Zach White on Lifestyle Engineering and Accelerating Your Growth
“At the end of the day, the antidote to analysis paralysis, the antidote to indecision is to make more decisions. Go and get experiences and go try things and learn.”
— ZACH WHITE
Subscribe on your favorite platform: Anchor | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
Consider supporting our content directly. You can also leave a review on your platform of choice. Thanks for listening!
Zach White is the Founder and Coach at OACO, the Oasis of Courage. The business was born from his passion for helping people push past their fears and find the edge of possibility in life, business, and career. It doesn't matter how successful or stuck you may feel today - everyone needs a great Coach. Zach will challenge you to go much further than you would ever go alone. In 2019, OACO launched a new program called the Lifestyle Engineering Blueprint, specifically for engineers and technical professionals to accelerate their careers while designing a life they love.
Zach began his career as a Mechanical Engineer at Whirlpool Corporation and held his BSME from Purdue University and MSME from the University of Michigan. His career shifted to Global Marketing for the KitchenAid brand before leaving the organization to found OACO. He finished certification as a Knowledge-Based Professional Coach (KBPC) with world-renowned coach instructor Leni Wildflower.
Interested in learning more about OACO and Lifestyle Engineering? Please find Zach on Facebook and Instagram (@oasisofcourage), then email your questions to Zach White, Founder and Coach (zach@oasisofcourage.com), or call 269-235-9633. Live with passion!
Links list:
Website: www.oasisofcourage.com
Show Notes:
[00:04:38] Zach's Current Focus
[00:08:16] When Did Zach's Interest In Engineering Start?
[00:10:05] The Engineer Mindset
[00:11:13] Systems Thinking
[00:13:38] Taking Technology For Granted
First Principles - Farnam Street
[00:15:54] The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop
J.C.R. Licklider |ARPA, ARPANET
[00:17:24] Entering The Real World After College
Whirlpool Corporation | University of Michigan
[00:18:23] Where Pushing With A Single-Minded Focus Left Zach
[00:19:34] Changing Mindset Towards Career
[00:20:55] People Noticed The Change And Wanted To Learn
[00:22:22] Being Comes Before Doing
[00:25:08] A Warning To "Smart" People
[00:28:34] Live As A Whole Person
[00:29:33] Descartes' Error
[00:31:10] Building An Awareness Of Your Feelings In This Moment
“I'd encourage everyone if you don't have a strong sense of the emotional side of your life. Press into that. It really is important, and there are so many ways to do it. Whether it's starting, most of us are engineers and academics. So let's read a good book, whether it's, whether it's emotional intelligence, there's something that you grabbed Daniel Goleman's work. Or others begin that journey. The sooner, the better. “
[00:32:38] Altered Traits and Mindfulness or Meditation
[00:34:23] Why Do Did Nobody Ever Talk About Mindfulness A Hundred Years Ago?
Mechanistic View | Western Culture
"The things we practice are the things that we master. If you look at your life all day, every day, and you ask the question, what is my mind practicing? We practice distraction. We practice short, little bursts. Sweet. We're in the middle of a project at work. And we're, we're letting email Gchats text messages, phone calls, everything, interrupt us. For some people, every minute, every 30 seconds. Not even, you're not focused on the work. You're in the middle of an FMEA, and you're responding to five chats at the same time. That's not work. "
[00:37:22] Why Mindfulness?
[00:39:27] Thinking In Spectrums: Mindfulness to Meditation
“Mindfulness is your entry point. Mindfulness is using like Headspace, Calm, any of those apps.
Then Meditation is the deep work. Meditation is where you do the introspection:
Where you're like, Hey, what am I like? How do I figure myself out? Where are my pain points here? How do I start untangling those mental knots?
Like you would try to push yourself at the gym and like break your body down.
Where can I find these knots in my psyche that are holding me back because I'm too scared?
To start opening Pandora's box. I think one of the things about Meditation is that it is scary, and what you're going to find is not going to be good sometimes.”
[00:41:23] Practice Thinking About Just One Thing
[00:42:44] Be Where Your Feet Are
[00:43:31] Cultivating Presence
[00:45:41] Separating Yourself From Screens
Zach’s Routine: No Screen for the first two hours and during meals.
[00:48:16] Making Our Devices Work For Us
[00:49:27] During Podcasts Nobody Checks Their Phone
Your Smartphone Reduces Your Brainpower, Even If It's Just Sitting There - The Atlantic
[00:51:26] Putting The Phone Airplane Mode
How to Configure Your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You - |Medium
[00:53:36] The Power Of Habit
Charles Duhigg's book The Power of Habit
James Clear’s book Atomic Habits
Small changes that compound over time: “So you know my morning routine, I already mentioned it. It's pretty regimented around how I do things, and I realized that if I could make a couple of small tweaks.
The way that I structured the activities, I could probably free up an additional five minutes in my morning routine, and some of my friends made fun of me like, fuck, what are you talking about?
Five minutes? Well, that five minutes get applied to the time that I read in the morning and let's say I could read a page a minute.
I'm not a fast reader. I'm an engineer. I read like an engineer. So a page a minute.
Well, five pages, man, over 300 days a year that I'm doing this. That adds up to, I mean, how many, like what, 20 more books or something that I'm going to devour this year just because I can get through that many extra pages.
The point is, don't underestimate the power of small compounding benefits in our lives and living habitually and stacking good habits and replacing bad habits with good habits. To me, that is an X factor to results that are bigger than you could ever imagine.”
[00:56:52] Eisenhower Decision Matrix Or Stephen Covey Time Management Quadrants
Dwight D. Eisenhower | Stephen Covey | Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Eisenhower Decision Matrix was described in #77 - How To Train Your Mind: Movement
[00:58:15] Being Able To Discriminate What's Important to You
What are the peak moments? What are the proud moments? What are the stories that come to mind when you reflect over your life and say in my autobiography, these are the big wins?
Look deeply at those stories. And what about them makes them important to you?
Then do the opposite.
What are the low points? What were the things that I had a big failure? Or something that is off track and is a hugely negative memory for me, and dive in like what was I feeling? What was I experiencing? Who was around what happened?
And then you want to diagnose what were the things that made it unique in our lives.
[01:01:36] What Are Your Commandments?
“ It doesn't matter if you're getting closer to the goal if you hate your life the whole time on your way there.”
[01:03:07] Personality Tests
Big Five Personality | VIA Character Strengths | Gallup Strengthsfinder 2.0
[01:04:44] Cultivating Self-Awareness: Look To Your Heroes
[01:06:23] Only Two Limited Resources: Time And Energy
[01:07:22] The Purpose of Vision
“Vision acts as a true North to make sure, like, am I going in the right direction? I think we all can create our visions regardless of whether or not you're a CEO. We're all the CEOs of our own life if you think about it.”
Ari Weinzweig found of Zingerman's
Ari’s definition of vision: “Vision is a picture of what success looks like at a particular point in time in the future. Described in rich emotional detail such that, you know, when you have arrived.”
[01:09:31] The Power Of Zach's Vision
Teddy Roosevelt and The Man In The Arena
Paraphrased here by Zach, “It's the man who's in the arena, whose face is marred by, by sweat and blood, and who's doing the deed. We want to get out of the bleachers, out of the grandstands of being a critic, and get into the arena of our life. The vision for OACO is to be a vehicle. The Oasis that helps people recognize you have to first get into the arena.”
[01:13:45] Allowing Technical People Express Themselves Fully
[01:16:36 ] Viewing Stress As A High Watermark - Two People Who Are Underwater Are Still Drowning
“Two underwater people are both drowning. It doesn't matter if relatively speaking; it's different in their world. They're drowning. The point I wanted to make was giving yourself permission to look and say, I'm drowning."
[01:19:11] Don't Be Vulnerable Because It's Popular
[01:20:38] Erich's View On Knowledge
“With Knowledge, Comes Responsibility”
“Throwing is as much information that we can at people and say, here's what seems to work. Now do it. Like, don't break it. Be the engineer.”
[01:21:26] Building Cultures and Elevating The Individual
Pete Carroll | Culture of caring for the individual continues paying dividends for Pete Carroll’s Seahawks
[01:22:50] Potential Left On The Table
[01:23:36] Prioritizing Recovery For The Individual
For more on the idea of recovery: #70 - How To Train Your Mind: Daily Recovery
Also, read my overview here - Meet Whoop and Oura Ring
[01:26:05] Organizing Human Capital
[01:27:38] Recommended Books
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
Awaken The Giant Within by Tony Robbins
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
[01:30:27] Be Decisive
“At the end of the day, the antidote to analysis paralysis, the antidote to indecision is to make more decisions. Go and get experiences and go try things and learn.”
