Mike Schmitz: Faith-Based Productivity and Sketch Notes (V1)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Norman Chella (00:20):
we talk with Mike Schmitz, who is a productivity
nerd, which he writes on hiswebsite, loves reading books and
enjoys making things.
He is currently the executiveeditor at this sweet setup, the
website where you can discoverthe best apps and workflows for
your iPhone Mac and iPad, aswell as co-host of the focused
bookworm and intentional familypodcasts.

(00:42):
his website, faith basedproductivity talks about his
intersections.
The amazing tips, tricks andprinciples of productivity and
his faith from his sermon sketchnotes, as well as his Bible
study notes.
Mike combines all of this inRome.
So in this episode, we talkabout Mike's origin story, how
he became a productivity coachfrom writing so much and

(01:05):
combining it with faith, theimpact of his sermon sketch
notes, as well as his quotes andpassages from the Bible on his
workflows and observations andhis Rome ORC flow, quite
extensive of a number of queriesand understandings with one
interesting use of poolingemails as a to-do on Rome.
we talked about the meaning offaith based productivity and the

(01:27):
true definition of hustle andthe meaning of cult, which can
be quite an uncomfortable wordto be used to describe loyal
users of a tool.
But.
Mike has some other thoughtsconcerning this.
and I understand his point ofview.
So without further ado, let'sdive into this wide ranging chat
with Mike Schmitz.

(01:48):
have faith based productivity.
Mr.
Mike Schmitz.
Oh, and you want it to cup in aswell.

Mike Schmitz (01:55):
I've been, I've been recording.
So for, for editing sake, I canmake it easier for you if we
count down and clap.

Okay.
Well, it doesn't matter if I'vealready clapped it in any way
and I can always just sync withthe zoom.
So might as well from thatminor.
Miss clap, mr.
Mike Schmitz.
Welcome to aroma FM.
How are you doing

I'm doing great.
I'm glad to be here.
I've been listening to some ofyour past episodes and I feel
like I am not as good at Rome assome of these people that you've
had on your show so far, but Iwill do my best.

Oh, no, don't worry.
I mean, we're not here to like,try to compete with each other
in terms of workflows oranything like that.
It's really just a broad rangeof use cases.
And I'm really curious aboutyours since I've read a few of
the articles that you've learnedabout Rome, uh, Not only like
some of the little videos thatyou do here and there on your

(02:47):
own website, but also on sweetsetup, which I will get into,
because I'm really, reallycurious about that.
But before we get right into thenitty gritty of Mike Schmitz,
the productivity coach based onfaith based productivity, there
has to be a dark times, which iswhat we know when he call the
times before we discovered Rome.

(03:08):
I'm really curious about this,um, about your origin stories
in.
Your interest in productivity,how did you get it to the world
of productivity?
And from there stumble into thetool that is around research.
Okay.

Oh, wow.
Okay.
So the short version, I guess.
Is that I was working for afamily computer software
business, and just decided thatI needed something a little bit
different, started writing andpublishing to my personal blog.
Did that like every day for twoweeks, getting up at 5:00 AM

(03:43):
before I went into the officewithin a couple of weeks, had a
small body of work and thenreached out to a site that I was
reading at the time, Asianefficiency.
They had posted, they werelooking for to hire somebody.
And I said, not interested in ajob, but how about guest
posting?
I said, well, we don't really dothat, but if you have any

(04:05):
things, send it our way.
So I sent them my blog, which Istarted two weeks earlier and
they.
Got back to me and said, this isreally good.
We tell God a lot of the samemindsets, uh, read a lot of the
same books.
So we want to give this a shotled to bigger projects,
eventually a full-time positionwith them.
Where I had been there forseveral years had been part of
the team that started theproductivity show podcast over

(04:25):
there.
Uh, I had started to do some ofmy own stuff.
The focus podcast with DavidSparks, the bookworm podcasts I
do with And about a year and ahalf ago, uh, was go from there
and took a full-time positionwith the suite set up.
So that's my main gig right now.
I'm an executive, uh, executiveeditor at the sweet setup where
we play in test and recommendApple hardware and software as

(04:47):
part of my job over there.
No Roman research came on myradar and a friend of mine was
telling me about, and he showedit to me, did a great demo.
And I was like, well, that'skind of cool, but.
Honestly, you're the kind of guywho gets excited about every new
app.
And we'll see if this sticks somonths go by, he's still excited
about it.
I look at it again and I'm justlike, I don't get it.

(05:09):
Like, why do I want to use this?
Which is why I say I'm bad atRome, because it took me a
really long time.
I watched the video, but ThomasFrank, and how he kind of used
it to synthesize some booknotes.
I'm like, well, that's cool.
But I got my own book notesworkflow, and that's not really
going to work for me.
And so I'd seen a lot of demos,heard a lot about it and was
just kind of like, nah, I don'twant to use that.
And then I got this idea becauseon top of all the regular stuff,

(05:33):
I went back to Bible college andgot a degree for funsies.
So I have always kind of wantedto take all the notes from my
personal Bible study and createlike a cross-reference library.
And so like I take notes on thesermons that I hear and jot down
a verse and then being able toconnect those to other verses,
like, if you have a physicalBible, for example, we'll have

(05:55):
next to the verses another versethat pertains to it.
And you can flip to that verseand kind of follow the chain of,
uh, the thought process there.
Uh, so that's the answerversion.
And I was like, Hmm, maybe I cando this in Rome.
And that's the moment that itclicked for me.
I had that, that project.
And like, this is what I want tobuild.
Well, Rome, let me build this.
And obviously, yes, Rome, let mebuild that.

(06:16):
And then from there I've beenkind of finding additional use
cases for it.
Uh, but I still feel like ittakes me a really long time to
get stuff, uh, built inside of aroom.
I feel like I'm still just kindof scratching the surface with
it, but am happy.
Definitely with the, uh, thethings that I've been able to
make it through so far.

Yeah so far.
And it sounds pretty interestingbecause it feels like you've
only just found how it can fitinto what you're doing.
Once you find a need currently,as in you tried to do everything
analog first, or you've tried todo everything with, or you've
tried to work on this idea witheverything else you've had at

(06:56):
the moment.
And then you're like, okay,well, Well, what about Rome?
And then you realized maybe it'sjust how powerful it is, even if
it is like you say, scratchingthe surface.
I don't think like many peoplewho are users of Rome research,
they don't use every singlefeature or they don't use every
single tool.
Like the way that a lot of usersI see at least is that there's a

(07:18):
huge.
Like a pie chart and themajority of the users would just
stick it to say note taking andto extent by directional
linking, which is more thanenough, like it's already
mindblowing to do that, forexample, cross-referencing or to
do something else for whatever.
Uh, so whatever activity they'redoing, but, um, I'm curious, I

(07:39):
only just going to stick tohaving Rome as a cross-reference
library or are you exploringother like other tasks?
Oh,

I've, I've gotten more stuff into a, to Rome and
that's kinda the thing that gotme into it.
And then once I got into it, Irealized there's a lot of value
in having all of these thingsconnected.
So Rome has some task managementfeatures, which I wrote off
right away, because I'm like,well, there's due dates.
There's no start dates like atool like OmniFocus, which I had

(08:09):
been using for years.
Uh, we are also though in themiddle of a global pandemic, so
I've been rethinking everything.
And part of the thing, one ofthe things that has really
helped me regain some.
So not peace of mind regardingjust the general sense of
overwhelmed with everythinggoing on has been to start using
analog tools.
So I have a fancy notebook thatI write out my five tasks for

(08:32):
the day time block my day.
And, uh, on the sweet setup, Iwrote about how, like, that was
something that I was committingto.
And at the same time I wasexperimenting with Rome.
So I've kind of landed on thisthing where as I'm going through
my day, everything that I thinkabout.
And I capture goes in thatnotebook using one of my fancy

(08:54):
pens.
I've got a whole big, fancy pencollection on my desk.
You're too.
Uh, but then at the end of theday, everything, this is kind of
loosely based on the bulletjournal system.
So the bullet journal system iskind of built on the idea.
It's completely analog, it's ina notebook and it's built on
this idea of intentionalfriction where you jot something
down to capture it and then youhave to transfer it somewhere

(09:15):
else.
And the act of transferring itsomewhere else is less
efficient, but that means you'remore ruthless in cutting out the
things you don't really want todo.
When I was using a digital taskmanager, it was easy to just add
things down and focus, addthings down, only focus, add
things, Tami focused, and thenyou have 3000 tasks you go in
there and you're like, Oh, I'mso overwhelmed.
I'm so far behind.
I don't want to touch it.

same for me.

Yeah.
So I am, again, I'm not, not atthe bar point where I can say
like, this is really clickingfor me yet, but I'm starting to
put all my tasks and roomsstarting to use queries to show
like the ones that areunscheduled, the ones that are
coming up.
I really like being able toassign a date to something and
have it show up at the bottom ofmy daily notes.
So kind of my workflow at themoment for getting things done

(09:57):
is to open up Rome.
I have this text expandersnippet.
I use to expand like a bunch ofsliders and use like the daily
questions from MarshallGoldsmith and triggers.
And then below that, you know,all the linked references it'll
show all the tasks that are aredue today.
And, uh, so I'll pull those,write them down in my notebook
and then work off of that.
Everything that I capturedthroughout the day, then it goes

(10:18):
back to Rome at the end of theday.
And, uh, I really liked theability to tie, you know, the
tasks, the articles that I'mwriting, the sermon notes, all
the book notes, like all ofthose things together, being
able to link them together isreally powerful.
Uh, I think just between thebook notes and the sermon notes,

(10:40):
like, that's really the thingfor me.
Like I, I read a lot ofproductivity books and I get all
these ideas and then I try to.
Uh, I try to map that up with.
Uh, I'm, I'm a Christian, soit's all Bible based, but I map
it up with the, my study of thescriptures and that's kind of
how faith based productivitycame to BS.
I saw a lot of like overlapthere.

(11:00):
And so being able to connectthose things is really important
to me.
And I see every day I see newways to do that inside of Rome.
Like.
Building a CRM inside a roam issomething that I'm going to be
playing with.
And I liked the idea of likehaving a task that you're
waiting for somebody, and thenyou can tag their specific
record and have all of theirinformation right there.
That's super powerful.

Yeah.
Referencing, especially when youhave a CRM and you can assign
that to either tasks and orprojects or things you're
working on.
And then have that contextwithin which is.
This context or this task hasthese relevant people involved.
Right.
And you don't have to have itwritten actually into task
itself, but the fact that it'salready referenced and you have

(11:42):
these people to refer to lateron, it's like really powerful or
it's like one of the more subtleuses of a link reference since
it helps you to focus and toknow where to go next, in case
you need help from somebody elseor who to refer to for, uh, for
later on, uh, to backtrack abit.
I actually, wasn't going to askabout faith-based productivity

(12:03):
because I don't want to make anyguesses since it seems like
you're going to, uh, do a littlebit of overlap between
productivity, either principlesand or tips and tricks and
methods with your faith, whichis Christianity.
And this studies that you'vedone with all the scriptures
that you've, um, that you'vecompiled into Rome.

(12:25):
So as someone who.
Let's just say, not that attunedwith the Christian faith, even
though technically, technicallyI am, but let's just say I'm not
that well, a studious in theBible.
Um, what are some of theoverlaps, because I'm going in
with the massive assumption thatthey have no overlap, but I
would love to be proven wrong.

(12:45):
And I would love to see like, isthere really such a big barrier
between productivity and faith?
Okay,

well, this is a quite a can of worms to open,
but

let's go for it.
I'm ready for it.

believe there's a ton of overlap kind of the
thing.
So the reason I started writingin the first place, which got me
connected with Asian deficiencywas I had gone to Bible college.
I had this degree, I wasactually teaching a personal
management course.
And I was doing personal studyfor that course.
And kind of the thing that stoodout to me was there's this

(13:19):
passage in Matthew chapter 25,where it talks about the parable
of the talents and basicallyit's stewardship.
And you can see from thatpassage that different people
got given a certain amount ofmoney, basically that, and then
the person that gives them themoney goes away.
He's like here, take care ofthis for me.
Uh, one person gets one talent.

(13:39):
One person gets two, one persongets five and that represents
basically money.
And in Bible times, and he comesback and he's like, what did you
guys do with what I gave you?
And the person that got fivedoubled it, the person that got
two doubled it, the person thatgot one went, hit it in a hole.
And that's the guy who got introuble, Mike Schmitz version.
Uh, but if you dig into it, youcan see there's, there's subtle
differences in how they.

(14:01):
Acted with the talents that theywere given.
So it says like the person whogot five, he went and got to
work immediately.
He didn't put off until, youknow, right before the guy got
back to, to do something withit.
He, he was intentional about itfrom the moment that it was
entrusted to him.
And so I kind of believe thatwe're joining a story in
progress here.
And the principle is that if youdo a good job with what you've

(14:23):
been given, like more will begiven to you.
And so the principle that themath at the end of this story is
that everything gets doubled.
So you combine that with likethe compound effect, which is
really popular in productivitycircles.
And it's really the heart of anysort of self-improvement is like
you do these little things overand over and over again.
And then the compound effectkicks in.
If you start going to the gymevery day, you know, the, for

(14:46):
the first month or two, you seeabsolutely no change.
And then it's like all of asudden, it just takes off as
long as you are consistent withit.
So I personally believe that Godis serious about productivity,
and he's going to ask me when Iget, when I get, when I'm done,
what did you do?
What did you do with what I gaveyou?

(15:06):
And I want to be able to say Idid the very best I could with
what you gave me and there's.
There's a lot more nuance to it.
You know, it's not just workingall the time.
It's not a hashtag hustle, butyou think about, uh, it's really
about being intentional andbeing effective.
That's one of the things I'vekind of landed on over the last

(15:26):
several years is that efficiencyhas its place.
But it's really not thatimportant.
Uh, what's really important isdoing the right thing at the
right time.
Uh, if you can be effective, youknow, efficiency is going to
take care of itself.
Uh, efficiency will help you dothings, help you complete tasks,
uh, more quickly, but withoutany, any thought to

(15:48):
effectiveness.
And should I be doing this thingin the first place?
It, the, the.
The work is still going to growto the time that you have
allotted to it.
So I see a lot of people who arelike, yeah, efficiency,
efficiency, and they, they wantto crank through stuff and then
they just fill it with moretime-wasters and that's not,
that's gonna make you worse offactually, because now you've
increased the efficiency.

(16:09):
And as long as you keep crankingthat dial, you know, you're
bringing it tighter and tighter,and then eventually someone's
gonna

yeah.
Or we burn out or we realizedjust how wrong we were, even
though we were so efficient, wewere going in the wrong
direction.
It wasn't something that we weremeant to prioritize.
And, uh,

Exactly.

uh, yeah, I I've had first firsthand experience
with that and I think I amregretting it a lot.
Um, and it's great to know thatyou're able to.
See the connections like evenbefore, like, even if Rome isn't
even there, like to be able tosee those connections between,
um, scriptures in Christianityand the principles behind

(16:48):
productivity, you can stilluncover that within these
writings, which is fantastic.
Like even if we have, you know,many different kinds of
narratives, many different kindsof, uh, stories that allow us to
see ourselves put into shoes ofthose characters within DS
moments, um, It helps us figureout like, okay, this is more
important.
Like, okay.
It just, it goes to your Dick,you can do it fast.

(17:09):
Doesn't mean you're doing it.
Right.
Right.
Like, and especially on thepoint of efficiency, not always
having to be there all the time,like rest is also one of the
greatest productivity hacks everand in the world of, yeah.
And in the world of hustleculture, And I see this a lot in
Twitter where a lot of researchpeople are on Twitter as well.

(17:29):
Just some overlap with liketech, Twitter, or VC, Twitter,
or whatever.
Um, hustle culture is likeeverywhere.
It's, it's really bad.
Like it's actually extremelyunhealthy to promote overwork as
the norm, even though in theword itself over work means work
beyond the capability of yourbody.
Like who, who taught us thatit's insane.

(17:52):
Yeah.

Yeah, well, I should, I should clarify here
because my book is actuallycalled thou shalt hustle, but I
have a different, I have adifferent definition of the
term, and I know I'm not goingto win back the word from the
Gary V's of the world, but theterm hustle actually means to
force to move Hurley orunceremoniously in a specified

(18:13):
direction.
And I believe you can break thatdown into three, three
components.
There's the, the force, thework.
And that's what everybody sees.
That's what people think of whenthey think of hustle.
And then there is theunceremoniously part, the
hurriedly part.
It doesn't mean you're workingreally fast or working all the
time.
It means that you've got amission and you don't care if
anybody's watching you becauseit's important to you.

(18:35):
And then there's the vision,ultimately the destination that
you want to arrive at.
And, uh, if you're going to, uh,to hustle effectively, it's kind
of like, Getting in the car andgoing on a trip, you've gotta
first, you gotta work backwards.
You gotta start with thedestination where you want to
end up.
Then you can figure out theroute that you're going to take.
And once you know where you'regoing and how you're going to
get there, then you get in thecar and you hit the gas.

(18:56):
Uh, but as it pertains to Rome,uh, I want to actually talk
about something that you.
You and Ali talked about in oneof, one of your episodes about
creativity, uh, because, uh,talking about the overlap and
the intersection of things, thisis kind of the thing for me is,
uh, I never really thought thatI was creative either.

(19:19):
And it was the, the connectionof the ideas that.
Really convinced me that I couldbe a, I read a book called
steal, like an artist by AustinKleon.
And before that I was like,well, I can't create anything
original.
I'm just not creative.
I like to play guitar.
And I sing on the worship teamat my church and I like to write

(19:40):
songs and I would write a song.
And then I realized, like Iripped off the melody line from
this other song when I wouldhear it on the radio.
And I'm like, ah, man, I can'tcreate anything.
And then Austin, that reallyAustin Kleon his book.
And he basically said that whenyou create something really all
you're doing.
Is you're connecting the dots ina way that hasn't been done
before.
So all the dots, preexist, allthe dots are there.

(20:01):
And when I read that, it waskinda like, okay, creativity is
a formula.
Now I just gotta collect moredots.
That is where Rome is reallyvaluable for me, I think is it
shows you how you can connectthose dots.
So I can read all these booksand I can study my Bible and I
can have all these experiencesand, and on one F one level, I

(20:22):
am connecting those dots.
Then they're in my head andthat's for a long time been good
enough for me.
He's like, I'm collecting thesedots of whatever comes out, then
that's the natural output.
So I don't have to judge.
This creation as good or badanymore.
It's just, these are the dots Icollected.
So this is the thing that Imade.
But Rome for the first time hasgiven me a visual way to connect

(20:43):
those dots.
And.
Seeing that is really powerful.
And it just kinda reinforces,uh, what you were mentioning a
little bit earlier about theconnection and an intersection
of all these things.
Because I think we tend to, wetend to think of things in
buckets and even our lives inbuckets.
I've got, um, I'm this way, I'mthis person over here when I'm
wearing this hat and I'm thisperson, or this way over here,

(21:05):
when I'm doing something else.
And that's not really true, likeyou just are who you are and you
are the sum total of yourexperiences.
And if you want to create abetter future wholeheartedly,
believe that start collectingbetter dots, you know, start
doing the right things today.
And the squirrel take care ofitself because those things will
connect.
And Rome is really cool becauseit allows me to jump between
them and, and make thoseconnections.

Yeah.
It's like an accelerator,really?
Because even with that Rome'sexistence, if you, if you had
the right systems, if you hadthe right shift in thinking, if
you had maybe the rightdefinition of creativity or
anything like that, you cancollect dots.
And you can sit down and focusand think, okay, how can I

(21:49):
connect and marry a and B and Band C and D and B, and all of
that.
And Rome feels like a reallygood, I'm not sure what's the
right word to describe here.
Uh, and maybe you could help meout.
Like Earl is like a really goodinterface or a screen to just
throw all these dots in front ofme.
And I can perform like creativesurgery.

(22:11):
It's like, let me get like anoperation with all these dots.
And you're like, okay, whathappens if I tried this right.
And I linked them, what happensif I tried this, I linked them.
What have I referred this blockto here?
What can I see?
What will I visualize?
Like, what are thepossibilities?
And a lot of how Rome is sold.
I'm still, I still disagree witha lot with how Rome is depicted

(22:34):
and maybe we can dive into that,

part.

that yes, the note, the note taking part,
right.
It's, it's way more than that.
And, and I'm not sure, I'm notsure if it's because they are
limited by the potentialimpression that they.
Have due to how similar it looksto other current note taking
apps at the moment.
That's why they write the copylike that.
I think that's why, but withmore and more people, like after

(22:59):
seeing like the giant$200million valuation and all of
these people diving into thetool and they realized the
possibilities like Rome cells,those possibilities, those
possible connections, we'reseeing a new genre pop up and
they may have to change that,that copy there.
Uh, I.
Want to find more ways to showpeople that, that surgery, that,

(23:21):
that table, uh, in a way whereit's a lot easier for people to
understand at first that onsurface level yeah.
You take notes, but on a deeperlevel.
Yeah.
You're confronting all thosedots in your head and you're
making the connections and herewe are.
So.

Yeah.
So one of the big mistakes I seepeople make when they try Rome
is they try to use it as like anEvernote replacement.
The way that they've always usedEvernote, which is just send
everything in there and I'll beable to search for it and find
it later.
And in my opinion, where Romereally shines is in ideas,

(23:57):
connecting ideas.
So yes, notes on, in one way,shape or form are ideas, but you
want a high signal to noiseratio in order for it to click.
If you just have a bunch ofthings in there, it's harder,
especially at the beginning.
To make those connections.
So I don't try to dumpeverything into Rome.
And that's why the bulletjournal I feel is like a natural

(24:19):
compliment to this because yeah.
You want to capture somethingwhen you think about it, because
you don't want any of thoseideas to disappear on the paper
off the mind, but then just thefact that you captured it
doesn't automatically mean thatit should go in the bucket.
So having another forest.
Uh, another tier of, of cutsthat are made before something

(24:40):
ends up in Rome.
For me, that means that thestuff that's in there is kind of
the cream of the crop.
And so that's the stuff that Iwant to see where the
connections lie.

but people don't realize that when they try the
app, because traditionally, andI think you've done this before.
Like you try other apps.
You would first start off withlike notes that you've had
before.
And you're like, Oh, you knowwhat happens if I just put it in
there?
Like we do that all the time.
I mean, I've done that with, um,with Google docs or G drive and
then I move it to Evernote and Imove it to notion and then I

(25:14):
move it to Rome.
And every single step totransfer has always been copy
pace, imparted all there, andthen, and then see what happens.
And I think it's because we havesuch a huge expectation on.
Predefined structures that wethink that it will organize
itself once we just import it.
Like, we think that it'll workas soon as it comes in there.

(25:36):
And then we meet, we, we, you gointo Roman, you're like, Oh, Oh
no, Oh no help me or no.
Cause uh, I realized, I realizedthat the behavior behind that
for anyone, especially whensomeone comes from Evernote to
row like this most prevalent in,in that, in that format, there
is.

(25:57):
Um, I'm not sure if it'sexpectation or there is the
impression that the notes thatthey gained from their Evernote,
it's only an archive and nothingmore.

Yeah.

And by throwing it in Rome, they can squeeze
more value out of it.

Yeah, exactly.
So like the archive is kind oflike someday.
If I get audited, I can findthis if I need it,

Yeah,

I'm not gonna think about it until then.
And I've, I've done that beforewhere it's like, Oh, I need this
thing again.
And I can go back and find it,but I'm not going to stumble
across that until I have thethought, Oh, where is that
thing?
And with Rome, I can say, okay,I want to study this thing.
What are all the other thingsthat I don't even know, connect

(26:47):
to this?
And that's where bi-directionallinking really, really helps.
Um, so I don't know.
You want me to kind of walkthrough a couple of the examples
of how I, how I built this,because I think you're right.
Like how you start that thetypes of things that you start
building inside a room, youcan't just transfer it from
another app.
You got to think aboutstructuring it a little bit

(27:09):
differently.
Um,

walk it through me.
Yeah.
I would love to hear.
Yeah.

Okay.
Uh, so what I've got for my, mysermon notes, I've been taking
sermon notes, using Sketchnotingand good notes for a long time.
And that was kind of the firstproject that I did in Rome is to
transfer all of that stuff fromgood notes into rooms.
So I have.
These sketch notes.

(27:35):
I would export them as imagefiles.
I would upload them to a datepage.
So like the one I'm looking atright now, it says nine, six 20.
It's got my, my sermon notes.
I've got like the littlenomenclature.
So I draw cliques squares aroundthe, the verses.
Do you want me to screen shareso you can see this as I

Maslow screen-share yeah, there there's
the possibility that we mightput up the video up.
So I think this will be veryhelpful.

Okay.
Uh, can you enable attendeesscreen sharing for me

Yeah, sure.
Uh,

now?
I gotta be careful what I,

yeah, please.
Yeah, please, please be careful.
Uh, and, uh, note for our audiolisteners.
Um, I'm trying my best to limitthe amount of video screen
shares and all that.
Mainly because of privacy.
If we are showing potentiallyroam graphs, et cetera, and now
we are looking at Mike's graph.
So you can head over to thevideo version suit.

All right.
Um, so I think this just mighthelp you ask some better follow
up questions if you can seethis.
So this is, uh, an image that Iexported from good notes, and
it's just uploaded using theslash command file upload.
Uh, I tag the person whopreached the message.
So dr.
James will be, is my pastor.
What this allows me to do is.

(28:50):
Open up all of the, all of thereferences.
So there's 39 differentreferences here, uh, pages where
he's, he's preached a messagesince I started taking those.
And then, uh, my goal at the endof the year is to take all of
those ones that are, are taggedand create like a, a book that I
can give to him.

(29:12):
Like these are the messages thatyou preached.
Uh, but the, the.
Sketch notes themselves.
Uh, it's basically just likeblock letters for things that
are important and then blocksaround the scripture references.
Then I've got a header here withthe scriptures and all of the
chapters are linked.
This is from a King Jamesversion import that I found.

(29:32):
So this is a public Rome graph,basically that I imported into
my own.
And what this allows me to dothen is take any of these
verses.
And, uh, I'll click on one ofthese.
All right.
So this is Proverbs 18, here'sall the different verses.
And then the links to thereferences for the other, other

(29:53):
places that that is, uh, isreferenced.
Uh, and this one in particular,there's not a whole lot of
references, but what I've foundis, uh, been building this out
is that there's more and more ofthese connections being made.
So you can kind of like followthese graph wise then.
And, uh, you've got this messageon this day where this first was
used.
And then what are the othermessages from other days where

(30:14):
that verse was used and you cankind of see the different themes
that have been connected thatway.
So that's the sermon notes.
And if I go to the sermon notespage, I mean, this is everything
that's that's in there.
So that took a really long time,all the way back to September of
2017.
Uh, and I took all of thosesketch notes and put them in
here, but I didn't start thesketch notes, obviously with the

(30:36):
goal of someday being able toconnect these.
I just wanted to retain morefrom the sermons that I was
listening to.

Interesting.
So a lot of, so that, that meansthat if you have kept a log of
every sermon or passage that hasbeen brought up in each sermon,
You can potentially do a queryof most mentioned passages or
like most used ones.

(31:03):
Okay.
Interesting.
And, uh, is it, is it safe toassume that the sermon itself
like the, yeah.
This image, is it a summary ofthe entirety of the sermon or is
it the most powerful or the mostimpactful passages that were
brought up during that time?

It's the most impactful stuff.
It's not everything that wassaid.
And that's one of the reasonsthat I started taking sketch
notes.
I read a study in my study ofproductivity.
I think it was the Oppenheimerstudy that where they compared
retention from students who tooknotes, using a keyboard.
Versus retention from studentswho took notes, using pen and

(31:44):
paper.
What they found is that thestudents who took notes with the
keyboard, they capturedeverything, but they couldn't
remember anything.
So I did that, you know, I wascapturing all these notes.
I was never going back to readthem and I couldn't remember
what my pastor preached on lastSunday.
So I'm like, okay, if pen andpaper forces me to slow down and
retain this.

(32:05):
Sketch notes probably is that tothe nth degree.
And since then, I've been ableto, to meet and interview Mike
Rody, the Sketchnote guy.
He actually lives in Wisconsinwhere I live.
So I've actually met him inperson.
He's a really cool guy.
Um, but he really is the personwho inspired me to start doing
this.
And if you go back and look atmy first sketch notes, they're

(32:26):
terrible.
It was like a stick figure and abunch of words.
So you can look at this maybeand people will say, Oh, that
looks really good.
I still don't think it's thatgood if you compare it to other
sketch notes, but, uh, I'm much,much better than I was when I
started.
And really the idea is thatthese are ideas.
It's not art.
You're not trying to create awork of art to sell some more.
You're just trying to retain theinformation.

(32:47):
So that allows me, it gives mepermission to let go of the, the
value judgment of the, uh, the,the note itself.

You draw to remember and you draw to learn
not to impress anybody with youramazing artistic skills.
I actually, this is pretty good.
I mean, got to say, I mean, Ilike the

thank you.

good.
And I'm really curious to knowabout this.
This thing that you're going todo at the end of the, at the
year, because assuming that it'sa large sketchpad collection of

Yep.

most impactful sermons are passages done by
your pasture from you, thatwould mean that you are showing
him.
The exact words that haveimpacted you the most.
And I find that veryfascinating.
Like not even

So this is.
This is the list of the, thesermons, you know, the, from
his, his page, I don't haveanything else on his page other
than just being able to link itto him.
Uh, but one of the things that Idiscovered when I started doing
those little brief videos on mywebsite of walking through my
sermon notes, that was somethingthat I was encouraged to do by
a, another.

(33:59):
Person that I turned to Romeactually, uh, Bodhi, quirk.
He's a pastor out in Californiathat I met at the max dot
conference.
And he's like, dude, these aregreat.
You got to like create littlevideos and walk us through your
thought process.
And like, no, one's going to beinterested in that.
I'm not going to do that.
And I did one and not only werepeople interested in it, but I

(34:19):
got a text message from mypastor because he saw it.
And he said, no, this is reallycool.
Sometimes as a pastor, you'repreaching this message and
you're not sure if anybody'sgetting anything.
So it's encouraging to me to seewhat you got from the message
I'm like, okay, well that'senough then I'm just going to
keep it doing this regardless ofanybody else watches it or not.
Uh, cause I thought maybe, youknow, people would like the

(34:39):
style, you know, one time, butthen they wouldn't come back and
keep looking at it.
But yeah, people are diggingthem.
So, you know, I just record aquick video, post it to my
website.
You can download the sketch notefile from there.
Um, but I never really intendedit for anybody else.
It was just for me.
And really it was the being ableto connect all these things this
way.
Now that's the sermon notesside, but there's also the, the

(35:00):
book notes side, which I thinkthis is probably more applicable
to the people who listened tothe show.
But, uh, this is where thesethings are eventually going to
get connected.
And I am still, like I say, I'mbad at Rome.
Like I just sit and I thinkabout these things and I try to
figure out the best way to doit.
And I don't just.
Do it, you know, and iterate onit.

(35:21):
But I have a, as part of thisbookworm podcast that I do with
Joe, be like, we read a bookevery two weeks.
So I have created a page forevery single episode of bookworm
that we've done.
Uh, let's just look at bookworm94.
Okay.
So this is, um, the page for theepisode.

(35:43):
I've got the book that wecovered, which in this case was
tiny habits, but BJ Fogg, whenthat episode was published, uh,
we give these books a rating.
Uh, so I have my rating.
I have who picked it cause wealternate picking the books.
I went into Libsyn where thepodcast is hosted, grab the
file.
And so I can actually listen tothe, all of the episode, audio

(36:04):
from these pages, if I want to,uh, there's a link to the
episode on the book room.fmpage, and then all of the links
from the, um, from the shownotes.
But I read these books for thispodcast.
So if I click on tiny habits,this is the.
Book notes page.
And this is also where I maybedo something a little bit

(36:26):
interesting.
Um, I don't read Kindle books.
I read physical books.
I have a bookshelf right overhere with all the books that I
own, and I will read a physicalbook and take notes in a mind
map using my note on my iPhone.

Oh, okay.

let me see if I can zoom in here a little bit.
Uh, Rome doesn't do great withPDF and beds, but hopefully you

I think you can, uh, uh, change the sizing.
Actually.
There does the way to do it, Ithink, but yeah.

Let's see.
Can I, Oh, there we go.
Well, I'm limited to the size ofthe con the width of the
container, but, um, I've gotthe, uh, the book image in the
middle and then every sectionchapter has its own section.
So like, I've got the.
Images here from the graphs andthings that are in the book.
I capture those with the camera.

(37:20):
Um, I've got my own emoji systemhere for the, uh, the notes that
I take.
So like the light bulbs, thoseare kind of like aha moments,
keys.
Those are like big ideas.
Uh, we'll track action items inhere.
Let's see, I'm trying to findsome other emoji examples.
Those are the big, the big ones.

(37:41):
Um, if there's talking pointslike, because this is for
bookworm, I'll put like a littletalking head emoji.
If there's quotes, I'll have alittle quote bubble and then a,
so I have this mind node file.
Um, and then I basically copyall of this and paste it in the
notes below this.
So I export that as, as texts.
And now I've got, you know, allof the

It's formatted for Rome.
It seems like it like it fitsreally

it.
The mind map is basically, Oh,PML.
So it's an L it's an outline.
And when you export it from mynote as plain text, it's
literally just command to copycommand V to paste, and this is
what you get.
So it's a, it's duplicating thenotes.
Now the next step of this is togo through all these book notes

(38:28):
and to synthesize them and kindof condense them.
Uh, I like the way that Jamesclear has on his website, like
three sentence summaries ofbooks.
So I want to be able to do that.
I also want to be able to takelike key ideas here and build
them into, I've got likethoughts on pages, which are not
very well developed, so I won'tgo into those yet.

(38:49):
Uh, but that, uh, that's theidea is that eventually I'm
going to have all of those, uh,pulling in all of the big ideas
from all the books that I'veread.
So right now I've got all thesedots in Rome, but they're not.
They're not connected yet.

no, but you're preparing the base for it, which
is pretty fascinating because Ican start, I can really imagine
you having this on the sidebar.
And then when you have either anarticle or an idea that you want
to develop over time, ref likeblock ref it in.
And then see what happens and,or have phrases and words as a
page, and then just see all theunlink references, just see what

(39:26):
magic comes out of it, becausewe can know where we can already
do this two ways.
Like one is to know which booksto remix, and then you put the
refs together.
And the second one is to goexploratory by like, just like
figuring out from underreferences.
Oh, this is, this isinteresting.
I really liked that because Iknow, cause it's not done.

(39:47):
I really liked that because it'slike, you're

it's a work in progress.

There's like this, like this one day where
you're going to be like sittingdown and you're like, okay, what
are we going to see?
Come out of this, like this bookand then that a book.
Oh, I'm excited.
I really want to see thishappen.

I also take the quotes because I was keeping a
quote book inside of day one,but I decided Rome would be the
better place for that.
So I have a quote book, which isa, literally a query.
Let me see if I can.
Select that here.

(40:23):
Yeah.
So here's the query.
All it's doing is pulling inthe, uh, the tag for quote book.
But when I write down a quotefrom a book in those book pages,
I will use that quote book tag,and then it'll pull it in here
and it'll pull it in by authorbecause actually the, the quotes
are on the author pages.
If I open up like the NeilPasricha one, for example, you

(40:44):
know, this is the Neil Pasrichapage.
So it's got the, uh, the quotebook hashtag, and then a link or
page link to the book that itcame from.

ah, not the other

And, uh,

That's interesting.
Okay.

and just by doing that, you know, this is what I
see is the quote book.
And then it's all broken down byauthor.
I like the way that this, thislooks and, uh, yeah, so this is.
Uh, uh, 278 results.
I've been collecting quotes fora while, but, uh, I like being
able to, you know, just addthose to the person who said it,

(41:20):
you know, add it to their pageand then have it be pulled into
this corporate pageautomatically using the queries.

Have you started using these codes for something
else?

Not really, but every once in a while, when I am
writing an article and I've gota topic like habits or whatever,
you know, I'll go look throughthe quotes that I've collected
on those specific topics.
I don't have them tagged.
I usually just do a search onthe, on the page to see if I can
find anything.
Um, so like a command F like aweb browser, a search on, on

Like actual control F.
Okay.
I see.

yeah, not using the search in the, in, in Rome
itself.

Okay.

Uh, I feel like that would be, that would PR
that would return more resultsthan I'm looking for.
Um, but yeah, again, there's,there's more ways that I can
build this out, you know, havingthe, the tags for the different,
different themes and things.
Um, and I will do that at somepoint, you know, that that is a
down the road addition to thesystem, because that I think is
the thing that links it to thesermon notes stuff, because the

(42:22):
Bible talks about habits.
The Bible talks about.
Productivity and all the othertopics.
So when I start going throughthere and adding those tags
there too, then that allows meto connect things a little bit
more strongly.

Oh, I'm excited to see that happen because I
never would have been able tomake those connections.
Like it's not even about.
Like, it's not even about havingthose dots in the first place,
because maybe I could have thebook notes.
Maybe I've been reading thesame, like several notes maybe
ever at the Bible.
Technically I have ages ago andI forgot most of it.
I'm really sorry for AvaraChristian-based listeners.

(42:58):
Uh, I apologize, but, uh, Inever would have thought to want
to make this connections.
And now that I'm seeing yourgraph and for our listeners, we
are still screen-sharing.
Now that I'm seeing your graph.
I'm really curious about theoutput, like the book notes and
the quote book and the, and thesermon notes and the resultant.

(43:22):
Unique flavor that comes out ofthis graph specifically.
So, Oh, I really want to seethis happen.
Okay.
I don't think I actuallydisagree with you saying that
you're not that much of a Romeuser.
I think this is already prettywell done.
Like.

Well, thank you.
But I feel like it's, it's avery roughly implemented.
It's got a lot of rough edgesyet.
And if I was, I feel like if I.
Considered myself a better Romeuser.
I would be able to fix the roughedges more quickly.
Uh, this stuff just kind of sitslike it is because, like I

(44:01):
mentioned before, I tend tothink about things and how do I
really want to do this?
As opposed to just trying tomake it a little bit better,
which I know is the systemsapproach the right approach
probably.
But

But you are on the way there.
And like we said before, I mean,efficiency doesn't have to
belong to everywhere.
So with the right intentions andI can see it, like I can
literally visualize theseintentions.
So, you know, you are well onthe way.
There, there are a lot of othermembers of the users of roam
research who don't even usequeries or who are extremely

(44:38):
page heavy.
I'm starting to see that thereare different levels of.
Usage or efficiency where peoplewould explore usages of Rome and
then they will be very pageheavy.
And then they realized just howslow that would be.
And then they'll realize howpowerful.
Page like blocks would berather, and then paired up with

(45:01):
craze.
And all of a sudden you havethis unique blend of who you are
in Rome format.
And right now I am seeing quitea vulnerable version of you
through this graph, becausethese are, you know, the notes
that you've been picking up fromfor years now, especially with
like what, three to four yearsof a sermon images, which is
pretty fantastic.
Ah, I like this so

Yeah, actually on that topic, I should, I should
clarify this on the sermon notespages, um, because you mentioned
something about embeds andthat's, that's important.
So these scriptures I'm linkingto the pages themselves, which
are all the chapters and thencolon the verse, uh, on those
pages.

(45:41):
I am using a block and bed forthe actual verse.
And that's the thing that allowsme to see all the references.
When I do go to a page like.
James three here.
So here's all of the references.
I can, I can see those becauseI'm using the block and beds.
I'm not pasting in text forthose verses all the time.

(46:02):
I also don't have pages for allthese individual verses.
I just use the block and bedsbecause I think that's what
keeps my, my database a littlebit cleaner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would also advise, like, forthat, like rather like just,
it's just cleaner, a lotcleaner.
I don't think you'd want to havea page for every single one of
these, like that saying that howmany blocks?
Okay.
We're looking at.
So we're currently looking atJames three and there's like
three, five, 15,

Yeah.
There's 18 right here.
Yeah.

blocks.
I don't want to see, like, Idon't think he'd want to say 18
separate pages.
Uh, just to describe like onesection of the book.
Okay.

that was the, the thing that got me into Rome from
obsidian.
Uh, I really liked obsidian.
I liked the idea of being ableto your whole database is just
text files on your computer, butit doesn't do lock references.
So deal breaker.
I'm not going to create a textfile for every single verse.

Yeah, the, um, there has been a huge, shall we
say note-taking war of so many,uh, network thought tools
talking about differencesbetween obsidian and Rome and
everything.
And.
They would say, Oh, they, theyall can do by directional
referencing.
Oh, what's the, what's thedifference?
Right?
Like, Oh no, she has been doingit too.

(47:24):
And, uh, what's, what'sdifferent about Rome.
This is going to be left behind.
It's not about that.
It's not about to buydirectional, linking it's about
the block.
Like those are the most powerfulfeatures in Rome.
It's just that bi-directionallinking, accelerates our usage
of blocks.
Therefore we can see it remixedto everything else.

(47:44):
Um,

I do wish Rome allowed you to.
To have texts, local text filesis part of your, your graph.
I do think there's some power tothat.
Uh, like I have an articlesection here, which is articles
that I am going to be writingfor.
Uh, the suite set up, actually,this one is.

(48:06):
Is done now.
Um, and these have links toUlysses sheets.
So if you pop that in, so thisis a Ulysses colon slash slash X
callback URL.
It will open that specific sheetinside of Ulysses, which is
where I prefer to write becauseyou list is, can publish
directly to WordPress.
If these were text files, then Icould open them theoretically,

(48:28):
in any application, even on aniOS device, just storm on
Dropbox or something, and thenpublish them wherever.
That would be my ideal workflowhere, but this isn't, this isn't
too bad.
Uh, these links, this is reallycool.
I, I love these, uh, I created,so one of the things, um, That I

(48:50):
have been thinking about latelyis like email and all of the
tasks that come in to your emailinbox.
And what do you do with those?
Uh, most people probably justleave them in their email inbox.
I don't like that.
I used to send those toOmniFocus and I liked that
because it gives you in thenotes, the link back to the
original message.

(49:10):
So your task manager can tellyou, Hey, you should be doing
this.
Now you click on that link andit takes you directly to that
message you reply, and then yougo close out the task.
I actually, uh, so I'm, I'm, uh,I'm a nerd.
I figured out a way to do thisusing Apple script.
I use MailMate on my Mac, um,and it has basic Apple script

(49:30):
support.
So what I do, I have a keyboardMaestro macro, which will pull
the URL of the message.
So the message, you, our messagecolon slash slash.
So when I click on that, it'lltake me directly to the message.
Uh, I use, uh, another key oranother Apple script.
So part of the same keyboard,Maestro, macro to pull in the

(49:51):
subject line.
And then, um, it runs a regularexpression on that to remove the
extra line breaks and formats itas a markdown formatted link.
So what ends up getting pastedinside a roam inside?
I have a to-do is the subjectline that you click on and it
takes you right to the originalmessage.

Converted the email into row markdown format.
Whoa,

So I'm not sharing my email.
So let me see if I can grabthis.
Um, let's see, you sent me oneearlier, so let's see if we can
find that message.

Whoa.
What.

I've got a, I've got a hot key here.
So I've got, uh, basically shiftcontrol, option command R for
Rome, and that will copy things.
Let's go back to our daily notesand see what happens if I paste
this in here.
See if it worked.
Yep.
So there's, that's what it lookslike.
And then that's what it ends upbeing.

Oh, my goodness.
Okay.
So for our listeners,

I can Mark as completed.
It's got a tag of emails so Ican use it in a query to find
all my email tasks.
And it's got the link to theoriginal message, which opens
it.

Oh my goodness.
That's insane.
That's amazing.
Okay.
So for our listeners, right?
I sent an email just to confirmthat we're having this call and
he has, Mike has a macro to pullthe subject line with a direct
link to the email.

(51:30):
Turned that block into a, to dowe have a hashtag for email
immediately copied into Rome?
That all my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
For a lot of people who had todo a lot of their task
management in Rome, I thinkthat's insane.
That's amazing.
Wow.
Oh, I would love to see that inaction.
I'm not sure if I can even dothat myself cause I'm I'm on

(51:51):
windows.
So I don't think I can, butmaybe I can emulate something
similar in different texts,expanding software on windows.
But wow.
I think a lot of people willwant to have that because you
know, when you live your life inemails, you really want to be
really efficient.
And I'm all about efficiency andemail, like high touch, get in,
get out quickly, process it andright away.

(52:11):
So.
Wow.
Thank you for that.
That's actually an insanedemonstration.

the way, the way MailMate and a lot of email
clients actually likethird-party email clients for
Mac and iOS.
Uh, they will have these actionswhere you can just open up, you
know, OmniFocus quick entry fromthe mail application.
So from MailMate I can use akeyboard shortcut built into
MailMate to open up OmniFocusgrabbed the subject line paste,

(52:36):
the link, even paste thecontents of the message if I
really wanted to.
So I've been doing that and Iwas like, I really want to be
able to do that in Rome.
Can I do that in Rome?
And it took a while, buteventually I got there because
of those message URL links, um,and because of the way MailMate
works, where you can grabdifferent tokens for different
things.
I think you can do this in likethe default Apple mail app, too.

(52:58):
Uh, that's where originally,where I got the inspiration is
David Sparks.
My co-host of the focus podcast.
He has been using this thingwhere he types like eat link,
and then he's got a whole postabout it on his blog.
It'll grab an Apple mail, theURL of the message.
But I wanted to apply a littlebit of extra room sauce to that
by converting it into a task,having the subject line there

(53:18):
instead of just the URL.
So I knew what it was playingthe hashtags so I can use it and
queries.
And, uh, that I feel is like oneof my biggest Roman achievements
to date.

Amazing achievement.
Wow.
I, I can't believe you stillcalled yourself, not a much of a
roam.
You started cause that to beable to add Apple scripts to
pull in your emails.
Oh wow.
Because I feel like even justlike a template of that, or
maybe a variation of that can beused for other things as well.
Like maybe beyond email.
I can't think of any right now,but the possibilities of

(53:51):
pulling.
You know, like third-partyinformation immediately
formatted into Rome and thenturning it into a task for us to
process as soon as possible.
What really worked well forthose who, uh, what, who would
work really well in the contextof Rome?
Like if they choose to workwithin the environment of Rome,
it works really well for them.
So, I mean, I think a lot ofpeople want to the corporate

(54:14):
this,

The other thing that I'll mention here, um, I've
got the daily questions here.
I paste this in at the beginningof the day, but let me just get
rid of this to show you how thisworks.
Um, there is, in my opinion, oneof the things that's really
powerful about Rome is the factthat everything is plain text.
And that means that if you useany sort of text expansion
software.
So I personally use textexpander and love it, but there

(54:36):
are other options available forboth Mac and PC.
Uh, that basically gives you theability to create templates for
anything inside of Rome.
And the way I use this most isfor these daily questions, which
I mentioned to picked up fromreading Marshall trigger or

(54:56):
Marshall Goldsmith, the triggersbook.
And the idea behind this, thisis kind of like a end of the day
sort of reflection, journalingtemplate, which I've been doing
journaling for quite a while.
Um, but I didn't like going inand.
Writing, especially if I had notdone something, it was kind of
disappointing to be like, yeah,I sucked at this.

(55:18):
So the whole idea behind thedaily questions is it's a zero
to 10.
Did I do my best to dosomething?
Did I put in any sort of effortfor this.
Uh, and then you can create yourown categories.
Obviously, Marshall Goldsmithmentions in the book, how he
uses it inside of an Excelspreadsheet.
And I was like, no way I want todo that.
Is there a better interface forthat inside a room?
There is the sliders, thesliders from zero to 10.

(55:40):
So I have a text expandersnippet, which is just SDQ.
Pulls in the date, fills out theforms.
And then there's the sliders.
I've done a little bit of customCSS to like hide the face that
appears underneath.
Um, but basically as I'm goingthroughout my day, then I will
adjust these.

(56:01):
So.
If I go for a run, you know,after this, I'll bump this
slider up to, to nine, uh, if Irecord a podcast, I'll bump this
one up, you know, and it's justan arbitrary number from zero to
10, but I feel like this is agreat interface for allowing me
to quickly just jot these thingsdown.
And then I collect all of theseunder the daily questions page,

(56:22):
using the back links to likepull them all in there and then
I can review all, um,periodically.

Uh, do you revisit this throughout the day?
So like, does this numberchanged like maybe in the
morning and afternoon at night?
Or is it just only one time atthe end of the day?

basically, if I, as I'm going through my day, uh,
if I do something they're like,ah, that moved the needle for
that specific area, then I'll goin here and I will bump this up.
But otherwise I will make surethat I fill this out as part of
my work shutdown routine, whichwas another thing I didn't like
using my phone right before bedtoo.

(56:59):
Jot a bunch of things down,especially when I'm tired and I
don't really want to elaborateon anything really that happened
during the day.
I just wanted, I want to shutdown.
Uh, so by building this into myWorkday, I feel like it helps me
to disconnect more when I'm,when I'm done.
I'm walking away from thecomputer.
So I'm recording this in myoffice, which is in our
basement, but at the end of theday, I will leave the computer

(57:22):
and everything else down here.
I won't come down here again to,to work.
At least that's the planoccasionally that doesn't work,
but generally it does.

no, it sets the intention for.
We are now offline, which isgreat.
Like it's fantastic.
And, and you don't have todisappoint yourself by having
such a grand end of the dayjournaling reviewing system,
which I can see like often, orlike it's quite common in many
other systems where it's like,you know, a whole list of like

(57:53):
20 questions to review the day.
And it goes from like, Oh, whatdid you do today to what is
life?
You know, it's insane.
Like sometimes you just want to.
Like these questions, they onlyserve, at least to me, I'm not
different for you, but to methey only serve one purpose.
And that is to prime you intothe context of self-reflection

(58:16):
and it doesn't matter how longit has it is.
And it doesn't matter howcomplicated it has to be.
So I like it that you did it outof like some sliders out of 10.
It's so simple.
Like I can just look at this andbe like, Oh, You know, I can
tell that Mike had a good day.
Most of his numbers are atnines, right?
Like, that's so cool.
Right.
And you know, if I look back atlike, I don't know, five days
ago, and you were at, did I domy best to exercise at two?

(58:42):
I ask you like, what's wrong?
Right.
What happened?
Right.
Like, did you eat too manydonuts?
I, it could be something likethat, right.
Oh, okay.
Okay.

Exactly.
And you can define your owncategories, but really the thing
that's beautiful about this isthe UI for the sliders is just
curly brackets, curly records,slider.
That's all it is.
And I love how there's so manythings inside a room that are
like that.
Like the articles.
Uh, page I showed you earlier,that's got like a combine view
and that's a text-based Kanbanview.

(59:10):
Like it formats it all and youcan get into the CSS.
You can customize it exactly theway that you want.
Uh, I have done a lot with CSSin Rome, uh, up until yesterday.
Actually this was not the themethat I was using, but they added
some additions and upgrades,honestly, to the sidebar.
And it broke a bunch of my CSS.

Okay.

I just had to use something more, more vanilla.
This is just kind like a, aninversion of the normal room
theme, but lesson learned, youknow, if you're going to make a
whole bunch of customizations,be ready for, for the team to
break it, they're working on theapp.

Yeah.
Uh, it was, uh, kinda kind ofunfortunate timing cause it also
happened to a lot of otherthemes as well.
That.
Like even some of the kitsstuff, like some of the
shortcuts with it overlapped.
So you see like sidebars openingat the same time or some don't
even work, uh, and or CSS had tobe changed.
So a lot of the, uh, a lot ofthe theme, a lot of the ones who

(01:00:09):
did their themes, they had tolike update there's a lot.
So we were seeing a lot of that.
Okay.
Okay.
I was curious, I was going toask like, Oh, is this your own
like custom theme?
I guess it's just a really quickre color or something like that.

Mike Schmitz (01:00:21):
yeah.
It's uh, let me see, let me pullup room CSS here.
It's a standard one, which isfairly simple.
It is not the Swan, the Romemidnight thing, same with a
couple of, of changes, uh, likehiding the, the faces for the
sliders and hiding the querytitles.

(01:00:45):
Uh, I can go back and edit thequery titles, but I don't like
seeing those in my, my views,like for the tasks view.
Uh, I don't like seeing a coupleof lines of query title.
Or the actual query codeunderneath the, I just have the
titles in there so I can breakit down into different
categories and get moreinformation that I actually want
to see on the screen at onetime.

Norman Chella (01:01:08):
Yeah, I need to mess around with that a lot more
because a lot of these CSS, alot of these available themes
are amazing.
It's just that there are someminor adjustments and I wish I
knew CSS enough to like actuallymake those instead of
accidentally deleting one lineand all of a sudden everything
breaks, which can happen maybe,maybe not because it's just CSS,
it's just, it's just appearance.
Right?
Like, so it's not really that

it is.
But all of a sudden you can'tsee anything on the screen.
I've had that happen.

totally.
No sidebar.

The CSS actually was, is part of the reason that
I got into Rome because I hatedthe look of the stock app when I
first started playing with it.
But I started playing with itduring one of my sabbaticals.
One of the things I really loveabout working with the team at
the sweet setup is that everyeighth week we go on sabbatical.

(01:01:58):
So every eighth week.
The company is off basically.
And during one of thosesabbatical weeks was when I
decided, okay, I'm finally goingto give roam research a fair
shake.
And I started putting in some ofthe sermon notes.
I'm like, okay, this will work.
And then I basically spent therest of the week playing with
the CSS.
I've done some web developmentin the past.

(01:02:19):
Uh, I was never really good atCSS.
I actually learned a lot fromdoing that and actually made a
ton of customizations to myactual website based on what I
learned from playing aroundwith, with Rome.
But I love that it's a web appand you're able to do that.
You know, you can basicallycustomize it as much as you

(01:02:42):
want.
Uh, I've seen some people dosome really crazy things with
it.
But you do gotta be carefulbecause they'll push out an
upgrade and it's not theirfault, but it'll break some
stuff.
So, yeah.

Yeah, they can't help it, like, especially with
just how versatile Rome can be.
Like we have to roam CSS, wehave Rome JS and we have more
and more people adding in likeJavaScript or, uh, other.
You know, new tools and tips andtricks, and we get normalized
like our behavior and ourworkflows get normalized to
these extra tools.

(01:03:14):
And then all of a sudden, a newupgrade just ruins everything.
And I got hit with thatfirsthand and it's crazy.
It's insane.
So, ah, to each their own it, Ilike it.
That it's still, I like it.
That it's, um, That your graphis a work in progress.
And I really do appreciate thatyou would be willing to share it
with me.
Uh, hopefully there wasn'tanything too personal in there.

Nope.
We're good.

And, uh, on that note, uh, we are, we are coming
up on time, but there issomething I still want to ask
you, uh, that had been on mymind, mainly because in one of
your episodes that I waslistening to.
Uh, you were sharing about, uh,you were sharing about how you
discovered a tool, but then youwere put off by how people who

(01:04:04):
used the tool room research werecalled, uh, rope cult.
And

Yes.

before I ask anything more, could I just ask,
uh, why?
Okay.

Uh, I feel like the term called has a lot of
negative connotations with it.
I feel like it's unnecessary.
And I feel like, um, with mypersonal belief system, um, I
don't need that being applied tome, uh, religion is one of those

(01:04:41):
things where every, everybodybelieves what they believe.
And if somebody else believessomething different, it's easy
to label them as a cult, uh,because they see things in a
different way.
And I've been accused of that.
I think myself.
So passe roam, cult just.
Brought back a bunch ofdistasteful memories to me, but

(01:05:03):
I know from talking to peoplethat other people have been put
off by it too.
Um, I have talked to severalpeople and convinced several
people to use Rome and, um, theylike me were put off at the.
The term, you know, they checkedit out for themselves and
they're like, no, I'm not goingto do this because I don't want
to be part of the cult, youknow?
And I'm like, no, that'sactually a really good tool.

(01:05:24):
You should give it a shot andokay, fine.
If you say so, you know, andthen they end up end up using it
and it kind of makes me, itmakes me sad on one level
because, um, I know that there'smore people than just the
handful of people that I'vetalked to who have felt that
way.
That are, this could be the toolthat allows them to connect the
dots and realize their fullpotential, but they're not going

(01:05:46):
to do it because of themarketing angle to it.
And I feel like lately the, theedge has been gone from a lot of
the, the stuff that you wouldfind on social media around
Rome, but it seemed like theywere really leaning into it at
the beginning.
Uh, and I, I think it's, I don'tknow.

(01:06:09):
I get, like, if you are justgonna be who you are, you're
going to attract some peopleyou're going to repel.
Some people like the oppositeof, uh, of love is not hate it's
indifference.
Like if you're going to take astand for something, you're
going to have people who are notaligning with that.
I just feel like the hashtagroom called is not the, the Hill

(01:06:31):
to die on.

Yeah, that that's always been a pressing question
for me because I'm not sure ifyou know the history of that
hashtag.
Um, it was,

I don't.
And I know that it's like roomculture and stuff like that.
Like there's different ways thatyou can interpret it, but that's
not where people go.
They think the guy who took hisfollowers down to Mexico and
made him

Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Because no, no matter what, likeeven the hashtag itself, like
just at surface level, I justlook so alarming.
Um, and even, even I was like,okay, is this, is this just, uh,
like a fancy way of saying likesquad or like a group where like
this exclusive thing.
Um, and even to the point oftagging everything related to

(01:07:20):
room research as Rome cult, uh,in the beginning, I was a bit
uncomfortable at first.
Not, not even from any, like,not even from any like, you
know, religious reason oranything like that.
It was more like, this waspretty fanatical, like very,
very fanatical.
And I tried the tool and I waslike, okay, I'm really obsessed.
And I built the show andeverything, and I realized that

(01:07:42):
a lot of people would associatethe ones, the ones who used the,
the tag roam cult tend to.
Display or tend to want todisplay their appreciation for
the tool.
Hence they put the hashtag roomcult, nothing to do with the

(01:08:05):
actual word, not Rome cult andits connotations or a tentative
meeting.
Um, but from the outside forany, you know, non Rome user.
On all of a sudden, when someonetells you like, Hey, if you want
to try this tool, and then thepeople centered around it is
around this, around this cult,it is freaky.
It is freaky.

(01:08:25):
And I'm worried about it.
Like I'm worried about itbecause I really want to
advocate for it as tool to beshared with a lot of people,
because it's so versatile, I cancarry it, can cater for it.
Any use cases and.

it can.
And I can tell you as the guywho wrote the book thought
hustle, that you're never goingto reclaim a word, a word means
what it means, and you're notgoing to change the definition.
You're not going to change thedefinition of cult by saying no,
come on in the water's fine.
And we got cookies.

Yeah.
That's a huge thing.
It's a huge thing.
And, and like, w w we kind of,we could have done something
like simple, like hashtagRomans, like, it would've been
easier.
Like you still, you still keeplike the branding.
It's still keep the, you know,the banter because.
Like, I, I have to say I'm atfault for a lot of these things,
because I'm probably one of themost vocal about Rome research,

(01:09:13):
uh, seeing as how I'm quiteactive on Twitter about this.
Uh, but I could have just stuckto just hashtag Romans, like
people would have known, Oh, thecity of Rome and all that, which
is fantastic.
It's just that the mostprominent tag happened to be
Rome cult.
And I'm worried that thatdetriment to Rome's growth is

(01:09:36):
because of.
The activity centered around thetool that are perceived as
fanatical.
Like we, like what we're sayingor what we're talking about may
not hurt anybody or may not haveany negative.
Like impact or anything likethat.
It's just that, because we seemas such, that was enough to, for

(01:09:57):
us to be like, uh, for others tobe like, uh, no, and I, I hate
that.
I really would hate that becauseit is so unfortunate that an
amazing tool, like Rome is justpushed aside because it's
freaky.

Yeah.
You know, if they would havecalled us fanatical room users,
I'd be okay with that because Imean, fanatical everybody's
fanatical about somethingeverybody's a fan of, of
something, but just the termcult just has a knee-jerk
negative reaction.
And I don't think it's reallyhurt.
Roam yet, but, but if, uh, if wecontinue to build this identity

(01:10:32):
around Rome called I would get,I would be worried about it.
Long-term I feel like it's hadsome pretty explosive growth
because it's a fresh take on theinterconnection of ideas.
Um, kind of what, what, uh, gotme thinking down this road in
the first place was the book howto read or how to take smart

(01:10:53):
notes by sancha errands.
First time.
I read it a couple of years ago.
I'm like, Hmm, this sounds good.
But there's no tool that willlet me do this.
And I tried some of the onesthat he recommended and like,
Nope, Nope.
Not going to work.
And then I re-read it after Istarted playing around with
Rome, they're like, maybe, youknow, this is the thing that
finally makes us click, I think,think that it is.

(01:11:14):
But I also think that Rome ishaving a impact in.
All of the note taking apps inthe space, like WorkFlowy Dyna
list drafts.
I mean, they're all adding someversion of Wiki style, linking a
lot of them even barely likebi-directional linking.

(01:11:34):
Uh, and it's all like adifferent implementation of it.
And none of it is exactly theway that Rome does it, which is
completely fine.
I think that, uh, as time goeson, there's going to be a lot of
people where Rome, maybe isn'tthe best tool because they just
want some Wiki style linking fortheir archive notes, you know?

(01:11:54):
And in that case, maybe whatbear ends up being or what
workflow ends up being or Dinahlist ends up being is, uh,
actually a better fit for them.
So, I don't know, as the marketgets more saturated, I feel like
it's going to be more importantto, I don't want to say be
inclusive.
That's not really what I'mtalking about, but, uh, don't
put people off just by wordchoice, you know, but take a

(01:12:17):
stand with like, Designimplementation of certain
features and be like, no, if youwant text files for everything,
then go look at obsidian.
Like we're not going to do that.
Draw your line in the sandthere, not with the marketing
terms that you're going to use.

yeah.
With the features, not thenaming.
Maybe we should retire the wordcult sometime in the future.
I may have to talk to.

It's my vote.

I totally, totally like for the sake of
trying to grow.
Like its user base and to caterfor a lot more people.
I need to talk to the Romansister's team about that, like
sooner or later, because evenConnor himself is using, uh,
Rome, Colton.
I feel like I'm potentially oneof the influences there.
And, and even it would just.

(01:13:02):
I don't know if that's good orbad or not, but I feel like I
am.
And I feel like my influenceshas been a little bit too much
that I'm losing control of theamount of power that I can just
keep spamming the room calledhashtag everywhere.
But to each their own, I will.
Have a chat with them sometimesoon to see if we can be, I'm

(01:13:23):
not like you said, maybe notinclusive is the right word, but
welcoming is probably a muchbetter word to describe people
who could be future romanceguys, Romans from not wrong
called Romans.

What's interesting is they have these office hour
calls for the, uh, the truebelievers.
They call them the people whohave dropped a bunch of money,
which I have attended some ofthose calls and actually brought
this up on one of those calls.
Like, I don't know if this isthe right place to do this, but,
uh, this is something I've beenthinking about.
And it was kind of shocking tome how many people who were true

(01:13:59):
believers also had the sameexperience and what was really
cool about that call.
There were 50 people on thecall.
Very very different people,very, very different walks of
life, different backgrounds, um,quite a few, uh, religious
backgrounds, which kind ofsurprised me.
I thought I would be an odd ballthere, but there's actually like

(01:14:21):
a lot of pastors and priests andclergy who are really intrigued
by the, the tool of, of roomresearch.
And so I feel like.
The people that are on that truebeliever call, they've kind of
been able to overcome thisalready and the community and
the diversity that's there ispretty amazing.

(01:14:42):
It's pretty awesome.
Uh, and I just don't think Iit's, it it's sad to see, uh,
anything I think kind of hinderthat, uh, I think especially
with all of the multiplayerstuff coming and like the, the
shared stuff.
Uh, it's, it's going to bereally cool to, to get ideas
that are outside of your echochamber.

(01:15:05):
You know, that's, that'ssomething that I've been
thinking about a lot lately.
I read a book, um, called neversplit the difference by Chris
Voss.
And, uh, he's, uh, ex FBIhostage, negotiator.
And, uh, there's this belief orthis mantra, you know, we don't
negotiate with terrorists.
And his whole book is basicallylike, that was his job.

(01:15:26):
He had to negotiate with theterrorists.
Uh, so you don't have the optionto just say like, no, I'm not
gonna listen to you.
And I feel like outside of ahostage negotiation, like that's
really, what's, what's missing,uh, from a lot of the.
The turmoil that we see andaround the world right now is
like, uh, an empathy, uh, and anwillingness to see things from
another point of view.
And Chris FOSS talked about thedifference in that book about

(01:15:48):
empathy and sympathy.
His job was to express empathyand understand where people were
coming from.
It doesn't mean you have toagree with everything that's
sympathy, you know, where youalign your ideas and your
beliefs with, uh, with somebodyelse.
No, one's really asking anyoneto do that.
But I do think, you know, theworld could benefit from a
little bit more empathy and Iview like these.

(01:16:09):
These multiplayer, roam grass,like being able to see inside
somebody's roam graph and seehow their brain works and how
they got to the point where theybelieve what they believe that
can only boost empathy in myopinion.

Yeah.
And you will have to, especiallywith the amount of vulnerability
that you'd have to display onhaving multiplayer row graphs in
public to be shared by otherpeople.
Um, just having eitherconversations between.
You and your team and thenhaving that display to everybody
or even you and somebody else,they collaborative graph, like

(01:16:47):
all the possibilities betweenthe relationships of blocks
between people who are justviewing or just editing, or from
the perspective of the authorthemselves, what is going to
happen there?
If we don't know, like we arealready seeing so much potential
and value from.
Uh, blocks being referenced,blocks, being queried of blocks,
being put into pages.

(01:17:08):
And now we can go hyper graphic,which is a word that I would
like to encourage people to use,uh, hyper graphic or at least
into graphic where we would lookat blocks from other graphs like
Ella love to like if someday,uh, there was a way to publicize
only a part of your graph.
I would love to like, Block refyour sermon notes and then refer

(01:17:32):
to them when thinking aboutlike, Oh yeah.
I remember Mike talking aboutfaith, best faith based
productivity.
Let me just block ref that.
And then I quickly just likewrite down some notes about
that.
That'd be fantastic.
Now we are coming up on time,Mike.
So I'd love to, uh, close offthis chat and I'm sure we can
talk one at a time, uh, with acouple of questions, the first
one being, how would youdescribe roam to someone who

(01:17:55):
hasn't started using it yet?

that's a good question.
Um, I think if I were describingroom to somebody, uh, because
they had asked me about the toolitself.
Or why they should use itinstead of something like
Evernote, for example, becausethat's kind of the, my frame of
reference.

(01:18:21):
That's what people have askedme.
I would say that it is not whatyou are used to for notes.
It is not a filing cabinet.
It's more like a mind map ofyour actual mind and really
like, that's what the, that'swhat the graph is.
Right?
It's all those dots and you seehow they, they connect.
So it's a visualization of theconnections that exist inside of

(01:18:45):
your brain.

I love that.
Okay.
Mind map of your actual mind?
It sounds kind of obvious, but,but really like every time did
we click on the graph overview?
That's us like, that's our headyet?
That's this is so cool.
Yeah.
Even though I don't click on itthat much because it lags, but
still, it's just nice to seesomething so pretty and all
these dots that are the.
The cumulative blocks that havemade from all these dots as a

(01:19:11):
result of my observations or mythoughts and all that.
So it's fantastic.

It is your neural network inside of an app.

That's scary.
What do you like?
That sounds scary.
Yeah.
Like I always think of it as I'mmaking a clone of myself in Rome
because I can then visualize itin graph format, but you know,
if your room can gain sunshades.
That's insane.
Like this is the thought of it.
Anyway, that's totally offtrack, but I haven't got

(01:19:39):
another, uh, like some sort ofAI expert to come on the show to
talk about that.
That'd be pretty fantastic.
And the last question is whatdoes Rome mean to you?

Um, well, uh, at this point, it's, uh, I feel
like I'm just at the tip of theiceberg in terms of the
connections that are arehappening.
But what it means to me is it'shard to put a hard to put into

(01:20:11):
words.
Um,

you rather draw it again?

Uh, it's, it's basically like, uh, a backup of
my brain in one sense with allthe sermon notes and all of the
book notes, but it's also at thesame time, kind of like a
creative map, because I'm ableto connect those dots and that
inspires new articles, newpodcasts, new ideas for things.

(01:20:44):
Cause a lot of what I do forwork is I create things.
So there's a lot of even work inmonetary value associated for me
with the ability to make theseconnections.
And I feel like I had been doingthat for years with the things
that I was doing, taking themind maps, taking the sketch
notes, but this is kind of likea force multiplier for that a

(01:21:09):
force multiplier for mycreativity.

Nice.
I like that.
A force multiplier for yourcreativity and the more that you
draw your notes out, and themore that you make connections
between your book notes, yourthoughts, your articles, and
everything in between.
I hope to see that huge remix ofeverything put together this
like ultra Rome based.

(01:21:33):
Faith-based productivity book,or maybe not even book or maybe
a different format, but productpackage thing.
I would love to see that and Iwill pay big bucks to block ref
that into my own graph.
So, Mike, thank you so much.
If we want to contact you or toreach out to you for anything
that we talked about in thisconversation, what is the best
way to do that?

probably Twitter.
I am at bobblehead Joe onTwitter.
If you want to see more of thework that I actually do a lot of
the writing.
Uh, it takesplace@thesweetsetup.com and then
faith-based productivity is mypersonal site with some of the
sermons, sketch notes stuff, andlinks to the other project.

All right.
And of course, links to all ofthese will be in the show notes
right below as well as thepublic roam FM graph.
Let me just write this down.
FAPE is productivity and ofcourse, thank you so much, Mike.
And I will see you on Twitter.

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