The most powerful systems aren’t built on motivation; they’re built on rules that make the right action the only option.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we follow Dean’s ongoing experiment with structured daily rhythms, phones locked from 10 PM to noon, meals pre-ordered the night before, and two daily golf sessions anchoring his mornings. He’s framing it not as discipline but as finally becoming a “law-abiding citizen” after 30 years of trying to be a maverick. The bigger discovery: for someone with ADHD, freedom lies within structure, not outside it.
Dan shares a quiet but significant shift in his Strategic Coach tools, replacing the prompt “What are your three biggest insights?” with “What are your three biggest rules?” Insights are just thoughts. Rules are decisions with direction. He also returns to a theme from his 130-day “Creating Great Yesterdays” practice: that your past isn’t a fixed record of what happened, it’s your interpretation of it, and that interpretation is entirely yours to change.
The episode closes with a wide-ranging discussion on AI, technological revolutions, and who actually profits when the world changes, spoiler: it’s rarely the builders. Dan’s historical read on railroads, radio, and automobiles applies just as cleanly to what’s happening now. This one rewards a second listen, especially the segment on time sense and what it means for how you take action.
- Dean’s new rule: phone locked from 10 PM to noon daily, not as willpower, but as a structure that makes the right choice the only choice.
- Dan replaced “What are your three biggest insights?” with “What are your three biggest rules?” on his thinking tools, and the difference in entrepreneurial traction was immediate.
- Your past isn’t a fixed record, it’s your interpretation of what happened, and that interpretation is yours to change at any time.
- In every major technological revolution, railroads, radio, automobiles, only about 5% of builders profit. The real winners are the consumers who apply the technology to their most productive opportunities.
- ADD and future-thinking may be deeply linked: Dan’s observation that spending today’s attention on things that don’t yet exist is what creates the paralysis most entrepreneurs experience.
- Dean’s “Decider” role: the bottleneck in any creative system isn’t ideas or energy, it’s the decision about what actually makes it into the real world.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson:
Welcome to CloudLandia. Mr. Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan:
Mr. Jackson.
Dean Jackson:
Well, here we are.
Dan Sullivan:
Here we are. Here we are. I was listening to the actual words of the song that you have introducing our podcast. And my feeling is that the guy who's singing is lying.
Dean Jackson:
Well, let's
Dan Sullivan:
Break it down. He's actually doing all those things and he's actually going to do all those things that he's saying. And I'm just wondering if all songs of that nature is that the singer is actually expressing something that's not true.
Dean Jackson:
Shadow. Some shadow.
Dan Sullivan:
Shadow. Shadow. This is the
Dean Jackson:
Challenge. The shadow side of it. I'm never going to give you up. I'm never going to let you go.
Dan Sullivan:
He's letting her go.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Oh my goodness.
Dan Sullivan:
Forget you. I'm
Dean Jackson:
Never going to
Dan Sullivan:
Forget. Well, I'm not sure of the gender that he's actually talking about. There we go. These days, you can't be sure.
Dean Jackson:
That is so funny, Dan. I love ... This is true. Yeah, you've been the first one to dial in. We should let people know the conference service that we use. We have it set up so that there's music playing when the first person arrives and the song is Rick Astley Never Going to Let You Go. Yeah, yeah. So you've been treated to some contemplative time with the lyrics of the song.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. My whole feeling is that anything that people are singing about kind of tells you that they're not actually that kind of person.
Dean Jackson:
I saw there was a-
Dan Sullivan:
If you have to say it, if you have to sing it, you're not doing it.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I saw a t-shirt that had an image on the front. It said, "Things Rick Assley will never do. " And then it was check boxes. Let you go, give you up, forget you. Check, check, check.
Dan Sullivan:
Or it's the reverse. That person is doing all those things to Rick. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny. The happiest people in the world are probably not talking about it.
Dean Jackson:
That's it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's up? What's up?
Dean Jackson:
Well, I'll tell you what, it's been another adventure in Club Landia, another week of being in one place geographically on my six month stay radical, let's call it. And I've really been embracing the locking in the big pieces. I've come to see now and suspected it all along that life is really a series of rhythmic patterns that are persistent and are never changing. Trying to align myself with those so that it feels downstream. And I'm really gamifying a lot. I have completely locked in the 10:00 PM till noon, no phone. I feel so much freer with that. Walking in, I think I'm trying to gamify. I'm really learning about my flavor of ADHD, which is really an executive function outside. So for me, that is embracing structure and just kind of realizing that the freedom is in the structure for me. And as much as we try and resist it, it's embracing it is the freedom rather than resisting it.
And so I've been setting up my life into zones and that 10:00 PM starts the kind of wind down process. My little gamification lights out by 11:00 PM, that's kind of the thing because otherwise I can kind of just scroll into things. So I'm just setting up little ... If you're imagining skiing down a mountain, it's like I've got little gates that I try and get around. So it's like I've got the 10 o'clock, the phone goes off and I start the wind down practice of getting my day prepared. This last few weeks, I've been choosing my meals for tomorrow in the spirit of creating a better past. I've been choosing my meals using the pre-order function of ... I use Grubhub and DoorDash and Uber Eats. I've got a series of meals that are good. And I pick them the night before so that I don't have to ever make the decision.
I look at my day and I figure when would be the right time for them to be delivered. And so that's a great thing. I make it my aim. The other gamification gate wheels up at eight o'clock, meaning I'm up and dressed and out the door and in my car, wheels up at 8:00 AM. And that's a fun thing. I've got the first stop honeycomb, and then I read and have breakfast, and then I'm over at Concord, and I've got two hours of focus times of my golf.
I've been golfing. Of course, my analogy is the golf is having a goal, an optimal environment, limited distractions at a fixed timeframe. So those two golf sessions before noon, and then I'm back home, and my phone unlocks at noon, and I spend the first little time catching up, seeing what I've missed, all my appointment, all my time, obligations of talking to people are in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, one o'clock till six o'clock. And yeah, it's a fun, really learning to embrace the freedom and creativity within the framework of what's reality.
Dan Sullivan:
So what you're telling me is that after almost 60 years, you've become a law-abiding citizen.
Dean Jackson:
Well, what I've realized is, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it's perfectly suited that the ... I really started ... I turned pro on the journaling at 30, and I've observed now those 30 years. I'll be 60 next month, and I've realized in looking back at all of those journals, what a gift it is, but it's still been 30 years of sort of not being a law-abiding citizen, trying to be a maverick. And so now it's like I might as well experiment with living within the law.
Dan Sullivan:
The interesting thing that I've been ... I made a switch in the tools about two months ago, and so you know all the thinking tools we have in Strategic Coach, but at the bottom of every thinking tool, when you've done everything else, you've done the first sheet, which is a new concept, and then you do the triple play, and then you come back and you finish it. And at the bottom, I always had, "What are your three biggest insights from doing this
Dean Jackson:
Thinking?"
Dan Sullivan:
And I don't quite know why I did this, but there was a tool and I said, "I don't think we're looking for insights. I think we're looking for rules
Dean Jackson:
Here."
Dan Sullivan:
So instead of your three biggest insight, what are your three biggest rules? And it's made a profound difference on the entrepreneurs. And usually, I do all my testing of new tools with the two hour connector
Dean Jackson:
Calls.
Dan Sullivan:
And for example, if I do, I do a new free zone workshop every quarter, but I've tested about four or five different tools to determine what's the best structured particular quarter, but I've done tools. I've done rules for the tools. I've done rules to it, and it makes a profound difference because an insight is just a thought. It's just there's no traction, there's no commitment, there's no decision whatsoever. You just had a thought. It's brainstorming. Basically, it's just brainstorming. But rules are a decision that you're going to go in this direction and not that direction. I see that my focus and my activity has to be doing then, therefore, I have to get rid of everything else. And we had a discussion on Friday, on Friday, two days. And I said, "If you talk to any entrepreneur, they don't like following other people's rules." But the big question is, you have to have rules.
So if you're not following other people's rules, you have to create your own rules. You got to have rules.
Dean Jackson:
That's exactly- That exactly harmonizes with what I've been experiencing here in that I am making rules. My rule is 10 o'clock is the start for the window. One o'clock, lights are out, eight o'clock I'm out the door, two hours of golf. And that's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as the people elements. And yeah, that's really something ... I think it's not going to change. The reality is it's been 30 years of the ... Nature doesn't change. We've been saying that for the last 30 million years, however long we've been going, that time moves at the speed of reality and there's no way around it. We can only experience the things in the moment. I had a really ...
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And you're really seeing that with the world that, for example, with cloud landing and AI and everything that's coming along with that, I said, "I've really studied other technological revolutions. This is a big one that we're going through right now." And I said, "Who actually makes the money when you have a technological revolution?" So they went back and they looked at railroads, they looked at automobiles, they looked at radio, they looked at television, they looked at airlines, all the things that have happened within the last 200 years, 200 years. And it's almost never the people who make the new technology that actually make the money. It's only about
Dean Jackson:
5%
Dan Sullivan:
Of the people who make the new technology that everybody else loses. The people who actually make the money are the consumers who consume the new technology. In other words, they adapt some aspect of the new technology and they apply it to their most productive opportunities, their most profitable opportunities. So you look at all the big tech people right now who are spending enormous amounts of money to be number one, 95% of them are going to be losers.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty-
Dan Sullivan:
Because I think they're creating something that doesn't follow the rules of history. Humans have been creating new capabilities since humans were humans, and they think that they're changing the world. They think they're changing human nature. They aren't human age. Human nature will watch, human nature will say, "All right, this is really interesting." "All right, all right, all right, this is really interesting, but I'm just going to use your new technology for this reason. ""No, no, you have to make a complete change." "No, no, I'm just going to pick what I like and I'm going to use it and I don't care if you make money or not.
Dean Jackson:
"I read your ... Sent me that coach is always upstream from AI thought essay, whatever we'll call it, manifest that. Yeah, little
Dan Sullivan:
Article, article. It's
Dean Jackson:
An article. Yeah, your article. And one thing that really struck me, the most impactful thing that I read was you talked of the coming world of delegators and the tiny minority of deciders. I realized, wow, that is where my economic ... Or not my executive function, that's my big thing, is the deciding. I actually added to my ... Imagine if you applied your self framework that I created Ds as a progression that imagine is starting out as a dreamer, being able to see something, create a vision of what something that could be and the if is as a designer where you can now imagine if that were to be true, this is all the things that would have to take place, but neither dreaming nor designing is actually getting anything into the applied world. It's all in the theoretical side of things. And the next level down then is that it has to go to you, the capital U of this as the decider of what is going to make it into the applied world.
What are you going to usher into the applied world, the applied world? And then it goes to, I'm calling this role, the dispatcher, because the dispatcher is who can ask the things," Is there any way we can do this without doing anything? "And that would mean that there's something ... I mentioned the SELF of self as your sphere, meaning is there a service? Is there something that we know of that could just do this? That would be the ... Well, dispatch it to the S is the ... If you have to do anything, what's the least amount that I would have to do? And that gets dispatched to my own energy. I have to invest my energy in this, or L is leadership, so that's delegation. Who can I just describe what I want? And then F is finances. Could I just use money to get more people to do the thing that I want?
And that's where ... So that's my big thing. I've been off of my vitamin A regimen now for ... I was on for about a hundred days in a row, and I did notice my ability to stay on task and to do things with energy, but I realized that it doesn't help with the main thing that my executive function struggles with is deciding.
I can do what I want to or decide to do, but that's why my 50 minute Focus Finders work. That's why golf works is because the G is essentially deciding I've got a goal, this is what I'm going to do. And so I'm really now leaning into almost detaching myself from this in a way of kind of agreeing with myself that I will be on a ... I've been referring to it. I heard about something as an FSO contractor. Have you ever heard those words for services? So oftentimes actors or entertainers will have a company that enters into contractual agreements with the studio, but the studio is entering into the contract with the company for services of Dan Sullivan, not just the company. It's like, " Okay, we're going to pay your company this, but it's specifically for the services of Dan Sullivan. "And that's an interesting thing, right?
I realized how my afternoons, I never miss anything that is synchronous and scheduled and involving other people. I'm super duper reliable. If I can figure out that element of it, of being super duper reliable for myself when there's no external consequences per se of doing it at this particular time, I need to put myself in that sort of detached role that I am, that the rule is, that's a great way to think about it actually, that maybe that's my thing is that the rule is I do two golf sessions a day that are predecided by that this is what this is going to be.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think I'm noticing because I'm at day 130 of my time experience, so 30 days.
And what I've noticed is that I don't pay much attention to anything that's more than 24 hours in the future. And what I mean by that, I look at next day's schedule and I say there's certain things that other people are depending on me for tomorrow, and therefore today I'm going to do those things so that I do what I've agreed to do and people are ... They're happy. They're happy with what I've done. And I'm just noticing my mind has become very resistant to thinking a month out or six months out, anything like that. And I said," Well, whatever six months out, when it gets to that, that is tomorrow, then I'll do it today, but I'm not going to be extending myself out into the future emotionally and everything like that.
"My sense is that, and we've talked about this before, that we have three timeframes that we just enter into when we're born and we're growing up, there's yesterday, there's today, and there's tomorrow, three things, but somewhere along the line, we either get hooked on not getting free from the past. So instead of it just being yesterday, it's last year or it's five years ago or it's 10 years ago, and there's people that had negative things happen to them 20 years ago, and some of today's time is still being used up with something that's 20 years in the past.
And I said," Well, you're kind of trapped by the past, so you're kind of trapped. Instead of having access to your full attention today, there's a portion of that, that you're paying for something that happened 20 years ago, and you can't get free from that. "But the other way, it happens in the future, and instead of paying attention tomorrow, you're paying attention to a year from now, or five years from now, or 20 years from now, your attention today is being used up with something that doesn't even exist. I mean, with the past thing, the past thing actually exists. I mean, it actually happened. You've got proof that ... But the future stuff, I mean, it's just a vapor, you're just
Dean Jackson:
Responding
Dan Sullivan:
To a vapor, but there's an emotional excitement with the past one, usually it's an emotional, a negative emotion, something that you haven't gotten over. But in the future, it's something that's really bad. Would've,
Dean Jackson:
Could have, should have. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And more and more, you're using today's energy and devoting it to something that doesn't even exist that's a long way in the future. And what I've noticed is that I've lost ... I've never had real problem with the past aspect of this, but I've had a lot of problems with the future aspect of it. And I think, and I said," If it was just one thing that I'm attached to in the future, that'd be okay, but it's 20 things, and
Dean Jackson:
They're not connected,
Dan Sullivan:
And they're not connected to each other, and they're all fighting for attention.
Dean Jackson:
"Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
And they're all saying," No, no, no. It's my turn. It's my turn. "It's everything
Dean Jackson:
Like that.
Dan Sullivan:
And I think that a lot of what we experience as ADD is actually that future attachment to things that don't even exist yet. I
Dean Jackson:
Agree with you, 100%. I mean, it's really, I look at the things ... I forget who it was. I think it was Jason Freed who wrote a book called Rework and Jason Fried is the co-owner, co-founder of a company that produced ... Their company's called 37 Signals, and they have notoriously been single focused, like having things very much buying into this idea that slow and steady wins the race kind of thing. And I hope I'm giving him the right attribution. So if somebody listening knows that maybe somebody else created this, it's not. He said," If we imagine our attention, which is the ... "These are my words, the crown jewel of our time, the laser tip of our point is our attention, meaning our gaze, our energy is in the moment, always engaged in something. And if we imagine that as the stage, that on center stage, there's always something on center stage and as soon as we put our attention on one thing, that it's almost like all these other things that are competing for our attention are stage left, stage right, backstage, idiot, all shouting for our attention like, " Oh, look at me, look at me, look at me, me.
"And then when we choose something, there's kind of this sense of that you've let the other ones down kind of thing.
But he said," If we treat this like managing the stage, instead of averting our gaze, spraying our gaze all over the place, if we keep our gaze on the stage and we move into ... I think what fits perfectly is this decider role of what's going on stage now, what's going on stage now. We're the program director of what our attention is going to be focused on, right? So we bring one thing on stage at one time and that's kind of ... If we think about it as a broadcast day, the good news is that we really ... One of these rhythms of life that is inescapable is the 24 hour cycle, which involves 16 waking hours, right? Our 10 minute attention slots, that's what we're filling for today. And I think what you are absolutely right about is the ... I would, like you, spend a lot of those units dreaming and designing things for the future, not doing things in the present.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. But it's actually the things you do in the present that actually create what-
Dean Jackson:
What you did. ...
Dan Sullivan:
What
Dean Jackson:
Tomorrow
Dan Sullivan:
Is.
Dean Jackson:
It's
Dan Sullivan:
Basically ... Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
That's where the idea of creating a better path is that the thing of doing is that at the end of the day, that becomes That's what you did. So we're creating the past in the present, like you said that we can ...
Dan Sullivan:
Well, I just write down little notes as they occur to me and oftentimes as a result of something that got discussed in a workshop or the two hour connectors. And I said, people's passion, I think, and especially you see that among entrepreneurs and you see that among very creative entrepreneurs because not all entrepreneurs are creative, but creative entrepreneurs. And what I notice is that they're trying to escape from a predictable past. They say, "My past was like this, and I want to create a future that is not predictable." Okay? And I said, "But what if you reversed your mindset here and you made your past unpredictable?" Okay. What I mean by that is that you can take any experience you've had in the past and if you go deep in the experience, what worked about this experience, what didn't work about this experience. And then you say, "Based on my new understanding of this experience, what can I do in the future?" My sense is you just changed your past.
You made your past unpredictable. Hello.
Dean Jackson:
I don't know what happened, Dan. You were on fire and we got-
Dan Sullivan:
I just had an unpredictable past experience.
Dean Jackson:
Exactly. That was perfectly fitting. Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. But the big thing is that there's this belief that the past is static,
Dean Jackson:
But
Dan Sullivan:
When you really think about what you're ... For my past and for most people's past, your past is not what actually happened. Your past is your interpretation of what happened. It's not the content of your past, it's the context that you've created out of having those experiences. And my sense is good experience, bad experience doesn't matter. If you go deep into it and say, "What did I actually ... Looking back now, what did I actually learn from that experience?" All of a sudden you have a new insight, you have a new possibility, and a certain sense, you've just used the past to create a new future. Okay? But it's actually based on real stuff. The future is not based on real stuff. It's just you're just casting images on the screen, but there's no emotion. Nobody's ever had an experience of the future. You've had an experience of seeing things from your past that now become real possibilities if you look at the future.
And you have total control over it. Nobody has access to any of the information that's related to your past. I mean, it's totally your property. You can do anything you want with it. And the other thing is it's completely competition free. Nobody knows you're doing this. Nobody knows what you're doing with it. Nobody knows what you're doing in looking at your past is going to show up in the future. The future is all competition. It's everybody's images, competing with everybody else's images.
Dean Jackson:
I mean, the future is all competition.
Dan Sullivan:
Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see that. I mean, you can just see that following the news of the big tech companies. And I was noticing that where Anthropic wants to get to now is just the next stage that is going to cost them $65 billion to get to the next stage, without any guarantee whatsoever that the 65 billion is going to do anything there. And the reason is they're in a hundred percent competition with everybody else. It has to pay off or they're done. They're in a position where everybody ... And I said, "Yeah, but maybe the 37 steps or whatever the name of the company is camp."
Dean Jackson:
37 signals. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
37
Dean Jackson:
Signals. 37 signals.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. They got the right idea. This stuff works. If you'll concentrate on it and give it your full attention, this stuff works. It's not a guess. It's not a bet. It's just a function of giving things that already work your full attention.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
No, I was thinking with your 14 hours, you've gained ownership of 14 hours of your 24 hour daily existence.That's roughly two thirds, basically. It's roughly about two thirds that you didn't have before. And just the fact that you have ownership now is going to make a huge difference in the future.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. And the long-term ramifications of it, like what I realize now is that I've certainly conditioned people in my life. And by the way, nobody misses you. Did you know?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I always say that people said, "What are people going to think about? If I do that, what are people going to think about me?
Dean Jackson:
"
Dan Sullivan:
And I says, "Relax, you're safe. They're not thinking about you at all.
Dean Jackson:
" They're not thinking about you at all. That is exactly right. So that's been one of my big realizations there is that I'm living in Dean Landia for 14 hours a day,
And that's a much better outcome. The majority, that puts me at a majority. The majority of my time is spent in Dean Landia, and I'm aiming that I'll get that even more. I've disconnected from ... I have no access to, or I actively do not go to any news outlets, any ... I don't watch anything real time. I'm carefully training my algorithms that ... What's very interesting on TikTok now, there's a function where you can ... When you follow somebody, right, there's two streams. You can go on what they call your For You page, which is what the algorithm thinks that you would be interested in. And then if you follow that person, you have another option, another tab in your Instagram or in your TikTok called following. So I've selected the things that I'm interested in exclusively, and I can go and only just view my following column, and I don't get caught up in going down these rabbit holes.
I'm curating my experience that way. So I'm woefully unaware of really what's happening in the world. And so far, I'm not missing anything. It feels like we're still ... There was a website years ago, do you remember when the large hydrant collider or whatever was a big out thing?
Dan Sullivan:
Yep, yep, yep.
Dean Jackson:
There was a website called, has the large hydrogen ... Or what was it called? Is it hydrant or collider or whatever? So the website- Well,
Dan Sullivan:
All I know is it's in Europe and I don't think it's going to amount to anything.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, exactly. So there was a website, has the large hydrogen collider ended theworldyt.com. And you go there and there's a reassuring, nope. That's the only thing on the page. Nope. So you just check it daily. Has the world ended today? Nope. Carry on. It's good enough. So that's the way I feel. I wake up and I'm here and that's enough. You know what I'm curious about, Dan, is I love your idea of rules and I'd love to hear if you've given any thought or if maybe we could create them, your three rules that you've observed from your 138 days of creating a better past.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. It's interesting. I haven't gotten to that point where I have three of them, but one of them is that how you consider time, and I'm talking about anybody.
One is that I think almost everybody does something different with time. There's been, according to anthropologists, people who make guesses about how long there's been actual human beings on the planet, and it's somewhere around 105 billion, in other words. And they have reasons for the number, and maybe 20 years from now, it'll be more than that or less than that. But one of the things is that it seems to me that what makes humans is their time sense. There's a sense of time sense. And I know that children don't have it when they're born. And Shannon Waller had her oldest daughter, they taught her sign language. There's a school in Philadelphia where they can learn. The parents can learn signs. They're almost like they have people who do hand signals so that deaf people can understand what's going on. And you can actually teach your baby rough, and they'll get it.
And they had about 50 things, and they would do hand signals. "I'm hungry. I have to go to the bathroom. I want to go outside and play and everything like this. "And she was probably about, let's say, a year and three months old, and she began telling stories using hand signals that she had seen a bird, and the bird was before her last dark sleep. So
She realized that naps are light sleeps, and going to bed at night is a dark sleep, and she said," I saw a bird in the park, "and she had a hand signal for that, and it was before my last dark sleep, and she was telling the story, and the next week she started to talk. She actually started using words, and she actually started to talk. And so my sense is that there's a relationship, I'm just putting one person's experience together here. There's a relationship between our time sense and our need to communicate, or it goes along with our desire to communicate, and that humans seem to be the only species who can't ... One, they have time measurements, and then they're able to use time measurements. But my sense is that I have a suspicion that yesterday, today, and tomorrow really means something different to each person.
They're very creative with it. They've worked it out. But with some people, it actually makes it possible for them to take action, and for some people, it actually makes it impossible for them to take action. There's something about their time sense. And both of us have been experimenting over the last half year or so, you a little bit longer than I have, but we're playing around with our time sense, and you've had great breakthroughs, and I've had great breakthroughs.
And so my sense is that if your time sense actually inhibits action, your time sense is not good for you. And if your time sense actually encourages action, it's actually good for you.
Dean Jackson:
Yes. Wow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? And the only thing is that what ... I've been calling it the permanent record, what's actually documented on the permanent record, and the only time we can actually put something on the record is today, is right now. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Action today.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Really, I've also learned that it's about a hundred minutes kind of thing is about the right ... I consider that to be the immediate present, like what's actually ... I think I have absolute clarity of what's going to happen in the next 100 minutes, but there's a lot of variation of what could happen a hundred minutes from now, unless there is something that is anchored in that time. If I have an appointment like this, my day, the only thing on my Sunday is this time locked in to spend this time with you. And so that dictates how my morning goes. For first thing, I have to set my clock to my phone to come out. I come out 90 minutes earlier than what it normally ... I set my phone to unlock at 10:30 instead of noon on these days because we talk 11:00, and that gives me some time to do that.
But the morning is pretty ... I went to Honeycomb this morning, had breakfast, I was reading, and then I got to do one session at Concord, and then I'm here, and now I can decide what I'm going to do for the rest of the day, but I don't ... It's unwritten. It's unwritten, all options available, and I have not ... That's where my executive function
Needs some direction, because I have all options, and I'll often end up really just not doing anything. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And I think that along with your sense that it's about a hundred minutes ahead of you, it's sort of like attention reality. You've
Dean Jackson:
Got
Dan Sullivan:
About a hundred hours of attention reality, but I
Dean Jackson:
Also
Dan Sullivan:
Think that there's a certain amount of having taken action during the day that makes it a really satisfying day. And if you do less than that, it makes it not such a satisfying day.
Dean Jackson:
I agree, 100%. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
But my sense is that taking action has a requirement, and that is it could be verified by other people that you took action. I think it's
Dean Jackson:
Where-That's what I mean
Dan Sullivan:
By- Where there's a social reality in the sense that ... Yeah, I think I did something important here, but I don't have any witnesses. I wouldn't have any witnesses to that. And there's a sense where we can spend all the time we want by ourselves thinking things through, but if there isn't a social verification, somebody tests you out,
Dean Jackson:
That was really- Yeah, I've been thinking about that as there's a ... That is easy when there's a transcript or record of an interaction. No matter what, we have created and documented this podcast episode as evidence that we did something today. This is on the permanent record. And I think that on the other side, when I'm doing it by myself, there has to be an artifact that is an output of you thinking through and developing a new tool is a necessary component of actually creating the artifact of that tool that you're thinking and everything that goes into it ultimately has to manifest as this document that can be entered into the permanent record.
Dan Sullivan:
Yep. Yes.
Dean Jackson:
What an adventure life is, Dan.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, and there's some sort of cloud landing of police
Dean Jackson:
Which
Dan Sullivan:
Can investigate and actually say," Yep, Your Honor, we can say that he actually did what he said he did.
Dean Jackson:
He can
Dan Sullivan:
Actually say that.
Dean Jackson:
"Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. That's amazing.
Dan Sullivan:
It's interesting. I get a feeling ... I have voracious appetite for investigating what the creation of AI, especially robots going along with them, what kind of psychological, emotional, intellectual, political, economic impact that this is having, because it's new.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
I mean, you can go 40, 50 years and not have something new like this. And I think that this seems to go to the heart of everything. This new capability gives you a chance to reexamine almost everything that humans do from a new end. But what I'm feeling about this is that it's not so much what we're going to find out about technology because of this new technology. It's what we're actually going to find out about humans with this
Dean Jackson:
New technology. Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. My sense is that you and I would not be having this discussion if ChatGPT had not come out in November 30th of 22.
Dean Jackson:
I don't
Dan Sullivan:
Think we'd be having this conversation.
Dean Jackson:
No, I agree with you. I think you're absolutely right, but I think it was 23, actually.
Dan Sullivan:
Was
Dean Jackson:
It 23?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
- 23. But you look at the ... Yeah, I think about just the cascading things like we don't even think twice about the fact that we're talking on a phone that didn't exist 150 years ago and that's in the big grand context of things and the fact that it's being recorded digitally with the microchip is really only 50 years old, that that's even a possibility, right? So the acceleration of things and being recorded in the cloud on the internet, which is only 30 years old, and now here we are with something that's only 30 months old is like, what a time to be alive. I really do think, Dan, Matt, I would love the same kind of ... The book that I got for you, the big change from 1925 to 1950, I think it would be amazing to see the 50 years from 1975 to 2025 is crazy. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's really interesting because everybody's freaked out by the war, the war. And I said, "You know something big is happening when people go to war." You've reached a point of irreconcilable difference with someone else. But the other thing is that I always say, as I think about the war with Iran, I said, "I don't think it's a war with Iran. I think it's a war with China that Iran was a customer of Chinese technology and they've been making big claims about their technology. They can do everything else." And my sense is the US, it's too dangerous to go to war with China because they have lots of nukes, but it's okay to go to war with a customer of China who has bought all of the Chinese technology and let's just show the Chinese how much their technology is actually worth and do it in a couple of weeks, everything they claim for. But my sense is that AI has really entered the realm of technology, wartime technology and that the ... I mean, everybody say, "This is a disaster, this is a quagmire." I said, "This has been the most one-sided victory in the history of the world." I mean, they just wiped out everything in the first 24 hours. The entire leadership was gone and everything like that. But Dean Jackson: I Dan Sullivan: Think that they're using it as an example. This is a safer bet type of war to have because nothing's going to happen to the United States. I mean, it's half the world around, but we can test all sorts of stuff, but especially the organization, military effort. I mean, that's where I think ... I don't think the AI is so much in the weapons. I think the AI is in the coordination of everything like that. And we're just going to send a message to the Chinese, "You thought you were ahead of us and we're just going to show you that you're still about 20 years behind us." Dean Jackson: Wild. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Well, here we are. Dan Sullivan: I don't like being in them, but I find wars interesting. Dean Jackson: I'll have to take your word for it. Dan Sullivan: I'll keep you up to date. Dean Jackson: Exactly. Yes, that's the best. Dean Jackson: I Like it. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. I was doing it. But anyway, it's interesting, but this time sense, I think we're really onto something with- Dean Jackson: I do too. Dan Sullivan: ... just exactly how are you conceptualizing and how are Dean Jackson: You Dan Sullivan: Organizing your time? I think it's at the center of everything human. Dean Jackson: Yeah. So I think I'm going to continue developing that, the dreamer, designer, decider, dispatcher, and doer. That's in one of those five roles at all times. Dan Sullivan: Yep. Alrighty. Dean Jackson: Yeah. All right, Dan. Always delightful. Talk Dan Sullivan: Next week. Talk next week. Okay, thanks. Bye.