 You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary heart show Welcome to the barbell logic podcast. It is a Sunday principles edition. I am Matt Reynolds I usually hear my brother Chris is with me I'm actually really excited for this show and let me tell you why I'm I think I'm excited although I may be wrong in In the past I we have done shows Scott and I have done shows way back I think in like the 40s episode in the lake the 40 episode more like at 320 or something now Where we talked about things that bring us value and things that rob us of value and I want to be clear when we say value We don't literally mean monetary value although certainly some things might in fact bring you monetary value We're really talking about joy and I've said this I don't want to play Semantics too much, but but I have And I this is not mine. I'm stealing it from a guy. I really like but I Don't think of joy and happiness is the same thing. I Think of happiness as fleeting is something that doesn't last Our grandma grandma Peggy is sick and dying right now as a matter of fact by the time this comes out You and I will have lost our last grandma. It's kind of sad to think about and and so Our mom got called down to she flew down to Houston Yesterday to go be with her mom on her last days it appears. She's had a stroke and whatnot and so My mom is not happy today But our mom can still have joy at what the things are that bring her value And so to me these things that bring us joy bring us value bring us value regardless of our Situation in life and happiness is often more fleeting right if I stub my toe real hard or like the day that Kinsley broke her arm When we were all down at big Cedar Lodge like I'm not happy at all But like I can still be joyful in a lot of those things like it's not about like this fleeting thing that happens this afternoon right these are things that kind of Work whether whether I'm super happy or not and so one of the things that I'm excited about in this episode is I I'm assuming Hashtag not a fan that Chris Reynolds has not listened to that episode in the 40s to hear my specific things that I listed That were things that brought me value or robbed me of value. Is that true? That is true. Now, you're gonna know a lot of the things because you and I are really really close But I'm interested to see the direction you take this having not heard mine or Scott's to talk through some of those things so Take it away. You want to talk about the stuff that brings you value first You want to go back and forth? What is the format you'd like to take? That's a good question. I was thinking about that Let's hit a few things That are almost old and expired at this point that I don't even consider them anymore That robbed me of value. Okay But they were Look, I'm not even gonna pretend that I have a very close understanding of the common working Professional at this point life is that type of life has been gone for me for quite some time and so there are there are some complexities to that as things go along but When Matt and I started I mean like in life, we were literally quite literally in total poverty we grew up in in literally below the poverty line and and so You know, it's a it's a big move to go from there to the point of being retired at the age of 37 and And I've learned a lot along the way The one of the very first things that happened that I would consider sort of a luxury to remove Something that robbed me of joy was I stopped mowing my lawn so it's like so simple but like Goddamn it if every Saturday when you finally had a little bit of time to just sort of maybe Chill out and relax. You weren't out working on your lawn. Now some people love doing this. It actually brings them joy I and and that's okay, but I was never working on my lawn I was always trying to fix a broken lawnmower right for some period of time. We were broke. We didn't have nice Because we were broke so I was crappy lawnmowers. I'm trying to figure out how to you know And very figuring out how things work is fun once I know how they work And what I'm really doing is slicing my fingers open trying to work on the the motor of a of a of a push mower is not fun And so I got to the point where I realized that while it took me maybe a couple hours to knock out mowing my lawn paying somebody else to mow my lawn took them like 15 20 minutes and Didn't cost me very much and I got rid of that Many many many years ago and I say how long ago do you think you think when was the last time you mowed your lawn? It's been 10 years. Oh It's been longer than that. You hired people to mow your lawn in your early 20s. I guess then yeah, that's correct Yeah, as soon as the company took off enough that I $22 to pay somebody to mow your lawn That's right. I mean we sacrificed you know going to out to Taco Bell That's right a time or two right note in order to cover that have you noticed that there are people in your neighborhood We you know We both live in nice neighborhood sure you live in a little more of a spread out like you you've got kind of a Fairer you got a great big lot where your house is right right? My house are nice custom homes are not all that you know They're all different and stuff and we have tons of retired people But matter of fact most of my neighborhood is sort of upper-class retired people They all mow their lawns. I'm like guys a lot of people around here mow their lawns Seventy-two years old you have to mow in your lawn. It's I mean four outside I talked to grandpa about it once you know and and he was like I like mowing my lawn and I was like great if you like mowing your lawn, you should mow your lawn. Yeah, I agreed I Don't and I'm glad I didn't do it. And so as soon as I got my Saturdays back You know the value the net value increased to me was absolutely more than the $22 of pay by far more than the $22 the second biggest thing was My wife and I have really never we don't fight much I mean like we have disagreements here and there on a few topics, but you never find us we don't escalate in Arguments or anything like that, but if there were arguments in our early marriage It was about the house. It was about cleaning the house because her threshold for things need to be clean is very very blow meaning that if There are a few things out. It's time to pick up right Whereas I can let things accumulate for a while until they really start irritating me and then so Unfortunately for her that would mean that she spent a lot of time picking things up, especially once we had kids so the next big thing for us was we had to get somebody to Clean the house like a once a week, you know in the evening, you know Somebody's doing the floors. Somebody's doing the windows. Somebody's cleaning the glass like that kind of thing That's a night of my life once a week, you know, you could tell me that up and realize how much life you've wasted Doing that for me. No, join it whatsoever Also, we have slightly different standards about how to do things and so that would always be sort of an issue and it Disappeared sure the day after we so it was only a few years after hiring somebody to mow the lawn that we had advanced In in the world enough to be able to pay to have somebody come out and clean the house like once every Every other week, I think is is about what we typically do something like that And so those are two things that obviously completely robbed me of joy and value and the opportunity costs were massively There is far better for me. So my time so anything else very quickly I think what's interesting to note here is that in both of your first two examples You talked about the thing that you were having to do that robbed you of joy And my guess then is that then hiring those things out You actually needed to have your lawnmode and you needed to have your a clean house and probably having a mowed lawn and having a Clean house brings you joy and it now brings you joy to let someone else do that And so it's actually you took a thing that robbed you of joy and you replaced it with a thing that brought you joy that's right and Freed up time for the things that bring me the absolute most joy right which Which we can get into here in a minute. I think the more that I Look at my list here. I think I'm just gonna go through the robbers first We're just gonna have to all deal with all the things that robbed me of joy and then we can talk about those five joy We'll do that This this has been a long-standing thing for me And I think the more you I think it's very worthwhile to evaluate this I remember eating breakfast with you Matt and you and you bringing me your list of things that robbed you of joy and things That added joy, maybe it was an early list, but I think it's worth evaluating maybe semi-frequently because Those things change as you change over time and so this is one that you'll find interesting I am robbed by joy. I'm robbed of joy by reading the news. Yep. I hate the news I've come to decide that reading the news I think it may have been no seem to leave or something that said if you want to cure yourself forever of Feeling like you need to read the news just read last week's news for a year and Then you'll never do it again, right? Because what you realize is how many things are completely inconsequential and matter zero From that seemed a big deal critical the first 24 hours enormous Yeah, and the day like how are the headlines the headlines and you realize like everything about the news It's meant to get your eyeballs and it's meant to drive up your you know Your energy and and and create a rage machine. Of course, that's and when I say the news I'm not just talking about newspapers I'm talking about and newspaper sites. I'm even talking about things like Twitter and and other places a Facebook where people get news now. That's not to say those tools aren't valuable I still use Twitter from time to time. I kind of like it to do investment research sometimes There's a few little things like that but As far as reading that stuff just to get the news on daily basis because it's like fear of it's kind of like FOMO Right, it's a little bit of fear missing out on knowing what's going on like bullshit. I'm sorry You don't need to know all most of that stuff. Sure So reading the news robs me of joy, especially not a guy who at this point is hold up in his house and Retired like true. Who do you need to know? Who do you need to impress with your knowledge of the news at this point? Well, and the interesting thing is I mean, you know a lot of the I I'm in I was trying to mimic Some of what I had heard about the way that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger do their investment work And they all you know always talked about reading newspapers. Well, it turns out I guess Munger doesn't really read many newspapers. He Immediately moves into a book the book. He's gonna read that brings me a ton of joy. We'll talk about that later But news articles, you know any more especially the world has changed dramatically a lot of the news being written that we read It was written by somebody who puts out 20 articles a Week now you tell me you tell me how high quality it could possibly be For someone who doesn't know what they're talking about to write 20 articles a week They're just looking for eyeballs and they're looking for you know headlines inability to be objective as well, right? That's yeah, and a billy ability read It's so I mean it jumps off the page just how slanted everything is that that's on every end of the spectrum on every end Absolutely The other thing is I would say that I am generally Robbed of value by most home improvement projects That wasn't the case in my early life I wanted to understand how everything worked in my house, so I remodeled the 1911 bungalow when I was in my 20s and I learned how to do also remodeled. Yes. Yeah You helped me finish that because you had already gotten you were doing well, and I was still broke I was still a teacher a shop teacher and I would come during the summers and help renovate that house Yeah, I wanted to get that thing finished and there was a lot to do But once I understood how everything worked like I wanted to understand how the plumbing worked and the hot water heater and the electricity and all those Once I understood how those things worked None of that was was of interest to me at all anymore So now when I have to have anything done at all in my house, I just hire somebody to do it The other thing is like everything you I've ever wanted to do you always think it's gonna take you 10 15 minutes on a home improvement project It takes it takes five times that and you ruin six things in the process fall through the ceiling break All the stuff. I mean like it's just it's miserable. So this is yours and so I want to encroach as little as possible It's been interesting for me I wonder is if if you can think back to when you were you were running the business several years ago For me. I also don't want to fix anything around my house The house that I'm currently sitting in I will hire everything out. I do kind of like working in my yard now I don't mow my lawn. I don't mind mow my lawn in April and May The problem is at some point it gets to be July don't mow my lawn right the rural land that we have I Find a lot of value going out there and doing manual labor, you know taking the chainsaw out and cutting down trees and stuff And here's why Takes my mind off everything Healthier than heroin Right like I don't have to think about the stuff And so I don't know if you had some Distraction type things that you did back when you ran the business, but for me I was thinking man I worked my ass off one day last week with Rachel I mean we we cut brush and we use the chainsaw and I thought to myself. I didn't think about one stressful thing I didn't think about the business. I didn't think about dad dying I didn't think about you know, I didn't think any of that stuff. I just ran a chainsaw in the moment You have to be in the moment. Yeah, it's wise to be in the moment when you're running. Yeah, in fact It is Yeah, but yeah, no, I you know and we even cleaned up the woods behind our house as well And and I enjoyed that so a little bit of of that type of but you're not installing a ceiling fan No, no, I'm not installing right now. Yeah, I will screw that up It'll it'll be so much worse than then it would be if a professional did it. I hate shopping Shopping can't stand shopping. Don't want to physically go anywhere where I have to shop and Even really electronic shopping Unless it's for books, which I love I don't really probably want to do although you and I have gone the same direction now Where we use algorithm-based shopping for things like clothes That send us clothes that fit us and it is our style, right? So that things like trunk club and place like that So when you so now we have people that are like, we know what size you are and we know the kind of stuff You wear and you're like it's almost like tender but for clothes you like swipe swipe left or whatever. Yes Yes, yes, no, no, no, and they figured out and then you and then they just send you your clothes Yep, pretty sweet. Yeah, and I also have my wife will supplement that she loves shopping and it's all about fashion so she buys me things sometimes and And I'm like, yeah, that's great. She tends to know what I wear well, but I I don't want to do it I think it's miserable And this goes to this next one goes to like a whole thing related to the way that we just run our lives And that is shuttling kids to things that don't matter Is something I don't want to spend any time doing at all This goes to a general principle that I hold which is that our children the children of America Maybe the children of the world, but I don't know the children of the world that well But I know the children of America reasonably well are way way Overcommitted. I mean overcommitted to a degree that is good is mind-blowing and we don't do it We don't we don't participate in that business So when when people tell us, you know, like well, you know, we started out this morning So taking our kids to hockey practice and then we went from hockey practice to basketball practice And basketball practice is something I'm like fire. I would Yeah, literally die if I to do it. I would rather just not exist by the way than being that way How often do you think and I don't know right? We're the same way. We just we're just not doing that, right? Mike's experience as a public school teacher for 10 years tells me That it's not the kid that committed himself. Oh No, that's mom and dad. I'm gonna do it curiously through said kid. Absolutely. Absolutely Yeah, mom and dad are like, you know, and you even see it like go to any competition whatsoever, you know, but let's use baseball as an example because it's an easy one to put in your head and Just imagine that you're standing on the pitchers mound behind the pitcher of the little league kid That's pitching the ball and you're looking in the stands Yeah You'll notice that the the parents that are out there are literally physically moving their bodies like the children should be doing They got eye black on that they got a jersey. They're kids seven They're wearing a an extra large-sized jersey with their kids number on it Yeah, and eye black Yeah, yeah, that's a problem I've seen I've seen like a cheerleading competition where the mother was literally physically moving her arms in each of the Of the movements that the cheerleader Down on the floor was doing and I'm just like it's everything about that makes me want to die. Yes, so not into that Oh, don't do that The last one this may be shocking. This is shocking to even some people who know me It robs me of value to compare or compete with anybody I don't like competing. Interesting. I am not it's really funny when we play games even as a family My favorite games are where the the family is playing a game to beat the game not each other I'm not looking for a number one and that is actually drives me crazy Now it does make sense if you if you go back to the podcast where we go over our personality Things I'm a peacemaker to me. That's just a whole hell of a lot of conflict that I don't need I refuse to play a game where Strategy cannot win Yeah, like ladders if all we're doing is like spinning stuff and rolling dice to see who wins I Refuse to play Yeah, yeah, I get that completely. I don't generally like games all that much anyway And I will play some and we play you know uno and stuff like that my kids are little And so there's only so many games we can play but also I don't for me and this this There's a side of this that adds a lot of value to to my life, which is the reverse of it It isn't I do not get joy out of competing with others. I get joy out of PRing myself Yeah, so when it comes to the weight room is a great example, I mean For me when you and I used to do powerlifting competitions or I only did one strongman competition But in all of those it really wasn't the other people on the floor that I cared about at all I did not care. I was out there to see if I could set my own PRs And if I could Awesome, and if I walked away the trophy great, but the trophy did not matter much to me It was could I beat myself? Yeah, that was the thing that I wanted to know And so, you know, that's that's sort of the the flip side of of all that Yeah, that's so those are the robbs Those are the things that robbed me of value that I could I could go through quickly Things that add me add value to my life Traveling for pleasure Traveling for business, but I did not enjoy very much by the way But traveling for pleasure or experiences probably the better way to say that is just experiences We realized a long time ago that life is just so much Better to spend money on experiences than it is to spend money on things and stuff We don't care about stuff But we do care a lot about experiences when I look back over the last You know five years back back in that era where people used to Congregate and be around each other. I know that's apparently never gonna happen again. I'm sorry I'm in the Northeast and I'm really Really getting tired of being in my house Rob's your value Yeah, right even as an intro last year we got to do you kind of want to go out and see some humans Yeah, yeah, it's weird. I mean if nothing else I just want to go be in in these cool places and travel and see the world and do the things that we were in the middle Yeah, I'm supposed to I was supposed to fly to Mexico tomorrow morning And I yeah, I'm not gonna get to do that now and my 20th anniversary is a week from today Yeah, we had a Miami trip that we missed we have a whole thing planned to go up into Maine We're still not sure if that's gonna happen and usually by this time of the year. We've taken two or three trips that are Fairly big and I missed that Obviously most of you will know this that reading books brings me an enormous amount of of joy and value although I Am time limited on that there is a point There's a law of diminishing return or law of diminishing utility I should probably say on reading books for me in that after some period of time of Continuously reading books. I start getting a little weird I need to like set the book down and get up and go talk to my wife and play with my kids or something and And that all goes this whole idea that is I've listed a little further down Which is probably the thing that brings me the most joy is just compounding my own Knowledge and personal growth whatever that is I love investing in Knowledge and wisdom and understanding things because those things help me understand and make sense of the world around me They help me maybe be halfway decent at predicting Things in uncertain circumstances, which is nice And so, you know, I would I would add to reading books things like I like to take online courses Usually I do them at like double speed or I'll watch videos at 1.75 x or something So that I can blast through some new thing and you know, I have we talked about I think it was last time that I was a programmer I mean, I still learn programming languages new ones Even now even with absolutely no reason to do it because I think it's fun. Yeah So I still do some of that Working out it has always been something that added a lot of of joy and value for me and It's funny from the time Matt and I were little It kind of it started when I was 10 I think I got that first plastic weight set from Walmart that the concrete dipped concrete dipped and I liked it then I liked everything about it. It just made me feel good I liked the you know, I liked all the all the elements to that and Even though there have been times in my life where I couldn't work out with a lot of consistency It didn't stop for an extended period of time really ever And and so I've just always really enjoyed that. I I love the way it makes me feel I know that it's it's an investment in the future because people who Work out have a little bit easier time dealing with things like depression as well as fighting off, you know Mental disorders for the future, which is a really good thing for you and me because it runs in the family So it's just a lot of big big value there and I absolutely love Love the time that I get to spend working out recently. I've combined that with working out with my wife she works out with me and That's made it even better. I like watching the look on her face when she's like walking on the treadmill Why you're doing your last set of deadlifts? Yeah, I just I've always had to go back and rewatch your deadlifts because I always like watching her to see if she's Got a look of fear in her eyes or if she's just like looking on like with a commending sort of smile or if she's like I don't know if I'm happy that he's lifting this much She was a little a little nervous on squats a while back, but I mean those has taken off. So it's a made it quite a bit easier Yeah Yeah, so so those things do it a good movies. I am so Matt and I were talking earlier about shows Recently, I think I've run out of all the shows and that's just maybe a COVID-19 thing Like I've run out of almost every show that I wanted to watch because in the evening after Jane I put the kids down I would typically watch, you know We'd watch one or two shows together and I'm kind of getting to the point where I'm sick of that However, I love great movies, but they just take a lot longer to produce and right now. There's nobody Out that but I can go back and watch old movies and be super happy about it Got a ton of old movies that I love and and we'll still go back and watch Wes Anderson specifically. I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan Spending time with my wife This is not obligatory and my wife does not listen to this podcast So I'm not saying this so that I get points my wife and I are We both don't have a whole pile of of friends outside of our circle. It's just not something that we value And there's goods and bads to that. I know I had I had a Therapist at one point or another that told me that that was really really strange But it's always been that way. I'm I love my close family and But I've really not needed for a very very very long time part of this my own introversion I don't need anything more than the the close family that I have and spending time with my wife is Brings me a ton of joy when the kids go down at night Sometimes we'll forego the show and we'll just literally hang out. We'll just chat. I'll have a drink She my my wife gets headaches so she can't really drink very much So I'm usually the one drinking and she's sitting there and we're chatting back and forth and I love it Yeah, I like to teach my kids. I Get a lot of value from teaching my kids stuff Matt and I were talking about earlier this as well as like this idea that Especially around things like history and we talked about this in a previous podcast Anchoring things like math and science into that history. I just like to watch my kids eyes light up And it takes a while you they have to get a little older My oldest son is sort of in that in that space my middle son is You know things that I like to learn to like it's so much fun He he's really into figurines the way that I was and Matt could tell you when I was a kid I played with GI Joe's yeah like Hours and hours and hours on end and my middle son is the same way And so when I told him that I thought I had figured out how we could get some plastic compounds and make our own Figurines out of plastic printer and stuff or like just we have yeah We have a 3d printer so we did some of that But we actually pour mold and make them and then he like he paints them makes a little weaponry for it and stuff And it's all material science, but he doesn't know he's learning material science. I just slowly feed it in there But I love it too, and I'm learning in that process as well, and I'm having an absolute blast doing I love doing that stuff Yeah, and really the last piece of this is we kind of hit this We kind of hit this in some of the higher-level things, but The biggest bulk of my time I like to spend in investing in My own knowledge of of stuff And that does come in a lot of different forms So it's not just books we talk about books a lot because you know There are these great condensed ways that people take you know 15 20 years of their life and put it into 250 pages and you can learn a lot But these days man, we have so many more opportunities than what our parents had You've got free online Courses that you can take from some of the best universities in the world and you can take them for free at your own pace There is no class at MIT or Cambridge, and it doesn't cost anything Right, you don't get official credit, but you get official education Yeah, it's it there's so there are just so many ways that you can grow and learn and the knowledge from biology ends up applying one way or the other to the knowledge that you have in Math and the knowledge that you have in investing and the knowledge that you're gonna have and that you build with human interaction, so I Get a lot of joy out of learning new things and understanding new concepts that help add clarity for me about the way the world works Because I really hate being confused about why people behave certain ways or why certain things happen When those questions pop up I have a tendency to rush rush to a book and start reading my way through it so that I can understand why that happens Yeah, I've watched you also you touch on this, but I know that you don't learn all of these things just to impress people I know that you learn them because you've always loved to learn But I've also watched the way your eyes light up and you get really excited and you really almost become like an extrovert When you're able to teach the things that you've learned So when there's a path thing that you're passionate about in the audience is right To watch you teach that you can tell there's a lot of joy there and being able to teach those things It freaks some people out in a in a like a party type setting or just when people are kind of milling about Because usually I won't be saying anything. I'll just be standing somewhere and somebody will come up to me And you know, I don't do small talk. I hate small talk. I just can't I have a very hard time with small talk And then they'll hit a topic Maybe by accident that is one that's very exciting to me I've recently been learning about and all of a sudden boom lights go on and then the poor people can't get away And sometimes Jenny has to like tug on my tug on my arm and be like, hey, it's kind of maybe time to let him go So that's good. But yeah, I definitely do that. I get extremely excited about the things I'm excited about and and I do love teaching teaching is is a blast I love it. I loved it when I when I was working one of my favorite things about being a high-level executive at a company Was that I could carve out time to teach my employees things That I knew would apply to their job and their life and would help them help them grow That was that was a great outlet to be able to use some of the knowledge I'd accumulated Yeah, I think for me it's the this podcast has done that better than almost anything else I mean when you when you run a podcast where essentially You and your podcast partner are the subject matter experts I've kind of said everything that I know about strength training, you know And so I think we're gonna see some more series coming up on the podcast where I Feature some more of my staff because they are subject matter experts Maybe in places where I'm not you know injury rehab and prevention or or training You know somebody like Jonathan Sullivan who talks about training athletes of aging like seniors or whatever those things are Where they are the subject matter experts and they're passionate about something that I don't know about and I want to learn It's it's but it's been a phenomenal outlet that at this point that kind of all of the things that I've learned all these years about strength training and then also how strength training has impacted my life in Ways that other people wouldn't be able to make that connection the podcast has been able to do for us as a matter of fact right now like I'm loving doing these principles series because So much of what we've learned You know you you were in the software business and you always kind of knew you were going in that route and I Transitioned out of teaching into the into the strength world of fitness business, but I was always Super passionate about strength, you know like it was always the thing it sucked because you were actually you actually were genetically more gifted than me at that stuff, but You liked to train But you didn't super like to like read everything there was to know about the thing like you read all this stuff Like you know you I remember you have an Arnold's encyclopedia of bodybuilding back in the mid 80s when like there wasn't anything else out Right like that was the thing that book did not end up being very scientific No, it was not but I mean when you're a kid that's the kind of stuff like, you know, we read that stuff But and so it's it's it's provided this great outlet for me as well to be able to talk through those things It's been it's been really fun And so now to continue to find people who are on our staff and on our team and part of they understand Ethos at Barba logic has been really really cool And then and then the way all of those things have affected My life as a as a dad as a boss as a husband as a as a citizen as you know We can talk about those things in the principles podcast has been really cool and and the reason this series really kind of came to be was because Especially now that you've moved away a couple years ago up to Boston. We were close. We've been close pretty much our whole life and There were far less opportunities for us to get together and have these discussions and we would sit at Home at Thanksgiving or Christmas, you know when you would come back to Springfield or when we would fly to Boston They're like our family our mom and sister. So they'd be like I can just listen you guys for hours the two of us just we'll just talk for like four straight hours And we're just kind of feeding off each other and so That's kind of how this came to be. So it's actually it's this this part This this series has brought a lot of joy to my life, too I'm excited about we got a list of 80 more things to talk about on the ground. There's always more things You know, it's funny. I think in fact after doing 320 podcasts all in strength training There aren't always more things like at some point there will actually be a thing where we'll be like, uh We talked about all the principles that matter, right? Like you could always come up with stuff, but there will be a point if we do one of these a week For two years, that'll be a hundred. Well, we will have done a hundred and four of these 104 major life-driving principles at that point. We're probably gonna start going who We're gonna start struggling with the list And that's okay because like what's the point of doing the thing like I'm excited that we get to help our listeners today But you know, I'm really excited about Ten years from now our kids being able to listen to this and if if they want to and knowing what their dad's thought about stuff And I think that's pretty cool. It's been preserved. I Totally agree. I this is an interesting way to think about the podcast because I I will there will be subjects that I I Read about learn about and apply and then five years later Circumstances will change in my life and everything around that subject has to be reapplied in a completely different way In a completely different context. And so one of the things that's interesting is Is it's an extremely rare week that goes by that I don't find myself struggling with something sure And when you look at that sort of in its guts You can find that there there's more there's more to The principle and the way you apply it Then then how you had done in the past and so I do think there is I think you're right I mean there is a point at which you're just sort of you know, you're done talking about core principles But I also think that there's um If you look at any given week of your life, there are struggles. There are things to be learned and at the heart of it is um Some something that you might have been missing That uh once discovered uh would have really helped you out in that particular circumstance I know I'm dealing with several of those right now this very week And so um, you know, there'll be plenty to talk about I think as time goes on Yeah, that's that's a great and maybe the the single greatest takeaway that our listeners can have for this series Is not that you need to agree with Chris and I and our principles and you and I haven't gotten into too many places Yet where we disagree but there there are a handful of things that we don't necessarily see eye to eye on That doesn't matter like you don't need to agree You don't need to be part of the the cult of matt and chris reynolds like there's no that's that's not what the Purpose of this is matter of fact We want to move as far away from that as we possibly can the purpose is Do you understand what principles drive your life? And it's to get people to think about those things and I think in for us we have an advantage in that in Recording the podcast about these principles It it sort of codifies these principles for us And forces us to think a little bit harder about them And both in the present as we record them and also in the future as we look back and say, you know what? I in fact don't feel that way anymore about that thing Yeah, you know, I was telling rachel. Uh, I was she I hadn't shared with her yet the Personality stuff and I said hey guess where I came out on the on the mires briggs on the on the Um extroverted introverted thing. She's like, you know super extrovert. I was like, mm-hmm I was like i'm still an extrovert But it's already it's been reduced by 30 in the last five years. Yeah. Yeah, you know And at some point I told her I was like I wouldn't be surprised when i'm 50 If i'm just over the line and to be an introverted Right because you spend your whole life like talking to people communicating people being around people influence people things like that And at some point you're like okay I'm ready to be my myself five I'm good. You know, that's okay So it'll be it'll be fun to look back at these things after ever after communicating those principles and kind of codifying those things and and I've said this I think probably 50 times in the 320 podcasts that I've that we've recorded If you have not sat down listeners And written down the things literally on a piece of paper Or on your notepad on your phone. It's fine That bring you value and bring you joy or rob you of value and rob you of joy. You're missing out. You should do it Because what you'll you'll find there will be some things that rob you of value That do not need to be replaced Right, for example, like there are there are unhealthy things I can drink too much. I can watch pornography. I I don't need to replace those things with something else I just need to purge my life of those things But there are lots of those things like you mentioned like very simple Amoral things like I don't like mowing my lawn and have to spend my Saturdays working on my trimming the hedges And what brings me values to have somebody else to do that like that's the that's the value I've told this story lots of times that what the most practical thing that I did the very first time I ever did this was The business was taken off things were going well I was still doing payroll like calculating payroll But I'm also the guy paying the payroll Which means as I calculated it up It just would make me like angry and I would sweat and you're just you know It was like doing your taxes when you knew you were going to owe a bunch at the end And you were like how much is it going to be how much is it going to be you kept kind of telling And eventually I was like why am I doing this? I could just hire somebody else to do the payroll and then they can just send me the email and I can look at it and be like Okay, and then that's it. Yeah. Yeah rather than taking nine hours to do the thing. Yeah Well, so much of this the the reason the huge value in in writing down a list like this Is that you know look let's say it's mowing the lawn like it is for me It's not a huge value to you to not mow the lawn once In your life. Yeah But if you get it done with mowing the lawn for the rest of your life You've just had a compounded effect of time. This is that right Which means that you have compounded the your Free time That's available to you to do the other things that do add value That's right And that's one of the the the easiest steps in this is to just You almost have to have a running list for like a month or two You start your list by scanning your past week And then as time goes on it when you find yourself particularly irritated that you're doing something Go grab your list and be like I don't want to do that anymore. That's right You know and so there's just that there's a way you can go through that and and the reason that it's valuable is that it Once you have come up with a way to get rid of that piece of of of time suck in your life Um, if you can do it forever then it has a massive massive multiplicative effect In freeing up additional that's right. If you mow your lawn an hour a week Every week, let's say you mow 30 weeks a year, right? So it's a little more than half of the year You have for 50 years That's 1,500 hours that you mowed now if you like mowing Beautiful, that's 1,500 hours that brought you joy, but if you hate it that's 1,500 hours that you hated That's that's that's that's nearly That's 30. That's almost 40 40 hour work weeks That's right. And the and it's the opportunity cost of that time That is the actual worst part of this is right because not only did you do 1,500 hours that you hated You did that instead of 1,500 hours of things that you could have liked. That's exactly right. It's that's the swing Yeah, that's good. All right, dude. Thanks for sharing that stuff You've listened to another barbell logic episode the principles edition principles series Talk where we talk about values principles things that uh really drive our lives Every single sunday. So thanks for joining and we'll see you tomorrow