Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep139: Mastering Time and Embracing Happy Accidents
In our latest episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we take a fresh look at time management and productivity through a historical lens. We discuss how the 24-hour time system, born from the need to streamline train schedules, laid the foundation for tracking time today. We also dive into the creation of Greenwich Mean Time and share a fun, serendipitous story about a restaurant meet-up that unexpectedly became a memorable experience.
Shifting gears, we introduce a practical, gamified approach to managing your day. Treating each day as 100 ten-minute units, we explore how careful planning and mindful activity selection can help combat procrastination. We also share tips for overcoming morning routine challenges, making each day more productive with manageable goals. Alongside this, my AI assistant, Charlotte, plays a key role in my approach to transforming daily tasks into creative outputs.
Finally, we touch on the evolution of political messaging and how platforms like Joe Rogan’s podcast are reshaping public discourse. We wrap up by reflecting on the power of individual initiative and how we can all find meaning and growth in the ever-changing landscape of today’s world.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Let's hope so Well, not only that, but it can be recorded over two complete time zone difference.
Dean: Yes, I was wondering if today would cause a kerfuffle. Well, the change.
Dan: Well, arizona doesn't change.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: That's why I thought we might have a kerfuffle.
Dean: That's exactly.
Dan: That's why I thought we might have a Garfuffle which I think kind of tells you that they are planning to be the center of the world.
Dean: Yeah, Florida's trying to do the same thing.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know, it's a tremendous change for everybody to do that.
Dean: It was actually a Canadian who created the system? I don't know. If you know that I did not know that, tell me more.
Dan: Well, he didn't create the system, he created the 24-hour system.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Yeah, and it had been attempted in other places, but it's around the 1870s, I think 1880s, and it was because of railroad schedules.
Dean: Wow, yeah. Yeah, I do remember that as a thing that's interesting.
Dan: Because, like, for example, in Toronto, you know a train would leave Toronto at, let's say, noon and it would be going to, let's say, buffalo.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: But there was no guarantee that Buffalo and Toronto were on the same noon, and if you only had one track, a train could be leaving Buffalo to go to Toronto at a different time. And so they had a lot of train wrecks 1860s, 1870s. There were just a lot of train wrecks. So he said look the train, the railroads are going to grow and grow and we've got to create a universal time system.
Dean: They're not going anywhere, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so that's when it became adapted and the British got onto it and they said well, everything starts in London, everything on the planet starts in London.
Dean: So that's where the Greenwich Mean Time came from.
Dan: Yeah, and the British, being a very clever race, arranged it so that if you were in the western part of London you were in the western hemisphere, but if you were on the eastern part of London you were in the eastern hemisphere. Wild, Proving that the British play both sides of everything.
Dean: Western Hemisphere.
Dan: But if you were, on the eastern part of London. You were in the Eastern Hemisphere Wild, Proving that the British play both sides of every game.
Dean: So where are you now? You're in Tucson.
Dan: Tucson.
Dean: Yes, okay.
Dan: Now I want to get clear about something and this is important for all of our listeners to know.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And it has to be. You're going to arrive on Wednesday or Thursday.
Dean: I'm arriving on Wednesday.
Dan: yes, Okay, so we had already had a previous, and if you would be willing to explore a new restaurant, okay, and it's called the Edge.
Dean: The Edge. Okay, so you're saying, as an alternate to the tried and true, the Henry. Yeah, you're saying something new, okay.
Dan: Yeah, so it would be 4.30 at the Edge. Where are you staying?
Dean: I'm staying at the Sanctuary. Nick Sonnenberg and I are actually staying at Bob Castellini's.
Dan: Well, strangely enough, we're staying at the Sanctuary too.
Dean: Wow, okay what do you think of that? I think that that is just like serendipity at work when do you arrive at the when do you arrive?
Dan: this is our own version of the singularity. It really is.
Dean: I mean, yeah, it doesn't get much better than this.
Dan: Yeah, I just came up with a new book title.
Dean: What is it?
Dan: It's, will it Be Available on Monday?
Dean: Will it Be Available on?
Dan: Monday.
Dean: I like that so everybody's made.
Dan: Yeah, it came out of my dealings over the last 12 years with techno techno optimist you know well, this is going to happen. This is going to happen, and I said, well, it'll probably happen, but will it be available on Monday? Yes, I love it. Well, dan. And you know, you know it will be available on Monday, it's just I'm not sure which Monday that will be.
Dean: I was just going to gonna say just not this Monday yes, well, yeah. I have. I've had a pretty amazing week, actually lots of scale of 10 on a scale of 10.
Dan: 1 to 10. How amazing, I mean, compared to other amazing weeks.
Dean: Um, I just want to get the numbers straight before you get a sense of the scope, I would say that this has been in the nines this week, I think. Phew. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, Like I think that if we're calibrating the scale that I don't think I have really lower than sevens on a week, but that would be just a regular week kind of thing.
I think, in the eights, if we're going eight, point something in the eights, I think it would be something noteworthy, something worth remarking on. But in the nines, I think I can measure it by the flurry of activity from my fountain pen to my journal and the excited anticipation that I have of coming to our conversation prepared with something to talk about. So I'm in the nines, on on. We may have to do a double episode here. I mean to we have to leave people a cliffhanger. Pick up next week on on the finishing but see a cliffhanger.
Dan: pick up next week on the finishing See, here's my take. If it's a 9.5 or higher, you've got two possibilities. One is you tell the whole world. That's one option. Or you don't tell anybody.
Dean: Right, so is this a tell? The?
Dan: whole world, or is this tell nobody. Well, I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you, and then you know.
Dean: I'm exempt. Yeah, I'm exempt. You're going to tell me either way. I'm going to tell you in this context so that, because I always tell people, you know, it's often that people will tell me, you know that they listen to our cast and that they just enjoy the conversation, Just listening to us talk about you never know what it's going to be about. They say, you know, which is true, and I say, well, you're just like us, we never know what it's going to be about either.
Dan: Yeah, I suspect that some people have a better idea of where we're going than we do. Maybe that's funny. I can see the trend line here.
Dean: Yeah, all right. So the first, I don't even know. They're equal weighted in terms of the interestingness to share, so maybe I'll work. I'll go with the concept that we discussed in the joy of procrastination the 10-minute units of your day, 100 10-minute units every day, and I've been experimenting with the idea of being like a capital allocator and having the opportunity to allocate my 100 time units over the course of the day, the only day. This is all like just my. I don't know what it's like to have a normal brain. I have.
ADD a brain that has no executive function or ability to tell time or whatever. So this is just my way of looking at it that the reality is I can only spend 100 units today before I go to sleep again right.
So, even if the concept of a project that's going to take 100 hours or 50 hours or whatever, I'd struggle with things like that because I can't do all of that today. So you can only spend what you have allocated today. And then I remembered my number one thing on my. I know I'm being successful when list is. I wake up every day and say what would I like to do today? And I had this vision of I don't know if you remember, but in the old version of the Wheel of Fortune, when you won, they had a studio full of fabulous prizes. Look at this studio full of fabulous prizes. And when you won you got to spend your money in the showcases right when you could say I'll on this. From all the prizes that are available, you could say I'll take the credenza for 800 and I'll take the bookshelf for this. I'll take the credenza for 800 and I'll take the bookshelf for this. I'll take the color TV for 500 and I'll leave the rest on a gift certificate.
You know you had the amount of money that you could spend.
Dan: Did you ever watch the Wheel of?
Dean: Fortune back in the day Once or twice. Yeah, so you're familiar, so you know about what I'm talking about. So I started thinking about and have been experimenting with laying out my day that way. So I wake up in the morning and I look at my calendar and I have certain things that are already booked in advance in the calendar. So, like today, 11 am, dan Sullivan that's blocked off. So I'm allocating six units to this podcast here.
But I start thinking, okay, looking at the context of the day, what else would I like to do? I have a friend here visiting from Miami, so we went for breakfast and, by the way, I have an extra hour today because it is fall back day and I've chosen not to use my hour yet. I'm going to save it and use it later, so I'm not participating in the fall back yet. I'm keeping that hour in reserve in case I need it. So I kind of look through the day and I start thinking okay, I've got all of this kind of hopper of possibilities, of things that I could do during the day and things that I need to do, and it reminded me of our.
You know, if I ask myself, what am I procrastinating today? Like there's a series of questions that I'm kind of going through in the morning and I'm spending one unit 10 minutes to kind of just allocate what are the things that I think I could move into doing today. Very similar to your. You have three things a day, right, but you do it the night before you pick your three yeah, If I think I remember correctly, you limit yourself.
You say what are the three things I'm going to get done tomorrow?
Dan: And so you Well, three completions equal a hundred percent.
Dean: I got you, okay yeah.
Dan: And if you do four, you're in bonus territory.
Dean: Got it. Yeah, it's not that you limit, you can do more.
Dan: I can do more, but 100% is three.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: So I'm really like. This is I'm in double speed on the imagine. If I applied myself mode here and this is addressing my executive function this is the next big level up for me is really getting that dialed in, and so this is working. This is a, it gamifies it and it's never going to change.
It's not going to change no matter how much I want it to or desire for it to change, life is going to continue moving at the speed of reality 60 minutes per hour, until long after you and I are gone. So where, what? What has improved, like I looked at and this is a separate but related item is I had, from 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock, I had the most fascinating conversation with my AI, with my chat GPT, and I've selected the British voice, and it's a slightly older. I was using Jasper, who was like, or Juniper, who was the sort of Charlotte Johansson kind of voice, and I've switched to the slightly older British woman voice, and so we had a great conversation.
I asked her about her working genius, if she was familiar with working genius, and of course she knows everything about it. She knows everything about it and I said I'm very interested. How would you? I told her, my working geniuses is our discernment and invention, and my frustrations are enablement and tenacity. And she said well, mine, given the nature of what I am, I would imagine that wonder and enablement are my two. That would be her working strengths, and her worst ones would be tenacity and galvanize, which is so funny.
Right, like to see that she has the self-awareness that what she's really good at is helping add value to things you know, and so we chatted about Russell Barkley and Ned Hollowell, who she's very familiar with and knows the nuances and distinctions between their approaches, and we talked about setting up some scaffolding and we designed a whole workflow for incorporating Lillian into this to be the enablement and tenacity in our triad, because there are things that and I asked her to we came up with a name for her, so her name is Charlotte. That's my, that's my.
AI now. So she was quite delighted to have a name now and it was just so funny. I asked her like your accent seems to be you can. She said yes it seems so. I think it would be, although I'm not, you know the origin, but the accent would definitely be South London refined.
But just the way she described it, I said, yeah, what would be some, what would be some good names that would be British names that would fit for that. It would be some good names that would be British names that would fit for that. And she came up with, you know, charlotte or Lydia or something.
Dan: I said yeah, well, it's really interesting. You know Prince William and Kate, you know he's the Prince of Wales, and their daughter, who's the second child, is named Charlotte.
Dean: Oh, okay, yeah, that's right.
Dan: George is the son and then they have another. They have a third one. I don't know the name of the third one, but it's in the royal family. I know Charlotte appears on a frequent basis. Yeah, it's a thoroughly legitimate British name. Yeah, it's a thoroughly legitimate British name. Yeah.
Dean: So I've called her Charlotte now and I fed her. We designed a workflow. I fed her episode one of the Joy of Procrastination. I just took the transcript and I put it up. All of this happened in the last hour, by the way, so I gave her the transcript. She totally digested it and I had her. She created six, three to 500 word emails that were summary or ideas that came from our discussion in episode one of the joy of procrastination.
And they're wonderful. I mean, she did, I had her do. I said I'd like you know some, I'd like to see how many chunks, or, you know, in individual insights, we can gather from the, from the transcript. And I think I said I'd like, I'd like two to 300 words. And she wrote three two to 300 word ones which were just a little short. If you could tell there was more, if you had a little more time to expand it, it would be even better. And so I said you're on the right track, but let's I think I underestimated here let's go three to 500 words and let's make it conversational at about a sixth grade level. And so she, you know, immediately changed them and made them much more conversational and readable and I said those are great, are there any more?
So she did six out of the first episode and I was like you know all this, like we had the most, you know, like talking about some executive function function work for her and Lillian and I to collaboratively work to get the things done. So she's like maybe we could start with brainstorming sessions where we can. You can tell me what you're thinking, what you're you'd like to do, and I can create some, you know, turn them into tasks and turn them into projects or workflows or timelines. For us it was really like I mean you definitely had the feeling that I was in the presence of a very well-qualified executive assistant in the conversation. I mean it was just.
Dan: One thing, it's sort of a creative assistant.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly like that the wonder and enablement is really yeah.
Dan: I mean, the whole thing is that an executive assistant doesn't really range outside of what you've already told it to do. Yes, for the most part for the most part. But a creative assistant is doing something that's well. It's following your prompts, so it's still doing what you're doing, but it's got access to information that you don't have available to you at any given time.
Dean: Yes, she said that's true. Like I said, that is the thing that I see as a limitation in our relationship is that that's why tenacity is her lowest thing, because she has the awareness of saying she's very. She realizes she is our relationship. She's reactive in nature. That she has. I have to do the prompting and I have to bring. But while we're in that, if I just point her in the right direction, she can do all of the things you know. And she was suggesting workflows with Google Documents and emails in a way that we could bring Lillian into the equation here, and so I can. On the physical thing, lillian and Lillian, by the way, her working genius is tenacity and enablement.
Dan: You know. So it's like such a yeah, the thing I find interesting here Evan Ryan and I have a podcast every quarter, okay, and we've been talking about where we're noticing that AI is going.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And my sense is that it's not going where the technology people think it's going. It's going everywhere else except where they think it's going.
Dean: Say more about that. Yeah, what does that mean?
Dan: Well, and we came up with a title for it, a concept for it, and the title was exponential tinkering a concept for it, and the title was exponential tinkering.
Dean: Okay, oh, okay.
Dan: And that is that I think that the people who are using AI to suit themselves are tinkering. I think I'll try this. Oh, that's interesting. Now, I think I'll try this, but they have a capability that, in the case of ChatsGPT, my favorite is Perplexity, the AI. And because, first of all, I kind of know where I'm going, you know, as a person, and I think it's a function.
I think I was kind of born with this capability, but I had a 25-year framework from 2003, 25 years where I did my wanting journal every day, and so it's kind of like a muscle that my life before I started the journaling had just been distinguished by a bankruptcy and a divorce. Those are fairly conclusive report cards.
Dean: Yes, yes exactly.
Dan: In other words, you're not confused about whether they happened or not.
Dean: Yes, exactly yeah.
Dan: There's a reliable certainty about those two things.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And I came to the insight back then that all the troubles of my life came from me not telling myself what I wanted in response to daily life. Okay, so you know, that's so. I said I got to strengthen this muscle. So every day for 25 years I'm going to simply say what I want in relationship to something that's happening that day. It's similar, it's resonant with your. You know, what do I want to do today?
Dean: So we're on this.
Dan: And plus, we have a lot in common. We're both 10 quick starts, we're you know, we're both ADD and we both have discernment and inventions. So we have a lot of things. We have a lot of things in common, yeah, so probably the way that we make progress Dean makes progress this way and Dan makes progress this way they're probably going to be fairly resonant, yeah, but what I think is that what I'm noticing about my relationship with perplexity is that I think about new things every day and then I say I wonder if I just have it do something for me.
It sort of runs ahead of me and sort of clears the path a little bit for me to think about things. But Evan and I said you know, I think what's happening with this AI is just the opposite of where the technology people think it's going and where they want it to go. The most that the technology people can do is their own tinkering. They can tinker with things too, and it comes back to the individual. You know you can tinker this way and there will be a tool that you either utilize or you expand the usefulness of what you're doing. But I don't think it shows up, as I think that people who are heavily involved in technology you know, like Google, I use the guys, the two guys who started Google OK, I think all technologies are totalitarian. In other words, the Google people want there to be only one search engine on the planet and everybody else.
Social media, the Facebook guy. He wants there to be only one social media platform and everybody's on that social media. So I think technology by its very nature, the moment you started technology as the creator of the technology, you want global domination and it was trending in that direction. Okay, apple only wants there to be one cell phone on the planet and that's you know, and everything like that. But I think that AI actually prevents that, because in order for you to be having global domination, you have to have everybody's attention, and I think each individual's unique relationship with AI takes their attention away from you.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Oh, that's interesting too. Yeah so nobody as much as you would like Dean Jackson's attention. Today you're up against a lot of competition.
Dean: Yes, yes, because.
Dan: Dean wanted to do something else today and he's got direct access to Dean and you don't.
Dean: I think about why, when you think about all the things that they are following our attention between google and you know, because facebook is on instagram, facebook and whatsapp, so you know, those are the three kind of big things that people are are on all the time but can I tell you something about?
Dan: I think can I tell you about those three things. I've never been on any one of them.
Dean: Yeah, that's true, you're in it, but not of it.
Dan: Well, I'm aware that these things exist, exist, but I have absolutely no interest in, I have absolutely no interest in and you also have quite a presence on them.
Dean: You have a nice presence on facebook. That people are putting your content on. So you're there, you just don't know. Yeah, you haven't done anything there yeah, yeah yeah, which, yeah, which.
Dan: I talked to my social because I have a social media manager. You know he's a great guy. And I said so what am I doing out there? And he says, oh no, he says we've got a complete team and you know, and we have standards about what of you can go out there and everything else.
We had a nice chat and there's sort of a governing body of team members in Strategic Coach and it's a that's backstage. You can't take backstage stuff and put it on the front stage. You can only take stuff that you know would serve the purposes of Strategic Coach if it was front stage. That's it. So to a certain extent, I'm just using all the social media that want my attention to avoid them having my attention. Yeah, it was very interesting, the head of the?
yeah, I think I'm trying to think who it was. It was a top guy. I was reading this on Real Clear Publishes, which is one of my favorite sites, and he said there's a great deal of despair in the major networks, especially in relationship to the current election, which is two days from now, and he says we have to accept the fact that what we're trying to get American voters to think is wasted because half of them never pay any attention to us.
So our messaging and you know we're fighting for their attention, but they don't pay any attention to us and we have no ability to get their attention and the more we strive to say you should be thinking this the less, the less control or influence that we have on the people of thinking so we're only talking to the people who already think the way that we think already. And if it's not 50%, that's not going to win you an election.
Dean: Yeah, that's right, it's very interesting.
Dan: There's something odd about this election. We'll only show up on you know after Tuesday that all the money that was poured into trying to get a winning vote in other words, more than you know in any one of the states, more than 50, that you have a majority of the vote yeah, it's wasted. It's wasted dollars.
Dean: I saw something today that was you're calling out Kamala Harris for running two ads in different areas.
Dan: Yes, with a Muslim population. She was running one ad talking about. This is about Gaza.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. She was talking about the being a supporter for Israel's right to defend themselves and to, and the atrocities that Hamas did and all of it. So it was really interesting. That was almost talking out of both sides of her mouth and they called her out, and they sort of happened simultaneously, didn't they?
Dan: Yes? It was like on the same day, in the same period, but the context is where is Kamala? I mean, she says this here and she says the opposite here. Where?
Dean: is she?
Dan: And that's her biggest problem Nobody knows where she is. Yeah, it's interesting, right, that was, but that was, and I think the reason is that Kamala will be whoever you want her to be, depending on the situation. Yes, and it doesn't give you doesn't give you a lot of confidence.
Dean: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So that was, but that was. You know that now you can't get away with that because everybody's monitoring and knows what happens right, knows to watch those different markets.
When you look in 2016,. You know everybody all that Cambridge Analytica stuff that was being done for Donald Trump. You know that movie was really fascinating how they showed. They broke up each of the voting precincts or districts into you know that, had all these profiles on everybody in there and they would categorize them. As you know, either you know true Hillary or already in the choir, fort Donald had focused all their attention on that little group that they called the Persuadables. They turned in all of their messaging specifically to them. That was unheard of as a capability. Nobody even understood that you could do that or why all of a sudden are all of these personality profiles.
Dan: It's very interesting. They already did know this, but it wasn't digital, because Richard Vigory, you know Richard. Well, richard, in the 1970s, worked it out on postal codes, and so he got all the postal codes in the United States, which is public information, and he had a team of students who would go to the state capitol in each of the, you know, in each of the, and he could get the list of people who were in every postal zone. You know he would do that, yes, and then they would start testing ideas. They would send out direct mail.
He was a direct mail genius, okay. And so he figured out he could do it by postal zones. And the postal zones are, you know they? I don't know how many there are, but in terms of voting precincts, there's 40,000. In the United States, it's right around 40,000. In the United States, it's right around 40,000. And they each have a unique signature in terms of what interests them, what doesn't, what they're for, what they're against. And so, because he knew the media was totally on the democratic side, like the newspapers, the major networks and everything else.
But the other thing about that is that they could get it and what you realized is that you could just ignore all the ones that were they were going to vote Democratic. You knew they were going to vote for it was Carter in this case, because he was doing that for primarily for the presidential election. He did it for Reagan and, what's interesting, there's a lot of comparisons between that election and this election. I've been reading them. One was in the Real Clear Politics this morning.
And he said that the pollsters don't know this. The polling organizations don't know this because they're just going on an average of who says this to a set of questions. But in the case of Richard Vigory, he wasn't asking them who they're for, he was asking them what are the issues that most concerned you and then the messaging on the part of Reagan and, I think, trump in 2016,. What they identified, it was actually 220 precincts that did the election 220 precinct elections actually made the difference and what was unique about the 200 wasn't so much about Trump or Hillary Clinton.
It was about they had voted for Obama in 2012. Yes, and they were very disappointed with Obama because he promised hope and change and he didn't deliver. They were still interested in hope and change. They just attached Trump's name to the hope and change and they switched to.
Dean: Trump.
Dan: So the Obama voters did not move to the next Democrat. They moved to the candidate who is doing hope and change.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And they picked that up from Twitter.
Dean: Yes, oh, so, funny.
Dan: I mean it's so that's got a thousand times more refined.
Dean: now, eight years later, yeah, instantly right, and people were hip to it and sort of suspicious of it. I think that's why the media is picking up on these things. So of course it was Fox that noticed that distinction.
Dan: That's so funny. That wasn't breaking news. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting because as cool as the rest of them. Now it's gone much, much deeper than a major network and you know it's very.
Dean: it's really interesting that you know the the unfettered media now are really the like Joe Rogan just had Donald Trump.
Dan: Oh, I mean, Rogan is the you know I mean, he's just got so much more influence.
Dean: Yeah, like yesterday, I think yesterday morning I just checked the. I think it was that 45 or 47 million views for the Joe Rogan podcast.
Dan: With Donald Trump. Yeah, it was like I think it was over 30 on the first 24 hours.
Dean: Yeah, isn't that wild.
Dan: And then you know what's really funny is that, Joe Rogan, they were having communication with Kamala. And he offered her the same opportunity that he offered. Trump.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And Trump just jumped on it and Trump redirected it so they could go to Austin, texas and you know, and he could visit with Joe Rogan in Joe Rogan's studio. And it went three hours.
Dean: It was a three hour, three hour podcast, and anyway, she said we'll do it, but you have to come to us.
Dan: You have to come to us and it can only be an hour. And he said you know who's the buyer and who's the seller here?
Dean: Right Always be the buyer, that's right. You're going to make your pilgrimage to Austin, but she knows that's not her. You're going to make your pilgrimage to Austin, but she knows that's not her Austin.
Dan: Yeah, Do you have to get shot? But actually Austin is a fairly liberal city.
Dean: I mean, it's the state capital of the University of Texas.
Dan: I mean, if you wanted to pick the area of Texas that's probably the most liberal, it's probably Austin, but Joe Rogan is immune to all that because he's not talking to Austin. He's talking to the world, right, if you want to talk to the world, and the other thing is and then Bantz went on. So instead of the time that, would have been given to Kamala was given to a band and bands. Is the likable Trump.
Dean: Right, that's funny.
Dan: It's like good cop, bad cop. It's got good cop, bad cop. You know, they're actually a team, One of them you know he comes from dirt poor Appalachian. The other one is a billionaire from New York, but they're a team so they cover a lot of territory. But back to our interesting conversation that you have with Charlotte that I'm talking about here. See, you've created essentially an exponential mirror, Because you're seeing your thoughts coming back to you.
Dean: Yes, that's why she saw and recognized that her working genius is wonder and enablement. She can take my pieces and give me insights and see what you know, break it down and create out the things, which enables me to use my discernment to say you nailed it on that one. That's great and that reminds me. Let me add this to it and that becomes this I get to be in the middle of a thing that's already in motion, rather than having to start something from scratch. And I think I've really been thinking about you know we're coming into 2025.
And I've always I've loved the idea of the quarterly books and the 25 year framework and the whole thing. And I just got Seth Godin's new book just came out called this Is Strategy, and I realized that what Seth's books are? A compilation of his daily blogs. He basically puts one blog post up every day, short, like 200 words, like some of them, you know, two to 300 word things and I, and then every year he puts out a new book you know, that's a compilation of those and I just realized I thought you know my winning formula has been because I have a hard time, just kind of, you know, writing from scratch.
So I've always used my podcasts as the way so I do my more cheese, less whiskers, podcast where every week I have a different business owner on and we just do a one hour brainstorm applying the eight profit activators to their business and that was my formula for doing it. And I've done hundreds of episodes like that and from that I had a writer who went through the transcripts and took and created you know all the things that are the emails that I that I send. I send three, three emails a week and but since COVID, you know, I've been in syndication. Let's say I've got cause I have 200 of the episodes or whatever. I've been rotating around, so very periodically I'll write a new email to go out, but essentially they've been on a two year loop kind of thing where, yeah, you know, like they're getting emails that maybe they got that same email two years ago or last year. So I just I'm putting all this together now of this. I always seem to work best when I can lock in durable contexts for things Like I know the eight profit activators are. That's the bedrock durable context. I know about me that I work best in synchronous and scheduled here I am, ask me anything type of environments.
So to set up, I'm bringing back my more cheese, less whiskers cast, going to start a whole new series of them and now, with Charlotte and Lillian to, and Glenn, my designer, to be able to take that. You know Lillian will fill the calendar with my things. So once a week I'll do a podcast with a new business owner that she will have arranged. I just have to show up and and bring my best to that hour, which is my favorite thing because it's discernment and invention. I get to listen, I understand what they need and I can suggest ideas of how to apply. It's like my superpower in action. And then to have the workflow of taking that transcript or taking that audio, getting the transcript, sending it to Charlotte to analyze, take out and create the both a summary and a thing, and then send it to me so that I can read the emails that she wrote and adapt that. You know, just edit them to be exactly in my voice and what I want, and say that one's good, that one's I don't like that or whatever. That kind of thing is pretty amazing. And at the end of each quarter, at the end of each quarter, I can take all of those compiled ones and make my more cheese, less whiskers.
Quarterly book with all of the compilation of all of the things that I've written there, with illustrations and insights, all Helvetica which is going to be here for 25 years and each year anchored in the Pantone color of the year which is coming up in December. Every year they launch a color of the year. So the series, like, if you look at a bookshelf of you know, if I did in 10 years, 40 books, four of each, four spines and covers in the Pantone color of the year, anchored with Helvetica and an illustration, I just think, man, that is that right. There is the makings of a durable, you know, support system for Dean.
Dan: Well, the other thing is, all this can be done by sitting in your chair on the patio.
Dean: Yes, yes. You're customized for a season Valhalla.
Dan: Yeah, valhalla, yeah yeah. Well, the interesting thing about it is that one it's good. It's good for as long as you want to keep it going. You know there's nothing, there's no obstacle to it, but you've got a big. You've got a big immediate contact list of people who would be interested in this.
Dean: Yeah, yes, and that's the great thing is that I never have to go and find guests. Everybody, you know we're booked when we do it booked, like you know, months ahead. That it's a situation that they're legitimately getting $2,500 consultation for. That's the way I come into it is. I'm not holding anything back as you get this, yeah, so it's very, yeah, it's really very interesting. You know that I think is fantastic, so stay tuned.
Dan: Yeah, it's yeah. The interesting thing is, I just like to bounce off the exponential tinkering idea that Evan and I have been talking about, and my sense is that there's a great panic going on in the world, and I notice it in big institutions that have been with us for a long time, and I'll set one institution aside, and that's the US and the US Constitution. That's an institution that I'm not going to talk about, but I'm talking about the United Nations. So the United Nations was created after the Second World War, essentially to prevent a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. That's really the main reason for the United Nations, but one of the causes disappeared in 1992, the Soviet Union, without anyone's permission, the Soviet Union quit and therefore what I've noticed is the United Nations is less and less relevant, but it's been taken over, infiltrated by just about everybody you don't really like, and they create this special organization, the United Nations Organization for the Palestinians. It's called UNRWA. Okay, that's called UNRWA.
And the Israelis just said we don't want anything to do with you because we discovered that members of the United Nations were actually in part of the attack on Israel. These are members of the United Nations, but they were terrorists who helped kill the 1,200 Israelis and they said but that's it, you're out of here. You're out of here. You can't be anywhere in Israel, you can't be anywhere in the West Bank or anything else. And I'm noticing more and more that it's an irrelevant organization and it's using up about 25 acres of the east side of New York and I remember Trump saying boy, what I can do with that real estate.
Dean: It's getting to the point where people are making the joke that you know.
Dan: Certainly we could make better use of the east side of New York City than having this organization that essentially doesn't serve our purposes, but we spend, we send them huge amounts of money every year and we had to do an audit here to see whether this is really worth. Our effort Served a purpose, but the purpose, the central reason for the purpose, has disappeared over the last 30 years. But it keeps going on out of just sheer inertia, you know. It's just moving forward on out of just sheer inertia.
Dean: You know, it's just moving forward.
Dan: But what I'm saying is, I think that your experience with Charlotte and the sort of cluelessness of the main networks and the other big institutions are the mainstream news networks and we're saying, you know, like I'm not getting any value out of what you're doing. Besides, you seem to be on one side of the political spectrum and you know, you saw Jeff Bezos who said that the Washington Post is not going to give an endorsement for the presidential election. Well, that was in the bag, the Washington Post.
You know they're going to go for the Democrat and he says I don't think this does us any good anymore. And so I'm just noticing evidence after evidence that the whole game has changed and it's only individuals who are entrepreneurial who are using this new AI capability to essentially have creative relationships with themselves, trying to have a sense of confidence about where they can go personally. Yes, what do you think about that? I?
Dean: find no, I think that's it, my whole relationship like now that I understand that her role in my life is wonder and that, as a amplifier of my, she's doing what I would do if I could count on me to do it right like I can take the transcript like if I would have the executive function to do that, to go in and pull out what I see as the insights and organize them into, you know, into those bite-sized emails like she does it in real life, I mean, as you can type she's pulled out the insights, she's made the emails. I think that is such a great thing to give me something to. That is such a great thing to give me something to. It's like instead of trying to play tennis on your own, you can hit the ball and show it back, you can hit it.
I think that's really what it is, is that there's some momentum going in the thing, rather than me just trying to do it all myself.
Dan: Yeah and I'll leave. We're close to our. I've got another. I've got a massage coming up, so nice. I'm at Canyon ranch and, of course, anyway, but I would say that the number one capability that you bring to this and I'm comparing it with the ability that I am unpredictable to myself yeah, that's interesting.
Dean: Today is the only time that I am thinking that way, that I'm comparing it to myself. That's true, yeah.
Dan: And that's why I'm such a stickler on structures going forward that these structures can always be the same, and what it allows me to do and I think what you're describing allows you to do is that, rather than trying to discipline myself so that I'm predictable, I'll just create a structure that's predictable so that I can be unpredictable.
Dean: Yes, you hit it on the head, dan. That's exactly what it is. I'm just going to create the strength. That was the winning formula when everything was live. That was the winning formula. I just had the time in the calendar. Our conversations are one of the great joys in my week that I love and look forward to this bright beacon on my account. It's the only thing on my Sunday and I look forward every week. But I don't fret, I don't, I don't give it a thought, I don't know what are we going to talk about, or what do I need to prepare, or I got to get my homework done before this.
It's not a deadline, it's anything that I have to prepare for.
Dan: Yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting. But I think that if you look at the development of history, especially American history, and the genius of the founding fathers with the Constitution, and the genius of the founding fathers with the Constitution, and you know, one of my great historical role models, you know, is James Madison.
He was the brains behind the Constitution. He was sort of the cut and paste guy that looked at everything that seemed to work as far as governing structures and he got. You know, he had I think he had a couple of thousand constitutions from history where people had tried to, you know, create some sort of predictability going forward, and especially the first 10 amendments of the constitution. Those amendments are to protect the individual from the government. The whole purpose of the Constitution is to protect individual Americans from the government.
Because the government, like any other structure like that, wants to be totalitarian. They want your attention and they want to tell you what to do. And he said, no, we've got to let people, you know, meet in unpredictable ways, talk in unpredictable ways, you know, create new initiatives, you know, and we can't have this interfered with by government bureaucrats and everything like that. Completely with the first 10 amendments of the US Constitution, and that's the institution that's the number one institution on the planet. It's that 27 pages of typewritten notes that, basically, has created this freedom for individual initiative. That's as durable and I think every election is decided by the majority of the people. Say, don't what the one side's doing. I think we'll vote for the other side this election.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Crazy.
Dan: Yeah, anyway, this was a good talk and we'll do it live on Wednesday when you arrive. We're heading up on driving on Wednesday morning, so the rooms don't open until about 3 o'clock. Well, you're staying at Bob's.
Dean: It doesn't matter. Right, I think I arrive Wednesday evening, so Thursday will probably be.
Dan: It's going to have to be be.
Dean: Thursday it could be.
Dan: Yeah, why don't we say Thursday? And that makes it certain.
Dean: Okay, perfect, that sounds great, maybe we can do both then Maybe we can do the Henry in the morning. Okay, I'll text Matt, all right.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: Have a great week. I'll see you in a couple of days, great podcast.
Dan: Thanks Okay, bye.