Welcome to No Compromises. A peek into the mind of two old web devs who have seen some things. This is Joel.

And this is Aaron.

Hey Aaron, I really don't have time to record the podcast today. Can we push it off to another week and then maybe miss a week and never do it?

Oh, what the (bleep)?

I'm joking. We are recording and we're going to keep recording. There was a recent tip I wrote and I maybe alluded, it was around planning and review, and I alluded to the concept of like, "We don't have time to do everything we want." Which I think is true and I don't think you dispute that but you kind of said, "Joel, you're going a little soft on this tip. You should tell people to just do the thing and don't make excuses." Am I characterizing our discussion correctly?

Yeah. I mean, you made me sound so much nicer, which I appreciate.

Oh, okay.

But yeah, I said, "Don't be so soft to everyone." I really hate when people say, "I don't have time for this." It's like, I think about this example, you know all these different proverbs and you hear them all the time so I'll just give you one. But it's the idea of like, "Hey, I'm calling you to give you a check for $100,000 if you just drive over here." It's like, "I'm sorry, I'm too busy picking up these $1 bills." It's like, come on. Just look at this opportunity, this person is giving you an opportunity. I think that's why I get frustrated when I hear people respond to good advice. "Oh, I don't have time to do that though. If I only had the time to do that." It's like, okay, first of all, that person they're giving you that advice. I mean, obviously, you can argue on the internet. "They're giving you that advice because they want clicks and all that kind of stuff, they want money." But in reality, a lot of people are giving you advice because they want something good for you, they want you to experience something positive.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I want to narrow it because everything we're talking about is absolutely true and it applies broadly in life. But I think maybe the place you and I feel it the most viscerally is advice on a project. And especially when we're hired to work on a project and we're like, "If you do this thing, it's going to make your life easier." And then we hear, "Well, we don't have time." And you know what? We'll get into the nuances of what actually is meant, that is said. Maybe the answer is not to do the thing we're recommending, but the framing it as a lack of time I think is what sets you off and also sets me off because it is not addressing what actual decision is being made. And it feels more like... I'll just add my opinion on this, it feels like, "Oh, I can't do anything about that," whereas you really are in control of that decision. It's not something out of your control.

I sort of cut myself off and stopped what I was saying because I thought of something evil. That was something evil for you, Joel, because I know which direction you're trying to go with this but I'm going to sidetrack you and I'm going to turn it around on you.

All right.

Here's some behind-the-scenes. The idea for our podcast topic is we want to talk about like, "Hey, you should do these things because they're going to save you time in the long run," an argument against time and whatnot. But one of the things that we kind of talked about was, is it important to you? Are you lying to yourself when you say you don't have time? Is the answer that you're really saying is it's not important? And I'm sorry I gave away the whole show, Joel, but it's really because what I want to do is I want to say something different. I want to turn it around on us. We didn't sell the value of the item that we suggest strong enough for the person to see the time-saving.

Okay. I can accept that.

We're here saying, "Hey, you need to do this thing. It's going to save you time." And they're saying, "We don't have time to do it." Maybe my example isn't good enough for the $100,000 versus, I'm picking up the $1 bills, because a person's like, "Well, if I pick up enough $1 bills, I'll get to $100,000." And I know if I do this one thing over and over and over I know I can get there, or I might get into a car accident over there or something. So really maybe we haven't sold it good enough, maybe the value is so high it's a billion dollars. "Here's your billion-dollar check, or you can pick up this one thing." So maybe it's our fault that we haven't been selling or our fault or other people's fault, right?

Yeah.

But people giving the tip, they haven't been selling the time-saving feature enough.

I can accept that. And honestly, I think the $100,000 versus $1 I think is still pretty clear-cut. But when you expand it to a billion it becomes even more obviously clear-cut. I think there's very few things that clear cut in life though, especially when you're talking about improving process on a project or things like that. I'll accept your premise that the person making the request could do better. But I think it's also important to address like, there's an underlying emotional context or mental context that needs to be addressed. Because I still go back to the fact it really is not about time, it's about priority, right? Like, you would agree with that?

Yeah. I would agree with that but I'm not willing to let us off the hook yet.

Okay. So, do you have a suggestion on how we could present it better or you want me to try to come up with a scenario?

Well, I'm using us as an example so some of these things may not always be 100% apropos to us. But I think about people who now present the item and they want to say, "Here, it's such a valuable thing." Are they being vulnerable enough with how bad it was for them before they did this thing? When you start to feel the value of a thing that saved you time and given you such great things, you can't help but be that person. Now there's quality and saving time, and everything looks great. And sometimes even in the past, the way you described the past even sounds better than what it was. So when we start to give this advice to someone, you can start thinking about it like, "Oh, well maybe Joel and Aaron had most of their stuff together already, and then they're giving us this idea of how to get 98% to 100%. And that's great. But they don't understand I'm here at 25%, I'm trying to even get to 50%." That's not what we're talking about, everywhere it works.

Yeah, vulnerability is a good word for that. And I'm actually thinking to that specific tip I wrote that went live today, or when we're recording this, I didn't really set up the past world. I talked about it in generalities, but I didn't say, "Here was my before state, now I did this thing here's my after state." I can see what you're saying, how it would really strengthen the argument of why this is valuable, to get more specific about how I personally benefited from it.

It's like when I saw... I did some research on different investments and stuff like that, you might do too. And it was frustrating when you see someone that doesn't remember like, "How I got my first investment property," or something like that. And they're like, "Oh, well once you have 7 you can use them to get 27." It's like, "Yeah, okay. But how do I start from the beginning?" So I think sometimes when we talk about these time-saving things, it looks such a jump but really that time-saving thing gives you that huge jump because everyone was where you are at.

Yeah. I'm going to throw something else out and tell me if this is in the same vein because I think it is but I want to get your take on it. Which is, when you're describing the benefits and the after state, to be vulnerable and realistic there too. Because if you oversell it, you might think you're encouraging them to do it but then if they try it and they don't get that amazing vision of what you said happened, they'll just give up. So I think there's a line of like, "This made my life better, here's why. But it's still not perfect, just so you don't think this is going to solve all your problems." Do you agree that's still a valuable part of the discussion?

Exactly, because that's the other half of what I was talking about. It's like, you might forget how bad it was and because everything is rosy, so exciting, you might even... It's so easy to paint it even more exciting and more great.

Yeah. Which is not realistic and that's why people give up. Because maybe my tip will convince somebody to try it, because I was talking about a quarterly and a weekly planning process that I use. Maybe they'll even try it for one or two quarters and like, "Yeah, that's a little better but I don't know," so if I oversell it, it could actually have the negative effect that I'm trying to avoid.

I just want to make it clear though that I have been taking a lot of the blame onto us. And I know that Joel, you had started out and I kind of gave away some of the details of where the podcast was going to go. But I look at it as just a summary, a teaser for really part two, which is coming out pretty soon. Which is like, "Okay. We did sell it, what's your responsibility now?"

A cliffhanger, I love it. I recently spent a little time in nature and I actually took a trip away from home and did not bring my laptop. First of all, before I go on I want praise from you for doing that.

Good job.

Thank you. As I'm sitting in nature, I was maybe reading a book or whatever but we were literally in the woods and there were squirrels. And I just thought, watching the way they move, I have a question for you. Have you ever seen a squirrel just walk somewhere? Have you paid attention to squirrels?

No. The only ones I've seen walk were chipmunks.

Interesting, okay.

They were on their way to rescue someone.

Oh my goodness. I'm asking for that. Okay, but anyways, a squirrel it wants to go from here to one foot away. It doesn't walk, it jumps, they leap. At first, I'm like, "Man, why do they do that?" But then my wife is like, "Well, if they did just walk, it would look kind of weird." And I thought about it, I'm like, yeah, if you just saw a squirrel walking calmly it would be a little bit weird, I think.

Well, no, it's because you... There's a difference in the size of the animal versus its speed. So what we see as jumping and running is just normal speed for it because it's so small. If we were seeing it walking normal, our speed, it'd be walking in slow motion. It'd be doing a Baywatch sort of walk. It'd be doing sexy squirrel walk and I don't think that's what we want.

We definitely don't. But see, this is why I bring these topics to you, Aaron, because you just always help me get clearer on it.

I know you don't have a lot of time so just listen to part two.