Transformative Principal

Jethro D. Jones: Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I am your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Welcome to Transformative Principle.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

Today I'm gonna share a recording from one of the things that I do that you might not know about.

I started this project in August, and what I wanted to do was bring together people who are doing some cool things, who were trying to make a big impact, and it's called a big impact mixer.

So you can find information about this@bigimpactmixer.com, and you can also sign up to be on a special email list that I only send things relating to the big impact mixer, including agendas and invites about being part of this.

Uh, today I am sharing our, our meeting from.

February because what I talked about was doing little experiments, and that's one of my goals this year is to do a whole bunch of experiments.

I've heard this phrase that the only difference between a crazy person and a scientist is that the scientist write down, the scientist writes down his experiments, and so I've been a crazy person for a while 'cause I haven't been writing down my experiment experiments.

But I am doing that this year, and I talked about this, and then we did a little process where we went through and made up our own experiments that we're working on.

Now here's what I'm trying to do with the big Impact mixer.

What I want to do is have a little bit of.

Uh, like teaching or visioning or something like that.

And then have some time for you to actually do stuff that is interesting to you.

So I'm putting an invite in the show notes to this episode at Transformative principle.org.

I would love to have you come and join us if you would like, you can click on the invite or you can go to big impact mixer.com to sign up for the email list if you can't make it this week or this next month.

Uh, we do this on the third Thursday of each month, and I thought that would be a good time to get together, talk to other people who are making a big impact, and see if there's anything powerful there Now.

Because you're listening to this, you might be interested in this, in this once a month networking session that is different kind of networking.

This is going and being vulnerable, sharing what you're doing and sharing how you're trying to make a big impact.

The feedback from this has been pretty awesome.

Like I said, I've been doing it on a small scale.

For the last seven months or so, and I've really enjoyed doing it and I've had a great time.

And the people who come say this is a worthwhile use of their time, and definitely something that helps them stay focused on the big things that they're trying to do.

I invite you to check it out, big impact mixer.com.

I am still looking for beta testers for my school X book study, so if you would like to be part of it and see how the sausage is made, I'd love to have you join me.

That's at Jethro dot site slash beta.

So that's the School X Beta book study.

Uh, we're gonna do some cool things with that.

Would love to have your help.

Please come and join me.

And here is part of what we were talking about coming up in just a moment.

A little bit about me.

You guys all know me pretty well.

I help people make podcasts.

It's pretty awesome.

I help people stop putting out fires and start leading.

That's one of my favorite things is we're just putting out fires all the time.

And when we stop putting out fires and we start leading, it just changes everything that we're doing, regardless of who it is that we are leading, whether it's ourself or other people, or,

Anything else, um, we can do it.

So, uh, I mentioned this in the email.

The only difference between a crazy person and a scientist is a scientist writes down their experiments.

And, uh, again, I don't know where this came from.

I don't know who who said it or where I heard it, but I remember thinking, yes, that's my problem.

I'm not writing anything down and I need to start doing that.

So, . I, I've been thinking about this, what makes a good experiment and I'm not going to be like, what makes a good experiment to be accepted by the scientific community?

Because honestly, I don't really care what they think.

I'm talking about experiments in my life.

They're gonna be beneficial to me.

So I came up with three things.

It needs to be a real problem for you.

. If it's not a real problem or something that you, uh, care about deeply, then it really doesn't matter.

And, and I think the scientific community would agree with this too, although there are some, some, uh, research studies that I don't understand why anybody would pay to have those done.

But people do pay to have those done.

I just don't get it myself.

But if the problem is not affecting you, then there's really no point because.

, why would you be wasting your time if it's not going to make your life better?

Now, it could be a real problem for someone you care about and you could be trying to solve their problem.

That's totally fine and that's acceptable as well.

The next piece of this though, is where we differ a little bit.

Um, I think there should be a stated goal.

What am I trying to accomplish as a part of this, not necessarily a hypothesis.

And the difference is, is that the stated goal is how is this going to solve that problem or make my life better is more important than what I think is actually going to happen.

Because here's the other thing, once it's not, once you are sure it's not working, you really should just abandon it.

You know, like Aaron was sharing all these things that he's doing as as habits, and that's great, but if one of them is not helping, why would he keep doing it?

If he already has enough data to know that it's not working, you really should just stop it.

And because we're not trying to prove a point to anyone but ourselves, then I think that this is a totally appropriate thing to do.

Now you're going to have a hypothesis of . of what you're doing, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it right.

But the reason why I like to think of it as a stated goal, not a hypothesis, is that you have a purpose that you're trying to get out of it, rather than just proving if something is right or not.

That to me, makes it a little bit more personal and a little bit more effective at.

giving yourself permission to, to abandon it if it's not working.

And sometimes you abandon things, not because they're not working, but because you don't have the energy or the, the ability to put the time and effort in to make it happen.

And that can be a separate thing.

Like this thing could be working, but it takes me six hours to do it, you know?

Like, uh, you know, Aaron's the example of of fixing his back.

You know, I could, I could fix my back by doing all kinds of stretching things like David Goggins does.

I'm sure that that would help.

But David Goggins spends like three hours a day stretching, and I am not gonna spend three hours a day stretching, so I'm not interested in doing that kind of a thing.

So there has to be a trade off, and that part of that goal is to be able to do it in less than five minutes per day or . Whatever it is that you're talking about.

And then the final thing is a timeframe.

Uh, you can continue experiments indefinitely, of course, but you wanna have a timeframe to where you can say . . Yes, this is, this is done.

So I want to talk about some experiments that I'm doing this year and there are four that I've done or that I'm going to do so far and I'm trying to do like one per month.

So it's a little wishy-washy, but I don't want to overload myself.

Um, let me go, lemme back up to this a little bit.

The other piece of the timeframe that I forgot that is important is you want it to be able to fit into the things you're already doing.

I. And so you don't necessarily want to start something brand new, although there may be a way for that to work, but it, it, I didn't make it its own bullet point because maybe you do need to start something brand new and,
and that's an okay experiment to run, but you don't wanna, you don't want it to be something that is, that is so off the wall and different from what you're already doing that, uh, that it's just too big of a lift to do it.

So like, I'm not a runner.

But let's say that I wanted to start running and for me to run a 5K every single day would, would be a crazy thing to start out with.

And so running a mile every day, I could probably do that.

'cause I walked to the gym every morning and I, and it's a mile away so I could just start running there instead of walking there.

I'll probably wait until the snow is off the ground and it's not icy.

A little bit safer, but . Yeah, that's the kind of thing you want to fit into your lifestyle already.

You don't wanna make huge, drastic changes, you know, start taking 16 supplements as, as a way to deal with whatever's going on.

'cause you don't know what's going to happen, so, so timeframe and scope maybe would be a better way of describing that.

All right, so these are four experiments.

One is magic mind two is high rep workouts.

Three is paper tracking, and four is Dan COE's writing workshop.

So I'm gonna go through each of these real quick and just share my 1, 2, 3 for each of them.

So Magic Mind is, uh, this supplement that you can take.

They actually, uh, reached out to me to advertise on my podcast and I was like, sure, let's give it a shot.

Let's see how it goes.

And, um.

, that was cool.

I've used it before, so I was familiar with it, and then I wanted to keep track and see how it affected, and I want to see if it would increase my energy.

And I had a 15 day supply from them, so I was gonna do it for 15 days and see.

And the results were that I did feel energetic on those days that I was taking it.

I did feel like it was helping and I did feel like it was, uh, worthwhile to do.

I also had a sleep supplement that went with it that I took in the evenings and.

Uh, I did not notice that much with the sleep.

I do think I slept, but I also had weird dreams, which I always do when I take anything for sleeping.

So, you know, where do you go with that?

And, and was that, were those weird dreams because of that or because of the scary movie I watched before I went to bed.

I dunno.

. No, I'm just kidding.

I didn't watch a scary movie then.

But, um, so, so those were my three for this.

So that was in January.

That's what I was working on for February.

I'm working on high rep workouts.

Um, I'm getting a little bored of my workouts and so I want to improve them and make them more, uh, just different and, and spice it up a little bit.

I wanna lose weight while I'm building muscle.

The place that I heard about this was this . Ripped guy in the sauna, um, who, uh, was saying, this is what you gotta do, and the weight will just melt off.

Well, I don't think that's happening, but, you know, we'll see.

I'm still doing it and, and I'm only gonna do it for the month of February because what's interesting is that I'm, I'm seeing that it's changing some things . That I am experiencing, like my elbow from the repetitive motion from doing so many reps with such a lightweight is causing a different kind of strain on my body than heavier weights is.

And I'm finding that really interesting.

I. , but that's a small thing that maybe, maybe there's something to that.

Maybe there's not, I don't know.

But that's just one thing that I'm noticing so far and, and so my joints are getting more workout and maybe they're hurting because they're getting so much more workout.

I'm not really sure, but at the end of February I'm gonna stop and go back to my regular routine and I'm gonna see if, like this guy said, I'm going to be stronger and way less, we'll see.

He said, I promise you'll be able to lift more.

After doing this for a while.

We'll see . So the jury's still out on that and, and I'm not sure where that's gonna go.

Um, the next one and this one I put in our, in the shared album, uh, that I created for this, uh, this is tracking things on paper.

I'm very much a digital first kind of person, but I bought these little, uh, slips of paper card stock to be able to track the stuff that I wanted to be able to track.

And so I can write down on this, having something physical, there is power on that.

And what I've, the . The, the problem that I'm trying to solve is I've got too much to do and I wanna prioritize the important things, and if I can write it down and check it off, that does something different in my personal brain than checking it off on, on a to-do list on my computer, and it forces me.

Here's the other key thing.

It forces me to pay attention to what I'm writing down and what I'm saying I'm going to do.

Sometimes I don't finish what's on the card.

And, um, so this one, it's, it's a little bit hard to see, but it's in the album, so you can go check it out.

This one, I, I do a check mark for my daily habits and, and I, uh, reserve the right to update these as the year goes on.

And, and see how it works.

But my commitment is to do this for the first quarter of the year and see how it goes.

Now for this one, this is why I need to do it for the first quarter because this is a routine and a habit that I need to force myself to do, and I need to experience what it's like in different situations.

So I went to Arizona last week with my wife.

We had a great time.

It was wonderful, very relaxing.

And my, uh.

My part of this thing is to write down the big three that I want to accomplish.

Well, for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Uh, it was enjoying my time with Stacy and be present.

So that was, that was it.

You know, I didn't have anything else, and I did that very well, which was great.

, because I usually don't, um, . But writing that down really forced me to say, I don't need to be doing anything else on Friday.

I had a second one, which was present well, 'cause I was presenting at a, at a school district.

And so, uh, that, that day was, was one thing different.

So writing things down that does actually do something different in my brain.

And I feel the dopamine hit in different ways than when I do this, uh, than when I do it just digitally.

I. All right.

The fourth one is Dan COE's writing Workshop.

And, uh, and Dan Co is this guy who writes on the internet.

Has anybody heard of him before?

All right.

Aaron has.

Eric has, Trish has, all right.

So, uh, he, he writes good stuff and I like it.

And he recently created an app, uh, to help with the writing thing.

I am probably not going to.

Commit to his app because I have a system in place for writing already that I really like, and it's gonna take a lot to convince me to change, but maybe it'll work, I don't know.

Um, but for the duration of his thing, I'm going to use his app, uh, as a clean slate to get started on this and start doing things, and I can always transfer it over to my own system.

So my problem is that I have a desire to be a prolific writer.

Like Peter is Peter, how many books have you written?

Oh, depending on how you count, somewhere between like 45 and 70.

Um, yes.

So a lot.

Somewhere between over 25 years.

Yeah.

45 and 70.

So, uh, when I met Peter, uh, last year, I said.

This is a guy that I want to emulate.

This is the kind of thing that I want to be doing, and I need to have systems and processes in place for me to be able to do that.

And Peter has also, uh, worked full time during this whole time, so he is not, I. He's not working as an author.

He's working in a day job and writing in addition to that.

So, uh, thanks for being willing to be on the spot there, Peter, but that, that was an inspiration to me and I'm not there and I haven't figured out how to make that work.

That being said, I have written and I write thousands of words every single day.

And, but it's not organized and it's not published and it's not getting there.

So what I want to do is take my notes and all this stuff that I've been doing and turn it into articles, turn into books.

One of my goals this year is to submit four publications to different magazines and or journals or whatever.

And um, and I need to find a way to do that better.

I'm gonna write a dissertation in the next year.

And I do not want to spend, uh, two years writing the dissertation.

I want it to be done as quickly as is humanly possible, and I wanna start building the framework for that to happen right now.

Uh, number three.

Uh, this one is going March 4th through April 11th.

He's running a workshop.

I joined that workshop intentionally as a way to force myself to do this and do it in a, um, . In a way that makes sense.

And, and that's something that, uh, you know, that'll help keep me focused and keep it, uh, keep it contained.

And I, I realize, Aaron, you put in the chat that there's a 2 million token context window in Gemini 2.0.

And, uh, yes, I'm definitely looking at how do I use AI to help me organize things because they're already loosely connected.

Plus, here's the other thing I have done, . Uh, 700 plus episodes of my podcast, transformative Principle, plus a whole bunch of other episodes on different podcasts.

So I have so much content that is just out there that I could and should repurpose in a smart way that's beneficial and gets to people who aren't listening to my podcast and, and all that.

So there's, there's a lot of things on there.

Um.

That I need to, that I need to work through and figure out how to do.

So, um, I just haven't figured that out yet.

And this is going to be a focus of mine March 4th through April 11th.

So if you want to follow along, uh, you can go to jetro.site/experiments and I'll put that in the chat also so you can open it up and, and look at it later.

Um.

Here's, here's the thing.

I'm keeping track of these things there, and I go into way more detail on those, uh, on those posts for each one of these.

So I just barely did, um, a little bit today here.

So what we're gonna do is next, we are going to define your own experiment using these three keys and, oh, I missed a slide in here.

Pardon me.

Let me fix that real quick.

I didn't, I didn't put 'em in how I wanted to.

So just one sec.

Okay, here we go.

All right.

Can you still see that?

Alright, so define your your own experiment.

You're going to come up with a real problem for you.

You're gonna have a stated goal and you're gonna have a timeframe.

And so this can be big, this can be small, whatever you want.

I'm gonna give you I, uh, five minutes of quiet time.

I'm gonna play a song.

Hopefully it'll be a good one, and hopefully it won't be too loud.

I'm gonna try to adjust my volume and see if, uh, see what we can do with that.

Um, and I'm gonna set the timer for five minutes and let you work on this.

Um, feel free to turn your cameras off.

Feel free to, uh, uh, mute yourselves.

And, uh, so we'll just set the timer and we will go from there.

And then we'll come back together and share, uh, briefly.

What our ideas are for our experiments.