Juan Carlos: Mental models are a way to frame reality in different ways. 

It could be as simple as the concept of a dollar bill. The constructs of it are these, there’s a lot of depth to what is a dollar.

The concept of currency is underneath that, the concept of. Of the way that it’s traded is underneath that. So just this one sense of this $1 bill has a ton inbuilt, right? And then there’s the piece of it, which is if you actually were looking at a dollar bill and tried to draw it out you would be able to look at it and then try to draw it and make like as close to a approximate copy of it as possible.

But if you didn’t have one, you tried to draw it, you’d have a very odd looking dollar bill. But the concept would probably still translate to another human because the model exists for them in the same framework as us. So that’s where I look at it from the most base version of it, which is these are constructs, they’re, these are models. [00:01:00] 

Joel: My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. 

You may have noticed that I took a couple weeks off. Or maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe this is your first time listening. Thank you. Welcome. I was out for a couple weeks for some client workshops and for my wedding anniversary was amazing [00:02:00] time. Sorry to have missed you guys.

And, uh, let’s get into today’s guest nerd.

Today on Nerds that Talk Good. I am excited to welcome Juan Carlos, a writer, a poet storyteller who blends his vulnerability, humor, and insight to create powerful connections with his readers.

His work explores identity healing and the messy, beautiful journey of being human. He is written many essays, poems, performances, books and the stuff that he’s working on right now is very exciting and we’ll dig into that. He invites us to slow down, reflect. Find meaning in our own stories.

I can’t wait to dive into the creative process. He’s another deck designer. I’m very excited about that. Juan Carlos, thank you so much for joining. You are today’s guest nerd.

Juan Carlos: Thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Joel: I wanna start off just obviously where I start most conversations with the nerd origin story. You’ve been, in technology, you’ve been all over the place in different industries. But tell us what got you into [00:03:00] the positions that you’re in and where you’re headed.

Juan Carlos: Yeah, sure. So at a young age, I actually was really into filmmaking and had my heart set on being a director. I lived that life for about a decade, and I made and directed two feature films. So the first one was called Second Skin, which was about virtual worlds like Second Life and EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and that really began a push into that world.

I loved chatting and hanging out with hardcore gamers that had one foot in the virtual space and another foot in reality. And then I learned how to hack and create a marketing campaign through, just by virtue of needing to get it done right. So that was where my technology piece really started to grow.

I started to get excited about building websites and learning how to code. So [00:04:00] it was right in that path where both of those were legitimately required to be able to be an indie filmmaker in New York. And so from that, I then started my second feature, which was a departure in one sense, from that type of social commentary and a focus on technology now working with a group of youth in foster care.

So worked with them to both write and then have them act in a movie about their own lives. And it was an intense. Process around that time. I also had a transformative kind of view on the world of do good, be good, let the rest follow. It came from, a lot of different pieces of my life falling apart a few years previous to that and going, I need to reset and just do good in the world.

That led to working more focused on social impact. And I created and founded a nonprofit around that same [00:05:00] time called White Roof Project. So this is essentially a tale of these really intense parallel paths of creating and building the nonprofit while building this feature film.

On the other side of that go, oh, wait a minute. It looks like everything I’ve done until this point has been about how to create and develop impact in some form. How do I rethink and reshape the way that I’ve been creating? Because directing isn’t necessarily doing what I want it to, and I don’t find myself compelled to make another film.

Now, that’s when I took a big, break. On what I was doing instead, it’s all technology now. I went into product management when I worked at a place called Participant that does, you know, or at the time, does these cool social impact films for, essentially like Oscar Award-winning impact films and Spotlight and The Cove.

So I went in there, sold my movie [00:06:00] into Participant, thankfully, which is great, and then got to make a big impact. With that film changed some legislation came out on the other side saying these social impact campaigns are meaningful. I want to continue to pursue this. Created now going into that sort of startup, fast paced technology world that led through to leadership in product and technology.

Ultimately, where I’ve landed today.

Then around. Last, since say 2020. I was at a point where I’ve been living in LA and I thought, gosh, my brain legitimately, there’s so much noise and so many messages coming in, and I couldn’t really figure out where I. I ended and other people’s thoughts began and where other people ended and my thoughts began and I started to realize there was this legitimate challenge in my brain [00:07:00] about figuring out who I am and what I am versus what the world is saying about me or what it, what is being asked.

So societally, what is, what are the ways in which I am an independent thinker that legitimately have my own thoughts versus. What am I compelled to think? Because of all the influences that are happening externally, and this is, a problem in modernity right now, right where we live inside this space.

But that’s the liminal space where I was really starting to find myself going, wait, what are my limiting beliefs? How am I thinking about these things incorrectly or correctly? Some of these items that I’m thinking of are really important and valuable. Some of them. Don’t make any sense at all. And I don’t know why I’ve held onto them.

Maybe I’ve held onto them since I was a child and didn’t recognize them. And they’re a huge impediment to my growth and capacity. So I started to think of this as the moment of Kintsugi, right? I’m gonna break a piece of pottery then like golden joinery, put it back [00:08:00] together and then put the gold around, and all of a sudden it’s more beautiful.

But you have those scars that show what has occurred, right? And that’s the healing process of essentially I thought of it a little bit as thinking of it as a eulogy for the old self, right? There’s a moment where you let the old self die and then there’s a new self. And so from that perspective.

I was taking both the Kintsugi and this concept and bringing it through. I started writing about mental models around that time because that’s what I found as the, essentially the big concept that led me to the eureka of here’s how I can learn to think for myself more formally by using frameworks to essentially engage and see the world in new ways and think clearly versus what I think had been happening before was a lot of trust your gut, a lot of instinctual kinds of decision making, which isn’t necessarily wrong or bad in the right context.[00:09:00] 

But contextually knowing the difference is extremely important, right? Started writing, thinking, dove into Charlie Munger, the legendary investor dove into Shane Parrish and a lot of the other folks writing about this kind of content. And then started just doing some digging on my own through textbooks, et cetera.

Ended up looking at basically a thousand mental models. Distilled it down into a hundred mental models, said, these are the 100 mental models that I find to be the most valuable from a Swiss Army knife type of perspective. You can use any of these no matter what domain you’re in. It could be something that’s based in mathematics or psychology.

However, it’s for anyone and everyone, and you can use it really to fit into any type of scenario. And that’s what I wanted with this new deck that I’m putting out, that, we’re, our friendship is based on our love for deck [00:10:00] making, right? So I built that deck With that in mind, how do I put and distill these concepts into some framework that allows me to build that out.

And honestly, when I first started building it, it was mostly just on a white little white cards, right? Just little poker cards. I’m just writing these down because I wanted to remember them myself, and so I was using that as the impetus. It was really just driven from building and wanting to build for myself.

And then I formalized it thinking maybe I should share this out. And I think some of the folks who I was working with were going, oh, I’d love to see these. You know? And so I’m going, oh, well I could, I could, I could make a deck, I could make a prototype. I could do this.

So I started to think about it from that perspective. It’s really the first product that I’ve built from the ground up for myself versus everything else up until now has been with other in mind first, and so this is the first time I’m [00:11:00] going. I’ve got a product and I’m, I think I love it.

I’m excited to see how it fits in with the world.

Joel: It’s incredible to me to think when you actually start to take a step back and quantify and identify that there could be as many mental models as a thousand. And it’s not that surprising knowing how the human brain works, but the task and the challenge of okay, these have similar words, but they’re really doing the same thing.

Or, they’re both a Phillips screwdriver one is more applicable than the other. Stripping it back and doing that personal work yourself. It’s, it reminds me, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s deck the Oblique Strategies, which I would still love to get my hands on a copy.

They’re rare. But that was something that they just did on their own. It was just, oh, I’ve got an idea. Let me write it down. And as you use and apply and reapply and evaluate you’re able to identify like you said, that [00:12:00] Swiss army knife. Maybe it’s not everything you need but it’s the core.

How long did that take you? 

Juan Carlos: Oh my

Joel: Actual work, not just it’s been a lifetime of

Juan Carlos: No. I would certainly not say it was a lifetime either. So do not I please do not confuse my my intention there. It is. I’d say from the time that I started writing the actual cards down was about maybe two and a half, three years ago and I, it was stayed in that format. No, not two and a half, two, two years ago.

So two years ago, wrote it down, was in there writing it, had it there in front of me, and then it was probably not long after that ChatGPT came out and I thought, oh my gosh, I think I want to translate this. Into ChatGPT. This would be really fun to make an iOS app out of. And this is the first time that I, as someone that is not [00:13:00] necessarily technical, I have done some very light coding.

I’ve made some websites, I have that marketing type of background to be able to build. And then I’ve formally gone into product, so I have an understanding of tech to enough to be dangerous, but not necessarily as being someone that is legitimately capable of coding in Swift, right?

And so this is the first time that I’m able to pick up an application and go, help me write this in Swift. I wanna make a native iOS app. And I was just cutting. This is like legitimately the first days of ChatGPT three five at the time, and wrote out some code, started getting it working, and was able to put all of those mental models into this app.

And I’m going, oh goodness. That’s cool. But then fundamentally, as I’m finishing that app, I’m looking back and going, but the tactile nature of these cards is missing. Like the, I have this app now, it’s in the app store. I went all the [00:14:00] way, which, if you’ve tried to do that, it’s randomly hard to put it on the app store. So you know, you get six, seven, tenths out of the way through making something, and then the last stage is all of the crud that Apple needs to put you through to essentially get it on the store itself. But after that I was still going, gosh, I miss this.

I miss. Having the deck because I love having just a card right in front of me every day. I love the action of being able to use it as an oracle type of deck. I love the ability to make recipes, and there’s a way that you can rifle through a deck and then put these things together and go, oh, this is a valuable way to frame this up.

It’s really challenging to do that in digital, and so I love the idea of going back and going, no, I wanna formalize the deck. The deck is an important. Piece of how to create and build analog. And maybe it was also a, process of, there’s pieces of us that are, that AI is gonna be there for, that we absolutely need.

And I [00:15:00] love AI, so I’m big. Excited about the future of ai. And then that said, there’s this piece of us that we need to still have creative processes that exist in the real world. And to me that’s the really nice mix of this for Re:Mind, is you have this ability to have the deck and utilize it in a myriad of ways.

And then you also have the app. So if you’re out and about, you don’t have the deck. Hey, here it is, handy. I’ve saved all the ones that I love, handy. There’s a ,little widget, that you can see daily posts on it, all handy. That from the advent of three, five to now has been the now scaled version of it that has come out.

So all in all, probably several hundred hours. I couldn’t quantify like the specifics, but somewhere in the neighborhood.

Joel: I had a similar experience doing the the MessageDeck, which essentially started as a, as an Excel spreadsheet of [00:16:00] just all the questions that I would have or the different ways I would come at a question with a client when I wanted to draw out some of their messages. And it got to the point where it was almost too much to handle digitally. 

The edges to, in my mind of digital content are still fuzzy and squishy and there’s no limitations. And by limiting and by, by having that constraint, I imagine is very much like the same of writing down a mental model. The artwork and design is gorgeous and you have not only a pictogram of the of the mental model. You’ve given it a title, you’ve got a summary and a background, and that helps you refine and lock in that concept. 

Whereas, if it was fully digital, nothing is permanent and it can always change and you’re always tweaking and nothing is ever done. So I feel that with the cards.

Share a couple of the mental models just for those who maybe aren’t familiar with the concept of mental [00:17:00] models. They’ll know it the moment you bring it up but what is an example of how we would use a mental model when we’re not aware that it’s a model what our brain is maybe doing.

And then once we’re aware of the model, how can we use it as a tool?

Juan Carlos: Yeah, absolutely. So I think. Mental models are a way to frame reality in different ways, right? At the very base of it. And some of the frameworks are ones that we can use to then create different ways to look at the world and use them for strategic thinking, et cetera. So the way that a mental model works.

It could be as simple as the concept of a dollar bill, right? That’s not what we’re talking about when we use like mental models, like a capital M, but the model that we create is essentially a, oh, this is what it is. The constructs of it are these, there’s a lot of depth to what is a dollar.

The concept of currency is underneath that, the concept of. Of the way that it’s [00:18:00] traded is underneath that. So just this one sense of this $1 bill has a ton inbuilt, right? And then there’s the piece of it, which is if you actually were looking at a dollar bill and tried to draw it out you would be able to look at it and then try to draw it and make like as close to a approximate copy of it as possible.

But if you didn’t have one, you tried to draw it, you’d have a very odd looking dollar bill. But the concept would probably still translate to another human because the model exists for them in the same framework as us. So that’s where I look at it from the most base version of it, which is these are constructs, they’re, these are models.

At the same time, when we talk about mental models and these frameworks, usually the way that we’re describing them is from the premise that we want to learn about a way of doing something that’s better, that can help us iterate and think in a way that could help [00:19:00] us and then utilize a model in a format that legitimately lets us leapfrog either a cognitive bias or a limiting belief or a challenge that we may not, either individually or as a group see.

So an example of this, and I think you brought it up very well, is. Here’s a framework that we might not see. Maybe it’s hidden from us sometimes, but it’s legitimate and constant, right? It’s the Ebbing House Forgetting Curve. So when we’re learning about something, we’re almost immediately forgetting it, right?

So within a day a week, we lose probably somewhere along the lines of 70 to 80%. Of what we just learned unless we do something, and this is the mental model that I love for this one, spaced repetition. So when you space out your learning over time and you relearn it consistently, you can essentially go [00:20:00] against this natural curve.

We have to forget what we just learned. For me, that was one of the biggest reasons why I wanted the cards in the first place. Kept on finding out I, I’m reading about these things. I, I’ll read three hun. A book with legit, literally 300 of these things, right? I think that one was Super Thinking.

And I love that book. And I went to recall some of what I learned. I went, I. Oh, shucks. I can’t remember one of these off the top of my head. And I just wanted something that I could do that space repetition with. And so I, that’s, that was that process. So often that’s where we’re looking at these, where you’re looking at say, a bias, a cognitive bias can be a great version of a model that you wanna overcome by utilizing something.

When I think about. Strategic thinking. Here’s a challenge that I face, and this is, often true for folks in corporate, right? Which is we use the availability heuristic to [00:21:00] determine our path. And by that I mean, you know, something that happened recently has created a crisis, right? So your availability bias for the crisis is immediate.

Right now is having a serious problem and we need to fix for that right now. And everyone’s eyes are on scheduling, right? And there’s, maybe 20 people that are dealing with the crisis. And you can’t figure out how to schedule appropriately because something’s broken or the process has a new problem that has now elevated it to, priority zero at the company, right?

You’re going, darn, like red lights are everywhere. And then you go whoa. A week ago we were being really strategic and intentional, but today we’re not. Today we’re in full blown crisis mode, fix it, and a lot of new priorities are asking for attention. How do you get folks to take a big step back when you’re in that sort of giant alarm bell scenario?

And [00:22:00] obviously it happens in corporate, but it happens pretty much anywhere at any given time. And I think about it like this. When I utilize a set, a recipe of these mental models, it’s to remind myself I called it. That’s why I called it Re:Mind, right? But I use it literally to remind myself of the process and the recipe that I want.

And so I’ll start with first principles. Can I break this down to its fundamentals? And Steve Jobs canonically has used this as the way that he thought about an iPhone, right? So from soup to nuts, there’s a lot of phones out there at that time. You got the, you got Palm, you have all these other little phones that have come out.

You got Blackberry, right? So everyone knows about these. How do you make a. Fundamental leap forward, that changes everything. And that’s what the iPhone does at that time. That’s first principles thinking. How do you take it back down to the basic building blocks and then rethink [00:23:00] how someone’s supposed to perceive and change the way that they can utilize something, right?

Fundamentals. So that’s my number one. When I’m in these moments where things are going wild, how do I take that big step back and look at it from first principle? Then the second is second order thinking. So now we’re looking at, so most of the time you’re looking at first order consequences. If we fix that this way, we’re gonna be good to go.

But you don’t think about this second order consequences of making that change. An example of this might be investment, right? So when the. Say the stock market crashes, right? Or is crashing like it did recently,

And we’re looking at like the beginning of, say, a recession. I don’t know, hypothetically.

So you’re in this scenario and what do you want to do? You desperately want to get your money out of there. You don’t want to fall, with the sinking ship. You don’t wanna go down with it, right? So the idea there is Hey, I need to get this out so I can, ensure that [00:24:00] I, hold myself back from losing more.

But the challenge is one, you’re going to be pulling out when it’s low already, right? So the second order effects are like you had a serious loss, and then now there might actually be an ability at this moment to buy in or do something else that would be effective and actually create. A success story, and there’s people in those scenarios that are going to be able to do that, right?

Where actually the right way to go is use, and in some cases people have these, pretty interesting, complex algorithms to buy. But if you stop yourself from that, you would stop yourself from that growth. So that’s so number one, first principles, number two. Second order thinking. Number three, inversion.

And this one I love. It’s like very near and dear to my heart, but it’s the idea of antigo, right? So when I look at solving for a problem, I try not to look at the goal that’s right in front of me and say that’s where I want to [00:25:00] go. It’s more a question of where don’t I want to go? So I put Xs on the map of things I don’t wanna happen versus only going toward the one thing.

I do wanna happen. And if you do that, then at least you understand, hey, we can go in a lot of different directions that all lead to success, right? But it’s not necessary to get the maximally successful outcome. And in fact, by doing that, you might have a challenge in that goal may not have been the correct one.

So it’s better to know where you don’t want to go in many cases. That’s number three, four. After all that thinking is Occam’s razor, simplest path is the best path. And then five, now that all of the thinking has occurred, it is time to do a thought experiment and ensure that you have done the right kind of processes in place to be able to say, I can see these different roots forward, and these are the ways in which we may or may not be successful in these [00:26:00] scenarios. So that’s my strategic thinking one. That’s the recipe.

Joel: wow. Okay. And it sounds like that’s a whole lot of of effort and work to do. But if you’re familiar with it if you’ve got the model, if you understand the model before, because obviously you were explaining it as you went along, I would imagine it’s that repetition and it’s that, that muscle movement that you’re able to, move and build pretty quickly through those steps.

It reminds me an awful lot of my mental model of my messaging hierarchy, which, for the very longest time was just how I instinctually did stuff. And it wasn’t until I started to do some reading and some research and philosophy and things like Aristotle’s essence.

I don’t worry too much about the words in the headline, but I wanna understand the thing that I want to talk about and that I want people to take away. ’cause they may not remember the words, but they’ll remember the feeling. And when I put a name to that it became much more handy and [00:27:00] accessible. So what are your hopes and plans for this?

Juan Carlos: Oh yeah. So I just launched on Kickstarter about two weeks ago. The only modality for this right now is the app and the cards. So there’s a card deck. There’ll be inside the deck. There will be a booklet of many of these recipes that I have found through trial and error to be valuable. And one of the things that I’m going to be building into the app is the ability for anyone to make recipes with.

Anything that’s in the application itself. So there’ll be a conduit to be able to do it for yourself and then share it with others. Which that’s one of the biggest things that drives me, is how do we build a community around these frameworks and then be able to share out what works best for us in these different scenarios, right?

So one thing that Munger talks about is this [00:28:00] Lollapalooza effect, where in concert there’s a lattice work of these models that you can use that then create either a more persuasive scenario. Or are more influential, Cialdini’s book Influence, if I’m sure you’re familiar with it. He talks about six different principles for influence.

And so I think about that when I think about these is there’s a lot of, I. Value in how these combine together and create something new, almost like a molecule, right? Where you have different pieces and then they create something that’s more versus just having one model in of itself. You get a good explanation.

It can be helpful, but really the secret sauce from me is how they work in concert and how you’re able to then utilize them in the moment and exactly to your point. It’s all about being able to recall them in those moments when you are probably at the least likely point to [00:29:00] remember them, because they’re usually in heightened moments, right?

I think about this one book, crucial Conversations all the time and it’s the idea of adding to the pool of knowledge versus creating. Stories, right? Stories of like heroes and villains and we’re all storytellers, but when we’re challenging story, when we create challenging stories in our mind, it can be one that really does create a story that can negatively affect the way that you enter a scenario.

And so a lot of the ways in which I think about these is, how do these help me fundamentally take that big step and. Oh, let me recall. This is the board. And I think about it, just, it’s like a board of these are my steps in this moment. I’ve played in this game so many times before, and when I would come to this moment, I would go into the regular cycle and the cycle would take me like, through things that helped, like I’m growing in excitement.

Two things [00:30:00] that might not help. Now I’ve heard something that I dislike and I’m angry. Two. Now I’m saying something out of. Frustration instead of being present and acknowledging now into, I’m on the other side where often we feel some level of shame or challenge. And then you go back through the cycle at least for me, right?

That’s, I’m not explaining everyone’s cycle, but you often, we run through cycles that are nearly self-determined because we don’t relearn or change the way that we run those games. And so for me that’s models, frameworks, helped just take a giant stick and send it into the spoke of the bike that was running that same exact script over and over.

Joel: That’s fantastic. Yeah. You sounds. Like you’ve been talking with my wife, she is a amazing at pointing out the patterns and cycles and things that I do. And she said, if you would just say yes instead of [00:31:00] no, I’m not. We could avoid a 30 minute conversation. ’cause eventually you’re gonna say yes.

Or you’re gonna, you’re gonna acquiesce and every time I’m like, you’re absolutely right. But every time that wheel comes back around. 

Yeah, I’ve downloaded the app and played through it a little bit in the the demo time. But yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna unlock that and definitely have that more to the ready.

Marker

Joel: Hello, this is Joel just breaking in just for a moment. I’m practicing my narrator voice. You wanna know why? It’s because my book is coming out and I am right now recording the audio book. I’m so excited. I’m trying to decide whether it’s more like an NPR, you know. Hi. Welcome to. Be a nerd that talks good.

I’m your host, Joel Benge. Or you know, maybe I’ll just, I’ll lean in and maybe, and you have to let me know. Would you listen to a five hour audio book on being a nerd? That talks good. That sounds like probably not. Anyway, I’m really excited. Thank you so much for Juan Carlos for joining me, but I wanted to bust in here and [00:32:00] share the really great news.

Uh, Be a Nerd That Talks Good. Uh, it’s. Being loaded right now on all of the platforms in, uh, ebook and uh, uh, print form. And you’re gonna be able to get it and pre-order it very soon. So if you wanna be on the list, head over to nerdthattalksgood.com/book.

Sign up for that Book Army so that you will know the moment it goes on presale. It would mean a whole heck of a lot to me. But, uh, let’s get back to, uh, this awesome conversation with Juan Carlos. 

I’d love to talk about maybe a memorable project where some of these approaches came in handy, or maybe when something surprised you when you were going at it with one particular model and something turned you around. ’cause I’m imagining that this is beneficial both personally and even collectively. But there’s probably a difference in how you approach that with the self and with the team. So how would you employ some of these corporately and collectively, or how has that worked for [00:33:00] you in your other capacities?

Juan Carlos: Sure. So I think one of the big things that has occurred for me in the last couple of years are thinking about the models from. From within that problem space, right? So I’m in, I’m within the problem. I am living in this moment. And one challenge that I faced probably about a year and a half ago was around the idea of going from one platform that we were on to another, and then this is our applicant tracking system.

And we wanted to make a transformational change. We wanted to build this out and we did so much mapping. We built out these really intense workflows and had concepts for using AI and automations, and had built out [00:34:00] essentially the ways which we would’ve created a perfect state going from essentially, I think at the time it was about 142 steps to 35, so it would be a giant leap forward for us.

We’re taking out an enormous burden that is currently sustained by the team. And, one of the concepts that I’m consistently go back to is the idea of bottlenecks and constraints. Where are we essentially relieving bottlenecks? Where have we built in constraints into the system? Why are we building certain constraints in the system?

And will we eventually need to alleviate those or change them? So thinking about those and the duality of bottlenecks and constraints, especially when building out a new system is. Ultra important. And so we, the big thing that we did is just a lot of pre-work and then we went into the implementation phase.

And of course when you’re in the imple implementation phase, one of the things you find out is the map is not the territory. And that’s my big one that I think is been primary for me in a lot of these [00:35:00] big implementations. Where, you’re on essentially a six month. Waterfall, which, Lord knows I wanna ever be on a waterfall type of approach to a project.

We’re very much scrum at where I work. But when it comes to implementations you’re, you get stuck footing the bill with these giant waterfall type of projects often, because that’s the way they work. It’s, Hey, we’re gonna build these things, but they’re gonna be done in this format and we’re doing everything before we go live.

So in that scenario. The map is not the territory. It’s fundamental to me to then prime myself in the right ways to know where to go and what to do, because I wanna always go back to the map and say. We said we want this, and this. But you have to be flexible enough to understand, hey, no, now that we’re in here and we’re actually doing the work and we see what’s occurring, things do need to change and things will have to change ultimately.

And so one of the big challenges that we had was during the onboarding workflows which, you essentially go from this applicant that’s in [00:36:00] the new hire. Scenario to now they’ve been hired and we’re onboarding them and there’s, about 25 steps within this one part with a lot of different places where we need to add compliance and document uploads that get verified, et cetera.

And we’ve talked about certain automations and we need to update that because the rule set is one that we can’t necessarily sustain in the same format. That’s where we had to be really flexible on some of those details that we wanted to. Have, be super specific and granular for each of those workflows, and then ultimately say, no we can’t do that.

And we won’t, because it’ll impair us from being able to scale appropriately with the number of applicants we need to come through. ’cause the ultimate goal, like the biggest picture was. We wanna be able to go from hiring, say, a hundred to 300, 400 plus people a month. So high volume recruiting requires some level of flexibility in these, some of these moments, [00:37:00] and that’s what we’ve had to toy with.

And I, the map and the territory we’re functionally different at that specific point.

Joel: That’s a great one. I recently saw a video where someone who was explaining. How our concept of a globe when we flatten out and, Greenland very much in the news right now looks so gigantic just because of the geometry of flattening out a round shape.

But realistically. There are other ways to do that map. And you realize that there’s a lot of different perspectives and it’s, there are choices that we make. So understanding that, there was a need to. Wrap a, a three dimensional shape and flatten it because, it was a lot easier to carry paper around.

That necessitated a choice which, which changed and distorted our perspective for a long time. And I’ll look up for that video. And I’ll drop it in the in the show notes. I always like to use, do a little bit of extra credit for people who wanna look those out. But [00:38:00] it was one of those things that we’re aware of.

But until you see it and until you see it demonstrated, you don’t really understand about those biases. So that’s cool. That’s very fascinating. 

Juan Carlos: This day and agreed a hundred percent to this day. Even if you show me Greenland in that smaller concept, I can’t actually wrap my head around it. It’s like a very weird.

Joel: Yeah.

Juan Carlos: Cognitive dissonance anyway.

Joel: Yeah. And I think that’s the thing is we, there are things that we learn. And, there are many different cultures that maybe have different models, and so they really have a hard time wrapping their head around a new model. Once you’re, 20, 30, 40 years in the brain is set.

So having the opportunity and I call this, breaking people’s brains, just enough so that you can introduce other [00:39:00] concepts is super duper powerful. 

You’ve mentioned some books and I’ll include those in the notes as well, but what, who are right now some of your, people that you’re inspired by, people that are informing even as you’re continuing to do this work people who are doing similar things to yours that you look to.

Juan Carlos: Oh, for sure. There’s a lot of it is on LinkedIn and Instagram, honestly, that, I follow a lot of these influencers like Sahil Bloom, he just came out with the, The Five Types Of Wealth, I believe. And one of the, one of the basic premises of the book is around time wealth. And when you’re young, you have billions of minutes or billions of seconds of time, right?

Whereas now as you get older, you’re not, and would you ever trade places with someone who like say. Warren Buffett, right? Would you wanna trade places that, that’s a billionaire many times over, right? But he doesn’t have much time left. Would you make that trade for maybe a couple [00:40:00] years of life for all the money in the world, basically?

And I think most people would probably say no. Which is interesting because when you think about it, when we think about what we need, we always. Beeline toward money, not time, but reversed, untrue. So Sahil Bloom, he’s great, and I find him to be endlessly fascinating with the way that he posits the world.

Similarly, Shane Parrish, I got into him early listening to the Knowledge Project and I loved it. And I use those models all the time. I actually have all four of his books right behind me. So those are the great mental models. I both listen to them and read them. So love that and use that. Similarly I’m a big fan of Daoism and the Da Ching.

So lasu ranks highly. That’s not necessarily someone that’s influencing on social media these days, but I think permeates culture Ryan Holiday for all of the thoughts around stoicism. [00:41:00] Who would’ve thought that stoicism would have such a heyday right now? But I think it rests legitimately on this guy’s shoulders for why stoicism is important to this many humans in this current state.

So I love that. And there’s, of course, Munger himself, who, I think that’s the godfather of. All of this work and the thinking I should say godfather of codifying this work, not the actual models themselves, which comes from, hundreds of different people who all were building and creating in all these different disciplines.

Daniel Kahneman, of course as someone that you know, thinking fast and slow is the canonical example and then book, et cetera, but love that work so much and so much of what he’s done has changed my perception. Of reality. So those are a few that I can think off the top of my head.

There’s a million more. I love a lot of the folks who do drawings as well, like Janice Oslon, I think [00:42:00] he does Ozo art and he does a lot of these really interesting self-development type of imagery work, simple drawings that are meaningful and help you just cut through the noise really fast.

So folks like that are building in that way, really. It just perks my interest on a daily basis and kind of helps me, do a quick reset. So I like that framing a lot too.

Joel: You’ve given me so many people to chase down some, I’ve heard of many I haven’t. And that’s the purpose of this of this podcast is really to talk with somebody, unpeel their experience and what inspired them and to give people these little rabbit rabbit trails and things to run down.

I’m assuming the answer’s going to be reading. But what do you do outside of this endeavor or your professional time that really energizes you and recharges you? I’m assuming again, reading in, in Instagram, but what surprise us? What I played the didi do not well.

Juan Carlos: That sounds, when you say it like that, [00:43:00] reading an Instagram sounds super lame.

Joel: I know. Oh, that’s why I wanted to, I said is, I’m sure it’s much deeper than this. We’re, you’re very much a student of the human condition and drawing in all these, all this stuff, but surprise us about what we might not know that, that really excites you, not adding you for anything here that’s

Juan Carlos: No. You’re good. You’re good. I am good. So I think a couple things. I live in Joshua Tree, so I live in the desert and I love the desert. And I’ve been here, part of the reason why I came out here was to get a sense of space and a sense of self. And that’s what happened in 2020 and then started writing about these models, but one of the things that really got me is that it feels like an alien landscape here and going on these really long, beautiful hikes helped. Elevate and separate me from the den of noise and to be able to really live into that quiet. My house is essentially right [00:44:00] near a flood area. So the back of my house, you can just walk down this hill and then walk up a mountain, and then you’re in the park you’re in literally Joshua Tree National Park, and there’s this wonderful sense of being able to look at that vast.

Landscape and wonder and then similarly at night stargazing here is so beautiful. It reminds me of when I used to go out to the country in middle school and see the stars. And one of the things that I used to really enjoy doing was taking off my glasses and I can’t see worth anything. I have terrible eyesight and look at the stars and then put them back on and look at the different ways.

I don’t know why I would do this, but it would help me see, this is the way I naturally see things and this is the way I see when I have the right frames on, literally. And I used to love that. So not to tie it back like in a full circle loop, but there’s that piece. So [00:45:00] stargazing hiking in that format.

And then I, in terms of just finding. Myself and sense of self and in the morning so I have kids things go crazy. Soccer, violin, you name it, I, they’re in chess club now. Like you just keep on adding things and like every little thing we’re like doing kickball now too, baseball and like every ball basically that can possibly exist.

So the kids really have taken from the moment that I get outta work to like the evening. Until I get off and then do my stuff from nine to 12, that’s, it’s just all baked in time. And to your point, it that it gets really intense to keep up. So I’m very intentional about mornings. Now, and there’s several processes might not be that interesting, but I basically stopped drinking, maybe once on the weekend.

What are you gonna do? But honestly it’s, the [00:46:00] things that drive me most now are routines. And I love having really solidly built disciplines. One of the things that I do in the morning is I do my weight. And I love doing, weightlifting to be able, not that I’m like giant, obviously you can see me, I’m not like a huge guy.

So this is be about, hey guys. But I love doing that action. And then I do my run, I come inside, I do gratitude journaling in the morning. And it sets intention at the very start of the day in a way that really helps. It’s what are you grateful? What are three things that you’re grateful for, and then what are three things that would make today great?

I write those every single day. I’ve been doing it for just about six months. Honestly. I. And then after that, I do what I’ve been doing for about 10 years, which is meditation. My favorite kind of meditation is Cohen meditation, which is just the idea of there’s the blue ball. You’re saying essentially these [00:47:00] words and they have no meaning, and then they have all the meaning, and then they have no meaning again, and they echo inside your brain and they let you find space there.

The other type of meditation that I love is meta meditation, which I think really. Saved me early on. So that morning routine clears for the rest of the day, and then the rest of the day goes absolute bonkers, haywire, and then the clearing happens again. Oh. And then, I listen to Huberman Huberman lab, and of course he’s like the biggest proponent of cold showers.

Or cold water, the plunge, like ice plunge, bath, whatever. I don’t have one of those, but I do cold showers, and that legitimately has been just a massive help to clearing. So after all that in the morning, that clears and yeah, the day goes. So I don’t know. I find a lot of value and fun, weirdly [00:48:00] enough, in creating like a really solid and specific routine.

Joel: That’s fascinating ’cause it, it almost sounds like you’re building physical and time model. If you’re making yourself that space and you’re going through the same routine, my wife and I just last week traveled for our anniversary and left my son with my parents and we were, away in a different house for a couple days.

And I missed my routine. I missed making my coffee. They don’t have a great coffee maker at my in-laws condo. We had to go out for coffee and it was nice, but by the end of it, I was just like, you know what? I’m glad that tomorrow’s Monday and I will wake up maybe a little bit later than normal. But, we will wake up, have breakfast together in our spot. I’m, I do Wim Hof breathing, and I’m off the cold showers for the winter. I gotta get back into it for the spring. But yeah I agree ha having that sense of familiarity and being able to go back to, okay, even though things are hectic [00:49:00] and crazy, this is an anchor, this is a thing that I can do.

Predictably I think just sums up and ties up why we need things like those mental models while we need something that we’ve rehearsed that we can just grab onto.

How can people keep up with you? Obviously get the app get the cards drop, drop some some link knowledge on us, and I’ll be sure to include that.

But what’s the best way of catching up with what you’re doing right now and staying in, in touch?

Juan Carlos: I’d say get on the newsletter. So my, I’m at readjuancarlos.com. And that website, you can just jump on the newsletter from there. I have a Kickstarter that’s active as of this moment. And even if you catch this later, it’ll still be there for you if you need it. So there is where you can get the deck and the app.

And thankfully we’ve already raised the, we funded it in under 24 hours, but we’re growing the movement and what I [00:50:00] like to think about it is. I want to be able to grow this into a legitimate movement. I wanna help a hundred thousand people think clearly. Definitely jump on the website, get on the newsletter, pick up a deck and app.

That would be lovely. And then if you want, and are into social I’m on these as at ReadJuanCarlos, both on LinkedIn and on Instagram and I barely do TikTok, but it’s there if you happen to be there.

Joel: If TikTok is there in a couple weeks. Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, this has been an absolute pleasure. I’m really excited. I will I’ve played around with the with the app. I’m gonna run out and grab the cards. And I cannot wait to get them in my hands ’cause I’m already thinking of ways to incorporate some of these models, even within some of my workshops. And that’ll expose you to some other people too. So this has been a real pleasure. And thank you for joining today.

Juan Carlos: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It.

Joel: if you want links to [00:51:00] the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.

 Remember, you don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.