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Welcome to a mini-MDRT book club session. Today, I have two wonderful guests joining me, all Top of the Table members, Dana Mitchell from Toronto, Canada, and Brendan Walsh from Detroit, Michigan. And I'm Ted Rusinoff, a TOT member from Stow, Ohio. And what we're going to give you today is an opportunity to take a glance at what our book club looks like, where we read a book together, and then we share some of our insights and takeaways from the book that we have read and enjoyed, sometimes enough to read it twice.

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Sometimes maybe we don't finish it, and we just come to the conversation to get the CliffsNotes. But the conversation and connection with members is something that we truly enjoy. I think we should start with our favorite book. Well, at least my favorite book. I'll speak for myself on that one. And that is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. We read this one.

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We had a great conversation about it, and I get so excited about the way he approaches things to say, take the big thing, break it into its smallest little pieces, and then try to find an incremental improvement on each individual piece. And then when you add it all back together, you've made significant improvement for growth, for opportunity, for just getting better. When I applied that to my largest relationship inside of our firm, it totally transformed our ability to grow and manage that relationship successfully.

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And I thought, I mean, does a book need to give you any more than that to be a good book? I don't know. I think what made that book particularly good was I think about it all the time, you know, that we get 1% better. And a book that's truly great is one that keeps coming back to you and you keep referring to, and I think of all the books we read, that one pops into my head most regularly.

00:02:10:03 - 00:02:35:20

And you are saying that it pops into your head. And almost every time that I think of the book, I think of Brendan because he likes to talk about habit stacking, like, “Hey, if you have it stacked, you can do anything.” And I and I hear you talking about it in my head. When I think about the book, I'd say something that really stuck with me is just that adding one thing.

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And then once you've hit that and you've mastered it and it's become a regular part of your life, then adding something on. It actually feels like it's something that we do in our book club where we'll read a new book and we'll go back and reference back to something that we've read before and how all of these things that we've taken from all these books over the last several years have improved us that little bit more, a little bit more every time we get together.

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And I think about the story within the book about the British Cycling club. They were completely inconsequential. No one knew who they were. You didn't think his words were they are unremarkable, meaning there was nothing. There's nothing to say. I'm like, wow, that's pretty harsh. But nothing that was true. Right? But did you just completely blow it up and start from scratch and find all these little places where they can get better and better and better, whether it's and how they construct the bikes or how they clean their trailers or what they sleep on and what they eat and what they drink.

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And these tiny things to all of a sudden they're the best team in the world, and they're winning the Tour de France and they're winning gold medals at the Olympics. And the things that the places where we can take that, where I think it's easy for us to try to make these big, sweeping changes in our lives, whether it's with our health or with our families or with our businesses.

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And to think that it's just that little bit every day that, compounded over time, can have a massive effect. Well, I think people get confused when they see the title Atomic Habits, and they think atomic like big explosions. And they think atomic is this like major force. And what James Clear does is he says, “Yeah, that's what it is, but it's in the smaller easier part, it's the atomic, the atom where you go to that smallest part to find that power.”

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And that was something that I was probably two times, three times through the book before that concept really came and took root, that it's the smallest pieces and it talks about setting up your environment to be something that encourages you to do the thing. And I know, Brendan, you do this. I know, Dana, you do this. If you want to go running, if you want to go work out, don't put the clothes in a place that's hard to get to.

00:04:57:02 - 00:05:24:18

You'll never get them on. If you leave them out so that you roll out of bed and there they are, that's accessible, that's easy. That's the next thing you're going to do. And now it's easier to get to the gym. It's easier to get to the workout just by changing the environment a little bit. And before we leave this book, I want to hit one more thing, which if it's not enough to get out of bed and get the clothes on

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sleep in them. Yeah, he did say that. I'm not trying to tell people what to wear when they go to bed, but I am telling them, put the clothes next to the bed if you want to work out as soon as you wake up. And the other thing that I just before we leave, leave that topic is I love the mindset shift that James Clear talks about in that book of not wanting to be an athlete but thinking I am an athlete. That's what I was going to go to is the identity component.

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He talked about a smoker or non-smoker. And to me just thinking that through, the person that's trying to quit are they a smoker or a non-smoker? Well, the ones that saw themselves as a non-smoker, they smoked yesterday, but they want to quit. And so, they see themselves now as just as a non-smoker were far more successful at not smoking because they weren't a smoker trying to quit.

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They were a non-smoker. And that identity you work out, you don't try to work out. You don't think about working out. I'm someone who works out my identity started to be put into that. That's pretty significant. And, Dana, this goes to a book that I know I think you read twice, and that's Charlie Gilkey’s book “Start Finishing.”

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And he was talking about how to take some of those things and like chunk it up and put the pieces together so we can do our best work. And I know that resonated with you quite a bit. Yeah, I did read that book twice because the first time I read it, I saw our book club as business-related.

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So, I thought, I've got a great business book and I read it and I realized that the book is more than a business book because it also applies to, you know, my personal life. And when I got to the end, I was like, I don't think my business work is my best work. I think being a mom is really my best work.

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Obviously, I love what I do professionally, but if I had to pick one or the other and I couldn't be both, I would be Mom. Your kids are going to be really glad to hear that. The kids don't love book references, but I'm sure they liked to hear they’re No. 1.

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But I went right back, and I looked at the kids as my best work because he talks about in the book how limited our time truly is. And one of the references that resonated with me was books. So, I know I read about 25 books in a year, and you take your age plus 25 books and then take you forward to, say, 80 years old.

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And there are millions of books out there, but you only have a chance to read such a minute portion of them. So, what are you going to read? And it shows you how limited your time is. And I think about my kids all the time. You know, my son is going to graduate from high school in four years, so I've got spring break and Christmas vacation times two times those four years.

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That's only eight trips. And so, you know, although I thought about it, you know, with business, I truly appreciated how precious that time was with my kids. And “Start Finishing” is about efficiently using your time. And I really started to think, how am I efficiently using my parenting time? So, I got it was like a two-for-one book because I got two books out of it.

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We have people in our club that don't finish the book and we have Dana in our club who reads it twice. Like between all of us, we average out to at least a complete read that's four per member of the club. She took “Start Finishing” quite literally. I liked the concept that there's a best time to do things. Like in the course of a day, if you're better at doing your creative when you have your cup of coffee and you're in your space and it's completely quiet, then that's when you should do your creative work.

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If that isn't your best time to do creative work, don't try to do creative work during that time. Like every cycle of your day, the cycle of your life, there's a way to bring it so that your best work can be done at the best time to get the best result. And I never consciously considered how to marry those things up.

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And I know they're doing it in schools now. They've studied that kids do math better in the morning than they do in the afternoon. So, they try to have more of the math classes scheduled before lunch and then more history classes scheduled after and that kind of analysis and brain science, I think, informed a lot of what Charlie Gilkey put into the book on getting the best work done at the best time for that best result.

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And with that, for me, it wasn't only when you do your best work, but it was also and maybe I'm alone in this, but my days get away from me really easily and really quickly. None of us have that problem. We're immune to, you know, humanity. So that is what he talks about, being conscious about how you're blocking your time.

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I've heard about time blocking, but he gave really concrete ideas of, you know, don't block two hours, block 20 minutes, and get your best work in those 20 minutes. Also, block the time that you're going to need to take a break and check out and decompress or recharge or whatever have you. And I took that when I'd sit and I'd plan my day ahead and I block off on my calendar with alerts, here's how you're spending your day.

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And I'd build that around the other things that I have scheduled. And now I have that whole day scheduled, but not in a way that, oh my gosh, look at all this stuff that I have. I have here's where I'm going to go hard and here's where I'm going to take a break and then here's what I'm meeting with a client and then here's where I'm going to factor in that.

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And so having that and that idea, while simple, is, I think, harder to implement, then that was really impactful for me. The part that made that helpful for me was the piece that he added about breadcrumbs. I was just going to say that the breadcrumbs I love that I was preparing for The Annual Meeting and working on some material, and I literally was building the breadcrumbs in so I could come back to it.

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And then I knew when I was going to work on it again and I knew what I would need to leave at the end of my notes, so I'd be able to pick up right where I left off. And that has been a transformative concept that I've applied in how I can't get it all done in one sitting.

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And when you can't, you need to know, what have I done and where? Where do I need to pick up and do next? And I know, Dana, you were reading it, you had so many of these things you were pulling out. You really could have taught a class in our book club on the book.

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So, I started making lists called Breadcrumbs. So, often with school pick-ups, I'll end up leaving something midway through and I'll run to pick the kids up. So, I make a list titled Breadcrumbs, and then I'll write how to get back into the work and what's left.

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So, the list is actually called breadcrumbs. That's great. And this has been a great conversation.

Transcript

Author(s):

Dana Mitchell, CFP, CLU

Ted Rusinoff

Brendan Clune Walsh

2 books that are a force for change