The Path to Focused Success and Overcoming Shiny Object Syndrome with Dr. Robert Glover

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com
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00:52 Igor Kheifets

Welcome back to The ListBuilding Lifestyle, I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting none other than Dr Robert Glover. Now, Dr Robert Glover wrote the book No More, Mr. Nice Guy, and it’s a book I keep recommending to people, and at this point, I lost count just how many times I’ve recommended it, and it had a tremendous impact on my life, because I’m a classic case of the nice guy. And if you don’t know what that means, I highly suggest you read the book, but if you do, then you know, you kind of understand that it’s somebody who always tries to please and has these covered contracts with people, and it’s speaking their mind and just, you know, living life the way they want to live it, and that, I mean, that was the big part of the journey that I made as a result of starting my own business and kind of becoming my own man.

01:50

So, that is why I’m really pumped to host Dr Robert on the show. But, we’re not going to focus too much on The Nice Guy Syndrome today, today, I want to pick his brain about something else, something that’s a big problem, I think, in the industry of making money online, or in the industry of the online entrepreneur, and that is The Shiny Object Syndrome. And I feel that we can have some really cool insights today about this issue. So, Dr Robert, welcome to The ListBuilding Lifestyle.

02:28 The guest, Robert Glover

Igor, Thank you. It’s going to be fun!

02:30 Igor Kheifets

Indeed, So, The Shiny Object Syndrome, I define it as someone buying a course or a program or a book or starting something and then getting involved in it very quickly, finding it difficult, challenging, boring, uncomfortable in some way! And then their attention switches over to something else, which they end up getting, the next shiny thing. And it’s actually, I not only see it with, like online courses and different business ventures, but also I see it, like my kids, right? They’ll play a video game, as soon as they hit a challenge, bam! They switch to a different game, or they have a toy, they play with it for two minutes, and then they want the next one. So, I see it everywhere now, and I’m wondering whether you see it, and if you do, then what’s your take on it?

03:30 The guest, Robert Glover

Alright? Yeah, of course, that’s the world we live in! We live in a commercialized world that just keeps introducing us to the next shiny thing. Our economies depend on us getting distracted by shiny things, especially if it involves buying stuff. So, of course, this is real.

03:50

Now, I’ve got at least three different tracks we can take to this, that I think we’ll probably take all three and bring them all back together into one, because probably (The shiny multiverse) Yeah, exactly! So, we have three things to choose from in our shiny universe right here in front of us, but hopefully we have enough mindset to bring them all together into one, because we do want to probably end up with talking about, what do we do, right? How do we break out of that pattern?

04:20

So, yeah! So, some different ways of looking at it, and we’ll keep ADHD to the very end. So, we are bombarded with shiny stimuli. And I don’t know how old you are, but I know Millennials, Gen X, have grown up just flooded with information. My son is 39 and I remember when he was probably 12, 13, we got broadband internet, and he spent all of his time on the computer, basically stealing music on Napster and looking at porn. Because, you could, right? There was so much to do, and that was back before there was very much on the internet, and that was before social media really was the dominant force that it is.

05:11

So, we live in a time where we have technologies to present us with non-stop stuff, whether it’s information, whether it’s entertainment, whether it’s things that we can buy, try, do! we, I mean, again, we just live in that kind of environment, and the environment is built, I mean, if you look, just watch social media, watch Netflix, watch football games on television. They’re all rapid movements, they’re all built to just keep flashing. Because, what we’ve kind of found with people now is that if you give them too much time, they get bored and they want more stimulus. So, we really are in an economy, in a marketplace, in a world that gives us that constant stimulus of more.

06:10

And so, they do it because it works. We are easily distracted. So, let’s kind of back up a little bit and look at where you and I sit, 2025 you have a brand new year here. If we went back a 100 years, our grandfather, great grandfather time. If we were born in that time, we wouldn’t have had the technology, we wouldn’t have had the distractions, wouldn’t have had telephone, of course, wouldn’t have had television, and we would have just gotten up every day and done what needed to be done! You know, we would have gone out with our father, maybe our grandfather, uncles, cousins, and we would have gathered eggs, we would have milked the cow, we would have gone and worked in the farm, move some rocks, you know, filled some, you know, believe it or not, farmers had to move a lot of rocks back in the day!

07:08 Igor Kheifets

Oh, I believe it man!

07:09 The guest, Robert Glover

You know, a lot of rock moving! So, the next shiny thing was the next rock that you have to move! The next furrow you need to plow into it. So, there was just not that much going on! But, even more than that, is that we had a source of an initiation. We were raised by men, by our fathers, by uncles and cousins. Sure, we were raised by women for the first few years of life, but then we got to the point where dad said, “Hey, time to put the boy to work, you can carry some eggs in, from the hen house”. And so, from there on, we were in the world of men.

07:48

Now, if you go back about 10,000 years prior to our agrarian society, farming, where we grew stuff, plants, animals and kind of stayed in one place, and go back to our tribal society time, that we’d lived in for about a million and a half years, the masculine initiation was very definite there, in that the men, the masterful men, took the boys out at about 8, 10, 12 years old, put them through a ritual that was life threatening, that taught them how to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable, that taught them the skills they needed to survive as a man, individually and as part of a tribe. And then once they’d finished that initiation, I mean, think of like the movie 300 when the boys in the cave with this spear and the wild animal there might have been a vision quest, might have been tying him down to, you know, a red ant hill. It might have been a sun dance, where you have the hooks in your chest and you’re staring at the sun for three days. But, it very definitely got us comfortable feeling uncomfortable, and it got us to where we could take masterful, powerful action and get things done! Would that mean be a hunter, a gatherer, a warrior? Those were the skill sets we needed, and we were taught those things at a very young age by masterful men.

09:03

All right, come back forward again, back to modern times. Now again, a couple of things have changed. One, we don’t tend to have our dads taking us out and teaching us how to hunt, how to gather, how to fight, teaching us skill sets, we don’t have any men teaching us the skill sets we need, other than how to build a click funnel and market our product. (Yeah!) We do get that kind of initiation. Okay, so now we don’t have that initiation into what I call the masterful masculine to where we are comfortable feeling uncomfortable, where we know how to get something done, where we can be persistent, where we can see it through to the end, where we can not only start it, but we can finish it, right? Those skill sets have not been taught to us. And as a result, most men, you know, even my generation, Gen X, but especially Millennials, and especially Gen Z, I say often, they’re living in the nursery where everything gets pushed to them. They get their Netflix pushed to them. They get their social media pushed to them. They get everything on the internet that’s easy to buy pushed to them. They get information pushed to them. They get their meals pushed to them through Uber Eats. They get video games pushed to them. And, you know, a young man can spend a lot of his time smoking dope, playing video games, jerking off to porn on the internet and ordering his food on Uber and never really has to go be challenged in any way!

10:34

So, I think one thing we’re dealing with is just a crisis of boys not being initiated into the world of masterful masculinity by masterful men, being raised by women, you know, our mothers were our first caregivers. We probably got put into daycare. We went to preschool. Our first teachers were women. And I’m not blaming women for this! This is a pretty natural progression. Even in second grade, how old are your kids? You mentioned your kids (six and 12) Okay! so, you’re six years old and 12 years old, boys or girls? (Girl and a boy) Which one’s a boy? (The six year old) The six year old, okay? So, he’s in first grade? (Kind of pre-first grade, I think). Okay, all right! Well, let’s imagine it probably for the next six years, he’s primarily going to have female teachers in the school system.

11:24 Igor Kheifets

And what’s worse is he also has predominantly female, like, classmates. (Okay) I think right now he’s got only one other boy (Wow) And 10 other girls.

11:38 The guest, Robert Glover

Wow! Okay, and so the school system, again, this is not to place blame on anybody. It’s just how things have evolved! The school systems are pretty much built to educate girls, girls that can sit still, pay attention, get approval by answering questions, not built for boys who like to move around, be active, disrupt things, run, jump, hit people! School systems just aren’t built for boys, and they’re primarily going to have female teachers, which means, for your son to successfully navigate pre first to first, first to second, second to third grade, he not only has to learn his reading, writing and arithmetic, but hopefully how to please a woman, who basically holds His future well-being in her hands. So, he’s got to learn to do that with really, probably no real direction of how to please a woman! You and I are still trying to figure that one out, “How do you please a woman?”

But, you know, he’s got to at least try. So, that means he’s going to grow up with a primary focus of life is trying to please the feminine. Don’t piss off the woman, don’t piss off Mom, don’t piss off the teacher. Try to do . . in order to survive! And so, since that’s really an impossibility to do that, guess what he’ll probably do? He’ll probably fall in line with a lot of young men and just keep consuming information, getting stuff pushed to him. And so, that’s kind of the world we live in!

13:03

Now, here’s the thing, your generation, Millennials, Gen Z, your son, are the best informed people in the world! You have constant information being pushed to. So, here’s a second thing that is happening with The Shiny Object Syndrome: One, is we’ve not been initiated into the masterful masculine, that teaches us how to get things done and how to do them well and how to see them through! In terms of our survival, depending on it. Now, we can survive without any real skill sets, and, you know, playing World of Warcraft really probably isn’t a skill set that gets you, you know, helps you survive in life. But, here’s the second part of this. We are bombarded with just information and with stimulus! And, I hang out, I mean, I’m around young men, I said, my son’s 39, my granddaughter is 18. So, I’m around younger people, both in work, life and you guys are the most informed people that ever walked the planet! My son is a walking encyclopedia! I mean, he grew up on Animal Planet, on Discovery Channel, Shark Week. He’s got a master’s degree in wildlife ecology. And the guy, I can ask him any question, and he can talk intelligently about almost any subject! And, a lot of young men are like that! I know a lot of young men that are just full of valuable, accurate information!

14:28

But, here’s another problem we run into. It’s easy to consume information, right? No working bone, no real challenge, no fears to face, nothing that you got to go put yourself on the line for. So, it’s easy to consume information! I mean, it flows. It’s interesting to consume information. But, the problem is, it is so easy, and there’s always more, right? There’s a shot, well, there’s another podcast I can watch, there’s another audio book I can listen to, there’s another seminar I can sign up for, there’s another class I can take! It’s easy, right? It just flows to us! And, one of the things I tell a lot of people I work with is that you probably already have enough information to change your life. If you put it into practice, you can already go do significant things with just the information you have. You could probably go another 10 years without new information and live a kick ass life! You’ve got enough, you’ve consumed enough!

15:24

But the problem is, the doing of stuff is challenging! It’s difficult, it’s frightening, even! . Because, if I launch, you know, into a new endeavor that I’ve never done before, I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I’m going to Japan in March, I’ve never been! I’ve been invited to go. My way is being paid, I just have to go be a speaker to a group of entrepreneurs that are taking a ski trip to Japan. And, you know, my wife keeps asking me, “Are you excited? I’m really proud of you, you’re going to go do this thing! You got invited to go to Japan”. And I said, “Yeah, I’m excited, and I’m scared because I’ve never done it before”. Now, it’s not even on me, I don’t even have to arrange it, my flight’s already been booked, and everything else will be taken care of, I just have to show up and do something, you know, I have to give wisdom to entrepreneurs, probably about relationships or shiny things! So, I have to sit in the hot tub up in the mountains and say, “Yeah, let’s talk about how we can do better at putting all our information into practice”.

But because it’s new, I’ve never gone to Japan, and who is this group of people? I just know the person organizing it! Is outside my comfort zone. And and, you know, believe it or not, there’s even a part of me that says, “Well, I don’t know, should I go to Japan? I could just stay home and do what feels familiar to me”. And that’s the constant tug that we all have, just keep doing what feels familiar, or go do this thing that’s outside of our comfort zone, especially if we’ve never done it before, especially if there’s some kind of risk involved with it, like Failure, embarrassment, loss of money, loss of, you know, status, things. So, whether it’s talking to a pretty woman, where there’s this risk, you don’t know that’s going to happen, whether it’s launching your own business, whether it’s you’re taking a solo trip by yourself, whatever it is, Those things are scary! And because we’ve not had the masculine initiation into doing scary things, we just get up again another day and do the thing that comes easy, and that is for most of us, consume information!

17:30

So, there’s at least to think a couple of tracks, and I’ll stop for a minute, because I got one more track to go, the third track, before we pull these back together. So, is that making sense? One, we’re bombarded with tons of information. There’s always more information we can go find. Two, we’ve not been initiated, basically how to take that information and use it masterfully through action.

17:52 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, let me try and sum up what we’ve talked about so far, just to kind of recap, as a checkpoint. So, the first point you made is that we no longer live in a world where young boys get initiated. And you also, in your book, you mentioned another book called Iron John, (Oh, yeah) Where they go in depth into that topic, I kind of read half of it before I got tired of it, you know, I got the point. Just like you mentioned the movie 300, which is most of it, is fiction, kind of loosely based in the real world, but yeah, the Spartans did have a tradition, rite of passage, if you will, where they would take a 12 year old boy, take him away from his mother, and the mother would actually have to put on a Big Show, you know, with lots of tears and agony.

18:43 The guest, Robert Glover

Oh, No! Don’t take my boy, my baby!

18:46 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, and they would, you know, take him out, either to the woods or somewhere, to go fight an animal of some sort, and come back with a trophy. So, that would, essentially, this is what would turn him into a man! And, you know, I’m Jewish,

19:03 The guest, Robert Glover

And I’ll say, and the rest of the tribe would know that as well! His mother would know it, the tribe would know it, the girls, the young women, would know this guy is a man now!

19:13 Igor Kheifets

Interesting, yeah, I didn’t consider that one! So, that rite of passage is important, because it signifies transition from boyhood to manhood (exactly!) Where shit gets real, right?

19:26 The guest, Robert Glover

Yeah, and you’re gonna say as a Jewish person, you’ve got the same rituals and girls, right?

19:32 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, we don’t kill anyone or anything, unfortunately! I’d love the experience, but we do go through like, a traditional set of, I guess -what do you call them?- Like a ritual, right? (Ritual, right) It’s a ritual! And so, you know, I didn’t recognize the value of it, until much later in my life, of why that is actually important! Now, the second thing you mentioned Is, of course, information overload, as well as easy access and a constant flow of information, entertainment, food and anything else to consume! Basically, we’re being constantly fed lots of information we can consume, and consumption itself becomes a habit, and consumption itself becomes almost like an escape mechanism from actually going and living our lives! (good way, good point) Because, we can always go and watch the next video, listen to the next podcast, read the next book, and actually have a really good friend of my really close friend, who I’m trying to set on a path to go do stuff, and I had him read your book, but before I had to read your book, I pointed it out to him, I said, “Okay, so, this is your goal, you know, So, what do you need to go and do in order to achieve it?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna go watch this course, I’m gonna go read that thing”. No! That’s more information, dude!

21:00 The guest, Robert Glover

If it’s my course, tell him to go do it. That’s okay! You have enough information. But, you know, but okay, but do my course, finish the course first. Well, you know, let me just tell you a quick, interesting side note about No More Mr. Nice Guy. It took me about six to seven years to write the book. And, I thought I’d pretty much had it complete, and I sent it off to a professional editor, and he got back to me with some really valuable insights, and the three most valuable things, which is: Number one, you’re about halfway done! I thought, “Oh no, I thought it was done”. He said, “ there’s way too much information, way too many illustrations. People don’t need to know everything you know to get better!” So, it would have been that thick, now, it’s only that thick! So, there’s one thing, it got edited down.

21:48

Another thing, he said, Well, you’re telling people what not to be, Don’t be a nice guy! But you’re not telling them what they are going to be. And I thought, “Oh, okay!” And, that’s where I came up with the integrated man image, that okay, what does it mean to be integrated, to not be that passively pleasing nice guy.

But, the third thing that he told me, that I think is huge, is he says, “Okay, you’ve told everybody, you know what? Here’s what a nice guy syndrome looks like. Here’s what not to do, but you have to tell them what to do to get better”. And I go, “I’m a therapist. Therapists don’t tell people what to do!” He goes, “This self help book, You need to tell people what to do!”

22:24

So, No More Mr. Nice Guy has like something like 50, 56, I don’t remember breaking free activities in it, of things to actually go do. So, hopefully your friend, as he reads the book or reads the book, begins to start doing those breaking free activities. The things to do, to integrate the information into action, into real life, because that’s crucial!

22:49 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, and he did. He read the book, and he immediately made a few phone calls, got honest with a few people within his life, including his boss. Because, he was in the situation where he’s really good at what he does for work, but he wanted to start his own business for a long time, and briefly had his own business quite successful for some period of time. Then, the industry changed and kind of lost focus. So, in this case, you know, this work that he did, he kind of did it because he felt obligated to. And he kind of felt uncomfortable being honest with his boss about not wanting to do the work anymore! And he dragged it for a couple years. And so, after reading the book, or half of it, I think, you know, he actually called him and he said, “Look, I’ve just, you know, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m going to give you 90 days or four months, and I’m going to walk!”

23:51 The guest, Robert Glover

So powerful! That’s amazing! This is a success story, right there.

23:54 Igor Kheifets

Very good, yeah, like it’s so cool to see him step into his own power like that! Because, he’s naturally a very accommodating and very people-pleasing kind of guy. So, it’s definitely a pattern and a habit. So, doing something like this is way outside this comfort zone. And when he told me, I felt so excited for him

24:17 The guest, Robert Glover

And I bet he felt both liberated and terrified, all the same time! Which is great, as I say, and I think I say this in No More Mr. Nice Guy, when you feel a little bit anxious and a little bit excited or a lot anxious a lot excited, you’re probably on the right track! When those two things combine, like me going to Japan, I’m excited and anxious. Good! That means I’ve gotten out of my comfort zone, and things are going to get interesting.

24:44 Igor Kheifets

Yeah! So, two out of three, we’re not getting initiated into the rite of passage to go from boyhood to manhood. And two, we have a non stop incoming flow of information. So, it kind of takes over our attention span.

25:04 The guest, Robert Glover

Yeah! And the third one, hey, we’re done. Well, haven’t we? We’ve stayed with all three! So, the third one, I’ll just throw out is ADHD, they used to call it ADD. So, you know, they keep you revising what they call it. And, I know that’s a hot topic in culture. You have a young son, and maybe that issue even comes up around your son. And, I know when it comes to the subject of ADHD, a lot of people’s response is, we’re over medicating little boys and little girls now, a lot, as well. Which is true, as already said, we don’t have school systems that are built for active children. How many they’re very passive, sit still, you know, kind of children? Yeah, you can pour stuff into them, you know, and educate them! But again, boys learn best through activity, going out and doing something and learning from the experience of doing it. And there’s not a lot of that in school systems.

25:59

So, we do then take these boys that don’t do well sitting still. And I just give an example, my stepson, when he was in sixth grade, he was six foot two, he was already over six foot tall at 12 years old, okay? And (I’m not even six feet tall) I’m just barely six feet tall! And so, at 12, I said my son and stepson were six months apart, and they both grew and they’re both six foot tall, And at 12, they’re playing Little League Baseball, they were taller than the umpires and coaches on their team. But, look at the situation, here’s my stepson, he’s in school, and I don’t know if you’ve sat in these kinds of desks, but there, there’s a classroom desk with a chair and then, like a little desk, that kind of wraps around you. He couldn’t fit in any of those. It’d be like, you know, if you went to your son’s pre-one and tried to sit in little chairs they sit in, and you had to sit in that chair all day long. How much would you learn? And so, we went to the school, we said, “you know, my stepson, My son needs a chair that fits him. He’s over six foot tall! These chairs don’t fit him”. They go, “We don’t have any other chairs. We can’t accommodate him. He has to make do with what we’ve got”. Wow! You know, if you’re uncomfortable sitting all day long, how much are you going to learn? I mean, I used to be a minister for years and years in a previous lifetime, and I never, I grew up listening to long sermons. Maybe you grew up listening to pretty long sermons as well, I don’t know if Jews keep it short or not.

27:29 Igor Kheifets

I actually went to religious Jewish school for some time, and I sat through

27:33

You sat through! Well! I never understood why preachers had to preach so long, because a term that I learned as a preacher was, the mind can only absorb as much as the but can endure. So, if you were sitting a long time and uncomfortable, even like doing this work -I have another interview lined up this afternoon, I have two calls with my financial advisor, with the guys help me plan a program, with my YouTube team, all of that through the rest of this day- I already know I’m going to be really wiped out at the end of the day, mainly from sitting so much so, you know some of those calls I’ll get up at my stand up desk. We need to be able to move, okay!

28:15

But, here we got this thing, that I’ve learned working with men, that this ADHD thing is real! When I started recognizing the tendencies in men that signaled possibly ADHD, procrastination is a big one! not finishing what you start, that Shiny Object Syndrome, squirrel, Easily Distracted syndrome, working twice as hard as everyone else to get half as much done, doing deep dives into things, until, as you said, either you hit that challenging point and you go do something else, or even going all the way into the challenge is a deep dive, but you tune out everything else until you master that thing, and then you’re bored, and you look around, okay! What’s the next thing to do?

Now, it is a real dynamic. I don’t think it’s a disorder. I mean, it’s got a terrible name to even call it a disorder. And I do believe we over medicate young boys in the school system. I think we do a better job helping young boys. And I do believe that ADHD is real, and paradoxically, scientists, doctors still don’t know why. If you give somebody that shows the symptomatology of ADHD stimulants, they actually get more focused, they actually get calmer, and they actually follow through on stuff!

Now, if you give the average person stimulants, we can pay closer attention for a short amount of time. But, if you give us too much stimulants, you meet too many stimulants. I’m like this, I’m on the ceiling, I can’t get anything done. You give somebody with ADHD the same amount of stimulants, they’re focused, they’re productive, they start things, they finish things, they follow through, and they actually feel better about themselves! Because they go, “Wait a minute! I just thought I was lazy or stupid all this time, because I was in trouble, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t remember stuff, I couldn’t follow through, I procrastinated . . “ And we don’t know why, the theories as to why stimulants help people focus.

30:16

Now, when I am working with a man, and I see certain signs, whether it’s distractibility, can’t like, finish a complete sentence, bounces from topic to topic. I’ve got some clients that if they don’t vape the entire session we’re talking, they can’t carry on a coherent conversation for 50 minutes! That is because it’s a stimulant, it helps them stay focused. And I think a lot of men go towards stimulants. In fact, I’ll even, when I talk with men about ADHD, they go, “I don’t want to be given a drug for, you know, something” You know. I go, how much coffee do you drink? Soda Do you drink? You know, when I was a youth minister years ago, the kids were all walking around with, you know, Candy suckers, hard suckers and Mountain Dew, because Mountain Dew had more caffeine than any other soft drink. Nowadays, they have drinks you get, they’re just loaded, or how many Red Bulls Do you drink? How much coffee do you drink? Do you smoke? Do you chew? Do you vape? All of those are guys finding their own stimulant transport systems, to unconsciously deal with their ADHD. Because it helps them focus, actually calm down and settle when they’re on a stimulant.

31:26

So, a lot of men who say, “Don’t give me a drug, don’t give me a pharmaceutical”, are actually out there self medicating with stimulants. Again, there’s no judgment of that! They’ve actually unconsciously found something that helps them focus. And I found that a lot of men I work with, I can’t prescribe drugs, and I don’t even necessarily encourage the drugs. There are a lot of ways that men can start addressing their ADHD, but the first is just to acknowledge, “You know what, I’m easily distracted!” And it’s not that you can’t pay attention! It’s not that you’re stupid! I work with a lot of highly intelligent men with ADHD, who do work twice as hard to get half as much done, but are still very successful, and many just find ways to manage that.

My cousin, he’s a medical doctor, his name is Danny Glover, believe it or not, he’s down in Tennessee and he’s a doctor, and he started a program in the local schools for boys with ADHD, but he’s as ADHD as anybody I know! When I travel with him, I don’t let him have the keys to anything, the car, the hotel, anything! He’ll lose it. And he’s got like, a 60 acre farm. And I visited him a number of times, and I’ll tell him, “Dandy, your garage is the most beautifully organized garage of anybody I’ve ever seen, for somebody with ADHD, that amazes me”. He goes, “Oh, I learned a long time ago, If I just put the wrench down on the tractor fender out in the field, I’ll never see it again! I know, I’ve got to put everything in its place”. I’m another good friend who carries a man bag everywhere. And in that man bag, the cell goes in the same slot, every time! The keys go in the same slot, the wallet goes in the same slot. A lot of people with ADHD, you just learn to manage it. So there are management skills.

33:08

Now, here’s the thing, let’s go back to tribal times again, I think ADHD in the correct environment is an asset, because we go back to a tribe, if you know, right now in America, the US NFL football playoffs are underway. So, I’ve been watching a few football games this week and watching the football team. You got your offense and defense, you got linemen, you got receivers, you got running backs, yet quarterbacks, you got cornerbacks, you got safety, you got linebackers! Everybody plays a different role, to which they are extremely well suited, right? You probably don’t want to have guys that are better playing linemen, playing safety for you, and you probably don’t want your receivers blocking 300 pound defensive linemen. Everybody is slotted into bringing their best talent, whether it’s their physical size, their speed, their strength, their intelligence, to playing a role that best serves them, but more importantly, best serves the team! Right? Because, if you have any weak spot on that team, whether it’s basketball, football -as they call it here, soccer as they call it in America- It doesn’t matter what the team sport is, everybody is slotted into where they can play their best role. Now, if that gets out of whack, or if you don’t have people that play that best role, you don’t make it in the playoffs, you’ve got to have people to do it well.

34:33

So, I think, people, men with ADHD, as we call it now, probably played a really important role in tribal times. Because, can you imagine, what if everybody in the tribe did the exact same thing equally well? What if everybody was the best at throwing a rock and, you know, hitting an animal and killing it? That’d be great! But, you might miss out on other important things, like organizational skills or, looking, you know, Where are those animals at?

So, I think having some men, from an evolutionary point of view, in the tribe, that were easily distracted, where the next shiny thing actually paid off, maybe they noticed the clouds changing, maybe they noticed the direction of the wind had just changed, maybe they noticed the rustling in the leaves over there, maybe they noticed a broken twig on the ground, stuff that people like me might not notice because I’m just so focused! Just give me the next thing to do, and I’ll get it done. Right? I’m pretty good at that! But, I actually need people that have a broader view of things, that see a bigger picture, that are more creative now, maybe they’re easily distracted, and maybe they’re going to . . and I have people on my team, my tech guy has severe ADHD, and, you know, my job as a manager is to use his assets, but also keep him reined in, to where his ADHD doesn’t just lead him astray, and he never gets any work done for me, because that could happen. It has happened! But that’s on me, I have to use the skills of somebody that is somewhat easily distractible, loves doing the deep dive, and is distracted by a shiny thing, because that shiny thing might be the next thing that helps my business grow, right? But I have to reign him back in. So, right now, we’ve got the shiny thing, let’s implement it.

36:25

And then I have another person over here that’s got an MBA in finance, who’s just good at creating the spreadsheets, the plans, how we’re going to implement it, following up, he’s just good at that! I’m good with the vision and pulling a lot of pieces together, saying, “We could do it like this”. And I have another guy that says, “I know how to make that happen”, and I have another guy that says, ‘here and I can assist you in the technology of it, but I’ll get distracted easily!” So, it’s a team effort!

36:52

So, if a person does indeed seem, if they think maybe they have ADHD, or were diagnosed as a kid with ADHD, or their father, brother were diagnosed with ADHD, or they do use a lot of stimulants, or they do get easily distracted, you know, or maybe were impulsive when they were a kid, research this because, again, we don’t just have to go on medication to deal with it. We can use it as an asset, if we get it channeled correctly.

37:21

I had a client years ago, who one of the guys had to vape . . he actually came to my home for a session one time. We had been working on Zoom, because he was in South Africa when I started working with him. I’m in Mexico! So, he came to Mexico, came to a session at my house, and he was sitting on my couch right over here, and he’s like, he couldn’t finish the sentence! And I’m going, “Well, this guy can’t stay on track to save his life!” And about halfway through the session, he said, “Oh, “I decided to cut back my Adderall, yesterday. -Adderall is ADD, ADHD medicine- And he goes, “I cut it back by 50%”, I go, “why?” “I just wanted to try to see if I can get myself off it’, I said, “Next time, you have a session, take your medication first, so we can actually get something done!” From then on, he said he was vaping the entire time, but he told me, his father is a billionaire, a highly successful entrepreneur, and he says his dad has worse ADHD than he does! But, his father has surrounded himself with accountants, attorneys, MBAs, people that can follow through and get things done! He’s good at getting this great big picture, but he can’t follow it. So, he has somebody that helps him with it.

38:39

So, this ADHD thing I believe is real, I believe there are tools we can use to help it doesn’t drive the bus to where it’s constantly distracting us, whether it is stimulants, pharmaceutical or otherwise, whether it is creating rituals where, like, you put your keys in the same dish by the door every time you come home, you know, you put your cell phone down in the same place every time, you don’t just lay it! So, we can learn to do some of that, but also maybe honor this fact that we are easily distracted, we do go for the next shiny thing, and can we build systems? Can we find people and systems to help us follow through on those probably great ideas, or, you know, flashes of genius that we do have from time to time? Maybe all the time! So, there’s a third piece in this thing, around The Shiny Object Syndrome. It’s a natural part of ADHD, and I think probably a good part of it! If we can use it as an asset, not as a disability!

39:45 Igor Kheifets

Right! So, the non-stop flow of information, the lack of initiation from boyhood to manhood, and now also ADHD, although it’s hard to, I guess it’s hard to gage out of 100% of anyone who suffers with China objects in there, how much of it

40:06 The guest, Robert Glover

What? Right! Yeah, 33% it’s probably 80, 27, you know, something like that! (Yeah) Who knows?!

40:15 Igor Kheifets

So, let’s assume that aged ADHD is a part of it, not the main part of it.

40:20 The guest, Robert Glover

Well, it could be a huge part of it (Very easy) And that’s actually where I would start, I would start, if I seem to be easily distracted, procrastinate, can’t follow through, you know, kind of do the next shiny thing! I would start with looking at the ADHD thing. Because, if you can rule it in, or rule it out, the other stuff, then, you know, you go to work on the other stuff. But, if you go to work on the other stuff, but you haven’t dealt with it, is it ADHD! You might tell yourself, “I’m not going to look at, you know, anything on the internet, you know, only for 30 minutes every day. I’m going to create this boundary. I’m going to take everything off my phone”. You can do all that stuff! But, if you have ADHD, you’re still not going to be dealing with “how do I get things started? How do I follow through? How do I stay on track?” So, I’d be where I’d start, actually!

41:10 Igor Kheifets

Okay! So, I don’t want the episode to become all about ADHD, to be honest! Because I’m afraid to give some advice and that will hold me somehow legally, like

41:21 The guest, Robert Glover

Laws we don’t, as long as we don’t prescribe any medicine or tell people, you need to go take this medicine . .

41:27 Igor Kheifets

Okay! So, not talking about medicine! So, where would one start? Just an average person struggles with Shiny Object Syndrome, tries to start several businesses every time, gets distracted! And most importantly, you keep saying, and I think that’s, you know, huge. And as things don’t finish them, (Yeah) I think that’s!

41:47 The guest, Robert Glover

Or don’t start things! Procrastination is huge there too! (Okay) So, because procrastination is actually just a bunch of little shiny things after another, right? That is easy to follow, so we don’t follow that big thing, like calling your boss and saying, “I don’t like my job”, right? You could find a million shiny things that are easier to do than call your boss. So procrastination, it’s often a lot of shiny things, small shiny things, that we’re following!

42:15

So, here’s what I’d suggest: go to the internet and get more information, if you think you might have ADHD, believe it or not! Here’s what would happen if you went to your medical doctor and went to a specialist, whether a psychiatrist or neurologist or just your general doctor, to ask them, “I think I might have ADHD!” Or if your son, you think might have ADHD, what the doctor is going to do, is just ask you a few questions. Those exact same questions are on online tests, on the internet. So, just google “Adult ADHD”, and a bunch of tests will come up, take two or three, no more! Don’t go take 12 of them! You don’t need to! One, probably enough, but because most people don’t believe it, that they might have ADHD, because they don’t want to believe they have ADHD! And take two maybe, or take a third one, but no more! And if you

43:13 Igor Kheifets

But if you end up taking all 12, you probably do have ADHD.

43:18 The guest, Robert Glover

You know what? Whenever I talk about this in the past, like with my clients, like when I had private practice -Was that espresso you just drink? (Yes) that’s your morning ADHD!-

43:31 Igor Kheifets

I know, I seriously, you mentioned this thing where you said, people who’ve got ADHD, are more focused and can complete things when they’re on, like a bunch of steam on stimulus. (Yeah, I have two for everybody actually) I have like five or six espressos a day (Oh my!) And, in addition, I drink Coke Zero, which has caffeine in it (Oh my!) So, I’m probably gonna take the ADHD test!

43:59 The guest, Robert Glover

Go online and take a test, if you told me at the beginning of the call, we would have gone right in this direction, because that’s what, again, that’s what I do! I’d ask guys, how much caffeine do you take in a day? How about stimulants? And if they’re drinking five espressos a day! -One is a double espresso, gets me wound up, right?- Five espressos, add some coke to it! Oh my goodness! Coca Cola.

44:22 Igor Kheifets

I can have an espresso (And go to sleep by bed) Yes, and go and sleep like a baby

44:27 The guest, Robert Glover

When guys tell me that, I go, “Go take the test!” When they say it helps me sleep, “Go take the test!” Because, it shouldn’t help you sleep unless you have ADHD! (okay) And again, I hope you can hear, there’s no judgment in this. I know there’s a lot of judgment culturally around things like that, believe me, I have no judgment, I think it’s an asset! And my only question is, how do we work with it, not, you know, work against us! So, go online, take one of those online tests, and if, like, one or two or three of them say there’s a likelihood, or high likelihood, that you might have ADHD, then maybe do some more research. I mean, because there’s a lot of good information out there, that might give you suggestions for ways to start managing it with behavioral things. I said, “I don’t tell people, “Oh, you should quit drinking all those espressos!” What I do say is that, it can be helpful to have a measured dose of your stimulants to where it’s easier to manage! Now, I won’t prescribe, I can’t suggest a medication to do that! But, if managed measured doses make things easier to manage -Because, I know it’s easy to start just kind of overdoing it, and until all of a sudden, you know, we’re so wound up, but we’re not, you know, we’re not getting anything done, not sleeping, we’re agitated! We’re barking orders at people! People don’t want to be around us!_ So, take those exams, because they’re the same questions a doctor would ask you. Now, here’s what a doctor would do if you walked into his office, and he said, “Yeah, it looks like you might have ADHD” Based on the same questions you could get off those internet questionnaires, Is, you know, in cooking, they talk about, you know, throwing the pasta against the wall. You throw it against the wall to see if it sticks. If it sticks, it’s not ready yet, it slides down the wall, pasta is ready to eat! The shrink, the doctor is going to do the same thing! They’re probably going to say, “Let’s start you out on a time release Adderall -with children, I’m not sure exactly why, but they usually use Ritalin, adults, they often use Adderall, and there’s newer medications as well now, because stimulants are addictive, and so, they might even have you cycle on or off, is why they usually put you on time release, is it diminishes the tendency towards getting tolerance or addiction towards the stimulant- And so the doctors say, “Try this many milligrams of this time release Adderall, they might have you do it just Monday through Friday, they might have you do it seven days a week, every doctor is different! And then, come back in X amount of weeks, and we’re going to see how you’re doing! And if you come back and say, “I’m doing fantastic from day one, I’m getting work done, I’m more productive, I’m more focused, life’s amazing!” The doctor would say, “Great! We seem to be on the right track”, And the doctor might leave it where it is, but he might up it, just a little bit. And what the doctor is going to try to do is find a sweet spot where there’s enough stimulant to activate you in a positive way, but not so much stimulant that you get agitated, angry, can’t sleep, can’t calm down,! And so, once they hit that upper level, they back you down, okay? So, they’re looking, again, it’s just throwing the pasta against the wall to see, is there a sweet spot, and does a certain medication work better for you than another one?

47:50

Now, some men, you know, get on the pharmaceuticals, and they absolutely love it! They go, “Man, this changed my life!” Other people do it and say, “I just can’t handle it, It does make me too anxious, blah, blah . . “ But again, there are often behavioral tools that we can use to help as well. And most men are going to continue to self medicate. Now, if you’re on medication, you need to cut back on all the espressos, because I promise, you will be crawling out of your skin with all that stimulation. So, I’m not saying, go to a doctor. I’m not saying take pharmaceuticals, but do go take an online test, if you think you might have ADHD, because I’ve talked with so many men who thought, “Yeah, I’ve never even thought of that”, Or “Yeah, I have thought of it, but I don’t want to take pharmaceuticals”. I said, “Just take the test”. They take a test, they get a direction, and they come back and say, “Robert, this changed my life, I always thought I was stupid and or lazy, and I come find out I’m not stupid, I’m not lazy, and now I can stay focused, I can start things, I can finish things, and and I feel good about myself!”

48:59

So, do go look at that. That is what I would say, the starting point. And if you rule that out, okay! Or rule it in, either way, we still then go look at, what do we do with this bombardment of information? And, do we also want to explore this, this dynamic of how do I go get connected with men who can mentor me, coach me, integrate me, you know, do some sort of initiation to actually get past, to get me out of the nursery, to get me out of this kind of “I’ll just keep consuming information, because it’s easy”. So, those are the next steps. And those are probably the bigger, those are probably more challenging steps than even just addressing the ADHD, if that is a factor in the situation.

49:47 Igor Kheifets

Okay, so let’s talk about managing that information, or other things we can do to fight off The Shiny Object Syndrome, or develop a habit of starting things and finishing things, or develop a habit of recognizing why we procrastinate and maybe addressing the root cause of it.

50:06

Right, your listeners aren’t going to like this part! If they already turned it off because we talked about ADHD, or if they’re still around, they’re not going to like this part at all! The dealing with ADHD part is easy compared to the other two parts. So, the information overload, you know, we’ve all got these things. I stood in line on day one when the first iPhone came out. So I’ve had an iPhone continuously since they launched. I actually got to play with one before they even started advertising them, because I used to be around a lot of tech people. So, I love it, you know, I love my technology, and, you know, we all love our technology! And technology is built to addict us. It’s not a judgment, you know, it’s not some nefarious we’re victims! Our ancestors hunter gatherers, you know, if certain things that were about survival, lit up our hormone system, our neurotransmitters, especially like dopamine, serotonin, we want to go get more of that, because that helped us survive, and we found a bunch of berries in the summertime, eat those sugary berries because they’re going to put on some fat and they’ll get us through the winter time, right? We can kill a beast. “Let’s kill that beast, Let’s eat it, because it’s gonna, you know, for fire, it’s gonna rot in a day or so. Let’s gorge on it”. We’re built to do that! And the technologies, whether it’s social media, internet, Netflix, these phones, the apps! They are built to take advantage of that tendency to gorge when we have something that lights up our dopamine system. So, that’s just the reality of the world we live in!

51:51

I like to think, I’m not overly addicted to my phone! But I had technology in front of me all the time. You know, I’m sitting here at my desk with my Mac Mini 227 inch high depth monitors, you know, my good sure microphone, my phone, a preamp, there’s another laptop there, there’s an iPad right over there. I’ve got technology all around me! And I use it a lot, but I also have to make sure I don’t! I get up in the morning and I meditate, I write in my journal using a pen on paper, I take my dog for a walk, Then I dive into technology, Then this was 10am my time when I started this call with you, Then I start technology! During the day, I take time out to just go be with my wife, with my kids! I like to read, so I’ll go read, I do read on my Kindle, but, you know, I’ll go read. I’m over the Christmas holidays, I finished a couple books and started a couple more. And, like I encourage a lot of people, you probably have read enough business, marketing and self help books. You probably don’t need more! I encourage guys to read fiction. I love fiction! Fiction was the original self help book, because every fiction story has a morality tale, a hero’s journey, something in there, so, read fiction!

53:16

I love fiction! I got a bunch of my buddies, they’ve all agreed to read “Old Man in The Sea” by Hemingway, I love that book! It’d probably be my third or fourth time reading it since high school. And so, I take time to read, to just kind of, get away. But even while I’m reading a book, my phone’s by me, and I’ll notice, I’ll pick it up, anything new, any new sports scores, anything new in the news. And now I don’t even have social media on my phone, and so here’s what I tell guys is “Planned periods of time away from technology, whether it is meditation, going for a walk, talking to people face to face, being in public, being social, reading a book, take time away!” Now, we’re I really get the deer in the headlight look from most men I talk to is I’ll say, “Take the social media apps off your phone”. And every guy I say that to goes like, “No” deer in the headlight! I get that a lot of people nowadays don’t have a computer or desktop with all the gas in their phone. And if you grew up with social media, saying take it off your phone is like saying disconnect from the entire world and everybody you know. So, I get that it’s a big challenge! But, I’d say for guys, try it for a week! Take the social media apps off your phone. I’m not saying don’t use social media, but take the ability to mindlessly surf off your phone, off the device! Now, the way I kind of do it is I have a rule, I don’t take my phone to the bathroom with me, that I can go to the bathroom without needing my phone, I can have a urination meditation, I can go sit down and have a couple minutes of peace without having to look at my phone, I’m addicted to it as well!

54:59

So, we have to actually come up with some conscious ways to slow down that flow of information, because it does stimulate our nervous system in ways that feel good to our nervous system. That’s why we keep doing it. If it felt bad, we’d quit, but it feels good! So, we have to consciously create some guardrails, some parameters to keep us more within the space that we want to be. Use the technology, but know how to turn it off, how to put it aside, how to, you know, At night time I put my phone on airplane mode, I just don’t want the distraction, the temptation to look at my email one last time before I go to sleep at night! So, we need these little tools to slow us down and for every person that’s going to look different, for every person, we’re going to have to find a different way to do that effectively, and we’ll probably keep experimenting with it, because the technology is built to keep trying to grab our attention.

55:58 Igor Kheifets

I agree with you on this one more than anything, because a long time ago, I read a book by Cal Newport called “Deep Work”, where the big message in the book was: Stop wasting so much time on social media! And it was the first book that actually quantified what it meant, and the author tracked how much time he spent on social media, how much time he spent checking his email, and was able to provide coherent numbers to show what the impact of that was. And that launched me on a journey, if you will, to exploring things like that, things that . . basically that day, I realized that productivity, or ability to finish what I start was a matter of eliminating distractions! And the phone was the primary social media, at the time for me was the primary one. So, I literally got off of social media, I removed all the social media apps from my phone

57:02 The guest, Robert Glover

That’s huge! I know how big that is!

57:05 Igor Kheifets

That was big! That was so big. And not only I was able to get more done, I also felt better, like in general, I felt better because anytime we get on social media and scroll through the feed, it’s like private jet this, dream wedding that, fix my marriage this, I lost, you know, 50 pounds of fat, and I have a six pack right now! I mean, it was always like everyone just trying to showcase how amazing they are and how amazing their life is. And here I am feeling like shit. But the paradox was that even back then, I was already doing really well for myself. I had a great family, I had a great business, I was fit! I mean, I wasn’t a fitness model, but

57:48 The guest, Robert Glover

Everybody else was measuring themselves by you, but yet you were measuring yourself by all these ideals out there

57:54 Igor Kheifets

Yes, and it just made me feel terrible! Like, I really, like you said, I felt terrible about myself! So, I got off social media, even though I did use it for business, I actually set up mechanisms that prevented me from going on social media.

58:08 The guest, Robert Glover

And that’s exactly what I encourage men to do, because guys say, “Well, I need it for my coaching business or for my marketing business, you know, my Instagram, my YouTube!” I go, “Great, they’re great tools for your business. But how about your personal accounts and, you know, how is that a great tool for you?” Probably not!

58:24 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, and you can set up systems around that, like, if you really need to use it for business, you can have your VA do the things, and you just give the VA orders on how to do them. If you really have to communicate through social media, you can, like, for example, with Facebook and Instagram, you can remove, let’s say, the Facebook app from your phone, but you can keep the messenger app, so you can chat with people, but you don’t have to scroll through the feed. If you use Facebook on your computer or Instagram on your computer, there’s apps, there’s Google Chrome plugins that remove the feed, so you get on it, but there’s no feed! The feed was blocked! (Yeah) I remember doing that, and it had a tremendous impact on productivity, because all of a sudden I found myself not spending very much time on Facebook at all. It’s like, what’s the point of going if there’s no feed to look at?

59:17 The guest, Robert Glover

I love that you have done this, because I give these suggestions to so many men, and they just, again, “Deer in the headlight!” I was actually doing an interview the other day with somebody that, you know, their business is built around being a content creator influencer on the internet. I said, “Man, do you think men, if they’ve spent a bunch of time scrolling social media, do they feel more masculine? Do they feel productive? Do they feel good about themselves? Do they like themselves, their body? No! If you start talking to people about how they feel after using extended periods of social media, you don’t feel good and you’re not productive. Most guys go, I just wasted two hours doomscrolling on Instagram, or I just wasted three hours just on YouTube, just watching . . And again, In a lot of the business places, monitor and block that stuff because it is so addictive. And again, no judgment of this! This stuff is built to take advantage of our evolutionary desire to binge on stuff that in the moment feels good, now in the long term, does it serve us? Often not! That’s where we need these tools and parameters to help us look out for the long term issues that we want in our life.

01:00:44 Igor Kheifets

What’s interesting is that the same people use that created casinos and addictive gambling mechanisms, they’re the ones who consulted all these tech startups on how to make the apps (That’s what I’ve heard) And I remember watching this TED talk by somebody who used to work in Google, in the department responsible for making the Android phones more addictive. And he actually suggested, he said, “If you want to lower your screen time, what you do is you go into your iPhone, or whatever the phone, and find the grayscale setting and just make it black and white”. So, you can actually make your phone black and white, completely lacking color! (Oh, take the color away! Yeah) Yes, you take the color away, and all of a sudden you don’t want to look at it anymore! And I did it as well for about a year, year and a half or so, I went with a black and white phone, and you just look at it, and then you don’t want to look at it! And I did the same thing with my daughter when I got her the phone for the first time. I enforced it on her for about two weeks, and she didn’t even touch it, until the curfew was up and there were colors again! (That’s amazing) The eye just loves the colors, so you take the colors away, all of a sudden it’s not so attractive! In addition, I always keep my phone on mute, like it never makes noises, because otherwise, all these (The sounds are satisfying) They’re so satisfying. So, you know, ideally

01:02:13 The guest, Robert Glover

Can I give you one more thing to go with that? There’s a little bit of a different subject, but imagine the shiny thing people were talking about that applies pornography? (Oh yeah) I’ve worked with a lot of men around pornography, that’s built to be addictive as well, because it ties into our deepest drive, sexuality and variety and constant change, and porn does that better than real life does it! And so of course, we get hooked on that. And I’ve worked with a lot of men around pornography, and how I work with them, I just said, “Show me your pornography, show me what you look at, let’s talk about it!” We talk about it like you and I are just talking about anything, so you get the shame out of it.

01:02:48

But, the other thing I tell men to do, turn the sound off, because I used to, when I had men in my office look at me, I didn’t have speakers hooked up to my computer, so there’s no sound. Porn gets boring really fast with no sound! Just like you’re saying no color on the phone gets boring really fast, because our brains are wired, that smell, taste, sight, sound go to the deepest parts of our brain. And if they can get our phones to start giving us good smells, because smell is the deepest wired part into the most primitive part of our brain. So, yeah, that’s a great idea, turn the color off, turn the sound off on the porn, and it begins to get boring really quickly!

01:03:32 Igor Kheifets

There’s also been another study done. It’s not very popular, but I’ve read about it somewhere, maybe a friend told me, I have an amazing friend, she’s got this incredible memory, almost like a photographic memory. So, if she reads about a study, or hears about a study, she’ll remember it for the rest of her life. And she’s really into studies, like, almost like a study geek, you know, and so she told me about this one study where they had three groups, so first group was asked to take a math test, and they were asked to take their phones, put the phone on top of the desk, screen down. The second group was asked to take the same math test, this time the phone, or they were asked to turn the phone off and put it inside the cupboard beneath the desk. And the third group was asked to take the math test, but before they entered the classroom, they were asked to put the phones in a bin outside, so the phone was not in the room. Now, the average score on that test with the third group was, on average, 20 points higher than the scores of group one and two. So, what they’ve concluded is this, the phone, if it’s located anywhere near us, and we know it’s anywhere near us, whether it’s within sight, whether it’s not within sight, but we know it’s here (it’s a distraction) Yes! It’s literally stealing your bandwidth just by being in your space. It doesn’t even have to be ringing or dinging,it just, if it’s there, it’s stealing your bandwidth, which is why (It’s amazing) If you want to eliminate distractions, if you want to minimize distractions even more, you should just take your phone and leave it in a different room in your house, when you’re doing the work. So, it’s not just about turning it off or putting it face down on, you know how a lot of times, like you get with someone for coffee or whatever, they take their phone, then they’re like, putting it face down like this, almost

01:05:32 The guest, Robert Glover

It’s still calling them, I need a jacket, there might be something there, right? (Yeah) It does that! You know, I’m just, I just saw the headline for an article in the local newspaper where I used to live in Seattle, Washington, and I didn’t read it. I went back and read it where the headline was the state legislature or school board, something was considering a plan that would limit children’s access to their cell phones in school. And I’ve thought for the last 15 years, why do kids, you know, young adults, teenagers, need their phones at school? (anyway) “Oh, well, I need to let my mom know if I need a ride or this or that”. But yeah, I’m a big fan, you know. Let’s put it, you know, in a lock box when they enter the school, they pick it up when they leave, because why do they need it? And again, I know we live in the reality of the world, you might need to ask a question while you’re doing some research, I don’t know! But yeah, just removing them would make such a big difference!

01:06:36 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, I agree! We don’t notice it, but it’s a big distraction point, and it’s only one out of several, another one that I found to be extremely distracting, and it’s not going to sound nice, and I don’t think our listeners will love it, is actually our friends and family. When I started my business, very early on, I had to fight from my time with my parents, with my friends. I got a lot of shit from everybody! It’s like, “Oh, can you come, you know, can you go to the store and pick this up?” It’s like, “Is it really urgent? Do you need to, like, right now? No, okay! Then I’ll do it tomorrow”. It’s like, “What do you mean tomorrow? No, I need it”. It’s like, “No, I can’t do it now. It’s something more important, if you really need it, you go do it yourself. Bye”

01:07:20

My brother’s wife, you know, she used to love to call me, she used to work for a TV company, and she used to work in a department where they were collecting, it’s like collecting debt from people who weren’t paying their bills. So, she had a lot of downtime, because her job was calling them, arguing with them, cajoling them, trying to, like, get them to pay something! And, you know, therefore that’s the sort of job where you have lots of downtime. And she also used to smoke -Well, she still smokes- So, she would go out and she would need somebody to talk to, (She needs to talk to somebody, right?) Yeah (somebody friendly, a friendly face . .) Yes! So, I would be working my business, and she would call me. It’s like, hey, hey, How are you doing? How are you? Yeah, I’m good! At work? Yeah. What are you doing? Oh, nothing, just working. . Yeah! And that was every conversation, every day. At some point, I finally got it, and I was like, “Pay is this urgent? No! okay, I’ll call you back”. And then I would not call her back, and at some point I just stopped picking up altogether.

01:08:26

Now, she’s still upset with me about that, and that’s fine! But I realized that it was important for me to reclaim my time back, and all of a sudden, I realized that the phone in general was like a little pathway into my world, that other people can use to completely distract me and take my attention, put on their agendas! Because they’re calling me and they need something, It’s their agenda. It’s not my agenda! And if I have a goal and a purpose, guess what? I need to stick with that! And it took my family about three years to get with that program, to stop calling me for no damn reason. And now, these days, they think twice before even ever calling me (ever) If they ever need something from me, they would text me and they’d be like, “Hey, I really need your help, when can we talk?” So, this way I can at least plan it and talk to them when I’m in my downtime, you know, whether I’m taking a break or maybe it’s an afternoon

1:09:25 The guest, Robert Glover

You’re preaching to the choir! I hate talking on the phone, I live by my messages, I love texting! Just send the message you’re done, right? (Yes!) And I’m the same way, people don’t call me, my phone never rings! Because I’ve trained people a long time ago, I’m not going to answer it. If I see it was my mother or my son, I’ll answer because they never call me. So, if they’re calling me, I’m answering it because I know it’s probably really important! But my wife doesn’t call me, my friends don’t call me! I just, because same thing, I just feel like, if someone calls you and you pick it up when they call you, you’re now a hostage! You’re on their timetable, not your timetable! You might have been doing something important! Now, if you’re just wasting time and not important, okay, Answer it, I don’t care! But to me, yeah, mainly because I just don’t like talking on the phone, but I hear you, and that’s really codependency is what that is, and I have an online course. Here’s more information called “Nice Guys Don’t Finish Last”, They brought in middle management. And one of the key things I talked about in that course is our co-dependent relationships that distract us from the work that we need to be doing, because we care about these people, we want them to be okay, and you know, whether, “Oh, if you loved me, you would answer the phone!” Okay, what’s that about? (No) It has nothing to do with love. But so, yeah! What you’re talking about, you’re preaching to the choir on that one! Yeah! Get these distractions away from you during the time that you’re trying to get stuff done.

01:10:59 Igor Kheifets

You can also, one last trick that I found. I’ll share it, because I know we’re coming up on time and you have another thing. One thing I’ve learned is that, there’s some things that I can’t avoid, either a phone call that I cannot avoid, or a trip that I have to make, that I cannot avoid. So, I’ll deliberately schedule it after doing my most important work, like, if my most important work is to create an email sequence for a new funnel that I’ve built, then I’ll make sure that I wake up in the morning and I’ll work on that first, and once I’m done with it, or at least devoted at least an hour or two to it, I can then with, you know, clean conscience -so to speak- I can then go handle this other thing (right) That’s just going to take me away from my business.

I used to not understand this principle and what I would do, I would mismanage my time, in a sense, by giving the first two hours of the day to something like that. It’s like, let’s say I had, I needed to take my mom to do grocery shopping, because she doesn’t drive and I needed to take her, well, I could either do it at 8:30am when the store opens, or I can just as easily do it at 1pm one mile launch break, right? And so the difference, though, is huge! Because if I take her to the grocery store at 8:30am and I come back at, let’s say, 10:30am, I sit down and I’m not focused! It’s really hard to get into the groove, into the zone at 10:30 after you’ve been out with your mom and going through the store and the noises and the cars and, you know, looking for parking spaces and things like that!

01:12:40

And, you know, by switching those, I’ve regained a lot of my productivity! Because (yeah) my brain is still fresh early in the morning. They can do something that takes a lot of effort, you know, for the brain to stay focused.

01:12:57 The guest, Robert Glover

Yeah, do the most challenging things, the things we don’t want to do, do them early! Whether it’s getting into the gym, doing your meditation, you know, doing your work thing. I saw an interview with Jordan Peterson a while back, and the numbers I’m about to say are probably not completely accurate, but it’s a ballpark thing. I think he said since 1985 that’s a long time ago, he has spent three hours a day writing in solitude, you know, office door closed, no interruptions! Because, like he said, If I’ve got like these 12 ideas, you know, up here, I’m juggling in my head, and somebody taps on my door or walks in the door, they all come crumbling down, I start all over again! So, the point is, yeah, life happens, distractions happen, they do happen, and that’s okay. It really is okay. Life goes on! But if we are conscious and have our systems in place to help us focus on what is most important, minimize the distractions, it feels better, you know how it feels! We all procrastinate, not even, not just people with ADHD, something you’ve been putting off doing, and it might not even be hard. It might be a three minute conversation, It might just be pulling up a document, getting a piece of information, and it’s you’ve been putting it off for days, weeks, maybe months! It’s on your to do list. You just keep moving and you go do it! Damn, that feels good! It feels like a weight taken off.

01:14:29

And the same thing, feels like you start something and you finish it, and you get done, and you go, wow, that’s done! It’s off the plate! I don’t have to worry about it anymore, I will check it off! Yesterday, I cleaned my closet, my clothes closet upstairs, my wife and I’ve been talking about cleaning our closets for months, and she’s got a lot more clothes than I do. Hers is piled up in the room, and I said, you need to go through and get rid of the stuff you don’t wear. I did that with my closet yesterday. Took me an hour, hour and a half . . you know, I’ve leaned down, pulled out everything that’s worn in 10 years, or that’s over 10 years old or doesn’t fit me. It felt good to just be done! Now, I go open the doors, look at my closets, all ordered, you know, get rid of a bunch of shoes I haven’t worn in years! Ah, it feels good!

01:15:19

So, imagine living life that way of where we start the stuff, don’t put it off, doesn’t hang over us, and we finish what we start. Life feels good! Now, we go, wow! I got time to enjoy life, I’m not worried, I’m not stressed, I’m not anxious, I don’t have stuff hanging over me, I’m not beating myself up because I haven’t finished that thing. Life just feels good, and I’m a big fan of life feeling good.

01:15:45 Igor Kheifets

Yeah, I bet it’s almost alien to most people! They’re so used to living, you know, stressed out. All right? So, we have a couple more minutes, so I think it’s a great opportunity, a great spot to ask you where you know, we find out more about what you do and what’s the thing you work on right now? Obviously, if you were listening to this, read, No More Mr. Nice Guy, I think that’s the first thing to kind of get into your universe. But you also do a lot of other stuff these days. So, what’s your big project right now?

01:16:22 The guest, Robert Glover

Well, this will actually help us wrap up that third thing that we talked about, Lack of masculine initiation, to initiate us in the world of masterful masculinity. I’m all about building community and helping men, you know, live their best lives. So yeah! drglover.com, is my website under construction right now, but it’s gonna look really good. My classes are there, my workshops are there, my podcasts are there, so my consultations are there. So drglover.com, the thing I’m really excited about is Integration Nation. It’s my Men’s community. So, that is integrationnation.net We launched this a year and a half ago, July of 2023, is a worldwide community of men to build community, to build masculine initiation, to help sharpen men, give men support systems, accountability, and so if men, I’ll say wherever we’re struggling or stuck or underperforming or unhappy in life, I think it’s typically due to a lack of good men in our life!

01:17:31

Our ancestors live their lives around men, and so often now we’re cut off from men in general, but often, a lot of young men spend all their time pursuing the attention of women. We need men! So, that kind of brings us to wrap up all three of the things we talked about. So, check out integrationnation.net if you think you’d like a men’s program, men’s group, or men’s community.

01:17:55 Igor Kheifets

All right. So, no more No More Mr. Nice Guy you can get on Amazon and integrationnation.net and also, you can go to drglover.com, for additional programs. And this goes not just for men, this goes for anyone who has the sort of Nice Guy Syndrome. Tends to be over accommodating to other people, tends to be over pleasing other people in hopes that those people will reward them somehow. And basically, if you find yourself putting others first, putting the needs of everyone else first, and feeling lots of shame and guilt about your own needs and about your own desires and behaviors (Or telling your mother no, when she wants you to take her to the store right now) Yes, exactly! So definitely check out Dr. Roberts work, because it can be life-changing for you, and the changes can be instantaneous, very fast, because often times, it’s a matter of drawing boundaries, It’s a matter of having a difficult conversation that you’ve been putting off for years, you know, this can fix your relationships, This can improve the quality of your life, This can increase your self esteem very fast! And you’re still living, you basically go from sort of existing in fear and shame and guilt to living and thriving, you know, which is the way you were meant to live. So again, it’s No More Mr. Nice Guy on Amazon, integrationnation.net and drglover.com (yeah) Alright, So doc, thank you so much for doing this. It was a pleasure, and until next time we’ll chat. Have a good one.

1:19:45

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at www.listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you 3,000$ worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com, now to claim your free package!