Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today it’s gonna be a little bit of a random episode. I’ll cover a few topics. I’ll talk about, uh, maybe what my goals of 2025 were and why I didn’t accomplish them, and I’ll let you in on the secret. I, I didn’t go back and try to look at what my quote goals were.
If you’re a longtime follower of the show, which I think most people are, there’s not a lot of new people popping on. But, uh, there’s several, crazy enough, there’s several hundred of you that do listen to the show on a regular basis, and that’s in the audio and video side. And I’m not, you know, out there trying to promote it.
But anyway, you have been listening for a while and probably. I see the stats, which are not many, uh, that you get from podcasting, but I could see, uh, consistently y’all listen and you may remember that. Um, I probably talked about a few things early in the year and over the years. I usually, ’cause everyone does like these year end type episodes while I do ’em too, but.
I usually do a poor job and I don’t do resolutions, and at the beginning of the year it’s, um, arbitrary to start something at the beginning of the year. Sometimes it works out timing wise. Most of the time I just do stuff whenever, and I’ll talk about a couple of those things and I’ll talk about, you know, probably some of the stuff that I mentioned earlier this year.
I’m almost certain that I talked about it, but I, I just don’t remember any details and I will open with a little story. I at least two stories, but the one I’m thinking of is, uh, I recently got a new Apple watch. The one I had, it was like five or six years old and it was like just horrible battery life.
Uh, like it would only last for a few hours. I was charging it through the day, which was not a huge deal. I mean, I was still able to use it when I needed to and it would last through the night. Uh, use it for sleep tracking. But anyway, it, it actually just died and it wouldn’t hold a charge. And I was like, I’m gonna go without the, the watch for a little while and see how it goes.
’cause it’s, you know, somewhat of a distraction. And I thought maybe it’s a, it’s an unproductive thing for me to obsessively check stats on my phone. Usually it’s like health stats. So I was like, alright, I’ll, I’ll just see what it’s like for a couple weeks. It turns out I did like less activity, so it turns out that I should be you know, using my watch in a positive way, which I, I guess I was doing because I was like more active and I was doing like just.
You know, more steps, more cardio, more working out in general. And I could clearly see it in the activity level, but then I also took a quick peek at my, um, like my VO two, my cardio level as reported by the Apple watch on my iPhone. And it was like clearly lower and I’m like, oh yeah, I literally have been doing less cardio type stuff, so, and.
You know, I got the new watch a couple weeks later. I think I got like the Black Friday deal. I didn’t get like the latest and greatest. I just got like kind of comparable, but I was using like an I, or sorry A, A Apple Watch four, and I think they’re on number 11 or something like that. So I tend to keep stuff for a long time and I was like, ah, do I really, do I need all this shit on my watch or.
Is it just fine? Without, but turns out I use the watch to drive and motivate my activity level because I’m, I’m looking at it, I’m looking at those metrics and I’m looking at it multiple times a day, so it turns out to be a positive thing for me. On the other side of the coin, the goals, or at least some of the things that I talked about earlier in the year and over the years, I was not tracking.
In any capacity at all. So I didn’t do much of these things. I did some other stuff instead, which I’ll talk about. So number one, I think I talked about reading and like maybe reading a little bit more than I did in previous years. Although my reading level has been higher. I, I have gone back to nonfiction books ’cause I took a break for probably a couple years.
I. Wasn’t as interested, at least, especially in the self-help or business area. I was like, I don’t care about these books and ac Actually someone just invited me to go to a fair, fairly small, like brand new conference and I won’t mention it ’cause I’m gonna, I’m telling you I’m not gonna go, but I’ll just say it was lightly.
Business related self-improvement, they’re, they kind of go hand in hand in some capacities. And I was like, I’m not trying to over optimize. I spent many couple decades like trying to optimize and like, alright, how can I squeeze out efficiency? And I’m not, I’m actively trying not to do that kind of stuff because of just, you know.
Obsession on stuff that doesn’t matter too much. So I was like, yeah, I’m not gonna go to that conference. I, I politely declined. I was like, yeah, I, and I didn’t, I, you know what, I don’t have to explain why to the person. I was just like, ah, I’m not a good fit for that one. But it sounds pretty cool. Just not a good fit for me.
So I think the, the person accepted my answer. I mean. Because I didn’t give a reason. They couldn’t try to convince me. And it was a, it was a friendly, uh, friendly note like, Hey, I’m putting on this conference if you want to come. It could be cool. It’s gonna be very, pretty small, like under a hundred people.
So pretty tight. The all that said, I have read more books just generally in the nonfiction area and. Uh, I think some of them are, like I said, outside of the, you know, normal self-help. So I, I think I read one about Yellowstone. I do remember that in that book the person mentioned a book about Ravens, the flying Bird animal Ravens.
And they, uh, I was like, oh, that book sounds cool and I found it on eBay. That’s a a little trick that I do. You can go to eBay often find used books for, I mean, 90%, it’s under um. $5, it’s like four 50, sometimes it might be like $5. Usually it’s free shipping. So I’ll like take a peek at some other books that I might be interested in, in that, um, from that same store.
Usually it’s like a Goodwill or something like that, that has figured out a process where they’re selling books for very cheap free shipping and it’s awesome. So I bought the Raven Book. I haven’t read that one yet, but. I have it on the shelf, so I do read, I’m always reading a, um, fiction book that I read just before bed, and I, you know, go to the library, you know, the Libby app.
I don’t physically go to the library, and then I just download it on my Kindle. But I’m always reading a book before bed, usually for 15 or 20. Minutes if it’s really good. Maybe a little bit longer, but usually I’ll, I’ll read until I get sleepy and I haven’t, I haven’t looked, but I bet I read at least 20 fiction books this year and at the end of the year I’ll take a quick look ’cause I can’t see how many books I’m reading, but I don’t look on a regular basis where I’m like, oh, I really need to like work through this book.
I just read at my own pace. It’s not like a fucking college class or anything like that. So books, that’s one thing that I, I know is like, I think I’m gonna read more and, uh, I’m gonna tell you about it and that I didn’t do any of that. Just reading at my own pace. Other big topic, what you do enjoy is, uh, journaling and I have journaled off and on again.
Similar kind of thing. I’m not trying to, um. I’m not trying to like do anything every single day or anything like that. It’s just when I, when I feel like it, when I want to, and usually I’ll have some sort of a, you know. You know, busier time or less busy time, and I’m like, you know what? I should write some of this stuff down.
And sometimes it’s like a brain dump situation. Sometimes it’s show ideas or other creative ideas that I’m thinking about, video ideas. Other times it’s like, oh yeah, this, I’m going on, uh, vacation and I want to, you know, journal so we can remember like what we were up to on these specific days where we were at because.
You tend to forget that stuff pretty quickly, but if you write it down, you actually can go revisit those ideas in the, you know, just documenting what you did on those days. And it’s kind of fun to go back often, you know, nowadays we have our, uh, phones with cameras on there. We’re snapping pictures all the time, so you can kind of cross reference the two.
You have the date, you have the time, you have some photos. So if, if you want to, you know, go reminisce, you can go back and check those out, which is kind of fun to do. So journaling again, I haven’t, um, tried to get too deep into it, um, or have a regular practice or anything like that. And it is interesting ’cause I know I got more interested in sort of the bullet journaling style through some YouTube videos.
And then like YouTube’s very interesting ’cause it keeps feeding you stuff and it keeps, um, you know, getting you deeper into whatever. Topic area, subculture thing. And if you’re not careful, you end up thinking like, all this stuff is so important and so critical, like you’re doing journaling wrong if you don’t do this.
And it’s like, ah, come on dude. Like we’re all, we’re all just trying our best. You don’t have to do everything right, all the fucking time. So. And, and it’s so stressful to try because like basically if you are thinking in that way, you’re doing most stuff wrong most of the time anyway. So like, it’s, um, fools errand.
I mean, don’t not try to improve yourself, but you know, with moderation, right? With moderation. So anyway, journaling I should probably do a little bit more. Thing is I love, uh, like I enjoy it so much. I. Was, um, I actually have several, uh, like little field note notebooks, but cool thing my wife, she started making like little notebooks.
So the, this is like hand bound. She went to, I think it was some sort of a Japanese style binding. So she made a couple like journals and like printed photos of, uh, it’s, I think it’s all dog. So it’s all our old dog Brody. And then Georgie’s in here too. I, I think, yeah, it’s, it’s all dogs in here, which is funny.
It’s pretty funny. So like she printed out the. The photos, um, on the paper that she used, and then folded it together and then, you know, actually like threaded the, you know, the binding through here. Which is pretty cool. ’cause I, I love these little journals. The funny thing is I, you know, I ordered a, a handful of them.
I think I have maybe like five or six of them unused. I’m not blowing through ’em. And then she made me a couple and I think maybe I, I like. Bought some from field notes, which I mean, they’re not super expensive. They’re like fairly high quality. But they’re probably overpriced. Like you can get a comparable one probably at Walmart or fill in your discount store that are like 90% the, the same and you could probably get ’em for one third of the price or something like that.
Like, like most journals, like you can get a mole skin or a, what are those? Um. Uh, there, there’s so many different kinds, but you know, you can get like fancier, thicker paper or like the fancier brand that’s made in Italy, or you could buy like the cheap one on Amazon, or you can get ’em at Walmart and they will be, like I said, a third of the price, something like that.
They’re, they’re very cheap. But anyway, my wife made a couple of those, so. And you can use them for anything. You know, keep notes, use a to-do list, a grocery list, whatever. And I like carry ’em around all the time. Uh, but I just haven’t been writing in them as much, but I’m trying to do a little bit more of it because I realized being real lazy coming up with, uh, show ideas.
Not this one or any of the ones you could think of, but I often now I’m like, oh. I need to record some shows, get some interviews lined up, all that. I do enjoy it. In fact, I heard from Paul I guess you’ll check out this show, Paul, you sent me an email and you were like, Hey, I just wanna let you know, I don’t even know if you’re gonna get this, but you were like, Hey, you were the number one podcast or YouTube channel that Paul consumed.
It was me, like the Doug, Doug Cunnington channel. And uh, thank you for letting me know. ’cause I’m definitely at a point where. Like, I’m looking at the stats and there’s not, you know, there’s not nearly as many people, but I’m doing this because I enjoy it and I know there are several dozen folks out there that are still paying attention and you must enjoy it too.
And there’s, uh, you know, maybe it’s just my soothing voice or long drawn out stories with no actual point that. You fall asleep before bed. That, that was a common thing that I would hear from folks. Uh, like I’d, I’d meet ’em in person or I’d talk to ’em like after an interview for example. They’re like, yeah, I do listen to the show.
Funny thing. I listened to it before bed, fall asleep, whether you talking to me. And I was like, okay. Like what? Whatever, whatever it takes. But paul said he listens all that to say if I write down some ideas, which I actually had some good ideas recently and I was like, oh, I better write this down so I don’t fucking forget and I can actually record it for a show.
So I mentioned a couple things that I didn’t really follow up on, uh, as far as reaching a goal or a habit with the journaling I have been. Playing the guitar a lot more. And I’m trying to think, I got a couple guitars, uh, maybe I got one guitar this year. I don’t remember. Maybe I got two. I I did sell one, which was cool.
I mentioned it on a show here and. I, I bought it for, you know, what I thought was a good deal, probably fair market price out there. Um, I sold it for a little bit more than I bought it for, which was really cool ’cause I got to enjoy it for a while and I sold it to someone who looked like they were gonna enjoy it.
And the thing is, with a guitar, the market price is a, is a range. And there’s, you know, obviously many different factors, timing, supply and demand and what the person’s looking for at this specific time, obviously. Uh. Even if you have like a perfect person to buy the thing that you’re selling and they want that exactly, but you’re off by three weeks or a month or three months or whatever, then you’re not gonna get that, you know, higher price.
You may get a lower price if you can’t find the right person at the right time. So if it does work out, then maybe you’ll be able to get something at a good deal because supply and demand or. Maybe you’ll be able to sell it for a little bit more. And if you are patient and lucky, and I was patient lucky in this case, able to sell it.
Anyway, all that said, I’ve been playing more and I’ve been playing with, um, other musicians. So a friend of mine, Tyler, he’s on drums. I’ve played with him more often and that’s been super fun. Matt Esei came out and jammed with us the other day. Really fun. Matt was on bass and yeah, we just, we just improvised and made a lot of noise and it was really fun and low pressure, uh, fun was had by all, so really awesome.
And I’m enjoying the music portion. And, uh, someone heard me talking about the Sonora Guitar Intensive, which is, uh, a guitar, you know, online instruction. Uh, it’s out there to really compete with, um, like conservancy type music schools, like guitar schools where people would be paying, uh, basically tuition, right?
This is a, it’s set up more like a, a school more serious as professional. And I’m, I don’t have those ambitions. I’m just trying to, you know, learn a little bit more. So a listener said, Hey, I’ve been using pickup music, which is. I gotta be honest, it looks pretty close to the same kind of offering. They even have office hours and uh, you know, the same kinds of courses from what I could tell.
Uh, I did not take Sonora guitar intensive, but pickup music has curriculum and they’re like, you could go through these things. We kinda suggest you go through this path. And each course is about, I think they recommend taking about three months for each, you know, big sort of bigger course. And I just finished up one of those and it’s great because they go at a, a slow pace and they.
Give you exercises to reinforce the ideas, you know, mentally and physically. You know, there’s some muscle memory aspect with playing the guitar, and I literally can tell that I’ve gotten much better in the last three months, and that includes like the improvising with friends, which is, you know what I’m trying to do.
So pretty awesome. I’ve been spending more time on that. There was a whole saga, which I’ll. I’m not a hundred percent sure how we’ll cover it. Maybe I’ll just do it on one of these, um, episodes. But, uh, the guitar behind me over here, it’s, uh, Les Paul tribute and. I guess the, the viewers out there that can see the guitar back there and, uh, have a keen eye, you’ll notice the pickups are different.
So it has like a zebra, zebra style pickups, which is black and white, uh, and alternating colors instead of the chrome cover that was there before. So I replaced the pickups. It was, it was a technical challenge and really, um. I had, I had to work on it and it took a few weeks and Sounds great. Now, turns out some of the parts I was using, they were bad.
So I think I made a couple like light mistakes, but nothing, no huge, uh, issues. Basically like if you’re wiring something up. And you haven’t soldered in a while, you may make a little mistake. There could be a, like a, a grounding wire or you know, something that’s not supposed to happen, like some wires touching, but you could test that.
And, and in my case, none of that was an issue. Um, some of the pots were bad, so outta the four, the four potentiometers, two of them were bad. And I figured it out by just bypassing them. I was like, well, if it works when I take it out of the circuit, then that’s the part that’s bad. So I did that methodically and actually just kind of, you know, hardwired some things so that I could play, um, the guitar while it was still with the bad pots in there.
But you know, I was unable to control the volume or the tone respectively. Eventually I fixed it. And overall, yeah, music has been really cool. Um, I’m working on a Christmas bluegrass tune with my wife who’s playing banjo and. It’s been, it’s a tough arrangement. I will publish or I’ll figure out how to share that out there.
Uh, you know what? I should be able to, I’ll put the music out there, um, in one of these episodes coming up because we’ve, we actually have been recording to kind of track our progress and just listen and see how we do. And, uh, there’s like a local, friends group recital that we’ve been doing for a couple years, and, uh, we’re gonna perform it in about a week, which, uh, makes me a little nervous.
Most of the time we play it pretty well, but it’s pretty hard. It’s pretty hard. And, uh, we mess up lightly, maybe one out of three times. So. If things go right, we’ll play it very well on the, on the recital day at that time. But we are, you know, we’re practicing pretty much every day, but we still have some hiccups along the way, which I, I hope we will.
I hope we’ll have a good take. Now, one thing I wanna talk about that I didn’t mention at the opening, and maybe I’ll do a longer episode. Coming up, but I listened to the Tim Ferris podcast, recent episode with Kevin Rose. They do what they call a random show and they just catch up. I think they might do it about once a quarter or so, and they’re buddies.
It gives them a chance to, to catch up. So they’ll just, you know, talk about things that are going on. And it might be something business related. A lot of times it’s health related and it could just be their random interest or travel or whatever, whatever it is that they’re doing, researching. And they just wanna tell the other one about it.
So one of the things Kevin Rose talked about, he’s a big technologist in. Really follow stuff very closely. And he was going on and on about AI and one of the points he made was around like developers using AI and maybe saying, Hey, yeah, I tried AI and it’s actually not coding very well. It actually doesn’t make it faster for me, and you know, it’s not that great.
And then Kevin said, oh, we. What version or like what were you using or when was it when you tested it? And they were like, I don’t know, it was like six months ago, three months ago, whatever. Whatever answer they give. And he said, oh, it’s 10 times better than it was back then. And it made me realize, you know, I’ve done a couple episodes recently, maybe unfairly, where I was like, you know, don’t use AI too much.
Like it can make you dumb. I’ve mentioned it in passing where it’s just like, man, these AI. Overview results. They’re real bad. They’re real bad because of the way the information is gathered, and it’s not something that I would rely on probably 99% of the time, these AI overviews, but it’s very different than someone maybe using an AI tool for coding, like Kevin was mentioning.
Now, I haven’t tried that and recently. Uh, several episodes I’ve been like, uh, the vibe coding thing, I’m not sure I love that, but used properly, like maybe it’s totally fine. So anyway, all that to say I’ve gone back and forth over and over again with ai and in the beginning I was like, these AI tools like Jasper.
Uh, not really saving that much time for me. I tested ’em out and I was like, these are really shitty. Then they got better chat, GPT, Gemini, Claude, on and on. They’ve gotten better and better and better. Obviously they are. Very awesome compared to what they were. And I was using some of these tools often.
And then all of a sudden these AI overviews using search were kind of poor. And I, I think I did an episode maybe a couple months ago. I was like, Hey. Yeah, chat, GPT. Is it a good idea to build a niche site? What are the pros and the cons and such and such? And it was giving advice that I think was not very good.
It was like, yeah, go for it. Like you could do it, it could be a little bit hard, but you can make a full-time income if you build an affiliate site and use SEO, which I don’t know anyone giving that advice at this point in time. Fuck, even the people trying to, that used to sell courses and products in that area, they’re not even saying that, right?
Like it’s just no one’s buying that and no one’s trying to sell that idea. But AI is like, sure, give it a shot, which is interesting and I must, I mean, it must be. The same deal in other industries and other places where if you don’t know what’s going on and you’re like, Hey, is it a good idea to do x AI may say, yeah, it’s a good idea.
You know, here’s some pros and cons. Sounds totally reasonable, but give it a shot. So, I don’t know. And obviously there’s many different AI tools out there. And, um, all that to say, I have an open mind and I’m sure I’ll flip flop again and. I say, yes, AI is a great idea for these new AI overviews, or if you use this specific tool or whatever, then you’re gonna be all right.
But, you know, at this point, I’m trying to limit it and I’m not, I’m not trying to solve the same kind of business problems. I think one, you know, great way to use ai. Is as like a, a sounding board, and it could be for, you know, I have a, a business idea and let’s go back and forth. That said, I think you need to make sure AI isn’t just encouraging you because it just wants to be positive.
I’ve heard of people saying that. It’s like, yeah, AI is just gonna tell you kind of what you want to hear, but. One that I would caution folks on and I have to cough. Why don’t I take a sip of beer and then I’ll cough on ’em. I don’t know, maybe it’s totally valid, but I feel like, I feel like maybe it’s not a great, great thing when people are like, you know what?
I use AI to be like my, uh, therapist and friend, and, uh, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a great way to use it, but I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I suspect before too long there’s gonna be ads in the AI feed. Are there already ads in the AI feed? I don’t use it that much, but if you start, if you start revealing too much information, you’re gonna see, um.
You’re gonna see some ads, I guess. I mean, that’s exactly what Google does, right? So it’s just gonna go that route, which now that I’m saying out loud, completely obvious, right? We have all these, uh, whatever Google tools, ai can probably parse that stuff. We got the Gmail and whatever. I mean, they know everything already, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s a great thing to use.
AI is your, is your friend and therapist and that kind of thing. But my mind is, uh, is still open. Obviously a lot of people use ai. There’s great use cases out there, blah, blah, blah. But. But yeah, I, I witnessed in myself some additional laziness in the brain power and intellectual area, and that’s a, that’s an area I want to keep a little sharper.
So I was like, let’s use AI tools for the things that they might be good for, and kind of leave it out for things that. Yeah, probably I could do a little bit, uh, faster, uh, better in my brain. And even if I can’t, maybe it’s better to keep those skills active versus letting your, you know, your smarts, atrophy.
So I feel my voice getting a little scratchy, so maybe it’s a good time to end here.
If you have any show ideas or questions, shoot me an email feedback at Doug Show. And I think maybe I forgot to put it on a, who knows how many different podcast episodes, but I do have a Google Voice number that you could leave a voicemail and I would recommend if you have a question, make it between like 60 and 90 seconds.
Uh, early on in the podcast, many people. Uh, they, uh, left a voicemail and I could play it on there and answer it. So show ideas and you can just shoot an email if you don’t wanna record your voice or whatever. Uh, but like I said, aim for like 60 to 90 seconds. Keep it tight. It’ll cut you off after some point.
I don’t know what the time limit is, but if you start rambling, um, you’re gonna, you’re gonna run out of time. So. Write it down, practice it, keep it tight, and uh, maybe I’ll play it on a show.