would be, I completely disconnected from the internet for a week.
Dan: Yeah, or the only person I talked to on my cell phone is Jean Jackson.
Dean: Right, yes, exactly. Oh, man.
Dan: Not by intention, it's just that it just shows up that way.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I didn't have a master plan to have a dedicated cell phone just for you, but the whole point is that I've arranged the rest of my life so that I basically don't have to use it.
Dean: Right.
Dan: The interesting thing ... So here's a question for you, if you're not clear about the distinction you're making between mainland and Cloudlandia, and you're getting tags from both directions without knowing what the tags are and why the tags are coming, in other words there is a pull one way, there is a pull another way. Would that in itself not increase the amount of procrastination that people experience in their life?
Dean: Yes, it would. Absolutely it does. I think that's absolutely it.
Dan: Yeah, I think so too.
Dean: But I think that part of the thing that is required if we look at it that we're starting with this abundance of 100 units as our thing ... And I meant to ask you, by the way, have you been counting your usage of measurement or you found that too onerous?
Dan: No, I haven't been recording it. I found it a bit onerous to keep track about it. I keep track, but I have some other score keeping I do during the day. And this didn't seem to add anything to my score keeping pleasure, so I just didn't go there.
But my consciousness of it, whenever I'm debating whether I'm going to do something or not, comes into my mind and said, "Well, what could I do in 10 minutes?" And then I immediately go to the activity knowing that it's just 10 minutes and I can do it.
For example, I'm putting to bed a new exercise for the first workshop, which is tomorrow morning of the quarter, so the March-April quarter. So, this is around five after 12 and our phone call is at 12:30, so I'm sitting there and I'm saying, "I wonder if I could get that started?" And I said, "Well, all you have to do is do it from 12:10 to 12:20. That gives you lots of time to get yourself ready for the podcast."
And I went in and I completed one whole section of the exercise in some minutes.
Dean: Yeah, I think I like that.
Dan: And so my feeling is that the lesson of the Jacksonian time system has become hardwired. It's actually become ingrained. And the other thing is my estimation of how long things take, has really sharpened.
Dean: Me too. I have that awareness, you're right. I think it becomes a skill, estimation of what you can actually accomplish in a certain amount of time.
That's a big thing and I think that especially to have that awareness of what you can do in 10 minutes. And so, I know that I can really do a great brainstorm in 10 ... 10 minutes is a really nice amount of time to brainstorm.
Dan: And the other, the core area of that, the other side of the argument is it worth 10 minutes of my time to even be thinking about this or even occupying myself.
Dean: When you're clear, that's the other thing that you can often do is you can write a very clear concise email to send somebody a directive or to send something to a who.
Dan: Yeah. So, it's had a huge impact on me because I would say since you introduced that thought into our podcast, I have been remarkably more relaxed about time.
Dean: Well, I like that. Yeah, me too. I just noticed as things are dialed in, the more ... When I really realize the things that we ... the only things that I can do really keeping with the 405 things that are the real things, thinking and brainstorming and having conversations and ... That's input things, reading and observing things.
Those are all ... I really feel like it's a point where I can be at that highest level, which is just ... It almost seems ... I don't know what the right word is. It almost seems like too easy in a way to think that you could ... That this is really all I have to do.
And that's been a thought for me for quite some time, once I got into that idea of stopping from being the self-milking cow and really focusing on just doing the things that only the cow can do.
When I realized that we have so much access right now to ... I have a designer friend who was talking about the way that I was using one of my designers. Glen was like a superpower, like a super pack that I have.
It's like me and then I've got these super packs of capabilities that I can tap into that I just I say what I want and it can come out. And I'm seeing that now with the writers and with designers and web, all my cavalcade of who's who that are supporting me into staying in the zone.
Dan: Yeah, I've been thinking about that from another angle, which you just spread up and that is there is a dynamic relationship between capability and ambition.
Dean: Tell me.
Dan: And what I mean by that is that one of them is what you can do, and the other one is why you're doing it.
So, the ambition part of it is why you're doing something, and it relates to some better and probably bigger result in the future that you are adding a capability here for as future reason.
I don't think we add capabilities just to add capabilities. I think we add capabilities for some sort of message that we've set up from a destination in the future that's talking backwards to us and said, "Look, if you want to get to here, you've got to increase this capability and this capability."
Now, my feeling is that if the relationship, the dynamic relationship between growing your capabilities and having a reason for bigger capabilities in the future, it's up to us, in other words that your capabilities are bigger than yours.
My feeling is you will procrastinate as a result of that because you can't see the reason why you should be using the capabilities because you don't have the reason in the future.
That you'll procrastinate there ... Conversely, that if your ambition is way too big for your capabilities, you will also procrastinate there because you say, "Well, what's the use? I don't have the capability to pull that off."
Dean: Yes. I think we've never been in a better time to have access to capabilities on demand in a niche format, I mean literally on demand as you, like Celine would say like a scalable workforce. We can literally tap into whatever capability we need on demand upscale.
And it's really almost like ... I think when people figure this out it's really the way of the future. There isn't going to be one of the people who are one of the suppliers of a capability in an on demand kind of gig society, or an organizer of those capabilities for a bigger purpose, which is a multiplier.
Dan: Yeah, I think that there's ... Humans are really clever. I've looked at the alternatives to humanity and I don't see the cleverness, you know chimps, you know there is a lot of that.
Dean: As Louis C.K. used to say, we escaped the food chain. We're out of the food chain.
Dan: Okay, so I'll go to the other side and the early Cloudlandia creatures like the Alexa and Siri.
Dean: Oh, yeah, okay.
Dan: And so I experimented with Alexa for about a half hour one day and I said, well, smarter than a chimp in some ways, but not as entertaining.
Dean: Right, yeah.
Dan: I said, if you think this is a profound experience, if you're a human being and you think that interacting with Alexa is a profound transformative experience, the problems of your life don't lie on the technological side.
Dean: Right. I think you're absolutely right.
Dan: Yeah. It's like a kid with a new toy. Give a kid a box of all sorts of different sizes pieces of wood and everything like that and they'll entertain themselves forever. Give them the most advanced, new rate tool, technological tool and they're pretty well done with it by halfway through Christmas day. And say, "Oh, geez, I kind of got that."
Isn't it interesting that the world's number one toy is the LEGO?
Dean: Yeah, it really is still.
Dan: Yeah, and the reason is because there is no prescribed use for LEGO. It's whatever you want to do with it and the more LEGO pieces that you have the better off it is and everything like that.
But it's all dependent upon the human imagination, it's not dependent on the imagination of the tool maker and everything like that, but it's advertised, "This is going to be so enjoyable if your child has his own Tesla.
Dean: That's funny.
Dan: Because they give them away. Tesla gives these little miniature versions of their little electric cars that kids can ride around.
But it's got a wear out factor really fast.
Dean: Yeah. But I think that that now though, that we've got the ability. I think you're right on that the human capability, human is ... Even like you're saying if you say you take the smartest AI there is still, any your average human is going to be, there's something extra about that, I think being able-
Dan: Well, here's my guess, I think we're enjoying the stimulation of interacting with technology and I think we're getting smarter as a result of it.
There's actually a test that's gone back now to right around 1900, where they do this standard IQ test at 10, I think it's a 10 or 20 year interval. So whatever the IQ test was in 1900 and they had one, they've used it every 20 years and they find that whatever gave you a score of a ... Say you take a person and they got a score of 100 in 1900 and you would a hundred and almost 20 years later, you take and you've got fundamentally about six generations and you test again, the person who got 100 for the test in-
Dean: In 1900, yeah.
Dan: In 1900 would be somewhere around 135 right now. And the test hasn't changed but humans have changed. And a lot of it, the people believe it's the unpredictable demands of the jousting to technology that has forced people to make decisions faster, size up situations faster, make connections faster and I believe that.
I believe that interacting with movies, interacting with radio, interacting with television, computers, the internet and everything else, I think it actually stimulates the brain in certain ways.
Dean: Yeah. When you look at that ... I'm trying to think where the combination is. I feel like we're at this point as we're looking into this migration to Cloudlandia that there is something happening here, that there are going to be people who just want to live and be on the mainland.
The collection of those people, organizing those people into roles as the bigger capability of somebody driving with the ambition ... Ambition is almost another way of saying ideas versus execution in a way, right? I mean capability of an expectation.
Dan: Yeah, well, I think the big thing ... I don't think you can have an achievement in Cloudlandia. I think the only place humans can have achievements is in the mainland.
Dean: Well, yeah, I think you're right.
Dan: I mean, you can have achievements that are capability achievements, but you don't know what they're worth until you bring them back to the mainland. In other words you can digitally improve your connections, but they only have meaning if you're able to affect the change or a better, bigger result on the mainland.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, you're right. That's it. But that's really where the ... that's the fundamental thing. When you talk about the self-driving cars are not doing deliveries because it's less convenient that you'd have to actually walk outside to meet somebody at the curb, that's different than coming to the door, but all of those things are really meeting our mainland needs.
I was thinking about the ghost restaurant ideas of having the nine restaurants operating, only existing in the cloud, but actually the fundamental thing is a mainland service. This kitchen and getting food in your belly is a physical-
Dan: Well, not only that, probably one of the most incredible kitchens that you can imagine.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, you're right, but in an off the main drag sort of world.
Dan: Not in the high rent district. Yeah, and they've got parking all around for the delivery services. So it's probably an industry in there. They probably have the kitchen in an industrial area where the real estate is cheap, with big parking lots. They need a big parking lot.
Dean: Right. I wonder how that's going to affect strategic coach. When you start thinking about the abilities to remain in the cloud kind of thing.
I saw there is a real estate company that has really positioned themselves as a cloud company and they've got some really interesting virtual world where all of their agents can come and with their avatars take a seat in an animated or virtual theater, where you're basically sitting for, they have a training facility and all this stuff that's in the cloud.
So that wherever you are, you can come with your avatar, sit in an auditorium like in an actual seat.
Dan: Can I comment on that?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Okay, so it's the situation that you're talking about, the avatar for Dean Jackson shows up, okay and I'm in a position, the person who is organizing the digital situation and I'm developing judgments about the contributions made by the various avatars that show up, we're connected back to real people in the mainland.
And I'm writing up reports on them and I'm observing the avatar that comes in from Dean Jackson and I say, "Well, Dean seems capable of doing almost anything he sets his mind to, but doesn't seem to really try."
Dean: Right.
Dan: I think you get the same grade card being an avatar in a cloudland situation as you got when you were in first grade.
Dean: Yeah that's right.
Dan: I think the reason is that you'd sum up the value of that experience in maybe a couple of hours.
Dean: Yeah, it's different. It really is, isn't it?
Dan: Well, just think about it. I really love Zoom, because I do a lot of work with Zoom, but I'm very, very ... And it's a big improvement on Skype, huge improvement on Skype. But then we have the Beam and it's a huge improvement on the Beam, but I have to tell you if the person was right across from me in the mainland where I'd probably get more value out of the interaction.
Dean: Yeah, I agree. That's really the thing. I'm so sorry, joy in thinking through all the elements here and seeing what's that balance, being of Cloudlandia, in Cloudlandia, but not of it kind of thing.
Dan: If Cloudlandia continues to be increasingly valuable to us, it's because it's dimensions added to and also growing mainland experience, in other words we're having a ... You and I, to tell the truth, both of us would have to tell the truth that we were kind of made for this age.
In other words, we have really taken maximum advantage both in Cloudlandia or are continually taking greater advantage of Cloudlandia to improve the quality of our mainland experience.
Yeah, and so my feeling is, it's not a replacement, Cloudlandia cannot be a replacement for the mainland experience except in the cases where people, if you graded their mainland experience, it adds up to zero. They're such complete failures in mainland that it's almost like an addiction that they have to go to Cloudlandia because they have no actual experience until they go into that other world.
It's like last week, I recorded my dinner with Cooper and he said, you could tell right off the bat when you got into the entertainment world that a lot of the entertainers were there to escape into their act, because their actual, real lives were so miserable to them that they wanted to be the person that they were on stage.
And he said, "I was tempted, but I never went there."
Dean: Oh, yeah. That's interesting. And I didn't realize that your dinner was at Danny's house who I've met.
Dan: Oh, you know Danny, do you?
Dean: Well, I met Danny at Chef Gordon's house. He was there when I went there.
Dan: Yeah, so it was Danny.
Yeah, so anyways, but it's interesting because I think that the seeing out of this conversation because I want to keep the context of the procrastination that it's this uncertainty and unclarity about where the reality actually is in your life here in 2018 between the mainland, even having those distinctions in your mind, not even having those distinctions and Cloudlandia and not getting caught in between the two worlds.
I think all procrastination comes from being caught between the two worlds and not knowing where the tugs are coming from.
Dean: Yeah, and being crystal clear that all the value creation comes in the mainland. That's really the thing. All the deep thinking, the brainstorming, the talking, the creating stuff, the collaborating it's all happening on the mainland.
Joe and I talked about that. It's interesting that there are not many people that are on the surface very detached from the cloud in a way. Joe and I talked about you and Dan Kennedy, probably the two least Cloudlandia sort of eccentric people, but use it as the ... That it's done on your behalf. You benefit from it, but you're not involved in it.
And there is something about that, I mean.
Dan: Yeah, but I think that approaches are very different. I think that we have very, very different approach, because I'm much more, I think connected in the world than my reports about Dean Kennedy.
I like really mixing with people and coming across people who really have uniqueness so that I can benefit. So I'm always on the lookout for that. It's just that I really have a passion for thinking about my thinking and I don't need Cloudlandia to do that. I can sit in a chair and think about my thinking.
So, that's the mainland experience that goes back 73 years or at least 60, probably 65 years just getting enjoyment and learning out of my own thought processes that doesn't require any digital connection with anything.
Dean: Yeah, and that's great because that's probably, you've had more experience of not. When I started coming, like over the last 30 years of progressively getting more digital as we went.
I really came in at the beginning, sort of the genesis of the digital, if you look at the fax machine and the digital pager and the cellphone and personal computers, all of that stuff that's been progressively getting to that point. But you had a good 10, 12 years even ahead of that without that.
Dan: Yeah, well, I was even before the television. People connected to radio. I grew up really connected to radio. I didn't get television till I was about 10 years old and didn't become terribly hooked on it.
I had shows I liked and made sure that I saw them, but a lot of them were cross over shows that had come from the radio world. They were televised versions of something that had already started on radio.
Yeah, it's fascinating to me about this and it goes in all sorts of directions and it's just an awareness that we're jumping from one world to another in a way that I think is more consequential than previous jumps.
I think the jump from non printing to printing was consequential, but it took more time. Where experiencing about a 50 year period was like a 250 year period back in the jump there. So I think that the ... And the population is much bigger. I mean the population is huge for this one.
And then the very essence of the technology is that people are continually impacting on each other, social media being the prime example of doing that. You would write something and then maybe depending on the distance from the receiver of your written communication there was a time delay.
And if they responded to you, it would be the same time delay back and so there was really a delay in the system. Now there is almost no delay. It's almost instantaneous, yeah.
I just wanted to come across, I've got a great example of the different between Cloudlandia and the mainland and it has to do with bitcoin and money. People are saying, bitcoin is money, but bitcoin isn't money.
And the reason is that money represents the value of something without the something. Bitcoin actually represents the value of nothing without any something.
Dean: Wow! So what do you mean by that?
Dan: Well, first of all if I give you, say I just give you $50 in currency. It could be digital, I could wire you the $50 or I could give you paper currency. Well, that's actually backed up by a reality somewhere else, in this case, The United States Government, the whole course of the ... it could be related to an actual value that has been created through your time or an idea or a report or something, but there is a value somewhere that the money represents.
But bitcoin represents only itself. Not related to any other value. Not related to any value.
Dean: And we're still valuing it in money, which is interesting.
Dan: Yeah, and it's very, very interesting that the underworld, the criminal world went for bitcoin right away, but they're turning off of it because of its extraordinary volatility. Because you can't make a contract beyond 24 hours with it because the value that's agreed on today may have altered itself tomorrow.
Well, it's not good money if it doesn't have a certain kind of ... Think of real estate market in bitcoin, it would be hard to close deals.
Dean: Yeah, exactly. How are you going to have a 30 day closing when you start out at 3,000 and the next thing it's gone to 19,000 and then back to 7,000 in that 30 days?
Dan: Yeah. So the talk about bitcoin being a money or an alternative money it doesn't hold true. It's not based on any kind of outside value creation.
And the other thing is there is no transparency to it because you don't know how things are actually happening.
And the other thing is there is no regulatory body that keeps things within decent standards. So, it's really interesting, but bitcoin is a pure Cloudlandia phenomenon.
Dean: Yes. I think you're absolutely right.
Dan: But the consequences of it really do take place in the real world if you try to translate it into actual money, some actual value then there are huge consequences.
Dean: Amazing.
Dan: I just had a thought there, all the consequences that humans experience happen on the mainland, they don't happen in, definitely happening in Cloudlandia.
Dean: Well, that's the thing. That's when you really realize it. When I think about what has remained constant, I was thinking about a young Dan with no TV listening to the Radio and in all of that transition, the thing that remained constant is our ability to think about our thinking, just self direct our ... You had 100 units then, same way we have 100 units now, but so many of those units are being directed towards Cloudlandia activities.
That what's being squeezed on mainland once you had ... You had more, it seems like the frequency or the bandwidth or whatever the thing that gives you the feeling of time moving quicker, feels like it's moving faster now because the frequencies that we're hooked into are so much more.
Everything is actually speeding up because you think about the time that it takes to even travel or to go distances or your ability to go places-
Dan: Yeah, but I don't have ... The way that I've structured my mainland, I don't have that sense of speeding up only. Only in Cloudlandia. As a matter of fact. Yeah, go ahead.
Dean: I think that's what I'm really trying to come to terms with is this ability to not get distracted on Cloudlandia time and be more present in mainland time.
Dan: There is a funny routine Garrison Keillor does but he's been thrown off national public radio because of the sexual assault thing, but I used to listen to a program on NPR called Prairie Home Companion, which he created.
He had a devastating impersonation that he brought out frequently and George W. Bush, George Bush Junior and he had his voice done and he would give little monologues on George, but he had this one, which I thought was really funny and, "Well, I went to Europe for the first time. I went to France and you know ... Nice people. Nice place and everything, but I don't know how they put up with the time change."
Dean: How they put up with the time change. Oh, my goodness, that is the best.
Dan: But, it's funny for a lot of different reasons, but the whole thing, nobody up until air flight had that problem. You had five weeks on the sea to make the time change and-
Dean: To make the adjustment, yes, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, time change is a product of a speeded up world.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. But in reality the things that those 100 units are the same 100 units.
Dan: Yeah, in France or in Washington, it doesn't make any difference, yeah.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: So, anyway very intriguing. We've covered a lot of ... I think we opened a lot of things further. Thank you.
Dean: I think we did. And I didn't even get to tell you about my experience with my remarkable tablet.
Dan: Oh, yeah.
Dean: We'll save that for next time.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: I'm here to report that it is fantastic. It is remarkable.
Dan: Good, great.
Dean: I think you're going to enjoy it. Okay Dan, I will talk to you next time.
Dan: Yes, okay. Bye.
Dean: Thanks. Bye.