Join Dean and Dan as they develop the idea of Who not How, and all the Who-pportunities that presents.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep050
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Mr. Jackson, and so soon since I've been talking to you.
Dean: Oh my goodness. I couldn't wait. I had to be the first one on, but I can tell you this: I'm never gonna run around or desert you.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: That was one little thing that I wanted to check out, whether you were gonna do that or not.
Dean: Right. Oh, boy. You're back in Toronto?
Dan: Yup. Yup. We got back on Friday, and getting ready for my biggest ever 10 Times Surge tomorrow morning.
Dean: Very nice.
Dan: We have 70 coming in from around five different countries to Toronto.
Dean: That's so great.
Dan: We have a party tonight at the Ritz-Carlton, and we will launch them in our new program from the standpoint that everything starts with who, not how.
Dean: Oh, nice.
Dan: And every concept that they get will be explained in terms of who, and not how. I think that's a pretty cool thing to be doing in my 45th year of coaching.
Dean: I think that's pretty amazing, and I think that just that foundation, that everything else builds on that. That's pretty cool.
Dan: It's very entrepreneurial. I did a Zoom call interview with Chip Mock, who gave the excellent presentation at the Game Changer, and I had a whole half hour with him, and I took him through step by step how he did what he did, and it's really great to see how his imagination just keeps finding new people to cooperate with and to collaborate with, where other people are doing a "how," and he's lining it up for them.
Dean: That's so great. This concept that we explored this week in the workshops, I'm really enjoying coming and actually doing the back-to-back workshops, doing my 10 Times workshop the day before Game Changer. It's really a nice, full immersion couple of days. This one was particularly eventful for me. This was really a couple of breakthrough concepts there. Because it was very interesting that we introduced this concept of "whoed up hours," which was something great that you presented, in that idea of now getting towards making that sort of a focus, of finding the right who to replace you in the day-to-day operations of your business, to the point that you free up 1,000 hours. You've got 1,000 whoed up hours. I like that vocabulary of this.
In doing it, what I realized is because it's been such a focus of mine over the last several years, that I was already at a situation where I've whoed up all the whoable things out of my base business, as you call it, and I like that term, too. That's an interesting way to think about it. My base business, that drives the revenue, is self-managing and requires of me 417 hours, is what it comes down to, that is required by me where I'm the how. I'm the who in this, and can only be the who in the current model.
Dan: That's 417 per year, right?
Dean: 417 hours a year is what it takes. That's what drives all of that, is my doing the podcast, doing my Breakthrough Blueprint event, doing the member calls for my Email Mastery program and my GoGoAgent program, all of those things for the base business run into 417 hours. I already have the 1,000 available hours, but the idea, I hadn't thought about it to that depth, of thinking about it as currency in a way, right? Like units that are investible, and thinking about them in that way, that my role now is to ... I've been thinking and framing my thinking around looking at, as a venture capitalist, in a way, but as a venture collaborist, is the term I came up with.
Dan: Yeah. I think that's a really good distinction that you're making there, because what I see that we're exploring, and we're not far down the road on this yet, so I can't make any definitive statements about it yet, but I think we're departing from the model that I've always heard, and I've been in the entrepreneurial world for pushing 50 years now, and the moment someone gets a new idea, they immediately say, "Well, I'm gonna now go and find investors who will invest capital in my venture." What we're doing in the Game Changer, and what you're talking about here, we're going and looking at people with unique capabilities that are going to actually invest collaboration in the venture. Capital will be created out of that, but no upfront capital besides maybe things that we would do, to have to travel, or phone calls, or anything that's really, really required, because what you're doing in the marketplace is you're putting together two distinctly unique capabilities to produce something much bigger, and that actually doesn't require capital to grow it, because both companies are already providing the capital from their sides to provide the unique capability on each side.
You can do it with a handshake, and that's sort of one of my informal requirements, and what I mean is that you can put together an entrepreneurial venture, and you can even do it with a corporation, as Chip Mock on his great presentation did. There was no money that exchanged hands between Chip's company and the large technological corporation, and yet within about two years, they all have transformed about 150 medical practices across the United States, and each of them only has to provide what they're already providing.
Dean: That's exactly right. Sometimes that's just what ... The asset is already created in terms of distribution for something. They have relationships, or have connections, or whatever it is for a company. They've got that as an asset that they've already built, that doesn't require going out and building the thing. You're just joining up the IP or the unique ability, the capability that you have. It's such an amazing... I think this is gonna be a game changer.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It does change the game fundamentally. It's not about-
Dan: Well, I think it's, capital is a game changer, you know?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I've always found something that I didn't like about the traditional investment model, where you got an idea, and then you try to attract a great deal of investment, and people are investing in something way before there's any capability there to actually prove that it could actually work out.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I've always found that very weird, you know? I don't know why, but it seems to introduce all sorts of highly stressful, highly ... I want to talk about stressful in about 10 different ways here, but there's a stress, stress model, where you haven't even created the reality of what's being invested in yet, and it just seems rather strange.
Dean: Mm-hmm. I get it. Yeah, because then there's that pressure, then, that you're spending money rather than making money initially, and you don't know. I look at it, particularly with my unique skillset and my unique sort of organizational capabilities, that's a term we've been using, that bringing those things to somebody, it's not capital intensive, because I've got a model that I can overlay on an existing business, and create a result with very little capital. Yeah. I'm really, I'm super excited about that, and what I realized in the thing was that 1,000 hours is a lot of time, when I look at that.
Dan: Yeah. This is... Yeah.
Dean: That's twice what I'm spending right now in my base business, you know? Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I'm introducing this in the very first workshop tomorrow, so I have 70, just starting with Coach. They've never had any experience with Coach, and we've been sort of loosening them up over the last three months, because I sent one of my quarterly books out every month. No. I'm sorry. Every week, for 13 weeks, we send one of the books out. Tonight, when I get to the party, what you'll discover is, they've all latched on to something that they're fascinated about. One of the books will have provided an idea that they're interested in.
Dean: Yes. Yeah.
Dan: Then they'll get to know each other in the way that alcohol can introduce people to each other.
Dean: That's funny.
Dan: Real multiplier. $1 spent on alcohol always produces 10 times value within about a two-hour period.
Dean: Oh, that's so funny. Then at some point, a diminishing return.
Dan: Yeah. We only scheduled the party for two hours.
Dean: Right. Exactly. Right at the peak. You have peak benefit, and then you tail out. I love it.
Dan: I bring them in 9:00, first thing that goes up on the screen is the walkthrough of the "Who, Not How." Then we have a little card, where we say, "Identify the three best whos you've ever had, and the three worst hows that you ever had." That's an exercise you've done. Then we get them to talk about it, and then the first hour, from previous workshops, I've had the experience of about 10, 15 people coming up to me and say, "Okay, we can go home. We got what we needed to come for."
Dean: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Dan: Then we spend an hour just introducing them to each other, so everybody has to get up and talk about who they are, where they come from, and why they've come to Coach, and what it is that they're trying to change there. Then in the third hour, we do the Lifetime Extender, and I have the new book, My Plan for Living to 156.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I show them, then, how the "Who, Not How" actually makes it possible for them to lead a much longer, certainly longer business life, and then with all the new things that are happening, medical technology and such, possibly setting us up to actually live a much longer personal lifetime.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: That's the morning, and then we come back in early afternoon and I say, "Now, you're gonna have to become far, far more exacting about what it is that you expect of people." We're going to show them the four by four, you know, as a tool that they can use to set up their collaborations, both inside and outside their company. But then I'm going to do what I did to the Game Changers. I have a new 10 Times Ambition four by four, so for everybody in the room, I'm saying, "This is who you have to be when you're in the workshop." I take them through that, and then we're doing 1,000 Whoed Up Hours.
Dean: Yes. I like that. That, to me, that's an interesting thing. I really, when I look back on progress, not perfection, I look at the thing, that's really been the peak. That's been the peak, sort of one of them, accomplishments that I've been able to create over the last five or six years of really thinking this way. My thought was thinking about myself as the cow. Yeah. The base thought of thinking about who, not how. Being able to get to the point where really those, the 417 hours that I've gotten it down to, are truly cow hours, you know? That are doing the milk things that only I can do, and surrounded with everything else.
To have that, because a lot of people, most entrepreneurs, it would take them, that's gotta be some amount of time invested in freeing up that 1,000 hours first, so I feel like that was base camp one, is getting to that, where now I've got it, and I feel like such a sense of abundance, and there's certainly that time wealth to capital that I have to invest. I'm fully funded already in that with an abundance of time, and all the IP and all the knowledge and unique ability and capabilities that I bring to this point, to now not only invest the time, but invest the unique ability and the capabilities into something as a really valuable collaborative partner.
Dan: Yeah. I've got a question for you. Actually, two questions for you.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: First of all, clocking in at 415 hours of actual work in a year barely qualifies you as a legitimate American.
Dean: Right. Right, right.
Dan: I mean, it would probably invite all kind of investigation on part of some regulatory body to see if you're actually a legitimate American. But if we say that, generally speaking, people probably put in about 2,000 hours. Where you're 417, people are putting in 2,000 hours.
Dean: Yes. Right.
Dan: That's about a 1600 hour difference, and do you now look differently at that 1600 hours?
Dean: I do.
Dan: Your big discovery on Tuesday, when we did the workshop, is that you had already done the shifting of time. Now the question is, are there new freedoms too that have appeared in your mind, once you got clear that you've actually done this?
Dean: Yes. Yes. That's the thing. Yeah. I've gotten freedom from-
Dan: That's the second question. That's the second question. One is out of the fact that you've already freed up from, then do you have new freed up to purposes?
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly it. Now I have this mindset of looking at it as 1,000 hours of investible capital, you know, look at that.
Dan: At least collaboration.
Dean: Yes. Exactly.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: That got that time.
Dan: You have the time wealth, so that you can be a collaborationist.
Dean: Yes. Yes. That's exactly right. That then becomes, "What's the most discerning things, or the most exciting, motivating things that I can bring to a collaboration that can create the most value?" That's kind of a really exciting thing, you know? I don't even know yet, because I haven't had the time really to think it all the way through since I got back, you know? Because I literally just got back this week, and I haven't really thought it all the way through, but that is guiding my thinking here, going into 2019 with a thought of carrying with me 1,000 investible hours, and realizing that that 1,000 hours, unlike capital, unlike money, I can't invest it all at once, right? You're metered out. I can only invest it at a rate of, if you want to really go to it, then maybe you can invest eight hours at a time, eight hours a day or something, you know?
Dan: Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is-
Dean: But that would be crazy.
Dan: ... we can talk about this as we go on in the Joy of Procrastination series, but actually to invest eight hours of your time right now is actually a big block of time.
Dean: Absolutely. That's what I mean.
Dan: If you were to investigate something right now, and you were willing to put eight hours into it right now, that would strike me right now as ... It would have to be something that really, really is checking off the boxes in your mind, that this is something that's really worth looking at, because my sense is, where you are right now, it generally wouldn't take you more than an hour of conversation to know whether it was green light or red light.
Dean: Yes. That's right. Yes. That's exactly right.
Dan: I mean, the project would almost be launched at the end of eight hours.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, and the thing is that most of the things, like my capability, my contribution on those things in terms of strategy and knowing what to do, and the context of something, is creating a blueprint ... I mean, it just opens up to so many different ways of thinking about it, because there's so many models at work here that I look at your concept of "make it up, make it real, make it recur," as different skill levels. Where my unique ability is making it up, and then with help, with collaboration, creating something that makes it real, and then somebody else taking it to make it recur.
Dan: Right.
Dean: I look at myself as an architect with doing the conceptual drawings of what something is, but working with a draftsman or an architect who can make working plans that something can be to build that thing. I don't have to make the complete blueprints of something. I just have to be able to draw it, articulate it clearly enough that somebody could make the actual execution plans from our conversations, and I can do that in conversation, and those conversations are multipliers, because in a one-hour conversation, somebody coming behind that as the draftsperson, or as the one who's making that real, would probably be at a 10 to one ratio probably, right? Or more, even, of one hour of conversation with me could lead to 10 hours of fleshing out and making something real, you know?
Dan: Yup. Mm-hmm.
Dean: It's certainly a multiplier, rather than me trying to get to that.
Dan: Yeah. The thing that I find really interesting, because you introduced the concept of "Who, Not How" to me in the summer of not '18, but '17, so it was probably in July or August of 2017 when you told it to me, and then you were at the very first workshop of the quarter in September, and I just had you tell the entire workshop your thinking on, "Who, Not How."
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Meanwhile, I went to the smart board.
Dean: Drew.
Dan: I literally drew the diagram, which has actually worked. I kind of nailed it on the first time. Now we've been talking about it and talking about it, and I've had 5,500 people actually working on it, and looking back over the entire history of the program, I think it's the concept that's taken hold the fastest. I mean, I can't remember another concept that took hold as fast, which kind of tells me that a great number of people were prepared to receive something like this.
Dean: Yeah. We've tapped-
Dan: In other words, it's almost like that they were looking for something, and this just kind of hit the spot, you know? Telling them that the way forward wasn't getting better at the hows that they were doing. As a matter of fact, to stop doing the hows that they're doing, and just get really, really good at identifying whos.
Dean: If you look at that, the reason that it resonates so well is it's really been the result of observation, that I've really observed that in people. That was where the original thought of the self-milking cow, the idea that I see among people, because I would share ideas with people. I'd share, "This is exactly how you do it. Look what I've figured out here." And sharing them the exactly how, but then getting frustrated with their frustration at not actually being able to execute it, right? And I realized in that moment that the thing that frustrates them, all entrepreneurs that reach that frustration level, are that they're trying to be self-milking cows. They're trying to make the milk, come up with the idea, have the what you would call "bigger, better" vision of what they actually want, but then trying to milk themselves, and pasteurize it-
Dan: Pasteurize it. Yeah. Pasteurize the milk.
Dean: ... and process it, and package it, and take it to market, and make the yogurt and the cheese and the derivatives, when all they really want to do is roam the fields and make the milk, and then get milked.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: They want to just be cows. I've been having that concept for probably five years now.
Dan: Yeah. I remember when you introduced it. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. That, every time I say that to people, especially if it's them, they recognize it in themselves, and it's just this crystal clear articulation of where they really are, and so over that, then over that five years, it's been about recognizing that it's the who and not the how. The how is where all the frustration stuff is, and if they just have the right who, that all of that freedom comes from there, you know?
Dan: I have another question for you, because I'm reflecting back on 45 years of coaching experience, so next year I'll be 45 years, it’s the 30th year with the Strategic Coach Workshop, but 45 years of coaching.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: The question I have for you is, what has to be true about a person's mindset? Because first of all, I was guilty in my lifetime of doing massive amounts of how. I can remember whole weekends, working whole weekends, working nights just by myself, completing assignments that were the main assignment that made me the money, okay?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Not working to set other people up to do the work, but actually me actually doing the work.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: What I'm looking for here, because I'm trying to get further and further back in the evolution of ... And my feeling is that there's a mindset difference, that you're either open to this possibility or absolutely not. You would resist it, and you'd say, "No, no. Not going there. You get paid for being really, really great at doing something. Besides, I'm not good with other people anyway, and I don't want to go there." That could be a part of that. Any thoughts on that? Because you can look back and see where you took the fork in the road that's brought you to where you are, which is totally who, not how, but you knew people who were right with you, and they took the other fork in the road.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: They're working really hard, or they're getting tired out from really working hard, and they haven't really grown conceptually. They really haven't grown organizationally.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: They haven't really grown from an innovation standpoint, so can you kind of take yourself back to where you were just before you hit on this?
Dean: Well, I think that part was one of the blessings that I have in all of this is being ADD. I'm viewing that as something that is incapable of, even with the best of intentions, or the desire to do it, being incapable of, "Head down, buckle down, focus and just do."
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That was off the table for me, and that necessity, then, has led to how my life mission was laid out for me in third grade, right? "Dean's able to achieve excellent results with what seems like little effort." Even then, as a workaround, that was the thing. I've always had to get by with being able to do the minimum, because I'm incapable of doing more than the minimum.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Really, embracing that and making that okay, I think I mentioned it's kind of freeing when you get that way, ideas are valuable. Knowing what to do and having the vision and how to lay something out is enough, and that especially in a world where I've said we kind of fetishize execution over ideas, right? We look at that that's the thing that, it's almost like frowned on that somebody is ... That you're just an idea guy, or whatever, you know? As opposed to what we reward, and what we sort of ... Mostly "fetishize" is the right word, right? It's almost this thing is the grind, and the hustle, and the "roll up your shirtsleeves, and get 'er done," you know? That's kind of the society thing that we have coupled with entrepreneurship.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: You bootstrap, and you get down there, and it's hard work, and you grind it out and get it done, but it doesn't have to be that way, you know? When you really give yourself permission, when you give yourself permission, it's okay that other people can do it.
Dan: Right. It seems to me that there's also been a change in the world that the power of ideas has decreased exponentially, during our working lifetime, you know, since [crosstalk 00:34:34].
Dean: Well, our ability to tap into…
Dan: Well, let's say yeah It definitely is.
Dean: Our ability to tap into execution.
Dan: Yeah. The idea that got me launched in 1974, I had the idea, but the idea was severely constrained by who I could tell the idea to, you know?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Now I had enough that I could make a living. Yeah. I mean, I had enough idea power, and the idea worked fast enough that I could get paid for it, but there wasn't a multiplier in it for a long time. I'm just trying to think, what is the growth path for the person who totally chooses to go this road, and then gets better and better and better at it? Because you're fighting some big counterwinds in society that tell you, "Don't go there." I mean, "Don't do this." You know?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: "You're not actually creating anything valuable. People who actually do things create things that are valuable."
Dean: Right.
Dan: But I think the ADD is really, because it would be equally true for me, that that would be true, is that both of us are constitutionally incapable of focusing on anything much beyond the idea stage.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right.
Dan: And we're both incapable, totally incapable of giving anything our maximum effort all the way through to the end.
Dean: Right. That's exactly right. Now, though, the great thing that's come about is that it's never been easier to collaborate or to tap into execution. All the hows, all the hows are available on demand, just in time for just the right amount, right? I mean, you're not having to over-hire, to have that available. You can get just the right amount that you need when you need it, and that, being able to just kind of orchestrate those things, we've got this global orchestra of whos available to us at any time through our app. What's really come down to it, I've mentioned Kylie Jenner building a billion dollar company, but she has seven employees, because they only do the what, the idea. "We want to do lip kits, and these are the colors and the names of the ones we want to do, and this is the packaging ideas around this," but everything else is done by whos. She's not worried about-
Dan: Well, her-
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Her base company has seven individuals.
Dean: Right. Mm-hmm. That's it.
Dan: But her collaboration company has hundreds.
Dean: That's exactly right. Yes.
Dan: ...of people involved. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Because a lot of times, people think… Let's just take somebody, if we break down what Kylie did, comparing it to what a traditional entrepreneur would do, is they've got this idea that they want to do lip kits, but then they would go down to the level of, "Well, how do I make this stuff?" They would look up and find the ingredients, and then they would order from individual suppliers, all the ingredients that go into these lip balms, and then mix them up in the kitchen, and put all the colors together, and then mock up the packaging. They're doing all that how stuff to create it, rather than partnering with, what Kylie does, a company that makes it, and packages it, and distributes it. All she has to do is the what, you know?
Dan: The what and the why.
Dean: Yes. We've all got that available now, you know? Everything that used to be big investments, like where you would have had to buy a big supply of something, or even books. When we look at the first sort of who-ready thing that I created was the 90 Minute Book company to help people write their books, well, in the past, you would have had to, for most people, they have to print up 5,000 copies of a book to get a decent price on printing. Now with CreateSpace you can get them one at a time for $2.20 or whatever it is.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: The barriers to entry are very, very low.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I came across an article. I've been creating this big file of the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence, because first of all, it's gonna be a bigger and bigger discussion point in public as we go forward.
Dean: Did you send me, by the way, Dan, did you send me a book about AI just recently?
Dan: No.
Dean: Okay. I just got home and it arrived in my mailbox.
Dan: Oh, we got one too. We got one too. I don't know who it was, but we couldn't identify who it was.
Dean: Maybe somebody from Game Changer sent it. Okay.
Dan: Okay. Now I'm worried.
Dean: Why?
Dan: Received packages.
Dean: Uh-huh.
Dan: Check to see if there's not something in the cover or something.
Dean: Uh-oh.
Dan: Something that will knock us off really quickly. But I was reading, and I just want you to think about this, is it's impossible for artificial intelligence to match human intelligence, because it's not distractable.
Dean: Right. It's not open to observing-
Dan: Artificial intelligence, people say, "Well, it has this incredible consistency." I says, "Yeah, it's an incredible consistency is what prevents it from matching human intelligence, because we're not-"
Dean: Yeah. What really is lacking is the nuance of things. Right. Mm-hmm.
Dan: Yeah, and I was reading an article. They say that the person who is least distracted, that they would do tests on people, the person who is least distracted, they can go the longest period keeping their mind on a topic where they're not shifting and they do brain sensors so they can tell where the mind shift is at, is about one minute. It's about one minute. The humans can go about one minute.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: You and I are probably somewhere in the neighborhood between six and 10 seconds. Every six or 10 seconds we kind of shift the lens a little bit, or a lot, to look at something. But what they're saying is, probably it's not a human ability to go much more than a minute without shifting channels in your brain, and thinking about this or thinking about that. They were saying that each time you shift, you aren't shifting that to something that already exists. You're shifting to something that you're creating in the act of shifting.
Dean: Wow. I've noticed that.
Dan: People who do really well with that are the ones who think that's a capability, and the people who don't do well with that are the people who think that there's something wrong with them because they're doing that.
Dean: Yeah. That's something. I mean, I've been really becoming aware of my attention, and how our attention wants to be, and is, as a matter of fact. I don't think it wants to be. It is, 100% of the time, engaged in something. We are perpetually and constantly focused on something, and what I've just been observing about myself is how that thing is usually the path of least resistance, is what our attention gets focused on, and patterns, right? But it's constantly looking for something. I had an experiment in my workshops this week. I've been experimenting with going without my oxygen tank, as we've been referring to it, of turning off the phone, and I've just noticed the quality of the attention is much deeper, richer. Yeah. That feels good, you know, to know that that's the thing. Our brains actually think.
I've been doing swap-outs where a lot of times I will, in the car, I'll drive in silence without the radio, without a podcast, without something to engage my attention, and realize just how there's something relaxing about it. It's almost like our brain has a chance to breathe, because the onslaught of things that we have to focus our attention on, especially now, digitally there's constantly a new stream of ... It's just a glance away, on your phone, of new stuff to look at, you know?
Dan: Yeah. I can very definitely see a shift, because I'm an internet spotter, so my involvement with the digital world is a series of websites, such as Google on the Google platform, and I check in with them every day. I'm like a dog on his rounds, you know? I go around and I check my territory. It's usually, I have it on the Apple, on my Mac, I've got what are called "top sites," okay?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Top sites are eight things that can be your screensaver.
Dean: Okay. Yeah.
Dan: I immediately go to my top sites, and there are a series where each of them is updated continually throughout the 24 hours. For example, my big one is called RealClearPolitics, and it's an aggregation of the 50, probably 50 most interesting articles that their editors are nothing but an aggregator platform, but they probably have dozens or hundreds of people who are looking at the New York Times or looking at the Wall Street Journal.
Dean: Right.
Dan: They're saying, "Well, here's three or four from The New York Times. Here's three or four." They probably are searching maybe 100 different sources that have a record of producing really interesting, good articles, and they put them in, and then they have some sort of algorithm that I suspect probably sorts out the top 30, but then they have 10 different subject areas. They have politics, and then they have policy, and they have markets, and science, and technology, and history, and religion. There would be an equal number of articles, so every day there's a couple hundred articles that weren't there yesterday, so I'll go through, and I just see the titles, and then one of them attracts me, and I hit on it, and I look at the headline, I look down and maybe I spend 15 seconds, but maybe it's really good and I spend an hour, and then I can bookmark also. I can bookmark for further reading, or I can bookmark for files.
That's just the background of telling you my main point. I'm seeing incredible numbers of articles within the last year of people just switching off.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Just switching off. Just doing the reverse of that famous story you told about someone in the 90s, early 90s, being alone in an apartment for the weekend in New York, and trying to survive just by using electronics.
Dean: Right. Just slowing down the internet as their only means of communication with the outside world. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: What I'm noticing, it's 25 years later, and now I'm noticing the shift back. It's my feeling that the digital world is driven by Moore's Law, the speed of evolution of computer processing goes up exponentially, but that it's created such a force in the world that now we're getting a counterforce, and that's Newton's third law: For every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. People are just saying, "I've tested this out for ..." In our case, 25 years. Some cases, people, five years or 10 years, and they're saying, "I'm just not getting very much value out of this." You know? "I'm being engaged, but nothing's coming out of the engagement. I get a feeling that the other side is getting more out of me than I'm getting out of the other side."
Dean: That's the truth. That's exactly it. You look at it now, I think we've all reached the point where it's impossible, utterly and completely impossible to keep on top of everything. There's too much. I think that we're all reaching that point where I mentioned, where being in silence is that my brain almost feels like ... I almost feel like my brain relaxing. It's like, "Oh, thank you." That it doesn't have to be listening to this, to watching this, to paying attention to all this stimuli, nonstop, from the morning I wake up. I'm really examining that in my life, of looking at the things, you know?
Dan: Yeah. Yup. Yeah.
Dean: Where are those opportunities?
Dan: We're getting close to our hour here.
Dean: Oh, say it's not true.
Dan: I wanted to ask a question of insights on procrastination, because I'm just totally 100% in the camp now that procrastination is inner wisdom.
Dean: Yes. I would agree with that.
Dan: Telling you not to do how.
Dean: Yes. I agree. We look at it that perspective, it's like, "Yeah. That really is the thing where you're ..." That's well said. I mean, it really is the thing. You know, "No, no, no, no, no. That's not for you. That's not for you." It's like whispering to us those things, right? "No, no, no, no, no. That's not for you. That's not ... You shouldn't. That's not for you."
Dan: Yeah. I'm just finding almost this delight that I discovered this in my 70s.
Dean: I am, too. I mean, I will never forget, Dan, I go right immediately to the Select Bistro. I only wish that I could have been you seeing the look on my face when you were saying that to me, that my true and pure ... How long have you known this? Because I really felt like you had been harboring this secret.
Dan: Holding out. Holding out, yeah.
Dean: Yes. Yes. When you get new information like that, I remember it being so impactful, that that is ... You know?
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It's been amazing how…
Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting thing, because we can talk about it on a future session, but that's a life-changing thought.
Dean: That's it.
Dan: You immediately can use that thought to understand everything backwards, what's happening today, and understand everything that's going forward.
Dean: Yes. Yeah.
Dan: I was thinking about that in relationship to the book that I gave out at the Game Changer, the George Gilder book, Life After Google, and he said, he would say to us, George Gilder, we would tell him the story about this discovery about procrastination in the French bistro, and he said, "Yeah." He said, "What's really interesting, you've just fundamentally changed your life with a thought, but the day you did it, each of you was burning at the max, maybe about 150 watts of energy to make this total change." He said, "That is why humans are top dogs, and will always be top dogs in the thinking world, is that we use so little energy to have thoughts that can fundamentally change the actions of ourselves, actions of teams that we're working with, and that happens in an instance like that, and it takes almost no energy to actually produce that." He said, "You can't do that in the digital world. You can't do that in the artificial intelligence world."
Dean: Right.
Dan: "It requires a whole data center to crunch out that thought."
Dean: Yeah. It certainly has been a life changer for me, just the cavalcade of things.
Dan: Yeah, and here's the thing-
Dean: The cascading thought stream that we've gone down over since then, even just in these conversations.
Dan: Yeah. The interesting thing is, it would have just been a thought that I might have pondered. I'd been at that for about two or three weeks before I mentioned it to you, so that thought was just emerging, but it wouldn't have gone anywhere particular if it hadn't been the two of us talking about it.
Dean: Yeah. That's true. Being in conversation. Yeah.
Dan: Which is another contention. The intelligence is actually in the connecting to brains.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: That's where the real intelligence is. It's not just in one brain. It's in two brains.
Dean: Then you think about the other things that collaboration, that we were able to do. To be able to say. Where else, Dan, could two people with the level of ADD that we have be able to say, "We should do a podcast. What are you doing tomorrow?" And have that now happen without us actually. It's only because of the time that I had put into making the capability called "produce a podcast" in an ADD, or I call it a cow-compliant podcast method, that allows us to just get milked. We come here and we just talk, and that's it. Since day one, since we did it, you and I have never had any other involvement in the execution of this, other than, "What time are we talking?"
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And we talked.
Dan: Yeah. And the interesting thing is that it was the essence of easy the first time we did it, and it's been the essence of easy repeated. You know, repeated over a two-year period.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah. I'm fascinated where all this is going, you know-
Dean: Me too.
Dan: Because on the one hand, you say, "Well, why didn't I know this a long time ago?" And I said, "Because you had to think a lot of other thoughts before you could get to this thought." That's how I tell.
Dean: I think that part of this, we didn't-
Dan: You had to experiment. You had to experiment with a lot of other possibilities before you could get to this possibility.
Dean: To get to the point where we give ourselves permission to have that thought.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. That's, I think, a big thing.
Dan: Mm-hmm.
Dean: Well, Dan, I always enjoy these conversations.
Dan: I love it.
Dean: I can't tell you how they go so fast.
Dan: Yup, and we'll be on a week from now, according to my schedule.
Dean: Perfect. I love it.
Dan: All right.
Dean: I will be here. Thanks, Dan. Have a great week.
Dan: Okay. Bye.
Dean: Bye.