Sharpen The Saw

Rob Bell:
This week, we're discussing Jono's sketch, entitled Sharpening The Saw.

Jono Hey:
In software development, as you build stuff quickly, maybe you take a quick shortcut, you don't build it the perfect way, and then you realize, actually, there'd be a better way to build that.

We can sharpen the saw here.

We'll take a bit of time, and we'll go slowly in this time, and that will enable us to go faster.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Tom Pellereau:
There's so much power in spending five minutes doing something, ideally, every day, that will help build strength or build mental endurance.

It's amazing the cumulative benefit.

Rob Bell:
What I tend to do is try and find a chisel that is the sharpest, even if it isn't quite the right size, because it takes a good half an hour to sharpen all my tools.

Jono Hey:
Did not occur to me to actually be talking about sharpening reels, saws and tools.

Rob Bell:
Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

In hot pursuit of the 16 commute busting episodes that went out in Series 2, we're back for another series.

Hooray!

Now, whether you'd personally opt for Lint, Godiva, Cadbury's or Hotel Chocolat, I like to think that we have something to please everyone from this next selection box of audio treats.

We'll have more sweet sketches to unwrap, more delicious expert guests, more fruity anecdotes, more crunchy stories shared from you, our refined listeners and more smooth and rich input from us.

I'm Rob Bell and I'm chomping at the bit to sink my teeth into another layer of decadent tasty topics.

But what would this podcast be without he who keeps us all on our toes, Chief Chocolatier Jono Hey, and the man who runs through walls to ensure we keep doing things better, it's top taste tester, Tom Pelero.

All right, lads, how do you feel about going again?

Jono Hey:
It's great.

It's great.

I mean, I feel like we've done quite a few now, and yet there's still so many interesting ones to do that are worth talking about.

So that's good.

It feels good.

Tom Pellereau:
And thank you very much to everyone who's listening, because we're only kind of carrying on because of them.

And well, would we carry?

Yeah, I think it is maybe for them.

It's not just the three of us.

Rob Bell:
It's encouraging.

It's more encouraging, I'd say.

Tom Pellereau:
We would probably just carry on talking if no one was listening, but it is very nice.

And thank you for all your comments and feedback so far.

Rob Bell:
Keep it coming in.

Yeah.

But third series or third rounds of stuff you've done before is a theme.

And then you guys can think of it that you've done three of.

Both of you have only had two kids.

Jono Hey:
One of three.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

OK.

So is Jono one of three.

So am I one of three.

Tom Pellereau:
All of us.

One of three.

Rob Bell:
Tommy, products you brought out more than three products you brought out.

Tom Pellereau:
I have brought out the first launch with Lord Sugar was three products.

The Emergency File, the S File and the S Buffer back in the day.

Exclusive with Sainsbury's.

It was I was with them recently.

It was quite like, oh, 10, 12 years ago.

It's like, oh, wow.

Rob Bell:
You never miss a trick.

Even though this is recorded amongst you, you never miss a trick to pull out your as live interview technique of answering the questions with as many products as you possibly can.

Tom Pellereau:
I love it.

Rob Bell:
I love it.

I love it.

Don't ever stop.

But you must have said, but on product launches, you must have done at least three product launches, however many products you were launching each time, right?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, we do sort of a product launch a year.

So it's kind of going 10th, 10th, 11th.

Rob Bell:
Does it get easier?

Did it get easier by like the third time?

Because you know a bit what you're doing.

Jono Hey:
You've got two out of the way.

Rob Bell:
You learn from your mistakes.

Tom Pellereau:
It does.

Rob Bell:
And you learn from what went well.

Tom Pellereau:
And actually on about, we're on sort of 10th now.

I am getting a lot of better, but also the market and what they're interested in changes quite significantly.

So you learn and also you have to unlearn.

Jono Hey:
But this should be the best series yet, taking in everything we've learned from the previous series.

Rob Bell:
More expert guests, I think that's good.

More of that for the future, because it just takes you off on, you know, it's a new personality, right, into the equation.

There's less predictability about it.

Not that you too are predictable, but, you know.

Jono Hey:
Never know what you're going to do in an intro.

That's certainly for sure.

I've never been called Chief Chocolatier before.

Yeah, that's nice.

Rob Bell:
So I was thinking about this.

I've done so many different TV series, but only two went on to three or more series.

Does that make sense?

One of them was on Lighthouses, and the other was on Walking Britain's Lost Railways.

Jono Hey:
Both really good.

Rob Bell:
Both.

I would have kept on doing more and more.

I loved doing them.

It was great.

You get to go to some great places.

I presume you ran out of Lighthouses.

No.

Goodness me, no.

Really?

No.

And they would rock Lighthouses that we're doing, so ones that were offshore.

No, there's a fair few left to do.

Jono Hey:
You see, I got sent a beautiful map of the UK, and it's got the whole of the UK, but it's at night, and you can just make out the land, and then it's got all the Lighthouses all the way around, and it shows the sort of like glow of light around each one, and it's really like, it's a beautiful thing, and you just see that we've basically lit up all of the tricky bits of this island.

It's really cool.

And as I say, there's like 50 or 100 or something.

Yeah, so many.

Really cool.

Rob Bell:
And there are some seriously tricky bits as well.

Jono Hey:
As you would know, after three series of Lighthouses.

Rob Bell:
Good fun.

Well, listen, whether you're coming along with us on this roller coaster for your third installment of Sketchplanations, The Podcast, or if you're just dipping your toe in for the first time now, thank you for joining us.

It's lovely that you're here.

I will say, if you haven't already, it really helps us if you can subscribe to the podcast and leave a quick review.

But however long you intend to stay listening with us, you need to know that Jono has his Sketchplanations book out.

It's available now called Big Ideas, Little Pictures.

Jono, what's it all about?

Jono Hey:
What's the plot?

It hasn't exactly got a plot, but it will take you through a journey from more physical things to interesting paradoxes about the world.

We look at things like earthquakes and surfing breaks, but all the way to psychology and well-being and motivation, a ton of sketches in there, 130 plus.

It's really fun to flick through.

I hope you really love it.

Rob Bell:
It is, and it's because of all this work that you've done that we have all these sketches for us to talk about on the podcast as well.

But the book really kind of elevates it.

I've had a copy in my hands and flicked through it and it feels great.

There's quite a bit of splash of colour in there.

It's a lovely, lovely thing to hold and have and enjoy flicking through.

Great.

Well, as they used to say in Rome, Omnitrium Perfectum, everything that comes in threes is perfect.

It's not a great mantra to market our next series by, but we'll worry about that when we get there.

Series 3.

Here we go.

Let's podcast.

This week, we're discussing Jono's sketch entitled Sharpening The Saw.

It's a metaphor for when you feel like you're just too darn busy with a project, or perhaps there's too much stuff to get done in life generally to stop for anything.

Even if stopping to assess or recharge might actually help you accomplish your goal quicker or better.

Now you should be able to see the sketch for this up on your screens now, but if not, the link is in the podcast description down below and that will take you straight over to the sketch on sketchplanations.com.

And as you listen along, if you feel inspired to send us a message about occasions that you've felt there wasn't enough time to sharpen the saw, then please send it in to hello at sketchplanations.com.

Thank you, Tommy.

Right, John, before I ask you about the sketch, actually, I want to say that if it was me who'd done this sketch, I mean, big if, you would have done it better.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Goodness me, no.

But there's something about it that I know I would have really enjoyed doing, and I'm not sure whether it's the repeated nature of creating the scene with all these tree trunks in them, but each one is individual and has its own slants and characteristics.

I don't know whether it's the detail of the saw and the cut tree stump that's there, because I quite enjoy the texture of timber and woods.

I quite enjoy all that stuff.

Or I don't know if it's the way that you've captured the emotions of the two characters involved in there as well.

But as a whole, I just love it.

I absolutely love it.

I've spent a lot of time just admiring and enjoying this sketch.

Jono Hey:
Good.

Good.

Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty simple sketch, isn't it?

It's those two characters and a saw stuck in a tree.

And then a lot of trees is like, actually, it's quite interesting.

You think, how do I draw wood without drawing 10,000 things?

Right.

Because that's what the challenge is often.

I really like collage things.

And so it's almost like you just take, you take like the outline of the trees and you find like a nice texture and you fill it with the texture.

And so that's that's kind of what I was going for.

And then we spent some time in the Pacific Northwest out in the woods.

And there was just some beautiful, beautiful woods.

Yeah.

And the way the trees sort of fade away into the distance and the different type of light you get in the mist on them is lovely.

So I remember looking back at a few photos for that to try and capture a little bit in the sketch.

Rob Bell:
It's gorgeous.

Yeah, it's gorgeous.

You know, I've been watching a lot of Fargo, the series on telly again recently, and that's all out in, what would you call Minnesota?

Midwest.

But there's quite a lot of forests and kind of big expanses in there.

And there are some scenes in the forest and it kind of reminded me of that.

It's lovely.

I just love it.

Anyway, well, that's the sketch itself, but can you tell us a bit about why you wanted to raise this topic of sharpening the saw?

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

I mean, this one came to be recently, a long, long time ago, I read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

And then I've been working in product development, software development for quite a long time and running product teams.

And we brought in a new head of product called Dan Smythe.

And as he was looking at everything that was going on, and we'd been working really hard, pushing stuff out really fast for a long time, he was like, well, actually, this could be the perfect time to sharpen the saw, which is, okay, let's just take a moment.

Let's slow down what we're doing, instead of pushing stuff out, pushing stuff out, pushing stuff out, and let's make sure that we've done everything really well.

And in the context of software, that might be technical debt, you call it.

So as you build stuff quickly, maybe you take a quick shortcut, you're trying to get this out, you don't build it the perfect way.

Or later, you've built a lot of stuff, and then you realize, actually, there'd be a better way to build that now that we've got this whole range of things.

And so you come back and refactor it, and you have to build in time to do that.

And so that was the original thing where it came back into my consciousness, this idea of, oh yeah, actually, this is, we can sharpen the saw here, which is actually, we'll take a bit of time and we'll go slowly in this time, and that will enable us to go faster in the long run.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Now Tommy, I know you've read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I think you referenced it a couple of times in the podcast possibly as well.

So I'm sure you are no stranger to this mantra if you like.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

I don't know if I've said it before, but I think that book kind of changed my life.

It was the first book I read that I really enjoyed, which sort of seems weird, but I was quite old, I was probably in my 20-ish.

But as a dyslexic, I'd never really enjoyed reading books, because the story was so slow when I read them.

But this was just fascinating.

This concept that someone had kind of studied thousands of people to try and understand like things that you could learn, and then opened up this genre to me that I'd never heard of before, the kind of self-help.

And since I just, you know, I gobble through mainly listening to these sort of books, you know, The Chimp Paradox, E-Myth, Start With Why, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Jim Collins, Rocket Fuel, Mind Jim.

You know, I just love reading and understanding these books.

And I feel so privileged that there are these people who dedicate years of their life.

Like, I think Stephen Covey takes years to write his books and then distills them into these, you know, these collections and make sense of them and puts them down as, you know, 7 habits.

Sharpen The Saw, I must admit, certainly in my youth, I'm getting better now.

I was always pretty awful at it.

I would just work, work, work, work, work, not take many holidays, not take many days off.

Always be striving to get the next product out, as Jono would say, and not taking enough time for myself or possibly even for my, for my projects.

And I've, I've got a lot better now by kind of having certain habits to make sure I do speak to my family regularly, do plan holidays at the beginning of the year and that sort of thing.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, this is, this is really interesting because Jono, you talked about it in the perspective of, let's say a business putting out products, developing new software, Hank, guys, let's, as a team, slow this down, reassess where we are.

Tommy, you've mentioned it there in both contexts, both professionally and in your home life, in your day-to-day life and taking a bit of time to slow down and refresh.

And I was looking around online for this and from the Franklin Covey website, Organizational and Behavioral Change Management Specialists.

And you can't see Stephen Covey on there, but you see, I assume to be his son, it's part of this website.

Anyway, they talk about this saying, sharpening the saw keeps you fresh.

You increase your capacity to produce and handle the challenges around you.

Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive and the person selfish.

In my mind, before I started reading around this, I was only applying it in the kind of project sense and not in the self sense.

And I think they're not the same, but equally important.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

And I think in the book, it's talking about you as an individual.

And that's what Sharpening The Saw is.

It's keeping yourself renewed and fresh and at peak performance and working on your own self so you can be as productive as you can.

And I think it makes so much sense when you think about it from so many organization perspectives.

For example, you could have a software product out there and you've got bugs coming in and you spend a third of your time dealing with the bugs and that allows you two-thirds of the time to do other stuff.

But it feels if you stop and you spend a few weeks fixing things properly, then you free up all of that time for future stuff.

And it's one of these ones where you're like, oh, we don't have the time to stop and do that.

And then, of course, you realize that you don't have time not to stop and do that.

Like, yeah, it makes such a difference.

But yeah, definitely in the book, it's about yourself, your physical, your mental, social, emotional and spiritual, I think, renewal.

Rob Bell:
Yes, yeah, mental, physical, social, emotional and spiritual.

That's what you said, wasn't it?

I mean, I think this is pretty obvious from what we're talking about.

Sharpening The Saw and The Woodsman, if you like, in the sketch, who is chopping down a tree with the saw, you're going as fast as you can, as hard as you can, bang, there gets another one on straight on to the next one.

As you're doing that, your saw becomes blunt.

And if you take the time to sharpen the saw, your work is probably a lot more effective and you are more productive.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Bell:
I don't think I needed to explain that, but...

Jono Hey:
Well, no, no, I think I think it's worth it.

And I think that's actually how the chapter starts, is that little story of a woodcutter is like trying to chop all the trees down and suggest, well, maybe it's worth taking a break.

Well, I don't have time to take a break and sharpen the saw because I've got all these trees to cut down.

Rob Bell:
So I can relate to that in a much more literal sense.

Jono Hey:
Go on then.

Rob Bell:
Are you out in the workshop?

Jono Hey:
Actually need to sharpen your saw.

Rob Bell:
Replace saw for chisel slash plane.

Yes.

I mean, anyone who is a maker, who makes stuff will kind of know that it takes ages to do, to create the things that we do.

I've put one of my projects up on social media recently, a coat rack that I did, okay?

And I decided I'd film it properly.

And it took me probably over two weeks of actual days to do that, but that was spread out over a number of months, really, because you're busy some days and some weekends, you're not doing it at the weekend, and some weekends you're busy so you don't get time, and then you might get three hours out there, which is never satisfactory.

So when you're doing that, you just want to get to the next stage.

And so the last thing you want to do is stop when you're trying to file or plane something back or chisel it back, just to pair it back, stop to go and sharpen everything so that it all happens nicely and you can slice through that wood.

What I tend to do is try and find a chisel that is the sharpest amongst my set of chisels, even if it isn't quite the right size and effective, or the right shape even, because it takes a good half an hour to sharpen all my tools if I want to, because if I'm going to get the sharpening stuff out, I'll do all of them.

So it takes me a good half hour to an hour to sharpen all that stuff.

I don't have time, I just want to get to the next bit.

So in that literal sense, I follow quite a few makers on social media, and there was a song that did the rounds as a soundtrack to a lot of these videos about a year, 18 months ago.

It's called It Costs That Much, was the name of this song, and it's by Laura Jane or Woe Dude, and you can find it up on YouTube, and the lyrics are, the lyrics start, It costs that much because it takes me f-ing hours.

It's true.

It's so true.

Jono Hey:
It's good.

Rob Bell:
So that literal sense, I get it from that literal sense.

Tom Pellereau:
I think there is a bit of an aspect with this example though, in the fact that I'm not sure that many people really, Sharpening The Saw, there aren't many of us who cut down on wood anymore or work in woodwork.

And also I think a lot of the times these days, if your saw is blunt, you go to B&Q and you'd buy another saw.

So the sort of sharpening of the saw is not necessarily such a strong analogy to think that maybe it used to be, because a lot of people don't realize you can sharpen a saw, so to speak.

Jono Hey:
And you can't with a lot of like, technology, it's like my, you know, my mouse is getting a bit slow, so I'm going to sharpen it, but my iPhone's breaking.

I don't know, the camera's not as good anymore.

I'm going to polish it.

Tom Pellereau:
Or maybe that is an example, actually, on the iPhone, like it does eventually get full of photos.

So every, every like four or six months, I will empty all the photos off my phone, because I find that makes quite a big difference.

So maybe it's like, or defragging your hard drive, or, you know, or deleting your e-mails.

Rob Bell:
But it takes time and it's so dull to do.

Tom Pellereau:
But then your phone is a lot quicker once you have taken all that stuff.

Rob Bell:
We've given it a refresh.

Coming back to the metaphor, you're giving your phone a mental, physical, social and spiritual refresh, aren't you?

Jono Hey:
Just going to connect with some other phones, realize its true purpose.

Rob Bell:
On a technical point, just in case there are any other woodworkers listening, you can and you should sharpen your saws if you have a saw.

Basically, if you've got a saw with a plastic handle, then you shouldn't try and sharpen that saw, like one that you'd buy from your local DIY store, because that will have hardened steel.

And if you try and file that back, you'll blunten the file.

So there's no point.

When that is blunt, get rid of it.

But if you've got a saw with a wooden handle, and that is a kind of general rule, then you can sharpen those.

But different techniques depending on whether it's a crosscut saw or a rip saw.

Tom Pellereau:
And what I've just got to say this, because I'm sure I've bored the bat.

In the summer, I went to a desert, an island, with no electricity, no running water, that sort of thing.

And we were having to chop logs with a proper handsaw, you know, the two-person ones.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, like in the sketch.

Tom Pellereau:
And we were cutting proper massive logs.

And at first I was like, well, this is never going to work.

Like, there's no way we can do this without a chainsaw or that.

But actually, it was amazing how much cutting force you can put through with two people with a sharpened saw.

And these were with wooden handles, so they were sharpened and fully greased.

You know, just how quickly you can go through big logs.

Really surprised me.

Jono Hey:
It's funny because when I thought about talking about this tonight in the podcast, it did not occur to me to actually be talking about sharpening reels, saws and tools.

I was way in the abstracts, metaphors, analogies.

Yeah.

What sort of domains might this principle apply?

Actually it's good to sharpen your saws and your knives and your axes, people.

Rob Bell:
In the metaphorical sense, I don't mind admitting that I really suffer from it.

Like you were saying, Tommy, I can get so wound up by needing to complete or needing to keep creating or getting stuff out there or getting things done.

I can get really wound up by that, that I will not stop to analyze and think about, actually what I'm doing here, is that the best thing for me to be doing?

Is there a better way to be doing it?

I know I probably should, but I'll go to bed angry and annoyed at myself if I haven't, what I feel, been productive enough.

But then in the back of your head, your nag is, well yeah, but you could have probably been more productive had you spent yesterday not doing the same and thinking it a bit more.

And I don't mind admitting it, I find it quite stressful.

So I'm grateful we're talking about this tonight because I know I'll probably go away with a bit more impetus to try and address it because I feel like I do need to address it because as I say, it's a stress that I don't want.

Jono Hey:
And there's like a classic quote by Abraham Lincoln, I don't know if you heard that one, that give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Yes, it sounds like you probably wouldn't.

I don't know if anybody would.

But it's funny how like you can sort of notice if I guess if your tool, your actual tools are blunt, but it's quite hard to notice if you're not being as like productive or thinking as clearly anymore, you're just sort of in it.

And it's quite hard to step back and go, actually, maybe I'm not being as useful with my time.

And actually, it'd be better to go to sleep now, I'd better go walk now, I'd better go speak to my partner.

And like when you're in it, you don't necessarily notice, I think, as easily as when it's a physical example.

Rob Bell:
Agreed.

Yeah, that's a really good comparison, Jono.

And the best thing, I think, for that is working with other people who are working with a good leader perhaps, who can identify when maybe there is a need for the team to just stop them and refresh and sharpen the saw a bit.

Jono Hey:
Rob, why don't you just give it a rest for tonight?

Don't worry about it.

Have watched something, go to sleep, go for a run.

You'll feel...

Do you know what?

I think you notice that as parents with kids, like if they're doing stuff, I can sort of tell if they're like, maybe it'd be good if you took a break right now and like ran around in the garden for a bit and then came back to it.

But if it's me, I don't think I always notice.

I'd be like, just on the treadmill of click, click, click.

Yeah.

Doing that stuff.

Sorry, Tom.

Rob Bell:
Go for it.

Tom Pellereau:
Do either of you journal much?

Rob Bell:
No, not at all.

Jono Hey:
I have done and it's really nice when I do, but I don't.

I wish I did.

Tom Pellereau:
So I've got one of these five year diaries where it's like five lines per day.

And then every day of the year, and then you come and then you write the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year in the same diary.

So you literally only have five little lines.

You have like two and a half.

It's a very small amount of space.

And I have found with that, firstly, it's fascinating to see what you were doing this time last year and where things have progressed and that sort of stuff.

But I have, as a result of that, found that it was really important to me to have things in the diary, like holidays booked into the future to look forward to and meeting with close friends.

So I now really make sure that I've got a close friend each month, once a month that I'm seeing, to make sure I see my 10 at least best friends a year.

Otherwise, I find that you can forget to book these things in, especially as we become older, become more busy.

And then at the end of the year, you're like, oh my God, I haven't seen Benji for 12 months, I haven't seen Phil, I haven't seen, and you've kind of got to, I find I have to structure that in and that really, really helps me to be a better person.

Rob Bell:
Do you mind me asking what you put down in that journal?

Is it just the facts of the day or do you put down kind of how you might be feeling or stuff that you might be worried about or things that aren't going as well?

Tom Pellereau:
Really good question.

So I put down the facts, I put down things that I'm worried about or things that were bad in like red, things that were good in green.

I tried to be like quite positive about what was good.

And I write it at the end of the day.

And I find that it's quite useful.

I then try and put like small snippets about like what the kids have done because they're changing so quickly.

I find that quite amusing.

At one stage, I was putting in my kind of emotional state kind of thing.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
And I actually, if I'm really honest, I was kind of like, I'm not sure I'd want anyone to find this.

I feel safe for putting down the facts of what happened.

And maybe from those facts of what happened, I will personally know how I was at that time.

Rob Bell:
Because then when you come back to it, whatever, the 9th of April, and you're there and you're looking at the year previously, I'm trying to think how you might feel if in that diary entry from last year or from two years ago, it was a particularly negative or a particularly positive day.

And the day this year was somewhere in the middle, maybe.

What would that do?

Tom Pellereau:
Would that motivate you with that?

A year ago, this problem was happening, and that was so important to me on that day.

And a year later, it's like, I forgot, I completely even forgot about that.

Or that was solved.

And things never solve themselves quite as quickly as you hope they might, but it's fascinating to see how things are resolved.

And you can look at it and go, oh, well, then maybe today's issues are also, you know.

Rob Bell:
So it is helpful, you'd say.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

From that perspective.

Jono Hey:
The Stephen Covey actually has a, he has something he calls the daily private victory.

So he's like, spend an hour on yourself each day.

You know, it's a bit of time spent being active, working on your body, learning something, connecting with somebody, you know, something about, you know, like listening to some beautiful music, seeing something beautiful, and he calls that your daily private victory.

And an hour working on yourself each day will be, you know, the best compounding effect that you can do if you just find that hour.

Rob Bell:
It links very closely to what we're talking about with wellness expert Nancy Hey, on the 5 Ways to Wellbeing.

And I mean, because they were connect, take notice, give, be active, keep learning.

So you connect as your social, emotional, take notice as your spiritual, be active as your physical, keep learning as your mental, give.

Yeah, I think that's the fifth one.

Jono Hey:
Elements of spiritual and social and emotional there.

There's sort of a bit of both.

But yeah, I know I thought I thought very similar.

It was really like, actually, if you take these are these elements you're working on, they are working on your well-being.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
So for any any new listeners who haven't heard that episode, it's episode 15 from series one, 5 Ways to Wellbeing.

Have a listen to that.

We've got expert Nancy Hey on with us.

And yeah, that was a great, great learning experience for me doing that.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Really.

And really nice things to take away and work on and think about for yourself.

Tom Pellereau:
I do think of Jono a lot in these sorts of respects, because Jono, one of his special skills is kind of consistency of things.

Like you've been producing one sketch every week for eight years in your notebooks to start on an iPad, and you've been doing 30 or 50 press ups is it a day?

You and Simon are still doing every single day.

And I've learned and I've appreciated so much more in my as I've grown up.

Like I'm now doing these certain physio exercises every day for my back.

And there are five of them.

And I have a little sheet that I tick them off.

And I have an alarm that goes off at 10 to 11 in the morning and at 630 at night.

And I do those exercises.

And I'm really finding an improvement in my in my back.

And I think it's all part of this.

And for me, it's channeling my inner Jono Hey to do this repeatability of the thing every day, every week.

But there's so much power in spending 10, 15, 5 minutes doing something pretty much, you know, ideally every day that will help build strength or build, you know, mental endurance or build something like that.

And it's amazing the cumulative benefit.

Jono Hey:
There's actually an amazing speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger on the internet, really inspiring.

And he talks about finding an hour a day to learn something.

Do you want to work on something?

You do have time, just go find an hour a day and you can just, like, you can do that between 9 and 10 or between getting up an hour early.

Tom Pellereau:
His book is brilliant and I think it mentions it because he sort of goes through, he goes, busy as bulls**t, I think he says, isn't he?

Busy as bulls**t, everyone can find an hour.

And he kind of goes through a day like, he goes into the real nitty gritty detail showing how you can find an hour a day.

It's really inspiring, isn't it?

Jono Hey:
Well, I was thinking that a number of my, I think like some of the more popular sketches that I've done, I did one about Jolle Bokkerflod, which is this sort of Iceland thing about staying in and reading a book, Christmas Eve, Forest Bathing, 5 Ways to Wellbeing, these ones, a lot.

They're some of the more popular ones, and I feel maybe there's some need for everybody to like slow down and recharge, and you really relate to it.

There's another one, Salvatore Ambulando, which means like it's solved by thinking, like you go for a walk, think it through as you go for a walk, and that's just sort of this quite nice, appealing thing.

And so many people are in need of like, actually, that's kind of what I need right now, rather than more stuff.

Rob Bell:
And I was going to say, maybe it's the act of kind of giving someone permission to do that.

You know, saying it's okay to do this.

In fact, it's beneficial, you should do this.

But then I feel like what would probably be more helpful is a definitive instruction to do it.

I would definitely respond well to that, I think.

Jono Hey:
I think it's quite hard to be sat at your desk at work and not obviously doing anything.

And just be like, I'm thinking, I'm recharging, I'm resting.

Like that just feels weird in our culture, doesn't it?

To be sat at your desk and not doing anything.

Which is funny because we've done a lot of like endurance events.

Or if you go hiking or something, it's so completely obvious when you should take a break.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
You're like, I literally, I just can't go anymore.

What I really need now is to pause.

Rob Bell:
Take some food in, redo my laces, get rid of that stone in my shoe.

Jono Hey:
Remember why you're doing this.

Remember why you're enjoying that you signed up for this thing.

And then you go again and you're feeling fresh.

And it's so obvious in these kind of like extreme examples.

But in the day to day, it's so easy to kind of miss that.

That actually, you know what I could really do with sitting down and playing the piano right now, instead of writing a bit more, working a bit more.

Rob Bell:
I just had a weird thought about being in an office.

Because when I was in an office, more people smoked.

And those people who smoked would take 5, 10 minutes a few times throughout the day out of the office, away from the desk, go outside, probably have a chat with somebody else who was out there, or not just stand there and think or do nothing.

And they say smoking is unhealthy.

Tom Pellereau:
Ironically, often smokers get more fresh air, they go outside more.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
We need to ask some smokers, really.

I think none of us are active smokers to find what the benefits of that is.

But I know what you mean.

Like if I just went, I'm just standing at the front of the building.

On the mental side of it, I think one of the reasons I really enjoy doing Sketchplanations is because that is a chance to go learn a bit more about the new topic, something I didn't know in that much detail.

And so it's like, oh, I've heard of this interesting thing.

I'm going to go spend an hour reading about it and then really try and communicate it.

And I just think that's like, it's been a real benefit for me.

Hopefully it is for everybody who, you know, subscribes and gets them and reads them as well.

But it's sort of that lifelong learner mentality.

And it's really helped for me, like that consistency of like, I'm just going to keep learning one, two things a week, which may have nothing to do with my job or what I'm working on at the moment, but it's interesting to me.

And that's going to keep my mind fresh.

Rob Bell:
In that sense, Jono, is sometimes Sketchplanations a sharpening, a saw sharpening experience for you, would you say, to take you away from all the other stuff from your day to day routine, whether that's at home or professionally?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I would think it is.

I hadn't thought about it like that.

Yeah, it gives it gives it gives another channel.

Like if you're working really hard on this thing, I go away at lunch and I read about something completely different that just interests me.

And and that's probably really good for me to go do that.

Yeah, probably probably when I come back after lunch or whatever, I'm feeling energized and ready to get back on with whatever I was doing beforehand, actually.

And then you yeah, you look again with fresh eyes.

That's a lovely observation by Suzanne.

Paul Suzanne, who's a painter.

And he said, I think it was genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

So I guess to come back fresh each day and look at something and go, wow, this is this is beautiful again and not not have that same old blah, blah.

Like, you know, here we go.

Here I am walking down the street, but I don't notice anything anymore.

I think it's a lovely way to think that I feel like that.

Sharpening The Saw is that kind of rejuvenation, like, oh, I'm going to notice stuff again.

I feel feel fresh, ready to take in new things.

Rob Bell:
Anything else anyone would like to add on there on the subject of sharpening the saw?

This this metaphor.

Jono Hey:
One thing we didn't cover is like burnout.

And I think burnout is where you didn't stop to sharpen the saw.

And I think that's a is a real challenge in society sometimes.

And that's where you don't necessarily notice that you're burning out until it's too late.

Rob Bell:
And then you're left in a doing too much physical and mental state.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

So to sharpen your saw before you burn out.

It doesn't quite work, does it?

As a metaphor, burning out and sharpening, sharpening your saw before you get stuck.

Tom Pellereau:
We get stuck in that tree.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I mean, I looked into exactly how you sharpen a saw, but I'm not going to go into that.

We've already covered a bit of it.

Yeah.

Just quickly, with a rip cut saw, you go perpendicular to the length of the saw across the teeth.

And with a cross cut saw, you go at 45 degrees because they are, the teeth are set up slightly differently.

Tom Pellereau:
And the chainsaw?

Rob Bell:
Different altogether.

They're all round things.

But you still take a file to it.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
When it's off.

Rob Bell:
Well, I hope there's some useful information in amongst everything we've discussed there for you, our listeners.

It's definitely been useful for me.

Thanks for sharing your tips on that.

Because as I said, it's something I struggle with.

I know I struggle with it and I get stressed by it.

And it's lovely to have some tools and techniques.

Tommy, I think I might start a little bit of journaling.

I think I feel like I need a book like you have to do that.

I don't think I'm going to do it without something physical to help me do that and remind me to do it and make it easy to do.

But that feels like a nice thing.

Tom Pellereau:
So four years ago, Amazon AWS, I've got it in red.

Apparently it almost killed me.

I'm not even sure I can remember what that was all about.

Clearly it was very...

And three years ago, Poppy got into the bed at 4am and she certainly doesn't do that anymore, which is amazing, too, so...

Rob Bell:
So what a lovely day you've had in comparison to previous years.

Well, I don't know quite exactly, but...

Jono Hey:
You needed to have your saw sharpened again.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

I'm coming with my files, Tommy.

Well, listen, guys, thank you very much and thank you, our listeners, for coming along with us into a third series of Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

And please send us your thoughts and experiences on this topic.

I think I'd probably find it quite cathartic to hear more people who maybe suffer from this or more people who have solutions that work for them around this.

We'd love to hear from you, so please do send those in.

So until next time, thank you for listening.

Go well, stay well.

Goodbye.

Tom Pellereau:
Goodbye.

Rob Bell:
And we're back once again to go through the post bag from our last episode, which was our episode on finishing lines with, I'm gonna say, the wonderful Brendan Leonard.

It's just me and Jono to go through the post bag this week.

Tommy's busy, he's always busy.

How cool's Brendan?

Jono Hey:
What a brilliant chat that was.

So much fun.

So much fun and so interesting at the same time.

What a great combination for a person.

Rob Bell:
I feel like I really look up to Brendan.

I really do, but there's a guy I want to be like.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Well, he's probably younger than you or something.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I know.

Jono Hey:
I wish I had been like.

Rob Bell:
But we've had a couple of messages in, which is lovely.

Thank you for all your messages.

We love receiving them.

Do send them in.

There's so many ways you can email us.

Hello, it's sketchplanations.com.

You can get in touch via the podcast website, either leaving a message up there, or you can leave us a voice note as well.

Or, sorry, you can get in touch with us on social media, on Instagram or Twitter or any of the other ones.

But this one came from, I'll say, yeah, friend of the show, Ron Roth, who sent us an email to hello, it's sketchplanations.com.

And Ron was saying, the podcast made me think about my motivations, which have recently worked for me.

As I've aged, my limitations have increased, but not my desire to stay in shape.

So when my seven and a half minute mile runs dropped off to 11 minute mile runs, I basically stopped running and increased my cycling.

Besides one or two metric centuries a year, do you know what that means, Jono?

Two metric centuries, is that 200 kilometers, you think?

Because this is written by an American.

Jono Hey:
I would guess it's cycling 100 miles, but...

Rob Bell:
Or two metric centuries, though, which is why I'm thinking it's kilometers.

Jono Hey:
That's a good point.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah?

Should we say that?

Rob Bell:
So, that's what we think.

So, besides one or two metric centuries a year, one of my strongest motivators has been to ride my age every year.

This year is my 70th birthday.

Congratulations, Ron.

So, for the last month, I worked up to two 70-mile rides.

That's awesome.

I mean, hats off to you, Ron.

That is absolutely fantastic to hear.

But he goes on to say, These yearly challenges have motivated me to increase my time in miles in the saddle exponentially.

And your most recent podcast has got me to reflect on the start line and the finish line within that challenge.

Which is great.

It's so lovely to hear that.

Here's a guy who's obviously motivated, right?

But he set himself these challenges to give himself those finishing lines to keep working towards every year.

Jono Hey:
I love, I love how the challenge gets harder as you get older.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
So 85 is going to be quite some, quite some riding year.

I'd be very impressed.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
It's the double whammy, right?

It's the double whammy of the challenge getting harder.

The exponential increase in difficulty.

Yeah.

Hats off to you, Ron.

Hats off to you.

And thank you so much for getting in touch.

It's lovely to read and yeah, if I could be like Ron when I was 70 as well, I'll be pretty pleased with myself.

We also had a message from Rebecca on Instagram saying, and this was in reference to Brendan talking about his fear-based training plans.

And Rebecca says, yep, that's me over here training for an ultra because I'm not sure I'd ever run again if I didn't sign myself up for some form of suffer fast, as she calls it.

Which kind of goes to show that it's not just Brendan.

It's not just us who get some kind of pleasure from pushing ourselves to the point of pain.

People do it.

Jono Hey:
We all need to reread Brendan's book again, going into all the many motivations about why we do it.

It's so good.

Rob Bell:
It's so good.

And yeah, as we talked about in the podcast, so much of it resonates with me.

And it's just lovely to have it written down, because I have often stopped and wondered, why do I do this?

And I've never really come up with a good enough reason, I don't think, why motivates me?

And in my eyes, it makes me a better person, but it's pretty arbitrary, really.

Jono Hey:
You're a really good person, Rob.

Rob Bell:
No, thanks mate.

Jono Hey:
So don't worry about it.

Thanks.

Sit at home.

Rob Bell:
And what else have we got, Jono?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I thought I'd have one.

We had a chat at the beginning of the episode, if you remember, about survival skills.

Rob Bell:
We did.

Jono Hey:
With some quite remarkable survival stories.

And I, on reflecting on my own, I mentioned that, actually, I feel like most of my survival skills take place at home in the kitchen before I even leave on any expedition.

And that's kind of the point.

Rob Bell:
Which was such a brilliant answer.

I didn't see it coming at all, but it was the best answer of all.

Jono Hey:
Well, yeah.

And it made me think, it made me think enough that I did a sketch of it I, in the last month, because I actually think it just really made sense to me.

And then somebody wrote in to me and said, I was so excited when I saw this, because I thought it was all going to be about formal table settings.

Rob Bell:
Because you're, because the sketch that you did was entitled what?

Jono Hey:
Kitchen table survival skills.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

So you're now thinking kitchen table, right?

I don't know, maybe we've got, we're inviting friends around for a dinner party.

And this is how to make sure that you've got your table set to survive the dinner party.

Jono Hey:
This is, this is how to get through to do it properly.

Sadly, it wasn't for that.

However, I did many years ago do a sketch on that.

So if you read that and you were disappointed, you can look up, there's a sketch called Set Your Table in Time Honored Positions, which explains exactly where you should put knives and forks and how many of them you should have, and that the plates should come in from the left and out to the right.

Should you wish to go have a look.

Rob Bell:
Whereas the Kitchen Table Survival Skills sketch is all about what you were talking about in last week's podcast, how your greatest survival assets is the planning.

And I'll put links to both those sketches and then you can see it.

It's all there.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But everything you can do with the Kitchen Table before you get out and are thirsty and lost in the wilderness.

Rob Bell:
And it pretty much does mirror what you said in the podcast, Jolo.

I love that conversation, that fairly kind of offhand conversation that we had spurred this sketch into reality.

I love that.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, somebody said they sent it immediately to all their local scout groups.

So that's nice.

Rob Bell:
Oh, great.

Jono Hey:
Oh, that's brilliant.

So maybe, you know, maybe it will save somebody one day.

You never know, because if they're saved, we don't hear.

Yeah, you don't hear from it.

Rob Bell:
So you don't hear those stories.

Well, let's hope we never hear any stories of people.

Jono Hey:
I didn't read your kitchen table survival skills.

I got into a whole world of trouble.

Rob Bell:
Brilliant stuff.

Listen, we're going to leave it there for this week's podcast.

But thank you so much for listening.

Do keep sending us your messages, as I say, through our social media channels in response to the stuff we pop up every episode on email.

Hello at sketchplanations.com or via the Sketchplanations, the podcast website where you can leave us a voice note or you can tap us a message on there.

Thanks very much for listening.

See you next time.

Bye bye.

All music on this podcast is sourced from the very talented Franc Cinelli and you can find loads more tracks at franccinelli.com.