Breath, Stoicism, and The Power of Not Knowing with Carl Smith

In this episode, hosts Dave Prior and Stuart Young sit down with Carl Smith, a "philosophical futurist" and leader of The Bureau (https://thebureau.community/), a community of over 1,500 creative leaders. The conversation explores how to "tune up" your personal and professional systems to better serve yourself and others by embracing vulnerability, mindfulness, and the power of imperfection.

Key Topics and Takeaways

• The Trap of Busyness vs. Productivity: Carl shares a recent "reset" triggered by a Saturday morning spent staring at spreadsheets. He discusses the danger of moving from a "creating" mindset to a "protecting" mindset, and how his attempt to become more efficient unintentionally made his team inefficient. 

• Energy Management and Burnout: Carl defines burnout as a state where you send all your energy out and none comes back. He uses a slot machine analogy to describe how different interactions can either deplete or replenish your internal "jackpot". 

• Self-Regulation Power-Ups:
• Speed Journaling
• NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Relaxation)
• Nose Breathing (Yes, it's a thing)
• Health Tracking Systems and why you might need more than one
• Stoicism


You can find the podcast here: https://systemsofimperfection.riverside.com/

Links from the Podcast

• No One Is Coming to Save You: The Power Ups to Help Surf the Chaos https://tinyurl.com/5dsh2n4v
• The Bureau of Digital https://thebureau.community/
• Breath by James Nestor https://tinyurl.com/38uemcx4
• Outlive by Peter Attia https://tinyurl.com/4e5a6nc3
• The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins https://tinyurl.com/2rpwe93u
• Project to Product by Mik Kersten https://tinyurl.com/2rksj6bw
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman https://tinyurl.com/46xeh8nn
• Everyday Stoicism by Gareth Southwell https://tinyurl.com/5c5n5392
• Daily Stoic Podcast byRyan Holiday https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-stoic/id1430315931
• Life Saver Graphics LLC https://tinyurl.com/yfr95r8u




Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Systems of Imperfection

03:22 The Importance of Self-Care and Productivity

05:50 Navigating Work Overwhelm and Chaos

08:55 The Role of Community in Professional Growth

11:45 Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

14:50 Mindfulness Practices for Better Living

17:47 The Power of Authenticity in Leadership

20:59 The Intersection of Technology and Humanity

23:59 Stoicism and Its Relevance Today

26:54 Embracing Imperfection and Learning from Mistakes

29:52 The Future of Work and Community Engagement

32:57 Creating Value Through Collaboration

35:54 Final Thoughts on Being Human in a Digital Age

56:09 Outro.mp4

Contacting Carl

• The Bureau:  https://thebureau.community/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-w-smith/

Contacting Stuart 

• linktr.ee/stuartliveart



Contacting Dave 

• linktr.ee/mrsungo

Meditating Project Managers

Steve Winters and Matt Payton are Digital Project Managers who work MetalToad. One of the coolest things they are working on right now is a series of experiments they are planning for 2015. Each month they're going to change up something specific in how they live and work to see what impact it has. In January they've decided to take on meditating for 20 minutes each day.  I am going to join Steve and Matt and commit to meditating for at least 20 minutes each day during January and I want to challenge you and other PMs to join us as well.

If you'd like to check out the interview I did with Steve about the experiments you can find it here.

And if you'd like to read his blog post on what they have planned for 2015, you can check that out here.

Steve mentions in the post that one of the reasons he thinks meditation will be beneficial is that PMs have a lot of stress in their lives and this could be a great way to help with that.  He's right. It will. I've been meditating almost daily for close to 10 years now and it has had a MASSIVE positive impact on every corner of my life.

If you're interested in participating, please reach out to Steve and let him know you be joining in. We'll be using Insight Timer and there will probably be an Insight Timer Meditation group set up for meditating PMs so we can all offer each other support.

If you're skeptical about meditation and can't really see the point of sitting and still and not doing anything for 20 minutes a day, you might want to check out this, or this, or this.

One of my teachers once said something to me about meditation that has stuck with me and seems more true every day. She said, "I sit every day because of what happens when I don't."