Doug: Hey, what’s going on. Welcome to the Doug show. My name is Doug Cunnington. And today I’m going to talk about a little project that I’m making up for myself, uh, at the beginning of the year, it’s not a resolution, but the timing just kind of worked out that way. I either started a little late or a little early, depending on how you think about it.
Which that hardly even makes sense. But basically I got in my head that. I want to do a little bit more reading. This was about a month ago. So that timeframe, it was. You know, kind of middle of December or so, which I guess maybe people were thinking about their resolutions and stuff. But I think I talked about this a couple episodes ago.
I really don’t do resolutions. It’s just sort of an arbitrary timeframe all through the year. I, I start and stop things. And sometimes I start things and realize, Hey. I don’t want to do it anymore. But anyway, in this case, I’m going to be reading a little bit more. And I actually read quite a bit currently, but typically these days I’m reading a lot of non fiction.
No, not nonfiction. I’m reading a lot of fiction. I’m reading a lot of fiction, and I’ll usually read like before bed. I gravitate towards sort of like Mystery crime Like I don’t know thriller type books. I like the Reacher series like Jack Reacher And I’ve read about 20 of those. That’s by Lee Child.
There’s been a couple of movies. There’s an Amazon series. Amazon is a good series out there. So I do recommend you check it out if you like Reacher. And I also read CJ Box, who has the Joe Pickett series. There’s 20 plus books there. And it’s set in Wyoming, sometimes in Yellowstone, out in the Mountain West.
So. That’s a pretty fun one too. And there was a Paramount plus a TV series. Pretty good. I think it only lasted two seasons though. So anyway, I read a lot of fiction and have for the last a decade or so. And the thing is over the last few years, I haven’t been reading as much nonfiction. Nonfiction used to be my favorite.
I used to only read nonfiction. And the, the funny thing is I’ve, I’ve still. Purchased books in the last few years. I just haven’t been reading them, which is kind of silly. And the thing is I didn’t stop nonfiction altogether. I just really tapered back. So probably over the course of the last couple of years, maybe I only read like four or five nonfiction books and I have a lot of print ones.
The thing is, I know. Sometimes I’ll listen to the audio book and I’ll like it so much that I will buy the print book, knowing that I’ll check it out later, or I just like having the physical one. I have a pile of them. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to read coming up. But the other thing is I know if I like a specific author, because maybe I like their podcast or they wrote a book before and I know I like their style.
So there’s a couple of scenarios in that way. And. I’ll show you the books that I’m going to read at least some of them. I think this is just a portion. I kind of want to do this for maybe the year we’ll see how it goes. The funny thing is I I’ve been at a town a lot. You know fun sort of weekend trips and stuff like that And I’ll always bring a book or two and I never fucking crack it open It’s pretty funny because I’ve done this again like the last couple years I’ll always bring a book with the intention like thinking hey, I’m gonna have just some idle time to read I don’t I’m always doing like some other thing or some adventure or something else so anyway I am, I’m going to be reading a lot more.
Uh, I just started over the last three or four days. So I’m still, you know, eager about it, but I, I hope I’ll, I’ll be able to, to keep it up. So my, sort of the ideal would be to read about one hour per day. Now, the thing is, I’m not going to be too strict. So some days, if I can only read for five or 10 minutes, that’s fine.
And some days, maybe it’s going to be a long travel day or something like that. It’ll be zero and that’s going to be okay. And my goal will be to not have too many zeros in general, and hopefully never two in a row and just have the habit going. Now, the thing is, I, I do like reading, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
And to break the monotony here for a second, I’ll show you the book that I’m reading, right? Right now, Charles Duhigg, super communicator. And this book came out about a year ago or so. And I was excited when it came out because I’m a big Charles Duhigg fan. And the thing is I even pre ordered it and I pre ordered it cause I was on this, the email list.
And I, so I have like a signed, uh, Assigned copy, which is kind of fun but I haven’t cracked it open. So I had this thing for a year and I, I didn’t even crack it open until recently. And in fact, it looks like I, I don’t remember what I set on there, but there’s like a Put like a coffee stain on there, which is funny.
So it’s been around. In fact, I used it as a big fucking coaster for something but it’s fine and I do like Charles Duhigg. Now the cool thing this super communicators book is It’s already come in handy. So I started reading it just a couple of days ago. And at the time that I’m recording this, it is January of 2025.
And it’s been very cold here in Colorado. This morning it was like negative four degrees Fahrenheit or so. So very cold, quite cold. So I’ve been able to make good headway over the last couple of days because it’s been cold enough where, you know, I’m not walking the dog as much. I’m not doing stuff outside because it’s that cold.
So anyway, this book has come in handy already. Even though I’m only like 120 pages in or so, uh, because it does talk about communication. And one funny thing is I live in this neighborhood and there’s an HOA. A lot of people fucking hate HOAs and I’m, I’m one of them. I don’t like HOAs. Um, they. I don’t even know if many people like them at all.
Even people that are on like HOA boards. I don’t think they even like it. It’s just somehow they had a weak moment and they ran because nobody else would. But we have, I’ll just tell you the story. We got a few minutes. So I’ll tell you the story. In, uh, in the neighborhood here, or close by the neighborhood, there’s, there’s, uh, some land which is kind of outside the neighborhood near the, the green space around the neighborhood, and there’s a bunch of prairie dogs that live there.
And there’s a bunch of holes, and they run around, and they squeak at each other. They’re kind of fun. I like animals. And there is a desire to Eradicate them. And I think I just, I did a little more reading and it’s a little sad. I think they pumped the holes full of carbon monoxide and they suffocate the little guys.
So pretty dramatic. And the thing is there’s some people on the board, actually four out of the five people on the board want to get rid of them. And there’s a bunch of residents myself included, who are thinking, Hey, are there other options? Like what, can we please get all the information? Why do you want them gone?
Is there a health risk? Um, they say if the prairie dogs, migrate into people’s yards. There’s a chance of a lawsuit. And I’m like, what the fuck? Like if an animal, a wild animal lives nearby and then goes into people’s yards, the board could be sued. Like it didn’t make sense. I, so I was asking a couple of questions about precedent anyway.
There’s a feud, right? There’s there’s people in the Facebook group, which is not the way the the board is managed by the way It’s just like that’s the easiest way for a lot of people to communicate So there are people kind of talking past each other and they they’re like we want to get rid of them And here’s a couple reasons why which may or may not be valid and then other people are saying I don’t, we kind of like them, but they’re not really asking each other, like what is actually important to either group?
Like, is it an eyesore? Do people just think, Oh, the holes look bad. So we want to kill all these small animals. Or is it some other health issue? Right. Turns out prairie dogs might carry the plague. Obviously, that’s quite rare. It’ll wipe out the whole colony in like two days, apparently. Anyway, I googled some stuff and I, I found like a 86 page whole, you know, single space, like long document talking all about prairie dogs in Boulder County.
But anyway, I popped into The Facebook group. And I asked what, Hey, what is important to, to you on this side? And what is important to you on this side? Because maybe there’s some sort of middle ground compromise, but people are really digging in and they’re just like, ah, these people are fucking idiots or whatever.
So it’s like, Someone needs to sort of mediate. I, to be clear, I don’t want to be that person, but I popped in and I asked questions about what’s important to both groups and I think like maybe I’ll understand it better and the other thing HOA boards suck. I like, I’m not even sure if, if everyone is.
Annoyed, like what, not annoyed, if the majority of residents don’t want this to happen, like what needs to happen to like prevent them from eradicating, which is the word they use, the prairie dogs. So anyway. HOAs, right? They’re crazy. So I did learn some techniques just in the first 120 pages where, you know, you can ask a couple of questions to go a little bit deeper and kind of try to understand what’s going on.
Great book. And I have Charles Duhigg’s other two main books. I don’t know if he’s written others. I think he’s only written three the power of habit and a productivity book called like faster, smarter, better. I think that’s what it’s called. So anyway, I’m going through this super communicators book first.
And actually at the rate that I’m going, um, I mean, I think I’m more than halfway through. I’m not sure at the end, how many references and stuff are in there, but I’m making pretty good headway. And if I’m reading about one hour per day, I should be able to go pretty quickly through many books. I mean, that might be like two per week, depending of course, on the length of the book.
So let’s go through some of the other ones. And Oh, if you’re watching on YouTube, like comment, uh, your reading habits to help, you know, boost the. Algorithm, maybe more people will check it out, but let’s go through some of the other ones. Quick caveat, some of these books I have read before, but I’m like, Oh, I’ll read them again.
Cause they’re good. But I’ll tell you the ones that I have not read. So this book by Mark Manson, everything is fucked. I think this was like the second book in his, um, Fucked series. This is a book about hope and I really like Mark Manson. I’ve been listening to his podcast, probably maybe 50 percent of the episodes.
And I bought this book. I think I still have the receipt in here or maybe I don’t. I bought this book I think when it came out or at least when it first came out on paperback. So I got this, I think in 2019. And like I said, I do like Mark Manson and I like, I like his style of writing and it’s quite casual and fun.
And let me see, do I have the date on here? 2020. So I bought this in 20. Yes. Yeah. 2020. Sorry. Good book. I read apparently like 15 or 20 pages, but unlike when I started super communicators with this, I didn’t have much intention. So I would sit down and start reading like two pages at a time. That’s what I used to do before I started reading, uh, pretty actively.
I think in about 20, 30, 40, 12, 2013. I started reading like a lot more. Really. I went from reading like zero to two books a year to like 20 to 40 or something like that. I need to look back. I do use Goodreads most of the time and. Yeah, I think, you know, for a couple of years I read like 40 to 50 books, something like that.
Alright, so we got Everything is Fucked, which should be a good book. And here’s another one that I have not read yet. Again Cal Newport. I know he’s a great author. I have deep work, which I found very good. And the thing is I listened to quite a few Cal Newport podcast interviews before he had his own podcast.
And he was starting to talk about slow productivity. And I was like, man, I really, I like that mindset and approach. And I think it’s something I want to do more of. And. I bought this book. I pre ordered it as well. I haven’t cracked it open. It’s been sitting back there. I haven’t cracked the fucking thing open.
And I’ve been listening a little bit more to Cal Newport’s podcast. It is, it’s definitely deeper and more, it’s longer than some shows that I like to listen to. Although now that I said that, I do listen to long shows, but I think Cal is such a good teacher that it’s more dense than what I can handle sometimes.
So when I see like a 90 minute podcast from Cal, I might not check it out because it’ll be too dense. I’ve listened to a, I probably listened to a show maybe like once a quarter or so. If the title catches me, but I really do like Cal Newport a lot. I like his writing style. Deep work was like fairly, uh, influential for me.
So I do have that. And I was like, I’ll probably check it out again. Now I’ll take a quick little detour again, because. I recently watched a YouTube video that talked about, like, being able to focus and I think it was pretty focused on reading and being able to read a book specifically, like, you know, like these books that I’m showing you here, it improves your ability to focus and not get distracted.
Now. I think I’m lucky. I guess there’s advantages and disadvantages to being able to focus versus ADHD and actually a number of my friends. And, you know, you, you hear this often where someone’s like, yeah, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I’m taking like whatever medicine, whatever kind of speed they give you, uh, not to laugh about people’s ADHD, but I’ve talked to several people and they’re like, yeah, I’ve I’ve taken you know, I started taking the medicine, we locked in the dosage and I’m able to focus like I’ve never have been before.
Turns out I, I’d never had ADHD and I can sit and focus for hours at a time and I’ve always been able to, so a little bit lucky there. But the, the thing is I am not immune to the, the lure of the, uh, the lure Of social media and short form content, which I tend to stay away from. Right. I, I am susceptible to like Instagram and Instagram reels.
But YouTube shorts, not too, I’m not that into them. Like when they pop up, like when I open on my, my phone, my app it tries to give me shorts and I’m like, fuck that, like I get out of there. I want to watch like a little bit longer form video. However. Again, I’m not immune to this stuff, so I’ll watch a video that I’m interested in, and then, there’s a slow point, and I look for another video, like a, addict, just trying to find something a little bit more Interesting, something that’ll hit me with some more dopamine.
So as the last few weeks have gone on, I’ve been like, am I watching too much YouTube and I don’t even want to look at the screen time stats on my iPhone because I’m not going to like what I see. And the thing is, like, I do watch a lot of educational slash entertaining things on YouTube. Is that the same as me just watching like old reruns of sitcoms and just like vegging out?
Which, which is valid. I do enjoy watching TV and I think that’s totally fine. But. Am I doing too much of that? And am I consuming too much, sort of like, of that junk food of our attention span? Will I be better served to read things like deep work and slow productivity? Probably so. These things They put a lot more time into it and they have professional editors that make sure the information is good and that it’s well written.
And if I’m consuming like higher quality stuff, will I have higher quality ideas? In my, I mean, I know that will be the case because I am just trying to veg out, which I think is valid. I’ve gone through a, you know, a long period. I mentioned, I started reading a lot more in 2013 and I worked very hard and I did a bunch of stuff.
I learned many things and I’m in a little stage where I’m like, I need to veg out, let my brain rest a little bit and get a little bored. And I think that’s totally fine. Maybe I need to work on some other stuff or do some physical challenges or whatever, but, but anyway, took a little break, but I was like, all right, do I feel good about like watching so much YouTube stuff and like trying to find new stuff to watch as I’m watching something else, because I’m a little bit bored for 10 seconds and that’s not great.
So this YouTube video that I watched, they were talking about like the fact that you can focus and read a book is a great thing. I realized that I hadn’t been doing that in a while. So that was part of the inspiration and the stack of books that I’ve been ordering yet, not reading. So let’s keep going through a couple more here in more YouTube comments.
If you want, what book are you reading? Or is there one here? That, that I’m about to show you, or that I’m reading that, that you want to read to what’s on your list. Okay. Next one, we’ll do one. That I have not read yet. Uh, my friend Jordan Grumet wrote this, the purpose code. He was actually on the show a few weeks back and I didn’t realize it.
But Morgan Housel did the blurb at the top, which is awesome. I love Morgan Housel. I have been reading his couple books and I think he has a new one coming out later on this year that he’s been teasing his books are behind me, but I, I like devoured those as soon as I got them. Funny enough, yeah, the Morgan’s books are like a couple of them when I got them, I read them, and I was like, I love these books.
All right, next couple Oliver Berkman for these last two. So I’ve actually read both of these. So one is the antidote and I believe this was his First major book. Let me look at the date on here. But I read 4, 000 weeks and I was like, 4, 000 weeks is awesome. I’m going to get his other book. So this was in 2012, Oliver Berkman wrote this in 2012.
And I, I did not hear about it. It’s the antidote and it’s happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking. That’s a great subtitle there. And when I first heard about Oliver Berkman, it was because of this book, 4, 000 weeks, and it was on the Tim Ferriss podcast. Tim published one chapter from this and I was like, this is fucking awesome.
I’ve heard a lot about this book, but I did not, I didn’t read it until I heard the blurb. And then I was like, I have to check it out. Tim Ferris published chapter 13, cosmic insignificance therapy. And it is the. 13th of 14 chapters. So towards the end, you can go find it on the feed on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
And the thing is I heard about 4, 000 weeks for a little while, say a year. I don’t know. I heard about it for a little while and I was like, eh, probably I get the point. I don’t really need to check it out. But when I heard the chapter, I was like, this is pretty good. I have to read that. This was published in 2021.
And. The other book that I heard around the same time is die with zero. Another great book. I actually don’t have the print copy of that. I keep meaning to order it, but that’s another book, I think 4, 000 weeks and die with zero read those two together and for about, I wouldn’t say like two maybe it was only a year.
It was only a year. I heard several people mention those two books. And they were a couple of friends. A couple of big podcasters mentioned those books being extremely influential. They read them both. I had a profound impact on their life. Same deal for me. And I, I don’t think my wife has read 4, 000 weeks, but she read that was zero.
And that was instrumental in her retiring in the last year here. So that’s my, that’s my overall thing. I’m going to be. Attempting to read about at least one hour per day. Most days, like I said, I’m not going to, I’m not going to be too strict and some days for whatever reason, I’m going to be like, I don’t feel like reading this much or the schedule doesn’t allow for some reason.
Although I control my schedule. So there’s no reason for that to happen. But the thing is just don’t miss too many days. Really, as long as I read just a few minutes, like that, that’s Satisfies it. And one thing I mentioned on a recent live stream is like, I had this kind of idea to do this reading. And I was like, I want to make sure that I sort of capture something.
And I, I mentioned like potentially writing one paragraph or so, or at least a few sentences about what I read that day, and I’m not sure, I’m not sure. So I haven’t done that so far. However, I have been keeping some notes and one thing I started to do in the last couple of years is just write in my books, right?
Like I own these and typically I would like buy a book and I would read it and put it on the shelf and. It looks brand new, like no one touched it ever. And I was like, I could take notes in the book. Maybe I, I’m sure I heard a couple of people talk about like taking notes. And so what I started to do is just write in the books, right.
In the margins, underline stuff, make notes. And, um, you know, it doesn’t have to be much, but if I just see like something. That seems a little interesting. I think you can see the underline stuff if you’re watching on YouTube and sometimes I’ll make like some, some longer notes and stuff. So maybe what I’ll do is like when I finish a book to maybe like write a paragraph or a page or whatever, just a little summary of the book or the biggest takeaways.
The other thing when you, when you put notes in, and I have done this on, on some books where I’ll put notes in and then. At the end of the book, I’ll create my own index in that way. If I’m ever like, Oh yeah, what, what did I like in this book? Although to be fair, I’ve never gone back and actually referenced it.
I think I would write some stuff in there and then I know where to go for things, so I didn’t do it for this whole book, but you could see, Here, if it will focus that I have some notes handwritten and it’s just like in the very back. And in most books, they’ll have like one or two, this actually has like one has like three blank pages in here.
So like you can make a full index or write whatever you want in there. And a lot of times there’s like a page up front two or a couple of pages up front. Yeah. This one has like three up front. It’s your book, right? You could write all through it if you want. And keep your notes in there. That way you’re not going to lose them.
And there was a time where I was like, okay, I’m going to read and I’m going to write quotes in a little notebook. And I did that for like one day and that never went back to look at it. And then if I’m thinking, Hey, I pick up the book and I’m like, Oh yeah, I kept the notes. It will be some sort of a treasure hunt to try to find where the notebook is with the notes from that book.
So putting them directly in the book, it seems like a great idea. And like I said, I used to treat the, my books as like a museum piece or whatever. Like I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t fold pages. I like would keep it very pristine for like no reason, but I could beat the thing up and, and, you know. Tape the cover up and draw on it or do whatever I want.
And if that makes it more interesting or Memorable to read the book and that’s a good thing So so that’s the goal and I think you know It’s one of these where I’m gonna be able to stick with it because it’s something I like to do and I mean I’m learning And entertained by the book reading these books and it does improve the focus.
And I, I do, I do think that is important when I’m looking at like the alternatives, if I’m like, Oh, I could scroll for an hour or read reading is probably a better choice. Uh, side note, you know, with the social media, like I said, I am a little susceptible, but I think the algorithm serves me pretty positive stuff.
I am not really shown things where I compare myself to others, which is like one of the super negative things about social media, there’s very few news stories, it’s usually guitars and food and. Border Collies sometimes you know, other breeds of dogs, but, uh, you know, fun pets overall or something funny.
It’s rare that it’s a negative thing for me, and I’m a little bit, well, not lucky. I’ve like cultivated and I like don’t pay attention to the garbage on there. So, anyway. I’m going to be reading a bunch more quick note. If you’re not on the email list, we’ll put a link in the description so you could check it out.
And I’ll put a list of the books that I mentioned in a couple others that I didn’t mention that it will be reading that I have, and they just, they were in another room or something like that. So, all right, have a good one. We’ll catch you on the next episode here. And all right, that’s it, I guess.