Threads of Focus: Embracing Uniqueness, Curiosity, and the Art of Balance

Welcome to the Wabi Sabi Show. This is the art of imperfection and podcasts. we're here with Jim and he's back from a big weekend away. And I'm here in Portugal loving the sunny weather and he's enjoying the rainy wet weather over there in Scotland.

Well I've got a jumper on Laurence, I'm all rugged up. For anybody who's listening closely, I'm recovering from a cold. It's not Scotland cold, it's just about pushing myself a little bit too hard. So I'm just in keeping with the Scottish background you would expect for someone living in a cold environment.

And I'm here, uh, you know, still in shorts and t-shirts, whether or so not to push it in, uh, not to rub it in there, Jim, but, uh, I'm actually heading out to Spain next week. Actually. I'm going to drive down to Seville and take some time and spend some, uh, exciting, some time with this. Yeah. It's cool. That's right.

Yeah Nice. Oh, that's right. School holidays next week for, yeah, I'm so out of the loop. You know, it's funny. Once your kids don't aren't at school anymore, you lose a perspective of holidays. Where are they? And they're usually, they used to always be the first things that I'd kept in mind. You know, they're so important now it's like, Oh yeah, hang on. Why the roads clear an hour or, or how come don't have these kids got school? Oh yeah, it's holiday. So you just get out of the loop. You just, it's really bizarre.

Yes. That's right. Well, that's the thing. Like sometimes like, you know, so today's topic is really about that sort of similar focus, right? It focuses the thing or the lack thereof. And oftentimes when we're on a day to day, you know, routine of life, uh, we're very focused on the same thing on, on, on repeat, really, we kind of focus on the same thing. We have similar routines and, and so on and so forth. And you, and all of sudden, like when you ex you expect something, which is in, this case, would you say, which was traffic? So the traffic is all of a sudden lighter this morning. It's like, well, why, what's happening? And it's because like all of a sudden now, cause you're so focused on what you're doing, you then all of a sudden notice that, Hey, like this is actually happening around the world. mean, of course you don't have kids. Like, I mean, you have kids actually in the school anymore. So it doesn't really matter, but all of a sudden, like that kind of environmental changes changes the, uh, changes your routine, you know, something external that changed your routine. all of sudden, like your, your focus is like, Oh, like you, then you actually have to focus on like, what's actually happening. What's, what's around me? Because we're sometimes so dialed in. to something, whether it be a project or your business or your relationship, that oftentimes we're ignoring other parts of what's actually going around in the world. And I think that happens a lot.

Or are you oblivious or in a bubble and you have no idea of what's going on around you there as well too. You know, so there's other, there's, there's that other perspective of like, you're so focused on stuff that you can selectively, uh, allocate your bandwidth to certain things. Other times you're just totally oblivious to what's going on because it's not a priority. It's not, it's not your main thing. So because of that, uh, you don't have the awareness of it. You don't have the interest in it and any responsibilities around that too, but I can tell you for a start, always knew to the day, to the time when school holidays were there because it usually would mean, okay, kids are on, let's, uh, that's our opportunity to spend some quality family time together. And just over time as now they've graduated from school and they're living adult lives, it's, it's a different priority. It's a different focus. So, um, naturally I'm it's it's slippage or it slipped from my, uh, from my priority list, uh, to just something that, oh yeah, I used to need to be aware of every now and again.

So begs the question, a couple of things that come to mind as you're talking about that is how this world we live in is full of information overload, which means there's so much information out there and you can really dive deep on any particular subject. If you really fall in love with, say, Jiu-Jitsu, you can go down a rabbit hole and you can do 24-7 or Jiu-Jitsu information on YouTube or on the web or whatever. If you're really into football, you well, depending on what kind of football, right? You love gridiron or you went to soccer or type of football, and you can dive into a particular team and you can probably find so many reports that could fill your week of information on what's going on with that team, what's going on with that player, what should be happening, these talking heads talking about any particular thing. So the question I have is like, what should we pay attention to and what should we not pay attention to? Because there's so much going on. And the real reason I'm asking that is because now that I live in Portugal, I have no idea what's going around. Like I don't, live here and obviously I don't really speak Portuguese so I don't really listen to the news. And I rarely listen to news when I was in Australia anyways. And so therefore like my news update on what's going on actually in Portugal is very, very minimal. Like it's almost a non-existent. It only comes up if someone happened to post something or Facebook really posts something about something and I might actually read it and go, oh, this isn't that interesting. That's pretty much my extent of Portugal, know.

Mm-hmm.

politics or Portugal news or even European news, for example. Whereas, you know, how important is it, do you think, in general day to day life?

It's a good question because it, there's a great saying that we have, and that is unless you control the inputs, unless you control social media, social media controls you, right? So you can open it up and you're effectively going, tell me what is going on. Like, and whatever other people's priorities are because suddenly become your priorities. If you don't have the discernment to be able to work out what's what's important for me or not. Right. So there's that part of it. You're right, though. You know, I think for the first 12 months of living in Spain, I was very much like that as well, too. Like I just go, look, I'm just going to do my thing. I'll just keep an eye on things. Because I have business interests and I do stuff in Australia and the UK and America, I've always observed and taken interest in what's going on in those areas, you know, in terms of at a geopolitical level, at a finance level, that had a bit of an impact. So they were my priorities. They were my focus. And so you know, general things I had no idea about, with, with the specific specific subject, I made it my job job and role to be updated with those. But when it comes to Spain, I had no idea what was going on. I got sick and tired of just rocking up, going to the bank to go and it's like, oh, no, it's a bank holiday. I had no idea of those things. I was that far out of it. And that happens one, two, five times. You go, I've been at Pagan interest. So I signed up a subscribe to an English speaking. Spanish paper. So at least I had an idea of when the public holidays are. And they have so many, but they're by the way, right? And I got, that was the only reason why. I took enough of an interest to know the really key things like public holidays these days and whatever. And finally enough of all days, Lawrence, had, I haven't gotten rid of a notification on my iPad from this newspaper. And I got a report, you'd be interested to find out the discussions of getting a train between Barcelona and Lisbon. Yep. So there's talk. So there you go. You know, I've just saved you the trouble of looking that up because it came to me, but otherwise I would have known either.

There's Right. Well, so what's interesting about that fact is that they're in discussion. So let's just give it about five to 10 years to actually pass through whatever laws that need to do. And then let's add another five to 10 years before it actually gets built. Um, so really by then, who knows where we actually will be anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, your kids, your kids have got kids of their own. You know, that's pretty much.

Yeah. I think that talk talks been probably ongoing for quite some time. That's really interesting. Must've been a slow days in the news. So it's so I'm gonna stick with this, this topic around news there, because I still remember the day before social media. And this is when I was a kid where I'm not sure if we used to kind of just by at least we used to maybe watch like the six o'clock news, right? And just kind of find out like with generally what's actually happening around the world in that first five to 10 minutes, you know, This is before those highlighter, highlighted newscasters stuff because the next generation, next iteration of that was because we all used to just watch one channel and it'll be global news or whatever it is and then five, 10 minutes of what's actually happening today. Then it got to this 24 news station where CNN came on, it was 24 hours of cycle of news, so pretty much news all the time. And then it had those ticker symbols.

Yeah.

There'll be ticker symbols for weather. There'll be ticker symbols for sports, ticker symbols for stocks. And then it was like, literally your screen was, it used to be like this big to like that small because everything else was just like stuff on it. And so I think that was the transition where almost information was too much. Where it used to get a summary. Yeah, it used to be a summary. And then now it became like, okay, if you, now all the stuff was in there. And now it's more like, it's not even on the TV anymore.

Yeah, you got overload. You got overload.

hardly anybody watches that anymore. It's mostly just now you're getting the feed specifically to what you're actually interested in. And you only kind of dive into that particular circle, right? Would you not agree with that? Like that's sort of how things have become, right?

Yeah, that's tech. what's happening going on. And the danger with that is that you start living in an echo chamber, particularly in social media where you only, if the algorithm basically looks at who you check, what sites you visit, it just repopulates that back to you. You start then becoming very singular in how you look at anything specifically. And it'll only ever show you. uh, particularly from a social media point of perspective, the algorithm will just show you stuff that you, they think you'll like. And so it won't ever expose you to alternative arguments. I think that that's part of, you, you, here's the thing to me, that it can be very passive. Like you can actually just sit there and stuff that comes out comes at you. Right. Um, given a choice between watching the news and reading about it, I always prefer reading, uh, the news. purely because when I was watching somebody's news, that was basically what they thought were the highest priorities that I know. Whereas for me, I like it and I'd skip over an article, go not interested, not interested, not interested. I just focus on what I wanted to, but it's kind of like a primitive RSS feed. And so to me, I've always subscribed to those so that that way that made sure that I was up to date with the things that mattered to me the most and I could afford to just let go of stuff. So that wasn't of interest to me.

Mm-hmm. Well, I think that what goes to show though, right? Then we're going to use this as an example is that pretty much you're really going to read the news or anything that you're interested in or watch or view on things that you're interested in, really. Like if you're not interested in something, not going to spend any time or energy or effort into it. And I think that that's a key element of how we need to see starts to see things because really this is no different than regards, I think there's... What I wanna highlight today on our topic is because we do need to focus in on certain things in our business or in our life, because if you don't focus, you get too distracted and you actually never get anything done or you never get any, you never dive deep into anything particular. But there's a cost and there's downside to that too as well, which is when you're only focused on that one thing, you're actually not really allowing yourself to be available or be knowledgeable in other areas that although may not be, of interest to you, but may actually have some consequential effect on the thing you're actually working on.

It's kind of like the blinkers, right? They put on race horses to keep them focused on, hey, these are the, you know, this is the one kilometer or a mile that we want you to focus on. Don't worry about everything else and get distracted by that. Focus on what's ahead. And that's really a strategy and a pathway and a process for a lot of people. We've got to sometimes put the blinkers on to let go of the distractions to focus on what we need to do. So definitely there's an element of that that, that optimizes your Focus on your performance as well.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, mean, it goes to show like I was never a person that was, uh, um, unfortunately, very broad spectrum of like knowledge around the world. I was only like knew the things that I kind of knew, but which means I was blinded by my blind spots were like anything that wasn't like my, you know, within my lane. So for example, like I might, well, the perfect example is I knew nothing about Europe, like anything to do with Europe or say Middle East or what's gone like, Conflicts and stuff. I didn't really know about you kind of hear about it But you don't really know like too much about it because it wasn't you know as a kid like it wasn't something Let's say it was something about the Middle East right because I'm not Jewish You know, I'm not those conflicts or them, you know and conflicts in Europe and all those had no interest to me So I never really thought of it because there's really more of policy as being a Canadian Maybe American politics or mayor things are going in America, but any outside anything outside of North America. I would know nothing about

Yeah.

Now, but now, now that I moved to Australia for 20 years, okay. Now like I have the interest in North America, um, Canada, America, and also Australian news because they news in a sense of like what's going on in those, those three countries because they do, you know, cause I have some interest into it. And now that I moved to Europe, all of a sudden now European news starts to kind of have an effect on me. And, and so, but I'm kind of, I know sometimes when I'm talking to people who lived in Europe all their life, it's like.

you

I don't, like, I don't know anything about Europe. Like, what are you talking about that incident that happened, you know, whenever? Like, I feel so dumb, right? Because we're so isolated. Whereas I find that Europeans, they're actually more knowledgeable about the world. They're a little bit more knowledgeable other parts of the world than the reverse.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I found too. So that, you know, I think it's because like English, for example, is, you know, basically the, the, one of the most important languages throughout the world. Right. So even if it's not your native language, you, you kind of still learn English and in the process of learning English, you start learning about the history of the country and et cetera, cetera. So you, tend to do that. And I've found that as well too in, in, Europe as well, they're, understanding of not just general European historical events and geography and politics, they have a broader, they knew things about Australia that a lot of people in Australia wouldn't know. They just had, they'd made it an interest in this. I always found that fascinating. But you only just have to look at, if you pulled up a newspaper in Australia or the US or Canada, I imagine as well too, you'd have the local news and then you'd have one page that says world. And it's like, how do you condense? everything outside of your country, out of your bubble into one page of a newspaper. And it has to would be the biggest things are the biggest things. So we were filtered. And then, you know, I've got friends who have lived through in China, where that is deliberately filtered out as well, too. So nothing exists outside of that. So you don't even have that one page is a newspaper. So, you know, there's there's there's reasons and sometimes people focus in order to

Yeah. Yeah.

to improve their performance and get rid of distractions, sometimes, in a manipulative sort of way, you basically withhold information from people to get them focused and thinking that this is all it is. There's nothing more outside of this. So leaders have been doing that for many, years.

So how do we take this concept and apply that to our life to make sure that we can use it to our full advantage to actually be better at it in terms of no matter what it is, whether it be business, relationships, personal life, personal development.

I, that's a great question, you know, and you know, you can be, you can know a lot of a lot, you know, you can lot know a lot about a lot of things and you know, you can't necessarily go width and depth in everything. Right. So, you know, you either have a general overview of a lot of topics, but not much depth in them. And, you know that that's the case, or you're really subject matter expert of one, two things at the exclusion of a whole lot of things. So you know what I've always, I've always been fascinated by. what I learned for myself and a lot of ways. And so I think having a sense of curiosity and wonder really helps because what that does is that that leads you, leads you down your own self-discovery and you learn stuff. And if you just ask good questions and if, you know, hopefully I always used to have a teacher back at school who always rather than giving us an answer, always would ask us a question. Hey, have you ever wondered why this and this happens? And you go, Actually, no, but now that you say that and that would start the connections and that would then start a pathway. And then I'd go, Hey, I'm interested in, I want to find out more. I do that. You know, it's, it's, it's the default, the things that I, know, there's certain things that you just go, I can't get enough of this and I want to know more about it. That's an element of enthusiasm, et cetera. But to me, what makes the connections and expands you is, a curiosity and wanting to know a little bit more about the things that.

Hmm.

are out there rather than just the things that you just default to all the time. And they're not wrong. They're not wrong. It's not wrong. It's just that, you know, that that would be how you would expand what your knowledge base is, is by seeking connections outside of what you already know for sure now.

Yeah, so... No. Yeah, I think the mentioned thing about the width and depth thing, I think is a very interesting kind of concept, right? Because I think the reality is that, let's call one aspect, which is the depth. think a lot of people, not a lot of people, there are certain groups of people that are really subject matter expertise, that their depth is so deep, but their width is very, very narrow. And so what happens to those people is that they're the big whale in that field, in that particular pond. but they're very difficult to maneuver to other pawns. And I think, you know, to function in a day-to-day life, think, to be successful, think you, of course you can be successful there, but I find that having more width and also having several depths in specific areas and arenas goes a long way. So I think there has to be some sort of ability to be able to have a variety of width of

Yeah.

And I'm gonna quote the book, Range. I don't know if you ever read the book, Range. It's a fascinating book because it talks about how athletes and successful people actually, are, what we're taught always is to be a specialist. You know, in order to be the greatest golfer, you need to be a specialist. In order to be a great tennis player, you need to be a specialist and start young. But this book actually dismisses that. It doesn't say that there's, they don't exist, like those people don't exist. They do, but we kind of,

Yep.

put them on a pedestal, but reality where some of the best players are actually the people who actually had a lot of range in variety of different sports or in variety of different things. And the combination of those skills that they learned from something else that they brought it into their game in this particular domain. their width was there, but they were able to take some of those knowledge and skillset to apply it to their depth of domain that actually made them unique. So I find that that's fascinating concept is to take a range of things that you are interested in and then putting them together, that actually makes up the unique you. And you are unlike anybody else because no one has the same skillsets or experience that you have had in that combination and in that depth and that what makes you unique. And I love that kind of concept to help you become that uniquely brand you in a sense.

Yeah. Go. Thank Yeah, 100 % correct. know, innovation, for example, they will pair people who have a traditional, the focus part of it would be the subject matter experts, you know, everything about everything. And they've got a lot of depth about that, but they'll pair them up with someone who's, who has an arts degree or who has a geography degree. And at first thought you think, how could that be helpful? But what happens sometimes you look at base beliefs and, you know, views of the world and how they see this. And that stimulates questions. And a lot of times when you find the links between one thing and another, there may not be, but what in the process, you might go, have you ever thought about doing this? And you go, Oh, I never thought about it that way. mean, Musk, who we talk about Elon Musk so often, we talk about what he's able to create. He's got an engineering background, which is an inquisitive mind, but he looks for things that are connected to other things. And that to me is, is how he, he's got a broad range of understanding of certain matters, but then he can actually link him up and look for, okay, one and one, we've put those two together. We iterate, we sometimes come up with something even better, right? So you can stay focused on things. And I think that when you do that purely from a business sense, you will considerably get better iterations of things, you know, like

Hmm.

This is Mark one version two, version three, but you are following along this linear path. Whereas if you totally disrupt something and come from another perspective, you potentially come up with a solution that's far greater purely because you expanded your refractory period or your range, like you're talking about outside of just a narrow perspective. So there's benefits to both, no question.

Yeah, it's interesting. My daughter, she just at school, they, um, all a lot of the parents put their name up to be mentors to the high schoolers or to her grade. And you get to choose. have to like, there was a list of like 46, you know, parents that were willing to be mentors to these high school kids. And they, you know, she asked me like, can I have to narrow it down to five dads? I'm like, okay, let me, let's look through them all. mean, go, please don't make me read all 46, like at least narrow down to like 10 or something and I can just choose five. And so was really interesting and fascinating to me on how she chose and how I would have chosen too as well. she basically chose the people that were gonna be the most, that had the most diverse range of experiences. Like there was this one, can't, I'm gonna make some of this up. there's one person who might've graduated as an engineer, but actually worked in the fashion industry, then worked into real estate industry and the banking industry. To her, that's fascinating. And that's to me, that's fascinating too. Someone to be able to go, you know, this is what I started off with and then actually ended up somewhere else. That's a really amazing, you know, skill set to actually have.

Mmm. Yeah, totally. I agree. And you know, it's funny, Lawrence, I was talking to Bettina earlier today and she asked me, know, you know, what are you up to? She's gone into the college. She's she's working there today. And I said, Oh, look, I've got a recording with Lawrence. Normally we shifted it a couple of days ago. I was unwell. So we've moved today. So this was out of our normal organization. She goes, what are you talking about? I said, well, we're talking about focus. I've got just a rough idea. And it was really interesting. You know, she says, you know, I've listened to your podcast before what you guys do. comes across as a conversation. It comes across as a conversation that you, uh, and Lawrence have. And what I find endearing about that is that, you know, you're probably just doing it for yourself as much as anything else. got a hundred percent because we talk and I'll get stuff up. It's like a conversation when we just have others eavesdropping into it. And I said, look, sometimes we get on the. the podcast, and we're not really, really sure what we're to talk about, but we go with it and we innovate in the moment. And here's something that she said that was really interesting that fits in. She goes, it's because of all the background, all the things, all the experiences you have and the experience you've been able to do it. It's not, you're not making it up. It might feel like you're in the moment. You don't know what you're going on, but you just have, both of you just need one thread and you can go in so many different directions and you can bring different perspectives. and different cultural work, whatever. that adds, and I went, Oh, I think she's right. You know, aside from really enjoying having a chat to you, how you see the world, how I see the world is, the similarity, but there's differences. And when we come onto the podcast, we are focused as in, okay, we're here to do this and we can then draw from all these experiences that we've had. Yeah. So that was just me going off on a tangent to write it back to exactly what you're talking about.

Absolutely.

and what gives, because at first glance we'd go, okay, where's the similarity between these two? What are the differences? And what happens when they do bring it together and what comes out of that?

Well, the reality is that that's how I've always seen my skill set or your skill set. And anything that what we're trying to say to most people is that your skill set is exactly the same. Is that when you can start to recognize, and I didn't know this for a long time and it came up, I don't know when, but when I started to realize and when I started to realize this fact of what Bettina just said was I have this special and I call it special not because it's extraordinary. It's special because it's unique to me. Right? Meaning like those experiences, or the things I'm drawing from our combination of my education, the books I've read, the interest that I actually have, the things I've actually experienced the things I've done, things I've seen done. And I'm threading all of that. And also that layered on top of that was what Bettina saying is there's a fundamental philosophy that I have or at least my view of the world. And I'm basically talking, what I'm talking is that I'm speaking with that type of filter and you're doing the same thing. I think that the main thing about this is that your philosophy and my philosophy is similar. I don't think it'll be exactly the same because none of us are exactly the same, but it's similar enough. So the filter comes out. But when we talk, when I talk to a certain story, you're going to talk from a different... a similar story, but different. Because you know, I'm a Canadian, Chinese, Australian, you're a Greek, you know, Australian filter, you come from a little old, older kids, I got a younger kids and like that, those things are going to come differently, but apply to the same filter. And hence, there's that that thread. And so I want to sum this up by saying, I think it's so important for all of you, the listeners to recognize that you have that same special thread.

Yeah. Yeah.

as well, you just have to recognize it and then lean into it and recognize, no one in the world is just like you. Yes, we're all human beings and 99.9 % of our DNA is exactly the same. We all look differently. I know that all that stuff too. But no, what I'm saying is that it's not the looks and everything. It's actually your life experience, your levels of interest, what you have dived into and not dived into, and what you have experienced in the world. All of that makes the uniqueness of you. And when you can recognize that and appreciate it and lean into it, I think something magical could come through.

Totally agree. And I think that that's, that's the uniqueness and the skillset and the individuality and authenticity we all bring. And we were comfortable enough to bring those talents, tools, experiences into, into light. can, you know, amazing things happen. Creativity happens, which is fascinating. You know, what, when we talk about focus and, um, and the opposite of focus, right? Let's, when I say focus, if you've ever had kids in your, you and you were growing up who were just incredibly talented in two or three sports. Right. They we used to have them all the time. The kid who was the, you know, state athletics champion was also a phenomenal soccer player and could represent the country in cricket. And they were playing all of those three things and doing all those three things up to about 15, 16. And then they had to make a decision. They had to make a decision to say, listen, if you're going to be world class at any one of these, you've got to choose one. Right. You it's the divergence and the, and the dissolution of focus and energy into three different directions that are going to compromise your ability to get one. And so a lot of them choose one sport and they go all in or they follow through and they get phenomenal responses. What's stimulated to me to ask you that question is there's a guy who used to play for man, man United. Who's now today launching his professional tennis degree, tennis career. And I'm like, how much talent has this guy got?

Wow.

you know, to be able to do that, to switch gears and go back that. that to me is an example a lot of times of the difference between being a generalist and being a specialist, you know, being focused on one thing and just pursuing multiple things. Perhaps we can talk a little bit about that to Lawrence as well.

Yeah, well, there's another player, Ash, Ash Barty, the number one Australian tennis player, you know, left when she was number one to go and then she decided to retire and then went to golf, right? I don't know how successful her career was as a golfer. You know, Michael Jordan, you know, after winning three championship after his father died, decided to go into baseball, you know, and, and I think there's success and failures with that, obviously, there's, you know, it's, it's like, there's the success of,

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

I don't think it's, I think in a high level, like high, high level, I think it's rare to be able to trans, transcend one sport to another sport. Um, I don't see it very often. I do see that in Olympics though. Uh, and in certain sport, like I've seen, um, I can't remember her name, but she was a, uh, I believe she was a sprinter. You know, I've seen sprinters transition to like Bob's letters, for example, summer Olympics to a winter Olympics.

Yep, yep, yep.

You've seen that, but I haven't seen, you know, you obviously seen the 100 meter runners go to 200 meters or 200 meters go to 100 meter. We've seen that with Noah Lyles, you know, that can transcend that, but it's still running. It's a different sport in a sense, but it's still similar. I can't think of anybody who's actually done one sport that dominated one sport and then went to another sport and dominated that. Can you think of anybody?

Look, these days, not dominated, there's guys that I know in, particularly in Australia that I'll be more familiar there, who played cricket at the highest level, sorry, played, sorry, they played football at the highest level in the AFL or Victorian Football League as it was called back then, and then represented their country in cricket. So that's, I know a few of those. Rick Charles was the only person that I know. who, um, who, he went to a really high level, you know, he was a doctor then, uh, basically involved in hockey as well. So multi-talented sort of a guy, um, who, yeah, go for it. Go hit me with them. Who? Yeah. No, no, no.

I just came up with two. I just remember two people. Sorry, sorry. Well, so, all right. This is going back. So it hasn't happened in a very long time, and that's why it took me a while. Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. Okay, so these are American sports here, but Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, they both played baseball at a high level, both in the Major League Baseball at a high level. They were not just like bench players. They were actually really good players. Plus, they also played American football.

Okay. Bo Jackson, okay.

at a high level as well. And, uh, and I don't know if you remember the days of the 1980s when Bo Jackson was huge, it was always Bo knows, um, the Nike ads and, he was able to, like, both of those players were able to play. Now it was rare, obviously just because, you know, you gotta be super talented, uh, and skillful to play in any of those major league sports, but to do it both also required those two sports not to coincide with each other in terms of the season, which is also a very difficult thing to do.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that that highlights the, the just how difficult that is and how rare that is to be able to then go, because if you're to put all your energy and time and, it's not just the training time, it's the recuperation time. You know, um, if you, if you're focusing on a career, like I remember, you know, when we were studying chiropractic, there were a couple of guys who were playing, who were aspiring to play AFL football and they did, and they played football in the highest level. And they were also following through a career as well as a professional sporting career and kudos to them. You know how they, I think they had an incredible capacity to manage their time and priorities, which is a lot of what we're talking about now. They had to identify what is important and necessary to do and what is just filler. And so they had a lot less downtime. They focused on the things that gave them the greatest outcome, the Pareto principle, so to speak. And so they use the skill sets. And I think that that's probably what Bo Jackson would have been able to do is to go, what can I identify in my mindset as a professional athlete in this area that I can transfer to another area? Not so much the skills per se, but rather often the preparation, the mindset and how I show up to me. think that's, that's really helpful, but gosh, it'd be really difficult. It's hard enough, as you said, to do things in one, let alone another. And that's what's always fascinated me by the decathlon. You know, it's like, how do you do, you know,

Hmm.

Most people will be struggling to do one of those events and you'll do 10.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that's a perfect example. Um, or even like a triathlon or an Ironman, like those kinds of examples where you have to be, you have to be decently strong in all three, but chances are you're never the top one for all three or all 10. Right. And I remember watching the Olympics one time and I was watching this a hundred meter race. I'm like, who are these people and what heat are we in? Cause they were just running and they're like, the times don't look that great. I don't understand how is this the Olympic 100 meter thing? I'm like, these don't look like sprinters. And then I realized it was, oh no, that was the 100 meter race in the decathlon. I'm like, oh, that makes sense, right? No wonder they were like scoring in the tens, right? In 10 seconds and 10.29 or whatever. Which is still decent, right? It's still great, but it's not the 100 meters, you know, the nine, the sub tens I was expecting. And that really just goes to show like.

Yeah.

You don't have to be, it's something like a sport like the Catholic, you don't have to be the best in every single one of them, but you have to be pretty damn good at most of those disciplines to actually, you know, to get anywhere. I think another sport like that is CrossFit. You know, CrossFit is because it's over, you know, three to four days. And you know, it is about, it's not just about, you know, how fit you are because it's not, fitness, Ozzy said fitness, but it's fitness on strength. could just be a one RM of something like a squat or a snatch or something.

Yeah.

or a certain lift all the way to like a long distance, know, 30 minute and an hour bike ride and swim and all that stuff too. So it's like accommodate, how do you do, how do you train for that? It's such a very, very difficult thing to do because sometimes it's about power and strength and sometimes it's about distance. Like when I go to a CrossFit gym and sort of do a workout, you give me pull-ups, push-ups, air squats, like anything body weight, I'm gonna be

Smashing it.

I'm to be pretty decent, right? You put a barbell in front of me, I'm screwed, right? Like I'm just not that good and not that strong with it, you know? But then those guys, like the big guys, they're just going to go like, give that to me and I'll be able to do that no problem. And so that's why, you know, every sport has its advantages and disadvantages for a thing. And that's what I love about the sport. I love about sports in general is because you could be great at one thing, but it doesn't mean that you can translate it and just apply it to something else.

Eh, eh. Smash it.

And I think that that's something that we have to kind of appreciate. And I think that's exactly the same thing when it comes to business and in life. So oftentimes I see, and I'm sure you see this in clients, is that they spent their whole entire life doing this one thing. Let's just call it chiropractors doing chiropractic things and being a chiropractor. And then all of a sudden the expectation is, because I'm a great chiropractor, I must be a great business person. Or I'm a great chiropractor and I've had a successful career, I'm going to be, and transition to, I don't know, a coach or transition to be a real estate investor or a real, and they think that, well, cause I was successful in one area, must, what must be, will be okay, successful in another area. And then this is, mean, I've had that thought too, when I, when I transitioned, like, of course, like I'm already great at this and it must be great. And then realize I had to actually not start from the bottom, but I pretty much have to start first. I'm going back to base camp. Exactly. And it's hard. It's hard for the mind to, to, to kind of rationalize because like think about Michael Jordan, who's at the top of his game.

You're to base camp. You're going to base camp basically. Yeah, look.

right, the MVP won championships and then got to go to the minor leagues and sit on the bus. the, the ego that you have to let go to be in that position is really difficult for most people. And I think that's the biggest challenge when people try to transition their professional careers.

Yeah, totally. You know, I was going to talk about the difference between being a specialist and a generalist, but I want to go back because I had my mind just went off on this little tangent when you were talking about the sprinter and the decathlon. So imagine being a sprinter, you're doing sprints, you get it done in like 9.7 seconds or whatever you win. A decathlon does it in 10.2 seconds. Um, and you're just going to spend the rest of the day just sprinting. try to shave down that point, oh, three of a second. And this bike is going to go off and do all this. What was going to go off and do nine other events. Um, it's just, it's insane. But that's so when you're focusing on things, sometimes the, victories, the improvements are going to feel slower. There'll be a point of diminishing returns because you're getting deeper and deeper and deeper into one specific area. And so you're not going to have the magic, the big victories necessarily. as often or as, as you're not going to be able to map your progress as quickly as you were when you first starting to do something. Whereas the person will go off and do nine events. They're going to have reference representations and areas where they can plot progress across the board. And as long as they're improving by, you know, two or three seconds or five, one or five or 10 meters on each point, then they're getting better. They've got something more tangible to, to measure their progress. So that then cycles me back to, you know, some of the benefits of being a generalist and some of it of being someone who's a specialist, right? So you talked earlier on about the generalists and I read a book, or sorry, I read a book, I saw a book recently and I haven't, don't know the author, but they're talking about why the generalists have more of an impact and may have more of a legacy on the world specifically as opposed to specialization. And I'm starting to believe that that's the case more now as well too, where We were always trained to study in a specific area, stay in your lane, stay in your niche, but there's validity and power in being able to have a diverse and generalized skillset and being able to adapt. think that's what I'm seeing more and more. Not sure how you see that as well.

Yeah, think, yeah, so I feel like, as my dog is barking over here, sorry, I don't know if you can hear that, but.

That's okay. Mine's in my room as well too. So that's fine. Let's name it. Let's acknowledge it. Mine's sleeping. Mine's sleeping. She's out calling.

Yeah, it's good to go with it. Mine was sleeping and all of sudden something has stirred her up. I think she wants to go outside for a walk. Yeah. So I think there's, there's a couple of things I think in order, I don't know. And I don't know if I'm right on this, but I feel like there's, there, I think in any professional career or endeavor, like you have to have, you have to be a generalist in a lot of the foundational things. Like you got to be generalist in majority of the things that makes that particular profession or that particular thing. Um, you got to know it.

She's a generalist. She just wants to contribute to the conversation, Loris.

Otherwise, it's really difficult. But I think where the differentiation between you and the next person is your ability to be able to hone in on being a specialist in one specific or two specific lanes in that so that you become like the standout. But you don't remember, you know, any professional, you don't have to be the best for everyone. You just need to be if you like to say there's 10 generalist skill sets, you know that everybody has, I think you need to maintain your minimum skill set for all. all 10 areas like that's, you know, and have a higher than just minimum, right? If you can have better than minimum, then I think that you're doing well. But if you're able to take one of those 10 and make that to say, let's say the minimum is three, and you're a four across the board. But if you took one of those things and as a nine or 10, I think all of a sudden now you distinguish yourself far from me everybody else in that lane, and everybody will be known for you for that one thing, but they will assume

Yeah.

because you're a 10 out of 10 on that one level that you're actually very decent on all other ones. your fours, even though you don't have to work on it, becomes more like it's inflated because that one thing takes you, elevates you to a degree, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I like that. I like that explanation and analogy to basically say you need to have core competencies or skill sets in all in a multiple areas. Like a business person has to have an understanding of rudimentary finance and accounting and, and legal matters. And they have to have an about marketing, all those kinds of things, but they need to be exceptionally good at the areas that they want to be good at. so they've got a more rounded, more more, I wouldn't say balanced, but a more rounded perspective and understanding of what are required to be successful in business. And then they then become the avenues through which they excel.

That's right. Yeah. So let's use an example, right? So let's just maybe make me as a chiropractor as my career when I was a chiropractor. And let's just say like, you know, I would say my weak points were that as a diagnostician, I like, could do it. Like, I mean, I can, I wasn't the best at it though. I wasn't the most knowledgeable person that came in with these things. like, okay, this must be it. Like I wasn't one of those people. My ability to like remember or recall

Yeah.

like scientific studies and all that stuff, probably not very great. My X-ray reading skills, decent enough. It wasn't like a low end, but it was definitely like middle end, but it wasn't like, oh, like I know exactly what that is, right? So, but my skills, like what was my strength was, I believe, was my communication skills. Like I think that was, you my ability, not because I was a good talker, no, that's not the communication I'm talking about. My ability to be able to relate to people. and communicate valuable information that makes sense to them. I think that was a very top thing that was probably distinction between me and most other practitioners. My adjusting skill, I don't actually think I was actually the greatest adjuster in the world. I told that in my mind, but I still don't necessarily fully believe it. I was definitely good, but I wasn't amazing. I think there's a lot of great adjusters out there that are far better than me. so that's why, and the reason why I'm saying this is because Sometimes people rank that you, know, in chiropractic, for example, and they're like, you must be a great adjuster to be great at chiropractic. I don't believe so. Like I think there's certain skillsets that require you to be better. Having being a great adjuster, of course helps you, but I don't think it's the only thing. And my rationale for this, and maybe it's rational because of my skillset, is that if you can't communicate, who are you going to actually adjust? Right? If you can't communicate to what you're trying to tell people, what this is important,

Hmm. you

then who are you actually adjusting? So it's kind of a wasted skill. So I send certain levels of skills that needs to be there. And you can apply that to accounting. You can apply that to being a lawyer, a medical doctor, an entrepreneur. There's certain things that you're gonna be great at. And other things like as an entrepreneur, you don't have to be great at everything. I know entrepreneurs that are fantastic ideation. Like they just come up with their most craziest ideas, but they're terrible executors. Like actually this is a typical entrepreneur. A typical entrepreneur, if you go with a Coby,

Hmm.

I think it's a Kobe B index or something like that. It's a, which is test. And most entrepreneurs that I've ever met all say there are quick starts. They're like a nine out of 10 and quick start, which means they execute faster than most people. Right. They will just come up with, they have an idea and they just get execute. They have an idea. They execute. Right. What are they terrible at? Attention to detail. Typically, again, I'm not, not all entrepreneurs, but this is most entrepreneurs. They're really quick starts, but they're terrible detail orientated. Right. They're big thinkers, the highest.

you Mm. I'll put my head up, yeah.

high in the sky visionaries, but they're terrible at the details. And so, but does it mean that the flip is doesn't, you can't be a great entrepreneur? No, it doesn't mean that it just means that it's about recognizing your skill set, recognizing what you're great at, and then leveraging the hell out of it and find other people who are who are your who can manage your weakness who are great at doing the things that you are terrible at. I think that will be the finding the right team and partnership. And that's what

Yep.

Because that allows you going back to the topic, allows you to focus on what gives you energy. That's number one. Number two, it gives you focus on your genius rather than things that actually cost you energy.

Yeah. And sometimes when people can't focus on an area and they'll focus on what's, you know, the shiny object syndrome, they always look into something new, something different. It's usually either they're not doing what is interesting or they're not really focusing on something that they're really good at and, and it excites them and they can see the connections and the impact of it because constantly they're thinking they're looking at a superficial level rather than going very deep and going, what would happen if I really I immersed myself in this, this would, so often it's people who aren't able to focus on a particular area, either haven't given of themselves fully, or it's there in the area that they're not very good at. And they're basically trying to push rubbish up a hill, so to speak. Um, that's what I find. That's why people get distracted. They're not, they're not interested in that area, but the moment you follow your own curiosity, your own pathway, your own natural enthusiasm, you'll suddenly find, okay, I can really get to know more about this area. I can, I can know a little bit about this and this actually ultimately helped me focus on what I really want to know about. it's the links that I find fascinating where you start whenever you've spoken about getting on YouTube a lot of the time and I, and I can see that being a case for a lot of people. You start off going, how I want to know more about this. And then you learn about them and go, huh, that's interesting. How does that link up to something else? So to me, YouTube is just a platform for if you use it correctly, that could actually help you understand things curiously. If you're looking at it passively, and that's the way it's designed to be on there, it's just designed to be the moment that one video finishes, it's the automatic feed that just keeps going there. It's just really designed to keep you on there. But you can be intentional and focus on what you want to focus on or be the effect of things. And then become a consumer as opposed to someone who's being intentional.

Hmm. you know, I just literally had this conversation with my son today on the ride to school and the conversation was, know, he's 13 years old and you he's sort of at that cusp of going to high school soon in grade nine, he's in grade eight now and going to grade nine. it's, you know, one of the things I said to him, I encouraged him, it's like he got down with himself when he felt like he was something that he was not doing well in school or what his test didn't do as well. and helped him through, look through some of the problems of why he didn't do as well. what it really was was just, he just made some silly mistakes. It wasn't that, but in his head when he first got the mark was like, oh, I'm not smart. And I just said to him today, I'm like, you gotta be very careful here about being smart or not smart. It has nothing to do with that at all. It has nothing to do with smart or being not smart. It's actually smartness. If you think that someone's smart and not smart, you either, if you don't get something right, you're gonna just assume that you don't have that ability. And that's not how we should be thinking about this. We should really start to think about that life is about knowing how hard you actually worked at something rather than how smart you are It's not you know, because people who are really good at something isn't because they're smarter It's about how good they are something So I think that's really important for them to kind of think about the second thing I really kind of talked to him about was recognizing like you got to be curious Like he has this great skill when he wants to know something He will deep he will go do a deep dive and figure that out and I love that about him And I reminded him that's a skill set that you actually have that most people don't Most people don't have the tenacity to go after something. And when you have that ability to do that, that's a strength and you want to leverage that. You sometimes may have to fake it to be curious. I'm like, oh, that's what curious about this math problem and dive deep into it. But if you can do that and kind of do this for subjects that you don't actually care about yet. But if you kind of do this curiosity, it will go a long way. And I think that would be helpful for him. that was some, which is why I encourage everybody here. It's like, I feel like if you just want to be a generalist and just be okay, a mediocre at everything. that's not really going to be the thing, successful thing that's going to get you. I think what's going to help all of you is that you want to deep dive in something, something that you already are interested in. And when you can leverage that, you can go deep dive and I it will make a massive difference.

Yeah. And you know, Lawrence, um, that's a great grab there. I think we should use this one for marketing purposes as well, particularly because your dog, um, is really enthusiastic about it. It's quite passionate. She can feel the energy and the enthusiasm of what you're talking about. And, um, and, and it just reaffirms everything that you're basically saying. So this is the art of imperfection, right? This is the thing I used to take my kids to business meetings all the time and you know, my kids would start drawing on the contracts with you not looking over and you'd have a look around. So I hate what's happening here, but you know what? That's, that's, that's it. You know, that's we, we strive for a high level of excellence. Um, occasionally things happen. Um, we're still focused, uh, but sometimes we're also adaptive in the moment and we can just go with that as well. And no, no, I could hear it. I'm here. It's not, it's not, I'm cracking up laughing. I'm going, this is hilarious. This is funny. And this is like,

Yeah, I apologize for that. I was hoping that you wouldn't hear it, but at the end of the day, uh,

I want to stop you because you're in a zone. It's a really good grab. I, you know, it's like, okay, we won't be able to use it for marketing purpose because, because that's it. That's Correct. Correct. I could feel it. could feel it. went, know what? Who cares? Don't worry about it. It's fun. You're in the zone. Anybody who could actually take the, the, the, the, the nuggets, the gold nuggets out of what you were saying. And cause it was a really powerful.

I know I can see a smile on your face. That's the thing. I saw the smile on your face. I'm like, I know you can hear this, but I'm like, I am not breaking a train of thought right now. I am going to continue this rant and just keep going.

communication there and just get focused on what you're saying, not the distractions. Perfect metaphor. Focus on the words, not what's going on. A great coach of mine, um, when he was talking about, uh, a boxer, uh, basically said, know, when you're ever in, when a boxer is in a ring and he's been beaten down to the canvas and there's all these voices shouting all over the place. The one voice he listens to is the guy in the corner, his trainer.

Hmm.

That's the voice you listen to. You have to discipline yourself to tune out all the noise and focus on the most important voice. Sometimes that voice is your own. Sometimes it's the, it's your trusted advisor. So in that moment, I couldn't hear a dog except for the part of me that was cracking up laughing. So, but I, but, I was taking away what you were saying far more than the distraction.

I'm glad it was hopefully I'm gonna have to re-listen to that and hopefully that it will still turn out okay. guys, I hope that you enjoyed. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Well, this is the perfect example of the art of imperfection is what this podcast is about. This is Wabi Sabi and I hope you enjoyed that and took something away and more importantly, just that you want to focus on.

Our editing team do a great job. Our editing team do a great job.

Focus on the things that you know that makes you uniquely you. That's our message to you today and if you feel like this is going to help someone else, please share this podcast with someone else. All right, until next week, this is Jim and I signing off. Take care.