Creating Structure in Chaos - Mark Fisher

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level Five Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Oh, we're live. Mark Fisher, welcome back. Hello. Thank you for having me. Yeah, man. Your tone always makes me laugh. You're you're a funny dude. Yeah, so okay, let's let's set the table here a little bit. It's April 16th, 2020. You are in New York City. I'm in northwest Montana. Give me the lowdown on what's it like? You know, you were just telling me about looking out your window. What does that look like right now?

Uh yeah, it's pretty weird. So New York City right now, for those that, if you're watching this at a later time, we are probably past the peak, which is good. We peaked at a high level that is not great. There are definitely a lot of people dying. The hospitals are overwhelmed, but there's strangely a sense of relief in the city in this particular moment because I think in the past few days, the good news is we flattened the curve enough that it's not going to be quite the apocalyptic scenarios that everyone was afraid of. So strangely, I think there's actually a little bit of relief from that. And people are now starting to put a little bit of more thought seriously into like, okay, how do we even open up? What does that look like? We actually just found out literally today that the governor says we're definitely not opening up before May 15th, which, as for anyone paying attention, I think was kind of obvious that that was the earliest ever that this was going to happen. Now, as far as whether we will open up then, obviously nobody knows. But yeah, so I think New York City right now seems to have adapted. And the strangest thing is looking out my window because as somebody that has lived in New York for many, many years, I can see the disparity between what's usually going on outside my window and what's going on now, which is mostly minimal cars. There are minimal people outside. They just instituted a law yesterday that they're now asking everybody that's outside and now has to have a mask. So it's a real interesting scenario.

Yeah, it's it's very different what you're experiencing, what I'm experiencing. I mean, we have very little population up here in the whitefish area in Flathead County. I mean, I think we've had 37 cases in our county last time I checked, and our curve is more like just uh kind of a flat thing with a few bumps in it. You know, obviously Montana as a state is locked down, but I can't even imagine what it's like in New York City. How how what about you, man? I mean, you strike me as a pretty social guy, you know. What how are you dealing with with the lockdown personally?

You know, I am doing pretty great. If anything, I think it's been interesting to acknowledge how wired I am to really do my own thing. I'm actually, I love people so, so, so much. And I am very self-directed and I love to just like kind of do my own thing all day long. So I do great with lots and lots of alone time. And if anything, it's making me figure, ask myself, do I need to create a lifestyle that's more location independent? Because I actually do great with vast swaths of time alone, which uh might be surprising to a lot of people because I think certainly I am an eccentric person and I do love connecting with people. But in fact, if given my druthers the opportunity to just like work on projects all day long in silence with the occasional meeting is something that kind of appeals to me. So I gotta say, I'm doing pretty well personally. There is, of course, stress around what the next 12 months is going to bring because it's likely that this is, it's it's certain, in fact, that we will not be flipping a switch and going back to what we were. And the two things that are the giant question marks are number one, what sort of social restrictions will either be imposed on us by the government or culturally, socially be what people expect. Now, that presents a particular issue for brick and mortar fitness businesses because in any market, but certainly in New York, it's a real estate game. And it's largely about can you make enough money in that real estate with the fixed costs and then the sum variable costs to really make meaningful profit and appropriate margins for the effort you're putting in. And if suddenly we can only have eight people per class instead of 15, which I think is way more likely than not, that's gonna be a real challenge. And we're gonna get it figured out, but it's also a little too early to even plan for that because we're not exactly sure what's gonna happen. The other piece, which is not specific to the New York market, that I would encourage anybody listening to be thinking about is just paying attention to what's going on with the broader macroeconomic environment because the downwind effects of this are gonna absolutely hit everybody. There are markets that are barely gonna be touched by this directly. There are markets that are not gonna see many cases. Hopefully, they're not gonna see much in the way of the healthcare systems being overwhelmed. So admittedly, New York is gonna deal with a little bit more psychological and emotional toll than a lot of other places. But anybody that's reading the news right now, I mean, if you're reading, I think the IMF the other day said this is like gonna definitely be worse than anything we've seen since the Depression. And again, maybe they could be wrong, but anybody that's reading any reputable news sources, there's really no major organization or thought leadership or consultancy that has any good news right now about what the next 12 to 24 months are going to be. And the last thought I always want to qualify that with the big asterisk is long term, you're still gonna be fine. Long term, you're still gonna be fine. I don't discount or dismiss the very real health and life challenges many people are gonna face. That that's gonna be a challenge. I don't want to mean to discount that, but I think it's very important that people both prepare for a very real winter that's coming, prepare to take advantage of the opportunities that they can, and trust that ultimately, particularly anybody that's not retiring anytime soon, like I'm a buy and hold investor, I'm a buy and hold everything. I'm playing the long game, so this is not ideal, but we're all going through it together, and I'm still remain ever optimistic about humanities, society, the world, the future. And I think ultimately it's gonna all be okay, but it's gonna be an interesting year.

Yeah. That was uh that was a lot of great information, man. Great opinions. And obviously you take time to think about things before you say them, which I appreciate. Can't say that for everybody nowadays, but it's it's important. Let's I want to go back a little bit because it's interesting. You know, I uh maybe we're we're more similar than I thought. I'm most people would think, wow, this guy talks to a lot of people, does a lot of podcasts, talks to a lot of people on Zoom, you know, does a lot I do I talk a lot, but I'm really introverted. Like I'm exhausted during the day, you know, and talking. And I'm curious, you know, when you say find your own way during the day, what does that look like? What is what is Mark finding his way? Is you reading more? Are you working on projects? What do you do?

I think I like to work on products. One of the things I teach professionally is time management. So I quite like making structure. I am also lucky in that I am someone that does very well with structure. And I love to be diligent and conscientious throughout the day and just bang things out and get things done. And that has something that has really served me not only professionally, frankly, as far as I think being pretty good about prioritizing high-impact projects and then actually executing and getting them done, but also emotionally and mentally, it's been very good for me because most days I'm very excited about what happened, right? Like at the end of a lot of days, I would look back and I'm like, I cannot believe I got all that done. Uh and that's thrilling for me. And that's part of why I love teaching time managers. I want more people to experience that. And that is a learnable skill, like many other skills. It's certainly I have a natural aptitude for it, but I've also spent many years honing that. So to answer your question, for me, a day will often look like very specific kinds of routines where I will get up, you know, it depends on the day, but these days I'm getting up probably around like 6:30, and then I will, you know, it's all very American cycle, Christian bailish, but I will get up and I'll do my 20-minute meditation, and then I'll drink my greens formula and drink my coffee where I read for precisely 30 to 45 minutes. And then I do the high impact tasks and projects that I know will move the ball forward and that are very cognitively demanding that I don't do as well later in the day. Examples of that would be things like writing marketing content, writing email copy, writing landing pages, creating courses, working on presentations, all of those high-level creatively demanding tasks that I enjoy, but are best done during my first caffeine high of the day and while I'm fresh. I will usually do that for oftentimes in 30-minute blocks, and I'll usually do maybe, depending on the day, but again, at least two, sometimes up to four or five 30-minute blocks. And then I will do a quick little email refresh, I'll check on the social medias, then I'll usually do a workout. At that point, I come back. Now I have a late lunch, and I will usually then do another meditation. And then I start the second part of my day. So now I'm a little more fatigued, I'm not quite as crisp. And I could spend the entire day thrilled just doing more modules of work, but I also have to do a fair amount of meetings, which, and again, to be clear, I don't want to make it sound like I'm a hermit. I like having some meetings. I very specifically have realized now we're we're really taking a dark walk inside my weird, strange brain. Like very precisely, I my dream day is like probably two to three hours of meetings in the afternoon. I can do up to four, I can even do up to five, but at that point, I don't have as much time or energy to get the projects done as well as keep all the plates spinning throughout the day and do the self-care stuff that is so important to my own continued physical, mental, emotional well-being. Then for me, the final part of my day begins probably between around like 5:30 and 6.30. I start to run out of gas. And then usually I'll spend final 60 to 90 minutes just crossing off some easy-to-do things, perhaps like paperwork or writing a rent check or cleaning out my email inbox. So these are things that have to get done. Some of them are time sensitive, but they're not cognitively demanding. They're relatively easy. So I like to say I start the day with my brain being crisp, and I end the day with my brain being crispy. So I try to be very methodical about planning things that don't require a lot of brain power at the end of the day. And then I do a nightly shutdown ritual. And again, that can be anywhere from six to sometimes eight in the real world. Sometimes I'll go all the way to eight o'clock, and then I'm done. So I've written out my to-do list for the next day, and the cycle repeats, the computer shuts, and then I'm present with my wife and my dog and whatever's going on that evening or friends, whether we zoom or in the old world when I used to go somewhere. In the old world and would leave sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting, man. I like I like it. I like the intention behind it. I think um, you know, entrepreneurs in general, we don't have that structure we have to come up with it ourselves. I mean, mine's different, yeah, very similar. I mean, I generally right now waking up anywhere between six and seven, usually uh, depending on what's going on. If I have meetings somewhere else in the world, I'll have to get up a little bit earlier. But yeah, I start, you know, ice cold shower. That gets me going in the morning. Then I get into some journaling while the coffee's brewing. After that, I create my to-do list from the day. Then I immediately start in on the most important tasks, usually content creation or things that I think um are most important for my business. And then the meetings start, then I take a break, work out, do, you know, less cognitive loaded things, more task-oriented stuff in the afternoon. I actually try to shut it down by no later than four, usually three. And then I go uh, as I say, screw off for the afternoon. Maybe go do something physical outside. But what about on a weekly schedule? Do you have like set days where you do nothing?

Usually on the weekend is chaos. Like the weekend, usually I don't schedule anything. Uh now I will often work a half day on I thought a lot about this because I think a common misconception that can make that schedule look a little zenier than it is, is that it's like 13 hours a day. But as we all know, that's like one of the most common myths. Like no one does a 13-hour day, but I have, depending on your definition, frankly indulgent about my own self-care, that there's so many breaks in there to work out and meditate twice for 20 minutes and cook a long lunch and go for a walk and take a break to read. That the actual amount of work I get done, it's really like kind of like an eight-hour day. It's actually not all that impressive. It's just like I'm plugging in all those other things throughout the day. So I stay fresh. And obviously, that's not the way some people prefer a much more compacted day where they just get in and get out, which is also a great way to go. The weekends, I tend to still keep a very similar schedule, usually on Saturdays. And then I just like to kind of do whatever. But even on Saturday mornings, I have a general sense of what I'm gonna do. But again, I allow for chaos and more like, you know, that's where I would allow myself. Like, I just suddenly feel like reading this other book. And, you know, then instead of like having these tight 20, 30-minute modules, I just go as long as I want to go with things. I also find I tend to not make much in the way of plans ever on the weekend. Sometimes on a Saturday night, because again, I don't like having anything scheduled. So it's this sort of weird system where I'm so like tightly regulated, usually Monday through Friday, and then Saturday, Sunday, there's like nothing. And I would note on the macro, that's actually also something that plays out where my weeks generally are pretty scheduled. But if I'm on vacation, I am not somebody that tends to schedule things very tightly. And again, I've noticed such interesting different people prefer different balances between freedom and structure based on what they're doing. But for instance, if I'm going, I don't know, on vacation somewhere, like it's never packed. I'll get up you know in the morning in London and be like, I have one thing I want to do at three. I'm just gonna walk around, I'm just gonna see what's on my phone and just sort of follow wherever my woodsy takes me. And the ultimate example of chaos, of course, is Burning Man, where you can't really make any plans and just eight days of madness. So for me, that particular balance works. And as people are listening to this and appropriately contextualizing it for themselves, like, oh, I like that, or I wouldn't like that, or that would be a weird fit for me. The game, really, you're always playing is what is your preferred balance of freedom and structure. And that's why time management has to be so individualized. It's not unlike fitness, frankly, in that you really have to take into account personal preference. The principles will remain consistent, but different individuals really need to get clear with themselves about what feels the right balance. Because if you don't feel like you have enough structure in your life, you'll feel discombobulated, you don't feel accomplished in the day. And frankly, you're probably not getting as much done as you could. But on the other side, if people try to get too regimented, and certainly I can push this pretty far, but most people, that level of regimentation would be miserable. They'd feel super, super unhappy. And then their best probably would take the foot off the gas pedal and probably allowing for more chaos than my week schedule does.

It's it's really interesting because I I didn't intend to get in this topic, but I think it's super relevant for people right now because there's a lot of people who are now used to some sort of structure, whether, hey, I had to be at the gym at a certain time and coach these classes and meet with these people or whatever job it may be. Yes. And now they're like, well, Netflix now too early? Like they don't know. Man, if you like the solitary, you should come try my lifestyle for a while. I think you'd like it. Yeah. There's been weeks where I haven't seen other human besides my wife and my dog. Now that my dog's human, I realize the difference, but kind of makes sense.

No, I I uh, you know, there's there's a lot about that that actually uh has always appealed to me. And certainly I'm somebody that's also very community-oriented, so it's somewhat paradoxical in the uh which and I'm sure you're the same, right? Relationships in my life are also very, very important to me. So I don't mean to make it sound like I'm a hermit, but yeah, I do, I do pretty well with that. You know, and I think part of it is I have an ability to create my own structure. I'm very self-directed, you know, I rage towards autonomy. So for me, having the freedom to create the exact data I want every day is really amazing. And it's really part of why I both love and find entrepreneurship such a good fit. As you mentioned, for some individuals, that can be challenging. That can be like just like too much. So it's interesting because as I've been doing a lot of stuff with time management, particularly now in this disruptive time, there are kind of three buckets of people, right? You have people that like have way too much to do, they're professional firefighting, maybe they've got additional family obligations they haven't had, maybe they're now homeschooling their children while trying to get done this mass amount of extra work they're doing because every business is going through a very challenging time. And the challenge is, of course, that individual is getting really disciplined about taking time to fill their cup, about prioritizing, about saying no and setting boundaries, which we're about to do a webinar on, as we're realizing a lot of people just really struggle with that. But then you have this other group of people that often are underemployed and they've got like all this free time, right? And humans do better with routine. Humans do better with routine. My wife and I are taking one of the Coursera courses on the science of well-being. So I think it's, you know, it's interesting that people have to also really slot themselves in because it can, you know, humans just don't do well with unlimited structure. I think a lot of people probably had like a week or two where it felt like good vacation, and you know, but at a certain point, unless you create some games you can win, is the way I always refer to this. Unless you're creating games that can win, you're not gonna be super stoked. And creating games you can win has two important elements. One, you have to be able to win it, which means you have to overcome planning fallacy and get realistic about what can actually get done in the day. But on the other hand, it a good game has to be sufficiently challenging. It has to feel like you're you're getting forward momentum. So if the game is so easy that it's not even worth playing, then that for a lot of people can lead to procrastination. And there have certainly been some times in my life where I've experienced that where I just didn't have enough going on. And it was like I couldn't even get around to doing the one thing because I just like have nothing going on, right? So it's interesting how you have to sort of like contextualize based on your life and find the way to make a sufficiently challenging, forward, momentum increasing game that you could realistically win if you really put your mind to it and work it your day.

Let's extrapolate that a little bit. Give you an example of a game.

So an example. So broadly, this I think is about how the day gets scheduled. So, for instance, another thing that I like to say is uh to-do lists that don't exist in time are a recipe for being miserable, sad, and crazy, right? Because a lot of people have these, and and by the way, you're already in a good place, right? So the first principle of any time management system is there has to be some moment where you capture the inputs. And this there's gotta be some external thing. It could be like a notebook or a Google Doc or Evernote or a sauna or anything, but there's gotta be some place where you capture all the goats that are running around your head, all the mental goats. And these are things that you're thinking of to be done, things that you're remembering to do. These are things that you have to do for your personal life. These are tasks to get assigned to work, these are things you have to do for clients. You have this amorphous mask of things, right? And if those aren't written down, life gets very, very, very challenging. So the first thing that you invariably you have to do, there's kind of no way around this, is you have to write things down. So, as David Allen said, brains are for having ideas, not for remembering them. And yes, I've read moonwalking with Einstein. I know memory palaces. I'm not saying there's not utility in having robust memory. I think that's a useful thing. But ultimately, we've all just got a lot going on. You gotta get it out of your head somewhere. But then you also have to have a thoughtful moment where you analyze and organizing and then make it exist in time somehow. So if one has just a bunch of never-ending to-do lists, you never get the satisfaction of a game you can win. You can't win that game. If it's just this giant list of all these things that aren't gonna get done, there's never a sense of accomplishment. And that's why for most people, it's going to almost always be useful as you create a day for that to have some container for the given day. And you'll know whether this is like Asana, whether this is virtually any of the digital platforms that allow you to do this, if it is any of the commercially available time management planners, they invariably set it up so that like you have one visual container and bucket that represents a day. And the advantage of that is you get the satisfaction of finishing that day. And if you're meticulous about that container, the worst comes to worst. If you don't get done to all the things, they still get crossed out or deleted or whatever, but then they get moved later and then you don't forget stuff. You don't have to like go back in the plan and be like, oh, what did I not get done on Tuesday? Because you're always moving everything forward at the end of a given day. So when I say creating a game, you can win, to me, that really just means literally scheduling tasks in a day that will force you to work a little bit, so it'd be sufficiently challenging to be a fun game, but that realistically you could actually get done. Most humans are not great at planning things. We tend to be bad. It's literally one of the classic cognitive biases called planning fallacy. And the reason for this is because the ancestral evolutionary environment, we never did project planning, just it wasn't a useful thing. So we're just we're not good at it. Furthermore, it serves us to be a little bit pathologically optimistic, where most humans will take on these big projects and not really understand how difficult it's gonna be. And that's kind of valuable because most people wouldn't have kids, they wouldn't start, they wouldn't open up a business, they wouldn't, you know, build a house because everything gets very complicated in the real world. But the better you get at this planning function, the better you get, I think, at being realistic to understanding that there's always gonna be setbacks, that nothing's ever gonna go as smoothly as you want it to. For me, the ultimate example of this is commuting time. I find commuting time to be hilarious. And I'm gonna acknowledge this. I I teach time manager, right? And I want to be clear, like I full disclosure, I'm not always Johnny on the spot, right? So one of my worst qualities I have to look out for, and it's so dumb because I know better, there's an easy solve for it, is I always want to get that one more email done, right? And then I'm like running a couple minutes late for a meeting sometimes. And I've gotten a lot better by this, I've gotten older because for a lot of people, that is very triggering, right? Like, so different people have different relationships with time, and you know, it's interesting because different cultures, it's very different, right? If you're in India, you know, you need to like lock down the meeting right at the end of it because time's over, that's considered very rude, right? It's also very rude to start the meeting right on time. It's like not something that is embraced in certain cultures. But in America, you know, we we got that Frederick Taylor, you know, background. Like we like that time is money, right? So commuting is particularly interesting, particularly in New York City, because our MCA, you might be familiar because it's globally infamous, is not great. Now, to be clear, it's great because it gets us around and it's cheap. And it's one of the world's great transit systems. And I think part of the reason people get so mad at the MTA is because they have planning fallacy. It just feels like the trains should have less delays. It just feels like there should be more trains. And like, that's okay. It's okay to have those feelings. But after you've been in the city for a week, or if you've been in the city for 20 years and you continue to leave just the precise amount of time it would require for you to get from your apartment to your meeting if everything goes perfectly, and then you're consistently late three out of five days per week. And then you always walk in and you're always like, oh, trains. Well, to be fair, the the trains, more often than not, are messed up, right? Of course, the simple solution is just build in more time, get there earlier and have something else to work on. But such is human nature, hope springs eternal, and the eternal optimist is always thinking it's going to take just the right amount of time. So I think that's a very important piece of making games you can win is being realistic with how long projects will take you. And no one's ever perfect at this, because you frankly, you never know. But I think when you really start getting rigorous about this, you allow yourself a little bit more of a buffer. And then what happens is just as sometimes things run a little long, amazingly, wonderfully, sometimes things run a little short. And then you get more things done. And that is thrilling.

That's awesome, man. That's great. Really valuable. When we work with people, we have uh, you know, term we use unique ability or your superpower. You know, it's it's phrased in a lot of different ways. I'm dead set sure that you've thought about this. What is your unique ability? What is it that fires you up and you feel that you do better than most people?

Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's interesting. I I would probably say actually, those abilities to be that meticulous with my time. I think I don't know if it's a superpower in and of itself, but I am, I know, methodical. And for me, discipline feels great in a way that I know it doesn't for everybody. And that's an incredible blessing. So that brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment satisfaction. And I think probably the other two are learning. I love to learn, and it seems, and it's interesting enough, I recently did an exercise from John Burrdi's book Changemaker, which is really awesome, which I emailed like 15 people from all different parts of my life and asked them five questions around what do you think my talents are? What do you think me ticks? What do you count on me for? Where do you see me at my best? It's a really interesting activity. I highly recommend people do because you get some really interesting data. It was very moving, of course, because usually I'm often, you know, like most of us, like can struggle with some perfectionist tendencies. And I'm looking for like, okay, what could I be doing better? Okay, but yeah, yeah, blah, blah, I did like good, but what am I not doing good, right? And this is like kind of lovely because a lot of people, you know, I did a really wide swath of humans from different parts of my life are giving you information. And particularly when you're asking, like, you know, your little brother, your best friend from high school, your girlfriend from your 20s, your wife, your business partner, you know, you start to see some trends. You're like, wow, that sounds very consistent. And in addition to the word methodical coming up again and again, the other two things were learning. I just love to learn. I do think I have an ability, both I think for the discipline that comes out of the methodical thing to really put in the hours and the reps, but I do think I'm like a quick study, right? I think I can pick up things pretty quickly and find the frameworks and importantly, put them into action. And then I think the third superpower is I love teaching. Nice. I love, love, love teaching. So anything that has to do with like, I think mentoring, developing skills. And in fact, of late, that's really been something I've been loving digging in on is adult learning and specifically like what's called in corporate circles, training the trainer, which gets very confusing in the world of like fitness, because there are trainers. But specifically, how do you train people on a team to do things very consistently? How do you use the best practices of adult learning to, for instance, create role play scenarios so people at the front desk get very clear on what the expectation is for greeting someone or what are the standards for email communication? How do you teach that to people? How do you hold them accountable? How do you create opportunities for them to really practice that and really get so good that as the saying goes, amateurs practice till they get it right, but pros practice till they can't get it wrong. So anything that has to do with, I think, learning or teaching is just absolutely like lights me on fire. And I'll give a quick plug for anybody listening because there are people I've learned so much from this, particularly on training the trainer, is Zingerman's Deli or Zing Train, is their business training unit in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's strange, I know, but understand you're talking to a unicorn ninja gym owner that does business consulting. But they are a deli that they are my utter heroes, and they have, I think, the coolest and most unusual small business in America is like their tagline. And wow, it's really true. So at any rate, anybody that has a little free time, I would encourage you to go to zingtrain.com because I think they have some of the best continuing education out there. And I think the Ari Weinswag, the gentleman who runs the business, I think is like a prophet. He's like a philosopher warrior, poet king of business. And my model for how one uses uh a business to create an expression of their hypotheses of what a truly just and moral and awesome society would be. So it probably sounds too academic. So if anybody's like, that sounds academic, well, just just trust me, go look and you'll like it.

Yeah. I feel like uh you would have a great business of just coming up with people's names. Like I want to be a unicorn business something guy. Yeah, right. You know, as far as learning, let's tag into that. Because you you're obviously you're a notorious book reader, right? You consume a lot of stuff. I'm not gonna ask you exactly what books you're reading now right now. What I'm gonna ask is, you know, given the uniqueness of the situation, what books are you revisiting right now?

Yeah, it's you know what's interesting is I have almost only been revisiting books lately. I have found myself really just not enthused by new books. And it's like a strange thing to say, but I have been reading so aggressively for so long that, you know, and this is probably like a phase, but I have had zero interest in any business books I find to be generally some consultants' 200-page book of what should be a PDF, but they kind of gotta write the book because then they gotta like get their friends to buy it, because then it can be a speaker, and then they can charge higher rates for their corporate consulting and then for the mastermind groups. I mean that in the most loving way possible. I don't want to sound flippant because that's like many of my personal friends. So that's like not a judgment, but I'm not interested in reading that book. It's like this is a 200-page book that should have been 10 words with like your one framework that you sell with your consulting. So I have been like these days, I'm just more interested in like philosophy and like kind of hard science-y psychology. Hard science-y, I put in quotes, because psychology is a social science. So I've been revisiting a lot of stuff. So, very specifically, you know, I recently reread Man's Search for Meaning. I reread Sapiens, I've been rereading Taleb's Anti-Fragile, which is such a wonderful, weird, infuriating book that I'm just so confident half of it is completely wrong. And I just don't know which half because the half of it is correct, is so brilliant and contrarian and like so far ahead of everybody. But I'm not really smart enough to understand which half is correct or not. So I just like kind of read it all, and it's like, ah, you're this interesting guy that's yelling at me through this book. But I really like it. So I've been I've been dinging on those for sure. Uh I'm I've just started a book called How Not to Be Wrong, which I'm rereading. I did the audio book, but even though I learned pretty well through audiobooks, this book was dense and I wanted to get back to it. It's most famous for being one of Bill Gates' top 10 books. And what's interesting about this book is it's really like a book about thinking. And specifically, it's like how to use mathematical concepts to think more clearly. So a lot of the things I'm most interested at this point in my education is really what's called metacognition, which is thinking about thinking. So I've been obsessed the past like year and a half with people like Charlie Munger, anybody that gets good at using these frameworks, these mental models to create maxims, heuristics, rules of thumb that allow them to then get better outcomes in an uncertain world. So those that those happen to be the books that I'm reading right now. And like I said, it's I'm sure I'll go back to the business books. Again, I hope I didn't come across like I was shitting on business books because I I do enjoy them from time to time. But these days I've just been getting more interested in kind of the dense stuff for the time being.

Well, it makes a lot of sense. And I'm uh I'm rereading Anti-Fragile now and I feel the same way. I've actually been talking about it quite a lot because I think it's really important people understand that we can actually conceptualize that this is a black swan event and what's, you know, some of the things that could be happening right now because it's it's nice, everyone's grasping for something to relate this to, and I think they he does a great job with that. And he's he's not afraid of you know a random F-bomb, which I appreciate too.

No, no. Well, and you know what's interesting too. He and I'm just like I've become like gone such the rabbit all time lately. He interestingly enough doesn't actually curse much. And you might note a lot of his stuff is asterisk because he says he does not care for the aesthetics of swearing. He's just such a weird, quirky guy. He actually, and the other thing too is I don't use Twitter at all. The only thing I use Twitter for is every morning, I follow his tweets because he's just such a wild man. It's literally the only thing like I don't really get Twitter. It's so to me kind of of the moment in a way that I'm like, I'd rather read Adam Smart. But I totally know some people are into it. But I like it because I like watching what he's saying, his often mean, flawless things, half of which I think are brilliant, half of which are probably wrong. I can't tell you which which. Because another thing that's interesting, one of Taleb's distinctions, because he's been like writing his face off about this the whole time, yeah, one of his things he keeps saying over and over is from his definition, this actually isn't a black swan because this was obviously going to happen. So for him, the pandemic isn't even a black swan because he's like, there's no excuse not to be prepared for this because we knew this was going to happen. It was only a matter of time, and our complete lack of preparedness is unforgivable. And he in January released a paper on the precautionary principle where he had basically made the case, which you know kind of turned out to be right, that just to be on the safe side, protecting your town side, it would be better. So he was pushing for a lot more isolationist uh locking down of travel between countries much sooner than happened. And it's interesting because obviously he seems pretty vindicated by this. And even Sam Harris, as you might know, they do not get along. They are not fans of each other, like kind of blood enemies. And even Sam Harris wrote a tweet where he's like, you know, everybody knows that like Taleb and I absolutely hate each other, but he was right about this article from January.

It's an interesting time. I mean, I don't know if you've seen this too. I actually started on the framework of a book this year, and then February hit, and I was like, this doesn't make any sense anymore. And I think a lot of people are going through that. You know, even like uh this podcast, man, I have, and I I I apologize for people I've recorded and I'm just not releasing those episodes, but it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah.

Things I recorded back in January, you know, right? I think a lot of people have seen that too.

Oh gosh, I got a copy of uh, you know, like I have like a subscription of Fortune magazine or whatever, and I got a copy of it's also bad for him right? I got a it was like three weeks ago, but it was just like so hilarious and kind of tragic that oh gosh, you went to print with this this magazine, but it's completely meaningless. And you could tell they like jammed in some stuff about coronavirus, and you could tell they probably like wrote a last minute editorial because it was about climate change, but it's about disruption, like climate change and coronavirus, you know. Like, but like, you know, it's such an interesting thing, right? Because there was so much content, there was so much information and solutions that just became not relevant for now, you know. And I imagine a lot of it will still be relevant, right? Principles in particular will remain principles and the world will go back to what it was, but yeah, what a weird moment, right? It's wild, man.

And you know, it's I I I love that we're having this conversation because I would imagine most people probably saw you know your name pop up in my podcast to be like, oh, they're gonna talk about gym business. I think there's a lot of people talking about that. Yeah, I just think there's a lot of people talking about that.

Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. And honestly, even my approach to that comes out of, you know, I think the foundation of the stuff always has to be kind of philosophy and psychology, and you know, and that definitely influences my my view on that stuff. But if it's of interest and there's of course no pressure, I'm happy to get uh far more tactical if there's fitness business owners just in the beginning of the episode. You might have to tell them, like, you might want to fire 30 minutes of philosophy and time management.

Well, it's important.

Yeah, it's I think it is I think it's important. I agree.

I mean, if you you know, I'm feel fortunate that I have a firm base in stoicism, it's just kind of my operating system, really. And, you know, it's helped me get through a lot of this with a little bit of certainty in times of uncertainty. I mean, I I I'm the first one to say that, hey, my business got hurt badly in a very short period of time. I'm gonna be okay, you know, everything's gonna be okay. It's not as fun, but I know there's a lot of people who have it, you know, far worse than me. And you know, there's the but you have to you have to train your mind in times like this because it's really easy to go off the deep end. And if you're not structuring your time, if you're not thinking about your thinking, the things can can really spiral in directions you don't want to spiral in. It's critical, it's way more important. I mean, man, you know this. I mean, how many gym consulting you know professionals, and I say that with quotation marks, you know, are giving out advice that they're not no one really knows. Dude, no one knows, right?

Yeah, you know, no, yeah, and that's the thing, you know, and I think it's tough. And I have empathy, and certainly to some extent, I'm in the same boat myself, right? Where there are people that look to me and are literally paying me to help give them things to do. I try to always I try to be very, very explicit about this, even while I'm speaking or giving a course about the difference between first order knowledge and like theoretical knowledge, because they're different, right? And oftentimes I obviously like words and I read books and I sure can talk. So my brain will often come up with a good sounding solution. Someone will ask me a question. I read lots of books, and I'll pull out something that sounds feasible based on the books I've read. And I really try to make it a practice, and I'm sure I don't do it all the time because brains are tricking. I'm sure I get tricked by my own brain, but try to be explicit when someone asks me a thing and I'm like, I don't have first order knowledge of this, but here's what I might try in that situation, follow your heart, as opposed to here's a thing I have seen to be useful, and I have scabs and scars on my knees to show you about how I learned this particular lesson. But particularly when you're talking about the future, you know, it's interesting. One of the, I'm in like a Facebooker, my friend JT Tamsid, who's a big guy in Australia, and he did a copy of some Facebook ad he got served to. And the ad was, oh, something. It was still, and again, I'm sure these are wonderfully well-in-the-chip people, I'm sure they mean well, but like talk about extrapolating the wrong thing for the moment. It was something like, you know, click here now and get our proven process for opening back up after the coronavirus. And he was like, proven process for opening up. No one's done this. How is that proven? Like, literally, no one has done this, you know? So it's such an interesting uh thing, right? You know, and I think we could still be valuable. You know, again, first of all, going back to you know, quote unquote first order thinking, which is of course very like nerdy and sort of like kind of in turn, but but you know, if you look at these like principles, I do think you'll at least have a good idea of where to start, but you also need this giant dose of humility that's just like, yeah, but I don't know about this context. I've never had this context before. And I think as long as long as people are honest about that, then I think it's you know, we can hopefully all test out theories together and stay dialogue and be honest about, well, I tried this and that didn't work.

Yeah. Well, the silver lining around it, and it's been said so many times, but it's said that it's been said so many times because it's true, is that we are literally all in this together. You know, I mean, I saw a non-credible headline from from uh from a news dollar that said, you know, hey, it's certain like France is looking for a world truce. I'm like, well, that's cool, right? If it's true. I don't know if it is. I haven't fact-checked it, so you know, don't hold me over the fire on it. But it's I'm like, well, wow, it's kind of reminds me of those, you know, old movies when aliens would come and all of a sudden everyone buying together behind it, right?

Yeah, it's really it's gonna be so interesting to see, because obviously that's anybody that has globalist tendencies, of which I confess, obviously it's that's what I most want, but because of the nationalistic moment in much of the world, it's I'm gonna be interested to see the way this goes. You know, it's Harari, who wrote Sapiens, has actually been lately really talking, speaking a lot about this. And there's a great article he wrote for The Guardian, where that frankly is his concern, because without going to great detail with the article or getting anything overly political, that there, you know, there's a lot of people right now that are not interested in a unified, codified response. And on the one hand, a lot of that makes sense. And Taleb, of course, is somebody that's so pro-localism. But on the other hand, if we're not coordinating well together and we're fighting over resources, like, oh, that's gonna make this probably a lot gnarlier. But happily for people like you and I, if we don't have my, I can't make any of those calls directly. So I don't know, and I I, you know, confess I'm not even sure the best way to go, but I tend to think a more unified, inclusive, humanistic, globalized approach would be better. And I hope that that's that's I hope that that's what we try.

Yeah. Well, it's it's gotta be both, you know, ultimately. I think there's gotta be a little bit of everything. I mean, I look at like the scenario, just how drastically different where you are and where I am. Like it can't be managed the same way. Yet globally, it has to be managed in some way.

Right. And that's precisely the challenge, right? Because it has to be so hyper-localized, the response on the ground. It's like an enormous organization, right? This challenge of the decisions ideally always need to be best made at the lowest possible level. People that are on the ground are best qualified to make it. But at the same time, if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and particularly because probably unfortunately the more appropriate analogy is uh, you know, every country is sort of its own organization. And then certainly even in the states, you know, it's very clear that there's obviously some tension right now between the the states and the federal government. But it's gonna be an interesting time, my friend.

Yeah, man. I think the uh with the governor of California uh announced themselves as a nation state. That's yeah, oof. Wow.

It's funny because Taleb loves that stuff. He's so about all these city states. It's like I was like, I don't know, you challenge me with that comment, but I'm so open to your brain because you're so intelligent, but I need to think about what that means.

Oh, but anyway. Yeah, man. Well, Mark, I uh I appreciate I mean and people know where to get you. But it was great coming on and you know, I'm trying to make these conversations as relevant and get them out as fast as possible because I think it's uh it's important, you know, that we get thought that's current. I I can't see any other better way. So um, man, I appreciate your time. I know it's valuable and you know, I'll let you get back to your structured day. And yeah, man, anytime you need anything, just let me know.

Thank you, friend. Much appreciated. And I would say that if anybody listening is interested, we are doing time management webinars on a kind of regular basis because people seem to really want to know about that right now. So they can uh check out businessfreeunicorns.com. If they go to our mailing list, they can be notified about that if they're interested in learning more about how we're approaching time management because it's a strange time.

Yeah, man. And think of my name, will you? I'd appreciate that. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Mark Fisher. Thanks for coming on, man. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futurofitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.