All right, well, we can go ahead and get started.
So last week, we talked about a simple rule to help you take action no matter how you're
feeling.
And that was called the five second rule based on the book by Mel Robbins.
So I think today's training is going to pair perfectly with what we learned last week.
And today we're talking about how to power start your projects.
So this is a really incredible technique that I love, and it helps you overcome that initial
resistance that you start to feel sometimes when you're beginning a new project or activity.
So just before we dive in, I do have a pro tip for you all today.
It's one of my favorites, but it's all about batching and theming.
So by now, I think we're all familiar with setting up our work buckets.
And again, that's where we're setting aside time for general work, focused work, deep
work.
Has that been going well for all of you?
Any thumbs up?
Nodding heads?
Yes.
All right.
Yeah.
It's been such a game changing way to organize your time.
And even with buckets, I mean, have you ever found yourself still feeling like you're jumping
between different tasks at once and maybe losing that momentum and that focus?
I know for me, that does happen.
So one of the best ways to combat that loss of focus is actually to start batching similar
tasks together within your work bucket.
So for example, my role here at Brilliant is partly administrative.
The other half is content management.
And so when I'm working on content managing or planning for the podcast, it is a whole
lot easier for me to transition from that into another content task instead of completely
switching over to something administrative.
So on Mondays, I like to look through my cue book when I'm planning my week and find similar
items and batch them together in a focus session.
That way, I'm not losing any momentum as I'm finishing one task and then starting another.
So that's your pro tip for today.
And with that, I think we are ready to get started.
So everyone ready to dive in?
Perfect.
All right.
And then just as a reminder, as we're going through the material and Dion is talking,
feel free to add your questions in the chat.
We do want to get to those.
So Dion, I will go ahead and hand it over to you.
Thanks, Jaylen.
Just so you know that the podcast that Jaylen runs gets about 25,000 downloads a week.
And just so that's a rather substantive product that Brilliant offers.
And I think we just passed, was it 4 million downloads in total?
It's been a lot.
And we were in the top 10 downloads on Spotify.
I've forgotten.
Anyway, all that to say, she just threw that out there like it wasn't a big deal.
It's a very casual issue.
She launches an enormous podcast and manages it extremely well.
Yeah.
Jaylen is an understated person, which is one of the things we love about her.
Massively competent, very capable.
And I love that she's applying all these things because Jaylen, you came into the process
fairly late, right?
I mean, we were already well into it a year and a something into it.
And so you've gone through a lot of what people here on the Edge have gone through where you
had to learn stuff, right?
So I know I'm putting you a little bit on the spot, but as you're thinking back, what
were some of the first things that helped you jump into this new culture and catch up?
Yeah, that's a good question.
It's funny because when I came in, you all had been running after this for a while.
So I didn't know any different.
I just was like, oh, everyone does focused work and everyone has their deep work session.
So yeah, I should do that too.
And I think actually setting aside those times of buckets was the most helpful thing for
me to get running and on my feet because it gave me the permission to set aside time
to get done what I needed to get done.
And I felt like I had permission to not necessarily be interrupted or constantly juggling things.
So it was actually a pretty easy transition once I got the hang of the Q book and setting
up my work buckets because then I could plan my time accordingly.
So it helped that everyone else did it and it was an entire culture of it.
Yeah.
I think that is the key.
And why we do it all together as a team, right, is because we want to normalize and culturalize
these ideas because it's very hard for you to just do deep work on your own and tell
your boss I'm not available for four hours if that's not part of your culture, it's not
part of your thing.
Right.
So.
All right.
Well, today we're going to get into how to power start and it's playing on words because
the word start is an acronym, how to power start your project.
So we're going to do is we're going to pull several things together.
And then we're going to do a little hot seat here with something she's working on.
And then we're going to break up into our teams and then I'm going to ask your teams
to go through the worksheets that we've provided and then come back.
And then I want to spend 20 minutes hot seating a couple of people.
last time we did the hot seats you guys said that was helpful and this ties in this really you'll
see this is one of those uh this one of those talks that ties together a lot of the components
and hopefully it all starts to make sense why did we do this piece and that piece and the next piece
today we pull them together here's why we're doing this we're doing this because we want you to help
you to feel like your work is effortless how can we make work feel effortless and we've talked a
lot about getting rid of switching costs you know jayla just talked about batching things every time
you switch there's this 20 40 minute switching you may have moved to the next task but your
brain is still lingering on the other one that creates mental and cognitive fatigue we've talked
a lot about some of the elements that but this one we're talking about today is how to make your
projects feel effortless i don't know how many of you've got the general feeling that these all
these projects you haven't done right let's take home projects how many got a pile of home projects
you just haven't got to you'd like to you haven't done this you want to do that just never got to
do that busy too many too many projects too little time so that general feeling of you know pressure
how do we get rid of that feeling that all these projects need to be done and how can we live in a
far more free way to do this we have to reprogram what's called our working memory the way you work
has a certain memory to it you even down to how you answer emails the way when you get up in the
morning the first thing you tackle and we spend a lot of time saying things like don't put your
best energy on your lowest tasks right we've talked about how to find joy how to find peace in what
you're doing you know all those kind of elements and they were all designed for the same idea
of helping you find that freedom so the real question is how can we reprogram our working
memory so now we're going to do the same thing jaylen just mentioned we're going to batch together
five techniques they're going to make one power away to kickstart projects so what is it so
it's like you know i don't know if there are any introverts on the call but introverts are
notorious we raised a few in our family the introverts never want to go to the party you
know they don't want to go i don't they just because there's like a there's like this um
connection resistance but then they go to the party and they connect and they're having such
a great time they don't want to leave so that you know that mechanism i saw that in our kids
you know i don't want to play the sons i don't want to do that and then they get into it and
then you can't you can't pry them away because they kind of get into it so there's this connection
resistance um that a lot of people feel and experience the same with projects getting into
the project how many of you know that when you're in the project and you've got that rhythm of that
thing going it's a lot easier you're not you're starting to enjoy it your brain's wrapping itself
around so you're tracking your projects in a different way so how do we create this inertia
how do we overcome this resistance and reprogram our working memory now here's the interesting thing
that programming uh working memory works the same for your personal projects at home as it does for
your business it's just the way you work it's the way you think it's that mental the mental steps
you go through in your mind and depending on how you've programmed that that can create stress
tiredness that feeling of fatigue can be done just because of the way your brain is programmed
last week we spent a lot of time talking about how this simple simple thing called the five second
rule counting down from five five four three two one move that simple thing disrupts those old
mental patterns and gives you a new highway you can build in your mind so as we go through that
you know a lot of times we got all these projects and so we can just have this general feeling that
we're always behind feeling overwhelmed and so we often stall projects delay them
or we use over analysis as a way to talk ourselves out of it or as we know from last week
sometimes it's as simple as you take five seconds to talk yourself out of every good idea you have
so what we're doing is we're overcoming that we're rewiring our minds we're using the latest
neuroscience and tools and techniques so let's put a let's put introduce one more concept one or
two more concepts and a great book on this by the way is a book called effortless by greg mckeon
and greg has studied you know if you may know him from the book essentialism he's the guy wrote
essentialism if anyone's you know fantastic book on how to figure out what's important and only do
the essential stuff and say no to everything else so it's a very radical way to live and maybe some
of you know some essentialists you know they some of them are called minimalists you know they've
got rid of all the extra clothes all the extra furniture get rid of all that great basic idea
wasn't so much that as it was can you figure out what's the main thing in your life what's the
essential thing you have to do that you have to execute on
to say no to everything else, so that that one main thing gets done. And then he realized that
even when people became essentialists, they were still tired, still behind, still couldn't keep up
with their projects. And so he did his next level of research seven years later. And by the way,
I know Greg McKeon, he spoke at one of our events, and he's an incredible guy. And he realized that
people need help. And so he went to look at which people seem to effortlessly do their work. And so
he wrote the book called Effortless. It's a wonderful book, just frees up your mind. But
again, of course, you always get the bottom line from us. So you don't have to read the book.
But one of the key ideas is that he introduces is this idea of the first baby step. So if you're
going to tackle something, and again, I've mentioned it once before, the first baby step
is when you're going to start any project, if you can identify the first baby step, it'll get you
going. So the problem with things like, you know, Marie Kondo, you know, the whole clean your house,
everybody know her, you know, the Japanese influencer, and it's the whole clean your house,
and how to fold your socks and all that, she will literally come in someone's house, and they'll rip
through the whole house, and they'll do the whole thing. So these are what we would in our language
now called the boil the ocean project, certainly not a thin slice approach at all. And the problem
with that is, you know, there's another Japanese leader, by the name of Sasaki, I think I pronounced
it correctly, wrote an incredible thing called Goodbye, things. It's a great book. And basically,
what he says, why don't we rather instead of reorganizing the whole house? Why don't we just
start with the idea of discard something right now, just discard one thing right now, get up,
walk, walk away from your computer, go and discard something right now, give it away,
discard it, get rid of it. For those of you know, Bob Goff is an incredible guy. He's written a lot
of books, and I've had the honor of meeting him. And Bob, you know, he, he, if anyone knows this
about him, he's cut out the left pocket out of his pants, all these fancy by new pair of pants,
and he will cut out the left pocket. And that's to remind him not to hold things. So every pair
of pants, he doesn't have a left functioning left pocket. And then he decided, it's Thursday,
I'm giving something away. So every Thursday, he cuts something out of his life, he either simplifies
his, he gives something away. And so one time, you know, he built up this big law practice,
he said, and I think he teaches law at somebody can remind me, Pepperdine, I think. And anyway,
so Bob, who travels around the world is an incredible isn't only an attorney, great speaker,
just loves people. I think he wrote a book called love does. There's just, he's just a great guy.
But here's what Bob does, Bob, every Thursday, give something away. So you know, he built up
this law practice. And then one Thursday, he called all the staff together in the room.
And he said, Okay, it's Thursday, I'm giving away my law firm, and he handed it to a junior partner.
And the guy said, What is it? I don't have to buy it. He said, No, you are now on the law firm,
gave him the keys and left. That was the end of his spent 30 some years building a practice
literally gave it away, because it's Thursday. And that's what one does on Thursdays.
I don't know. That's Bob. Just a great just a great guy. Yeah, so it is Pepperdine law school.
Thank you, Jalen. So we used to do this. We're raising our kids, we do like, you know,
do the spring cleaning thing, take two, three days, just super clean the house,
throw out all the junk, get rid of it. And it's brutal, you know, on the family.
So a much better approach is just to do the first baby step to do one thing. So Bridget and I give
away something every Saturday, Saturday is our day we give something away, we just give away stuff,
give away furniture. I've given away iPads, computers, very expensive jackets, I've given
away, you know, something because it's Saturday, we didn't do Thursday, we chose Saturday, we like
Bob's idea. So we've adopted it as a part of our lifestyle. Because what it does, it gets you out
of the hoarding thing. And it just helps you that first baby step, guess what happens, you give away
something, you start to think about other stuff, you can give away, you start to declutter your
life, just because you took the first baby step. So the first baby step can lead to the beginning
of a thin slice project. Right? So when Airbnb were first starting, they were struggling to get
stuff to work. And they couldn't figure out why people weren't booking their first in New York,
why they couldn't get the first people to book Airbnbs. And it was a very odd concept that you're
going to go into some stranger's house, and the person who owns the house is going to let some
stranger in to use their spare bedroom. It just seemed weird. So they so the CEO and the CFO,
and I think one
another, went to the house, and actually met with the first,
you know, the first person, and then they realized that the
photographs were really bad. And I think the CFO is a natural
photographer. So they read the photography, and they just took
the first baby step, just let's make it look good. And then they
figured out that was huge. And I think still today, if you list
your property on Airbnb, you have to use one of their, one of
their, you know, photographers. So all these come down to, you
know, the first baby step. So, you know, it's like the first
rule of business, right? What's the first rule of business, you
start a business having done a lot of startups, you know, so if
you think about as a startup person, the first rule of
business is find a customer, and then get them the product they
want. A lot of what's the rookie mistake everybody tries to do
build a product and then find the customer. Find the customer
and give them what they want, rather than build a product and
try to find somebody to buy it. So anyway, so there, there's
that. So what we've come up with to help you is we've created an
acronym called start, S-T-A-R-T, start. So the first, the S of
start is slice, identify the thinnest slice of the project
starting with the appetite, I've got two hours, I've got two
weeks, whatever your appetite is. So the first, the S is for
slice, what's the thinnest slice I can do here. Number two, T for
target. What does done mean? Visualize done. Remember the
whole thing about done? Sometimes done means this, you
know, are we doing the Miyada version? Are we doing the
Porsche version? I think you may remember that, that talk. The
next one is ACT, A-C-T, ACT, take the first baby step,
identify what's the first tiniest baby step I can do,
right? So I'm going to clean out the garage, find the broom,
first baby step. The next thing is reset, reset or reprogram.
This is using the five second rule to get that initial
resistance, five, four, three, two, one, move, get the broom
start. And the last one, the T is transition. Now transition
uses an idea called microbursts. And we have mentioned this once
before. But microbursts is that you work flat out for 10 minutes
without thinking about it. And you don't stop at all. It's
called a microburst. And if you can start with a microburst,
like you start cleaning the garage, you work flat out for 10
minutes, what will happen is within 10 minutes, you will have
created enough momentum to keep going. It's like the flywheel
concept. You know, remember when you're kids, everybody jumped on
the on the merry-go-round or whatever you call it. What's the
American equivalent of a merry-go-round? Is that what's
still called that? Yeah, it is. Okay, well, you know what I
mean. So all the kids jumped on. And remember, if you were the
kid, you had to push that first circle and you killed yourself.
And then it got a little easier. And eventually it got so much
momentum, you were just tapping it and just keeping it going.
Well, that's what microbursts do. They help you get that first
rotation going. So how do we use this? Let's talk about super
practical. How do we use this? At first, I'm warning you, it
will feel artificial to walk through these five steps. But
remember, you're reprogramming your working memory. And over
time, it will feel less artificial, and it'll become
more part of the way you think. But you have to create new
highways in your thinking in your mind to make this work. So
let me give you an example. So we can try to make this a little
more interactive if we can. But I want you to picture a problem.
Here's the problem. You walk into a house, and it's
absolutely stuffed with books, true hoarder of books. There's
so many books that it's overflowing everywhere. They're
they piles on the floor, it's even being used as a sort of a
side table for the coffee. It's just piles of books everywhere
in the room. Right? Now you can imagine this is such an
overwhelming thing to fix that it just stays like that. They
just clear the pathway and vacuum around the books. So what
would be the thinnest slice that we could come up with for
this, for this project? Well, I'll suggest a few things. The
thinnest possible slice would be, remember, delete, don't go
and don't go and organize the books, pack them in a bookshelf
and then find out and then give away half of them. And now you
only need two shelves, not four. So the first thing would be to
give away as many books as possible, that would be your
first thinnest slice, get rid of the books you don't actually
want or need. So that's the slice the target would what is
done mean? So done would mean having less books on the floor.
Right? And, and those books at Goodwill, or wherever you're
giving them at the second hand bookstore. So you're visualizing
the bookstore, having your books or Goodwill, and you're
visualizing less physical books on the floor.
Then you're going to act. You can take your first baby step.
What's the baby step?
Is you're going to write a criteria,
a list of how you're going to decide.
So that's all you're going to do, write a list.
So like, if I haven't touched you in three years
and the book doesn't have sentimental value,
like my, you know, my great-grandmother gave it to me
or whatever, it doesn't have sentimental value, it's going.
Then you're going to do reset, five, four, three, two, one,
move, get the paper, write the list.
Soon as I do that, I start the microburst.
As I write the list, I get up and for 10 minutes,
I start sorting books.
And I create my first pile of books,
which I then move to the car.
And I keep that up.
Remember, I started with the appetite
that I want to do this for two hours.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that, it's in my notes.
So when I did the thin slice,
I started, I got two hours to do this.
And two hours later, I've cleared out the books
and they're off to the...
Now I haven't solved the problem.
I just took one thin slice.
You noticed that, right?
This is really, really important.
Because I did this, now I'm going to do several slices.
So let's go through, what would the second slice
look like if I did the books thing?
The second slice would be, okay, I've got two hours,
well, I got one hour.
The second slice is I want to figure out
how many bookcases I need.
That's the second slice.
I'm not organizing the books.
I'm not packing them away.
I'm just working on how many bookcases I need.
So I got one hour to figure that out, maybe half an hour.
What does done mean?
Done means I've done enough calculations.
I know how big the books are and I can visualize a drawing
with and how many bookcases I need.
First baby step, get a tape measure.
This is super simple.
Five, four, three, two, one, get the tape measure,
measure out everything that we need.
And then I work for 10 minutes,
but now I've got a list of all the books.
So let me summarize and speed up the example.
So slice one, give away books.
Slice two, figure out how many bookcases I need.
Slice three, I find a way to get the bookcases
within my budget.
Maybe they're giving it away.
Maybe a school's getting rid of them.
Maybe I build them, whatever it is,
I'm now finding a way to find the bookcases I need.
So I don't have the excuse of, oh, well, I can't afford it
because I can't afford the ones I want from Ikea
or whatever it is.
Now I'm looking for a way to find the books
within my budget.
The next thin slice I've got is,
I now clear the physical space where the bookcases can go.
And of course, slice number five
is I fill the bookcases, right?
I organize them and I fill them.
So notice I didn't boil the ocean.
I didn't walk in and say, okay,
because here's the mistake I could have made.
I could have gone and bought twice the number of bookcases,
got halfway through filling them out,
lived with this chaos while I was trying to figure it out.
Then as I was going through it,
I realized I don't need this book, I don't need this book.
And I started giving books away
and then I end up with two empty bookcases.
Now I have to sell those.
So what I've done,
this is how boil the ocean problems are,
is what you think you understand,
as simple as this example is,
what you think you understand
at the beginning of the project
is usually at least half wrong.
It's at least half wrong.
What you think the client needs
for that software development program
is at least half wrong.
And when I say at least,
we have projects at Brilliant
where we've been 90% wrong.
So welcome to our world.
And the reason is we know this.
And because we know this,
we do this in thin slices
because it makes you less wrong.
Thin slices makes you less wrong,
makes you feel in control
and you end up at the end of the day
in a different position.
Hey, Jalen, let's see your project
and let's go through yours.
Let's do a hot seat quick.
Okay, there you go.
So Jalen, tell us about your project.
What is the project?
All right, this is a real life project.
So my landlord is doing renovations
at the house where I rent.
So I need to empty out my bedroom
and I have definitely been putting this off
for a couple of weeks.
So this is my thin slice to get started.
Hey, walk us through it.
All right, so hopefully I did this right, Dion.
But for the slice,
the thinnest slice I could think of
was just to tackle one area.
So I picked the closet to pack that up.
And I said, I'll dedicate four hours
and make a deep work session of it on Sunday.
So my target, what I am-
Very good.
So you start with your appetite.
I'm putting four hours in.
So of course we don't have to measure
personal projects in deep work,
but just how many hours you're gonna do.
So four hours would have been great.
So we can say it's four hours
and we would have started there
was when the first thing you said
was this is a four hour thing.
Give your time, give your appetite first.
And then we go to pack up the closet.
Okay.
I especially didn't rehearse this with Jalen
so that this would all be live for benefit.
Go ahead.
Okay, so for the target, what I want to see,
what I'm visualizing in my head
is my closet being completely empty.
So that is, I have my suitcase ready with all my essentials
so I can live at least one box filled with things
that I can take to donate and get rid of.
And all of the remaining things
will be packed away neatly in boxes.
That is what I'm visualizing.
Did you clean the closet?
Did you wipe it down or any of that?
No, but it can be a part of it.
It doesn't have to be,
but you didn't put it in your list, I'm just saying.
All right, let's go.
No, it doesn't have to be, that's your list.
And then you add, what's your first baby step?
Yes, I put to buy five large boxes at Home Depot,
hoping that will be enough.
But I think that will be enough for what I have left.
So when you're about to start, you're going to do the reset,
you're going to count down
and you're going to head out to Home Depot.
I take a countdown and head to Home Depot.
Is that what you're going to do?
Mm-hmm.
And when you get back, as you get back from Home Depot,
are you going immediately to a microburst?
Ooh, that is a great question.
Yes, if this is a part,
if getting the boxes becomes a part of my four-hour session,
then yes, then that it's the beginning.
That's how I'll start it.
Yep, good.
Okay, so we got it down.
You've just power started your first project.
Let us know how it goes.
I will.
So I'd love you guys to break out into the groups.
I want to make it shorter though.
So we'll give you 15 minutes.
Pick a project.
You can make it personal, a business one,
anything you want.
Go through that exercise.
We just want you to see it live.
And then I'd like, if the leaders could pick it,
find somebody who's willing to do a hot seat,
just like we did with Jalen,
and then we'll do a hot seat or two,
and hopefully we'll really lock this down.
Right, Dion, we have a really quick question
about the reset step.
If you could explain that one just a bit more.
Yeah, so the reset is just the five-second rule.
How the five-second rule disrupts
your old patterns of thinking
and resets your mind to learn new ways.
So that was from last week.
It's all of last week's talk about the five-second rule.
I could have said reprogram,
but in some ways the whole thing is a reprogramming.
Thank you.
All right, well, then we will go ahead
and separate into our breakout rooms now.
So we'll see you back here at 140
so we can start hot seat time.
Let's make it 145, let's give them 15 minutes.
Okay, perfect.
And solo leaders, if we have any of you all,
you can go in the group called General
where you can interact together,
and we'll see you all here at the main meeting at 145.
All right, here we go, everyone's coming back.
Hey, how are you doing?
All right, we're gonna need a brave volunteer or two here
to drop their project, their worksheet.
Has anybody got their, anybody willing to be a volunteer?
No, it looks like we have a-
Who's ready?
Who's speaking?
Oh, there you go.
Okay, who is that?
Who's speaking there?
The one marked Carla, where is that person?
It's actually, it's K Construction.
Our power went out, so we're at the resident
that has a generator in town.
I see, oh, wow.
So we're not gonna be able to share a screen,
but Amber has one that I think we can listen to,
and she'll walk us through, so I'll point it to Amber.
Hey, hi.
There you go, hey, Amber, thanks for being brave.
Yeah, so my thin slice or the problem,
do you wanna know what the problem is,
or do you want me to just jump in with my thin slices?
Yeah, you can jump, you tell us the problem
and then tell us the thin slices, yeah.
So the problem is that we need a way
to be able to understand our leads
and where we are at in the process of each lead.
And so my thin slice would last two hours,
and I would like to create a lead report
that I could produce at a sales meeting once a week.
Okay.
What done means would be to have a template
or have a spreadsheet that is a template
where I can input the info that I need.
My app.
is to gather my notes and determine a layout for that spreadsheet.
My 5 4 3 2 1 reset would be to open Microsoft Excel.
And then my transition would be to actually spend the time creating the spreadsheet.
Yeah, the 10 minute micro burst will get you into the game.
Yep.
Yeah, that was perfect. The 10 minute,
just remember the 10 minute thing is not negotiable.
From the time you have 3 2 1 go, the 10 minute clicks directly.
And that's the key for the reprogramming.
I know these seem very elementary points,
but we're talking about rewiring your working memory.
Cool, man. Thank you for doing that.
Excellent. Anyone else?
That was so good. Nothing too hot seat there.
That was pretty tight.
Okay. Somebody else?
Did we have somebody else there?
We need another volunteer.
Otherwise, I'll have to pick on two brilliant people.
Looks like Owen has one as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm Owen here from Alpha Vista, Kansas.
So the big problem, I guess, between what Ben and I had going on,
we had discussed some of our leads in our marketing and trying to improve that and
trying to basically fix the trail from our website and links and everything like that
to generate more leads.
And so with the kind of antiquated system that we were used to,
now my slice is learning how SEO has changed
as far as the algorithm and everything like that.
I've allotted two hours to figure out and learn about how SEO has changed.
My target is to have a list of our weaknesses versus the way the algorithm is now generated.
My act is to open YouTube.
My reset is to click play.
And then my transition is to watch videos.
There you go for 10 minutes.
10 minutes.
Perfect.
Was that Owen?
Is that who we spoke?
Yeah, very good.
Thank you, Owen.
That was really good.
Guys, you got this.
Does it make more sense to you now that we're pulling all the pieces together?
When you're learning the pieces by itself, you might like, what's the use of that?
What's the use of that?
I hope now that we got to one of those fun times, it doesn't make more sense to you.
Anybody have a question when you were going through this?
You were like, I don't know if I got this right.
Okay.
So during the break there, Jalen, you mentioned that
even though you've been doing this a while,
and even though this is part of the work culture that you're familiar with,
even when you started your project, you found that it was quite hard to thin slice it.
Yes.
Anytime I would try to start a thin slice project,
I would almost cut off too big of a slice where I thought it was the thinnest slice.
And then as I got into it, I realized, oh, this could have been three slices.
So it still takes effort as I'm going through it to think,
okay, is there anything thinner than this that I could do?
And yeah, I would say I was very used to boiling the ocean before Brilliant.
Yeah.
So we were talking about why that is.
The reason that is, is because for those of us that grew up in a Western culture,
it's a very Western thing to do this big blocky stuff.
When we want to fix something, we spring clean the house.
We reorganize the company.
We redo everything.
We don't have this idea, which is a bit more of an Eastern idea
of making micro, small changes and learning every little step along the way.
We'll get to the concept of Kaizen, the Japanese thing, in much more detail because
what will happen is, which I haven't got into, but if you do this enough,
if you give yourself permission to think in the way that we just said with start,
and you realize you have the freedom to do as many slices as it takes,
you'll be amazed at actually how fast you do it because you won't be wasting time.
It will feel more effortless and you will feel in control.
That's the big thing.
Back to cognitive control.
You will feel like, okay, I got all these projects,
but they don't mean anything just because they're on a list because I haven't started them.
And that way, when you start a project,
it's not like you can have a pile of half unfinished projects.
I think this is a very powerful way.
Here's the interesting thing, though.
Once you've done the thing with the books, as an example, now the book's on the shelf.
Now you can add Kaizen, which is just Japanese for good change.
You can add tiny Kaizen.
is the idea. It's not continual improvement like we have in the West. Continual improvement is
still in big chunks. Kaizen is the tiniest thin slice improvement you can possibly make.
When you walk past the books, you notice this shelf looks unorganized because they are
different heights, so you just organize them shortest to tallest. Or you don't like the
categorization, so you're just going to pull all the fiction books together. You don't reorganize
all the books. You just fix that one thing. And every two or three days, you're tweaking this,
tweaking this, tweaking this, almost subconsciously. What will happen is over six months,
that bookcase will become amazing because it'll keep getting better in tiny imperceptible ways.
Think of how you organize your desk. Don't reorganize your desk. Just fix the one draw
or just organize where your pen goes or just one tiny thin slice idea. So this will
build up over time. What we were dealing with today was how do you just reprogram your brain,
power start a project, and pull together all these techniques. What's amazing is if we had the time,
and you can imagine this would be a very many-hour course, if I had to go through all the neuroscience
behind each of these points, our gift to you is you don't have to put yourself through that.
But the downside is when you land them on such a simple idea, five-second rule,
10-minute microburst, first baby step, visualizing what done means, they sound such tiny things
that they sound like, is this a serious course? But when you batch them together, they're incredibly
powerful. So if you can take my word for it, there is a lot of research behind each of these points.
So, Ben, you looked like you wanted to weigh in there on something.
No, I'm just really thankful. Honestly, I said, awesome. I appreciate the simplicity, honestly.
And we were just having a discussion earlier today about Qbooks and how simple it is to have
a piece of paper, and how we have to fight our urge to overcomplicate things and stay in the
electronic world. When we're actually paying you, we should take your advice and just listen to you.
Well, thank you. We appreciate it. It's funny you should mention the Qbook. I had a Gen Z come to
me and say, hey, I'm going to automate this whole thing in Notion. So I said, sure, go ahead. And
I should bring him on at one time, because he's my son. And there's a big gap between my older
three kids, and he's the young one. And so he does this whole thing. I mean, he's a genius. I mean,
he's writing code in Notion, if you want to know how good he is. And he works for PricewaterhouseCoopers,
he's got a big, he knows what he's doing, is my point. And he works, his job at PwC,
he's one of 70 designers, and they design human interfaces, they're into the psychology of human
interactions and interfaces. I say that to say that if anyone was going to pull this off, it
would be him. And after the third edition, you know, he said to me, I kept telling him, it's not
going to work. But hey, I mean, the poor guy spent so much time doing this. And I have it if you're
interested. But here's the problem with it, is it doesn't let your brain map the page. And the
minute the screen scrolls, it's gone. The mapping's gone. He's, yeah, but you can search. Yes, you can
search. So this is what helped a lot of people, is when we created the pyramid, you know, right,
Q sits at the top of the pyramid, it controls all the systems. Sitting below that are all the
middleware, all the middleware stuff, Notion, Slack, all the, you know, your calendar, all that stuff
sits in middleware. At the bottom are all your digital assets, your documents, your photos, your
videos, all that's at the bottom of the pyramid. Q sits by itself. You need one ring to bind them
all. You need one ring to control them all. And if you find yourself, if the middleware can do a better
job, use it, but use Q to control it. Go to Notion and check that I'm up to date on projects. Go to
Slack and do this. You can use, you need one place your brain can map. And I counted the other,
there are 12 neuroscience components in Q. Now, you haven't got them all because we haven't done
the advanced Q version, which is coming. We'll do, there's a next level up where there's little
tweaks and improvements, and it'll create a little more space for you guys. We'll do that.
And we only did it recently for Team Brilliant as well.
Q was really interesting for me. I think one of the things, I'm Matt, I'm Matt, if you don't know
me, I'm the newest member of Team Brilliant. I found myself, and I don't know, Ben, if you
feel something similar, but like I almost felt myself like guilty for like not
using the latest technology. I'm like, Oh, I should be using this. I was freelancing for most
of my career before I came here. So I had these, I also had very elaborate notion boards and,
but I kept finding myself also just wanting to use a notebook. And then when I was given the
formula of Q, I literally just stopped using my notion boards. I was like, Oh, here's permission.
I think for me, the power was the permission to not feel like swept up in this. Oh, you have to
use all these new technologies. And I'm like, no, pen and paper works great for me right now.
And yeah. Yep. We will, we'll address it again, but thanks for sharing that and appreciate it.
Well, thanks everybody. Really appreciate it. Over to you Jialan, wrap it up for us.
Yes. Well, that concludes our edge team training for today. As always, we will have the end of
call survey. Please fill that out. It does give us more insight on how to make this better next
time. So we will see you next week and happy Wednesday.