Doing The Most Important Things in 2019 with Javan Bernakevitch (FSFS164)

 

Listen to more episodes of Farm Small Farm Smart

 

            Twenty-nineteen is coming up, and why don’t we pause, look at the past, and adjust the future accordingly? Today will be a podcast around reframing your context, defining what’s important, and planning the coming year around the things that are important. We’ll do that along with some decluttering both in your space and headspace.

            My friend Javan Bernakevitch of All Points Design will give us valuable insight to help us do just that.

 

Today’s Guest:  Javan Bernakevitch

Javan operates All Points Design in two ways: land design and life design. He believes that everything runs on good design. Javan was a victim of a car accident earlier in 2018, and that incident had helped him reframe and recontextualize his views on life and the things that matter.

 

Relevant Links

            All Points Design – Website | Life Design| E-mail | Facebook | Instagram

 

In this episode of Farm Small, Farm Smart

 

  • Who is Javan Bernakevitch (03:00)
  • Relish in the glory and the impact we leave (07:00)
  • Our capacities and operating at capacity (08:30)
  • Taking a step back and assessing (14:30)
  • The holistic life context (18:00)
  • How to approach a rebound year (20:45)
  • Things that are important now that weren’t important before (24:25)
  • Allocating the finite amount of attention and a finite amount of energy (27:00)
  • Double down on what works and focus there (33:00)
  • Sunk costs and how to feel about them (36:30)
  • “Kill your darlings.” – William Faulkner (40:15)
  • “The cost of anything is the amount of life energy it takes out of us.” (42:40)
  • Metrics and mediums to keep our connections alive (50:00)
  • Feedback and becoming highly sensitized to ourselves (56:30)
  • Decluttering and taking away some mental burden (01:04:00)
  • Clear and cancel (01:06:15)
  • Overwhelmed with open loops (01:14:10)
  • The process of getting stuff done starts with delegating and eliminating (01:22:00)
  • Be careful of what you put in your toolbox (01:28:15)
  • If I don’t need it immediately, I’m not getting it (01:40:25)
  • Design by subtraction (01:46:00)

 

Resources

  • The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown
  • Spartan Up! by Jeff O’Connell & Joe De Sena
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Charlie Munger
  • Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
  • Lost Connections by Johann Hari
  • Requiem for a Dream (Daren Aronofsky, 2000)
  • Kobo Clara HD
  • Deep Work by Cal Newport

 

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iTunes | Spotify | PlayerFM

FSFS164_JavanBernakevitch2019

Diego: [00:00:00] What's the most important thing in your life? Do you know? If you don't know why don't, because you should know you should define it and what is most important because everything definitely isn't important. That's what this episode is all about. Stay tuned for that. Coming up. Welcome to the episode today.

I'm your host, Diego, D I E G O. Today's a special bonus episode, it's airing on all three feeds of podcast that I put out. So you'll hear this on Grassfed life. You'll hear this on Farm Small, Farm Smart. And you'll hear this on Permaculture Voices. It's a special episode, a bonus episode because I think it's a very important conversation.

It's a conversation that I'm having with my friend, Javin. If you haven't heard of Javin before, he's going to explain a little bit about who he is at the beginning of this episode when it kicks off, but Javin somebody who I've done a whole bunch of podcasts with in the past. And in today's episode, we're talking about lessons that we learned in 2018 and how we're going to take those lessons and apply them this year in 2019.

I think this process of pausing, looking at the past, asking how things are going and adjusting for the future accordingly is critical. That's why I'm putting this out on all of the channels. this content isn't directly farm-related livestock or veg. It is life related. And if you have a farm, you have a life by definition, and I can guarantee you that if your life is poorly planned, then your farm will be poorly run.

So give this episode a shot. It's a long one. I realize this episode might not be for everyone, but it is for someone. And if that someone is you, I hope it helps. Let's jump right into it. It's doing the most important things in 2019 with Javin.

2019 is here. We're already halfway through January by the time that this episode airs. And today we're going to take some time to look at how we're making 2019, a little bit different. You and I have done this the past couple years at the end of each year. You being Javin Bernanke of itch. And we're going to look at some of the lessons we took from 2018, how we're going to implement them in 2019.

But just to start out the show for people who maybe haven't heard any of those past episodes, they're not familiar with who you are. Give us a little bit of a background found and why I wanted to probably involve you in this conversation.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:02:52] Sounds good Diego. Thanks again for reaching out and having me on it's always a pleasure. I look forward to these conversations for folks that haven't heard of me or heard those previous podcasts. My name's Javin. I live in Canada and operate all points, design.ca and all points for me. And the culmination of my work over the last 10 years is twofold. One is land design.

So focusing on land design, focusing on pre-purchase assessment, focusing on. And farm development to create antifragility to create resiliency, to move towards regeneration and really help people get a good mindset on when it comes to business. And then on the other side, within the life design, because I've had experiences with depression and mental illness, when it comes to anxiety and made it through with a good toolbox and a relatively sane mind, I know, close friends.

I've always wondered if that's the truth. As we are kayaking across lakes and dumping boats as Diego knows. So well, I really do focus on mindset. I really do focus on the fictions and the limiting beliefs. We tell ourselves because the farm, the homestead, the enterprise is only as. vibrant and only as strong as the weak links inside of our minds.

So I've done a lot of work around that. And the other thing I'll say, which has been really fascinating this year is I've had a lot of people reach out over this past year, just. Thanking me and Diego for the podcast we've done together in the past and a lot of good conversations, a lot of potential clients I've spoken to.

And I just, I really appreciate the folks who listened to your podcast. It's great to hear from folks and it's great to connect and talk. And the last thing I'll say is that I'm working on a, I'm working on a documentary called Facing Fire, building resiliency to wildfire. And it's a response to the wildfire seasons that we've been seeing up and down the West coast of North America over the last couple of years.

And it's really going to be a focus on how did we get here? Where are we going? And what's happening next? And if folks are interested in reaching out and contacting me, or if you have a good resource or good opinion that you want to bring, feel free to reach out at Javan@AllPointsDesign.ca, I would love to chat with people.

So now that I've got my agenda out of the way, why did Diego decide to reach out to me? I think first is familial we've. We've had a lot of connection and conversation around life design about designing, better about working in a better vein. And we've had a lot of good conversations when it comes to taking lessons and turning them into action, which I don't think is something that a lot of people do.

We don't. Review and reflect an entire year. Think about the ups. Think about the downs, think about what we can learn about that and what we can do better. And if I could boil life design down to a very simple, maximum, very simple tool, as I know that Diego and others are really keen about it's review the last day, the last week, the last month, the last year, the last half decade.

if you're getting into years, quarter, century, take a look at the things that worked. Take a look at the things that you loved. You enjoyed, worked well. Put those into schedule, put those into planning today for the next day, the next month, the next week, the next year. Okay. Take a look at the things that didn't work, minimize the occasions for those to occur or the conditions rinse and repeat.

And I think that's essentially what we're doing with this podcast. Isn't it Diego, where we're taking a look at the year, taking a look at the lessons we learned and saying, okay, we're going to plan more for those great moments, those moments of brilliance, those moments of joy and love. And we're going to minimize some of the other moments while realizing that God or life laughs, when we try to make plans .

Diego: [00:06:34] That's exactly it. And that's why this episode is airing on all three of the podcast feeds, which I do the normal permaculture voices one, but you may also be hearing this on grassfed life or farm, small farm smart podcasts that normally focus on, business design, farming type content. But as you said, business goes part and parcel along with lifestyle, a business owner that struggles in life.

Will mean you have a business that is struggling. So I'm very big on incorporating life design, self-reflection, self-care into business conversations, because I think it's under talked about, we all know how to grow tomatoes, but we don't necessarily all know how to grow a better self. And I wanted to talk about this because I've done a lot of work late this year, just trying to figure things out.

I'm very involved in the farm space and if people want to keep hearing this podcast in the future, I do evaluate a lot of what I have going on in my life to say, how do I keep the podcast going? If I keep the podcast going what changes do I have to make? And you're one of the people that really got me thinking about things, because you had an accident in a car in 2018, and it's something that from an outside perspective, it made me really realize, wow, like life can change very quickly.

We need to appreciate what we have, not just work all the time, not say yes to everything and build in a schedule that allows us to make our impact, but also. Relish a little bit in the glory that impact leaves on the ground.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:08:19] I like that we've already gone into relish and glory, it feels like the evangelist in both of us is going to be well-honed during this podcast. So as Diego alluded, I had a really interesting year and in writing a little bit about my thoughts about what I was going to talk about today, two to three main thoughts came up, one is.

One of the amazing gifts of depression, of making screwed, making it through depression and having it as an exercise that one has gone through is that few things actually seem daunting afterwards after you've made it through that after you've looked into the abyss and the abyss stares back.

So it took me November when I was being treated into my third month for 'em. A car accident that left me in about 10 to 15% capacity of what I was before the accident. It took one of my practitioners to say, wow, you've had a real year because as you're being treated, you create a rapport and start talking.

And I hadn't really, I hadn't really registered it. I'd registered the frustration in the moment, but I hadn't registered the entire year and taken as a year, I had a four-month stint of sickness where two months I was pretty much bedridden, and for two months I was recovering to the point where I was, reasonably capable again in June.

And then in September I had a car accident and a car accident reduced me drastically, not only physically, but also cognitively because it affected my nervous system and there was some cognitive impairments that had come up.

I've had a really interesting year when it comes to looking at capacity. And I spoke to I've listened to the previous podcast about, holistic life context in the work that I do with decision making on context. One of my elements within my context is that I work at 60% capacity. So of the total hours that I have within a week, I try to only work 60% of those leaving the rest of the time for deep work, for project work, for thinking, for ruminating, for acts, work, and firewood creation and all those things that are important to keep a balanced mind.

But this year I did the numbers, Diego. I went month by month to take a look at my capacity and, capacity was at the top in sort of January and August at 80% down to 5% in March, April coming back up to that August 80%, then back down to 10 or 15% and totally I added up all of the months of capacity of, self-subscribed.

So there's obviously a bias I'm at about 32.5% is what my capacity was for operation. And that's not just capacity. That's what I was able to do, that brought up this really interesting dynamic of 2018, which is what is my capacity? And then what's actually resonating?

What's important enough to do with that five or 10% that I have to work with, because right now I'm on a doctor prescription of taking 10 to 15 minutes on the computer screen and then 45 minutes off. And if anybody's ever tried to do that, or I've tried to have completed that, it's near impossible to get anything done.

And what I found that was so interesting is that your notes for this episode was very similar in that. It's really about knowing what your, and you've made it to now. And you said, know your list of importance, what are the things that are important to you? So I'm curious for you, has that become a now and has it become like a real focus, is that the word you're using or what's the background behind that? That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Diego: [00:11:40] Yeah. And I it's, I think there's a book called the one thing. Or the thing or something like that. And one phrase that they always repeat in there is, make sure that the most important thing stays the most important thing. And they might have borrowed that from somewhere else, but that's stuck with me and I've really tried to identify what is important and in going into the end of the year, Scott Hiebert, and I did an episode on audio books that we really resonated with one I like, and I've read is essential ism.

And he talks about, again, distilling down, what's important, really sat down and had to say, okay, what do I deem most important? Because as strange as it sounds like I'd never quantified that. We have it in our head, always obviously my wife is important, my kids are important, but beyond that, what else is important, is podcasting as important as Paper Pot Co.? Is that as important as gardening? Is it important? Is some sort of physical fitness activity that I want to take on mentally?

Like that shifts by the day it shifts with workload sentiment and I don't, I want to get away from this, like dancing around of Swaying to the pressure of workload and making decisions that way. So I really sat down and said, okay, I got to identify what is important because when I identify what's important, that's going to tell me what I need to do.

Fast forwarding ahead. And we can zoom in on this later, but it's okay. If my, if I deem, okay, my relationship with my wife is important, then that means I want to take and allocate extra time and specific activities to nurture that relationship, deepen it and build it. And unless I can define these things, what's important.

I don't know what to focus on and knowing what to focus on. Like getting some targets out there. On the battleground of life, if you will, was important for me, because I also had a very chaotic year. A lot of which was external, like your year was very internal driven the cab, the sickness, the car accident, where I was greatly affected in my life by people around me.

I had her really close acquaintance that was affected by depression and that had to have me step in and get involved in that was hard because suddenly my life now became, okay, I also have to I'll say burden, but in a good loving way had to take on some of the burden that this person was feeling.

So my bandwidth that I had wasn't any longer was no longer just what could I spend it on that I want to spend it on. I also have to account for this other thing. And my daughters are growing older and the other big issue was, one of my daughters is definitely behaviorally challenged and she requires extra attention and time and care.

And you can autopilot that. I don't want to outsource that, for one and I can't just ignore it. So in talking with my wife, it's how do we do with all this stuff? And the stuff we have to do? And it just came down to, I got to take some time to step back and say, I only have so much capacity.

Some of that capacity has to go towards, I'll call it life support, providing income, house maintenance, personal care, those types of things. Then there's like that optional capacity in the optional capacity are really things like the podcast, that's optional at the end of the day. It's not as important as taking care of my daughter.

And I had to weigh out the optionals and say, okay, which of those are most important? And what can I get done so I can. Preserve my mental sanity, because I really got tested between taking care of her, dealing with this acquaintance with depression. And I didn't want myself get run down. like I kinda ran into this chaos and going back to where I started in answer your question.

Identifying what became important, gave me some stuff to focus on within the chaos. So I could say, this is what I'm dealing with everything else. Like I am deeming it not important. I'm not going to spend time on it. So the things that are important, I can go all in on, enjoy them and also take downtime in there. So I can like mentally get a breath in recover and not feel guilty about what it should have.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:16:41] So much of that is incredibly important and incredibly mature to get to a place, to be able to look at and grade one of the businesses are essential to do the work of the householder and ensuring tha t the family's taken care of and you were taken care of.

And then moving down the list in terms of what are the other pieces that I enjoy, that I like, what are essential. And this really comes into a lot of the work I do with clients on like design around value-based scheduling, which is, first and foremost, know your values know what's important to you, which is the tool I use for that is the holistic life context.

Let's make sure that we know what you want the future to look like. And what's really important to you. At that point. We have default settings, we have the things that are important, right. That need to be established. And so then we take a look at scheduling and we go from a yearly conversation down to a seasonal now two a month.

And then we use a weekly scheduler to ensure that the very big things are already in place before life comes at you in 2019. So that way you look at all the pieces and you go, yeah, I know that's when the vocations are. That's when the me-time is that's when the really deep work for a couple of days for a couple of projects are on there and then coming down, this is what I'm spending time with.

My partner, this is why I'm spending time with friends and making sure that those connections are there, making sure that's in place before life starts throwing all of these really shiny things. And I think those of us that are on the scale of regenerative, in terms of being able to see that there are elements at play within the world that need further input from Homo sapiens to be able to improve be it ecologically or from climate conversation. Yeah, we are highly distractible. We are the crows of the human and world in that we see something interesting and often we scuttle never really asking, is this the most important thing?

What's important now was a part of the keynote I gave at the last PV a couple years go alongside Eric. what's important now, WIN. Am I winning by implementing what's important now and constantly asking ourselves that I think in a previous episode, maybe even the very first one, I'd been reading the book Spartan Up! and there was this great, simple decision making matrix that the author used.

I think he attributed it to the original Spartans, it started with health, after something what's the most important thing I can do for my health. After that, what's the most important thing I can do for my family. After that, what's the most important thing I can do for my business.

And after that, and only after that, what can I do for leisure? And those types of systems, tools, processes come right back to this idea of importance. What's important. Taking the time as you did to observe, to take a look at. The individual pieces, your daughter, for example, and saying, okay, that's important. I'm going to schedule the time because as especially with something like Paper Pot Co. or somebody wanting to do a podcast episode, or an opportunity in your local area, it's easy to be distracted.

Diego: [00:19:41] It always is. And I try and encourage people to think about capacity, to think about what's reasonably predictable in their life.

Like you can't. Predict a car accident. You can't predict sickness, but you want to lay out your schedule for this year with some room to breathe or to give the things that you know were there. The time that they do deserve. I just see a lot of farm plans and on Instagram you see a lot of the glory of again using the word glory of what people are planning for next year.

And I just always think in the back of my head, did you put some conscious effort in saying should I do this versus this? A versus B? And with the experiences you had last year, the car accident, the sickness driving bandwidth, way down as you go into 2019. How do you approach a year that is a rebound year?

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:20:39] I think that's where, again, we're depression as has left me with a couple of really invaluable skills. One of them is immediately it's what's the lesson. And part of that is I developed a tool of sovereignty about starting to train my own mind and helping clients to develop their own mind against adversity so that we, when adversity, or let's call it potentially perceived adversity comes, your first response is interesting.

Oh, that's an interesting thing. And then it's fascinating. And then it's good, going to Jocko Willink response to everything and then moving on to great. So going from the sort of stare out interesting then to fascinating kind of raising the eyebrows, Spock style, getting into the stern, like Jocko Willink.

Good. And then getting to the sort of effervescent. Great. And with all of those pieces, I, over the last year, especially when I was bedridden for a couple of those months and just thinking, okay, what's interesting about this and taking a lot of that time to think about, okay, if I am bedridden and this is an exercise that the very first business design process, I went through about 10 years ago, one of the things they ran us through was an exercise is if you were bedridden, would your business still survive?

And it was apparent that there was some elements of my business that wouldn't, and you don't get that level of stress testing through a mental exercise. And that was one of the great lessons of 2018. As I had two exceptional opportunities to real time stress. What happens when Javan is completely and utterly reduced? What happens when I'm reduced in total capacity? What happens when I'm reduced in computer capacity and how much of my business is based upon those elements?

Really stress testing, the weak links. And so I would say that, you could look at 2018 as a write off. I think it's a waste, in the same way that we look at our feces as a waste. It's actually a nutrient in the rough, as it was this year. And the big lessons were when it comes to capacity what are the absolute most important things that A.) Produce income and B.) Produce enthusiasm out of me and an even more.

So I feel like we talk about this a lot in all of our podcasts, but it's funny because when you focus upon it, the area of the overlap in the Venn diagram. Becomes the whole Venn diagram and then there's smaller circles. There's smaller nuances. And I think that was a great piece this year is just the details and the importance of all of that. And being able to see that in a, in real time of what's going on.

Diego: [00:23:17] Are there important stuff this year, that maybe wasn't important in January, 2018.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:23:24] Hugely so. Hugely so. recently I started reading the very hard to find, it's Charlie mongers, Almanac, the Almanac of maybe it's the Almanac of Charlie Munger. I'll have to take a look at it. It's just on my desk here, but I finally found it and was able to start reading through it. And one of them was, His and Warren Buffett's explanation of what makes a good partner. A partner who's going to show up more so than you, and that you want to show up more for them, and that both of you are willing to be wrong.

And both of you are willing to come to the table. And lots of that. And I had a couple of collaborations, this past year that, some of them were fantastic and great. And it was definitely that. And some of them weren't and I was pushing the collaboration I was putting in the over the 50% line, in terms of total contribution in which both should be a hundred and 110%.

So that was really interesting. And I stepped back from most of those collaborations and some of those collaborations are gonna be completing within the next week. And I'm. I'm very heightened now. Cause there's a bunch of opportunity right now with collaborations about finding the right partner, finding the partner that wants to bring 110.

And I see that in their frequency of emails and their enthusiasm about the project and in their total heck yes. About the work that we're doing together. So that was a big takeaway. that was one of the majors I've got a number of others, but that was a big one.

Diego: [00:24:46] I like the idea of that of just reducing down, looking at, not just cutting the cut, but like you said, looking at what was the year before the quote waste of it and saying, okay, what is the lesson here?

It can be too easy to look past stuff and just say it didn't work. Let's move on to the next thing. Cause we're just so go oriented and not take the time to. Break down. Okay. What, wasn't good about this partnership or what do I need to look for next time? Those types of things, part of my decision making for deciding what was important going into 2019 was I had now gotten past this hurdle of financial sustainability, like over the past year, two years.

Cause I quit my job in two years ago in December. It had been up in there, the air financially, like I was living off some savings and I had definitely income coming in, but expenses outweighed income in 2018 was the year where I went income positive. And I felt okay, everything here feels stable is stable as it can realistically feel.

And I no longer had to worry about. Scrambling as much because when you don't, when you don't have enough income, there's a few things you're doing, right? Like you're maybe trying to build one thing, which in my case would say Paper Pot, but eventually once you're building it, like there's only so much you can do to turn up the volume or push the accelerator to make it go faster.

Like you can't speed up growth. Past a certain point within reason. So I was trying to fill in the gaps and do other things and shoot at other little targets to try and make income. And then I started looking back in 2018 and say, okay, what am I doing to make all this income? What all these numbers look like?

Where's the future? What do I enjoy here? And let's just focus on that stuff. Financially, it can be comfortable, not extravagant at this point and cut stuff. So for me finally, getting past that income bar is one of the things that allowed me to take a more designed approach for 2019 that I hadn't been able to do in the past because.

It had to be a little more grinding Helter Skelter in previous years because I just had to try a bunch of stuff to get to something that works. So I definitely empathize with. The new startup, the new entrepreneur or somebody who's trying to work the side hustle and do a bunch of things. But once you finally get traction, it's nice to see okay, we're outside the storm. There's clear sailing ahead. Now let's really decide, which Island are we go into here?

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:27:42] That's. Again, a very brilliant observation and result. And I think the main thing here is understanding that we really do have a finite amount of attention and a finite amount of energy. That is one of the most important things that I have learned over the last couple of years.

We have a finite amount of time. We have a finite amount of energy. We have a finite amount of inspiration. We have a finite amount of enthusiasm on a daily, on a weekly, on a monthly, on a yearly basis. It's really true. And. Yes, you can supplement with stimulants, but it's artificial. For anybody who's ever worked on something past when their body said yes and they moved to caffeine or they moved to something heavier, you are boring from your health to do that work.

And I've been in that place before, or I pulled all nighters. I've done big nights on caffeine. I've done big nights. I've done, I've worked through that or I've amped myself up to move past when my body is saying no, What's interesting is that as we take a look at that idea and there's this beautiful, there's this beautiful way of charting.

And, it looks like a, split octopus. You start with a total full amount, a hundred percent, and then there's splits. And I see them a lot on Reddit. They're the usually in the data is beautiful subreddit and it shows how income is split and it goes all the way down to the nitty gritty.

So we start with a hundred percent and then you move down to 0.07, 1% about where that income goes. that's a really interesting exercise to do with time. No. Where does your time go in a day? Where does your time go in a year and then taking a look again? Where does your time go? When it comes to projects and yeah.

Similarly, I think we're the same, we have our mainstays and then we're always interested in something new. What I found this year is doubling down on the things that are working and working well is way more beneficial than having four or five, six, seven, eight other small little things that I'm attempting to work on.

And a big thing that I've done over the last couple of years. And we've talked about this was my work with ayearly linear calendar and taking a look at how many. So I had available for land design, how many spots I had available for life design, how many spots I had available, what in terms of what I turned education and outreach.

So education courses or doing something new. And it was always numerous. There was always a number of them. And this year was a great example of saying you're actually a lot better when there's one, when you have full focus. So that way, when you sit down at the desk, you're not thinking about one, two, three, four, five, and trying to think about, okay, what am I doing on Monday? What am I doing about Tuesday?

And we've talked about this last time, talking about how I dedicated a day to a certain area of my work. More and more. I'm finding the more I focus on just one major project. And then the life design clients that come to me, which again, for me is a non-exhaustive process, anybody who comes to me for life design, I always feel more so afterwards.

It's never draining for me, which is a really important thing to be aware of because. In our lives. We have a lot of opportunity to put energy into hobbies or income generating opportunities. And to find that overlap is the Holy grail.

I think a lot of people think it's easy to do. I have not to be the case. If other people have found a quicker way then, No, please do let me know, but it's taken a good 10 years. And before that, another 10 years, focus and focus and focus, and it's always about focusing, isn't it. It's always about taking that small cross hairs that we think is so small.

And then that becomes our reality and then saying, Oh man, this is a whole sealed. And then taking another small process. Do you find that with the podcasting? I'm just curious because you started with. There's not a lot of conversations about business. There's not a lot of conversation about the nitty gritty of making these systems work.

And that from an outside perspective, that's how I felt you had landed yourself and now you've got three main podcasts that all have their different focuses. Do you have a baby between the three of them? Where if you absolutely had to cut to one podcast that you would say, I'd continue on without or Is that having to choose a child is it, are they too close?

Diego: [00:31:50] No, they're not. They're not children and they're easily expendable. So you know, all of the three, permaculture voices is one that really got shut down for the most part last year that is a legacy, I look at it more like it's an archive of past content that I simulcast new content from the other shows on.

And I'll do, occasional special episodes like this one that'll air as new episodes on PV. But for the most part like that had to get shut down. It just, it got to be where I couldn't do more.

And, your idea, what you were talking about of doubling down is always more beneficial than taking it four or five things.

That's something I'm growing or maturing to. Yeah. So the podcast is one of those things where it's four or five being paired down and just saying, what is the most integral what stacks the most, if we're going to use some permaculture, the vege podcast stacks with Paper Pot, I have an online course and the livestock side that stacks well with Grass Fed Life, the Permaculture Voices, one was more of a soul fulfillment thing.

And as much as I got enjoyment out of it, doing that, it didn't have a time. Yeah. And eventually it was like, there's only so many seats. The other seats are occupied by things that I personally rank higher at this point in time. Something's gotta be out. It's like you watch a top chef and it gets down to the final five.

They're making decisions based upon who had a few more grains of salt on their plate because you gotta nitpick eventually. And then that's where I was at with it all. And early on in for the blessed. Few years, like I had been the four or five thing taking on and I started to think later on in 2018, I don't know that I've ever really gone all in on one thing.

And what would it be like if I did go all in on one thing I did with the conference when it started, but when the conference struggled, I had to regroup and scramble and since then, it has been a scuttle to find something that works or some combination that works. And again, now that I have it's refining down and doubling down.

But the hard thing about that can be tying into your question is, you're letting some things that you value deeply go or things that you will want to value deeply. And. Scott Heber showed me this one, Seth Godin podcast, where he talks about sunk costs and sunk costs are something I've talked about on the podcast a lot, but more on the business side.

Sunk cost is basically, it doesn't matter what you paid for something in the past now. You've already paid for it. So whether you throw it away or keep it, it's irrelevant because it's been paid for. And Seth talks about it with regards to life and activities, just because you've put a whole bunch of work into something.

If it's not important now, you shouldn't necessarily value that work like, Oh, I've done all this work. I have to keep it around. And I really tried to do that analysis on my life with things like YouTube and other things and ask the question, if I wasn't already doing it, what I start now. So I could look at the permaculture voices podcast and say, if I wasn't.

If that show wasn't live have now, if I had never made one today, would I start a third brand new podcast and the answer is no. So then it goes to, you have a third podcast. Should you keep it in? And then the part of you says, I put all that work and do it, it's a waste to let it go.

And it's not a waste because people got value from it in the past, it served a purpose for me at a point in time, it served the purpose for other people at a point in time. And it's a evergreen resource and the beauty that is the internet. I can't weigh what was then now I have to start making decisions for the future based on what will be important going forward.

So these types of things were how I look at. A lot of what I've done. And I've really tried to cut down and further on the podcast. Like I'm doing things like I'm truncating the schedules for the other podcasts, the veg and the livestock heads up newsflash. If you're listening to those in 2019, you're going to hear less episodes in 2019 than you would have in 2018, which was reduced down from 2017 because I realize.

I can't mentally do this forever all the time. And I try to say, what's more important. If I enjoy the show to keep doing it for the next few years or to burn out this year and never do it again? And when you do episodes like this, like we're working off rough bullets here, but this is a lot of mental freestyling.

There has to be the right mindset. There has to be a creative vein going to make this work. And I found the more I overburdened myself with producing more, the more it like it damped out the oxygen for that candle to the creative candle to burn. And it became just doing to do. Versus doing because I wanted to, and I hadn't done a podcast with you and I don't know, we haven't done one in eight months or something.

And like that candle had re flickered and I'm as excited to do this. Like normally I wouldn't take this episode on. So it goes to show when you shut stuff down and give it room to breathe and you move past things that you think you need to do, there's a lot of ways that life can change. So that's where I'm at with the podcast.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:38:00] I love it. I love it. I think, you've talked about so many really important things and I want to touch on a couple of them and the quote that came up to me as you were speaking, and it's one that. I ruminate on quite a lot is from William Faulkner.

And it originally, it was in writing and the quote starts in writing. You must kill your darlings. And it's the literary advice about the dangers of becoming a enamored with your favorite elements and your favorite characters, regardless of the fact of if they actually fit the story or fit the plot or make sense.

And we are similarly afflicted by attachment. We are afflicted by something we enjoy or we like, or we think is good. And that's where this dichotomy between. External programming or internal desire comes into place. And I think that's where folks like Marie Kondo are pretty exceptional and I really enjoy her book, the life changing magic of tidying up.

She has a Netflix. I can't say that it's really enjoyable or, it's fun to watch people tidy their rooms. I think it might be quite possibly some of the worst television I've ever seen. I had to watch it cause I'm a fan of her work, but I don't know if it translates into TV. But the act of doing it, the act of picking up an item and saying, does this spark joy in me, does this make me excited and using that in a similar vein with projects and then using, as you were talking about elements or uric sticks to say, would I start this again?

If I was doing this now and then again, Adding on Kevin Kelly's advice of if he's offered to do something and it's six months in advance, he can put it off, but he asks himself, would I do this tomorrow morning? And that's his heuristic to say, okay. Yeah, that obviously gets past my programming and my conversation of taking it on

Diego: [00:39:44] Another thing I heard recently. And I can't remember who to actually cite the students, not mine, but it was, what, if you found out that your life would dramatically change in six months, and we're not going to define that you're dying or anything, but what would you do over the next six months to ensure that your life was moving in the right direction, moving in a positive direction?

Like you had to clean up debt, clean up, say substance abuse problems, work on your marriage, strengthened bonds, like putting yourself on the pressure of if I had to change now, Because something was going to make me change in the future. What I keep doing, what I'm doing now or what I enact change.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:40:27] And that's that ties in so well with what. My next point was, which is, the cost of anything is the amount of life energy it takes out of us. So if you knew things were going to change and yet something was already costing you an exact, an incredible amount of life, energy without a return.

What do you do with that now that you're diminished, or you don't have the capacity or you don't have the time, the money, the resources, the energy, what happens then? And I think that's a really important mental exercise to take before you actually have to do it. And I think it's actually an exercise we're facing on an ecological level.

Not a lot of people are trying to point towards that. If we continue on with speciation extinction, if we continue on with loss of ice, if we continue on with. Increasing of carbon dioxide in atmosphere. We may find ourselves in a place where we don't have choices anymore. we only have to respond and that's where planning and training I think go really well together.

so planning is important, what am I doing? Where am I going? And. A very loose five-year plan is not a terrible thing. Although five-year plans and 10 year plans have been debunked across the board within business, because it puts you in front of the map instead of feeling and looking at the terrain.

Whereas working with something organic, working with a values-based approach, you're talking about the importance, Working with what do I want to be and who do I want to be in the future? And I think that's what you've alluded to, which is again, a tool of sovereignty, that I use with clients of making decisions for future Diego.

So today you make a decision for future Diego what's future Diego, really going to want looking back on 2019, when it comes to podcasts, is it going to be, another. Vege a podcast, another livestock, or it's going to be an idea, a touchstone that he can go back to in real time and go. This is where my thinking was, mid January, 2019, how awful was I?

Cause we're always off and that's where you and I have taken the ideas of holistic life context and decision making and made them tangible. We do these public, podcast and we say what our work is and where we're going. And I went back and I listened to the other podcast and got a sense of what I was talking about last year.

And it's remarkable what happens when you vocalize it externally and how close you are to those conversations going throughout a year.

Diego: [00:42:47] You know as I get older, the one thing I. I'm starting to realize that I pay attention to more than other people. Maybe this is my special visualization that I have on the world that I don't think everybody has is, I noticed the passing of time and the development of things, particularly related to children, because I think when we grow older, for most of us, we're the frog in the boiling water.

We don't notice the temperature getting warmer. We don't notice ourselves getting older because another day is another day. It's not, you're 30, then you're 40 tomorrow. And you notice everything that goes along with it. And I really notice it in my kids, particularly my oldest daughter, she's grown a ton in the past year.

She's seven now. And. I just start to think. Okay. Like I only have so many, I have a very finite amount of time of what I'll call childhood innocence in her, where she'll have fun, just being silly and doing things and doing kids stuff, because she's very close to the tipping point where she goes from young child into kind of like preteen where the mindset changes.

And I'm noticing like how close the line could be. Obviously, I don't know where it is, but it's wow, I really have to respect this time. And that means like dialing back. Yeah. Other stuff in life to do stuff with her. So I did something I've never done in the past. I went on the calendar and I booked off one day a week.

There's one hour. That is like our time where we can do stuff on the calendar 52 weeks a year. And you might say, it's only an hour a week, but if you're not doing anything or you don't have it on there, an hour is it might as well be 24 hours. It's a big change. And I also want to be able to do a lot of kid things like.

we have Lego land, very close to us. And if you're a local, you can get a season pass for really cheap, like a hundred bucks. It goes every day of the year, if you want for a hundred bucks. And I want to be able to do that while she is still in this younger phase and can enjoy some of the real kiddish stuff and I can live vicariously with her and experience that.

But if I want to take some days to go there, let's say 15 days out of the year, like I have to be able to have that time and maybe more importantly to be able to leave and go there and not feel guilty about leaving, like leaving my phone in the car, turned off and live in the moment that's there. So again, it's going back to that life bandwidth thing, but thinking about your accent, seeing�

One of my daughters have behavioral issues. It illustrates how fragile our time is now and how things are today with our current capacity. And it can change any time. So why not maximize what we have now and do what we have now and get as much like squeeze the washcloth as much as we can getting every dropout of it now.

So when that change inevitably comes, whether it's an accident, a death, a mental thing, w a sickness that we won't have squandered, what came prior to that? So my, that, grow a long worded way of saying like that, how I'm designing 2019 to use this time wisely by focusing on what I have to. And that means the most important stuff.

In terms of the business side, but then also leaving enough bandwidth to focus on the other important stuff, which is the personal stuff. Like I want to enjoy life some and step back and not feel like I'm working all the time.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:46:52] I think what you're talking about at an essence is about metrics and kids, and I'm just training and working with a new puppy. When you're going through the juvenile stage of biology, the metric is apparent.

You see your kids grow, you see them taller, you see them change their facial structure. You see them change their linguistic structure, their mind, their fine motor skills, all of that is shown. And same thing with my puppy. I see moments of intelligence in her eyes as opposed to just biting and pooping and peeing everywhere.

I see those moments where she considers the command and thinks about and goes, Oh, okay, those are metrics. And what we are either inherently, really, really not good at which I don't think is the case, or we are trained not to think about and create, which I think is more. So the case is creating gross and fine metrics to show progress for ourselves.

To me, that's an, a really important piece is to understand what our personal metrics are. Is it days, on skis? Is it days hiking in the mountains? Is it, the ability to lift wood without a pain in your back? simple metrics, and then starting to take those conversations and ask, okay, is anything getting in the way of those metrics? Is anything getting in the way of. The hour I have with my daughter a week, tell you off the bat, going to be one of the most important investments you'll have made in her life is to give her that solo dad time.

She'll look back at that following years, you'll develop your own secret language. You'll develop your own secret conversation. That will be really important to the two of you and into what you do. Recently I was working with a relationship within my work and, there's some minimums, there's a minimum of a single date night, a week of preferably two there's research that shows that 90 minutes of talking about nothing in particular, just talking about the week, talking about the day per week is the minimum for maintenance.

And there are these minimums that we found over time, and of course, mileage will vary. And you who was listening and thinking that's too much or too little for me or. Are probably the exception, but there are these metrics and these mediums that we need to fulfill within daily living, not just for ourselves, but for the people around us to keep those connections alive and to keep ourselves happy and, and directed.

I think that's a big thing that folks forget is that if we lose that happiness factor, if we lose that joy factor, then the direction, the motivation, the tank drains really quickly, I'm finally getting along or getting around to reading, lost connections by, Johann Hari, all about the main causes of depression.

And, they're very simple antidotes. And so much of that is lost connection. Lost connection with self, lost connection with job, meaningful work, and really having that connection. Bravo to you for taking that step to give that time to your daughter. I'm currently giving about three to six hours to a puppy a day. So I think, I think we may have different outcomes at the end of the year, but, I'm sure it's time well-spent either way.

Diego: [00:50:00] Yeah. Date nights, another one that I, we calendared in two a week and it's something we hadn't done in the past. It was just take it as you can, but. When life gets in the way, it's an easy thing to let slide and I'm trying to hold my calendar is sacred, where if it's on it, it will get none.

And I think what's not written down on a calendar, assuming there's some discipline in play. Like it won't get done. Because if you have kids, or you have puppy or a job that's highly demanding, like the optional stuff. When something potentially deemed more important comes up, like just gets, it's thrown out the window and this didn't come easy for me.

Like I'm somebody who likes to take on projects and likes to do work. And I think I definitely burned out last year and I realized something needs to change here big time. And I took a bunch of time off over Christmas. As much downtime as I could, because really, I say I own a business, but I own a job.

So I have to be present at least in a minimalistic sense to ship things for people. But I reduced the rate at which I was shipping and it takes a couple hours a day, two hours a day working is a lot less than eight and it was unbelievable. Like I felt like I was in college and I had, the winter break of three weeks off and not doing anything.

And I had forgotten like how great it was just to be like, what do we want to do today? Let's go do something. Let's play games with the kids. Let's enjoy stuff. So in the scramble, you know that this is something I talked about in recent podcasts.

It's like this entrepreneurial trap, you leave a corporate job to become an entrepreneur because you want to get out of the corporate regime and take control of your own destiny, but then you become the entrepreneur and you create your own mini corporate world that takes your control away or takes away you being able to control your own destiny because you become so invested in that work and you lose what you tried to create in the first place.

And I have a note right in front of me. I want to do an episode on how my life would be different if I still had a corporate job. And I think in a lot of ways it would be better. And I'm somebody who is very against corporate jobs, if they're not your thing, but another episode for another day.

So yeah, I tried to step back and take that time off and taking that time off, I realized I'm not losing anything. That's the other thing, I think Tim Ferriss talked about this in his book. He started some supplement business early in his career. He was so worried if he leaves that it would all fall apart.

It's like I dialed back my hours. I didn't do like emails every day, nothing crumbled, nothing fell apart. It was all fine. And I think a lot of times like our fears of not touching stuff so much are unfounded. It's like you don't have to stare at the water while it's on the stove to ensure that it boils. Like you can just turn it on, walk away, come back sometime later and the water will be boiling, just like our work will keep going.

Javan Bernakevitch: [00:53:24] So much of that I think is ego�people need us, people want us, if we don't show up, we'll be letting people down projections that we have upon our work or ourselves.

And the core of it is that none of us is indispensable. Like it's, none of us absolutely needs to go and do our work on a daily basis. There'll be people who miss us and there'll be people who miss our work and all of that. But there's a key word here that we're both talking about, which is feedback is being really open to feedback and hearing that feedback for what it is, not what we want it to be or what we don't want it to be.

And feedback is an important thing when we're talking about life design and direction. and listening to that feedback time and time again for myself over these, this past year, working with the life design clients I have on mindset strengthening or decision making or business design, time and time again, the responses�

Cause I do this throughout the work. I say, what's the impact of working? What do you enjoy about working together and what don't you? And so much of the individuals that have come to me have said, we've we listened to all of your podcasts with Diego and the podcast you've done with the sample hour and other podcasts.

And we've listened to them multiple times, and we really liked that. And we loved that one on one. We have with you. We love that conversation we have with you. And if you ever think of doing a more dedicated podcast, we would listen religiously. And I've heard that for a couple of years and I went off and I did this great podcast with Rob Davis called uncertified rational, where me and him just jammed. Life, got busy and for both of us, and we did the first pilot for we, haven't got a couple more that have been recorded and haven't been put through because of our schedules.

I developed this great podcast with, Susan Cousineau about the science of permaculture. Very heady stuff took a month or two to actually do one episode. She became a mum recently. And so we dialed way back on that. And what's so interesting is I'm at this crossroads where, when I think about getting on a podcast, I think about getting on a podcast with you.

I think about this type of conversation, because this is the type of conversation. I get excited to get on the mic about I'm stoked afterwards. And I think about what we could do next, and we've talked a little bit about making something regular, but as usual, life gets busy.

And it's taken me a long time to think, wait a second, I'm still outsourcing the control of that. What if I just adopted that? It was my podcast. I brought in these individuals to do different conversations about a broad variety of things. I've really taken a lot of lessons from you and permaculture voices, which is have a container that can contain your interest and your desires, so that way you don't have to segment, you can do what I think Ferris has done really well, which is, Hey, this is this type of episode.

If you don't like these episodes, skip. Which feels really great to say in my head. I don't know if it'll feel great to say when I start doing this, but to say, listen, this is going to be about this.

And if you don't like that tune in next week, we're going to be doing something different, but I'm doing this for me. This is for my excitement and my enjoyment. And I'm talking to X and X about depression this week, or I'm talking to X about, doing wastewater treatment. And those are the things I like to talk about.

So those are the things I'm going to talk about and. I think for me, it, I don't know if this is true for anybody else, but we forget that life is completely made up. Completely made up. We started with agriculture 10 to 14,000 years ago saying this is the best way to make food. We know nutritionally that's not the case.

So obviously that's a fiction world reporting. And as we move along, we think, I can't do a podcast about everything I wanted to talk about. And the question is, why not? If you love doing it, if you bring your enthusiasm to it every week, it doesn't feel like work. You're stoked to put the time, the money and energy. What's the downside?

And it's interesting that as we give this medicine to others, or more specifically, as I give this advice to others, I was removed from that to listen to it, to myself, to actually go, Oh, wait a second. This is what I really enjoy to the point to where, what if I'm in a place where this is up and running and I can just call you and be like, Hey, do you got an hour?

You don't have to do anything. Let's just come and talk about what's up. That's a whole different situation than. Putting it on somebody else's time. So it's really interesting to listen to feedback and to become highly sensitized. I think that's another piece that I don't want to do a whole other conversation and run on and not give you a chance to speak, but becoming really sensitized to ourselves to really feel what it feels like when we go through a process and go, I'm doing this to do this. I'm not doing this because I love it.

Diego: [00:57:59] I'm in maybe a position where this is a lil lazier, but I think anybody can do this. I can do. A couple podcast episodes with you a year and that's good. I feel like I'm doing it. I don't have to record 52 episodes with you a year and feel like, okay, that itches fulfilled.

I think sometimes just doing it a couple old times or trying it, or getting it out of your system is enough. And sometimes maybe the pushes, like you gotta go huge with it in order to exercise it. And it's let's just do that. We get the enjoyment out of it. If that's all the enjoyment that comes out of this podcast, so be it.

That's how I look at it and that's how this episode falls in and I wanted to do it with you. I'm going to enjoy doing it with you. I don't care how many people listen after this. The feedback I get, or the listens that come with that, had no relevance on my decision for doing this episode. I just know from doing enough of these, like someone will benefit, which is great. But once we hang up, it's done. That was good. Mission fulfilled right there.

Now I have to do some work to make it happen, but you don't have to commit to everything. And it's just, I look at life and all the shiny things we can go after now and do, and instead of maybe going and buying all the equipment, can you just go you really want a garden? Do you have time to garden? Can you just go volunteer at somebody's farm one day a week and get the itch that way? So you're like getting these things out of your system without eating up too much of your capacity.

One thing I'm going to, I'm going to double back here a little bit, cause one thing you brought up earlier is Marie Kondo. I also love her work, the life changing magic of tidying up. It's been something that's really changed how I approach stuff and non-physical stuff in life. And I started going around, like my house and looking at stuff that I had of, this is something I bought two years ago and it's in its original box. Unopened.

And it's basically like the equipment to run a hobby and there's a lot of these, so it could be something like beer making or gardening. And I had that we'll run to this stuff and say, am I going to do this? If not, this thing needs to get out of here and along with the thing going out, I need to export the idea out of my head and just say I'm abandoning the idea of growing mushrooms, the equipment I bought I'll sell it, donate it, whatever.

That's a sunk cost. Let's get it out of here. I want it off the list because that's one thing I tried to do mentally is. Not just refine down what I am doing, but to get the want to do list refined down to, I don't want this big, heavy balloon of things I want to do in the future. Like over my head anymore.

I want to be like, this is what I'm doing. I'll figure out. New, want to do is as I go forward in life because my kids are going to get older, I'm going to get older. Things are going to change. There's no sense in me saying five years from now, I want to grow mushrooms when I could be dead in five years.

So why let that burden me for the next five years? Like gardening was one of the things I prioritize. I said, look, I got this stuff. Some of it, it's just sitting here, I'm going to make a concerted effort to do it. And that means scheduling time for it. And if I'm going to do that means I'm not going to do these other things.

So this other stuff, the idea that it needs to get out of here and move forward into 2019 that way. So that's another way I really tried to pare back both the temptation by getting rid of the objects and the reminders of indecision, inactivity, bad decisions of the past, like the physical stuff that was just clutter and then sending away the idea of it also mentally. So I could focus on the things that are important.

Because I think it's one thing to quantify what's important. It's another thing to execute them and be fully immersed in them so you can think about them and enjoy them and feel like you're doing them because that's what you chose to do, not doing it because you feel guilty about doing it or feel like you're doing it at the expense of something else so it's lessening all that burden.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:02:45] Two things you've talked about there which are tools in the toolbox that I use on a yearly basis. More so now on a seasonal or monthly basis, which is a great habit I've gotten into but really across the board. And, and that's, clearing cancel.

And over 2018, 2019 and 2017, 2018 and 2016, 2017. I clear and cancel. I take a look at everything that is outstanding from 2018, and I look at, does it need to be canceled? Totally. Does it need to just come off the plate completely and it's for another time at another place? can I cancel it or can I clear it in some way, shape or form?

Can I put on the execution to somebody else? Can they do it? Can they create it? Can they operate it? And that's been fascinating. I do this every year with almost all of my online subscriptions. I take a look at my usage. I take a look at, was this a super valuable thing? If this was gone tomorrow, would I miss it? And I just start canceling things and, it's a bit impulsive, but it's again, based on the, does this bring me joy?

Diego: [01:03:46] I mean, impulsive? Have you ever canceled something and then regretted canceling it? I don't mean a subscription, like an activity.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:03:53] No, I've never regretted it.

Diego: [01:03:55] Yeah. See, that's the thing, like we're scared to cancel it, but then you do cancel it and you never regret canceling it.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:04:01] I want to make a bumper sticker that says quitting is for winners because there's so much value in stopping. There's so much value in saying this doesn't work. Something I've learned about exercise for me is that the exercise that works is the ones I enjoy doing. Bar none. if I enjoy doing it.

I'll do it. If I dislike doing it, I won't. And if I continue doing it, the things I love and I've said this multiple times. Yeah, we are what we do consistently, not what we do heroically. So the 30 day challenge is great, but it doesn't usually gets you into it, especially if it's not something that is close to your heart and you actually enjoy going and do it.

So if even if the ball bar is low, which is another tool I use with clients, it's just setting the bar ridiculously low, that moves you in the right direction. And so the things that I've canceled, I really haven't looked back on and been like, Oh, I wish I still had that. It's the things that hang on that I have regrets about.

The things that I was subscribing to either financially or mentally and subscriptions can be both. And I would say the mental subscriptions are way more costly than the financials. I'm still subscribing to an idea. I'm still subscribing to a fiction. I'm still subscribing to a hope. And I think Requiem for a Dream is a great movie that showed that you can be addicted to hope.

that's problematic in a big way. And I find it very problematic, but quitting is not a problem. I think the main thing here. Scott Adams of Dilbert comic fame said it best was when you're looking at a project. Don't look at it at the ends of the project as being the point. But what is the skill and ability acquisition?

Cause you all have thousands of projects throughout your life and the podcast I've done with Rob with uncertified rational, the podcasts I've done with Susan, with the science of permaculture, the podcast I've done with you have given me an pardon, me have made me eligible to realize that One, I like it. Two, I'm not bad at it. Three, I feel more for it.

I get really jazzed about it. The fact that I get to talk about it, probably because I was going into radio anyways for university, I originally was going for a radio broadcasting degree. So there was an inheritance, the piece of me that wanted to do this. And I did the tape recorder as a kid and did the radio show and all the rest of that and made a big detour through a lot of other work to come back to it.

I enjoy this type of work and I get good feedback from it. So all of that builds skill or ability. And so now I'm in a place to be able to take a look back and go, okay, this is important. And also take a look at those podcasts and go, can they be rolled into a meta podcast, a podcast I've been playing with the name very simply just Better by Design, because I feel like that actually encapsulates both the life and the land and the message that I constantly come back to, which is it'd be better by design.

Be it in land or life for business, we can do it with intent. We can do it with. With Gusto, as long as we are willing to make changes, which is the design part, but that takes time.

And that takes observation. That takes reflection. And all of us, I think, would be really well-served to do two main major things. One highly sensitized yourself to your life, which means. And I don't mean don't be tolerant about other people. stop tolerating things within your life that are taking in an immeasurable amount of time, energy or sleep.

And if they're taking those three things, ask yourself, can I cancel this? Can I clear this? Can I morph this or change this or adapt this? or is this something I have to live with? Yeah. And what's fascinating is that there's very few things that we have to live with. Absolutely. And most of what we think we do is complete societal programming.

Diego: [01:07:38] Yeah, I really liked the idea of clear or cancel. This is the succinct way of saying something I'm trying to do in 2019. Because I have a lot of projects long standing to do wishlist the items. That had been hanging out there for a while. The projects are everything from online to home scale.

And the home stuff, like I got to get it done. a room that's half painted eventually should be painted before, my wife just goes nuts and says, what are we doing? Yeah, this is ridiculous. So I, and trying to go through and look at all like the open, safe, physical realm projects that I have and say. Do I need to finish it.

And that means me. That might mean hiring it out or do I just say I'm not taking this on? And that might mean I made money. I bought materials for it, but I'm just not going to do it today. It's going to be lower on the priority list because that's another burden I felt in past years is I can start stuff and I don't always see it through to.

Total completion. And then you end up with all these open loops and in those open loops are like, like the Medusa heads luring you in and you just, you get tangled up in them and you can't get out. So I want to close those out before I take on anything new. So if I take on something new, say around the house, it's gotta be like something broke.

Oh, we have a leak that has to be fixed versus we want to change this. But we're not going to change it until every other thing on the list is done. Same thing with stuff online. And I did this with all the businesses I have this year for the first time ever. And I did it with the people who I partner with.

I did it with Curtis. I did it with Darby. I came up with in my mind's eye, a bunch of projects. Things that I felt had been hanging around for a while. And I listed them as, topic one through topic X and went through the list with them each and said, Hey, this is topic one. Here's where I see it.

Is this a kill it? Or is this something we do? If we do it? What is the next step? When is the next step? And who's doing it. Because I didn't want to just say we keep it. I wanted to say, okay, what is the path to completion? And some things were, yes, we want to keep this around. We'll revisit it in June. That goes on a list that doesn't get seen until June.

So it's no longer clutter in the way. And that was huge. So on a home level, on a business level, relieving myself of these burdens clearing and canceling stuff was big. So I'm going to steal that phrase going forward. I love that. Yeah.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:10:36] Yeah. Let's talk about open loops. Open loops is a conversation I've used for a number of years, personally and professionally and.

For folks overwhelmed folks saying they don't have a good work life balance almost without fail and without exception, I just want to think about that for a second and see if that's true of all the clients I've had is up in the case. Yeah, it has. if there's an issue of time, it's usually an issue of priority and usually an issue of open loops that there are things that are open within their mind that are not completed, but are cluttering.

Open loops just like open tabs on a browser take, especially if it's Chrome, Google, if you're listening, why does it have to take so much computer Ram? Really? Anyways, that's just a little rant. Open loops, take a lot of computing power they do. And just like open tabs, Oh, I'll come back to that. if you're thinking that if you're, it's a great example, if you're thinking I'll come back to that.

That's an open loop. That your mind is slowly working on. And there was, there's a reason why I don't. I get into conversations with people on Facebook. Normally. because they take a lot of my mind. And this was a great example. I posted something last week about, Elon Musk of all people who was talking about, are we done with this experiment about fossil fuels as being a viable form of fuel for transportation?

It seems like we should be done with this at this point. And somebody who I know and respect and love the work he's doing was like, Oh, Elon Musk. If only he was making positive ripples in the world. And I just thought what, What do you mean positive ripples? He's done an incredible amount of work for improving at the very least the optics of electric vehicles.

PV of solar, a photovoltaic PV creating charging stations. Really. And igniting the imagination of so many individuals. So I was just so surprised by this and it consumed to me for a week. And for some reason there was another request that came and on Facebook. Hey, would you talk about this social issue?

And I started to think about it and I realized this was a great example. I started to realize, I don't know enough about this topic to talk about it with any sort of authority. And they wanted me to give a blurb for something. And I just said, because I asked them a bunch of questions upon reflection on your answers.

I don't think I'm a good fit for this. I wish you the best. I'd love to read what you produce. Thanks so much. And that was a great no. That was a great no, and a great step back. And with this other post, I actually sent my reply directly to the person. And just said, if you ever want to talk about this on the phone, I'm really stoked to do so because we can talk about it.

It's over. I don't have to think about it anymore, but it's one of the reasons why I stopped interacting with people on Facebook because I just find it sucks the time it's great to post it's great to interact. There's a lot of great tools within Facebook, but that conversation created open loops in the week.

And I have a running list in Wunderlist, an application I use that says open loops, what are the main drains on my brain? And I look at it and I go, what could I kill this week? What I, what could I cure, clear or cancel, what can I get rid of and not have to think about anymore? And I do the same thing with my computer now on my downloads folder.

I try to keep it zero within it. My desktop, I try to keep a zero inbox, try to keep it zero because all of those are open loops. And I know a lot of people think, that's impossible. It is. If you're thinking on a weekly basis, if you're thinking about a yearly basis, like I'd like to get to a zero inbox in five years, or I'd like to get to I'm getting through all my downloads in a year.

Cause I was terrible. I didn't think I had 360 different items in my download when I started doing this two years ago. It really does clear up the mental space. You don't have to think about things. You don't have to trip over things, and it's the things that you don't have to trip over anymore that are really the big improvements over a year span.

Diego: [01:14:22] I think a big part of that goes to something we've talked about in previous episodes of stopping yourself from ever having to get too deep into commitment of having to think about it. Short way of saying, just say no to it. And to begin with, if I download this, it's going to be hanging out in my download folder once it's there, I'm going to have to either stress about it, being there and put it somewhere.

And I got to figure out where to put it or categorize it, or I have to do something with it, watch it, read it, use it. So it goes back to the top of the chain. You want to avoid that stress? Do I download this? Am I ever realistically going to need this?

Is it going to make my life better dot dot dot? Because you know the macro in a lot of this and what we've talked about. Is it all requires time to analyze past experiences, time to think about your personal sensitivity to bandwidth right now, time to think about what's important. If you're just doing so much that you don't even feel like you have the time to sit down and reflect, like that's a problem, or if you don't have the time to allocate to just doing the reflections, say you do have the time, but you're not prioritizing like the reflection.

What are you doing? It was something we were talking about offline, there's all these schemes for organization. And this is a kind of a pull off of a Marie Kondo ism where she'll say something like.

In much more polite terms. Like the whole organization field is just bullshit. Because you're taking a bunch of stuff in just because you're putting it in order or a nice little trays or these types of things, it doesn't solve the problem of you have too much stuff to begin with. So she's going to the root cause of saying, just get less, forget, organizing more, get less.

When I look at scheduling, it's the same way. David Allen, getting things done, system, whatever the system is like, you can plan your week, ad nauseum ad infinitum. But if there's too much crap going on to the calendar or you're trying to do over a shaky mental space or a shaky physical space, doesn't matter how good the system is.

It's not going to execute. And last year I struggled with this. That's why calendaring never worked as well as I wanted it to for me, one, because I had to deal with these life unknown's and I didn't have the breathing room in my schedule to deal with them and two, there's probably a few years.

I also didn't respect them enough to say, okay, spending time with my daughter and helping her each day is going to require a lot more time than I think, three hours a day. That's three hours less I have to work with. Okay. What else is important? Like thinking of all this stuff, and then looking at this like week that has now gone from 18 hours a day times seven, whenever that math works out to and saying, okay, that leaves six hours Monday through Friday, each.

Where are you going to put everything? And then you start to block stuff out on there and you realize, Oh, okay, this is all not gonna fit, so instead of trying to shove more stuff in or do stuff more efficiently or outsourcing it. I just tried to approach it with, let's just say no to it in the first place. Let's clear and cancel it, get it off. Let's not do it at all. I don't want to worry about it and get the schedule down to stuff that's going to work, but it's the most important stuff on the schedule.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:18:14] Exactly. Exactly. And the getting stuff done process starts with eliminate delegate and eliminate.

What can we get rid of? What can we give to somebody else? Almost all of these systems start with elimination starts with, there is so much noise in the world today that it's easy to pick up extra. I need this. I want that this is essential, but reduction designed by subtraction. Is one of the most useful forms of design because it removes the number of parts that require maintenance that require capital to create in the first place and the require thought process.

One of the more important routines or habits I've adopted over the last five years is intermittent fasting. You want to reduce your food bill. You want to reduce the amount of time that you produce food. When you make food. Cut out a meal cut out two. Again, mileage may vary does not fit all sizes.

It's an idea about subtraction it's idea about design subtraction, and I have been better, therefore eating less eating later in the day, eating earlier in the evening and having a small feeding window. There's a bunch of great research that just came out, talking about how intermittent fasting might be the, might be the key to old age.

And when you think about it from a historical perspective, we didn't have access to food all the time. We didn't have refrigerators. We weren't the neck rivers that went, we are today eating dead flesh. That's been preserved or months, sometimes years after it's been harvested and preserved, we eat living food that was alive and in front of us.

And that's a really interesting point that the more we emulate our nature pre a lot of technological innovations, at least for myself, the better I feel the better my relationships are, the better my interactions are now. All of that helps with my day to day. And when, again, working with clients and interacting with them, this is an interesting piece just recently that's come up.

We have forgotten some of the. The ecological ramifications of life. We've looked at life where we've been programmed to like to see it as goalposts or to see it as finish lines. There's no finish line. There's no shoreline, ecologically speaking in life. The only finish line is, when you die and after that, who knows, but up until then, that's about it.

There's only mountain peaks and valleys. And as we're moving through a particularly boggy trough, within this mountain peak and Valley bottom Valley trough situation, as we're moving through this one trough in, through the swamp, we may get really overwhelmed by the leeches as we move out of it until the right perry.

And we might get overwhelmed by the mosquitoes and. We might get stressed out as we're moving up the mountain, feeling muscles we've never used before. Barely making it over to what, to us is a mountain, but in the distance, when we finally get up to that peak, we see we got a lot more ahead of us. What's interesting is that on the other side of that mountain, as we're moving down, it's easier than it was one we're going downhill, but two we've experienced it before we've experienced the strain, the stress we've experienced, the mosquitoes we've experienced the leaches we build.

We've built processes and attitudes, more importantly to deal with them. So when we get to the next mountain and there's always the next mountain, this is something that time and time again, I feel that society has missed programmed individuals. And from my own client work is almost ubiquitous with every client I work with.

They forgotten that life is a series of checks, challenges that have inherent, Problems that we either take us off ringers. We take as challenges. And once we have this mental model in check this idea of hiking this mountain and coming down the backside, and we applied this idea of subtractive design or what's important, we start really thinking about foot placement.

We start really thinking about what goes on our back because we have to carry it up and down. And if you've ever. Read or listen to anybody who's done any of the big through hikes on the Pacific coast trail or the Appalachian trail. There's this wonderful moment at the first little bit of both ends of the trail, both on our North side, directional height, where people shed, they shed gear, they change out gear, they change out systems.

They change out tools and they jute. They do it judiciously. They take out everything that doesn't work because. It's on your back. The problem with modern living is that a lot of what we take on emotionally or spiritually or physically or intellectually is either only on our back for a little while. So we don't really say, Oh, that's really stressful.

And so we don't really take the more ties cost of that stress or it's taken on by somebody else for the most part of the time. And then we take it on, even our systems within our homes. There's a great example. We press a button in a way goes our dedication and our urination. It just moves away from us magically.

in many places over the last couple of weeks, there's been a number of storms within Canada. And people have realized that. That button, that they were relying on somebody else to take that load, which I didn't think about before I said that, but there you go. that. No longer is the case because you've been relying on somebody else.

So do you have the skills, the ability, the process to be able to deal with your shit literally and figuratively, and it's the same conversation? That's the great thing about if you get to a good mental model, if it transcends all of these conversations is that you're going to have to hike up. You're going to have to hike down.

So be very careful on what you take with you because, and be careful about your training. Be careful about the shoes. Be careful about that, how you look at the terrain because that all skews, how well you get to the top. If you get down to the side or if you give up.

Diego: [01:23:48] Yeah. One of the best quotes I heard last year was actually from a previous episode of top chef.

And one of the more experienced chefs was talking to a younger chef on there that was competing. And the younger chef was somebody who was definitely a go getter, ambitious, trying a lot of stuff, new, a lot of techniques, pushing the limits in artists in a way. In the more experienced chef who had a restaurant based upon his heritage, did one style of cooking and became great at it said to the younger one.

you have a bag of tools bigger than you can carry. You need to be careful what you put in that bag. Like it still sticks with me. Like I can see him saying it. I could hear him saying it. And it really went right to the core of what I'm doing, because I started to look at everything that I'm doing and, from hobby skills to hard skills that are required to a business.

And I started to think about how big is the bag that I have. Am I continuing to put stuff in it that I don't need to am I. Shining and polishing tools in that bag that shouldn't be in the bag to begin with. And what tools do I really need in that bag to enable me to move forward? What do I have to jettison from the bag to carry it?

And I said, started thinking about this idea of, everybody goes into 2018, 19, or a new year with Oh, I'm going to dominate the F out of 2019. I'm going to crush it. And it's what if it was just, and I feel like that in a way too, because you want the momentum, but what about this idea of the year of zero growth?

Meaning not physical growth, not mental growth, but we're not going to go out and trying to grow business and purposely we're not going to go try and do more. We're going to maintain. Improve clearing cancel those types of things. We're just going to focus on what we have and I guess eliminate improve it, refine it versus trying to stack more on.

And I started to think about that with everything that I do. What if I didn't try and add on anything new? What if I just went into the year saying business as usual? But let's just work with what we have and holistically improve it. And I suddenly realized like that itself is a massive amount of work and a lot of that stuff is really important stuff.

How do we then think we're going to do all that and take on new stuff? And I think it's this trap we fall into of, we lose sight of doing what we do better becoming a master at something and finishing stuff, becoming fulfilled with something and just chasing the new thing. Like the new has the excitement.

And I think we leave a lot on the table. And maybe we don't get the results that we wanted to with a business, with a thing in life, because we didn't give it all the attention time, effort required because we just tried to do too much. So yeah, like this year of zero growth, loosely, socially speaking.

it's been something that's really resonated with me.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:27:28] I love it. I love it. Quote, I love the idea that you've got more tools in your toolbox than you can carry. I love the connection between that and restaurants that have menus that are 15 pages long, which is almost the first thing. When I've watched those cooking shows what the expert goes and slashes down to just.

The best, taking a look at the cream and what we're talking about here, Diego cause the cream for everybody is value. It's the values that you have. That's the creed. We are the happiest. We are most exuberant and we're normally the most effective one we are living through and by or values, we get excited by it because it's a fulfillment of.

A self-prescribed prophecy. And for folks that are like, I don't even know my values. you're starting at more of a story where one base, it doesn't mean you can't, it's a really important piece to do, and it's a really important piece to live. Yeah. Because then that comes to just value-based scheduling value based living value-based working.

And constantly refining and reiteration reiterating part of me. And I think that's where, Darren already have the agrarians move has this wonderful adage of let's make farming boring again, instead of trying 14 new crops this year. And. And new technology and new machinery, just go with what worked last year and make one change, maybe two this year, but that's it make sure that the system is good and repeatable and functional and then try again and then try again and then try again.

But constant iteration, constant experimentation every single year is pretty drowning in terms of the amount of effort it takes. It's like trying to swim in a VAT of molasses. All you're doing is working and churning and. When we come to this idea of zero growth is an important thing and an important process to take on, especially if you're taking a look at one area of your life, I'm not taking on any more hobbies.

This is something very true of folks, in their twenties. I found fidelity. You can hobby after hobby, and you just sitting there Just pick one. Yeah. But there's so many, and I've been told I can be anything and do anything again. Terrible advice. Whoever decided to put that into the world sphere.

I don't know if it was on purpose to make sure that there was a bunch of people who would just constantly eat up their life, energy with everything that was out there constantly starting to buy and interact, but a terrible advice instead of, what are we excited for? What makes us come alive?

What. Could we talk about at end's length about, and what do we love looking at the other day, I was working on a pre purchase property assessment, looking at the best place within 3000 acres of land. And I spent an entire, our night there on my night off when nobody was around the house and I could have been doing anything.

I was just there going through Google earth pro and going through all my layers and all of the data, because it was just exceptionally good. Fun for me. No that's feedback. That's really good court and feedback for folks to take to heart and to go. If we are going to approach this idea of a zero-gain year a zero-growth year.

And looking at something like that and looking at four or five other hobbies that we think we're going to develop where we think we're going to play with to potentially be competing with somebody else or to have another offering. Why? What's the point when you have something like that? That's so interesting to you or to me for that example.

We have these examples all the time, Diego, I'm sure you've experienced them time with your kids or certain things that make you interested or come alive. I used to call, I still call them zones of brilliance, but we don't spend that time to really look for those things. And you end up with a lot of people with dissatisfaction of life or dissatisfaction with meaningful work, because they've never thought about it before.

Diego: [01:31:08] Yeah. I think hobbies are easy to start, but hard to do well. And I'm a hobby accumulator, as I've already talked about in this episode. So then I realized that now I'm sorry. I'm Diego. I'm hobby accumulator, and I'm trying to change.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:31:24] Hi, Diego.

Diego: [01:31:27] So one way I'm trying to mitigate that going forward. And this is with a lot of newer ideas that.

I don't see an immediate impact for say some new opportunity comes up for Paper Pot. I see how it can fit in and okay. That's a different story, but I want to take on a new hobby. I park it in the back of my head and say I'm going to sit on this for a few weeks. if I remember it in a few weeks, I'll reevaluate, but I'm not going to act on first impulse because with the Amazon app on the phone and podcasts and YouTube videos, it's real quick to dive right in so fast.

And then suddenly you've committed yourself where if you just say. Interesting. I like it. I think I want to do it. Let's park it, ice it. And let's see if it comes back around. No Paulo Coelho what's important remains. So doing that as helped narrow it down. And the advice I try and give people, say on a farm thing is people say, I'm going to do this year.

Try something new, implement a new management system. And I always go to them. If you're going to do this thing new this year, what are you not doing this year? And sometimes they they'll be like, what do you mean? Okay, so you were busy last year, running around like a chicken with your head cut off.

And now you're deciding this year, you're going to do more. How is that going to be better? And I look at it like at least a one for one, if not a one for 1.5, because, we always assume it's going to take one unit when we all know it's going to take 1.5 or two units. So if you're going to add something new, you need to be shedding at least equal, probably more than equal to make sure that you can do it well, because if you can't do it well, why do it like I'm.

This is the danger of me taking on hobbies is I do it. And I get frustrated that I can't do it enough. That's depressing. That makes me angry. Like I get cranky and snippy when it's like, Oh, I plan on doing this. I can't do it. I never should have committed to doing it. Or I suck at it because I can't dedicate enough time to it.

If you can't be good at it, if you can't put enough time at it to master it and really do it, should you do it? And that's where I go to get into renting a hobby, go take a one-off class. Something that is like commitment, live vicariously on YouTube for a night, but don't hit the buy order on anything

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:34:03] that could be a whole show on him in and of itself, going in and seeing those conversations.

I'm very similar and there's a recent example. That makes good sense. And especially from the conversation about taking time off over December, and that being a bit of an inspiration for your conversation, but for years, I've wanted to constantly learn about music on an eyes. I've got my mom to thank for forcing me into piano lessons, which I didn't want to do when I was very young, but very grateful for it because it led to a life of musical, just musical inspiration and an exploration.

I sung in choirs. I played the trombone. I played the saxophone. I played the bass trombone. I played around with the didgeridoo. I picked up the guitar, about a year after being introduced to a bass guitar, I thought, I really want to try it out. I want to see what it's like.

And so something that I've done, with my roughly yeah. Month off for Christmas is I pick up a skill or pick up a hobby that I want to experiment with and see what it's like. And I pick it up and give it some focus. So this year I picked up online lessons and I rented up. A bass guitar.

We have an amazing company here in Canada. Maybe it's in the state called long and McQuade where you can rent musical instruments for the super cheap. I think I rented the amp and the bass guitar and the chords and the strap for, I think 30 bucks, 35 bucks got the application to work with the lessons.

So I had my own personal teacher and every night over the holidays when we were in the law between food and games and I come back into my office and I would pluck away at the bass guitar and it was amazing. It was so cool to learn something totally different and to learn that amazing, that amazing bass riff from another one, bites the dust by queen Leo, things that you can recognize and feel that thrill of learning and.

Realize that, wow, there's a real, there's a real learning curve. When you go from six strings of a guitar and a notation of that to four strings on a bass guitar and just see the problems and the bass guitar is going back next week because I've looked at my schedule and I'm like, yep. It was a really good time.

I'll probably pick it up again when I give myself another break and pick it up for a week or two. Until it's something I want to do daily currently. I don't want to do it, but I'm a big fan of renting. I'm a big fan of trialing. A good friend of mine, Tod Hargrave, said this, date your niche. Don't fall in love with it. Don't. Think you're going to be with it forever and ever, date, your niche in business. See if it's a good idea. And I would say date all niches date. If it's a good idea, see if it works, see if you're excited, do a small pilot, keep the bar low, but that's a great example of exactly what you were talking about.

And the other example I have is that because of the cause of the. the accident and some of the post concussive symptoms I've been having, I've been told to stay off blue light devices. so that's any illuminated AMOLED or LCD screen. My phone, my tablet, my computer screen, my monitor screen.

There's a lot of them. And so I said, what about reading? What about reading on the page? And the specialist I'm working with says, you want to keep down the brain on the load, but you're two, three months past when we would be really concerned about that. So yeah, you can read. So I said, what about e-ink?

Cause that's something that's interesting. Is that something that I should look into and they said, yeah, take a look at it. And Ian, cause basically a physical screen. I'm an evangelist now about eating because it's physical pigmentation, black and white and you run on an electric current through it and it comes up to the top.

So here I was, and I tried a number of things, of devices. I took a look at a Kubu forma. I took a look at, I think I'm saying that wrong Kobo. I took a look at a light book Mars, which is an e-ink Android tablet and came back to Kobo, really small, simple reader called a Clara HD super simple, cheap, just so simple.

It allows me to read articles from, from the web as you would on paperback, which I think is the best way to read, an online article ever created. But, it was a long experimentation phase and. Another thing I've learned that's really important is, really get rid of the idea of a magic bullet, a silver bullet.

You're going to pick something up. It's going to be perfect. I finally found out where that came from. It came from one of the very first, Malaria medications. and it was German. originally this idea that you could shoot in a crowd and your bow would find the, would find the criminal. It was originally called magic bullet and it got morphed into silver bullets, but.

It takes time. I think people forget that it takes time to see if this is a good fit to see if it makes good sense, and to really take your time within that, not the jumping head, hands and feet at the drop of a hat. And I think that's partly what you're talking about. Oh, that's interesting. I'm going to spend a night on YouTube.

Then I'm going to buy all the books. Then I'm going to listen to all the podcasts only, and still that's way better than buying all the equipment to be sure that's definitely lower on the scale, starting to have a great end approach to some of these things is very intelligent. Yeah. One

Diego: [01:38:54] of the things I do now is as rain in the books, I've gotten rid of a lot of books very recently this month. And I do not now myself anymore to buy a book unless I guarantee I can read it right now, right away. Otherwise, it does not get bought. Same thing with a lot of stuff. I don't buy it unless it can go into implementation. Right away. The only exception will be like food, even with deals and sales and things like that, or free stuff on the side of the road.

If it does not have an immediate use, I don't want it because that's where I think the danger happens. Because once you acquire it does start like a little bit of its own mental process where it's like slightly pinging your I'm here. Use me do something with me. Let Home Depot, keep it on the shelf, let Best Buy, keep it on the shelf when I, they can hold that worry when I need it, I'll go get it.

And a lot of times, like you just don't end up needing it. I'm saving stuff. I would never even buy. Some of the books I'm donating were books on like I'm interested in the subject matter of. But I'm not interested in 250 pages of the subject matter yet. I popped on the book. So getting rid of them.

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:40:17] That's a great example. That's where my reading process came from. It came from reading through an entire book and realizing usually the books that I was recommended to read were difficult for me to get through. So I just started to read online summaries. Got the gist of it, watched a video to summary watched and read a summary and ask myself if this had any value.

And usually I would take a look at the table of contents, which you can almost always find, on Amazon. And if after that 20, 30-minute investment gave me what I needed and this is what happened with Cal Newport's book, deep work. I never read it. I read the basic conversation. I understood it.

I didn't need to dedicate 30, 40, 50 hours to it. And what I found now with an E-reader is that I'm reading a lot more fiction, which is regenerating my mind, which is increasing my imagination and giving me time to then turn back to this very skimmed way of digesting content, and taking the most important pieces.

And then going back to it, we are an incredible hoarding, society. I'm going to say Western civilization because I don't want to speak for anybody else. And I think Mollison had this right, any resource that isn't an action is a deed pollution, because it does take up time and space. And when I go through context with folks, we go through a process of looking through the eight forms of capital.

And one of them is the things in your life. And I talk about it directly in the online material, in the course that I have for folks that. That supports the one on one work. If we do it, or folks just take the online work. And it says right off the bat, your stuff takes time and energy. And if you have too much of it, it takes up too much time and energy, and it can be converted into other types of capital, sometimes financial capital, sometimes social capital.

You have something that. Some somebody else could have a great need of if it's sitting on a shelf, it's taking up space, time and energy. And that's where I think Kondo has been exceptional in her work is that she's realized that if you focus on joy, which is again an outside, it's about taking a look at the intrinsic motivation.

Does this bring me joy instead of. Maybe I'll need this one time in a blue moon when somebody comes by. But do I love using this thing and pulling it out or do I always have to go around this thing? Do I have to put it aside to find something else that then actually it goes back to the permaculture idea of zones and having things that you need all the time around you directly.

And I did this with my home screen of my phone the other day went through an entire process of simplifying to just the things I need on the home screen and simplifying the line art and moving it to a gray scale. So that my, that way, again, my phone, wasn't a very big distraction. all of these, everything we're talking about, this distraction, or this design by subtraction is.

Everything that we should have, I've been taught about. And I think we would have been taught about if we were built in. And built like cultivated grown, raised in a community of individuals who had good practices themselves. most of the connections I think, in our lives have been disassociated or skewed or moved into a place that doesn't focus on values upon your relationship with your kids on your relationship with yourself, on your relationship with the natural world.

And so much of these. Podcasts books, conversations that you and I think find ourselves in and on a daily basis is remediation. It's rehabilitation. It's recovery. Coming back to who we are as individuals and finding the joy in life.

Diego: [01:43:53] A hundred percent. And despite it being mid-January, it is not too late to correct 2019 the plan for 2019 to design 2019 for a year that highlights what you deem to be important.

To find joy and to clear and cancel things that don't lead to joy or aren't important. The take home message I want to leave here is just take some time to evaluate what you're doing. Get rid of the stuff that doesn't matter. Keep what matters under the filter of most stuff. Doesn't matter. Then take what's left and put it in a plan that can work for you.

you've given a lot of great advice in this one for people that want to dive in more outside of the podcast, learn more from you. What are the options they have and where can they go to reach out if they have questions or just want to chat?

Javan Bernakevitch: [01:44:54] Always happy to chat with folks. So if folks are interested, you can go to my website, allpointsdesigned.ca if you're interested more in the life design conversation you go to can go to allpointslife.ca, which will take you directly to that conversation.

Emails. javan@allpointsdesigned.ca on Instagram, on Facebook, happy to chat with folks. And, I am, I'm giving some time and some energy to a brand new podcast this year called better by design. And, I'm going to start highlighting these conversations cause I really do enjoy them. And maybe Diego you'll join me and lend your veteran experience to something like that.

But if you're. Keen to learn about that, or the other podcasts that I've been involved in, you can go to allpointsdesign.ca forward slash podcasts. And if you're interested in working together more than happy to chat, yeah. I have a 20 to 40 minute conversation with everybody who reaches out and we talk about what's going on and if it's good fit.

And, I just wish that everybody has a really exceptional year and takes the time the money. And the energy to really ask themselves some really important questions who am I what's important to me on my values. Who's important to me. And am I spending my time, money and energy? Likewise, because value based living is really what we're missing, in this day and age.

And the more you do that. The more joy you're going to bring yourself in the more joy you're going to bring other people I'll just finish by again, giving a big, thank you to you, Diego, for the work you do, and the invitation to come and chat. I always enjoy it. And it's just a big highlight. So thank you again for what you do.

Diego: [01:46:27] There you have it lessons from 2018. How they're going to play out in 2019 with Javin Bernanke of itch. If you want to follow along with everything that Javin is doing. Be sure to check them out on the links below. Just scroll down. You'll see links to his website. If you enjoyed this episode, if you think this episode resonated, please shoot me an email diego@permaculturevoices.com or hit me up on Instagram at Diego footer.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. I love doing this type of content. And I realized that it's not for everyone. And I realize a lot of people will dismiss this content at first glance or first listen. But I think that the people that truly listen and get a lot out of it really get a lot out of it.

So if you're one of those people who got a lot out of it, let me know. I'd love to hear more from you. That's all for this one. Thanks for listening until next time. Be nice. Be thankful. And do the work.

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